Poems

This particular Monday brings all the fear of moving to a new state to the forefront. I tend to believe that, much like stress has categories good and bad, also does fear. And my fear today is mostly good. As I've mentioned, I look forward to the mystery beheld by a new environment. There've been new entries knocking around in my head for a few days now but a fact of moving is that a four day holiday almost completely used for packing and purging, is still not enough time. Craig and I spent the entire day yesterday finishing on through midnight, and it wasn't enough because this morning six o'clock found me shuffling through items in the bathroom drawers wondering Do I ever use this? And, How many face creams have I bought, anyway? Nonetheless, a good deal of what I'd like to mention about my weekend will be in abbreviated format (as abbreviated as this long-winded girl gets) because there was simply too much activity and too many goings-on to fill in all the blanks. Wednesday night we kicked into Thanksgiving gear by baking those pies. I mean, Craig did. In the midst of that I was to chop items for stir fry, and to add any further commotion to our small square apartment kitchen, I had not eaten much of anything for lunch so I was brilliantly starved and shaking from lack of sustenance. Craig had purchased several bottles of wine for the actual day of Thanksgiving but we had decided to open one during stir fry and pie baking anyway. Craig, nerves frayed from worrying that he had too few pecans and too little brown sugar and too shallow crust, offered additionally to help me out by opening our choice bottle for the evening. He began the corkscrew process, distracted, and as he prepared to pull the cork from the neck of the bottle, the device popped out with only half of the cork in it. A few mumbled profanities later, Craig performed various alternative methods of getting stuck cork from a bottle of wine. We finally recognized that cork was inevitably to swim in one of our glasses; I opted for that one because he was being such a sweetheart about everything in the kitchen from his baking all the way to his offers of assistance. Meanwhile, he disappeared from the hub of activity for a few minutes and I turned to place my glass of wine (and cork) on the counter near the stove. Like poetry, as I explained to Craig later, the two cutting boards that were leaning tenuously against the wall began to slide and together they took the wine glass down with them. Wine spilled beautifully across our light colored countertop. I deemed that bottle of wine, The Bottle That Was Not Meant to Be. Anyway, we made it through the remainder of the night relatively unscathed. Thanksgiving at the B's was a pleasure (thanks B's!) We ate really fantastic food and spent time together, the 3 Atlanta couples transplanted from other regions of the country and far from home, and I captured plenty of smiles on camera (nice new camera! It was actually Craig's birthday present but I'm taking the liberty to learn my way around the options...it's fun joining the higher tech society!) and at some point it was noted that AB kept interrupting my stories (which really didn't bother me, truth is I talk too much to begin with!) That must have been contagious because before long, everyone was interrupting me and whoever was not responsible would point it out: "Hey! You interrupted KB!" (insert laughter round the room!) I have insecurity issues on occasion but this did nothing to bruise my tender ego. Anyway, after a day of that and food and wine, the R's headed out and the four B people suited up in MB's spare hockey jerseys to go see the Thrashers. Our seats were really good and it was a high scoring game, too (something AB said about the rules of the game changing, I think?) and all around it was a good time. Friday morning AB made us way better coffee than I ever make and a casserole containing eggs and hash browns and cheese, and Craig and I parted company with them to cruise back to Smyrna (Vinings) to take care of business. It was a long Friday for us. Sorting through boxes we had stashed quietly in the guest closet, wondering why we kept items we hadn't browsed the entire year we've been in Atlanta. Craig made trips to the dumpster up the hill from our place with miscellaneous things. Friday flew by, and for dinner we ordered Uncle Wong's Thai (my favorite Asian fare in the neighborhood) and rented a Glenn Close movie titled Heights and the new release from Rob Zombie (could one possibly rent any two different genres than these? Not likely!) Heights was incredible, far better than reviews led me to believe. I was stunned with Glenn Close and the lead blonde, Elizabeth Banks, acted really well, also. There were several scenes that amazed me at their simplicity and beautiful portrayal of love and life in New York City. I'm also realizing my interest in the movies that show these sullen-faced moments of actors as they ponder something awful. It doesn't matter how many times in a row I watch a film inflicted by that mood, I still admire it. Following that we watched The Devil's Rejects. I think Craig believed I would abhor this film but in actuality, I managed to rather enjoy my first Rob Zombie gore experience. In fact, I have continued to think about it since...not so much fascinated with the absolute bloodshed and sheer distasteful invention of these characters, but appreciative of their horrific choreography set to classic 70's rock and roll as they slaughtered lesser important characters that crossed their paths. The entire movie plays out a demented nightmare that I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to have, but I don't know...there was something about it that struck me, anyway. Saturday morning and into the early part of noon we continued the packing thing. Then we embarked on likely what was the worst public transportation experience either of us has had to date. We were counting on MARTA to get us to Georgia Tech safely and expeditiously. Safely happened, but there was no speed or time efficiency about getting us there. We left the apartment at 2.00 and it was probably 3.45 before we walked up on the tailgate, which, as I mentioned before was to be massive, turned out to be not that massive. Nevertheless, after some grumbling on both our parts, some waiting, some walking and some more walking, we found the tailgate, secured ourselves a beer each, and relaxed a little. Following the tailgate we continued on to Douglasville to spend another evening with the B's and the R's, and this time our other friends D and J showed. It was low key: burgers, beers, that board game that we never played on Thanksgiving which had several of us laughing fairly hard at points. Sort of served as Craig's farewell (I will see everyone one last time in Douglasville this Wednesday for dinner and to borrow a bed to sleep one night). Yesterday I felt sick, very tired, even nauseated by the amount of dust animals being circulated as I continued to paw through boxes. The delight of yesterday is that I encountered several pieces of my writing from the late 90's that I actually didn't think were too awful. Several poems, a sonnet that wasn't too terrible, a short story that almost made me cry (did I write that?) and another short story that I have yet to determine whether or not I wrote. I read it several times, repeated times, and searched very hard for myself in it. It rang in places of me, but I also wondered if it were too sharply honed to be a short story out of my messy mind. Would I have typed a story of a friend's and stapled it into a notebook? Or did I encounter a fleeting moment of clarity in college where my intuition and ambition and imagination met at a tidy place in the middle and actually acted together for once? Likely there is no chance I could resolve whether or not I actually wrote the thing. I could attempt a re-write, call it a variation and be on my way. The above excerpt from Denise Levertov was jotted in a notebook of mine from early college and beneath it I composed my own variation on her theme. The concept of anything contained within another thing (ie. hope in a jar) must have really struck me as a romantic thought because the theme recurred in other places as well. Anyway, I was relieved at the fleeting mental revival of old poetic KB and further motivated that I should begin to better organize my haphazard amateur miscellany. We'll see if that should happen.*This may be the final entry for several days. It depends. Craig leaves tomorrow with his laptop computer and I remain to complete my time at work. I leave Thursday but am believing I will encounter chaos (good stress, positive fear) before the week concludes, too much so to return with details thereof. But my brief hiatus will be redeemed by a longer description of my drive to and arrival in Richmond.