jamelah.net

This past Friday and Saturday, I got to learn how to be a funktified poetry DJ by helping out with the LitKicks 24 Hour Poetry Party. I had a lot of fun staying up all night, listening to my massive iTunes playlist that includes a little bit of everything from Ricky Martin to Wilco, and slicing & dicing poetry contributions from writers around the world into a massive poem. (The end result is pretty damn cool, if I do say so myself.)

So, I woke up a little bit before 7 a.m. on Friday to go to work, and didn’t end up going to bed until a little after 2 p.m. on Saturday, and I got a little insane at several points of the experience. I also realized at some point that man, I’m older than I was when I was in college, where I would frequently go days without sleeping because I was editing the Pleiad and writing way too many papers.

Anyway, it’s logical that I got a little bit tired during the proceedings. But because I had more caffeine in my bloodstream than blood, I didn’t feel like I needed to go to bed, though my brain would often go on little vacations from time to time, leaving me in a state of hysterical disconnect, where I would alternately spend several minutes staring blankly into space or dancing frantically around my living room. (Because, you know, nothin’ makes me want to dance, dance, dance like drinking 2 pots of coffee & several cans of Diet Coke and then listening to They Might Be Giants. Who knew “We Want A Rock” was such a party-tastic tune?)

I invented what is, quite possibly, the best typo in the existence of typos (wax a chumo. waxachumo. wax a chumo like a candle.) and I discovered that it is indeed possible to laugh until I think I might break a rib. All of this laughing was probably about things that weren’t actually funny, but whatever, chumo. I took a picture of myself at around 5:30 a.m. and discovered that I look like a heroin-addicted waif. So that’s nice. (And no, I’m not putting it up here.)

I guess in the end, I want to say that everybody involved, from Levi and Caryn (the best two partners in crime a girl could possibly ask for) to all the contributors, helped to make a little bit of literary history this weekend. Or at the very least, we made a really long poem. I think The Iliad is longer, but at least we don’t have any frickin’ dactylic hexameter. Take that, Homer.

There have been times when I wondered why the hell I said okay when Levi asked me if I wanted to be a part of the LitKicks Staff, but it’s when stuff like this happens that I’m glad I was given the opportunity. Right now I’m sure I’m still in a daze, and I know I’m probably feeling a little bit sappy, but I feel proud of the corner of the web known as Literary Kicks, and I would like to buy it a Coke and take it bowling. And I hate bowling. But the shoes are cute.

I think I might also have some sentimental thoughts floating around in my brain about the 10th anniversary of the site and all the things that have happened to me (good & bad) as a result of the community, but those are for another day and perhaps an e-mail. Right now, I think it’s time for one of those naps that last all night and end when it’s time to face the fact that I’m apparently a responsible adult with a job and bills to pay.

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