The beach and the bay and the two brief moments I was out enjoying them on my trip to Lincoln City. The retreat was a success. Thoughts thought. Writing written. Struggles, triumphs, whiskey and a big ass bathtub. I honestly can't say that I'd want to do that kind of intense thinking all day every day. It felt good to get back to my physical work this afternoon. But I'd be willing to take one out of every four weeks and hide away with a project and a view. If only I could find someone willing to pay for it.

I hate to leave town when Taylor St. is about to burst out with my favorite celebration of pink blooms, but I'm off to the beach and another round of revisions. It's just a stack of typed pages, but I feel as though I'm about to meet up with some old high school friends. What will they be like? Will we get along? Do I really want to spend four days all alone with them? No choice now. Dig in and make the best of it.

photo by Herman Krieger

A new study shows that for every dollar Oregon spends on higher education, a dollar and six cents is spent on prisons. Look here to see how much your state cares, then let your state legislators know what you think.

Ever feel like you're driving around in a beater van with painted over windows and no brakes? Okay, so it's a bit of a stretch. Still, it feels like I've been bumping around inside this shitmobile for over a month now, waiting to hit something solid. I'm hoping that landing is solid but sweet when I head to the coast in a few days for another round of novel revisions.

A poem by Robert Creeley

The Farm

Tips of celery,
clouds of

grass–one
day I'll go away

In a dream, this would be my backyard. A forest of timber bamboo. In reality, this is one small grove on the extensive grounds of Bamboo Garden in North Plains, OR. Too open to truly hide in, it would still be a good green filter against a rush of miseries, a good tease for the imagination.

The top picture was taken a few days ago out at Sauvie Island, home of pick your own berries, bird sanctuaries and buck naked fairies. We walked along the Columbia, saw a whole host of pretty little snakes and admired the distant but crisp view of Mount St. Helens.

The bottom picture is from 1980 when St. Helen's erupted. Those aren't clouds. That's ash. I find it fascinating. Imagine the energy it takes to blow the top off a mountain. In my fourteen plus years here, I've never been to see it. That's unbearably lame. It is, however, top of my long list of Pacific Northwest destinations to get to before the end of the year.

Reading an old issue of The Paris Review, I came across an interview with Jack Gilbert. This guy has it figured out, or at least, a good way of trying to figure it out:

The poem is about the heart. Not the heart as in "I'm in love" or "my girl cheated on me"–I mean the conscious heart, the fact that we are the only things in the entire universe that know true consciousness. We're the only things–leaving religion out of it–we're the only things in the world that know spring is coming.

Later, the interviewer asks Gilbert what, other than himself, is the subject of his poems.

Those I love. Being. Living my life without being diverted into things that people so often get diverted into. Being alive is so extraordinary I don't know why people limit it to riches, pride, security–all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the the house. And they have to have a car. You can't see anything from a car. It's moving too fast. People take vacations. That's their reward–the vacation. Why not the life? Vacations are second-rate. People deprive themselves of so much of their lives–until it's too late. Though I understand that often you don't have a choice.

Makes me want to pick up and move to Italy, move to the beach, move towards some slower place. Makes me wonder about all the times I've chosen security over adventure, comfort over joy. Makes me wonder what it would take for me to make a different choice.

I now own tan pants. Sigh. I long ago came to terms with being shunned from the punk rock club, but I'm now officially banned from inclusion amongst the artsy/fartsy pre-goth alternatypes. Of course, the transition happened ages ago. The thrift store dresses got chucked. The amount of polyester in my wardrobe has been minimal for years. Still, tan pants? Having grown up surrounded by L.L. Bean models, I always feared this moment would come and now it has, but that's what I get for trying to make my pants from last winter make it through this winter. Slim pickins off the winter sale rack. Shoot me if I post a pic of my new duck boots.

Is it obvious now, how I'm in full avoidance of the matters at hand? There's big trouble brewing in my latest novel revision. Brewing can be good, of course. A good boil can do wonders. However, I fear the whole thing will have to be chucked in the end, an unpalatable mess. Humph.

