You Either Have It Or You Don't

Here's some Sunday fiction. This story was first published in Hayden's Ferry Review.

You Either Have It Or You Don't

I'm sitting at my desk, trying to spell "surprise." I think I've got it right, but the longer I look at it, the more wrong it seems. Instead of being the receptionist this morning, I have to take pictures and write a story about our center, a non-profit, church-owned social work outreach program on the eastside of Detroit. Each year, every center turns in a story that the head branch pieces together for a booklet called A Day in the Life. I got the assignment because nobody else has the time or desire, and I'm considered a writer, because I'm working on a thesis in English, documenting examples of the process by which people make entire stories about secondary characters or plot pieces of larger narratives, like John Gardner's Grendel. Like everything else, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But now that I've moved two thousand miles away from my university and haven't so much as looked at a book on my subject since I got here three months ago, I'm not so sure.

"Hey, do something useful. I need a picture," I say to the bookkeeper, thinking about how photography was another degree I'd tried and not finished.

"United Way: people helping people," he says in an over-sincere announcer voice, then makes to put the petty cash in his wallet.

He's not too bad. I call him Tandy Boy because he uses the only computer in the office, an antiquated PC years behind most office technology. Before I started working here, he was the only one in the office who knew how to use any computer. The rest of the social workers type everything on ancient IBM Selectrics. I've learned how to load correctable tape. We aren't allowed to use Liquid Paper because our boss says that shows we saw the error, but it doesn't make it look better. This is the non-profit, social work equivalent of "we were poor, but we were always clean."

Tandy Boy and I work on the second floor with all the main offices: home health services, drug counselling, medication vouchers for the elderly and low-income. Directly below us is an adult day care center that specializes in dementia patients. Near the end of the day, I lean over the balcony feeling like Olivia de Haviland in The Snake Pit and watch the clients sit and watch television, some days Sesame Street, yesterday some political funeral on CNN.

"So, have you decided what you're going to write about?" he asks.

"I can't even spell today, much less write."

He interrupts. "Take a picture of Dolores. I'm supposed to unplug her toilet today if she'll let me in."

In addition to keeping the books, Tandy Boy works chore service, and today he must see Dolores Pringle, a notorious repeat recipient of said service, a middle-aged schizophrenic with long black hair, pale skin, and a voice that drops from normal to registers best described as spooky in a matter of seconds. Once she came in for a medication voucher and saw me. She walked by my desk and in the most certain of tones said, "I don't like the way you look. You never know what's going to happen," and I thought, Finally, someone who knows me.
Sometimes what you leave behind is as telling as what you take. When I moved here three months ago, I didn't want to pack much. Instead, I gave almost all of my possessions away. It was a variation on my favorite childhood game: pretending I was dying and making lists of my toys and who would get them when I was gone. My mother never made that kind of list even when it was clear she needed to.

That was nine months ago, so my boyfriend Stephen never met her. He hasn't met my father, either, a man I've seen with increasing irregularity for the last nineteen years. I started dating Stephen four months before he was scheduled to graduate and move to Detroit to start his new job as chairman of an English department at a frou-frou prep school in Grosse Pointe. It's a long way from Texas, where we met and where I've lived my entire life.
On our first date, we went to the movies. We were there at the perfect time for only one showing, a movie in which Kevin Costner delivers mail after a massive nuclear war, restoring faith in America. My first thought was, Everyone's dead or maimed and you're still getting your Discover bill and this is supposed to make you feel better?

But after it was over, he said, "Boy, if we can make it through that movie, we can make it through anything."

There's a rebellion of sorts downstairs after Tandy Boy leaves. One of the men, Bill, beats a table with his cane because a program aide spelled macaroni incorrectly. He's yelling,
"Goddamnit, I've lived ninety-five years, I know how to spell macaroni and that's not it, black girl."

In the background, Frank Sinatra sings "Witchcraft" and two women wander about, both clutching dolls. Many of the patients downstairs have dolls they take care of and give names to, words that aren't really names, like Sweetheart and Baby. For some of the patients, the dolls are more real than the program aides who take care of them. There is a Tibetan word for this, a word I can't remember, for the belief that objects can be animated by living people.

I hear someone crying, saying, "My baby. She's dead."

"That's okay, she's just sleeping. Your daughter's gonna be here in a minute," one of the program aides says.
Bill continues to beat away with his cane.

"What's going on down there?" asks one of the social workers, a thirty-something anorexic with honey-blonde hair down to her waist.

"Semantics discussion," I say.

Since I've arrived here, I have gotten almost as thin as she is, but it's not the same. I start to eat, but get distracted and nervous and the food turns cold. I can't force it down. My lack of appetite is a failure of will, not a triumph.

This woman with her beautiful hair will say, "God, I'm so hungry, but I don't know what I want." She'll pace around the food at office parties, eating the tops off cupcakes, then throwing the rest in the trash when she thinks no one is looking.

There was one other time I became thin enough to be worried. My mother took me to her doctor who talked to me for a long time. I don't remember what I said, only that I convinced him I was happy and healthy without a care in the world.

"She does these cartwheels and handstands all over the house," my mother said. "I can just see the calories fly off her."

My mother was trying to diet at this time herself because the thyroid medication left her metabolism sluggish. Radiation implants buried deep inside her, she'd recovered enough to worry about the way she looked.

"Do me a favor, okay? Teach your mother to do cartwheels," the doctor said on our way out the door.

Trying to get away from the phones and noise long enough to write, I lock myself in the student intern office. Like everything else here, I feel like I'm stepping back in time twenty years. Even the books in this office are from the seventies. There's some illustrated children's books: Free to Be You and Me and You Have the Right, stories about kids breaking through gender lines and becoming self-actualized. And there's an old textbook I've looked through to kill time called Deviancy and Social Behavior with studies about religious cults and specialized populations, like prisoners of war and EST participants.

When I set all of my notes in front of me, I feel like I've pulled out everything in my closet, and I don't have the energy to figure out how it all fits together. Dementia patients watching Wishbone, a show about the adventures of a talking dog. Medication vouchers for oncology drugs so expensive I would have to save a month's worth of paychecks for a refill. I don't know where to start. It's this feeling of being overwhelmed that makes me get rid of things. My boyfriend is the opposite. He saves everything, but has none of the necessities. When I offered him a frying pan once, he was aghast, saying, "I'll never use that," as if I were trying to give him heart-shaped muffin tins or corn-cob skewers. Once upon a time, this lack of commitment to the things of this world would have seemed to me a bad sign.

But graduate school changed me. I stopped wanting traditional arrangements, including the one I had. In graduate school, we had basement offices with no windows, completely sealed from the rest of the world. This office is not so different. Second floor, but still no windows, no suggestion of the outside.

Even so, it's not the worst work I've ever done. People here have a sense of perspective lacking in the university. One of my first days here I stayed on my knees for the good part of eight hours, filing in bottom cabinets. An older women with a cigarette-ruined voice looked at me and said, "Honey, you're not supposed to get on your knees for anyone but your boyfriend or your husband."

And I mean, really, how can you argue with that?

The longer I spend not writing my thesis, the more I think about this: you have two jobs in life -- to do what you have to do and to explain why you are doing it. The easier the first part is, the harder the explanation. Nobody asks you to justify being a heart surgeon, but a receptionist? I think by not writing my thesis, I am defining myself, much the same way people who don't drink anymore want to call themselves alcoholics.

My whole life is like this in some ways. When friends from home ask if I'm meeting people, I say yes, which is true, but not the answer to the question they mean to ask. I don't want to meet people; I know some already. The difficulties of explaining behavior, personality, the whole why I do what I do, it's just not something I want to think about here. But I do think about a job I was offered before I moved, a tech writing job that offered a lot more money than I've ever made, a nice-sized office instead of a cubicle, and something I could say I did at the end of the day when I went home. It was more tempting than I've confessed.

In the middle of the afternoon, we get a person to come in and help, someone we refer to somewhat oxymoronically as a court-ordered community service volunteer. This young man shows up in a pair of long cut-offs, a shirt that says "Mudhoney" and bulky socks that don’t quite hide the tether strapped to his ankle. The first thing he asks is, "What's the ordeal here?" and it's my job to manage his time for the afternoon because my boss is away attending a meeting at the downtown office.

We get lots of court-ordered community service volunteers, about one a month. The question we always ask is, Why are you here, followed by, How much time do you have to do? I've been asked the same questions, more subtly, and I envy the volunteers their direct answers, the way they know what they did and how much time they will spend before they wipe the slate clean. Today's volunteer possessed ten ounces of marijuana and was caught driving under the influence. He has twenty-eight days before he's free. I take out the list my boss left concerning his duties, reach into the supply closet. I hand him a toilet scrubber and some Comet. I direct him to his task.

"It's my thirtieth birthday today," he says. "I didn't think it would be like this."

Last week was my twenty-seventh birthday. Two weeks ago my ex-husband called to tell me he was getting married on my birthday to a girl he met in a conversational English class six months ago, the kind of class structured so that native speakers could learn a foreign language while speaking English with non-native speakers.

When I got off the phone, Stephen asked me who it was.

"My ex-husband is getting married to his Thai sweetheart at a Buddhist retreat outside of Denton on my birthday and wants to know if we want an invitation."

"You'll come over to my side about not having a phone," he said.

I called my best friend and told her about it. I knew she would understand because her ex-fiancé Jim had e-mailed her on her birthday to tell her he was getting married.

"I thought Jim was about as low as you could go," she said. "The crown passes."

"It was the day the Thai calendar ordained," I said, repeating my ex's tentative explanation for the hostility of the date.

"He said that? So where is he marrying his war-bride, his Saigon bar girl, his Gary Snyder fantasy?"

I told her it was the same Buddhist retreat where our friend Andy Furlow had gone to dry out. Andy couldn't afford rehab so he decided that two weeks with only vegetarian meals and meditating might set him right. He lasted a day before he and everybody else at the retreat thought that he definitely should have a drink and that his not drinking only made everybody suffer. As for myself, if I gave up drinking now, I'd be forfeiting a major source of calories. When I go to the store, I think of mixers as a way of getting vitamins orange juice with calcium for screwdrivers (early precaution against osteoporosis), limes and lemons for gin and tonics (a sure cure for scurvy), and cranberry juice to mix with vodka (that time-honored preventative for the dreaded urinary tract infection).

