I often subscribe by email to comment threads on other blogs so that I don’t miss replies.
I just checked my email and found that a whole bunch of those emails got shunted to my junk folder at the same time that many others landed correctly in my inbox.
Weird.
I am really tired. I got up at 3:45 AM because I have a cold and started coughing.
And I am too tired now, forty-five minutes later, to write much of anything cogent.
I doubt I’m going to catch a nap later, so SoCS is going to be short and sweet.
Not quite as short and sweet as One-Liner Wednesday, but close.
Well, close on the short side. Not on the sweet.
Did I mention I am really tired?
Wishing everyone a good weekend. I hope that no one else has a cold or is tired…
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “tire” – alone or as prefix or suffix. Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/02/12/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-1316/
Thanks to all my blogger friends for their advice on my new theme!
I looked through my photos and found one I thought would crop well as a new header image.
Boiler House Poets and people familiar with North Adams, Massachusetts may recognize the street sign. It was just outside the apartments where we stayed during the Tupelo Press/Mass MoCA residency. (If you want to know more about the residency, check my blog archive for November, 2015.)
I will leave it to my readers to ponder the deep inner meaning of Center Street being one way and what that has to do with the Top of JC’s Mind…
I still wish I could make the title/tagline font larger, but I think it doesn’t look quite so tiny with the header image breaking it apart from the larger-font post title.
It just occurred to me that my link to my “About” page got lost in the shuffle of the theme change. I guess that will be my next problem to solve.
I’d appreciate any comments/musing/interpretations on the new header image.
With thanks,
JC
People who visit HarsH ReaLiTy by Opinionated Man, aka, OM, aka Jason Cushman will want to visit this post so that they can continue to read his blog which is moving to a new platform.
Because I have been (somewhat uncharacteristically) posting every day this month as part of Linda’s Just Jot It January, I have been more proactive than usual in planning my posts. I had a topic picked out for today and had written most of the post in my head.
Then, today happened.
My mom asked me this morning if I could send her a copy of the Prayer of Saint Francis, which a friend who recently passed away had chosen for her prayer card. I wrote a note to remind myself to do it and set out on a day of errands, a meeting, and an appointment.
I wasn’t expecting it, but it became a day when human needs for peace, love, compassion, healing, strength, and joy were placed before me again and again.
The best that I can hope to offer is to share the words of the Saint Francis Peace Prayer, which, while it is a Christian prayer, can also speak in large measure to people regardless of their belief system.
Prayer of Saint Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Shared for my mom, for Wilhelmina, and for all those in need of any of the gifts that Francis calls for in this prayer.
In peace,
Joanne
*****
To join Just Jot It January, visit here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/28/just-jot-it-january-28th-serendipity/
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here.
It’s hard to be on an even keel when the water is choppy and there are rocks and storms and all manner of unexpected happenings.
There is an old saying/blessing/curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
Times in both the public and private sphere are definitely interesting.
Is it odd to wish that, at least once in a while, things were on an even keel instead?
*****
Join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday! This week’s prompt was odd and/or even. Find out more here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-jan-2316/
It is also part of Linda’s Just Jot It January! Visit here to find out more: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/23/just-jot-it-january-23rd-oddeven-socs/
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today.
My body is not co-operating with the whole sleep thing tonight, so I am awake when Linda’s post appears on schedule at 2 AM. Of course, my brain is not capable of creative thought at the moment, but it isn’t likely to be later in the day either, given that I won’t get much sleep.
Hence, this much more jot-ty than usual post.
I generally tend to the pontificating end of the scale…
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Start be visiting here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/15/just-jot-it-january-15th-leadership/
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today.
Much of the energy expended this weekend has been spent taking down Christmas decorations.
Yesterday, we concentrated on helping Grandma, which is a huge task as she likes to decorate every room.
Today, we packed things here at our house. I’m happy to report that everything is safely stowed in the basement, waiting for December 2016 to roll around. Well, not everything. The tree is out on the curb, waiting for the special collection that will turn the trees into mulch for the parks.
