Preparing for the Rapture - A Check List

Pet owners, if you expect to be swept up in the Rapture tomorrow, I hope that you have found good homes for your pets.  If you have not, please do not leave them locked in your house!  If you haven’t found homes yet, leave the door unlocked so that they can be rescued. Leave them plenty of food and water.

Wait for Jesus in your front yard, (or on the sidewalk if you live in an apartment building) so that it will be easier to collect your body when your spirit is spirited away.

If you live in a rural area, it might be more practical to just wander off into the woods and let nature take its course.  Likewise those who live near the ocean may want to camp on the beach overnight, as close to the shore as possible, so the tide can carry you out to sea.

Consider giving your houseplants to your neighbors. Don’t disconnect your electricity, so sprinkler timers will continue to come on, and food in the freezer will not thaw. 

Make sure your house is clean and tidy. It might be a while before anyone comes to claim your house.  If you are a renter, notify your landlord so he/she can get your place cleaned up and re-rented by the first of the month.  Make sure there’s toilet paper in the bathrooms.

If you own your home outright I hope you have already transferred title to next of kin who aren’t as holy as thou, or given it to your favorite charity.  It’s heartwarming to think that all the empty houses left behind may be used to provide shelter for the homeless, or places of safety for battered women, even if you think they deserve their lot.

If you are “upside down” on your house or are locked into a high-interest mortgage, then don’t sweat it. Look how many people have already had to walk away from their homes.   Take off the screens and open the windows. There are many raccoons who would find your house way more comfortable than sleeping in a storm drain or hollow tree.

By now I trust you have destroyed any embarrassing evidence of past indiscretions for which you have been forgiven by God, but which your friends and neighbors would find hilarious.  Unless you really don’t care what others think, you might also want to shred photographs of you in the 80s with big hair and shoulder pads.

Enjoy heaven, where you can eat as much as you want and never get fat! The rest of us will be along eventually but most likely we will not run into you because as I understand it, heaven is quite huge and just as here on earth, we’ll hang out with those who share our beliefs.  Look for me in Cat Corner.

It rained!!! (Yesterday)

This happened Thursday, May 12 but the site wouldn't let me post until May 13th.

          Finally, it rained!  Just at the end of my morning walk with Walter drops started to fall.  Then a few minutes after we came inside the sky got absolutely black as night.  The thunder that had been distant when we were outside was overhead.  The lights blinked off, then on, and then a crack of lightning, like a gunshot, exploded over the house. Walter shivered.  Then, light again – an eerie green light, like we were swimming in a cool celery soup – and wind!  Rain blew down the street in waves, drops flew side wards.

          I emailed my students asking if we should cancel class and one said “yes” but three showed up.  When I called to check on Frank the storm was pummeling Fredericksburg and he was not about to go out in it. The three of us had a great workshop. I think it’s so funny, when I tell them I love being around other poets, they say, “we are?”  They’re natural poets” they appreciate words and how to put them together in an interesting way; they love fresh metaphors and straight-forward from the heart phrases.  Poetry is like food: whether complex or simple, there’s lots of it to be enjoyed. Especially poems fresh off the printer. Yum, like diving into warm cupcake.

          I’ve often thought my poems are like cupcakes. I whip them up in about half an hour; then clean up (edit) time. They take about a minute to eat, a little longer to digest and I hope leave the reader with a pleasant aftertaste.  At least that’s my desire.

          After the class left, I watched about half-an-hour of

Quality Street

, an early Hepburn movie while I ate my lunch. The script was based on a novel by J.M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan. - a genteel comedy.

          I went to Walmart to pick up my new glasses: bronze metal frames for indoors and big dark glasses for outside.  I returned the photo-sensitive ones because I had to hold them out the car window for them to get dark. 

          The frames of the new sunglasses are good but I should have gotten gray not brown: my red car looks red-orange.

Ding, Dong, Bin Laden's Dead!

          Call me a cynic: I didn’t rejoice upon hearing of the demise of Bin Laden.  I’d rather he had been taken alive.  I’m even sorry Sadam Hussain was executed. I wish he were in jail.  This is not because I’m a compassionate person who doesn’t believe in capital punishment, or killing our enemies. It’s because I want the evil doers to suffer. I took great satisfaction seeing photographs of a disheveled Sadam Hussain hiding in his hole.

