A New Year...what?!

Well, it's 2011, and I kind of remembered I had set up this blog a long time ago and then abandoned it. In my defense, a lot happened in the summer and fall of last year that kept me away. Not small among those happenings was my house purchase, which began in August and wasn't completed until mid-October (because financing is crazy). Then I moved into my house, which was no small feat. And then we had the holidays. So here we are in a new year, and I'm feeling the writing bug biting me again. Probably because I'm bored out of my mind. In fact, it's hard to know whether my mind still functions at all. My plan is to test it out by reading a lot of books this year, and then maybe move back into writing things if it so happens that my thinking faculties are still with me. We'll see. Another thing I would like to do is figure out what I enjoy in life and try to pursue those paths...not necessarily as a career, but at least as something I spend time doing. So yeah...let's get moving!

Too Much

Lately I've been having this unpleasant feeling a lot like the world just has too much in it for me to handle. I assume this is what feeling overwhelmed is. Though there is no way I do enough in my dull little life that I should feel overwhelmed. So what can I do to get rid of this? I already live pretty simply, I think. I mean, I own a lot of junk, but it fits into no more than 2 rooms. I don't own a home. I don't even rent an apartment. I do own a car, but it's a very simple, compact car. So what's the problem? I'm mentally fatigued by the world instead of excited by possibilities or brimming with creative ideas. What's wrong with me?

Oh, and not that this is related, but my story that I submitted to the Kenyon Review contest way back when was not among the finalists...they received 750 submissions, so I guess I can't be too sad. I know I need to just keep at writing, too. It's hard to win contests when you only write one thing per year. :-/

Anyway, whew...I feel tense. :-( I need to create something new for myself.

A Writing...

I was just sifting through the "Personal" folder I have here on my work computer and found this little bit I apparently wrote last summer while bored; It's not great, but I like certain aspects of it:

One tree across the street from my office window, the one nearest the corner by the vacant, grassy lot, is clearly dying. Its scant leaves all yellow and brown misshapes (on the few branches that aren’t completely bare) appear especially dreadful when compared to the rest of the trees along the block (with their robust green foliage despite their scrawnier trunks). I mourn the corner tree, but more I wonder what could have happened to ruin it. It bears no outward damage – no bark stripped away by bored teenage vandals or roots exposed by carelessly operated vehicles. The small bed at this maple’s base is freshly mulched, in fact, thanks to the neighborhood improvement agency’s hard work. Yet the tree doesn’t thrive. Is it the exhaust from idling southbound buses waiting at the intersection for the light to change or that of big rig trucks laboring to turn left around the corner? Perhaps it’s just not a city tree. Should have been planted in the country or as an example of its kind in an arboretum… Like me? I wither and waste in the city all day long performing menial labor for paltry pay; standing idly by while others wring their hands and fret over spreadsheets of numbers and network connection speeds and errors in newspaper articles published yesterday. I nod at appropriate times, take notes, appear diligent and dutiful – yet I lose a little of my spirit with each passing day. Will this begin to show on my face? And if so, how soon?

Facebook

So, I'm worried that Facebook is making me stupid. The sheer amount of terrible writing on there is kind of a nasty shock to my system every time I sign on, which is often because my job is the dullest job there is. I hate to say it, but I might have to go on a Facebook vacation to see if a few of my brain cells redevelop.

Something

Well, I went and did it; I entered the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest for young writers. I don't have very lofty hopes, seeing as I called my story "Shadows in Spring." It's a snippet from the November novel that deals with the protagonist's mother's death...not too melodramatically, (I promise). Anyway, I'm tired and my left eye hurts from an unfortunate meeting with some shampoo this morning, so I'm hitting the bed. Just wanted to note that I finally did something writer-y. :-)

Slow is me

So, I decided that I should try to figure out Twitter. I started playing with it a few weeks ago with a profile called MyQuotableMom where I post "mom quotes." My mother is famous for saying bizarre things, and I kind of wanted to ride that wave with the guy that writes things his dad says. Anyway, I'm not serious about it, I just kind of wanted to check out this phenomenon everyone is so obsessed with. I mean, I think about 40% of conversations at work relate to Twitter and "social media" these days, so I got curious. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about Twitter, but whatever. And I know...I'm slow to catch on -- I mean, I'm still using two spaces after a period when I type (which does not work well with Twitter, by the way...it really eats up the 140 characters)!

