A Cranky Ol' Lady Goes a'Blogging

Poetry recitations & doggie eating disorder

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:06:00 +0000

Tonight I fed Lady, then took off to hear high school students recite poetry. I didn't know what I was getting into, thought it was a poetry slam kind of thing because I didn't read very carefully the info I had in front of me. If I'd known, I might not have gone, and that would have been sad. It turned out to be the finals to select the Arizona champ to go to Washington DC and compete for the national prize of a $20,000 scholarship. Wow. That's not chump change. So, I've added a new vocabulary word: recitation. It does not mean performing your own poetry. The big upside to this is that not only did I not have to listen to any bad poetry, but I also heard wonderful poems I'd never heard of by poets I'd never heard of, what I call making new "friends." These students were mostly excellent reciters, putting lots of interpretive expression into it, and also speaking slowly and clearly enough that I could actually follow along (not true lots of the time when people read their own poems). I had a great time. I am going to start memorizing some poems. Alberto Rios (another reason I'm glad I went) reminded us that memorizing (the work) is for remembering (the reward) and also read some of his poems, as he is a widely renowned Arizona poet and another new "friend" for me. He read one about a grandmother with mile-long hair (a frightening abusive tale with a happy ending in which the hair saves the life of her and a baby) and a hilarious one about pies.

When I got home, there was Lady licking her chops from her second dinner, as Grumpy was asleep when I left, and I didn't leave a note. Then she went racing back and forth between us slurping stuck-to-dish remains from our meals. I swear, by the end of all this she was whining to lick my ice cream container (Haagen-Dazs dark chocolate), and I was threatening to send her to eating disorder meetings.

Discovery: Kashi frozen meals - yummy, wholegrainy.

I've upped my exercise with aerobics & yoga classes (ideally two of each per week, but actually so far, the past two weeks, I've only made it to three total per week, like tonight I skipped yoga for the poetry) in addition to all the dog walks and forgetting to go to Bally's. I'm achey anyhow.

Bio/poetry interface... Oops!

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:07:00 +0000

In class yesterday I kinda fell through the language crack. Three lines in an Elizabeth Bishop poem bugged me: "--the frightening gills,/fresh and crisp with blood,/that can cut so badly--" (from "The Fish"), so I spoke up. I said "This really bothers me, because gills are soft. I never heard of gills hurting anybody." Several others piped up to disagree and related their personal injuries. So I shut up, puzzled. On the drive home, I realized what had happened. Gills are soft -- capillary beds enclosed in permeable membrane, the sites of gas exchange between capillary blood and the water. But the gill arches (the gill-bearing structures) are made of cartilage and can indeed be scratchy. I hear the very specific language, and others hear the general reference that would include the gills, gill arches, and gill slits as single thing, "the gills."

That sort of thing is inevitable, the differences in language use. What bugs me ultimately is that I can be so blind to it, just not "get" it right away but only an hour later on the freeway. So I miss the chance to talk about it, to clarify it when I'm still in the group, to not be taken for the idiot who's never poked at a fish. I can be so stubbornly literal sometimes, blindered.

Travel & carbon trading

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:27:00 +0000

Babies grow so fast! It's only been a couple of months, and my grandson has doubled his size and become sharp enough to recognize that Grandma is actually a stranger. Each smile won doubled in value by virtue of its scarcity, like oil.

On the plane home, I read "Conning the Climate" by Mark Schapiro in Harper's (Feb 2010). I wanted to puke. If what he says about cap-and-trade is true (likely), and if my instincts are accurate (admittedly dubious), the sociopaths that gamed our financial system to near death are onto something new and not-so-new, playing a frighteningly similar game with carbon trading ("the fastest-growing commodities market on earth"). In the good old days I might have theorized that organized crime had taken us over, but no, I think it's individualistic sociopaths having a hell of a good time gaming each other and to hell with us insignificant and uninteresting ordinary people. It's enough to send an otherwise down-to-earth citizen, taking poetry classes and trips to enjoy nature and family, off to the boonies to hole up in a shack in the woods with neither running water nor internet access, struggling to become a good buddhist.

