The Space Between

Brickberry: We Are All Cyborgs, Now

2012-02-02T02:51:00.002-05:00

It used to be a little 8330 Curve. I liked it because it had a keyboard with buttons I could actually press, and because at the time, I was skeptical of smart phones. I was never an early adopter. And really, it was one of the few smartphone options my cell carrier had.

Today, my little Blackberry became a Brickberry. This has been part of the long arc of its slow decline. First, it ceased to receive data. Updating the operating system failed to do anything. Then, it lost the ability to be recognized on my computer as a device, either as a Blackberry or in mass storage mode. Then the camera went. Next, the track ball fell out. It didn't just fall out, but the rollers disintegrated, leaving me with a tiny ball and no housing in which to place it.

Today, it bricked. I turned it on, and it decided it didn't want to be on. I turned it on again and checked the charge— full. It promptly shut itself off again. I plugged it in. On again. Yes, yes... and then it blinked off. I went off to work, sans phone.

Work, without a phone, put me in a strange location. I couldn't time my breaks but to ask others what the hour looked like. I fretted over my roommates, my family being unable to contact me. But the worst of it came when I realized that in trading a closing shift, I had no way to call anyone to ask for a ride home. I had no way to call for help should I get in a cycling accident. Not because there weren't any phones— no, the store has plenty of those, as does just about every passer-by. I had no phone numbers to call. I no longer know anyone's phone number by heart.

This shouldn't be a huge realization. I mean, I always knew that in not having to dial, I had forgotten every phone number I'd ever known. Faced with my inability to even quickly gain this information (long waits between emails and facebook posts in order to reconstruct my list do not make it a very speedy process), I finally felt vulnerable. I had lost my entire list of contacts. Unless I can make that Brickberry work for long enough to transfer the data to a new phone, I've lost everything. I can't even call my parents. They changed their number years ago, and their old one was the last I had remembered rote.

How strange. We truly are cyborgs, then. We allow technology to assume the function of part of our brains— our memory— in order to free ourselves of the constraints of learning by rote. We can then devote that energy to other things, achieve yet greater results... but when a device fails catastrophically (oh my Brickberry), the information, the utility we lose is akin to a serious injury. In fact, that is exactly what occurs: because we have given over part of our minds to the keeping of our tech, because we have turned ourselves into partially electronic creatures, it is very much an injury to our external memories.

As with any wound, it takes time to heal. I will need to repair the gaps in my recall by collecting phone numbers again. I will need to habituate to a new phone. The poems I wrote and stored and failed to transcribe from my new-minted brick are lost forever. But then there is addressing that sense of vulnerability that comes with a major injury: it will take time to heal from feeling so exposed without the power to contact others, being deprived of my very recall. In the manner of my fellow beings, I will become overly cautious about backing up, not trust devices that show even the slightest hint of malfunction. This is adaptive, especially for bespectacled cyborgs like me who store part of their memory on devices off-body.

After all, what do we have if not our minds?

Lit Bit: Occasional Poems

2012-01-29T00:56:00.000-05:00

I am not a big fan of writing poems for certain occasions. I'd say I absorbed this disdain from my poetry professor at New College, but my dislike predates my college career, having instead been inspired by the greeting card industry and its rigid meter and forced rhymes. Nothing sounds so stilted as the rhyming congratulations expressed in a greeting card. Nothing sounds so forced as condolences inked on paperboard.

That's why, when I sat down to try to write poems about the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year, I hemmed and hawed, but in the end I felt the urge to do better. To roll up my sleeves, to hunker down, and to break all the expectations. Only, it's not so easy as that.

Limits can be freeing. A theme can be helpful. But one thing I've noted in writing poetry for an occasion is that it's damned hard to make it good. Nigh impossible. I kept trying to capture summer, a spirit of place, comparing it to seasons down south on the other side of the equator, marry the theme of alienation from inhabited space due to the impetus of cultural notions and... well, that's a big abstract concept. So I threw some concrete at it.

But you can't just throw any concrete at it. It has to be the right concrete. Even eschewing Rhyme and Meter (caps, of course, and seriously, who do those guys think they are?), finding the right concrete is... well, I mean, think of it this way: you're out looking for a book. A book about unicorns. It has to be fiction, it has to be a novel, and it has to be from after 1963. But that's not all. It has to have a certain decorum, can't include a wizard, and needs to contain the phrase, "but moonlight is the light for liars," as well as a certain sad edge to the happy parts. It gets a bit ridiculous. That's what writing an occasional poem is like.

As it turns out, I threw the wrong concrete.

When I write occasional poems, it's a lot like putting the cart before the horse. I have an outcome in mind, when usually, the way I write a poem is to write until I have a shape, and then work at that shape. I find themes in the words, rather than choosing the words to fit a theme. Sometimes I don't even know what a poem is about until after it's done. Then I make a few passes with a plane to get it down to just that shape, the one I'd seen suggested. Only then will I even consider the thought that it might be nearing complete.

In the end, I finished three Pagan poems. Only three. Out of eight. So if ever I finally release that chapbook, you'll know the real reason that section is titled "Pretending to Be Pagan: Poems for 3/8 of the Year."

Of the Rites of the Bean

2012-01-26T03:36:00.000-05:00

That's college. Down to the lounge to the only oven open to a hundred students, and there is my one lonesome burner free. I am smart enough for an honors school, but not smart enough to get a bag to carry the burr grinder, the whole bean coffee, the moka pot, and my spoons. I'm too bleary for it to matter. That is what I say, though the real reason is that it isn't part of the ritual. You have to be careful what you do, lest it become part of the ritual. That's true of anything. That's how hard cider and chocolate became a healthy breakfast, and why I light candles for Elsa every January 3rd.

There is a meditation in balancing my items in arms to small to hold them all, and tottering down the concrete stairs barefoot every morning. There is something entirely present here now in depressing the door handle with an ass cheek, and leaning the steel door inward.

I unpack on a small section of counter that I have to clear with a knee. It's mostly hippie food grown over with mold, stacked on paper plates.

I refuse to make my coffee in an unclean kitchen, so all the food has to be air lifted into the trash. I have to run up to my room on deer's feet to grab a rag for the counter. No one ever leaves cleaning supplies in the lounge.

Once the sweep of my arm and the smell of the soap has almost made the space usable, the real ritual begins. I set the grinder finest. Three scoops of beans once ground will fill the middle chamber. Three scoops a day sustains me.

