Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

Antilamentation

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, to the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the one
who crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the tv set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it.
Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

-Dorianne Laux

Joy

joy

joi/

noun

noun: joy

1. 1.

   a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

   "tears of joy"

Joy, today, was a simple thing.

It was picking up my dog, after a week apart, and being snuffled. It was putting on snow boots and a ridiculous hat and walking to the good bagel place, where it was all steamy and warm, for a toasted everything with veggie cream cheese. It was walking a little further, into the small independent bookshop that just opened today in my neighborhood, and geeking out over the coolness of jersey city. It was being on the train, blasting the same Ke$ha song on repeat five actual times and trying desperately not to dance. It was pulling into Hoboken where approximately 100 people dressed as santa claus piled trashily into my car.

It was, later, eating that bagel.

It's so easy to let bad emotions swallow you whole. Sadness, inferiority, stress, depression, anxiety. As a counter-balance its good to let the happy ones swell and rise up, too. When you can find them. Today they were easier to find, and I appreciated that.

Where the hell were all those Santas going, anyway?

Mercy

The music was fidgety, arch,
an orchestral version of twang.
Welcome to atonal hell,
welcome to the execution
of a theory, I kept thinking,
thinking, thinking. I hadn't felt
a thing. Was it old fashioned
of me to want to? Or were feelings,
as usual, part of the problem?
The conductor seemed to flail
more than lead,
his baton evidence
of something unresolved,
perhaps recent trouble at home.
And though I liked the cellist -
especially the way
she held her instrument -
unless you had a taste
for unhappiness
you didn't want to look
at the first violinists face.
My wife whispered to me
This music is better than it sounds.
I reminded myself the world outside
might be a worse place
than where I was now,
though that seemed little reason
to take heart. Instead
I closed my eyes, thought about
a certain mezzo soprano
who could gladden a sad day
anywhere, but one January night
in Milan went a full octave
into the beyond. Sometimes escape
can be an art, or a selfishness,
or just a gift you need
to give yourself. Whichever,
I disappeared for a while,
left my body to sit there, nod,
applaud at the appropriate time.

- Stephen Dunn

Empathy vs. Sympathy

"Vulnerability isn't good or bad. It's not what we call a dark emotion, nor is it always a light, positive experience. Vulnerability is the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is a weakness is to believe that feeling is a weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living....Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path."

-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

Parties, Appreciated

There's a lot of pressure in parties - both throwing and attending. Pressure of all kinds makes me feel itchy.

A casual "meet up at the bar" is no big deal. You have one drink, or maybe a few, you talk to your friends, laugh a little, eat something fried or with melted cheese on top, and you go home. No one is disappointed in a night like that.

If that casual bar-night escalates into shots of tequila, karaoke, and sweatily dancing to 80's hits at 2 am then for sure you are pleasantly surprised. You now have a win of an evening on your hands, my friend. All the more special for being unexpected.

But even if the night is quieter, it's still a-ok. Because, again, it was just a night at the bar.

Parties, in contrast, are pressurized. You must consider the quality of your outfit, the thoughtfulness of your gift, prepare to comment on the music, make pleasant small talk over by the snacks. Everyone must have F.U.N., or the whole encounter feels stiff and unpleasant and everyone, while smiling and eating cheese, really just wants to be home in their pajamas watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory.

I went to a fun party this weekend. Why was it successful? There are so many reasons.

1. Quality crowd, in the mood for a good time.
2. Excellent music selection, beginning with fun 80's stuff and escalating, slowly, in flawless tandem with the drinking, into current popular songs that inspire impromptu dance-offs.
3. Jello shots. I had six.
4. Cell phone pictures. With props. Too many.
5. The game "Heads Up" played to excess.
6. And of course, cheese. With bacon!

I overdrank. At one point I fell down. To be fair, in that moment I was pretending to be a sled, and a friend hopped on my back to "ride" me, so I feel my loss of balance was warranted. And yet.

Moments like that are the at-home equivalent of the casual bar night's descent (ascent?) into drunken jukebox singalongs followed by chaotic orders of general tso's for everyone, everyone!

They are more rare than wild herons. And I am appreciative.

Morning of the Gods

Is there anything better than waking up to a sun-filled bedroom after days of rain? No. There is not.

Oh wait, yes there is. The following must also be present for stellar-status to be achieved:

- One extraordinarily comfortable bed with pillows of excellence and a cozy blue blanket for snuggling.
- The coffee pot perking in the next room, promising the first hot cup of the day.
- A small gray dog, snoozy and slow, curled around your feet.
- A laptop, for writing senseless shit like this.
- Silence, excluding the comforting background whoosh of traffic.
- The idea that I don't have to see, or speak to, any human soul for hours and hours.

Bliss, friends. Bliss. If every Saturday morning was something like this, I'd be a better human being. In the meantime, I'll take what I can get.

On Debt

It's funny, how easy and instantaneous it is to accumulate massive debt. It's easier than ordering groceries on the internet. And I should know; I order a lot of online food.

I'm starting up grad school next month, and have been navigating the world of student loans as of late.

I was lucky, as an undergrad. I had solid scholarships, and my parents were in a good financial position to pick up much of the rest. I graduated with something like $18K in loans, which wasn't terrible. I decided to pay them interest-first, which was terrible. But what did I know when I set up the payment system at 22 and then walked away from it? I just wanted a cheap bill. I got what I asked for, and most of that debt still remains.

So - throw an entire MFA on the ol' tab, there. Why not?

I've had the loan in "pending" status on the school's website for awhile. My mouse would hover over the accept button and then I'd purposefully get distracted, move away, eat a donut, forget to finish. Until this morning at 8 a.m. when the financial aid office of the school called to hound me. "We can't process your loan if you don't accept it," said the nice lady. "Did you forget to log in? Did you lose your password?"

Oh well. Swallow, hit accept, walk away. Don't dare think about the future or you'll stop moving.

Historic Shirt

Ran into Alyssa and Todd and Alyssa said "I like your shirt"
and I laughed because it's obviously very old and she said
"But it looks so soft and comfortable" and I agreed
and Alyssa said "And that little heart is so sweet"
referring to the red velvet heart sewn on the left shoulder
so I said "There's a lot of history in that" and then had to explain
that my first wife sewed the heart on this shirt
for her boyfriend before me - and Alyssa said
"Wow, that seems symbolic of something!" and Todd laughed
and I said "It probably means that I refuse to let go of
any trace of the past" and Alyssa said "Or maybe it means
you refuse to be oppressed by the past" and I said
"That sounds good" and Todd sort of half smiled and Alyssa said
"You accept the past so it can't then turn around and bite you"
and for a half second this idea sparkled alarmingly in the air
and then we all smiled in order to let the scene end

and Alyssa walked away arm in arm with her new husband
to go on making the life that would be their past together.

- Mark Halliday

The Fourth State Of Matter

"In the porch light the trees shiver, the squirrels turn over in their sleep. The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. Over the neighbor’s house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io. I learned it at work, from the group of men who surround me there. Space physicists, guys who spend days on end with their heads poked through the fabric of the sky, listening to the sounds of the universe. Guys whose own lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet."

If you have time to read a long-form essay, make it this one: The Fourth State of Matter, by Jo Ann Beard.

My brain just melted.

Immortal Longings

Inside the silver body
Slowing as it banks through veils of cloud
We float separately in our seats

Like the cells or atoms of one
Creature, needs
And states of a shuddering god.

Under him, a thirsty brilliance.
Pulsing or steady,
The fixed lights of the city.

And the flood of carlights coursing
Through the grid: Delivery,
Arrival, Departure. Whim. Entering

And entered.Touching
And touched: down
The lit boulevards, over the bridges.

And the river like an arm of night.
Book, cigarette. Bathroom.
Thirst. Some of us are asleep.

We tilt roaring
Over the glittering
Zodiac of intentions.

-Robert Pinsky

"I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation - a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move."

- John Steinbeck

Detail of the Woods

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.

A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.

I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.

Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything.

- Richard Siken

Artistic Surprises

Last weekend I took my mother to the Berkshires for her birthday. One of our planned-for visits was the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

My mom has always been a fan of his paintings. Most people are, I suppose, and for good reason - they are easy to enjoy. They are old-timey and nostalgic, perfect little slices of Americana. Come Christmas, our house fairly drowns in Norman Rockwell paraphernalia - books, statues, ornaments. I like them. I approve.

