"Egyptian Revival" and Anniversaries

Straight from the Writer's Almanac.

It's the birthday of poet C.P. Cavafy, (books by this author) born in Alexandria, Egypt (1863). His parents were Greek, and he wrote his poetry in modern Greek, but lived in Alexandria almost his entire life. He lived with his mother until he was thirty-six, in an apartment just above a brothel, and across the street from a church and a hospital.

One of his few friends was the novelist E.M. Forster, who called Cavafy "a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe."

What I like about Cavafy's photographs are his hooded eyes, the power of which are not hidden behind those decorous round glasses.
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Today's also C. Dale Young's weddding day. Congratulations and best wishes to him and Jacob! I hope their day is beautiful.
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Also about 2 decades ago, on this date, Harvey and I went to the courthouse on my lunch break and were married. The judge's secretary picked pink tulips from the courthouse lawn so I could have a bouquet. We had no rings, nothing old, new, borrowed, or blue (unless you count my 1964 Impala). I went back to work, and Harvey went back to finals. In the only picture we have of that day, we look so young (and he was young, at 22-1/2, just a baby). My friend Janice always says, "Men are dessert." To that I say Harvey is the most decadent baked Alaska. (And who's counting calories?) I love you, Harv.

Enough mush. Must write ballad today--I think it's on playing tennis with a former teacher of mine. (And I whupped him, too).

Pamela

I hope it's just gossip, but...

To paraphrase:

Elizabeth Taylor
we love you get well

Why I Love Medical Transcription

An incision was made into the bologna popliteal artery.

Talk about a cold cut--the correct word is below-knee.

Priceless, priceless, priceless. Who wouldn't want to edit that?

Subluminal Mutterings and MFA

1. Rising ::
Sun

2. Third ::
Rock from the (rising) Sun

3. Disruptive ::
neighbors

4. Surround ::
Sound

5. Distant ::
Relations

6. Suction ::
Cannula

7. Fried ::
Banana (made them this weekend--yum)

8. Nuggets ::
Clementine

9. Clip ::
Clop

10. San Antonio ::
Spurs (my team)

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MFA is coming down to its last lap. I have 2 poem exercises (Ballade and Slant) to write, and I am transcribing my journal notes. Read lately: Robert Penn Warren--Brother to Dragons, Ellen Bryant Voigt--Kyrie; Yeats' Autobiography. Still to write up: Devolution of the Nude; John Hollander's The Gazer Within (ekphrasis in poetry); Marianne Moore's Collected Poems. Also need to write up something on Robert Frost.

One more story due--it's finished for the first draft--I have till 05/02 to get it cleaned up.

Maybe I will have more exciting news soon--I have just gotten a letter asking me to revise a story and send it back. If this pans out, it is $1,000. Oh, I hope so. Maybe the gods are trying to tell me something about writing fiction, because I also found $20 in a paperback mystery today. If the message is poetry doesn't pay, well, I think I've gotten that one sans need for Ouija board.

Harvey is now an official junk-king. He went for a walk yesterday and brought back a very cool blue metal kitchen stool, which matches the porch swing exactly and will make a great drink/plant stand. He also found a HUGE (3 x 2 feet approximately) 19th century plaster/gilt frame that someone had tossed out in the trash. I am thrilled. Today, I found 6 salt and pepper sets at Trade Day--one of playing cards (lustreware), one of pickles, one of grasshoppers on watermelons, one green Tappan chef and wife (brandishing rolling pin), one pair of lobsters, one pair turtles (sitting on their tails, smoking cigars). Oh, what fun for my lunch money, and then I found a $20.00 bill in a copy of Best American Mystery Stories (containing, as well, Dennis Lehane's "Until Gwen" and this book was free to me from the dealer, who did not have change for a 10-spot and just gave me the regularly priced 25-cent book). So for a net profit of $15.00, we have today's treasures. And I'm still debating about the alarm clock s/p shakers that were left behind (not in a Tim Lehaye way, though). They'd be a great windowsill accessory...

My chipped elbow is almost back to normal. It's been very hard to type (i.e, make money as a transcriptionist) when my elbow swelled up bigger than Popeye's biceps. No anchor, alas...

Vroom, Vroom, Vroom

I'm a Porsche 911!

