--CHASING THE GHOST OF A GOOD THING

…Yesterday I spent a lot of time reading—reading submissions and reading a friend’s book that hasn’t come out yet, as he asked me to write a blurb for the book jacket.  I was very productive, but didn’t write a thing, other than rejection letters and that blurb and some advice.  So goes it some days.

…I hope you have the greatest weekend ever.

…A very creative friend of mine who believes in fairies wrote this, and I think you’ll find worth in it:

The old me is scared of getting younger. ! Old patterns I know need to be broken.  At least I am more aware of them so I can challenge their existence and hold on me. Old holds.  Getting free of them makes me younger, I can think of new things and not talk myself out of ideas without trying because I am sure I’m not good enough to achieve. Who says I’m not good enough?  Old holds.  Now it has a name. Separate from myself.  It is not pervasive in my thoughts. The old me knows that as I start to look at possibilities, believing in me, it gets weaker. That new world is scary. Old holds is losing strength. Deflating.  The strength is shifting to the younger me. Now I can get younger forever. Now I know this. But I have to believe in my youth, every moment.  I have to own my youthful self, no fear. Why not? New dreams. Big dreams. Every morning waking up younger. Let’s go.

…I bought a lot of books at AWP.  I also took home a little sliver of a thing called “Memos To Poets” by Kwame Dawes and it has some snippets I thought we were worthy of pondering:

-“Our bodies are poems—our scars, aches, wounds, quirks, beauties, ugly bits, our pulse, our textures—a universe of poems.”

-“Perhaps all memory is fiction and all fiction is memory.”

-“A poem will not build a bridge, nor will laughter, yet we keep laughing.”

-“Some moments demand a sermon, or a speech, or a fist, or a bowl of water, or a rose, not a poem.”

-“The moon is always ‘distant’.  It’s not like we are going to forget.”