I was walking in the woods with my main man. The trail was narrow and beset by deer flies or it was wide and sandy, I promise that it doesn't matter which, and we couldn't hold hands because it was too hot or I was too sick or that sort of thing simply wouldn't fit. I thought about all of the trees I know the name of and at the same time how soft a bed pine needles can make when you are too young to get home on your own and no one is going to pick you up any where near on time. The tiny frog I caught waited just until her close-up to hop off of my hand and into an inkberry bush or a beech tree grove with all the other frogs I didn't step on and some memories that flood flood flooded my brain while we watched our feet. My shoulders swung like a weather vane and I pointed out things I knew and wanted to know, all the while trying to avoid shit-in shorts and more embarrassing things because you never know which one will be too much. Why have maps when you can get lost in a paradise is a nice thought but my body never wants to sit down and let such ideas have an orderly hike by. I blew mosquitoes away with loud, huffing breath—all the better to not talk with. But that sort of thing never works, does it? Still, mishearing a woodpecker is better than never even considering one, never even looking and trying to find the culprit.

It was that kind of walk.

mail enhancement

A treat from Amanda WellTailored:

My first piece of mail in my P.O. Box from Melissa at Viva Snail Mail, which goes to prove that if you want mail, you simply have to write to the right person.

And some outgoing mail:

Send me stuff! Including review books--I know, I know, it has been awhile, but I plan to start writing comics reviews again.
Carrie Try Harder
P.O. Box 170293
Times Plaza Station
Brooklyn, NY
11217-9997

"lazy shut-in"

If you, like me, love horror movies, then Final Girl Theory by A.C. Wise will unsettle you for several excellent reasons. It is a great, scary, story about obsession, entertainment and complicity. It is narrated by John Meagher over at Pseudopod, #287.
“The woman screams. The screen dissolves in a mass of spinning color, and the opening credits roll.
You know what the worst part is? The opening sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It is what it is; it exists purely for its own sake.”

!000!

Let's talk about subscriptions. If you make minis regularly or have any other kind of regular publishing schedule, please make a subscription option available. It helps lazy shut-ins like me get your comics when they come out AND you make more money upfront--all the better to plan your lavish vacations and yacht purchases with. Kus does it, Retrofit does it and Oily Comics has been talking about it. Who else?

!000!

!000!

Dear comic book store guy,

When I come into your store, head straight for the mini comic section, pick out a few things and come to the register money in hand, do not tell me that you'd rather pay highX amount of dollars for the item that you have displayed on your counter, no matter how cool it is, than the regularX dollars for the comics I have chosen. I am standing at the register. I could still walk away. (I should have walked away).

You are not only drastically lowering my opinion of you, but you are insulting me, the work I am interested in, a genre that I love and your own store's selection. This does not make you seem cool or informed--it makes you seem like a preteen braggart all alone on the playground.

Best,
Carrie

Looking for a safe space to have a vagina

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I love to let my eyes leave the screen for a while and let my brain grapple with information in another way. It’s generally a very enjoyable way to spend time.

As I recently prepared my place for guests, I clicked on the science fiction cast StarShipSofa #240 to make the cleaning go faster. Everything was going great, as usual, until J.J. Campanella’s Science News. His intro to the first story began, as you may remember like this: “The first story of the night may make the male part of the audience a bit uncomfortable because it has to do with, well, female plumbing, so to speak. So if you have kids listening or are just uncomfortable about the topic you may want to skip ahead about five or six minutes to get beyond this particular story. So what is this anti-macho, squirm-inducing story?”

The answer to that is: a very technical story about the human microbiome, specifically that of the vagina.*

This embarrassing intro not only undercut the cool science of the story but it also made me feel incredibly angry and sad. Here’s why:  First it suggests that male audience members are so immature as to find a rather dry (though interesting) story about vaginas somehow unlistenable. StarshipSofa often includes stories where men and women fuck each other, most often, vaginally—including the story before this one. So imagining a vagina is cool if we’re talking sex, but if we are talking science, it’s gross? Way to reinforce negative stereotypes of science fiction fans, Dr. Campanella, while undercutting your own science reporting at the same time! At its most innocuous, this kind of intro panders to the immature and close-minded, more insidiously, it provides support to the idea that it is totally reasonable to think that women’s bodies are gross, that it's okay, if you are a man, to be ignorant of the non-sexual aspects of the vag.

