A mi ver

Caught

2009-11-08T20:06:00.004-05:00

In a maelstrom, that is. Ten more days until comprehensive exams. Forty-one more days til a Master's degree. Thirty-eight more days until my mother arrives for two weeks. She'll probably bring me fluffy socks and try to iron everything in my closet. But that's a whole other story.

I fell asleep on my books today. Didn't get home last night until midnight, after a 30-inch story on deadline. This kind of exhaustion like nothing I've ever known. It's been my life for a year and a half.

I remember when I started this journey. Now I'm about to end it. And the once taken-for-granted gifts of sleep and time will be mine again.

Waiting

2009-11-01T01:54:00.002-05:00

"Look," he says, "how the night follows us home."

In the mirror, I see it: fierce fading light in the moving distance. Our fingers thread like Christmas lights and so the day ends. And another will begin. Some tomorrows you cannot escape.

Good hair

2009-10-26T19:21:00.004-05:00

Posting a little late--we ran this Oct. 20--but here's my Accent advance on Chris Rock's documentary, Good Hair, which launched nationwide Oct. 23.

What Is 'Good' Hair?
Black community debates controversial, expensive topic

I first heard about "good hair" in college. And apparently I had it.

Frizzy curls that I paid little attention to. I'd wake up, fluff and run. Or roll a bun and be done. But the "good" hair thing? That was new.

I grew up in Trinidad, where cultural and ethnic blending is a fine, taken-for-granted art. My curls came from an East Indian mother and a black father, mostly.

My concept of hair was that it was beautiful regardless of shade, texture or style.

But being at a historically black college in the heart of a thriving black community taught me that not everyone felt the same way.

In his man-on-the-street documentary "Good Hair" -- which snagged a special jury prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival -- comedian Chris Rock takes on what many in the black community see as a taboo topic.

He visits beauty salons, hair shows and even science labs in an irreverent yet socially conscious exploration of how hair affects the community's self-esteem, finances and relationships.

His impromptu interview subjects talk about everything from touching a black woman's hair to "creamy crack," as often-pricey hair relaxers are called in jest.

Rock's motivation for the Jeff Stilson-directed flick? An off-handed question from his daughter on why she didn't have "good" hair.

Read the rest.

Photo of yours truly from The News-Journal by Sean McNeil

Only a thing

2009-10-24T01:58:00.003-05:00

"You could compare a certain kind of love affair to a car wreck. You don't expect it, and yet when it does happen it seems somehow inevitable—even overdue. There is the status quo, and then its interruption; a pattern, then variation."
- Antonya Nelson in Only a Thing

If you read nothing else this weekend, read Nelson's Only a Thing.

Photo by Monalyn Garcia from Corbis

All the words

2009-10-24T00:18:00.004-05:00

To be read on a bench.

I can never not stumble upon and wander into used bookstores. On street corners. Under buildings. Off snow-slicked sidewalks.

Here: wooden spice bottles for sale amid the cookbooks; a $3 decorative, glittering pear; stained bottles one would expect to find with messages in the salt spray; tiny tea sets; old children's desks; amber-handled, greening copper tea pots with the architecture books.

Books, books, books. Books everywhere. Books and mermaids. The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké.

Ella. Ella and the Duke. A bookstore with a soundtrack. The Very Thought of You: How I know all the words.

Pastiche

2009-10-17T11:07:00.004-05:00

In the past three months, I've read more than I've read in a year. Not the feet-high stacks of research articles: communication theories and qualitative studies and advertising (those don't count). And not because I don't love to read--I do--simply that time for things that once brought me pleasure (other than CSI) is almost non-existent.

And so, between the meetings and deadlines and few-hundred-miles-on-the-roads days, I've been reading novels and writing guides. I lug them around in the car in case the day grants me a spare moment. In carry-on luggage to pass the time in airports and in planes not spent sleeping. Half a novel a week--sometimes a whole book (it depends on the length)--and a few essays. Not the two or three chapters of research articles (those don't count).

Baxter and Root and McCullers and Krauss and Calvino and Auster and Covington and Kincaid.

Funny that I've learned more about writing from reading their prose and Baxter and Root's essays--thrown on the side like fries--than in a workshop. Like I learned to write like a journalist as an undergraduate PR student by reading the newspapers and pretending I knew what I was doing. (The first story I ever did: it was about a roving Vietnam Wall exhibit (I think I was 20) ran in the Orlando Sentinel. You cannot imagine the pressure; I cannot imagine the editor's grief, working through my words, crafting a too-long piece into something suitable for print. She later said the writing base was there; the craft I'd come to learn on my own reading newspapers and finally knowing what I was doing.)

