The room is still spinning. It will take a few weeks to reset from the wild madness of AWP. After a week of people, books, art, drinking, laughing, bowling (yes, bowling), it takes time to process the experience.
On the surface, AWP is thousands of books, thousands of people—an ordinary conference. But this is no ordinary conference—this is where one faces off with the hunger that is at the core of dreams. It is animal—a primal need for survival enacted through writing, reading, believing. Art requires we believe beyond starvation and sleep deprivation—belief in something beyond what is possible—art is the miraculous.
I believe in miracles.
On average I slept 3 hours a night. If I add this correctly, this means Monday+Tuesday+Wednesday+Thursday+Friday+Saturday=18 hours of sleep for an entire week.
The room is still spinning. Shadows haunt my peripheral vision. But, I am slowly stitching myself back together. Soon there will be enough glasses of water and sleep, enough normal, enough time with blue sky and my son to be rooted. That is until next AWP—the next wild flight.
It is a great honor to live with art.
It was an honor to share over a hundred poem pockets at AWP—great thanks to everyone who submitted poems and great thanks to those who received them.
