Dear Writers

I am a secret hoarder. You can be a secret hoarder when you have a big house with lots of closets and a garage. Your friends will think you are one of the tidiest and most organized people they know. They are wrong.

You cannot be a secret hoarder when you live in a condo, and you share a big underground garage with 500 other people where only cars, not stuff, are allowed. You cannot be a secret hoarder when your only storage area is a 4x8 cage. Still, my 4x8 cage is a tower of wonders--bins stacked on bins stacked on shelves, the walls lined with s-hooks hanging all the things I want to someday need but might not ever need.

I prepared for the great downsizing. I gave things away. I had an auction. I gave more things away. I sold things to friends. I sold probably half my furniture to the new owners of my big house. I gave still more things away. But still, I have dozens of pens. Dozens of markers, and document clips, and paper clips, and pencils, and rubber bands, and envelopes. And hundreds of post-its and boxes of staples. I have journals and more journals, both empty and full. I have index cards, and journals made of tear-out index cards. I have books and more books. I have so many books that I cried yesterday when I tried to fit them on my fabulous wall unit after it got installed. There wasn't enough room even though I made more space in my bedroom and in my closet. So, weeping while I worked, I boxed up four boxes of books to give away. And I lived.

Long live e-books. Long live my book-sized iPad mini. Long live the written word. Long live poetry, and novels, and memoir. Long live essay collections, and story collections, and anthologies and books about birds and whales. Long live books written by dear friends, and writers I'll never meet. Long live all those words that have mended all the broken places, filled the empty places, and emptied out the places full of sorrow and bitterness. Dear writers of those words, thank you.

Dreams in Pink Madras

 I was at a party, and there he was. He pulled up a chair across from me, our knees nearly touching. There was a table to our right where we set our drinks. "You're back," I said. I meant back from the dead. He nodded."You look good. God, you look so good." And really, Dan had never looked better. He looked rested, and the skin on his hands and face was smooth. A life of hard work, erased. I took his face in my hands and our eyes locked.
"You know I can't stay," he said.

The dream was thin--a whisper, a shadow. The party was something about books. My friend Elizabeth was there. Our eyes met. I looked at her as if to say, don't breathe a word about this visit from the other world. She nodded.

"I love your shirt," I said to Dan, though it was nothing like I'd ever seen him wear in real life. The shirt was a pink madras plaid with a button-down collar. And he might have been wearing an earring.

That's all I remember.

***

Clothing seems to figure rather prominently into my dreams about Dan. The stylish jacket and designer sunglasses he wore when he turned up at my house with the gorgeous blond; the long red skirt, tight pants, bolero, kimono, and two hats he was wearing the time he wanted to take me to the balloon festival. Now pink madras. What does it all mean? No idea.

But I do know this: Saturday night I had friends over. We ate on the patio even though it was chilly. "Here. Wear the guest polar-fleece," I told the friend who'd only brought shorts and a t-shirt. It was Dan's jacket I offered him. One of two jackets Dan habitually wore, and I keep it in the armoire next to the front door. I ended up wearing the other jacket that night. I went upstairs to use the bathroom, and realized I was a bit cold too. When I went into my closet to find something warm, there was Dan's blue jacket. It matched my shirt perfectly so I put it on. What a beautiful jacket, everyone said when I came downstairs. So there we were, partying on the patio in Dan's jackets,warm bodies in the cold night air, connecting this world to the next.

What to Pack for the Women's March on Washington

Part I: The Plane Ride

Books and more books. Inspiration is good.

Vitamins. Because being healthy is good.

Drink coupons. Because.

My mom's wristwatch. Because she would be over the moon in favor of this March.

Here's a poem from "When She Named Fire." This is a volume of poems subtitled "Contemporary Poetry by American Women," edited by Andrea Hollander Budy whom I had the pleasure of meeting in residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts a few years ago.

What We Need 
by Pamela Alexander

A roof over
three squares.
Warmth to wear, 
something to burn

in winter. Water
music: sheets
of rain hung out
to dry. Time, or

the habits of light,
A road that thins
in hills. Hills.
Once an image

sufficed; now I see
we must speak.

