Fire Season: September 2020

Sunrise, smoke

Fire Season: September 2020

I don’t usually do a mid-week post, but I thought I’d just let you know what’s happening in Washington State. Since Monday, we’ve had 500,000 acres burned across the state. (That’s more acres than usually catch on fire in WA in an entire year.)

Wildfires are in every direction, and the air quality started at about 150 Monday night and stayed that way all yesterday. Even running several air purifiers inside, the air quality is still a little troublesome, causing scratchy eyes and throat, a little cough. The news is full of people crying, evacuated from homes. Our firefighting force is stretched thin, fighting huge fires all across the state, many of whom having just come back from volunteering in California’s fires. The Oregon Coast, where you might think you could go to escape the fires, is on fire. It’s just wildfires in every direction, along with dangerous heat and high wind.

Monday, the day this started, I spent two hours outside, gardening, reading. Air quality was fine. When it got to be almost dark, Glenn and I looked at a black and red cloud on the horizon, and knew the smoke was coming for us. This picture was the sunrise on Tuesday, when it came up and the sky was red.

Smoke Map, early Tuesday, West Coast

I have read many of my friends all along the West Coast being evacuated, and we are preparing a bag just in case, ourselves. The smoke, for now, is enough of a hazard – and they’re saying our hazardous air conditions will not go away until next Monday. That’s a full week of me not being able to go outside at all due to my asthma and lung scarring. Still, it’s much worse for the firefighters, who are working in the worst possible circumstances.

Also, WA State emergency systems has the nerve to suggest we use “N95” masks if you go outside. Where are we supposed to get those, since you outlawed us buying them for the last six months? Are we supposed to knock over a hospital? Come out, please give us actual advice we can use, people!

So, think good thoughts for your friends along the West Coast, the firefighters here in terrible conditions, and I guess hoping to find some N95 masks…

I wrote an apocalypse book and published it in 2016. (Which Amazon is having trouble delivering right now, so if you want a copy, click on “signed copy” and I’ll send one to you!) Turns out I was just a couple of years early..

Adventures During a Plague Year: A Full Corn Moon, First Trip to a Store (with Miyazaki), and First Visit with Family (and Unicorn)

Full Corn Moon, with Woodinville Trees

Adventures During a Plague Year: Full Corn Moon

This week, as I continue to feel better, was full of firsts “since February.” If you know me, you know I have an immune deficiency and I’ve basically been isolating since February. This week took me outside of my house, and empty outdoor areas, to a visit a gardening store (mostly outdoor, and practically empty, with all employees wearing masks correctly and social distancing) and a visit with my little brother and his wife in our front yard (also with masks and social distancing). These things felt so odd and awkward, and exhilarating. A little piece of normalcy returning in a town where we are still mostly not normal, not yet. Stores close early; salons and restaurants only hold a certain capacity; school, at least in my county, is all virtual for now.

The moon the last few nights has risen orange and spooky, veiled by cloud, still bright enough to make quite an entrance. Full moons can seem to presage some kind of change. I’m hoping these changes will be for the better. I don’t know about you, but like the moon, I’ve felt veiled with a heavy layer of foreboding and depression. The news is full of horrors, including wildfires in Washington and California; I’m worried about the election, too. It’s hard to see the light.

Me Feeling Better, Looking forward to Fall

Firsts Since February – a Trip to a Store, and a Visit with Family

Our local gardening store, Molbaks, which is largely outdoors (but also has an indoor component) seemed like a good first experiment for a foray into the so-called “outside world.” The last time I’d been there in February they had very little stock in, so I couldn’t build the garden I wanted this year. I picked up some herbs I’d been missing, some mums and pansies to give the garden some color after our sunflowers and dahlias finally fade, and a Halloween mask (in case we are able to celebrate Halloween? At least virtually?) It felt a little bit like a zombie video game, zig-zagging to avoid the store sparsely dotted with employees and shoppers, with signs posting “stay six feet apart from other shoppers” between the seasonal displays. Everyone was required to wear masks, which made me feel a little safer. To make me feel a little more invincible, I wore some Miyazaki-related clothing – a Totoro-themed sundress, Totoro shirt, and Totoro mask (Glenn has a Catbus one.) I wonder how much Totoro is too much? Here I am posing at home (pre-mask) and at Molbaks (with mask). Here are orange dahlias, growing outside the shop. Don’t they make you feel fall-ish?

Today we had my little brother Mike and his wife Loree over for a little rosé and skewers (all finger food, for safety, and plastic champagne glasses) and we introduced the inflatable unicorn rainbow sprinkler again. It was great to see their faces (and my little brother’s pandemic beard) but it was sad not to be able to hug them. We sat about twenty feet apart for most of the visit, to be safe. Is this “the new normal?” It seems so strange. Masks, hand sanitizer, outdoor furniture arranged just so – not things we’re used to yet – well, this was our first socializing in a long time! But the visit was definitely a bright spot in our long weekend. I took the most pictures, so I didn’t appear in that many of them, but I have fun taking pictures (masked and from a distance, of course), so it’s all good. It was a perfect day, not too hot, and so great to catch up. But the smoke from the fires is starting to creep into our area – by the evening, you could almost see it hanging in the air. Check out the moon tonight compared to the picture at the top, from three days ago.

Pileated Woodpecker Perched a Planter

I have to admit these modest adventures – which felt risky to me, but rewarding – did lift my spirits. The week ahead promises to bring record-breaking heat (in the nineties) and more smoke, so I’ll probably be acting more Emily Dickinson-y than daredevil-y for the rest of the week, a good time to write and send out work, and spend time with my cats and my birds instead of humans. Here’s one of my regular visitors – a pileated woodpecker. This week I saw a V of snow geese migrating overhead, always a beautiful sight (if a bit cacophonous). The hummingbirds were persistently hanging around us this afternoon, fluttering in front of us and zipping from flower to tree branch. It was like they wanted to socialize too!

I hope you all stay safe and find some joy in your week. I’m going to sleep after watching a little bit of the Last Unicorn on cable, which seemed appropriate viewing.

Winner of the PR for Poets Giveaway, The Light in August with Otters and Unicorns, and Looking Forward to Fall (and Working While Ill)

Sylvia posing with PR for Poets

Winner of the PR for Poets Giveaway!

Congratulations to Jan Priddy, who won last week’s giveaway of my book, PR for Poets! I’ll be sending it out really soon. Thanks to everyone who entered!

I’ll wait to do another giveaway til the first week of September, when it will be Field Guide to the End of the World.

A bouquet of dahlias from my garden

The Light in August

Both metaphorical and spiritual. As September approaches, the days here get shorter, but the light between 6 and 7 PM is so beautiful and golden. As I continue healing, I find my spirit lightening as well. My husband made a concerted effort to try to cheer me up this week – as you’ll see in pictures, this included a visit to Lake Washington where we got an up-close visit with otters, and an inflatable unicorn sprinkler. It may seem silly, but sometimes in the darkest days we need to make an effort to embrace the light.

For me, being out in nature, flowers, wild animals and even inflatable unicorn rainbow sprinklers can be part of healing the inside as well as the outside. After all, life can’t be all doctor visits and medication schedules. You have to remind yourself of why you bother fighting by doing things that remind you of the joy of living, the beauty of the world. (The ugliness of the world is easy to see – but the beauty often takes a little more searching.)

Sunflowers in late August light

Looking Forward to Fall – and Working While Ill

As we turn towards September, it feels like my energy for writing (and sending out work) is increasing. I’m feeling more hopeful about my manuscripts too, which I worked very hard on editing during the summer, along with writing new poems. Do you find the fall is linked in your mind to increased productivity and happiness, even with the pandemic? Summer is definitely not my season – I’m allergic to the sun, and MS makes you sensitive to heat – and anyway my personality definitely tends towards the “wrapped in a sweater, reading by the fire with a cup of tea” rather than “beach bunny” type.

