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Les Semaines
01.08.12
what I'm thinking and doing § what I'm listening to § what I'm reading
what I'm writing § retrospective: The Phonosnout
So Mom was here from Sunday till Thursday afternoon, and we sat around and talked and read and slept and ate and just generally hung out. A wonderful relaxing time. I really love my Mom. She's so easy to be around and she's never boring. I wish I saw her and Dad more often. It's crazy, because Victoria isn't really that far away, but we all get too busy with our lives.
Anyway, I'm not feeling much like thinking and I really haven't been doing much (dinners out, barbecues with friends, things I could talk about that would be interesting only to me) so here are some pictures instead of some words. And besides, Sophia is telling me that she has a furry mousie that needs to be tossed downstairs a few times.
 | Mom, me, and the cats. Doesn't Sophia look as though she has something to say? |
 | Zach and Sophia reading the neighbourhood news. |
 | Sophia telling Zach to stay on his side of the loveseat cushion. |
 | Tamar, Jim, and me. |
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That's all the news that's fit to print.
last week's thinking and doing § next week's thinking and doing
Listening to lots of albums while updating The Ectophiles' Guide.
last week's listening § next week's listening
Gail Levine Carson's The Two Princesses of Bamarre is a young adult fantasy novel about a shy retiring princess who likes embroidery, is falling in love with the young court sorceror, and who has made her beloved bold sister promise to wait to go adventuring until after she has safely married. But her her sister contracts the Grey Fever and is certain to die without miraculous intervention, The timid sister must go out into the world to try to find a cure. While this isn't as much fun as Ella Enchanted (see comments in my February 7, 1999 entry I still found it enjoyable.
While I really liked the idea of Max Phillips' The Artist's Wife, a novelized autobiography of Alma Mahler, a Viennese composer who marred Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, and Franz Werfel, as well as having affairs with other well-known people, I found it a little tedious. The tone of spoiled-girl-telling-her-tale thing got wearying after a while. Or at least I felt like having read as far as I had I'd read the whole thing except for various incidents. So I bailed on it and hope sometime to read a real biography, though Jim read and liked this one, and we've gone around the house singing Tom Lehrer's song about her for weeks.
I did read the stories/chapters by the people in my fiction workshop who had work up this week.
There are a couple of other books I just haven't really engaged with this week, too. I think I'm in a reading slump. About time, eh?
last week's reading § next week's reading
Was happily working on the novel until I got to a spot where I didn't know quiet ehat was going to happen--I knew that she had to get to that spot but I didn't know what happened there and so I got stuck. I'm not one of those people who can just let it go and leave a blank or insert [STUFF HAPPENS HERE] and merrily go on my way. But when I was having my shower this morning I think I figured out what happens. We'll see.
And it was fiction writing workshop weekend but I didn't have anything up this session.
last week's writing § next week's writing
About the Phonosnout
February 1980
1123. Something to add onto February 17, 1980
Today I went to work and I did that to wake me. Then I came home and nothinged, which I am so good at these days and we have a family dinner with a birthday pie for Grandma (blackberry) and these are the bones of my day. Somewhere in between here I may have thought, and something may have happened that mattered, but as usual, I am unaware, because my nothinging is taking over my mental processes. But now that I write I know that I live, and only as long as I write can I know that. This is something to deal with that despair, and something to add onto that poem that is building.
Tonight I watched an old movie about a owman executed for murder, a woman who married into my last name, and may or may not have committed the murder, but she was gassed anyway, probably before I was born. It was a movie that made me walk with her every step of the way until I wlked with her into the chamber and felt the gas seeping through me. My lungs feel strange, and I wonder how I breathe, but I write and live.
1124. Poem heading nowhere February 19, 1980
These are the bones of my day:
the rock clattering down the
hill to rest beside me; the
black edge of metal bent under
the rock; the dogwood
with its early leaves
barely fleshing my bones.
Waking is the second less,
it is learning to walk
from the night carrying
sleep still with me.
Walking is the thid,
walking three times around the hill.
Each time the dogwoods
are in fuller bloom. Each
step sheds more of the spring
onto the path,
and I hear
deeper rumblings of the rock
on the hill. [1]
You must admit, it has its problems, this poem. I took it to our workshop group tonight and they agreed with me, but didn't really help me to decide what to do with it. A strange group last night, with a marvellous lack of communication, but still we learned and certain things were decided, and taught and there was great food (tee hee).
1125. Quite a repeat February 19, 1980
Yes, it's true. Another rejection slip, but this time a very encouraging one (send us more they say--rather foolish, they'll get it) and I received more flowers from that client at Gillain. So tow repeats, making this day bittersweet.
Robin's class was cancelled, so I went to UVic for nothing but to work in the library for a brief while before going to work (half an hour early--got off at 10:30 for a delightful change), and I got a deep paper cut on my baby finger--ah, these important details of life.
Brenda and I are trying to make an escape for a weekend, but I can't find the place to be. All are either full, or closed for the season. I'm going to have to keep trying tomorrow. Long distance phone bills. All I want is a roof, a relatively warm place to sleep, and a beach or a forest to walk in. An escape for two days, a collapse. (Help me find a place to hide.) I need to wander, to drift places and times, I need a little healing time, and will need it even more by the end of this essay. I marvellously don't know what I'm doing, I will have to do the usual sweat out the lousy essay, and it will kill me, o yes, it will be the end. (Neurotic, I.)
NOTES
1. I never did do anything with this poem, though echoes of it can be found in later poems.
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