As for my birthday, I got what I wanted.

I'd hinted that what I really needed was a good medical reference book, and Stephen didn't ask why, he just bought one. I looked up the final cancer my mother had, uterine, a second time around with that particular kind, and the operation she'd had. The book reads, "Total exoneration involves removal of all pelvic organs. Instruct the patient about postoperative procedures: I.V. therapy, central venous pressure catheter, blood drainage system, and an unsutured perineal wound with gauze packing. Make sure the patient understands that her vagina will be removed."

I put the book down and didn't read anything else for the rest of the day.

Once my mother bought me a make-up kit for my birthday. The lipstick didn't match my skin tone. But there was another lipstick in the packet designed to change the shade of what you were wearing if you didn't like it. The lesson seemed to be that everything is salvageable if you put in the effort.

In the afternoon, Tandy Boy returns from his chore and sits at the computer, downloading Star Wars files from the Internet. Without the boss here, things are slow so we make up names for Barbie Dolls based on our clientele. Senior Citizen Barbie says, "If I could do it myself, I would." Court-Ordered Community Service Ken says, "It wasn't my gun in the car; it was my son's, but the fucked-up part is that the police can nail you on that just like it was your own." Tandy Boy's favorite: Psycho Barbie and Walked-On Ken. Psycho Barbie says things like, "Does this dress make me look fat?" and "Let's just be friends." Walked-On Ken has only one line: "Yes, Dear."

I forgive Tandy Boy his slight misogyny which I attribute to what I call his "gay no more" classes. He's in therapy to become a practicing heterosexual, or perhaps more accurately, to remain a non-practicing homosexual. But when we had to throw a breakfast for the office and he said, "Not many people like kiwi, but you need it on the fruit tray for color," I told him that he might want to step up his classes to twice a week.

"Are you going to the circus?" Tandy Boy asks.

"Hadn't thought about it. Not much into the big top, I'm afraid."

"It's going to be cool because there's going to be that family of trapeze artists that died here all those years ago and they're trying the same trick without a net," he says.

I know of that which Tandy Boy speaks. The Wallenda family. They interested me because I read an interview with them last week and one of them said, speaking for the second and third generations that would be performing this terrifying human pyramid on the high wire, that all their life was just spending time waiting for the next performance. The person claimed that everything else was just killing time. And I think now that maybe it's time for me to do the same, make a commitment. Take a leap.

When I want to cry and can't, I think about my mother as a child riding in my grandfather's pick-up truck, her teeth full of cavities. Every week she went with him to get gas because the filling station attendant would give her a handful of hard gum, something she desperately looked forward to even though the gum made her teeth ache, the sweetness inseparable from the pain. Looking back, she'd say, "I loved it even though it hurt," and I think I'm starting to know what she meant.

On my way home, I see a billboard for Chivas Regal, with the caption "You Either Have It Or You Don't." The picture displays a man and woman at a party, done in what I call "Harlem Renaissance" style. Of course, I never see anybody in this neighborhood who looks like they're having this much fun.

What I do see driving home are a bunch of stores charging too much for things people don't really need, words on a burnt-out theater marquee announcing community events like open houses at various parochial schools, and the Thomas Jefferson branch of the Detroit Public Library system.

Reading is one of the things that marks time for me here. The library sits only two blocks from where I live, and if the neighborhood was safer, I could walk. As it is, I drive and stay for hours, looking at books I'd never think twice about anywhere else. Most of the material is outdated -- first aid books from the sixties, old books about photography and psychology and weird sports stuff like You Too Can Canoe. Five copies of the Billie Holiday biography. Surprised by how much I liked that one, I finished it all in one sitting.

Sometimes I check the books out. Once when I was getting in my car, I saw a man with a crack pipe in the alley. He looked at me, and I held up a copy of Scuba Diving Now to show him I didn't have anything of value. He went back to his escape, and I got into the car with mine.

When I get home, Stephen sits on his chair reading a copy of Henry James' first novel, Roderick Hudson, his recreational reading.

"You're home. Yeah," he says, putting down his books and kissing me on the cheek. "If you didn't have that job, you'd be here more. You should quit."

"And do what?"

"Anything you want."

He doesn't say finish the thesis. He amazes me by being the first person who ever loved me and never demanded that I be or do something extraordinary. He's content to pass the time with me watching bad movies, drinking, trying to get me to eat a little something now and then. When my mother would get on my case about "getting my act together," I'd defend myself by saying, "Other people don't have . . . " and she'd cut me off with, "You're not other people."

Once he asked me to tell him something about her.

What's to say? Given a choice between a beautiful dress or one that fit better, she'd insist on getting the dress that fit. I have a closet full of things I can't wear because I bought them thinking I would grow or lose weight to fit them, always seeing myself as I wanted to be, never as I was. So when I started talking about her, I end up telling about me, which may have been what he wanted.

Tonight, Stephen grades papers in the back bedroom, and I sit in front of the television with a notebook, trying to piece together the article for tomorrow. I can't come up with anything, and I think writing my thesis is easier than this and that I really should quit this stupid job, and try to go on from here, quit thinking about going back to school or leaving Detroit, or any of the other options I've kept open by not working on the thesis or thinking about anything else.

On a local cable access channel, there's the circus, and I think of Tandy Boy being there and how he's so devoted to his anti-homosexual classes because he feels he needs to change and how he told me he's acting from a place of courage, not fear like everybody thinks. He thinks he's being brave by giving up something he feels, and I think he's being stupid. It's easy to make that distinction for someone else.

"Hey Stephen. Come out here for a minute. This is going to be incredible. They're going to pyramid without a net."

"What's the big deal, little girl?" he asks, coming out of the back room, pulling the drawstring on his sweat pants tighter.

"It's the Wallendas. They're going to do that trick without a net. Lots of them died last time they did it. It's the second generation now. They're trying it again."

"Why would they do that?" he asks.

But I shush him as they climb on top of each other, one by one, until the last girl climbs on top and positions herself on a chair held by the rest of them, perfect and still for a brief moment, just as they'd envisioned in all the practices. It's something of beauty, the moment where they're doing something other than killing time. They're exactly where they want to be. I'm happy for them.


Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Suns may set and rise again: for us, when our brief light has set, there's the sleep of perpetual night. " Catullus

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: The Re-Up Eminem

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

64 Days until The Sopranos airs!

The Art of Losing

A few days ago, I locked myself out of my house. My first thought besides, you dumbass, was the beautiful Raymond Carver poem, "Locking . . . " an ode to all that he had destroyed and left behind, all that was lost to him behind the glass that he could see, but not return to unless he was willing to wreak havoc on the window that would let him back inside. My second thought was that I might die of exposure because this is Detroit and the D is not the tropics, even with global warming. I tried to break into my house and was both relieved and dismayed to find that I couldn't. I called a friend with a key and twenty minutes later, time I'd like to say I spent in relaxed meditation, but in fact, spent cursing into my scarf, I was back inside. While I sat in the cold, I thought about all the careless things I have done in my life -- I've lost keys, phones, and even managed to throw away a debit card. I looked over at my neighbor's yard from my window and said hello to their beautiful Virgin Mary and St. Francis statues and then saw the vile plaque with a picture of Kokopelli on it. Kokopelli is a southwestern symbol for mischief. Friends, I blame him for my mishap with the keys. I have always hated him, his evil little back hunched over playing the flute. You are an asshole, I said, not quite aware that I was addressing something in which I don't even believe.

My friend arrived; I did not die. I went inside and sat next to my space heater until I worked myself out of my bitter little snit. I could still see Kokpelli from my window! Hateful! I thought about what I might have done had my friend not had the key -- could I have bashed the window and stepped back inside? My tolerance for frustration is low so I wouldn't have been surprised. As it was, I stepped in the door like I owned the place. Of course, my friend only had the key to the back door. You get in, I suppose, any way you can.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"The art of losing isn't hard to master." Elizabeth Bishop

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: The Tao of Steve

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Saturday!

65 days until The Sopranos airs!

Molly Ivins Memorial

I would like to give a belated memorial tribute to the absolutely brilliant and funny Molly Ivins who died on January 31. She was always my favorite columnist in all of Texas. My friends and I read her columns and books with great joy! She will be sorely missed!

"I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults," Molly Ivins, from a March 1992 column.

The End of Things

My friend Hank used to say that February was the shortest month that lasted the longest -- of course, he died on the last day of it, on the heels of Mr. Rogers. He, I suspect, would have appreciated the irony. First off, February has the dreaded Valentine's day and while I appreciate hearts, especially bloody ones, and the color red, I do not like the holiday itself. It is, in a word, evil. It's cold as all billy hell here in Detroit. But there's something about the bleakness that I can't help but enjoy. I like the end of things. That's usually when they get my attention, when everyone else is in the process of bailing out of the boat.

One of my favorite childhood memories was practicing for A Christmas Carol -- shock, surprise, I was the ghost of Christmas past. We practiced in an unheated church basement and when the miserable conditions were revealed, many parents pulled their children out of the production. We didn't even have enough for all the ghosts, much less Scrooge! I remember our very last rehearsal; the show must go on spirit had left, like a raft that had been pricked with a pin and we sat around eating bologna on Wonder Bread. It was cold and lonely, something that Dickens might have been proud to write had he lived in Texas in the 1980s. I munched along happily -- I'd hung in until the bitter end! There weren't many of us, but hey, I was still standing, ready to rattle my chains and tell everyone how it had been. There's something about that last gasp, the faithful survivors. What can I say? Spring is my very least favorite season. Of course, I was born in the month of May.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I have the heart of a young boy in a jar by my desk." Stephen King

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Carrie

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday, dear ones!

67 days until The Sopranos airs!

