It strikes me that perhaps I should give a brief overview of the events of the past few months.  In many ways, it seems as if magic has dropped us in this little red house, trimmed in wisteria, just a walk away from the water.  On clear days the Olympics, framed by cedars, rise dark above the bright glimmer of Poulsbo's harbor. . .but that is for later.

Here, on this page, at least for a while, I am still at Wazoo Farm, though that beloved, rambling, hard-won old house and yard belongs now to two young women, who, on their free time, have been refinishing the floors and doing who-knows-what. . .there was always another job, or two, or six, waiting.  So let me back up: it's early-June, and a hot early-June it is, too.

As most of you know, in a series of most unfortunate, rather awful events that had nothing to do with his excellent work or much-loved reputation, Martin did not receive tenure, and this signalled to us the beginning of an end.  As some of his beloved colleagues began to lose their jobs as well, we realized that the University was taking a road we could never, ever walk (at this point, the decision had been made for us anyway, so in a way, that was a great relief).  It became harder and harder to live in a town where we had invested everything with feeling that our departure, and the sale of our house, and all the work that leaving such a life would entail (mentally and physically) was imminent.  Indeed it hung over us like a great heavy cloud.

We also realized that Martin's "sabbatical" year, for which we'd been tentatively planning, was suddenly upon us: a full year, at full pay, without any teaching obligations.  We'd talked of travel and spending time near family; now there was no promise of work at the other end--so why not have the adventure we'd been dreaming of?

We came to all these conclusions, at the same time, silently and independently, on a hike in the mountains of West Virginia.  The weather had been utterly sweltering and our lovely old home had no air-conditioning. Every time I looked out the window at our garden I despised it and all the work it entailed; it was so longer ours, it seemed, but we were still responsible for readying it--and the whole house--for someone else.  We'd planned, of course, on pouring the next twenty years into it; now we had a year. 

Our house was bursting with house guests, one of whom was in a life-changing crisis.  A woman had verbally abused us on our front doorstep and threatened us and the police had awakened us one morning at one o'clock.  (That's a whole story unto itself).  We hadn't spent any quality time with our children in goodness knows how long and we felt unbraided and unravelled.  So we escaped.  We packed our car and drove up into the mountains and stayed in a little forest-service cabin, our first family vacation in what seemed like years.  I hadn't been able to do any work so I planned to pack my laptop and squeeze in some good writing time, but Martin was adamant: no technology.  No computer.  No phone.  Only a few games, our swimming suits, and groceries. 

The first evening, after unpacking, Martin took the girls down to the swimming pool.  The evening was cool and I searched around under the maples and oaks for kindling.  Then I built a fire, sat back, and stared at the flames.  Inside I felt a great knot, one that I'd felt looping and tightening in February, when Martin received his letter, finally beginning to loosen.  I hadn't known it was there.  I fixed a simple dinner in the tiny kitchen; I made the beds in the two rooms.  Everything smelt of wood and woodsmoke.  There was no noise.  The girls came home, happy and flushed, and soon we were eating together around the chunky, awkward wooden table.  We played a game and drank hot chocolate.  That night I read a book silently with Martin in front of the fire. 

I realized I hadn't spent such a simple, wonderful evening with my family in many months.  Our house, our schedules, our hearts and minds--they had been full and frantic, so good and blessed, a basket always overflowing, that this evening felt almost ascetic, as if we'd walked out of a bizarre and fabulous and noisy carnival into a monk's cell.

The next morning we hiked together.  The day was overcast, the path sylvan and full of wonder.  We meandered around deep seas of green moss and gnarled, old roots that tumbled and twisted over each other.  Here and there we found smooth, grey rocks balanced on top of each other in piles, and it seemed to us that other-worldly creatures, not hikers, had stacked them there.  A wooden bridge curved over a clear sandy bank, crisscrossed by a clear stream. At the turning-about point, an impossibly large boulder balanced on a tiny rock.  Then, at the very end of our hike, we found a thousand piles of zen rocks, all balanced perfectly.  We stacked our own.  Martin and both knew--independently--exactly what we must do.

On the way back to our cabin, I looked at Martin.  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"  I said in a low voice.  I didn't want the children to hear.

"I think I am," he said.

