I Would Have Been a Locksmith

Catching My Breath

2009-12-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

I keep my blog because I must not want to take it down. Which means I must want to update it. Let’s see what gifties December brings, shall we? Maybe a bit of year in review, so we can catch up with each other. Yes, that sounds nice.

So, in 2009, where did I go? A variety of places for a bunch of reasons this year, all within the country - work trips, road trips, camping trips. Sounds like a lot of trips, but it wasn’t, really.

Portland reigns, as it were. The rocky beaches, the cold Pacific, funky, wonderful city I could be perfectly happy to be in. Well, if not for the incessant rain.

Trips to the red rocks = sustenance. Girls weekend in Sedona. Camping with the fam in Captiol Reef. Makes me whole to breath in the dry air, smell the sage brush, find red earth in the car for weeks after a camping trip. Always always.

And next year holds much in the way of trip-promise. The kids are going to Norway with their grandparents, so C and I are planning an away, too. No wheres or whats figured out just yet. Australia? Italy? Spain? Yes, please.

Even more, it felt good to settle in, unpack, be home. This house has its quirks, but each time I step outside into my neighborhood, those oddities fall away. Home.

Of Note, As of Late

2009-08-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

There are two cars in the garage - not a minor miracle, my friends.
Portland is a city it would be easy to fall in love with.
Loved Meryl Streep in "Julie & Julia," as I knew I would.
I have long been an Adam Sandler fan, and like most of his movies, although I am usually annoyed by them.
It's not possible that my son will be thirteen tomorrow, but it is so.
You should buy and read "Best of the Web 2009" by Dzanc Books, and look for my essay, "Why."
Couldn't be happier to be....home. Feel more like myself than I have in years. Wanna go for a hike?
Looking forward to Atlanta and being in the office for a bit. Working remotely is a fine, wonderful gig, but I miss the camaraderie of an office.
Apricot trees are yummy, messy business.
Soon, there will be doors on the cupboards.

All in all, to quote a friend, things are very not bad around here.

What the Quiz Tells You about Who You Tell Yourself You Are

2009-04-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

The minute was garden variety.
A minute in a garden?
No. Any garden. Any minute.
Workaday.
No remarkable thing.
Nothing you could point to years later.
A moonly child
Just after the whistling.
Brown fog, winter noon
Clangy bouys, beating lighthouses:
Waiting to be, become, be becoming.
Athena with super speed
in Seattle during the renaissance
John Lennon, Patti Smith, Starry Night
Or something like it.

Bare Lilac Bushes down the Street See the Monument’s in the Making

2009-04-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

Way into April, snow on snow
& the orange sun keeps oozing

Working through the doom-gloomed,
unbuttoned, junk season - Longwinterlatespring

Enough of the down-dirty,
hijinks from the sundial, jittery jays

Here, I’m watching homebound war dead for the first time
(why? why didn’t I realize?)

Here, I’m sifting through old photos with older friends
Who swear they were exed out of the frame

Though water levels rise, skiers powder on
Lilacs aspire to their own blooming

Eyeing that insincere storm light
& acting in spite of it

They know: We’ve outlived larger disasters -
coughing up a nail

Plane crash on the water
A disappearing lattice

They’ll fill in anyway
The wind blows anyway

Lilacs, we’re lumbering on
Believing in good brew, drops of lemon

Honey tongues, the queen’s clusters
The nothing that lasts.

The Problem with Turning Left Stale Yellow Light Pitch Dark on Astronomy Lane

2009-04-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

Oh honey,
I’ve feigned other, bitter rides
same places I should have been
no any other way to go
latituding up that drive

Asphalt night
astrids unbloomed
asterisms hanging on

Black ice arises all around
mercury meets the pleiades
the moon occulting venus
its enclave of closed key neighbors

Your breath in my window
vascular, visceral, vociferous
what I was winding for

Begins

2009-04-01T22:06:00.001-07:00

Might

Want to live on an island
honey
comb my hair with sea
shells en twine to wind
Unwind the day with wire-
y strips of bark
Juice from a man
go where the day
ze go blaze through the h(ours)
And it all flow(er)s (over)

Might

Ask you, tele me
want you want to
take me take you
where no one else
has there.

Well, Tell Me

2009-03-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

What we got wrong about the stars is what haven’t we got wrong isn’t it shouldn’t that be the question, the question itself wrong and the night also wrong, wrought, rung out, rung through, through so much more than this: the question, you ask, where left meets right, right around to that nothing followed nothing. The stars don’t question for us, no ring nor rung, busy in the business of energy, bang and boom, birthing and dying, all that. A want - the question to be the thing - and it hasn’t anyone, anywhere else to go.

All Systems Go!

2009-01-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

If early reports have it right, Obama has plans to close Gitmo, get rid of "don't ask, don't tell," ensure greater accountability for bailout dollars, conduct the White House in a more open, transparent fashion and begin to mend US relations with other countries. Hats off to a man who looks to be hitting the ground running, and doing the right things. I knew way back when Oprah didn't endorse Hillary that she wasn't going to be our next prez, but until then I hadn't really heard of this Obama dude. Don't envy him the multiple fixes that need to be fixed, all at once, all incredibly important, but hey, that's why I wouldn't run for office.

And why, oh why, is there a goodbye speech that will interrupt my favorite prime-time viewing (Grey's Anatomy)? No long goodbyes, please!

This Evening's Path to Happiness

2009-01-08T18:43:00.000-08:00

The weather warmed up today, the snow on the roads and walks has melted, and work's amazingly smooth going these first few days of the year.

Tonight: A warm cozy fireplace, a rocking chair, a knitted blanket - begun by my dear grandma and finished by her sweet sister (was unpacking...something...the other day and came across it, that was a fine find), two children dutifully homeworking, a dog with her big fat sighs, and (more than one) cup of this fine tea.

I look forward to finding the home we need to be in, planning travels to destinations north and southwest, and taking in every fine moment as it comes my way. Every one.

Channeling the Inner Fun Pig

2009-01-08T06:24:00.000-08:00

The funniest billboard I ever saw....several years ago heading into Moab, the sign "Welcome Fun Pigs." Fun pigs being those humans who like extreme sports, hard play, getting dirty in the red rocks, all that. I'm a moderate swine when it comes to fun (tho who doesn't love a bit of debauchery and decadence, but that's a different kind of fun we're talking 'bout), but chatting with my friends last night about training for mountain biking in the spring gave me much to look forward to. We'll just have to see how far my li'l blue Rose (no shocks, no suspension) will take me.

In the meantime, there's all this wondrous snow and such happiness.

The Trees Have it

2009-01-06T17:44:00.000-08:00

"Years before I'd given away an antique postcard that said, beneath a drawing of a pine branch:
For thee I pine.
For thee I blossom.

(I regretted giving away that postcard almost immediately. The recipient didn't deserve it. Me in a nutshell: I don't regret a single instance of giving away my heart, but a novelty postcard with a really good pun? I still wish I hadn't."

From "An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Elizabeth McCracken

----
Who doesn't love a play of words: a great pun; a half or new word left when neon letters of a sign burn out; misheard lyrics (even now I hear "Don't make a chrome be a crime" instead of "Don't make a grown man cry" in that Rolling Stones song and giggle; the misspeak of children...Toys Or Else, anyone?

On the Shelf

2009-01-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

Books I Read Over the Holidays

My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath
The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

Books I Started to Read at Least Twice and Stopped (You'll be no more surprised than I was)

Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

I've gone through a looooong period of disinterest in reading novels, over a year now, which is unprecedented for me. Think that's turning around a bit, but I'm still finding creative nonfiction to be what keeps me reading. Still, the only novel I've read recently is a young adults book, Horvath's, and it was a lovely read, but fast and first person and confessional, and it felt like reading nonfiction.

Williams is long and far one of my favorite authors, I just need to be in the right space to read her complex, lovely, and often sad work. Will try that again soon.

While I'm not setting myself up for any failed resolutions, I aim to see what I can do about this, if, in fact, I need to DO anything, because it'll likely resolve itself, in this, the new year.

Easy in

2008-12-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

Hope your holidays filled you up, with good food, friends and family, little gifties you'd been hoping for, and more. Cheers to you for what is new, what is gone, what you've given, given away, given up on or let go this looooong year. Let's have a gentle year, shall we?

Winter Trees

by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

The Long, Long Road Home

2008-12-16T06:11:00.000-08:00

The new year will mean we've gone as long as we can go without our OWN home. Hard to not be a homeowner after being so for fifteen years, and ready for that temporariness that renting brings to end.

Discovering more details about what we'll want in our next house, now that the snows have gone on for continuous days...

A short driveway
A short driveway with a small or non-existent incline
Two-car garage, one side for the SUV and one to hold Gunther, who ain't a snowbird, oh no he's not, my little high maintenance car that feels like Christmas every time I get in it. Luckily Gunther is small, so we can store lots of crap in front of him, too, cuz that's another thing on the list.
Good storage space
The obligatory and necessary space with two offices away from one another and bedrooms for the kids, and a good basement where kids can be herded toward

There's more, and fortunate we are to think we can make all that happen, and in a neighborhood CLOSE IN. Have I mentioned how much I love living downtown? All the culcha is nearby, A. takes drama classes at the university, we play tennis at the park, and well, the city's heart and I have an understanding. I am happiest now and here. Grateful beyond measure of the many, many inches of snow on the lawn, and now piling up on that endless driveway.

Give me a check in, how are you holding up?

We're Talking' Big, Big Moon

2008-12-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

There's a big full moon tonight.

Quick Peek at a Winter Constellation

2008-12-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

Here now and not for long...kick me a little feedback on this indie-music inspired jig.

Triangulum
Again, December surrounds us
Decembering around us. Dear,
here, deer, snow stars and a sky so high and crisp
my lungs bellow, below.

How hard it is
to be starry and bright
knight of my night, so up so light
and dense, so all and once I
wasn’t pretending
those wishes
were carbuncles, osprey, the love, my love
the sound that weighs, waves me,

what about that, really?

Listen:
happens all around us
we happen in an instant
we ache the close distance
we do, don’t we do?

Ambivalent light & o what a night, my
Tea and a biscuit, we’ll skip all those dishes,
save for tomorrow
a lot and its sorry
leftovers, a day’s what you get.
& now, tossed
through the tumble, a skip and a stumble

& an all-berry crumble
with a bit of a bite of whipped cream.

Where I'm at

2008-11-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

Ski resorts are opening, and holiday plans are coming together. Work continues to take all plus some, but I really like what I do and work with great people, so that's not a bad thing at all.

Have picked up tennis and am perfecting my mean leftie backhand....look out. (No really, look out! I have a history of inadvertantly injuring others when I learn a sport. I say it's because we lefties are forever working in a system designed opposite of how we are, but really, I'm quite ambidextrous and am really just a klutz.)

The afterglow/aftermath of the election is what it is - happy on a national level - and yet the politics affecting my geography are troubling. Utah as a state, its industries, shouldn't suffer the boycott of the Prop 8 backlash, though you know I'm on the side of equality here.

I want people to understand the vibrant, liberal, arty, accepting community inside the inside of here that will be harmed if the whole place is boycotted. We try from the innards, to make inroads. We have a vital, thriving, progressive core here. That's why I wanted to come back to the place I left. I love that in spite of/because of other goings on, Salt Lake has a wild, lovely heart.

Frick! This is the State We Chose to Move Back to

2008-11-03T15:51:00.000-08:00

Sigh, as Utah natives, we knew their would be weirdnesses to get used to once we came back to live here. The fact that one can't buy alcohol on election day, a weirdness, especially when alcohol on election day might be just the thing.

But the whole business of getting involved in California's Prop 8 decision? NO. NO. NO. Not even our geography, people, why do you care who marries whom? Ugh. Simply wrong. Simply intolerable. Pull the mini-vans with the eight screaming kids out of the way so people can live how they chose, and with the same rights. Damn.

Crank it up!

2008-10-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

Heavy on the crank today, too much work this week. Plus my life exists between two time zones (I work East Coast hours still) and it confuses me sometimes. Today I went to early vote...TOO EARLY. The polls weren't open.

At least when I had my car inspected and emissions-tested it passed, though they do advise some work (of course). Got locked out of the house, too. Think I'll spit some nails. Petty, little nails. That might please me. Clearly, I need to go workout.

P.S.

2008-10-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

I have found and taken a Pilates class. I will not say no, or yeah, I don't think so. I will not DELETE. I will go and go and go again. And you?

Another Best Weekend and Moving on

2008-10-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to my wonderful host in Ohio last weekend. She of the lovely home and great sense of style, who knew all the funky best places to go and with whom I found tea heaven. And a lambic in a bar....an unheard of thing! My lovelies loved their gifties, dearie, and the all of us look forward to your Thanksgiving visit. Pineapple martinis? Mojitos the right way? All possible.

To the readers still checking in here, to anyone who wondered where, oh where, Words on Walls has been, we have decided to reinvent, to shift, to focus other ways. Like the novel I started a dozen years ago and now know I can't write, be, do, that story now that I'm here, where I am now, the online literary fresco was for us, the avenue we wanted to take when we took it. There are others to be, go, do, shoo be do be do. WOW thanks everyone who contributed over the years. Stay tuned.

Next Stop! Moab, Arches, Canyonlands

2008-10-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Back home with some spicy tea, sitting in front of the t.v., the internets, and half a dozen catalogs and magazines that need my perusing. It's hard to single out the best part of this weekend's camping trip, so a list will have to do.

The wind turbines at the base of Spanish Fork Canyon. Thirty years from now I'll mock myself for thinking them beautiful. But today, that wind corridor was sheer loveliness.
The cattle drive coming around the canyon bend, cows blending with road construction equipment, the construction workers having given up any hope of fixing that bridge that day.
Didn't see the broken arch but took a last minute jaunt to Mesa Arch and found views beyond the beyond
The morning at Delicate Arch and the joyous rock hopping hike it took to get there.
The white-tailed deer blocking the path to the restrooms Sunday morning.
Deadhorse Point.
The new double sleeping bag that held up to the wind and cold.
Scoring Terry Tempest Williams' new book at the awesome Arches Book Co.
Stars and shooting stars and Milky Way.
Three whole days of being checked out. No news. No email. No cell phone. (Tell me that's not the best of all. I highly recommend it.)

Believe it or Slurp it!

2008-10-15T20:04:00.001-07:00

Yes it was 29 degrees outside. Yes we did have snow last weekend. Yes there was enough of it to build two snowmen in our front yard. Even if the kids did lift some snow from the lawn of the store across the street to build them. Yes I realize it was only the beginning of October. Yes I do.

How to Bring on Another Year

2008-10-08T19:33:00.000-07:00

Celebrate with one of the most amazing dinners of your life (in the top two, really). Include fabulous views of the leaves churning their way through the season. Top it off with (not your grandmother's) pineapple upside down cake with rhubarb ice cream. Do that here.

Go tinker with the yuppy camping gadgets here. Try to figure out why you really need something like this. (Don't think anybody does.)

