I want to cry for the fullness. This music makes me want to cry. Last night J-bird sang me to sleep long distance. J-bird told me I was his best friend. I think he�s sad. He said I�m the only one besides sfitz he wants to talk to. He was practically in tears when he told me he wasn�t invited to Sue�s wedding. I told him he could be my date. I mean, how horrible would it be to have a hotel room with sftiz and Blythe without J-bird? Yeah. He sang to me Steve Earle and U2 songs. Man, I love that kid. I love old friends, people who�ve known me before I am this me I am today. I talked to him late late into the night in the dark bedroom and his voice so low and quiet and sad, sometimes, and silly the other times. Mostly he sounded terribly sad. Oh J, babes. You my kid.

Before J-bird, I talked to brother Shawn for almost 2 hours. Ok, well, he talked. I said, �uh-huh oh yeah wow that�s interesting.� He�s suddenly a chatty teenager boy. He had to tell me all the stories in the world.

But before that even, when I came home, I fell in love with my life again. My empty house and the dark and the falling cold and my pup and the books of poems I pulled out. I made food and drink for myself and sat on the living room floor with just one lamp and read out loud to myself and to Basho. I read John Donne, �Batter My Heart, Three-Person�d God� and I read Yeats �Lake Isle of Innisfree� and I memorized that one too, dancing around the house saying it:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made
Nine bean rows will I have there, and a hive for the honeybee
And live alone in the bee loud glade

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight�s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet�s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart�s core.

Well. I guess I only memorized the first stanza. I waltzed around my warm and darkened home in the early evening saying all the lines to myself. And then I read Wordsworth and then I read Shakespeare and then I read Whitman and then I read William Carlos Williams and then Li-Young Lee some more and I was deeply and darkly happy. And then my life was a deep, dark mystery. And sweet too.

Oh, I love this. This is what I was just listening to:

Momma been a walkin with ya
Poppa been a walkin with ya
Walkin up and down the hallway
Look out the window
See the city lights shining
When you're sick you look so tiny
I'm gonna put you in my pocket
Go down to where it's warmer
I'm gonna throw you in the ocean
And you will turn into a dolphin
And when you get all better
You will swim back to me

I wish Greg Brown were my poppa. Except I love my poppa so I wish he were my uncle.

Oh it�s cold outside and it�s going to snow and that, my friends, is exciting. For now, however, I am off to class. Oh I love you all today.