I have forgotten my espresso cups. Another trip, bird's feet on tile, and up to rummage and back flying wings down to my lonely coffee tools. There is a hippie at them, diaphanous skirt swaying under the AC vent, her nose in my beans.

“Hey!” I snap.

“It's in the lounge,” she says.

“Because I brought it here to make.” These turf wars are never fun.

“Geeze, you don't have to be so mean.”

I brush her aside, and fill the lower chamber with tap water. It is pure shame that fills me. Tap water is unworthy of my beans, but it's what I have. It will have to do. And there is the ritual to mind. It would not do to change it.

The burner lights, coil rising to glow one shade at a time. I have but to screw the upper chamber in place, and place the pot on stove, step back and wait.

Books are good for this, but they are not part of the ritual. I watch my pot boil. It is not like grass or paint, because there are tiny changes to note.

First, the pot reflects the glow of the coil. Second, there is a sound that steam pressure makes. I cannot tell you what that sound is. You must hear it for yourself. Third, the bubble comes. It is glorious. It's like the rumble of a train from far away. It's like the purr of a cat when your head rests on its belly.

When this stops, the next phase of the ritual begins. You need a potholder, or your hand may burn. There is never a potholder in the lounge. There are sometimes dish towels that smell rank, and sometimes a hippie's shirt discarded on the floor. The ritual calls for one of these in a potholder's place.

It must be an espresso cup. It must have a saucer. One must pour slowly enough to enjoy the beauty of the crema that pours out; even stove-top espresso has crema.

Here is where the ritual may change. It all comes down to this deciding moment. Now with the coffee made, I can do many things. Today, I will pile my supplies on the lounge counter and walk slowly back up to my room to stand on my dorm's double balcony overlooking the volley ball net, the swing set, and underbrush and live oaks. I will stand in the gold morning listening to wind chimes and sip my espresso standing. Tomorrow, I may sit on the lounge floor with Scrabble tiles strewn about connecting archaic cuss words, or maybe outside under the bottle brush, my back bark abraded. But for today, this. Gold is out of the ordinary enough.

Lit Bit: Sick Edition

2012-01-23T02:16:00.001-05:00

I had a realization today. This is a rather foolish realization, a dull and mundane realization: it is very hard to write, or do any creative work, for that matter, when it feels as though you've been hit by a bus. Flus are not conducive to productivity. This is true also of hunger, but oddly not always of sleep deprivation.

Since I am still battling a flu, this is all I have to say on the matter.

What Makes Your Garden Grow?

2012-01-19T01:30:00.000-05:00

When I talk about gardening, there seems to be a disconnect between me and the person listening. Maybe I'm the weird one (in fact I'd lay money on that), but when I think of "gardening" the last things I think about are pretty flowers. For me, gardening as all about the food. Eatables. Sustainability. And if I grow roses, you can bet I'm planning on putting them in tea and salads.

When I talk to other people about my passion, the first thing that seems to come to their minds is chrysanthemums and azaleas and prize winning birds-of-paradise. And so they launch into talks of their queen palms, landscaping, and hibiscus. To which I reply, "Mmmm, hibiscus is tasty! Have you ever made syrup from the calyx?" This ends the conversation. I seem to forget that people grow plants for purposes other than food. I guess that's a personal failing.

I wonder about this. What does it say that the only conceivable idea of gardening for some includes primarily concerns for the aesthetic, and for me, primarily the practical? Okay, and the tasty. I'd be lying if I said I only grow nutrient-rich, high caloric density foods. I grow things I like to eat. I grow things which make my taste buds dance, and my bowels tremor: ghost peppers. Habaneros. Their sister, the Scotch Bonnet. Thai poinsettia peppers. I like it hot.

But how did the idea of growing things get separated into two so vastly different categories? How is it that when I say the word "garden" it means something entirely different to my grandmother and my peers? It makes it interesting when I speak to the local Master Gardeners. Most know their native plants inside and out, and many focus on ornamentals. But when I ask about any eatable other than oranges and tomatoes, they seem to be stumped, and I get referred yet again to the extension service website. What is the edible gardener to do? Aside from purchasing an exorbitantly priced copy of Tom MacCubbin's now out-of-print book.

Lit Bit: Writing in Public

2012-01-15T14:10:00.000-05:00

Some writers will tell you that you should never ever write in a public space. That it's not conducive to getting work done. That if you write in public, you're just in love with the idea of being a writer and you want people to notice you sitting there, writing. I call bullshit.

Everyone has a different experience of writing. While some may really benefit from a nice quiet room with no extra sound, no thrum of traffic, no conversations in the background, that kind of silence drives me up a wall. I hate it. I'm a city creature, after all, and the cry of sirens in the night is my lullaby. Quiet is a hindrance to my words, then. There's also the fact that when I hunker down in a public place, I don't dick around on the internet like I do in private. My very environment becomes a tool for productivity.

That said, libraries work a bit for me, but their silence is foreboding. The people coming and going don't take time to bother me, and I love how no one ever expects you to interact. They leave you to sit and write. But you can hear the clock tick itself off the wall. It's almost painful. Then again, you're writing on top of a rich book vein, just waiting for you to mine it. There are trade offs.

Cafés are another matter. Coffee is the writer's friend. There are so many comings and goings. At least, there are during the lunch hour. Here again, no one expects you to interact, or at least they don't if it's an American café. But cafés are where writers are supposed to write, and I can almost feel that accusation of wanting to be seen writing anthropomorphizing itself, and sticking me with little guilt pins. Then there's the peril of jelly splotches. Or the peril of the traffic die-down.

Now, bars are an interesting fish. A good bar, a well-patronized bar, has a liveliness that sings. It hums with activity. The noise is a constant energetic roar, the lights are low, and it's always easy to bum a light. It's not true for everyone, but it's just the place for me to hunker down, sink into the sound and let my pencil walk around its blue-ruled yard. Except...

This also seems to be a rule for bars: anything you do, anything at all, people seem to take as an invitation to talk. Bury yourself in a beer and misery? "Hey, you here by yourself?" Rock out to the band? "Hey, you come here often?" Bend down to tie your shoelace? "Hey, sorry about slapping you like that, but your ass was just asking for it." Order a hard cider? "Hey, is that girl beer or something? Mind if I get you something stronger?" Whip out your pencil and notebook? "Hey, what are you writing?" When you don't answer, when you tell them, "Hey, look, I'm busy," they get grabby.

