I am back, and thanks be to God, fully recovered from this four day virus I had which led me to believe that death was imminent.

Lately (since I've been back in town lately), I've been seriously thinking about writing. Writing, not as a hobby, but as a profession. I know there must be something publishable in all my poems and if it's there and its good, then why shouldn't it be published? I think it's getting to the point where it's my responsibility to take initiative and do something with the bedlam on my computer.

Now I know every writer goes through that whole " i must be published for the sake of being published" thing. The poet's infant stage of wanting to be recognized, of feeling he or she has the unerring right to be recognized, but it's not that. It's more of the realization that this needs to be done. In Franny and Zooey one character tells his sister that if she's knows she's an actress then it's her responsibility to act. So, I guess that's the quintessential theory behind all this sudden ardency.

I'm a writer, dammit, and writers need volumes of lore!

Really, I'd like to start a publishing company sometime during the unknown course of my life. Something like Black Sparrow Press, which Charles Bukowski inspired in the sixties. His friend sort of commenced the whole thing in order to publish Bukowski.It's rather a dreamy scenario, but perhaps not as full of chimera and impracticality as may be suggested at first glance. Reality lives to rebuke the surreal. Hmm. Who knows. If I did start publishing, the first people on my list would be my friend Joe, Alex, Jamie, Kyle, and my online friend Brian, who's trying to get a book published as we speak. Man, I'm feeling passionate about this... I wish I had some money.

Anyway, to circle back around to my life, it's a bit insipid right now. Jamie mentioned in her weblog recently that this summer doesn't seem as great as the last. But really we say that about every summer and next July we'll be sitting on our butts saying things like "Gee, last summer was surely the best I've ever seen, a hell of a lot better than this one," when in reality we don't even remember how bored we were the previous year. It's a funny cycle.

I'm missing Kyle immensely right now. He's hours away and I'm whining about it. I don't know when we'll get to see each other again, hopefully soon, but things like this are never rooted into schedules, they just sort of sprout arbitrarily and wilt just as easy. I sent him a few poems today and he sent me some a few days ago. They were all really good, I think there was only one or two I didn't exactly care for. In the back of our minds we're both becoming the next Elizabeth and John Browning.

Well, all this talk about books is just a reminder that I have to go buy one. And write one.