My favorite aunt is dying now - what my hospice nurse mother calls "actively dying" - in Colorado. I haven't seen her in many years. Maybe ten. My brother was always her favorite, but that's okay. She is wonderful. I miss her.
Maybe it's because I haven't seen her in so long that I can't feel anything.
*
Tonight The Bug was returned to me overwarm from his lobster costume and heavily asleep. I laid him on his changing table and unzipped him, folded him out of the legs and arms of the thing. He snored slightly from the gunk in his nose. His lips are plump and shaped nicely, like mine. I clicked on the little light and laid him on my lap and clipped his nails. It's more difficult if he hasn't just had a bath, but I can't do it while he's awake.
Actually, strike that. Last time, he was awake. I talked him through it. He's growing up.
I thought of Aunt while I did all this. I wish she could have met him. They would have liked one another. After she passes I will ask her to come watch over us. I bet she'd do it. I bet she'd love to.
I could kick my story. That latest one. I added all this cool stuff and it ended up muddy and convoluted. I will have to start from scratch, maybe ditch that whole collective narrative thing that I've been clinging to.
That's okay. I'm willing. When things get tough for me, that's my cue to plow through.
The Bug's nose bled last night during a marathon of "The Biggest Loser" on Bravo. Just one nostril, and not heavy. It's the dryness. Mister Aran told me he remembered blood on his pillowcases during season changes. So The Bug has inherited this.
Awhile ago I saw a puffy red patch of skin on The Bug's back. So it could be that he's also inherited Mister Aran's sensitive skin.
He's miserable; his voice is nearly gone and when crying he coughs badly. I may call the pediatrician today, but the thought of an hour in the waiting room along with all the healthy kids (better doctor's offices have separate waiting rooms for sick kids), The Bug impatient and coughing and bleeding from the nose, makes me hope on hope that it just goes away on its own. I want to go to the park and watch him run around. I want to go to the library and check out some Michael Martone. I want to finish my Larry Brown book. This, at least, can be done today whether or not The Bug gets to feeling better.
*
We want to get back into training with Joker (his site's down, or I'd link you). His new gym isn't close and it isn't cheap but we do like to hit things, and one another, so we're going to bypass all those breakfasts out and get back into the swing of things. I was just getting into my sparring when the goddamn gym closed. I still can't think about it. Pisses me off. To some, a gym closing is no big deal. For us, it was like finding a fantastic church. It had everything and we felt at home there.
I picked up John Irving's latest hardcover, Until I Find You, at the B&N. I read the back, got as far as some text involving a young man and older women... and put it back down like it was on fire.
I'm tired, tired, tired of John Irving's old themes. I've ranted about it before, so I won't again here, but I will say my problem with him is probably compounded by the fact that A Prayer For Owen Meany remains my favorite book of all time. I expect too much from Irving, probably. I don't begrudge Amy Tan her repetitiveness because, though I've enjoyed a couple of her novels, they don't have a permanent spot in my memory and history.
I was looking around for that flap copy so I could show you here but I ran into this article instead.
It was while writing Until I Find You that Irving discovered the identity of his own biological father. In addition, he has gone public about being seduced as a pre-teen by an older woman, a fate that also befalls Jack.
Ahhhh sooooo.
Let's hope to god this means Irving is going to get past this and move on to other subjects for his next book.
I thought I'd have to send old stories through the workshops in class, because I was out of ideas. I panicked, thinking of having to write fiction again. Last week, though, I came up with something. I had a seed of an idea while I was trying to fall asleep. By some miracle, I remembered it in the morning, and an actual character came out of it, with... like... themes and metaphors and stuff attached.
This week, though, I was sure I'd have to print out an old story. For two days I couldn't think of anything. Then, at the park, something big happened. A fire helicopter landed in the baseball diamond. The Bug and I watched, exclaiming, exuberant, my god it was so amazing. It would have been cool if I were alone; imagine that cool times one hundred. That's how it is with a toddler involved.
The story came out of that. No helicopters land in parks in the story, but the seed was there. Great things happen at parks. Big things.
