Blogorrhea Junior

Reading Under Cover

If you're a lifelong reader like I am, you remember sneaking books after the lights were supposed to be out, reading under the covers with a flashlight because the book was just too absorbing to put down. That image popped into my mind today when I read the following letter to the editor, except that it puts a whole new spin on the activity.

Reading (Shh!) in Tehran

November 30, 2004

To the Editor:

Re "Iran's Lonely Crowd," by Farouz Farzami (Op-Ed, Nov. 27):

I left Iran 18 years ago, when I was 18. As a 14-year-old
who was obsessed with political theory, Voltaire and Thomas Paine, and disgusted with my countrymen's illusions of establishing a "democratic theocracy" (an oxymoron, if there ever was one), I, too, had an experience with a banned book.

I wanted desperately to read a book that was heavily critical of the prophet, fundamentalist Islam and the ayatollahs. This book  was declared blasphemous by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and one could be condemned for being a heretic and get the death  penalty for possessing it. I was too afraid to keep it in our house, so I came up with the ingenious idea of tearing off the covers, reading it in a public park in Tehran and then burying it at a certain spot until I was finished reading it.

I did finish the book, but that experience, and the fear that it inspired in me in those lonely afternoons in a park in Tehran, will always stay in my mind to remind me of the utter importance of the separation of church and state, which ironically the current administration of my adopted country is determined to weaken.

Mehran Seyed
Reseda, Calif., Nov. 27, 2004

I remember, too, sneaking books that I probably shouldn't have been reading at the time, but I don't think it merited much more than a suggestion that whatever I was reading might be "too old for me." Certainly not execution by the state. Imagine being under threat of death for reading Fahrenheit 9/11—or Fahrenheit 451, for that matter. The latter's a nice bit of irony, I might add. For those of you who don't know the book (which Michael Moore is alluding to in his own title), it's about government-mandated burning of books. Every book.

First the FBI wants to know what you're reading, then they take it away from you.

Why I love New York

#1 in an Occasional Series—Do the Hustle

I came home from DC last night after spending five blissfully slothful days with Jen over Thanksgiving weekend. She lives in a fairly quiet neighborhood that's up and coming, at the back of a building set back from the street. I had a great time, slept late, cooked, ate, yakked, finally met her friend Carlos, but hardly left the house, which was fine with me. It took 5 minutes to get from Jen's house to Union Station, then another 10 minutes to get around the traffic circle to the drop off point in front of it. Inside the station, all the chain stores were open and everyone was lining up in nice tidy lines to get on the train.

While it's true that visitors scuttle into New York like rats, coming through the underground gloominess of Penn Station, there's something terribly fake about Union Station. I used to really like it, before Grand Central was renovated in a similar way that still somehow preserved its grittiness. Now Penn Station just looks like a suburban mall with pretensions.

The train on the way back wasn't even that crowded, surprisingly, or at least it didn't feel like it until we got off and filed up the escalator at Penn Station around 10 pm. That took a good ten minutes all by itself. I think we were all too tired to do anything but file up the escalator without grumbling. No stampedes like there usually are. We came in way at the back of the platform, and I wonder how long those things really are? There was at least one train parked ahead of ours, the Acela that had preceded us, and it felt like we were walking from at least 9th Avenue, which gives you some idea of how vast the train yards are beneath the city.

Upstairs, on the LIRR/NJ Transit concourse, all the greasy cheesy delis were closed, with gates over their entrances. National Guardsmen stood around in their cammo, eyeballing travelers. Near the turnstiles to the 1/2/3/9, one of the Music Under New York performers was playing jazz harmonica.

At around 10:15, I caught the number 9 up to Times Square to catch the Shuttle to the 6 and came up the stairs from the platform into a virtual circus: The guy with the found percussion set was banging away at his junk (literally junk, too: it's just a collection of crap he's found on the street, from old 5-gallon paint drums to garbage can lids) in a hot, hopping rhythm. He's one of the first street musicians I encountered in my first year here, almost 20 years ago. Some group had set up a couple of tables to give people stress tests and about a half dozen people were lined up waiting or watching or having theirs explained to them. A woman was sitting in a fold-up canvas chair and sketching people on the platforms. Folks were to-ing and fro-ing with luggage, coming back from their holiday weekends. The trains were packed. It could have been the middle of the day. And it all made me smile, all the hustle and activity, all the movement and energy at that time of night. It wasn't near anybody's bedtime, despite the fact that we were all going to work tomorrow.

