Rereading

After work today, I stopped in at Holiday, and got some drinks. I haven’t been to a bar alone in a long time, and this was an interesting departure from the norm. I had a bunch of my poems with me, which I’ve printed out, and basically just sat there for an hour and went through them, one by one.

I had two double Beams, and just sifted through all my old writing.

And I gotta say – it felt great. Not everything was good, but there were several moments where I felt proud, moved, energized by my own writing. I was trying to think of how to express this sensation to you. It felt a bit like masturbating – but just the brain. It was a very selfish, indulgent act. It also felt a bit like looking at a photograph of yourself, some ten years back, when you were younger, stronger, and full of the kind of optimism that couldn’t be deterred.

I got a few ideas while I was looking over my poems, so it’ll be interesting to see where things go from here. After talking with Matt and Juliet, I think I’m going to try to get an application together for MacDowell. I also had an idea of making another Flash-based poem, and getting my mom to help me out with it. The poem is largely about her, and the idea of collaborating with her is kind of intriguing. I also got this wacky idea to try and get permission from various sources (this would take a long time) to turn a really old poem into a Flash piece… we’ll see how that goes in the coming weeks.

Tonight was fun. I haven’t gone over my work in a really, really long time. It felt nice to review things, and there were several moments where I wanted to read lines/phrases out loud. Seriously – there were a few instances where I wanted to shout things out to the world. I’m definitely looking forward to reading in front of an audience/group/whoever again. Soon. This all seems like a good sign.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll start writing again.