So many kinds of work available

Economic indicators show a resurgence in the job market or some such abstract concept. Down here below the clouds, job-hunting is not just a stroll down the shoulder. I'm already scrambling to meet the job search demands of the Texas Workforce Commission. It's all new and different and definitely work.

This time in early June for many summers I would be driving to Nebraska to check on my elderly parents. They are both gone, but work remained--way overdue emotional work.

And so it came to pass that I was ready to watch "Nebraska", a brilliant movie uncomfortably close to my last years with my dad. The effect was like Cerberus chomping down on my gut and shaking me around while I sobbed and struggled for breath. Well, crap, the only way out must be through.

Lightening the material load is ongoing work. What I can't just mail off or throw away, I'm scanning. It will land in a digital haystack instead of a roomful of boxes and Rubbermaid storage tubs.

I'm delighted to find three copies of a letter my dad wrote to my sons in 1988. Dad had visited the 45th Infantry Museum with us when we lived in Oklahoma, and the experience unlocked his own overdue work.

Like so many veterans of World War Two, he had rarely talked about his experiences, but now he was anxious to share them. For myself, I am anxious to deliver the photos and letter from Dad to his now grown grandsons. Perhaps that will be a future post.

"Working in clay" seems an odd expression for the relaxing, sensorial, "in the flow" process of shaping mud. Work is such a gift when it feels like play. For a few hours a week I'll be doing overdue sensorial work and getting out of my head!

For what seems like years I've been gainfully employed six days a week. Life maintenance work had to be crammed into nights and Sundays. Now the cardboard tube of Pillsbury danish is cracked open, and life maintenance is expanding to fill the time available. I MUST FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE EXPANDING  DOUGH DUE TO MY DECREASING DOUGH!

But you wonder about my Saturday with Kirkus Reviews (6/1/14). The stars of the Circus McGurkus today were not brave Sneelock and young Morris. Instead please ponder:

• What We See When We Read seems like a must-read for poets. "In this brilliant amalgam of philosophy, psychology, literary theory and visual art, Knopf associate art director and cover designer Mendelsund inquires about the complex process of reading. . . . The book exemplifies the idea that reading is not a linear process. Even if readers follow consecutive words, they incorporate into reading memories, distractions, predispositions, desires and expectations. . . . In 19 brief, zesty chapters, the author considers such topics as the relationship of reading to time, skill, visual acuity, fantasy, synesthesia and belief.... Mendelsund amply attains his goal to produce a quirky, fresh and altogether delightful meditation on the miraculous act of reading. —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

• Twice Upon a Time There's a short preview of this ebook single at Vimeo. At $2.99, this is Kindle purchase in my price range, but now I must find my Kindle... last seen before my move in March. Yet another head on the gut-biting dog.... "A visionary e-book exploring the medium's multimedia possibilities while offering meditations on the sounds of New York and the life and work of the late street composer Moondog. An aural and visual immersion like no other, showing the dimensions that 'books' can explore onscreen that they can't in print.” — Kirkus (starred review)

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder