My wife scored a 96% on her most recent medical school exam!
YAY!
To celebrate, she’s taking a neurology exam tomorrow!
YAY!
I love my wife.
My dear, dear wife ordered the 8-minute series. We’ve got abs, buns, legs and arms… She says that when she and Amir were roomies, at least one of them would think to do the workout, and the other couldn’t really say, “No, I don’t have 8 minutes to spare.” So hoping for more of the same out of me, well, let’s just say we’re proud owners.
We’ve been doing it for a little while–like 4 times. My abs look 32 minutes better.
That’s not the point, though.
The point is that my sister is extremely fit and competitive. So for her, of course, 8-minutes weren’t enough. We started with 8-minute abs. Then, done with that she said, let’s do legs. I said, no. She said, c’mon it’s only 8-minutes… and I have to say, she had me there. So we did another 8-minutes. My 8-minute workout became a 16-minute workout.
Of course, that wasn’t enough for my maniacal sister. She had to up it again. Let’s do buns! No. C’mon it’s only 8-minutes. Fine.
16- becomes 24-.
Fortunately we don’t have hand weights, otherwise my 8- would have become 32- and that would be too much working out for me. I have to ease into things…
I’m going to go lie down now.
Actually, I have another post to write, and then I’m going to lie down.
Began: 7:24 p.m.
It’s ridiculous how time just slips…
For me, writing has got to be a habit I grow into. The only way I’m going to do that is by writing–by forcing myself to write.
*!*
And just when you start writing, your wife finishes making your quiche dinner. So please excuse me for a minute.
*!*
Okay, I’m back. Didn’t seem like a long time, did it? It was. We take time with our dinners. It’s good together time–particular when Sarah’s got a test week. Like this week is. A test week.
I have a lot to catch y’all up on, but I’m only allowed to write for another 20 minutes (when you’re done reading this, you’ll feel bad for me
*!*
SON OF A-! See, then my friend calls and interrupts me again! Reckish-freckin!
*!*
’cause I don’t really get much writing done in 20 minutes… )
Now I don’t even remember what I was going to write about.
Now I don’t even feel like writing.
Um….
hm.
Oh! Here’s something. Two weeks ago Sarah and I added a little to our Church of Walking. We’ve redubbed our Sunday mornings “Self Preservation Sundays” at which time we attend the Church of Self Preservation.
We are still going on our walks, which are the first part of Self Preservation Sundays. Two weeks ago we drove around Omaha for about 1/2 an hour before we found a place worth walking. The first “park” was a scary, deserted Marina in the shadow of the airport. The second place we tried out turned out not to have any place to walk–it was a parking lot which overlooked the Missouri River with a memorial for York, William Clark’s manservant. William Clark of Lewis and Clark. It was a nice memorial, but didn’t offer much of an opportunity for us to walk.
We eventually found a place (Independence Park?) near the Old Market. It was peaceful and pretty and we had fun harassing the ducks, but it was a path around one of those man-made ponds with office buildings off by one corner of the pond. We had a fun time watching the geese fly and fight and float along.
Anyway: Self Preservation Sundays. In addition to our walk, we’ve mandated art-only time. Sarah was an art major at Cal (which I think I’ve mentioned before), and besides that, enjoys craft-making. With medical school requiring such a huge amount of time, attention and energy, she wasn’t able to nurture her artistic side. So we decided that on Sundays, after our walk we’d have a little breakfast (or brunch if I have my way) and then set aside 3-4 hours for arts and crafts.
I feel like much of the web design and programming I do is arts and craftsy–it’s not tangible, but some of the things I’m working on I look at more as hobbies than computer work. Still, one of the rules of Self Preservation Sundays is that I’m not allowed to sit down at the computer. I’d say it’s a fair request.
I was travelling last week, but the week before, on our first Self Preservation Sunday, Sarah got out her beads and we made a super-long bracelet-necklace beaded-thing together. We didn’t spend the entire four hours doing it–mostly because we’d spent a good six hours the day before “restoring” some old chairs we got at a thrift store.
Sarah’s a very talented painter, and selfishly, I want her to continue painting. So, even though we can spend the time doing what we want, I really hope she decides to paint more. One of the things she’s thinking about doing is hanging blank canvases on the walls of our apartment, and slowly painting them. My wife is a bad-ass. She’s got this idea to paint copies of retro-bollywood posters. Artists!
I’ll probably spend the time writing. Maybe I’ll write something for the poetry slams so I can get a little writing and a little performance on. I miss the stage. Mostly I want to do it because writing is something which I’ve never been very good at; I spend some time regularly nurturing it, I think it’s something I can improve on.
Heh. We’ve always got our screenplay that we’re writing to work on. Or Where is Jesus outlines!
It’s funny. You’d think that being married would encourage me to lose a little focus on myself ’cause I’d have another person in my everyday life. But since I’ve been married I’ve been able to take more time to take care of and nurture myself. We’ve got some good balance going on ’round here.
Life budgeting… that’s what it is.
Finished: 10:18 p.m.
In my previous post I promised a poem from the slam we went to… and here it is:
The Baby That Ate Cincinnati
by Matt Mason
--Dedicated to those others who on telling people
you're expecting your first child find they don't
say "Congratulations," they first tell you how you're
never leaving the house again ever.
