Unknown

I received a cute little comment on yesterday's post suggesting my titles for posts in this blog suck. So I went for even greater obscurity today.

This blog is mostly for my notes, and mostly for my notes as a writer. I don't try to market this one--I have two others that I market, and this one just sits here to give me a chance to talk about writing without censoring myself. So when I get the feedback that I need to improve my titles on this blog I have to snicker. Someone hasn't been reading the blog, and someone therefore doesn't know much about marketing this blog.

*****

I'm falling into a pattern with my writing groups--I'm using the time during the sessions to freewrite on my writing projects and tune the goals. For the last week I haven't done any actual project work in the sessions, and it feels right. It actually provides me with two luxuries: meeting other writers, and spending time thinking about my writing so that I have a sharper focus for the next time I sit down with the project.

It's like I'm teaching myself my own college class...or actually seeing through a work of art.

Write on.

To the Asian Advertising Hopefuls

This post is specially dedicated to the cluster of people who keep trying to advertise Asian girls in the comments section of my blog, and keep trying to do that advertising in Chinese--I'm now moderating my comments. No one could read them before because they weren't in English, and no one will have the chance to read them now.

I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more in your endeavors. You've annoyed me long enough, and I don't date women. If I did, your girls look like a lovely option, but I don't.

Spam someone else, dear reader.

Go For Launch

And this blog is no longer on Facebook. Now I can develop my writing and improve it. Not to mention hopefully having more of it.

Happy Easter, dear reader.

The Latest Notes From Sea Level

{Poster's Note: The following was taken from a longhand journal entry during a Meetup "Shut Up and Write" session on Sunday, March 28th, 2010.}

I miss writing when I don't get to do it. I love everything about it. I am even enamored by the materials--papers in different weights, different bindings on cahiers, different pens (the only thing I won't write with is a ballpoint pen, blech), different coffee shops, differing light, the music that gets me started. Then there is the font when the second draft is typed, whether it is generated on paper or on-line, the package, the typeface, the binding. Pages--even or uneven, and the texture of the paper. Everything creating a tome thrills me.

I thought about such things last night during Earth Hour. During Earth Hour I had shut off the lights, the computer, the phone, the iPod, the Kindle--anything electronic or electric. I lit candles and sat next to their light with a glass of wine and started to read from a paper book, Isabel Allende's "My Invented Country." Soon, however, the lowering wax and untrimmed wicks created some very active flame in the candles, and the flickering was too hard on my eyes. I closed the book and did some stretches on the floor, breathing evenly to inspire meditation, but couldn't get in the zone. I blamed the wine and moved back to the couch with said wine and had a dialogue with God about what I love about writing.

I have been writing a long time--in one form or another since I was six years old. I even love the psychology and sociology of writers. Where they write, how they write, how alike and how different they are within countries and continents. I love the ironic fact that I love Dostoyevsky and hate Tolstoy, but that I think both Allende and Garcia Marquez are magical. I love any history of writing. I love any language, even though the only two that I understand are English and some French. Every moment that I reached an answer God came back with a deeper question.

What would be better, that was the ultimate one.

Most of the authors I can name are classic authors--I know very few up-and-comers. That is something I would like to change. I would like to be more well-versed in publishing. I would like more structure in my blogs. {Poster's Note: I'm sure my readers would like more structure in my blogs as well.} I would like more consistency in my postings. I would like the writing to improve. I want to be better at editing. I want to say more of what I mean rather than just get the idea down on the blog and then walk away from it.

That question of what would better stumped me last night during Earth Hour, and I'm finally answering it the next day. I was afraid to answer it last night for fear that I wouldn't get or give the right answer. Now I realize that any answer is a better one than waiting. The answer may change, and I have to be ready for the answer to change--that's adaptability in motion.

