Happy Birthday, Beth!

Happy birthday to my lovely sister Beth who is not pictured above (that is the troll doll Marci I recently purchased which Beth put nail polish on and cut its hair as a child -- the original Marci doesn't look quite so chilled out). Hope you're all having a great Sunday!

Are You Going To Go My Way?

Hi everyone -- hope the start to the weekend is a good one. Thanks so very much about your kind comments about the pictures -- all were taken in Detroit!


Saw two signs this week from people trying to get a ride somewhere -- Travelin, Broke and Sexy was the first one from a cute couple both wearing matching knee high striped socks and the other said, Stranded Due To Poor Decisions and Bad Men. Both made me smile and made me think what I would put on a sign to explain my life. I couldn't think of anything near as snappy as the first two so I put the challenge to you guys -- If you had a sign, what would it say and where are you trying to go?

Street Photography

Hey guys -- hope everyone is having a great week. Happy Tuesday to all!

Enjoy Your Troll

The strangeness of watching Hoarders on A&E and then going to an antique mini-mall the very next day cannot be overestimated. So much of what we have has significance far beyond its actual worth. I recently bought a friend a birthday card with a cartoon depicting the Dali Lama's birthday where he's opening a box and says, Nothing -- just what I wanted! My friend is a minimalist in all things and will appreciate the sentiment. But most people I know tend to go the opposite direction and love the physical world for its meaning -- I wore this when I got my first job, I had this since I was five, etc. Things represent possibility and hope, I thought as I trudged down the aisles of of the mall that contained stores with names such as Treasures Remembered, Time Doesn't Forget (that sounds like a noir novel title), and so on. I wanted to have my own Faulkneresque store called "The Past Isn't Really The Past" but alas I am also a minimalist and tend toward purging rather than keeping. Even so, I find myself overcome with the same urge that drives this business -- wouldn't that pink Depression tea set be cool for a party? Wouldn't that light be awesome in a house where it was the center? Lives I will never lead run through my mind. At those moments, I want to lead them, no matter how impractical. I want to be a certain kind of person. I remember the first ad that worked on me in this way, an ad for some sort of lingerie which depicted a beautiful old house on a rainy day with a record player in the background, playing sad jazz songs. I could be that kind of person! I could have rain, jazzy, clothes drying on an inside line, swaying in a breeze.

Sufficed to say, I have not become that kind of person. I am a person who has seen the insides of laundromats, who has waited months to stuff everything in her own washer/dryer combo and hoped it didn't come out the size of a shrinky dink. While I enjoy jazz, I never put it on a record player while it's raining. Usually I'm doing unglamorous errands in the rain, cursing at CVS and whatnot. But the magic of the mini mall did do its trick and I did not leave empty-handed. I saw Marcy! Marcy, my plastic girl mouse doll with overalls in amongst a bevy of trolls. Marcy, an Easter present in 1976. Marcy returned to me with her Proustian rush of longing. Under twenty dollars, she was a steal for such sweet gladness to return me to the past. I bought her and the cashier said, Enjoy your troll! Which I've been doing in some ways my entire life.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I've got to run to keep from hiding." Greg Allman

Cocktail Hour
Season Five of Dexter is out on dvd -- weekend planned!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday Ang!

Happy birthday to my dear friend Angela! This picture was taken many years ago and things have been rocking and rolling ever since. Many happy wishes to you, dearest Ang and lots of love!

To Whom Shall I Tell My Grief

I've been thinking about the term overshare lately, what it means in a confessional time. Post Secret, a website run by Frank Warren, caters to the impulse of relative strangers to share secrets with one another, postcards that range from the banal and innocent (ie, secrets about urinating in the shower) to the truly horror-inducing (rape, death, loss, spiritual emptiness). The website doesn't have the traditional comment section to discourage the rubbernecking tendency of some who tend toward a clinical level of sensitivity, but has a community which can "chat" about these confessions. I've noticed a lot of people run the gamut of infatuation with both the website and Frank who seems like a really ordinary, nice guy who can hold many projections (Frank as evil Svengali making money for secrets, Frank as Savior who has come to unite and heal), emotions that tend to go from This has saved my life to utter despair over quality, tone, and the ability of confession to save anyone.

The truth has a tendency to feel like a bracing drink on a blistering day --heady and refreshing. Of course, there's the inevitable hangover that comes with this new high, the horrible What have I done? I have never sent a secret because frankly I can't think of one. I suppose it falls in the category of embarrassing stories -- everything is a secret and yet nothing really is. I don't mind the overshare in real life -- I know the consequences of telling someone something and weight them before speaking. Not always the case, not by a long shot. There's something that comes with age that doesn't suck! What about you guys? Tend to regret hearing or saying something? Ever been on the receiving end of someone telling you something and then regretting their confession? Overshare with me!

Detroit Pigeon

In Memoriam

Endless Summer

I've had and talked to people in various writing workshops where stories about the most .... experience are often fodder for icebreakers and other exercises. I have a tremendously difficult time with this concept. The worst for me is most embarrassing. I think both all my life is somewhat embarrassing and when I think about it, none of it really is. Picking out the worst incident in this sea of failure would require some doing. Interestingly, I talked with my dear friend Shawn the other day who had such a workshop. He said that most people talked about things that had been done to them. I tend to go the other way as humiliation isn't really embarrassing. My worst moments come in the things that I do. I can't control when other people act like asshats, but when I do, there's a sense of shame that's far worse than anything that has been done or said to me. I think I've been immunized against taking insult too seriously -- yes, words hurt, but not as much as they used to hurt. The internet age brings both kindness and insult in equal measure. So again, when I think of my answer to this question, I come up blank. To go into my deepest failings is not the ideal icebreaker. That said, I'd try it just to see what happened. What about you -- most embarrassing moments? Were you younger or older when they happened? Do they involve other people or only things you know about?