Timeline

Ran across this idea on Teresa Ballard's blog Early Hours of Sky, traced it through a couple of other blogs to Ji-in's blog Twice the Rice:

What were you doing 10 years ago; and five years ago; and one year ago; and yesterday?

10 years ago
I was working in downtown St. Paul relaying phone conversations for people who were deaf, hard-of-hearing, and/or speech impaired. It was a non-profit agency funded by the state. When I'd first started working there (1990) I liked the job, though little by little corporate-style management had crept in, and the job had become bitter and hostile. (We'd formed a union and had been on strike once.) I still liked the work itself, sometimes, even as stressful as it could be. I could write while I was at work -- I got much much writing done during the time I worked there. Marking time, waiting for what was next.

A long relationship with a woman I'd known many years was slowly drying up, finally going nowhere. I felt sad but it no longer hurt very much. A short intense erratic friendship with a poet 20 years younger than me exploded and ended badly, though (later) mended somewhat. I spent much time hanging out at local coffeehouses in Minneapolis, especially the Coffee Gallery and Cafe Wyrd, where I wrote a lot.

5 years ago
Mulling over the implications of the "election" of George Bush. Had been largely idling in neutral for much of the previous year; this was in part, though not entirely, a slow crawl back out of numbness after my father's death by suicide in 1999. I was coming somewhat back to life by this point. The poetry open-mike scene in Minneapolis -- highly active and lively through much of the '90's -- was starting to thin out, as little by little the more serious poets began to hole up and get reclusive and concentrate on writing. My book of poems If There Is A Song was forthcoming at the publisher during this time. (It came out early 2002.) I was writing a lot, and reading. Working for a living in the billing department of a large corporation, in an office with gray cubicles and gray windows.

1 year ago
Mulling over implications of the "re-election" of Bush. Locked in mortal combat with Microsoft "customer service" trying to figure out why I was having problems installing MS Word in my computer. (Turned out to be a simple stupid thing that it took three phone calls and a couple of unanswered emails to figure out.) Two poetry books forthcoming at the publishers. Firmly entrenched as a recluse, enjoying relative solitude. At around that time (or maybe shortly after), I was posting a lot on a couple of poetry message boards. Not blogging yet.

Yesterday
Woke up mid-morning. Bright and clear and cold outside. Snowed here several times during the past week or so, not heaps of snow but a good covering. Read some of Late into the Night, translations by Martin McKinsey of Yannis Ritsos, which I like; and read some of Winter Hours, new book of poems by Thomas R. Smith published by Red Dragonfly Press, which I also like. Read a couple of pages of The Story of Gosta Berling, novel by Selma Lagerlof, translated by Robert Bly, to get a sense of the writing. I'll spend more time with it. The novel captures well the spare silent quality, the starved isolation, of the northern European culture that remains such a pervasive undercurrent here, even with the great changes that have happened in the local culture in the past thirty years with successive influxes of people immigrating from southeast Asia, Central America, Somalia, and elsewhere.

I watched the Minnesota Vikings play football on T.V., and ate pizza. This time of year it's cold here and the daylight is short. Good time for hibernating. Two books of poems still forthcoming from the publishers. Writing much.