Hemlock Society

As a child, I wanted to join the Hemlock Society after reading Jean's Way: A Love Story, a book about his wife's terminal illness and assisted death, by Derek Humphry. My parents put the kibosh on that idea because there was no such group in Mineral Wells, Texas, and I was only ten years old. Instead I was allowed to do the puppet show for Vacation Bible School. It wasn't the same, but I enjoyed acting out little performances and waiting for Jesus to return from the dead as we were charged with acting Holy Saturday and Easter. Where is He, I could imagine the disciples saying, with lots of Monday-morning quarterbacking. But I never lost my interest in end of life issues for the mortals. As a Catholic, I know I'm supposed to say that all life is precious if those irritating You Can't Be Catholic and Pro-Choice bumperstickers are to be believed. Guess what, you can. You can go to mass on Saturday night and watch You Don't Know Jack afterward and deeply admire the crackpot ways of Jack Kevorkian. Maybe it's genetic -- my mother sufffered greatly from cancer throughout her life and always said she wanted to call him if things got too terrible.

When I got to Michigan, Jack Kevorkian's trials had begun, a media circus. The man people called Dr. Death had assisted one hundred and thirty people by this time. The details of his rise and downfall are played to perfection in You Don't Know Jack. Al Pacino plays Jack K. with all his quirks on full display, so much so that you never see Al Pacino. Is Jack Kevorkian likable? Yes, in that way that crazy people with a mission are. Do you want to go to the Big Boy with him? Maybe, maybe not. Nobody longs for the day in which the suffering becomes too great to want to live. The scenes in this movie that made me cry were the ones in which real footage from people seeking help from Jack Kevorkian were shown. The worst of the lot was a man that Dr. Kevorkian turned down, a clinically depressed paraplegic who had doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. Jack refused to assist him in suicide, given his depression. Human suffering, like the poor, will always be with us. Those brave enough to stare into the abyss of it, well, they will always be in short supply.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." Oscar Wilde

Cocktail Hour
HBO Suggestion -- enjoyed the second episode of Treme. We'll see if it makes it to my trinity of goodness -- Hung, Californication, and Nurse Jackie.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy birthday to Al Pacino!

HBO Films: You Don't Know Jack Trailer #3 (HBO)

Snake Farm

Another excerpt -- more soon!

“Don’t be afraid, Shelley,” Mother said, using her affectionate nickname for me. Nobody except her ever called me Shelley, and she never used it except when she was trying to be sweet. I’d offered to accompany her in hopes of buying some unusual Christmas gifts for my friends in Michigan. But once there, I didn’t think it was a great idea.

Harlon had worked at the farm for a couple of years and none of the people Mother knew when she was young and selling snakes still worked there. Harlon told us a lot of them had died from the acetone used to make the paperweights. “They think it gave them cancer,” Harlon reported.

I wondered if this had affected Mother. She looked so frail among all the snake merchandise, her weight plummeting post-surgery, her face drawn and tired. Now she relied on a steady stream of Vicodin to get her through the day. Much of her time was spent in her darkened bedroom watching television, the set surrounded by tiny stuffed animals that Beth had bought to make her feel better. Mother enjoyed The Sopranos and documentaries about people who had undergone violent transformations.

She looked happy in the snake farm, but I could tell she wanted to get home. “I think I’ve seen it all,” she said as I paid for a dandelion encapsulated in a paperweight.

“I don’t know how the guy does it so that the dandelion looks like you’re just about to make a wish,” Harlon said. “Seems like it would get all fucked up in the goop surrounding it.”

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop." Jack Nicholson

Cocktail Hour
Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy belated birthdays to Nick, Iggy Pop, and today is Jack Nicholson. The Taurus cycle begins . . . Happy Thursday!

My Plot Is Thickening

Hi everyone -- hope you're having a good week. Like Snoopy, I'm busily typing away and trying to address issues with plot. My favorite definition of plot comes from the great noir writer Jim Thompson: Things are not what they seem. If you write or do something else artistic, what parts do you struggle with the most?

The Mayor Of Detroit

Hey guys -- here's a bumper sticker that got made a couple of years ago when the former mayor of Detroit got caught in various debacles. Today he's facing the music yet again. I'm still working away -- back soon!

Lost Satellite Reception

My least favorite writing prompt or question is What is your most embarrassing moment? I mean, really. How the hell am I supposed to narrow it down? Oh, put more simply, do I talk about what is really embarrassing -- sins of pride, arrogance, acts of intentional cruelty, petty jealousy, poor boundaries, a default position of aggrieved disappointment when things don't work? Or do I settle for the time when my GPS went off during mass because of a dying battery and kept saying Lost Satellite Reception every few minutes while I desperately tried to alternately turn it off and when that didn't work, bury it in my purse while pretending that I didn't know what was happening?

I like the symbolism of the last moment and had to laugh when I was safely back in my car, cursing the GPS and sad that I had missed large parts of the homily about the fig tree and how it was given a second chance even though it bore no fruit. I think about that little tree a lot, you know, about how it didn't do anything. I sympathize with the dude in the Bible who buried his talent because he was afraid. Fear of damn near everything ruled my life for a long time. When I stepped out of that cycle, I realized that the wreckage was everywhere. I had lost my way in a proverbial dark woods. So you unbury the talent. And you wait until reception returns and the direction is clear.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Think. The big fucking picture." Tony Soprano

Cocktail Hour
Hung being filmed in the Diego Rivera room at the DIA today -- too cool for words! Can't wait until the show returns.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday! Marci continues to make progress -- thanks for all the good thoughts.

Instant History

Sunday reading for my dears -- see you tomorrow.

On our way to Detroit, Angela and I stopped at a roadside café in Arkansas, the only place for miles where we could park our U-Haul. Both starving from our steady diet of M&Ms on the road, we ordered chicken fried steaks and surveyed our surroundings which seemed grim to her and familiar to me.

“We are the only people in the whole place who aren’t related to each other. Seriously,” Angela said.

The place didn’t strike me as odd as it did her; I’d come from Mineral Wells, where indeed most people were kin to each other in one way or another, making gossiping about anyone a tricky business. Hank and I managed to keep most of the blood lines straight with occasional gaffes relating to cousins by marriage and the like.