But as we wandered through the museum, which is beautiful and simple, a small white house set atop some rolling hills deep in the mountains, this particular painting caught my eye.

It's called Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi). He painted it in 1965, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It honors three civil rights workers who, as retribution for their work helping African Americans register to vote, were kidnapped by members of the Ku Klux Klan, driven to a secluded area, beaten, and executed at close range.

Three real men. The shadows of the killers to the right, holding their rifles. The last man standing, looking towards his death, is what I kept coming back to. The set of his shoulders, the defiance in his eyes as he holds his dying friend in his arms. The dark monotony of the colors, the heaviness of everything, all that stark light. The brushstrokes at the top are severe, almost angry. The texture of the painting was so thick, I had to fight myself from reaching out to touch it.

I kept leaving to explore other rooms in the museum, but drifted back to this painting again and again. I couldn't stop looking at it. I'm not sure I've ever reacted so viscerally to a painting before. Something about the blend of hopelessness and strength absolutely arrested me. The light in his face.

Turns out Norman Rockwell was a photographer first. He'd hire models, or more often than not, use his own family and friends as subjects. He'd decide upon a pose and a setting, take photos until it was exactly right, and then use the photos for reference while he painted. The man still standing, in the photo that became the painting, was actually one of his sons.

He painted a lot during the Civil Rights Movement, in fact. Many difficult subjects, a lot of bold and very liberal work. I kept finding myself drawn towards those paintings, the bleak, complicated ones, rather than the nostalgic stuff he is normally known for.

Prior to this I pictured Norman Rockwell - if I thought about him at all - as a sweet old man in a sweater vest. A blend of Mr. Rogers and Jimmy Stuart, maybe. I see something totally different now. And I find it a wonder that he is remembered for his (admittedly lovely) paintings of children and puppies and young couples in love, when he also was capable of creating something as chilling and dark as this.

In summary: museums are for learning!

Dear Life

"He had often wondered what difference it would make.

But the emptiness in place of her was astounding. 

He looked at the nurse in wonder. She thought he was asking her what to do next and she began to tell him. Filling him in. He understood her fine, but was still preoccupied. 

He'd thought it had happened long before with Isabel, but it hadn't. Not until now. 

She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeying the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging - as they said - for the remains.

What an excellent word - "remains." Like something left to dry out in sooty layers in the cupboard. 

And before long he found himself outside, pretending that he had as ordinary and good a reason as anybody else to put one foot ahead of the other. 

What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever."

- Leaving Maverly, Dear Life, Alice Munro

...if nothing else, this passage is a lesson in the power of simplicity.

Aloneness, Plus a Dog

Today marks two weeks of what I'm dubbing "living alone for the first time in my life." That's extreme wording for what is a temporary situation, but this is a two month jaunt of aloneness, so hey. It qualifies.

I had such big plans. Beginning on day one I was going to rise with the sun. Read, write, coffee, every single morning before work. Work hard and well at actual work, then come home and make myself a healthy and affordable dinner, play with my puppy, and then read, write, dessert. I was going to be scholarly and ambitious and serious and quiet. I was going to think deep thoughts.

What an a-hole. Christ.

These were all good, lofty intentions. But I forgot to account for my general exhaustion, which has been large and looming. This summer was one long, enormous ramp up for a hectic fall. Jobs have been quit, finances have been reorganized, parties parties parties have happened, plans have been made.

So, what did I do once the silence finally descended? I collapsed in on myself. (Predictably.) Sprawled out on the couch. Fucked around on ye olde internet. Watched reruns of Criminal Minds while eating handfuls of chocolate. (Matthew Gray Gubler, my nerd crush, continues to make me adore him.)

So of course I felt real shitty about all this, until I remembered, who the fuck cares? I'm allowed to sit and vegetate. What on earth is wrong with taking a week or so to be a lump, a loaf, deeply lazy? Nada.

And sure enough, post-resting, this week has been different. I've already finished two books this month and have four more to go, so I stopped at my favorite bookstore in the village and treated myself to a few lovely new titles. And over the past few days, I've been sliding down into the head space I have been so craving. That place where everything goes quiet and soft around me, but on the inside I feel electric and zippy with thoughts and with words.

Balance. It's so key, so elemental. I admire people who can function with ease in a chaotic life, but I'm just not one of them. I can handle it when times get crazy; I can function and squeak on by. But in order to feel correct, I require balance. And balance is different for everyone, but to me, its simple things: quiet. reading. music. running. sunlight. fresh air. a good friend to laugh with. yummy things. sleep.

Today was perfect. A good day at work, lunch out with friends. An after-work four mile run in the cool wind and the warm, thin September sun. A snacky dinner of pita, hunks of cheese, and a tomato and cucumber salad. And now, time at my desk. The candle next to me is "gingergrass and lemon" scented. A hot cup of chai tea to my left, a small bowl of graham crackers and chocolates to my right. My dog, asleep in her bed on the bottom of the bookshelf, her soft snores my warmest company.

And, sure as anything, the urge to write comes back.

I know I need these things. Routine, and health, and quiet. And when I don't take the time to prioritize them, I lose my way, again and again. I'm not sure how to make a habit out of putting myself first, but certainly I'm a better person when I've done it.

As my mom sometimes says to me, an eye-roll in her voice, "Just go for your run. Maybe you'll be a nicer person when you get home."

Hm.

Two weeks down, six or so to go. Maybe by the end I'll actually be artistically productive. Or, at least, a nicer person. One can hope.

Quite Frankly

They got old, they got old and died. But first -
okay but first they composed plangent depictions
of how much they lost and how much cared about losing.
Meantime their hair got thin and more thin
as their shoulders went slumpy. Okay but

not before the photo albums got arranged by them,
arranged with a niftiness, not just two or three
but eighteen photo albums, yes eighteen eventually,
eighteen albums proving the beauty of them (and not someone else),
them and their relations and friends, incontrovertible

playing croquet in that Bloomington yard,
floating on those comic inflatables at Dow Lake,
giggling at the Dairy Queen, waltzing at the wedding,
building a Lego palace on the porch,
holding the baby beside the rental truck,
leaning on the Hemingway statue at Pamplona,
discussing the eternity of art in that Sardinian restaurant.

Yes! And so, quite frankly - at the end of the day -
they got old and died okay sure but quite frankly
how much does that matter in view of
the eighteen photo albums, big ones
thirteen inches by twelve inches each
full of such undeniable beauty?

- Mark Halliday

On September Adventures

This morning I woke up early, poured myself some coffee, and said a weepy goodbye to my lovely husband. He's a writer whose third, and most important, book has just come out, and he's headed off on a national book tour for several months.

He travels often, but even the dog seemed to know he'd been gone for awhile this time. She chased him down the stairs of our apartment building in a hysterical howling fashion, and since he left, she's been glued to the windowsill, nothing but watchful waiting.

This is an exciting opportunity for him, and it's also kind of one for me. I'm 32 years old and I've never lived alone. I've lived with roommates in many, many apartments - in Florida, in London, in Hoboken and in Manhattan. Roommates who were close friends of mine, roommates who were strangers I found in the wilds of Craigslist. I always knew, as a teenager, that having a few years to live on my own was something I needed to do. And I considered living with a roommate to still be living on my own. The desire to be alone-alone just wasn't something I possessed. I just wanted my own room, in a town of my own choosing. I wanted to paint my bedroom walls any color I wanted, and pick out my own bedspread, and have my own shelf in the kitchen. That was enough for me.

I also wanted friends within reach, and that's where the roommate idea came into play. In high school and college, my mom used to tease me for my love of the TV show Friends. "That's not real life," she'd say, with a sniff. "People don't really live that way, so get used to it."

And I remember thinking, even as a teenager - but...yes, they do. And that's what I wanted. So, that's what I created. And it was a lot of fun, while it was happening. In particular I loved watching Lost with Karen, my brief-stint-in-NYC roommate, while her little dog napped in his bed in the corner.

But it's true that I've never genuinely lived alone. And while Hollsby (le husband) will only be gone for a couple of months - maybe two, maybe three, with occasional drop-ins back home for a night or so - I'm going to look upon it as my own little solo adventure.

