november, a strange light

the light is going, and it feels lousy. there’s also another quality to its departure: a strange frenzy. i don’t really know how else to describe it. it’s not the soggy leaves in quiet piles i’m talking about. this november feels like the crisp leaves that race the wind. they never seem to stop moving. they’ll never be caught.

and i’ll never catch up. i don’t know which way to go. things that i thought i knew for sure seem upside down now. and things i had given up on are sneaking back over the border. there is this familiar haunting: the one who reminds me i don’t know where i belong.

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november is full of another sort of challenge: the poetry challenge. for years, poets have been countering national novel writing month (nanowrimo) with writing challenges of their own. each year i attempt it, typically writing from a combination of prompts, always among them the poetic asides prompts. this year, there’s a new set revealing itself at up the river, a very new poetry journal co-edited by jill.

without committing to a poem-a-day (sense a theme? i couldn’t commit to a similar challenge in october), i’m going to write as much as i can. i wrote a poem yesterday, and i started one today. i may post them later on. or not. i have a terrible time making decisions lately.

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however, there’s one decision i’ve made with total certainty. i’ll no longer be publishing the comments from my “good” friend the cyber-bully. it was important to me that his/her words not make me ashamed; the nonsense isn’t my shame to bear. it was important to me to that others could see what was happening, and so i brought the comments out where it was easy to see how ridiculous they were. it helped, but i won’t be publishing the comments here for public view any longer.

i’ll keep them in case i ever need them, and they may even get “outed” in other ways, but i believe they have changed the nature of comments here, even deterring some from commenting. that’s not ok with me. this blog isn’t about defending my choices. it is about writing and living and hopefully finding a place where i dare to love again. that’s what the posts are about, and that’s where i want to keep the comments focused.