Still thinking...

About love...


I think there is this nutty thing, where 30-ish women suddenly become afraid they'll never get married. I know a lot of women like this. I know more 30-ish women like this than 30-ish women NOT like this.


It makes me groan.


Months back I had a fight with a friend at work. We were both trying to advise a younger woman about how to proceed after a first date. My co-worker suggested all that "Wait two days before calling" bullshit. "Don't tell him you love him until he tells you." "Act nonchalant."


All defenses. All manipulations designed to keep rejection to a minimum. But it's just like gambling in Vegas. If you're hanging at the roulette wheel, and you only play black or red, you'll never win anything worth taking home. The night I got married (literally), I put 30 bucks on number 9 and hubby and I went home winners.


True story.


I think men like women who like themselves. I think men like women with the confidence to say what they think/mean. I think men fall in love with immediacy and urgency. Not all men, but the good ones (for me), anyway.


My advice to the younger co-worker?


"Like, call him right now and say 'Hey we had a lot of fun last night. Want to take the rest of the day off work with me, right this minute, and go bowling or something? Maybe we could grab some tacos too! I just can't wait to see you again!'"


Because what could happen? He could get freaked by the immediacy and honesty... in which case he's a coward or he can't handle a real human being... in which case you're WAY better off knowing now...


I always say I love you. I always give lots of presents. I always lean in for the kiss first. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I just don't see the point in wasting time.


You know that thing (I'm sure it has a name or a philosopher to go with it, but I forget) about believing in God?


If you believe in God, and God exists, you win. If you believe in God and God doesn't exist, no difference. If you don't believe and God doesn't exist, no difference. But if you don't believe and God does exist?


Hoo-EEE, boy!


I feel like that about honesty and immediacy in love.


If you fall for Joe, and prematurely tell him you dig the shit out of him, and he bolts, he's an asshole and it's better not to get too attached anyway.


If you fall for Joe and you tell him, and he digs you too? Fireworks! Trust! Love!


If you fall for Joe and you don't tell him? Either you find yourself 6 months into a relationship, waiting for him to say "I love you" first, resenting him and fearing rejection now that you've invested six months of your life...


Or, he assumes you don't really dig him and goes looking for someone who really does...


Either, way... you don't feel honest and open and trusting.


Either way, you've missed your shot at magic.


Just once in my life I played it "safe." The guy I liked had told me up front that he "Wasn't in a place where he could make promises", because he was planning to move to Texas. I thought I could change his mind. Whenever pushed, he told me he loved me. We had a "great time" drinking and dancing and traveling. I could see no reason why he wouldn't "come around."


It took me years to get over it. Not to get over him, but to get over ME. To get over having become someone who didn't trust myself. Having become someone willing to let another person dictate the size of my emotion, depth of my relationship. The damage was done NOT by his inability to give 100%, but by my own defense mechanisms. I shrank in my own estimations. I let myself matter less than he mattered to us both. In the end I couldn't forgive him, so that even once he was actually ready to "give" I couldn't be fully invested. I was broken. I didn't believe in love anymore.


So as far as I'm concerned, the only way to start out right is to start out open and willing and honest and ready to be rejected.


But I'm me and you're you. If you have a story about playing the love game with "games" and winning a real and lasting relationship built on trust, I want to hear it.


And btw... "games" and "courtship" are two different things. I'm all for waiting a year to fuck. I'm all for sending flowers. When I say "games" I mean operating out of fear of rejection. I mean trying to coerce the other person into letting you be in charge.


Because... who the fuck wants to be in charge? That isn't what a relationship is about...


I say, forget the games and enjoy the courtship. But mostly, be HONEST! You could die tomorrow... you want to spend your last day on earth playing games, or loving?


Pretend you're 89 and in a nursing home, with a crush on Howie in room 6B. Are you gonna wait until after Howie strokes out again to tell him you think you love him? Are you gonna worry that Howie might turn you down?


Or are you gonna wrap your bony-ass arms around his stretchy-wrinkly neck, climb into his Hoverround with him and say, "Howie, you are the sweetest sexiest WWII veteran in this joint and I want to spend my last days just staring into your cloudy eyes. Now, let's go find a utility room and do the things teenagers dream about."


You better.

