Feeling exploratory but not adventurous

[rinue]

Woke up many hours early after not much sleep so that Ciro and I could go to the laundromat before I left for work. (The joys of a single car and driver and six loads of laundry.) This was exciting for two reasons: I like laundromats and haven't been to a proper one in more than a decade, and we had a months-long backload of laundry thanks to a washing machine breakdown, so that for the past three months or more we've had a cabinet full of dirty towels, dirty bedsheets, and dirty out-of-season clothes while we did emergency "socks and t-shirts" loads at the homes of friends and relatives while we worked on projects for or with friends and relatives. It was a relief to watch many, many pounds of fabric pass through multiple simultaneous industrial-strength machines, although I myself was at the garage down the street for most of it, getting an emissions inspection.

I am only awake thanks to many cups of coffee. I would take speed if it was available. I ate a moon pie for breakfast, despite not liking moon pies much, on the grounds I could get it at the gas station at the first shelf after I walked in. I packed a lunch that was as low effort as possible: open tin of sardines; eat with fork. Cut avocado open; eat with spoon. Piece of bread with indifferently sliced cheese.

So tired. So jangly and tired.

Had a nice dinner with Amber and Jeremy last night; watched each other's films and sat out on the roof wrapped in blankets and drinking wine. Otherwise, the day was mostly errands, with a small sliver of time carved out to sit on the couch with Ciro, reading books and drinking tea. Wrote a bit of a poem I'm still tinkering with. Poems are things I can manage when I don't have time or space, although I wonder if they aren't a bit pointless to other people. Aside from me and Ciro, I don't know anyone who reads poetry. I don't know whether even the poets I read read poetry. I should like to find out more about people; I hope this does not backfire.

Comments

[valancy_jane]

God, I hear you. Wish I were closer so I could be Laundro-Girl-Assistant.

My allergies are so bad this week (I guess it's my turn?) I'm on 4 kinds of allergy medication and I still can't hear out of my right ear. I am alternately exhausted/wired depending on my most recent dose.

Hang in there on poems - I love yours, though I can't say I'm any different in general from what you fear, as I barely read any at all now. I used to read poetry, but somewhere between taking too many crappy poetry classes and hearing the wrong stuff (I thought) praised consistently, I guess I just gave up.

At least I'm reading short stories? sigh.

[rinue]

Oh my I have read so much bad poetry. There is actually a lot of great stuff being published, but you wouldn't know it in most bookstores, and it is absolutely not the stuff people are reading at most open mics. And, sad to say, most poetry professors are also batshit and have terrible taste to an even higher degree than short story professors. And as usual, New York is a snake eating its own tail and thinking that's the whole world. But I could point to a ton of magazines that rule. I think the majority of the best poets ever are alive right now.

Oddly enough I've been becoming more impressed with Emily Dickinson lately, mainly because each time I've heard it read aloud it's felt brand new and exciting and like something to pay attention to. I feel like she's one of those people who seems overrated but who is not in fact overrated, and who has probably been unfairly ghettoized as a shy feminine poet when she isn't particularly shy or gendered.

[valancy_jane]

Hell yeah!

Dickinson was probably the last poet I got excited about, or at least the last English one.

[movingfinger]

I didn't mind the laundromat much until we had no car and I had to hand-carry or tow (in a granny cart, which is actually not so great for laundry) everything a few blocks down and uphill. When we had a car and no washing machines, it was somehow pleasant, sometimes, to take everything at once in baskets and pillow cases, use a couple of the gigantic machines, and have the down time when one really couldn't be expected to be or do anything else but Laundry.

That was before the Age of Coffee, and now of course some laundromats offer espresso and wifi or are at least located next to a cafe with both...

I remember sitting in a flickering linoleum laundromat on an orange fiberglass seat, watching a black-and-white kitten someone had brought with him pummeling a plastic bag around the floor.