The Rockrose Moon (A Serial Fiction)
Part 10
God, this place is a mess! I need new clothes. What happens when I need something new is that I try on everything in about 50 different combinations before I go out and I end up with piles on the ballroom floor under the windows.
My dad was a bond trader in San Francisco and when I was little and very very good sometimes I could go to his office, a high rise. They all had these pretty empty offices with piles of paper stacked neatly in front of the floor to ceiling windows. So when I throw a tiny sea green layering t-shirt on a stack of other clothes under the bell shaped windows I think of him.
Weird.
Jack had me read my poem outloud to the workshop group. No problem. I am an experienced reader, my voice only quavered at first. Then he asked the group, “So what does it mean???” Dead silence. Silencio.
It killed me, that silence.
Broke my heart. He even tried giving hints…”Do you think it might be about…” No one spoke up. Everybody just made nice nice and after awhile he told some story and mumbled about the benefits of clear writing and moved on.
Later, Christian, my champion, said to Jack privately, “It is about death you know, her poem.” Jack, said, “Of course it is about death! I knew that but they didn’t.”
Love and sex and death.
When it comes down to it every poem that matters is about those things in some way. Even poems about the inevitability of regret are about loss, which is a kind of a death.
So here is my hint to you, if you ever find yourself in an odious overpriced workshop and can’t think of a thing to say about somebody else’s work, ask yourself what part of love, sex and/or death is it about and get a clue and say something intelligent, okay? Somebody's heart is most likely at risk.
There was this middle-aged woman in that workshop that could not stop talking. After about four hours of her nervous nonsensical ramblings I thought I was just going to deflate and die right there on the spot. It was exhausting.
I wonder what she said to herself when she went home. If she had any awareness that her compulsive babbling was killing anything that even resembled a creative or an intuitive spark or passing on of some august teaching?
The other day I asked a receptionist at this office I was in if she was okay, she had this odd little bandage on her face and not only did I get the story of her frightening trip to the dermatologist, I am not sure how but that turned into a description of the place she wanted to have her son’s birthday party and then, and then as I am trying desperately to back away and out of there a description of the death of each of three kittens she brought home from the Humane Society!
Where in there, in my inquiry about her wellbeing did I give her permission to tell me that! Eek.
Poetry, the art of saying so much with so few words.
The antithesis of our modern world.
I think my cell phone is probably under one of those piles of clothes. I am ignoring the ringing.
God, this place is a mess! I need new clothes. What happens when I need something new is that I try on everything in about 50 different combinations before I go out and I end up with piles on the ballroom floor under the windows.
My dad was a bond trader in San Francisco and when I was little and very very good sometimes I could go to his office, a high rise. They all had these pretty empty offices with piles of paper stacked neatly in front of the floor to ceiling windows. So when I throw a tiny sea green layering t-shirt on a stack of other clothes under the bell shaped windows I think of him.
Weird.
Jack had me read my poem outloud to the workshop group. No problem. I am an experienced reader, my voice only quavered at first. Then he asked the group, “So what does it mean???” Dead silence. Silencio.
It killed me, that silence.
Broke my heart. He even tried giving hints…”Do you think it might be about…” No one spoke up. Everybody just made nice nice and after awhile he told some story and mumbled about the benefits of clear writing and moved on.
Later, Christian, my champion, said to Jack privately, “It is about death you know, her poem.” Jack, said, “Of course it is about death! I knew that but they didn’t.”
Love and sex and death.
When it comes down to it every poem that matters is about those things in some way. Even poems about the inevitability of regret are about loss, which is a kind of a death.
So here is my hint to you, if you ever find yourself in an odious overpriced workshop and can’t think of a thing to say about somebody else’s work, ask yourself what part of love, sex and/or death is it about and get a clue and say something intelligent, okay? Somebody's heart is most likely at risk.
There was this middle-aged woman in that workshop that could not stop talking. After about four hours of her nervous nonsensical ramblings I thought I was just going to deflate and die right there on the spot. It was exhausting.
I wonder what she said to herself when she went home. If she had any awareness that her compulsive babbling was killing anything that even resembled a creative or an intuitive spark or passing on of some august teaching?
The other day I asked a receptionist at this office I was in if she was okay, she had this odd little bandage on her face and not only did I get the story of her frightening trip to the dermatologist, I am not sure how but that turned into a description of the place she wanted to have her son’s birthday party and then, and then as I am trying desperately to back away and out of there a description of the death of each of three kittens she brought home from the Humane Society!
Where in there, in my inquiry about her wellbeing did I give her permission to tell me that! Eek.
Poetry, the art of saying so much with so few words.
The antithesis of our modern world.
I think my cell phone is probably under one of those piles of clothes. I am ignoring the ringing.
posted by NokoRose at 7:22 PM
1 Comments:
Tee hee - that Rose is a character - what a character!!! Lovin' it.
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