Now, to act on it. I want a blog. Seriously. One with a continuous line of plot, you might say. And so here we go, with a line. Creating a continual line in a long-term blog strikes me as the same kind of challenge that the Apollo 13 astronauts had in keeping to course when they used the moon's gravity to slingshot themselves back to Earth. Most of the course is determined by that gravity, but at one point they had to correct the trajectory so that they stayed in within the narrow window of re-entry without bouncing off the atmosphere when they return. The astronauts couldn't fire up the instrumentation due to a power shortage, so they had to find a fixed horizon point--in their case, keep the moon within a certain window. Trouble is, when they fired up the boosters the thrust pushed them all over the place, and not just in a straight line to the course. They knew this would happen, but they knew that they could get the correction needed if they could manage to straighten it out in the last ten seconds of the thrust and keep the moon in that window for the last ten seconds. So the first ten seconds of the thrust were quickly learning stabilization--the last ten were for the actual correction. It was a harrowing 20 seconds, but they accomplished it, and made their narrow window.

To give you an idea of how narrow the window was at that time, newscasters of the event described it as trying to put a basketball through a space the thickness of a sheet of paper.

That's the kind of narrow focus that I have to get myself to. Sooner or later, I have to master the 20 second booster power.

The moon's gravity I already have.

Nuns and Paddle Ball

Since I am, in fact, the biggest nerd on the planet, I possess a reading journal. I made it myself years ago, back in the States. It's a 6" x 8" three-ring binder with sleeves in the covers for inserting my own pictures. On the front cover is a picture of a room with bare walls and filled waist-deep with books, surrounded by the quote "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." It's a quote from the late great Flannery O'Connor.

Inside the book are a bouquet of bookmarks, then a great deal of notes in the binder, and then in the back cover is another photo, of an elderly nun playing paddle ball. The quote around this photo is "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?" That one's from Satchel Paige.

A reset, of sorts.

So if I didn't know a lot of things, like all the stuff I assault myself with all day long, then maybe I would be a little more free. If I didn't check Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter and e-mail, would I feel a little less inadequate? Would I stop comparing my life with the lives of other people? Would I go out and find life, instead of following the plotline of everyone else's?

Not to walk away for just a day or a week.

How about walking away until next year?

Everyone that I follow on Facebook and Twitter has their life in order, with families and boatloads of friends and travel and fulfilling lifestyles. I feel empty, uninspired, lost, and (this is going to be politically incorrect, brace for it), retarded. I feel light years behind the world when I should be standing in my own shoes anyway. I have talents that I have forgotten, focus I've lost, all to my stinky self-esteem, which drags in the water like sprays of seaweed, heavy and off-balance.

How about one focus?

How about just one thing to follow?

More to come.

Slow Brain Food

It has always amazed me how I will read something at one point and then, in what seems like moments later, will read something else that reaffirms it.

Yesterday I came upon a post by a friend of mine that talked about how her writing style could never really fit the Twitter format. I myself used to utilize Twitter as something to text when it seemed that my friends weren't listening, but now I feel as though Twitter is just a bigger silent audience for me. I feed to it on my blog as something that changes even when I haven't posted an in-depth blog post for some time, but I have found that I can't, like my friend, keep to the 140 characters either--what usually happens is I'll post about five "tweets" at a stretch that are all of the same theme. Why five? Because five shows up on the feed on my blog.

Still, even with five, the venue seems to be lacking. Five sentences and there's my day? When just last year I was working to post on this blog daily? It's the fast food, the fast junk food, of my own production. I seem to try to perfect THAT format because who is going to read a whole BLOG POST, for Pete's sake? Lord knows this is an abuse of a LOT more than 140 characters. If a majority or all of my readers prefer, only have time for, or only have the attention span for "tweets," then blogging on a full-blown scale is a bit arrogant, right?

But isn't writing itself a strong belief in oneself to start with? Aren't I being arrogant to assume that someone will even read the tweets?