          I praise and commend the individuals in the intelligence service who worked so hard to make sure they knew where they were going and how they pulled if off. I hope that by confiscating the computers this will impede whoever was linked-in to that particular terrorist network.

          I do think about the women and children who were in the compound, though.  What must it have been like to live a sequestered life? We’ve seen it before from cults right here in America.  That’s one of the reasons I was so fascinated by “Big Love”, the HBO series about plural marriage.  What must it be like to be so devoted to -- or held prisoner by – a charismatic figure head?

          Perhaps some of the children never saw the outside world, like the narrator of Emma Donoghue’s brilliant novel, Room.  But aren’t all of us, more or less contained in our own reality rooms?  How big is your room? Which windows do you choose to look out?  Which windows do you keep closed?

          My “room” hasn’t changed all that much in my life in spite of having traveled to Asia, Europe, South America; in spite of having been married, divorced, single fifteen years then married again (going on 19 years!).  My life is measured out pretty much like J. Alfred Prufrock’s, in spoons, coffee cups, glasses of wine.

          Lately, writing my memoir, I’ve focused my attention on certain periods of my life that were fraught with emotion – happiness or sorrow. First love!  First heartache.  Becoming a woman! Realizing the responsibilities of being an adult.

          When a rare day, or week, comes that I’m not on an emotional roller coaster because of the anxieties of life – worry about my mother, husband, friends, finances, the world – I seek out books or movies or memories that reunite me with the adrenaline-inducing thoughts that make me feel alive.

          Lately I’ve taken great pleasure in making collage greeting cards. This is one of the rare times I slow down and focus on a simple task that blots out the world of terrorists and tornadoes, and lets me live peacefully in the moment with the regular rhythm of my heart the only music I need to hear.

NEW GLASSES, OLD CLOTHES

I need to nominate myself for “What Not to Wear” so Stacy and Clinton will kidnap me, make me throw out all my clothes and give me $5,000 for a new wardrobe.  I almost cried today, finding holes in my favorite tank tops. Sure, they’re twenty-years-old but I still love them! I probably shouldn’t be wearing tank tops anyway.  What I need is a nice light-weight burkha that will cover the wrinkly skin on my bony frame.  Just a slit for the eyes. . . . speaking of which I hate my new glasses.

I thought they were so great when I tried them on because they’re bigger than the rectangular shape that’s been in style for the last four or five years. Everybody looks exactly the same except for the occasional old soul who somehow finds 1980s mega-frames that cover half his face.  I chose these new black frames because I opted for photo-sensitive, and wanted something big enough to keep the sun out. Plus, I thought they make me look intelligent but John says they look like Clark Kent.

I liked the idea of one pair of glasses, not having to switch from glasses to sunglasses every time I went anywhere in the daytime. I was tired of the clip-on sunglass because they can get bent if I put them in my pocket, forget and sit on them, which bends them all out of shape. Or if I raise my hand to push hair out of my face I flick the sunglass part to the floor. 

I remember in the mid 80s when I was working at the Sand & Sea and had several different pair of classes. It was such fun to get dressed and decide between my green or black glasses. I remember the orange ones with little flecks in them that looked like butterfly wings. Those days are way behind me, I know, so I shouldn’t reminisce and make myself depressed. 

In the meantime I’m working on my memoir, Gowland Girl, which I plan to have cover my life until I moved away from home. It will be prose, poems and photographs. I had fun scanning old photos into the computer. But when I cut and pasted the photos into the document and tried to email it to John to print - because he has a much better printer than I do - the file was enormous and would not go through. So I deleted all the pictures and don’t know how this will work when I want to submit the manuscript to a publisher.

Some days I feel like a country bumpkin, not knowing how to deal with the sophisticated world.  Today is Tuesday which I love because I go to the writing group at the Dietert Center. It’s such a pleasure to read what everyone’s writing and get help when I struggle. I’ll bring in my Chapter One re-write which is called “Before I Was Born”.  I need to get that just right before I proceed. 

I’m glad I have friends to encourage me because otherwise I’d just want to crawl back into bed with my Kindle and play Easy Word, which I think I need to delete. I spent two hours the other day playing it. What a waste of time!  I already play Scrabble online, watch Jeopardy! every day and do crosswords. I don’t need another game to distract me from the WORK I should be doing!

