--IS THAT SEAT TAKEN?

--This morning I spoke to a group of 150 surgeons and nurses and other folk. It was fun. I think I was funny. They laughed a lot. Maybe they were laughing at me or maybe they thought I was very silly. In any event, it went well and I think they thought it worthwhile.


…I saw “Midnight In Paris” the other day and rather liked it a lot. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Woody Allen film. This was very clever. Owen Wilson’s character goes back in time and meets Hemmingway, Salvador Dali, Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein (played by Cathy Bates), Mondrian…
The cinematography felt antiqued, like one of those cobalt blue doors that has nicks and splotches where the paint has chipped off.
Go see Woody’s latest so that we’ll have something to watch other than animation and Marvel Comic movies.

…On PBS last night they were playing a reel of "Les Miserables." It gave me chills. It always does. When Fantine sings "A little fall of rain," my skin prickles.
Nick Jonas sang a few numbers. He was quite good! Really.
The first time I saw "Les Miserables" was in London. I'd sobbed three times before intermission. The second time I saw it was at the Kennedy Center in DC and it leveled me the same as the first time.

…I have been listening to Joanna Newsome. You should, too. There's no one on the planet like her. Go to youtube and watch/listen to “Peach Plum Pear.”

…And I have been watching "So You Think You Can Dance," which is the lamest name of any television show ever, but it's really good. The dancing is so varied but sharp and breath-taking. Some of these people are like sculpture, like rolling waves of controlled water. Physical poetry. One krunk dancer said, "I write music with my body." That's pretty accurate.

…I am gearing up for my trip to Iowa for a writer's workshop. I think this is going to be a grand adventure. I think I am going to learn a lot, make new friends and be inspired. I need something to kick me in the ass and this should do the trick.

…Yesterday I wrote a story about a boy who watches his mother stick pins into herself, over every inch of her body. It sounds twisted, but I actually think it turned out well, this story called, “Punctured.” There’s symbolism in it as the wife’s husband is a tailor.
Often times when I try to describe me writing to other people they look at me a bit skeptical, with a nervous stare in their eye.

…I like these things on a Wednesday:

--“Today was a bad day. We lean on each other when things are bad.” Grey’s Anatomy

--"I think we're just gonna to have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that, Richie."

--"I did not write and I did not write, and still it was all on the way to being a writer." Sven Birkerts

--"I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me. The two elements of passion are rapture and melancholy. It seems to me, I am that incarnate. I am and have always been intense. The only feeling I have never experienced is indifference. Only indifference. Everything else I have either felt or imagined so vividly as to make it real to me." - Edna St. Vincent Millay

--"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls." - Anaïs Nin

--"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." - Charles Bukowski

--"It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write." Sinclair Lewis

--"As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words." William Shakespeare