“And everyone is smoking,” Angela said. “Do they have any idea they are killing themselves? Don’t they care about second hand smoke?”

I glanced at a thin worn woman who appeared to be in her late forties and at least seven months pregnant. She sat smoking at a table with a man who put his hand on her stomach. He looked young enough to be her son.

“I don’t know if word about the dangers of smoke has gotten out around here,” I said. I didn’t mind it so much. It reminded me of the days when Grandma Yvette lived with us and a thick yellow cloud hung over her corner of the kitchen enclave like Pig Pen’s dirty aura.

“God, what do you think their story is?” Angela asked, referring to the unlikely couple.

“Hard to tell,” I said. “Instant history says the guy is a friend of her son who became involved with her after he dropped out of high school.” Hank and I played Instant History whenever we went somewhere new. The game didn’t work in Mineral Wells where we knew the histories all too well.

Our food came, my first bite reminding me of Salisbury steak day in elementary school. Angela put down her fork after a few half-hearted attempts at ignoring the obvious. We stuck with the mashed potatoes and asked for the check.

“I’m not going to forget this stop,” she said. “Let’s get you to Detroit. It may not be great, I know it’s better than this.”

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"When you have nothing left to burn, you must set yourself on fire." Jack Kevorkian

Cocktail Hour
Drinking new show suggestion: Treme on HBO -- missed the first episode, but looking forward to watching.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Thanks for all the good energies and prayers for Marci! I'll keep you posted on her condition. Happy Sunday!

Health Update

Health update -- thanks for all the good thoughts and prayers for my friend Marci. She suffered a pulmonary embolism and will be in the hospital for a few more days. This is me and Baby Grouchie wishing her lots of love. Obviously, this whole incident is very scary and serious, but they caught it in time. I'm almost finished with my rewrite of You Are The Camera and will probably post a few more excerpts. Hope you're having a great weekend, my dears!

Words, Words, Words

Hey guys -- thanks so much for reading the excerpts this week! Here's a virtual bouquet for your efforts. As for comment questions, Dave -- I can't remember what the princess in that long ago workshop story did. I do remember it was followed by a tale of sexual obsession about a man who kept stalking a Jack in the Box employee. Forever emblazoned in my mind is this sentence: "He kept stopping back in the Box for one last spicy treat." Gorgeous Jodi, I did live on Courville pre rat-infested apartment. Like men, I can pick them. My next place is going to be a step up, I feel certain. To the anonymous comment about why D didn't help me with the tire -- he was at work. No cell phones in those days. One had to rely on the kindness of strangers. As Mark pointed out, most of them weren't really strangers. Angels in disguise! Okay, pet peeve words -- Mark, you best not start with these either! I'm limiting it to three today.

Using impact as a verb. Seriously, I hate this one. Unless you are a tooth, you are not impacted by anything.

Fresh, as in when people say, This food is so fresh. As if everything else they have been eating is stale and old.

Nice, as in when people use it ironically. I don't know why, but I hate it when you do something stupid and someone says, Nice in that long, extended dance-mix way. Anything is preferable to this, even the old grade school bon mot, Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

In other news, my dear friend Marci is ill and in the hospital. She's the one who informed you guys of my ruptured appendix. Not entirely sure what's wrong yet, but please send lots of love, prayers, and good energies her way.

I'll be back tomorrow -- tax season is done. May your weekend be a restful one!

101 Freaky Ways To Die

Hey everyone, hope you're surviving tax day! This is another excerpt from You Are The Camera and probably the last one I'll post for a bit. Tomorrow, I return to share with you words I hate. Yes, I have a list of pet peeve words. Or maybe I'll write about that sex machine, Larry King who is working on divorce eight. Kidding. At least about mentioning sex and Larry King in the same sentence again.

I didn’t feel comfortable using the phone for long distance since David paid for it and didn’t even want a phone despite the fact that it informed him of the rare snow day and also served as our only means to contact the police. With a 911 lag time of six hours in the city proper, he might have had a point about its inefficacy. Even so, I bought phone cards with my bottle deposit money and called friends from home when I could, especially Hank who had taken to sending me clippings from various newspapers about serial killers. It reminded me of when we were kids and read stories from a book titled 101 Freaky Ways To Die! which we treated as required reading. Our favorite was a B-list actress who had taken a cocktail of pills only to drown to death with her head in the toilet. Denton, he claimed, had grown as stale and wearisome as Mineral Wells, declaring that he had become the proverbial turd in the punchbowl at most gatherings. At least he could still hear the sound of the train from his apartment which made him happy. Even if he chose to stay put for a little while longer, he knew other people were on the move.

I had five hundred dollars in my bank account, and thought I might get three hundred more from my deposit on the duplex in Denton. My car payments were two hundred a month, and I knew I could let them slide for three months before the threat of repossession loomed. For two months, I returned David’s beer bottles to get money, Michigan offering ten cents each, and I sent my resume to local colleges. There hadn’t been a lot of hope in terms of finding a job in academia given to us in graduate school so I also applied for any receptionist jobs listed in the local papers. Even though my car wasn’t paid for, it was falling apart. People in Michigan referred to it as a beater, a term I had never heard. At least I didn’t drive a foreign car like most people in Texas. Foreign cars were considered betrayal which I found refreshing. As I drove out of my neighborhood in six inches of snow, my front right tire goes flat on East Warren. I managed to get it to a gas station connected to an oil change center.

“Man, I feel so so sad for this little car,” one of the mechanics said as he surveyed my tire.

“I’m new here,” I said as two guys graciously offer to change my tire to the donut spare I have in the trunk. I was freezing, but they seemed totally unfazed in their gray overalls. “I’m from Texas and don’t know how to drive in the snow.”

“You the new white girl on Courville?” one asked.

“Probably,” I said.

“This will last you for a little bit, but you need a real tire to get around this shit.”

“Yep,” the other guy said. “Michigan ain’t no joke.”

I nodded, so grateful not to be stuck.

The man put the flat tire back in my trunk. “I’m telling you, Michigan, this state, it ain’t no joke.”

