(fleeting)

All these “Micro.blogiversaries” (e.g. @Miraz, @Burk) remind me my own third anniversary was nine days ago.

Thanks to @manton, @cheesemaker, and @jean for laying the groundwork for such a wonderful community!

Here’s another bookmark that just turned up. I remember it being cluttered and tousled, the sort of place where accident was the only real form of discovery.

Happy New Year!

Yesterday’s scones.

The scones are in the oven. A day late, but just in time to be my last creative project of 2020.

A poem of mine, Thighbones, Clay, is up at Eunoia Review.

Oh, what a year. I’m aware of (and grateful for) my privilege and my luck. But it doesn’t always help, when I’m struggling. And I’ve been struggling.

But tomorrow, I make scones.

I will build something, and add savor to the world, at least for a few moments.

“Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia.”

—Thomas Pynchon, V.

The first day in weeks I’ve made it through the day without a nap. Then I remembered why. I woke as usual at 5am, went to my kitchen corner to write, then I decided I just… needed to lie down… for a few minutes. I slept for two more hours on the couch.

Another entry in the intermittently active Bookmarks series. This is actually a receipt not a bookmark, but I’ll allow it.

A belated thank you to @schuth for the recommendation. I finally bought it on the last Bandcamp Friday, and I’ve been listening to it constantly ever since.

“I believe that in awarding me this prize, the Swedish Academy is choosing to honor the intimate, private voice, which public utterance can sometimes augment or extend, but never replace.” —Louise Glück, Nobel Prize lecture, 8 December 2020.

Sixty years ago today, one of the two men I was named after — my Opa Nicolaas — dropped dead suddenly as he was getting into a cab in ’s-Gravenhage, his arms laden with Sinterklaas presents.

🔗 Paris Review: A Masterpiece of Disharmony

Hadn’t listened to this in years. The CD is buried in a box somewhere, but the MP3s are on a spare hard drive under the desk…

🔗 BRO! A marathon reading of a new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahavana Headley kicks off on December 1, daily through December 25 /cc @Miraz

🔗 NPR: David Prowse, Actor Behind Darth Vader, Dies At 85

The transcendent All Things Must Pass is fifty years old today.

“…and with tears in our eyes, we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.”

Last, next.

72: United States of Letterpress (Starshaped Press)
73: Nat’l Parks: Denali

I’m appalled to find I have a book-length ms of work written in 2020. How is this possible? I swear I spent the year hiding in bed or crushed in a chair staring blankly at an unread book. Frankly, I feel a little queasy that this shitshow year has been so productive for me.

Every morning, I stand in the darkness of my kitchen and think — maybe there was something I could have done in 1994 that would averted all of this.

My triple-booked evening: I’m listening to two poets having a conversation on composition, process, motherhood; a concert of musicians taking turns playing songs; and a group of poets reading their favorite poems by other poets. My cup — and attention span — overfloweth…

A late entry to the Bookmark project!

I pulled a book off the shelf just now and stumbled on this:

PSA: An Unearthly Child debuted 57 years ago today. Both Aldous Huxley and CS Lewis had died the previous day and there was so much coverage on the Beeb that the broadcast started 15 minutes late.

Well, it’s 8:30 on a Sunday night. Time to drink too much wine, revise old poems until they’re indecipherable, and listen to this on repeat.

After nearly a year, I think I’m finally ready to finish my rewatch of Until the End of the World. I savored the first disc late last December. After some distractions, I meant to pick it up again — but by February I knew I couldn’t handle that final sequence in the outback.