My Mary Oliver Moment

It seems weird to be writing this post to go live two days after my carpal tunnel and trigger thumb surgeries but it's on my dominant hand and it will be out of commission with a splint on it for a week. The problem with writing ahead is that I generally have to wait for more ‘life’ to happen for me to have anything to write about. I need at least a spark---a tidbit in a conversation, some quality people watching---to inspire a post. And as a secondary excuse, I’ve been sidetracked trying my hand at writing poetry and reading Mary Oliver books. She’s immensely popular and, to be honest, I can’t figure out why precisely. Poetry is a tough genre to make a name in and she’s managing to make it to the top of the modern heap. 

When I was a teenager I wrote long poems mostly about unrequited love and they were all rhyming verses with meter and metaphors. My very first attempt at writing a poem was for a high school assignment. It’s documented in an early 1950s diary and starts out, “Oh, how I hate to sit at home and rack my brain to write a poem.” One of the first poems I remember studying in school was Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. It’s included in Mary Oliver’s book, A Poetry Handbook. Here’s some gobbly-goop she says about that classic poem: “The initial four lines are rife with w’s and th’s; f is there and v. Three sets of double ll’s. The heaviness of the vowels is increased by the use of diphthongs.” Blab, blab blab. It’s too deep in the language weeds for me and it’s hurting my head to break down Frost’s poem into mutes and semivowels the way Mary does. 

Frost:

Whose woods these are I think I know

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

to watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

Me:

 

Oh, how I dearly hate to sit at home

learning the proper way to write a poem.

Even with Mary Oliver trying to teach me

I am like a blue bottle tossed out to sea

bobbing one way on the waves, then another 

as I recall the poems written by my brother.

My brother really could write heart-felt poetry and I don’t know where he got that ability or the desire to create them. He wasn’t the best student in high school---had the brains but he was more into  cars and girls instead of English Literature. And I’ve never known him to be much of a reader over the years. It wasn’t until the ‘80s when I got the rude awakening that he could write better poems than me. I was working on a family history book and had asked everyone in the family to submit something I could include…poems, essays, photos, special memories, recipes, answers to a questionnaire. That request revealed a lot of hidden talent. Both of my nieces sent me poems and one of their husbands did, my brother too, even my dad recited a poem on a cassette tape he wrote in the third grade. It was printed in his hometown newspaper where they called him the new Longfellow. We ended up with twenty poems and only four were written by me and I can honesty say my brother’s blew mine out of the water---thus the metaphorical bobbing in the waves (above).

From my superficial and extremely brief research I learned that poetry has been around in the spoken form since the twelfth century and much earlier in the form of verses sung to tell stories with its humble beginnings in ritual and religious chants. I have no trouble visualizing roaming bands of troubadours discovering words that rhyme and pleased the ear could bring more coins into their purses. I have no trouble visualizing monks doing their lovely chanting and receiving food offerings in their 'begging bowls.' Considering that music is universal in all cultures it safe to say that free verse and poetry is innate in all of us. In other words, we all could write it if we set our minds to do it, especial the newer free verse style where if there are any rules I haven't found them. Yet. It might not be good poetry but if we write about love, loss and life experiences other readers will find their stories in our words. If nothing else it’s good exercise for the brain to try to be our own versions of Mary Oliver. Or we'd accidentally write a few good old country western songs.

And guess what, I just finished writing a generic post for the week when I’ll be recovering from my trigger thumb and carpal tunnel surgeries. The eighth was the big day.  I'll try to update you in the comment section, should anyone leave one. ©

 

Andy Weir Books, Fall and Football

I should be hold up in my den writing as if I was monk on a mountain top because the eighth of September is coming up soon. That’s the day I have my carpal tunnel and trigger thumb operations on my dominate hand and it could be as long a two weeks when I won’t be able to type, or so I’ve been lead to believe from reading about the surgeries online. Two weeks translates to four posts I should have ready in my scheduler but I’ve only got two. My doctor says it will be sooner than two weeks so who are you going to believe? Mayo Clinic or my local bone guy? 

I just finished multi-task writing while listening to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. The Martian was his first book, a best seller that was made into a movie and I loved the movie as much as the book. His second book---Artemisis---doesn't have the science driven plot that his first one had and I haven’t read it. But this third book had me tuning in whenever I could. One night I fell asleep listening to it and it was still going in the morning and I had to back it up to a place where I remembered what was going on. It’s a wonder my brain didn’t bust open, filling it full of seven hours worth of back-to-back science. That’s when I learned how to use the sleep timer on my Kindle. Only had the thing for a decade.

I love Andy's way of creating protagonists with self-deprecating humor and this book delivered on that, especially when he teams up with an alien life form that looks like a German shepherd sized spider. The science goes so far over my head and if I had tired to read it rather than listen to the book I’d quit before the plot setup was finished, but it’s so well explained that I can pretend I almost get it. 

The synopsis for Project Hail Mary on Amazon reads: “Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it….a ‘propulsive’ thriller full of suspense, humor, and fantasizing science.” The alien is also on a mission to save his planet from the same enemy that is causing the sun to die.

I sometimes get a little too big for my britches and I think I’m making good use of my brain then I read a book like one of Andy’s and I realize that I have the brain power of a flea especially compared to the astrophysicists and math nerds that work for the space programs around the world. (Heck, I couldn't even keep up with the science at the local sewage treatment plant that turns our toilet wastes into safe drinking water when I toured the place. Or maybe it was the fact that I decided some things we're better off not knowing about.)

