Would That I Might

 I often considered various literary forms as organizational mechanics.  For example, I think of stories in this way.  Consider that a series of events are not a story in the world, but become a story through how they are collected into a framework.  A set of events over a span of years might seem disparate and unconnected when seen as just the reality of things that happened, but when some of those events are pulled out and ordered, it can create a specific narrative thread.  The story is not the events that occur, but a method for ordering them, with certain qualities. To me, this is the essential function of language, to be honest: to organize and process information about the world.  This facilitates communication, of course, but the truth is, it is an internal tool first.  The mind of a child must learn to associate words and ideas with what exists in the world before being able to put that language to use with another.  Various studies show that learning language facilitates the

Family Goals Asked what she wants for her family, I thought it would be happiness or something of that sort, that she would want  her children to have joy, but that was not anything she says she wants, no, what she wants is communication and respect, but she did not say anything about making things better, only that their should be respect and the ability to discuss it.

I am thinking about certain personal myths that have been part of my identity for a very long time.  When I was young and began school, my experiences were very extreme and difficult.  As a dyslexic student, I had a great deal of difficulty learning and the school was not equipped to offer any help.  Instead, I was ignored and convinced of my own failings.  I believed I was notintellectually capable of reading, for example.   The results of this were very extreme.  I was a young child and the impact of being pushed down in this way were very extreme.  My father always spoke of how I changed, how I lost a certain spark.  My mother has expressed similar feelings as well.  Now, I am sure that there is a truth here, that I did change.  I was wounded, and I cannot really describe what I felt at the time.  I accepted it as true and right, as normal.  I deserved it, because I was just stupid.  But, I did not want to be, and it crushed me to be in that situation.  That is all true. Yet, I cann

Family Therapy Tomorrow scares me, it will bring a day I already can see, can imagine.  The morning seems so clear, tonight I can see it, can see dawn and a sky balancing clouds against blue.  It seems fine, a nice morning, but I am not afraid because of weather. Rain would be the same. It is what I might learn, what may be said, what may be made clear.

I have been thinking quite a lot about what it means to be a poet.  For me, it tends to be about an intimacy with language as a physical thing, with words as objects.  In our usual interactions with language, we are treating it as a means, as a method for communicating.  The words are not important in and of themselves, but as the vehicles for expression.  When I write poetry, however, the words still communicate, of course, but they are themselves a solid presence, are integral.  An essay or story is not, in some sense, made of words, but made of the elements of those mediums, ideas, plots, characters.  The words act to carry these things to the reader, but are not the primary offering.  This is, of course, a general statement, and is less and less true over time, I think, as writing in other genres beyond poetry begins to take on these qualities (I could write as to my thoughts on the reasons for this, but I will save that for another time).  A quote I heard once, attributed to Hemin

He Thinks We Are Alike That I am the same, that I think those things, that I see people as he does, and I know what he sees, I have heard enough of it, have listened, have heard, have understood it, and I do not know why I did not run, but I did not.  I listened, and he thinks I am the same, but it is only that I listened, is only that I was afraid to be seen by him, to be dismissed.  I know what he thinks, what he considers doing. I do not want  to push him, and so I listened, so he thinks we are the same.

 I have not been very good about writing in the morning, lately.  I've been doing my intended work, but not according to the daily plan I have in my mental schedule.  Ideally, I would like to start and end my day by writing, but I find I am having difficulty with that morning aspect.  It is a matter of choosing to do it, but I find it easy to say to let that slip.  At night, going to bed is a hard deadline.  I am committed to doing the work before I go to sleep, so I get it done.  I need to figure out something similar where I can use as a boundary, but I am not sure what that would be.  At least, I am still doing my work each day.  It would be good to have my routine under control, but I am still producing new poems daily, and that is a far more important consideration.

Loud Voice They claim I am yelling but, they are wrong. If they want, I can yell for comparison, but they would not be happy, not at all, if they think this is yelling, if they think this is the volume when I am intending to be loud. No, this is not yelling.

I received two more rejections tonight, and it is always hard to receive them.  The thing that makes it worse, though, is the feeling that I have nothing else to expect.  I have received them continuously for a long enough time, now, that I do not expect anything else, and am not even certain how it would feel to get an acceptance.  To some extent, I know that a single acceptance, in general, is not a large event, and I do not expect that I will find a major journal is the first to accept any of my poetry, but I would value any acceptance at this point.  At the same time, I am also aware that a single acceptance followed by another period of rejection akin to my current run would not be any type of real progress, at least in terms of a career.  Getting one poem published every few years is not a satisfying trajectory, and I don't have a real reason to believe that one acceptance will change the odds for me, in any direct or immediate fashion.  At the same time, it is the thing I am

Using A Hand Is Hard each finger bends in so many places, and each one must be moved in. Just the right way, and that is only one hand, is not the hand here on this edge of myself and that one there all the way across, at another end. I do not know how others can coordinate, can move both together at one time without any thought, as though it were simple, as though it were not doing too much at once, but I know they do, I know it is simple to them, though it is impossible, the complexity, the communion, so many resources harmonized, controlled.  No, it seems so difficult, even the possibility, but I can see everyone else using both hand at once, together, sometimes even on one side of the body.

It is very strange, in some ways, to be working on this full length manuscript of poetry at the moment when I cannot get anything else published at all.  It feels silly and egotistical, in some ways, though it is driven by other motives.  If I consider it in terms of the work itself, on an artistic level, that brings a certain set of criteria to mind, but there is also the practical aspect, the reality that the poetry I write may need a bit of its own context.  I am often very subtle about the themes I am dealing with, but through juxtaposing work and building associated meaning through imagery and sound, those elements can become more apparent.  An individual poem's subtext might be easy to overlook alone, but when it is working in tandem with other pieces that reinforce the ideas and methods, the repetition can alter the work and make it more easily digested.  As well, I think it is an important skill, and one that provides me a good opportunity to do a lot of other important wor

Who I Am Since First Grade I am told there was a joy that was within me that was destroyed, a part of who I was that did not survive what happened. I do not know.  I recall so much.  I do not foget, though I was young. It was real.  Few things are that real.  I remember feeling broken, feeling I could not be better. I remember the day I was told I was dyslexic, that I was not dumb or incapable: I could learn, was smart, only different.  I understood that difficulty was not a final judgement. But, I am told it did not restore me, that I am still not that person, the one I was before, that happy boy.  He  had been wounded from the world, and I wonder if that is you thinking I am still broken, that I was right when I thought that, that all I have done since meant nothing, was too late, was far too late.

 There is a way in which my sense of being stuck, in terms of career and other aspects of my life, is part of what keeps me feeling stuck in terms of my actual writing, and what I manage to write.  In part, this is the normal.issue of catharsis, of the desire to release what is built up within. This is not, though, the only, or even the most natural, issue.  I do not write only, or even mostly, poems that are personal or expressing those feelings.  I do think more such poems may exist on this one, especially at certain times, but that is a product of my viewing this as a personal venue, a public journal. What I find, though, to be more pernicious and more subtle, however, is the impact of being stuck, as an experiential quality of my current life.  It is not that I am writing about such things all the time, or even considering them, but the way it impacts me, in terms of my mood and such.  I want to be able to move beyond my current paradigm, to write work that comes from perspectives

Second-Hand Regrets I asked that you not intercede, not involve yourself, but you do not listen, and now:  you tell me what you have heard, what would not be said to me, because it is about me.  You asked, entered the places I asked you not to enter, and you do not see it, nor do you even understand what you were told, what it means when I am called a result of failure.

It can be difficult ontinuing to write each day despite my failure to find any success with publishing.  I feel as if it is a waste, at times, a delusional act.  I believe in my work, but that is an active choice, especially at the moment.  I have to remember that it is a larger practice, though it matters deeply to me that I can make some real professional progress.  In truth, I believe it is that larger focus as a writer that might make it possible for me to do the kind of work I aim to accomplish.

Relations I know what you say, that you do care, but I am uncertain. I have trusted when it was wrong, have wounds, still, and you do not see, do not seem to remember: I have reached out to you, before, and waited with no response.

I have been feeling very stuck, of late, not only in the ways I usually speak about, but in a creative sense.  I have been struggling to make progress within my work, to discover the ways to create work of certain types that I aim towards, and I often feel quite close to a breakthrough.  For example, I have been trying to get closer to personal matters, to the truth of things in my life, and to enrich my poems in certain ways.  There are moments when it feels simple and clear, but those are never the moments when I am writing.  I may have a clear idea of a poem, but the second it begins to get written down, it will change and feel less like what I had imagined it would be.  I am not certain, in those moments, whether the failure of memory is an inability to recall exactly what I wished to write, or in my initial impression of the work.  I know I will get there, not only in terms of this effort, but in a larger sense.  I believe it is a matter of doing the work and staying focused, but

What Will You Do, Now? I have asked for help and I should be glad to hear you offer, to hear you say you wish to aid me, but I do not know what help to ask for from you.  I do not know. I know my needs, but how can you help with them. In truth, I can think of things I wish you would make better, things done long ago, promises you broke once.  I still hurt.  But I know: it is too late for those things to change, for that to be made better, but what I want is for you to heal wounds you inflicted.

I am starting to think about a short craft essay that I want to write, and which I think I can get published.  The piece is also, in part, a personal exploration, connecting to questions about how poetry addresses language.  I read an article at some time last year which was about the use of language in dreams.  The general thrust of the piece was about the fact that language experiences are not, in general, a common feature of dreams, though we do not usually notice this.  The author made the point that, according to the research into this topic, Poets, even more than other writers, experience more language in their dreams than most people.  They discussed some reasons for this, but they did not seem to make sense to me, if I am honest.  It was suggested it had to do with the ability of poets to process less typical and more abstract language, and, while I can understand that idea, it seemed reductive, or even dismissive, suggesting that poetic language is somehow inexact.  I think it

No One Comes Here, even if the doors are open and the lamps shine with a glow that,  I think, seems inviting, no one comes. I should go myself, but I am afraid: what if they do not come because I am here; what if they never come anyplace I am present?

I am trying hard to make something with paper that I can present soon.  I feel silly explaining the specific idea, as it sounds insane, but I have done a lot to research and consider this project, and am already well into producing parts for it.  I still have a long way to go, and I know there are challenges to overcome, especially in the long term, as my initial goal is only a basic test of essential concepts.  I feel close, and I think the results will be something special, if I can maintain focus and do the work.

Transgression And Entropy I am told again and again: "this is the way things are, now.  We cannot change how it is now."  I know, I understand: about time, the single direction arrow of our motion  through that fourth(and most mysterious) of dimensions.  We cannot go backwards, cannot undo entropy, turn back the outcome of events already occurred: I know.  But, even so: it is not enough 5o say it is too late, no, not when I was warning what would come, not when those who would not listen have what they want now, have taken what they want. Now l, they tell me it is too late to change, so I must live with the results, must remain with the damage and pretend it is fine, because the world is this way now, because no one listened, they just did what they wanted anyway.

It has been an interesting process, preparing work for this new manuscript.  So much of the effort, to this point, has been small things.  The largest result, at least in terms of what can be seen, is the pile of poems itself, but those already existed, of course.  It is their curation into the manuscript, their inclusion, which can be considered a result so far, but that is only a first step.  Their is a great deal more that has been considered and done, but which is not yet present other than as an idea.  I know that at some point soon, it will all begin to click together.  That is how it happens, at least for me: the ideas have to become clear, and then I can get to work on the actual revision and such.  It takes knowing the work, and knowing it together, in context.  That is what I am doing now, and it is important for me to recognize that as significant, as more than just sitting around, even though it is sitting with the work.