Sun Moves in to Taurus

Yay, the sun has moved into Taurus, my sign. And the moon is in Sagittarius, my rising sign. I have my energy and determination back!

I can hardly type though, because my fingers are so sore from working in the library basement today. An hour and forty-five minutes of moving hardbound books.  One of the other volunteers knelt almost the whole time, as we handed her books. I couldn’t kneel on a cement floor at all, let alone for so long!

“Oh, I don’t maaand,” she cheerfully said in her Texas drawl, “I love to garden. I’m used to kneeling . . . there’s nothing more relaxing than weeding a flowerbed!”

I enjoyed my time in the muggy basement, being part of a team: two men, three women, all late middle age or more. We were like a fire brigade passing books down the line; like mules when we all pushed the emptied shelves to make more space.

My glasses kept slipping down my nose, because I was so sweaty, so I just left them on a shelf while I worked.  “Ahh’ve worn glasses since Ah was six years old,”  she said, “Ah could be pretty or see, and Ah chose to see.”

I’d left my water bottle in John’s car when he dropped me off to pick up mine. I wondered how dehydrated I could get before I passed out.  Of course I didn’t.  I chatted and moved books then went to the market where I bought a packet of Juicy Fruit gum. 

Remember 5 cent packs of gum? They are long gone. The box I bought, larger than a credit card but pretty much the same shape, holds fifteen sticks, three abreast, nestled as if in a coffin. The lid is a complicated contraption that requires manual dexterity to get it closed.  I chew a piece and am transported back to the Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades, 1965.  Under the theater seats were wads of gum. I of course, put my used gum back in its wrapper and tucked it into my purse.

My car CD player will not release three library CDs.  This has happened before and Vernessa at Coarsegold Car Care dug around and got them out. This time the repair shop says it will cost $500 to replace; and if they just remove it, take it apart to get the CDs out, that will ruin the radio. Plus, you have to remove the entire shift console.  John says if he gets an owner’s manual, he can do it. But I’m hoping that when Mercury moves out of retrograde on the 23^rd, the CDs will decide to come out. I want to try unhooking the battery to see if the little computer in there can reboot.

I decided I’m going to finish my memoir, “Gowland Girl – a memoir in prose, poems and photographs” this year.   Time is a wastin’.  Going through my office I’ve found two previous attempts, two different versions of poems and photos. So I’ll cull from those, and see what I’ve got.

I’ve volunteered to contact classmates about a 45^th reunion next year. So far the other two friends, on this ad hoc committee we’ve created, have gotten mostly “yes” responses to the people they’ve contacted. I love my school friends and would like to see them all once a year! So it will be fun to look forward to. Plus two of my very best friends did not attend the fortieth.

Tomorrow is the fifth of six meetings of my Club Ed Class.  I believe five or six wish to continue and seem amenable to a poetry workshop.  I want to make a flyer, or form for them to fill out and call it, “Adventures in Poetry: exploring and being inspired by poets, poetic forms and styles” but that’s cumbersome.  I’ll work on it after I walk Walter. Who, by the way peed on the floor in the daytime, today.  John said he’s at his wit’s end.  I’ve tied W. out on the shady, grassy side of the house and he seems pretty content. He freaks out in his old patio, though, now that it’s full of furniture.

Austin International Poetry Festival

          I’ve been to poetry conferences, symposiums, workshops and readings but I had never attended a poetry festival before. I got an email from Terri Glass at CPITS the day before registration ended for the Austin International Poetry Festival. I thought I’d pay the $35 and drive over one of the days, attend some readings and/or workshops, and drive back.  The entry fee also allowed attendees to submit three poems, and one would be included in the anthology.

          About a week later I got an email congratulating me on being chosen to be one of five State Featured Poets. The festival also features five International Featured Poets (from Singapore, Brisbane, Alberta, Suffolk and Nigeria), five US Featured Poets (from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, New York and Massachusetts) as well as six Austin Featured Poets.

          The responsibilities of the Features is to participate in a reading of their group, read every day at open mics, host an open mic, and put on a workshop.   For this we get our $35 back!

          The festival ran Thursday through Sunday, but I decided four days of poetry in the Big City would be too much for me, plus I teach on Thursdays, so I said I would arrive Friday and depart Sunday and worked out when I would read, host open mic and teach a workshop.