Go home and wrestle with the command key, not the control key. Do please forget about Vista. Do please forget those files that are trapped on a sad, dead hard drive. (What? I backed up before we moved!)

Enjoy the yummies the children brought to you, searched for, paid for from their own allowances (triple the sweetness, that!)

Plan a trip with sky miles. Plan a camping trip to see the broken arch.

Enjoy the fall that crashed in just for your day. Love that you are home (HOME!) this, your favorite season. Those leaves! The crisp night air. The smell of the heater kicking on.

Call it thirty thirteen. That's what it is.

The Year of Ridiculous Reading

2008-10-07T18:33:00.001-07:00

It's true. Since completing my MFA, I have read trash, drivel, dreck, crap, and metric tons of ridiculous magazines. There has been a foray into some great creative nonfiction, and that's been a nice change, a smidge of a creative boost.

The rest? ESCAPE ~ from the chaos of moving, from the workaday world, from anything requiring my full attention. I've even read those damned vampire books. Every page exasperating. Doesn't seem like my mood is changing anytime soon. Ugh.

Whacha been reading?

Now There's Some Middle Schoolers to Be Proud of

2008-09-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

That bunch of them, after school, who walked into the Obama headquarters and asked for batches of stickers...my son already having done so and shared among his classmates earlier this week. He, who also loves a good DISCUSSION of the issues. Loves to hear his grandfather talk history and politics. On his way to becoming a busy citizen with much to do for the world. These are today's middle schoolers. There's much to hope for.

Shall I Be Brief?

2008-09-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

Me. Here. Read.

I Like to Stay Away From Political Fray...BUT

2008-09-10T14:53:00.001-07:00

when I hear the media jump all over the idea that women will vote McCain-Palin because Palin is a girl, and men will vote McCain-Palin because Palin is cute, it makes me roll my eyes. Aren't we a country that votes on issues? Aren't we smarter than the hormones that overtook us in eighth grade? Please pass me a note at my locker and tell me we are!

Oh, and that whole lipstick/pig thing today? Puh-lease. Shame on anyone who covered it as news. Stick to the issues.

And while I agree, completely, and would like to be able to do what Ron Paul suggests, this ain't the year. Sigh.

Check out Brevity Next Week

2008-09-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Brevity. I'll be there.

5 Months 100 Words 2000 Miles Away

2008-09-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

House on market, kids finished school, purged/packed, packed/purged, dog sick, received promotion, C. became remote employee too, loaded stuff, threw away stuff, gave away stuff, offer on house, shipped cars, left on jet plane, arrived in rainstorm, got our cars, found place to rent for now, offer went away, more offers, bad prices, happy reunions, dog sick again, an offer we could live with, cat ran away, kids started school, closed on house during TS Hanna, incredible relief, horseback riding, hiking, bike riding, and rafting in Jackson, 15 years of bliss this week.

Not much, you?

Today's six-word summary a deux

2008-04-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Pick your fav:

Tiny coat rack.
Pummeled with coats.

-or-

I love roundabouts.
Don't even ask.

Here's What I Know

2008-04-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

Before long, I will fly west where hiking and camping and red rocks and granite rocks and brazilliant sunsets await and friends upon friends will join me for margarita nights at the Rio Grande Cafe. Oh, I have waited so long. So, so long. River-filling long.

Back home in some ways feels backward, but then again. I've always known what it means to be outside the within in my community, if not my geography. So much that it's what I know and know how to do well. There's that wildhearted citykins that makes it all okay. I'll take my Euro-trash hair color and my lion-sun tat and my live it your own way and make a great go of it. Because of and in spite of. You know what I mean.

And with that, calling you writers who are green -- so many of you out there, river-saving, Prius-driving, xeriscaping, do-the-right-thing writers I know and love (or at least recall fondly) -- Delta Sky Magazine is holding a green fiction contest,. Why not?

Ridiculous? Sublime?

2008-04-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

Chessboxing.

Yes, that's right. Box. Then chess. Then box again. Then chess again. Make a go of eleven rounds, or until you're KOd or checkmated. If you're of hearty/hardy stock, you might even try this blindfolded. Go figure.

One appreciative and indulged chickie

2008-02-14T08:57:00.000-08:00

The movie "Chocolat" plays while I work and indulge today in a bite (okay bites) of Swiss chocolate that is called intense and is all dark and orange delight. Its taste conjures up the flavor of one of the two types of cake at C. and my wedding a lot of damn years ago (a term of affection and appreciation for the endurance of our bliss).

This cake, this no-flour cake made with 90(!) eggs, made by the hands of a friend, decorated in an exquisite basket weave frosting by another, and decorated with calla lillies by none other than that sweet Intagliod Up in Blue, = symbol of all that is great in my life.

Later today I will listen to music on my new docking station for my iPod and later this week I will send my dear C. off to out-of-town for a guy's weekend of freedom and debauchery, and tonight I will enjoy his luscious cooking. And tonight I will laugh off any of the day's troubles with my two lovelies who are growing so far, so fast. And any day, I know I am one fortunate girl.

Who knew a piece of chocolate could hold all that? Here, take one.

Back in the Neighborhood

2008-02-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

Bucket rain. My neighbor's blooming orchids. Rumble thunder. Her newly discovered fascination with The Beatles. His return to basketball - swoosh! The fresh paint in the master bedroom, and it's buttery love against the curtains. The mildew that finally left the shower curtain after three washings. The freshly cleaned tile grout. (White grout? Whose idea? I'm not a fan.) The grout dye that saved my sanity. Appreciative, talented coworkers. Interesting work. The dwindling list. Knowing June is less than four months away. Westward, ho! The pigeons that came back to nest, and my not-so-sorry plants that survived in the wall planter, leaving the pigeons homeless. The dahlias ringing the bottlebrush tree out front. The fact that I haven't neglected those flowers into oblivion. The bucket rain.

She's a Brick Ow

2007-11-06T16:06:00.000-08:00

Add this to the list of mis-heard lyrics, and the best chuckle of the day, courtesy of my children.

Now you'll hear it this way, too. Try not to.

Every Now & Then You Discover Something Completely New

2007-10-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

I made a discovery that makes the hedonist-in-my-head-who-thinks-she-runs-things flop over into a chocolate-induced coma:

I. Don't. Hate. Running.

Oh, honeydrip, it gets better.

I'm thinking of training for a 5k race.

Many of you know my hedonist's view on running: she will take up running when she sees a smiling jogger. In her years, she's not once seen such a site. Despite a former walking partner who swears she has smiled and run AT THE SAME TIME. My hedonist believes she has a better chance of witnessing the second coming of someone else's lord before she will spy a smiler pounding the asphalt.

Even so, I'm considering the post-run mood lift. The lack of pain in my legs when I DO exercise regularly. (An odd thing that's happened over the past year....my legs ache at night if I haven't taken them out for a stroll.) The way I DON'T worry over what doesn't matter. (The editor in my head has the means to slam the lid on that stuff -ahhhh- when I've given her the right endorphins.)

So I've printed a training schedule. I've pinpointed a race eight weeks out. I've been exercising every day for a while now. I am making progress.

So, while the hedonist has her panties in a bunch, she, the editor, and all these other people in my head and I are almost in training. Happy birthday to me.

Just in, Gifts from the Universe

2007-09-24T11:52:00.001-07:00

Snow in the mountains (farfaraway mountains, but still, it brings the hope of the change of seasons)
Phone calls and dinners that pull me to center
And best, Sophia's story, "Sundress", originally published in Glimmer Train, is a notable 100 story in Best American Short Stories 2007

What Didn't I Learn from Grace Paley?