The rain may come in slow and steady for the rest of the week, but today we have daphne. Regardless of what the calendar says and ignoring the pale crocus blooms, the first intoxicating hit of those tart pink buds means it's spring in Portland. Praise be.

Long ago, I shaved my head bald. I went by the name Bob. I was the regretful owner of a big iguana named Skunk that lived in my closet. But I have never been punk rock in the traditional sense. Hm. That's a funny sentence. Anyway, there is still a little part of me that admires the punk rock life and those capable of living it. There will always be a part of me that loves a house decorated with mannequin legs and puppets. I especially like the long ladder leading up to the second-story porch that's just barely visible in this picture.

There is something ridiculous, stupid and completely wonderful about the punk house. There's a book of photographs by Abby Banks out now that documents these houses. Thurston Moore wrote an essay for it. And yes, Portland has its own pages in the book.

I just finished rereading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson for my book club. I must have read this in high school, maybe I saw the movie. All I remembered of it was a cold darkness and a certain affinity with the tall, quiet narrator. I'm so glad that I went back to it.

Having spent a great deal of time thinking about regional literature for my graduate thesis paper and lecture, I found Robinson's novel a perfect example of how to do it right. Robinson insists that the fictional town of Fingerbone is just that, fictional, and that the story could take place anywhere and yet the landscape plays a crucial role in the story. These characters stand apart from the civic and social aspects of the town they live in, and yet they feel like a natural product of the landscape. They are also a product of their particular tragedies which, in their case, are intrinsically linked with the lake that dominates the area.

This is writing of a place, not about a place. The landscape is there to serve the story, not be the story. This is a difficult distinction to make, but a necessary one. The landscape has to already be there. It can't be imposed on a story, attached as a few introductory paragraphs. Here is a great example from early on in Housekeeping when Ruthie and Lucille skate to the far side of the lake:

The town itself seemed a negligible thing from such a distance. Were it not for the clutter on shore, the flames and the tremulous pillars of heat that stood above the barrels, and of course the skaters who swooped and sailed and made bright, brave sounds, it would have been possible not to notice the town at all. The mountains that stood up behind it were covered in snow and hidden in the white sky, and the lake was sealed and hidden, yet their eclipse had not made the town more prominent. Indeed, where we were we could feel the reach of the lake far behind us, and far beyond us on either side, in a spacious silence that seemed to ring like glass.

It's been a few weeks since I finished the latest draft of my book. At the time, I was eager to take a break, play with some new ideas and get a fresh perspective. What I've noticed, however, is that since I sent my baby out for feedback, I've been lost. Being lost can be good and I can't deny that one of my new ideas has blossomed oh so slightly. But I've been cranky and disoriented. Without my novel to focus my attention, I've had very little focus at all.

I need them back, those imperfect and imperfectly written people, but I also NEED to take a little bit longer break, not only because the feedback hasn't rolled in yet, but because I still need to wipe my head clean of all those paragraphs I have memorized, all those scenes I've squeezed the life out of. My characters need time away from me as much as I need it from them. Doesn't mean it's easy. Doesn't mean it's fun. Our reunion, I hope, will be grand.

For the last two years, I've gone to Mexico with my friend, Joe. This year he went without me. Stupid me. Portland hasn't had any tornadoes and we're not buried under feet and feet of snow, so I don't really have the right to complain about the perpetual cold rain. I only have the right to complain about how much I regret not going to Holbox, a little island northwest of Cancun where there are no cars and no paved roads. Only crazy blue water and dreams of crazy blue water.

Sven Birkerts has been named the new director of the Bennington Writing Seminars. The man has an awesome intelligence and a quiet, thoughtful nature. He was the person I was most scared would ask me a question after my graduate lecture. And of course, he did. All I could do was nod my head to his comment about Saul Bellow, who I'd briefly referenced in my lecture and say yes, you're right, yes.

Here's one of my favorite passages from his book Readings:

It is better, more rewarding, to study the grasshopper on the windowsill with full attention than to stand half-distractedly before a painting by Paul Klee or Botticelli. Attention completes the inner circuit, and completing that circuit is everything–at least if we care about the idea of an integral subjective self.
As it happens, reading is one of the very few things that you can only really do with full attentiveness.

