NaPoWriMo: Midway Progress Report and Taking the Shots

It's been a hectic couple of days. I've been productive, but without much breathing space. This seems to correlate with my going to bed thinking of what I didn't get done rather than feeling pleased with everything I did. So, a progress report on this 'poem every day in April' project feels like a good anchor for this post.

Breathing Space and Missed Shots
Speaking of breathing space, here's the window I had to squeeze through as told in my Comedy of Errors post: I mentioned in it that events had moved at such a zany pace that I didn't have frame-by-frame pictures, and kt made the very smart suggestion that that was one pic I could share.

The window's quite tall but that crank mechanism doesn't allow it to open very wide...

Other productive busyness for which I missed the obvious photos: yesterday, I 'hosted' our writers group. We meet every two weeks. People take turns to host at their home, creating a relaxed environment with snacks. If one's home is too small, one can host at the library--which is obviously what I did! I'd have loved to have taken photos, both of the group and of the spread that I put on, but I left my camera at home. One thing that did feature in the spread was 'blackamole,' though...

We have light in the sky from before 6am until after 10pm now, which means we're getting into manic season. I'm not dreading it as much as last year. However, the combination of so many hours of daylight and big low tides around the full moon means that it's prime time to drive out on the beach to the base of the bluff on which our cabin sits...

filling in with an older pic

...and for Phil to put in more long, heavy hours of fighting against the Pacific Ocean!

another old pic...

We were down there this morning by 6.20: the beach deserted and expansive, all the creeks fully thawed and flowing rapidly into the ocean, crows and gulls dancing among the tidepools, the eastern sky rosy.
(And once again, I didn't have the camera...) It was still cold from the night: 25 degrees--and feeling the air and ground frozen but hearing water running everywhere was a peculiar juxtaposition.

NaPoWriMo
Wait--weren't you supposed to be talking about NaPoWriMo and how this poem-a-day jaunt is going? Well yes. My point is that it was so easy to miss all those shots, not to be present with the ever-ready camera, or to miss all kinds of inspirational moments and opportunities in the course of a day. And writing a poem every day has been a wonderful antidote to this tendency.

One new poem every day: and I set myself the additional guideline that every day's draft should be something worth working on further after the end of the month. This means that I can't miss my shot: every day, from my internal landscape, from events and scenery outside, or even from using a prompt, I must find something worth writing about and worth thinking about in an exalted way. But, as this wealth of possible sources hints, it also shows that there are so many possible shots! I couldn't possibly write every poem that occurs to me in the course of a day and this reflection has sometimes induced paralysis. The habit of writing just a single one of them, every day, opens this up so wide: it feels more like fruition and less like agony in the bud.

Although, as I predicted, I'm already looking forward to the end of the month and having more time to revise and develop what's come so far, I'm thinking that I'll probably continue something like this just for the juice that it generates. Even keeping the habit of writing down some 'germs of gems' every day sounds so attractive.

I haven't yet played with a couple of forms that I wanted to play with, and I need to do some more 'funny' poems, but the only day's effort that didn't feel like it was going anywhere for me was a prompt, to attempt a cento poem based on Bob Dylan's lyrics. I didn't give it a fair chance, did it from off the top of my head...and even though I wasn't pleased with what I did, it definitely gives me more interest in playing with cento.

Low tide was at 7 this evening and Phil wanted to go back down and fight the ocean: I thought he was leaving at 6.30 but he wanted to be gone soon after 6. He wolfed his dinner, and I stayed home and enjoyed mine slowly.

Yam with coconut butter, doused with cinnamon (with lots of salad on the side) seems so decadent and delectable--perfect for savoring alone.

Another long day and early start tomorrow: we're going to Captain Cook State Park and beach, 100-some miles north of here, to meet a friend, hike and look at rocks and fossils.

Have a beautiful weekend!