Have you ever noticed Trotsky’s hair? All you may think you know about a person, all you read and the pictures poured over, and the wife solitary in wool, a grandson caught in a brief snare—chin pointed and lips thin and flat like a duck's dipping down into chickweed waters, shy and smirked—none of it tells you as much. It arches over his head like a nation’s flag, thinned at the sides, black and swirled across the lid.

I imagine wearing that way—an angry agent, a child fighting with the bathtub. Perhaps if I kept my intellect in a similar fashion, I would have streaks of white whittled within the core. My life would be more, somehow. Less a hellbent following of orange, less an investment in music in sound in the rikatik pattern of letter in the crisp crumbling of soil in the misplaced faith in humanity (specific humans, actually) in the silent tales of skin or the doubts I have in one person, in my one person.

Courage is only understood next to fear. Trotsky’s hair is bravery blatant against a backdrop of oil, the crickcrack of cogs wrenching a chain through the thin eyelet off the backside of a trawler. The thick strands the shadowed bullweed in the forested shoals, fingers raking currents, sparks instant for a few seconds in the salt of it all.

I once daydreamt daily, each night before sleep, a few minutes new touched inside a self-believing story. Kidnapped by an alien spaceship, invested in the greenropery of jungle, twenty-seven children not all naturally born (their hair twined among my own at night, as we fought for the inches), a school my own, a batrillion dollars wisely invested, a presidency spent spurning the dollar for the righteous, a sea that swept up during tidal wave and took me forever, wrapping in shiny white of oysters and setting my eyes white and wild, my hair like Trotsky’s until I rose up out of the waters and claim.

I could have said clam, but I didn’t. Well.

I spent all day yesterday admiring his hair. It started with a picture from his youth, when one wouldn’t have ever thought him handsome, but I would have. I would have been entranced, I covet men or women who have hair like that, just like I covet sufficient punctuation, or blackberries when I’m walking along a trail in August or September. I wondered idly if I had hair like that whether I might have found love. I probably couldn’t have helped it. Maybe I would’ve had time for manifestos, declarations, and economic analyses too. I would half found belief in the uprising of the foolish, the addicted and indebted, the lulled. I would have found a way to not be quite so foolish, addicted and indebted, lulled and beguiled by the fortunate and hidden, the untold. Hair like that brooks no untold stories.

Hell, Trotsky, you make me think about things with that hair. Damn, Trotsky, young man with a beast of life (and hair), I wish I could have known you. And Tolstoy. He had crappy hair but he was kind of like a god. Or Dostoevsky, who likely had smelly greasy hair and cursed under his breath. He probably had excessive chest hair too, poor man, writer with my own twitching beards. Well, I suppose one can tell I like stories fictional, but honestly, I also like my hair like Trotsky’s, ravening crisp, kempt up above like a pressed mohawk, the punkish kind—wildy paranoid, a tad ridiculous, but still thick, luxurious.

Speaking of my hair, it is full of earth and white today, it is crashed by winter helmets and flat, unclear, not nearly long enough. It was once purple, blue, black, red, green, straight up, shaved, curly, curled, long, gone, greasy, dry. It was once like a sailboat without a mast, before that a slab without anyone lurking behind. I once cried for three days after a haircut (a mullet), and another time, just ripped it off like a beer lid. My hair once came close to yours, Trotsky, but it took three shavings and numerous unbathings, a bleaching, and a job at a library. A night job at a library. I would have kicked your ass at that point in time, Trotsky. Except I was a pacifist twenty-year old and you were very dead.

Trotsky, I have taken to talking to you, and you are dead. But I am willing to bet that somewhere down in the depths of the Mexican soil, your hair is still there, rising up earthquake from a clear white skull without that strange, naïve and excellent brain, but still just brilliant.

days of anger, the toss

green everywhere, green under finger
tips of at least fifteen percent
age is overrated, a belly
full of age. Every day I miss the way your heart
attacks my grandfathers, lungs filling

there are so many days
he hasn’t yet told
me about, there is my biological grand
pris, grand finale, wait I want to hear
I want to hear what mumbled under an accent
my grandfather, and you, my love
imagined. like the rhythm a metra, a palin an unknown
drone paved across the unmanned skies
what you have to

if it weren’t so hard to love you, I still

wait I want you to hear my forg-
etting. dear grand I remember each
story told about you. No, I re
harbor the seconds, each a stor
age, it’s, I mean, an age
I don’t want you
let me start again,

I will always remember you as I never saw you
amid machinery, you are still

anger, my faith, never let it mean I haven’t
understood everything or will
soon, I’m sure

Um, howdy there.

