It's very strange. I grew up in the country, with only one house even in sight, and I still find hills and mountains and wilderness beautiful. But my soul doesn't feel like it's firing on all cylinders unless I'm surrounded by people. I think it's the sense of mad potential.

Drabble time!

This is our sort-of 1-year drabble anniversary -- a drabbleversary, if you will. I'm not sure there's any super-duper-fantabulous drabbleversary challenge topic that exists, but I'm giving it a shot.

Challenge #52 (more pictures from Look At Me) is now closed.

Challenge #53 is: One Year. Do anything you want with it. Anything at all.

And thanks to everyone who's a part of this community, just for being a part of it, and for your willingness to share some truly incredible writing over the past year. My writing teacher always says that sharing one's writing with others is a generosity, and that's really true. So thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.

Now go write something!

But my soul doesn't feel like it's firing on all cylinders unless I'm surrounded by people.

I love being surounded by people. I want to choose the people, is all. And not being much of a toucher, prolonged yet random contact turns me into a killing machine.

I had lunch with my editor, and she has a verbal synopsis of erika's book, and I have details for erika, and we have until October.

Because I've not posted enough like a nut today.
One year, I hope to feel brilliant, not crazy. One year, I hope to feel so at home in my real life that I don’t want to live in my computer anymore. One year I hope to stand, or, okay, sit with my political brothers and sisters when this whole neo-conservative thing is just an embarrassment in our history books. One year, I hope to have a life so filled with love, it would never occur to me to pine, except for fiction’s sake. One year I want to see all those places that are now just pictures. One year, I want to be able to leave the change in the couch. One year, I want to tell all the people that dump on me now to kiss my fine crippled ass, and by the way, I don’t think you’re on the list. Bye. Someone will show you out. One year, I hope to be Zen enough that that won’t be the best part of this list. One year, I want my book to be The Shit. One year, I want me to be too. I want young girls to be glad to get casts because it makes them more like me. Then I can die.

Then I can die.

Nope. Actually, then you live forever.

Not even going to try to write anything on a public computer on a stool in a hotel lobby...

I wanted to avoid the obvious melancholy possibilities of One Year. So . . .

In the course of a year I've found out booze is not evil, though it can turn people into idiots. In the course of a year, I've found out what all the fuss was about guys.

People who haven't known me most of my life have said I was smart, so maybe it's time to believe them. People who weren't raised like me are not wicked, they're just people.

I'm smart, I can think, one or two people think I'm sexy. College is very educational.

I have a one year drabble brewing. In the meantime, this poem presented itself to me this morning:
. . .

A sudden sadness

like a bird startled
into the air

darts into my chest
bruises my heart with frantic wings
until it aches

with the possibility of flight.

Because it's been one year for me:

One year.

In one year I've gone from not knowing what I wanted to do to feeling like I never want to do anything else. How can one little person make one year seem so short? Short but deliriously happy. They say a lot can happen in a year but it doesn't take a lot to make a difference. Sometimes it only takes one small thing. One small person.

One 34th of my entire life. .0294 % of my life. That's it. That small sliver of life's pie chart represents total contentment.

Oh, all of those are so lovely. Cash, you're making me cry.

I'm afraid I went a little more abstract this time. Neither of the words "one" or "year" appear in this drabble. But it does spell out one year if you look close enough.

One Year

Ominous shadows made her look up and realize it was almost winter. Normally, she enjoyed the trasition of seasons; from verdant green to the blazing foliage of fall. Every October they had taken a trip along narrow back roads. Yet here it was, December, with snow laden skies bearing down on her from that neglected northern country. Each turn of the earth was a reminder that days were getting shorter; the way life got shorter. Alone now, no fire left to warm her, she had only the ashes of their love--of him. Rushing away in the river of time.

Sail, even without spelling out one year, the content is both gorgeously written and appropos for the topic. (And you make me giggle.)