Forgive me friends if I've neglected you these last months.
It’s been so long since I posted anything online that I admittedly feel a bit timid. Every time I've thought about writing anything here, I've suddenly stopped--as though the blog police will inform me that I'm violating unspoken decorum in polluting airspace in writing about my-little-ol-insignificant-self instead of something or someone which warrants actual attention and examination.
Life right now is anxious and urgent, but perhaps it always is? Perhaps we are only cognizent of the urgency of living when things are painful or new, or when we are truly free and have reconciled our actions with the conviction that we will die sooner than we think?
Life right now is the fullness of Atlanta heat and sweaty, pregnant clouds collapsing into violent rainstorms. Life right now is discovering Philip Larkin for the first time and quietly weeping into glasses of very, very cheap red wine over gorgeous lines like, "Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf."
Life right now is two jobs to equal one full(ish) income.
Life right now is coming home at night to a child who is already sweetly sleeping in her bed, and feeling strong and concurrently helpless when I drop that same child off at preschool the next morning while she whimpers and clings to my leg and begs me to stay with her instead of going back to work. Life right now is modeling the value of hardwork and sacrifice. I can only hope that one day she will forgive me, and understand why I must be apart from her so much right now.
Life right now is fighting for life right now.
Life right now is listening to my inner-most self.
Life right now is politely (temporarily) removing myself from the poetry scene, and that feels very good and necessary. My brain and heart have appreciated the break from the preening and useless circle-jerking that seems to abound in this little tribe.
Life right now is gobbling up a lot of non-fiction, YA novels, and personal finance manuals lately and somehow that feels more nutritive and empowering than my constant poetry consumption in the last 2 years which has left me (lately, anyway) feeling disgusted or rejected or full of exquisite jealousy. I leave poetry with the hope of rediscovering the joy of it.
Life right now is quiet and solitary and uncertain, but for the first time it is taking a shape that I give it.
Surely that is worth saying something about.