Distractions...

And pleasures...


Paul is asking for our guilty pleasures. And I have SO MANY of them.


1. Whenever I fly or get sick, I buy a People/ In Touch/ Star magazine.


2. Googling myself.


3. Googling old boyfriends to see what has become of them.


4. Sometimes, when I'm by myself and nobody knows, I eat at McDonalds.


5. America's Next Top Model. Court TV.


6. Frozen pot pies.


7. Fitty Cent.


In other news, I'm busy today. Dave is getting his picture taken (my dog) at a fundraiser for animal rescue groups in ATL. I have an interview with Patty Griffin after lunch. And I have my last Hillel program of the year tonight!!!

Two lists...

I would be lying...


If I said that this month had not been hard. It has been one of the hardest I can remember. And as a list-maker, I have been compliling in my head, to keep myself sane. Two lists.


Things I am lucky to have, no matter how hard it gets:


The best pets in the world, constant comfort
The best husband (for me) in the world
A relationship with my sister most cannot fathom
A solid and loving family
Close friends who let me be me
The ability to be my own therapy (writing)
My health
A willingness to live poor without shame
Appreciation for nature
Appreciation for human nature
TV and bad mystery novels
Ice cream


Things I miss from my Iowa life:


My friends
Porches with people
Motley Cow for dinner
Cheap booze at the Foxhead
Amish Pies
Farmers market, pocket of change
Root Beer at the Auction
Hamburg Inn
Devotay for lunch
Hickory Hill Park
Girl Friday
Talking poetry with strangers

"Stay" and "Last"...

Are diffeent words...


It's hard, with blogging, to know which stories are the blogger's tales to tell. I find that I need to blog, that the connection to a readership, a personal audience with a certain correct distance, is critical for me...


But there are those things in our lives that we want to discuss, but that aren't ours for the blogging. They aren't ours to disclose.


My Grandmother is a grey area... a hugely important myth-maker in my life and the neurosis from which all my family issues stem. She is mine... but also she is not, because however BIG she is to me, she is BIGGER to my mother and uncle. She is monolithic. So I don't want to tell THEIR stories. I especially don't want to unearth the stories they aren't able to tell/hear yet. So forgive my lack of particulars...


But without saying too much, I can say that my Grandmother is a sad sick woman. She has been, in her life, neglected and neglectful, abused and abusive. She is incredibly clever and amazingly manipulative. It is "wrong" to speak ill of the dead, but she isn't dead yet. And I'm not certain she ever really will be, because she'll live forever inside the distrust and insecurity that decends from her.


Also, it is wrong to lie. And for me, it's wrong to keep secrets. So here I am.


My grandmother drove away the people she loved, all her life. It's hard even to use the word "love" right now...because she defies the definition people generally like to use about love. She set into motion a self-fulfilling prophecy of abandonment and distrust. She never forgave. She did not (ever) understand what a simple feeling was, an honest instinct.


She has never been able to reach beyond her own misery to share goodness with anyone she feared, anyone she felt threatened by. All the wealth, goodness and happiness in the world only reflected her own failures, and so she hated happiness. So much and so venomously that eventually, she crept into a dark hole with a radio and some frozen burritos.


And there she sat, and waited to be correct, to be dead and standing at the pearly gates or the flaming gates. To be able to say to God or the Devil-- "See, I was right! Nobody really cared about me!"


But she did love. Really she did.


And when I was little, she was the best grandmother in the world, BECAUSE of her insanity and her strangeness. She taught me about fairies, and I think she truly believed in them, because she made me believe. She introduced me to poetry. She bought me my best books. My first Grimm's. She was a children's librarian and she collected autographs for me. She took me to Disneyland, but the Disneyland I saw was fifty years older... because I saw it through her strange eyes. She took me to Catalina and Balboa Island, bought me frozen bananas and very spicy tacos. She never treated me like a kid, because she treated everyone like a kid.


A bitter fairy talking to a world of children. And if you were 8 years old and liked fairies and morbid stories... that wasn't a bad thing.