And, worse than gross, apparently “the topic” is unsuitable for children. Considering half of those hypothetical kids have vaginas themselves, this idea is absurd at best. It is definitely a pretty terrifying statement about how many people conceive of reproductive organs, especially those of women, as shameful, embarrassing, and most importantly, a dirty secret. If you, as a parent, are not comfortable with your kids knowing about their own bodies, or them hearing the correct terms used for their parts, then you are failing in your job. Frankly, any parent listening to a podcast aimed at adults, full of violence and other adult situations, with their children better be prepared to answer much more challenging questions than “What’s a vagina?”

Even though the terms “anti-macho, squirm-inducing” are thrown out a with a little cheek, it is still incredibly disappointing to hear SSS’s science correspondent use those words to describe a story about a part of half of the population’s bodies. Why do I have to hear this shit on a podcast dedicated to the world of the fantastic, fiction or fact, where anything is supposedly possible?

* Here's the article: P. Gajer, R. M. Brotman, G. Bai, J. Sakamoto, U. M. Schütte, X. Zhong, S. S. Koenig, L. Fu, Z. (. Ma, X. Zhou, Z. Abdo, L. J. Forney, J. Ravel, Temporal Dynamics of the Human Vaginal Microbiota. Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 132ra52 (2012).

"archive dust"

An excellent essay about letters, choices, writers, grandmas and Martha Gellhorn over a The Millions by friend-o-tryharder, Amy Shearn: A Goofy State of Mind

<<<>>>

The Vatican, yes that Vatican, has opened, and is sending out, a portion of their massive "Secret" archive. The real, live items will be exhibited in Capitoline Museums in Rome, but you can see some very intriguing tidbits here: Lux In Arcana

<<<>>>

I started buying magazines. So many subscriptions bought, forgotten about, then appearing, regularly in the mail. B did the same during the contagious fugue state where credit cards flashed to the sound of glossy pages flip flapping. It was a good idea: Cabinet, Gastronmica, wax poetics, bitch, BOMB, The Coffin Factory, and more now come to our door.

<<<>>>

I grew these and now they are gone.

The rest of the summer is waiting.

half a good ship MoCCA: 2012

An inexplicable sea theme for the post? Yes, and? Help me fill in the question marks in the comments.

Salty sailors Kenan Rubenstein and Neil Brideau

Three Armed Squids Kim Ku, Alexandra Beguez and Alden Viguilla. Their tablemate, Estrella Vega, is unpictured because I apparently don't know how to use a camera. I remembered Kim and Alexandra  from the SVA table last year and was happy to see all their new stuff.

Prism Index, editor Jeffery Bowers, handmade paper, music, movies, and a vast collection of conch shells. Jeffery told me that I looked miserable which is always nice to hear.

CCS castaways Denis St. John, Matt Aucoin and ???

Idiot's Books' co-captain Robbi Behr.

Alabaster sails into the storm with The Complete Talamaroo.

The Hic & Hoc table, helmed by Matt Moses. His triton is hidden. Guess where!

Jensine Eckwall, Lily Padula, ????, Lindsey Richter were gracious, for sea witches.

MariNaomi, one of my favorite crew members of The Rumpus, signs my book and makes me feel like a million pirate golds.

Box Brown, with booty from the holds of Retrofit Comics.

Requisite (and terrible) crowd shots:

Because of my looming surgery and general malaise, I wasn't sure that I would make this MoCCA. I was only able to circulate for about two hours. I saw many fewer iPad displays than last year and seemingly more handmade work by youngoes and oldies alike. Along the left wall there was a large group of antipodean folks, under the banner of Caravan of Comics and I popped in long enough to check out Mandy Ord's books and buy her collection, Sensitive Creatures. I wish I had been able to spend more time at the Caravan since meeting authors from other places is one of my main reasons to go to shows. I was happy to pick up two Retrofit comics that came out before my subscription started. By the time I made it all the way to the right of the space, I couldn't afford any Nordic beauty, but it was cool to see the contingent present again this year.

