Spend your time well before you go.

I think I may need a mix CD for the return.

To fictitious mountain towns

Do I use these words to try to bring myself closer?

I wonder if this place will matter as much when you're gone.

On the verge of peppermint mocha

The wind's still rolling and now I've caught on. I run quickly down alleyway and walk next to deep blue river. Reeds bend, water breaks, my hair flies. She says "beta" and I think of fish in a bowl, swishing fiesty tail. She says I'm the powerful one and I realize she's right, that maybe I have been all along.

southern lights

This wind has soul.

simplicity.

Soft rain on roof. Christmas music but I'm not cringing (too much). I am thankful for two healthy legs that will be very sore when I wake up, two feet that bounce up hills and curve around beams. Two hands for typing the two current stories. Two parents, three brothers, two girls, two boys, three teams, fourteen students, one love. Many loves. Many friends. Many words, many miles, many songs. Nights with Lauren and tea. Nights with all of us dancing. I danced all day today and never when there was music. That's the joy, I think.

On Northern shores

I look to the ocean and feel thankful for the Sound.

Home for approximately 1.5 hours

and I'm not very good at staying still.

"I'M EIGHTEEN!"

Some nights all we need is good company, windows down, and the most ridiculous songs the dial can find.

92 pages and rising

I look forward to next semester's Fridays, where I won't work for 9 hours and drive an additional two hours and then spend Saturday afternoons sleeping it away. Sometimes Sunday, like today, is the day of the sleeping-and-reading hangover. You know what that's like?

I'm all right. Amotivated but that's everyone right now. I'll miss teaching next semester and I hope that there's some sudden burst of students who need to be taught and that they'll pick me. I want to learn everything exciting and minute and breathtaking. I want something worth sweating over, something worth the miles under aching knees.

Maybe it's the YA novel-reading of sixteen-year-olds with their best friends for life, but today I miss our friendship more than normal. I know it's "people change" and "who cares" and imagined vendettas that really mean nothing. Still, though. I miss it.

Thanks for the memories

Sunshine in November, and I wake up free of everything that held me back before.

luck be a ladybug

"Can we use a springboard for bars?"
"Can I do a straddle kip?"
"Can we go to Panera?" --> followed by a chorus of "YEAAAAHHHH!"

9.3. 9.2. 9.2. I'll take it!

thirteenth, Friday

There's water on the moon and water on the south shore. Ice under speed skaters with long legs and swinging arms. It's almost that time for dancing and snow sprays and anthems. For now, I screw the lid and keep the heat.

--

There are a couple of things I'd like to say. First off, if you want to make "joking" advances, why would you do it while I'm standing there? Or at all, even, especially if I'm your friend?

And secondly, I've grown weary of consistent status updates, sad faces, blah blah blah over "I'm not in a relationship"/"I can't have her"/"But I want him/her." Yes, we've all been there! But you are allowed to enjoy the rest of your life sometimes!

We all have times when we've got to let it out. But for the rest of the time: If you have something emo to say, don't say it.

Samurai chai & 11.11

"Diana, you always keep me on task during stretching!" - Kaylee

That's why they keep me around!

--

Between the safety dance, ligers, panda death, and a single xylophone, I'm feeling pretty inspired!

"Instead of 'fin,' you'll say, 'PIN!'"

Spring '10 Shelter Island dorm themes, as composed by Ashley and me in the Tree House Lounge today:

-12 apostles
-Stations of the cross
-Communist countries
-Countries of Africa
-Colors of the Wind (shotgunning Grandma Willow)
-Boots (with the fur)
-Shakespearean insults
-Phases of Ashley's life

And on the plus side for creativity, I did win the random drawing in the name of the shoulder stick: Sebastian.

(This pursuit of the MFA is clearly paying off!)

"I'm like Enrique Iglesias."

Adventures in (real) Wainscott coupled with WEHM DJs jumping the car and the pink elephant mini golf course in Candor. Surprises in Suite 1! Quick and frigid beach trip with fuschia pink sky burning. Conflicting stories. Continuing stories. Caralyn's life story. Boys in boxes with foam axes. "...Even my smell."

And... and...

G'night!

Post-Deana Fridays

are brutal, even without Lauren's influence. ;-)

Last night: Eleven of us packed onto chairs and couches in the Greenport common area, watching "The History of Porn" or something similarly ridiculous that's even more absured under the influence. Everyone's making wise-cracks and laughing. Dom offers his house for my birthday party "as long as you invite Kimberly." 12:36 a.m. is the appropriate time for an adventure under piercing moon, deep blue sky. At 3:00 a.m. Family Guy parodies Mel Gibson and Dusty's put Deana on the couch. When I leave, the sky is perfect black and I move quickly over the sidewalk, bag in hand - the doctor is in.

And I'm a million different people from one day to the next...