Later on yesterday I picked up an August edition of the Oprah magazine at the supermarket and leafed through it on the way home. In each issue they have a celebrity talk about their favorite books, and in this issue they talked with "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm. Hamm is a guy all strong jaw and authority and brooding on the show--I know this because sadly enough for this reader I am addicted to another frickin' television show. I feel guilt when I say I like a television show, even if I try to temper it by saying "it's well-written." Remarkably, Hamm sort of addresses that in the article, as he also addresses Twitter and attention span:

I know that reading isn't as easy to do as turning on a television or
getting on the Internet or twittering or whatever else you have ot do in this
modern society, but it's way more rewarding. It's calming. It's
edifying, and even as it has become less popular as the options have grown for
instant-gratification entertainment, most of the books that appeal to me...take
a while to have their effect. Once you give them that time, it's paid back
times a million...when you've got 500 pages to explore something, you're going
to go deeper into it than if you've got 23 minutes and commercial breaks.

Gutsy for a guy who makes his living off of 48 minutes and commercial breaks, but he is a man who seems to recognize all forms of the culture, all wonders of the universe and not just the high intellect ones. My friend and Hamm solidified something...that even though Twitter is there and fast and wonderful and I'm not giving it up, I don't have to be good at it or even give up my long conversations on the blog. Someone wants the 500 pages. Maybe less so than before, but someone does.

Read on, dear reader.

Reading, Writing, Skip the Math

Okay, Jo, it's the ever-lovin' 15th. Are we really going to average an entry every ten days?

Okay.

Dust off the keyboard.

Could be worse.

I could be giving up for the year.

Thing is, I have been absorbing more than I should for a person in my thirties. LATE thirties. My advisor in college said that you spend your twenties absorbing all kinds of art, and the rest of your life creating it. I'm still absorbing art like a leaking sponge. Other things take precedent. I'm back in classes. And that is doing wonders for making it through a story. And I am discovering new music every day. I'm rediscovering old favorites in the literature department.

In the blog?

Crickets. :)

Let me come up with a topic, and then I'll talk to you.

The New (to Jo) Google Reader, or, Society

Society, you're a crazy breed...

At the inspiration of DK and MH, I awoke this morning, depressed of Facebook yet again, and decided to explore Google Reader. Back when I was on Yahoo! 360 Robin talked up the wonders of exploring the internet and particularly with Google Reader (and she still talks it up to this day), and I sort of shelved the whole idea--a lot of the internet stuff is over my head. And I sort of sentenced myself to keep it that way. I filled voids with networking sites like Friendster, then Gather, then MySpace, then Facebook. I wanted to talk to people (it seemed easier than learning tools of the internet).

Be careful what you wish for.

This morning I cleaned up my Internet Explorer Favorites, getting rid of stuff that I didn't even remember from the name of the link, getting rid of stuff that I usually just type in the search field anyway, and then I looked hard at my Google buttons at the top of the screen. "Let's take away the temptations toward poor self-worth," I thought, and got rid of Facebook. I replaced the Facebook icon with the Google Reader icon, and then opened it, for the first time. I loaded blogs there, and sat there reading...released.

I read Robin, and Jenny Lancaster (she's acerbic, but she makes me laugh, dammit), and Cake Wrecks, and a guy who blogs about the San Francisco Muni J Line, and the Happiness Project, and...I decompressed. It was like walking back into the present. Facebook has some present things for me, but most of it possesses a huge stamp of my past. I have changed. Back when I was in high school I didn't know what NPR was. I didn't know who Albert Camus was. I didn't know who Billy Collins was. I didn't listen to Springsteen. I didn't know the strength of Tornado Alley or Maverick's off of Half Moon Bay. So many things have happened--I have learned so much.

I'm not abandoning the folks I am in touch with on Facebook. I'm not nursing Facebook. People who truly want to stay in touch with me will do that, and I will recipricate.

I am SO looking forward to continue to learn. I am coming back to the present. Come, join me.