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." Henry Miller

Cocktail Hour
Tonight Sober House continues -- yay!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Postscript

Hi everyone -- one more day until the dreaded tax day. Thanks so much for reading the excerpts. Very soon the whole revised project will be done. My dearest Jodi will be the first to know, then all of you!

David moved in August to start the school year while I awaited my defense in October. My graduate hours completed, I could no longer teach which was a relief. Instead I worked twenty hours a week in the graduate studies office, and I worked part-time for Angela as an office assistant at the university in the computer science department where everyone had advice about my predicament.

“There’s loads of inappropriate middle-aged men here,” one adjunct in the department said. “You don’t need to drag your shit halfway across the country.”

“I think people have a betting pool,” Angela said. “Kind of like football season.”

The soundtrack to these lonely days was the Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” Hank hummed a darker song, Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.” We went out to dinner a couple nights a week, grim slogs through formerly happy haunts that seemed to say, Nevermore, like Poe’s “Raven” gone awry. Even the reliable Chinese buffet that had charmed us in our undergraduate days with its cheap prices and loads of MSG had lost its luster. I pushed around chunks of sesame chicken and tried to make conversation. Hank couldn’t read the small writing on his fortunes so he always handed them to me without a word. Years ago, he got one that said, She loves you as much as she can, she just can’t love you very much. Hank laughed and attributed the sentiment to Erin, whom had left town for London and who had only sent one letter to me, imploring me in the postscript to love her as much as she loved me. I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t want to know.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It's awfully difficult." Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale

Cocktail Hour
It's Restaurant Week in Detroit!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

Scruples

One more section of You Are The Camera for Tuesday morning. Thanks so much for reading!

Hank hated the new configuration. While he had no problem with the divorce and neither Robert nor I had forced him into any loyalty tests, what had seemed ideal turned rancid. He loved me being single again, loved that he was right about the foolishness of the marriage, and glad for his friendship with Robert. They played guitar together a couple of times a week and each Christmas gave out tapes of themselves performing duets with alternate lyrics to such ditties as John Mellencamp’s “Small Town,” calling themselves The Cat and The Dog. I had briefly dated Hank’s friend Eric, a sweet ex-Marine with whom I had almost nothing in common. But David was different. Hank began to hate David even before the Detroit move was a possibility. After a particularly boring creative writing workshop where a student presented a story about a princess with the power to see through walls, Hank and I sat on the bench outside the English department, discussing the situation.

“He’s a dinosaur, Michelle. He’s old enough to be your . . .”

“My uncle,” I interrupted.

“Your father. You don’t have an uncle. You have a wonderful dad. Why do you need someone who hasn’t had a date since the Carter administration?”

“He’s had dates. Remember how he took Shelley to the Christmas party?”

“Yeah, and I also remembered how she got drunk and cried at the after party because he wouldn’t sleep with her. He told her he had to coach little league. Jesus. What a fucking moron.” Hank didn’t wear a Scruples card in his hat anymore, but I could still see him turning it around from the good angel side to the pitchfork side like he did when Robert and I announced our engagement.

“He wakes up early to run. What’s so wrong about that?” I asked.

“Nothing if you’re Forest fucking Gump. The only thing that could get me to run is if the Devil himself were chasing me.”

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel." Bret Michaels

Cocktail Hour
Nurse Jackie was great last night -- complications galore!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Dessert Tray

Hi everyone -- happy Friday! I hope everyone is enjoying the weekend before the dreaded tax day and also reveling in the Tiger's opening day victory. I leave you with some virtual dessert for your viewing pleasure and will be back tomorrow with my ongoing struggles with plot, rewriting, and the general meanderings you know all too well.

Just Do It

One of my favorite Onion headlines has to do with Valentine's Day -- Partner's Same Apalling Body Shoved Into Skimpy New Underwear. Today Nike debuted an ad with Tiger Woods where his dead father has a voice-over while a picture of Tiger looking remorseful flashes on the screen. I took pause -- this seems really creepy to me. To me, people. Tiger's father is saying all sorts of things about why, why, why to an unseen interviewer. We never get the context, but no matter. We supply it. Why, Tiger, did you fuck up your career, dead daddy is saying. Just tell me; I'll understand. Okay. Tiger doesn't speak and the familiar Nike swoosh appears.

The second car I ever owned came with a dying alternator and a Nike bumpersticker that said, Just Do It. I hate bumperstickers for some reason and tried and tried to get this one off, but couldn't. It seemed I was destined to drive around in a shitty car imploring me and everyone on the road to Just Do It! But what? I suppose it's an injunction against paralysis by analysis. Some people can live their whole lives in quiet desperation. But is Nike really trying to sell me shoes based on remorse for Tiger having just done it, a lot of it, in fact? I suppose so. Tiger didn't lose his contract with Nike, but he has to take this public scolding from his dead father. Worth it? God, let's hope it is to him. Same body, different lingerie.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"A penumbra of somber dignity has descended over his reputation." James Atlas

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Happy Alex Lemon

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Wednesday Addams Asks A Question

It's midweek and in lieu of a post, I will ask a question -- what are your favorite blogs or websites? What form of social networking do you enjoy most and why? I'll be back tomorrow -- hope you're having a great week, my dears!

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." Albert Einstein

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Lit Mary Karr

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

It's Not Enough That I Succeed

I was at a poetry reading (against my will, I might add) a few months ago where said poet criticized my beloved Anne Sexton, telling a student that she was much better than Anne Sexton (really?) and that Sexton wasn't very good and had made herself into a sideshow freak. This poet did his reading while I tuned out (a talent I honed during the worst of the open mike nights at Jim's Diner, a tried and true hang-out during college where grad students loved to read their suicide notes in a small room without air conditioning) and thought about why writers love to put other writers down. It shows one of our worst qualities -- vast insecurity borne of loneliness and misery, a pernicious side effect of too much time alone in the bad neighborhood of the mind. If this person was trying to establish a sort of snobby credential, it had the opposite effect. So in the spirit of defending the great Ms. Sexton, I'm posting one of her poems that I love.