Today the sun pierces just as much as the moon, but I'm barely moving. Spanish music on Pandora's the only thing to keep me awake (and Christina!). My fingers slip on the keyboard. I can only think of convenient gym closures and sleep, but neither will happen.

--

"I think we should go into business together and start a club where people can't touch each other. Like they have to wear signs that say, 'It's okay to grind on me.'"

--

The good thing this week is that I've put in the miles. Done real skills. My left shoulder's never going to loosen, both knees hurt, my left hip flexor shoots a nagging tightness down the leg, my back yelped as I turned quickly toward this computer.

And how do I feel? Fantastic.

remember, remember, the fifth of November!

Open gym, 11.4:
-System of A Down songs that I'd forgotten about blast against all walls.
-Matt swings on the rope above the trampoline, wearing a Superman cape.
-I lift into the air, twist, land lightly. Do it again.

--

"I haven't been to the library since 1984." - Tara, age 25

--

As I drink water and we discuss babies: "I hear they die easily. Like pets."

"Take your shirt off!"

So I really need a break.
And I ended class fifteen minutes early for lack of anything else to teach.
And my knees hurt despite taking today off.

But I've got a thesis settled upon,
a first-round acceptance into a lit mag,
skinny black pants,
and you know,
it's not last year
but I'm starting to
(!!!) like this year.

I need a little more time on Tuesdays

Knock it off, you dreams, you!

Nowhere to go but out, so I'm gone

There's nowhere to go in this town but out, so I'm gone. Like the ones I laughed with--they're gone, too. I don't know what's next, but I don't want to stay.

If she ever had the chance, would she do it all again?

I dreamt about this old song yesterday. We tried to make a music video to it and got as far as walking on the beach, me wearing one of your shirts and a pair of sunglasses, stepping solemnly by the water. You step elsewhere now.

But I'm back in our woods. I run because that's always been the best way to pass this transition time, the time I'm too impatient to sit through for the wait and see. Leaves cover roots so I bounce lightly, more up and down than forward, but faster than I'd thought.

Take a bow.

No. Keep going.

These two legs will save me.

Star maps to the sun.

Light streaks through the trees and breaks against the orange, red, yellow--I break faster--

You're playing you now.

drive 'til morning comes

Tonight in my car I could drive anywhere. Upstate, that state, across states to sun rising on gold coast. What would you say if I came to your door? Tonight I believe I could do it, could go anywhere on $20 and half a tank.

i miss ya kido, im glad we got to see each other in the city when i was poor and on top of the world

But I shift so quickly. Give me an audience and I tumble faster and higher than I have since summer. The time gaps are never too wide. Gymnastics means more to me than most people. I will always burn to be upside down. To raise my face to the lights in time to the music. And so I will. Even in small gyms on Thursdays nights. There is no "until."

a smile...like a lighthouse on the tip of Long Island.

Tonight I dream about running and this one and that one and our friends coming together. All of these things matter.

bury your head

I move slowly on days when I only have one (well, two) jobs. I don't sleep well, keep waking to turn onto my side, my back, my side again. It all started post-surgery with my tremendous brace, when turning had to be conscious. I need new colors, new curves in the land, new thoughts.

But where projectors fail, Nutella takes its place. A spirited discussion. The nuclear wings. Strangely enough, I've got it together.

photos of snow

Nostalgia runs rampant lately.

11:11 a.m.

This morning as I fall back asleep, I see them in parachutes lifting up and away. Not me, though. Sometimes you're the soul, other times you're the body.

crack the sky

It's the day to run at 5:06 and finish at 5:46, but the music's so good that you keep moving. You walk a campus loop as Elton John sings "Tiny Dancer" in Australia and the sky burns orange, pink streaks puffing against soft blue. You remember what Dom wrote - the sky reflects the water - and you are alone, you are filled with light.

algunas cositas con respeto a las gimnastas hoy

-I'm definitely a fan of Lauren Mitchell; very cool beam set, and at least her floor choreography attempts to go with the music!
-Same to Ana Porgras.
-Beth Tweddle's "dance" was offensively bad. In fact, nonexistent. World champion how?
-Rebecca Bross and Bridget Sloan are good, but not anywhere near as captivating as the Shawn-Nastia rivalry. No spark from either of them.
-Sun Liu (sp?) may have indeed looked like "a little girl running around the playground with her friends," but her dance showed expression and creativity beyond two poses - jump - two poses - tumble - two poses - leap pass.
-And seeing Steve Legendre on TV = freakin' sweet!

Hey, Emeline

(Set to the tune of "Hey, Jude" --> check it!)

