The Sheila Variations

Jeff Bridges ...

I mentioned recently that I had been thinking a lot about Jeff Bridges.

And here is the result of all that thinking: 5 for the day: Jeff Bridges.

"Let it all go"

Excerpt from Lessons in Becoming Myself, by Ellen Burstyn.

About Requiem For A Dream:

The most difficult scene was one in which my son realizes I'm on speed. It was a nine-page scene, but the last three pages were my soliloquy. I told Darren [Aronofsky] I wanted to do all the coverage of the entire scene, except three pages that would be shot in close-up. I wanted that close-up to be last. That was not the economical way to shoot the scene. Normally, the director shoots everything in one direction and then turns the camera around and shoots everything in the other direction. I was asking for walls to be put up, taken down, and then put up again. That takes time, and in movies, time costs money. But this was a pivotal scene that was beautifully written, and I knew what I needed to do it right. I had never before asked for my creative needs to take precedence over economic considerations. But I had learned to stand up for what I truly needed in order to do my best. I had been testing myself for the last couple of years; testing both my talent and my technique. I knew what I was working with and what I could deliver. Darren and I trusted each other. He told the producer, his friend and partner, Eric Watson, that he wanted to do it my way. They scheduled a whole day for those three pages. I could feel what was there waiting to be expressed. It was my own feeling about aging that I hadn't been aware of, but which surprised me one day in rehearsal. As soon as I felt that little rise in emotion when I said, "I'm old," I knew where the reality of the scene was for me. I had to bank that fire, then wait for the right moment. I had to ask for the right conditions to let that slender shoot of truth expose itself at just the precise moment. All my training and effort I'd put in over the years blossomed in that moment of truth. We got it on the first take. We were finished with our day's work by lunchtime. It ended up costing less time and less money by doing it right creatively. There's a big lesson here.

On May 5, 1999, Darren showed me some footage. When I told him how much I liked the film, he returned the compliment and repeated something the producer said as he watched my dailies: that I was one of the greatest living actors. I could feel the inflation rise in me and knew I was getting all puffed up, so I went and sat in my trailer and meditated on the image of polishing the mirror and then leaving so that God's face can shine through. That's the charge in all of this: to remember that when it comes through, it is God who is shining through, not one's personal ego.

It's such a paradox. We must put in all the effort to shine the mirror and then walk away. But isn't that the same as one's work in life - to learn how to die consciously? To build the entire structure of one's life, then breathe - let go - breathe - let go - breathe and then finally, let it all go.

It takes practice.

I shot for two weeks in my fat suits. One added fifty pounds and then, after Sara began her addiction to diet pills, the second fat suit added only twenty-five pounds. Then I was off for two weeks. While Darren shot other stuff, I went on the cabbage soup diet and managed to lose ten more pounds.

When we finished shooting, I wrote Darren a letter and thanked him for the opportunity "to mobilize my entire army, and for wanting what I got and letting me give it."

Question: "How did you guys meet?"

Weird awkward pause with some measure of shared hilarity going on underneath. We looked at each other. What on EARTH does one say. Such an innocuous question but it was as though he had said, "How do you split the atom? What is the process?" Guys. It's a simple question. Answer it. But we both paused, stalled, looking at each other. It's like we share one brain. How do we even answer that and not start out with, "I was born on a cold dark day in 1857 ..." HOW DID WE MEET? I mean, how much TIME have you got for us to sufficiently answer that question, where we will need to pontificate on quantum physics, Katherine Dunn, the space-time continuum, Spandau Ballet and the nature of tragedy in ancient Greece.
Speaking of ancient Greece: another funny thing in the moment was that I, through my writing, have "told" the story - which of course he lived it, but there's something different when you read someone's "story" of your life. It becomes narrative. I "set" it. And all of that was somehow was in his face when he looked at me. So, weirdly, when faced with that unfathomably deep and universe-shaking question ("How did you guys meet?" HOW DID YOU GUYS MEET??") I gave him the words. At least the words to answer the question simply enough so that we all could move on with our lives. There is a reason why Mitchell calls me "the Homer of our group of friends".
He: "Well ... she was standing on the sidewalk ... and I saw her and I walked up to her and said ...." He looked at me, and there was something so funny between us. Like, our whole story. Beyond words, but we were looking at each other, and there it was. I can't put a word to it, I just know that we were identical twins in that moment.
Me: (feeling distinctly foolish in a very funny way, finishing the sentence) " 'Are you waiting for someone?' "
It was as though it was a script that we had been rehearsing. This is how it happened. We had never done that before. I think that might have been why we were on the verge of some sort of hilarious outburst.
When I finished his opening line, he burst out laughing and so did I and he hugged me with one arm, and nobody knew what was going on but us.
Everything is left between the words. As always.

Last night. 2 a.m.

There was a moment careening down 9th Avenue, music blaring (Bleu, if you must know), when all of the lights turned green. Green lights stretched to the horizon. And they're long green lights in New York, uncannily long, it keeps everything moving. But there's that moment, almost like reaching the top of the peak, that small hesitation before you launch yourself down the mountain, when you see, unfurling, all the red lights switch to green ... and then ... you are OFF. If you're accustomed to small town driving (as I am, I haven't driven much in Manhattan) you keep waiting for the yellow light - but then you realize it won't come ... not for a while yet ... so just go go go go go go go. Yellow cabs zip around you, everyone is going 50, 60 miles an hour, and there's no stopping, no hesitation, if you brake cautiously all will be lost ... You submit to the beast, and you drive like a bat out of hell. It was EXHILARATING. Nervewracking too but I wanted to just keep driving up and down the avenues of the city all night, taking advantage of the endless green. It felt like flying.

Orphan Train. The Novel. By me. Age 11. - Chapter 3

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Music drifted through the air at the Florence's mansion. Sarah gazed out the window from the living room.

A tall woman wearing mounds of makeup flounced into the room.

"Sarah!" she cried sternly. "How many times do I have to tell you. Don't look out that window. Especially when I'm havin' a party. Now git upstairs to your room and stay there."

Sarah sadly walked out of the room. She was a thin girl and had used to be an orphan. But Mrs. Florence had liked her (not really) and taken her in. Sarah was treated badly. She was not beaten, but the Florence's did not give her love. She hated living there but she did not dare run away.

As she sauntered down the long hall to her room she heard noises behind one of the doors. Being a curious girl of 13 she peered through the small window at the bottom of the door.

A fat man was setting up his bed. He was the butler. Sarah did not like him.

Right inside the door, and in Sarah's view, was a black leather wallet and Sarah could see clearly that it was full of money as it was so fat.

Sarah still had some orphan traits left in her and she wanted that wallet.

She reached her hand in through the crack in the door and grabbed the wallet. A big book had been lying against the wallet and it fell to the floor with a thump.

Sarah jumped to her feet and darted down the hall. But the man had heard. He dashed out the door and grabbed Sarah by the arm. Sarah thrashed around and screamed at the top of her lungs.

Mrs. Florence rushed up the stairs and was surprised to find the butler shaking Sarah.

"Now stop that Jonathan! Stop it! What did she do now?" Mrs. Florence inquired.

Jonathan (the butler) let Sarah go. "She took my wallet."

"Now Sarah," Mrs. Florence said. "Apologize immediately and give him back his wallet." She turned and walked down the stairs.

Jonathan smiled at her. "Come now, Sarah. Give me back my wallet." He gently rubbed her shoulder.

She wriggled away. "Please don't. Please."

"Now Sarah. You shouldn't have taken my wallet but I will accept an apology. Come now. I won't hurt you."

Sarah gulped. She handed over the wallet. "Sorry," she whispered and ran off.

Back in her room she sat on her small bed and stared out into the street. She sighed. Life was so dismal there.

"I'm gonna run away," she told herself. "But I'll do it tomorrow. I'm too tired now." She flopped down on her bed.

"Stay gold, Ponyboy."

A wonderful essay by Sarah Bunting (Sars by another name) about The Outsiders - and how it works almost better as a silent film ... here's just a taste of her essay, but go read the whole thing:

And in case you've failed thus far to grasp The Tragedy, he's dying in the street, shot down by the uncaring Tulsa PD for caring too deeply about his dead friend—and people, Matt Dillon is dying the hell out of it, crawling ass-up on his elbows, face torqued all out of shape, flailing over onto his back. It's an ugly bit of acting, but if you subtract the campy "Noooooooooo!" and "He's just a kid!" ululating of the other Greasers from the equation, it's effective, even eerie.