I think it's going to take a bit of time for me to warm back up on the blogging. Just as I think it's going to take me some time to warm back up on the writing in general. Thankfully for the writing, I have a lot of ideas and too many half-finished projects that I still love and want to see through. To randomly follow the scroll of my thinking, which is what I'm going to do in order to make the dreaded transition back into blogging here from time to time, and writing there from time to time, I will jump:

I'm still working on the same damn novel, believe it or not. Not only that, but I think I might be at the point of scrapping it again and starting afresh. There is hope, however, because I might be scrappin' parts because I think I've finally winnowed down the focus. All this time, I've wanted to include every character I love, and to follow all points of view, and add in side characters and multiple plotlines... and I've realized finally that in order to tell the story I want to tell, I have to clear away the extra and decide just what I want to be there in the end. So, I've settled on 3 points of view instead of 6, and there are only 3 basic, pared away storylines (told by the three POVs) that I have clearly set in my head (well, sorta. I still am tossing around one possible shift in the 3rd storyline). I know their starting points, and I understand their ending points. I like the characters. I like the story.

I decided to ditch one character altogether about whom I've written quite a bit, but he will become his own story. This actually gives me new ideas for where to take that character. Nice nice.

And now the problem becomes sitting down. And now the problem becomes not playing stupid gameboy games (I'm a hopeless addict, but nothing calms me quite so mindlessly, which is the point: Don't Be Mindless, J). And now the problem becomes finding time in the grading, allowing myself time in the grading. And the problem becomes wanting to use words again. And the problem becomes loving writing again and feeling that I might be good at it. And the problem becomes scraping together confidence, telling myself that every darn person on the face of this planet develops at their own pace, and I've always been behind the curve in nearly everything. I am my own curve. And so the problem becomes jump-starting my curve. Upwards.

Ho hum. I promised wisdom. I realized recently that I have little to give.

Mostly I removed myself from too much internet because I didn't want certain people out there in the world to read my hurt... the boring repetitive nature of it, and the vulnerable aspect of it, and the angry angerson part of it. And I made tons of progress on my own, towards accepting and understanding that sometimes friendships just end. And that we all get to decide, we all make these decisions daily about who we want in our lives and who we don't, or what we want/don't. And that's a right that other aspects of life, such as colleagues or family, don't afford us--that right to choose.

Yes, I get pissed historically, and weepish, and hurt, when someone doesn't choose me. Someone whom I want to choose me. Whether as a friend, or lover, writer, or whatever. But that's their right. You know, for years I've been angry at my high school best friend because she stopped returning my phone calls and letters without so much as an explanation. Truth is, she probably thinks fondly of me, but her family has always been her only priority in life. Her choice.

Thank god, too, that we get to choose.

And so I've been working on letting go. That's what NM told me in her last email: "let go." And so I have. What happens when you let go of the world? When you let go of each other?

Turns out, nothing too bad. Some people leave, others leave and then turn around, still others don't leave because they weren't planning on it in the first place.

And we get the present. It is the result and the expectation and the moment. We ask for nothing more and hold on to nothing more: we let go. And here is this moment, and it is joy sometimes, and it is painful and lonely other times, and hilarious still other times. It changes just the same as it changed before, only this time I simply allow it and don't try to hold on to the joy. I get it, it goes, another time comes.

For right now, I am okay with this. I feel hope all the time, and that doesn't quite fit so easily, but I will figure that out when the time comes.

Yep, and so I've also been choosing, because I get to choose too, and also in letting go, I am choosing something else. This time I am choosing myself. And this time I am investing in only myself (I've stopped believing in investment in other human beings. We invest in ourselves, I think, and give to others. Important to differentiate). I am choosing right now and tomorrow, and choosing to let go of yesterday. It's gone anyways, and tomorrow is rushing towards me with open arms, so why not choose it? It's bound to come. So if it's bound to come, and the other is to bound away, then best make the smart choice, which is to move forward, not keep backing up.

