All the king's horses and all the king's men have not yet been able to put Michael back together again.

Obviously, my posts have dwindled since the golden age of May. Let's just say that June and July were truly nightmarish (and August appears to be just as bad, so far). Actually, most of my regular readers have some idea what's been going on. But I don't want this to be "that" kind of blog, so I'll just move on.

One important development is that, due to personal setbacks this summer, the PhD plan is either postponed or dashed completely, depending in part upon whether I can get myself back together again. So, I won't be going to Chicago this fall, after all. This might be the end of my student life forever, for all I know right now.

Occupying this weird liminal space, in which I don't know what either the future or the immediate present hold for me, has made me look hard at my life plans, to the extent that I have any. For a while I had planned to quit poetry completely, since the PhD commitment was really all that was connecting me to poetry. I feel quite alienated by much of contemporary poetry, not to mention by my difficulty in getting anything published. But I've had an idea for my next manuscript, which will likely be even more unpalatable to publishers than is Thrown, my current manuscript. The gist of it is something like "Fifty Ways to Imagine God," in which each poem is a different variety of imaginative poetic theology, which I mean as loosely and openly as possible. So, in theory, this will include a huge variety of forms and voices. I'm hoping this will allow me to jump around between all the different styles of vision and discourse that fill my reading life. The title will likely be Godsmithing, for which I am indebted to Melissa in the Spring 06 poetry workshop.

Overall, my motivation for writing is generally to participate in the culture; I write to be read. I agree completely with Sartre that literature, to exist, must include both writer and reader. But now I'm leaning towards writing more in terms of some kind of personal spiritual exploration. I have not used poetry in that way thus far; usually I use poems to report, and to celebrate, what I have already learned by other means. So now I'm reading touchy-feely writing-as-therapy sort of books. I wanted a new direction, and this certainly is one!

Other recent inner developments include a recognition that I have largely lost my way spiritually, so the vacation from the academy may allow me to return to my old practices. If I didn't have so many debts to deal with, I would go live at Zen Mountain Monastery, which I consider my spiritual home base. Maybe in the coming year I will finally achieve my old dream of being a formal student of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism. There is a Toledo Zen group, which I have never gotten around to connecting with, that is loosely affiliated with the monastery. And I've already taken the refuge and bodhisattva vows in the Tibetan Karma Kagyu tradition, so I hope to re-connect with them as well. (My "problem" has robbed me of much of my control of my life, so hoping is the best I can do these days.)

Of course, I really have no idea what's going to happen to me. For the first time in many years, I have no economic security of any kind. No job lined up, no loans on the way. So far, no prospects at all. I'm hoping that having two master's degrees will let me get a job other than working at Wal-Mart. I wonder how I would look in the blue vest with the smiley face.

"O Lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." -- Thomas Wolfe