Confession Tuesday
It's Confession Tuesday--you know the drill!
I am frazzled. Much of my time has been spent helping to plan the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Right now, I'm organizing the program booklet, as well as coordinating a good portion of the marketing efforts. I can barely keep up with email. I'm averaging about four hours a night for sleep. But a few big projects are about to move off of my plate. What keeps me going is the knowledge that this will be an outstanding event. But I'm ready to get my life back--or at least a good night's sleep!
This past weekend I did catch on sleep a little, and took the kids to the movies and an Easter egg hunt. So there was a little play mixed in with the work. I needed to pull back from technology for a while.
****
Needless to say, I've had to put the writing challenges on hold. Hoping to finish the month with a few good poems. And my blog is in need of some love. *sigh*
****
Lots of readings coming up, which is cool. Today and tomorrow, I'm the Visiting Writer at North Shore Community College. Tonight I'm reading with Jennifer Jean with the Frost Foundation: 7 p.m. at Cafe Azteca, 180 Common St., Lawrence, MA. And on Thursday, I'm reading at the Liberty Hotel in Boston.
****
And the kicker to last week is that I ruined my thumb drive, which has everything I've been working on for the past year, including my second manuscript. I believe I have copies of the electronic files in email, but if anyone knows how to recover lost files from a damaged drive, please let me know!
Happy Tuesday!
I am frazzled. Much of my time has been spent helping to plan the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Right now, I'm organizing the program booklet, as well as coordinating a good portion of the marketing efforts. I can barely keep up with email. I'm averaging about four hours a night for sleep. But a few big projects are about to move off of my plate. What keeps me going is the knowledge that this will be an outstanding event. But I'm ready to get my life back--or at least a good night's sleep!
This past weekend I did catch on sleep a little, and took the kids to the movies and an Easter egg hunt. So there was a little play mixed in with the work. I needed to pull back from technology for a while.
****
Needless to say, I've had to put the writing challenges on hold. Hoping to finish the month with a few good poems. And my blog is in need of some love. *sigh*
****
Lots of readings coming up, which is cool. Today and tomorrow, I'm the Visiting Writer at North Shore Community College. Tonight I'm reading with Jennifer Jean with the Frost Foundation: 7 p.m. at Cafe Azteca, 180 Common St., Lawrence, MA. And on Thursday, I'm reading at the Liberty Hotel in Boston.
****
And the kicker to last week is that I ruined my thumb drive, which has everything I've been working on for the past year, including my second manuscript. I believe I have copies of the electronic files in email, but if anyone knows how to recover lost files from a damaged drive, please let me know!
Happy Tuesday!
Comments
Moving forward, I would *highly* recommend using drop box or another of the free cloud services to have an emergency back up. We had an automated whole house backup drive for all our computers. The bad news is that it was in the basement--where our fire started. So it ended up a puddle of slag on the basement floor. All of my writing was also in a drop box folder, so nothing was lost.
Hoping to see you at the Mass Poetry Festival!
I believe in Shakespeare, and in Dylan Thomas, and in E E Cummings, and in cold autumn days, and in the Smiths, and in clouds, and in glasses of chilled red wine as big as bathtubs.
I believe in coffee and poetry and music and Niles Crane and second-hand bookstores and Gaius Valerius Catullus. I believe in flowers and bowers and bumblebees and Scarlatti and Fats Waller and beautiful brown eyes.
I believe in dolce far niente. I believe in cloisters and cities and fireplaces and chimneys and mountains and valleys and “settlements of snow."
I believe in resiliency and hope and tenacity in the face of despair. I believe in joy and gloom and sorrow and doom and Audrey Hepburn and Pippin.
I believe in basking in the God-light that comes through the window of the #45 bus as I go to visit friends in a supposedly dangerous but evidently graced section of my vexing but lovable city.
I believe in shouting and whispering, depending on the occasion. I believe in Calvin Coolidge, who said that we should be as revolutionary as science, or as reactionary as the multiplication-table, depending on the occasion.
I believe that the tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. I believe in the instinctive use of spondees. I believe in Rossetti and pine-cones; Alighieri and effervescence. I believe in matrigna mia, who left us nine years ago in June.
I believe in my friends. I believe in my enemies. I believe in the Psalms and the Song of Solomon. I believe in the poetry that Daniel Berrigan wrote before he became concerned with politics.
I believe in construction-workers and carpenters and in people who do things that I can’t do. I believe in Mozart and Tracy Chapman and Oscar Wilde and in the invaluably salvific properties of a really good laugh.
I believe in dew and frost, forests and deserts, Carretto and Campion, rain and fire, light and darkness, speech and silence.
I believe I’ve gone on for far too long.