This was long overdue. I deactivated it last November, but turned it back on a few weeks later to save my following/follower list. Then it lay dormant & forgotten for most of the year, except for some DMs to people who were still nowhere else & who were seemingly impervious to email. It’s time.
I was invited over to a friend’s apartment to meet her — and she ignored me the whole time. No hello, no eye contact. Absolutely nothing. She was utterly unapproachable. Instead, she spent the evening in the other room, forehead-to-forehead with her friend, discussing and analyzing a VHS tape of the modern dance concert she’d choreographed a few weeks earlier. And I could see instantly how smart, articulate, beautiful, and, most of all, strong she was.
We began dating eleven months later, and married eleven months after that. Twenty-two months that seemed, at the time, to span thirty years. And now, thirty years that seem, at times, to have spanned barely twenty-two months. Well, that’s time for you.
Some stories belong to the breath, not to the pixel and keyboard. Some stories need the counterpoint of digressions and indignant amendments, of interruptions to refill the wine glass or the bread bowl, or to choose more music, album by album. They need the bustle and patience of a long evening, the wood and steel rhythms of a well-provisioned table.
So: to hear the rest of the story, you’ll need to be seated across from us, favorite beverage at your elbow, and all the time in the world. And perhaps a story or two for us in exchange.
I’m going to the Ren Fest today for the first time in over thirty-five years, and possibly only the second or third time ever. This weekend’s theme is, apparently, Oktoberfest and I am told there will be yodelers. I think I’ve just developed an anticipatory hangover.
My chapbook came out yesterday, and a problem with being an older debut poet is just hitting me.
Almost everyone I’d like to share the news with is long dead.
My parents, most of my teachers, all my mentors. The twentieth century has been dying for years; this week I feel freshly re-orphaned.
Obviously, this is not to diminish how great it’s been to share this news with all the people who ARE still here, but it’s all the more bittersweet because it makes me realize how many others have already gone…
Also… I may have a list of the dead, but I’ve lived long enough that there is also a list of the dead-to-me. This is bittersweet in a different way, but it also brings a grim satisfaction that I never have to deal with any of them ever again.
I’m only now beginning to feel slightly human again after losing a week to the most spectacular head cold I’ve had in years. Watching my immune system fight this cold was like watching someone try to build an intricate model airplane while being pelted with coins.