Sure enough, on the way home as the children slept, we began to plan our departure.  It would be a quick, easy escape from all the heartbreak but it would be a tearing wrench to leave our community, whom we loved as our own family, behind.  But the more we spoke, the more we realized that a flight northwest, thousands of miles away and without a long term job waiting for us, was an inexorable reality.   For our family, for ourselves, for reasons we couldn't even articulate.  We'd been planning to spend our lives invested in one place; we'd been released from those plans; we felt God's loving but insistent boot in our rears and felt the wind from an open door.  Take as little as you can and leave as fast as you can.  Go.  You're released from all this goodness and heartache; there is new good waiting for you.  Go.

Today, in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, I peeled and chopped tiny yellow apples, a crop the girls and I had piled into Bea's bike basket days before at our nearby communal orchard.  I added peaches that were so ripe the skin slipped easily under a hot stream of water, and I broke them into a pot with my fingers.  The girls scooped up a pile of windfalls from our own apple tree and I added them, too, still hard and green.  As the sauce simmered and filled the house with a familiar heady scent, I thought of long mornings in Pennsylvania, a bushel of apples between my feet, bent over the peeler as I chatted with Nancy Thompson and we sipped tea.  I thought of winding through roads swept with yellow leaves with my friend Tonya (or Sonya, as she appeared in my columns), on our way to the local apple and peach orchard. 

I think, too, of a brilliant day when the sky was the color of my daughter's eyes, swinging myself up into an apple tree not far from town as Sally (or Sal, as she appeared in my columns) snapped photos of our children.

Our little house smelled wonderful and as my sister and brother-in-law, my cousin, my nieces and nephews and my own family spilled in the door from the chilly outdoors, I relished sharing it with them.  This process--harvesting, cooking slowly, eating together--the smelling and the stirring, the sugaring and the spicing--all of it recorded my belonging in a new place.

Tonight, stepping out of a hot shower, I looked in the mirror and read much of my life on my body: a series of maps that trace my daughters' first growth as they stretched and pushed from inside my belly.  I suddenly realized that each day in my life never feels truly finished unless I've processed it somehow, and as a writer, I do that by recording, by mapping.  When life is busy, I write the stories in my mind in a quiet moment, but that feels incomplete.  Settling myself here, then, must mean that I have to return to this place to find these words and share them with you. 

Writers often advise their students to let a life-changing experience stew for a while.  Walk around it slowly, smell it, taste it, let the flavors mingle.  Then offer it up.  I've waited for a few months now.  We're well and truly moved, but so much of my soul lingers behind.  How will I center myself in this new place?  Write, write, write.  It's time.  Thanks for waiting.

"Wazoo Goes West" will wait as I find a way to leave "Notes From. . ." behind.  Bodily, I left it some time ago, but the recording must still be done.  I'll try for as long as I can stand it and then I'll move on.

Two hours of editing is nothing.  Two hours of writing is even less.  Sometimes I feel as if I could write for about twelve hours straight.  For about twelve months straight.  But, alas, and hallelujah too, school is almost over and soon my beautiful girls will be home with me.  All day.

Right now I have, at the most, five minutes to scribble a blog post.  Let me begin with Rilke's line, or the imperfect remembered version:  "Though we strain against the deadening grip of daily necessity, we sense this mystery: all life is being lived. . ."

This morning, robin's song.  Sunlight caught by curtain.  A yellow butterfly among the climbing rose, just now bursting with deep pink blooms.  Blue paths in a cloudy sky, the passing roar of cars outside, the hum of a lawnmower.  All life is being lived, a million lives just outside in the garden, and so many more in widening circles from this one point, where Martin and I sit and record more unfolding life, the life of characters--fourth grade Maple Mullihan who must try to find her talent, must find the key to the locked door that leads to the extraordinary.  Across from me, Martin ignites word after word on a blank white page, tending the many tiny flames that make a poem.

And now my minutes are up, and I must go and make myself presentable for the world, shake off the cloak that quiet writing wraps me in, put on my company face.  Two hours, such a very short time.

This afternoon I balanced two cups of tea and two gingersnaps on a little tray and managed to carry them, without spilling, to the red adirondacks under the birch trees.  The birch trees!  Queenly trees with fluttering skirts and sunlight dancing in each leaf.  Or perhaps they're more like dancers with streamered tambourines.  We are in love with them.  We planted them six years ago and today we sat in their shade and drank our tea and talked about what is most important in our lives.

