On the occasion of housey things

As we pre­pare for tonight’s  —  astound­ingly awe­somely STILL HAP­PEN­ING  —  debate, I’d like to share some­thing small and won­der­ful. Feel free to take it from me for a few min­utes and hold it in your palms, but be care­ful, cause it’s young yet, and frag­ile. This fol­low­ing para­graph is what you need to know to under­stand this charged but del­i­cate thing: I have now inter­viewed not only the par­ents cur­rently liv­ing in the House, I have inter­viewed the par­ents of the fam­ily that lived in the House before my fam­ily, and today inter­viewed their daugh­ter. Their two sons remain unin­ter­viewed, but hope­fully not for too long. The first inter­view ran 2.25 hours. The last two have gone 3.5. Now, the…

The Sweet Metallic of Success

Last night, talk­ing it over with my lady and then my boy Jason (we go back to fresh­man Eng­lish in high school, and I’ve been sleep­ing at his place) I con­cluded sev­eral things about my visit to the House. This list is as much for me to think out loud and have a resource to refer to as for you play­ing from home, so if you’re bored or busy, feel free to mosey on, mosey on: At the fore­front, it was suc­cess­ful. I made a good impres­sion with the fam­ily, and I think the door is open for poten­tial vis­its in the future. We talked for two hours, and about every­thing from the house to language…

Ahem

This place is swal­low­ing me alive. The strangest part of being here is how nat­ural it all feels, how unforced, how reg­u­lar. I can’t tell for the life of me if this is nec­es­sary, ter­ri­ble, psy­chotic, sur­real, all of the above, or in fact, per­fectly fine. Light a can­dle for me, if you would. And then, as you were.

Updates updates

I was phys­i­cally exhausted for most of the last week. I am now phys­i­cally just reg­u­lar tired, but emo­tion­ally a bit ten­der. Mys­ter­ies have come into focus through research, then been solved. Also through research. I am, at this moment, also very hun­gry. I’m kinda scared I’m going to wake up very depressed tomor­row. I have been dream­ing for over a week straight.

I just called the House. Left a mes­sage. My hands are still shak­ing. It’s been five min­utes. Edit: Ten minutes.

Traditional Sunport post

It’s time. I’m less sure now of whether I’m ready than I’ve ever been, but I’m sure that has more to do with aller­gies and irreg­u­lar sleep pat­terns than any real spir­i­tual doubt. I am pro­tected by a dear friend’s box of sage and oils. What’s com­ing is some­thing I’ve likely never seen before in my entire fucking life.

Since last April

I’ve had dreams of being in mass­a­chu­setts, on my way to Welles­ley, and get­ting caught up in Amherst or Boston, and never mak­ing it there to con­duct the research I’m there for. I take from this that I’m not spend­ing enough time on the poems. I take from that, in think­ing about putting things off to work on the poems, that there’s a fuck­ing lot of stuff I’m about to fall behind on if i don’t snap to. Some day I will learn to bal­ance all of this.

Attn: Boston & environs

Say I was com­ing into town in April. Say, by the grace of a few peo­ple act­ing not at all in con­cert with each other, but clearly under the direc­tive of some lumi­nous and gen­er­ous god of open mics, I have fea­tures ten­ta­tively booked on April 22 and 29. Say I said the trip was gonna be very expen­sive and I’d have a brand-​​​​new lim­ited run chap­book (which itself will be the first install­ment in a very excit­ing seri­al­iza­tion of a full-​​​​length book of poems, about a par­tic­u­lar town in the region). Say I wanted to set up some fea­tures between April 18 and May 1. And, because I’m feel­ing saucy, I would per­son­ally hand…