Temporary Setbacks in The Moment I was excited, but now: it seems less clear, doubts are coming, grow like the shadows of sun crossing clouds. It felt so close, but it will take time, if it happens at all, it will not be so soon. I am afraid of the waiting, am worried, am uncertain of what is to come, of what it will take for me to get there.

I need some kind of feeling of progress.  I have many areas where I am working hard, not only in terms of my writing, but I have been feeling stuck in most of those arenas, and I am not certain what to do.  I find that I cannot get help, for the most part, and, even more, that when I express a need or want, even to family members, they do things to make it impossible.  I do not know what to do about any of it, and am attempting to channel my energy into positive outlets, but it can only go so far.  I need a path forward, not to feel that I am still working on the things that might allow me to begin in earnest.

Deficits  There are things I do well, but those are not all the things, and many of the things which are not those that I am capable of doing are important, and I do try.  I seek to learn, but it is always too trying to try, is a trial, a test that I do not pass, and I ask to understand, but no one can explain what is not the same in my mind because they need to know how it is different first.

I am still feeling quite low, and am thinking a lot about Dad.  I decided to take and spend a bit of time working on a paper project, as a way of taking myself into a less mental space.  I find, at times, the physical activity, the focus on cutting, folding, connecting is good for me.  It takes me from language, at least to some extent.  Maybe it is like moving meditation for me, at times, but I think it is something else.  I am too focused on what I need to do, on the details of the physical act, that the little linguistic processing I do is only commentary, a nudge about cutting a piece of tape or that a fold is done.  I think some of this is a dyslexia thing, to be honest, but I can never truly be certain what is or is not.  I can say that I managed to make a small paper device that I am happy with for the moment, one that is very similar to what I set out to make this evening.  As well, I think the process I used tonight is one that I will repeat to make other things, and which wil

After All, A Beginning I think it may be that some new magic will be made if I keep along to what I am doing, if I continue along. The steps were simple, but it may be they are more when done not alone but many that are each one at a time, that are alone only until they are seen from the destination. I do not know. It only began now. It may only be that kind of magic, but the hope itself, even if not this time: it comes, wondrous the consideration of what one day it is clear will become possible.

Tonight is the start of my father's fifth Yahrzeit, and I am missing him so much right now.  I had a rather upsetting day for various reasons, many of which are related to issues with my family, and I just felt that absence so much.  I do not know what else I can really say tonight.  I just miss my dad and there is nothing to be done about it, though I know I am lucky to have had a father like mine, even if it leaves me wishing he were still about.  I know that he understood that he would not always be able to care for me, and I appreciate the ways he prepared me for this time that has fallen with his shadow.

From Those Dreams It was almost the same, that moment today, it was almost identical to a fragment I recall of the nightmares I had, the ones I mentioned when I asked you not to do what you have done, and today a moment of  nightmare returned to me as a bit of my life, and I think you can see why I might think you are responsible, why it might be imortant you understand you did this.

 I do not know how to navigate the situation I find myself in regarding publishing.   I have little doubt that I am sending out good work, not because of my own ego, but because I receive a fair amount of affirmation from editors and from others l.  Often, a rejection will include some small mark of praise or encouragement, generally not specific, but on occasion I will receive a comment about a particular poem being striking.  Of course, it must not have met some threshold, for those editors, but that is a matter of taste, and, tend to think, less so about quality.  Were the work not of publishable quality, the responses would likely not include that encouragement.  That is to say, I believe my work is good enough, it just seems unwanted.  I do not know what to say beyond that, or how to reconcile with that kind of realization, or what I am supposed to do.  I don't feel that my poetry is all that outside the mainstream, or is not relevant(my fiction is farther afield, but I recogn

Sunk In The energy put in has not resulted in any output, perhaps just heat, entropic dissipation, but nothing else, it has done nothing but feed, fuel up, take in the work, the energy of labor, building its own reservoir, or just wasting it all. There is no meaningful output, not yet, but it cannot be stopped now. It might be ready to turn productive tomorrow.

