So much of writing is reading, researching. This week, I've been poring over my own archives as I cobble together an outline for the next book. My own archives include twenty-one years of journaling--not straight through, not always consistently, but there is something to show for every year between then and now and that is something. I've done this before--going back and perusing. But never all the way through. Never in this place in time, and so it feels all new again. And alongside all the journaling are poems, which at times reveal more than we intend. What was once an amusing exercise now feels notably more emotional. To read back through all of these versions of self, to walk the path while knowing where it goes(or where it doesn't)...I am overwhelmed with what remained and what changed. All of it. I am both embarassed and intrigued by my youth--my rambling telling of it, how some things were given play-by-play and some were too full to recount it. Instead, I would j