Keeping me company on my desk is my new art purchase, a bird/man sculpture from John & Robin Gumaelius that I got at the Museum of Contemporary Craft Gallery. I wanted one of their more extravagant bird/bald-headed man pieces in ceramic and metal, but this was more than I could afford as it was. I've had a tirade or two against bird art in the past, but I think this is different. It's not a silhouette of a crow. It's not a rust colored owl. It has feet!

Instead of watching the Super Bowl my bird-man and I have been doing taxes this afternoon. Equally boring endeavors. My mother tells me she fears a victory parade in Boston on Monday. She says when the Sox won she couldn't get home from work at the State House because the trains were so packed with rabid fans. I'm all for some fun, but the fervor of these fans makes me sick. Show an ounce of that enthusiasm for something that actually makes a difference. Try it. Please.

Touching warms the art

A while back I posted about the signs at the Museum of Contemporary Craft that said "Touching Harms the Art." Well, my friend and metalsmith wiz, Rebecca Scheer, helped co-curate a new exhibit at the museum called Touching Warms the Art. It's all about jewelry that visitors can get their hands on, their fingers, wrists and necks in. I'm totally in love with Cristina Dias' rubber magnetic broach and Susan Matsché's necklace of little scribbled on pieces of cardboard. Check out more visitors trying on the jewelry here.

I went there yesterday by myself and it was a little odd to be playing with all this cool stuff without a friend to laugh and pose with, but it was too much fun to resist. I even spent some time sitting at the "Art Bar" in front of a row of bins of materials set up for people to make their own jewelry. I felt a little like a mental patient brought out for art therapy, but that didn't stop me from wrapping some twine around some rubber around some styrofoam. Weee! What a good cure for yet another cold, crappy day.

Leaky aura?

Do you Suffer from a Leaky Aura? Take this quiz!

I am offended by this on many levels. In terms of language and communication, it's a travesty. Not only does "Leaky Aura" sound awful, but who would admit they suffered from this even if they knew what it was? Secondly, don't tell me you're going to "correct" my aura, plug my leaks or anything of the kind. All you're going to do is take my money because I'm stressed out and desperate for a change.

I fully believe other people can affect our moods. Obviously, right? I believe that some people are more susceptible to the moods of others. And, as a bodyworker, I've seen the damaging effects of stress on people's lives. But Leaky Aura Syndrome(LAS)? The only reason to package it that way is because it allows you to market your wares under a new angle. The wares might even be legit, but the marketing stinks.

Oh so slowly, my stories are trickling out into the world. pacificREVIEW has published my story "Homes" in their 2007-2008 issue. Holding the thing in my hands is not nearly as satisfying as getting that acceptance letter (email in this case) that said YES. And really, that letter was far less satisfying than the day I finished the story and got to say DONE.

As much as I long to be published and give my words some larger life, I have to say that the process of writing them is, by far, the better part of this bizarre life. It has to be, right? Of course, I wouldn't mind testing this theory against an acceptance from, say, The Paris Review. Just a thought.

Another draft done. How done, I'm not sure. What feels good is the concentrated effort that went into finishing this round. I could have been more focused, but for a lazy girl like myself, this was pretty damn good.

Unlike other moments in the revision process of this book, this feels like the right moment to take a real step back and turn my attention to something new. There's another novel that's been brewing for a while. There may be a short story in there somewhere. Maybe even a poem in the spirit of my 2008 More Poetry Manifesto.

Leaving these characters behind for now feels great, like finally getting out of my parent's house after a long visit. I love them dearly, but a little time away is a beautiful thing.

And speaking of sea creatures...
Last night I was part of a birthday celebration at Toro Bravo. This Spanish tapas restaurant has garnered much deserved praise 'round these parts. It was one of the best meals I've ever had, partly because there were enough of us to try a ton of different dishes and because we didn't hold back. Spendy? Yes. But I always like to compare my indulgences to my own hourly massage rate. How many massages is a plate of fried anchovies with fennel and lemon worth? How about a salt cod fritter that was indescribable (partly because describing it goes like this: they're these little balls of fish that were kind of whipped or something...eeew). Even the cauliflower was amazing because those wacky Spaniards know to serve it with chopped olives and salsa verde.

