New World Order

Tonight's post is a little different.  I was inspired by this Hugh MacLeod cartoon that arrived in my inbox today.  The great news is that you, too, can receive these great cartoons on a daily basis by signing up for free at gapingvoid.com.

In an effort to try something edgy, I'm going to introduce you to my poetry on Thursdays and A Few of My Favorite Things on Friday.  I have a lot  to share with you and I'm trying to do it in a controlled burn sort of way so we don't end up with a conflagration of convoluted ideas.

The most challenging part of this writing challenge is not the writing, but everything else.  I had a full life before I started writing which is why I didn't write much.  But the writing insisted the days of being ignored are over.

My friend Ron suggested I write about how to manage writing while juggling a full time job, a full time relationship, and all the other full time stuff of life.  So you don't assume this juggling is a walk in the park, I give you this little snapshot into life under the Big Top.

New World Order

He sat down to read what he thought was her daily blah, blah, blog and instead discovered it was a cleverly disguised and long overdue poem.  He didn’t recognize it as a poem at first, because it was written in paragraphs instead of the fits and bursts that usually punctuated her poetry.  

Nor had he seen any evidence of the profanity she liked to sprinkle amongst her best poetry.  (Fertilizer, she rationalized, to feed the deep, dark roots of her tortured soul.) 

It seemed in her new found zeitgeist for the writing life, she abandoned the cozy life he’d come to count on.  Instead of cuddling up on the couch and watching questionable tv, she was obsessed with her computer and coveralls and counting steps.  

While all these things were good in theory, or at least moderation, they made him wonder whether she’d ever come back to him or if he’d lost to her the world from where she came and where her imagination often wandered.  That mysterious place of other people, places, and adventures he had never known and stories she had never shared but was revealing to him right along with the rest of her blog reading tribe.    

He was being a great sport about the whole thing, although he was never consulted as to whether he’d like to accompany her on this particular course correction or asked if what was good for the goose was good for the gander.  He wanted her to be happy and this certainly seemed to do it for it.  And since she’d only signed on for 31 days and this was already day sixteen, he was sure this, too, would pass.

In spite of the burning of the midnight oil, there were benefits.  He could drink beer and she wouldn’t count how many.  He could watch hunting shows and she wouldn’t comment.  He could hang out with his friends and fish or golf or watch Iowa games or wear Packer paraphernalia or do any and all of the things he loved to do.  As long as she was writing, she didn’t seem to mind.

His new world order was tied into her new word order and the many ways she would wield them.  He could live with this.  As long as she wrote of few of them just for him every now and then.