--THAT WAS ALMOST TOO EASY

…It's sunny in Seattle. Yes it is. There is abundant sunshine streaming like lave waves of gold through my window as I write this, so much so that I have to position myself, my head, lower than normal in order to have this computer screen block the festering sun.
I love it.

…The other night my daughter and I went to see Katy Perry. It was quite a n evening. The fans there really get into it ala "Rocky Horror Picture Show." There must have been hundreds of blue and pink wigs. Key Arena was filled with 30,000 screaming fans, 98% of them female, 70 percent of them 18 or younger.
But it was fun. It was an extravaganza. There were floating clouds (Katy actually sang on one, flying across the stadium), glitter cannons, fireworks, trapeze artists, a mini-film cartoon characters, bare-chested audience members on stage and 20 costumer/wardrobe changes.
Katy herself was sweet and funny, humble and a lot of fun. She was also pretty sexy.
I'm just not sure about 6 and 9 year old singing about losing their virginity, or singing "Let me see you peacock cock cock" or using the "F" word. But maybe I'm getting old. (Though I did get ID’ed when I ordered a beer there.)

..I finished Michael Kimball's book, "Us" today. He breaks dozen of writing rules but has created a distinct voice for himself. The book was clever and remarkably poignant. I felt like I should have cried a few times. I think Michael must be Scottish. I could be wrong. Hopefully I'll meet him at AWP next year.

…I'm trying hard to imagine "Two and a Half Men" without Charlie Sheen and I cannot do it. I like Charlie. yes, I know he's screwed his whole life. But he's a good actor and he has brilliant comedic timing.

…If you don't watch "So You Think You Can Dance" you should start. It's the worst tv show name ever, but the dancing is so sharp and artful. It really is like seeing poetry in motion.

…Speaking of poetry, I just can't seem to stop writing it. There was a call for submissions from a magazine. The theme is "7." So I wrote seven poems, each sentence of each one starting the one of the letters of "seven."
For instance: Somewhere saint are dancing doe-si-doe at our demise

…I'm almost done with "Twins" by Marcy Dermansky. It has taken me forever to read that book. I don't know why. It's pretty strong writing. Next up is Jennifer Egan's, "A Visit From the Goon Squad." Then "City of Ash" by my friend and mentor, Megan Chance.

…I hope you are having a wonderful day. I hope good things happened to you, that someone you love told you how much they love you, that someone did a nice surprise for you, gave you a back rub and foot massage, made you laugh, wrote you a poem, drew your portrait, told you a story and said how they couldn't live without you.

…I like these things on a Sunday night:
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‎"[It's] very often true that what we are compelled to describe is terrible, or oppressive, or heartbreaking. Language is hungry for that, too. It wants, as it were, to eat everything. Even the falling and fading world, even misery." —Mark Doty

"You should always do sober what you say you're going to do drunk. That will help you keep your mouth shut." Hemingway

--"We are here to serve the stories, not the other way around."
--Fiction is often written out of a productive unhappiness. If you're happy all the time, why should you have any recourse to art? Every writer should feel at least from time to time as if he or she is in an exile from happiness. Why should people who are perfectly happy have any desire to make art?" -- Charles Baxter


"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger than reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not 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." ~Anais Nin

"The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory." ~May Sarton
"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger than reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not 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." ~Anais Nin

"The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory." ~May Sarton

"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; ...it's only good for wallowing in." ~Katherine Mansfield

“The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched” ~Henry David Thoreau

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." ~Jung

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world" ~Albert Einstein

"Good poetry makes the universe reveal its secret" ~ Hafiz

"I chose poetry and the metaphor not for the love of mystery or elusiveness but because it comes closer to the way we experience things deep down. Explicitness and directness cannot be applied to our psychic life. They are not subtle enough." ~Anais Nin

"Love and compassion are necessities, not
luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive." ~Dalai Lama

"The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational
disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of
madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and
keeps only their quintessences." ~Rimbaud

"I want to be with those that know secret things, or else alone" ~Rilke

"The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved; the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." ~Jack Kerouac

"The great beauty of my life is that I live out what others only dream about, talk about, or analyze. I want to go on living the uncensored dream, the free unconscious" ~Anais Nin

"When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package" ~John Ruskin

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say" ~Anaïs Nin

"Let the woman lose her small, personal fears. Let her dare to offer her creation, and if necessary, suffer the consequences. Every artist has taken that risk" ~Anais Nin

“Those who danced were thought insane by those who couldn’t hear the music” ~Angela Monet

"And there came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom" ~Anais Nin

"Ink on paper is as beautiful to me as flowers on the mountains; God composes, why shouldn't we?" ~Audra Foveo-Alba

"The woman who loves always transcends the man she loves, because life is greater than fate. Her devotion wants to be immeasurable; that is her happiness." ~Rilke

"I have great faith in all things not yet spoken" ~Rilke

“Talk about choices does not apply to me~ While intelligence considers options, I am somewhere lost in the wind” ~Rumi

"Those who are burned into the fire of love are buried into the heart of God..." ~Sufi Mystic

"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote" ~Yevgeny Yevtushenko

"If I could wake completely, I would say without speaking why I'm ashamed of using words" ~Rumi

"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets." ~Titanic

“He who is born in imagination discovers the latent forces of Nature. . . Besides the stars that are established, there is yet another- Imagination- that begets a new star and a new heaven.” ~Paracelsus

"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking" ~Gibran

"Let us speak silently like spirits and avoid talkers who use words in vain" ~Rumi

“She loved him so much she concealed his name in many phrases~ the inner meanings known only to her” ~Rumi


"Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love." ~Gibran

"Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why." ~Rumi

"A lover's food is the love of bread, not the bread. No one who really loves, loves existence. Lovers have nothing to do with existence." ~Rumi

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery" ~Francis Bacon

"The way you make love is the way God will be with you" ~Rumi

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." ~Charles Bukowski

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexity or pride~ I love you because I know no other way” ~Pablo Neruda