the romance, the break up and the apology: about which she knows nothing!

This is a photo I took at WomanKind, February 2006.

So yesterday, Style printed my diatribe about not getting the Anne Lamott interview the last 2 times she's been in town. I wrote one just for me the first time and then elaborated and compounded for the second. But, when I read it in print it sounded a lot more whiny and pathetic than I had intended. Why would she want to interview with me anyway!? Not that it's her that makes those decisions. That's what publicists are for. Anyways, you can read my article, entitled "She Loves Me Not" HERE.

Get out your hanky.

what i read in alaska

This was my ship, and that is a whale.

In Alaska I read "Pride and Predjudice," my first ever Jane Austen novel. I lusted after Mr. Darcy and feared that I wasn't as spirited and rosy cheeked as Elizabeth and would never get the chance to run breathlessly across a moor.

I read "Gulliver's Travels" and felt like the at times huge at times tiny traveller of strange and foreign lands.

I read "Hero With a Thousand Faces." Isn't that pretentious? But I was really really trying to make sense out of the Hero's Journey, particularly those journeys upon which the hero repeatedly encounters a whale.

I read the prose-poet W.S. Merwin, particularly those prose-poems involving icebergs.

I read Poe's "Annabel Lee" because Avo the deck-hand had set it to music and kept singing it to the elderly guests after dinner.

I read a select few traditional Hebrew prayers because my mother sent them to me.

I read "She's Come Undone," the Wally Lamb novel about the obese woman who goes through therapy.

I read a Chinese poem about ghosts and drowing that the Chief Steward gave me one day in a card, with a rose.

a lotta angels & a lot more words

Yesterday around 3 pm, Henry and I headed into the fan for a lively afternoon of blue grass music and children's literature at Narnia Bookstore. The word "Narnia" alone made Henry laugh. I'm ashamed to say I had never taken him there before. We've already been gifted with about 1.34 billion children's books, not to mention I still have most of mine, so selfishly when we look for new books they are usually for me. Also, bookstores are trouble because of their high risk potential for spending way too much money. But this was a perfect excuse to risk taking out my wallet and adding to the boy's massive book collection.

Patricia Keeler, the step-mother of my genuine scraped-knee blood sister from kindergarten's was in town from Hoboken, NJ to sign her newly illustrated book, "Thank You Angels." A nice 4-some of staid looking 50 somethings played a guitar, a cello, a mandolin?? I don't know my stringed instruments!!! But I recognized a lot of the good music and soon a lot of kids and some moms and stragglers were doing a sort of stomp dance jump clap fest in the middle of the floor. Henry's favorite activity was eating the angel-shaped sugar cookies on the refreshment table and then demanding me to read him board books pulled at random from the shelves. We bought a copy of Patricia's book and I immediately recognized the name of the author: Doreen Virtue, PhD, because she authored a particularly good set of Goddess Tarot cards I used to have.

So this was all nice and fun, but the crazy part (I guess it's not really crazy considering we're talking Richmond) was the people I knew who showed up! It was wonderful of course to see Ida and her new-ish husband Ben (more about them later) and Sabot families I used to know and local author/actress/director Irene Ziegler, and Ingrid Mercer and Gail Shookoff (sp?) who took Ida and I to Water Country USA every summer for like 8 years even tho I didn't get a chance to even say "hi" because I was over reading a Cheerios Action Book in the corner , and then.....(drumroll).....Carter Graham walked in! Just last week I'd had this astral travel/vacuuming/muppet movie dream about him and had tracked down his address to send him a blow by blow along with an invitation to maybe come for dinner sometime and meet my son. I don't think I'd seen him for about 3 years. But since we were both there, I just went ahead and told him my dream and introduced him to Henry- they did the high 5-guy thing- and then that night, when he got home, my card was waiting.

