It’s 10:26 on the “atomic clock” behind me at “work” (HAHAHAHAHA) where I’m sitting at the showroom computer. I’m wearing my usual garb for raking leaves at 40 degrees on a windless, overcast morning and over that, a light flannel jacket and over that my brown leather jacket. I should come as a surprise to many of you that I’m not raking leaves outside today, I’m sitting in a building on the edge of the world and serving my employer by answering the phone, greeting customers who visit and helping them make granite countertops a part of their homes and businesses. I like the freedom that transcends the downside degradation and shame I feel when I encounter anyone I know who innocently and rightfully visits here. I do not like “employer’s” (HAHAHAHA) aversion to turning on the furnace.
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My feet and hands are cold; between them, I’m okay. I’ve not finished my first cup of coffee of the day.
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I slept in my bed instead of the living room easy chair last night because it was important for me to get an honest five hours sleep. I didn’t even nap after dinner last night because I knew I would be arising later than usual: 7:30 or so because I had to pay my electric bill downtown before driving out to the airport for a while and then coming here. So, I watched my special edition video of Caddy Shack and enjoyed it immensely, I could listen to Loggins sing “I’m All Right” for an hour and want to hear another hour. Slept like a sleeping baby until 6:45 and lay in bed until 7:30. Then dressed and drove down to the utility office and then to AeroKnow Museum with just time enough to check my email before coming here.
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This morning at work (HAHAHAHA) I’m culling cartoons, poems and articles from the past two-years’ The New Yorker for future reference. The cartoons I like will be trimmed out lf whole pages and taped to the clean sides of scrap paper I’ve already printed on one side and three-hole punched. Eventually, by February, probably, I will add the pages to binders. I already have six or seven full since I started 16 years ago. The collection will serve as a tomb of humor I’ve appreciated, thus a tomb of my humor as created by successful cartoonists. I hope that MANYmany years from now, friends who survive me (and I hope all of them will) will find these binders in a corner of my living room bookshelves, take them home and laugh. This is my legacy to those people.
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The articles are terrific non-fiction covering mostly politics, history, biography and art, articles I’ve read and articles I’ve not read but want to read. It’s amazing how many of these I’m finding for the first time, probably because I didn’t sit down and look closely at the issue when it arrived in my mailbox. Case in point: “Decline, Fall, Rinse, Repeat” by Adam Gopnik in the September 12, 2011 The New Yorker. I read enough of every article on sight to know if each is a keeper or a discard. It’s also amazing this year and in 2010, how many I’m not reading . . . ever . . . not saving, and that is why I’m likely going to write the subscription department and cancel my subscription for 2012. The articles I keep TRUMP cartoons and poetry every time. Even if it’s a beautiful poem, it’s a poem lost for the sake of the greater whole article.
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The poetry requires more time. All I am doing at first glance is setting every poem aside. If it’s a two-page presentation, I remove both pages and tape them, back to back at the top for easer reading later. This winter, for the first time, those I don’t enjoy will be shared with my poetry friends in this town. I will take them to a poetry reading, leave them on a table and invite all comers to take some home. I believe in poetry. Those I like will be read and savored, added to my whole poetic consciousness, to feed my own creative process; not so I can imitate a favorite author, but so I can digest success on paper and gladly be moved in small ways by small echoes of those poems as I create my own. Those I like will be added to a file of “world poetry” Ive clipped from The New Yorker and encountered and printed on the Internet.in my home office. Robert Pinsky’s “Samurai Song” hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks ago. I read it at a poetry event, and I’m going to memorize it.
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It’s 11: 01 Monday morning. My hands are getting colder. I haven’t even finished my first cup of coffee, and it’s time for a second cup so I can warm my hands again. That means I must conclude this minstrel’s ramble.
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Y’all have a fine day! 
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Live long . . . . . . and proper.
What I’m Doing This Morning
November 28, 2011 by Job Conger
I, too, think poetry has a rightful place in the readers’/listener’s life, more than it has in today’s world. Then there are a few of us, like Job and others, who take the time and heart and pain to write their song. Bravo to him and them! Be not deterred in what might seem to be an ungrateful moment. Good poems last.