Grant Rant, Cat Re-Christianing, A Stray Poem

Yesterday, I started in working in earnest on putting together everything I need for the grant application I mentioned in last week’s post. I’ve barely started, and already it’s a horrific, hair-pulling process. I spent a good chunk of yesterday muddling my way through an essay about “how my work exhibits excellence in storytelling”. I completely lack the chutzpah to write a 350-word essay about what an excellent storyteller I am, so the resulting piece is a mushy-mouthed mess that refuses to admit to any personal talent or technical skill on my part. The problem is that I don’t know how analyze my own process because in all honesty I don’t know how to write—I just write. For some reason, a lot of people think I was an English major, but I wasn’t. I’ve never taken any  classes in writing other than a brief poetry workshop here and there, and my writing process lacks any sort of formal technique or deliberateness. So it’s hard for me to write with any authority about narrative form, genre or “craft”. But all the same, I’m starting to feel weirdly competitive about the whole thing, and I’m determined to push through and get the application in, even though objectively, my chances of winning are nil.

In other news, Sammy has been re-christianed “Buddy”, and continues to be a maniac. I don’t know how a creature so tiny and skinny can manage to be such a terror. He’s just a relentless, shrieking, destructive blur of fur and claws. It’s like having a armed toddler on cocaine. What else....I’m experimenting with a short story written entirely in dialogue. Other than that, I have nothing to report, since my days lately are entirely consumed with work and subsequently recovering from work. I’m plotting a get-away to a magical healer who can take all of my stress away and make everything better. I need a good old-fashioned shamanic, new-age, mystical, woo-woo healy-type person to peel the layers of crud and grime from my energy field and make me all shiny and optimistic again. I’m Googling.

Since I’m out of stuff to say, here’s a stray poem I wrote a while back that I never did anything with, and an amusing video from the “Written by a Kid” series. Enjoy!

Notes on Surrender

When we think
of surrender we think
of salmon, of their thoughtless yielding
to biology, and of those
poor saps in archaic tales,
forced to slaughter their own
to learn the nature of loss.

So forgive me but today I shredded
with my own hands each
of your bouquet’s petals
just at the peak of their bloom. My fingers
stink of rose. I have wiped
their tribal stains onto my cheeks.
I did it, understand, because
I resented their timing,
unwilling as I was to bear
witness to their death--not this dozen,
not these.

How many has God lost
to our disregard for a mystery, to our
heroic, ham-handed
rescue of our ourselves?

Let us surrender this day to our cowardice, to our
one bad turn too many. Let fear
take hold of us completely, let us
offer it our necks.
It’s okay for a while to cower
frozen in our terror,
to clench and hide,
until starving,
we emerge to search for home.

--Kristen McHenry