Milan in a Nutshell

This is as much of Milan as I saw last week.  No, seriously.

My first European flight! (We ended up taking off at 8:30)

On the floor, JFK

Saying goodbye to my baby.

This was really my hotel room. It's a good thing I didn't really spend much time here, because I don't think I could get a good rest with a Nagel-esque Sophia Loren looming over my head.

Umm, this was 5:00 AM, not PM.  Tuesday into Wednesday morning. I had been on press from 11:00 Tuesday around the clock, and ended up finishing at about 6:00 PM Wednesday.

Third shift pressmen are third shift pressmen, no matter where you are in the world.

Nicolo and me, weary after a long night playing with color.  I am looking decidedly bedraggled.

What I do.

Vending machine in the plant, dispensing espressos, capuccinos, mochas, in the cutest little Dixie cups. These kept me going and I'm sure the multiple espressos didn't impair my judgment at all.

"No riding Razr scooters in the plant!"

You are required to wear gloves, shoes, an Anthony Hopkins mask, and Philip Johnson glasses.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Will This Year Ever End? -- Blabulous Blabbing

I promised myself (and thus you, my bloggy friends), that I would post more.

I've felt a little constrained lately.  To be perfectly frank, a better word may be choked, or suffocated, or throttled. Whatever the feeling, it's made me strangely leery of unloading here. Then I realized in the last few days, as I've done a little spiral slide down into what seems to be a bona fide mini-depression, or some kind of seasonally-affected thing -- whatever, it feels way beyond your usual holiday weltschmertz -- that I need to write here.

See, I realized I have replaced all the things I used to blab about here with lots of talking elsewhere, and now I'm starting to realize that one cannot replace the other. They need to exist in a kind of talk-write homeostasis, with some sort of surface tension keeping the thing quivering without overflowing.

Writing here = MUST DO.

I can't not write here. It's what I do. It's part of who I am. It's where I explore all the inny-outy places in my brain, the good stuff and the bad stuff, and hopefully make an occasional discovery about how I am at any given moment. It's a place where I can back up my truck (beep-beep-beep!), tilt the bed, and just dump out my garbage.  If anyone happens to be reading, well, that's great, but it's not really why I've written, or not written here.

And in not coming here and purging/cleansing/writing something/anything, I realize, I've become more and more rootless as time has passed. I've got to water the ground, or everything dries up and lately, I feel like I may blow away and disappear. Something that nourishes and nurtures me has gone fallow, and I've almost forgotten how to form a thought or how to express it.  I know my thinking/writing muscles are terribly out of shape. I think this is part of why I have been feeling depressed. Maybe it's not actually depression, but some sort of creative constipation.

It's not that I'm not on the bloggermajig every day, either -- I do read what all of my blog friends have to say in their own online spaces, and believe it or not, your observations on your own lives actually speak to me. I read the musings, the angst, the humor of my bloggy friends, and I always seem to find a place where I relate. (Even the fishing blog -- I don't know diddly about fishing, but I look at the pictures and feel a sweet sense of recognition in the Colorado landscapes that are so generously sprinkled there.)

Simply put:  Writing here is one of the ways I take care of me. A journalistic purgative. Ipecac for the writerly soul. And so, so imperative to my own self-care.

I'm still trying to find the balance between taking care of myself and nurturing a new relationship and remembering that oh, yes, there is another person involved in your life now, Aileen. (And is a relationship still considered "new" after five months, or are we just well into it? huh.)

I am finding this hard.  I've been alone for a long time, and I've liked it, and become used to just moving through my life like some implacable shark, doing what I want, when I want, and however I want, accountable to no one but me, myself, and Aileen. Since Dood is 1600 FMA (that's Fucking Miles Away, just so you know), I still have that perogative for the most part, but there are delicate areas of expectation and communication that have to be negotiated where I would have previously gone ahead and done what the hell I wanted, screw what anyone else thinks.

Stupid things like, say, disappearing into a bar with a friend for three hours after work with my phone buried in my handbag -- that's probably not polite, at least not without a call beforehand to say, "Honey, I'm going out for a drink with So-and-so, I'll talk to you later." Now, that courtesy call is, if not mandated, at least strongly encouraged, if only because I don't want someone to think my nude, dismembered body is lying in the Gowanus Canal.  And it's actually kind of nice, knowing there's someone out there who actually gives a shit where I might be at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night.

We're also negotiating the "how much information about your past is too much information?" tightrope right now. He's of the "Ask All/Tell All No Matter What" school of thought, and I'm more of the "Ask Very Little/Tell What's Important and What Makes Sense From a Situational Standpoint" school. 

Apollonians versus Dionysians (interestingly, I tend to be the more "Apollonian" of us). Freudians versus Jungians. Jets versus Sharks. 

This has become another area of some quite lively discussion, and frankly I don't think we'll ever reach an accord on it.  We even got down to the specifics of what do you do with a text message from an ex? Well, it depends.  If it's pointless and means nothing to you, a random "Hi," showing up on your phone, what's wrong with seeing it, and deleting it without comment? I mean, it's not important, right? On the other hand, did I need to know his recent ex sent him one of those boohooey, "oh-poor-little-brokenhearted-me-I-am-reminded-of-you-every-time-I-go-to-the-7/11-to-refill-my-bottomless-Slurpee" texts on Thanksgiving morning? No, not really. It just irritated me and made me say, in a very mean voice, "Jesus Christ, won't the bitch just go away?"

For me, it's really situational. You pick your poison.  Do I need/want to know about the "Thinking of you," texts from his ex? No, not particularly. Would I need/want to know if he got a text from her saying, "Hey, I am going to be in Texas and I need a place to crash."? Damn straight. (And the correct answer to that, for the record, is "Here is a list of hotels," not, "You can crash on my couch.") Think of it as comparing a one-dollar bill with a Franklin hundred. They're both green pieces of paper with numbers on them, same size, shape and weight, but one has more value and can buy a whole lot more trouble. You can't go into Peter Luger and try to spend the dollar with the explanation that it's a green piece of paper with numbers on it, so it has the same intrinsic value as the hundred. You gotta decide if the situation is a dollar or a hundred, and prioritize appropriately.

But I digress. 

My sun sign is Libra: the scales. Most people assume that means I'm a balanced person, but what gets forgotten are the wild swings and tilts and UN-balanced moments that occur before the scales come to rest at that tenuous balance point. And that moment of balance can sometimes be upset by a mere feather landing on one side or another.

2010 has been a year of nothing but swings and tilts and having my legs kicked out from under me, it seems. Even adding good things to the scales, like a job promotion, or a brand-new, life-altering love, well, these are feathers on the scale, too. Stressors.  Good or bad, ugly or pretty, funny or grim, stress is stress. (For some reason this conjures memories of Mr. Knaupf in high school psychology class, and the terms "distress" and "eustress." Whether you attach a label "good" or "bad" to it, the physiological and sometimes psychological response to it is the same.)

Suddenly I have to think about my life, and the people in it, in a whole different way. I have to make room on the scales of my life for different things and try to make them balance. Put some on, take some off, move some around, hope things level out somewhere down the line.

