Night of 100 Weird Things, Part 2

Don't you hate it when writers say "to be continued" and then don't finish it the next day? Me too. But you have to admit, for a blogger who only posts about once a month, I'm doing pretty well.

Anyway, there was a key detail that I forgot to mention in the first part of this story. I'd left my purse in Jan's car when we got to Tribute, and stuffed my license and my check card in my pocket. All of these blogposts are first drafts unless I go back and edit them, which doesn't serve me well if I'm telling an actual story. I should probably save it once I write it, go back and edit it, and all that stuff, but it's too tempting to hit that button that says "publish" when I'm done. I have atleast two books that I've been trying to get published that I would love to hit the "publish" button for, but alas, it's not as easy as blogging.  So if I ever do get parts of this blog published, remind me to go back and add the purse-in-the-car detail to Part 1, ok? Thank you, thank you, you're a beautiful audience.

So where was I? Oh yes, I was a bisexual in a lesbian bar, pushing myself further towards the brink of sobriety with an ice cold water in my hand, watching people dance and feeling awkward when two good looking people caught my eye, and one of them returned and held my gaze. Why does this kind of thing only happen in a bar, I wondered, and not, say, the zoo?  You're at the seal tank when a beautiful, dark haired young woman notices you at the same time when you notice her and both of you drop your popcorn. Then one of you approaches the other, and you remark that they shouldn't make popcorn bags so slippery and then you get to know each other. You know why that doesn't happen? Because neither of you are sure that the other one is gay. So if that happened to me at a zoo, I would stand aghast at the beautiful person before me, think to say something witty, grow doubtful, and then walk off with no popcorn to find the lion exhibit. But at a bar that is accepting of gay or even half-gay people, your chances are greater of asking someone to dance and not being beaten, or worse, handed a church pamphlet. So why aren't there gay zoos? Where do the sober, nerdy, non-dance music ones go? They're driven to fund raisers at bars when their movies are sold out...remind me to start editing these things. Three paragraphs in and I'm still standing there, drinking water. I hope I'm not boring you guys. For all I know, this whole narrative is boring and I should stick with writing about how remote control buttons confuse me.

But in any case, the lean, pretty girl lowered her eyes and turned to hug someone who just walked in, and the cute dancing guy kept dancing. Lucy noticed him too.
"What do you think is his deal?" she asked, pointing at him with her gin and tonic, my old signature drink.
This was her way of asking me "why is a young straight guy here in a room of gay women?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe he likes girls who like girls."
She shrugged. "Probably."
"Maybe he's just having a good time. He's cute."
"Yeah. How does he move like that?" she asked as he fell backwards, touched the ground, and popped back up. It was like watching Keanu Reeves dodge a bullet on "The Matrix."
"I don't know. He must practice at home. So do you recognize anybody?"
Lucy has been out much longer than I have and I thought she might know someone.
"Not at all."
"Wanna shoot pool?" I asked.
There were six unattended pool tables lined up two by two on the side of the room.
"I suck at pool," she said.
"So do I. Hey Jan! Wanna shoot pool with us?"
She walked over from the bar, sipping an icy, brown concoction. "I suck at pool," she said.
"Awesome," I replied. "Let's do it!"
"How do three of us play at the same time?" Jan asked.
"We play Cut Throat. Three people can play that."
I explained the rules and Lucy said, "How do you know an actual game?"
"I used to play with my guy friends. I got good at it for a while, but I'm rusty now. I don't know if I can hit anything in."
"Genevieve," Lucy said. "I don't know if I can hit the white ball."
After some grumbling and groaning they agreed. My logic was, it was better to suck at pool than at not talking to people.
Lucy hadn't been kidding. The pool stick slipped passed the white ball on her first shot. But as she drank, she got better, and out of the four games we played, she ended up winning one of them.
What was great about shooting pool was that none of us really knew what we were doing. I'd remembered on the bare bones rules of the game but that's it, so we just made up the rest.
"What happens if you scratch on the white ball?" Jan asked me.
"Um..you can only hit a ball with the color white in it for the rest of the game."
"They've all got white. Even the eight ball."
"Oh. Then red. You can only hit red, and you have to shoot with one hand."
"Really?"
"No. But give it a try."
Playing like that for an hour took the edge off of my nervousness. And I could still gaze at the blue tank top girl and the dancing boy, and appreciate their beauty without having to do anything about it. The guy was in his own world anyway, except for when one obese woman with black framed glasses started gyrating next to him.  But Blue Top would always look back at me when I looked at her. It made me feel good even though we weren't talking.