Change Pose

When I was a model for a beginning figure drawing class, I'd occasionally run into someone who'd seem startled to see me and kept looking at me as if to place me. I didn't recognize you with your clothes on, the aspiring artist would eventually say, once they figured it out. It happened once at a Mr. Ghatti's Pizza Buffet and the guy working the line said, What is it that you do? I had on oversized t-shirt with Ziggy on it saying, Why Me?, blue leggings, and some high-top Reeboks which I thought really fetching (not a good look, to be sure, but it wasn't the Ritz). I didn't mind the work -- I'm good at being still for long periods of time and nudity eventually became as erotic to me as the aforementioned outfit. Clothes or no clothes, I'd already fallen madly (emphasis on mad) with the art professor, a troubled and talented man who slept with damn near everything that moved. Change pose, he would say after a time, and I would. Life seemed luminous with possibility.

I never got to see any of the figure drawings of myself and for this small mercy, I was glad. Aren't you curious?, a friend of mind asked. Umm, no. Was not in the least. All the drawings, I suspected were different. Nobody sees anything the same way. I could only hope they were kind with my thighs. As for myself, I can't even draw a convincing stick figure. In my drawings, the head is always too large for the body and the arms come out for days, while the legs are tiny little stubs. If I'm feeling really ambitious, I put a bow and a ponytail to signify a female and some short, ratty hair for a boy. In my pictures, the sun has a smile on its face even though in real life, I never allow it to touch my skin.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I'm responding with the only vocabulary I have to extraordinary and ordinary situations around me." Sally Mann, photographer

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: White Blood Cells White Stripes

Benedictions and malediction

Thanks for all the sweet comments about the dress in the last photograph. At this point, I'd have to consider it vintage. My friend mentioned in an earlier post (the one who dressed like me) had the dress for a long time and had grown weary of it so she loaned it to me for a first date. I loved it so she gave it to me. That was over ten years ago. The dress has to be almost twenty years old at this point.

As to Jason's great question about whether or not people being in love and/or lust with you is a good thing or a bother, I'd say for me it's always lovely (except when they're stalking you and going through your trash, both of which have happened to me) and an affirmation of everything good. Also, a writer always courts this kind of attention -- people fall in love with your work, your jacket photo, your biography, and your world. If they didn't, you wouldn't sell any books! I do know people who don't like it, who think people who love them are stupid and annoying. I don't get this attitude at all except that it probably stems from a self-loathing that gets projected onto the one who loves. Okay, enough of the Freud stuff! The only thing that ever pisses me off is when someone tells me, Smile, it's not that bad. Umm, how the hell do they know? If people want me to smile, they will say something that is funny!

67 Days until The Sopranos airs!

Nothing But Purple

I once went to a psychic in Texas who told me that I had a neighbor that served as "a little sex partner" for me. My neighbors at the time were as follows -- a hobbit-like man named Doyle who looked as if he'd leapt off the pages of a Joyce Carol Oates story in the role of pervert, an incredibly kind, very happily married, African-American Vietnam Vet who had lost both of his legs because the doctor had removed the wrong one (one had gangrene because of his diabetes) during surgery, and a closeted lesbian history teacher who had lived with the closeted lesbian librarian for as long as I could remember. I could not imagine having sex with any of my neighbors and told her so. One of them wants to be, she said, the crappy psychic fallback line to be sure. You could probably take your pick. Uh huh, I said, thinking that Doyle was most assuredly the worst of the lot and if he told me that I'd be more beautiful if I smiled more often and pulled the stick out of my ass, that I would gouge out his eyes with rusty needles. Later in the reading, she informed me that I spent a lot of time supressing rage. To loosely quote Hamlet, One needs no ghost to tell me this!

Alas, people are always telling us things we do not wish to hear. Once as I walked through a department store make-up section, a woman stopped me and my sister and asks if we want to see our damage. She had a machine that you put your face next to that lit up in different colors according to how bad things were. Beth loves that sort of thing and immediately tried it. Her face, by the machine's reading, was healthy beyond belief. How about you? the woman asked. I said no, but was pressured into it. Nothing but purple, she said. I've never seen so much damage -- poor nutrition, dehydration. I gasped in mock horror. You mean a steady diet of Dr. Pepper and low-fat Twinkies haven't done much for me? Maybe if I had smiled into the machine and surpressed just a little more rage, the reading would have turned out differently.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I'm looking for a man that excites me as much as a baked potato." Eating

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Drunks

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Wednesday!

68 days until The Sopranos!

Dark Room

The summer I worked for the Mineral Wells Index, a man brought a dead rattlesnake in the back of his truck for someone to photograph. I'd been around snakes my entire life, but I sure the hell did not want to take a picture of one, even a dead one. Guess who got to take the picture? Found it in the garden, the dude said. My wife thought it was a garden hose until it started to move. I got my camera and walked with him outside to see this evil beast and startled when he pulled it out of the truck bed. His arm muscles quivered as he held the snake out to show its full length. Snakes have a weight you might not attribute to them, a way of imposing a certain vision that is not, as you might imagine, for everyone.

When I wasn't engaged in fun assignments like photographing dead animals, I took pictures of accidents. Mineral Wells had lots of them that summer, cars wrecks, boating accidents, and fools jumping off Hell's Gate, two big rocks that rose out of Possum Kingdom Lake that could kill you if you hit the water the wrong way. I took pictures of fireworks, wading into the lake while tiny snakes made v's through the water. Not a lot of things came out -- I'd lied about being able to use a camera. I could barely take a picture without lopping someone's head off. But there was almost always one that worked. It's probably no surprise that the dark room was my favorite place to be. You'd put your work in a tray of chemicals and images would arise. You could be certain that the only snakes you'd see would be the ones you'd already faced.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day, man." Janis Joplin

Cocktail Hour

Drinking reading suggestion: All of Us Raymond Carver

Benedictions and Maledictions

Wishing a speedy recovery from her car accident to Robin of R's Musings! Feel better soon!

69 Days Until The Sopranos!

You Can Absorb A Great Deal of Pain

Once a woman who hated me gave me a copy of The Sensuous Woman. Those who are familiar with this tome published first in 1969 know that it's a pretty innocuous how-to book billed to help "the female who yearns to be ALL woman." The woman who gave it to me knew that her husband had been yearning to have an affair with me -- wives always know even when nothing has happened. She'd also propositioned me herself, a preemptive strike, perhaps. Whatever the case and cause, I was thrilled to have the book, which I had read as a child. My parents didn't have a lot of sex books around the house, save for one ancient Playboy and a few medical encyclopedias (one so old that it discussed how birth control should be illegal). But they did have The Sensuous Woman and so I read with great interest. The book, written by "J", is a study in male-pleasing at its best, not exactly Andrea Dworkin, but for its time, it seems remarkably frank and not totally sexist.

I adore gifts, adore them! Seldom do I receive anything that gives me pause, no matter what the motive or the source. The ones that have, well, that is for another day. This gift didn't bother me in the least. It reminds of my childhood, the way Coppertone or rattlesnakes do. What's not to love about a book that has a section entitled Men To Stay Away From Unless You Can Absorb A Great Deal of Pain? It's a long list, but it doesn't include the married ones. You can't, I suppose, remember everything when you make a list.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"When you date a married man, you shouldn't wear mascara." Shirley MacLaine, The Apartment

Cocktail Hour

Generique -- Miles Davis

Benedictions and Maledictions

The last season of The Sopranos is approaching. I will be taking to my bed for at least a week when the last episode airs. My parents both loved this show and dreaded the day it would come to an end -- alas they did not live to see it. It most certainly influenced their lives -- I can say that by Season Two, they were both swearing a lot more and humming the theme song with an eerie regularity. So today I will begin a countdown to the first episode of the last season, kind of like in Halloween 3 when you hear that song, Five more days until Halloween . . . except not in that creepy voice unless you want to provide that yourself.

70 Days until The Sopranos airs.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry

A fellow poet named Alan King gave my chapbook, No Half-Measures Here, a very wonderful review. Here's the link! Please check out Alan's book, Transfer, which is really brilliant and lovely. I wish I had half his talent. Thanks again, Alan!

http://myspace.com/alanking81.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Even as a person of faith or maybe because of that fact, I find the following joke to be funny -- a mother goes to a priest and asks him to pray for her son in his next boxing match. The priest says that he will but he adds, it'll help if the kid can punch. I used to have a Bozo the Clown blow-up doll that I loved to hit until he became deflated from my punches and kicks, and I cried and cried. What had been destroyed could not be made whole, I thought, although I don't think I articulated it that way -- I think I said, I'm never going to be able to hit a clown again. How wrong I was about that sentiment!

Bozo was the kind of kid's toy that parents hate and that a fun uncle or aunt will bring over --something that makes a lot of noise and/or causes chaos subsequently driving the parents to drink gin straight for weeks. The worst version of this type of toy was when my mother was in the hospital and her roommate had a child with a Screaming Stevie doll. The doll would yell at random points, I'm Screamin' Stevie and I'm the boss! The doll was made by Matel, although I think it was designed by Satan for Matel, much the way Isaac Mizrahi designs for Target now. The last doll I bought for an adult was a Krusty the Klown doll from Krusty's appearance on "Treehouse of Terror." Krusty had three settings -- good, bad, and both good and bad. The good Krusty said things like, I'm Krusty the Klown and I love you very much. The bad Krusty said things like, Shut your hole! He was usually on the middle setting so you never knew what was going to come out of his mouth. It could be a message of love, it could be a hateful little ditty. At a certain point, I hated Krusty, all smug in his Conspiracy Museum of Dallas t-shirt. I bought the little bastard that shirt! He wasn't a tiny doll, but he was no inflatable Bozo either. It would have helped if I could have punched.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"My mother always said love would set me free, but I've been a prisoner because of my love for you." Bride of Chucky

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Hannah and Her Sisters

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Sunday!

