I am starting to learn how to use my new camera. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to find the built in flash. It was really built in! Carolyn Forche’ is coming to Minneapolis for my birthday. Well, she is coming to teach this but I can say she is coming for me. I am in the class. The U is picking up the bill though I had to throw my teaching schedule to the wind. Now I am in a panic b/c she has already read my current manuscript of poems and maybe I should be working on another. Here is a goal, maybe I should just write ONE fricken, mothertucking poem. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should stick with the flash.

Another thing I have applied for. I want to go to a ghost ranch in New Mexico and write. I want horses and dust and no way for my children to find me.

Vividly, I remember being 13 and knowing I was forgetting how to be a child. Lately I am feeling that way about poetry. I am forgetting…and maybe that is good. Maybe I will emerge something else I haven’t even considered and that would be okay. Wouldn’t it?

Why do I feel like I am trying to convince myself that growing old is pretty?