2007-08-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

For all of her sharp dialogue, her brave and not-so-brave wise-acre characters, her musical prose you HAVE to read aloud, through Grace Paley's work, I learned much of what I know about writing fiction. Mostly, I know that every time I read one of her stories, I will twinge with a desire to get at, to know what goes on in her cranium to make stories that resonate so strongly with me.

Rest, peacefully.

Calling Writer/Readers

2007-08-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Email or post a comment if you're in the area and want to join a new reading group for Writer/Readers. Craft discussion about novels and short stories, dismantling the HOW. We'll meet once a month, rotate moderators. When you choose the book, you lead its discussion.

I'm in the midst of Ron Carlson's "Five Skies." Who's in with me?

What's Novel about That?

2007-08-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

Spend a few years writing a novel and you come up against a scary thing: you might outgrow the idea, the character, the interest in the events that brought you into the story in the first place. Won't be able to write THAT story anymore. When that happens, what does a writer do?

My solution has been to work on what's exciting me now, and let the dust mites settle in and make a thick layer on the pages of the story formerly known as Back Space. What's exciting me now is the revision of an old story that suffered for years from its overwrought pinnacle. (I can’t say climax or denouement without hooking myself to that nasty P-word that I don‘t use, but which means, the sequence of events within a story.)

After hearing some words of wisdom at my Thesis Defense with Cookies(tm) last month, I seriously considered pulling the story, which would’ve really hammered away at the page count and the repeating-character link that my shores up my short story collection. Then, a few nights ago, rudely awaken by 1)C’s snorey-snore fest and 2)a nasty ant bite (one of those little annoying bastards...ghost ants, I think they’re called) my brain gave in and got over its worry-stoning and offered up some answers.

Keep in mind, in these many diversions within this post, that revision and I have a complicated relationship. My iterative writing process serves up some nice, clean first drafts, and if I get to a third draft of something, I’m just as likely to abandon it as give it another shot. And I’m not particularly proud of that fact, but it is what it is, and I simply point it out for discussion. Part of the joy that is me. Goes along with the other quirks...like my fascination with Scandinavian-brand shoes, my need to front-face all labels in the cupboard, and my utter discombobulation when I’m not in the driver’s seat in a Florida lightingfest rainstorm.

So revision and I suffer our complicated relationship. But now, exciting progress on the revision front. To the sage who pointed out this short story’s trouble, I raise my glass of fruity, twice-fermented Belgian beer your way. I had been within this story's weeds (er...grave sites) too long to see the obvious.

And the other stuff that’s exciting me now is poetry, otherwise known as my first love. I’ll start a count down soon for my 88 poems project, but I’m shooting for an end-of-the-year wrap up to the first draft. If you see me, ask me about it to keep me on my toes, dern it.

Now about that novel. My orphaned orphan story. Abandoned, perhaps always left, forever cornered. Maybe always the story that I gnashed my novel-writing teeth over, wrote and rewrote, and finally gave up on. But also, the story that showed me how to story across so many pages and iterations and interests. Not a bad thing, Wart, not a bad thing at all.

Ten-dollar Words

2007-07-25T05:31:00.000-07:00

The word of the day is caducity \kuh-DOO-suh-tee\, noun, which has an interesting double meaning, the first, senility, and the second, the quality of being transitory or perishable. Now, we silly writers are supposed to have a lock on understanding the temporary condition of life, this stunning trade-off of mortality.

And me, I've been gone and nowhere, right here. For a little while. And when I'm gone and nowhere, like I get sometimes, sometimes I need to be just that. To close up, gather up some serenity and spark with new energy. And then I need to step away. And when I'm gone and nowhere and don't realize it, but realize I'm not quite here, I can always point to three things that are absent: 1. writing. 2. exercise. 3. music.

Though sometimes I forget this fact. (Guess that's where senility comes in?)

Still, I firmly believe that most situations can be reduced to their simplest terms, and ought to be. When I'm gone and nowhere, the simple things swing it back around.

Me and the big fat speakers in the living room (the best splurge of long-ago splurges...went in for a clothes dryer, came out with sound extraordinaire) have a date with Hercules, that large and summer constellation that's not so easily spotted.

Tell me what you're listening to. Tell me how you're listening.

Tagged: Eight Random Factoids about Me

2007-06-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

---

I have red light karma.
But I have awesome parking space karma.
You don't get both green light karma and parking space karma. It's the rule of the universe.
I am not entirely symmetrical.
I love it when neon signs start to burn out and leave funny new words behind.
I love musicals far too much for a normal human being. (Was just telling C. how much I like "Camelot," which remineds me of "Paint Your Wagon," another favorite. Can't explain it really. Although I do wish we lived in a universe where people spontaneously break out into song.)
Please don't break into song near me. Or I'll share my red light karma with you. Oh, it's that strong, my red light karma.
There are too many style guides I should be following in any given day (MLA, AMA, AP, modified whatever it is we use at work, etc.); therefore, I remember precisely nothing about employing style guides. Believe me, I'm not proud of this.

I'll have to tag people later. Eight is a lot.

Friday Eleven Goes to Twelve on Saturday

2007-06-23T06:54:00.001-07:00

Baby's Got Sauce - G. Love & Special Sauce
Drops of Jupiter -Train
Take Me to the Water - Nina Simone
Until the End - Norah Jones
Bartender - Regina Spektor
Cold Beverage - G. Love & Special Sauce
I Alone - Live
Fiery Gun Hand - Cardiacs
Creeping Up the Back Stairs - The Fratellis
Minority - Green Day
Fell On Black Days - Soundgarden
Guitar - Cake

Am I on Earth or Some Celestial Sphere?

2007-06-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

My last class of my MFA gig, and I'm revelling myself in some Edmund Spenser. Writing an explication of a section of my choosing, the proeme that begins Book V. The proeme is full of greek mythology and astronomy and I'm full up of some wonderfullness that reminds me why I gave my son a middle name in Spenser's honor (no, I don't mean Edmund.)

And you can't read Spenser without starting to think in iambic pentameter. Just an added bonus, would that we all thought in this meter.

Click! S'rainin'

2007-05-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Someone clicked a button and the rain turned on.

I Am

2007-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

You're Prufrock and Other Observations! by T.S. Eliot

Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic
and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people trying to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything, you've really heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee spoons.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Many is the Way to Move on from Joyce

2007-05-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

On the bedside table:

"Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov
"Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
"Madam" by Julianna Baggott

In my ear:

"Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson (The early critique: one step down from a "physics-for-poets" (as my physics major husband & brother-in-law would call it) version of his science. However, I think my son is old enough to find it an enjoyable read. I'll let you know if he takes to it.)

Close Enough

2007-05-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

In good news, I received copies of Cincinnati Review with my poem in it. I have poems up at Wicked Alice, and Pebble Lake Review also is taking a poem of mine for its August issue. That's a lot of celebratory martinis for me. (I'm on the run, links to be added later).

And in a WHEW sort of moment, I did not have to trouble the decision of the job in city A. I came close (b/c usually when I get an interview, I usually am offered the job) but they went with a local candidate. And I say I didn't have to suffer the decision, b/c C and I have decided city B is our goal, and city A is off the list, whenever we decide we're ready to leave here. City A is only a five-hour drive from there, so it's close enough.

I See

2007-05-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

Hard at work the other day, recovering from her paper-writing frenzy, a knock. At the door, an older couple, dressed in clothes too warm for the weather, Sundey-clothes, her grandpa would call them.

She looks at the book he's holding in his hands, and know what's coming.

"We'd like to share some thoughts with you," the older gentleman said, his wife smiling at her with a warm, let-me-bake-you-some-pie smile.