But for this, the atmosphere would be perfect. It's a rather large "but" to overcome; it's awfully hard to write when someone else's hand has snatched your pencil away, and they're physically blocking a hasty retreat to the women's restroom. Now, your mileage on this may vary. Being female-bodied and obviously en-titted, I think my experience might be a bit different from a guy's. From observation, it seems men are more often left to their own devices in bars. If you are male, cis or trans or simply appear so in drag, and wish to try it out and tell me of it, I'd love an account. That is, if you, like me, need noise to narrow your focus and fiddle with lit.

So what is a writing person to do? As I scribble this, I am sitting at a café, sipping coffee, hiding in a corner, and trying to be unobtrusive. I feel like a cliché. It's quiet here, and the movie playing in the main room (Superman) clashes with the Golden Earring song whispering from the radio. Only the owner is conversing. It leaves me antsy. But this is what I have to work with, and unless I can come up with better strategies for writing in bars, my options for public scribbling are limited.

Perennials

2012-01-12T14:05:00.002-05:00

I am not a cooping-up creature. I love the city. I love the streets and alleys and the stretch of tall buildings, the late night places, the light spilling at odd angles across sidewalks, the feeling of asphalt under my feet.

I do not love so very little space to garden. I have a balcony full of plants right now, all constrained in pots, and wanting room to unfurl. Maybe some deeper troughs for hardier roots.

And that's what I miss most about Port Charlotte, though I never thought I'd say it: a yard with a garden. My okra with buttermilk blooms and raisin tinted middles. My peppers popping capsaicin red under the autumn sun. My pomegranate's dragon-tongued blossoms shedding petals, then rounding, rounding into heavy fruit.

I thought in moving to Miami, I had to trade all of that to have a city. It was the one thing I was reluctant to give up, but it was worth it to be in a place that didn't fall asleep before eight, that felt like it breathed deep breaths before dancing through the night in a swirl of sodium arc orange and neon glow. A place all food and sound and bodies and thrum. It was a welcome trade, and expected loss. I weighed it carefully when I made my choice.

And then I met Kit and Mouse. They were coworkers in the electronics store, lived in Fort Lauderdale, and owned a beautiful little house with walls painted teal and green apple and sage, with a yard full of bees. You know: the ill-mowed scraggle that cradles little white wildflowers of a million sorts, a secret feast for insects on the wing. And they asked me to help with their garden.

Suddenly, I didn't have to choose. My city-self well-fed, my night-roamer uncaged, and now my gardener girl, overalled and barefoot, had been invited out to play, too. I helped plant scallions, prepare raised vegetable beds with peat moss and compost. As Kit and Mouse expand their gardening to include an urban chicken coop, their own bees in top bar hives, more raised beds for tomatoes and eggplant and okra and squash, I'll get to be there to help. I don't have to trade my sanity for my green thumb.

Lit Bit: The Broke Poet

2012-01-08T23:31:00.000-05:00

It was told to me, and I will tell it to you: there is no money in poetry. Sure, there is a slim ray of hope that you could become Poet Laureate of the United States, or your own country if such a position is available, and if your own country is Canada or New Zealand or the UK, you're set, but at least here in US-land, the Laureate's stipend is only $35,000. That used to be a lot. It isn't so very much now.

I can write a bazillion poems, and save for a few prestigious prizes, there are very few ways to get paid for my work. Most markets for poetry are non-paying markets. Where markets pay, they don't pay much not out of cheapness, but because poetry is generally a much shorter form than prose, whether fiction or non. You'd have to do a LOT of publishing in order to pay the rent.

Then there is the notion that no one reads poetry. Or that only other poets read poetry. I know I read poetry, but I'm a poet, so I think that only supports this notion. And honestly, with the supposed shortening of the modern attention span in the days of publication by tweet, you'd think that such a short form would be more widely embraced. Maybe it is, and I just haven't seen the actual number of subscribers to various publications.

The hard reality is, if you're writing poetry and seeking publication, there has to be a motive other than riches behind it, because save for the likes of Billy Collins, few poets are rich or even well-fed off their words. Unless their primary body of work is in some field of prose.

The funny thing is, it's not a deterrent to me. Poetry has an intrinsic value to me. I have to write, or my brain will flood. I will continue to enter to compete for poetry prizes, knowing full well I stand no chance of winning, but it's more a way to feel as though I am active in the field. It is more of a means to feel that my entry fees are keeping poems in print for everyone.

Because there is no money in poetry, my reward for writing poems is... writing poems.

Forbidden Fruit: A Bicycle at Night

2012-01-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

People like the forbidden, I'm told. It seems to make sense. That stolen-candy rush when you're doing something you're not really supposed to... or maybe I'm projecting a little hard. There seems to me a sweetness about doing things that are looked-down-upon, improper, or maybe just a little subversive.

Night cycling is one of the tamest of these. First, there's the cold hard fact: I lived for many years in what amounted to a retirement community, where the sidewalks rolled up at 6pm... if there were even sidewalks. Most areas had no sidewalks. To go out at night was to be a criminal. Every few nights, I would get stopped by police. "Where do you live?" "It's after midnight. There's a curfew, you know." "Oh, sorry ma'am. You just look young."

Even here, exploring Fort Lauderdale, I get that subversive rush. I'm sailing down streets mostly untrafficked, passing shop windows I vow to return to in daylight, and then, best of all, I stumble upon a neat night spot, light flooding out, and food scents curling over my face.

More than this, there is a the contact with the night. In a car, I am enclosed, cut off, shuttling from here to there as fast as you please. Stopping is a process. It takes time. time becomes this precious thing. On a bicycle... well, it's a lot easier to simply brake, lock up, and explore. You're already out in the air. You need no real parking spot. Just a tree to which to tether. A post. Or one of those lovely bike racks that dot urban landscapes. There's always room. It's easy.

It's a shrugging off of the cult of the car, that sacred institution. I can go further, faster on a bike than with my feet, and the miles take mere minutes. All of these things combine to grant me a sense that I am totally free. What could be more delicious and subversive than that?

Lit Bit: Little Lit Lists

2012-01-01T02:40:00.000-05:00

There is a tiny part of me that likes lists. Maybe it's not so tiny a part of me. Maybe it's a part of me that is a crutch I lean on on those days when I don't have caffeine— and that's a lot of days lately. Lists help. They help a lot. Without them... I don't think I could function. I'd wander off into distraction-land, and never come back. Big, full round lists are most helpful. I can procrastinate my heart out and still get a metric ass-ton finished. You could say it's ADHD. You'd actually be correct.

