"...her skin is rehab for sandpaper junkies." Derrick Brown

[autumns_failure]

My neck is slightly curled downward, pointing my chin at my chest as I am sitting on my bed with a bunk above my head, preventing me from straightening my posture. So I am hunched, you see, and I was reading until I decided to take a break. And that's what's going on in my life, pretty much: a cycle of reading and writing, taking breaks and eating and drinking tea, all the while being slightly hunched over in dim light. It's surreal; weeks feel like really long days. The good thing about really long days is that they usually contain epihpanies that are lacking or missed in regular-length days: strange epiphanies about time, God, dreams, relationships, pain, truth, art, coffee and tea, her beauty, what it means to breathe, close quarters and colloquialisms, you get the picture. So, yeah, needless to say, I've been thinking and learning a lot lately. And I think when that's your job - thinking and learning - you tend to feel a lot more than usual; you tend to be happier and more pained all at the same time, and the stitch in your side that comes from being chased by and running after good things and hard things is harshly more acute. That's what I've realized. And I've realized that God engineers this. He establishes this acuteness so that we may grow, like a father sets-up a learning experience that may challenge his child so that his child might develop.

Well, that's about all that was on my mind. Oh, and if you like slam poetry, check out www.brownpoetry.com, and listen to the poem "pussycat love" and some others on the media player at the bottom of the page. And there's a bunch of other cool stuff on there. Well, I love you all, and I look forward to spring break when I will be able to desperately hug you and know that there are still people out there who know what's up.

Oh, and I got tired of my old screen name. So: ten neon ashes <---- that's the new one. Figure it out. Bye.

-L