Shhhh! Don't tell, but... I just submitted my first query letter for the first time in over a year. It's for a not-quite-written-yet piece based on my adventures in Tunisia (check out the pipelinks for related material on E2), and I offered it to a little online travel zine that only barely pays its contributors, so it almost doesn't count, but.... baby steps. Soon, I tell you, soon I will be rocking all over the dead tree quest brought to us by the stupendously awesome Lucy-S. And maybe, just maybe, I will someday regale (i.e. completely bore) all y'all with the terrible true story of how the first magazine to accept one of my articles went out of business before they could publish me. I'm still traumatized, I tell you!

Ok, done bragging about my more or less completely petty personal victory now, really.

Out of my way, Everything2!

I'M A MOTORIST!!!

I tried to love you my way
But I couldn't make it hold
So I closed the book of longing
And I do as I am told
-Leonard Cohen, That Don't Make It Junk

Having passed the far point of my highly elliptical orbit, after several months' journey in the freezing darkness and jet-black cold of the outer space, I'm coming back to the inner planets, feeling the fire of the still distant star slowly starting to melt me, a spectacular trail of myself behind me as I speed towards the center. Unfreezing is the worst part, for the things that froze with you awaken and begin to stir - in other words, it is relatively easy to say, let alone sing, what L.C. does; it isn't hard to believe when you're alone out there in the outer darkness, thinking your own really deep thoughts. It is when you come back to life when this resolution wavers, falters and crashes. It is really easy to uphold if you don't see her, talk to her, feel her hand brush yours. It is at days like today you wish you are on a course towards the Earth.