All of this "coping," all of this "getting by," all of this "day by day" has turned me towards writing poetry. One of my open secrets is that I wrote poetry for many years, most of it lost now. The way that scraps of thought could be fixed by a poem was very soothing to me. I am soothed again by that now. Well, perhaps soothed is the wrong word, marginally satisfied is probably better. I can pin down the small truths and then let them rest.

I keep starting essays about grief and end up with poems. Maybe it is the sudden lack of perspective I am suffering from, but a poem seems like an option now in a way that it hasn't in a long while. I don't know how I feel about this except that any writing is better than none.

<<<>>>

Does what you write, or how you write it, change when your circumstances change? How?

Goodbye, friend

Today I am heading down to Philadelphia to my great friend Sally's wake. I will be witnessing the sorrow of my two friends, Jenn and Greg, her children, as well as the many other people who loved her and relied on her.

My own sorrow is furtive and strange. I am in shock--I don't believe that she is gone, but I know that it is true. I fear that I won't be able to support my friends in their grief because of the power of my own. I am afraid that I will become furtive and strange, myself. I am afraid of life without her.

Sally had much to teach someone 40 years her junior about life, but one of the things that made her special is that she also was always ready to learn something about it, too. As you can see from the photo below, she was always up to help out with a project, especially if it meant trying something new. That is what I will keep with with as I try to create a lesson out out a tragedy.

Photo by Jennifer Shahade

Dr. Sally Solomon 

1940-2013

lounging with giacco

So, I felt like a sack of pain today so I hung with Giacco and worked & read.

Starting in on Y.T Yost's new food-themed anthology and George Saunder's new story collection Tenth of December, I am struck with how much I love short stories. Drop me in a world, make me believe it and I will be yours.

[Giacco was rescued by Sugar Mutts. Here is his page, check it out!]

more bad, good dog

One of the most distressing things about grief for me is its tenacity. It just comes and comes, never forgetting for more than a few moments. When you are a person with depression, this doggedness can turn great sadness into a feeling of sickness or even, in my case, a sense of being trapped in a nightmare. The depression augments the grief like diarrhea atop a shit sandwich. More bad.

I've been eating a shit sandwich for several months. But these days, unlike in the past, I have a persistent, inconvenient, desire to stick around on this planet. So the question became: How to keep on keeping, etc. AND smile every once and awhile?

I started looking at adoptable dogs on petfinder a few months ago to distract from my dad's tidal wave of a diagnosis. It was calming, and free and sane. Fast forward to B & I checking out an adoption event and then emailing a few choice petfinder folks. Only one rescuer responded, but the dog we were looking at got adopted. However, there was a new dog that she wanted to get out of the shelter ASAP. Enter Giacco (jee-ah-koh), foster dog extraordinaire:

Giacco is 50 lbs. of puppyish fun with some learning to do. He is getting adjusted to tryharderland and is always ready for some quiet reading time. We are not sure about the long-term feasibility of having a dog, but getting to know him has been a jolt of love and difference that my brain needed.
[Giacco was rescued by Sugar Mutts. Here is his page, check it out!]

Regional Relationships 3: Yock Yok by Feresteh Toosi & Neil Brideau

After too many days, I hit up my PO Box and found this package from Regional Relationships, a Chicago-based outfit that investigates the idea of "regional."

This third installment of the series is by artist Feresteh Toosi and cartoonist Neil Brideau. It includes a comic, dishtowel and audio interview on CD.

The project explores Yock, a noodle dish that goes by many names, including "old sober."  The comic takes the reader through the many legends about the tomatoey noodles through interviews, tall tales and even some true crime. The last line in the comic is "It's old food, and broke people eat it! Go eat some!" But there is no recipe. It is cute, thanks to Brideau's art style, but slight, and left me wanting more.

The dish towel was my favorite element. With its combination of utility and fantastic elements— it places the geographical area where yok exists in a mythical context—makes it an interesting and enduring item that will remind you of what you learned every time you use it. I especially like Brideau's sea monsters.