My Head Behind The Mask

I once went to a museum full of dolls. I did not realize where I was going which is one of the setbacks of being drunk when you agree to something. In the sobering morning light being stuck in the middle of nowhere near the doll museum, I reconsidered. Dolls, by their nature, are creepy as all billy hell. I blame this on an overactive imagination, ie, What do the dolls do when you are sleeping? I believe they wake up and speak evil. Okay, maybe they don't, but still. All those tiny little eyes following you wherever you go. All those elaborate ruffled outfits, making them look suffocated. The curator of said museum seemed straight out of the central casting from Psycho. We have many rooms, he said. Do not get too close to anything. I could see right away that this experience would rank right up there with the Hobo Museum in Iowa, which was in fact a very cold room with signs all around in "hobo language." Hardly a Jackson Pollack exhibit.

As I walked around and looked at the various dollies, most of them as beautiful and made-up as Jon-Benet Ramsey, I craned my head up and realized that I was on camera looking at the dolls. The curator could see his dolls the entire time and see people's reactions to them. And I could see myself looking at myself and then looking away, trying not to look at myself. It reminded me of being caught on the monitor at Target walking in the store. Do I really look like that? I think as I see a gray-faced, tired woman rush into the store. Yes, I must concede, I do. In a room full of dolls, they started to look more alive than I was. I could imagine myself among their ranks, staring out of a vapid emptiness, tended to by a man who loved me so much he wanted to watch me all day to make sure I didn't get away.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I never realized why I had this stare on my face. It's sort of an ambiguous look. You don't really know if it's a gaze of terror or excitement. There was one image in the show that a lot of people thought was me. The mannequin that wears the crown — they swore it had my eyes. Everybody thought that I had placed my head behind the mask." Cindy Sherman, discussing her art exhibit using mannequins and dolls

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Live Through This Hole

Benedictions and Maledictions

Special thanks to Robin of R's Musings for a lovely lunch yesterday! I hardly ever cook at home and having someone cook for me was wonderful! Thanks, Miss R!

Wedding Cake For One

Seduce The Reader

I read an interview with one of my favorite writers, Jim Harrison, once in which he claimed to write Dalva (his best novel by my humble evaluation) because he wasn't in love and wanted to create a woman that would inspire that feeling. Mikhail Barishinikov once said that he always fell a little in love with all his partners (and most certainly he slept with all of them -- as a straight man in the world of ballet, I suspect he did not even have to half-ass try), and in a strange way, I love all my characters as well, even the bad ones, perhaps especially the bad ones. One of the questions that is constantly batted around writing workshops is -- Do your characters have to be sympathetic? I think so, but only to the writer. You cannot write effectively about people you hold in contempt, at least in fiction -- I think the constraints of the form have to offer us insight into their humanity. I don't feel this applies in nonfiction in the same way. But regardless of the form, the characters have to be engaging. We must feel as if someone could fall in love with them. From the first line of Dalva, I knew Jim H. had gotten it right -- "It was today -- rather yesterday I think -- that he told me it was important not to accept life as a brutal approximation. I said people don't talk like that in this neighborhood."

The kind of fiction I write is often coded as confessional -- I chalk this up to my early influences, all that Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, poets that seems as if they have no skin, as if their words are a direct line to their hearts. That, of course, is artifice just as much as a Victorian novel is artifice. One of my former writing teachers was forever saying that you had to seduce the reader. I think this is because he loved the word seduce. But I have to agree that it is an excellent word -- seduction is both completely earnest and completely staged. You tap into the best part of yourself, the part that makes people love you, and you act your heart out. Is it real or is it Memorex? as the old commercial used to ask. Both, I say. That is, if it's working.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"We loved the earth, but could not stay." -- old saying

Cocktail Hour

Drinking book suggestion: Duane's Depressed Larry McMurtry -- This is the final part of The Last Picture Show trilogy. If you're not drinking before you read, you most certainly will be after! This book is so so sad and brilliant and funny.

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday! Stay warm, fellow Detroiters!

Take Things As They Are

The other day I was talking to some friends about the gift of desperation, the necessity of it for meaningful change, and how suffering is our secret friend. I do not like the gift of desperation and would far prefer a beautiful necklace or a cup of chocolate-filled coffee with whipped cream. I do not like moments that coaches talk about, the time when you have nothing left but to win, win, win, to keep going against all odds, or the moments pastors preach about when our faith is being tested, the darkest hour before the dawn, etc. I am not, by and large, a fan of pulling my head out of my ass and getting out of my own way. Case in point: I used a cell phone that was hanging by one little thread of a cord for weeks because I could "make it work" by holding it in a certain way. A friend of mine laughed about it, saying, It's not a person, Michelle. You can get a new one. Get a new one?! Blasphemy. I kept my little cell phone friend until the caller ID stopped working and its entire screen went blank.

My friend Hank used to say, you're one of those last minute, save yourself types. But who, I would argue, isn't? We are all falling apart, each and every one of us, and only love and faith can save us. My sister laughs affectionately at the things I like, saying, I knew you'd want that one. That's a real Charlie Brown Christmas tree special you got on your hands. Like Linus said, all that tree needed was a little love! So we suffer at the hands of ourselves and others from this lack; we start to droop. But then we see our little friends, the other Christmas trees, and we sparkle again. We talk about the gift of desperation, but we give each other necklaces and glittery beautiful things. After all, life is mighty good at giving us the first gift.


Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick." Bruce Lee

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix (favorite song on this one: You Got Me Floatin' PM Dawn)

Benedictions and Maledictions

In answer to Jim's question about how much money I made off of my brilliant tour de force, Irrational Fears, the answer would be less than zero, to quote Brett Easton Ellis. The poetry was, in a word, stinky, and I pray to God that no copies exist. Happy Thursday!

You Sacrifice The Things You Love

The one thing I remember about the Jimi Hendrix biography I read while I was a lifeguard during the times in the concession area or office is that he practiced playing guitar constantly, no matter where he was. He'd even bring it to the movies with him and play it without sound. All the wild tales of sex and drugs fell away in light of this fact -- as a person who wanted to be a writer, I saw that I would have to change my ways! I'd been mighty proud of myself that I'd completed my very first collection of poems, a ghastly set that I'd entitled Irrational Fears. Each section had poems about a different phobia. What fun! What joy! Now if I saw it, I'd probably howl about how bad it was. And I'd only spent a few minutes during lifeguarding breaks on it. I was not taking my guitar to the movies, no sir. I hadn't made any sacrifices except telling a few of the male lifeguards to buzz off, I am working, can't you see! It wasn't much of a struggle.

By the time I'd gotten to the Hendrix biography, I'd just finished reading Lolita which seemed fitting -- both books were about a singular obsession. I've always liked the word obsession better than addiction although they share a lot -- the outside world falls away and all thoughts of the person or thing become paramount. You lose a lot of time and energy to both. Like your mind and your entire life. Nobody told me it would be quite like this! But wait -- both the Bible and Jimi Hendrix point to it -- you must lose your life to find it, you must take your guitar everywhere and play it all the time. There's not as much time for sex and drugs as you'd like! Like anyone trapped in a calling, everything else falls aways like so many snowflakes. You notice them as you walk to your destination, but they don't stop you even as they pile up. You present yourself as a living sacrifice until life chokes every last breath out of you.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar." Jimi Hendrix

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Bold As Love Jimi Hendrix

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Wednesday to everyone!

You Have Your Whole Life

A few of the men that frequented The Blade and Wing, an old Vietnam vet hang-out that I used to bartend at, were amputees. I'd watch them drink their boilermakers (the most common request I got -- I didn't even know what a cosmo was in those days) and keep my eye on everything to make sure everybody wasn't in any danger of fighting or falling off the barstool, both common occurences. I was reminded of these men when I read an article the other day on body integrity disorder -- put simply, people who want to amputate a healthy limb in order to feel whole. These people believe they've been born into the wrong body and go to dramatic measures to harm themselves so that a surgeon will have to amputate -- packing themselves in dry ice, putting their legs on train tracks, and so on. When I mentioned this to a friend, my friend said, Send their asses to Iraq. That'll do it.

I suppose what disturbed me most about the article was that everyone I know wants to change a little something about themselves at one time or another -- from most women I hear, If I could only lose ten pounds, I'd be happy. I used to believe this too until dieting caused my hair to fall out. But it's all a matter of scale -- whereas one person wishes to be a blonde, one wishes to hack her right leg off. Once a student of mine wrote a great story with a line out of a military instructional manual -- You have your whole life to get out of a minefield. Our minds, if nothing else, are those minefields, and I think of it often as pain, real and phantom, haunts me. Things that aren't there sometimes hurt just as much as things that are. We carry them around like an extra limb, all the while wishing that someone would make us whole.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence. " Charles Bukowski

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Music for Lovers John Coltrane

Benedictions and Maledictions

The beautiful scarf in the picture was made by my gorgeous, talented friend Stacey! And the car, of course, is my precious Snowflake.

You Won't Even Know I'm Gone

If it were easier, you'd send me back.
But all my original packaging is lost
and there is no receipt. Don't worry --
I'm returning a few things too. I'll save
you the trip, put myself back on the shelf.
I'm no longer your have to have, just
your it would be a relief to give up. Don't
be too sad, honey. This, like most things,
will hurt for a very long time. You won't
have to give up everything all at once.

All That Is Seen and Unseen

I met one of my closest friends because we showed up to school wearing the exact same dress. It was our first day of teaching college and since we had zero experience, we were assigned a mentor to help us along with the finer points. In her office dressed like twins, we couldn't stop laughing and looking at each other. The dresses we had were unusual -- long and brown, with printed flowers all over them and short capped sleeves. What can I say -- the early nineties were not kind in matters of fashion. I was also terribly attached to a hideous pair of maroon-colored leggings made of material so thin you could see my cellulite through them. I thought I looked smoking hot wearing these godforsaken pants until I saw a few pictures. Reality hit -- so cruel, so cruel! Fortunately, I saved all my leggings for home. We made a vow not to be seen together that day since we looked like deranged Holly Hobby twins and went our separate ways. When we saw each other in the hall, we shrieked and scooted away.

