--YOU MAKE ME HAPPY

…Last night I went to a reading given by Kim Barnes at Third Place Books in Ravenna.

Kim’s first book, a memoir, was short-listed for The Pulitzer Prize.

For her latest novel, she did a slide slow presentation, replete with old photographs that inspired her unique story about the Americon Corporation and Americans moving to Saudi Arabia to begin drilling oil in 1937.  It was utterly fascinating and the book ("In the Kingdom of Men") seems like it will be so, too.

I’m looking forward to reading it.

…It’s a blustery day here in Seattle.  (“Blustery” always makes me think of Winnie the Poo and Piglet, and my daughter’s love of all those characters created by A.A. Milne as bedtime stories for his children.)

What are you doing today?

…Here are some of the latest Facebook clips, unedited, for your reading enjoyment:

-Someone smarter than me needs to invent a social media breathalyzer because sometimes when people drink they say dumbshit on the Internet.

-Silence is loud.

-I have the biggest, ugliest zit on my left cheek.

-My mom just got yelled at for biting a mask in a souvenir shop.

-My sister's school grades are very high. She's so different than I am. She got abused a lot less, though. It helps.

-Hello all you perverts and lovers. Do you use sex apps? Which ones are good? Lemme know!

-I'm slapping this to-do list right across its ugly face. And then I'm killing it. It will not exist by the end of tomorrow.

-Sorry I didn't cut deeper. You know my hands shake.

-You know what taking offense to everything equals? No sense of humor. Unequivocally, the people I know who take the greatest offense to things that myself or other people say have ZERO sense of humor.

-Lighten the fuck up.

-While I am on the road, if any of you (in the next 6 hours) want to steal any one of my boy friends starting with the letter "A" it is okay.

-I dreamt last night that Plath was my therapist, and she was over charging me.

-Play me a song, please.

-I wouldn't say I'm hypersexual. I'd just say, "I'm horny."

-Pale women who are never satisfied.

-For some reason, I love everyone today!

--YOU'RE EVERYONE'S FAVORITE.  I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT

  

…It’s so pretty outside that I almost want to cry.  Almost.

…What are your plans for the rest of the week?

When's the last time you laughed so hard you cried? 

The last time you skipped or played hopscotch? 

The last time you said, "I love you" and meant it?

The last time you cried at a movie?

The last time you told someone how much they meant to you, and why?

The last time you read poetry?

The last time you said you were sorry?

The last time you told someone a dirty little secret about yourself and didn't get judged because of it?

When was the last time you saw an ex-lover at the airport?

The last funeral you went to?

The last infant you held and cooed over?

The last time you looked at yourself naked in the mirror and thought, Not bad actually.?

The last time you got so drunk you said things you can't remember?

The last time a security guard broke up your embrace?

The last time you wrote a love letter?

The last time you thought: I don't want this to ever end.?

The last time you made a new friend of the same sex?

The last time you went to an art museum?

The last time you felt an authentic sense of wonder?

When was the last time you went shopping with someone you adored and watched them try on different outfits?

The last time you saw something burning?

The last time you asked God for something you didn't really deserve or want anyway?

The last time you said, "Screw it.  I'm giving up."?

The last time you felt proud but didn't have anyone to tell?

The last time you sought out a sunset and marveled at the way it casts colors all around it?

The last time you ate twice as much as you should have?

The last time you watched a great film?   A great love story?  A heart-punching tragedy?

The last time you couldn't wait for it to be tomorrow?

The last time you felt really lucky to be alive and on this earth?

The last time someone gave you a genuine compliment that made you feel valuable?

The last time you thought about the one that got away?

The last time you were really pissed at someone, and were right to be?

The last time you admitted you were lonely?

The last time you said, "I don't think I'll ever feel this way about another person as long as I live."?

Why do you think I'm such a curious boy?

--TAKE ME OUT WITH THE WASTE

…This morning there’s a semi-thick layer of fog on the lake, as if God sneezed and the sneeze froze into something resembling cement-colored air.

There are already three fishing boats lurking in the hazy soup.  Like an old song that triggers a memory, I remember standing before the Hong Kong harbor in awe, age 24, high rise after high rise shouldering me from behind, the air oppressively humid and profuse with a stew of odors—brine, fish, car exhaust, persimmon—while tinny transistor radios played stutter-stop songs with harpsichords and reedy-voiced Cantonese singers wailing as if at a wake.

It’s beautiful, all of this—the actual and the remembered.

I wish you could see it.

