*waves hanky*

So here it is darlings- In an hour I leave for the airport, with 4 heavy bags and one light heart. I have been rushing to get most things finished all week, but have been made sane and kept happy by the amount of people who have been calling to wish me good luck, or insisting that they MUST see me before I go. You know who you all are, and you mean the world to me.
Funny enough, leaving preparations involved two things: packing and illustrations. I got the illos done (of course in the nick of time, but fully) and the packing...weeeell, my lovely subletter, Carrie, is letting me leave my 200 tons of books and shoes under the bed, and Mykle's random peices of iron and mechanic tools and electrical cords.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love San Francisco? It's freezing and raining, and supposedly snowing in Oakland, but the sun shines through the clouds silver and oh! it's so beautiful. I look to the South and see the future on the grey horizon.

Solitude

When left to my own devices,
i see each small task accomplished,
as a little step closer
to feeling as a whole person does.

It's as if I acquire things, collect actions like trinkets,
my work is a hatch-mark on a wall,
marking off points in an unfathomable game.
Sometimes there is nothings so pleasurable
as completing some relatively meaningless chore
that only my solitude and the chilly afternoon
lets me accomplish.

With the presence of love around
small tasks like this get pushed to the side like broken cluttered toys,
and only love is taken up in the hands
smoothed, polished, cared for...
all else in wayside trash until I notice it at random
between the other work of love,
and time spent in each other's presence,
and experiences acquired together.
That too is a kind of gain, but one of the heart, immaterial comparatively,
but all consuming.

Solitude is a blessing I guess.
Love and the presence of it built my world,
but now I see how sturdily my world stands up when the braces, the scaffording, the physicality of love is taken away.
Here I am in my solitude-
in my practical tower-
hard at my work.

This isn't a poem, it's actually how I write naturally when I am writing something only I will read. Hooray for blogs, where you get to pull out your journal and copy this stuff, cause it's the only way to explain that makes sense. This kind of stuff is shorthand, written longhand.