Day 8

So I've been at Soul Mountain now for 8 days. It is easy to count my time here as it passes the way the month of July passes...slow nectar with each rise and fall of the sun.

There is much to be thankful for, this I know. This time, though often I find myself bored and lonely, is something to be thankful for. I am. I was in a rut for a little bit, looking for things to write about, and even still now I find myself looking for the next poem, but know that something magical happens when you allow yourself to stop life for a moment and really just give yourself to your art, your craft. Exposure like this can be daunting. It has been for me, learning things about myself that I was not sure I was ready to deal with. But, I survive.

Over the past few days I've started and finished Claudia Rankine's _Don't Let Me Be Lonely_ and I will say right now, I believe in its brilliance. I want to say I wish I had the capacity to write something equally brilliant. I cannot say that before my week at Cave Canem with her that I would have picked up this book and attempted to read it; in fact, I had the book for a while before I read it. Being on a mountain top affords you a lot of time to read things you never thought you'd give yourself to reading before. Anyways. Read it. Let's talk about it.

Also while here I embarked on a larger project which included investigating animals. It isn't as Discovery Channel as it sounds, but it is a collection of poems in which the titles are different animal species and I have moved on to investigating different landscapes. Of course, they have a specific De'Lana turn. What would a poem written by me be like without it?

What else is there? I started and finished a short story between yesterday and today. I started a play and an essay. I have the desire to write a long poem and I think I have the idea for it. I will spend tonight mapping it out. It will be my endurance test. I think my poems are indicative of my mild ADD. They are short. They rarely - unless a sestina which the form forces its length - go beyond the second page. To think that I could find an idea that could sustain more than say...50 lines, is amazing. and I'm going to try it. I'm going to try and write something or start something while here that is going to be the longest poem I've ever written. What that will do for me, I'm not sure, other than break past this imaginary wall that seems to draw itself about halfway down the page and dares my pen to cross it, and I usually don't. But I'm on a mission to cross that frontier, and to do it with a stunning poem. Watch out now.