"you fucked me"

As a person raised in the religious faith that was on the cutting edge of rooting out backwards-masked messages on rock albums years ago (and having had some albums removed from my collection because of it), it's interesting to note that in the series of slides in the ridiculous poll on Huffington Post asking whether or not Sarah Palin's lip liner is tattooed on (i.e., "Do you think she's White Trash?"), if you begin at the fourth slide and click the right arrow under the picture quickly you can very clearly see that Sarah Palin is saying "You fucked me." (Just keep clicking, really fast, it becomes more obvious a couple of times through.) Whether this was intended by the person who put the slide show together, or is merely a Satanic message remains to be decided. And for whom is this message intended anyway?

this is why i stay out of it

I am very disillusioned by the reports that Bill Clinton will do anything to get John McCain elected. Is this a fact? Even after having lunch with Barack Obama and saying to him and to reporters he believes Obama will win the election, "and will win handily," or something like that? Is Bill Clinton as stupid as Sarah Palin?

The first whiff I got of this was after Bill Clinton was on David Letterman, followed by Chris Rock, who said, "Was it just me, or did he not wanna say Barack Obama's name out loud?!" I thought Chris was just being a blowhard, but when I asked S about it, he seemed to concur that Bill is furious at Obama for not nominating Hillary as his vice presidential running mate.

But so much so that he would do anything to get John McCain -- and, gulp, Sarah Palin -- elected? What's going on here? If it's factual, this is all big baby politics in play, and that's why I generally prefer to stay out of it.

If Bill gets his way... Spain is nice.

At a dinner party a couple of nights ago with A, her long-time friend and some young Democrats (plus a Dutchman who's here for a semester of school at Southwestern because he wants to be in the States during this historic election cycle), I mentioned to the woman sitting next to me (who just returned from a year in a town near Wasilla, Alaska, doing post-graduate work for a judge there) that I will move to Spain if McCain/Palin get into office. Her response: Well, you'll still have to pay taxes."

So?

And for the record, Spain is not definite. Southern Italy or even Central or South America would be fine by me. Someplace warm that's not the Republican States of America. S wants to go to a Spanish-speaking country. And if he's going with me, I'll go for that. Fortunately, I have a job that I can take anywhere with me.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Barack has got to win this election. I feel pretty confident that he will win it handily. I'm keeping my options open though, because there's some weird shit going on around here.

05. tom collins (houston) 1967

artist and rice university student dar meets a handsome stranger in rice village, has lunch with him, then invites him back to her apartment in the montrose where they get high together and make love, two things he has never done before considering he has only recently arrived from arkansas having run away from his very large, very poor and very religious family.

04. hell's kitchenette (nyc) 1982

after a year in college -- during which time randy is outed by dorm mates who steal his journal -- randy drives to new york city where he meets an older gay man named charles who gives him a job, finds him an apartment, and makes him feel welcome in his new hometown.

spinning out of the din of the den

I'm somewhat of a late-comer to the political process. I blame it on my fucked up religious upbringing -- and why not?! Basically, I always saw politics as similar to religion in that someone was hollering about this is Right and that is Wrong, then somebody on the other side would holler, no, this is Right and that is Wrong. The difference in politics is that the two sides get together and holler at each other, and neither of them make much sense.

I'd always been a reluctant voter; my decisions were based mostly on what my Right Wing anti-everything (except Life and the Hereafter) family would vote for, and then vote the opposite. When I was 19, I refused to talk about politics with my outspoken boss because, I said, I didn't know enough to back up my thoughts. She said it was my duty to figure out what I stood for and spout it off whenever possible. My mom and grandmother were outspoken women, so that didn't really convince me of anything.

But now we have this current election. I believe this is the most important election of my lifetime, maybe of all times. It is certainly a history-maker no matter how it turns out (though I am completely serious when I say I will start looking for an alternative country to call home if the McCain camp wins). Fortunately, I have S on my side. He's a pretty smart guy, he's willing to explain the stuff that I don't get, two or three times if necessary until I understand it or decide it doesn't really matter.

I first got caught up in the election fever when I suggested to S that I would vote for Hillary in the primaries, way back when they first became candidates. S pointed out his thoughts on Clinton and Obama, so I started paying more attention and quickly came to realize that Obama was a candidate who has represented me more than any other candidate ever has. Mostly in the sense that, in S's words, "he brings compassion to politics." That's what I want, a president who is compassionate, who thinks about the majority.

