Restricted

The rules by which we live in five categories: Vital – you walk on sidewalks rather than down the middle of the street, you don’t eat those mushrooms, etc. Conventional – cultural rules by which you know whether to wait in a restaurant to be seated or to find the empty seats and help yourself, how to behave in various social situations, avoid the strange looks from others. Pedagogical – submission to which you may not understand the reasons why, but you do it anyway in trust of your teacher. Wax on, wax off. The unnatural shape of your hand at a new musical instrument that, built into your technique, will make more advanced passages possible. Arbitrary (oulipo) (puzzles and games) – these add challenge to ordinary activities, are...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Mar 26, 2011 | 2 comments

Unslaked

Sometimes I own a book for a year or two or five before it becomes not just important but urgent enough I read it that it jumps whatever queue I have for intended reading and comes into my hands. Raven particularly liked the chart I made for myself with a queue for fiction, a queue for music books, one for other non-fiction, one for books of literary criticism or on the subject of writing — figuring that was how many I could responsibly maintain at a given time. Though of course the books we read aloud together to the little boys have a queue of their own in my mind, and poetry — doesn’t make lists. It comes spontaneously to hand for one poem or for a whole book of poetry, filling a need, answering a line crying out in my head, like a song lyric...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Mar 6, 2011 | 2 comments

Ordinary Time

And it occurs to me that after so many years of journals and blog entries I have created for myself a particular sort of almanac: this is February and there is a thawing and melting in my brain, that starts with the merest hint of dripping and a brave spear of green with the temerity to poke up through the snow, and proceeds as it has since the invention of seasons while reinventing itself completely anew, a cycle that leaves words and feelings tumbling in wild and unrestrained cataracts. I walk into the house grateful for quiet and solitude after walking my son to school because there is no one to ask my attention before I grab a pencil and scrawl the words that have rushed my brain, the demand for immediate jotting, words in pairs, wild puns and homonyms (when...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 18, 2011 | 1 comment

Bare

I like the litter of the little plastic ampules emptied of purple ink, scattered about on my desk, and even the scraps and bits of paper on which I have pressed the nub trying to establish a smooth line, a flow of ink. It is fussy and perhaps a little backwards. Energy would be better spent trying for greater legibility. “The worst handwriting for a girl I’ve ever seen” said my seventh grade math teacher: perversely this became a source of pride. I would be heartbroken to learn that every year was a girl chosen to be bestowed with the honor. I envy friends with beautiful handwriting, of course — though one can now have a friendship without ever becoming acquainted with the friend’s hand. Which seems so odd to me. Handwriting as...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 17, 2011 | 0 comments

Anniversaries

I sat the other day looking at the stacks of journals I have filled; there are 28 of the particular binding and dimensions I grew attached to and would buy, stockpiling them like the nuttiest sort of squirrel, every time I had to go to Target for diapers, for toothpaste, for laundry detergent. One secret thing in the shopping cart that suggested I wasn’t just a housewife. It’s my favorite aisle of the store, the one where I spot the women who browse notebooks attentively, with a slight dreaminess as they contemplate rule and binding. I can no longer find these notebooks, have been unable to for more than a year, and I write in the last of them a little regretfully. I finally this month found a possible replacement and bought up seven of them, they have...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 11, 2011 | 0 comments

More violin

This morning I kept a promise and strapped my violin case to my back, walked down the hill to the school where the middle two boys are and went in to the office where a substitute secretary went fumbling through desk drawers to find me a visitor’s pass so that I was official. It is astounding how every school seems to have its own culture of protocols, at my younger son’s school I have to create an account on a visitor’s computer on which I sign in; here the community is so small that everyone pretty much recognizes everyone, but there are concessions to security, a kidnapping from a Portland school last spring, I don’t complain. And then I went out to the portable classroom where my son’s class is, open the door to a jumble of seven...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jan 27, 2011 | 0 comments