I have been talking a lot about the idea for this new fiction project, but that has not been my major focus in terms of the actual work I am doing.  The ideas are percolating, but the focus of my actual work activity is still on the poetry collection.  I feel close to having a sense of it, but it is still forming.  I think that in the next week or so, I will reach the point where I can begin to do the revision and to work on organizing the poems into something cohesive.  It feels close, but it is difficult to put my finger on just what is coming into focus.

Helper I asked, and you answered yes, but nothing happened.  You did not need to tell me yes, if it meant nothing, if it would be the same as saying no, if you would do the same as if you had said no. Saying no would have been better, would not have created expectations.

 In conceptualizing the story for the fictional work I am beginning, I need to step back and consider it from an elemental, structural perspective.  I have ideas for characters to inhabit the piece, and a sense of certain settings, but the goal is to craft a piece in which the parts are the same story, on smaller scale, and the creation of that structure requires stripping away the trappings of a specific embodiment of the narrative.  I am understanding that perspective, and hope, soon, that I will find the specific solution.

You Have Gone to Be Alone while I am here.  It is alright: we all need time without intrusion. I spend time alone, too and must remember that. It is fine.  I can be alone, even now, I must understand.

 It is difficult to remain focused on my qork, at times, when I am still finding no reception for my work.  I have a lot of "positive" rejections, where I am asked to send more work and told it was just not right for the issue, the kinds of rejections that I am told signify that one is "getting close."  But I have been receiving these all along.  I do not know if I am getting a greater ratio of them, but even if that is the case, it does not feel useful or even real as a barometer.  I want real help to figure out what I need to be doing, what is not working for me right now.

Colorblindness My mother asks me the paint colors that we have chosen, as though I can name them with any accuracy, and I do not even think I should tell her I am not certain.

As usual on Fridays, I worked with Freesia this afternoon, getting more done to prepare the new manuscript.  As I have said, I am getting a sense of the work as a whole and how it can come together.  At present, we are still curating work, both in the sense of selecting what to include, and in terms of categorizing and organizing the work.  Right now, the goal is to organize the animal poems and to identify them in terms of their realism and their tone.  That should provide tools for building the structure of the books journey.  I am still following an intuitive process, and that can be a bit uncertain, but I feel a degree of trust and a sense of where this is leading that are balancing against that.

I Heard They toss out the bad news with no care.  It is a small matter, does not even matter.  Yes, it is a matter  that does not matter at all, to them, so why take care? No, it is not an issue if it is bad news for another. It does not harm them. Why take care about what is done if the harm is another's?

 I am thinking a great deal about this new fiction project, and am excited by it.  All that is quite positive, but I also recognize that I have been at this point before, and have lost the work before it came to fruition.  I do not want to lose this biden, and yet I am also aware that I am not yet prepared to begin writing.  I want to find a way to get myself committed to this piece, but I am not certain why that would entail.  I think I need tocget a bit more active with my work on it, but I also know it is still forming.  I have to trust my process, so I am stating it here instead, that I am dedicating myself to getting this piece started in the next month.

Collectors of Secrets They carry well folded packets filled with them: secrets, so many, any secret.  It does not matter so long as they can have it and no one else does, all they will do is shove them down to the bottoms iof their pockets, pretend to forget what is there, beneath keys and wallets, wreathed in lint and dust. They leave them to wrinkle and crease, until they fade, turn brittle, still there, but  even touching it would break it apart before it could be held upmost, even light would destroy it.. The secrets they keep are lost, are secrets even from those who carry them.

Ideas for this new fiction work are developing.  I can't really put them together in a cogent way yet, but that is normal, I think.  Right now, I have a bunch of themes and a sense of the structure, and a bunch of thoughts to do with the larger picture, but it is yet to come into anything more solid and grounded.  I know it is going to involve revursion and repetition, and that there is a duality to those elements.  In one sense, the same events are being told through a variety of metaphorical settings, but, as well, those events are happening again and again.  It is not one or the other, but both.  As well, I can sense other elements that are more specific and grounded, but attempting to convey those would be more difficult, and I am afraid it might make me doubtful of things that I am considering in a detrimental way.

