City of Legends

Delivered Elric to his new college at University of Hawaii at Hilo, Dante leaves for Old Dominion University in two days.

Still haven’t finished release of "Selected Poems and Passions"…don’t have the emotional stamina for it, with all else that’s going on.

Survived my birthday on the 16th…hundreds of well wishers, which still was not sufficient to overcome my funk for my Sunday Girl being out of touch.  I admit, wounding…but one embraces what one can and accepts the rest.

I have been writing, sporadically, but some good material.  I need to find a way to decouple my creative/emotional energies from the roller coaster ride of my lovelife…

My front license plate was stolen, right off my car, inconvenient.

Just staying busy, as best I can…feeling in a bit of a holding pattern.  Why is it that whenever I fall into the horse lattitudes that random women come out of the woodwork, seeking a position as new muse? 

According to various sources, including myself, my web hosting company (web.com), my publisher, my friend Dan McTaggart, the remaining judges for the TVC2008 who have not yet gotten their votes in to me (harrumph), Barnes & Noble, my parents, my sibs, the media, my sons, one of my ex wives and two or three inspirationally-gifted friends, the next three days of my life should unfold with some of the following milestones.

Tomorrow we will announce the winner of the TVC2008. Mass hysteria will abound as we announce the TVC2009.

peacat.com will vanish, by midnight tonight. If no one with greater claim to the name asks for it before the registration runs out next year, it will go back on the open market.

I will give three two-hour readings at Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV, Sunday (10-12, 1-3, 4-6) with the assistance of the amazing Dan McTaggart, who co-authored Psalms of the Monster River Cult with me. I don’t think they could handle the intensity of the Long Beach reads, so I am trying to strike a balance.

Michael Phelps will win two more Olympic Gold Medals.

I will add ten more pieces to williamfdevault.com. Someone will blast me for the lovely nudity that is interspersed with the other artwork on the site. I will feel bad that I am being criticized, but will soldier on.

I will hear from someone out of an unexpected quarter.

I will write something inexplicably charming.

I will announce sometime today…oops, already did, that some of the Fields of Arbol pieces appearing on Amomancer will find their way onto williamfdevault.com.

Some doucebag will leave a stupid (definition: willfully ignorant), presumptive and irrelevant comment on one of my blogs.

I will drive over 500 miles in the next three days. I will still be alive Monday morning.

I will have dinner with my family on Saturday, and visit with my Grandmother, who is 96…bearing down on 97 next month.

I will discover a fantastic new muse.

Not possible.

To move beyond memory, one must forget who they are, where they have been and what they have experienced. A persistent vegetative state might make it so, but that’s not a status I have devoutly wished for in this life.

Today is August 14th. It is a crossroads date (someone with my sense of time and history has man) as it is the anniversary of one or more events, that cross paths in my understanding of the world I live in. My birthday is August 16th, Psyche’s is August 12th. For the five years we were together, we tended to celebrate on the 14th as a compromise date.

There are other things that have occurred on Thursdays, on the 14th of a month, even on August 14th, and in my morning contemplations it is remarkable to remember some of them and close circles and utter words to keep promises (I may be slow, often, as I forget or am distracted or given rationale to forget, but I generally get around to those oaths I have made) that I have made, in good faith, altered only by the external forces I have no control over.

In that context, you may want to check out a new poem I posted this morning on Amomancer entitled the mantra of severing, which is about keeping promises, even ancient ones, when they are recalled. There will be those who believe they know of what I speak, but to imagine that, in my entire life, I have only walked one road with one companion to one end and made one promise…that would be a very blissful life, and chaos still calls.

I once wrote that "memory is the curse of those who care". It leads us to a terrible and an arrogant place, where we think the world sees with our eyes and feels with our hearts, and knows us. When I was a child I used to blow my mind by trying to contemplate infinity, but one day I hit upon something more incredible to contemplate: There are billions of people on this planet, most (if not all) of them leading lives as experientially, intellectually and emotionally complex as our own. That many thoughts, that many emotions, that many dreams, and God knows them all, and I can never even know for sure my own heart.

We never move beyond memory. At best, we acknowledge the sprained ankle of life and adjust to the limping.

Happy Birthday, Peri!