10 years here

By here I mean posting at this site.  It was at 2:02 p.m. on March 6, 2003 that I first ffloed.

I invoked the Muse.  On some level I guess that worked.

For the longest time I didn't say much.  Grumbling about politics.  Quiz memes.  It was initially mostly a funny way of talking to Twila and Brandon, who were across the room from me.

The first time I recall really finding myself noticing enjoying the writing of the writing here was when I wrote about the onion chopping of the dead.  I'd say that remains my favorite post to have made while making it.  There've been a good number of times I've lost myself in the making of sentences, in the typing of words, and I like very much to lose myself that way.

Another favorite post is the time I told about my parents' love letters, and the dog name.

Then there's my up and translating Rilke myself, when I didn't like the translations I saw.  Or, in poetry of my own from the ground up, the sonnet cycle I constructed over several days, culminating in one I'll reproduce here, with a tweaked ending:

Don't wonder whether it could come to call
and tie the room together, like a rug,
for it would untie everything withal
as it has untied everything withal.
Don’t wonder, there’s no point, why you might want
a tying to to hold you in its thrall
—that sailor doesn't put much stock in knots,
while, all the while, the sailor's knotting taunts.
When student surgeons have a nasty itch
they're told to use a trick the old ones know—
to make the itch end, what you do is this:
Wait.  Wait, and, finally, it will go.
But, oh, to know its happy lush fierce fire,
Alive as one is only with desire.

Yeah, I don't care how very not the first I am to put "fire" with "desire."  I made you slow down for that fire, and that's enough.  :)

It was one from the middle of that cycle that people seemed to like most, though:

They say that water in your dreams means life,
Whatever you may take that line to mean.
The water also could just mean a pipe
Is leaking over where you dream your dreams.
They say we lust for what we haven't got—
Too easy to agree and disagree;
They say, as I do, lots of claptrap rot
That means whatever you decide it means.
This balmy, thick-aired night I've had enough.
I want the heaviness to break, as it won't do.
My worn-down soul wants just your simple touch,
And, thoughtlessly, and simply, to touch you.
And simple isn't anywhere in view,
And simple seems impossible with you.


My relationship with this space/place/thing has been all over the place, but somehow I'm still coming here.  There's a kind of perverse pleasure in continuing past the heyday, past the veritable demise.  I enjoy this perversity in others, too.  Like we'll stop when we want to, thank you very much.

Happy my lj-anniversary to you, whoever you are.  Thanks for reading.