I tried to write [[poetry]] or something again, failed, got miserable. Went in by Cholula preparatory to going upstairs to fitful or restful dreams or blank sleeping oblivion. She said I could do whatever I wanted. She said she’s seen my drive and passion, and when I use it I’m unstoppable. She said some people you can just tell are going to excel, and I’m one of them. She said she wasn’t just saying all this to make me feel better. I had said, What’s so great about life? We’re taught to believe it’s this great blessing, this wonderful thing, but it’s no better than being a rock. Just a different arrangement of particles. We eat s*** die etc, and I’m tired of it. To which she countered, when they say it’s beautiful they don’t mean stupendous, amazing things are going to happen to you all the time. They mean you got to see that fawn. You got to eat that bacon you like. And if that’s not enough, well, yeah, you are going to be miserable because you may not always get the opportunity for anything more stupendous than that. And I thought about that, and I realized that--and here’s where it gets a little sticky, a little sweet, but nonetheless, I think that’s what a poem actually is, is that fawn in the woods. I didn’t create the fawn; I was amazed by it. Likewise, I never write poems from zero, never on purpose. They’re always (the good ones, the keepers I mean, the ones I like to read over again) a little speckled curled-up dreaming animal I stumble upon in the woods. Some woods are in the middle of the steaming city, some woods are in your mind, and some are somewhere else. But if it makes you happy to walk around those places, then walk around there. And if there’s something there you want to show someone else, show them. Whatever else you feel you have to do is just the price you pay for being human, for eating bacon. But I think what Cholula was telling me was a little like Alice Walker’s *The Color Purple*—all about how God gets mad if you walk by a field all flowing and purple in the sun, and you just don’t even notice, you just don’t even care. It’s like, what are you complaining about, you want so much more and you don’t even drink what you got already. *(2003)*