On Monday I am having surgery to get the plate taken out of my ankle, which I snapped in the midst of a terrible, extended break-up period. I’ve had the plate in there for two years, give or take a few weeks. At first it was necessary because it was holding all my broken parts together. Now it causes numbness in some places, and shooting pains in others. Everything can be made into a metaphor if you try hard enough, and I don’t even think you have to try that hard with this one.

I’m pretty sure I’m coming to the end of cycle. Love and books, the both of them. They’re all I have.

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In the bookstore the other day I was talking about how I had nothing planned for my paperback launch except for a group reading in January. Ten of my friends are going to join me and read short road trip stories. I’m so much more interested in what they have to say than what I do.

“It’s very strange for me to not have anything planned,” I said.

“You know what you should do?” said Stephanie, the store manager. She’s dry as a martini, and twice the fun. “You should totally do a book blog tour. I hear those are extremely popular.”

“Oh yea, I’m thinking about getting one of those twitter accounts too,” I said. “Everyone’s tweeting these days.”

This is not the only way to talk about books these days, but it is one way.

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I saw a friend last night I hadn’t seen for a while. He’s a writer. We fell apart this summer. I missed him but also I couldn’t be around him. He’s in it, he’s in this literary world. Literary World. He gets a lot out of it. He loves to run around the city and see all the people. All I want to do is hide in a little bookstore on the edge of Brooklyn and write.

Six years, three books. Everything has changed, everything has stayed the same.

I had all the energy in the world once, and I finally understand that hasn’t changed. I’m just redirecting it.

(11/04/10) | 7 Comments »