I'll admit that my first concern about Obama getting elected was that he might get assassinated. It's a real fear. I'm sure his camp is aware of the possibility. There are definitely relatives of mine who categorically wouldn't vote for Obama because of his race. That's one reason why I would, to be honest; that was one reason I thought I'd vote for Hillary -- probably the biggest and maybe only reason in the beginning -- because she is a woman.

But then there came this Sarah Palin political embarrassment. The fact that she is from the same wacky religion that I grew up in cause me to become obsessed with the news coverage on her and all things Election '08. At this point, the frenzy has died down, thankfully, and my fears have mostly subsided about the possibility that she could get any nearer to the White House than she already is. I've made some campaign contributions to Obama, I've bought bumper stickers and T-shirts that I wear whenever possible. (Besides, if the unthinkable happens, Spain or Italy might be very nice choices for residency.)

Last night, a group of us met at M&J's for the first presidential debate. There were ten or twelve adults in all, and it was obvious very early into what I thought was a very important event, that the atmosphere in their den was more like one at a sporting event. People around me were very vocal, particularly when McCain was speaking, saying "You're a fucking idiot!" or "That's a lie!" so loud as to blot out any ability to comprehend what he was saying. While Obama spoke, the audience was a little more reverent but there were still outbursts of things like "Yeah!" or "Give it to that fucking idiot, Obama!"

S and P and I inched closer and closer to the TV. A couple of times, I made comments like "I'd like to hear what he has to say," and the adult-children tried to hold down their exuberance, but it was difficult for them; that's just the kind of people they are. Me, I'm admittedly slower to catch on to what all of the subtelties mean; I need time to think about what is being said, perhaps listen to the reporters spin it, read Andrew Sullivan's blog, or ask S or someone else for explanations, or just hear what they think.

As soon as the debate was over, there was that interaction, but I felt cornered. "What did you think?" and "Don't you think Obama should have done this?" I don't know. That's what I said. I don't know. It seemed the consensus was that Obama should have "slam dunked" McCain early in the debate, put him on the defensive, hit him with a left hook then carried the ball down the track for a home run...

But that's not the way I see Obama, and that seems to me to be why this presidential race is different. This isn't a blood sport to Obama. He comes off as level-headed, intelligent and prepared. And compassionate. That above all. He seems really compassionate. For the first time in my life last night I thought what an honor and a thrill it would be to meet the president, to meet someone like Barack Obama.

03. black lake (childhood) 1972

this is the name of the town and the trailer park young randy reardon lives in. his half-sister rona tells him the story of how their mother ended up here while randy is hiding out after accidentally catching a train car full of logs on fire with a flare he found. early the next morning rona runs out of town with the next-door neighbor's boyfriend in the rv he has just got running, pregnant with his baby.

short - sexy - straight

Who are you?

I saw you across the way, at the table along the wall, your back against the wall, looking my way, glancing over at me, smiling at me. Nice smile, by the way. And those Nana Mouskouri glasses look good with your floppy blond hair, don't you know.

My friend across from me kept thinking I was looking at her; I had to tell her I was using her to get glances at you (fortunately, she's a lesbo so she wasn't offended). Our friend was on the stage with two other singer/songwriters -- I assumed one of them was your friend, too. I noticed the ring on your "wedding" finger, and the guy in the middle on the stage, with the sweet high tenor voice also had a ring on his finger, and it looked a lot like your ring (though of course there isn't a lot of variety in men's wedding rings). But I was convinced. When the singer sang a pronoun-free song of love, your dimples showed, you glowed. I was sure I was right.

To be honest, I didn't like his songs that much. They were okay. The other woman in the trio singing seemed to be trying to write a Nashville hit to save her soul, so I didn't like hers much at all. I was really only there for my friend, whose songs seem to come out of the depths of her heart and soul. She looked like a caged animal up on stage in that straight-backed chair. She could hardly contain her feet as she sang her songs of disappointment and despair, love and loss. There is power in her emotions.

You were the icing on the night for me.

Some other people came to sit at the table I shared with my friend, some said hello; one (straight) man whom I was a little too amorous towards once upon a time wouldn't even look my way, which isn't a new development.

I didn't care; I was enjoying my little game of catch-my-eye with you.

When I lived in New York, I used to play a game on the subway or wherever groups of strangers were caught suspended for a moment or several -- a museum exhibit or drum circle in Washington Square Park; I would commit myself to looking into a stranger's eyes, holding a gaze the longest, not looking away until after he did. It was harder than it sounds.