She explained things to me... how to tell good turquoise from cheap, and why the Pacific Ocean is different from the Atlantic. She defined myself for me, told me I was special. She made me understand that humanity (including cruelty) is interesting, often funny... and so made me a better writer. She convinced me that the "regular" world didn't much matter. She made me see, very early (before I had words to describe what I knew), that the mentally ill are two breaths away from the poets. That to tell stories that matter, you have to be willing to scare and hurt people.


I'm rambling, but I don't know who else to talk you... and I need you... my bloggers.


Because her intensity and illness did not wreak the havoc on me that they did on my mom and uncle, I need to leave this issue alone right now. It is not only NOT my story... but it is NOT my death. I am, as confused and hurt and sad as I feel, only a grandaughter. And I have to leave it to my mother and her brother to do the hardest work this week. THEY are making the decisions and THEY are setting down patterns which will, for better or worse, create the next family myth. It is a heavy burden and a big task.


I wish them strength and love. I hope they will find peace and a forgiveness... enough... so that we can all truly put my grandmother to rest...


Here is an old poem:


My Sick Grandmother Looks at a Picture,
Remembers the Sick Hotel


My father ran a place for consumptives
and kept a wife across town,
but I never saw her. She was poor


like my sisters were beautiful, clearly.
They were cold chattering birds
in perfect dresses. They got along.


See, that’s me, there in the corner
with the poor cousins who came
to eat in their brown clothes.


We were well-off, because we
didn’t throw things away,
wrote on newspaper, wore pinchy shoes.


And I remember the dustbowl, how it swirled
through Denver, I watched it,
stood in my door and thought about dust—


How it came from somewhere, from Oklahoma,
where thin people stood against walls.
It tangled their filthy hair, blew off their hats,


and I knew it. You’ve never seen dust like that,
you couldn’t— the hats blown off, the dust,
the tangling, the cold chattering dresses.


We had a Christmas tree so big it filled the lobby,
but there was a bald sad place on the back of the tree.
I used to look at it from my corner—


from my little chair. Nobody else
even knew it was there, or me.
I saw many empty things.


I said to my sister Lizzie one day,
“Look how this leaf is darker than that other leaf,
even though they came from the same tree.”


And she snatched the leaves from me,
put them in her pocket.
‘They’re both just green,” she said.


She walked away. but that isn’t my fault.
That isn’t real. Look—you can hardly
see me. Look, I’m a leaf. Hello?”

Love and obligation...

I'm thinking....


I'm thinking a lot, as I prepare for my trip (Monday) to California, to help...


I'm thinking about what it means to love someone.


I don't know... if you cry when you think of a death, do you love that person? What if you don't "like" that person? What if you know that person has been cruel/ manipulative all their life? Are you a bad person is you DON'T love someone who loves you? Does being in a position to care for someone create an obligation for love?


I wonder a lot about what it's like to be an impatient quick person who has a baby with really bad retardation problems... I worry I couldn't love my slow, dumb, ugly baby...


I know this sounds bad, but it's what I'm thinking...


Who do YOU love?

Just call me Job...

And then tell me it gets better...


Grandmother is alive. She is in hospice care, in Orange County. Her heart is failing. She wants nothing to do with us. I am flying out this weekend to try and help mend old family wounds...


Meanwhile, hubby has ruptured wisdom teeth and must have oral surgery.


Meanwhile, I REALLY picked the wrong week to go off my meds!!!

Found grandmother...

She is in a convalescent home...


She will not speak to us, any of us.


This is very bad.

Do not call me...

I will bite you...


I'm having a BAD week. Not just bad, but BAD!!!!


Missing Grandmothers and overactive thyroids and yelling bosses and no money, and a husband who works 90 (that's what I said... 90!!!) hours a week. It's Passover and doesn't feel like it, as my "job" is to help other people observe the holiday.


I'm homesick. I miss Iowa. I may have to fly to New port Beach to look for my grandmother, with no $$$ and my pet thyroid. I want to move home to Iowa, buy a farmhouse, hunker down, bake cookies, get fat, garden, write in a quiet place.


I picked the wrong week to go off my meds!

It seems...

My grandmother has gone missing...

Exodus...

Ahead of the curve...


Been a rough week here. Medications shifting around, fuss and ugly over quitting job, husband has not had (literally) a day off in 6 weeks, and we have been working on our new budget. Ugh.


