From the Department of "Well, That Was Dumb"

I'm having one of those mornings where I got off to a weird start. I bought yet another laptop bag yesterday, and in the transfer of writing supplies to take with me to the library I forgot my pouch of back-up pens. I've Tweeted the fact, Facebooked the fact...I'm obsessed. This was supposed to be a writing session.

And it was. Just an on-line one, is all. I'm still working on adaptability issues, obviously. City writer, country writer. :) (Thanks, Robin.)

And for those of you following my bag count...I picked up this little gem at the outlet mall, Kenneth Cole, $17, AND it matches my current handbag. Oh, I'm such a girl.

I'm at the Carlsbad City Library this morning, the Georgina Cole branch, while Serena volunteers at the Senior Center. Yes, I could have volunteered with her. Yes, I was selfish about my writing and chose that instead this week. I'm used to the San Francisco Public Library, which isn't much different from this library at the satellite branches. The two biggest differences are:

• The librarians here are so friendly they greet you coming in, and they invite you to stay and read a while. "It's hot out there; you better stay put," was my instruction on Wednesday. I readily complied and read for two hours that day. (Had plenty of ink and I read the whole time--oh, for God's sake, let it GO already, Jo...) The San Francisco librarians are pleasant, but you have to get in front of them and make yourself known. I suspect that has to do with the second difference, below...
• About 30% of the patrons at the SF Public Library are homeless people, camping in the temperature control with free knowledge. I don't begrudge them that, although it lends an unmistakable aroma to a library in San Francisco that for the most part does an excellent job of keeping me from curling up with a book there. In this library there is just one homeless person, and none that I could find at the main branch over on Dove Lane. The homeless woman here seems disturbed but well-behaved--I imagine she doesn't want to be thrown out in this heat.

I love the Main Branch of the SF Public Library for it's grandeur, but I must say that I love these little libraries for their humanity. Today I had to journey upstairs for a vacant writing table, but Wednesday I got a table right by checkout, and got to talk to children. One little girl who I swear came up to my knee insisted on showing me the correct way to self-checkout (Tina Fey, Jr.), and another little girl passed my table and demanded that she wish me goodbye and that I have a good day. This friendliness seems consistent with much of Carlsbad--Mike and Serena's neighbors invite me over to their units and show me pets and renovations with relish, offer up sunburn cure-alls, and ask if I'm looking for a vacancy down here. They even nod in agreement about my love of San Francisco--"Oh, I understand, hon. Just saying you have a home here if you want it." At the cafe yesterday two people stopped to ask me about the library book I was reading, and if I was reading it for work. STRANGERS. It's like Mayberry meets Surf City.

Well that's enough writing for now...I'm going to finish that book I started on Wednesday and wait to see what the tide will bring.

Write on. :)

Hide and Go Seek

I'm in San Diego this week (well, Carlsbad...I get liberal and start incorporating myself in that San Diego curtain pretty freely), and not writing much. The only writing I get done is my morning pages. I got in four pages of free-writing yesterday, but that's it.

But I'm okay with all of it.

What I am doing down here is a lot of living, or watching the living. I've got the pace almost down, but I don't need to--I just watch and talk to people and listen. Listening is the big thing. I had one hang-up yesterday; our neighbor is high drama and took her high drama on her cell phone down to the hot tub in the courtyard to share with the whole complex. She's the only one I've had to drown out with the iPod. Everyone else I listen to.

Either I'm at peace, or people have better articulation skills down here in Carlsbad. In SF most Muni conversations are peppered with the word "like." I know the scientific study behind that word's abuse but having that knowledge doesn't make the abuse of the word any easier to bear. When I get back the new goal is to leave the iPod off first and see if I can find pockets where, like, you know, like, they don't, like, talk like that.

Next to me at this cafe there are two women talking intelligently about education plans at the local school for the coming fall. At the table on the other side of me is a mundane conversation about what one of the party should have ordered, but, despite the subject matter, it's easy to listen to. Other things pop up to fuel my writing idea pot. On Tuesday night a woman in the complex across the lagoon tried to jump, and was carted off by the paramedics. My sis-in-love called it "Rear Window, Revisited," and asked me what I had to write about since I didn't know the circumstances or the aftermath. I grinned. "See, those are the parts I get to make up," I said with relish. Earlier in the vacation my brother gave me an idea for a modern twist on "The Old Man and the Sea, Revisited." So I could write. But I'll do that when I get back to lonely.

