Some Things I Learned as an Adjunct English Professor (in my first semester teaching)

(In no particular order)

1. Too much exposure to passive voice can make one delusional.

2. Know your physical peripheries: the desk is in the same place as it is always in, be aware of its placement in relation to your body. You can and will bounce off of it (and it's best to call yourself out on this... somehow).

3. Do not attempt to scale a random bag of potting soil at 8 a.m. Sprained ankles hurt and the focus on teaching is lost when body parts throb.

4. Set three alarms for 8 a.m. classes.

5. Many will fail to tell you when you are teaching with your jacket on inside out/ turn on the light in the morning when getting dressed.

6. ALWAYS check the marker you are writing on the board (it may be permanent and permanent markers do not erase easily-- even with cleaning agents).

7. Just buy a parking permit (the $12 it costs for the semester is MUCH cheaper than the endless quarters fed into the meter/ parking tickets collected).

8. Smart classrooms are at times possessed and not much can be done about it.

9.Do not leave glasses of red wine near ungraded papers.

10. If you are low on parking meter change, but have a few dollar bills, you can stick them in the Coke machine and hit cancel, and get quarters in return.

11. When the sun shines in classroom windows, the shadows on the white board can be really beautiful.

12. Boots without traction are a bad idea when lecturing.

13. Running after the meter maid and waving your arms in the air, shouting, "I'm coming. Don't ticket my car. Please don't ticket my car" can work as a method to avoid getting a ticket.

14. It's nearly impossible to grade with a pug dog on your lap.

15. Red ink is both powerful and intimidating.

16. Grading takes a lot of freaking time, and snacks are a good interruption.

17. The phrase, "Just kidding," has the potential to erase what you've just said.

New Publication!

My poem, "After 7 am," is published in the most recent issue of dot dot dash, the "Gambit Issue." I haven't received my copy yet, but I'm very excited for when I do, and happy to be a part of an international publication. The idea of themed magazines is a good one, not to pigeon-hole, but to open a discourse and to reinterpret words, meanings, definitions, themes.

Prior to submitting to dot dot dash, I didn't know what a gambit is... a wacky chess move? When one makes a sacrificing move to get ahead. So... interesting. I originally heard of the publication through a colleague at Chatham, Miss Laura Davis, her poem is published in the Feast Issue (#5). I love the design choices of dot dot dash, and decided to think about what the word "gambit" means, and if I had a poem suitable for the word/ idea. Looking through my manuscript, I found a plethora of poems on sacrifice, and I'm happy to have found, "After 7 am" a home. The poem personifies Tuesday, and approaches friendship and love.

I'll do a write-up on Issue 8 (examining other writers' interpretations of gambit) when I receive the magazine in the post.

Thanks dot dot dash! For including my work!

A Handmade/ Secondhand Christmas/ Playing a Good Santa

This year I have decided to shop only secondhand, handmade, independent, or at local shops for Christmas. Not only does it save (slightly), but it's also so nice to the earth and to the community. I wanted to avoid online shopping, but along the way, I found some great sites that have allowed me to stick to my promise to myself.

I am brought back to the times of my teenage hood, when I saved up my babysitting money, and shopped at thrift stores for gifts. Finding vintage treasures has the same magical feeling as it did then, and each gift given is bound to be unique, truly the chances of repeat gifts are cut back, and the surprise will always be bigger.

With two weeks left until Christmas, I find myself still shopping, and I figure others are doing the same. I've compiled a list for smart shopping/ unique holiday gift ideas I've fallen upon along the way:

1. Mystic Monk Coffee : For the days when it's hard to make it to the coffee shop to write, this stuff is amazing. My parents first brought home a bag from the National Cathedral in DC. I honestly could not believe the alert state my mind took after drinking my first cup. Brewed by the Carmelite Monks in Wyoming, the blends are all remniscent of their name: mystic. This is a fly high drink, and it really will make the coffee drinkers in your life happy. The coffee/ tea also makes a good gift to the self!

2. For the literary lovers in your life: Small Press Distribution is running a 40% off sale for the holidays. SPD is wonderful. I always feel good shopping with them, a hub for small presses, the non-profit company carries an excellent array of publications from the independent literary world... from Alice James Books to Zone 3 Press.

3. Etsy carries just about anything and everything colorful and unique. Among my favorites are the handmade journals.

4. Book-y earrings -- way cool!

5. Vintage books / things made out of vintage books Story-time clocks? Yes!

Happy Smart Shopping and Merry Merry Everything!