After a little while of getting comfortable with the idea of MyQuotableMom, I decided to set up a profile to connect with this blog. Granted, just about no one reads this blog (or the new associated Twitter page), but I wanted to feel like I'm self-promoting. Hahaha. So now I just need to figure out how Twitter works; it seems kind of complicated. Come "follow" me!

Poetry?

I wrote some words just now that might be interpreted as a poem of some sort (maybe?). Here it is:

The sky is blue-gray watercolor clouds;
the grass in the lot across the street from my window is dressed in its winter brown camouflage…
people drift by on the sidewalks wearing too much clothing on their ways to the post office and the market.
With dry lips and aching head, I watch the scene, dreaming of brighter days.

So...kind of cliche-y and uninteresting, but it came to me in a minute of staring out of my office window and being uninspired by the typical Central PA winter drab out there (all bare trees and muddy colors). It's Friday and I'm tired and dehydrated (probably shouldn't be drinking this coffee to wake up).

Boss is away, so I think I'll time-thief a little and try to work on a short story. Maybe something to share later? (But probably not). Blah.

What it is that is up

So, no progress on the short story as yet. I did spend some time today looking at a short story idea generator on the internets, which told me that the theme should be weakness, the setting should be a post office, and the story should somehow involve a silk scarf. Maybe I'll give it go. Haha.

Anyway, I also wanted to make a short note on my feelings about keeping a journal. To quote Mr. Horse from the original Ren & Stimpy series, "No sir, I don't like it." I've been trying to write a bit at the end of each day in an effort to chronicle my final year (or, with any luck, months) living in my parents' house as an adult person. I find, though, that it's mostly complaints about how my dad is sleeping in front of the tv, which is blasting police chase shows or how my mom is clomping up the stairs to see what I'm doing. And really, these events occur so often that I shan't soon forget upon moving out. What I don't want to forget are all the little details that might contribute atmosphere or depth to possible future projects. Maybe I'm nutso, but I feel like the fact that my brother's room collects all the dishware in the house (and the rest of us have to sneak in when he's away and retrieve it) or the series of "cat pee incidents" (in which my mom's idiot cat pees on shoes and towels mistakenly left around) are poignant. Like I said...maybe I'm nutso. But that's what's up.

Short story

So, I got this email about a short story contest put on by the Kenyon Review for writers under 30. The submission can be no longer than 1,200 words (which now seems quite short after working on the NaNoWriMo novel). I'm totally going to enter -- the winner gets to attend their writers' workshop in the summer for free and gets their story published. The only problem is, I don't know what to write a short story about. The entries are due at the end of February, so I do have a little time, but I wonder what to do.

I just took a few minutes to read the two runner-up stories from last year (the winning story isn't online), and I don't know... One is good, the other seems kind of pretentious. Also, I don't have an MFA in creative writing. I did take that one creative writing course in college...haha.

I guess we'll see...I'm nervous to put myself out there with writing because I don't really fancy a knock-out punch from the rejection fairy in this area. Making up stories is the one thing I'd like to continue dreaming that I'm good at. I suppose winning contests isn't everything, and I'm not pinning being a successful writer on doing well in some contest, but my ego's fragile, damn it (and already so bruised from never having any good job prospects). Oh well...I'll give an update when I come up with some story scenarios or characters or something.

An Untimely Update...

Well, I "won" NaNoWriMo at the end of November, though I didn't take the time to mention that on here. Of course, I didn't take the time to mention anything on here, so...oops. Anyway, I do want to get back to updating this blog since I find I have hours and hours at work where I'm really not doing anything but staring at celebrity gossip stories on the internets. Probably ought to do something productive, eh? Don't worry, I do perform the duties of my job, it just turns out that I don't really have the aptitude for secretarial work. I tend to finish all my work really quickly, but then do not feel motivated to seek more out. Secretarial work is really more for people who don't know how to multitask, I think. But that's not important. Back to NaNoWriMo (which is a dumb name, I know)...