So this morning, Stan, Henry & I had brunch with Ida and Ben: french toast, ruby red grapefruit juice, turkey-bacon, strooooong coffee and red grapes. What a great time! Ida, a former poetry professor now writes a newsletter for a museum/garden place in Wilmington, Delaware where they moved for Ben to work at House Industries as a "type designer." That's right, Ben has Master's Degree in Fonts. He received it somewhere in England, but I already forgot where. I asked him what he does all day working at a font company and he said he stares at letters (and answers tech support calls)!! Isn't that WILD?? I thought so too.

the unsuspecting poet

We met Darren through his writing first. We were sitting around the Black Swan bookstore one cold and stormy night when we the author of "The Paper Airplane Engineer" surfaced in little fits and starts through 5 double-spaced pieces of ordinary white paper. We were simultaneously curious and relieved to find a submission for the fiction contest that didn't suck, bore, need massive editing or an immediate call to the suicide hot line. Who was this masked man? Well, after he won second place (which was a horrible travesty and a major nudge to never again use nincompoops for judges) I called to interview him and mostly I remember that he made me laugh. Hard. He'd won the Virginia Commission for the Arts Fiction Prize and bought a couch with the stipend. Other wacky, funny stuff. He was very modest, self-effacing and goofy too.

The first time I ever saw Darren, I recognized him from the back of his head. He was about 10 rows in front of me in the auditorium at the Library of Virginia's James River Writer's conference. From the cocked way he held his chin, the earnest yet mocking look on his face when he turned around, the blonde goatee. It couldn't have been anybody else. The next week we made a unanimous decision to give him a trial run (we had an elaborate and crazy but foolproof system for trying out new potential group members including but not limited to monkey masks and black balls). Our round table discussion that night has gone down in the annals of writing group history- scatalogical jokes were made somebody cried, somebody quit, sparks flew, etc. etc and with that Darren was in.

How is it possible that there was a time we didn't know Darren? Last night, his poetry reading in the lower atrium (I do not know what the hell it's really called) of the Virginia Museum was subtle magic. Have you ever seen a 6 foot 5 baseball player read poetry beautifully? Death by fire, Persephone, the siren's song, bad god-lovin' license plates, thrushes and sparrows, a state of Henrys, vodka, apples, broken bottles of wine, death, love- you know the good stuff. It wasn't too long; it wasn't too short. And he didn't have on a turtle neck or a beret or read in that terrible monotonous sing-song voice that gives poetry a bad name. And he read a poem that made it OK to hate poetry readings, but truly, I think I can say this for all of us, last night, nobody did.

i lost the photo of tom robbins and me

Here are the remaining photos of the day my mother, my mother's then boyfriend but now husband, Buddy & I went to a picnic for Tom Robbins at the home of the White Pygmy Queen (I swear, i think that was her name!! I also think she died some tragic, lonely death with noone to bury her.) We brought a potato salad and some extra chairs. My mother is a button maker, listed in the phone book. The Pygmy Queen wanted to have buttons made for the picnic she was planning for her old friend coming to visit from Cal-i-forn-i-a, Tom Robbins. (You can see Tom with one of the buttons pinned to his Hawaain Shirt, middle right). My mother said I'll make the buttons if you let me and my boyfriend and my daughter come to the picnic. She drives a tough bargain, my old ma, doesn't she? The Pygmy Queen (standing with Tom Robbins in the white t-shirt on the photo to the right) said O.K. So. I was 20 and still very much enamored of Mr. Robbins as were the at least 8 other women who married him. (I don't know if it's really 8, but it's more than 3 and less than 10). I was then spending 6 weeks of my summer as a counselor at the UVA Young Writer's Workshop in Charlottesville, but arranged to take the day off to come over and meet my own personal effusive pan jitterbug freaky literary hero man. So I was wearing a brown polyester dress with flowers on it and several people there came up and asked if I was his new wife!! Ha! She wasn't much older than me, and looked like me too. Then I met Tom. He had on a LOT of skull and snake rings. I told him I was a writer. He told me that writing classes are worthless. Then I told him I was majoring in creative writing at sarah lawrence college and teaching at a young writer's workshop at UVA. He said drop out immediately and do something useful with your life like attend nursing school. I told him no freakin bleepin way, are you kidding? Actually, I don't remember what I told him, but I know it wasn't good. And them my mom gave him a photocopy of a story I'd written (OF COURSE, right??) and he told me he'd read it on the plane (YEAH RIGHT?) The story was called Star Wars and was about a girl taking a bath and dying her leg hair purple when Jesus comes in and they have this crazy conversation about Star Wars and Taco Bell and other modern pop culture stuff. Do you think my style was at all influenced by Tom Robbins? Anyway, later on in the picnic, the wicker bench Tom and his wife were sitting on fell over and me and my mom ran up and started taking photos of them lying on the ground. (See photo bottom left). Of course the really great shots are scrapbooked away somewhere and I just can't find them anywhere, so these that I've scrounged up will have to do as the visual representation of my story. And that's pretty much the end of it.

