i didn't blog because of the plagues, i swear

The 10 Plagues of the bad Blogger

1-- 194 style fiction contest entries descended on my head.

2--The rain has decomposed the literary nature of my (soil) (sole) (soul)

3--I've been trying to find the right amount of postage necessary to mail my letter to G-D

4--Instead of giving up yeast, I've given up words

5--The cat ate my keyboard (well, he did throw up near it)

6--MIT professor Dan Ariely's new book "Predictably Irrational" has forced me to write an

article about it.

7--The plague inbetween death of the first born son and boils is writer's block

8--When I took the Continuum class called "The Body as Sacred Ground" I accidentally tilled, aerated and hydrated my brain.

9--It's more fun to sit in the backyard eating Hebrew Nationals and chocolate cake.

10--My dominant hand was hidden in the couch cushions with the afikomen, but nobody found it.

Truth
Heralds

Endings

Bitchin'

Literary

Aeronautical

Critques

Kickbutt

Sink

Wrong

Answers

Never

Stories

I have been in a writer's group for nigh on four years. It is better than a baker's dozen chocolate eclairs AND a teenage boys idea of sex. It keeps me afloat when my thoughts have turned against me and are ready to attack. It is like going on a treasure hunt in a foreign land with exotic travellers every single Tuesday night (except for those long, dry spells when you thirst and ache for that clue and that map, that finally, from heaven, appear.) It is a way to restore faith after hearing on the radio about all those boys being blown to bits across the sea. It's an idea, a story, a prayer, a blessing, a window into the other worlds I didn't own 2 hours before.

vall

Exhibit A: Michael Parker

Exhibit B: Michael Parker wearing my hat!

Yes, VALL is the first 3 of the 33 letters in my name, but no, for once, it's not all about me. VALL happened at the Empire Theatre last Saturday night despite divas, demons and divorce (not really, i just had to come up with a third d). now that i am on the board of the jrw, i know more than a journalist should and despite all training of the last 4 years i shall remain mum as to the behind the scenes goings on as decency requires.

however, i will talk about the first story read, which as it so happens, was also the last story chosen. chosen at the 11th hour, as it were. under duress as it were. "Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony and Life Experiences in the Song 'Ain't Going to Bump No More No Big Fat Woman'" about a song by Joe Tex by the author Michael Parker is a story i had read twice before hearing it performed at VALL and I was just as happy to experience it a third time. particularly as this reading/performance/night drove home for me the fact that I am quite sure I know Michael Parker. If he did in fact attend UVA and is currently a creative writing teacher with dark hair and eyes as his bio suggests, i am led to conclude that he must be the michael parker that taught me FICTION at the UVA Young Writer's Workshop in 1991 when I was 15. It must have been him! It was!

OK. thank god for my scrapbooking days but damn those circle cutters. i found a picture of michael parker wearing my hat!!! See Exhibit B! (That's me with the wild bangs in the hippie shirt, bottom left). this was a helluva rambler, but see, I had a point! I just forgot what it was! Check out his collections of short stories and novels..... "Virginia Lovers," "If You Want Me to Stay" and "Don't Make Me Stop Now." Also do yourself a favor, and read "Ain't Gonna Bump No More..." in ... well i don't what the hell it's in... i swear it was in a best of the south but go find it yourself... you'll thank me later.

this is one monkey you gotta meet

To be honest, I haven't gotten quite so excited about someone else's life for a long time. When I first glanced over the press release for “The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist’s Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics, and Other Consciousness-Raising Experiments," I basically puh-shawed (verb usage?) And then I came to. (Press-releases send me into a 30 second stupor before I am able to resume normal brain function.) I read a few sentences. And then a few more. And then I couldn't stop! Which led to this beautifully written passage that now graces the editorial department's cutting room floor:

While reading his book, my work and my co-worker’s work suffered. I couldn’t stop compulsively reading, shrieking or quoting aloud passages as I delved deeper into the jungles of this man’s ridiculously adventured life, populated by the who’s who of the modern spiritual world against such backdrops as India, Brazil and Jerusalem.

Then I got to meet the guy. And he's so unassuming! He's not arrogant or prickish or loud or any of those things you may have come to fear in a writer, if, like me, you spend some time around writers (Or gurus for that matter. I'm not referring to YOU of course.)

Come to find out, he's spent over a year in our fine, charming, cosmopolitan town and has not yet met ANYBODY!! He has friends all over the globe and a lovely wife, etc. but he's been pretty much a hermit around these parts and so I graciously offered to help him step into the limelight of the South via the alternative weekly vehicle, Style Weekly! So anyhoo, read my article HERE. And come with me to hear him read at Chop Suey at 1317 West Cary Street on April 6 at 3pm. It'll be a swingin' good time.

Here's another little gem that got the axe:

But for all of his spiritual tomfoolery, the undercurrents of “99th Monkey” are serious, historical, and even monumental. Sobel’s moment with the Dalai Lama is transcendent; his homage to Auschwitz is sacred and his quest to understand the horror instilled in him as the child of a child of concentration camp victim is key. As a chaplain at a university hospital he helped people.

jesus' lap looks so full

Like every good Jewish girl, I love Easter.

Hunting for hollow chocolate bunnies in the bushes, rainbows of jelly beans buried in plastic eggs, flourescent yellow sugar chicks laying upon their beds of plastic grass. Just like what Jesus had at the last supper. So this Easter, we went to visit my mother-in-law (whom I love dearly. this is a disclaimer for anything that comes next.) Like all good Jewish girls, I married a Baptist boy, ensuring that our son would grow up to have just as big of an identity crisis as me. Sunday, after an anarchy filled egg hunt and a cartoon about the resurrection we took our boy to the nursery with his Baptist Grandma while we headed upstairs to catch the Sermon. Sadly, the sanctuary was already filled to capacity and we had to leave. Yes, we had to miss the 13 live baptisms on the docket for the day- unlike 2 years ago when my "Sex in the City" cellphone ring added a new dimension to one man's religious induction. We could have squeezed into the adult education room with the rest of the overflow and watched the service on video, as we were invited too, but we have standards. We are not McEaster nuggets. We walked up and down the streets of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood (wishing desperately that more Jewish people would move to the South and open some coffeeshops that weren't closed on Sundays) before returning to Church to wile away our time in the Bethany Room. There, Stan, who like all good reclusive-skater-intellectual-freaky types went to a Nazarene College in Boston, read to me some of the more interesting passages from one of the many Gideon Bibles, lining the shelves.

Such as this from the book of Judges:

But Ja'el, the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, till it went down into the ground, as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

Hmph. Well. Yeah. Happy Passover ya'll!

exhaustion is a 4 letter word.

this is what the inside of my planner and the inside of my brain look like tonight at 10:58 pm:

deadlines

line edits

publications committee preschool silent auction

calendars out the wazooky

spring social scene-- a beast I tell you!!

gym (well, at least i walked in)

board meetings (wait a minute- am I a grown-up??)

taxes

law suits

collection agencies

playdates

easter eggs

birthday parties. for people who haven't reached their double digits. lots of them.

bed

laundry laundry laundry

dishes dishes dishes

life and death

returned phonecalls

all the unreturned phone calls

subsequent guilt

disturbing dreams

dead sleep

carb heavy sugar laden breakfasts

caffeine

coffee

caffeine

coffee

a lite lunch salad

parking garage

energy bar

god

please

prayer

please