And so I read half a novel a week--sometimes a whole book (it depends on the length)--and I wonder if I'm teaching myself to write in other ways again. I read with a yellow highlighter and a blue pen, mark the passages and turns-of-phrase that make me pause (White: "And in the east beyond the lilac and beyond the barn and beyond the bay and behind the deepening hills, in slow and splendid surprise, rise the bomber's moon.") Also, highlight mentions of books that probably should be read.

And sometimes I'll read something that, when the passage is past, I'll exhale and realize I'd stopped breathing.

Anne Dillard in Holy the Firm. The narrator is camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains, reading the poet Rimbaud's biography, when she sees the death of a moth in the candle by which she's reading.

"She burned for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning--only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled, while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brains in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet."

Exhale.

Photo by Doug Landreth from Corbis

Solitude

2009-10-11T20:54:00.006-05:00

"If there is a voice of truth--assuming there is such a thing as truth, and assuming this truth can speak--it comes from the mouth of a woman."- Paul Auster in The Invention of Solitude

In the long tunnel of endless night

2009-10-10T22:57:00.006-05:00

I cannot be without you,
and will always be beside you,
in body, in mind, in spirit, in love.
Undeniable love.
Even in the middle of the night.

Late at night, only two lamps burn. Sometimes the TV, for sleep's sake.

My space has become a Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment. A living cumulative essay.

The kitchen in boxes in the living room; disorder defining management's futile attempt to rid us of tiny roaches. (No time yet to unpack.) Research articles: assigned and printed for the coming week's Advertising class; found and printed for the final paper. Book stacks. Water bill. A food-stained syllabus. Sample graduation invitations. Police reports.

A traffic citation. A copy of a story that ran last week reminds me that a critical e-mail or two still haven't been answered. Maybe the 12-page essay due in prose can be about another story that ran a few months ago, can juxtapose the chase, the development, my involvement, the source's ultimate insult and betrayal?

Nothing is linear anymore. Everything flows into the next.

I move the heavy lion from the shelf against the red wall to the book shelf on the opposite end of the couch. And smell it along the way. It smells like nothing. And then the phone rings.

Photo of the lioness on a hummock from Corbis

Indelible tics

2009-10-07T23:32:00.003-05:00

"When I first started, I thought it would come spontaneously, in a trance-like outpouring. So great was my need to write that I thought the story would be written by itself. But the words have come very slowly so far. Even on the best days I have not been able to write more than a page or two. I seem to be afflicted, cursed by some failure of mind to concentrate on what I am doing. Again and again I have watched my thoughts trail off from the thing in front of me. No sooner have I thought one thing than it evokes another thing, until there is an accumulation of detail so dense that I feel I am going to suffocate. Never before have I been so aware of the rift between thinking and writing. For the past few days, in fact, I have begun to feel like the story I am trying to tell is somehow incompatible with language, that the degree to which it resists language is an exact measure of how close I have come to saying something important, and that when the moment arrives for me to say the one truly important thing (assuming it exists), I will not be able to say it."
- Paul Auster in The Invention of Solitude

Photo by Robert Essel NYC from Corbis

Speak easy

2009-10-06T23:16:00.003-05:00

He appears from behind the bar, grey waistcoat and scruffy beard. Like a jazz musician whose real work isn't here.

"I heard you're trying to go Upstairs," he says. We nod.

"There are two seats waiting for you at the bar if you go now," he says. "Just call first."

We saunter over to the vault-like door, schoolgirls with a secret. She picks up the phone. Where it rings we cannot hear. In five seconds, the door unclicks and we're in.

The wooden stairs and walls are rustic, the hallways lined with nude black and whites. Upstairs, static tunes tumble from an invisible phonograph.

Another waistcoated bartender says our wish is his command. Anything my lady has a thirst for? Yes. He mixes a frothy Armaretto concoction and watches as I sip, walks away only when I nod in appreciation.

She and I spend the evening curled on bar stools, staring at antique liquor bottles. People come and go, talking of Michaelangelo. Friends stay.

We move to big, straight-backed chairs in the corner, sip each other's drinks and talk about journalism and sexuality.

When we leave, the patrons downstairs watch with curiosity as we emerge from the metal door. Outside, Seattle is cold, but the ginger keeps me warm.

