--I CAN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU

…Is it bad that I forget what day it is?  More and more, I do that quite often.

But I just look and so I know it's Thursday.

I know tonight I will go to The Hugo House in Seattle and hear writers read and I will be one of those reading as well.

I know I'll be a little bit nervous even though that's kind of ridiculous, since I used to speak in front of very large groups, five to ten times larger than the size of the crowd which will be at The Hugo House.

Still, I will try not to be nervous and I will attempt to make eye contact and project and find a cadence that makes my writing sound fluid.

I will try to do all those things and later I'll let you know if I succeeded or not.

…Until then, here are some more Facebook quips/ditties/ruminations that peeked my interest, and maybe yours as well…

-They better let atheists in Heaven, or I'm screwed.

-Question: is there any point in getting old, besides the not-dying part?

-Wanted: extremely wealthy terminally ill literate adorable man over the age of 90 who needs a sweet brunette to read original stories to him, no sex, just reading and occasional pecks on the cheek. Marriage is possible. References upon request.

-Things I've learned over the weekend...I don't love jesus, I'm all for child abuse, I support all forms of violence against women, I hate kittens and puppies, and I don't love my own children. ALL THIS BECAUSE I DIDN'T REPOST. I guess reposting is the new "if you don't forward this email, your leg will fall off and a leprechaun will crap in your cereal."

-Smashing windows like there ain't no blowback.

-"Gay" man telling me how "hot" I am. And how my smile "cripples" him. I am too drunk to deal with this. And now the band is playing Freebird and I want to evaporate with someone.

-Just tried to include a message with a friend request, was offered choices that amounting to this: 'You're not connected to so-and-so on facebook, so your message will be delivered to their Other Box. Would you like it delivered to a Box Where They Might Actually See It for $1?'

-My girlfriend was answering the Jeopardy final question. I thought she said "Ice Cream and Methadone". What she really said was "Hunchback of Notre Dame". Time to get my hearing checked.

-last full day of winter. i celebrated with a beer and a burrito. well, two beers. i'll miss you, snowy. i'll miss you, wintry mix. tomorrow begins another life.

-I've discovered that some of my emotional problems are a result of too much love rather than too little.

-In my next life I am going to be a radical feminist, obsessed with root vegetables.

·         

-I have a cold. Need juice. And someone to sing Soft Kitty.

-Maybe it's normal to caress your gun on the sidewalk but it scared me.

-Him, glancing at a card on the dresser: Who is that? Christopher Robin?
Me: No, he's that guy from "A Clockwork Orange."
Him: Oh man. I hated that movie. I wish I'd never seen it.
Me: It's a great movie.
Him: No it isn't. It's perverted.

Pretty sure March is the cruelest month.

-Tell me about your day, sugar…

--YOU MAKE ME WANT TO ENJOY MY LIFE AGAIN

…I've been doing a lot of reading lately:

"Coronado" by Dennis Lehane

"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Moshin Hamid

"Men In Groups" by Aaron Smith

"Shampoo Horns" by Aaron Teal

and "Ordinary People" by Judith Guest, my second time reading it in as many years.

…Last night I also finished "Moods" by Rachel Glaser.  It’s a slight book of prose poetry, or proseity.  Whatever it is, it’s also wonderful, imaginative, clever, ironic, confessional, and very fresh sounding.

I loved almost every little ditty.

To give you a good long sip, here are some samples:

from “Buying Money”

…I knew about money

That it piled exact and thin

It bundled in families and waited in suitcases

It could turn at any moment into a speed boat

Or a fat turkey

A dripping diamond

It wasn’t trash, though it smelled so old

from “Thanksgiving didn’t happen”

All I know is one thing:

Hairs really love to grow out of a mole

…people marry easy and it’s like playing Blackjack scared

from “Feminine in water”

She is lucky

She realizes

Many women only feel feminine in the water

Near dolphins

Or when a saxophone sweats and strains…

What is feminine?

A towel baked in the sun

A monument with carved hair

A wild animal’s cursive handwriting…

from “God is Popular”

The ocean is okay

But boats crowd I with their wakes

God can’t help but look at every bubble

It puts a strain on his eyes to watch small things

And fast thing

Cities, streets, fingernails

Dots on a die…

He cannot rub it

He is invisible

No one can help him.

And what about the music we made in cars

When no one was sitting shotgun

No one carrying the radio like a football…

from “Grand Variety”

My date has a CVS brand orgasm

And I buy a Nike one on my smartphone

I’m not an athlete but I like how it feels

My parents have a lot of Price Club orgasms

But I will never be like them…

But still, once in a while

I have a knock off Versace orgasm quietly in the trees….

