Flashback to the Present

When I first discovered the internet, I wasted the first year or two with chat. Not something I regret -- just something I wish I had gotten over sooner. Eventually I had the unintentional joy of re-discovering poetry. Now we all know that poetry.com is a scam, but I owe them at least some small thanks for getting me interested, thrilled, truly motivated to write again. Yes it was because I typed in "poetry" into a search box, and poof poetry.com came up. I went, I posted, I got letters! I was gonna be published! Woo hooo!

I learned my lesson about poetry.com, but I realized in the interim how much I missed the saving graces of poetry. So I went looking for other places for poetry - surely that place couldn't be the only place online that accepted poetry...
I got lucky, I daresay "blessed" (those of you who know me know how rarely I will ever use that word) yes, blessed to find moontowncafe.com. It was a place where I was welcomed, encouraged, and taught.

Thank you God for MTC - without them I would still be sending horrid rhyming and overly sentimental poetry to poetry.com. I will honestly tell you all that MTC has made me the writer that I am. I hope that they take that as the compliment it is intended to be.

When I first found them, my first comments came from someone named Tara. She was amazing. Her poetry blew my mind, made me see what real poetry looked like. He replies were equally awe inspiring, so warm and helpful and professional - well thought out and worded so as to give me no choice but to understand. I honestly thought she was from some other-worldly place, a place where mere mortals could not possibly reside - where words strung themselves together in ethereal ribbons of sheer beauty.

She made me ache to write well, to be successful in writing. Not 'to be published' or 'to become famous' but to write in a way that other people would see and like and understand and be touched by.

Eventually Tara faded out of MTC, I never really knew where she drifted off to, or why. But she taught me more in the span of a year then I had learned in the first 25 or so years of my life, and she was able to do that because she instilled in me a desire to learn, and an inspiration to write.
I've often wondered what happened to her, what (successful) endeavor she was a part of, and yes I knew it would be something successful.

Tonight I found her. Or at least found where she went to. She has her own ezine, a very nice looking one. I seem to have some vague recollection of her saying she was a part of one all those years ago. I'm considering submitting, I don't know, we'll see. Part of me is happy leaving her as the memory she is - you know, like a child with fond memories of Christmases when Santa brought the presents, or lost teeth where the tooth fairy dropped off a quarter.