Promises, Promises (31)

- To post soon (about something besides Kudzu)

- To move

- To reflect upon meeting the one and only Mendacious

- To be older

- To get my passport (for Mendacious)

- To write more poems, essays, letters

- To think about tomorrow

- To take a break

- To call

- To wear a dress

- To go to bed

A Voice from Afar

Hello.

I'm still here.

Promise.

Posts are a-brewin'.

April showers will bring May flowers.

Miss y'all.

A Pretty Good Year: Resolutions

* Take a deep breath during perfect moments and really live them.

* Apologize less for being me.

* Accept my limitations.

* Let go of the past - learn from it, but know that the present and the future are where I can exercise the most control.

* Get my stupid passport already.

* Be hopeful and believe that good things exist for me.

* Write more - and write earnestly. It's time to stop holding to insecurities and just do it.

* Welcome Reese into the world with all the love I have to give.

* Embrace happiness without reservation. Love without fear. And relentlessly seek to be at peace with myself.

Gratitude: Part V - Love

Today is the day that we come together and give thanks for what we have. And the thing that I have in abundance - the thing that political strife and economic turmoil and absolute tragedy can't take away - is love. Just that. Just love. And I am grateful beyond measure for love.

For the love of my family...whom I have grown closer to and come to appreciate more than I ever have in my life. I cherish them and see them, as with fresh eyes, for the immense blessing that they are. They are the cornerstones that keep me grounded, that support me, that I always, always come back to.

For the love of my friends...whom I have relied on for strength and comfort and peace in the past nine months. You have been the eyes reading my thoughts and the ears hearing my words and the arms that have gone around me when there was simply nothing to say. You have shown me the meaning of true friendship - in the worst of circumstances - you have risen to the occasion to humble me with your love.

For the love of my work...which has given me constancy during turbulence. I don't like to say too much about my job on the blog, but I will say that the company has embraced me and helped me hold it together when my whole life was flying apart. I get to do what I love, and I get to do it with people I love. On Tuesday, the Big Boss was in the ATown office, and he hugged me and said, "I'm so thankful for you." And I am thankful for a job where I am loved.

For the love of words...how they have sustained me through the darkest times. Even when I thought I was speechless, struck dumb by the wholly unexpected tragedy, I found words. And unleashed, those black marks against white inked out all that was seizing my heart and mind. Words, words, words. I thank God for the blessing of words, my friends when I am in need. How I love words...in some ways, I had almost forgotten.

For the love of God...no, really. For the Peace that Passes All Understanding, for a faith that has given me a Rock upon which to stand, for prayers that have been heard, for the comfort that has been given.

For the love of love...for the recognition that love is what is healing me. Love is what is keeping me from falling apart, what keeps me from being afraid of the dark. Love is what I can offer to my sister, to the rest of my family. Love is the only thing that I can give back to those friends who have been there for me. Love can be given in words, expressed to those who need it. Love is the embodiment of the God who loves me.

Thank you, Love.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Midnight Miscellany

* I am on Facebook, the seventh time-suckage wonder of the world. This has led to the good, the bad, and the ugly: reunited with a long-silent friend who lives in the ATown; found Chad D., love of my 15-year-old life; and a guy I went to high school with wearing a cowboy hat and a very curly blonde wig, making him just about the ugliest girl I've ever seen.

* Tomorrow is the Come-to-Jesus Part 2: Status Redux. I'll be heading to his house with pizza and indigestion following work tomorrow. Stay tuned.

* Yesterday, my client sent my boss a note about what a great writer I am. I mean, I know it's Writing for The Man, but still, it warms my heart.

* Dillon now says my whole name - although he finds the "l" a bit tricky. But I'll take "Ashey" anyday - even when it's followed by the demand, "Socks off!"

* I am getting the ball rolling with my own volunteer group. I'm both nervous and excited. It's thrilling to think that it could work and be great, and terrifying to think I will be a singles volunteer group with a single volunteer - me.

* The weekend will be partially devoted to a Thanksgiving party with friends - and partly to finishing Breaking Dawn.

* Good night.

