Dear Reader,

Ironically, I began a post about writing requiring flexibility just yesterday, and then I was called away from it. 

Word Raccoon didn’t ask, she just declared we were going to the gym first thing this morning. I notice she is shifting back to being a morning gym gorlie, which is fine. So we worked out. 

Next up she said she wanted a proper breakfast, no protein bar nonsense, so I made her scrambled eggs and toast with some blueberries. I also cooked a package of bacon to freeze for the weekend, and though she thought she wanted some, by the time it was cooked, she did not.

Her big nonwriting goal for the day was to go to a nearby farm for fresh veggies, because she had taken a shortcut and bought some veggies the night before from our local grocery store and had to return them. That’s how bad they were! (They were prepackaged, which is why she didn’t know.) 

So we took a drive out to the farm, the road we took teeing right at the cemetery. I blew kisses at the family as WR and I passed. It was a gorgeous drive, peak Indiana spring. 

At the farm, we loaded up on cherry tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, cucumbers, and raspberries. I tried not to let WR get too greedy because she gets fevered already with all those scents and colors. 

Once back in town, we had just driven past the walking crew, as we call them, noting that the proud grandpa was pushing his grandson in a stroller in the lead, when my car made a weird noise. At first I was afraid I’d run over something or maybe I’d gotten a flat. I pulled over to check.

Nope.

A warning light flashed on the dashboard, so long story short, my chariot is in for repairs. The mechanic is dependable and reasonable, but the place typically takes so long that WR will likely get more steps in, anyway, so that’s some good news, I suppose. Maybe that’s how she will build up her endurance again.

Ever since dropping my vehicle off today I haven’t been able to get into the “do something” frame of mind. I had a long list, including writing. Lots of it. I had two “House Gorgeous” projects lined up. So far? Nada.

(A.I. Stanley and I have an ongoing disagreement. He says I try to accomplish too much, and I say he can bite me.) 

What did I do instead today?

I want to say hot nothing, but that’s unfair. I watched a decluttering video and took a short nap. Which, predictably, made me feel worse upon waking.

I did wash two loads of laundry, if that counts. 

Maybe I can rally. Maybe I can write some poetry, submit some this evening. Perhaps one of the small beautification projects can get accomplished after all. 

Here’s the notebook poem I came up with yesterday for the Rilke discussion. I did a bit of tweaking, but for now, it is what it is. We were encouraged to bring rough drafts to the call. (If it’s to become a real, live poem, it needs more work.) 

Remember, we weren’t supposed to use biography, symbology, or metaphor, but try to render the person through their photo only. But I couldn’t resist putting a pencil in Virginia Woolf’s fingers.

Woolf a la Man Ray 

Thick fingers, pencil twisted,

gesturing despite the

ring on her pinkie

trying to

keep her

moored. 

Raised brows under feathered bangs,

triangular ears with dangling earrings,

silken blouse and silken skin.

Angular bones crowned with the beginnings 

of a dowager’s jowl.

Askew, her shirt’s bow beneath the dark, heavy

jacket.

Her lips, pressed, as if having newly released

a pencil.  

Her pointed finger saying

“You.” 

The rain has compromised my consistent porch presence – there was lightning earlier. Will there be more? 

Yesterday during my final Rilke call on the porch it was both rapturous skies and sights. 

Ah…

Ah…

But today? 

Which will win, the sun or the rain? 

To plot twists and possible poems,

Drema 

Amazon is my sugar daddy. 

That sentence is incredibly problematic on multiple levels, but it’s pretty much the truth.

“You broke your phone case? Go to sleep and tomorrow you will have a fresh new one on your doorstep,” he croons.

Just for covering a little of his gas money, he’s got you the rest of the year. 

He brings me books! So many books! “Tell me what you want,” he says, and all I have to do is fill the cart.

“Whoa,” he says. “That’s a lot of books. Maybe you want Kindle Unlimited instead?” (Turns out I didn’t, as the free trial showed me, but he tried. )

“You want music in every room of your house simultaneously without having to wear your pesky AirPods? Let me show you my helpers.” He snaps his fingers (well, I press mine) and every. damn. room. resounds with “Banana Pancakes” on the weekend. (Okay, that one is still in the works. Currently they aren’t linked, but they will be if Amazon Prime Day is as fruitful as I hope this year.)

