Well the final residency show is completed. I performed my feature and remembered all the words to my poems. People seemed to enjoy it. The Bele Cher mayhem has begun downtown, but i need to keep alert and aware of time because i have to help ferry people out to the airport both today and tomorrow. I'm going to try to enjoy myself though this weekend and plan on taking the rest of the week to catch up with myself.~w

Ooh! I don't know if my sister has internet access right now, and if she does she may not check my site regularly anyway, but i couldn't resist a big

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

to my 26 year old sis today.~w

All over American (and beyond) poets are packing bags and organizing their poems and hopping the motorcycle, car, bus, train, plane to Seattle. You see next week is the National Poetry Slam. But, i won't be there. I didn't look at prices early because i was sure i couldn't afford a ticket, and when it came to later i found myself with deadlines to meet, and a show and inservice for librarians to do. It's good that my life is full, but there's this nagging part at the back of my brain saying "didn't i tell you it could happen, it's going to be an amazing event, you wanted so badly for this to take place how can you sit at home now that it's happening?" Still, i think this process with getting on with my life is important rather than trying to retread old dreams and wish for something that in many ways has lost my interest. If i really wanted to be there, i would have bought myself a ticket by now anyway.

Besides, i am a featured poet tonight at the Grey Eagle Music Hall. This final group of teachers are the singingest, dancingest, goofiest set of educators i've seen yet. We're going to have a ball. Of course then Bele Cher starts today as well. At 5pm last night all the downtown streets were closed to traffic and the booths started going up. Through Sunday downtown will be one big arts extraveganza. Whee! I just haven't figured out when i'm going to have time to sleep.

So, now i'm off to clear my desk before things get too much fun for work.~w

It was a wet day yesterday down at Carl Sanburg's farm, but i did get some writing done. Here's one piece:

The center of the stage is dry
Looking out at the world from this box
I want to be brilliant
But fires are fickle in damp weather

The forest of my heart is soaked to the soul
I need to air it out
Let some of the humidity escape
return it to the world I absorbed it from

A river runs swiftly to the ocean
Hoping for a warm spring day
that will send it soaring again

I am the mountain
You are the ocean
But the river's been damed
for hydro-electric purposes

You see the cost of energy is high
and I was running on reserves
before this damp season
there was a drought
Every drop of water precious

Somehow I'd forgotten
you have to empty the glass
before you can fill it again

So, I'm leaking and fraying
a bit these days
wading through high water
looking for a key to unlock the dam.

* * *
So, that's it for now.~w

I'm going on a "Feeled" Trip today.This has become my yearly trip to try to do some writing. I will meet up with the residency folks shortly and drive down to Carl Sandburg's farm to wander and explore and do some writing. There's a tour and a show and Poetry Alive! takes care of lunch so its a nice day all around even if the sky is still leaking today.

But, in order to go i need to dash out early to meet them at the dorms.~w

The summer residency folks will be writing about "Querencia" today, or what is their safe place or the place where they feel most at home. I wrote about that a couple of years ago when i had just moved to Asheville, but i hadn't moved into my house yet. I found that my "safe place" was actually sitting down with a good cup of coffee, a blank notebook and a pen to write. Maybe that's why it's been so hard for me to feel grounded and home here. I haven't taken the time to write properly.

Granted, i have the computer and a cup of coffee with me right now, but it's not quite the same in my mind. There is something special about taking the time to write by hand and carefully put the words on paper one at a time. In this format i tend to babble with my fingers more than anything. However, the computer itself has been kind of a home over the past few years. It's my little window to the world that i take with me everywhere i go. Only in the past couple of weeks have i stopped dragging it to work with me. I think it was kind of a security blanket as much as it was the hope that i would have some time to work on the website (my mac at work doesn't have the software i need for web design, but with my handy little ethernet card i can plug my dell laptop into the t-1 line there). Besides all the software, it has a lot of my "stuff" in it. All my little doodlings and musings and half finished pieces are semi-neatly tucked away on it.

Hmm, now that i think of it, it probably wouldn't hurt to update my backup disk sometime soon. This evening perhaps, because the clock is telling me that it's time to move myself toward the door to start another day.~w

"Let the beauty we love be what we do." -- Rumi

Everyone was delivered safely yesterday and we have assembled another amazing group of teachers for this week. When i left last night the two guys who brought guitars were still hangin and playing in the common room (and this is only night one). I have a feeling this group is going to do some wonderful work this week. My goal for the week is to get in there and spend some time writing as well, not just sitting on the sidelines.

I suppose in order to do that i should get myself moving so i can get the nitty gritty stuff out of my way...~w

My morning is being eaten by a misbehaving floppy drive. I don't usually use it, but a friend wants to borrow my computer to type poems and save them to disk. i'm about ready to scream! all i wanted to do was go online this morning write a little and read a little. i've now spent the past half hour rebooting the dang thing trying to get it to work. urg.

Anyway, i was thinking about names this morning. How and why people are named and where that comes from. Naming gives identity to the individual. For instance, cats are cats, but my cat has a name that makes her unique from all other cats. Oddly enough there is someone who moved to seattle who already had my first name and took my last in marriage. Fortunately i have a middle name to delineate me, but it still felt weird to suddenly need that to separate myself. If only she hadn't changed her name, we wouldn't have even matched. Why do women change their names for marriage anyway? Why don't both partners change their names to something new to create a name for the family? I suppose it dates back to the old days where a bride was an item of property that was owned through marriage by her husband's family. But we don't think like that anymore...do we? Do why do we still hang on to the vestiges of that?

But, i've run out of time, so i guess i'll just have to muse about it later...~w