Got my goat(s)

So there I was, walking Greta Garbo near the old reservoir by City College, and lo and behold! Goats. I attempted a cameraphone pic, but as I'm extremely stupid at such things, I assumed it didn't work. But I guess I got something.

Nice weekend. Did some po biz, went to dinner at friends' up in San Anselmo, worked in the garden.

Fog is back.

Request

Back from the park and ready to get to work (despite little glitch in Internet connection, now resolved.) Oh, but I'm feeling good, having got a full 8 hours of sleep. Yes!

Sun is fighting to break through the fog this morning, but earlier, at Pine Lake, the mist was rising from the lake. A cormorant glided toward the edge and disappeared. A large turtle swam just under the surface. Later, the cormorant could be seen drying its wings, as is its wont, on the float in the middle of the lake.

Yesterday, I wanted to post about all the metaphors newscasters (on NPR) use to discuss the news: the fire metastasized. There was a seismic shift in public opinion. I never got around to post yesterday and have now forgotten the other examples I heard. Feel free to add others you've heard in a comment.

I know the posts have been few and far between on this blog of late. Robert has been busy moving and I have just been busy. (And no one else in the group seems to want to post.)

But I have a favor to ask the blogosphere. John (husband) attended a portfolio review (photography) in Santa Fe last week: big deal juried conference. Despite the fact that he was maybe the oldest there and everyone else seemed to know one another from graduate school, he, or rather, his work, got a fantastic reception. A major SF gallery is interested, and a well-known New York (name withheld) art publisher wants to do his book. This book will be his photos of principals, chorus, and supernumeraries in the SF Opera, in costume and in character. But he needs someone to write text to accompany the photos. I know zilch about opera, and the publisher wants someone, preferably, not only knowledgeable, but "with clout." So, if you or someone you know is this person, could you contact us? His website , which usually shows his commercial work, has been refurbished with some of these portraits (even more impressive as large prints). There you will find contact info as well.

Back home

Back home again, since about midnight last night. Totally jetlagged but pleased to be back. The flight was very long, especially since we spent an hour on the tarmac in NYC.

It was a beautiful, eventful, trip — but it was not relaxing. I must have been out of my mind to think that it would be relaxing. It's never relaxing when we're with John's family. We were all in Maine — from Texas, from NYC, from Boston, from SF (our contingent), from Ireland — and there was antiquing and pingpong and cards and art galleries and a boatride to Monhegan and lots of eating and a whole lot of drinking, but it was not relaxing. Although I did spend some time in the Adirondack chair pictured here reading John's Dublin cousin's novel manuscript.

And there was the wedding of course. "Your typical Maine Irish-Hindu wedding overlooking the ocean" as the minister said. Dramatic clouds and wind, but the rain held off. The bride and groom did a great Argentine tango!

Maine chance

Yeah, I'm sure that's the first time that pun was used. Anyway, if all goes well, we'll shortly be off on the red-eye to Maine, for our lovely niece's wedding and a week in Port Clyde of Doing Nothing. Of course my version of doing nothing means: reading, writing, long walks. We're sharing a house with my brother-in-law and his wife and a cousin from Ireland.

I'm excited about the whole deal -- well, not the flight; that sucks. Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast with my son on his 26th birthday -- in Boston. He and his wife are doing a baseball vacation Back East, and are all set to go to Fenway at noon. Then we drive up to Maine with her sister, our other niece.

The bride is marrying a Indian-Canadian and will be wearing a green sari. There is to be Indian food and music and events all weekend -- clambake on the beach on Memorial day.

I'm trying to deal with leaving my pooch. Someone is coming to look after her, but leaving her is so hard. Your should see her poor pathetic pooch face.

Islands Apart

I’ve been terrible about blogging. Blame the fact that, as Eavan Boland puts it in an essay I loved in the current Poetry, “Whether we like it or not, the contemporary poet is increasingly skill-based. Or expected to be. He or she can — or should — lecture, lead a workshop, run an introductory class, teach composition, write a review, give a conference paper [and blog!]. But there is always a fraction — even if it’s just a small minority — of poets out in the world who don’t want to do any of these things. If there’s a conversation, they’re having it with themselves, with their own poems. They don’t want to extend it, share it, structure it. They are private, inward, and dissociated from the skills on offer or in demand. Once I thought there was a broad tolerance for this. Now I’m not so sure.”

Meanwhile, we’re finally moving next week to our “new” home across the Bay! “New” is in quotes because it’s the home where I grew up. You can see the booties we’ve been ordered to wear to protect the newly refinished floors. Just wait till our cats move in, though: you won’t catch them in no damn booties!

Sunset on daffodils = yellow

Greta in the tall grass (Brooks Park)

Squirrels and Turtles and Ducks ...

Oh my! Well, sorry bout that. Not much profundity lurking in this noggin of late. Yeah, I'm depressed, and yeah, what else is new. Didn't sleep very well last night, but this morning, as it's Friday and my day to work at home (instead of commuting an hour+ to Mountain View), I didn't get up in the dark to walk pooch, but took her by car to Stern Grove-Pine Lake.

Spring has sprung. Small birds zipped around. (For all I know, it was the same bird!) You could hear, though not see, an industrious woodpecker. The ducks were paired up, the turtles, a whole bunch of 'em, stretched their necks all the way out as they sunned on a log. Greta, whose squirrel-hunting days are over -- was very excited by their scent nevertheless.

It was really very lovely. Fluffy stuff, like snow, blew on the breeze.

Slut for Sound

Haven't had anything terribly profound to post -- but really, why should that stop me? Life has been, well, not very stressful for me (way less stressful than last year at this time), but somewhat difficult -- physical things, irksome things that are not worth talking about, but take up a great deal of time and brain space all the same.

But I want to talk about poetry. C. Dale asks "What makes us choose what we choose when we write?" My answer is definitely music. I don't think that's such a great answer, but it's my answer nonetheless. I play by ear, that's all. More than images, more than ideas, I'm a slut for sound -- and often the beat and vowel sounds will fill my ear even before the words are shaped. Strangely, this is not only what gets me writing poetry -- although it's a heightened experience for poetry. As I'm typing now, I hear the shape of the words before I know precisely what it is that I want to write.

Which is to say that it isn't necessarily gorgeous sounds that I seek -- no, that seek me. Rather, they are like chords that needs one note behind them that insists on being played. I think I may be a victim, more than most, of sound worms. A theme song I hear on the radio on the way to work will be in my mind for a week or more. More than that, in a compulsion almost like Tourette's, words take shape in my mouth and need to be uttered. These words are often names I hear: Moktada al-Sadr, Sylvia Poggioli, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- all, regardless of who they are, that are like candy in my mouth.

There's an answer.