Happy Valentine’s Day (during a Pandemic and a Snowstorm!), Tentatively Thinking About the Future, and Adventures in Japanese and Plath

Happy Valentine’s Day from us!

Happy Valentine’s Day 2021 (with Pandemic and Snowstorm!)

So, what are your plans for Valentine’s Day? Is it watching eight inches of snow fall on your doorstep, essentially trapping you at home which you were trapped in anyway because of the pandemic? Yes, that is our plan!

I was pretty sick at the beginning of the week, and then the impeachment with its disappointing ending, so you could say it wasn’t a very romantic beginning to the week. But I’m recovering, we’ll watch some romantic movies tomorrow and Glenn will make a fancy steak dinner (and he made pink heart-shape marshmallows for me!) and we’ll do our best to cheer ourselves up. I’m hopeful that the vaccines will be available for people here soon after a lot of shortages (and government mismanagement) in WA state. My parents in Ohio already have gotten the vaccine, so they will be safe – at least from covid, which is cheering. I’m hoping WA decides to prioritize the disabled, immune-compromised and chronically ill, but there’s no sense of that yet.

The results of the impeachment were not what I hoped, I’m hoping that with the impeachment over, we just don’t have to hear much about former President 45 ever again. It’s so nice to have a competent, low-key, polite President not taking up space in my brain all the time.

The snowstorm is beautiful, even if it keeps away our packages and grocery delivery, and watching the flakes fall is so mesmerizing. We get a big snow – eight inches and still going – so rarely, that it seems almost celebratory.

Valentine’s Kiss

Tentatively Thinking About the Future

So, as we watch old movies, and watch the snow come down, I’m tentatively thinking about the future. Have you started doing that yet? I’m thinking about my birthday, April 30, and daring to hope I will have the vaccine by then so I can safely go to, for instance, the bookstore or the dentist. Things I’ve been putting off – like going to the gardening store I love, or schedule an appointment to go into Open Books again to browse poetry. I hope to have a celebration, even if it’s just a small one.

And I’m scheduling some medical appointments I’ve been putting off. I’m getting my MRI of my liver  – which I haven’t had for a year – next week, and hoping for good news (or no news) there, and soon I’ll be getting my brain MRI for my MS. Health care does feel a little safer now that health care workers, at least, have been vaccinated, even if I haven’t.

And looking at book publishers and imagining which I would like to have publish one of my book manuscripts. There are great established publishers I love – like Copper Canyon, or BOA, or Graywolf – and some great newer ones, like Acre Books or Yes Yes Books. I’ve even started thinking about book covers…I’m hoping that the acceptance of one of the books isn’t too far off now. Is this unfounded optimism? I don’t know. I’m even working on a third manuscript – which seems like the height of nuttiness, but I think I’ve written another book after the second one, all about the pandemic. I’ve also reached out to a couple of poets that I’ve been online friends with for a long time to talk about publication, and it turns out, it’s a great idea to talk on the phone to people instead of just social media. It reminds me of the eighties, when you’d write letters to your friends and sometimes call them, but it was probably too expensive to do often. I’m realizing I have a poetry friends I’ve known for years all over the US, and talking to them reminds me we are all in this together – whether you’re in upstate New York, rural Virginia, or like me, in a far-out suburb of Seattle. Everyone has struggles and doubts, and talking about them seems to make them lessen, and encouraging friends make everything a little better.

Adventures in Japanese (and Plath)

Sylvia cuddled up with Aoka Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are

With Glenn in data science school at night, I’ve been teaching myself Japanese on Duolingo every night (really helpful – I’ve been trying to teach myself Japanese for more fifteen years, and never gotten very far) and reading a terrific Japanese book, Aoko Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are, funny, feminist re-takes on some really melancholy Japanese ghost/folk tales. (High recommend for people who like Haruki Murakami, for instance, or Kelly Link.) Also still reading the new, very detailed, Plath biography, Red Comet, which has some terrific samples of her unpublished fiction (found that fascinating) and photos and art work by Plath I’d never seen before.

I had researched the Japanese language, Japanese poetry, and Japanese folk tales for several years to write She Returns to the Floating World, but I still have so much to learn. I would love to actually visit Japan one day, if I ever get healthy enough. When I studied French, going to France really helped me learn to use French in a practical way that I would never have learned remotely, and the constant feedback on accents and vocabulary were invaluable. Right now we can’t travel, but we can dream of it in the future, still. It’s nice, during the pandemic and the winter when we can’t get out as much, to have a project to work on. Next I might try to teach myself the computer language Python, which Glenn is learning for his grad school. It seems pretty accessible. We’ll see!

Valentine Picture with Pink typewriter and Tulips

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day, or Galentine’s Day, however you choose to celebrate. I recommend, whatever you do, watch something that makes you happy, drink some hot chocolate, and be kind to yourself. And maybe get out a new (or old and well loved) book of poetry to read out loud to yourself or with your loved ones. Some people call Valentine’s Day the Poet’s Holiday, but I’m not sure about that. Nevertheless, if people go looking to poetry in search of romance, or solace, or even apocalypse meanderings, that’s not a bad thing.