My Thanksgiving List of Things to Be Grateful For
–Good friends who are there when you need them. And supportive families when you are freaking out about moving and finances and why you became a poet in the first place.
–Baby seals sleeping on the beach. Are they dreaming about swimming?
–Deer in people’s yards, eating blackberry leaves, in the middle of the day for no reason.
–Sunshine in November in the NW – high 45, sunshine all day expected!
–Upcoming Poetry Books to look forward to from people whose poetry you really like (Yay, Suzanne Frischkorn!)
–Pomegranate 7Up – a little too sweet, but you know what? Awesome! And real pomegranates at every market too!
–To everyone who publishes and buys poetry and grant-giving organizations and artist colonies that support poets. Thanks!
–Renting three videos in case the DSL goes out (again!) and not feeling guilty about watching them because it’s a holiday darn it!
–My husband’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner!
Happy Thanksgiving! And the holidays and Christian Humanism (or, I John 4:12 and the Greatest Commandment)
So, Jessica Smith and The Poetry Foundation Blog have got me thinking about the kind of Christianity I could really embrace. Jessica mentioned that she’s not religious, but that the verse “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us” ( I John 4:12) pretty much sums up what a religion should be about.
Ange Mlinko on the Harriet Blog talked about how Auden got in trouble with Christian friends and Rationalist friends alike for valuing the commandment “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” above the rest of the cannon or the Church (which, as Ange points out, Jesus said in a related verse could be used to replace entire Old Testament Law.)
These days, Christianity has a terrible rep in America, as a bunch of smug, self-righteous people trying to start another set of crusades (cough, President, cough.) But I think of back when I read the Bible myself at 12 or 13 (complete with rainbows and Jesus-hugging-sheep pictures!) that I was really struck with I John 4:12, and that I thought, that is really a God I could picture and get behind, a God who, crazy as it sounds, is love. I think the verse in I John goes onto say something about “God is love. He who does not love does not know God…he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (This is a paraphrase, I don’t have it memorized.) It really puts that religious stuff in perspective – listen, if we can’t get be kind and stuff to all the crazy people around us (our families included – and they’re the craziest of all, usually) then we don’t have any business going around saying how much we love God.
In high school my Honors European History class studied Christian Humanism, and several pieces of work by Erasmus (In Praise of Folly was a really witty piece of writing I still enjoy reading) and Blaise Pascal. Like Auden, they were intelligent, educated people who didn’t believe the Church was really acting for the good of the average person, and encouraged people to 1. think for themselves, read the Bible for themselves, which was pretty radical in the 1500’s etc. and 2. do that thing where you love your neighbor instead of doing a lot of religious rituals.
Hmm. Must be all the Christmas music in the air, but that all sounds good to me. I’m basically a selfish person, and tend to forget that the people around me (the slow person in line, or the idiot weaving over both lanes going 40 in a 55 mph zone) are real people, with internal lives and struggles, just as valuable as me. It would be good for me to remember more often that the best way to be a spiritual person is just to be decent to the person next to me.
Pshaw. What will happen to my Villainess reputation if I keep up this kind of talk. Bah Humbug I say! Poison apples (and pumpkins) for all!
Plus, I just got done watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. If that doesn’t make you all sentimenal for your high school history theology-studying days, I don’t know what will.
Notes from the small-seaside town:
Today I was walking on the beach with my husband (don’t be TOO jealous, it was grey, about 30 degrees and super windy) and there was this sign that said “DONT BOTHER THE SEAL PUPS.” And then four feet away, looking exactly like a piece of moldy driftwood (or, conversely, a very gray human baby) was a tiny new baby seal with its eyes closed, breathing really fast and twitching in its sleep. I tried to convince Glenn it was cold and needed me to hug it keep it warm, but he pointed out the sign again. I think it would play really well with the cats.
