July 2, 2009
13: Gently Down the Stream of Consciousness
1. My two favorite words heard recently are brouhaha and jalopy.
2. I keep getting the Jubilee and the Jamboree mixed up. We have both in Floyd now.
3. I’ve been calling the Station, the newly renovated old building in town with apartments upstairs, the Dakota of Floyd.
4. While shopping this week I saw a bright gold bra with a smiley face on one of the cups.
5. My first trip to the Country Club pool resulted in some pictures of the tadpoles (a pre-beginner swim class), at least 13 of them.
6. Learn why I have a brand new pink blow up raft not yet out of the package HERE.
7. I bought four new cushion lawn chairs that unfortunately required some assembly but when we opened the box to put them together, we discovered there were no screws, bringing a whole new meaning to “we were screwed!”
8. I just got a message from the little voice within that my rice cooking on the stove is burning. Be right back.
9. The rice was stuck to the bottom of the pan but still eatable.
10. Speaking of pan, I was recently asked in a meme that I didn’t finish to name a fictitious character who made a lasting impression and my answer was Peter Pan.
11. Because I grew up on a tiny peninsula in between Boston and Cape Cod, I’m fortunate that I can visit my family and have a beach vacation at the same time.
12. Whenever I say Cape Cod, I think about when I was a young girl picking wild blueberries there with my grandmother, which leads to remembering a poem I wrote about baking a birthday blueberry pie for my son Josh … I feel my grandmother's wildness in me … navigating rough edges of coastline … as I steer the rolling pin like an oar … like an antique relic from her "roaring 20s" … it rocks back and forth … And especially this stanza: As I search the bowl of blueberries … for the bluest black ones … I remember 4 and 20 … blackbirds baked in a pie … and my son arranging battles … between blueberries and grapes … The blueberries always lost because he ate them …
13. I just this second remembered that Josh’s birthday is on July 10 and I may be away for his birthday, so now I’m going downstairs to find a card to send him.
More Thirteen Thursday fun HERE.
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July 1, 2009
Tea Haiku
A scented cloud lifts
from a lake of Darjeeling
Bamboo flute notes rise
Post Note: Click and scroll down HERE for more tea poems.
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June 30, 2009
Gone to Soon June
By the end of June the Parkway rhododendrons are weeping petals and roadside lilies are looking sassy. ‘Fireworks For Sale’ signs have become evident and everyone seems to be having a yard sale.
My one year old grandson likes me. He holds out his arms now for me to pick him up. He’s not big on waving bye-bye but he likes to point. Whada? Means “What’s that?” and Getah means “get that.” Every week when I see him there’s a new discovery to make. Today I discovered that he likes blueberries more than any boy I’ve known. He can also hear NO from me now without it breaking his heart and he lets me wash his face after breakfast.
Every year I wonder what would my garden look like if I stayed home all summer, if I kept up with the weeding, if I clipped back the overgrowth, used a weed whacker, or if cleaned out my cellar and pantry. Then the screen door slams, I track garden dirt and bugs follow me inside. At night I jump on the trampoline under a big moon and the beach begins to call.
Every summer I’m torn between barefoot mornings, lazy hammock afternoons with visiting family and seeing more of the world. Between going and staying, between doing and not doing, between mountains and sea.
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June 29, 2009
Where Visual Art and Poetry Converge
Floyd artist Lora Geissler (pictured above with two of her paintings) asked members of the Floyd Writers Circle to put a poetic voice to her recent body of work. At a Show Opening at the Café del Sol on Sunday, Mara Robbins, Rosemary Wyman and myself performed some of the poetry that resulted from her request. Although we knew the literal subject of many Lora’s painting was an old rusty sink abandoned on a beach in Maine, her zoomed in artist’s eye and sensibility transformed the ordinary into archetypal landscapes that lent themselves to personal interpretation and to the stirring of poetry.
Rosemary read her poem "Convergence," titled for the painting of the same name. Behind milky scrim … shadowy limbs collect … ready to present. Indistinct faces press … anxious to peer … through the caul.
Mara’s poem of the same name, written for the same painting, began with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." It read in part … Howl in the background, falling … ribbon, shells, signs. Birchbark … peeling out of sight, last night … when the stars … were stars, your fingers … This frame. The poem she’s reading in the above shot is titled “Cave of Disembodied Legs” and goes with the picture on her left, titled “Within.”
My little sips of haiku-inspired verse inviting the listener to slip in-between worlds were of moon and sun as star crossed lovers, a well, a skull, a kiss. A woman’s capacity … Love echoes far … I see myself … I see myself … I see. And Loyal companion … Fixed gaze … Death shows life … The way.
Lora was the 2008 winner of the Staunton Art in the Park Best in Show, winning a ribbon and a $1,000 prize, along with a solo exhibit at the Staunton Augusta Art Center, which took place this past spring. In an article for The Floyd Press about that exhibit Rosemary described Lora’s work as embodying … a silent generosity – a palpable quality of meditative introspection and reverence … She writes, … For Lora Leigh whole landscapes are to be found where sun bleached New England granite ledge has split apart to produce a deep inky crevice, or where Pacific tides and winds constantly erode sandstone cliffs unearthing prehistoric looking egg-shaped boulders. You can check out Lora’s website HERE.
