Tuesday, July 31, 2007
All About Marriage
Searching for Bobby Fischer
For years I told people Bobby and I were friends. In 2005 after being indicted by the US for playing chess in Yugoslavia and being arrested in Tokyo Bobby Fischer asked for and received a citizenship offer from Iceland. You know, Bobby, if you're reading this: It never would have worked out. I'm more of a desert girl myself...
Monday, July 30, 2007
Hollywood or Bust
One day out of the blue, Sol said: Mom, take me to Hollywood so I can be in commercials!
I said: I don't have enough gas to take you to Hollywood...
I can just imagine where we'd all be now if I'd earned just a little bit more...
Open Wide...
I was lying in the dentist's chair today stoned out of it on nitrous oxide when it came to me: The story I'm writing isn't visceral enough! I've been tramping from one scene to the next hell bent on coming up with a conclusion...an ungainly march toward the end...
I need to stumble around in the particles a little..
Hmmm, I should get my whole mouth done!
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Reluctant Rider
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Peek Preview
I don't get it...
Friday, July 27, 2007
The Book Thief
A woman came along, picked up "The Book Thief".
woman: have you read this one?
me: yes, I did.
woman: wow...I've never met anyone besides me who's read this book! (woman elated) It was so...
me: strange?
woman: yes! that's it exactly! But the....
me: the death narrator?
woman: yes, the thing about the narrator being Death!
me: personally I found it a little hard to take.
woman: oh, me too.
The woman then put the book down and moved to the next stall. I don't know why I told her I'd read the book when I hadn't. But I did seem to understand it better than she did....
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A walk in the hood
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Distraction
The view from my writing room door....
I'm not a minimalist...(stuff everywhere...) Some mornings I can let anything distract me: Scientific studies and impending doom. The way early morning light creeps into the sculpture garden just outside my door. The painting hanging over my desk with its purple door and barebulb and straightback chair. A pregnant "daddy long-legs" spider traipsing across the wall. But where, oh where is the book I'm writing?
Monday, July 23, 2007
Best Toes
We played darts on a frayed bristle board hung next to the regulations against one wall. Jay and I draped a madras cloth bedspread over our two desks, tent-like. One of our group surfed on his breaks and we won't go into what our clerk was doing tucked away in her little cube. We took Italian lessons and read a chapter of Nancy Drew outloud each day...
And I was voted "Best Toes"....some say I've still got it....
Neighborhood Bar
Now when I walk by I can hear the dull crack of a cue ball and a one note twang from the juke box. Smell the drift of cigarette smoke and hear the muffled clap of two old timers playing "horses"against the countertop. The seedier the bar the better, the more grizzled the men and lacquered the women. Watered down drafts for a quarter and grit on the floor and a Clydesdale horse clopping around and around in a neon Bud sign. And just the faint hint of expectation in the air. It does make me pause and hold in the scene like a lungful of good smoke before I move on...
Sunday, July 22, 2007
more of the woods....
A Week in the Woods
Friday, July 13, 2007
Gone Fishin'
Escape!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Never enough
When my younger son, Sol was 18 he joined the navy. I was pretty freaked out but did my best to be supportive.
"Oh!" I said. "Well! That's great. But are you going on a ship?"
Sol actually traveled the world, just like the billboards promised.
I never stopped worrying about him and kept a world map over my desk at work with stick pins marking his voyage.
One day at work I went to the postoffice to retrieve a package he'd sent me from Mombasa, Africa. I hurried back to my office and while my co-workers watched I ripped it open, tore through the newspaper stuffing, unwrapping carved giraffes, wooden bookends of women with big bosoms, tiny black elephants and this beautifully carved and dyed mask. When I'd finished I sat down and wept.
It wasn't enough. What I wanted wasn't in the box, it wasn't some trinket...I wanted my son back, safe within my reach.