Tips & Tricks #1: Know Your Enemy

This is that magical time of year when people all over the world are saying to themselves "Oh no! What have I gotten myself into?" as they contemplate the prospect of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. It sounds nigh-well impossible, but it's not. In fact, while it will have a noticeable impact on your life, it needn't disrupt things entirely.

You've heard stories, I'm sure, of Nanovelists who have pulled some sort of Herculean all-nighter on 11/29 and managed 25,000 words on the very last day to finish. I can't do that. I am a person who likes to break a task up into equal, manageable chunks and pace myself.

If you take this approach with Nano, your task is this: 1,666.67 words per day for 30 days.

In the beginning, when you're still getting in practice, it might take you a few hours to get all 1666.67 words out (just do 1667 - that 2/3 word is tricky), or it might take you half an hour. When I'm really in form, it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to do 2,000 words including time I spend pondering whether to say "hermaneutic" or "heuristic."

One swell way of powering through your words is to make a pact with yourself. You will NOT get up from your seat without having finished. Not to get a drink, answer the phone, pee - you will NOT get out of that seat.

And just remember - you only have to reach 50,000 words. You don't have to write something publishable. You don't have to write something readable. Your novel does not have to be finished, even. My first attempt had reached 83,000 by the end of November, but it took another two years and several complete re-writes to get it into shape.

Next issue: Where to Write

Blogging My Novel

For the first time, I am inviting you all to participate with me in my own private novel-writing process.

I write the same way I breathe. Constantly. Compulsively. Sometimes I have trouble doing it well, and it makes me panic. I experience a feeling of extraordinary well-being when I am doing it voluminously and well.

I have opinions of other Nanos that are probably uncharitable.
1. I want to smack anyone who logs onto any public forum and announces "What have I gotten myself into? I must be crazy!" If you're so intimidated, don't do it. I've done it several times and lived, so I'm not really sympathetic. We're all busy. We're all intimidated by the commitment we've made. But notice, we're NOT all whining about it.

2. I am not interested in cheerleaders. I know that everyone has to start somewhere and that it's nice to be able to say "I'm writing a Harry Potter fanfic with faeries and a new character based on my younger brother who's Harry's new best friend." And then a zillion other people jump on board and tell that person what a genius s/he is and how great they're sure it will be. Perhaps it's just sour grapes on my part. I have written all my life, and have received very little encouragement for it.

3. I am infuriated by people who cheat. What the hell is the point? You're not winning anything of value, here. You're winning a 50,000-word first draft of a novel that you had to write yourself, that you're going to have to do another 11 months' worth of work on to have a saleable product. Nobody is impressed if you suddenly come up on November 2nd with 300,000 words. We just think you're an insufferable wanker.

4. I am a very curmudgeonly person in writing, but very nice in person. That being said, I don't want to meet you. I don't want to leave my house. And, most of the time, I would like the people in my house to leave for a while and get out of my hair. I am annoyed with the tendency of Nanos to obsess about the next partying opportunity. I am not in this to go to parties. I am in this to force myself to write some stuff down, although I do that all the time anyway. I also like the t-shirts. Except this year's.

5. I am first and foremost a writer. Sure, I do lots of other things, but I'm a professional writer. I make money doing this. So I don't want to hear how full of shit I am from someone who's accumulating half-finished first drafts in a folder stashed away under their unmentionables.

6. I do not represent that either my routine or my process are suitable for anyone other than myself. I'm certain that many successful writers do their thang in ways that are 180 degrees different than my own. That's great. They're not asking me for help, and laughing at me behind my back if they deign to notice me at all. I will probably post little insights into my process, but I don't claim that if you do what I do you'll get anything but tired. Truthfully, that's about all it gets me a lot of the time.

Next issue: Tips and Tricks

Good Work

I spent last night going through the Writer's Market and looking up agents. I have no idea what to look for. My criteria seem completely subjective to me, and I have no idea whether they are helping my search or hindering it.

My criteria:

Should have been in the agenting business for five years or more (I figure this weeds out those who are losers and/or not serious)

Should represent at least 50 clients (this tells me that they're serious about agenting, not running a beauty salon/literary agency)

Should list information about recent sales, and should actually have recent sales to list (if you "decline to comment," it may be because you've got nothing on which to comment)

Prior to being a literary agent, should have worked in a related field (publishing, another agency - no former substitute teachers or psychologists need apply)

Should be local (I'm needy and don't want to spend a fortune in long distance and airfare whining to an agent)

Contains less than 2% of: represents my genre (literary fiction), reasonable query turnaround time, doesn't come off as smarmy and nasty

So, I figure that I have plenty of time to craft the most amazing cover letter possible for my book (since it's not finished yet) and then carpet the earth with query letters. Yes, many of them say "no simultaneous queries," but if I have a manuscript that I spent three years on, I don't want to send it off to one agent, wait two to six months, send it to another agent, etc. A good fisherman uses a sturdy pole and the right bait. A REALLY good fisherman uses four or five poles and homemade bait. A professional uses half a ton of chum and a big fucking net.

I Haven't Posted Anything Significant In a While

Contents:
1. What I've Been Doing with my Writing
2. The Direction My Life is Taking Doesn't Seem to Appear on my Map
3. I Hate My Fucking Job

1. I've been indulging in an orgy of editing and submitting lately. I feel really good about the fact that I've gotten over that mental hurdle that had me too scared and too embarrassed by my own perceived lack of talent to submit anything. I totally credit the Nanos for kicking my butt and helping me find markets and the courage to send stuff to them. It's only a matter of time now before something I've submitted somewhere gets picked up, because it's good writing, goddamnit!

2. I am currently in a weird limbo. Frankly, I think I've got enough talent to be a commercially viable writer. The problem is that I lack the time and the understanding of my family. sees me struggling to make time for my novel, but let's face it - there's only one of me and one of him and a whole house and a garden and two kids and he's got stuff he needs to do as well. In the meantime, I have a boss who spends 12+ hours a day at work, and therefore isn't all that impressed by anyone who does anything less.

I'd love to be able to quit my job and just write, but that doesn't seem to be on the horizon anywhere. My extended family says "But you already finished your novel, right? When is it coming out?" They see people like J.K. Rowling (who took years to write her first novel and another full year to sell it to someone, and then another year for it to hit the market) and see a book a year for a few years and wonder why I can't do the same thing. They don't seem to see the rest of the picture where, by the time you've churned out a best-selling book, you're allowed to quit your job and write full time, and your publisher is willing to assign you editors who will help you through the most time-consuming part of the process - the editing.

But I'm not bitter.

3. The above translates into my looking at the work I get paid to do and think "Why? Why am I knocking myself out for this?" I like the people with whom I work, but I'm not going to feel very bad when I can quit. That probably makes me a horrible person, but there it is, then.

My Fears of Giving Birth to a Baby Goth are Laid to Rest

Peaches gave me folders with her work in it. I put them aside, meaning to read them later. And I didn't read them later. I'm a bad parent. The Pirate handed me one of her poems and I was floored.

Amazing non-Goth poetry written by a 12-year-old with a perspective I could only wish for.

I Am

I am funny and athletic.
I wonder how babies are made.
I hear my mom yelling my name.
I see Sombra laughing and happy.
I want a dog instead of a fish.
I am funny and athletic.

I pretend that I am popular.
I feel like my life is the worst
life a kid could ever have.
I touch things like books.
I worry about the health of my pets.
I cry because I miss the dead.
I am funny and athletic.

I understand why my parents are divorced.
I say that I believe in BUDDHA.
I drream that I will be a good person.
I hope that my grades will be good.
I try to get things right.
I am funny and athletic.

The Living Bedroom

My falling socks are like snow
And my flying shirts are always in the air.
My bed is like huge mountain ranges
And my top bunk is a flea comb swiping up jumping fleas.
Do not throw any clothes into my eating dresser.
They will never be seen again.
My books are like caves covering up my pens,
And my dresser is like a fence
For all of my things.
The cat hair on my bed can be used for string,
And on my bed is a sniffling me.
Everywhere I go,
And whenever I move,
The posters eyes follow me.
So do not go into my room or else you will be eaten
And never come out the other end.
Beware of the flying clothes and strange sounds.
Go back to your room and that grabbing memory
Might just haunt forever.

I feel so presumptuous trying to write. I don't have half the talent this kid has. Or maybe I'm just a doting mama.

Bitching About People Who Can Read This

I'm grouchy.

I have been working really hard, at home and at work, to knock down my many, many "to-do" lists. I live by my lists, and they keep me focused. This week, I actually hit 100% of the stuff I meant to accomplish, but I don't feel any better about it than I did last week when I did even make a list.

Partly it's this: I got my review last week. My boss thinks I walk on water. He's foursquare in my corner and wants to see me kicking more of the ass that I kick for him on a regular basis. He's made goals for me this year that are...ambitious. I worry because I have goals for myself that are probably equally ambitious, but I can't reach them if I'm spending all my time at work. But I'm incapable of just saying "fuck it," and letting my boss down. I have the sort of sense of duty that one looks for in a lapdog. Pathetic, I know. But I take pride in the fact that my boss never thinks twice about entrusting me with very large, very complex projects that must be carried out with no sort of oversight.

That my boss loves me is all well and good, but it also makes me feel as though every day, I make the choice between bolstering my writing career (such as it is) and doing this thing I do for money. The more I search myself, the more I realize that the satisfaction that comes of doing an excellent job for someone else isn't enough. It feels sort of analagous to when Peaches was a baby, and I would call her caregiver two and three times a day to find out how she was doing. I finally had to quit my job because I coudln't concentrate. I had to be with my little girl. I am feeling that way about my writing. I want to be with it more than with my work.

