Who I Am Not
I realized recently I’m less interested in persona in poetry these days. When I was young–very young–I wanted a hoochie coochie goddess voice not my own. Hence I spoke as many a mythological character.
Now that I’m old in poetry as well as in years I have no idea what it means to speak in a voice not my own, for what could not be mine?
Then I realized, maybe this wasn’t the transcendent Zen experience it seemed. Maybe it was just that I was writing fiction again, certainly writing in a voice not my own.
On the porch of a cabin next to a lake with tall firs and loons, this morning I wrote: Tucson, Arizona was not a bad place to be if you were dying fairly quickly of a painful disease.
The story is a flash fiction, about two very different women who are comet hunting partners. In it I’ve twisted an experience about the non pre-eminence of art in someone’s last few days on earth to be about how what you’ve loved the most, in this case comet hunting, can actually fall away.
Have I experienced this? Have you?
Yes.
No.
Miriam's Well: Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond 
The effort to drop the mask and show who we truly are…this is spiritual practice, never mind that we fail, or fall short…the attempt to look directly at ourselves and the world, is, I think, living the real life. It becomes an organic process after a while, and I feel that others notice that we are really ourselves way before we do…but then, I don’t know so much…I struggle and sweat for every insight.
Gambatte kudasai!
Patrick