on the cusp of april

Today, I am wearing my Stevie Nicks T-shirt and a long black tiered skirt in homage, and am feeling very much my uniformed late 90's/early 2000's self.  The pigeons are back out in the nest on the ledge they barely fit in after scoping it out last week then dissappearing for a few days. They are rather comic in their "if I fits, I sits" attitude in a nest meant for much smaller birds. My mood over the weekend was buoyed by landing a vaccine appointment for midweek, which means by early May, I will be fully vaccinated, which made my inner world a little calmer. The outer world however goes on much as it ever has, and I've yet to check the news today to chart the concerning rise of positives.  

My immediate world this week will be filled with collecting art drop-offs for urban legends and building the virtual exhibit.  Soon it will be April, and once again, the decision on whether or not to jump in the pool of NAPOWRIMO. I actually do have a potential project in mind devoted to the Walter Potter dioramas, and themed projects due seem to fare better in the pressure cooker of poetry month shenanigans.  Such subject matter would suit well my AUTOMAGIC manuscript, which is about 3/4 of the way done, and which I'd like to finish by the end of the year now that I am wrapping up some other longer manuscripts which I intend to either publish or submit (I will likely be self-issuing DARK COUNTRY and ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MONSTER, possibly this year, but COLLAPSOLOGIES fate is still uncertain.) In the meantime, there are zines I am working on and trying to get out there on the regular (conspiracy theories, the text of which is brand new and totally unpublished with the images I am working on for exhibit will be coming in April, followed by extinction event in May.)   As for submissions, I am working on placing more of the plague letters, so hopefully watch for some of those in publications soon.)

I've been working to finish off the conspiracy theory poems before the end of the month and finally have them to my liking. They are awash in this sort of personal folklore informed by urban legend vibe, so they fit nicely with the new collage work that will be part of the exhibit. It's taken three months to get only 12 pieces to my liking with a lot of breaks (February was a huge one.) but I am pretty happy with them. I read a few at the Pretty Owl reading alongside the tabloid poems, but otherwise they haven't seen much daylight yet.  

April is also my birthday month, and turning another year older feels strange and unfair after a year that doesn't really feel like it was a year at all. Though I suppose in many ways I am incredibly lucky to have survived it (knock on wood) when so many others have not. I am also navigating the strange world of "late forties" when I still feel like I am 26 and that very little time has passed in 20 odd years. I was watching thrifting blogs over the weekend and nearly choked everytime they speculated anything from the 90's was vintage. I have a couple things in my closet, maybe not that old, but certainly from the first couple years I was living back in the city that are nearing up on vintage. There is this weird time stretch as you get older where the early decades of your life seem not all that long ago, but you get whiplash when you think about how anything over 20 years seems like the 70's but it's actually the 90's, and now, the aughts.  I've lived in my apartment and been at the same job for 20 years, so this makes it even stranger with no different eras to really break it up. High school seems like a while ago, and so does college and grad school at DePaul, but everything else is just  NOW (early NOW or lately NOW, but still NOW)  

I caught the first reunion Real World episode on youtube and had a strange curisoity to what happened to these particular people in the past 30 years, but still more strangely, thinking what happened to ME in the same span of time.  In 1992 when I saw bits of that 1st season in NC, I was a freshman studying marine bio.  Then I was back in the midwest doing theater and studying English.. Then I was in grad school studying mostly novels.  Then I worked in the elementary school.  Then I was here at Columbia.  These years varied a little, but were much the same. All along writing, sometimes more. sometimes less. My MFA  Years My first readings and recognition. My first chapbooks and books. Starting the journal and the press. The etsy shop years selling mostly vintage finds.and paper goods. The studio years growing the press. Job and responsibility shifts at the library, but still the same library, the same desk covered with stickers. In other aspects, there were many cats, friends, novels, dresses, cocktails, and men, but everything kind of runs together since I was the rather stationary point around which they revolved. I did not move, but the world moved around me, which sounds sort of egotistical, but it's the only way to describe the sensation. Many people routinely cast off and become new selves, in entirely new places, but I am, after all,  a Taurus, so it's less likely..lol..