Unfastened

Poems and prattles

 

Eliana Hope Is Here! March 4, 2009

Filed under: Photos, Prattles — Laurie @ 11:22 am

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Born February 6th at 8:03 p.m. — 6 lbs 10 oz of cuteness! Mario and I are adjusting to our new daily routine which consists of feeding, burping, diapering, sleeping when we can, and occasionally staring at each other in bewilderment: we have a baby!

 
 

New Release December 26, 2008

Filed under: Tidings, Photos, Prattles — Laurie @ 8:47 am

For Christmas Mario gave me this cover for my first CD! Of course, I have no songs written and I haven’t touched a guitar since 1997, but I have a cover. And a baby in that belly, which isn’t nothing.

We spent a quiet Christmas with Mario’s family and my parents, hanging out here in Austin. Our plan for next week is to pack the suitcase just in case the little one decides to opt for an early release.

Hope all who read this are having a wonderful holiday!!!!

Oh, and if you’re interested in our baby registry:

http://www.mygiftlist.com/registryfinder.asp?refsource=EARTHMAN846

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Zuuummmiiii! October 26, 2008

Filed under: Tidings, Photos — Laurie @ 10:03 am

laurie_belly_21oct20083.jpg Yes, Maybe became Maybier became Zumi! She’s moving around in there and sometimes waking me up with hiccups in the middle of the night :-) 

 
 

Maybe . . . September 12, 2008

Filed under: Tidings, Photos, Prattles — Laurie @ 4:24 pm

Yep that’s me with Maybe, growing into Maybier. Eventually Mario and I will come up with a different name. We’re doing well (despite my complaints about sleeping on my left side and my constant desire for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, peanut butter and apple sandwiches, peanut butter and peanut butter sandwiches, you get the picture) Feeling lucky compared to all the hurricane evacuees in town. And lucky to be halfway to the eta in February. We’ll keep you posted!

maybe…

 
 

Updates Long Overdue June 10, 2008

Filed under: Tidings, Prattles — Laurie @ 6:22 pm

In January, Mario and I moved to Cinnamon Path (1406A to be exact, zip code 78704), the street name much to his chagrin. When I praise our sweet and spicy locale, he threatens to get a P.O. Box ☺ At any rate, we’re enjoying our half a duplex, with a red floor, high ceiling, and cheaper rent. We can walk to Maria’s Tacos and the Irie Bean. I’ve been potting plants in our shady yard.Politics dominates our conversations, our social life, our youtube viewing. Last night we danced to Stevie Wonder at Club DeVille, celebrating Obama’s nomination. Mario has worked hard, so hard, that a straw poll last weekend placed him as a likely delegate to the national convention in August. Wow! He’s also been working as the “netroots” technology coordinator for the Travis County Coordinated Campaign.

Not to be outshone, I’ve been working hard too. I’ve almost completed my first year at Badgerdog managing education programs that place writers in the schools. I’ve helped train teachers and organize readings, I’ve managed publications and developed budgets, I’ve served lemonade to student authors and even signed a few autographs. Now we’re gearing up to start our summer writing camps.

On a personal note, I’ve officially begun the summer of turning 40. Vive and I christened it with a trip to the Crossings: yoga, swimming, hiking, and a reiki class. I like to think of this year as my year to stop wandering in the wilderness stubbornly wrestling with god and to arrive at the promised land of self-acceptance ☺

Hope all who read this are well!

 
 

More about 40 June 7, 2008

Filed under: Prattles, Uncategorized — Laurie @ 7:38 pm

It’s not my own age so much that’s obsessing me, but the historical era. MLK was shot the year I was born. And not long after, Nixon was elected. 40 years: it doesn’t seem a stretch to say, as a nation, we’ve been wandering. The flood, the desert, the desolate pit — choose your biblical metaphor. And now here’s a leader in Barak Obama, a man whose story is the is the story of the hero’s journey, a black man with a Muslim name. Is it too much to dream anything is possible?

 
 

Mayakovsky and Weather Warnings July 16, 2007

Filed under: Prattles — Laurie @ 3:36 pm

January 15th, 2007

I’ve been reading a little book of Mayakovsky’s early poems. Outside, a rare Austin ice storm threatens. And I wonder if we had more severe weather if Texas would have more poets, poets who call out to the audience: “All of you, filthly, in galoshes or without/will clamber onto the butterfly of the poet’s heart!” Or poets who contemplate suicide by shotgun or the embrace of a locomotive’s wheel. The house won’t get warm, and I’m reading Mayakovsky, Mayakovsky before he bought the communist dream, Mayakovsky consoled by indolent clothes while the sky cries loudly. Of course, he is beautiful and sinister, photographed in shadows, isolated even from other poets. Mayakovsky has no poem for Akhmatova. No poem for Pushkin that I have found, though his concern for horses reminds me of The Bronze Horseman, where Yevgeny, reduced to a lone beggar, is whipped like a horse in the street, and reminds me of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, an animal who suffered the same fate. In Austin, the memory of horses has nothing to do with a human recognition in a horse’s tear. Here, we have two or three days of Russia a year when the sky stops suggesting the endless frontier, when the fiddles stop singing, and the rain turns to ice, and suddenly it feels possible to write.