I remember well when the banking system forced us former savers into dubious investments by shriveling the interest rates on savings to effectively less-than-zero when inflation is figured in. I kicked and screamed and refused to cooperate for years, having concluded (with brilliant insight I might add) that the market is a colossal gambling casino that best serves players that can afford to lose. I nurse the heartfelt conviction that the savings interest evaporation was a conscious ploy to pull more money into the sociopath playground.

"Precious"

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:14:00 +0000

Tonight I saw "Precious." I felt like I'd been stabbed in the heart and emerged from the theatre wanting to teach literacy. That faded, but I still feel stabbed and bleeding. I feel smart sometimes, like I know about things, but there's knowing about and there's KNOWING. The film put me right into her unspeakably horrible life. I'll never forget it. I doubt I would have survived it like she did.

I've been requesting official transcripts and letters of recommendation to be sent to Pacific University's MFA writing program in poetry. Yep, I'm really going to do it if they'll have me.

Hassayampa, Temple Grandin

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:47:00 +0000

Hassayampa River Preserve, near Wickenberg.

This is an oasis in the desert, complete with native palms. The river emerges from underground here, via 26 springs (originally), dug out decades ago to form a small lake, which is now being allowed to sediment in and revert to its natural form, which will take a while, already almost three decades since The Nature Conservancy got hold of it and stopped messing with it. An area with picnic tables is surrounded by desert palms (like the one in my front yard) which are loaded with drooping, fruit-heavy inflorescences. Birds make a constant racket here when most of the preserve is pretty quiet by mid-afternoon when I've been able to drag my butt out of the house to go anywhere. It's said to be a birdwatcher's paradise, which I hope to sample one day early and binoc-equipped. Squinting, I saw robins and flickers, and a ring-neck duck on the pond, and coots of course, and smaller birds I couldn't see well enough to name. I had a pleasant, slow walk. Half the trails were wiped out by our recent rainfall extravaganza, which also remodeled the riverbanks. I was surprised to see an enormous bull stopping for a drink, though why I was surprised, having already seen cloven imprints in the sand, is beyond me and a testament to scatterbrained relaxation in retirement, apparently not only from work.

Tonight I watched the HBO film "Temple Grandin," which I've been hearing about for weeks on NPR as they interview her and replay old interviews. I also saw her at a local bookstore where she plugged her latest book along with the film and was quite entertaining. She's a damned handsome sixty-something woman! Poised, gracious, funny, with a tendency to coast off track in response to some questions. Oh how she must get tired of repeating the same stories over and over! I heard her say how much she liked the film and how Claire Danes played her absolutely perfectly, so I've been eager to see it. It is a wonderful film! It kept me laughing, choking up, and teary-eyed the whole way through. Claire Danes really ought to get some awesome award for the role. She played its heart out.

Films, poetry, dog stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:33:00 +0000

Two more excellent films! "A Single Man" is powerful, characters dealing with & talking about heavy issues with absolute honesty. So rare. Role model much needed for most of us. It is a painful, hopeful, moving film, serious about love and death. Colin Firth has my full attention now. Fine acting, deep writing. "Appaloosa" is a western so non-formulaic it took my breath away. Ed Harris has had my attention for a long time, and he just gets better. So interesting and unexpected.

I won a poetry prize! This time first place, community college lit magazine competition. Moving on up!

Saw/heard Temple Grandin at a book-signing talk. I admire her so much, and she is a very handsome woman now at just about my age. She's all over the place pushing latest book and an HBO film about her early life & eventual success. She said on npr that Claire Danes does an excellent job being her, just perfect. Thesis on mooing. Can't you see the cowboy profs' faces? Got her master's here at ASU! I never knew that. Out in the stockyards with the guys (whose wives complained, this being the 70's) giving her a hard time, covering her car with bull testicles, etc. Now who's laughing?