I know some of my friends who are parents are struggling with having kids at home while working full time, and friends who are teachers and professors being forced to be in the classroom, which brings risk and more stress than usual. How are you adjusting to the coming fall?

Pileated Woodpecker takes flight

I thought I’d write a little bit about working while ill. Chadwick Boseman’s death – may he rest in peace, such a talented, beautiful actor –  came as a surprise to many, even though he had been fighting colon cancer for four years – almost all the time playing starring roles in major movies. Chadwick was the same age as my little brother – way too young – and by all accounts was a sweet, kind, upbeat guy – as well as a terrific actor who didn’t get enough time to showcase all of his talents. It seems unfair. I saw a lot of people raising the issue that he didn’t make his cancer struggle public – though he often engaged with children with cancer in charitable ways. But working in Hollywood while ill is a fraught issue – studios might not want to cast you, insurance companies might not be willing to insure you while filming and getting health insurance means you have to keep working. (Actresses like Selma Blair have discussed this in terms of going public with MS, as well.) I think also there’s a psychological aspect. If you admit you are fighting cancer, it becomes more real to you, and people will keep bringing it up in interviews or even strangers on the street will probably address you about it. Maybe he wanted to focus on the positive, and not be constantly reminded of his cancer. I can understand why he kept it private, for professional and personal reasons. His work, his radiant spirit, will live on his movies, not just the iconic Black Panther’s King T’Challa but also icons like Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown. (He also was pretty great on his stint as a host on SNL.)  Director Nora Ephron also kept her cancer a secret even from her family almost right up until her death, even while working on her last film, Julie and Julia, probably for similar reasons.

I hope people will respect these kinds of decisions, among ill and disabled people in regular life as well as Hollywood – because even though I talk here about working while disabled and chronically ill, I’m not a celebrity and my work as a freelance writer really isn’t impacted that much by whether I am sick or not. Also, I’m the kind of person who feels better venting, and when I was dealing with my own disease journey (including being diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago, gearing up for chemo, getting multiple oncologists’s appointments, getting radiated) – I felt okay reaching out to friends and family for support, even though some of them weren’t all that supportive (some people feel cancer is maybe contagious, or maybe talking to you might remind them of their own mortality – and while those friends’ and family’s reactions were disappointing to me, they weren’t the end of the world). That’s the way I deal with most of my problems, but other people’s decisions on how to deal with theirs are equally valid, and I hope you will try not to judge them if they don’t disclose their health struggles with you. I hope for a future where being disabled or ill would not result in discrimination at work or in personal relationships, but that future, sadly, is not here yet.

Roses in August light

That was a somewhat somber way to end a blog post about embracing the light and otter encounters. Doesn’t it seem like every bit of light these days has a little shadow cast over it – whether by the pandemic, politics, or personal losses? We do not get to choose to live without loss, stress, difficulty. But I hope we can look to Chadwick – who reached out to others to improve their lives while confronting his own mortality at such a young age – as not just a positive icon in his role as Black Panther, but a person who embraced the little joys of life, and cared deeply about others, to inspire us to help bring joy to others, and to appreciate the little joys along the way, despite our struggles. Also, this is a reminder that if someone you know seems tired, loses or gains weight, or even if they seem completely fine, they may be dealing with something hard that they have chosen not to make public. It is a reminder to be kind, to cut people some extra slack, because we never know someone else’s true story.

Onward, towards September! Remember that one of Boseman’s last tweets of a picture of him hugging Kamala Harris, and urging us to vote this fall. Write. Vote. Plant a tree, or a bunch of trees. Leave flowers for a friend. Try to change the world, a little bit at a time, to be a little bit better.