And it's not the trees, or the house, or the programs and classes Martin developed over the last seven years.  And it's not our work, either, though we love it, and it's not our poems or stories or our small successes.  What is most important for us are the people we love and transform by our love--and the people by whom we have been transformed. We pour ourselves and our work and our energy into people.  The rest is important, but by contrast, the rest is temporal; it can blow away in one mighty gust of wind. And much of it has.  Martin came home from cleaning out his office disconcerted and sad.  I think it surprised him, how depressing it was.  All his beautiful programs, the ones he envisioned and worked so hard for--the literary magazine, the open mics, the reading series, each class sculpted and labored over.  And for what?  he asked.

But the birch trees spoke to us with their music:  It's not the programs themselves that matter; programs are for people.  Programs inevitably disappear.  But the impact they have on people, the ways they change those who experienced and participated--that is the lasting thing.

If we've been taught anything by all of this, one lesson driven home directly and mercilessly would be: very little is ours.  I keep rehearsing it.  I knew it, or thought I knew it.  Now I know it even more.  We are given gifts, we love them, we do our best with them, but they are not ultimately ours.  Not even our writing really belongs to us; we are stewards of a poem, or a story, but we walk alongside them; we do not possess them, and by trying to possess any of it, we ruin all of it.  I guess that rule goes for just about everything I can think of, including people--friends, spouses, children, parents.  We must perpetually let go if we want to find the core of what really matters, if we want to hold tightly to what makes life real and miraculous and lasting. 

We did some haiku with a bunch of fourth graders today, and that was healing: experience a moment; love it; let it go.  Also healing was the fact that every haiku master we came across loved talking about bird droppings.  Bird ---t in sake and on rice cakes.  One haiku basically read:  the happier the sparrow, the more he s---s all over you. (Insert appropriate word--not for young audiences).  So when one fourth grader wrote about a seagull pooping on his potato chips at the beach, we said, Ah, welcome to the fold, young poet.

Haiku is the only writing assignment in college I ever got assigned a B for.  I was crushed.  I have been intimidated by haiku, probably since then.  Apparently I stink at whittling a moment down to three, spare lines.  That's Martin's cup of tea.  Maybe I'll try it as a sort of spiritual discipline.  Maybe you should.  One freeing tip: what you heard in elementary school, that the lines must be 5 / 7 / 5 syllables--you can forget that tyranny.  What you're looking for are three short, simple lines.

Birch leaf--
coin of sunshine on my shoulder
We drink tea all afternoon.

Oh, I'm still terrible.  This will, perhaps,be a private exercise.  (I just had to slip in the bit about drinking tea.)  I think the fourth graders haikued me right under the table today.

Daddy's Garden

This month, if you flip open the covers of the national children's magazine, Ladybug, you'll find a story called "Daddy's Garden" about a gentle Daddy who finds a snake in the family garden.  A girl named Merry narrates the story, and there are three more characters--Elspeth, her little sister, the baby, and Mommy, who tends to be a bit cautious around animals.

Coincidence?  Happily, no.  Though I've seen my work published many times in other venues, receiving my copy of Ladybug was, by far, the most satisfying and rewarding.

Here are a few of the photos that accompanied the first draft of the story, which I wrote as a birthday gift for Martin many years ago (check out Martin's long locks).  You can visit Ladybug's website by clicking HERE, though you won't be able to see the gorgeous illustrations (the Daddy character is especially handsome) by talented artist Betsy Wallin (visit her website HERE) unless you buy the magazine.  I had no idea what illustrations would accompany my text, but when I opened the magazine (breath held) I was ecstatic to see seven beautiful watercolors.

After Martin received his letters informing him that he'd been denied tenure, the journal that he advised, (and the biggest reason his career here ended), was left without a faculty advisor.  But completely without his knowledge, an amazing issue was just released, completely student-produced.  Read it here:  UNDERGROUND MUSE & STONE.

I just wrote an e-mail to some friends of mine about how absent-minded I've been lately (writing can make you schizophrenic). I cut this bit for your benefit:

I've been spending a lot of time with Maple [the character in my book for young readers] these days. So much, in fact, that in the car I couldn't get out what I wanted to say to the kids, which was, "Roll up your windows!" What came out of my mouth was, "Boil your seats!" I wish the kids just knew what I meant. Mental telepathy, while dangerous, could be helpful.


