Resolutions

I talked in group about them tonight. I shuffled around online and found these. They're as good as any I've seen.

But really, most resolutions are bullshit. Not all. Just most. 

Beginning of an essay

The freeways of Southern California, so entangled in the landscape as to almost reach a quality of myth. People place their lives in these concrete-and-metal hands on daily commutes, jaunts, trips to the beach where they lie in the sand and bitch about nothing.

 

I had my favorites: 15 South, 163 South, 52 West to Ardath Road where the path carried drivers toward La Jolla and Prospect Place. And Prospect Place – well, hell. I don’t need to explain that to you.

 

 

By myself

Adam and Baz are headed to LA. The dogs and I are staying behind. They just left. I feel lonely. That's not going to last. I've wanted this time to myself. Now I have it. 

Revising

It really is revisioning. I finished my work on CONFLAGRATION weeks ago and haven't been able to edit the damn thing because I've been going about it in ways that weren't suiting what I want to do with the project. 

Right now I'm just sitting and thinking about it. I think -- I hope -- that will lead the right way.

Today's editing

Danny

Mom died of COVID.

 

Two months now. A vent. Enough wires to scare a small child. Nurse called me: It’s her time. Cried into our cell-phone cameras. FaceTimed her a goodbye. Couldn’t go into Alta Bates. Too risky.

 

Two months on. Standing in line at Café Aquatica. Sits amidst what passes for central Jenner. Seventy-seven-point-one miles north of where she died. Less than two tranquil hours along the winding lane she’ll never again see.

 

Grief is neither linear nor logical. Like most things, it makes no goddamned sense.

 

Need to remember this

 

Having ADHD is trying desperately to make sure nobody misunderstands what you’re trying to say

and yet being misunderstood your whole life because no one has taken the time to try to understand where you’re coming from

— Dani Donovan 👩🏻‍🎨 ADHD Comics (@danidonovan) December 11, 2021

Don McLean, "Empty Chairs"

 I feel a trembling tingle of a sleepless night

Creep through my fingers and the moon is bright
Beams of blue come flickering through my windowpane
Like Gypsy moths that dance around a candle flame

And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you'd go
Until you did
I never thought you would

Moonlight used to bathe the contours of your face
While chestnut hair fell all around the pillowcase
And the fragrance of your flowers rest beneath my head
A sympathy bouquet left with a love that's dead

And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you'd go
Until you did
I never thought you would

Never thought the words you said were true
Never thought you said just what you meant
Never knew how much I needed you
Never thought you'd leave, until you went

Morning comes and morning goes with no regret
The evening brings the memories I can't forget
Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs
And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs

And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you'd go
Until you did
I never thought you would

Official announcement

 

Seasonal depression

I've been struggling. Nothing feels right. Nothing feels like it fits. I'm restless and exhausted at the same time. Jesus Christ, are the holidays done?

Yee hah!

Just wrote THE END on my latest!

Today's writing

 

From above you see nothing and everything. I once read that about the Zizkov Television Tower in Prague – it’s an ugly-ass building for sure and also, at 700 feet high, the Czech Republic’s tallest building. All that work to create a view and what happens? It half-fails.

 

But the successful half is glorious. I’ve never been to Prague, so I can’t say, but I am an expert on this part of the world, the glory of the Northern California coast. The sweep of the ocean. The swath of the trees. The trails of me and what I’ve created, what I continue to create.

 

It’s that overhead shot, you know, the long view.

 

I’m the wildfire, but call me Freddy. It’s friendlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WILDFIRE (FREDDY) IS A MIX BETWEEN END OF BIG LEBOWSKI AND BIRD FROM TELEGRAPH AVENUE. LOTS OF PHILOSOPHY ABOUT THE THREE THREADS: COVID, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND HUMAN CONNECTION. ABSOLUTELY NO EASY ANSWERS.

Today's writing

My departure could have been the dictionary definition for awkward. After Kelly cut me down, I just sat there for a minute, absorbing the shards. I could still taste her in my mouth, smell her on my skin, and yet she was already busy pushing me away. There are words for that, but the first one that comes to my mind is bitch.

 

What in the hell drew me so strongly to them?

 

Thing is, I don’t have to ask the question. I just know. I can’t answer in words; it was more like the feeling that I got when I was around them. Like I’d known them from somewhere else, or if I hadn’t, that I somehow wanted to know them. The draw was different with each of them. With Danny it was more sexual, more located between the legs. With Kelly it was something different, more complex, something straddling the line between love and loathing. I wanted both to get to know her and to spit in her face, and that had nothing to do with any sort of jealousy surrounding Danny. It was that low-level tension that two people – usually two women – get between each other. You can’t run from it, even if you can’t always resolve it.