How haggard I feel having a Land’s End orgasm

Though my breasts don’t know the difference.

from “Every time my pills fall, I feel very much like an addict”

I always thought if I shaved my head I would suddenly

Become adventurous

And have more friends

I’d be able to sculpt or at least be musical

I wouldn’t be afraid

I would look younger and more troubled

I’d crash at someone’s house or the would crash here

My hair would inch out and I’d have a choice

from “I’m dead”

The body inevitably misbehaves

But that’s how we bought it…

from “Your soul, barely”

You were sharp

No one could hug you without bleeding.

Your friends were with angels

And the angels got injured…

…And she has great titles, in addition to the ones mentioned above:

“Heroes are so long”

“Two girls can talk about boys and make it sound like a conversation”

“Best nose”

“I took a secret trip to have an affair”

“Sing radiohead like something has gone wrong”

“Incest is lazy”

“Me and you wait for Our Husband though he’s only so-so”

“I’m talking about Trent Reznor, saying he’s a Shakespearean tragic hero”

“The whale changes his mind”

“People in pain”

--I AM YOUR BURNING ONE

…Hey Hi.  How’s your weekend?

“Love Actually” is playing on the TV downstairs.  I love that movie and can’t really see it too many times.

…Here’s one of my first published stories (in Juked) that got a little bit of good press at the time it came out:

                                                            The Launcher

That summer we were bored or stoned when we could afford to be.  It was Barry’s brilliant notion to build the thing but I didn’t have any ideas of my own so I went with his, which was the start of our trouble.

            It looked like a homemade bazooka, made of plastic and duct tape, because that’s what it was, more or less.

            “Do these things have a name?” I asked.

            Barry said, “Hell if I know.  What’s it matter?”

            So we called it The Launcher and started off with spuds.  Barry’s mom had a twenty pound bag of them.  They looked like aborted infants, only solid and heavy.  They sailed into the sky, hung there for an astounding thirty seconds before landing in a violent splatter.  It felt like discounted murder without any of the consequences.

            When we ran out of potatoes we used every other vegetable we could find—tomatoes and squash, zucchini, cabbage.  We moved onto solids out of necessity.  First it was soda cans, then soda bottles.  The shattered glass sizzled, hissing at us like pissed off snakes.

            Looking back I suppose those potatoes were something of a gateway drug because we got over them real quick, yet their minor thrill left us wanting more, a different fix that might kick-start some sedentary neuron in our brains.

            We went to the pet store and bought two litters of mice.  I can still recall their furious scratching in the bag behind my car seat.  Their breathing was husky.  I found it fascinating that they never squeaked because in every mouse story I’d ever read there always seemed to be a lot of squeaking or squealing.

            Barry’s house was a dilapidated cabin that his grandfather had built a hundred years ago.  It leaned eastward, toward the rising sun, and from a certain angle you might have thought it had lost balance and was about to fall into the water.

            Chain Lake was no more than two blocks long and maybe one block wide on the other side.  I never thought we’d hit the guy’s house.  If I’d believed we could, if Barry had, we would have tried first thing.

            As it happened, the third mouse landed on the old geezer’s roof.  It surprised me how dull and empty the resonance of death could be—nothing but a thud and short skid sound.  It depressed and disappointed me.  I thought of my parents and wondered if they had gasped or screamed before that car hit them.  

            We shot two mice at a time.  I don’t know what I expected.  Perhaps I thought of my cartoon watching days and that they’d clasp their furry paws like a varmint couple desperate to enter the afterlife conjoined.  But they just flew apart and landed apart, two separate thud-and-skid noises.

            Uncle Rory says things happen.  It can be fate or it can be God’s busy.  When I broke his windshield with a bat he didn’t seem such a believer in fate.  Or the time I lit the drapes on fire and almost burned the house down.  His notion of fate was dropping me off at juvie and letting some other sucker adopt me.  When they arrest you they put your wrists in handcuffs.  Feels like glass cutting into your skin.  Feels like chains and you feel like a slave or the very criminal you were meant to be.  Ha, so maybe that is fate.

            Across the lake, the old man came out of the house around the time we were nearly finished.  Barry took off, dust vapors rising up where he had been.

            I watched the guy sight me with his rifle, heard him yell, “One more time.  Go ahead.  I ain’t afraid to shoot.”

            It felt like someone had given me a belated birthday present.  I loaded the launcher, pulled the makeshift trigger, puffed out my chest and waited.

--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?”