Night Blooming Jasmine vs. Rhododendron

It occurred to me in a blink yesterday that in some ways I am reliving the Venice Beach year, just in West Virginia. Bizarre, I know, but the context is there. I'm just coming off a divorce. I've promised a certain fealty to a woman who is not maintaining her celibacy at the same time. I'm sublimating my sexuality into my work, resulting in a period of unparalleled productivity. And my moods are all over the map. There's just not as many string bikinis here.

The blog makes it interesting, as I am recording my thoughts and moods as they happen, without the filter of the art, and thus I look back a day or two and go "Whoa...I was that down?"

Tag has promised me his foreword the THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES this weekend...I know Twist is well along with hers...I have Brigit's (although she seems to have, once again, dropped off the planet...maybe I need to change my mouthwash). I presume the copies of PANTHEON and INVOCATO what I sent to my proposed cover model in New York have been received...I'll be glad when I can identify her by name and start giving her some free publicity...sigh.

My last copy of my first shipment of THE MORGANTOWN SUITE POEMS goes with me to the reunion tonight for my friend Carol. Not sure what I am going to do tonight...while I do look forward to seeing familiar faces, most of them friendly, at the same time I recognize that it is all nostalgia...memory without meat.

I need to write a piece about the evolution and design of my bookcovers...
...it will be a good lead in to a discussion of the evolution of the cover of TCPC.

It is a shame Ann is on hiatus (as she presented it)...I could've used her image for the cover of that book, would've made my life simpler and it always pleased her to be a cover model (had she dedicated herself a little harder to her craft she could've been huge...all photographers who worked with her were wowed...she just lacked that aggression) and I hate the fact that a stranger will be taking her place, but that was her decision. Interesting transition: In LOVE GODS OF A FORGOTTEN RELIGION and FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER, she was the cover model and a major theme of the works. 101 GREAT LOVE POEMS, still very present. INVOCATO, she's mentioned in a shopping list of people I care for. THE MORGANTOWN SUITE POEMS? She's nowhere to be found. And in the glund oyarsa of all my books, THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES, she is not only not present, she's been replaced. I feel great sadness in this. While she was never the most supportive of people, now that great things are rising, I had promised her a share in all of this...and she is nowhere to be found.

Ah well. Typical of me to mourn her loss over my own. Typical.

Time to get back up, I suppose.