It's jazzy, to create something new. You get high. I've been riding on my two new stories like surfboards for days now. With the first one, I couldn't keep my mouth shut; I sent it to friends before it was formed, like showing off ultrasound pictures. They squint at it and act happy for you, but really they think you're nuts. I'll be better this time. I'll let this story incubate.
Anne Lamott says there's a Dr. Seuss character in her brain, feeding her stories. I don't know where these last two stories came from. I'm not that creative. I'll buy into the Dr. Seuss guy idea, for lack of any better explanation.
I want to believe there's a way out. If we could just drill in Alaska for a short time, long enough to develop alternative energy. If we could just pull out of the Middle East altogether, take our sticky fingers out of their lives and politics, leave Israel to fend for itself. If we could just secure our borders, stop outsourcing. If we could just, if we could just, if we could just.
Then they'd stop hating us, the great devil America. They'd stop developing the bomb, or at least, they'd use it against one another and not us. They'd dismantle the cells of operations here, go back home. They'd stop stockpiling weapons, sending their young boys into the streets in cars filled with explosives. Free to live under the strict rule of Islam, they'd allow the rest of the world their own religous freedom. They'd stop kidnapping, beheading. They'd have no reason to put live bombs into the hands of children to throw at tanks. They'd retire their AK-47s, rebuild their cities, grow vegetables, vote or not; this isn't our business.
I want to believe what the Democrats say: that it's our fault. That it can be fixed by leaving them alone.
The closest thing to truth that we have, now, is not the politicians or the media. It's the armed forces. The little they're allowed to say. Listen carefully.
The Bug had a rough night. His nose was full and he couldn't breathe. He woke a few times and we took turns going in. I tried to hold him but he struggled away, impatient, as if thrashing underwater, like drowning. I put him down and he screamed worse, so I picked him up again and again he pushed away.
*
After two weeks, we put him in his own room.
He wakes angry. Sometimes he refuses to be picked up. He gives us the evil eye. Unless we're already there when he wakes. Then he gives a bleary, devious smile.
Even if we wanted to bring him back to us at night, we couldn't. He is independent now. He demands his space. He's used to his rectangle, his freedom.
*
I put him down for his nap today and after awhile he made a noise so I went to him. But his eyes were still shut and he'd found his empty bottle and was sucking at it, so I waited. Then I backed out, watched from the door. His breathing was labored, but he was determined to rest, so I left. I read my book in my bed.
This morning at the bookstore I saw a book on scientific parenting, something about brain research and us all being mammals. In the sleeping section (the section I always turn to first in such books) there were pictures of koalas, orangutans, sleeping together, mother and child. We're the only mammals who don't co-sleep, the book explained. It is too dangerous, anywhere else, to leave your child alone. On another page, a newborn slept next to his mother, who "slept" only for the camera, with perfect, if natural-looking, makeup.
That's what we give up for what we have now. For society. We put our children in the other room. We have sex. It's good or it's bad; for me it's mostly great. We clean up. The man falls asleep. The woman lays awake, body still tingling with sex, with the biological hope of it, even if our minds don't follow. We fall asleep eventually, but then we wake. Our weakened bladders. Our stuffed-up sons. Our mammalian impulses. The helpless child in the enclosed rectangle.
I don't know if I'll ever sleep well again.
*
In Afghanistan, a woman could have friends. She could go to the University; she could dress mostly as she liked and walk with those friends and laugh. She could be a doctor. She could fall in love, have babies, keep a house, have a say.
In 1995 I graduated high school. In 1995 Afghan women graduated, too. They celebrated, maybe like I did.
In 1997, no women graduated in Afghanistan.
It could happen. To you, to your wife, to your sister, your mother. In a few weeks, a month. In a year, you could be covered from head to heel with cloth. Expelled from school. The windows of your house painted black.
Unable to see a male doctor, you could die of an easily treatable disease. Accused unfairly of almost anything, you could hang. If your ankle showed, you could be beaten with cables until you died.
