Poetry Corner Monday

Sometimes I'm convinced that Mondays would be wretched days no matter where they fell in the week. There's just something about seeing that awful word slumbering peacefully in its little calendar box that fills me with rage.

This week I need peace. I need deep breaths and a mind swept clean of shrapnel. 

I need Maya Angelou.

Here is an excerpt from On the Pulse of Morning

Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever 
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day,
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.


Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up, and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country,
And say simply,
Very simply,
With hope,
Good morning.

So That Happened

Here's a scene that just went down two minutes ago: I was upstairs at my computer and I heard my mom say to my dad, "Except for Michael's Netflix movie, Livvy got all the mail." I never get mail, so I bounded down the stairs to where my mom had made a little pile of three envelopes on the bottom step. "It's nothing exciting," she said. She may as well have clawed out my heart and squeezed it through a garlic press. 

I looked at the stack. Wells Fargo, Chase, NPR. NPR? I raced upstairs and tore open the envelope. A few weeks ago I donated some money to the pledge drive and the letter was just a thank-you. I was about to toss it in the recycling when I felt a thicker, glossy page inside the folded paper. A sticker! My very own NPR sticker! "Mom!" I shouted, and darted down the stairs. (I swear one of these days I'm going to fall to my death.) "Mom! Guess what I got! Guess what I got!" It would not be an overstatement to say that I was more excited that moment than a small child on Christmas morning. "What?" my mom asked, presumably expecting something that a normal person would find exciting, like winning the lotto. "An NPR sticker!" I exclaimed, and held it up in front of my face so she could admire it and congratulate me on obtaining such a fine item.

She smiled. In a brief moment of self-realization, my face fell. "Oh my god." I said, slumping against the door frame. "I'm a freak." Usually this would be the time when my mom would say something comforting like, "But it's good to be informed of the news!" or "No you're not, honey. You're wonderful." This time she gave me one look, walked past me into the living room, and said to my dad, "Our daughter is a freak."

Stupid NPR sticker.

(But where should I put it?!)

UPDATE: I was just blow-drying my hair (which I never do because without a diffuser it turns all my curls into frizz) and I noticed a diffuser in the drawer. "Mom!" I shouted, "how come you never told me you had a diffuser?" "Why would I?" she responded from the kitchen. "I don't even know what a diffuser is!" I explained to her that it means I can blow-dry my hair instead of walking to the bus in sub-freezing temperatures with wet hair. She and I have decided to create a scale of my excitement, with NPR sticker at Maximum Excitement, and Diffuser just a half-step below it.

Poetry Corner Whenever I Feel Like It

It's not Monday (obviously), but Monday was an atrocious day and not even a poem was going to save it. In fact, whatever poem I chose would probably be marred for all eternity because of its association with Monday. So here it is, two days late. It's a Billy Collins poem because my interview with him was the best part of that wretched day.

The Drive

There were four of us in the car
early that summer evening,
short-hopping from one place to another,
thrown together by a light toss of circumstance.

I was in the backseat
directly behind the driver who was talking
about one thing and another
while his wife smiled quietly at the windshield.

I was happy to be paying attention
to the rows of tall hedges
and the gravel driveways we were passing
and then the yellow signs on the roadside stores.

It was only when he began to belittle you
that I found myself shifting my focus
to the back of his head,
a head that was large and expansively bald.

As he continued talking
and the car continued along the highway,
I began to divide his head into sections
by means of dotted lines,

the kind you see on the diagram of a steer.
Only here, I was not interested in short loin,
rump, shank, or sirloin tip,
but curious about what region of his cranium

housed the hard nugget of his malice.
Tom, my friend, you would have enjoyed the sight--
the car turning this way and that,
the sunlight low in the trees,

the man going on about your many failings,
and me sitting quietly behind him
wearing my white butcher's apron
and my small, regulation butcher's hat. 

Olivia and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Warning: Contents Unabridged)

For the sake of my sanity, I'm willing to overlook the awfulness that was my Monday. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the day partially redeemed itself, if for no other reason than how cute Taffy looked falling asleep on my legs last night. (And, of course, an all-new House.)

But today. 

I'll give you just enough back story so you can follow along: I'm working on a magazine article right now that requires me to contact four local semi-celebrities to find out various items of information about their travel preferences. The article was due today. As of last night I was only halfway done because two of my four contacts had yet to get back to me. I emailed my editor, near tears, apologizing profusely for letting him down and for fact that I wouldn't have the piece done on time. I didn't hear back from him (or anyone else, for that matter) before I went to sleep, so I spent a restless night stressing with a pounding headache. (I don't eat when I'm stressed, so my body was not pleased that I'd been starving it).

Ice. Deadly ice.

