Renee and I will hit the road for Cleveland on August 18th. To keep it simple I will say this: we’re quite excited
about it. It’s been a while since our words have been hosted as guests in another city, another community.
We traveled a bit in the past through slam but that was different–a very specific kind of venture, and we
were younger. I’d like to say as writers we are stronger and we have a better grip on the wanting-it-so-badly
part. I look forward to being in a room full of strangers, shaking hands, sharing stories. Life is so short and
the world is so big and writing keeps me going. A rambly equation for me to solve but it works.

I’ve been thinking about things that maybe I’m still to foolish to ignore. Like death and going, how this instant is so
brief and the harder I hold it the more it struggles for me to let it go. I think about how it is inevitable and I
don’t want the inevitable, feels like the very breath is fighting against it. My drum still here and going strong.
I cannot stand to be so afraid of something beyond me. I want to read everything I can get my hands on.
Want to walk into the room over and over again and see that grin for the first time. You know, live.

At the end of this month I’ll be one year without drinking alcohol–I no longer possess any social ties to the elixir.
Along with sobriety returned a fear, some fear of the lack of control around me in certain scenarios. I’ve had
to think about the past again, think about where the defense first took its form. Possibly staying up all night
listening to the Smiths at the Ryburn apartment. I don’t know. It isn’t a welcome kind of reflection–it just has
to happen. I feel like the odd man out but I’m okay with it. Now I walk away. I’ve gone through dramatic
examples of what it can do to you…and god forbid I criticize my survival, but I don’t think people get that.
Maybe I just come along as bitter and hostile. I let that go too. I’m too old to start caring about what others
think. Out of my orbit.

I own no complacence, but I’m getting the itch to go. I’m watching the world move and twist and change around me–
yellow getting more yellow, buildings beginning new. I want to move and twist and change too. Staying may
not be the answer, and I’ve started on the homework early–first step being the imagining. Another
neighborhood, another state. Closer to the bloodline. I’m eyeballing the chem trail of the journey behind me.
Wherever I’ll go, I will be there–a classic sentiment that used to do its best to haunt me–now it’s a comfort
to turn another corner and know I can be wherever I put myself. Where is the placing?

The person who brought me to this city is moving away, and friends are married, and the stack of papers and
poems grows. The sun has faded all of the curtains and I tend to hum under the cicadas. I’m all on fire and
motioning water. Just enjoying it. This summer has been something. I’m twelve shades of dark and trying to
save money. I’m all full of questions and catching myself saying a lot of “when I was your age,” or referring to the
young-20’s as “kids.” Walking slower. Tango with the old dilemma of stay laying down and try to sleep or get up
and write your guts out. You know, living.

The saying goes: time owes you nothing. Doesn’t need to teach, doesn’t need to lean on explanation or reasons for the brief,
the length–the increments ticking yet constantly abandoned. Too busy living. Too loud, too fast, too focused. Rain in the
wires, voices reduced to pin drops in static. I believe it. I’m not owed anything. But sometimes time flips up the hem of its
distance, and you see it and it’s okay. Even makes sense, might even make it better. You trace the line, a little amused
with dragging it through everywhere you’ve been. From there to there to here, eventually. Shift one thing and you move a
world.

Just a note to say life’s thrown me a bit sideways lately…I will update soon.

The above = my dominant viewing spot for the past 4, 5 days. Another epic migraine. Except for the 6 hour lie on New Year’s
Eve, when I convinced myself I was well enough to go to a party, smile and fake it. I was, of course, wrong. I had the right
intentions, however–get some fresh air, seem some lovely faces, engage in conversation. Pain trumps intent though, and so I
left without really saying goodbye to people and woke up the next morning with the usual unexplainable ache in my noggin and
a healthy dose of guilt(for the lack of au revoir–that’s very unlike me). Anyway, I feel like I’m finally crawling out of it…
right in time to go back to work tomorrow. Time for another doctor, because this episode was just ridiculous.

So I started my new year by hiding how sick I felt from everyone around me. I’m over it. I haven’t been well enough to do
much over the past few days except think–think on the ground behind me a bit but mostly on what’s in front. I squared away
my first gig for ‘10, and I’m ready to do more. There’s a new class to show my dukes to, and a few projects that are already
stealing my heart. Learning to approach them with “I will” instead of “I want to.”

More after I obtain some rest and a day or two of painlessness.

