—WOKE UP THIS MORNING WITH A WINE GLASS IN MY HAND  

 

…Happy Friday, happy weekend to you.

 

…I woke feeling like I’m wearing a cloak of despair. Not sure why that is, but it’s there, invisible or not. Maybe it’s the weight of frivolity. Or maybe it’s something else altogether. Perhaps I’ll figure it out at some point.

 

…Here are some random things to ponder and enjoy on the cliff of the week:

 

Ravenous Butterflies

 

“And I'll dance with you in Vienna,

I'll be wearing a river's disguise.

The hyacinth wild on my shoulder

my mouth on the dew of your thighs.

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,

with the photographs there and the moss.

And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,

my cheap violin and my cross.”

--Leonard Cohen

 

 

“I think there are people who help you become the person you end up being, and you can be grateful for them even if they are not part of your life forever.” –Diane Nguyen, BoJack Horseman

 

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.”—Sylvia Plath

 

 

“Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett

 

“I almost view myself as somebody else. I’m only interested in the parts of my experience that are universal and part of an unspoken shared experience.” Rachel Cusk

 

"I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry." -- Sylvia Plath

 

“There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.” - Edgar Allan Poe

 

“I think the dark side of an artist is important, because when I was 16 and thinking about hanging myself, I stopped and asked myself, ‘why am I like this.?’ Almost all of my songs are about paranoia and self-doubt.” Rick Springfield 

 

"I never liked myself: a love story." 

 

"There is a large part of me that wants to see me dead." --Melissa Broder

 

 

 

—PROMISE ME ONE MORE THING; THAT YOU’LL NEVER DIE

 

 

In The Moment

 

…I love it when the rain is its own thunder, making it impossible to hear anything other than the deluge itself while the lake looks like it’s boiling. 

 

That’s the kind of rain that’ll get your attention and keep it. That’s the kind of rain we had yesterday for quite a long while. I’m guessing a few inches pooled and slurred within minutes.

 

It’s the type of rain that makes you think God is really frustrated and pissed off. That he has to go really bad.

 

The kind of rain that’s scary to drive in, but fun to make-out in.

 

Rain that rules the world where you are.

 

Rain that won’t let you read or write or think about anyone in the moment.

 

Rain that reminds you it’s nature who controls everything, and you’re not any part of that.

 

That reminds you you’re just not that interesting.

 

Rain that takes the wind with it, stand-up-straight-but-sideways wind. Wind that bows to the rain but still wants to be noticed, because doesn’t everyone want to be noticed?

 

Rain that shifts gears and sounds like its coughing or grinding down a very stubborn stone you might have once admired.

 

Rain that makes the sky blush twenty-nine shades of gray.

 

Rain that makes you wonder when you last said your prayers and what you’d asked for.

 

Rain that helps you forget the pandemic and your parents for a while.

 

Pregnant rain that sends the ducks and eagle and beaver for cover.

 

Rain that asks you what you believe in, and how sure you are about that, and what you’ll do the next time someone leaves you again, for good.

 

 

—DAYTIME, NIGHTTIME, YIKES

 

…Happy Monday to you.

I hope you had a fabulous weekend. Mine was mostly rainy and lonely. I was productive, however. I did a lot of work on the new book and also wrote some new pieces about being opinionated, hurting people, and The Thing About (My) Weight.

 

…I hope you have a terrific week.

 

…Here’s an essay that’s dear to me, “The Thing About Grief,” in the fabulous GHOST PARACHUTE (thank you so much, Brett Pribble):

 

http://ghostparachute.com/the-thing-about-grief/?fbclid=IwAR3MQ6NzHLcdnOjr-fRfNBJOc1z0GvrM0VuGPwPN_8cFVwJak1gxLgnuEBg

 

 

–YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’VE GOT 'TIL IT’S GONE

 

Ideation

 

I’m breathing for 

the first time today, 

taking in the light with me, 

drinking the lake whole, 

swallowing each cloud, 

becoming a bloom, 

something transient and 

outside of myself where 

the lack of purity 

isn’t a sin but is, rather, 

a call for acceptance 

and celebration, 

and within that 

ring of recognition 

the ideation of life anew 

drips from the faucet of me, 

trickling towards 

your extended palm.