Wednesday Morning $%&*@ Report

Yes, I altered this photo.

Sometime it's great to tinker with reality. Sometimes it's not. When I read this morning's New York Times, I saw that of the top ten trending stories, all but one had to do with $%&*@. Almost the same was true of the most read stories and the stories selected just for me (a long time subscriber.) However, there were only or two stories about #$%&@ in the most emailed stories. Friends don't let friends drive drunk and they don't email one another about #$%&@. I'm not going to be blogging about him or linking to articles about him on FB. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. 

There's a lot to read. A lot of very important stuff. How about this heartbreaking blog post by my friend Elizabeth Aquino? 

Or THIS? There'a a very pretty picture there.

Or read about THIS BOOK, then maybe buy it.

Or instead of obsessing over $%^&* follow this hot advice:

1. Go buy a box of those Trader Joe's peaches right now. Seriously. Get up. Go. 

2. If you want to put texture on your walls, maybe don't use that powdered pour in the paint can texture. I have no idea what you should use instead.

3. If you are a MAC user and you're doing an online search on your state website for unclaimed property (well, California, for sure) use your CAPSLOCK key when you type in your name. Seriously. 

You're welcome.

I don't know what the quote of the day was in the New York Times today, because I often don't see it now that I read it online. But I'd vote for this from the article on Las Vegas real estate wherein the reporter interviewed this guy who is losing his shirt. “I just don’t know what this world’s going to be like in 90 days. I have never been more confused about my country.”

A party!!! And all of Internet-land is invited!!!

I wrote a book.

I've gone on about it a bit here. I hope not too tiresomely.

Other people wrote books, too. Those people are:

Mona Gable
Elizabeth Aquino
Zöe Rosenfeld
Laura Fraser

We're all going to be reading from our books at the party that Shebooks, the publisher, is throwing on Thursday night.

There'll be drinks, snacks, cookies, music, literary chit-chat, fabulous company, music, and readings.

It's at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts in Los Angeles. It starts at 7:30.

Oh, and all of our books are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. You can click the links below for "Birth Mother," my book.

Reading, Grief, Authors I Love, and Shebooks' Equal Writes Campaign

I confess. I'm lying in bed. I slept for 9 hours last night, but after washing and putting away all of the linens that were used for guest beds during Dan's final days, I'm horizontal again.

Lying in bed is a good place to keep up with the condolence notes. (Thank your from the bottom of my heart for each and every word.) Email. Facebook. I read and write back. Or just read, making a mental note to write back later.

Reading anything longer than these note from my friends and Dan's friends has been pretty much impossible. My eyes seem to be unable to focus right or something. Today, however, my friend Elizabeth Aquino's book has come out on Shebooks.  I've had the privilege of watching this book take shape while we wrote together at UCLA and in Elizabeth's living room, as well as in the homes of others in our small writers' group. I am positive I can read this book because I love what I know of it so much, and it will be positively thrilling to see it whole. I hope you will read this courageous and beautiful story too.

And while you are traveling around on the Interwebs, check out The Equal Writes Campaign. 

Oh, and yeah, I have a contract with Shebooks too. More about that when my book is released.

I Don't Care--A Cautionary Tale

I slept in this bed just as it appears here for two nights this past week. One of them in my clothes with sand in the cuffs of my jeans. Outside the frame of this photo are heaps of books intermingling with dust bunnies and that trail of books continues down the steps to the front hall where my mother has stacked the books she wanted out of her room. Until the man who loves me arrived on Sunday morning, the bathroom trash had begun to overflow onto the floor. Suffice it to say that I had motivational problems this week. While downstairs I managed to keep up appearances as my mother's cheery cook and companion, upstairs I became surly and apathetic muttering about all the things I didn't care about. Just like Pierre. My daughters would gasp when I read this book by Maurice Sendak to them. I loved the fact that Sendak had the balls to let the lion eat that miserable little boy. Of course, Pierre got a second chance when a doctor was able to retrieve him, whole and unscathed. And I'm giving myself a second chance too. Of course, this being real life, that would be for this week.