In the past, I've had a penchant for lists of books. What I am currently reading (usually five or six titles), what I have read (oh dear, thousands...), and what I will soon be reading (usually in the form of a stack in the corner— that's a kind of list, right?). That worked as a way of organizing my readings, they created my pace. Finish one, start two more, and go. But I wanted a record of what I'd read.

The internet, marvel though it is, did not change this. I tried for a while to track my habits with social media. I really did. I used LivingSocial's Visual Bookshelf while it lasted. For a while, I was logging in to GoodReads. But all of these fell by the wayside in favor of my fickleness, "Ooo, that title looks shiny and it's been sitting on my shelf a while." Or better yet, wandering aimlessly through the bookstore or library saying, "No, no, no, yes, yes, no, yes..." and nabbing a new stack to bring home. It seemed like too much effort to list all the titles I was reading at once. And then I wanted to go back and list everything I'd ever read. EVERYTHING I'D EVER READ. Fickle and picky.

Needless to say, it's a nigh impossible task. Where to start? Le Guin? John Varley? How about that weird book about the ghost in the computer I'd read as a kid? There were so many titles I'd forgotten... like those books about the boy and the alien teacher. And what about the ones I'd only half read? Or the ones I stuck through and wish I hadn't read? Like Shanara? What about all the McCaffrey and Piers Anthony that I read only to realize that I didn't really like it? Or the Meredith Ann Pierce or Louise Cooper that was so much better than I gave it credit for at the time? And that's not even touching upon the graphic novels...

So what's a list-loving gal to do? My book consumption lies in disarray, having plowed through Gene Wolf's Nightside the Long Sun, being in the midst of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Break, Blow, Burn. I still have a few more of Nin Andrew's prose poems to lick from the page, and no way to organize all this.

And that is why I turn to you, oh readers. Please. Suggest something to me. Anything. I'm desperate. I'll list the reasons...

There Is No Such Thing as a New Year

2011-12-29T11:26:00.002-05:00

The new year. There are lists of resolutions. Parties to go to. A new calendar to buy. It's easy to propel yourself forward through it, working hard to forget what you didn't do the year before. So many projects left unfinished, so many broken promises to yourself or others.

I don't think laziness or failure is the problem here. I think it's the way we mark off our time. I don't like this roll-over model. I don't like this clock-bound mode of thinking. That time is a resource hoarded. We spend it like money. I'm not the first, and sure as hell not the last to say so.

So forget New Year's. Forget it. Bury it under a mountain of something else. Pull back on the reins. Slow down. Look back longly instead: you had a long road from beginning to now. You have done many things. You have learned many things. Instead of breaking it down into little one year chunks and berating yourself for what you have not accomplished (or what you know you'll say you'll accomplish and won't in the next year), look to the arc of your whole life. What marrow have you sucked from its bones?

And if you come up dry... today, TODAY do something strange and delicious and powerful. Volunteer. Write your first poem in years. Draw that comic strip you always wanted to. Just one. Not all the strips. Just one. Why put off until tomorrow what you could be reveling in right now? Because there is right now, or there is never. Not a new year, but a new instant. And you're here. And why not?

Lit Bit: A Recommendation

2011-12-25T14:29:00.000-05:00

While most folk are celebrating with their families, or going out for Chinese food, I am cleaning and reading. I'm finishing up a short story collection by Ursula K. Le Guin. I know, I know, big surprise that I'm reading Le Guin. Her prose is always a favorite of mine.

But I wanted to pipe up today: if you ever have a chance, read The Compass Rose. It's one of the best short story collections I've ever read. Of late, I've read a lot of short stories. I've been licking screen prose from Daily Science Fiction, popping Bradbury like candy, and rolling in Stanislaw Lem. I keep returning to Le Guin, though. There is something about the way she handles human relationships that makes almost every story achingly beautiful.

The Compass Rose is arranged not just around the cardinal directions, but up and down: Zenith and Nadir. There are six sections, then, and the tales themselves relate in theme (for instance, west for death, dying, age and endings) or direction of travel to the section in which they're included.

Take, for instance, "Gwilan's Harp." It's in the West section, and is the story of a life changed course through the breaking of a harp, it's the tale of an ordinary woman's life with an extraordinary gift. No great glory, no fortune to find, just a family life, and an old age. And the simple realization that "...you play the instrument you have." There is power in this, power in the familiar, the ordinary. There is more truth in it than great imaginings or vast battles and worlds changed. Worlds change in a eye blink and at a snail's pace. And change's agents are so many that we are all carrying a single grain of rice to fill a storehouse. But this is Le Guin's art.

Or "The Author of the Acacia Seeds," which was also printed in Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Visitations. Movement as text. Humans are not alone on this rock. It leads off the collection, and takes the breath away.

I am leafing through "Sur" now, an all women's expedition to the Antarctic. As the volume closes, the old familiar feeling of sadness at a book's end is creeping up on me. Anthony Burgess awaits me when I'm finished, and A Clockwork Orange is not nearly so inviting a text.

If you have something of a winter break, a few spare days for New Years set aside to read, pick up The Compass Rose. It's worth it. Perhaps it will leave you haunted. If it does, you're welcome.

A Ritual Urge

2011-12-22T04:10:00.002-05:00

I am keeping vigil for the sun. It is a simple act. Every year, on the solstice night, I stay up through the dark hours, and come daylight, I eat an orange that for a moment I hold to the sky.

Let's not lie. Most years, not each year. Some years I get grouchy, and give up, "What use is this?" Some years I fall asleep, just before lighting the candle that will keep vigil in my stead. And some years are like this, when I work the first part of the night, and am alone deep into the wee hours, knowing I'll make it.

Despite the fact that I have no literal belief in any deity, despite the fact that my religious leanings are purely poetic, I find power in this ritual. There is something that is for me correct in marking the seasons, in syncing with the dirtball on which I was born and live and toil and will die. I call it my ritual urge.

I am not alone in this. A few no-longer-Catholic friends tell me that even though they do not believe in god as such, do not believe in the dogmas of the church, that they find something peaceful and beautiful in the mass. I can see why. It is not true of everyone. But I do think humans have a general urge to mark off, to make special. Weddings. Graduations. Award ceremonies. The lighting of the effigy at Burning Man.