 

  —THE MORE YOU REMEMBER, THE MORE YOU’RE LOST

 

 

My Unscripted

 

I am looking at a lake of bright white light,

the page as wide as an ocean,

unlined and endless

waiting for ink and words,

sonnets or songs,

maybe a pretty poem about possibilities

or perhaps something stormy

where the outcome remains in peril,

one hand reaching out for hand

in desperation.

 

I am not made of marble or stone.

In fact, I’ve been bleeding pools

so as to dip a brush

and write this in red

in order that you might know the color of

my heart.

 

Under an elm you

ponder the past and

paginate your future so thoughtfully.

I am not a fool

and yet I understand now that the stars do not lie

the moon does not deceive,

and it’s the light at the end of time

that wants us to cross together,

holding hands,

smiling over the tops of any scars

that might have hindered

our getting there,

two as one separated by nothing.

 

—DON’T HOLD YOUR HEAD SO LOW THAT YOU CAN’T SEE THE SKY

 

                                          CHAPTER ONE

                                                   Prunes

 

Pearl’s door was cracked a third of the way open when they wheeled the body down the hall. A black sheet covered Esther’s frame head to toe, nothing of her actual-self visible other than a vague outline of her shrunken body.

For the blink of a moment, Pearl had caught one of the EMT’s eye, a man-boy so young he could well be Pearl’s great grandson if she’d had one. He glanced at Pearl sheepishly with a look that said, I’m sorry, that said, I’ll be back soon and, I’m sorry again, but you’re likely next.

He might well be correct on that score. Pearl had become the oldest of the lot many months ago, though now, inexplicably, it was the younger ones who kept dying before her.

She would miss Esther dearly. Oh sure, she missed the others as well, but Esther was extra special. Esther, 85 years old, eight years younger than her. Esther her Gin Rummy partner. Esther who was always stealing prunes from the kitchen. Esther and her phantom gerbil, Mamie Eisenhower. Esther, mother of twins who’d each hung themselves only days apart.

A bubble burst in Pearl’s throat letting her know how much she would miss her best friend and when Pearl swallowed she thought she tasted prunes.

Pearl felt drunk with despair and old age, and now a new flange of loneliness to handle. Yes, the drunkenness of age often slurred her concentration more and more, eroding her once-keen ability to be alert and observant to the finest of details. Pearl sat at her desk and shook her head thinking, I’ve become a dumb, old bag of dust. Maybe a bit of a bitch, too.

And then a shadow, a flash. Only it was a person, Stanley appearing before her like a hologram shooting up from the floor.

“You little shit,” Pearl said. “You know I hate it when you do that. You could quite literally give me a heart attack.”

“Well, I’m certainly sorry, but Pearl, you know as well as anyone that a person has to be clandestine in a place like this. Survival depends on it!”

Stanley’s face was flushed, the tips of his pointy ears the shade of pink lemonade, cotton candy. Stanley was an odd-ball few in the care center liked, but Pearl rather enjoyed the strange ones, and she wasn’t picky about companions since they were so few and far in between.

Stanley stuck half his head out the door, checking both ends of the narrow hall, then closed the door softly before sitting on the side of Pearl’s mattress, the springs moaning as he did.

Stanley looked a bit like a chihuahua, what with those ears, sharp teeth and tiny hands for paws. Today he appeared agitated as well, though it wasn’t like Stanley to make her wait for him to spit out his news or suspicions.

“If you’re going to meditate, there’s a room here for that, but it’s not this one.”

Stanley leaned forward and the space they shared was so small that she knew he’d eaten something with Tabasco sauce and dill pickles. “Pearl, Pearl,” Stanley said, whispering so that it sounded more like Purr, Purr, “They aim to kill us all. Pick us off one by one.”

She didn’t mean to be rude but couldn’t stop herself from snorting. Stanley could be a hoot without even knowing it.

“I’m serious,” he whispered. “We've gotta make a run for it before they use the garrotes. Garrotes! My God!”

Stanley’s little dog teeth chattered, which momentarily made Pearl think of tap dancing, which then made her think of Laurel, of course.

“Who is They, Stanley?”

That question caused Stanley’s eyes to cross, going topsy-turvy before re-fixing themselves. “They is them. Them. The ones that aren’t us.”

“Young people, you mean?”

Stanley’s eyes twirled again. He was his own three-ring circus. “Maybe. Perhaps they’re a part of the plan, too. One can never know for certain unless one is on the other side, their side.”

Pearl decided to go with it. There was nothing else to do but let the loss of Esther seep in and break her further.

