If anyone stopped in here yesterday they would have seen one sentence that said something along the lines of “I screwed up.” I got going on my first entry and hit the delete button. could find no “un do” thingy under edit. So, I’m trying again.
My resolution is to begin blogging again, since its been almost a year, since last year’s AWP conference. So what if I didn’t start on the first. My new philosophy, the one I plan to live by for the rest of my life is “Don’t Worry About it.” So, it’s January 6. So what?
Quick review: I started smoking on the Fourth of July, the same day I started drinking. The smoking stuck like glue; the drinking didn’t really take. I had a few beers this summer. The last one was about a month and a half ago. I just quit smoking today (on Chantix). I have no desire to drink and for now my philosophy is “don’t worry about it.” I plan to stay off smokes because they might kill me and I feel like crap.
I’ve gained ten more pounds for a total of 165. Weight Watchers starts on campus next week.
Worked like a maniac on my book last spring and through part of the summer, until I started smoking and drinking. I plan to start working on it again. I just finished reading The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis. One of the best personal, nature, history, place, etc pieces I’ve ever read. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Dennis travels the Great Lakes, starting in Traverse City, with _____ on a big sailing ship called the Malibar. He starts with some childhood memories summering on Lake Michigan, not far from Sleeping Bear Dunes, I think it was. He recalls a race from Chicago to the Straights that give a nice close up of that part of Lake Michigan, then takes off with his friend on the Malibar. Excellent close ups of the Lakes, islands, rivers, canals, etc, manuevering through buoys in shallow water, dealing with fog, storms (a big one on Lake Erie). They go through the St. Claire River near Detroit (get stuck in the sand) travel through locks (I forgot the name: the one which bypasses Niagra Falls, I think), and the Erie Canal. Very cool. I knew nothing about the Erie Canal They go all the way to the Long Island Sound, out to the Atlantic, from Rhode Island up the Maine. He discusses ship wrecks, the power of the Great Lakes, the waves, memories of fisherman drowning on Lake Michigan, wild-life and fish (alewives and the lamprey eel, something I’d like to talk about too in my book), and a whole lot of great history. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. The difference between the Atlantic and the Lakes is interesting. The Atlantic, with horizon all around, freaked him out a bit. Bigger swells, lots of fog. I think on parts of the Great Lakes there are places where you see no land: I hear it’s freaked some out. Dennis mentions that even those used to the ocean are awe struck and kind of frightenened by sailing the Great Lakes: there’s a whole different kind of power that many sailors don’t expect, and plenty of funky obstacles, like manuevering throught the Straights. That was one of my favorite parts.
So, Bob R offered his students a journal prompt to talk about what they’re working on and what they’ve read lately. This is what I’ve read and yes, its very much related to what I’m working on. I’m thinking of sending the guy an email, if I can find him. I finished the book two days ago and was sad to finish it. I could have sailed with this guy forever. Funny that I’ve never heard of him. I’m working on something kind of similar: the history of the region where I spent my summers growing up, around a place once called Antrim City, now referred to as Old Antrim City, a ghost town. There’s a lof of stuff I’m trying to do: part memoir, part history/place/nature: mostly about the temporary-ness versus permanence of this place (I wish I were more eloquent). Both physically and likely, emotionally. Ultimately everything washes away in the bay and crumbles to the ground. More detail as I go.
I’m supposed to, according to Bob, write about a memory every day. It’s almost 11, and classes started yesterday. I’m not finished with my prep work or schedule, and part of me wants to skip writing about the memory and get to work. I think I’m supposed to devote a half an hour to a memory, but can a memory be “one” thing? I have snippet that would remind me of other snippets. Like the memory of getting onto my brother’s back, like riding a horse, only he was lying flat (Lindy). I leapt off his back, straight up in the air as far as I could, and came back down on him, also as hard as I could. Knocked the wind out of him. I’m not sure, but I think he cried. I know I hurt him. I have no idea how old we were.
That’s an isolated memory. Nothing around it; no before or after, though I could attach it maybe to other memories I have of him: The way he ate cereal with my other brothers around the kitchen table, shoving a spoonful into his mouth kind of sideways so he could read the back of the cereal box. The older brothers hogged the cereal boxes. Seems to me I wanted to read the box and shove cereal into my mouth sideways. An up north memory of Lindy: an injury either on a mini-bike or motorcycle. He cut his leg up, I think. I was walking down Antrim Lane and Mom and Dad stopped in their car; Lindy was in the back seat, lying down, again, maybe crying or just in pain. I can’t remember any details, but I remember worrying about the rest of the walk back down Antrim Lane to the cottage. I’ll have to ask Lindy what happened. He was the most accident prone in the family: cut the tip of his ring finger off on a printing press, went off a winding road somewhere near Harbor Springs and into the woods at 60 or 70 mph on a motorcycle, missing every tree. An eye injury; I can’t remember how he did that, but I remember we could not go up north that weekend because of it, and I was mad at both him and my parents. Lindy urged my parents to take my sister and I up anyway, but they would not leave him alone at the house with his eye bandaged. He must have been older than 18 then, maybe working in Mt. Pleasant or something.
Okay, back to work.
