esme

So I decided to google myself today, because...well, because sometimes you have to do that. actually, my specific motivation was to see whether my name came up on the High Risk Gallery page (it does!). But in the process, I found this. (you don't have to bother to click...the interesting part is like 2/3s of the way down and would involve reading a lot of names). It's this magazine that I submitted to like a year and a half ago and never heard back from. But apparently they accepted my poem(s).

Now, here's the thing...instead of getting all excited by this newfound publishing credit, I started to get all worried. What if there are others out there, and I'll never know? Moreover, is it possible I could end up getting in trouble? A lot of journals out there won't accept previously published work...is ignorance a decent excuse? I try to keep good track of the rejection and (rare) acceptance letters that I get, but I just keep moving so damn much that I never got my SASEs back from probably half of the places I've submitted to over the last 18 months or so. And I should probably get down off my high horse and assume that everything was rejected...but who can say for sure?

**********

You know that section in my profile? Where, under both "makes me happy" and "makes me sad," I say "remembering things." I know it's really cheesy, although a friend of mine did once say it was poetic. This morning, while saerching for godknowswhat, I found this Byron quote that gives me a little more cred, even though, based on my profile, anyway, I fundamentally disagree with half his argument:

Joy's recollection is no longer joy,
while sorrow's memory is sorrow still.

So what's the deal? I mean, the more I think about it, the more I realize that, yes, even good memories make me sad, because I know I'll never have that experience again. I think that's why I default to writing so much. Thinking about it this way makes me feel like a hack, of course--I'm not a memoirist, I'm just a self-indulgent, overly descriptive diarist. Regardless, I carry on. Somewhere in Salinger the advice is given: "Write the book you've always wanted to read." Which is exactly what I'm doing, but the trouble is, I've written all the good stuff, and now all I do is sit and read it, over and over again, those seemingly self-contained events that are nothing without context besides, as I said before, self-indulgent, overly descriptive diaries.

Regardles, I'm pulling myself up by the bootstraps, heading down to the cafe where they have free coffee on Mondays, and getting my shit organzied. I hope.

Don't mind me if this didn't make any sense. I had The Prce is Right on the whole time in the background. It messes with my head.