…"We are all refugees from our childhoods.  As so we turn, among other things, to stories." Mohsin Hamid

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." Albert Einstein

"We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind with a tender heart." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Our injuries are our gifts." Kate Cantrill

"Don't get too lost in your emotions today. While you can definitely get swept up in your feelings, you'd be better off doing something that makes you feel grounded. That could be as simple as picking a flower, sitting down and consciously breathing, or savoring a cup of lavender-infused green tea. Indulge in a few sensual delights to bring yourself back down to earth." -Alison Burkhart

--DO YOU EVER THINK OF ME?

…Happy Easter Weekend.  What are your plans?

In a couple of hours there will be 30+ people here.  The sun is up, the sky is clear and already there are half a dozen boats on the lake.

These are the times when Seattle is at its best.

…The new GI Joe movie is out.  Why exactly do we need a new GI Joe movie?  I understand different people have different tastes, but GI Joe, really?

…I started reading “How To Get Filthy Rich In Asia” by Mohsin Hamid.  It’s an awful title, but works once you get into the novel.  Stylistically, I’ve never read anything like it.  It’s quite a feat to have that fresh of a voice in a world where we have millions of writers and have had tens of millions more.

I’ve read all his books, “Moth Smoke” being one of my favorite ever.

…Here are some thoughts to ponder:

“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.” Sylvia Plath

"Without love, all things wither." Cynthia Reeser

"A man is only as good as what he loves." Saul Bellow

"But at that moment, sitting there in front of his tidy desk, he was vaguely nagged by the memory of a poem he’d wanted to write that morning, and there was that other poem he hadn’t gotten back to. … What can be said for a man who chooses to blab on the phone all day, or else write stupid letters while he lets his poems go unattended and uncared for, abandoned – or worse, unattempted. This man doesn’t deserve poems and they shouldn’t be given to him in any form. His poems, should he ever produce any more, ought to be eaten by mice." Raymond Carver

"I would rather die of passion than boredom." Van Gogh

"And you learned that wherever you take your stand, your back is turned on something else." Sam Pink

"Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush." - Wallace Stevens

"Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It's hard to be mad at someone when you're right in the middle or fucking them." Kristen Young

"What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard

times bravely and cheerfully." Charles Cherbuliez

--IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT I REMEMBER MOST

…Yesterday I finished two books almost simultaneously: “Why We Never Talk About Sugar,” by Aubrey Hirsch, and “I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It”, by Sam Pink.

Though they are of similar length, the two could not have been more different.

Hirsch’s stories are fully-formed capsules of broke-down relationships, heavy on narrative so that the reader is able to slip inside each character’s situation (plight, usually).  Hirsch seems to know a lot about a lot of things-from hardware stores to South Korean academics, to Cancer, MS, the atom bomb, and physics.  She knows a great deal about physics.

In all her pieces she lays her heart bare, but with truth and bravery, and sans melodramatics.  She writes with an uncommon authority on subject matters that are quite diverse (see above) and with such command that it makes the reader feel as if the author has lived dozens and dozens of different lives.

Some of these stories will break your heart, others will tug on it hard, but all of them will transport you the way the very best writing does.

…Pink’s writings, on the other hand, are like fists to the face.  On the back flap jacket, the publisher has aptly called this book “The Bible of Bad Feelings.”  If Radiohead’s song, “Creep” were a book, it would be this one.

Pink’s writing is cryptic, new-age psalms, mostly laced with bitter acrimony and self-loathing, or the loathing of others:

           - “There are too many emotions.  But I really only feel one, and it’s, “I would kiss you goodnight except I’m allergic to assholes.”

            -“And your opinion never bruises me, it tickles.”

            -“All my fingers are criminals.”

            -“Each new relationship is made of cotton and I am a bee that is on fire, lost and ready to land.”

            -“I’m so great it hurts.”

            -“I’m looking for someone to spend time with.  But I can’t afford too many hellos.”

            -“Sometimes you just have to relieve something of its surroundings for it to die.”

            -“You are everything you hide.”

            -“Whoever runs my brain is doing a shitty job.”

            -“I should take a picture of myself to make sure I am real today.  I should make sure.”

Sometimes these snippets go on rapid-fire, for pages and pages, like a Gatling gun spraying verbal bullets, but almost always hitting their mark.

It’s a book not for the faint of heart, a book not for those who like more traditional writing, but some of the phrasings are especially clever.  I know I did a lot of underlining.

And Pink is a master of coming up with intriguing titles, such as these:

“Today I Hope a Bus Accidentally Kills Me”

“I Am the Best Thing Ever Introduced to the Material World”

“Mannequins That Sweat Black Ink and Never Have Any Fun”

“I Envy the Moon Because It Never Has to Face the Day”

“Most People Are Not As Good As Me”

“Help Me”

“Selfish Asshole”

“Voluntary Death”

“Culture is Stupid”

“Tomorrow is on Fire and I Am Very Young”

“Genital Mutilation”

“I Am Going to Jump-Kick Your Face and Then Kiss It”

“I Don’t Know Anything or Care About Anything and I Should Probably Just Sit in a Folding Chair and Die”

“Ugandan Hooker”

“Hold Hands with Someone Who Hates You”

“I Would Feel Better on Earth without You Here”

“I Smash My Smile against Yours”

“I Am a Champion and You Are the Echo of My Last Breath”

“I Am a Lawnmower”

“I Love You, You Shithead”…

And so on…

--THE THING IS, I DON'T WANT TO DISAPPOINT YOU

 …How’s your week starting out?