The show felt more attuned to my interests than last year, which meant I spent a ton of money. There seemed to be fewer melting neon faces in the mix but perhaps my rose-colored glasses were acting up. Hooray! But the usual looming question still hung heavy on the day: who is making money at this thing? The price of tables needs to go down and/or the door fee has to go. More attendees and more, and more relaxed, contributors could only make the show better. With a venue like the Armory, walk-ins could be an powerful audience--especially with an extra 15 or so dollars in their pocket. I know that the fest is in fact a benefit for the MoCCA museum, but as I said last year, the high price of doing MoCCA might feel a better value if they actually did a much higher ratio of programming highlighting the small press comics community.

the haul

I also hit up Sean Ford's long-awaited book release party at Bergen Street comics. It was great to see all the CCS folks and other interested parties. When I checked out, the dude asked me if it was my first time "coming out" and I wanted to punch him in the face, but instead I just said "no." Sigh.

items of interest

I finally got a new P.O. box. Yes, I braved the absolutely terrible Atlantic Station office with my two sets of I.D. and glistening neck scar and picked up the keys today. Here is the address:

Carrie Try Harder

P.O. Box 170293

Times Plaza Station

Brooklyn, NY 

11217-9997

%%%%%

An exciting essay on pregnancy and the importance of controlling one's own information (and body) over at The Rumpus: On Pregnancy and Privacy and Fear by Aubrey Hirsch.
Even if you have never been pregnant, or noticeably pregnant, it will make you angry, perhaps nod in recognition and hopefully remind you to check yourself around pregnant, and all, women.

%%%%%

Catching up on my podcast listening and heard the Inkstuds interview about RUB THE BLOOD with editors Ian Harker and Pat Aulisio. If you want to hear some serious Philly-style accents, check it out.

%%%%%

And what's happening over at the hairpin you ask? Well, they finally have an Ask An Archivist column.

what I've been doing

Feels worse than it looks, but better than it sounds.

But don't worry, I may have lost a few lucrative neck-modeling contracts, but my new gasping talent has triggered several voice-over opportunities in the horror and pharmaceutical industries.

&&&

I hope to be back to writing by next week. I hope everyone hasn't decided to stop bitching about MoCCA by then.

narfles

Readers know how I feel about Lynda Barry. An interview of the lady herself at The Rumpus by Anne Elizabeth Moore: "It doesn’t matter what their days were like before, their lives. Lynda Barry is in the room with them now so everything from this moment on will be amazing."

From Barry: "The one thing I can say about images and work with images, if I can put their function into one sentence: it’s the thing that gives you the feeling that life is worth living. Which is step one, I’m not saying it’s really worth living or it’s fantastic. I’m saying it’s also the thing that will keep you from killing yourself and others. So it’s a public service, I think [laughter], to engage in images."

unununununununun

This weekend I got an tour of East Coast former-Pennsylvania Railroad stations via an unexpected trip to Charm City. Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is my one and only love, but I also got to see Frank Furness's little brick Wilmington station (twice) and spend an anticlimactic hour and a half in Baltimore's beautiful Penn Station. 

B and I relaxed into acceptance by the time the train back North arrived and on the way back we sat across from some drunken New Yorkers. We talked about Sodastream and running. Well, they talked about running. The lady half of the couple already googled me and found this blog, which proves she is much better at drinking than I.

unununununununun

Saveur magazine is making the world a better place by asking amazing comics folks to make one of favorite things: recipe comics. The most recent one is from Corrine Mucha and includes "choi butts." 

Photo from Saveur 

Other contributors include Dorothy Gambrell, Jillian Tamaki and Anthony Clark. And it is a great place to see work from criminally under-read Laura Park.

Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

Since reading the collection of short stories What I Didn't See, I've been going through Karen Joy Fowler's back catalog and snatching up anything that didn't have Jane Austen in the title. This book sounded great for a fun bit of a mystery reading, hopefully with Fowler's trademark emotional smarts.

And, in some ways, that is exactly what I got. Wit's End includes many of the elements that appear in Fowler's other work, such as an immortality cult with one surviving member whose founder was mysteriously exempt from the group's celibacy vow (the sweet and funny "Always"), mystery writers and their foibles ("Private Grave 9") and the strange ways that people do a number on one another (too many to mention). The plot centers around the mystery surrounding the relationship of godmother, famous mystery writer Addison Early, and her father—how exactly it began and what soured it. There are descriptions of meals that made my mouth water, images of Santa Cruz that jarred my memories of the place and lots of creepy letters. These parts kept me engaged and excited like a good genre book should.

But what I am gracelessly dancing around here?