 

Done!

Woodhall Press now has my manuscript!

Well

At least in my own story I won. 

Getting close

Page 252 of 328. I can do this. Even if it means a few nightmares along the way. 

And another difficult part

Man. Editing this part of the manuscript is gonna suck.

I knew I'd get to this part

Of course I did. I'm editing the entire damn manuscript. This is part of it.

           Brent has a 1960s-era American car, a classic model that I’ll wager is a Corvair. It has wings and chrome and inside is a giant fucking mess. As we slide inside – him opening the door for me first, then slamming it shut and trotting over to the driver’s-side door – I picture the place where he lives. It’s a loft, I’ll bet, one of those empty industrial spaces. Take the H-bomb and drop it, just chuck it down repeatedly. It can only help matters.

Played a long time ago at a circus in Spain

Because I fucking deserve it

I booked a hot tub at Piedmont Springs for Wednesday. It was just profiled in the Chron as "just the cost of a few San Francisco cocktails" or some such nonsense, so I figured I'd better get there before the bridge-and-tunnel crew started showing up. 

Editing my manuscript

In a way, this feels like the most legitimate work I've ever done. An excerpt:

            Dinner is beef and broccoli with a side of television. We serve ourselves and my mother serves my father, who sits in the small dining nook wearing only his underwear. Middle and I are in charge of getting him drinks. He communicates through grunts and hand signals, pounding his chest like an ape for emphasis. Even Jonathan looks disgusted in his high chair.

          We take our places at the scarred bleached-wood table. I want to roll around in the wheeled dining-room chair until I vomit, but instead I load up my fork and put it to my lips. Small bites, I’d counseled myself in my journal. Chew well. Trick your stomach into thinking it’s not hungry.

          “I took her to Frye’s office today,” my mother says.

          Rooster makes a humph noise.

          “He said she was –”

          “Do you mind?” He doesn’t take his eyes from the screen. “Family Ties is on.”

Forthcoming from Woodhall Press: BEARDED LADY!

 

Today's writing

Oh shit. I really need to get out of here. Being in the middle has never been my bag, though sexually it was slightly hot, I can’t lie. There really was something about him having me from behind while I was going down on her. I’d seen it in movies, but never quite experienced it as I did with them here on this needs-to-be-replaced floor.

 

Baby, it’s a wild world. Cat Stevens only knew the half of it.

 

Still, I feel like I need to fly. This whole experience felt jagged, partway, unfinished, and I’m not looking to put it to rest. I have this weird need to find Andy, to sit him down and explain who and what and why and how I’m feeling about it, to have him hold me, to rub my feet, to help me make sense of it all. It may not occur to me until later, if at all, how selfish that impulse is, how Andy may be angry at me for stepping out on him or worse, that he might have concerns of his own and that they might not have anything to do with me. Sometimes it’s the absolute worst when something isn’t about you at all, like you’re pressing your nose against the cold glass of the situation, trying to make sense of it and utterly failing in the endeavor, alone in the task, shivering and regretful. When you realize life isn’t all about you, far from it. When you understand that you’re not in the middle after all, that you are not the nexus, that intersection of everything. When you understand that you are lingering and lonely, just like everyone else.

 

Two years ago

 

17 years

First real date at La Mediterranee on College. Wearing a short skirt. Nervous. Excited as fuck.

Today's writing

When I was six, I fell into the community pool. It wasn’t anything overly dramatic; it was simply the fact that one minute I was upright and dry and the next I was waterlogged and flailing. It took maybe a minute if not seconds, but in that time I could feel the importance of my life press upon my shoulders, like I had important things waiting in my future. What I didn’t realize was that I was so close to drowning I could taste, touch, smell, see it. Feel it. Understand it, in that way of a child. By the time I broke through that glassy surface something inside me had changed, an incontrovertible switch I would only truly understand right fucking now.

 

I should have known it was going to be weird. I mean, how could it not be? It’s a constant series of calculations, of checking in, making sure everyone’s feeling included because it would be impolite to leave someone out of the equation. It feels like walking down the street with your head continually turned, just in case.

 

Still, I manage to come several times. I mean, that’s just good manners.

 

“Jesus,” Danny says, trying a little too hard, “why haven’t we done this before?”

 

He’s trying to put one arm around each of us and neither of us is having it. It’s like she and I are in sync, and he’s just fallen behind a little bit. My poor little drummer boy. I couldn’t even tell you why I don’t want him to touch me.

 

Then again, maybe I can.