Commercials and Poetry: How Levis has been giving me the shivers

A little while back, I did a blog post on The Beats, it was Jack K's b-day on that day. I included a clip of Tom Waits reading, "The Laughing Heart." G-damn I love that poem.

And then later, I was sitting in the movie theatre, a few months ago, and I literally almost jumped out of my seat when I saw Levi's had done a commercial, "Go Forth..." that featured Bukowski's poem.

But a few moments ago, I was watching a friend's vlog (The Vlog Poet's Channel) and one of the videos talked about poetry in the news... film and media. I was reminded of the commercial again and wanted to share it:



"Be on the watch... the Gods will offer you chances, know them. Take them."

It really is great to see poetry moving into the mainstream, whether viewers realize it or not. Because I do believe, we ought wear poetry the way we wear jeans.

Thank you, Levi's.

And another favorite:



Jeans and poetry. Love and Sex. And strange love... God how that idea grips me... because writing is some strange love, after all.

Return to (a post on self-help for myself...a vent really)

I love it. I love poetry. So why haven't I been letting it permeate my life? Why haven't I been dedicating myself to it? I want to give myself reasons, thus making my problem "public" "bloglic.. public..." (I have a cold and my thoughts are blending together.)

1. I feel broken record-ish.

2. I just want to watch T.V.

3. Grading. I ought to be grading.

4. Does my work feel boring somehow? Or am I just missing a semblance of a writing community?

5. I need a good, independent coffee shop to go to.

6. Job hunting for full time work or supplemental part time work. It takes time.

I need to change something. Maybe write long hand instead of on the computer. Maybe re-focus myself.

I need to, we all need to:

1. Trust my body of revised work and send it out for publications.

2. Revise.

3. Seek advise from writing friends.

4. Re-visit my manuscript and re-shop the market.

5. Let go of timelines. Then create timelines.

6. Become capable of turning negative feelings into positive feelings.

(Lists should always come in 6's.)

Three pieces of Insight for the Day

I write in red ink these days, it spreads across the papers I collect. The words passive voice; word choice, spelling error spill out of my hand, but I never forget: a soul lives in every word written. Every word spoken.




Disfunction. Misinterpretations. Repetitions. Wacky equations. Good is always on the horizon.



Sometimes it's easier to neglect making art; to neglect visual and verbal expression; to stare off into space. Because life doesn't always reveal the importance of reflection; of replication/ interpretation. Because who can tell how big an audience, if ever an audience, what for? These words echo the reminder: the reasons to make art are just as significant as making love: for history, for the better of the body, for the better of the earth, to spread energy, the earth is incomplete and boring without it.

Inspiration for a Sunday

(Thanks, Kim Brown, for sharing!)

Small Press Festival in Frostburg, MD

Dear Good People,

This coming Saturday, October 15th, is Frostburg State University's Center for Creative Writing Small Press Festival, and that's exciting to me for the following reasons:

1. Shady Side Review will be serving on the panel: Online Journals: From Paper to Published.
2. Athena Pappas, my dear friend/ poetry co-editor/ poetic partner in crime, and I will be selling chapbooks we published.
3. I will be selling my own chapbook.
4. Frostburg is beautiful in the fall.
5. The line-up is great:

10:30 am - Registration; Meet and Greet the Editors and Publishers; and Light Breakfast

11 am- Book Fair Opens

11:30 am - 12:15 pm
Publishing Basics
YA/ Children's Writing: A Round Table
Reading and Writing Online
Freelance Writing

12:30 pm - 1:15 pm
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Horror: A Round Table
Self Promotion
Writing Spirituality
Blogging, New Media, and Journalism

Break

2:00 pm - 2: 45 pm
DIY and Self Publishing
Poetry: A Round Table
The Novel: A Round Table

3:00 pm - 3:45 pm
Writing Local
Scriptwriting: A Round Table
Online Journals: From Paper to Published
Publishing Basics

4:00 pm- 4:30 pm
Book Fair
Light Refreshments

If you're in the area: BE THERE!

More Info: http://www.frostburg.edu/cwcenter/smallpressfair.htm

Quote of the Day

"

You should just live your life. You should write your name on the Earth in gasoline and just light that shit on fire." - Casey, Party Down

New Publication!

Two of my poems are published in the new issue of Radioactive Moat, and they can be read here.

The poems in this issue are a part of my manuscript, "Let the Balloons Go on the Highway." I am currently seeking a home for the manuscript, and hoping it finds its place in the small press world.