I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that the main character, Rima, is twenty-nine and an orphan. She is grieving for both her mother and father, as a unit and separately. Their deaths color her life and make her feel set apart from other twentysomethings, apart from everyone. The thing is that not only are her parents dead, but her little brother is dead, too. He died at the same age as my little brother, from essentially the same cause. This worried me for many reasons--was this not going to be the light read I craved and what if the author got it wrong?

Fowler gets it right, that spectrum of feelings and experiences when someone (or everyone) you love dies. She shows how a person can live with those things and not be permanently broken through the voices of both Rima and Addison. The parts about grief sang with truth while being both simple and in service to the story. It felt good to read even as I shook with angry recognition:

"Rima was perpetually offended by the suggestion that luck should be graded on a curve. Of all of the false comforts she'd been recently offered, the most poisonous one was the one that told you to be grateful that you were better off somehow."

"There'd been an undertone in Scorch's* blog, maybe even in a few comments Addison had made had made, or maybe Rima had imagined it. You weren't supposed to love your brother more than anyone else in the world..."

"In telling the story to Rima and Tilda, her point was a different one. Sometimes something happens to you, she said, and there's no way to be the person you were before. You won't ever be that person again; that person's gone. There's a little freedom in every loss, no matter how unwelcome and unhappy that freedom may be."

I was also really into the idea that runs through the book that we make our own families. This was the subtle message that pulsed under all the loss--inspiring without any saccharine promises.

*Oh how I hate this character's name. Every time I would see it on the page I'd scoff a little then dive back in. I get the whole Santa Cruz, self-invented and kinda stupid young person name but it just didn't sit right.

one piece of the story

So of course I got a subscription to The Rumpus' Letters in the Mail. I've been enjoying it immensely, especially the missives from Padma Viswanathan and Matthew Specktor. Sari Botton's essay about participating in it talks about her letter writing friendship with a guy called David. It reminded me a little about the one I have with my friend R—what's encapsulated in our correspondence is how we became ourselves and how we become over and over. It's a maddening record but I love it. 

As you may remember, I have a problem with poetry. I don't read it. When Adrienne Rich died many of the people that I respect were expressing their feelings of loss and I've got to say that every single excerpt of Rich's poetry bled with truth and made me want to read more. Here is a lovely illustration of some Rich lines by Lisa Congdon.

Several people have asked me over the years what comics got me into the genre. At 15 I was volunteering at a thrift store on South Street to fulfill the delightfully named "community service" requirement of public schooling in Philly. One day I was working in the basement in the book section and came across a comics anthology about abortion. I stopped working and read it through. I had never really experienced that kind of storytelling before--angry, smart, feminist and utterly human. Each story looked different and I could understand each one. For almost 16 years I've been unable to remember the title and all my googling was in vain until moments ago. The book: Choices: a pro-choice benefit comic anthology for the National Organization for Women. The extreme ugliness of the cover was instantly identifiable. Click the link to see all the heavy hitters that contributed work.

Dear Christian,

I do not care to think about how old you would have been today. It has been too long and it is too hard. I am farther and farther away from being my favorite thing: a sister. This cannot be helped and I need all the help I can get.

Since the idea of creating a ritual around your birthday just never felt right, I'll simply tell you what I decided to do today:

1) I read selections from the collected Sugar columns by Cheryl Strayed on my subway ride home from work. These columns inspired me to write again with their "radical empathy," as Steve Almond called it, and the sheer love of life and words that jumped out at me when I clicked over every Thursday--a new ritual for a new life. I think "The Black Arc of It" helped B understand me better and I could never thank Strayed too much for that.

2) I began, and hope to finish, a review of Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler. The book had a secret dead brother, who died at 19, just like you. The protagonist is incredibly angry, just like me. The handled this so well that it mitigated my sad shock at finding us on the page when I was just trying to read a good summer book.

3) When I finish my work I will play Skyrim and forget a bit.

4) You were so full of love that it inspires me to make more every day. So, today I will love B harder, even if he doesn't know it.

Sorry you got a list letter for your birthday, baby boy. I am all out of other ideas for today.

Miss you always,
Your sister

tids

"'Hello Aimee, it’s your dad. I was just calling to say hello to you and your family. I miss you. I love you. When will you come see us again?'"
The Disciples of Memory by Aimee Phan over at The Rumpus is beautiful and vicious essay about parents and Alzheimer's.

For all you academics and responsible writers out there, the MLA has answered an important question: How to cite a tweet.

I've been spending a lot of time on 50 Watts recently checking out the gorgeous book art and illustration. It used to be called A Journey Around My Skull--this one, not this one.