Turns out, we had lots of clothes that were alike, so much so that we took to calling each other before wearing certain outfits so that we didn't match. Teaching became like the Academy Awards -- God forbid we had the same dress! Although we looked nothing alike, our department chair called us the Gold Dust twins since we were always together and had our own language that we used to scare other people. And there was the matter of clothes --we sort of dressed alike no matter how much we worked against that impulse. Now I wear mostly black, a decision I made because it is slimming and flattering, but I like to say it's for the Johnny Cash reason, wearing a little darkness on my back for other people's suffering. And if I meet someone dressed like me, well, I'm sure we'll become the best of friends.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I wouldn't let anybody influence me into thinking I was doing the wrong thing by singing about death, hell and drugs. Because I've always done that, and I always will. " Johnny Cash

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: The Man Comes Around Johnny Cash

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Monday! And thanks to everyone for the incredibly kind words about the first few videos! And AP, Grouchie has not been fed any crystal meth to keep him awake. He's an integral part of the filming process and is limited to Red Bull and Red Bull only!

The World Is A Dangerous Place

A few years ago in the lone star state, I went outside my parents' house to greet a friend. As I hugged him, I felt my legs sting with a thousand points of pain, and looked down to see that I had stepped into a swarm of fire ants, beastly creatures. I screamed and brushed them off as fast as I could while my sister yelled, Take off your shorts and run some cold water. Sit in it. I did as she said, watching the hives appear on my once pristine legs. The homespun cure was not taking. Turns out that it needed to be hot water to diffuse the poison. The cold, in fact, was making it worse. Despite immediate action, something I generally resist, and all the best intentions, the situation was a fuck-up, much like a screen door on a submarine.

A few years after my rape, I went to the college counselling center for help. After talking to a very nice woman, she referred me to her supervisor. I'm a little out of my league here, she said. I mostly just deal with students who can't manage their time. I broke down and told the supervisor dude everything -- how I was carrying a gun to the bathroom in case someone broke into my apartment while I was taking a bath, how I carried it into each room (the apartment only had two), how I freaked every time the wind blew or someone opened a nearby door. I don't, he said, see anything wrong with taking your gun to the bathroom. The world is a dangerous place. I looked at him with an incredulous expression, picturing year after year of relaxing bubble baths with a loaded pistol by my side. Can I have some Valium? I asked. I'm not that kind of doctor, he said. So I kept carting my gun to the bathroom, knowing I was absolutely batshit, but hey, a professional had said it was fine. A professional I had stopped seeing, thinking he wasn't all there either. At least, I suppose, he didn't tell me to sit in cold water to heal myself because God knows, I would have tried anything.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." Tom Waits

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: B Sides and Othersides Morphine

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Sunday! And check out www.jrtomlinson.blogspot.com -- He's bringing, to loosely paraphrase Mr. Justin Timberlake, poetry back. It's hysterical!

Please Undo Me

Here's a piece of flash fiction!

Please Undo Me

I died on a Friday morning, the day of sorrowful mysteries, those I meditate on and those I do not know and will not understand until they happen to me. It was like everything, like nothing, like being in love with you. This is my body, such as it is, bruises everywhere from what I don’t know. This is my blood, running down my thighs, staining the sheets. How does this pretty dress come off? you ask, and it does, like skin, layer by layer. I say, Will you please undo me, after a long night of wearing something uncomfortable. When the dress hits the floor, the silence enters me just like you have, time and time again. You can do anything you want to while I hold my breath; you can break me. Maybe this is where my story starts.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Real art has the capacity to make us nervous." Susan Sontag

Cocktail Hour

Drinking book suggestion: The Camera My Mother Gave Me Susanna Kaysen

Benedictions and Maledictions

Thanks to all my readers for the support and kindness about the new video clips and especially Jason for the technical suggestions! I'm still longing for the days when I wrote on a IBM Selectric so technology is a bit of a challenge, but I'm working on it. Congratulations to the Pistons for a stunning overtime win!

Happy Birthday to Miss Janis Joplin!

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes-Benz

Texas is hard on women and horses, so it's no surprise that Janis Joplin came from the pit of hell that is Port Arthur, a small east Texas refinery town, kicking and screaming, 64 years ago today, a true force of nature if there ever was one. If Janis hadn't existed, I would have never made it through a thousand and one break-ups. In my mind, you have two choices of songs to listen to if your heart is broken -- "Ball and Chain" or "Me and Bobby McGee." The worst the break-up, the more "Ball and Chain." One of my favorite dvds is a recording of her on the Dick Cavett show right before her death. She's hysterical and heartbreaking, the way truly funny people always are. Also, she's not wearing a trace of make-up and dressed in a boa. In an era of overdone, perfect-looking celebrities, she's as shocking today as she was so many years ago. Smart and self-efffacing, she holds her own with Mr. Cavett. The moment I love the most is when she explains male/female relationships to him in metaphor -- women being the donkeys who are chasing after the carrots men are always dangling right in front of you and then yanking away. He looks confused until she breaks it down for him and then says, I could tell you're hip and swinging by your shoes, man. He's wearing the squarest shoes in the world and they both laugh when he says, If they were good enough for my grandfather . . .

I left Texas when I was 26, right around the age that Janis died. I figured it was time to move on down the line before Texas did me in. The place doesn't leave you, though. All that scary empty space! I'm sure that's what in part made Janis so great -- molded in one of the most conservative parts of the country in those days, she broke out of it to become herself, no easy feat to be sure. I don't, she told Mr. Cavett, write songs. I make them up. She died early and lonely, claiming to want the white pickett fence fantasy as much as anything else. Thank God you don't always get what you want.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"If you don't believe there's a price/ for this sweet paradise/ just remind me to show you the scars." Bob Dylan

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: 18 Essential Songs Janis Joplin

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday!

It Poisons Everything

I saw my first Valentine's decoration yesterday -- a small heart wreath on the outside of someone's window. I was with a friend who hates the holiday even more than I do, and we railed against it for a few minutes. We haven't even finished recovering from Christmas and now the stores are filled with pink and red. It poisons everything, my friend said. We were on Van Dyke, passing a hotel called the King Richard. Let's just say The King has seen better days. It's what I call an afternoon affair hotel, where you sneak off to shoot drugs or sleep with your best friend's wife on an extended lunch break. To cheer my friend up, I said I'd write a Valentine's story at The King where the adulterous lovers snuck off on VD day (as my friend Hank used to refer to it) and walked hand in hand to the Stardust, a liquor store with a beautiful name that spoke of an ethereal, fleeting loveliness, but like The King, had morphed into a pitstop of desperation. They'd cart a bottle of cheap champagne back to their room and squeeze everything they could out of the few stolen hours to profess their love.

The story wouldn't be at The King, though. I'd start with one of the two at home, having to go through the motions of his or her life and pretend as if The King had never happened. The King would be the highlight, the most beautiful and exciting part of the day and by five o'clock, it would all be over and ordinary time would start. Maybe they'd have to give a token Valentine to their spouses and pretend like everything was fine. This evening scene would be so depressing that you'd realize that one is punished by the sin, not for it. The next day, the candy hearts would haunt the stores, all marked down. You could get them for almost nothing if you waited long enough.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Protect me from what I want." Jenny Holzer

Cocktail Hour

Drinking reading suggestion: Adult Bookstore Karl Shapiro

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Thursday!

Hello Everyone!

Here's my first reading in front of a camera!

Pistons' Basketball!

Go Pistons!

What Becomes A Legend Most

I love the old Blackglama ads, especially the one with a very beat-up looking Lillian Hellman in her later years, the caption reading, What becomes a legend most . . . I like a face with character, except when it is mine, and then I like it to look as if has never been friends with the sun. Of course, it has been intimate with that evil force, good friends, Crisco/baby oil/ suntan oil SPF 0 friends with the sun, and now I stay inside and beg God to spare me the sins of my youth. Or as Joan Rivers said about the great picture of Lillian, It's majestic and powerful and all, but would it have killed her to use a little moisturizer? One of my least favorite people in the entire world used to be friends with my mother and now has lunch with my sister from time to time. This woman is in her late seventies, has a face cracked like the dirt of west Texas and attends all the senior citizen dances where she requests songs like "Pussy Control" and proceeds to do a pseudo-pole dance at whatever VFW Hall is hosting. This would be reason enough to like her, but she has many bad qualities that offset this brash display of confidence including but not limited to having very loud opinions and once telling me that I needed to pull my head out of my ass and wear something that would make me look good for a change. I had the dubious privilege of seeing her perform her dance in the parking lot of Pulidos, a Mexican restaurant in beautiful Mineral Wells, Texas in the middle of one warm afternoon. Turn up the radio, Beth, she yelled. I want to show the world what I got!

I can't say I enjoyed the parking lot dance, but she did, and man I knew she had something that no amount of face cream could impart, that joie de vivre, a confidence that exceeded all understanding. She should be thinking about getting into heaven, my sister said, laughing hysterically. Or knitting. She should be home moisturizing is what I was thinking, but an entire vat of Oil of Olay would have been filed under the catagory of too little, too late. Even so I'd give anything for a drop of that utter lack of concern for what other people think. She kept getting kicked out of the senior dances for obscene behavior, raising hell. I guess that's one way to create a legend.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Men always want to protect me. From what, I have no idea." Mae West

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Office Space

Benedictions and Maledictions

Again, the fur used in this picture is not real! No bunnies or any other animals were harmed. And congratulations to Chris Webber, the newest Detroit Piston! Welcome back, Chris!

Cheers!

Spell for a Wednesday night in January

1 part vanilla vodka
1 part Godiva white chocolate liqueur
1 part Baileys

Serve chilled as a martini and garnish with chocolate syrup!

It's Been Quite A Year

One of my early Detroit memories was of writing Christmas messages in cards while drinking Kool-Aid spiked with vodka and watching the blue of other people's televisions from my second-story flat. My then-boyfriend had gone to bed early, and the city was totally quiet, a hushed snow coming down. It was my first year in Detroit -- I'd been here about three months and struggled to think of something to write about my experience. I'd been alone more in those three months than I had in the last ten years, long hours spent writing and reading, thinking about things. It wasn't the kind of experience that lent itself to the Christmas newsletter form -- Hello Everyone -- It's been quite a year! I moved to Detroit and . . . And what? I'd just gotten a job scheduled to start at the beginning of the year at a social work center, so far out of my chosen field of work it would make people go, huh? The pay was just enough to keep my car from getting repossessed. That wouldn't work as news either. After finishing up the tumbler of my drink, I settled on "Happy Holidays, love, Michelle." Brilliant stuff from a writer, huh?

