--I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT

…How are you doing?  No, really, I wanna know.  Tell me.

…Facebook has been replete with ruminations about AWP, but here are some other Facebook posts that are amusing or interesting, or both…

…Carly-“We have a new poop!”

Mike-“You mean, Pope.”

Carly-“Have you looked in the toilet?”

….I'd punch someone in the face for a pair of doc martens

…Thelonious Monk and bourbon. It is about all I can concentrate on.

..Not attractive to find out you snore by waking yourself up with your own snores on an airplane surrounded by the entire Lacrosse team from University of New Hampshire.

…I am not going to be hard on myself

I am not going to be hard on myself
I am not going to be hard on myself
(not working)

…I hate this town.

…Sometimes I just have to admit it: I want so much!

 …Just read The Grapes of Wrath for the first time. The moral of the story: Life really sucks, and then it sucks more, and then it sucks more, and then it sucks even more.

…In other news, this morning the dog licked the cat's butt, and nobody seemed to mind, so I think we're all settled in here.

…It's official: As of today my ex-husband is a convicted felon.

…As a short, Jewish woman it is an honor to be chosen as Pope.

…Babies would be cuter if they were puppies.

..I have found the inside of my soul. It is not very friendly.

..The way I ask friends to meet me at the library is 'Hey do you wanna go pretend to be bears?'

..On the bus I sat in front of two college students sharing all the ways they cheat in their courses. I'm off to cry in a corner.

..No coffee was harmed in the making of this penguin.

…I am in a giving people a piece of my mind mood.  You want a piece, too?  Step right up.

…Our dishwasher died the weekend before last.  New one came today.  Am I weird if I hug it?

--YOU BELONG TO SOMEONE ELSE, BUT YOU SEEM HAPPY ENOUGH

…I'm still sort of reeling from last week's excursion into Boston, but I have managed to learn a few things since I've been back, and so I thought I’d share them with you... 

…There are 40 million foreign-born people in the US, up from 9.6 million in 1970

…Spain's unemployment rate is 25%, 52% for Spanish youth

…The percentage of births to unmarried women has increased eightfold in the past 50 years and it is now 40.8% of all births.

…2.4 --Times more likely a woman will share her phone number when approached by a man near a flower shop versus a shoe store

…There are 158.3 million females in the US.  23 million are mothers in the workplace

…There are currently 1,360 radical militias and anti-government groups in the US

…There are 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S., up 3 million from ten years ago

…19,000 of the more than 31,000 gun-related deaths in the US each year are due to suicide.

…The Army recorded its worst year in decades for soldiers killing themselves--with 323 deaths in 2012.

…1.3 million vehicles were repossessed last year, the lowest tally in 12 years.  That's down 31.8% from the recessionary peak year of 2009.

…People watch 4 billion YouTube videos every day.

…Someone with 24 pounds of body fat can last up to 60 days without food.

…84 percent of Americans think Global Warming is a serious, or somewhat serious concern.

…It costs $30,000 a year to house a single federal prisoner.

…The U.S. birthrate is its lowest since 1920.

…There are 2.2 billion of the world’s people, or 32 percent, who consider themselves to be adherents of the Christian faith. Islam follows in second place, with 1.6 billion believers. In third place is the category “none,” consisting of 1.1 billion of the world’s people who claim no religious affiliation or proclaim themselves to be atheists or agnostics.

…The world’s Hindu population totals 1 billion, followed by 500 million Buddhists, according to Pew. There are 14 million Jews in the world.

…The percentage of student loans that are 90 days or more delinquent has increased from 6% to 11% over the last 10 years.  Total outstanding student loans ($956 billion) are now approximately 12% larger than outstanding credit card balances.

…Soda consumption has decreased by nearly 30% in the last decade

…In Britain, an average of 18 pubs close every day.  Nearly 6,000 landlords have gone out of business in the last four years.