And then tonight when Elspeth hurt her pinky finger I said, half-paying attention, "Don't worry, honey, you'll get a new pinky soon," and she stared at me blankly and a little worried and said, "What?" Oh, man. I'm losing it.

In other news, my friend Sal fulfilled a life-long dream of mine and rented a rollerskating rink for my birthday. What do you get when you combine a bunch of thirty- and forty-somethings with a bunch of kids ten and under? We were falling like flies. One of my friends ended up wrapped in heating pads and she and her daughter, whose sprained ankle was on ice, watched a "Mythbusters" marathon as they recovered. But baby, all those years of skating on cobblestones in Kenya paid off--I had the time of my life and even remembered how to skate backwards so I could finally fulfill a fantasy--skating in my true love's arms. Martin looked a little less than relaxed and we weren't terribly close, but we made it around the rink one entire rotation without wiping out. Sheer bliss. Check out Bea 'n friends "shaking their grove thing" by clicking HERE.

I'm entrenched in my own vocabulary.

When Martin told me that it's 90 degrees today for the Boston Marathon, I said, "That's terrible." I thought about it some more. Ninety degrees for a spring marathon! It was unusually warm in southwest Pennsylvania, too; we were driving with large gas rigs into town and the roads gleamed with heat and the sky darkened with the threat of a thunderstorm. I imagined running, a sport I detest unless I'm being chased by dogs, and I said again, "That's terrible. Terrible. Ninety degrees." There was a pause. "That's terrible."

My thoughts shifted from the terrible April heat to my vocabulary, so lacking and barren. I spent the next few minutes in despair.

I have been working hard on a third draft of a book for young readers, and there's nothing like writing a novel to realize how limited your bank of words really is. Last night I took a break to read a book--a published, popular one, and though the writing comes with its own set of predetermined words, they're different than mine. I read the word, "preternatural." Of course I've used it before, and it's not exactly a grandly unusual word, but I mentally flogged myself. Why can't you use that word sometimes? You're terrible!

I've been combing through my novel with the aid of the "find and replace" button. I type in "sparkly" and I find all one dozen mentions in the 170-page book and replace them with glitzy, shiny, twinkly. . .I was never aware of how predisposed I was to "sparkly." Or "miserable" or the idea of someone's ears burning when embarrassed. Now I know. It's not a pretty discovery.

If you have any favorite synonyms for 'sparkly' or 'miserable' that are appropriate for young readers, let me know. I need help. Don't give me any for 'terrible,' though. I'm on a roll with that one.

This is the sort of morning that fits me like a glove: cool, overcast, perfect for short-sleeve weeding. It's a Nairobi morning, and in my garden this morning, birdsong with black dirt under my fingernails and worm-squirm and distant laughter of children, I could almost smell bread baking at Adam's Arcade.

Adam's Arcade was a short walk away from our first home in Nairobi. We lived in the second-story flat of a large house belonging to an older couple who were on home-leave in the US. Since it would take almost a year for our shipment to arrive from America (due to extensive testing of my mother's dangerous bottle of McCormick Poppyseeds), the flat with its lovely old furniture, dusty puzzles, and enormous, screenless windows was perfect. An elderly British woman lived downstairs in a flowery apartment and she and my mother took tea on a regular basis. There was a large, sunny courtyard where I once took a sketchbook and toiled with my pencils over a sketch of a bicycle wheel. There was a pool but I never remember swimming in it, and there must have been a high gate with a night guard sitting in a little hut.

That was the house in the spreading trees where my mother caught a baboon on our dining room table, eating calmly from the fruit bowl. Baboons are not trustworthy, polite creatures and my mother chased his rubbery bottom all the way down the hallway and back out the window.

Nairobi was younger then. Friends tell me that it takes an hour or more just to drive across the city now. I haven't been back in fifteen years but my memories are as clear as if I left just a month ago. Mostly I remember colors and smells, the sound of my own voice as I opened a window, struck by the beauty of the city--thorny trees, bougainvillea climbing over thick hedges, the jangle of music and the distant roar of downtown traffic. I suppose it was dusty and loud and rather unsafe (almost everyone we knew had been robbed in one way or another), but it was the place of my childhood, and beyond that, it was objectively beautiful in many ways. Why is our culture so monochromatic? In Nairobi, color, color everywhere, on tin cups and matatus and clothes and up walls and in the market.