Comedy of errors

I arrived at Vintage Bar on 9th Avenue to meet my sister Siobhan just like we planned. I was right on time. I did a scan of the place for my sister and did not see her. I nabbed us a table, and settled in. The skinny gorgeous waitress with huge boobs came over and asked if I wanted to order. I said I was waiting for someone, so, could I wait to order until she showed up? Skinny Boobs said fine. I was a tiny bit scared of my waitress, and she was a teensy bit snotty. Whatevs. So I settled in. There were two guys next to me - one with a goombah Jersey accent, the other with a deep Southern drawl - and they were loosening their ties as they walked in, obviously young ad execs or something along those lines, talking about work and strategies, and also dirty martinis and interns and the joys thereof. I kept glancing out the door for my sister and the two guys kept thinking I was staring at them. Finally, I let them off the hook and took out Fortune of War and started reading. Vintage is known for its martinis (there are 7 pages of martini drinks on the menu ... you can get an Oreo Cookie Dough martini if you want it) - so obviously the joint starts HOPPIN'. But I can read anywhere, anytime, and so I did. About 20 minutes in, I caved and ordered a glass of wine from Skinny Boobs, who gave me a wine recommendation that turned out to be stellar. I didn't worry at first. It's normal to be late in the city. I didn't think much about 20 minutes but after that, I started to wonder. Where was Siobhan? I reached in my purse for my cell phone only to find, horribly, that I had left it at home. If you ever NEED a cell phone, it's for when you're trying to meet up with someone, and I had forgotten it. It was now a good 45 minutes after our meeting time, and this was totally unlike Siobhan. I didn't know what to do. I finally realized (duh) that I had my blackberry on me ... and it's also a phone. But ... duh as well ... I do not know my sister's cell # off the top of my head, because everything is on speed dial now and so ... my parents number I have memorized but that's only because it's the same number I've had since I was, what, 11 years old? A nuclear holocaust couldn't erase that number from my head. But I didn't know Siobhan's number. The martini decibels were now at their peak. I caved. I needed to contact her, and had no other way to do so. I called my parents. Retarded. "Hello?" said my mother. I launched right into it, regardless of whatever my parents might have been up to in that moment, shouting above the martini noise and the jocular post-work conversation beside me in 2 thick regional US accents, "Hi! I know this sounds crazy - but what is Siobhan's cell number?" And bless my mother (although this shouldn't be a surprise, if you read my blog) she said immediately, "Hang on a second. Let me get it." Within 10 seconds, she read it out to me. I tried to explain, shouting above the Oreo Cookie Dough martini racket, "Siobhan's 40 minutes late and I don't have my cell phone and I also don't have Siobhan's phone number!" Sheila? Stop talking. You sound like a moron. So. I call Siobhan, from the blackberry - shouting into it, "HI! I'M HERE AT VINTAGE! I'M CALLING FROM MY BLACKBERRY! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MY BLACKBERRY NUMBER IS THOUGH. SO I HOPE YOU CAN SEE IT ON YOUR PHONE. BUT I'M HERE. SO I HOPE YOU'RE OKAY!" Sheila? Stop talking. Then I realized that I could find out my blackberry number (I never use it as a phone) - and so I wrote it down and called back, shouting, "OKAY, SO HERE'S MY BLACK BERRY NUMBER --" and as I started to read it out I saw Siobhan herself emerge from the back of the bar, stalking towards the front, looking around her like an insane person. She had obviously just gotten my message and had been sitting in the bar the entire time. I hadn't seen her though, in my original sweep, I swear! I shouted up at her, "SIOBHAN!" We then hugged and laughed and Siobhan went back to the back of the bar to grab, you know, all her stuff - to join me up front. She had left me numerous messages on my cell phone which I, naturally, had not gotten, because it was sitting at home on my desk ... so we could have gone the entire night, sitting 30 feet away from each other, total missed connections, if I hadn't remembered that I could use my blackberry. Sheila. Why else does one have a blackberry? But let's disregard that. So Siobhan came up and joined me and we were laughing about how ridiculous the whole thing was, both of us practically crying about the fact that we were sitting so near to one another, and yet so far ... and at some point Snotty Skinny Boobs came over to our table (she had also been Siobhan's waitress) and she said, gesturing at the two of us, now finally together, "Okay, this? Is hysterical." She totally got the entire situation, the missed connections part of it, the comedy of errors - and then Siobhan and I said, in unison, "And we're sisters, too!" And that sealed our fate. Turns out, Skinny Boobs has two sisters, and they all live on the same floor in the same apartment building, and so Skinny Boobs will get a call from one of her sisters at 8:30 in the morning, saying, 'Hi. I bought a dress yesterday. I need you to come over right now and tell me if I look cute in it." Skinny Boobs goes next door, and her sister answers the door wearing the dress in question. Skinny Boobs looks at her sister in the dress. She then silently leads her sister back to her apartment, opens her closet, and shows her that she had bought the very same dress on the very same day. She told us that entire story. We totally fell in love with her. You know. Sisters. Anyone who has sisters understands. She absolutely loved us - and the snottiness I felt (oh, and that Siobhan felt, too) was probably just being harassed by having too many tables and too many Cookies 'n Creme martinis to make. Oh - and off of their huge wine list, Siobhan and I separately had both ordered the same glass of wine. Skinny Boobs loved that, too. She swooped by us on her way to another table and stopped just long enough to say, "You know what is also hysterical? You ordered the same drink. Brilliant. This is brilliant!"

Just 'cause (corrected title)

Oops - got an email from my sister asking me to explain the title which was listed originally as "Just Cause". It should be "Just 'cause" - as in "Just because" - Kind of funny how there are two totally different meanings. Just Cause sounds rather ominous ... like: Sheila. What have you done?? Whatever it is I am SURE you did not have "just cause" at this point. Whereas "just 'cause" is whimsical. I mean it in a whimsical manner.

Culture notes and emotional notes

-- I'm reading A Widow for One Year by John Irving and also The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian. Awesome counterpoint. Both superb writers in their own way.

-- Thank you, dear Siobhan, for introducing me to the amazing pleasures of L.E.O. - I cannot get enough of them right now. (Website here) Mike Viola and the Candybutchers are pretty much a required course if you are an O'Malley - kinda like the Foo Fighters - you at least have to give them a chance ... otherwise we won't take you seriously. It's kind of non-negotiable. Sorry. Anyway, L.E.O. is sheer liquid joy floating through the atmosphere. The song "Make Me" is my current fave. (Explanation of what L.E.O. is here)

-- Thinking a lot about Jeff Bridges these days. More later.

-- Went to a screening last week of Mongol, the sweeping Russian epic about Genghis Khan. Big plush press screening room on 57th Street, it was great. Everyone (myself included) blackberrying throughout the film, stepping outside to take a phone call, whatever ... and also scribbling on notepads throughout ... totally different atmosphere from seeing a movie out in the real world, but fun and interesting. My review will be on House Next Door eventually - I'll point you that way when it launches.

-- Totally consumed by something I'm working on now. It's causing me a lot of stress, there are not enough hours in the day, but I find a deadline ultimately very freeing.

-- Oh, guess who I heard from randomly (God bless Facebook) ... the guy I gave a photograph of my eyeball to for Valentine's Day 'lo those many years ago. Hysterical. It was good to catch up. I didn't bring up the eyeball. It's still too embarrassing.

-- I miss all of my friends right now.

-- Cashel wears a fedora to school now. He calls it his "trademark".

-- Allison's going to Italy for 10 days with her aunt to take a vacation in Tuscany on a horse farm. She's going to be riding horses the entire time. I'm so happy for her, although I will miss her.

-- Thank you, Hitachi. From the bottom of my heart: THANK. YOU.

-- Oh, and I'm also reading Patricia Neal's autobiography (thank you, cousin Mike!) and damn it's making me fucking SAD. She had one love. Gary Cooper. And she never recovered from the loss. Never. And Roald Dahl was a son of a bitch. But what a life, what a career, what strength ... but she ends the book with thoughts of Gary. She never got over it.

-- I crossed 2 or 3 pretty major things off my To Do list which have been haunting me. I actually cried when I crossed the last one off. It had been tormenting my mind, and giving me stress dreams.

-- Watched Stranger Than Fiction last night for, oh, the 10th time, and had to mop the tears off my face at the end. Slowly it's becoming one of my all-time favorite movies. ("You're never too old for space camp, dude.")

-- Last week I said the following sentence to Patrick, "My fallopian tubes are unfurling." Patrick still has not recovered.

-- My entire consciousness is now consumed by the bridesmaid dress I will wear in September.

-- I find office supplies immensely relaxing.

The Bunny ...

... a wonderful piece of writing. I love her.

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'The Wamsutter Wolf' (Annie Proulx)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'The Wamsutter Wolf'.