Perhaps you would sit in your home and watch your son grow, helpless. Maybe you would wish for the black windows of your house to break. For the soldiers to come. For the bombs to drop. Maybe once you were a teacher. Maybe once you were a government worker. September 27, 1996. It took only one day, but it was brewing before then.
*
I took my book into The Bug's room. I sat carefully in the big chair, careful not to squeak. I watched him, and I read. Outside, crows argued, motorcycles roared, music pounded from parking cars, garbage trucks did their business, leaf blowers droned. But he slept. He pressed through the gunk in his nose. A few times, he made a noise, stirred, but fell back into sleep. I watched and I read.
This morning I thought it would be nice for him to be old enough to play alone, so I could do... what? My work, my reading, my cleaning. Already, though, he looks like he will soon outgrow that rectangle. I wanted to get in it with him, but I stayed in my chair. On his back, his breathing grew easy, then faint. His breathing is faster than mine. Little lungs need less air.
He slept and slept. He's still sleeping. He never sleeps this long. He's missed Gymboree. I let him sleep. I left to turn off my phone, and to write this. I'm going back now, because it can all go away. One day, one month, the water boiling so gradually that you don't know you're cooking. I want to see him wake up. I want that wry smile.
Last time didn't work out so well. I'm assuming it got buried. So here we go again. If you're reading this, take a moment to leave a comment answering the following question:
My caffeine headache grows steady between my temples now. I'm drinking Diet Dr. Pepper to stave off the inevitable until The Bug wakes and we can hit up the Coffee Bean.
Last night something odd happened in class. I always have a latte during my first break so that I'll stay alert for the duration of the four-hour class. Last night, though, I only drank half and I felt a painful squeeze in my belly. Then I turned into Cornholio.
If you don't know who Cornholio is, watch the following short clip:
I couldn't stop shaking. My jaw chattered. I felt like that bug alien in Men In Black who was forever trying to act casual while inside the restrictive body of a man. Worse still, it was my shining moment: I had to read my auto-erotic cannibalistic coming-of-age story aloud to two classmates and (horrors) my teacher.
I always leave class a little too jazzed. I'm cutting out that breaktime latte. I'd rather feel sleepy than nuts.
I used to edit. Sorta. I read my pieces eighty times, making changes in the text as I went. I fixed problems. I chose better words. I considered what other readers said and sometimes made those changes.
But it's only since starting this class that I've really learned to edit. I have a long way to go, I see now. But editing is so great. None of the original rush of creation, which sucks, but it's nihilistic, which just tickles my Tyler Durden pink.
I'll leave you with that image for a second.
...
Anyway.
I love having early drafts, now. I love watching the number of drafts stack up. And I love being able to show people the laughable differences between number one (usually half scratched out on paper) and number nine or ten. The last one isn't as crazy, but it is loved. Deeply loved. It's like marriage vs. one-night-stand.
My shoulders are caked with sand; it's made its way into the cups of my collarbones, too. While I read I scoop and scrape. The playground is a marvelous exfoliant.
Sometimes I find out the names of the other children. The opening line, though, is about age. We ask because we're comparing.
Older boys skateboard over the playground equipment. I'd like to bop them over their heads. One cries, "Let's skate down the slide!" Secretly, I hope he does. One less idiot in the world. Then I remember, boys. Mine will one day consider stupid dangerous things like this, too. Already, everything long and grippable is a sword in his hands. He goes about stabbing and slashing in the living room and around the park like it's his job. And it is.
My mother printed out this post and sent it to my brother inside a care package. She told him not to tell me. Then she admitted it to me. No matter how annoyed I am with this, she's adamant that it was the right thing to do. She's taking some high ground where my brother needs to know how I feel about him and also he needs to know how talented I am - these are her words, jesus god please believe me - so it was worth getting me angry.
She doesn't know shit about my relationship with my brother. We've been building something over the last year. For him to see that now, after all that's changed between us since, is... it's just stupid.
I don't rant here about my mother anymore because she read some of the other ones and I felt like eight kinds of shit, but I'd like to ask her: Is this about me and my brother, or about you and your shitty siblings?
