Poets in the Park Report, Summertime Revising Season, and MS Energy Conservation

Summer is the Season of Revision

Hope you all had a good holiday week. I spent a good deal of the holiday sick as a dog with an upper respiratory thing, which meant we stayed home and listened to locals shooting fireworks from noon to midnight. I took the opportunity (as I was not able to sleep much) to revise my sixth manuscript again. Last time I went through it very carefully and didn’t find anything to cut. This time I was like, “Why are these six poems even in this manuscript” and found the same poem in two different places. Sigh. But the good things about the relative downtime of summer is that it releases the time for revision, which I don’t know about you, but I usually need to do quite a bit of.

On the plus side, my roses are finally flourishing now that the deer have for some reason stopped eating them. I surrounded all of them with edible herbs, like thyme and rosemary, which seems to have helped deter the cute but pesky flower-eaters. The hummingbirds are still going crazy now that the dry season has finally started – I did manage to catch a rainbow a couple of days ago during a brief storm. I love rain in the summertime. Where I grew up in Tennessee, there was a brief rainstorm almost every afternoon in the summer. And it was always wonderful – you could smell the air getting cleaner and the flowers being happy.

Poets at the Park in Redmond – a Delight

I managed to cold-medicine myself up and make it to my PR for Poets talk and reading with Jack Straw at the yearly Redmond poetry festival Poets in the Park. It was great opportunity to reconnect with old friends (especially a few I hadn’t seen in a while) and hear poetry and sell some books. The PR for Poets talk was crowded and people asked a lot of really good questions. The reading part – I read some new poems as well as a couple from Field Guide to the End of the World on the subject of resilience seemed to go well, except I need to remember that reading while standing makes my MS symptoms really act up – vertigo, the shakes, even trouble breathing (!) Reading while sitting seems to not bring these on, which my neurologist explained was because trying to keep your balance when you have brain damage in your brain stem and balance center takes quite a bit of work, so the other stuff gets a little iffy while you’re doing it. A reminder to me that I need to ask for a chair at readings from now on. I don’t want to fall on anyone and then get a rumor started that I’m a drunk or something. (I can’t even drink so that would be a very unfair rumor!)

MS Energy Conservation Lession #212

I got to see my friend Natasha Moni read at Poets in the Park, as well as the new Washington state Poet Laureate Claudia Luna and Jack Straw alums. I wish I could have stayed longer, and done more socializing, but even that three hours and a half made me super shaky and exhausted. Right. So. Trying to remember to keep that MS energy meter thing controlled. Energy conservation seems to be a repeated lesson I am not good at learning. Especially in the summer time, because, in case you ever have any friends with MS, it’s a struggle because heat, sun and humidity all increase MS symptoms. Which I remember because, that’s right, this is exactly the time last year I was in the hospital and I couldn’t walk, talk, or swallow. So at least I’m better than that, but management is still something I have to continuously remember.

So today I am taking it easy, resting in an air conditioned room, and quietly reading and writing – not even watching any television. Staying cool and quiet seems to help the MS symptoms recede a bit. It’s really like a miniature lesson in life balance that becomes super annoying really quickly. LOL. I have a meditation app on my phone now (no eye rolling) and practice things like breathing and balance (the literal kind) on these down days, too. Oh and sip things like watermelon juice and take extra vitamins. Man. If I didn’t get to visit with you at the festival, I’m sorry, and please feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I’m much better one on one these days anyway! I’m pretty sure I’m behind on some paperwork (backed up grant paperwork, e-mails, blurbs, and etc) so if I owe you something, please remind me. I’m just a little slower at getting things done these days, and I guess that’s the new normal, especially in summer. The forced slow-down does give you something, I’ll give you that – I pay much more attention to little things like the garden and my birds and the texture of a piece of clothing or the taste of something as simple as juice. You check in with yourself and your body more, too – am I cold or hot? Am I thirsty? Do I need to nap? It’s like advanced accelerated AP self-care but instead of grades you just get zapped with a million symptoms if you fail. I bet a lot of people with a chronic illness feel this way – if I don’t do everything carefully, slowly and meaningfully, my body will spiral into some kind of terrible disaster zone. Anyway, if you’re out there reading this, I feel you. I’m going through the same things. We have to adjust our expectations, the pace of our lives, even the breadth of our ambitions to make money, be successful, be a great friend/spouse/etc. We have to accept the lessons without fighting against them every day. It’s tough. It’s revision on steroids, revising your life to just the simplest, most necessary things. Sometimes I want to be able to do things like a poetry festival appearance, but I have to remember that before and after, I’ll need a ton of rest. Resist, resilience, revise, refresh, rest.