So I haven't really begun blogging ever since I started this stupid blog. I have posted a few lousy poems, and a list, but no actual talk-about-your-day, Dear Diary blog post.

Here's a start.

I think I have to think less, and write more. No editing of posts, or premeditated plans - just have to run a string of thoughts from my head to my fingers. Hopefully with no self-conscious urge to delete everything I've written. I have to ignore all those annoying questions that keep popping up too - who am I writing to? Should I be writing in first person narrative? Why am I even blogging to begin with?

I have decided to blog because:

1. I find myself sitting at work, with time on my hands, and a weight on my chest
2. I think writing will help me (with the above, spiritually, and who-knows, career-wise)

So Dear Blog, I look to you for salvation and hope in the coming months.

Love,
Diana

Almond Branches in Bloom, San Remy c.1890 - Vincent Van Gogh

Books I Have Read (Partway) in 2009

1. Mammon, Inc. by Hwee Hwee Tan

2. Dead Funny: "Flying Dutch", "Faust Among Equals": Omnibus 1 by Tom Holt

3. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

4. The Memory Keepers' Daughter by Kim Edwards

5. The Dragon Quintet by Orson Scott Card, Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Moon, Michael Swanwick

6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K.Rowling

7. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Books I Have Read in 2009 (So Far)

1. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

2. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
3. Yesterday's Houses by Mavis Cheek
4. The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
5. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
6. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

7. The Alchemist's Daughter by Katharine McMahon
8. 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo

9. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

10. The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

11. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

12. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

13. Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon

14. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

15. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Books to Read in 2009

1. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
2. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
3. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
4. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
5. Indignation by Philip Roth
6. The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
7. The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
8. Beloved by Toni Morrison
9. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
10. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
11. The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
12. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
13. The Girl with No Shadow by Joanne Harris
14. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
15. Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher
16. Possession by A.S. Byatt
17. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
18. Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

And all the other books I've bought but haven't finished.

Bitter, bitter

Heavy noxious smoke
Comes curling
Out of the foul black pit
Threaded with a ribbon of
The sickly green
Sulphur within

I am suffocated
Drowning in the sticky
Acid sour
Webs you spit
Anchored by the need
To clean, scour

To wash that filthy soul of yours out with soap

Lather in vain
For no abrasive
Can scrub away
Such bitterness

Goldfish

Goldfish, 1911 - Henri Matisse

They peer at the

World around

Mouths agape at

Distorted refracted

Images and reflections

(Closing in)

Colour filtered through

Paradigmatic glass

Bending the outside

(Closer)

Confinement has never been

So liberating

They swim and they go

(Nowhere)

I see the world

As does a goldfish

(In a bowl)