It's a sin

This week started with Pride. Ah yes, that evil sin that has crushed countries in war, split up families at Christmas time and promoted a thriving bumper sticker industry through the parents of honor roll students was a huge force a few days ago. The students in my Intro to Technical Theatre class frackin' rocked their recital on Monday evening. My three bright shining superstars arrived at the theatre early, anxiously awaiting the culmination of their six Saturday sessions spent crawling under the stage, deftly clamboring across the catwalk and coiling miles of cable.

Their show was fantabulous. Between the three of them, they ran the show by themselves- Lights, Sound, Calling the Cues - The Whole Shebang. Despite this being the first class I've taught, as I told them, they are by far my favorite class ever.

However, the week slid into a thick despair yesterday when, on my rounds to gather bits for my Halloween costume, I learned that the local art store closed and the owners moved back to the mainland.

As many of you are artists, in some realm(s), you can understand my sadness. This isn't the first time this has happened, and, likely, it won't be the last. It is depressing nonetheless. When hubs of creativity, whether it's a neighborhood bookstore, a record shop or an art supply store, are lost, creativity is stymied. The tree has no room to grow, its branches break against eachother, it withers without the room to let its roots wind down deep. Not being a botanist, or arborist, maybe the metaphor doesn't exactly work, but the idea is still true. We need to save creativity before it's overrun and stamped out for good.
Now, go out and create.

Phones

I am a weary traveler of the phone lines today. From 8:50 in the morning until noon, I played the customer service call in game, and every minute I played I lost patience, brain cells and slivers of my soul.

Without getting into too much detail, I called a number for important information.

Thus my journey into Hell began.
Just to let you know, one of two voices greets the caller. It will either be a soprano voice that triggers images of hairsprayed airline stewardesses smiling, pointing out emergency escapes, but secretly wishing for the plane to catch on fire. This is the voice of corporate apologies. "I'm sorry but at this time, we are fielding too many calls... blah blah blah check out our website for more details."
The needed action here is to hang up and dial again. It may be two, three even for more attempts before one will get through to the other voice.

The voice the caller wants to hear is the deeper voice of action. I imagine it's a woman who comes home to her house flooded, the dogs barking, the kids chasing one another squealing, and she rolls up her sleeves, pulls her crescent wrench out of her back pocket, swats the kids and proceeds to fix the plumbing catastrophe with the gritty grace of rosie the riveter without the cheesy smile.

This voice means work. This voice means progress. This voice is the shepherd of the labyrinth of extensions.

Having been through this Hell before, I have the maze of extension numbers memorized (i.e. for English press 1, beep, for a prerecorded message press 1, for all other info press 2, beeep, etc....) The magic sequence I wanted was 1243. Ah, but if it were only that easy. When I got to the holy message, "Now transferring your call," I was thwarted time and time again with "Due to the high volume of calls, you will need to call back later. Goodbye."

Aarrrrrrrrgh! I went through over three hours of the call, press extensions, hang up cycle. And at last I heard an ethereal message: "Your wait time is estimated at 6 minutes." To their credit, that wait was only three minutes.

The person, the living breathing person, on the other end was of very little help to me, but she did take the time at the beginning of the conversation to let me know there was very little she would be able to do, know or find out.

Curses! Foiled Again.

Congratulations are in order

Congratulations to Herta Mueller for winning the 2009 Nobel literature prize. Her works include "Nadirs", "The Passport," "The Land of Green Plums," "Traveling on One Leg" and "The Appointment."
Here's an excerpt from The Funeral Sermon, which appeared in Nadirs

Father was lying in a coffin in the middle of the room. The walls were covered with so many pictures that you couldn't see the wall.

In one picture, Father was half as tall as the chair he was holding onto. He was wearing a dress and his bowed legs were all rolls of fat. His head was pear-shaped and bald.

In another picture Father was the bridegroom. You could see only half of his chest. The other half was a bunch of tattered white flowers in Mother's hands. Their heads were so close together that their earlobes were touching.

In a different picture Father was standing bolt upright in front of a fence. There was snow under his boots. The snow was so white that Father was surrounded by emptiness. His hand was raised above his head in a salute. There were runes on his collar.

In the picture next to it, Father had a hoe resting on his shoulder. Behind him there was a cornstalk sticking up into the sky. Father was wearing a hat on his head. His hat cast a wide shadow and hid his face.

In the next picture, Father was sitting behind the steering wheel of a truck. The truck was full of cows. Every week Father would drive the cows to the slaughterhouse in the city. Father's face was thin and had hard edges.

In all the pictures, Father was frozen in the middle of a gesture. In all the pictures, Father looked as though he didn't know what to do. But Father always knew what to do. That's why all these pictures were wrong. All those false pictures, all those false faces chilled the room. I wanted to get up from my chair, but my dress was frozen to the wood. My dress was transparent and black. It crackled whenever I moved. I rose and touched Father's face. It was colder than the objects in the room. It was summer outside. Flies were dropping their maggots in flight. The village stretched along the wide sandy road. The road was hot and brown, and burned out your eyes with its glare.

The factory is renovated.

The sun is setting on another beautiful day in Kona. The yippee dog two houses down is alerting the neighborhood of its existence over and over and over and over and over... My dogs are napping in front of the screen door, tired from their day at the beach, and I am plodding through my to-do list, realizing that once again I have forgotten to buy milk (no White Russians for me).

Besides the milk, another item looming on my list is to submit my poetry. I've missed a very important deadline this year, in fact just days ago. The 2010 edition of Edge had their deadline of Oct.1 and because I kept putting things off by doing other things, like getting my scuba certification, learning how to sail my new boat and teaching an intro to technical theatre class, I did not submit anything. No poetry. No photography. Nothin'.

Now all these other activities are well and good, but they don't include writing or, just as important, submitting.

Oh sure, I started off the year in a productive stride, having received 9 rejections in a matter of months, but really that's not productive enough. I need to become a factory of poetry. Words churning out of my mind and into my notebook, out from the notebook onto the computer, edited down and sent out to every publication I can.
Sounds great doesn't it?

But while I was set on submitting, I was neglecting the basis of everything- the writing. So I slowed my submissions (see stopped all together) and focused on my writing. That lasted a week.

All is not lost, though. Having recently seen the revamped website at www.tahoewritersworks.com and Bona Fide Books, I am newly inspired. Hence the revamped blog.

Cheers for now, I'm going to work on some poetry.

Changes are Coming

Change will be coming to this blog.