The poems in this issue: "Gemini" and "Machinery at Play" are poems that reflect upon my childhood. The mini-me lives inside each of them. Writing poetry like this makes me feel as if I can re-kindle with the girl I once was-- I'd like to meet that girl. I think we could all benefit from meeting our childhood self, not to give advice or warn against heartache, but simply to give a hug-- to show love to the youth that brought us to where we are.

Shady Side Review Fall 2011 Issue Released!

(Cover Art: Sleeping Giant by: Steven Knezovich)

It's been a year since our last issue, but I like to think this one was worth the wait. Our editors have gone through some wild changes (completing grad school, moving places in Europe, moving across the states, and the like) since the last issue. The journal itself has gone through some wild changes as well: with a new format and focus in style, Shady Side Review has released it's Fall 2011 issue.

We stuck to our Pittsburgh roots and featured cover art by Stephen Knezovich, an artist living in the Steel City. For me, it's a matter of the way Stephen melds definitions and images together that keeps my eyes drawn and my brain going, "Wow." I love the vintage effect in his collages: nostalgic and grainy and dreamy and surreal and all other good things that come out of thrift stores and antique shops. It's a recycled art of sorts, and featured here: http://thenewgravycake.wordpress.com/

Stephen is equally as interesting as his art-work; one of my fellow editors and I had the pleasure of meeting him at AWP in Denver. He's got great things on his mind.

Continuing on the Pittsburgh roots note, we've got a few other Steel City artists in this issue, Robert Isenberg (fiction) and Siobhan Casey (poetry). And hey! We're not bias, it just happened that way, but to be honest, I think the editors all miss the city we met in, at least a little.

The full list of Fall 2011 contributors includes poetry by: Shirley Brewer, Siobhan Casey, Milton P. Erlich, Kurt Z. Geisler, and Ann Neuser Lederer. Fiction by: Joe Baumann and Robert Isenberg. Non-fiction by: Rachel Carbonell, James Claffey, and Lynn Harper. And cover art by: Stephen Knezovich.

The writers in this issue give us: Persephone, romance on highways, parrots reading tarot cards, arguments about words like babushka,naked lovers in the rain, a man with a tin leg, and a way to dismantle routine.

Shady Side Review is moving forward. To go along with our new look, we're working on a new mission, our focus in the work we publish is shifting, and talks of themed issues have come up. The fall is always a good time for transition. We embrace it.

Check us out: http://issuu.com/shadysidereview/docs/ssr2011

Birds, Hunger, Self Promotion

Years ago I kept parakeets. My first was named Uncle Elmo. He was a sky colored bird and had cotton candy blue markings on his beak, which was how I learned he was a male. I loved that bird. He talked, better yet he cussed, he made strange noises, and he really seemed as if he was from outer space. I always felt as if Uncle Elmo was a bigger part of me, something of my spirit. He lived until I was about twelve. My second bird was named Delilah; she was sunshine colored with green specks of grass in her feathers, and she was kind of a bitch. She wouldn't sit on anyone's finger, she bit skin for the salt, and she would only talk at night when there was a cover on her cage, but I loved her because my friend's bought her for me for my nineteenth birthday as a surprise. And it became apparent to me, it was if she was the bad that lived inside of me: the rebellious, and she too was a part of my spirit.

I wrote a poem a few years ago, in which I imagined myself as Anne Sexton. I imagined her hunger and put a parakeet in her mouth. I, myself, may have had some similar fantasy, not because of literal hunger, but because sometimes it feels as if something bigger is missing. I titled the poem, "The Truth the Hungry Know (After Anne Sexton)," as she wrote a poem, "The Truth the Dead Know." My poem was accepted and is now part of Cave Moon Presses' fine publication/ anthology, "Broken Circles." Not only is it exciting to be part of a book, but it's even more exciting to be part of a book that reaches for a greater cause: to fight hunger and poverty.

Buy it here:

https://www.createspace.com/3668679

It's for a wonderful cause! I can't wait to receive my copy!

Found Art

Hooray for random metaphor in grocery stores! Because flowers = poetry. Because poetry should be consumed. Because life is romantic (if we let it be that way). I like that this is in the Safeway in Wheaton, MD. It strikes me by surprise every time I see it. I would love to see a whole store filled with poetry signs like this. In the bakery: Poetry in the making. In the meat department: Raw Poetry or Poetry and Beef. In the greeting card section: Poetry for all occasions. Yes!

