Rollin' With It

One thing that's fun and kind of freeing about moving across the country is that you no longer know what to expect, so you don't necessarily expect anything (well, it's kind of freeing unless the thing you didn't know to expect was a big something-or-another at school that you missed. But I digress.). The last two mornings we've climbed out of bed into a sea of fog, or cloud, or ocean mist, or whatever it is. The whole world was a ghost, and light came late to the morning. When it was time to walk to school, the fog or cloud or ocean mist or whatever it is clung to our fleeces and hair. A brand new weather experience, and we don't know if it's usual for this time of year or not.

Leaves are turning and falling now that it's almost December. The color is striking against the blue-green backdrop of the foothills, which seem softer in the late autumn light -- gentler shadows under a gentler sun. But wait -- is it late autumn? Or, Reader, do you think it's winter here yet? I don't know, but I'm rollin' with it.

Same goes for the writing life lately. Holiday and virus-related schedule interruptions threaten at every turn. I'm rollin' with it. Teeny tiny fever? Tummyache? No problem, I'll write some other day. I'm fitting in a few submissions every week while I kill time waiting for the library to open (sidebar: if I were in charge of the world the library would open at 8 a.m. Vote for me!) -- not as much as I'd like, but some every week is better than none. I've been revising the six Mail Order Bride poems, and this time, rather than just tinkering, I'm doing some re-vision, trying a few different versions of each poem. It'll be fun to see what happens behind door number 1, 2 and 3 inside the room of each poem.

And I've been reading a collection of poems that has me rollin' with it, too: Blue Hour by Carolyn Forche (that e has a little thing-y (technical term) above it but I don't know how to insert it here). I've had to work hard to stay with the book, not because it's not good -- it's full of beautiful and scathing and inventive images; war and peace; death and life; present and past (and maybe even future?); certainty and memory. But the poems have very little narrative and connective tissue holding the images together, so I'm never 100% sure what's going on in the poem or the collection, except to sense that, in this book, the world is both disturbing and beautiful, unknowable and yet deeply known, full of suffering that can blunt or hone us, or both. Seems about right to me. So I've been rollin' with the feeling-ness (technical term) of the poems, resting in the white space, and persisting.

Whatever's coming your way these days, I hope you're rollin' with it, too. Happy winter (maybe).