Belly Up to the Bar

Despite my abysmal showing on Swing State, I have been invited to the bar - the Smartini Bar, that is. Spearheaded by Megan (Head Smartini Wench), we've opened a new establishment in the blogosphere for those of you with a taste for sass. Bringing you thoughts on all manner of things, we'll also be serving up some weekly specials that will give you (sometimes bizarre) insight into the minds of your Smartenders. Please stop by - the drinks are on us.

Wisdom, Stumbled Upon, Worth Sharing

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.

--Annie Dillard

My Own Words Come Back to Haunt Me

"But somehow, it was a reminder that the innocent suffer for no apparent reason. That in an instant, something that brought great joy into this world was gone. That there is no rhyme or reason to it. That it's not anyone's fault. And perhaps worst of all, that something like this, some inexplicable terrible thing, will happen again. Sooner or later. And there's nothing I can do it stop it. Death creeps up; it lurks around the corner. Whether it comes for the pets or the people that you love, when death comes, you just have to live with it."

--July 1, 2007

Spinning Plates

Work is going really well. I am two weeks away from the six-month mark. I have officially taken over the leadership role on two major accounts and am in transition on a third. I'm a second on one of the firm's most volatile accounts (The Client Who Shall Not Be Named), and I've been tapped to work on the creative concept development for a new client. The Big Boss stopped me in the Atlanta office the other day to personally applaud my work. People hug me when I arrive in Atlanta; the office banter is getting easier. And so rises the "Hallelujah" chorus to a grand crescendo...and then...

And then I realize that I'm working late a lot. When I'm not working, I'm thinking about work. My email is woefully neglected. I forget to return phone calls or else can't muster the energy for a real conversation. Yesterday, STGD suggested I post a photo of a cobweb on the blog. I was excited about Swing State and yet, I haven't worked on making it what I wanted it to be. I just...ran out of gas. And writing beyond that? Forget about it.

The money I've been saving for the Elusive House Purchase in the Nonspecific Future is sitting in my checking account - my non-interest bearing checking account - because I cannot wrap my brain around putting a chunk of it into the savings account that I set up months ago.

And while I continue to raise my hand for all sorts of charitable causes (an extension of work in many ways) my social life hasn't seen considerable growth in the months since my job began.

But this isn't a post about how I need to work less. Or even, really, how work is getting in the way of life. I actually enjoy what I do. I like my job. So what gives?

The delicate balance between applying enough force to maintain momentum and enjoying the spin is escaping me. Instead, I've got one plate in my grip, spinning it for all I'm worth while the other plates crash to the ground in a heap of fragments: unanswered emails, stacks of correspondence, phone numbers long since dialed, friends unmade. And on that one sharp point, dancing in a wobbling elliptical, is the dish in which I've placed my hope. But if I don't slow down, it too will shatter.

Winter Drive

Weak winter sun, a pale yellow egg yolk in the eastern porcelain sky. Lacy stamp of a half moon in the west. Cragged limbs of a tree filled with obsidian crows, eyes beady and glassine against the cold. Last vestiges of woodsmoke curl through the tight air. Bitter breath in tiny clouds after cautious sips of hot coffee. Skin dry and papery in front of the heat vents, fingertips numb - where are my gloves? No sunglasses this morning, crinkle my eyes against that thin creamy light flickering through the slats of pine trees edging the road, marking each second with light and shadow. Trees along the downtown streets strain their bare fractal limbs against the sky - now tinged blue or pink, the sun growing orange and somehow closer as I turn past the stacked brick building. I could keep going - keep driving in this solitary winter landscape - but I shut off the motor, go inside.

Good and True News

Please welcome to the blogiverse some Good and True Things as penned by Jenn. If you're lucky, she'll eventually recount some highly amusing and slightly embarrassing stories of my earlier years, seeing as how we were fairly inseparable during that time. Hence the listing under Hometown Jungle Cats.

As the blogiverse expands, the world gets a little smaller, bringing all of us far-flung friends a little closer together. And that's a good thing.

Room for Improvement

* Posture

* Self-deprecation

* Writing habits

* Second guessing

* Envying

* Punctuality

* Belonging

* Dedication to house savings-fund

* Sharpness of mind

* Joke-telling

Eight-Legged Freakout

Last night, I had the most vivid dream that my scalp was covered with tiny little black spiders no bigger than the end of your finger. In the dream, I kept putting my hands in my hair and leaning forward to flick the spiders from my head. And then at some point, I realized the spiders were literally coming out of my head, from this bump above my forehead at my hairline. Spiders upon spiders. I started awake and lay very still as chills descended on me from head to toe. So real was the dream that I was afraid to touch my head, and so I tried to ignore the creepy crawling feeling on my skin and go back to sleep. I couldn't shake the sensation of tickling legs for the rest of the morning and even checked my pillowcases to rule out actual spiders.