1. The light through the schefflera is not as charming as it should be.

2. My nose is dripping onto my upper lip and the dust is thick on the walls and I smell mold and other things, mostly gross things, like butts and fish and it makes me want to take off my face and put it away for the night.

3. There is a space in my life where Scrabble used to be.  Remember when we played?

4. I'm thinking about an essay that started in a half-dream in my friend Ray's guest room. In my mind I was running through the halls of my dead grandmother's L-shaped home in California. Everything was eye-level and I was going really fast. I am writing this on a tablecloth brought from her place that I never saw before. It is possible that it was never used while she was alive.

5. I don't feel like writing about what I've read. Sorry.

Did I tell you that I got some great mail?

Award winning!

fighting words

Speak Spanish? There's a new narrative non-fiction radio show called Radio Ambulante in the works. Keep up with them at their blog.

#########

I was coming home from the Coop with a walker. As we rumbled down a Park Slope street, I was talking about having to hit up the post office and library later in the day. He made a sound and, unprompted, commented on how "obsolete" both of those institutions are. Hey guy,  I'm sorry no one wants to write you a letter and that books are too heavy and long, but I am sure you have many other exciting qualities that I can't see from my time machine. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, all of this is to say check out this cool episode of 99% Invisible about how stamp images get chosen.

#########

Today I am going to try Other People with Brad Listi. The tag line is "In-depth, inappropriate interviews with authors" and I want to hear those exact things in conversations with Cheryl Strayed, Ben Marcus, Tayari Jones, Vanessa Veselka and Roxane Gay.

#########

Winter 2011/2012 contest winner: Sarah Egelman

Contest winner Sarah Egelman has lived in New Mexico, New York and Seattle.  She is a professor at a community college teaching religious studies and humanities and writes book reviews on the side.  She likes octopuses and really really hates onions.  She blogs at Citizen Beta.

Absolute Dissection 401

Susan had heard cryptic mumblings about Dr. Ebie’s lab for years.  Maybe even as early as freshman orientation. At first she assumed these tales were meant to scare the underclassmen, to weed out the faint of heart.  But, every semester as AD 401 drew nearer her anxiety grew.  It grew because now she knew that even if exaggerated strange things (perhaps horrific, perhaps fantastic) happened in that lab.  And now, here she was in her final semester of medical school, hand on the doorknob, and she felt like she was going to throw up.

Over the last few years Susan had succeeded in all her lab and dissection classes.  She earned a reputation for fearlessness and a steady hand.  It didn’t matter what she was cutting apart, she was thrilled to do it.  She longed to be charge of an actual surgery cutting and cauterizing and plunging her hands up to her wrists in viscera.  Medicine, surgery in particular, was her calling, her vocation and she was pulled to it with a seemingly mystic fiery drive.

Absolute Dissection 401 met twice a week from 9 am to noon on the top floor of Blucher Hall.  In fact, the entire floor, the third, of Blucher Hall seemed to have been reserved for Ebie’s lab.  No one could recall it being used for any other purpose, therefore the physical space of AD 4001 was as mysterious as the curriculum.  And, while Susan and her classmates wondered about the lab equipment they would have access to in this holy of holies, it was the curriculum that kept them up at night in anticipation. 

After Susan opened the door on the first day and her eyes adjusted to the dim light she found an otherwise ordinary, if cavernous, room.  Filled with the usual assortment of objects and the usual lab tables, even the usual lab smells, she found it at once a comfortable place.  But, Ebie was another story.  Short with thinning silver hair and piercing blue eyes almost buried in his round face, Ebie had thick and bright red lips.  He wore, that day and nearly every day, a tweedy wool suit and scuffed but expensive looking black leather shoes.  On first glance he was ugly but as he lectured, pacing back and forth, his voice echoing through the lab, his frightening intelligence and strange charm transformed him into an almost handsome figure.

The first cadavers were shared. There were about ten for the thirty or so students.  Dr. Ebie seemed less interested in their command of anatomy—it was assumed they knew all that already.  He wasn’t even concerned with their dissection skills---they had been working on them for years.  He was, it seemed, concerned with their eye for defect.  Quickly the students realized each cadaver had some physical anomaly though it wasn’t necessarily was killed them.  A grotesquely enlarged lymph node, an atrophied spleen, a deformed uterus, a parasitic twin…While fun and interesting, students, including Susan, began to wonder what all the fuss about AD 401 was about.  Ebie had a knack for procuring odd corpses and an entertaining manner but that hardly seemed cause for the strange reputation of the class.