Perhaps it is not universal, but it is vast. People making events do a lot of work, standing in for other ideas. Taking on extra meanings. What does it mean when you don a black gown, and receive a piece of paper? What does it mean when the desert is awash with EL wire, and we dance with fire hurtling about our bodies? What does it mean?

Tonight is no different. I am keeping vigil for the sun. It is a simple act. Come morning, I will pull the light up from the bottom of a well, from the bottom of the night with a kiss and an orange. These mean many things.

Lit Bit Sundays: Good Practice

2011-12-18T21:02:00.001-05:00

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got as a writer was to write a little bit every day. It didn't have to be a lot. It didn't have to be a huge chunk of something. It just had to be "enough." Enough varies. Enough can be ten minutes of free writing. Enough can be two hours of leisurely prose. Enough can be half an hour pumped into the craft of a fifteen line poem. It depends on the day. But write.

The thing of it is, I am a procrastinator. Not only am I a procrastinator, I have ADHD to boot. My attention wanders around like a mayfly. It's a hard thing to sit still long enough to finish chunks of a novel.

Now, I'd already had an inkling in this direction, as I almost had a "system" to do this sort of thing, but my father crystallized it for me on the way back to Miami in the moving expedition. He'd recently heard this piece of advice somewhere, and since I had hit upon having a couple writing projects in the wings, it gelled. You put things off? Heap on more doings. That's right. Fill your plate heaps high with things to do, and instead of putting off and dragging heels over just a few painful tasks, cherry pick your favorite to-do items off a list of 100. You'll get more done. And it will be like candy.

The same is true in writing: with a bazillion projects to attack, you will power through the easiest, the tastiest first. Having trouble on your novel? Been meaning to write a short story? Switch tasks. The short story's revision got you tearing out your hair? What about that poem you wanted to write? You will get more writing done. Then the rule of sheer practice kicks in: since you're doing the tastier writing, you're writing more, practicing more. When you're avoiding a task, you're not doing it. Your skills rust like tools left in a damp shed. By switching tasks, you get more writings accomplished. Your volume of production increases. And that's just the practical side. Never mind the sheer glee of it, the feel of finishing a piece, or the scratch of a pencil on paper, or the marvelous clatter of fingers on keys.

So I wanted to say, thanks Dad, for passing along the good advice. And seriously, if that pencil is dragging, keep your to-do list long.

Moving Days

2011-12-16T01:27:00.000-05:00

I hate moving. It used to be a neutral thing, an adventurous thing, but like most adults, I've done it so many times now, it's painful. That's what I was doing today. Moving.

It never fails to stir up a hornet's nest. In past moves, going back to the old place brought up wistfulness: the trace of lavender and sugar cookie. Or brought up an aching nostalia: lemon pine floor cleaner and jasmine tea. Personal smells that haunt a place like a ghost.

Today, I wasn't even move to anywhere new. I was just moving a lot of stuff out from an old place. Instead of wistful sad sweet, the place was hung with a cloud of dread. This was a pit. Port Charlotte. I don't want to badmouth the place. I just can't live here. It is the home of my depression, my anorexia. It was where I was raped. There is no public transit. The libraries close early on Fridays. Some aren't even open on Mondays. The sidewalks roll up around 6pm. The only places open through the night are as follows: a Walmart; a Denny's, a Wafflehouse. On weekends, so is the IHOP over the bridge in Punta Gorda. Even the best coffee in town shut down; Mrs. McDougall's is no more. Port Charlotte is a suburb of nowhere.

It isn't hard to see why coming back, even for this task, would leave me so drained. Like Spider Jerusalem, I hate it here. It's hard to work up the energy to sort, pack, discard, box. It's hard to imagine what possessed me to ever consent to live here. This is a place for other people. Not me.

The house I used to live in looks like a rodent's den, uncleaned. The pall is palpable. My old books are laced with spiderwebs. The looming foreclosure casts strange shadows into the corners. It's hard to find the things I once found dear.

This is it, though. Anything left is gone for good. I just can't seem to work up the energy here to care. I want to go home. I miss Miami. I miss Fort Lauderdale. I want to go out to the Original Fat Cat's and down a cider. I want to go explore the coffeeshops dotted throughout. I want to bum around with friends playing shesh besh 'til dawn. I want this right now.

Instead, I'm exhausted, haunted, and posting late.

Lit Bit: Reading Habits in a Digital Age

2011-12-11T22:09:00.001-05:00

I realized something a while ago. As much as I love technology, as much as I find computers to be a comfort, I cannot make myself cozy with a e-reader. It makes me wonder if anyone else has had this adaptive dilemma.

I know, I know. You're thinking, "Story, don't tell me you're a Luddite!" I can assure you, I'm not. While I flirt with the notion of older technologies, and I stop to wonder at where new modes of communication may take our cognition, I by no means think our devices, our screens, our intarwebs are a bad thing. They are mixed blessings, but blessings all the same.

At first I thought that it was just that tablets and e-readers felt too much like computers to me, but I soon realized I was wrong. No, the reason I can't quite work with an e-reader is that all my learning is in my body. When I think, I have to move or gesticulate wildly. I have to locate a notion in physical space in order to rough it out, give it a relative position adjacent to me, and the other thoughts on my mental table. I learn and create positionally. Relatively. In terms of reading, I need to hold a physical object. Not had to do, right? An e-reader, like a brick or book, can be thrown at a person.

Ah! But my recall of the text aligns with its physical being. When I remember a non-fiction passage, I remember the physical location of the paragraph within the text. I remember whether it's on the right or left side (even if I can't remember right from left in general), I remember how deep into a text a piece of information was found, and the general shape of the surrounding paragraphs. Without a physical book to delve into, my recall of a text drops.

It doesn't disappear. It doesn't evaporate entirely. But the change is noticeable. Annoying. More so now that the bulk of my reading is on a screen. Even just the physical act of turning a page cements something in my head.

A touch screen helps. Flipping pages in a manner where I "directly" manipulate the text makes a difference. But then I have no physical marker of how deep into a text I am. There is a visual one, yes, but a tablet doesn't thicken at one end and thin at the other as you move through pages. The whole concept of a page loses meaning when you can resize the letters to better suit your vision. The entire idea of physical orientation then goes up in smoke, as does the information on the right side or left side, the shape of the surrounding text as a marker of location.

It is an odd thing to notice, really. I want to embrace this technology. After all, I blog, tweet, and I'm formatting my chapbook for the Kindle. And as I've said, this hobble is not a crippling one, though it is a hobble. It's just painful to watch a familiar and tried technique fall by the wayside.

