North American facts
1. When a cricket flies into the side of your neck, as happened to me on two separate occasions this morning, it feels hard and sharp and not at all nice. But the cricket hates it as much as you do, and flies away again pronto even as you're jumping up, rubbing your neck and flapping your top around and looking on the chair where you were sitting. He is already camouflaged in some quiet bit of grass you're probably just about to step on.
2. There are red leaves coming already. The wind got up this afternoon; the pool will be shut down after tomorrow. Autumn is coming. I must rejoin the gym when I get home.
3. Truman, the incorrigible puppy, has eaten the neat ribbon bow off one of my brand new Liz Claiborne basket-weave ballet flats. I got them yesterday. I didn't even mean to leave them where he could get them. (But, America being what it is, they were only £13 in English money, and they are so intensely beautiful that it is probably worth going and seeing if there's another pair in my size. Of course there won't be.)
4. If you give a puppy Hungarian Chamomile calming-down treats (takes 4-6 weeks to reach full effect) for the first time, and he really likes them, he does not calm down. In this case, the puppy in question ripped the very heart out of one of his toys and had to be put to bed.
5. The buses in Hartford, CT, cost $1.25. And, of you need to go somewhere that requires two buses, you get a transfer ticket. Following on from Non-Working Monkey's recent post (sorry, I'm away: I can't be bothered to do links this week but darling NWM is listed in my sidebar) about coming back to London after several months in Amsterdam, may I just echo her sentiments? £2 bus fares in London!!! (And no transfer tickets.) That's four bucks! What the f@%* is that about!?!
6. The "garden spider" of Connecticut and environs is about two inches across. Not to mix measurements here, his body is at least a centimetre, and it is a round, fleshy centimetre. It is coloured a virulent yellow and black, which had me thinking it must be outrageously poisonous, so imagine what the birdbrained birds think. It has shifty, scary eyes that follow you around wherever you go on the porch in your efforts to escape its notice. And the worst of all are its legs; they are long, muscular, and yellow down to the knee, but from the knee down they are black: it is as if either they have been dipped in purest venom, or they are international footballers. It may jump at any moment.
7. There's nothing on telly here. The other day I watched Inspector Lynley. It was odd.
8. Sorry, there are no interesting facts.
6 comments:
That's a writer spider, I think.
They aren't poisonous but if they write your name in their web you'll die. Sorry. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Yes there is nothing on TV here.
Will understand if this is not the window for my ramblings katy, and good luck, keep it up, you are not missing out on any excitement being away from the lonely L, though i suppose you are missing the tight knit baroque offspring summat rotten now...And i bet when you get back, you will be babysitting a lot with that new adopted baroque, from the urban warrior's teen mom, and then..ha ha..instant cool A inetersting'ness and Katy back to the fray fighting fit. But this dip into your deepest ID, has been a treat to read ..
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But as for this list, I thought all the points were interesting facts katy, and the final point about there being no interesting fact, i took, as only revealing a lack of faith on you part, and would give you enemies in the one line talk caper a psychological insight into your state of mind when writing this excellent deposit, which is far greater than the sum of the one line of point 8 suggests.
If you would have had seven points, it would have been the perfectly neutral voice we strive for, as there is no purchase on the real person behind the authorial I, except for the final point, which the clever begrudgers with much experience in print, would be happy to read, as it indicates that you do not have the faith in the interesting'ness of this post which your reader has, and if point 8 were absent the post is perfect 10/10 stuff, seriously, i think this writing you have been doing since you got "home" is a step up.
We all do it, think we are being boring, when the opposite is true, and an indication that you are getting ever more real and taking on the poet mantle, in a way they with less truth in print, but more experience, may not like..
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I have been chatting along broadly similar lines on my chat site with sue, a writer i met on the guardian and who i have been helping to instill with confidence over the four months we have been print pals.
It ties in with the Georgina Banfield business, and she wrote to me yesterday about her gig in Naked Lunch here in Dublin:
"I just want to thank you so much for the shining support you gave about my first feature at Naked Lunch. You know I'm still smiling about how welcoming you and the other poets were. (An extra special thankyou for liking the *mix* of traditional, experimental styles I have...and for understanding how important it was for me to read *A less than narrow path* about my background. For once I felt closer to being a poet and not being frowning down on or looked at with a big fat question mark that follows new readers sometimes from the established London Circuit..."