But today I'm thinking of Adam's Arcade, which we loved for its awkward concrete playground and difficult slide only manageable by squatting and sliding on the soles of your shoes. The bakery smelled different than any bakery I've sniffed since; it was a warm mixture, I suppose, of french bread and samosas and mandazi, mingling with the dust and exhaust of Nairobi. I don't remember many of its offerings beyond the chocolate croissants, which my mother asked for in a French accent since our Canadian friend, who worked for the embassy or the consulate or something important, had once mocked us for sounding American and uncouth. "A loaf of bread and three cwaasant," we ordered, and that's how we still pronounce them today, much to the vigorous mockery of Americans (like my husband), who chide us for being ridiculous.

Today the morning is a grey umbrella, and the air swims with birdsong and spring and the voices of my children on the porch. And I too, just for a few minutes, am a child, lifting my nose to find a rather mediocre bakery I once loved and anticipated as a world-class treat. Sometimes, just before sleeping, I find a place like that deep inside, and I long to stay in that cool place above worry and adulthood just long enough to slip into a dream, and soemtimes, if I'm lucky, I do.

*
For a vision of loveliness, as my mother says, see my friend Sal's photos (plus I got a little mention :) at her blog: Sally's Blog

It's Sunday and the children are a'bed. Last night, a good friend of ours (and a colleague of Martin's), wonderful poet and wise fellow Bob Randolph (his wife, Amy, is also a lovely poet and songwriter with whom we have sung many a time), sent us this e-mail after we potlucked with some good friends on Saturday evening. . .Thought I'd share it with you.

*

Hi Martin and Kim,

Amy told me that at Noah's house the other night, when Amy was there, Martin told about writing a poem and reading it to Kim as she stood working with something on the stove, her back to him. He said he finished reading and there was no response, so he asked what she thought of it. She turned around with tears in her eyes because the poem was beautiful.

Amy said that at that point, when she heard Martin recount that, she said to herself, "Ah, yes--they'll be ok."

I agree and want to amplify that a little. Tenure or no tenure, as important as that may be, is not the core, neither is promotion or not promotion, and where a person works or doesn't work isn't the core either--Stevens sold insurance, Ginsberg got kicked out of college, Snyder sailed around all over as a merchant seaman--writers write; to a writer what can matter more than writing something so beautiful it brings tears to your soul-mate. That's what we do. That's what we build our universes out of. The rest is stuff, but that's the heart of it.

So I'm with Amy on this.
The two of you standing by that stove may not be much to some people, but to me, Martin, it's exactly why you should be hired at Harvard, or anywhere else.

(At least, that's the sort of thing the universe I bank on comes from.)

In the midst of talk of . . ., talk of abiding sorrow, a man reads a poem to his wife in the kitchen as she is cooking, and the poem is so beautiful it makes her cry. That's the diamond and the truth.

Bob

When Merry finished A Wrinkle in Time the other night, I realized I'd need to read it again if I were to discuss it intelligently with her. I remembered parts of the book (in particular, I remember a vague feeling that I should memorize a great deal more than I had in high school if I were to ever battle a giant, disembodied, evil Brain), but the rest was fuzzy.

So last night I stayed up half the night and read Madeline L'Engle's classic again. I was so spooked by IT and its control of Meg's little brother that, at midnight, when I moved my reading upstairs to bed, I couldn't bring myself to drop off my tea cup in a dark, lonely kitchen. I left it on the hall table and dashed up to bed where I finished the book in peace, switched off the light, and marvelled at L'Engle's brilliance.

Reading the book as an adult and as a writer was interesting; I was caught up in the narrative but I was detached enough to think, when the star's song is taken straight from the Psalms, "That was risky. I wouldn't have tried that. . ." and wonder at the sheer intelligence of the writing, how Mrs. Who pulled quotes seemingly out of thin air and how L'Engle mesmerized us with math. . . .and how the book, when studied in little pieces, was not as brilliant as the whole, which shimmers with the qualities of true Myth.

I can't give too much away, because Martin (gasp) has never read it. I'm switching books with him as soon as he finishes rereading "Asher Lev" which I'm sure I must have read in my Potok phase but can't remember. (Did I ever tell you I read Vanity Fair twice, and the second time didn't realize it was a reread until I was almost half-way through?)

If you haven't read L'Engle in a while, I highly recommend a revisit--wonderful stuff for midwinter days. And a reminder, too, of what is real, what is worth pursuing--and fighting for--in life and art.