To "win" NaNoWriMo, one must write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. I didn't quite manage the full 50,000 honestly, so that's why I wasn't entirely proud to announce my "win." I think when all was said and done I came up with about 30,000 usable words. And now I just need to get back to working on adding to those (and editing). My novel really isn't too bad, I don't think, though it is probably a little boring and character-driven. I do have a plan to include a horrific fire set by the son of a major character as a homicide attempt; I just haven't gotten there. But that's action, right? :-)

Okay, I seriously promise to write more in this space in the coming months as I get back to writing novel #1 and move on to future projects. I guess this is also me committing myself to finishing novel #1 and moving on to future projects. I would actually like to try writing some poetry; I used to write angsty teen poems all the time when I was in high school, and I loved poetry a lot back then. When I got to college, professors told me that they didn't understand what my poems were about, so I decided to stop and work on writing in complete sentences. Haha.

NaNoWriMo

So...I decided to go for it and start a novel on November 1st! The happiness this project is bringing me is somewhat puzzling and certainly unexpected. Could I actually have been meant to be a writer all along? I don't know...I don't really write the kind of quality material typical of honest-to-goodness Writers (with a capital 'W'). But I really am having fun. Seriously. So weird.

Anyway, I just thought I'd take a break from my 5,500 words (oops...I'm supposed to be somewhere over 8,000 by now, but I'm trying not to fret) to make a note on something that's bothering me about my story so far. This is the fact that I started in a sort of flashback period, expecting this to last only a chapter, at most. But now I'm into the third chapter (yeah, these are Dan Brown-length chapters...suck it), and still about 8 months away from what I was considering "the present." And I'm tired of summarizing, so I started writing dialogue between characters to keep myself going. Is this okay? I was only planning to start my characters having conversations once I had caught up to "real time." Hmmm...I'm just frightened that dialogue within someone's description of the past seems really goofy. I mean, no one writes word for word dialogue in their diary, right? So would a narrator really recall entire complex conversations from 8 months ago? Doubtful.

I assume I'll just press on and continue to allow my characters to converse with one another -- it just feels so wrong! Oh well, the point of NaNoWriMo is to JUST KEEP MOVING, and that's what I'm trying to do.

Funny, but not really...

So how do you like that since I declared this blog would be dedicated to thinking about, talking about, and doing (about?) writing, I never updated again? Yeah, that's what I do...be afraid of the activity of writing, that is. I want to write, and I actually do enjoy the process, but fear of failure makes me want to just go to bed.

In order to combat fear and shrink WRITING back down to something smaller than myself, I believe I'm going to try to complete National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this November. The quantity over quality aspect of the program really appeals to me in a sort of masochistic way since my instinct is to labor over individual lines and words for hours on end, (which is certainly a character flaw deserving of punishment). Also, what else am I really doing, anyway?

So, a challenge! Can I stick to the program? We'll see at the end of November.

Summer, friends, future directions...

Well, it's a summertime Friday and I can't keep my mind on my work for more than about 22 seconds. I have a tenacious headache, too, which isn't helping. I took an ibu-tab from the school medicine cabinet, but the pain has not abated as yet...boo. Anyway, I've been neglecting this blog, but no one has been clamoring for updates, so I suppose it doesn't matter much. I've been spending time doing fun summer things like going to the beach and performing pool maintenance and looking at real estate, so I haven't just been shirking my writing initiatives for no purpose...so if you have been waiting patiently for updates, know that I've actually been quite busy. :-) I've also been assisting with the ongoing grandparents' estate disposal/dispersal, which includes a lot of supportive conversations with my mother that somehow require a good deal of time.

In other news, some good friends from Minnesota have been visiting, and it's been great to spend time with them...too bad I have to work because I really hate cutting evening picnic table conversations short at midnight. Haha. I think my lack of sleep related to the sudden addition of friends is actually what's causing this pesky headache, but I'm not unhappy to suffer for a social life.

*many hours later*...so I got distracted doing actual work, but I wanted to say one thing before I close this entry related to the "future directions" portion of my post title. I'm thinking that in an effort to write more often, I am going to dedicate the future of this blog to talking about writing, posting writing samples, and recording inspirational stuff that might be used in my writing (and I'm not referring to pansy-ass "inspirational" quotes). I mean, I may have already been doing these things here in a less focused way, but I think I'm going to be more serious about it. To add some urgency to that sentiment, I truly believe that writing is the only thing I can do to save myself from a life of secretarial work. So what do you think?

So I don't forget...