I know it’s fiction but the way Grace and Rocky (the alien) developed a language using math as a starting point really does sound doable. And if someone had told me I could fall in deep like for a spider-like creature I wouldn’t have believed it in a hundred years but here I am a fan of a creature who speaks in musical sound waves that a newly written-by-Grace computer program can translate it into English and vise versa. For such a smart “spider” he has a sweet innocents to him that made him adorable. I absolutely want to give you a spoiler on how this book ends but if I did there’d be a few wiser people out there in blogger land who’d admonish me for spreading the joy I felt at the surprising conclusion of the book.

Change of topic: I don’t want to say this too loudly but it feels like fall. The nights are getting cooler, the hydrangeas outside my window are changing color and the stores are full of back to school supplies and Christmas stuff next to the Halloween decor. In my old neighborhood by now I’d be hearing the marching band from the near-by high school practicing. In the house I lived in before that one I not only heard the marching band but I saw it in the street in front of my house. This will be the first year in my entire life when I won’t have a marching band to help usher in the changing of the season. 

People here are talking about football. I’ve never followed or liked the sport but I suppose it will be my new marker for the beginning of fall. They even fly college flags to support the University of Michigan or Michigan State. I won’t be able to ignore the game like I’ve done in the past---too many alumni here who follow it as if college football is the Pied Piper to happiness. And I suppose it is for those few hours when they can watch a game and relive their time on the field or at the parties around the bonfires afterward. I suspect our resident cheerleader who married (and later divorced) the college quarterback made her first baby at one of those bonfires. She’s my age and can still wear her old cheeerleader's uniform. She acquired two or three more husbands after her first and she could get another if now if she wanted to; she's one of those perky little things that men love and women envy. But she's a genuinely nice, compassionate person so her character breaks the shallow-headed cheerleader stereotype. 

I couldn't wear anything from my college days---not even my shoes. If I could wish my life away I’d wish to be thin and not the hard way by catching cancer. It’s my only real shame in life...that I’m not the weight I should be and haven't been for 50% of my life. No need to body shame me, I'm good at that DIY project all on my own.

We have one of those gas fireplaces out on our piazza. It’s about twelve feet long and covered in blue stones with glass walls all around it. All summer long it’s where we gathered after dinner a couple of nights a week. We still do but lately we’ve been turning the fireplace timer on…another sign of fall coming our way. I’m not ready. Are you? ©

* Meme is of Rocky's speech pattern when he asks questions.

The Passing of Time and Melancholy Moods

Can you believe it’s September already? I can’t and I’ve got two old people, atomic clocks in the house that shout the date out. The clocks don’t literally shout but the numbers on the clocks are two inches tall and black and you can’t miss them against their silvery white background. The only time I don’t love my atomic clocks is when we have to move the time back an hour in the fall. That has to be done manually where in the spring they can spring forward on their own with a little help from the timekeepers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. There are some 400 places around the world that keep official standards of time for different geographical areas so don’t go thinking the USA is ‘special’ because we can synchronize time in so many wall clocks, computers, cars, phones, watches, electrical grids, GPS systems and other devices where being precise matters. Gone are the days when men would walk down to the town square each day and set their pocket watches to the town’s tower clock.

And from the who really cares department did you know that time zones were invented by the railroads? From History.com “The need for continental time zones stemmed directly from the problems of moving passengers and freight over the thousands of miles of rail line that covered North America by the 1880s. Since human beings had first begun keeping track of time, they set their clocks to the local movement of the sun. Even as late as the 1880s, most towns in the U.S. had their own local time, generally based on 'high noon,' or the time when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As railroads began to shrink the travel time between cities from days or months to mere hours, however, these local times became a scheduling nightmare. Railroad timetables in major cities listed dozens of different arrival and departure times for the same train, each linked to a different local time zone.” Also from the who really cares department, I didn’t just learn this from a trip to Googleland. My husband had some antique railroad schedules that peaked his curiosity and he dug up the history of time zones in an age before computers were a household ‘thing.’

I was thinking about the passing of time while in the car coming back from having my hearing aid get cleaned. For the second time. Since it was new in April. This time the audiologist showed me how to clean it myself and I dutifully paid attention all the while thinking she’s full of beans, that ear wax no one can see is not the issue, and eventually the aid will need to go back to the factory. But I played the game and promised to brush the living daylights out of the little money grabbing devices morning and night and to put them in the jar of drying agent overnight. The hearing aids that these new aids replaced lived through seven years without cleaning or jars of moisture sucking beads, one even almost became chewing gum for our dog and they never once quit working in all that time. When I bemoaned this fact to the audiologist she said that people's ears change as they age. I'd been patronized.

It sure takes a lot of time to be old, doesn’t it. Besides that routine added to my daily schedule I now have acquired my first pair of compression socks and you’ll never guess what they’re for so I’ll tell you. Remember the cancerous mole I have removed on my ankle back in June? It’s still not healed up and the dermatologist ordered bamboo compression stockings to increase circulation down there. And have I mentioned that I don’t like yogurt but I’m sitting here eating some ‘Brown Cow’ stuff (that isn’t so bad) because it’s got five kinds of live, active cultures in it? Apparently you need to replace the good bacteria in you digestive system after having diarrhea several days in a row. Why, oh why, can’t I go back to being forty again! I’ve even take fifty to start over again.

On the ride home Kenny Chesney was singing Knowing You and I thought I’d start crying. I know it wasn’t a song about missing your younger self but that’s the way I internalized the words. In the intro to his video he says, “Not everything is meant to last but you don’t think about that when it’s perfect.” Yup, good-bye to my life before ointments and compression socks and popping pills at breakfast. I miss you and I’m sorry I took you for granted. ©

 “God, we were so alive
I was a kid on a carnival ride
Holdin' my breath 'til the moment
When you were gonna leave me too soon
But I'd do it all over
'Cause damn, it was good knowin' you”