If I want to walk in the front door after a day at work, make myself popcorn for dinner, and sit around eating it in my underwear while watching girly movies, so be it. If I want to go out every night, so be that, too. If I want to not use the stove even one time, except for as a storage device for my extra pots and pans, well, fuck it, whose going to stop me?

I joked to him, just last night, that without him here to cook for me I will probably forget to eat. He will likely return home to a rail-thin wife with a drinking problem and also maybe a tattoo because that is something I've been casually pondering.

He considered this. "The tattoo is fine," he pronounced. "Maybe not so much with the rail thin, though."

He was away earlier in the summer for a week, and I went briefly insane. I boarded our dog so I wouldn't have to take care of anything, and went out every single night - to literary readings, to parties, to the movies. I ate almost nothing except for cereal and potato chips in bed. I drank every night, and I rarely drink, so this was odd of me but enormously fun. By my last night home alone, I was coming down with a bad cold, so I tried to heat up some soup on the stovetop. But I accidentally lit the wrong burner, and while I thought my soup was warming, I got distracted because the movie Mermaids - of all things - was on TV. So when the fire alarms began to go off with a vengeance I was confused, until I realized I'd accidentally been heating up, and then burning, old bacon grease in a leftover pan. Not my chicken noodle soup. The apartment smelled like a peculiar version of bacon-hell, my dog was crying and hiding in the corner, and the smoke was so thick I literally thought about crawling around so I wouldn't die of inhalation. I had to open every single window I have, put on every fan, and stand, in my underwear (of course), under the alarm flinging around a towel to make the noise stop.

By the end of that week I had a terrible sinus infection and had to miss two entire days of work. But lordy, was that a fun week.

This time around I'll try to be a real human adult. Two months of that kind of behavior would clearly put me in a casket, anyway.

My real plan is to use this time to prepare for graduate school. I start up an MFA in creative writing in January, on top of having a day job. So beginning on September 1st, my plan has been to hold myself accountable to what will be my grad school schedule: reading six books, and writing 30 pages of manuscript, per month. I'll start casually this month, reading whatever books move me and writing anything I like. Then I'll try to step it up, adding more focus to the mix, in October.

In honor of this, I spent Monday cleaning and organizing my office, so my writing space would be clear and welcoming. And on September 1st I began and finished my first book - a fun pick, Stephen King's Joyland. What an awesome feeling that is, and has always, been - to begin and finish a fun, breezy book in one languid, rainy day.

So, tonight. After work I will come home, walk the pup, and head to the library. I will pick out five more books, anything that moves me, anything that feels right. And I'll come home, try to remember to feed myself, and then settle into this newly organized, bright and friendly book-room of mine, to begin practicing for my own new life.

You can have adventures by leaving, by moving, by going somewhere new. And admittedly those are my favorite kind. But you can also have them at home, by living in a new way. And I'm genuinely excited for mine to begin.

The Poet With His Face In His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need any more of that sound.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed, you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, it's wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

- Mary Oliver

Contents May Have Shifted

"I am up front, next to the pilot, Halifax William behind me, a woman from Juneau next to him, our three packs taking up every inch of space in the tail. The pilot turns the plane in a tight circle, we accelerate and lift off, and before he has even pulled in the flaps the first glacier is in front of us, huge and dirty and violent with stretch marks, plunging out of the cloud cover and into the shimmering sun.

Instantly I feel that old surge come back, that seizing of my own life on my own terms. It is such a physical thing, like the time I had my forearm shattered and the nurse came in every four hours on the dot to give me a shot of morphine - that's how physical - and I look down at the glacier and the ice-ridged peaks that go on forever behind it and say, Remember this remember this remember this the next time you think it's over, because some man, or some hope, or some life takes away instead of gives. Remember this and get on an airplane, a small one if possible, because it always works."

- Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

A few months ago I was at my mom's house, watching TV and absentmindedly looking up writer's workshops, to see if there were any to which I might apply. I happened upon one in California in October that would be taught by Cheryl Strayed, an author I'm obsessed with.

I realized I already had a piece, clean and good enough, that I could apply with. I realized I'd used their submission website before, and that applying would take just three clicks, a few thoughtless seconds. So I did it. Then I went to bed and honestly forgot this had happened.

Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon at an outlet mall parking lot deep in Pennsylvania, I got an email saying I'd been accepted. It took a minute to remember to what. But then I did remember and was delighted, but there was a catch. Cheryl Strayed's workshop was full. But I could have a spot in Pam Houston's. Did I want it?

I didn't know who that was. I wanted Cheryl and Cheryl only. This workshop would be on the pricey side, and I didn't want to compromise, so I didn't put down a deposit. Then I forgot about it. Again.

A month ago, I got an email from Pam Houston's private email address, following up. Did I intend to join? No, I didn't. Who the heck was she, anyway?

The other day, I read an interview with Pam Houston on The Rumpus, a lit website I follow. It was about the fusion of memoir and fiction, about how restlessness is bred into the souls of some people and cannot be stamped out, about how there are those among us who can only think when they are moving, walking, running, traveling. It was gorgeous. It was perfect. The next day I went out and finally bought her book. It's also gorgeous. It's also perfect. That sickening "I'm such an asshole" feeling crept into me.

I emailed her personal address, on a whim, to see if I could still get in. She wrote back in minutes, from her iPhone. No space, she said, but I could definitely go on the waitlist. A lot can happen between now and October, she offered up. She asked me where I lived. Rattled off a list of where she's teaching next, and when. Said she hopes to meet me somewhere along the path.

And now I sit in my bed, her book next to me, her email in my inbox, thinking about the fact that you can spend your whole life feeling a little bit weird, a little bit alone, and then one day you realize there is a whole tribe of people out there just like you, who feel too much, who want too much, who think and hurt and process too much, too hard. They're called writers. They're artists. And they were out there all along waiting for you to figure it the fuck out.

I hope I get to meet her someday. I love knowing she's a famous, successful author who answered an email from a nobody like me on the spot, from her phone, as she went about her day. Taking the time to wish me well.

I don't really care if I ever succeed at writing in a commercial way. That desire to be known, or famous, is absolutely not a part of who I am. But I do promise that if I ever am known, in that way, to be similarly kind, and to always, always reach a hand towards those still stuck at the bottom of the mountain. To haul them right up.

The Tender Bar

"How did she do it? With no education, no money, no prospects, how did my mother manage to look so fierce? She'd just survived my father clamping a pillow over her face until she couldn't breathe, and lunging at her with a razor, and though she must have been relieved to escape him, she must also have been aware of what lay ahead - loneliness, money worries, the Shit House. But you wouldn't know it to look at her. She was an inspired liar, a brilliant liar, and she was also lying to herself, which made me perceive her lies in a whole new light. I saw that we must lie to ourselves now and then, tell ourselves that we're capable and strong, that life is good and hard work will be rewarded, and then we must try to make our lies come true. This is our work, our salvation, and this link between lying and trying was one of my mother's many gifts to me, the truth that always lay just beneath her lies."

-J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

(This book is fucking fantastic.)

Pluma

Once, when there were no riches, somewhere in southern
Mexico I lost my only pen in the
middle of one of my dark and flashy moments
and euchered the desk clerk of my small hotel
out of his only piece of bright equipment
in an extravegence of double-dealing,
nor can I explain the joy in that and how I
wrote for my life, though unacknowledged, and clearly
it was unimportant and I had the money and
all I had to do was look up the Spanish and
I was not for a second constrained and there was
no glory, not for a second, and it had nothing to
do with the price of the room, and for example, it only
made writing what it should be and the life we
led more rare than what we thought and tested
the art of giving back, and some place near me,
as if there had to be a celebration
to balance out the act of chicanery,
a dog had started to bark and the lights were burning.

- Gerald Stern

Snippets

My sister and her three kids are in town on their annual summer visit. They drive up from their place in Nashville, and tend to be very casual about when they will arrive and for how long they'll stay. This makes sense because the kids are on summer break and my sister is between jobs, so why not be flexible? Right?

I only found out when they would arrive this summer, besides my sister's usual airy, "Oh, sometime in early July-ish!" when I got this text from her last Monday: "In Virginia. Be home tomorrow night! But maybe late."