Grandin says if you have a whiny separation-anxious dog, get another dog for company, or dog sitter, gave the impression you're dreaming to imagine there's a cure (though a friend tells me there are anti-anxiety meds for dogs that work). Lady is a case study in separation anxiety. If I leave and Grumpy is asleep, she howls and cries and carries on like she's been tossed down a well! If both of us are gone and we forgot to close the bedroom door, our nice moccasin slippers take a beating and every sort of paper and plastic within reach gets spread all around the living room. At least she doesn't destroy furniture or piss on everything. It could be worse.

I went dog shopping this weekend, finally deciding that's just not going to work, too much more on our plates than we can live with. But maybe a kitten. I have a mental image of Lady curled up with kitten while I'm gone. Is that too far-fetched? I dread kitty-litter stink though.

Lost Dutchman State Park

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 07:22:00 +0000

Last Sunday, just before the weather got crappy, I hiked a 2.4-mile loop trail here. It was a mile relentlessly uphill, a jiggle across, and a blessed downhill mile, watching the sun disappear, back to the car. My thighs burned and were sore for two days. The rocks are more striking the closer one gets to them. Of course, being MLK weekend, there were too many people, and one has to remember to keep facing east to avoid gazing at citified views, but I felt my mind expanding, as always when I get outside and out of town and walk. Keeps me sane. This park has more trail distance to expand into as I get tougher (presumably). One can hope.

Chickeny bone!

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:05:00 +0000

Days of rain, little explosions of high winds, tornado warnings (unclear whether any actually touched down), floods, feet of snow up north, highways closed, streets closed, power outages. We chose to hunker down, wide-eyed. Most of "Gray's Anatomy" was lost, and I finished another A. S. Byatt novel.

The poor dog seems never to have experienced rain. On the screened-in back porch by the doggie door, she looked out, then at me, squatted and peed inside with a look that said her decision was logical and surely... I shoved her out into the rain! She didn't die out there but finished peeing. I praised her like she'd mastered calculus, rewarded her with a treat, and she glowed with joy and ridiculously elevated self esteem. The pee-pee war continues.

This was back-to-school week, and Lady is coping with separation anxiety once again. I brought home a bag full of treats and chewy things, including two very expensive rawhide "bones" making dental health claims and incorporating a layer of "chicken." I put it in quotes because the color is strange and I have no idea what was done to it since it was a bird. When the first one disappeared unusually quickly, I thought, oh, gee, she chewed it all up in one day? Must be good. Then we had a sunny spell. I sat outside reading while Lady carried the prized and clearly too-precious-to-chew second chickeny bone around burying it, digging it up, burying it somewhere else, digging it up, etc. I was so excited I went in to get the camera. I had never seen this before except in cartoons! Slapping forehead, previous brown nose observations and dried mud on sofa suddenly make sense! On the other hand, I swear to never again spend $7.99 on a rawhide chickeny bone. Yesterday one mud-caked chickeny bone reappeared on a doggie bed in the living room. I confiscated it for a wash and dry.

Tonto Natural Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:41:00 +0000

Winter session online poetry course completed, poetry reading done, four-day weekend before a new class begins -- time to get out of town. I chose a state park I've never visited -- Tonto Natural Bridge State Park. The state parks are closing down for lack of $, so I'd better visit some while I can.

The old guy at the gate looked me over skeptically when I drove in and went on about how steep the trail is. Ha! If I can climb up out of Walnut Canyon, I can get out of this one. It's only a quarter of a mile long with a 200-ft elevation change. I'm pleased to report that it was absolutely no problem. I'm stronger than I look. :)

The bridge formation is very pretty, with water showering down from above. I am so pleased the rainbow actually shows in the photo. I had only my iPhone for a camera. It was so cloudy when I left home I didn't bother to carry the good camera along. I wish I had. The zoom would have come in handy to capture the woman posing nude for a photographer on the rocks under the bridge. She was lovely, though a bit of a looney tunes taking it all off as chilly as it was.