This morning I woke up super early and left the house to catch the bus that comes before the one I usually catch so I could make it to work on time even if traffic was bad. We had our first real snow of the season yesterday and the roads are horrendous. When I woke up it was 18 degrees (that's -8 degrees C if any of my Aussies are reading) and the streets were glistening with ice. So I slid my way up the hill to the bus stop, caught the bus (which was surprisingly running on time) and got into the city with no problems. I arrived at work at 8:30--when they open, and an hour before I usually get there--and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. I got off and noticed immediately that the office door was closed. Confused, I tried the handle. Locked.

Even Taff was cold! My poor little baby.

I rode the elevator back down to the lobby and called my dad. "Could you check my work email?" I asked him, hoping that there was something from the managing editor explaining why no one was in the office. "Here's one," my dad said, and proceeded to read it. It was not from the managing editor, who is in charge of the interns, but from the editor of the article I'm writing who was responding to the frantic email I'd sent him the night before. At the end he mentioned that "not very many people" were going in to the office today, so I should work from home. He'd sent it at 8:31 this morning--one minute after I got to the office. Because I live out in the boonies, getting to work on a normal day requires me to leave my house at 7:55. This morning I left at 7:25. Even if I'd taken my usual bus I wouldn't have gotten the email.

Okay. Fine. I left the building and walked up the treacherous ice block that was University Avenue. The 522 bus was supposed to come at 9:06 and it was then 8:56. No problem, I can wait. And wait. And wait. It pulled up at 9:30 and got easily out of the city. Rather than cross the 520 floating bridge, the 522 takes Lake City Way which, for those unfamiliar with the Seattle area, runs north of the lake. So we were on the freeway just inching along when we came to the LCW exit...which was blocked off by a snow plow and three cop cars. Behind the automobile barricade was a pile-up of at least ten cars trapped in the snow. 

At this time, my fellow passengers decided it was necessary to shout out alternate routes to the bus driver who clearly didn't have any idea what the hell she was doing. We took the next exit and crept down a hill where we passed a Metro bus idling in a snowbank. One passenger shouted, "You should get yourself a 522!" and another exclaimed, "Off-roading with the 5-2-2!" He liked his comment so much that he repeated it several moments later. (And yes, I wrote all of this in my notebook. What can I say? It's the writer's curse.) We eventually wound up on Aurora, then 125th, then Lake City Way, and it was smooth sailing until we hit Bothell. 

For some reason, our bus driver found it absolutely necessary to stop right outside this cafe called the Lyon's Den, and as she disembarked the vehicle she shouted, "I'll be right back! I need to do something...and it's not coffee!" (at which point I was thinking, if you need to use the bathroom, just say so). She got back on and tried to pull back into the street--tried being the operative word. The more she hit the gas, the more the back of the bus swung out into the road. It was like a V collapsing in on itself. 

"Shit!" the driver screamed. "Shit shit shit!" The guy sitting behind me got up immediately and headed to the front. "I can take it from here," he said--as if he meant to drive--and climbed down onto the sidewalk. About ten minutes passed full of quiet passenger murmurings of "What's going on?" (I think it's pretty clear, guys) and "Aw man! This is just perfect" (is it? Really?). My absolute favorite moment of the day--and maybe one of my top twenty favorite moments of my life--was when this guy who had been sleeping jerked his head up and said aloud, "We stopped!" Astute observation, sir. He then proceeded to look exceedingly confused, and eventually meandered up the aisle and off the bus, looking very much like he was staggering out of a bar in a drunken stupor.

Cayenne is a snow badass.

I followed not long after, when I realized that I could conceivably be sitting in that bus until spring came. It took me an hour to walk home, slogging through two inches of snow in my thin, totally non-snow-proof navy blue Keds. By the time I got home, there was white everywhere and I was convinced I'd have to amputate my toes--if I even still had toes. I went immediately to my mom's studio where her sympathy almost made up for the awful events preceding it. "Oh honey!" she exclaimed, "Let's get you inside! I banked up the fire! Do you want some hot chocolate? I bought marshmallows! Oh, you poor thing! Are you just frozen?" We walked inside the house at 11:30, almost three hours after I left the office. On a normal day, the commute is 45 minutes. 

In case you missed the memo, it's cold.

But that's not the end. Oh no. This, my friends, is the story that keeps on giving. I checked my email practically immediately after walking inside. I had one from the web editor saying "I hope you all got the email from [the managing editor] telling you not to come in today." Wow. Thanks. And while I appreciated the email from the editor of my article telling me not to stress about the unreachable contacts, he said I should aim for getting the article to him by tomorrow. Guess what. No one's in their office today. (There's kind of a lot of snow.) Which means no one is getting back to me today. Which means no article tomorrow. 

It's 2:10pm and I still can't feel my toes. 

Addendum: You can call us Pacific Northwesterners a lot of things, but "snow folk" is not among them. When my dad and I were driving into Seattle yesterday--this was before there was any snow accumulation on the ground at all--we passed two plows headed into Woodinville on the freeway. One flake was enough to assemble the big guns, and evidently two inches of white is all it takes to cripple the city. The Apocalypse isn't coming, friends. It's already here.

