Who was this man? He wore a red and gold argyle sweater as he downed another shot before grabbing his gym bag and heading to Gleason's. He loved vodka and boxing. His father had fought bareknuckled, but he preferred the decisive whomp of a leather glove on a jawbone. Once, a girl he was dating brought him a little triangular wooden tray and told him it was something called Swedish modern. She was maybe the type to head into trends a little to quick, he thought, but she was darling too. She worked the night shift at the luncheonette, serving the barflies trying to sober up before they headed home. She served the salesmen's wives, gabbing over pie and nursing a big lonely. She served him, that's how they'd met, and when he asked for a short stack she brought him a tall one, and when he asked for just a little more butter she brought him what seemed like a hundred pats. She was darling, truly. That's what she was.

My favorite murder mystery writer said something great on WAMC this morning. He said he writes because he loves to write. He doesn't write because there is a dark angel chattering obscenities in his ear if he doesn't make his page quota. He doesn't write because there is a gaping hole in his past that is only filled by words. He writes because he loves to write.

Like a lollipop over the air to hear that.

Fast forward a hundred and something weeks


To be honest, I had this blog for the sake of my book being out, because I wanted it to function as a kind of trumpet section, tootling fanfares for anyone who happened to notice. But since the book came out my life has changed, let's say, immeasurably. And being unable to measure just how amazing those changes have been, I just decided to let the trumpets toot until they got tired, and then fade out gently. And I imagined a little deserted yard filled with trumpets in varying stages of tarnish and decay, and noone to pick them up and point to the sky. But I couldn't maintain that idea. I felt terrible about it.

Meanwhile the changes kept changing and the book kept living and oddly enough, when I least expected it, there was that bleating sound again, the Vivaldi of hope curling all over the place with its little frippery of notes. So I decided what the hey.

Ever since the age of 4 I have been wearing sailor dresses and writing and that is not going to change. At the age of 10 I was given a gold horseshoe with a little bell ringing from it, and I hung it around my neck as I trotted around a ring on palomino morgan whose name I swore I'd never forget. But I can wear the bell again. And will.

Imagine if you lived here.




Or walked around in this.

Last year Jennifer May, the photographer, dragged me out to the deserted train cars on route 28 for a photo shoot. she's got that powerfully comforting power of a photographer who can Get You To Do What She Wants about her. Vital for a photographer. And I began to move in and out of the old cars, forgetting about the mess they were and thinking about how they might have been in my father's time. He loves trains. And he loves photography. And it's a bit uncanny, now, thinking about it. I haven't even shown him the photograph yet.

Bad daughter.

Jennifer and the writer and playright and major prime mover up here, Nina Shengold assembled photos and portraits of a whole bunch of writers up here for a book, forthcoming. River of Words. It is a powerfully comforting title. They are both comfortingly powerful women. Glad I got on that train.

Maggie is writing a novel set in 19th century NYC, among the girl gangsters. She read from the second chapter, which was marvelous. Peter Aaron read a story from his ultracynic days and a great piece, a really powerful piece about the Bad Brains. Tony Fletcher read from his fantastic book on music in NYC, 1927-1997, and then a hilarious and too spot-on scene from his novel, Hedonism. The 80s art scene, the anchorage, an on the make art dealer. I read chapter 1 from the new book. It went over well. And it ends terrifically for reading a loud, with the words Thank You.

Thank you.

I am reading on November 29th with Maggie Estep, Peter Aaron, and Tony Fletcher at Inquiring Minds, Saugerties, 4-6 pm. Call it Attack of the East Village Warriors.

It has to do with rolling typography.

Yes. Rolling typography.

Nicole Bobek, US figure skating champion, 1995
Nicole Bobek, meth perp, 2009


A plastic tub of dried cranberries sits on a cake plate. The cranberries are from Dix Hills, NY. Tke cake plate is from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn in the 1940s. And so the world turns. The whole Michael Jackson thing. The site of a giant person in stripes laying flowers at a memorial. And Nicole Bobek. An Olympic figure skater caught up in a meth ring in Hudson, NJ. That makes sense to me. Extremes beget extremes.

My goal this year has been to avoid those extremes. To avoid the panic of the soul at the sound of an amazing song, that fight or flight impulse it always dredges up. And then I hear something like Panic Switch (Silversun Pickups) and there it is again. Circle of 5ths, circle of fate?

the most amazing reading at Barnes & Noble that you could ever wish for
for a hundred reasons
including all the people in the audience
who understood how a white girl fiction writer with an edge and a flair for drama
and a latina poet and artist
could be completely the same

Is Mink Hollow is up on the resurrected Sporkpress. Those southwestern boys, they do a beautiful job.

Waiting to Go Becomes Going Becomes Gone


People who've gotten in touch lately: the amazing artist J.D. King, whose illustrations you've seen a lot more than you may know -- and whose work spawned the whole genre of retro-linear abstracto-geek, and Linda from Glimmer Train, my original favorite literary magazine. Long ago they published "Hope" and got me started. Thing was, I nearly didn't send it. Then I didn't think clearly enough to delineate it as meant for their fiction contest. And then she called me, to straighten it all out. That's what makes them a cut above as you might say in copywriting. They really care. But it doesn't stop them from publishing great stuff.

Then they used an illustration that was uncanny because the woman in the illustration looked exactly like my grandmother, who had only recently passed away. So there. They are with us, always. My mother is watching me right now, from her painting. I'll show you.


And the SPORK weekly fiction column is starting back up: the doctors in Tucson have reconnected the crying monster and got him up on his booted feet again. And there is The Lifted Brow, a magazine in Australia doing this issue on geography -- and they are a magazine with a lot of great ideas, like the furious horses month, a story a day by Christopher Currie. For the geography issue, you:
1. Pick a country.
2. Send us fiction or nonfiction, a song, or a comic based on that country. The relationship of your piece to the country you pick can be as real, fake, or loose as you want.countries of destination,

and I have this idea, because I am genetically nomadic.
And there is the novel, which refuses to get off the highway and is committed, gritted teeth and leaky radiator and all, to making the trip. Yesterday was the annual pilgrimage to Sonoma County to meet the students at the Hutchins School and explain how to write. Explain. How. To. Write. Explain? How? To? Write? You can't. But we had a great two hours. They wrote, in an awful room, about the awful room. They did everything right. I applaud them. More to come on all the breaking news, Mordechai. I am gone back into this good world, purple-washed dog with yellow legs you can only see up close.