A lot of Annie Proulx's stories are dominated by silence and space. Maybe there's wind, the sound of snow on the windshield - but her people, in general, are not talkers. But 'The Wamsutter Wolf' is so "noisy", so crowded - that I ended up aching for Buddy (the lead character) to get away, get away ... so he could at least hear himself think! Buddy Millar is a drifter, not really tied down to anyone. Well, he's a bit tied to his parents - who are openly disappointed and angry at him, for the way he lives his life. Buddy tried to work for his father, but that didn't work out. His dad has a temper, and Buddy couldn't take it. He is broke, he eventually rents a trailer for forty bucks a month in a bleak place called Wamsutter - it's filthy, but he can't afford anything else. There's a big dirty loud family who lives in the trailer next door - Buddy watches them from afar for a while, gives them nicknames (Fat Wife, Big Dad) - and it eventually becomes clear (and that's in the excerpt below) that Buddy went to high school with the mother and father (their names are Cheri and Rase). This is not an overwhelmingly joyful reunion - Rase is a sociopath who smashed Buddy's face into the pavement in grade school. Cheri was pathetic in high school and she's pathetic now. They live in squalor. This is not about being poor. This is about not giving a crap about where you live. This is about being so lazy you can't ever wash a dish. The kids are filthy. Their parents let them drink beer, to start them young. Annie Proulx has never been so mean. She's merciless. Buddy is the only one here who comes off looking okay ... he's actually kind of sensitive, and he's doing the best he can. But he gets sucked into the disgusting family drama across the way, and increasingly he feels he cannot escape. Cheri and Rase both treat him as an intimate, there's no polite neighborliness - these people have no boundaries whatsoever, with anyone - and Buddy comes home sometimes and Cheri is sleeping on the floor of his trailer because she had a fight with Rase. Rase is a terrible character. A violent ignorant man with a giant chip on his shoulder. Poor Buddy. He tries to be polite at first, after all he went to high school with these people - and they're all grown up now, right? The past is in the past, right? Buddy realizes very quickly the error of letting such people into his life. These people are barely civilized. It's horrible. A horrible story. Well written but I was sure glad when it was over.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'The Wamsutter Wolf'.

Fat Wife opened the door. The smell of cigarette smoke came with her.

"Yeah?" she said, lighting another.

"Hi. I'm your neighbor - Buddy Millar. Uh - I'm having a little problem with your dogs. Dog. the brown one." Two were black and one was brown, all of indeterminate breed.

"Buddy Millar! I knew there was something. I told Rase you looked real familiar."

He stared at her. The frizzled red hair showed dark at the roots, and the long ends straggled across her shoulders like damp raffia, the finer strands caught in the fleece fabric of the grimy anorak she wore. Her face was so oily it seemed metaled. Behind her he could see a brown chair, the floor littered with clothing and toys.

"I'm Cheri. Cheri Bise back in high school. Cheri Wham now. Me and Rase Wham got married."

Slowly it came to him, the high school bully, Rase Wham, had dropped out in tenth grade. Wham had been a vicious sociopath. Cheri Bise, the overweight slut whose insecurity made her an easy sexual conquest, had disappeared around the same time.

"Come on in, have a cup of coffee." There was a highway of festering pimples alongside her nose. She cleared a path in the debris by kicking toys left and right. Reluctantly he went inside. It stank of cigarettes, garbage, and feces. The television set stuttered colors.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked, taking shallow breaths.

"Rase is workin for Halliburton now. He used a work for a drillin outfit but the well froze and there was a blowout and it kind a hurt him. He had a concussion. Last year. And I work Fridays in the school cafeteria."

He understood from the tone in her voice that she considered the cafeteria job a career.

"Barbette's in school, second grade, and that's Vernon Clarence - " She pointed at the dull-faced boy of four or five holding a box of Cracker Jacks. "And that's the baby, Lye." The diaper-clad baby was crawling toward them, his sticky fingers furred with lint and clutching a tiny red car that Buddy recognized as an Aston Martin. The kid, clinging to Buddy's knee, clawed himself upright and thrust the toy at him.

"Caw!" said the child.

"Yes, it's a nice car," said Buddy. In the room beyond he could see a bed heaped with grimy blankets.

"Caw!"

Cheri reheated stale coffee in a saucepan, poured the pungent liquid into mugs emblazoned GO POKES, set one before him. She did not proffer milk nor sugar. She sat down at the table and blew on her coffee.

"And we're expectin the next one in December, week before Christmas. It's ahrd ona kid have a birthday that close a Christmas, but you sure don't think a that when you're doin it." She had a spit-frilled way of talking.

The baby was staring at Buddy with savage intensity, as though he were going to utter a great scientific truth never before known. His face reddened and the vein in his forehead stood out. He grunted and with an explosive burst filled his diaper.

While Cheri changed him on the kitchen table less than eighteen inches from Buddy's coffee cup, he looked around to avoid watching her mop at Lye's besmeared buttocks and scrotum. On the floor several feathers were stuck in a coagulated blob. Wads of trodden gum appeared as archipelagoes in a mud-colored sea while bits of popcorn, string ends, torn paper, a crushed McDonald's cup, and candy wrappers made up the flotsam. An electric wall heater stuck out into the room. On top of it were three coffee mugs, two beer cans, several brimming ashtrays, a tiny plastic fox, and a prescription bottle. Through the amber plastic of the bottle he could see the dark forms of capsules.

There was a sudden plop as Cheri threw the loaded diaper into an open pail already seething with banana peels, coffee grounds, and prehistoric diapers.

The older child, Vernon Clarence, edged along the sofa toward the wall heater. His small hands grasped a beer can and shook it. He dropped it on the floor and tried the other, which responded with a promising slosh. He drank the dregs, warm beer running down his chin and soaking his pajama top. Buddy wondered if he should mention to Cheri that the kid was drinking beer, decided against it. The freshly emptied can rolled under the sofa.

Cheri suddenly got up, lunged for the cupboard, and retrieved a package. She shook several small bright pink cakes bristling with shredded coconut onto a chipped saucer.

"Go on! Take one!" She held the saucer in front of his face as Lye had held the toy car.

He took one. A coconut point stuck into his finger like a staple. He put the cake on the table. Lye seized it and mumbled "Caw!" as he gummed the confection. From across the room Vernon Clarence started to bawl, pointing eloquently at Lye, whose face was crowded by the pink mass.

"Here you go! Catch!" shouted Cheri, hurling a cake at the child. It hit an ashtray on the coffee table and sent butts and ash flying.

"I've got a get going," said Buddy, rising. "I just wanted to mention about the dogs - dog. And introduce myself."

"Well, I'm thrilled," said Cheri. "I always had a big crush on you in school. All the girls thought you was cute. Rase will just about pass out when I tell him who our new neighbor is." She snapped a cigarette from the package on the table.

"Say hello to him for me," said Buddy, struggling with the door latch, which was some devious childproof design. He glanced around the room as he backed out. The fastidious Vernon Clarence was picking a cigarette butt from his confectionary prize.

Buddy's trailer seemed a cozy haven in contrast with the Whams', and he quickly made his bed and washed the dishes lest he become like them.

Orphan Train. The Novel. By me. Age 11. - Chapter 2

If you want to read Chapter 1, it's here. I am holding myself back from interjecting snarky little comments like I do in Diary Friday. Believe me, I want to - but there's something truly innocent about what I was going for here ... my passion for the TV movie completely expressed ... and I just don't feel right about making fun of that.

Even though some of my word choices are funny and how many times can paragraphs begin with the words "Miss Sims sighed"? Apparently a lot.

Chapter 2.

The children rushed up to the bars and peered through. A small crowd had gathered around the gallows.

Miss Sims looked over the children and saw two policemen dragging a boy, around 17, toward the gallows. There was complete silence everywhere. No one uttered the slightest sound.

Suddenly a boy up front, around 13 or 14, called out in a strong English accent, "'Ey! 'E's got friends! Let 'em say g'bye!"

The policemen turned to face the melancholy boy.

"Listen, kid. You just --" one of them began but the other one interrupted.

"No. He's right. But just for a minute." He pushed the boy gently.

David (the boy) ran over the 13 or 14 year old boy. "Bye, Liverpool."

Liverpool looked at him seriously and set his lips together tightly.

David looked at Liverpool sadly. Then he bent over and took off his worn out boots. He held them out to Liverpool.

Liverpool looked at David questioningly.

David thrust them at Liverpool violently. "Take 'em. To remember me by."

Liverpool nodded and took them. He looked at David and immediately turned his gaze at the ground. David stared sadly at his friend. Liverpool, who was usually tough and brave, was now furiously fighting back tears. " 'Ey." David said and patted him on the shoulder.

Liverpool didn't look up. The policeman came and led David away.

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

Miss Sims walked briskly down the street and turned in at a large mansion. She walked up the stone steps and in through the huge front doors.

The inside was cool and airy with pillars and statues and wide, elegant staircases.

She took off her brown coat and put it in the hall closet.

She sat down helplessly on a green plush chair.

A man walked in a dignified manner over to Miss Sims. "So, Miss Sims," he said in a very sophisticated voice. "How are the little ragamuffins today?"

Miss Sims sighed. "I have told you before. They are orphans. Not ragamuffins. They may look like ragamuffins but they are innocent children. Poor little children."

The man looked her face over. "Anything the matter, Miss Sims?"

