The Poet’s Way

Lately I feel vague, uneasy stirrings inside me of unrealized inspiration. I have not written fresh poetry in weeks. I am going through a dry spell, which is not abnormal but still disconcerting. Writing is usually one of the constants in my life, and this prolonged period of creative silence is disturbing. A writer is someone who writes. I identify as a writer but have not been writing. Something doesn’t add up.

Part of the problem is that I need more poetry to read. Reading stimulates creativity and imagination. To that end I am going to find two or three new poetry books online and order them this week. I have to look online because so much of what they have in the bookstore I have either already read or it is much more mainstream than my taste. There are pretty slim pickings for poetry in most bookstores, at least the book stores around me.

I need to start using Goodreads to help me hunt down good books, too.

If I really want some inspiration, I need to take more of my current poetry and run it through Google translate in Xhosa and Afrikaans. That is an ongoing project of mine, to translate my poems into these two languages and back again to English and then edit and revise my results. I can get some really fascinating results from doing this and I love to play with language. It was inspired by a South African pen pal.

Sometimes I get flashes of imagery in my head or bits of phrases I want to use, but nothing cohesive has come together. Poetry is never far from my thoughts, but I just haven’t given birth to any healthy lines.

Sometimes a little bit of creative silence can be a good thing. It gives you a chance to collect your thoughts, process the world, and provides you time to live life so that you actually have something to say. Writing is an act of communication and rare is the person who truly has something to say 24 hours a day. Sometimes I come away from creative dry spells completely re-energized and ready to tackle lots of interesting imagery and conflicting ideas. Letting my writing brain sleep allows it to awaken refreshed. But this dry spell has gone on too long and I need a sort of bootcamp to get my creative muscles taut and toned again.

To that end I need some sort of discipline and something to ignite my mind. What I will do:

Read read read

Look at images for inspiration

Try handwriting some poems to end this block.

Reread Twyla Tharpe’s book on creativity.

Read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and see if I can pick up anything useful.

Continue to work on waking up earlier so I have more time to write.

Talk to other writers about maybe having a support group.

Use my Mastery app to log time writing poetry.

Be willing to write work that isn’t my best just to get something down on the page. Great artists/writers, like great athletes, need to practice.

Purity

When I was young I was not as pure as I should have been. I kept my virginity until I was 21 as opposed to waiting until I was married. I only had sex with one man other than my husband and I was manic when I did it, but that is one man too many. With other boyfriends I may not have had sex, but I was too physical with some of them too.

I want better for my daughter. I want her to be a virgin when she gets married, and I don’t want her giving away pieces of herself to men that are not Mr. Right. Mr. Right Now should not get something as precious as my daughter’s purity. I want her to value premarital chastity as something important to God, and as a gift she can give her husband.

I want her to value herself and not give herself away cheaply. Consequence free sex does not exist. Our heavenly Father knows what we do when the lights go out. It grieves Him to see unmarried people having sex. Not to mention, there are emotional and physical costs to sex. With the risk of pregnancy and the risk of STDs, and with the emotional baggage that premature sex can bring I definitely think it is necessary to teach my daughter that sex belongs within marriage and only within marriage.

If we want a culture where women are respected women first need to respect themselves. That means chastity and modesty. Don’t cast your pearls before swine.  Respect your body and keep it private for your spouse. So many girls these days walk around dressed like strippers and passing out their sexual favors like the free lollipops you get at the bank, and then wonder why they are not getting respect from men. If you want other people to respect you you have to respect yourself first. I look back on my youth and I definitely did not have enough self-respect. I also did not have enough accountability and self-control. I needed more of both. I see these girls with their butt cheeks hanging out of their shorts and I honestly feel sorry for them because I have been there. I know what it’s like to feel that desperation for male attention and male approval. I think it is so hard for any woman in our culture to feel like she is enough without showing everything, and it puts a lot of pressure on young women to dress and behave in ways that are inappropriate.

