What's on Your Desk?

Here are some of the things on my desk:

1) A glass paperweight that used to belong to my mother, weird but unique
2) No fewer than five notebook / journals hardly written in
3) Squiggly dry seaweed driftwood
4) Two pieces of other driftwood
5) Two fabric lizards, lounging
6) Files and paid bills and letters held up by a pair of spherical wooden bookends that belonged to my father.
7) A black Santa Clara pottery bowl filled with shells and stones
8) A metal candy box filled with same
9) A small black plastic dog -- were two, one has gone missing
10) A glass jar filled with batteries to be recycled
11) Stationery boxes
12) Stapler, pens, pencils, and assorted crap

If you want to enumerate what is on your desk, consider yourself tagged.

Forgot a title

So much has happened in the days since my last post, but not much has happened to me. I resist posting here the same news everyone posts. And my own life is boring. So what does that leave? Good luck, every last bit of it, to our new leader. I have faith in you and know you will work hard for us.

Work has been very busy, and I struggle to stay awake on my long drive home, often waking with a jerk after I've swerved out of my lane. (Yeah, I know that's awful. I'm working on it!)

I look forward to leaving (on the red eye) for VCCA in less than a month. I've been through Virginia but never to Virginia, so I can't visualize it, don't know what to expect. I plan to shape a bunch of poems into BookNext (which also needs a real title) and make some decisions about Conjugated Visits. For two and a half weeks, I will answer only to myself.

Self Centered

This post is fairly selfish. That is, it's more pertinent to myself than the rest of the group. Bear with me, please.

I'm going to VCCA in about a month's time. I'm excited about having 18 days or thereabouts to do my writing and not be required to go to work or cook or clean or socialize if I don't want to. They're giving me the residency for practically nothing, and by using my Discover card I can whittle down much of the plane fare.

But I will be missing twelve days of work that I can ill afford to miss. Other people I know who have gone hither or thither have gotten fellowships to help them cover expenses. I don't know the first thing about this -- well, I know about it but I don't know how to apply that knowledge specifically to my case.

Does anyone know of any grants or fellowships I can apply to. How do I go about doing this?

New Year's Day, Some Assembly Required, Resolutions Included

Happy New Year to anyone out there reading this, though I very much wonder if anybody is. I am having a lovely afternoon after a hectic holiday. John and I are sitting in the living room. Sun is pouring in on us and on the dog, the kind of winter light that feels redemptive, perfect for the first day of the New Year. We are drinking tea and eating cheese and crackers, dried fruit and nuts, and biscotti and listening to a new Sonny Rollins CD, "Road Shows" -- thanks Robert and Cheryl!

Here are some of my New Year's resolutions, in the order that they come to me, to be refined, I'm sure:

1) (Verily paradoxical), I resolve to spend less time on the computer, more reading, exercising body and mind.
2) Get my book taken this year, and if there are no takers, take stock of its worth, whether it is meant to be or not, possibly making revolutionary changes.
3) Finish the prose memoirs (essays) that I've talked about more than written.
4) Be less of a hermit and keep in touch with those who are close to my heart but may be far away.
5) Try not to make resolutions for anyone else.
6) Try not to worry, at least late at night when I should be sleeping.

That's all for now. Namaste!