New poems simmering...
A series called "Word Problems."
Like the ones on the SAT. Yeah, like those...
And meanwhile, I have 3 hours a day that Mose sleeps while I'm awake. Each night, I promise myself I'm going to use the time to REVISE the NOVEL and each day I end up scribbling poems, ripping up carpet, and talking on the phone.
I am a bad girl.
And also, when I began ripping up the carpet I found oak hardwoods. Yay! Got 3/4 of the way done and found PLYWOOD. Boo!
My solution, after pricing new floors, which we cannot afford even remotely becasue we're BROKE AS HELL?
Paint. I'm painting all the plywood and all the oak and moving all the furniture and rugs around to cover the ugly part. A big white painted room with strategically placed rugs.
Cover up the ugly. That's the way the world works.
I am poor. I don't mind my bare bones so much, as long as I know other happy poor people. I even like the aesthetic of my poverty. I don't mind my old clothes. But I can't help that I wish I could have a new floor, some bookshelves... maybe even bookshelves that aren't from a thriftstore...
Luxury=extra. Not having to stack your books in double rows on the old bookshelves you inherited from a roommate who left.
Although the truth is this is CRAP and I should be ashamed. When the poverty threshold in Georgia is 16,600 for a family of three. I am lucky lucky lucky...
Back to the novel...
5 Comments:
Can I get an amen? Amen.
Poor, but not in poverty. Wish we could have a beer and chat it over (says the woman who just painted the cement floor in her kitchen because she couldn't afford to replace the laminate after our drain broke and ruined it.)
But I always try to remember, at least I have a kitchen and food to put in it.
We are blessed, if not with luxury, at least with love and creativity and good friends and productive work. And that is a lot.
xo
we're poor and happy darlin'...but someday i will also want bookshelves instead of milk crates.
hope your well...it was good to see your honey bee in madison.
k
You are inspiring me to put naptime to better use...thanks!
how about so poor you get evicted and how about so family-poor there's no one to take you in, so you are homeless in homeless shelter with uneducated fake social workers who are jealous cause you aren't as stupid and ugly as they, how about sleeping on metal chairs and having crackheads try to cut you up and steal the nine dollars in your bra? How about a family that wouldn't help you out at all when you had a full scholarship to one of the most prestigious theatre conservatories in the country even though they never sent you to college and you roamed the streets searching for work with no skills and went to a state school and couldn't finish cause you were up til 3:30 every morning, then you got mugged and in hospital, then raped, all trying to get home from waitress jobs? How about fast forward to homeless and then public housing, and marrying someone who is very ill just to get that public housing apartment cause they take YEARS to get a single woman without a husband or a baby an apartment? How about still can't get a job even with a BA from a good school, speaking of which I now owe $52,000 in student loans and my husband collects a little over $600 a month for being disabled and I can't get a job, just made $500 this whole year and a half, and for a story in a journal, not a real job, and then Social Security will try to take money away from him, because I'm not disabled, so according to them, if I make more than $240 a month, I AM supporting him, regardless that for the year a half before I made $1800 in temp jobs for eighteen months? How about I can never get my MFA in Creative Writing or pay my AFTRA union dues, or get a bed that doesn't hurt our backs terribly, or eat enough, cause they give such stingy food stamp allotments? How about being raised upper midddle class and having such mean parents they didn't send me to college to save money for their old age? How about, and about and about the job interview I had yesterday to be a writer for BINDER AND BINDER and the twenty something minority interviewer told me that just because I worked at Harvard Law School for a year, just because I have over 50 literary publications, including a poetry book coming out, that I am not capable of writing two paragraphs to judges for a motion for the disabled EVEN when my own husband is disabled? How about I'm "over qualified" to be a secretary, waitress, receptionist when I can't get a job that matches my skills? How about that's how I became homeless and married a sick man? How about poverty? It's not a happy thing...
Dea anonymous,
I'm so sorry if this is the case for you. And I apologize if you read this post as a suggestion from me that I feel unfortunate. That word--poor-- is easy to misuse, oversuse. Real poverty is so terrible. So hard. I don't mean to disrespect anyone in this post. I was just wanking becasue we had a bad year for medical bills and roof repairs and cars dying and are behind financially, and it's easy to feel sorry for myself. But I'm blessed and I know it. Good luck!
Post a Comment
<< Home