April 30: please! (10 minutes)

Give me a break!
Back away!
Give me some room to breathe!
I can't see to think!
I don't know what's what!
I need to get out of here, go somewhere, get far, far away from here, to someplace dark, still, quiet.
The noise!
Oh, the racket!
It's infernal!
Out of control.
Back up.
Hold on.
Give me a minute, just a minute.
Let me explain.
I can explain.
It's not what it looks like.
I know what you're thinking...
This is so embarrassing!
I've never been in a situation like this before.
Do you understand?
Do you know where I'm coming from?
Nobody seems to understand.
This is insane!
This isn't the way it's supposed to work.
I don't know what you were expecting but this isn't it.
I can't deliver.
I can't make good on a promise like that.
I said that under great duress.
Please just let me think for a minute.
Let's gather up the facts, lay it all out, take a look at it all laid out.
Just a minute.
Hold on.
Don't rush me!
Don't push!
You're being pushy!
Didn't you ever hear that you'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar?
Well, I don't know what it means but let's assume that's vinegar.
Let's assume you want to catch flies.
Let's assume that honey is the good thing.
I think we can agree on that.
Can't we?
Sweet stuff.
That's what it takes.
Sweetness.
Just give me a little sugar, just a spoonful.
A kiss on the cheek, a smile, a wink.
Just let me know you're on my side.
That I'm not alone.
Don't leave me stranded.
Don't leave me all alone.
Please!
I may look brave but it's just a front.
Believe you me I'm not brave.
And I'm not good in situations like this.
I need support.
I need some back up.
Watch my back.
Have you got my back?
Just for a minute.
Please....

April 29: giving up (20 minutes)

I want to do a Master Cleanse, kind of flush out the system, Spring Cleaning, I guess you could say, even though a couple of friends have "warned" me about it because they "care" about me.

"Have you read a book on it?"
"Where did you get your information about it?"
"On the Web? Don't you think you should go to BookPeople or Whole Foods and get a book on it?"

What book do you think I would get? Exactly the ones I'm looking at online! Will buying it give me a better chance of survival?

I suppose their intentions are good but "Leave me alone" comes to mind!

Okay, maybe that's a little harsh and I don't know how I got here. I give up.

What I really started to write about was giving up. Vices, I mean. I want to do a Master Cleanse but I didn't want to quit drinking coffee Cold Turkey because I knew I would get a headache which could turn into a migraine, which could turn into a Panic Attack. (My therapist always corrects me when I say Panic Attack. "You mean Anxiety Attack?" What's the difference! I give up on that, too!)

And we finished off the pot when our out of town guest was here and S. can't smoke anyway because he has to get another drug trial job, and he can't afford it anyway, and even though this pot was given to me by a friend I don't really wanna smoke anymore either (for a while) (at least) and I can't really afford any right now anyway so that works out. How did I get off on that?!

I tapered off my coffee intake over the past several days and today only had one (large) cup of black tea and a couple glasses of hibiscus tea at lunch. And I've had a little bit of a headache.

I also tapered off on cigarette smoking. None today, one thin one (roll-your-own) yesterday, one not so thin the day before. I don't often have more than one cigarette a day but would find that my afternoon headaches -- even when I was drinking regular amounts of caffeine -- could be done away with pretty easily by rolling and smoking a cigarette.

I hate that feeling of addiction, my body saying "Give Me!" I enjoy the habit (sometimes) of drinking coffee, of smoking a cigarette, the feeling of those things (sometimes) and of getting high, and I enjoy the taste (sometimes) of those things. But when I can't get through the day without them, that's when I start to get bummed out on myself and that's when I feel the need to make a change, clean myself out, give it up.

My uncle who was addicted to drugs and gave that up for Jesus started smoking again. He said to me "You never got into all that stuff like smoking cigarettes, did you?"
I said, "Yeah, I smoke occasionally."
"Occasionally!? How do you smoke occasionally?! Nobody can smoke occasionally! Maybe weed but not cigarettes!"

I guess we're not the same.

I somehow have given up sex too. Well, have cut way back on masturbation. I don't know why. I don't think coffee and cigarettes and marijuana make me horny. I think maybe they make me jittery, make me think I need to think of some way to fill my time, but it's not like I'm completely over the withdrawals, so we'll see.

And I haven't even started the Master Cleanse, so we'll see.

April 28, part four: stick figure man (10 minutes)

stick figure man goes shopping for clothes,
can't find nothing for his stick figure nose;
a shapely woman, no sticks at all
is standing 'round a corner when she hears him call.
"hello, stick man," she says like marilyn monroe.
"hello," says he, "is there somewhere we can go?"
"what do you want?" says the shapely girl.
"a place to bend and a place to curl."
"oh no," says she, "i'm not that kind of broad."
"oh well," says he, "now I feel like such a sod."
"please don't," says she, "i don't want you to feel bad."
"and i," says he, "don't want you to be mad."
"i'm not mad little man, you're as cute as a stick,
and unlike most men you're not too much of a prick!"
"that hurts," he says, "i can't help the way i look."
"i know," says she, "this isn't going by the book."
"what book are you talking 'bout?" he wonders out loud.
"the book of love and life on clouds."
"i'm afraid of clouds, i must shamefully admit."
she smiles, "i knew there was something and that's it!
i too have a fear of high and fluffy places."
"well, well," says he, "then i guess there's no disgraces
to loving on a shapely girl and being a stick man."
and so the shapely woman walked over and took his stick hand.

April 28, part three: tranny (14 minutes)

I put down my ten dollar bill for the play and the guy behind the counter said "It's actually fifteen dollars unless you want to help out the starving theatre." My friend put twenty dollars down, I later realized as a five dollar donation to the starving theatre, but at the time thought she was picking up slack for me. Oh well.

My friend is very friendly with the theatre staff, particularly the woman who runs it because she lives across the street. This was the second production I've gone to see and I wasn't impressed by either of them. I was silently comforted that this current production is the last by this company because they sold the building. It's in the quickly gentrifying East Side, so I'll probably wish for the old cinder block Jehovah's Witness Hall when whatever comes to the property, but hopefully I won't have to visit it.

My friend chatted happily with a gin and tonic in her hand (one of the perks of living across the street I guess) and had to be rushed away because the play was about to start.

My friend whispered to me that the woman who runs the theatre used to be a man. It was somehow obvious. Broad shoulders, thick hands. She had no adam's apple though. She told us that one of the actresses was sick and she had learned her lines on the way to the theatre in the car. I was able to spend the second half of the second act staring at her, observing her. She kept her large hands on her chest most of the time, as a motherly gesture, I imagined. "Acting," I guess you could say. Her breasts were strangely far apart and I decided that was to detract or somehow make an optical illusion of her broad shoulders. My friend said a couple of times, "But don't you think she has a pretty face?"

I feel bad that I ogled her for the time she was onstage, but she was really the most interesting part of the production to me. The rest of the time I just wanted to sleep.

It was all illusions, really. The main character was supposed to be waifishly thin, according to the dialogue, but he was pudgy, had man boobs anyway. He wasn't a bad actor. He was probably the best of the bunch, but it just seemed odd that he was so miscast.

I don't want to complain. I don't want to be rude. It was a bad production. Bad acting. I'm allowed to say that, aren't I? If I see a bad movie, I'm allowed to say it was bad, aren't I? Can't I say that out loud? I can give it one to five stars, can't I? I'm not a professional critic, but I feel like I should be allowed to express myself.

April 28, part two: hurricane (12 minutes)

Over the course of three or four days I watched Spike Lee's HBO mini-series When the Levees Broke, about Hurricane Katrina and the government's abuse of the people involved. I watched two episodes in one night, then skipped a night or two and watched the remaining two episodes one night at a time. It was just too difficult. I wasn't prepared for the images Spike Lee was going to show me. I sobbed several times, particularly in the first episode, either because it was more harsh or because I was a little more hardened by episode number four. What really affected me, I later realized, was the people who were able to smile at the camera, give a sigh and a little wave to the camera as they waded chest deep in water. Most of the people were angry. Understandably. One of the angriest women, Phyllis Montana LaBlanc, made me and my friend laugh with her anger. It was completely reasonable, her desire to take a security guard woman at the airport where she was deposited for endless days "out back to fuck her up, and then move on." Understandable that she was angry, but her colorful language made it funny, or at least allowed us to laugh, sort of a laughter of relief. She gave her name and social security number to Barbara Bush and said, "Tell her to call me and we'll talk about whether I'm better off or not." This after the comments Mrs. Bush made about the people living in the Astrodome were better off, many of them.

