Dog Music



by Paul Zimmer


Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.

My big dog sang with me so purely,

puckering her ruffled lips into an O,

beginning with small, swallowing sounds

like Coltrane musing, then rising to power

and resonance, gulping air to continue—

her passion and sense of flawless form—

singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.

We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"

"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."

She was a great master and died young,

leaving me with unrelieved grief,

her talents known to only a few.



Now I have a small dog who does not sing,

but listens with discernment, requiring

skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.

I sing her name and words of love

andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.

Sometimes she is so moved she turns

to place a paw across her snout,

closes her eyes, sighing like a girl

I held and danced with years ago.




But I am a pretender to dog music.

The true strains rise only from

the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,

these melodies best when the moon is up,

listeners and singers together or

apart, beyond friendship and anger,

far from any human imposter—

ballads of long nights lifting

to starlight, songs of bones, turds,

conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,

things settled long before our birth.

A Don't List

My "don't" list:

Don't check e mail more than twice a day
Don't surf the web when I'm supposed to be writing
Don't keep e mail and browser programs open while writing
Don't let anyone tell me I can't write
Don't let anyone tell me I can't get published
Don't check my school e mail at home
Don't let a day go by without writing something.

Friendship is work

It's true-- it takes work to make a friendship go. But I'm seeing a disturbing trend among younger people-- just chuck your friends in the trash if it's not working the way you hoped it would. Plenty more where those ones came from. So it seems as if people get into a friendship, see what they can get out of it and then at the least little bump in the road, abandon ship, pretend they never knew the person, meet someone else and start the cycle again.

To me, a friendship takes work. If something doesn't seem right, talk about it. If someone offends you let them know. But don't just toss people aside the way you toss last year's iPod. We've become, sadly, a disposable society and it seems that's translating into relationships as well.

My big question is:

What are these people going to do when they run out of people to toss aside? How will they react when they're the ones getting tossed in the trash?

Time will tell.

Once Upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a girl in college who was so shy she used to eat her lunch on the stairwell rather than go to the SUB. She told her adviser she wanted to be "a janitor." She did however have 3 majors and parents who spoiled her by paying for her tuition (and her car and her insurance...)

At the same time, an older girl tried to be her friend, by encouraging her to write, to pursue her education and to come out of her shell.

Later, the younger girl fell in love with a guy who turned out to be a thief and a drug addict. Her older friend sent her gifts and offered her a place to stay if and when she ever needed it. She fielded many e mails from her young friend listening to her adventures with her criminal boyfriend and consoling her when things went south. She also helped her young friend out with editing articles she wrote for a newspaper, even to the extent of reading them 2 or three times and sometimes the night before they were due, setting her own work aside for this.

Later still, the young girl was trying to decide what to do with her life. Her older friend advised her to go to grad school and even wrote several very nice letters of recommendation for her (including one she faxed at the very last minute) and gave her the email of a former professor who wrote yet another letter of reference. When the young girl entered grad school, she had many housing adventures and her friend read her e mails, consoled and helped with comments on her papers and questions about her degree. She even consoled her when the younger girl whined about having to actually work 20 hours a week every week, even though the older girl had held down two jobs while attending grad school and paid for it all herself without parental help or support.

The young girl graduate from grad school, which she claimed to have attended because she liked the gowns the graduates wore and because she was bored. She finally found a guy who would support her in the manner to which she was accustomed. Having gotten all she could from her idler friend, she promptly proceeded to distort her words of advice, read things into her comments which weren't there and then pretend she never met her.

The older girl was hurt but picked herself up and went on to fame and fortune elsewhere, wiser now.

Moral of the story: never bend over for someone else or you'll get a kick in the butt.

You can't tell I'm a fan of Ghost Hunters, can you?




moar funny pictures

Busy new year

Okay, things are crazy already. On line classes, talking down the tree, setting goals for 2010, trying to write, and shoveling. Oh, yeah, did I mention we're supposed to get more snow? To the tune of 4-6 inches. Just what we need.

Despite all of that, I'm trying to keep the optimistic feeling going. It's tough when my colleagues are making things a pain already (and we're technically still on break). To cope, I've vowed to ignore my school e mail unless I really need to open an e mail for some pressing reason, until January 11 when we go back. But I know then all heck will break loose. I'm just gonna grab a life preserver and hang on. Summer can't come soon enough for me.

Thought for the evening

Never tell someone who had to struggle to pay for college that you went to school "because I was bored."

Onward!

Yay! 2010 is finally here. So now it's time to move forward, move ahead, not look back, forget about the decade with no name, the decade of yuk, the decade that time forgot. Time to get out of the habit of writing the yeart as "0x" and learn to use a 1. Time to make fresh resolution, to clean our offices and to ditch old habits and create some enw ones.

Count me in.

Happy 2010.

Moving on

Time to move ahead. The new year, 2010 beckons and I want to make the last week of 2009 as productive as I can. So I'm not looking back, not regretting anything, and actually, I feel lighter, happier and more hopeful now than I have for months. Yay! I've turned the corner and things are going to get better. I know they will.

And as for the past, my Daddy used to say, "What goes around, comes around." I can't wait, grin.

Oh yeah, and beware of low leaping kangaroos.

Quote for the day

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -
for you'll be criticized anyway.
You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

One more thing...

Retraction: that standing invitation to come here? No longer exists. Especially for someone I've never met.

Taking back

Dear world. I'm taking back my life now. No more looking back, no regrets and no wondering what I could've done differently. I told a group of students this year that "You can only worry about what you can control." I'm hereby applying that to my life. I can't control other people's misperceptions or their tendency to twist or distort things I have said. But I don't regret what I said. And I'm not going to worry about them either. So there, too.

Retraction

If a person for whom I wrote a letter of rec to grad school now wants to "imagine she never met me," can I retract my letter?

Here goes:

Dear University History Department:

This is to inform you that I have never heard of this person. Therefore, I cannot possibly give you any sense of her academic abilities, her social skills or her potential to succeed. I have no clue why someone I have never met would list me as a reference, but there you have it. I cannot possibly write a recommendation for this person, since "recommendation" implies I actually know this person and she swears we have never met.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have created for you and your program. You may want to consider retroactively removing degrees from such people.

Sincerely,

The imaginary English professor who has never met this applicant

There. If I can't really do it, at least I can do it here.

Quote for the day

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”

Dr. Seuss

Oh, yeah, one more lesson

One more lesson-- the next time someone says "If things get really bad I'm going to sell everything, buy a rowboat and row out into the Pacific Ocean" my response should be, "Whatever floats your (row) boat.

After Christmas musings

Ah, well, learned a valuable lesson today. Never go out of your way to help someone because it will (and I mean will, not possibly) come back to bite you. Never mind last minute letters of reference written or newspaper articles proofread the night before they were due. Or offers to have a friend stay with you, or condolences given because a friend hooked up with a guy who turned out to be a thief and a drug addict. or critiques exchanged. Or suggestions of going to grad school-- even encouragement to go, attempts to find someone to be a reference for them. Right-- and then a slap in the face later.

So my New Year's resolution:

I'm not getting involved in any one sided friendships ever again. Not worth my time and frustration. I've got enough real friends to last me a lifetime.

Sarcasm becomes what?

As an avid user of sarcasm, I appreciate it-- to a point. However, even I have an upper limit on my tolerance of it-- especially on line. I hate being lectured to by people, especially people who either a) have a silly soapbox to stand on or b) have lived quite a few years less than I have. Advice is one thing. You can take it or leave it. Lecture-- that's another thing. As a teacher, I know what lecture does to my students-- their eyes glaze over, they fall sleep, they go check their Facebook pages. (Hmm, maybe I should, oh, wait, I'm not done). So if you're going to post advice somewhere, please, make it friendly, calmly worded advice. Lectures get you flamed or ignored or both. I don't have the time for that and I know a lot of other people who don't either. But hey, I don't want this to be a lecture on not lecturing, so if you wnat to annoy people, feel free. I won't be among them though.

On the plus side, it's the last day of finals week, which means I am nearly done grading student papers, and manly have to input grades and start prepping for spring (yes I'm going to start early this year-- but I say that every year, so I wouldn't be surprised if I don't get too far). So that frees me up to write, to get a tree (if there are any left) and to just chill and enjoy the season-- for a week or two. Then it's back to work.

Happy week before Christmas.

Finals!

Oh yeah it's that time again. Final exam time. For my students, not for me. I get to grade 'em.

The good part is, I get 3 weeks off afterwards. Can't friggin' wait.

Old friends, former friends

Reconnected with an old friend tonight and confirmed that a recent friend is no longer a friend. I've never understood how people can just decide to not be friends. Yes, friendships fade away gradually. But how do you wake up one day and say "I don't want to be friends with him/her any more"? That is just so foreign to me.

But then again, this person was probably never a true friend to begin with. I'm just going to move on. I've got tons of other friends-- I don't need to regret losing one person off my list. There's plenty more out there to gain, too.

Random wondering

It's been one of those days-- I feel like I woke up and hit the ground running and it's not going to stop till I get home this evening. Between issues at the Writing center, web page stuff at work, worries over friends, trying to find time for my writing, wondering if I'll ever get published-- it's not been an easy week. I guess I need to work harder at taking things one day at a time, one issue at a time,. But it's frustrating to sit here and look back over my life and realize that so many people have been published when they were a lot younger than me-- and here I am still plugging along and trying to get something accepted. Ever time I submit, I hope that maybe this time will be THE time. And every time, I'm disappointed. But I;'m still in there trying and I guess that's what counts.

And I am working on not feeling just a twinge of envy at my other writer friends' successes. Anne Lamott suggests that this isn't good, and I know it isn't, but it's hard to help sometimes. But I;m working on it.