Busted!

I don't know whether to laugh or wince at this one, since it is, after all, the state I grew up in. These are also the people who wanted to prosecute Michael Moore for influencing voters by handing out 3-packs of underwear to bribe slackerboys to vote. This tidbit of absurdity is from Moira Allen's Writing World newsletter.

Librarians want jail time for overdue book offenders
----------------------------------------------------
Bay City, Michigan Library System Director Frederick Paffhausen is asking the county library board for permission to seek arrest warrants for offenders who ignore overdue notices. According to Paffhausen, one patron owes $1,190 for 73 items overdue for more than a year and patrons keep an average of $25,000 in overdue materials out of the system each year. Librarians want the worst offenders to face charges and up to 90 days behind bars. The board plans to consider the idea.

On the other hand, $1200 is a lot of overdueness. And nothing is more annoying than waiting for a book and having some jerk hang onto it. I say this having been an offender myself, which is why I don't borrow books from the library anymore. I can't even get the DVDs back to the rental store on time. Netflicks was made for idiots like me. But at least I have the courtesy not to borrow books and I've virtually given up on the DVDs for now.

Garnishing overdue offenders' wages might be smarter, though. Hardly anything makes people move it like losing money from their paycheck, even threat of jail, and it'd be way cheaper in the long run. I wouldn't particularly want my tax dollars spent on prosecuting petty crime like this. The courts have enough to do.

It also, I have to say, smacks a bit of Big Brother. Jail time for overdue books? It's like getting caned in Singapore for spitting out your gum on the sidewalk. Somewhat draconian, especially considering the state of most jails. Can you imagine that first conversation with your cellmate? It'd be like something out of Alice's Restaurant. Not to mention how humiliated the cops would be for busting you, unless you got some self-righteous Javert type. Just imagine: Book cops. Seems to me this would have a kind of chilling effect on using the library, which is the last thing anybody wants, except the FBI, who'd like to know what you're reading. Now there's some incentive to get your books back on time.

Split Personality

I have a new blog: The Perfidy Report.

No, one wasn't enough, apparently. Nor was occasionally blogging on Ron & Roger's blog. Like voters in this country, I am deeply divided. I started blogging because I was so mad about the war in Afghanistan, then continued on because I was even madder about the war in Iraq, not to mention the slow disappearance of my right to free speech and the creeping religious persecution of Muslims, which is bad for everybody who's not a mainstream Christian. It's all been very distracting and keeping me at a roiling boil for the last couple of years.

It's also kept me, in some ways, from what I really should be doing, which is writing fiction and poetry. I can't complain too much, because I've gotten the germs of some good essays out of my ranting, pieces which I am even now whipping into shape with my writing group. But, you know, I'm really not a political commentator by nature, and I don't particularly want to be one, though I am enjoying learning to write essays. I'm just a ranter with strong opinions when it comes to current affairs.

So I decided enough was enough. As part of the retooling I've been doing for the last year, I'm re-purposing (eeek! What a horrible bit of bizspeak that is. See how working in marketing is corrupting me?) this blog. I've decided I want it to be more about writing and art and life than it's been, and books in particular. That doesn't mean I'm not going to rant at all here; that's just not possible. I'll just be ranting about topics related more to writing, books, literature, publishing, language, and the workings of everyday life. I'll probably be writing about some of my artist's book projects as well, and dropping hints about upcoming shows I'll be doing with Marcia next year, much like I'd planned to do over on the now-defunct Long Meg Press Production Blog.

In the meanwhile, over on The Perfidy Report, I hope I won't be the only one blogging there. I've sent out a few invitations, but if you're interested in contributing on a regular or semi-regular basis (whenever, really), drop me a note and I'll add you to the author's list. I'd like it to be sort of a clearinghouse of outrage. I don't think I'll be doing extended essays there, but I'm certainly going to post about topics I think are indicative of particularly egregious behavior in Washington and elsewhere. I've also rearranged some of the typelists and links formerly available here to be associated The Perfidy Report instead. So if you're missing one of your favorite links, look over there for it.

Jump right in. The water's, uh, fine.