Which brings me to the next thing, which is that I find it nigh-well impossible to find a suitable place to do my work. I can't carry it out at work. I have too much to do there to do much of anything else. I can't do it at home, because again, that dratted sense of duty won't let me concentrate. How can I selfishly sit on my ass writing and editing when there are dishes to be done or laundry to be folded? So I go out, but the problem there is that I am incapable of telling anyone to leave me alone. I went to OVC tonight and saw a few of the gang there and started to make really good progress on a piece that I think is just about ready for submission, but got sidetracked by an unwelcome conversation. And not just once. I made a few comments that this other person found provocative, and at least twice, this person felt moved to get my attention (taking it away from what I was doing) to distract me with a conversation that had nothing to do with what I was there for. I hate to be rude. I really do. I am incapable of saying "leave me alone right now," even when it's what I most fondly wish. The irony is that part of this conversation had to do with Americans' concept of proper manners.

Now, this brings me to the very last bitter dreg of my sour draught. The person who was so interested in what I had to say was also a person to whom I had given a draft of part of my novel many months ago, with the understanding that he would read it and give me feedback. I have never received said feedback. I gave it to at least three people, and never heard anything from any of them. I have now edited two novels, two novellas and half a dozen short stories for this group, and have gotten back exactly one critique of one short story, given by a person who, by his own admission, didn't have time to read it properly because he was in the middle of moving.

Those people who have heard my work read out loud have been unanimous in their praise, but that does me no good at all when what I'm looking for is the little nits that will make it perfect. I am frustrated that I have made time for them, but they have not seen fit to return the favor. At this point in time, I have exactly one dear friend who is enough of a writer that I trust his judgement and enough of a friend that he's not afraid to tell me when I'm phoning it in. He's a writer as well, and I edit his stuff and we sit down together and hammer things out. It's the most valuable interaction I've ever had with another writer. I'd love to find one more, but I don't even begin to know where to look.

I feel like I need more. From my work life, from my writing, from those people who call themselves my friends.


Okay. You can come out now. I'm done bitching.

Okay, Feeling Better

It's a quarter of three here, and since that last post I have finished and submitted that manual, eaten lunch, put a couple of miles on the treadmill and had a shower. I feel pretty justified in sitting on my ass for the rest of the day.

Not that it's likely to happen. Stephanie and I are supposed to go shopping after work, and then I have plenty to do once I get home. Like...kissing on my family, which I could spend hours doing. They're just so smoochilicious.

I'm still a little torn, though. I was talking to The Pirate after the reading I did on Friday. It was really well-received, and I felt about it the way I've felt about other readings: my stuff is as good as any of this, and better than a lot of it. He said that if he were me, he would be frustrated because my stuff is better than a lot of other readers who were already published and my stuff isn't published yet.

That's not why I'm frustrated. I know exactly why it isn't published. It's because there just aren't enough hours in the day for me to earn a living, take care of my family, take care of myself and finish this novel by the end of the week. It's slow going, and I always feel criminally self-indulgent when I'm writing and neglecting other things.

I'm not sure what to do about this.

The Virtual Bank Line Comes to Reality

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was in the corridor of a hospital. There were about 12-15 women there, all wearing beautifully adorned chadors in jewel colors - deep blues, reds and golds. They were all sitting on benches or standing in the hallway of this hospital waiting to hear news of a women relative who was there having a baby. In among the women were two or three men, including the husband of the laboring mother, all anxiously waiting for news. The atmosphere was festive and talkative. There was going to be a party at someone's house as soon as the baby was born, and everyone was pretty happy.

On the walls were photos of a pretty young woman wearing a black headscarf and a very serious expression. There was no text with the photos, but I knew that she was an activist of some sort who was there in the hospital because she was dying. She wasn't sick, she was dying as a protest. She had simply decided that she was going to die, and without doing anything like taking poison or starving herself, she sickened. I looked at the pictures of this serious woman in black and at all the happy women around me dressed like lovely exotic birds.

A murmur went through the crowd as the doctor came out of the delivery room holding the red, squirming baby. "It's a boy!" The father looked at the baby and smiled, saying "Yeah, he looks just like me!" Everyone laughed and clapped him on the back, and all got up to leave. As they were filing out, the word went through the crowd that the activist had, in fact, died just then. The women in the group all pressed their lips together and nodded. It seemed that they weren't surprised in the least. They knew that it would happen and they seemed to think that things were as they should be. I felt very conscious of being on the outside, an observer, in a thing whose meaning I did not understand and was not meant to understand.

This dream happened three days ago, and yesterday I went to the Baby Goddess' school to drop her off. Monira, a grandmotherly woman who's there in the mornings smiled and I told her about the dream, as she had been one of the women in the hospital corridor. Her eyes got huge and she became very serious. She said that she thought it was strange that I should be dreaming about her.

This morning, she came and put her arms around me and told me that she had talked to her daughters and her sisters and told them about the dream. Apparently, I dreamed a thing that had happened to them. She told me that they were all very flattered that I was dreaming about them, especially as the things that are happening to them are happening in Egypt, where Monira's family lives.

It's always strange to find out how connected we all are to each other.

Finally Processing the Weekend

Many Things have happened. Many. Muchness went on, and I was there for it.

I got my eyebrow pierced. After the hilarity surrounding the microphone-nosering conjuction, I just had to go for the lorgnette and eyebrow ring conjuction. The Pirate is pleased as all heck, as is the man who sold me the lorgnette. He wants pictures for their website.

My mother thinks the overall effect is "punk granny," the Pirate says "Victorian borg," but Stephanie says "It's just Goth." Ew.

The cat pee briefcase has been restored to functionality. Which is lucky for the damn cat. A little Nature's Miracle and then some saddle soap and mink oil and all that's left is a wierd sort of watermark. That's not bad

And on the writing front, several things are popping and humming. The woman who gushed about Orfeo at the last CWC reading forwarded my name to a friend of hers who teaches at the University of Southern Maine. This woman and I have now hooked up and are corresponding. She wants to use my writing in her class. Mmmmm!
I'm giving another reading of The Birth of Athena this coming Friday at the Borders in Los Gatos. Mike M. has already promised to show up, as well as a couple of the other South Bay Nanos.

I'm also pleased as all get-out to see more people putting up their to-do lists. Let me just say, HOORAY! I love the lists! I want to give each and every one of you a cookie. Perhaps two.

And, in other news, there's a billboard advertising insurance on the 880 going toward Oakland (is that north or west?) just before the Montague exit. It has a huge picture of Andrew Jackson wearing sunglasses and it looks eerily like Mike M. only with longer hair. I've been thinking about that every time I pass it, and keep forgetting to say anything.

What Pimping Gets You

Friday has turned out to be a pretty good day for me. I went to the CWC reading at the B&N, and read the same selection from Orfeo that I had read at Zebulon's Lounge last Tuesday, but it went a little more smoothly this time, even though I wasn't drunk.

It helped that I had a few friends there with me. In addition to the Pirate, a friend and his wife from my new job showed up, as well as a friend from my old job and his fiance, and Mike M. and Ian D. The people who showed up for just me outnumbered those who had come to see everyone else. Thank you to those of you who made the trek out. It meant a whole lot to me.

A nice unforeseen bonus came in the form of another one of the evening's readers, a poet by the name of Carolyn Schuk, came up to me and said that she has a good friend who teaches mythology at the University of Maine. This particular professor would be highly interested in the fact that my stories combine Greek mythology and Mexican culture. Well, as they say, write what you know.

And, in a completely unrelated bout of pimping, the Pirate has caught on. He's had a series of interviews with three large, profitable, well-known Silicon Valley companies. Company G flew him down to Los Angeles, wined and dined him and impressed him with their high-energy corporate-cult atmosphere. Company N had him out for a regular interview at their Los Gatos office, and impressed him with the fact that they're a little older on average, and seem to be a little less out to prove something. Company A has only given him a phone interview thus far. Company G wants him in their Mountain View office on Wednesday for another series of interviews. Company A has asked for a second interview. Company N will make him an offer on Monday. They've already talked money, and the only reason they didn't make the offer is because the guy in charge of that was sick today. So, it's all over but the shouting, and I brought the Pirate home some nice champagne to celebrate.

It looks like the shitstorm is letting up a little at the ol' homestead. Actually, I'm feeling pretty blessed right about now.

Ed. It.

No, I didn't make it to CS last night. The poor Pirate was on his last (good) leg and really needed to be given the night off. We lay in bed, him watching absolutely the best movie ever made, a little slice of heaven that is corn with cheese on it dipped in acid, Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

Luckily, I was very busy with the next section of my novel. So...my total hours for the month are now at 13, only 37 to go. I am hoping that if I can shoehorn in 2 hours a day between now and the end of the month, I'll be doing okay. I think that I can hammer this thing into decent shape by then.

The second portion, Atena, is much like the first in that on my first reading after some time, I found a lot of really strong parts, and a lot of flabby filler. But I'm excited to be working hard on it and whipping it into shape.

Time Well Spent

On Tuesday I did that reading in Petaluma and heard a really amazing piece by a woman who lives in that area. So, yesterday, I decided to email her and tell her exactly what I thought of her work. I wrote her a fairly long email with my comments and praise.

She wrote me back last night, a warm happy letter saying in effect that I'd made her day. She also asked for the text of Orfeo because she said that it went by too fast for her and she'd like to "linger over it." I was tickled and, after finishing my last round of edits last night, emailed it off to her.

Increasing the happiness in the world. It's one of my five pledges.

Family Trouble

Now, you might think that I'm having trouble with my family. Au contraire! It's they who are having the trouble.

My younger sister phoned last night. I haven't talked to her in a while. I thought she was calling me to gossip about our older sister, but no. She's got her own shit.

