Still alive...

... just haven't posted in a week. Sorry about that, y'all. I know you were refreshing the page constantly, hoping for some pearls of wisdom...

... oh, you weren't? Guess I'll go eat worms.

Hee.

My life this week has been completely taken over by a) getting the book manuscript sent out (8 places so far and more to come this weekend; it takes me forever to do each one because I'm so paranoid about forgetting something and, say, not sending a SASP to the ones that say to send an SASP and if I forget to include it they'll decide I can't follow directions and they'll just throw my manuscript away and pretend I fell off the face of the earth, so I check everything fourteen times before sealing the envelope) and b) planning my Bruce Springsteen road trip. (Yes, I'm going to the St. Louis and Kansas City shows -- I have hotel reservations and the vacation time is approved, tickets go on sale Saturday morning, and I am thoroughly psyched -- this will be the farthest I have ever driven for a concert.)

I owe email to a bunch of people. If you're one of them, I swear, I plan to spend a good chunk of the weekend with tennis on my TV and the laptop on my knees, catching up.

Meanwhile, here's a poem I liked.


The Photographer

At the fence of the world
I had my tête-à-tête with the universe

photographed. The proximate
Provincetown ocean bent at the knees

and stood, like the photographer
I didn't know was there

until after my existential hissy fit -- i.e.
"Why, Universe? Why exclude me

from everything?" The universe
didn't like to hear that,

and I've been blacklisted ever since:
consigned to fear dawn,

peninsulas without hospitals,
and the dunes

that lose and gain themselves in weather.
Perhaps if there hadn't been proof --

but no use blaming the photographer.
He and I are alike -- interfering

in what isn't ours, using things
to our heart's content.

--Kathryn Maris
from The Book of Jobs (Four Way Press, 2006)