Now the question is: will I find a technology to adapt these new modes of text distribution to my learning patterns, or will I develop new ways to reposition a text in my brain in order to properly digest it?

What things have changed about your modes of digesting books? Have you noticed any stumbling blocks of your own in trading page for screen?

A Long Way from There

2011-12-08T13:25:00.001-05:00

Trains, well, I'd only ever ridden on the subway before. That, and the restored trains that ran through Connecticut, green and gold through the wooded hills, pointing out historic points in the landscape. Maybe the BART counted, too. With my Easy Card in hand instead of a paper ticket, I didn't quite know what to do. The swipe terminal was for transfers only. So I stood on the platform, wondering how to go about this thing, this riding the train. I was off to a job training 45 miles from my home, blearing into the six a.m. sunrise.

This is my favorite kind of mundane adventure, at least these days, even though I can remember it in my body, in the sweat on my brow and the clenching in my chest what it felt like the first time I took public transit alone.

Down underground, a turnstile to one side, and the BART line that ran all the way up Telegraph Avenue beyond. On my side was a machine. Where you got your tickets. Paid your fare. Gained entrance. I walked up to the machine, set into the wall, and the directions swam in front of me.

It wasn't just the directions. There were people behind me. There were people tapping feet. There were people shifting uncomfortably. And I could not read the directions. I could not make them make sense. One more frustrated sigh... it didn't even take that. They knew I had no idea what I was doing. They knew. So I fled.

Back up the stairs, running east (ish), two blocks, before I hunched in the shadow of a high-rise. Back against cool stone in the October air, I slid, shirt dragging, back scratched, until I was crouched safely away from the BART. People walked by. They were looking at the weird girl who had started talking to herself.

Do you know what I said?

"Hey, Story. It's okay. It's okay. First, take as long as you need to get calm," I said aloud to myself. People gave me wide berth.

"First, breathe. Good deep breaths. There. That's it. Now, I want you to know you have permission to be a freaking weirdo. You have permission to not know how to do a thing."

Okay, so far so good. I'd stopped crying, and my chest didn't feel as though it was under an elephant.

"Good. Good. You're breathing again. I want you to stand up, slow or fast as you want to..."

I shot up and brushed myself off.

"... and I want you to walk slowly back to the station."

West it was. I went back down the stairs, and faced the ticketing machine again.

"Take your time. Read all the directions. Don't worry about people behind you."

So I took a good eight minutes to look over the fares, and calculated the exact amount based on the tables given and where I'd hop off. It'd be a long walk from the station up to UC Berkley, and the co-op where my friend lived. But that was in the future. With a steady confidence, I pressed the buttons, and the machine spat out my pass. Then I checked in through the turnstiles. And I was on my way.

Standing on the Tri Rail platform, I thrilled at the flutter of wind as the train pulled up, no idea how to handle my Easy Card. It didn't seem so big a deal. In retrospect, neither did the BART. But this is Story-now looking back on Story-then, and they are not the same person. I am trying to uncover her, this me who was afraid to buy a ticket. She's been all but erased, and I can barely make out her shape when I look back over my shoulder. I want to hug her and tell her that it's all going to be okay, look at how she'll turn out. Maybe I already have.

But for the day at hand, I stepped into the car, and off to work.

Lit Bit Late

2011-12-06T23:08:00.001-05:00

I don't read enough anymore. I hate saying that. It's like something uncomfortably acidic on my tongue. Rather, I don't read enough novels. I keep plugging away at One Hundred Years of Solitude and making little headway, meanwhile I've been popping short fiction like candy. Daily Science Fiction has helped with that, giving me a short story per day. On the days that no fiction arrives in my inbox, I find myself picking up Lem and Le Guin, Bradbury and Chopin. That last just to add variety. One can't live by science fiction alone.

I keep thinking about an article I'd read some years ago in The Atlantic about information overload, snippet distribution of information, and human attention span. There's been a great deal of debate on the topic. While I at times agree with Carr (I think Benedict Andersen's thesis bears on this— how maps, clocks, and newspapers helped allow for the rise of nationalistic thinking, and I know how even a technology such as writing itself can impact the way people think), that something may just well be happening to the way people read, I hadn't noticed this much in my life, until now. Is my fiction consumption pattern altered by the digital age?

The best I can guess is probably, and likely not in the ways that Carr posits. I wonder if my experience really matches Carr's thesis, or if I've just gotten busier. Despite my cramped schedule, I leave vast empty swathes in my day just to collect thoughts, arrange words. I will sit with a single poem for half an hour wringing every sweet drop of juxtaposition from it. These are not the habits of someone who has fundamentally altered their brain to better exist in a world of clips and headlines hanging textless. In fact, I blog about old ideas. I lay out long essays. Is this the mark of someone who can't focus on a single task?

Maybe. When my gmail is open and facebook is up and my cell phone is on, these are hard to do. Every now and again, I shut them off, log out, and read a short story. I like a good long short story. It has cohesion and impact. Anything up to 7,000 words. Sometimes longer. Just what it needs to be.

Am I becoming more distractable? I posted my Lit Bit late. You tell me.

Eulogies: Everything I Wanted to Say

2011-12-01T05:24:00.000-05:00

I do not write this as an offense. I do not write this out of spite. That's not true. I write this out of spite, but not for her. It's spite for a system of glossing over all the bad things, spite because we are encouraged to remember things in black and white: the good old days, the simpler times, the people who hurt us who are now deceased. We never want to say bad things of the dead.

My aunt was nothing so bad as that. She was my aunt. She was human. I wanted to go to her memorial when she died in 2007 and say, "She was a brick-headed ox of a woman. She was a Republican, and she was very good at not listening. I think Rush Limbaugh himself taught her the art of the shout-down." I wanted to say, "She never read fiction, but she read mine, and liked it." I wanted to say, "Once she sent a children's story I wrote off to Scholastic without my knowing in order to get it published. I was both honored and offended that she hadn't asked first." She told my mother I worshipped Satan, even after I, the mysticskeptic, explained to her about goddesses and mythic reinterpretation. She had a hard time learning chess from me. Maybe I was just a bad teacher, but she dutifully wrote down all the ways the pieces moved and their values, and the rules of capturing en passant. I was proud of her. I was proud of her tenacity. She had such tenacity.