I got home from work that night and told the hubs, "So, Jill will be home tomorrow. For two weeks. Guess I better take off from work soon, huh?" I packed a bag and went down to my mom's condo the next night, and since then my life has been a blur of bad sleep, long shleps from the suburbs to my NY office, and a shit-ton of junk food.

To my mom, love equals food. And since the kids are here, the food she demonstrates her love with are kid-things. Potato chips of many varieties. Double Stuf Oreos. Ice pops. Entenman's chocolate cakes and doughnuts and crumb cakes and pound cakes.(Anything Entenmann's, really, will do.) Twizzlers, for reasons no one can figure out. Mountains of bacon. Seas of bagels. French toast and pancakes and banana bread. A never ending stream of pasta and gravy and meatballs, and everything, everything, with a side of delicious cheese.

Three nights ago, we had pizza. Two nights ago, Chinese food. Last night, McDonalds. Today we're going down the shore so I definitely see a boatload of ice cream and funnel cake and boardwalk pizza (surprisingly delicious) or maybe even cheesesteak (mmm) in my near future. I have gained three pounds in one week, and still have another week (maybe?) to go. Oops.

Right now I smell pancakes, and even though I'm already in my gym clothes, and 100% ready to go for a run, something in me is all, nah, screw it. Let's just lay on the couch and feast on carbs to the point of feeling ill, and *then* put on a bathing suit! That sounds like a much more reasonable plan for the day.

One morning soon I expect my sister will wake up, pour herself a cup of coffee, wipe some sleep from her eyes, stand and blithely say, "Ok kids, pack it up. Let's head home." And the flurry of activity will end, and they'll drive gaily off into the sunset in their big red minivan full of electronics and gifts and snacks, and I'll stand in the driveway of a condo complex, disoriented and fat and sleepy, waving goodbye.

And then I'll go back to my apartment and my job and my commute and my salads and my turkey sandwiches on whole wheat, wondering where all of the Fritos have gone, and also the tiny hands that steal them from me when my head is turned.

Fiction

Going south, we watched spring
unroll like a proper novel;
forsythia, dogwood, rose;
bare trees, green lace, full shade.
By the time we arrived in Georgia
the complications were deep.

When we drove back, we read
from back to front. Maroon went wild,
went scarlet, burned once more
and then withdrew into pink,
tentative, still in bud.
I thought if only we could go on
and meet again, shy as strangers.

- Lisa Mueller

In Spite of Everything, the Stars

Like a stunned piano, like a bucket
of fresh milk flung into the air
or a dozen fists of confetti
thrown hard at a bride
stepping down from the altar,
the stars surprise the sky.
Think of dazed stones
floating overhead, or an ocean
of starfish hung up to dry. Yes,
like a conductor's expectant arm
about to lift toward the chorus,
or a juggler's plates defying gravity,
or a hundred fastballs fired at once
and freezing in midair, the stars
startle the sky over the city.

And that's why drunks leaning up
against abandoned buildings, women
hurrying home on deserted side streets,
policemen turning blind corners, and
even thieves stepping from alleys
all stare up at once. Why else do
sleepwalkers move toward the windows,
or old men drag flimsy lawn chairs
onto fire escapes, or hardened criminals
press sad foreheads to steel bars?
Because the night is alive with lamps!
That's why in dark houses all over the city
dreams stir in the pillows, a million
plumes of breath rise into the sky.

- Edward Hirsch

...sometimes i can't catch my breath for the wonder of it all. this poem is a gift. perfect words in their perfect order are a gift. certain images and colors and sounds are gifts. gifts. and there is nothing else that i need.

well, ok, wait. maybe i need food. sometimes. also, sex is nice. shelter is helpful, in a roughly traditional kind of way. and i do find money to be convenient. coffee is important. and dogs. people are nice to have around. (er, sometimes.) so perhaps, i mean just maybe, i am a tad dramatic.

but what is this life for, if not to be moved by beauty? even just the title of this poem somehow calms me. in (artful) communication of any kind, whether it's music or words or a painting or a photograph or a movie or a play, there is always this blissed out moment of relief - this yes, yes, this person understands, they totally get it!

Which is, for me, immediately followed by a sincere thank fucking god. i'm not the only one.

Maybe only the neurotic among us know this knee-buckling relief in being understood, in seeing beauty valued, captured properly, and reflected back upon us. I hope not, though. It would be a sad, shallow kind of life to not be moved by these things.

In spite of everything, the stars.

It's 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and what have you accomplished?

"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be."

- Roald Dahl

Yes, yes, absolutely yes, but...what about those days when it's essential, utterly essential, to do nothing but lay on the couch and get lost in the internet? Or eat a whole bag of family-sized Doritos? Or have lunch with a friend during which you have the same conversation you've had approximately 15 other times in the last year, but who cares, because no one is counting? Or those rainy days when you read six trashy magazines instead of a novel? Or sleep for another few hours because really, why not? Or decide to finally clean your apartment, put away exactly one shirt, and then lay down again, exhausted and defeated?

Those days are important, too. I am having one right now. It was near-medicinally necessary.

Balance. Right?

White hot and passionate is better, but sometimes you just need to lay there and stare at a spot on the ceiling, too. I'm gonna go do that now.

On Brownstones

I've written nothing here in a month. Nothing.

The weird thing is, the longer I go without writing here, the harder it becomes to start again. I'd have thought the opposite would be true, that it would be easy to find something to say after so long, but I was wrong.

If you are in the habit of writing often, then it's easy to say whatever stupid thing pops into your head. If you're writing less frequently, there becomes this urge to say something "important" or "beautiful" or "funny." Mounting internal pressure helps zero things, I usually find.

So fine, I have nothing important, or beautiful, or funny, to say. But I wanted to break the silence anyway. So, I'm writing about having nothing good to say.

But, let me say this: that goddamn humidity is finally gone. This morning I got up at 6:30 and walked my dog wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and the air was clean and cool. I got goosebumps on my thighs and felt a sort of wild relief at being able to breath again.

And so right now I'm sitting on my couch, looking out the windows of my living room. I love this view in the spring and summer. My apartment is on the second floor of a brownstone, a corner unit with lots of big, old, creaky windows. Being on the second floor means I'm leaf-level with the big oak (maybe-oak?) trees in my neighborhood. So when I look outside, right now, what I see is this: other brownstones across the street, and between me and them nothing but rustling, bright green leaves and the twisting old arms of branches. Sometimes a squirrel. And on a gorgeous clear morning like this one, the leaves are sun-dappled and luminous, and the birds are chattering, and I've long-since trained myself to block out the street noise, so this moment is about as country and peaceful as it gets in Jersey City.

When I was a little girl, I imagined myself growing up and living in a brownstone. I'd seen approximately one million movies where beautiful 20-something women came tripping down the stairs of their gorgeous apartments wearing shiny, clicky heels, flipping their shiny, perfect hair. Looking happy and adult in a way that I imagined would fit me.

Living in a real one is a bit of a bear sometimes. Like yesterday, when my husband dropped a razor into the porcelain sink and a huge chunk of it broke, and now our sink is un-sinkable. Or like that horrible night last year when the great mouse invasion happened and we caught and/or murdered eight of them, me shrieking wildly the entire time, in less than 48 hours. You try sleeping with the souls of eight broken necked mice hanging over your head. I dare you.

But mostly, I love it. Every morning I wake up and write a little bit while looking out these old, grainy windows, and I think about the fact that this building has been here for 150 years or something insane like that. I think about the many lives it's held, the stories it's collected in its old brick walls. It makes me feel like I"m a part of something continuing and sturdy. Something lasting.

Right now a squirrel is sitting on a branch, gazing up into the sun. If my dog sees it, she'll freak the fuck out. And thus, the circle of life continues on.

Now I'm going to work. You are welcome.

Advice for Writers

"Be brave. Write what's true for you. Write what you think. Write about what confuses or compels you. Write about the crazy, hard, and beautiful. Write what scares you. Write what makes you laugh and write what makes you weep. Writing is risk and revelation. There's no need to show up at the party if you're only going to stand around with your hands in your pockets and stare at the drapes."

- Cheryl Strayed

Personal

Don't take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal -

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain -
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn't and I didn't and I don't
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I'm Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool's backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

-Tony Hoagland

"It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment - that explodes in poetry."