Yellow

When they turn the sun
on again, I'll plant children
under it, I'll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing. I'll
take my mother and soap her up, I'll
take my bones and polish them, I'll
vacuum up my stale hair, I'll
pay all my neighbor's bad debts, I'll
write a poem called Yellow and put
my lips down to drink it up, I'll
feed myself spoonfuls of heat and
everyone will be home playing with
their wings and the planet will
shudder with all those smiles and
there will be no poison anywhere, no plague
in the sky and there will be a mother-broth
for all of the people and we will
never die, not one of us, we'll go on,
won't we?

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I just get an idea and then all of a sudden I've got a song." John Lee Hooker

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Literary Life Larry McMurtry

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Permanent Collection

What happens when you finally get something you have wanted for a very long time and don't want it anymore? This is the question posed by Up In The Air, a film I just watched on dvd again and love. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who knows himself well. He doesn't want marriage, children, or a permanent place to live. He makes a living firing people and teaching others to rid themselves of baggage. He practices what he preaches; his apartment is as sparse as a monk's cell and his backpack contains only essentials, the most important ones being those elite status cards that tell him who he is. Contrary to popular belief, there aren't that many perks to being a gold member. It's more the idea of yourself as a person who deserves more than the other unwashed masses -- that's what places are selling, not a better seat on the plane or a cookie at check-in.

Of course, Ryan changes over the course of the film. He falls in love, that transformative force. He takes a risk that he didn't imagine he would take, and it doesn't work out. He gets what he wants (reaching the ten million air mile point), but he finds it's not at all as he imagined. Even though he's most himself surrounded by strangers who know his name, he doesn't know who he is. Like the people he fires, he finds himself completely adrift, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He looks at that familiar screen with all those arrivals and departures. Where will he go from here? It feels as hopeless as those without work, but it's not. He has all those miles; he can go anywhere he wants.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." Mick Jagger

Cocktail Hour
Drinking cable suggestion: How To Make It In America

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

Happy Easter!

Hi everyone! Hope you're having a wonderful Easter weekend. I'll be back to posting tomorrow, but for now I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading this blog and for all your wonderful comments. Happy Easter!

Sin And The Art Of War

This is dedicated to Rob (check out his wonderful, thoughtful blog www.robsfobs.blogspot.com Thanks so much for the writing prompt!)

Most of success in anything is showing up. That's Woody Allen. As a writer, it's not the writing that's so difficult, it's getting started and making time for it. Same with athletic pursuits. And I believe so it is with sin. Most of turning away from sin is not in resisting it, but avoiding it. One can resist sin, but if you're in the position of having to resist it, much of the battle is already lost. You are already on death ground, in Art Of War terms. Much of doing what we don't want to do comes from pride, from believing we are beyond temptation. Consider St. Paul -- The thing I want to do, I do not do. The things I do not want to do, I do.

If you know yourself to any degree, you understand some of your fundamental moral weaknesses. To avoid putting yourself in situations where you will no doubt act like an asshole is the first step to wisdom. I think a major component of sin as self-harm. And if you're doing something to hurt yourself, you're separating yourself from others and from God, making yourself dangerous. The good news is you can stop. Go and sin no more. But instead of resisting sin, pushing against inward and outward flaws and temptations, why not avoid them? It's a different way of thinking about the struggle. Avoid the blows instead of trying not to get knocked out. Avoid death ground.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Being with people who make you feel alone is worse than being alone." World's Greatest Dad

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jazz suggestion for Easter weekend: Kind of Blue Miles Davis

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Saturday!

April Fools!

Thanks for all the blog birthday wishes! I hope you're having a great first of April and nobody is playing any evil little tricks on you. I'll be back on Good Friday with a spell for the Holy Weekend.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I invented the feel no evil monkey." MacKenzie Phillips

Cocktail Hour
Still enjoying Dr. Drew on Sober House. Anybody else watching?

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Altar Call

Years before I became a Catholic, I attended a hellfire and brimstone Baptist church, the kind with the interminable altar call where we were implored to sing all the verses of "Washed in the Blood" or "The Old Rugged Cross." It was a small church and almost everyone had already been "saved." So the call mainly appealed to people who wished to "rededicate" their lives to Christ. It was a strange process filled with drama and excitement. You never knew who might walk down the aisle.

Four years ago, I did my very first blog post. I started the blog without any preconceptions about direction. It's been a wonderful experience; I've met some lovely people, written about some difficult things, had many laughs. I have had unbelievable support (the near death! Note to readers -- do not let your appendix rupture!). And this year I have finished my first memoir, You Are The Camera. I would have never written this book without the blog. So I take this day to rededicate my commitment to my blog. Next year, more pictures (fashion, fun, weird places), more of my beloved Detroit, more crackpot opinions, stories from the past, observations about the future. Thanks to all of you for reading, always. Without you, this wouldn't exist.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"This hair is from Detroit." "Maybe it ought to go back there." Chris Rock trying to sell hair in his documentary Good Hair

Cocktail Hour
Drink some champagne soon -- spring is here!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

Installation Continues In The Next Room

My hands used to blister and rip open after a time on the parallel bars. These were called rips by gymnasts and were hugely painful. You had to chalk up before hitting your routine and the chalk made the rips burn. The only way to get around it was an evil liquid called Tough Skin which felt like pouring liquid fire on an open sore. After, the sore closed up and formed a callous so the show could go on.

I wasn't very good at the bars. My strength was always the floor. Yes, these two lines are examples of self-service humor. You can make up your own joke. But I did have a perverse enjoyment of the callous-forming process. I haven't seen Tough Skin in years, but I think about it when I'm in pain and need to get over it quickly. Your hands and what they are dealt are always changing.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"When we cannot change a situation, we are forced to change ourselves." Victor Frankel

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: The Secret Lives of Pippa Lee

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Saturday! In honor of Earth Day, I'm taking the day off. I'll be back tomorrow with the rest of the story . . . (Paul Harvey voice). Hope you're having a great weekend.

Become A Photograph

http://www.wordle.net/

The Evil Eye

You guys know that my luck has been all but perfect and so it goes without saying that I know everything in the world. But here's a mystery that has troubled me since the beginning of time, the jinx or the evil eye. My older female relatives always warned that as soon as you speak of something in glowing terms, you lose it. I already wrote about Jesse James' first mistress (and then there were four!) and how much I loathe the kiss and tell. But here's another question that the scandal brings up for me, unrelated to the various doomed tattooed love mistresses on Jesse's gun magazine of misery. When you give voice to something wonderful (ie, Sandra Bullock at the various awards shows, praising her husband), do you put yourself at risk?

