I find that writing recently has become a kind of divination process.  I cut myself off from outside influence more and more, stay in my house or at least my room alone for as long as I can, no internet browsing, no putsing around, just quiet time with words both new and old.  I switch back and forth between paper and screen.  I got through old drafts and mine for things that seem important enough to say the right way.  I end up saying a lot of sad this way.  But every once in awhile, happy things come out of it.  The short memoir of my restaurant encounters with Junot Diaz has turned out neurotic, but mostly bumbling and funny.  I wrote a palm-sized poem about my mother and Patti Smith the other day.  I resurrected a love letter to my city and made it new.  I’m going to take the drain girl story to work in awhile and hopefully get a good, strong almost-final draft ready for the world.  I’m conceptualizing a zine for the April workshop at my former high school on craft, and also all the things I wish someone had told me as a teenage poet.  I thought writing as a full time job would make me hate craft, hate the bones of the mammoth I chase for food.  I’ve always shied from whole days dedicated to words.  But this just feels right.  I am immersed and undrownable.  I go where the images take me, even it’s a tough, ugly place.