The Year in Review 2008 [All I Know is That I Should]

Dear Dad,

I’m writing you from the airplane. It’s a really tiny jet, just one seat in my row and two across the aisle. On the right side (I’m on the left) you can see the sun setting across the whole wide world. There’s one solid line of burnt orange, sandwiched by a dark sheath of cloud and the earth below it. It’s pretty beautiful.

I had lunch with your Mom and Dad today. Grandma’s doing well, actually, better than I’d expected, maybe even better than she was a few years ago. Grandpa just sits in his chair, he doesn’t know what’s going on. We were having dinner yesterday, for Christmas – we still do our celebration on the 24th, but now on the 25th I'm flying instead of going to the movies like we used to do together -- and everyone was watching the babies play with their new toys and Grandpa says “Where am I?” and everyone ignored him. It was real quiet and maybe only I heard him. He says stuff like that all the time.

Anyhow we were watching the babies. Carrie and her husband have a boy, Kyle and his wife have a girl. I guess we always knew they’d be the first ones to do that.

Grandpa’s chair has a button on the arm-rest so he can lift himself up almost all the way into a stand. Sometimes you’ll just be sitting there and you’ll hear this buzzing – that’s the sound the chair makes when he’s pressing the button to go up. That’s how you know Grandpa wants to go somewhere.

Everyone helps him get up and then he gets on his walker and walks to the back of the house, then he gets confused and Grandma goes and takes him back to the chair. She takes care of him all the time. It’s something to do.

Anyhow, it was good to see them and see everyone – Mom, and your sisters and my cousins, and to spend time with Lewis. I guess you know what happened with S., I’m sure your sister told you about it, or maybe she didn’t. All the lies he told and what he took from her; his mother. One of the things I learned this year was that that kind of thing actually happens more than people think. You know – people make up lives and stories they like better than their true lives and stories. Sometimes they do it for love or money but usually they don’t even know why they do it, they just do it. Like how I don’t know why I sometimes get swallowed in darkness, it just happens and there I am with my eyes open but nothing around me seems light.

I wish I’d had the time to know you. Maybe what I mean is I wish you'd had the time to know me. I’m obsessed with you.

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Last night we were talking about Obama and Aunt B said “You know I’d always wondered about your father, you know, like now with Obama -" and I said that I know you would’ve loved him. (Mom said that too, she called me the day after, she wishes you could’ve seen it happen. You know Aunt B went door to door in the whitest whitest parts of plain flat Ohio for Obama? She did that. And you should’ve heard Grandma talking shit about Palin Dad, you would’ve been so proud of your parents. (Grandma told me a story about when they first met my Mom, the first “Jewish person” they’d ever met, and Grandma made these potatoes wrapped in bacon, and Grandma Goldstein went apeshit? Amazing.)

Then Aunt B said, Oh no honey. I mean I wonder if your father would have been in the cabinet. I laughed like we were talking about spaceships or something. He was on track to be an economic advisor for Clinton’s second term, she said then. I probably laughed again. I mean still as I write this I feel like I’m writing lies too.

Uncle T said: At the funeral, strangers came up to me and said losing Vic is not just a loss to the accounting community and to U of Michigan and to Price Waterhouse but losing Vic is a loss to the world economy.

We talked for a little bit about that; you know, how you never told us anything. Top ten accounting researcher in the world, Lewis saying your study was material in an investments class he took in college. You never told us anything besides that your work was boring and we didn’t want to hear about it.

Maybe telling myself you quit while you were ahead was the only thing that got me through, so I’m going to say that I think they were bullshitting about that too. Everyone seems better in retrospect. I mean it’s over Dad so what can anyone really say?

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Everyone always talks about how you were a genius. Does that mean I’m a genius too? Sometimes I feel really stupid, Dad.

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Anyhow so I was going to tell you about 2008. It’s probably weird that I’m putting this on my blog. You get it though, you always knew this is what I’d be doing. When you and Mom started having me dictate my diaries to you before I knew how to write? You told me it mattered enough to write it down. Maybe that’s all I needed, maybe that’s why I guess you get this.

I hope so ‘cause everything I do, I do hoping you’d approve. It’s kinda difficult since you’re dead, I have to do a lot of guesswork.

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Anyhow so 2008 was crazy. 2007 was crazy too but 2008 was a different kind of crazy. You're a good person to talk to about the years because it's your birthday. December 31st. You were born and then the new year started right away.

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I’ve spent the last two years in other people’s fantasy worlds. I think that says something about my ability to accept the world as it is. It’s just that as it is; the world is sort of ugly and mundane and miracles don't happen every day. In the subway I look around me and see faces like paper plates. It’s just that I died when I was only 14. Fuck. I’m sorry. I mean that you died when I was only 14.

I’m obsessed with you, I like you so much, I talk to everyone but you. I pretend sometimes I couldn’t care less.

I've learned that I don’t have eternal life, that I haven't been chosen by some higher power to change the world, I'm the one with that choice, and speaking of the opposite of that I learned this year that I’m not truly able to jet to Malibu and drink cocktails and read novels by the pool all the time and over-tip and give everything to everyone who ever needs anything. It was fun though to believe those things. It was a time. We laughed and ran, like you did. Always running, laughing, always in the air going places.

I tell you Dad, I loved it. All the places I got to see. I’ll see anything. I feel like everything is interesting! Crossing that bridge at night in Austin, heat like a desert dressed up as an acoustic embrace.

The moment right before Austin I first saw my secret cyber-savior walk up the stairs to my stupid linoleum Harlem place and even though I was so nervous I was already high enough to not know what to say, and stayed nervous for weeks, and then how this year I nearly lost her like I lost you – I mean it Dad -- and how one day when we have that kind of vocabulary Dad? I’ll understand how much it meant that I didn’t. We didn’t lose her. Anyhow I was talking about flying.

The peace of the bed in Miami, alone when they went into town without me. Hiding from the world beneath those sheets, and the silver to eat with. I said, what do you want. I said, I have access to your happiness. I know someone who knows someone. I said I was a superhero. No one is but like I said anyway I was talking about flying. The thing about flying is all you see. You can see for miles, sandwiched in that hot orange place between earth and sky.

I went to a lot of places, which is funny ‘cause in ’07 I never went anywhere at all, just to Philly, and out to the hospital and out to see her family in the suburbs. ’08 is the first time I’ve traveled for the sake of traveling since you died.

Right after you died, we tried to go on vacation without you but it wasn’t the same so we stopped trying at some point. It wasn't anyone's fault, it's just we were reminded. Grandma mentioned Hawaii, she still remembers the food on the airplane. That's the farthest away your parents have ever been from home, because you took them there.

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In 2008, I tried to fix the biggest hole that’s ever been dug in my heart since you’ve died and for a lot of reasons, I failed. So I just have to let that hole sit there, un-fixed, and do what I can to tread efficiently and productively on the fissures. I am figuring out how to see it and feel it and say: that's okay, I can go on.

I’ve found some wells of happiness. I sometimes sit at the bottom, splashing and happy as a clam.
I mean it. Eyes like saucers, blue and open to anything, even me.

I had a really brilliant June and July. A solid January full of hope. Some of February. Oh ... some of all of it.

I can’t really say anything more about that part of my life because something else I learned this year is that when I write things down, I make them true – permanent at least – so I try not to do that to things that are still happening. I don’t want to fuck with time and space. I mean that I do – I do want to fuck with time and space. What I learned this year is that I actually cannot do that. All I have is this time, my little space. Insert myspace joke here.

I think I’m more confident now than I was, even if I don't deserve to be. Remember how I kept getting fired? I was the worst. Not all of us were put here to work, Eileen Myles says: “Why can’t I just act that way. why can’t I write everything down like my life counts, like I’m the Queen of England or Bobby Vee, and that way I can be safe and not have to wait to die ... why can’t I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work.”

