Weblog 12

February 5, 2006~ 1:30pm
Here it is...Superbowl Sunday. I slept 13 hours last night, well-rested, not quite rarin' to go yet, but gettin' there with coffee. Due to call my mother in a half-hour-- assure her I haven't slept in, that we will go shopping, that we'll have a nice meal at Eat'n Park, and that I'll stay and watch the game with her- losing my cool as per usual- though I know very little about the game. LOL...

I get a big kick out of watching her settled in her easy chair, face percolating with emotion, telling the TV screen what's what, and givin' it hell. Nothing could be better for her than seeing the Steelers win this championship. She's waited 25 years to see the Steel Curtain rise again to reveal a real ass-kicking football team, so I hope it happens for her tonight. And yeah...getting home late or not, I want to see that. Steeler fans are a strange, gregarious lot......



Give that guys breasts...could very easily be me or my mum. LOL!

And yes, still posting at the board. Still no one but me. Everyone's gone off to another pasture--- but in time it will populate again, I feel confident of that- it's been through these nuclear explosions before and come back as green, with strange new mutated flowers and bigger butterflies and psychedelic bees....this is a day of praying for comebacks. A day of crazy hope.


February 5, 2006~ 11:50pm
Couldn't let this day go by without saying...

We DID IT!! "One for the thumb!" You beautiful, beautiful boys. The Steelers pulled it out and hauled it home. Good job, Roethlisberger, Ward, Bettis, all the blitzing, boinking, bull-charging lot of ya! You made my mother.....very happy *grin* Coming home, there was about an inch of sleety snow on the roads and throngs of honking cars with happy passengers. And one old guy who stands out for me...so I wrote a poem.

Victory

It was immediate,
the honking horns, the sound
of pistols fired, the cracker
jacking happiness
of victory
when the clock
ran out and Pittsburgh
had its win. My mother, 85, had lived
to see another Superbowl win
in Steel Town. Such things
never solve
our problems, but for a brief few hours
everyone is
everybody's friend. There is a shared
exuberance, clapping on the back- pulling strangers
into the protected circle of the self. And although
it's fleeting, silly, gone in no time, yet
the sight
of a toothless man, head
back- laughing into
snow, standing on the corner
under a streetlight
as I made my way
through sleety streets
back home, and waving
a yellow towel around his head
and whooping, makes it worth it. I knew
wherever he
was going
with that toothless
grin, was probably someplace all
alone, being that he came outside
and found a place
where he could see the traffic
honking,
frivolous and noisy, told me he'd probably
watched the game
at home, all by
himself,
and now had need of others to pour
his joy into,
and I understood
that: connectedness is all- is always
worth it.
Under
dressed, dentureless
or not, to whoop is something
done in
packs,
and it swells
with life, and he was
thirsty.


February 7, 2006~ 5:30pm
Life is such a mixture of highs and lows. Late last night, I killed off my poetry persona for the board I was enjoying: the place had a nice long history, but this last rift was unlike any other. This time there was a whistle blown for "everybody outta the pool!" (Not in so many words- few, actually) but this time a new camp was set up nearby.

Which would've been fine- it's been done before and I've watched as writer's would slowly begin to cross-post, hop in and out-- but this time, one voice made it clear that those who did not make an immediate show of protest were in actuality being disloyal to a much-beloved original poster, so instead of letting things cool off in their own fashion (as they usually do between creative folks) it suddenly became awkward for people to remain. To stay was not to care...and poets, one by one started to hop over. Aand not hop back.

I tried to stick it out for a couple of days but everyone has migrated. The new board prides itself on anarchy, and I've seen this at work before. Inevitably, it becomes more and more fragmented- silly, broken--not much of anything at all but a huge graffiti board. Seeing no future in either place I committed hara kari- Sayonara, Pghpoet- we had a fun seven week run.

This would've solved itself.
No one gave it a chance to repair. Emotions were running higher than usual and the thing dismantled after 5 years because one person didn't have the opportunity to jump back into an argument and continue it.

Sad. It makes me very sad. I suspect the board was not meeting whatever needs were going unmet for some, but I don't remember it being created originally for anything other than sharing good writing and warm camaraderie- and as a haven from 'form bullies' who'd trounced someone simply for posting too often. That morphed somewhere along the line, into a statement about absolute freedom....which turned to license...which eventually turns to Trash indeed....and 'junk'.

None of which interests me in the slightest.

Ironically, the two who purported to love the place the most, are the ones who (in reality) closed it down: the argument didn't do it.

It was a lovely place................once upon a time.


February 8, 2006~ 9:00am
For a real feeling of just how keyed up and wonderful this town is, feast your eyes on this slide show with sound from today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON

*(click on the little arrow in the bottom left hand corner to start the sequence)--I just want to add, that with 250,000 people crammed into the tight streets of downtown, there was not one injury or incident. My favorite story is the fella who drove in, not to attend the victory parade, but to keep a doctor's appointment in Oakland. Needless to say, he became stuck. Instead of ranting and fuming, he allowed people to climb up on TOP of his mini van in order to get a better view....lol. Now that's the kind of thing that's special about this town. It's a city with a 'small town heart'.


February 9, 2006~ 10:15pm
This is a day I could chew ground glass & spit it back out diamonds- I feel that tight-jawed determined in everything. The work day was satisfying- much accomplished. My favorite new employee is leaving for a much better opportunity and I'm happy for her--gave her a copy of my book as a remembrance and I hope she uses the email address I wrote inside of it--gonna miss her.

One thing life should teach us is knowing how and when to leave. That's a skill- or talent- or intuition should never be underestimated. It's the difference between feeling at peace with yourself or not-- feeling contented or chronically malcontent. It's also the mark of maturity. The truly experienced person knows when the water is foul, the ground is fallow, the time to move on has come.

And I'm learnin'......



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