03 May 2003 - 5:41 a.m.

Yep, it's a name change. When Amadeus first ran on Broadway, back in 1980, Ian McKellen portrayed Salieri, and a reviewer praised the "measured extravagance" of his performance. I've forgotten the reviewer's name, alas, but not the phrase. It's been on the title bar for a while, and I've been participating in more forums under my given name, so it seems like a good time to drop "Mechaieh" from the title (and "windowseat," too, having learned that there's a weblog by that name that was around long before this site).

I've also revised the about capsule and added a bibliography of sorts. Not everything's listed - I've been collecting acceptances from literary journals since my junior year of high school, but I'm not about to scrabble through the wall of banker's boxes in which they're buried. Moreover, some of the pieces now make me wince (although I'm still grateful to the editors who accepted them), and I'm a jittery git, so I'm not comfortable listing the forthcoming stuff until it's come forth.

That noted, there really were stretches of years where I wasn't able to get anything published - my overall approach (or lack thereof) to writing has been more than a trifle haphazard and sporadic. As it happened, I was feeling rather glum tonight (in spite of sharing some excellent beer and flan with the BYM during Gretchen Casler's show), so I was trying to work through it by pulling together a new set of submissions, which required sifiting through pages of old records to check on earlier attempts.

It does make me feel a bit better, looking at the list: given what I've managed to put on there while playing at a half-assed level, and given what I'm now absorbing from the savvier, more focused writers and editors, I like to think it's a given that I'll be improving both the quality and quantity of my credits over the next couple of decades. (Yesterday, a market that had sent me a "thanks for submitting your work, good luck elsewhere" slip a couple of years ago enclosed a "fine work, keep us in mind" note in response to my latest attempt. I do seem to be receiving more of those, which is both heartening and exasperating - on my bad days, I find myself wondering if I'm forever doomed to be second place, second runner-up, almost but not quite, etc., blah, vey. On my good days, it's the shove I need to work harder.)

Anyhow, at some point I will also put up an index of the poetry posted on this site, but for now, I think I've ridden out the current wave of insomnia. And so, to bed.

One year ago: World enough and time.