How do we get this way? How do we have such a huge chasm between the haves and the have-nots? And the have-nots are not used to living in a sports arena. How could that be? Oh, I hung my head in shame when I saw Barbara Bush say that, and I lifted my head and laughed from deep in my heart when Phyllis Montana LaBlanc was onscreen.

It looked like the end of the world came to New Orleans. When I lived on the road traveling and performing, my partner and I parked our travel trailer in a friend's yard for a couple of weeks. He was a musician from Australia living in the Lower Ninth Ward. Watching the HBO show, I was struck by the fact that we very easily could have been right there when Katrina struck. Would we have evacuated? Maybe. When my grandparents were a young couple, they used to drive to Galveston to take moving pictures of hurricanes coming in. They could have been taken away, it could have been the end of the world for them just like it could have been the end of the world for me in my twenty-foot travel trailer parked in the Ninth Ward.

My mother's sister is a religious zealot. One time she notified the family that the Rapture would be taking place (some TV evangelist had figured out the exact date) and she wanted us to be ready for the end of the world. My mother rolled her eyes and said, "The Bible says nobody knows when it will happen." I just rolled my eyes and stayed silent.

In the future, some religious zealots will update the Bible and say that Katrina was an act of God along the lines of the Great Flood to get rid of the sinful sections of the planet. I don't know why Washington D.C. is still standing in that case.

April 28, part one: theatre (12 minutes)

My friend lives across the street from a community theatre, spelled with an R-E, of course. We went to see their latest production which was filled with typically bad acting. The play was too long, over two hours, but that could be because the actors really took their time with delivery, and I'm not sure, but I think a couple of exchanges whirlpooled around when one actor got lost, back to page twelve, back to page twelve.

I wrote a play that was produced in an East Village theater twenty years ago give or take. The two main characters were played by large black drag queens. The action took place on another planet; a drug-addled young man was dropped in on them from planet earth. He was in the middle of a night of disco dancing and he had no idea where he was, thought these large black Ramadan women were actually drag queens. In the play they weren't, on the stage they were.

Neither of them had done much acting before, the director and I found them performing lip synced songs on a stage in an outdoor festival a few months before the performance. They drew a big crowd because people knew who they were. The director and I didn't know who they were by name but thought they fit the parts because of their outfits and their ability to mouth along to the words of a Bobby Gentry or Dolly Parton song.

It was all about costuming, really. They had nice costumes for the show. Well, nice isn't really the right word. Interesting. We rehearsed for weeks, the "girls" struggled with their lines. This was the most difficult thing either of them had ever done. They were stretching themselves. It was obviously good for at least one of them who went on to a considerable amount of fame, a TV talk show for a while on a cable music network.

I remember sitting in the sound booth as the show went on and feeling like the show was falling apart as they got caught in a whirlpool somewhere between page five and page six and spent a good ten minutes trying to find their way out of the the line skipping record. The show was longer than expected, every night, but it was always packed, and they always got a huge ovation, which they took graciously, sweat pouring from under their wigs and furry costumes.

No one ever screamed "Author! Author!" It wasn't all that good of a script, quickly written, but a lot of fun. And really it was just a vehicle for two black men who liked to wear "women's" clothing.

April 27: zinnia (15 minutes)

"If a flower doesn't make you feel good, I don't know what will," she said, bending over and snipping the first zinnia bloom in the spring garden, like that was the last word on the subject.
"Well, it won't," I responded.
She said, "Well, I don't know what will, then."
At least she was consistent.
But here I was fresh out of surgery on a broken pinky finger, feeling groggy and depressed and in a bad mood. At the last minute I let the anesthesiologist talk me into going local.
"General won't make you feel good at all."
Well, I don't feel good and I don't know if I'd have felt worse if I had had a general but I would venture to say I wouldn't feel a whole lot worse.
Percocet. I want to take the whole bottle. That's another word for general anesthesia: suicide.
No, I don't really want to kill myself! I just want to feel sorry for myself and that's part of the process.
She came back up, her head beet red, holding the small vibrant pink -- almost unnaturally pink -- zinnia she had just snipped off the stem with a little doohickey she keeps in her garden apron. "Here."
I just looked at her.
"Take it and put it in some water. It'll last for a week or more."
I felt like she had laid a responsibility on me. I wanted to take it from her and drop it in the kitchen garbage, smiled to myself at the thought of it, picturing it lying there on top of the burned out lightbulb and the burned egg I tried to cook for myself one-handed this morning. A bit of my smile leaked out.
"See, you're already looking better," she said and I took the flower.
I smelled it.
"No smell," she informed me. "Zinnias are all about looks. Beauty!" She pointed out the dozens of little heads at the tops of all the slender green plants filling the front garden under her windows. They all had little crowns of color coming out. It was like a garden full of royalty, all these green heads with a variety of colorful crowns, all different color crowns. She told me to check back in a week and the colorful array would take my breath away. She promised. "Some of them as big as my hand!"
Her hands were small but that would be a lot bigger than the zinnia I was holding, twirling by its stem like a paper umbrella on a toothpick.
"Why did you pick this one so early? You should have waited till it got bigger," I said, looking for an argument.
"Pshaw!" she said, "The first one is always smaller. It's just coming out to see if this is a good garden in which to grow---

April 26: mafioso (before previews)

dark room,
tight seats,
cup holders,
people whispering,
some in Italian,
cell phone powering down,
woman choosing her seat,
six dollars with a discount,
movie prices are going up,
old movie,
subtitles,
people wandering about,
man taking his garbage out,
napkin dropped,
he stoops to pick it up,
another man comes in and takes his seat,
another stands at the back of the theater to wait for his date,
she comes,
they sit,
first man returns without garbage and with his date,
seat shifting,
mumbles about seat choices,
Is this good for you?
one empty seat between each of them,
old woman,
middle aged man,
young woman,
I'm in a row by myself,
back row,
four seats,
giggles across the aisle,
seats at an angle,
quiet people sitting alone,
some writing (one, me),
cultured people,
old woman asks young woman what she knows about this movie we're about to see,
Oh, no, I think, here we go,
No sense in staying,
young woman asks Why?
Older woman says What do you know because I know nothing.
Well, it's a comedy--
previews,
people still talking,
a hush slowly but surely falls,
projector noise behind me,
Stella Artois---

April 25: who is Lisa? (20 minutes)

Lisa is a famous actress, one of my favorites in the TV show that made her famous. She did another TV show -- a cable TV show -- about being an actress who has to deal with ageism in Hollywood. I didn't see the show when it first came out but it's on DVD now and I watched the first DVD a while ago with S. and tonight we're going to G. & A.'s house to watch the second one. The show is funny, but it's also kind of harsh.

Who is Lisa?
Lisa seems to be on her way up. She has been on a couple of cop TV shows as a secondary character -- I guess that's what she would be called -- and not long ago she showed up briefly as an extra -- actually more than an extra, she got billed as EMT Operator #1 or something like that -- in a Hollywood movie we saw recently. She had a one-woman show at the Public Theater a while back that went onto Broadway. I don't think it's still running, but it got good reviews. Before that, back when I knew her, she was part of a performance troupe, five women, they were amazingly talented. They started doing one-woman stuff around that (some of them) and we performed with Lisa in Baltimore. We rented a car in New York City and drove together. We got to know each other pretty well, but I was always intimidated by her, even when I saw her at the Public Theater backstage in her dressing room. Her girlfriend told me to go in. I wouldn't have otherwise. I hadn't seen her in several years. It was awkward but nice. I heard she and her girlfriend broke up. I don't think it had anything to do with that event.