uniform

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

I've been wondering why there are no standard issue uniforms for writers. Why must we be indistinguishable from normies? My husband, for example, has a different uniform or "outfit" for every hobby he's adopted (or adapted or whatever.) When he bought his Tiger Triumph when I was 8 months pregnant, the fluorescent full body suit was not far behind. See exhibit A. Now he's into windsurfing, and you guessed it, another full body suit. See exhibit B. These lifeless 4 limbed phantoms are always flying around suspended by hooks or hangers in the bathroom or just inside the closet door scaring the bejesus out of me. I, on the other hand could spend my entire working day in sweat pants or tights or a hula skirt or whatever the hell I want. I'm a "writer." Yes, I go into the "office" 2 and 1/2 days a week, but that's pretty loosy-goosy too. I just have to look not-crazy. Sure, it doesn't hurt to blow dry my hair and/or put on makeup every once in a while, but whether I do or not does not a writer make (or destroy.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that I'd ever wear a uniform even if there was one, nor do I long for my name cross-stitched into the left breast pocket of my shirt. I just want to know if you're anything like me when I see you walking down the street.

true confessions

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. Thank you for taking my confession. (I have never done this before! Am I doing it right??)

I am an arrogant, picky reader.

I do not love all books, as muck as I'd like to say I do.

I only like books that are compulsively readable.

I am turning away from fiction (gasp!!) and reading more memoir (self-indulgent! trendy!)

I adore People Magazine (lowbrow!)

My son likes movies more than books- he said so himself! (will he also turn out to be a Republican??)

I judge books by their covers. Ugly cover- no read.

I turn my nose up at genre fiction (but what about mysteries/sci-fi/fantasy/romance? what about all those authors just trying to make a living? Sorry!!)

I get totally intimidated and overwhelmed in bookstores knowing that I'll never be able to read everything so I head straight over to the cafe to drown my insecurity in big, fat lattes.

In the last 4 years I have read only contemporary literature (except Gone With the Wind)

I'm in love with Rhett Butler- and my husband doesn't know!

So what do I do now, say 50 rosaries and 10 hail marys or run to the nearest independent bookstore and repent?

What's weighing on your chest? What are you too embarassed to admit in polite/intellectual company? Share your guilty secrets here in the Haggard confessional!

valentine's day index of the irrelevant and love too

a poem made of book titles that I can see from where I sit:

the mythic image- land of the ocean mists- writer's dreaming- starting from scratch- writing from the heart- sin in the second city- gone with the wind- kosher sex- i love you let's meet- memories of my melancholy whores- the razor's edge- enemies a love story- where are you going-i have become alive

things that i love:

irreverant uses of grammar- odd shaped stationery- hot gingerbread- drizzle- old maps with dragons in the water- body butter- those upper chest muscles on my husband- the first sip of a hot cup of coffee thick with cream and sugar- tights that don't run- personalized license plates- prisms-butterfly kites- memories of our wedding canoe- my son's tiny voice on the telephone- holding hands to say an impromptu prayer- leaving the gym- checking for mail- having money and being in a bookstore at the same time- letting someone else shampoo my hair- finding the perfect wrapping paper- photo booth photos- waiting rooms that have People- the sound of a diesel- turning the page of the calendar- horseradish- goblets- candelabras- piles of change- starting a new journal- finishing an old book- love poems on bathroom walls

