*

Sometimes things just take on a life of their own, don’t they? Especially when you’re writing. I started with High Lonesome on a bunch of bricks in downtown Ft. Worth and ended up with a prose poem that, really, has little to do with any of that.

*

High Lonesome

In lesser hands, this would be a pie. In mine, it is two scorched oven mitts and a castoff crust. This recipe is the only souvenir from the flame-baked kitchen. Nana stole it from a turkey somewhere in the Idaho woods. Now it’s photocopied on index cards, passed around the table like leaves. Nothing is scarce anymore. Between my fingers, what should have stuck together becomes a million crumbs. The things we destroy in the making. There are cherry pickers for a reason. My thumbs bleed like maraschinos. Every drop a letter home.

*

Kiss kiss bang bang, s.

Fifteen-minute poem prompt. GO! (I’ll post mine tomorrow).

*

Tree in downtown Ft. Worth. It’s snowing and blowing and perfect for staying inside doing nothing. Merry days!

*

This is a fantastic video — and an even more fantastic idea from the creative mind of Stefan Sagmeister. I love his idea of taking five the retirement years and moving them forward. I also loved his sense of humor, and the kinds of things he came up with while on sabbatical. One of the things I find most interesting — and disheartening — are some of the comments from viewers (not on the You Tube section, but in the actual Ted website, which I couldn’t embed). They talk about how ridiculous this is because they don’t have money, because it’s only for the rich, because no one but the famous can make it work — and I think it’s that kind of thinking that holds us down, that keeps us doing the drudgery of life without joy.

I think a lot about what it means to be creative, about what I’m doing for money versus what I’m doing for love. I know how I start to feel when I’m writing too much or too much of the same thing or when I’m not writing things that challenge me. I get dulled. I still write, but it’s this kind of drag. It’s becomes, “When will this be done?” instead of “Wow, where did the time go?” I think that we have to make a choice to remain creative, to move on and see things that re-open our brains and our sense of wonder.

This year, for me, has been half creative — my time in Scotland was a sabbatical, although I didn’t call it that, because I was writing every day, and I didn’t see it for what it was. It was a sabbatical from “real work” (meaning: paying work) and a change to live the kind of life he’s talking about: writing, walking, exploring, being creative in whatever way that came to me.

Now, I’m back in the other side — the writing for money, the head-down, fingers at the keyboard side. I miss the sabbatical already. But I also don’t know if I could do that year-round…

Oh, hell…who am I kidding? I totally could! If only I didn’t need to actually make some money once in a while.

Far and fast, s.

*

Sun through the trees. It’s turning fall here. Which is nothing like fall anywhere else I’ve ever been.

*

The friends I’m staying with at the moment have a gaming system and a couple of copies of Rock Band. I’ve always loved music, but I can’t -make- music for the life of me. I blame this faulty musical ability on two things:

1. My parents, who raised me listening to musicians like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin. Fantastic poets, fantastic wordsmiths, but couldn’t sing a lick, any of them. So, I became a poet instead of a singer.
2. My middle school, which only had two flutes available for students. Everyone wanted to play the flute (I don’t know why they wanted to play the flute; I wanted to play the flute because I’d seen the size of the trombone case and was NOT about to carry that sucker around all day). So, we put our names in a hat and whoever’s name got drawn got to play the flute. I didn’t get picked. Thus, while everyone else was learning about rhythm and chords, I was hammering away at my bird house in wood shop.

One of my friends here has a very good voice. I mean, very good. The kind that’s actually nice to listen to. And he says I have a passable voice, that I just need to learn how to use it (And if you knew this person, you would know that “passable” is a serious compliment). So, I’m learning. I am an … I forget the term. Kind of high. Alto? Something like that. Which means I’m learning how to try and hit those ridiculous low notes that make me sound like a bullfrog. I’m also trying to learn what it means to be “jump octaves” and all these other terms. “To make your voice do that, just jump an octave.” What? Right. Okay.

