I may contribute a verse?

Written by Megan

When Amanda began this project, we sat in our old sunny room as she worked on ideas for the name of her blog.  Coming up with names for things is sort of like being a popcorn popper--you plug into your idea outlet (and hope, as always, that it doesn't short or blow you up) and begin warming up the kernels that are rattling around inside your brain.  They start popping.  Unfortunately, in this situation you're not just the popcorn popper, you're also the person who has to eat the popcorn, and your corn kernels didn't come from a factory with excellent quality control policies, you just found them on the side of the road mostly, so nearly all of them, as they pop into form, are really only fit for the garbage can--they're burnt or half-popped or they're dead bugs.

Anyway, she was working on popping a batch of idea-corn, looking for the one that was edible, and she came up with Create the Day, a more specified, less overtly violent version of seizing it.  The title fit the project, and yet the project has plenty of room to grow within the title.  For example, it suddenly finds itself fitting me as a co-creator (the aptness!).

In a not-so-strange coincidence (as far as coincidences go), only a few days before Amanda granted me the boon of joining her here, I was watching John Keating whisper "carpe....carpe....carpe...diem" in the ears of his students.  I had decided to re-watch Dead Poets Society in preparation for a lesson I was teaching on poetry.

Aside from reminding me of the bitter shortness of this sweet life, the movie reminded me of something about poetry, about words hunted and herded and strung so carefully in order to say something.  Not to be cute, as Keating says, but to express real human passion--love, beauty, romance, the things we stay alive for:  These things are not naturally occurring scientific phenomena.  As a friend of mine recently put it, "there is no atom of empathy, no base-pair sequence of beauty."  These things that we stay alive for won't just rain down on us, we can't buy them in the vitamin aisle, and we won't blunder into them in blind and howling wanderings.  These are the things, not that we take from life, but the things we create and contribute.  And that is why I love this project.  It sums up the whole point of being alive.

I will try to create and contribute everyday,  and relate the best and worst of those experiences on this blog every other week perhaps.  In parting, here is a black-out poem I created during that lesson on poetry, rewritten rather than photographed because I made a mess of the original and I like the look of it in quasi-stanzas.

Morocco

As this village retreats
amid bread ovens and the sounds of braying,

pay attention--

When the sun sets
the mountaintops drift to prayer.


P.S. For more on black-out poetry (or, you know, just something on black-out poetry) visit artist-author Austin Kleon's page here: black-out poetry.

A Tale from the Memoirs of the Person I Was Almost

The day after my 10th birthday I woke up with a funny taste in my mouth.  Like steamed broccoli, but without the melted cheese sauce.

At breakfast I spooned sugared cereal slowly and thoughtfully into my mouth, wondering if more sugar would dissolve the funny taste.  It didn't.

It wasn't until I had gotten dressed and pretended to brush my teeth and sat down to watch reruns of mine and my siblings' favorite cartoons that I finally realized it.

Nothing had changed.

Now that I was 10 I still slept in the same bed, wore the same t-shirts, ate the same sugared cereals, and watched all the same cartoons as I had done when I was 9.  The only thing that was different from the past year was that I now finally had all my adult teeth.  But it turns out those were always hiding up under my other teeth, so I don't think it really counts.

No.  Something BIG needed to happen.  And fast.  Without really knowing how, I suddenly knew that if I didn't change something, I would never make it to 11.

My thoughts churned like ice cream in my gut until my parents asked me to get the mail after lunch.  And then there it was.  The answer to my dilemma.  A slick, yellow catalog of home listings.  I knew that was it.  I had to have my own place.

*  *  *

So, it's time for some explanations and a story about this other story.

First, the story.  For some odd reason I've developed a most frustrating sleeping problem this summer.  No matter the time or whether or not I've brushed my teeth, the moment I hit my bed, I can't sleep.  It's not that I'm wide awake, though, either.  I just lay there for who knows how long because all of a sudden my brain decides that it needs to figure out how much money I'll make this summer if I work an average of 20 hours/week for 13.5 weeks or how exactly I'm going to turn my grandmother's old cedar chest into a love-seat.  Originally, I was chalking it up to anxiety about my new job, but now that I've adjusted to the idea of putting my life on pause for 5 hours a day nearly every day, I don't know what the matter is.  Anywho, that was way too much info.  Basically, the other night, I was lying in bed, like I do, and I start thinking about how I was obsessed with the idea of living on my own when I was a wee, small bairn.  And then this happened.

Now for some explaining.  First of all, I want to explain a little about what I've just explained.  I don't want people to get the idea that I'm one of those types who keeps a notebook by their bed so they can write down all their genius ideas when they wake up with them in the middle of the night.  No, most of the stuff that occupies my mind at night are things I've already planned and written down, generally.  Things that I just need to get done, but can't because I'm lying in a bed, trying to sleep.  There was also no overpowering urge that forced me out of bed or violent muse that seized my mind until I penned these words.  I wrote this down because I liked it and because I wasn't asleep.

What I think I'm getting at is this.  I'm tired of the "artist" stereotype.  That creative people are simply born that way.  That ideas are more akin to spirits possessing the body than actual people using their actual brains.  I could keep going, but I'll stop there.  It's not that people place this stereotype on me, but I'm just tired of seeing it in the art world in general.  It's often made me feel like I can't measure up because I have no childhood trauma to inspire masterpieces or things like that.  And what's more, people who have a propensity for creativity are completely turned off, because they don't fit the culture.

Um, okay.  Why do I always let these "explanations" get so out there?  Moving on.

Another explanation.  Remember that resolution of mine?  The one about three posts a month?  Remember how my last post was in March?  And now it's half-way through May?  Yeah.  Turns out, I don't think resolutions are exactly the best idea for me.  When I make them, I'm so full of energy and feel like I can accomplish whatever task I set my mind to.  And I could, if only that energy would last.  Unfortunately, for me, that kind of energy doesn't last.  Sometimes I'll have it in spades for a decent amount of time, but other time I come crashing down and end up sleeping in my closet for a week or so while I hid from the world.  Well, when I finally emerge, I suddenly see all those things that I told myself I would do, and I see how I haven't done them, and then I get discouraged.  So, before I delve too deep into the incredibly pointless and boring ups and downs that construct my life at the mo', I come to you all with a solution to my resolution.  (A reresolution?)

I cannot take credit for this solution, as it wasn't even my idea.  My sister Megan and I love doing all sorts of projects together, but unfortunately we live too far apart to get together that often.  She suggested some type of combined summer project for the two of us, but I was perhaps a little too pessimistic and pointed out the statistical likelihood of its demise.  Eventually, she asked for a boon.  To join me on this blogging adventure.

I think it's a superb idea.  We both find a lot of fun a excitement from creating the day and double the authors means double the posts (and hopefully the frequency).

From now on, underneath each title, we'll put by Megan or by Amanda or some other mark of distinguishment so readers will know who they're reading from.  I think things are going to start turning up here, and I hope it will be enjoyed by all.

Ta!