There are inspirational places to write as well. A suggestion made to me didn't pan out because that location has been closed for about a year, but the suggestion got me exploring downtown. I wrote a little in a french bakery, the local libraries (two of them), and the cafe here. I get words down. To paraphrase Picasso, they don't look like me now, but they will. And I'm losing my fear of deserts. Or, I should say, the fear isn't so acute.

This may be my last post until I hit the Bay Area again on Monday. Meantime, write on.

Weather, Porn

Um, nope, that title is not a typo.

I am very nearly getting off on the weather tonight.

Allow me to explain.

People move to San Francisco for a number of reasons. People live in different areas of the City based on economic and social measures, sure, but there's also the weather. You want warmth and sunshine? Go live in the Mission. You want fog and cooler temperatures? Go live by the ocean...and so I do.

Is it any wonder then that when the temperature even next to the ocean over the past three days exceeded 90 that we heard more sirens coursing through the streets out here, or that we all wandered around grumpy in the Inner Sunset? I think not. One of my coworkers said, "Why didn't you just go to the Park?" Is she insane? Everyone and their brother who lives anywhere near the Park goes to the Park on days like these, for the purpose of finding shade. It looks like a refugee camp down there.

So when I came back from Oakland this afternoon and arrived on the Number 6 mere blocks from my house, I nearly swooned. Thick marine layer (California for "fog") was rolling over Mount Sutro. I climbed the steps to the apartment, threw open my window, and HAPPILY GOT A CHILL. Keep in mind too that I've either been sick or allergic to something now since Sunday...I'm thinking sick, because it didn't abate with the heat, but it could be allergies, since I am not running a fever. Still, all stuffed up and deaf, I let the night air storm in, which it does, like a lover who's conquered the world and returned, "Baby, I'm HOME!"

One more note to this...some people enjoy aspects of the hot weather if only to get a look at things that they don't always get to see when it's cold enough to cover up. A friend wrote this on Twitter:

College campus + heat-wave clothing = difficult to keep one's eyes to one's
self.

The sad thing is, I'm in a uniform for most of the day that makes me look like what I think is a Pep Boy outfit, but contractors and tradesmen still come in all day with a "Nice outfit!" eyes a-roaming, or just eyes a-roaming, so...

Hot weather or no, I'm a pin-up girl. It does get old.

*****

One of the drooling men this past week was telling me about a scene from the movie "Bull Durham" (actually a couple of them) where two different men had the opportunity to disarm a woman's garter belt and one makes it out to be as difficult as nailing Jell-O to a tree while the other one completely executes the task in style. I don't know where specifically he was headed (although I have a pretty good guess), but I had forgotten the scenes, so I pulled them up on You Tube.

Gracious.

Baseball players, Kevin Costner, and garter belts.

Too bad I have no need for such a thing. I steered the guy back to his valves that he needed to order, and as creepy as he is, I guess I have to be grateful for the reminder entertainment.

Sleep well, dear reader.

Living

It struck me again today how little I live and how much I post on Facebook and Twitter. It struck me again today how much like this was in my years of television-watching in Missouri on nights after 10 hours on the customer service phones. Come home. Sit. Rot.

While the Earth rotates outside my window.

But this weekend I got to catch up with two old friends, and those experiences felt like strikes of flint. Tonight I found a tune of Emmylou Harris's that I had lost for 14 years. This afternoon I curled up on the couch and read Fitzgerald without guilt.

I spent time in the sun.

Not so much screen. More words that I can't hold back. More living on my own, without watching someone else have all of the fun on the field.

Put me in, coach. :)

Sleep well, dear reader.

In Defense of Sex

Yep. This post is going to be about what you think it's going to be about. No use sugar-coating it.

Unless you're of a kinky inclination.

Last night I was at my Tuesday night short-story writin', darn tootin' Meetup and I got to a point where sex comes into the plot. What's funny is that seven years ago, the last time I was writing regularly, I was a virgin. I thought that I would still be able to write about sex, but more like from the viewpoint of a virgin.

Which is sort of like writing about the Sistine Chapel from the point of view of an aetheist.

