In her absence

We changed everything

Took down the posters

Painted the walls

Installed new carpet

Brought in new furniture

Yet still and always

This is your room

The spirit of Christmas past

drooping red ribbon
'round a stiff mistletoe sprig
wrung dry by kisses

More writing about doing stuff that may eventually lead to art instead of writing that may or may not be art

    I've been playing with Magix some more tonight. You are supposed to be able to add a video track to your music tracks and then export the finished project. So I converted my very small audio project into a video. It didn't matter whether I used eight pictures or one picture for the whole thing, the final file was 1.75GB!!!! Not at all loadable into Blogger (I think it has a 100mg limit for video...which may be wrong), and the project certainly isn't worth all that space. I obviously have a lot to learn about compression and file formats.
    But not tonight.
    It is strange that you can upload a video to Blogger but not a sound file. Why is that? Anybody?

My favorite kind of day

A day off work, which allowed:

A couple of hours of writing
A bit of reading
A few chores to make this a pleasant place to live
A family visit
A couple hours of music playing and music software exploration and experimentation
A walk at the beach
A long talk on the phone with one of my beloveds
A trip to the grocery store
A great dinner and half a movie
And time here.

I love days filled with lots of variety, where every hour is different from the one before it. I feel like I live a lot more on a day like this. I certainly experience more, from the feel of sketchbook paper against my hand as I write in my huge notebook that is strictly for imagination and not for dreary diary-like journal stuff, to the smell of aged fish guts at the end of the pier.

Tomorrow it’s back to the…well, not a mill and certainly not a Satanic mill; not a mine; not a prison. But a voluntary necessity of being a grown up and taking care of business.

The unusually large amount of writing and music time I had today throws into light the drawback of this daily date with the blog business: I prefer to post a piece of creative work every day (rather than journalish stuff), but that pretty much limits me to haiku and photos since longer pieces take, well, longer. If I spend an hour or so most days just trying to figure out what to write about, that’s an hour I’m not spending on the book that I someday hope to finish. But most of the time I don’t have the luxury I had today, and a haiku really is all I have the time for, so I'm glad that I have made a commitment to do at least that much. So I will keep it up.

The view out my window the other day:

That flaming ball of gas, that golden chariot, that great ball of dung rolled across the sky by a beetle

     I have been working on a post for the last forty-five minutes and am having no end of formatting difficulties, which has definitely let the air out of the inspiration balloon.

     However, I started learning a new piece of recording software today, so that is something. I even played my viola a little to day--very badly, true, but it turns out to be much easier on my fingers than guitar, so music is a possibility after all! A Christmas miracle!

                                                            Shortest day is past
                                                            From the depth of winter, joy:
                                                            Hail, Sol Invictus

These are a few of my favorite things

The guests have begun to arrive. There will be food and laughter and important conversations. My keyboard...appointments? dates? sessions? daily adventures? will be somewhat spotty until after Christmas. I'm warning myself.

It is raining
which makes me happy
the days are expected to dry
out
starting tomorrow
which makes other
people happy

I will soak in the
pinging of raindrops on the air conditioner
splash of the unexpected puddle
the flap and rattle of umbrellas
      blossoming and shriveling
while I can

So, who is Pete, anyway?

I missed my writing time last night! I was still writing reports for one of my jobs at 1:30 in the morning and I just couldn't! So sad for me...and tonight looks like it will be more of the same.

This picture is a non sequitur rather than anything deep or meaningful. It's just a picture I took, and I'm posting it just because I think an occasional picture is pleasant. Though it loses something by having a wall behind it rather than an actual peacock.

At work yesterday I met a woman who was processing her book to be sold on consignment and we got to talking. She says that she has invented a new poetry form called Fukyu. It is basically angry haiku--same 5-7-5 structure, but with, oh my gosh, attitude. The ones she showed me were hysterical. I want to read more, but I will have to see if she is successful in her effort to get it on the shelves.