So, I’ve been singing. I do best with slow songs, the ones that give me enough time to breathe in between lyrics and to laugh at myself. Last night, it was Rambling Man by the Allman Brothers.

Lord, I was born a ramblin’ man
Trying to make a living and doing the best I can
When it’s time for leaving, I hope you’ll understand
That I was born a rambling man

And it got me thinking about why some people travel and some people don’t. Are we really born to ramble? Do we learn it? Is it fear that keeps us from traveling, or a genuine lack of desire?

I don’t think I was born a traveler. I always knew that I wanted something different from what I was born into. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family or their life — I did — but I wanted more. I always felt too bookish, too geeky, too quiet, too anti-social, too out-of-place. When I was a kid, I used to pretend that I had homework, just so I could spend more time with my nose buried in a book instead of doing “social” things. It wasn’t that I wanted to escape. It was that I wanted to experience.

Of course, traveling is scary when you start it, if you haven’t been raised in a traveling culture/family. It’s damn scary. Even small steps seem huge. The first time I moved from my little town to the “big” city of Syracuse, I was scared out of my mind. I couldn’t even drive on the highway. Then, I moved across the country with the love of my life. Drove there. Crashed my car on the way. It was amazing and exhilarating and freak-out inducing. Then, I had the chance to begin to travel internationally with a woman who was both a boss and a friend. She guided me through the process, step-by-step, until I became what I am today, which is a fairly solid international traveler.

I’m grateful to all of those people– family, friends, loved ones, bosses — I really am. I’m not sure I would have been able to fulfill my desire to travel without their help and guidance and shoves.

These days, I am a rambling man, as it were. (I tried singing “rambling woman” but it doesn’t fit so well. It screws up the rhythm or meter or whatever the hell that is). I’ve begun dreaming of places. Back to Scotland? Off to South Africa? Brazil? Ireland? My feet are getting itchy to see somewhere new, even though I know I’m not ready to take a new leap yet. I have a few months of work and whatnot before I can even begin to think about traipsing off somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll keep working on my voice. Jumping octaves can’t be as hard as jumping continents, right?

Far and fast, s.

*

Just can’t wait to get on the road again.
The LIFE I love is makin’ music with my friends

~Proper Lyrics from On the Road Again

Just can’t wait to get on the road again.
The WIFE I love is makin’ music with my friends

~How I always heard the lyrics from On the Road Again. I used to think that “makin music” was a euphemism for sex, to which I thought, “No wonder he wants to get on the road again! His wife is having sex with all his friends. Poor guy!”

*

*

(here’s my fifteen-minute poem from yesterday’s post. mine turned out dark, which I think is because I came up with the title first scroll down to read the wonderful poems that readers wrote!)

*

Witch List

The wolf is sick again. Skin and bones

urked onto the wood floor, gristle between

his teeth. If he smiled, you would know

that dinner dines not on plates but on

*

places. And hearts. Hers is black these days,

a rot of swamps and shallows, quick breaths,

the kind of air that weaves frost patterns

along her lungs, little hands making

*

patty-cake prints. There are six things

she must do today, and none of them pretty.

Moss makes soft shoes on which to walk

the darkway, picking frogs from limbs.

*

Dressed in delight branches, the moon

howls to her as she goes, awroos like an old lover

whose face stays turned away,

hidden by hair like fronds.

*

*

Far and fast, s.

*

Fifteen-minute poem anyone? I’m going to write a fifteen-minute poem later today out of this photo, but wanted to give everyone else the chance to write one first. There aren’t really any rules to this: write a poem in fifteen minutes (or do the five-minute version if you really feel challenged!) inspired in any way by the photograph. You can post it here, post it on your own blog or just comment and say, “Yeah, I did, but I’m not sharing!” The joy of the timer poem is that there’s no pressure, just throw together whatever you can and enjoy!

So, what poetry do you see?

Far and fast, s.

*

*

Um… what? This was the view outside the window this morning. Where am I again?

*

*

Snow Day by Billy Collins

*

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

*

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

… (read the rest of this poem here)

*