Watermark

NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, & Holidailies

Woo Hoo! I actually managed to do this. And I can't possibly express how satisfied I feel.

This was a totally different experience than last year. Last year, I actually attempted a novel; this time I began a memoir. And it is just a beginning. I know this is a project I'll be working on for quite a long time. It's some combination of 'real' writing, and therapeutic writing -- which I've resisted for months, but obviously needed to do.

You may continue to see excerpts posted here, now and then, as I go back through it and find bits that might interest you.

And yup, I managed this, too. I don't feel quite so exhilarated about this one, but I am pleased, and I think it was useful. Some of you know that I was not writing, or blogging, for several months; this exercise reminded me how much practice matters.

I had, somehow, lost the knack, and the delight, of blogging. That's back now, I think. I'm loving it again.

Good thing, too, since it's time for Holidailies. Last year I forgot about this until it was too late to register, but I was right on it this year. So you can look forward (you do look forward, don't you?) to another month of daily posts.

So, hey -- see ya soon!   

Thursday Poetry: Rabbits & People

Rabbit and Thing
Illustration uploaded by erat

The Neighbors Debate

When discovered by the social worker,
the yellow rabbit was nibbling blooming
dandelions, violets and clover
on the neighbor's lawn. The circling

cats did not disturb it. The rabbit hopped
up to the cats and touched twitchy noses.
The cats dashed, lickety-split, and dropped
back into hunting-jungle-tiger poses.

The neighbors schemed. Caught and caged,
unperturbed, the rabbit washed its face.
The prison guard said "Let it go."  "Not wild,"
the social worker warned. "And think, the child

who lost it, crying all night," the day-care
worker sighed. The rabbit combed its hair.

[ Poem by SB ]

 

  This week's prompt was:

What do you see when you look at animals? A reflection of yourself? A resource to be used? A kindred part of God's creation? A bundle of physiology and biochemistry?

As it happens, I had this sonnet tucked away on just this topic, and a quick flickr search found the perfect illustration. Some of you have seen this poem before, but it is too perfect for the prompt for me to not post it.

I liked the suggestion of other animals in the graphic, and its sense of confusion; that the viewer must impose her own interpretation upon it. As we do with the other animals, seeing in them both ourselves, and the other.

Pens & Meaning

An excerpt:

When I was about twelve, I went through a period of stealing pens from my classmates. Later I realized that the Freudians would see this as some phallic reference. Later still, as I began to understand how my own mind works, and how I, as a poet, work with metaphors and symbols, I came to believe this was less subtle, less (or perhaps more) primal than that.

What, after all, are pens for? What do they do?

They are instruments of speech. The pen is mightier than the sword.

It is also mightier than the penis.

We pick up the pen, we set the point to paper, and we write. We speak. It is possible to believe that a bold and beautiful pen might speak bold and beautiful thoughts.

Today, tinywords sent me this haiku:

moonless sky
so much darkness
from my pen

--Josh Wikoff

Did I believe, at some deep level, that if I could only find the right pen, appropriate the right instrument, I would be able to speak the darkness I carried?

Make it beautiful?

My Own Private Conspiracy Theory

What They Don't Want You to Know

In order to understand the A-List blogging phenomena you need to realize that everything is controlled by a hostile group of extraterrestial and local aliens made up of portly female geniuses with help from extremist web nerds of various genders.

The conspiracy first started during the degenerate sixties in San Francisco. They have been responsible for many events throughout history, including the death of Princess Diana.

Today, members of the conspiracy are everywhere. They can be identified by their habit of smoking colored cigarillos.

They want to vigorously humiliate The Moral Majority and imprison resisters in a deserted mine shaft using sabotaged elevators.

In order to prepare for this, we all must get married to someone of the opposite sex. Since the media is controlled by crazed radical feminists we should get all our information from Karl Rove and Ron Paul.

What? You don't believe me?

Well, then -- go Make Your Own Conspiracy Theory. While you're at it, check out the Blog Herald Article Series on Conspiracy Theories and Blogs. And then, before you get all dismissive about bloggers indulging themselves in such trivialities, go read Anil Dash on Serious LOL's.

If

red fruit: apple
Photo uploaded by beta karel.

 

If I brought you a cloak
    embroidered with stars
        a staff & a crown & a steed
            would you mount it?

If I laid out a carpet
    from my veins of bright red
        if I bled & I bled
            would you walk it?

