Jack Johnson - Buddha

I'm trying to decide if I can afford to spend the $50.00 application fee for Macondo, much less if I can even afford to go since I'm supposed to go to Canto Mundo. Well, that's neither here nor there, I'll have to see when it is and if I even get accepted.

Today, I will spend time with my mother who is going to return to Denver with me for a 3 day visit. As I grow older, I appreciate her company more and more.

Someone said I should write more critically here, in essay format, and I may soon do so later. I am writing/revising one essay which I think will be published in the near future in a print magazine, so perhaps it's time to write more critically and praise books that I think should be praised here, so often they are less praised online than truly bad books that are wildly heralded in the name of "community". I'm still trying to wrap my head around the why's of that, but it is the case that online reviews are often praise for truly terrible books. And I ask myself, is it merely a case of taste, or are they really bad, and I tend to conclude nope, they really are bad, in terms of flat language, uninteresting content, lack of flair or spark or anything beyond a quiet sincerity.

My last review for the El Paso Times never was published, and I need to contact them to see what's up with it. I heard the editor had health problems, so I need to get on the ball and remind him about that review of a novel I enjoyed.

Things will prove more difficult though as I will not have internet service at home in terms of writing more critically here, but in the end, I hope to have more time to spend revising 7, which may get a new title down the line, and which I am now considering sending out to contests. Oh joy. I'm just not sure it's ready. But I am thinking pretty seriously of sending requested revised copies out en masse to presses and contests. I want it to be good and I want it to be published by a reputable press that will give me an actual contract rather than verbal interest in it. But the contest route if murky if best, in that people do seem to pick people they know, or at least knew.

Blah, I'm blathering. I miss Emmy. I think I really do miss Emmy. In any case, I am in El Paso and the sun is coming up quite miraculously. I am going to take a walk at the Andres High School track and remember when I actually could run around it.

Later, I will visit my 98 year old abuelita! Yes, she is still fiesty and vocal! Yes, she eats mole and sopa every single day, the diet of champions.

I had menudo with my mom yesterday at the Good Luck Cafe at Alameda and it was awesome.
Lots going on in terms of whether I'll stay in Denver after my health issues are cleared up. I probably will. I don't know. I do love El Paso and will hopefully have health benefits in the end. There are about three different places I may end up, and I'll have to simply heal up, rest up and see where life takes me, where the current takes me. I know I am utterly exhausted from swimming against it in terms of trying to teach in an academic environment. If I'm meant to teach, things will have to change drastically as I will no longer be an overworked, stressed-out, underpaid adjunct.

I am blessed to be getting some help for a change in my life and thank my family and the professionals who have provided so much for me. I am truly blessed this coming year and will not be working. So, the Macondo thing is really up in the air as my finances will be limited, and that too will limit where I can send the manuscript.

Oh well, at least I will have time to write again. I hope and pray I do, and prayer in and of itself could cause me to write another overly long post.

I don't quite know what I believe anymore in terms of this universe. On the drive to El Paso, Texas from Denver I saw the open sky and clouds and sun as some sign of divinity, but it is the eventual decay, the cyclical nature of it that leads me to feel life is life and death is simply the end of life. But S always said, the energy has to go somewhere. I'm just not so sure it manifests itself as "us" or "ourselves". I don't know. I really would like to believe in divinity, a god, or something.

I received a ton of Jesus stuff from my family and felt kind of bad. I wear a Mary icon necklace and have tiny Buddhas in my room, but the fact of the matter is that I float in a sea of uncertainty. Maybe that's a good thing.