Alligators, alligators, alligators
Just go there metaphorically
and I'll see you below in a minute.


Thanks to everyone in the writing group last night for
confiding your insecurity and reluctance
and exposing your brilliance, wit and poetry
and making me feel so much less alone
and more alive
also the laughing was good.

I've sent in my manifesto for my December 14 reading. The one I didn't send went like this:

Artist Manifesto


This is just
to say
there never is
a perfect time to write
so I have to do it now
even though I don’t want to
I’m not good enough
my pen is out of ink
and I have a fever
and chilblains.


---

Boy do I like the word "AND" and the run-on sentence. Check out Gertrude Stein's "Paris France" and know I'm in excellent company. Of course she's writing in a child voice. I worry I mostly write in a child's voice also, but big whoop. Keep writing. That is also my poetry manifesto. Amen.

Right now I am supposed to be packing. Who is supposing I am packing you ask? Two friends who are arriving at my house this morning so we can carpool to the train to take us to Portland where I guess it might be snowing. I am sitting here on assignment, my own assignment, I have pledged better dilligence and to stop already with the discouragement and just jazz away at the keyboard and f**k em if they can't take a joke. I'll be happier. It's obvious I'm never going to be any kind of productive in a USA sense (cue flags not fiddles) or for that matter in an instrumental sense (now cue violins, pianos, congas and recorders. an odd assortment but I've played them all and am going for accuracy here.) What the heck was I driving at? I guess that I have to quit with the worrying about my worth and just do what I do - write and cut and paste and read and work with kids to say it's okay to dork around with creative stuff. I want me for a teacher actually because in the classroom dang it I am convincing and convinced that this life I advocate is worthwhile. I hate the word and concept worthwhile. We're all rooting in the turquise mud its just that some of us are wearing Keens and some of us are wearing Manolos and some of us are barefoot and there's that and again, which I really really like. I also like the word really and the word so and the word anyway. I like to write anyway as anyways, which I think is hilariously funny.

Here is an edit of my poem I wrote in 6th grade last week:

Eulogy for Mesopotamia

O once magnanimous land,
irrigation pushed
history's heavy plow
through muscled soil
steady dowry for generations
stylus cut metronome
free-writing language
altered earth carrying
civilization into mist
as silt lifts skyward,
topsoil gone to myth.

--
My daughter says she is often disappointed at how dull people are who she's met through IMing - she imagines the attitudinal slant she would put on phrases like "LOL" and discovers lots of folks are happy to exist on the boring straight ahead level. I hate IMing though it has made introducing the game Acronymble in school much easier because the kids know zillions of acronyms now.
I am all over the map as I ready (or delay readying) to go south a bit on the map.

Two books on my must-read list:
Set this House on Fire by Matt Ruff
Where the Sea Used to Be by Rick Bass

Have you seen Darjeeling Limited yet? Ah
Wes Anderson Wes Anderson Wes Anderson.

Thinking about an artist manifesto instead of preparing to teach

Two days more, counting today, with the eighth and sixth graders. Today we're revising. I'll bring my bucket'o thesauri and my handouts. Some of the eighth graders will bring their vast aleoli wiggling lungs and some will bring their quiet writing selves. All the sixth graders will wiggle. And write. Meanwhile I will think about what I believe as an artist. Not what I believe as a teaching artist or a teacher or a mother or a wife or a homeowner or a gardener or driver or political being or coxswain. What does my artist believe?

Joy exists in, among, between, under, inside and through words.
It doesn't matter if I'm good or published or part of a movement when I am inside my work.
What is beside the point is the point.
The truth lies in the gaps.
Seek and ye will find diddly squat, keep writing.
Read, read, read, read, read, read.
Write, write, write, write, write, write.
You won't always know art when you see it, keep writing.

Sheffer Crossword Puzzle for Thursday, November 8

Pass the pita, mash the yam. Byte
me. Ono bounced like Roo above
Lennon's sour mood. Kid, whose egos
ache indigo? Elaine's?
Ooh, but OTB means nothing - B for
Boys? Can't, he says, take me anywhere. So much ado, wacka doo. Moo cows moo, we ail
like redcoats surrendering arms.
age like eons, ebb like tides,
eat halves, stare at menus, myopic.
What brings you to Erie?
The lei speaks to my ulna.
Where was art last noon?
Sigh and measure sag in dynes.

Today at School and more

Today I taught the Pantoum form. Kids began with their "My Name" poems from yesterday, their homework notes if they had them and the handout with hundreds of icons radiating out mandala style from a central giant word YOU to make pantoums. All three classes got the pattern and got to work. Here are a couple of the pantoums:

Glorious soldier
that’s what my name means
nice and cool on a hot day
comforting and warm on a cold nite

that’s what my name means,
my name is sometimes angry, but
comforting and warm on a cold nite
my name is sometimes sad

my names is sometimes angry
my name is dumb once I think too much
my name is sometimes sad
but I love my name

my name is dumb once I think too much
nice and cool on a hot day
but I love my name
Glorious soldier

My name makes me famous

it is pure and will never get old

it has no regrets

my name is always being talked about

it is pure and will never get old

my name is a fairytale story with a happy ending

my name is always being talked about

it will never break a promise

my name is a fairytale with a happy ending

my name is rock -- it will never be broken

it will never break a promise

it echoes through your mouth just so it can be heard

my name is a rock and will never be broken

it has no regret

it echoes through your mouth -- just so it can be heard

my name makes me famous

I've just spent too many minutes looking through a bunch of stock images of middle school online. Lord it is entirely too easy to waste time pretending to do something using the internet. The site is sorta hilarious, with such photo titles as "Asian teacher with middle school students", "African American woman teacher with middle school students," etc. And what is my theme?