"No thanks," she says. Politely, but closing the discussion they undoubtedly had rehearsed and repeated a few times, working to accumulate some chits they could trade in on their own afterlife.

"I see," he said. Ugh. There it was. The patronly you're damned and your clothes are inappropriate for 10:30 in the morning voice. Okay maybe that last part he wasn't thinking, but she hadn't brushed her hair or changed out of her walking clothes by the time they ding-ed her doorbell. (Hadn't gone walking either. Remember she was hard at work at nothing and it was beautiful.)

I see. Ahem. Don't stand on her doorstep and fling that filthy, judge-y phrase. Don't be soliciting for that 10% offering + her tattered soul in her no solicitation neighborhood. If she wants some of that flavor of candy she knows where to find it.

Duct Tape and All, My Friend

2007-05-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

The Joyce paper is turned in, and tonight's post is brought to you by European greens, feta, tomato, cucumber, walnut, pecan, and sunflower seed salad with balsamic vinegar. Oh, and a very fine lemon drinky-poo.

That's all.

Just A Glimpse of How I Torture Myself

2007-04-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

I want a job in city A, I want to live in city B, and I want C. to chase his dream job opportunities right where we are, right where he already works. A, B, and C are hundreds to thousands of miles apart.

I hate the part of compromise that means nobody gets what they want.

What's Up Friday

2007-04-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

I'm more than twenty pages along in my Joyce paper, today has been a fruitful day, and I'm feeling overwhelmingly happy with the direction it's taken. (Still wish I had pursued the astronomy topic, but I'm glad to be closing in on the finishing line, so I move up, move on, move out.)
On my way out the door to walk away the heebie-jeebie creepy-crawlies of sitting in front of the laptop all the live long day. Stress! RELIEF!
The dog, BHH, is no longer sick. Why she is sick was sick is a gross story that you don't want me to share. Dogs sometimes do really yucky things, is all I will say.
Sad to see the Joyce class end. Though I've had many good suggestions on what to read next, I just can't imagine reading anything unless it's as amazing as Ulysses. I've been passionate about a fair measure of writers over the years, and I always have a stack of "to reads" by my bed, but I've never been clueless as to how to move on from a book. It sounds silly, but here it is, I am forever altered by that read. That's all.

Friday, Eleven

2007-04-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Desire -U2
Her Majesy -The Beatles
Hero - Regina Spektor
Weapon of Choice- Fatboy Slim
Open Letter - Living Colour
Closer to You - Dennis Quaid
One Love - Bob Marley and the Wailers
Vice President Fruitely - Eels
Mining for Gold - Cowboy Junkies
Two Step - Dave Matthews Band
Day Is Gone - Cardiacs

NaPoWriMo #(who knows)

2007-04-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

What's A Girl To Do Now?

2007-04-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

Say the girl has just closed the book on Ulysses. What next? What does she read next?

An easy book? Nah, too dreadful dry after the language roller coaster she has just exited.

A chewy read? Dunno, might induce heart failure, much too much to fathom.

But a girl needs something to look forward to this next week as she winds her way through a 25-page paper. Tell her, what next?

Lemon Drops & Wanderlust

2007-04-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

When it sets in, there are a thousand and twelve places she wants to be, here and here, there and there, too. Today it's the Musee d'Orsay, hanging with Vincent.

Good News Friday

2007-04-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

The English department and the local branch of the American Pen Women have awarded me a lovely scholarship. Let's celebrate. Let me buy you a virtual martini! (Is there such a thing?)

Friday Goes to Eleven

2007-04-20T06:20:00.000-07:00

Shuffle duffle on the iPod:

The Rockafeller Skank - Fatboy Slim
It's on the Rocks - The Donnas
Get Up Stand Up - Bob Marley & the Wailers
In a Sony -Tresspassers William
Cool Blue Reason - Cake
Walkin' After Midnight - Cowboy Junkies
She Hates Me - Puddle of Mudd
Breathe In - Frou Frou
Wake Up - Rage Against the Machine
True Dreams of Wichita - Soul Coughing
Uh-Merica - Regina Spektor

Mis Ta Ke

2007-04-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

Girl might have chosen the wrong topic for her Joyce paper. Girl knows Ulysses is full of astronomy reference. Girl, what are you thinking?

Several pages in to the paper, and girl has to think on her feet, now.

Maybe two short(er) papers? One on Aeolus and headlines and wordplay, one on the Joyce's stellar leanings. One to link with her fiction collection, the other to her poetry collection. B/C it all has to come back to what she's writing, afterall. Girl is like that.

Epitaph

2007-04-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt." -Kurt Vonnegut

Banana Layer Cake with Marscapone Frosting

2007-04-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

Baking desserts is my specialty.You want some of this just-wafting out of the oven goodness, I'm telling you.

Hey You! Come to Sophia's Reading

2007-04-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

Sophia's in town tomorrow and reading on Friday evening. Come, listen, enjoy.

Hedonism, Reading

2007-04-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

I just realized I haven't been sharing the love of my Joyce experience (and really, what can you call reading "Ulysses" but *an experience*?).

Shame on me.

Because, see, when it comes to reading, I'm a hedonist, on a perpetual search for that crash and rumble in my belly.

And while I'm not necessarily a patient hedonist, I am a persistent one. I don't give up on great books. I get freaking irritated if I can see a gimmick or the authorial hand trying to pull something over on me (and remember, I'm a doubter, so I'm quick to spot that stuff). I'm oh, so very impatient with that kind of passage. But I'll run wholeheartedly through the brambles and the briars if I can see the potential reward...the payoff, where I get to feel my organs explode.

Needles to say, this Joyce experience is filling up all the hedonistic soffets in my brain, plus a few other vital organs. Even the (heh) laborious Oxen of the Sun chapter. Still, I think I can see why "Ulysses" is the most-oft started-but-never-finished book in our canon. If you're hanging on by fingernails and get to Oxen of the Sun, let's just say, I know why you let it go and reached for the flash fiction anthology near your bed. And the wine glass.

And while C. was going to listen to his audio version of "Ulysses" while I read the (falling apart at the seams, it seems) revised Gabler version, C. bailed early. I can't say I blame him. I just don't think it's a book that can be absorbed without a tour guide or three (a wicked smart professor among them).

Still, the week's been busy and long, and not enough poems of the day are making their way out. But my new issue of Astronomy magazine is in, and I have a half-day road trip coming up, which always makes for good thinkin' time. (Oh wait, that's right, I loaded up the iPod with the Circe chapter, to give another way for what I just read to sink in). I'll let you know how that goes.

Soup Sunday

2007-04-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

We soup on Sundays, then enjoy the tastiness throughout the week. This week it's the mostbestwonderful (TM) batch of black bean /turkey sausage chili, which is best topped with a sprinkle of shredded cheddar.

NaPoWriMo #4

2007-04-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

Rapture w/Cilantro and Risotto

2007-03-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

I've just renamed this delicious dish, still lingering in tastebud memory from Sunday dinner. Shrimp and scallops cooked in chili oil, garlic, and cilantro. Lemon risotto. Rapturosity, indeed.

L'il Tease From Her Novel

2007-03-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Wart sat down in the restaurant and ordered breakfast. She could feel the sweet spot, the perfect moment coming on. She skipped the newspaper and pulled out her notebook.

Taking the symbols that make up the words that make up the songs, putting them to music in a way that enhances, builds, creates its own sensory perceptions, then taking those words and that music and making it live. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a clarinet or a piano or a flute to create beautiful notes from scratch, knows the challenge here. The wander land between playback and creation. The ability to put it together from a thought, a perception, a collection of visual stimuli, of preverbal thought, to properly gather all the sensory input the brain has registered and turn that into something the listener takes and processes and believes to be full of meaning or passion.
To do it so well, you bring an audience out of themselves, however briefly. To take the mathematical concepts of music and make it pause and stretch, build and crash, just the right way. To do that.