Dear Emeline (Body Mass, as Britt would have it),

Remember that time Beth convinced me it would be a good life decision to try out for cheerleading? And I made it? And you helped me get ready for my first game in secret, then texted your mom a picture? And then the next morning I slumped into the den and Tanya noticed that one of my pupils was dilated? So you made me hide my face in your pillow and then shone a light into my eye to see if it reacted? And then throughout the week you forwarded me information about strokes, most likely while you were working at the library desk and I was on the computers there?

:-)

12:12, for lack of better title

I walk up the sidewalk through softly rolling green hills, sun filtered through yellow and orange and feel here. Not elsewhere, not anyone else.

Lately I'm not really saying anything. But nothing's raced me to do so. No kicks, no slaps. Just murmurs. She asks how I am and I say solid and I realize that is the word. Four jobs make strange harmonious sense. I love teaching. Kaylee, Hannah, and Leah now have the potential to kick ass on bars. "I saw you jogging the other day," he says. Back to the highway, indeed.

But I wonder sometimes which of these things is fleeting.

on meteor night

Where do all the lost letters run? The ones that never appear in password boxes or love messages. The poems and song lyrics scribbled along class notes, those equations and quadrants soon forgotten. The ones that disappear after the screen turns black, face snapped shut. The ones we whispered each day, each night.

What songs do they sing now?

Pueblo

I am my father's daughter. I strike up conversations with the cleaning lady who talks of Mexico and I imagine planes descending on brown valley runway. I yell at the ones who think they can get away with anything. My voice rings from mat-padded wall. Oh, no, you can't, not anymore. I find joy in the repetition of step-step-step-step-step... on pavement and treadmill track in morning piercing light, in afternoon bluster, in dusk.

--

Every Friday feels nostalgic, or maybe I'm just too quick with copy/paste, or overtired enough to let the fall air rattle me. But this Saturday afternoon speeds by like the gusts against the clouds. I am here. I am happy.

Isn't it...

5.

jersey devils

At 4:45 am, I hear conversations in the hamster wheel, think about all the e's (and the hypen) in "re-elect," remember a handout on research that I can give to my students. Write this the next night at 3:13 am when my spelling and syntax's all right but my punctuation's just a little bit off and I'd best sleep before I say too much.

Yes, I crank that every day

I write you into corners where I'm the only one who sees you.

But today I prefer wide open spaces.

Today I miss typing a quick "experiment" for Monday morning. Miss wheat bagels with egg whites and Swiss cheese, and hot chocolate on the scandalous days. Blackboard stars and photo projects on the overhead, the pain for all to see. "Too many words." Quiet Adirondack waters. Emphatic nods. You and me laughing because we always felt the same. In a way, I miss the up-and-down every-day-an-adventure-in-joy-or-pain that moved the year. Miss the barely-unbroken girl with eyes to northern stars regardless.

Don't worry about the conclusion. Tell a story.

red and black

I walked into the bathroom of the Japanese restaurant and saw my hair in the mirror. Dark as it always was after a year of red. Black as clouds streaked over piercing moon. Don't you hurt my moon, you.

--

I took on too much but I've come to love it all, come to hold it close.

soul gusts

I feel like my freshmen: I want to sleep all day. Is it the orange juice that's giving me these strange dreams and no rest? Some night I'm cold as midwinter, but you know my season's always changing.

But I love this wind. Wild boisterous gusts sending leaves spinning and branches stumbling. The kind that blows straight into the soul.

sound of distant drumming

I need my mind to be thrown wide open.

these are the lives you'd love to lead

Throwing hands up for "We Built This City," talking about overseas, cramming onto trains, torn eardrums from MSG screaming, four hours of sleep from missed alarm, Caralyn's film debut, dance dance dance.

I needed this.

Notes next to pumpkin buckets

Today:

Woke up at 6:48 and never really returned to sleep. Purple eyeshadow (why not?). 111 -> LIE -> Nicolls = NEVER. AGAIN. But the red FAC/STAFF parking permit is probably the best thing that's happened to me. Ever. Learned of Ireland's debate over voting yes or no for the EU. Glad we could stimulate the economy (or, rather, buy cheap sandwiches and let Irish boys pay our admission to the discoteca -- oops!). Refrained from reading about heinous crimes. Learned that Chicago was out in round one. Learned that Rio won. Put together a newsletter. Brought my red hat just in case anyone was giving out free SBU stuff today. Did not score any such stuff. Ate pizza. Eavesdropped on enthusiastic Spanish conversation.

"You look so pretty with make-up on!" the girls said.

"Why'd you wear make-up today?" said Valentina, age 8.

"I wanted to look like an adult," I said.

"I think it makes you look younger," she said.

Nice.

Then Fame and my cousin on screen and in the credits! And now it's getting later and I'm getting more tired, but hell, it's Friday and I should be crying by now, especially since I have to get up the morning, no?

:-)

Consider You Stalked.

Oh, Google. You make this far too easy!

