Spreadsheet No More! A tale of liberation.

In 2008-2009-2010, I have read 61 books, 70 books, and 40 books, respectively. I tallied my reading habits on nerdalicious spreadsheets, sharing and comparing with my readerly friends. We had some great conversations over those lists, didn't we, friends? Didn't we?

Lookit. I wimped out this year.

No spreadsheet. No list. Occasionally I updated the column on the right side of this page, the "Now Reading," though I declined to include the books I was reading to my son, now almost 15 months old. There would be quite a few repeats on that list, including a book we have unofficially titled "Sad Animals."

Huge point of pride that this little guy loves books. He'll clamber into your lap with a book in hand, and point out certain pictures and read along. His favorite books often involve the word "no," which he delights in saying.

Did I distract you yet from the lack of spreadsheet? It is partially due to caring for baby that I neglected to care about logging my book list. To be honest, I used him as an excuse: I knew I'd be busy and never started a list in the first place. It was freeing to read indiscriminately and not think about how the books stacked up, or how many books I'd have to read to reach the previous year's total, or whether I seemed to be reading more nonfiction versus fiction or men versus women. All of that tracking I did was interesting for a time, and helpful in making conscious choices about reading material. But the unconscious can be a powerful ally, I think, in picking books that you not only want to read, but might even need to read.

A few of the ones I read and loved (or am still reading, and ones that I can, at this moment and without a spreadsheet as a reminder, remember): Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog; Jo Ann Beard's In Zanesville; Bob Hicok's Words for Empty, Words for Full; Teju Cole's Open City; David Foster Wallace's The Pale King; Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (again); Patricia Henley's Other Heartbreaks; Michael Martone's Four For a Quarter; Mark Neely's Four of a Kind; Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad; Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story; Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy; and Leah Stewart's Husband and Wife.

My awesome sister and brother-in-law got me a Kindle for Christmas, which has been fantastic. The first book I downloaded was Thoreau's Walden. A compromise of sorts: taking baby steps into the technology, dearhearts. (Also: free book.) Can't imagine ever giving up paper books, but I'm excited by the prospect that having more options will equate to more reading next year.

Happy almost-2012. And please send me your recommended reads.

11 lines in 11 minutes

1. When I was in college, we called an automated line to find out our grades in advance of receiving paper copies; you had to listen to a maddeningly slow voice spell out the course and section number and then likely you would hear, "GRADE. NOT YET. SUBMITTED."

2. The message I'd like to send at present: GRADE. NOT YET. SUBMITTED.

3. During the Victoria's Secret Runway Show tonight, with musical guest Kanye West, he spoke of his own departed angel, his mother; he dedicated a song to her as 19-yr-old women dressed in angel wings strutted past.

4. His mother died of complications from plastic surgery.

5. I am living the American dream, said one corseted model.

6. This was about six minutes worth of the show, and then we watched LOUIE, in which the title character, a much younger male comedian, came on to the much older Joan Rivers.

7. Today I read a YA blog that called this generation of young people the most literate and text-savvy of all time.

8. Eggs, it seems, taste different lately, almost as if they've changed the recipe, like the chickens got together and cracked open (ha) a cookbook and said, Well, how about this?

9. If I were a different sort, I would WebMD the symptom: WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN EGGS TASTE DIFFERENT?

10. Better not to know.

11. Ah, there's twelve minutes, and I've missed my designated window, and we haven't even gotten to the tabloid narratives observed at the grocery store, which can be a topic for a later date. (Teaser: ANGELINA RUINS THANKSGIVING. And it hadn't even happened yet.)

It's here. Welcome, book.

Sudden Flash Youth, a new collection of young adult flash fiction from Persea Books, is out now. It includes my short piece, "For Good," about Juan and Cece at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. You'll find work from Steve Almond, Richard Bausch, Stuart Dybeck, Dave Eggers, Pia Z. Erhardt, Meg Kearney, Paul Lisicky, Naomi Shihab Nye, Pamela Painter, Robert Shapard, Alice Walker, and many, many others. The book is edited by Christine Perkins-Hazuka, Tom Hazuka, and Mark Budman.

This piece of art gets special mention in my story (The artist is Do-Ho Suh):

And so does this one, by artist Robert Indiana:

A funny thing happened on the way to the dinner

So there I am, at the gorgeous Central Library as part of the Indiana Author's Award event. I have two back-to-back sessions during the day, and before the first one starts, I have a minute to duck into the Author's Fair and say hello to Bich Minh Nguyen, one of the finalists for the Emerging Author award (the other finalists were Micah Ling and Aaron Michael Morales.) Bich was kind enough to invite me to join her for the awards dinner at Purdue's table -- she teaches at Purdue, which is where I earned my MFA.

I also see Dick Wolfsie sitting at one of the tables in front of a stack of books. I say hello, and tell him that I had the pleasure of watching a taping of his show with my class more than 20 years ago at Union Station.

"Great!" he says, nice as can be. "Are you still a teacher?"

This is where I had to explain that yes, I am now a teacher, but back then, well, I was in the sixth grade.

Poor Dick Wolfsie was mortified. He clapped his hands over his mouth and apologized. "Wait until my wife hears about this." (Note to Dick Wolfsie's wife: It was totally fine. Funny, in fact.)