Last evening the man who loves me and I arrived at the beach just as the big orange ball of the sun dropped behind the islands. We approached the sand from the park and walked through an opening in the dunes with palm trees at a tilt framing the vista you see below. "This looks like the set for a movie where people are seeing California for the first time, blown away by its beauty," he said--or something like that. Even native Californians cannot believe how beautiful this place is.

Each day the beach is different in dozens of ways. The waves, the wind, the sky and its clouds, the birds. Is the tide in or out? Are there dolphins? Whales? Sea lions?
Behold, the beauty. Where every day seems like second chance.

Les Plesko 1954-2013

It sinks in slowly-- this thing called death. And it's different somehow, losing a writer who's left behind his books. All those words. His notes on pages of my own writing. Lists of of books to read. His own little booklet of rules and instructions that he handed out in his classes.

The memorial was a writerly comfort. Readings of tributes. Readings of Les's own work. Pictures, stories.

Death frequently carries a suitcase stuffed with regrets. I truly wished that I, with all the money I had to spare in those days, had offered to foot the bill for fixing his teeth. He was beset by health problems--especially this past year, people said. And there were people who did come to his aid.

He was tortured by insomnia, others said. Last night was the first I slept without waking several times in the night since I heard of his death. That waking a small connection to be grateful for. A space to lie in the dark and stretch out a hand.

I am thrilled to have known him.

Don't Judge My Covers by My Books

I used to read just one book at a time. Never, ever read two books for pleasure simultaneously. My brain kinda broke during my divorce and reading anything felt like a trek up a foggy mountain. I have no idea how I got my MFA during those first two post-divorce years. Everything I read, I had to read each sentence, each paragraph over and over again. Nowadays, I read a little of this, a little of that. I sleep with a pile of books and reach for the one I'm in the mood for at night. Reach for another in the morning. Take a couple to my comfy chair in the afternoon if I have time. There's poetry next to the bathroom sink and in the john. Lit magazines in my car. Lit magazines everywhere, actually.

I have no loyalty to prose or poetry. Novels don't own me. Memoir, you know I'll kiss and tell. Paper, screen--I don't care. I just want it. Morning, noon, and night.

Banned or Challenged Literary Classics

This is a list from the Banned Books Week website.




"According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.

The titles below represent banned or challenged books on that list ( see the entire list here). For more information on why these books were challenged, visit challenged classics and the Banned Books Week Web site."

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger 
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck 
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee 
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker 
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce 
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison 
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding 
9. 1984, by George Orwell 

11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov 
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck 

15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller 
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley 
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell 
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway 
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner 
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway 

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston 
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison 
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison 
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell 
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright 
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey 
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut 
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway 

33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London 

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin 

38. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren 

40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien 

45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair 

48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence 
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess 
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin 

53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote 

55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie 

57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron 

64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence 

66. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut 
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles 

73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs 
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh 
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence 

80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer 

84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller 

88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser 

97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike 


I'm happy to say that I've read all but a handful of the books on the list.  I have my Catholic high school in rural Iowa to thank. Many  of the books were assigned reading--or I was led to them by reading an assigned book by the same author. The most recent book I've read is on this list, too. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a coming of age story filled with heartbreaking betrayal and confusion and ultimate victory, but at a price. A book like Invisible Man could be a life raft for a young man or woman whose dreams for college have fallen apart.


I still remember the first book I read  that served as a life raft. There it was on the page--someone who was crying over the very same thing that was hurting me. I was seven or eight years old, and my best friend was moving away. Carol from the Country by Frieda Friedman got me through it. The book is now called simply, Carol.


I'm thinking of all the books that I've turned to over the years. I owe a lot of writers. Do you have a book that's served as a life raft for you?

One of my Favorite Blogs

I am obsessed with books. I am always reading a book. When I finish it. I know what I will read next. I've written a book and want to see it published. I have a wall of books in my living room, another bookcase of them in my study, rows of them on my desk and in my bedroom.  I have a Kindle and an iPad--because what if the battery runs down and the e-book I'm reading is inaccessible? When I fly, I always have my iPad and a"real" book because the iPad must be powered down during take off and landing.

Well, enough about books and me.

Read THIS.