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When the four brits were here last week, i thought Georgina had come over with one of them, who was being superficially, incredibly supportive, with lots of - what on the face of it - seemed like verbal encouragement, but which i detected was really an attempt to put her off and make her feel crap. Jealousy disguised in the tenor of "friendly" advice.
By the way the jealous poet was behaving i just assumed she had known her for years, and not the truth, that she had only met georgina that evening n the pub.
And at one point, the other poet said summat so blatantly false, after i was offering genuine vocal support to counter this bizzare act of pretend friendship, that in the second before Banfield began reading, I was proved correct as the other poet let slip the truth verbally, due to me saying summat in return to her pretend maety'ness, in which the true desire, for georgina to be crap, came out, blatant for all to hear, leaving itself in the air as the one bit of truth that got outed. In the mili-second before Banfield began talking herself.
And the mic was an inch to high, which i noticed and made a pint of adjusting just before she started also, which was something seemingly minor, an ince, but which just makes it all the more difficult, and we only needa few of these minor things accrue and our whole experience can change from the 51% goodness we need for buoyancy, to the 49& of the listing experience that will change our whole perspective and memory of what we did.
The fact this person didn't wish Banfield well at all and all her huggie kissie act was total bollix, would have remained concealed if it were not for that mili-second of verbal truth she slipped up on, impulsed as a result if me offering supprt acoustically, based oin my own poetic instinct and experience.
And the last point of 8, I took it that your insightful enemies would be rubbing their hands in glee..as the X ray intelligence reads it that ..a ha..baroque is unhappy here, feeling a bit worthless, as you make a point of saying
8 - There is nothing of interest to say.
Which is false, this is just paranoia, if my surmation is correct, as what you are saying and have been since you arrived in the states, to me, is interesting, as the thing i notice with many London blogs is what banfield refers to, the ruthless competitive edge where people would happily see you drop dead in front of them and make a joke about it two minutes later.
And judging on what i see prominent London poets saying in print when supposedly engaged in conversation pertaining to the Art of poetry, it is all one liners and not much nuts and blot stuff being talked about at all.
Just the cheap quip egos trying to dominate, not by any windy enobling linguistic skill or quest into voicing deep poetic truths, but the short sharp attempt at the comedic line, that gets brutal if the three year old emotional minds in the adult brains can't get theoir own way; like a kid who can't watch Barney or postman pat after bedtime.
The line designed to silence and which indicates the lack of honest chat going on, which i see between the various board citizens in their various virtual nations and gulags, in my job as a serious bore.
Quincy's concentration camp does have a healthy flow, as they have got over the first hurdle, to not hold grudges or engage in cyclical faction fights that never get past first base, the acknowledgment of humanity and admitting we can all be crap and uninteresting, that we are all essentially, equal..
So keep it up Katherine Bush, you are doing great and will be the focus of some jealousy if you continue to get better by being honest about who you are, and as Amergin says in the Cauldron of Poesy, one of the four human joys (obviously he would say it being a poet) is us being:
"..untroubled by the abundance of goading when a person takes up the prosperity of bardcraft.."
Amazing, a 7C poet talking complete relevant stuff, and one of the other joys
"..the joy of the binding principle of wisdom after good (poetic) construction.."
And as regards the mag, i am just going to focus, the homeless canteen for lunch, and it should be there by now. Focus is great, the centre of Temple Bar and 1 euro fifty for top quality nosh, the philosophy being to give th dossers one good meal a day, and really it keeps me humanly connected to those at the bottom of the heap, real if you will. Lat night i was organising a gig at the denis o'driscoll launch, Heaney et all in tow, the next day it's business as usual with the forgotten at the base of humanity's heap..
And this piece i reckon is good poetic construction...Love and peace..
Sorry, Ms. B., but there are always interesting facts.
Hi Jilly! Yes, I knew there was something like that going on. That black on their legs: it's ink...
Des, really, that must be your longest comment ever. Thanks for all the praise etc, & whether the enemies and psychoanalysts are correct or not, I can tell you I just wrote Fact 8 because I thought everybody must be getting bored of insects by now. I'm glad you're not.
Anyway, all the world in a grain of sand and all that...
Dick! How did I miss you there in all your splendour? You're right, of course; and I think my spider fact was intensely interesting. I'm glad you haven't tired of insects.
Fine name for a puppy...
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