I wanted badly to poke at the mounds of bright green moss on some of the rocks, but I played it safe and didn't climb down to it. Next time I'll bring my walking stick for balance.

Poetry reading

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:16:00 +0000

Well! Last night I did a 20-minute reading of twelve of my poems for a small group that meets one Tuesday a month. I've read single poems there three times (open mike) and was invited to be a feature poet -- a first for me.

I thought I was perfectly calm. Ha. It hit me when I got up on stage. Turned red, of course, and kept bumping into the teetery mike. It went well, all things considered. Being winter break at the college, the crowd was smaller than usual, and quieter. I missed the usual guffaws when I read my bawdy poems. That was a little disconcerting. But I soldiered on, seeing smiles and nods of encouragement. They weren't all bawdy. I spread out into a couple of more serious ones, and two nature poems including the grackle sestina I'm so proud of. I survived, ate a cookie, received a nice little gift from the school, came home and had five shots of Glenfiddich in front of the TV. Yum.

FREEZE!

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:35:00 +0000

What is the world coming to? Freeze warning tonight, 20's or 30's. I don't think it's ever been that cold in Phoenix since I moved here. Well, maybe once or twice in 20 years. Creepy.

Another creepy thing? Lady likes grapefruit, if I peel off the thin membrane, which I did today and swear I will never do again. That's just too much. She's craziest about nuts, any kind. She and Grumpy feast on pistachios together. Oranges too, but grapefruit? It took me a lifetime to develop a taste for them.

I've stayed home all day, avoiding people wishing me a Merry, content with my NPR, computer fiddling, picking at a poem, cleaning the kitchen. I made food for breakfast, turkey stew, lovely. Maybe I'm about to start cooking again? Grumpy pissed me off months ago rejecting anything with cumin or any other "weird" additive. I love cumin. I have a long memory, a bit much. I've been in house refusal status for months and months, but I got busy with a broom day before yesterday and swept up the heap of grass Lady has rolled in and deposited in the living room. Bedroom next. I have no explanation, just observing myself.

Two great films

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:16:00 +0000

Breaking and Entering (2007), dir. Anthony Minghella, cast includes Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, and Robin Wright Penn -- Oh, I am sitting here just after watching this marvelous film, moved in so many different ways it is very hard to describe. Look it up, find it, watch it. Immigrants, crime, love, autism, urban renewal, ...more.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of New Orleans (2009), dir. Werner Herzog, Nicolas Cage is main character -- I guess they had to add the part of the title after the colon because there was another film, starring Harvey Keitel, also great, with the same name. Herzog is amazing, perhaps a lunatic, with extreme poetic vision. The film is like a poem, in that it shows rather than narrating a story, all imagery and emotion. The story is complex, fragmented, and so are the characters, especially Cage, who seems to splinter into shards but keeps going and going and going, ricocheting all over the place, coming out the other side intact. It reminds me of that TV series, "The Shield," done as a manic visual poem. Police corruption, prostitution, drugs, a dog, violence, comedy -- everything but the kitchen sink, set in New Orleans not long after Katrina tore it all to hell. Keep in mind, this is the guy who made Fitzcarraldo. This one is even better.

Winter doldrums

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:27:00 +0000

We've been using the heat pump the past few weeks, wearing warm slippers and sweatshirts, sleeping under the winter duvet Grumpy brought home from Ireland. Some days the high temp is only in the 50's and nights in the 40's. Brrrrr! In the backyard, grapefruits are ripe and juicy.

In Uganda, death to homosexuals! Head spinning. Sometimes we need a reminder that there are places in the world a whole lot crazier than us. In the U.S., we've rejected universal health care (too scary to even talk about). We just love our parasitic insurance companies getting between us and our doctors to keep health care down and costs up. But they've cobbled together a monstrous (in size) health care bill that nobody really likes but it's all the fear mongers will let us have -- and that on the backs of women's rights with its virtual exclusion of coverage for abortion. Amazingly, it prevents insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, but it doesn't limit what they can charge for covering them! What the hell is that? Oh, it does include some improvements, but when you think about what they could have done, it's depressing. Hopefully a wiser future generation will modify it or replace it. (I heard that when Canada got universal health care, the bill was only seven pages long.)