Actually I think we are all sent here to work, it’s just different kinds of work.

Anyway Dad I was talking about flying and in that burnt orange space I need to tell you that anyway I have this hope that people are gonna come to me when they oughtta. I gotta believe that things are gonna work out somehow and that all choices in retrospect become good ones because they are true and if something is true it must be good. Anyway I was saying honesty is a real bitch.

I want to be more self-reliant because when I hand the wheel over to someone else, I’m not even like a backseat driver. I just recline and stare at the stars and wait to become infinite.

Like you; infinite.

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I have some really good friends you’d really love, I’ve always been blessed with good friends. When I fall to pieces they’re there. When THEY fall to pieces they’re there. Like angels. They aren’t angels because no one is angels but they are very similar. There are some people I love with a deep, radiating love, a love so strong it transcends logic but not in a crazy way, just in a super-love way. Like the way superheroes love other superheroes after they’ve lost their powers.

I have really amazing readers who do crazy things for me! It’s so awesome, I think you’d be kinda proud of me sometimes.

I’m living with someone I love and I love our apartment and being here with her. I get scared just writing that, I always jinx good things.

"Listen, my truest love.
I've tried to clear a late century place for us
in among the shards.
Lie down, tell me what you need.
Here is where loneliness can live
with failure,
and nothing's complete.
I love how we go on."
(Stephen Dunn, “Loves”)
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So anyhow. I’m still writing and editing videos. Still scraping by. Still have all kinds of debt I know you’d hate. I think you wrote the book on how to avoid that. I still rely too much on substances to make me feel anything other than this. “Not me” is what all those pills and drinks should be called. I’ll just have a “not me on the rocks.” But Dad I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon, so I’m gonna figure out how to better live with it.

I guess that’s the thing – accepting things as they are. Accepting discomfort and making a life anyhow. I want to start my own magazine online so I’m going to do that, alone I guess, starting real soon I hope, I’m getting ready. Or not, I mean. I was talking anyway about flying. One time we went running together, you and me. One time in Orlando she jumped on the grass, one-two-jump-on-three. Everything was beautiful and perfect. It’s just that I rarely let go. I let go a lot last year and this year. I was dropped too, but first I opened up to like ... I dunno. Joy? Comfort? I just always felt like if first I had the help to jump, I could fix something. Just I want to help the world get better. God, I mean, that’s so pretentious. Who am I, no one. But that’s the thing who cares? I’m no one but if everyone is who is no-one wants to help the world get better than surely we’ll all make a difference like by default.

I think I have some things to say and I’m hoping there are people willing to listen. I know the economy has crashed – which probs made your head explode, how avoidable that whole thing was – but we have a new president who you’d like. Hope and that.

I feel optimistic right now, who knows how I’ll feel in five minutes. I feel sad right now, I wish I could die tomorrow and I hate myself for a selfish wish. I feel so happy, I feel so beautiful, I feel ugly, I feel terrific, I feel whatever the fuck ever, who cares. Enough feeling ... I'm hoping to act on that.

I love how we go on.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know what’s been going on. I know you’ve been worried. I keep trying.

You two were so close, your Mom said to me. You two were glued together. You were just two peas in a pod.

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later:

So, you, it’s Christmas. I’m writing you now from my bed, it’s been several hours since I was on the plane. My friend picked me up from the airport, I had champagne and we talked about how things are better in a lot of ways since last year, and how there’s nothing else to do but go up. Okay, so we didn’t say that about going up exactly but that was what was said. We will. What I mean is we try to predict the future, which is boring 'cause it's never true, so in the meantime we can play infinite. Anyway I was talking about flying.

I made some bad choices this year, you know. But I grew and keep on.

My number one feeling is dancing. My number two feeling is:

I love the past, which doesn't exist
until I summon it, or make it up,
and I love how you believe
and certify me by your belief,
whoever you are, a fiction too,
held together by what? Personality?
Voice? I love abstractions. I love
to give them a nouny place to live,
a firm seat in the balcony
of ideas, where music plays.
(Stephen Dunn, Loves)
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I just want to live like music.

I'm still trying to reach you.


As Ever,
All my Love,
Ree

Automatic Fun House of the Day: 12.4.2008

When I stand on the windowsill and lower the windowpane I can see into other people's windows, right across the alley. I could do this all day. In Williamsburg, there was a couple we used to watch. While watching, I'd think; we could just as easily be the couple in the other window, if only we wanted totally different things than the things that we actually want.

I think I should've gone to school for web design programming or whatevs it's called. I want to be the person who can type in the special codes to make things look right on the interwebs. How many times have you been willing to die for a person like that? So many times. I've been trying to teach myself HTML, a quest that began in 1996. I've got italics down now, but tinkering with basic templates can be tough.

Also, I deleted my Google Reader feed on this blog 'cause I wanted to change it, but instead of changing it, Google Reader invited my entire address book to read my shared items in a deceptively personal-looking email. If you are one of those people, I'm sorry. And no, I don't really want to share any items with you, but thanks for checking in. JK I love everyone, please link me pot psychology.

No really, I have a weirdness with Google Reader, I use it very specifically. Most sites I read every day I won't have on my feed, I'll just check in -- Jezebel, Gawker, HuffPo, The New York Times, Arts & Letters. Etc.

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Quote: “The same week of high school that I quit track, I missed a math test. I never missed math tests but woke up that morning and something about the sun through the curtains, rolling out in its smooth ivory rays, made me unable to move. The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day by day decision if you want to agree to that proposal.” (aimee bender, an invisible sign of my own)

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Links:
1. Aggressive capitalism has come to an end: "our future has never been brighter." (@ode magazine)
2. Paul Carr challenges Evening Standard film critic Nick Curtis to try Twitter for a week (@guardian uk) -- after Curtis wrote, after using twitter for two hours, that Twitter was "endless prattle from people with too much time and too little imagination" and "facebook statuses on crack," Carr makes Curtis try it for a week 'cause he used to think so too, and after a friend made him the same one-week deal, he's come to think that "Twitter, unlike Facebook, has the power to change the world." (@the guardian uk)
3. The Days of Their Lives - Lesbians Star in the funny pages of Alison Bechdel's "Essential Dykes to Watch Out For" (@nytimes)
4. Norton's Writers Recommend - includes Diane Ackerman, Andre Dubus III and Nicole Krauss. (@writers recommend)
5. Best Book Designs of the Year 2008 (@nytimes) and A Year in Reading 2008 (@the millions)
6. Princess Leia's wild, bipolar adventures (@salon.com)
7. Maureen Dowd's What Tiny Fey Wants (@vanity fair) and Emily Gould's take on it: "if this is the best magazines can do, then they deserve to die." (@emily magazine)
8. If you haven't already seen it: Prop 8 the Musical ! Sarah Chalke (LOZO!), Jack Black, John C. Reily, Margaret Cho, Maya Rudolph, Neil Patrick Harris and MORE! (@funny or die)
9. The "Mad Men" dilemna: why you might be suffering from Quality Show Fatigue. (@nymag)
10. In Which it Happened That Night: after canceling her 10-day membership to the NYC Republicans Club (the first person to ever do so) -- "my brief stint as a Republican was purely an all access pass into their election night event (“Victory 2008!”), which I attended, more or less, for my own amusement." (@this recording)
11. Check out Olympia Zagnoli, the illustrator who made that over there [15 Ways to Sleep on a Train]

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Last time, I brought you insomnia poetry of randomly assembled lines from my 2000 diaryland account. This time, I wanted to do the same thing -- but realized it's not the same with paper diaries that were written to be private. So I bring you livejournal randomly assembled poetry. This has three stanzas or whathaveyou.