When I came to Detroit, it was raining, a slow kind of drizzle that fell from the sky in smoggish rainbow colors. I loved the color and fell in love with the city because of it. At first, everything was difficult -- getting around, finding things. The post office had bullet-proof glass, making it hard to mail anything bigger than an envelope. Even the Kentucky Fried Chicken had bullet-proof glass that kept me from getting my favorite food with ease! I had to wait for the box to glide around and pull it out of its protected space. Where would I write these things? Or as Chekhov might say, To whom shall I tell my grief? But it wasn't grief, it was love. Of course, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I wasn't the prettiest or the most special. I just wanted it the most." Marilyn Monroe, on success

Cocktail Hour

Drinking reading suggestion: The Root Worker Rainelle Burton -- this great novel is set in 1960s Detroit and all about hoodoo and incest -- scary as hell and the kind of book you won't be able to put down!

Benedictions and Maledictions

Congratulations to Forrest Whitaker on his Golden Globe for his portrayal of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. If you haven't seen this movie, go see it! Do not, however, take a date!

Buried Alive in the Blues

I once made my father sign a contract that if I were to die, he would stick a stake of holly through my heart just to make sure that I was not buried alive. I spent a lot of time on the document which was written on Big Chief Paper in red crayon with a black crayoned line for his signature. I'd been reading a lot of Poe and felt nervous, not so much about death, but about being trapped. My dad signed it, saying, Nobody is going to bury you alive. You have to have faith. Faith wasn't my strong suit in those days, even though I spent a lot of time with the Bible. One of my favorite moments in the Good Book was the one with the man who wanted to be healed, but couldn't believe that he would be. So he got creative and said, Lord, Cure me of my disbelief! I often think the same thing, that I have faith that I can be given faith.

I'm the type of person who takes things to heart, that carries the weight of the world, not that the world knows or gives one rat's ass. I keep waiting for things to get easier, to calm down. But they don't. It's kind of like learning how to swim -- I'd struggle to get to someone or something where I could relax. And I would, but then I'd have to let it go and keep going. No rest for the wicked! Eventually I learned lots of things -- how to tread water, how to jump off a high dive without crawling back down, how to swim without using much energy. The one thing I can't do is float. No matter what I do, I sink. But other people can so I know it's possible. And I've helped people to shore, been pulled out of the water a few times myself. I've heard it said that love is the truest expression of faith. So we keep struggling against the waves. Even when they threaten to overtake us, we keep going. Because there's nothing else to do. I suppose that's faith. And if it's not, then I have faith that it can be.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live." Martin Luther King, Jr. , from a speech in Detroit, Michigan

Cocktail Hour

Drinking reading suggestion: Eva's Man Gayl Jones

Benedictions and Maledictions

I, like many writers, am superstitious. Almost every single day for the last ten years, I have listened to the same piece of music when I begin writing, a jazz composition written by Alice Coltrane in honor of famous husband John. I heard the song in an Alvin Ailey dance production and spent a huge amount of time tracking it down, given that there was no easy way to find things in those long ago, early Internet days. Alice Coltrane died yesterday night in L.A., far away from Detroit, where she was born and lived for a long time. I'm sure she had a devoted following, although I doubt that anyone spends quite as much time as I do listening to her one song, over and over again, as a form of inducing a writing trance. Many of my exes have a great dislike toward the song, a hatred one might say, calling it the "garbage can rattling lid" song. I, however, hope to spend the next ten years listening to it. Rest in peace, Alice Coltrane! And Happy MLK Day to all!

I'm Glad I'm Dead!

One of my favorite jokes, besides a very bad pun involving Jim Jones and a punchline (get it, punchline, HA!), is the one about Pollyanna's (that eternally cheerful fictional character) tombstone -- What is written on Pollyanna's tombstone -- I'm glad I'm dead! The joke seems very true to me, in the way that the best comedy is. I overheard someone in a CVS the other day say that she was making a gratitude list for the new year at the urging of her therapist, but had only gotten to number three. You're breathing, her friend said. The exchange reminded me of an apartment complex I once looked at that listed hot and cold running water as one of its special features or the hotels that still display AM/FM Radio in All Rooms! on their signs to draw customers.

Although I have never watched Nascar despite my southern roots, I felt sorry for Dale Earnhart Jr. when his dad died in that fiery car crash, mostly because he'd have to hear, over and over, even on television, how thankful he should be that his dad died doing something he loved, a final race, that he hadn't suffered, that he'd gone out with a bang. I'll say. So let me get this straight -- Dale Jr. is supposed to be grateful that he got to see his dad die in a race in which he was also competing, burnt down to his teeth? Maybe he could put that on his gratitude list! And even though I lean toward the glib and clever instead of the earnest and hopeful, would rather die than admit suffering or weakness, maybe I should make such a list as well. I could start with breathing! But maybe not. A man on an airplane once told me that the less you breaths you take per minute, the longer you live. My breathing, short and rapid, one might say shallow, makes me think of the Pollyanna tombstone. But my vow today is to take a deep breath, at least as much as my puny lungs will allow, and begin.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything." Anton Chekhov

Cocktail Hour

Drinking reading suggestion: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos (one of my all-time favorite books ever!)

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Sunday!

A Feast of Snakes

On my left index finger, I wear a snake ring. The ring is designed such that the head of the snake could turn inward or outward, and I have always worn it facing inward, not even thinking about it until someone mentioned the fact. I also own a pair of earrings made from the rattles of a snake and a set made from the fangs. I remember thinking that once I got out of my hometown and far away from a climate warm enough to support the little beasts, I would never think about them again. But alas, I choose to wear the scars, and in the case of my ring, face them inward. After all, I would never be comfortable with it facing the other way. You make your choices early; it's hard to recalibrate even the smallest things.

Since my long-ago childhood, I've been terrified of snakes -- one of the strangest times was when I was dragged to a Rattlesnake Roundup in a nearby town. The locals collect the snakes from the hills, wrestling them into brown potato bags and bringing them to dump into huge vats. Some of the snakes are used for their venom, some for decoration, some for food. Others just hang out, making a sound that is distinctive from all others. You walk around, you get used to the handlers, the contests, the snakes with their mouths open, being milked, the ones being grilled for snacks. You begin to not notice what's around you, cease to be afraid of it. You forget you're surrounded by danger. Sometimes when I wear the rattle earrings, I startle myself with a sudden move of the head that sets off the noise a rattlesnake makes to warn you of its presence. At the Rattlesnake Roundup, I stopped hearing the noise after a while -- all those snakes, all that warning. It's then, I think, it's probably time to go. But the fangs, they make no noise. I could wear those for days and never even realize I had them in my ears.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures." —Flannery O'Connor, "The Fiction Writer & His Country"

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: The House of Yes

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Saturday!

Some Guns Stay On Safety Forever

Years ago a woman working the front counter at Whataburger said to me, Yours is a violent energy, but nothing will come of it. I'd ordered a taquito, a breakfast burrito dealy with bacon and eggs and cheese and a Dr. Pepper. I stared at her strange reddish face adorned by the manadatory paper hat, and wondered what the hell I had done to make her say that short of placing a rather unexceptional order. You don't say, I said, not wanting to upset her delicate applecart. I do say, she said. Violent and evil. I wanted to make a joke about needing an exorcism, but I refrained. She pushed my order to me, making a hissing sound. I wondered if she saw something about me that I didn't or if she'd just been on her shift a few hours too long. Crazy bitch, I said, walking out the door and instantly regretted it. Life was hard enough if you had to wear a paper hat every day. Alas, you can't, as they say, come out of every human transaction smelling like a rose.

I'm afraid of people from time to time, especially ones that seem hellbent on destruction, namely mine. But who can tell the depths of the human heart? Life is no story, and unlike Chekhov's famous dictate about putting a gun in the first act that has to go off by the last, some guns stay on safety forever. To note, daddy long legs are the most poisonous of all spiders. Nobody fears them because their mouths are too small to release any of that potential no matter what their intentions are. Depending on your mood, you let them crawl all over you, set them gently outside, or you pull them apart, leg by leg, until nothing remains.


Michelle's Spell of the Day

"It is not the words of our enemies that we will remember, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday! Special thanks to Jodi and Randy for being the best hosts ever! And kudos to Randy for his excellent mixology skills!

The Americans Have Liberated The Camps

On Thanksgiving Day, I watched a documentary called Thin about a famous eating disorder treatment facility. As I stuffed a few stray chocolates into my mouth, I watched a young woman cry because she had to eat a cupcake for her birthday in an attempt to "normalize" her behavior. The girls and women who were there ranged from death camp movie extra to average-sized. Of course, you couldn't tell by the body who was the sickest -- that became clear over the time as I heard one perfectly normal-looking thirty year old say, If I have to die to be thin, then so be it. It's been my only goal in life. She had two lovely children, a decent career, and was willing to give it all away to the gods of perfection. As a former gymnast, I understood all too well the horrors of that line of thinking and can remember my mother looking at pictures of me from that time and saying to my father, Look, Don. The Americans have liberated the camps.

After doing every exercise regime under the sun, I started practicing yoga four years ago because my mother made me promise to "do something about your stress." I tried assuring her that I didn't feel particularly stressed, but the fact was I inhaled it, nursed it, loved it as if it were my very best friend and the thought of all that turmoil going bye-bye was almost more than I could stand. Who was I if not somebody who was always running around, biting off more than a person four times my size could chew, and never having a spare moment to think? It was one of her only requests before she died and as reluctant as I was about doing anything physical that didn't promise to drop weight immediately, I gave it a try. The stress proved to be a formidable enemy -- my nature is not a relaxed one. But as my yoga teacher says, one must challenge oneself without judgment, and I do. I try. As for liberation, well, that's a tough one when the camp is one of your own making and you have lived there for a very long time.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more." Dorothy Parker

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Mrs. Parker and The Vicious Circle

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Thursday! In answer to Jon's question, it is a cigarette lighter burn. The tractor had one in case one felt compelled to smoke and farm at the same time!

