Loose Leaf Notes

1. I dreamt all night that I was filling out a form to report how the January 6th insurrection affected me. I kept having to start over or get a new form to fill out.

2. When I lost you in Paris / we were both naïve / not to have made a plan / Now there are secrets I’m not in on / and sometimes you don’t say a word / I see you but you don’t see me / We still argue over who looked away first… From Objects are Closer Than They Appear, which appeared in my poetry memoir of the same title, the third in a trilogy.

3. “Hitting an emotional chord, talking to my late sister in dreams, becoming a tourist to my own aging and inhabiting the inner life where the ground of consciousness isn’t mine alone, these are some of the themes that Objects are Closer Than They Appear explore. Every remnant pulled from memory or a dream resonates with an afterlife, as if they were visitations from the same place where my dead loved ones are, closer than they seem. Through the landmarks of foundational lived-experience and the transcendence of dreams, I am writing the psyche’s story, leaving my poet’s thumbprint, love letters to whom it concerns.” -From the back cover of Objects are Closer Than They Appear

4. Entropy or Atrophy?

5. She said don’t worry about a crash or running out of gas. Destiny is the orbit of a developmental path.

6. When a birth is happening / All of the universe/ Coalesces to attend / So it is with someone’s death / Time opens the doorway – Read more about our community memorial celebration for our friend Monika and the rest of this poem by Katherine Chantal HERE. 

7. The Whale should have won Best Picture. Would the classic book Moby Dick be banned today?

8. “Moby-Dick may be the first work of western fiction to feature a same-sex marriage: Ishmael, the loner narrator (famous for the most ambiguous opening line in literature) gets hitched – in bed – to the omni-tattooed Pacific islander, Queequeg: “He pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.” -The Guardian

9. I also recently watched the movie classic, Soylent Green, an ecological dystopian thriller, on one of those retro channels and was surprised to see that in 1973 the movie was based on “The Greenhouse Effect,” causing dying oceans, year-round humidity, food, water and housing shortages. It was set in 2022.

10. “The greenhouse effect happens when certain gases collect in Earth’s atmosphere. Greenhouse gases from human activities are the most significant driver of observed climate change since the mid-20th century. Worldwide, net emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities increased by 43 percent from 1990 to 2015. Emissions of carbon dioxide, which account for about three-fourths of total emissions, increased by 51 percent over this period. As with the United States, the majority of the world’s emissions result from transportation, electricity generation, and other forms of energy production and use.” -EPA

11. It was a steep switch-back climb. I Ieft Joe in the dust because my bike has an electric motor and his does not. At the top is the world’s largest man-made star. Erected in 1949, the Mill Mountain Star sits 1,045 above the Roanoke city. It represents the spirit of the Star City and stands 88 feet tall. It lights up at night! – More HERE.

12. “Advice for the class of 2000: Run away and join the circus. Get a tattoo, hop a train. Plant a garden and save the seeds. Get married, have kids, wear a hat. Get good with a bullwhip. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal. Everyone must put beans on the table. Be devoted to the unification of the diverse aspects of yourself. Remember, most of what is essential is invisible to the eye. The quality of time you spend with someone far outweighs the quantity. And there’s a lot you can do with a wah-wah pedal and a bullet mike.” – Tom Waits

13. “An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.” James Baldwin

_____________Thirteen Thursday

When a birth is happening
All of the universe
Coalesces to attend
So it is with someone’s death
Time opens the doorway
As it so wonts
To allow
Passage of leaving
As we wait upon,
As we attend
The slipping away of a body
The soul prepares
For union
Once again

Being with Monika
Watching her these past
Months, weeks, days
Knowing these moments
Were coming, closer
Was just an idea
As every need, day by day
Fades into oblivion

Could it really be we had a
Conversation just yesterday
It was about the artist she was
A photographer
We laughed and shared
Parts of who she was
In our time together
She accepted all
Allowing us the privilege
Of attending her

Today, Monika looks like
One of the beautiful native women
She so lovingly lived with long ago
She brought many home with her
Witnessed by the extraordinary
Photographs of their regal faces

I gaze upon her profile these
Last hours and see her
As one of them
Sitting proudly, gazing inward
As her vision of this world
Recedes

Her last days
The wisdom is beyond words
Beyond comprehending
Simply living my transformation
While she lives in her dying
The mystery she is living

But may never reveal
One I might only know
When I am in her place
I am awed and humbled
As tears roll down my face

If I cast my net
Made of light
What gathers within
Becomes, not mine

_________Wordless Wednesday

We biked up to the top of Mill Mountain from the Roanoke River Greenway.