Who is Lisa?
She came to my church when we were teenagers. We hit it off. She had dark hair (the first Lisa has blond, the second is a redhead) and a lower jaw that jutted out like Beavis or Butt-head (whichever one has that). I thought she was very pretty but she was self-conscious about it and was picked on by kids in school (not the school I went to) and she said she was going to have surgery, have her jaw broken and reset so she would look like everybody else. She and I used to talk about heaven and hell, about how great heaven would be and about how horrible hell would be. She said the pain of hell would be like having your fingernails pulled out one at a time and your hands shoved into a bowl of salt. She turned me onto the soundtrack for the movie Hair, which I loved. It was several years before I saw the movie but I had all the songs memorized and sang along, much to the annoyance of the person who owned the VHS tape and let me watch it with him.

Who is Lisa?
I don't know her. I saw her name on a chart or on the nameplate outside a closed hospital door when I was in Houston. She was on the cancer ward. She probably didn't have any hair at all. But like every other Lisa, like the Lisas I know, she probably is always smiling, always making people laugh. Laughter through the pain, that's what it is.

Who is Lisa?
She's a black girl sitting next to me at a lecture called Pornography and the End of Intimacy or something like that. She handed me the clipboard with a list of names and contact info on it; somebody had just passed it to her. But I didn't put my info on it. I wasn't sure I needed to be on the list for updates on this subject. It wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be, the lecture. It was more about violence against women. Which is a good thing, I'm all for that-- or against it, I mean. All for the cause is what I meant. It was about pornography that is aimed at the heterosexual white male citizens. Somehow I don't fit in the group. Neither does Lisa, but Lisa has some interest in it. My interest isn't strong enough to give up my contact info.

Who is Lisa?
A little girl, a twin, her brother's name is Larry. They are what you call tow-heads, shiny white-blond hair. Lisa smiles, Larry fusses. They love each other, but they'll have their disagreements, their problems---

April 24: the Sun (20 minutes)

I picture the Sun as a big blister, festering, bubbling, boiling, sliced open, pouring out, golden sun, heaven inside, protected from the harsh atmosphere outside by a fiery crust. Inside it's all Smurfs and Sesame Street and fuzzy little animals on rolling green hills with pink and blue flowers, shiny like plastic. Who wants to play ball?! Everything is inside-out. No harm done. Nothing bad can get you here; you are safe. Locked up tight like a big metal safe, walls three feet thick and made of solid lead. Lead pipe pathways under the city. Swimming under us like a deep sea diver.

I sent off a check and subscription card for the Sun magazine today. The mailbox flag is up but the postman's already come this afternoon. It'll be tomorrow but it might be wet and smeared, ink on the front of the envelope smudged from the thunderstorm that's coming. Big storm coming, wind blowing, an undercurrent of cool, moist wind. A breeze that catches the birds' wings and throws them off their flight plan.

Flight plan, M. is in the sky on her way to Houston. Maybe she's already there by now but she's still woozy from the tranquilizer she inevitably took. She never flies without taking a tranquilizer, even for a flight as short as Austin to Houston. She's scared to fly, scared of death, scared of a loss of control. "As I get older it gets worse" she told me. I feel that too, a growing discomfort with a loss of control in my life.

I feel pretty comfortable about most things, about my life and the way it's going. I've got a pretty comfortable life, I must admit. But I'm still losing control and I'm still trumping up the accusations for the things about which I don't have control, or about which I have less control.

I don't know what I'm writing.

The Sun. The star, the being, the magazine. Things I don't desire to control in my life. I'm pretty content about just letting these things exist however they or their makers see fit. I'll read whatever the magazine has to offer me; I'll take a sunny day if it comes, a scorcher if that's what it is, or perhaps I'll just sit on the porch in the overcast atmosphere and write while the Sun is nowhere to be seen except in the silver light that she allows to be reflected.

The sky is like a big dirty mirror, an old mirror, gauzy and non-reflective, except of light. It bounces light around in blue-whiteness. The breeze blows, the birds swim by, miss the feeder and keep going. The garden greens yawn and stretch and maybe dance a little. They're dancing for rain. The cat paces around anxiously, no control over so many things in his life, but he knows he can pass near and my arm will fall to the side of the chair and my fingers will wiggle in his fur. He can almost always count on that. He can't control it, but he can almost always count on it.

The bean vines are searching for higher poles, climbing toward the Sun they've never met but know intimately. The lady bugs---

April 23: stained glass window... (10 minutes)

...in a wooden window frame, rescued from the big garbage day pickup. Faded green and amber and blue glass tiles with lead frames stacked together, sort of American Craftsman Style. Frank Lloyd Wright is rolling over in his grave; we've gotten to the point in history when such a thing can be found in the garbage thrown out with part of an old trellis, some termite-holed two-by-fours and a drawer from a built-in vanity with a glass knob spinning round but forever imprisoned by a rusty old Phillip's head screw with the + in the top stripped out. It sparkled with its diamond cut surface, like the clear glass tiles in the stained glass window do, even though there is dirt and bug markings and perhaps a drip of off-white paint. The glass is wrinkled, or prismed, or pockmarked. The blue glass tile is cracked, as is the bottom left uncolored one. The lead frame around that corner has peeled away from the wooden frame, or the wooden frame has arched away from the stained glass. Must have been a bathroom window. Too much moisture, too many years of neglect. When someone got around to trying to repair it, they didn't do much more than hammer a nail partway into the frame. There are a couple of half-hammered nails in the frame. Some of the hardware remains in place -- the latch, the arm that keeps the window from opening too wide -- but they're useless without---

April 22: clouds (20 minutes)

A cloudy day, blustery, the sky is one big cloud. No shapes. No elephants, no apples, no dinosaurs, no man smoking a huge pipe. Cloudy day, starlings warbling in the trees, so black against the soft blue background. Not really blue at all. Blue-white, blue-gray.

When I was young we lived in an apartment building in Waxahachie. There was a cotton field next to it. When the cotton was harvested there were always bits of cotton left behind on the empty husks. The earth was gray, the stalks of the cotton plant were brown, spent, dead, the little bits of cotton were like clouds floating by, caught in the husks and on the branches.

One time the bright sky was full of fluffy clouds. Not storm clouds, just sun-blocking cloudy. A storm of passing shadows. I loved the sky when it was full of clouds, so full that the clouds crowded each other downward and seemed to be not far from touching the ground, nearly close enough to reach up and touch them. I ran along the ground when the shadows floated by. Pretended I could fly on the clouds like they did in cartoons, wished that I could, wished there was a way out.

One time the sun pushed through the fluffy clouds, a circle of beams came down from the sky in the middle of the cotton field. I was playing alone. I got a sudden scary feeling that the Rapture was about to take place, or that it was in the process of taking place, and I couldn't imagine that I was ready for the Rapture, not with the thoughts that plagued my mind, not with the sins I committed in my heart. I was all alone. I often played alone. I liked to play alone. Or I was used to it. I was okay with it because that's just the way it was, that was the way it had to be.

I saw the clouds from above for the first time when my uncle took me to New York City. They were the same from above as they were from below, scattered out shapes that reminded me of things, animals, people doing weird things. Up in an airplane you can watch a far off cloud for a long time, watch it as it changes from a whale to a mountain to a spewing volcano to a woman with a grocery cart to a car pulling a camper to a cluster of islands on a brownish reddish sea.

When I flew to Scotland, I saw clouds formed by the wings. Little white lines seemed to be spewing out of the wings, sometimes just dots, like Morse Code. I don't know Morse Code but I was convinced that if I did I would be able to see some sort of message being written in the sky with the Morse Code clouds. It could've been a mundane message, or perhaps it was something very serious, not just about this planet, this atmosphere, a message from some unseen force in our galaxy to another.

If you believe in such things.

I believed that I could sit on a cloud when I was young, and I had dreams that I was doing that. But if I stepped on the wrong part of the cloud -- blip! -- my foot would go right in, disappear in the cloudiness.

Cloudy day. It's Earth Day. It seems like it should be sunny. I don't know why. A cloudy day doesn't seem right somehow for Earth Day. But maybe all of the clouds have come to see what's going on for Earth Day in our little green town.