I do have a tendency to go all or nothing sometimes -- and in this case, I went all.  I simply swept my arm across the table of my life, pushed every other thing off the edge, and said, sit here, this is all for you. I didn't even think to save a little piece for myself.  Now, this gets tricky, because once you've invited someone into your life and told them, you can have all of my time at any time, it gets a little sticky when you try to scoop some of that back onto your own plate. It takes some diplomacy (which I have to learn), and tact (which I have to learn), and grace (which I have to learn).
Being blurty AND quick-witted can be dangerous, because sometimes what comes out is mean as snakes.  Mean as snakes is not a good description for a girlfriend. "Ohhh, my girlfriend, she's mean as snakes. Funny as shit, but hoo-bob, don't cross her. She'll cut ya once and you'll bleed twice."  Attractive, no?

Anyway.

Those of us who write (for whatever reason, be it journals like this, or fiction, or history, or whatever), I think we have some cellular need to have a quiet place in our minds where we can go. We aren't doing one of the other arts where it's all about "Look at me! Look at what I'm doing!" We aren't singers or painters or dancers or actors, bleeding in public and making a lot of noise and then standing back and waiting for the applause to start. For some reason, we've chosen the most solitary, inward-looking art as our means of expression. We have something to say, and we are compelled to say it, even if it's just for ourselves. Maybe mostly for ourselves.

When I was a tiny little girl, my sister tells me, I used to walk up to her and hand her pieces of paper covered in the illegible scribbles of a 3-year-old.

"Look," I would say, "I wrote a story."

Even then, I was a child who needed to spend time in her head. Even as I was developing this personality, this loud and brash and silly and ridiculous "watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat," snark-laden personality, I must have had a need for some quiet place where my thoughts and ideas could ferment. Maybe it was just a natural reaction to living in a 3-bedroom house with six brothers and sisters, and it was my way of carving out that space for myself.

So my intention for 2011 is to re-apportion that time for myself.

To find those quiet corners, where I can sit alone and have my thinks, and write my thinks, and sometimes even publish my thinks right here in Blogworld.  To go for long walks on my own looking at things in my city, or to sit on the steps in Union Square and watch the people walk by, to go to a restaurant alone and eat a hamburger while reading a good book, or to just sit down in my own home, with no television, or music, or telephone, and cross my legs and exhale "ohmmmmmmm" into the universe.

In the meantime, I feel so much better right now, having written far too many words here, so thanks. Thanks for reading.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Oh, Oh Telephone Line, Give Me Some Time, I'm Living in Twilight

(This post started as a comment over at Gekko's place, then sort of grow'd like Topsy, so I decided it was a post unto itself.)

Since we only get to make the sex occasionally (due to the 1663.29 miles -- but who's counting? -- between us), Dood and I mostly do nothing BUT talk. And talk, and talk, and talk. And no, it's not all phone sex and dirty giggles late into the night -- there is that, but there have also been the quotidian moments of doing laundry, grocery shopping, taking a smoking break, and then some truly hard, painful, both-of-us-crying moments. There have also been the "I have to hang up the phone RIGHT NOW because if I stay on I will say something terrible that I don't mean and will regret later," moments.

See -- we made a commitment from the very beginning to total honesty.

First of all, we were just goofing around (what are the chances we'll actually really meet, I mean, you're in New Orleans and I'm in New York, right?) and felt we had absolutely nothing to lose by total nakedness, and then second, after the gooshy feelings started creeping in, we both recognized that the only way to sustain any kind of relationship is to be completely honest, even if it totally sucks at the moment.

Even if I'm afraid I'm revealing some aspect of my personality that will suddenly turn off the "love" switch*, it's out there for him to look at, and I'm mostly certain he's not looking at it and making a list of reasons to reject me, and same goes for me. (*part of me still thinks this can happen.)

I won't lie, this has been really hard. My inclination is to not talk about what I think, feel, and want. My inclination, sometimes, is still to shut down a la "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Because I am not verbally adept and I don't like confrontation (think "roll up in corner with arms over head"), I am TERRIBLE at arguing my positions. If I could rebut an argument by WRITING things down, I'd do it. If only it were so.

Every now and then, in the midst of a discussion, some double-edged Hattori Hanso words will come flying out of my mouth, drawing blood, surprising both of us.

"Your words cut me," he said, and the look in his eyes was:  First Tiny Heartbreak.  Which, for the record, made us even-steven that night.

And now there've been some changes to the Dood's life, which have curtailed our previous talk time. I am severely displeased by this -- no, actually, for a week or so, I acted like a junkie in withdrawal, but I reminded myself (thanks to zen for this) that I can accept it or not accept it, but it doesn't change the situation.  I still don't get any more talk time, so won't it be easier for me to just accept it and get on with things?

Acceptance is just easier.  And I do mean acceptance, not resignation.  As Cheri says, acceptance happens with your head up, resignation happens with your head down.  What this means is that I'm here, and he's there, and while he goes about his bidness, I just have to go about my bidness.  If he's in the middle of watching a movie that runs past the time I go to bed (I'm back to a somewhat normal bedtime again, those fabulous rangy calls that lasted 'til 3am had to stop sometime), then I just have to go about my going to bed, and we'll talk another time.

And so it goes...there is a longer-term goal in all of this, but since I've spent the last decade of my life training to not be "attached to outcomes," I also have to look ruthlessly at the possibility that it just might not happen. Life has a funny way of happening, throwing down obstacles that make you detour and end up somewhere else. Anything could happen, and might. I have to accept that possibility, as much as I really, reeeeeally, want that thing to happen.

Anyway, I only have to wait until my next birthday, and that's just 10 short months away, which means that it's less than a year away, and for some reason, that length of time seems completely manageable and suddenly I'm much more cheerful about it.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday (retroactive)

One Arm Out From Under the Porch, Waving a Tiny Piece of Paper With Some Words on It

Important enough for me to post and repost.

Cheri kicks my ass, if only I remember to go to her when I am feeling like crap.

Now, if only I could remember it:

Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but....

But -- gawd-dayum I'm so pissed at myself because I haven't written anything worth a damn in a while.

Shit.

And FUCK ME, FUCK ME, FUCK ME, I wish I had written this:

Mr. Hayes probably got forty bucks for publishing this, but who the hell cares? It's freakin' beautiful ("I now know "bolt" is to lock and "bolt" is to run away.") and it's in The New Yorker.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

In other words, good ole Ozymandias was saying, you better read this, commit it to memory, before the copyright police come along and make me take it down.

Right now, I am jonesing for grace.

I'm Not Dead Yet

I haven't died or had anything really bad happen to me.

I just had had a tiny little piece of my heart carved out a few minutes ago after ten wonderful days of vacation and I will be back at work today.

Hopefully I'll be blogging full-speed-ahead again soon.

Right now, I need to pry the Mad Kitty from my lap, as she saw suitcases being packed this morning and went into full-on panicky clinging mode with all its attendant meowing and running from room to room and huge black accusatory eyes. She seems calmer now that she's realized it wasn't my luggage being packed, but she has planted herself on my lap as if she's about to sprout roots.

Right now, having watched my person get into a car that took him away from me to LaGuardia, where the good people at United Airlines will carry him even farther away, I'm too sad to cry.

I did my crying on and off yesterday as I watched our last hours trickle away, then felt the last precious ones were stolen from me, which made me jump up and down shouting, "Unfair! Unfair! Unfair!"

As the good Mr. Vonnegut said, so it goes.

More often than not, tears are futile and pointless anyway. And you can stand there jumping up and down all you want, and it doesn't make any difference in the end.