In other news, I found my roasting pan, and put my bookshelves together. Also had to go to the eye doc after something during the move flew into my eye and my eye swelled up and got all red and they had to get it out with a suction cup thingy they put on your eyeball (ow!) and run an IV (eye-V?) bag of saline through to rinse out your eye. Like a big plastic contact lens. Not something I’d recommend for fun, especially if you’re a little eye-squeamish (I am!) In future, my father tells me, I should wear protective “Lab Goggles” when I move. Especially in the 60-mile-an-hour winds and a truck full of tiny particles of dust, mold, fiberglass, feathers, and God knows what else was in there from previous moves…Hey, when I was in organic chem, we had the eye safety center, which was basically a big water fountain, and that was good enough for us. No frou-frou-plastic-suction-eye-wash crap for us! No sir. Such overkill these modern doctors!
Also, I bought Thanksgiving food, including a branch of brussel sprouts. I don’t know exactly how to cook them on a branch. Should we just throw it in the over and gnaw at it? I did not buy a pie, though they looked good, because, what are two people going to do with a whole pie? If we want pie, you can go to the coffee shop the day after Thanksgiving. I’m sure we’ll be hungry again by then.
One more carload of stuff in the old place to get tomorrow…
40 things that can go wrong when you move, or why moving is always, always more expensive and challaneging than you think…Or, trust that Murphy fellow and his law
First of all, a big shout-out and thank you to Poet Kelli and her husband who helped us move into our new place. That’s a real poetry superheroine, one who will actually move your boxes with you! In the driving cold wind and rain! Anyway, we are eternally grateful, K!
So, yesterday, the pickup of the 26-foot truck was scheduled was 8:30 AM, and the movers were supposed to appear at 9 AM. But, low and behold, when husband G shows up yesterday morning, they did not have the reservation or know anything about it. Later, the manager showed up and says, Oh, I wrote you down for blank day. Of course, the wrong day. So we end up calling a bunch of rental companies in a panic. The movers start charging us at 9 AM whether we have a truck or not. Finally we find a truck, a 23-foot. Glenn buys extra insurance on the truck because he is nervous about driving such a big truck himself. (Turns out that will be a smart move on his part.) So that was yesterday’s drama (ended up paying an extra $110 for the mover’s time.) Also, we had to buy lots of little things that were missing from the house: a curtain rod, new sets of curtains for the hundred thousand giganto-windows we have that look directly into our neighbor’s houses (great view!) a shower curtain, a new cat litter box, and one of those rugs for the inside of the doorway – since we haven’t had non-carpeted floors in about 8 years. A Target run that cost about as much as I made last month.
This morning, at 7 AM we start loading up all the little stuff, including all of our clothes. It is about 40 degrees, howling wind, and driving sideways soaking rain. At about 11 AM, we took off in the big rig for Port Townsend. Husband G was driving like a champ, even maneuvering the giant truck on and off the ferry, which can be tricky. But after two hours of driving, about five miles away from our new place, he tries to pull a turn in a parking lot and knocks the fender off a parked car. Holy Crap! The truck isn’t even dinged. He calls the police to let them know what happened since he can’t find the owner of the car, and leaves his insurance information, but he is devastated. The woman evenutally calls and they exchange information, (she wasn’t mad, just bemused by how such a thing had happened) police later give him a citation, and our insurance rates will go up now. Perfect way to start life in a new town!
Did I mention my computer crashed (for no apparent reason) three times during the last two days, wiping out not all of my labor, but at least a chunk of it?
Lessons Learned: Always buy the extra insurance. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay for a moving truck AND driver. Don’t buy Vista yet. Save your documents frequently. When making reservations for movers and a truck, give yourself a few hours of leeway, and always call every day for at least ten days and talk to every employee at the rental truck agency to make sure they all know you and when you’re renting their truck. Or get a written contract. Or save yourself a lot of pain and stay put in one place as long as possible. Sell all your possessions and live out of your backpack, so you don’t have to rent a truck in the first place. Or make a lot of money so none of those little-expenses-that-add-up hurt so badly. Maybe I should look into that…
Mood: Exasperated, Exhausted, and Broke
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
