Like I Have Time For This?

Back when I lived in Colorado, I used to go on a poetry-writing retreat every May. When we suddenly had to move to the east coast this year, I thought surely that would be the end of my decadent annual trip into the Sangre de Cristo mountains with a bunch of other poets where for five days, we’d all sit quietly and write to our hearts’ content, eat the kind of food that toddlers don’t like, and sit around the lodge in the evening listening to the coyotes wail and just talk the kind of talk that poets talk when they’re not writing.

But guess what? They called me a few months ago and said: Are you still coming to this thing or not?

And I said: HELL YES, I’M STILL COMING!!!!!!!

So, tomorrow, I fly west to the place that still feels like home, and after a few hours of driving I’ll find myself back in the Baca Grande, with my good old friends who taught me everything I know about poetry. We’ll write, drink coffee, talk over simple meals, and maybe dance a little bit in the desert sage that owns the land out there.

There’s no Internet access there, (and cell phones only work if you go up to the roof and dangle precariously over the edge of the wall and wait for the bars to light up.) So consider me out of commission until next week, people.

But before I go, a little housekeeping.

You may have noticed I added a picture of myself at the top of the screen. That’s me. Or at least, that’s what I look like when I take my camera and sneak out behind the barn and aim it at my head in a feeble attempt to simultaneously get an “artsy” shot of myself while masking the growing number of chins I’m sporting these days.

(When I was MUCH younger I used to sneak out behind the barn with a six-pack of beer and a deck of smokes. But alas! Those days are in the past. Now it’s just me and my feeble camera. Hoo boy! Here comes 40!)

I figured I put so many pictures of the family up here, it’s only right to add one of myself. So, there it is.

Also, a dear, dear friend has requested that I start listing what I’m reading. I guess I’ll get around to doing that formally in the sidebar at some point, but not today. It took me almost an hour to figure out how to get the picture and accompanying text to work right. So, until I figure it all out, here’s a small list (in no particular order) of some of the fiction I’ve read recently. I’m not linking to Amazon because I don’t have time. So, you’ll just have to go there and type it in the search box yourself. Don’t worry. You CAN do it.

The Hours, by Michael Cunningham
The Time Travellers Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

So, if you’re totally distraught over the fact that there won’t be any new posts here for the rest of the week, pick up one of these titles. They’re all good reads. I’ll do a more complete listing when I get back. Promise.

Until next Tuesday, then.