Now, let me just tell you the kind of shit she gets herself into....
Ximena is a clinical psychologist on Chicago's south side. She works with families in crisis (and believe me, she's got a fabulous firsthand foundation on that). On this particular day she was doing outreach with Xavier, a guy who's getting his degree in counseling. She likes this guy because he's working on his degree after being in prison for 20 years on a murder charge. He's 35.

They are at some building in Chicago that used to house a large mental hospital, but is now being used as a sort of outpatient facility. After completing their outreach calls, my sister turns to Xavier and says "Hey, you wanna go up and see the twelfth floor?"

"What's on the twelfth floor?"

"That's where they kept all the real f-ed up folks. It's totally Girl, Interrupted."

Xavier is skeptical, but goes along with it. The twelfth floor does not have any direct access from an elevator. In order to get to it you have to go up to a higher floor and then down a series of staircases that are not necessarily near each other and that, at one time, were all kept locked. Ximena and Xavier thread their way in the near-dark through the series of stairs and doors until they find themselves in a large room on the twelfth floor. There is dusty, knocked-over furniture and trash on the floor, and the whole thing smells like mildew. Xavier, who is still on parole, does not come into the room with her. He is a sensible man who knows that if they do find anything untoward, he can't afford to be the one to find it.

And, sure enough, my sister spots a pair of legs. The feet at the end of the legs do not have shoes on them, and the legs themselves are twisted up in a position that suggests that their owner didn't just lie down for a little nappy-do. My sister is immediately wigged out and turns and runs out, screaming at Xavier "Let's get outta heeeeeeeeeere!"

Xavier is not only a sensible man, but a very large one. He has not seen anything, but scoops my sister up and rushes back out the way they came. As he's running down a hall with my sister in tow, he says "What are we running from?" "A body!" she pants. He rolls his eyes and speeds up.

They get out to the nurses' station at the front lobby and my sister is overcome with an attack of conscience. Xavier would much rather leave this theoretical body that he has not seen where it supposedly lies and get the heck outta Dodge, but my sister will do no such thing. She goes to the nurse at the desk and says "Um...there's a guy....upstairs...on the twelfth floor...um...lying down."

The nurse's eyebrows shoot up. "What were you doing on the twelfth floor?" My sister had to do a little fast talking, but her clinical psychologist cred gets her and Xavier out of being arrested. A pair of security guards is summoned and Ximena and Xavier are asked to lead them to the "guy lying down."

Ximena had completely lost her sense of direction, but Xavier, being the self-possessed person he is, knew exactly where he was going. As Xavier is saying "Left here...right through this door....down the second set of stairs..." Ximena looked at these guys and thought "Okay, Xavier is Freddy, this guy over here is Velma, that guy is Daphne...and I'm Scooby Doo."

They get into the room and Ximena and Xavier hang back. There's no way she wants to see that sight again, and she feels that now that she's led the security guys to it, she's done her duty. On the other hand, she is not without a sense of morbid curiosity. Who is it? It couldn't possibly be anyone who accidentally wandered up there.

The guards looked carefully at the body without touching it. One of them bent down for a closer look, then beckoned the other to do the same. Both of them burst out laughing. Ximena is horrified. She runs up to them, asking them what's so funny. They turn the body over...and she can clearly see the mannequin's face in the dim light.

The rosy glow coming from Ximena's face is enough to illuminate the scene.

Now that the tension's been broken, the four of them turn even more Scooby Doo. They decide that while they're here.... They start walking around the rest of the floor. The rest is much the same, trash and dusty furniture. But WAYYYYY in the back, they find a queen-sized bed up on cinder blocks. The sheets are clean, the bed is made. Someone has been up here recently. The guards immediately turn to Ximena and Xavier and ask "So - what do YOU TWO know about this?"

After a little more poking around, Ximena and Xavier are escorted out. Upon reflection, Ximena has decided that the dead body was an amazingly creative first line of defense for someone's Fortified Love Nest.

Bedtime Reading of the Terribly Pedantic Lifestyle

I've been listening to a history of Alexander the Great written about a hundred years after his death, but it's a little hard to get into as an audiobook.

There are lots of descriptions of places that no longer exist and a lot of passages that sound like this "And so Alexander met with Thorax. This is not Thorax of Hypnotia, whom some of the early Lucites worshipped as a god. This is Thorax of Biodegradia, son of Beltsander." And then there are the countless battles with triremes and quadriremes and lemoncremes until your eyes no longer blink in unison.

The Pirate took Peaches off to the library tonight so that she could get some books for a school project and came home with histories of Mesopotamia, Sumaria, Babylon, Assyria and the Persian empire.

Frankly, there is a whole big hunk of history that I just have a hard time getting past. Everything between....fire and the invention of Popeil's Pocket Fisherman. Okay, maybe not that big, but anything that doesn't already come with a compelling narrative is just tough to get past. Even the Bible skips past all this and gets right to the sex (you know - Hashish begat Diphthong who begat Target who begat Hut who begat Tarnashun who begat....). And then you go right to a place where we begin to have written record.

So, right now he's sitting next to me reading about how the little Mesopotamuses went to war with the Sombrarians under Xanax and created the first empire. Meanwhile, in the Persian empire, Zoroaster was creating the first religion to be picked up by a country music singer and made into a chain of fast food restaurants, Kenny Roger's Zoroasters.

This is really motivating me to find a wall-sized map of ancient Greece so I can go back to Alexander the Great and skip the whole history of the Assyrians who invaded the Sombrarians while the Sombrarians were busy using their little hats as flowerpots. Or maybe it was the Babbleonandonians.

I can never remember.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I have no idea where this came from, but it's a little scary.

So, I'm at work, working hard on this manual that I've got to get done. At the same time, there are two bumbling idiots running around in a place that looks like Golden Gate park, trying to avoid a large gang of terrorists that are trying to kill them.

I can see these two idiots because I'm sort of flying above them, every once in a while stopping and clinging to a tree and checking out the amazing colonies of insects that live high up in trees.

And then I'm back at work, and while I was gone, they have removed all the cubicles and re-arranged the space. Everyone now has small desks arranged in a U shape around the room. The rest of the company is at a meeting, but there are about five people sitting at desks talking together. The nameplates that used to adorn the outside of our cubes are now on the top of the desks so that we can find our place, and I'm looking around for my desk because I had been in the middle of an important project. I ask the few people in the room if they know which one is my desk, and they ignore me. I walk around the U, looking for my nameplate. I finally come upon it attached to a desk with a person sitting at it. I am deeply annoyed.

In another room, there is a guy who looks like the guy from Office Space (who in turn closely resembles my best friend). He has a scam in mind wherein he's going to tell the women in accounts payable that he needs these checks made out to a bunch of vendors. He's got the pile of blank checks in his hand. He walks into accounts payable, which consists of three desks at weird angles to each other, so that the women behind them are no more than 4 feet from one another.

He addresses the middle one, asking if she can do a rush job making out these checks to the vendors. She looks at him, picks up her phone and dials. The phone of the woman to her right rings, and that woman picks it up. Neither of the women look at each other or at the guy, and the women are talking in stage whispers as though he can't hear them perfectly well.

"I think we should get this guy to come and work for us," the first woman says.

"That's fine. He can have Marcy's old desk," the other woman says.

"Okay. I'll get him started right away," the first woman says, and hangs up the phone. Then she looks at the other woman and mouths the words "Thank you."

She directs the guy to another desk directly behind the group, and tells him that there is an account ledger and to just get started. He sits down, baffled about what just happened.

I go back to my desk, and I'm fishing through the very large bottom drawer, which is full of junk. Saddam Hussein is sitting to my left wearing a maroon beret. We are arguing about who currently has control of Libya. He maintains that the beret he's wearing proves that he controls Libya, but I insist that there is a set of filing cabinet keys in my drawer that proves that I have control of Libya. I'm annoyed because he won't stop taunting me as I'm fishing through this large drawer for these very small keys.

I look up and he's grinning like an idiot at me from behind his desk. "You can't find them, can you?" he says in an irritating, cheerful tone. "That's because I control Libya and Ghaddafi." I give him a nasty look and keep searching for those keys.

And in the dream, for some reason, none of this was even remotely funny.

Desperation Food Critic

I would like to take a few minutes to provide a public service to those of you who, like me, find yourselves waking up at bitch o'clock, going in to work, working until fuckthirty, going home, falling into bed and then repeating the process over and over until you forget what day it is.

The first cherished habit to fall victim to this schedule is that of sitting down to an actual meal. Let's face it, a handful of Skittles and three diet Cherry Cokes may get you through, but you will pay in the long run. My personal coping mechanism is this: eating cold soup directly from the tin with a plastic spoon. The beauty of this particular fare is that it leaves no dirty dishes covered with the tiny crumbs of congealed grease that say "This soup was never heated" (as opposed to the long smears of grease on a bowl that say "This soup was heated, eaten and the dishes thrown into the sink a week ago Thursday").

My personal favorite is Progresso's Southwestern-Style chicken. The roasted chicken has that Liquid Smoke flavor that, if you close the one eye that you're not keeping on your work, you can almost believe was hot not very long ago. The rice acts as a homogenizing agent, keeping the grease well mixed in the soup so that it doesn't end up coating your spoon after the second bite making you lose your appetite after the third bite.
The the best part? The slightly spicy flavor is a fabulous complement to the bitter taste of the self-recrimination that comes of neglecting your personal life.

Bon apetit!

Hairy Stress Hateku

What's my damn problem?
Why can't I just be happy?
Or stop my whining?

Child Support Hateku

You're such a cheapskate
This is your kid you're shorting
She'll hate you later

22:25

Renata put her hands against the steering wheel and flexed them hard, trying to work out the soreness. Then she turned her left foot in circles and, after gunning the engine hard for a second, quickly did the same with her right. She arched her back as far as her seatbelt would allow, then scootched around in her seat, trying to find a spot that didn't feel like she was stuck to it.