 

It’s not because of anything that took place in this weird triad we called sex, not because he cheated on me with Tabitha before we threw ourselves into this nonsensical void. It’s something that started before her, before this place, maybe even before his mother passed away.

 

It’s something called misguided love. And as I lie here with my ass pushed against the scratchy carpet of Guest House, I realize that we suffer from it. Now, realizing something means close to nothing if you don’t know what to do, but it’s at least a start. If you can name it, you can do something about it.

 

Right?

God, I love dogs

 

Trying to move

Have I mentioned that I hate where I live? It's pretty hardcore. Adam wants us to cull our belongings and start packing before we find a place, so that's where I'm at at the moment in my copious free time. Joy!

Cat Stevens, "Moonshadow"

Yes, I'm being followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leaping and hopping on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow

And if I ever lose my hands
Lose my plow, lose my land
Oh, if I ever lose my hands
Oh, if, I won't have to work no more

And if I ever lose my eyes
If my colours all run dry
Yes, if I ever lose my eyes
Oh, if, I won't have to cry no more

Yes, I'm being followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leaping and hopping on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow

And if I ever lose my legs
I won't moan, and I won't beg
Oh, if I ever lose my legs
Oh, if, I won't have to walk no more

And if I ever lose my mouth
All my teeth, north and south
Yes, if I ever lose my mouth
Oh, if, I won't have to talk

Did it take long to find me?
I ask the faithful light
Oh, did it take long to find me?
And, are you gonna stay the night?

I'm being followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leaping and hopping on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow

Moonshadow, moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow

Today's writing

I feel Danny’s hard-on in the corner, practically poking a hole in his Levi’s. I smell his insecurity, his uncertainty. I hear the jackhammer of his heart.

 

In contrast, Kelly is chill. She’s just looking at me like – whenever you want to start. I like that. Less pressure. “You know,” I say, “I’ve cleaned here, delivered food here, but never actually hung out. This place is nice.”

 

“Yeah,” she says, and we sit there like morons until I kiss her again. This time it’s different. Hotter, harder, longer. I feel the uptick, the sweat bead my brow, and I know she does too.

 

“I haven’t done this here either,” I say, and brush her hair with the back of my hand. Then I turn to Danny and smile. It’s like hot glue stretching across my face. I feel like there’s something I’m trying to prove to him, to her, to both of them, maybe to myself. Some point I’m trying to get across, some message to be communicated through lips and fingertips.

New House Day School, 2019

Pancakes and Pajamas Week.

Croce Plays Croce

Worth the drive down to Saratoga in the teeth of rush hour. Worth the ticket fee. Worth it. So worth it.

My puppies

They're getting older. It's like someone flipped a switch and my 11 1/2-year-old whirling dervishes somehow aged. My heart hurts today. I feel it, and I feel it keenly.

Brought to you by afternoon chill

 

En route home

Worried about Jack, who is showing signs of canine vestibular disease (if that's what it is, it's less worrisome than it looks, but still). A piece of plastic came loose on our car, scraping the road as we drove. The wind kicked up, pushing us around. Fuck, I thought. Fuck.

Tonight

ADAM: I thought you were still talking about dicks.

ME: I'm talking about tongues. Keep up.

Railroad Park Resort

 

A poem

Cardboard
 
Begin the exploration,
the excavation,
whatever you choose
to call it,
first groaning about the task.
 
So hard to leave your chair,
that bastion of tattered comfort.
So hard to set yourself in motion.
 
When it starts,
juggle a series of bags –
keep, donate, recycle –
the common wisdom
Marie Kondo
and your mother
might impart.
 
Plunge wrist-deep
into the task,
finding along the way
that you’re a minor-league failure.
 
Mail you never bothered to open.
shopping lists for dinners never made.
Get to the aborted love letter from 1996
abandon ship
seek port.

Today's writing

She seems really into it. That slight stiffness – she gets that when she’s down for it. Always has. Throws her head back just slightly so that I can kiss her. It’s not long before my tongue is in her mouth and my hands are on her tits.

 

Then she pushes me away.

 

What the hell? Am I supposed to pull out my goddamned pom-poms and watch them go at it? You could seriously create a new Pantone color out of my blue balls. I stand like an asshole, hovering over them. Jesus, this is history’s worst threesome and it hasn’t even really kicked off yet.

 

Five years ago

 

God, this was awful.

Just sheerly awful. Who the fuck wants to read about the trials and tribulations of two writers backstabbing each other? These two, at least. Yuck.