*
It isn't so much the butting into our business that bothers me, since god knows she was brought up to behave that way. It's the "Don't tell your sister... Don't tell your brother... I don't want him/her to be mad at me." Chrissake, if she doesn't want us to be mad at her, she could try not doing the things that piss us off for a change. She leaves a key under the mat, tells a near stranger, then is surprised to discover that he's been coming in regularly to take showers, dip into her stash of pills, and help himself to her jewelry. She lets drug addicts stay in her house - there are promises of rent money and quick jobs and apartment searches; none of this occurs of course BECAUSE WE ARE DEALING WITH ADDICTS - and then is surprised and annoyed to find that there is drama when she wants them to leave.
All this is not necessarily my business, either, so I don't really get angry like she thinks. It's getting old, hearing her swear she isn't into all the drugs and shit her circle of friends are into (yeah, that happens), but she's an adult and I leave her to her decisions for the most part. But her lies pissed me the fuck off recently, to the point where I don't care if she's still reading this. Go ahead and read on, Ma, because you crossed a line when you didn't let me know that the people who visited us with you are also addicts. Not just alcoholics, but drug addicts as well. You let me invite them into my home overnight. You led me to believe it was safe to let them watch my Bug for me. ADDICTS.
I know how it is. You hang with people long enough, it doesn't seem like a big deal. You make allowances for them. You try a little. You forgive them. Then you forget that addicts are unpredictable, selfish people.
*
I'm still trying to figure out what my relationship with my mom should be. I thought I could let her in aways but then I found out she was a liar. It's not easy to see reality when you're up close, but I got it now. I got it.
I am not sleeping well. My brain works overtime lately. I lay there, tired as hell, and don't sleep.
I didn't see The Bug much at all today. When I came home from breakfast, he was out in the grass next to the sidewalk with his Lolo so I went up to see them. As soon as The Bug saw me, he turned around and ran the other direction. I kept telling him, "I'm not going to take you away from Lolo," but he went limp and threw a tantrum when I tried to hold him anyway. So I was almost happy when he woke up a few minutes ago. I was trying to read myself to sleep. When I picked him up, I choked on his smell. It was like he'd bathed in perfume. Maybe his Lola had been wearing it.
I've felt tired and dizzy and a little nauseous and now this. Mister Aran said he didn't smell it. I'm annoyed at the whole potential prospect. Counting days. Wearing myself out.
My brother is safe now, safe as can be anyway, in his home in Oceanside. He got in last night. Was travelling since last Monday, if you can imagine. He says it was hell. I bought him 'No True Glory' for the trip back. He's been wanting to read it.
I will see him tomorrow. He sounded happy on the phone.
I have been giddy the last two weeks. I chalked it up to it being short fiction time in my class. I'm ready to nail it. I'm ready to get better. I'm ready to work my ass off. And I have been writing. Not the poetry stuff, which I think I do well because I have a great ear (this is why my piano teachers gave up on me - I refused to read the music), but fiction again. Fiction, especially short fiction, taps into seedy little wells of junk in my psyche, pumps it out, spills it everywhere. I wrote a story last week that I meant to be gory gobbletigoo, just fun, just horror. Today, though, while scrubbing the tub, I was startled to realize that the story has solid themes and metaphor, stuff I've been writing about and working through for years. I love it when my brains work without me.
It all came to a climax today - I don't use the C word lightly, here; I was a mess - when I read the first few pages of this month's Esquire.
If you've known me for five minutes, you know I love Esquire. Love isn't quite the word, actually. Esquire is my dream, my goal, often my inspiration. A few months ago, for the first time in many months, they published fiction, a tale about a Katrina survivor. They've decided, since, to start publishing fiction regularly again, and they're pushing the envelope: they're commissioning stories, giving writers assignments and titles and letting them run with it.
Fiction has meant so much to me, since I was a little girl, that the last few years of nonfiction craze has been hard. I have been waiting for a rebirth, for someone to come along and push fiction into a new age, and I believe this is it.
