meteoroid

multicolored pink malformations

genuine feelings/conflicted feelings/conflicted forms of expression/death...

I have mixed feelings about poetry open mics, because on one hand I do want to share parts of my creative self, but on the other hand, I often feel uncomfortable publicly sharing my poetry unless a literary magazine or press specifically chose to accept it for publication. Sometimes publicly sharing it in front of a crowd feels a bit too close for comfort to forcing myself upon other people. Granted that doesn't necessarily make sense, because most of the people who attend poetry readings are other poetry people who chose to attend for a poetic reason, but I sometimes (possibly incorrectly) sense them looking away from me or rolling their eyes. I can visualize a specific guy looking away last time I read one of my poems in public, but that doesn't mean I know WHY he chose to look away.

If I was chosen as a featured reader (rather than random open mic reader), I sometimes feel better about it - but overall, I still tend towards feeling edgy and/or somewhat awkward and/or rather uncomfortable.

However, I don't want to be invisible or unknown or unseen or unheard or un-involved in the poetry scene. But with that said, I'm no scenester. I don't want to attend reading after reading in order to be a big part of a particular scene, and not allow myself enough time to focus upon my personal creative process. I feel the need to focus quite a bit of my time and mental energy on creative processing and writing by myself.

But on the other hand, I do like to not only read other poets, but also listen to, meet, and sometimes interact with other poets. I don't want any poets to feel un-heard (unless they want their whole process to be private), but I tend to relate to poets who are into the actual creation of poetry more than poets who are into being a big part of the poetry scene. I'm not saying some people can't be significant parts of both to an extent. I think it's a balancing act that different people balance differently.

I personally alternate between focusing on my own poetry - and focusing on other people's poetry via my small indie print press (Blood Pudding Press) and my online blog style lit mag (Thirteen Myna Birds) - and sometimes reading my poetry/listening to other's poetry in person/in public.

But the primary mental/emotional part of it for me and my personal poetic/artistic expression is via the actual writing and the actual poetry.

Also, I often feel like with my own poetry and my press poetry and my slow reading, I don't have nearly enough time to focus on just reading for the sake of reading - whether online literary magazines or print chapbooks or books. I'm not kidding when I say that I literally have HUNDREDS of unread poetry chapbooks and books in my home, because I like to support small presses by acquiring books that seem appealing to me, but also my reading is WAY slower than it used to be (before my stroke) and my brain is different than it used to be, and I can't read/process anything quickly, so it's hard to combine my own writing with a print press with an online blog style mag with reading other stuff too. That change of my brain sometimes makes me feel sad.

But I'm happy to be a creative individual, primarily poetry focused, with occasional spurts of visual art. 

***

On another level of sadness, I sometimes feel like I am terrible when it comes to talking non-poetically about certain emotionally devastating issues, including death.

I don't just want to tell someone that I'm thinking of them or praying for them (even if that is true); I want to express more/deeper/more individualistically, but sometimes I don't know what to say or how to say it, unless I say it poetically/artistically in a way that's open to interpretation.

It's not that I'm unemotional or don't have real life feelings.

I think I'm good at expressing my feelings on a small scale personal level; but I'm not good at expressing my feelings on a larger scale level, in which lots of people are expressing themselves in rapid succession. I guess I'm not good at rapid succession?

I don't like to open presents fast, because I want good gifts to last as long as they can.

I don't like to express strong sadness fast, because I don't want it to come close to ebbing too soon.

I don't know if any of this makes logical sense.

I don't know what to do sometimes.

I don't know.

***

So sometimes when a poet I know suddenly dies, I don't know what to say right away.  I don't want to be silent about it, but I also don't want to be someone who hardly ever says anything about someone when they're alive, but suddenly seems to have a lot to say shortly after they pass away.

But I certainly don't want it to seem as if I'm ignoring someone after they pass away.

But I also have mild aphasia based memory issues that seem to further add on to my not knowing what to say.