Going back to where I came from in a few days. I prepare to go with a project in mind–I’ll steal a few moments alone here
and there to make use of the rental and drive around my old town. Documentation for research purposes is one way to say it. Feelings
range from place to place–affection for some and a throat-full of bile for others. The visual is just a map back to how things
felt, cul de sac pockets in the brain, the hard-to-reach curved corner of the hippocampus. Then I will print them out, clothesline them over the writing desk and get to work.

Ink idea is the works for Jessica, my exquisite first roommate. I feel compelled to do something for her, in thought of her.
Ever since I found out about her murder, I haven’t been quite thesame. I think about her often. I’ve been in touch with our other roommate,
as she found out about Jess just as recently.We’ve taken to trading our stories back and forth, reminding each other of things forgotten which is the most precious & strange
thing–for someone to tell you so clearly about something you never remembered. Then, there. It’s back as if never gone. There
connection is key for me in dealing with Jessica’s death. It’s also pretty brilliant to have an old friend give you a lengthy
run down on their life and what they’ve been through over the past 8 years. That is exactly what we did for one another–the
summations are asymmetric, as significance is weighed differently in retrospect. In a way, we are talking about another lifetime,
or multiple ones with clumsy progressions. Anyway, it’s been nice to talk with someone who was there. It’s kind of like saying
“this happened and we lived through it.”

More thoughts, always more thoughts, but sleep summons me. Work was long and busy, and my therapy session cracked the
head and heart open. And some things are best when they are stirred up then reabsorbed into the body.

Had another roller coaster dream last night. It happens every now and then, more often than I realize–a dream about
waiting in line, pointing out their curves and loops to others, getting in, and riding one, hanging on. Always hanging on,
warning my passenger as we ascend that I almost always fall out. I put both elbow bends up under the bar and push
against the pull, and that’s how I woke up this morning–arms in two L-shapes, fists clenched up, laughing. I woke up
in the middle of a drop and I was still laughing about it.

Officially, the semester is over. I had a stressful ending–the stomach flu found me on the very last day(Monday), when
both of my final projects were due. I spent the day puking and worrying about getting my work in on time. Everything
turned out okay and the sickness backed off by evening. The queasiness is sticking around but it’ll pass. br>

The migraines have been a bit better–I do believe this medication is working to a degree. I’m going to pick up some
magnesium supplements and riboflavin(Vitamin B2) as well–both appear to help with head pain. I’m working on an
apppointment with the headache clinic here at Pitt–neurologist, more tests, more trying things. I’m also applying for intermittent
FMLA to protect my job, since the migraines put me in a position to always be running out of sick time. FMLA will give me
the extra day or two per month just in case. It isn’t something I want to do, but my options aren’t exactly limitless.

Next week, I head to Ohio to spend the holiday with the family. I’m looking forward to the drive–I’ve been traveling so
little lately and I’m really getting antsy about it. Starting to daydream about exit ramps, road signs, beaches, bodies
of water. Part of me feels ridiculously bored with my routine, and a bit burned out by the semester. I have a lot of reading,
cleaning, writing, creating to catch up on. A lot of life to catch up on…that feels most appropriate to say.

Eating an apple a day, the green ones if I have the choice. I have to spin it around in my palm a couple times before diving
in. I gnaw my way to the carpels while considering the term “apple rootstock.” I quickly decide that I like it.

After I make it through another bad migraine, I tend to declare myself as being “back among the living,” as that is exactly
what it feels like. Weak like a newborn but thankful just to be sitting upright and out of that ridiculous limbo-like fog that
hovers between pain and relief, awake and asleep. Last night I thought about how little I make this pain thing a subject/source
of my writing–I do this barely, if at all, yet it’s the big blindspot in my existence that I carry around day in and day out. As
much as I do not want this to define me, it plays a big part in the kind of person I am, the one I’ve had to grow into being(a little
more cautious, observant, sober–somebody who no longer apologizes for having to leave the party early).

In terms of writing about it: avoidance on purpose? Hardly. Well, I take that back. Here, in the realm of “blogging,” yes–I
avoid it on purpose because(as I’ve expressed to a close friend), I feel like I talk about it too much already, and nobody wants
to hear it. The last thing I want is a “pity me, please” type of misunderstanding. Quite the contrary. When I talk about it,
I want those I know to perhaps understand it a little better. Also, I want someone to relate to this(certainly, most certainly,
I do). Chronic pain sucks in a very specific way–I think it changes how you greet the world and the world greets you. So,
again: why am I not writing about this?