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June 26, 2009
Marching to a Summer Drummer
The first taste of blueberries picked from the garden, the first splashed dunk in the Country Club pool. Meals on the porch. Everyday an outside tea party attended in sundress style. The lawn chairs are moved from the open sun, tucked under pine trees in the shade. The dog looks forlorn, overdressed in fur. Industrious carpenter ants with appetites for our log home, leave telltale piles of wood dust around. Flip flops flap and butterflies flit. I slow down and listen to the symphony of wild. Every buzz, chirp, tweet, and drone tells me what I want to hear, that summer is in full swing.
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June 25, 2009
Does it Grow Corn?
1. My corn is taller than a toddler.
2. If it was a kid it would be in the second grade.
3. “Does it Grow Corn?” is a Native American expression not so unlike “Walk your Talk,” one that I first heard from Medicine Man Sun Bear when he came to Floyd in the 80’s and I wrote about his visit in the Museletter.
4. I might as well be a car mechanic. My hands stay that stained and dirty from gardening all summer long.
5. I just went to write “Sesame Seeds” on my grocery list and wrote “Sesame Street” instead.
6. I haven’t seen a tomato horn worm since I was scared by them as a girl.
7. In case you missed it, the last paragraph in THIS post describes praying mantis sex.
8. Over the weekend I spent the good part of a day in compromising positions that involved ladders and dangling between branches off the edge of the porch while trimming the humongous forsythia bush in front of our house.
9. On my way to town for Floyd’s first annual jubilee festival, I imagined that friends there would ask me how I was doing and that I would answer, “As well as can be expected for someone who just spent an entire day tackling a bush twice as high and five times wider than me.” Of course I ended up answering “pretty good” when they really asked.
10. Because my car needs a new tie rod and makes knocking sounds when I go over bumps, I took the paved road route to town for the Jubilee. While driving I passed the house we lived in before this one (eighteen years ago) and saw a young boy in the yard planting something with his mother. It made me nostalgic for my sons as little boys.
11. While I was at the Jubilee and the Spoken Word Open Mic, my husband Joe spent a very fulfilling Father’s Day weekend helping my Asheville Potter Son with building projects in preparation for the Carolina Kiln Build on his compound in Marshall County. The day after he returned he went down the mountain to baby sit Bryce, my youngest son Dylan’s baby boy. Later, he thanked me for bringing him into such a wonderful family. (My kids were five and seven when Joe and I got together.)
12. I started a list of alternative answers to the question “How are you?” but I wrote them on the back of an envelope while driving and I can’t read my own writing now.
13. What would you do if you ran into one of THESE guys in the garden?
More 13 Thursday play HERE.
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June 23, 2009
A Daze of Daisy Days
A Maze of Daisies
A Vase of Daisies
She Loves Me. She Loves Me Not.
She Loves Me!
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June 22, 2009
Just When You Thought the Floyd Spoken Word Couldn’t Get Any Bigger
An overflowing crowd packed the Café del Sol for June’s Spoken Word Open Mic. With the warm glow of evening sun streaming in, the café was abuzz with a celebratory din left over from the town's Jubilee festival that day. There was pizza eating, card playing, cappuccino sipping, and socializing, but all quieted to a hush when the readers took to the stage.
Three members of the Floyd Writer’s Circle, Rosemary Wyman, Mara Robbins, and I opened the evening with poetry interpretations to Lora Geissler’s abstract art that hung on the Café Walls. Eight contributors to the new spring issue of Floyd County Moonshine shared their literary talents. Two poets visiting from Washington D.C. joined the performing line-up, along with returning members of the Spoken Word community and a couple of first time readers. 
Mara, Floyd County Moonshine’s new associate editor and acting emcee, stood on the café coffee table, projecting her voice over the crowd, welcoming them and reviewing the open mic guidelines. With twenty-eight readers of short stories, poetry, essays, and excerpts from novels and memoirs, the ten minute reading slots had to be cut back to five minutes.
The first Moonshine reader Charles Swanson, who teaches creative writing and composition at Gretna High School, followed Mara’s lead and stood on the coffee table until café owner Sally Walker arrived with the PA system that someone said she borrowed from the Floyd Country Store. Ropes of spider webs hanging …from the low log lintel … we knocked back with a stick … and Granddad made … with twigs and tobacco twine … a broom to sweep the floor, Swanson read from a poem titled "Broom" about reclaiming a barn from an overgrown tobacco patch. He also read a poem about the drinkable kind of Moonshine, which was written from a variety of voices.
“I don’t think I can shout haiku,” I said when it was my turn to share my minute of tiny poems inspired by Lora’s paintings. By the time I returned to the stage later in the evening for the four minutes remaining of my five minute slot, I was speaking into a mic. From my “Fit to Be Quipped” punch line series excerpted from my blog, I read, My husband Joe has thick curly hair. When my kids were little and Joe needed a haircut, they would tease him by calling him “Ofra” Winfrey. Now when he needs a haircut we just call him Rob Blagojevich. Although I could perfectly pronounce “Blagojevich” all through the day, when I read it on stage I needed the help of the audience to get it right.