One Star I looked up into the sky and so a cloud so vast that in the dark of night I might have thought it the vast empty itself, but a crack was present, just enough to see through towards one distant star surrounded by black void, and it was so far, it felt so far, and I was staring down from the top of a deep pit, shuddering at the thought of such a long fall.

I keep returning to this idea I have for a longer work of fiction, but it is still quite nebulous.  It involves exploring the way the same story can be told in different settings, with changes in the people and places, even aspects of genre and the nature of the fictional reality.  For example, one can translate a fairy tale into a modern setting, or recast a drama of one period as a science fiction epic of the future.  This has me wondering how one might connect different stories into one, where it is clear, despite the same types of changes in setting and such, that underneath it is part of the same narrative structure, that the details are just shifting metaphors to do with a single story beneath it all.  Of course, I am also imagining more to it than this, and an idea of a story that would necessitate, or at least be best explored, with such a device.  I have a concept that is taking shape, but am not quite ready to discuss that at the moment.  

It Was The Beginning but it felt more like an ending to what had been before, or the middle, between what was and what would be, but it was the beginning, there had been nothing and then, the start without running jump or on ramp, came to be from the nothing before it, or maybe I am wrong, maybe it came from the end of what had been before, whatever it was, even if it was just nothing, even if the seeming absence did exist.

The process of selecting and organizing work for the new manuscript is one that I find difficult to explain.  In some ways, I feel I have done nothing.  I've read poems again and again, considered them.  I have some notes and general thoughts, and I think a lot of other poems I believe would be good to add to the collection, but it can look as though it is just busy work and meaningless.  I don't have anything more to show of a book than I did before: a pile of poems in no particular order, with no easy explanation for why they fit together.   All this is the apparent truth of things, measured by the current state of the work as it exists on paper, and it is easy for me to feel that I am not getting things done, at times.  I spent a long time looking at a single poem and considering it, but did nothing to it, just read it a bunch and thought.  I didn't want to make any revisions yet, not until I have a grasp of the context for the piece in the book. A few years ago, I atten

Triangle Each one complains of being caught in the middle, as though  it is unique and the others are not also pulled this way and that, split at unpleasant angles, as if they see each neighbor as an end point of its own.

 For some reason, I am having an issue with the word processing software on my computer.  I do not know what it is that happened, but I couldn't use it tonight.  It is a bit ironic, as I have often been working on my phone, writing in my email or such, and I chose to come up here to work tonight instead.  I find the computer an easier device to utilize, but the phone is more convenient, and is always present when I am struck by an idea for a poem and want to get to work straight away.  The resulting work is often different, depending on the mode in use, I think, and I felt a strong push to do the work on the computer.  I did write with the computer, I just had to do it as an email, in spite of being on my PC.  I hope it is not a major issue and I can resolve it easily.  But I am going to let that wait for tomorrow, as I have already had enough tonight.  Earlier, I spent a prolonged time attempting to connect my phone to our new printer.  I installed the print service and thought it

The Wind Is Heading Out, Now, is leaving for the next town.  If you want to go, you should hurry, the wind will take you, but it does not wait.  You must go now, or you will need to go alone, without the wind's guidance. You can wait, of course.  The wind is best, but it is not the only choice. The rain should be coming, and night brings still others.

