Today's writing

They’re seated by the window, that ocean to Leigh’s left. She’s not sure whether or not to let him off the hook. Of course there are things she doesn’t know – witness the cigarettes – but was that a hint to let her know there’s more to come? Or maybe she’s just overthinking it, as she’s prone to do?

He extends his hand. “So?”

“So what?”

“What’s up?”

She shrugs, knowing she’s being difficult, not caring, but caring, but trying not to. What is she, sixteen? Why play these games? If something’s wrong, why not just spit it out so it can get resolved.

“Something I said, right?”

She shrugs again. Something hard and heavy in her chest won’t let her respond in the way she knows she should, the mature and considerate way. She wasn’t always like this, was she? Just since Katie, right? She’s in mourning. Shouldn’t she have the right to be a little crazy, a lot obstinate?

Katie died. She has to keep repeating that to herself to try to get it to make sense, but it doesn’t. Let’s try this, then: Katie was killed. That ugly, truthful single syllable. Her life didn’t slip away like the waves from the sand, nothing prettified like that. There was not a single person she loved, who loved her, there when it happened. Her life was wrested from her, a tsunami that doesn’t even give the courtesy of warning before it comes to call.

We loan our loved ones to the universe, hoping they will be treated kindly. Our trust is sometimes spurned. 

"I had her longer than I've had you"

Adam had his Miata for 12 years. He's only had me (if you want to put it like that, and he likes to do exactly that) for 10 years as a friend, 8 as a partner, 5 as a wife. Yesterday he sold the Miata for $300 to a friend. It's so weird to think that car is no longer his, even though he barely drove it in the end and got way more parking tickets than anything else on the damn thing.

For some reason this makes me think about our relationship. I teared up when the damn car got towed away. We went on our first date in that car, both of us dressed up and strangely nervous. His hair was short then, his plans uncertain. Things have changed over time!

Mrs. Dalloway's pocket poem

The Origin of the World

About suffering they were never wrong. - W.H. Auden

They knew something about pleasure, too,
those painters; they understood
how it may be compounded
of the simplest elements, the merest trace
of water or light.

Courbet's L'Origine du monde, for instance.
The bedclothes are thrust aside
and a woman's sumptuous thighs
sprawl open the canvas toward you
as  you approach.

Courbet studies his nude with the acuity
of a lover. And lets you see
in the crest of reddish fur
at the body's threshold
a hint of wet

like the dab of white in the iris
that lights the eye.

- Chana Bloch

Jack, AKA The Baba

Maizie gets licky wid it

39

Birthdays are so strange, so loaded. It almost feels as though you're required to be happy throughout your special day. And I am happy, but I am also anxious, as I so often am. I know I am lucky for what I have. I know there is also so much that I want. All in all, not the worst place to be.

Happy fifth anniversary!

The fam on the way to the Russian River. Happy anniversary, baby. I love you more every day!

Play fetch with us!

RIP Roger Ebert

Damn you, 2013. You are taking too many amazing people. Today Roger Ebert died at the age of 70. He was a great man and a huge influence on me. When I write, I so often think of a line I once read by him, something to the degree of specifics create the best universalities.

I first became a huge fan while working at the Fairfield Daily Republic, where his reviews would run on the wire. Then I read his Sideways review, where he noted that, at heart, a drunk is always planning his drinking, and I realized (after so many others) that this was more than just a movie reviewer. This was a philosopher, and a brilliant one at that.

Adam and I saw him at the Castro Theater a few years back. He and his wife Chaz seemed like great people. It's a very sad day.