I've heard that grief is a strange thing in that it hits randomly and without warning. You could be doing something completely mundane (such as data entry into a new database system), and all of a sudden, there's sadness staring you in the face (or anger or panic or some other emotion associated with the grieving process). As I've mentioned before, I've experienced some familial loss in recent months, and I consider myself to be in a grieving process for this now. So please excuse the following, dear reader...I make an effort to record memories when they come to me because I really don't want to forget little daily-life details from my life with my grandparents.

Maybe it's the fault of spending an hour or so last night going through old family photos and realizing that there are more photos of me with my grandma than with probably anyone else. This made me feel good more than sad, but I think it planted a seed to remember this random thing today as I was going about my work-ish business: as a kid, and even into teen-hood and early adulthood, I spent a lot of time hanging around in my grandparents' attic as my grandma worked on the sewing machine. She loved sewing up there in her little finished room with her plants and her paintings that my mom did in school hanging on the wood-paneled walls. And she would listen to the radio, a plastic, wood-grain-printed clock radio (I think it was a GE; I know it had the flip-over plastic numbers that were obsolete since the invention of digital read-outs), tuned to this bizarre "easy listening" station that played violin-heavy renditions of hits "from the 70's to today." We've all heard muzak played in elevators and insurance company phone system holds, but I swear this was weirder, though I don't think the station still exists in order to verify that claim. In any case, I HATED that music...it poisoned my dreams at night and waltzed around in my head like a soundtrack to my young life. If I had to hear Lionel Richie's "Hello" on those cat-fight screechy violins with jazzy soprano sax solo one more time, I was probably going to commit arson.

But you know, I thought of the lyrics to "Hello" a little bit ago and had to laugh at my juvenile rage over "grandma's radio station." And I just had to record that silly memory. I still loathe muzak (my hate fueled by many many years of musical instruction throughout my life), but the thought of it reminds me of my gram and her quirkiness. We dismantled the attic several weeks ago in the now-for sale house on South Hazel Street, but I will always see it in my head (if I can count on memory not to fade too badly) in the same warm, woody-toned way. The sewing machine perpendicular to the windows in the dormer and the radio (which was always perched on the top of an old black and white TV that was pretty much never on because it only got like one channel) at my grandma's back as she worked away hemming pants or whatever. The dangerous electric space heater plugged in near her feet in the winter, its coils glowing red just beyond a screen that you could easily poke your fingers through (and something she repeatedly warned me against). So funny and strange.

Sad. Tired.

I know that this blog should probably be called "Heartbreak and Crying" or "Sad Violins," or some such misery-evoking title. It seems all I do here is highlight my sadness and worry and desperate need for pity. For this I offer an apology...and a request that you don't pity me; my life really isn't that bad...I just have some sort of chemical imbalance, I think, that makes me sad a lot (especially when exhausted, as now). Just make me laugh now and then and I will love you forever (whether or not you really want me to). :-)

Anyway, so I am sad and tired today. Probably more tired than truly sad, but the tiredness makes me weepy, so it's hard to tell. (In case you don't know, I have two main stages of exhaustion -- the first is an inexplicable near-constant recall of random German phrases in my head. The second is weepiness, which progresses from a point of mild hide-able over-emotional reactions to full-on tears streaming down my face beyond my ability to control. Seriously, I am not making this up even though it probably sounds insane). There is good reason for sadness, I assume...I feel trapped in my job, I'm trapped in a living situation that continues to get more and more stressful, I lost two very wonderful grandparents within the last 8 months, and I have no money. Though it gets me in trouble to tie those all together, they are linked (well, some of them anyway) -- I think it's pretty clear. I realize that my life could be much worse, of course -- I could be on the street eating out of garbage cans or have some terrible disease or something along those tragic lines -- I could be fighting to survive. Instead, I am surviving. But that's all I feel like I'm doing most of the time...just numbly pulling myself along. And I am heavy...the effort takes considerable energy.

What does it take to feel like I'm actually living?

Work and Worry

When I'm in the shower in the morning before work, I allow myself to think about all the things I have to do once I get to work. (The shower is the only place I permit my brain to dwell on work-related issues in order to avoid hatred of my life beyond work, which is a disease that I'm genetically susceptible to). This means that when I get to work, I'm ready to divide and conquer, and I usually manage great productivity and focus. Until about noon or so. After I eat lunch, I find the urge to run screaming from the building much stronger, as if the meager nourishment of my packed sandwich and banana have given my brain the fuel to get ridiculously bored and subsequently panic for fear that my life is floating by without my doing anything to stop it.

