Hello, blogosphere. Sorry for the extended absence. There hasn’t been much of a response to my virtual writing workshop, but I am hopeful that some folks are just waiting to see what the final proposal will look like. I myself am waiting to see what Diaspora will look like, so, here we are.
When last I left you, I was preparing to send my only child off to college. She seems to be faring well – the usual adjustment bumps and bruises. I wish I could say the same for yours truly. Honestly, I wish I could say anything for yours truly with some degree of certainty, but I cannot. I have managed to keep myself extremely busy, and when I’m not busy, I’m sleeping. Uh-oh. I expressed this whack-a-doodle state of affairs to a good friend and fellow writer yesterday, and her advice to me was, “Take some time. Sit with this, and just let yourself feel what you feel.” Of course! Insert smack to the forehead here. I confessed to her that I see the wisdom of such a course of action, and probably just needed somebody to tell me to take it!
As poet Jennifer K. Sweeney and I explored in an interview I did of her a few years ago [Main Street Rag, Spring 2007], a poet doesn’t so much “move on” from painful things as “move through” them.* Frankly, we often move through them when the rest of you cannot bear to do so, and we do it because you cannot bear to do so. We hew the rough underbrush of the path, and hope that you will follow because we know you will feel better if you do. We know so because we feel better for having cut the trail; and, we are also readers, so we also feel better when we follow a painful path that someone else mapped first. Such knowledge of this process, however, did not help me see that I was running away from my own feelings about this personal milestone. It took someone else articulating it to make me realize what I was (am) doing.
Talking to Myself ... eavesdroppers welcome 