10.1.09

I love that it's October. Rolling thick gray-blue clouds. Wind swirling orange, red, yellow and rattling branches. But still sunlight, slanting shadows. Sweatshirts and smoke in air. Pumpkins, apple cider, giddy fear, spirit whispers.

Let this year be the one where I'm not sad.

closing tonight with a little MJ

I'd be in bed, but I like to end my days with a word.

Writeeditreadprintgo! --> to the post office as gray wind whips the canvas bag against me and an old man calls to me as he protests Obama's healthcare on the curb --> to the pen, to the sealed envelope, to Westhampton.

I've needed this momentum.

--

Tonight the clouds are glowing.

You gave me a poem last night

I commandeered your sleeping self and wrote about it.

Thank you! ;-)

--

The dreams still drive me. After all this time, I'm still looking for signs.

For a good afternoon

Am I boring you? Do you prefer the broken girl? I can think of one who won't. Would you rather the metaphored zings? Allusions to "you"? None of this Girl And Her Thesis? There's always subtext if you follow closely enough. Face to the ground, eyes unblinking on the underbrush until something moves.

What's saved me is that I can't remember good. Just crying and cautious fleeting happiness. A high, really. I could say more but that's not the point right now. It was the point for a while. I could write about everything wrong with this place, but everyone here already knows. I could write about everything that's wrong with what you call love and friendship, but you're too busy shutting doors and I've got other stories that need a voice.

green flash

I'm surrounded by green cups. Green cups and 7-Up. This weekend I remembered what it felt like to relax. That will pass soon enough. I want the way that will write itself. That won't come.

But maybe I lie. It's 1:59 and I just remembered something. The sort of something that didn't really matter then but when I think to write of it, of course it had to be there.

Other Roads

So if a man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it, then I'm on the proper path--agonizing over every drifting sentence, finding any other project/person/plan more enticing easier acceptable, and eventually doing what I knew I would--coming back, coming back.

"All the elements are there."

Today feels fantastic. It's almost October and almost eighty. I have a (hopefully) thought-provoking class planned. I've got some flipping to look forward to. Check check check yes.

--

Locked doors couldn't take away that smile.

secrets on small paper

(And tonight, this is okay): How will I fit all of this into one thesis? (And tonight, I dare to try.)

I like conversations with doors open, secrets on small paper, questions with so many answers. I like that I no longer need some things and like that I can't remember quite how it was like. I like humid warm night, silent thick black phone, love in pumpkin goodness, words and words and words.

It rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone

I can't help but love this line on such days:

We need the rain to wash away our bad luck.

"You don't need horses to have an epiphany."

On early end-of-summer Baltimore morning, sun dazzles off the bay and people drive past farms. Planes lift and land, someone dies, someone falls in love, someone says yes and another says no. Someone is born. Others finish waking up and stretch and look on the wall and it's Sunday.

On Long Island afternoon, comet-white streaks trail ocean boats, a power plant watches without surge, people drive and text and call on grid-schemed roads, someone hears the worst news and others get the best, someone sleeps for the final time and someone comes to stay.

that which makes the climax inevitable

Dear Christina, your comments make me smile. I'm glad we continue to be friends after our 101 Hendrick days. :-)

Dear Lena, I would be neither writer nor gymnast were it not for you.

And now I have a screenplay!

Dear Octoberfest, you make me want to dance. To be like them. I will dance again.

Right now I wish to write something profound, but I shut the door instead.

you meant to me what no other could be

I miss you all. You, and you, and you, too. I pull on Albany purple and Edinburgh blue.

I go through dreams as you. I am your man-appears-from-the-shadows-and-slow-motion-breaks-you-down nightmare. I am your all-night job, the one where you're responsible for cleaning and saving lives, and I panic but this dream has only a staff meeting, and I leave without anyone knowing that I don't know what I am doing.

Maybe this is why I don't sleep well.

When do you have time for you?

Uh. Sundays?

But not really, of course.

..

Well, I'm excited for tonight before the dreams. :-)

I hope you always find a mystery in me.

I measured distance in lines

Fall nostalgia whispers in. This is the way I'm always missing. I've made leaps and bounds, but the path still winds.

So many fires burning.

station-like activities

I can't concentrate. This is the sign of too much. But it's okay. I always say it's okay. What else would I do, scream? Today one student said, "I don't usually like writing, but your class is interesting." I'll take "interesting."

I ought to know what's going on and I don't. I'm sorry. I'm always sorry, too. What else would I do? Scream.

Remember my name

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywGNmsGoMl0 --> my cousin says, "Jaaaazzzzzz." :-)

black heart inertia

Blogger has a happy piece of cake on the log-in page. Good signs?

Thunderclouds are the signs I like. Thick black streaks above the highway. It's still so hard to let go, isn't it? Count those headlights. Whisper your wants. We'll be something. Something.

tonight smells like incense

and I haven't burnt out.