My sessions were titled "Get Started," a course I'd taught before for the Writers' Center of Indiana. My first group kicked off with participants asking a number of questions, which helped focus the discussion. We wrote a little, talked a little more, and people discussed the stages of their various writing projects (for some, they had yet to begin, so "Get Started" made perfect sense.) It was a great, participatory group. Afterwards, I watched two attendees introduce themselves, then exchange contact information along with meaningful hugs. Not exactly typical of a short writing session, but hey: I'm thrilled that connections were made.

Have I mentioned that I did not eat lunch, not officially, on this day? It had been a busy morning. My husband had rented an aerator for the lawn, and drove across town to do my parents' lawn, too. When he got home, he looked peaked. "I feel horrible," he said, and collapsed into bed.

Really? I was thinking. I haven't showered, and the baby needs to eat, and he's taking a nap? I looked closer. He was more than peaked, he was green. And he'd have to take care of the baby -- who'd had a bug two days before, which my husband must've caught -- when I left to teach. "Rest," I said, "then call my mom if you need her." Grammy's always on call. Three cheers for Grammy!

So I wheeled the high chair over to the bathroom door and took a quick shower while the baby ate. He whined at first, then kicked his feet and laughed each time I peek-a-booed around the shower curtain. I quickly got ready and grabbed a banana to go. Got through the first session, then realized I'd need a little more sustenance. I bought a granola bar at the library cafe and ducked into the now-empty author's fair room to eat.

A man walks in. "Are you an author?" he asks. "Are you famous?"

"Um, yes?" I say. "And no."

We chatted a bit about his writing, his identity crisis, his career change. I gulped down the granola bar. I only had a few minutes before the next session, and I raced off. I do a lot of racing around these days, which is funny considering my high school volleyball teammates used to call me Eeyore. Because I was slow. Also: grumpy.

The second session went a little differently. People came in and out, sort of trying out the class before deciding it wasn't for them. Or maybe they wanted to hit more than one session before heading home. There was a distracted vibe. I talked about getting messy, creatively, rather than trying to shoehorn ideas into a prearranged format. "But I'm halfway done!" one person argued. "I've got it all mapped out on a spreadsheet, and now you're telling me to start over?"

Was I? I didn't think so. I had been talking about getting started. As the title of the session would suggest. Even so, I began to sweat. Was this nerves? Students offer challenges all the time, and usually it doesn't faze me. I like trying to think on my feet and explain something in a new way. But I was definitely sweating. Maybe I shouldn't have worn a wool sweater.

I was in the middle of a sentence, answering a question about the merits of MFA programs, when I knew that it wasn't nerves. I felt sick.

"I need to excuse myself," I said. "If I'm not back in five minutes, we'll have to cancel."

Deep breathing got me to the bathroom, where I proceeded to retch my meager lunch into the toilet. "Sorry," I said weakly to the person in the next stall, who was nice enough to ask if I was OK.

Actually, now I felt great. "I'm fine," I said emphatically, popped a Breathsaver, and returned to the room to finish the session. A concerned trio of library staff waited for me there, and I reassured them I could finish the remaining ten minutes. And I did. I can still make the dinner, I told myself. That was a one-time thing.

It wasn't. I had to pull over once on the way home, and couldn't even make it to the passenger side to get sick on busy College Ave. Someone, I thought, is going to drive into my open car door, and also my head, and this will be a humiliating way to die. While vomiting on the roadside.

"I can still make the dinner," I said when I got home. My husband eyed me from the couch; my mom shook her head doubtfully. I laid down on the floor. My sweet baby scooted over and flopped his body over mine as if giving me a hug.

"Just a sec," I said, and ran to the bathroom.

Old Faithful, my husband called me, once I was well enough to joke about such things. I stayed in bed until late afternoon Sunday. The bug my son had and my husband nearly had was no joke.

So, I missed the dinner, which, judging by all of your photos on Facebook, was really nice. Congratulations go out to poet Micah Ling, who won the Emerging Author award, and I wished I'd had the chance to talk to her, and to catch up with Bich, and to meet Aaron, another Purdue MFA grad.

Jell-O and soup and saltines and a really great husband (and mom, who came back on Monday to take care of me AND the baby) fixed me up right. Baby's feeling great now, too. Here's hoping I'll keep my clean bill of health for the Gathering of Writers this Saturday. I'll continue my strict regimen of granola bar avoidance, and everything should be just fine.

In which I want a crepe but do not get one

Indianapolis Monthly has just made me swoon, via "The Dish," with mention of banana and Nutella crepes. It is too late to get some, hour-wise. Must distract self. And perhaps you!

Me, in words:
A headline poem, "Monkeys Ponder What Could Have Been," in Gargoyle 57

An interview with PANK Magazine, at their blog

Short fiction, "Arrested Development," in Midwestern Gothic

Me, in events:
I'm teaching two "Get Started" sessions at the Indianapolis Central Library on Saturday, from 1-2:30 p.m., and also from 3-4:30 p.m. This is part of the Indiana Authors Award event. Very excited to attend the dinner. Business attire is recommended! I do not know exactly what this means, which is part of the excitement.

And, I'm teaching a session on the essay at the Gathering of Writers, a fantastic annual event put on by the Writers' Center of Indiana.

(I still want those crepes. Man.)

Uh-oh

Today's horoscope: "Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The answers you need may be lost in the mail or floating in cyberspace. You and your can-do attitude will prevail."

That's a nice little uplift at the end. Still. THE ANSWERS I NEED MAY BE FLOATING IN CYBERSPACE? Super. I'll just get started tracking them down. Because cyberspace is small, easily managed, and it shouldn't take me, oh, more than an hour.

Also I have tons of spare time! So there's that.

