Just so nobody worries about my well-being, I’m going camping in the Adirondacks for a few days (maybe quite a few days if the weather turns nice), and am taking a break from the internet. I’ve temporarily removed the sidebar listing of recent comments, so as not to give the advantage to any spam commenters who might get past the crocodile-filled moat.
Moving Poems will continue to publish next week in my absence, inshallah. And don’t forget to keep up with qarrtsiluni, as well, where my able co-editor Beth will be running the show.
For the second autumn in a row, Beth Adams and I will be stepping out from behind the curtain to edit an issue of qarrtsiluni ourselves. The deadline for submissions is August 31, and publication will begin around September 15. We’re pretty excited by the theme.
This time we’re looking for words of power: curses, spells, charms, prayers, incantations, mantras, sacred scriptures, explicit performative utterances, oaths, or legal instruments. Submissions may consist entirely of such super-charged language, or may riff upon or explore such language. Submissions of visual art may of course take a more figurative approach to the topic; images of amulets and other power-objects, for example, would be welcome. But otherwise we urge contributors not to interpret the theme too broadly. Please don’t just send us a piece of writing that you think is powerful according to some subjective evaluation. We’re looking quite specifically for language freighted with mana and/or executive force, or writing about that kind of language. If you’re not sure whether something qualifies, feel free to query.
Please limit written material to no more than five items per submission, with individual pieces not exceeding 3,000 words. Please refer to the general guidelines before submitting, and note especially the recommendation to query us if we don’t acknowledge receipt within two days — occasional server hiccups and email glitches are a fact of life on the internet.
We look forward to reading your words of power with an unusual admixture of excitement and trepidation. This issue could be a real test of our editorial juju!
We’re also really pleased with the results of our first annual poetry chapbook contest. Here’s the announcement about that.
In the middle of life’s journey,
I found myself in a light-filled woods,
the path long since forgotten…
O.K., not quite what Dante wrote. But then, Via Negativa ain’t exactly the Divine Comedy. I am, however, currently exploring the circle of hell populated by malicious hackers and spam bots (which is why the comments are inaccessible). See you on the other side, I hope.
For anyone in the local area who may be able to attend, I’ll be giving my first-ever PowerPoint presentation tomorrow night (Tuesday, January 15) at 7:00 p.m. for my local Audubon chapter. It’s entitled “Finding (and Putting) Nature on the Web,” and I’ll be focusing primarily on nature blogs, photo-sharing sites, and online nature identification resources. Apparently, our meeting place, a chapel in a graveyard, doesn’t have wi-fi, so I’ll be relying exclusively on screen shots. It’s easy to find, right off an exit of I-99 — directions are here. Come for the free cookies if nothing else.
UPDATE (June 22) – Thanks to everyone for the supportive and sympathetic comments. I do now have regular access to a dial-up connection, but as you can imagine it’s excruciating to go back to that after having gotten accustomed to DSL. If I get desperate enough, I may return to blogging at 26k/sec. In any case, though, I have sent Smorgasblog on vacation and substituted a dynamic blogroll courtesy of Google Reader. This will display links to the latest posts from close to 100 blogs; it’s not selective.
I’m suspending publication of Via Negativa (and curtailing most of my other online activities) due to a loss of internet service in Plummer’s Hollow. At this point I can’t predict when I might resume — it could be anywhere from a few days to a couple of months.
Thanks for reading. Take care.
Remember that stray cat I blogged about back in March, who was adopted by Suzanne? Here’s an update, profusely illustrated, and containing some startling news about his likely origins.
For anyone in the area who might be interested, I’ll be leading a walk up the hollow on Saturday morning beginning at 9:00 a.m. The road is open to the public in any case, but only for the first mile and quarter. By joining this hike saunter, you’ll get to see parts of the property normally off-limits to casual visitors. Bring water, wear comfortable walking shoes, and drop me a line if you need directions. Our wildflower diversity isn’t as high as you might find in some other spots with less acidic soil, but the hollow’s very pretty this time of year, and of course I can natter on endlessly about forest history and stuff.
I have been blogging elsewhere today. Because, you know, it’s my day off from blogging.
Seated between the quietly humming computer and the cold-air return vent for the furnace, I begin to hear voices. It’s not the stirring of a crowd united in passion for some cause or spectacle, nor the whispers of a moss colony buried by snow, but a simple and pleasing cacophony — the kind that grows from any gathering in which many conversations blend and merge. Picture yourself in some cave-like station or terminal where every other person is speaking animatedly into a cell phone. They might as well each be talking to God, except that, from time to time, they pause to listen. That’s what this pause is like. I’m tired and I’ve run out of things to say, so I give listening a try. The furnace stops, and a moment later the refrigerator shudders into silence. I power down the computer; the voices merely rise in pitch, till they are thin as the hairs on a fly. Call it sensory deprivation if you want. It’s past midnight, the full moon is hidden by clouds and I’m sitting in the dark, accompanied by the white noise of angels in which I do not believe.
Also posted in Greatest Hits
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UPDATE (12/23): I paid the pittance WordPress.com was asking for the right to make alterations to shadow cabinet’s stylesheet, and increased the text size to what I hope is a more readable level.
I’m still working away at shadow cabinet — and getting a better sense of how much more needs to be done. New poems added today include: Bodies of Water (extensive revision to a piece that first appeared here as prose, over a year ago); The Other Coltrane; Dust; Out Back at the All-Night Diner; The Sycamore; and The Greek. Many other poems, of course, were considered and rejected for one reason or another. I find a perverse satisfaction in that — it makes me feel clean, somehow.
Needless to say, all the poems in shadow cabinet are there provisionally, and many will undergo further revision.
