Inside, I am better able to focus on writing-related things than I was a few weeks ago. I have a new book, after all, and want to figure out ways to celebrate and promote it as much as I can. There are also a couple new series--one devoted to Weekly World News headlines and another that just might tangentially be about the virus, but also about intimacy and connection. Also just the notion of "viral" and things hi-jacking the body from a scientific standpoint. I feel like I need to tread carefully...I'm not particularly keen on most current events type writing since I think it tends to fall into cliche and hyperbole very easily. The lit journals are filled with mediocre coronapoems right now. I think I, myself, need a little more distance. There are few things I've set aside to return to for revising or expanding-- the dog girl poems, now The Shining pieces. A couple months always gives me fresh eyes on things I've hidden away for a bit. Meanwhile I ten to the dark country manuscript. I get pieces of extinction event ready to send out. I hope the creative weather holds.
Tonight, in my quarantine cooking adventures, I am making ribs in the crockpot, which can do no wrong. Also some elote, which I tried to make at least once before and need to perfect my recipe. The weather outside is lovely, though I've only been out a little bit in it. I am excited for them to re-open the lakefront soon, though I don't know how prohibitively crowded it will be (even though I tend for dusk visits and don't really like being out in all that sun during the day anyway, even before the virus.) Every so often I take a walk around outside and catch sight of that beautiful blue and make sure it's still there. I am so close, but so far. If I lived a couple floors higher in my building, I'd have a view of it (though you pay handsomely for that view). My daily routine was always mentally charting how high or low the water is (by the amount of beach/concrete visible in places and the surface of the pond near the zoo on my commute ) I miss even that a little. How I'd occasionally say to my friends for just random conversational purposes "Woo-wee, the lake is high today!" in the same tone you talk about all weather related phenomena. Now,conversations are by phone or zoom, less prone to wandering and more specifically focused on sharing information. I am not usually one for small talk, but I did like talking about the lake and its many moods and fluctuations--gray brown and angry, sky blue and completely still. Rain swollen and swallowing the shoreline. Though she's block and a half away, I miss her most.
