Wednesdays will always be troublesome. Mondays shine with possibility, Either week's beginning or Sunday's cleanup crew. Tuesdays just fail. With no Expectations (they're not Monday After all), Tuesdays become Confused-days, not knowing if they should emulate Monday or Jump into end-of-week shenanigans. Failing at both, they give way to dear equivocal Wednesdays. Knowing neither beginning or end Wednesday attempts nothing, gives Nothing, muddles around, muddies one's mind. First Friday follows then Real Friday, Then expansive jovial Saturday. (Sunday stands alone; we won't disturb her). Poor Wednesday. Trying nothing, gaining nothing. Leaving me wondering if I should write her something.
Hopped a freight, saw gang in Thompson Falls, flatcar next track over. They liked my car better, took it by force. No, wait... Hopped freight into someone else's car, who pushed me out again without my knapsack, broke my leg, or... I remember: clinging to moving car, one hand desperately grabbing a handle, slipped, lost my legs while those startled drivers waited, watched, horrified behind barricades. Or did the speed freak sipping Mickey's Big Mouths not drop me off, but instead mug me miles from home?
Eloquently, asked blond Orphan Annie out when snow bounced like Styrofoam. Followed her eastward to Midwest. Sat bouncing one child after another while she conducted services at her church. Or did we split angrily over my lack of faith? I can never remember.
My epileptic buddy seized while training for his bicycle road race, hit his head, died. Knowing he didn't take his meds, dedicated my life to medical counseling, patient support/advocacy. Died early, stress from lack of success, debt.
Indulged whim to own motorcycle. Pretending to slalom along Woods Creek, hit gravel, slid into oncoming lane, already occupied by one-ton pickup. Or did I just slide right over the edge, mangling my body, my hopes for being energetic weekly news reporter?
Did my heart burst when I snorted Black Beauties? Or did I die after doing same with PCP disguised as so-called cannabinol? How 'bout that time "chocolate mesc" turned out to be rat poison, not placebo?
Millions of me's live in my memories, branched from events gone right, events gone wrong, events gone different. When my editor ended my career for once again failing to put "ly" on adverbs. When my employer marketed my database, fame, money, a new career following. When I got hired in Southern California instead of upstate New York. When my wife died from cancer instead of lived.
70/100 100 poems in 100 days
Every one of those branching events could have happened, the only speculative one being the one about getting fired for not using “ly” on adverbs—although an editor/publisher could have ended my teaching career before it started when upon learning I intended to teach journalism he laughed and said, “You?”
I did indeed hop a freight while in college. There was a sinister looking bunch of guys on a flatbed. There could have been a guy in my car. I did hang on gamely when I tried to mount a moving freight car now way too high due to a raised railbed. After getting off of the freight, a tweaked out guy picked me up in a Roadrunner around midnight.
I did have a crush on that young woman in college, but too insecure, I didn’t ask her out. I speculated on her future career.
My epileptic buddy fortunately had his seizure on the dormitory floor, not while he was out training for the race. He’d stopped taking his meds.
I did slide right into the oncoming lane of traffic. It was a lonely road. I righted the bike, got back into my own lane.
Uh….yeah I did do those substances as described. The capsules at the end only had chocolate in them, not mescaline.
The rest is self-explanatory.
It’s interesting to me how I think about all of the ways my life could’ve gone wrong, only rarely think how it could’ve gone differently, and not at all how something could have gone right instead of how it went down. Does that make me a glass-half-full kind of guy? Or do some of us innately focus on good things instead of bad ones?
Failure, horticultural-style. Every spray of green you see is a crape myrtle. The tallest one which grazes the top of the photo, is over five feet tall. Other than the columbine you see in the extreme lower right, and the yellow tassels of goldenrod peeking through the crape myrtle, everything you see in the foreground is a crape myrtle. We paid last October to have the one crape myrtle which grew here removed. August 2026.
In some ways that’s a pretty cheap get I’ve put up there, but here’s what’s been playing on my mind:
Recently I’ve been attempting to not over-plan my days and then just hope I make good in-roads on completing some of them, nibbling at some others, and just feeling crummy about all the important ones that didn’t see a bit of my attention. “Wow,” I’ll say to my wife, “I really need to get to [insert important item].” I’ve found I use it as subterfuge. I’ll plan 6-10 tasks, a good handful of them all-day-and-more projects, then I’ll cherry pick the ones I want to work on. That one I’ve “really got to get to” becomes the sacrifice day after day. Plus, if you condition yourself to not getting things done, you begin to feel only superficially guilty about not doing them. Instead, the past two weeks I’ve estimated the amount of time certain tasks will take, generally held to that regardless of them getting completed, and planned no more of them than there is time in my day. I try to learn where I need to get more accurate on projecting how long a task will take. And just to keep it real, I plan 90 minutes called “personal time/time sucks” to acknowledge there are just unavoidable interruptions in everyone’s day. Thus, I’ve been failing because I’ve attempted to over-succeed.