And because this is my blog, everything cool about other people always comes around to be about me. The lesson I learned here was: take chances and have fun, for Pete's sake. I have always loved the gentle awareness of nature in haiku, the touch of the seasons, the surprise endings. But it is a form capable of so much more. And when I have actually had enough sleep for my brain cells to function, I will actually go exploring in this broadened world.

No spoilers version

Tonight I interrupted my work schedule (on a Tuesday!!!!!) and went to see ___ _________. Though purists will cringe at the _______ and even more at the _______ ___ ____, I loved it! As usual, some parts were way too ___________, but most of the _______ important _________ were included. _________ was spectacular! I was hoping that ________ ________ would change the roster of who _______. _____ he _____. It was crazy to hope. My ______ is ________. But if he had, _____ would have been up in ______. Sigh. There's no getting away from _______.

Guess I had a little time for comtemplation, after all. But not for daydreaming.

    Massive amounts of work tonight, which is translating into no time at all for contemplation or daydreaming. And certainly not for playing guitar. Yesterdays songfest has cost me the use of two fingers for most of today. Apparently I am not ready to go back to pressing strings yet. But I am ever hopeful, and am getting pretty fast at typing with fewer fingers than usual.
    So. Some words of wisdom that I keep coming across in various forms and using various justifications--keep yourself separate from the world. It is fallen/corrupt/illusion. I sort of see the point in some regards, but from another point of view, we are only here for a little while, no matter whether you believe that this is a stopping point or testing ground on your way to somewhere better...or worse...or in any case, apparently more important, or you believe that this is it. This being the case, I feel strongly that we should love hard while we are here. Love your beloveds and make sure they know it. Love your earth because you are made of it and it is what makes your life possible. With that in mind, I embrace the world and all it contains, and do what I can to make it better, or at least not worse. But I won't set myself aside from it as though it were something dirty or evil. There is plenty of natural unpleasantness that we can't do anything about (wasp eggs planted inside of caterpillars, anyone?). There are the terrible things that humans do to other humans and to animals and to our entire life support system. Instead of causing one to withdraw, these should inspire one to engage, even if it's only to the extent of sending $20 to Habitat for Humanity or the World Wildlife Fund.
    And to those of you who are thinking, "This isn't the kind of thing we're talking about when we're talking about eschewing worldly things!", hmm.
    There are so many tangents to go off to from here. But I really do have to get back to work.

So good to have you in my arms again

     I pulled out my guitar for the first time in months today. I put it away because I hurt a couple of my fingers a while back and it really hurt too much to play. A couple of fingers on my left hand still hurt and won't bend all the way so it's hard to make chords or move very fast, and the months away from the strings have made my right hand slow and clumsy...but oh man, it felt GOOD GOOD GOOD to be playing again.
     I stopped before I got any blisters or re-damaged my fingers. I hope. I will find out tomorrow when I try it again.

Tanka

So I was poking around the web looking for a new way to arrange syllables (Apparently we no longer surf the web. So I poke.) and I found this website that must be for teachers:

http://ettcweb.lr.k12.nj.us/forms/newpoem.htm 

I worked my way down the list of poetry forms and found these instructions for a tanka poem:

"Write an Instant Tanka Poem

LINE 1 Five syllables: Describe when it happened
LINE 2 Seven syllables: Describe what happened
LINE 3 Five syllables: Your worst fear
LINE 4 Seven syllables: A positive outcome from the experience
LINE 5 Seven syllables: One life lesson you learned as a result"

Here are a couple of tries.

last night at your house
you turned to me and smiled hugely
were you faking it?
but no! all you said was love
open your heart, close your fear

* ** *** ** *

A pause in my walk

I saw white sails through the trees

I must be mad--then

Two white herons winged upriver

There’s still magic in the world

 * ** *** ** *

    I was wondering if the progress of subject matter through the lines was a convention of the form, or just some ideas to get you started. Whew, it turns out to be the latter. I have plenty of fears, but I don't think I could come up with a new worst fear every time I tried to write one of these things. 

    While I love haiku, sometimes I want space for a little more thought. I could come up with my own rules, but there is something elegant about time- and tradition-tested forms.