Thursday, December 18, 2008

OMG, it snowed so much. I went to Seward Park on skis and skied around and back up the hill and was out for 3 hours. I was wiped when I got home. This is a perfect reason to drink large quantities of hot chocolate, which I made with rice milk because of the vegan thing. So, rice milk, powered cocoa, agave, vanilla, cinnamon and a smidge of cayenne. It was thick and delicious.

However. There is the issue of getting into the hot tub when it is snowing and there is about 8 inches of snow on the deck, stairs, etc. So, under cover of semi-darkness, you put on a robe and gum boots (very sexy) and go down the stairs which you have not shoveled. You have a vision of slipping and falling into the snow where you will be found tomorrow, frozen to the deck in your white terrycloth robe with a busted leg. You manage to get to the hot tub and the cover has about 100 pounds of snow on it, which you struggle to lift. Then, you balance on one leg while you ease out of one boot, then the other and fling your legs into the tub without getting the bathrobe wet. Oh, the bathrobe. Just put it on the folded back cover where you hope it won't slide into the water. Ah, lovely steamy water. Fantasy #2, you climb out and make it up the stairs to find that you have locked yourself out. Hypothermia sets in and the frozen to the deck scenario ensues. I accomplished all of this without dying. It was brilliant, as they say in a
Australia.

When I have lots of unstructured time, I noodle. I read a bit, I clean a bit, do some laundry, go for a run, etc,etc. All so I don't have to write effing poetry. I am reading Lunar Park, a rather creepy, compulsive book. The author actually makes a living by writing. Imagine a poet deciding he/she is going to make a living by writing poetry. Guaranteed starvation and ruin. Ridiculous. I sold some chapbooks and came out even once. And a composer gave me $200 to use a poem she put to music. And Dana gave me a dollar once to read my poem at a workshop. That's it, that's the extent of it. Cripes.

I think I will go to an open mike in January. I can read a new-ish poem and weird people out. Northwesty types like herons in their poems, not suicide/dead/father in the baseboards kind of poems. Ah well.

3 comments:

Valerie Loveland said...

I added up all the money I was paid for my poetry once and it was $80.

Apple said...

It was almost 70 degrees here in North Carolina this afternoon. I wore my coat because it's December, damn it. This little piggy sweat all the way home.

beth coyote said...

Valerie-think what we could do if we pooled our money, all us poets? Woo-hoo, we could buy, well, food or a newspaper or some cat litter, yeah.

April-shut up, jeez, the wind is actually howling here and the pile of snow on my railing is about 8 inches high.