          The two-hour drive was lovely, in spite of the fact that the famous Blue Bonnets and other wildflowers have not come up, due to the lack of rain. Only in Johnson City did I see an abundance of yellow and orange flowers, but those are planted by the city.   Once in Austin, with the non-stop schedule, adrenaline kicked in. Only after I got home and referred back to the program did I know who the names of some of the people I met!

          Check-in was at Ruta Maya coffee house, which has a huge open space with stage and microphone. Darling Ashley, coordinator of the festival was there with other volunteers, giving us our program, anthology, tee-shirt.  The poets who milled around were the typical bunch: barefoot college guys; a college-age girl with multiple piercings and a huge tattoo across her shoulder blades of  two cartoon characters I don’t recognize; several gray-haired women; middle aged men with ponytails. I was too late for the Spoken Word Comedy workshop but did participate in the open mic Comedy hosted by “Austin Poetry Slam”.  I’m beginning to appreciate Slam Poets, who are really delivering soliloquies. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to memorize my work and perform it.  It might actually be easier than reading.  Jena Kirkpatrick did a long piece in the voice of a Louisiana grandmother that was very entertaining. An east Indian woman read a poem about growing older that was funny and sweet. 

          I left the coffee house at 2:00, intending to head to my hotel, change, maybe relax a little – swim? – before returning for an afternoon workshop.  What I did not figure was bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way up I-35.  I really did feel like I was in L.A.!   I had just fifteen minutes to change and get back in the car.  Then, because I was following a huge truck, I wasn’t sure if I got off at the right exit. Luckily I have good instincts so found the street I was looking for, but still could not navigate parking for the Long Center.  Suffice it to say I was twenty minutes late for the workshop “Writing Narrative Poems that Sing” hosted by Ogaga Ifowodo, the Nigerian Poet who teaches at Texas State University, San Marcos.  I hate coming in late and it was even worse because even though the sign-up sheet – back at Ruta Maya -  had only eighteen people on it, there were at least twenty-five people already seated at the big square formed by four tables.  I found a seat on a corner,  and was asked to introduce myself. After I did, the young woman next to me whispered “I’m from California, too.” I asked where - Thousand Oaks, but she lives in Austin now. A woman with curly white hair in a silky caftan, big black beads the size of jaw breakers around her neck and a slab of polished stone on her wrist also told me she was from California but did not identify the city.  Across from me a woman with a thick New York accent had volunteered to read one of the example poems,  “Refugee Blues” by W.H. Auden.  She was asked to identify the number of beats per line. She wasn’t sure it was three or four.  We also heard “Digging” by Seamus Heany.  When a Pablo Neruda poem was shared I asked if it would be read en Espanol or English.  The instructor  seemed to like the idea of hearing it in the original language, so a young man with two big black earrings in his ears read the Spanish version. Then we heard the English and all decided the Spanish was more beautiful.  When it came time to write the instructor said, “Let’s write for . . .” and I blurted out, “ten minutes?”   He said, no, thirty!  So, while others labored over their poems, I pushed my chair back and wrote about my move to Texas:

I load up the car with my dog and my cat

I’m in the front, the dog’s in the back

panting and happy to be on the road

while the cat glares in anger

her cries break my heart . . . [yeah this line needs work]

Down through the valley

Down past the river

Down toward the ocean

that silently quivers

this quivering, shivering, mysterious trip

where will it lead?

Up through the mountains

my little car chugs

then sails like a sparrow

and gets splattered with bugs

each one a death witnessed and mourned

each a reminder I need to stay calm.

Ah, Arizona!  with your Joshua trees

your mountains like fists gripping old memories

we sail, we slide, we glide, we roar

my curious heart hungry for more.

Behind me the past grows faint as a whisper

the tap of a bongo from an wizened old hipster.

Ahead is our future, completely unknown.

I embrace it, I race it, I can taste it,

I’m home.

          Now I had twenty minutes to kill. I went out into the lobby saw a bar which would service the attendees of Tap-estry a tap dance show the same evening. Rats! How I’d love to go to that!!  I asked the fat usher about nearby restaurants: across the street – Hooters; around the corner – Whataburger. Not exactly what I had in mind for dinner.

          Back in the workshop about half the participants read and that woman from New York still didn’t seem to grasp the concept of rhythm. The lesbian (I wasn’t sure if she was a guy or a girl until they said her first name) had written a poem about child molestation. Most of the others are a blur.