A second cadaver was assigned to each student individually near the end of the term. This, Susan thought, was what made AD 401 unique then! Her own body! 

Monday morning Susan drank too much coffee and cursed her shaking hands. She found her cadaver, marked with her name, in a back row of the lab near a grimy window, the sun straining to shine in.  She took a sharp intake of breath and drew back the sheet.  On the table was the body of a young woman not more than thirty years old though because of the slack muscles and lack of body fluids it was hard to tell.  She had medium length brown hair, perhaps once shiny and wavy but now dull and pulled tightly from her face.  She was, or had been, short but full figured, heavy through the hips.  Susan began to think of names for her in the med school tradition but stopped short.  The only name that came to mind was Susan. Susan.  The body didn’t look much like her. Or, maybe there was a resemblance. Something in the brow, the cheekbones.  Something familiar to Susan having looked at herself so closely in mirrors. Shaking her head, trying to clear her thoughts and steady her hands Susan decided the name Jane, as in Doe, would have to do.

Waiting for Ebie’s instruction, for suddenly Susan felt unsure, she noticed a ragged and simplistic heart tattooed about Jane’s left breast.  The heart, though really comically childish, weeping shaky black tears, appeared sinister to Susan.  Finally she heard Dr. Ebie’s voice entreating her to begin. Her told her this dissection was hers and hers alone.  She was free to approach it as she saw fit he only asked her to be as complete and thorough as humanly possible. Susan was relieved to make the first cut, her eyes and hands focused on the skin of the chest and abdomen and away from Jane’s face.

Her work progressed as expected.  Her thoughts were only a bit cloudy and she found herself moving to the rhythm of her own name: Susan Susan Susan Susan Susan Susan Susan Susan SusanSusanSusansusansusansusansusan.  Her back began to ache and her hands cramp and she caught a glimpse of the clock.  It didn’t seem possible but she had been at it most of the day. The sun moved from the window and the room grew cold and colder.  She was vaguely aware of other students, heard the scrapings of instruments, the squeak of shoes and occasional soft moans.  Just as she registered the passing of time and the pain she was in, Ebie was behind her.

“Susan,” he said.  “Susan, this class is called Absolute Dissection for a reason.  Your dissection must be absolute.”

For a reason she could not name Susan would not turn to meet Ebie’s eyes.  Instead with hands still moving inside Jane she listened.

“Absolute and complete,” he continued.  “Absolute.  All parts examined.  Yes, examined but also known.  You must dissect all of her, know absolutely all of her.”

Susan bent forward and reached.  Her scalpel continued to cut.  Deeper and deeper she went until she felt Jane’s spine sever under the thin blade.  It gave way like butter and moved itself aside for Susan’s hands, wrists, arms.  Through the last layer of skin she went and through the cold metal table.  The floor was next and Susan cut though the horizontal parts of Blucher Hall.  Head down but not at all dizzy Susan cut her way through the thawing ground under the building and through the underground pipes.  Soon the earth was hers to know and she cut through the geologic strata passing worms and insects and eventually fossils and she swam easily through pools of oil.  Steadier now her hands grew warm as the planet’s magma swirled around her and still Ebie spoke behind her.

“On Susan.  Move on. Keep going.  You must know her but first take her apart.  What is she made of?  Who is she?  Who is she, Susan?  Who is she? Susan!  She was but still is.  She still is. Who are you? Who are you?”

In a moment she was back through the earth’s crust but on the other side of the world, breaking through with a satisfying crack.  A crack like knuckle bones, like broken bones, like sharp smacks.  The sky was blue and purple, bruised and tender and she slashed through it slicing clouds and slicing into the atmosphere.  The air grew thin, like the last gasp of a choke.  But, there were no hands on her throat and even Ebie’s voice faded to a low rumbling like very very distant thunder.  Space was dark and cold and Susan’s body was dark and cold uprooted from the world and beginning to spread thinly across the universe.  Those familiar stars, gazed at out shattered windows, the place Jane, the place Susan sent all those futile prayers, all was gas and freezing and vast distance and sheer vastness.  Jane was so vast and Susan was the vastness and Jane was Susan or maybe they were nothing.  Now they were nothing as all cells broke into atoms and all atoms separated and there was nothingness or perhaps almost nothingness and Susan was dissected, broken into bits that meant nothing.  She was scattered over everything and it lasted a moment, a moment one lifetime short of eternity.