When Wart thought about it like that, it became large, too large to work with. A task, a project of such magnitude she felt her brain might combust. When she thought about it this way: I feel a song, the lyrics bubbling, this shapeless thing that doesn't exist yet. I bring it out in words. Throw in just the best, sparsest notes, a moan, maybe, a scream or too, besides. The rest of the band puts it to the test later, adding, chords, percussion, bass. And there. A song. Then the process seemed to be itself and nothing more.

But then: The whole issue of trying to translate the pure energy coming from your organs, all keen and glistening, hoping like hell that nothing gets lost on the train from your inner brain out to the physical medium. Hoping like hell that the genius of the thing in your brain lasts, and works when it hits air. That even as it oxidizes, makes the necessary leap from whatever you think in--picture, sound byte, words, Precambrian intuition-- that it comes out as brilliant a hue as you see it, feel it, sense it in your cortex. That the synapses that bring it from here to there know what they're doing. That you can get back there again, and again, and again, to that place where only you and this thing, this creation about to happen, exists. And knowing, knowing once the song has been released, there’s no going back.

And then Wart can't believe what happens when she returns to the page, later, after it's cooled down, stopped sparking and hissing, to witness it breathing. This must be something like what Lydia and Jaren feel, seeing Kira each morning, kissing her brown hair full of tangles, smelling those sweet and not so sweet baby smells.

Not every one learns how to call up what they know from their core. Even Einstein needed a little math help to be able to explain what was going on in there. That perhaps his inner brain processed parts of the future and pulled them back to the present, then translated those images, theories into a language we could just barely understand with the use of symbols. To form a pattern you must combine simple elements in unexpected ways. But even then, the translation to the physical turns out to be a series of scribblings on old wood. Nothing more than stains.

Friday Random Eleven

2007-03-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

What shuffled up on my iPod today?

What's so Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding - Elvis Costello
Freedom For My People - U2
Move Over Ms. L. - John Lennon
Castles Made of Sand - Jimi Hendrix
Lie in the Sound - Tresspassers William
Misinformed - Soul Coughing
Look Around - Blues Traveler
Streets of Istanbul - Dzihan & Kamien
I Am the Walrus - Oingo Boingo
Beautiful Boy - John Lennon
Push Th'Little Daisies - Ween

AllAirNoSpace

2007-03-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

The tallest.

The tallest man.

The tallest man in the world.

The tallest man in the world can’t use a cell phone. When he goes to the airport, he ducks all the way.

The tallest man in the world holds memory as a brittle magnet, a spikey, splintery twist in the ulna refurbished with titanium. Memory is pressure in the nasal cavity when the barometer drops. Memory aches before a storm.

His mother has a malleable lensed-version, bendy and marinated in sweet liquor, the fibers of it tenderized right through its tough and all the way back t'other way.

The tallest man in the world still grows.

The tallest man in the world wants us to take our stories and leave.

And

2007-03-08T11:23:00.000-08:00

Also at AWP, a preview of the new cover of Cincinatti Review and Daniel Nestor's two books of poems on Queen, and yes, I touched Freddy Mercury.

Fiction? Rant? I Know! Rant-Fiction

2007-03-06T06:30:00.000-08:00

Check out Julianna Baggot's awesomely caustic reply to The Napkin Fiction Project.

Check, Please

2007-03-05T05:39:00.000-08:00

Back from AWP after schlepping many, many books and lit mags home with me, so many that I had to CHECK my luggage. (EGADS you say, not that!). When I travel without my kids, I try to keep all maintenance and hassle at bay in a way not possible when I travel with them*, hence, no checking the luggage, no worries about if the hotel has a pool and other amenities to entertain the troops, etc.

But all those yummy books made it home safely. Among them-- Slouching in the Path of a Comet by Mike Dockins, invisible sister by jeffrey ethan lee, Balm by the ever-scrappy TA Noonan, and I Carry A Hammer In My Pocket For Occasions Such As These by Anthony Tognazzi. The last one, published by BOA Editions, is the first of their fiction publications...and a press I've long admired (and who hasn't, you say). Still, a poetry press that later includes fiction seems to me that it would have a special affinity for language-driven stories. You officially bear witness to the fact that I'm commiting to send Head Lines of the Extra Ordinary there for consideration. Wish me luck!

More importantly, I met a million and three people. Exactly that many. Highlights? Meeting many, many WOW authors, at least a dozen of Sophia's peeps, lunch with Jackie Osherow at the Flying Biscuit (where she signed another book I picked up from BOA Editions... The Hoopoe's Crown), and lots of time with my lovelies Sophia and Scarlett. Also, some quality moments with the FAU crowd, something in short supply lately.

Now, back to adding art and more fiction and poetry to Words on Walls, writing a paper on Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, and prepping for my upcoming presentation on the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses. Oh yes, and spring break.

*and when I travel with them, which I love to do, the focus is also on simplifying (I'm all about keeping it simple, but it's somehow entirely different, and when I travel alone I tend to just sleep on the plane --you know I come from a long line of power nappers) and now that they're a little older they're all hooked up with mp3 players and video games which makes for a smooth plane ride, but still somehow, no nap for me. (as my friend Deb used to say, I just wants my sleep!) I also try to travel when I know they'll be most mellow (like at night), though that's not always possible to manage.

NOTE TO SELF: when did you start italicizing text on the web? Are you throwing away your web design tenants one at a time? Next you'll be linking to PDFs without telling people they're about to download a huge-ass file. Duh. Self is sullen and defiant on this one. She's a doubter, too.

Move Along Li'l Doggie

2007-02-26T05:46:00.000-08:00

We're neck deep in a new Words on Walls issue (and I'd say finally if finally didn't seem so inadequate) and are trying to pull together a WOW reading at AWP. Former authors, give us a shout if you're game!

Sadness Squared

2007-02-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

My beloved and I logged many hours of our humble beginnings of learning how to live together avoiding the actual place we lived (a scary place with a death-mongering furnace and a holy-cow sized swamp cooler that blew the contents of our kitchen to and fro whenever it was on). Instead we toodled over to the lovely square aross the street to enjoy meals and video games and people watching, much people watching. And dreams of the day we'd be able to afford new furniture.

Also in this square is the bar where we went at the end of our first date, after we left the lovely French restaurant that is no more. (Odd when the memories outlive the place of their making, isn't it?) The square is the site of Monday's sad, awful sad news out of Salt Lake.

Today my beloved and I are fortunate to celebrate a life of many years together. Half-mast for those who just wanted to spend their own little smidgeon of time that day at T. Square, too.

Proudest Monkey

2007-01-29T17:05:00.000-08:00

Picking up on a ChickyWang meme to post songs that make me feel like the world's greatest. Now, this is my kind of list. An endless list, but I'll limit it to the songs currently loaded on the iPod.

Sometimes the most meloncholy songs do it for me, most times it's funky lyrics and mean bass. And every now and then, there's Bootsy Collins holiday music.