Linked and Built Together

I've just begun to read Nancy Horan's "Loving Frank," a novel about the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. It's beautiful, but haunting and tragic, and with every page I further draw a personal connection. Today, I was reading on the metro ride home, and the line that stopped me most was, "Truth against the world." I read it over and over and said it out loud and made it my facebook status. I want to know what it means to me, I'm curious. In the context of the story line, it meant we must believe in our individual truths when the outside world embellishes our lives.

In a lot of ways, the story line in "Loving Frank" reminds me of Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying:" running away to a foreign country with a lover in order to discover oneself, and the discoveries one makes because of love affairs. Being deep within a woman's psyche we learn the sacrifices humans make to move forward, to reach discovery, but within those sacrifices, the deep hurt that is found and the blackness to the discoveries made.

When looking up, "Truth against the world," I fell upon this Frank Lloyd Wright quote, and it made me feel as if I am meant to be studying the man further as if I will continue to discover through his words and work (especially appropriate as I have been temping as a receptionist at an architect firm lately).

If you would see how interwoven it is in the warp and woof of civilization ... go at night-fall to the top of one of the down-town steel giants and you may see how in the image of material man, at once his glory and his menace, is this thing we call a city. There beneath you is the monster, stretching acre upon acre into the far distance. High over head hangs the stagnant pall of its fetid breath, reddened with light from myriad eyes endlessly, everywhere blinking. Thousands of acres of cellular tissue, the city’s flesh outspreads layer upon layer, enmeshed by an intricate network of veins and arteries radiating...

I have scaled these city walls

At the end of the work day today someone was whistling this song in the office. I couldn't see who it was, but the moment stayed with me as I walked to the metro. The whistling reverberated in my thoughts the same as it had sounded as it traveled through the cubicles. I imagined it to be the cleaning man who earlier in the afternoon waved to me in the elevator video camera or one of the architects thinking of the end of the day--in a dreamy mode, pressing their lips together.

On the walk to the way to Dupont Circle, over and over I sang to myself, "These city walls. These city walls." As a writer or artist, don't we all live for these moments? When symbolism is created unknowingly. When real life becomes like a scene from a movie or novel. For me, this is the reason to re-create real life moments: to put down in words what I imagine or experience for others.

Working in the city and living in the suburbs, I have a limited understanding of the "city walls" of Washington D.C. But with each passing moment, I take in the people surrounding, passersby as inspiration.

I love being in a place that feels brand new to me. A place where my observational levels are heightened. A place that inspires me to capture each moment I experience and turn it into poetry, even if the poetry is only in my mind. Even if it hasn't formed itself into stanzas, line breaks, rhythm. And to be reminded that art is made by art. That living and small moments that turn into ideas are the meaning behind art. To know that we all are searching for the perfect line and to be okay with admitting, "but I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Today's Focus: Energy: The Ability to Do

Energy: The ability to do.

Poetry Cartoons! Yes!

All I need is somewhere I can feel the grass beneath my feet

Belle & Sebastian are my go-to for inspiration. Their lyrics never fail to take me into a lovely world, one with daydreams and reality that meld together, cloud-like.

The following two songs are by far my favorite and are on the endless playlist in my head especially as of late as we move into the summer season.

Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
(From Write about Love)

What a waste I could have been your lover
What a waste I could have been your friend
Perfect love is like the blossom that fades so quick
When it’s blowing up a storm in may

Travel south until your skin gets warmer
Travel south until your skin turns brown
Put a language in your head and live on a train
And then come back to the one you love

Yeah, you’re great, you’re just part
Of this lifetime of dreaming
That extends to the heart
Of this long summer feeling

Quiet night you see the tvs glowing
Quiet night you hear the walls are awake
Me and you are getting out of the party crowd
Can I see what’s underneath your bed?

Can I stay until the milkman’s working
Can I stay until the café awakes
Do you hate me in the light, did you get a fright
When you looked across from where you lay?