Today at School with the 8th and 6th graders
by Laura Gamache

At the end of my teaching, MK and I discussed the student who had the cell phone AND digital recording device up his right sleeve in class. When I had engaged him in brief conversation, he being new to me (not at school this week till today) I asked if he had notebook paper. Yes, he did. I asked if he had a pen. Yes, he did. I asked if he was left handed (since his sweatshirt sleeve was wrapped over his right hand. No he was right handed. How can you write? I asked. The girl across the table, who he had recently whacked in the wrist with a calculator, said he had a cellphone up his sleeve. I asked for it. He refused. I tattled to the teacher who took him into the hall and had him take everything out of his pockets, and confiscated his cellphone, digital recorder and some little toys. She says he cannot read or write. The kid was sharp, calling out hilarious acronymble solutions which I encouraged him to write down. I noticed he did not, which had me suspicious he couldn't write. MK said his mom thinks MK is singling her kid out for bad treatment. MK thinks that recorder is to document possible MK singling out of the kid, whose little kid, dorky glassed self radiates hostility. Lordy. As we were talking, MK said, "Are you wearing two different earrings?" I felt my ears and yes I was unintentionally wearing a yellow beach glass dangly in my left ear, a silver heart with large red something stone in my right. I laughed. I'd had about five minutes at home to eat something and change from crew layers and layers into school attire. I was especially rushed since I had promised to meet the person from my arts organization who was coming to observe my teaching in the office before class which meant I needed to allow more time for photocopying. Photocopying is my rhythmic zone out from day to day poet/coxswain to teaching poet. I love choosing colored paper from the office stash and walking into the copier generated warmth of the copy room where nobody ever seems to be but me. I love entering the "1234" code and pushing "ID", and I love the photocopying choices - 1 to 2 sided, 2 to 2 sided, paper drawer #. I even love the jammed paper alerts which force me to open the door shown on the front of the copier and clear paper by pushing down on the levers and pulling out drawers as the copier instructs me. Inside the copier is a warren of possible paper jam locations, very Rube Goldberg, and entirely solvable provided you are not late for class.

Today's lesson began, after Acronymble of course, with having six students read the six paragraphs of the "My Name" chapter of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. In my first class one of the kids read HOMS this summer in Spanish. He's bringing it to school for me to borrow. Ya-hoo! Another thing I love is how middle school students, even my second group of squirrely chatty 8th graders, quiet and listen when their peers read. We talked a bit about the chapter, and then I read them a poem written a few years ago by a then-8th grader at another school:

My Name

My name tugs at your shoelaces
it springs out of your mouth faster than a shotgun
listen sharp or you'll miss it
My name is a hero of the stars
It is a bright light, breaking up the darkness
My name won't make you trip
But if you fall, it will help you up again
My name is mischievous like a fox
It will sneak up on you when you least expect it
My name will laugh when you tell a joke
It will make you happy when you're feeling down
My name is Batman
Or at least, it is his bat symbol searchlight
My name is like a happy summer
It is warm with a cool breeze upon entering your ears
My name is like the feeling when your foot falls asleep
It actually kind of feels good
My name is not meant to be whispered
It's meant to be screamed!

-L.S.


Yowsa, but that is one personified, metaphorically, sensorally alive piece of writing! Between that and the Chinese zodiac I put next to it on the back of the page with the chapter from HOMS, the kids had lots to work with to begin their "My Name" pieces. Lots of them found great directions to go, and some shared with the group. My focus in that last group is to get other voices than the six always-talkers up in front of the room. Successful today!

Monday Monday

So anyways I taught today. A class of 8th graders, a class of 6th graders and a class of 8th graders. The last class could not would not stop chattering. They come straight from gym and ordinarily I found out from the teacher during the uprising they have a half hour of SSR (sustained silent reading - so weird and funny that 13 year olds have the idea this is torturous.) I said I'd like to have them return to their usual routine after she (the teacher, M.K.) told me they really settle down during that time. Why didn't she tell me this before? I have an idea it's because at the planning meeting (8 or 9 teachers plus me so the one on one was a bit on the lighter side,) there seemed to be a drive to get me in and out with no breaks, have me push through quickly. I can understand their reasoning, but I'm going to dig having 30 minutes breather after two classes and before this one that did not gel at all on the first day and which I'll need to do a bit of remedial work with towards our community and group project.

Well, sheesh, the group project is the 8th grade class project which is (and here I hope you have the image of the mirror image inside the mirror image inside, etc.) based on Georgia Ella Lyons' poem, "Where I'm From." "Where I'm From" is a fine poem but has become a nearly universal poetry prompt in middle school so that say for example today a girl said, "oh I did that last year." I remember being in middle school. If you have done a thing, a sonnet or a book report or an algebra proof, you have done that thing and have no further interest in exploring another facet of that project, your mindset being, "Next!" cuz you're 13 and damn you have lots of new things to get to.

