Welcome to Spring. Finally! Yes, I have spent the last two days reading and writing about ancient Greece rather than writing about reading and writing about… You see the problem. Once again the idea of competing priorities takes the stage. The difference is that in my last post, the priorities were literary priorities: rhythm versus flexibility versus imagery versus placement in the poem (e.g., need for transitions or closure). Basically, poetry as problem and solution over and over again.

In contrast, the priorities this weekend were those of time and space. My roommate, talented filmmaker, Jack Siberine, was making another film in our apartment, and it turns out that to make a ten minute film, you pretty much have to shoot ten hours or so of footage (or whatever they call it in the digital age) as well as feeding your 16 person crew pizza, and moving all the furniture out of one room and into others and vice versa. This makes those of us who would rather not get in the way spend time at cafes and the library.

Do not get me wrong. I am a big fan of both cafes and libraries, because 1) duh, coffee and 2) libaries are where the books live. But it does change the kind of work you can do, particularly when the cafe you have chosen turns off its free WiFi on the weekends to get a faster customer turnover. Sigh. Now that I finally have a mobile thingy (iPad), I cannot use it. So instead I wrote poetry. Longhand. Because it Just Feels Better.

What do you do when your normal routine is obstructed?