Truth? I don’t know. I have no idea. Perhaps it is because I deal with it on the daily and the last thing I want to do is get
creative about the hardest thing I’ve ever had to (consistently) deal with. Which is the most absurd reasoning because
I do believe the best way I can cope with this currently is by getting creative. I also think that I see it as my weakness,
my downfall, and I struggle with exposing that to others. I guess it’s twofold. 1: Creatively, I tend not to think about it
because I deal with it so much already and 2: I’m a big scaredycat wimp. The best news is that I’m willing to change this,
that I want to change this–at the very least it will provide me with another way to cope, to survive.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do not write about these days, mainly because my extracurricular writings have
squealed nearly to a halt. I write for class and that’s been my story for the past month or two. Sending work out for publication
consideration? Yes. Scribbling down new lines & such? Not really. I feel like the autumn involved a lot of internal things–
work and thoughts, maintenance and questions–I find it impossible to write in the thick of it.

I’m still feeling quite a bit disturbed by the news of Jessica’s murder, too. Thoughts of her make me crave writing again, and
writing for the right reason/the only reason: because it is what I do and what I love, and there is no need to question
it or feel isolated or abandoned by it. May it never leave. May I always think of those nights at the apartment with Jess,
when she listened to me read new poems, when she offered feedback and support and her own work in return. The
next book will be formed soon, and the next book will be for her.

Other odds & ends: I’m three months sober. If it’s gonna be a long haul I pregame with the french press and sip on shirley
temples at the bar. I spent my first Thanksgiving alone ever. Just me and the cat, which was strange. The air had that specific
stillness to it that happens on holidays because your mind thinks that stillness into existence–the air is air like any other
non-holiday but we turn it into something significant. I certainly did; sitting on my back porch in the chilly air, staring at the
busted up clouds above me. I had cold spaghetti and brussel sprouts that day, enjoyed the thickness of solitude and stayed
in my long johns until it was time to go to bed again. I go back to the doctor in just under two weeks, and begin seeing
another one soon. More waiting rooms on lunch breaks but that’s okay. The medication seems to be working, though there is always more work to be done.

I started writing a poem at work today. The poem started with a title: “Keats Vs. Beats,” which referred to that night in
the year 2000 when four of us sat in a kitchen and had a read-off between John Keats and the beats(Kerouac, Ginsberg,
etc). It was the night of my roommate Jessica’s birthday. Her friend(my professor) John stashed a bottle of vodka in the
freezer, complete with cat toy wound around the neck. Belinda(my other roommate) pulled out the polaroid camera
and we took pictures for her in matching gray sweaters and fake mustaches. Jess came home balancing two plastic
champagne glasses with a finger’s width of liquid in each. She carried them all the way home from the opera house.

As soon as I started the piece, I realized how much I missed Jess, and I thought about emailing her again, as the last one
did not warrant a response. I figured I would try google, assuming a facebook page would surface(as everyone seems
to prefer that method nowadays). Instead, I found out that Jessica was murdered in her home in New Orleans.

I lost my breath upon reading and realizing the news, and I have yet to regain it. Jess was my first roommate, my first
real roommate after moving out of my dad’s house. I was 18 and she was 23, and she praised, nurtured, and supported
my poetry and desire to be a writer. She majored in British Literature and Botany, and loved Virginia Woolf. I’m aware
of Woolf’s existence because of her. She insisted I read “Orlando,” reasoning I would adore it. And I did. We watched
the movie together and Jess absolutely hated it. “They took out the most beautiful parts!” She yelled. That was her
way of talking. Kind of yelling, kind of not. If she loved something in a book, she would read it to you and want you to
love it just as much. She would finish the passage with, “Isn’t it wonderful?”

When I think of Jess, I think of sitting in the living room with her, smoking cloves and listening to Janis Joplin or Billie
Holiday. If Jess really liked a song, then she couldn’t let it play all the way through to the end. She would constantly
restart them from the beginning. I would pick through my e.e. cummings text while Jess sat in her giant chair, poetry
on one knee and the dictionary on the other. Some days we would drink boxed wine on our roof–I remember a spring
day doing that after class, unwinding, our books open against the tilt of shingles. At one point, I worked a waitressing
job that I could barely stand–one night after my shift I sat in the parking lot in the car and cried my eyes out. I put
myself together enough to drive home, and once I was there I let it spill again. Jess invited me to get a glass a wine and
come up to her room. She let me vent for a while, and then she played T.S. Eliot reading “The Wasteland.” We
spent the rest of the night laughing and losing our minds over Eliot’s cadence(“Hurry up pleeeease it’s tiiiiime”).