She squinted at the road ahead, but it was no use. There was nothing but the illuminated gray of the mist coming up from the road, caught in her headlights and the black of the night beyond it. No lights on this stretch of the 10, no cars, no stars. Nothing. And there would be nothing until Desert Center, if you could call Desert Center "something."

She punched the buttons of the radio, cursing under her breath at the frazzled bit of cord that used to be the cd adapter until she'd shut it in the car door at Indio where she'd stopped to get gas. Of course there was nothing on FM. She pressed Search, and the LEDs whizzed crazily around, stopping occasionally at a bit of static that was on the border of making sense, but not crossing it.

She turned over to AM, and hit search again. Search. The numbers marched purposefully forward, stopping at 70s elevator music, the cigarette voice of some right-wing talk-show host, the always-unexpected volume of a station playing Mexican country music. Her finger hovered over the button, ready to jab it if anything sounded promising. Search.

"...waiting for you to come home."

There was a brief pause after that bit of a sentence, long enough for Renata to want to know who was waiting, and who was coming home.

"Jesus knows you're coming," the voice went on.

"Aw, shit," Renata said, her finger jabbing for Search again and missing, breaking a nail against the faceplate of the radio. But she didn't hit the button again. The voice wasn't strident. Not berating or unkind. The voice wasn't admonishing her to admit that she was a bad person.
"Jesus is waiting for you, and weeping. Weeping for you like the mother who weeps for her lost child, because you are the lost children of Jesus, who loves you as no mother has ever loved her children with a love that is perfect and pure and blessed and will wash the stain of your sins away from your face and you will shine as the sun and sit at the table with Jesus who will feed you with his very hand."

She began to feel light-headed. She turned off the radio and thought about pulling over. She didn't remember what the last milepost had said, but she couldn't have been more than a few miles outside Banning, which meant that (excepting the bustling metropolis of Desert Center) there really wouldn't be much until Blythe.

Goddamn it. Why did I go to that party? They knew I was leaving tonight. I told them a million times. The truck was packed, everything was ready.

She peered through the rain, then down at the dashboard clock. She had left at eleven, fully four hours after she'd meant to. If she had just left right from home at seven, she'd be past Quartzite right now, and almost there. If it hadn't started raining, she'd be going more than sixty, cutting her travel time with every mile.

When she was a kid, driving this stretch with her father, she would look at every milepost and figure up how long it would take to get home. At sixty miles an hour, it would take one minute per mile, and with 285 miles left, it would take...If her father went a little faster, she was always delighted to see that they were ahead of her imagined schedule, and she was deeply put out by having to make gas stops. Stopping just to use the bathroom or, heaven forbid, sightsee was just out of the question. There was nothing to see here anyway. Nothing.

Watched a Movie

The Pirate and I finally got around to seeing the movie "Before Night Falls," the story of Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas.
The movie was very rich and colorful and interesting to look at, but I was disappointed.

Arenas was born in Cuba in 1949, and before his death from AIDS in 1990 wrote 9 novels and won many literary awards. Unfortunately, rather than focus on Arenas the writer, "Before Night Falls" focused on Arenas the persecuted homosexual. At the time of the revolution, homosexuals were sent to concentration camps in Cuba to be "rehabilitated," and it didn't take much to be arrested as a homosexual.
The movie showed more scenes of Arenas at the beach than of him writing. We see two scenes of him giving people manuscripts to others who will have them published, but we don't see any of him working at his art.

It reminded me of a couple I know - one was an artist, the other a dancer. They were watching a movie that had dancing in it, and the dancer complained that they never show the people's feet. The artist pointed out that 99% of the movie watching public isn't interested in the technicalities of dance, and therefore the feet aren't the important part. The dancer pouted anyway.

The Pirate thought that the movie was great, and it was only after I expressed my discontent that he realized that it was true - there was not really much "writerliness" in the movie.

Oh well.

Traffic Hateku

I didn't see you
I'm sorry I cut you off
Stop honking, asshole

Everyone makes mistakes. But it takes someone really special to stick with you for ten or fifteen miles reminding you and everyone in the lanes adjacent to you of them.

Hateku

You really suck
Nobody really likes you
At least I sure don't

No, it's not a comment on anybody or anything. I'm just buried under a mountain of work, my entire body is sore, my weekend plans have been massively re-routed, and I'm feeling as bitter as 7-11 coffee.

In the Virtual Bank Line

It's my wedding day. I'm marrying The Wannabe - a guy who, in real life, I dated for four years at the end of high school and the beginning of college. For some reason the plan was that The Wannabe and I would have a civil ceremony, and then an hour later have a big ceremony at my brother's house.

For the civil ceremony I wore an elaborate dress made entirely of pearls. It was heavy and uncomfortable, but looked spectacular. Right after the ceremony we went outside and while The Wannabe went and got the car, I stood on a lawn. A friend had his son's school band drive by on a big truck, playing for us. I was really happy and thought it was really sweet and thoughtful of my friend.

Then we're at my brother's house. My understanding was that we'd get there, have the ceremony, and then have dinner and the reception. But somebody else had decided differently and everyone was already sitting down to dinner when we got there. The house seemed really tiny and cramped and the people were loud. I sat down, feeling panicky because things weren't going according to plan and I wasn't sure what to do. The Wannabe had disappeared, so I couldn't ask him what was going on.

It was getting later and later, and I had a headache I couldn't shake, so I told whoever was sitting next to me that I was going into another room to lie down. I went into a room that looked like an office with a couch in it. I lay down on the couch and picked up a magazine. I paged through it and then fell asleep. The next thing I knew, my mother was kissing me good-bye. I asked her why she was leaving and she said that it was getting late and she had to be at work the next day. I was really disappointed that she wouldn't be at the wedding, but lay back down on the couch.

I woke up again and I was in bed with The Wannabe. We were both asleep, and I shook his shoulder and asked him what had happened. He said that everyone had decided just to call off the wedding.

Then I was walking down the street from an apartment building. I had moved into his apartment with him, and he was supposed to come and pick me up. His car came down the street and passed me, turning the corner in front of me. I thought that he was going to go around the corner and wait, so I ran to the corner and got there in time to see his car turning the next corner. I thought that perhaps he had just accidentally passed me and was going to go around the block and catch up with me to pick me up, so I ran all the way around the block back to the front of my apartment building. I waited and he didn't show up.

I went inside and up to the apartment which was so full of furniture that it was a wreck. I picked up my cell phone and put it into my pocket so that it would be near me in case he called. The phone rang and it was an old boyfriend. I snapped that I didn't want to talk to him but then allowed myself to be drawn into a conversation. There was a knock at the door. It was my children who had come to live with me, as my honeymoon had been cancelled. I brought them inside while still talking on the phone, following them around the apartment and trying to steer them clear of things they weren't supposed to touch. The second line on my phone rang, and I clicked over. A voice said hello, and when I said hello the voice said that I sounded stressed. I didn't recognize the voice, so I stayed noncommittal. The voice then said, "Yeah, I know how you feel. I was feeling really stressed too, until I bought this amazing new product..." I shouted into the phone that I didn't have time for this crap and clicked the phone off.

It immediately rang again and it was The Wannabe. He said that he had gone to a club where his friend's band was playing, and then he was going to a party at someone's house, and then he'd call me afterward and see if I wanted to get together. I didn't say anything, but I was just really disappointed.

And then the alarm went off, leaving me feeling very disquieted and with a pounding headache.

War and Peace Workout

Welcome to Tolstoy on the Treadmill!

Lizette Margaretovna trudged uphill on the treadmill aware of a discomfort, a dull ache in the part of her on which she had until recently been accustomed to sitting down.

"My butt hurts," Lizette said to Prince Piratoff.

She could feel more and more acutely a shooting pain, a keen sensation everywhere on her lovely body between her hips and the tops of her thighs.

She seemed singularly unaware that this pronouncement might jeopardize her union with Prince Piratoff who loved her deeply, but whose father, Count Rubleski, wanted him to marry the less attractive but nonetheless charming Princess Getova Meovna. The match would have been much more to Count Rubleski's advantage, as Getova's father owned half of St. Scarfersberg but whose fortunes had taken a turn for the worse when his serfs all appended "er" to their title and moved en masse to America.

...Next time - Sartre on the StairMaster!

Opening Myself Up

So, I went to the Glimmer Train group last night, and I felt so out of place. I felt like a scribbler in a roomful of serious people. I know that I'm capable of good writing, but it's tough when everyone else is writing things that are not just serious but introspective and surprising and hypnotic and what you've done is just...silly.

In the Virtual Bank Line

The Pirate and I are at the opera. The venue is not the usual War Memorial Opera House, but something that looks like a community college auditorium. The walls on either side of the audience are giant windows covered with heavy drapes, and everything is done in white and gold, making the interior very light.

It is intermission, and before the audience gets up and files out, an usher asks if there are announcements. I pipe up and say that if anyone hasn't received their tickets for next season, the ushers are now handing them out. With that, ushers appear at the heads of the aisles with sheaves of tickets in their hands, although I realize that I don't have mine either. The thing in my hand that I thought was a ticket turned out to be an old receipt.

The people have filed out and are just about to come back into the auditorium. There is a single set of huge double doors at the back of the auditorium through which the people come to get into their seats, and as the first couple comes back into the room, I am standing next to the door. The man hands me my green leather notebook, and I remember that I had mislaid it somewhere. I express my gratitude, and he told me that I had left it in one of the seats and that he and his wife had to read a lot of it before they could discern to whom it belonged.

I had a message for a Chinese couple, and I waited in the stairwell until I saw them. I gave them the message, and they were incredibly grateful, so much so that we ended up talking and becoming friends. I invited them to our house after the opera, and they came over.