          So, the workshop ends. I have one hour to eat and return to the same room for our State Featured Poets reading.  A black woman with half of her hair dyed bright yellow seemed friendly so I asked her if she was hungry. She said “I have to move my car but I can give you a ride.” I suggested we start walking but after five minutes of her gathering her books, papers, notebook, I told her I’d just dash out and find something, which I did. 

          At the huge intersection I could see restaurants down the street. I waited for the light to change so long that I decided I’d cross wherever  the lights were green, and sure enough I found  Threadgill’s whose outdoor patio was being set up for a party.  I opened the door for a man behind me carrying his suit jacket.

          “Oops! Sorry, I’m from California, I keep forgetting that men in Texas are supposed to open doors for women!”

          “That’s okay,” he said, “I’m from New York.”  We ended up sitting next to each other at the bar, because he was returning for the Tap-estry show, he’s a board member, an attorney, who has lived in Austin fifteen years. He had a beer, I had a shot of Cuervo Gold and we ate our sandwiches and chatted.

          We talked about how different Texas is from other places, the sense of pride Texans have. They’re Texans first, then black, white, Hispanic, etc., unlike New York and California where people generally identify with their race. or religion, or political party, or even home state for than they do as Californians. I don’t remember ever seeing a California flag flown on private property. But here it’s quite usual for people to fly the Texas flag, or have cut-outs of the state decorating their houses, yards. There are even Texas-shaped pretzels!

          When my dinner companion found I’m a huge fan of dance, he offered to comp me for Saturday’s 2 p.m. show!  We walked back to the Long Center together and in the lobby, went our separate ways.

          The room had been reconfigured: gone were the tables. Four more rows of chairs were set up, and a lectern. The MC was a large one-armed man, dressed in a black shirt, and Birkenstocks. Was he a priest? No, it was a medallion around his neck, not a cross.  At home I find out he’s Dillon McKinsey, a founder of Austin Poetry Slam, whose credits include hosting a radio show, reading in Singapore and being a trustee of the Institute for Neuroscience and Consciousness Studies.

          I’d say there were about seventy-five people in the room.  The first poet was a cute young guy, Daniel C. Ramos, from Midland, founder of the Amarillo Poetry Slam, who stood before the lectern and performed several slam pieces that I found very moving.

          Second was Del Cain (Saginaw, TX) who has been coming to the AIPF for twelve years, has written non-fiction, including “Lawmen of the Old West” and is a member of the DFW writers workshop.  He, too, stood in front of the lectern and read short, pithy poems.

          Third was India-Rassner Donovan, dressed in a long mauve sundress and coral shawl with a gray braid down to her waist. She only began writing poems when her son was in Iraq.  She is a lives in Bastrop, a suburb of Austin, on Dancing Turkey Sanctuary, where she and her husband “compose, garden, sing and weave together.” She is in the “healing community” and a VP of the Austin Poetry Society. 

          I was next. I went behind the lectern, where I could set up my books and loose pages. I’d worn my black top with rhinestone trim that looks (to me) like an angel.  I chose to read a variety of different styles and different voices, settling on eight of the forty poems I’d culled from the hundreds I’ve written in the last forty-five years.  I think I did okay. I didn’t drop dead from a heart attack and when I took my seat, the woman next to me said, “good job.”

          Last was Mary Margaret Carlisle, who also went behind the podium. She has straight white hair, bangs, and wore a black blazer encrusted with various pins, which I late saw were from different poetry organizations. She lives in Webster and is very much an agitator for poetry, getting Barnes & Noble at two Houston locations to offer their space for twice-a-month critique groups and readings.

          I felt happy and full and was ready to leave when the MC announced there would now be open mic!  Some of the audience left but as I was seated in the middle of a row I stayed as long as I could until I had to pee.  In the restroom I ran into Mary Margaret where she told me about herself.   

          I went back into the room and endured through the rest of the readings.  A previous poet Laureate of TX was quite good – damn if I know his name, I’ll have to wade through the program to find it; last was a gangly young black man with pulled-back dreadlocks. He put his laptop on the lectern and read some deep, dark emotional poems from his experiences in the Marines.

          By now it was 10:00 PM and I was pooped. Outside music was booming from several locations and sky scrapers were lit up in red, yellow and gold. Ack! It just made me want to crawl into a hole! I found the freeway entrance right away and cursed Google that the directions to the venue had been so round-about. 

