Careful! Those Words Are Loaded!

Many things to talk about, and I may run out of time, but here goes:

First, I haven't written yet today, though I did get in my 1500 yesterday. I'm getting a little bogged down in the story at the moment actually. I still like it and I'm becoming dangerously attached to a certain one of my characters, but the darn thing just keeps getting longer! This is good, because it looks like my story is definitely fully novel-length (always an issue for me, the queen of the 80-page novella...), but it's also bad because I'm trying to write quickly, so I don't give up or get distracted, but as each chapter blossoms into four or five chapters, I get the sense that I will never finish. I will be writing this book forever. At least I like it.

A brief note about some changes to my profile: I added more interests to help (theoretically) people find this who might like it. I don't spend a whole lot of time online, except to write these entries basically, so it takes a while for me to find new blogs/journals and very, very rarely comment on other people's entries. I should do that more often, actually. I also added a link. I will discuss why I've chosen those links in the future, I swear, just as soon as...Well, you know. I have a dream. My dream is that someday I will live in a little house in the country. I will have a studio where I can paint and sculpt and not have to worry about moving stuff off the table when company comes over, or you know, we have to eat. And I will have lots more time to do all the things I like to do, like read books, and sleep. Yeah. ; )

( Little Rant on RDR/WB Trial )

In other news, I went to hear Mary Oliver read last night. I bought two of her books two weeks ago, but I didn't want to write anything until after I'd heard her speak, as authors sometimes give insight into their work that changes the whole way you look at and think about it. And I liked hearing Ms. Oliver read her poems. She unconsciously ADDED PUNCTUATION where it BELONGED in the poem, so it was much easier to understand what she meant when she read it than when I read it. I still don't much care for any of her poems (OK, to be fair, there are one or two I kind of liked, but not in the profoundly passionate way I love the works of certain other poets. Actually, I usually detest the modern poems I read in literary journals, etc. I like Keats and Robert Browning, and even Shakespeare. I am starting to think there's really no hope I'll ever get any of my poems published...).

Somehow, hearing the awed and thoughtful "Hmm"s of the audience as she ended each piece only made them seem triter and less important to me. Somehow, I didn't hear anything new in her words. I don't know if, forty years ago, her poetry was new and important, but not only were there no really profound thoughts for me, her own profound thoughts never really changed over that whole long career. Her recent poems express the exact same feelings her earlier ones do. I actually find it kind of sad to think a person could live such a long time and not learn anything she hadn't learned by the time she was 25. Sigh. Someone who went with me suggested that I couldn't appreciate the insights she got from the little nature of New England, because I've been jaded by the grandeur that surrounds me every day. It's hard to have a small thought in a place like this. ; ) I did find it interesting that she saw a dipper once in Colorado fifty years ago and decided then to be a poet. Something kind of like that happened to me. ; )

Indeed, I was inspired to write two poems last night. And, on the way home, I saw a black (!!) fox, and a great horned owl. The fox was a red fox, of course, (Vulpes vulpes), but it was black with white specks, not at all unlike the black form of the yellow-bellied marmot I've seen around here sometimes, or even the black form of the fox squirrel. But I didn't know they came in that color! It wasn't the "cross fox"; it was just black. And the owls were calling outside my window all evening as the horned moon set behind the mountains...It's hard not to write poetry around here, come to think of it!

And, I was very happy this morning because my two favorite bloggers had new entries...but I think I've really run out of time, and space (I've run out of space-time!! Never mind...), to write about them. And I wanted so much to mention toilets in Australia...Yes, well, I'll talk about all these things eventually, I'm sure. Let me just add that everyone should have an Italian cousin with whom they can discuss art and tax shelters, and wasn't I going to write about the art museum? And didn't I say I'd talk about my future, as dictated by very bad fast food? And it's snowing again...actually mixed rain and snow. Well, there's always tomorrow. ; ) And now the sun has come out again. And a bunch of Cassin's finches (the first I've seen this spring!) are bathing in a puddle in the driveway. And we finally got the bat box hung this morning...

-Susie

The Tangled Interwebs We Weave...

Today is my birthday. I am 24. It seems to me this year should be going better for me than it has been so far, after all, it is my year, i.e. the Year of the Rat. I am (proudly) a rat. Perhaps your year is not the year when everything goes right for you. Perhaps it's just when all the hidden parts of your personality become most apparent. In that case, then, it seems logical that this year I would be filled with self-doubt, which is I think Rat's greatest fault. And I am. So I decided, as a motivation I suppose, to start a blog on my birthday and continue to keep it for a year. The hope is that here I will record my thoughts and progress and by the time my next birthday comes around, when I will be a quarter of a century old, I will have achieved the goals I lay out here today, namely to get my next book in the secure grasp of a publisher--a real publisher--and feel I have finally earned the right to call myself an author, even though I've been a writer for many years. Because, you see, I think the difference between an author and a writer is more than just verb tense. A writer writes. An author wrote. But, like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest unwatched by human eyes, if a writer's work goes unread, has she been utterly wasting her time?
I hope to post some of my writing here in the future, although that is a sticky thing to do, as technically, any writing posted online is essentially published, even if nobody reads it. I will try to put up some previously published poems and I actually have a little short story in mind that would be inappropriate to post anywhere else, but more on that some other day.
So. Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I live? Firstly, I am a writer. That is my vocation. It is the only thing in the world I have really enjoyed doing and that has given meaning to my life. I do not write anything lightly, and hope that my view of the world is sufficiently different and interesting as to be important to others. In the meantime, I hope that my thoughts here will amuse you and give you something to think about that you might not have thought about before. My interests are wide and varied, and I hope to explore them all here as time goes by. I will keep all my entries public for the simple reason that the internet is never as private as some believe and if something is so personal I only want to share it with my real-life friends, I will tell them by other means. I will not be afraid to bare my soul here, though, as that's what writers really do.
Why is my name here Lepus domesticus? Because it's obscure. That's all. I am a sucker for bad puns, word games, and esoterica. It is scientific Latin meaning a domestic, or tame, hare. I got that from W.B. Yeats' poem "Two Songs of a Fool" whose first line is "A speckled cat and a tame hare." It is not my favorite poem of his, though he is my favorite poet, but I chose it because I have often felt like The Fool, but I relate more to the hare than to the cat. The speckled cat will wander out of the house away from the hearth and have his adventures and then return and sit smugly by the fire as cats are wont to do. The hare on the other hand, desperate to stretch her long, long legs will dash out into the woods, leaping and pirouetting as hares are wont to do, and may find herself at last on the table of the hunter, which neither cat nor fool will ever do. The hare's position is the most perilous, and she therefore represents life. We may be as secure as we like before the fire on the worn rug that has adorned our home for centuries, but eventually, we have to go out into the woods, we have to leap, and then we are in danger. So I'm leaping.
Where am I? My home is my center and very much defines me. It is a lovely cloudy day today and I will talk about the weather and my wild neighbors often on this blog. Today, however, I will only say this: Last year for my birthday I had daffodils. This year, there is too much snow. I saw some swallows floating by around noon, however, and a butterfly beat its sharp dark wings against my window. The nutcrackers are hoarsely chattering in the douglas-firs on the hill, protecting their new nest from the deep brown dark phase redtail and her mate, who like to perch up there and catch the wind. And the ravens are always soaring overhead and calling. As you can probably tell by my picture, ravens are very important to me, and to see them floating effortlessly and to hear their throaty rasps and caws and to watch them tumbling over and over in the high wind like so many black feathered clouds, always brings joy to my heart.
Happy birthday to me! Here's to a good year and all it brings!! And here's to all the things I bring to you who read here!