They're asking for their slush pile to grow to the ceiling, and I will be in it. And if my story isn't enough, I will work harder, and it may be the next time. Or the next.
If you are at all interested in the war in Iraq, please read No True Glory by Bing West. This book talks mostly about the battles in and for Fallujah up to 2005. West keeps his opinion out of it for the most part, except in the heroic paintings you get of the individual soliders and Marines, but I bought it. He keeps his conclusions separate, at the end. It's some good, solid reporting. You'll be amazed at how important politics and media are in the waging of modern war.
It's also just a thrilling read. It's accessable even for those of us who have no understanding of military terminology.
*
In other news, I was annoyed by the end of The Lovely Bones. Not angry, throwing things angry, like I was at the end of White Oleander (I have come to the conclusion that Janet Fitch is a sadist who hates her readers), but it was enough to make me close the book with a dissatisfied groan.
*
But Larry Brown! How have I missed him all my life? He is a sneaky, sneaky writer. So deceptively simple. You close his book, and for an hour you're narrating your own life in your head in his voice. I've never known a writer who could better paint a scene. Thank you, thank you Miss Snark. I'm enjoying Fathers and Sons now. It is testosterone at its simple, beautiful finest.
I read somewhere in my Miss Snark travels that finding an agent is a writer's biggest hurdle. (In the comments, not the main body of the blog, of course.)
I wholly disagree. Finding an agent is a hurdle, a horrible, slippery, hurdle with jaws and mean nasty pointy teeth, okay, but the writer's biggest hurdle is WRITING. Getting better all the time.
Sometimes I think I'd love to get to the place where I can read something of mine five years later and not crumble in embarrassment. It's probably a good thing, though. Hopefully I'll be ninety-five, and stumble across something I wrote at ninety, and toss it away with a, "Oh, that was just an experiment. Was I ever that silly?"
I want to get The Bug into capoeira when he's little and still bendy. It's a fun fighting discipline with music involved. So, at least he'll be a killer dancer one day.
We can begin his kerambit training when he's a little older. Like five.
Mister Aran has been such an inspiration in some odd ways. Because I do all the driving, I sat in on some of the classes he taught on character design. I learned more about writing characters from an art class than anywhere else. Mister Aran's characters must read immediately. They must be defined in three lines or less. They must be able to work - for example, have bones and muscle and mechanics or whatever is required. There are some cool-looking robot designs out there that, if built, would fall on their asses. Mister Aran thinks out every bolt, every joint, center of gravity. His characters can move.
While walking with The Bug at sundown this evening, I saw a girl on the soccer field at halftime, a goalie, practicing with her coach. He kept kicking balls at her and if he made it in, he'd hoot and raise his arms in ecstasy. I thought, "Yay for you, retard. You made a goal on an eight-year old." Her legs were like saplings. Everything looked too big on her. Her hair was escaping from her ponytail. It was a beautiful moment and I wanted to write about it. So I let my mind wander with it. I told myself about the fading orange stripe at the horizon, the blue above it growing darker, the breeze turning from warm to cool to cold fast as walking into an industrial fridge. And there were rabbits and swarms of gnats and The Cranky Bug, sans nap number two, the little lights on his shoes blinking as he thrashed in the stroller.
But I got bored with it immediately because there was no action. I don't need the girl to take off her cleat and charge the coach with it, but I do need it to go somewhere. And maybe someone else could take the same scene and make something of it, but I couldn't. At least not then. (Though, that cleat idea is pretty good. Maybe later.)
I tried, for a few minutes, to do what David Foster Wallace did (yeah, laugh it up you bastards) in that story about the boy jumping off the high-dive on his birthday. It's one of the most perfect stories I've ever read, and it takes place in the matter of maybe two minutes, but you feel, smell, taste, hear and see every tiny little detail on his way up the big ladder. But what's so fucking genius about it is, the details don't stop the action at all. They propel it somehow. I don't know how! But I have the rest of my life to figure it out.