number of men in target this afternoon crowded around the valentine's cards: seven

boys named thomas that i have loved: three

men named stan that i have married: one

days after i met him before i knew i would marry him: thirty

times i've wanted to throw him out the window: 479

times he has let me down: 0

the almost death of my almost book

Last night I was ready to treat the "book" I am writing to a nice little bubble bath of kerosene and flaming inferno. I felt the utterly hopeless despair of the midway writer; midway to nowhere with all of my insides tied up in a couple hundred pages of jumpy, non-linear, emotional mish-mash. How was I going to turn this non-narrative rambling into a coherant whole? What had I been doing in front of my computer screen for the past 4 years? Receiving hypnotic brainwashing by aliens? How could something I found so utterly fascinating last year turn out to be such utter crap this year? Why are so many trite, arrogant sons-o-bitches published and not me? Who's going to love me if I never publish my book? Who's going to love me if I do? Am I a self-indulgent narcissist or do I actually have something to say that's interesting to people other than My Mom?

I've always been pretty sure that life is a bazillion times better when I'm writing, that I'm more fun to be around, that even plants like me better when I have an outlet for the constant weird/sad/stupid/funny experiences of my life other than the 4 cramped walls inside my brain. And I'm pretty sure that taking up crotchet, basket-weaving, scrapbooking, pillow sewing stained glass making and even sometimes motherhood and all the trappings of a marriage were all just a stack of mattresses to stop the free-fall of my fear of being a terrible- or a brilliant- or a mediocre- writer.

In any case, these are the thoughts I was battling last night as I drove downtown to Robinson and Maine to meet my writing group. (A terrible idea, to drive and think!). As we gathered in our usual, cozy book-filled room, I announced that I would be setting fire to all of my writing at midnight and that I would never write another word again. Well, it wasn't that dramatic, but that was the general idea. And then they, the both talented and physically very attractive, members of my writing group preceded to pull the emergency rope-thingy attached to parachutes, one by one, word by word. They pulled me out of the muck and the mire. They spun me around in a new direction. All was not lost! Those hours and pages and pages and hours were research, not natural disasters! I was actually a lot closer than I thought! This was part of the process! It wouldn't be good if there wasn't any doubt! I didn't have to die, or worse yet, self-publish (ha-ha, just kidding!-sort of). I could leave it be. I could go home and do something else. I could wile away the hours on my blog or in my head or in a bag of bbq potato chips or with my husband and son and that didn't mean I would die a miserable unpublished death. I could wait for detachment to occur, for inspiration to strike, for structure to form and I could trust that it would happen (before 2050) as long as I continued.... to believe. And yes, that I can do. Thank you H, D, B & S. You saved my proverbial life.

Last night with Arlo

Last night I took my Dad to see Arlo Guthrie at the UR Modlin Center. Arlo turned 60 this year and my Dad turned 59 today, so they are contemporaries that never met except maybe in 1967 on memory-altering substances. Although like a lot of 30 something kids with hippie-something parents, I'm familiar with Arlo in the sense that I watched "Alice's Restaurant" sometime in highschool, but mostly I just carried him around in my head as a fuzzy headed druggie songster. Well, he was definitely fuzzy headed, but he was also helluva smart, funny and as always there was much more to him than the 2-D poster boy my brain had constructed.

He possessed the ability to infuse each song he sang with its own passion even though you knew he'd sung it a billion and three times before because he's been on tour constantly for like 40 years. He's also a fantastic storyteller which is what for me, really made the concert. I have always loved lyric heavy music; voice, rhythm and beat are almost incidental to me. That's why I adore Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco, Paul Simon, Meatloaf... etc. Lyrics! Words! Stories! That's what it's all about for me. What is a soprano, a treble cleft, a C note? I have no earthly idea but if you play them while singing a nice rhyme or turn of phrase, I'm hooked. So I was thrilled to hear Arlo Guthrie sing "St. James' Infermary" (because it reminds me a of a lot of old friends), "This Land Is Your Land" (because I didn't even know that his DAD wrote it) and "I don't want a pickle/I just want to ride my motorcycle" (because I actually knew all of the words.) And I loved his rambling renditions of Joseph and the Technicolor DreamCoat, his first-ever memory of being two years old and hanging out with Leadbelly, and the stories of his mythic legendary dad. He said his Dad liked to write so much that it was annoying. If he came to visit at your house he'd use up all of you paper-like apparatus and then move onto the furniture, the cat, your wife, whatever he could get his hands on. In fact, there are something like 3500 unpublished songs in addition to the published books, plays, songs, etc. that Arlo's sister is slowly releasing to the public!