USPS, I still love you. Whitney Houston-style: I will always love you. Do not be confused, though: I am not saying you are Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. Which is playing simultaneously in living rooms across the nation, on three different channels, at any given point on any given day.

Except Sunday.

Ten lines in ten minutes

1. Life observed from the car window is removed times two, yet feels sped up.
2. The dancing Cash for Gold man usually wears a gold lame suit and plays cardboard guitar, though lately he has taken to wearing a vampire costume for Halloween (presumably.)
3. Once I watched a special on TV about a man who claimed, from jail, not to have killed a woman he seemed guilty of killing; during the interview, he played a small guitar he'd made of cardboard and dental floss.
4. At The Avett Brothers concert the other weekend, I entered a raffle to win a signed guitar.
5. I said I'd really learn to play this time, if I won.
6. I'm going to win, I told my friend Allison.
7. I didn't win.
8. The night was chilly, more than that, the night was cold, and we wore our blankets and stomped our feet and danced and watched the moon and the stars and listened to the Avetts singing song after song, all that emotion, what do they do with all that emotion, I love them for having it, writing it, sharing it.
9. Sometimes in class, I feel as if I'm being watched/recorded, a la Candid Camera, based on the ludicrousness of situation.
10. Maybe I am.

Lost Dissertation Opportunity #267

Degree Candidate: Sarah A. Layden
Degree Sought: PhD in Popular Culture and Fast-Food Studies
Working Title: Color Me with Condiments: Representations of Race and Class in Burger King's 1974 "Have it Your Way" Campaign
Research questions: What is the cringey to sassy ratio? Is that Jon Voigt asking for four Coca-Cola? Why not colas?

15 lines in 15 minutes

1.) The deadline forces the mind to mind. 2.) I am writing about personal things, potentially exposing things, which feels hazardous and risky; but I'm telling the story as best I can, which means being honest, which can be incredibly difficult. 3.) There are many, many jobs that are more difficult than writing, chief among them police officer. 4.) The IMPD officers wear bulletproof vests at all times, over shorts and T-shirts when the weather is warm. 5.) There is something startling about a man in shorts with a visible gun holster, and a gun inside that holster. 6.) Even more startling: that man at your door. 7.) (Everything's fine, mom.) 8.) The refrain of the subconscious, the things it wants and asks for, so different from what the upfront brain says it wants. 9.) You Are Your Brain vs. You Are Not Your Brain. 10.) Polenta with pesto, chicken cordon bleu, a glass of red wine, a green salad. 11.) My week's refrain: The World Without Aunt Judy In It. 12.) A Facebook friend referred to FB as the biggest panoptican there is; look it up -- he's right. 13.) Planning to see "Contagion" and read "The Plague" by Camus, 'cause I'm sick like that. 14.) While burping the baby I sang to him, "Who let the burp out?" to the tune of that song, and he replied, Dada. 15.) I'd speculate if he knows what he was saying, but really: do any of us?

Click publish

Sometimes it seems there are too many ways to express the self, including this mode, le blogger, and we have to choose which method for which situation, which place in time, which people will see which thing, how those people might react in their particular places and times, the fallout or repercussions of those reactions or potentially the lack thereof, a silence that speaks to being ignored or worse, never seen, never heard, our lives a vacuum in which we are talking to ourselves but pretending otherwise, until the word "vacuum" reminds this particular self that I forgot to vacuum the dining room rug earlier, and now it is too late in terms of those who are awake versus those who are asleep, and whatever fell off a certain someone's high chair tray will just have to stay there, and my shoulder hurts and hoisting the vacuum wouldn't be a good idea anyway, and the movie we watched half of, "An Education," was rife with people about to act on bad ideas presented in a suspenseful fashion and I'm eager to watch the rest of it, now I am writing as "I" and not "this self," I am getting closer to saying something, maybe what I want to say is that I like distance and this mode of expression begs for assumed closeness and I want to assume as little as possible, that we (me and you, whoever you are) would share the details of our weekend around some sort of beverage cart (because really, water coolers? They are expensive enough, apparently, that they are removed from certain offices as cost-cutting measures), and I am about to backspace over all of this, just unpave the whole thing, and I see that button below, Publish, and this isn't really all that interesting, why should I click publish, or why NOT, as a little counter-argument, arguments about counters, granite vs. laminate, both heavy, and seriously: my arm and shoulder feel like they're about to fall off, and here seems like a good venue for that discussion instead of there, which would turn into "Wot happend?" and "Aww poor baybeeee" and "what did u do?" and even typing in that fashion makes me want to massage my eye sockets with a pencil eraser, and what happened was carrying a heavy but adorable baby, and yoga, and moving furniture, and being old, oldER, shall we say, if we're continuing our beverage cart chat, because this is what (wot) we do: share the mundanity of our lives, and twenty to forty-five times a day I think of doing so, sharing, and usually don't, but the mundanity is where the meaning is, the walk after getting ice cream (birthday cake flavor), the stretch of my hamstrings, listening to the baby learning to say "Uh oh," the weather today so perfect and sunny with a slight breeze and blue skies and the feeling of, Why can't every day be like this? Like Sunday, as Morrissey wondered, like grilling out for dinner and a walk down the block and calm, calm, calm, a day so lovely you almost can't believe there was a hurricane on the east coast, Irene, when you're just going about your business, and at 11:11 when I make a wish (always), it is for myself or my child or my husband and almost never do I use my wishes on strangers, and almost always is the wish the same thing, a version of the same idea, and I am close to telling, I am this close to telling, so I either unpave what I've written or click publish, and you know what? 11:11, make a wish.