LIVEJOURNAL MAGNETIC INSOMNIA POETRY

I just want to drive in the sunshine,
listen to sugarcult too loud.
Maybe if Britney Spears was my girlfriend then it would be o.k.
If I knew what was wrong, I could fix it. But I don't.
(march 2002)

This week begins Operation: Enduring Relationship.
Plan: you must love Stephen Dunn, strange food,
fantasies of trips to South America, art you don't understand,
theater, stories, books. My stories.
I want you to know me.
(october 2002)

this is our dog, oscar, eating his dinner
tonight i had salmon, baked potato and a spinach-feta-driedcherries-olive-oil salad.
I made it myself.
tonight, oscar had dog food.
that is one of many differences between oscar and i.
(december 2002)

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Auto-Fun of Nov. 11th 2008: Like a Kite That Floats So Effortlessly

Intro, The Week to Come: There's this Azure Ray song "November." Every November I listen to it and feel really emo: so we're speeding towards that time of year, to the day that marks that you're not here. This week leaves little time for emo, there's so much going on! ... Rising Star Haviland Stillwell is coming to town, it's Stef's birthday on Wednesday, The Sex Blogger Calendar Release Party is on Friday, and then there's this Saturday's NO ON 8 Rally at NYC's city hall (wanna read my opinion on it again okay here, wanna watch it okay here ). I might even recap South of Nowhere ! Or set up my room! Or put up curtains in the living room!

Also. Also. Also. It's Lozo's birthday today!

Where's Papi?: The L Word Season Six Promo is out! So far Shane's hair seems to be on a good track. Someone's gonna get killed apparently. My money's on Jodi, she'll be like "I never even heard them coming!" Hey-o!

Where's Hedwig? You know who else has a teaser out? The New York Sex Blogger Calendar! We were in Em&Lo's Daily Bedpost, for which I continued my erratic support for this project with a two-line bio I don't remember writing. Holler! 6:30 - 9:30 pm at the White Rabbit on 145 E. Houston between Forsyth and Eldridge. There will be Burlesque performers, free foods, crazy raffles and the first 100 to arrive will get a FREE gift bag from Babeland!! Plus, Semicolon and Haviland are going! The costume of the day is edgy black tie (for us), you can wear what you wish.

Ideas for signs for NO ON 8 Rally:
-Really 52% of Californians? Really?
-Ellen and Portia are HOT
-Hands Down Totes NO
-Give EZGirl the right to marry!
-Don't Leave Carmen De La Pica Morales alone at the altar!

OMG, I'm so clever, I should just be a sign-maker. This holiday season instead of doing t-shirts we will be selling signs.

Advice Column/Riese & Hav Vlog: So Hav and I obviously need to do another advice column vlog while she's in town. Some of you asked questions in August that I'm sure you still want answers to, if you haven't lost faith in us altogether. Askautowin@yahoo.com. Or just comment, but then everyone will know what a fuck-up you are. For the first time in advice column history I am offering you the chance to ask a question and get your answer within about two weeks, which's essentially record time, possibly even an acceptable turnaround time for taking action. Also you can ask us questions that have nothing to do with homosexuality or bisexuality, I promise. Like if you wanna know how to ride your husband's hobby horse, you know, give us a shot. You might be surprised what we know. If I was in the band "an horse," I would feel weird about saying that all the time. "An Horse." I mean it doesn't roll off the tongue. It's certainly no "Bruce Springsteen."

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Auto-Fun:

Quote: "How attractive trouble feels in paradise. The place next door where pain is an option begins to whisper ... a wish to stir the stilled air with a serrated knife ... woo a stranger so you'll not be mutinous alone, to lie down knowingly among the nettles and the thorns." (stephen dunn, "paradise")

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Links:
1. Obamaism: "It's a kind of religion. But one rooted in a deep faith in rationality. Last week, New York rejoiced in its promise. And sang the National Anthem in the streets." (@nymag)
2. When to Work for Free: "No one ever filled a gas tank or bought groceries with exposure." (@nytimes)
3. Foes, a new story by Lorrie Moore! (@the guardian uk)
4. Top Ten Most Irritating Phrases. (@the telegraph)
5. A Rough Night for Gay Obama Supporters: "Around us, the ecstatic volunteers updated the chant. "Yes! We! Did! Yes! We! Did!" When we got home from the celebration, we got the news about Proposition 8. (@salon)
6. Will the White House website work as a social network? (@slate)
7. With Lozo, Sloganx and EV Idiot all recently closing up shop I'm inclined to agree that to some extent ... the blog is dying. (@roughtype) My theory? We're either getting paid for it, or sick of doing it for free. I'm not getting paid for it, I am sick of doing it for free, but there's something else that keeps me here. Maybe it's just all I know at this point. I used to say it was leading into paying gigs, but are there any paying gigs anymore? I dunno. I think I'm determined to get paid by Google AdSense eventually. The Economist says blogging is no longer what it was. (@the economist, obvs)
Only two percent of bloggers can make a living from it. (@mediabistro). Excellent!
8. Socially conscious book buying (@good)
9. My Four Weddings: How Getting Gay Married Became an Olympic Sport for me or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mormons." (@the daily beast)
10. poem. prayers. by rae armantrout (@the new yorker)
11. Lindsay Lohan might be an actual bisexual, not a unicorn. (@afterellen)
12. Little Edie Beale: The Ultimate Recessionista (@jezebel)

[eoin stanley ]

insomnia poem #19

thinking now of a job i could believe in
a job to go to,
even
dress/stand for,
a uniform with a collar & logo
a shirt that smells like wok oil and afterwork
you wear it out 'cause
if it was between you and betty ford
on a desereted one drink island
you'd punch her paunch like red party punch
drunken licky lips and hi-ho all the way home

i'd like to job at edible arrangements.
i believe in pineapple flowers.
btw my heart is half apple, half blood,
bite me i can make a flower from a pineapple.

insomnia poem #20

no use fighting it.
these are my favorite hours of the day
fists full of cookie jar
should be sleeping
feeling out of it
yet still
impossibly, and for no reason at all,
able to write shit down and make poeple look at it.
even if it's just a few people.
like, hey, what's up. it's daytime
in australia.
it's nighttime on the west coast
here we are.
it's no time here in my bed here we are.

Autowin Book Club #2: Lying, by Lauren Slater

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"Sickness demands compassion, but even so, one can be forgiven for wanting to throttle the narrator of Lauren Slater's latest book, Lying.''
-Rebecca Mead, "Stranger than Fiction: Lauren Slater's Lying: A Memoir."
The New York Times, July 16, 2000
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Angela Hayes: "What are you trying to accomplish in writing Blue Beyond Blue [a book of fairy tales]?"
Lauren Slater: "I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything through the book. The plan wasn’t to put the stories in a book and publish them. My goal was the same as it is in my other writing in that I wanted to create a world through words that was palpable and tangible and could stand on its own."
- A Conversation with Lauren Slater.
small spiral notebook, Summer 2005
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I have a lot of feelings about this book because speaking of lying, have I got some stories for you. I mean it -- that's just how beautifully I've worked it all out, that my life's narrative and this book's narrative have come together unexpectedly but perfectly, offering numerous "factions" for me to weave into a multi-layered tale of drama & intrigue relevant to our discussion of Lauren Slater's memoir, Lying. Butttt ... I'm not gonna tell these stories. Of course, I can tell whatever stories I want to, but wouldn't that be silly, to do that, just because I can.

I've been asking "why the lies?" a lot lately, and though I've found answers for many of the situations begging this inquiry, I haven't found an answer to justify -- or even understand -- Slater's lies.