But there was that ring. And there was that man onstage, your man, I assumed, and it's really not my thing (anymore) to break up happy couples, or even unhappy couples. You break up, and then I'll come calling...perhaps. I pondered my "Shot in the Dark" ad for the Chronicle, but knew I wouldn't go through with it. Who reads those things anyway? What if somebody saw it was me? A friend. Would they pity me? That's the last thing I want: anybody's pity (yours among them).

So I put "our future" out of my head, just enjoyed the caught glances over the mouths of our drinking glasses.

Then there was a break in the music. You rose and came over to our table, said you liked my Obama ("Compassion for a Change") t-shirt. I told you where I got it after an initial huminah-huminah-huminah!
And that was it. Nice little exchange. Damn, you're short! Like a foot shorter than me. (I like that. I've always found short somewhat fey men quite sexy. Must be a dominance thing.)

A couple of minutes later, the singer/songwriters were off the stage, the man in the middle was at your table, and I heard your chit-chat, which didn't sound much like two men who were intimately involved (unless, I pondered, you had some sort of big closet-in-public thing going on between the two of you while your husband worked his way up to super-stardom at which point he could more easily make his Clay Aiken appeal). And then you introduced him to the woman sitting next to him as your wife. What the--

Last night I had a dream that I was at the Central Texas Democratic National Committee Campaign Headquarters (which is just a few blocks from our apartment, and which is where I got my t-shirt). I was wearing cut-offs and cowboy boots. I don't know why this detail seemed important, except that I saw a short blond man in the parking lot (you) walking with a large red-headed woman (like the "fag hag" I imagined the woman sitting next to you last night to be) and I was trying to walk more butch in my boots instead of like a drag queen in heels, in case you looked my way.

The two of you went into a store next to the campaign headquarters, a fabric store that was going out of business. The front window was smashed in and spray-painted letters all around the door announced the deep discounts going on inside. I followed after you, thinking to myself, "Well, I do need lots of fabric for curtains for my new house, and I can also look for some stretchy vinyl." That last part was a reference to a conversation I had with the neighbor on the front porch just before bed (she's been hired to make a vinyl jumpsuit for a friend and said stretchy vinyl fabric is hard to find in Austin).

When I got inside, you and The Woman were looking at furniture and talking about how well this chair would go with your couch and how this fabric matched your lamps. I was heartbroken. In my dream.

Oh, one other nugget -- so to speak -- to hold onto... I showered right before I went to the show last night. I neti potted my nasal passages as per usual and blew my nose in the shower stream. While I was at the show, I went to the bathroom and thought I felt a scab on my dick, but it was a dried up booger. I thought that would be a funny detail for my book, for when Randy the narrator is standing at a row of public urinals somewhere, masturbating next to another "pervert" who notices a big brown booger on his dick, which of course makes the fellow next to him lose his erection, and then sends Randy running embarrassed from his spot.

Of course, this isn't something I would tell you -- I don't even know you -- it just kinda fits neatly into this little entry about you. So there.

02. two pounds (road) 1993

randy arrives in his florida hometown from new york city, picks up his mother's ashes and her car from the hospital, drives to the trailer park where he grew up and decides he can't stay there, and he can't go back to new york, so he takes a cue from a collector's edition alcatraz island salt-and-pepper set his mother had to drive to san francisco to sprinkle her ashes there.

01. march first (diary) 1993

randy's car that he has been traveling in catches fire on the side of the interstate near columbus, texas. he makes his way to a neary motel and crashes there.

the letters of amitodana

I worked on the letters of Amitodana last night. Letter number three. One and two are already written but I went back to them thinking I would rewrite them then caught myself and moved forward. They're short chapters; the first one is two pages, the second one is four pages. Chapter three looks like it'll be six or seven pages. They each get longer because Amitodana is writing to a stranger, and opening up as she goes, telling the stranger about the main character's condition. He is in a hospice far from home and she is the only person who knows him, but she doesn't know him very well -- she only knows him because of his illness, or because he's her neighbor who is ill -- and she is trying to let the stranger know where his sick friend is in case he wants to visit.

There are five letters in all from Amitodana to August. The third one (the one I wrote last night) implores him to visit or at least make contact, for the good of the patient. The fourth letter is a letter of resignation and disappointment that August hasn't yet made contact. And the fifth is a compassionate description of the patient's last hours. Or will be.

***

Sunday night, P, A, and R came over for dinner. It was P's birthday. S made a delicious meal and I made a delicious cake. A brought wine; R brought an appetizer. P brought flowers from her yard (we think they're pink oleanders) and I made two arrangements from flowers in our yard, bougainvilleas and flame something-or-others and another bright red flower that the hummingbirds love along with live and dead weeds and rosemary stalks.

P was going to bring a guy she's dating so we could get to know him better, but she changed her mind that day because they've been getting to know each other a lot since I made the invitation a few weeks ago and they needed to take a break. That was why I invited R. I saw him driving up to his house while I was cutting flowers and invited him. He's a good neighbor that way. He's hung out with P before, too, and likes her -- she reminds him of someone special -- and so it was fun to have him there.

P had requested S and I sing to her ("serenade" was the word she used), but we didn't have time to rehearse and didn't want to rehearse (we don't like to rehearse together), so I offered to read to her since I used to do a lot of that and haven't in months. I read to all of them chapter thirty-one, "Journey Home," which I'd written a few nights earlier, stayed up until 3 a.m. writing. I hadn't even typed it up yet; S hadn't even read or heard it yet. It was fresh.

S liked it a lot. They all liked it. I was quite proud of it. Am quite proud of it. It's the fifth installment in the five-installment Houston section of the book, so I felt a certain amount of explanation was in order, particularly for R and A, since neither of them have read or heard any part of the book. I stumbled through explanations of the preceding four sections but decided the next night to write out as brief as possible explanations of each chapter so I'll have them for later similar occasions.

It took two hours and ten pages to write out all thirty-four chapter descriptions, but it charged me up. I really didn't have to write the fifth segment descriptions -- since these were intended to be "preceding chapter descriptions," but I was on a roll.

***

Last week I went to the movies with MV; we saw a great movie about the last days of Bertolt Brecht's life. I dropped her off at MN's where she was staying afterwards and went up to say hello. MV sang us a new song she had written and I read a dream from my journal that I happened to have with me (because it has drawings of my cobbing plans that I wanted to show MN). Then MV sang another song and I read another something.

I decided that night that I want to have a salon for my birthday. A Soup Salon, I decided. A dinner party in which all of the attendees offer something they're working on, or something they've created previously, or somebody else's work that inspires them in their work. It could be a song, a story, a poem, a journal reading, whatever. S's offering will be the soup (though he might sing or read something; I hope he will but won't pressure him). He wants to keep the event fairly small because of his busy school schedule, and I want it to be a diverse group, so I'm gonna have to do some thinking and planning.

garbage talk

Today, I saw a clip of Sarah Palin defending John McCain's statement about the fundamentals of the economy being strong by saying, "Well, it was an unfair attack on the verbage that Senator McCain chose to use..." She didn't say "verbiage," which she obviously meant, but "verbage." She said the word twice ("...that was an unfair attack there, again, based on verbage that John McCain used.").

Oftentimes in my writing, I come across a word I want to use that I don't know the full meaning of, or am thinking of another word that sounds similar to the word I come up with in the moment. For example, when I was editor of my high school newspaper, I got into trouble for writing that a fairly popular girl was "homely," when I really meant "homey." I wasn't a popular person before that faux pas, but that certainly didn't help my standing at Robert E. Lee. I wasn't out to get this person; she was actually very friendly to me. I liked her a lot. She understood the mistake when I apologized to her, but others didn't, particularly the jocks, who were always looking for a way to put me in my place at the time, or so it seemed (and that was a very dark place indeed).

In my defense, I was called out by one of the other newspaper writers for using the word "suffice" -- in a different article -- which was a word he didn't know how to pronounce, much less how to use in a sentence.

I have gotten in the habit of looking up words (usually; occasionally S catches one) when writing, as well as when I'm reading, which is often with some writers. (Admittedly, I ain't the most intellectual person in the world.) I still struggle for words when I'm speaking sometimes. S has commented that my vocabulary is the weakest part of my abilities -- though he would never put it in such a harsh way.

So, when I heard Sarah Palin use the word "verbage," twice, I paused, thought to myself, "That doesn't sound right," and looked up the two words. Dictionary.com defines them thusly:

verbiage

1.	overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity.

2.	manner or style of expressing something in words; wording: a manual of official verbiage.

verbage
A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that assimilates it to the word "garbage".

Regardless of all the other evidence piling up against the election of John McCain and Sarah Palin, this distresses me somewhat most of all. I would really prefer my potential president be smarter than I see myself, at least in matters of economics, foreign policy and vocabulary.

One thing is certain: I spend way too much time reading political blogs when I would/could/should otherwise be working, to pay bills or creatively.

belinda walked past

Belinda stood in the middle of the street, in the shadows of the pecan branches on her flower print skirt, her black top hiked over her left breast, baby Carson close to it, his lips swollen from sucking, but satisfied; her nipple stiff and rigid, a little goddess statue on a soft, freckled hill.