Dissonance

I have spent the last two weeks talking, teaching many classes. I used to think I was an introvert, and Myers-Briggs even said it was so. But teaching has turned me extroverted. Truthily. The last M-B personality test I took placed me squarely in the "E" category. Who knew?

Hectic as summer programs are, I had a blast. But boy am I sick of the sound of my own voice.

Let's listen to other people for awhile.



I'm reading Bob Mould's autobiography, See a Little Light.



I sung a few bars for my husband. He thought I was singing something by this band. I wasn't, but it's always nice to revisit the 90s.



Looking forward to the new Feist album, Metals, in October. The 4th, says the knowledgeable staff at LUNA Music. I'm-a gonna get it for the baby for his birthday, which is the 5th. Almost one! Who can believe it? Not I.



That was kind of dreamy. Speaking of, awoke with this in my head...



Better than getting Rick-rolled, which just happened when I clicked on a YouTube video a minute ago. But was secretly pleasing, also.



Enjoy the random, the general specific. The happiness of the guys in this audience. One beard, two beard, red beard, blue beard.

Close to Home

The Indiana State Fairgrounds are a mile-and-a-half from our house. We can walk there, or run past on the Monon Trail. Saturday night, we were at home, not at the fair. We were on the couch, enjoying Mexican takeout and a drink and the Colts game interspersed with The Dark Knight, enjoying the fact that the baby was sleeping so we could do all of the above.

We were not at the fair. We were not there when the storm rolled in just before Sugarland was about to take the grandstand stage, when gusts of wind caused the stage to topple, when four people died (and later, at the hospital, a fifth) and dozens were injured, when concertgoers were evacuated, with people far and wide wondering whether their loved ones were all right.

We can hear muffled versions of State Fair concerts from our house, but not this night. The wind drew us to the porch, and we watched the enormous trees behind our neighbor's house sway. I moved the potted plants from the table to the porch floor. The plants are nearly dead from the heat and my neglect but I didn't want the pots to tip and shatter. The power surged briefly, then came back on. The baby slept. We went back to watching The Dark Knight, and created a hand gesture/gang sign to indicate hash tags, basically the new air quotes (#HolyHeathLedger). I thought of the tall trees in our own backyard, outside the baby's room. The biggest one's trunk veers in two different directions. We had it cabled for stability last year, I reminded myself. The wind had already died down. Just some rain now. Midwestern spring and summer storms can be wicked. We would hear the tornado sirens if it came to that, and we'd grab the sleeping baby and retreat to the basement in time to be fine, if it came to that.

When we'd had enough of TV, I logged onto Facebook. That was how I heard about the catastrophe at the State Fair, which dominated my news feed. Initial reports said four dead, at least a dozen injured. No names of victims yet. I had been about to post an update about our relaxing, fun evening staying in, but I didn't. People were dead a mile-and-a-half from my house. Mexican food and the Colts and Heath Ledger were no longer relevant. The baby sighed in his sleep over the monitor. He does this sometimes, his thoughtful way of reminding me that he's still breathing. Sugarland. A band I knew from students who recommended their music, who said their concert was the best experience of their summers.

Were any of my former students at the concert? I hit refresh, willing the list of names to appear. They didn't. (Not until midmorning Sunday: Tammy Vandam, 42, Wanatah, Ind.; Glenn Goodrich, 49, Indianapolis; Alina Bigjohny, 23 Fort Wayne; Christina Santiago, 29, Chicago; Nathan Byrd, 51, Indianapolis. People I didn't know, won't know. Rest in peace.)

I looked up Indianapolis Star music critic Dave Lindquist on Facebook and read his reports from the scene. I scrolled the feed to read about friends who updated that they were all right, and so were their friends and family.

Then the power went out. It was about 10:30 p.m. We gathered the flashlight and candles, discussed whether the baby would be too warm without air conditioning. How long the fridge and freezer contents could last without spoiling. Tom went to the store for ice, grabbing extra bags for the neighbors. We went to bed, and the power came back on around 1:30 a.m. Our food was fine. The baby's bottles were fine. Minor inconveniences. A mile-and-a-half down the road, people clutched at each other as they ran for their lives. I wasn't there. I saw the pictures.

Today we went to the zoo with our friends, and it was like being on vacation. The place was packed, perhaps in part because the State Fair was closed today. Rain clouds came and went. If there was a storm, it was meant for somewhere else. The drops mostly missed us, just a few on my face. I picked up the baby and shielded him the best I could.

Sometimes you search the Internet, sometimes the Internet searches you.

I can't believe I found this. My search terms were "egg commercial wagon wheel." Can't really pinpoint why I was looking for it -- maybe I want some cheese? -- but it instantly brought me back to my youth, watching TV, and these wonderfully bizarre PSAs on behalf of whatever food needed promoting that month. (Such as the Incredible Edible Egg. Brilliant. Though just came across some 1980s commercials, with limber female gymnasts and downhill skiers and plates of different egg dishes, that were startling in their sensuous depiction of the egg. What's that all about? Lost thesis opportunity: The Hidden Fertility and Procreation Messages from The Egg Council Circa 1985.)

And then I am reminded of college, of Danielle's spookily accurate impersonation of the rubbery-legged cartoon egg, which made us laugh so hard we cried. The camaraderie created by a commercial aired in two different states decades before, remembered by two people who had not met, but watched simultaneously, probably in pajamas while eating cereal out of the box (Lucky Charms for me, Cap'n Crunch, I'd guess, for her). Years later, we wound up at the same college on the same volleyball team in yet another state, and discovered that for a short period of our childhoods, we had lived near each other, but never met. Our older siblings went to the same preschool.