And as me, Lucy and Jan played game after silly game, I realized that I felt something good that I don't usually feel in a smoke-filled bar with pop-sexy music. I felt comfortable being myself. I was in a room full of Tomboys. I don't feel comfortable around other women. Usually I feel like I have to stretch to act like someone else, and it's exhausting. But I could be myself here, all of me, the Tomboyish and feminine parts of me, and relax. It wasn't because everybody in there was gay either. Jan's straight as can be. She just knows me, as I really am, a playful Tomboy. I don't get to be that playful Tomboy everywhere I go without getting strange looks.  Nobody else played, though there were five empty tables, but when one of us made a shot, sometimes we got encouraging calls from a group of women sitting near us. I began to glow from that small camaraderie.

"You don't seem to be tired," Lucy said to me after a while.
"No," I said, smiling. "I'm having fun. Maybe I should get caffeine, though, just to stave it off."
"Can't hurt," she agreed. "You're the designated driver."
I went over to the bar, ordered a Diet Coke, and interrupted Rhonda in the middle of her talking to the woman next to her and texting at the same time.
"How's it going Rhonda?"
"Good, good. You having fun?" she asked, her eyes on her phone.
I ducked down, blocked her phone with my face, and grinned wide.
"Get outta here, jackass," she giggled, pushing me away.
"Look at me then, goddammit," I said. "Come shoot pool with us."
She set her phone on the bar. "I'll come down there in a bit. Y'all," she said to the other ladies around her. "This is Genevieve."
I shook hands with them, one middle aged couple and a bleached blond woman sitting to Rhonda's right who'd been talking to her before I wrangled her attention away.
"We're all going to L.A.X. in a few. Y'all should come," one of them said.
"L.A.X.?" I asked.
"It's across the interstate," Rhonda explained. "It used to be Angles."
Then I remembered seeing the sign as I drove passed on my way to work sometimes. "Ooooh, that place X-lax?"
Rhonda made a face. "X-lax?"
"Yeah, it's got a big 'x' and the 'l.a.'s are around it. X-lax. Terrible name for a club."
"It is, but that's not the name of it, you jackass, it's L.A.X."
I looked over at Blue Top, who looked back at me. "Everybody's going?" I asked.
"Yeah, in a minute. Go tell the girls."
I grabbed my Coke and went back to the pool table. Jan agreed, and Lucy, on her second or third gin and tonic, said "Sure."
Rhonda came over to us, all smiles, and said she was glad we were there. That confused me at first because we hadn't really hung out with her yet, but then I understood. It was the way I felt about being in that big room of people without talking to them, and the glances between me and Blue Top. It was just a feeling. It was why I agreed to go to the next bar even though it was 11:00 at night, and I had a long drive home.

It was also because of a little thing that happened when I was sizing up a shot at the pool table. I was walking backwards, studying the possible shot from every angle, and a woman in jeans, a polo shirt, boots, black short hair, and a tan, lined face walked towards me. She was not pretty and not handsome. She was not approaching me exactly, but was walking towards the bathroom behind me. Still, as I walked backwards, she marched forwards, we looked at each other and for a few seconds, it felt like a chase.
"I know you," I thought, as she came closer. "You look nothing like me, but you are me."
I don't know what she thought when she looked at me, sizing me up like I'd sized up that pool shot, and then passed me by, brushing my shoulder. But I thought two things: I feel like her inside, a Tomboy chasing something, and also, as I remembered the panther tattoo on my leg, I like to be chased.

In my purse that was stolen, was a phone list from a women's AA meeting I'd gone to a few days before. Out of a list of twenty women, there were only two that I'd felt comfortable enough to call, and really be myself with. I could to talk to them about the thoughts and feelings I sometimes wanted to numb. Especially my tendency to be attracted to and obsess over someone who is intense, wants me, and chases me, but doesn't really love me. And as it has been explained to me, that's not loving behavior from my end either.

"Goddamn, that's the last thing I need," I thought, after the mannish woman passed me by. "This is one more reason why it's good that I'm single."

