First Chestnut in Everyday Ramblings

“If you pay attention to which weeds proliferate, the soil will tell you what it needs. The presence of chicory or wild carrot or the lovely Queen Anne’s lace means the soil is low in fertility, a classic problem that arises when you harvest crops without returning nutrients to the soil.”

I read this last night and thought, ah ha. I didn’t even know what wild chicory looked like until Most Honorable and I went out on our first bird lecture walk across the river six years or so ago. There was a dry field near a marsh that was covered in chicory and a swarm of goldfinches.

This morning when I was walking near the river here on the west side in the dry scrub land between all the new construction I saw trash, a rusty barbeque and chicory and dried Queen Anne’s lace. I am still not sure what wild carrot looks like but wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were there too. Interesting, Google says they are basically the same plant. Who knew? Daucus carota.

Friday night I watched the documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. I was totally entranced. I knew from the interviews a few years back with Keith Richards when his memoir came out that he didn’t live in the world I know of as real. From the clips of Mick Jagger in this movie that is clearly true for him too.

Last night I started watching the Sherlock episode His Last Vow. PBS made it available for a brief time to watch streaming. I hadn’t managed to see this one when it aired at the end of Season 3. It has been perfect to watch in snippets throughout the day and I just finished it. I have the complete works. Someday I hope to have time to read the two stories it is based on.

I’ve made a decision that may have some long reaching consequences. I am for the first time ever in my life actually honoring the fact that I am a major introvert. Or as Mr. Finch used to tell people, I have a “Social Anxiety Disorder”. That helped him explain why there were many things going on in the local poetry “scene” I didn’t want to have anything to do with. Like going to smoky cheap bars and eating greasy food and drinking bad wine and watching people pretend they are Charles Bukowski or Jack Kerouac.

For all the times I didn’t go to one of those events, there were torturous times I did.

But I had him with me.

For the last few years I have been going to my local monthly reading in the neighborhood. These are comparatively sedate and intellectual events on the spectrum and I do enjoy having the chance to read new work to an audience that is expecting poetry.

But going alone I always feel like the top of my head is going to come off. I have made myself do it because I believed I had to be out there, visible, to get my work noticed. But when you read at an open mic, you are always considered an amateur no matter how good your work is.

I started laughing this afternoon when I realized that although I would love to share my new poem with an audience that I very much do not have the energetic resources to go alone to the reading tonight.

I imagined hiring an “escort”, a handsome young man to come with me and smile charmingly at all the other women in the room and chat intelligently with me during the breaks.

Now that I would enjoy!

Life is too darn short and precious for me to spend any more time than is necessary in rooms where I feel the top of my head is going to come off.

In the meantime I am going to concentrate on making my work the best it can possibly be. And if 25 people in Portland don’t get to hear it tonight, well, oh well. Maybe I am just fooling myself because I don’t want to be uncomfortable but I think I am getting more selective about what I do that makes me uncomfortable.

I shall ask the warrior goddesses for guidance and take a bath and get to bed on time instead.

(I took this first chestnut of the season picture this morning before the smoke from local fires moved in.)

Last updated September 15, 2014