--I HAD A DREAM THAT WE WERE VERY HAPPY, BUT WE ALMOST GOT ARRESTED

…This is a post about anything but writing or writers, though those things do figure into the mix in the same way that sweat is an inevitable byproduct of hardy exercise…

…It’s very difficult to characterize an event as massive and daunting as AWP.  It’s hard to have an appropriate reaction.  One might as well try describing what an orgasm feels like, having to do  so without being able to use clichéd words like “flushed,” “euphoria,” “climax,” “it was a kind of rapture, a second coming,” “inflamed loins,” “panting,” “dilated,” “erratic thrusting,” etc…

…There were hordes and hordes of people, writers, 11,000 beings sharing the same oxygen and smells, the undercurrent of misplaced tension wrapped inside the ruddy noise of conversation, every one of us sharing curiosities and ambitions, vulnerabilities and silly giddiness, all the while trying to look at ease, attempting to appear engaged, anything, really, other than overwhelmed and foolish.

It’s a difficult concept to get your arms around, isn’t it?—that so many people share your dream, that they are willing to attain their dream without expecting riches in return--or in many cases—payment of any kind.  
Who does that?
Who besides a dreamer, a fool, an artist, or maybe Jesus?

I met people I’d wanted to meet for some time—Joseph Quintela, Christopher Allen, Lily Hoang, Jessica Keener, Gay Degani, Alex Pruteanu, Eryk Wenziak, Pat Pajolus, Gessy Alvarez, Laura Bogart, Timothy Gager, Angela Wooward, Jodi Paloni, Antonia Crane…and so many more that I can’t, currently, think of off the top of my head…

There were others I didn’t know I wanted to meet but was damn lucky I did meet—Karen Stefano and Michael Maxwell, for example.

I saw friends I knew and know and people that I love and revere—Meg Tuite, Robert Vaughan, Ken Robidoux, Sara Lippmann, Janee Braugher,  xTx, Bill Yarrow, Ben Tanzer, Helen Vitoria, Jane Carman, Gloria Mindock, Brandi Wells…

I ate and drank and laughed and--I'll admit it-- I even cried—sometimes from joy, once in a while because what I heard was the verbal equivalent of watching a child die….

I was told secrets—deep, dark, one-of-a-kind secrets (although there are really no such things) and I even shared secrets of my own, and in doing so, I felt not relieved or in any way paroled, but rather I felt completely gifted by the listener’s mercy and grace, their kind and unwavering attention….

…There are times in our lives where we feel as close to fully-formed as we will ever be, our essence froth with the giddiness of having discovered a sense of purpose, when it’s like coming upon a door left open for us, cracked just a bit with a blade of light creasing both inward and out, and when we push that door open further, we find how incredibly fortunate we are to walk through it, stumbling into the very crux of who we are and who were really meant to be, stumbling or trotting or skipping through that damn door with our eyes and ears wide open, shouting, “I’m here.  Whatcha got for me?”

--IT'S ALL YOURS.  ALWAYS WILL BE.

…I'm headed to Boston and I'm a bit nervous.  11,000 writers and me.  Yikes.  Wish me luck.

…Oh, Facebook people, you're so funny and clever.  Here are some of the amusing things you said this last week:

-Dear asshole in front of me,
It's a crowded train, so nobody gets their own little island. You don't get to recline into my lap, and damn straight I will knee you if you do it again. We don't have to like each other, but let's have an amicable trip, shall we?
Thanks,
The girl behind you

-Today I found some eggs.

-You got to love a bra that makes your boobs look half their age.

-Baby, if you were a chicken, you'd be impeccable.

-We are living in the future and I am TERRIFIED.

 ·        -Okay. I'm putting away the goddamn tears and ignoring the bottle of vodka that is winking at me from the dresser. I'm going to write a story entitled Sadists and it will not be terribly sexy or endearing.

-I ♥ zombies.

-What the fuck happened to tug-of-war?