The first time I managed to water ski, I remember not thinking at all. My dad's friend Larry had sat with me in the water, smoking a cigarette while I put on the child skis. It was labor day, the summer fading, a sad holiday filled with inchoate longing. I had tried all summer to ski, my face bunched up in concentration. I had just damn near given up on the idea. So I lifted out of the water without realizing it and went for a bit until I realized I was skiing. Then I got nervous and fell into the wake. That was my first zen moment when I realized I could do something if I didn't think about it which was counter intuitive to all my usual striving. I remember years ago when my marriage was failing, I put a picture on my desk and my next boyfriend put a post-it note on it that said, "Stop flaunting your happy little love affair. It makes the rest of us depressed." I wasn't flaunting, I was showing the flag, the one that let everyone know I was drowning, not waving.


Michelle's Spell of the Day
"To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute." Vladimir Nabokov

Cocktail Hour
Drinking documentary suggestion: Good Hair

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Say A Little Prayer For Me

Alert: Spoilers for Nurse Jackie!

Let me just start by saying I love the Showtime series, Nurse Jackie which had its season premiere last night. Edie Falco (Carmella Soprano for a time on another brilliant show, my favorite show in the universe) plays Nurse Jackie, a ER nurse in All Saints, a hospital in NYC. She also happens to be a pill-addicted adultress with two little girls. Last season, she had an affair with the hospital pharmacist Eddie (how much was love and how much was Vicodan is one of the gray areas this series skirts with ease) which blew up by the end of the season. He found out about her husband and children. The season opens with him attempting suicide and ending up in Nurse Jackie's care. But the chilling thing is this -- he didn't want to die. He wanted to see Jackie because she wasn't answering her calls. He took just enough pills to land in the emergency. She looks at him in horror. Like Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, she knows what has happened. Eddie is a bunny boiler.

You see lots of female crazies of this variety on television and movies, the Play Misty For Me types, the women who can't let go. We all know the type. But we seldom see men who aren't violent, but as Glen Close famously says, will not be ignored. What will Jackie do? Her supply is low and her nerves are shot. We end on a shot of Nurse Jackie, staring in the mirror. The rest of the season is going to be about what she sees looking back.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Not even the gods fight against necessity." Simonides

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion: www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

You Are The Camera

Hi everyone! Hope you had a great weekend, complete with the first day of my least favorite season. I'm still working on my FINAL revision (thanks for all comments that have helped -- past, present, future) of You Are The Camera. I'm in whatever metaphor you prefer -- death throes, labor pain, final stretch, last mile, . . . Thanks to all for your patience -- email returned tomorrow, I promise, pinky swear!

In sad news, Charles' (of Razored Zen) mother died this weekend. Please send him and his lovely wife Lana all your good energies and thoughts at this time.

I'll be back Tuesday -- be good, my dears!

What I Did For Love

I always wanted to be a dancer, to wear the leotards and be surrounded by sophisticated worldly choreographers like Balanchine and Twyla Tharp who would create dances for me. I wanted to live in New York City and to suffer for my art. I was big on suffering in those days like most young people who don't know that life doles out plenty of it and none of it is particularly glamorous. Of course, I lived in Mineral Wells, Texas so I had to settle for a beginning jazz class from a woman who was being stalked by someone long before the term had been coined. The stalker would call the dance studio and threaten to kill her or breathe heavily or hang up. Those were the days of land lines when you knew when someone hung up on you and didn't just lose the connection. These calls terrified my teacher and created a real mood kill as the class danced to Aretha Franklin's "Highway of Love."

My class wasn't like the book my dad bought me, Dancing!, a book that I desperately wanted and we couldn't well afford (twelve dollars in paperback was a lot of money for a book at that point). When I did get it, I read it obsessively. It includes lots of stories about the New York City of the 1970s, and its propensity for being both magical and dangerous. This was as close to the dancer's life as I would ever get. I didn't want it, not really. I wanted the trappings. A dancer's life is equal parts despair and hope and pain which plays out brilliantly in Every Little Step, a documentary that follows the process of auditions and call backs during the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line. There is great footage from the 70s, during the creation of the musical and like Woody Allen, A Chorus Line has its own font which always brings up a feeling of nostalgia for a time I never knew. What is the word for mourning a life you never had? I suppose it's all dead space, like the dial tones of the past that we don't hear anymore.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury." Twyla Tharp

Cocktail Hour
Anyone reading anything good right now? You guys tell me!

Benedictions and Maledictions

Go And Sin No More

Coming to the end of a week where women (Rielle Hunter, Michelle McGree) have no shame. My people, my people. Let's start at the beginning. Men and women cheat. This sucks. The men in these sagas are responsible for breaking their marriage vows. That ain't good. But must their mistresses pose provocatively in magazines and tell all the dirty details about the illicit sex they had? Including nicknames for private parts? Including pet names for the men?

Obviously, I don't know any of the players in these scenarios. The skanked out pictures of Michelle McGee posing with a Nazi armband make me glad not to know her. She claims she meant no harm by it and the WP tattooed on her legs doesn't stand for white power but instead wet pussy. That women is ALL class. Okay, I'm not the type to typically cast stones. We're all human, we all make mistakes. I'm not going to give a sermon on adultery. But it's the insult to injury part of this scenario that gives me pause. Rielle without pants next to a stuffed Barney claiming that she sympathizes with Elizabeth? Michelle outing her affair with Jesse a couple of weeks after Sandra Bullock gives round after round of interviews, talking about how much she loves her husband? I think of Jesus and the adulteress, about how he told her to go and sin no more. I'm thinking if Jesus imagined said adulteress going to In Touch or GQ and telling all the details, He'd do one more thing, the thing He did in the shortest verse in the Bible -- weep.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
“When we take one step toward to God, he takes seven steps toward us.” Indian Proverb

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion: www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday! And in response to Dave, I'm a little younger than Hank, but not much. Hanging on in the late thirties!