Connections atop connections. Geography. But also, eggs speaking about cheese.

Which led me to: "You Are What You Eat (From Your Head Down to Your Feet)" which is just as creepy as I remember. Our insides have conveyor belts and trap doors. And an Eggman, koo koo katchoo, deciding what stays and what goes. Tapping his little cane on your small intestine.



And appearing in the sidebar is Mr. Yuk: terrifying.


Those 1970s/80s warnings for children pull no punches, for real. And guess what: I still have some Mr. Yuk stickers. Want one? Let me know. I'll drop it in the mail. Seriously. If not a Mr. Yuk, you could also opt for a scratch-and-sniff that smells vaguely of cotton candy, and also the 80s.

Cool it, now

People. It is hot. It is the kind of hot that bakes our brains, and the only thing we can say to each other, all day long, is: "It is hot. It is HOT."

And our wilted companions try to nod, but their sweaty hair weighs down their head and neck and they look a little Muppety. (No offense.) "Hot," they agree, weak but emphatic.

So we head indoors. Yesterday the newspaper's front-page story was about a man who works on a boiler at the gas plant. No indoors option for him. To paraphrase the headline: Think it's hot? Try working his job. (It's a Midwestern specialty: stop complaining, because somebody's got it worse than you. And they do. My classroom is air conditioned. The closest I've ever gotten to a boiler is Purdue Pete.) Today's front page? "We're sweatin' (But just a little)." Come ON. There are rivulets of sweat running down this city's back. That stiff Midwestern upper lip is caked in layers or salt.

Indoors. Ho-hum. The love affair with cable has drawn to its predictable close. The mall feels like cheating on the pool, with distracting signage. "It's our biggest event of the year!" exclaims a department store that holds a sale roughly every two seconds. Should we "step out" and see what it's all about? Apparently a reality show mom just "stepped out" with a new facelift. A facelift, the celeb news anchor said, that she got in time for her daughter's wedding.

Help me, Rhonda.

I feel like it's important for us to remember that a sale is not an event. Also? People do not "step out." They leave the house, sure, but presumably to do things. It occurs to me now that the idea of "stepping out" was invented for non-events. Like celebrities leaving the house in order to be photographed. And that's not an event, either. It's a sale.

Trapped inside, we long for something new. The computer connects us to the celebs stepping out, the sales events, each other. We circle one another online without ever having to say hello. Hello.



I hope The Moody Blues have found Facebook. Go-go Boots Dancer, I bet, is a vaguebooker.

So look here. I don't know if this will alleviate heat malaise or boredom, but I got something for you: The New Thing, completely free at Metazen. While you're reading that, I will wait patiently for my new thing to arrive on the doorstep. Whatever it is, it's on its way.

Special Summer Blockbuster Trailers Edition

BOOK TRAILERS, of course! Books I'm reading/want to read. What other trailers are out there? Please do share. Enquiring minds, etc. etc.

I can't think of any movies out now that I'm really excited about seeing. This is mainly because I've been living in a cave, but also because there's an awful lot of dreck out now, therefore I stop paying attention. I see two-and-a-half stars from my trusty reviewers and think, Eh, there's one less thing I need to be concerned with, so THANKS, reviewers, and THANKS to the five-star rating system and visual/symbol literacy, and THANKS brain for understanding said system and moving on to the next thing, which is the comics, and also the baby wants more cereal, like immediately, because that kid can eat. So! Let's you and me curl up with a good book trailer followed by reading the book itself. Yes. Get on board.


So You Know It's Me by Brian Oliu

So You Know It's Me Trailer from Be Xo on Vimeo.

Naked Summer by Andrew Scott

Naked Summer: The Book Trailer from Andrew Scott on Vimeo.

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French



Question: would it be odd to make a trailer for a book that has yet to be published? Because I think that would be some awesome fun. And a great excuse to travel and shoot footage. Cue the fog machine. Release the hounds. Vamanos a las montañas. Etc. etc.

Notebook detritus

Yesterday I came across an old "ideas" file on the computer, a place I'd intended to jot and stash images and material for stories, poems and the like. I'd forgotten the file and hadn't opened it in ages, since I usually turn to notebooks and scrap paper. There were only a half-dozen items on my list, which is actually titled "idears," because that seems a little amusing and vaguely British and has "dear" in it, always nice. One of my idears was this gem:

POEM ABOUT DUST

I have no recollection of writing this note-to-self, and not even sure what I had in mind with my poem about dust. The constant battle against? The squeamy feeling that comes with thinking about dust mites on the skin? To dust we shall return?

I really ought to write a poem about dust. Dorianne Laux did, and so did Li-Young Lee.

(Fun for hours at The Writer's Almanac, at least for a word nerd like me. Here you will find the work of David Shumate, a fine, fine, poet I am lucky to call a colleague. Related: Good Poems for Hard Times, selected by Garrison Keillor.)

I have more notebooks than I can keep track of, filled with the unfinished, the half-thought-out. Maybe I need to dust off a few old ones to see what else I've forgotten.

Piece of advice overheard in a restaurant on Elmwood Ave. in Buffalo, N.Y., from a grandfather to his granddaughter, at a post-graduation lunch:

"Stay away from writers and artists. They only make money after they're dead."

