Notable Boudoirs

Apartment Therapy website has 15 bedrooms of famous writers (although I must confess that I actually became aware of this blog from the Poetry Foundation's Harriet Blog).

I love Hemingway's bedroom for the floor-to-ceiling arched windows and the white paint. Thoreau had good windows too, an essential to a successful bedroom in my opinion. Not sure what Flannery O'Connor was thinking though (or how she could think with that print; or why she covered up all the windows, though maybe she didn't and that's just for preservation).

These days, as a spring break project, my boys and I have been going through closets and boxes and shelves and throwing stuff away madly, trying to make more space, to find more light. It's a constant challenge living in Japan not to be overcome with stuff, and I salivate looking at some of these bedrooms with their empty spaces.

I write in the bedroom sometimes too. I peel back the covers and get down to the fitted sheet, and then spread my work around me. This is especially helpful when I need to organize a manuscript or when I have multiple poems going on and I want to figure out how they are working together. Or when I'm consulting many books while I write. I just like writing on the bed. It frees me up to be in a more creative space than sitting at my desk. (And I hate our couch, so I always prefer to go in and sit on the bed when I can.)

(Oh, and here's a secret. When the light is coming into the boys' bedroom in the early afternoon and the view over the bay is magnificent, I sometimes climb up on the top bunk, pull the covers onto the floor down to the fitted sheet, and write on my son's bed. Don't tell him though; it's all nicely put back before he comes home from school. Not having a lot of space and not having their own rooms, I've taught the boys to consider their beds their own private spaces--it wouldn't do that I secretly use one to write.)

Being Human with Jane Hirshfield

At the Being Human Conference, Jane Hirshfield read some of her poems. Enjoy.

http://fora.tv/2012/03/24/Being_Human_Reflection_Poem

http://fora.tv/2012/03/24/Being_Human_Reflection__Poem_2

The Marginalia of Monks

The always-amusing people at Brain Pickings have a collection of marginalia from illuminated manuscripts, written by complaining monks and scribes. Have a look to read gems such as "This page has not been written very slowly," and "As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe."

Or the inimitable "Thank God, it will be dark soon."

Which it will.

c. 1300, A Female figure, possibly a personification of astronomy showing the stars to a group of scholars from the ancient world, from Anthology of Grammatical and Scholastic Texts, Paris, France.

Gratitude Lists

So it's been a rough couple of years for me and my family. Not because of anything that has happened, but because of what, thanks to modern medical science, we know is going to happen. And though I  keep telling myself that there is no need to feel bad about it now, that there is plenty of time in the future to feel bad about it when it does happen, I have not been able to shake my worries and sadness.

You know that party game you play...if (fill in the blank) were going to happen, would you want to know beforehand? Well, I now know the answer to that for myself, regardless of what (fill in the blank) is. No, I don't want to know, not anything.

So for the past couple of years two recurrent thoughts have popped unbidden into my mind several times a day. Several times a day. Every day. One is "Nothing good is ever going to happen to me again" and the other is "I hate my life." The truth is that when I observe these thoughts consciously, I don't believe either of them. Yet until a few months ago they popped into my head repeatedly. Repeatedly. Did I mention, repeatedly? And daily. (Oh, and these thoughts are centered on me, when the looming problem doesn't even belong to me, but to someone I love. How messed up is that?)

As far as unbidden thoughts go, one could do better. Thinking about this, I remembered advice I read a long time ago about gratitude. About how the single best way to improve your attitude about your life is to practice gratitude. About how people required to write each day in a notebook a list of five things they were grateful for reported satisfaction with their lives to be significantly higher than before beginning this month-long experiment.

A month-long experient: I could do that. And so I started to think about five things I was grateful for each day. Or, I did it on the days I remembered. And it helped, but only a little bit. Only when I remembered. So I decided to write them down in one of my notebooks, when I remembered to. And that helped a bit more. And I remembered a bit more often to do it. But weeks would go by when I would forget, or I would just think my gratitude instead of going to where the notebook was and writing it down.

Then, in January, I decided to do it right. I got a dedicated gratitude notebook and I started writing down my lists. I love lists; I have a special place I keep all my lists and I refer to that place several times a day. So it wasn't really any big deal to add another list; it was kind of a pleasure actually. Why had I not been doing it already?

So here's the upshot: I write my gratitude list throughout the day, every day. And it's been more than a month since I've thought either of my unbidden thoughts. Well, I thought one yesterday and marvelled at how long it had been since I had thought it. And I was grateful for that. And I wrote it down.

Aaaargh!!!

And here's a friendly reminder to back up your files, all of them. My extra computer died and I've just heard from the repair shop that while they can recover the data, the hard drive is a goner.

Luckily I didn't lose any poetry, because I moved it all to my new computer and because I back up my poetry files regularly. But guess what I did lose? The spreadsheet of every place I've submitted poetry to (in detail by poem and date and result) for oh, my entire publishing career. That particular file I thought I was backing up regularly, but when checking my backup storage places, apparently NOT!

I didn't move that crucial file to my new computer because my new computer doesn't have the software to read it, so I just left it on my old computer. So it's just this one file that is causing me problems (and my iTunes, which I hadn't moved so that my new computer wouldn't get slow, but which I can get back thanks to some programs I found online that will read my iPod and put it on the new computer). However, the repair place can recover this one spreadsheet for me, for about $30, and I can download a trial software package to view it and convert it to something I can read on my computer, or if not, at least I'll be able to print it out. Hopefully.

Anyway, more detail than you needed. But do heed my friendly reminder to back up everything, not just your writing files, but everything you need to support your publishing.