The idea of the body is really getting to me. My eye doctor asks if I have a cold after he looks in my right eye, and I say no. Then I come home and today I wake up with a sore throat and a runny nose. Amazing. I walk through the supermarket and force myself away from the junk food. I never had to do that before. I stare at the arm weights I just bought and haven't used yet. My uncle is going back in the hospital for chemo treatment on his brain. This is all just depressing.

Everything is so CSI these days. I think about what is under my nails, what crumbs I drop where (and what that says about me and my eating habits), where my hair falls, and the type of dirt at the bottom of my shoe. This is good for a poet: to think CSI, to focus on the details. At least, it is good for the kind of poetry I am passionate about. The wonderful everyday details that make up a life, that give meaning to all things. The pattern of frost on the windshield. The rough white of winter skin.

Jack said that the doctors said that some people reject the respirator as something foreign and just subsist on it in a general way, but some take to the respirator right away, to the point where it is dangerous, where the body incorporates it as a functioning piece, and the organs do well, working as they should. It seems she was the former kind of somebody, and despite the living will, they kept her breathing on it. Eventually the family fought like alley cats and decided that yes, her will was what should be, and then they let her go.

I don't really know who or what I'm angry at, but much of the time I am angry that I only have a set number of years to enjoy life. I've started a list of things I want to do before I can't do them anymore, but I wonder how many of these things I'll actually do. See the Northern Lights. Visit the United Kingdom. Publish a book. Have an evening garden party with cucumber sandwiches. Hold a real salon. Watch a space shuttle take off. Watch a whale swim in the ocean. Visit Australia. Hear the Dalai Lama speak.

In the busy dermatologist's waiting room, the man with slick black hair and dark small eyeglasses talked on his tiny cell phone to some client or partner or assistant about ordering too much of something or not enough of everything, writing large sweeping letters on a long yellow ruled legal pad on his lap. I looked up at the paper sign near his head that asked us as waiting room people not to talk on cell phones, and then I sneered at him, but he didn't see me sneering, or he pretended not to see in a very clever way.

I think there should be required service in America. Not military like Israel, but a fixed time where everyone was employed in customer service -- a waitress or store clerk. Then, I figured, people would better relate and act like compassionate human beings. Now I think that U.S. citizens should be required to create one invention each and be granted the means to do so, to make this country a better place. I've been wondering about how to develop a pen that you can use to semi-permanently tattoo yourself, but I can't yet see how that makes the world better.

After the ice storm the trees were monstrous elderly hands, heavy bowing Buddha fingers. I expected power lines to fall thick from the poles like seawater anchor ropes. The birdbath was crusted over with ice and snow. The suet feeder swung upside-down, and the squirrels hung on with their long nails. My father didn't even try to shoo them away. The most depressing thing about all the snow is that I have only seen two snowmen this whole winter. And even then, only one had a scarf – blue striped, wrapped twice around its skinny neck. Where are all the kids?

When he finished talking about his mother, he slipped between his lips one of his thick kiwi and tuna rolls, letting the dark soy sauce gather and sit at the corner of his mouth. She took her chopsticks from their thin white paper sleeping bag and snapped them apart in a sharp quick way that told him she was not having a good time. She slowly rubbed them together to free the jagged splinters from the soft wood. This motion reminded him of the way a chef sharpens a blade along a metal cylinder to prepare for an expert carving.

What do you do when the only information you are provided is that you will have a talk tomorrow? You call your friend who goes through the possibilities with you but in the end asks the same questions you already have. You make a list of the things that you might be talking about, and then realize that whatever is on the list is probably better than the thing you'll be talking about. You sit at your desk to get things done but can't concentrate. You watch the dog show, eat your pot pie, feel heavy and tired. You sleep.

After her poetry reading, the featured poet sat in an uncomfortable yellow plastic chair for the open mic sessions, staying to listen to the amateurs so she did not appear rude or superior. While the first reader lamented about lost love, she noticed the thin curves of neon tubing in the window of the small shop across the street and how the light waxed and waned in the cold winter night, the words "TV REPAIR" struggling asthmatically for each bright blue glow. She remembered that decades ago people really did repair things like televisions, dusty vacuum tubes in big cases.