Waiting for Fall to Arrive, Deer and Dahlias, a Week of Recovery and Reading, and a Giveaway

Me posing post-hospital with dahlias

Waiting for Fall to Arrive

So, thank you for all your kind messages, notes, and even a few gifts this week as I recovered from my hospital trips last week. I took some selfies to prove I was indeed alive and if not totally well, at least on a path to recovery. And I wanted to show off some of my garden dahlias – they are so spectacular in August, as everything else in the garden is starting to die down.

We’ve had rain, thunderstorms, and went from 95 degrees back to the seventies. It is starting to feel a little like fall is arriving soon. I always do better in the autumn than the summer. Of course, there is a lot of stress for the parents of children off to school or college – or the kids themselves – anxiety over what will happen with coronavirus and a ton of bodies together again.

There is anxiety over the election (yes, I watched the DNC, and if you want my recommendations, watch Michelle Obama’s speech, Kamala Harris’, Elizabeth Warren address healthcare, and Joe Biden make the speech of his career (and correctly quote poetry!)

There is wildfire all up and down the West coast, and hurricanes coming in the coast. It does seem like we’ve brought on a bunch of curses all at once. Oh, and they released genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida. I’m sure nothing will go wrong, especially once they’ve sucked the blood of some meth gators. (Just kidding, Florida.) In general, it’s an anxiety-producing world. It’s an apocalypse movie that goes too long.

Glenn and I with dahlias, post-hospital

Deer and Dahlias

Meanwhile, this week brought me a lot of late-August beauty, birds, deer with fawns, the dahlias bursting into fantastic bloom, the last of the late roses. I even have a bouquet of late lavender by the bed. I’ve been slowly getting my mental energy back, and yesterday I had enough write a poem and send my book manuscripts to some new places (for me.) I’m really hoping to have a book taken soon so I can direct my energy in a positive way as the fall comes, and opportunities to be outside dwindle. It’s good to have something to worry about besides coronavirus death rates, the post office being threatened by our evil would-be dictator, my own struggle to overcome threats to my own body, my family back in Ohio, etc, etc.

I hope you’ll enjoy this gallery of photos from my home for the week: dahlias, roses, black-tailed doe and fawn, Steller’s jay, goldfinch with phlox.

Sylvia posing with Anna Maria Hong’s Fablesque

Reading and Recovery

One of the kind gifts sent to me this week was Anna Maria Hong’s new book from Tupelo Press, Fablesque. If you enjoy fairy-tale-twisted poetry, mythology, experimental poetry, prose poetry, and harrowing tales of fathers escaping North Korea, this book is for you. I very much enjoyed it, and as you can see, Sylvia cuddled up to it right away.

I tried a bit of This is How You Lose the Time War, a sci-fi novel my little brother recommended, and finished Joan Didion’s White Album, thinking about starting the Year of Magical Thinking next. I’ve also been continuing my re-read of AS Byatt’s Possession, particularly as I go to sleep. In the heat, in my fatigue, reading is a way to make my mind and body work together, pass the time while I heal, while I hide out. Not so different, really, than my reasons for reading as a young kid.

PR for Poets

A Giveaway – PR for Poets

And speaking of reading as healing and escape, I’m going to do a series of giveaways on the blog, starting with my latest book, PR for Poets. If you have a book that’s just come out or have a book that’s about to come out, and you’re stressed about how the heck you’re going to sell books in today’s, erm, climate, this book might just be helpful.

So, I’m giving away one copy of PR for Poets to someone in the US who needs it! Just leave a comment on this blog post, with your e-mail so I can contact you if you win. If you want, you can also leave the name of your new book or upcoming book, so more people can see it! I’ll pick someone next Saturday with a random number generator, and then I’ll start a giveaway for Field Guide to the End of the World.