Two weeks with no poetry classes! I should be working on poems, as I've accepted an invitation to do a 20-minute reading on January 12, and I'm not even sure I have enough poems to fill that amount of time. Maybe I can tell some jokes. ha-ha.

Lady fattened up so much she lost her waistline, but lately she gets so much exercise at the dog park that just a hint of narrowing behind the ribs has re-appeared. Tonight she ran like a maniac in figure-eights while a plaintive beagle pup tried desperately to keep up by cutting corners (corners?). They stop to catch a breath, facing each other, until the beagle yips and off she goes again. I'm trying to teach her to chase a ball. It shouldn't be so difficult. Everydoggy else does it.

I'm spending way too much time playing Spider solitaire while listening to NPR. Writing here again is my strategy to break the habit of passivity.

Grandma! (me)

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:23:00 +0000

Visiting Henry, my first grandchild, is a trip! I don't believe I've even held a baby for more than a couple of seconds since about 26 years ago when I had my youngest. The first day felt awkward. Then it all came back to me and felt perfectly natural. I have no interest at all in other people's babies. This is a whole different thing. This baby sleeping on my chest fills me with peace and well-being (oxytocin? endorphins?). He's five weeks old now. Over the week I've been here, I've watched his gaze change as his vision improves. When he stares right into my eyes, it's a thrill. When he becomes perfectly still staring at a window or the ceiling fan or the line where wall meets ceiling, I'm fascinated. Such a simple thing, and no less amazing for that.

I have a heart full of negative things to say about my mother, but she was there for both my sons' births (and, for different reasons, their fathers were not). She was perfect, doing everything helpful and kind. Remembering that, and appreciating her so much, makes me joyful to have the chance to pass it on. Contrary to my usual cranky attitude toward domestic tasks (and fully negligent at home), here I am genuinely happy to wash dishes, help cook & clean, do whatever I can to give the parents a break. They are not getting much sleep yet, tired but happy. This child is so fortunate to have such parents, to grow up in a happy family.

Okay, I'm getting misty-eyed. Such a softy. Wait, I'll think about our never-ending wars and the struggle to allow our citizens straightforward access to health care. Yeah, here I am, all cranky again.

So much has happened!

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:42:00 +0000

I have shamelessly neglected my blog. I wonder if anyone still checks it out. Whew! First, on October 26 I became a grandma! Totally new experience, full of unknowns, haven't even held him yet. But I'm traveling to see him soon, off to rainy Oregon for two weeks around Thanksgiving.

And I have done so much traveling and taken so many pictures!

Oh, and last night I won second place in a poetry competition at the community college where I used to teach biology in a former lifetime. That made me ridiculously happy and got me a basket of treats, including a twenty-dollar bill.

Cousin Hooly visited, and we had scenic drives and hikes. Here's Cousin Hooly on the trail to the natural bridge (ha) in Chiricahua National Monument. We mathematically challenged dodos had done a 2.6-mile hike, so naturally we figured that a 4.8-mile hike with steeper hills would be a snap.

We also intended to visit Garden Canyon inside Fort Huachuca, but Hooly has reached the ripe age of 55 without learning to carry her car registration "at all times," so I had to go back there alone after she left for home. Maybe I can blame her for the disappearing tire (nothing left but raggedy edges) on my way home from this second visit to Sierra Vista, stuck on the freeway at night too scared to change a tire with humongous semis blasting by at 75+ mph. AAA rescued me. I bow to AAA. After this incident, I conclude that in an emergency I am a totally useless basket case, instantaneously stupid. AAA of course wanted to have some better clue to my location than "somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix." I was in the middle of nowhere, literally. Nice lady losing her cool over the phone suggested I get out of the car and look around for something informative. Grumpily, I did so, totally forgetting that my car has a navigation system complete with a helpful map-on-screen, on which I could easily have located the nearest crossroad, without having to climb out between madly whooshing monster trucks to read the sign on the overpass that turned out to be right behind me. Anyhow, Hooly, here's a little of what you missed:

Films, poets, dog

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:02:00 +0000

Golly, I've been busy! Two poetry classes at the same time is a lot of reading and writing, with a sick dog and a hunger for leisure. Forgetting to exercise.

