Almost April already.

The last month of school is always hectic. Even though this semester has been easy compared to my last three, there is always the slieu of final papers & projects that comes around the end of April. While I'm not looking forward to that, I am so looking forward to graduating. May 1ist, and I'll be done (at least for a year or so). I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, really. I'll have more time for photography, yoga, writing, and reading, and that's really all I could ask for.

Seeing people I went to high school with or people I know getting married or having babies (or both) blows my mind sometimes, for no other reason than that I cannot picture myself doing either for a good five years. The greatest committment in my life so far has been getting tattooed, and sometimes I find myself even wondering if that was a smart decision. All I can think about is how much I want to travel before I settle down. I think I may try to go on a week-long trip by myself, just to see if I could do it. I want to go to take a tour of the literary South, specifically Mississippi. Maybe going to Rowan Oak will inspire me to crank out the next great American novel. On the cover of my book, there will be blurbs from literary critics praising me as a female Faulkner and calling me the South's next great Gothic novelist. One can hope.

"The Hills" has started again, and we are going to the Braves home opener Monday night - right now, I couldn't ask for much more. Well, maybe a real job, but I'm still working on that.

This article is amazing, and this poem is how I might start living my life.

Charles Bukowski's "How to be a goood writer"

you've got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.

and don't worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.

just drink more beer
more and more beer

and attend the racetrack at least once a

week

and win
if possible

learning to win is hard —
any slob can be a good loser.

and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.

don't overexercise.

sleep until noon.

avoid paying credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.

remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world over $50
(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong —

an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.

stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient —
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery

all that dross.

stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.

get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window

hit that thing
hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

If you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now

without women
without food
without hope

then you're not ready.

drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too.