Lit blog

[annaswirls]

Oh a real live letter with curly letters? That would be most wonderful... I remember writing and recieveing letters, mostly in my first years of college, but even after.... I often think that I should get out my fancy pen and buy some cool paper to write...

The latest ultrasound showed ten fingers, ten toes (very wiggly) a four chambered heart pumping nicely, two squishy kidneys doing kidney stuff, one brain with all the proper parts (can't tell if it is a poet or a scientist yet eh hem) and well.... one little trouble making penis. Yep. Looks like another boy. Lord help me. Seriously. Anyone with a good connection please put in a good word, I am going to need all the help I can get.


At any rate, I am glad you got over to the summer issue-- some people are so damn talented it gives me the shivers!

If you want to write me a real letter, like an awake one, let me know, I will send you my address Glad you are back! I would also love just a regular old email, maybe you can pick a curly font

~AS

In my most recent dream, I dreamt I was writing a letter..in the most beautiful cursive style. Like when I was in the sixth grade and we had to write a letter to the president.

I have had only limited internet access for the last 2 months and could not access Lit in any way at all. I come back and find a note from a precious friend I have not answered yet because I feel sort of ugly and non responsive because of my absence. To You,precious friend, I hope there is a little strawberry blonde GIRL in your future I hope you know I love love love you!!!

back to that letter...it was to that particular friend. I can still feel the curve of the S as the pen touched the paper, in my drea, and I was thinking how very blessed I am to be able to write, considering I havent written, on paper, ( well, very little ) since I got a keyboard, and my typing consistently laughs back at me because I am so inept.

Shara, I saw your Prez illustrated poem on Anna's site, its wonderful. Im so sorry I didnt get back to you, but it was impossible. I hope you forgive me, but all your work is great, you couldnt have picked wrong.

And WE... praise be, woman!! Your spread on ME is wonderful. Some of my favorite poems by Double D keep up the excellent work!! ( ps, I know this ownt surprise you, but I had a serial killer scrap book when I was a kid, I wanted to be an FBI agent, had no idea it was called profiling back then, lol. ) I might share it with you someday if my kids didnt steal it years ago, its in my hope chest)

My youngest is back off to college this weekend, and I have no more out of town work till the end of September. Hope to see what I have been missing


xoxox
g_g

 

[annaswirls]

omg I know, not your point to do so but this made me so hungry damn it and another 6 hours before breakfast

So I am in SFO this morning, ready to fly back home. I’m wandering around trying to find some sanitary facilities (Hello, SF Airport people! Your restrooms suck!) and happen to pass by some guy eating breakfast at one of the many sad excuses for restaurants found in the terminal.

Ordinary looking guy, probably a bit younger than me. He’s reading the paper and sopping up some yolk from his over medium egg with what looks like a triangle of classic white buttered toast. All well and good. But (and this is 9:00 AM) he ain’t washing all of this down with coffee or milk or OJ or even (shudder) a Coke. He’s washing it down with a pint of ale.

Now, understand. I like my beer. I might even like it pretty damn early in the marnin’, under certain circumstances.

I do not, however, frickin’ want it with my eggs and toast.

Why we is all differential, I guess.

OK. Rant over. Carry on.

 

[bogusbrig]

I've been waiting for bad news for a week or so and I've been like a cat on a hot tin roof and walking round the old haven here. I found a bar on the corner of a side street, one I must have past a thousand times or more and never noticed it. This time I went in and found it full of poets, artists, collectors and assorted 'n'er do wells'. Since its discovery I've been endlessly writing what I call 'beer mat' poems, nothing great, more a stream of consciousness rubbish but it's got me back writing. Apart from that, the company is great and there is a barmaid around my age with a body half her age that her life style doesn't deserve and she keeps calling me by my name with a lilt that sends a shiver down my back. One of those good to be alive feelings that we need to experience to know it exists.

hey. the beer is both cheap and good, which is a difficult combination to find nowadays.

 

[Tathagata]

looking back i see where i thought all the crossroads in my life were.
they coincided with mistakes for the most part so crossroads were usually regrets that I carried like canadians coins that were useless here for getting what i needed.
now i see everyday is a cross road and sometimes thats exhilerating because i know where to go and can see the wide expanse of oiled road and the smell of sweet grass and stables
cow manure is aroma therapy to me
and other days i'm waiting at midnight for the red unfeeling eyes and i sell off another piece of my soul
like an addict
just to make the pain stop
whats one more little piece?
and by selling the pieces that hurt i'm reducing the parts of me that can feel anything
and then i have regret
and then theres a crossroad.....

