I am happy to report that today is a good day to be alive and well and gleaming though exhausted.

This year I have apparently decided to be a yesgirl. I am snapping up opportunities and shenanigans and all manner of other assorted things before the hat even drops from them. Consequences: new experiences, new responsibilities, better social life, and a daunting cumulative bar tab. Less poetry writing, but I am apparently going to about three poetry readings a week so I suppose it evens out. So much mental flailing (some of it feels like thrash dancing), so many beautiful words in one ear and wedged halfway out the other, so many funfab nights barely remembered. I quit my job at the end of last semester so I could knock this last one out of the park.

So far, so good.

NOW time to churn out a poem and perhaps book some plane tickets for AWP (!).

whiteboard reconvolutions

you are damask   you are fjord   you
are my lightningrod unrelativized
hyperaccompanied  you will not stop til
i am my sweat and you are what
exactly aryou  my and you are not
subjectively in a sentence together conjugated
unstopped and unwielding and un
lachrimose for you are grey mourning
Sunday and i am undangling.

One is silver, and the other's gold

Huh. What an interesting past week or two it has been.

I may have learned a lesson or two, but by far the most important is:
Have friends.
Crucially, have friends that are going to be there--to listen to ridiculous o'clock freakouts,
to pick your ass up from that bar and whisk you away from bad decisions, to wingman/lady
for you so you make mostly good decisions and are able to carry them off
with a reasonable amount of smoothness.
If you have neglected to cultivate and maintain such friendships, then you need to make especially sure to avoid any major missteps in life, because they are going to go from hellish to unendurable after a bit. Having a shoulder to cry on (sometimes embarrassingly literally) or an ear at which to direct your stream of verbal vomit (unpleasant but necessary excretion of life) can rein the situation in from anguish to ball of nerves your stomach is chewing at.

I am doubly grateful because I have not always been the most attentive friend to even my most beloved comrades. Am in the process of trying to remedy this fault of mine, mending old gaps and suturing drifts, etc (that is, when I am not involved in my own local whirlwind of indulgent drama).
I know this is incoherent and less than literary, but I have been so over-occupied in piling up and organizing the bad, scary things in life that I don't often stop worrying to count my blessings.
So, heartfelt thanks to everyone that has been there for me when I needed it, in the bad times or the blah times and even in the good times. You are truly excellent, and I keep forgetting to not forget that when I am making my universal grumbles about my distaste for humanity.
Thanks.