Lazy Sunday

Someone made me watch this movie. I am always a bit behind (in this case like seven or so years) in movies. What a beautiful movie: multi-layered, raw, and exquisite. I remember it getting some bad reviews. I should have known then that it was worth a watch. I am wondering what other people think of this movie. I like the line where the grown up quiz kid, played by William H. Macy, says I have so much love to give, I just don't know where to put it.

Thoughts on the WRITING LIFE

I’m always writing something in my head. That habit forces me to evacuate the right now of countless situations. I’m wondering if I miss out on things. And most of the time I am digesting something from years ago.

I remember my mother getting irritated at Christmas when I would write in my notebook (after I opened my presents, of course). I think that at times she, and other family members, took writing as a kind of negative, ungrateful body language.

I have been spending time with Matthew Thorburn’s book Subject to Change. In the poem Triptych, he speaks of the dichotomy involved in the writing life. He says, two lives, pushing on in one, one circling back to re-imagine and rearrange.

That duality is something I think makes someone a writer or an artist of any sort.

I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t trade my writer self. It’s probably the most authentic me, but sometimes it makes me feel different and lonely.

My little thug pug

I put a hat on Telemachus today and he just sat there. What was I to do? I had to snap a picture. When I see dogs in clothes I always feel bad for them, but since T was a tiny pup, he has loved to wear clothes. The older I get, the more I become everything I ever made fun of. But, seriously, is there anything cuter than a chubby little pug in a baseball cap?

I better post something

I really don't have much to say. I thought I should have a blog since I like to read everybody else's. Maybe I will answer the survey questions Sara had on her site.

1. Pick out a scar you have and explain how you got it.
I have a large scar across my stomach that looks like a scarecrow's smile. It is from a surgery (something like a choledochaljejunostomy...spelled wrong of course) I had at the Cleveland Clinic years ago, a surgery that saved my life in some ways. I love the scar, rub my fingers across the ridges, smile and generally feel happy to be here. Sometimes, I call my self Tubby Scarbelly.

2. What does your phone look like? Reasons you bought it.
My phone is hot pink and I think it is a razor or something like that. It was way too much money and no matter how much I clean it, it looks smudged with something slimy.

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?
Rejection letters, four van Gogh paintings, a postcard I sent to myself years ago that says "No matter what the cost, always return to Ireland."

4.What is your current desktop picture?



5. Do you believe in Gay Marriage?
I believe in love.


6. What is the one thing you want more that anything?
a day off

7.What time were you born?
around ten in the morning


8. Are your parents still together.
No

9.Last person who made you cry?
Myself

10What is your favorite perfume or cologne?
Pleasures for ladies
Cool Water for men

Thoughts of Northern Ireland

I can remember the exact moment of the above picture. S and I were walking to the Gweedore as we did every Sunday evening to have a pint or two and listen to a local band cover artists like Dylan and Springsteen. I could feel the sun behind me. I stopped to turn around and was pleasantly silenced by the Northern Irish sun. I dug my camera out of my bag like the tourist I pretended not to be. S said there was no way a picture would capture the sky. But I took one anyway and I love it, my sherbet sky hovering above a city hungover from civil war. My Derry. My Ireland.

TELEMACHUS

The above picture is the reason I struggle to complete the things I need to do. Telemachus rolls on my poems and distracts me with his sweet face.

I have crossed over to the blogger's world. It's a rainy Sunday morning, a perfect time for my first rambling. I have lists of tasks to complete: write the IRS a letter explaining they have made a big mistake, give Telemachus a bath because he smells, print out every poem I have so far written for my thesis, complete a load of laundry (I have to use the word complete or I will half-ass the task, leaving soaking clothes in the washer for days), visit my 90 year old grandma (I call her Bubba) and remind her thirty times who I am, grade some papers, and write a poem for Mary's class that includes a car trip, a house, an element, and a literary figure or text. Before I tackle such jobs, I am going to finish watching a very interesting movie a friend let me borrow. It is called The Science of Sleep. Then, I may take a nap myself.