VivTown, Population: 1

Before I woke my astoundingly tall sons — how did this happen? — for their first day of school (5th & 8th grade) this morning, I performed my new moon ritual of lighting a candle and drawing a rune. The new moon was actually on Saturday, August 30th: O well, I think it’s ok to be imprecise when it comes to the moon…

When I draw a rune, I take it with me mentally and meditate on it throughout the day Sometimes, I use it as a weapon against despair or a psycho boss. In this case, Berkano speaks to me of continuous growth and fertility; it says propagate, propagate, propagate! It tells me to create and be in a perpetual state of birth-ing. No more biological children for me, so I take it to mean poems, stews, paintings, songs, friendships. I take it to mean: keep on keepin’ on.

So…one of the good things in my life at the moment is the fact that my cubicle is next door to Anna A.’s cubicle on a sort of cul-de-sac at our office. That means we can have lots of over-the-clothesline conversations and Anna can roll her chair on over to mine and say “I hate her” in that deadpan scary way she has when our boss is being particularly narcissistic. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Anna, and luckily I’m not. Here’s an example of how nice Anna A. can be: One day I was having a horrendously bad day and Anna rolled over and let me pick out a My Little Pony sticker to cheer me up. I stuck it to the front of my CPU. The ridiculously festive mane and the optimism in its jaunty little pose do cheer me up. Every day. She also got me hooked on lol cats — another cheerer upper when the pressure’s on.

The other day Anna A. told me she only reads blogs that have entries about her.  So here it is, Anna, a post about you.

Before I hurry off to my cool new job as Web Maven for a health organization, I am happy to see (and say) that Poetry Daily, a poetry anthology site, is still alive and thriving. The Editors, Don Selby & Diane Boller, are dedicated to searching out good contemporary poems and serving them to those of us who require poetic nourishment on a regular basis. They’ve also just announced their new RSS feed — for those who truly want to be served.

Today will mark my first day back to full time 9-5 work after a considerable period of unemployment (8 months). As a single mother and provider for two school-aged children, I’m grateful for the paycheck I’ll be bringing in again and for the opportunity to enjoy some professional success. But, I have to admit that the thought of going back to work full time fills me with some trepidation: how will I manage to do it all? Over the past eight months, I have truly come to appreciate how much unpaid work I perform outside my 9-5 wage-earning job. While being unemployed, the work of running a household and tending to the various needs of my children, occupied a huge chunk of my time. I’m acknowledging to myself that working full time while also managing a household singlehandedly puts me at risk for not being able to perform either job at maximum efficiency! In my last job, my supervisor couldn’t tolerate and punished me for unpredictable fluctuations in my schedule and my sometimes divided attention. That she was insane and scary and evil is another story.

I’m grateful that my new boss raised a child on her own and understands what I’m up against — and what all of us are up against — as we try to make a living and live a life. I’m bracing myself for the grind of the days of a 9-5 wage slave and her hurried (but well-loved) children. I also have every intention to breathe and smile in both the relentless rhythms and the ceasuras of the modern routine.

Wish me luck, everyone, as I enter the workaday world once again!

I’ve been in a delicious state of beginner-ness this past week as I’ve been teaching myself how to juggle. I’ve managed to get to the point where I can juggle 6 tosses in a row. After six tosses something happens: my brain freezes up and the entire operation falls apart. Once or twice I’ve done 8 or 9 tosses in a row and was amazed and exhilerated by the figure 8 pattern that I could see in front of my eyes as I forgot my hands and the hard brain work of left-toss, right-toss, left-toss, right-toss and just moved into the juggling zone — a beautiful Newtonian place where objects and gravity do an arc-shaped dance. Both times that I’ve accomplished 8 or 9 tosses, I’ve been listening to music.

I am fascinated by the fact that when I practice juggling while listening to music I am 10x more successful than when I don’t. Juggling to music somehow helps my brain and body to synch up — or it helps me to stop thinking about what I’m doing and just do it. It’s clear to me that juggling is a “brainy” activity; the left and right hands and both eyes are engaged all at once in an exercise of rhythm and pattern-making. I swear I can feel the growth of all that new grey matter.

Whatever the health benefits — and there are many — of juggling, that’s not the reason I decided I wanted to learn how to juggle. I just wanted to be able to do it — to impress and entertain my kids — to impress myself! Soon, I hope to join all the jugglers of the ages — tossing balls in the air, making patterns, playing for the sake of play.