I'm just waiting on a phone call

As it so often happens in this business, suddenly work and clients are pouring in. I stopped typing for a minute to find wood to knock on. I settled for the metal locker in my studio because that was the closest thing, and it's the thought that counts.

This Monday morning, I am sitting wearily in my studio waiting for a phone call. I am also sitting here with Chris, and we are drinking coffee and watching Lost. Not that we have given up on House, of course. We are simply branching out.

Friday, I finished some work I had had, and today I need to do more. But right now, I'm too sleepy to do anything but type a few thoughts and drink my coffee and, well, a cigarette or two won't hurt...

On Friday night, I had a headache so I stayed home. Dereck had gone out for dinner with a thesis committee he was on. While I was at home watching House with Chris (I made him watch the season finale of Season 4, which is awesome), my friend Jamie called. Jamie is a poet. He and his wife Karen, who is also a poet, were going to come by with their friend Mary. They didn't end up coming by. Dereck told me later that Mary is also a poet, and she was giving a reading on Saturday. It turns out there was a whole conference last weekend that I would have loved to have gone to, but that's life.

So, Saturday afternoon, I went to hear Mary read. And she was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Of course, none of the poems she read Saturday are published yet. I recognized a lot of myself in her poems. I was lucky that I had a chance to go and hang out with her and Jamie and Karen and their friend Allegra that evening for an hour.

They were playing with a dream website and we were talking about recurring dreams. I mentioned that my recurring anxiety dreams are always that I am in an airport, train station, or hotel that is like a labyrinth. I can't ever get to my destination because I am stuck, but I end up having such interesting adventures that I end up not caring. And for the first time, it occurred to me that maybe my dreams are trying to tell me that even if I am not at the point in my life that I may think I need to be, even if it feels like I am being waylaid en route to my destination, maybe the journey IS the point. And maybe the fact that it's so interesting along the way makes up for not arriving.

Mary looked at me and said, "I've known you for ten minutes and I knew that's what your dreams meant. This means that you need to stop worrying about not writing. Live your life, take care of your children. This is more interesting."

I mentioned to her that when I first became friends with Jamie (I met him before I met Karen because she teaches in Southern Missouri), I was excited to have a poet to talk shop with. However, we almost never talk shop. She said, "All of my closest friends are poets, and I can assure you, we never talk about the craft of poetry. We share a worldview so we hang out."

Yes.

I was also thinking yesterday of how fortunate I have been to meet so many interesting people in my life-- many of them right here. It made me feel better about where I live. I was also thinking about Emily Dickinson. She rarely left her house. Yet, what a very vivid life of the mind she had!

Every once in awhile I have to rattle my cage and then I eventually accept again my perimeters. Until I don't.

I did start knitting. I am making another shawl. I have gotten a lot done on it so far-- I love the pattern. It's very easy and repetitive, which suits me. It has enough variation to keep me from getting bored. I am enjoying the process and the soft alpaca yarn, but I am always impatient when I am working for the final project. And then to start another one. I have two more projects in mind after this one, and lovely yarn to use for them.

Here is my shawl so far:


I hope things are going well for you.