Okay so the best thing to happen to me all day was a postcard from Ms. Loudon. It made me smile. It made me think about art, the ocean and an amazing poet. I like to smile.

I am hopelessly addicted to www.goodreads.com. Go there! Read some books! Cause hell.

Also I received an email from Dorrianne Laux today about a residency in the woods. Anyone up to collaborating with me and trees? Why does that sound like dirty talk? Why does a room full of scientists sound like fun to me? Am I applying.

The house is asleep. The sun is shining and it is late morning and everyone is so tired from all the holiday hooplaa no one will wake which is fine by me—it is the first time I’ve been alone in four days.

Facts:
1. I have enough leftovers to feed a small village
2. I don’t want to cook but live off saltines and tea
3. I like Katherine Mansfield’s writing far better than Virginia Woolfe
4. I am leaving for Boston in four days
5. I am going to be staying at the Ronald McDonald House (which though tragic seems oddly funny to me)
6. I am horrible with sick people
7. I am a good teacher, friend, mother but no so good with illness
8. I am scared
9. I hate flying
10. The only good parts are fried clams and seeing my sister
11. I want to use the top graphic as the cover of my new book
12. I find out about the big grant on Thursday
13. I will be out of town
14. I miss writing
15. I think we can be a cruel nation that doesn't take care of sick people

I am reading. I am reading Ginsberg and Mansfield. Last night I dreamt there was a box of light in my bathroom and I could make plants grow from it. I had a small cardboard field of tomatoes and rosemary---this is what I get for reading the Garden Supply Catalog before bed.

Tonight my sister is sitting by a hospital bed in Boston and wondering if my niece is going to live. My niece is six months old and beautiful. She is six month old and beautiful and has three tumors on her facial bone. Why did I ever read Lucy Grealy?

Once in a writing conference a famous writer said to me, national disasters happen all around me I thought it was an arrogant way to look at the world---to believe you were are the center of everything.

Truth: I believe if I thought about it happening and then it happens I caused it to happen. I believed b/c I read the book and feared for my own children I cause somehow the baby to be sick or b/c after the death of my nephew my mind has never felt safe, our children are never safe. It is a weird disease to be the center---to cause the world to fall off balance.

Jane Mead

The Specter and His World are One



Some say a jar can tell you
where you are, some say
a satellite. Others—

the postman, the stars,
the sea. It is possible
for the world to mislead you.

You cannot look too much
over your shoulder.
The symbol for moss

is a symbol for destiny:
The shut blaze darkens.
The world misleads you.

You cannot look too much
over your shoulder, I
cannot but say now

follow me,—onto the road
my own heart made,—
the red disc—

the real clay—
pile of yellow thistle
where I’m weeding.

This is the red earth you loved
—my way into.

Stranger than Fiction

My life is starting to resemble the movie “Stranger than Fiction” lately. I keep thinking I am going to hear Emma Thompson’s voice saying....”Harold had a very boring existence until....

1. her father ran off to Vegas with a 24 year old girl
2. her mother was put on a suicide watch
3. her six month old niece, who she has never seen was diagnosed with three cranial tumors
4. her father came back from Vegas and claimed he had been hunting
5. her mother TOOK HIM BACK
6. her father saw Jay Leno
7. her mother went on Valium
8. the tumors seem to be genetic
9. Harold put on a huge art show and raised 10,000 dollars for charity
10. Harold learns she is not adopted


There are days when it is far easier to be a character in a book---

 
Stupid things people said at the Frida Kahlo exhibit

1. Is that really a PET monkey?
2. Wasn’t her husband a painter
3. Wow, she looked much prettier then
4. How did she get her face to stay so still
5. I bet the monkey shit on her shoulder
6. I really don’t know what the big deal is...
7. I am supposed to write a paper on this and I hate it—
8. How I am suppose to write a paper on something I hate!!!!
9. Who’s Dorothy Parker?
10. Dear God, Frida was a communist
11. Do you think she had a cage for that monkey
12. My poster is MUCH bigger than the painting
13. Really, what is the big deal?


I am planning to break into the museum and go back when no one is there. Truly.
It is the largest collection of her paintings ever and I think it might be worth a felony just to see them without everyone yacking.

Yes, I’m an art bitch. I want quiet and color and maybe a good glass of wine.

The first thing I thought when I walked in was---I’d rather be happy. There’s such a sadness to her work, it’s as if pain is suddenly crawling under your skin when you enter the room. Maybe that’s why it is hard to be quiet.

I use to believe great art was worth anything.

And honestly I would feel sad for those people who didn’t seem to get it. That it came first, this need to create and if you didn’t feed it—it became only a shimmer, never great art. Great art came with sacrifice.

I still might believe it but I’d rather be happy. I have watched great artists come and go and I made pure shit and I’ve come close to beauty and if at the end of my life my children know I have loved them well. If I have loved E well then I’ve accomplished greatness—a life, a love which was art.

Yes I know I haven’t been here.

I have a big art show coming up on November 17th at the Northrup King Gallery and I have been driving myself crazy with it. I can’t wait till it is over. I miss writing. I am a far more solitary creature then I once believed.

I’m old now and I need my time.

Did you know yellow jackets bury themselves in the dirt and hibernate for winter?

I found their striped, curled bodies in the flower bed by the north wall and in my brush bag they began to wake and buzz. It was an amazing thing. I held them on my palm, sleepy with cold and they seemed so harmless, so beautiful.