Salvation

2009-09-29T23:03:00.003-05:00

"There are moments when you stand on the brink of a new experience and understand that you have no choice about it. Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a permanent way. Either way, there will be consequences."
- Dennis Covington in Salvation on Sand Mountain

Photo by Angelo Cavalli from Corbis

Shoe fetish

2009-09-20T16:48:00.002-05:00

"The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it."
- Neal Stephenson

Wordsmith memorials

2009-09-16T22:50:00.005-05:00

"I'm done with journalism," she says. And just like that, a chapter in a prolific book is closed.

Just like that, journalism has lost another True Writer. A victim of the Anti-Industry-Revolutionists, the Wait-And-Sees, the Changing Ad Platform and Lack of Response, the Economy. The Excuses. Politics. Bad Decisions.

She gives me her boxes of plastic forks and spoons, a package of patterned paper napkins. To another reporter, The Oversized Bottle of Ketchup. We used to laugh at that ketchup. Today, no one laughs. The writer passes the bottle onto me.

"I have something for you," I tell her editor.

He takes The Oversized Bottle of Ketchup wordlessly with a sad, wry smile and finds a clear spot on his semi-cluttered desk. Like a roadside memorial. Like a trophy.

We will not forget the souls of the True Writers who suffered in The Storm.

Photo by Bernd Vogel from Corbis

Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life

2009-09-12T15:55:00.004-05:00

The days fall away in words and books and minutes and lies. A neighbor makes his leaden way up the wooden stairs.

Slowly and, sometimes, not so slowly, the things begin to gather in piles around this living space: unopened mail and ambitious syllabi, groceries still bagged, a carboard toolbox, bracelets, sour fruit. A whole lot of Been-Meaning-To's.

And so the days fall away in words and books. A blink: Thirty minutes gone in their reading. The newsroom, a black hole. Hours go by whipping through e-mails and messages and stories and interviews and pictures and deadlines. A meeting at 9 a.m. A meeting in 45 minutes. Reminders to remember the next. The open road, a fearful, exhilerating, weighty place. Conquered, night after night.

Always seeking. Still ticking. Tomorrow, another day to finish today's unfinished. Another day to let your voice, your memory, guide me through the moments we forget to stop to breathe.

We do enough so that chosen freedom, carefully crafted, selected, is devoid of guilt. Inactivity's productivity. We remember to stop to breathe.

Photo of Maasai Warrior with Spear by Hugh Sitton from Corbis

Entry title from Grace Paley's Conversation with My Father

Truths miscalled lies

2009-09-06T18:41:00.004-05:00

“The morning after, you can say, “Mistakes were made,” but with the people I’ve known, a phrase like “Mistakes were made” won’t even buy you a cup of coffee. There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, “Mistakes were made,” you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel. When you say, “I fucked up,” the action retains its meaning, its sordid origin, its obscenity, and its poetry. Poetry is quite compatible with obscenity.”
- Charles Baxter in Dysfunctional Narratives

The disorder of pots and dishes in the cupboards was covered in a thin film of dust, sticky to the touch, poorly washed and hastily stacked away.

Sometimes the church women came and fried fish and he’d freeze the leftovers in the ice box, he said. It’d been six years since his wife passed, he said, six years. His mama taught him to cook so he could eat when his wife got angry, he said. She seldom cooked and cleaned after the wedding, he said. Sometimes it got lonely, he said.

The girl fumbled her way around the unfamiliar kitchen, improvising bowls and containers, seldom used, now carefully washed. When she ran the water, the smell of the sewer rose. His speech was garbled and when she didn’t understand, she smiled anyway. He did most of the talking. You should be one of those fashion models, he said.

He hadn't eaten rice in more than 50 years and couldn't tell her why. But he ate hers. When the food was done, she cleaned the countertops and stacked the spices away. Her mama raised her right, he said. She arranged the food on his plate and handed him the meal with a fork and Diet Coke. Diet Coke was all he drank, he said. That and water and Gatorade.

In the dining room, she sat across from him, though he left the head of the table empty. She finished first and took her plate to the kitchen. Leave the dishes, he said. She had to leave, she said. Put the food in the fridge when it cools and don’t forget to share, she said.

She grabbed her bag of spices and a bottle of ketchup; he grabbed two bags. And then he said her name.

She turned to face him and the air in the dusty kitchen changed. What she saw was no longer a man of God, just a man, a tired, old one, lonely and desperate, laden with grocery bags.