Yesterday I saw two films in a row, pissed off because I had planned to hear Sherman Alexie, a funny native american poet, but tickets sold out! Can you imagine, a poet sold out? I had no clue he was that well known. Anyhow, I was pissed and took myself off to Harkins theatre to see a poet movie (Bright Star) and Capitalism: A Love Story. Good pairing. The romantic love epic complete with TB and blood was a bit much, but the poetry was actually beautiful, made me want to read more. Michael Moore was the perfect antidote and not a bit too much. I wish I knew how to contribute to the overthrow of Wall St. Right at the beginning of the film, a woman fell on me. I was sitting on the aisle, and she tripped on the dark steps. That wasn't so bad, but when she left I noticed I didn't any longer have my glasses on! I was down on my knees feeling all around the dirty dark floor under my seat -- yuk and panic. She came back, having found my glasses hooked onto her purse. We had a good laugh, and I didn't miss much of the film.

Lady is well now and pesky. Whenever Grumpy and I are both gone, she drags our smelly stuff into the living room (underpants, bra, sweaty shorts, shoes, slippers). She doesn't chew them up like she did a pencil and a dried out dead bird. I've seen her rest her chin on my shoe. I think she just likes having our smells close to her. Awwwwwww.

She is a good leash walker until she sees another dog, which is when Grumpy learned she is also an expert collar-slipper-out-of. This may be how she got to the pound. Now she has a harness, and we'll have to work on that. I swear I was striding with confidence and authority last night, a la Cesar, but clearly she didn't notice. I was not even on her radar, used brute force to get her attention. Gotta work on that.

Time to clean up the trash and gummy floors for company. Gotta finish reading Komunyakaa, start reading Boisseaux, write a paper on Sharon Olds, read a chapter -- pant, pant. Naw, I love it. Ed Pavlic came to class Thursday night, and now I'm determined to see Black Poet Ventures do a show based on his book of poems about the life and music of Donny Hathaway this weekend. (Yeah, I'd never heard of him either.) The floors may not get done after all.

Sick Lady

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:05:00 +0000

Yesterday afternoon she started hacking, sounded like something was stuck in her throat. This morning it was worse, so off we went to the vet and came home with antibiotics, cough suppressants and a diagnosis of kennel cough. Not in her lungs yet, so hopefully she'll get better quickly. No interest in standard food today, but she opened wide for balls of liverwurst and cream cheese, with and without pills inside. She's coughing less now, lethargic, napping. I'm standing guard over her (sitting, actually). Saturday is my day to listen to hours of NPR anyhow. Upside, she's gained a pound.

Funny watching her change as she settles in. Day 3, she suddenly dared to get up on the bed and refused to move off it. She only weighs 42 pounds, felt like about a hundred trying to move her. Repeat, repeat. It took two days for her to give up trying, but she hasn't tried since. Once she gets it, she doesn't forget. Can't blame her for trying, but I'm not feeling sorry for somebody who has three cushy beds of her own scattered around the house.

Only yesterday morning, no cough yet, she was madly dashing through puddles in the park with a look of pure joy. I dared to turn her loose briefly, as she had started responding to her name. But I didn't push it. At the first sign of her testing whether she had to come or not, I leashed her up. She needs to build the habit gradually, and I didn't have any treats on hand to help that out. Homie had such good behavior, and its easy to forget he didn't come that way. Lady has to learn from scratch never to step off the curb on her own. We started that, along with staying on my left. We had two lessons on "Fix it," the command I use for when the dog gets the leash wrapped around something and has to figure out how to unwind. I do it by just standing there, waiting, saying "Fix it" until she accidentally moves in the right direction. Every time she does, I praise her and tighten the slack. Eventually she gets unwound, and hopefully it gets easier and easier with repetitions.