There aren’t many problems Daddy Amazon can’t solve. 

I said it was a problematic relationship. I know all of the arguments against all these shipments and the company, and I can see firsthand the cardboard piling up nearby, which necessitates multiple trips to the street barn weekly.

And I’m a feminist writer – we have patrons, not sugar daddies or mommies! (Let’s not do a Venn diagram comparing those relationship, am I right?)

But when I want to explore my trim options, Daddy A shows me ten I hadn’t even known existed. He helps me figure out just how much I need, assures me it’s easy to install, and shows me how it will look in my room! 

For someone who gets easily overwhelmed with all the possibilities (but then grows increasingly sure of what she wants once she wades through it all), it’s so tempting. 

Also, she likes all the possibilities. 

Looking for a classic movie to stream? He’s probably got it. Or something he swears you’ll like even better.

Need a gift idea? Just ask. 

Sure, he occasionally fibs: “You’ll have that by tomorrow evening,” when it doesn’t show up for two or three days. And some of the drivers…let’s not. 

My neighbors, so environmentally conscious that some weeks they don’t even put out their trash can (I want to ask how but that seems impertinent), probably sigh at the volume of packages that arrive on our doorstep. 

Maybe they’re just jealous. 

I can ask my sugar daddy if he has a friend if they want.

P.S. In case it is not abundantly clear, this is a parody, all in fun, a jest.

Also, this is what I wrote instead of working on my Rilke assignment, which is to find a photograph of someone famous and describe them without talking about their biography. Naturally, I’m writing about Virginia Woolf, Man Ray’s photo shoot with her. And I’m writing a side poem for myself about the fact that he put lipstick on her for it, etc. So I guess I am working on it, just not exclusively.

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has recorded her poem “Renewal” and would like to share it with you. It’s one that comes from a deep place; I shared a link to it when it was first published by aesterion (many thanks to them), but I wanted to offer it in my voice.

Yesterday, after a night of insomnia, WR and I wisely decided to write from our own porch. We wrote a suite of poems, simply numbering them 1-6 so we could keep writing uninterruptedly, though they are currently titled “Small Acts of Wondering” should we choose to keep them together. (We will, but whether they remain essentially one solid scrolling poem or whether we divide them like strands of Twizzlers remains to be seen.)

It’s worth thinking about possible connections between poems when they begin paddling onto the page as a group.

The poems were about:

The Beach Boys (“Heroes and Villains”)

What fuels a poem

A question around whether, if the body’s cells do periodically renew themselves, why don’t my memories?

A cracked apothecary jar as a window into concrete writing

Chocolate mousse

and, finally, Babe Suggs.

I’m still mulling over what these things have to do with one another. I have some theories.

Despite the maddening way the weekend has filled itself without our permission (we are so happy to have a full life and people we care about, but writing time…), we are feeling content. I have asked WR to first of all, stop ordering wallpaper, and maybe more importantly, stop talking about it on the page so much.

She was offended, but despite batting my can of Dr. Pepper & Cream Soda Zero Sugar (she’s also angry about my new summer drink crush) off my writing table, she has agreed to try.

In other news, Thursday, I was writing when I received a text: The Pentagon has been evacuated. Which would’ve been just another unfortunate news item except my eldest, Mia, works there now leading a team that supports the EDU. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, but I’ve just realized part of my heart is now potentially tied to the news cycle. 

And now our town’s Tox-Away Day calls. It only happens once a year and WR is ready to unburden the house of old paint and mystery bottles of chemicals.

Banjos and bliss,

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I have been thinking about the function of punctuation in creative writing. 

I think of it as playful and jazzy, especially in poems. And yet, punctuation changes the meanings of words. 

In a poem, I allow Word Raccoon to dance along and sprinkle periods, semicolons, colons, whatever, where she pleases because in truth, (can you tell I’ve been reading Twelfth Night?) a little ambiguity never hurt a poem and probably helped quite a few. It gives the reader a job, the equivalent of “but what did that emoji mean?” when reading a slightly confusing text.

