A Quick Mea Culpa for the Typos & Co., All 3,000 Loving Ones

Emily Carr

A quick apology.  This morning I was alerted to a new comment to my blog posting on Marianne Moore's poem "A Jelly-fish."

The comment is interesting, a student's take on the poem, and after reading the insight, I reread my very short posting. And saw that I had misspelled a word IN SPITE OF SPELL CHECK.  Spell check sends little wavy lines under questionable spellings. And, yes, there they were, the little red warnings wavy as the Pacific. And yet, like the captain of the Titanic (to mix up my oceans) or that fool who sunk a ship off the coast of Italy, earlier this year, I ignored the signs.

And also, in terms of mistakes made: I had not used hyphens in a consistent manner in this remarkably short posting. The spacing between paragraphs was, furthermore, inconsistent.

As anyone who uses blogspot (a child of Google) knows, the blog has a mind of its own, and that willfulness can explain the occasional lack of breathable spacing or, conversely, huge blank crevices between paragraphs.  But only Sarah can make a typo.

Or mess up syntax or create other pretty darn egregious grammatical eyesores. My commitment to myself in creating this blog was to write quickly, not spend more than five minutes searching out an illustration / picture, and then get on with my day, a commitment which is understandable to anyone who has a day to get on with, i.e., all of you.  And yet, I was committing to writing a blog posting, which means communicating with some vague public by means of the tools at hand, which include spell check, native proofreading skills, and common sense.

Enough with the mea culpa. There's always that umbrella excuse, "Life happens." It's no justification but it is an excuse. I have, I hope, corrected the Marianne Moore mistakes and added a link to her bio on poets.org.

Those People with Missing Chunks in their Infrastructure. p.s. The medium [of a blog] is authentication

from
Missing Chunk . com

Dear Blog,

I don't quite understand why posting on you can ratchet up my sense of self or self-esteem but it can. A few years ago, two friends insisted I post here every day. I didn't, not every day, but I did try to do so most days, and it worked. No longer a slug who had to fight lethargy, avoidance, the droopsies or Factor X, I was getting up, drinking my coffee and communicating.

The content might not be important so much as the product--a shiny graphic, a new poem of mine or a fabulous poem by a master, an observation on the world.  You write a little, you slap on a graphic, and you've got yourself a visible sign you exist and function, maybe cleverly or not, maybe wisely or not, with or without impact.  But here you are.

The medium of a blog posting is not the message, the medium is authentication.  It is, Hey, Ma, Look what I've done.  It is a friend discovering My 3,000 Loving Arms last Sunday and telling me it looks good, even if she doesn't (to her way of thinking) understand poetry.

Today I submit a specific, though perhaps random, observation. I can't offer details or background as I'm not running an expose machine and don't want to hurt anyone (unless it's Romney, Santorum, Barbara Bush or her sons, any of the 1 percent who refuse to see the global untenability of their lifestyle).

I'd begun noticing in this professional, shall we say, I was seeing for a time, that he had huge chunks missing. I'd seen it before, and never moved my insight ahead. But as I began to catch on to his inability to assist me beyond our first meetings, when I was directed to some local agencies, I realized he didn't have the capacity to do so, boyish good looks notwithstanding.

And though I'd begun wondering if those missing chunks (of emotional infrastructure) signalled something menacing, as if he might be one of those functional sociopaths who are in the news these days (in press conferences relating to their votes in Congress), I finally caught myself.  I was overthinking.

My aha! came when he explained away a huge glitch in his information sharing (he was the one who glitched, if you will) with a petulant, "My bad."  My bad?  That's it? You've wasted a month and a half of my time and your full expression of regret or shame or even concern for me is, My bad?

The chunks that were missing? They are missing chunks.  That's all.  He's probably not a sociopath or psychopath, just a slightly hollow person, one I don't have much interest in.

And writing this makes me feel better. 

Yours,
Sarah Sarai (aka Sarah Gancher Sarai)

Friends & their opinions; explanation of why we are here (on the globe); policy statement

Between now and the end of the year I am not including an image of any type—graven, engraven or mineral—with these postings. [12.30.10 Note:  I couldn't take responsible for such a drab blog and am adding illustrations. Left is a Rosicrucian war machine. Why? It looks like it could double as a housecleaning appliance.]

I am also not going to say much. How much is there to say, really? Sure I am opinionated but how many of my opinions let alone phrasings of same are needed out there, among you-all, and without poetic or fictional coloration, to boot?

My 3,000 Loving Arms have been loving you since 2009—deeply loving and embracing you, but until this summer weren't doing so with much regularity. What made the difference? This July, two friends who had never seen my blog or read a word I'd written—not poem, story or mineral—apparently held, nonetheless, decided opinions about this blog and expressed (to me) said opinions. Both friends! On the same evening!

Opinion 1—I should get up at the same hour every morning, prepare my hot beverage and, at the same time every morning, write my blog, or my blog posting. I estimated an hour a day and have pretty much held to that.

Opinion 2—I should use this blog to promote my writing and should therefore discuss the process of writing. I was already doing that, when I had something to say on the subject. Some writers are better than I am at discussing process. I mercilessly promote my scant publications, however, so stand back.

