ordinary moments

Today there were 3
fortunes in my fortune cookie.
Good fortune or bad?

Two of the fortunes
were lost in translation, but
the third, at least, is
worth contemplating:

There are
no
ordinary moments.

Charles Baxter once said the world could use more tenderness

I could go in stomping and snorting and pushing myself past my so-lowered limits again, but that doesn't work.  It didn't work last week.  It won't work this week.  This is a task that calls for delicacy, sensitivity, tender care of self, and concentrated attention, and I am not very good at those things, especially right now.  I remind myself that I love a challenge (in theory) and that I can't just keep galloping full-speed ahead as I have been because that didn't work, isn't working, won't likely ever work again.  Patient and tender attention to me and the now immediately around me: this is what I need.  Harder than self-destruction in small doses any day.

the list of things I should do

.
the list of things I should do

is much longer than the list
of things I have energy to do. 

I suspect that this
is how it will always be. 

I am trying very hard to be okay with that.
.

being attentive

.
I watched the rainbow as it started to disappear,
but then the kids started yelling, so I turned away,
and when I looked back, it was gone.

Have you ever seen a rainbow disappear all the way
to the bitter end?  Maybe rainbows are like fairies
in that Peter Pan play, fueled by belief, killed so easily

by distraction -even a moment- that results in (if not
disbelief) unbelief or something like it; not active
disbelieving but passive not believing not focusing, not
being attentive
.

When Wally is your cube neighbor

Two short ones about my dreadfully annoying cube-dweller next door.

He can't possibly be

looking forward to his vacation

as much as I am.

*

Enjoy this moment;

don't waste it wondering when

he'll come in today.

Yep.  You can find poetry anywhere.  :)

Wanting to lose

Like many people, I am pretty desperately looking for a job. I'd like to get into teaching full time this year--though it's unlikely for a newly-minted MFA with no formal teaching experience (since it's hard to get the teaching experience without the master's)--so I've been living this last year thinking of experiences here as my last.

My last winter here with all the moronic drivers. My last months with the view out the store's huge picture windows. My last spring concert with the choir. My last near-death icy driving experience(s) on Highway XX. My last year in retail hell.

Now that it's looking increasingly unlikely that I'll get my desired job, I'm letting myself think about the other side.

Some things I wouldn't mind being here for:

• another state fair free admission and a free meal for volunteering at my old church's booth!
• another autumn leaves turning and falling and leaving skeletons behind
• another year with the friends and mentors from my graduate program we've got work to do on the alumni group
• another Christmas concert how I love that little cathedral

Maybe it's okay to think like that, to ignore the whole poverty issue and the looming personal financial crisis and think about nature and people and beauty and how I will lose them.

Meanwhile, I'm working as hard as I can to make sure I don't see these any of these things again, and that makes me a bit sad. I would leave it all in a heartbeat in exchange for a new job. Practicality can be heartless.