The presentation of the CD led me to I expect much more from the interview than a less-than-five-minute chat with a friend of the artists who makes a vegan yock and appears in the last two panels of the comic. It feels tacked on to the project and actually takes something away from the exploration.



I am not sure how this project fits in to the rest of the project but I'd like to find out. Subscriptions are pricey, but there is a budget option for $30/year.

Baby Geisha by Trinie Dalton

What better surprise from a trip to L.A. could there be than a Trinie Dalton reading at Family Bookstore. I already talked about that here, back when it actually happened. I recommended this book to Prickly Pete by saying that they were perfect stories for his trip to the city: short, full of vice and sweetness. Since he hasn't didn't return it until now, I'd like to believe that the rec went right.

Dalton's work crackles with desert heat with bursts of wildflower color. It is utterly surprising without cheating her characters of depth or realness. She captures what is sneaky and interesting about Southern California: bad-drug haze, almost petulant natural beauty, burnout wisdom and the fringes of society and sanity.  

"'Is that a mushroom cult?' people whispered as I fluffed up kale bundles." (Escape Mushroom Style)

Journeys and their place in personal reinvention, or perhaps, redemption, are a running theme in the collection. Whether it is to a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, hot for a Pulitzer (Pura Vida) or a three-dollar-a-night campsite in the Ozarks (Wet Look),these characters are trying to run towards their better selves and mostly failing.

Baby Geisha is about half stories and half monologue—The Sad Drag Monologues to be exact. I preferred the stories, especially The Perverted Hobo, Wet Look and Jackpot (II), because they are denser and more of a much-need, imagery-laden, punch to the brain, but enjoyed the rhythm of the monologues. From Small Time Spender, in reference to free enlightenment in the age of "austerity":

"The all-loving, all-embracing wise universe: the Jewel Tree Meditation is free... Enlightenment awaits us, in the form of Stevie Wonder. He's living with his hot wife in Detroit. Time to write a fan letter."

Boom Boom Boom. Loved it.

2012 reads

Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and the Sublime from Tin House edited by Rob Spillman

Blood Child and other stories by Octavia E. Butler

Nurse Nurse by Katie Skelly

The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

Forecast by Shya Scanlon

Significant Objects edited by Joshua Glenn & Rob Walker

Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee

Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen

Anna & Eva by Jennifer Daydreamer

Oliver by Jennifer Daydreamer

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint

Chester 5000 by Jess Fink

Radio Iris by Anne-Marie Kinney

Torch by Cheryl Strayed

Firebirds Rising edited by Sharyn November

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Better With You Here by Gwendolyn Zepeda

How to Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

Three Messages and A Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Only Skin by Sean Ford

kus 11: Artventurous

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer

In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard

Girl, Reading by Katie Ward

kus 10: Sea Stories

Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel

Kiss & Tell by MariNaomi

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

Deathless by Cathrynne M. Valente

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

The Accidental by Ali Smith

Baby Geisha by Trinie Dalton

kus 9

Embassytown by China Mieville

Tell It Slant by Beth Follett

Kraken by China Mieville

Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia

So many good things about bad things

It has been an amazing few months in essay. All of these transported me to a questioning place, guided me through an emotional minefield or somehow blew me a kiss. Please leave your recent favorite essays in the comments.

Nina Simone's Gun by Saeed Jones at LAMBDA Literary
"She went into the garage. When her husband, Andy, came home a few hours later, he found her sitting on the floor with a mess of tools spread out in front of her. Nina Simone was trying to build a hand-made gun."

What Music? by Brian Allen Carr at The Rumpus
"He had been out drinking with strangers—at least, that’s what the detective told us. The last words we know he said were, “Good night, new friends."

New Romance: A Practicum for the Living by Nadine Friedman at The Hairpin
"And because subconsciously I didn't want to love anyone, ever, I asked my new boyfriend to come, presenting it somewhat like a day trip to an upstate winery."

Go, Go, Go, Go, Go: Theo Ellsworth's The Understanding Monster by Martyn Pedler at Bookslut. "Time is the only thing that'll help? Then why are clocks ticking and suns setting and seasons changing with an almost sarcastic speed and everything feels worse and worse?"