That's the only contact I had with that woman at all, and it was barely anything. She was at the next bar too, but we didn't talk or acknowledge each other. Noticing her wasn't really about her anyway. It was something about me, about that boyish girl who I've kept buried inside of me, ashamed, for two decades, and what she likes. What does she like? Is it possible for her to like ANYTHING healthy? I'm still feeling that out.

The four of us walked out of Tribute and went to our cars. We found Jan's car untouched, and my purse safely inside. I thought about how I didn't really want a purse, I never had, but that it was a girl thing to do so I carried one.

Then we drove to X-lax. And this will be continued.

Night of 100 Weird Things, Part 1

This month's copy of Yoga Journal was in my purse when it was stolen last Saturday night, but that's not the worst of it. Maybe it my pictures of the kids that was the worst? That bothers me, but, unlike the kids themselves, the pictures are replaceable. Still, I don't like the thought of someone who had it in them to smash my friend's car window, reach in and grab my purse off the floor, to be looking at my children's faces.

It happened while me and a couple of friends of mine were in a bar, some time between 11-2:00 in the morning. There are a few things out of place with this. I don't drink so I don't go to bars, unless there's a specific reason to, like if there's a good band playing, but that wasn't the case Saturday night. The second thing that's weird about this is that I'm hardly ever awake between the hours of 11-2 anymore, and if I am, then it's because I am lying awake worrying about something while my purse is sitting safely in the next room. Also what was weird is that this was the SECOND bar I'd been to that night.

It started of with just me and my buddy Lucy going to see "Moonrise Kingdom," which I've been wanting to see for weeks, and it finally came out in one theater in town. But when I met up with Lucy at Canal Place she walked over to me with a perplexed look and said, "It's sold out."
"It's sold out?" I asked. "But we're a half hour early."
"I know."
"It SOLD OUT??"
"Yeah," she said.
"Like...as in all the tickets are sold?"
"Yeah."
"So like...there were tickets but so many people bought them that there aren't any left for us?"
"Yeah," she said, just as weirded out by it as I was.

I gazed around at the mostly middle aged, well-dressed people around me. Canal Place has recently become swanky, serving dinner and wine with the movie, and it attracts, well, people who can afford wine and popcorn drizzled with truffle oil. These people were not here to see "The Avengers" in 3D. These people were here to see my obscure, artsy movie that no one else is supposed to know about. In the weeks leading up to its release, every time I'd mentioned it to a friend or a co-worker they would say, "I haven't heard of that one," and I would assure them that it looked good and that the writer/director was one of my favorites. To this they would say, "Who's Wes Anderson?" But apparently, I'd been asking all the wrong people. The bunch of winos surrounding me who all had tickets in their hands for the 7:40 showing had heard about it, and beaten me to it.

"These bitches sold out my movie," I told Lucy.
"Yeah, and the next one's not until 10-something."
"I'm not going to be awake for that," I said.
I was basing this theory on experience, and the fact that I was already tired. I'd been out to see my friend's band play the night before (which is as you recall the only reason I go to bars, except for when I want to have my purse stolen) and I'd gotten in unusually late. As far as I was concerned, I'd filled my late-night bar adventure quota for the year.

Lucy and I leaned against the wall of the theater, scowling at the people around us. We must have looked like hoodlums. In the midst of well-dressed, button down shirt, pearl wearing men and women, I stood there in my Dad's old black Ken-Po karate t-shirt, jeans shorts, and sneakers next to my short-spiky-haired companion. I was hoping we'd make people nervous, and that in our cool, dangerous silence they would consider handing over their tickets, lest they be whacked over the head. But we didn't look like the head whacker types. We just looked not-preppy, and so no one gave us their tickets.

"How do you feel about Jan and Rhonda's invitation?" she asked me.
"What the fund-raiser dealy at Tribute?"
"Yeah," Lucy said looking reluctant. "I don't know if I want to go to a bar. It'll be crowded."
I shrugged. "It's for a good cause."
"That's true."
"Jan said the lady they're raising money for went from stage 2 to stage 4 cancer in two weeks."
"Yikes."
"Yeah. And the bar will be full of lesbians."
"That's also true," and then she hesitated. Lucy's open to the idea of meeting a new girlfriend, but not necessarily someone she'd pick up at a bar.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "But I think Jan and Rhonda are counting on us to go. And we could just skip it if OUR MOVIE HADN'T SOLD OUT!"
"I know!" she said.
"So what are we gonna do?"
Lucy sighed. "Well, I guess we're hittin' the dyke bar."


