There is something about listening to classical music in the morning that just makes the mornings that more pleasant. I'm still trying to wake up every morning at about 5ish to read and write, beside the little set back I had last week of getting sick, I've held that commitment to myself.
I received a few rejection letters these past few weeks from literary journals. I wasn't too surprised to receive it from one of the journals, but I was really surprised my poems didn't make it into the other journal. My reasoning is that I received a prior rejection letter from them last November, with them urging me to submit again, since my poems were among the finalist. I have a feeling this is what they tell all of their rejects. Boo! I guess this is why it has been hard for me to get motivated to write some of the poems I have in my head, but this morning, I did manage to write two more entries for my verse-novel, The Papaya Plot.
Some other good news, last night I booked another ticket to visit my wife in Phoenix. She will be doing a month long rotation at St. Joseph's so I'm very happy that I'll be able to visit her again while she is down there, plus the sound of Arizona when it 10 degrees outside here in Nebraska sounds so much better! Oh Arizona...how I miss thee!!
I've been thinking about my grandfather a lot these past few days. I think mainly because, I'm at the part in The Papaya Plot, which resembles his life. When I think of him, two images come to my mind. The first is him in his wheelchair, sitting next to the front window of our house and looking outside for hours. He would sit there and not say a word just watch. I always wondered what he was thinking. Did he like it here in the U.S.? Was happy with the way thing turn out in Nicaragua with the revolution? What did he expect to see to in our neighborhood? Yet, with all these questions lingering, it was a comforting image, seeing him sitting there looking out into the world from our small home.
The other image of I have of him is from a totally different spectrum. For the most part, my grandfather was a very quite and reserved man. Didn't say much, but when he talked, everyone made sure to listen. He was a quite man, but how he laughed. It was a ritual my father did solely so that my grandfather would laugh. Every time after dinner, my father would act like he was singing a Chinese Opera, within seconds my grandfather was a gasping for air from laughing so hard. Everyone at the dinner table would laugh with him, because I think deep down inside everyone knew he didn't have much time and what better way to spend your last days than with family at the dinner table and laughing to the sound of bad imitation Chinese Opera.
Te extraño abuelito!!
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