Anyway, he said that at one point his Dad felt like there was something funny about him so he quit drinking. Well, that wasn't it so he started drinking again and checked himself into a mental institution in New Jersey. After a while, the psych doctor called Arlo's mom and said "Ma'am, your husband has delusions of grandeur. He thinks he's a famous folk singer!" Woody was relieved to finally meet a man who said- "I know who you are. You're Woody Guthrie. I loved your book." "You read my book?" asked Woody. "No, I ate it," said the man. After 3 months in the loonybin, Arlo's mom went to get him out but by then he didn't want to leave because he'd made a lot of friends. Truth or fiction? I don't care. It's a great story.

"Every now and then I have a few highly publicized affairs. I thought I owed that to my biographer." And other brilliant thoughts by Rita Mae Brown.

I have decided to take advantage of the blog format to show off some of my celebrity quotes/photos that went unused in the article format. Like these of Rita Mae Brown, who is bold, brash, truthful and unapologetic. Talking to Rita Mae was a pleasure as I have admired her since my dawn-of-realization- about-sex-and-feminism-and-the-wildlife-youth.

(photo credit goes to my artist-buttonmaker-lesbianwriter advocate mother, Jennifer Yane who accompanied me to the reading at the downtown public library.)

"If there’s going to be a scandal I’d much rather it be sex than money and we Virginians don’t disappoint. As mother always said, only be as good as you need to be. She used to trail clouds of men."

"I’ve hunted for so long that I’m also part of the fox family. I know the foxes, and I also know the fox children. They are more intelligent than we are and I’m not just saying that to be cute. We have ideologies that make us stupid. The fox has no ideology, they see reality exactly the way it is. We are a deluded species and now a dangerous one."

(My brilliant question) As a lesbian, do you have a different take on Southern manners?

After all those years of cotillion, it doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight, all those old biddies are going to get you. I have a whimsical regard for gender. Americans are dualistic; I’m slippery, slidery, in some ways it’s tougher than boot camp. They all had bosoms like flight decks. You're little and all you think is "My eyes! My eyes!" Argue your deepest beliefs at the soup kitchen or voting booth, but the south is absolutely right in trying to make parties pleasant."

Isn't she brilliant and hard and leathery and deep? Yes, I thought so too.

holograms + me = nerd (squared)

During the past 2 weeks or so I have been reading "The Holographic Universe" lent to me by my good friend and colleague, Mr. Brandon Reynolds (as himself.) I have now learned just enough about how our big old world works to make me dangerous. In fact, I hesitate to even attempt to post about this because I might end up transported to another dimension. Wait! We already exist in multiple dimenisons! That's the beauty of the book. As you travel with it through time and space, you are already there. So, the author, Michael Talbot, begins by drawing the reader in by evoking the image of a holographic Princess Leia and then skyrockets us on to multiple personalities, the collective unconscious, synchronicity, psychokinesis, why placebos might work better than drugs, the effect of brain waves on technology and crazy French people throughout the ages that have been invulnerable to raging fires and falling bolders.

OK, I am not going to try to pretend to attempt to explain any of the phenomena about which I am reading, I just want to admit and brag that I am reading it. Of course, as cutting edge as it may seem- it's actually ancient history, published at the dawn of the end of the last century, the old days of 1991. (the author I just learned died the very next year of Lukemia at the age of 39).

