Spiritus Mundi

May 21

Whoo. This has been a hell of a weekend. But now I'm showered, and I've had a couple cups of coffee, and I can look back on all of it as a Valuable Life Experience.

I don't know if I mentioned, but I went home to Goldsboro this weekend for my friend (and old high-school sweetheart) Amily's engagement party. It promised to be a fiesta of old high school friends, home videos, and really good cheeseburgers. My girlfriend went with me, and all was well-- we took turns driving and reading to each other during the trip, and we stopped at a bookstore and a music store. Then, around 3pm on Sunday, she started to feel sick.

And she stayed sick until the present moment (10:30ish Sunday night) and counting. She's much better now, the worst of it was over by this morning, but she's still not great. She wound up crashed out in Amily's old bedroom, making only a couple of appearances to the party at large. I divided my time between taking care of her (and becoming increasingly frustrated; I'm really not a very good caretaker) and dodging into the party from time to time for hugs and catching-up and snippets of the aforementioned home movies (one, the post senior prom video, featured a lengthy discourse by me regarding a dream I had about Jesus). Still, I had a pretty good time, except for worrying about my darling, and Amily is quite the gracious hostess.

(Also the cheeseburgers, prepared by Amily's fiance the chef, were divine)

Around midnightish, my girlfriend started to feel even worse, so I took her to the emergency room. We were there until about 5 in the morning. It wasn't so bad for me; I finished reading Kim Newman's Bad Dreams, then arranged the waiting-room loveseat/couch cushions in such a way that I could sleep relatively comfortably. My darling had a much worse time, being intravenously rehydrated and alternately prodded and ignored. Still, she felt better by the time we left. I got some sleep. She didn't, really, but she caught up on the five-hour drive home today, and she's resting basically comfortably now, last I heard...

Not the best trip to my hometown I've ever had. The place becomes increasingly tainted with every new experience, it seems. I didn't even get good barbecue this time...

Next weekend we're going to the LEAF (That is, the Lake Eden Arts Festival), and that will hopefully be a better time, with less sickishness.

On to other matters.

Since I sold those poems to Asimov's, I've been thinking lots about poetry. I used to write it constantly. I carried these spiral-bound notebooks around with me everywhere, and while there's lots of crap in them, there are also some good pieces of writing (looking back with a couple of years' worth of objectivity, I think I can confidently say that). Yet, for some reason, I stopped writing poetry so much about a year ago. The last dated entry I have in a notebook is for May 1999. I've written a few pieces since then, I think pretty good ones (including one about a killer who seeks redemption in a misguided way, and a beauty-and-the-beast twist, and one about a pyromaniac and a birdwatcher mingling dreams, and one called "Scale" that's about size and justice and lizards), but the constant attention I used to pay to poetry is gone. Part of that comes from the zombie-sleepwalk non-thinking tropism-like period of my life I've so recently emerged from... but I let it slip before then.

Clarion had a little to do with that, I think. Since leaving Clarion I've written a novel and a half, two novellas, and eight or ten stories (not counting aborted attempts-- and one of those sad failures went about 15,000 words before I finally gave up). I've been very fiction-oriented since Clarion, and in truth my greatest love is for fiction, always will be. Still, I love poetry, and I remember taking joy in the writing and performance of my work. I should be trying to sell a chapbook, submitting poetry to top markets, entering competitions, instead of just dribbling out submissions when I think about it.

Somehow, I forgot about poetry, and how it helped me think things through and make sense of the world. Now I'm remembering.

So tomorrow I'll buy another spiral-bound college-ruled notebook, a red one, and put it in my bookbag. I'll use it, too. I'll let the words build up, and then I'll dash them down.

Before I go, here are some Notes On My Insecurity:

Gardner Dozois accepted two of the three poems I sent him. Pretty good, right? Except the two he bought are a couple of years old, while the one he rejected is only a few months old. Did I use up all my talent in college? Have I lost it? (I don't really think so... but the idea has crossed my mind. It hasn't set up camp or anything, but it's mosied on by).

Also of note, I think of poor Eddie Poe... he wanted to be respected as a serious poet, but the public always knew him best for his "scare" stories. That really tore him up. I fear a sort of reverse poeism in my own life; publishing lots of poetry while I labor in obscurity over my fiction.

Of course, becoming known as a poet wouldn't be bad at all. I love poetry, reading it and teaching it and, more and more lately, writing it. It's more likely that I won't be renowned for anything... but that won't stop me from trying.

And I'm still very young. Anything could happen. Lots of things almost certainly will.

Thanks for bearing with me. I know I talked a lot tonight. Y'all take care, now.