A cheerful post

Glynis reminded me that a new set of goals, a set for October, is in order:

-Walk to Whyte Ave. This has been a goal for quite some time. It will be accomplished tomorrow.

-Finish The Lord of The Rings. I'm in the middle of the third part.

-Finish Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, including all the math.

-Read On The Wealth of Nations.

-Play my new Kymlicka piece to relative perfection.

-Buy a super nice cooking thermometer. Then make marmalade with it.

They keep demanding that I lie.

I am so tired.

I saw the "Poetry Route" posters for the first time yesterday, on the way home from school. The city of Edmonton thought that publishing poetry on the inside walls of buses was a creative idea. Perhaps it is. Regardless, I am not only intellectually, but personally offended by the posters. It is despicable that drivel like that is taking up recognition, funding, and publishing space that the work of talented poets is denied. If this is the sort of arena I have to look forward to, I'm not sure I want to be a more-published writer.

A day of vague hatred. I am holding a meltdown at bay with avocado, milk, and sugar. I am dissecting my old cd player. I will cry later.

September 20

I am trying not to ruin everything I touch. It's miserable to realize that I do. I want to improve things and make things, rather than degrade and destroy them.

I am suddenly aware of the process of [the broad sense of] industrial civilization, that is: thousands of years of certain human beings desperate to create perfect, durable, elegant things. They all wanted to outwit senselessness, waste of time, prevention of pleasure, decay, and despair with their own competence. So do I.

New Items

I'd like to post some literary productions, but I find myself hoarding them for Tom-Tom #3. Thus:

I am sick. In my congested, sore, fevered and chilled and exhausted condition I have been spending eight hours a night scrubbing burned milk and tannin off of sinks, steaming wands, and pitchers. Also infecting countless Starbucks customers. When I'm not at work I'm reading The Two Towers and huddling under my ratty quilt. I look great when I'm sick. Sort of like a schizophrenic.

I've started violin lessons again.

I've ordered copper earrings from The Noisy Plume on Etsy.

I'm writing a new story and designing a building for it.

You're

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.


Sylvia Plath

On the literature front

I've finished The Fellowship of the Ring, and I'm one chapter away from the end of Six Not-So-Easy Pieces.

Bones

I am extremely happy today in honor of yesterday. I climbed a pine tree and ran down another hill. I slept. I went to the playground and swung on the swings. I curled up and drank hot tea. Everything is sensual today.

The lack of butter and the abundance of margarine in this house is the last straw. I hate with great integrity. I am so tired of every mediocre aspect of living at home with these people. Happiness is nothing but work here.

I am about five pages away from having filled an entire notebook by left hand. I've been practicing since the spring. I'm getting pretty neat and pretty fast. Making my body do what I want it to is great fun. On Tuesday I also climbed into a tree from the ground to a branch about level with my face, which I've never been able to do. I started by walking up the trunk while holding the branch I wanted to get on to, then hanging by my knees, and finally swinging my hips over and sitting up. Then I went higher.

"I want to see, real and living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry."

-Ayn Rand

In the middle, with curly hair.

To read before Christmas

-Lolita
-Othello
-Six Not-So-Easy Pieces [again]
-The Fellowship of the Ring
-The Prince