I may, though, but so far one instrument joins the hum at a time. I explain "tone" with chalk and while everything doesn't quite make sense right now, it's beginning to. I will make it do so. I will!

(Too many metaphors:)
In afternoons, the peacock strutting; by night, soft shadow moving from shelter south; in mornings, as exhausted as the rest; but sometimes in mirror glances, the bun, the red jacket, the flip-flops and ready legs of a girl prepared to spring. The one I love best.

premise as personal conviction

I'll be impressed if I accomplish anything this semester (cough thesis) that's more than the late-night slap of fingers to keyboards and colors--but hey, isn't that pretty?

It's just like the ocean under the moon

Before she rises over the trees tonight, before my knee takes a sudden stop, the sun burns into cool upstate night and I think how nice it is to lead my life not by the thunderstorm now, but by the moon. My moon.

Nineteen-year-old brothers

I'm reading first-day writing samples and walking in Southampton in short shorts and sweatshirt (what else is new?), looking at neon-streaked portraits. The diagonal stroke (rush rush)--I see the lines of light blue, light blue, dark. Yet somehow the perfect shading to the suit to the man with the green drops hailing from his heaven.

And I think that some things, you just know.

It's like a real college or something.

What I like about these crazy days is shaking out the demons (and I don't mean the freshmen) -- too much going on for too much doubt. So they sift down into dreams as I squeeze my eyes shut before the alarm, and as Billy Collins says, hell is listening to other people's dreams, and this week the dreams are a breath, a whisp, a nada.

Shelter sounds

It's 1:01 am, the time I told myself I'd stop, and here I am, stopped for now. I kept going in the quiet corridor because I had to get those letters straight - a twist of calligraphy, a thicker ROCK for emphasis. Tomorrow I'll feel it but tonight I love the bright happy colors, the Rock Star Target dollar specials on the walls, the perfect twists of the w's in "We Will." We will, indeed.

I lift the chair I had to stand on up the stairs, stepping sideways, carrying myself to bed.

one suite down, seven to go

I miss writing. And running. Sleeping. Lauren and Deana because they should be here. (And in case you stalk me, Miss Sarah, I'm in need of some life updates! Your jewelry is lovely!) For every good piece of news comes five annoying pieces. But at least there's the good, you know? I should know better, but in any free moment, I just can't be made to move. Not that way.

I want to teach, want to be in the midst of all this already. I'm excited about this class and I think this is something I can do. Something I will enjoy while the rest of me does its usual five-six-seven dance.

Dom on marrying a woman who already has children: "But then if we had kids, I'd have to love her kids as much as mine, and I'm too lazy for that shit."

I'm really, really glad that your mom is okay right now. I thought about her all day yesterday. Still thinking now.

And for the one who has perfected the field of tweezer surgery: What would I do this crazy week without you?

Friends don't let friends bite strangers.

Before I left home for college, I left Riverside for Spins. I was thirteen. The only thing that could have kept me there were the girls I'd grown attached to in our two years as a team. I don't know how many push-ups, pull-ups, leg lifts, oversplits, press handstands, failed back handsprings, and missed kips we suffered through. Recital dances to Men in Black and sleepovers.

But I had to leave. Because I shouldn't have had to want to throw up from anxiety before and during every practice. There had to be a gym where the coaches pushed me to be the gymnast I could be instead of holding me down to the gymnast they thought I was. And maybe I'd make friends there.

Ten years later on a humid summer night, five of us sweat from hot wings instead of un-air-conditioned gym. We drink beer and Grey Goose instead of water (or with water), wear cute T-shirts instead of leotards, make sure to make fun of boys (maybe that never changed). Between us we've got two associates degrees, a masters in progress, three bachelors, another bachelors in the works and the fifth just begun. An age gap as wide as nine years and as close as four days. Roommates turned besties and roommates turned...lame. New gyms, old gym, and no gym at all.
Yet no matter what we speak of, one can easily say "roundoff" or "Tsuk"' or "spotting fat kids" or "I can't even..." and the rest pick up the rhythm immediately.

I think that's how it is at home. They speak your first language. And perhaps that doesn't happen until two or three or seven homes later when you realize who you are and what you want to say. And that's when the first people listen.

So to elbows bitten and needles used and unused and Meghan's shining start to college and, most certainly, to all of us.

The world we know

It's probably awkward for me to say, "Hey, I read about your dad in the paper, and I'm sorry," but...I read about your dad in the paper. And I'm sorry.

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/suspected-drunken-driver-in-fatal-commack-crash-jailed-1.1381139

Seriously. Is it THAT HARD to resist ridiculous amounts of alcohol before you drive? Especially when you KNOW that you're going to drive later? And is it that hard to call a friend, a cab, is it so difficult to stay put for awhile?

How much more is it going to take?