And sometimes you just have to realize that even though something is clearly huge and important to you at the moment, someone else will see something else as huger and more important in the same moment. And you just have to live with that. It's people, right? No one is going to see everything exactly as you do, and they are going to make the choices that seem right for them at the time. Agree to disagree.

I realize I'm sounding cryptic here, so I'm just gonna go hop in the shower where I can cry and pretend my tears are just more water from the tap.

The Great Date Debate

The Dood and I are having a good-natured debate about something.
See, I have many male friends, with whom I share completely platonic relationships. I don't want to sleep with them, and presumably, given the length of some of these friendships (I can come up with one that goes back to 1988 and one that goes back to 1992), they don't want to sleep with me.
Every now and then, I'll get together with these male friends for cocktails or dinner, and a few laughs. Most of the time, we go Dutch, unless I am so dirt-po' that I announce, "I'm broke, you're payin'," and then I choose an appropriately divey joint with $4 draft beers and cheap bar snacks (One memorable drunken night at the Oyster Bar excepted).
Tonight, for instance, I'm having dinner with my friend Michael.
We met in 2002, when I worked for the enviro-printing company that was owned by the recycled paper company. Michael and I became friends almost immediately, because we had similar taste in music and the same slightly askew sense of humor, only his delivery is much better. Acerbic, witty. He never broadcasts a joke, he assumes you'll get it. Michael is one of a very few people who can walk down the street with me and in an instant have me doubled over with laughter, screaming "Stop! Please! You're gonna make me wet my pants!" Trust me, this is a gift. (He once also, to great comic effect, called me on my birthday and played the birthday song -- on a trombone. Maybe you had to be there, but it was comedy gold.)
So Michael moved way the hell upstate, and only gets into the city occasionally on business. Now and then we'll hang out and have a cocktail or two. I've been upstate to visit him and his wife, whom I adore. They are one of those clearly in-love couples you want to emulate one minute and throw old food at the next. They're that cute.
So anyway, I'm on my way over to Alphabet City to meet Michael for burgers and beers at Royale. Got me a hankerin' for a Bacon Royale with blue cheese and some onion rings. Yum.
Dood keeps referring to this as a "date."
Feeling like Schwarzenegger, I keep saying, "It's not a date!"
So we're on the phone earlier and Dood's brother is in the room, and he opens the question to the floor: Is Aileen going on a date?
(NO)
Well, Brother of Dood weighs in: where he comes from, that's a date.
Now it's two against one, and I know it's not a date, Michael knows it's not a date, but two Southern boys think it's a date (which leads me to ask, in an aside, you guys make your dates pay for their own meals? Y'all must not be gettin' laid much, or if y'are, Southern girls are big sluts. Subject for a different debate...)
Dood holds the WHMS opinion that all men, no matter what, "pretty much want to nail" any woman they're friends with. He is quick to recuse himself from the category of "all men." His brother backed him up in this claim, which of course he would do, hello, he's his BROTHER, and he was talking to me. Duh. That's a Mafia vouch if ever I heard one, "yeah, he's a friend of ours."
I disagree. To reiterate, I'm friends with lots of men, and all of them platonically.
So I ask you, my bloggy friends, is this a date?
(There are no wrong answers, but I'm interested in knowing what you all think.)

Wordless Wednesday

Next Year On My Birthday

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
about the time I picked up
the Daily News and the headline read
No Bad News Today.

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
how I found a painting signed "Vincent" in the attic
and sold it to a passing junk dealer
for the price of a meal.

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
about the 2am I stood on a street corner
and watched an elephant appear from a hole in the river,
give me the wisdom in one sad eye,
then lift me onto her back.

How I waved at the gaping crowd
as we paraded west,
disappearing into a garden.

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
about the time I spent the last dollar in my wallet
and bought the winning lottery ticket,
and on my way to collect the winnings
the wind snatched it from my hands.

I watched it blow away and laughed
with the taste of ashes in my mouth
and didn't chase it.

Parable, Allegory, Metaphor for Life, Whatever...

So I get into the office early today, and as I walk down the hall toward my office, I smell the really good smells of French toast and home fries.

My coworker, who always gets in at about 7:30, is sitting at her desk, eating a country breakfast.

I pop in, to do the usual "how was your weekend" rundown, but the entire time, she's sitting there eating this delicious-smelling challah French toast.

In my hand, I've got my little plastic bag from the fruit man on 59th and Park, with its virtuous bananas, granny Smiths, and a bag of baby carrots, which I eat mainly for the chewing sensation than anything else.

"Well," I finally say, "I'm going to go and resentfully eat oatmeal for breakfast."

We all laughed then, but I will admit to being resentful about eating healthy, good-for-your-heart oatmeal, while she sat there plugging wads of egg-fried bread into her piehole.

Sometimes I get tired of eating the things that are "good for me" all the fucking time. You know what? I want to stuff my face with challah French toast on a Monday morning, too!

I'm generally full of resentment right now, so much so that I can barely speak, in fact, knowing that if I do start to speak what will come out will be a howl of fury and rage, and I have to remind myself that yes, my coworker eats French toast for breakfast and Ranch 1 for lunch whenever she wants, but she's also (literally) 100 pounds overweight, is plagued by chronic ailments and pain, and gets "I have to leave early" sick at least twice a month, and would I trade places with her?

Not in one second, not for a million dollars.

But I still wonder sometimes what must it be like to wake up and think, yeah, today, like yesterday, and the day before, I'm gonna eat French toast and Ranch 1.

Ready to Roll

In complete avoidance of doing something I needed to do immediately (find my passport, do my laundry, cut my own bangs in a fit of self-mutilation, minister tenderly to my own crouched-under-the-you-know-what self), I instead ministered tenderly to my neglected bicycle last night.

I rolled little Loki out of the corner, carefully wiped her down with a damp cloth moistened with a gentle, organic cleanser (no, you don't wipe down a bike with paper towels, of course not! You'll scratch the paint!), including every spoke on both wheels.

I carefully inflated her long-flat tires, to see if she could take a full 110lbs of air pressure, which she did -- though we'll see how those old tires hold up once I park my fat ass on her on the trainer, which is also standing patiently by. I'll probably switch out her tubes, as I'm sure the old ones are all dried out and flimsy.

Turned her over onto the handlebars and seat, and carefully picked the wads of dust and cat hair out of the gearset. Ran her through all of her gears, 3 front, 9 back, with careful drops of White Lightning.

Smiled at the happy "zzzzzzzzz" of the wheel spinning when I stopped turning the cranks, though I know that back wheel needs to go into the shop to be trued.  It's never been the same since that day I chased my molester off the Williamsburg Bridge, heedless of those plate covers banging the back end of the bike around. I still hold out hope that he rode his bike into traffic and got creamed by a truck or something.

Tonight -- adjusting the clips on my new Diadoras and seeing if the elastic is completely dead on all my bike shorts.

Putting her on the trainer, and pretending to go really, really fast down that big stretch of 9W going into Nyack.

Who wants to ride with me next spring? I need quads of steel and a really great glove tan.

Saturday Oldies

I started the day watching "It Might Get Loud," on DVD. I know, you're probably asking yourself, "Really? She's talking about that fucking movie AGAIN?" What can I say? It gave me a genuine appreciation for Jack White, not to mention the DVD has some truly great "Deleted Scenes" (Jimmy Page playing acoustic! JP, Edge and Jack White jamming on "Kashmir!") I'm totally in love with Jimmy Page -- he's a total rock god who's retained all of his hotness and then some. Wowsa. Hubba hubba.

