Frazzle Dazzle Day

Yesterday was a day of ups and downs, a real frazzle dazzle of a day.

It began oddly.  I went to my gym which is part of a hospital.  As I walked down the hallway, the alarm lights went off and a voice over the P.A. said, "Code red in the mechanical building."  Over and over the voice said that, and the lights flashed.

Code red--fire, right?

But no one seemed alarmed, so I went on up to the 8th floor.  There was limited electricity, meaning no fans and no music for the spin class room.  But we decided to go ahead anyway.

Halfway through, we were plunged into darkness.  Still, we continued to spin.  By the time we were done, still no power.  So, I made my way down the steps and went back home to shower.

Oddly, the whole experience restored my good humor.  I had woken up in quite a funk, thinking about how I had accomplished nothing in my life, I would never be published again, I would never achieve my full potential.  How I hate that kind of funk!  Luckily, I've read enough biographies of creative people to know that these funks are normal.  Luckily, I've been through them enough times to recognize the lie in the hissing voice that rears up in my head occasionally--and I know that if I sit tight, and continue to do the creative work, I'll be O.K.

By late morning, I was rewarded.  Kathleen Kirk sent me an e-mail to let me know that my poems were up at Escape Into Life.  You can see them here.

I have long admired Kathleen's work, both her own creative work and the editing that she does.  I've loved the way she paired poems and art.  I've often wondered what she'd do with my work.  What a treat to find out.

Through the years, I thought about sending her some poems.  But I worried that there might be some reason why she had never suggested that I submit my work.  I didn't want to put her in a difficult position by reaching out.

So, when she asked me to submit poems, I was thrilled.  And yesterday, when I went to the site, I was thrilled again.

I love that the Internet makes this kind of pairing--poems and art--possible.  In the days of print journals, it would be prohibitively expensive to create this kind of feature.

And then it was off to the mock accreditation meeting.  It was a long meeting, full of good information, but it left me feeling frazzled.  I spent the rest of the afternoon copying every field trip permission slip from the past year, e-mailing the copies to myself so I had a PDF file to keep electronically, hole punching and putting the paper copies into a binder.  Today I'll do the same for every syllabus for every course that I oversee that's in the catalogue.

It's work that's necessary, but not exactly inspiring.

I ended the day by going to an artist's studio.  The artist is doing amazing things with bird cages.  Picture a bird cage with paper dolls from the 1950's hanging inside.  Picture a birdcage with rusty objects hanging from perches--or with sparkly bits dangling. 

The artist had invited a select group, and I felt immensely honored to be part of it.  We ate and discussed school stuff and art stuff and happily we stayed away from politics and the world situation.  I drove home with my frazzle mood dispersed and my dazzle mood restored.

Notice a theme?  Throughout the day, it was the endorphins produced by exercise and art that got rid of the frazzles and restored me to dazzle.  Hurrah for endorphins!  Hurrah for exercise!  Hurrah for art!