 

[annaswirls]

sounds wonderful! hope the bad news can't find you in there

I've been waiting for bad news for a week or so and I've been like a cat on a hot tin roof and walking round the old haven here. I found a bar on the corner of a side street, one I must have past a thousand times or more and never noticed it. This time I went in and found it full of poets, artists, collectors and assorted 'n'er do wells'. Since its discovery I've been endlessly writing what I call 'beer mat' poems, nothing great, more a stream of consciousness rubbish but it's got me back writing. Apart from that, the company is great and there is a barmaid around my age with a body half her age that her life style doesn't deserve and she keeps calling me by my name with a lilt that sends a shiver down my back. One of those good to be alive feelings that we need to experience to know it exists.

hey. the beer is both cheap and good, which is a difficult combination to find nowadays.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

No Signs of Intelligent Life

I have fallen into the habit of thinking that I live among aliens and I am the only human being with a pulse, an actual lub-dub, a heartbeat, a soul among the majority of those surrounding me. Sometimes, it is saddening. Sometimes, it makes me feel comfort in knowing that I have not given way to the alienating aspects of life.

Deep in my heart, though, I long for that feeling of humanity and of understanding that seems absent in my day-to-day life.

 

[ghost_girl]

"I Have Fallen" ( found poetry in the post above me)

.............
__________________

 

[Senna Jawa]

a variation of lesbiaprhrodite's text

Ghost girl was alert to the poetic quality of lesbiaphrodite's Lit blog entry, and added formatting to it. I'll go a step further.

aliens don't know
my lonely
heart-lub-dub-beat

It's been so long
i shiver

day and night
dub-dub-dub

i long for humanity
​

lesbiaphrodite
--a variation
​

 

[unpredictablebijou]

IT'S RAINING! IT'S RAINING! YAY!

after about five straight days of 104 degrees, people keeling over everywhere, bad craziness, it has started to rain!!!

I went out and pulled up a chair in front of the shop and just sat in it, getting soaked to the skin. We have a tiny little garden spot out front with bunches of plants and a couple of deck chairs. I got crazy looks from the people in passing traffic, but personally I found them rather insane for driving around with the windows up while there was actual cool water falling from the sky for the first time in a hot, hot HOT week or two.

I let it pound me, big fat drops cooling off the top of my head, and breathed in that hot-wet-concrete smell that always happens when the rain first starts. Whether or not it's an actually pleasant smell, I suddenly found it amazingly appealing, because of what it represented.

That got me to thinking about how much our esthetics, which can be inexplicably free of any rationality most of the time, can sometimes perhaps be quite controlled by a perception or a conclusion. Normally I don't really like that scent, and of course it's really not a "good" smell in any of the traditional ways. I mean, it's not going to end up in someone's cologne blend anytime soon. But to me, just now, it was a beautiful smell. Hit me right in the pleasure centers.

Interesting thought train, that. Conditioning. Pleasure. Sensory experience. Associations. Gives me some ideas for ideas.

 

[bogusbrig]

My daughter (who is 16) is on holiday in the US, Washington DC to be exact and later South Carolina. I received a postcard from her and the sole subject of the message on it was her complaining she couldn't find a groovy card to send so she sent me a boring one (her words) of George Washington's house. Yesterday she left me a phone message, the whole message was about her trials and tribulations of trying but failing to find a groovy card. For all I know it could be snowing over there, Washington could have slipped into the sea or she's been kidnapped by a gang of renegade Disney characters but I do know you can't buy a groovy card in Washington or at least, a card my daughter considers groovy.

 

[Senna Jawa]

My daughter (who is 16) is on holiday in the US, Washington DC to be exact and later South Carolina. I received a postcard from her and the sole subject of the message on it was her complaining she couldn't find a groovy card to send so she sent me a boring one (her words) of George Washington's house. Yesterday she left me a phone message, the whole message was about her trials and tribulations of trying but failing to find a groovy card. For all I know it could be snowing over there, Washington could have slipped into the sea or she's been kidnapped by a gang of renegade Disney characters but I do know you can't buy a groovy card in Washington or at least, a card my daughter considers groovy.

So cute! Bogu, you have no reason to complain, none whatsoever!

Best regards,

 

[ghost_girl]

..........

 

[ghost_girl]

have you seen the IFL?

.........

 

[bogusbrig]

Hi Bogusbrig!!

I live in SC.....does your daughter need a good will ambasador? I am in Lexington, near Columbia.

anyway, I hope she has a great time, visits the museums and stuff, we have some good ones. And rivers, and and ohh, the swamps, lol.. I kinda kike this place even though the politics are disgustingly Republican



julie

I've since managed to be in when she has phoned. She is loving it and had genuine excitement in her voice. I'm not sure she is seeing much of what it is really like to live there because she is being totally spoilt by the people she is staying with. I'll have to check the address of where she is staying, it is a small town and somewhere I've never previously heard of. Oh, she is struggling with the heat a little but other than that she'd having a ball.

 

[ghost_girl]

[............

 

[ghost_girl]

..........

 

[Tzara]

The land near Aldergrove, BC is largely flat. As we travel south, toward the US, the farmland is off to our right. There are some monster-sized greenhouses there. Producing tomatoes for BC Hothouse, perhaps, or roses or who knows. Something. The land to the left of us is a bit hilly. A bit. It's not like hiking the Alps. The bushes look like some kind of berry thing, like what we see to the west.

We are basically parked in front of some poor southern BC resident's house. We haven't moved for twenty minutes. I presume we will sometime move, at least during my lifetime. There is no guarantee of that, of course.

After twenty minutes, we move. The odd thing is that we move so much. Not a car length, or two, or three. We move something like ten car lengths, pause five minutes, move ten again. I am digging this. At least we move.

We pass a guy in a Mr. Freeze truck, who has backed into some field turnout. Let's hope those cows don't have to go anywhere. He has two forlorn looking Canadian flags flying from his truck's twin antennae. We decide we don't want any ice cream. Not today, anyway. Not from him.

Ten lengths. We move again.

The border is, as one might expect, rather forlorn. Big structures like, oh, gas stations or Jiffy Lube franchises or, actually, Duty Free Stores on both sides of the border, which is demarcated by a slim cyclone fence. OPEN 8 AM TO MIDNIGHT says the gate. Anyone could jump it, if they were serious enough. We prefer to sidle through the normal way, to avoid being trailed by the CIA or by mysterious black helicopters. We have to wait a bit, though. The agents are fumbling around at the computers in the station, playing twister with the cones in the driveway, perhaps merely tweaking "the man" down from Vancouver or (as is our case) up from Seattle.

Maybe they're just stupid.

Anyway, we're finally at customs. Yes, we're American. We're from Seattle. We spent the day in Vancouver. It was just one night.

Ye Gods.

OK, the agent finally says, Drive on.

We drive. Boy, do we drive

Boy do we drive, drive, drive.

 

[Angeline]

A different border crossing

The trolley drops us in front of a tunnel. We walk through it and it's not very long nor well lit for that matter, but there are many people walkiing from my side, to Mexico, and very few walking to where I've come from, California. I wonder if there are other crossing like this where the middle of the tunnel feels like no man's land, a black holely limbo that is exactly nowhere. When we exit the tunnel, we see a sign that welcomes us to Tiajuana and some guards mill around. "American Girls!" Whatchoo doin here?" That's the extent of it and beyond them a rather bleak parking lot, but we keep walking and come, eventually, to a thorofare. No one else wants to practice their high school Spanish so I, ever the fool, leap in and flag a cab. I'm from the city; I have excellent cab flagging skills. ?cuánto para conducirnos centro de la ciudad? Of course, I haven't a clue how much it should cost so if he says 50 dollars US, what do I say? No problem? But he doesn't. He says something like 2 dollars and we head off, me in the front passenger seat, mangling what little Spanish I still remember ("Yo estudio para tres anos en escuela, Senor"). He acts impressed until I remember he wants a tip, but fine.

The main drag in Tiajuana is teeming with vendors hanging outside their stall doors, beckoning us come in, come in Amerigan girls. I bargain my way to a brown topaz and silver necklace (which I've never worn), then make my way around drunk Tiajuanans and sailors beckoning us toward go-go bars to a department store. Ah, Cuban cigars. I buy a small box of them for my father-in-law and some Tequila for me.

We head back to the border. I'm clanking when I walk and very nervous about the cigars. What'll happen to me if they find them? But I gather together my city attitude, paste on my "don't fuck with me" face and walk past the Mexican boarder patrol. They're stopping a lot of people and checking their bags, but to us they only say "Pretty American girls. What chu buy for your boyfriends?" We tell them Tequila, and they look us up and down, wave us past, the cigars whispering "ladrón, criminal" from deep in my tote bag. No one hears them and they board the trolley with me back to San Diago and my hotel. They perform a similar disappearing act at the airport, something they'd never get a way with today, and make it to under my in-laws Christmas tree, to my father-in-laws unending respect for me.

 

[ghost_girl]

...........