Later I would remember that my new camera was in my purse. It had pictures of the kids mostly, who were at their dad's that weekend. I never go out on nights that I have them. But there were also pictures of my friends, the beach, and some blurry ones of speeding cars at the Indy 500, that I'd gone to last month. There were none of my ex-girlfriend because I'd bought it after we broke up in May. But like the other people in my camera, her face is still in my mind, and I thought of her when I walked into Tribute, about how much she would despise that place. Crowded, smoky, and full of potential drunken drama.

We got there in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation on the enormous flat-screen on the wall. Pictures faded in and out of the woman we were all there to support, the one I'd never met, but knew of her plight through friends of friends. It played along with a song I didn't know, and every time a picture of her kissing her partner would fade in all the ladies would scream. The one of her behind a bar curling her arm like Popeye the Sailor got a lot of hoots and hollers too.

I wondered what pictures my friends would show of me if I were in the same position, and then I realized there weren't many. Mostly I was with my kids, not my friends, and mostly I took pictures of them. I, like most people I know, don't like having my picture taken and I'm comfortable being the picture-taker instead of the take-ee. But this woman, a bar tender who knew more people than Facebook, had a big smile ready for each shot, like she knew she was the kind of person that people wanted to remember with a picture. I decided to have my picture taken like that from now on - with big smiles even though I don't like my smile. And maybe some Popeye muscle.

Lucy and I had met at Jan's house and she'd driven us there. Rhonda had been there for an hour and was already mixing it up with the ladies at the bar.
"How many women is Rhonda dating now?" I asked Jan, as we walked over to her.
"Five."
"FIVE??" Lucy and I said.
"How?" Lucy asked. "How does she keep track of that?"
Jan shrugged. She's going through a divorce and the complexities of dating aren't on her mind.
"I don't know. Rhonda!" I hollered.
The PowerePoint show ended as we approached her. She didn't hear me, though I was only five feet from her. She was talking to three different women at once. I had to lay a hand on her shoulder and shake her.
"Rhonda!"
"Hey!" she exclaimed and kissed my cheek.
I didn't return the kiss. I just said, "You're seeing FIVE women?"
"Yeah," she said, through a grin.
"How do you do that?"
"They don't live in town. Never in town, that's the rule."
"It is?"
"Yes," she pointed at me. "That's been your problem."
I wanted to argue that during my last relationship we lived an hour away from each other for the first six months, and also that I suffer from several problems, but she was already talking to eight other women by then.
Maybe that's also my problem. I talk to women one at a time. Rhonda needs to write down these rules.

Jan went off to talk to a few other people, and Lucy and I just stood there for a minute before she said something about needing a drink.
"Want anything?" she asked.
I looked over at some people who were dancing. I thought about saying that I wanted to know how to dance because it would be something to do.
"Water," I told her, even though I knew that to further hydrate myself meant I was even less likely to dance.

When she walked off I saw two people who were not standing next to each other, but were both in my line of vision and both extremely noticeable. One was a really cute guy who was dancing by himself like Napoleon Dynamite. The other was a tall, lean-muscled woman in a blue tank top who stared straight at me and smiled.

To be continued...

This would make a good blog post

Why does my car smell like bacon in the sand? I know that I've taken the kids to the beach lately, but...bacon? I've done no frying in my car, and bought no McBacony Bacon Dippers or anything. And it doesn't smelll like bacon AND sand or bacon ON the sand, but distinctly bacon IN the sand. I smelled it and thought two things: 1) Why? and 2) This would make a good blog post.  But alas, it offers no resolution. I've looked under my seats, in the trunk, the CD player and the glove compartment, and there is no bacon anywhere. The best I can guess is that the sand in my car has grease in it. But what do I know, I've got a degree in English, not in Breakfast Foods.....mmmmmmmm, a degree in breakfast foods.

PS - yes, that's it, that's really the end of this post. I told you, it offers no resolution! Other than vacuuming my car, and you and I both know that I'm not going to do that, so forget it!. Dude, she gets snippy when her car smells like bacon.

PPS- I should write a series of blog posts that follow in the spirit of A Series of Unfortunate Events. You know how in A Series of Unfortunate Events, the author warns you throughout the entire series that the main characters' lives are just going to get worse and worse and the ending is going to disappoint you? Maybe I should write A Series of Unfortunate Smells, where I blog about strange odors and never find out where they're coming from. And it would never be anything you'd expect like gas, or rotten eggs, but average, not even bad smelling-smells in places you wouldn't expect, like maple syrup in a freshly mowed the lawn, or the scent of rain in McDonald's. This is genius. Someone get me an agent!

Step 1: Worry about being accepted

I emailed two of my former professors to ask if they could write letters of recommendation for me and they actually remembered who I am! We haven't seen each other in five years! I would like to believe that my world class writing skills is what makes me stick out in their minds, but I think what really registered with them is when I reminded them that "I was the tall one." Then they thought, "Oh yes! The tall one of the spring of '07! Of course!"

So the application process is going well. Now I just need to take the GRE, send everything off, and cross my fingers. Then after I get in I will worry about passing. Then after I pass and graduate I will worry about finding a job. Then after I find a job, I'll worry about getting fired or laid off. That's my career plan.  It's solid.

But I am worried about the finding a job part. Every time I tell people that I'm going to be a librarian they have one of two reactions. Either, "That's awesome! I can see that!" or "When are you get a job? When someone dies? You know librarians hold onto those jobs until they die." And I believe them because once I get a library gig I plan to hold onto it until they have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. Oh the other thing that people like to say is that there won't be many jobs open by the time I graduate because everything is moving on-line and there will be no print books. Ok. Then I'll be the old creepy lady who takes care of the archives. Surely, even when books are no longer printed on paper, the old originals will be so prized to book lovers that they will insist there be gate keepers to mind them and care for them in temperature controlled climates. Gate keepers with master's degrees in Library Science!

Why oh why do I care about how people react to my ideas? There's always SOMEBODY who's going to point out the flaws and inevitable catastrophes. "Don't become a librarian! It will be the ruin of us all! Run! Hide the children!"

The only downside I see is more student loans. Ugh. But I'm going to apply for everything that's out there! Grants, scholarships, single-mom-sympathy-gimme-money, ALL OF IT!

Writing my old teachers reminded me that I miss school. I miss sitting in classrooms and talking about a books, styles of writing, papers, and deadlines. History and ideas that people had. That's what I like about the library. It's one big reference section where people go to learn, or share knowledge. Dude, my inner nerd just goes CRAZY. And when I work at a library it'll go crazy every day! Because I'm going to find one of those hard-to-get jobs! And I'll have to die before someone can replace me! And I'll keep submitting my books to hard-to-please publishers so that one day, goddammit, I'll be shelving my own book! And fifty years from now when I'm caretaking the ancient archive I'll show my work to a young person who's never seen paper before and I'll say, "I'm Genevieve Rheams. I wrote this loooong ago." And they'll say, "I remember you! You're that writer! The tall one!"

Writing in the Wrong Places

I can't sit on the sea wall by the lake and write about the water, or the way the sun warms my hands. But I can write about it while I'm sitting at my desk, here where I should not be blogging. Then I can write about any other place, really. It's like my mind can't write about what it's looking at, but where it's wandering to next. Here at this fake-wooden desk in an office with no windows, I can see each step of the seawall, each a darker gray and greener the closer they get to the water. Sometimes I see slender fish slip by. I think of mornings I've gone canoing with my dad, and the thrill and fright of turning over, plunging into the water and popping back out, smiling and clutching the side of the canoe. "Don't turn it over," he'd warn, frsutrated that I would purposely topple over, and not understanding the enchantment of the water when in the boat and the allure of the boat when under water.

Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Good afternoon, poetry lovers!...Poetry likers?...Poetry tolerators?...What do you mean, you would rather have your brains eaten by Edgar Allan Poe's zombie than read one of his poems?  Have you READ one of his poems out loud? They'll scare the pants off of you, and don't tell me that you don't like to have your pants off because everyone does!

But anyways, whether you like, love, or loathe poetry, today is Poem in Your Pocket Day! Yes, this is a real day dedicated to a single poem - any poem! Behold -
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/25/151339990/celebrating-poem-in-your-pocket-day

Seeeeeee! There's an article about it! And when you read about it on-line you know that it's real.

I have NPR to thank for getting me into poetry, actually. I began listening to The Writer's Almanac about ten years ago, where Garrison Kelloir reads you a (usually contemporary) poem and gives you the historical literary facts for the day. Before I started listening to this guy, I honestly thought I hated poetry.

