Mood: Monday

Got another new book.

Since I’m writing responses in this one, not sure I’ll always share the answers. But today, I chose “Have you ever had to give up on a dream and if so why?”

First thought: This book is not big on proper punctuation.

Then I got out my Wood Words from Magnetic Poetry creator Dave Kapell (it’s signed and numbered on the bottom, and I had forgotten all about it until I went looking for something else).

I pulled some words to add to my answer. It’s a mood.

Vibes


Pulled out this little tin box today and wondered, Why are there two breath mints in here with these words? OH, YEAH. These once stayed in flood water for a while and smelled bad. They’re fine now.

Here are all the words from the Little Box of Happiness tin. Feel free to use them to make a poem. You can even put it in my comments, if you like.

I did it.

July Fourth 2020

I am lucky enough to be able to keep up with most of our nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews via social media (that isn’t Facebook). Today, I was struck very much by a page Cassidy shared, a re-post from Celisia Stanton:

It’s an hour ’til midnight now, and I’m still thinking about this. No doubt 2020, half gone, has been horrible and challenging. And yes, July Fourth is different for this white woman this year.

A thing I still believe: In the worst of times, there are moments of joy, grace, redemption, learning, and growth. Growth is never without pain.

Anyway, I put together this MagPo poem. Hope you’re all safe and sane and remembering to see the wonders and feel the joys.

Some stuff

I wonder if any readers ever noticed that I changed my subheading on this blog. It used to say An Aries Knows (everything). I was poking fun at myself, and in my About Me section, I stated that I didn’t actually know everything but kept my mouth shut about those things I didn’t know.

I’m not sure when in 2019 it became An Aries Knows (some stuff). It was in keeping with my lifelong philosophy that “the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know” vein.

To be clear.
I don’t know it all.
I can’t know it all.
I don’t want to know it all.
I do want to keep learning.

There was a morning in 2016 when I sat on a patio in the shade, surrounded by beautiful plants and drinking coffee, and I confided to Geri, and I believe Stacey, that I felt guilty for not always using my voice on things that matter to me. On this blog, specifically. Also, however, in conversations. Often it’s because I don’t give quick, snappy answers to complex issues. I don’t talk in soundbites. For one thing, I’m Southern. We do okay with sassy comebacks, but the soundbite is not our way.

I don’t remember Geri’s exact response, but she reminded me that sometimes there are other ways to heal the world. It was okay to be who and where I was. It was comforting, and it also helped me put something in perspective. What I was struggling with was silence after a long time of advocacy.

I spent the 1980s trying to get my own personal shit together, sometimes in a very small world, sometimes in a larger one. Period.

I spent most of the 1990s advocating for a marginalized population (LGBTQ) and another group that included some of that population (HIV/AIDS). This was mostly pre-Internet (at least in my world), and I used my voice at my jobs both as part of diversity groups and as an individual employee. Sometimes being an ally means speaking up and out for people who can’t for very valid reasons. The reason I felt confident in doing this was because beginning in 1989, I read every book I could get my hands on–nonfiction, biography, memoir, fiction–about realities surrounding the LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS communities. There were also in my own life a number of people who were friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who helped me learn and grow and see.

In the first decade of the 2000s, I was using my voice as a fiction writer to create characters and stories where a reader could find love, tolerance, acceptance, friendship, kindness, and hopefully some humor and a bit of wisdom. That is also the decade I was on message boards and then began blogging, first on LiveJournal then here on Word Press. My voice was therefore using the written word, one way or another.

In the second decade of this century, through my volunteer work and employment with an animal rescue group, I supported and advocated for the voiceless in Houston’s homeless pet population. I also spent a lot of time on art. I have no regrets about any of that, but I did very much miss writing fiction. I need to write. It’s part of my lifelong identity. I didn’t know where to find the time or energy to attempt writing fiction again. I would dabble in it here on the blog, for example, in efforts like my “Pet Prose” posts.

I decided one way to ease back into writing without being frustrated about not having much time for it, or having to endure gaps between writing sessions, was to take some old, unpublished manuscripts and rewrite those novels (there are three) from the perspective of a brain and heart more or less three decades older. I knew the characters. I knew the plots. But how would the novels change based on how I’ve changed?

Immediately in the first novel, I identified things that displeased me about my characters. I realized though my plots weren’t all bad, there was way too much plot, and also, I’m a different kind of storyteller now. Am I better? As a writer, I say yes. As an editor, I shrug. I know the things I do that won’t fly in the publishing world. But the marvelous thing is, once I realized I was writing the novel I wanted to write, for the sole pleasure of writing it, I stopped caring about traditional publishing. Oh, the time may come when I reach out to my editor, but if he says no, then I’m fine with that. Will I self-publish? I hope to, if only for the few people who I know might enjoy what I’ve done.

I didn’t reread any versions of the first novel. I wanted to write clean, not getting bogged down in what I’d done before. Along with better character development, I knew for sure one thing I’d gotten wrong. I was fairly meticulous about research of the entertainment business, particularly music and filmmaking. I wanted to place my novels firmly in the era they were set. That meant I had to consider big things like the Vietnam war and how those impacted the entertainment industry in general and my characters specifically.

It was hard to acknowledge what I’d dodged before. For the time and place my books were set, there was a hell of a lot going on in this country socially and politically, and considering the backdrop of my characters’ regions, families, friends, and professions, I couldn’t ignore gender, race, or sexual orientation. I’m not writing a sociology text. I’m not a political scientist. I’m a fiction writer. I had to find a way to organically weave these bigger themes into my characters’ lives.

I refreshed my knowledge of things I knew (from my life, reading, and education) and sought information about things I didn’t know. It was mind-blowing to be reminded again of all I don’t know. So, so much.

Will I use, am I using, my voice again? Yes.

Is it easy? FUCK.NO. That’d be a discussion for another time.

Do I know everything? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Am I learning? My Instagram tag line has from the first been, “Always learning.”

Will I get it right? My Twitter tagline has always included, “Writer and editor. I read a lot of stuff on here I don’t get, but I always know where the apostrophes go.” I’m confident the apostrophes will be right. As for the rest of it…

Do I guess a lot? I do. I will do my best to make informed guesses.

Pass!

Back in April, I posted about making a coping skills toolbox. So far, I’ve only used it once when I reread a favorite book I’d placed in it.


Today, I took this journal from it. It contains (written versions of) magnetic poetry I began writing in April 1998. But not just that. It also contains poetry from James, Timmy, and Steve that they made from magnetic words I pulled randomly for them. And hilariously, there is this poem (once again, from words pulled randomly) that I noted was written by Timothy and me:

Storm Poetry

My favorite photo
Folds down
In the stiff breeze
You see me
But why speak
With me
Most stare

Squirm–his addition

I’ll bet I laughed like a crazy person when he added his one word.

There’s nothing in the journal after 2004, and for good reason. That’s the year I began blogging (on LiveJournal), so any poems ended up on the blog instead of in the journal. Including, of course, an entire year of magnetic poetry in 2011. One a day. I don’t know how I did it.

Today I pulled some random words from the 50 Something Kit.


What does it MEAN? Does it mean I’m giving anxiety a quick pass, like I don’t need or harbor it anymore?

Or does it mean I have passed my skill at anxiety with flying colors, I am the A+ student of anxiety?

I’m relatively sure it’s the second option.

Drowned Poetry

Almost a year ago, I posted about dreading taking on this task. When we took a photo of this closet in the middle bedroom after the flood water was out of the house, it didn’t seem so bad.


Ha. That door has been replaced. That floor was replaced. The lower walls of the closet had to be replaced and repainted, along with all the woodwork in and around the closet and that entire room. That Dyson was dead thanks to water damage. And that’s where the bag with all my Magnetic Poetry stuff was–and it had water in it. A month after the flood, as referenced in the above linked post, I knew I was going to have to tackle cleaning it, but I just didn’t have the energy to do that in light of all the other things I was doing day in and day out.

The bag got stuck on a lower bookshelf in the library, where I had to see it every day and know I wasn’t doing anything to fix it.


You can see it in this picture behind Jack, taunting me.

A few weeks ago, I bought some plastic containers so when I did take on the job, I’d be able to organize. Those containers were then stuck in the middle bedroom where everything goes to be out of sight and wait for the house to be finished so it can be moved to its eventual destination.

I decided today was the day.

First, opening that bag, being confronted by the odor, and figuring out what could be saved and what was lost.


Anything that had any kind of paper was not salvageable. Even if it looks okay in the below pictures, it was stuck together, misshapen, and it smelled. So goodbye entertaining and original boxes.

Magnetic Poetry: The Game was the worst. The plastic inset had protected its metal container, but the paper stuff inside was still wet and covered in mildew. It was completely disgusting.

Cleaned and saved:

This little container had some rust, but I cleaned it and all its words, dropped a couple of breath mints in with the words, and I hope it’ll be okay.

Most of the words had long been divided into multiple plastic containers. Some of those never took water and were okay. Some had to be thrown away. I lost a whole set of gay-themed magnetic words I bought in San Francisco in 1998. That set is no longer manufactured, and I’ll miss it and some of the words unique to its era.

All of the surviving Magnetic Poetry words were separated and given baths in my kitchen sink. Hundreds and hundreds of words, a box at a time, were cleaned and dried and put into new containers. This took all day long as I worked on it while I was also doing my rescue job. Whenever there was a work lull, I went back to the kitchen. Lynne was here cooking a pork roast in the crock pot. She cleaned the house while I was doing all this other stuff, cooked our dinner, ushered dogs in and out all day, and loaded the dishwasher after dinner. It was a rainy, humid day, so apparently even housework was better than trying to do anything outside. I’m eternally in her debt for taking over the care of the Hall and the Hounds for the day.

Too bad I didn’t take photos of all those words laid out in the sink or drying on towels. Photography wasn’t part of the cleaning routine. By the end of the day, this was everything that was safe, all cleaned and dry.

What I couldn’t save were the personalized sets of magnetic words that were made for me by Marika (Twilight-themed) and Rob E (Becky-themed). The paper on those magnetic sheets was ruined by water. I’d also been given a colorful set of magnetic words by our friend John that an author signing at Murder By The Book had handed out at her event. Those are the ones in the third photo above, stuck to my metal box. That box… Well, I’ve cleaned it, but it looks pretty bad, and I haven’t put any of the word collections inside it. It may remain just a decorative reminder of the day Harvey tried to drown all the poetry.

As if…


This is my message to everyone struggling after Hurricane Florence. I deeply hope that you get the kind of help that was given to Texas and Texans. I wish that same level of help had been given to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. (That is not to disparage the people and organizations who are helping there and have been for a year. You are an inspiration and a gift.)

I wish all the survivors and rescuers, human and animal, the best from the bottom of my heart.

Like love, like hope, like help, as with all art, there will always be poetry.

the next gross task

I’d thought all my magnetic poetry was safe in the bottom of one of the guest room closets because it was in a plastic bag. Most of the magnetic words are in a metal Magnetic Poetry lunchbox or in plastic containers. But some are in their original cardboard containers, and those were damp, so I guess I’m going to have to clean them all, and clean them in such a way that the words don’t disappear from the magnets.

I REALLY need a house elf for this job, dammit. You’ll know I’ve actually done it when a magnetic poem shows up on the blog. Something to look forward to. [commence eyeroll]