There's a portion of my favorite book of all time, "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," by Betty Smith, where the protagonist, Francie, submits a series of stories about her life to her middle school teacher. The teacher seems miffed by the stories--they are base and mean in her opinion. "Why can't you write about something pretty and blooming?" seems to be the general sentiment, and Francie is hurt because this writing is beautiful. She's in love with the story of her family. But her teacher wants beauty we ALL think is beauty. So Francie sits down to write a story of a girl who can order any food that she wants...and actually drools on the page because she described the food so beautifully and because she is too poor to afford this kind of food. The same thing went for me with writing about sex when I was a virgin. I made myself hungry and awkward on paper. I forgot the emotions and got hung up on the physics.

Now, after having had sex with a whole two men (which doesn't make me an expert, but lends me some perspective), I find that I can skip the physics some and write the emotion. Neither man loved me, but I loved both of them at the time, so I can give an accurate rendition of what we would have experienced if we were both on the same page, or nearly. Since when are men and women on the same page, sexually? DK had a great observation he shared with me once in an e-mail--"Men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love." But somewhere in the middle in good stories of love there's a jagged meeting of the puzzle pieces, or, more to the point, a forcing of the two nearly-matched pieces together.

There is another force of habit that kept me from writing sex into short stories in the past--intimidation due to lack of experience. Here, in 2009, I've had a crash course. I imagine that here in this place where I finally gained the experience there will be more men who think that they can "teach" me or use my lack of experience to inform me of "how things work" in terms of manners and such, but I ignore that now. The man would have to draw me in, to woo me.

Another literary character comes to mind--Celie from "The Color Purple." "Why, Miz Celie, you're still a virgin. You ain't never been loved," says Sug, and every man who meets her calls her poor and ugly. "But dear God, I'm here!" she declares, and she finds fulfillment in the children she gave up. I don't have children in Africa, but dear God, I'm here. I'm a sensual woman who knows exactly what she wants after the loveless experience of two completely different fellas in Shrek suits, and if another fella comes along he is going to have to do some old-fashioned courting. In the same venue, he's experience. Would I write about him? Probably not directly. I have worked some of G and FG into my paintings, but not enough so's they'd notice. (Neither of them read anyway.) And they gave me a great ballast--er, what I mean to say is they gave me a leverage point from which to write about something other than the physics. I'm sorry I gave it up to them. But I'm not sorry that I gave it up, and I can imagine, having loved without sex, the beautiful and rich rest.

That, and I'm a sensual woman in her sexual prime. My imagination hatch-eth and spring-eth stronger than ever it did in the younger years.

Get ready for my fiction. :)

Theory

I wouldn't be nearly as grumpy as I am right now if the temperature was normal.

But what is normal? This is San Francisco! ;)

Have a gigantis iced caramel macchiato and a chick flick and am now going to lay VERY still.

Missed a Day By Merely an Hour...

Sorry folks.

More to come...

Just a Few Brief Notes...

A few quick points--I got sick tonight after a nightmare incident at work and am a bit weak, so I have to rest in a minute--and here they are:

• What's the deal with Facebook now forcing me to take the new version, which no longer shows me everyone's status on the home page...?
• Regarding our tweets, DK--I don't get it, but it's probably some defect on my part...no worries.
• Robin, got your e-mail and it showed up on my wall tonight--thoroughly enjoyed that article...
• Anyone else who's reading--sorry for yet another lame post. Know this: It's not easy being green.

My effort at humor.

Sipping juice and water to rehydrate. Tomorrow night I will be stuck at work late, but I'll Twitter the entry if/when I can.

Viva la contract work, I say.

There Will Be Blood. Lots Of It. Watch at Your Own Risk.

One word for this movie:

YIKES.

I guess I should have counted on a "YIKES" factor, though. This is the guy who brought us "Punch Drunk Love," "Blow," and "Magnolia," none of which I liked. There's also the factor that the art Anderson is basing this movie on is none other than Upton Sinclair, and I thought "The Jungle" was enough to nauseate a world. (Is it just me, or were Upton Sinclair and George Orwell soul brothers or something...)

Still, despite all the oil deaths, derrick deaths, bowling pin deaths (that's not a typo), firearm deaths, old age deaths, and oil strike deafs (that's not a typo either), "There Will Be Blood" is a work of art, an absolutely excellent movie.

And that's the first and the last time I'll see it.

Oh Yeah, NOW I Remember

I remembered what I was going to write yesterday...

As of yesterday, I have been in the state of California for 4 years.

Dunno about this marriage, Cali...