well, persephone is kicking up her heels again.

I turned her off and just let her sit for a whole day. I'm hoping maybe she'll like me better after having a nice long rest. I know I felt better this morning after a nice long rest.

Is it terrible that I'm completely dreading the writing sleepover on Wednesday? I don't like staying up all night - it makes me wacky for a week, and I get so grumpy at about 4am that I can hardly stand myself. Also, I'm trying to fight off a cold here, and missing sleep is not going to help any. Not to mention that I know anything I write late at night is crap and requires twice as much revision as if I had just waited until morning. This plan seems full of holes to me. Not to mention that our peer groups are each required to do something to refresh/revitalize/re-inspire the other groups once during the night. We're doing make - sock - puppets - that - look - like - your - character - and - then - let - it - speak - to - you activities at 11 o'clock. I mean, what the crap? Granted, it's better than duck-duck-goose.... but not by much.

Happy birthday to Sharon!

And here's the poem I decided to close with, written by Jane Hirshfield:

Waking This Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep

But with this sentence:
"Use your failures for paper."
Meaning, I understood,
the backs of failed poems, but also my life.

Whose far side I begin now to enter -

A book imprinted without seeming reason,
each blank day bearing on its reverse, in random order,
the mad-set type of another.
December 12, 1960. April 4, 1981. 13th of August, 1974 -

Certain words bleed through to the unwritten pages.
To call this memory offers no solace.

"Even in sleep, the heavy millstones turning."

I do not know where the words come from,
what the millstones,
where the turning may lead.

I, a woman of forty-five, beginning to gray at the temples,
putting pages of ruined paper
into a basket, pulling them out again.