So, I was doing well. And then NM contacted me again, and sounded sorry and so we met and she wasn't sorry and we fought horribly and it was totally wretched (I took Herald and towards the end of our fight, he rocked back on his haunches and howwwwwwwled) and I had all this disgust towards her and she had all this something towards me, and the something wasn't regret or sorrow. And I wasn't ready for anything other than regret or sorrow. I could go on... my mind has been racing ever since, very much stirred up like the beehive that was smoke sleeping and then roused with a stick.

But I would rather go back to the other place. Letting go, moving forward.

New things in that other place:

I have been developing a pretty good friendship with the woman I met through online dating. You know, the one I mentioned before who I wasn't attracted to. Sometimes I am attracted to her, mostly not. But I like her and it's dreadfully nice to like someone. We go to the occasional concert together (ALT-J coming up) or shadow puppet show (Puss in Boots with a Mardi Gras theme). I gave her one of the beds in my new garden, and she is thrilled by it. She always shows up when she says she's going to show up, and she is reserved and slow to warm up, just like me. It's been fun.

As has the new garden: I rented three community garden plots, and they have actual sunshine!!! Imagine that! I am going to try growing watermelon (crazy, I know) and brussel sprouts and corn, etc. Lately I've been working on ripping out the old fence, which was a very messy thick netting, and putting in a new fence, which is chicken wire on the bottom and twine up top. Next will be the twine, as well as a gate. Then I'm moving around the beds. Then I'm bringing in mulch and some new soil... tons to do. Thankfully spring break is only 3 weeks away, and I'm not going anywhere this year. I will garden. But the garden is year round, and organic, and already I've met a couple of nice people there.

I might meet more people through the online dating thing, which is exhausting. I hate it utterly, but am forcing myself. I've been hog wild with spring fever this year, and realized I am fed up with being single. Fuck single. If I keep being single, I'm going to totally forget how to not be single. I'm almost there. I have 97.3215% forgotten how to not be single. That significant portion of me starts thinking that it is way better, not to mention easier, to be single. I would like to believe that the remaining 2.6785% of me is correct... that there is something important to learn there. That I want to learn. And so, spring fever away.

To help with the spring fever, I am working out. I remind myself that I don't hate it, because I mostly think I do. I do sometimes get that euphoric haze when working out at the gym, which I have only ever felt dancing. I try to trigger it, and have developed an elaborate set of tricks. My favorite trick is to pick another member of the gym who is working out--someone sweet and out of shape like myself--and start them dancing. They usually begin at the shoulders to the house-dance type music that I listen to, then their legs follow, and then the person next to them, until the whole gym is dancing to my music, including the cleaning staff. Highly choreographed, triggers euphoric haze from time to time.

The other part of why I'm "working out"--along with spring fever and health--is because I am going to my 15 year college reunion this summer. I'm excited. I'd be more excited if my other close friend, ER, was going to meet us there... The 1st third of our trinity being SS, who lives near the college and emailed me to remind me of the reunion, so who darn well better show up. But alas, ER lives ever so far away, and so I will have to take millions of pictures for her. Maybe carry around my laptop and skype it to her, or something. And show her how super fit and spring fever sexy I am (after a month, I still haven't lost a damn pound, so we'll see).

Okay. I have procrastinated from grading papers long enough. I will just add that CR got himself another Lambert puppy, and she is totally adorable and Herald hates her. We've named her Gladys, which I didn't pick out this time, but really love as a name. Don't tell whomever came up with it. Gladys is a badass. Sometimes she's the baddest though. She's a badass when she follows my chickens around, trying to convince them to play with her or follow her, since she's their new rooster now that we've done in Mary Russell. Oh, we did in Mary Russell because he finally attacked the right person. I miss his crows, and his adorable feathers, but not the fear factor walking out in the yard. Sometimes it's nice not to be attacked.

I guess I've let go of that one.

Ciao, for now...