I am not entirely sure what the teachers meant when they said to me, "We want you to do that "Where I'm From" project. I do not hit up one poem for multiple sessions and have decided to keep my own counsel on my approach. I'm taking it as a broad theme. I read the poem to them today along with a poem I wrote influenced by it which felt badly in need of music as I read it to them. I veered mightily off course and read them my poem in my own made up language along with the translation. In both 8th grade classes a boy in the back right corner asked, "How did you do that?" about the translating piece which I thought was an interesting question. The first class I waved my arm and made a "psst, pffft" response, but I tried to answer the second boy. I realized I had gone too far when he put his head down on his desk.

After I read WIF to the first class a boy said, "she never said where she comes from!" And she didn't tell us where geographically she came from so his question let me open the topic of what she did tell us and the topic of being poetry sleuths trying to discover what a poet is doing so we can copy and move forward or "embrace and extend" which is business lingo, at least coming from Jim.

I felt back in the saddle after the first two classes but the third class wore me down and sored up my throat since I mistakenly attempted to talk (yell) over them which everyone who has ever worked with eighth graders knows is an invitation for them to get louder. They got louder and louder. At one point I said, "Do you know what your job is at this age?" One of the boys said, "To be quiet?" I said, "well yeah, but I mean developmentally," which was kinda passive aggressive because kids never want to think of themselves as incomplete evolving beings. Then I said, "At your age, your job is to bond with your peers," and then I paused and said, "and you guys are really got at your job!" and then asked them to can it anyway. I said, "Just for these few minutes, while I'm meeting each of you, you can decorate your file folder, write your secret name inside your name plate or pass notes to each other, just don't talk. They talked. Loudly. This was a test. MK was stepping in ineffectually every few minutes to tell them to be quiet, then I would step in ineffectually to make my plea and it just wound up and up and up ridiculously. Even so, several kids got up and read their poems to the group at the end. The rules for the poems were: write a poem in a made up language with no words in any language you know, the poem has to be at least three lines long and has to have at least four made up words per line, and it cannot make any sense whatsoever. I wrote this in my notebook which I'd set so the document camera would display its image on the screen for all to see. One boy asked, "What does the poem have to be about?" "You can't make it be about anything," I said. "I can't rhyme," another kid said. "Don't rhyme," I said. "Oh!" both boys set to writing.

The eighth graders come in sizes from four feet tall and 80 skinny pounds to 5'11" and a lumbering 200 or so pounds. Some of them look 10 and others look 18. Standing outside the door waiting for MK to come unlock it, I was in the shorter third of the class, which I forget when I only work with 6th graders.

I returned to the 6th grade classroom of a teacher, SM, I worked happily with last year. One girl came up to me before class and said, "I'm going to be your biggest fan!" We had a blast in there, everyone including SM writing own language poems of twice plus the length of the 8th grade assignment. 8th graders are far more easily exhausted than 6th graders. SM, who lived in Russia for a couple of years, read her poem along with several kids. Hers had a slavic growl to it.

The sky is blue above and through the branches of the big alders across the alley above the white house of my urban chicken farmer neighbors. Light falls on my three orange pumpkins which I will soon pitch into the yard. The first year we lived here I had the most fortuitous lovely pumpkin vines that grew pumpkins all through the landscape in a charmingly haphazard way as though I'd orchestrated the composition. I tried the year after that to orchestrate a composition but as you already must know nothing of beauty came of that. Now I pitch the pumpkins onto the hillside once they begin to sink into themselves and pretend not to hope.

Thanks to no more daylight savings time we had light on us for rowing practice this morning. When we loaded into the boat I could see the expression on the face of the stroke, and expressions not to mention faces and oars of the other rowers and oh yes out on the water, buoys! My eight which according to the regatta central website will row together for Head of the Lake this Sunday, November 11, went out with Eleanor. I haven't gone out with only Eleanor before and was a tad nervous. Before Head of the Charles we were out in the fracking dark one morning and, after I'd run my two seat's oar into a buoy, Eleanor said, "You are not taking into account the oars sticking out from the boat," which I let lie. The fact was I had not seen the buoy in the dark. I was fit for glasses soon afterwards. Eleanor said quite gruffly that morning after I thanked her for her help with wind direction, and other things, "Your crew has to be able to trust you." She was right of course but not very kind about it. This morning as I came up on the inside of a visible buoy I had my eye on, Eleanor said, "It looks like you're going to hit that buoy." I said, "I've got lots of room. Trust me." I did have lots of room. There was a bit of rower chat in the boat. Perhaps my little head will be popped off the next time I goof up.

Today's Sheffer Crossword Puzzle, A Poem

Across

Drink your Tab. Other wits learn Arabic,
punch awls into idols, identify novas.
We watch The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, turn to
Zoroaster for our news cycles, paw
ones like helots dig soil below
the zeppelin. Ah what we might redo.
Ono meets Lennon on that ladder,
they dine, vin santo toasts and a
list of what not to. No zucchini,
adhoc street walks, squa sightings.
Fie on all and any lying. Refill my
zinfandel and see what we can redefine.
Erie, isn't it? We vote with our ova,
Pen dele a year, think our now is new.