The Pirate and I went to bed, and when I woke up in the morning, not only was the Chinese couple still there, but they had invited all sorts of other people. They were sitting in the backyard on the adirondack chairs surrounded by their children and a few of the children's friends. They were looking out over the swimming pool that had a rock garden just beyond it. There was also a carefully laid out flower garden with little gravel paths, and a little orchard with tidy plots of vegetables among the trees. The whole effect was beautiful and restful, and the couple was telling us that they loved our place and wished they had one like it.

It turned out that while we were sleeping, a lot of people had come to the place. We heard about jam sessions among famous musicians, witticisms by famous writers and pundits, appearances by politicians without their wives. And the miracle was that I was being credited with this whole party. I saw snatches of notes on the floor that had dropped from the notebooks of at least one reporter, and when I got on the internet, I saw stories from the party in the entertainment section.

I had a screenplay that I had written and had been vainly trying to sell before, but I now had messages on my answering machine from at least three studios that were trying to buy the work. I went to a friend's house to sort out what to do next. The friend had a daughter about Peaches' age, and the two girls put on bathing suits and played in the swimming pool and ate potato chips while my friend and I talked about what to do next. The friend suggested that I not react too quickly to anything. Just sit back, let everyone make their offers, and then make a decision.

I left, leaving Peaches behind to play with her friend while the Pirate and I went on an errand. We had a second truck that we had left out on the edge of town, near a place that had a lot of truck stops and convenience stores. On the way, the Pirate asked me if I wanted to listen to a new tape that he had bought that he didn't like very much. It was some sort of "classic rock" crap, and I told him no, thanks. He gave me five dollars to put gas into the truck to get it home, and I realized that I really wanted a cigarette. I went to the convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes, but realized that I only had the five dollars and that I couldn't put any gas in the truck if I bought cigarettes, so I put the pack down and walked back outside.

The Pirate and I went to a place that was a sort of combination insurance agency/state aid agency/title company. We had to check into the insurance on one of the vehicles, and while the Pirate was busy looking into that, I looked out the window at the people outside. It took me a few minutes to notice that all of them were women, and all of them were wearing red dresses of various cuts and designs. I thought that it was odd, but the fact that I wasn't wearing a red dress didn't bother me at all.

A woman wearing a long black coat over a long-sleeved red sweater dress came walking in. She was applying for welfare, although she was obviously not poor. She was dressed expensively, was wearing very tastefully-done, expensive-looking makeup, and had manicured nails. Her shoes were obviously very expensive, and her sweater dress was cashmere. She was pregnant, and was telling the woman that she wanted to apply for welfare since she would have to quit her job once the baby was born.

The office worker made her fill out some forms, and then talked on the phone while looking at the forms. She told the woman that because her husband made a lot of money, she didn't qualify for welfare. The woman burst into tears, saying that she didn't know how they were going to live on just her husband's income, even though just his income was hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

She made a call from a payphone in the middle of the office that was one of the European style that looks like just a big, fat regular telephone. But she was short a nickel for the call, and while the telephone connected her, it began demanding the nickel loudly, the volume increasing the longer everyone in the office tried to ignore it. Finally one of the office workers got up and, with a look of obvious annoyance at the woman, plugged a nickel into the machine.

Then her caseworker told her that she had talked to her supervisor and that he had changed his mind. At first he had just said "tough luck," but now he was telling her that he could do something for her after all. The woman was beaming, and walked out of the office toward the bus stop looking very pleased with herself. I noticed her actions, but although I knew them to be unfair because this woman certainly didn't need welfare, I didn't feel at all angry about it.

We went back home and I listened to the messages on my answering machine. The messages were all from the studios that were offering me a lot of money for my screenplay. They all said that they were sending out representatives to my house today to draw up the contracts, and I figured that I would just let them come over and negotiate.

The doorbell rang, and it was the head of the company that laid me off last year. I didn't open the screen door or invite him in, but I asked him through the screen what he wanted. He said that he'd heard about the screenplay and that because I was a former employee of his, he wanted to take care of me. He offered to buy the screenplay, although he didn't mention a dollar figure. I asked him what use an electronics association had for a screenplay, knowing full well that he himself was just going to turn around and resell it to the studios.

He said that he just wanted to look out for my interests, and I told him that since they laid me off last year, I was no longer an employee, and that I could take care of myself just fine, thank you. He asked me to reconsider, telling me that he thought that I was making a mistake, but I just laughed at him and closed the door.

Then the alarm went off.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I am an 8-year-old boy. I'm being sent away to camp, and I don't want to go, because camp is scary. I don't know the rules, everyone is really clubby and I feel very excluded. I am not all that fond of home, but at least home is familiar and I have my hiding places.

I get to camp and the counsellors are all the PE teachers from my school. They're vigorous, stocky women in their twenties who are frighteningly overenthusiastic. They talk to us about all the things we're going to do at camp, but as they're talking, I completely zone out. I'm not interested, and I just want to leave and hide somewhere in the woods that are all around us.

I perk up when I hear that there will be horses at the camp. I want to see the horses, to ride them. I raise my hand and ask if I can ride the horses, and one of the counsellors knows that I haven't been paying attention. She tells me that I can ride the horses if I can tell her how many there are. I guess six, and everyone laughs at me. She tells me that there are eight white horses used to pull the camp's wagon. I'm embarrassed and run into a big central building that looks like a house.

I run through the building and see that the horses are out back. All eight of them are standing on a hill looking down at the house. They are beautiful and snow-white with black noses, and I want to find some hay and give it to them. They are up on a hill that's more like a tiny cliff, about ten feet high, and I can't see any path or stairs that leads up to where they are. I look around and there is a shed next to the house, and a barn next to that. Next to the barn is another house, and this other house's roof dropped down onto the top of this little cliff.

I go to the shed, grab two fistfuls of alfalfa and climb onto the shed's roof, and from there onto the roof of the house. I didn't realize what a steeply-pitched roof the house has, and I am clinging to the top of the roof. I am not at camp anymore, but the horses are still there. I am now in my own neighborhood, clinging to the roof of my next-door neighbor. I can't see anymore how to get to the horses, and besides, now the camp counsellors are there, standing next to the horses and I know that they will not let me feed them.

I realize that the part of the roof that I'm holding onto is breaking. It is as if the roof is put together with staples, and even my small weight is too much for it. Someone is yelling at me to get off the roof because it's breaking. I wriggle around and just as the piece I'm holding breaks off, I heave myself into a window.

It's the window of the teenage boy that lives next door. His bed is a loft bed. The foot end of the loft is a wardrobe where his clothes are hanging, and at the foot of his bed is one of those giant black-and-white TVs made out of that old white plastic that seemed to yellow instantly. The minute my feet hit the floor, one wall of the wardrobe gives way. I realize that the rod of the wardrobe is still suspended in midair, clothes still on hangers on it. I stare at it for a second, and then clothes, TV, bed, wardrobe all come crashing down.

I took off running, and I'm suddenly outside near a University. There are lots of big buildings and tons of people all over. There is a kid following me, yelling at me. It wasn't his room or his bed, and I don't know why this kid is yelling at me. It makes me angry that this kid I've never seen before should be following me in the street and shouting at me, so I turn and punch him in the face. He is surprised that I hit him, so I hit him again. And again. I punch him in the body and the face. I kick him in the groin.

The kid isn't making a sound, and although he's making like he's going to fight me, but he never seems to throw an actual punch. I continue to pound him until he falls, and then I kick him until he stops moving. Then I get scared and I run. I look back, and the kid is up again, bloody and ragged, running after me. I turn my head again and start dashing among the buildings, hoping to lose this kid. I go around the corner of one building, around another corner, and then I see inside one of the buildings a sort of glass cubicle that I can't see into from outside. I know that I will be able to see outside while no one can see in. I dash inside and stand against the window, watching for my pursuer.

For a while, I see nothing. No one seems to have noticed either my beating the kid or a bloody kid chasing me. I turn and look in another direction and I can just see two policemen kneeling next to a fallen person. I can't see the whole person, only the feet and lower legs. Curious, I go outside to see, and as I round the corner, I see that it's not the kid that I had beaten. Then I look around and see that there are hundreds of bodybags and stretchers with people who have been beaten. The stretchers are lining the sidewalks and walkways of the university, and as I leave the campus, they are lining the streets as well. Some of the people on the stretchers have been there for so long that they are covered with sores running with green pus. Although I imagine that they stink of rot, I can't smell them.

I'm walking down the street now, going back home. I'm happy to be going home. I walk down my street and to my own house. My older brother is there. He's 12 or so, and he tells me that we have to go with Dad to take the garbage out. There have been a lot of beatings, he says, and we have to stick together. We can't be too careful. My father appears with the trash bag, and we continue walking around the block. Our back yard doesn't have access to the alley, so we have to walk around the block to take out the trash. It's dusk, and my brother and I walk behind some sheds that are out in the alley. My brother is yelling the whole time that we're taking out the trash. He's made a kind of song out of it, and he's singing it at the top of his lungs.
We get to the dumpster which has a huge tree growing next to it. My brother and I climb the tree, followed by a kid who lives in the next block who heard my brother screaming and wants to play with us. We climb the tree and watch my dad go down the alley, taking the long way home. My brother and the kid go after him. I stay in the tree by myself, watching them leave. Soon, my mother comes into the alley and tells me that I have to go inside. I get down, and we walk the long way around the block home.

We're at the other end of the block from our house, and we're walking, but we don't seem to be getting any closer to our house. Then we see an ambulance in our driveway, and we run, but we're still not getting any closer. Then, one second the ambulance is in our driveway and the next, it has passed us going the other way on the road. My mother takes off running after it and I am left alone going home. I know that my father is in the ambulance, and while I don't know what happened to him, I'm not even curious.

