September 17, 2013

Heron on the neighbors’ roof yesterday, displaying his long self long enough for photos. I wanted him on my roof, but then I would have the blessing without knowledge of it.

Well over $100 was taken from my wallet, which lay in my jacket in my office while I taught. The odd thing is that they left a $5 bill behind. Thieves with scruples.

I’m featured poet for the Month at the Altamont, where I read to an interesting crowd last night. My achievement was to st through the whole of the open mic that came after. TD attended, as did several of my students. The event was damaged by a disrespectful chatterbox whose name seems to be Locky. The only quite silent moment was when she was reading her poem. Some poets (and I was one of these upon a time) proceed by thinking of striking metaphors for normal things, and stringing them together like beads on a wire. The discovery, then, is not of some truth or further country, but of what the poet meant by the inventive trope. There are worse way of writing than this. Certainly there are better. I fear it’s what we actually teach (at least by implication) in our workshops. Cleverness is far easier to teach than inspiration.

Exhausted now because sleepless last night. Hungry, I ate a chunk of Spam before leaving the house, and was sick immediately, and so sick through the day that I ate nothing else. Still my stomach was a cauldron of acids, spilling over at every decline from the vertical. Have a cold at the same time. And remarkable diarrhea.  Probably afflictions that I do not remember. No Spam for me, ever.

I will let the heron stand for everything, and call it good.