food and sex and good writing

Well, okay, maybe this is the last thing before I go. My friend Louise started a book blog, and I revised something I'd written about Dorothy Allison for it, and it's posted here. Thanks, and see you in Germany!

i still only travel by foot and by foot it's a slow climb

So here's another reason I haven't been writing: I'm going to Germany. For a month, almost, and I leave six days from now. I'm pretty sure I forgot to mention this, but my amazing new music group--which I am a part of because I took Music and Gender at NU with the founder and she later looked me up on myspace, of all places--got accepted to a fancy-schmancy music festival just outside of Frankfurt, and I'll be playing my ass off for two weeks on a concert program that gives me headaches and that includes the first piece I've ever been given that I couldn't even read. (Seriously.) After that? A trip to a farm in the Black Forest, and then... Somewhere else. Berlin? France, somewhere? Amsterdam, Copenhagen? I haven't decided--I'm taking suggestions though--but hopefully I'll be ready to tell you all about it, either while it's happening or after I get back.

I'm both excited and terrified. How much can change in a month? When I flip through all those empty pages in my planner, all those days with no work, no appointments, no dinners or coffees or meetings or anything, I get a little freaked out. My life here has felt so insane for so long that the thought of just abandoning ship (as it were), of going out alone and having so little agenda, is incomprehensible. I think that actually that means that this trip is necessary. I need a break, to reset and get myself back to myself instead of feeling tugged apart, smashed flat between all of my many and mostly beloved obligations. My most important rule is that I have to love myself if I want to love anyone else well, and lately there has simply been no time. Here, suddenly, there is nothing but time. It's like jumping into cold water.

But until my plane leaves next Thursday I'm short on time and, except for today apparently, words (I haven't written a thing in the past nearly-month, which is sort of scary), so I won't belabor you any longer. Wish me a happy journey, write me an email to remind me that I'm coming back, and enjoy your summers.