Do Mode & Be Mode

While walking the other day & thinking about Rod McKuen, I was in Be Mode.  My antennae were up, my ear was to the ground, eyes in the trees and water.  I took notes like a photographer, composing what I saw, skimming and focusing on the periphery... I collected and gathered and walked.  That was the last day of Be Mode.

During Be Mode, I do fun things, like take pictures of spilled milk, as if it had spilled in the shape of the Virgin Mary... During Do Mode, I do similar things, just in a different way.  For instance, I take pictures of what I have done or what I am doing. If I spill the milk in Do Mode, I just grumble and wipe it up. 

Since the day of the walk, I've been in Do Mode.  Here's what I've been doing (Note: I work in Lists while in Do Mode, so that's all you get):

I took C & my mom to see my amazing cousin perform in Phantom of the Opera.  I’m not the kind of person to talk things up if they’re not worth talking about.  My cousin Josh is worth talking about, and he's just in high school.  After the performance, he was surrounded by a gaggle of girls asking him to sign their programs, one of whom said she was his future wife... Ah, to be a kid again... I promise he’ll be famous some day.  There is, oddly, well, maybe not so oddly, a review of the performance here, so you know I'm not biased, he is really a bit genius.  (He's discussed a bit later in the review and when the reviewer says he's genus, I think he/she means genius. Not to be a snob or anything, I mean, high-five for reviewing a high school musical...)

 

My mom and I spent the weekend with the twin baby nieces so my sister-in-law could go out with her friends.  My brother was hunting.  He didn’t get a deer.  Needless to say, there was little being, lots of doing.

Thanksgiving menu is set, its execution planned, and cleaning/cooking time scheduled.  Matthew’s family is coming. Tomorrow I will go to the store at 7 am to avoid people.  I’m sure Thanksgiving will be all I think/talk about for the next 2-7 days...

I updated my submission spreadsheet with a list of journals I’d like to be published in & then made a list of which poems to send them.  There are 33 new submissions to send.  That’s a lot of doing. 

I went to H&M (see previous post).  What I didn’t mention is that I also went to Jo Ann Fabrics & Hobby Lobby and bought glittery things with which to make Christmas tree ornaments. And a pheasant, a quail, and pine cones.

Food while in Do Mode: pumpkin waffles with spiced whipped cream and maple butter; enchiladas; 4 loaves of Italian bread for stuffing; a delicious butternut squash, potato, &caramelized onion gratin (I caramelized while slicing and subbed the onions for the tomatoes) ; and pizza from Glass Nickel (because I was too busy doing other things that day).  They were all so good that C went back for 3rds.

  

Do Mode is all right.  I've been reading about the habits of "prolific writers" for a workshop I'm teaching this spring called "Secrets of a Prolific Writer."  I found a blog talking about how Joan Didion needed to hang out with the dishes and laundry while writing in between these chores.  I can't find the actual essay in which she actually says this, but it feels good to me to believe she said it, so I do.

One day, Be Mode and Do Mode converge and then there are poems.