The Second Order of a Minute

The ghost of Tyrone Guthrie

wavers and walks again

across the city in which he slept

built dreamed thought acted

action impacting thousands

even as his body rests

and his face, always larger than life,

stares for a time down Washington Avenue

while we walk, jog, run

acting on the small stage of Minneapolis

under the influence

of the flour sacks

and the ruins of mills

We know our bones won’t last as long

as the stone arch bridge

even with its trusses

its heart surgeries and such

our time is a moment

and we still do not understand the nature of time.

Back to Writing!!

Hi there. So, I went to log into my website, www.sheilamcmahon.com, only to discover that it is gone. It is now an advertisement. So I am faced with the question of whether I would like to reup with it – and the answer is, I don’t think so right now. I haven’t been doing anything with it. I had a large section of my unpublished but basically finished novel, Someotherville ,posted, with some glaring errors that haven’t been corrected yet, and that was the whole thing. I don’t know enough about websites to make a really good one, and frankly, I really like wordpress, and I don’t think I need a different site.

I am considering posting part of Someotherville here, but I don’t know if I want to yet. I have been thinking over the fact that I haven’t made a concerted effort to get it published. I don’t know what stops me – I’m happy with the book, I think people would enjoy it – there’s no reason not to work harder, finish the last round of corrections, rework one section just a tad more, because I had a revelation about it, and then send it off to —who? That’s the big question, I guess.

But the small question of whether I should contact the website people and get my site back is easy – no. Not necessary. And if some other Sheila McMahon (and there are a lot of us) should snag it, then good for her.

I’m glad I still have my wordpress blog, and perhaps I should start with rededicating myself to posting here every day. I find myself putting things on facebook that would be more appropriate here, anyway.

Alphabetography

Hey what up?  Sorry I haven’t been writing much – the fall is hard for me, and I get myself into a funk.  I was somewhat depressed over the weekend, but now I have an idea for a new project for one of my classes.  It’s actually an idea that I read somewhere else a few weeks ago, but I have ideas as to how I’m going to use it.  It’s a memoir project.  The idea is that for each letter of the alphabet, you tell a different story from your life.  You might say, A is for Accident, and then tell about an accident that you had.  We are going to do one letter a week.  Meanwhile, we are still going to work on memorizing a poem, and we are going to talk about the mechanics of poetry.  We will also read some other people’s memoirs.  Yeah!  I am so excited about this work.  Can’t wait to get started.  I think we will start with my favorite idea generator ever – you take about 5 minutes and write down a list of all the people you can remember from your life.  From there, you make a list of important moments in your life… using that list to come up with ideas for your memoirs.  Ok, have a good day.  <3 Sheila