1/31/12

Springy Poeticism Times TWO!

Even though my day started out a bit rough and tumble (see blog post below this one), it wonderfully improved as soon as I visited online and found out that TWO different new online poetry magazines went live today with my poetry inside their creative goodie bags. Yay!

A NEW Certain Circuits with one of my new poems here (click on my blood red hair):

http://certaincircuits.tumblr.com/

A NEW Lingerpost with one of my new poems AND one by PoetJoe H. Gallagher & me here:

http://lingerpost.org/?page_id=69

I'm thrilled I'm still writing and being published (and also publishing others - and on that note, a new Thirteen Myna Birds will be coming soon PLUS another poetic Valentine treat - stay tuned).

Broken Springs

It was a gorgeous springy day today weather-wise, but…

I seemed to be having a broken springs/tainted strings mish mash associated with my brain.

I’ve recently gotten on a friend of mine’s case a few times about too frequently using the word “broken” to describe himself/his brain, but my brain sure felt broken earlier today.

It was a tough morning for me in terms of a number of easy little things being overly difficult. I used to be detail oriented and good at remembering things in advance, but now I’m not good at remembering details – so if anyone expects me to quickly get something done at the last minute (without finding out about it, remembering it, and planning for it in advance), chances are I might have a stressed out little explosion – and unfortunately, they’ll be stuck in the middle of my explosive devises too. Not that those explosive devises will be lashing out at THEM, mind you – but they’ll sure hear me lashing out at myself and calling my brain inept and screwed up and disappointing.

Trying to quickly get something done at the last minute (without advance notice and planning in advance time) stresses my brain into shredded threads that don’t like themselves, don’t appreciate themselves, and focus too much on their weaknesses instead of their strengths.

This morning, I got all stressed out because at the last minute I was attempting to fill out a piece of paperwork that should have been easy, but wasn’t – because I can’t remember my dog’s age, his date or month of birth, what vet appointments/treatments he might need, nor where the heck I put the past paperwork that might offer me such information. I used to be good at all of that stuff (as well as other forms of organization); now I am not. I certainly don’t want my dog to suffer from a too-early demise due to my disabled brain strands.

Then from their I got to thinking about how frequently I seem to lose things ‘cuz I can’t remember where the heck I put them when I was attempting to organize them (from my calculator to my assortment of googly eyes that I wanted to use for making some homemade Valentine cards to much more). Then I got upset (not at HER; at ME) when my little niece stepped into my art room and blurted out that it was the messiest room she’s ever seen – which is probably because I’m frequently having to unpack boxes in order to try to find things AND some boxes I don’t even bother unpacking/organizing into a particular space in the first place, ‘cuz then I’ll soon forget where I put those.

It seems like every time I make a substantial and time-consuming effort to organize my space, I then forget the details of my organization by the next day – and I don’t want to have a messy, unorganized space – but I also don’t want to have a neat, organized space that involves unpacking multiple boxes and searching for things on a frequent basis. Both ways cause me to feel bothered and troubled by my seemingly inept brain.

In case you think I’m exaggerating about my broke strings and mutilated brain waves, consider this. I’ve now been living in my newish space for more than seven months and I still haven’t memorized my address. I have it written down and have to look at that piece of writing every time I need to write it down somewhere else.

I know I need to focus on the positive not the negative, but sometimes (like this morning), I have an episode where it really bothers me that I used to have strong memorization skills and be a fast-moving individual; but now I’m more of a slow-moving, unorganized mess, whose brain sometimes can’t remember easy things yet is frequently popping out all kinds of random things and weird things and big bizarre words.

On the plus side, at least I can use some of those big bizarre words as part of my poetry content – and that’s definitely a pretty awesome plus side, as far as I’m concerned. In fact, in mere minutes, I shall post a positive, poetry-oriented blog entry above this negative little spurt.

1/29/12

Blah

Have felt overly tired all day long and feel upset and dissapointed in myself for not having a very productive day. Gave my dog a bath and I feel as if that's the only thing I really accomplished today. The bottom of my feet are bothering me, which is my own damn falt for having a semi-obsessive compulsive (and big time wasting) event for hours yesterday peeling gross dry skin off them. Feel like I'm looking old and ugly and having another little grey/white hair explosion.

So fucking tired I finally decided to take a little half hour nap circa 7:00-7:30 and then get up, make coffee and dinner, work on stuff. Instead my nap ended up lasting until 8:30 - I still felt just as tired (maybe even more tired) when I forced myself up - and I didn't feel hungry but I can't not eat, so I started cooking some salmon and ended up burning it. I am not a good cook. Blah.

Still feeling overly tired and like giving up for the day and going back to bed, but I guess I'll force feed myself a little more, keep my hands off the bottoms of my feet, and try to work on a few things. Still though, my overly tired and slow spell today (and also maybe PMS starting up) is making me feel like a rather worthless time-wasting loser. I hate feeling unproductive.

