NoraSawyer.com

‘Have You Herd Sheep’ is Right

Look! A title! I don’t know what came over me. Twenty-five cents to anyone (besides you, dad) who can tell me what song (or songwriter) that’s from.

Know what I’ve noticed lately? My grammar is getting horrid. And my writing’s worse. I think this might be a sign that the writing program I’m in is working. Or that my orange juice is irradiated. Which would explain why my brand new computer has been so slow lately.

In other news, I hate my last ten or so entries. I don’t proofread my posts here, and it shows. I need to either start editing, or stop reading past posts. And that Edna St. Vincent Millay (ahem) homage that used to be posted below? Forget you ever saw it. Not fit for public consumption. Urg. Not that the other two are.

Ugh. The musty tea cozy of despair settles ’round. Lemon, anyone?

Oh, and I’ve added a new link to the sidebar: Mimi Smartypants.

It had me laughing so hard, I actually drove Brian from the room.

I can’t decide what I find more disturbing about Dawn Eden’s latest blog entry: that she thinks Christopher Reeve died of AIDs (because he appeared emaciated in1994 – a few months before his riding accident), or that she thinks it’s any of her business what he died of. Actually, come to think of it, the latter is what’s disturbing about the former. But screw it, I like the rythym.

Now that Shaw has gone and linked me, I guess I really should post some content up in here.

But I’m busy.

So, join me in embracing mediocrity as I make my first foray into the world of poetry (Aaron& Tricia,you might want to look away). Here are some sonnets I’ve written for my poetic forms class:

Bargain Basement Poe

Freud tells us that love is a recalling

Of sweet unspoken needs by mother met;

When the heart, alight, is through love soaring

It rides a sniveling, poopy infant jet.

And Ovid sings of satyr Marsyas

Who by Apollo flayed, his outsides in,

Sensed the truth we know when love’s upon us:

We are not the masters of our skin.

I never had a kiss that I, rememb’ring

Could feel again as warm, and not corpse cold.

O warmth! O kiss-heat! Abet forgetting

(Forget that I will die, that you’ll grow old).

Just sit with me a while, infant lover,

Your sweet kinder-corpse hand in my own.

And tell me that our lives are far from over –

I need to call my mother. Where’s the phone?

Bargain Basement Shakespeare (the Earl Of Oggsford)

Shall I compare thee to a Tuber-rose?

Thou are’t not an age restricted product

Inhaled into an unsuspecting nose

(An odd feeling – nicotine in bile duct).

Your presence, though, at best disquieting

An untraceable tick’ling in the night

Lingers sweetly, preciously inspiring

A world at once asunder and aright.

Smelling rain, a memory of your sweater

Cheek to blue wool shoulder in the night

A promise to be here, in this moment

And a blessing, interrupting – Gesundheidt

From floating dust condens’d, the heart inspired

You — though smokeless — kindle smold’ring fire.

Oh, and FYI:

Yeah, I know I haven’t updated in a while. And all you’re getting is this:

You are Fish ‘Tacos.’ You might think you’re
exotic and worldly-wise, but in reality you’re
just a bunch of crap on toast. Repeat after
me: ‘just because you put something in
quotation marks doesn’t make it so.’ And
‘taco’ isn’t Spanish for ‘toast.’

What Weight Watchers recipe card from 1974 are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

who says life is fair?

I’m a very jumpy person. A door opens suddenly and I squeal. Someone sneezes unexpectedly, and I jump a foot in the air. I can’t watch scary movies. I end up behind myself with fear.

I read something in the Science Times once – nervous mice, the ones that don’t adventure out on their own in uncertain circumstances, are much more likely to die young than mice that are more nonchalant. Apparently being nervous does them in.

Apparently, there’s a French version of the beatitudes that reads (roughly) ‘blessed are the nonchalant.’ Which actually might be closer to the Aramaic, which I understand translates closer to ‘blessed are the bendable’ than ‘bessed are the meek.’

Which means gymanasts alone will be saved.

Brian and I are watching The Secret Window. Maybe I don’t want to be a writer after all.

“Being a writer” sure is fun – if only I could take those quotation marks away.

Wasn’t there a time when this was all simpler? Was there ever a time when rent wasn’t a worry, when clothes and washing and food just somehow happened? When a girl could stay home and watch the pigeons outside her window?

How can on viva la vie boheme in San Francisco, where the rent on a studio in darkest Sunset is $900?

I need a benefactor. With low expectations.

think more: “amoral pagan world” v. world of reason

Once upon a time, the gods were closer to the earth; once they walked among us and sat at our dinner tables. Their movements were discernible in the world: an old couple was turned to wood, their limbs eternally intertwined; a handsome boy, catching the fancy of a nymph, changed into a bug that lived forever.

As much as it could, the world made sense. People lived out their lives in the place they were born, or left their homes, more than likely never to return. Poets, called the Sons of Homer, moved from town to town, reciting stories and poems (there wasn’t much difference then) in exchange for food and shelter. It was widely acknowledged that they were blind, as Great Homer had been, though most of them were not. This paradox didn’t disturb anyone. These poets – blind but not blind – brought the world to common hearths and town squares: it was small, it was vast, it was knowable, but unknown.

ανδρα μοι ενεπε, Μουσα, πολυτροπον −

The man, O Muse, sing to me of that man, ever turning .

I’m (foolishly) hopeing that writing here will somehow make writing easier. I’ve been running into that old ‘N train’ problem, where during my morning and afternoon commutes, my head is positively swimming with ideas, but somehow, when I flip open the ol’ (new!) computer…. blorp. Nothin’.

Of course, the problem really is that my N Train ideas are just fleeting ideas, and even when they do form themselves into complete sentences, ‘t ain’t enough to actually fill more than a centemeter or two on ze page.

Ok – here are all the ideas I can remember (save these for me, ok?):

Lessing’s Lacoon – something to do with words and image. And symbolism. And being a German philosopher in the 189th(?) century. Friedrich II. Anyway – look over the scene in the Aneid.

Invocation of the muse/ Invocation of oral histories & stories passed down in the family (lets call it the “sing in me grandma” idea)

Excercise for self (or for my craft presentation next month?): go through canto one of Dante (or another canto that seems better) and find all the symbolism & brief refrences to other literature. Make a list (She-wolf, leopard, St Lucia, the selva oscura… all that). Write a story using one (or more) of them. Or trying to make my own.

Arma virumque cano – a man and his dog walk in to a bar. Gack. ever get a phrase stuck in yer head? This’s been running about in my head all day .