We have to learn to differentiate kind instruction from deconstructive criticism; as in the kind of thing that robs someone's confidence, such a rare vein of ore in all of us (unless you're living right, or never let anybody that far in). Got a really long call from Patrick, whose first words were making fun of me for the lamest attempt at self-offing ever. He was scornful and I laughed really hard and we were back in 10th grade, suffering from adolescence, catching each other's eye over some insanely minor detail and losing our minds. A lost mind is a terrible thing to find.

Yes you are here at TripleXK, listening to her philosophical musings...do call in; after a long day of writing really fast for forty-five minutes, I am up for some human discourse. If you have any vodka, drop by...
NO, NOT really.
(Wait, maybe...)
Just kidding.

(As I rip off Eddie Izzard).
But seriously, please. Somebody give me some airtime. My theme song is all picked out:
'I'm WIDE A-WAAAAAAKE! I'm WIDE A-WAAAKE...! I'm not sleee-pinnnnngg, oh, no.'
by U2.

I want to play Amy Winehouse and that French singer and Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake and the Clash and the Who and the Stones' B side of Tattoo You (one long perfect song) and Buffalo Springfield and Shirley Bassey and Massive Attack and a Tribe Called Quest and a LOT of Led Z., and Cole Porter and New Order and Thelonious Monk, Alone in SF -- the entire album -- and The Gentle Side of John Coltrane and Courtney Love and Madonna (Ray of Light) and the Cocteau Twins and Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and Stan Getz and Shirley Horn and Astrid y Arturo Joabim (the Joabims), and Kanye West and Ray Charles and the Temptations and Pink Floyd and Portishead and George Michael and Billie Holiday (what's a day without the Lady?) and John McCloy, and Ten Inch Men, and Cinnamon Rush, and Waz Ziehl, and -- you get the sonic picture. All interspersed w my charming comments, plus calls from other insomaniacs still up -- the 12-3 am slot. Then I can sleep until 1 pm and never feel guilty for skipping morning, the scourge of my existence, for as long as I keep the job. (Paid, with benefits. This is what I see). 

A Facebook Dialogue with Gaia So

FB:  what's on your mind?  (great question by the way, gotta hand it to them there)

Me/today/as in 11:11 my favorite number:

Fear, panic, dread. More fear.

(people hit: Like
Like
plus emojis:
Love
Haha
Wow
Sad
Angry)

then 'Comment/Share'
4 Matt McElroy, Martin Hyatt and 2 others
Comments
Margaret Diehl
Margaret Diehl Gacela Of The Dark Death - by Federico García Lorca

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
Like · Reply · 2 · 38 mins · Edited
Margaret Diehl
Margaret Diehl I was going to put up a poem of joy and hope but decided this was better.
Like · Reply · 1 · 39 mins
Gaia So
Gaia So I get the uplift here, Margaret. Thanks for sharing that! This is what it's like to cut your heart on the high seas. There is a certain comfort in knowing what to expect. Very alchemical.
Like · Reply · 16 mins
Kristin McCloy
Kristin McCloy That sounds so cool, and so right somehow, and so Gaia-whipsmart (but I don't understand, really -- can you dumbsplain it to me??)
Like · Reply · 15 mins
Gaia So
Gaia So The impulse to draw away, and then to find the vitality in the child's dream, and remembering that he in fact wants to live with that dark child and cut his heart on those high seas, accepting the ants and well shod enough to miss the scorpions pinch.
Like · Reply · 12 mins
Gaia So
Gaia So The apple and the gold are the alchemical hints. Also clues for behavior: a stable of gold in my lips, a lament that will cleanse me to earth. Beautiful words marking a path through dark times. Very scorpionic (dark child) underworldly, delivering us up to true heart's desire that otherwise we might be too chickenshit to embark towards. Claiming I AM the intense shadows of my tears. Claiming it.
Like · Reply · 7 mins
Kristin McCloy
Kristin McCloy For me there is no claiming. I just am the tears and the shadows and what I'm clawing for is escape from that -- I have my own alchemy, my own sorcery (every person, and I'm sorry but particularly women, IN GENERAL) -- there is a passionfruit vine (complete w/ dangling fruit) snaking not only through my skylight but right at my bed -- it looks like a praying mantis doing aikido, but very very viny (veiny??) Of course soon it will have to circle around, back to the light, away from me. But. Not yet.
Like · Reply · 1 · 2 mins
Gaia So
Gaia So Kristin McCloy Uh, I think you just claimed something.... (squishy hugs and soft chuckles)
Like · Reply · Just now
Kristin McCloy
Kristin McCloy Other magic in my room is a clock with Guadalupe face that runs on batteries (my friend Josie, a total wench) gave me (batts were dead, after 45 minutes of taking time) but I still love the big cheap Mexican clock (blue and pink and sky ad gold) setting next to my bright green stuffed darling abandoned monkey (George) so I kept it and it now ticks, absolutely illogically, unreasonably, IRRATIONALLY, even, at the oddest times. Sometimes goes backwards. Is time being erased by ancient goddesses? All I know is that when I wake up at pitch o'clock, I hear the tick of it and I tell myself, She is with me. I am not alone. (And in fact, there Zelly was; my ultimate familiar, who has not slept with me since the zoo here started using my bed as their real estate too...)
Like · Reply · 1 · Just now
Kristin McCloy
Kristin McCloy So of course yes we speak the same language. Sometimes I might need you to break it down for me...just some times.
Like · Reply · Just now
Kristin McCloy
Kristin McCloy Be so so so good to see you. Round here. And not just for us, I think -- for thee, too/ soul sistah
Like · Reply · Just now
Kristin McCloy