The Uneasy Relationship Between Mental Illness and Comedy by Jaime Lutz at Splitsider
"Plenty of vulnerable people are drawn to, say, Scientology; why wouldn’t some of them instead be drawn to the equally expensive cult that is the Upright Citizens Brigade?"

31 DRAWINGS THAT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH BEING IN LOVE AND NOT BEING IN LOVE by Eleanor Davis

It is no secret that I love Eleanor Davis. When I discovered that she'd be making a mini of her pieces for the most recent Giant Robot Post-It show I felt the gimme-gimmes overtake me.

I rarely allow myself to submit to such clammy passions, but it seemed a win-win situation. Sure the black of the stapled spine is already creasing away and there are a few unexpected blank pages, but considering that a pencil drawing of baby by Davis was included--like a best and most unexpected autograph--this $5 treat is all-ok with me.

Davis' usual botanical flourishes are a lush and almost furtive presence in these small, black and white drawings. It is almost as if the branches, leaves, flowers and berries want to distract the viewer from the things that the human figures are doing to one another, or sometimes the things that they refuse to do.
 

Some drawings are subtly heartbreaking >>>
Some are so sweet that you let out a breathe that you didn't know that you were holding in >>>

One of the things that draws me again and again to Davis' work is the way pain and hope are entwined in even her simplest images. You can feel the struggle to find answers to why we should persist. She often focuses on sex, love and the body and, unsurprisingly, all of those themes are present in 31 DRAWINGS THAT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH BEING IN LOVE AND NOT BEING IN LOVE. Sometimes, especially in her sketchbook work, anger or disgust with, well, human beings, comes through first, but instead of feeling like a reminder of horrors, there is an interrogation of relationships that challenges and inspires me.

Checked my P.O. this week and found stuff in there from October. Then I had to wait in line for 20 minutes to find out that that they had sent some of my mail back. I spent so much time in that post office that I forgot how much I love mail. That place has an evil power!

VVVVVV

If you've been checking the sidebar at all you can see that I've been pouring books down my gullet like a starving sea bird. Almost all have been good, all have have fantastic elements. Reading still has that dislocating power for me--a fact that I become more grateful for as the tragedies pile up. Short stories work well for the subway, novels for the train and while in my parents' house, and comics for all the times in between.

What have been your security blanket books?

VVVVVV

Felt a strong connection to the Norwegian people after hearing this from Julia Grønnevet's recent essay in n+1, "Letters from Oslo:"

"Almost everyone owns a washing machine, but no one owns a dryer! Instead everyone dries their clothes on flimsy drying racks, and this takes so long that these racks are out on display all the time, even though they are constructed so that you can fold them away. it mystifies me why Norwegians, who tend to arrange their lives for maximum convenience, treat laundry as though it were a passing issue. It looks terrible..."

The essay is actually about a mass-murderer, and it is very disturbing. A reminder that life and laundry persist even as monsters exist.

If you or someone you know had photos damaged by hurricane Sandy, CARE (Cherished Albums Restoration Effort) will digitally restore them for free.They are also looking for volunteers, so if you are a Photoshop wizard, look them up and use your powers for good.


Okay? Okay.

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

I had an imaginary friend. Her name was Cousin Jane and she lived in the sewer. I could call her on the fire hydrant that was the same color as her hair. I don't know where she came from or when she left, but I know that I never saw her--I simply knew what she looked like. She was my cousin, you know?

The Icarus Girl is about an unpopular, sickly, and somewhat sad girl named Jessamy, or "Jess," who lives in London with her Anglo dad and Nigerian mom. The book plays with permutations of cleaving and doubling: Jess's "mixed" parentage and the division of her life between sickness and health are two of the more subtle examples of that. The more central doubling occurs when Jess and family go to Nigeria for a month. Jess feels better with all the aunties and cousins, but still on the outside. When she goes exploring the family compound she catches a message just for her: "Then her eye caught on something and she backed, all thoughts of staircases and balconies and upstairs rooms completely forgotten.