She doesn't wait tables anymore, doesn't write anymore, doesn't skate with the girls anymore; she met a handsome young man in the neighborhood -- forever childlike with his protruding ears, button nose and wide-set eye, forever cool with his tattooed sleeves -- and decided to stick with something for a change.

Their firstborn Piper, now four years old, in her dirty pink dress with the daisy applique, stood in the gutter rearranging the dried brown leaves, stepping up on the curb, stepping down, busy in her world, aware of the dead and shriveled cacti not too far away, an old woman with sharp, brittle nails.

This wasn't Piper's yard. It wasn't much of a yard at all, five feet from curb to door, a sidewalk up the middle with gravel mostly, but also the cacti and a discarded chest-of-drawers with one drawer missing. But if it were a yard it wouldn't be hers as this house wasn't hers. This was the house across the side street from Belinda and Paul's house.

Belinda bought her house and renovated it after her mother died. It was one of the first houses in the neighborhood to get that treatment. This was around the time of all the other young men in the neighborhood, the gatherings, the parties, the regular sex. Belinda used to be a wild one, used to party with her girlfriends around the clock, used to hook up with the guys in the cheap-rent rundown duplex apartments and tiny shacks.

She would tell you that her house used to be known as the Home for Wayward Boys because of all the activity she saw. She would tell you that in a neighborly way, as if to say her life was an open book, in hopes that yours would be, too.

But then she settled down. This Paul guy. He had it more together than those other guys; he had a job with the State, health insurance, paid vacations, a future. He also had two pre-teen daughters and an unhappy marriage. But Belinda saw something in him. She took him in. Took it all in, the girls, his divorce, their marriage (she kept her name), plans for a bigger family.

The two young men who lived in the shack across the street fancied themselves as punks, with their radical hairdos and no a/c. They lay around the front room on the bed in their underwear or cutoff black jeans; they walked around the neighborhood like that, their smooth bodies bared, on hot and humid August days when a walk to create a slight breeze more refreshing than lying still.

Belinda could see them from the bathroom window. They could see her, too. Nobody made mention of it, least of all Belinda. The guys made no crude remarks, just kept their eyes trained on the light that sometimes lit up that window, and they watched in gentle wonderment the occasional glimpse of a naked breast, full of milk, glowing in the steam covered pane.

One time Billy got to watch her rub lotion under her breasts in front of the mirror. He got an erection, turned off the bedside lamp and masturbated as she seemed to look out at him approvingly and fondle herself.

Billy and John looked a lot alike in their house. They were more easily distinguished in their late night rock club circle, but in their shack they melted into one another. Belinda introduced herself and Paul and the kids to them as they passed by on one of their walks and the two guys were sitting on the front door step. She knew there was a Billy and a John, but she could never remember which was which. She even commented to Paul that they should get some tattoos so she could tell them apart!

They were nice to everybody. If you walked or rode your bike or even drove by and looked in at them on the bed, they always smiled unabashedly and waved or at least tipped their chins your way.

Belinda took to walking more after Carson was born. She and Paul and the now teen girls (when they were staying with them), Piper, Carson, the dog and cat walked every evening, mostly with the intent to get the "baby fat" off of Belinda's body. And since it wasn't enough, Belinda started taking a second walk some days when she had the time.

On one of those walks, Piper paused at the curb on the side street to pick up a leaf. Instead of continuing on and calling after her daughter as usual, Belinda stopped in the middle of the deserted street from Piper. Carson was coming off of her breast, his head limp, his eyes floating back in their sockets.

Belinda didn't notice Billy right away on the bed in his white-white briefs, in the shadow of the house insides. She couldn't see the erection growing as she rocked back and forth to soothe the baby on to sleep, but she saw his hand darken the front of his crotch as he adjusted himself.

Piper was enthralled with her new playground, the crunching leaves under her tennis shoes, the perfect curb with its line of yellow weeds growing in a straight line up the seam.

Belinda took a step closer to the house, her face now shaded by an overhead branch. She could see the young man, his nipples, his eyes, his legs, feet dangling off the bed soles toward her. She could see his hand on his underwear.

A car turned the corner and slowed as it approached the scene. It was the gay couple from around the corner. Belinda spun around and offered her usual randy greeting to her neighbors as she tugged her black top down over her exposed breast. Carson was jarred half-awake in the process; he sat propped in her arms as the adults talked; her hands were busy all over him.

