Hi, 2023! + "O Faded Elegant World" + MacQueen's Quinterly

These kids predate me, I suspect, but still, happy 

and goofy kids is what kindergarten is about. 

 

I started the year with a long walk, longer than expected, on the sidewalks of musty New York, first to a bar where I discovered an event had been canceled then across town to a building complex that demands I walk an extra ten blocks in the wrong direction before it will allow me into its time-honored walls. Every time. There, people I know, all warm smiles, warm hugs.  And in-between the Lower East Side and the evasive building down some from the Whitney Museum I ran into a friend. And that was unexpected - insofar as, what! you? yay! - and delightful. An unexpected, impromptu, generous meet-up. Somehow helped me clear a bit of the baggage I was hauling from 2022. 

After seeing some warm acquaintances, and friends, on top of two-and-a-half hours of walking on sidewalks, I caught a bus, but only part way. It gets complicated. Once home I popped into bed, fully clothed, fell asleep. Woke. Did some things people do when awake, such as removing a sports bra, reading a poem, watching a t.v. show I knew would lull me back to sleep.

So no booze, no big parties. I like booze and I like big parties. Another time. Soon!

One more event. When I woke for the small portion of time I saw that new work of mine had been published. A Flash autobiographical essay* of mine was online. "O Faded Elegant World" in MacQueen's Quinterly. That surely wins the prize for a journal name. It mixes the hip and the quaint. My mini-essay is personal history as recalled by the personal historian who was seven? six? when the events took place. So. Grain of sand. Definitely with a toss of salt over your left shoulder. And truth.

Here's to 2023! Peace and sanity, please. 

*500 words or less, in this case

Deactivation Report: I'm out of the Facebook box

April 2012 Update. Back on FB, but as a presence. Not roving, not posting (this blog posts automatically). More time for me. Less agonizing over lives of others.

This shouldn't be news but then a blogger shouldn't be compelled to be a news source. Now that that disclaimer is off my shoulders or mind or other part of my anatomy or portion of me which defines or signals me, here's the non-newsworthy news: I got off Facebook.

I deactivated my account. I can return. And, yes, it's not a monumental life event. Part of the reason I'm  mentioning this is in case one of my almost 2,000 Facebook friends, most of whom I haven't met but do have a connection with, through poetry or fiction, wonders if I unfriended them.

No!  No one is unfriended. Just, everyone.

Not much more to say than that it is a good move right now. Like many things, Facebook is a box, a specified delivery system. As an intimacy-avoiding mechanism, it rules. I, however, am human, and need intimacy.

As a poet and fiction writer, I need to stray. I am a cat, straying.  I am howling in the alley.

(p.s. Just did a spellcheck. Three words come up as questionable:  Facebook. unfriended. spellcheck.

Guest poem (came in the mail) (Arthur Tulee)

My friend Arthur Tulee lives in Seattle. He runs. He writes. He sends poems by way of post card. This is time honored. Even with e-mail, poems and other works of art are being mailed, artist-to-artist, around the country, the globe, every day.

What a nice image, luminescence in the hands of postal workers. Shining trajectories of joy, stamped wisdom here and there and there. Here is Arthur's poem. I received it on Saturday.

If you live in precarious circumstance
long enough this too becomes a comfort
an achievement of pride
a sign of an iron mind
an iron spirit and iron gut

And we are all iron
raw rude metal
poured into molds of broken
burning earth by starfire

We walk as iron
we breathe as iron
we love as iron
we die as iron

Arthur Tulee, June 2010

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.