On the surface of the tabletop, someone had disturbed the dust. Scrawled in the centre in lopsided lettering were the words HEllO JEssY"

This is Jess's first introduction to a mysterious, mischievous girl that she nicknames Tilly or TillyTilly. But what exactly is TillyTilly? And what does she want with Jess? I loved how Oyeyemi shows the danger inherent in Tilly's seduction by letting the reader see the manipulation that Jess, as an 8 year-old, can't. When Tilly shows up on Jess's London doorstep things get really good.

Sure, this book is a first novel, and that shows occasionally, but The Icarus Girl is scary, very scary. It's a horror book dressed up like a literary novel about the trials of youth and the dangers of loneliness. I stayed up all night reading it, by coincidence in my childhood bedroom, and deep in the dark, I got the for-real shivers. Cousin Jane stopped calling long before my teens but just for a moment I experienced the feeling of the fire hydrant suddenly sounding into the night.

Mannish

Today has featured two Isle of Man delights:

First Isle of Man stamps of 2013 revealed! To celebrate a Manx heritage museum opening!

"That Ol' Dagon Dark" by Robert MacAnthony (Pseudopod #307) and read by Pseudopod host Alastair Stuart. Never, ever try the special blend, no matter how good it smells.

From the NYPL Digital Gallery: ID 1640578

I spent one Christmas in the  mid-2000s stomping through the snowy streets of Manhattan with a young Manx man. He didn't know what Hanukka is. He also may have thought I was going to murder him. He wanted fish and chips for dinner but I think we ended up with falafel. I think he wanted a Christmas kiss. He promised to write but never did.

So I bought a YA novel by a science fiction author I am trying to get into. Most of the blame should rest on my lack of close reading of the cover copy, but the fact that the design of this book for teenagers is indistinguishable from those marketed to adults says a little something about the genre.

Boo.

That is all.

taxes, why you pay

Need to get out of the house post-Sandy? Use the internet? Find edification or escapism?

Most Brooklyn Public Library locations are open today until 5, including Central Library at Grand Army Plaza. These are not: Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Flatlands, Gerritsen Beach, Gravesend, Jamaica Bay, Kensington, McKinley Park and Sheepshead Bay. All open branches are open normal hours tomorrow. 

NYPL (Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island) are also open til 5 today, with some major exceptions. Click the link for a full list.

The Queens Library system is mostly open normal hours, with the exception of the beach branches (Arverne, Broad Channel, Peninsula and Seaside). Click the link for a full list.

$$$ 

Because the mail must go through I am grateful. With the mail today was this. I cannot wait to read it. Vanessa Veselka and Lidia Yuknavitch wrote two of the best books I read this year, along with several get-down-to-it essays.

sandy sandy sandy

I worked from home most of last week on a very frustrating project. One of the ways that I deal with being glued to the computer for most of the day, and the subsequent loss of reading time, is to listen to podcasts. I've been catching up with my Inkstuds and loved the Pat Grant interview. It starts off with a roadtrip elopement and goes so many places from there. Grant has a kickass process blog that all lovers of self-published comics should check out.

zzzzzzzz

I don't know how else to illustrate the word irresistible than this dollar rack find:

 With illustrations by Tanith Lee herself!

zzzzzzzzz

I'm sure that you already know about the newly revived The Memory Palace, being the kind of discerning folk that hang out in tryharderland. But, if not, just know that little nonfiction stories about history are found there. (See also 99% Invisible.) 

zzzzzzzzz

This posey is made from some of the last of the flowers from the roof. Well, not the last, but probably the last untouched by Scary Sandy. With the storm a ragin' or whatever, let's write one another some letters and emails, ok? Ok.

Chester 5000 XYV by Jess Fink

Ah, comics erotica, when you're good, you're good, when you're bad, that's normal.  The story of a woman and her sex robot, Chester 5000 XYV is somewhere in between. A mostly silent, Victoriana-themed, hardcore is promising of course, and the fact that there is a sweetness and fun about the whole book is even better. But the thing about about art meant to jingle jangle your downstairs is that it kind of matters what you are into and I am into story and this is where the book forgets foreplay.

