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She's in hospice care. Not gone yet, but that doesn't mean I can't grieve. Look! I have put my obsession with the geology of the Bitterroot Valley into practical use!

Sapphire Mountains

When the hills slid from the mountains,
aching with the pain of separation.
When ancient fell from the grasp
of the young, even as youth
reaches high,
coated in the mica of your passing;
I fall from you
as you fall from me;
falling away across ever-winding rivers;
beyond trees that never die, and
roads that never straighten.
I will see you there glowing in the sunset
with sapphires in your heart.
nonionay: (Default)
Trying not to be bitter today. And not for the usual "Valentine's Day sucks" reasons. An old friend stated that hate is love restrained. So what are we, society, doing insisting on restraining love that isn't even ours?

Tradition states* that today, almost two thousand years ago, a man died who, among other things, committed the crime of performing marriages for a group of people who were reviled and forbidden to practice their faith. (and thereby, get married).

Heaven forbid anyone marry the person they love, no matter what society at large has to say about it. At various times of my life, I've felt required to keep the people I love apart, because of fear and the specter of shame. (I'm not ashamed, dammit. I don't want to act like it.)

So here's a prayer for anyone who's in love with a person--or persons--that someone else thinks they shouldn't love.*** For gays, polyamorists, people of disparate races and religions and political creeds and anything else I haven't thought of.

Thank you for love
for the joy it brings
and the sharing
and caring.

The glee and excitement
that turns dried flowers
into nectar-spilling roses.

Let me share my nectar with all the world.
Let the whole world benefit
From the relationships I create
For are not two more powerful than one?
(And three and four? An infinite net to catch me and my children when I fall.)

Let there be no orphans
Or widowed hearts
Damned to isolation
Because of fear.

Let us proclaim our love to the world.




*No matter how tradition may have been revised.**
** Also, happy Saint Cyril and Methodius Day! Yay Cyrillic writing system! Knowing how humble saints are supposed to be, I'm sure Methodius doesn't feel shafted for the writing system not being called Cyrillmethodic.
***Excepting the pedophiliacs. Sucks to be them. As long as we're praying, we can all pray they manage to be self-aware and in control.
nonionay: (Default)
Holy smokes! I just discovered an easy way to to make poetry.
Some of the seeds I generate from prompts are short and pretty, but I can't for the life of me imagine how to pull a 1,000-5,000 word story out of them, and there's not enough plot for it to be flash. That last poem I posted, though, came from me playing with such a seed and turning it to poem form. It sat. And sat. Months after doing this, I realize I actually have a poem.
So, I thought, why don't I do this for all those other orphaned seeds?
So yeah, I just wrote two poems in ten minutes.
One that I just did, I only had to add line breaks!

I go back and forth with my poetry. Most of my earlier stuff is just me playing around, and it only makes sense to me. Every now and then, I get the urge to send one out. It gets rejected, and I chicken out again. I'm back in send-it-out mode.
Looking at the pro markets, you can make like 300$ for a poem! Dude!
Of course, most of them also have response times of at least a hundred days, according to Duotrope.

And of course, I'm not likely to get 300$ But if I can get 20 dollars for a poem it takes me ten minutes to write, I'll feel good.
nonionay: (Default)
Curled up in my beanbag chair this evening with Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Traveled." I expected an informational book, not an interactive one! But Fry pushes you along and orders you to read things out loud and mark up the sample verses with a pencil. And it's Stephen Fry, with his jovial, conversational, gentlemanly voice, and so you can't disobey. As a result, I can't let Audrey borrow it when I'm done, but will have to buy it for her as a gift. She needs her own to mark up. Definitely, because she's the only other poetry person in my group.

It includes exercises, which Fry does along with you for reassurance and example. He stresses having fun and writing poetry as a hobby. You can tell he writes his examples spontaneously, just as he wants you to, as they're full of mentions of the birds outside his window, and his desktop ashtrays overflowing. They're not masterpieces, but they're honest and show how lovely everyday things can be when you write them in iambic pentameter. They encourage everyone to join in.

I've done three of the exercises, and my brain feels pleasantly worked out. He suggests doing similar exercises regularly, and I agree. It's a good way to keep your brain working and feeling out rhythms. Most useful was the exercise that required you write two couplets in iambic pentameter, each about the same topic (he provided five--simple things like what's outside your window), one without (to simplify the jargon) punctuation, and one with. It forces you to write with different styles and think about what you're doing.
nonionay: (Default)
Went to the Paranormal Bender, [livejournal.com profile] tbclone47 has pictures.
We got there early (to compensate for traffic that didn't exist. Coming home was hell, though.) so we lost ourselves in the sf section of the University Bookstore, letting Duane tell us stories like The Missing Chapter in a Robin Hobb Book That We Had to Photocopy and Hand Out To People.

I spent almost $100 on books, and since I'm saving $1000 bucks by not going to Worldcon, I can do this. Mainly, I got people I know, online or otherwise. Of the speakers, I only got Mark Teppo's Lightbreaker and Cherie Priest's Fathom, since I've already got stuff by the others (and I just really wanted Fathom).

With 40 minutes to spare, we settled into the seating area, which had a table so San could finish his fan drawings. It's in the poetry section, so I was able to continue my search for a good poetry instruction book that includes traditional forms other than just the sonnet. They had a huge volume of Russian poems translated by Nabokov. I drooled, but it was 40$ and would have broken my arm carrying it around. However, I read the opening, which included a poem by Nabokov about translating poems. It included lines like (paraphrased) desecrating graves and dove droppings on your monument. I <3 Nabokov.
Then, to my joy, I found it. A book about poetry, emphasis on the traditional, by Stephen Fry.
<3 <3 <3

An Ode

Nov. 23rd, 2008 08:05 am
nonionay: (Default)
Wow, I'm a featured member on Elfwood today...
I haven't even visited there in like...
years.
Dear Elfwood, land where I let myself be creative
land where I met [livejournal.com profile] csinman
land where I met [livejournal.com profile] kehrli before I met [livejournal.com profile] kehrli
land where [livejournal.com profile] kehrli met [livejournal.com profile] renatus and [livejournal.com profile] awriter
land of guilt trips, since I totally don't do visual art anymore
and everyone yells at me for it.

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