Soul Coughing - all of their songs. Okay, I'll pick one: Bus to Beelzebub
G. Love & Special Sauce - Cold Beverage
Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane
Cake - Mexico, Palm of Your Hand
Ben Folds - The Luckiest
Chaka Kahn - Tell Me Something Good
Elvis Costello - New Amsterdam
Living Colour - An Open Letter
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
Oingo Boingo - Only a Lad, Who Do You Want to Be?
Peter Gabriel - Red Rain
Primus - Tommy the Cat
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
Dave Matthews Band - Proudest Monkey
Regina Spektor - Baobabs
Rolling Stones - She's So Cold (One of my all-time most hilarious mis-heard lyrics. Start Me Up, too.)
Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun, Spoonman
Talking Heads - Take Me to the River
John Lennon - Beautiful Boy
Cowboy Junkies - Blue Moon
The Big Easy soundtrack
Bootsy Collins - Sleigh Ride

It's true, It's true, Cincy Review

2007-01-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

A commentor in the know outs me...my poem "Dracos" was just accepted for the next issue of Cincinatti Review. Buy me a mocha or a martini, let's celebrate this fine beginning to a new year.

Sparks, Poems

2007-01-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

In response to Sophia's challenge to post the first poems that made me want to write more (and which I'm deciding means that she's asking for poems that caught me when I first really started reading/analzing poems from a writer's viewpoint as opposed to simply reading them for pleasure or for a class) I give you just a couple.

Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, Frank O'Hara and Marge Piercy also belong on that list, but these two poems are forever entwined in my brain for their soft beautiful ache and their snakey progression to a sparkly, perfect ending.

Warm Flesh-Colored Ode
by Donald Justice

It was still possible then
To imagine that no more than one or two hands
Would ever move down the face of the hour,
And that the shadow which followed
Might remain patient
And, if anything, somewhat reluctant to continue;
That no more than one or two hands
Had ever descended so far
As the shoulders of the afternoon,
And that, necessarily, they would have been bare then
Of even that shadow which sometimes, the air itself seems to be charged with
And to suffer from;
That no more than one or two hands surely
Would have crossed the forbidden zone
At the end of summer,
And that the sky there would be turning always from white to pink, slowly,
And that it could no longer matter then
What shadows rose from you hollows and sank back.

And it is still possible to imagine
That there are one or two hands
Which do not know, or do not yet know,
Anything of either that face or the shadow
Which does, after all, follow,
Or of flushed shoulders or turning sky,
Or of those particular hollows, alive
With less and less curious and impulsive shadows now;
And that there may somewhere be hands
Which will never be smeared with the very special pollen
And general muskiness of a dying summer;
And that there are probably other hands which have stopped,
Or will stop, or even now are shaken with premonitions
Of a time when the will have begun to stop,
And among these some which remember little or nothing
Of you and your coloring,
And some also which do not and cannot forget
Your blood upon them and your dew.

Re-statement of Romance
by Wallance Stevens

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am:
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,

That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.

Five Things You Might Not Know About Me

2007-01-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

Chances are, I'll forget your name at least once. But I'll always remember your face.
At any given moment, I know what time it is, within five minutes, whether I've seen a clock, watch, cell phone or computer at all that day.
I've had the opening refrain from the Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" running through my head for weeks. Weeks I tell you.
I don't consider #3 a bad thing. It might be because my kids are learning to play it on the piano and the guitar.
Isn't an umbrella a lightning rod?

Much Looof lei ness

2006-12-12T14:33:00.000-08:00

Sophia is having a hella good month.

Her poem "Litote, Smoke Trees, Fireworks Over Water" was Verse Daily's feaure poem for December 8.

She has three poems over at Mipoesis.

And her poem "Fish-Eye" won Mid-American Review's Fineline Competition.

Help her celebrate! Go buy her book.

Some New Girl. No Dial Tone.

2006-12-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

She became aware of her own amusia after she went to sleep for thirty days and woke up into a new decade. Her ability to recognize musical notes, recreate them with her pipes and digits gone, gone, gone, so long. Not there. The fact of its leaving an abyss, her chest hollow and achy cold, her throat spiked ragged like too many ice cubes. Like all the other too many things evicted. For example: the sound of words -- cosmonaut, dexterity, shindig, marionette, alluvial.

Also in the abyss: her marrow’s shock when she heard Sweet Jane or Blue Moon. Her trivia head. (Perhaps now a veranda for more important things?) Her fancy of words left behind in half flamed-out neon.

And as for kismet, the red light karma is gone, lofted into the gorge, so there’s that one good (bad) thing gifted to the infinite echo. Not that she could chose.

Still, the hope of the ricochet, an askew cleverness pitched back her way, or maybe not real hope but the edge of it, a hint of how to put the car into D for drive and go on. Demands she hefted into the nothing air not unreasonable, just off-key.

Once she held selection criteria that included perfect pitch. A boy had to hold his notes before he held any other thing. That was a chasm ago. An arroyo of days she can’t recover.

How can you know what you’re missing?

Middle Way

2006-11-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

My Melville fest has ended. Ever read a writer you know you just *get* on multiple levels? Yup, that's him. I align myself with different authors for many reasons: Grace Paley for her sharp wit (oh, how her intellect spins out on the page), Carol Maso for her lyricism, Robert Coover for his ambitious experiments, Ellen Gilchrist and Antonya Nelson for their generous treatment of fractured humans, and I could go on and on. But Melville. Yeah. Wow.

And on to other things...in August in fiction workshop, I wrote down a topic that I wanted to focus on and strengthen in my own writing for the semester. Oddly, I picked endings. I can't recall why now, because endings aren't an issue for me. I write killer lyical endings. They close the story and open the world. It's the middle that trips me up. And each story has its own complex relationship with its middle. Sometimes the characters give out. Sometimes the language is vain and hogs the limelight (I blame my poetry background). Sometimes, no matter how much a story sparks and hisses, the middle is lumpy and lets us all down.

I have friends who beat the middle into bloody submission through multiple edits. I admire their stamina and determination. Me? I have a circular writing process that turns out pretty clean first drafts, and by a third draft, if the middle hasn't earned its ending, I'm likely to abandon the poor thing. But I know this about myself, and I'm trying to be more generous to those poor suckers (my characters) who get stuck in that nasty battle. So what do you think December, the end of the year, has in store for me? The middles. Caio!

Lorrie Moore and Melville

2006-11-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

Few writers fill me with such complete joy as Lorrie "Plots are for dead people, pore- face." Moore. Me, the girl who intentionally futzes with song lyrics and names of books and their characters to twist them into their funny and admittedly sometimes lame --in a living-in-my-own-private-idaho sort of way --counterparts. (Shark-Spear is a recent one. I know I'm a dork. And a smart-ass. I rest easy with that self-awareness, thankyouverymuch.)

Here's a favorite from Moore's "How to Become a Writer":
"Tell your roommate your great idea, your great exercise of imaginative power: a transformation of Melville to contemporary life. It will be about monomania and the fish-eat-fish world of life insurance in Rochester, N.Y. The first line will be ''Call me Fishmeal,'' and it will feature a menopausal suburban husband named Richard, who because he is so depressed all the time is called ''Mopey Dick'' by his witty wife Elaine. Say to your roommate: ''Mopey Dick, get it?'"

When dear Sophia introduced me to Moore's work (in the Utah days now known as a long-damn-time-ago), I knew: That. Was. What. I. Wanted. To. Do. Writing poetry was, is still, my primary goal, but I wanted to write fiction that held on by its bloody nails. Because of the high-powered language driving the engine. Because of the flinty wit and intellect and insight. Because the characters purposely, directly engage the reader in spun-out dialogue that makes them need to hold on for dear life, too.

Reading Moore again today, I realize my goal hasn't changed a bit. And Moore awes me just as much as she did (not-so) long ago.

This Day

2006-11-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

A hint of a breath of a hopeful one.

The wind of a string of a song of one.

The x of a y of a z of one.

The blip of a snip of a whip of one.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Hold.

It's All Good

2006-10-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

In lieu of a post, please drool with me tonight over the following salad: spinach, red onions, peas, chevre rolled in chopped pecans, all drizzled in a sweet vidalia vinaigrette.

