Michael McConnell

makes beautiful things. Like the above, Spinning Silver Lined Stories, which is the cover of the current Denver Quarterly. And more on his website. They are like blurred, jagged dreams from childhood, glued atop a book of fairy tales, but peeling off at the edges and worn thin in places, so that the cover shows through.

Come and get me, Wednesday.

I feel ready for anything. Don't know why.

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Working on a new piece, slowly, slowly.

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Beatrice is finding words. It feels that way, like she's rummaging around in her throat and locating what happen to be recognizable sounds attached to recognizable meanings. She's been talking for a long time; these days it's fun being able to understand her.

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After speaking with a dear friend, a resolution has been made: some days will be devoted only to writing and reading. Some days to teaching stuff. Some days to errands and miscellany. I want a chalkboard to write this down on.

Place

The other night I left my house at 10:45 to drive to the gas station and purchase one can of Coca-Cola. That is an example of a thing that would have never happened if I still lived up North. I think there is something in the air in Georgia that makes people crave Coca-Cola. I rarely drink soda, and if I do, I have generally preferred Pepsi. It seems that some holdout part of me that I never knew existed has finally succumbed.

Another thing that I probably would have never experienced if I still lived up North: the news from a couple months back that an older couple, a couple of miles from where I live, was attacked and killed by a pack of wild dogs.

2010/It's the Future/How Soon is Now, indeed

I have high hopes for this new year. According to Facebook, so does everyone. Maybe because it's also a new decade. Maybe because 2009 was unanimously difficult. For me, a lot of drudgery and illness. An inert year, in many ways, although I have been expanded, certainly, in many hard-to-reach places. The caves of my heart, notably. The attics of my uppermost feelings. A couple unarguably breathtaking, beautiful, triumphant moments. But not much writing done since early summer, and the nagging sense, always, that I'm supposed to be "farther along" by now. The hint of belatedness that seems to cling, always, to everything good-ish that comes, like a faint mildew.

It's silly, of course, to think that a calendar page, a turning of days, a minuscule milepost in the time-space continuum, could *mean* or portend anything much. But I enjoy the opportunity to pretend that it can, and to hope mightily that along with things, I can get better too.

Part of me feels superstitious about articulating my wants in a public place. Part of me doesn't give a fuck. That part wins. That part often wins. Probably not often enough.

I want The School to be published. I want it to look like a reading primer from 1942. I want a publisher. I also want an agent, but I want a publisher more. I want to get dizzy with book #2. Right now it's all stops and starts and hating everything the next day. I want to read books again, whole books. Motherhood has made me harebrained in this regard, and I also blame our house. I deeply miss laying in bed with a book and reading past a responsible hour. Beatrice shares our room, and she has become a sensitive enough sleeper that after her bedtime, we corral ourselves in the main room until we're ready to sleep. I want to turn the internet off more, which is much harder for me to do than the TV, but I want to turn that off, too. I want our funny little house to sell. I want an office. I want to fret less, in my creating and in my life, and create more, and live better. I want to help Brian finish his album. I want us always to be making, despite the jobs and the drudgery.

In 2009, in the words of The Mountain Goats: "hurt my knuckles punching the machines." And in the other words of The Mountain Goats, "there will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year." Next year being this year, obviously.