Tall Order

Last night, as Martin slept, he dreamt that he was a waiter in a diner. His sole customer, a woman and a novelist he had never seen before, slightly older than he, demanded pancakes. When he brought her the plate she snapped, "I wanted burned pancakes."

"They are burned," he said, lifting one to check.

"I wanted them burned on both sides," she said, and waved him away.

Poor Martin took the plate back to the kitchen and explained the order to the cook, who grumpily threw them back on the skillet and began burning the other side.

"I want eggs, too!" Martin turned around and found that the woman novelist had followed him into the kitchen. She fixed him with her beady eye and specified: "A cooked egg within an egg."

This morning we were eating a much less complicated breakfast--Cheerios and muesli--when Martin recounted his dream. I, chief dream interpreter and magician of the Cockroft household, spun this explanation: the woman, who is unrecognizable except as a figment of Martin's imagination, is Martin's creative spirit, or Muse. She's a pushy spirit, asking Martin for things he must go to great lengths to provide, even the impossible and enigmatic Egg Within an Egg.

He performs drudge work and even still he is unable to please his Muse, whom he both wants to please and feels bitter toward.

Why? Because these days, we have no time or energy for creative writing. None. Neither of us have written a poem or story in months. We've been writing of course--Martin sketches syllabi and lesson plans and I've been writing for the paper, and both are important and rewarding in their own right. But we both feel utterly divorced from our creative writing, and the muses are getting grumpy.

Martin felt this when he arrived home yesterday evening and groaned, "I'm so tired. I feel absolutely drained." On closer inspection of his day, we realized he hadn't eaten breakfast nor lunch--an involuntary fast due to a hectic, packed day.

And here I am now, typing away when I should be working on a story for a magazine or at least catching up with our Everests of laundry. But I need to toss my hungry Muse a little scrap now and then to keep her from devouring me. . .though I don't know whether I'll ever be able to fulfill Martin's tall order. That's up to him and his spirit to settle.

For the first time, my articles appear in three places on the Observer-Reporter page. I disclosing this information mainly for my family, who will read anything I write. See if you can find my articles, Mom and Dad (both sets of you)--three places (click on any of them for the main page): Pinewood Derby, "Nourishment and Hope," and "Love at First Sight."

The rest of you, read if you'd like; and remember your days of glory in the Pinewood Derby (if you raced); or if you're like me, recall your brother's first, and last Pinewood Derby car.

A postscript to my mother: Remind me to clip and send the article to you of the toothless bankrobber. I didn't cover that story but I enjoyed it.

Enjoy a little Cinderellaesque love story I wrote for the paper by clicking HERE.

I've been thinking about writing a lot. I've been writing only a little. I've been thinking about starting work on a novel; I haven't typed a single word. Last night I told Martin, "Why do it when there are plenty of people who have already done it well? And most of them I haven't even read yet!" I've also been meaning to start a writing group with students since I'm not teaching this semester. I ran into a student in the University hallway--straight from home, I was in my "plain clothes" of course--stained shirt, house sweater, comfy cordoroys, my hair hanging about my face--and Bea, though she was dressed, had left her coat at home and was in socks with no shoes (she did have a blister on her toe, by the way). I chatted with the student for a bit and then the writing group came up. "Yes," I said, "I will organize it. I plan to get serious again in. . .um. Four days."

The days are passing quickly with no signs of seriousness from me yet, though at least I've started blogging again.

It was certainly encouraging to find a review online of my short story, "Patron Saint of Trees," by Nichole Reber at her site, "The Review Review." You can read my very first review HERE.

Next week I will gather in my energy and be serious again. That gives me--let's see--about four days more. Perfect.

High Heels!

Brilliant musician Greg Scheer writes:

I didn't write a poem about high heels, but I included high heels in a new song. I hope there's a prize or something, because I just ate up a half of a day on this absurd little venture: http://musicblog.gregscheer.com/2011/12/15/baby-youre-not-wearing-pants-again/

Listen to his song now before you hear it on Top Ten on your favorite radio station.

PLUS. . .Heather Long McDaniel submitted this beaute about a callous aunt from Pennsylvania:

There once was an aunt from PA
Who gave neices sharp heels for play
The aunt did not know
Of the pain in the toes
She doomed me to suffer that day


Don't be intimidated. Submit your art/poems/etc. about high heels and win Wazoo's fabulous (virtual) prize!

