This is pretty cool. It’s a graphic representation of the Google News aggregator. Stories are represented on the map based on, among other things, how many related articles are found. It’s a quick way to see what’s important to the media and what’s not. Of course, what it can’t see at all are the things that never make the aggregator.
Author: Julia
Wrong side of the sunrise
It is just after 4 AM. I think I am going to go to bed soon, but I feel like there is something urgent lurking under the fog of my exhaustion and although I think it is unlikely that I will be able to get it out, I am pushing myself to stay awake for as long as possible in the hope that it will break through.
The last time I went to sleep was at 9 AM on Monday morning, after staying awake through all of Sunday night. I can’t remember the last time I pulled an all-nighter, but this time it felt good. Just after 6 o’clock, it occurred to me that the sun was going to rise soon, so I drove to Goldsboro as fast as I could and sat on the riverbank as the sun ascended past the horizon. Unfortunately, in my sleep deprived state I had neglected to consider the cloud cover, and while there was a small band of sky that turned a lovely pink color, the sunrise itself was less than satisfying.
Additionally, I’d forgotten how loud the morning can be. I savor the night for its quiet, and I tend to think of the early morning in the same way. While it was free of human noise, though, the cacophony of the birds this morning was enough that I had a feeling similar to that of being at a concert or a loud bar, when the volume is so great and the quality so discordant that it permeates your brain, destroying the capacity for coherent thought. This was no gentle chirping, but a full on aural assault.
To maintain the peaceful center I’d achieved during my night of solitude and had hoped to enhance through communion with nature, I focused instead on the soft and placid steam rising slowly, almost meditatively, from the TMI towers. I let it carry me up, sometimes curling around the flared edges of the concrete walls before fading into the less graceful clouds that covered the sky.
I noted once, in high school, that from certain angles, the TMI clouds were obtrusive enough to block the sunrise from view. I resented them for it. This morning, I was grateful for their calming presence.
Deliberate Living
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about deliberate living — about making conscious decisions about what I want my life to be and being aware of how my actions fit with that image in every moment. I’m very aware that I spend much of my time living inattentively at best, but to live more deliberately requires not only a nearly constant concerted effort, but also an awareness of what I want out of my life to a degree that I don’t currently have. Now that I’m unemployed I have, at least in theory, more decisions to make about how I spend my time than I have had in a long time, and it’s becoming increasingly important to me to get as much life as possible out of each second of the day. Sometimes that means just closing my eyes and enjoying the stillness or even playing a game of computer solitaire, but more it sinks in that I don’t have to get in my car and go to work, the less interested I am in doing nothing. This has me thinking about what I do want to do with my time, not only on a moment-to-moment basis, but also in terms of the larger things I want to do with my life and the kind of person I want to be.
Coincidentally, I recently stumbled upon 2dobeforeidie.com, a site encouraging people to make lists of 100 things they’d like to do before they die. It’s not a new idea, certainly there are many “inspirational” stories about people making this kind of conscious decision to do something fun or interesting in their life and then going to incredible lengths to make it happen, but it is one that appeals to me. I’m trying to make a list, but coming up with 100 things is hard. It means thinking in both very narrow and very broad scopes about what I want out of life, but it’s still a small enough number that I think I’m going to have to make some hard decisions as to what makes the list and what doesn’t.
I’m far from done, but here are some samples:
Take a road trip with no time constraints or monetary limitations
Find my soulmate
Get a book of poetry published
Eat pasta in Italy
Watch the sun set over the Pacific
Watch the sun set over the Atlantic
Learn to keep things clean
Document my family history
Develop a coherent political philosophy
Develop a coherent spiritual philosophy
Watch the sun rise over the Atlantic
Watch the sun rise over the Pacific
Eventually I’m going to add another page with the complete list, and update it as I complete things. I’d also love to hear about what other people would put on their lists.
Gene Hosey
I spent some time on Gene Hosey’s site yesterday, I highly recommend it. Read the poetry.