Here's how I see it: you can lie to protect people, lie playfully with postmodern intent, lie 'cause you can't help it, lie 'cause you're pathological and it's what you do, lie to save your ass. I've accepted lies, overlooked stories I should've been looking over and trusted when I shouldn't have. But generally the liars I've loved are people with hearts -- thus me loving them in the first place. They display, somehow, a degree or remorse, humility, self-awareness, responsiblity or, lacking all these things -- at least a reason, even if it's a fucked up reason.

Furthermore, I've lied in my writing. I've lied to protect people, lied about a fact to get at an emotional truth, lied to clean up a narrative, lied to protect myself professionally, legally or emotionally.

But I can't seem to figure out exactly why Slater is so entitled to her lies, besides "Because I can."

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"I'll tell you about lies. There are white lies and black lies and many shades of grey lies. Some lies are justified. Lies told out of kindness, lies that preserve dignity, lies that spare pain. Everybody's a liar dear."
-Abraxas in conversation with Jenny, The L Word

"What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change. It's the currency of the world."
-Dan, Closer
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Maybe, since I've already written all my good stories but I'm not done talking about myself (oh man! I've barely even started! Watch me go! memememeeme!) I could tell you a story about someone else, but say it was about me, 'cause it's a metaphor for how I really feel, which is detached. I was just talking to Alex about Lying, which she loved or hated or maybe didn't read at all, and she said she would've liked it better as a novel, like James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning.

I said Bright Shiny Morning doesn't stand up to bright & shiny mornings themselves, which I actually love, because I'm not really a vampire as I said, it's just a metaphor for how I really feel, which is hungry and heartless and pale. That book I talk about that I'm writing is basically A Million Little Pieces with a lesbian reveal on page 256, with extra drunkenness and unemployment. It might not be about that at all, but that doesn't matter, 'cause it's a metaphor for how I really feel, which is abandoned and lost because of my mother, who was mean, and because of my father, who I never met 'cause he was on the road selling things, and then he died, thus becoming the inspiration for the book Death of a Salesman, which is actually a play, but they print plays in books now, because of the Industrial Revolution, which is a metaphor for the theater, literature, death and my father.

Anyhow back to Alex, who only read half this book. Speaking of lesbians and halves, I'm not actually gay or even a bisexual, it's just a very current marketing angle and besides, boys are impossible to communicate with and I'm tired, and bisexuality is a metaphor for how I actually feel, which is conflicted. I'm inspired by Lindsay Lohan, Haviland, and Alex who did not read Lying 'cause of the internet, which I don't believe in, but the internet is a metaphor for how I really feel, which's alienated and lost without my mother, who doted on me like a princess, but not a real princess like Tinkerbell, who might not look real, but feels very real to me.

Anyhow if you want to read a good metaphor for bisexuality you could read Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, which is one of the reasons why I'm gay, or metaphorically gay, but mostly it's because of my mother, who missed my college graduation for the WNBA finals, and is not really a social worker, but a nun, and a saleswoman, and Tinkerbell, and the only gay in the village. The End! DISCUSS.

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"I love that there's a secret
behind every secret I've ever told."
-Stephen Dunn, from "Loves"
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"I had not known, until then, that beauty lived beneath the supposedly solid surface of things, how every line was really a curve uncreased, how every hill was smoke."
-Lauren Slater, Lying: A Memoir
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I hoped Slater was attempting to explore one of the following ideas, which interest me:

- Lying as a Valid Storytelling Device in its own right: Slater argues in her introduction to The Best American Essays of 2006 that "Sickness is the natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of health, only to return to our fevers, our infections, our rapid, minute mutations, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined future."

Similarly, I'd argue that deception is a natural state in which we humans reside. We occasionally fall into brief brackets of total honesty, only to return to our excuses, our withholding, our salesmen and our politicians, our exaggerations, our rapid, minute white lies, which take us toward death even as they evolve us, as a species, into some ill-defined life of storytelling. I'd argue that truth and lies aren't good vs. bad, there's tons of nuance, and I find investigations of this stimulating and compelling reads. From time to time, Slater does explore this issue: "Why is what we feel less true than what is?" (pg. 162) and so forth. At these times, she's poised and interesting, vivid and educating.

But ultimately she doesn't seem to prove this point for anyone besides herself. She argues that truth is nuanced and therefore she can write an un-true memoir, but she doesn't argue that anyone else can (or should), nor does she ever explain why her story needs to be told at all, or why it matters, or why this experience is so crucial, so vital -- just begging to be addressed -- that she needs to go through all this metaphoric struggle to begin with.

-In order to make "sane" people understand the crippling nature of mental illness, we must explain it in physical terms: It's difficult to be a privileged white girl writing about mental illness without being scoffed at, call it the Elizabeth Wurtzel effect.

I understand first-hand how much more impact one's description of mental illness becomes when it's manifested physically, or visually.

When I explain I'm having a major depressive disorder episode, I get eye rolls and frustration/confusion -- "snap out of it." When I say the fibro is making my whole body throb and ache (why? 'cause I'm having a major depressive disorder episode) I'm supported and helped.

But, ultimately, this is just the point I want Slater to make. It's not the point she's actually trying to make, though the beginning gives me hope: "I wish I had epilepsy, so I could find a way of explaining the dirty, spastic glimmering place I had in my mother's heart."

Ultimately, she convinces us that her story can only be told as a metaphor rather than through the facts themselves. But beyond that ... so what? We get only that she CAN, and so she will, 'cause she's a liar, and she must. But why must she tell her story at all? I don't know.

Is it because she already told her story, and it was time to write another book and she doesn't like writing about things other than herself? If it's all one big post-modern exercise, than perhaps we should've been informed of this, rather than being lead to believe the story was somewhat true and somewhat untrue -- as in, she isn't just lying about epilepsy, she's lying about all of it. She's writing a novel with her actual self as the main character. Which is neat, and fun, and cool, but she could've done that without all the dwelling on the revolutionary self-importance of her lying and her compulsion to do so.

Does she do her subject justice? What is she doing at all? Postmodern memoirs like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius are fun, playful and adventurous, but Lying feels self-righteous, especially 'cause she fakes seizures in hospitals without recognizing the time she wastes of everoyne around her. She's so self-centered, it's hard to care much about what happens to her.

Though she's willing to cop to being a liar or a bad person, she's not ready to accept responsibility for the effect this could have on other people, or for how this reflects on her quality as a person.

Undoubtedly, she's a gifted writer. I mean, she's so good! She spins a brilliant sentence and a compelling page. I underlined, I loved the quotes, there were sections that spoke to me clearly and directly. I'd read it again in a heartbeat, I looked forward to picking it up, and I'd recommend it.

Yet at the same time, she sometimes made me feel sick to my stomach. It was often too close to home. I sometimes wanted to punch her in the face.

And the more I research Slater, the more confused I am about how I'm supposed to feel about this book. So I'll stop talking and ask you how did you feel about it.

1. In The New York Times review (The Last Word) of Lauren Slater's book "Unpacking Skinner's Box," Laura Miller writes: "[Slater] is not above manipulating her readers, while technically avoiding inaccuracy, if it will make the tale more potent. This recklessness is both the kernel of her talent and her nemesis; she is forever threatening to cross the line." Do you feel this applies to Lying?

2. In her New York Times' review of Lying, Janet Maslin writes: "It is not likely that the reader's interest in Ms. Slater's medical and philosophical condition will rival her own." Does it?

3. How did you react to the love affair with the poet teacher at Breadloaf? Haviland and I reacted very differently to it, and I'm curious how other people felt.

4. Does it matter to you if the story is true or not? Would you have read it differently had it been a novel?

5. What was your favorite scene?

6. Do you think this book would've been written differently now in the post-James Frey internet age, when facts are more easily and instantly verifiable?

