June 20: Earth Sways, Parabolas, Attacking Orcs

It's all I can do to stand.  I feel dizzy, drawn, mauled.  Below me the floodwater roils to a violent froth that looks like dirty lace, a lace that continuously explodes before my eyes.  If I look away, the earth moves backwards, rises and swells, from the fixing of my eyes at one spot against the motion of the flood.  All the familiar land looks as though it were not solid and real at all, but painted on a scroll like a backdrop, and that unrolled scroll has been shaken, so the earth sways and the air roars.

Dillard feels off kilter.  Floodwaters have rearranged her familiar landscape.  Everything is movement.  The earth recedes and sways.  All that was bedrock has become liquid and air, and Dillard is unmoored from her beloved Tinker Creek.

I have sort of felt like Dillard for most of today.  I don't know why.  As I was walking into work this morning, the winds were violent.  I was literally leaning into them, trying to keep my footing.  The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  My path from my car to the medical center was a parabola.

And I have sort of kept on that trajectory all day, trying to accomplish tasks but constantly veering off course a little.  This post is a little parabolic for me, as well.  I intended to write about the tension I feel as I wait to hear back from my editor about the poems I submitted.  Instead, I'm writing about floods and winds and shifting worlds.

I find myself in a tempest of self-doubt at the moment.  I've read and reread my poems.  At times, the sonnet seems sound and fresh.  Other times, it strikes me as, pardon my French (why French?  I've never understood that phrase), a piece of shit.  It has been slightly torturous.  I keep checking my e-mail to see if I've gotten a response from the editor.  Each time I checked, nothing.  And the winds kept blowing, and the earth kept shifting.

Tonight, I have to dig in and plan out the online film class I'm teaching this summer.  Lots of busy work.  Quizzes and lectures and final exams.  Choices to make.  That will keep me quite occupied for most of the evening.  (My daughter is quite happy about this development.  I'm interfering with her gaming.  Others will have to defeat the evil horde of attacking orcs tonight.)  I'm panicking a little about this, as well, since I have never taught on online course in my life.  Winds.  Floods.  Parabolas.

At this moment, I am going to check again to see if the editor has responded.  This will only take a moment . . . Nope.

Looks like Saint Marty's going to have a stormy night.