Working out the Words

Wednesday, Sept. 26 My friend Jack sent me this link to Taylor Mali, a teacher/comedian/orator who has at once blown my mind and renewed my faith in the possibility that this nation can embrace literacy.  When the video finishes, there are other links to choose from including other routines of his.  (I recommend "The Impotence of Proofreading.")  Thank you, Taylor. Tuesday, Sept. 25 Over the last week I read Daphne du Maurier's The House on the Strand.  I read it riding down to Knoxville; I read it at the house where we stayed.  I read it in the hotel, and on the two day ride back to Connecticut.  I finished the last five pages at my kitchen table within twenty minutes of arriving home, ignoring the phone. I dreamed about it at night.  I cried over it.  I learned a few new words, among them escheator, the person who makes sure that lands with no heirs revert back to the manor lord, or the crown.  It has, as I suspected, the same roots as the word cheat. Today I kept bereftness at bay (no more book!) by going running.  I had a little knee issue last week so I laid off for a few days.  I seem to be all right; there is a new, little clicking sound in my knee sometimes when I straighten it.   Like the way a knuckle or a shoulder snaps at odd moments, without pain, just a short statement, no details.  Just the facts, ma'am.  I also visited the new and improved laundromat, with the new and improved machines, dropping five bucks on a couple of loads.  Feels good to do ordinary things that don't involve sitting in a car for 15 hours. Still thinking about the book.  It's about a man who takes an experimental drug that sends him back in time by 600 years, but without his body.  His body remains in the present.  (This causes some problems.)  He must be only an observer; if he touches anyone he's in for a lot of trouble on reentry.  He gets completely caught up in the lives and events of the people who lived nearby in the 14th century, their political struggles and familial intrigues, their adulteries, loves and revenges. Anyway, it was a tremendous escape. I'll be raiding Margo's bookshelf again this week. Now, back to the present: much work to do before our departure on Thursday for Texas.  I am going to meet my neice for the first time on this tour; she is in her late twenties.  She is the daughter of my estranged brother, whom I have not seen since 1984.  Whatever happens to the Jones family line in 600 years will be largely up to her, as my sister and I have no children.  This is only lately becoming clear to me.    Wednesday, September 12 Awoke from the dream of being on the hijacked bus. It was only a little kid driving; why did no one have the wherewithal to stop him? Or call 911 on the cell phone? (Odd that I had this dream on the night of 9/11.) Frantically trying to signal people on the outside. Part of the countryside was English; but we were in the States driving on the wrong side of the road. Once we careened off a cliff -- vertigo -- but then, after the tumble, it seemed we had only rolled sideways, and the kid kept going. I saw a group of people I'd known in high school, sitting talking around a bench, and cried, "Oh! That's my madrigal choir!" and the shock of knowing I'd never sing with them again, and how they'd wonder what happened to me, doubled me over in sobbing grief. Some people on the bus started laughing at this. I went over to two of them and hit them hard, yelling. These were also people I knew many years ago but did not go to school with. I was so furious at their making light of my loss. Okay. So if I'm everyone in my dream, my inner child is driving the bus, my inner adult is terrified, my inner teenager is laughing at the whole thing, and my inner madrigal choir is sitting blithely in the sunshine with no idea that any of this is going on. Yep! That sounds like me. ******** I'm enjoying reading Amy Clampitt this week. I found a big book of her collected poems on the bookshelf. See, I went to clean off the kitchen table (again), and had to put two books away. When I got to the bookcase I found there is no more room to put any books in it. So, I said, something has to go. I pulled out this volume, which I bought on impulse a couple of years ago because I'd read it had a tribute to John Keats in it -- but it's been sitting there all this time, unread. I thought I'd just give it away somewhere. On the way back to the kitchen, however, I started thumbing through it and ended up reading quite a bit. She didn't publish a book of poetry until she was in her 60s. I don't think she published any single poems until in her 50s. Her poetry is dense, packed to the brim; one critic said she had "a Keatsian lusciousness" and "a Quaker austerity." I find her fascinating, though I have to attend her poems closely. She died at 74, of ovarian cancer, in Lenox, Massachusetts. She had married her longtime partner three months before she died. ******** The aloe jettisoned a dozen spiky hands today. It's been dying off, probably rootbound; this, after a long growth spurt this summer that had it looking like a signpost pointing in all directions. I lifted it up on another stand so it could catch more light, cut off all the dead flyaways and, though I said I wouldn't, put most of the limbs into water to root. I have no more pots and no more room. But as the plant steward of this particular address, if they give me progeny I can't just toss them all.  