7. The primary difference between a memoir and a novel, as I see it, is the meta-story implicit in the memoir. When reading Jeanette Walls' Glass Castle, to pick a popular example, the story is not only what's in the book, it's also the story of a woman who survived homelessness and insane parents and lived to tell the tale, and eloquently. If her story isn't true, then it's just the story, which is fine, but that's a novel.

There's some things I want to tell you, and you can tell me how you feel about them, and if it changes your feelings about this book.

So What She Lies, I'd Lie to Her Too:

a) The forward is presented as a letter of endorsement and praise written by Dr. Hayward Krieger, Ph.D., a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California.

Dr. Krieger does not exist.

He is a character invented by Ms. Slater, who -- when called out for this blatant misrepresentation -- sent a letter to the NY Times as Dr. Krieger expressing "his"/her outrage at this discrediting.

b) Ms. Slater was born in 1963 and began at Brandeis in 1981, which puts her at Breadloaf Writer's Conference in '81 -- according to the narrative she was 17 and it was the summer before college. She cites Francine Prose as an instructor and Mark Strand as a visiting poet. Prose did not begin teaching at Bread Loaf until 1984. Mark Strand's years:'73, '82, '84, '85, '92, '93. Slater did, without a doubt, attend Bread Loaf (she describes it in detail in her well-written introduction to The Best American Essays 2006), but she did not attend at the age of 17 in 1981 under a different name, as she says in this book. Consequently I doubt she had the affair she describes either.

c) Ms. Slater's memoir "Prozac Diaries" apparently is the true memoir she claimed she wouldn't be able to write. In Prozac Diaries, Slater recounts growing up with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and depression with two sisters who were not mentioned in Lying. The book was praised for its honesty and passion. Apparently she then felt the need to write another memoir about herself, but with a different syndrome than the one she already wrote about. This sort of makes my head hurt just to think about it.

d) In Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah: Lauren Slater's book "Lying," on blogcritics.org, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti -- who is also an epileptic -- has this to say about her description of the illness: "For all of its cinematic imagery and consistent with epilepsy symptoms (for the most part,), it's lacking some of the personal detail that I would expect from an epileptic, and also, for someone with temporal lobe epilepsy, a condition for which hypergraphia is a major concern, the book is remarkably short. It's that Slater is almost too perfect in her fucked up, epileptic fugue and the tale she tells that gives rise to doubt."

e) There was quite a stir over Slater's book Unpacking Skinner's Box, in which she "re-tells" the stories of major psychological experiments. Take a gander at this particular argument, from beatrice.com.

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"Is the urge to make meaning a misguided human coping mechanism that gives a false shape to our existence? How best to live? To die?"
(Lauren Slater)
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"Thoughts?"
(Haviland Stillwell)

if I gave you my number would it still be the same

Remember last Sunday? I do, but only generally. Like; I'm aware it was a day. I'm aware it was different than today. A whole week ago! I believe, in the bestest brightest way possible, that Part Two of the Sunday Top Ten: "Back in the 90s" will be coming later this week. Clarissa will explain it all, it'll smell like teen spirit, and all ye younguns will sport your hot outfits in a photographic retrospective envying the Amy Grant soundtracked Graduation Video that played at my middle school graduation.

Do people still give slide shows? Is there any chance ... like ... any chance at all ... of going back? To slideshows, black and white teevee, the milkman, 'zines, etc?

Wait. NEVER MIND ... I couldn't ever go back to 1995 for real because ... if it was 1991/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 ... there'd be no Uh Huh Her. Who would be Tinkerbell's new number one band? Would you still believe in something?

I don't have a brand new inventive post in me right now so I'm gonna ramble instead. Honestly, it's so fucking weird to think about how from now on I'll never be posting from that little cave I lived in until yesterday! The cave where I lost my mind and lost ahold of like -- ME! I mean ... wtf? That space ... that room ... that emo-cave ... has been so central to a certain phase of evolution and similarly to a certain phase of solitary self-destruction.

You get into a routine. You're up up up up up up up and more up up up up up up and then down. There's the computer, radiating possibility of connection without having to face anything, really, face to face, and what if I don't like your face? and if you dare to go outside I was proven right right away -- yes, you're right, people are annoying, and they talk too loud, and want all the wrong things.

Speaking of the nineties ...

So I felt anchored in that emo cave like I've never felt anchored before. As in; not at the port. But drowning. Anchored by the weight of books, hundreds of books and the shelves that held them. By running to the hospital with photocopies while my limbs wondered if I'd ever eat or feel again. Anchored by an empty bank account, that silly meaningless determined vessel.

Anchored by the weight of moving in at a low point and never really recovering and this week has been a blur of wishing just once I could move without mourning and then remembering how often I used to. How many times I moved not only without mourning but WITH determination.

How I used to move with pride, violently alone.

When in doubt: go. Did you hurt me? Time to go. A fight? Let's fight for the door except that wait just kidding, I'm already there, and that do you hear that sound that it is the sound of it shutting.

I knew, after all, the danger of depending.

Because, speaking of the nineties, one day I dared to write in my diary that my Dad was the only good thing in my life and the next day I woke up and went to school at Pioneer and then during 9th hour because I didn't have a 9th hour I went to McDonald's with my theater friends and I ate two cheeseburgers and french fries and a Coke. We came back to school and there were messages for me.

I read the messages & waited outside alone for the woman who'd left the messages to come pick me up. She drove me away from school 'cause what had just happened while I'd been eating cheeseburgers is that my Dad died. I'd told my diary he was the only good thing in my life and so then he died.

So. At 14 I became fierce, cold, and mean. Violent without touching. Violent 'cause when I said "fuck off" I meant it and I stayed that way for years and years.

This thing where I depend? That thing? That's new to me. I mean, I'm so new at it. There's not many things I'm new at anymore but I'm new at: being broke, not going to a physical workplace every day and also I'm new at depending.

Because back then? You'd never catch me caring. Like in public. Alone: alone I could do anything! I could cry, cut, starve, fuck, try try try to feel something -- ANYTHING -- anything else.

And this brings us to the part where I'm trying to roll up my own carpet to leave the dorms that semester and I have to ask an RA to help me 'cause I realize suddenly it's a physically impossible task and per ush I'm the last one in the dormitory, determined to do it alone, because that's what I DO, that's what I DO! I do it alone. I don't want help. Help is for people who can't hack it on their own, help is for losers and I, I, I iiiiiiii am a winner. mememememe.

I had my own money from my Dad and on top of that I always worked as often as I could so I had more than enough so I can pay for you and you and you and then ultimately memememe. And the RA says "Sure," surprised of course that that girl (the only first year student to actually request a single, the girl who didn't wanna meet new people and at 19 had already lived away from home for four years, like in a CITY ) (that girl who liked to dissappear on walks to places the other kids didn't know about and for a few weeks had to disappear to her home and stay with her Mom even though she hadn't done that in years. That girl who'd locked everything in SO TIGHT that it made her too sick to move) was talking to him at all, let alone asking for something.

"Why are you doing this alone?" he asks, squinting his eyes like I'm crazy.

I say, "My Mom's at work," even though she's not. My Mom asked if I wanted help and i said No, No, No, NO! I will do this alone.

I'll be Little Orphan Annie despite the facts. I'll beat you to the door, I'm telling you, don't fucking test me, when I run out it'll be like a slammed the door in your face but FYI my face is so over your face it needs a whole new word for Over, and Face.

Those who've gotten away from me:
read this, and call.
Those whom I've hurt:
I wanted everything, or not enough.
It was all my fault.
-Stephen Dunn, "Loves"

And I kept doing that. Packing up car after car alone. Doing everything for all the wrong/right reasons. But all around me I saw people depend and I though that was maybe a good back-up plan if this plan ever failed.

