Thursday, September 23, 2010

Dry Spell

We're all moved in now, there are boxes still laying around and loads of laundry to finish.  We still need to buy desks for our office and bookcases for the myriads of books I have stored in Oklahoma City, but technically we now live in a house.  The Airstreamer Era is over for Wynn and I.  The Airstream is now sitting at a storage place between a gutted bus and an 85 primer gray Chevy Silverado.  It's like a graveyard of sorts and part of me feels guilty for keeping such a beautiful piece of history there, but it is the practical thing to do.

The Airstream is for sale and I know, I know, post photos.  I will, I've taken them, they're on the IPhone and I may post them tonight if I'm not too busy at work.  I shouldn't be, the kids will be in bed by the time I clock in and aside from finishing a spreadsheet for my boss, I don't really have much I need to do other than homework, but neither of those tasks should take eight hours.

I have hit a rather dry spell lately with the blogging and all of the writing I do.  It's as though I don't feel like I need it to cope anymore like I did in the Airstream.  There are so many other things that I could be doing, like making my own bread in the bread maker I bought at the Goodwill for $4 the other day, or reading.

Currently reading: The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Currently listening to: The Clicks
Would really like to be reading:  The Things They Carried,  Tim O'Brien
Movie I'd like to watch: Apocalypse Now

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Frustration

Yes, tomorrow is move in day and I am very excited about moving into our awesome little rent house here in town.  It's going to be chaotic due to the fact that there is not enough room in the Airstream to pack before we move.  I am alright with the chaos because I know that it is just a part of the process. 

My frustration has absolutely nothing to do with anything that is currently going on in my life.  My frustration comes from a small quiet voice deep inside that becomes louder with each post I make on this blog.  This small voice keeps telling me that in a literary sense my voice has changed. 

Let me go back a few years for those of you who aren't sure what I mean.  I am a writer before anything else that  I do professionally.  I am a poet who has lost her ability to write poetry; I'm not sure that it is actually gone I am only sure that I can no longer find it.  I am sure it was there once just over a decade ago, I know I had talent and promise, but I somehow feel as though I have squandered it.  If I knew just what went wrong I could find it again and I could write again. 

In 1999 I auditioned and was accepted into the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, my poetry, my ability beat out several other high school students in Oklahoma.  In 2000 I was accepted again but even at the audition I felt as though my ability to write poetry was slipping away, little did I know that by August of that year it would be totally gone, or if not gone unreachable. 

By the time I entered college in the fall of 2000 I knew it was gone and at the protests of my friends and some of my professors I refused to pursue an English or Creative Writing degree because of this.  I tried desperately to write again on an almost constant basis.  I tried so often that it affected my ability to concentrate in class or do homework.  I enrolled in as many English courses as I could, in hopes that they would somehow force me into writing poetry again. 

They didn't, even as much as I wanted them to. 

I ended up dropping out of college a few years later and because I didn't have a degree I had to work in jobs that forced me to dumb myself down for the sake of the customers and even my coworkers.  I feel like the years that I spent doing so caused me to lose my voice.  As I read my previous posts and look at the language and punctuation used, I feel as though they were not written by me.  I feel as though their style and grammar are remedial.  I feel as though any refinement I once had is gone. 

I am just so frustrated by it. 

I am not going to stop blogging because of my current frustration.  I'm just going to keep plugging away post after post, in hopes that my voice will start to come back.  I just wish it weren't too much to ask to one day be able to sit down and write poetry once again.  I miss the release and the satisfaction that I used to feel after completing that final stanza and knowing that what I had just produced was quality work and not just some remedial sophomoric drivel. 

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Save The Admiral Twin Drive In

I've been busy again, but I'm still blogging when I have time.  It's been a rough few days here lately.  I had a birthday on the first and Wynn and I have been busy looking for things for the house.  We move in six days so things are starting to get a bit hectic.  We went to a furniture auction yesterday but we were out bid on everything, but we have a bed and I know of some free furniture stashed away at a family member's house a few miles away so that will do for now.  Oh I made an A on the Biology test last week, so that's awesome.

Here's what's not so awesome.  One of the last drive in theaters in the US burned on the second.  I loved this place it was just down the road from where the Airstream is parked and only a few miles from Route 66.  One of my favorite movies was filmed there, The Outsiders, and the theater was still in operation after all of these years and I had planned to try to make The Outsiders Festival on the last day of the season.




I'm still devastated by the loss of this historic structure.


It was just the screen but the screen was not insured.  It was a nine foot wooden frame structure that no one would insure and it was a total loss within ten or twenty minutes.  No one knows for sure how it caught fire, I personally think it was arson.  It had recently rained and there were no electron components in the structure.


There has been an out pouring of support by the people of Tulsa and it looks as though the Admiral Twin will be rebuilt and open again by next season.  Wynn and I plan to attend a benefit to raise money for the Admiral Twin on October 10th at the Rose Bowl another historic Route 66 attraction.  

I hope that someday soon the Admiral Twin will be showing movies at dusk like it always has before.





Gratuitious Outsiders still taken from one of the scenes filmed at the Admiral Twin.