This Plant Is A Healer

There's a scar on my upper leg that looks like a ringworm. It's from a tractor lighter, one that my friend Bridgett stuck on my leg because her granddaddy said it didn't work. It did. The burn, a third degree one, caused her grandmother to scream and run for her aloe vera plant. She squirted some of the strange-looking fluid out of its cactus-like limbs and waited for me to feel better. This plant is a healer, she said. Even at age five, I knew that I needed nothing less than morphine to ease my suffering, not some crappy plant that had been dying in her living room for as long as I could recall. Do not, she said, play on the tractor. Alas, too little, too late, the story of my then short-lived life. I did not like the shape of the burn as it mimicked a ringworm affliction a little too closely. Ringworm was common in my classmates -- many of them had to have their heads shaved because of it and went around with tiny homemade beanies to cover them. Even though the affliction was not pleasant, nothing was as bad as the shame and taunting.

One of my favorite titles ever is the Charles Bukowski short story, "My Beerdrunk Soul Is Sadder Than All the Dead Christmas Trees in the World." It's long as titles go, but I think it says a lot and one of the lines in the story about how we cling to our misery is downright brilliant. Even though I hated my scar as a child, I love it now. The burn was a bad one, but the pain wasn't terrible since it was such a small area. I could separate myself from it, pretend it belonged to someone else. The scar speaks to me of a different time, one when playing on a tractor seemed like a suitable way to pass an afternoon. It fades a little each year, becomes more and more like something else. Then again, it never looked like a burn. It could be a ringworm scar or the surface of the moon, something horrible or magical, but nothing a person could see without knowing what they were looking for from the start.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Sometimes you unexpectedly taste/ the inside of your own mouth." Denis Johnson

Cocktail Hour

Drinking reading suggestion: The Incognito Lounge Denis Johnson

Benedictions and Maledictions

When We Go Out

I never know what to order.
That's where you come in. I
was not born to this world, don't
understand the language. Food
doesn't interest me until it's
on the plate. I'm not going to
be difficult. Tell me what I want.

The Book I Was Reading On The Side

After high school had let out on Friday afternoon, one of my friends got down on her knees and started barking at my parents' German Shepherd. She'd become unhinged from doing a lot of coke and decided to pay me and the dog a surprise visit. She growled, bared her teeth, and went to the bathroom, where she dumped a potted plant in the tub before leaving to score more drugs. I didn't understand what was happening -- I'd never touched much of anything at that point. I petted the dog and repotted the plant, the Cure in the background singing "Why Can't I Be You." I didn't want to be anyone else at that moment and especially not when I returned to school the next Monday and saw her bruised arms. When I asked what happened to her, she said, I hit myself when I'm coming down. It makes me feel better. Our AP English class had Paradise Lost on the docket for the day. Because I was talking to my friend, my teacher called on me right away to explain what Milton had meant by making a heaven of a hell and a hell of a heaven. She didn't think I had heard the question and wanted to make a point. I answered it completely, even throwing in a few additional references to Portnoy's Complaint, the book I was reading on the side. I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the class; I adored my teacher and didn't want to make her thankless task of getting teenagers interested in Milton anymore difficult than it already was.

When class ended, my teacher asked me to stay after. I thought she was going to ask what happened to my friend, one of her favorite students, a beautiful girl who looked like she'd been through a few rounds of her own personal Fight Club. But she didn't. She said, Michelle, you're too smart for your own good. It will lead you to great unhappiness in some ways. Her comment thrilled me. It wasn't as if she'd told me I didn't belong in the class or was hideous in some way. She hadn't told me I was failing or that she was disappointed in me. I went around all day, happy as could be, feeling special. Then I realized that I'd dressed in the dark and had one black loafer on, one blue one. They'd looked alike in the dim morning, and I hadn't noticed what a dork I was all day, running around with two different types of shoes, one black, one blue, the colors of my friend's bruises, the colors of shame, and nobody said anything directly, not once, not to either of us.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"No longer feeling bad is not the same as feeling good." Betty Rollin, Last Wish

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Panic in Needle Park

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Tuesday! Thanks for all the sweet comments! I hope everyone has recovered from the holidays.

No Phoenix From The Flame

In this picture, I'm standing about a mile from the old gym where I used to practice gymnastics three hours a night for many years. The gym had the basics -- a springboard mat, balance beam, uneven bars, and a vault. No frills would be putting it mildly -- the place barely had a working water fountain. If practice was to end early or late and we had to use a phone, we'd have to jog over half a mile to Pecan Valley, the Mental Health/Mental Retardation Crisis Center and beg to be allowed a local call. Our coach, a bitter young woman who hated her husband and her life, yelled at us all the time and wasn't a stranger to a few friendly "taps" when we screwed up routines which was not as infrequent as one might have hoped. Terrible as it all seems, I found the whole thing oddly comforting. There's something about playing a sport that you cannot do well (my body type did not really fit, I was terrified of breaking my neck half the time, I had little to no balance) with a great passion that creates a realist. It did not, as the bullshit propaganda about sports and kids would suggest, bolster self-esteem. You get self-esteem by doing something well, not by someone telling you that you are good. The thin reed I hung my tiny little hat on was that I did not give up, even when the odds were bad and the air-conditioner wasn't working.

Last night, I went to see We Are Marshall. What's to say except that Matthew McCoughnahey can look good, even wearing an authentic seventies coaching outfit. It was a predictable, tragic true story tearjerker about a town who loses nearly its entire football team to a plane crash and has to rebuild everything with the help of an crazy, slightly simple outsider, the classic phoenix from the ashes story. Corndog as it is, what I wouldn't give for an ounce of that feeling! Most days I feel like the main character in a truly great football movie, North Dallas Forty, where the coaches keep shooting Nick Nolte up with painkiller and forcing him to play more and more injured each time, more and more numb. I'm pretty efficient in my own life -- I get to be the coach and the player. Why pay for more actors when you can do it all yourself? Many coaches talk about "heart," that elusive quality that makes athletes do things they cannot do, win matches they shouldn't win, come out the other side, bloody and battered, but victorious. If you have to be shot up with drugs, taped and bandaged to high heaven, and running on empty, well, I suppose that's heart as well, and even if there's no phoenix from the flame moment, there will be ashes to mark what you have done.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"All my dreams are made of chrome/ I have no way to get back home." Tom Waits, "A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Blue Gun."

Cocktail Hour

Drinking story suggestion: "The Lady and the Pet Dog" Anton Chekhov

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Monday!

My Story Is No Different

I once set up a friend of mine with a man she came to refer to as the Slow Talker. The situation was classic set-up; my friend was lonely, my then-beloved had a single friend who was great, and I nursed the fantasy of having an instant couple friendship, no muss, no fuss, since we already liked both people. For once, my motives were relatively pure -- usually set-ups involve dumping one pain in the ass lonely friend on an unwitting victim to not hear the incessant whining about there being "nobody good" out there or setting up someone you are secretly in love with, but cannot have because you are already in a loveless, dead relationship that you feel you must continue for any number of reasons. Alas, no good or bad deed in playing Cupid goes unpunished, and my story is no different. My friend and the Slow Talker went out on three dates. My friend was a little high-strung, a little bit hospital corners, a little bit House of Usher. (You see why we are friends!) The Slow Talker was a kind, smart lawyer, a beloved only child without any real issues. The match was, as they say, a few rungs lower than heaven. His list of sins included wearing sweats on a date, renting terrible movies, taking her to a country place called The Dinner Bell where he'd dated most of the waitstaff, and well, talking slow. I'd never noticed it before she pointed it out, but a lot of his sentences took a long time, as if he were a record set a few seconds off its normal speed.

We all went out once for Chinese food, and that was the beginning and end of my couple friend fantasy life. The dinner was strained and awkward -- even my very asocial then-boyfriend was working his ass off to make conversation, a sign that things were sinking fast. I'd hoped for a last minute save from the fortune cookies, a divine sign that things were better than they seemed. Ha! No help from those evil things! I got one that said, You have found love, the same one my then-beloved got. I wished that I could magically transfer mine to my friend, but no such luck. My friend and the Slow Talker got fortunes that aren't really fortunes, you know, You are artistic and have many friends, etc. The Slow Talker read his slowly, as if he were translating from another language. She smiled at him, like he were a child, not one of her own, not a beloved one, just someone struggling to make sense of what was in front of him.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I'm standing here, knowing that I have a loaded gun in my mouth, but I love the taste of the metal, and I can't let it go." Robert Downey Jr. at his last court sentencing for drugs

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Another Side of Bob Dylan Bob Dylan

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy birthday to my dearly departed dad, born a day before Elvis' birthday. The park I am pictured in was the site of many of his company picnics.

No End In Sight

The last time my entire immediate family had their picture taken together was at the thirtieth birthday party for the son of one of my parents' friends. The son had just gotten out of prison for drugs, and he'd gotten AIDS from dirty needles. He'd recently married a woman he'd met in rehab who also had AIDS and two little boys, who were not infected. I had to be dragged by my hair to this event, given that I'm not a social person by nature and while I liked the birthday boy and had written him in prison, I didn't want to endure the horrors of being trapped in a small house with screaming children and no end in sight. But I went. The father, totally blotto by our arrival, greeted us at the door crying. I suspected that this would be a pretty dismal affair, and so far, my Amazing Karnac impression had proved correct. The new wife tried to get her boys under control -- they were running around like crazy, hitting all the guests on their heads with a rolled-up Spice Girls poster, yelling, These are the spicy girls! over and over. I began to understand the father's strategy of heavy drinking even though almost everyone there besides my family was in some sort of recovery and could not join him in his tour of duty through a box, yes, a box of wine.