It is eerily like a poem I wrote last April. On this my last day before getting busy again, I want to run and work on a song or two. It's already nearly noon. I awoke from the dream and went back to bed. I can alternate, now, between getting up early and not. After installing a second file cabinet in the office yesterday (requiring much reorganizing of files and tidying of the walk-in closet that is my workspace), I feel slightly more organized inside. It's cool and very breezy outside today, with high white clouds. A nice aftermath from yesterday's torrential rains. Thursday, Sept. 6 Ah, me.  Reading Billy Collins always does this.  How can he be so good?   Does he throw away a lot of chaff?  How many drafts are there before it goes into the book?  How long did it take him to come up with, "in every section of the tangerine of earth"?  Or does he just keep a file of infallible metaphors so he can pull one out at need?  And the stanza: The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong game of proofreading, glancing back and forth from page to page... Did he consider removing the last line, as a redundancy?  How much gets clipped?  To whom does he show it first?  Is he insufferable to live with?   Was his wife drawn to him because he's so good with words, and then later did she say, "For God's sake, stop writing!  Just go with me to the movies!" I want to have lunch with this man.  Even if we say nothing. ******** I debuted the new songs for the band today, and only one needs major work.   It's still going to be hard, for a while, to find time to rehearse.  We also got a new bass on spec.  I have to change the strings and play with it a while here, but I don't have it in me tonight.  Tomorrow, along with the five other things I've been putting off.  Is that all right?  Can I put it off til then?   I promise I'll do it; I'll also go to the post office and mail the CDs someone ordered, and to the car wash, to clean off the bird poop that my sister insists will eat the paint off my car.  And maybe the laundromat.  And the several things I've been needing to install in my computer.  And cleaning the apartment -- the ongoing task.  And running.  I need to run tomorrow.  I will not under any circumstances get stuck at the kitchen table with a steaming Disney mug of D'Oro decaf (or maybe half-caf) and my new Billy Collins book, resting my feet (crossed at the ankles) on the next chair under the table, allowing the sun to filter through all the plants in the window and fall on each page in succession as I savor and turn them under the ROASTING FIRE OF MY EYES, okay?? Sunday, Sept. 2 Forgive me; I've been away.  And since coming home, I've been writing a spate of songs. Here is where I went:                              Here is what I'm writing about:  Lindisfarne; storms; running euphoria in England; love and cooking; the endurance of stones; the importance of passion.  This week my body has let me know it's time to rest.  My ankle is sore, my back spazzed yesterday and the neck stiffness which completely disappeared in England is talking a little, again.  I haven't slept much since returning, getting up between 6:30 and 8:00 most days and either working on songs or going out to run; this, after staying up sometimes til 2 or 3am.  (New personal best running time:  one hour.)  I am reading every day about the intuitive self; Skeleton Woman, the Life/Death/Life cycle as pertaining to relationships.  It's very interesting to me, as my longest intimate relationship to date has been 5 years, and that one was 4 years too many.  I haven't weathered the cycles well, even with healthy partners.  The big gates have been closed for a long time.  It's time to at least open a window. And oh, the dreams this week.  I've immersed myself in a marathon of Lord of the Rings -- a friend graciously gifted me with the set, and it's been quite cathartic.   Many images have found their way into my dream scenes.  Some have been lucid, some not.  For example, the hyena or lion or whatever it was that was chasing me -- I was cognizent enough to know that it was a dream so I could fly away -- but not enough to realize that it was a dream so the hyena wouldn't hurt me.  Or the big spider, or the gang of boys on bikes that was going to beat me up (or whatever).   Ever we strive for greater consciousness, in sleep and waking. Cleaning the bathroom floor is a good way to put off working on songs.  Working on songs is a good way to put off sending the newsletter.  