She died of a broken heart. When she was young, her first husband drowned. And then, in 1994, a car struck like lightning through a red light, through her husband, my uncle Carl, and rattled her heart in its ribcage. It never recovered. Not with a piece of it dead in the driver's seat.

It's a slow death that takes thirteen years to get you. Scarring in her heart tissue. Not supposed to have wine, but she did. It was cardiac arrest, but I know better. She'd told me how empty all those years were.

I felt like a traitor to my cousins' pain there in the hospital room, but when I had my time with her, I told her, "I know how hard it's been on you. I know your sons want you to stay. You just do what you need to. We'll love you no matter what. Immortality lies on the lips and tongue; I promise I will speak of you."

I keep my promises.

Lit Bit Sundays: Installment the Third, First Poems

2011-11-27T15:01:00.000-05:00

I did not start off liking poetry. In fact, I felt it was one of those things one should like, but never did, so outside of the Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot and Shakespeare and Blake and Dickinson we studied in school, I never really read any except Tennyson, but that was only because I was literary child in other ways, and was rather found of a certain orphaned Canadian red-head that I'd have married if she were real.

Oh sure, I wrote poems. High schooler poems, filled with black souls and depression. The stuff I'd lock in a bank safety deposit box and pretend never existed if I still had any of it... and no, I'm not going to tell you the bank I keep it at.

But something changed when Mrs. Tidwell gave us poetry packets. I hated Mrs. Tidwell. She held class meetings after school hours which I could never attend. She instilled in me my hatred of Cormac McCarthy and his dropped quotations in All the Pretty Horses. And then she had us plow through thick packets of poems.

Now, these were not the poems you'd find in most text books. It was recent stuff, stuff from the 70's and later, and she wanted us to sit and analyze them for symbolism and structure, just like that, one two three go no prep or theory or discussion. After a particularly awful one about Snow White and sin, I turned the packet page and read, "The bonsai tree/ in the attractive pot/ could have grown eighty feet tall..."

I stopped. I held my breath. Those last lines, "the hands you/ love to touch," punched me in the gut.

I turned the packet page again, and was faced with Barbie Doll. I had to set my nose and sop up the blood.

And that's what a poem should do— take liberties with you, abuse its intimacy with you. It should not be kind or quiet, but more like a hard break-up, or a death in the family, or the feel of riding the tilt-a-whirl just a little too fast, uncertain whether they bolted it together right. A good poem should be more than any of these things. A good poem should make you stop short.

And the love of Piercy slowly spread out to the other verse I'd read. I finally felt kin to Dickinson, holding in my bones the knowledge that "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Was there ever a poem like that for you?

The Country Dwellers Make Up a Matriarchy

2011-11-24T05:05:00.000-05:00

I could become very unpopular with other Pagans by saying this, but let's face it, I'm already unpopular with other Pagans. I don't truck with the notion that Wicca/Witchcraft/Neo-Paganisms are ancient. I do not believe that there's an unbroken line from the Paleolithic to modern Witchcraft. And maybe I'm overestimating how many Pagan folk believe the myth of the matriarchy; in my thesis work, skepticism abounded. Material culture: a button reading, "Wicca: Pretending to be an ancient religion since 1957." Credit where it's due.

But I've also encountered Pagans who see what they want to, a hidden tradition, untouched by time, the refuge of the accused, and a feminist bastion to boot. Invented traditions do that, worm their way in, scattering fig leaves over facts. The Scottish tartan is more ancient than the paleolithic paganisms of Margaret Murray. What bothers me is not the existence of the myth, but its application.

See, it gets used as a primacy claim. It gets used as a way to invent a rosy past, in order to create a mythic age people should want to seek return to. It gets used as a way to trump other faiths in a game of "Nyah-nyah, we were first!" It gets used as a way to legitimize a thing which needs not be legitimized. Its existence is justification enough. Remember Hobsbawm? I mention him on occasion. Tell me, who says the ancient is the only authentic? The Neo-Pagan community represents a living tradition here now, and functions as a legitimate system of meaning-making. Isn't that the business of religion? A means of making meaning? A means of forming deep connections?

Further, I take issue with the idea of the golden age of the matriarchy. The idea of ancient global mother-goddess worshipers has been basically debunked, but nowhere does it seem to gain so much traction as in the Pagan community. There is no evidence, first. And second, what good does it do to try to invent a better world based on the structures of an imagined past when we can study here now how people work, and labor toward a better world under observations of actual behavior? Just sayin'. Real observations and work help more than trying to return to make-believe golden ages.

I'll leave respectful fact-ordering to scholars like Ronald Hutton, but I want to point out that every tradition has a beginning. The Catholic Church hasn't always existed, shrouded in such inventions. Even offerings to the Lares started at some point. There is no mythical magical "always been" for any tradition. They were initiated in a moment, and it was the needs of the human psyche which spurred them. When we lack a tool, we make one. Perhaps Paganism is a postmodern answer to a need for ritual. The issue at hand is its "back story" pulled whole-cloth from bad anthropology and wishful thinking. Let's not pretend— we can leave that for LARP games— Neo-Paganism is new. I see that as a strength.

Lit Bit Sundays: Installment the Second, Public Poetry Strikes Again

2011-11-20T02:17:00.000-05:00

I am an imp. I couldn't help myself. I really couldn't. The temptation was too great, and the glee too delicious. I swear, this will become my addiction, and it will be the end of me if I'm not careful. I dropped poems again. At the library and up and down Himmarshee Street. In various hidey-holes and in trees. Around and about well-trafficked places. Dotting un-passed-by landmarks. In the bushes. All on boxes, in boxes, about boxes. Some very tiny origami boxes. All sneaky-like. All brash and in the open.

Pandora would be proud, save for one small nagging detail: she didn't open a box. It was a jar. All these years, we have labored under a mistranslation. But I don't think anyone will mind. Now the question is, knowing Pandora's tale, who would be curious enough to open such gifts? Who will be bold enough to see if the box is really empty after all? Go ahead. See for yourself.

A night well-spent, if I do say so myself.

So now the question is, when to do it again? Or better yet, who wants to join me?

Confessional Poetry

2011-11-17T00:25:00.000-05:00

If you can stand it, I will tell you a story. It isn't a petty story, not a good, not a happy story. I like to be a happy Story. But I will tell it because I am cleaning. Because it feels light to do so. Because I want you to know you're not alone. Because I want to assure myself that I here now am real, to look back and say, "I was real then too," and remember where I've walked. Because it is difficult to remember something so painful that has melted from your bones.

