Now on route to a tourist zone to check that its acclaimed changes are "all that".
Hi CoSo!
I've been consumed by my ego this week.
How are you? How've you been keeping sane? (Or at least from going more nuts?)
What's one small triumph in your life as of late?
Name one (1) art that's moved you as of late.
If you had your druthers, where would you be today, and what would you be doing?
@MLClark I too have been moved recently by music, although my current tunes are from the western Classical tradition (Schubert and Bach -- reminiscing about my childhood). I've also been writing lately after a long pause, so I guess poetry is moving me too, and that also counts as a small triumph.
There is something very fine and difficult to put to words about the experience of returning to classical music at different points in one's life. I'm glad you have a soundtrack for reminiscing.
When you say "writing lately", do you mean with the ghazal project, or have you been moved to return to other forms and themes?
@MLClark I have a ghazal underway, but it seems kind of stuck at the moment and I don't feel like pushing it. On the other hand, I wrote three haibun this last weekend, two of which return to the familiar theme of grief, and one of which involves my childhood, which is what had me listening to Schubert and Bach again.
I don't know what it is about the haibun, but I've been drawn to the form myself as of late.
Maybe it's the way the prose component captures a state of chaos, which the poetic turn distills, that makes it such an excellent medium for the moment?
(I too have been writing on grief in the form--world-grief, mainly, but still.)
How's your reading?
@MLClark My reading lately has been mainly for work and escapist: I've been working through Olivie Blake's Januaries, a collection of short stories that tends towards the fantasy and romance end of things but with a wicked sense of humor. On the other hand I have queued up Lew Watts' Eira which is a memoir in haibun that I've had kicking around on my to-be-read pile for a while.
That's quite a range!
I'm looking forward to some pleasure-reading, too. I have one more book review to finish first - then an SF book I started, then put aside.
After that, I want to find some small, unexpected beauty of an essay collection or short story collection (or return to that Lowell biography, Setting the River on Fire!) in which to lose myself.
I hope that haibun memoir stirs up moments of beauty for you, when you reach for it.