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

Some Water Conservation in Atlanta, Georgia

1. Revert to Navy showers - get in, get wet, turn the water off, wash your hair, rinse, turn the water off, wash your hair, rinse, turn the water off, put your conditioner in your hair, shave, soap, rinse everything, turn the water off, get out.

2. Put the empty 5 gallon paint bucket in the shower to collect the runoff water. You'd be astonished how much water is lost even in a Navy shower.

3. Let the dogs lick the pots and dishes as clean as possible. Yeah, you heard me. This way you won't spend so much time scrubbing in the water.

4. Save the gray water from the shower and the sink to water your indoor plants. Though it's against the law in the Stae of Georgia to use gray water for anything outdoors, I suspect so many (of us) are using it on our rose bushes and what not just the same.

5. Instead of running the water until it gets hot for doing dishes, boil water. I have a water kettle that boils a pot in 5 minutes or less.

6. If you aren't sure you can trust your sink stopper not to leak, use a your big soup pot for washing dishes instead.

7. Instead of washing small loads of laundry, wait until you have bigger loads, even if you have to mix what you're washing (say, lights w/ darks). You can always wash on cold.

8. Bathe your dogs using the garden hose w/ the nozzle that you can start and stop rather than let it continuously run. This conserves more water than taking them in the shower w/ you the way you normally do.

9. Turn off your ice maker. If you want a cold drink, keep it in the fridge

10. All that ice in the chest you typically would have let melt in the sink or backyard once the party was over? Let it rest in the ice chest until it thoroughly melts. If your ice chest is CLEAN, this is potential drinking water if, for no one else, other than your pets.

11. Make only as much coffee/tea as you're going to drink.

12. If you can afford it, start buying water for drinking and stock piling it for everything.

13. If you're thoroughly pessimistic, switch to martini's.

just testing...

OUR LOVE FOR YOU