At the car, when they leaned forward to touch collarbones, she was careful not to press her body against his. He’d lost his right to an embrace.

On the way home, she thought about that moment in the kitchen again and again. Anger balanced with pity. Now everything she thought she knew and everything she’d written about him had become lies.

Photo by Jack Delano, circa 1941, from Corbis

I think I screamed

2009-09-02T16:11:00.003-05:00

I think I screamed.

On the way home, behind the wheel of an unfamiliar car, I tried to scream again. To recapture the panic, the helplessness, the disbelief. But I couldn’t get it quite right.

I can still feel that lurching swing of the car. Still feel that waiting. For the End. Whatever that End may be. An end to the spinning. Or an end to my life. Whichever came first or simultaneously. Too familiar.

Two calls for help, one more obvious than the other. But sometimes help can be no good. Sometimes help takes 30 minutes to arrive in the driving rain. Sometimes help affixes blame and a citation. Sometimes help doesn’t arrive at all, uninvited.

I drag my feet through the mud. The trooper says sorry without meaning it. The snake under my car latches onto the tow truck driver; he goes to the hospital.

Are you OK? Are you OK? ARE YOU OK? Everyone keeps asking, Are you OK? Nod and smile and die inside.

At the liquor store, the wet, blackened edges of my khaki slacks mop the floor.

I remember the way the heavy tyre tracks looked in the grass. I remember the traffic that kept going. I would have kept on going too.

(B)rambles

2009-08-31T22:05:00.008-05:00

"she’s seeing little hims running around her knees calling her mommy and him daddy. she’s seeing him reading Langston on a brown over-stuffed lounge chair and her sitting at a desk large enough to contain her mess, and to the right a window A window that looks out to the beach ‘cause he finally got them there. dreaming, she thinks to herself, he said once, in a poem, dreaming, I was only dreaming...but I didn’t get on that train, he continued, and ended up running right into jail."
- Lesley-Ann Brown in A Love Poem (Ten Years After the Fact)

Fifteen months ago, my life changed. In strange, subtle ways. In ways not so subtle and ways I cannot say. Part of the cryptic story involves death. Another, life and love. And also rebirth.

But we won't talk about death here, about violence and broken gravestones. About finding the strength to mourn in unexpected places.

We'll speak of a breathless call at 2 a.m. I'd slept in my clothes and looked as rumpled as I felt. I drove to the hospital; she gasped in the seat. We walked the maternity halls, a haggard, wary pair, like lovers, reading the noticeboards, waiting.

When my goddaughter finally came, her suctioned head looked like a soft pyramid. She had confused eyes like black flames and defensive hands. We all cried. She taught me about loving something bigger than myself.

I've seen my own wonder and childhood in her eyes, been willing to fight and kill for her safety. And her mother's. When she clings to me, when her eyes light up, when she giggles and steals my crackers, part of my soul melts. Again and again.

Her mother reminds me when I need it most that I'm loved purely by two beautiful females.

"Every story is a history, however, and when there is no comprehensible story, there is no history."
- Charles Baxter in Dysfunctional Narratives

Sometimes you wake up and, without rolling over, you know that they're there. This person you've shared your entire life with, whom you'd rather be without at times. At times you barely nod. But they live with you, are a part of you. A steady weight at the center of your chest. Love and hate.

"It's like that moment when, often early in the morning, perhaps in a strange house, you pass before a mirror you hadn't known would be there. You see a glimpse of someone reflected in that mirror, and a moment passes before you recognize that that person is yourself."
- Charles Baxter in On Defamiliarization

That's kind of how I feel about writing.

But it's easier to paint writing into a box to pay the bills, to live the life that makes sense. To write 10-word tag lines, to sell ideas, to write 18 inches of copy, to sell the news.

And then one day I rolled over and looked it straight in the eye. We'd been co-habitating for so long; we knew each other too well. All it took was a muse who believed. And a workshop.

Stripped bare, writing became that Thing I Could Do. Also, That Thing I Was Meant To Do more than I was doing. No longer a dream deferred. No longer tied up in tragedy and public responsibility. Possible.

"I used to call her the "storm goddess," because she was at her best surrounded by cataclysm. She could stir up others with drink and drugs and magic incantations, and then when the cyclone was at its most intense, sit down at calm center and glow."
- Virgil Thomson

Goodbyes can be bittersweet and full of resentment. Every hello, forgiveness. On mornings, my love wakes me. I roll over and look it straight in the eye. Later, I want to tell my goddaughter that it is Possible, that cemeteries are for the dead, but the living find peace there.

Photo by Mika from Corbis

Judith*

2009-08-30T19:48:00.004-05:00

We did it one day when no one was looking. Save for the judge. And the clerk. Though I’d hardly count the clerk because I doubt she was paying attention. Maybe they were in between arraignments.

Everyone signed. And then everyone was happy. They moved on to other couples; we moved on to Ever After. I wasn’t showing yet.

He said I love you all the time. Like a refrain. Then the baby died. And I had nothing to show anymore. I named her Judith and cried. After a while, I stopped believing in refrains. The first time I knew was the last time I let him say it.

“I love you.” He kissed my forehead and made for the door.

“Do you?” I crumbled when he left. Like a grieving widow. I suppose in many ways I was.

I wanted to give him back those words. Tell him I didn’t want them. Though I desperately did. Want them to be real, to not disappear like he did when our pain was alive and throbbing.

I knew where he went and it wasn’t here. And it wasn’t me. I love you couldn’t soften the absence and the blows. What is love if not a cradle?

It seemed everyone was looking the day we did it. Weddings: Fifth floor. Annulments: Sixth. The courthouse smelled vaguely like mustard and crime. We smelled like a statistic. (If statistics had a scent, it might be burning brakes.)

“I loved you,” I said and made for the doors.

“And now?”

“And now you smell like mustard.”

* Before you start freaking out, it's just a writing exercise. (Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental etc. etc. etc.) The first line dropped in and the rest just went from there. Since the writing workshop earlier this year, I've realized part of my style is choppy, incomplete sentences and irony--not something I can get away with in journalism. So it's fun--despite the morbid topic--to experiment at times and indulge inspiration.

Photo by Bernd Vogel from Corbis

The pursuit of happiness

2009-08-20T22:21:00.007-05:00

When I get e-mails in the middle of a hectic workday with interesting articles that I know I'd like to do more than scan, I print them out and take them home. (In my environmental defense, I usually toss them into the blue office recycle bin the next day unless they're so good they have to be filed.)

One of today's articles (Edit: Sent from miko), strangely appropriate as of late, was Carlin Flora's The Pursuit of Happiness in Psychology Today, in which Flora outlines our evolving understanding of how to achieve happiness. And she does it without sounding like a cheesy self-help guru.

Fair warning: If you read the article in its entirety, it sounds much less general than what I've outlined below, but here are The Parts That Really Struck Me anyway:

"What is happiness? The most useful definition—and it's one agreed upon by neuroscientists, psychiatrists, behavioral economists, positive psychologists, and Buddhist monks—is more like satisfied or content than "happy" in its strict bursting-with-glee sense. It has depth and deliberation to it. It encompasses living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, living with thought and purpose. (My emphasis.)

Pain is a Part of Happiness
Happiness is not your reward for escaping pain. It demands that you confront negative feelings head-on, without letting them overwhelm you... Happiness would be meaningless if not for sadness: Without the contrast of darkness, there is no light.

Mindfulness Brings Happiness
Don't banish your negative feelings, but don't let them get in the way of your taking productive actions, either.

Happiness Lies in the Chase
It's not crossing the finish line that is most rewarding; it's anticipating achieving your goal.

Happiness is Other People
Good relationships are buffers against the damaging effects of all of life's inevitable letdowns and setbacks.

Options Make Us Miserable
We base many of our decisions on whether we think a particular preference will increase our well-being. Intuitively, we seem convinced that the more choices we have, the better off we'll ultimately be. But our world of unlimited opportunity imprisons us more than it makes us happy.

Happiness Hinges on Your Time Frame
Evaluate your well-being at the macro as well as the micro level to get the most accurate picture of your own happiness.

You're Wrong About What Will Make You Happy and You're Wrong About What Made You Happy
We are terrible at predicting our future feelings accurately, especially if our predictions are based on our past experiences. The past exists in our memory, after all, and memory is not a reliable recording device: We recall beginnings and endings far more intensely than those long "middles," whether they're eventful or not.

Happiness Is Embracing Your Natural Coping Style
Barbara Held, a professor of psychology at Bowdoin College, for one, rails against "the tyranny of the positive attitude." "Looking on the bright side isn't possible for some people and is even counterproductive," she insists. "When you put pressure on people to cope in a way that doesn't fit them, it not only doesn't work, it makes them feel like a failure on top of already feeling bad."

Happiness Is Living Your Values
If you aren't living according to your values, you won't be happy, no matter how much you are achieving... The state of happiness is not really a state at all. It's an ongoing personal experiment."

This has been your Friday public service announcement. Drink and be merry. But not too much, I hear alcohol's a depressant and such.

Photo of children in Goa, India, by Bruno Ehrs is from Corbis

inspiration attendant

2009-08-18T00:05:00.007-05:00

"when a woman undresses and opens and offers herself to you the world fades away. i thought i understood that power when i realised i'd become a woman and was good with that knowledge. but now i sense in a whole 'nother, fuller way how amazing are these lovely creatures too-often too-simply referred to as "hot". her naked form over you, softly backlit, almost too beautiful to believe..."
- Sweet Trini in life imitates art, and other revelatory experiences

Photo by Stuart Westmorland from Corbis

Nomahs Land - Metisse

The traveling circus

2009-08-16T20:50:00.004-05:00

Lesser known fact about this writer (which, I suppose, won't be lesser known once I post this) is that I sing.

Yes, there are videos out there of a skinny teenager performing under stage lights that'll no doubt suddenly surface should I ever step into a writing realm larger than journalism.

My favourite part was not so much the camaraderie among choir members born out of traveling together and lengthy, frequent, tiring practices pre-concert. And it wasn't so much the performing itself, though that's always fun for the extrovert.

It was the scales, the 20-minute warm-up before we began running through our repertoire. I could always feel the moment my voice was ready to reach the notes demanded. It was an invincible feeling. For several years, singing alto gave me a release as powerful as writing. I once lost my voice for almost two weeks as a teenager and thought it was the end of the world.

But I only confess all this because sometimes I miss singing. Like last Friday.

Worn from the week's work, a friend and I ventured north to the St. Augustine Amphitheatre to see Counting Crows with Michael Franti and Spearhead and Augustana. They rocked the stage that night for almost four hours. We sat and drank, stood and danced, got caught up in the music.

I imagined I could feel the heat of the stage lights, inhale the maple-like smell of the smoke machine, thrive on the crowd's energy. Sing from the diaphragm, the back of the throat, my soul, until all was spent. In that moment, I wanted to be up there, mic in hand, with that familiar feeling of fear and exhileration.

Even when she and I left to wander down St. George Street, when we drifted into a cozy bar and chatted over lambic and beer, part of me was still ruminating about that past life.

I still sing while I cook and drive, when a song or a pretty note hit me, but few people in my life know how important it has been, how indelibly it is linked to my love of music.

I sing for even fewer.

Is it a crime?

2009-08-12T19:38:00.005-05:00

I seem to have a knack for switching beats in the middle of budget season.

For the past ten days, I've been attending and scheduling more meetings than writing. It comes with the territory, I suppose, of leaving established sources behind and forging new relationships, memorizing new roles, places, names and faces, getting a handle on a new set of issues.

I was apprehensive when I first learned of the change and though it's exhausting ordering a different sort of professional grind, the busyness, the challenge, moving a different set of chess pieces, can be gratifying, stimulating even. A workaholic's drug.

Sometimes I wonder if I really like government. Is it the complexity of the issues? Is it the watchdog status? Is it the access to decision makers? Is it just because I think deadlines are sexy? Because it really can't be the meetings. Or millage rates.

It drives me to mandatory beers afterward, solitary visits to the beach. Also, insane. But, as closely related as they can seem, I'd rather be doing government than crime.

Photo by Philip James Corwin from Corbis

Fire

2009-08-10T23:42:00.004-05:00

Fire - Lizz Wright And it's gonna burn, right or wrong:It's all for you to see.Stop hiding your eyes; take the fire from me.And be warm, life is hard and sometimes the night is long. Take the fire; you don't have to give it back to me.

Vida

2009-08-07T21:44:00.002-05:00

"The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

- Norman Cousins

Photo by Ken Seet from Corbis

When first we faced

2009-08-03T09:13:00.004-05:00

When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much the meeting owed To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonize.

Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself -- no cost,
No past, no people else at all --
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange.

- Philip Larkin

I've been following musician Chris Blake on Twitter and he put me onto the poem you've just read. It's one of those things that's so profound, so sad, so true that you stop breathing for a moment.

And then you do.

Photo by Luca Tettoni from Corbis