"What are these 'standards' you speak of?"

I think what I've wanted these past few days is my old way -- running away to stop thinking, to maybe still think but laugh too hard to listen. Just for a few hours.

So I did.

And I could have exercised a bit longer, written a bit more, but the rest of me feels realigned.

oh, I remember, don't worry

How could I ever forget?

soft skin

The radio stations aren't coming in so well tonight, and that's quite all right with me.

:-)

I wanna take you for granted

I downloaded several Matchbox Twenty songs, which of course brought me back. A good back, a growing back. Maybe I'll dig more deeply or keep it safely, keep it present.

Either way, I'm reconciling the parts of me.

Apocalypse: Now.

Thesis: arranged, aligned.
Classes: registered.
Syllabus: review begun.
Newsletter: bright lights, bright fonts.
Gymnasts: happy (for now).
Debts: paid.
Novel: nearly 40 pages told.
Laundry put away: lol.

...

I promise:

One day, I will scream! I will scream in the most calm tone, in sweetly modulated syllables, no trace of tear or doubt,

and you will be brought to your knees.

In the words of Uncle Vanya: "You will remember me!"

"Let's play this as bowling AND golf."

In other letters,

You make it real for me.

:-)

drowning deep inside your sound

Two sorts of breaks:

I swim and float and twirl, waiting for thirty minutes to pass. Perhaps I shouldn't make swimming an exercise the way I have with running. Maybe I won't. Either way it feels good to move through chilly water. The right feeling. That this is one of the few activities that has nothing to do with anyone I once knew.

A wave bobs behind me - I dive down - the thought: They're breaking, but I'm not.

On Sunday night (Monday morning?), I drive Beth's car down the highway. Lightning sketches the sky but our music's too loud for thunder. I'm more alert than I am in my car; I see every approaching headlight. I've just picked up the Poppin' Pink Lemonade when brakelights go red ahead of me. I brake, too, and then the water: bullets of rain blinding windshield. Beth takes the cup from my hand. But I only need one hand on the wheel. I know it already: I've got this.

outsourcing harrassment

I'm home right now and things are good. They're well. They're well and good. Good and well? Why not?

I write, submit, laugh with the best. I like quiet time and loud time. Early mornings are not so impossible. August was always our month. But everything beyond August might become impossible, so I slide into blue-gray water under dark gray clouds and swim until the thunder warns me out. Not the ominous thunder. The groaning crack that makes me want to get drenched in rain like ocean.

Does this make sense? Sometimes I feel like two or three different people. Lately, an exterior shell that speaks professionally and offers answers with a bright smile. Next, the self who says all sorts of silly things, and finally, the one who feels quite distant from all of this.

But all fall away in the water. Treading, splashing. Feeling chilly depths on feet. I laugh and kick them away. Swimming. Looking. Being.

angels would fall

Standing in soft Sound in darkness. Hushed water on rocks. Light glowing as brightly as full moon. One star falls.

All is right.

..

Gianna, age 10: "My mom says I remind her of the girl from The Orphan. You know, the devil one?"

buzz words:

This is the sort of language you have to speak here.

-resonate
-connect
-actor muscle
-arc
-organic
-sensibility
-turn
-hinge
-set-up
-premise line
-line break
-act break
-pinch point
-four plots
-A, B, and C stories
-male orgasm play
-"I'm a little confused by..."/"I was a little unclear on..."
-"Maybe..."
-"Maybe..."
-Maybe...
-Why haven't the scholarships shown up on SOLAR?
-How does this late fee go away?
-When are we supposed to register?
-What are we supposed to register for?
-When are we supposed to graduate?
-What time are we going to the Tide?

come on, get higher

Today is the day for acceptance, for publishing. For delicious plays and obscure allergies. For pizza and thunderclouds. Mucus and middle school memories. The perfect shade of salmon-mango nail polish. For us.

1,111

Tonight many things happen when I walk outside. Train begins to clatter down track. A plane red as Mars moves quietly. Single car drives down Montauk Highway. I imagine the waves crashing. Cicadas hum in humidity. I watch the half moon, drinking Guinness and hearing "Indestructible" in my head.

The night is thick but the sky has yet to crack. I imagine the storm. That summer it was storm and storm and storm. This summer nothing is crashing, but some things are wanting to.

humid nights that never break.

I need to tear out the lost in me.

scaramouche and all kinds of weather

I remember far too much, and it doesn't help. Leaves me longing for a nostalgia that was never really mine. Desarreglado, uprooted, looking for where the next storm comes.

dusk

I'm sitting outside on the deck right now with my laptop, possibly ruining the "natural" feel of the sunset behind the trees. I'm still not used to this seat -- there should be a pool out here and a weeping willow back there, memory says. The breeze and incessant insect hum warn of storm. Can't you feel it in the air tonight?