In retrospect, I wish I had not gone beyond kissing any of the men I was with before my husband. That is what I want for my daughter. I don’t want her to make the same mistakes I did, and sex outside marriage is always a mistake. For this reason I am considering getting Angelica a purity ring when she gets older, something beautiful to remind her of her commitment to God and herself. And I will definitely encourage more of a courtship style dating rather than traditional dating with no accountability for sexual behavior.

Purity rings and courtship certainly put me in the minority for our culture, but as a Christian I am called to be in this world and not of it. I cannot stress to my daughter enough that although magazines and television and even the local schools will tell her that anything goes, she needs to love God and herself enough to wait. Note that when I say courtship, I am not suggesting that I should pick who she marries. In some families that practice courtship the parents become too involved. She should still choose who she has relationships with, but they should only be people that are eligible marriage material, at an age where she’s ready to get married, and I want her to feel free to come to me for accountability with her purity during the dating or courtship process.

Of course, once she is grown and out of the house I do not have any say-so over what she does. But I hope by the time she reaches that point she will be married and/or mature enough to realize the wisdom in what her parents have taught her and follow our teachings. Sexual purity is such a gift, and the virtues that come with it (faith, self control, chastity) are more valuable than gold. Isn’t that I don’t want my daughter to have a sex life but that I want her to have the best sex life possible, and God designed sex for marriage. She will be happiest if she follows God’s design for sex and for her life in general.

Swollen Bones

Today I went to the podiatrist to get the results of my MRI. I am still having pain when I walk and when I take the stairs. He said the basically my bones are swelling. I’m not sure how that works. In the notes from the people who did my MRI it said that it looks like I may still have a bone infection, but the doctor doesn’t think so. He gave me a cortisone shot in my ankle joint. Let me tell you that is not pleasant. He froze my foot first with this can of cold air so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been but it definitely hurt. He stuck that needle there and put a whole bunch of cortisone in. My foot is still swollen.

When I got home I hung out with a friend and we watched the movie Passengers. I haven’t seen it before. It was really good. It would have been nice to see it in theaters. Definitely a worthwhile movie to watch.

We have an offer on the condo! For the past two years we have been landlords with a condo in Virginia Beach. This time around we didn’t want to keep the condo so we put it on the market for sale and someone has given us an offer. So if everything goes well will be selling it. Of course it could fall through and we’ll have to sell to someone else or be landlords again, but I think everything is going to work out.

Being a landlord hasn’t been bad, although it has been stressful recently with coordinating showings around the tenants. But we do have quiet tenants that have always paid on time.  But in January when we move to Colorado we are already going to be landlords for our little yellow house here in Moyock. We didn’t want to be landlords of two properties from such a long distance. A lot can go wrong and it can get expensive.

It will be hard to finally say bye to the condo. It was the first home that Craig ever bought, and it was the first home of our married lives. It’s the house we brought the baby back to when she was a newborn. It definitely has a lot of sentimental value. But you can’t make business decisions based purely on sentimental value and having too many rental properties when we’re going to be halfway across the country is a big liability. Someday we might go into the landlording business but I don’t think we want to do that until we are more settled. And even then it is only a maybe.

 

 

Anorexia 2

Food is excellent,

almost smells necessary.

So does everything that possesses you

 

If only people could turn off the clock and wean themselves from his

nefarious purposes…

 

You feel five feet wide and are at least 1.

On the counter,

chocolate in all his attractions. Do not listen to him.

Eat your salad.

This is hate.

Your teeth flicker on and off.

Your bones shrink in disgrace.

Sad Mornings

Lately I just can’t seem to feel any joy in the mornings. I don’t know why. I always have a good day to look forward to. But lately not only am I having a hard time waking up, I’m having a hard time getting up and getting going when I do finally wake up. I feel neither the urgency of the things I need to do nor the anticipation of the things I want to do. Instead I feel just sort of empty and low. I want to curl up in a ball and just stay still for the day. When I do finally get going I am okay, but I just haven’t been feeling my best in the mornings. I hope my mood is not starting to dip, as usually having a hard time getting out of bed is a sign that it is dropping. And today at lunch I actually had anxiety, which I haven’t had in a few weeks.