April 21*: envelope (30 minutes)

Her fingers were elongated by the boniness of them; her knuckles large and looking like they might tear through the paper-thin flesh. She always cut herself when she opened an envelope, so long ago she kept a butter knife on her writing table.

Getting the mail was one of the few rituals she had in a day. A walk to the mailbox took fifteen minutes because she shuffled her feet, her corns catching in her tattered old terrycloth house shoes, burns on the bottoms from stubbing out cigarettes at the back landing. She was only 73 but looked 90 because she had smoked so many cigarettes in her day. Her hair was still long and braided tightly in a halo on top of her head. Unraveled it came down past her shoulder blades, gray and white and honey colored and always cool and moist to the touch. She perfumed her hair with oils and rosewater. She said that was her secret; she didn't say what it was her secret to. Perhaps to keeping her hair from smelling like an ashtray, perhaps her secret to her cool, moist hair. That was another ritual she enjoyed. She used to braid her hair only once a week, but after Clyde died she started doing it every day, taking it down, brushing it a hundred and twenty times and putting it up again. To help herself keep from getting lonely. She never felt too lonely so she dared not stop that ritual.

And here it was six months later, the house as still as the day she woke up next to her dead husband; her buddy as she called him. Her best friend. Someone recently convinced her to go through his things, to donate his suits to the church or Goodwill, to find a cabinet at the VFW Hall to display his WWII medals and uniform. It wasn't doing any good all boxed up like that, and it was probably gonna just get eaten up by bugs or end up smelling like mothballs. She couldn't keep it hanging at attention in the closet there with her few nice dresses. It looked like a soldier among a bunch of gay women in the closet there.

The box on the top shelf was his personal box, he never told her not to look in it, but it was his private collection. Pictures and things from his first marriage. She didn't have any need to go in there while he was alive. And now it seemed she did have a need to go in, to sort it all out, to figure out what to do with it. Her bony hands took down the box, its lid trembling, making a rattling cardboard sound as she walked from the closet to the bed and set it there and lifted off the lid. He was eight years older than her. He married her when she was only 18. He was already a man, experienced in the ways of the world, the experience of war in a foreign land, a wife dying in his arms, the love of his life. She knew this. She wasn't jealous of this woman she never met; she was glad her buddy had had the opportunity to be so deeply in love. She knew it would never happen for her, but she didn't mind. He was a good man, he took care of her always.

Inside the box were dozens of letters sealed and stamped and addressed to an Audrey Rose. Not his late wife; the woman who had at one time been this old girl's best friend. But shortly after their marriage, Audrey stopped calling, stopped coming round, made excuses, seemed to disappear out of her life.

She opened one of the letters. She carried the one on top to the writing desk and took her butter knife out of the top right drawer, slid it into the space at the top of the V-shaped flap on the back, the little opening where his tongue had not managed to wet the glue. She had a strange sense about the letter, about what she would find her late husband had written to her best friend. It seemed queer that the letter was unsent. The letter on top was only a year old, the postage stamp was three-cents shy of being proper.

As she imagined deep in the recesses of her heart, the envelope held a love letter written by her husband, her best friend: To Audrey Rose. It was three pages long, but she only read the first page, and then turned to the bottom of the third page to be sure (even though his handwriting was unmistakable) and see his salutation, "Yours in Unrequited Love, Clyde." Then she folded the letter up, returned it to the envelope, walked back to the box on the bed in their guest bedroom and gathered up all of the letters. She only looked through them to make sure they were also addressed to Audrey Rose.

There was one at the bottom addressed to Clyde, the address was typed, the return address a p.o. box. She didn't remember seeing the envelope when it arrived, but imagined she probably had because she always collected the mail and put the envelopes and other mail addressed to Clyde in the open nook on the tall back of the writing desk they shared. The return address was the same as the address under Audrey Rose's name on all of the unsent letters Clyde had addressed, so she knew it was from her to him. The date was hard to read, but the envelope was yellowed with age and so she knew it had been there a long time. She put that envelope aside and planned to later burn it in the fireplace (without reading it, of course).

The others, she stacked together on the writing desktop. She pulled the large drawer open and found a large envelope from Clyde's old office supply stash and put all of the letters he had written in the envelope, then she put as many stamps as she could find on the envelope, addressed it as he had to Audrey Rose, with no return address, and then slowly shuffled out to the mailbox at the street and stuffed the envelope in it and raised the flag.

*another older writing exercise while I have an out of town guest.

April 20: purple (15 minutes)

(from Writing Down the Bones, chapter six, A List of Topics for Writing Practice:)
4. Choose a color---for instance, pink---and take a fifteen-minute walk. On your walk notice wherever there is pink. Come back to your notebook and write for fifteen minutes.

chair
flowers
diaper
buses
shadows
sticker
FedEx truck
violet gum wrapper
Ray's shirt
house trim
car tinting

on my morning walk i looked for the color purple. my first thought was to look for green or blue, but that's just silly; i wouldn't get off my block! i live in a new house (well, new for me)* in a new old neighborhood, funky and delightful; i've met a few of my neighbors. Ashley and her boyfriend have a purple stuffed chair on their porch. is it really purple or more burgundy? i was picturing a violet or lavender when i came up with purple, but i got nervous that i wouldn't see anything purple.

ah, but across the street, down on the corner, at the cemetery end of the block, an old house FOR SALE TO BE MOVED has a yard full of pale purple flowers. growing like weeds in every yard actually. i never know the names of flowers. i have a garden tilled and waiting to be seeded in my front yard; surely i'll know the names of flowers after growing season, at least the names of the kinds of flowers that i buy. the flower in the yard is shaped like a five-pointed star with a yellow center. is it a stamen? it pokes out and has some pollen dust on it. i know so little about flora and fauna.

oh, and there's a diaper in the yard, too. tab holding it closed into a triangle shape like a carefully folded american flag. a memorial to baby's last bowel movement. lovely.

a couple of bright colored buses with CIRCUS on the side of one have some purple accents. deep purple. the black guy with dreadlocks is working under the hood of one. he is kind of purple in color, and his dirty white coveralls must've been a costume at one time; they have purple bones painted on them and now they're fading.

shadows look kind of purple in the morning light, especially shadows around cement. cement in shadow puts off a purplish light. i pick a 5-pointed star flower from another yard and a truck turns off the main street onto the side street where i'm stooped over. the window is open slightly. the man inside leans up to peek at me through the dark purple shadow of inside the cab of the truck.

i turn on to the main street (12th). a band sticker has some purple on it, then a FedEx truck with its purple Fed and red Ex passes.

i like the side streets; i turn back toward my house, my neighborhood on Waller. there's a plastic wrapper discarded from a single piece of violet gum.

nearer the house, i find the remodeled house with the yellow, green and lavender trim. the neon green Geo out front matches.

and i'm on my way home again, but can't help spotting the purple tinting of a car's windows. not so rare afterall.

*This is an old exercise I came across while going through old journals (looking for some help for novel writing). We have a friend visiting from out of town and I just thought it would be fun to put this writing exercise in from when I first moved into this house instead of doing an exercise (but she's taking a nap right now and I have a little time). So much has changed! The HOUSE was bought and moved and mo-dern living quarters are being built there now. S. and I have a nice garden out there now, tomatoes and peppers and sunflowers and zinnias and watermelon and meyer lemon and peas and climbing spinach, lots of herbs, and another flower which I don't know the name of (I still am not too good at that).