Lady Boxer

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:40:00 +0000

There's a new Lady at our house. Here she is, first day at home from the pound (yesterday). Another day and she'd have been killed. Age about one year, has already had puppies, smaller than average for a boxer, and with too much white for breed standards. She's a blank slate, no history available, taken in as a "stray." Grumpy just couldn't wait any longer. He needs exercise, likes to walk but not alone. They did a five-miler this morning before dawn. She's sweet-natured and housebroken, way too thin but the way she eats that won't last. She had a check-up today at our new vet's office and was judged healthy. It's too bad Homie isn't here to play with her.

Visiting the moving wall

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Heavy head, longish day. For a poetry class assignment, I visited the traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Phoenix for the weekend. I should have studied the original first, as this one was oddly organized. I was distracted trying to figure out the significance of apparent paragraphs, separated by blank space -- do they represent different years, or what? No, they are meaningless, an artifact of the fact that this version of the moving wall does not taper off at the ends. The "paragraphs" represent names on one panel of the original, I think, though some of the lists seem to continue from one panel to the next, thus obliterating any visible pattern of decreasing numbers of lines and throwing me into confusion as I tried to understand the artist's vision. This defective replica appears to exist solely for people who can't make it to Washington, D.C., to rub names from on bits of paper.

I was also thrown by the angled junction of the two wings, the right-hand wing starting with 1959 at the top, and the left-hand wing ending with 1975 at the bottom. I was sure the replica had been put together incorrectly! But I found a quote from the artist on the internet, and that turns out to be correct. She visualized starting from the angle at 1959 and moving along toward the east as the wall tapers into the ground, then circling around to start again at the tapered end of the west wall and returning to the angle, ending with 1975 at the bottom of the last column on that side. Odd, but it works. The long, tapered wings, joined at an angle, look like a scar in the earth from above, the shortest panel at each end with only one line of names, a vision completely obliterated by our version of the moving wall. There are several replicas, and from photos I could see that one of them, probably the first one made, does actually taper like the original though it's only half the original's size.

After this puzzling wall visit, I munched salad at Wildflower Bakery while reading 42 poems by Yusef Komunyakaa about the Vietnam War, which he experienced as a journalist (published as a collection titled Dien Cai Dau). The last poem is about the wall. My head became heavier and heavier reading all these poems. I didn't lose anyone in that war. Grumpy was damaged by it, says he was a horrible soldier, and when asked if he wanted to go see the wall, said: "No way in hell!" He proudly pissed on Lyndon Johnson's grave some years ago. It's been a while since I was outraged (for several years) by that rotten war. What fun to revisit the meaningless horror of it.

Who is Harry Crews?

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:32:00 +0000

At the end of the film, "The Hawk is Dying," I waited to see if it was taken from a book and who wrote it. There it was: ". . . a book by Harry Crews." Who the heck is Harry Crews, and if he always writes such weird shit, why haven't I ever heard of him?

So I googled him, of course. Turns out he was in a documentary called "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" that I had watched with my two Gainesville friends on one of my visits down there, which also turns out to be where Crews lives. There is a website that pulls together stuff by and about and with Crews, where I read a couple of interviews. He kinda reminds me of Charles Bukowski (hope I spelled that right), cranky ol' guy with a history of hard drinking who doesn't enjoy much and writes like a sonofabitch (meant in a good way).

Wow. Three of his novels can be found in my very own local public library, where I've been spending time lately instead of in online or on-the-ground bookstores during my quest to stop pretending I'm rich. I have a Margaret Drabble novel to read first, then off I go to sample Crews.