I then started a bile-filled post about 25-year-old shitheads, then realized that perhaps my worldview was temporarily tainted by riding the L train out of and into Williamsburg on a Saturday, so I've shelved those thousand words for the time being -- until the next time some 25-year-old shithead pisses me off by whining about how he showed up on time for work three whole days this week and not one person threw a parade.

Instead, I want to talk about what a nice afternoon I had going to see "Raging Bull" at the Film Forum with my friend Judy, then we strolled over to Sixth Avenue on this unseasonably balmy night because neither of us had eaten all day and we were dying of hunger. As luck would have it, we got to Da Silvano just before the mad dinner rush and were seated immediately. We had to run a small gauntlet of paparazzi (that's twice this week for me, the first being outside my office, where some Jim Carrey movie is being filmed), but that was okay, I didn't care, as long as they sat us and dropped a plate of bread in front of me before I started chewing on my own fingertips for sustenance. I just wanted a plate of pasta.

We shared an artichoke (YUM) and had arugula con parmeggiano salads, so we both picked at our tagliatelle when it arrived. Somehow we managed to find room for the panna cotta, which as far as I can see, is a far superior desert than tiramisu. (I'm a complete snot when it comes to tiramisu, most you find is just terrible).

One of the things I like about Da Silvano is that their menu says, in big bold letters, "No cheese served on seafood, at any time." They might as well put a sign out front that says, "We are not the Olive Garden, you American rubes."

It's also about food. The service is fast, brusque, and efficient. None of this, "I'm Trevor and I'll be your server tonight," crap. They move ya in, and move ya out. Romantic it's not. Delicious, it is.

Plus, since Judy and I ordered the same thing, then picked at our entrees, I have enough leftover for two meals.

Now I'm home, early on a Saturday night, drinking a Guinness, and listening to 80's music.

How can I possibly end such a day on any kind of sour note when I've got Scritti Politti singing "Perfect Way," with Real Life's "Send Me An Angel," right behind it!

I mean, honestly. What's to complain about?

My Tired Old Eyes

Guys, even I couldn't read my own bloggy putrescence, so I changed my font to something that resembles actual letters, formed into words, formed into sentences, formed into paragraphs.

Occasionally, a thought will show up, too.

Randomalia: 11/11/10

It's 11/11, make a wish!

1) Milano is a go! Yay! Now, to find mia pasaporte (Ok. That may not actually be Italian, but it sounds good when you say it out loud.) Honestly, what I'm most excited about is not the shopping but the eating. I hear those Italians do know how to eat. Buon viaggio!

2) I'm reading a book called "New York," by Edward Rutherfurd. Eight hundred-some pages of fiction, moderately larded with the history of my town.

You know the style -- you have your main characters, fictional, of course, and as the author tells their story, Very Large Historical Figures appear on the sidelines to have some effect on moving the story along. It's a cheap plot device when used badly, but some authors do it better than others. I'm thinking of E.L. Doctorow in "Billy Bathgate," or James Michener in his epic period. It's a way to get your history spoon-fed to you without having to lie back and think of England.

This book is moderately engaging. I say "moderately" because I picked it up at JFK in early October when I needed something to occupy me on one of my flights to LA, then made it about ten pages in before sacking out for the rest of the trip. Ever since then, I've been half-heartedly reading it, a few pages here, a few pages there, sort of "feh" about the whole thing.

It's okay. (Talk about damned with faint praise. That's a "she has a great personality" book review if ever I heard one) It's not the worst book I've ever read, but it's not great, either, not by a long shot. There's nothing about it that makes me long for it, nothing that makes me wake up as if I'd been in a dream, having passed my subway stop, nothing that makes me stay up all night reading until I'm bleary-eyed, then fall asleep with my cheek on its open pages and reach for it in the morning like a new lover.

It's just "feh."

A month and a half down the line and I'm only 300 pages into this monster. And now the new Jonathan Franzen is sitting on my kitchen table, all hardcovered and alluring and giving me a wolf-whistle every time I walk by.

Someone told me this morning to look at the Franzen like dessert, and the Rutherfurd as the pile of Brussels sprouts I have to eat before I can eat my cake and ice cream. Really? Can't I just point at the Brussels sprouts and say, "But I'm full -- of THIS," then gesture at the cake and say, "I have plenty of room -- for THIS?"

What in the world is a girl supposed to do? I'm a grown-up, I can eat dessert first if I want, can't I?

3) I have no idea what is going on in a single television show that's on right now. This makes me a social liability in those ten minutes that get wasted at the beginning and end of every meeting talking about things like Justin Bieber's hair, those damned "Twilight" books and what happened on "Glee."

4) I know, I know, I've railed against white hosiery, but I just saw a tiny Asian girl wearing them and it worked. Two things -- no, four -- made it work for her. First, her Cyd Charisse stems. Most of the girls you usually see wearing white stockings have legs like eggplants turned on end. Second, she was wearing the most adorable pair of taupe suede shoes with a just-so chunky four-inch heel. Third, her cream-colored tam was tilted at just the right perky angle. And fourth, her very affectionate boyfriend was togged out in a fantastic Andre 3000-preppie getup, right up to his plaid newsboy cap. So the lesson here is, you *can* get away with a Glamour Don't if a) you're an adorable Asian girl with b) great gams, c) super-cute footwear, and d) an equally super-cute Romany Malco-looking boyfriend wearing an outfit as cute as yours. See how simple it is to have style? You can do it in four easy steps!

5) I've got the GC arriving next Sunday! Super-hooray with a stag leap and a triple axel-triple loop combination! I'm busy making shopping lists and plans, and appointments for secret girl stuff before he arrives. I'm not sure yet what we will do for the ten days of his visit, but I think it may be imperative for us to partake of some herbal enjoyment on Thanksgiving morning and go see 50-foot Bart Simpson skateboard down Broadway.

6) I went to see my pals at SUNY Optometric this week for an eye exam and to use up some more of my Flexible Spending Account ("We hold your money hostage, and if you don't use it, we get to keep it!"), of which I had spent a whopping 44 bucks so far this year (couple of prescriptions, I think for that uveitis thing with my eyeball). Well, it's official now -- I'm old. My new lenses for my glasses -- and this is just the lenses, folks, being put into my existing frames (which cost a pretty penny themselves) -- ended up being PROGRESSIVES (those are fancy reading glasses, crapola) and costing 350 dollars! Yipes! So glad I love my frames, because that about wiped out my FSA, leaving me with 67-some dollars to spend by the end of the year. I think a prescription for Xanax to help me get over the shock of spending nearly four hundred bucks on EYEGLASS LENSES might be in order with that last bit of money.

Well, I'm home now, my pasta is done al dente, and I've got on my eatin' shorts, so I'll stop here.

Ciao, y'all!

Wordless Wednesday

Ciao, Bello!

I am going to Italy in December -- Milano during Christmas week. For work. Sounds like a dream job, right?

So why am I so not very excited?

1) I don't know where my expired passport is. I remember finding it, and my birth certificate a couple of years ago, and putting both in a "safe" place. Apparently, they are now both safe from me.

