I was just looking over our blogs, and the latest entry came from Auzelle almost 2 weeks ago. I think everyone's beginning to feel a bit busy and stressed out if I'm not mistaken.I just finished up my two papers for the semester, and wow, I'm beat! 

However, I do have some good news! Firstly, there is a chance I might get a second article published. My paper on Ellen Glasgow's "Whispering Leaves" is being peer reviewed now, so I'm hoping that it makes the cut ;) Secondly, I'm going to the American Literature Conference in San Francisco in May of 2008, and I'm going for FREE!!! Yep, that's right ladies, Clayton State has now officially paid for over $2,000 worth of my travel expenses for the 3 conferences I've attended thus far. Basically, I've taken my first 4 Master's classes for free if you add up how much they've given me for travel funding. Great, huh?

Somehow, I keep expecting to hear an echo of my own voice as I'm writing this, because there's a chance it may be a good while before anyone gets back with me to let me know how you all are doing at the moment. I miss everyone, it's been really lonely these past months. I'm ready for Thanksgiving break, which is only 10 more school days away, roughly equaly to about 85 hours at work and 10 more at school for me, not that I'm counting!

So, in keeping with this idea the lonely but happy place in my life, I came to a realization recently. After signing on to match.com, because, according to Dr. Phil, "it's ok to look," I've decided that what I really want, after it's all said and done, isn't to get into a relationship. Honestly, I dont even think that I want to date. I think a lot of my frustration with where I'm at has been rooted in the fact that I'd just like some companionship, and I guess I always thought the rememdy was through dating. What's been so hard is seeing everyone go. Kelly will be leaving, Dana is at grad school, Auzelle is at school... all of us have our own busy and demanding lives, and I'm a working adult with a child and an academic career. Can we say "isolation nation" anyone? I think now that I've owned the fact that I'm lonely and that it is really painful (no matter how grateful I am for where I'm at), I've really begun to learn a lot of things about that. After getting dozens of responses from match.com, I realized that even the guys I found attractive/interesting didn't really interest me. Not really. Not in the "I'm afraid to begin a new relationship or meet people" way, I mean more like I dont see that as such a fulfilling part of life anymore. What I want, like I've wrote here before, is someone to spend time with who can appreciate what I like, who's a good person, and who wants to be as good of a friend to me as I can to be to them. All of you, ladies, have done a great job of that. I dont think that romance is exactly all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes all a girl needs is just someone to hang out with-- forget candles and dating.

This isn't my declaration of becoming anti-dating, it's more that I really see how that I think I'm doing just fine as I am. It's such a bloody and raw process to learn about yourself, and now I think that anyone else in the picture would detract from my hard-won indepedance and success, unless I really want him, that is ;) Who knows what'll happen? But I'm not going to worry so much about not having prospects. I got the chance to see what it'd be like, and I can honestly say that I didn't care for it.

All I really want is to see all you more often.

love Anna

A confluence of city-states

“Dig it out for yourselves.”

                                    - Spartan response to an envoy requesting earth and water for Xerxes I

In truth,

Lacedaemon wells cry echoes

loudly as Athenian chasms.

Replicated experiments yield

same results

when time tested--

arms

crucified on beams of air

tear as wildly as bones

if flicked from balance.

Binaries merge,

conjoin.

Like malformed womb spittle

with odd numbered limbs

to a single heart

that vibrates

in ecstatic rebellion

of death sucking away

rhythm.

Convergence?

Just thick as clay.

Unmeshed as derisive gods

to fist shaking humans.

Walls packed

with such hesitant mortar

funnel all too well.

The Thrice-Named Judas

Balancing disproportions

and shuffling history along

a 10 kilometer pass that transforms

to a slender necklace

elsewhere.

A handful of something

twitches

inside a head that spawns

possibilities to barter.

To speak then

into foreign ears so fragile

as to ingest double-edged swords?

An empire bends through mountains,

listens.

Snake tongue roads

are wedged in

breasts of rock.

Roaming eyes are mute--

not deaf.

Zephyr stirs in branches.

Calming fear

with ladle-fed truths,

he brings torrents,

deluges, in arrows.

A generation

sucks in a breath,

trips backwards to away.

Immortals veering

left, taste blood spat

of Phocian veins

draining to the sea

that watches, silent.

Recorded as thrice named Judas.

Nightmare. Traitor. Ephialtes.