Today, despite what the calendar says, is the first day that feels like fall. Not just the light and the yellow tinge to things but also the rain that poured torrentially all morning, reappeared in the afternoon, and left behind blustery cooler temps that had me closing windows and settling in to make soup with a whole chicken I'd originally intended for the crockpot (also pie for breakfast because I was uninspired by muffins the past couple of days and they were out of croissants.) Once the weather turns, the year begins this quick descent toward winter every season, but I am determined to grasp whatever of fall I can do so safely and out of doors mostly, because, yo, despite what most people --out of obliviousness, disregard, or selfishness--would have you believe, covid is still a thing killing quite a few people everyday. I made an appt. for my updated booster on my way out of town Friday, so that will help hopefully as far as the variants, but I will still be wearing a mask til those numbers go down..I cringe a little every time I see photos from crowded unmasked readings, because really, I expect better from poets. Maybe I shouldn't.
Yesterday, I finished up the layout and posted the accompanying e-zine for the MEMOIR IN BONE & INK video series. It felt fitting to be putting both the video project and that zine to bed (well, out there in the world with a bow on it for whoever wants a little more than the videos can provide) I wrote those poems back in April as part of NAPOWRIMO, with just a title and a general idea that I wanted to talk about writing and artmaking and how it relates to the body and experience. I sometimes think about the idea of memoirs, and how sometimes I am surprised when people say they are writing them, since I feel, even at middle age, I don't have all that much to say except maybe about very specific things. But then, I've written a number of fragmented, memoirish series like the hunger palace and exquisite damage. But then as a poet who always twists the biographical stone cold truth, I'd feel weird and exposed writing a true memoir. I am also not sure I have anything interesting enough to say in it.
But then again, even this blog sometimes feels like a really long memoir project. Or maybe a really long letter to someone I don't even know. A youtuber author I watch was talking about trying to set habits to journal like Virginia Woolf, who spent her afternoons journaling and letter writing, which seems nice, but my afternoons are devoted to writing other things. The blog entries, which took the place of the paper journals I once kept, happen in the in-betweens. I've often wondered if I lost something when I transitioned to journaling in online spaces, but mostly what I see flipping through old ones is a lot of useless emoting over unimportant things.
Otherwise its the same stuff I post here. Or maybe I am just more even-handed handed and sure of myself and my world as a forty-something than I was as a twenty-something. When I read those marble composition books, I am mostly just embarrassed by those parts, for that girl, and they will probably lead me to toss them eventually. There are also holes, either by accident (a journal stolen in 1996) or blackouts when I was too depressed even to journal (like the winter of 1998). I've been in this space just over 17 years. Somewhere in my dropbox are the files of my previous Xanga blog before that from 2002-2005. Before that, it was analog, beginning with intermittent diary entries in high school, then more lengthier journaling in college. They feel like photographs of someone I once was which sometimes feels amusing, but sometimes just seems annoying.