Write a reply...


Kristin McCloy

Write a comment...

woke up with this in my head, composed:

The New Year comes in on its knees, and empty-handed; the dregs of midnight,  a moonless cloudy night; no stars either.  Every kiss feels hollow.

How could anyone possibly believe in January 1, especially if living in those places locked in tight with cold and fog and snow.  That December 31st party:  it's like something invented by a parent to console a post-Christmas-partum child ('and we'll have a BIG PARTY, with hats and bells and funny noises and kisses!  We'll drink fizzy stuff and it will be festive!)

The child, of course, being ourselves, the party just a promise,  something to look forward to, that keeps us moving along the relentless conveyor belt of life.


Gotta wonder what the hell I was dreaming about, to wake up to something so bleak!

Middle Eastern Rant, excised from current novel

   

      If only, Zoe thought, if only there was some brand-new ... thing that might start a mad trend for peace all over the Middle East -- something underwritten, anarchic, erupting from, say, the women; the mothers, the wives, the daughters, the sisters, who could not help but weep in sympathy and fear when another mother's young son strapped on the bomb-pack and set bravely forth, believing in Allah more than in that first, sweet, sweet kiss – God they got younger and younger, didn't they?  From their youngest twenties down -- once to a nine-year-old boy entrusted (entrusted!) with that enormous backpack.

     (Just get on the bus, Hakim, and pull the string.  Make sure the driver is driving, and don't make anybody look at you, no matter what...)

      And all the while the news got worse and worse.  She'd once met and couldn't stand a troop of Israeli soldiers with puffed-up chests talking about how they'd bombed a village near the ever-talling Wall ('women and children?  They looked at each other, a gleam in their eye, their faces absolutely solemn.  'Almost certainly not.'  The wink inherent; grotesque).

     She'd also met others, much too young to be haunted but haunted they were, their eyes hollow and flat, their voices raspy, saying they could not stand this man's army.  They wanted either to bury their guns or shoot their heads off.  

     They sat in cafes and drank from flasks all night long, speaking ever-more broken English but with such liquid eyes it was all understood, the mayhem and the cruelty, the orders of shoot-to-kill, even children, small boys of six, and girls, younger, imitating their brothers, shouting in their fragile little girl voices, a chant made up on the spot:  hey, hey, go away, don't come back another day!

     These were the young men who stumbled home crying, weeping, for the things they had seen; and the things they had done.  To children!  Just children, throwing stones.

     But it seemed everybody knew the secret that was no secret:  nobody wanted peace.   Everybody wanted just to win, when winning was in fact losing.  When winning would destroy half, if not all, of the land, and the crops would wither and die, the Dead Sea swell with the deader, until you could not wade into it without immediately being swung into the dead-man float.  Drifting on the surface, held high, high up from everything below – how much blood, how many bodies.  The sea was slick with it, the salt a salve that tore at your wounds, the sun a blister you got for being beneath it.

     Everything, this is how it seemed to Zoe some smoky, grey mornings, was going to get so much horribly worse before it got better.  And it seemed as if no single individual had more than zero to the nth power to change it/anything – because who was actually in charge?  The politicians, who had so-called been 'elected' by the people?  All the subversives working beneath, or the angels above (or maybe it was just the Kardashians, ruling the world?  Because what really matters?  Well, duh, if her ass is real or not!)