Have you ever REALLY made a budget? It's hard and upsetting, trying to winnow your life down to the bare minimum. Trying to figure out how often (based on receipts) you need a haircut... trying to estimate a monthly average for vet bills, utils, gas, groceries.


I cut my like into three parts: regualar needs (basic bills), occasional needs (appliance purchases, haircuts, doctor visits) and non-needs (dinners out, movies, vacations).


Based on the numbers, the very basic monthly needs (including a new car which we HAVE to get) comes to exactly nineteen dollars less than our monthly income.


Which means that whatever I can find in technical and freelance writing will have to cover occasional needs, savings, parental holiday gifts, emergencies, etc. It also means we will not be eating dinner out, buying coffee drinks, new clothes... for a year.


Scary.


But the interesting thing is that I was watching PBS today and there was a woman talking about the problem of the "two income family" and it made me feel better. She was explaining that the way we live now... buying big houses, new cars, meals out... based on having two incomes... is dangerous, and leads often to bankruptcy.


See, back when the man worked... if something happened to his job (injury, lay-off, etc) the woman went and got work, took in laundry, etc... there was a fall-back plan. But now we live (often withour real savings) on two incomes, so if something happens to one person, and they have to be home sick, go to jail, or can't find work... there's no back-up plan...


And in families with kids, where people tend to buy $$$ houses for the school districts, etc.... the likelihood of bankrupty is three times greater. Becasue people don't buy what they can logivally afford. They buy what they want, hoping things get easier, not harder.


Which doesn't happen often.


So I feel some solace, as I sit here trying to make a list of dinners I know I can cook for under ten bucks, patching my old jeans, and looking for a reliable used car online. I feel a little bit ahead of the curve. I feel like maybe this makes sense.

Today...

A doctor called...


It seems something might be wrong with my thyroid. What does that mean?


In other news, it occured to me that if I quit my job, we could (theoretically) move any(damn)where Chris could get a job...


Hmm.....

Janet made the Times!!!

Check her out!


GO JANET!!!!

Dude, it's like...

The Constitutional Congress or sumpin...


Help make history, elect a blogging poet laureate of the WOLD!


Why Elect A Poet Laureate?


Well for starters: it’s never been done. Until now, every poet laureate from the lowly school or church laureate, village, state, and even the official poet laureates of the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and every other poet laureate in the world has been appointed by some board, politician, or worse yet-- bureaucrat.


If we can’t elect even a poet laureate then how can we claim to live in democracies?



Check it out over HERE!!! He's called Billy the Blogging Poet!

Wednesday blah...

But...


Just turned in my two little bits to PASTE. It's my first time writing for them and I'm excited. I LOVE this magazine.


In other news, I intend to get a hot fudge sundae tonight. It seems only fair if I'm to read at an ice cream store I should get something gooey. Why aren't there more events at ice cream stores?


In still other news, I need to walk my dog. Here I go....

And if you live in the ATL...

Please come to Jake's tomorrow night.


I'm reading, and there will be music, and face-painting for the kiddles.


7ish.


The Jake's on Highland.

I've been waiting...

Until I could tell my students, which I'll do today...


So I can now report the BIG NEWS....


I am leaving my job, altogether. I am quitting.


I aspire to be a (poor) housewife.


Also, a girl who finally finished a book...

Maria Weidner,...

Come on down!!!


My college roomie Maria is moving to Iowa to go to law school, and in honor of the occasion she has also joined the blogosphere...

Pay her a VISIT!!!

http://fantasyiowa.blogspot.com/

Leading the blind...

Anyone have any really good freelance leads????


I'm gonna be needing some work here pretty soon. Gonna be scrounging pennies. I sure could use a friend at a glossy magazine...


Anyone know anyone? I'm prepared to write anything.

I won't "make a play" but...

I'll make a decision!!!


Decisionmaking is afoot at Chez Laurel. Tune in next week to find out if I'm running for office, moving to Topeka, or adopting a monkey... there are so many options. God bless America!!!

Last night and this morning...

Last night we had our "big" spring event for Hillel... Basically, it was a fundraiser in the form of a talent show/ American Idol imitation. It went well, though not to mine own aesthetic likings. But nobody asked me.