So this lead me, ultimately, to 2004, moving out here (alone) and busting a tire at 3 A.M. in New Jersey. My whole life was in my car and I was fucking determined to make it out alive and alone. I was saved, ultimately, by a good samaritan in a serial killer van. But before he came I don't know if I was ready to disappar or determined to keep going.

Natalie says; "You know, you always do things I'd never do 'cause I'd be too afraid it'd kill me and maybe that's just 'cause you're not like --" and then [the pause].

Chelsea says; "Marie, aren't you? Afraid?" when the topic of death comes up one afternoon in the dorms (the one I couldn't move the carpet out of). No, of course not, I say, paying only half attention. How silly. Here, is here, and here is okay. And there is with my Dad, and so that's okay too, and so what's the big deal? Death is not THIS but that doesn't mean it's not okay.

When did this change? When did I change? When did I start caring so hard that I had to stop caring even harder?

And where's the middle ground, between me and not me, between anchors and flying, between leaving and refusing to leave? The line between love and hate isn't all that thin, but the line between love and love? It's a gulf. It's a terrifying gulf and as you try to leap across it, hate will grab you by the horns and it will hurt and if you make it to the other side ... that's love. And now you've earned it after all.

I don't know. I don't know the answers to these questions. Right now, thanks to Team Crisis (A;ex, Stef, and -- for the very very heavy stuff -- A;ex's friend Eric, with his man-muscles), all my shit is now in a storage unit. Or in the trash or at the salvation army or sold or donated.

With me: I've got a suitcase and my heart and a desire to move into a middle ground where I can be on a Team without needing a Team Crisis.

Right now I'm in A;ex's basement in Long Island. I have abso-fucking-lutely no idea where I'm gonna live or really what I'm gonna do, like with my life, and that fucking pisses me off, and will probs gaurantee at least ten more panic attacks this week, but my Mom always told me that thing about lemons and lemonade. Like how you should make lemonades out of lemons if that's what you get. And another thing my Mom taught me is that people can fuck you up but people can change. People will change, no matter what the stakes. People CAN change.

And who doesn't like lemonade? Assholes, that's who. People who can't spare a nickel. Look. If I can spare a nickel, you can spare a nickel.

I hope I win the calendar contest, I'd love to know what day it is, how time passes, you know. how we go on.

So anyway here I am in the middle of wherevs in the basement 'cause there's no wireless upstairs and a;ex made me dinner. We sat outside on the back porch and I thought oh my god it is so quiet. And I thought, if I'm gonna do this, I mean really do this, I mean get back to the mememememe I was before I somehow lost it ....

I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but sometimes when I trust someone else with gravity it's like my heart looks at me and is like, "really?" and then before I can answer it goes, it flutters away like the happiest bird of all time. It goes before I answer, like it has wings I'd never noticed before, I'd just thought "what nice shoulder blades you have."

I mean that first my heart drops to my gut, and then directly to the sky. And then it disappears. And I watch it go and I nod because I'm okay with that.

And I guess what I'm saying is; everyone I love, I need you now.

I need you because I don't. I need you because I want you, because I want to choose who I want close to me. Because ... actually, ultimately ... like you've shown me a million trillion times ... I can't really count on anyone but me.

And so I know that. And so after that, I mean after learning that again ... I've chosen to count on you. And you, and you, and you. I want to love you all and I can't let anyone else tell me what to do or who to love if I'm going to just be true to myself. And so I've chosen to count on you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and trust me, you know, I've got my back, and I'm sorry, for what I said, but I've got it, I've got my own back, here's the trust fall, and here's my trust, and let me, because, it was my turn to decide and all I know is that I should.

"Listen, my truest love.
I've tried to clear a late century place for us
in among the shards.
Lie down, tell me what you need.
Here is where loneliness can live with failure,
and nothing's complete.
I love how we go on."
-Stephen Dunn, "Loves"
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Stuff I've Been Reading: June & July Super-Special

Hello and welcome to "Stuff I've Been Reading," a weekly variety show starring Barry Williams (the original Greg Brady) and the number one flirt herself Haviland Stillwell. I'm your host Riese. Today's show is going to be a blog post about Stuff I've Been Reading, a.k.a. the (bi)monthly auto-win segment inspired by Nick Hornby's column by the same name at The Believer. (Prior installments of "SIBR": Jan., Feb, March, April/May ) Hornby's mission statement, and mine: ""A Hilarious and True Account of One Man's Struggle With The Monthly Tide of The Books He's Bought and The Books He's Been Meaning to Read.""

This month I combine June & July into a Big Reading Sandwich, like World Book. More about Auto-Win Book Club #2 at the end of this post. Guess who wrote a book? Mia Kirshner (Jenny from The L Word)! OMG, what if I WROTE Some of her Parts? Like, the memoir? Then we could vote on what's better, my edition of Jenny Schecter's Some of Her Parts or Mia's book I Live Here, which's not about the toolshed, it's about people with real problems, like in Africa and stuff. It's not out 'til October, but probs most of you know a thing or two about waiting.

BOOKS BOUGHT/RECEIVED
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Dìaz
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
The Andy Warhol Diaries, edited by Pat Hackett
How Sassy Changed my Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, by Kara Jesella and Marisa Melzer
The Worst Days of Your Life, edited by Mark Jude Ponier
Learning to Love You More , edited by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July

BOOKS READ
Veronica, by Mary Gaitkskill - (re-read)
Live Through This,, edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
How Sassy Changed my Life, by Kara Jesella and Marisa Melzer
Learning to Love You More , edited by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July

I was talking about books and re-reading w/a blog commenter on facebook (I'd like to make this sentence as geeky as possible. I should add: "while reading babylon-5 fan-fic & watching re-runs of Quantum Leap."), and he asked me: "How do you know if you really like a book if you only read it once? Reading a book for the first time is like having sex with someone for the first time ... it's new, and it's exciting, but none of the bits quite line up like you're used to, and it's always a little bit confusing."

[Just as a sidenote; he also compared creative writing vs. literary criticism to sex in a recent comment.]

I'm currently in withdrawal over Mary Gaitskill's inability to pound out a Joyce Carol Oates-ian nine novels a year. I eat M.G.'s work. I'm hungry. So I returned to Veronica. I loved it! Again! I'm re-reading all my favorite books now from now on. I realized I'd missed much of the present-tense voice (w/its trees, moss, grass, etc) the first time around. Caitlin read it simultaneously for the first time so we could have mini-bookclub.

If I had to compare re-reading Veronica to sex, I'd say it'd be like having sex with an ex you know you're going to fall in love with all over again, and that this time around it'll work. That never happens in real life, that's why I love literature.

I'd suggested Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction as a book club selection, then got it anyway. Firstly, so glad I picked Oscar Wao. (which clearly I won't talk about here, 'cause that's what Auto-Win Book Club is for!) I read it in about two days, 'cause I thought I'd include it in a review I penned for a new magazine, but didn't finish in time.

Anyhow, if you thought you'd like LTT, you should get it, 'cause it has some really perfect moments, I'd recommend it. OK but -- Secondly; though the collection's got a great-line up (e.g., Eileen Myles, Bell Hooks, Cristy C. Road) and several intensely compelling pieces, I did yell at my wall and scream at Tinkerbell about it.

