Me, as myself

So, you're wondering about me, now that I seem to have emerged from the desert.

Well, I'm still just about as busy. However, getting the letter that means the surgery is going to proceed has lifted a huge weight. It seems to have been a lot of what I've been repressing inside. I'd reached a certain... I don't know. Hopelessness over the situation. Two and a half years we've been working on this, and it's only now that we have actual confirmation that something might happen.

That's huge. That's like waiting two and a half years before hearing if you've been accepted to college. And it was seeming like I couldn't make it happen. With that resolved, tension becomes anticipation and I don't have to hold so much back.

Otherwise, I'm still busy. Killer, deeply busy. Work has responded to this by having me come in an hour earlier each day. No, I'm not leaving any earlier, buuuut.... (Though I am. I'm far less concerned about making sure everything is done before I go now. I figure if they want to be sure I come in earlier in the day, they're forfeiting the right to an 8 pm departure time. I'll do an 11 hour day but I won't do a 12. And am less willing to do an 11 if I'm getting up an hour earlier in the morning.)

The cat is good. I am good. And for whatever reason, my poetry is coming out nicely right now. Nicer than Theftworld, which is a hair stalled, but mostly for lack of time. You can write twenty lines of poetry faster than 4000 words of prose.

Of course, writing twenty good lines of poetry is about as hard as writing a chapter. But as a limbering exercise, twenty crappy lines of poetry is simple and pleasurable. Sort of like bachelor cooking.

I'll throw another poem your way, soon.

Another poem, because you've been so good.

They remade his office into a conference room.
He had his desk, his chairs, paintings
and posters, maps of Australia,
scenes of his sloop sitting on mooring.
He sold the sloop for lack of use.
Too many days and nights in his corner office
that no longer belongs to him.
They made it a room for teams to meet
inpersonal. Walls, chairs, a table.
A wire basket of pens, a pile of pads.
All things for all people, they say
which makes it nothing. Impersonal.
They even took his whiteboard down.
It was nice, in a blondwood cabinet
rolling slats like a rollaway desk.
Individual, distinct. Like his pipe.
Like the mark on his face
where the mole was removed.
The walls still have hooks
the crannies exposed now.
No bookshelves, no filing cabinets,
no phone or folders or fanfile folio
he used to keep notes in.

The way of the world

So. I write a poem. A pretty good one, I think.

My friend edg writes a short story response to it. Very different in feel than the poem, but undeniably nifty.

A few minutes later, a cute female Malakite posts a comment in praise of him.

That can't possibly be fair.