So far, terrible things have happened to me in this dream, but I'm emotionless. I feel no curiosity, no sense of danger, no regret or disgust at what's happening.

After my mother leaves me, I decide that I"m going to go through all the houses on my way home. I go in the nearest front door. The houses are really small and close together, almost like townhouses. In the first house is a little girl in a frilly dress sitting at the dining room table coloring while her mother (Laurie Anderson) is playing the piano in another room and singing to her. I go to the side of the house, open the big picture window, and step through it. The next house has a similar picture window, and I open it from the outside and step into the house which has a large Asian family in it.

The little children smile at me, as though it is perfectly natural that I'm there. I go through three for four more houses before I realize that none of these houses even vaguely resemble mine, and I am no longer in my own street.

And then I'm awake..

In the Virtual Bank Line

I had to babysit for my cousin. In real life she's an adult, but in the dream she was about 8 and spoiled rotten. I was trying to get her to clean her house, but she wanted to get more and more toys out. I was taking them away from her and telling her that she could either clean her room or sit in the corner. She went to get out more toys, and I picked her up and plunked her down in the corner. I was MAD.

So, my cousin was howling in the corner and my sister came over. The rest of the family was hanging out down the street and were going out somewhere, so she came over to hang out with me while they were out. She wanted to play with my cousin, and encouraged the girl to get toys out, and I hit the roof. I yelled at her that our cousin was in time out for the very same infraction, and that she should be in time out too. My sister gamely went and stood in the corner, looking properly apologetic.

Just then I looked out the window and saw my family walking by wearing matching Xmas sweaters that looked hand-knit in really bright colors with crudely rendered cartoon animals on them. They were hideously ugly. The only one who was not wearing the sweater was the Pirate. He was wearing red plaid long cutoffs, black low-top Converse sneakers with white socks, a wife beater and a black denim jacket covered with studs and chains. He was riding his long skateboard and basically looked like an overgrown suburban punk. His hair had been cut with everything below the tops of his ears shaved off, and everything above the tops of his ears cut in a long sort of birds-nest style, with one long fringy layer of hair that covered everything had been badly bleached blond. It looked horrible, and I couldn't understand why he would do such a thing. He was walking next to a girl who looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, and I went outside and called to him and he stopped and turned around, and so did the girl. The rest of the family kept walking.

I asked him what he had done to his hair, and he asked me in a taunting tone of voice "Why? Don't you like it?" while shooting an "I told you so" look at the girl. I said no, I thought it looked horrible. He and the girl grinned at each other as though sharing some private joke, and he bowed his head to touch his forehead to hers affectionately. I was inexpressibly hurt and just walked away.

I went back into the house, and my sister had gotten herself and my cousin ready for bed and cleaned the house up. I was very grateful, and we went to bed. In the middle of the night I woke up because I couldn't sleep, so I opened up my laptop. My Yahoo messenger opened automatically, and the Pirate had evidently left his on and left his webcam on, because I could see an image of him and the girl asleep in my bed. I felt very sad again, and just shut the computer off.

In the morning, I had to go to work at a restaurant run by Florence Henderson. My sister had to get herself to the airport to get home. Peaches was with me, and she was going to stay with my mother for the day. For some reason, the bunch of us started out by walking down the highway. My sister and I turned to go one way that would lead us to my work, where my sister was going to call a cab, and Peaches ended up going straight on. She was stomping off purposefully, and stamped very deliberately on a small child's blue suede dress shoe that had been lost by the side of the road. I again felt very sad watching her walk away from me down the dangerous road, but she knew where she was going and what to do, and I knew that she would be okay.

I get to the restaurant, and it's a sort of B and B that's run by Florence Henderson. It's got a sort of TV theme, so the downstairs dining room has pictures of celebrities in it. I go upstairs because I'm supposed to be changing sheets on the beds. My sister comes with me, bids me goodbye and then leaves to catch her plane. I thank her for spending time with me, and we go downstairs.

Florence Henderson is there, and she's in the kitchen screaming at the staff. "WE DON'T PUT SPICES IN THIS FUCKING FOOD, GODDAMN IT! THIS IS FOOD FOR WHITE PEOPLE! I DON'T WANT TO SEE OR HEAR ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE! WHITE PEOPLE! DO YOU HEAR ME?" The staff and I are staring at each other in shock. We can't believe that she's saying this. Later she capitulates by telling us that we can put a picture of Gary Coleman in the dining room with the other TV celebrities, but THAT'S ALL.

I go upstairs and start stripping the beds, which are covered with layers and layers of blankets. The girl who's working with me and I stand on either side of the beds, loosen the layers of blankets, and then throw them into a giant pile to be taken to the laundry. Before we start making the bed again, I decide to go downstairs.

I go outside the building, and now we're in downtown San Francisco. Our restaurant/hotel is right next to some sort of weight loss clinic where the clients live onsite and all wear white togas. They mill around in and around this place, and you can hear from the outside the rhythmic clapping and low chanting of some sort of group attitude-improving exercise (think Amway meeting). The funny part is that there is a group of homeless people in a doorway just outside, and they're all staring in the direction of the building and chanting insulting slogans in time to the clapping. I can't help but laugh.

A good friend of mine is coming down the street on her way to lunch. She and I start walking together and she looks at all the women milling around in white togas and starts complaining about her own weight. She is about 5' 9" with medium-length dark blonde hair that's done up in a perm of big curls that looks very midwest. She's on the chunky side, but she looks fine, and I tell her so.

"Don't patronize me," she said. "Sure, I'm not a gigantic blob, but I know that I'm overweight and that I'd both look and feel better if I lost the weight. Your telling me that I look fine is just insulting."

I felt bad because I knew it was true. I wasn't trying to be insulting, I was just trying to be supportive. But she had a good point.

"I look at these women here," she went on. "I see that at least they're doing something about their problem. Yeah, you and I both know that they're going to end up right back where they were, but for now, they're doing something. I'm not even doing that much."

And we went walking on.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The funny thing is that some really emotionally powerful things happened in this dream, but none of them caused a big emotional spike. Even seeing the Pirate sleeping with someone else just made me feel sort of sad, not angry.

In the Virtual Bank Line

At the beginning of the night, I was curled up around the Pirate. I found myself poking him in the chest because I was dreaming that I had given him a shirt (or vest or something) and it had installed some software in his operating system. I was looking for which button on his body to poke in order to bring up the "Settings" menu so I could remove the software that installed itself.

In the dream, I ended up closing my eyes tight and putting my forehead against his back. Then, when I pushed at his flesh, the menus would pop up before my tightly-closed eyes and I could remove the program.
Later, I was back at my computer, doing some other work. I was in a big, sunny apartment in a dining room whose north-facing wall was nothing but a bank of windows, letting in beautiful afternoon light and a view of the tops of other buildings. The television is on, and I'm looking up from my computer screen occasionally to see the television, although I can't tell what program is playing.

Then it's time to go to work. I'm performing with a troupe of comedians. We do Monty Python-like physical comedy - silly walks, skits dressed in drag, etc. We also do acrobatics using long poles that are used variously as pole vaulter's poles, punting poles, shepherd's crooks, etc. On this day, we were out deep in the woods, practicing our thing. A little crowd of forest-folk gathered - elves, gnomes, trolls, etc. After our practice, one of the trolls came forward and asked us to come to his house to perform for his wife who was always very sad.

We followed him to his house, a cave in the side of a mountain not far away. Inside, there was furniture made of branches without the twigs removed lashed together with rope of dried grass. Everything seemed to be covered with a wild, fringey, sandy-colored moss, and as we crawled into the dim cave that was lit by a few candles, the troll yelled "Wife!"

A little patch of the sandy-colored moss moved, and we realized it was the hair of a little tiny woman. She was human-looking, but small and fragile and sad. Her hair was wild, as thought it hadn't seen a brush in years. There were dark circles under her eyes and she was pitifully thin.
We walked in and began performing our act. After about half an hour, she was smiling weakly, and we stopped. The troll had been making lunch for us, and while the others were eating cheese and bacon and fruit, I was talking to the wife, who was dressed in a collection of rags.

"Who are you? You don't look like a troll."

"No, I'm not a troll. I'm a person just like you. Well, not just like you. I wrote about my life. Would you read it?"

I nodded my head enthusiastically, curious to see how a human girl ended up married to a troll. She took a pile of light-colored dried leaves that were tied together with dried grass and untied them. As she untied them, I could see that they were covered with writing in dark-brown, watery ink.

"I used very strong tea for ink and a pigeon's feather for a pen. I didn't have anything else."

I pulled a candle closer and read her story. It started with a woman in her early twenties in Northern California. She had family and friends, she had graduated college and was looking forward to getting married and having a family. She began having hallucinations of living in a cave in the forest, the wife of a scary troll. She was terrified of the hallucinations, which began coming with more and more frequency.

The woman finally went to a doctor. After many tests and stays in lonely white hospital rooms, the doctor told her the truth. She had brain cancer. Not one tumor, but three, growing at an amazing rate. These weren't big lumps that could be scooped out like ice cubes out of a cool drink. These were spiders, whose many legs were winding, searching, grasping at everything they touch. The doctor tells her that the hallucinations are because of these malicious spiders touching the parts of her brain that want to be somewhere else. The doctor doesn't understand that the world she inhabits in her hallucinations is not one that she likes, even a little bit. It terrifies her.

She becomes unable to drive, as the hallucinations begin coming on suddenly and without warning. Then she becomes unable to leave the house. The last memory she has of the other life is of her mother at the hospital, telling her that she will come to visit every day. She closed her eyes on the world where she had been a child for the last time, and when she opened them, she was back here again. She had never been back.
She was trying very hard to be happy here. She was trying to adjust. She tried very hard not to be too bitter. Every day, she wrote a little more, determined to keep her other life real, to keep it close to her. She looked for ways back, but she knew that it was useless.