One time she made my friend who talked too much be completely silent for a solid five minutes. The same day we drank
boxes of wine and reclined on the roof in the sun topless, playing silly pop culture games and quoting lines of poems. It
was a very young and romantic time for me, an important one. Jessica and I kept in touch over the years here and
there–she moved to Utah for beekeeping and then to the Everglades, and to New Orleans which she loved. She stayed
there after Katrina, made a home for herself.

I can’t believe she’s gone, and I can’t believe I didn’t know–that I went on living without knowing. Which might sound
funny to read, but it’s just so strange when something tragic happens to a person who left such an imprint on your growth.
In a way I’m surprised that time didn’t stop. I can’t wrap my head around it. I can still see her sitting there, naming all
the plants in the plant room, or giggling about our next door neighbor Jo who walked around barefoot too much and sang
loud and unashamed on her balcony. Or bringing home giant stalks of cat nip and dropping it in the middle of the kitchen
floor so her cats could go to town. I think of receiving her emails and updates and how much I loved to read them, or the
card she sent after Katrina hit, the one where she is standing on the end of a boat placed squarely on the highway median.
I think of the day she plopped the H.D. biography into my lap, half-shouting “I love it!” Burning Bali Hai in hand.

There’s so much I want to say but it’s all coming out disjointed, in clumps and rushes and stops and starts. That will have
to do for now. I can’t get past the disbelief. I’ll end this with a poem that Jessica sent me a couple years ago:

Concerto no. 5

Again turn the sun to the music of the moon and let the night chime
Gather the fruits, let them bound the seams and burst the sorrows
Incessant swirls of melody and memory, thoughts of strands of pearls, vibrating another
clime
Baluster sways, breathing the songs of life, “days of youth” it cries,
yet solemnly creeks, “tomorrows”

Once more the words become audible
“Wear it again, sing it again, taste it on my lips again, sweet Carmine”
Eyes and lips and sighs touched with a mistiness of age, molds the absolute, mirrors an
old accord
From time to time,
lovers resign

“Chime again!” I plead the memories from indolence
Sorrows gather like moths to the dim light in the eyes of mine
Time incessantly breaks, laps the mind, searching for a source of abstinence
“Carmine, once…”
but the words fell away, and trailed apart

Carmine, the sweet realness of that symphony is more than my memory can afford
Tomorrow’s baluster is steady and next to the nausea, numbness is fine
Accordion days and nights and these thoughts of mine
To that old song, I dance alone from time to time
I resign
–By: J.H.

Just a sliver to post here. I just started adjusting to a new medication, so I’m going to
concentrate on getting through that. Soon I will fill this space with more things to
say. More coming, I promise.

My lady Renee lays it down about the library. Go here to read.

Our libraries are in trouble, and I never thought I’d see the day. The library saved my life all throughout childhood–I could
go there and escape. I could check out books on my reading level instead of being force fed the prescribed books in class.
I could go there with my dad and my sister, as a family. I could look up anything I wanted, find resources for my book reports
and projects(what’s up, encyclopedia britannica). I could fantasize about owning my own fully stocked card catalogue. I could
walk through the back aisles and smell the age and time and life between the pages. When home life was too much, too
confusing, too chaotic–I had a safe place to go. That’s the short version. The library helped me survive. My heart breaks
to think that someday our libraries might be a thing of the
past, that my kids may never have that experience..

Go to the link, read Renee’s words. An exerpt:

The library is more important than you. The library is more important than its librarians. The library is more
important than the materials on its shelves, screens, and speakers. The library is more important than the buildings that
house those materials. The library is more important than its director. The library is more important than the newspaper, the
TV and radio stations, and all of their reporters. The library is more important than the mayor, city council, congresspersons,
the governor, and every candidate for those offices. The library is more important than the state budget and the rest
of its funding sources. The library is more important than Andrew Carnegie.

The library is more important, because its potential for change and growth extends beyond you, to your family, your
neighbors, and your community. The library is not just a symbol or a luxury. It is a cornerstone for an informed society to
build its future. Anyone can use the library’s resources to become the next librarian, director, mayor, reporter, congressperson,
governor, anything. The library is open to anyone to educate herself and her children without agenda or bias, to entertain
himself with the media of his choice, to find employment, to research and read and listen and write and watch.

In my cover letter to apply for this job, I wrote, “Libraries, as a free source of unrestricted public education, are a vital part
of our communities.” Now that I work here, I know that to be true. It says right above the door: Free to the People.
The library is not more important than the people. Who are the People? That’s you.