*
It was hilarious to read Chekhov's "Lady with the Pet Dog." It's like my first novel, but good! And short! And true! This is why writers have to read, and read and read and read like madmen, because there is no other way to be original. I sent that shit out to agents and made my notes in my little spreadsheet like a good girl and followed instructions online and in books. I murdered myself doing it. I raced into the house after leaving for ten minutes to check my phone messages. I let the business be the joyful part. Now I just want to get good. I will never be good enough, but I continue to entertain myself. And my shit is so much better now than it was back then, even though I took whole years off.
*
There's another thing I learned from Mister Aran: how to separate myself from my work. He doesn't hold his work close to his bosom. He's a commercial artist. Commercial writers need to think the same way, or they end up drinking three bottles of wine with breakfast.
*
On another note, I am so fucking glad that Jeffrey won Project Runway. Best season ever.
Tom H. Macker makes me happy in my pants. He's like me, but you know... what's the word? Better. I went googling him and found old stuff. Let's hope he gets shit together and publishes soon so I can read him on the can.
When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.
In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she. (Anton Chekhov, in a letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886.)
I've been in one of the best guilds in WoW. It is much older and more accomplished than the one this guy talks about in this post I will link. Although I was one of the crappy 12-hour a week guildies at my pinnacle, I observed the 10-hour a day'ers, and what he says is true.
It reminds me of a girl who, back in beta, posted something like, "The server never stays up for twelve hours at a time." My immediate reaction was, How do you know? The people who complained about lack of content and too-fast levelling were the ones who logged on right after pushing the button on the coffee machine in the morning and logged out after the raid at 3:00 AM.
One of the greatest players, who hailed back from EQ and maybe even further back, sent me a text message one day with a picture attached of a pile of game discs, broken and in the trash. He was in his early twenties, with a college education he wasn't really using, living with his parents, and he hadn't yet kissed a girl. I was so proud of him. I still am. Real life is scary and painful for him, but he's doing beautifully.
The only thing that really irks me about this article is how the guy consistently blames Blizzard. There's a reason some of those instances are on timers, sir. They're trying to keep you from pushing across the Middle East every damn day. Rested bonuses were implemented to convince players to log off while levelling. Blizzard has always understood the addictive quality of a mmorpg, and taken responsibility for it to whatever extent they can.
It smacks of blame. Taking responsibility for yourself is key, people. If this guy were really into drinking and he quit because his group of "friends" were breaking up and being destructive and, hey, acting like addicts, he wouldn't be blaming Jose Cuervo.
There are millions (yes, millions) of us who enjoy WoW for exactly what it is: beautiful, exciting fun. It is not a job. It is not a social life. It is a game. Some people can't have just one glass of wine with dinner, and some people can't play just a couple hours at night. It's up to us as adults to know this about ourselves, and it is up to us as parents to know this about our kids and take necessary action.
This morning, a woman walked into the Den and ordered coffee at the counter. On the way there, she dropped something. When she bent, I saw her entire red string thong jut up out of her jeans. This all happened over Mister Aran's shoulder.
"Oh man," I said, "That chick's thong just busted hella out of her jeans." I watched her at the counter. Mister Aran was already moving on, and that couldn't be. I needed her to bend over again so he could see it, and share in the... whatever of it. The whatever is difficult to explain. She was older; maybe that was it. Her clothes were unkempt and ill-fitting. Her hair, pulled back into partial pig-tails, was dyed blonde and red. She had to be at least forty, and her look was far too young. The thong was the crux of it.
"You dropped that," said the server, pointing at a receipt on the ground next to Thong Lady.
"Oh god yes! Watch, watch!" I muscled Mister Aran into a sideways sitting position. The woman took her time tucking change into her wallet, but before she left, she bent for the receipt, and Mister Aran saw it. We shared a celebratory high-five. Carlo now calls it a London Bridge. Thanks, Fergie, for educating my husband on the finer points of multi-person sex. I digress.
