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.

Mid-March update
(because ever since Mom passed away in the beginning of March, and Dad called it the ides of March, one of the rare times he actually said something really sucked, because he is a gentleman and does not say such things, but this time he said this is a real bummer, I can't do much writing then. In her honor, I stare at her paintings, and be wry, and read newspapers, and get a croissant and coffee. In her honor.)

1. Did not get the yellow cottage. There was a crack in the foundation and the bank could not underwrite the loan. I immediately relished the metaphor and forgot about the loss.

2. Have been writing the novel. It is becoming satirical. That makes me nervous. But the book can't help it.

3. Did a reading with Luc Sante, Mimi Lipson, and Jon Bowermaster in Saugerties. Forgive me for not posting it. I was too busy getting ready.

3a. At the reading, read from the new novel, but not really a satirical part. It seemed to go well. People were sad about the yellow wolf. I immediately relished the misunderstanding because the wolf is actually a white wolf but it's really dirty, having lived a sad and dirty life. And I created this misunderstanding. It made me feel a little godlike in a very bad way.

3b. A man asked me whether I was worried about reading from an unfinished work. I pretended not to be.

4. I am reading at BARNES & NOBLE on APRIL 17th with Tanya Torres, an amazing poet and artist and all around strong spirit. She seems to beat to the color red.

5. I am heading to California next week to do the annual pilgrimage to the students who read my book.

Deeply hopeful for the new year

Backyard of the dream house


Corner of the kitchen of the dream house


Cherry-red chaise velvet chaise lounge for the living room of the dream house

Great reading I missed but shouldn't have


Gary Allen, Tamara Watson and Phillip Levine read at the MUDDY CUP/INQUIRING MINDS coffeehouse and bookstore in Saugerties, part of a great series put together by Teresa Giordano. And unfortunately and stupidly I had to miss it. I had written, in this sam post, a kind of luminous excuse: the sky was so many colors, the dogs had to be fed, the pages of the book would not stop turning on their own, and so I lost my place, and so I lost track of time while I was looking for the place, and then it was late, and the drive is long and the roads were winding, and windy, and I didn't go. The excuse itself was inspired by Phillip, who seems to be able to make verse, sweet, human verse, out of nearly everything. There was actually a concrete reason why I couldn't go. All the same, it was a — loss. One thing: the bookstore has a myspace page, where it describes itself as a swinger and an 18 year old male.

Merry Surviving

(about a woman who survived for 3 days under the snow, and was found by a search & rescue dog.)

It's Christmas, I'm looking at a paper bag printed with reindeers wearing scarves, watching the dogs chase each other outside. The power went out for a few hours around 3 a.m., which led to a dream of being old and marooned. But I'm not. Is there an equivalent to 3 days under the snow? A domestic equivalent? And why is life constantly permeated — or perforated — with a sense of connection, whereby the story I picked last month as Chronogram's fiction winner was about a man obsessed with a Ford Aerostar, the car that took me to graduate and into the first vestige of a new life, and why was it the best story, and how did it come to be that it was written by Mimi Lipson, who just happens to be with Luc Sante, who just happens to also be on Verse Chorus, etc.?

I blacked out the names of all the authors when I read the stories. But I wouldn't have known anyway. A blind spot which led right back into the small tidy circle of life. I'd been meaning to mention this.

And my father just told me this, his advice to a friend who was having trouble (his words) with her son: One of the first things I learned as a parent is how to make my children feel guilty.

Xavier and Cato, early December, before the snow.




Slam after the snow.

ran turned away.
what? he said. did I do something wrong?
he's staring at me, she said. she was referring to Old Big Guy, who was laying on his pile of clothes, his giant shovel-head resting on the edge of the bed, yellow eyes shining as they went at it.
what, never had sex with a 140 pound wolf staring at you?

Because most of the time in the cabin there were at least 2 if not 3 of the wolves, usually because Big Old Guy was there, and he had taken a fancy to one of the females, or a rank young male was injured trying to climb up the ladder, or they'd found yet another, wounded or hurt, or just too weak to be outside.

The other night in the city of Kingston the only other people on the same block were drunk coming out of the pub. A man insisted I should come out of the cold and at least get a hot cider. He was making a big deal about the cider. I said, "What's the big deal about the cider?" Asked this of a perfect stranger. He was unphased. "It's so good," he said. "You never know — you might like it." He seemed to be trying to wink at me.

I was dressed in double hats, double jackets, insulated boots, holding the dog toy. The dog toy would be given to the dog when she found me in the dark, in this mostly empty city. Because I was out there, waiting for a trailing dog to find me during an urban trail. "Well who are you waiting for, then" he wanted to know. I didn't want to tell him I was waiting for a dog. And I'd forgotten, really, what it meant to be considered a possibility. So I thanked him.

On the way back to the truck after everything, I saw the deer in the window. Further proof of the shorthand darling heart of faith in the odd world. For you.