Self Disclosure

List Mania

I have a weakness for these things. So much so that I compiled, a while back, a combination of all of the surveys of this type that I'd ever received. This, unfortunately, is a brand new one, sent to me by Jen. Feel free to copy and paste and pass around to annoy your friends.

Welcome to the Autumn 2004 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy (not forward) this entire email and paste it onto a new email that you'll send. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send this to a whole bunch of people, including the person who sent it to you. You will learn a lot about your friends, if you did not know them already!

1. What time do you get up?

As late as I can manage it. Work, unfortunately, interferes with my preferred sleep patterns.

2. If you could eat lunch with one person (alive or deceased), who would it be?

I used to say Virginia Woolf, but she was such a snob. Better yet, I’d like George Bush to have lunch in Falluja with an Iraqi family, right now, with the assault going on.

3. Gold or silver?

Silver’s good. Gold’s overrated, though I do like the colored varieties.

4. What was the last film you saw in a theater and with whom?

Eeek. Can’t think when I last went to the movies. I think it was the "Bourne Supremacy" with Emily. She likes Matt Damon; I like stupid action movies.

5.What is you favorite tv show?

TV? Oh that big stupid box with the pictures on it?

6. What did you have for breakfast?

A cranberry orange muffin and a mug of tea. No health food here.

7. Who would you hate to be stuck in a room with?

"George W. Bush or any of his cronies," sez Jen. Hear, hear. Unless I could keep them captive and knock some sense into them. That might take more than my lifetime, however. The next worse thing would be another "Star Wars" Geek.

8. What or who inspires you?

Avoidance of shame and other base emotions. That’s what motivates most people if they’re not kicked in the head by artistic inspiration. As asked, this is an unanswerable question. Inspires me to do what?

9. Beach, city or country?

Oooo, tough one. I love urban life, but I need to know there’ beach somewhere near, even if I don’t go to it. And it needs to be either ocean or Great Lakes beach. Real beach, not just water.

10. Favorite ice cream?

Phish Food, hands down. God bless Ben & Jerry.

11. Butter, plain or salted popcorn??

Not much point in eating popcorn if it’ not slathered in butter and sprinkled with Lawrey’s Seasoned Salt.

12. Favorite color?

Cobalt blue.

13. What kind of car do you drive?

No car, no bike, no wheels at all. If I did drive, and money were no object, I’d have a Maserati. Otherwise, probably a hybrid. Are they going to make Mustang hybrids?

14. favorite sandwich?

Grilled cheese BLT. Hedonistic.

15. What characteristic(s) do you despise?

"Pet peeve of the day is willful ignorance. Other chronic bugbears: hypocrisy, intolerance, self-righteousness, self-pity, and of course, any kind of controlling behavior. Delusions of grandeur are irritating but can also be very funny, depending on context," sez Jen. I can’t think of anything to add.

16. Favorite flower?

The lowly oxeye daisy.

17. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation with where would you go?

"Hmmm. Thailand or Vietnam would be nice. Also Morocco," sez Jen. This is why we are friends, although I would not spend my money in Thailand until they stop pandering to sickos who like to have sex with children. Also on the list: Venice and Barcelona. Coming up: Kyoto.

18. What color is your is your bathroom?

Green tile, white walls soon to have a metallic gold wash.

19. Favorite clothes store?

J. Jill. I’ve begun living in their clothes. They’re the only people I know who actually have petite clothes in my size that are the right length. Two inches shorter than normal size is not petite, folks.

20. Where would you retire?

At this point, it’s really more like where do you want to be an expat? I probably won’t "retire" per se either. I don’t think I want to stay in the states for my old age though, and New York is too expensive and hard to grow old in. Barcelona, maybe? Dublin?

21. What is you favorite day of the week?

Any day I don’t have to go work for somebody else. Phooey.

22. what did you on your last birthday?

Was taken out to lunch by a couple of pals.

23. Where were you born?

West Point, NY (yes, at the academy. My ass has "army surplus" stamped on it.)

24. When is your birthday?

None of your business. Next you'll want my Social Security number. Cranky? Me?

25. what is your favorite sport to watch?

Hockey. Go Penguins! Go Redwings!

26. Who do you least expect to send this back to you?

Highfield, who’s too damn busy.

27. Person you expect to send you this back first?

All my friends are too damn busy.

28. What fabric detergent do you use?

I don’t do my own laundry. I pay nice Chinese ladies to do it for me. I haven’t done my own laundry in 18 years. Ya gotta love New York.