April 19: morning (10 minutes)

mosquito waiting on the front screen door. "Have you got any blood? It's been a long night."

impatient sunflower turning its head toward the east to get the first drops of sunbeams coming up over the graveyard.

cardinal atop a post, a couple yards from the empty feeder. "Chirp. Chirp." He fluffs his body inside out, his feathers turn grayish for a moment.

climbing spinach made one more orbit around the bamboo pole last night, spiraling upward, this morning's green finger reaches out for dew.

the highway noise is a constant wave; the titmice and sparrows and cardinals and mourning doves practice their individual pieces.

the coffee in the deep blue cup steams.

everything is moist and green, life and death, a new day emerges.

the pecan tree is flowering. that must've happened in the past week. where have I been?

a hanging teardrop crystal catches the rising sun and shoots a rainbow into my eye.

mornings are so peaceful, even with all the clatter, the birds, the traffic, the house being built half a block away, a Mexican radio station not yet at full volume---

April 18: Q&A (30 minutes)

Q: What are you doing?
A: Writing.
Q: What are you writing?
A: A play.
Q: A play!? What's it about?
A: I don't know yet.
Q: You don't know yet?
A: I don't know yet.
Q: How can you not know what it's about?
A: Because I haven't written it yet.
Q: What?
A: Leave me alone.
Q: I'm confused.
A: I know you are.
Q: Have you done this before?
A: Have I done what?
Q: Written a play.
A: ---
Q: Are you ignoring me?
A: Yes.
Q: That's not very nice, is it?
A: Look. I just want to write.
Q: Fine.
A: Fine.
Q: But you need me, don't you?
A: Just give me thirty minutes.
Q: Thirty minutes?
A: Twenty.
Q: To write your play?
A: Yeah.
Q: Okay.
. . .
Q: You're not writing anything.
A: ...I'm thinking.
Q: What are you thinking about?
A: I'm thinking about what to write. I have to think.
Q: Then you're not really writing, are you?
A: Are you just being a pest?
Q: I'm curious.
A: Whatever.
Q: ...I have an idea.
A: ---
Q: Do you want to hear my idea?
A: No.
Q: Oh, come on, don't be a prick.
A: A prick?!
Q: Let me tell you my idea.
A: No!
Q: Come on...
A: Okay, tell me your idea.
Q: Not if you're gonna be like that.
A: Like what?
Q: ...I saw a flower growing today.
A: Okay...
Q: It was growing while I watched it.
A: What?
Q: I sat in the middle of the yard and stared at it and I saw it move.
A: It was probably the wind.
Q: No it wasn't!
A: There was no wind?
Q: Well, maybe there was wind.
A: Of course there was wind.
Q: Of course there was wind, but I saw the flower growing.
A: What are you talking about?
Q: I sat there a long time, like I was meditating. I was meditating on the flower, inside my head
I was saying "Grow. Grow."
A: And the flower heard you?!
Q: No! Well, I don't know. I doubt it.
A: Yeah, I doubt it, too.
Q: But I was concentrating hard on that, on "grow." That's all I was thinking. I totally cleared
out my mind except for "Grow. Grow." And the little bloom started opening up. There were
like eight or ten petals and they were all joined together and one of them let loose, came loose
from the others as if to say, "Okay, I'm growing!" It was beautiful. It took about twenty
minutes of thinking for it to pop out.
A: That's fascinating...
Q: You're making fun of me!
A: No I'm not.
Q: ---
A: Well, I am, but I'm not.
Q: What's that supposed to mean?
A: I can't write a play about that. How could I write a play about that?
Q: Sure you can.
A: How can I write a play about that?
Q: If you were a good play writer you could.
A: Playwright.
Q: What?
A: It's not play writer, it's playwright.
Q: Well, you've got the terminology down anyway.
A: Are you gonna let me write?
Q: Are you gonna write my idea?
A: No! It doesn't make any sense. How would I write a play about that? There's no action. Plays
are about action.
Q: No they're not.
A: Yes they are.
Q: No they aren't. Plays are about dialogue.
A: But not inner dialogue.
Q: It could be magic realism. You can do anything in a magic realism play.
A: Well, at least you've got the terminology down. --But I don't want to write a magic realism
play. What, the flower and the meditator?
Q: That would be good.
A: No it wouldn't!
Q: I'd like that.
A: I'm not writing for you.
Q: Who are you writing for then?
A: For me.
Q: What kind of a play would be just for the playwright?
A: This one. One with dialogue and action.
Q: What do you have so far?
A: I'm about to hit you!
Q: That would be action!
A: Yeah, it would.
Q: You should've seen the flower, it was so pretty.
A: I've seen lots of flowers.
Q: Yeah, but have you seen them grow?
A: On TV. I saw one in time-lapse photography. It grew from a seed to a sunflower.
Q: Oh, so you're writing a teleplay?
A: No! I'm writing whatever comes to mind.
Q: What do you have so far?
A: Nothing. A conversation.
Q: A conversation.
A: A boring conversation between you and me. It's boring.
Q: Me? I'm in it?
A: Yeah, because you won't leave me alone.
. . .
A: What are you doing?
Q: I'm gonna write a play.
A: What about?
Q: About a flower and a meditator.
A: Please!
Q: Well, if you won't do it, somebody has to.
A: Nobody has to.
Q: I think so. It needs to be written.
A: You're annoying me.
Q: We'll see what's more interesting, your play or mine.
A: Forget it.
Q: What? Where are you going?
A: I'm going to my room.
Q: Why?
A: Because I'm not getting anything done.
Q: Are you going to write?
A: I don't know, maybe.
Q: Well, don't write about a flower and a meditator.
A: Don't worry.
Q: Don't! That's my idea.
A: Don't worry.
Q: I'm not worried.
A: It's a stupid idea.
Q: Maybe. We'll see.
A: I won't see.
Q: You're not gonna see my play?
A: What? You're not a playwright.
Q: No. I'm a play writer. I'm gonna write magic realism. I'm gonna have a flower that talks and
dances and grows right before your eyes!
A: Not my eyes.
Q: You'll see.
A: Bye.

April 17, part five: porcupine (1 minute)

porcupine prickles delight the forest, leaves catch and fall off.

porcupine pulls his points in, downward, sleek back, shiny, oily, catches what he needs, frightens away what he doesn't need.

curiosity prickles---

April 17, part four: burnt orange (3 minutes)

burnt orange building,
burnt orange house.
burnt orange car.
burnt orange umbrella,
burnt orange shirts,
t-shirts,
jerseys,
jackets,
running suits,
track shoes.
everything is burnt orange.
like a cow,
like a brick,
like the sun at a certain part of the day,
late day.
early evening.
a wallet falls to the floor.
natural cowhide.
burnt orange.
skin that has been slathered with tan-in-a-jar,
burnt orange,
not tan,
burnt orange.
the coach wears burnt orange polyester,
his varicose veins dance on his thighs as he yells at the swimmers.
their burnt orange caps go in and out of the water.
breast stroke,
burnt orange.
breast stroke---

April 17, part three: pacing (5 minutes)

Pacing, pacing, clipping, clopping, a phone to the ear, Italian shoes on the deck's loose boards, one hand in a pocket, touching the ball, touching the shaft, flaccid.

A girl, confused, making her understand, trying to make her understand. Around the tables, clip-clop, "I want to work this out." Inside, outside, pacing, outside again, nervous, anxious, people can hear but that doesn't matter. Can she hear? That's what matters. That's what really matters. That's the only thing that matters.

The rain isn't loud enough to drown out the conversation, the one-sided conversation. A cleared throat, recognition of the two people sitting at the tables around which the pacing takes place. Shifting in their seats, nervous, anxious. No one can read while this is taking place. No one can write about anything else. This is all that exists for now. The rain isn't a calming force, the rain is damp, the air is damp, the canvas hangs heavy over the heavy conversation.

Long pause. She has to speak her heart---

April 17, part two: glance (10 minutes)

You glance at me through the window. I see my reflection and the things behind me but I see you, too, inside, glancing out at me. No need to be nonchalant, though I know that is your nature. You honed your nonchalance in school mimicking the boys you liked, the boys you wanted to be like, the boys you would never speak to. I know, I was there once too.

Believe me, it never goes away. It expands as you move out in the world, as you leave high school, out as you go to a huge university where you are even more invisible.

Is it just a look or is it chemistry? Is it more than that? Do you want me too? What is it we want? Just a glance through a dirty window? Do we speak? Should I say more than "Coffee and a croissant"? Do I tell you want I really want? Do you want the same thing? Do we want the same thing from each other? Is there more to this than those four words?

You glance at me and I see some sort of longing. Maybe you are only longing for a break. A cigarette break, a coffee break. Would you approach me if you weren't so nonchalant? Does my interest interest you? Or are you afraid? Are you afraid too?