Call for Poems

While this is not really in the spirit of the Christmas season, and while I should be grading final projects, I've noticed lately that there's quite a bit of traffic to Wazoo generated by people hunting for. . ."poems about high heels." You faithful visitors may remember a poem I wrote about Merry's high heels last April, which was National Poetry Month.

High heels and I are not on intimate terms right now, nor do I know any women (or men) who wear them. But I'd love to post some fun, silly, or serious poems about high heels! You can leave them here in the comments section, with lines separated by back slashes ( / ) and I will publish them in their correct form. High heels in December? And why not? I've got a red pair the color of holly berries. They languish in the basement next to old seed packets. The girls try them on once and a while and trip and clomp around the laundry room. The girls LOVE them. Why? What is so inherently attractive about high heels?

So write me.

P.S. Weirdest search by a Wazoo visitor? "Bald flight attendants."

My story, "Name Finding," has been published at Literary Mama. Please read it (and leave a comment if you'd like) by clicking HERE. I hope you enjoy the site--it's not just for mamas, of course.

And. . .to read about my first experience hunting, check out my column for this week by clicking on the geranium at right. (Did I mention I never write my own headlines?) Also, while you may be the reader that takes the total reads to fourteen, the column is mostly read in print in this county and in the next. But online reads are important, too, so leave a message if you'd like! Finally, big thanks to Tonya for putting up with me as a novice hunter.

Post Thanksgiving

I fell off the bandwagon last week, blogging wise. Well, I'm back, for better or for worse.

How was your Thanksgiving?

Our turkey was a delectable homage to what a turkey can be if stuffed with apples, sage, and onions, if his skin is pulled from his breast and his flesh prodded with butter and garlic and a freshly ground spice rub, if indeed he is roasted slowly, breast down, then flipped and glazed with an apple reduction. This should have been enough to make me swoon but by the time I sat down to partake, I'd had a headache all day from telling the girls what and what not to do, and I was having a bit of trouble being grateful for anything. After dinner I lay down on the floor, lifted a limp hand to shove puzzle pieces across the floor to Beatrix from a catacomb of blankets. The turkey was a success (thanks to Martin). I was a Thanksgiving FAIL.

That night I lay in bed and searched my recent history to find just one kind thing that I had said to Elspeth. I came up empty. All day, and nothing but reprimands and grumpiness from me.

The next morning, however, I awakened renewed and determined to live the day better, and so I did. Elspeth and I got on like a house a fire all day, and I went to sleep much happier that evening. What is wrong with me sometimes? I can be such a cantankerous wench.

Our little Christmas tree winks from our sun room window, decorated with ornaments from around the world. We let the girls choose one new ornament every year from the Ten Thousand Villages store, and the "Elephant Tree" as I dubbed it for its preponderance of little Indian elephant ornaments, is a happy presence in our house.

I just taught my second and last class of the week, and as usually is the case, now that the semester is almost over, the students are open and easy with me and with each other. I should be conducting some interviews for columns but right now I'm happy to just sit for a while and contemplate magnetic poetry. Martin's mammoth metal desk has that one thing going for it: a big surface to craft some magnificent magnetic poetry. Here's my latest effort:

honeydrunk as a moon
some gift peaches
or white milk
but chanting spring
winds to winter moan
and dresses in bare sleep

Okay, the ending is a bit melodramatic. Indeed it is! But choices are limited, people.

Also, there are weird accidents that occur, such as the juxtaposition of these two words: boil mother.
or
vision friend
or
bitter afterpound,
which is what I am sporting postThanksgiving.

PS. To read a Thanksgiving reflection (around Tecumseh's prayer) in my weekly column, please click the geranium at right.

What Tecumseh Can Teach Us

Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee (died 1813), composed this exquisite poem that I introduced the other evening at a potluck. We took the third stanza and danced to it with the kids it a "Rite of Thanksgiving" (something we all need more of, I think). Tecumseh was no stranger to injustice or to the threat that outsiders brought to his people. He valiantly defended his peoples' rights even as they were stripped away. Stanza two charges us today to welcome strangers, just as a courageous group of Native Americans welcomed a bunch of cold, starving foreigners that first Thanksgiving.

There are some excellent challenges in his poem for us as we begin to ponder what it means to be thankful and live bravely.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion;
respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.