- Adrienne Rich

One Place to Begin

You need a reason, any reason - skiing, a job in movies,
     the Golden Gate Bridge.
Take your reason and drive west, past the Rockies.
When you're bored with bare hills, dry flats, and distance,
     stop anywhere.
Forget where you thought you were going.

Rattle through the beer cans in the ditch.
If there's a fence, try your luck - they don't stop cows.
Follow the first hawk you see, and when the sagebrush
     trips you, take a good look before you get up.
The desert gets by without government.

Crush juniper berries, breathe the smell, smear your face.
When you wonder why you're here, yell as loud
     as you can and don't look behind.
Walk. Your feet are learning.

Admit you're afraid of the dark.
Soak the warmth from scabrock, cheek to lichen.
The wind isn't talking to you. Listen anyway.
Let the cries of coyotes light a fire in your heart.
Remember the terrible song of the stars - you knew it once,
     before you were born.

Tell a story about why the sun comes back.
Sit still until the itches give up, lizards ignore you,
     a mule deer holds you in her eyes.
Explain yourself over and over. Forget it all
     when a scrub jay shrieks.
Imagine sun, sky, and wind the same, over your
     scattered white bones.

On Better Late Than Never

It's just before 6 a.m. in Hawaii, and I'm sitting on my lanai (balcony) with a little tiny bird near my feet. Yesterday some birds flew into my hotel room, hung out for awhile, and then fluttered back out, all made up of calm and air and light. This morning I couldn't sleep because of the cacophony of the birds, the hundreds of these little singing featherpuffs living inside the tree near my balcony. This is sort of endearing, and sort of annoying, but mostly it's just different. I could curl up inside of anything different and live there forever.

So far, this trip has been sock-rocking. It's funny, I never want to go to places like Hawaii because I often feel they're overdone. Everyone goes to Hawaii, therefore, it's not special anymore, right? What a stupid, snobby way to think. Travel is the same (sometimes) as literature - there is a reason that certain places (books) are beloved. Maui is exceptional. It's so beautiful it's irritating. It's so joyously colorful and bright that it's stupid. I could live here forever and never grow tired of those mountains and that sea. 

The photos below, of me wearing a bikini on a beach, happened on day one, and I need to memorialize them here. I have wanted this moment since I was old enough to understand that girls are supposed to be beautiful and thin, and if they aren't, they have somehow failed at girlhood and should be whole-bodily ashamed. I absorbed that lesson young. Definitely before my teenage years, and possibly before I was 10. I have spent my entire youth loathing this body, instead of loving it.

I wish I knew at any point in time that the power to feel beautiful is always in your own hands. You can either find it by being healthy and fit, which then (as a little bonus) conforms you to certain societal standards, or you can buck all of that and just be confident with what you have, but either way - the power to feel gorgeous has always been inside of you. No one ever took it from you. You just gave it away. 

I'll be 32 in a few weeks. I had the idea that, when I lost weight, a svelte 19 year old body would pop out. Obviously, I've been wildly disappointed in that. My body is every inch of my age. But yesterday I walked on the beach for a few miles with my husband. Then I sprinted a quick mile in the hotel gym, then I lifted weights for an hour. Later that day I ate a big lunch, a huge ice cream cone, and drank a sugary tropical drink. Then I swam in the ocean. I feel bad about none of it. I felt alive and healthy and vital. Which is gorgeous. Finally. 

Pretty Halcyon Days

How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned.
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done.

How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.

How pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vikings and whalers
In the days of the viking and whale.
They sport on the brink
Of the shad at the shark;
If it's windy they sink;
If it isn't, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.

How pleasant the salt anaesthetic
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.

- Ogden Nash

Tomorrow I'm heading off to Hawaii for a little vacation with my lover, my dude, my main squeeze, my guy who makes the food and walks the dog. We are long overdue for this sort of thing - by which I mean, we have never before done this sort of thing. We travel hard and often, but we do not beach vacation. It's uncharted marital territory, this idea of "laying about," this concept of "relaxing." Who on earth will we be, in this crazy alternate reality?

For myself, I have extremely specific plans to drink all of the rum and to eat all of the things. I also will take lots of beachside morning runs and sit in reverent silence in as many patches of hot sun as I can find. I may throw myself gracelessly into a wave or two, but mostly I just want to wrap myself in beauty and color. I intend to leap face first into the first bush of tropical flowers I can find. This will probably be painful. Also, do bushes have flowers? I bet they do in Hawaii. I want to absorb tropical flowers into my tired soul. I want to sleep forever, but not in a death way. In a delicious comfy pajama-ed windows open to the night air kind of way.

Mostly, I just want the rum. And speaking of delicious things, this poem is fracking delicious. It begs to be read aloud. Do it, now, wherever you are. Who cares if you look ridiculous? Read this poem, now, with flair and dramatic import, and get thee to a rum-based beverage immediately afterwards. Your day will immediately improve. I promise.

On Idolatry

"What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than that because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?"

- Cheryl Strayed, Wild

Idolatry is perhaps an unwise thing. No one, really, is good enough or perfect enough to earn someone's undiluted and intense worship. Everyone is a little bit broken.

But, if a person were worth it, that person is absolutely, entirely Cheryl Strayed. I could talk forever about the magic that she makes with words, but I won't today. Mostly because I have somewhere to be right now. But, it's coming. It'll probably be sickeningly gushy, too. You've been warned.

Cheering Fans/Too Much Coffee

Hear ye, hear ye!

For those looking for the answer to life (the universe, and everything?) I have found it. Are you ready? Are you prepared to know, finally, the unknowable? Read on, dear ones.

The answer to life is - wait for it - working out in the morning.

I know, I know, getting up early is generally a shitty answer for anything. But I am telling you, this has been the missing link of my entire shabby life. Try it. Consider the following:

Scenario #1: Stay up way too late reading 17 blogs of people you've (mostly) never met until your eyes start to tear from the computer glare. Definitely be unable to fall asleep, and be angry about it, for a very long time. When your alarm goes off at 7:00 a.m., hit snooze every five minutes for one entire hour. Get up with the momentum and grace of a 75 year old arthritic grandpa. Stare at your weird hair in the mirror despondently for awhile while pumping yourself with caffeine. Snap out of your reverie when the dog barks. Commence racing around in wild panic to leave the apartment on time. Absolutely fail at this. Definitely do not leave yourself enough time to pack a lunch, put on makeup, or dry your hair. Arrive at work late and entirely disheveled. Feel like death, loathe yourself, hate the earth. Definitely don't become remotely productive until at least 10:00 a.m.

Scenario #2: Go to bed early, like a real person. Set your alarm for 6:30 a.m. Actually obey that goddamn thing and haul your ass up. Drink coffee while staring out window at rising sun, already feeling mildly triumphant and zen-like. Leave by 7:00. Arrive at gym by 7:30. Work out like a killer warrior girl for one entire hour. Imagine stands full of jubilant fans screaming themselves hoarse at your victory over your sloth-like self. Do extra crunches, saluting them in your mind. Get ready for work in the gym's dreamy, spa-like locker room, pretending you're in a fancy hotel as you help yourself to an extra towel. Revel in avoiding your own dirty apartment bathroom, where you ran out of toilet paper days ago and the stack of napkins you use as replacements are running low. Remind yourself to buy more toilet paper later. In your wild confidience, faintly believe you'll actually remember this later. Get to work on time, looking presentable. With actual makeup on your actual face. Begin takeover of planet earth.

Happy Friday.

....

i cry a little bit.

Happiness Is...

Today, happiness is a quiet moment.  It's sitting cross-legged on my bed at my mother's house, enjoying the stillness. It's the way the sunlight pours in the window and drifts slowly towards me as the afternoon ticks by. It's eating slices of bakery bread spread thick with butter and drinking coffee from my very favorite ceramic mug. It's the fact that mixed into my messy sheets are two magazines, one literary journal, one travel guidebook, and a few novels, like little word-surprises lost in the wilds of my bedding.

It's my dog, rotating from room to room to follow the sun for her naps. It's the way a house feels when everyone in it is quietly absorbed in something, or resting. It's the way my body feels after a morning run in the fresh air and the bright light. It's the anticipation of dinner tonight in the company of old friends.

