Out of ink, money, and earshot.

Our condo came with a complete set of furniture. So did I.


My printer is out of ink. Again. My printer uses cartridges which, according to something I read somewhere online, so it has to be true, contain only a teaspoon of ink, a very expensive teaspoon of ink. My printer spends a vast amount of time sucked dry. In fact, my entire last year of university, being too poor to afford this solid gold ink for my own printer, was spent constantly converting files written on a pc using WordPerfect to be read by a mac, emailing them to myself, running upstairs to my mother's computer, waiting to receive the email, running back downstairs and emailing again having sent the unconverted file, running upstairs to my mother's computer, waiting to receive the email, running back downstairs and emailing again having forgotten to attach any file, running upstairs to my mother's computer, and printing them off her mac using a wireless and finicky contraption of a printer. But it always had ink. And the fact that it worked without wires now appeals to me, seeing as how, in order to attach my printer to my computer, wires end up strung across the kitchen door, and over top of my bf's computer. It's just the way all this furniture fits. So in order to print anything I use a USB powered cup warmer, which happens to have a very long wire and multiple USB plugging in-able holes, as a handy extension cord to string across the room, as the printer's own cord, of course, isn't long enough.


I managed to print off a few finished poems the other day, leaving the iffy one to be further worked on. One of those printed though has fairly faded ink, and the perfectionist in me cringes and wants to reprint it once I've gotten some more ink, while the poverty stricken poet in me cringes at the idea of replacing something that isn't completely broken.


No, I won't let us cave in to peer pressure and purchase a new, big, flat-screen tv. The small boxy one we have still works. And if it stopped working, we have the older, smaller (and thus slightly less boxy?) tv from the bedroom we could bring out.


I really need a teapot. Making tea one cup at a time, it's just not efficient.


I printed those few poems, and on arranging them onto the clipboard, reread an older poem, Godspeak, which had been inspired by a poem that originated as an in-class exercise. I immediately jumped onto the computer, brought up the old file and went wild. It was just one of those moments. Perhaps the longer a poem sits, the more chance the weaker images and words have to stagnate, and the easier it is to then sniff them out. Some pruning allowed an opportunity to show within the piece, and following up on this really clarified the work. I'm very happy with it now, and after bringing out the index card with its name on it, I can see that I wasn't before; it has never been sent out anywhere.

Perhaps most striking about this was that it was a moment when I was able to write in the evening, with the bf at home. It was still a struggle of course, but not completely impossible. Most important I think was that there wasn't a lot of time where I had to let my mind wander, the writing involved was very goal oriented. The biggest challenge of writing when he's home is how to politely, and without hurting his feelings, tell him to shut up. And then of course, since he's male, he needs to be reminded, constantly, that you've asked him to not talk. Their memory... it's not fantastic, coupled with the serious hearing disabilities inherent with the y chromosome...