EUREKA!

All my months of sweating and whining and self-flagellation have finally paid off: I wrote a good poem.

I felt it when I was writing in. I felt it when I was revising it. I felt it when I submitted it to workshop. And today, my professor emailed me to say that my poem was "tremendous" and "sublime" and to urge me to submit it to The Iowa Review. Which I probably won't, but who cares, I feel elated now. I've been working relentlessly on my poetry these past six months (not to mention the two decades of messing around before that) and struggling and fighting and hating every other word I've written. To finally get just one poem right, and to have that validated by a professor that I respect, one who has pushed me and demanded quality from me and never failed to point out a flaw from which I might learn, is just...

So happy.

And beyond happy, I'm relieved. I feel like I've proven to myself that busting my ass can actually have a positive impact on my writing. On some level, after my 3-year hiatus from seriously writing, I felt I'd lost "it," and it's deeply comforting to know that "it" is still there. If things don't work out next year, there's still hope for my Polish ass.

The hilarious part is that I'll most likely be back to feeling like a talentless hack by tomorrow. To preserve the moment, I've abused Illustrator and created the celebratory death bunny you see above. Death bunny knows that euphoria is fleeting, and one must cherish the moment by leaping through the rain on a sunny day over a field of gaping hearts while quoting Lewis Carroll.

In other news, I won the auction for an almost-new pair of black Frye Campus boots (pair number 5, joining pairs 1 through 4 in blazer brown, banana, purple and white, respectively---what the hell is wrong with me) and found out that I have tomorrow off (along with my usual Wednesday) so I can rest up and prepare to march in the huge San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday.

Life is good, folks. Let's keep the spirit of death bunny alive.