          Cars were flying on the freeway, the ten miles to my hotel. I squinted against the bright lights and gripped the steering wheel, trying to take deep breaths and remain calm.  Oh no! Almost got off at exit 244A instead of 245A!  My good little car waited then accelerated so I could squeeze back in. By the time I got out of the car my hands were shaking.

          I was too wired to go to sleep right away. I’d turned the A/C down to 72 when I left and turned it up to 75 when I went to bed, so the room was relatively quiet as I read Half Broke Horses on my Kindle until 12:30.  I turned out the light, laid on my side and closed my eyes. I was just about to fall asleep when I heard two clicks. What’s that? I wondered, and then WHOOSH the air conditioner – along the floor below the window, about three feet from my bed came on, blasting cold, noisy air into the room. Even with it running I was hot. I threw off the coverlet, and had just a sheet over me. I tried lying on my stomach but could not navigate the dips and bumps of the “pillow top” mattress. Turning on to my stomach, I could get one breast in one of the holes but the other was mashed beneath me.  And what was the bright light illuminating the room? The clock!  I threw a pillow over it and other over my head and tried to sleep. But I didn’t. Finally, at 6:00 am I got up and turned the A/C completely off. Slept for an hour. When I woke up, the room was 77 and I felt queasy. (Back home, John told me when he’s in this situation he turns the A/C down to 68, so that it will just run all night – not cycle on and off – and heaps blankets on himself.)

          I decided I should take advantage of the pool so I went downstairs and took a dip in extremely warm water.   I made the water seem relatively cool by going in the hot Jacuzzi then returning to the pool for a few more laps.  It did help clear my brain, a bit.

          After a shower I ventured into the breakfast room which was packed with teenagers participating in the state final track meets.  I took Raisin Bran back to the room and ate at the desk.  I knew I could not go through one more night like this so I checked out.

          I found the location for my workshop relatively easily: a nice big upstairs banquet room with round tables. Six people were there! Their faces immediately cheered me.  Anne, my friend Diane’s high school friend, had come from about 45 minutes away. (I’d contacted her and asked if she’d come so that if no one else showed up I’d have someone to talk to!)   I only needed an hour for my lesson so I asked if the group would mind if we did two exercises. When I heard the Response Poems they wrote my heart filled. There is practically nothing I love more than teaching, especially poetry, because the writers are so willing to bare their souls. Plus, their writing was good!

          A few more poets had straggled in, so we had eight for the Poems for Two Voices (four teams), plus Anne, and the husband of one of the participants.  I was thrilled to meet Wendy from Minnesota, who is staying in a hostel and taking the bus to the various events, and Rosemarie who came from Ohio.  I was so happy to see everyone dive right in to the two-part assignment and perform their poems for us. We ran a bit late, so their reading ran into the Open Mic where more poets showed up, including Tantra Zawadi, one of the National Readers, from New York, was resplendent in an orange African blouse and skirt. Her honey-colored dreadlocks fell around her forehead and shoulders like a fur cape.  On her wrists many bangles clinked and jangled as she recited a poem about an African lesbian who was raped by a man who though it would “straighten her out.” 

          Many of us exchanged cards and talked about websites for poets and writers.  The Open mic morphed into City Readings, where more people arrived but by now it was 1:30 and I was hungry so Anne and I went downstairs to eat and chat.  Thank for you lunch Anne!  We plan to get together again. She’s lived in Texas twenty years and wants me to see New Braunfels and other places I know nothing about. 

          I’d missed the Tap-estry show, which was a shame, but the morning was fulfilling.  I didn’t regret not sticking around for the evening reading because I was just too damn tired!  I was a little sad to miss Jena Kirkpatrick’s Sunday workshop on Poetry in Schools, but I had chatted with her a little at Ruta Maya and will keep in touch. Texas does not have a statewide organization like California Poets in the Schools. Jean works through Badgerdog an Austin arts organization. I’m pretty much on my own over here in Kerrville, but I’m not discouraged. Just this week the local paper ran the photo and article Tom Daniels elementary submitted about my 4^th grade class there, and ran the article I submitted about me being a State Featured Poet at the AIPF.  I’m getting my name out there!  Plus, I’ll be teaching this summer at the Krok Center. Eventually I’ll get Poetry Out Loud going. I know I will!

