Windchimes

always almost

Been a long time since I've written anything in this journal or done anything pertaining to the website besides responding to a few r & r's. I'm grateful that people still stop by my port from time to time, and let me know about it, considering how little I've been involved for so long. It's been kind of a long last month of the semester, but tonight I'm looking forward to writing something in English, without using an English vocabulary suitable for a critical essay. Since I've been steeped in my senior seminar paper for the English major for days, using low-fallutin' (my professor calls it "colloquial") English might take a little effort. Other than saying that I've already made the minimum page requirement (12 pages, typed, double-spaced, in MLA format, of course), finished the works cited page and there are still topics I want to cover before the paper is due (tomorrow at 5p.m.), so I think I'm in pretty good shape with it, I'm not going to talk about my English paper. God, it feels good to string a run-on sentence together without caring. No looking back. I refuse to edit it.

I almost wrote a decent final paper for my French poetry course. I'm almost finished with my German minor. I'm almost finished with the whole undergraduate project. I can almost read what I'm writing on my laptop here without putting on my glasses, so I'm leaving them in their case in my purse.

It's almost Christmas, once again. Yes, to me, twenty days means almost here when it comes to Christmas. We haven't put up our tree yet. Constance has been too busy to clamor for the annual trek to a tree farm, and I'm grateful. I could almost skip the whole thing, the way I feel at the moment. Almost human, only.

That's almost enough of almost.

Here are some things I'm more than almost excited about. Our lit mag's website is looking good. The web designer and web editor have been on the ball. So has the Managing Editor (as the person previously designated Associate Editor has now decided he would like to be refered to). Ha, I just began AND ended a clause with prepositions! It takes so little to make me happy. I still need to write a blurb for the "About Us" page, and I will do that on Thursday, after finishing and turning in the paper I almost discussed in the first paragraph of this entry. The web editor has even posted the 2005 and 2006 issues on the website, in PDF format. So now, anyone with an internet connection can check it out at https://www.westga.edu/~eclectic

Other things I will do after finishing the work required by this semester's courses:

--Write a list of goals, based on our faculty advisors' ideas, to post in a prominent place within my cubicle.

--Clean up my bedroom.

--Clean up and organize this office (I'm at home, and I can almost believe I will actually do this one)

I know there are other things. I've got them written down somewhere. Oh, here's one more very important thing: I've got to write a syllabus for an independent study I want to do with Dr. D next semester. It's going to be another writing-intensive course on poetry. I'll be studying it and writing it, and writing about it, focusing on formal poetry. It took forever for me to go to sleep that night after discussing the course with him earlier that afternoon, which my daughter tells me is just sad. I don't know about that. Maybe it is a little triste when poetry, and the chance to read it, write it, study it, listen to it motivate me better than almost anything else to get out of bed in the morning. Sort of reminds me of the fanatacism and addiction that set in the first months after I'd found this website. I remember the excitement that woke me up early and kept me up late in those days. Also reminds me of participating in the wdc poetry slams. This course will be an impetus to get back into the same routine I had to adopt when I took the advanced creative writing poetry class. I got a couple of nice, solid poems from that process, as well as one or two that have lots of potential. That probably sounds like we didn't have to do a lot of writing, but that would be a false impression. Still, I'm hoping to get a chapbook full of solid poems out of this independent study.

In the meantime, I finally submitted some poems to a publication other than the Eclectic. Get this: the first time I send poems away, it's to the Atlantic Monthly. Their annual undergraduate writing contest. If it weren't for the fact that 1st prize in each category is $1,000 and that it didn't cost anything but a stamp and a self-adressed stamped postcard to enter, and that Dr. D gave me some excellent feedback on the three poems I submitted (yeah, if by some wild chance they're accepted, I'll definitely owe Dr. D a beer, but if he really likes beer, I wouldn't wait until then for the next one if I were him) I'd be amazed at my own gall.

Ah yes, one more thing to do on Thursday. There's "study for the German final on Friday" but I was thinking about submitting some poems to another undergrad contest... Won't be long till I'm not eligible for those.

Ewww. It's almost time to get a real job.

J.H. Larrew
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