ambivalence

I haven't done much here -- ok, nothing at all -- for a while. R says I should be excited about the opportunities presented by leaving this job (at which I am currently goofing off rather). I am not NOT excited but R seems to be more excited than I. I got my first "real" job in 6th grade cleaning the school I went to and have worked more or less ever since. I never quit a job without knowing exactly what was next. I have a friend who guaranteed me a min of 20 hours a week contract - I thought the minimum was to ensure I got "$x" a week but he seems to think it means I will work at least "x" hours. Friday I leave here, with mixed feelings -- actually without much feeling at all -- and Monday he wants me there at 9:30. Maybe I picked the wrong thing. My boss announced I was leaving to become a "housewife" as I do not have an actual job to go to; R says I am not unemployed but I am becoming self employed, and the truth of the matter is -- if it could work financially and it wasn't unfair to R I would just stay home and do nothing but work to finish the house repairs and to read, write, photograph, garden, paint, contemplate... it's just not realistic with M off to Tulane in a month... probably it never will be realistic either.
I wanted time ... to watch stupid movies (aren't they all stupid, really?), to clean out and make a space for me at the house, to drive around (that seems to be how I write anymore), to write, to do photos, to read. But instead I am going to work at 9:30 on Monday. If I am expected to show up every day I may have to reconsider but this is a good friend after all -- so I can't just dump him in the grease either.
I wanted to put the house back in some order, to quit living out of boxes, to paint the new sheetrock, to do the finish work on the new floors, to get some bookcases put in since we had to rip out the built-in storage which was flooded and to get to the wood floors underneath that were ruined by Ike. I wanted to unpack the multitude of boxes ... I actually bought books Monday at a resale shop -- some of which I have copies of -- because mine are in one or more of the many boxes stacked in neat piles throughout the house. My reading choices otherwise are some James Alison ("On Being Liked" is proving very dense or I am too dense for this one), one WB ("The Memory of Old Jack"), a book on Islam, and an assortment of magazines and papers I haven't caught up with. M wanted a book of poetry the other day -- a real book, not a download from Gutenberg -- but no such luck. They don't seem to carry a lot of poetry in stores selling used books.
I have been writing a lot but in the car - not a smart or safe practice but for some time driving has been the easiest way to write, it just comes. I keep a notebook for those occasions but it is full and so I resort to the backs of old maps and scraps of paper. And I haven't really decided how I feel about moving things from those scraps or notebooks to here -- it is spontaneous as written but if I move it, it's just copying, not writing -- it doesn't feel the same as writing (it's not, after all, it is copying). So there is nothing to put here bc I am mired in ambivalence and having not written anything other than while driving for the longest time ... the default position is to do nothing.
Doing nothing accomplishes nothing, it helps me figure out exactly nothing, and it's a lazy way for a scared person to go about things, things we don't even know about.
Maybe I will post on the other site the things R selected for the poetry fest ... he is the only one who ever read as many as he did or who ever suggested I should be more public by submitting them for anything ...
I don't expect anything to come of it but it was nice to have that encouragement and feedback.

poetry feedback

I have the best husband -- sometimes it's frustrating because i don't do loveable well, sometimes it's hard to accept that I am loved, but he sticks in there anyway ... at least so far. He read about a local poetry competition. While being so nice as to never comment or say anything about whatever appears here, or what I write, or more importantly about anything behind whatever shows up here, he does at times read the blog and he suggested I do this thing.
I do not presume to write poetry -- it's that thing of having to do it right so if i deny I am trying to write poetry then I don't have to do it right, but if I said I was writing poetry then I would have to do it right or else ...

"Someone of unbound conscience can dare to get it wrong, because they don't have to get it right. If you have to get it right, that means that you don't dare to get it wrong, which means that you are afraid of what will happen to you if you do get it wrong." James Alison. On Being Liked. New York: Crossroad, 2003. 110

-- but since I can't admit I try to write poetry I could hardly select a poem for this project. So R made the selections. The required submission is 5 poems on 5 pages. I tried to pick -- not because I think I have anything (I'm still stuck on being wrong) but because R thought I should pick, and if he thought there was anything to any of it then I should try to pick. But I had no idea how or what to choose. No one has ever even suggested there's any merit to my writing, so ...

I may not have picked the same five he picked but I think they go together in a way and here, I will say it, those five don't suck so bad.
One wasn't even really written as a poem ... but R saw it differently and when I read it as he selected it, it was more than I thought before theat -- if that makes sense. the seeing through another's eyes os what we write is pretty neat.

Will any be recognized? I doubt it -- this group has a periodical and what I come up with is not anything like what they choose.
But that's not the point.

The point is that someone who doesn't read poetry, who reads a lot and knows a lot but seldom reads anything other than industry/tech/geek type stuff, who doesn't even listen to much music so far as I can tell unless he's stuck in my car with ipod or pandora on -- someone else read some of my stuff and five struck him as good enough ... seeing what he chose and him telling me some of why is a first, a rare -- I think the first -- interaction between me as a "writer" and anyone, to get an idea of what anyone else thinks about anything I write. I guess I'd like to have more of that interaction/input/feedback on writing.

I didn't know I missed or wanted it but now I know ... for whatever it's worth.

What's important ... walking the line

 

K as a jew could not stay on the palace grounds in Prague but his sister loved this little house [the blue one] and they rented it on Golden Lane. Every day they would go together and he had a small upstairs room where he wrote; small dormer windows looking over the alley and ceilings low, shaped to the roof, requring me to stoop. The light in the evening of a January day is clear. K was an insurance lawyer who hated his job. Perhaps I should move to Prague and rent a room. Would that make me at least a writer of even the most base kind?
But I could never do this ...
 

... so I guess i'll go to work again today.

Irresolute resolution

I don't believe in resolutions, they're just another route to failure. I can fail well enough without the additional pressure, courtesy of myself, to meet some unrealistic goal within "x" amount of time. If it's worth being done then I ought to start doing it when I realize it's something I shoulkd be doing, and if I don't care enough then to start, how can it be imnportant enough to set a goal?
For example, perhaps I would resolve to write here more but as it is, there is nothing to say so why bother stringing together a bunch of words that no one will read or miss -- either way -- and that are or would in any event be utterly inconsequential?
Perhaps I might resolve to write only when I have something to say -- but I don't really always know when I have anything to say. As above, it's inconsequential either way, so ...