My head is a mess.

No, I'm not about to turn that into a metaphor; I've just got a cold. The letters on this thing all look gigantic, I felt about 7 feet tall as I stood up a few minutes ago, and everything still hurts. Especially my head, and especially when I stand. I feel like I can't put together a cohesive thought... yet I blog anyway. As I said from the beginning, I really do want to push myself to write anything on a majority of the days out of the week.

One of the fun things about being sick is all the craziness that goes on in my head. I have the most fantastic dreams. Funny, I still find myself dreaming of tornadoes frequently. I wonder if this will change if I ever move out of state. Also, I think some of the most absurd things while conscious as well, like six or so years ago when I came down with five different infections and -itises all at once, and proceeded to think I was Robert Plant, commander of the Alaskan army, and later claimed my dad's side of the parental bed as my won territory. He was out of town at the time, so really all it did was wake my mom up. She kicked me out of her room and I stepped in cat vomit. What a night.

Recently, I've come up with the idea of turning wine into a makeshift champagne panacea by spiking it with an Alka-seltzer tablet. If I could make it out of my room without falling over, I might give it a try. I've googled it and haven't come up with much. I'm surprised that no one else has thought of this. I'm also glad it hasn't popped up in any urban legends like mentos and coke. I can't think of any reason why it would be a bad combination, other than acetaminophin and alcohol aren't exactly friends, but that's only if you consume more than three drinks per day, so I should be safe. Some Alka-seltzer is now being sold with aspirin instead of acetaminophin, though, so that's something to watch out for. Case in point: acetaminaphin in moderation? Safe. Wine in moderation? Generally safe. Both in combination in moderation? possibly moderately safe and potentially gloriously beneficial. Tune in for the results show.

Now to pump a little substance into this post, the inscape release was last night. It went well, though I guess my head really is such a mess that I don't have words for it. Some of the poets who read, I kept asking myself "I picked this why?" though many of them were those who were on the cusp, and it's not like I didn't have a co-editor and seven other classmates whose opinions were balanced in the decision-making process. Thinking back, there was a lot that made it onto the final list because I kept those things in mind.

That sounds bad. Really, it does, that I'm sitting here typing about how I don't really like a lot of the stuff that made it in, that I had a large hand in getting into the journal. However, what I liked five or six months ago and what I like now are bound to be somewhat in conflict with each other. It happens with my own work, that I go through periods of not liking certain poems or stories, often all from one range of time. Currently, I'm in a period of not liking my Fall '07 poems. Only one sticks out at me as worthwhile. At the same time, I've rediscovered my spring '07 poems- the very first poems I wrote- and found that I really do like them again, and see the merit in them, that they might be worth either heavily editing or extracting bits and pieces that work to put into new poems.

What stuck out at me most during the reading, though, is one particular poem that should've ended at the penultimate stanza. I'm sorry, it just should have. I loved the poem enough to overlook those last few lines, but hearing it read again after not having looked at it for several months, I still thought the same thing about it. It was one of thoses living reminders to check my work; to make sure it didn't end before I stopped writing.

I'm presenting Pinter's Betrayal in playwriting tomorrow. I like this play a bit more each time I read it, and see a lot of Pinter's sort of hallmark technique of pause and silence as something I've already idealized in my own work and ideas. I should read more Pinter. I love the way the play unfolds itself, and the treatment of the subject matter, though my head is still too foggy and pained to go much beyond those topical statements.

I'll be starting a new poem shortly; the line popped into my mind last night, I wrote it down, and now I'm letting it work its way into myself for a few days until I feel the impulse. It's a rather curious process, though I try not to think about it too much, sort of like how one doesn't think about walking, lest he suddenly trip.

On Friday, I look at a house to rent. And I just got a call from a 361 number. Curious. Usually a person doesn't get long distance wrong-number calls, though the person hung up a few seconds after I answered. I can only think of one person who it might have been, but 1) I don't know how he'd have gotten my number, and 2) it's been confirmed it wasn't his number anyway (though that doesn't necessarily rule out that he called from someone else's phone, but why?), so I'll just assume it was one of those freak incidents. One of those freak incidents that will still keep me wondering just a little. Wonderful.