Set the pastries in the display case, move the fresh ones to the front, glance out through the front glass of the display case, the florescent light does wonders, lights your face. Here I am on the other side of that glass, across the bakery house sitting area, over the table by the window, through the window, through the dirty glass, sitting at the table---

April 17, part one: blood (20 minutes)

I taste blood in my mouth, my throat is raw, I can picture the splots of phlegm and mucus hanging onto the raw surface of inner surface. My lungs bristle, bubble. I can't suppress a cough. My stomach muscles heave, shake, shudder, vacate. Up it comes, up the long pipeline to the open air. What is this? My insides reek, sting, leave a bad taste everywhere there are taste buds. I'm glad there aren't taste buds further down, deeper inside, where the sun never dries, always moist, always smacking wet, stuck together like snot, like a huge open wound, one long wound from one end to the other, miles and miles of nothing but rot, nothing but the most preliminary of recognizable things. Movement. Always moving, pushing something down, sending something up. Out, out! You can't stay here. It may seem like the most natural place to be here with the filth, the wretchedness of the inner sanctum, from holy mouth to rectum. Ave, ave. Leave the lights off. Keep the door closed. Nobody wants to see that. And the moment fresh air touches it, comes in contact with, comes anywhere close to it, well, you'll wish you had thought twice, wish you had thought otherwise, had made alternate plans. You'll wish. You will. I know you will. How do I know? I just do. Don't ask unanswerable questions unless you ask them rhetorically. As surely as you think you know the answer, think again. You don't even know the question! How did we get here? This slice of life sliced open like cherry cobbler but speckled with partially digested bits of food, wasted particles untasted, unenjoyed, just swallows of sustenance in a scratchy throat, caught in the mucus, spit out in the grass with bits of lung and intestinal fluids. Up, up, cough it up! I can't taste anything. I can taste death! This must be what death tastes like. This is what the last breath of a dying man consists of: dirty oxygen and blood. Mixed in, sticking with it, flowing through the blood vessels. Bloody, bloody. I am a sore inside and out. Here come the last thoughts, the last drops of blood, the last breath. I taste blood in my mouth. My throat is sore, my larynx dangles, drips with blood, shiny, deep red. I open my mouth and hurl it out. You're killing me, oh body! Say goodbye.

April 16: gnat (30 minutes)

My shower is a tub all tiled around, with a textured window that slides open right to left. It had no screen when I first moved in which was the first of summer so I opened it up anyway and the bugs came in. Mosquitoes and mosquito hawks, ants and little roaches, spiders and gnats. If something darted across the white surface of the tub when I turned on the water before I twisted the knob to engage the shower head, I would turn off the water and usher the insect back outside. If it was an ant I let it crawl up on a finger, if it was a bug that made me a little more squeamish I would collect it on a postcard or other handy piece of paper. If it could fly I would gently bat it toward the opening.

When I got a roommate, he wasn't so keen on taking showers with critters so we bought a piece of screen from the hardware store and I climbed up on a ladder and thumbtacked the screen around the window frame. From the inside it looks quite proper. Outside is a grove of bamboo so nobody can see it and it doesn't really matter. There are a few places between thumbtacks where tiny insects can still make their way in. It's a bit strange to me that with that big world out there that bugs would be interested in finding a small opening and coming inside, but then again insects seem to always be moving, trying to find a more secure place to be, trying to find a bite size morsel to eat.

Today in the shower the window was only open a few inches because it was a cool day but my roommate is always opening the window to help dry the towels and ward off the mold. I was already standing under the shower water when I noticed a gnat wiping her wings dry standing on the tiled ledge by the window where the tiny drops splashing off of my skin were landing. She would barely manage to wipe herself off and prepare to take flight when another drop would hit her and thwart her plans. I opened the window wider and turned the hot water up a tad and stood to the side to facilitate her escape at least to the screen so I could close the window and shower in peace while she made her way back to the opening and the big world outside.

But she flew up slightly and landed in a huge puddle (huge to her) and fell over onto her back. I had no choice but to put my wet finger close to her, carefully, not to squash her but to let her latch onto me, then I flicked her as gently as possible in a tangled, water logged wad onto the screen.

It kind of annoys me that I couldn't just ignore her and let fate take its course. Once I'm aware I cannot just ignore a sufferer and move on. A gnat, a crying cat, a miserable dog in a rainstorm, a child being ignored by his mother as he cries, snot running down his face. Oh, but wait, I do ignore the child. It pains me but I don't help. I don't say anything to the mother. That would be out of place in society. I can help the gnat, but the little boy I can only smile at, wrinkle my brow and say as loud as I can from my heart, "I'm sorry!"

I guess when I am able I try to help out. When I'm not able I can't. I suppose if the child were drowning I would jump in after him. If his mother was beating him I might say something. I don't know the whole story there. In the case of the gnat I guess I feel a little bit responsible. So maybe that's the difference. Maybe it's okay. Maybe I've done what I can. Maybe I've done my best. Maybe---

April 15: music (10 minutes)

Make music.
Oh, Hosanna!
Sing, sing a song.
Merrily we go along.
Let's sing.
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
I'm on the top of the world looking down on creation and the only explanation I can find is the love that I've found ever since you've been around, your love puts me on the top of the world.
Up on a pedestal.
Knock her down.
Sing her down.
Get down!
Get up off of that wall, dance, come on!
Come one, come all!
Hail, hail, the gang's all here.
All in the Gang.
Gang of Four.
Kajagoogoo.
Eliminopee.
How happy do you feel?
Have you seen the crimson robes.
James Brown, James Brown.
Ooh! Ahh! Get up now.
Papa's got a brand new bag. Ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling.
Sounds good to me.
Delicious.
Phat beats from Philly-dell-phi-ayyy!
Set your standard high or set your standard low. Get your feet a-dancin' on the periwinkle flo'.
Mama told me not to come.
I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses.

{phone call}

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Hello? Hello?
Hallowed be thy name?
I saw you standing alone.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.
Song sung blue, everybody knows one.
In the gloaming, oh my darling.
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Loretta! Loretta!
Turn that frown upside down and smile, smile, smile.
Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh.
I love you, doo-dee-doo-doo-dah-doo...
Sample a piece of my heart.
I wonder why you're lonely when I'm on the other line.
Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
My funny valentine.
As I stood there by my window on a cold and cloudy day...
I can't remember the last time I heard your voice.
In the sweet by and by.
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
I'm gonna meet you in that heavenly choir.
Precious memories, how they linger, how they ever flood my soul.
Hip hop hooray.
Don't go chasin' waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to 'cause you know you gotta have it your way or nothin' at all; you're moving too fast.
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder when I'll see you.
Heigh-dee-heigh-dee-heigh-dee-ho...
On the first of June, o, my darlin'.
Won't you marry me and make me happy?
On the clearing in the middle of the afternoon.
Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.
You broke my heart, oh, Danny Boy.
Sometimes a lie is much sweeter than the truth.
Let the sun shine, let the sun shine in---

April 14, part four: acid (10 minutes)

Preacher's kids don't do acid. Or shouldn't. That was me, a preacher's kid (my father dead two years) trying to be a rebel, trying to have cool friends, buddies who drove motorcycles and wore leather jackets and slept around on their girlfriends, and when we could get the money together, the idea of buying acid always came up. Now that I was unemployed and living with my uncle I had more time to spend with them. They were cool, maybe I would be too.

They were trouble. The three of them were the reason I got fired from my job. I worked the graveyard shift at the Super Duper and they ambled in on a humid Houston spring night wearing overcoats. They spent a long time in three different places in the store. There's no way I could have watched them all. When they left, one of them bought a pack of cigarettes and the other two walked out snickering. The one with the cigarettes was a few cents short. I said No problem, put the money in from my own pocket, and this one -- the leader of the pack -- left, his body making a curious crunching sound, like a dozen bags of chips and candy bars had been stashed.

The next time stock inventory came around, I was fired.

I saw two of the three at a dance club shortly thereafter. I was in love with a Swedish girl who had an Iranian boyfriend. It was a love of convenience since she didn't cheat on her boyfriend. I could just speak of my misery with my new friends.