And so I work and worry...and wonder. Would it be so bad if I were doing something I enjoyed? I mean, I don't freak out so much when people just leave me to accomplish my to-do list, it's when they start asking for assistance and favors that I really start to get rattled. Maybe if I just worked with more people that I respected? I've come to realize that respect is a big deal to me, and you really have to give it to get it from me. I know, I know...standards too high...this is a perpetual problem for perfectionist me; I expect a lot from myself, so I expect a lot from others too. Maybe it's a combination of a lot of different things. I just don't know.

It's afternoon right now, don't you know, and so I'm naturally worried. It's rainy outside and so I'm a little sad on top of my usual anxiety. With this, though, is the specific concern that my dog is going to die. (Whoa! That came out of no where, didn't it)?! My dog is old -- will be 17 in just over a week, and she is mostly deaf and somewhat blind. A few days ago, she suffered some mystery problem (stroke? fall from parents' bed?) and now can not walk -- she can sort of hobble, but it's like half of her body isn't responding how she wants it to. She still has an appetite and has been bathroom-ing mostly normally (except that someone has to carry her to the grass and set her down in it), and she hasn't been crying in pain. I don't know enough about dog strokes other than that they can have them, and the only other thing internet research can point me to is that she may have slipped a disk in her back because, as a Shih-tzu, she's a long-back-short-legs dog and they get back problems sometimes, especially with age and/or trauma. But what can the vet really do, you know? We have an appointment after work tonight, but what are they going to say -- I can't imagine she could have surgery of any kind...she's old and seems even skinnier than ever (she's always been a thing dog). Are they just going to say "sorry, we have to euthanize your dog?" I guess she could have a brain tumor -- maybe that's why her barking habits changed lately, too...but she just doesn't seem to be suffering. Dogs suffer worse than cats, don't they? They yelp and cry with pain while cats are more stoic (I've read this, at least, and have had some sick cats in recent years)? Ugh, too many questions...too much worry. I've said goodbye to so many people and creature friends in the past few months/years, that I just don't know if I'm ready yet again.

H1N1

Did you ever see the movie Outbreak? Yeah...the one with the monkey that apparently also played Marcel on Friends. (Whoa, look at me with the 90's references)! I can't help but keep thinking of that movie all the time in the past few days with all of this "swine flu" nonsense. That's right, I called it nonsense! The freaking thing responds to available treatments (i.e. Tamiflu, which I can personally advocate as effective against the regular flu), and we're over here talking about closing down and canceling events that have been planned all year.

It would be unpleasant if a lot of us here got sick all at the same time, but as I read in an op-ed piece in the NY Times (thanks Lanester), there are more people who will probably die from "official ineptitude" surrounding this outbreak than will die from infection. Judging from actions and reactions I've witnessed thus far, that definitely seems plausible.

Anyway, I just wanted to express my concern for people acting especially foolish right now. Panic never solves anything, don't you know. :-)

April

I always thought that Eliot got it wrong...February is the cruelest month, or maybe October (at least in my personal experience). But I learned this year that April is probably truly the cruelest month. Beyond the fact that the weather has been crazy this April, school kids are unruly (racial incidents at local colleges -- and note that most of the worst school shootings in US history took place in April), and more bad things have happened in my own life (relative to my previous post) to punish me for declaring 2009 a good year. Not that I really believe that some higher force is punishing me for optimism, but it sure appears that way when I consider recent events.

Number one bad thing is that my grandmother unexpectedly died last Monday, just 6 months after my grandfather passed (not so unexpectedly). She was 83, which isn't young, but isn't really that old either when you think about life expectancy these days (or read the obituaries in the paper where most of the deceased were like 93 or 101, for example). I miss her a lot because she was like my second mom...she was my mom's mom and they were extremely close (they even shared a birthday), and she was just always there. She took care of me and brother a lot when we were pups because we lived across the street and our parents worked through the summers (unlike her, the lunch lady at my elementary school who would bring me my cheese sandwich when I forgot it or give me a little jar of honey on chicken nuggets day because the school didn't provide any sauce other than ketchup...hahaha). She took us to Mt. Gretna and to parks all over the county to feed ducks and go on sliding boards, and she couldn't hold back laughter when we back-talked (unlike Mom). Her sense of humor was always sharp, and she never felt the need to censor what she thought of anything. She left strange messages on the answering machine and always cleared her throat before talking when you did answer a call from her (which became a family joke). Everyone thought she was getting foggier as the years progressed, but I knew she was just losing her hearing and didn't want anyone to make her get a hearing aid. She never complained about health problems (probably because she thought other people whined too much about being sick)...she was selfless and really didn't tolerate fuss over anything.