Miss Sims sighed. "Yes there is. Today I saw a boy hanged. I couldn't do anything about it. I just stood there and watched. I never want to feel that helpless again. Never! I am taking those children out West."

The man's eyes practically popped out of his head. "You, Miss Sims? But how?"

Miss Sims straightened out her puffy dress. "I have no idea, but I am going to do it. Those children have got to have homes and I am going to find them some."

Happy birthday, Edward Lear

Edward Lear (the so-called "father of nonsense") was born today in 1812 in London.

I could recite from memory a lot of his stuff when I was pretty close to this age here. The Golden Book of Poetry was so read in our family that the cover faded to almost nothing, the binding fell apart ... and I can still, in my mind's eye, see all of the illustrations - and where they were placed on the page. And most of the poem's, when I read them now, I hear them in my father's gravelly voice. (The photo at the top of this post is me, "candidly" posing with the Golden Book of Poetry.) "The Owl and the Pussy-cat" is still a favorite. Look how the verse just rocks and sings. It's perfect.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat - by Edward Lear

I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II
Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III
'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Michael Schmidt, in his book "Lives of the Poets" writes that Lear, and Lewis Carroll (Lear's younger peer) wrote "nonsense verse" which "strays into the musical zones that Longfellow mapped with his self-propelling meters."

-- the inventor of the term "snail mail" in this whimsical letter to Evelyn Baring? The letter itself reads, along the twists of the snail shell:

Feb. 19. 1864 Dear Baring Please give the enclosed noat to Sir Henry - (which I had just written:-& say that I shall have great pleasure in coming on Sunday. I have sent your 2 vols of Hood to Wade Brown. Many thanks for lending them to me - which they have delighted me eggstreamly Yours sincerely

"Don't tell me of a man's being able to talk sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?" -- William Pitt

In regard to his verses, Lear asserted that "nonsense, pure and absolute," was his aim throughout; and remarked, further, that to have been the means of administering innocent mirth to thousands was surely a just excuse for satisfaction. He pursued his aim with scrupulous consistency, and his absurd conceits are fantastic and ridiculous, but never cheaply or vulgarly funny. -- Carolyn Wells

However, there are subtler methods of debunking than throwing custard pies. There is also the humour of pure fantasy, which assaults man's notion of himself as not only a dignified but a rational being. Lewis Carroll's humour consists essentially in making fun of logic, and Edward Lear's in a sort of poltergeist interference with common sense. When the Red Queen remarks, "I've seen hills compared with which you'd call that one a valley", she is in her way attacking the bases of society as violently as Swift or Voltaire. Comic verse, as in Lear's poem "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò", often depends on building up a fantastic universe which is just similar enough to the real universe to rob it of its dignity. But more often it depends on anticlimax -- that is, on starting out with a high-flown language and then suddenly coming down with a bump. -- George Orwell, "Funny But Not Vulgar"

From Michael Sala, "Lear's Nonsense":
Edward Lear, a skillful illustrator of science books (botany, zoology), started his literary career by chance. As a matter of fact, "most of Lear's limericks were not written with publication in mind, but rather as gifts for specific children" (Rieder 1998: 50). He was persuaded toward their publication by the enthusiastic reaction of his young audience.

There was an old person of Rimini
Who said, "Gracious! Goodness! O Gimini!
When they said, "Please be still!" she ran down a hill
And was never once heard of at Rimini.

There was an old person of Sestri
Who sat himself down in the vestry,
When they said "You are wrong!" - he merely said "Bong!"
That repulsive old person of Sestri.

This is a typical example of Lear's limericks, and a perfect example of what is intended by nonsense, that is to say, "language lifted out of context, language turning on itself [a] language made hermetic, opaque" (Stewars 1979: 3), language that "resists contextualization, so that it refers to 'nothing' instead of to the word's commonsense designation [and] refusing to work as conventional communication " (Rieder 1998: 49). In other words, what happened to the old person of Rimini? What is wrong with the person of Sestri? It is impossible to answer, because, despite the perfectly grammatical use of the words, they don't tell much. They are just bizarrely arranged so as to sound appealing. If there is a shadow of a story, usually it is nothing more than that: only a shadow of a story (without causes or consequences). In Lear's limericks, words introduce "a number of possibilities, including dangerous and violent ones, and at the same time disconnect those possibilities from the real world, that is, from what goes on after the game is over" (Rieder 1996: 49).

'My dear child, I'm sure we shall be allowed to laugh in Heaven!'" --from a letter to a little girl he knew

In the limericks [. . .] to an extent difficult for us now to imagine, Lear offered children the liberation of unaffected high spirits [. . .]. Here are grown-ups doing silly things, the kind of things grown-ups never do [. . .]. for all their incongruity, there is in the limericks a truth which is lacking in the improving literature of the time. In an age when children were loaded with shame, Lear attempted to free them from it. -- Vivien Noakes

Like the limericks, they celebrate the outsider. Their principal characters are socially unacceptable" --Susan Chitty on Lear's ballads.

Mr. Lear was delighted when I showed to him that this couple [the Owl and the Pussy-cat] were reviving the old law of Solon, that the Athenian bride and bridegroom eat a quince together at their wedding -- Sir Edward Strachey

More information on Edward Lear here.

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'Man Crawling Out Of Trees' (Annie Proulx)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Man Crawling Out Of Trees',

I love this story. It's about two transplants from New England to Wyoming - and the culture is so different they might as well have moved to Turkmenistan. Mitchell and Eugenie are a couple in their 50s - who have spent their lives in New York (I think they lived in Brooklyn) - until a couple of bad things happen (a mugging on the subway?) and they decide to move. Their daughter Honor is a young woman now - with her own life - so they decide to move to Wyoming. Their dream is to live near Yellowstone or one of the national parks, but they soon discover that any property anywhere NEAR any of the parks is way beyond millions of dollars. They eventually settle on something - smaller, scraggly ... and it's almost like they're stepping into a dream-state. Like, to people in Wyoming, it's all real, for God's sake ... there's no fantasy in living how they live - but Mitchell and Eugenie are foreigners and they have a fantasy of the West, and what their lives will be like. Mitchell was a philanderer - and we eventually realize that Eugenie is no saint, either - so I think they're hoping that a change of venue might help their marriage. Yeah, well, the people who actually live in Wyoming are used to folks like Mitchell and Eugenie - people who move there with some sort of "dream" - and they try to accept Mitchell and Eugenie but it's like the two of them just cannot get the language straight. They miss symbols, they don't pick up on messages ... they keep breaking "the rules". It's like they are still living by New York rules (the "man crawling out of trees" incident is a perfect example ... Eugenie sees an injured man crawl out of her trees on a snowy day and is so terrified she locks all the doors and calls the sheriff's department. Turns out, the man was an injured skier, who was calling for help - and so the town judges Eugenie - In Wyoming, even if a man is your mortal enemy, you help him if, say, his truck broke down, or he's fallen on hard times. Even the sheriff yells at Eugenie. But there's more. Mitchell and Eugenie are not particularly close - you can tell - and their daughter Honor has had a baby with a man Mitchell's age - her boyfriend (he sounds a little bit like the Tim Robbins' character in High Fidelity - they live in Maine - and Mitchell and Eugenie are baffled as to who their daughter has become. They don't know how to deal with it. At the same time, they are now trapped in the reality of Wyoming - wondering where the dream went.

Great story. Very funny, but with Proulx's insightful observations - and her accurate aim - not only at folks like Mitchell and Eugenie, their pretensions and mistakes - but the folks of the town who are rigid and close-minded. Culture clash. And you write people off at your peril. But also: some people are just assholes, and never forget that. A total lack of curiosity about another person and another region in the country means you are an asshole.

Proulx rides both sides here - although the story is from Mitchell and Eugenie's point of view. Proulx lives in Wyoming and has for many years. She knows it intimately. But she can slip inside Mitchell and Eugenie, because that's what she does, as a writer.

And the response of the folks in the town, their neighbors, reminds me of the B&B we stayed in on Achill Island, a big island off the west coast of Ireland. The couple who owned the B&B had lived there on Achill for thirty years. And they were still referred to, by the villagers, as "blow-ins". Blown in from somewhere else. How long would you have to live there before they just accepted that you were one of them? Probably a very long time. But also: if you move to Achill, with some leprechaun-filled fantasy of the 'auld country' - you will be doomed to disappointment. Deal with reality, please. Have real curiosity about the culture you are visiting.