I do know that poet Marthe Reed suddenly passed away and I feel sad and upset about it, but I do not know what to say in a larger scale way. I did not know her very well on a personal level, but I have been aware of her poetically for years. I think I initially became aware of her through the Dusie Kollektiv, which I was involved with for several years, which was a truly wonderful, unique, creative, incredibly poetic, individualistic, expressive experience. I've read several of Marthe Reed's chapbooks and they still exist within my home space. I am aware of her Black Radish Books. I've seen and briefly met her in person at a writing conference I attended. I don't remember what we might have said to each other, which upsets me. Online, I've heard her read with my poetic collaborator j/j hastain - Marthe Reed and j/j hastain were poetic collaborators too. I truly appreciate Marthe Reed's long term genuine poetic passion and ongoing poetry flow.  I feel sad that she's passed away too soon and I feel for those who knew her on a more in depth personal level. I am glad that her poetry will live on.

Sometimes I feel like I don't communicate enough on a personal emotional level, in large part because I tend towards becoming overly emotional, to the extent that loss devastates me.

But then I worry that my reluctance to express feelings about death on a personal level aside from art/poetry might cause it to seem as if I am just ignoring death and I am not.

***

Sometimes when I try my best to express my true feelings in the moment, I end up ruining things.

But sometimes if I don't express myself, I feel too close to approaching stagnation. 

and so on and so forth

 I used to think that there was always a very valid and potentially powerful point to creative expression via poetry and art (and sometimes I still think so and still feel that way), but a lot of my creative expression is very personal (which I'm usually fine with, because that's how I write and create).

But lately I've been thinking that even if my poems are a meaningful form of expression for me personally, they might not have much of a larger purpose (and they're still valuable to me if they don't but...) I mean, who wants to hear a middle-aged, middle-class white woman go on and on about her body issues and her anxiety and her depression and her anger and her relationship issues and her uncertainty about whatever the heck love is and so on and so forth?

Granted, I'm technically poverty level, but I don't feel poor, so I'll always consider myself middle class. Granted, I'm technically disabled, but I don't directly focus on that in my poetry and sometimes it upsets me when people seem to encourage me to focus MORE on my disability in my poetry, because maybe I already AM focusing on it in an indirect, semi-abstract sort of way. Sometimes I think that me feeling like I barely exist and that I'm not particularly meaningful is a sort of side effect of the brain damage of my stroke, because I don't remember feeling so pointless when I was younger, but maybe I always felt that way, or maybe I would have felt that way when I got older anyway, whether or not I had undergone such a brain fluke.

But it makes me feel a bit weirdly uncomfortable if people seem more interested in my brain damage rather than my poetry - because of those two parts of my life, I most definitely prefer the poetry, whether or not it interests many others. 

This is one writer/small press editor's thoughts and feelings about AWP, inspired by the linked to POV at the bottom of the post

I saw this small article/POV on a few of my friends walls last week and found it a worthwhile and interesting perception, which generated a variety of different thoughts/feelings/perspectives from me. Here's my personal take on the matter (which is longer than the article).

In my opinion, this small article offers some good, valid, thought provoking and very legitimate points, but not the whole point of the picture (not that any picture has only one whole point).

It is certainly true that the AWP convention seems to hugely overcharge as if poetry is some sort of corporate job that makes big bucks, when really it's not a money-based realm at all. Perhaps this is because AWP started off geared towards college-based presses and in more recent years, lots of smaller, independent presses chose to become part of the convention too, even though it wasn't initially aimed at/geared towards them and wasn't reasonably affordable to them, since little individual presses don't have a university covering their fees.

My Blood Pudding Press is a teeny tiny indie press run by one woman and this year's AWP convention was the third time I've attended AWP. Each time (especially the second and third times), I've seriously questioned whether or not I should attend, because it's difficult for me to afford it. Even if it wasn't difficult for me to afford it, I would still feel like it was overpriced, and takes advantage of poets who desire to connect with other poets, and restricts poets who can't afford it at all even if they want to.

For me personally, since I chose to attend AWP this year, I had to turn down the offer to participate in another long weekend poetry event in another state, which might have been a better choice for me, because it was focused on more independent poets rather than academic AND independent presses. However, I couldn't afford two out-of-state poetry events within a few months of each other - and furthermore, when I was invited to be part of the more indie poetry event, I had already committed to AWP, since reservation and monetary prep for the AWP has to be handled VERY far in advance, unless you want your fees to go up even higher.

With the very first AWP I ever attended, I was extremely excited about the event; in fact, I was THRILLED, not because of the ability to sell my press's books at a convention center table, but because I'd been aware of the AWP for years and had never been able to attend for various reasons and was so incredibly excited about the idea of being surrounded by all kinds of different presses and poets from all over the place. I don't think book sales is the primary driving force of most AWP attendees; I think its main appeal for a lot of poets is a more broad scale connectivity, instead of a small scale niche in one particular area. (On a side note, some small scale poetry niches feel sort of like popularity contests to me - where if you don't specifically focus on them in particular and connect with them in particular and support their particulars, then you don't fit in to their niche and they'll mentally kick you out.) While it's very true that AWP's somewhat more broad scale connectivity is seriously limited when only some people can afford to attend, I think it is also true that most smaller scale niches don't support or appreciate everyone either.

As for the book sales versus the giving away of books, this year was the first AWP I've attended where I did not have a table for my tiny indie press and thus was not particularly focused on selling. I did advance prepare and take some chapbooks from my press (just in case), but I didn't walk around carrying boxes of chapbooks and promoting promoting promoting and trying to sell myself. I wanted to walk around and BE myself and look at other people and books and re-connect with or connect with other poets and give out hand-designed business cards and gizzard stickers.

Thus I sold nowhere near the number of books mentioned in this article. In fact, to be completely honest, I only sold four books. I had told myself that I wasn't going to buy any books this year (or very very few), because I STILL have un-read books from the past two AWP's I've attended, but I ended up buying close to twenty books (eighteen to be precise, but I gave away one of them - and I also received two free contributor copies from lovely lit mags with my poems inside them).

Close to twenty books at a huge press-based, poetry-focused book fair convention is on the low end for me, but still - that's buying WAY more books than I sold, as well as paying approximately 500 bucks for me and my man to have badge access to the convention itself, plus our gas money, plus our hotel room money, plus spending significantly more on food and drink in less than five days than I usually spend in three or more months. To plan and prepare for this event in advance, I had to make a substantial effort to spend less money and save more money for more than half a year, in order to be able to afford to attend this convention - and I still would not have been able to afford to attend it if my partner hadn't split the bills with me.

Backtracking to the two previous AWP conventions I attended where I split a table with another press, I sold a lot of chapbooks for a three day event (at least by my own standards), but a lot of chapbooks for a three day event was still less than 50 chapbooks, and that involved sitting at my table the vast majority of the three days (other than taking little breaks to check out other tables, talk to other poets and press editors, and buy other books).

So based on my own experiences, my own finances, and my tiny indie press perspective, AWP expenditures are WAY overpriced and unreasonable for small independent presses and people with low or very limited income. Personally, I can somewhat write off the unreasonable part by considering it a special vacation experience for myself, because it's not like I'm someone who vacations much. But that doesn't write off the overpriced to the point of being completely un-doable for a whole lot of low income poets. So why do I still go? Why do I allow such expenditures to take advantage of me? Why not just leave it for the academic presses it was originally focused on and who can more reasonably afford it?

Well that's a good question and I think I've already answered it to an extent and I don't necessarily have a detailed and laid out and extremely legitimate answer, especially since the last two times I've attended, I've questioned myself a lot for doing so. The best I can do is tell you why I personally chose to attend, despite my own mixed feelings and questions. For me, it's not about solely attempting or expecting to sell a bunch of books. (Even when I had a table, in order to recoup all my costs associated with the convention, I'd have to sell well over 100 books and not buy anyone else's books, and that wasn't going to happen). For me, it's not about trying to promote my press to the extent of making it considerably more well-known or significantly bigger, because I want to keep my itty bitty indie press pretty itty bitty, so I don't go insane by making my creative work feel like a job (and so I don't let my editing/publishing outweigh my own personal reading/writing/art).