And now she's gone. She hadn't wanted to pick a tombstone for my grandfather, but finally did just a couple of weeks ago...and now we had to call and have them add her name and dates, too. She passed just two days before what would have been my grandpa's 90th birthday. It just all seems so strange.

And we've been cleaning the house now -- getting things in order for an eventual sale. She never threw anything out (and had only just begun to sort through my grandpa's things); there is a dresser drawer filled with tiny hotel shampoos and soaps and lotions (some probably from as far back as the 1970's)...and about 10 or so brand new, still packaged toothbrushes. And I can't forget the boxes just filled with lots of smaller boxes, or the three bedrooms plus the attic with all the closets and bureaus packed full of clothing (much of it new...some of it still with tags on). We've adopted her cat and I've taken all of her orchids and other plants home. There's just so much yet left to do.

So yeah, April...not really my favorite month. I guess I never shouldn't trust good ol' T.S.

Miscellany.

Well, I fought the urge to post whilst stuffing envelopes all week last week, but I just can't help myself from writing a little today to make it appear to people outside my office that I'm working. For some reason, I can't seem to find any big (or small) projects today beyond putting really old papers in one of the filing cabinets under my care (= BORING), though I do have that nagging feeling that I'm neglecting something important. Oh well -- as I wait for the terror of realization to set in, I think I should probably exercise my writing skills.

So, I was looking back over previous posts and wondering if I sort of damned myself with that one about 2009 being a good year. Bad/crappy stuff keeps happening to me and those around me: joblessness, relative sicknesses/deaths, car damage, illnesses/aches & pains. So much for general optimism, I guess. Relating to myself, I've been thinking about making a doctor's appointment to talk about hypothyroidism. I just feel so run-down and fatigued most of the time (along with some other symptoms I don't care to elaborate on here). I'm nervous to make and attend doctor's appointments, though. I just really despise sitting in stuffy gross waiting rooms and then talking to people I don't really trust. And, if I'm going to talk about a thyroid problem, blood will inevitably have to be taken, which adds substantially to the fear factor. If I could start feeling better, though -- I assume the risk of passing out with a needle in my arm is worth it. I'm just such a wuss when it comes to health and body stuff. I am amazed by surgeons and nurses who can dig around in people's insides and not have a panic attack. Hell, I can't even eat tomatoes because they look somewhat like insides when sliced up. Seriously. Ew.

Well, I guess I really don't have anything profound or even vaguely interesting to say. I ate too much food at Easter dinners yesterday, and am suffering the consequences today. I am planning to help Karyn do her taxes tonight. I have a bunch of junk I want to sell on Ebay, and started a crazy campaign of spring cleaning last night. I think I'm just ready for warm weather to finally show up and stay around for awhile. Enough of this 54 degrees in the day and 29 at night crap.

Okay...enough grexing. Time to go do some more filing...or something.

Old Friends

I've had opportunities to spend time with a lot of old friends lately due to both sad happenings and happy ones, and I felt the need to document my gratefulness (I don't really know how else to describe the feeling...it's positive, yet quietly melancholy to me...so goth, I know).

Getting together with people who knew me back in the olden days (when I was both more and less of a loser) always makes me feel like I matter and have an identity beyond just my own sick, sad thoughts about who I must be. It's comforting. Yet, the future keeps always moving and pulling (pushing?) us in different directions, and I get a little wistful for the days when we did see each other constantly with our big dreams intact and our endless possibilities still ahead of us. Doors close now every day (but other doors open, of course, as is the old adage), and I have to sort of mourn each tiny slam just a little. At least for me, every slam shuts out one more bit of potential greatness and, I'm afraid, locks in an ordinary existence. So love and loss mingle when I relive the past and I feel both at home and lost in the forest (the forest of open and closed doors? Yeah, how's that for mixing metaphors?).

And with all that gothness above, I'm going to go start a poetry journal. :-) (But seriously, I do really take to heart reconnections with old friends -- it means a lot to me, and I hope we can always be part of each others' lives).