2) Why is my passport expired, you ask? Because I've never really traveled out of the country, other than vacations to Bermuda, Puerto Rico (doesn't count as leaving the country -- it barely counts as leaving New York) and Canada (again, doesn't really count if you don't leave the land mass you were born on). I've always approached international travel from an "I've been to New York City, why would I want to go anywhere else?" perspective, and I'm vaguely ashamed that I am 46 years old and I haven't BEEN anywhere. Not even England or Ireland, where they speak a reasonable facsimile of English as I know it. Hey, I've fucked people from England and Ireland, does that count?

3) I'm so fucking broke all the time, that big travel is just not in my budget now or in the forseeable future. And the prospect of a free trip to Italy should excite me, but the idea that I will be in Milan without possessing an American Express card just leaves me ineffably glum.

4) I don't speak Italian, and I will be expected to communicate important information regarding my job, to Italians. Here's the sum total of what I know how to say in Italian besides "ciao!"

"Chi e quel ragazzo?"

This is a cute party trick when hanging out with my gay Italian friend from Bensonhurst, or if I happened to be single, but for navigating my way through an airport or taxi queue, or checking into a hotel, it's no great shakes and may in fact cause me no end of agita. Wait, there's another Italian word that I know! Agita!

5) I'm secretly terrified that al Qaeda will choose Christmas week to make a statement and blow up an international transoceanic flight, and that the only thing that will be recovered of my earthly remains will be a one-quart Ziploc bag full of hotel-sized Aveda shampoo bottles.

6) Christmas? I gotta travel overseas at Christmas? Then I sort of shrug my shoulders and tell myself, "Oh, well, it's not like I have anything special planned for Christmas," and that makes me sad, like I'm some spinster with a cat and a family who makes her crazy and no parents to call on Christmas Day anymore.

* * * * * * * * * *

And in the meantime, I'm struggling, my bloggy pals, to navigate the unfamiliar shoreline of "being in a relationship," and I swear to God I am having a really hard time with it. Am I just too set in my ways?

I am having boundary issues, as I believe there should be some boundaries, and places that we don't need to go, but this seems to be counter to a commitment made to "openness and honesty and truth."

See, I feel that beyond OH&T, there's this weird no-man's land called, "More Information Than I Wanted or Needed." That boundary is porous, I know, which means it needs to be navigated with extreme care and delicacy. When I express any discomfort with a breach of that emotional DMZ, I then start to feel like a) a huge prude, b) a huge bitch, or worst of all c) some kind pf crazy person when I openly, and honestly, and truthfully say what is on my mind, which may entail some awful Bad Thought, which I immediately assume must mean I'm a Bad Person, and really, people, how could anyone possibly love anyone as awful as me?

Look, I'm a handful, I know, and I've reached a point in my life where I have no interest in playing games, and I really don't have time to be bullshit, but Christ Alfuckingmighty, sometimes the "not bullshit" Aileen is someone even I can't stand to be around.

Plus, someone told me today, in words said out loud, to "shut up," and it hurt my feelings, and now I'm looking around in the shed for a crowbar or a Hurst Tool because as soon as I heard it, something inside me slammed shut with a nearly audible "clang" and I'm turtling a little bit.

Jesus, how do people do this? I'm smart, and yet I can't seem to stop fucking up or holding on the tiller of this boat while navigating it straight onto the rocks.

Because I Loves Me Some Catholic Humor

Random Note Found on My Blackberry

Jotted in the Notes on 6/18/10, after awakening from a nap:

Dream Nap 6/18

I am in CA on business and someone whom I know, but don't know, is there as well (you know how that is in dreams. In the dream you know the person, but in real life you don't know him).

I am checked into a hotel I don't recognize. One of those older hotels that has been remodeled and expanded. I am in the older, lower more motel-like part, the kind with outdoor entrances. Room 202. He has a room in the newer wing, room 502. I can see the new wing from the door of my room, it is in the style of California Spanish. Adobe with a tiled roof.

I need to leave my room for something, and when I return I realize that I have left the door wide open with all of my belongings exposed. My handbag is open on the bed, laptop on a table. Strangely, nothing is touched. The room is exactly as I left it.

The red message light on the phone is blinking, and when I retrieve my voice mail there is just one message. A male voice, and I know it is the voice of the man I know is there. "I am here. I can see into your room from mine." I don't feel afraid or threatened because I recognize his voice. And I already knew what room he was in.

Dream shift and I am sitting in a chair. I know I am still somewhere in this hotel. There is a man standing behind me. It is the man from room 502. His hands are on my shoulders and tangled in my hair and occasionally, around my neck. Again, I am not afraid. Though I try to turn around to look at him, his hands stop me.

"Wait." he says. "Wait. Not yet."

I settle back in the chair, bow my head, and let him rub my neck.

Wordless Wednesday

Tired to Death, Tired of Death, Day of the Dead

Maybe what I need isn't Noble Silence but a couple of days under the porch. Or a night on the jar with some friends.

I know, I know, it's the Day of the Dead, All Saints' Day, blah, blah, blah. I'm supposed to reckon with the dead and tell 'em what's going on, and leave cookies and milk by the Christmas tree for them, oh wait, am I getting my holidays mixed up? Or is this the day when those guys roll back the stone in front of the tomb after three days and yank out a disgruntled rodent? Maybe it's the one where we celebrate those people fleeing religious persecution in England because they brought smallpox-riddled blankets to wipe out indigenous peoples...

Can't seem to keep my bank holidays straight...

Even though today's supposed to be el dia de los muertos, honestly, I'm tired of death. Really, really tired of it.

Just got off a the phone with my sister, who was hysterical because she had to have another one of her cats put to sleep today. This one was really hard for her because he was her late husband's cat, and really her last tie to him. Okay, he was probably the most evil cat you've ever met (his name was Chaos), but still.

All these deaths -- pets, parents, relationships...it just makes me tired. I think if I went home tonight and found one of my plants dead I'd probably kill myself.

All I can say, and I'll say this again, if I'm ever at the point where I'm blind, deaf, and incontinent, make sure there's a needle for me.  NO EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES. There, it's in writing, these are my words, and that's the fact, Jack.

So here's my Day of the Dead shout-out to my Dads:

Dear Dad:


Hope you're doing okay wherever you are, and that there is lots of cold beer and good sprint car racing there. Were you able to take up smoking again? I know you really missed your Pall Malls, even after you had the quintuple bypass and had to quit.


I still miss our phone calls on Sunday morning after all the talk shows. Just in case you don't have cable wherever you are, we did dodge a huge bullet with that moron from Alaska. And don't get me started on the Teabaggers.


Things are pretty good for me right now. Got promoted at work, thought you'd like to hear about that. And oh, I met a guy, and didn't have to go halfway around the globe to do it, like some other sisters of mine I won't mention.  You'd like him. I sure do. A whole lot.


Well, that's all I have for ya, Dad. Hope Mum found you, I know she was always asking where you were after you left. She would even make me turn on the outside lights for you so you would be able to find your way up the driveway. "Where's my danna-san?" she would ask. "He should be home by now."


I'll bet you guys are sitting in some 70's fake-wood paneled room together right now, and she just made you one of those little plates of pepperoni and cheese for a snack, just like you used to like. Am I right?


Hey, Dad? If you're still anywhere around, knock something over or slam a door or something, okay? Your baby girl really misses you.