For me, the primary reason I've attended AWP three times is because I want to be temporarily surrounded by lots of different presses and poets from lots of different spaces and places that I don't frequently encounter. Poetry friends of mine who live in different states and so I hardly ever get to see them and poets who I've only ever seen/spoken with online and have been friends with online for years, but have never met in person before.

Granted, in a way, the whole big group dynamic of the convention does make it difficult to have many in-depth personal interactions, but short interactions with those you would otherwise never get to see can still be pretty exciting, even if they are relatively brief. Granted, the noisy busy group environment can be overwhelming to me; I want to take genuine creative advantage of the relatively short span of time without overwhelming myself into stressful semi-oblivion (and I don't think I did as good a job with that at this AWP than at the other two I've attended - but that subject matter could lead to a whole other post) - but despite the various mental quirks I had a hard time handling, I was delighted to meet a few poets for the first time, briefly reconnect with some poets I hadn't seen for quite a few years, and so forth.

As for trying to sell (or give away) books or be part of the poetry community in my closer-to-home immediate area, that area doesn't have much of a poetry scene going on. The closest area(s) that do are close to an hour away from me. I'm a non-driver. My main man drives and is more than willing to attend poetry readings with me, but it seems that a lot of them happen on weekdays, which can be a bit challenging, if you have an early morning weekday work schedule and a poetry reading that's close to an hour away starts on a weekday evening.

So what if you don't have a poetry community in your immediate area, you don't have many friends in your immediate area, you don't drive, you're not very scene-driven, you're not aiming to be part of any one particular poetry niche market, you're not aiming to start your own poetry niche market, and you can only handle group events in occasional small spurts? That doesn't mean you're clueless or doing anything wrong. Not all poets are the same. Not all poets are deeply connected with the area they live in. Not all poets are comfortable in public. Not all poets are sociable performance artists. If I tried to be frequently sociable, I would drain my own creative energies fast and I would collapse.

If I do something big group oriented (which I sometimes do, when it comes to poetry), it then takes me over a week to recalculate my brain and reconnect with myself and my individual energy and creativity. I know I'm not the only poet/artist/creative type how feels this way. I think quite a few of us need a lot of time and space to ourselves. Some people can energize themselves in big group performance artsy crowds; other people can energize themselves by personally connecting with themselves or one or two other individuals, in a small, intense and genuine form of personal interaction. I far prefer the latter and sometimes attempt the former in small doses i.e. AWP, which happens once a year.

I have no desire to sell myself (or my press) solely for the sake of selling myself - I have no desire to sell myself (or my press) in order to be popular - and I have no desire to sell myself (or my press) by competing with or cutting down others. I'm not interested in being feverishly competitive or combative. I'm interested in doing what I want to do for the personal reasons I want to do it.

I think that many different poetic and creative goals exist beyond the point of just publishing and selling (or publishing and giving away) and so I don't think a writing convention can be easily narrowed down to costs versus book sales. Ultimately, every writer and publisher should set their own goals and make their own choices and share their own thoughts and feelings - and this article shared some interesting thoughts and feelings and encouraged me to share some of mine.

Do I think AWP is rather ridiculously overpriced for small press/independent artists and worthy of being questioned for its overpricing? Yes. Do I think everyone choosing to attend AWP is just cluelessly succumbing to that? No.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0L5_KiJ2xvcQVFFOVdHRHB1YjA/view

Me looking overly chartreuse

Poetry Publishing AND Writing

For whatever reason(s), some poets and presses don’t seem to like to talk about subject matter related to poetry acceptance/rejection, how much they do or don’t submit, and how many submissions their presses receive etc… but I will. Maybe this is inappropriate or unprofessional by some people’s standards, but why? Maybe it will make me seem unpopular by some people’s standards, but oh well. I have no desire to force my way or fake my way into the popular zone.