          It wasn’t easy staying awake on the drive home, what with the pretty hills lulling me and my sleep deprived brain wanting to turn off. I listened to some funny Garrison Keillor and David Sedaris and pulled into the driveway exactly two hours after I’d left.

          Walter was ecstatic to see me, licking and licking me. Audrey let me see her but kept her distance until later when we could have a private reunion in the bedroom.  John let me talk! for about half an hour – suddenly I got a burst of energy when I started recounting my trip.  He

informed me our 25-year old refrigerator had finally died. He had it before we met and it spent the last ten years as the patio fridge in Coarsegold, so it served us well.  

          We went out to dinner at Billy Gene’s. I was so happy to be on roads that had only half-a-dozen cars on them! I felt like I could finally let down my vigilance.  After dinner we went to Lowe’s and priced refrigerators, settling on a low-cost Whirlpool. Supposedly we’ll save $200 a year on our electricity bill because these new models are so much more efficient.  

          John wanted to go to the market for ice but I was fading fast so he dropped me off before he went out again.  I don’t think my bed as ever felt so good! The air conditioning was positively genteel when it came on a few times in the night, whispering cool air across my face. I slept well, woke up refreshed and watched a charming CBS Sunday Morning, all about animals, with my canine, feline and human companions within touching distance. Ah, home!

Preparing for Austin

          I spent Friday trying to decide which poems to take to Austin. Went through the journals where I’ve been published, my own books and chapbooks, folders in the file cabinet and nine years of poems on this old computer.  I basically write four types of poems: about my past, about my present, assignments from writing classes, and poems inspired by current events. By the end of the day I had selected forty, of which I’ll probably read eight to ten at the State Poet reading, and two or three at smaller local readings and open mics.  Which leaves me with more deciding to do . . .

          I won’t know a soul in Austin and hope that I can meet some of the other 200 or so poets who will show up.  With twenty venues, I imagine there will be poets I never do encounter.  It’s all quite overwhelming!

          Yesterday, as a sort of rehearsal, I read two poems (five minutes total) at the Unity of the Hills talent show.  I was in the second half. The first half of the show was fabulous!  The songs and poems were much better than I expected. At intermission we viewed art work, jewelry, woodwork and books set up in an adjacent room where chocolate truffles and other rich desserts were provided. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth and didn’t want to have food in my teeth when I read, so I just mixed and mingled.

          When it was my turn to read, I took off my glasses and approached the microphone. I set up my poems on the music stand and all the while my heart was racing. Why was I so nervous? Because at most of the readings I’ve given I’ve had a glass of wine beforehand! But this was late afternoon and I was totally sober.

          Following me was Bill singing the song I wrote, “Bump in the Road”.  It elicited lots of laughs because Bill asked two of the “regulars” to come up and act out some of the lyrics and I thought how I’d never have been allowed to write these lyrics in 1963 which is the last time I was in a talent show: Color Cotton Day at Paul Revere Junior High. I played Snidley Whiplash in “Silent Movie” with Joanne and Julie and Marilyn.

          Yesterday’s last two acts were really fun: female choir members in pajamas with stuffed animals singing “Grandmas Feather Bed”, ending with a hot boogie-woogie piano number which had half of us, me included, dancing in the aisles. I love belonging to a church that knows how to have fun!

          And now, today, a blustery cold front has descended in the form of gusting winds and clear sunlight.  This place is wild!  Out with Walter at 7:30 AM it was partly cloudy, 70 degrees, humid – tropical, really. Then bam! So different from living in Southern California where the air is usually stagnant except for when Santa Ana winds blow in from the desert, a constant dry whistle that hisses and crackles; or the Mono winds of the Sierra Nevada that fiercely scour the mountains. Here we’re unprotected, our lovely rolling hills are vulnerable to wind from any direction.

          Fritatta for dinner, followed by Dancing with the Stars. It’s always cathartic to watch. Tonight tears streamed down my face as Petra danced for the survivors of the Indonesian tsunami. . .

          A few days ago I finished Cutting for Stone and have not been able to commit to a new novel since, because I’m still under the spell of that luminous writing, the believable (and loveable) characters and the fascinating medical descriptions, not to mention the recent past history of Ethiopia.

          So, tonight I’ll cozy up with my Kindle and browse literary fiction in the comfort of my bed, while John, out in the garage, continues to perfect his new speaker designs which he’ll take to Dallas next month.