paper tower

The most audible sound in my room right now is the sound of cats, furiously licking.

One of my favorite sounds lately is that of the breath of someone falling asleep, how it shifts from short clasps to longer, more orotund measures. And you know that person is very far away from you, yet still tangled up like a bramble, a dozing tumbleweed.

I am tired. Is 25 the age where you just totally lose your ability to handle your liquor? I always thought I had a thick Irish liver that could conquer unquantifiable amounts of the cheapest bottom-shelf whiskey, but my borderline alcoholic, Cherokee blood must be frothing to the surface, because today, my brain is a sponge, bleating insults and accusing me of bad parenting/malpractice.

Despite feeling like a kitten flattened by a semi, I had a very pleasant 3-hour discussion with Sean Patrick Hill this afternoon, who is an acquaintance I met through Greg a few months ago. He is a 30-something high school teacher and a poet with experience getting writer's residencies. He gave me some good advice and recommended a few places that I didn't know about, including one in an old mining town in Montana that looks amazing, and another on Whidbey Island outside of Seattle. We're going to exchange 10 poems each in the next week. He and his wife will be coming to the reading at the church this Thursday. He even offered to write a recommendation letter for my application to Caldera, which is the residency in Sisters, so...boom. Our conversation weasled quite nerdily into talking about everything from Harold Bloom's critique of Paradise Lost, to the idea of "Genius," to how obnoxious the Beats were, as is a lot of contemporary "experimental" poetry. It turns out we both like a lot of the same poets, genres, threads and thimbles. A lot of things I would like read to aloud to someone, like Wallace Stevens, anyone classified as an Objectivist, Anne Carson's pilgrimage poems, the essays of Annie Dillard, annals of Roman history, Plutarch, Horace, stormy 19th century New England lit.

Oh, and in case you haven't seen this, our website (currently in its temporary phase) is up, lookin' beautiful. Come out to our reading this Thursday!