In a larger sense, it’s difficult these days to go more than a month or two without encountering “you’ve got to fail to succeed,” spouted by some motivational type of person. (Gah! I thought I would get away from cheerleaders when I got out of school!) While I can quibble a bit with the mentality—I can point to many people, many situations where they will continue to fail, never experiencing success—it’s true right down in the gut that quitting because you’ve failed once isn’t a very good strategy. Date someone and they break up with you? I guess you’re not cut out for love! Put all your money on red and it comes up black? “I guess I’ll never win at roulette.” Or how about, “I could never make myself write. I guess I’m just not a writer.” Now look at the boy. Shooting for success almost always guarantees encountering some failure.
And last week I read “These 20 Words Are Worth a Thousand Pictures” an article about a very short poem by Ezra Pound. (I hope that link gets you behind the paywall. I’ve never tried to share an article to the entire world before.) Let’s dispense with the fact Pound collaborated with the fascist regime in Italy in WWII. Ernest Hemingway seems to have been a pretty good male chauvinist, and Michael Jackson, well, where do I start? All have undeniable artistic talent. Coming back to the poem and the article, I realized poetry takes a multiplicity of forms. As a writing friend told me a month ago, “It’s a poem if you say it’s a poem.” I hope the person saying it’s a poem (me) has enough artistic integrity to adhere to his idea of poetry. I think 25-40% of my poems have not been very good in this 100-poems-in-100-days thing. Poems condense meaning. They are to literature what a fine spirit is to alcoholic beverages. They seek not the pretty good word, but the right word, the best word. One doesn’t find the jigsaw piece which closely fits and just hammer it into the puzzle. One seeks for that piece which perfectly fits the hole. I’m going to continue to attempt to write successful poems. I will fail…but maybe not all of the time.
Pop quiz: young man below (who hopefully will not be recognized because I doubt he will be flattered) was a real-life grad student. This photo represents what?
A. a waste of his parents’ money
B. proof “too much education” actually is a thing
C. the dangers of drinking
D. the empirical method at work, determining remaining quantity of beer
E. a complete lack of hand-eye coordination
F. pick any two above and provide a complete argument for your choices
College dormmate, Fall of 1976
Summer, nineteen seventy-six, living my self-realized dream of poverty, danger, emotional confusion combined with dead-end work. No car. Walk two miles to work, six days per, rain, shine. Three of us with Crazy Pete supervising(?), performing work long since killed by technology's steady advance. Loaned co-worker Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance precipitating his mental descent, believing himself to be Jesus. Nearly killed my roommate, here now first confessed. My defense, your honor, has to do with his pistol-waving girlfriend, sister to his wife—plus their side business, stealing pills from our state mental ward to sell them later. Thinking America's Bicentennial would prompt Jefferson Starship plus Grateful Dead to perform freely in Golden Gate Park, headed south with friend Ray, driving one-oh-one down entire coast (nearly killing us when his bald-tired Vee-Dub spun circles on twisting roads through California's redwoods). No concert transpired but our good friend entertained us from his expensive digs above Oakland, serving up ridge views with top-flight drugs. Returning, faced up to first failure as freelance writer of fiction, looked in my mirror, predicted, "If you don't get your ass back to college for some kind of degree, you never will." U-Dub to my rescue, restoring my transcripts, enabling graduation in five college quarters.
Postscript: afraid to take summer off (because I'd drop out again), attended said institution for nineteen months, grabbed its sheepskin after Christmas, proving to myself how one can be right/wrong simultaneously.
I feel bad because I’m breaking the chain for real today. I had planned to write a poem as we flew eastward, but I chose to finish Hamnet instead… and sleep. Then I thought, “I’ll dash it off at home.” We walked into a house without air-conditioning! 😲😰 It was 60 degF as we walked to the Seattle airport. We dropped into 85 degrees with over 70% humidity here in Raleigh, NC… And the house was the same.
I love the East especially the southeast of North Carolina where we landed, but I was raised in Eastern Washington where hot days didn’t carry that humidity and were balanced by cool nights. This was reinforced by our recent visit there. (Of course all the smoke from fires and the dry, dessicated grasses reminded me why I like the East. )
I wrote it while flying cross-country at which point food and drink became more important. The clock kept ticking. By the time dinner had finished, it was nearly time for bed, and I just plain forgot the poem. (But will he post one tonight?…)
Sing, Muse!
Come, Muse! Grace these cells laden, encumbered, bracken- masked, alone Swing Inspiration's sword, cut these bonds which cruelly imprison. Sing! May these cells quiver for joys just now birthed, for new connections made, for purpose kindled, for feelings restored.
I follow few blogs (he said, cringing at the fact about 150 follow his). One that I follow, belatedly, catching up to its posts when I can, is from Ben East, until recently a member of our country’s foreign service. I’m not sure what though it might have been U. S. Aid. It’s not important. What is important is that he wrote a book about some super-notable people who started in the Peace Corps and went on to distinguished careers in foreign service.
Around the time Ben published his book, he wrote this post which really hits home to the writers among us. I urge you to read it if you consider yourself a writer, even if you’ve written little.
I’ll be shouting out a couple of other blogs in the near future. Ciao for now.
20/100 I’m writing a poem a day (sometimes two), and now I’m 20% there. It’s causing me to rethink poetry and my approach to it, when and how I’ve written it in the past.
all the voices in my head 