The newlyweds talked about how they had met in group therapy and knew they'd found their soulmates. I never met anyone who got me right away, the birthday boy said. He'd written the same thing about heroin in one of his letters to me and about his last, for lack of a better descriptive word, skanky beyond belief girlfriend who he'd found on the ho' troll in Ft. Worth whom he'd saved from her pimp. The boys referred to their mother's new husband as "Daddy Two" and talked about Daddy One's slow descent into death. Daddy One used a walker. Daddy One coughed and had to have a tube. It was enough to make you either count your blessings or want to take the gaspipe. I sat on the couch, accustomed to pretending bizarre situations were completely normal. The birthday boy's parents looked much older than they were, having been through a wringer they could have never even known existed given their staid, middle-class lives. Years ago, the birthday boy's mother had asked my mother if she could have these evil-looking wooden carved statues that once decorated my parents' house. They were a gift from my mother's relatives in the old country, and my mother believed them cursed. My mother wanted to throw them out, but gave them away instead because of the request. Now they surrounded us again, glaring at us from the corners of the living room. The drunk father asked if we wanted our picture taken. My mother was on the verge of getting sick again, my dad had been through a brutal lay-off at work. Everyone had their eyes open, except my sister who was the only one who looked happy, as if she were making a wish. I guess that's what you do at birthday parties.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." Muriel Rukeyser

Cocktail Hour

Drinking music suggestion: Hillbilly Deluxe Dwight Yoakum

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Saturday!

May All Your Dreams Come True

My mother once sent a friend of hers a book for his birthday that caused him to leave his wife. The book had been about by Paul Theroux, a brilliant travel writer, about his adventures in the South Pacific. The friend, in his early fifties, had read the book upon receiving it in the mail (he lived in New Zealand), and decided that the life he was leading, in his words, was shallow and vapid and full of mundane trivial bullshit and that he had a dream to pursue. (Um, now that I am older, the first part of that seems a little too close to home, but I shall continue!) So when my mother phoned his wife (also a close friend) a few months later, she got the whole story about his picking up and leaving and a new phone number for her friend. Your book made him leave me, the wife said. Now I'm old and fat and have nothing to show for it. Men have it made. They can do whatever the fuck they want, but women are always stuck with the worst of it. The wife reassured my mother that it was not her fault, that it was some mid-life thing that was probably inevitable, but the whole event gave me pause and made me think twice about giving people certain types of gifts, particularly anything by Mr. Theroux.

Now that the holidays have ended and we are back to ordinary time, the inevitable sadness of everyday life has time to bleed into our days. As much as I complain about the holidays, January has a bleak quality to it. Who among us has the stomach for yet more of the same? One of the scariest things I see on cards and fortune cookies is, May All Your Dreams Come True. I often dream about being on dangerous streets alone, running to the next place in hopes of being safe. I dream of the dead returning, rising out of their caskets and asking what's next. Mornings are all dim light, getting dressed for work, the inevitable disappointments and pleasures. In other words, life in this world, where the South Pacific exists, but you never see it.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever... " Isak Dineson

Cocktail Hour

Drinking book suggestion: My Other Life Paul Theroux

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Friday!

Grow Your Own Witch

I am sitting near the site of an old army barracks where, as a teenager, I used to attend a yearly haunted house that served as a fundraiser for the disturbed adolescent house that operated on the by-then decomissioned army base. I loved that haunted house -- by today's standards, it wouldn't be all that scary: a few bloody mirrors, some hatchets, people dressed as ghosts. It certainly couldn't touch the downright bullshit of the new breed of "haunted houses" run by particularly conservative churches in the south designed to show kids what hell will be like if they have the misfortune of wearing the "wrong" clothes and being at the "wrong" place -- rape, shame, death, AIDS, abortion. The explicit message of these places is that everything bad happens to you because you have strayed and gone into a world full of secular evil. I went through one of these once for an article I was writing -- I killed my baby, I killed my baby, screamed a young girl, maybe 15, in a room full of blood and demonic abortion doctors with a disembodied speaker voice intoning, She'll never get another chance. She's infertile now. Sweet Jesus, it made me miss the old barracks haunted house with the "retards operating fake chainsaws" as one of my friends used to put it.

As I was Christmas shopping this year, I saw a teeny-tiny witch doll. The package said, Grow Your Own Witch! The witch becomes 600 times her size if you put her in water. I don't know because I haven't. I considered her as a present for someone who might need a witch; we all need someone to vilify every now and then, I think. And let's face it -- sometimes the other person is the witch and sometimes you are. In my most morally and spiritually exhausted moments, I wish I had the clear-cut enemy that the aforementioned haunted house provides -- that's what's good about simple rules; you don't have to think as much. That said, I'm keeping my witch this year. I won't have to put her in water and watch her grow, though. A small witch is enough for me. I can see the rest of her in myself.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"It's hard to be free but when it works, it' s worth it!" Janis Joplin

Cocktail Hour

Drinking poetry suggestion: The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster Richard Brautigan

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Thursday!

Cheers!

Special thanks to Jim of J.R. Thumbprint for nominating me for a webblog award. He was my student, a brilliant one, and I'm paying him very well these days to be so nice. Check out his blog if you haven't already done so under the More Poison link. (www.jrtomlinson.blogspot.com) Thanks so much, Jim!

Where Bad Things Have Happened To Someone

I once recieved a Christmas gift from a friend that gave me considerable pause. The first part, a gas station Snoopy glass, gave me great pleasure. The second thing in the box, a t-shirt with a stick figure that held a knife that dripped blood, made me wonder. The caption under the figure read, I Hate Waking Up. We were at lunch with a lot of people, all exchanging gifts, and nobody knew quite what to say to mine, which I hid away as soon as I could under my seat. I knew I'd never wear it, in the way that I don't have it in me to wear a t-shirt I recently saw that said, Fueled by GHB (the initials for the infamous date rape drug). My friend thought the shirt edgy, and I love edgy gifts. But I couldn't quite reconcile the impulse with what he knew about my past and his own muddled role in it so I stuffed it in my basement, in hopes that I would not see it any time soon.

To many people's horror, I throw all sorts of things away, having been encouraged by a feng-shui book many moons ago about clearing your clutter and clearing your life. I have cleared my clutter. Still waiting on the life part, but hope, you know. I have a pretty clean basement as that area represents the past. Even so, it's the repository for things that I cannot throw away. It's a creepy space to other people, even when it contained nothing. It looks, one of my friends said as she helped me move into my house, like a place where bad things have happened to someone. I saw her point, the bare lights and cement floor, the secret room with shelves to hold clothes and books and dolls. I spend a lot of time down there, organizing and culling my things, but I've never seen the shirt again. Sometimes when you hide something well, you can't even find it yourself.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"The first need of a free people is to define their own terms. " Stokely Carmichael

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Factotum

Benedictions and Maledictions

Thanks so much to everyone for all the sweet compliments on my hair! I owe anything that works to my beautiful friend Stacey, a stylist on par with Ken Paves any day! Any problems I attribute to my propensity for thoughtless harsh brushing. However, I am working on it as well as more frequent conditioning.

The Black Lights

Once I was at a dinner party where one of the guests, Mike, claimed that he had over 10,000 pictures of Farrah Faucett. Mike had just returned from an all-gay cruise vacation (A thousand men on a ship -- yay! was his summation of the experience), and he tried to explain his Farrah obsession. She's just so beautiful, he said. Do you know she paints? While I believe that Farrah is indeed a beautiful woman, like all objects of obsession, it's almost impossible to explain what makes her more special to Mike than anyone else. Another guest named Tommy at the same party had a similiar dilemma -- relating the plot of Rocky IV. Dude, he said, motioning with his hands to Mike, It's a lot more than you think. Tommy continued with about twenty minutes of tedious plot description before adding, I can't explain what the movie did to me. There's so much more to it. It's emotional.

Now that the sixth installment of the Rocky series is out, I suspect that I'll hear that sentiment again. The clips suggest that Sylvester S. taps into his old boxer's heart and pulls out another victory. It's a story we love, that fight against all the odds. Strangely, Farrah is also involved in that story, except it's a horribly real fight against cancer. Many years have passed since the dinner party. I wonder if Mike still has his collection and worries about Farrah. I hope that Tommy looks forward to the new Rocky movie and hasn't grown cynical and bored. When boxers get knocked out, they see something referred to as the black lights. I've been hit hard enough to see stars. That was enough for me to get the point, but the world, so wondrous and hideous, has much more in store, I'm certain.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"A definition of peace: the moment when you reload your rifle." Bob Dylan

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Blood On The Tracks Bob Dylan

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Tuesday! P.S. I put this fur coat on after a breakfast of veal and shark fin soup. Kidding! The fur in the picture is not real.

Done In By Detroit!

As I watched the ball drop last night, I watched all the people in Times Square while John Lennon's "Imagine" played. The announcer claimed the mood was "reflective" while the images were of a bunch of drunk people yelling and dancing while wearing novelty glasses that said 2007. It didn't seem incredibly thoughtful, but I suppose that the start of a new year can't help but be reflective especially for those who dread such an activity. Thinking about the past means "getting in touch with my feelings" (a dreadful phrase) and finding out that some of them are in fact predictably awful, and it's not an activity I encourage. Drinking helps until it doesn't. At any rate, I found myself clinging to the abusive leg of the old year until the ball dropped.

All that said, what are we to make of the new year? Well, the Lions kicked the Dallas Cowboys' asses, making me a very happy camper. The title of this entry comes from the Star Telegram front-page headline in Ft. Worth. Ha! So that's a start. As for everything else in the world, we'll be watching our televisions next year to find out who made it and who didn't and thinking, damn, how did another year pass without me even knowing it?

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"If it ain't rough, it ain't right." RIP Hamilton, Detroit Pistons

Cocktail Hour

If you drank a lot yesterday, like vats and vats until you blacked out, you should try the following recipe to get rid of some of the pain.

New Year's Day

1 glass of scotch whiskey served with three teaspoons of honey

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy New Year's Day!

Laughing in the New Year

Happy 2007 everybody! Regular post to come later today -- my first New Year's Resolution!