Nothing can shake me and no one mistakes me in my 21 acres of forest.  I wander in the dim, pulling green and must deep into my lungs.  The speckled sun adores me.  Every mote, every crumb of leaf drifts in its own way.  As do I.  Time comes to eat – I chew on bread and cheese.  Time comes to drink – water and tea will suffice.  The dream is all about me, this cabin, these eaves, thick deep wood.  This mug of tea.  The stream nearby.  Paths and no paths.  Bracken, lichen, and the fall.  The hope of light.  Dense tangles and a sudden clearing, the one with the rock I can sit on.  That’s the ticket.  I’m sitting on that rock, chunk of granite misplaced in the woods, center of its own tiny meadow, with notebook and pen and a mug of mushroom tea, writing this, as the glad sun warms my hands, and tiny flies dart among the bluets, harbored in the mystery of trees.  Days breeze by.  Now let it be.

~ ~ ~

ANNOUNCE  ::  Not much to announce right now, if anything, and glad am I for it.  A read coming up in February and I’ll talk about that later; deets on the Events page for now.  After a first-half-hoopla’ed second-half-sick December, trying to settle into a good long healthy spate of writing, if I can shoo away enough neuroses and spaghetti-work to glean the time.  Shoo, flies, don’t botha me!  And boy do I need it.  So if you give a shout and receive nary an echo, don’t a-worry, I’m just busy.

QUERY  ::  Starting to look for a publisher for A Breast Panached: The Big Adventures of Little Clowndy, and I’m open to suggestions, recommendations, and/or referrals.  Also looking for advice on making cold submissions, e.g., should I send the whole piece, or excerpts with a cover letter, etc.  It runs about 45 pages in a slightly large font, and I think it’d work best formatted like and resembling a children’s book, though geared to language-loving adult readers.  Be great to find a publisher with a little distribution, but don’t we all think that.  So if you’re at all familiar with the piece, and have any suggestions, please please please do pass it along.  Anyone who passes along advice that leads to publication will receive a cameo in the sequel.   😛

~ ~ ~

A trinket; a mushroom; a broken box.  A rainstorm; a blanket; a piece of glass.  A column; a carseat; an open field.  A daisy; a fountain; a single cloud.  You take me in your arms, and let me go.  A satchel; a marble; a sprig of clove.  A pencil; a ticket; a swatch of cloth.  An apple; a candle; a plastic ring.  A hairbrush; a shoelace; a great expanse.  You take me in your arms, and let me go.

~ ~ ~

REFLECT  ::  A year of turning inside-out, again and again and again.  Of massing bursts of onomato burning through the leaden sea.  Of stretches spread to snapping by the false juice of the nerves.  Of hurtling body in thin tin shells through global arcs toward friends.  Long bouts of ecophilia, of staying inside for days, not through fear or much more than irritation of the outside, which I do enjoy, but because I love this frickin apartment.  Of completing the ten thousand productivities, and leaving the next ten thousand on the plate.  Of touching minds I haven’t touched for years.  Of touching new minds.  Of rejoicing.  Of falling on the floor.  Of planting seeds and harvesting and keeping the garden hale.  Of drudging and of leaping to get it all done.  Of tending the body, again and again, however dull, however dark, however sometimes fascinating.  Of sitting in long silences, and of singing.  A year like many because there are no years, just sections of the symphony, movements of the fugue, a pause, and the strains playing on.

~ ~ ~

This year is starting quietly because I need it to.  Because the pine needles of the nerves need to lie on the floor of the forest and soak up sun.  Because the mind is a rumbling bulldog and the heart a worn patch of lace.  Because I’m feeling see-through from the need to generate.  Gossamers beckon.  The lightest breeze alerts me.  Time to sit without moving, or with tiniest movements, and reshape the everything.  Time to summon the you-know-what.  Let there be sight.  Let there be inchworms and sky.  Let there be grass.

Sincerely,
Richard