I was joyful. Triumphant. I had made a wish, and Jesus had made it so. Then a frightening reality knocked me back: Jesus was listening... then? Right then? What if that was my only chance at an audience with the Almighty, and that's the wish he happened to hear?
One day, The Bug will live under a bridge, sad, diseased and alone, and I will know it's because I fucked up my one damn Jesus wish for a half-second shot at a woman's red thong.
It's weird to read Miss Snark's blog. I ain't even linking it, because there's a sort of 'community' lurking in her comments section and after a year of posting she already seems put upon. Miss Snark is like that side street short cut in Los Angeles that you guard carefully, and only disclose to your closest friends.
Anyway, it's fun to read about publishing. I think about it sometimes. Probably, Jordan thinks about it more than I do. At least twice a day and sometimes on the john. I don't. I trained myself for a few years not to think of it, and that's the only reason why I feel able to tap out a few lines on the old Playboy laptop lately.
That publishing time stripped my soul thin until I hated writers, hated writing, even hated reading. So torturous was the tumor of publishing that I had zero interest in my favorite pastime since I was eighteen months old.
See, what a bad sentence that was? This blog was like my Emancipation of Mimi, except without the bra and panty ensembles. And the singing. Well, maybe there was a little singing. Writing was fun enough, but then I started to have a little, quiet audience too.
In order to get here, I had to tell myself that it was okay to put the crap up here. Yes, sometimes the junk on this page is uninteresting and badly written, but I thank God for every shitty line, like Salieri.
After a few years of that, I started Ask Samus, a place where silly and often gross teenage boys asked me for advice and I gave it, often with visual aids and a touch of humiliation. That was fun. Never did I wonder whether Ask Samus would turn into something else, be discovered by Jenny Bent and be turned into the next Quirky Bad Girl How-To paperback, complete with a cartoon mascot and corresponding calendars, pencils and dog carriers. Then someone asked me in the thread whether I'd try to make it into a book, and all of it came back to me. I said, as flat as the typed word can convey, No.
Then came the letters to my brother, starting last February when he deployed to Iraq. Those are nothing short of nihilism. My little Tyler Durden letters. I don't save a single one of them, and some are great. The only way I'll ever see them again is if he saves them and shows them to me in the future. I used to keep everything I wrote, and read it again and again, hash over the hoped-for reaction of its recipient. No more.
And now, my creative writing class. God, an excuse to write, every week! Imposed discipline, assignments, editing, but most of all, reading. Glorious, good reading. And writing without an inkling about how I'd summarize it for a prospective agent. Just writing!
Miss Snark reminds me of all those query letters, the rejections, the spreadsheets, the jealousy, the half-hearted golf claps, the loneliness, that first time an agent asked for a full ms and I spent a rainy morning listening to Peter Gabriel and printing out my first novel with joy.
She reminds me of something else, too. That I will publish. I have no doubt. It's never been in question that I'm supposed to write. At the right time, the right writing will get me published. I harbor no notions about Oprah and couldn't give a crap about Rowling's good fortune. I have a husband, a son, and a home to care for. But, for the rest of my life, I will read, read, write, and send it out, rinse and repeat. Something will catch. I won't live off it, probably, but I'm lucky enough for that not to be the point anymore. The point is to write as well and learn as much as I possibly can until I die.
I have a new cookbook full of slow cooker recipes. I have a glass of Diet Squirt. I have a sleeping kid and a lunch engagement at 12:30. I can think of nothing but curry.
The other night we bought two cases of pop (Diet Squirt and Diet Berry Dr. Pepper) and a bag of ice that had partially melted and refroze. There's nothing more to this story except that both kinds of pop are exceptionally good, and it's cathartic to jab away at an ice lump with a butter knife.
I know I should start dueling at level one like everyone else, so that by sixty I have some clue as to how PVP works, but I don't. It's never been my thing, PVP. I like humans. I used to be one. Night elves are okay; it's funny to watch them run with the staves up their butts. Gnomes are downright lovely; we have one in the Undercity with whom I've become quite fond, and they're such nifty engineers. I have been known to sneak a little dwarven ale, though it makes such a puddle when it falls through my ribcage. Alas.