Proulx describes this whole divide perfectly.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Man Crawling Out Of Trees',

Wyoming had seemed civilized when they first moved out, but gradually evidence appeared that forced them to recognize that they were in a place people in the east would regard as peripheral to the real world. There were disturbing proofs that the weight of a harsh past still bore down with force. Every few months something inexplicably rural happened: on a back road one man shot another with his great-grandfather's 45.70 vintage buffalo gun; a newcomer from Iowa set out for an afternoon hike, and fell off a cliff as she descended Wringer Mountain. Black bears came down in September and smashed Eugenie's bird feeders. A hawk hid under the potentilla bush and leaped suddenly on an overconfident prairie dog a little too far from its burrow. In Antler Spring, the town where they bought their liquor and groceries, a young woman expecting her first child was widowed when her husband, fighting summer wildfires in Colorado, was killed by a Pulaski tool that fell from a helicopter. Vacationers locked themselves out of their cars and were struck by lightning. Ranchers, their eyes on their cattle, drove off the road and overturned. Everything seemed to end in blood.

Outside the Star Lily Ranch community Eleanora Figg was their nearest neighbor. She was an elderly widow rancher in her mid-seventies of the classic Republican, conservative, art-hating, right-wing, outspoken, flint-faced type. She ran both cattle and some sheep, drove an ancient black Jeep. She loathed environmentalists and people from somewhere else. Mitchell understood the bumper sticker on her Jeep - SHOOT, SHOVEL AND SHUT UP - to express her opinions on wolves. She had taken one look at the Fairs' Infiniti and recognized them as sybarites who dined on camel heels and foreign olives. She herself lived on home-killed beef, boiled potatoes, and black coffee. She was always dressed in jeans, manure-caked boots, and a ragged barn coat. When they first met, Mitchell shook the old woman's hand, feeling the coarse, hard fingers gripping his own with remarkable strength.

"How's your teeth?" she said. "Pretty sharp?"

"I don't know," said Mitchell, nonplussed by the odd question. "Why?"

"Always lookin for somebody help us castrate lambs."

At the post office the woman told him about Eleanora Figg.

"Her and her boys Condor and Tommy just about run this place." She added that there had been a third son, Cody, who had died of heatstroke hiking in the Grand Canyon on his first and only vacation.

He had met Condor Figg. The first winter he learned the hard way that the truck he had bought was best as a summer truck. It skidded and slewed in the lightest snow. The inevitable happened, and while he was trying to call a tow truck on his cell phone, damning the hundreds of Wyoming dead spots that made smoke signals more practical than cell phones, a big flatbed truck carrying a thousand-pound roll of hay pulled up.

"Got a chain?" yelled the driver, a big chunky man wearing a T-shirt despite the cold and snow. He had a curly black beard and eyes as narrow and darting as two fingerling trout.

"No," said Mitchell, and before his mouth closed the man was out of the truck and dragging a heavy chain with hook ends from it. In less than forty seconds he had the chain wrapped around Mitchell's trailer hitch and the truck up on the road, pointed the wrong way.

"My God," said Mitchell, "how can I thank you?" He fumbled for money, looking at the hole in the snow where the truck had been. Beyond the fence thirty or forty pronghorn grazed with cool detachment. He rushed on, his voice fast out of his throat. "My name's Mitchell Fair. We live in Star Lily Ranch." And he held out a twenty-dollar bill.

The man looked at him with hatred. "Yeah. I know. Keep your money. Where your house sets is where my folks had a stock tank. When old Dean Peraine had that truck you bought off a him he run it ever weather for damn near ten years. Had some weight to her. Never went off the road unless he wanted to." He jumped in the big truck, stood on the gas, and was gone in a blast of blue smoke. But Mitchell put four hundred pounds of sandbags in the bed of his truck and his winter driving skills improved. He stayed on the road.

There was another old woman in Swift Fox - Mrs. Conkle. She was also a rancher's widow but lived in a decrepit trailer with a yellow stucco exterior. Over the years wind-driven dirty had discolored the structure as the stucco cracked and buckled into a leprous mass. Sometimes when the Fairs drove past they saw the old woman outside, struggling to hang some wet grey garments on a drooping clothesline.

"That old thing," said Eugenie. "You have to wonder how somebody gets to that state."

Mitchell, who talked with local people more than she did, had heard a tale of hard luck and swindle.

The day the Fairs left Swift Fox on their journey to Maine they had passed Mrs. Conkle's ugly trailer. The yard was full of trucks, and men were coming from the trailer carrying a bureau, a box of canning jars, a rocking chair.

"Ah," said Eugenie. "There must have been a fire. Or maybe the poor old lady died and the relatives are going through her things."

Mitchell didn't think so. As they neared the bottom of the hill, coming toward them was Condor Figg's flatbed loaded with lumber and logs. In the side mirror Mitchell saw him turn in to Mrs. Conkle's yard.

Just when I thought that my skies were a June July blue ...

1,000 umbrellas opened
2,000 umbrellas opened
10,000 umbrellas opened to spoil the view ...

-- XTC, "1,000 Umbrellas"

My Mother: "The Periwinkle Dishes"

In 2003 I moved into my own apartment after living with the same woman for 9 years. It was a huge adjustment, and very exciting, and thanks to Craig's List I found an amazing situation for myself. My mother was so excited for me, so involved. She came down and went through the whole move with me ... It was her contention that as long as, by the first night, your kitchen and your bathroom are all set up - you will be fine. So even as my movers were lugging my furniture all about, my mother was tearing through boxes marked "KITCHEN" and "BATHROOM" - and hurriedly putting things away - scrubbing the tub, scrubbing the insides of cabinets - all while I was consumed with playing Traffic Cop for my movers. My mother made the transition unbelievably calming. I was so grateful to have her there.

But more on this whole move:

My dishes/pots/pans have always been hand-me-downs, unimportant. I buy crap dishes at flea markets, I don't have a 'set' of anything.

But as my move approached, my mother got it into her head that I should have a nice set of dishes. I should have a pattern that I wanted, I should pick out dinnerware for myself - with no concern for cost.

I'm not married. Married people get that stuff at their shower. But what happens if you never get married, AND if you have no money? Does that mean you never get to have a nice set of dishes that you like?

So my mother took me out shopping. Basically, it was like my own personal shower. We had such a good time together - she took me to shops in Rhode island, and I picked out all the stuff I liked. Stuff that spoke to me.

I picked these great big chunky plates, painted this heavenly color - a periwinkle blue. I picked these tall water glasses, with autumn leaves wrapping around them. I picked placemats- a pale lavendar color. I also got the silverware I wanted - nice solid silver. (I've always had crappy silverware - I never could justify the cost - I'd buy 10 crappy forks at a church flea market and call it a day.) So I cherish my beautiful silverware that my mother bought me.

We were both suffused with girlie excitement.

But let me tell you the deeper thing: I was so moved at how much my mother wanted to give me something. It meant the world to her - to give me what I wanted - to hear me say, "Oh, aren't these pretty?" (about the autumn leaf glasses) - and then be able to say, "Let's get a couple of them. You like them. Let's get them."

As is probably obvious, I am stridently independent and have been on my own for a long time. It is not often that my mother gets to GIVE like that to me, and it meant so much to her.

It's hard for me to accept gifts - but I also could feel, in my heart, how happy it made her to be able to give me something I wanted. So i was able to accept.

But here's the coda to this whole story about my dishes - and why I wanted to write about this in the first place:

A month or so later, my parents drove down to New York, to all of us who live here, and to see what I had done to my place. My mother had already seen my apartment, my father had not.

Now as I write this, I am fully aware that there are people on this earth (many of my friends included) who have parents who could not give two shits about "seeing" their child's "new place". Some people just don't have that parental involvement in their lives. I do. And my God. My God. I am fully aware of how blessed I am. How amazing my parents are. Truly. When I was in my 20s, trying to break free, it felt like a burden, at times. Like: "Jesus, other parents aren't so INVOLVED....why are MINE???" But now, of course, I see how fortunate I am. And was.

My parents arrived. I was so excited to have them see my place, to have my dad see it for the first time, to have my mom see what I had done to it. I loved being able to have them both sit in my kitchen, to serve them drinks, to be all set up.

My father took one look around my main room - with the hard wood floor, the ceiling fan, the patterned ceiling, and the PILES AND PILES OF BOOKS - and said, in his understated calm way, nodding his approval, "Good. Good."

But what I want to talk about is my mother.

I was in the kitchen with my mother, so excited to show her what I had done, how I had set things up, where I had put things.

And this is what is extraordinary about this woman - or one of the many extraordinary things:

NOTHING was boring to her.

I know mothers who are bossy, who come into their child's space and immediately re-arrange things, or criticize. I know these kinds of mothers. Bitchy petty controlling mothers. My mother could not be petty if you paid her a million dollars. My mother would turn down the cash. She would not do it. Her inner compass is too strong.

If her child is excited about something, then she is excited. (Well, let me re-phrase. If I came to her and said, "Omigod, I am so excited about how much blow I am doing right now!!" she would not be excited. She has her limits.)

I opened my cupboard and said, smiling, "And here are my dishes!!"

Now: reminder: SHE had bought me those dishes. She had already SEEN those dishes!!

And yet -she took one of the dishes out, and said, "Oh, gosh, they are so pretty."

I don't think I'm describing this right. I am sitting here with tears running down my face, and I don't feel that I'm describing this.