1/24/12

small snippet (perception)

Had a lot of trouble sleeping this past week, which means I sometimes popped up and jotted down notes. Here's a small one (coming soon is a longer one I wrote after semi-randomly thinking about Lady Gaga):

I think there are certain things/experiences/people that happen within our lives that we are going to continue to remember for a long time, maybe even forever.

I hope I am one of those people within a few other people's remembrances and I hope the remembrance of me is a good one.

I hope I am not an overly disappointing, overly sad, overly stressful memory.

I hope I am not a blah, bland, neutral, whatever memory.

I hope I am a positive, powerful memory for someone - but one never knows exactly how anyone else perceives her.

Oddly enough, I know how some people perceive my poetry, but not how the non-poetry part of me is perceived.

1/15/12

A few notes related to my Blood Pudding Press

Poems are often smaller than fiction or full-length quantity innards, but tend to be more intense and powerful, in word style oriented ways and emotionally speaking. A smaller, artsy hand-designed size for vaster mentally linked force fields creates an intense fusion, brimming with uniquely unusual powers.

Poems can be interpreted very differently by different readers; which makes the chapbook design process quite interesting. Poetry often relates to emotions, feelings, or other sorts of oddly intrinsic details, and sometimes tends to elicit visual sensations and artistic imagery within my brain.

Since the poets I choose to publish are poets whose work fits my style and sensibilities and whose poetry I feel strongly about, the publishing process tends to work well. If I published poetry that was not my style, that would be a lot tougher and less enjoyable and less passion-inducing and what would be the point of that?

There are so many different styles of poetry and poetry publishers, but I think most poets have poet friends, if not in person, ONLINE poet friends, and since some of your poet friends probably share stylistic similarities with you in terms of the kind of art they like and the kind of content that interests them, you're likely to receive hints and linkage that way.

Print publications can be a bit trickier than online publications in that you can conduct a lot of content oriented advance research of online publications, whereas with print ones, you can probably just see cover photos until you buy a chap or two - and you probably don't want to submit to a source whose style is not yours, both visually and content-wise.

Still though, a small press that would be a good fit for your stylistics has probably published a couple other poets you like and thus you can purchase a few of their chapbooks and/or trust them - or you can just take an interesting semi-risk.

Partake of some Blood Pudding Press offerings here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress

Read more about small press publishing here:

http://voices.yahoo.com/diy-poetry-publishing-power-2698564.html?cat=38

1/11/12

In addition to poetry, a zombie gnome!







In addition to poetry chapbooks, Blood Pudding Press now has a hand-painted zombie gnome available for sale.

Yep that's right, I am in the midst of a little zombie gnome painting spree - and thought it might inspire another poet's writing too, so decided to offer one for sale in my Blood Pudding Press etsy shop.



Above are a few zombie gnome photos to take a peek at - and then if so inclined, you may visit the Blood Pudding Press etsy shop via the link below.




1/8/12

YAY 2012 YAY!

2012 seems to be off to a wonderful start for me.

Of course ever year/month/week has its odd little up & down snippets (& I soon might be temporarily infiltrated with my rather awful PMS mode), but this new year is still pretty darn fantabulous so far.

This past Friday was the second anniversary date of my carotid artery dissection/aneurisms/and stroke – and the first anniversary date of my divorce – and I can hardly believe how quickly/weirdly those two years passed by and how many things changed – and how much I still have trouble with easy little words and more. I think that lots of people might be tired of hearing about that stuff, but maybe that’s an overly negative thought process of mine – and I need to quit dwelling on people who tire of me, when there are other people who don’t.

This new year, I did not feel terribly bothered and upset by January 6, because my first part of 2012 is off to a wonderful start. I had a fun, creative friend to hang out with for New Years Eve night plus the next few days AND I sold oodles of poetry chapbooks. Yay! I sold six in a row at the end of 2011 and then nine so far this month - one to Australia, two to a ModCloth editor (who is going to photograph them and place those photos online next week) and six to a poet guy I’m friends with on fb. Less than one week into January, I had already sold more chaps than I usually sell within several different months, so 2012 is off to a delightful beginning!

I think that my first few days of January spent with a delicious creative interesting creature of delight and my small influx of January chapbook sales (and the related printing & designing) is a fun-filled hint that this January is going to be so much better than my last two Januaries! Also, it is pretty awesome to quickly start regenerating the money I spent on Xmas/Artmas gifts, so that soon I can start thinking about/getting ready to work on creating the NEXT Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook! Plus focus on reading and writing more again!

On a different note - I am planning to paint a couple more zombie gnomes tomorrow. Yay!

On a very different note (and I don’t mean this negatively; it was just an odd thought process I had last night in bed) – in recent months, I semi-often feel badly about starting to look older and I even complain about that, sometimes blurting out something about how I look too middle aged. Well last night I realized that doesn’t make much sense to semi-insult myself that way, since I AM middle-aged. I guess I feel younger than I really am (and thus feel as if I ought to look younger), but the fact of the matter is, I am 39 – and 39 plus 39 equals 78, which is rather old – so I AM middle-aged – so why am I complaining about looking the way I really am as though it’s some icky insult?

Hmmm…