seeds are waiting
under the snow
just like i am waiting
under my skin

get ready to grow

the essence of good relationship:
we take turns.

(originally written 12.24)

the fractal fingers of Appalachia reach for me from the right.
i fall forward through the clouds.
snake-arms of Ma Atlantic on the left
meet the embrace.

hold me suspended between worlds, here
water and rock and
life, and breath, and magic,
and clouds.

“what is done between the worlds,
changes all the worlds.”

There are no stars here
in the sky. Instead they shine
below, crunching asphalt
beneath my feet.

As I walk, I spread fragments of shattered glass:
a minor Deity,
rearranging constellations.

new south

here you grow cotton and
houses in straight rows

watered by chemicals, fertilizer and
lawns, tended by fleets of everlarger
Machinery

oh take me back to where i can be
more than this
already

camouflage

you look through my
business suit
and see the thrift store underneath.

will i ever learn to blend in, here?

Bad day today. Maybe it’s just the rain. October is exciting, but November is just dreary…

I got my first rejection letter of the current batch of story submissions today. I wasn’t surprised; I knew when I submitted that that particular magazine was a bit out of my league. As soon as I came home and saw the envelope lying on the table, I knew what it was.

Despite the fact that I know this is necessary, that every writer gets their stack of 10 rejection letters before they publish their first story, that it’s a commonplace part of the writing business… I still didn’t want to open the letter. I knew what it was, and I just didn’t want to see it in black and white, on paper.

The letter itself was pretty standard — probably the same form they send out to everyone. “Your story didn’t grab my interest, but thanks for sending it along.”

The “why am I doing this, I should just give up” phase lasted only about 15 minutes, I think. That’s pretty good. And now I will review the story again, and try to make it better, and send it along to someone else that will perhaps be a more appropriate market.

Rejection’s never fun. On a personal level, on an artistic level — anytime something you care about is involved. But if I’m going to play this game and try to be a writer, I know that I need to get used to it.

Gonna keep working on that stack of 10…

Other stuff that’s important but a little further away:

1. Pay off the student loans. I would really like to get this done as soon as possible. It would totally rock to be completely out of debt, even if just for a little while.

I’m still scheming on how quick I can actually get this done, but my ideal is to have it done by the time I finish the training program I’m currently in. So by July 2008. If I want to do that, I will have to put a lot of money into it starting next month, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that yet.

2. I’ve been tossing around the thought lately of buying a house after I get my loans paid off. There’s so many “if”s in front of that one that it’s almost ridiculous to think about — like maybe I won’t want to still be living here then, or maybe I’ll be in a relationship which could impact living arrangements, or maybe I’ll decide to go back to school, or maybe I’ll want to move closer to work, or to get a job closer to where I live. So many “if”s. But it’s something I’ve been pondering.

Right now I really like this neighborhood, and I think it would be possible for me to eventually buy a house around here. (Heck, I’m paying enough in rent, I might as well be getting something out of it.)

Or maybe it’s just that, with my little sister getting married, I feel compelled to do something equally adult and stable. If only to prove to myself that I can.

3. I would really really like to do the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University in the UK. (This would be a “while working fulltime” type thing, I think.)

4. Eventually I would really really really like to do the PhD in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Not because I particularly want to move to Atlanta, but because it sounds like such a friggin’ awesome program otherwise. (This would be a “quit my job and go back to school” type thing.)

So there. I think that’s everything I’ve been thinking about lately. Who knows if any of it will ever come true? But I’m pretty confident in my ability to pursue things that I decide I want, so I guess we’ll just have to see what I decide I want…

I’ve been thinking a lot about goals lately, and my own personal goals in particular. (”Lately”, in this case, meaning “roughly since I started this whole post-college / real job / Philadelphia adventure”.)

You know, it seems like while you’re in school your goals are basically predefined for you, or at least heavily influenced by the structure of the system. While I was in high school in Alabama, my goals were all about going to college and getting out of there, getting to a better place both personally and geographically. In college, my goals were twofold — both to study and develop in topics that interested me, and to build the necessary skills to get a good job immediately (as required by student loan debt, which I knew I was accepting when I chose Cornell). I managed to do plenty for myself in that time, that wasn’t related to getting a job — like living in Australia and doing my honors thesis — but I knew there was a time limit built in, and money pressures, and something that it all built toward.

Now, for possibly the first time ever, I’m in a place where I could stay a long time. Probably the rest of my life, if I really wanted to. And so for the first time, I’m faced with the task of really setting my own goals and deciding what’s most important to me, what’s the purpose of my life. (Not to sound too metaphysical or anything. I mean purpose in a very concrete sense, as in: What is my work? What is my vocation? What is it that I’m meant to contribute to the world in the time that I am here?)

Right after I started on at the LFC, I set some tangible goals for myself, things I wanted to complete before the end of 2006. One was to get out of credit card debt, which I’ve basically been able to do. (I didn’t have as much as a lot of people, but “too much” means “any” in my opinion.) Another was to go through all of my old half-written, drafted, or incomplete stories that I’ve accumulated, stretching back to my high school days, decide which ones were worthwhile and edit them into publishable shape, and discard the rest. The third was to submit two good stories for publication by the end of this year. (That one I’ve met, as of last Wednesday.)

The themes that come out to me here are a) financial stability, and b) writing. I’ve come to realize that, at least for right now, writing is what I “really do”. I may never do it fulltime, I may never be the next Neil Gaiman, but from my thesis project onward I’ve known that that was it. That is what I have to contribute to the world. Financial stability, of course, is the other, and that’s just part of being an adult and being able to take care of myself and help people.

More thoughts on this will probably come, especially as it re: my “day job”.

I.

i told my illusions
we needed to see other people,
and then i stopped returning their phone calls.

II.

the Word was the Universe,
and god said:
Listen.

III.

ask,
and trust that the question will hold you.

my answer is not
what will make you stand or fall.