Easter Sunday, one Pez candy was normally split four ways and I crunched up the acid soaked sugary treat without a thought. Easter Sunday, a religious holiday, barbecued rabbit. Hippies and kegs and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time---

April 14, part three: Eleanor (15 minutes)

Eleanor Roosevelt said "Do something every day that scares you." Just taking that advice is enough to set the heart to racing on some days.

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions, or if I do I don't give them much importance. At the beginning of this year I decided I would start a blog. Time to drag myself into the 21st Century. I hemmed and hawed over what to create a blog on, and finally settled on a blog of timed writing exercises inspired by the Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones. (It's the same reason I come to this writing group.) I call my blog My Daily Bone and I write almost every day in it. Sometimes two or more exercises. It scared me at first but now it feels useful.

About a year ago, I started going to a thrice weekly dance group. An improvised ecstatic dance event. I haven't gone much this year; it stopped scaring me and started confusing me. Which isn't always enough to count for doing something scary.

A few weeks ago I started taking a comedy improv class. Talk about scary. I have wanted to quit. Today is the last day I can go of the eight weeks before I have to pay for the class. A couple of friends have encouraged me to continue. My best friend says "It sounds to me like you want to do it but you're scared." He's right. I wouldn't feel good long after the relief of not going to make up for the disappointment. Personal failure.

It's such a straight white male thing, comedy. I know there are lots of women who are very funny, some of them even gay -- Ellen DeGeneres is one of the funniest women* in the world in my opinion. I performed for 10 years in a musical storytelling duo, and I took a lot of inspiration from watching tapes of Ellen. But this is different. This comedy improv isn't about planning, it isn't about perfection. Perfection in this group is blurting out the first thing that comes to mind and working with that. I'm terrified of that. I'm scared of exposing too much of myself. Even in this writing group I feel like I edit myself while I'm frantically spilling out my thoughts as fast as my hand can write.

And what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of me, I suppose. And I cover it so well, apparently, that people are surprised that I'm even struggling.

One woman in the improv group talks a lot about her struggles. Once I said to her "I think we all struggle." She said "Oh, not you! You seem so natural. I like everything you do!" I wanted to slap her. But then I realized she says nice things to everybody (whether she means them or not) to try to build her own failing ego up.

Everything in my life has become about improv, it seems. I improvise these writing exercises. When I dance, it's contact improv, and for some reason I feel inclined to not only embarrass and frighten myself for eight weeks trying to be my funny self in front of a dozen other mostly straight white males (half my age on top of it), and pay $200 for the honor of the abuse.

What am I trying to get at? What is all this fear doing good for me, Eleanor? What did you do in your youth?

{*I really wish I had written "one of the funniest people..." That's what I think.}

April 14, part two: stoned (12 minutes)

I opened the car door and my dignity spilled out onto the parking lot, partially on the raised yellow stripe marking my space and mostly on the blue-gray gravel glued together like a granola bar. I was stoned out of my mind, sat there looking at my dignity as the breeze tickled it, lifted up a corner, tried to take it away, but my dignity is heavier than that, dammit! I looked up and my eyes wouldn't focus out the front windshield. Everything was brown and woodgrain, a fence that I'd pulled up to.

That bell. That damn dinging! What is that?

Oh, the key. Thank god for the factory reminders. How many times had I locked my keys in my car? Enough times to go to the trouble of buying one of those little plastic magnetic boxes with a compartment for a spare. But I had this great idea in the middle of a monster movie marathon on a lazy Saturday. I spilled the bong and stepped in the half eaten container of Cool Whip with Hershey's syrup mixed in on the way out to get one. I forgot forty seven times where I was going and remembered forty eight. But then I put the damn container under the car, somewhere under there and was too stoned to remember where it was when I needed it. I must have spent an hour under that car looking at all the metal parts for that little black box. If I ever find it I'll paint it pink! I fell asleep so it could've easily been a couple of hours. When you're that high it's amazing how comfortable pavement can be.

And now I'm sitting here -- ding-ding-ding -- the key. Oh, yeah, the key.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, my dignity on the ground out the door in the parking lot.

Wait. That's not my dignity. That's a Jack in the Box bag. There's no dignity in that. Just the remains of a munchie-fest that I never got to. I drove all the way to Jack in the Box then forgot where I put the bag of food, forgot where I'd gone.

Oh, yeah, that was just now. This is the present. That's my lunch. A bong and a Saturday full of TBS awaits me.

Which apartment is mine? I always get it confused. 203 or 302? Dammit! Sharon said she'd call the cops if I walked into her apartment one more time. I should knock. But how would it look knocking on my own apartment door? Somebody will get suspicious. The cops will be here anyway.

Or am I just being paranoid?

Is this even my apartment building? Did they paint it brown? When did they paint it brown?

April 14, part one: bear (10 minutes)

Hello, friends, I know most of you don't know me but we all live in the same woods so I feel like you are all my friends and I hope you will feel that I am your friend as well.
I have never hurt any of your kin so I don't see any reason for you to be afraid of me, though I know my looks are perhaps a bit off-putting, but it has been said that looks can be deceiving, and I hope that you will keep that saying in mind as you gaze upon my six foot eight inch frame and all of this fur and, oh, yes, these teeth.
I go outside of these woods to find my food -- as it has been said I "eat out" -- so you never have to worry.
I feel it is important that we know one another as intimately as we feel comfortable, especially considering the recent events.
Naturally, some of you have only come here today because you fear me, fear some sort of retribution I might take on you if you were to go against my requests.
I appreciate that you are here, and promise you that no such retribution is forthcoming or would be.
Please tell those who are not present today that I harbor no ill feelings toward them and do hope they stay around because these woods are home to them as much as they are home to any of us, and I for one feel like this is home because of the diversity in the population.
Which brings me to the point I've come to make.
There are a couple of boys, human boys, who have found my cave and I am worried that their spelunking will bring harm to them.
I am a carnivore, after all, and I have tasted the flesh of humans and believe you me it is a taste you don't soon forget.
But I don't want to commit such an act in our very own woods.
I would much rather eat them on their own turf.
But they are quite adorable and I have grown somewhat attached and it saddens me to say that I may not want to eat them at all.
But as they run about the woods, their smell becomes stronger and though I have a ready supply of hackberries and grubs to snack on.
Well, as I said, you don't soon forget that taste.
I am asking for the help of the more fearsome of my neighbors to frighten the boys away from these woods.
Get them out of harm's way.
Out of sight, out of mind, it has been said.
And I will do my best to satisfy my appetite in other ways.
I will go further afield, will even attempt living what is called a vegetarian diet, or at least try to catch the catfish in the cow pond---

April 12: leaving (20 minutes)

SON: Mother, I'm leaving.
MOTHER: That can't be, son, you're only 16.
S: It's a different world now. Things happen sooner. Maybe.
M: Maybe. I won't believe it till I see it.
S: You know I don't like to be naked in front of you.
M: I understand. Tell your father when he gets home.

S: Father, I'm leaving.
FATHER: So soon? I didn't leave until I was almost 18.
S: Are you jealous?
F: No, I'm proud! But are you sure?
S: Here, look.
He removes his shirt, and sure enough there are little green sprouts all over his chest.

I was 17 when I graduated from high school. I started college when I was 17. I only went to college for one year. I lived at home for barely a month before I got a job selling encyclopedias door to door.

I tried coming out to myself when I was in college. I wrote a journal that spoke of my crushes on other guys in the dorm I lived in, and my (imagined?) thoughts of some of their attempts at passes on me. One guy in particular. He had blonde curly hair. We were friends but I thought there was more to it. He was among my dorm mates who got together to secretly read my journal my roommate had found and snuck out with. The blonde guy and I were planning to go to California the next year, to go to college there, him for golf, me for writing. He called to tell me California was off, they had read my journal. That was the only time in my life I wanted to commit suicide.

I lived with my gay uncle for a while after I quit selling encyclopedias door to door. I went to dance clubs, had girlfriends and also had sex with men. I did a lot of drugs. That was when we guys were most apt to mess around.

