I'm taking a little break for a while. I am packing my bag for the reading in Kato town, and I am reading poems. I am trying to figure out what to tell my creative writers about story and conflict and dialogue at a time when everything in my personal life is story and conflict and dialogue, and I am so, so tired.
I am also trying to figure out the best way to physically prevent myself from not wandering over to the house where I used to live--and not standing in the middle of that old street and not looking in the windows of the living room where we all used to drink wine and scream Rod Stewart songs and not crying until my fucking face slides off--this coming Thursday. Perhaps it will involve rope, perhaps it will involve Master Locks.
I am trying to figure out where to go the weekend after, whether I should stay here or get myself to Pennsylvania. All I can think is that at this time last year, I was wearing a new fleece and running almost every day. I was listening to Jason Anderson's "First Snow of the Year" and feeling warm and independent and okay.
And now I feel none of those things. Or, to borrow lines from Bob Hicok's "The Maple":
The story
here is that all morning
I've thought of the statement
that art is about loneliness
while watching golden leaves
become unhinged.
So I'm not going to be here for a while, and I will see most of you pretty soon, and let's just talk then. Oh boy should we ever.
