#27—Bye-Bye MacDowell

So I'm coming to the end of a two month stay here at MacDowell. And, as I suspected, my behind is a little less holy than it was when I landed in New Hampshire. Too many cookies, I dare say. Too much, well, I don't quite know. Too much everything. Also, my hair is sort of a mess. I'm trying to grow it out and don't really do "sort of a mess" well. So I'm chronically worried that this punky afro is never ever gonna work itself into something reasonable.

The time here has been oddly fruitful, though I've done not-so-much as it relates to my book. In fact, I tried not to write Detroit poems here. Something about the energy of the place I didn't want informing that Detroit work. Or, maybe I could say that the Detroit work requires a particular kind of energy I didn't find here. So instead, I was paying attention to what people said, did, and to what I was saying and doing. I spent a lot of time just looking at the ceiling. Very, very good. Too, I've met some extraordinary artists. (And a bunch of bubbleheads, too. But, as I travel around, I find bubbleheads everywhere--and I am not discounting myself in this grouping.) The extraordinary artists, though, are for keeps. I can't believe the folks who have been here. Really impressive.

My heart and head switched on in ways they were not when I came. Well, on and on and then off. And I'm leaving it at that. Y'all don't need to know all my business. Suffice it to say, I leave Peterborough a woman more fully herself.

Last night I was asked, "How are you?" and the only answer I could come up with was, "Fantastic." I am fantastic. Even with the turbulence of the last two months, my life seems exquisitely blessed, and that fact emerges ever more clearly day-by-day. So much so, frankly, that even when I have cause to be blue, blueness just sort of wicks off me. This fact, to me and given where I was at the start of 2000, seems like a miracle. At this time in 2000, I was burying my mother, attending to a new job, a new city, finding my way in the world--alone. Very dark. Very difficult. So all this lightness is sort of blinding, I'm suggesting. And it makes me a little slaphappy. The woman next to me last night (the questioner) thinks I'm strange, I do believe. Though, we were laughing and laughing as I told her I was fantastic and that my angels are strong.

As you know I'm on my way to the Midwest where I hang out for a while. I'm happy to be back on the road, meeting new people, leaving old people, moving back towards Detroit where the poems seem to rest. That's it for me for now. Oh, well, that's it except for the $900 grumble which is the fact that I'm sitting in a coffee shop on the side of a road waiting for the guys to get finished putting new tires on the Beast. Pft. Why can't they make Forever Tires? $900-tires sucks.

Onward!
C