Down Days, Up Days, Dog Days, Poetry Manuscripts Going Out into the World, and the Magic of Selkies

Hot Air Balloon, August Morning

Down Days, Up Days, Dog Days

Hello my friends. How are you holding up? Yesterday I felt okay – well enough to go out in my neighborhood and photograph dahlias – and today I was sick enough to almost go to the emergency room. This is the same infection I’ve been fighting off for a month, by the way, that keeps rearing its ugly head. It is confusing, head-spinning, frustrating – I so want to be well, even well in a coroanvirus-based world.

It reminds me that August, for me, often has its up days (represented by this hot air balloon that descended across from our house this last week first thing in the morning) and its down days (represented by the waning Grain Moon.) The Dog days of August.

Waning Full Grain Moon

If I look back at previous Augusts, I’ve been in the hospital for various problems a lot – I mean, maybe it’s the heat, the waning summer, summer germ theory – so I can’t be shocked, though I’ve never had this particular kind of superbug infection before. The Dog Days indeed.

My coping mechanisms for previous illness-filled Augusts include trying to focus on the things I can do and enjoy – watching movies (recently, loved the quirky woman-writer-centered comedy “I Used to Go Here,” the first twenty minutes of which I swear was stolen from my own first book tour experiences), listening to audiobooks, dipping into poetry, photographing things when I get the chance. Not focusing on my lack of ability to do my normal things (even in these highly abnormal time) or focusing on my lack of productivity. Not focusing on possible mortality issues (this particular illness has a 6-8 percent mortality rate, higher than coronavirus!)

Red dahlias with a sunflower background

Finding Beauty – and Sending Poetry Manuscripts Out Into the World

So yesterday I went out into my neighborhood of Woodinville and found small u-pick gardens and took pictures of dahlias and sunflowers. I even took a picture in one small garden, because I want to be reminded that I live in a world surrounded by beauty.

Similarly, I’ve been taking a partial try at The Sealey Challenge (because not every day is an “up” day where I feel well enough to read, I’m not reading a poetry book every single day in August, which is the challenge, but I’m trying to pick up a book on the days when I can.) And one thing about reading more poetry, and reading widely, from lots of publishers, is being introduced to all types of writing, and voices, and you notice covers and fonts, and you start thinking about how what you read influences your own work, and how your voice fit with with other voices of your time.

Glenn and I in a u-pick garden in Woodinville, with dahlias and sunflowers

So how do we get the bravery, the gumption, to send out our own voices, our hard work, out into the world, knowing that most of the time we will be rejected despite the $25 fee, with barely a note, that even when our books come out, how much attention will they receive? Probably very little, probably not showered with awards or reviewed in the New York Times (like the writer in “I Used to Go Here” is – maybe the least realistic thing in the movie.) But we do it anyway.

Even on days that we don’t feel our best, when we don’t feel optimistic in the future at all, we take the chance, we make the effort.

Why do I take pictures of flowers? Because I want evidence of something, memories, visible ghosts. Maybe books are something similar. Our own living ghost pages, out there in the universe.

Baby Seal

The Magic of Selkies – Thanks to Terri Windling

A big thank you to Terri Windling for featuring my poem, “The Selkie Wife’s Daughter,” on her wonderful blog, Myth and Moor. That poem, by the way, was written in Sapphic lyrics, a form I love but don’t write in very often.

There is something magical about seals, isn’t there? I’ve always thought so. Otters and seals. The closest I ever live to them was in Port Townsend. I love foxes too, more of a woodsy animal. If I was a shape-shifter, I’d definitely choose one of those forms. Yes, it’s something I’ve given thought to. Maybe we need a little magical thinking right now. Hell, if not in the middle of a pandemic, when can we?