As 2007 comes to a close, my husband has just gone to bed having stayed up later on this NYE than he has in the last ten... close, but no fireworks.

This has been perhaps the longest year of my personal record.

I have slogged through what felt like the insurmountable heartbreak of disillusion, the betrayal and loss of what I thought was my most veracious friend - the one person I thought had righteously seen me, the whole of me, warts and all. I rolled up a dream with that great love and sweated the inquisitive knock of so many others, along with disruptive insobriety, gluttonous infidelity and perhaps the death toll of my marriage.

I have written some 500 pages over this last year -- not a single one for public consumption.

Illusion has a cost.

I at once said the only good thing to have come from that particular liaison was a cowbell left over from one gig gone wrong (MORE COWBELL!!!). But the reality is I now know who my friends are, and while some are just as steadfast as they have been through the years, others have proven instantaneously surprising - both near and far.

I am grateful for each of you - especially to those of you who alternately told me to follow my dream and to "dump that tramp right now!" Because even now, in the face of IRS investigation, divorce, financial despair... when asked if it was worth it... I have to say, unequivocally, yes.

Not only do I now know who my friends are, I also know the exhilaration of loving with abandon, of following that dream at (nearly) any cost, of the passion still burning inside that will no longer be drowned by depression or food or drink or the extended quiet of a life grown far, too, still.

So, goodbye 2007, you swollen harlot! May you go down in history far better than you have on my extant palate.

In 2008, I will again be a poet. I will wish only love, even for those who have hate on their tongue for me now.


"Out beyond any ideas of wrong doing or right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." -- Rumi