Putting the End in Friend

Writers get rejected a lot. As far as I can tell, it's simply a fact you learn to get used to, and then you move on. Submit somewhere else. Write something new. Take up ice dancing or handicrafts, for the love of Pete, if only for the diversion.

You'd think that all that rejection would prepare a person for the tricky-to-navigate world of Facebook unfriending, but no. Yours vicariously recently has been cast out of several friends' lists, and at first I was hurt. Then confused. Then I forgot about it, and went to see Bridesmaids with one of my oldest, dearest, most hilarious friends, and realized these particular Deleters were people I only sort of knew. It would be super-awkward going to a movie with them. I wouldn't want our hands to accidentally touch in the popcorn tub.

But still. It's like a weird cyber break-up, sans confrontation. It's like the little notes I sometimes get back when I send my writing out to various publications. "We loved it! The language is evocative and haunting! But in no way is this right for us!"

Yes, right! Wait. What?

I set out to understand why this virtual shunning had happened. My research showed that "Unfriending Day" wasn't until Nov. 17. Hmm.

This article was similarly informative: a study found that most people are unfriended for inflammatory posts or mundane posts. And here's a nice little kicker for this new mom: “As soon as you have a baby, you become uninteresting,” noted one survey respondent.

Ouch. Or to paraphrase Ben Folds Five, Eff you, too.

Some light self-reflection reminded me of my unwritten rules: I try not to post about anything I wouldn't say loudly in public. That leaves out, at minimum: politics, religion, the best swear words, and the consistency of my baby's poop. (But if other people post on these topics? I will add my two cents. Loophole city, sweetheart.) It doesn't mean I don't swear, or think about religion, politics, and poop. I do. More often than I'd like, most days. But I just don't air my opinions in a loud voice, in public. It's the best gauge I can think of, when it comes to sharing and oversharing online.

So: what's left? Well, there's always food. Is food mundane? On occasion I will announce what I've just consumed/am about to consume/am thinking about consuming at an undetermined point in the future. Mayhaps this is related to my recent extra caloric intake (see: baby). Maybe I am simply a sinning glutton. Even food is political; again, happy to discuss this with you face to face, not so much online. (Because then there is a record. Which you will use against me when I rail against Americans' bad eating habits, Hoosiers especially, then go buy designer cupcakes at my favorite designer cupcakery. If our conversation's over dinner, I can always blame the wine, or your hearing.) I don't post about food that often, I swear. And one of the people who deleted me does. Or rather, did. Sniff.

Besides updating about my uninteresting life and baby, I often post about writing, books and education. Because you know what I like? Writing. And books. Also, education. One recent deleter is a writer and teacher, someone I'd met and admire. (Should I be writing in the past tense? It's not like this is death. More like the type of breakup where the other person suddenly stops talking to you.) This person had signed my books and my wall, and the unplugging stung a little. We still have a dozen mutual writer/teacher friends, and the witty repartee continues around the cyber water cooler. But this writer? Rejected. Was it a friend purge? Did I say the wrong thing? I'm too embarrassed and proud to ask.

There's always a chance you will see your Deleter in person after the deed is done. I recently attended an event where that very thing happened. It was less awkward than you might think, even though this was a Very Special Deleter, for I had been added and deleted, then re-added and re-deleted. That's right. Two times I was deemed "not friend material." Or in '80s movie terms, I must've had The Wrong Stuff, and All the Wrong Moves. Since our in-person encounter was perfectly cordial, and I still get very nice occasional email forwards, we will chalk up the double-delete to generational differences in the understanding and use of current social networking technology. That, or my online persona, and perhaps my very self, is a total asshole.

"How do you even know who deleted you?" my husband asked. "I don't pay attention."

"I hadn't seen posts from those people in awhile, so I went looking for them, and it said 'Add as a Friend.' I'd sometimes hide their posts because one said something borderline racist. Another updated nonstop about the most trivial things. I wondered if they were still posting borderline racist stuff or completely trivial things, so..."

"You're upset that someone you hid is no longer there?"

Yeah. Smart husband. I wanted to be the Deleter, not the Deleted. The dumper, not the dumpee. Dumpette. Backing up my dump truck of online friends with a beep-beep-beep, and out you go.

It feels silly, investing so much meaning in an action that likely took less than one second. Click. But that's just it: actions mean something, and friends do, too. They mean different things to different people.

Listen. Don't feel rejected, but I've gotta get back to the Book of Faces. I have 72 new photos of the baby to upload. But I will continue to exercise the utmost discretion and restraint. Not a single one of them involves poop. This time.

I had to stop watching Oprah after every episode provoked sobbing, even (especially) the "favorite things" *

Man alive, have I been posting a lot of man-with-guitar videos lately. Lest you think I'm not up on current events, I happen to be aware that today is the last broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show.

I haven't seen the episode yet, but I got this spoiler alert from a friend: BEES.


Just went on an online Oprah smorgasbord. The Onion's Oprah Viewers Patiently Awaiting Instructions, the one where Tom Cruise jumps on the couch, the one where Tom Cruise jumps on the couch and lightning bolts shoot from his hands into Oprah's body, the one where Tom Cruise calls Matt Lauer glib. Uh. Guess I got a little off course there.

It's tornado season here in the Unironic Midwest, and every distraction helps.

*Okay, maybe not sobbing. But seriously, the "favorite things" made me feel down, man. Why? As I might write on a student paper, "Explore this further." I will think very hard on this topic to formulate a reasonable response, in 3-5 pages (double-spaced). Yes, it has to be typed. No, I don't have a stapler.