Twenty-Five

There are some lists going around a circle of friends of mine on Facebook, a list that kind of reminds me of NPR's This I Believe or Oprah's What I Know For Sure, only longer. Ladies, here's my answer (and gentlemen may read too):

1. I am 36 years old, and I would kill to have my mother tuck me in one more time.
2. When I eat a slice of pie, I eat the crust first, 'cause I like it least but don't want to waste the crust.
3. My brother is my best friend, whether he always knows it or not.
4. If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be where I find my true love. Here's hoping he's a cowboy.
5. My favorite cocktail is the Mojito. 'Nough said.
6. I prefer dark over milk chocolate, and white chocolate is a joke.
7. My name means, in order, "Princess," "God's Increase," "One Who Lives In a Castle."
8. If I were stranded on a deserted island, the only music I would want with me is Springsteen.
9. Before I die, I want to see the snows of Kilimanjaro, Paris, Florence, Alaska, Tibet, and Spain.
10. I only get carsick if a woman is driving.
11. When people ask me where I'm from, I still slip and say the Show Me state. (Missouri.)
12. I don't ask men out. Anymore.
13. I am fantastic at karoke, particularly the song "One" by U2 or "All That Jazz" from Chicago.
14. I don't own a car.
15. I don't own a house.
16. I do own a vibrator.
17. I have swam with sharks.
18. I can do everything in the kitchen but can my own fruits and veggies. Pressure cookers frighten me.
19. I have John Denver, John Mayer, and the Butthole Surfers on my iPod. They aren't my first choice, but they are there.
20. I have TMJ. Puts a bit of a damper on my love-life, when I have one.
21. My favorite color is aquamarine.
22. I love the works of Bruce Willis, Mark Twain, David Gray, and Robert Redford.
23. I'm single but not gay. Trust me, it would be easier in San Francisco if I was.
24. My eyes change color from green to blue depending on what I wear.
25. And...my God, I will always love words.

You Can Dance...Every Dance With the Guy Who Gives You the Eye

Darlin'.

Save the last dance for me.

*****

Sunday night. I am wrapping things up before another work week. Because I try to limit airtime of the job here on ye olde Smoke, I will only say it's step two of Boundaries Training this week on the job scene--I am training myself to eat a HEALTHY lunch that I have prepared myself with love and minimum packaging. This week lunches consist of the following:

• Sandwich on whole wheat with roasted bell peppers, roasted turkey breast, sunflower sprouts, spinach, and mustard
• Carrot sticks
• No Fat/Skim milk in a little Sigg
• Honeycrisp Apple
• Cloth napkin (treating myself to elegance AND saving the environment)
• Sandwich and carrot sticks packed in Rubbermaid containers also to save the environment

In coming weeks I would like to pack a poem in there every day, like a love note to myself, but for now I'm still wading through a fat, creepy novel on the Kindle ("The Story of Edgar Sawtelle"), so I will allow myself that luxury during my lunch. When I start a new book then I'll pack the poetry. Or maybe just save the environment and pack the whole damn book of poems.

All this fuss is occuring because it occurs to me that this year is feeling a lot like last year. I'm trying to stay afloat, when it should be EASIER. And I continually make it harder. Yes, I said I make it harder. I go to Facebook and watch 20 people have the life I wanted 17 years ago. I go to the New York Times and watch 750,000 people in Washington having the adventure that I traded everyone else's Facebook life for, and I'm not having that life, either.

So today wasn't church and a movie to write about. Today was about making peace with boring Jo that I want to spend time with.

I got up and made myself breakfast. I wrote the morning. I walked to Andronico's listening to music in the sunshine and loaded up two bags of fresh food for the week--I should be able to get away without eating out for all meals but two (my writing nights--I don't want to pack a football cooler for those two days, so I'll give myself the luxury of eating out on art nights). I took a lot of deep breaths today, stopping anger, loneliness, the thickest parts of stillness. I was pleasant to clerks, despite finding bananas at the bottom of the cloth grocery bags. Ah...bruised...who cares? It's still whole. I drank lots of fluids. I took my chances with peanut butter and laughed on it. I checked Cake Wrecks and laughed on that. And I finished an age-old New Yorker from last year.

I can exercise whenever I want and eat whatever makes me healthy without worrying about whether the family will like it. I don't have the Facebook life, which is good for something this year--I can eat healthy without excuse and exercise without abandoning my world.