So, as the great anthem once asked, why can't we be friends? Samus has taken up residence on a PVE server, disguised as a mage. Oh, it's grand to throw balls of fire! I digress.
Last night, I ran into a night elf who happened to be a Marine. I knew he was a Marine because his name was Devildogusmc. They aren't known for their creativity, just their badassery, and that's just fine with me. We helped one another through a cave filled with nasty furlbogs, silent except for my occasional emote.
I think it's nice that Sesame Street wants us all to understand our Spanish-speaking brethren and sistren. I like that Grover goes all over the world, collecting culture, and tries it out himself, with disastrous results. But it would be nice if they did more with science, or maybe mentioned that it's nice to live here, too.
So I saw a video linked on Fred's page and I was trying to tell Mister Aran about it but I couldn't remember the name of the thing they're tossing out the back of a plane. Sex makes my memory suck. Wait, no. I remembered the name of it during sex. It's not having sex that makes my memory suck. Anyway, during said sex I'm like, "Howitzer! That's the thing they drop out of the plane!" And Mister Aran is like, "But those are like cannons." So I doubted myself. How do you drop a cannon out of a plane? But then I looked at it again and, sure enough! Fucking Howitzers!
Ugh, my brother emailed, thank god. I will breathe for five minutes. I was losing hope all week. I have the evil eye, actually. I tend to get too enmeshed in online communities. But I have made a promise to myself, that when I start getting upset at what's going on with online people, I will back away and remember what's important. So I'm doing that. Online is for chilling, not stressing. My time is better spent writing to my brother, massaging Mister Aran's shoulder, running around with The Bug, cleaning something, cooking a new recipe, doing my homework, working out. Fuck psychos I don't even know. It isn't worth putting my family in danger.
I know none of that makes sense to any of you, but I'm just jamming here.
Now I'll go rest, and read, and write to my brother if the mood hits, and I hope anyone reading this has a very nice day.
Ten months ago, my brother sent in his taxes. He visited family in Colorado, even the estranged people, and behaved diplomatically. He told our mother not to pray for him, but to pray for his men.
He disconnected his cell phone. He made arrangements for his bills. He went shopping. He bought more armor than is issued, better armor, and rolls of Copenhagen, and boxes of Mach 3 razors.
His dining room table was neatly littered with stacks of paper. An open laptop with iTunes at the front sat facing the kitchen. His room was the same as it had been on base, in San Diego, except the walls were not stacked concrete blocks.
He met his nephew and we all went to dinner at El Torito. We laughed. Our waitress flirted with him. My brother is horribly handsome.
After dinner, we took rides in his little car. What was it, an Infinity? He played the music very loud, like always.
*
Iraq is a fucking mess. Whether or not there was a reason to go there, it's a fucking mess now. It may have been going okay for awhile, but Fallujah remained the wild card. Then Fallujah got fucked up big time. Four Americans strung up on a bridge, dragged through the streets. How could Bush save face with what the Marines proposed? To quietly take care of the perpetrators, to continue with their previous plan of attack, to slowly and invisibly help the Iraqi Police take Fallujah over a long period of time? The cameras were rolling, and Bush was angry. What could he do? At home, we said, Bomb them back to the stone age! Badgered, how could he make the right decision? And what has the wrong decision cost?
It is 1:56 AM for my brother now. It is getting chilly. One day, he had to wear a sweatshirt against the cold, then he saw the temperature: eighty-five degrees.
Ha, I'm still awake for no reason! Yay, it's 2:03 fucking AM!
I've been doing this too much lately. I get a sick happy feeling from staying up too late. It makes me feel like I'm ten years old and getting away with something. Same reason I eat sugar, too. Seriously. That's the thought process. Right now Mister Aran is rolling around in bed because I'm an asshole who can't stop keeping him awake with my typing. I swear it's like a disease. I'm not even awake. It doesn't even feel good. And in the morning, it'll feel worse. So what's my problem?
Time to myself! It feels good enough to risk my mood and health for.