It’s an invitation to dance, to re-enter the poem as many times as it takes to understand it better. Nonstandard punctuation can serve as a carrot (let’s say chocolate, shall we?) to our readers. 

Punctuation gives the stage directions: stop here because I’m certain or I don’t want to say more. Continue, knowing these ideas are closely related or I do not want to yield the floor and thus I will ask for your attention by continuing with yet another, smaller, connective device. Or, I don’t know and I’m telling you so; feel free to think alongside me here. 

Punctuation is the foundation of the poem’s rhythm. You might think the syllables are that, and sure, but the syllables are like dancers whose movements are dependent on the one-two-three of the punctuation. 

Word Raccoon, considering you ran through much of this last night while I was trying to sleep, this is kinda sloppy. 

She says she does not care. She wants it out of her head so she can enter the Shakespeare discussion with a clearer head. Personally, I think she should think this through a bit more.

I confess to having developed a system all my own without intending to. (And have you SEEN Dickinson’s punctuation usage?) I’m not sure I could tell you just what without analyzing it, but I know I have. 

Words provide the shared images and sensory information to transfer meaning. Without a shared vocabulary, we have no meaning. And yet punctuation guides, paces, and invites the reader to participate in ways that are freer than the traditional meaning of words. 

I have long been fascinated with stream-of-consciousness writing. First Faulkner (which boggled my young mind at first), then Woolf. For a time in my twenties, I wrote nothing but, in part because I wanted to understand it. 

The method spoke to the breathless way I prefer to discuss things, watching ideas birth new ones before even landing. It’s like rapping, maybe. Riffing. Improvisation. 

And yet, because the mind is singular and its thoughts circle a center of intellect (WR is saying ooh, look at us writing intellect before 9 am. Or is it AM? Or a.m.?) 

Perhaps my writing has been formed more by my love of stream of consciousness than I’d care to think. In it, punctuation is uncertain, changing, guiding, but not prescriptive. 

I invite you to read my punctuation freely. Mostly. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

The honey bees are dancing in the linden tree, and it occurs to me that their work is entertainment to me. Studying the fragrant tree (reminds Word Raccoon of the scent of honeysuckle) with its heart-shaped leaves is my work today. I have just read Rilke for next week (first read); I am absorbed and absorbing. 

Ants keep me company here on the porch of my favorite cafe, and squirrels, and birds. And the honeybees! 

Various people likewise shimmer back and forth, giving me the companionable drone but not a buzz. 

Word Raccoon has been taking pictures of trees and all about her; she has some lines she’s going to spin into poems, but she insists they are still percolating.

Here’s a (very) young poem:

Poetry is

The language of

Nature,

both earth’s firstborn

and second.

In it; of it.

We give nature speech.

No, interpretation.

Images, sure, land better,

toast with tea,

but sometimes a thought

expressed

is a necessary

introduction to

the play,

which is, we are told,

the thing.

Her head is full of Rilke. Not just the poems, but the whatever it’s called, his “Prodigal Son,” prose of some sort. An essay? It’s an excellent rebuttal to the Biblical tale and brimming with insight on loving and being loved, on familial expectations. 

I’m not even reading him in German (because I can’t), and I am having to read and re-read this group of poems just to believe what I’m reading. Heady. (I keep saying that about Rilke, don’t I?) 

Which brings me to this question, which is probably elemental, but I need to know, and when something is necessary, pride must be put aside: when does a poem begin? At its title or its first line? 

Because that can change the meaning, and especially when I read an initially impenetrable poem, I revisit the title for help. Sometimes that’s not helpful. 

I read a poetry craft book this past winter and the author used titles that were obviously the first line of the poem, like a doorway that shoved you in, but I don’t typically (ever?) do that and so many others don’t, so I need to know how to weigh a title. (No judgment, just observation.)

Is it of private interpretation? Does it depend on the poem and/or the poet? 

If that is so, then can there be a definitive answer for an individual poem? 