I'm not a foodie. Today I had a PBJ for lunch and a bowl of microwave popcorn and I liked it just fine, dammit. But if you have the money, every once in a while it's worth showing your taste buds some real respect. And if you really have the money it's probably worth packing up your bags and going to Spain for some regular feedings of goat cheese and scallops and little balls of fried, whipped fish.

I bought my friend this book for his birthday and can barely stand that it's all wrapped up in plastic, guarded from my greedy fingers. My friend would love to see these creatures close up in the watery depths. I prefer them on the glossy pages of a book.

I love the water, or rather, I love the surface of the water. The surface and a few feet below the surface if it's nice and clear. I love to float in it, swim in it, look at it from a sandy beach or warm wooden dock but I'm pretty sure if I came in physical contact with one of these alien creatures I would scream my head off and in doing so would swallow a ton of water and probably die. They are the beautiful beings of my nightmares.

Listen to this from Rush Limbaugh, the big racist hypocrite.

Watch McCain say permanent occupation of Iraq is okay with us as long as soldiers aren't getting killed.

Hang on until the end of this clip of Huckabee until he starts joking about blinking in morse code.

What kind of insanity do we live in? How are these people getting away with talking like this? Howard Dean lost all of his support because he shouted a little too loudly but these idiots get away with being foolish, uninformed and hateful. My head is going to explode.

No joke. I used to work in the basement of this motel. It was my first job as a massage therapist over eleven years ago. The place had "spa" in its name and the two workspaces each had a jacuzzi tub and sauna, but they were also converted motel rooms and retained quite a bit of their motel feel. Their clientelle were mostly male businessmen. One of my coworkers was a woman in her late fifties/early sixties who used to be a stripper but became an LMT when her boobs started sagging. She also did out-call massage without a table, which meant she went to people's houses and gave them massages on their beds. She was a hoot, a nutjob and extremely sketchy depending on the day.

Don't get me wrong, the place was legit, though I got the job because another therapist was fired for stealing and giving happy endings. The good thing was that she was fired. The bad thing was that one of her favorite clients wasn't banned from the establishment and decided to test the limits of the "new girl." I think I quit soon thereafter.

My massage career since then has largely been free of any sketchiness. Largely. The problem of men wanting more, taking more, or insinuating that they should get more still happens in this line of work from time to time. I hear this from all of my LMT friends. It's extremely unfortunate, especially since the weekly papers and craigslist are chock full of women willing to give them just what they want. I think I am most resentful that a lot of these men seem to like the legitimacy of seeing a licensed LMT as well as the mind games or power that comes with pushing the limits of that legitimacy. Sorry, but I'm not a substitute for the prostitute or lap dance you think you're above getting because you're a "good family man."

I'd like to think that some day this will no longer be an issue. We will be completely accepted as legitimate health professionals. With that would come a shift that says sex workers are equally legitimate in their own field and that there's no shame in hiring them. I wonder, do they have this problem in Amsterdam?

We were promised sun yesterday and sun was indeed delivered. We are promised it much of the week and as my friends basked on the back porch, we made plans for it. We'll rotate our days to align with the light and hope it's enough to get us through to the first pink buds.

Here's a winter poem from James Wright that makes me happy that I don't live in Ohio.

Late November in a Field

Today I am walking alone in a bare place,
And winter is here.
Two squirrels near a fence post
Are helping each other drag a branch
Toward a hiding place; it must be somewhere
Behind those ash trees.
They are all still alive,they ought to save acorns
Against the cold.
Frail paws rifle the troughs between cornstalks
when the moon
Is looking away.
The earth is hard now,
The soles of my shoes need repairs.
I have nothing to ask a blessing for,
Except these words.
I wish they were
Grass.

Kitty Mao makes out

My cat is a slut for Joe, or rather, for Joe's clothes. All it takes is a drop of this man's sweat and she goes nuts. Go figure. . .