I remember when I was younger and got more bummed out by rejections and tended to take them too personally. Once I ended up having my poetry accepted by a lot of sources, rejections didn’t bother me much – because I started to perceive it more like obviously my work wasn’t going to be everyone’s/every presses style. I mean do I like everyone else’s poetry? No way. And sometimes when I don’t like it, it’s not because it’s poorly written or clichéd or otherwise crappy. SOMETIMES it’s for reasons like that – but other times, it’s well written, but just not my style. Not that I have any ONE style. There are numerous styles I like and numerous styles I don’t like, when it comes to poetry, visual art, and lots of other things too.

Aside from my own poetry’s acceptance and rejection, what’s changed my perspective even more in recent years is running my own small poetry press, Blood Pudding Press. When I hear someone sound really bummed about having a chapbook manuscript rejected (not just some individual poems, but a whole manuscript), I can somewhat relate to that on a poet level, but I can also think about it on a press/publisher level and here’s part of how I feel about it on that publisher level.

My Blood Pudding Press is pretty itty bitty. It’s not academic (or anti-academic) or associated with any particular organization; it’s just a one woman gig of publishing unique, ribbon-bound, hand-designed poetry chapbooks – only a few a year, so that I can also focus on my own reading, writing, submitting, art stuff, other stuff. (Some poets/publishers are way better at multi-tasking than I am; not me; I’m not going to force myself to pick up my pace and then go bonkers).

The last few years, in order to choose which chapbooks I’m going to publish, I’ve run a chapbook contest. For this year’s contest, I was accepting submissions for one month and received well over 50 submissions. In the 50s is probably a very small amount of submissions compared to what college based or other more well-known, large scale presses receive – and might even be a small amount related to what some other small presses receive. But 50+ was a good number of submissions for me.

Of the more than 50 submissions I received, I only plan to choose two for publication. So far I'm not even halfway through reading them all and there's already way more than two that definitely deserve to be published, so it is going to be tough narrowing it down. I imagine it works similarly for many other small poetry presses, especially the presses that are not academically based (and I’m not talking about content there; I’m talking about being associated with a university, which has a lot of different readers and covers the publishing fees and etc…).

If you are a small press that is handled by just one individual poet (or less than one handful of individual poets), then those who handle the press can either choose to focus mostly on publishing (barely spending any time at all on their own personal writing/art/creative work – unless they have a speed racing, multi-tasking style), so that they can manage to publish more than just a few of the people who deserve to be published - OR they can choose to publish just a few of the people who deserve to be published and also have time remaining to focus on their own creative flow. 

Obviously, this works somewhat differently for every individual and I’m just speaking for myself. As with many other aspects of life, I think I am pretty “in between” with this, but I choose to focus on BOTH (my own writing/submitting AND publishing others) – and for me personally, if I focused much more on publishing, then that would hugely outweigh my own creative flow and then I’d be really unhappy. 

With all that said though, again, of the 50+ chapbook submissions I recently received for my Blood Pudding Press and am currently reading, I’ll bet there’s going to be more than two HANDFULS of them that deserve to be published – and it will be tough narrowing it down to only two.

MIXED FEELING MESS (some thoughts that emerged during a recent poetry interview)

I was recently working on answering a series of interview questions related to my POST-STROKE poetry chapbook (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 5, 2011). That chapbook was the first new poetry collection to be written and created by me after my stroke, which happened early in 2010.  I had a tough time dealing with questions about it at this point in time, and so I needed to write some of my challenging thoughts/feelings out of my system before focusing on the specific interview points of view.  I will share those thoughts/feelings here on my blog – and then later, when the interview is posted on the Poet Hound blog, I will link to that.