Here's why: most essays aren't about creativity & self-destruction so much as they're about rehabilitation from creativity & self-destruction and advice on how to stop self-destruction. I know that's wise, but it felt preachy, I was expecting more about how to lessen the harm and incorporate various 'self-destructive' behaviors, not escape it. Myles's contribution, about obsessive toothbrushing and alcoholism, "Live Through That?!" is a stand-out - exceptional piece. Other highlights include Silas Howard's San Francisco addiction memoir "Friends as Heroes" and Toni Blackman's poignant "Rappin' my Wounds." An excerpt:

"Your insanity is his insanity. His crazy belongs to you ... you want to love him ... want to make the nonsense make sense ... he has used your secrets as weapons in verbal warfare. He berates you and puts down your work. He tells you how to speak at meetings, how to stand in line ... he was taught that criticism is love. It is not ... He wants you to be different, to be like him, think like him, talk like him and you want to simply be. Even his best attempts at apologies feel like intentional disses." (pg. 138, Toni Blackman)

But what really got my goat is that of all the pieces, only ONE addresses incorporating this self destruction into their lives (sans "my work is MUCH better now that I'm sober/eating/whatevs!" waxing poetic) -- and it's a bipolar writer arguing that other bipolar peoples should eschew "cutting off" "so-called symptoms" with medicine/treatment and rather explore their inner beings and untapped capacities. Then she mouths off about how she loves her cello and sometimes she sits down and talks to it and all bipolar people should damn the man, fuck all kinds of Seroquel, mental health is just trying to keep us DOWN!

That's fine, I hope she never hits or berates her daughter/son or girlfriend/boyfriend, like um, Toni Blackman's ex-boyfriend, clearly all he needed was a cello or maybe a viola. Moving on.

How do I consistently end up w/Virginia Woolf by the pool? Key Bisquane's windy bluesy wind nearly stole A Room Of One's Own, and I found myself on the Ro-Boat deck reading Orlando. Anyways, you know how when you're exercising, you're pumped up thinking how good this activity is for you rather than how good it feels right that minute? It was like that. I kinda felt like Woolf was playing with us, but in the funnest way possible, like "I'm Virigina Woolf and I'm gonna write a crazy-ass story where all kinds of bizarre shit happens and it's kinda mostly about/for this girl I la-la-love! There's pictures! Oh, and it's gonna be GOOD!" I found it super interesting/monumental from a queer studies perspective, filled in a lot of gaps from bisexual studies books I've read.

Anyhow, speaking of page-turners -- haha! No, this one really was. I'm bursting with big revolution ideas lately and I'd been hoping to read How Sassy Changed my Life, since it came out, we saw it in a D.C. bookstore and nabbed it, I read it immediately and everywhere, then made Stef, Caitlin and Haviland read it. Hav stole it away to L.A., and then mailed it back to Caitlin who's in New Jersey with cholera.

HSCML is packed with "ooo! ooo!" moments -- "OMG, Jane Pratt and I have so much in common!" I squealed about teenage-girl-in-the-90's nostalgia (omg! postal mail was so important!), like a trip down one of the only adolescent memory lanes I'd still find charming. A bit kiss-ass at times, but I'll kiss Sassy's ass any time. I'd like to start a magazine one day but first I need my own cooking show called "One-Pot Cooking" with a guarantee no meal will require washing over two (2) dishes.

++

I think lately I'm especially drawn to books which provide glimpses into the evolution and maintenance of various community-oriented/collective arts. I ordered The Andy Warhol Diaries during my intense phase of obsession, it's approximately a bajillon (20,000) pages long. If Andy Warhol had a twitter feed (and you KNOW he would), this'd be it. Everywhere he went, all he ate, who he saw. I'll never finish it. It's an epic.

I got Learning to Love You More (Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July) at The Whitney gift shop when Alex, Caitlin and I went there with my Mom for the Biennial. July & Fletcher started a website in 2002 that invited visitors to accept assignments, complete it following instructions and send in a specified report (writing, photo, etc), this book's a collection of those things. Internet gimmick books aren't how I usually spend my money, but something about this mission -- which garnered heartfelt stories and photos from all over the world that truly penetrate a breadth of human emotion -- seemed way more beautiful than Stuff White People Like. I read it on the subway with Alex and Caitlin mostly, and then finished it at home. Howevs, I don't want to see anyone's parents kissing ever again.

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Book Club!

I want the next Book Club book to be by a lady-writer. Though I loved Wao like SO MUCH, I was thinking that I wouldn't have ever recommended it to a friend so we could talk about it together (though I would recommend it simply because it's so good), like Veronica. Which isn't to say Veronica's a better book, it's just a book that for some reason struck a chord with me, that made me want to scream and recommend and gab. I'm gonna try to pick a book like that this time.

Wow. It's way harder to think of books by ladies I'm eager to read -- probs 'cause men still outnumber women in what's "out there" in the media so I'm more aware of their output. I've got heaps of women writers I still need to read pre-death, but those are older books and I like newer things for book club.

When I love a lady-writer I LOVE her, I never love a man-writer with the same intensity except Stephen Dunn. But, it's kinda lame that with all the feminist and literary blogs I read every day I don't have anything on the top of my head. Maybe women don't write as many books 'cause they have their period or have babies. BAKE ME A PIE WOMAN thank you.

Auto-Win Book Club #2 ... I'm really intrigued by the first one, I've read a lot about it and it would be fun! But in the interest of a democratic process, take a gander:

What it is, by Lynda Barry
Lying: A Memoir, by Lauren Slater
Diary of a Mad Housewife, by Sue Kauffman
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
Family and Other Accidents, by Sheri Goldhagen
Break it Down, by Lydia Davis
The Best of Everything, by Rona Jaffe

Tell me what you like, grasshoppers. Personally, I love bears.

Sunday Top Ten: If We Took a Holiday, Took Some Time to Celebrate

Hallo! First off, check out the list of books on the Saturday Auto-Fun and let me know which one you'd like to be the first Auto-Win Book Club selection. I'll make a decision soon and I la-la-love/need your input ... I'm pretty sure that we've reached a consensus, but you never know, look what happened to Al Gore! Hey, speaking of voting, are you going to VOTE? -- WAIT! this just in ... I could've sworn I saw Wao in paperback at a store recently, but all online booksellers seem to suggest it's not coming out in paperback 'til September. In which case, it can't be our book club selection 'cause $24.95 is a lot of money, right? (Or, rather ... $15 on amazon, it'd seem)

Anyhow ... Happy Father's Day! Hm, obviously this isn't my favorite holiday. What IS my favorite holiday, you ask? Do you like ANYTHING, Riese, or are you all rainshowers and spoiled pudding? Yes, I do like things, I am rainy pudding but I'm also sunshine and bunny rabbits. I like Tinkerbell, matzoh ball soup, presents, unicorns, the smell of rain, making out, the next joke, tweezers, wax museums, ipods, books and children in puffy coats. Also; always been a fan of Administrative Assistant's Day.

I don't mean to pull a Lozo and execute an entire post just to complain, but the topic of "holidays I don't like" offers a mine[field] of possibilities. You step inside it, and there's ten smiling children all saying "no" while shaking their heads "yes." There are nine pictures of children who enjoy the company of other children. In the tenth picture, a child is eating pudding underneath a giant red rain-hat and she's ready to go home. The tenth picture is me.

Sunday Top Ten: Hello Holiday. It's me, Tinkerbell. I'm Just Not That Into You.
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10. Fourth of July

The hot outdoors. Sticky hands. The inevitable consumption of beer, subsequent desire to nap and/or feeling of belly bloated by froth & bubbles & popsicle. Grilling meat into humid air, the clank of cheering bottles, the anticipation of watermelon never matching the pleasure of the fruit itself. Lying in dry grass, near dirt. The assumption that we ought to love America so badly we explode of it. Sometimes I avoid this holiday altogether, and instead write crazy blog entries ...

... but this year, we're celebrating! 'Cause it's Caitlin's favorite holiday and Alex is "really serious" about it. I've actually had some really spectacular July 4ths in my life ... and this year, it'll be the most fun ever. Like independence, which was also fun for the [white male] Americans.