The Last Laundromat

Hey everyone -- on what would have been Hank's fortieth birthday, I give you one of his poems from the infamous laundromat trilogy. I'll be back tomorrow with more excitment!

The Laundromat Trilogy, Part Three:
You Head So Big by Hank D. Ballenger

This is the last laundromat poem,
I promise.
I've moved to a better-appointed apartment complex.

I was dividing my attention
between Bukowski's Septuagenarian Stew,
my clothes in dryer four,
and a man to my right teaching a little boy
how to play the dozens.

"Your head's so big
you can wear a phone booth
for an earring."
I'd been watching this little drama
since the spin cycle.
Seems Mom,
who stayed well on the other side
of the washeteria most of the time,
was testing this man.

"Well, you head so big
it look like a dinosaur."
"Any man," I imagine her saying,
"can be good to a child every other weekend or so,
take him places,
buy him treats.
Let's see how he handles the real
day-to-day kind of stuff."

"Your head's so big
you need a fork lift for a hat-rack."

Two things were clear:
the little boy had been through this before,
and trying to teach a seven-year-old
how to play the dozens
was a bad idea.

"Well, you head so big,
it look like a cow."
"No, Thomas, that won't work.
It's not funny."
"Yeah it is, you look like a cow."
"No, that's not funny, it's just strange.
Say something else."

"You say something else."
I wanted to help him out;
but dozens for the Disney crowd
is not my speciality.
All the lines I know are strictly NC-17.
He seemed like a nice guy.
He even kept his cool when the kid talked
about his "other daddy" and his "first daddy."

"Your head's so big
they post hurricane warnings
every time you get a cold."
Good one. Go for snot.
Snot works.

Picture if you will a group of first-graders
on a playground
shot from the waist down,
a Gap Kids logo in the bottom
right corner of the screen.

"Best pickle joke," one says.
"That's a given," another replies,
kicking a soccer ball, "What's big and green
and fights bad guys?"
In chorus: "A Mighty Morphin' Power Pickle!"
Kids that age are natural born surrealists.
I guess Bukowski never grew out of it.

"You head so big
they post warnings
when you get a cold."
"That's not funny."
"Yeah it is."
"You just said the same thing I did."
"Well, it was funny."
"But that's not the way it goes, Thomas.
You have to say something funny and different."

Tell me about it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
“Most wretched men are cradled to poetry by wrong: they learn in suffering what they teach in song”

Cocktail Hour
Drinking documentary suggestion: Every Little Step (plan on writing about this soon -- it's really great.)

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!

Shine On Your Grave

Here's a section of a longer piece -- working away! Hope you're having a good St. Patrick's Day and saving your energy for the green beer later tonight.

During my senior year of high school, there were no quotes on the chalkboard from Dr. E. Amer to read each day. Hank had left for college, taking his poetry and tidbits of wisdom with him. In junior high, he'd come up with a pen name to make his statement. It took me a few months to realize Dr. E. Amer was Hank, the name a clever nod to his romantic vision of himself as a dreamer, a perception that degenerated even more quickly than his sight. I always dreaded the days when Hank didn't leave a message on the board and wrote "Dr. E. Amer is on vacation."

Now he was always on vacation and I marked off the days until I left for college on a large promotional calender complements of K-Bobs, the local steakhouse where my friend Robin worked. Robin had one blue eye and one green, like a cat, and she did little tabs of LSD she brought to homeroom almost every morning. Despite my miseries, I couldn't bring myself to try it. Robin wore smeared red lipstick and admitted to me that she often woke up in the morning, unaware of what happened the previous night.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"May the light of heaven shine on your grave." Irish blessing

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion: www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Bluebird Singing A Song

Hi everyone! Iggy and the Stooges are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, St. Patrick's Day is looming, and spring is on the way. Here's a couple of shots from the Blue Bird Inn (where I was posed in my last post) in its heyday of the 1940s and 50s. In answer to my old buddy Mark's question, this is the Blue Bird in Detroit. I'm still blasting away on what I hope is the final revision of my big project. Will post some new writing tomorrow.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am." Joan Jett

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Just Kids Patti Smith

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday! Thanks so Shea for the lovely compliment! And good to see you, MW!

The Stars Are Out Tonight

Mother loved to pose my sister and I in the crook of the big tree in the front yard, the one overgrown by oak and brush. You'd have to pick your way through the weeds and rocks to get to the center where you'd sit for the long minutes it took to get the picture. Mother let many snakes out by this tree, the ones she didn't kill and use for decorations, saying that they deserved a good life in nature. The tree sat pretty close to our house and needless to say, I felt as if these creatures might find their way back to our abode where they would try to enjoy the good life in our house.

These tree pictures always had a haunted look, mostly because of the fear of sitting in a place where you couldn't see what was under your feet. The rustling could be anything. I thought of that old Vacation Bible School song about the wise man building his house upon the rock and the foolish man building his house upon the sand. What if you built your house on something you couldn't understand?

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"He sees the city asleep at night/ He sees the stars are out tonight/ And all of it is yours and mine." Iggy Pop

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion: www.artjewelrydesign.com/
Also check out The J Spot for a great post on Iggy by my dear Jodi!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

Search And Destroy

Happy Sunday! I hope you're all having a good weekend. I'll be back tonight with a longer post and will be able to return all e-mail! Michigan's own, The Stooges, are being inducted (FINALLY) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow. Iggy, as usual, is circumspect about the whole thing, saying "Well, they can kick you out, but at least you could say you were in it."

Negative Given

I worked in a dark room once, one of my first jobs at a newspaper. I didn't have a clue what I was doing which wasn't anything new in those days. A precedent, you might say, started when I was in first grade and was instructed to fold a grocery bag. All the other kids were folding their bags while I watched, fluffing my in a vain effort to look as though I knew what I was doing. Again, this problem resurfaced when we had tamales for lunch; I didn't realize they were wrapped in paper and subsequently ate the tamale, paper in all, not knowing any better until I saw all the dead soldiers on the other kid's plates. Not a good moment. But the dark room was a solitary humiliation; I ruined a lot of pictures. Even so, I loved the moment when you could see what was starting to appear on the negative. Like a Polaroid, the image didn't appear all at once.