Kaleidoscope

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:58:00 +0000

My mind is awash with multi-mingled images. I drove across town to see two films, "Adam" and "Cold Souls," both very differently emotional, funny, and moving; "Cold Souls" more than that, ridiculous and profound. Then I watched the season finale of "True Blood," then another Paul Giamatti film, "The Hawk is Dying," both of which were perverse, grotesque, dysfunctional, and riveting. Meanwhile I'm thinking about a poem I will write about my face. So, you see, my mind is tossing salad.

"Cold Souls" is a do-not-miss film. Thigh-slapping kudos for Mr. Funny-Face Genius.

Poetic gamboling

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:11:00 +0000

Back again. It's been a bit of drag with no Flagstaff trips to write about, but school has started and I've had two weeks of new poetry classes to keep me busy. One is a 200-level class at a community college, only 9 or 10 students, mostly young and mostly male. It's very odd to have a mostly male poetry class! It's almost always the other way around. We've divided into two groups for work-shopping our poems (instructor prowls around listening instead of participating in the feedback). In my group are three young males, one a bit older, and me. Two of the youngsters are hispanic, and are dreamy-eyed romantics. The third is blond and very shy. The older guy gives the best feedback. So, here I come with my second poem, first line "Her labia," and heads fly back.

I don't do this with malice or for shock value. Really. Sexual issues bother me, have bothered me most of my life, and so that's just naturally what I write a lot about. We had to write an extended metaphor poem, something standing in for something else. The labia were gates, and the rest of the poem tried to see them through the eyes of a man working out how to get in there and risking failure and humiliation. There are passwords and padlocks and pathways without signposts, yadda-yadda, the whole dilemma. I stared at my big toe for a while and got no ideas at all, but as soon as I thought of labia, bingo! I had a metaphor!

The instructor seems to be a bit timid, so I don't know what to expect from her re my metaphor. We get written comments on our poems next week. In the ASU class, 400-level, we all sit in a big circle, 20 of us and the instructor (as we did in the 200- and 300-level workshops). The interaction is busy and fruitful, the instructor participating in a way that helps produce productive feedback. I like this much better. My first poem -- a tale comparing chilly collapsed male genitalia to a novelty cow pie and going on to describe some of the pitfalls of senior sex -- was received with a few blushes and general hilarity and appreciation. The instructor wrote "bawdy and wonderful" on it. (Grin!)

"He died last night."

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:30:00 +0000

I feel like a big old silly, but I tear up over and over again every time they say on NPR "He died last night." I didn't want him to die! I loved the old fart, warts and all, and I wanted him to see us get health care reform of some kind before he died.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a little novel about Chappaquiddick, thinly disguised, from the point of view of the young woman in the car. Listening to the audiobook while driving, I abruptly found myself no longer on the highway but speeding through a copper mine. That's how riveting the story was. Backtracking, I discovered I had sped blindly past wildly flashing red lights, and I met a state police car on my way out after apologizing to the flustered gatekeeper. That's my most personal memory of Ted Kennedy.

Shifting gears

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:30:00 +0000

Nearly heat-stroked visiting two campuses in the middle of the day Monday to buy textbooks, and that's wearing sun-hat, lugging water, and taking shade sit breaks to walk a half mile each way from the ASU parking lot. I am definitely spoiled by walking only in Flagstaff these past months. Poetry classes start tomorrow.

This morning I showed up at 6 am for a yoga class and watched the jaws of those who know me drop to the floor. Hey, at 6 am it was only 90 degrees out! I haven't done any yoga classes all summer, so it nearly killed me.

At Bally's a couple of days ago, I tried out some of those crazy machines for upper body work, really barely did anything at all, and for two days I have been so sore. I swear, even the fat under my upper arms hurts. I guess I know what I need to be doing from now on.

I'm craving Cheetos.

Raining like hell!

noreply@blogger.com (Cranky Ol' Lady) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:34:00 +0000

Wow. This is so exciting -- thunder, wind, pouring rain. It feels like national news, like a war breaking out. Sadly, in the time it took me to take a photo and type this, it's already fading away.