In the last 12 days…
My coffee pot died. I mourned for two days. Gnashed teeth and cried in the night. I was on the verge of covering myself with Biblically accurate ashes befitting the tragic loss when saintly friends stepped in to loan me their old Mr. Coffee back up machine, and all was well in my universe once again.
A duck named Mad Momma hatched 12 babies on the Little Bryant Homestead where my camper, my cat, and I are staying. She paraded them right past my camper porch while I was sitting outside. Oh man, that was a sight.
I watched a dozen days blur into the detritus of life.
I found the muse in Fort Wayne, IN
My twin children, Spenser and Iris, celebrated their 20th birthday. Spenser and I attended an all day metal fest and Iris and their partner Moe, and my youngest Finn, had a picnic.
Photo by PhotoDave Photography of me and Spenser at the show
Birthday twin Iris, me, Finn and Moe
I submitted poems to Rattle magazine’s annual poetry contest, thanks to the generosity of a couple of supporters for pitching in to cover the submission fees.
I worked on pre roll poems. These are much more time consuming than they look, but they’re fun, and I love doing something neat and fun with my poems, and doing it just because it’s neat and fun and not for money. The first of these will be going out to those that donated for my Rattle submission fees.
I worked on my camper. Invaded a private beach on a private lake with friends. Worked a lot at the cannabis dispensary. Had some great days. Had some good ones. Had some that were just a head nod as I walked past them down the hallways of life.
Next week, on Friday the 26th, I head to Louisville to attend and participate in the last of legendary poet Ron Whitehead’s Insomniacathons. It’s Friday - Sunday the 26th - 28th and I hope to see you there. One update for this event. My reading time has been moved up to Saturday at 5pm.
Did you get your tickets yet for Ben Stalets Backyard Birthday Bash? Saturday Aug 10th in Toledo, from Over Yonder concerts, it’s Ben Stalets and his full band, with special guest Don “Doop” Duprie, the legendary Detroit area songwriter, and me hosting and reading a few poems. Tickets are $15. It’ll be an event to remember.
I’m starting the planning now for my next big tour. I’m planning to take the month of November to drive to Los Angeles and back, for a big reading I’ve been invited to be in on November 10th, and I plan to schedule poetry and book readings all along the route there and back, and hopefully spend some time camping near the beach, and at Joshua Tree National Park.
There are other events in the works between now and November, but they’ll be kept sparse while I work to plan that big tour, and work on getting some of these big book projects done and to the editors. My first full length poetry manuscript, and a Jeep/UAW memoir are both stirring on the stove, simmering and waiting for their final ingredients, but for time and space they’d be done already. But you know how it goes. You fit the writing in between the cracks of life. In between the job, the family, the chores, the motions of social life. You work in jagged and found fits of time, until you create enough patchwork to sew the damn thing together and step back and see what you got. So it goes.
I know this wasn’t posted on Monday. I know it’s Saturday. But I’m not good at deadlines, rules, supposed to’s, and have to’s.
Photo by PhotoDave Photography of me at the metal fest.
The work continues. Buy books. Read books. Gift books. And fight the patriarchy.
Love,
Dan
Maybe you are ahead of schedule, not behind