Down

We talc away, parent bloc wizened
from I do to the Tor of baby slop.
We answer rot with Ave! but never
pass a bar. Aah! How lop comes
to shove. Even Zola had his Enid,
posh-necked Levi? Odin found
not Toni but Greenland. Hail sculler!
Hay or toffee? The CIA asks. Envy
follows zed like ire becomes nil.
Doe contains that long long O and eta.
Icon in the far nave, we grin you gnaw.

Tigerlillia Terribilis from Edward Lear's Nonsense Botany

The explorers of the 1500s brought plants from all parts of the world to the attention of European botanists.... One of the more remarkable naturalists of this period was Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), an Italian philosopher and botanist who directed the botanical garden at Bologna and taught botany there in 1555. He was one of the first persons to make a collection of dried plants mounted on sheets of paper. This collection, called a "herbarium," was bound together as a folio of 260 pages, containing 768 plants listed with both Latin and Italian names. His chief work, De Plantis (published in 1583) was the most accurate botanical treatise since the days of Theophrastus... Cesalpino accepted the old Aristotelian idea that plants have no sex and followed the view that leaves were merely protective organs for buds and fruits.

-taken almost verbatim from my college text, BOTANY, by Michael Neushul, published by Hamilton Publishing Company, Santa Barbara, CA

Jinglia Tinkettlia

from Edward Lear's Nonsense Botany

Love Letters

To Plant Taxonomy

I placed your syllables on my tongue

Acer palmatum, Pseudotsuga,

tasty as white truffle oil.

I thought you my calling,

pressed leaves between pages

of my taxonomy tome,

kept crumbling testatments

odor of rot in a shoe box

plant stained notecards

blue in a cramped hand

for twenty years.

I stroked leaves in the arboretum,

called to you in code.

You didn't acknowledge me

I embraced a tree and longed for you,

your gossip and Latin, how it felt

to enter your intricate hierarchies.

I never questioned your motives,

would have lit a votive to your

perfection if you had called me yours.

To the Head of the Charles

Railroad, BU, River Street, Western Ave.,

Weeks Footbridge, Larz Anderson, Eliot

I learned your turnings and timings, sought

your orange buoys and your green,

kept watch for the blue dome where

Weeks meets Cambridge shore.

My voice over the cox box speakers

enchoed inside bridge arches.

Last year I wasn't ready to meet your needs,

I am glad I waited. You were too grand,

too impressive. I mastered

some of your complications, recognized

my limitations in passing - others

passed me but you stayed,

your steady flow every call and stroke.

We swung together through The Big Turn,

my rudder and rowers sure.

You favored others more.

I know what it is to feel unworthy.

You took me on,

the moment to moment calls,

sun across your surface,

our time so sharply gone.

To the Dead

I'm a sap for you, clumsy

in my breath, sweat, my

bloody corporeal form.

Let me slip out of this skin

and show you who I am.

Head of the Charles Race Report, Part II: The Race

After the first segment of our warm up down river we rowed the outside perimeter of the warmup area between B.U. Bridge and MIT Bridge, the corners marked with giant orange buoys. We rowed at half slide, 10 strokes at half pressure, 10 at three quarters pressure, then 10 at full pressure, with a coordinated return to full slide rowing for another 10 strokes, then back to half slide, to reinforce rowing as one, which is after all the immense grace of this sport, that eight bodies can come together as one smooth series of movements that propels a 60 foot long hull through water. Rowing is no sport for the individuated hot shot who must stand out and be recognized. If anyone stands out in the boat, the grace and thus the race is entirely lost. Every stroke presents its opportunity for grace. As one of the rowers said to me, rowing is an ongoing act of forgiveness. To dwell on a bad stroke, bad catch, rushed slide takes attention that is badly needed, immediately and repeatedly essential to the boat. Forgive and row. Lock, send it. Lock, send it.

I began to look around for boats that would be in our race. The eight with forty year old men? No, those guys were late lining up for their race. The fours? Uh, no. On the back side of the warmup area I saw boat number 6, and then 9 and then we were with our group, looking for our line up slot to move into the chute. Our boat was odd numbered, 23, so we needed to find our line up on the left, the Boston side. Boat 11 was behind and a huddle of us let them pass. The creep forward was long. The marshalls seemed to be spacing boats closer than two boatlenghts. The marshall standing with megaphone on the stake boat to starboard of us asked for my attention. I gave it and he thanked me. I took that as a good omen. We went on the paddle, were called to half pressure, the boats ahead of us closer than I wanted them, but I called us to half pressure, then, on the marshall's call, full pressure, and we took it up, passing between the yellow triangular start buoys. "We're on the course," I said, and then took us into a focus 20, as boats in front pushed through BU Bridge, and everyone appeared to have seen the same video I had, all of us hugging the green buoys to starboard around Magazine Beach, where the singles and doubles launch. A boat went to port and passed us as we eased to port to line up with the center arch openings of River Street and Western Avenue Bridges, the powerhouse stretch where the race came into focus as a race. Head of the Charles no more an institution or some kind of ediface but a contest we should not be content to meander through. My job was to call and encourage, to steer and keep us safe from bridges and other boats, the rowers' job was to row, which they were doing, at a steady race pace of 30 strokes per minute.