On this Conference-free day, I spent a good amount of time submitting*. Or attempting to submit. In the past two weeks, I've submitted more than I normally do in a six-month period.

(*Sending out writing to literary magazines, all ye dirty minds!)

Conclusions:
1. Submitting takes a long time.
2. All magazines sound identical. My eyes began to glaze over at, among other terms "high quality," "off-beat," "expermental/blurs/defies genres," "eclectic, intellectual, and engaging," and "Midwest women's relationships to the prairie" (yes, I did find that).
3. Despair is inevitable.

But I shall forge ahead, following the repeated heeds of the good Dr. Boynton -- submit! Submit!

Additionally:
4. I'm considering creating a webpage.
5. As well as a "real blog," though I'm not sure what I'd be blogging about.
6. I'd still maintain this one, however.
7. I still dislike 7.
8. Facebook auf Deutsch is very frightening.
9. I'm on the hunt for good Spanish music.
10. This entry has been oddly straightforward.
11. Pink streaks in clouds. Perhaps no storm tonight (the lull for now).
12. I miss gymnastics.
13. And upstate.

monsoon (the writing writer)

I loved these ten days of chaos, though we didn't always know what to think of our fearless workshop leader. I loved this weekend, too. Who wouldn't love such a surprise? :-) Guinness, cookies, good friends and fog-shrouded ocean. Would you believe it if I said I could be a poet, am one? You already might have.

Back to early morning work and regular exercise for the next couple of days. And so it will be for August. So I'm enjoying this now, this "non-real life" yet very, very real writing life. I race my fingers to writing the words and race to share them all before the rains come -- I am running -- come with me --

the trouble with poetry

It's before midnight, and I am thinking of sleep. Monumental?

You need to know what I'm not saying. You need to know that with this need, I don't know what I will do next.

Her diamonds falling down

Seriously, dreams? There are certain histories I wish not to repeat.

A little night music

"Miniature" -- Yannis Ritsos

The woman stood up in front of the table. Her sad hands
begin to cut thin slices of lemon for tea
like yellow wheels for a very small carriage
made for a child's fairy tale. The young officer sitting
opposite
is buried in the old armchair. He doesn't look at her.
He lights up his cigarette. His hand holding the match
trembles,
throwing light on his tender chin and the teacup's
handle. The clock
holds its heartbeat for a moment. Something has been
postponed.
The moment has gone. It's too late now. Let's drink our
tea.
Is it possible, then, for death to come in that kind of
carriage?
To pass by and go away? And only this carriage to
remain,
with its little yellow wheels of lemon
parked for so many years on a side street with unlit
lamps,
and then a small song, a little mist, and then nothing?

From here

I'm sad about Frank McCourt. He would have been here if he were not there. Otherwise, today is a good day. A day to win softball under perfect summer blue skies, a day for back handsprings and aerials. Runs down rich roads, frisbees tossed as sun retreats. Two poems in one hour. Chicken and Irish nachos. 3-for-3.

Sleep.

..

Before the call/Electing out:

I look for a clean page because all the others are filled with notes I won't look back on and scribbled names of movies and books I will never see or read.

I want to tell you that despite my height, I can sit on the top step and see the ocean from here.

tell me about heaven

We look up at pink stroke brush white clouds on deepening blue sky and I wonder if she sees God in them, because I think I might.

K-O-A-L-A

I look on the board for where "love" will be worth the most.

Almanac

For no reason at all I suddenly want fall. Leaves golden in blowing sunshine, children in too-tight new shoes at school uncomfortable in season, but everything soon to settle in an inevitable way. I'm always sad in fall but at least I know it's coming, at least I know what to expect. I know how to lose things then. How to recover, or how to try to recover. Winter is struggling soul, spring is love and wide smiles and whispers, summer is laughter then silent slow time, and fall is always something I can't quite touch, something nothing else can touch in me.

"Hi, Karen."

Whoa. It's Friday already?

Which means that I wake up at 6:55 instead of 7:30, drive instead of run, coach for a hot second and then speed back for the next round of lecture and reading out loud and listening to people's questions about process and questions that are really ways to discuss their own writing and listening to lengthy stories that lead to non-answers. My head leans toward sleep and suddenly someone says something brilliant. Everyone laughs. I have ideas! And an impromptu scholarship! And a roundoff back handspring across the yard! You never know when you might need these things.

"You're so little! I never realized," says the girl I once did gymnastics with who was, at that time, up to my chest and now has a good inch or two or three on me. Well, I was taller than you once, you know!

Muggy afternoon closes in as I walk up mansion steps--no yoga today--thinking of poetry for the teacher who was the reason I applied to Southampton, thinking of Facebook stalking, feeling quite all right.

A tomato for all directions

I'm tired every day, just like the fall semester junior year. Then night falls and I come to life. I step around the room in time to one a.m., two a.m., child who won't be put to bed, trading morning groans for late-night trance.