The book opens with heterosexual newlyweds going at it. They seem to be having a good time when the man looks disturbed and runs from the room. The next panel is the wife looking sad and the husband thinking hard. The next page is devoted to his construction of the titular robot, before he hands his wife the key and runs off. The rest of the story shows the evolving relationship between wife and robot, husband and jealousy and a determined brunette and all three of them, but, storytelling-wise, that first page haunts the rest of the book.

Husband flees wife

I can't figure out why the husband flees the bedroom and decides to replace himself with a robot, which makes his eventual jealousy less interesting, and his love for his wife less believable. The book copy has an answer, but I don't read book copy and didn't even look at it until writing this review. It says that he is too busy thinking of inventions to fuck, but it doesn't ring true, partially because of the time he is shown jackin' to their shenanigans and partially because he creates a robot that can love her. The brunette's lack of distinguishability (besides hair) from the wife also bugged. If her body looked different from the wife's it would have helped give her more of a character, especially with much of the action in this book happening during, well, action. The usual cartoony mangling of anatomical detail (missing buttholes, weird proportions, etc.) crops up here and there which is distracting but not terrible. Fink's style, though not my preferred vision of erotic cartoons, made details of robots, ladies and annoying dudes getting off pretty fun, even if the final product was a tad too superficial to earn a spot in the try harder library.

frankenmail

It should be no rug pulled out from under you that I subscribe to The Rumpus's Letters in the Mail. I always forget that I signed up, so each letter from an author is a surprise. I mostly read them on the subway, the perfect way to transport from Brooklyn to Manhattan with even knowing it. I've even written a few back. The stacks of white envelopes remind me to write to my letter friends--I always feel behind.

The most recent letter is from author T Cooper. I love it. It is long and wandering and includes pictures. On the first page he writes about a correspondence with a friend in France: "Every time I open up this drawer (approximately two times a day), the envelope is just sitting there staring up at me with its little foreign stamp and sailboats running atop it in reverse, reminding me that I'm an  asshole for not yet having written him back. I've seen him once and written him electronically countless times since he wrote that latter back in July, so that certainly thwarts my motivation to write him back. Or maybe that's just how we live now, even me, even though I think I'm somehow different."

I like how written letters mix in with everything else. I think of them as a moment where I can stop and focus only on the person I am writing to, which is a different thing than taking to them, or holding hands or tweeting at them. I think of them and how I want to tell it, whatever it is, to them. It is a powerful way to stay in the present. Plus, everyone loves letters.

}}}}{{{{

How to throw a fancy mail art party. I'd probably drop the gift bags and nice paper, add piles of old magazine for collage and put out a tip jar for stamp costs (and offer to mail everyone's letters), but to each her own. What would you want at a mail art do?

}}}}{{{{ 

My dad has cancer and was given (too) short number of years to live. Unsurprisingly, he is very sad. One of the few things that cheers him up is mail. His friends have been sending a ton of postcards and other greetings, which surprised and cheered him. And, of course, me. I'm sending him and my mom a Nan Goldin postcard tomorrow. Three dimes and two pennies is all it takes, and I have that, if not a lot else at the moment.

cleaning, cleaning my brain

Comics from one or two years ago to read and shelve, or read and recycle:

|||||||||||

Found this paper doll by Susie Oh and put it together, sans two grommets. Check out her animations with the dolls. Botanical boojangles.

||||||||||| 

I found a first draft of a poem I wrote deep in my grieving:

Hello?
No.
I meant to say yes, but,
you're too late.
I'm sorry that you are stuck,
a few years behind.
The train still goes there, yes,
all the way to the end of the line,
but what was there
isn't anymore.
Yes, I was a mother but now I am just a mouth.
Were you in bed, were you wrapped up tight,
were you dead for minutes that stretched and stretched?
No.
Not sorrier than I.

|||||||||||

Titular:

"You want to know why blogging died? It is because the people who were talking the most forgot to do much listening, and the people who were talking a little stopped being interested in listening so hard."

I love this stranger's writing, always have. I found her by accident when such things were more possible.