The other players in the troupe had finished their lunch and wanted to leave. I hand the leaves back to the woman and leave, looking back to see her crying after us. I want to cry too, because I realize that what this means is that I am a character in another person's hallucination, and that thought makes me profoundly sad.

But I don't have time to be sad, because I have to pick up my two children and fly back home to San Jose with them. I hurry to the airport, and I get there half an hour before my flight. As I'm running up to the terminal, my children are also running up yelling "Mommy, mommy!"

They are followed by my father and stepmother, and by my mother. I take the girls' hands because we need to run for the plane, but my father says that he wants to take the girls for a drink in the airport lounge first. He leads them down hallway, telling them "Come on, your mommy's just being silly. Come away from that hysterical woman." I am furious because my parents do this to me all the time. I get angry and yell at the girls to come with me or we'll miss our plane, all the while glaring at my parents.

I open a door that I think will take us in the direction of the planes, but it turns out to be a conference room. I go in and see a closet door that has a sort of garbage chute in the bottom of it. There is a fire in the garbage chute, and as I come in, the flames begin licking at the closet doors.
I look around and see a complicated sort of box with a fire extinguisher in it. To get to the fire extinguisher, you had to pull three handles. One sounded the alarm. One activated a lot of safety systems that unlocked stairwell doors and pressurized rooms to keep the fire from spreading. The third handle opened the door of the box. I took the fire extinguisher and tried putting out the fire, but it was just too big. Other people came into the room, and as they took over, I grabbed the girls and left.

We made our plane and landed in San Jose. We got off and went to the parking garage, and as we walked by, a fire broke out in a trash can. I clasped the girls' hands a little tighter and started running as fast as I could with the baby holding my hand. Then we're home, and the police are questioning me. They are telling me that I set the fires. I apparently set the airport fire so that I could be the hero and put it out, except that it got out of hand.

I argued that I hadn't even stayed to put the fire out. That I saw it, alerted people as was my duty, and then left, not even telling anyone my name. That's hardly the action of someone who wanted to be a hero. They asked me to explain the fire in the trash can, and I told them that I had no explanation whatsoever. They were questioning the girls, planting ideas in their heads. "Your mommy put a lit match in the trash, right?" But the girls wouldn't say anything but the truth, no matter how leading the questioners tried to be.

The questioners were leaving as my alarm went off.

****
The fire incident reminded me after I woke up of the time that I was really sick with fever, and everything that I had touched - the clothes I wore, the sheets and pillowcases I slept on, ended up with little burn holes in it that we've never been able to explain. The Pirate says I'm that powerful, but I don't know what to

In the Virtual Bank Line

The Pirate and I are in a car driving to some small-ish town near a larger town - perhaps Richmond. I am tired and uncomfortable and want to get out of the car and walk around, but the Pirate keeps saying "Just a little further." We're going to some walking trail that the Pirate wants to show me. Finally the car stopped. I thought that we had found the trail, so I got out of the car. On the ground, there was a two-foot-wide stripe on the ground with black arrows pointing in one direction. The Pirate says "No, that's not it," but I'm already off walking. I come to some lettering on the ground that tells me that this wide yellow stripe was a fault line.

I walk along the fault line, and came to a place where there was a two-inch crack in the yellow stripe. I kept following along, and the line curved around the block down a little street bordered on one side by a hill. Clothes were strewn about the street, as though someone had lost a basket of laundry. I kept following the now-cracked fault line, and it wound back around the block to where I had first noticed the crack, as though if there were an earthquake, this block would sink into the ground.

I went back around the curve, and this time there were a lot more clothes lying in the street. Now it looked as though someone was throwing clothes off the hill. It occurs to me that I don't know where the Pirate is, so I go up the hill looking for him.

I don't find him, but I find a woman who has apparently been my pen-pal from the East Coast. She is here for a visit, and I am thrilled to see her. She wants to drive into the city for a little sight-seeing. My friend wanted to take a ferry into the city. This ferry was the sort that one drives one's car into, so we drove to the pier, but we saw the latest ferry pulling away. We parked in a parking lot and got out of the car to walk to the end of the pier. There were a lot of other people at the end of the pier, and the more people who walked to the end of the pier, the further the pier stretched out over the water.

The crowd that amassed finally made the pier stretch all the way across the bay, to within 10 yards of the other shore. We waded through the water to the nearest patch of land, which was a gravel beach completely surrounded by a huge building that we would have to go through in order to get out. The crowd acts as though we have just come through some dangerous, scary experience. Most of the people join hands and begin singing a song that everyone knows but me. I open my mouth wide, letting a very faint "la laaaa la" out so that people will think that I'm singing too.

After the singing, my friend and I go into the building and then find ourselves in the Sunset district of the city at a squalid apartment building. We go into an apartment and see that no one lives there, although we are expecting to see a man there. There are a couple of sodas into the refrigerator, but no real food. There is no toilet paper in the bathroom. There are hangers in the closet, but only one pair of pants and two shirts hung on them. No bed, no dresser, no nothing else. It looks like maybe someone uses this place in emergencies, but does not stay there.

My friend says that our target is not there, so we have to go to some desert town where he has fled. We have to get some information from him that is very important. Bad people are also trying to get this information, and it's important that we get it first. We drive to the desert, to a big, sprawling house. There's no one home, but someone has left in a hurry. There is a still-steaming cup of coffee, the dresser drawers are open and their contents spilled all over the place.

We go outside and in the back yard, there is a school bus whose seats have been mostly removed and has been converted into a tour bus. In the back of the tour bus, there is another closet with empty hangers and a pair of pants and a couple of shirts. We know that we're very close. We go through the bus, looking everywhere. We find the man we're looking for. He is dead in one of the seats.

We jump off the bus and go back through the house. There is a baby in a carrier in a bedroom. The bad people don't know that the baby's carrier is the key to the information they want. We look at the carrier, but can't see anything that looks like the information we need. It must be encoded somehow, but we don't know how.

We take the baby and go back to the city, back to the very large building. We were still trying to figure out where the information in the baby carrier was. But now we know that the bad people are onto us. They haven't actually seen the baby, but they know that we have a baby and that baby has the information. I sent my friend away - told her to run with the baby and get away. She ran from the building, and I watched her go, running up the street. I ran out another door and realized that I was on the top floor of the building. A man comes out of one of the rooms and says that he can help me. I don't trust him, so I decide to tell him that I'm alone. My friend will get away alone and I will distract this person by letting him "help" me.

He takes my hand and leads me to a stairwell, telling me that this is the way to escape. He lets me go first, and as I start down the stairs he jumps me, grabbing me around the neck. As we fall I manage to turn around so that we fall onto the man's body. He grunts heavily, so I know that he is hurt. We are lying on the landing, me on top of him, and I'm trying to get up, but he puts his hands around my neck from behind. I grab two of his fingers and pulled as hard as I could, breaking them. The man took his hands away, screaming in pain. I jumped to my feet and began kicking his head as hard as I could until he passed out.

I ran out the nearest door, finding myself on a balcony facing a street. On identical balconies off to my left were two women who were obviously pursuing me. They looked at me and ran back into the building. I realized that I was only on the second floor and jumped from my balcony into the street where I started running. I got a little way down the street when my friend came out from the bushes, hissing at me.

I went over to the bushes and saw that she didn't have the baby anymore. "I put it in daycare!" she said, proudly. I immediately realized that this was genius. None of the bad guys had seen the baby, so if they were to actually figure out which daycare the baby was in, all they would see was a whole mess of babies, and wouldn't know which one was the right one.
Not only that, but my friend had figured out the code. We would have to wait until the heat was off in order to get at it. But it was okay. We could wait years to get the information. The information was encoded in the baby's DNA.

And then I woke up.

At the beginning of the dream, I felt nothing but curiosity. Even when the Pirate disappeared, I only felt curious about where he'd gone. Then, during the very dangerous chase parts, I was excited as one is when watching a movie. At no time in the dream did I ever feel that I was in danger. I knew that I had the ability to outsmart, outfight, outrun these people. By the end, I felt triumphant, really proud of myself.

In the Virtual Bank Line

The Pirate and the girls and I are at a big family retreat. We're sleeping on a fold-out couch in a room with at least three other people sleeping in cots and sleeping bags around the floor. There are more people sleeping in other rooms. Someone yells my name (not "Mommy," so I know it's not one of my children), and I yell back "Fuck off!" because I'm not ready to wake up yet. The Pirate digs me in the ribs and chides me for being rude to my family.

Then the Pirate goes off somewhere and I go to my father's house. There are two small apartments attached to Pop's house that he rents out, and as I'm sitting there in the kitchen, a guy that I went out with a couple of times and then dumped because he was a total loser walked in from one of the apartments. "You rented to him?" I said. "Yeah," my stepmother says. "You know him?" But when he comes back out, it's Mike M. and I say "Oh, yeah. He's a good guy."

Mike M. starts telling me that he's submitted a couple of short stories to a contest being held at a local bar, and he's really nervous. I go to the bar to meet the Pirate for lunch, and as I get there, they're announcing the results of the contest, and Mike M. has won! I notice that several of us are clapping and cheering more than politely, and it turns out that, while quite a few of the Nanos have turned out, the winner himself didn't make it.

Just as the Pirate was showing up for lunch, the alarm went off.

In the Virtual Bank Line

The first thing I can see is my own face in the mirror, although my vision is partially obscured. It is obscured because my eyeballs don't seem to line up with the holes in my eyelids for them, as though I'm looking out from behind a mask.