 

[Angeline]

I'm in between jobs myself right now. I finished typing and editing a book for a client right before we left for New Jersey. This same man is working on another book, so I'll have that job coming up but in the meantime no work unless I want to go back to working with the ED (emotionally disturbed) children on a per diem basis. I really don't. They're so difficult to work with to begin with and when it's not a regular, full time job you're not around them long enough to build trust. So they're that much more likely to act out on you. And I'm just too old to be dodging kicks from 18 year old boys or pinning a teenaged girl to the ground so she won't hurt me or herself.

I need to look for more freelance writing and editing work. I'll probably be able to pick some up at the university once the semester begins. Of course, if my divorce is final tomorrow after the hearing--and it might be--we can start making plans to move. Maybe I should think about finding work in Asheville. If we continue to live as frugally as we have--and we've gotten so good at it--I may not have to work at all. But everything hangs on the outcome of tomorrow. I just want it to be over. I really don't want to be told I have to wait another 60 days, 90 days. Even so, I'm trying to adjust my mind to the notion that we'll probably have to stay here through one more winter. Disappointing, but true.

 

[ghost_girl]

oh, Ange!

I will think good thoughts for you, okay? Everything wil be fine, just believe.




j

 

[Angeline]

oh, Ange!

I will think good thoughts for you, okay? Everything wil be fine, just believe.




j

Terry will be right by my side through it all. And I'll take all the prayers and good thoughts I can get, dear sister.

 

[RhymeFairy]

I'm in between jobs myself right now. I finished typing and editing a book for a client right before we left for New Jersey. This same man is working on another book, so I'll have that job coming up but in the meantime no work unless I want to go back to working with the ED (emotionally disturbed) children on a per diem basis. I really don't. They're so difficult to work with to begin with and when it's not a regular, full time job you're not around them long enough to build trust. So they're that much more likely to act out on you. And I'm just too old to be dodging kicks from 18 year old boys or pinning a teenaged girl to the ground so she won't hurt me or herself.

I need to look for more freelance writing and editing work. I'll probably be able to pick some up at the university once the semester begins. Of course, if my divorce is final tomorrow after the hearing--and it might be--we can start making plans to move. Maybe I should think about finding work in Asheville. If we continue to live as frugally as we have--and we've gotten so good at it--I may not have to work at all. But everything hangs on the outcome of tomorrow. I just want it to be over. I really don't want to be told I have to wait another 60 days, 90 days. Even so, I'm trying to adjust my mind to the notion that we'll probably have to stay here through one more winter. Disappointing, but true.

I can understand your frustration Angeline. But hang in there. It will happen and one day all this will be far behind you. You'll forget all the worry and finally feel normal again. AND I also understand the living one place and wishing, dreaming of another. I too have been hoping for some change but all I can do is say again, hang in there ... be positive and thankful for what you do have. Good times are on their way, We're all here if you need us, just say the word and a shoulder with hankie appears outta thin air.

 

[champagne1982]

I've been talking a lot about putting myself out there for editing. I've been told I have a good sense of what people mean and how to say it best. I think that is an admirable strength. But, oh how I wish I could finish all of the wonderful books I have writing themselves in my head.

I guess if I allow myself a bit of slack over the intrusions of all the crises in my life these past 18 months or so, I know I'll get around to writing what needs to get onto the page. Like Ange though, I feel as if I could make a greater contribution to the day-to-day if only the big things in life would just curl up a bit.

Let's muddle through each wonderous day and be amazed that we're still here.

 

[Angeline]

I can understand your frustration Angeline. But hang in there. It will happen and one day all this will be far behind you. You'll forget all the worry and finally feel normal again. AND I also understand the living one place and wishing, dreaming of another. I too have been hoping for some change but all I can do is say again, hang in there ... be positive and thankful for what you do have. Good times are on their way, We're all here if you need us, just say the word and a shoulder with hankie appears outta thin air.

My friends here--and I include eagleyez because I met him here--are what got me through the past few years. My mother is very old and in reletively good health but in assisted living. My children are living with their dad and everyone else in my family is dead. The few friends I had--of very long standing--sided with my ex when I left because they thought I was wrong to leave the kids. I didn't have any choice. The ex and I had got to the point where we couldn't get through a day without screaming at each other, either that or not talking, and you can imagine how good *that* was for my kids. And mind you they were both teenagers already. I couldn't uproot them from their home, their school, their friends, their grandparents and bring them to a place they had visited once. It was an impossible situation. And frankly I had nowhere else to go. I wanted to be with ee of course but we had hoped he could move to Philly. I couldn't make that happen without a family to help me through it all, so I came to Maine. Like fled. That is the best word for it. And eagleyez god bless him opened his heart and his home and his life to me and here we are.

I've cried on so many shoulders here, I should buy about 20 of you stock in Kleenex. With any luck, tomorrow I can have my name back and start to put all the painful memories behind me.