Make a New Plan, Stan

I've been hearing a lot about May 21, which is just around the corner, the alleged Judgment Day. The Internet is a-buzzing like a hive of angry bees. Just to be clear, the world is not going to end on Saturday. I bet you three dollars.

What are you doing before the Rapture? I might head to the record shop for the new Paul Simon. Mine is a modest bucket list.



Says Simon in a recent interview: “If there's no one listening, is there any reason to write? Art can't exist unless there's someone to appreciate it."




When I was a child, my parents often played Simon & Garfunkel on the stereo at home, and we heard all the hits on AM radio while driving around town. Two of my favorite songs were "Slip Slidin' Away" and "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover." The latter I thought of as a kind of adventure song, which, in a way, it is: hopping on the bus (Gus) and making a new key (Lee) to evade that pesky lover. Hijinks! And rhyming. You just slip out the back, Jack.

In high school one year, I got Paul Simon's Concert in Central Park double CD as a Christmas present. Which I re-bought after the disc was stolen. There's a point during "The Obvious Child" where the song skips. "Why deny the ob-ob-obviousss child." I'd always thought I'd scratched the CD, but my new one does it in exactly the same place.

I love Paul Simon's writing. And his songs. Put the two together, and the effect is, well, rapturous.

Three dollars on the world not ending, you hear? I'm setting up PayPal momentarily.

Carpe Vita

May I?

May I please tell you that the month of May is for writing? For me, that is. It's not, like, a national event or anything. No gimmicks. No tricks. Just writing. And MAYbe occasionally shopping online for adorable baby clothing, but mostly writing. And emptying the spam folder, which includes missives from Lisa about Amazing Scholarship Opportunity. I know, I know, hilarious spam is old news. But still? It makes me laugh, daily. It makes me jot things down. It makes me pay attention. Pay attention. You MAY have already won valuable prizes and dollars US.

May I also share an excerpt from my novel, SLEEPING WOMAN? You may find it in the Dia de los Muertos anthology.



I just got my copy in the mail, and it's a very cool book with a variety of material centered on the loose theme of the Day of the Dead. To find out more about Day of the Dead, you may consult an encyclopedia, Wikipedia, or your local news outlet on or around Nov. 1.

Other excerpts from SLEEPING WOMAN have been published by Freight Stories and Cantaraville. You may find yourself enjoying those publications as much as I.

(In fact, I know you will. Go on, now. Git.)

Some random pieces of information that loosely cohere via association

My story White Hands, published by Zone 3 in their Fall 2008 issue, is now online. They've added lots of content to their website. Look for the issue with fiction/an interview with Michael Martone, U of Alabama professor, who is in Tuscaloosa, dealing with the aftermath of the tornadoes. He is OK, and is busy making sure everyone else is OK.


Stacks of paper are piling up here in the haushold. We choose to deal with it by listening to music. During this song, the baby stops what he's doing and gives me a very sweet smile. He's always liked a little Ray.



A peaceful song about less-than-peaceful times. But the baby doesn't know that. Not yet.

About White Hands: I wrote it in graduate school, and I remember my professor being less than impressed with my initial drafts. Unsatisfied is perhaps the better word. Of course it stung at the time, but I realized that having a reader like that is crucial. That is one way to grow: by learning how to be a little unsatisfied with your own work. It's a recurring theme in Although Of Course You End Up Being Yourself by David Lipsky, which chronicles his road trip interview with David Foster Wallace on the Infinite Jest book tour in the late '90s. That, and the dangers of becoming addicted to television. And the Internet. And what-all else you can imagine. The dangers of white noise, once again.

White noise from my inbox: "When your wipes case is this stylish, your diaper bag might actually get jealous."

The ludicrousness of this world, I tell you. (My diaper bag is plenty secure in its self.)

Sudden Flash Youth

Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short-Short Stories

From Persea Books, now available for preorder. Includes my short piece "For Good," about Cece and Juan at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Contributors include Dave Eggers, Pamela Painter, Alice Walker, Ron Carlson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and more. It's edited by Christine Perkins-Hazuka and Tom Hazuka, and Mark Budman, who also edits Vestal Review (which published one of my flash fictions, He Waits, Wants, in Issue 30.)

Am I sounding convincingly casual? Because, really, I am doing some calisthenics of excitement over here, to be including in this book. Deep knee bends and such. Toe touches. Sudden Flash Youth ships in mid-June.

Musical Youth, if you've clicked the title of this post, is something else entirely. Can we hope for a comeback tour?

All we can do is hope, friends.

Your mission for the day

(From MAKE Magazine, out of Chicago.)

The magical UPS truck

...has delivered my copy of The Pale King, David Foster Wallace's last -- and unfinished -- novel. Sorry, other books. Putting you down for awhile. The foreword tells how editor Michael Pietsch worked on the book from drafts, notes, and how he interpreted Wallace's vision for the work.

On the subject of DFW, this article says more than I could, presently. Writer Maria Bustillos spent three days at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, reading his papers, notes, and a sampling of his annotated books -- some 300 are included there.

I have a copy of this Wall Street Journal piece tucked away, too, in case the Internet ever explodes. "This is water, this is water."



It is an odd thing, missing someone you didn't know. That I'll never be able to send DFW a postcard, or receive one in return. (Imagined scenarios, part I.) That the imaginary postcard would be delivered by a new mailman, the old one reassigned to a new route without even a goodbye. No goodbye!