29. Coke or Pepsi?

Cherry Coke, once in a blue moon. Otherwise, I’m staring at the ceiling all night.

30. Are you a morning person or night owl?

Sadly, the older I get, the earlier I tend to go to bed and get up. This sucks, because everyone knows that all the really cool stuff happens at night. Only work happens in the morning.

31. What shoe size?

7

32. Do you have any pets?

Alas, no cats anymore. I am in a pet-discriminatory building now. I may have to get some fish.

33. Who sent this to you?

Jennie Jennie, my evil twin.

Zoom! Whee!

And now for something totally inappropriate.

From my friend Michelle, a long, loopy, complicated and cool flash animation. Well worth the wait even if you have dial-up. Fans of Dali and Escher will dig it. Don't eat the brown acid.

Requiem

I heard a loud voice from the throne say: "Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.

-Revelation 21:3-4

Just heard from Mom that my cousin Ginny, who's also a JW, died today. I'm not surprised, but I'm sad, mostly for her family and for Mom, who was close to her. I'm glad that she didn't suffer for long. I know bone cancer can be incredibly painful, and she'd had enough pain already. I wonder what Sonny's going to do without her? They've been married such a long time and just adored each other. I know he's in a good congregation and I'm sure they'll all be looking out for him, so that's some comfort.

And I wonder if my long-lost, black sheep, second cousin Keith will show up for his mother's funeral or memorial service or whatever they're going to have.

Ginny was a wonderful cook and baker, and she did beautiful crocheting. She and Mom have swapped loads of painted china and crocheted stuff over the years. Mostly what I loved about Ginny was her laugh and her delight in life. She was almost always amused by life, and one of those people who were cheerful even in adversity. It's not a bad quality to cultivate. I'm sorry she's gone, but I'm glad she's not suffering. I hope she went peacefully and easily. And I hope I'll see her again sometime.

I have hope toward God. . .  that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.

-Acts 24:15

No Rest for the Wicked

So I'm home today, obviously, stirring up trouble. I think I'm fighting off a cold, which is making me cranky. The last two nights after work I've been heading up to a cafe or restaurant (Star*uck's the first night, the wonderful Ennju last night) to edit a chapter of my long-lost novel. It's so much easier to do on paper, for some reason. I get a pen in my hand and it's like a scythe: there goes that extraneous word, that superfluous paragraph, swish! Of course, having this much distance from the original effort helps. After a couple of years, I'm not so enamored of my own prose as I was. Or, as Jen says, from the throes of editing her own book, "Why did I write so goddamn many words?" Out! Out damned words! By contrast, when I try to edit on line, I wind up just tinkering and adding stuff. I think when I sit down with paper in front of me it's more the teacher correcting papers than the writer, except I'm much harsher with myself than I ever was with my students. I like the process though. I've always liked editing and revising, though I have to admit that I'm over it with this book. I just want to get it out the door, or get on to the next one, or something. Sheesh.

Me in editing mode:

Rule, Britannia!

QEI

A little history note from Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," as hosted by Powells:

It was on this day [November 17] in 1558 that Queen Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne upon the death of her sister, Queen Mary. She reigned for 45 years, one of the great eras in English history. Near the end of her reign, she said to her subjects: "Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves."

Despite the dark events of war and religious murders, Elizabeth's reign is best remembered for extraordinary achievements. She believed it was her divine mission to lead England, and under her direction, the country became strong and unified. Commerce and industry prospered. The queen herself was an expert musician and her court was the cultural center of its day. Some of the great writers in English literature — Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare — appeared during her reign. Spenser's masterpiece, The Faerie Queen (1596) is even dedicated to her.

Gloriana, like most rulers of her time, felt herself appointed by God and not the democratic mob, who nonetheless loved her. Her country had recently broken with Catholicism and religious sects were cropping up like mushrooms after a rain, so religion was what we would call "an issue" during her reign too. Tied up as it was with the legitimacy of political power, Elizabeth had no qualms about enforcing her views, even if it involved execution. Neither did her sister, Bloody Mary. Heretics were heretics, as well as a threat to her throne.

