A metaphor

I stood on the bank of a river,

stuck in a toe and felt

invigorated, refreshed, yet chilled to the bone.

And looking over the waves, I perceived

swimmers in the torrent.

Some struggled, nearly sinking,

others floated, eyes glowing,

buoyed up by the icy flow.

I had thought I could swim;

now, I do not know.

But I long, I long

to the core of my soul,

to join those who float,

to float to the sea,

and see what becomes of me.

I have come up with a magic formula:

ADDS--Action, Dialogue, Description equal Story.

Well, I say come up with; I should say recognized. All the stories I like most have something happening in them, to people who must talk to each other, in a land that is described. It's a ridiculously basic formula, but I like it.

I tried another bit of blank verse today.

It was more stream-of-consciousness than my poetry usually is, so I think it's bad. I don't know. I should leave blank verse alone.

I keep daydreaming about going to Ireland. I've worked out some of the logistics, but I really need to bounce the idea off my boss before I start making any concrete plans. My sister has made plans based on my idea. Not just concrete plans, I swear she's building a house. I really should work out these plans.

I spent yesterday feeling like playing hooky. This resulted in skipping my improving book at lunchtime in favor of finishing a poem and writing a synopsis for an ongoing idea. Then it resulted in staying up until one o'clock in the morning, eating kettle corn and watching TV shows on Hulu. But my Facebook friends told me there's nothing wrong with nutty stuff like that, as long as I enjoyed it. Apparently, kettle corn is a popular thing.

I am so stuck on the Bard story, it isn't even funny. But, since the dear sweet kids in Sunday school are curious, I promised I'd read them the original draft. I figure, hey, eight-year-olds aren't going to notice bad writing. We'll see how far that idea takes me.

I listened to Mumford and Sons earlier today. Now I have one of their songs stuck in my head. But since I play it more as background music than as sing-along music, I have no idea of which song it was. Ah well, it makes nice mental background music too.

I'm also working through Antony and Cleopatra for the second time. For some reason, the first time I read it I thought of it as comical. I have no idea why. Because it isn't. She's concerned about his faithfulness, since he left his wife for her and then remarried for political reasons when his first wife died. He's torn between his love for her, his duty to Rome, and his growing uneasiness about Caesar Octavius. Octavius would really like it if Antony would settle down and help crush Pompey's rebellion. And that's just Acts One and Two, folks. Good old Shakespeare, packing a million events into a tiny booklet. I still want to see this play performed. I should get Julius Caesar, too, and finish watching that.

This is the sort of random trivia that I subject my dear father to on my way to work. Since he's not home and I'm bored, I am now inflicting the random trivia on the internet. Shazam.