The UPS truck driver remains the same. Loud music, high socks, speedy. Grateful for my gratitude when he brings me books.

Thanks for the books, sirs. Both of you.

"Some things stay the same. Like time."

Gray Monday with a chance of warm. High probability of coffee in orange mug, possible cold front sweeping through sinuses. Thunder rumble, or truck of insanity on road in need of paving. Grading done, writing commenced, baby "singing" to his toys on the playmat while music softly plays. A good start to the day/week/month/year. To wit: my March Madness bracket ain't shot yet. One side is completely intact, save for Syracuse losing to Marquette last night. What can I say? I make my picks with the heart.

Gray Monday deserves as much prettiness as we can give it.

White Noise

I've been wondering lately about images and associations, and how the brain does what it does when it comes to calling up random bits of information, culture, clutter, effluvia. The white noise of the brain, the distractable brain. The Retractable Brain, the brain that can be folded into a small case, potato-head-like!

Sometimes I get certain words in my head and repeat them to myself in the manner of a lunatic. Or I am driving, and the music I'm listening to (Arcade Fire, The Suburbs) makes me feel like the soundtrack to my own movie is playing in the background. A single raindrop hits my windshield and rolls down, slowly, and if I were a filmmaker, this would be my visual for "sad," my cheesy and obvious visual, until the pan-out reveals I am in the Starbucks drive-through, being a yuppie buying a yuppie drink ("I think we've aged out of that designation," I recently told my husband, though right now, the moment of this image, I am alone in the car, with Arcade Fire (is it "The" Arcade Fire?), soy latte in hand), and the detail of Starbucks, the iconic green logo, makes the mood either sadder or much happier, depending on where you sit. I sit in the car. I wish for my camera when a man on a bicycle rides slowly by, hunchback in a red and blue windbreaker, framed perfectly between two identical brick buildings.

I want to write these things down, but I am in the car, driving. Also, I keep losing my favorite pen. DANCE TEAM TORI says the window decal on the Suburban.

My brain recalls and grabs on to things that seemingly have no connection: "My ancestors spit on your haircut!" RSTLN and E. Rock you like a hurricane.

What is my brain trying to tell me?

I attempt to unravel these connections. I google things and get lost for awhile, in the brain-like folds of the Internet. There were weeks when everything I searched for directed me to the same cruddy website. I thought that Google was broken, but it was me.

Consider the equation. What if: C.Sheen = J.Phoenix - beard + smirk (x sympathy / tough love)?

We build excitement.

Operators are standing by.



Online TV Shows by Ustream

Or maybe the operators have flown by now. Flighty. Like my brain.

Book Me

The ides of February have passed.

What are we going to read next? At the moment, I'm itching for something relatively fast, with a minimum of horror/tragedy (unless, of course, the horror and tragedy are handled as comedy, in which case the experience of reading said events is much more enjoyable. For me, anyway.) But not too funny. And not too sappy. And with just the right amount of profound, you-did-not-waste-your-time-reading-this added in.

I could do a keyword search at the library with all of the above and see what I come up with. I don't think I have enough Boolean operatives for such a search. Which is why browsing the shelves is so important. Which is why I'm a little distressed about what's happening with the Borders reorganization, even if there are other stores, plenty of them. Some say bookstores are going the way of the dinosaur, thanks to e-readers. I'm not against e-readers (the devices, nor those who read electronically) and aside from the bigger and nastier question of who has access to the technology, I do think they limit the serendipity of finding the perfect book you're in the mood for. I don't want our society to become so efficient that we eliminate browsing.

I love to browse. Not just bookstores, either: I could spend, I have spent, many hours in the aisles of hardware stores, office supply stores, craft stores, variety stores. Many hours, many stores. Browsing. Bookstores are by far my favorite.
And libraries, too.

These are social spaces. And while I like technological convenience and certainly enjoy bouts of hibernation, I sort of fear these insular worlds we're creating, where limited interaction occurs. Limited chance of finding or seeing the thing or person you didn't expect to find or see.

That's my platform. More serendipity. Can we make that happen? And also, a recommendation for my next read?

New Booth

It's the second issue of Butler University's literary magazine, Booth.

Fiction: John Baum, Aaron Burch, Edward Porter
Winesburg, Indiana: Barbara Bean, Kate Bernheimer, Robin Black, B.J. Hollars, Michael Martone, Deb Olin Unferth
Art: Austin Kleon
Poetry: Jason Bredle, Mary Buchinger, James Crews, Brent Fisk, Derrick Harriell, Lois Harrod, Marty McConnell
Interviews: Jay Lesandrini talks with Nick Flynn, Barbara Shoup sits down with Jane Hamilton
Expert Miscellany: Kathleen Balma, Karen Kovacik, Sarah Layden, Brian Oliu, Chad Redden

Give it a look-see, hear?

Writers of the Internet: Go Read This

Amber Sparks writes about the hyper-anxiety social networking can provoke in writers at Big Other. As my dear friend Jennifer says about the pitfalls of Facebook: "Compare and despair."

The comments after the article offer a pretty great conversation, too. I don't know Amber, but after reading this, I'd like to.

P.S. I got my very special rejection T-shirt for Christmas. Boo yah.

Warming up

It's a cold January morning, which I know without having to go outside.
The birds scramble around the near-empty feeders.
I'm drinking hot coffee from an orange mug.
Making plans. Lists.

Listing. Listening to:



"It would be this, it would be this."

I made no resolutions this year, so my January is freed up for hearing this song on repeat. May you enjoy similar small pleasures.