We Should All Write Like Melville

2006-10-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Messy and chaotic and full of digression upon digression...and utterly brilliant.

Excess Aint Rebelling + Shuffle Aint Random

2006-10-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today, in an odd bit of counterplay on the iPod, which was set to shuffle, The Donnas and John Lennon seemed to be in the midst of an ill-fated love affair and were hurling painful songs back and forth at each other. Random? I don't think so.

The weather couldn't have been lovelier and by that I mean I had to don a sweatshirt while yon pupper and I circumnavigated the park. They don't happen often, those chilly days, here in the jungle, so when they do, wow, are they striking.

Everything I love about autumn begins with those brisk mornings, and here, seasonal differences are a more subtle thing. I know you northerners might run into the 60 degree weather with dungarees and light t-shirts, but my transplanted blood has thinned, and 60 feels cold now. No, really, it does. And I'm glad for it, or every day in paradise would feel the same.

She Takes a Memo to Herself

2006-10-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

It says: Stop dreaming of the West. Stop.

Deep in the Not-News

2006-10-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

Have been tussling with the over-arching theme of my short story collection. Honing in on the way we focus on news, or not-news as it were, and why. The way that newspapers are a document of the important goings-on of the day and of time, and on the nowhere that our focus on info-tainment gets us. The escapist notion of info-tainment. Or is it escapist? Is it natural to love trivia and gossip? Probably.

But also, there's a reason it's called hard news. Or maybe the hard news is so harsh that we can't take it in and process it. Maybe we're also just lazy.

I like to think that being drawn toward *real* human interest stories is a product of the desire to understand people better. Certainly as a writer, certain stories can be research to understanding human psychology and formulating buzz-sharp instinct and insight. But as we all know, the writing endeavor is in part narcisstic pursuit, too. Where in the stories do we or could we see ourselves reflected out? And if info-tainment is our source, what of that? Yipes.

Birthday Cake

2006-10-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

And she receives the best cake ever for her birthday the other day! There's something SO about John McCrea's voice. He must get scads of perfumed undergarments lobbed at him on the stage.

Boom, Boom, Out Go the Lights

2006-09-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

How cool is it that Iceland's capital city Reykjavik (yeah, the whole city) is turning off all the lights for evenings of stargazing accompanied by the lulling voice of astronomy-directed radio?

Even better, how cool is it that most of the country gets most of its electricity from thermal energy?

Lemonheads and Sparkling Water

2006-09-26T05:27:00.000-07:00

Sweet girl with a monster headache stays home from school. Her ankles ache. All commercials = Food (When did Chocolate Lucky Charms happen?) The comforts? Phoebe the pig-dog & her stuffed tiger (the girl born in the year of the tiger). The bucket. Ice. Sprite Zero. Tomorrow she'll feel better.

The mom is neck deep in Melville and Shakespeare. It's beautiful outside. The new bedroom curtains are shimmery aquarius blue and sage and brown. There's a story bubbling up. It's the title story of her collection. She can feel its hum and crackle.

In the night, teeth are growing, moving, shifting. Today erupted right next to yesterday.

Every day is lemonheads and sparkling water, baybee. Every day.

Calling Out

2006-08-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading Rae Meadows' first novel, Calling Out. It's set in Salt Lake City, covers the seedy underbelly of the escort service industry. All in all, a respectable novel, an enjoyable read. Meadows touches upon the basics of life in Salt Lake, where identity is classified in two terms: Mormon or Non-Mormon.

When I was growing up, I was, oddly, both.

Later, late in my undergraduate days, when I figured out that religion and I were not going to work out, my life straightened out. I found my even keel. My grandparents, who had helped found the church I belonged to when I was young, never gave up hope that I would someday return to the (their) fold. After they both died, their friends continued to express that sentiment for them. But honestly, I knew they were happy that I had found solid ground. Was done floundering. They wouldn't want to know some of the main reasons for my leaving for good. Ones that I knew in ninth grade but couldn't communicate. The intellectual reasoning behind it took me longer to figure out.

The other church I attended, the Mormon church, just never took hold for me. Going to Primary and later, Mutual, was a good way to hang out with my friends, and doing so seemed to please my dad, a jack-Mormon, who more than anything, seemed to want to make sure my grandparents' religion didn't overrun the religous choice of his family's. My parents wanted to expose me to both options they were familiar with, and then wanted me to choose for myself.

One way or another, as an adult, I would have left any church. Above all else, my grandparents were pragmatists. They would have understood. And this notion that one, minus religious influence, can be a good and productive member of society , is one that is found more in Salt Lake City than most outsiders realize.

When I started college, then moved "downtown" and out of the 'burbs, I found out that Salt Lake holds an abundant intellectual, artistic "outside" that resides inside the very heart of the city. Agnostic, atheistic, and/or religious-tolerant, this core drew me in and made me realize I did sort of fit in this wacky place. That's what I miss when I miss Salt Lake. That any given day there are four plays and a great reading just around the corner. That around the other corner there's a quick escape from PEOPLE (AHHHHH!) and an entry into some of the most beautiful landscape on earth. That there's a fierce little independent and liberal element to the city that thrives because of, and in spite of, other goings-on.

But back to Meadows' novel. I like it, it's solid, but I was left wanting something more. What? Lasting perhaps. But I admire that for a first novel the author did not strive for an overly ambitious creative work that dazzled and jumped and sparked. It was confident. I wanted to read it through in one reading frenzy. That is perhaps it's greatest success.

Intaglio

2006-08-08T06:13:00.000-07:00

Order Sophia's book, Intaglio, from Kent State University Press

Yes, but it's a Dry Heat

2006-07-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

Random trip factoids:
Every day it's been over 100 degrees.
We brought thunderstorms with us.
We have seen all the right friends and relatives.
We have indeed seen redrocks without leaving Salt Lake County.

And I just realized this one: we've been here six days and I haven't cranked my neck back for some stargazing. What the hell?

No Surprises Here

2006-07-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

As you know, had I not been born with the word bug (and unlike the title of my blog suggests), I would have been an Astronomy major. 'Sno wonder my poetry is focused skyward, eh?

---------------

You scored as Urania. You are Urania, the muse of the heavens and astronomy. You are very thoughtful, but so thoughtful that it sometimes hinders you. You also have an uncanny ability to know something out of the ordinary will happen.

Which of the Greek Muses are you?

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This IS What BO-ca Needs

2006-07-11T05:50:00.000-07:00

The reinvention of Liberties Books. Life is good.

Flat Line at 90 Degrees

2006-07-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

There's something she'll never get used to, here in the swamp, with the bugs, and the turtles and jungle ants: the need to indoor oneself in June, July, August. To stay in most, to plan the day so that no one has bounced off this or that wall by 5:30, which has always been the witching hour in this home. To get out when the sun squeezes its way through those books and books of clouds.

Get out early.

Or don't get out at all.

This July reminds her of June 2003, where it thundered and plundered all day, every single day. The incredible drama of the rains. Astounding knockings of shockwaves, the air heating, expanding, the incredible bolt. (Light travels faster than sound, light travels faster than sound.)

It's 10:30. The sun is out.

Get out early.

Keep an Eye Out for Blink

2006-06-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

A heads up to look for this fine anthology, Blink, to be released this summer by The Paper Journey Press and featuring work from yours truly, Abbe, Scarlett, Su, and Tiffany. We'll try to set up a reading to follow the book's release.

And if you're nice, I have a free copy or two that I can share, since I'll get a few for winning their contest. (Toot, toot, goes my own horn.) Give me a shout.