Yeah you’re great, you’re just part
Of this lifetime of dreaming
That extends to the heart
Of this long summer feeling
All the history of boys
I invent in my head

Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John

What a waste I could have been your lover
What a waste I could have been your friend



Asleep on a Sunbeam
(From Dear Catastrophe Waitress)

When the half light makes for a clearer view
Sleep a little more if you want to
But restlessness has seized me now, it’s true
I could watch the dreams flicker in your eyes
Lying here asleep on a sunbeam
I wonder if you realise you fascinate me so

Think about a new destination
If you think you need inspiration
Roll out the map and mark it with a pin
I will follow every direction
Just lace up your shoes while I’m fetching a sleeping bag, a tent...
Another summer’s passing by
All I need is somewhere I feel the grass beneath my feet
A walk on sand, a fire I can warm my hands
My joy will be complete

I thought about a new destination
I’m never short of new inspiration
Roll out the map and mark it with a gin
Made my plans to conquer the country
I’m waiting for you to get out of your situation
With your job and with your life

All I need is somewhere I feel the grass beneath my feet
A walk on sand
A fire, I can warm my hands
My joy will be complete.

(What a cute little character at the beginning of this video! She, within herself, is inspiring!)

Advice and Insight

Yesterday I went for a walk in the sunshine with my cousin Marc. We talked about horror movies while we meandered down the sidewalk, and as we were nearing home, I took notice to a sign in the neighbor's front yard. I stopped and took a picture of the "End These Wars" sign, and he asked if I'd noticed the others in the yards we'd passed. Somehow I hadn't observed them. After taking the picture, I stood in front of the sign and thought of the words as advice and not as a demand.

As a writer, as a human, I am always looking for advice, but knowing what to do with it doesn't come easy. I collect in the way of stacking magazine clippings, I file away what others give me. "You should do this, you should read this, you should check this out." Suggestions are therapeutic, they take the stress off discovering on your own, directing yourself. Being co-dependent in certain elements of life can be beautiful, for me unavoidable. I know I cannot live alone with my creativity. I know I cannot be alone in my beliefs.

Recently, a beautiful friend of mine suggested an article to me. After reading it I felt, powered, charged, and as if I wanted more: The Urgent Matter of Books reminds one it's okay to sit on your ass and read as long as you stand up and share afterwards. Lidia Yuknavitch's article made me think about the whole process of reading and writing, how there must be a balance between the solitude of both processes and the community found through each.

What would we do without the advice and insight literature gives us?

Recently, I have been thinking of my favorite Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector. As I neared the end of my grad program, I realized how much of an influence she has in both my writing and how after I read and studied her, I gained a new way of looking at the world. This perception is one that lies in an incredibly internal place. Some words from her:

"Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence." (The Passion According to GH)

"For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes." (The Hour of the Star)

"The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices." (The Passion According to GH)

5 Literary Things I am Thankful For (as of late)

1.) Finding my Hummingway (Hemingway) t-shirt that was packed away in my spring/ summer clothing. This shirt is a Konglish favorite. I bought it while I lived in South Korea. It was the only one in the store front in this tiny clothing boutique that was on the back streets of Suwon. (Is it an intentional mistake? Or just a perfect gem of a sincere mistake?)

2.) Yesterday I went to a writer's workshop put on by Frostburg Center for Creative Writing. The workshop was led by Detroit poet, Joy Gaines-Friedler; she focused on using art as a muse. Her energy and encouragement left me feeling creatively charged. We worked on writing exercises and the entire workshop shared what they had written.

Here is a segment of something I wrote:

Life is a dream for her. She falls asleep in any space: on lilies, busted cobwebs, against a fence. The wood must feel good on her face, and her balance is beautiful. She does not miss her grown-up sister who used to sit on the white plastic teeter-tauter with her. Her arms are dangling towards the ground, one moment in broken stasis.

I want to call her Reba. She lives in the mid-west--life will always be slow for her, might she keep her eyes closed. Her bangs tickle her own face, then her father's face when he lifts her and takes her inside to the sofa. The television is on.

(This came from a picture of a little girl with blonde hair. She was leaning on a board that rested against a fence. In the background, white playground equipment sat rusting.)

3.) Last week I introduced my writing mentor's book of poetry at his book release party. It felt good to introduce Gerry LaFemina to a familar crowd at Main Street Books. His new book, Vanishing Horizon, is his best yet, and I will be writing a review for it in the near future.

4.) The book I am reading right now, "The Year of the Hare" by Arto Paasilinna and my dear friend, Amanda Bena, who reviewed it, suggested it to me, and who has recently reminded me of the magic of going to the library.

5.) Austin Kleon's "How to Steal Like an Artist and Nine Other Things Nobody Told Me." (Thanks Kim Brown, for sharing.) Of my favorite among these: "Be nice. The world is a small town." It's important to think about methods of self-help when creating art-work, and Austin Kleon reminds us not to be alone in our methods of self-help. I like that.