There was a voice.  Susan came together. The stars receded and the cold receded and even some splinters of pain were gone, pulled out, but still throbbing.  She was pulled back together not just by the voice but by a decision not quite her own but, as she thought about it over the following years, not quite something cosmic or metaphysical.  The decision was a fact that had paradoxically always existed and that was that and there she was by the grimy window in the back row of the third floor lab of Blucher Hall.  She was alone in the room, the sweat under her arms and across her hairline already drying into a salty crust.  She was alone but okay finally.  Alone, finally okay and finally put back together. With just the ghost of pain, like the spot where splinters are removed, throbbing just a little bit and then no longer.

Susan was not superstitious but even when she got the name tag from the hospital she didn’t try it on, pin it to herself, until she pinned it to her new lab coat on the first day of work.  Residency behind her she was on her own as a surgeon.  But the tag weighed heavily, pulled at the lab coat which rubbed against her sweater which irritated her new tattoo.  After a couple hours she ducked into the bathroom.  It was a dirty bathroom in a dirty hospital.  She shrugged off her coat and pulled up the sweater.  She found the tattoo, a painstakingly rendered human heart, inflamed and weeping out the open wounds.  The heart wept blood and pus and a clear shining liquid.  The heart wept.  Susan remembered: fear and screams and bruises and blood.  She remembered dark windows glittering with the sunrise.  She remembered a violent yet loving slashing of the world and her own breast carved, stitched and carved again.  Jane’s carved breast and her own inked.  The ink leaked, the heart wept.  Susan wept.  

She heard thunder in the distance.

friends of try harder: good stuff

Amanda Well-Tailored wrote an excellent essay on expectations for new years and her 2012 resolve: Chop Wood, Carry Water. She also makes ramen while she talks.

SEC, or Sara Edward-Corbett, has an excellent new blog, blunderbustle.









 

Zane Grant has been writing a fun supernatural comic, Detective Warlock, Warlock Detective. It is in its fourth chapter now, but you should start here.

bits and

There are no post office boxes available in my area. What a drag. So, my promise to mini comics makers everywhere remains unfulfilled. Maybe next month.

One excellent thing about going into the office, besides the companionship and free pens, is that sometimes ARCs of books that you wanted make their way into your hands. Yesterday I got a copy of The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith, which I wrote about here. Can I read this book about dead parents? Not right now, probably, but I am glad to have it for when I am feeling stronger.

I want this book: Stone Animals by Kelly Link, published by Madras Press. It is illustrated by Lilli Carré, Lisa Brown and Ursula K. Le Guin and more. Whoa.

Some school in Florida has assigned 'Finances' by Lydia Davis and now students are searching for answers with google queries like "what are the man and woman trying to do in "finances" by lydia davis about?." Seriously? Do your own homework. Be happy you have a time in your life that you can sit around and think about what stories mean. This will end faster than you think.

I really detest the winter. My everything is cold.

Trinie Dalton Book Launch Party @ Family Bookstore

I walked to the one place in Los Angeles I knew I had to see: Family Bookstore. It's a small place on Fairfax with a curated collection of art books, magazines, fiction and comics. But I was there to see Trinie Dalton read from her new Two Dollar Radio book, Baby Geisha. I loved Wide-Eyed and much of Sweet Tomb and couldn't wait for more sticky stories to warm my winter.

The start of the reading was sort of weird because we were all huddled in the dark listening to the beginnings of a few of the stories in the first part of the book. Because Dalton's characterization is a big part of what I like about her work, it was strange to hear her luscious stories being filtered through her calm speaking voice, which made each piece seem similar to the one before it. The reason we were in the dark was for the second part of the reading:  a slideshow of plant images that went along with readings from some in-progress stuff she is working on. I really enjoyed this part of the reading. It was a interesting look into process--she showed lists of plants and images of those plants piled up into a collage as she read stories inspired by them.  I found the combination of the images and reading hypnotic. Even though I felt strange saying it to her face, and even though I called it "Burgertime," it was great to be able to tell her how much 'Animal Story' meant to me.

Check her out at Spoonbill & Sugartown in Brooklyn on March 11th @ 7pm.

*******************

Family Bookstore, inside:

 Family Bookstore, outside mural by Ron Regé: