Next time I’m in Austin (which willl be in August), I need to hang out more with ohiojake. Especially since I’ll be able to speak coherently by then.

I’ll do a full SlamMasters’ social roundup (not the decisions, of course; not mine to comment) sometime tomorrow while I’m at the airport somewhere, k? For now, it’s nighty night from Austin.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm…sausage.

if someone should ask me now
why i am so quiet i would tell them
that i am stitching the headache — doing what
my grandmother taught me to do:

to see the blue
amorphous pain in my head, to imagine myself drawing
a silver needle and silver thread around and through its edges,
pulling them tight so i could describe exactly where the pain was,
how large it was — and then to slowly stitch it down, smaller, smaller,
until at last it disappeared, and the headache always did too. and it does.

tonight i’m stitching down a headache
and wondering how well the technique might work with other things:
bad history, unwelcome accumulations, the way i get scared when one thing
leads to another and a cold becomes a rupture becomes a surgery
becomes another reason to remember my age. i mean,

my grandmother
hated my father. i wonder if she ever
stitched him down? did she see him
diminished — the bad indian
who stole her little girl? did she
tie him into a bag and drop him
into some hole in her own mind?

soon enough
i close my eyes and must pull the needle and thread out again,
look for the edges of the new pain, begin to sew. my grandmother, my mother,
my father, my wife, my aging body: i can’t fit everything in there.
i will capture what i can.

It is possible that the reason I’m having trouble breathing since my plane trip is that I was bitten by a snake, and did not realize it.

Motherfucker.

i’m really ill again. I think the plane reaggravated everything.

perfect storm: severe strep related swollen throat lining meets already severe chronic obstructive apnea.

can’t breathe. haven’t eaten. keep choking/coughing. can’t speak, really, without strangling on my words.

only thing working is to put on the CPAP device and let it keep my throat open. I’ve taken all my pills, gonna give it a bit and try to eat something, and hope it clears up by tomorrow.

Can I be honest? I’m a little scared. The fact that I can only breathe without coughing by using a machine right now is a little overwhelming.

Fingers crossed, k? And y’know…a prayer wouldn’t hurt.

to austin.

it’s warm. it’s pretty. there are very many bars and clubs.

my first order of business is to sleep.

i think i’m doing something tonight, but still a toss up.

there’s a 35″ flat panel TV in this room. i missed the sopranos. nighty night.

more later.

Here’s the day so far as of 9 AM EDT:

3:15 AM — Catch limo ride to Logan.

4:30 AM — Arrive at Logan after picking up other passengers. Smoke last cigarette before flight.

5:15 AM — Get through security with the usual hassle: extra explosive screening, swabbing of laptop and case, being asked to turn it on, and second x-ray of case. No one will ever convince me this stuff is random.

5:45 AM — Airborne. Full flight, but I lucked out and pulled an aisle seat on the bulkhead. Joy. Ear and throat down to a moderate murmur of pain, and flight was uneventful from a physical standpoint.

8:20 AM — Arrive in Atlanta, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, home of the Escalators from Hell. I swear the person who designed the perspective you can see from these escalators was named Escher. (Or Lovecraft. “Fly the friendly skies of Cthulu…”)

We are early — almost half an hour early. Which means that my slightly longer than two hour layover has stretched miraculously into nearly 3. Yay.

And of course, I CAN NEVER CONNECT TO FREE WIRELESS IN ANY FUCKING AIRPORT I ever fly into. So I’m writing this in Journler and will post it when I get into Austin in a little over 5 hours. (You’d think that if every little coffeehouse in the world can do this, the big airports here can do it. Or maybe I’m just missing something. I know Logan has a limited access, but it only lets you into proprietary sites. And I’m showing 4 bars for Atlanta WiFi, but can’t connect to anything. Balls. )

I’m in a better mood than it sounds, by the way.

I’ll spiff this up in Austin and post it when I get in.

EDIT: Ah. Found a spot I can use. Lucky folks…you get it now. (cough, cough) More when I get to TX.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Feeling better…

Sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette (believe it or not, it makes my throat drier and thus a little better as long as I don’t overdo it), and working on a project for a potential job opportunity…there are times when this self-employed thing feels more like self-employed and less like unemployed.

Just checked the weather for Austin — 80s and 90s all thru the weekend. Mmmmmm…

Since no one offered me a room, I’m booking myself in at the Austin Motel for Thursday night.

Can’t wait to see everyone.

Hey, the new Zero Point Zero is up at http://www.gotpoetry.com .

I’m cancelling SPEAK tonight — there’s a big poetry festival in Worcester and a lot of the regulars won’t be there, plus I want at least some of another night to rest before getting in the limo to the airport at 3:30 in the morning to catch my 5:45 flight. (the only way I could afford it)

I think we’re going to have to talk about the future of that reading now that I’m in Worcester. A four year run seems pretty good, I think.

Ah well, back to work.

i just got back from the clinic and the verdict is STREP.

I’ll be past the contagious stage by Thursday and TX, though.

Sick is bad. Sick sucks.

My throat feels like it’s been cut and my ear feels like there’s an icepick in it. My throat was so bad last night (swollen) I couldn’t use the CPAP machine, so I slept really badly.

I’m going to slammasters on Thursday. Austinites, can you put me up Thursday night? IF not, I’ll go to the Austin Motel.
Just let me know.

Thanks…

Hey — locals and Austinites…

I’m coming in for Slammasters and need a couple of things:

For the Austinites:
1. A place to stay on Thursday night — get in around 12:30 PM.

For the locals:
2. A ride back from Manchester NH at 9:00 Monday night.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Awake sucks.

I’ve got a sore throat and I want to sleep. So I’ve been feeding myself small doses of Seroquel to try and get to sleep without becoming comatose.

I’m up to about 3/4 of a tab by now in the last two hours, and still nothing. (That’s about 18 mg for those keeping track — not even close to a lethal or even harmful dose. Some folks take up to 200 mg at a time; I’m just really sensitive to it.)

I seem to have misplaced my Ambien, which usually does the trick much more mildly and quickly in such small doses. Thus, the hacking of Seroquel pills.

I could really use the sleep — lots to do tomorrow, including the completion of the next Zero Point Zero column and rent payments and all sorts of things. But I also don’t want to get up at 11, so getting to sleep now is crucial.

I’m going to hit myself in the head with a hammer soon.

As long as I’ve had sleep disorders, I’ve never gotten used to them. I don’t think I ever will.

Today:

— got a fresh list of potential contracts from a friend (the guy who took the 80+K year job I turned down) which I’ve been e-mailing and calling.

— confirmed that I’m getting the referral fee from the recruiter for said job.

— finalized the ad code for the snakepilot blog ( http://www.snakepilot.candyham.com ) so I might actually start getting paid for this thing. (Reminder: it’s a blog about my professional transition journey. I get paid for clicks and stuff. Go check it out, please?)

— worked on the next Zero Point Zero column.

— confirmed with Jeff Robinson that I’ll be doing a class through the Online School of Poetry. It’ll be called “To Voice Through Class” and will be geared toward helping beginning writers with personal/political work move from impassioned abstractions to more powerful, more concrete, poetry. Fees and structure to follow. For more info on school and faculty: http://www.onlineschoolofpoetry.com

I’m going out now to do a little shopping; might hit the Hut for lunch and ‘surfing. Later, gators.