So That Happened

Every time I ride into Seattle in the morning with my dad, the radio and I wage war. There's never anything on. Of course it doesn't help that I listen to three stations and one of them is NPR. I turn on one station that's playing a commercial, flip it to the other that's playing a song I can't stand, and then flip it off. About 17 seconds later I repeat the process. This makes for a very aggravated Olivia on her way to work. So this morning, following my dad's advice, I brought a couple CDs--mixes I'd made a while ago to play while I cook.

I popped in a CD and the first song was "Mr. Pitiful" by Matt Costa. I was not feeling pitiful this morning (although I could have fooled anyone), so I skipped it. The next song was the Glee version of "Fire" which I was also not thrilled about at that precise moment. I skipped that one as well. When I'd skipped seven songs in a row and was halfway through the CD, I got annoyed and put in a different one. That didn't go well either. "These CDs suck!" I said, and shoved them into my bag. My dad looked confused. "Didn't you make them?"

Mom: I'm lobbying hard for a ceiling fan.
Dad: Lobby quietly.
Mom: Why?
Dad: So I don't hear you.


I've mentioned here before that the office in which I work is a strange, silent, oftentimes cavelike place. It's like walking into a black hole. Because no one ever talks, I have frequent email conversations with a friend who sits literally two steps away. Yesterday we heard a woman laughing in an office near our cubicles. Immediately after--and I'm talking before she'd even finished laughing--the following email exchange took place:
H: Who's cackling?
O: I don't know, but I can't concentrate with all this noise.
H: We should report her to security. I feel this is a major breach of office rules.
O: And while we're at it, we should complain about these obnoxious lights. I can't work when I can see my own hands on the keyboard.

Sure enough, the next morning the lights were out. The office is truly a magical world.


I was reading an article in the paper this weekend about a woman who was hand-searched in the airport after the underwire of her bra set off the metal detector. I was enraged. I shouted, "Oh my god! I'm never flying again!" My dad's response: "You're going to make a great travel writer."

Things My Cat Has and Has Not Inherited from Me

 Has NOT:

1. Her aversion to snuggling.
2. The need to sleep under things (i.e. the purse dangling from my chair; the clothes rack when it has clothes on it).
3. Long nails.
4. Dependency issues.
5. Her nightly ritual of crying at the top of her tiny feline lungs as soon as everyone goes to sleep.
6. Dandruff.


HAS:

1. Fondness for high-fiving (but she never got the memo that stabbing my palm isn't part of the game).
2. Love of poetry.
3. Laziness.
4. Attraction to piles of blankets.
5. Moodiness.
6. Lots of hair.
7. The awful habit of biting her nails.


Considering that the ways she resembles me outnumber (by one) the ways she doesn't, I am forced to conclude that she is, in fact, my cat.

Isn't she just the preciousest? Who wouldn't love this face?

Poetry Corner Monday

This week's poem is brought to you by The Writer's Almanac. And the letter Y.

The Day I Made My Father Proud
by Michael Moran 

The doorbell jarred me
toward consciousness
on a sultry Sunday morning
when I was nineteen,
a college sophomore.
I had slept where the bourbon
laid me—on an old couch
reclaimed from a curb.
The party had sped by,
left me road-kill,
limp and snoring,
so my roommates said,
and now I stumbled
to the buzzing door,
remembering what I had never
completely forgotten—
my family is coming.

Dad at the door.
I mumble, "I overslept,"
as he surveys the wreckage
of these tired rooms:
lip-sticked cigarette butts,
crushed aluminum cans,
glasses floating sliced limes,
broken brown bottles,
a sticky wooden floor under
smoked-and-perfumed air.
He turns slowly to me
and winks! "We can't
let your mother see this,"
as if we'd planned the party
together, drank from the same
Yellowstone bottle all night.

We spring to action,
sponging spills, opening windows,
gathering garbage. He spins
through the rooms
with the grace of a dancer—
a miniature Falstaff—
humming old barroom songs
from his Navy days,
chuckling softly, his eyes
gleaming as he hides
the half-emptied Jim Beam.
By the time my mother
has herded all my siblings
up the stairs to the apartment,
we have salvaged it to decency.

You see, he thought I was
too serious, worried that I
read too many books, never
got into real trouble.
I remember the way
he stared at me
one Halloween evening
when I told him
I was staying home
to read King Lear.
His cold brown eyes
were sad, disgusted,
the eyes of an Elizabethan
reveler who had just heard
that the Puritans
had closed the theaters.

But that morning
I made him proud,
couldn't have done better,
unless, perhaps,
one of the girls
had slept over
and answered the door,
wearing nothing
but my faded
red flannel shirt,
top buttons
undone.