One of the questions for me, in crafting the new manuscript, is how to create a sense of progress through the work as a whole.  As I have said before, I don't want to create a collection of disconnected poems, but a work that brings the poems together to create a large poem.  In order to accomplish this, one of the keys, I believe, is crafting moods that seem to shift as they flow through the book.  By doing this in concert with the various tactics for connecting the poems, an organizational scheme can be developed that carries the reader through an experience of the book as whole.  This is a very abstract explanation, I know, but it is hard to be more explicit, as it is a process which happens organically, and this effort is my own attempt to explore the work I am doing.  At present, a lot of it is just looking at poems and thinking about their emotional tenor, and the symbolic space they exist within.  For example, I have a bunch of animal poems, some of which are more realistic,

More Than Nothing I have done a bit.  Not all of it, but a bit.  Just a little.  It is fine to be slow, isn't it?  I am taking time, attempting to get it right, it is nothing else.  I would say if it were anything else, if I were afraid, or failing, or afraid of failing.  Why would I be?  I am careful, but that is all.  Yes, it is fine.  I will do more, but not now.  What I did will be enough for now, it is not as if anyone cares or is waiting.  No, it is fine.  I can be slow, if I do not finish no one will care, and I do not want to get it wrong.

I had the chance to speak with Freesia today, and we continued work on the new manuscript.  We have gotten to a point where we have a lot of work collected and organized into thematic groupings.  Now, we are focusing within the categories.  I think that I am starting to see the shape of the book emerging from this exploration of the work.  I am excited to see what it will become, but I am also a bit nervous, as I am aware that soon it will also require a lot more work revising the work so it all shines together.

One Night It Does Not Get Dark The sun has set, it slid away, is gone, but still a great brightness persists, the sky almost white. It is not the sun, comes without clear source, and every shadow I cast is covered by other light.

I am in need of a change, of some shift that allows me to sense real progress.  For a long while, I have been taking the important steps necessary for moving forwards, but I do not feel that anything has changed as a result.  I do not know what it is that I am missing, or how I can shift this, but I know it is not tenable.

When The Pipe Burst My mother's older cousins blamed me, told me I was a cause of destruction, said I was unwelcome in my parent's home, where I had grown from my boyhood, and my parents said I should be calm, not allow it to hurt me, because they are family, I should accept them because it is family.

I did my writing this morning, once more.  I have been slacking on that aspect of my schedule for some time, now, and I was fine with that.  I am not even certain what has prompted me to make this shift, other than a general desire to feel more productive.  I have found it difficult keeping motivated lately, and I think putting myself back on a better schedule will have a good impact on that.

There Were Ducks in The Pool, Again I wanted to swim the other afternoon, but, the ducks: brown feathered, floating, I felt the arrow of their stare  as soon as I walked outside: "this place is ours now." I took my towel back inside.

I did some writing this morning.  It was difficult, as things were quite noisy around here, today, but I got myself to work and am glad for that.  It will be a good thing for me to get myself writing more, again, though I know it will take a bit to get back in that swing.  I also am hoping to organize my efforts on other projects, as well, so that I can make some more substantial progress. 

The Choice Was No Choice I do not want the things we chose, but, what I do want is not right any longer, not now.  Once, it did seem possible, but, it has changed. It was a choice, but it would be nice to feel we could choose what we want, not what we must do. It is good, though, to know I am not alone, that it is us, even in this.

I did not sleep at all last night, so I am hoping I can get to bed early.  I did nap a bit during the day, but not enough to make up for the lack of sleep.  I did not write this morning, as I had intended, but I hope, if I can get some reasonable sleep, tomorrow will be a good chance to get on that.

Waiting for The Bloom What is it that I have not done that is needed?  Or is it  a thing I have done that needed to remain undone?  Either way, I hope it is not too late.

 It is quite late, a reflection of my difficulty getting to work tonight.  I am going to keep this short, but I am recognizing a need to get myself back onto a real schedule, working in the morning and afternoon, again.  I think it is good for my mental well-being as well, feeling I have accomplished something of merit already in the morning.

Our Home We grasped this as a chance to create what we needed, to invest, with money and time, and our energy, not only in effort but also, our energy: who we are, crafting a reflection of our selves. And it seemed nice, the potential of it, choosing, planning, creating this together, but now: it is changed, and the only choice is to continue until we can find a chance to begin this again, to start once more what has already taken so much.