And yet, without tongue in cheek, Elizabeth could rightfully say at the end of her reign that England had prospered, because she had cared for it:

I have ever used to set the Last Judgement Day before mine eyes and so to rule as I shall be judged to answer before a higher judge, and now if my kingly bounties have been abused and my grants turned to the hurt of my people contrary to my will and meaning, and if any in authority under me have neglected or perverted what I have committed to them, I hope God will not lay their culps and offenses in my charge. I know the title of a King is a glorious title, but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding, but that we well know and remember that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the great judge. To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it. [emphasis added] For myself I was never so much enticed with the glorious name of a King or royal authority of a Queen as delighted that God hath made me his instrument to maintain his truth and glory and to defend his kingdom as I said from peril, dishonour, tyranny and oppression. There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety than myself. For it is my desire to live nor reign no longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have, any that will be more careful and loving.

QEII

And from Oxymoron.org, which is also keeping track of the hanky panky of Diebold-collected election results, an old joke, from 2000 (date of the first coup):

From Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In the light of your failure to elect a proper President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.  Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.  Except Utah, which she does not fancy.  Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.  A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

King George

And now, news of a possible second coup, and George Bush's "mandate." Remember that the electoral college doesn't vote until December 13.

Reinventing Myself

Or, The Road to Hell, With Pot Holes

I had every good intention of using this weekend to write, and I have, sort of. I got another blog post up yesterday, not only here but in Roger's blog, but that's not what I'd intended to do. You see, I've got one novel I desperately need to edit for what I hope will be the last time before I send it out to make the rounds again. I've got a series of stories for a zine I need to finish before my fans totally lose interest or think I've died. I've got a second novel in my head, and a story from the third novel that I'd like to finish and send out. I've got a couple of topics I'd like to blog about too, in a serious way that would lead to a couple of essays.

So what's stopping me?

• I could call it writer's block, but I think that's a cop-out. 
• I could say I'm uninspired, but real writing goes on whether your muse screams in your ear or not.
• I could say I've had all the life sucked out of me by the stress of my job, but that's too easy an excuse. Other people work and write at the same time.
• I could say that it's been a hell of a year emotionally, but when isn't it a hell of a year anymore, in some way. Life isn't perfect.
• I could say that I've been busy moving and fixing up my new place, but there's always something around the house to do, if you look hard enough.

And yet, all of these things are true. There are a million and one excuses not to write. And writing is one of those things that that, as Yoda says, you either do or do not; there is no try. You write or you don't.

My work pal Jennifer DeMerrit (whose last name, God help me, I can never spell correctly), flogs herself into writing pretty consistently by signing up for repeated doses of Tori Rowan's TK workshops. A lot of other people I know cobble together or pay to attend writers' groups both formal and informal. I've never had much success with these except in graduate school, probably in part because I haven't found people who do the same kind of quirky writing that I do. The feedback I get is rarely very useful because nobody's ever sure of what to do with magical realism or urban fantasy unless they read a lot of it, and none of my previous writing group members did.

I also shy away from writers' groups because, fundamentally, I think writing is a solitary experience, not a group activity. I find myself too easily influenced by other people's voices and word choices when I'm working with others, and for some of the things I write, that can be disastrous. When you're juggling five different voices over the course of a long book, they have to be consistently different. Diction, word choice, sentence length—all those things will vary from voice to voice to make an individual. Too much outside editing will destroy that delicate balance.

Also, when I'm working with other people, I find I come to rely on them as an excuse or a reason to do or not do. Roz and Eva and I have been trying to get a writers' group going all summer. Roz, bless her, is hard at work reorganizing and recreating herself; Eva works in publishing full time, and both live in tiny railroad apartments in the East Village. There isn't much room to write. That's a problem we discussed last week. It sounds like an excuse and it can be, but I've been there too. You've got to have a space to work in, even if it's only your kitchen table. For Eva, who sits at a computer all day, it's hard to come home and force herself to write on one. Their discouragement and distraction becomes frustration for me, though it's not their fault that I put off working all summer.

Originally, I'd planned to work with them on editing my novel, getting them to help me cut it down to a manageable size, but I don't think that's going to work. I'm too afraid of losing the voices. Then I decided I'd take in my essays that I've gleaned from this blog and work on those. While I think that's a sensible choice, we still haven't had anything but preliminary meetings, and I'm the only one doing any writing at the moment. Roz, who teaches writing both at a Jesuit college in Jersey and for the Barnes and Noble on Sixth Ave., suggested we do some writing exercises instead.