When the gay guys were gone, Belinda couldn't look back into the house. The inviting shadows played in her peripheral vision but she couldn't look. The sun shadows danced on her face but she couldn't move back to her previous position, to her better vantage point.

Piper's shadow was bent across the curb; Belinda looked at that for a moment then called out sweetly, "Come on, baby." She walked on and Piper reluctantly followed.

the lucky roommate

Last night was the first night in months that I slept in anything and under a light blanket (most nights I haven't even slept under the sheet) with all the fans off. It's 75° outside right now and I'm wearing pj bottoms and slippers over socks. Yesterday, S made a soup out of the squash we got from our Community Supported Agriculture delivery, "before they all rot," he said. Today is his long day at school; he left the house at 9:00 a.m. for a class and his last class ends at 10:00 p.m. (he has some long open stretches in the middle, but he won't be coming home, he stays there and studies). He told me wouldn't be home to fix supper but reminded me about the soup. I have plans with M (who's just returned home from a national tour) to go see a film about the end of Bertolt Brecht's life called The Farewell, which is at the Alamo, so I'll be eating there. But I had some of the soup for lunch with a piece of toast from a loaf of rosemary bread A sent home with us after dinner at her house Sunday a week ago. The soup is the color of fall, a little less orange than pumpkin, but velvety smooth, sweet and slightly spicy. I'm the lucky roommate.

Last night, S and I went to see Burn After Reading at the Alamo Downtown (the Ritz) -- tonight's showing is at Alamo South -- and I had a Greek salad; he had his usual bleu burger with fries. It was already cool out, so I had a Guinness. This weather is fantastic. We both liked Burn quite a bit, though I felt like it didn't have the punch that say Fargo had. S disagreed with me there, but felt that Frances McDormand's performance was perhaps a bit restrained, whereas I thought she was great. We didn't talk a lot about it, not in order to avoid any conflict between us, I just think there wasn't a lot to say (that's what I mean by it not having as big a punch; Fargo was a topic at water-coolers for awhile, as I recall). Maybe the intricacies of the film will surface as we've had more time to think about it. But I doubt it. What I think I'll remember most about Burn is that it's the night fall came to Austin, the night before I had this wonderful cup of soup in the middle of the day.

in the wind and rain

Hurricane Ike has finally brought a little relief from the humidity and high temperatures in Central Texas. It's early yet, we haven't seen any of the major storm activity here. In fact, out my window I see the sun shining and butterflies dancing around the flowering fruit tree in the neighbor's yard. There's a nice breeze through the house without all the fans on high, so there's relief. But you never know what the wind's gonna blow into town.

Yesterday, I got a call from my eldest sister, R, saying that she and her boyfriend and son and an undisclosed number of "dogs" were on the road having been evacuated from their home on the coast near where Galveston Bay meets the Houston Ship Channel. They had been on the road for hours already looking for a large town with hotel availability when B, the boyfriend, said, "Where does your brother live?" I was fine with having them pop in, but our apartment is small and I didn't think we could host (or even greet) all those people and all those dogs, so I called M and asked if I could meet them at their house.

As it turned out, M&J had J's sister K's ex-boyfriend T's Airstream in the driveway waiting for friends from down near Corpus Christi, but when Ike decided to head more northerly, they chose not to make the trip. J is a tinkerer and was proud that he had been able to get the a/c working in the Airstream, so I think he was quite happy to have people staying in it.

I went to H.E.B., got a case of beer and headed to M&J's to have one before my family arrived. Little P had a friend (whose name I missed) over, and then L&S -- M&J's friends they met because their daughters are in school together -- showed up with I (their daughter), who has been calling me "uncle jaybird" like Little P always has (which I love), and they had more beer, and so it turned out to be a regular old beer-drinking Friday night at M&J's.

The dogs numbered three, "all angels," R assured me on the phone, and they were fine. Bones, M&J's dog was ecstatic to have in specie guests, and didn't care that all three of the dogs had their hair raised and teeth bared for the first half hour, he just wanted to play! Eventually, the two younger dogs allowed Bones to kiss and sniff on them and even wagged their tails a little bit.

My sister was so grateful to have a place to be and turned in rather early; the rest of us sat in front of the big screen TV watching the silly CNN weathermen in their L.L. Bean jackets standing on the coast of Galveston Bay alternately over-dramatizing the wind and rain and "complaining" that the winds weren't really all that strong. I could only take a little bit of that and found myself in a jump roping competition with I and her mother (those girls are very competitive) which made my head throb, partly from the beer and partly from the weather.

