Beauty in the Desert

I feel uniquely qualified to write a post with this title. I spent my formative years living in the High Desert of Central Oregon, surrounded by pine and juniper trees, bitterbrush and sagebrush, yellow bunch grasses and gnarled lava rock. The color palette of my childhood was tan, muted green, and gray. The soil was dusty. The air was bone-dry.

It was beautiful.

The skies were perpetually blue. The freezing lakes and rivers were clear. And the isolated, glaciered peaks of dead and dormant volcanic mountains dominated the eye from every meadow. I loved the tiny, anemic-green leaves of the bitterbrush and the smell in the air produced by its equally small, pale yellow flowers in the spring. Orange, fallen pine needles crunched under foot in the summer; dry, white powder muted the world in winter. In the fall, a drive to the mountains might reveal the brilliant red of a lone deciduous bush farewelling its leaves against the black of an endless ancient lava flow.

There is beauty in the desert, not just in spite of its desertness, but because of it.

Exciting Newses!

Before we start, please forgive the poor grammar in this post's title. It was intentional. (This might be why I'm not a copyeditor...)

So! I have news. There has been a LOT going on in the last twelve months. I give you: The List of Significant Things That Have Happened!

The List of Significant Things That Have Happened:

1) I wrote the pilot episode to a TV show I'd love to develop and get produced.

COVID-19 Poetry

Hello, everyone!

I thought it would be nice, since I'm all alone and since a lot of people are flocking to the internet while they're holed up in their houses, apartments, Hobbit holes and  the like, to perhaps post some entertaining fluff poems.

Fluff poems are what I call poetry that I dash off quickly, without too much thought beyond making sure it's coherent and structured. It's poetry for fun, and it's for your fun, too! So I hope you enjoy my very first COVID-19 poem, creatively titled "COVID-19."  :)


COVID-19


There was a lone poet who lived abroad
In an ancient, Slavic land;
She came to teach and live the life,
Then things got out of hand.
A bat and pangolin, they say,
May have made the brand new strand
Of virus which was spread abroad -
Now travel's mostly banned.

The poet hunkered down inside
Her dorm room all alone,
And thought she'd take a little time
To write this little poem.
And so, to all of you, she says,
"Take heart - we're not alone;
Our God still watches over us
In this strange, new war-zone."


Happy hunkering!

-RL

Uninspired and Addicted to Books

There is nothing inspiring about selling a house.

If, like my dad, you're good at landscaping, I suppose it could be an opportunity to create landscape art in the name of curb appeal.

If, like my mom, you're good at interior design, you could potentially flex your creative muscles in a bid to make the inside so welcoming that your buyers insist on keeping all the furniture and accessories (this actually happened once).

I have neither of those skills.  The height of my house-selling creativity has been applying touch-up paint to scuffs on the walls.



I've been taking refuge at Barnes and Noble whenever my realtor needs me out of the house, which is a dangerous thing to do.  I was there for a few hours yesterday, and I was absolutely determined to not buy anything except my lunch.  I was going to completely avoid temptation by not even looking at any books or DVDs.  I even took my netbook to work on a writing project so I wouldn't get bored.

Unfortunately, I brought the wrong cable and couldn't plug it in.

So I got bored.

I played it fairly safe.  I stopped by the reference section.  I glanced at the plays.  I flipped through a couple books about television shows.  I meandered over to the poetry section.  I picked books up and put them back down.  I read bits and pieces and set them aside.  I was doing very well.

Then I started skimming The Mousetrap And Other Plays by Agatha Christie.  And after that I saw the copy of Beowulf as translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, which I'd heard was coming out back in June at the Glen Workshop.

I didn't stand a chance.  I bought them both.

On the plus side, I did get an idea for a Beowulf-related story while reading that book's introduction.  So, basically, I can justify that purchase by calling it research.  As for the Agatha Christie volume...character study.  Yes.  You see?  Research again.  A legitimate, even necessary expense.



Don't judge me.  :)