I have been scrubbing my Facebook page of all my blog posts.
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
It was actually an interesting little trip down memory lane.
It was good to see the pictures and posts and the blogs and to see how steady I have been in my pursuit of this endeavor.
I suspect that as of this blog the readership will go down.
Down a lot.
But so be it.
It’s the price I pay to get to continue doing this, my little love, my bunny, my pet project for the last seven years.
I will happily sacrifice readers to keep doing the writing.
I was talking with a friend and my words ran away with themselves.
I got so excited about writing and poetry and I just started gushing.
My heart raced.
Words get me all crazy.
I’m not a crazy cat lady.
I’m a crazy poetry lady.
You should have heard me reciting Shakespeare earlier.
I got all kinds of excited.
Ah, Old English you do me so well.
Heh.
Today I actually had time for poetic pursuits, not so much writing it, but perusing it, looking up some old favorites and wondering to myself if it weren’t time to go replace some books of poetry that I used to have in my small library.
When I moved to Paris back in 2012 I sold off all my books.
All of them.
It still hurts to think about a little, some tenderness there, but I wanted to throw myself at the Paris experience and I knew I wasn’t going to pack a bunch of books up with me and carry them across the pond.
No.
I sold them.
I stored a few personal belongings of my own, small framed art works and pictures, my notebooks, my own writing, in a friend’s garage, but aside from that I got rid of everything else.
Books.
Clothes.
Shoes.
Everything but my bicycle and some clothes in a roll on suitcase.
I came back with that same roll on luggage and my bicycle.
And.
Ten dollars.
I don’t regret it, but yeah, I did have a moment today when I realized I had sold my copy of Pablo Neruda’s 100 Love Sonnets.
That I didn’t have my complete works for Shakespeare, leather-bound from my undergraduate days.
Or.
Sigh.
My collection of TS Eliot.
Also from undergrad.
And.
Oh.
My OED.
My Oxford English Dictionary.
I sold that too.
I think this may be the first time I have ever admitted that in writing in a public forum.
It was a graduation gift from a set of girlfriends in Madison who were my best friends for years before I moved to San Francisco and became a raging drug addict whose friends wanted nothing to fucking do with her whatsoever.
I managed to keep that damn dictionary through years of moves and geographics and even pretty damn far into sobriety.
But.
I decided to let it go.
It was for God to have.
It was always Gods.
I went into Alley Cat Books on 24th Street a few months ago to see if the OED was still there, I was on my way to an appointment and really did not have time to stop in and look, but the last time I had been in there, the dictionary was still there.
Granted that had been over a year and a half ago.
I didn’t see it, but they had re-arranged the store and I was too shy and pinched on time to ask the clerk if they still had it.
One day I’ll replace those words.
And one day these words will be replaced.
All words are infinite.
All moments meaningful, lustful, alive, here and present and a live and loved in my heart.
I don’t have much contact with any of those old girlfriends, but they live in my heart.
And I won’t ever forget what it felt like to get that gift at my graduation party.
I can still feel the weight of it in my hands and I knew the moment it was set in my arms what it was.
I was blown away.
To be seen for what I love is important.
Although not important enough for me to have to do it, the writing or the reading, all good writers have to read too, I love an audience, but I don’t need one to write.
God is my witness.
My heart is my muse.
I am a channel and I don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going to go.
Only that it will.
These words.
Into the ether.
Into the void.
From out my fingers, from out of my heart, with passion and providence, into the universe.
Perhaps the words will fill the voids between stars, the emptiness that needs be filled by poetry until all the worlds are seemless and held in beauty, together under the great bounty and soulshine, the light will cover the dark.
Or not.
I don’t know.
I can’t ever really know.
I will just keep writing and trying and falling and stumbling and getting up again.
I believe I will fly one day, if not this day, then the next.
And every word I put down an attempt at faith in something so much bigger than I, a tiny glimpse, a sliver of honey and lavender crystals, a shining cello note, a sting pulled, a plucking, a bewitching, an enamourement, a leap, and love tossed I jump.
I don’t need to know where I land.
The leaping.
Well.
It is enough.
It always is.
Auntiebubba 