Other Floyd County Moonshine contributors reading included Floyd Moonshine editor Aaron Moore, author Neva Bryan, Emory and Henry teacher Felicia Mitchell, Radford poet Cynthia Ring, Hollins University Creative Writing student Sharon Mirtaheri, and Floyd’s own Jayn Avery, who Mara introduced as “potter by trade and writer by impulse.” 
Before reading an excerpt from his novel Barn Blazing, Aaron told the crowd that the deadline for the summer Floyd County Moonshine is June 30. It will be an all Floyd edition, he said.
Civilizations crumbled beneath me—a plethora of insects and spiders fled beneath the swipes of the pendulating scythe. I, being a veritable voyeur, only relented at the sight of one thing: preying mantis sex. The male was much lesser in stature than the female, propped on the female’s back sitting rigid while hugging her reddish-purple thorax. She was a massive creature compared to him, beautiful in an alien sort of fashion. When they were alerted to my presence, she bore him with her and he held on. ~ From Barn Blazing by Aaron Moore
Post notes: Contributors pictured reading from Floyd Country Moonshine are Charles Swanson, Cynthia Ring, Felicia Mitchell, and Sharon Mirtaheri. Submissions to Floyd County Moonshine, a regional literary and art magazine, should be sent as an attachment to floydshine@gmail.com. Inquiries about advertising and subscriptions can also be made at that address. Copies of Moonshine are available in cafes around town for $7.
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June 21, 2009
Scenes from the First Annual Floyd Town Jubilee
1. My favorite dust sprinkling Blue Fairy walks on clouds.
2. View of the Floyd Country Store from the newly renovated Station at Locust Street, which was celebrating their Grand Opening with tours. The building, once home of Mama Lizzardo’s Restaurant, combines studio businesses, a tasting room, restaurant, and apartments upstairs. It's very impressive inside and out and the tour was a highlight of the day.
3. The Floyd Artist Association moved from Art Under the Sun and has a new gallery in the Station. The group also had an outside booth for the day (pictured). Tina Liza Jones (far right), a FAA member, led a group in an old time jam.
4. Looking down from one of the Station’s balconies onto Jubilee venders selling pottery, clothing, jewelry, art, food, and more.
5. A Wizard of Oz wind blew up and vendors helped other vendors hold the forts down.
6. Veterans raising money for veteran causes selling paper poppy flowers as a jamboree mountaineer passes by.
7. Young Actors Coop and Floyd belly dancers paraded through downtown bringing whimsy and theatrics to the event.
8. The first annual Floyd Jubilee was also a celebration of the new Warren Lineberry Memorial Park, named for a Floyd judge and active community member who passed away in 2003, and was brought to us by The Partnership for Floyd citizen group. There was general frolicking on the lawn all day, in this case to the tunes of Upland Express.
9. It was a great turnout and I think everyone who attended would agree the Jubilee was a success. There were tractor rides and a garden Par-Tea on the lawn of one historic home. I was sorry I missed some of the other musical performances, Rob Neurirch’s storytelling at the Hotel Floyd amphitheater stage, and the Hollerin’ Contest (but cafe owner Sally Walker gave us a good sample of the hollerin’ at the Café del Sol Spoken Word later that night).
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June 19, 2009
I Made My First Soul Collage Card and I Love It
Having just come off a dizzying roller coaster ride of the written word, I went to an open house art day at Rosemary’s house to play in the world of non-verbal fairytale, to tell a deeper story with image and color. There was sunlight shining in on the dining room table, strawberry rhubarb pie and blueberry muffins, scissors and glue stick, and wise woman talk.
It turns out that making a soul collage card is a lot like writing poetry. It’s an intuitive process that when you get it right feels like hitting the nail on the head, like finding an antidote for the over-rush of days, a ticket for the psyche to travel. Some make a whole deck of soul collage cards with suits for readings. I was happy today just to make one.
I don’t remember looking for the pieces or the parts that make up my first soul collage. It started with a sage green sheet of letters brought by another budding soul collage artist. The rest just seemed to appear before me. It manifested like a doodle I was hardly aware I was working on.
I love gazing at it. I love the 5X8 card size. I love not interpreting it into words, but knowing on some level exactly what it means and knowing that the meaning can change with the tiniest shift of perception. Have her roller skates been underused or overused? Is that Van Gogh’s sunflower, the same one that hung for years on my fridge with the words of Rumi printed on it: Let yourself be silently drawn to the stronger pull of what you really love?
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From the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia I write to synthesize what I'm learning at the time, whether it be poetry, a political commentary, or a letter to my mother in Hull, Massachusetts, where I'm originally from. Whenever I don't know exactly what it is I'm doing and it borders on wasting my time, I call it research. 'Dear Abby, How can I get rid of freckles?' was my first published piece at the age of 11.