..

I will admit it here: the Children's Literature conference was far more fun -- and chaotic -- than I'd thought it'd be.

Right now I feel unnecessarily brave. Like I'll submit anywhere and damn, we'll see what happens.

Hutzpa!

..

To dancing stars:

Something seems to always want to be said.

sugar pie with fruit

Today is long. "You can't LEAVE!" Alexa and Sydney protest when I go to leave the gym at 9am. Where does K.S. take her authority and nose-hole-thang next? How do I follow? I must follow. Can I? Who are we telling these stories to and is it all right if I want to believe that sometimes it does not matter, that no matter what we cannot lose sight of the story for ourselves, the story for just us written to the music of keys in quiet rooms? Or is this what I have to move beyond, what frightens me? I don't know, but I will sing in faux-theater musical notes as we walk down chilly July sidewalks. Four of us at our own Tidewater table as I write comments and this tall one smiles and two are in the middle of the story and the third one walks back with shots.

Then tonight I walk alone past the mansion. Lamplight shows the shadow of hooded head on sidewalk. Suddenly I am Dante in fire-charred night perpetually pointed toward hell, but walking, walking, never looking up or back but ahead.

"I don't think that's going to be an issue"

Large vans, copy copy copy rumbling road around the phragmites. Let's be each other's friends. Let's talk about writing and write in small corners in hurried scraps of time. Stalk down the hall and then a shot of Schnaps and we're all all right, we're beyond all right. We laugh and someone says sestina and these things make sense, you see, even when you're afraid of poetry and eyes water from late hours and early mornings but you do it again, again, again.

"She's going to be published soon."

Gem car with 200 point victory lap under serene blue afternoon beside bedside laughter and inmate dancing a glass of wine a shot, a shot dreams to words to dreams and back.

evening, thinking of fire

Against All Odds

but the odds are good.

..

Ah. Here I am with my life about to be taken over by conferring with writers between menial tasks, enjoying my sports bra sunburn (she makes me laugh) and dark Shoreham drives, Jillian's hula dancing and home, of all places. Home is all right now and I needed to make it so. Before I leave again.

..

Yesterday I walked out of the water, nearly losing my balance on the Sound's rounded stones, and remembered last year's metaphor: the child stumbling from the womb. This year I am still child but one who walks, one who learns the words.

And today I pull myself out and turn back to the water to see it glimmer gray-white under late-day sun. And I'm reminded of hope, something I haven't thought of in awhile. Well, what of hope? I hope my twin makes it back to Germany safely. I hope I don't step on glass when, for whatever reason, I take off my flip-flops on North Side Road and walk on fresh paved asphalt. I hope (you know what I hope)...the rest trails off like sun.

..

This does NOT apply to my life.

But it is funny:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGAOpPTqjfqSDhFu1gk_aAC0p_Iis5k9rwlnzs0_sMLZ1ioleAu4gCGCDMS6VI3zSW6ESpUMAiqh6aG29AIFWI8coh4vAPV6JNVqK2UJWYcFUupUqLd4LN4sEug1FO_TN3KHE5Vw/s1600-h/fantasies.jpg

fireworks from the freeway

There's something to be said for 2am clarity at the stoplight just before the left turn:

This is my place.

I still get a little sad sometimes.

But Time will set this right.

And lest you think there's nothing to look forward to in life...

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/donmar-warehouses-hamlet-coming-to-broadway-with-jude-law/

shaking hard enough to shut windows

but I feel so much better now.

Clouds break.

a simple lack of mirrors

No matter how many times everyone reassures me, I see my future as an uncomfortable haze. Right now I am underwhelmed, but the only thing keeping me calm with slow steps is knowing that the fall will be chaos: four jobs, class, thesis, possibly a life.

But to what end?

--

I'd be all right with being all right with forgetting.

--

I inspected recently under bright bathroom lights, sitting on the counter and leaning my face close to the glass. They are longer now, covering the barren patches, becoming lovely.

And I know you or you or you might see me again after I've stopped, if I ever really stop. And you'll congratulate yourself. Say it was you who had stopped me. Maybe tell others about your achievement if the story's not too weird to tell.

So I'll let you know here that it was none of you. It will never be any of you.

It was a simple lack of mirrors.

daydreams

Today clouds drift through blue skies. Advil calms my groans and I can stand again. The fire alarm chirps. I'm still recovering from the "third grade incident." Today nothing needs to be done besides dreaming with you.

If London's calling, don't you dare pick up the phone

The place where I've experienced the most sunshine this summer is not the fabled Hamptons, but...Dublin. And Kerry. And it was decently lovely, minus, you know, the pollen attacks. And the driving. And insects crawling in and out. Okay, maybe I'll take the clouds.