*****

There's a wonderful columnist/writer that I found on Slate last week, Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen has a rather saccharin-sounding blog entitled The Happiness Project. Normally I would see something like that, glance at it for the bullshit factor, and then move on (reminder: I'm not much on self-help since Mom passed--too close to the Chicken Soup fairy tales with no happy ending, I guess), but this one seems to have me hooked for the moment. She's on a quest and for the moment she's not laying out the Keys TO ALL SECRETS OF THE WORLD in a book. (That comes later, and NO, I'm not buying the book. I don't buy those things, 'member?) Her blog not only shows you how she literally gets inspiration from ANYWHERE, but she encourages you to find happiness ANYWHERE too. About a half hour with her and I read novels like a kid just given a crystal dish full of sugar-jeweled and soft gumdrops--I enjoy words by taste and linking and relish the pleasure like a glutton. She makes it okay to be happy with what you are happy with, more or less.

If you think I'm recommending this site you are absolutely right. This ain't no sermon, chile, but it certainly made me feel good in my own skin again. Her blog is a relief, and not in a false-net-under-the-trapeze sort of way. Our loves will change. She sees this. Just look around, though--can you see your life? What are you happy with? What would you change? She doesn't have the six steps to change it. She wants you to discover how your body/mind/soul works to want to change it.

As always, I bungle the descriptions, but the reason for the bungling? My lit advisor in college always said: "If you can easily describe it, it's not the best, really, is it?"

So I save the last dance...the best dance...the one who takes me home for now...MYSELF...in a project of sandwiches and poetry and boundaries...the last dance is for me.

Sleep well, dear reader.

'Faced, Or How I Met My "Family"

I've got a problem.

It's called Facebook.

*****

When I lived in Missouri and first lived here in California in Sunnyvale with my brother, I was devoted to the television show "The West Wing." My brother jokingly used to refer to it as my "family," as though I were one of those blue-haired women with six cats who wouldn't miss a night of "Dynasty." In my opinion, it's still the best written show on television (in syndication, of course), followed at a close second by episodes of M*A*S*H. Those are timeless as well.

But they ended that series and here I am with a collection of DVDs and a striking need for a storyline.

With Facebook, I have about 20 of them. Some of them lie dormant for weeks, months. Others update daily. One updates about every 4 hours.

It's starting to take over.

Not that I don't want to keep up with my friends. Some of these people I haven't seen or heard from in nearly 20 years. Others I have never met but would love to. But checking in four times a day to see if someone sneezed, took the dog out, etc. is a bit excessive of me.

I'm tuning into someone else's life. Or, TURNING into someone else's life.

Folks, if I don't keep up with Facebook after tomorrow as I did before, know this--I've been keeping up in a pretty concentrated measure for a while now. I will tune in again. Just not four times a day.

Maybe...once a week. Like when "Dynasty" is on, or I have re-color my hair. ;)

Network well, dear reader.

War of the Words

Occasionally, bibliophiles and borderline OCD sufferers such as myself get wind of lists that we somehow missed on the first pass, and most of the time these lists arrive via our favorite list sites for books (e.g., BookCrossing.com, Shelfari, Good Reads, etc). Here's a seductive and suggestive link from my BookCrossing e-mail this week.

I downloaded the Excel sheet and filled in the books I had read (which is a pretty poor few, unfortunately, even for a former lit girl). Turns out I will finish them all if I read 21 a year of the rest of the list, provided I don't get hit in a BART riot tomorrow.

This is EVIL... ;)

4,000 Miles From The Year 2005

Okay, for those of you keeping track...