Way they say it,
they say
baby
like a storm on the way,
they say baby
like that's the cue for the thunderclap
to interrupt the wolves' long howls,
they say I got three
and they're the best
ever happen to me
as they say
baby
same as you'd say "run"
they shout
baby
like there are flames lickin' at window frames
tell us
how their lives
didn't just change,
oh no,
as
they
say
baby
like a hyena inside there
comin' out fangs a-blazin',
they say
baby
like it's standing
right
behind us
like it's a tornado on the highway,
but ain't
it
a marvel,
way they talk,
give that patronizing nod
when we
claim we still goin' to poetry readings,
we still goin' to see movies,
we still goin'
to phone our unwed friends
as they say
baby
like a bomb in the air,
they say
baby
like just waitin' in the shelter now
with AM radio and a can of pork n' beans
you're so lucky,
they weep,
sincerely
as I sit on the bed,
knees held precious,
watching my wife's belly,
larger every day,
wonderin'
what's in there.
We gonna need a priest, a gun,
silver bullets, wire cutters, 16 gallons a hydrochloric acid,
Red Cross, National Guard, seven million dollars
in non-sequential unmarked bills
because all these warnings giftwrapped with blessings
when I know
ain't gonna be the same around here;
but
baby,
when we say "baby,"
let's say it
like "bread,"
like "honey,"
like "beautiful,"
like "dear,"
like it's true.
In performance, as you can imagine, each “baby” is uttered with a different tone and sentiment. When reading it, though you can make up your own!
In our brief encounter with Omaha slam poetry, it seems as if Matt is the leader of the scene. He’s good, though, so it’s fine with me–I hope he continues to nurture the Omaha arts scene.
He’s also a very nice guy. Maybe we’ll make him our friend.
That’s all.
UPDATE: Stupid wordpress, stupid fonts, stupid magicquotes, stupid slashes…
So that previous post about poetry I had actually started last week, but just finished up yesterday. In the meantime, however, I had some more poetry experiences which I’d be amiss not to mention considering my last post.
Omaha has a pretty good slam poetry team. 10th in the nation last year, I believe. Not so bad for backwater, artless, whitewashed, ignorant town like Omaha, eh? Now before you get out the pitchforks, that’s not how I feel about Omaha at all. I spend most of my time working from home, but when I do get out, I’m regularly surprised by what Omaha has to offer. The arts scene actually isn’t bad.
I think most places you go you can find “good” art (whatever “good” means). The differnece between small cities like Omaha and a city like San Francisco is that the number of artists is fewer, so there’s less of a chance of you finding it–and (and this is the more important component) less of a chance of finding something which speaks to you. I was thinking about it though, and I wonder if artisitic expression is more “free” in places like this because the competition isn’t as steep and your work isn’t considered as much of a product… hmmm…
Anyway.
This past weekend we went to the slam poetry finals for the team to represent Omaha in the national competition in New Mexico this year. Sarah and I had gone to a poetry slam put on by the same group a few months ago, and it was fun to see some of the same poets now competing for team spots. There were 8(?) poets to start the night, and it gets whittled down to 5 — 3 team members, and a first and second alternate.
Before the slams, there’s always an open-mic — a chance for poets to try out new pieces, experiment with slam poetry, or get up and read something they like. The open-mic this time was really great.
One of the poets was a young kid (late middle school, early high school maybe?) who wrote a poem about his friend’s family. It turned out to be a great piece couched in Dante’s Inferno. He was young and nervous, so his presentation wasn’t outstanding–but he’s got the material, the energy and courage. I hope he finds a supportive community ’cause it’d be a shame for his art to not be nurtured.
So much of what I learned in acting applies to slam poetry. For this kid, he needs to learn to complete his thoughts, control the tempo, and make sure he’s saying what he’s saying. I hope to see him again.
Another open-mic poet was a man, I believe in his late-eighties, early-nineties, who read a rhyming-couplet poem he wrote about procrastination. His daughter had enlarged the poem, such that each line contained one or two short words, and the poem was probably 15 to 16 pages long. Even then, on a couple of occasions he couldn’t read the writing, but bravely soldiered on–making jokes at his own expense, and inspiring the audience.
There’s nothing like a man reaching the end of his life, still extolling the virtues of procrastination–inspiring, indeed!
On a related note, I was surprised by the number of poets who “went up” (as we say in the theat-ah, as in “in the middle of the scene, I went up.” Meaning, I forgot my lines.) while performing their pieces. On the other hand, they probably aren’t afforded the luxury actors are in terms of rehearsal time; and competing for a shot at the national team certainly can’t be a relaxing endeavor.
The last open-mic poet I remember most strongly was… my wife. I can’t believe her sometimes. She signed up for the open-mic when no one was looking (we were there with her mom who was visiting from out of town, and some old family friends of Sarah and her mom (and now mine!)). So when they called out her name, she walked up to the great surprise of her friends and family, and opened with “I’d just like to say this poem is not about my husband”–which, after hearing the poem, was much to my relief.
My wife is a medical student. A ME-DI-CAL student. This means she has time only for studying and eating. Not for preparing a poem for performance. Turns out it was a broken-hearted/mending-hearted poem she wrote as an undergrad, so thankfully, she didn’t write it between studying the cranial nerve and the medulla oblongata. Nevertheless this amazing woman, who I already knew was a Top-of-her-class painter, a with-honors graduate from UC Berkeley, fluent in French, a master crocheter and knitter, could make clothes with a sewing machine, and could cook and make me feel like we’re in a fancy restarant every night, can also write and perform poetry.
Performing a poem she hadn’t performed in over a year — with no rehearsal.
RIDICULOUS!
Needless to say (and I say this without bias, I swear), she was certainly the best open-mic poet, and though she probably wouldn’t have made the team, she certainly would have been competitive.
Phew. Long post.
Maybe I’ll write about the competition itself next. I was going to include it in this one, but didn’t realize how much I’d write. At the very least I’m going to share one of the poems from the slam. It may not have been the best of the night, but it’s a fun one, and one that I think some of my friends would like to read.
Go do something artsy this weekend. It’ll make you feel cultured.