Wound up going to the Frantic Rabbit reading for the first time in months and had a wonderful time. It’s such a small, high-quality reading (I mean, really — , , , , , , and Heather!) and you just gotta love it.

Plus, I won the Written Right Now contest (I won an American flag), and I had the chance to read two of the three parts of February Triptych. It felt good to be at a poetry reading again after a long absence. And it has been a long absence. Today is March 16, but I wrote the Triptych in mid February, so that’s been a month, and I didn’t read the last time I was at Java Hut for finals night for the Youth Poetry Slam championships. And I didn’t go the weekend of the iWPS happenings (either on duty, or having precious time with … I don’t think I’ve been to a reading since early January.

Here’s the Poem I wrote: Interview with the genius of Betsey Ross

(to be read in a kindly old-woman-y voice)
Nowadays they just print the stars
instead of sewing them on.
The stripes aren’t cut
and matched with each other
white against red
purity with blood.
These twenty stitches here?
These were bleeding Kansas
where the nation fought for
and against slavery, tooth and nail.
Those fifty-four stitches were
Oregon and these thirty million
were the Mexican War, and the
Gasden Purchase for the railroads.
Three years for this running line,
all a single thread of ink in blank pages:
Lewis and Clark crossing a continent
no one would ever see in quite
the same way ever again.
Twenty here for the Sooners in Oklahoma,
and these here for the 1906 earthquake.
This stitch, and this star, for Queen Emma in Hawaii,
and this row of hemming for Chief Seattle,
Chief Joseph, and Sitting Bull.
Metacomet — I mean, King Philip —
he came too early, and I had to leave him off.
These are for Flying Cloud —
Fifty four stitches for fifty-four days,
New York to San Francisco,
a record never equaled before or since,
and a woman’s hands on the sextant.
How about that?!

There’s not a stitch or spot of dye
on this old thing I haven’t put in,
in memory of someone or something
done or spoke or wrote…
and I been sittin’ here all this time,
just stitching and sewing.
Pity it’s getting so old —
some of the poor thing’s getting faded,
and parts are starting to unravel.

Writing for White Wolf is going well. My 25,000 words are due on Friday in first draft; I have 16,500 words done. This means I have to write at least 2800 words or so today, Thursday and Friday — plus I need to alter some of what I’ve already written for the sake of continuity and restructuring it based on conversations with former editors, present editors, and co-writers.

My single greatest difficulty in this sort of project is wrapping up all the loose ends. In the case of this particular project, I was still uncovering major plot points and details of the setting yesterday. I was looking something up in a book, and discovered that my sophisticated, civilized, urbane folks were banging the rocks together only a very short while ago. It changed my perspective on the society from a mature, 300-500-year-old culture to a much younger and vibrant nation — but with resulting gaps between rich and poor, in addition to the environmental problems I’d already discussed. I’m tempted to turn all of Friday into a rewriting day, and try to get the bulk of the text finished, today and tomorrow. I may also put off rewriting until Monday or Tuesday next week, since I’ve already plugged some of these changes to my current editor, and the proposed changes suit him just fine… I just have to remember to include some notes in the existing text to that effect.

Thanks to and , I took this quiz. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I have neither images of Herne nor images of Hera on my altar, and I wear neither an ankh nor a pentacle. I certainly borrow from a variety of cultures, including Episcopalianism and Congregationalism — but none of the choices in this table really hits closely on what I actually believe. There isn’t, after all, a place in this table for a Western Orthodox Andruvian.

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