2013: A recap full of recaps.

Having just spent the last forty reviewing what I wrote, and wrote about in 2013, one thing that stuck out at me is how many of the substantive posts were dealing with endings. The end of 2012, the end of the Greenwood Lit Crawl, the end of my tenure as host of Works in Progress.
There were other endings I didn't post about with as much depth; the end of my tenure at North Seattle Community College, after nearly four years of tutoring. Spending 3 hours daily on rickety buses for 5 hour shifts at a wage that hadn't raised in almost a decade had become untenable, especially paired with subsequent 8 hour shifts behind a bar.
My Grandma, who taught me to love poetry at the age of 10 years old, passed last Christmas, but it was January when the services were, when we could all get together to acknowledge loss. This was a thing I tried to keep private, but that loss definitely cast its net into 2013's waters.
I also moved. For the second time in my life, and the first time as a non-student, I live alone. It's a studio apartment, but it has its own bathroom, kitchen space, plenty of natural light, a view of the smith tower that makes me feel pretty writerly late at night. this is a beginning, but it's also an end (for the time being, at least) of me living in the South End. I've lived in the South End for the last three years, since moving back to Seattle Proper, and in a sense, its become part of my identity. Not that I never left it; contrarily, it was long trips on the 7 that helped solidify my self-identification as a South-ender. Meghan K says that technically I am still a Southender, as my address has a S in it, and I'm past Yesler. . . but I'm not in the Rainier Valley, I'm on the edge of downtown. With Rachel's recent move to Capitol District (where the CD and cap hill meet and no one knows what to call it!) that leaves my job at the best bar in the RV as my only tangible connection to the 98118.

I also noticed how text heavy my posts were this year. So here's this little bit of Pop Culture that also ended in 2013:

If you didn't watch that show, I recommend it; especially if you like romantic comedies in which a jimmy-stewart-esque every man triumphs over corruption, vice, and every day hurdles through a simple purity of spirit.

I wanted to write a proper recap-- month by month, or achievement by achievement, even failure by failure. But I feel like there's been too much recapping and looking back already. The high notes have been harped on and the low notes have been struck. I'm in a different place, physically, literarily, geographically, and emotionally. And I won't be surprised if I'll be able to say the same thing next year.

2013: Internet Stats

in 2013, I posted 58 times on this blogspot. This is down by five from 2012, when I posted 63 times, and down by 18 from 2011, when I posted 86 times on this blog. 2011, so far, is the record for posts-per-year since I started writing here (instead of Livejournal(!)) in late 2007, when blogging still seemed an artistic and expressive form instead of being Crucial to Maximizing and Maintaining a Strong Internet Presence.
The most read post this year was my Next Big Thing Interview in February, right before the release of FJGTPL. The second most read was when I wrote about the end of the Greenwood Lit Crawl, which makes me happy, since it was a piece of communication I put some work and thought into, and is perhaps my favorite of the informational blog posts from this year.
The month with the greatest number of posts (nearly a third of them from 2013) is April, due to NaPoWriMo. I still mine that repository of near-finished poems and half ideas for inspiration or pet rocks worth polishing.
Most of the traffic came from instances where I posted a link to this blog on Facebook, though some reroutes from SPLAB and Wonder And Risk came a close second.
I make no promises about whether this year will continue a downward trend in posting habits, or will reverse it. But this is the information as it stands. Deduce what you will about my life from it.

January 5th, 2014

Rachel and I went to the catholic church where we met three years ago and then to Lindas. Rituals.

On the last day of 2013

I sent my sister back to Chicago, ate Taiwanese food, was correctly diagnosed as needing some coffee, had a beer in the oldest bar in Seattle, helped Rachel clean her old apartment, shook some drinks, poured some champagne, got paid, took a shower.

not in that order. all the blogging cleanup of 2013 and the subsequent looks forward happen by January 7th, or they get skipped this year.

The Day After Christmas

the bus driver swerved
tailgated a truck with political
stickers all the way
from Everett

to somewhere called Newberry Court,
a small city nearly lease ready

while a Russian woman laughed
loudly at the girl who asked if she was German.
"Oh, svweethhchaart, I vish."

Maintenance Update Eight Million and Three:

Concise and relevant updates with regards to readings and writings curated and designed or otherwise involving myself:
Thursday, December 12th, I read at Honey Moon Mead in Bellingham, Wa, with Marissa Dimick and Douglas Stranger. It was a great reading, warm crowd, nice venue and I enjoyed the other features as well.
Set: Our Favorite Radio Station/Love and breakfast/Rite Aid/Sleeps With the Fishes/Tool Breaks its Promise/New Danger Activities/Cavities/GRIFOLS/All Things Winged and Waiting

Speaking of "A Tool Breaks its Promise" was featured on Wa. State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken's blog recently. Stoked.

Coming up: Rad Santa: A Night of Literary Holiday Catharsis. At Lotties. I think this marks my first crosspollination between my life as a bartender and life as an organizer. Milestones! Gusta will be coming down from Bellingham, Paul Nelson will be haiku-ing, Ela Barton will throwdown. . . plus more.

January 5th I'm opening for Kris Hall as he releases his new manuscript, Manuscript. Full of poems titled Poem.

January 19th I'm reading at a new event at Naked City Brewing called Squid Press: Books and Beats. Two readers, two beatmakers. Rose Mc Aleese is also reading. More info on that when it's not 4:15pm on a Wednesday, with a few brief hours to be a good holiday shopper. . .

Crashing and Brackish (rough)

the town still flooded

                         tendons unspooled

across the arterials,

your arms, finally.

(in the manual,
we are the wires.
in the manual,
we are the charge.)

your legs deregulate

                        across from union station

and the armies of

neighboring cities

                       rally in mortar against

the grating.

(in the police report
we are the wires.

in the police report
we are the charge.)

hire a better crane
                          girders for monuments
rebar for rebar
and salt and Norway rats
                          running down the ropes.

I carry my entrails calmly,
though this is not how it was

supposed to go.