Oh... so the rest of last night... the six of us went out on the roof and smoked cigars, which I'd never done before. Not the roof part, I mean, the cigar part. It was so wonderful. It was a beautiful night and we could see the big dipper for a while before the clouds closed over. I loved sucking the smoke into my mouth and watching it drift up through the sky... sitting there, I got such a warm, loving, comfortable feeling all through my body. I fell in love with everybody there. Two in the morning, I came home, still blissful, put on my pajamas, brushed, flossed (because it felt like there was smoke between my teeth) and got in bed. That morning smell when the shower hits your hair and all the smoke from last night comes out...

Yeah. I've been good. The weekend was nice; our poetry workshop reading went well. I was glad again for all the thursday nights I spent in high school at Toxic Ink, open mikes and improvs in the basement of Vagabond coffee house. Before junior year, when I started doing that, I'd get so nervous when I had to read poetry in public. My heart would beat fast and gerbil-like in my throat and my hands would shake. Now, though, I don't even get nervous. I mean, slightly nervous... like I want to do a good job. But now it's much more about performing, about making sure my meaning comes through the way I want it to... it's about connecting with the audience. Two of the poems where I especially feel like that happened were wishing, a poem I wrote for my sister, and Breasts and the Sensitive Guy: a meditation, which I wrote during the week when we were supposed to write a poem in the voice of the opposite gender. ("however you define 'opposite,' " Nat explained.)

I had a great time reading those two poems. The other night, I read "Breasts" to Garcia over the phone. She really liked it. It feels so good to talk to her... we'd gotten out of the habit of calling so often, but I still consider her my best friend in so many ways. There are lots of people who I refer to as my best friends. Garcia, Allison, Hannah... everyone in the quint. Funny, no boys though... There are certainly boys I'm friends with (like Tim) but they don't usually fill that role of best friend. Last year, maybe, there were times when I felt like Ben Tiven was one of my best friends. I saw him last weekend again... it was great. I miss him. I miss the way he makes quotation marks with his fingers in a very Ben way.

So... there's the mini-Sarah update. Enjoy the page... there's a few new links, a few new poems... plus all the other stuff, if you haven't read it, it's new to you, now isn't it...?

Enjoy!