• Three weeks back one of my customers asked for my phone number. He said that he called me the following Saturday, but I didn't get the call and didn't receive a message. He said he wasn't a "message" guy. He is 25 and his name is Brian. He thinks I look "hot" in my work uniform.
• Four weeks ago I spoke with FG, reconciled, slipped and forgot the boundaries the following Sunday, heard from him on Monday, and then was forgot by him, AGAIN, for another four weeks. I told him I never wanted to hear from him again on Tuesday of this week, we had a blow-out, and said goodbye Wednesday morning.
• Thursday afternoon I was helping customers at the counter and a 60-year-old guy who looks 40 came to the counter wanting his will call order: two 12-foot extension ladders. When I wheeled the cart out to his van he refused to let me lift a thing and told me I was a very attractive woman and started talking all about himself, that that day was his birthday and that he was 60, and he asked if I was married. "Nope." "YOU'RE KIDDING. So could I have your number?" Oh, why the fuck not...what does THIS one want...WHEN DID MEN GET SO FRICKIN' DISTASTEFUL AND GOD, WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE ME A LESBIAN SO I COULD AVOID THIS PAINFUL DANCE????? "Can I call you tonight?" Sure. "What time?" I get home at around 8. He called at 7:43, talked about how he was doing a good deed for an elderly neighbor and that he looks so young because he never drank or smoked in his life (NEVER DRANK? oo, boy...) and he walks all the time and he drinks a lot of water..."And when can I see you? Saturday?" How about noon at Golden Gate Park? "Okay, how do I get there from BART?" Mild annoyance while I explain how to get around to a Californian...he should be showing me the state..."And you'll be there? You're not going to stand me up? Can I call you tomorrow? What time?" His name is Otto.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not so fast, not so much, what do you WANT, what am I going to have sell myself on THIS time, why do I have to be nice to freakin' every guy who asks for the number because friends in the past and present think I'm just lucky someone is showing interest, and THIS IS WHAT FUCKED ME UP WITH GARY AND CHIP AND FG? Who's Next? Who wants to take a punch at me next? You, sir? You? Or maybe you? She's a sweetheart, she'll put up with anything, come take your best shot...

I was looking forward to a weekend of trying to end my therapy and writing and loving my solitude that I was sure was here to stay because NO GUY I DATE WANTS TO READ OR HAVE INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION...

A lot of capital letters and shouting there, Jo.

Deep breath.

All I ask is a simple thing: let me look over at you across a crowded room and feel like a partner, like we share a secret of caring for each other...I'm tired of the guys cramming a life lecture or a sex scene down my throat, or apathy...

I want to date a secure guy who loves that I love what I love. And maybe likes an occasional drink.

Please God. Stop torturing me with insecure men. Bring along a man who knows how to treat a woman. And if you can't do that, let me be happy with being a writer, and let me get out of my unhealthy workplace.

Sure, Slow On the Uptake, But I Eventually Discover This Stuff...

Just browsing the information on the Blogger dashboard and discovered a button that lets me write this from MY GOOGLE HOME PAGE.

Oooo, that's nice.

You know me...this mind wants for challenge and new things to play with.

WRONG...But Intriguing

Yesterday at work we were listening to KFOG, and they played one of my favorite Stones song.

In fact, it's the only Stones song I like.

I'm picky about the Stones and the Beach Boys. There's very little of either artist that I like. In an earlier post I mentioned that the only songs I liked by the Beach Boys were "Gold Only Knows," which is happy enough, and "Sloop John B," which many tote as a drug song. (Maybe it is, but it annoys me when people get that sanctimonious "You know, that was a DRUG song," like they do for songs like "Bridge Over Troubled Water" when it takes some six degrees of separation to make that connection.)

So this morning I was updating the podcasts and thought, how about I put that Stones song on there? I dropped a few more tunes on the 'Pod as well, but...

You're probably wondering what the tune is.

For a feminist, it would be the worst possible song I could pick. But it probably explains my choices in men.

"It comes down to me...the way she talks when she's spoken to...under my thumb..."

Can't help it. I just say it's the music and not lyrics, but deep down there's a surface level appeal to the lyrics. Not one with lasting application to me (I eventually get bored with these men because they aren't present in the relationship--they're just in it for power), but one with initial appeal...

To soothe my conscience, I equalized it with John Mayer's "Daughters". ;)

Other tunes loaded this morning:

• A concert version of "Free Falling" covered by John Mayer
• "Say" by John Mayer

Listen and enjoy, dear reader.

'Til Now, I Always Got By On My Own, Part 2

Ah, but where, you ask, is part 1?