It was a steep switch-back climb. I Ieft Joe in the dust because my bike has an electric motor and his does not.

At the top is the world’s largest man-made star. Erected in 1949, the Mill Mountain Star sits 1,045 above the Roanoke city. It represents the spirit of the Star City and stands 88 feet tall. It lights up at night!

According to a Roanoke government webpage: “The site offers 500 acres of parkland atop Mill Mountain. In addition to a zoo, the site offers picnic areas, hiking trails, and two overlooks that provide 20 and 60-mile vistas across the City of Roanoke.”

I deserved a good IPA after the ride. I ordered this one at the Wasena City Tap Room because it was called Three Floyd’s Barbarian Haze, but it was from Indiana.

Joe took a video of me singing along with Love Potion #9 as I sipped my beer. I must have been a little drunk (It doesn’t take much) because when we left, we went next door to the Roanoke Mountain Adventures outfitters and I left my camera there.  We called the next day and it was still there! (which is why this post exists).

_____Wordless Wednesday

1. I was playing Old Maid with my youngest grandson and wondered out loud what a comparable word for an old maid would be for a man, and he suggested, “Old Butler.” It took me a moment.

2. As we played cards, my eldest grandson played some Master of Puppets Metallica on guitar.

3. Thug Life or Pub Life?

4. There was a lot of green to be seen at McDaniel’s Tavern at Buffalo Mountain Brewery last night and a new brew called Lucky Charm. I was already lucky because I had just come from The Great Clover Hunt with Muriel Alderman at Floyd’s Center for the Arts and found my first wild four-leaf clover. Ninety-year-old Muriel had a pop-up exhibit at the Center displaying her decades of luck finding the four-leaf rare variations of the common three-leaf clover, known in Ireland as the shamrock… Read all about it and see pictures HERE.

5. Faintly green / still spending its luck / a lottery shamrock / crisply pressed / Like a thousand dollar bill / of whimsical windfall / rich with what is possible / and suspending all doubt… Read In Clover in its entirety HERE. 

6. “Shamrock, or “seamrag” in Gaelic, means “little clover” which is so fitting because shamrocks and flour-leaf clovers belong to the white clover plant family. You can easily spot the difference between the two because shamrocks have three leaves (or leaflets, technically) while four-leaf clovers have, obviously, four leaflets. It takes a rare genetic mutation to get that extra leaf which is why it’s so difficult to find a four-leaf clover. Research places the difficulty at 1/10,000, so if you’re trying to find one of your own, you’re going to need to scan a large area.”

7. The older I get the more I have Déjà vu because it really did happen before.

8. Soul or solo?

9. The piece below, showcased at the Fibers of Nature Floyd Center for the Arts exhibit, is titled ‘Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn,’ but I think it’s more a ‘Cinderella’s Ball Fairy Godmother’s Creation.

10.  LOVE THIS. 

11. She said death is a launch / into another new morning / into an embryonic heaven / in a sea of outer space / where our cells defy gravity / and our minds lose their grasp / where dark matter pulls us together / and dark energy pushes us apart… Read The Speed of Light in its entirety HERE. 

12. “Poems meet the raw needs of our most vulnerable inner selves in a disarmingly primal way, using a simple tool no other sort of language mobilises in quite the same manner: predictable, physical, rhythmical repetition. Poetry chants and incants; it excites and lulls… Metred words, treated with reverence and care, have the unique potential to meet us halfway, uniting mind and body, conscious and unconscious self… From How poetry casts a spell through the rhythmic magic of metre

13. I’m looking for new focus / Some good luck / A power-up / A brainstorm to build on / A combination to unlock / I’ m searching for the next step / A sign to point the way / A word play / A game change / A poem to hold my place… Read Fill in the Blanks in its entirety HERE.

____________Thirteen Thursday

There was a lot of green to be seen at McDaniel’s Tavern at Buffalo Mountain Brewery last night and a new brew called Lucky Charm.

I was already lucky because I had just come from The Great Clover Hunt with Muriel Alderman at Floyd’s Center for the Arts and found my first wild four-leaf clover.

Ninety-year-old Muriel had a pop-up exhibit at the Center displaying her decades of luck finding the four-leaf rare variations of the common three-leaf clover, known in Ireland as the shamrock.

I found my first 4-leaf clover in a used book that I bought a book sale (which I wrote a poem about HERE) and the second in my brother Danny’s wallet (featured in THIS poem) after he died and this was the first time I found one in the grass. I was elated and felt like I had won the luck lottery!

But the Irish legacy is one of paradox. The luck of the Irish is super-imposed over Murphy’s Law (if something can go wrong it will).  Twenty minutes after finding my first four leaf clover, I pulled out the art center and scraped my car against a driveway barrier. That’s not good luck, I thought to myself, but then when I got home, I saw no marks on the car, I found my white beret that I had been looking for and received free medication in the mail from Abbvie Patient Assistance for a very expensive drug I now need, so good luck maybe, after all.

Later, Joe and I enjoyed chatting with friends at the brewery and hearing a bag pipe performance by Geoffrey of the Appalachian Piping Academy.

We enjoyed a delicious Irish-Inspired menu from the Vittles food truck, as well as left over biscuits, the name of the featured band. Sing along HERE.

This is the picture our friend Lester took just before my shamrock pin fell in my Irish stew and we had to fish it out with a spoon.

HERE’S Joe singing The Star of County Down (the Irish song with  my name in it) to me four years ago. Maybe next year he’ll sing it at the tavern.

And HERE I am drinking green beer a few years ago at the Tavern. Sláinte!

Life is a number’s game
A countdown to morning
where I re-member myself
and start over each day

where I watch a patch of blue
follow it from my window
being pushed aside
by a flood of cloud cover

I have dark thoughts
I told a woman in a dream
She said don’t say dark
the dark is fertile

It comes from the ground
before it reaches for the sun
and returns to darkness
when its glory day is done

Life force is fuel
Time is invisible
A broken mirror
of chaos and order

I put on my suit
but wander off course
I write a poem I don’t like
and use my thoughts for navigation

She said don’t worry about a crash
or running out of gas
Destiny is the orbit
of a developmental path

And death is a launch
into another new morning
into an embryonic heaven
in a sea of outer space

where our cells defy gravity
and our minds lose their grasp
where dark matter keeps us together
and dark energy pushes us apart

________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United/dVerse Poets Pub

1. Because of my dyscalculia, Joe says, “If you were a band your name would be “Wrong Direction” instead of “One Direction.”

2. The new goal of my poetry readings is: “Reading Poetry that Jack Has Never Heard.”

3. I’ve read with carpenter poet Jack Callan at his Fairmount Five readings in Norfolk, as one in his ensemble readings for the Poetry Society of Virginia, at the Little River Poetry Festival and the Monthly Spoken Word nights at Café Del Sol. Now we have Jack-led open mic readings the third Wednesday of each month at the library.

4. Wiseman or wise guy?

5. “Are languages then just a collection of words, syntax, and semantics? I’d like to sometimes see them as seeds and sometimes as fields – alive as the minds, tongues, throats, bodies and air they pass through; germinating, growing roots, bearing fruit, evolving like beings. But also holding space, expanding out like a unique land of perception. A non-physical geography hosting human and non-human drama. A living medium, a speech-scape.”  -M. Yuvan

6. I’m a movie buff who loves to fashion watch, loves to watch musical performances, to see people succeed and give emotional speeches, so of course I love to watch the Academy Awards like others love the Super Bowl.

7. But we don’t get network channel ABC, so Joe and I rented a room in a local hotel that gets the channel in. It had a hot tub, and we made it a date night sleep over.

8. I met poet Naomi Shihab Nye indirectly through a friend when she was in Roanoke for a keynote talk at a Contemplative Higher Education Alliance Conference. He said she was interested in learning more about my and Katherine’s Soulful Aging Tour poetry readings, so I sent a description and he sent it to her, but then I read the below (with excerpted lines) poem she wrote, and, although I relate to it, I knew it meant that I would never hear from her, a successful busy poet who teaches at Texas State University.

9. The Art of Disappearing –  When they say Don’t I know you? / say no. / When they invite you to the party / remember what parties are like / If they say We should get together / say why? / When someone recognizes you in a grocery store / nod briefly and become a cabbage…

10. Before.

11. After.

12. A Hub for Clubs at the Floyd Country Store.

13. Fight, flight or freeze, daylight saved. It was like a face-off between winter and spring HERE.

__________Thirteen Thursday

Daylight Saved

Daffodils Chilled

Bouquet on Ice

Snow Kidding

A groove to move. The Parachute Brigade Lands at Dogtown. Thanks for the dance music!

But it was Knitting Bee

and Scrabble Social at the Floyd Country Store, a homey hub for lunch hour clubs.