Come what May --

I realize I sort of sprung the essay excerpts on my readers. That is, if there are any readers out there! Allow me to explain a bit -- only a bit.

I haven't been writing poetry for a while. That's partly a lie. I was in a workshop with Tracy K. Smith, and it was hard to put myself in a position of both writer and promoter of my poetry/self when the book came out, and so I decided to let my promotion self step forward. However, writing largely focuses for me as a place I go to (it is a place in my mind) when I am dealing with difficult things, when I want to be in a different world for a while.

In tradition with a lot of events in my life, the last couple of weeks everything sort of came crashing down on me at once. And I had to (continue to) keep up this public persona, and I needed somewhere to escape, because there were little places to escape. Too, I've been wanting to write some of these essays for a while, and had been spinning them several different ways in my head, this way and that, and decided: what time is better than this to just write them? I wasn't interested in journaling the week's events. That becomes tired an old. I just wanted to not think about them, brood over them, so I do what I do in times of crisis: give myself a project.

The essays, even though excerpts only are presented here, are largely still unfinished. What I hoped to do was get to at least the heart of what I wanted to explore, to give myself a good running start for several essays that maybe can work their ways into something grander, can maybe even live together. What I discovered in the process is I am most ready to embrace my southern self than ever before. Maybe because I'm an ex-pat of sorts? I can't say that I don't ever imagine myself living in the South ever again, but I know there is a longing in this distance that is finding, sneaking its way into my writing -- an identity that I didn't have when I was in the South.

In other news, it's May. It feels like Seattle in New York -- it has rained consistently for the past week. We have seen a bad winter, one or two really good days, and now lots and lots of rain. I'll be happy for consistent sunshine. For walking the city streets without a jacket. Even -- gasp! dare i say it? -- a little humidity and heat. Oh, summer. Be with us now.