We did another focus 20 that took us through River Street Bridge and towards Western Ave. I talked our agreed mantra, "Relax, Ratio, and Rhythm" in various forms. We had rhythm, we had ratio, and we had a set boat, leaning neither to port, as we often did, nor to starboard. Everyone was working for the whole.

As I changed point for Weeks Bridge, from where the bridge meets Cambridge shore to the starboard abutment of the middle bridge opening, boat 26 moved in and tried to pass us. They did not announce themselves a half length back, as the rules said they should, and when I turned to look, saw their bow pointed towards our hull. They had not begun their turn. I gave way, but had I given as much as the cox wanted, we would have been forced to go through the far right bridge opening, where the possibility of going off course was one hundred percent and the possibility of hitting rocks was likely. Their bow seat was yelling at us the entire time to move over, which was unnerving. I moved to starboard, but I was going to take us through that middle opening and their cox was going to have to turn her boat, which, thank god, she began to do. We clashed oars inside the bridge opening, their bow seat still yelling, my crew and I intimidated, but feeling, at least I felt, wronged. I had had them ease off the whole time, and we weighed enough to allow boat 26 to pass us, immediately taking it back to race pace, which everyone so strongly did. Watching that boat head off in front of us was the nadir of the race for me. I knew I needed different tools, a strategy, a voice to yell back and assert our right to space on the race course, to call that cox on her unsafe decision, call her to take her turn and take control of her rower. We went into a focus 20 during which we let go of the bridge and pulled ourselves back into the race. Everyone got right back on pressure, to the 30, to sending the boat, taking control of the Doris and moving her forward. I set our point to the right edge of the white apartment building and Doris's rudder did most of the work turning us port around the Big Turn. We stayed on the orange buoys, inside, and then eased starboard to give us that sharp turn through Eliot Bridge. We came through lined up perfectly towards Belmont Hill Boathouse. Ahead of us about four boats clustered together. I thought we were moving up on them, but by the time we passed the green buoys and hugged the shore around the turn, easing to port for the last forty strokes of the race, those boats were too far ahead to catch. I'd tried a couple of times to go for power twenties, but the speed we were going seemed to be the speed we had. I opted not to take us to a sprint for our last 20, though I sort of left it to Nora, our stroke, saying, we were taking our last 20 "on this one," so that if she wanted to take it up two, she still could. We crossed between the finish buoys with good rhythm and ratio, having held off the number 24 boat the whole race. Suddenly I wanted back on the race course, knowing what I now knew, in that flood of relief for having made it unscathed and unhumiliated, the adrenaline rush of the race done. "That's it? That's the whole thing?" I thought I thought but said aloud. "You guys must want to kill me," I sort of apologized. "You could have waited a few more strokes," Marcie said. We paddled slowly along another several hundred yards to the turn around point, a mass of eights, two or three motorboats with orange jacketed marshalls with their megaphones. After our turn, we had to paddle past several connect a docks before we approached ours, our teammates on shore to help us lug Doris from the water, carry our oars and seat pads and water bottles. It was all congratulations and relief, earned fatigue. We brought the boat back to the slings, and ran back to the shore to try to see our 40+ four finish their race. We missed seeing them, but helped them in on return. We derigged boats and I called my eight together for a tiny meeting, where we sang "Que Sera, Sera" and I passed out "medicinal" chocolates with the word "Renewal" on their wrapping paper, as well as our car window stickers that announced we were 2007 Head of the Charles Race Participants.

Race Report: Race V (22) 2007 Head of the Charles, Part I: Pre-Race

I was determined our race day launch would not be a repeat of the dangerous and frightening experience we had Friday attempting to launch the Pocock 8 from the plastic Connect-a-Dock squat T . I scouted for nearby permanent docks and came up with zilch, both up and down river. Carrying the boat would be stressful too. It's heavy! I asked the coxswain in the orange jacket bbeside our nearest nightmare formation if they'd made any structural changes, which they had not. The cox the previous day had offered me one bit of advice about launching. She held up a stick and pointed 6" - 8" down its length. "That's how deep the water is off the dock," she said. I hoped for 8" and an intact rudder. This cox remarked that the previous day's helper was very inexperienced, and proceeded to give me a workable plan for getting the boat safely onto the dock. We followed her directions, spun the boat so the stern faced the water, took the boat up and overhead, and rowers slid so they were bunched between 2 and 3 seat and between 5 and 6 seat. Only then, boat still held high, did the stern group mount the connect a dock blocks that formed the stem of the T, angle up river and walk towards the end of the left side of the t-top, at which point it was workable to get the rowers holding the bow onto the T stem and over to the right side of the T top with nobody having to assume the Atlas-position, as Becky had done Friday. Rowers took the boat (borrowed from Navy, who had named it the St. Joe's, renamed by us "The Doris" in honor of Doris Day and "Que Sera, Sera" which was our fight song,) around and down and pushed it out a little as it landed on water, my hand on the stern by the rudder (a larger turnier rudder attached by and borrowed from John Titus of Pocock the previous day) which did not touch bottom or break off. The rowers got their oars and I attached my borrowed cox box (from the kind folks in the NK booth) and borrowed speed coach (from kind Nicki of Pocock). I called "Oars across," waited as the port oars went out to steady the boat like outriggers, called "one foot in," and then "Down." As they tied in to the mostly giant size 14 shoes on the foot stretchers I crawled into the stern cox seat, attached my headset to the coxbox in its round cradle, turned on the speed coach, we counted up, pushed out into the Charles River and joined the parade of mostly 8's on the down river journey to the starting chute.