M talked to her mother every couple of hours. Her mother kept saying, "I don't think we're gonna get any rain from this," and after several hours and several beers, M changed her tune to sound a little more like her mother's, which I chided her for.

My mother had called me earlier in the day to say she wasn't leaving her home, which is less than 10 miles from where my sister was mandatorily evacuated, and just 7.5 miles from the Houston Ship Channel. "After I sat on the highway for 12 hours that last time, I said, 'Never again!'" My stepdad took off the day before for the country house, but she is stubborn, by hers and everyone's admission.

B and D talked to her on the phone a couple of times last night and she was still there, still fine, though her 93-year-old father -- who was supposed to be picked up from his house closer to the bay and delivered to her house -- hadn't shown up yet. But he's pretty stubborn, too. (There is plenty of 8mm footage my grandfather and grandmother took from the Galveston Wall back in the day when they heard of a hurricane brewing and would drive to the water's edge to film it!)

I tried to call my mom at 7:30 this morning, but the telephone was out of order, not surprisingly. At 8:15, the radar showed a big red color-enhanced dot of wind and rain right over my mom's neighborhood. I guess we'll just have to see. I'm expecting to get a call any minute now from M or J, or even B to say they're up and ready for breakfast. I sure am. I don't know what the day holds. I certainly hope it won't require me to sit with family and friends while storms rage around us.

It's a little disheartening being around my nephew, who just recently returned from a Christian finishing school in California. But what bums me out the most is something that I struggled with growing up, and it is sad to see that it still exists in this family, and that is the idea that animals are disposable. They have three dogs, "angels all," though my sister and her boyfriend, D's guardians for now, have said that he can get a pit bull when he gets rid of one of the other dogs. So he's always trying to get somebody to take one of the dogs, while at the same times saying this one has Down's Syndrome or that one is worthless or whatever. I guess, in essence, they aren't cool enough for the image he obviously would like to project.

I can't say much more on this subject except to say that I know where this is coming from, and there is nothing I can do about it. I feel for the dogs, I feel for my sister's kids, I feel for my sister.

P.S. I wrote this entry for the most part before I met M&J and my family for breakfast, and now I'm back and it's 2:15 and we've gotten some breezes and have overcast skies, but still no rain. WTF?

P.P.S. My stepdad didn't actually leave my mother to fend for herself, I found out over lunch. Silly me, I called their land line and not her cell phone. Oh, well; reports are that they're fine except for a couple of leaks in the roof. They got rain, so where's ours?

the power of the prayer

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foolish endeavors

I paid $50 for a .pdf file of a 109-page color booklet on converting a car to run partially on water which I had to print out once I realized that there was no "kit" coming in the mail. It was a foolish endeavor to begin with -- I followed a Google ad at the top of my gmail box -- but I felt like I had done my research, though the research I did was on whether the conversion kit would work. "Anybody can install it!" the ad claimed. But shit, I didn't know I was gonna have to build the thing, too!

Fortunately I've got J on my team. Or do I? I offered to pay him to install the kit, but he refused payment because the project sounded exciting to him. I don't know if building the contraption will excite him as much. Well, yeah, I know it would excite him under normal circumstances, but his plate is kinda full right now, what with working on our house, working on the fishing reel he designed, and other project he's got going (two cars, a beer still in an old Airstream, their house projects, a fence around the property, and on and on).

Oh, well, I got a check for $51 for being an extra on some cable TV show called "Friday Night Lights" (never seen it), so I can kind of call it even, even though I would've made twice that had I stayed home and worked my regular job, but, oh, well, beggars/choosers, blah-blah-blah

I set out to write last night, set an alarm, pulled out all the paperwork and folders and binders and boxes, and then S came in with the offer of dinner. We had his squash and okra New Mexico Stew over polenta -- mm-mm! -- and then root beer floats (our daily obsession this summer). I kept time and reset the alarm for another 45 minutes later, but my work consisted more of organizing than writing. It was a necessary deed, but a bit tedious. There were moments of creative juiciness, particularly with the direction the "journey home" chapter is taking.

I made tabs out of pink and green post-it notes cut to slivers just big enough for chapter numbers (pink for first draft complete, green for in progress), 34 in all, and taped them to the first pages of each chapter or chapter notes. I'm happy to report that there are more pink ones than green ones.