I suppose this applies to the writing life or all of life really. We prophesy in part. Hindsight, that evil bitch that lives to haunt us, is always ever so twenty/twenty. Famous last words -- it seemed like a good idea at the time. Or as Hank used to say, You knew the assignment was dangerous when you took it. (He mostly said this to guys who complained about dating me. Awesome.) But even so, I have a nostalgia for the days when everything wasn't so instant. Which, of course, is totally satisfied by writing. Nothing instant about that process! And when you process all the negatives, you still must bring it to the light.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already.. the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of." Cindy Sherman

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion:
www.artjewelrydesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday! Must agree with Heff -- Feldman is the more annoying of the two Coreys. Please send lots of love to my buddy Mark, aka The Walking Man. I'm not at liberty to say more, but there you have it!

The Two Coreys

I want to write a long blog post about the nature of addiction and a kind of memoriam to Corey Haim, but I'm in the midst of the final push of a big project so I'm going to wait until tomorrow. I hope everyone is having a good week!

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"It basically comes down to that word: Love. I guess that's what it's all about." Corey Haim

Cocktail Hour
Drinking cocktail suggestion: www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

Show Your Work

I read a story about a Korean couple who let their five month old baby starve to death while they went to a cybercafe where they played with and nurtured a virtual child for upwards of twelve hours a day. This, even I have to say, is bizarre. But I'm not going to lecture about the dangers of the internet (like everything else, best in moderation, prone to abuses) or the evils of games like Second Life or Farmville (hey, we all have time to kill -- I like to clean which isn't exactly excitment city, to each his own). It's got me thinking about what we feed in our lives -- real babies or virtual ones. It's easy to be deceived into thinking that we're feeding our most alive impulses when we're often only medicating impulses.

Lately, I've had to take a very different approach with my writing which involves getting back to the basics of what I knew a long time ago -- it takes as long as it takes, it pays to study other models until you want to stab your eyes out, and you must throw out a lot even when it pains you. Oh, let's face it -- it always pains you. I've had to feed the real baby and ignore the fun stuff, the glitter and bells and whistles. You think this stuff would be pretty basic. But it's not for me. In math classes, I remember teachers always telling me, You got to the answer the hardest way a person could. Don't I know it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it." Confucius

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion:
www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Dreaming In Hindi

I just finished a beautiful memoir titled Dreaming In Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich. I'm not a person with a tremendous interest in foreign languages or other cultures except as metaphors I can use in writing which I'm sure the other cultures appreciate tremendously. But I am interested in words more than anything else and Katherine (as I call her in my mind as I'm certain we will become fast friends)writes elegantly about the way words shape our reality. As one linguist she quotes points out, If you speak one language, you have a certain reality and if you speak another language, your reality changes. Her first memoir (The Red Devil) is about another foreign country, a harsh terrible terrain no one goes to unless forced -- the land of cancer. My mother died of it, and I have many friends who are contending with various incarnations of the disease. I appreciate the frankness with which she writes, the self-deprecating humor and astute observation.

I'm in the homestretch of revising my big project (and yes, Mark is right -- it's the revising that's a bitch). It's something that hasn't been easy at all. I had to put the project away a few times before seeing it clearly. Which is the way Katherine describes learning Hindi -- hitting walls, letting it go, coming to a new understanding when she quits trying. It's kind of like the old chestnut about getting a boyfriend when you're not looking. Effort is everything until you hit the wall. Then you must wait. Which I guess is okay. After all, in VBS ever so long ago, we all had to pick a fruit of the spirit out of a hat. I got long suffering, which made everyone laugh. Even then I looked the part.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star." Sojourner Truth

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelery suggestion:
www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
Largely pleased by the Oscars awards. I really liked The Hurt Locker. Sad that A Serious Man didn't win anything (I thought it was pretty brilliant and tons better than No Country For Old Men). Yay for Jeff Bridges -- the dude most certainly abides! As do I -- I'll be with all the Motor City Burning Press people as soon as I put the last page of this awful revision to bed.

Academy Award Night

Happy Sunday, everyone! I'm gearing up for the Academy Awards (I'm a sucker for the clothes, bad speeches, the last Barbara Walters interview show, etc.) and thankful for all the comments. I liked a lot of the movies this year -- Crazy Heart, The Hurt Locker, Up In The Air (which I fear won't win anything because its not a feel good movie and is definitely George Clooney's best role for my money), Precious. I hated Inglorius Basterds and won't even go near Avatar. I'll be back tomorrow with more serious topics, but until then, have a good rest of the weekend, my dears!

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm." Kathryn Bigelow

Cocktail Hour
Drinking jewelry suggestion:
www.jewelryartdesigns.com

Benedictions and Maledictions
In response to Lana's comment, thank you! Hello Kitty came all the way from a McDonald's in Singapore from my dear friend Angela. She's seen the world, but the road for her really does end in Detroit.

Friday Delights

Hello Kitty received a beautiful set of rings from her dear friend Sarah at Jewelry Art Designs. Check out her wonderful site with the following link! I think the cut and glitter of these two pieces is spectacular.

Gearing up for the Academy Awards (I'll be wearing little outfits and practicing my speech for the best screenplay I didn't write -- my favorite look for accepting an award comes from Larry McMurtry who wore jeans while accepting an Academy Award for Brokeback Mountain). Any of you guys pulling for someone in particular? Of course, I LOVE Jeff Bridges (thanks for the correction-- I always get his name wrong) and have since his debut in Last Picture Show. Happy Friday!

http://www.jewelryartdesigns.com/

Jacob And The Angel

Been writing a lot lately which makes the rest of life fall away in certain regards. David Foster Wallace wrote an excellent essay on this problem -- "The Nature of the Fun." When you are in the finishing stages of a project, you tend to let go of the reins of control. Dishes don't get done, clothes tend to be, well, butt ugly (note Michael Douglas' writing outfit in Wonderboys), phone calls are unreturned. After the whole catastrophe is put to bed (as much as anything can be put to bed as far as writing is concerned), you spend your time trying to make Humpty Dumpty fit back together again.