Love,
AiAi

The Dangers of Posting While Drunk

The evidence is all there this morning in black and white. At least I spelled and punctuated everything correctly. When reminded that I had posted at 2 a.m., I expected to come here and find something that looked like this:

"Fjree jagagjklf skdh dkrkj sdslld skeuosal jdhj Jusalk," so while I'm a little bit embarrassed that I was so maudlin, at least I was grammatically maudlin.

Now it's Sunday, and I've read the "Times" (disheartening and depressing),eaten my bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich (cures the bottle of red wine consumed in a fit of boredom and over the course of a long phone convo), and I'm settled in with the Mad Kitty purring Friskie-breath in my face while she (successfully) tries to keep me from doing the crossword puzzle. She squoze herself across my arms and chest, on her back like a little baby. Gone is the sweet, milky scent of kittenhood; she breathes all meaty now, which is kind of gross, but her stankity meat-breath is more than offset by her sheer cuteness. I think this is how it works with people, too (witness guys who put up with batshit insane girlfriends because they look like Brazilian underwear models).

Am I bothering you? Too bad.

What I learned from yesterday's Noble Silence: it should always be followed by going out into the world IMMEDIATELY to interact in meatspace (to borrow Paula's word). Otherwise, I end up completely stir-crazy, a little bit bummed that my love and I are in what're probably the best cities for Halloween in the western world (New York and New Orleans, where you're encouraged to let your inner drag queen vogue), but not dressing up in some clever costumes together (snooki-wah, I wanted to borrow someone's baby and go dressed as Zach Galafianakis' character from "The Hangover"), and buzzed on a 2009 Valpolicella (nice bottle of wine, btw, I do like young Italians).

Want to know what made me feel better?

Reading poetry, aloud, to my Gentleman Caller. I've never done that before. I guess you could call me a poetry-reading virgin. Then again, I've never had a GC who actually gave a hoot about words, and music, and the music in words, and me, all at once (the Smelly Brit doesn't count because he was all snotty about some of my books. Does anyone remember that guy's name? I sure don't. The weasel-dude from this past spring doesn't count either, because, well, he just Doesn't Count.).

So I guess I win.

Now, to top off this fine, lazy Sunday, I've got a yen for General Tso chicken, so I'ma go get me some Chinese.

Didja

Didja ever love someone so much that you thought your heart might explode with it?

Well, I never did.

Up till now.

And I feel like if someone filmed me right now it would look like that shot of Julie Andrews looking all insane on the mountaintop and spinning around with her arms in the air and that was before the uber-hot Christopher Plummer decided he liked her better than the gorgeous Baroness...

Know what I mean?

Noble Silence - Saturday 6am - 12pm (Cross-Posted from JCBW)

Noble Silence

Listening takes place not just through the ears, but with all the senses. Sometimes the best way to prepare ourselves to hear in a new and better way is to be still and silent. When we quiet our motor minds — and our motor mouths — we find that we are better able to open our hearts. The ancient practice of Noble Silence helps us begin the process of hearing in a new way; this is a timeless and wise practice that helps us be more sensitive and perceptive.

Noble Silence traditionally begins with a vow to keep silent for a specific period of time. It can be an hour, a day, a week, or a month. There are practitioners who have kept Noble Silence for years. There is even a practice of lifetime silence in India called 'maun.' The famous master Meher Baba was a mauni baba, a silent holy man. He used a small blackboard to spell out his succinct messages, like 'Don't worry, be happy,' long before the reggae song was written.

If you want to try a period of Noble Silence, remember that it is a rest for all of the senses. Turn off the radio, the phone, the television. Enjoy a fast from the news. Turn off the thoughts in your head. Stay quiet. Take refuge in the inner calm and peace of the quiet mind. Don't write, don't read, don't surf the Net. Keep still. Listen to the sounds around you. What do you hear? What do you see? Open your eyes, open your ears, open your heart. Think of the ancient Christian exercise. Be still. Listen to the inner voice, and know God. This is how we learn to cultivate higher levels of hearing, perception, and vision.

'For someone deeply trapped in a prison of thought, how good it can feel to meet a mind that hears, a heart that reassures. It's as if a listening mind is, in and of itself, an invitation to another mind to listen too. How much it can mean when we accept the invitation and hear the world anew.'

From How Can I Help by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman.

I'm Aileen, and I'm Disgusting



My handful of faithful readers knows that I'm a big hockey fan.  I love me some Penguins hockey.  And I have my favorites on the team.

Sid's a fave, of course, and so's Geno, despite the fact that he's a funny-looking dude.  There are, of course, Max Talbot, and Pascal Dupuis (those eyelashes), but I guess, based on how many photos of him I've posted, you could say I'm mostly a fan of Jordan Staal.  I love all the Staal brothers, but mostly Jordan.

So I was poking around in Yahoo Sports, Puck Daddy, and noodling through some stats and photos to increase my Staal-edge, and came upon this image.

I thought it was kind of a cute pic, shirtless hockey player, yummy, haha, until I read somewhere that it was taken on NHL Draft Day in 2006 (this is unconfirmed).

On NHL Draft Day in 2006, Jordan Staal was 17.

I'm Aileen, and I'm disgusting.

Bitchery

Yes, this BeDazzled gentleman is completely relevant to this post, in the most ironic, tongue-in-cheek way. See, I say all this serious shit, then of course I have to make fun of myself, because I use humor and meanness toward myself as my favorite defense mechanisms.  Dude's name is Mauricio Alberto Kaisermann, and now, let's all sing along with him. (Click at your own risk. Seriously. Though now that I've listened to it again, it's actually a pretty song.)

Ah, fack. Fack. Fack.

October is another month in which I'm in the office a total of 12 days, meaning I'm abandoning the poor Mad Kitty, who is starting to look distinctly worried, for days at a time, dragging the Samsonite from coast to coast, and of course, there are the days following, when I'm jetlagged and miserable from fucked-up circadian rhythms, and bloated from eating presscheck food (i.e., green things never pass my lips because well, there are steaks at Houston's, and the good sushi in Gardena, and In-N-Out Burger -- and oh, wait, lately Judy will do anything to avoid taking me to In-N-Out Burger, even though I have been reduced to begging, "pleeeeeease take me to In-N-Out Burger," and I'm the FUCKING CLIENT, if I want goddamn In-N-Out Burger, shouldn't she take me to fucking In-N-Out Burger? I don't want the $28 "better" burger from the fancy place in Beverly Hills or West Hollywood, I want a fucking Double-Double Animal Style with all its attendant smells and drips, and I don't care if we have to go to the ghetto to get it. In the last four trips to Cali, I have not gotten my In-N-Fucking-Out Burger, and can you tell I'm just a little bit pissed about that? Do my million dollars in purchase orders NOT buy me at least one DDAS, For. The. Love. Of. CHRIST the GODDAM CARPENTER?)

Can you tell I'm in a mood? 

I'm actually feeling way gritchy today because I had one of those in-the-shower enlightenment moments when I recognized exactly why I was feeling the way I felt about a certain situation, having up to that moment only been aware that I was feeling rather shitty about it but completely unable to express just exactly why, and rather than just keeping this moment of a-ha information to myself as I would have been better off doing until I could sit down with Roni and be really pissed off over a couple glasses of red wine, I slopped it out all over someone, complete with weeping and snot running from my nose and trying to hide the fact that I was crying until I couldn't hide it anymore and then I tried to speak and all that came out were those embarrassing squeak noises you make when you're crying and trying to breathe and form words but you can't manage to do either.