Today's writing

Danny’s somehow migrated to the corner. He’s crouching down, just watching. I can’t really get a good read on his face – that might be considered kind of rude when I’m supposed to be getting it on with this girl – but I can imagine it: the slight furrow above his brow when he’s concentrating, the purse of his lips, eyes wide with surprise. What’s going on for him right now, watching me make out with another person, a girl no less? I mean, maybe it doesn’t make a difference whether she’s a girl or a guy, but something tells me it does. There’s a reason that guys watch porn with two females and one male, right? Do they watch it with two guys and one girl as often? I guess there are no real statistics on that, are there?

 

Back to Tabitha. Back to getting it on. Back to paying attention to what I’m doing because I’ve never done this before. Never kissed another woman. Certainly never lay prone with one, hand dangerously close to her hip. Never felt that slippery mix of connection and confusion leading me into something small and narrow, a claustrophobic center that cannot hold.

 

Something surges inside of me and I kiss her hard. Under my mouth I can feel her thin lips, that quirk of surprise. They’re sturdy and stiff and in a way I feel that they’re fighting against me. That turns me on. I slide my hands down her arms to her wrists, hold them against the floor. She makes some sort of muffled noise. I take that for a good sign.

 

Then she somehow gets out from under me and maneuvers herself atop my body, flips the tables. We’re playing out the power exchange, pressing back against one another, yin-ing and yang-ing. She’s small but fierce and I can feel her intensity as I begin to run my fingers along her body.

 

Just as it’s getting good, Danny joins us.

Today's writing

I lift my pipe to my lips and take a grand old hit. Major, more so than normal. Somehow my head falls into my hand and I rub my forehead until I can almost feel the static electricity start to build. I should leave this place, and for more reasons than simply escaping the fire.

 

St. Orres is cloistered, a beautiful nunnery. People come here to escape, and they’re right for doing it. But what they’re escaping, what they think they’re leaving behind, comes right along with them. It hangs on fibers of their clothes and luggage, clinging onto car trunks and dog collars.

 

They may think they no longer feel it, and perhaps they don’t – they transfer it to us. We, the people who bring them their breakfast baskets, who fluff their pillows and change their sheets. We don’t just take care of them. We bear their burdens until the next batch pulls into the dusty parking lot.

Random note

Negativity is a nasty, nasty disease. Don't fall prey to catching it.

I admit sometimes I can be negative -- ask Adam, he'll tell you. But I am not nasty to others. When I experience that, it can really throw me off. 

I don't even use Twitter that much

 

Dude, I just scored a book deal.

— Allison Landa (@allisonlanda) September 30, 2021

15 years

That's how long it took to get Bearded Lady moving toward print. Along the way I went through three agents, a micro-press, many publisher requests, two editorial board meetings, and a ton of fits and starts.

Then there were all the changes at the personal level.

Moving in together. An engagement, a marriage. Professional rockiness. An unexpected pregnancy. All along the running undercurrent that something was missing. 

Getting a publishing contract isn't a panacea. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel fucking good. 

This was big when Adam and I got together

And so appropriate.

Jams in the morning

Girls call me Jolly Rancher
Cause I stay so hard 
You can suck me for a long time
Oh my God

Remember my name

 

I can catch the moon in my hands 

Don't you know who I am?

 

This is for those who believed in me

I cannot thank you enough. There are so many of you. The notes, the emails, the texts, the kicks in the ass when I was down. They made all the difference. You made all the difference.

Adam never gave up, even when I wanted to. It just takes one he said over and over. He was right.

Well, now.

I received a traditional publishing contract today for my memoir BEARDED LADY.

Oh yes I DID!

Sinead O'Connor, "The Emperor's New Clothes"

I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace

Today's writing

But eventually we all get stung. There’s really no escaping it. My turn came on a sunny winter day where the sky’s promise was dashed by the wind. It was cold. Still, we were eating outside because we did that until we couldn’t do it anymore. We wanted to be outside. We spent enough time indoors. When it came to lunch, we wanted trees and sun, even if the former were dead and the latter a lie.

 

I was sitting on the concrete, a fourth grader with legs crossed – criss-cross applesauce, as they said – when it happened. Katherine was trying to take my Devil Dogs. “Don’t touch the merchandise,” I warned her, waving a hand in her face.

 

Then a sting in the crook of my arm. It felt like someone had opened a tiny hole in my flesh and poured in bleach. I yelped. To this day I’m not sure if I was more disturbed by the pain or the surprise. Probably both. Possibly neither. Sometimes we don’t know why we do what we do until a long way down the road, if we ever find out at all.

 

But I didn’t die. That much is obvious. For years I liked to believe this taught me that very little was so dire as to be the end, other than the end itself. A chunk of concrete to the head. A disease ripping you from the inside out. Pain so profound that it could only by ended by one’s own hand.

