"Asks" used as a noun! Twice in one day!

                        Dutch iris in front of loropetalum, May, '18, Couchwood, Saline County

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As I come to the end of  another journal, I'll share what I thought was important, ironic, idiotic, or interesting enough to transcribe. Bud Kenny and Gin Hartnett will remember my compendium project that the writers group stifled. I haven’t stopped with the project, and it’s becoming a behemoth.

Twice in one day, I read sentences that used “asks” as a noun!!! The first time I read it, I chuckled. “The U. S. has turned over to China a “detailed list of asks . . .” It was from the state paper’s wire service. The second instance came online from Tom Perez, Democratic Party head. “Dear Patricia, I know this is a big ask, . . .”

Now and then, an unknown word (or phrase) will ricochet from the paper to my eyes. If I’m at the computer, I’ll immediately ask Cortana for the definition. Two such words were “eustress” – “a moderate or normal psychological stress interpreted as being beneficial for the experiencer.” (Bing) The other was “inimical” – “tending to obstruct or harm; unfriendly, hostile.” (Let me stop right now and add those to my compendium chapter, “Unknown words or phrases.”)

“My theology,” says Christopher Morley, “is that the universe was dictated but not signed.” This was the solution to the AD-G’s cryptoquote on May 3. It was a different perspective, a different way of envisioning creation. I jotted it down.

Another quote, this time from Walter E. Williams, a columnist in the AD-G, is this: “The worst kind of ignorance is not knowing just how ignorant we are.” (March 29) And one more, “Spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.” – Susan L. Taylor, a cryptoquote I DID NOT SOLVE. The next day’s puzzle, I DID unravel: “Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and this is where you renew your springs that never run dry.”—Pearl S. Buck

I also collect given names. The final page in the artsy journal from Tuesday Morning include these: Rumondale, Elgean, Tasha, Ohmod, Quatie, Cleamon, Evert, Fayerene, Reagin, Arshia, Wyndham, Griffyn, Rocco and Claretha.

This is also where I compose poems. Two of them follow:

CHANGING SEASONS -
No wind
this work week’s last
day. Cloudy, quiet—what
does it portend? Has turbulence
died down?

ROTEL & HOT SAUCE –
A sure
way to unclog
sinuses: Tabasco
into your olio of white
bean soup.

Finally, odd surnames and those ending with “-man” also get a place in my writings. Some of my best stories and chapters have been written using a word bank of surnames. Here are some last names in  the last pages of my journal: Freda, Noel, Arbiter, Pries, Wingrove, Snow, Tang, Kirtzman, Spies, Sleeper, Lehman, Seidman, Schulman, and Gilman.

Now to add this list to the compendium.

Happy rest-of-May to you all. (Or to all of you.)

                                                         Newest journal, gift of B. K.

c 2018, PL, d/b/a lovepat press, Benton AR U.S.A.

               

                               

Cold week in the Ozarks: a journaling

Bundled up last October; not quite as cold this spring. But still cold--most of the week.

 

by Pat Laster

 

 APRIL 1- Monday, 7:55 a.m. – Couchwood. Sunny and foggy; up at 6:58 before alarm. Prepping to leave for a week at Eureka Springs – Lucidity Poetry retreat (for two days and three evenings) but living at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.

APRIL 2 – Tuesday, 8:14 a.m. At WCDH in the Peach Blossom Suite. Lower floor accessible street-side by stone steps (a death-trap by night without a flashlight) or park-side by a narrow path between the building and the edge of a 6-foot drop-off onto Polk Street. 42 degrees, rainy.
          After the first night, I wrote:

Lighting’s

poor, chair’s too low. 

The heating unit sounds

like a squadron of motorbikes

revving.

 

Coffee’s

good, the décor’s

pleasing and restful, bed’s

comfortable, dresser storage

ample.

          9:42 a.m. –breakfast: an Easter dinner roll spread with peanut butter and dried berries brought from home, almonds (ditto), cold skim milk and coffee from the common kitchen here. A cinquain texted to the roll baker:

Brother
Guy, I just ate
one of your homemade rolls
at Dairy Hollow in April.
Yum, yum!

APRIL 3 – Wednesday, 6:23 a.m., up with alarm at 5:58, 34 degrees!?! A call during the night from Tech Support Simon, who was “tuning up” my 3-week-old laptop, interrupted my sleep, making the alarm seem even earlier.
          Leading a Lucidity poets’ workshop across town that started at 8:30 meant leaving here at 8.  Jottings from the session included: “forensic = law,” a line from one poem, “The dead always want more,” and a reminder that “specifics are better than generalizations.”

APRIL 4 – Thursday. My notes begin at 11:30 with a lecture by our renown and long-standing professor Larry Thomas from Ypsilanti, Michigan, who has traveled this route for 19 years. After this year, he’s bowing out. Past age 80, he deserves to, though we will miss him terribly. Notes: Frost’s quandary can become our own: “What should I do today?”
          In another note the lecturer says, “A poem says one thing and means another.” I don’t agree with that statement, because many of my works are literal, not metaphorical. Perhaps he was talking about GOOD/GREAT poems.

APRIL 5 – Friday. 42 degrees—finally sunny. 10:05 a.m. After two days of arising by alarm for Lucidity workshops at 8:30, I sleep in till I’m rested. Vivid dreams of being back in the music classroom of 7^th graders are thankfully quashed by notification of a full bladder. At 7:20, I rouse, decide it’s too early, so, like a cat, I stretch, yawn, assume my favorite (fetal) position and return to sleep. But not a deep sleep, for I begin building Fibonacci (a new form of poetry for me) in my head. [6 more pages of notes.]

APRIL 6 – Saturday, 7:38 a.m. 50 degrees! I take my coffee outside and a bird seems to greet me. “Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie, sweetie,” with an occasional 5^th “sweetie.” It must know I stand below. [Tee-hee.]
           From inside, I grab a straight-back, slatted-back, caned-seat wooden chair. (Yes, I know there’s too many adjectives, but I want to be specific.) Add a pillow, fetch the oak TV tray that I brought with me “just in case.” (This is the “case.”) Voila! An outdoors writing station! [7 more pages of notes, mostly research about boardinghouse rates and related information.]

APRIL 7 – Sunday, 7:32 a.m.—up at 7:27, 51 degrees, cloudy. DREAM: I’d accepted an interim choir directing job at a local church. After one-and-a-half rehearsals of a difficult but doable anthem, I up and quit. “Lack of respect,” I shouted.
          First inciting event: While I was “teaching,” a man whom I knew talked–not whispered--to his neighbor the entire time. Second inciting event: Four women—two of whom I knew—quit singing and began hand-jiving in rhythm.
          Skip to the end: As I was leaving, the talkative tenor had gathered the group and some Cokesbury hymnals in the choir loft to “pick out something for Sunday.”
          I think I just dreamed a short story!