Sending the newsletter is a good way to put off balancing the checkbook. If only balancing the checkbook could put off cleaning the bathroom floor, I'd get everything done by putting everything off. The strawberries were magnificent, by the way.  In England.  Squat little red gnomes, red all the way through, not like the Driscoll's we get here that are shipped crisp and doused in duplicitous chemicals.  We ate them in Reeth, at a picnic table outside the pub, looking at the distant hills and listening to the sounds of local market sellers on the village green. And I kept finding money on the ground.  Twice I found a pound coin (about $2.10 at the exchange rate then), and a number of penny denominations.  The week we returned, I found $2 on the sidewalk near my house.  I tried to think of prosperity every time I picked up a coin, imagining every penny equalling a thousand dollars. I'd say we spent much of our time in England in a state of disbelief that we'd gotten there, and once back, disbelief that we'd returned.  It was wondrous, in addition to being real and practical and containing the usual challenges and choices and hardships of touring.  The gigs were lovely, satisfying.  One place advertised our concert as being a week later so not many people came.  But that night a Scottish gentleman allowed me to tape him reciting the words to the Sandgate Dandling song, which Margo found years ago in a book of Scottish songs, and he told us how it would really go in Scots English.  It was beautiful.  He was quite miffed that we weren't doing it accurately.  Later our agent researched the song and found that it was really written by a blind fiddler from Tyneside, in the north of England, so the lyrics as we originally learned them were actually correct.  But it was an exciting moment for me.   I didn't get enough chance to record people telling their stories in their own voices. In fact the thing we didn't get to do was sing in pubs.  Where we were, it seemed there weren't any opportunities, though we always asked.  I guess we'd have to go to bigger towns to find singing pubs or ceilis.  We did do one impromptu concert at a B&B, in front of a big fire, with a bottle of mediocre wine we'd gotten on sale.   Our host brought out a bottle of elderberry juice that he kept to "cheer up" a lousy wine, and the combination wasn't bad, kind of like Manischewitz meets Trader Joe's Three Buck Chuck. That place was originally the Lord of Northumberland's stables; a huge spread that this couple have turned into lodging rooms and an antique shop.  My room was called the Mouse House, up a winding stair into a little attic room with a skylight, a mouse-sized bathtub, a tiny tv, and fresh flowers on a little table.  Apart from pulling a 50-lb. suitcase up the stairs, it was a joy. It took so long to get home, with flight delays and weather issues, that I was up for 27 hours before finding my bed and falling into it.  The jet lag was much harder coming back, though we gained five hours.  I have finished four songs (!) and have two yet to go; that, exploring some heart issues, and scouting a new bass are my tasks this week.  (We left the bass in England so we wouldn't have to fly it each year.   The flight case was pretty beat up anyway.)  October is going to be very busy again.  I have finally weaned myself off of McVitie's Chocolate Biscuits (okay, there aren't any more) so I hope to clean up my diet again now.   Monday, July 23 Late one night, before we left for the Midwest, I went outside to watch the onset of the thunderstorm. The sky opened up and my street ran with rivers down each side, transporting a light cargo of garbage from up the block: a water bottle, a takeout cup. The cool air was a welcome change from inside, and I stood with my arm outstretched to catch some of the drops, or sat with my back against the house, looking through the fronds of the cat palm into the silver lines of rain, backlit by streetlamps. Spanish rang from a few houses up; I wasn't the only witness to the long-needed rain. It reminded me that I sit very little. We returned from Michigan late last night, each of us with a long list of things to get done in the week remaining before we leave for England. I hope I remember to be still sometimes, too. Breathe. Who knew there would yet be so much to accomplish? Somehow problems will be smoothed out, luggage will be packed. We’ll be there, in belief or disbelief. The Midwest was good. Nice crowds, and between weekends we practiced our Cropredy set, and ran and hiked. Our hostess in Michigan had rescued a hummingbird from their cat, and we fed it by hand with an eyedropper. I gave it a lot of Reiki and prayers. It was light as a moth, feisty in spite of some broken feathers. She knew someone who did wildlife rehab; I hope she’s called by now. Well, so much to do now; I may not post much here before we go.                                                                                                                        Grace Archive: April/May 2007 June/July 2007

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