New Addition/Welcome to the World, Anxieties of Progress, Makeshift Snacks

Welcome, Lyra!


I became an aunt yesterday! It sounds funny to say it like that, since I actually did nothing toward it, but yesterday the daughter of my brother and his wife, their first child, my mother's long-awaited first grandchild, was born!

Her name is Lyra, after the heroine of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy - a feisty, passionate, free-thinking namesake indeed. I am so glad that she is with us now, and that my sister-in-law doesn't have to be pregnant in the hot weather in London anymore!

I wish my brother and sister-in-law the very best of joy and delight in their new role as parents. It seems to me that bringing a child into the world is a very courageous thing to do, and I've been so impressed by all the preparation they've done for it.

Meanwhile, back in Fairbanks

It's been beautifully warm and even sunny the past three days. The threatened thunderstorms never materialized. I'm feeling the incipient lump-in-the-throat because we only have two days left for the workshop - but that also means that in less than five days I'll see Phil again, to which I'm really looking forward.

Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity for a brief consultation with one of the professors about some of my work. I intentionally put forward some of my work that was less 'polished,' but still felt somewhat deflated after we took it apart! It validating my own critical sensibilities in part, because in most cases she flagged as needing more work precisely the parts with which I wasn't comfortable, but it was also a wake-up call in one case, where I had fallen into my trap of being lulled by beautiful sounds and not realizing that the image was not being conveyed for anyone else.

Perhaps it's something to do with having memorized all kinds of very long passages of Sanskrit and Latin at a very young age, without having a clue what they meant. I have a propensity to be so satisfied by sounds and rhythms, but to invite someone else to care about my poems, I need to provide more than that!

It seems so silly that whilst I wanted to have my work criticized, there was also a part of me that so wanted it to be already perfect, a work of genius. The cool thing is that I'm actually excited to work on making it better, which shows that the impulse and commitment are real, not posturing.

Running low on snacks, yesterday I soaked up some flax seeds, added shredded coconut and a bunch of spices, stevia, chlorella, a little carob, dehydrated in an intermittent oven...

- makeshift snack-food! I don't prefer the texture with whole flaxseeds - they work better as meal - but these are portable, won't melt or spoil, taste not stellar but fine.

I am aquiver with my desire to take 'the next step' with my writing practice, prepare for applying to MFA programs, etc, and with the anxious realization that I really need help with this - I really need a mentor to help me do my best with this. I am aiming to put aside the anxiety and just promise myself that it's going to happen, I'm going to find a great mentor, but I barely slept last night, exhausted as I am, for the excitement of it.

Speaking of anxious progress, here are two others that I saw on the way to class -

- with my tea mug for scale - must have been a very hungry caterpillar on that barren pavement!

Probably doing about 15 mph.

And for a different kind of progress - the official flower of Fairbanks is the showy delphinium - you see them in people's yards everywhere. But here are some that escaped and went feral on the roadside