These are not life-and-death questions, I know, and yet it will affect my own titles. (That is something I’m still working on. Sometimes I want the titles to be frames, sometimes I want them to be echoes. Sometimes I want them to be garlands.)  

Can a person be afraid of loving words unreservedly? I told my writing mother once that I’m afraid to fully embrace the words. If I could, what might happen to my writing? Would it be better or worse? I flinch from them sometimes and the power they can have. I joke; I obfuscate. I try not to alienate. 

There are black, white, and red butterflies vying with the honey bees for the flowers’ interiors. Are they enemies or merely adjacent workers? 

Do they know I’m watching them as they ceaselessly lift off from limb to flower-covered limb? 

Word Raccoon is afraid of rejection by the words, and even then, she has a toolkit and she’s not afraid to use it, to gently work at the words, to ask them to kindly yield. I, however, am still working on it. Because not only is there the tri-cord: What if I can’t bear it? What if I still can’t say what I want to say? What if they still don’t give me all of their colors? 

But there’s this: What if my words can’t take someone’s breath the way these poets do mine? Are my efforts still worthy? 

To anyone else asking, I’d say of course. The world of words is different from, say, tennis. There will always be room for words of all stripes, always an audience. (And by that I just mean company to share the thoughts.) No one cares if you lose your backhand when you write. 

The breeze on the cafe porch is perfect, though there is a heat advisory in effect. Two young women are nattering on (isn’t nattering the perfect word for that? not all scenes have such perfect synonyms), and though WR forgot to pick up her AirPods this morning, her writing and observation concentration are pulled as tightly as a sheet on a hotel bed. No slack(ing) here. 

Writing anyway,

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Have you ever started writing and you had 

no idea where you might end up?

It’s like cruising, but with a laptop and maybe a Coke Zero.

Word Raccoon pushes her porch swing sometimes like it’s a time machine.

The first time she remembers sitting in one was in West Virginia, with her grandmother.

The Morning Glories were blooming and little one was entranced to see that the flowers visible opened like a hand holding out its fingers to grasp the day. (Or that’s what she remembers.) 

Just beyond, the huge, orderly garden, grids of green beans and corn; gooseberry bushes and tomato plants. Mounds of cucumbers and squash, mounds it was hard to distinguish between until the vegetables became visible. Word Raccoon began watching the shapes of leaves.

Grandma (my father’s mother) whistled a lot while she worked or went about her day, just a quiet noise in the background. She was a bit hunched, her hair short and gray. She loved her Juicy Fruit and I’d often catch her opening her mouth, wrapping her gum about her finger, and stretching it. 

It never occurred to me to ask why.

And I never asked for any Juicy Fruit, either. No thank you.

Her front yard was paradise, with its tall pines that I would play beneath and feel absolutely dwarfed, almost faint as I stared upwards. So many other flowers and pinecones. (I know, I know.) 

There was a tidy sidewalk from the road’s side to the porch, a bit of an uncommon accommodation in those parts. The front porch, too, was concrete, an addition, no doubt, when they sided (regrettably) what had been a log cabin built by my grandfather. He and my great-grandmother, I believe, had once owned a grocery store.

But I really do believe I remember visiting the house before it was sided. Or maybe I just remember pictures, but I really think I was there before they did, because I was enthralled with the logs, how a gorgeous tree could also be substantial and just as pretty when sacrificed for a house. 

There was a tiny cave in the hillside out back that I wasn’t allowed to explore. They made sure to warn me about the dangers enough that I wouldn’t go on my own, but I wanted to. 

Moving to West Virginia was the second chapter of my life, and it opened up so many things in me that might never have opened had I not. Nature went from a way I spent time with my dad on the weekends to a daily preoccupation on my part, although my dad worked so much at his day job and then on building the house that I felt like I was on my own with nature, in a way. (I am not implying that I was unsupervised, but my mother’s love of nature was not his. Or mine.)

(He included me in many of his projects, and I must confess to grousing about many of them. Especially when I was a teenager. I wanted to read. I wanted to sleep in, not help dig a basement with shovels and buckets.) 