Let me try to get clear:

She was the one who bought me the dishes. She had already seen them. And yet she was excited to see them placed in my new cupboard. She was right there with me, in my excitement.

Here is what that moment with the Periwinkle Dishes meant to me, and what it says about my mother:

My mother is ALWAYS doing her best. ALWAYS. I cannot say that I am always doing my best. There are many times when I am jealous, when I am bitter, when I let negativity overcome me. But my mother - without EVER being a pious self-righteous woman (and that's the whole point - that's the whole point - her ego is not wrapped up in her "righteousness") is ALWAYS doing her best. In every moment in life, we are faced with a choice: Should I go the high road or the low road? My mother probably knows better than I do, but I have never known her to take the low road.

I am not saying that she is perfect. Of course not. But I am saying that she is always doing her best in any given moment. Always. It has taken me YEARS to realize this about her. YEARS.

Another mother would have either scoffed at my dish placement, or would have squashed my excitement, "Yes, I know what they look like. After all, I paid an arm and a leg for them."

My mother just ooohed and aahed over how pretty they looked in my cupboard.

I told my sister Jean this story once, and Jean said, "You know ... it's actually kind of holy, isn't it." In the true sense of the word, yes. It is.

Grace. My mother teaches me grace.

Happy mother's day, mar mar.

Orphan Train: The Novel. By me. Age 11.

As I mentioned in this post - the television movie Orphan Train, from 1979 - starring Jill Eikenberry - was one of those moments, as a kid, where I went into a fever of obsession. A fever, I tell you! I was burning up! This of course was before the days of VCR (at least my family didn't have one) and rentals of movies - so I was reliant on TV Guide to tell me what was coming up. I pored over the weekly television listings, keeping my eye out for Orphan Train. The agony of having to wait!! And who knows when it would be on again?

And so I basically couldn't wait. So, based on my memory of the movie, I wrote it up in novel-form. I love that I included a copyright page and publisher information. It was apparently published by a little-known publisher called "Sheila University Press". I was 11 years old when I wrote this.

I forgot about it for years. I always remembered Orphan Train, but I forgot that I had written it up as a book. From memory. I fleshed out conversations, I went scene to scene ... it was my way of expressing my obsession. If I had had a blog then, I would have been doing posts like crazy on Orphan Train.

The "manuscript" was lost for many years, but I didn't even know it was lost.

And 3 or 4 years ago, my parents were at home and a knock came on the door. My mother opened the door, and there stood J. - one of my best friends from childhood and high school. I had not seen her in years. She was home for the weekend, and was cleaning stuff out of the attic - and she found my bound manuscript of Orphan Train and wanted me to have it. Amazing, right? My mother sent it to me and when I opened it up - my whole life flashed before my eyes. I had forgotten about it entirely. I hadn't missed it, or yearned for it, or wondered Where the hell did it go? But suddenly it was there, in my hands - a bound copy of my "novel" - a bright yellow cover - with my crazy doodles all over it. And I had written the thing out on looseleaf paper and then somehow clamped it down into this folder-like apparatus. My novel. What the hell??

I sat down and read the whole thing, laughing out loud at times, at times welling up with tears over my childish passion and fearlessness, guffawing at some of my word choices ... and then there were a couple of moments, I admit, when a phrase came up, or the way I finished a scene, where I thought, "You know what? That's not half bad."

So. Here is Chapter 1 of my novel. Orphan Train. Written by me at age 11.

Preface

In 1845 orphans roamed the street of New York City freely. Few of them had homes and those that did, sometimes they couldn't even get enough food to support them. This story is fictitious but based on real life as it was in 1845.

Chapter 1

"Tony," Ben Papinni wailed, making his short legs move very fast to catch up with his 11-year-old brother. "Wait up."

Tony sighed and stopped in front of a low crumbling wall.

Ben clutched the small wooden cage in his hand and ran up to his brother. He gazed up at him with wide eyes.

"Come on over here. There are some big ones over here as I 'member." Tony led his brother through the old, brick building and all of the rubble to a small hall and into a small musty room.

"Over here. They're over here and we'd better hurry." Tony knelt on the ground and took the cage from Ben.

He placed it in a small hole in the wall. Ben kneeled beside Tony and watched him eagerly.

"Now be quiet, Ben. They'll be comin' soon."

"They" were big rats who lurked in the building. Ben and Tony Pappini caught them and sold them to a man who was a cheapskate and hated kids, but nevertheless it did bring money to buy food. Tony would not go to the town soup kitchen. He considered people who went there babies and they gave up easily. Tony would not give up. The only time he ever allowed the two of them to go and get the small portion of gruel was when they were absolutely desperate for food. Ben, even though he was small for his age of 5, had a stomach like a balloon and it would hold quite a bit of food. But Ben admired his brother and always was loyal to Tony, so somehow he survived.

Clap! The cage door shut and Tony brought it out. There were two big black rats in it.

Tony smiled. "They're goodies. Mr. Johnson will give us seven cents for 'em. He promised. C'mon, Ben."

Tony and Ben got up and departed through a window onto the dirty cobblestone street.

A young boy in ragged clothes walked down the street yelling, "Papers! Get your papers!" He was waving newspapers in the air. His cap was placed firmly on his head and his knickers were ragged and dirty.

Tony sighed. Everything these days was so ugly and dirty. There were no real orphanages then and no one in New York seemed to care about all the poor, helpless children. They were looked upon practically like animals! Grown men would hit a kid without any hesitation and not feel sorry. Tony had heard that it was better out West. There had been some talk of herding all of the orphans out West to find them families, but not many people believed it. Practically all the folks considered the orphans trash and no one in their right minds would want them. Some orphans were bad but not all of them.

"C'mon, Ben. We gotta hurty," Tony said.

Ben sighed. Sometimes Tony was very impatient.

Finally they arrived at the rat place. It was rather a disgusting business. Partly because the rats were disgusting. They were big and black and gross. At least that was Ben and Tony's opinion.

After they had handed in their rats, Mr. Johnson gave them the money.

Tony stared at the coins in his dirty palm. "That's only three cents! You promised us seven!"

Mr. Johnson was angry. "It's money, ain't it? Now git out."

"But ..." Tony protested.

"Get out!" He gave Tony a hard push and Tony and Ben ran out.

"What're we gonna do?" Ben asked Tony.

Tony shrugged and tried to hide his despair from Ben. "We'll find somethin' for three cents."

Ben sighed. "I donno, Tony."

They turned a corner and walked down a damp, dark alley with a putrid odor. They did not notice the tall, dirty boy hiding behind a barrel.

As they passed he jumped out and grabbed Ben by the collar and shook him.

"Hey!" Tony yelled. "Put him down!"

"Not until you give me your money," the boy growled.

Tony glanced at the three cents in his hand. "But this is all I've got."

"I don't care. Give it."

Tony had no choice. He sadly placed the meagre amount of money in the boy's hand. The boy violently dropped Ben and, with much swagger, slouched down the alley.

"Now what're we gonna do?" Ben said, almost on the verge of tears, but he would never have cried in front of Tony.

Tony sighed. He knew they would have to go to the soup kitchen. He didn't want to admit to Ben though that they would have to give up.

Ben was studying Tony's face and he noticed the worried lines around his eyes. "It's o.k., Tony. You don't have to tell me. I know where we're goin'. Come on."

Tony was grateful to his brother to save him from saying they had given up.

They started off for the kitchen. When they were there they fell in line with the many other orphans there. The paper boy was there too. When Tony's turn in line came he got his soup as fast as possible and hurried off to a table.

When Ben came up to the counter he held up his bowl. The pretty woman behind the counter smiled down at him.

"Well, Ben. It's nice to see you here. You don't usually come," she said, and scooped an extra large portion of gruel for his bowl, for he looked especially thin.

Ben brought his bowl over to Tony's table and sat down. Soon he was gulfing down the warm soup.

As the lady behind the counter kept pouring soup into children's bowls she remarked to the man who was helping her, "Where do they all come from?"

The man shrugged. "Beats me. Poor things. That girl over there can't even walk right."

The woman looked with sympathy at the little girl. "I hope that that story about the train carrying all of the orphans West comes true. Whenever I look at their little faces I ---"

She was interrupted by a dirty ragged boy bursting into the kitchen excitedly. He yelled, "David Smithson's gittin' hanged down in 'a gallows!"

All of the orphans made a mad rush for the door and burst out into the street. Child after child rushing past the counter, dropping their bowls and spoons and pouring out into the street. People walking past the kitchen were amazed to all of a sudden see at least 3 dozen ragged, dirty children burst out onto the street and run down the cobblestone sidewalk.

As they ran past the soup counter, Miss Sims (the woman) tried desperately to stop them.

"Please children! Please! Finish your soup and --" she turned to the man. "I'm going to follow them and see what this hanging business is all about." She hurried out after all of the children.

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?' (Annie Proulx)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from her sweeping saga in 30 pages 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?'