“And what do They look like?”

Stanley leaned in even closer as the sharp tang of dill pickles started to make Pearl’s eyes water.

“Do They have all their teeth? All their hair? Do They wear normal underwear instead of adult diapers?”

Stanley’s nostrils twitched like guppies dying on a dock. He was irritated. “It's The Smocks,” he whispered.

Pearl feigned surprise, fanning her housecoat. “So, the staff is going to murder us?”

Stanley straightened his back like an obedient cartoon hound and nodded with gusto. "They already are! I told you. One by one, they're wiping us out."

“Hmm. But don’t their salaries depend on us being around, paying room and board in this old log cabin?”

Stanley's arms flapped, palms up, and clapped them seal-like now. “You don’t understand, Pearl, everyone is younger than us. There are so many more of us out in the real world—millions, billions—than there are of them. They can kill and kill and kill, but they’ll never run out of potential victims. They’ll always be more of us. Old people are a cash cow.”

“But what’s this about garrotes?”

“We’re so plentiful that simply shooting or gassing us will get boring after a while. These are devious and demented assassins we're talking about."

 "We?"

"They’ll devise many sinister methods to exterminate our kind. Eradicate us in heinous ways."

"I hate heinous. Sounds too similar to anus."

"The point is, Pearl," Purr, "that too much of anything gets tedious after a while.”

“Even slaughter?”

Stanley beamed. “Now you’re catching on!”

This time Pearl did stifle her snort. Oh Stanley, he was correct about one thing: everyone was younger than us. Indeed, they were. 

 

 

—MR. BLUE, I TOLD YOU THAT I LOVED YOU, PLEASE BELIEVE ME

 

 

…I recently came across the photograph above. That’s me and some great people I worked with in the Northeast a long time ago. Those four years were some of the most grueling of my career, but also incredibly gratifying. I learned a lot. I grew a lot. Plus, I got to be in NYC every other week.

 

…Yesterday it really wanted to snow and I really wanted to see it snow, but it didn’t happen. On Wednesday, however, a heady hailstorm arrived, so I went outside in my bare feet and danced in it, face tilted upward at all those pellets of white bombarding me. It was thrilling. There’s something about hail and snow that seems miraculous.

 

…The last week has seen me working on my publisher’s edits for a new book I’ll have coming out later—This Is Me, Being Brave, a collection of essays. I’m at the point now where I pretty much hate the thing, which is typically a good sign. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a book out. If things go well, I’ll have two. Fingers crossed.

 

…Wednesday I finished the mini-series The Night Of on HBO. It’s a few years old and I’d not even heard of it until my best friend mentioned it in an off-hand comment. It was spell-binding and a master class in acting.

 

…Yesterday I finished BoJack Horseman. What an amazing show. Definitely one of the most inventive and thought-provoking things I’ve ever seen. The first six episodes are a little so-so, but then very quickly it becomes yowzah.

 

…I hope you’re doing well. I hope you’re even doing great, if that’s at all possible. I’m certain remarkable things are coming your way. Silly Goose, just be hopeful.

 

…Some of my friends are struggling. One of my best friends called the other morning and from the second after I said, “Hello,” they started crying and shrieking for the entirety of our hour-long conversation. I know I was meant to just listen, but I think there were also times where I was meant to say something encouraging, and I think I mostly failed on that account.  I hate it when I’m supposed to say the right thing but I can’t find the words that make up the right thing. By the time I hung up, we were both gutted.

But I’ve been checking in on them every day, a few times a day. I know what’s it like to have people who are there for you when you most need someone to be there for you.

 

--“Sometimes life is sh*t and you're still living, but you'll have moments in life that will be beautiful.” —Diane Nguyen, BoJack Horseman

 

--“And I thought about how, actually, if you wanted to, you could say the same thing about life. That life is terrifying and overwhelming and it can happen at any moment. And when you're confronted with life you can either be cowardly or you can be brave, but either way you're going to live. So, you might as well be brave.”

 

“A statue isn't built from the ground up — it's chiseled out of a block of marble — and I often wonder if we aren't likewise shaped by the qualities we lack, outlined by the empty space where the marble used to be. I'll be sitting on a train. I'll be lying awake in bed. I'll be watching a movie; I'll be laughing. And then, all of a sudden, I'll be struck with the paralyzing truth: It's not what we do that makes us who are. It's what we don't do that defines us.”