My friends annoyed me, but they were right. One of the two has since seen my blog and offered no comment. Talk about annoying.

The Moral of the Posting—If it's good advice, follow it.  Follow the advice, not the source. Trust your instincts to know what's what. I did. My friends do not all or always read me. My readers are not always friends. The great interconnectedness is a mystery. There are piles of snow outside.

And oddly and somehow or another we are here to help and love one other in odd and mysterious ways. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

No More Promises, Pal

I promised I was going to blog every day in June and missed yesterday, choosing to go to bed because I was tired. It was only 10 p.m. and I could have pushed myself but my overall goal is in fact in life to begin slumber earlier than I have been and thus rise earlier, knowing productivity and a general and overall feeling of accomplishment as well as sensual pleasures of early light and even dew if I go to a park are more available to the early riser.

Having broken as if it were a potato chip and my intention a solid onion dip one promise I don't make another about a second blog this day but adopt a wait 'n see attitude.

My clothes are in the dryer. The want ads call. The kitties I cat sit cry out.

Did Shakespeare Have Pet Monkeys. BPI & Halliburton. Blogging.

I have long suspected William Shakespeare housed several (interconnected and extended) families of monkeys in the old gray barn out back, there behind Playwright Alley, Stratford-on-Avon. And I am not alone in my insanity but write here only of myself.

And said monkeys were variously fed according to Mistress Shakespeare's many whims and provided with pens and quills and Elizabethan-appropriate paper. Then set to work. Day and night they scribbled.

Bananas were the joy of the Empire. The sun never set.

I know this because I had to summon the spirit of the Shakespeares' monkeys this very morning. I was called to My 3,000 Loving Arms to "approve" a comment on the Kerouac posting in April, and in my wanderings about my own blog unintentionally clicked "New Post." I thus embarked on writing this posting.

If there IS nothing new under the sun, life must have been more dreary in ye British Empire than we have previously been led to believe. And to think. Gwenyth Paltrow hadn't been born yet.

Can I detail the ways I dislike that woman? Sure but why bother. And I won't deny her skill as an actress.

Order in the court. A monkey wants to speak, and so on; not much of a threat to a monkey, is it. No wonder the sun did finally set. And thank goodness for that, as I was really tired.

The monkeys are indicating it is time for a wee bit of cuddling and nit picking. They don't seem capable of destroying generations of life and natural beauty in the Gulf of Mexico, do they? Ah, but the monkeys didn't do that.

Halliburton and BPI did. The monkeys, being willing to risk being monkeys, speak. "Shame and shame again," they say.

Our oceans are weeping. Our coastline is weeping. Fish and birds weep. Good souls weep.

Brother Shakespeare has written of the evil men and women. They end days with a sword in their vile heart. From his quill to God's ear. From God's heart to the damaged earth. Please.

(I'm glad I wrote this posting. Always say yes when you click, New Post.)

I'm a dip, but so what: random cranks

I'm such a dip for not writing more often.

See, what I love about having a blog is that it forces me to write, to write more and with less perfectionism. It works against my tendency, cultivated in childhood's secrecy, to internalize everything. Blogs are clotheslines between the tenements. Hang your unders in public and damn the hatches. Something like that.

Also, I have this "thing" against complaining when, in fact, complaining is the root cause of art. Or one of the roots, along with ecstasy--which is what I want to veer towards, but even the Persian poet Hafez, who knows the divine and ecstasy, wrote cautionary poems, poems warning fellow poets to keep their egos under control.

My last post was a poem from my book. I'd included two "photos"--I found both in Google images as I usually do. I didn't feel either epitomized or complemented the poem, but my "rule" (the rules of the Order of St. Sarah Sarai) is to locate artwork quickly and be done with it. Again, the anti-perfectionist, and also the rule of a person who is a writer and not a photo editor.

I left the Ellis Island photo up but deleted the drawing of a slave ship. It never felt right to have it accompany the poem and that unease was met with comments too far afield. I was reminded of Susan Sontag's treatise Against Interpretation. Or Aristotle telling us, in different words, that a thing is equal to itself. I just couldn't stomach anyone interpreting a sketch of a slaver as looking like anything other than what it is--an implement of torture, genocide and means to the worst form of slavery that world has known (U.S. slavery).

So I took down the photo. I remember years ago when I was editor-in-chief of a small monthly devoted to ethnic arts and issues. A politicized African American group wanted me to print some anti-Jewish statements in an op-ed and I wouldn't. I was criticized but I just didn't see the point.

So that's that. Onward.

Sarah Sarai 2.0

On Thanksgiving Day, a young woman seated next to me at my lovely and gracious hostess' table asked about the focus of my blog.

I didn't know what to say. Sure, poetry, but there are poetry bloggers who assess poetics as a pure field in great depth. I more often make use of poetry to spring into some aspect of the world, or at least my world.

I've been itching to start writing more about my family and childhood. Something about this public forum draws me. Something about writing directly into this little box, running a spellcheck and publishing, leaves me satisfied, as if I'm accomplished something. And maybe I have.

So and therefore and thusly I added "memoir" to tagline for this blog. I agree with you. "this life" should cover memoir, but I wasn't sure the phrase was enough of an indication of what's to come.

Even now I'm not sure. We'll see. Please return to find out. I love having company.