The richness of waiting

I've been thinking about letters today and how much I miss them. Being phone-phobic the way I am, I love the alternative that e-mail gives me, but I miss the ink and stamp, the flutter of surprise at seeing my name hand-written on an envelope when I lift the lid of my mailbox. "The richness of writing and the deeper richness of waiting," Stanley Plumley writes in an essay about literary letter writers in the most recent Poetry Northwest.

That waiting always felt a bit like flirting to me, the tease of it. Today? Will it be today? And then the pay-off which sometimes disappointed in its banality and sometimes thrilled with its secrets.

It makes me sad, not only in my own life, but in general, that this form of communication has disappeared. Whether or not the recipient tossed the letter or hoarded it, there was a level of implied permanence to the process that inspired thoughtfulness. But now we've traded intimacy for speed. We've thrown away our private thoughts and instead spill them recklessly across these windows that everyone can see.

You know I like a good laugh at my own expense. Well, I find it pretty funny that ever since the New Year I've been living in Sean's track pants. I'm no fashion monger, but this is much further than I'd usually go, even within the confines of my home. And yet, here I am...

I've always embraced my elderly tendencies. Somewhere in the family albums is a picture of me dressed up as an old woman for halloween. Painstakingly needlepointed into my childhood Christmas stocking is an image of Mrs. Claus that reminded me fondly of my grandmother. I've always loved eating dinner early and going to bed early. I even wrote a poem once with the line "I'm going to be what they already see/a bitchy old lady of twenty-three."

But now in comes the new year with a fresh supply of old. In the last week or so I've come across at least three people who knew my name and I had no idea who they were. All I could manage were vague half-graspable memories of their voices, hair or smiles. I've since discovered who two of them are. The others continue to nag my swiss-cheese brain.

And then there's the track pants. If I had my own velour leisure suit, I certainly would have been wearing that instead. In the last week I've managed to acquire and largely recover from an ailment seen mostly in people over 60 (let's leave it at that. It's both better and worse than you imagine). And so I've been housebound, slipper-bound. Old, old, old.

Maybe I'm getting it out of the way now. Maybe I'll grow charmingly childlike in my golden years and not simply because I've got Alzheimer's. It could happen, right? It could.

Without TV I have time to do things like review my story submissions. Each time I've done this over the last year I've come across my submission to Orchid's short fiction contest in 2006. No reply. And no reply to my email inquiry. Their website says that winners will be announced in July. That's July of 2007. Still no news here in 2008.

What gets to me about this is not the idea that I might have won this contest if only they hadn't decided to suspend communication with the outside world. What bugs me is that on the same page is an invitation to submit to their 2007 contest. There's a fee for this contest. Surely, two-year's worth of contest participants would like to know if the magazine has folded or suffered some other fate. Meanwhile, the only evidence I could find that they were still in existence was a rejection letter published at Literary Rejections on Display.

I feel for these small magazines. It's got to be a largely thankless job. But I find this irresponsible as well as annoyingly mysterious.

Day four of no TV. Most of the people I know might think this is no big deal for me, a reader and writer, a lover of my twelve-block walk from house to world. In its deliberte absence over the last few days, however, I've seen how the minutes added up. A quick, lazy shot of a talk show while I eat my lunch. A relaxing lounge after finishing with my clients for the day. Just one bad cop show because, damn, I'm tired. No more. Good riddance.

Today it got sunny and warm. Actual bright blaring light. We all know how miserable the cold wet rain has been these last few weeks. What we forget is just how GOOD sun on your skin feels. More necessary than nice. Forget the TV. I ate my lunch outside and watched the grass and shadows.

Manifesto 2008

There are many facets to the new plan: No TV, less spending, more poetry, more walk to the talk. I'll let you know how my lifelong love of good enough meshes with my new love of diligence. I expect a painful but rewarding trip.

And now on with the poetry:

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Stephen Mitchell
We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.

Yeah, it's a little like that. Tired, chubby and lazy as hell. For some reason the end of this year has brought on a reign of overindulgence that hasn't been allowed in a long time. Or maybe it's my ability to tolerate the streams of sugar and alcohol and couch surfing that has diminished over the years. Either way, there's been no restraint because the anvil of reason is about to drop. Fulfilling the 2008 manifesto is going to be a little tough, but it's going to be good. Having finished off several pies, piles of toffee, bowls of nuts and bottles of wine, restraint and diligence is starting to have a nice ring to it.

