Love

There's a full moon out tonight or at least that's what it looks like to me, staring out my sole window in the living room. Almost a blue moon. Takes me back to June. One thing I know, have realized tonight, is that fear cuts you off at the knees. I have got to stay in the present and quit thinking backward or forward.

Tonight, I took all my rough drafts and ideas from the three spiral notebooks of this sabbatical (as the novel ferments on my desktop) and placed them categorically into a binder as Sarah and I watched Miss Teen USA and sadly shook our heads. Inbetween we watched Jeopardy and Democracy Now and Amy Goodman aired a past interview with Grace Paley from '93 since Ms. Paley died on Wednesday. I remember discovering her when my school threw me into an American Lit class and I stumbled upon her stories. But it was her poetry that she read in this interview that calmed and stirred me in renewed action:

"In poetry, men must become women and women must become women."

I have a binder with rough ideas and thoughts, first drafts of my refusal to be cut down by fear. I have the determination and peace that passes all understanding. I continue on in the spirit of Grace Paley.

--Dedicated to Leila Sandra Wolford, slaughterer of fear.