I'm at a level of skill in my writing where I don't need to do exercises to loosen up. I found them useful when I was just getting back into writing after a long drought (and I'm eternally grateful to Natalie Goldberg for the best of them), but now they only distract me. The time for exercises is past. I write almost every day in this blog, so I think my fingers and brain and the connection between them are pretty well oiled. What I like and need now are long stretches of time to sit and gnaw at a story—something I haven't had the luxury of in a long time. When I'm writing, there's a lot of sitting and staring stupidly, either at what I've just written, the blank space where I should have written something, or out the window somewhere while my brain grinds along like the mills of God. I do this pretty well at home, usually, but lately I've been too distracted by this damn blog.

In some ways, it's been a really good thing: I've gleaned at least a half dozen essays from it that I think can be worked into good non-fiction pieces I might sell. It's also, as I said, kept the wheels greased. I've churned out a lot of writing in the past three years that I've had a blog, and I think I'm well on my way to finding my non-fiction voice as a result. It's been great, too, to have some sort of journal again, where I can mull things over and chew over ideas and random bits of philosophical detritus that float into my head. I used to keep a journal religiously until I moved to New York, then I stopped. I don't know whether I got too overwhelmed by stimuli, or was just too busy soaking it all up, but it's only in the last three years that I've started writing journal-like material again, and I have 9/11 to thank for that.

As a result, a lot of what I've been writing has been about politics, war, and religion. I think it's time to give that up now. I'm not a particularly political animal since I don't for a New York minute believe in the process; most of what has been motivating me is a sense of outrage at the disregard for human rights and complete lack of compassion evident in the current regime, as well as George Bush's personal religious hypocrisy and his scary messianic complex. We're in for another four years of all those things, apparently, and I've decided I'm not going to continue to let it suck the life and creativity out of me. I've still got a few topics to weigh in on, but the focus of this blog and the rest of my writing is going to change.

Writing is a solitary occupation in another way, as well. It's isolating, as my pal Jen Ouellette has discovered in fulfilling her first book contract (Go Jen!). A couple of years ago, there was an article somewhere about the two kinds of writers one sees nowadays: writers who write, whom you don't see; and writers who are always in the public eye, who don't write. Over the past five years or so, I've given time to people who wanted or needed a lot of it (people who, incidentally, consider me a bit of a hermit, which I can be, admittedly) and that's taken away from my writing time. When I wrote the first draft of my novel, I pretty much told my friends that I was going to be unavailable for social activities, and I was. It was just me and my keyboard for about nine months. It helped that I was largely unemployed at the time, but had I been employed, it might have been worse. I'd be doing what I have the impulse to do now: coming home from work, shutting off the phone, and writing.

There's a solitary ecstasy in really working on a big writing project, six or eight or ten hours a day. It's what psychologists call peak or flow experiences, when you lose yourself in the work and time becomes irrelevant and relative. A whole day goes by and you've forgotten to eat, forgotten you could even get hungry when you had just this sentence, this paragraph, this page, this chapter to finish. This happens day after day, for weeks or sometimes months and one day it's done and you emerge blinking into the sunlight like a little mole coming up out of hibernation into spring sunlight, giddy and a little wan.

I miss that.

I've also been giving a lot of my time to book projects I thought I was working on with partners. I've immersed myself in the worlds of publishing, editing, and book distribution, as well as book arts. I've been cutting and gluing and drilling and sending out information packets. I learned HTML and built web sites. Turns out I was mostly in that alone, except for Marcia. So I've been trying, over the past year of settling into my new place, to wrench my life back into some shape that will let me focus on my fiction writing again. Marcia and I are still planning book projects together, perhaps even versions of the ones I'd hope to do through Long Meg. But both of us have our own art to do as well, and the work on the projects will be shared work.

What I seem to be doing here is serving notice: Listen up pals. I'm writing again. Don't expect to see or hear too much of me.

And not just notice to my friends, either, but to myself. I used to keep this wonderful quote by Deena Metzger on the bulletin board in my old office in Brooklyn. I've lost it now, and the book is still packed somewhere, but it was something to the effect of coming to the writing space as though we were coming to an altar to perform a sacred act, making sure it was a clean, well-lighted space, a room of one's own, with no angels in the house. I'm getting my house in order, literally and figuratively. I'm sitting down to write.