You have a classic style, but you're up-to-date with the latest technology. You're ambitious, competitive, and you love to win. Performance, precision, and prestige - you're one of the elite,and you know it.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

When Snakes Had Lips, Er, Hips

My grandmother used to say, "Back when snakes had lips..." and I thought I understood her. Maybe I misunderstood her, because of this...

The fossil of one of the most primitive snakes ever discovered has a sacrum (a bony structure that supports legs). As snakes lost their legs over time, they also lost their need for hips.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by Pamela, assiduously avoiding writing a POEM A DAY since 1996.

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All kidding aside, I have written 3 short stories this semester, 20 poems/exercises, and free-floating journal entries on poetic form. I am in the midst of compiling 25 poems I like from the Norton Anthology. (This is hard--I can either find 250 or 5, but 25 is a weird number). Next week, I'll type up all my journal entries, have a conference with one of my professors, and turn in the last short story. Then I will be a revising fool, who only needs to write a BALLAD to finish all class work. AARGH. Any ideas on a current news topic? Help me, because I am seriously considering the snake with hips option...

Sister Study

I am participating in this study in honor of my sister, Dr. Karen Robinette Mallory, who died of breast cancer last summer at age 46.

Thanks to Kelli Russell Agodon for posting this link on her blog.

No particular point to this except...

I saw a stein I could not afford at Trade Day--A lidded beer mug(the fancy Prussian sort) with the "GERTRUDE" engraved on its edge. That makes it a Gertrude Stein. It was $50. If only I could have afforded it...That would have been the coolest thing since my Dominion Jar.

So I went back to the hillbilly/pseudo-German/technobabble generator and found this:

Und, pukein pukein stein floppern poppin mitten der keepin kaputt wunderbar gestalt. Thinkin pukin--wunderbar.

That about sums up Tax Day here. Yessirree Bob.

Out of California; Out of Africa

First from California--this is just a great wine company. I like Merlot or the Chardonnay (tastes like I imagine sunlight would taste). And I want the poster, which I'll order right after my FEAR THE POET t-shirt comes off backorder. I think I'll post a photo of myself wearing this if I ever receive it. (Thanks, Anne, for the link!)



Second, straight from Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of Isak Dinesen, (books by this author) born Karen Dinesen on a rural estate called Rungsted near Copenhagen, Denmark (1885). She came from a wealthy family of landowners and writers. Her grandfather was a friend of Hans Christian Andersen. She started writing at an early age, and one of the first stories she published was about a woman who has a love affair with a ghost.

In college she fell in love with the son of Baron Blixen of Sweden. But when he refused to marry her, she decided to get revenge by marrying his twin brother. She and her husband then moved to Kenya where they started a coffee plantation. She fell in love with Africa, and thought of it as a kind of Eden.

But she and her husband did not get along and they separated in 1925. She was alone and unhappy on the coffee plantation, and said, "I began in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times." The plantation grew less and less profitable and she struggled to stay in business. After a swarm of locusts and a drought, she finally had to sell the farm to a local developer.

But just as she was leaving Africa for good, Dinesen sent some of her stories to a publisher, and they were published as the collection Seven Gothic Tales (1934). Out of Africa came out in 1937.

Isak Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."

Répétés trois fois, les mots deviennent fades comme l'eau.

Repeated three times, words become flat like water. --Chinese proverb

Here's the problem with my poetry/MFA--I feel that I am repeating myself. There is so much emphasis on revision (which is emphasis I am inflicting on myself) that I am sick of all my poems. Does this happen to anyone else?

Maybe I should put my poems to the boil like lab frogs, or freeze them like icicles?

I've already tried putting them in vases, glasses, beakers (rewriting them in forms) and this only intensified the problem... What does one do? Inquiring minds want to know.

