Several random things...

First: The interview went very well and because of my prior psychological evaluation, I did not even have to go into any of the gory detail about my past. This is the best blessing and gift I have received this year. Why I was so wired and what I feared the most, I hate reliving all that trauma and digging up those old bones.

Hate it.

This new licensing agency is a First Class organization and I am not even Catholic. One of the things I am enjoying though, is that by choosing to go with a faith based agency, we are more free to talk about (plug your eyes Paul) God. Yippee!

When I explain that my faith is why I am not a jaded grown up, someone who also has their own basis of faith is able to nod their head and say: "Yes, I get that."

We may get children yet. I did tell her though that I won't believe it until some social worker is pulling out of my drive way after having delivered children. No more of this heart wrenching "your licensed, your not licensed" drama on this front.

Second: the story below is just a fictional story, I have not ever lost a child but I have been to the south. (Some of my family lives in Georgia.) I also have friends whose child drowned in their pool, in Arizona that happens often. Tragic.

I also don't drink because Multiple Sclerosis has this wonderful side effect that causes me to feel like I am always drunk. I slur my words, I stumble when I walk, my vision can be fuzzy, and sometimes not...it comes and goes. Just like drinking. Sometimes I stand up and go "Whoa"....just like drinking.

The only accident I ever caused was this one time, when I rear ended a Minister. I bawled like a two year old.

Finally: Theresa has been posting some very interesting things about James Dickey and I promise you that I am going to go broke buying all the books this woman reads. Yes, I know it would make sense to go check them out at the library but one needs a certain level of maturity to check books out of a library. This is the same reason Charley and I buy movies...we acknowledge the fact the returning borrowed things is something that we suck at. By the time we pay late fees we could have bought whatever we borrowed so we skip that step and just buy it up front.

Back to Dickey (I have always wanted to say that in this blog) I think that Theresa has brought some very good points to light about what it means to be an Artist in the world. Society is a strange place and Artists have always seemed to be a breed all their own. Different and edgy, not always in positive ways.

I consider myself a poet although I have spent 20 years trying hard to fight it because I acknowledge that Artists are edgy. An Artsist raised me. I have been exposed to the humanities my entire life and part of me has always just wanted to fit in. To belong. But I shall not ever to truly fit in and as I have gotten older I have discovered that many people struggle with the same issues. That is what I like about blogging the most, we, as a society, are finally being able to connect with other people who are like us.

Writers tend to spend lots of time alone with their thoughts and with the thoughts of others. So do Artists of any medium because creating requires one to FOCUS. How can I create without FOCUS? I can not. But the compulsion to create is so strong that it drives us from important life matters, from important people and from important interests to that blank "canvas" where the desire consumes us.

"Out damned spot, out."

There are times when my poetry literally pours from my mind and it can not be stopped. Inaccessibly leaking out of my skull until my heart aches for my head to SHUT UP. Lyrical words dance in my brain and beg to let free.

They whisper to me...just one more poem.

Just one more.

I think in poetry.

And it can be irratating enough to make me think that I have gone mad.

That is until I discovered a world filled with other people who write and who, it seems, also think in poems. People who don't just eat plums from their fridge but who have to beg for forgiveness for having done so. William Carlos Willams is one of my favorite poets because I get him, I know what starkness and simple lyrical words feel like. I do have a large vocabulary but have found that it is more of an encumbrance to my poems rather than an enhancement. The pureness of my poerty is not freed when tied up into $5 dollar words and instead my message is locked into impressing people.

I am rambling. But it is ok to hijack one's own blog every now and again.

Some of my response to what Theresa had to say matters to my heart and I am going to put it here so I will remember it...not to say that what she said doesn't matter.

It does. Go read it and all the comments and debate, it is good stuff.


"All of you have become my "James Dickey" in that these blogs have become our letters. We write out our thoughts about what it means to write and our place within society.

Artist, by nature are seek crowds to stand on the edge of them observe, I think. How can I gleam good material if I don't watch for it? Sure, I live it too but some of the things must be seen with my own two eyes.

For example, I do not have to loose my own child to write a pretty convincing short story about loosing one. I do however; have to know something about loss. I think that when artist come together and discuss the processes and their points of views it only serves to sharpen the effectiveness of them all.

And I repeat, you each have become my "Dickey" but I refuse to be like Hemingway. In fact I am hoping that you will save me from me. From the despair of feeling alone...imagine if these men had had way to communicate instantly like this back then.

Imagine how many readers come to read your thoughts and are changed now.

I am a poet. No amount of denial has ever changed that simple fact about my soul. When I see the world I think in poems. Proof? I wrote that poem about the Sea of Cortez in my car, in my head on my way to work. I changed three words.

But this does not make me divine, it makes me sometimes hopeless...and distracted. It makes it hard for me to concentrate on accounting."

Vaya con Dios.