My windchimes bounce around on their strings like thunder puppets, repeating their saucy drama throughout the day. I am pleased with this melodramatic weather, keeping me inside and able to read and research.
I don’t know where to dig in first. There are so many opportunities in all these books I’ve gathered. I’d been sneaking into each one of them since I’ve been back from Goddard, sampling their textures and ideas, trying to fix on an itinerary for the next 15 weeks. Instead, I begin with organizing my desk, my computer files, my folders, and my pens. I decide to use the spidery .07mm gel writer in black ink instead of the juicier .05mm rollerballs of colors. I verify that I can access all my online reference sites and can get seduced by the thousands of e-books and articles waiting for me.
OK, back to my terms of engagement. Since three of the poetry books Rick recommended won’t be here until tomorrow, I start with The Unswept Path, Contemporary American Haiku, edited by John Brandi and Dennis Maloney. I’m encouraged by an opening quote credited to Matsuo Bashô:
“Don’t follow the steps of the ancients; seek what they sought.”
I read the essays and poetry in this compilation, make my notes, and realize the core of the Bashô quote is provoking me. The day proceeds from there, with laundry, twirling tea bags and Art21. So many ideas and concepts and terms; I realize that I don't know what I've been paying attention to these past 46 years. If my silent hysteria suits me, as Linka observed, then I'm wearing that outfit more often than I prefer. My raucous serenity was rumpled at the bottom of the hamper and I'm washing it in Woolite right now.I'm excited by these new thresholds, but I seem to be happier, today, asking pages of questions rather than answering them. Did my grandfather really tell my Mother he could see I was a logical baby? My memories might have made that up- I'll have to check with Mom on that.
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