Within the last few years, I have been a mixed feeling mess, about myself and others and life in general.  It’s hard for me to figure out and decide what I ought to be focusing on (aside from my poetry and art stuff) – and it’s hard for me to believe that anyone will be deeply interested in and able to tolerate me, except in small, short term doses. From family members to friends and even to significant others, I feel as if I’m not right for anyone anymore. I feel as if some people seem to think that I’ve focused on my health issue too much; whereas other people seem to think I don’t focus on it enough and should be more diligently making ongoing efforts at increased possible recovery.  For example, my ex-husband was tired of hearing about it after just a couple months – but then the next man I became seriously involved with after my divorce seemed to think I didn’t pay enough attention to my health, as if I should be primarily focused on that for as long as it took, even if it took the rest of my remaining existence.

I want others to allow me to make my own choices and to like me for WHO I AM. 

Not for whom I used to be – and not for whom they think I should try to be, by spending the majority of my time and energy and effort on repeatedly having my brain tested and scanned and researched and possibly improved upon in the midst of never ending medical stress.

Well anyone ever again appreciate and love me for WHO I AM RIGHT NOW?

(It hurts me thinking that the answer is probably know – that I’m not a very likable person – that I’m not good enough or fun enough or otherwise appealing enough anymore.)

On the poetry side of the spectrum, I am well aware of and understand that there are all different kinds of poetry out here – that some people will accept your style and some people will reject your style – that nobody’s creative work is going to be everyone else’s style. Personally, I’ve never aimed for main stream appeal or bill fitting poetry or vanilla snack pack pudding poetry (thus, why my press is named Blood Pudding Press). 

Despite being well aware of different styles and different tastes (and not caring whether I fit into them all), I got a bit bummed recently, in regards to a note I received from a press I had sent a query too, about whether they might be interested in partaking of my full-length poetry manuscript. My query had included a brief note letting them know how the title of my manuscript derived from my stroke – and then I also sent them three sample poems. 

They wrote back informing me that they thought the subject matter of my collection was too specific and might not warrant mass appeal, however they wished me health.  Well, of the three sample poems I had sent them, only one of those had been written after my stroke. It’s not like all of my poems focus on the subject matter of health or brain disabilities – and it’s not like my poetic subject matter has an obvious approach anyway.  My poetic content and style has never been very clear cut content wise.  If because of that, it doesn’t mesh well with their press’s style, then fine.  But don’t assume that the bulk of my poetic content and style is related to my stroke, just because I had a stroke and revealed that part of my book’s title derived from that. 

After reading that editorial response, I felt as if maybe I should change my manuscript’s title and remove every tidbit of my health background from my credits section - because when it comes to my poetry, I don’t wish to give the impression of being predominantly health-focused – because I’m not.  I want to be creatively poetry-focused – because I am.

However, I also don’t want to downright ignore or avoid significant parts of my life, as if they never really happened or barely exist within my brain - or not focus on them at all within my creative realm.  Thus, I honestly have found my health issue rather tricky in real life AND in my poetry life. My health issue did not largely change my poetry reading and writing style (except for slowing them down) – but my poetic content is mentally/emotionally based and the health issue certainly had an impact on those parts of me.

I’m pleased that I am still able to creatively express my thoughts/feelings/emotions/ideas through odd oodles of non-mainstream poetry. If I wanted to be a different kind of writer who was predominantly focused on my health issue, then perhaps I’d move away from poetry and try to focus on writing a real life story about my issues.  But guess what? That’s not what I want to focus on right now.

Still though, along such lines, when an interview I’m participating in is focused on my stroke, I do find myself wondering if most poets might not even be interested in reading this, because they’ll think its focus will be more about health than about art – and thus it will be rather boring and something that they’re just not particularly interested in.

I’ve never liked the phrase GO WITH THE FLOW

You didn’t like the way I dressed – you read some of my poetry and cried – you were upset by my taste in books – & many times when I expressed a different opinion/point of view than yours, you seemed to think that opinion/point of view of mine was created by or heavily influenced by other people rather than being my own opinion that happened to differ from yours.

