Hello all!

Well, it's a gray day with a soft misty rain coming down. I had my doubts about spring this year. I was pretty well sure it wasn't coming. And I was almost certain my tulips wouldn't come up. But here they come, along with the iris, and some other blooming-type stuff I don't know the name of--just their leaves so far, but every day when I come out my front door they're a little higher, scatterings of them all through the garden, not counting the one tulip shoot that seems to have escaped the garden and is coming up in the lawn. Whatever. Spring's sprung.

This week is the AWP Writer's Conference in Denver--I expect some of you will be there for the festivities?--and I'm looking forward to it. My panel should be a blast--it's on the use of humor in writing about illness--headed up by Dr. Sandi Wisenberg of Northwestern University. Plus I get to stay in a hotel. I am such a fan of hotels. Here's hoping for a proper coffee maker in the room. And then, as many of you know, the DBSA 2010 conference is coming up at the end of the month. Here's hoping I come up with something intelligible to say. (I promise I will. Really.)

Many thanks to all who wrote with good birthday wishes! I'm a whopping thirty-six. Who saw that coming? Not I, my friends. I'm a little alarmed. I made a really silly crack the other day about how I never, in my worst eating disordered days, thought I'd wind up worrying instead about wrinkles. But lo! It has come to pass, and good Lord but I'm glad to be here.

Work muddles on apace. Spirituality book coming along, the novel in spurts and starts, a couple of new poems this month, and my column for a local magazine, all lots of fun and challenging enough to have me tearing my hair as usual. The release of Sane in June is creeping up quickly--will keep you posted on media and suchlike.

The passing of winter and my semi-alarming birthday have me thinking about the way time flurries by, and I'm doing all I can to be very still and aware and attentive to each day. There are so many beautiful days. There are days that are hard as hell, I'll grant you. A dear friend of mine recently passed away, and that was a heartbroken day if there ever was one. But he'd have us all out and about in the spring rain, celebrating April and tulips that escape their bounds and come springing up in the middle of the lawn. So I'll follow his lead and sing praises to whatever's listening.

Here's a passage from Rilke that's been on my mind lately.

Tell us, Poet, what it is you do? —I praise.
But the deadly and the monstrous,
How do you bear them, how do you accept them? —I praise.
But the nameless, the anonymous,
How do you, Poet, call upon it? —I praise.
What gives you the right to be true,
In every disguise and beneath every mask? —I praise.
And how is it that both calm and violent things,
Like star and storm, know you so well? —I praise.

And I'll leave you with that on this rainy spring day.

Peace,
Marya