If I sent you a bird
    with a song yet unheard
        if it came in a cage
            would you free it?

If I wove silk from corn
    if I turned wheat to gold
        would you wrap yourself up?
            Would you count it?

If I gave you a colt
    with a horn in his head
        would you hold out your hand?
            Would you feed it?

If I cast down my hair
    with its stiff strands of grey
        if I unwound the braid
            would you climb it?

If I offered my head
    on a carved wooden plate
        if I died, if I'm dead
            would you grieve it?

If I hand you an apple
    from my orchard of hearts
        -- it is ripe, it is red --
            will you eat it?

[ poem by SB ]

Dry Flowers

Jump right in; the water's easy...

 

Via laelaps, which is much more sophisticated than Watermark.

Bibs, AKA PeeWee

Photo by Sue Pinkerton

For more kitties, go here:

• The Carnival of the Cats at Pet's Garden Blog
• On Sunday, the new carnival will be at Begin Each Day As If It Were on Purpose
• Weekend Cat Blogging last weekend was at Paulchen’s; this weekend you will find it at House of the (mostly) Black Cats;
• Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Kashim & Othello and will be at Mind of Mog
• Friday Ark at Modulator

NaBloPoMo | NaNoWriMo

My NaBloPoMo post for today is at Abide: Solitude, The Bad Smell, & Trying to Feel Thankful.

And a new guest post is up at Blogging Blog: A Cornucopia of Icons, by Anne of Ample Sanity.

On this day, I want to express my thanks to all who have kept Blogging Blog alive during this long and strenuous month: Damien, Dave, Anne, Skellie, and -- yet to come, but already helpful here on Watermark, Prairie Mary.

I continue to plug along with NaNoWriMo, more slowly, and behind at 30,117 words -- but still in the game.

Charlie Rose: A sadly superficial show on Human Sexuality

Last night, I watched a Charlie Rose program on Human Sexuality. It was, mostly, boring. This was not, in fact, a program on Human Sexuality; it was a program on adult heterosexual intercourse and human male erectile dysfunction.

I'm seldom bored by Charlie Rose, even when I expect to be. This time, I didn't expect to be. But these doctors and researchers sat around the oak table and spoke in abstractions, in generalities.

There was no discussion of sexual orientation; no discussion of how/why it is that some have a high sex drive, and others do not. No doubting of the accepted view that erectile dysfunction and lack of desire is a problem -- an individual problem, now possibly treatable. No awareness, that I could discern, that it's possible that not everyone must be highly sexually active to be whole, to be happy. No suggestion that one might be highly sexually active, and happy, with oneself.

No wondering whether the demand for Viagra and its companions might indicate something other than a collection of individual problems -- except for a mention that male obesity can contribute to this problem. No astonishment expressed that such a large segment of a civilized population can't seem to get it up.

When Charlie asked what problem, what answer, these specialists would most like to discover in the next five years, only one -- and tentatively, a bit defensively -- said she would like to understand sexual violence. Rape, molestation. She -- with many caveats -- quotes the statistic that 25% of college women report experiencing an attempted or completed rape -- and suggests this might be worthy of attention. She says that we have some research and assistance for the victims of these crimes. By implication, she suggests we would do well to look more closely at the perpetrators.

They continue around the table, with no comment -- and apparent discomfort -- at her observation.

They talk about the brain, about the organ, about vascular disease. They all confess that we know almost nothing about human sexuality.

Where was the zoologist, to discuss sexuality in the other animals; to tell us whether rape is common among them; to tell us whether adult males of other species are in the habit of sexually using immature members of their species? They hid from us for decades the prevalence, in other species, of homosexuality and same-sex pair bonding; what else do they know? (I'm not even certain zoology is the right speciality for this -- but Charlie should know.)

Where was the anthropologist, to discuss sexual practices in other cultures; the prevalence, or lack of, prostitution and sex with children? To talk about pair-bonding, and what connections it seems to have, or not have, with sexual behavior? Where was the three-dimensional model, to show us how all this -- desire, behavior, propensity -- intersects with culture and physiology and psychology?

Mostly, they acknowledged how little they know, but brushed past the most provocative questions. Were they trying to be serious? Were they trying to not titillate? One of the very first points made in the program was how rare a serious discussion of sexuality is in our culture.

Well, then. Let's have it.