An Homage for Jack Kerouac on his Birthday

DJ Bahler's "Everything is going to the beat intro" is pretty fabulous.
http://soundcloud.com/dj-bahler/sets/mashin-pit

“Maybe that's what life is...a wink of the eye and winking stars.”

He was a good one. I'm glad he existed.

The Laughing Heart

(For a little bit of assurance, and a lot a bit of love for Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski and because I've been thinking about The Beats lately.)


Listening to Waits read this poem made me realize just how powerful human expression is. It should never be withheld, always embraced, and shared with the world. If ever I'm not okay with being myself, I will think of Bukowski's words, because we ought to remind ourselves we are marvelous, we are to be delighted in.

The Laughing Heart
By Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Reading is Sexy

A certain kind of intimacy comes from watching others deep in a book/ magazine/newspaper, whether it's glancing at a complete stranger in a coffee shop, library, park, the beach, or if it comes from admiring your significant other/ crush being carried off into a completely different land created by words.

For the creeper/admirer in all of you, and to promote the appreciation of a sexy body and mind, I've put together a small compilation of websites featuring readers:

http://lu-yi.blogspot.com-- Each of the photos on this post are story-worthy. Oh, the stories within the stories.

http://hotguysreadingbooks.tumblr.com--Because those who don't like a good looking man with a book in his hand, well, they are just sad folk.

http://peoplereading.blogspot.com/--A blog with a very cool goal:

The goal: A hundred readers every hundred miles, everywhere the globe is populated. The arctic, not exempt—any scientific communities looking for a new project? The oceans, not exempt—forward to your friends who work on outrigger canoes, fishing vessels, oil rigs, cruise ships. The upper reaches of Siberia—not exempt!— reindeer herders read, too. A map filled up with readers would be a beautiful display of diversity, and unity. I invite you start your own sister (or brother) blog, wherever you may be.

http://typewritergirls.net/--Fun girls who create literary shenanigans in the Pittsburgh area and beyond.

Learning to Wait

(Image from amir kha's flicker)

Lately I have to keep reminding myself to have patience. My life has rapidly changed in the past year and a half, and due to all of the fast going changes I've had, my natural want is to continue to progress. To work towards what I need in life (whether that is selfish or selfless), and to feel like I am continually moving forward has become a natural state for me. Over and over I have been told to slow down, it will come to you, take life one step at a time, baby steps, things don't happen over night. These are all good pieces of advice, but I haven't been listening.

Today I began to recognize my obsession with goals: publication goals, career goals, personal goals, and how the months have passed by so quickly since I've moved home. Inevitably panic struck. I started to think about the people in my life who are patient, who take one step at a time, and how I want to and need to embrace that way of life. But how? The answer came from googling and stopping at thinkexist.com.

The following are quotes on patience that struck me (some in good fun, some as sincere meditations):

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.

-- Rainer Marie Rilke

Never run after a bus or a man. There will always be another one.

--Irish Proverb

Patience is passion tamed.

--Lyman Abbott

Patience is the art of hoping.

-- Marquis de Vauvenargues

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.

--Buddhist Proverb

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.

--St. Francis De Sales

Post to a post and home for a home

Last week (ish) I went to a phenomenal poetry reading hosted by Frostburg State's Center for Creative Writing. Before the reading, I did a little promotional blog for the CW Center's site. Can be found here: http://fsucenterforcreativewriting.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/crystal-williams-profile/

The reading itself was full of good vibes. For me, it was the first time I'd been in the Lyric Theatre as a theatre space, a theatre/ building that has caught fire twice. Once in its early days and more recently when it was home to Gandalf's Restaurant and Bar in 2004. To hear poetry here made me think of how the space itself thrives to be a public gathering point.

Crystal Williams was entrancing to watch. Her reading brought one to realize, poetry is an oral art. It should never be only on the page.

As I continue to think about her work, I realize just how much place informs our creative outlook. For the moment, I am happy to be home and to recognize the importance of environment as it relates to identity. More on that in my work. Most recently in my poems I've been exploring the first house I grew up in in Brimfield, Ohio, re-visiting memories and interconnecting the now with those memories. This first came about from reflecting on Williams' work, and later teaching a writing workshop at the Frostburg Senior Center, then finally into fruition when I told a love of mine I want to see Frida Kahlo's blue house. He said, "You are a blue house," jokingly, and coincidentally, my first childhood home was a blue ranch, and now I am working on a series of poems called just that, "You are a blue house." A good challenge.