There were "local celebrities" and a band with lots and lots of leather pants and of keyboards, and college students (with great voices) dressed in borrowed trimmings, singing like mariah carey. There was kosher food that didn't look kosher, and a swarm of wealthy Jewish people who'd paid 300 bucks a pop to support our agency. There was a GIANT check and we (the staff) all got to play with walkie-talkies.


My question? Am I overly sensitive to be vaguely offended by waitresses (all women) wearing tables (YES, WEARING tables) and greeting people with "I'll be your antipasto table this evening!" What if all the waiters circulating with trays were older black gentlemen? It creeped me out a little.


And now, this morning, I'm thinking about things. I think maybe the straw just landed on the camel.

What book am I???

You're Love in the Time of Cholera!

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by
sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give
consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the
one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions
barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff
could get you killed.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

The Topic Project...

REBORN!!!!!!
">

So, now that Foetry is gone, and the hubbub is ending, what are you gonna do to distract yourself from the dull dull days at work?


JOIN ME!


A few years back, my friend SARAH and I built a little website called the TOPIC PROJECT. It was a daily exercise, poets and writers scribbling to assigned topics, and it was WONDERFUL!!!


And now we're waking it up. Bigger, badder, better than ever. Check out the site, read the archives, and then shoot us an email so we can invite you onboard.


FUN!

The cat is out...

O' the bag...


Janet Holmes is an ass-kicker. Remind me never to tangle with that LADY!!!


She has unveiled the assholes over at Foetry, revealed them as Foets themselves.


Check it OUT!!!

Helloooooo???

Anyone dead yet today???


Not me, which is something of a relief.


Today I turned in a story about the high school in Jacksonville where Skynyrd didn't graduate, but DID get their name. Pretty fun stuff.


Yesterday I scrubbed my house because tonight my inlaws are visiting. I am making chicken parm and a big salad in my clean clean kitchen, and we will all use my fancy placemats (wedding) for the first time.


Headache is gone, but I'm still tired. Decaf Constant Comment isn't quite cutting it.


Whine whine whine. There are people dying everywhere, and I have nothing to bitch about, not really...

Yer on a roll, Grim Reaper...

FRANK CONROY TOO!!!???


I really can't believe this. After Saul Bellow, now Frank.


Frank Conroy was one of those people who make the world... the world.


As a poet, I never had a class with him, but as a diner waitress for four years in Iowa City, I served him a good number of hot dogs and pancakes. And when I graduated, it was Frank Conroy who handed me my "Mustard of Fine Arts".


So long, buddy. You were something else, and you'll be missed. A lot.

So tired....

But I'm doing it...


I've watched others, and sneered, laughed at them... said I'd never do it myself. But it's true, I've jumped off that tallest cliff... I'm off caffeine, after reading a scary article about breast cancer... and I'm DYING of the weary-wearies... ready to fall asleep driving.


On the brighter side, I've decided to substitute something for coffee, becasue of my constant need for an addiction... with BUTTER! Mmmmmm. Butter.


I considered exercise, but that just seemed wrong. So butter it is.

POKER...

The best thing about AWP was the flight home, reading "POKER", by Tomaz Salamun, published by Ugly Duckling Presse... my new favorite publisher of paper goods. Go get it and read it and you'll love it too!


And also, "Everyones Pretty" by Lydia Millet, published by Soft Skull Press. I ate it all up in one night.

AHA!!!

No longer a secret...


So I'm allowed to congratulate Ali Stine on her STEGNER!!!


In other news, AWP has been a treat! Enjoyed my shackles (in the form of BOMB magazines) which allowed me to chat and joke with Richard Nash. Soft Skull just continues to amaze and excite.


Loved spending real time with Tony Robinson, Jason Schneiderman. Wish I'd had more with Shanna Compton, Allison Amend. Happy meeting all sorts of new folks... shaking non-virtual hands with many bloggers. It was a dream. Vancouver is incredible.


Newly MIGHTILY impressed with Ugly Duckling Press. Told slews of folk about Killingthebuddha.com and dreamed up a fiction contest.


More later.

Time to hit em on the head...

With a silver hammer...


RIP

Pope JPII
Robert Creeley
Miss Schiavo
Frank Perdue


Anyone else?


"It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken"
"Look out where yr going."
"Amen"