"I can't see," I say without difficulty. A man's hand grabs my face at the cheeks and pushes while twisting slightly to one side. There is a click just in front of my ears, and when the hand moves, I can see that my face looks perfectly normal now. I don't have any hair, but the face is a normal face. I am wearing a nondescript white, collarless, long-sleeved shirt and black pants.

The man, the Maker, who adjusted my face comes up behind me again with a curved piece of hard plastic that's vaguely pinky-peach colored. He puts one hand on my forehead and with the other hand he snaps the plastic over the back of my head.

"There," he says, stepping back. "You're done."

I don't feel anything. Not happy or relieved or anything. I just am. There are other men in the house, all wearing turbans on their heads. The turbans mean nothing. They are a disguise. The men have guns and mill around, occasionally looking out the windows. Nothing can be seen outside but dark, but the men all seem very nervous.

The house suddenly goes dark and the Maker says "Get down!" I crouch down with my back to a wall next to the back door. I hold the doorknob still, in case someone wants to enter. The door has a window in it with a sheer curtain. Since the light is now coming from the outside in, we can see the silhouette of a person at the back door. The person tries the knob, but since I'm holding it still, the door doesn't open. The shadow disappears and the Maker gestures to one of the men near the front door. The door opened slowly and a man stepped inside, holding a gun in front of himself. The man near the door shot the intruder, who fell into the room. Another of the men put a flashlight in the dead man's face.

No one said anything, but this is a man who belongs to a group with whom my group is at war. If he knew where we were, others knew and we had to leave right then. The problem is that we have about six men (the Maker and me and four locals) and one rickety old jeep with almost no gas in it. To escape, we need to make it to the airstrip, but even that doesn't solve our problems. The Maker is a foreigner and therefore has a passport. I am a product and can be shipped, but the other four men don't have passports or papers. They will be killed for helping us, but they come anyway.

The jeep is lurching down the road, which is deeply pitted where landmines have gone off. The Maker is worrying out loud about what we're going to do about the other four guys, and whether we're going to have enough gas to get us to the airstrip. If we don't have enough gas, we will be found and the men will be killed. I don't know what will happen to me.

One of the men tells us to pull over. The Maker pulls over and the man gets out. He pulls two half-liter plastic bottles from his long coat pockets. The bottles are full of gas and it is enough to get us to the airstrip.
"If they catch me, they will kill me," the man said, pulling a gun from his pocket. "And we have no way of getting out of this place. I can't take this uncertainty anymore." And the man shot himself in the head.

The Maker hung his head for a minute, but herded the rest of us back into the car. We can't stop. Our enemies are still behind us.
As we drive down the road, I am sitting in the back of the jeep, staring at the body of the man lying in the road, and it begins to rain.

I Am A Wiener!

Okay, I have three pieces of news:

1. I got iTunes and an iPod (which hasn't arrived yet), so I've been incredibly busy ripping every cd I have in anticipation of the iPods arrival. No longer will I have to lug my hard plastic 40-cd case around with me. Granted, the hard plastic case was cool and made me very happy, but this thing is (okay, will be) the size of a pack of cigarettes (and didn't even cost that much more!) and will hold every cd I own. This is cool.

2. I finished my Nanowrimo novel! At 8:50 this evening, I finished the last paragraph for a total of 50,049 words. Not nearly the length of last year's endeavor, but I'm really pleased. My husband is also thrilled to no end because this means that he gets to see me again. He was missing me, poor baby. I have already promised the baby that extra snuggles would ensue, and there was champagne and sparkling cider being uncorked as I was tapping out the last hundred-ish words. Huge thanks to all my fellow Nanos for being there for me. I need you guys, even if I never show up at your dos.I'm with you in spirit.

3. My younger sister is in town this weekend for the American Public Health Association Conference. She's a clinical psychologist in Chicago, but here, she's still my baby sister. We had some yummy birthday time with her last night and she took the girls out to Santa Cruz while the Pirate and I went to the opera (we went to see Don Carlos, got there late, I wrote 1500 words while in the opera, and we left before the last guy died). She and the Pirate are playing Scrabble right now. My sister rocks, kicks ass, and is the best, bar none.

I love everything right this minute. Everything.

In the Virtual Bank Line

Saturday night's dream:

I was at work and my boss called me into his office. And now, he had a real office with an actual door. And not just one door. He had a back door, which he opened to reveal a sort of back yard, full of piglets.
"Hey, you know what?" he said in that bright, enthusiastic tone that he always has when he's trying to sell me on doing some project. "Could you train these pigs? Like to sit, and fetch and stuff?"

"Jon, I don't know how to train pigs. I mean, are they like dogs? Can you clicker train them with treats and stuff?"

"Exactly! See, you know how to do this! Great. So, go ahead and go to a pet store and get everything you need. Can you have them all sitting by the end of the week?"

I told my boss about this dream and he laughed a lot. I told him that I feel pretty confident in telling him that training pigs is well outside my skill set, and I like it that way.

On Sunday night, I had this cool dream.

The seven who went on the Nano retreat were working on a tandem story. Each one of us had a sort of journal that we could look at and see the progress being made by others. We all knew that, when we got to critical points in the narrative, we would all be magically whisked away to some place where we would all meet and resolve the story problem. I was sitting in a class at a large univerity with Mike when I happened to look at my copy of the book and notice that we were coming to a critical point. I leaned over and said to him "If you're working on anything critical, you'd better wrap it up. We're about to leave." Seconds later the seven of us were running through a field in a big park, laughing together and generally being pleased to see each other.

Yeah. The retreat was sort of like that.

And I have no idea where last night's dream came from.

I was standing on a rocky hill. There is a large group of men doing battle drills because they are just about to fight some enemy. They're all really nervous because they know they are going to lose. Everyone who faces this enemy does. Little is known about this enemy, and at the time the dream takes place (let me place the time for you - everyone is wearing wool tunics under leather and metal armor, and sandals) there is no reason to expect that the opposing army has some superior technology. The best they can do is have some amazing new strategy that allows them to cut down their opponents like wheat, so this army feels that their time is best spent drilling.

I hear a noise and look behind me, but there is nothing to see. I look back, and suddenly the battle has already started. The enemy had materialized out of nowhere - but they are not ordinary men. They have the same uniforms (white tunics with black metal and leather armor) but they also have giant wings coming from their backs. Huge, glossy black wings that they beat in the faces of the opposing soldiers, terrifying them. There are winged men with swords and winged men with a sort of thing that looks like an eagle with its beak raised and its wings outstretched. They are goring people with the sharp beak tip, stabbing them with the razor-sharp wings, or bludgeoning them with the whole thing, which looks to be made of silver or steel and looks very heavy and lethal.

The non-winged fighters are frightened, confused and losing. They have no idea where these men could have come from or how they just appeared out of nowhere right in their midst. I look behind me where I heard the original noise and I see the answer. They are phased. Another column of the warriors is materializing, already in formation, all ready to relieve the winged men who show no signs of fatigue, but who allow the new group to take over anyway. Wave upon wave of the winged men is materializing and I see something odd. There are two kinds of men in each column. There are men with two swords crossed over their heads as they march, and there are men with the giant eagles held over their heads as they march. But now I see a third kind.

This man has the head of a dog (he looks very Anubis-like) and holds no weapons, but both hands are raised in clenched fists. As the column of winged warriors passes me, Anubis looks at me and winks, giving me the sign for "I love you" and keeps marching by. None of the warriors notice me, and I know that after the other army has been completely decimated, they will just leave.

And that dream had a bitchin' soundtrack too!

What A Weekend

Back from the SoBaNaNo retreat, and I have some amazing gratitude to unpack:

THANKS to everyone who showed. Together, we were all a force of nature. My hands-down favorite part of the weekend was the Saturday night reading. You are all geniuses and I feel honored to be in your company.

SUPER THANKS to Cliff for his unfailing positivity, support, good humor and curiosity. I feel like I don't see nearly enough of you, and time in your company is always a treat.

SUPER DELUXE THANKS to Rob for his forebearance. Your restraint was both remarkable and appreciated. We know that you are capable of the kind of puns that leave the hearers unable to blink both eyes in unison and hemorrhaging from most orifices, and I feel fortunate to have gotten out in one piece.

DOUBLE BONUS THANKS to Mike for his amazing mastery of both fire and popcorn. And I don't even like popcorn. That's how good it was.

ASTRAL MEGA-BITCHIN' THANKS to Lynn for a tarot reading that didn't tell me anything new, but helped me to focus. Your willingness to do a reading even after I had another reading was greatly appreciated. And thank you for sharing such personal things with us. It was wonderful and moving.

SUPER MEGA DELUXE UBER-THANKS to Stephanie for yummy cookies, a fabulous tarot reading, being the designated extrovert and dishwasher and being my biggest cheerleader. Even introverts need luuuv, and I'm no exception. Thanks for being a bud.

And finally,
ULTRA SUPER MEGA GIGANTIC BONUS DELUXE THANKS WITH CHEESE to Ian for organizing the whole thing. The venue was wonderful, the company was inspiring, and it's always nice to have one guy in the group who's guaranteed to be shocked.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

Retreat! Retreat!

Went to go see Matrix Revolutions on Wednesday. Disappointed in that the potential of the original remains unrealized.

There were several previews, one of which was very alarming
There were several previews, one of which was very alarming. The Alamo. I see our country becoming increasingly jingoistic, isolationist and xenophobic, and it frightens me. The lines between "us" and "them" are being continually drawn in narrower and narrower circles, and while ideologically I'm quite happy to be outside that circle, it appears to be an increasingly dangerous proposition. I can hardly wait to leave.

Off to a three-day retreat to see just how many words I can write when I've nothing else to do. If I'm very good, I'll make a sizeable dent in the book this weekend.