I just didn't get it. None of the romantic or nature stuff moved me, which was confusing because I like love and nature, so why wouldn't I like poetry about it? None of it got to me until I read "The Death of The Ball Turret Gunner" in the 11th grade (WARNING! This poem has nothing to do with romance or nature):

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

I'd never read a poem like that. It was jarring, visual, gory, and real. And since I was very into heavy metal and gore, I thought this ROCKED. But I didn't read anything that affected me like that again until I started listening to Garrison Keillor. 

I didn't know that poetry could be funny like this:
"I've Always Enjoyed Her Sense of Humor"
by Gerald Locklin

"She's an old friend

And I don't see her very often,
But she has a way of turning up
When I'm talking to a girl I've just met,

And she will invariably storm up to us
And confront me with, "where is the child support check?!"
Then turn on her heel and storm from the room,
Leaving me to make inadequate explanations."

Or that a poem about an animal could be powerful, like this:
"The Dragonfly"
by Louise Bogan

"You are made of almost nothing
But of enough
To be great eyes
And diaphanous double vans;
To be ceaseless movement,
Unending hunger,
Grappling love.
Link between water and air,
Earth repels you.
Light touches you only to shift into iridescence
Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,
You split into the heat.
Swift beyond calculation or capture
You dart into the shadow
Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.
But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,
For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall
With the other husks of summer."

This is where Genevieve takes a moment to recover from the frustration of not being able to write lines like, "You split into the heat. Swift beyond calculation or capture."  Genevieve can't even describe why she likes that line! Or why it moves her!...or why she's writing about herself in the third person!

If I could write any kind of poem though, it would be the kind that tells a story, or rather, a snap shot of a moment in a person's life.  Like this:
"Where Dreams Come From"

by Marge Piercy

"A girl slams the door of her little room
under the eaves where marauding squirrels
scamper overhead like herds of ideas.
She has forgotten to be grateful she has
finally a room with a door that shuts.

She is furious her parents don't comprehend
why she wants to go to college, that place
of musical comedy fantasies and weekend
football her father watches, beer can
in hand. It is as if she announced I want
to journey to Iceland or Machu Picchu.
Nobody in their family goes to college.
Where do dreams come from? Do they
sneak in through torn screens at night
to light on the arm like mosquitoes?

Are they passed from mouth to ear
like gossip or dirty jokes? Do they
sprout from underground on damp
mornings like toadstools that form
fairy rings on dewtipped grasses?

No, they slink out of books, they lurk
in the stacks of libraries. Out of pages
turned they rise like the scent of peonies
and infect the brain with their promise.
I want, I will, says the girl and already

she is halfway out the door and down
the street from this neighborhood, this
mortgaged house, this family tight
and constricting as the collar on the next
door dog who howls on his chain all night."

And so, my dear people, I have done my part for Poem in Your Pocket Day. I have provided you with a few portable poems that you can stuff into your pocket and read later at the dinner table where your family will sling chicken legs at you and demand that you shut up.  When they do, threaten them with a love poem. I haven't provided you with one?  Well, shit.

"The Weight"

by Linda Gregg

"Two horses were put together in the same paddock.
Night and day. In the night and in the day
wet from heat and the chill of the wind
on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging
and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.
The dignity of being. They slept that way,
knowing each other always.
Withers quivering for a moment,
fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,
width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.
Fences were nothing compared to that.
People were nothing. They slept standing,
their throats curved against the other's rump.
they breathed against each other,
whinnied and stomped.
There are things they did that I do not know.
The privacy of them had a river in it.
Had our universe in it. And the way
its border looks back at us with its light.
This was finally their freedom.
The freedom an oak tree knows.
That is built at night by stars."

Twittings and thingings

I have embraced the inevitable and joined Twitter. Ok, I've decided to just go ahead and list my efforts and accomplishments lately because I know that you guys like it when I strut that stuff around. In the last week I have:

1) sent queries to four more agents

2) worked on the new book

3) eaten more Easter candy than any one human should consume

4) begun my application to LSU's library science program so that I can become a LIBRARIAN!!!!

5)Learned the lyrics to Elton John's song "Where to St. Peter" - I took myself a bluuuuuuuuuue canoe! And I floated like a leaf....

Ah, Sir Elton. Your early work was so raw, poetic and inspired. But I digress....life feels good. More later, my loves.