Monday update:

So I've got great news. Be sure I'll tell you all this in a few months, but I'd like to begin to put the energy into the world right now.

May 10, 2009 will be the night of my NYC Book Party/Launch. Yep. At The Bowery Poetry Club. Yep. from 6-930pm.

Other than that, business as usual. The economy being what it is required me to take some time (really, they "fixed" my schedule) off at work, and at first I was totally upset. I was livid. However, I will still make decent enough money to tide me over. I should be thankful, I concluded. For the time. I have this new manuscript that needs to be nurtured. I have a novel that I would like to see finished before the end of the year. I should be thankful that I have these few more hours, these few more days, really, a week to devote to writing. Here, I am trying to channel the positive.

I ordered two books last week. Toni Morrison's _a mercy_ and Jericho Brown's (Hi, Jericho!) _please_. They arrived yesterday. Whenever I work in the Bronx, I have a 45 minute commute from my apartment in Harlem there, and then an hour from the Bronx to my job's office on Wall Street. While I have this "policy" of three takes for music and poetry collections before I come down hard and fast, Jericho's book decidedly kept me engaged the whole ride. Let me just say, "Track 1: Lush Life". And I'm not just saying it because it's the first poem of the book. I mean, there are other poems -- but I remember reading that poem (sometimes I read collections back to front...) and immediately looking forward to the next 40 minute commute.

Last night I did get to see Toni Morrison. For like 2 seconds. Maybe my devotion is not that deep. My best friend called me earlier in the day to say she was in Barnes and Noble and Toni Morrison was giving a reading and immediately thought about me. I didn't know. But I thought how sweet, I just picked up the book today. It's in my bag. Perfect. I had just promised a friend I would go hear him feature. I cursed myself. So, I tried to slip away and gave myself excuses for going to see Toni Morrison at Barnes & Noble. When I got there, I thought, the bookstore was pretty empty to be having Toni there. I forgot about the four floors, and took myself to the top. Before the last escalator, a woman stopped me to ensure the4th floor was my destination.

"You're here for the event?" Yes, I say. Thinking she was going to tell me I needed a ticket or something I didn't have because I had just gotten off the train from work.

"There's like 1000 people up there and it's hot as heck. You have to go up and all the way to the back," she says.

I shrug it off, thinking, what's so bad about sitting on the back row or something. I go up there and it is packed. The air has stopped moving. And there is a low murmur from the front of the room that barely makes it past the rows and rows - and indeed, bookshelves - of people on the fourth floor. I strained to hear her from across the room and between the stacks. I was sweating, and suffocating (in truth: I'm slightly claustrophobic) and after about 2 minutes I got out of there. I love Toni, but the reality of me getting my book signed or surviving that reading was not happening. So, I left and went to Bar 13.

There, I wrote a pantoum. My favorite form. About Harlem, my favorite place.