I wish I had a private income and could just take a summer off. I want to work on writing and work in some time to exercise. Compared to so many people, I am lucky to have 2 jobs I like, but man, it's expensive for us to all be in college. Sometimes, I wish my son and I were both tuition-free. (Harvey has finished, but now there are student loans--AAARGH. Thanks to the infinite wisdom of our state government, after receiving his master's degree and a raise, he now brings home $15.00 more a month after his inflated state taxes are deducted). We are trying our best to pay Daniel's way completely so he doesn't start off adulthood with that burden of student loans, or if he chooses them, they can be for an advanced degree. What we'll do in 10 years when Raleigh heads off to college is anyone's guess. I hope she goes to the school of her dreams, because neither Harvey nor I ever did that. Our parents did not pay our way. Mine were helpful, as long as I went to the local college (where I had a free ride). His parents were in no position to pay for his college, but his grandmother did help him out till we got married (his junior year). Then he was "PAMELA'S PROBLEM." Hahaha. If all of my problems were as wonderful as that one, I would not be having this pity-party.

And sometimes my hillbilly voice comes out a sonnet

At the Purina Co-Op

Cornbread eatin', y'all--good and tired--just cain't
Quarrel--hillbilly in here havin'
Hoosegow, rotgut fire,
Confounded by cipherin'--burnin' up

Bacon pigs barn--lordy lordy lordy,
That mud-ignorant liar yonder, they're
Gonna be shootin' him before the mules.
No plug-nickel sam-hell, buffalo gals

Left, jiggly like that'un. Sit a spell--
Whiskey Road, off Poker Creek--pudneer there.
I tell you, boy, watchin' ain't real work but
More than my dogs is tired of walkin'.

Them salesmen chew caught hospitality
Then skedaddle out before the fussin'.

Sometimes I speak in my hillbilly voice....

Beer snakeoil hold naw, hauled cabin, far fiddle. Round-up, foreclose, ails, up deep-fried ails. Hootin' and hootin' hogs havin', sheep bacon mush squalor grandpa knickers mobilehome. Heapin' tractor pigs throwed barefoot fussin' slap.

Pick-up creosote jehosephat spittin' damn. Said rustle wagon everlastin' muster rightly fightin' quarrel git, her. Muster y'all huntin' tornado hobo, ass dogs over dirty lordy. Tar, dirt gonna in uncle butt jiggly nothin' gal. Fixin' give wrestlin', hollarin' pappy muster bootleg. Spell maw his feathered damn mud hollarin' stole wild no afford old. Townfolk chew gospel wild deep-fried, tonic done him said rodeo backwoods catfight showed, afford, plug-nickel.

Java grandpa co-op right hauled chitlins tools country huntin' out broke yer right. Kickin' crop if, right muster his broke, backwoods salesmen panhandle.

Away for a little bit...Lupus Biteth

I'm having a big-time flare with my joints--I eased into it slowly, and I didn't realize it was this bad till today. My eyes are going in and out, and I need a mini-break. Hopefully I'll have more energy soon. April is being the cruelest month--this is the first one in nearly 2 years.

From E-Verse Radio

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, meanings for common words.

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs. (And a coffer would be...)

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam. (and students at mid-term would be testes?)

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists. (and hopefully there would be moral rectitude?)

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist. (for all transcriptionists everywhere)

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there. (Or carried off in the mouth of an exuberant golden retriever)

Clinical Pearls

We have new transcriptionists at work--and my favorite physician is providing ample instruction for them: Cases in point:

1. The lungs reveal bilateral pleural effusions--and, transcriptionist, that is not P-L-U-R-A-L, even though there are two lungs. Go figure...but please insert the "e" this time.

2. Exam reveals cryptic tonsils. Yes, transcriptionist,that word is cryptic. Just like in Stephen King, only there I think it was ears. I need to work on my reading list to impress you transcriptionists--what do you think of Zadie Smith?

3. The patient, although not at all indisposed, convinced the ill-fated Admissions worker that I wanted to admit her to the floor, and the hospital was once again her Hilton. Don't put this, but I wanted to sign out AMA from her case.

Back when I actually had to go to the hospital to work (instead of sitting here at home in my pajamas, rapidly typing away--and, by the way, thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet), Favorite Physician called the office. When I answered the phone, he said, "Quick--who is this?" I told him, "Your name is Dr. Doctor, in case you've forgotten your ID badge." He started laughing and then told someone else in the room with him, "Pay up the fifty bucks." That day, he bought us all lunch with his ill-gotten gains, and I was able to meet him "in person." Now he sends me e-mail lists with his favorite oxymoronic phrases: jumbo shrimp, recent past history, organized doctor...

Happy Doctor's Day to my favorite doctor. You know who you are.