quickly...dad visited, job disappeared (thanks, New Economy), M-- called, and now must scramble for employment. however...the summer does not lend itself to scrambling. thinking of jotting down an elegeaic something for my job.

the scribble from the previous entry will be worked on and reposted. would be interesting to trace how one of these things come about.

clinton in town tomorrow for a fund raiser; girlfriends and i are desperate to go, but each plate costs $150. why don't they have tables/prices for the little guy? that's all we want--a seat at the table. hee. funny. have not yet started blumenthal's opus. it's heavy and every time i go to heave it into bed for a little nighttime reading, i pull a muscle.

hooray for the supreme court decision reaffirming university of michigan's affirmative action program for their law school. o'connor hopes that, in 25 years, these programs won't be necessary. so do i. however, considering that jim crow only ended 35-40 years ago, the civil rights movement was truly active only 40 yrs ago and that bakke was decided only 20, i don't think it'll happen.

3 or 4 poems are in the beginning stages. i have a couple of weeks for the portfolio to look like something real. how awful.

i sent another 'church gal' column off today in response to typical fundamentalist rantings from dad's readership. a part of me suspects this is his underhanded way to bring me back to the 'fold.' i don't think i've left the fold, though, just found a different kind. my next two have to be very different in tone, away from the church-bashing and more ... what? even handed? there's no way to be even handed. church guys turn me off because they're mostly narrow, prudish, patriarchal and anti-intellectual. sort of like our president.

i was going to post it, but for all my desire to be public or to have the merest public voice, i can't put it here.

i should be preparing my portfolio.

i haven't written anything substantial other than that column that only right-wing baptists will see.

the blank page is always so daunting. so challenging. it's like a dare.

so...i've taken up this dare, inching out further, sending words anonymously out ... there. hm. so pretentious sounding. do i state goals at this point? enter into a contract of sorts with whoever reads this? or just ... write? just writing. that's why i'm here.
...

eliza emailed me today; the anthology project she wrote me about is ramping up again. it's been a year since she last talked to me about it. in that year i've fooled around with the idea of quitting my job, going back to grad school, teaching in the city, going to law school, not quitting my job, going into public interest law, going into public policy, quitting my job and ... not quitting my job. all along, perhaps i should have been thinking of this anthology.

she wants me to contribute something and i have one month to produce a viable selection so that at least one thing gets through. i haven't written seriously in about 2.5 years, if not longer. emails to long-distance, online men don't count, though those are pretty good. bitter limericks about work don't count either.

(although, if william carlos williams wrote about grocery lists, why not write about work?)

i have less than a month; i have three weeks. three weeks to write my ass off and shake the dust from my brain.