…For some reason the post I put up yesterday disappeared into the internet ether.  That’s a tad frustrating, but it was probably something I did or didn’t do on my end.

I’m pretty sure it was the most interesting post in the history of blog posts.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

…So let’s just ponder a few of these things instead:

"Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated--the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived--is literature." Proust

-"Sometimes people have to find new ways to love each other."

-"I get lost in my own metaphors."

-"We spend so much energy being strong for each other that we can't talk anymore about things that make us weak."-- Aubrey Hirsch, "Why We Never Talk About Sugar"

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Walt Disney

"Male friendship isn't about the nagging wife.  It's about the nagging self."

"Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself." André Gide

"There are friends for all seasons.  They can also succeed.  The who do have a way of making us try harder."  Andrew O'Hagan

"I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve." Montaigne

"It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens." Woody Allen

"Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly." Robert Schuller

"God made us family but Prozac made us friends." Ryan Meeks

--I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT YOU

…Hey, Weekend, but aren’t you a pretty thing?  I think you are.

…The Hugo House event on Thursday was quite fun.  I got to Capital Hill early and ate at my favorite Asian place, “Boom” and sipped wine and people watched, which is an especially fun thing to do.

There are many, many interesting-looking people on Capital Hill.  If you’re not interesting-looking, you stand out as a fraud and foreigner.

Anyway, at the reading I got to hear and meet some fabulous female writers as it was Ladies Night.  Afterward, they opened it up for us males and I read and was probably the least nervous I’ve ever been.

I read something I’d written the day before.  I hope you like it.

                                                                 Reservations

            Nothing fell from the sky and no one got murdered.  Nothing even that remotely dramatic happened, yet, one Sunday, Aunt Ginny stopped leaving her house, and wouldn’t even open the door. 

            At first, it was just for a few days.  Then weeks.  Then months.  A year.  More…

            Aunt Ginny had been my favorite relative because she was the only woman I knew with green eyes.  They looked like lime Kool-Aid with butterscotch sprockets sunk down in her irises.  Even though I was a young boy, she liked to listen to anything I had to say, all of my preposterous  lies about exciting events that hadn’t really happened and could never really happen to a feckless, friendless, dullard such as me.

            But I was the one to fetch her groceries and dry cleaning.  I was the one who would visit and tell her what the world had done, even though she had the nightly news as a resource.

            I never asked her why she wouldn’t leave the house and I was not like the others who came with casseroles, inspirational quotes and Tony Robbins books, hoping these would conjure up enough latent confidence in Aunt Ginny to propel her off the porch, down the uneven paver stones of her front yard, toward the sidewalk and greater humanity. 

            But one day she brought up the subject.  “I’m going to die here.  Alone,” she said, and I told her that was impossible because I’d be by to visit.

            She tousled my hair and said, “It’s not like I’m afraid of anything.”

            I kept my face a blank slate.

            “You don’t believe me?”

            “Sure I do,” I said.

            “Awe, come here and give ol’ Aunt Gin a hug,” she said, holding out her arms which had flabby meat drooping down the backs of her biceps.

            I listened to her chest, as if it were a conch shell reprising sea sounds.  At first, her heart muscle thudded, something dull and echoey, like a lonesome cave where noises go to die.  Then there was nothing at all, just the end of things and the blunt finish of Aunt Gin.

            I’m married now.  There are kids, a dog, two turtles and a hamster named Getty Lee.  My existence is tidy and easily explained, like heart failure, glaucoma or why coffee is so important.

            I know I shouldn’t admit this, but I was in love with Aunt Ginny and I admired the hell out of her.  She’d carved out a humble sphere for herself, a radius of harmony, and that was all she needed.  Without telling me as much, Aunt Ginny understood that life can be fully-formed by imagination alone, and that everything else is ordinary, if not also second-rate.

            It’s Date Night Tuesday, a thing our counselor suggested as a means toward reconciliation.  The babysitter’s here and my wife is dolled-up and shiny as a seal, holding her phone with GPS directions to the new restaurant holding our reservation.

            When my wife asks me if I’m ready to go, I feel my legs hitch and steel themselves.  There’s a moment’s hesitation, but then I nod without saying a thing.