A friend got me hooked on this Eagle Cam, which is live streaming video of a bald eagle mama and her partner, nesting in New Jersey.
Often, the mama just sits there, acting like a hot water bottle, but every so often her guy comes by and they stand and chat for a bit. Yesterday she undertook a sort of rolfing activity, rolling her heavy breast over the eggs with vigor.
So maybe it’s no wonder that this morning, one of the three eggs hatched! I didn’t witness it happening, but soon after, the mama stood up and there was her eaglet — fuzzy and bright. The other two eggs, apparently, need a bit more massage before revealing their treasures.
I hope it doesn’t mess with my mission (to use haiku to interact with the actual) if my subject today is a couple thousand miles away and I’m only there via web cam. Somehow it feels very up close and personal to me…
Haiku 6
Hook-nosed and heavy, eagle sits still on her nest. We are all earth-bound.
What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms.
— Issa
Lighting one candle with another candle — spring evening.
— Bason
A cicada shell; it sang itself utterly away.
— Basho
When I got married, one of my sisters-in-law gave me a book of haiku — Hass’ The Essential Haiku — as a gift, the day before the wedding. At the time, I thought it was a lovely gesture. Something like being given a flower that would last awhile.
But recently I’ve thought about how appropriate it was as a message, a symbol.
When we make families there is something very pure at the center of the implulse. Something simple. Like love.
But the reality is that life instantly becomes a whole lot more complicated. Decisions that previously might have been singular must now be weighed and shared. Where there was previously one family, now there are two. (Or rather, three, if you count the newly formed one. Which, considering the occasion, I guess you ought to.) And, sometimes, the transition is quickly followed by others (like home ownership… like parenthood) that come bearing big responsibilities.
So, haiku on the eve of marriage says, "Don’t forget to clear away all the overwhelm sometimes. To notice the cherry blossoms and cicadas. To light the candles." Haiku says that on the eve of marriage, the morning of a meeting, the Friday afternoon of a very long week. Don’t you think?
Haiku 3
Oh, furtive bluejay helping yourself to cat food; today is all yours
It was stormy here this morning, although that’s already hard to fathom, with the sky turning toward blue and the birds content. I lay in bed listening, wanting to incorporate the sounds of the storm into my dreams, knowing I had to get up and start the day.
My Thursdays are long… the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and I finish teaching at 9:30 p.m. How do you look ahead at a day like that without getting overwhelmed? How do you stay present in each moment when there are so many moments tugging at your sleeves?
Haiku 2
Thunder black and deep; there’s so much to say today it shakes me awake
In the past, I’ve complained that poetry is relegated to just one lowly month, but this year I’m choosing to embrace the fact that we — as a nation of kids and grown-ups, writers and readers, students and teachers and booksellers and bus riders — celebrate poetry in earnest for 30 days straight. Because it’s that meaningful and worthwhile and joyous and true.
Here are some of the ways I’m celebrating this year:
Plus, I thought I oughta do a little of my own thing, which is why I’ve committed to penning a haiku each day in April. I plan to post them all here because that’ll keep me accountable. But really, I’m looking forward to it — as a daily mediation — so I don’t think I’ll try to get out of it.
I recently listened to a moving interview with poet Marie Howe in which she talked about trying to live a more simple, scaled-down life with an emphasis on "the actual". And that’s what haiku is to me — something tangible in the hand and in the heart.
I can’t pretend to understand all the very nuanced rules of the form (that go way beyond 5, 7 and 5 syllables) but I reckon I’ll understand them better 30 days from now. In the meantime, I’ll just be using the form to encounter a bit of the actual each day.
Starting now.
Haiku 1
Wind blows the door in; everyone considers it, even the house finch
To write about writing can sometimes be exceedingly dry and sometimes be exceedingly scary.
There are, it seems to me, two ways to go.
You can talk about craft — nuts and bolts — and risk being called dry. Or you can talk about process and face being called nuts.
I generally like to err on the side of nuts.
Because really, laundry is dry. Grocery shopping = dry. Making a run to the post office = arid.
Best to spice things up a bit. Right?
Here’s the thing, for me, about process.
It is brutal, except for those few times when it isn’t. And those times are, apparently, enough.
There’s something almost a little shameful about that. I mean, I tell my children what you tell your children — to find work they love.
And then I proceed to devote hundreds of unpaid hours to a few hundred words at a time without any idea which (if any) will ever see the light of day. And when I’m not actually typing, I devote my time to panic, doubt, yearning and obsession. All on the off chance that one day soon I’ll pick up a seriously fevered head of steam and work my way into an ecstatic froth. I love it when that happens.
The odds aren’t all that great but the payoff is just incomparable.