When dreams are this vivid, I feel like they must mean something - something my brain can't quite work out when I'm awake and thinking and so must consider while I'm asleep. I looked up spiders in several dream dictionaries, and their appearance in dreams can be sinister or an omen of good luck (for, like, getting a job?). One source suggested that spiders represent irrational fears and anxieties, but ones that are more complex, hence their representation by eight-legged creatures. And that they also can signify a feeling of oppression or stagnation. Other sources indicated that spiders are symbolic of the creative spirit, and that they simple indicate that you have a creative itch you need to scratch.

But in truth, the dream felt more like a little arachnid army of anxieties marching around my head followed by the realization that I was the source of the madness. Perhaps it was a combination of things: a laundry list of insecurities and doubts surging to the surface, a niggling sense that I've let my writing lay dormant for too long, and all this heat that has everything slow-roasting in its tracks. Whatever the case, I may sleep with Raid under my pillow tonight.

Things That Make You Go Whoops

I've been remiss in posting the last couple of days while I was in Atlanta with Justin, Eva and Dillon. I went to keep her company on Wednesday because Justin had to entertain clients late into the evening. Around 7:30, Eva and I headed for the car to dash out for dinner. We had been waiting on my cousin to show up when she called and cancelled due to work obligations. We had just a tiny window before Dillon was going to put on his fussy pants and demand his last bottle and bed. Did I mention we were voraciously hungry?

All of these things - the hunger, the lateness of the hour, the impending fussy pants episode, and the position of the garage in relation to the driveway - combined for a collossal oops. As we pulled out of the garage, Eva smashed into the back end of my Rav.

Now, some of you may know that Eva's a little bit notorious behind the wheel. For my grad school comrades, you may remember that I catalogued another famous car accident of hers in my short story "Car Crashes." And there's another story we like to tell about her driving when she had a tiny Ford Probe (totalled in aforementioned story accident) when I was on the way to her apartment with my boyfriend at the time. We were a little turned around when this silver bullet whipped around us, nearly clipping the corner of the car. And while my boyfriend was swearing at her, I said, "Follow her! That's Eva!"

The weird thing was that I knew it was going to happen. As the garage door lifted up and I spied the Rav behind us in the driveway, it just clicked in my head that she was going to hit it. But when she started easing out of the garage, I thought she saw it. When she cleared the trash can, she accelarated, and though I called out her name, she didn't have time to hit the breaks before she hit the car.

Bless her sweet heart. She felt so awful. And I felt so awful, looking at the bumper pulled away from the body and crumpled underneath. She couldn't stand the suspense and interrupted Justin's dinner meeting to tell her what she'd done. Between losing the dog last week and the accident this week, I'm doubtful that I'll be invited back to their house for awhile.

In Praise of Spring

The shift in seasons reminded me of a poem I wrote in college during my e.e. cummings period. I was quite fond of wandering around campus in the wee hours.

2 a.m. in spring

blooming into april neverdarkness
alive with lush green whispers
brazenly unfurling petals for a pale moon
who smiles at fevered spring eyes.
wild feet kiss fresh grass lips
lately wetted by dew's first --
poetry in the trees, these leaves
that rush against one another
like the lines of a sonnet, rhythmic
rustling words of lovers, spoken
during these hours of sleeping
when the light across town burns,
a little daylight saved for me.

Bloglect

It's been one of those weeks some of my fellow bloggers have warned me about. The well of ideas ran dry on me. Or else, it wasn't so much that the well ran dry as it was that the well was filled with water not fit for public consumption.

I spent the day in the car driving home to see family - and Dillon. And I tried to drown out the sound of my own thoughts with the radio. But all the lyrics seemed to play right into what I was thinking about and dig into me. Despite crossing state lines, I didn't escape anything that I might've thought I could leave behind in Wilmywood.