But mostly, it's in the awareness that spring is a real thing, an actual guarantee that is walking steadily towards me. And it's the knowledge that, if you let it, peace will always follow the dark, in the same way that flowers will always stretch towards the warmth and that the stars are always there, hiding behind the sun glare or the light pollution or some wispy clouds. Whether you can see them or not, they're always there, glinting effortlessly down, like an invisible promise. Like faith.

I'm not one for religion, so Easter as a holiday is something that is lost entirely on me. But any day set aside to celebrate rebirth, that happens at the start of spring, is an excellent way to mark the end of the dark and the walk into the light.

Also, jelly beans are really good, but mostly the jolly rancher kind. Like, honestly. That shit is delicious.

Demand It Courageously

     Make some room for yourself, human animal.
     Even a dog jostles about on his master's lap to
improve his position. And when he needs space he
runs forward, without paying attention to commands
or calls.
     If you didn't manage to receive freedom as a gift,
demand it as courageously as bread and meat.
     Make some room for yourself, human pride and
dignity.
     The Czech writer Hrabal said:
     I have as much freedom as I take.

- Julia Hartwig

"You arrive after years like a broken bird.
You are finally a breath away from everything."

- Mark Nepo

Boot Hunting: The Kill.

Boots are serious business. Good ones must be both sexy and comfortable at the same time, and you should be able to wear them with anything - jeans and a big sweater on a cold, overcast Saturday, a pencil skirt to the office on an important meeting day, a dress and big earrings to the bar on a Saturday night. This kind of versatility is the most important thing about boots, considering a high quality pair can set you back an astonishing amount of money.

I have high demands of my boots - they must be as comfortable as slippers, and make me feel as hot as stilettos. I think boots are way, way sexier than frilly heels anyway. The right pair of boots makes me think of dirty dancing late at night in a roadside bar somewhere in the dusty south. In this mythical land I am throwing back tequila shots, sitting on a bar stool, legs crossed, while a jukebox blares something fantastic and twangy from a dark corner. I am singing along in a carefree, lusty way, my lipstick is perfect, and I am exactly the right amount of drunk.

In other words, this is a fantasy that I will never actually live, but the right boots make me almost, almost believe it could be so.

In this hot little scenario it's all boots, baby. Keep your rickety heels in the city, where every girl looks awkward and steps gingerly over sidewalk cracks and cobblestone streets, and spends the tail end of the night moaning about blisters and forming little blood trails down her heels.

I know all of this about boots from a combination of research and fantasy only, I am sad to report. In real life, I spent good money on one pair of boots ever; then proceeded to wear them every single winter day for the next four years like a sad, boring uniform. There is a literal hole in one of them now. You have to look closely to see it, but yeah, it's there. A hole. In my shoe. Like a hobo.

I have been hunting for a new pair all winter long. I've been circling a handful of stores, prowling some websites. My heart was set on Frye boots but even my wallet starts to tremble around the $400 level. I mean, what am I, a lawyer? Fuck no. I cry a little bit inside when I have to pony up $60 to get my hair cut. Which is why I almost never get my hair cut.

So now you know the truth about me. Instead of being that wild girl at that roadside bar singing and dancing and doing tequila shots, I'm secretly a hobo with shabby, hole-laden old boots and ratty hair. And while we're on this tangent, I should mention that I never, ever have an umbrella with me, or rain shoes, or gloves, or a hat. I have a weird tendency to accidentally steal library books, and to forget to close the door of my apartment behind me when I leave the building. I often toss a banana into my purse and forget until I find it, with deep regret and a handful of black slime, a week later. I regularly fall over things, knock over other things, and just tonight dropped a whole slice of pizza onto a fuzzy blanket but ate it anyway. I tend to swear in the absolute wrong moment, like at a funeral or in front of small children. I will always steal your chocolate. I will never be sorry.

If you don't find these qualities of mine charming in a spastic, pleasantly absent sort of way, then I am not for you, my friend.

But again, the boots: I have hunted, I have prowled, I have been vastly unsatisfied with my findings and unwilling to part with my cash. Until tonight! Tonight, whereupon my dear friend Gina and I browsed through a few stores in the village and happened upon an enormous boot sale at Steven, the high-end version of Steve Madden. Five pairs tried on and some mild stressing later, a new pair were finally mine. Pretty little black ones with a fun, sexy heel and that smell like buttery leather. They were $300 originally.

But tonight? Tonight, my dear friends? Those fantastic little beauties were $75.

I got home and danced around my apartment in them. I tried on all manner of things: jeans, little casual dresses, a sexy dress, and then graduated to dancing foolishly in my bedroom in nothing but the boots and my underwear. This excited no one, but it did confuse the dog, who kept chasing me and trying to lick them. Yes, she literally licked my boots. This is adorable until you realize she's probably actually trying to lick the cow that later became these boots, but whatever. That was his cow duty, and I am duly appreciative of his sacrifice. Maybe I'll eat the burger version of him tomorrow.

Boots, people. Get me that dirty bar, that jukebox, that tequila shot. Or, you know, my normal routine of walking to work and walking back home again. I can handle either plan, as long as my feet feel pretty.

***What I am learning: blogs inspire a weird mix of sloppy, confessional writing, but by 1 a.m. I am too tired to care.***

"Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart."

- Phyllis McGinley

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look.

- Kim Addonizio

On...Fitness?

So, I'm getting close now. Close to being, if you will, "done" with losing weight. This is a strange and sort of daunting idea, when losing weight is something you've been...doing, something you've been in the active pursuit of, since you were literally what, eight years old? Nine?

The sadness in that is near overwhelming, of course. Actually, it disgusts me. But it's undeniably true, and probably is for an enormous amount of people, so let's just applaud ourselves for all being assholes in that way, shall we?

I know that once I hit my magical number, I'm going to have a lot to say about what this process has meant to me. And believe me, it's meant an extraordinary amount. It's not so much about looking good, although for sure, I am a fan of that. It's more about feeling strong as hell. Feeling strong is something I didn't realize could be so addicting. It's way hotter than feeling thin. It's sexy as shit, honestly.

I realize I'll never be a skinny girl now. All those times in high school that I went to the beach with my friends and lusted after the bodies of the tiny little girls in tiny little bikinis were misinformed at best, plain stupid at worst. That's just not ever, ever going to be me.

But now I realize I'd rather maybe look kind of rounded, less than model-perfect, and be able to run for miles. Which I can do now. Which is still astonishing and maybe always will be. I'd rather have a little bit of a chubby stomach - for the life of me, I cannot get rid of it - but be able to do 30 push-ups without collapsing, or wall squats for so long I leave gross streaks of sweat on the mirrored wall behind me. I often walk into that gym hating myself, loathing my life, so full of poison that I can't breath for the weight of all that self-hatred. I lift weights and do squats and planks for one hour, and I leave that place like a warrior fucking queen. It's amazing. Don't talk to me about addictions to heroin, to liquor, to cigarettes. Mine is the gym. If you try to take it away from me (who would? what a weird thing to say) I will have to plain kill you, and there's a solid chance I won't feel bad about it.

I've lost 65 pounds. For some reason my magic number is 70. At this point it's totally arbitrary, and I know five pounds means nothing, but there is still something to be said for crossing a finish line that you've been staring at in misery for your entire life.

I know now that it's not really about the number. It's not like I'll hit the 70 pound mark - which for me is 142 pounds, which is for sure not skinny at all - and suddenly stop caring. I'll still keep trying to be stronger, faster, better.

But there's a little girl in me crying because she's the fat girl at summer camp who doesn't want to put on a bathing suit in front of the other kids. For her, I want the satisfaction of the number. Just for proof that no matter how late the victory comes in life, it still counts.

Fuck numbers. They matter, they really, really do sometimes, but fuck them anyway.

Something in this process has made me angry. I will have to figure out why.

"Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing."

- Frida Kahlo

When I was 18 years old, I had a rough time of it. In September, my grandmother died. In November, my father died. In January, my grandfather died. The months in between were also genuinely less than stellar.

At the end of the third funeral, my mother, sister and I climbed into our third black limousine in front of the big, beautiful cathedral I'd grown up singing in but would now forevermore associate with loss. We clamored into our seats in that hunched, awkward way you do in limos, then looked quietly forward while we waited for the driver to start the engine.