No stroke rate registered on the cox box, though the amplification system worked. Two thirds of the way through our warm up, after turning the stroke coach on and off half a dozen times and just as I was about to have us weigh enough so folks could get a final drink and rest a minute the stroke coach gave me a rate of 19. I asked them to take it up two in two and lo the stroke coach registered 21. Nora, our stroke, shed her cowl of worry, dropped her shoulders three inches, and we were ready to do it for Doris.

"Nobody told me how fun this would be!" - Shelley (AFTER we raced)

Conibear 40+ 8 plus cox (that would be me, which is to say my arm in this photo) rowing the Head of the Charles on Saturday. We more than made our goals, which were:
1. do not dfl
2. do not hit bridges or other boats

The reindeer pulling this sleigh:
Nora, Denise, Marcie, Paula, Beth, Shelley, Becky and Jen.

Cox yells, "On Dancer!" and etc.

Average age: well above 40, except for Jen who is way, way under.

I am in a period of mourning for the anxiety and anticipation of the big event. I have downloaded the course map for the Head of the Lake, which will be November 11. Twice, but the second time it was accidentally. I also have played the Coaches & Coxes Video, both parts one and two, for this race. At the cox clinic Friday I bought a HOC "From the cox's seat" video, which shows Yas Farouk, former #1 cox in US, coxing the 1992 US Olympic Team Reunion 4 through the course last year. We saw a "do not try this at home" section of the video at the clinic, involving almost but not quite cutting off another boat just before the Weeks Bridge, which apparently the cox of boat 26 in our race took to be the way to take that bridge, so that we had a near collision with this boat that failed to announce itself before coming inside and attempting to pass us as I was setting up our turn, so that we clashed oars within the middle arch of the Weeks Bridge while the bow seat yelled at us in an intimidating manner. I had given and did give way for them to progress, but dammit was not going to let her make me go through the right hand arch which would have put us off course and possibly into the rocks. Oh! Did I mention that this boat also didn't seem to be taking this necessary turn? Neither of the boats got a penalty and I got a lesson in learning to be more aggressive. AT THE TIME, IN PROGRESS. SHEESH but sports are an in the moment activity!

HOC 8 KICKS MAJOR BUTT AT TRI MOUNTAIN REGATTA

We went fast, beating all 8s including the Mt. Baker Men's 8 by 26 seconds. We even beat the 50's 4 boat's time. It being a head race beating doesn't equal passing a boat, but we did pass the Mt. Baker Women's 8 along the wall before the finish line, which was extremely exciting and encouraging. After waiting three hours and warming up on the ergs four times as the fog pranced around on its little cat feet teasing us - now we could see the police boat, now we couldn't see the launch dock, now the entire bay was clear but the starting sailboat was invisible, etc., the water was glorious, sun bright, sky blue and our boat as I may have mentioned before performed the best ever.

Maybe I should (pardon the pun) launch a coxing blog?

note: archive scenic photo from Conibear's website .

One Week to Go to Race Day

But first I will veer wildly from course, cutting buoys with my thick hull. I have just finished and returned to its owner a bad bit of my dog and me memoir which number one makes me mad, this being the woman's seventh book, and how the he** does she get her work published when what my work receives on my meager enveloped outings into the world of publishing is mostly a typed reply with no ink from a human being? Number two was going to be that I too had a full and charmed relationship with my dog, but I ran out of steam as I began tumbling into my actual first topic of the day which is that I got an envelope in the mail yesterday from Artist Trust. It was a thin envelope, which was not encouraging, but I still hoped I had received one of the bi-annual fellowships. As I opened the envelope, I could see that it contained a photocopied list of recipients rather than an individually addressed letter. There were three hundred something applicants for 22 fellowships, in crafts and I don't know domino balancing, as well as literary, which was my, and I do mean that I thought it would be my, category. I had told friends that I felt winning the fellowship would validate me as a poet in a way that I need.

I'm in a disappointing place in my teaching career what with the leaving no child untested climate of WASL and the direction my main artist in the schools job source has taken. With writing, I think what is important is what happens in the gaps. That's where the astonishment lives. I once had a novice writer in the schools shadow me. When I checked in with him during a lesson I saw that his notes tracked my actions minute by minute. 11:23: Laura holds up funnel and says, (whatever the h#@ I said.) He wrote down everything but had no sense whatever what was going on in that room. The Seattle School District has gone to a writer's workshop model that comes from Columbia University's Teachers College. Swell and good. But not for those who work as I do, which is not to dependably travel from point a to point b in a straight and predictable line. My teaching credo holds that I resist such certainty in service of surprise, which I believe is essential to creativity. I hold to joy in the work. The writing and the teaching. I want to be where the juice is, pulp is, rich and squishy, smelly and alive. Opening that Artist Trust envelope, I felt flattened and dead.

So peeve number two after the big rejection and the competently written but not so scintillating dog memoir is the novel I picked up at the lady store based on a blog its author wrote after a big break-up. It too contains okay writing. It also adds page count through expanses of text from the blog, which I guess was famous and that's fine. I just don't understand why she's published and the dog lady is published and I'm rejected for the big fellowship that was going to buoy my confidence and instead I have to buoy my own confidence with the usual why care what others think write for and from yourself blah blah blah.