I'm not a natural writer. Like most people, I face all the usual resistances. Resistance is a tricky little demon that reappears in different forms all the time. Mine usually takes the form of this particular incantation -- you'll write better when . . . fill in the blank. When you've worked out, when you're not so tired, when you have everything in order, when you have flossed your teeth. I hate this motherfucking demon because it's so insidious, it sounds so reasonable. The way to work around it for me is to demand a certain page count. Weirdly, after I do my pages, those pressing demon demands don't seem at all attractive. I don't have any energy for them at all, really. The demon, defeated on a basic level for the day says, Well, since you're too tired to do anything else, you might as well write. At least you're sitting. Damn, that demon is clever! The next day is all about the same half-nelson. You wrestle with the angel and if you're as smart as Jacob, you demand something from that angel, a mark that says what you did and that it wasn't in vain.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach." — Mother Angelica

Cocktail Hour
Drinking documentary suggestion: Small Town, Gay Bar

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday! Thanks to all for being so patient while I pull myself out of torpor and respond to all emails, requests, etc. in the next two days. Also, I shall be wearing the new ring -- camera should be fixed in a couple of days.

Upside Down Detroit

Hello all! Here's a picture of my fair city. Hope you're having a good week -- I'll be posting more writing soon. My next post will be on balance between writing and everything else.

Every Little Step

Because my brain is still reeling from the recent rewrite I did, I'm at a loss for something to write about today. It does happen! So I cast this question to you -- most important thing about writing, least important thing about writing?

Also, I saw Roger Ebert on Oprah. Impressive and wonderful as always.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself." Christopher Isherwood

Cocktail Hour
Drinking documentary suggestion: Every Little Step

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday! Rest in peace, Barry Hannah!

Hope Chest

Here's a poem that first appeared in Art Times. I'll be back with new stuff soon -- spring is on the way!

Hope Chest for the Contemporary Single Girl

You start out hopeful, that's a given.
You dress better, say smarter things.
Hide the Prozac, the Paxil, the little
pills to take the edge off. You won't
be needing those little friends! Marvel
at how the dust on your computer sparkles.
How could you have missed this beauty?
You wait for those three words that will
change your everything, not "where's
the remote" or "get off me." The day
will come. Now someone else can plan
your elaborate yet tasteful funeral instead
of you dying alone eaten by your cats.
See -- everything does work out in the end!

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The main thing is to care. Care very hard, even if it is only a game you are playing." Billie Jean King

Cocktail Hour
Beautiful jewelery: www.jewelryartdesigns.com -- I'll be modeling a ring from this collection as soon as my camera is fixed.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!

Dr. E. Amer Is On Vacation

Eight years ago today, Hank D. Ballenger died. I've written about him a lot on this blog and have just finished a manuscript that includes much of his sage advice and crazy outlaw ways. He was easily the funniest, most fearless person I ever knew. I met him when we were really young and got to know him best in high school when he went by the pen name, Dr. E. Amer. He was a year ahead of me and every day he would write on the board a different quote or some line of his own poetry. Even though I knew Hank, it took me a long time to realize he was the one writing the quotes because of his alias.

I always looked forward to these daily quotes -- they acted as a sort of omen or portent or horoscope for the day. Of course, like all of us, he wore out from time to time and wrote "Dr. E. Amer is on vacation." I always dreaded these absences -- I missed my quote of the day, whether it be from Ginsberg ("I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness") -- sitting in Mineral Wells High School, I nodded furiously, I had seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness!, or Stevie Smith who seemed to both wave and drown or Hank himself, such as in the following poem, "I come out here to indulge/ My Blind Lemon Jefferson fantasy./I play guitar, yes/I sing, yes/But my "Prison Cell Blues"/Lacks a certain conviction,/And, as a blind man,/ I am rather ambivalent/ On the subject of tin cups." But in the spring of each year, Dr. E. Amer would take more vacations, particularly before the weekends or spring break. Spring fever, I suppose. I never liked the season. But now I like to think that Hank isn't dead, but on vacation, just like his youthful hopeful alter ego, and that one day I'll come back to see a new quote where only absence had been the day before.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Words and memories/Are the only curses/ I believe in anymore./ My words,/ Your memories." Hank D. Ballenger

Cocktail Hour
Beautiful jewelery coming up as promised -- my camera chose this exact moment to go on the fritz so I promise by mid-week, you will have pictures and a new link, my lovelies!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday! Thanks so much for all the supportive thoughts and wishes for finishing up my project. Today I complete all corrections and will return to my usually chatty, emailing returning self.

Apocalypse Now

Hi to all -- sorry about my absence for a couple of days. Thanks so much for the thoughtful comments on revision and memoir, especially to Keith -- I remember that story ever so well! As of late, I'm working hard to bring a bunch of material together. I enjoy revision to a point, but also find my mind turning to jello under the pressure of heavy revision and find myself in a bit of a lost space, kind of like in Apocalypse Now -- We all wanted to go home, but I'd been back and realized it no longer existed. And in a side note to Dave, I do have some lovely new jewelry to show for this weekend(the ring you noticed I have had for quite some time) and a great website for you guys to check out with said lovely rings, earrings, and necklaces. I'll be linking in to the side bar so look for it in the next couple of days. Please send all your energies, prayers, and thoughts my way as I enter the home stretch of this latest revision. Happy Friday!

Remember Me

Hi everyone -- hope you're having a good week! I'm working very hard on a new draft of some old material so if you have any revision advice or comments about the process (do you like it better than the first draft or is it more tedious), please feel free to leave them. I'm going to post an old poem today as we lead up to my old friend Hank's death day (Sunday) and will be back at you tomorrow.

Remember Me On This Computer

I'm not contagious, the woman on the plane
said. I just had some face work done.
It's not healing like they said it would.
We talked during the flight, and I discovered
that she had carried a list of pallbearers
in her purse since she was twenty-one. I add
and delete all the time, she said. The vagaries
of the heart! The kind of detail you'd love,
I thought, remembering your pallbearers, one my
ex-husband, another an ex-boyfriend. The typo
on your funeral program, What A Fried We Have In Jesus
and how that would have made you laugh. How my dad
laid his hand on your casket and said Good-bye, old buddy
and then the sound of your casket being lowered
into the ground. There is no other sound like it.


Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I don't need no make-up, I got real scars." Tom Waits

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: World's Greatest Dad

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!