It never did stick, at least not enough to hide my Sanford and Son yard, but it was still a nice surprise. Quiet Christmas snow.

For Christmas we unwrapped Sean's face from its cover of fur. I've always been a bit jealous of facial hair. So many silly stupid things you can do with it. On Sean, all of the in between stages turned him into an instant asshole (in appearance only, of course). The Lemmy stage is okay if you're Lemmy. The mini moustache is okay if you're Hitler. And if you're Ricky from Trailer Park Boys you can rock the chops/goatee look pretty hard. If you're none of these people, please think twice before doing something stupid with a razor.

As if to confirm the darkest of days, yesterday was a rainy, dreary mess. But in the evening it cleared up, the nearly full moon came out and we burned the shit out of a wooden man, much like this one. I've been bad about carrying my camera with me these days and so the bad news is I have no photos of the even larger man my friend built this year and I have no photos of the tower of flames it made and the perfect way it collapsed in on itself, its charred fingers flipping a flaming bird. Before we burned him, we covered him in marshmallow men and secret wishes, knowing that today, though equally dreary on its surface, would still be a little lighter.

Here's the Bee Gees doing their song. Not Melinda Doolittle, who apparently sang this on American Idol and not Feist who did a watered down version of it. Here they are in their falsetto glory.

No, Sean is neither a hipster nor a hippie and that should be a lesson to all of us who like to judge a book by its cover. Lucky him, he is currently sporting two different trends. The hipster facial scrub and the afro. It seems like both of these trends must be about to play themselves out if they haven't already. I think only mustaches are really in these days. Or maybe guys will start waxing their eyebrows off and penciling them in. Or maybe everyone will start getting perms. Anyhoo...sometimes it just happens that what you've always done falls into synch with what every one else is doing. You live with it because to change in order to deny the hipsters your company would be a very silly idea.

Me...I like disco. I have since I first heard it as a kid and continued to like it all through the eighties and nineties into today. If you haven't listened lately to the Bee Gee's version of Love You Inside and Out seek it out and have a shot at it. Hopefully, it will make you as happy as it makes me.

In the meantime, stay tuned for the twelve days of shaving. . .

Resolutions are too easy to ignore. Make your 2008 manifesto now.

Mine is still taking shape, but one thing I've decided is that I will bring more poetry into my life in the coming year. Not only will I read more poetry but I will also support it with dollars and applause.

I just bought Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2005.

Ambition

Having reached the beginning, starting toward
a new ignorance. Places to become,
secrets to live in, sins to achieve.
Maybe South America, perhaps a new woman,
another language to not understand.
Like setting out on a raft over an ocean
of life already well lived.
A two-story failed hotel in the tropics,
hot silence of noon with the sun
straying through the shutters.
Sitting with his poems at a small table,
everybody asleep. Thinking with pleasure,
trailing his hand in the river he will
turn into.

I am undoubtedly a scrooge, though I try and keep it to myself for the most part. Sean reminded me that the thing that we can both really get behind on this upcoming holiday (along with Thanksgiving and New Year's Day) is that it's a rare and wonderful thing to walk out into the urban landscape and not be assaulted by the sight, sound and smell of cars. Cheers and Merry merry to that.

This is a dark, early morning shot of my neighbor's christmas tree, the first visible one on my block since I moved here six years ago. Despite my scrooginess, I'm a sucker for those candy-colored lights, the ones that you have to screw into the green cord after spending an hour untangling it. I have a strong childhood memory of pure craving for them. I remember the fragile click as I opened the box we kept the bulbs in and my inevitable disappointment at how dull they looked. My sister and I would screw in the bulbs then string the tree and my mother would plug it all in. And oh, what a feast. For a second I can turn off my knowledge of electricity and imagine the sweetness of one of those delicious red globes.

"Stay and stay and stay and stay . . ."
Richard Ford in a lecture from The Celebrity Lecture Series at Michigan State University. Listen to these.