I turned to my sister's sad face, noticed my mom's exhausted eyes. Outside it was an overcast, frigid morning. This whole situation was near-cartoonishly depressing, so I figured, what the hell.

"Well, hey now. Three times in the limo, never in the hearse, am I right?" I chortled, and theatrically elbowed my mom right in the ribcage. For a second I got nervous that I'd crossed a line, but then she sort of deflated and laughed a little, and then my sister kind of snorted, and I felt all that terrible pressure lift off my body for just a few blessed, light seconds.

Tragedy really is the most ridiculous thing. I swear, whether I die in some horrific accident tomorrow or snug under some blankets when I'm 96 and gray and fulfilled, if anyone gets all moony and weepy over me at my funeral I'm going to find a way to haunt the everliving crap out of them, and I will giggle with real delight at every goddamn minute of their big-eyed fright.

I mean, really now. If you can't find a way to laugh at a funeral, we should not be friends. Taking yourself, or death, too seriously is the quickest way to self-implode.

It's also just really, really boring.

***This message has been brought to you by the other side of 4 a.m.***

The Observation of a Good Day

Yesterday was a good day. I got some news that made me happy. I came home after work and ate a weirdo celebratory dinner of guacamole and delicious homemade chicken soup. While I was eating, a song that I'm currently obsessed with and have listened to at least five times today alone came on, so I put it on loud enough to be annoying and didn't care. I took a bath - a bath! this means that my bathtub was clean enough for me to voluntarily sit in, naked! - with a silly candle and an actual flute of champagne and two delicious new books to read. I took a photo of the candle and the champagne perched together on the edge of the bathtub and almost put it on instagram, but then I realized you could see the toilet framed just behind them, which of course made it all a little weird. I got all wrinkly in there in the meantime; it was grand.

I love the word grand. I dig how it automatically makes you sound Irish and lilting and jovial, even if you've said nothing to deserve any of that.

Happy days are uncommon sometimes, particularly during a gray, long winter. It is important to pay attention to them when they come, to notice them and, as a result, inhabit them fully. Otherwise they just slide by and before you know it, you're just another day older with nothing to be thankful for.

For Christmas, my cousin Kim gave me an antique glass jar that was empty except for colorful little slips of blank paper. She said that for every good thing that happens this year, I should pick one piece of paper, write it down, and stick it back in. Then, on New Years Eve next year, I should take them out one by one to remember and honor all those good things - no matter how small - that happened as the year passed.

What a simple, beautiful gift. An empty jar that I get to fill with my own happiness. For perhaps the first time this year, I'll have a few to add this week:

• The way it felt to watch Carousel at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. It was a concert performance with the NY Philharmonic, rather than a traditional stage show, and it was one of the most glorious musical moments I have ever experienced. I cried so hard when it was over that my husband had to stand with me in the balcony and wait for my internal storm to settle so I wouldn't fall down the stairs and kill myself while wailing about how sad and perfect all those dark images were: The park bench they fell in love on when they were young. The wife's childlike faith in his goodness, even after he failed her, even after he beat her. The way he dies so recklessly, so violently. The star he plucks out of the night sky to give to the dancing teenaged daughter he never met in real life, and the way he hovers around with such intense protection during her graduation, but she can't see him there. The falling blossoms on his aging wife, so many years later. But mostly, it's the idea of having one last chance to go back to earth after your death and do one simple good thing, one shining moment to set it all straight, and failing at even that. How perfectly, perfectly human and dark. I have gotten teary at performances before of course,  but after this one I *literally* could not stop crying. It was astounding. Also, oh my god Nathan Gunn. Holy shit, people. He is magic. 
• The fact that I JUST NOW REALIZED they recorded this performance for PBS!!!! April 26th! Ahhh! 
• Being out to dinner afterwards, singing in my seat and dancing along with the bad radio station, shoving pieces of garlic bread into my mouth with wild abandon and absolutely no manners. For a few minutes there I was just lost in it, whatever "it" is, and I felt like myself, and I noticed it. It is the noticing of your own happiness that is important, folks. Paying attention is the thing. Otherwise, I was just an annoying girl singing too loud over her crabcakes. 
• I went to Target on Sunday night. I spent an inordinate amount of time selecting new candles for my office, because I guess it turns out I'm a creature of habit and I can't write without a candle next to me. I love Target. Something about the vastness of it all, the great red and white florescent scentless joy of organized commerce, just soothes my tired soul. 
• Tonight, of course. Good news and guacamole and chicken soup and champagne and books and a bathtub that is clean enough to climb into without twitching. 

So ok, a random visit to Target may not make it into a memory jar, but the way it felt to watch Carousel will. Having a quiet, happy night tonight will. There is a beauty in noticing the simple things and clinging to them as they pass. I suppose that writing is, in essence, my memory jar. This blog, my copious email habit, my journals, all of it is just a way of capturing and preserving both the good and the bad.

I still don't know if that bent towards preservation is a good thing or a bad thing. I wonder about the people, so different than me, who just live their lives forward and never look back. That could be healthy, I suppose. But how do you learn? How do you honor who you were and where you came from, and then choose - with real sureness and direction - where you're going next? Sometimes I think those people are healthier than me, and sometimes I think it's all bullshit, and mostly I think, who the fuck cares? We are who we are.

So much of art is just encapsulation anyway; the effort to grab onto a moment and preserve it. Paintings, sculptures, plays, movies, photography, writing, all of it - it's preservation, it's story-telling, but it's more than that, too. It's illumination. It's paying attention to the world and how we all move within it.  It's taking a simple moment, a simple story, and lighting it up. It's finding the spectacular hidden inside of the ordinary.

How could a world that makes a show like Carousel be anything other than beautiful?

Textbook Statistics

On average, 5 people are born every second and 1.78 die.
So we're ahead by 3.22, which is good, I think.

The average person will spend two weeks in his life
waiting for the traffic light to change.

Pubescent girls wait two to four years
for the tender lumps under their nipples to grow.

So the average adult has over 1,460 dreams a year,
laughs 15 times a day. Children, 385 more times.

So the average male adult mates 2,580 times with five different people
but falls in love only twice in his life - possibly

with the same person. Seventy-nine long years for each of us,
awakened to love in our twenties, so more or less

thirty years to love our two lovers each. And if, in a lifetime,
one walks a total of 13,640 miles by increments,

Where are you headed, traveler?
is a valid philosophical question to pose to a man, I think, along with

Why does the blood in your veins travel endlessly?
on account of those red cells flowing night and day

through the traffic of the blood vessels, which if laid out
in a straight line would be over 90,000 miles long.

The great Nile River in Egypt is 4,180 miles long.
The great circle of the earth's equator is 24,903 miles.

Dividing this green earth among all of us
gives a hundred square feet of living space to each,

but our brains take only one square foot of it,
along with the 29 bones of the skull, so

if you look outside your window with your mind only,
why do you hear the housefly hum middle octave, key of F?

If you listen to the cat on the rug by the fire with
the 32 muscles in your ear, you will hear

100 different vocal sounds. Listen to the dog
wishing for your love. 10 different sounds.

If you think lonliness is beyond calculation,
think of the mole digging a tunnel underground

ninety-eight miles long to China
is one single night. If you think beauty escapes you

or your entire genealogical tree, consider the slug
with its four uneven noses, or the chameleon shifting colors

under an arbitrary light. Think of the deepest point
in the deepest ocean, the Marianas Trench in the Pacific,

do you think anyone's sadness can be deeper? In 1681,
the last dodo bird died. In the 16th century,

Queen Elizabeth suffered from a fear of roses.
Anne Boleyn had six fingers. People fall in love

twice. The human heart beats 3 billion times - only - in a lifetime.
If you attempt to count all the stars in the galaxy, one

every second, it'll take 3 thousand years, if you're lucky.
As owls are the only birds that can see the color blue

the ocean is bluish, along with the sky and the eyes
of that boy who died alone by that little unnamed river

in your dreams one blue night of the war
of one of your lives. (Do you remember which one?)

Duration of World War 1: 4 years, 3 months, 14 days.
Duration of an equatorial sunset: 128 seconds, 142 tops.

A neuron's impulse takes 1/1000 of a second,
a morning's commute from Prospect Expressway

to the Brooklyn Bridge, about 90 minutes,
forty-five without traffic.