-I'm feeling pretty goddamn good, Facebook, even though I was cock blocked by Koko Loko tonight. The part about Koko Loko made my boyfriend laugh his ass off. But when I turned off the computer and the light he asked what I was doing. I told him I assumed he wanted to suck my nipples. "No thanks."

-I think as long as I am positive and supportive of others and because I don’t catfish people, that I am ok.

-Can't. Stop. Talking. In. Jewish. Mom. Voice. Need. Help.

-Shortly, my friends, this grim month will finally reach its end. Hallelujah.

"Here the faeries i caught in my back yard...you may take them, but let them play in the garden sometimes"

-" I have a dream that i will meet Tori Amos in a graveyard in Germany doing Wicca...then she will take me and we will kiss upon a piano with dead rats and bloodroses fallin...

-My nipples are nicer than yours.

 -I love the way ya poke me.

--I AM HERE, LISTENING

…You should see the lake right now.  It’s about as still as it’s ever been, a dark blue mirror reflecting back the evergreens, some house lights glowing like hot coals, rooftops and boats.

…On Wednesday I go to Boston for AWP, a writer’s conference.  11,000 people will be there.  The world needs more readers and fewer writers, don’t you think?

It should be a lot of fun, as well as a good chance to meet many of the people I only know via the internet.  Plus I’m reading on Wednesday and Friday night, and that’s always a lot of fun.

…A lot of people hate Monday.  Not me.  I like the idea of beginning something, a fresh start, a new week.

So here are some things to ponder:

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath

-"A lot of us wear braces on our teeth.  It's what sets us apart from the Europeans."

-"Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting." Ryan Meeks

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down."

--Woody Allen

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Abraham Lincoln

-"The human life is all one thing, like a blad3 tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow."

-"Words make a difference."

-"Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat."

-"By telling stories, you objectify your own experience.  You separate it from yourself.  You pin down certain truths.  You make up others.

-"But this too is true: stories can save us."

-"In a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world."

-"The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hopeing that others might  then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make the spirits in the head.  There's the illusion of aliveness." --Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"

"We are worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As is." Brené Brown

"We tend to make courage too dramatic. Courage is often doing

something simple, unpleasant, or boring again and again until we get it down pat. People who are physically challenged and who have the determination to get around their handicaps are great examples because their courage makes them test their limits every day." Dave Thomas

"Let's go get the world while there's still some of it worth getting."

"The best way to honor your life is to perform every act with ceremony.  Don't do sloppy work.  Tie your shoes carefully.  Comb your hair carefully." -- Bonnie Nadzam, "Lamb"

--HEY F_*KER

…Yeah, hey, so it's Friday, the start of the weekend already.  Again.  Seems like it was Friday just the other day.

So what are your plans?

…Last week I finished "Lamb" by Bonnie Nadzam (wonderful prose, with a freaky protagonist), "The Things They Carried" by Tim O’Brien (the last story almost had me crying in the bathtub") and "The Spare Room" Helen Garner (which was slight and just okay.)  Now I've moved onto "The Wanderers" (for the second time).  It's Richard Price's first novel and quite brilliant, if not overtly racist.

…Facebook posts continue to amuse and beguile me.  Just like these:

-In other news, this morning the dog licked the cat's butt, and nobody seemed to mind, so I think we're all settled in here.

-It's official: As of today my ex-husband is a convicted felon.

-As a short, Jewish woman it is an honor to be chosen as Pope.

-Babies would be cuter if they were puppies.

-I have found the inside of my soul. It is not very friendly.

-The way i ask friends to meet me at the library is 'hey do you wanna go pretend to be bears?'

-On the bus I sat in front of two college students sharing all the ways they cheat in their courses. I'm off to cry in a corner.

-No coffee was harmed in the making of this penguin.

-I am in a giving people a piece of my mind mood. You want a piece, too? Step right up.

-Our dishwasher died the weekend before last. New one came today. Am I weird if I hug it?