S has a film class on Tuesday evenings (7-10), so I think it would work out better for me to schedule my weekly writing time for Tuesdays, since I sometimes find the kitchen table a nice place to sprawl with all my stuff. I love that table; I think it should go in the upstairs container when we move; I really want the upstairs porch (or "hanging porch," as my neighbor R called it) to be a comfortable place to hang and relax and create or whatever. It has to be at least as wonderful as the porch we have now. I wonder if we'll really have to screen it in, or if the fact that it's ten feet in the air will make the mosquitoes less bothersome. Hm...

I feel kind of stuck as to where I should start writing. S suggested working on whatever inspires me, new stuff not rewrites. I guess it doesn't have to be the same thing every week. We'll see when the time comes.

Speaking of the house, I've been studying up on cob building and I got a big idea to make the west wall out of cob, maybe even build a fireplace into it... Of course, it's something I would have to get approval on from J&M, and it's another something that would get put on J's plate, to some extent, because he would have to bother himself at the very least with working this element into the overall design. But I think a cob wall would be very cool, aesthetically as well as temperature-wise.

I am totally obsessed with a game called Tris (don't even know how to pronounce it), an application on my iPhone.

artist emerging

I'm not going back to the gay men's chorus. It's not for me. I was doing the math -- amused that I even had to be doing math for such a thing -- and the numbers just don't make any sense. First, dues are $120 a year. I've been told that this money goes to pay the two co-directors' and the piano player's salaries and rental of the rehearsal space.

The first concert opportunity coming up is in the middle of the day, so I would miss a minimum of two hours of work(...$170); plus I would have to buy an outfit for the concert (casual dress attire, long sleeve shirt, slacks, tie; another $20 at best). (...$190) I don't have any of those items in my wardrobe and I don't really want any of items in my wardrobe. And on top of that, there's only one more rehearsal before that concert, and I don't feel confident with any of the songs (one of which I haven't even received the sheet music for, even though I paid my $10 music fee). (...$200)

The next concert opportunity is something I likely won't be chosen for, and I'm not sure I want to be anyway. It's the "Midnight Cabaret," an event for which the audition is this coming Thursday evening, and the director gets final say over the pieces, whether they're too risky or not bawdy enough. Those who don't perform in the cabaret are encouraged to volunteer but must be in full costume regardless of the position you volunteer for. I don't think I would get selected because I've seen a song or two that some of the men intend to audition with, and they seem boring to me, classic piano bar songs. Oy!

And then there's the Christmas concert. I'm somewhat opposed to singing songs about the Christchild any ol' way, but the costume for this concert is a tuxedo! Someone said you can get one at JC Penney's for around $100... ($300)

And I really have no interesting in inviting friends to come see the concerts (tickets for which I hear cost $140!) But mostly it's about the fact that I'm an Artist.

S and I went to see the Patti Smith documentary last night (Patti Smith: Dream of Life), an excellent, inspiring film. I had been thinking about quitting the chorus before we saw it, but was completely sold on the fact that I need to quit afterward because the movie is all about being an artist, being true to the artist that you are. I wasn't a big fan of Patti's back in the day because I really wasn't exposed to her. I don't know if I would have been transformed had I experienced her in the 80s when I was confused and stupid and living in Houston, but I was certainly transformed last night.

Although I am often lonely, I realized I don't need to search for community to fulfill me -- because I haven't found a community yet that fills that need. What I need to do is create art; I need to be proud of what I am creating. My art might bring me closer to a community of like-minded people; or maybe that won't happen until sometime in the distant future. Patti read a Walt Whitman poem in which he imagines all the poets to come after him; he was describing what he saw in the trees and the water and nature for the poets to come after him. She said it has always been important for her to do that. I like the way that sounded.

I keep making excuses not to write, not to get in there and cover my hands with papercuts in order to organize and work on this fucking big-ass novel. But last night, glowing from having just seen the Patti Smith movie, burning from the excitement that is New York City as I haven't since I left there ten years ago, I decided that I just gotta do it. So, I made a promise to myself. At the very least, I will spend the two hours of rehearsal time expected of the men in the chorus working on my novel. Every Monday evening, 7-9. There may be other hours as well, after I get into the groove of it and things start flowing, but right now I'm promising myself that much. Even if I just sit with the manuscript on my lap smoking cigarettes and staring at the space in front of me, I will be totally involved with my novel for two hours every week night. No special outfit required.

I was so charged when I went to bed last night that I had a full night of dreams, most of which I can't remember, except for one: A crowd of tall people talking at a party separates and a boy with breathtaking light blue eyes, pushes through, points at me and smiles, saying, "You! You!"