Best July 4th Ever: 2001 -- my diary says; "What's better than the world -- literally -- bursting into sky? Cliches are cliches for a reason." I met up w/Olive Garden friends and we snuck into a private party at a riverside apartment complex to watch the fireworks. I wasn't carded so we drank free beer, ate from big bags of candy and shared candy with children. It rained afterwards and we dashed through it like sparklers.

New Best Fourth of July Ever: 2008! Can't wait!

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9. Lent

[fumiko shibata]

When I'm like, "I want to eat a cookie" or "I want to get sloshed," and you're like, "OMG, I gave that up 'cause of Jesus and Easter and bunnies," I'll be like, "That is lame, I hate you and your holiday, you're gay." Though I liked it when my friends would give up Nintendo, then we could play Pretend or House instead and I wouldn't be left out.

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8. Yom Kippur

This is the day of atonement. Though fasting is a thrilling & self-destructive way to pass the day, it's this holiday's persistent habit of falling on my birthday that makes me dislike it. 'Cause I don't want to atone on my birthday, I want to celebrate, I want cake, I was told there'd be cake, you know?

Best Yom Kippur Ever - 1999: Alone at Sarah Lawrence with an unstable body & mind, I managed Yom Kippur. I went to four services that day at the temple synagogue, fasted, slept, sat in the library with books and pencils and then went back to temple. I broke fast alone, and slowly. I felt actually quite connected to my spirituality that day -- to something larger, and to everything wrong inside of me -- and I'd like to get back to that place some day. Where I could be like, "Are you there, G-d, it's me Marieeee?!?!"

Also, I've been known to enjoy a noodle koogle or two. Break-Fast is the best.

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7. Malcom X's Birthday

I realized I'd been in Planet Harlem for way over a year when I went to 125th to get some coffee and found EVERY SINGLE STORE shuttered for five hours, just like LAST YEAR! -- even the corporate chains closed in "observance" of Malcom X's birthday. If Malcom X were still alive, he'd march right into CVS and get some Aveeno even if he had to get violent, I don't think this was his dream. So it's like a double penalty holiday. Personally, I like to celebrate birthdays of important political leaders by treating myself to a nice cold beverage at Starbucks, but that's just me, keep marching and yelling, wheee!

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6. Thanksgiving

I don't like meat that's on the bone, let alone the whole honking animal sitting there looking at everyone. Either I eat a lot of potato products or there's not anything I want to eat and then I'm hungry. So as you can see it never ends well, look what happened to the American Indians, I rest my case.

Best Thanksgiving Ever: 1999 - So weird that the holidays of my semester at SLC are far more memorable & brighter than my other SLC days and also brighter than holidays celebrated in other years. We made dinner in Meg's NYU dorm with portobellos instead of turkey and we drank Pepsi One and I read The Iliad and Stephen Dunn and wrote. I transcribed "Essay on the Personal" into my journal next to a postcard of a purple & yellow watercolor painting.

2006 was a good one too, 'cause my brother came all the way from New Orleans with home-made macaroni and cheese as his carry-on.

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5. Valentine's Day

[artist]

I think we should all buy each other presents every minute we want to, and sweet things for our lover's mouths. The problem with Valentine's Day is that everything is too crowded to make a reservation except way ahead of time, which means you'll need to have been in a relationship for at least a month, and who has that kind of time, you know? JK. It's just a lot of pressure on an arbitrary day of the year, I like things to mean exactly what they mean, no less or more. I feel gross about buying into the corporate hoo-ha. I do it anyway, but that's 'cause I've been brainwashed by The Man.

Best V-Day Ever: 1998 - Ryan pulled out all the stops. At boarding school, this was difficult, but he did, and he did and he did. The first Valentine's Day on which I had a Valentine, even if he was a homosexual.
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4. Ash Wednesday
'Cause the first four ashed-up people I see make me really confused. On the fifth I say "A-ha!" but those first four were like : "whoa, where's the fire?"
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3. St. Patrick's Day/Puerto Rican Day (TIE)

I don't like anything where streets are blocked from cars and opened to drunk lusty boys & parades, unless it's the Gay Pride Parade. Hey it's raining outside, someone's raining on my parade! Everybody loves a parade, except me. We used to go to a circus parade every year in Ann Arbor, there was always a big elephant and then little people running around the elephant cleaning up after it. I thought, I'd like to have little people like that, following me around with a bucket of water and a proactive protective spirit.

Best Puerto Rican Day Parade Day Ever: 2008! I saw Gypsy with my Mum and Alexandra and Caitlin while the parade raged on, then afterwards we dined at 44x10 at a table by the window. The atmosphere @44x10 is a lot like Cafeteria, so sometimes I mix up my memories from those places 'cause I've got a handful where I'm with Alex and Caitlin and Alex's hand is on my knee and I'm eating smashed potatoes and around us bright spritely servers with perfect gay hair weave between tables, their slim hips bopping in and out of eye level. The first time I ate there was w/Haviland for Kelli's birthday, and the costume of the day was "Tipping the Velvet," but I hadn't read it yet.

Best St. Patrick's Day Ever: Probs 2002. 'Cause I was with Chris at the fraternity, and I believed in jungle juice (that's what they called the red vat of alcohol and fruit we drank from, it was too dark to see the syphillis in the moonlight) and the pure, green holiday. I sat on the stairwell gossiping with two younger girls I'd befriended (other frat "girlfriends" -- we stuck together), one of whom would eventually be using my drivers license as her fake ID, and I told them all my ugly eager secrets as if they weren't ugly but glossy grasshopper gemstones. In the juice, the pineapples turned red, and then our mouths.

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1. Father's DayLast year's Father's Day was one of the worst days of my life, but that was just a coincidence. I was gonna do this topic last year actually but then got distracted. I like that on father's day I can say things about fathers without anyone worrying I'm thinking/talking about my father on purpose and therefore must be whining again, or truly upset. I will buy myself a tie or a pie, or maybe tell a lie to the sky, or have a baby and name him "Guy." The thing about Father's Day ... and Valentine's Day ... is that they're basically created to make us spend money at Sears or get a Chili's gift card or something, and so if you can't celebrate it and that makes you upset, you're letting Sears and Chili's win.

I remember me and Lewis on the couch, watching television in our bathrobes while our friends ate creamy breakfast foods with their stalwart fathers. We weren't the only kids on our couches, I'm sure. I didn't know that then though. Now I do.

Also, 'cause my parents apparently enjoy conceiving nine months prior to unhappy holidays, Lewis's birthday often falls on Father's Day. Not this year! Lewis's birthday is tomorrow! What are you gonna get him? I haven't decided yet personally, but probs an orange or a squeaky dog toy.

That's one of the things I heart about NYC; on any given holiday, there's at least a bazillion other people not celebrating. In other towns if you're not doing Christmas or St.Patty's, you're well aware that everyone else is. Skipping Independence Day or sans Valentine? You're never alone in New York! And we're all far away from our families -- logistically, tangibly. Or not at all, for some people. la-di-da!

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Just FYI, these are my favorite holidays (in random order):

10. Pride: good costumes, many gays, ppl feeling not alone and loathed in the world, lots of big gay parties.
9. Passover: Matzoh ball soup. Egg whites in saltwater. Honey Cake w/matzah meal. Macaroons. Passover Marshmallows. Atkins Diet.
8. Christmas: The spirit and everything. the ritual.
7. Columbus Day: ''cause that was always exactly when you needed a day off from school, not 'cause I like Columbus, obvs.
6. Halloween : I do not know who I am, but I know who I can wear.
5. Hannukah: Latkes, hot crackling oil, presents.
4. Take Your Daughter to Work Day: I love GapKids
3. Election Day!: Vote or DIE
2. Martin Luther King Day : liked going to the gym and singing "we shall overcome" with the whole school holding hands.
1. Rex Manning Day:
We mustn't dwell... no, not today.
We CAN'T.

Not on Rex Manning day!