There it is.

I thought of this entry this morning due to some repetition in my life. A good measure of repetition.

MH doesn't like the idea of transparency. DK believes in complete transparency. And when it comes to my dumb-ass lack of learning, I am torn.

Every day, I look more and more like a girl who can't learn how to avoid the car crashes. Who doesn't know how to drive.

*****

I know nothin' stays the same/But if you're willing to play the game/It will be comin' around again...

Well, Carly, it came and left again. I can't keep pretending love. And if this makes me a snob, then so be it.

For those of my readers who fondly remember FG, he has been in and out of my life since his comment about "We need to get you a hobby"--whether I want him to or not. Sometimes I can't help myself and beg, hoping it will be different this time, like a floozy. Other times I wish he would make the silence permanent. "NO I SAID NO I MEAN NO." Yeah, real believable. I'm still to fucking nice. 'Cause, you know, poor guy, he's getting his hours cut at our workplace and his wife won't give him a divorce and his family gives him all kinds of troubles, and...

RUN.

RUN JO.

SWIM AWAY. SWIM AWAY.

This past Friday night (August 22nd, not August 29th) FG left for a week-long trip to, no less: El Salvador, San Antonio, Los Angeles. This was all for family "business," a story I have heard about 6 dozen times and keep believing. "I'll text you when I get back." I don't believe it, but this time he will probably keep to his word--because I don't want to hear from him. I had a tremendously releasing week without him. The silence felt good, because slowly, over the course of the week, I realized that sex or no sex, I don't care if I hear from him ever again. My heart has already said goodbye.

Maybe, with enough apathy, he'll leave me alone.

*****

Going back to Part 1, I received another series of texts from this guy just a few months ago, angry that I was ignoring him. "Fine," he said, "I get it. I'll leave you alone."

I think he finally has.

With enough silence, FG will too.

Men and work are no longer my concern. I have more important things to do. Like be a writer. God, thank you for letting me be the academic and smart bitch that I was afraid to be all along. I'll save the love for that and for other writers and those who treasure the stories that come from all of us.

*****

One final note.

Back in February our company got us a new district trainer. At that time when I met her, we became fast friends. She and I would meet on the weekends, she would give me hope to stay with the company. She even worked to get me to the Oakland location so that I would be out of the clutches of my former boss.

In the past three weeks, however, she moved her office to Berkeley and only speaks to me to ask me to do something for her. I don't talk to her on the weekends anymore.

Can you guess where she was born and raised?

Please understand that this is not another diatribe on how Californians are flaky. Hopefully I don't need to say that anymore...and I no longer feel that it's a bad thing. Californians want to experience everything and everyone. They are explorers, even if it requires stumbling into stupidity for a brief time. Even if it requires touching the void. The reason why I bring this up here is because it seems to fit in with FG and Part 1. It seems to be part of the lesson I'm supposed to learn--not that the worst of the world only exists on the coasts, but what to prioritize. Whom to help. Whom to treasure. However briefly.

As a transplanted Californian, I have to explore, even if it requires stumbling into stupidity for a brief time. Even if it requires touching the void.

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em...and fasten your seat belt. ;)

Ah, Sweet Notes, Like Water...

A never-ending spiritual thirst, and then the lovely Robin sends over a canteen fresh from the well...

Many thanks to Robin. :)

This woman reminds me of a cross between Phoebe from "Friends," Eva Cassidy, and a touch of Carly Simon thrown in.

Looking forward to Pony Girl's tunes...

Sleep and drink well, dear reader.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Facebook is changing their home page, Writer's Almanac changed theirs, Blogger has tweaked the dashboard...

It's California and MAKEOVER SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:)

Okay, maybe that isn't the reason...

Not the Only Wallflower On the Dance Floor

Oh, I so like THIS ONE...

Makes me feel normal, even if that isn't always desirable.

oops...

Forgot to enable the comments notification to e-mail on Paved Paradise...sorry it took so long to address the comments on the Kindle, MH and DK... :)

What can I say...I'm technologically inept.