RANT

I’ve mentioned this before, but you may not have been reading carefully, so I will repeat: If you take yourself seriously as a writer, Why Oh Why must you have white words on a black background on your website? OUCH!

Jump back, Jack, Tina Fey got something to say:

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fact or fiction–feathers

1. The beautiful mobile with swirling feathers was one more place where dust collected, one more thing to add to the work of the household, one more reminder of the filth of life. That one could never get out from under evolving piles of dirt was what kept her up nights. She wanted to live encased in a room free from debris and detritus. She wanted to be clean.

2. Annie’s boyfriend, Hanford Fletcher, was a drunk and an asshole. His alcoholism was a given from way back when, as a boy, he started stealing vodka from his uncle’s liquor cabinet. The asshole part could only be attributed to Hannie having made an early fortune as vice president of Bonnie Bell Cosmetics. Retired at 35 with millions in the bank, he had turned into an entitled playboy. If only Annie had realized it sooner.

3. He figured he was around 5 when he bent down and picked up a small black-and-blue striped feather at the edge of the parking lot. His mother swatted it from his hand. “Don’t you know how many germs are on those things?”

Today, as he walked home from high school, he saw the matted pile of what was left of a dead bluejay. He scooped it up into his leftover brown paper lunch bag. This time his mother would not chide him when he got home. Everything dies.

4. While Bertha distractedly did the dishes, she turned over a jar in the wash bin and began to notice its unusual heft. As she let the suds drip off of it she realized why it felt so heavy—it was made of glass. How uncommon glass jars had become, she thought. But this one was special, the last jar she had from her grandmother’s company, Featherweight Face Treat. She smiled as the heat from the jar pulsed into her hands. Her grandmother would be proud.

5. Pugnacious pugilists pummel porcine porcupines.

♥

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gravity always wins

Lately, when I look in the mirror, I see that the furrows and signs of age won’t be departing my face any time soon.

♦

There are many rock anthems, the best of which have multi-generational appeal. When songwriting is this good, it feels like it is about me and the years between me and my teenage-self fall away.

Just when I’d gotten Fake Plastic Trees out of a weeks-long loop in my head, my kid played it in the car. I belted it out along with Thom Yorke and now it is re-lodged in my neurology. I don’t mind though; this is why I love rock n roll. This is why I understand why I was born when I was born. This is one reason I love men and don’t mind terribly much sometimes that rock n roll is dominated by them.

Sometimes I dig a cover of a really good original tune when it is Jeff Tweedy singing it and hitting the nail on the head. I love this rendition, his fealty to the original, his obvious love for the song, and the humility with which he plays it–no fancy tricks.

 

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fact or fiction

1. The postman was good-looking: graying hair, chiseled features, blue-gray eyes. But he was no less an asshole than if he had been as ugly as a toad.

2. Professor Brentwood strode into the steel-gray hallway that connected each of the studios in the industrial-arts building. Her golden curls cascaded down the front of her shoulders; her white smock, which protected an ankle-length black dress, was covered in layers of clay and glaze. When Annalee saw her, she knew. This was the woman who had stolen the heart of her husband; this was her sworn enemy.

3. Dogs bounded in the fenced park. For the most part, the wrestling and barks were of the friendly variety until Stan let Middlebrooks off his leash to join the rollicking herd.

4. The bed, the clock, the curtains.

The metal bed.

The low humming buzz of the clock.

The flimsy curtains that let in too much light for anyone to get any rest.

The army hospital where no one visited and no one left alive.

5. Only Jim could see the truth, only he knew the wool was being pulled over their eyes. Though he was not a scheduled speaker, when there was a pause between the candidates, he rushed onto the stage, stood behind the podium, cleared his throat, and spoke loudly into the microphone. “All is not lost,” he said.

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falling out of the blogosphere

Long stretches between posts are now commonplace for me.

I learned a new phrase (and concept): uncanny valley.

I love the sound of it tremendously, but I don’t like the meaning. It’s a theory, nothing provable, but certainly it sheds light on the way I am simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by plastic surgery.

I am glad to know that I can still learn new things. Maybe I’m not hip, that I never knew the concept uncanny valley. The world is too big for any one person to know. We keep chipping away at it, gaining knowledge in pebbles.

I fell away from my writing and into an uncanny valley

I notice that my sleep is very disturbed lately. This is due in part to the fact that I have to wake up every weekday morning at 6:30. I still get up to help support my kids in that transition between home and bus and school. I am happy to do it, but I hate my lack of sleep.

I’ve pretty much given up on cooking. I still clean the few rooms which are not filled floor to ceiling with clutter. I couldn’t even clean when I was in the worst of the pain and immobility.

I still love the laundry. I like my fridge to sparkle white and bright inside. I organize to an extent. But I don’t give a crap about cooking for the most part. I feel so burned out. Maybe this is only since I’ve been injured, maybe longer. I can barely remember a time before this injury.

Instead of my summer schedule when I may wake in the early morning hours and can fall back to sleep until as late as 9 or 10, I wake around 4 am, am up for an hour, then have to wake up at 6:30, but I barely fall back to sleep most nights. I am getting about 4-6 hours of interrupted sleep–that’s it. I’m not too happy until I have my coffee but I can fake it most mornings til then.

When I feel good from good and long rest, I forget that I’ll ever be a victim of my insomnia again; and yet after all these years, it still rears its ugly head.

It’s been 5 months since my initial injury and I’m still not able to do yoga or to bike or swim. It’s been draining, frustrating, painful, disturbing. I am getting better, but I have really bad hours and days and nights. Soon, I hope, soon, I will be back to my old self. I know the sleep will change once I’m not in pain throughout the night. I am seeing a new physical therapist who does a particular kind of work that is unlike most physical therapy. After one session, I was monumentally better, but now my body is fading back into the habit of injury. For the next 3 weeks at least, I will have 2 sessions per week and I am hoping that will turn the tide for a good long while.

This is only the beginning. I need to write here. I hate to have such a long body of text without any images to break it up. I hate to write about the minutiae of my life and subject you to it, though you read by your own free will and I am grateful for your presence.

I will try to do better from now on out. I think my active mind will calm if I write more regularly and I won’t wake up at 4 am thinking the words.

I have so much to tell you.

♥

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