     Hey look to America for the freshest hypocrisy – organic!  Seasonal!  Homegrown!  The land of equality?  Yeah, tell it to the 99 (that includes way too many of my friends, she thought, and soon enough --) percent. Because what did a penny buy you these days?  Just a rubbed-out semi-likeness of Lincoln's profile.  C'est tout.

Scene from own postponed sequel to Some Girls, with Such & Claire

    Thus it was that two hours later, she was rested and fragrant, refusing to fret that Jasper still hadn't called (and if he wasn't going to call, then neither was she; anyway, they'd make up the way they always did:  face to face.)

     Half an hour after that, she was back at the Moroccan place from the night before, beyond relieved when she saw Such already waiting at the bar.
Is this cool or what?  she crowed, and he bowed his head, acquiescing, And you found it first.
  They ordered a frozen margarita (her), a shot of Patron (him), and went to sit at a small table with a bowl of salted pistachios.  She poured the entire story out and he listened, smiling occasionally, lighting her clove, which they shared, saying nothing till she was done.
Knew I liked that guy for a reason, he said, and she looked at him, hurt.
Do you think he was right?
Sure he was, Such said easily.  Obviously Miss Thing was competing with you.  He hit the nail on the head with her envy of your young youf and les tits – but (putting his hands up as Claire began the clamor of denial) – but in fact he knows nothing of your real relationship with her.  And you're right – the woman has a talent for living the charmed life, which God knows, someone should get paid for teaching the rich – and otherwise – to lead it too.  So she hangs out with musicians – so what? Not everyone is cut out to save the planet, no matter how much we should be.
After all, he added, putting his hands down so she could admire their beauty, I'm a musician too, and I like to think I bring a wee bit of joy into otherwise humdrum lives.
She laughed, already feeling much, much better.
Anyway, Such said, He passed the test.
What test?
What do you mean, what test?  The Jade test!  The one you subject every single one of your maybe-interested-in boys, to see if maybe she could interest them more?  Which, and do tell if I'm wrong, is usually the reason you fire them within twenty-four hours of such a meeting?
She stared at him, speechless.
Claire, Such said, now speaking slowly and with more volume, as it to a retarded, slightly deaf child, He met her, he saw the two of you together, and he knew instantly that he'd nabbed the prize.
He leaned back and lit another cigarette, consummately pleased with himself.  And might I say, he added, exuding a long plume of smoke, He got that right.
But...
He raised an eyebrow, as if to say, really?  This topic hasn't been dusted?  Then held up a hand, calling the waiter.
And speaking of how I'm doing, he said, I have, as it happens, a little news of my own.  But first, let's get another drink – (And then it was 'ooh la la, I got dibs on Cleopatra Eyes headin our way!')
They ordered another round, Cleopatra Eyes demurely half-closing ('now that's a man who's perfected the come-hither look,' Such said admiringly).
Served once again, Such laid the devastation down:
I'm moving to L.A.  Temporarily, at least, he said, his voice firm.  
Her jaw hung open for so long he finally said, Stop that!
But – but – but –
You can say ass, sweetheart.  We both know it's my favorite part.
-- But you're such a New Yorker!  She nearly wailed that part; the city and Such were so inextricably linked for her, and with such pure joy, it was worse than hideously awful to imagine them apart.
Yeah, well, the man made me an offer I couldn't refuse, he said, and though he aimed for arch and blew several perfect smoke rings, she could hear the ambivalence lurking beneath, which always italicized her:
What man?  What offer?
You know, some guy.  (This usually meant a piece of trade, rough or otherwise).  He came to the bar and stared at me so fixedly I started flirting with him – played Noel, Gershwin -- Christ, I even played Kurt Weill!  And he started buying me drinks – I'm talking Ketel One at first, but after Claude clued him in, Patron, and he kept 'em coming.
Clearly, this trade fell into the otherwise category.
Turns out –
You went home with him?  It came out accusingly; already she felt betrayed by this fan, his musical taste, his expensive tequila, the artful seduction he had obviously completed.
Well, if you consider the Four Seasons home – and I do – then yes, I guess I did.
She just stared at him, watching as he took his time stubbing a half-smoked cigarette out, then lifted his glass and said, It turns out he's a movie producer.
A 'ducer!  Claire said, allowing herself to hate this stranger even more.  Of what?  Porn?
Such looked at her, and for the briefest half-second she saw the glimmer of hurt in his eyes and cringed at herself, clasping her hands together and looking away.
I meant, she said.
  -- As it turns out, of some indie movie with a few raggedy wannabes – I think he mentioned Robert Downey, the Junior, and that li'l redhead, Julianne Moore, with ongoing negotiations for John Cusack and Maya Rudolph –
Are you kidding?  she nearly shrieked.  God, I love those guys!