Detours – a Week In and Out of the Hospital, Dahlias, and Feeling a Little Down While Wishing on Stars

Dinner Plate Pink Dahlia, my own garden

Detours – A Week In and Out of the Hospital, and Dahlias

Hello my friends! Since I last wrote, I had several unplanned detours into the hospital. I lost ten pounds in two days, ran 102 temperature, and endured two separate hospitals who took blood, gave me fluids and electrolyte bags, and let me tell you – stay away from hospitals during Covid if you can. The nurses were so inattentive as to seem terrified and understaffed. No visitors are allowed back – you may have heard about this – but the hospitals seem even more gloomy and terrifying than usual (and as you know, I’m something of a hospital veteran – having volunteered for five years in various wards at hospitals, including end-of-life wards, before starting, at 20, to pay way too many visits for my own health. First they were fighting a superbug – and then a complication from the drugs that treat the superbug – and then unexplained mysterious symptoms no one could explain. Not covid though! Just a reminder – there are things out there that can still make you sick enough to hospitalize you that are not covid, though covid is getting all the attention.

Anyway, spending time at the hospital is never pleasant, and was less pleasant this time than any time in recent memory, perhaps because I was also suffering and a bit out of it, which always makes bad things loom larger.

My care team – Glenn and Sylvia

When I got back from the hospital, and I was well enough to walk around my house, this pink dinner plate dahlia greeted me, as if it had been waiting for me. My care team – pictured to the left – Glenn and Sylvia – barely left my side as they made sure I drank broth and Pedialyte, and watched movies and documentaries (including a great one on Joan Didion, who, it turns out, was diagnosed with MS!)

These unplanned detours – which often seem to occur to me in August – derail my writing, my meager (during the plague, especially) life plans. But today I talked to a poet friend, my little brother, and caught up with my parents – a nice way to re-enter the human world, not the suspended animation of the medical care world. The dream (or nightmare) world of IVs and fever, of blood work and doctor exams.

Like going to and fro from the underworld, we need companions to help us re-arrive in the land of the living in one piece, recovering our spirits and reviving our bodies.

The circle of life, in typewriters

Feeling a Little Down, While Wishing on Falling Stars

Have you been watching the falling stars each night at midnight? I’ve been standing on my back porch, drawn to the red glow of Mars on the horizon, once in a while catching the quick winking of a falling star, wishing and wondering if I should even bother wishing. Is it naïve or child-like for me to even make wishes?

It’s been a tough year, definitely because of the plague-related disruptions, the tearing away of my comfort zones (oh, my bookstores!) and my support networks. Watching Americans do stupid things under a stupid president. Maybe also because I have two finished – or mostly finished – manuscripts – still looking for homes, maybe because both times I returned home from the hospital there was a rejection waiting for me (both places having taken a year to get back to me).

Field of flowers in Woodinville, sunflowers and dahlias

I won’t deny feeling down when I read about Trump’s attack on the post office (though I was a little cheered by Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as VP, for whom I voted for Presidential candidate). I feel down when I read about coronavirus deaths, and I couldn’t help but absorb a little fear from those gray-faced nurses at the hospital, curt and perfunctory in their fear. I feel, again, betrayed by my frail body that manages to be so sick I cannot control it. I feel that while all my writer friends are celebrating triumphs, I continue to fail. I know this may be temporary – perhaps a bit of gloom traced to the IV fluid in my veins, to my still sore arms (they couldn’t get a blood draw the third time, and my IV had to go in different places three different times). How to separate the physical from the mental and emotional?

I will quote here a bit from Joan Didion’s “The White Album,” her neurologist’s advice after her diagnosis (after many tests) of MS. “Lead a simple life,” the neurologist advised. “Not that it makes any difference we know about.” Ah, MS advice hasn’t changed a bit!

I try to find the beauty in the simple things around me – birds and the flowers of late August, sunflowers and dahlias. Tonight I will go out again after midnight, to watch for meteors flashing across the sky. I will probably still make a wish.