The Apostrophe Blog
It is a Wednesday in the third week of April 2024. What is below is from another Wednesday nineteen! years in the past but still musings I can find myself tangled up in today…
Dateline August 2005:
Out the window, Wednesday, there’s still life, flora and fauna, chittering nut hatches, bleating red-tailed squirrels. One of my cats sits at the base of a Doug fir, waiting, hoping, but the odds are against him, just like they are against me, too, in spite of all my pretending that I’ll figure it out, find the answer, we end up the same, dead in the end.
The cat that was once yours insists on working while I type, sits on my lap, seventeen years after you adoped him at Pet Pride, the animal shelter on the outskirts of Fairbanks. Days when I’m in a mood, I’ll think, maybe this cat will outlive me. Under the shelter that masquerades as woodshed past the hammock on the edge of the blackberry woods: the red and steel cart for hauling wood closer to the house for the woodstove, sits at a tilting list. A titling list, a list of titles, the best thing I’ve done this morning is go through my secret stash of meaningful bits and bobs and find fifteen quotes, write each one on a post card, sign my name, address them to the protesting mother at the Crawford Peace House, my contribution to the anti-war effort, signed member, Poets Against War.
Does this act matter as much as going there? Does pen and card and a 23-cent stamp add up to saving the world? The classical music on the radio station is Dvorak. It distracts me from the looking out the window, looking out this window, I’ve looked out this window now seven long solitary years, my solitary confinement, except I get up and walk around, my prison my own making, my self-hatred and disgust at behaviors, habits of mind, the way I can’t seem to shake the poison, shake the feeling I am not geting this living right—what right do I have to even think that is anything like the horror of behind bars?
Meandering mind, this cloudy, cooler August morning. First day alone in days, and I have remembered to notice, to take note, and to take a deep breath.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- Out the Window, Wednesday - October 3, 2024
- (Re)Publication News: “Six Degrees” - September 25, 2024
- Writing in Form: A Narrative Poem in Syllabics - September 17, 2024
