Artist's Way Journal - Week Six, Day Three

Feeling neutral today.  Actually, it was a day of getting caught up with bills and paperwork, tying up loose ends, some laundry, a big of housework.  Totally ran out of checks to pay bills with, so had to order more, and make transfers.  I swear, I can't seem to hold in my memory the things that need doing *when* they need doing.  It seems the more I hold in my thoughts, the more likely something else is spilling away.  Billy Collins said something about that in his poem, "Forgetfulness."  Now I'm distracted, and am going to go looking for the poem to post here.  I'll be back shortly.

Okay, here it is, and following that is a YouTube video to listen to, just so we don't forget.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.  Billy Collins

That's how I am these days - so distract-able.  Or it is "distractible?"  Somehow I think it's the former.  I realise that if I didn't go back and correct all my typing errors this would look more like this:

...somehow I htink it's the bormer.  I realise that I didn't go balck and corrnt all my typing errors this would look more like thsi...

And I wasn't even the one on 2 am duty last night.  Tonight's my night.  Tomorrow is a busy day.  I teach Pilates, take a SilverSneakers workshop, and then teach weightlifting.  The DS has drums, DD and her friend go to church group, after which I need to sneak over to the theater and get a ticket for Rocky Horror for the friend.  They're seeing it Friday night.  

Brings back memories.  I first saw TRHPS (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) when I was thirteen.  The line wrapped around the block, and we finally got in sometime near midnight. We did this quite a few times, and each time it got harder and harder to hear the actual words. I bought a book, and the LP.  One night a few guys all gathered around a VW bug and lifted it up, then set it back down in the street.  

Later, on a trip to London, DA and I saw "Pirates of Penzance," and I met lead-pirate Tim Curry backstage, and got his autograph.  I was eighteen, and my London experience was great.  It was the height of the (post-)punk movement, and it was the year the Pink Floyd movie "The Wall" came out.  We saw it in the Queen's Theatre, or something like that. Then we continued on to Scotland, whereupon I came down with tonsillitis. (I still loved it, though, and seven years later returned with DH on our honeymoon.)

Tim Curry as the Pirate King

So, I'm off to read some more about God and money...  still trying wrap my head around that one.

--TKC