And who but the Scarecrow and the Lion does not?  Such said dismissively, adding, Which said movie he wants accompanied by a single piano – he said he needed raw (here he rolled his eyes), and God knows I can do that; and he said he needed spontaneous, and God knows (she got a meaningful glance); and he said he needed 'haunted' – please, I told him, stop already!  You just described my last personal ad!
At which point, Claire guessed, He ordered Champagne.
He gave her an admiring glance.  Yes, he did, in fact.  Yes, he did.
And that's all it took?  She was embarrassed by the way her voice squeaked at the end, the worst part of adolescent boy.
Claire, please.  Such swallowed the last of his shot and signaled the bartender for another round.         She began to protest but he said, Trust me, this is gonna hurt you way more than it does me.
He offered to pay me, he went on, then wrote a number down on a bev nap and slid it her way.           Her eyes popped.
Seriously?  Holy shit!
Honey, isn't that the only reason people move to the Coast?  For the stupid money?
I thought it was to get famous.
I'll skip the fame, thank you, just bring that fortune on.
The drinks arrived and she held her glass up, determined to be happy for him.
Well, here's to you, then, she said.  
You mean here's to me getting out of the studio apartment with shower so charmingly affixed in the middle of the room and surviving on tips from drunks and tourists – aside of course from that dreary quartet with me and three lesbian strings, and, oh, living on a diet of mostly pizza?  Hell, yes, I'll drink to that.
...Even though it's New York City pizza?  Which absolutely does not exist anywhere else, no matter how many times they say it does!
Such leaned back, closed his eyes, and only then did it occur to her that that maybe this was, in fact, really hard for him, too.
God, I'm gonna miss it, he said.
She took another big swallow, pretended it was the alcohol that brought tears to her eyes, and smiled.
You won't stay, though, she said.  Right?
God forbid.  I think my driver's license lapsed a decade – and a half? -- ago.  You know, right after I moved here.  (This though he'd moved 'here' from his parents' house in Queens, a joke he'd capitalized on for years).
Are they going to rent a car with a driver for you then?  Put you up at the Chateau Marmont?
Those are my conditions, Such said, But it appears this guy has a an extra little roadster or two in his extended garage, and a two-bedroom apartment with sundeck dying for a tenant.  It's in WestHo – let's face it, ya gotta love the sound of that nabe – and costs entirely one full quarter less than my studio here.
So, what, you're moving out next week?
Such set his drink down carefully, avoiding her eyes.  More like three, he said.  I already gave my month's notice -- and I'ma skip out before all those maudlin goodbyes.
She sat back, as stunned as if he'd hit her.  This time, the tears brimmed over, and she had to pull a Jade and shade her face with her hand.
Come on, Claire.  Be happy for me.
I am happy for you, she choked out.  It's me I'm not happy for – you're gonna leave, like, tomorrow, and I bet you never come back!
Such encircled her wrist with one his elegant hands.
Sweetheart, I need the health insurance.  And it wouldn't kill me to see a boatload of sunny days all in a row.  Plus you can come stay with me, any time, as long as you like – you know, until your two weeks are up.  You'll have your own vacation getaway... won't you please try to think of it that way?
His voice so uncharacteristically gentle, all she could do was nod, even as the tears threatened to swell into outright sobs.
You're my best friend, she said.  You're my best friend!
Such grabbed a wad of napkins and pushed them into her hands.  You're ruining your makeup, he said briskly – he abhorred sentimentality, but she knew he was faking it this time.
And we both know damn well Miss Thing is your best friend, he added, watching approvingly as she mopped her face, wiping big black wings from under her eyes.  When she looked up, a couple of people glanced away but nobody seemed especially interested in their brief drama; it was New York, after all.  Who hadn't cried in public?  Especially as that particular public was what they'd come here for.
She's not – not exactly, she said, unable to finish the sentence.  Jade always had escaped definition, and Such laughed, slapping his face first on one side, then the other, saying, Friend (slap), lover (slap), friend –
  Oh cut it out, Claire said, failing to suppress a smile.  She's just Jade.
How adorable.  Now if we could just make a musical about her:  'Just Jade,' he squared his hands and put them up high, Can't you see it now, all lit up on Broadway?
There was a pause, and then they both burst out laughing, because the fact was they could see it, even as some vacuous runaway success ('but only if Just Jade starred in it,' Such added, 'wearing those miniscule leather scraps from Zeitgeist!')
Even in moments of true sorrow, they always cracked each other up.
      Oh, shit, Claire thought, shit shit shit shit shit!
Maybe I'll pitch it to Michel, Such said then.
Wait, the guy you're gonna work for is French?
So he says, you know, 'originally.'  But I'm pretty sure he's a Mike from waaay back.
What does he think you are from way back?
A complete and utter pervert, Such answered with a grin, And an absolutely divine piano player.
 