With Christmas things put away, there are few clues as to it being winter. We have had a major rainstorm with temperatures in the 40s F. (mid-single digits C.) We are expecting some seasonably cold temperatures tomorrow. At least we will know it is mid-January without referring to the calendar.
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! You can start by visiting this post: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/10/just-jot-it-january-10th-sane/
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today.
I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts over the last few days with people stating their New Year’s resolutions. I admit that I am not a New Year’s resolution person. If I need to make a change, I prefer to start when the need arises.
I’m not especially wedded to January first as a date. Which reminds me that I wrote a poem about it…
Some people chose to list goals rather than resolutions, but even that sounds too cut-and-dried to me.
Jay Dee, at the end of this Authors Answer post, asks what are our plans for 2016.
Plans are something I can get behind. Plans to me are more dynamic and able to be adjusted or revised as needed. Plans don’t have an expiration date.
My writing plan is to put together my first poetry collection.
Those of you who followed my saga of the Mass MoCA/Tupelo Press residency/workshop know that I had hoped returning to my home locale in its new phase of life would spawn a chapbook. Midway though the residency week, I realized that it needed to be a collection rather than a chapbook.
I have a provisional title.
A schema for organizing the sections of the collection.
And some poems that I have already written that will fit into the collection. Others are drafted but need revisions, workshopping, and more revision. Others are still barely ideas and there may be still others that become necessary to write to fill in gaps in the timeline or to balance the sections.
I am planning on marshaling my local resources, Sappho’s Circle and the Bunn Hill Poets, for help with workshopping individual poems. As I get further along in the process, I will probably afflict commandeer invite several writer-poet friends to critique a section or the whole collection. Other people are so much better at pointing out what doesn’t make sense or what is out of order than I am when I am so close to it.
I am ecstatic that our residency group, the Boiler House Poets, will have a reunion this fall. I definitely plan to enlist their help, although I’m not sure in what capacity. It will depend on where I am in the process in the fall. I may need more workshopping help, or organizational assistance, or help navigating the submission process, or may need some more art poems to balance the final section so that I would be generating new poems during the residency that would need feedback.
To me, that is part of the beauty of a plan. It can change and grow as needs dictate.
I know that many people would say that plans need to be written out with checkboxes and timelines and deadlines or things won’t get done.
I do understand that logic, but I can’t force myself – or my poetry – into that kind of straitjacket.
My life experience has featured too many unexpected events to carve any plan in stone.
Too many things can happen.
Too many things have happened.
I am confident that I will assemble this manuscript, but it doesn’t feel safe to me to say it is a 2016 goal or worse – shudder – resolution. It is a plan with roots in 2015 which will grow in 2016.
The fruit will ripen when the time is right. Whatever number gets attached to that date is not mine to say.
It’s not in the plan.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more about it here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/04/just-jot-it-january-4th-dachshund/
It’s been a busy couple of months. Ummmm…maybe more than a couple. OK – 2015 was a busy year.
This weekend, I just want to hit the pause button and rest. Not worry about planning anything. Being anywhere.
Just be.
Soon enough, it will be Monday morning. My husband’s 6 AM conference call with his colleagues in India will be back on. A lot of other obligations will be back on the calendar. I know. I spent a good chunk of yesterday copying dates onto a 2016 calendar. I’m still old-fashioned enough to keep a paper calendar rather than an electronic one. Well, two paper calendars. One on the dining room side table near the phone. Yes, landline. Still have one of those, too. The other a pocket calendar in my purse.
All those obligations waiting for my attention, starting Monday, January 4th.
But this weekend, a pause to catch a few more moments of unstructured time with B and T. Maybe a nap. Or a fire in the fireplace. Some hot cocoa with the last of the Christmas cookies.
Who knows?
Just being.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “pause/paws.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/01/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-jan-216/
http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/02/just-jot-it-january-2nd-pausepaws-socs/
Joanne Corey 