Reviews of the weather, books and other distractions
Winter feels interminable this year. When doesn’t it? AI generated art by me, above.
I’ve allowed myself to be a reader, not a reviser. My memoir is languishing, jostling the bits and bytes in my Macbook, sending up summer popsicle smells and unease. Mispellings in my emails caused by ill-advised hooker nails I bought in Aurora have caused a mini-furor at work. Why do I keep typing TNks? Is it a refusal to be truly grateful? Is it the extra long ring fingernail jooj-ing the n-cap instead of the “a”?
Ah, but what have I been reading!? Joyful stupid chick lit and brilliant novels. New Yorker short stories and indigenous poems. Journals from the years I had small children and everything was sticky and stank like peanut butter.
I have been listening to yoga yamas and niyamas and nonfiction about animals (An Immersive World by Ed Yong) as I walk, the runnels of near spring water slated to freeze in hours. The blessed 40-something degrees we got one Thursday, mud smell tricking my senses to springtime, was sandwiched this year between arctic blasts. Blue and white lines striped down the forecast, a burst pipe of unforgiving ice, I squint at on my iPhone, rolling over from sleep and (brrr) my freezing feet hit the floor.
I have been writing a set of animal poems/flash fictions to join the others. This is my buddy the creepy/awesome ray. I am so enamored of this book by Ed Yong.
- Sensory biology is a thing and you need to have Ed Yong explain it to you
- Carbon dioxide causes skeeters to bite but our warmth causes them to fly toward us
- Love the critters cuz they’re our brothers, sisters
I’ve been writing poems with @sireneatspoetry Every day I write and I love my creative spirit but also can appreciate and support the others in our group. Her link is here. I wanted to share something I wrote that I loved. And tell you I love you!
I am calling this duets — my new form, taking the second word of every line to start the next line. This form might exist already but I didn’t do too much research just in case ha ha
I’m not what I am today
Not fearful or flighty unless
Fearful me gets the villain
Me, the villain, like that T Swift song
The one that’s stuck in my head
One try, one time, I’d like to maybe
Try to be the hero of my own story
To slay what there is to slay
Slay it bloodless, but singing
It rears its ugly head and the driver
Rears it like a semi truck
It didn’t mean to crush me
Didn’t mean to destroy my day
Mean is as mean does and that
Is the part I get stuck on.
The part that feels good, or ok
Part of me wants to ignore it.
Of all the cruelty in the world
All of it starts with me against me.
Patty Tomsky 