Uneventful trip home. Of course, after several days of rain, Provincetown put on its bright sunny face to say goodbye this morning. I think it may have been laughing at me a little bit, too.
I miss good seafood everywhere, the sound of the foghorn, the way the air smells, the new & not-so-new friends I spent time with, the near-perfect balance between solitary writing time and socializing, waking early & happy and making coffee and sitting down at my little desk beneath the window overlooking the green courtyard and writing, rainbow flags all over the place, conversations that veer from poetry to silly shit and back again within moments, the making and remaking of connections.
I will not miss the giant-ass mosquitoes. Also, it's nice to be with my cats again. (The moment I stepped in the door, Lotus started up with the Super Extra Mega Noisy Purr. A couple minutes later, he got one of his toy mousies and ran to me with it & dropped it at my feet. Awwwwww! Bear was glad to see me too -- he is smiling & smiling.)
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I think I put my finger on why I've been feeling more dissatisfied with my work this week than I did after a similar week last year. Last year, I ended the week feeling all kinds of good things about my work, feeling like I'd made good strong progress. This year, I kind of feel like it's all crap. But you know what, I looked at some notes to myself I jotted on one of my exercise poems from the week, and I think I'm a lot better now at seeing what needs to be done -- at stepping back from my own poems & seeing where they fail, where they need to be pushed. So I'm kind of focused on the failure part, but in a way that should ultimately be productive. I am frustrated with my work mainly because my standards got higher. I don't think I did make quite the breakthroughs I made last year, but it probably isn't quite all crap, either.
I have a lot of work to do. And, you know, that's an okay place to be right now.
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"Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." --Rilke
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In the National Shitorgetoffthepo(e)t Derby, "put up" defeats "shut up" by a nose.
4 comments:
Sounds like a great trip. all in all. I will have to go there someday. It sounds wonderful.
Anne, I enjoyed following you and your adventures in Providence. Your enthusiasms are contagious!
Peter, you should absolutely go to P-town. You'd love it! If you go during the summer, you can catch a reading at FAWC almost any day of the week. It's just a lovely place.
Diane, glad you enjoyed! (Although it's Provincetown, as in the very tip of Cape Cod Massachusetts, not Providence in Rhode Island. Providence doesn't have drag queens on rollerblades in the middle of the main street... Provincetown does. *grin*)
Oh, sorry. I always mix up those two. I have actually been to Provincetown I think.
-d
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