To punish myself I will now write that my output has nothing like the page count of dog memoir lady or blog babe. Okay, okay, they write prose. I'm writing prose this minute! Could I scissor it into a book-length manuscript about me and what is important to me and how everybody wants to know what is going on with me including my wardrobe, at this moment orange cashmore fleece top (Title Nine, no idea of price as Julia worked there before she went to coach women's rowing at U of Miami, leaving the top here because it is 90 humid degrees there in October), brown cords (Fury Consignment $16), brand new vintage glasses (Ottica $150 plus lenses covered by my insurance), Smartwool socks (Mirage Shoes, $8), and Keen green sandals (Mirage Shoes $82 with $5 off coupon because I buy lots of shoes there)? Does anybody remember why there is a question mark at the end?

There may be something age appropriate in all this behavior. I've been reading The Wisdom of Menopause which has its appealing moments even though its author reads a bit smug for my taste. "When I can't sleep, I go downstairs and brew myself a pot of chamomile tea, then pop back into bed," which, along with skin of gherkin and three butt hairs from a Tibetan rat is about what I do. The fifties, when I was born and the age I am. That's all. I just wanted to write that phrase. But back to the book which features I may have mentioned in a previous blog a ginormous photo of its author as I don't know free mountable photo for over the fireplace maybe. I've dropped reproductive hormones and with them the scrim of happy attachment to going along, getting along, a state of being I had a tad tentative hold on in the first place if you ask anyone in my family. The angry "now I see life as it really is" clarity of PMS has hit the fan all month long for me at fifty five.

There are themed blogs and then there is mine where I get to rant into the ether and push PUBLISH POST which since I read the world is publishing to me. By the way, I have foregone any attempt to punctuate in a standard manner. I blame this on the fact that I am in the middle of reading through and grading eighth graders' short stories. Notice we have now entered a fifth or sixth topic which is not the Head of the Charles Regatta.

A paragraph about the Head of the Charles. I am scared though I prefer to frame it that I am excited about and giddily anticipating the challenge of coxing my eight through this three mile head race course. Last night I hosted a movie night for the boat. Four starboards and two ports attended. We ate pizza and popcorn, drank wine and beer, ate brownies from a heart shaped mother brownie and sweet spicy pumpkin muffins, talked about the race, watched the HOC safety video and then Bend It Like Beckham to inspire us to great girl athletic action. As one of the starboards (who had to leave early) noted, we could very well do very well in the race. We have no idea who the other competitors are. Nineteen of the thirty-one were invited, the other teams, like us, were chosen not for prowess but by lottery. Last year our 40 4+ boat, who came by lottery, was surprised to come in third. We could do that!

To Cox the Head of the Charles

not actually a primer, more an attempt to write down what I need to remember so as not to:

1) run into anything such as another boat, the shore, a bridge arch

2) come in dfl*

This morning the HOC (Head of the Charles) 8 practiced with the two 4's that will be going with us to the HOC Regatta. Very exciting in the dark dark predawn. For example, Eleanor said, "Laura, aim at the fishing pier." I looked into the murk and pointed the boat where I thought the fishing pier should and turned out to be. And lo the light increased and by the time we were to 50th street I could see the division between land and sky, water and land, and I saw it and it was good. Strange large rollers this morning, but these calmed down as we headed south into the bay within Seward Park's thumb. We were concentrating on easy speed, on pulling together so that we can pick up the pace again moving together to send the boat rather than tightening up, shortening up and rowing at individual times and elevations to cause the boat to lurch back with each stroke. What we're looking to do is to send the boat forward with each drive. Yes!

We practiced pause drills, pausing at arms away and at body over in order:

1) to move arms and body BEFORE legs

2) to have all 8 moving together when we resumed regular rowing

We continued to have the issue of being low to port, with immediate corrections of having ports raise hands and starboards lower hands fixing the problem which then reemerged when rowers went back to comfortable defaults. We worked on returning again and again to what works best for the boat.

I've watched the safety course video two times. There are six bridges, it is a buoyed course, there will be folks rowing back on our port side, outside the course buoys. There are places where the river is very narrow. The marshalling point by Boston University Bridge is huge. The first thing the guidance video says is that the first rule for the race is finding the beginning of the course. I think I've got it. I wish there were many videos, one for each sort of light we might encounter.

* dead fucking last. an official racing term.

Thirteenth and Final 13x13

ed & of of no be he so us an an do by

kale dark heliotrope in terra cotta weighted
with Martha Washington geraniums &
the hanging pot that offered its bounty of
languid lobelia as down the alley men of
rhythmic insistence pounded plastic pails of
drywall mud and too wide trucks with no
consideration blocked my car but I had to be
gracious as I was brought up to be unlike he
who pounded oblivious as flowers so
I stared at leaves and blooms, no us
to intrude on solitude this pounding an
irritation like drizzle or an
unlit road where there's nothing to do
so you wait, wait, wait, stand by.

---

I am not entirely pleased with my 13x13 experiment but committed to it and now am done and truly. There's something to tout, shout about, whatever clever me.