Out with Sara
Sara Bozich was kind enough to mention Poetry at The Alley in her column today. Once again, many thanks to her for coming out, introducing me, and for the mention! If you don’t already, I recommend checking her out every Friday in The Patriot’s Inside Out magazine.
Fashion Statement
Kevin sent me this link. I wanted to blog it, but didn’t know what to say. I think it speaks for itself. Kevin says, “They should have given her a veil.” I wish I were as clever as Kevin.
New Poetry
As the title of this post would imply, I’ve updated the poetry section. Some of them are new, some of them are old. What they all have in common is that I read them last night at The Alley. They’re even in the order in which I read them.
As a side note, the reading last night went very well. Snow surprised me by having Sara Bozich come in to introduce me, which was very cool. Sara and I were very close in high school as we were both discovering a love for writing. While I cringe to think about some of the things I wrote back then, having friends who shared my passion was important (as, of course, it still is) and passing notes full of poetry back and forth throughout the day did a lot to keep me sane.
Maybe a year or two before Sara and I were passing notes in German class, the father of a friend of mine brought home a box of chapbooks by a co-worker of his named Gene Hosey. It was just starting to occur to me that maybe I thought poets were kinda cool when I saw that box, and though I don’t think I ever did read the chapbook, it was my first introduction to the idea that there were some of these kinda-cool-poet-folks in a world at least adjacent to mine, if not actually in my world. Last night was the first time I saw Gene read at any length and he very much reinforced this crazy idea I have that poets are pretty okay. His work is sharp, funny, human, and crazy. I spoke with him a bit last night, and my impression is that he is much like his poetry. It was an honor to be featured with him.
Self-promotion
I probably should have mentioned this earlier but, well, I didn’t.
I’m going to be a co-feature at Poetry at The Alley this coming Saturday, along with Harrisburg’s first Poet Laureate, Gene Hosey.
It’s a good venue and we’re going to have lots of fun, so come join us! If you’d like more info, send me an email or follow the above link and call the restaurant itself.
Kevinus is the best
A few months ago, I started noticing that a lot of the spam I received contained seemingly random words at the bottom, in wonderful combinations like, “feverish interruption symphonic assyria headway argentina whom bragging rendezvous effusion peking bernardo california ellison”. I got excited — these were free words being sent to me every day.
Inspired by Jonathan Schwanbeck, I asked Kevin Gaughen if he would be able to help me at some point create a perl script that could take these spam words, insert random prepositions, conjunctions, etc., and random line breaks to create “poetry”. He said he could and told me what I could do to get started on it, but I kept pushing it off until I have more free time. A few days ago, he surprised me with the page I’ve linked above. Below is an example of poetry it created, based on the sample words in this post.
she
headway
effusion rendezvous
bragging
butpeking. or
interruption
symphonic california bernardo in front of
whom; argentina
Sinking In
I am sitting in an empty office at work. My manager just left the building for the last time. Most of the other members of my department have been gone for days, along with nearly all of the 400 employees who have filled this huge space for the last four years.
On Tuesday night I took the last call to come into the Harrisburg call center. We thought all the queues were turned off, but as we stared at the still monitors, a straggler came through, which had to be answered. It had been six months since I spoke to a customer, but it felt good to do it one last time, even if was just for a minute before I transferred him to an outsource agent somewhere in Asia.
I told a friend this morning that it hadn’t sunk in yet. I had thought that it would on Wednesday, as most people departed for the last time; or maybe on Wednesday night at the bar where everyone celebrated both St Patrick’s Day and their liberation. When I didn’t feel it then, I thought it would happen this morning when I pulled into a vacant parking lot and made my way through an empty building — but it didn’t. I gave up, and told my friend that I didn’t think it would happen until I left for the last time, or maybe not even until a few days after that.
It happened just now, as my boss smiled and walked out the door. I’ll be back next week, to help facilities and IS with anything I can before we permanently vacate, but seeing the last of my department leave means that my job as I knew it is gone, in a far more real way than it was even half an hour ago.
I’m going to say goodbye to a few remaining people, log off this computer once and for all, then swallow the lump in my throat and go home. I’ll be back, for a few more days anyway, but the chapter is already closed.