(no subject)

Last night in my dream I was being harrassed by a ghost. This really disturbed me, because I don't believe in ghosts.

At another point in my dream, I was in a room with about eight other people. I was the daughter in this family. The parents asked for everyone to leave, so we filed out. I looked back and saw that as my sister was getting close to the door, the long aquarium near the door was about to tilt over onto her. She caught it, but the aquarium was quite heavy with water. I came over to give some help, as did our father, but the glass broke and there was water everywhere. I got a cup of water and started gathering up the fish. I'd hold the cup near the fish, and they'd jump in.

Later, everyone was eating at a long table. I think they were eating cereal. But I couldn't find any bowls.

(no subject)

Hot Saucing a Child

I dunno. Given the choice between spanking and saucing, I'd go with the sauce.

I think when we kids were young, my mom and aunts would put hot sauce on thumbs to keep us from sucking them. (That was a behavior I wasn't terribly fond of, but one of my cousins did it until she was in her pre-teens. I don't think saucing dissuaded her, either.)

(no subject)

I'm going through my poems, trying to decide what to take to tonight's group. I don't have all of my poems at my disposal, but I have a few on a couple of disks here at work. I came across one title I didn't immediately recognize.

( In Hiding )

Heh. I can't bring that. If I received a poem like that for The Main, I wouldn't publish it. It doesn't say anything. I think back on it, and at that time I was paying a lot of conscious attention to rhythm, and I think that's its sole virtue. Maybe word choice, too, here and there.

I'm thinking of taking The Confessions series. Everyone else brings these long fiction excerpts; I feel I should bring something time-consuming, too. But The Confessions are not straightforward. So I can already anticipate some of the criticism I'd receive.

(no subject)

Back From the Dead

Three months ago Paula Maestas died while she was in labor with her second child - and then came back to life.

While in the delivery room at St. Joseph's Hospital, in Denver, Colo., Paula developed amniotic fluid embolus, an incredibly rare and dangerous condition. In 90 percent of cases, people die. Only 1 percent of women who survive are neurologically intact.

(no subject)

binge--bingeing
singe--singeing

Why then cringe--cringing?

(no subject)

My computer is making an ominous, hollow-sounding noise now. I don't know what that means. It scares me.

Just got back from the weekly writers' group. I had a better time (partly because I brought a better poem). There was this gal there--I guess she's a med student. She seems rather intelligent and had pertinent things to say. But she writes poetry like I did when I was an undergrad--that is, lots of abstraction and ambiguity. She didn't quite understand that if the reader doesn't know what the subject of the poem is, he won't be able to figure out what the real subject is. She just didn't care that the reader was in the dark. There's just no arguing with that. I wish I could sit her down with some Mark Strand or Ruth Stone and show her that vagueness is not your friend.

There was this other chick whose writing was very fresh. She wrote fiction, mostly driven by dialogue. We didn't have many suggestions other than for her to send her stories out to magazines. Hands down, she was the best writer there.

Anyway, my Mondays will be free next month. So I'm really hoping to organize a weekly poetry group there at that Borders. I think that would be extraordinarily fun and helpful at the same time.