Saturday, May 27, 2006

I'm worried that my work is becoming less concerned with violence and pain

For example:

I took my dinner to the beach--salmon and broccoli (or poached salmon and pan fried broccoli with other yummy stuff)--to watch the sun set, something I haven't actually done since I arrived. It gets so cold here, still, when the sun gets low in the sky. I ate my dinner and started to write a parody nature poem but had to stop because there were dolphins playing in the waves. They were riding them in more or less the same way surfers do.

This filled me with joy and longing and so I couldn't write my horrific poem. I just had to watch them and the sunset and the pelicans diving for fish and drink wine out of my travel coffee mug (no glass etc allowed on the beach) and long.

I suppose I've always been a big fan of longing, though. So maybe I shouldn't be so worried. My whole prose fiction poem thing "it does not go back" is an indulgence in and critique of lyric longing.

This is, perhaps, why I find it so difficult to resist Stinky the cat. He is so very needy. He longs. He is tragic. He longs to be inside someone's house, eating tuna. I nearly bought him a little outdoor cat bed/shelter to put on our balcony, and then decided against it.

Lester longs, but he never longs for long!