Take it with you

The old aphorism -- wherever you go, there you are -- is true. Right here I'm in North Beach chewing my lip over stupid trivial shit that doesn't matter now, let alone in a day or a week or a year. Can't I just escape my own bullshit and enjoy where I am? Why is that so damn hard?

A pretty picture from my walk up there because visuals count.

Ridiculous

I just teared up at an image of a woman breast-feeding. I never even breast-fed. It doesn't matter. It was that little hand wrapped around her finger, same as Baz does even today, hand in hand as we cross the street.

He won't always do that. I have to accept that. The times I push away, the times I wall off. I will never get those moments, those seconds, those fragments back. 

I am so vulnerable, so weak. 

Gerry Rafferty, "Right Down the Line"

 

You know I need your love
You've got that hold over me
Long as I've got your love
You know that I'll never leave
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it's been you woman
Right down the line

I know how much I lean on you
Only you can see
The changes that I've been through
Have left a mark on me
You've been as constant as a Northern Star
The brightest light that shines
It's been you, woman
Right down the line

I just want to say this is my way
Of tellin' you everything
I could never say before

Yeah this is my way of tellin' you
That every day I'm lovin' you so much more
'Cause you believed in me through my darkest night
Put somethin' better inside of me
You brought me into the light
Threw away all those crazy dreams
I put them all behind
And it was you, woman
Right down the line

I just want to say this is my way
Of tellin' you everything
I could never say before

Yeah this is my way of tellin' you
That every day I'm lovin' you so much more
If I should doubt myself
If I'm losing ground
I won't turn to someone else
They'd only let me down
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it's been you, woman
Right down the line

Mom win

I bought my kid light-up shoes last night.

They were $40 and worth every goddamned cent. 

Small snippet of today's writing

Then I’m hit with this brick barrier of anxiety. It walls me off from everyone and everything. It leaves me with a tiny sip of air and I’m gasping to get it into my lungs. But from my vantage point, my fishbowl, I can see. I can see everything:

 

The wood stove, muttering, burning.

 

The stains on the carpet.

 

The trees fading fast into the night.

Still, they don’t notice. I don’t know how they don’t, but they don’t. Okay, I do know. They’re wrapped in some sort of conversation, the kind that you just know leads to more.

 

What the fuck have I set into motion?

 

Their voices come to me as if through glass, muttered and molded. Weirdly, I can smell her. It’s a scent I associate with earth, with good clean dirt. It’s something base and primitive, knowing in its way. It’s a scent that nods at you, crooks a finger, says come here. 

 

In a galaxy far, far away

 

Up too damn early

I fight domesticity, but there are times I love it. Witness this picture from last November -- Adam on a conference call with Baz and Maizie at the ready.

 

These two

 

U2, "Walk On"

And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage that you can bring...
And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind

And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong

Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No, they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been
A place that has to be believed to be seen
You could have flown away
A singing bird in an open cage
Who will only fly, only fly for freedom

Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it, or buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on
walk on

Home, hard to know what it is if you've never had one
Home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the hurt is

And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on

Leave it behind
You've got to leave it behind

All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you steal
All this you feel
All that you reason
All that you care (It's only time)
And I'll never fill up all my mind
All that you sense
All that you speak
All you dress up
And all that you scheme
All you create
All that you wreck
All that you hate

Took him to Old Spaghetti Factory

And mini-golf, and the bookstore, where we got a Daniel Tiger tome and The Little Engine that Could, which he picked out himself.

Remember when

Someone told you parenthood was going to bring up all of your triggers, all of your shit, and they were right, you know that? So right. Because when you were the age your child is right now, your mother was threatening to divorce your father and dump your dog down in the canyon, because no one was going to want her. 

So much of it centered on the dog. Because I loved her. And they knew it.

Irene Cara, "Fame"

Always my jam -- now, then, forever. 

Stephen Dobyns, "How to Like It"

These are the first days of fall. The wind

at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

When you get to feeling helpless

You push against what you can push against. You tackle what you can. You break it down little by little, bird by bird, because if Anne Lamott could do it, so can you.

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

This was the processional at my wedding. I heard it at the Palace Grill in Santa Barbara when I was pregnant and didn't know it. I'm listening to it now with my son leaning against my shoulder.

Special.

Resonance

The Gabby Petito thing gets me because of the narcissism angle and also because of the potential domestic violence involved. I grew up with that shit. I saw it happen right in front of me. My father denies it, but he can go screw. So yeah, this gets to me. 

Twue wuv