And all before eight o'clock in the morning.

Totally ruining my makeup and leaving me with puffy eyes for the rest of the day.

And even better, it was on the phone.

Don't you love that kind of thing? When the person you most want to be looking into your eyes when you tell him that you're hurting and scared and a certain thing makes you feel bad, no matter how many times he tries to explain his position, you just can't seem to make him understand that you aren't trying to change anything, but you just want to tell him you still feel really bad and your feelings are hurt no matter what he says. You just can't seem to make him understand your feeling that you're not being chosen, and you're not even trying to change what he's doing, because you know you can't, and besides, you're far too well-trained by life to ask for something you may possibly want ("expect nothing, get nothing, and you won't be disappointed," remember?) and he tries to explain about obligations, and you try to explain that he's still making a choice, and then you say "People do exactly what they want to do, no matter what they may say," and it just makes you cry some more, and really, what you ought to say, clearly, and precisely, is "I am recently familiar with someone saying to me, 'I do not choose you,' and it felt really, really terrible, and I'm feeling like that again, which makes me feel bad about myself, so I would appreciate it if you didn't try to explain the error of my position or try to make me see your point of view right now. All I'm trying to do here is tell you how I am feeling about something, and oh, this is not something I am used to doing, and frankly, I'm not sure how much I like this, and whoa, is that branch cracking under me?"

Or maybe I should have just gone the old familiar route of, "La-di-dah, oh well," and kept my fucking mouth shut.  Life was a whole lot easier that way.

Frankly, I'm having a hard time dealing with all of these feelings. Blech. How do you people do it? I think it may be one of those things that couples do, talking about feelings and sharing stuff.  Honestly, I'm having a hard time getting used to it.

Then again, feeling insecure and generally shitty about myself has gotten me to dump 700 words here, even if they aren't exactly a Joycean stream of consciousness bound for the Pulitzer committee.

There is that.

PS -- on a couple of happier notes, I had a marvelous weekend in LA with the Gentleman Caller.  And earlier this week, I deleted those 2000+ emails from April to mid-July that were hovering in my old Yahoo box like a toxic stink. Gone, kaput (wipes hands).  Though, on second thought, they may have come in handy since I'm now officially a month behind in my rent, and seriously folks, every day I expect to come home and find an eviction notice nailed to my door like Luther's Theses.

Again, oh, well.

Wordless Wednesday

Dear Universe

Thank you for the happiness.

Apparently I can't write for shit anymore, but if that's the tradeoff, I'll take it.

I'm a pretty good writer, but if I have to choose between love and art, I'll pick love every time.

Hands down.

So, sorry, writing. You lose.

Wordless Wednesday

Fucking Brilliant

Yes, I used "fucking" to describe a blog entry written by my favorite Zen teacher.

So sue me.

I'd Rather Eat Dry Roast Beef

Because seriously, why bother?  They shouldn't even be allowed to add "naise" to the end of this word, because doesn't mayonnaise, by definition, contain eggs? 

It's like going to a vegan restaurant and seeing "tempeh bacon" on the menu. You can't call it bacon if it's not bacon! No, not even the turkey bacon!  Bacon has to be made from....BACON!

And don't get me started on fake fur. If you hate fur so much, don't even wear the fake kind.  I'm not talking about the blatantly fake fur, like the purple Lenny Kravitz thing that I tromp around in during cool weather which, as far as I can tell, is made of Muppets, but the fake fur that looks like the real stuff, the stuff that's good enough to fake out Anna Wintour -- or me -- from fifty paces. (I can spot a department store fur in a heartbeat.)  It oughta be called something like "polyester fiber pelted to look like a dead animal."

And the Devil said, "Is it cold in here?"

Well, I'm gonna brag on myself for a second.

I'm now a Director at a Fortune 500 company.

Holy shit, I'm a fucking suit. 

Guess I'll have to stop calling people "asshole" in meetings now.

Puck Bunny Link In Honor Of The First Day Of Regular Season Play

I'm a little embarrassed to link here.

This image is totally manipulated, 'cause Staalsy (6'4"), Geno (6'3") and Flower (6'2") are all so much taller than Sid (5'11").  New guy Mike Comrie's only 5'10" so there is that.

But dayum, those boys are just so cute.

Update

I know I've been missing for awhile now. All this travel, work, plus a new love, all have me in a tizz.

My work has slipped a little (I'm ashamed and getting my shit together as we speak), so I'm working on refocusing during office hours.

And yes, you read that right.

The girl with the hard-candy shell, the one who word-vomited all over the internet about some idiot for two months, well, she took a friend's advice, stayed open instead of shutting down, and the universe plopped love into her lap.

"Here," said the Universe. "Sorry it took so long to get this to you. Bet you thought I forgot about you."

And yes, it's love. I say it, he says it, and I'm astonished every time I hear it.

Happy Birthday to Me

Y'all know I don't like making a fuss about birthdays -- because I'M NOT FIVE.

But this year, I'm sending myself this birthday greeting:

Wordless Wednesday

On The Road Again

Come Thursday, I'll be a traveling fool once again.  I'll be living August all over again, hitting the road on a 6 am flight to Chicago on Thursday morning then turning around to come home Thursday night. 

Then I'm on a SIX-FREAKIN-A.M. flight to Los Angeles on Friday -- please, someone rub my entire body really hard with super-gritty sandpaper and mist me with iodine instead? This will be the third birthday in a row that I spend in Los Angeles.  The first was in 2008, and my sales rep Mark ignored me and went off to play golf or something. Last year, Judy took me up to Malibu, where we ate lunch with Pierce Brosnan and then we went to the Getty Villa and to The Hump for the best sushi I've ever had.  I wrote about all that.

This year, my birthday is on Monday (isn't Monday the most depressing day to have a birthday?) and I will more likely than not be sitting in the pressroom doing round-the-clock okays for the entire weekend. Some fun.  I'm SUPPOSED to fly back on Tuesday, but we'll see how that works out...

All this kvetching aside, I have nothing in my life to complain about.

Well, my bank account is perilously low -- we're talking "Erin Brockovich in her rant to Aaron Eckhart" low -- but it's only money, right? There's enough cat food to get us to next payday and I have a refrigerator full of food, a roof over my head, and clothes to hang on my back.  So no, there's nothing to complain about.  The IRS and the State of New York are getting paid the money that I owe them, I'm on a slow path to getting straight with other debts -- I know it's slow, but it'll get done, and hey, I got myself up this tree, now I'm slowly backing myself down.  Sure, I'd prefer a winning lottery ticket that would bounce me into a waiting trampoline (cue bear falling out of tree video), but oh well.

Anyway, I've been feeling like I won another kind of lottery lately.  The important kind.  See, I asked the universe to send me something four years ago, then completely forgot what I asked for.  last night I opened a silver box at my bedside that I hadn't touched since then, and I saw with wonder that everything I asked for has been given to me. And not in tiny little dollops.  Lots and lots, heaps, great, big, giant ladlefuls of all this good stuff.

Right here, right now, I am replete.

RANT: On Philip Roth, American Writers, and Literary Muscularity

"Roth's reputation, especially when it comes to stuff like doing publicity, is daunting. He is severly smart. Suffers fools badly. Parries, rather than answers, questions.