However I feel, I need to get more done during the day and I also want to make the most of and enjoy my mornings. So I need to come up with a plan to get me going earlier, and get me eager to start my day. I have a good life, so getting up in the morning should be something I look forward to.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to do several things to change my mornings. I’m going to set my alarm using an app called Alarm Clock Xtreme. The app settings allow you to require yourself to solve math problems of varying degrees of difficulty in order to snooze the alarm or turn it off. I’m hoping this forcing function of getting me to use my tired brain in the morning will force me to truly wake up. I’ve set the alarm for 8:02. Let’s see what time I wake up.

Now for the motivating myself to get out of bed part. I’m going to start setting daily checklists in my color note app in my color note calendar that will have reminders that pop up and show me what I need to do.  If that doesn’t help I’ll try Evernote or some other scheduling apps that might give me reminders of things I need and want to do. I’m hoping that just seeing a list of what I need and want to accomplish will help motivate me to get out of bed. I like Colornote because of the ease of use factor and because of all the rainbow colors it lets you use.

I’m going to try and start incorporating scripture in to my morning. Scripture can be so energizing and inspiring and it is the perfect way to start the day. So after making sure the baby has what she needs, and after letting the bunny out, I will dive into the Word. The Bible reminds me to take care of my family, my home, and myself – reminders I need when I’m not doing my best. And if the alarm I’m using to wake up actually works I should be awake early enough for once to have the chance to start the day with scripture.

Beyond that, I’m open to ideas. What can I do to dramatically change my mornings and my perspective on them? How can I take my mornings from unproductive and blah to creative and electric?

Craig is Home

Craig got home on Friday and we got to pick him up around noon. It has been so nice having him here. Angelica actually thinks he lives on the ship, and whenever he has to go to the ship she says he’s going home. Today we went to the ship for Craig to offload the rest of his stuff from his stateroom and she asked if daddy was going home. We try to explain to her that Daddy lives with us and just works on the ship, but after the last big deployment that doesn’t really seem to sink in with her and she’s quite sure Craig lives on the Eisenhower! It’s cute and sad at the same time.

We stayed in for most of the weekend, but today we went to Steak N Shake in Virginia Beach. I love that place. Forget my previous post about dieting. You can’t diet when the possibility of Steak N Shake exists. The diet will have to wait for another day. I got the shooter trio with two garlic burgers with cheese, and one cajun burger with cheese. Then I got an orange creamsicle milkshake. Delicious.

Parsnip is settling in to family life quite well. He apparently got out of his enclosure last night and Craig found him waiting patiently outside the enclosure this morning, wanting to get back in to get to his food and water. I don’t know whether he leaped over the side or  if he squeezed out because I didn’t have it secure enough. If he could squeeze out though you’d think he could squeeze back in, which makes me wonder if he jumped out and maybe had a hard time clearing that height. But at any rate he was not destructive even though he was by himself out of his enclosure for who knows how long, and today I even let him in the master bedroom and closet and bathroom, so now he has been everywhere except the FROG and laundry room.

I love it when he jumps up on the sofa to sit with me, and he grooms me and gives me kisses. He would have loved Jack. They are the best two bunnies ever. I’m so glad I found another companionable bunny. He makes the house more lively and cheerful. I always look forward to letting him out of his enclosure when I get home. He runs loose the whole time I’m home. He enjoys relaxing under the window behind the rocking chair in the library.

Angelica loves having him and is always petting him and feeding him. The first thing she does when I wake up in the morning is ask me to take him out. Getting a pet was definitely the right decision from her point of view as well. As I write, she’s playing with him.