abandoned.
You can now find me at West Egg.
7 August 2008
4 August 2008
Who is losing patience with this blog service?
Me.
Same person who just lost her tags and categories with an upgrade.
Tags, of course, being the reason I migrated my old blog here to begin with.
Sigh.
3 August 2008
Jockey’s Ridge State Park. Tornado, Anyone?
Looking for scenic, secluded getaways on the coast of North Carolina. There’s the Outer Banks with its coral reefs. Superb snorkeling. Lovely sunsets on the Atlantic. And, then, there’s Jockey’s Ridge State Park, known for extreme temperatures, shifting sand dunes, long stretches of barren land, and the bordering Roanoke Sound. Which sounded like my kind of place. Until I clicked on the photo gallery: three of the five images were tornados at the park!
Oh, yeah, my kind of vacation.
Discovering a New Home
Most of the weekend has been spent enjoying our new home rather than doing anything. Last night, for example, I took to the back deck to watch the sunset. Sophie stuck her head out the door and I told her to look at the sky, which prompted her to yell, Audrey, hurry. Your favorite color is in the sky!
Pink, of course.
The biggest relief of the weekend was the drafting of two new poems. I have been largely non-productive in this arena since arriving here, suddenly having no plethora of homelessness, abandoned houses, and general mayhem to write about. I mean, really, what else is there? Would I ever write a happy poem about the spider who lives on the porch? Or the fireflies in the backyard? So far, the answer is no. But I have finally found inspiration in place. I thought it might come from the hills with white fences, or the loblolly pines. So far, the answer is no there too. It has come from events in the neighborhood (emergency vehicles, of course) and lively office meetings (see previous post).
+ + + +
I have to travel back to Louisiana this week to read “State Street” at the Louisiana State Archives. Such mixed feelings. Excitement about seeing this exhibit come together after helping with it for a year and a half. Excited about being a part of such an important exhibit. Excited about seeing my family and friends. Not looking forward to the general environment, and don’t know how I’ll feel about staying in my old house, which has been populated with my brother’s girlfriend’s furniture while she is in between apartments. Reminds me of the time I got rid of nearly everything I owned to drive around the country for a year. When I arrived in Louisiana again, nearly six months into the trip, I stopped in Baton Rouge to see my sister in a play. The curtain rose and there was the stage — each of the props my old things. And then the spotlight shone on the actress entering the stage: my sister, who walked out wearing one of my old discarded dresses.
2 August 2008
The Book of Nightmares
A couple years ago, a friend sent a few books by Galway Kinnell, including The Book of Nightmares. I thumbed through, but somehow ended up storing it on a bookshelf, unread, nearly all this time. Not since I finished Robert Penn Warren’s “Audubon: A Vision” have I turned back to the beginning so many times to start reading all over again.
From “Under the Maud Moon”
3.
A round-
cheeked girlchild comes awake
in her crib. The green
swaddlings tear open,
a filament or vestment
tears, the blue
flower opens.
And she who is born,
she who sings and cries,
she who begins the passage, her hair
sprouting out,
her gums budding for her first spring on earth,
the mist still clinging about
her face, puts
her hand
into her father’s mouth, to take hold of
his song.