A couple of cool invitations

A week or so ago, Meg Tuite invited me to participate in a collaborative reading of Colin Pope's poem "Still Life with a Casket in the Distance." The video was just posted on the BENDING GENRES blog. I'm the second to last reader.

Maybe by chance, Jonathan Cardew just reposted an old craft essay I wrote for the BENDING GENRES blog denouncing plot. I was afraid to read "Plots are for Dead People," but it wears better than I expected. I still agree with myself, though I haven't written that sort of mathematical experiment in a while. I'd like to.

The flash writers Sudha Balagapal and Rudri Patel (editor of SUNLIGHT PRESS, where I won a flash essay contest) just invited me to talk about nonfiction flash via Zoom with their "Desert Flash" group later this month. I immediately had a lot of ideas, but then I asked and learned that they want me to talk for 7-8 minutes! I'm thinking about reading "The Arithmetic of Memory," which is sort of mathematical. Honored by the invitation.

Lots of good ideas for my "Masque of the Red Death"-inspired flash in my writing group Skype meeting Wednesday night. I spent most of yesterday going through ten drafts (ten!) of the 600-word flash, which might seem an exercise in futility to a non-writer, but made for a very satisfying day.

I also posted a photo on Facebook that I took of a sunset on Clement Street, just around the corner from Alia Volz's flat, where our writing group has been meeting for nine years. Skype works, but I miss my bimonthly trips over the Bay Bridge to meet with my brilliant fellow writers in person. I miss the neighborhood too. From the beginning, I felt like I was being lifted out of my university milieu in the East Bay into something new and unfamiliar and freeing.