Sunday, December 10, 2006

After five solid days of painting

...I decided to take the weekend off to tackle a pile of less creative tasks like laundry, dusting and vacuuming. Yesterday while I was vacuuming, the bones of a poem popped into my head, so I stopped what I was doing and quickly put the words down on paper. Some of my best work has come to be while flossing my teeth, but if memory serves me correctly, this is the first to come during vacuuming. The origin of the word floss goes rather well with the creative process. Rough silk. That's a nice way of describing the beginnings of a poem. Unfortunately, the word vacuum comes from the Latin vacuus meaning empty or void. That's not so good.

This morning I read about the journals of the Goncourt brothers. Yikes. While I do share bits of news and such with writers, usually about myself, I clearly don't know the first thing about dishing literary gossip. May my "archive of anxiety and thwarted ambition" and repository of "woes and disappointed hopes" always be small and unremarkable. A vacuum. A mean free path of great magnitude.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Come vacuum for me. Your back is better than mine !

Brenda Schmidt said...

Sure. I'd gladly vacuum if you sweeten the deal with some of your sugar cookies.

Anonymous said...

Back may be too bad to bake them !!!
Just kidding.

Brenda Schmidt said...

Ha! I hope you're just kidding. I think I'll want to see the cookies before I do the vacuuming... :)

Anonymous said...

Gosh, B., if you can get a poem out of the void, well, that's pretty darned good, don't you think?

I'm making gingerbread cookies tomorrow.

Brenda Schmidt said...

Berlynn, I'm afraid I don't think unless there are cookies in my bloodstream. If you sit me down with one of those gingerbread cookies, you'd be doing the poem and its audience a great favour. Hm. Looking at the poem, I think it might take a whole plate of cookies...

Ariel Gordon said...

Just think what a think hunk of nanaimo could do for that poem!

Brenda Schmidt said...

Yes! Perfect. Before eating the nanaimo, I'd set a bit of its chocolate icing aside. If eating nanaimo fails to help the poem, I'd use the icing to obliterate it.

Anonymous said...

Darling there's poetry in my dessert.

Poppy-cock!


I think you should just move to writing poetry in pudding. Remember? Like that time I was in pre-school when they put chocolate pudding on the paper and then you swirl it around and make shapes. Except you could make words. It could be art plus poetry = awesome with a remainder of tasty!

Brenda Schmidt said...

Rhett, you're brilliant! I can see it now. Pudding couplets...

What kind of pre-school did you attend anyhow? Your poor teacher is probably still having chocolate pudding nightmares.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure. I think we also had to strap coffee tins to our feet and walk around. It was like being on stilts, I imagine. I think I fell a few times...

...would explain a few things. There was that one time I got hit by a car when I was five too...

Brenda Schmidt said...

Hm. I'm beginning to think pre-school is where teachers go when they've been turned away from the pearly gates.

Just for the record, I wasn't the one driving the car. Mind you, had I foreseen the candy incident...

Anonymous said...

Oh, Brenda, it's soooo sad! I botched the batch of gingerbread! I guess I'm not as accustomed as I once was to having a two year-old assistant in the cookie-making department. It seems an extra bit of baking soda was added to the batter, making the bread a bit bitter.

But tomorrow's another day. Uh, or today is...

Brenda Schmidt said...

Bitter gingerbread! Oh no! When you ice them you better put little frowns on their bitter little faces.

GM said...

Dear, dear. What's the matter, all this chatter for a little cookie splatter? Don't bitch about a little bit bitter-butchered batch! Make botched batch of bitter batter better with a little bit-a-butter, and mutter in that sweater (that your mother knitted but barely fitted and now it's left in tatters) that you'll follow to the letter the better recipe you had from Mother or remember to not fritter or belittle this latter batter.

Indeed you'll do it better, and roll the wetter batter flatter ('cause a flatter batter matters) with but a smidge of soda smatter. Don't cook them til they splatter and your batter will be better, then you'll take that cookie cutter from the drawer's fettered clutter to cut those buttered batters into little Irish Setters, scattered on that platter (with that painted nutter Hatter) – not at all so bitter.

And your fatter guests will flatter with their little nitty chatter full of flying spittle spatter, utter, "Now that's a better ginger batter than I've tasted in a year – a bit botched (the butchered butter's kinda bitter) a little more soda might make the batch better, my dear…"

Anonymous said...

I think I speak for all present when I say: EEEK!

Unknown said...

Sigh. That'll teach me to post shortly after waking up from a nap.

Anonymous said...

ROFLMAOTIME!

Anonymous said...

I thought I was doing alright but GM always seems to come in and one up me.

Harumph! ^^

Brenda Schmidt said...

Ha! :) I think someone has been into the sugar.

Anonymous said...

It will take me days to sort these comments out.

Brenda Schmidt said...

It will take me days to sort them out, too. Berlynn's ROFLMAOTIME! had me totally puzzled. H figured that one out for me. And I can't get those little Irish Setters out of my head.

Anonymous said...

I betcha one the bitter setters is Betty.

Anonymous said...

Can H figure it out for me too?

(No, really...)

Brenda Schmidt said...

Betty! ha!

Ariel, really? While I was trying to relate the acronym to what G wrote, H did the practical thing and googled it. ROFLMAOTIME! =
Rolling On Floor Laughing My Ass Off, Tears In My Eyes!

Anonymous said...

Basically, I came into this post on my ROFLCOPTER!

Brenda Schmidt said...

Good grief.