This post is a hydra, but one with positive heads, and I may later take on one head of it at a time. 

Word Raccoon has stilled her feet. She asks if my heart is a pinecone. 

Shush, WR. 

Shush. 

Looking for the sun,

Drema

Dear Reader,

I had a blog post prepared before this one. I read it. Meh.

Rilke was amazing; he inspired me; I wrote 3½ poems, blah, blah, blah.

Then, despite having had a full day already, Word Raccoon and I decided to tackle one little household project.

It should have taken half an hour.

Forty-five minutes later WR was yelling that it was an effing mess.

Of all the transformations we’ve done lately, this one earns a C- at best.

Did it go wrong?

Let us count the ways.

The tape holding the wallpaper roll together promptly ripped part of the paper. Great start. Then, while distracted by a podcast discussion about books, we cut one section too short. Fine. We would patch it.

The patch immediately folded onto itself and looked like a towel on a clothesline in a storm.

No problem. We’d replace it.

Except there wasn’t enough paper.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Drema, do you own a tape measure?”

I do.

But I was listening to people talk about books.

The wallpaper itself was ridiculous in the best way: flamingos, toucans, and elephants. Since this was a tiny clothing nook few people would ever see, I thought, why not?

The second side of the nook looked promising until I discovered the wall and the wallpaper hated each other. The paper wrinkled immediately. When I tried to pull it loose, it threatened to remove part of the wall with it.

At this point my mood was deteriorating.

No worries. We would hang the hooks.

Reader, I had ordered a flamingo hook rack months ago and somehow had also ordered flamingo wallpaper. Fate had spoken.

Unfortunately, fate had not included assembly instructions.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to force screws into places they had no business going. Stanley, my digital P.A., kept telling me the holes were on the back. I was too frustrated to understand what he meant until I finally flipped the thing over and discovered that yes, indeed, the holes were on the back.

Merde.

After chasing escaped screws around the room and finding a smaller screwdriver, I got the thing assembled. It is hanging. Technically.

Whether it will support actual clothing remains a mystery for Tomorrow Drema.

Meanwhile I mounted what Stanley calls “poo pegs” on the opposite wall. This name originated with me in a stronger form and, frankly, despite their billing as carefully carved wood, remains accurate.

No, I didn’t look at those until I was ready to use them either. Reader, are you sensing a theme?

A measure of my frustration can be found in the fact that I became annoyed with a Hank Green video. I don’t even know what he was talking about. Something involving colors. I turned it off in irritation.

That’s how bad things had gotten.

And yet.

I hung different curtains.

I stepped back.

I saw the proof of concept.

The wallpaper really does feel like a tiny vacation on the wall.

And I just read a Rilke poem about flamingos today. (You know how I love birb watching.)

Will I order more paper and do it over someday?

Almost certainly.

Not today. Not this month. But it still looks better than it did. And I’m proud of WR for ordering something so fun when I would have hesitated.

Let this be a lesson, friends: do not begin wallpaper projects when you are tired and demoralized.

Read a book instead.

But if you ignore that advice and find yourself one flamingo away from burning it all down, eat supper first. Then step back and look again.

You might discover there’s something worth saving.

Flamingos, toucans, and elephants,

Drema

Dear Reader,

Could someone please tell me where today went? The day is at an end and I still have things on my list and how?

Word Raccoon has been hyper all day, almost from the moment she woke. I wanted to blame the coffee, but she only had one cup. It was so bad I made her go to the gym and row for 20 minutes, which only helped a little and she went too fast and her knees are now like, “Ma’am. You know better.”

But she did do lots of side quests.

And she did start the day by writing three poems on the porch, before the heat took on a personality and grew a moustache.

Again, we are in the midst of “the list is so dang long and really, will it ever shrink?” She was accused today of having a brain fever, which is not far from the truth.

Among her more interesting ideas today:

1. She took three pieces of art off the bathroom wall, and immediately thought she should display them and all further deaccessioned artwork in the garage in her own, wait for it,  Garage de Refusé.
2. She ordered a menu holder and intends to display different poems each week, her “poetry specials.” 