One reason I'm excited to read this book is that it's based largely on the life work of one of Stan's favorite authors and phycisits: David Bohm. Now we have something in common other than our marriage and our child! Now I might have a vague clue as to what he's talking about! However I am in possible and grave danger of becoming an even higher ranking nerd than ever. For example, this sub-chapter heading made me laugh out loud:

"Does Consciousness Create Subatomic Particles or Not Create Subatomic Particles, That Is the Question."

Yes, Michael, that is the question! It is! What?!? I can only read about one chapter a night as I lie in bed next to my son who is watching Ice Age II with Queen Latifah as the Mommy Mammoth and Ray Romano as the Daddy Mammoth, before my brain starts to sizzle and blow blue sparks. But it's a good chapter and a good end to the day- or maybe it's the beginning?

The Ballad of Pan & His Lady

This is an example of my bizarre stint with scrapbooking.

Today I really wanted to write about my adoration of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, but I can't stop thinking about my friend Edward and so my preconceived plan and I must part ways. And for the sake of honoring Edward, I also must turn my blog into a musiclog instead of a bookblog because our days together were much more infused with song and verse than prose. In fact, Edward inspired me to write a ballad which I read to him on the top of the ferris wheel at the Virginia State Fair, probably half a dozen years ago, or so. Like so many friends in the 90's, Edward and I showed our love through mix-tapes and dirges, Ani DiFranco concerts and raves, small femme punk concerts and Neil Diamond slow dances.





(PARAGRAPH BREAK: THIS IS FOR YOU CRAIG!)





Edward and I met my sophomore year at SLC. He wasn't a student there and so we spent a lot of time together in his closet-like room in Bronxville. After he left to major in Social Work and minor in Dance at Cornell, I took the bus up to visit him and he'd drive down to play my savior, time and time again. College for me was more like middle school than middle school. I felt freakish, insecure, dumb, ugly etc. It didn't help that I wasn't a millionare or a model. So. When Edward and I became friends it was like Kermit & Miss (Ms.?) Piggy or Laverne & Shirley. We were meant to be.



After college, Edward and I did stuff like drive to Colorado and camp in the Rocky mountains, live off of gas stations cappuccinos, then camp our way out to Olympia and hop a plane to Alaska (tickets courtesy of Edward-- thank you thank you than. k you) and live in a trailer park in Juneau with Edward's boyfriend before I took a job on a cruise ship and sailed off in a repeat loop around Alaska's inside passage for the next 2 1/2 months.


Edward is now a certified scuba instructor (among many, many other things) living in Hawaii with what sounds like a wonderful and a very lucky man. But he'll always be Pan to me.

The Ballad of Pan and His Lady
For EJE
The End of Summer 1999

Deep in the wild heart of the West
Just at the end of June
Pan and his Lady cast a spell
Under a crimson moon

By his hoof and her tender foot
There sprung a columbine
With roots like a true promise kept
Bound together through time

Call them morning or call them night
Be they foolish or wise
Pan loved his lady like a child
And they both had emerald eyes

Sky alive with blackberry wine
All for dance and folly
Sad and sweet they enchant with song
Wild Wind River Valley

As dusk falls soft they breathe the smoke
Of juniper and sage
For life reveals both lies and truth
At such a tender age

By the light of the great North Star
Goodbyes need not be feared
Although it seems their paths shall part
Upon the Last Frontier

So sad the stars ordained it so
She’ll never be his bride
But ever and forever more
Their love blooms side by side

She’ll set sail upon the sea
And he will find another
For so I’ve learned it is with hearts
At the end of summer