So. Here I sit. Doing the work that I love.
Happy Friday.
Starting a Poem — Robert Bly
You’re alone.Then there’s a knock On the door. It’s a word. You Bring it in. Things go OK for a while. But this word
Has relatives. Soon They turn up. None of them work. They sleep on the floor, and they steal Your tennis shoes.
You started it; you weren’t Content to leave things alone…
Not to sweep yesterday’s post under the rug, but the beauty of my working life after these many years is that I can often find something with which to counter-balance the rough stuff.
I tend to have numerous pots in the fire at once so if something goes completely south I can usually shift my stance a bit and keep on cooking.
After a proper period of grim moroseness, naturally.
So, in case yesterday’s post felt like more than enough of that, thank you very much, today I’d like to share something that’s a little brighter.
This pretty thing is my next book, due out on shelves September 8th. Rendered most lovingly by the extrordinary Marla Frazee. All wrapped up and ready to go.
As part of this week’s mega update on all things processy, I decided to share the good, bad and ugly.
Because otherwise… well… I would be lying.
About how I pretty much think up great ideas in the morning and hang on the beach drinking pina coladas in the afternoon.
Most days are kind of not very much like that. And some are the polar opposite.
In fact, a whole bunch of those polar opposite days have hung themselves to the rafters of one of my manuscripts. You know it as Wind but I occasionally refer to it as "that cursed Wind" or "that blasted Wind". If you get my drift.
So, a little backstory.
My very first drafts of this story are from 2003.
It lived at a publishing house (without a contract) for almost 2 years before being squeaked out of the final aquisition step. Which was a bitter pill.
But I revised it and I got it back out there.
Blasted Wind.
And then, in 2007, it found its way into the waiting arms of Allyn Johnston (then at Harcourt). We revised and revised and revised and it was about ready to go (with Marla Frazee illustrating) when I wrote All the World. And in our excitement over that project, we sort of kicked Wind to the curb. With every intention of coming back later to pick ‘er up and dust ‘er off.
Well. It’s later. It’s been later for awhile now. I spent a chunk of time in the fall revising it. Again. Re-imagining. Re-writing. One time I literally started from scratch.
It was as if I was getting further from understanding it the longer I lived with it.
So, in November, we decided to put it back on hold. Indefinately.
Cursed Wind.
Sometimes I wonder if its role in my life was just to introduce me to Allyn and Marla so we could get All the World made. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just been a very long and sustained exercise in futility craft. And then other times, I’m sure that the hold is temporary and that it will see the light of day as a book someday soon. I’ve dreamt about it more than once. (But then, I recently had a dream about my husband eating plastic children’s toys, so don’t give too much credence to my subconscious…)
The truth is, I don’t know what’s next for Wind, but I can tell you that you needn’t be watching the catalogs for it. Not now. Not yet.
Certain British authors who are now richer than the Queen notwithstanding, most of us children’s authors need to pick up some extra work along the way.
For me, that’s taken many guises over the years and I still threaten to chuck it all and go pack gift baskets at the Whole Foods. I seriously think I’d be kind of good at that.
In the meantime, though, school visits. They’re a pretty natural fit. Write for children? Take your books to them. Duh. Right?
Right, except for the fact that teachers are given less and less discretionary time to devote to these sorts of non-standards-based enrichment activities. And PTAs, librarians and districts are likely to see less and less discretionary funding made available for the same.
I’m lucky in that I actually love doing school visits. They exhaust but inspire me and remind me of exactly what it is I’m doing and why.
Still, I’ve got to get in the door.
Which is why I’ve spent some time lately working with the most excellent Natalie Lorenzi — children’s author, freelance writer, teacher and creator of curriculum guides for authors.
In a previous life, I’m pretty sure Natalie was Rumplestiltskin. Seriously. She is given an ordinary book and somehow spins all sorts of related, standards-based activities out of it. And they’re not boring! They’re creative, fun, hands-on and, if you ask me, worth their weight in gold.
She’s done one for my first book and, before long, she will have finished one for my second, due out late summer. And I’m immensely grateful, because I think they just may be the key to staying pertinent in the eyes of educators — even while recognizing the duel demons of testing and budget constraints.
If you’re a teacher or librarian and would like to see my curriculum guide, click here. (I don’t have it up on my web site yet, but I will as soon as I can figure that out…)
If you’re an author and you’re curious, go to Natalie’s site, where you can look at mine and at least one other sample. I think you’ll agree that she works a certain sort of magic. And I’m betting that her waiting list is about to get loooong, so make haste.
And if you’re neither teacher, librarian nor author and you’re still reading, bless you. You’re probably related to me and I owe you one.
More thrilling news in the life of a writer girl tomorrow…