Ben Wilson is a London artist who paints colorful, inoffensive images on pieces of chewing gum smashed into the sidewalk. Now he's been beaten by the police and had his DNA put on file. I, personally, don't love the paintings themselves, but I absolutely love this idea. I think it's inventive, constructive, and subversive in all the right ways. Clearly, he must be stopped. Read more about it in The Guardian.

A few nights ago, Sean and I watched Brazil. It was one of my favorite movies as a teenager and so I'd seen it many times, but Sean hadn't seen it since it first came out in 1985. My love for this film came back fresh. Not only did it look far superior to most of the unimaginative computer graphics in most movies today, but it was even more timely: Terrorist bombings hidden behind pretty tapestry screens, citizens arrested and tortured based on the flimsiest of evidence, the landscape stripped bare. My guess is Ben Wilson would see a bit of himself in Sam Lowry. I imagine a lot of people would.

I appreciate the effort to cover the side of your building with something other than a wide expanse of burgundy and ochre (apparently the hot colors around here these days) but murals are a tricky business. There is so much going on in this mural, it's hard to take it all in: ecstatic prepubescent girls, wary matrons being secretly groped by Sean Penn look-a-likes and a floating yellow rabbit in a blue jacket that seems ready, at any moment, to jet out of the scene under its own magic powers. And if that wasn't enough, a slightly less odd but equally sinister mural extends across the rest of the building. Congratulations. Best Wishes. Huzzah!

I have a very particular kind of neatness. It doesn't require hypoallergenic cleanliness. Dust, while not my friend, is not my hardened enemy. As Sean says of both the bathroom and kitchen: BEHOLD...the floors that never come clean! But what I do like, what I require, is a certain degree of order. The mail I haven't looked through doesn't have to get sorted but it has to be piled neatly at the edge of the table. The coats don't have to go on hangers or hooks, but they need to all be hung on the back of one chair. The dirty dishes can sit in the sink, but preferrably in a sturdy tower, from largest plate to smallest. You get the idea.

This morning I transferred all my idea notes into my manuscript at the appropriate chapters. At first, this felt like a very orderly way to go about this next set of revisions, but now I feel overwhelmed with the sprawling chaos of my story. The notes are nice, sure, but how do I gather it all in? How do I make sense of two protagonist's uneven narrative arcs? How do I add and subtract scenes without tossing the whole thing into the air like a disheartening game of 52 pickup?

The answer, I fear, is a more thorough cleaning. I'm goint to have to lift up all the lamps and sponge off the surfaces beneath them. I'm going to have to lift up the damn rug and scour out the old nasty dirt. I'm going to need bleach. Lots and lots of bleach.

I swear, Jordan Rosenfeld did NOT pay me for the following endoresement:

I'm about three-quarters of the way through Make A Scene. Now, because Jordan is a friend, I could have bought the book, read it and given her the ol' good job! But as you can see by the proliferation of stickie notes, this book has inspired a lot more than a passing glance.

This book reminds me of Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction, in that it tackles all the essential elements of what goes into a story. Jordan is good at giving examples from literary fiction, horror, fantasy. The rules apply regardless. All those stickie notes are ideas regarding my own novel that came to me as each element of a scene was disected.

I can see how this book would be really helpful to beginning writers, but even more so to those of us with a little experience who, perhaps, have let some of the basics get lost amidst all the complications of writing a novel.

And now, with feeling. GOOD JOB!

The Sylvia Beach Hotel along with most of the Oregon Coast is currently being battered by a huge storm, one of the strongest in the last ten years, closing down several of the roads between Portland and the Pacific. I love a good storm, but I'm glad I'm home now.

I stayed in the tiny but super-cozy Gertrude Stein room. Having read almost no Stein, I opened up one of her books from the shelf in the room and found this:
At the Sylvia Beach, even the storage space gets its own author:

And the resident cats are named Dickens (pictured here after I lured him into my room) and Shelley.

I hesitate to write much about my trip to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in this small space. It was as if I stepped into my real life, or rather, my writer life. And because I was in a building infused with books, visited by other artists and owned by a most remarkable woman, I believed that life and packed it up when I left.