Another one of Proulx's stories that feels like a novel, 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?' appeared in The New Yorker in 2003. It tells the story of a man named Gilbert Wolfscale, a rancher in Elk Tooth (the fictional town where all of the stories in Bad Dirt take place) who is a rigid workaholic, a rancher to the core - and it is this that messes up his personal life on all fronts. His sons, his wife - all are driven away by his controlling personality. A rancher needs to be controlling, obviously - and Gilbert is highly possessive of his land - almost bordering on the fanatic. But then, of course, there are so many things a rancher cannot control - weather, drought, the world financial markets ... Gilbert cannot really understand things beyond his own perspective. One of his sons is obviously gay. The other son knows it, tries to tell his father, and Gilbert just has no coping skills for something like that. His wife Suzzy has a gambling problem - and eventually goes to jail for embezzlement (if I'm remembering correctly - it's been a long time since I read it). He is ashamed of his wife. Ashamed of his sons. And his old mother lives with him, and she needs a lot of help just getting through the day ... and Gilbert grows more and more rigid in his isolation. He's kind of a son of a bitch, although you feel for him too. The younger generation, personified by his sons, seem way more laidback. He cannot understand that. His sons take a more philosophical view of their mother's misfortunes ... and they don't seem to mind the whole gay thing. Gilbert Wolfscale begins to seem like an old cow put out to pasture. And that he cannot abide.

He was a model of rancher stubbornness, savagely possessive of his property. He did everything in an odd, deliberate way, Gilbert Wolfscale's way, and never retreated once he had taken a position. Neighbors said he was self-reliant, but there was a way they said it that meant something else.

Here's an excerpt. This tells of how Gilbert came to marry Suzzy. Great concise character development.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?'

Seven miles north of the Harp on the Stump Hole Road lived May and Jim Codenhead of his generation. He had gone to grade school with May - she was then May Alwen - in the old century during the postwar fifties, the Eisenhower era of interstate highway construction that changed Wyoming forever by letting in the outside. May's brother, Sedley Alwen, a big, good-natured kid with stringy arms, had been Gilbert's best friend. Gilbert courted May for a year, had taken it for granted that Sedley would be his brother-in-law, but she strung him along and then, in a sudden move on Christmas Day in 1966, married Jim Codenhead. Jim was then nothing more than an illiterate Montana hand working on the Alwen place. May taught him to read until he could fumble through the newspaper.

"That's the shits, man," said Sedley sympathetically and took Gilbert on a two-day drunk that was as much a salute to his draft notice as balm for Gilbert's disappointment.

The marriage wasn't unprecedented. For those who took the long view and had patience, it was the classic route for a lowly cowhand to own his own spread - marry the rancher's daughter. In retaliation Gilbert went to a New Year's dance, found Suzzy New, and in ten days pressured her into a fast marriage.

Suzzy New was slender and small-boned, something French about her child-size wrists, a contrast to Gilbert, six foot four, bullnecked with heavy shoulders. She was nimble-fingered and a talented embroiderer. In the flush of their first months together Gilbert bragged that she was so handy she could make a pair of chaps for a hummingbird. She was quiet, disliked arguments and shouting. She held herself tensely and had a way of retreating into her thoughts. She believed herself to be a very private person. She slept badly, sensitive to the slightest abnormal sound - the creak of an attic timber, the rising wind, a raccoon forcing its way through the skirting of the house and under the kitchen floorboards. She had let herself be bullied into marrying Gilbert, and within days of the ruinous act bitterly regretted it.

All her life she had heard and felt the Wyoming wind and took it for granted. There had even been a day when she was a young girl standing by the road waiting for the school bus when a spring wind, fresh and warm and perfumed with pine resin, had caused a bolt of wild happiness to surge through her, its liveliness promising glinting chances. She had loved the wind that day. But out at the ranch it was different and she became aware of moving air's erratic, inimical character. The house lay directly in line with a gap in the encircling hills to the northwest, and through this notch the prevailing wind poured, falling on the house with ferocity. The house shuddered as the wind punched it, slid along its sides like a released torrent from a broken dam. Week after week in winter it sank and rose, attacked and feinted. When she put her head down and went out to the truck, it yanked at her clothing, shot up her sleeves, whisked her hair into raveled fright wigs. Gilbert seemed not to notice, but then, she thought, he probably regarded it as his wind, and no doubt took pleasure in such a powerful possession.

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'The Trickle-Down Effect' (Annie Proulx)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2by Annie Proulx

Anything coming after Close Range was going to be a disappointment - especially since Proulx explicitly connected them by calling this short story collection "Wyoming Stories 2". However, I'm such a diehard fan that when I heard that she has a third short story collection coming out this fall, I think - and I heard it's "Wyoming Stories 3" I got so excited I could barely count the days until it came out. So you see how it is. Proulx lives in Wyoming, she obviously has a lot to say about it. And each of the collections (so far) has its own feel. None of the stories in Bad Dirt would fit in in Close Range and vice versa. The setting is the same, but it's almost like Proulx is using two different languages in the two books. Close Range reflects the size of Wyoming - the scope of sky and plain and mountain that is so startling when you go there. It's beautiful, sure, but Proulx isn't interested in the beauty. She is interested in what such scope does to human beings. She is interested in the culture of Wyoming - brought about for all different reasons - every state has its own culture, its own identity ... That's what she delved into in Close Range - the people of grit and hardiness, but also the close-mindedness and rigidity that often comes with such grit. But there's the flipside - in such a landscape, with such a history - these are pioneer people - rigidity is often a necessary quality, so it's difficult to judge or stand back from the people, cluck-clucking at them. She's inside. She can be a merciless writer, but I never feel that she is unfair. Life can be unfair, but I don't feel her cackling behind the scenes, laughing at what she is putting her own characters through. I hate that kind of writing. Close Range has a kind of majesterial desolation to it that seriously makes it a short story collection worthy to be placed alongside the great short story collections of all time. It is not just a collection of someone's random work - there is a thruline, a theme, a keening chord of loneliness running through the whole thing. It takes your breath away.

So Bad Dirt was quite a jolt. All the stories take place in one town - Elk Tooth - in Wyoming, but it's a different Wyoming. A wackier Wyoming. It borders on the supernatural at times. There's almost a slapstick feel to some of the action. The characters are living their lives, but you don't get that telescopic feeling of universality like you did in Close Range. These people in Bad Dirt are eccentric, and you don't really worry about them too much. They all seem like they are going to be fine. I think I ws looking for Close Range in Bad Dirt - so it was rather a disappointment, although many of the stories - standing on their own - are just great. Time magazine said it best, in the quote excerpted on the back cover:

Annie Proulx renews the Western tradition of the short story as the tall tale ... [She] does a matchless job of summing up the human comedy of the modern West.

Very insightful, I think. These are "tall tales". The first story is called 'Hell Hole' and it tells of a guy who inadvertently discovers a place in the ground in the woods that occasionally opens up- showing a dark hot red tunnel of fire and lava within - and swallows people whole, the ground closing up behind them. So he takes his various enemies out there, and asks them to please, just jump up and down on that bit of earth - just to humor him - and whoosh - the ground opens up and swallows the person whole, leaving nary a trace behind. Proulx stays on the ground-level with these people, for the most part ... not catapulting herself back up and into the ether, looking down on them from above ... which is why Close Range is such a devastating read. You cannot separate yourself from any of those people, even if your life has nothing in common with theirs. She is talking about the human family. But Bad Dirt feels like gossip (not that that's a bad thing - just way different from Close Range). Each story feels like something someone would tell you at a bar one night, if you're just driving through Elk Tooth and know nothing about the inhabitants or the history of the place. "So let me tell you about the time Creel Zmundzinski found the fiery entrance to hell out in the woods over there ..." Every town has its tall tales.

Critics were not kind to Bad Dirt, although because she's Annie Proulx - she was cut a ton of slack. It's hard to 'get over' Close Range. It really is. You keep looking for "Brokeback Mountain" (excerpt here) or "The Mud Below" (excerpt here) in Bad Dirt ... but you don't find them.

'The Trickle-Down Effect' is the story of one of Annie Proulx's aimless loser protagonists - Deb Sipple, a guy who goes job to job, who has two crazy ex-wives behind him, and who is basically an alcoholic. He works to keep up with paying off his bar tabs. That's all he wants out of life. In 'The Trickle-Down Effect' he gets a job transporting bales of hay from Wisconsin and Minnesota to a "lady rancher" in Elk Tooth named Fiesta Punch. (I adore that name). Fiesta Punch is nobody's fool, a tough dame, who knows Deb Sipple is kind of a loser - but trusts him to do this job for her.

The last image of this story - and the way Proulx writes it - is almost laugh-out-loud funny - even though you gasp at what Deb Sipple has done and what a disaster it is (not just for him but for the entire county). He sure is made to pay for his sins, and then some. I wouldn't dream of giving it away - it's too good an ending ... but anyway, here's an excerpt - where we meet Deb and we meet Fiesta.