I woke up from a drug addled weekend of acid and mandrex with a transgender woman stepping over me in a trashy garage apartment duplex shared by some friends and other drug addicts/dealers and I felt like I'd hit bottom.

I had a crush on a guy and when I told him so he told me he was straight but wanted to stay friends. He introduced me to his mother, a bisexual artist. We hit it off, had great sex, got married, but that didn't last long. We both liked men more than each other.

She kicked me out (or I ran away) and moved back to my mother's house for a couple of weeks.

I moved to NYC when I was 24, had a multitude of relationships, mostly with men, and met S. with whom I started performing. We had a great collaborative relationship and were together for 10 years doing that, but romantically we fell out with each other till we met R. on the road. That lasted a couple more years then we all split up.

I lived in Florida and then Nashville and then decided to move to the west coast near where S. was living but stopped in my hometown and lived with my mother two more months while my grandmother died.

Then I left and moved to Austin where I am now. And S. moved here a year later and we live together as friends and sometimes collaborators. Never say never.

S: I want to trim off these leaves. I don't like these leaves.
F: You can't do that. Leaving means you're a man.
S: Maybe I don't want to be a man. Maybe I don't---

April 11: hamsters (10 minutes)

I saw this picture online today. I think it's an actual working hamster cage. But really, how much shredded paper does a hamster need? And is she gonna appreciate having your tax forms and other old files coming down on her at whatever hour of the day or night you decide to shred them? It's a pretty rinky-dink cage (furthermore), so it doesn't really look like the guy who invented this thing had the hamster's best interests in mind, nor the consumer of such a product.

I had lots of hamsters in my childhood. I even had one who had babies and made me some money. I had teddy bear hamsters -- I should say I graduated to teddy bear hamsters -- they're fluffy like clouds, lots of long, long hair, tan and white. Kind of like shrunken guinea pigs. No tails, or only little stubs anyway. That's what makes them so cute.

When my hamster had babies it was a Wednesday night and I wanted to stay home from church and watch them be born but I wasn't allowed. I hated that.

Most of my hamsters lived on Wright Blvd. We moved to Donovan Street the summer before I went into the eighth grade. That wasn't a very good year for me. I moved the hamster cage out to the garage to avoid cleaning it and the little bugger committed suicide. It was a cold night and he balled himself up under his water bottle so that the water ran out of the bottle and soaked him. He most likely died of pneumonia. I hated that.

At improv one night recently a guy mentioned having a hamster. Well, one of the other performers pointed at him accusingly and---

April 10: the nature of change (30 minutes)

Nick Drake is singing "Fruit Tree."

I want to call my memoir Way Too Blue.

Sometimes I get in a state of complacency where my novel is concerned. It's not a lack of desire to write, but I don't write. It's not writer's block, but still I don't write.

I realized in the transcribing of chapter seven that I need to make some changes. I realized that the last three or four pages need to go in chapter nine, and chapter seven needs to grow.

Chapter seven is called Interstate. It tracks Randy going across I-10 from the point in Florida where I-75 intersects with 10 and goes west. Randy goes west, in his mother's beat up old Dodge Dart, her ashes in the passenger seat. Randy is planning to take I-10 all the way to California and go north from there to San Francisco. He doesn't make it. The car catches fire in Columbus, Texas, leaving him stranded and rethinking his plans. Change.

Before he gets to Columbus, he spends some time in Houston. That time is captured in chapter ten: Ruckus. At the end of chapter seven, Randy has made an arbitrary goal to not stop to rest until he gets to Houston. He sees the mileage sign to Houston somewhere in Louisiana. The thought of Houston brings to Randy's mind the title character, august chagrin.

But then I've gone too far. I realized that I've written Randy's relationship with August Collins (who becomes august chagrin) in the third person in a nutshell at the end of chapter seven only to repeat it in much better detail in the first person in chapter nine.

I think I gave up on chapter seven too quickly. Randy thinks back on his experiences in Times Square porn theaters, where he contracted HIV and where he met August (he didn't get HIV from August) after an encounter with a man in an interstate rest area. I believe he needs to struggle more with the sex issue, needs to fight off the urge to even recognize that that is what is happening in the rest areas. He needs to stop at more rest stops as he struggles. He needs to become obsessed with the rest stops, stopping at practically every one he comes to, the way he was obsessed with the porn theaters in Times Square. He might not have another actual encounter besides the one I've already written (though he might), but he is hyper aware of the possibility of anonymous sex. His thoughts on nights of sex in New York City come back to him a little at a time. A handsome black man reminds him of Walter (the man from whom he contracted HIV); he runs into truck drivers and married men, transients and nervous college kids -- reread Times Square Red, Times Square Blue -- all of whom have a ready counterpart on the interstate.

Perhaps Randy sees men in the rest stops who remind him of men he was with in New York and those could facilitate flashbacks to the actual encounters, not realized in the rest areas. That could be what compels him forward, compels him to stop again and again, until he has the encounter with the urinal man. Maybe they have unsafe sex, or the man begs for it, and that is what makes Randy feel "guilty" and not want to do anything more, and so he smokes instead. Chain smokes---

April 9: sickness (20 minutes)

on the days he couldn't get up he lay in bed with a banana shaped boat to spit into. he was full of phlegm and mucus and saliva helping transport it from his lungs and stomach and bronchial tubes to his mouth and then to the boat. he could fill the boat up in two days, forty-eight hours, he imagined if someone didn't come by to empty it out. he did a lot of spitting and hacking and not much eating or drinking or swallowing of any type. he used to do more swallowing than anything, he laughs to himself as he lies there working up that particularly pesky piece of phlegm in his throat.

he has a black blanket on top of him. black at the top and bottom edges with a Native American design in the middle changing from clay houses to the black sky on the top side of the picture and to the black earth on the bottom side of the picture. She brought that from her garage the last time she was here. it's the middle of summer in Texas and he's shivering like a wet puppy in Alaska. he works the muscles of his throat, his tongue trying to make something happen, trying to take the lead, like a long line of people passing water down a line, or boxes of vegetables perhaps. but these people are muscles and this thing they're passing along the line is a piece of phlegm. feels like the lining of his lung. it rattles in his tubes as he tries to breath around it. And he has to take lots of breaks, a break to breathe and then back to the job at hand, Tow that line, move that phlegm!

He has fever dreams, imagines himself in imagined places he read about in history books, on a plantation. he is a slave. A slave to this sickness. A slave to A. He hacks a good bit and the phlegm comes up. He doesn't quite expect it. The boat is not in place and so the phlegm lands on the top edge of the blanket and slides off of the silky material along the top edge and makes its way onto the fuzzy blackness, the Native American night sky. And he imagines it as a meteor plummeting toward earth, taking out the village and throwing the planet off kilter, sending it flying out of its orbit, long ago and the future is nonexistent and the planet was barely getting started. The New World hadn't even been discovered yet.

But it's more aquatic than astronomic, this blob of phlegm on the blackness. It is whitish with dots of orangish red. brick red. red like the color of the university mascot, a red cow. really brown orange. dots, little dots throughout the phlegm but in a particular pattern. It looks like a squid, some sort of a white and red speckled squid. he peers at it for a long time, forgets his sickness, forgets the banana boat in his left hand, going slack, hanging over the edge of the bed, the side of the bed. If it were a movie, the camera would focus on that slop in the bucket, the boat, the camera would let us watch how close the nastiness is getting to spilling out, forcing a neighbor to do more cleanup than she'd expected. But he's caught, mesmerized by the squid on his blanket, like a squid on display on black velvet, at the museum of natural history. this is what the lung squid looks like, the sign would say. Lung squid. White phlegm speckled with blood, the lining of his interior.

he doesn't feel the pain of creating these squids specifically, he only feels a general pain, a weakness, on the days he's laid up. And then he'll be okay for a week or so. Hardly even any coughing. It's a strange feeling to die slowly, to know you're dying and to be able to watch it. Your brain helps you get around the idea, helps settle the score: You lost. But your brain doesn't help the neighbor come to terms with what she's witnessing, and her brain doesn't go far to help alleviate the pain and confusion and sadness She's seeing and feeling. You're just a couple of human animals, each doing its part, one dying, one---