I have been mostly doing fun things and have more fun things planned, but there's also a lot of other things happening like errands and work obligations and when the hell am I going to do any chores? My apartment is a nightmare of mess and the messier it gets, the more tense I feel. (Feng shui, people. It's all about the feng shui.) In fact, my hysteria over my messy apartment and my chores has caused me to completely lose my train of thought.

Yesterday we went to go see Yen Wade (that's what my father calls her, Yen Wade) play the flute in the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, which Ian was surprised that I had never heard of. Apparently I am deficient in my classical music knowledge because Brandenburg is very famous. Hey, I am willing to learn! I have Monty's Petrouchka's classical music swag; I should be all set. Yen Wade's performance was excellent, of course. I felt like a mommy at a piano recital: "You were so gooood!" "That's my little girl up there!"

Also I have taken on another SAT student and I meet with her on Thursday for the first time. (I was supposed to meet with her on Monday in fact, but I was too exhausted to make a good first impression so I made the great first impression of rescheduling. But they'll get more for their money this way, for instance, a tutor who is awake.) I am going to try and tutor a student here and a student there, as I am desperately in need of the money. This is because Serious Debt has landed on my doorstep in the form of Student Loan Payments.

These Student Loan Payments are scary. Scary like clowns. Tens of thousands of dollars of Serious Debt is frightening. To give you a sense of scale: my student loan debt is more than I make in a year. By the time I pay it off with interest, it will be more than I make in two years. It will take me thirty years to pay it off at the current rate. That is some scary shit.

So when my book of prose poems is finished, and I am selling it on a sliding scale in the hopes of making this Serious Debt into a Debt That Is Still Serious But Is Considering Having A Beer And Loosening Its Tie Because Hey It's Friday, don't judge me too harshly. It hurts, the Serious Debt. It hurts bad. And I'm sure most of you feel me on this one.

Actually I am feeling a little tightness in the chest just thinking about this for too long, so let's just move on.

I do want to mention the writing I've been doing, not in the context of the messy financial concerns, but on the artistic plane, which is where any and all discussion of the creation of art belongs, squarely. (And with a shout-out to Grace.)

Lately, I've been writing (and reading) quite a bit of prose poetry. (The one in the current issue of Best American Poetry by James Tate is one of his best.)

I've always enjoyed the prose poem and narrative poetry in general, although it is often dismissed or done badly or considered the art form of the lazy poet. Prose is allowed to be funny and fun and playful in ways that most traditional verse can't access. And it's challenging in its own way. Try it sometime!

Personally, I love the prose poem because of its hybrid nature, the way that a world can be created in a few short sentences, and the surrealistic elements of the prose poetry tradition. I like how each prose poem is a magical little fairy tale--or at least that's how I think of them.

My manuscript (to be called lost objects) is not literally about lost objects, but somehow the poems seem to fit. As in the business card poem. In the end, the business card is transformed in a surreal way, but this transformation also encompasses a sort of loss of the original item, its original function. I want to think about each poem in the book and, without making the collection too monotonous, figure out how they each tie in with that theme.

I've also chosen an epigram and a font. I've even started thinking about the cover design. And right now I have thirty-six poems, and am looking to have fifty. Of course not all of those thirty-six will make the final cut. I am hoping to finish my hundred poems (which means I have eighty more to write) and then pick the fifty best. That process should be done by October. If all goes well, the book will come out sometime in November.

Oh, the epigram is Elizabeth Bishop, of course. "The art of losing isn't hard to master; / So many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster."

Are you as excited about the book as I am?