Shiny Things

I am already a good way into Day 2, so I think it is high time to stop and get my head together about Day 1, as though that is even possible. I am sitting on the lower level of the hidden annex side of the conference center, where I just found some interesting glass sculpture and friendly school teacher from Pheonix, who grew up in North Canton. Yesterday, I went to more things than I even realized until I looked at my notes just now. A brief rundown: - Raven Chronicles reading - Here is the lovely serendipity for the day. I came to this panel purely for the name. Donnelle and Seven - two friends from grad school - we're already there, and I discovered a lovely journal - a multicultural journal with themed issues published here in Seattle and featuring, from the panel's evidence some really smart and interesting writers. The title to this post is drawn from a poem by Carletta Carrington Wilson, who spoke. - Hanging out with my friend Paula, who lives in Cleveland but we don...

Evidence The time change is really affecting me. I can't remember ever being so confused by crossing time zones. I can't figure out when to sleep or eat. Also, when alone and not responsible for other people's forward motion, decision making is confusing. I am slow and a little stupid out here. And yet, I got to explore Pike Street Market, took a long walk out to the Olympic Sculpture Park, sat for a while by a tiny "pocket beach" right on the sound and watched the waterfowl and the mountains and the freighters, encountered a hipster in an overcoat sitting on a park bench reading an ipad and smoking a meerschaum pipe (honestly, I witnessed this), drank lots of latte, and reconnected with an old coworker. Today the conference begins in earnest, and my head will crushed. Reading: Trying desperately to finish Looking for Alaska . Writing: Note taking Lunch & Dinner: Lunch, which was also a very late breakfast, because I couldn't figure out sleeping and eatin...

Dawn from my window. I arrived in Seattle yesterday. I've never been to this part of the country before. I'm going to AWP later this week, which if you don't know is a huge writing/teaching writing conference (The schedule alone is 500 pages long. I exaggerate. But, please, never ever use the word "praxis" in a panel title, even if you are in graduate school. More on AWP later.)  This trip has been in the works for a couple months now, but like  most things in my life recently, if it isn't immediately in front of me I don't have time to consider its reality. It was about half way through the flight from Chicago that I realized I was actually going to end up in the Pacific Northwest. Then a little later as the plane started to descend, I opened my window shade and saw this: Well, I didn't see this  precisely , because this image is from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier But I saw a view like this, only there was a cloud streaming off the t...

Last night, I drove way south to take the kids to what I have come to think of as The Wall of Soccer - three straight hours of sitting around the lounge of the indoor facility while they do footskills and alternate practice hours. (I am soccer mom. Hear me roar.) As timing would have it, I needed to procure dinner on the fly so I dropped the kids at the place (conveniently tucked behind a seedy motel near the racetrack) and ventured out to gather food on the vast snowy wastlelands of exurbia. Some things I noticed: 1. That chain not-quite-fast-food soup and sandwich place that I have gift cards for is not really "close" to the soccer place in any real-space kind of way. It is only close by virtue of being also all the way out there and connected by major arterial roads. 2. Major arterial roads are all there are in parts of out there, because the blocks of land between them are either still empty, undeveloped deer habitat (less empty by the year) or are home to recently erect...

Cryptic illustration, that requires reading all the way to bottom to understand This is why I like Sunday morning. I'm on the couch with Z. David is at the round table in the art/music/dishes/piles of paper room. Jazz is playing on the computer. O is upstairs maybe still asleep, maybe clandestinely playing with an electronic device. What now? Blog? Yoga? Call my mom? Work on script? Work on book? Read for pleasure? Read for school? Prep for school? Prep for writers group? Do the crossword? Plan menus? Bills & budgeting? Tidy & clean? Later I have a gift card from a fancy lady store to spend when I take Z to violin. Karen blogged. She blogged about not overthinking things . I think this is good advice. I've been wanting to blog since school was back in session. Wishing I could figure out just which sliver of the day to jam it into. I collect shiny things mentally, on notepads, on the funky "notebook" program on my electronic device. Each  Most mornings when I w...

The polar vortex has moved on and we are back to slushy January in Cleveland. (Most) schools are back in session. I am back in teacher mode. The interwebz come up with the most amazing things. If you start googling about yoga of completion or similar far-out things, you might just come across an online archive of   Northeast England's early 70s alternative newspaper ! Groovy, man! I am thinking a lot about finishing things and a lot about yoga. For the sake of compactness, I am beginning to think of myself as making a new practice of a "yoga of completion." (Yes, there is a tantric concept that might be called this. I am not sure that is what I am talking about. Who knows?) What I am talking about is a mindful dedication to finishing things, but finishing comes in many forms. Are you following me? Probably not. Let me start with this: I first began to do yoga 13 years ago, pregnant for the first time and embroiled in graduate school. When that first pregnancy ended in sti...

This is what -10 looks like Reading: I finally finished Teacher Man . At the end of the book, as he retires from teaching at Stuyvesant in New York, his students tell him he should go write a book. This is the last chapter: It says, "I'll try." That's a sweet ending. Nice that he went on to win a Pulitzer. Writing: I'll try. (A little Monday. More today. Need to use the cold to my advantage.) Dinner: David made pizza: eggplant, mushroom, and pepperoni with red sauce, and black olive and pepperoni with white. We ate it while watching the first half of Jack the Giant Slayer. More on that once we've finished it. Soundtrack: I've had "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" stuck in my head. Random thing:  Catsby Puffball has no concept of cold.