House of women this week, husband in another city at his company's monthly "Programmathon" for extended time, my sister here this week to begin her distance learning information science masters program at the UW, my daughter here to work till her husband sells or rents their Boise house so they can move here.

Today is my planning meeting for a big teaching residency that will determine my holes for the year I can then fill with writing, including residencies elsewhere, which I crave.

A little dulled and padded in cotton wadding, mirroring this Seattle fall day of bland cloud and muffled sounds out the window, dreary with the waning light. This far north the light wanes early, all day on a cloudy day like this one.

Tonight is poetry writing group. Do I have a poem to take? I have these 13x13 pieces, one of which might do. Or not. I don't recall there was an assignment, haven't gone to group nearly all summer, but I'll go with whatever I have that's new if not all that good. What is my fricking project now?

Waiting to hear back about my two chapbooks, and about my fellowship application.

Ah and in other news, I went to the optometrist yesterday. My sister wears glasses that correct for astigmatism and distance vision. When I tried them on, I saw more clearly, which led me to make the optometrist appointment. As I have uncorrected lazy eye in my left eye, which as I recall from my childhood has 20/400 vision whatever that means, I did very badly on the left eye eye exam and took it as a personal failing. I could not tell the very nice technician which of the lenses between my eye and the vague wall sharpened my vision. I had to bring my adult to counsel my inner child that I need not feel ashamed not to be able to see, even to fuzz to black (not Amy Winehouse's black) most of the grid I was supposed to see with or without wavy grid. I saw a black circle instead of most of the grid with my left eye. A brain tumor, obviously.

The kind tech left the room to consult with the optometrist. When she returned she told me he'd explained that the condition I have made further exploration of my inadequate vision unnecessary. I hadn't been able to accomplish binocular vision while reading a card of poorly constructed and predictable sentences of decreasing size through the giant owl eye device. She then put yellow eye drops in my eyes to numb them so she could put the glaucoma testing devise to each eye. I didn't believe her when she said she had touched the surface of each eyeball with it. The cylinder shape that approached my retina was fascinatingly blue. I am easily amused. I had enjoyed the air balloon in blue sky scene she showed me at the beginning through the owl eyes device. There was a flattened polaroid camera with two eye pieces I held at one point, as well as the plastic spoon disk to cover one eye and the 3d movie glasses with pinpricks and a little lever to close the pinpricks off one eye at a time. I also looked through something that had a series of red concentric circle circumferences like a portal to another dimension in a sci fi movie.

When the optometrist met with me he pooh poohed any weirdness about my left eye, focusing (ha) on the very little correction I might need to see better with my right, which does have mild astigmatism and a bit of distance vision difficulty. He said my problem with blurry vision after reading with my reading glasses (1.25, from the drug store) is not due as I thought to aging lenses unable to adjust quickly (I imagine attempting to adjust a rusted old fashioned camera lens)but to my straining my eyes with too little correction and suggested I try 1.5 reading glasses. "I think you'll be amazed at the difference," he said, adding that I will feel far less fatigued. I think he was talking only of my eyes, but I have a certain zesty hope that I'll feel more bouncy overall.

13x13, Day 12

You led with both ursas. I thought not
bad, showed you orion's belt. I stared
beyond for effect, which wasn't what
did you in. You had to have me always,
my honking laugh, bitten nails, odd gait,
and lazy eye my mother mentioned
and you smiled out of politeness
her eyes on you like headlights to your brain.
you had no idea where we would take
you nor had I, who thought only of myself,
fly on fire on the dashboard
none of my business.

13x13, Day 11 plus Alice Walker heals what ails you

only then here will have take than they feel were who him fall

Only when our feet touch earth

then we breathe and remember we are

here and see green and babies, have

will to wonder at willows that

have a place here with us though we

take ourselves more seriously

than eternity calls for given

they sway with underground water

feel atmospheric pressure and

were here before us

who think we are precious, me,

him, you, all of us so puffed up who

fall down so soon so soon

--

Alice Walker read her new children's book WHY WAR IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA at Town Hall last night as well as her last children's book THE FLOWER ON THE END OF MY NOSE IS SMELLING ME as well as being being being in our presence so that I relaxed and spent those hours there with her, crying when she talked about walking with her overweight lab and many other times from being touched not tough, my sister beside me here from San Francisco to begin a distance learning graduate program at the UW, and so apprehensive about it. Both of us nervous about how to be with one another, both of us given this lovely lovely oasis of calm and presence in experience of joy and of difficulty. Who cares if I sound frickin newage?

13x13, Day 11

only then here will have take than they feel were who him fall



Only you and I rise at five

then as cars drowse

here and no birds sing but

will for joy of new light

have a place on this lake

take fish rather

than frogs from shallows

they dive as we

feel to avoid where geese

were as you who shoulder boats

who lug armfuls of oars no

him among us breathe

fall adjust stretchers and row



--



guten morgen and off to find an optometrist covered by my new insurance

13x13, Day 10

Can doesn't mean will

but won't is unsatisfying.

Say you want

but you don't know what.

Hot resentment burns

sun-like and you

see everyone so clearly

for what they short shrift,

the unfit shirt gift,

ant trail on the counter verge.

Was this what you hoped?

Get your own life going.

---

Happy Sunday of marshmallow sky above the big leaf maples beyond my urban chicken farming neighbors' white house.