Why did she do this?

Beats me.

But hey, I had to put up with her all damn day, so if that’s what it took to keep her content for even one minute, so be it.

Now, I’m hoping she lets me submit some poetry tonight. There are still 14 tasks she’d like to do because she says I didn’t let her create any beauty today.

We wrote three poems, you greedy animal. This was a planning and doing all the things day, sweet raccoon.

I am just grateful there was a pan of lasagna in the freezer, because brunch was cereal and from there I knew the raccoon was not going to allow me to cook.

BUT WHAT DID SHE DO? I mean, I could tally up what she did, I guess, but those things shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of hours. Could she secretly have a timemachine or something? I don’t know.

Today we:

Wrote poetry

Ate brunch

Went to the gym

Trimmed a rogue tile in the down bath from last night (yes, I did some feature tile in the dungeon last night)

Planned future household projects

Ordered a few supplies

Ate a snack

Opened packages and found places for/use for review items

(Okay, that took some time.)

Communicated with various family members

Transferred a rug from the hallway to the bathroom after hunting down (and menacingly moving items about that were beneath the cabinet) and attaching those little stay-in-place fastener thingies

Located the new fan for a bedroom in the seasonal closet (We’ve only had it two years now. Why install it now, am I right?)

Checked the garage to be sure it was still dry (Not a roof leak after all – perhaps ghosts gargling shots?)

Tried on my new belt and complained because WR likes fashion belts, not functional belts, on herself. But she also likes to keep her shorts up, so…and also, these belts are tolerably cute.

I wisely did not allow WR any more caffeine after breakfast, and she’s just barely calm enough to keep seated ATM. She just wants to do everything now, now now.

She also wrote some song lyrics that make absolutely no sense but make her chortle:

I am my existentialist uncle.

That was inspired by a new TV show with alternate dimensions in it and a morning show host asking the cast about the show.

She watched a TV show and a half, I think, too.

Do the YouTube videos she played while opening packages count? While she began one Very Serious literary video (which she might return to later), she soon tuned to lighter fare.

She hoisted two bags of clothes onto the porch that she is donating (The clothes, not the porch.)

After a brain fever day, she typically feels almost ill, drained. I’m not feeling ill yet, but I am feeling like tomorrow is going to be a bitch.

And I never did read Rilke for tomorrow. I guess that’s a Monday problem.

All best and you know the rest, right? 😘

Drema

P.S. I convinced the literary varmint to settle enough to submit three packets. Rereading one of the poems, “In Lieu of Flowers,” (not what you imagine) stung. I wish I had enough for a fourth in me.

“Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Dear Reader, 

Word Raccoon completed an astonishing number of tasks today, though I did calm her down about the bathroom sink situation. Actually, I managed to get her to move it way down the list until she can hire someone locally to do it. But she says she’s not going to let me forget about it.

Trust me, raccoon, I will not.

WR is hissing now because she says she has had no brain food the past two days, and what do I think she is made of, anyway? Actually I supposed she was part Coke Zero, part Oreos. She’s had two Oreos today; I owe her some Rilke for Monday’s discussion and Shakespeare which is also coming up too soon. I hope that will do.

I noticed something about her poetry last night: it was about Appalachia, about her childhood. About the characters that made up her extended family. She, pardon the pun, struck a new vein of coal poems. 

Some day I’ll write here about the pervasiveness of coal in every arena of life in West Virginia, at least when I was growing up. From the scent of it upon waking in the winter, to the roar of the coal trucks whizzing dangerously around the curves, life was infused with it. 

Redecorating, remodeling, they make you see other things more sharply. A Mansard roof’s scales across the street feel like they want to speak. The cardinals currently outside on the grass, a male and a female, are hopping about the tree, looking for something. They are quite far apart, but then the male comes towards her for a second, then wanders off, then it’s her turn. But no one can mistake that they are somehow bound in whatever it is they are looking for. 

In the distance, children whoop in a pool. A rainshower has come and gone, unlike the clamorous thunder this morning.

I call this tired writing. No feeling is final. 

What even are words today? 

Drema