At my worst, I weighed 103 pounds.

My love of birds has nothing to do with their lightness. They are foreign-minded things, hateful little shits, and I only care for the corvids and their rasp-throated cawing, except, except... they all have wings. The sky is theirs, the whole sky in its openness. I am not the whole sky. I can only envy it.

I am a ground-bound thing, and today I can think above, keep my head in the clouds, because at my worst I lay in bed all day, weighing 103 pounds with my ribs at angles with my elbows. There's a certain strength that can come from walking through fire. Can come. It doesn't always. You are not alone if it doesn't get better.

But that's what small towns can do. My bottom of the well came of a situation and not a way of whole-being. It wasn't because my brain just "worked that way," but because on the days I did not work—when I had work, which came later—I did not speak. 24, 36, 48 hours in silence in a houseful of nothing in a nowhere place between Sarasota and Fort Myers.

It wasn't just the loneliness, though I was afraid of that, too. It was that at 28, I had gone nowhere. It was that at 28, I was tied to a boy who wanted nothing but to cut ties with the world and live in the middle of nowhere, a hermit's life, when all I wanted was the buzz thrum bustle of a city at night, diner doors open, laughter in the streets, music wafting from open windows, sewer grates exhaling billows into the January nights, streets slick with wet and cold, worn like a rhinestone belt. And he was my only pillar in that small place, and then he deployed.

At first, it was just food, and food was about value and control. It was about joblessness. See, if I ate less, I could justify my place in a house where I made no money. If I ate less, at least I'd be controlling something, and giving back the pennies I did not consume. Everything else was in free fall, with no friends nearby, no work to be had, student loans above my head, and no creative outlets. If I made myself small, it somehow suited my valuelessness.

It did not end there.

I ate a chocolate. Chocolate is a fraught thing, all those women fussing over its fat. Those with eating problems do not eat chocolates. Thus my justification: see and be seen eating a chocolate, and I am not an anorexic. Even if it was the only thing I ate that day. There were some days when it was the only thing I ate.

It did not end there.

There was understructure.

At my worst, I was alone in the house, no money for gas, a fridge full of slowly molding food I did not want to eat, and nothing driving me forward. So I stayed in bed. At my worst, three days in a row I stayed in bed.

I lay there, not moving, not wanting to move, three days, without eating, and a glass of water undrunk on the headboard shelf. Three days without leaving the room. Three months, three years, three decades in three days, flickering into and out of consciousness.

I woke one time to a small black-furred head nuzzling desperately against my chin.

"Acacia," I said. I tried to say. "I can't move."

But she became more insistent, butting my nose with the top of her skull. I raised my arm for the first time in ages and enveloped her in a hug. She purred against my chest.

Acacia had not had food for two days. "If I die," I rasped, "I won't mind if you eat me." You see, cats will eat their dead owners a full few days before a dog will. I imagined my cats rummaging through the last of their kibble to find it empty, then nipping at my upper arms, tearing small hunks from my torso. It as not an unpleasant thought.

But then I wondered, what would happen after? After all my flesh was gone? What would they eat? My neighbors never checked in. No one called or emailed. It could be weeks before anyone knew. My cats would have nothing to eat...

It was this that made me sink down to the bottom on an exhalation, negatively buoyant. I had stopped feeding my cats. If I was gone, who would care for them? Who would scoop their litter? Who would fill their water bowls? They would die.

So I got up, peeling myself from the mattress in order to pour them some food. There was none. The bag lay tipped over, empty.

In the depths of my delirium, it was such an effort to find my keys. They were a mystery, far gone, an epic object, lost to the ages. And if I found them, I would have to start the car, drive out to the store, watch traffic. Too much effort. Instead, I left through the front door, and set one foot in front of the other, and walked the three miles to the grocery. It was easier than driving, I told myself. It was easier to explain it that way.

So I schlepped twenty pounds of cat food on foot because my depression could find no better way. When I poured it out in their bowls, Millie and Acacia gorged as if they'd never see food again.

After I fed the felines, I poured myself a bowl of cereal. The milk was sour, but I ate half of it anyway. I could only eat half, but I took pride in my accomplishment.

And the days after? I could always look over the edge into the abyss until I moved to Miami. Even here, there are days when it haunts me, yawning wide-mouthed and toothless. Those days are few, but I think of my cats. I think of those I love. It's a candle flame against the night, but at least it's a light. At least it's a light.

To this day, I thank all the creator deities for the presence of black cats, and when one crosses my path, I leave small strips of meat in offering. Perhaps they will leave me my wings. Perhaps they will live another day, purring against a needy breast. But at my worst, I know it did not end there because of small black paws and rumbling ribs. I know that this crow still looks skyward because there is need in dark places.

Lit Bit Sundays: Installment the First

2011-11-13T10:45:00.001-05:00

I've been wanting to write more about writing. Part of this is stems from a healthy dose of self-analysis, but a larger part of this comes of a desire to share my love and passion for words by dissecting them, rolling around in them, and holding up the real gems I've come across. I want to set Sundays aside (it's somebody's day of rest, yeah?) to talk craft, analysis, to workshop, and to recommend good stuff. I want your recommendations, thoughts, and critiques in return. While the rest of the blog is made of tall tales, memoir, and personal essay— all that stuff that gets composted into creative non-fiction— once a week I want to take out my toy trucks and Transformers and play with you. Caveat: I get first dibs on the Xena action figures.

Next week, I want to talk poetry, and people's introductions to it. After that? Well, what do you want to talk about?

For Love of Nothing

2011-11-10T01:12:00.000-05:00

I would like to break your heart. You see, I am a nihilist, and I have managed to romanticize nihilism. It is my greatest comfort: that we are small and assured of our smallness. That we have none of the answers, that we are making it up as we go along. How large is the Atlantic? The Pacific? Now think: how far is it to Jupiter? To Bellatrix? And we matter, somehow? Are you sure? I do not believe in love, unless I am in love with everyone, and darling, dear one, I am in love with everyone. I realized long ago, ever since that fifth-grade play, that the girl with the green streak in her hair has always been the boy who never grew up. I am my own Wendy, asking myself, "Boy, why are you crying?" I already know the answer. My shadow won't stick. None of ours will, casting long looks into an empty future, and finding patterns that aren't really there. But they're really pretty. Peter knew it, too. Death is an awfully big adventure, he said, and I tell you we are dying every day. Will you come adventuring with me? It's all right. You can say no, for now.