Bobbing

Ah, DC. A couple of days ago I needed to record some poems for a Chicago-based broadcast recreating a Music/Words event I did with Inna Faliks and Oni Buchanan this past November. Only in my hometown would studio time get booked at NPR's national headquarters. Not the easiest day to be there; the CEO had resigned just that morning. Still, it is impossible not to be awed by the building and the talent it houses, which I do have faith will endure this current (largely development-side) scandal.


Two of the poems I read have been published in journals but not in a book. In the studio, freed from the distraction of gaging an audience, I found myself looking at the pages with fresh eyes. And I thought yep, there's a book here. Funny how just the conversation between two poems is enough to suggest a theme. It might be a collection that leaves poems by the wayside, poems I was sure I'd be using. But that's okay. I'm intrigued.


That's all I have to say about that for now.


I've been taking a few days to just...be. To enjoy the simple pleasures of making coffee in my own home, cooking quinoa on my own stove, getting my feet under me with my Writer's Center workshop, seeing friends for artisan cocktails (Laphroig + vermouth + "apple smoke" block of ice + pork belly garnish = good lordy), going on a scavenger hunt with my sister at the Textile Museum.


It has been good. But today, it all feels kind of insignificant. No personal balance can ground one enough to watch the waves of water that have swept across Japan in the 24 hours, or to watch the climbing count of lives lost, or to wait and see if Hawaii is hit, or to hear the second wave of reports that nuclear reactors--five of them--are "in peril" (the latest Washington Post headline). Some days you feel like a very small ship, bobbing in a very big & hungry sea.