Marce, Portrait of a Dog

     Such a big dog, even as a puppy.  I teased Mai that he was part gorilla, with that big black nose, part bear, with those big goofy paws, and of course part crocodile

     (here comes the rain again/)

     with those big, gorgeous blindingly white teeth, and later, part billy goat with his little white beard –

     Remember his shagginess when his beautifully silky curls got overgrown, till they flopped over those intelligent deep brown eyes always watching everything, not missing a trick (especially when it came to fishing your favorite sunglasses out of your purse, left stupidly within reach of the notorious counter thief, simply because he was bored and you were 'ignoring' him.)

     Self-soothe, Marce, I used to tell him, while he stared at me as though to answer, Get a life, Kristin. 

     In some ways he was so unlike other dogs:  he used to balk so much at going for walks.  Everything freaked him out, was too big, too loud – the skateboarder, the garbage truck, the squealy brakes on some old car, a cat across the street, some jogger going by – in some ways, regardless his size, he was just better inside, with his family, standing guard at the window when it was time for Aaron to come home, running to Mai when Andre cried.

 

     He was a big guy but you could never catch him.  You could try (his favorite game; your least, not least because he always, but ALWAYS, won), you did try, sometimes until you were breathless, but no.  You never caught him.

     Not gonna happen.

     Remember taking him out back, throwing a tennis ball while he stared at you like, what?  Then, gamely, he'd run and get it, but if you threw it again you'd really get The Look, the 'WTF you throw that out there again?  I just got it back for you!'

     It wasn't that he didn't like to run – he LOVED to run, and he was incredibly good at it – watching him and Ali play was a thing of rudeness and joy, their combined young health, the way they scared each other on purpose, the sudden standing-on-their–back-legs dance...no, it was that he just didn't understand your motive.

     ('Seriously now:  Why are you throwing that ball away all the time if all you want is to have it back?  Why?')

     Remember one rainy day when he absolutely would not budge to go outside (looking at you like, I don't have fur, where's MY jacket?)

     -- having seen the rubber ducky jacket he was gonna wear in Seattle, he was so close to being there –

     [ASIDE:  FUCK. LIFE!]

     Anyway, I was saying about how one rainy day, stuck inside (I used to get paid to hang with him when he was still a puppy – a big puppy, always, at five months nearly full grown, tall as your hip), I tried to teach him how to dance.  I'd fool around with the I-pad radio they left for on him (either Portuguese jazz – he was a Portuguese water dog after all – or sometimes reggae, very low) when they were both at work (this being B.A.; Before Andre) – so I fooled around with the stations and tried different things:

     Motown just made him crazy.  When I danced around him he would bark at me and jump around and ultimately work himself up into a state I could not handle, so we didn't hit our brief groove until I put on the old standards.  The music my mother loves, Ella and Etta (both of them), the Shirleys (Bassey and Horne), and of course Frank Sinatra -- 

     I invited Marce to dance by bowing, then coaxing him to put his big shaggy popcorn-scented paws on my shoulders, which perplexed him, at first in a good way, but after a little bit, he got tired.  Bbut then, he was always easily frustrated.  If he didn't get it, fuck it.  He'd either bark at you (he had two basic tones, asking you either to 'explain it! or to just 'quit it!') 

     Either that or he'd just lope off to eat your shoe, but only when you thought it was safe to take your eyes off him.

     He was a big black incredibly smart bad boy, my favorite, and I used to call my mom and tell her about him, because she loved 'a good scoundrel,' and Marce was certainly that.

