The power was out here in our little neck of the woods for 24 hours, due to one heck of a storm. We had to get out the kerosene lamps (I have two) and many candles, and Mr. Strega taught me to play gin rummy (I won 2 games). There has been a lot of local flooding, rivers and ponds rising, and overall drippiness, but nothing compared to the folks up in the Napa area (and this is all a drop compared to Hurricane Katrina). Mr. Strega and I fell asleep early, so we missed the New Year moment (no way to watch the ball drop on Times Square anyway, though the local bar, Monty's Log Cabin, hoists a big lit-up white ball onto a flagpole covered in Christmas lights, and apparently drops the ball at the crucial moment, with all the clientele gathered in the yard. Monty's is near the Felton Bigfoot Museum, and the clientele seem to intermingle, so we don't go there, not even to watch the ball drop). I woke up around four a.m., got up, lit the two kerosene lamps, did my Morning Pages, and then put batteries in my purple Itty Bitty Book Light and read MFK Fisher until I finally fell asleep again. I get very restless during storms--don't know why.
It is a new year, ableit soggy, and my only resolution today is to be kinder to myself and others--and maybe find my way back to poetry again. That is one of the reasons I started the Morning Pages again (I go on and off The Artist's Way, and am at a point of "take what you like and leave the rest," but am hoping that just writing like this in the morning will open the well again). Other writers I know have been very kind about pointing out the fact that I am writing a fairly big book (now estimated at 375 pages) of occasionally really difficult subject matter--but the hardest part for me is not feeling like a poet anymore. That is a very hard quality to describe, and I do know that it's a quality that hasn't died in me (I feel glimmers of it occasionally), but is just quieter than I want.
Still, I wish all my faithful readers a happy, healthy, prosperous, abundant New Year in which all our dreams and wishes come true. And that's my two cents' worth today.
1 comment:
Although I should be insulted by your comment about the clientele from the Bigfoot Museum, instead I'd like to extend a personal invitation for you to come in and experience the museum. As another "academe" wannabe, I'll be happy to introduce you to the facts about unidentified hairy bipeds. Perhaps some KNOWLEDGE on the subject might change your attitude about the museum clientele.
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