notes & things | 4/1/2023
And in the realm of impossible but much-awaited things, it seems we have stumbled into April. Last night, rain in a springish kind of way, and miles to the west, tornados and blown-off roof a town over from where I grew up. Next weekend is Easter. This week, my mother's birthday, what would have been her 76th were she still alive. Time floats and races at equal increments.
A couple days this week were bright and sunny if not necessarily warm and I could tell the difference in my mood and energy levels. Even inside, the sun has me waking early and not hitting a wall in the late afternoon as I work. I've been adjusting my wake-up time and my bedtime and still around 5pm all winter long, I feel badly in need of a nap, no matter how long I have been up. On the sunny days though, this legarthic afternoon slump was non-existent, which bodes well for summer. I don't even always fall asleep if I lie down, sometimes just sort of doze covered in cats who also decide the bed is the best place to be. Then usually I somehow rally an hour or two later and return to the usual things that occupy my nights, making dinner, writing poems or blogs or fiddling with collages, before hitting streaming offerings around midnight.
Today launched my NAPOWRIMO adventures and I'm liking the first poem so far. I may move off the technogrotesque project later in the month and on to something else. I may stick it out and make it a chapbook. I may abandon daily poems entirely. April is always an unpredictable month, but also I feel so much less ragged than I used to when usually, the library would be hitting full stride in terms of programming stuff and just general work, at least before the pandemic anyway. The absence of academic rhythms is still something I am getting used to, after an entire life subject to its ebb and flow.
I am still sometimes finding the rhythms of my days to myself, and it also changes seasonally and by mindset. This week, I wrote about Virginia Woolf and A Clockwork Orange and coyotes in Native American myth. About ceiling medallions and slow design and substitutions for corn starch. This too is an enjoyable rhythm--the research, the drafting, the polishing. The later afternoon is about editing and designing, steadily moving through the chaps delayed from late last year, of which there were many (and thankfully, I pushed everything new this year to the end since I suspected this would be the case.) I sometimes write poems when I first get up, sometimes later at night. Used to be, the mornings were key since the rest of the day would leave me with little to work with, but it's far better now. Even after a full day of other kinds of writing and editing, there are still words left shaking around at the bottom that can maybe be made into poems.
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