My Duomo

At work today I had to step outside of the office and away from my lovely stack of invoices and tearsheets to recieve a phonecall from my past. Gwen is a double-black belt in karate, a psychica pianist, a poet, a painter, fluent in Italian and the beloved victim of stalkers too numerous to count. Weezer's lead man has written several songs about her including Butterfly, which we listened to in our shared dorm senior year at least 18,000 times a day. Although I spent two years with Gwen- one in Italy and one in New York- solid, daily, 24/7 & etc. I have only seen her one time in one day in the 11 years since we graduated. And that was the day of my wedding. Although Gwen and I did many, many different things together-- from wholesome to illegal & everything inbetween, one of the things we loved doing best was reading. Separately and together. Outloud and silent. We went to the English bookstore and bought all kinds of random books we'd never heard of to devour together in our apartment along with tomatoes, mozarella and a couple of bottles of Chianti. In an earlier post I wrote about reading "The Fan Man" outloud to each other at the Telephone Bar, but after a few months of meeting there every night, we found that just wasn't enough. We had to move in and be together absolutely every minute and so we found an apartment above a wine store on Via Guelfa near the train station caddycorner to plenty of prostitutes and drugdealers. It was there that I gave her "Jane Eyre" and she gave me "Wuthering Heights." It was there that we discovered Natalia Ginzberg, Italo Calvino, hashish and Sappho. We named each room in our apartment (furnished with items we found in the alley) after a ring of Dante's Inferno. If you had been able to stand on the roof of our apartment, you could have seen the Duomo.

love in a recession

For Valentine's Day, I am growing my eyebrows out for Stan. He has an eyebrow fetish. This has nothing to do with books but it has everything to do with love (and vanity.) Wish me luck!

first grade confidential

According to legend, this is my first journal. As you can see, "who I Hait!" is followed by a long list of kid's names organized by an elaborate system of stars, check marks and x's. Then there is "who I LOVE:" followed by the names of my parents, myself, my cats, my friends and God in that order. There is also a list called "who I'm in Love with" but it's short: "Josaph" (followed by about 18,000 stars and hearts enclosing the word LOVE!) This alleged first-ever-journal ever also has many pages of frowny faces, giraffes, tic-tac-toe games, a screen play that's about seven sentences long, the first act of which is "Seen I, Amy: sniffle sniffle." There are drawings of hands with long fingernails, times table equations and stamps of dancing vegetables. Looking back, I can't say things have really changed all that much.

A Readers Lament and other Discrepancies

The difference between what I want to tell people I read and what I actually want to read.

Books to read vs. books finished vs. lonely, abandoned books divided in 2 by long forgotten bookmarks.

The passionate way I read Tom Robbins at 15 vs. the confused, somewhat annoyed way I read Tom Robbins at 32.

The amount of time there is to read vs. the amount of time there is to slough through the dishes, cram laundry in the washer, make playdough doggies with 3 year-olds, cook something, shop for something to cook, go to work, have sex, consider attending church, meditate, volunteer, drive the car around, etc.

The number of new books published in 2007 (195,000!!!) and the days I have in the year to get depressed and angry that so many other people are already published (365!!!)

The books I've read vs. the books my friends have read vs. the books my husband has read vs. the conversations we have that we filter through the words of different authors in our heads.

Ain't No Casanova

After 24 hours of nerve-racking uncertainty, God retrieved my brain from the looney bin- hurray! Sometimes, it seems, ms. brain likes to take little fieldtrips to insanity-land without getting the requisite signed permission slip. Which is why I must keep ever handy my winged pegasus, my headless fertility goddess, my double-stuff oreos, one of my many journals and any old highly romantic and engaging novel that happens to be laying around. Today's book du jour (is that the phrase? I'm not French, nor do I work in restaurants ((these days)) so pardon my vulgarity) was "In Lucia's Eyes" by, oh goodness, I don't remember already! Anyway, he was a Dutchman who writes the story of a woman that Cassanova mentioned briefly in his diaries-- Lucia -- his childhood true love who disappeared from the plantation where she was a servant girl only to be found many years later with a grossly disfigured face in Amsterdam. It's a very interesting book for many reasons--- there are graphic scenes of small pox, a beautiful red-head whose passion is drawing airships, whole passages of brilliance from Cassanova himself that in mood and flavor are reminiscent to me of Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray." And the red-light district of Amsterdam contrasted with the pastoral country-side of Italy, both of which I visited at the age of 20 in search of- or maybe on the lam from- my very own beautiful, arrogant Casanova. Anyway, thank you Lucia---you ever so gently helped transition me away from the dark side. **** Call me crazy, but I don't think the guy up there is very lust-provoking. What's up with Casanova???