Time it takes for a flower to wilt after it's cut from the stem: five days.
Time left our sun before it runs out of light: five billion years.

Hence the number of happy citizens under the red glow
of that sun: maybe 50% of us, 50% on good days, tops.

Number who are sad: maybe 70% on good days -
especially on the good days. (The first emotion's more intense, I think,

when caught up with the second.) So children grow faster in the summer,
their bright blue bodies expanding. The ocean, after all, is blue

which is why the sky now outside your window is bluish
expanding with the white of something beautiful, like clouds.

Fact: The world is a beautiful place - once in a while.
Another fact: We fall in love twice. Maybe more, if we're lucky.

- Arkaye Kierulf


...there isn't a word to describe what it feels like to collapse into a perfect poem, but there should be. And it should sound like both music and an explosion happening at the same time. And it should be almost, but not quite, a profanity, because "bad words" are best at conveying intensity, and also because I swear like a sailor. Falling into a perfect poem is nothing if not intense.

This is wondrous.

http://evdospina.com/home.html

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

- The Velveteen Rabbit

The Dance of Avoidance

Things you will do to avoid doing the thing(s) you must, must, must do, immediately, but dread doing:

- Go for a very long run outside, even though you really suck at that.
- Tweeze your eyebrows.
- Clean the kitchen.
- Write an essay about Jonathan Brandis, for no reason.
- Write an essay about weight loss, for no reason.
- Write an essay about an essay-writer you love, for no reason.
- Answer seven lingering emails to friends and family who probably don't give a shit about what you're rambling on about.
- Go to California. It's lovely there.
- Post a photo album of the California trip on Facebook, because you are just plain adept at wasting time.
- Write a blog post. Don't post it.
- Write a blog post. Don't post it.
- Ponder becoming a poet while sitting in your cubicle on a Friday afternoon. Laugh at self, loudly and with maniacal zest, when you really consider the insanity of paying over 30K to earn a piece of paper that legitimatizes you as...a fucking poet. WHERE, pray tell, is your very best beret?
- Decide - today! - that it's vitally important to start reading up on how to run properly, though you've been doing it for months now without instruction and have somehow survived.
- Clean your bedroom.
- Get lost, utterly lost, in the internet.
- Discover a new poet and read his work exhaustively online. Of course.
- Read a magazine.
- Eat two huge bowls of delicious chili, and some chocolate, and some potato chips, and some ice cream.
- Drink five cups of coffee, one cup of tea. Thus far. The night is young.
- Shower for longer than is reasonable.
- Organize your finances.
- Snuggle your dog.
- Snuggle yourself in blankets.
- Cry at least twice, over nothing. Confuse and worry everyone around you with your intensity, which you have tried your whole life to shed, but just cannot. Cannot! Reconsider being a poet, which is perhaps the only field in which that kind of intensity is acceptable. Buy that fucking beret, and definitely begin smoking French cigarettes immediately.
- Wonder if ethnic cigarettes are a real thing.
- Organize your clothes for work tomorrow, even though you have literally never in your life done that before, because you are not that girl.
- Go out for bagels. Twice.
- Write this list.
- Post it.

http://www.incidentalcomics.com/

Paradise

January finally drags into February and one fumbles with
numb fingers at the ordinary knots and hooks of life. People
are irritable, difficult. Some days you want to stay in bed
with the covers over your head and dream of paradise. A
place where the warm sea washes the white sand. There
are a few palm trees on the higher ground, many brightly
colored fish in the lagoon, waves breaking on the reef
farther out. No one in sight. Occasionally an incredibly
large, split-second shark darkens the clear water. Sea birds
ride the wind currents, albatross, kittiwake...and pass
on. Day after day, sea wind and perfect sky...You make a
big heap of driftwood on the beach.

- Louis Jenkins

Last night I walked through Hoboken in the dark, and it was windy, and the air was so cold my bones and face felt shattered. I tucked into a coffee shop and got a hot chocolate, which helped for approximately one minute before it the heat leached out of it. Then I sat on trains for awhile, all of them taking too long, drowsy with warmth. I watched people and thought about cold, about what a tropical sun feels like, about the lives of the other people in my train car, about poetry.

Could there be a better way to spend a day than making a big heap of driftwood on a beach? Quietly, alone, and under a perfect sky?

So Yeah, California is Nice

I was 22 years old when I drove cross-country with a car full of laughing friends. I'd graduated from college at the end of a rough year, which concluded a somewhat rough four years, and to me, getting in that car signified freedom, sweet relief from the stagnation of staying still and being me.

I wasn't the one moving to California, but I was still at the beginning of something, at the start of a journey, and that's what counted. With every mile of wind in my hair and every radio song blasted in my lungs I felt better. Lighter. Stronger.

As we left the desert and pulled towards the coast, my friend who was moving grew nervous. What if she was making a mistake? We said to her the soothing things that friends say: you'll be fine. You're so brave. We'll be here if you fall down, if you want to go home again. And then the sea appeared over the sandy California hills and her nerves slid away under the weight of all that perfect blue light. We blasted up the coast laughing, towards her new life, away from our old ones.

I wrote this essay about that time. It's one of the first essays I ever "tried" to write deliberately, one of the first things I didn't just blurt into a journal or an email. I wrote it about a year ago, and I've learned so much since then that I can see the holes in it from miles away, but I'm still proud. That essay was another beginning of something, the start of another journey, though I didn't realize that until much later. And now I'm at the bottom of a new mountain, which is my favorite place to be - metaphorically and maybe a teensy bit literally - and nothing in the world excites me more than beginning something hard that is also loved. I'll climb this new mountain word by word and phrase by phrase until I learn a little more about this fancy writing thing.

After that drive nine years ago, we dropped off my friend into her new life, and another friend at the airport for her flight home. That left my best friend Mike and I with the day free to explore before our own flight home, so we left the airport with our rental car and headed into San Francisco.

At 22, I still had the vague idea that I might live in Los Angeles someday. I'd dreamed of it since I was a little kid with actress dreams, and hadn't quite outgrown it yet. But from the first moment I saw San Francisco, I realized - nope. This is it, this is the California spot for me. This land of hills to climb, of sea views from every corner, this gorgeous town that is still California but slightly more serious, slightly more internal and misty and soft, would be mine.

Mike and I squirmed in our seats in excitement as we neared the Golden Gate Bridge. I was a film major deep in a phase of videotaping my friends every words and breaths, incredibly annoying and aggressive with my camera, so I held it high from the passenger seat as we advanced. As we left the land behind us and darted out onto the open bridge we both burst into goofy singing, blaring out the lyrics to the Full House theme song at the top of our lungs, fancying ourselves clever and hiliarious.

Then the video ends, then abruptly begins again. I am laughing so hard the camera is shaking, almost falling into my lap. Michael is cry-laughing and wheezing as he drives, and it's frankly a miracle we survived this particular vehicular moment.

I'd realized, in the brief dark moments the camera was turned off, that I could, in fact, see the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance, that burnished orange steel shining under the sun. This of course meant we were not actually on it, we'd realized with a startled snap. And as that thought crystalized, Michael gasped and said we were actually singing, so loud and with so much heart, the theme song from Family Matters. Not Full House.

And so, two goofy fools singing the wrong song on the wrong bridge in a new state in a rented car 3,000 miles from home became of the most hilarious and ridiculous moments of my life. I hope when I am dying, crinkled and decrepid and gasping my last painful breaths, a moment that flawless, that absurd, is still fresh in my mind, and I cross over smiling.

Being friends with a like-minded fool is a beautiful thing.

Last night, I flew again to San Francisco to visit my beautiful friend who was so brave so long ago, who moved far away on a whim and into a new life. I met Mike there at the airport, and today we'll rent a car, drive over a bridge, and for a little while we'll all be together, plus a brand new little California baby.

I was afraid, at 22, that we would all lose each other, that we'd each spin off into the big world in different directions and the threads that kept us together would break under the weight of all that empty space. And I was right to be afraid, because that is often what happens when you grow older and dig your way into your own space on the earth.

But if you're smart, and you try really hard, the threads don't have to break. They just stretch out into the air to impossible lengths, and if you feel for them in the dark, they will guide you each home to each other. For a little while at least. Which is sometimes enough.