Harp of God, Kinky Twist/Tyzillions, Blue Heart

Oh yeah, that list....

So: way too many posts ago, but also not enough posts ago because I should have written way more posts by now, I ended with the optimistic, "Tomorrow, a list!" That is, a list of ways to push past old regrets so that I can be a better person for myself and those around me in a creative, productive present. I think I've been avoiding the task because I'd subconsciously decided the list had to be the end-all and be-all Solution For Everything Ultimate Self-Improvement List. Which clearly has gotten me nowhere. So, finally, I am writing a quick, partial, late-night version of The List, so that I can know I have done it and moved forward. And maybe it will actually do some good.

OK. Here goes.

1) Keep running. Literally, that is, not metaphorically. I've been running regularly again for the first time in years and my body is grateful for it. My jeans even fit a tiny bit better. I'm a better person when I run, less edgy, less unecessarily intense, more clear-headed. Plus I simply feel better the way exercising people do. So. Yeah. Keep running.

2) Keep writing. Every day. This blog plus other ways. Keep the cobwebs out of my head, no blame anything or anyone around me for my not writing, and most importantly, of course, duh, maybe produce something worth reading and/or publishing. Which can only be a good thing. 

3) Keep working on the play or screenplay project I started a few weeks ago when a bizarre fever brought me a story idea in the shower. Even if it evolves slowly, which it most likely will as all my projects do, work on it and allow it to be worthwhile. 

4) Keep getting rid of stuff. And the stuff I do have, take better care of.

5) Apply to a bunch of writing colonies this year with project #3, get accepted to one, and go.

6) Write in a genre I've never written in before. Fiction, most likely. Let #3 be fiction if it needs to be. Try it that way.

7) Volunteer for something I really really care about. Allow it to matter.

8) Write pieces about Detroit, find ways to publish them. 

9) Write at least a poem a week. I miss poems.

10) Map out writing projects I want to complete in the next 10 years. (Another list).

11) Cook more from scratch, enjoy it as a creative process.

12) Grow things.

13) Speak my mind more easily, simply. In an open non-defensive way.

14) Find more ways to have true bonding time with my partner. Even if it's just finding fun/collaborative ways to do housework, organize the living space, etc. But also, outdoor things, short trips for no reason other than the pleasure of the trip. Things like that.

15) Get to LA to visit my friends, finally, and also to NYC at least once.

16) Plan trip to Scotland/England w/my mom.

17) Read more news about hard things I don't necessarily want to look at but know I need to be aware of.

18) Take the dog to dog parks!

19) Allow my boldness to flourish. In a non-foolish way.

 20) Always seek and pursue the greatest number and greatest quality of options for positive change. The best ways to be of use in the world.

OK, thank you for indulging me. It'll help as I move forward. The next post will be more about things happening around me, less about things happening inside me. But I needed this right now. So. Thank you, dear reader, or possibly readers? Thank you.

haiku

consequential

october presses

january; march pushes 

may to a full stop.

Stuck.

Wish I had brainspace for an entry tonight. Wish i'd had an entry, period, in the past 6 days.

Not quite all here right now, at least not in the writing sense. 

I hate complaints, victim trips, negativity; my aversion to excuses runs deeper.  So I'll quit wasting words on this. I'll leave it, watch Star Trek, do the dishes, go to bed. Tomorrow: another chance to write.  

Morning in a French Orbit

Dark coffee in the rough clay rooster mug, my dad's old paisley bathrobe, a whole pink grapefruit in an orange bowl, strawberry cream yogurt, sun. 

The light here is gentle and direct.

It's my first morning alone in Detroit. (Or was, when I began this entry.) Morning alone is a test of a place, of the homeness of it, I think. Detroit, oddly, seems to be getting an A. I feel peace here I never felt in the mountains, comfort looking out on rooftops that I never felt gazing at Appalachian treetops. A feel for the city that makes me want to wander, find people, know who they are. 

Two psychics - vastly different people living in vastly different places with vastly different approaches to their work -- have remarked, unprompted, that Detroit feels like home to me.  They can't explain it. I can't either, exactly, but I agree. I feel guilty for it, almost, or even embarrassed - but I feel it.

I feel at home in France, too, and in French Canada, and speaking French. Maybe that explains it. Those who familiar with the history of New France can skip the next couple of paragraphs, but for those of us who are unversed, here's a quick glimpse of the motor city origins, grace à nos amis at wikipedia:

Detroit was named by French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a controversial adventurer, trader, and “visionary” who (secretly) shipped off from Paris to escape punishment for unknown crimes, arriving in Canada in 1683 at age 25. After changing his name from Antoine Laumet to sieur Antoine de Lamothe-Cadillac to claim nobility and protect his identity, he founded and named Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit in 1701. Détroit, literally translated as "strait," is short for “le détroit du lac Érie,”  the narrow passage that links Lake Erie and Huron, now known as the Detroit River. 

Then man credited for noticing the "ideal spot for a settlement" on the North bank of the strait is Father Hennepin, a member of the Franciscan Recollect order (Les Récollets, credited with brewing the first beer in New France in 1620). One of the four missionaries sent by the Récollets to New France in 1675 at the request of Louis XIV, Hennepin sailed with La Salle on the great lakes and later described the vast territories of the new continent in three books that were largely debunked by later historians. Hennepin has been immortalized in place names all over North America, and in "The Hennepin Avenue Bridge," the final track on the 2006 album 13 by Brian Setzer. (Did I mention I was using wikipedia?)

Back to Detroit, where the British lopped off the accent aigu after gaining control during the French and Indian War (1760). Ottowa leader Chief Pontiac laid siege to the Fort of Detroit in Pontiac's Rebellion three years later, but was as unsuccessful as his namesake, the auto line that gave birth to such classics as the Star Chief, the Bonneville, and the GTO, but was recently deleted from GM's repertoire like an outdated accent mark.

The British kept control of the city until it passed to the US in 1796 as part of the Jay Treaty. This treaty, which also laid the groundwork for a decade of largely peaceful trade between the US and British-controlled Canada, was motivated, like so many diplomatic agreements, by fear of a political rival. In 1791, the first coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars had thrown France into chaos while the rest of Europe watched, unnerved and unsure of how best to exploit the situation – or at the very least how to protect their interests from its potentially destructive reach. Britain found one solution in the Jay Treaty, which, as wikipedia describes it, was formed to “improve relations with the US to keep the US from falling into the French orbit”.

Centuries later, I, an  American of somewhat British descent, seem to have yielded to the very danger the Jay Treaty was designed to prevent. Ever since tasting the delight of the word “hippopotame” in my mouth in fourth grade, I have been falling into a French orbit, and that orbit has, oddly, led me to Detroit. Where I feel at home. It could be, as they say on the West Coast, a "past life thing"...maybe I landed to New France 3 centuries ago and followed the ballsy Cadillac to that auspicious spot on the North shore of the strait. Previous incarnations aside, there is a trace, however faint, of Frenchness in the air...and maybe that's enough for me.

On a less personal (and quite possibly more interesting) note: it seems fitting that, for more than a century, the success and failure of this city - a place "discovered" by an ambitious missionary who wrote fake descriptions of the glorious new continent, and settled by a law-dodging adventurer who invented a fictional identity for himself (only to serve 5 years in the Bastille when he returned to France decades later and reverted to his birth name in order to claim his inheritance) - has been inextricably bound with the success and failure of an industry built on the American art of self-reinvention. 

But that's the subject of another blog, n'est-ce pas?

Till then...