Hardly a Halloween

It's supposed to be offensive, sorry it's hard to make out in the picture (we have a porch light that we can't control, joy of joys).

I made this for the English Club at UCD, which is very much not the UCD English Club.

Birthday Week Ends

Today I won the Virginia Lottery:


I will claim my prize soon.

Thanks to everybody for making my birthday a memorable one! I love yous!

Birthday Week Begins

Today, a doctor who looked conspicuously like Penn & Teller (the fat one) told me my foot was badly sprained. The X-rays, unfortunately, didn't tell us anything. The only remedy is icing it, and I know from experience that it will take a couple weeks to heal. It hurts to walk.

Dinner with Wes and Anita tonight was lovely, Mediterranean food and ice cream (separately). Many thanks to them!

Who Sent Me a Random Picture Message?

On Friday, I saw history happen. Best ballgame I've ever seen, I tell you what.

I wish I could scan things; I received the most wonderful drawing in the mail from the most wonderful friend. I can't explain it, it's gorgeous.

Lucky for me, my poetry class assigned a poem I had read and loved in high school, and subsequently forgot. It's called "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop:

"One Art"

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

How do you make something so lighthearted but so momentous? So essential? Wow.

Wildcat

Birthday Boy

The Rest of Us


Here is the poem I wrote for my first assignment.

"On the Coast of the North Sea"

Spring gallant from the shadows of her smoke, Cragged, spired and turreted, her virgin fort beflagged -R.L. Stevenson

***

Ice hung as spires inverted
Beneath cobbles, beneath me

I was surrounded by dark and by weight
Wool-thick, my collar up tight

And as I wove my breath into the tapestry above
Loose with exhaust, and holes of chill air

For the two miles home
Morning, and evening

The sky was tucked, in hospital corners,
Beneath the horizon

I liked it when I wrote it, I liked it until I read some of my book called The Poet's Companion. It showed me I was wrong to like it, how shameful!