Being quite convinced I can't write anything worthwhile unless I'm depressed, I woke up really happy that I woke up depressed, because I thought I might actually get some writing done. Better yet, I woke up depressed because I had a dream about of a long-lost, possibly estranged friend. So, I composed a little ten-line poem and sent it off to her by way of an e-mail account I rarely use but through which we used to correspond. I went back to that account to see if I could find the poem for possible reposting here, but there's no record of it in that account. Now I'm wondering if it actually got sent, or if I even composed it, which is meta-weird because it was about the phenomenon of waking up and not knowing which parts of your dream were actual. It also adds to the mounting issue of what the status of this, often mostly e-mail, relationship is- in the way that only an e-mail correspondence can make you wonder that (maybe paper letters can too, but I've never corresponded that way, so I wouldn't know).

This is continuing to make me depressed, but it's not producing very much poetry. The truth is, I just kind of want to hear from this person, and have a fairly pedestrian conversation about what's gone on on her life in the last forever of days. It doesn't really matter to me if it produces good poetry or not. I think maybe I have to develop a new poetics if it all revolves around managing to keep myself properly depressed for extended lengths of time. Here's the only thing I did produce today:

memory-free today
i want pledges like alcoholics get to have
please, Lord, grant me the unstable”I”, i know i am
i want I out i want(ed holy, holy skeptics doubt)
let me wipe this hard-disk, rounds its corners off with
sand paper or terry cloth

Now all I'm doing is avoiding starting commenting on student papers, which I've actually been enjoying lately, but I feel guilty about abandoning the draft above, even though I don't like it. Likely it's because it's not connected to any of my Big Projects, so I can't get my brain around writing in whatever way the first two lines are asking me to. Again, evidence I need to change my poetics- maybe I need to start stalking myself, if I'm reading Loretta's post right.

On other fronts, spent several hours trying to negotiate a truce of sorts at my old warehouse between dysfunctional parties I'm no longer party to all in the hopes that I can sneak back in there and make use of the "arts space" for practicing, throwing readings, finger-painting etc. Got home from that around 8pm, at which point it seemed too late to do any drum practicing, so I just watched the freakin' Al Gore movie (which is smart about information presentation, in an Allen Tufte kind of way, really dumb about drama and narrative) and went to sleep. Even if I get the whole arts space thing worked out, it will be months before I can just walk in there and sit at my drumset undisturbed and play at any hour, which is quickly becoming my sole ambition in life (fuck poetry, let's drum!)