Right now, life in general is like writing a short story. I have some characters, some plot, some scenes. I have a few knowns and a lot of unknowns. And I've got to sit down at that blank page and figure out how the story goes.

November

November is my least favorite month of the year, save that it brings Thanksgiving. Somehow it seems to be more of the end of the year than December, perhaps because December is so filled with holiday celebration that it distracts from the ending of another year. November always seems bleak...and tearing off the page on the calendar today that brought me to November 1 made me shudder. And so, a poem for today.

Every year, November

rain comes in thin
metal sheets tearing
last leaves from trees
pins them to sidewalks
mapping a path to winter

grey comes to shade
clouds like slim boats
hung on steeples
needling the skies
to hold autumn in place

night comes quickly
after noon to hurry day
away, slow blooming frost
covers the ground, windows
with the dying breath of gods

Firework Spectacluar

Tonight I was treated to an impromptu firework spectacular, no doubt launched from a river barge for some event at the Hilton or the Battleship. As odd as fireworks in October might seem, it made me smile. I've seen this firework display in October before - which inspired me to write a poem that eventually became the short story "Fireworks on the Fourth." There were two particularly eerie ones tonight - one that looked strangely like the Dark Mark in red and one that was at least 50 spinners that sounded like ghostly screams. Kudzu found them all particularly distressing and hid under the daybed in the living room.

Most of you have read it, but in honor of the occasion, here is the opening scene from the story that reads like de ja vu to me at the moment.

October
I called but I hung up before your answering machine picked up so I didn’t have to hear your voice. It was still strange to me, your absence, not being able to bear the sound of your voice. I wanted you to hear the anomalous explosions of fireworks popping off over the river in October. I watched them between the old oak trees in the backyard, feet propped on the wrought iron railing. The scream of a spinner broke through the cool air and gold sparks split through the stars.

I thought about going inside, and then I heard a remnant of your voice from July saying, “Wait. We can’t leave until the finale,” your eyes like marbles. That day at the park was the last time that we were together pretending to be happy. When the finale came, you put your hand to your chest to feel the vibrations of one boom after another. You left the next day.

From the porch I watched the finale, hysterical combustion of color and sound. I stood and put my hand to my chest, but I was too far away to feel them inside me. I saw only the spindles of smoke drifting across the sky like ghosts.

The Unblogables

One of the groomsmen in Dan & Jenn's wedding happens to be a poet in the final stages of his MFA. In the limo, we talked briefly about writing. He asked if I still wrote fiction - a question I get a lot after I've confessed that I have an MFA. I laughed a little and said no. I told him that I was blogging and journaling a lot but still not quite ready to get back in the saddle with fiction.

I wondered what he thought from that side of the fence - the final throes of the thesis work; the squeezing out of every last drop of energy you have to put into it; the feeling that something you'd put that much of yourself into had to amount to something. And me looking at him from what seemed a great distance and thinking about how I can't even seem to remember how to put a story together anymore.

Later I thought about how I had matriculated from this very serious writing place to writing posts about Paris Hilton's unfortunate wardrobe choice on magazine covers and broken computers. And of course, there is the other side - the personal journaling and sorting out of life that takes place in the offline corridors of this machine that's for me and me alone. I often think it's my better writing, but as many of the bloggers have discussed at length, there's certain unblogable territory. Online, we're all iceberg writers - just the tip that belies what goes far deeper under the surface.

I like my career and respect the integrity of it and my clients, and so I refrain from writing more than what skims the surface and holds on to some level of anonimity. And my family doesn't even know the blog exists, but there's certain sacredness to that part of my life. There's just a certain amount of what goes on in daily life that's top security access, that's not just for anyone who happens by.

I guess I felt a little guilty admitting that all I was writing at this point was a blog and a journal. I didn't further incriminate myself by telling him that I also write ad copy for The Man.

I want to write what's honest and gritty and close to the bone. But it's too hard when you don't know who's watching. Or who might get hurt. Or fired. Or angry. I admire you nonfictioneers who are willing to tell that kind of truth and make it artful. I'll just have to collect my unblogables and change the names to protect the innocent and produce a story that's honest and gritty and close to the bone. And pretend it's a lie.

Artwork that captured this feeling perfectly: Critique of Judgment, Observer by Ralph L. Steeds