There aren't enough good female superheroes. I just watched the Justice League with Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl, and I wouldn't mind being a Wonder Woman type, but I was thinking of something a bit more slinky and tough, less glamorous or something. Maybe like an X-Men character? But not like Storm. Those powers are lame. I'd want to have great strength and telekinesis, or maybe teleportation. So many choices. Exceptional bionic hearing is cool. That would come in handy. My colors might be silver and red. I think picking a costume would probably be less important than honing my skills.

I can't believe that I'm saying this, but I am ready for spring. Me. The one who prays for snow and can't wait to wear her wool sweaters. I think it is just the grey that I can't stand. If there were sunny days but cold wind I could deal with that. Why is it that I write about the weather when I have nothing else to say? I really want to get rid of this cold so I can feel like being creative again. When I am foggy, nothing comes to me. I'll sleep more and hope that helps.

Taking a five-hour nap before you actually go to bed is annoying. What do you do when you wake up? You're awake but it's early in the morning and there is an incredibly old movie on television. It's semi-flickering black and white, and although it could be the happiest movie every made, it is old and without color and thus foreboding and wicked. The lead in this one looks just a friend's husband, which is even more freakish. But the reality is that you are sick with a cold and will go back to bed. Things aren't like college anymore.

It's hard to tell if I'm losing weight when I don't own a scale. I keep hiking up the waistbands of my jeans even though they don't seem any more loose than the last time I hiked them up. Although I recognize the move as purely psychological, I keep doing it anyway. I don't know how I could be trimming down when I keep eating chocolate and avoiding the gym. I hate myself for not working out when I should be. It seems I always think I should be doing something other that what I am doing at that moment.

Things that make me feel completely alive: Standing outside on a cold, clear night, feeling the air sharp in my lungs, taking inventory of all the stars; driving on a wide, open road very late, listening to a rock song I remember from high school; rereading one of my creative pieces and feeling it work and just click each time I read it; locking firmly in a passionate kiss; laughing hard and loud with a friend who finds the same thing just as funny; the first time hearing the long sweet call of a bird after a dark gray winter.

It might be time to visit Ai in MA, take the long drive so I can think and generate creative experiences. Last time I was there, she tricked me into a long hike all around her town and surrounding areas. She let me babble on about pros and cons of ending things, and we ended up covering miles. Early in the hike we walked through the town green, and a just-married couple was posing for pictures by a lovely tree. I called out that they shouldn't have done it -- that it would turn sour -- and the single Ai laughed.

Drink Coke. Play Again. Those four words were hidden behind a thin, opaque, plastic film disk that I had to dig out of the bottlecap with my long round fingernail. Those four short words mean that I didn't win $5,000. Actually, only the last two words mean that I didn't win $5,000. The first two words are a message delivered in a They Live, Matrix command to be followed without thought. I use the soda for the caffeine, to keep me awake so I can work late. Tonight it keeps me up while making me depressed about being a loser.

She ate dry sugary cereal out of her fist. She put her books on the shelf so the spines faced the wall. She carried around her phone bill in her pocket but never paid it. She forgot about the nice clothes she kept under her bed. She cut all the wicks off her sister's candles. She watched vultures fly together over the highway. She always took an envelope from behind a different greeting card. She left her lips chapped in the winter. She used metal forks on her nonstick pans. She kept her plants rootbound in small pots. She dreamed.

The first time he delivered pizza he was greeted by three young kids and a too-young mother in dirty clothes, a cigarette stench strong from the door. He figured the medium pizza would feed them all. He wouldn't take the tip. The second time he delivered pizza he handed the pie to a scraggly blonde with tracks up her arm as some man in the background screamed for them to move it. She shoved a bill roll in his hand and whispered "Take it" as if she were passing government secrets and had to get back to her double life.

Sometimes I am afraid that I am working too much, but then I look at all that others (my friends!) have and I realize that there is not much I can do but try to balance it -- make more money and save it until I can get another house I know it just puts off my creative writing though, and aren't writers supposed to live in squalor? That is why they get the books done, because they don't work all the time. How frustrating. I just can't give it up now that I have clients and a real business. Humph.