 

“You had every intention of being depressed forever, but as it turns out, there's work to be done, meals to eat, movies to see, errands to run. You meant to be in ruins permanently, your misery a monument, a gash across the cold hard earth, but honestly, who has the time for that? Instead, you survived - apparently, you both did - and things are shockingly okay.” —Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of BoJack Horseman

 

 

—NO USE PRETENDING THINGS CAN STILL BE RIGHT. THERE’S REALLY NOTHING MORE TO SAY.

 

 

 

                                                   Such

 

The cats circle. The wind reverses. Today wants yesterday back, last year back, though it was bleak and broken and not the best of us.

A plane soars eastward. The sky convulses. You tell me, “Goodbye” for the thousandth time as I swim to the deep end with a barrel, while the waves say, “Such is love.” 

 

 

—I DON’T EVEN THINK YOU THINK SO

 

I repurpose myself as a lost book on a bus, the one you find when you’re younger, before you’ve found me, your hands thumbing the parchment, fingering my spine with the buttery softness of a moth, scanning all the words I have assembled, the ones I will whisper to you inside the margins and indentations, a revered music in the deft language that only we can hear, like a lone shell when it’s pressed just so against the ear, you stopping at the dogeared pages, giving those special attention, looking at what’s written there as if it’s a portent of what we’ll become, and when, and why.

 

 

  —SWEET MELISSA, ANGEL OF MY LIFETIME, ANSWER TO ALL ANSWERS I CAN'T FIND

 

 

…I woke at 3:30 this morning to the thrum of rain and a set of slate-black windows staring back at me like mimes. 

I had “Could It Be Magic” stuck in my head for some reason, so I found the song on YouTube and played it on repeat. 

Screw the Manilow haters. That guy can craft a song.

 

…How are you doing? Just wondering.

 

…It feels good to be reading again. I’m maybe reading too much (22 books already this year).

I’m writing in spurts. Still not sure what my purpose is, in that regard, though creating always feels like a revelation.

This a.m. I polished up “The Thing About Grief,” but I need my son’s approval before it can see publication.

 

…When I started this blog/site so many years ago, it was just meant to be a receptacle for my writing, but it has essentially turned into a version of my diary, or journal. Sometimes I’m too honest, or too bewildering here, for my own good. I guess we all have our different outlets, or so I hope.

 

…Since I haven’t been submitting, I haven’t had much of anything published of late, unless someone’s queried me. That happened with the story below, “Something Like Normal.” For whatever reason, it has garnered some of the best responses I’ve ever received from a written piece, which, being the insecure Cancer/writer that I am, means a lot…

 

https://fictivedream.com/2021/02/03/something-like-normal/?fbclid=IwAR1x53qRyR9HJDVVOAeT2XQMLE3ZJ5q1nSSKq9LLbOUqBrejCF4vnmjiOqY

 

-If you only read one thing today, make it this exquisite, powerful piece by the always amazing Len Kuntz

 

-Please read- Len Kuntz is so talented and I love sharing the talent. This moved me.

 

-Read this. Give yourself a moment to settle in, and take a breath after, you'll need it.

 

-There is something so clear and clean about the writing of Len Kuntz even when he's digging around in the saddest, darkest corners. He is one of my favorite writers which include Charlotte Bronte, Hillary Mantel, Thomas Hardy, Alexander Dumas, Wallace Stegner, Jack London, Andre Dubus III, Edith Wharton, Laura Hillenbrand, Flannery O'Conner, Jennifer Egan, and many more. Len you are fabulous

 

-Wow.

 

-You are an amazing writer

 

-The garrison of soup cans .... the pajamas looped over the end of a broom...weights pressing against my chest and skull... the manic throbbing ... oh wow, just wow, Len!

 

-Wow, just wow - you never fail to amaze me

 

-This is so powerful and poignant

 

-Sooo chilling and sad, Len.

 

-I really love this. Thanks for sharing it.

 

-Beautiful and sad. Bravo, Len

 

-Masterful. Such beauty in the pain. Well done, Len.

 

-I love how essentially kind this is. Soup for the soul in a tough time. Well done.

 

-Fantastic!!!

 

-Unsettling, finely observed, claustrophobic.

 

-A tender story of loss, vulnerability, and love. Beautifully controlled writing.

 

-Layers of unfolding and understated sadness beautifully controlled and evoked.