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.