The way she ground the dark brown powder on the wooden board. The way she dropped the golden linseed oil on the pile and swirled. The way the blood trickled from her earlobe after the piercing. The way she cut the vegetables precisely in the kitchen, arranging them on the plate by color. The way he stabbed his hard orange brush at the canvas. The way she scrubbed the silver right back into the bowl on the cold hard step of the house. The way she tried to fit the blue and white tile back together from its two pieces.

When she was 8 she saw a Saturday morning cartoon that featured an alley cat that walked down a city sidewalk muttering "I hate people," as people who passed him by kicked him aside, stepped on him, and knocked him over. He got shot to the moon and, finding himself finally living his fantasy to be alone, realized that loneliness was not all that he thought it would be. Now she is 35 and she thinks that she would find something great about being that far away from all the stupid people in the world, just for a little while.

Her favorite piece of pottery in her rather limited collection is a small maroon and blue Van Briggle, the top edge of the elliptical cup curving up and down like waves. The other night she heard about a potter who developed his own manner of glazing pottery and was so possessive about the special kind of metal patina that he developed that he ordered his relatives to burn the papers that told of his process upon his death. She thought that this was rather obnoxious and so decided never to buy any of this man's metal-looking pottery, whoever he was.

These times when we meet for dinner up north, I don't mind driving from work if asked of me, but I would much rather be the passenger in her car, especially on these clear winter nights. I fear she thinks I'm being rude or ignoring her on our ride back, but I do listen and respond as I lean to my side and look up at the stars in the wide dark upstate sky, checking on Orion and Venus and the thin slice of sharp white moon. I feel more alive then than at most other times in my life.

Today during one short drive, I noted the following items in various states and positions on the side of the highway that is left of the left lane, that is next to the beautiful cement barrier: a red BMX bike in many pieces, a snow shovel, a baby shoe that looked to hail from the 1950s, two baseballs, a tennis ball, a roll of black cable, a Reddi Whip can, a complete grill, and a license plate. It made me think about who lost those things and that I was glad not to see something sentimental like a teddy bear.

Island fish, pink and flaky and sweet. Green herbs chopped fine. Crisp think French green beans. Thick chunks of chocolate in the ice cream. Thin, slippery noodles with crunchy shoots. Rich fudgy brownies. Icy crystallized sherbet. Firm sticky rice with thin almond slivers. Fruity smooth berry juice. Full juicy poached peaches with soft green mint leaves. Crunchy chocolate and vanilla cream-filled cookies. Greasy buttery popped kernels of corn. Sweet syrupy tropical drinks. Thick bloody rare flank steaks. Chunky garlic mashed potatoes. Crunchy thick orange carrots glazed with heavy brown sugar. Fresh green peas. Glowing sweet juicy cantaloupe. Cool clear water.

I have picked out a tight black shirt for the party tomorrow. I have picked out that shirt and my dark washed jeans with the button fly. I am wondering whether to bring beer or wine. I think beer is more of the mood. I wonder if the person who is coming with us will like the person who he is to meet there. It's not really a set up, but it might turn out nice for them. He may leave his model girlfriend and find something more committed. He will no doubt make us late. He's never on time.

We walked around the park today, watching geese fly, honk, and land two by two, probably mating for spring. Most of the time we walked in silence. We were passed by a pug, rottie, spaniel, retriever, beagle, daschund, dalmatian, all focused and quiet. I did not see my heron in the lake. We did see a thin river, shallow with a thick sandbar. The ground was brown and dirt, no sign of green buds, no sign of new growth. Even the squirrel nests have crumbled away. Our quick pace felt good on my weak legs, made my heart beat hard.

What is it about the Academy Awards that gets me so excited to watch? I love seeing the dresses, who looks like what. I hope that the people I think deserve the award get the award. I like remembering who we have lost over the year so I can honor them in my thoughts. I like getting angry at the academy for making the undeserving picks. I hear everyone say "Who are you wearing" like they've skinned the designers and made them into dresses. I hate how everyone says "You look gorgeous" and no one means it. What a party.