Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Issue of Equal Rights. I guess that's all.

So...let me get this straight. You're a parent. You've worked extra hours to buy bikes, varsity jackets, the best Christmas presents, to pay for summer camp, music lessons, elaborate birthday parties and exotic pets. You've read the same bedtime story 35 times in a row, and when your sweet, sleepless child said "Again", you read it 36 times in spite of your drooping eyes, and the dishes in the sink, homework to check, your own bed calling out to you. You've bandaged and kissed every injury, soothed every anguish and supported every decision, like the wrong friends, the dangerous sports, the pursuit of the arts as a career. How many nights did you stay up late with worry or wonder? How many mornings did you rise early, barely rested, to make a special breakfast or pack a favorite lunch for this very child, this animal of wonder you and your beloved spouse made together?

You're a parent. You've contradicted yourself before, to teach a lesson.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Some of Us Write it Down: The Nicol Kostic Interview

I don’t remember when I first met Nicol Kostic. I saw her occasionally at the Sam ‘n Andy’s reading I hosted in the late nineties, and I liked her poems but got the very wrong impression that she wasn’t interested in talking to a young kid, and she liked to keep to herself. Once I moved into the Collingwood Arts Center, I learned how wrong about her I was. The CAC is a communal living situation where working artists combine residential space with studio space for a modest rent. There was one kitchen for all of us, in the basement, and one restroom per floor, shared by all the tenants. It was a creepy, lovely, inspiring and at times debauched place, but it was home, and it was cool.

Nicol had lived there for a long time, doing her many arts, and one evening, while doing my dinner dishes, she and her husband and I started a conversation about the value of art, of taking chances, believing in your creative goals, and giving precedence to the creative impulse. It was a wonderful hour. It turns out that not only was Nicol interested in talking to a young kid, she was really enthusiastic about all the arts, and willing to share her enthusiasm.

Monday, October 8, 2012

A Poem, September in the Midwest, The Little Creatures of Nature.

It's Sunday afternoon in the Universe, it's September, and lately the days are giving June, my most favorite month, a run for her money. Purple and yellow asters crowd the drainage ditches, along with chicory still flowering, thistles, golden rod, sumac, and heath asters. A lot of people around these parts have let roses go sort of feral in their ditches, or in underbrush near the road, and those leaves and thorns are red and sinister looking against the impossibly green lawns and tall grass growing in fallow fields. God, there are so many flowers I can't name or describe them all. I'm telling you the world outside your door is a quilt, it's a coat of many colors, it's the most magical thing going right now, unless your children happen to be outside playing in it, and then that is the most magical thing going.