     He was that, and ridiculously sensitive, too, coming to sit next to me one day when I was crying (it was four times a week, sometimes I cried!), putting his big head on my lap, whining a little bit ('please stop!  Here I am, see?  I love you!')

     Which he did.  Which he showed every single time I saw him, flipping out when he saw it was me, jumping like a maniac though he was so much better behaved at two plus years –

     What can I say, I loved it.  I always felt like we'd been lovers in some past life, not least for the way this dog kissed.

     (I know it sounds like this little essay has taken the turn for the weyrd, but I'm not kidding, this dog could have taught lessons).

     So gentle, a sideways kiss, a swipe of your neck, a nibble on your lips, a brief shy glance aside, another little swipe of his tongue on the corner of your mouth.

     I used to kiss him shamelessly, even in front of Mai, and she would just grin.  She knew. 

     We used to rhapsodize about him, the two of us, telling every little detail of his day, rub his belly and croon his name (I don't believe I need to tell you how much he loved this) –

     He was every ordinary dog – fiercely loyal, unendingly loving, deeply protective – and he was Marce, an absolutely unique, brilliant, funny, sensitive and unendingly sweet individual.

     He barged a Marce-shaped space into his people's hearts and now it cannot be occupied by anybody else.  He once belonged to us.

     Now, we belong to him.

A Hundred Thousand Worlds, by Bob Proehl

As I may have mentioned before, I have a great friend who slips me advance copies of mostly mid-list literary novels (which might still hit it big!)  Absolutely loved Proehl's first novel -- there were so many times I had to stop and mark the page, so let me get out of the way and show you:

'The universe is like a garden full of forking paths.  Every time you or I or any of us make a decision the path splits again.  When you decided to come to class today instead of staying in bed with your boyfriend, you created two possible timelines.  One in which you came to class, the timeline we're in, and one in which you didn't.  These splits happen a billion trillion times a day; each split creates a different timeline, a different universe.  If you look backwards, you'll see one path behind you.  The path you've been walking the whole time.  Your universe.  But if you could hover up above the garden, you'd see billions and billions of paths running parallel to one another.  The question is, what keeps them parallel to one another, what keeps them from intersecting?'

I'm pretty sure they do intersect -- mostly in your dream/life.  A couple of weeks ago I dreamt I was with someone I loved, adored -- his face was completely specific and we were SO HAPPY to see each other (and it is no one I know in life, nor any composite) and I felt myself being pulled away and woke up crying.  Not something that happens to me very often, at all.

I also sometimes feel shadow lives, who I might be if I'd gone that way instead of this...think we'd have to tesseract to the 5th, or maybe 6th dimension to get a glimpse of the multi-verse!

Regarding one of the few women at a comic convention who writes for a particular book, she muses on how sexed out all the women in comix are -- at the beginning she tried to match the look (failed), and 'Now she sports the same worn jeans and hoodie she wears while writing.  Her outfit tomorrow is a variation on the same.  The winning move is not to play.'

Definitely one strategy...

Re having to share custody, Valerie thinks:  'Maybe if he were an ugly child, she wouldn't be in danger of losing him.  It's not a charitable thought, but charity is for people with things to give away.'

What Alex, her precocious 9-yr-old thinks when they're halfway across the country: 'He can feel, through his forehead, through her shoulder, that she's in California already, that maybe she's been in California since before they left New York.  She's in a place they're not together anymore.  He doesn't know how to bring her back here...all he can do is ask her to meet him somewhere else.  "Tell me a story?" he asks quietly.'

Break my heart!

'Val can remember when her life was like this, the few years in LA when she floated in a moneyless world.  All cash transactions were handled elsewhere; cars and drinks and food appeared and were consumed and everyone was properly compensated as if by magic.  It always struck her as funny how having money made money obsolete.'

I remember those days...

Love his dialogue, too -- here are people playing characters from Angels in America (though the name of the play doesn't come up, which is cool, too):
'You have to come to the club with me,' Louis is saying to the Angel.  'Like that.  I don't know why I haven't thought of it before.  People will lose their shit.'
'I'm afraid "people,"' says the Angel, 'will have to hold on to their shit for one more night.'

Everybody is well drawn, deeply drawn, every character has her/his own voice, the dialogue is natural and often funny, the women as clear as the men -- a rarity, esp all of it together.