That started a very long time ago. I remember it happening a lot back when I was in college. If my opinion wasn’t the same as yours, you seemed to think my opinion was created by/influenced by/controlled by others. For one small example, when instead of being anti-abortion, I became pro-choice, you seemed to think that must have been due to somebody else, rather than due to my own opinion changing as I became an adult.

Since you’ve often seemed to think I’m someone who is overly influenced by others (and since I have always disagreed with that perspective of yours about me), part of me was overly worried/concerned about the chance that you might be using my post-stroke situation as some sort of excuse to rid me of someone/something you had never really liked – and since I don’t want another adult to make a choice for me too quickly (or at all for that matter, because I don’t think adults should try to make lifestyle choices for other adults – offering opinions is one thing; but repeatedly telling someone what they should do is another thing), it took me longer to make my own choice.

I tend to be a slow decision maker anyway, even about little things – and when it comes to a big, major lifestyle decision, I sure don’t want to make my choice too fast. For the most part, it is up to each adult to make their own choices when ready/willing. If it took me too long by some people’s standards, oh well. Lots of things take me too long by some people’s standards and it is important to me to try my best to stay attuned to my own standards/thoughts/feelings/perspectives.

I strongly dislike it when I try to express how I am feeling about something and the person I’m talking to interrupts me and says something like, ‘No, that is NOT the way you feel’ as though I am making up my own thoughts/feelings or as if they think they might be more aware of my own thoughts/feelings than I am. WTF!?! Yes, I have lots of mixed feelings, but that doesn’t make me a faker, a lying person, or a person who wants someone else to tell me how I should feel or how I do feel.

Let me express myself my way.

***

(Woke up in the middle of the night a while back and felt compelled to write those notes on papers beside my bed and have now decided to post them here. They probably sound semi-random, but I wanted to write them down again and then throw the papers away).

More Mixed Feelings, Confusion, & Nervousness Galore

1. A few thoughts/feelings a little earlier today:

I think my most recent poetry has become somewhat flatter and doesn't have as much resonant, powerful feeling as it used to.

I think that's because I also don't have as much resonant, powerful feeling as I used to.

I had to tone down some of my own strong feelings, lest I became a continuous panic attack mishap.

(Mind you, this did not involve pysch. drugs; I am pretty anti psych. drugs; but my brain managed to somehow tone down/turn off itself.)

2. A few thoughts/feelings less than half an hour later:

I think the above is untrue, because almost as soon as I started thinking more about it, I then started crying. Is there something wrong with me? My feelings are so frequently mixed mixed mixed and discombobulated.

I think one reason I try not to think about things too much anymore is because then I get really nervous about almost everything.

I'm nervous about my new up-coming house (why? it's not like I've never lived by myself before. It's not like it's in a dangerous area. Why my uncomfortable nervous spurts about something good?). Maybe it's partly because I have frequent mixed feelings about whether I want to be by myself or not. I do, I don't, I do, I don't.

I'm nervous about being by myself; I'm nervous about seriously commiting to anyone.

I'm nervous that my poetry is not as good as it used to be - and what if I lose my passion for the primary entity I've been incredibly passionate about for countless years.

The last three words of my newest poem are "on, off, on".

I'm nervous that I have no clue what to do job-wise anymore (what I can do OR what I want to do).

I'm nervous that everyone might get tired of me; less & less interested.

On, off, on.

I'm over the top then under.

Over the top then downhill.

I worry that maybe love always dies or wishes you dead.

These thoughts made me start crying, so I guess my worry that I do not have strong feelings anymore is wrong.

Maybe I just emotionally/mentally tone them down so I don't get incredibly nervous and start crying all the time.

I do still have feelings and emotions. They're just rather nerve wracking if I concentrate on them too hard.

I'm nervous about my terrible sense of direction.

I'm nervous about being a 38 year old who feels like I am starting over in a way, but does not know how to.

How should I turn my nervousness into art?

Mixed feelings are not mixed bags; how should I open them?

Mixed feelings are not mixed drinks; how should I swallow them?