True, true, and true. Roth has the mien and bearing of a man in charge by dint of brainpower alone. He is tall and thin, hawkeyed, comfortable in silence. He takes words in -- visibly takes their measure -- with no more than a cock of an eye or a narrowed brow. Say something particularly insipid and he may purse his lips.


And how else would anybody but a fool meet the world? This is no celebrity. This is a poker-faced novelist, a man who tasted fame, gagged, and spit it out, the same man who two-plus decades back told an interviewer, "I am very much like somebody who spends all day writing.""

Scott Raab
"Philip Roth Goes Home Again"
Esquire, October 2010

Man, why are there no articles like this in women's magazines? Is it any wonder I prefer "Esquire" and "Vanity Fair" to "Vogue" and "O -- The Oprah Magazine?"

The writers who do great long-form general journalism -- with just a little Gonzo thrown into the mix -- the Scott Raabs, and Chris Joneses, and Bethany MacLeans, and Maureen Orths... Do they propose their stories to Vogue and Elle and O and get polite "doesn't meet our needs at the current time" rejection letters?
I just don't understand it. Surely I'm not the only woman who counts one of these two magazines as her favorite for the quality of the writing.

Take "Esquire." Ostensibly, it's a men's fashion magazine, and yet it won a National Magazine Award for an article that Chris Jones wrote ("The Things That Carried Him," May 2009, I think, the story of a dead soldier's journey home from Iraq. I blogged about it back then -- too lazy to go find the link right now -- because it was the best piece of journalism I'd read in years -- fact-fact-fact-fact-fact, dispassionate and yet moving, not mawkish, heartfelt without being sentimental. Jones presented the story without frippery, and I remember having to close the magazine and turn my face to the airplane window because I was crying so hard when I finished, while at the same time thinking, "God-DAMN I wish I had written that!" And then thinking, "This article should win some kind of award." Which it subsequently did, ahem.)

During the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009 "Vanity Fair" had its writers dissecting the villains of the financial crisis, with at least one long-form article in every issue peeling back the curtain behind which the so-called Wizards of Wall Street were hiding. It was a beautiful thing.

* * * * * * * * * *

There's been a lot of stank in the literary press lately because Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner have been out there whining about all the fuss being made over Jonathan Franzen's latest, "Freedom," (which I'm dying to read btw, and can hardly wait until the trade paperback is out, hello everyone, my birthday is coming up, not that I'm hinting or anything, but I'm just saying).

Seems JW and JP are annoyed with all the hype Franzen has gotten over his latest big, sweeping American-Family novel, which is being compared mostly-favorably to "The Corrections," a novel which was, simply put, a masterpiece. They want to know why it's always the male writers who get all the glory, wah wah wah, why isn't anyone paying attention to US and taking US as seriously? They created a false gender inequality literary strawman, and I'm sad to say, the media has bought into it.

I'm sure there are undiscerning readers of the suburban-mom ilk (I can see them, too, for some reason in my mind, they all have Kate Gosselin's short hairdo, carry Vera Bradley bags, and wardrobe themselves from Chico's, but then again, I'm one-a them snotty East Coast elitist types so what do I know about the real 'Merrka?) who have jumped on that you-go-girl fake-femiinist bandwagon and picked the latest Picoult or Weiner for their "book clubs" (they've gotten through the whole "Twilight" series, you see, and "Eat, Pray, Love" is sooo 2008), thereby driving sales and ensuring another Mercedes coupe for both writers.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, and I'll add to it: They don't get no respect from Michiko Kakutani because they write crap. And the Jonathan Franzens and Richard Russos and Michael Chabons of the writing world aren't churning out crap. Even when they write something I don't love, I at least get the sense that they're trying to produce a quality work of fiction that addresses some universal theme.

Unlike Weiner and Picoult, who put their finger in the air and say, hmmmm, how can I sell as many books as possible? Is there a school shooting I can exploit, or, you know, no one's written about a college friend reunion weekend that goes bad because one of the reunionees suddenly remembers that she was raped by one of the others' boyfriends. Or worst of all, the "city girl" who spends 200 pages trying to win her a Man. Blah blah blah.

Hey, I got nothing against writing crappy books to make money, people have to make a living. If I thought I could make a million doing it, I would. (Maybe I still will, but I won't use my real name :))

But please, don't put a McDonald's Happy Meal in front of me and get mad when I say I ordered sirloin. And sometimes I'll even eat the Happy Meal -- but it's with the full awareness that I'm eating crap that isn't going to nourish me. You got my money, now shut the fuck up and go sit on your bags of cash in your mansion on a golf course outside of Atlanta or wherever it is you live.

My point being -- what was my point? Oh, yeah. there are still people who want to read quality writing, and we don't care who writes it. I just did a drive-by of my bookshelves and next to Richard Russo and Michael Chabon and John Steinbeck and Richard Price I see Patricia Highsmith and Iris Murdoch and Joan Didion and Barbara Kingsolver and Jane Fucking Smiley, so there. Quality writing is quality writing, and JW and JP seem to think that "sold lots of books" equals "must mean it's good."

No.

It just means that Americans' taste in reading material is a lot like their taste in everything else -- they don't want complex layers of flavor in their characters and plots, they want simple and easy-to-swallow prepackaged, sugar-packed junk. Then they wonder why their minds are as flabby as their oversized American butts and they can't grasp a concept deeper than "I want my country back!"

In a word, I like writing that's got some muscle. That shows me something about humanity, whether it's lovely or hideous (ever read Pete Dexter?), and that fills me up with something I didn't know I wanted.

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen." -- Jonathan Franzen, the first two sentences of "The Corrections."

Like that.

I want writing that throws me down on the bed, rips open my shirt with buttons flying around the room, stands over me with its hands on its belt buckle, smiles a little, and says, "And now, I am going to fuck you. And you're going to like it."

I submit.

I Concede Defeat

All right, kids, I hang my weary head in shame and admit that I have consumed the Kool-Aid.

It's grapey and delicious.  Next I'll pour it into ice cube trays and make little popsicles.

Still stupid.  But it is a good place to unload the snark, isn't it?

Precognition, Premonition, Presentiment

I posted this on August 3rd on Comic Book World.  Lyrics are over there if you want them.

I just went back there, and listened. And listened again. And then again.




I don't mean to get all freaky and rama-lama-ding-dong and stuff, but every now and again, I'll get a... vibration from the universe. Just a little "bzzzzt" in my ear.  Sitting still a lot helps me to pay attention to those little rumbles.  I think maybe this might have been one of them.  It's a good thing I was paying attention. A really good thing.

Maybe I was picking up on one of those vibes when I chose to post this song.  (I do remember I was sitting in the Hotel Monaco in Portland, OR, late at night, confused about my own whereabouts after a week and a half of traveling, maybe slightly tipsy from having wine with my vendor, and probably feeling quite lonely and ungrounded from not having been home for so long.) 

So I chose, as usual, a much-loved song to settle myself.  Music hath charms and all that...

Thought it was worth posting again.

Wordless Wednesday

Chewchewchewchewchew

Gristle.

Sometimes ya gots ta gnaw right through through the gristle.

Appendix A

Oh, and this one?  Just as I suspected, she's a little hoor. 

I mean, look at her! All sprawled out with those come-hither eyes and that exposed belly.

She pretends to be all shy and retiring, but when the right person comes along, suddenly she's all, "Oh, and what did you say your name was again, Person Who Opens Cat Food?"

Slut.