Alex, working on his own story:
'"You're a writer?" he asks.  She nods like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't have.  "Me, too," he says.
"It's no way to make a living," Gail says, which is something his mom says about acting sometimes.  He wonders if that's something you say about things that are important to you.  His fingers tap his own notebook as he decides where to start today.  He didn't realize this about telling a story, that you needed to figure out where to start again and again and again.'

God, don't I know it.  But it's gotta be the difference between writing formula, and writing fresh.  It's more -- how do say in California?  -- organic.  And still, I bet writing formula is just (or kind of) as hard as writing anything.  Writing is hard!  (wah wah wah)
But hey!  At least it doesn't pay!
(Certainly not when you're working-in-progress...the days of the advance are long gone).

'"Everything changes, all the time [says Brett, who draws pix for kid's book, briefly].  Even if you tried not to change, things would change around you till you'd have to.  It's like you're a story, not a picture."'

C'est si vrai!  It's also how living in New York made me feel...

'Alex is so tired.  So tired he could stay awake all night.  So tired he should never, ever go to bed again.  He knows this place.  It is where being sleepy and being wakeful, as in literally full of awake, blur into each other, his body's and his brain's signals getting so crossed that they're entangled and inseparable.'
The not-enough napagens problem.  I LIVE in that place (until I got the meds -- took 3 of them -- to pull me down under).

'She's sweating like Nixon.'
I am stealing that, and if you notice, g'head & call me out -- fair enough!

Saying no to her ex, 'she can feel some power move from him into her, a strength created by negation, the energy released when an idea, unwanted, dies.'

Okay so that's almost the end of the book.
Imagine everything I left out -- or better yet, don't.  Just read it.

RE:  Christodoro, by Tim Murphy

Jared, re breakup: ' he's drinking every night w his buddies,.  Bombed, he would wordlessly approach them and give them long, rocking hugs   How ya doin, they'd ask, and he'd shrug slowly, searching for words:

'I'd say I just went from the period of unbearable, scalding misery to the period of abiding but somehow just barely tolerable misery, he'd finally say.  Like, from waking up in the morning and thinking, first thing, I'm alone, I wanna die, to thinking, I'm alone, I wanna die, yeah, so fucking get some coffee and the paper and get on with your day and deal with it.'
AUGH!

'Like all New Yorkers who move to LA, even those like her who'd lived in New York but briefly, she clung to her New York identity…'

'…she held on to that New York period of her life, when she was a messy, lost party girl booty-grinding to Mary J. Blige on a coffee table at somebody's after-hours party.'
(that was Part II, the late 90s NYC, post-deevorce pour moi; (a little bit, as Carmen would say.  I love you so much, honey.  I just love you a little bit, okay?)

[ASIDE: Notes for book:
You'll See What I See
Take a Look at My Life; other lyrics, songs from that album.}

Back to el libro!:

'Protease, fucking protease.  I fucking hate that word.'
(God!  It never occurred to me!  What a weird big-pharm mindfuck!)

'And then, oh God, Carrie!  He'd sought her out…lured her…he was so hungry to use…'put your self-hatred about Carrie on the shelf,' his sponsor says. … That's about the only thought that keeps Mateo from blowing his brains out over the thought of Carrie, because basically he feels like he killed her.'

I can imagine that so well.
[ELEPHANT ENTERS ROOM.  HEAD.  HEART.]
It's a heart-stopping, mind-killing STOMP.

A guy at an AA mtg, 'Welcome to my world, little man.  The Try-Not-To-Hate-Yourself-Too-Much-Today Club!  We're all VIP members here!'
(Now that's the line that would lure me in…)

'There will never be a drug that hits him as hard and as fast as New York City, the first sight of which, swallowed whole from above, seizes him with dizzying waves of exhilaration, nostalgia … And unlike a drug, it's real, it's all real.  Everything that happened down there is real, real, real.'

'The cab went straight through the East Village tonight.  I got a hot flash when we  crossed Ninth street.'
Me, too, M-Dreem – especially when I checked out the list of tenants on 317 East 9th, and there was my name, on #7  (you can see Veselka's from there, gone from humble 24-hour café, to posh diner that serves $18 bowls of borscht!)

Damn!  I hoped I'd still been living there, and there I was!

March 12, 2016

The Police

So lonely/
so lonely/
so lonely/
I feel so lonely

I feel so lonely lonely lonely lo --
I feel so lonely LONELY LONELY LO

I FEEL LONELY
SO LONELY!!