Real Life

Having recently spent seven hours in an urgent care clinic, I got to thinking about the things that draw me away from writing. Not just the things that take time away from anything I can carve out to be creative, but things that disturb the head space that I seem to need for anything remotely creative to come out.

It’s been a hell of a year and a half for writing.

Hurricane Jakey has been a blessing. My son is a very cool little person and I wouldn’t trade him for anything. But he’s been bad for my creative process and not just in a “I need to be in the right state of unhappiness to write well” way. I learned that I need more sleep than the average person to be anything other than a dreary zombie. I did not get a full night’s sleep for more than 11 months. I wanted to die. At least temporarily for like ten hours. The first night he slept through the night, close to his birthday, I felt like crying. Such a small thing I had taken for granted all my life. Going to sleep and safely assuming I’d be that way til my alarm went off. It was useful to know that it was possible to be too depressed to write, that whatever the optimal level of misery was for the creative process, it was less than infinity.

Everything flows from that. It was a hell of a year and a half for work, and I am only now digging out from under the various work projects I committed to and am behind on. The publications took a dip, the billable hours took a dip, and I have no doubt that I was not doing my best technical, professional writing. Or data analysis.

Oddly, my chronic health issue has been the least of my problems. Having Crohn’s Disease makes it always unclear whether you have a stomach flu or a flare or food poisoning. I’ve been blessed in general to be pretty good most of the time. My recent adventure turns out to have been, not a flare up as I originally thought, but E. Coli food poisoning. That coincided with my final paper for my lit class.

And speaking of class, it’s been an odd combination of a drag and really invigorating. It’s nice to have any contact at all with adults, but honestly, the fall semester, my first semester back, was not a lot of fun. It’s undoubtedly all what I put in, but I found myself doing the bare minimum of creative writing, even for class. I think the quality of what I produced was higher, but I just didn’t click with anyone in the class, or for that matter, my American lit class. This semester, my creative writing class was canceled, and I focused on the lit class and it was really great. Seriously, Post-colonial lit with Professor Aboul-ela is great and it seems to attract smart people.

Anyway, back to writing. It feels like something is coming unstuck. I hope that’s right. Now that I am less than 2 months behind on work and don’t owe anybody a term paper, I am feeling less stressed about everything and the writing is slowly coming back. Jakey starts day school in the fall and I am honestly looking forward to the extra 8 hours a week of absolute free time that I can fill how I choose.

I am working on a poem about castrating cows, which continues the theme I had earlier of farming accidents. Although, it’s not that different if you take the perspective of the steer.

Among the Families of the Earth... and transitions

I wrote my first new poem in a long time last week. It was good. It was a sign that I am starting to settle into the new routine. I still struggle with feeling guilty every time I write creatively or read for fun, because I should be working. But that seems to be subsiding.

I have a new poem that has been accepted. And the outlet for my last poem has gone out of business.

Empirical Magazine seemed really cool and I was really excited that they printed my poem. But then they went more or less out of business, so the issue my poem appeared in was the last one. you can get the e-book version of the issue here and it has some cool stuff:

http://empiricalmag.blogspot.com/

Here is the poem, as I wrote it. It's largely fictional, and I think the point is the biblical quote that is alluded to: "You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins." Amos 3:2. There are a bunch of ways of reading this and I am not sure the way the character reads it. I wonder if there are some down-sides to so-called righteousness, if it creates barriers. Certainly, it's easy for the devout to be judgmental and unforgiving, and everything I read in the new testament suggests that these are every bit as bad as what is judged or unforgiven. This old testament fire and brimstone prophet can be read that way as well.

Here it is.

among the families of the earth

your father wakes; it’s five and cold,

steam; his breath, his head as it
is shaved. his wife, your mother,
stirs. the door clicks closed. the snow;
the shoveling, the salt; the half
mile to the bus on the Express.
its empty seats, he reads from
Amos, prays. but not for you.
 
perhaps not for his wife. the
listener, himself alone
and drifting through the morning
shards, will never tell.

the work is dirty, rodent eyes

from cages gleam. their foreign
ordered thoughts. the sawdust
always stinking. they breed;
mechanical and hostile. he records

his duty done, the bus again
the lights flick on as night
descends, the drifted sidewalk
(shovel, salt); the silent dinner
prayer; and living with
the consequences; sleep.

My first published poem

So, this poem appeared in the journal Relief, which bills itself as "A Quarterly Christian Expression." It's not explicitly Christian, but then a fair bit of what they publish isn't so either.

The theme of the issue was supposed to be love and war. Well, I guess that's about right. I always remember fencing as being something of a battle, and I hope this conveyed that.

The other thing that was interesting to me. Neither my wife nor the other couple of friends who read this before I submitted it knew what a maul was. I guess that's a point for the fact that my experiences don't generalize nearly as much as I might think they do. (For the record, a maul is kind of like a sledgehammer. But 'sledgehammer' would have seriously messed with the meter. And evoke Peter Gabriel).

The ending rhyme kind of snuck up on me, but I really felt it was inevitable.

In any case, here it is:


And he the maul

We’d start it once the frost was gone
He’d cut the posts and sharpen them
I’d peel the bark- slough it off
In white strips dripping sap
(My hands too cold to feel their pull).
And then I’d paint them creosote
While he changed gas and filed the saw
Half as big as me.

We’d drive as far as we could go
And then we’d hike the rest-
He with his six posts, I with four,
I with the bar and he the maul.
It was still damp and gray;
The woods were dark.

Above, the sun, and with it flies
Black clouds that pulsed and
Hummed our blood.
We’d never speak-they’d fill
Eyes, mouth, and nose;
They’d drown in sweat
Then coat the skin.

I’d think to stop, or swat, or spit
I don’t know what he thought
The maul was sharper than their song
He’d have a blackened crown of grime
That pressed into his eyes
The nearest thing I’d see to tears-
My father weeping flies.