The stories in Bad Dirt stay on the surface. We get the details of life, but we no longer feel that we are on the inside.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2by Annie Proulx - 'The Trickle-Down Effect'

Deb's only asset was his flatbed truck. Most of what little money he made with occasional hauling funneled straight into Elk Tooth's three bars, what bartender Amanda Gribb called the Wyoming trickle down effect. He would run up a big tab at the Pee Wee, and when Amanda leaned on him he switched to the Silvertip and the Pee Wee saw him not. When the Silvertip debt began to be mentioned he favored Muddy's Hole and dropped hints that he was looking for a job or two. Everyone understood that he wasn't interested in a real job but in a few days' work. Sooner or later something came up, and when he collected he'd hit the Pee Wee, pay off his tab, and start a new one. So went the cycle of Deb Sipple's years measured in bar bills and small work.

Wyoming had been dry as a quart of sand for three years and Elk Tooth was in the heart of the drought disaster zone. Those ranchers who had held on to their herds hoping for rain were caught like mice. As the summer drew to its stove-lid end, the most precious commodity to those in the cow business was hay, and the prices demanded for it matched the prices for rubies. Ranchers spent hours on the telephone and searching the Internet for reasonably priced hay. No flimsy or wild rumor could be ignored. If a rancher heard of hay up in Saskatchewan that a seller described simply as "not moldy" she'd try for it.

Most of the desperate ranchers were women, for in Elk Tooth lady ranchers abound, some who had stepped into ownership when a husband rancher died, some the mature daughters of men who had sired no male heirs, some ex-CEOs who had tossed up everything and headed for the high country, as close to Jackson as they could get.

One of the ranchers was Fiesta Punch, a good horsewoman, but rough on the hired help. She ran Red Cheerios, a weird brand of exotics with white rings around their eyes her grandfather had bred up, but this summer their range was so badly gnawed it resembled the surface of an antique billiard table in an attic heavily populated by moths. There was no point in selling. The market was glutted and prices lower than breakeven. And she wanted to hold on to what was probably the only herd of Red Cheerios in existence. She had to get her hands on enough hay to carry them through the fall and winter. She owed that much to family heritage.

The double trouble with scarce hay was that in addition to paying through the nose for the stuff, when she finally located some, she would have to face fearsome transport charges. The only decent hay grew in distant parts, and hay transporters knew a penned turkey when they saw one. Hauling the hay from Farmer X to Rancher Z could double the cost of the precious bales. Fiesta Punch was in a position to lose her shirt. On the pan of the scale Deb Sipple, with his big flatbed truck, could almost guarantee himself several years of elbow security at the Pee Wee.

Friday Night ME-ME

Annoying and NOSY mee-mee from Tracey.

1.ONE OF YOUR SCARS, HOW DID YOU GET IT? Scar on my knee from leaping out of a tree ONTO A ROCK in the playground at age 7.

2. WHAT IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR ROOM? A huge poster of Rick Springfield. No, just kidding. Let's see. I will list everything I have on the wall of my main room:

1. Painting done by my mother of a bucket on the edge of a maple tree.

2. Framed 1916 Proclamation of Ireland

3. Framed page from Book of Kells

4. Huge framed old-time map of Ireland

5. Shadow box filled with knick knacks from my entire life

6. Little mirror with stained glass pieces surrounding it

7. Black and white photo of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands taken by the great Sam Shaw

3. DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME YOU WERE BORN? 6 am? No idea. It's been a huge problem for me, in terms of getting accurate astrological readings

4. WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW? What I want more than anything is not possible right now. So. A book advance. And a husband. But I'll take the advance over the husband at this particular moment in time.

5. WHAT DO YOU MISS? Lying with my head in M.'s lap, covered in blankets, watching some bullshit movie about aliens at 4 o'clock in the morning. And I have to be at work at 8:30 a.m.

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOST PRIZED POSSESSION? This is kind of embarrassing, but whatevs. I was given a teensy tiny piece of beach glass by a man who was in love with me - years ago - years and years ... and I swear that freakin' piece of beach glass travels in state. When I travel, or move - that piece of beach glass is ON MY PERSON ... I refuse to trust it to anyone else. It's not like I'm pining for the man who gave it to me ... or not really. But that piece of beach glass is literally precious to me. For my own sweet reasons, thankyouverymuch.

7. HOW TALL ARE YOU? 5'6"

8. DO YOU GET SCARED IN THE DAY? All the time. 3 pm is a particularly difficult time for me. I whiteknuckle it.

9. WHAT’S YOUR WORST FEAR? Having my life look at 80 the way it looks now.

10. WHAT KIND OF HAIR COLOR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX? Dark.

11. WHAT ABOUT EYE COLOR? I'm a sucker for those crazy light-blue Irish eyes.

12. COFFEE OR ENERGY DRINK? Coffee.

13. FAVORITE PIZZA TOPPING? Pepperoni

14. IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Barbecued ribs.

15. FAVORITE COLOR OF ALL TIME? Wow. You're a dramatic meme, aren't you? I guess dark purple, but seriously, I'm not all "of all time" about it.

16. HAVE YOU EVER EATEN A GOLDFISH? No, although I did consider eating fried worms in 5th grade.

17. WHAT WAS THE FIRST MEANINGFUL GIFT YOU EVER RECEIVED? My mother, for some unknown reason, gave me the soundtrack to Annie (the original Broadway production) when I was 10 years old, and I'd say it seriously impacted my life in ways I can't even count right now.

18. DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH? Yup.

19. FAVORITE CLOTHING BRAND? Max Studio. Seriously. If there's a rack with Max Studio clothes within a 5 mile radius of me, I know it.

20. WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU WANT? I am TOTALLY happy with my car right now. But a 67 Mustang would be freakin' awesome.

21. WOULD YOU FALL IN LOVE KNOWING THAT THE PERSON IS LEAVING? Where the hell is he going? Is he off to 'Nam? Is he an astronaut? If so then absolutely, I would fall in love. But leaving - as in: "I'm leaving because I would rather keep the dream of you intact, and although I love you I don't think I could handle you on a day to day basis, and therefore I am going to marry this less-threatening woman who is a bit more conventional" then hell to the FUCK no.

22. HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF THE USA? Yes.

23. YOUR WEAKNESSES? I find it difficult to turn down a taco.

24. MET ANYONE FAMOUS? Yes. I should hope so, they're family members.

25. FIRST JOB? Well, babysitting. But my first "real" job was as a page at the local library. Best job ever. To this day.

26. EVER DONE A PRANK CALL? Absolutely. Recently.

27. DO YOU THINK EVERYONE OUT THERE HAS A SOUL MATE? Fuck you.

28. WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE YOU FILLED THIS OUT? Talking to my mom.

29. HAVE YOU EVER HAD SURGERY? No.

30. WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST? My skin. My humor. My friendship.

31. WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY? A book deal.

32. HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT? Fuck you.

33. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? My mother.

34. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST TURN OFF WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX? Guys who don't know how to have a conversation. The art of conversation is just that - an ART - and when I meet a man who knows how to have a conversation - listening, talking, anecdotes, knowing how to tell a story, knowing how to ADD and not belittle ... I'm kinda toast. Cynicism is the hugest turnoff. And anyone whose MO is "been there, done that" - it's all I can do to keep from yawning in their face.

35. WHAT IS ONE THING YOU MISS ABOUT GRADE SCHOOL? Recess. I think grownups should have recess.

36. WHAT KIND OF SHAMPOO DO YOU USE? I buy all my products from Melaleuca. I'm not wacky about their shampoo - it doesn't lather the way I like .. but I'm sticking with it because I get a discount.

37. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? My handwriting is shit. It used to be good, I have no idea what happened.

38. ANY BAD HABITS? Where do I begin? I have a ton of bad habits. Anyone who says "No" to this question is a douschebag.

39. ARE YOU A JEALOUS PERSON? To me, jealousy comes out of insecurity - so yes. I can be jealous if I'm feeling insecure.

40. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Yes. I have doubts about many things - but my gift at friendship is not one of them.

41. DO YOU AGREE WITH FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS? Hell yes!

42. HOW DO YOU RELEASE ANGER? By saying, "Get the HELL out of my way" when someone stops at the bottom of an escalator, causing a backlog.

43. WHAT’S YOUR MAIN GOAL IN LIFE? Oh for God's sake. No. Refuse to answer.

44. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD? Anything that had to do with Fisher Price.

45. HOW MANY NUMBERS ARE IN YOUR CELL PHONE? 20? Frankly, not enough. I am behind on updating my cell phone. I don't have a home phone, by the way ... my phone, my only phone, is my cell (welcome to urban life) - so I really need to have everyone in there.

46. WERE YOU A FAN OF BARNEY AS A LITTLE KID? Way after my time. I was a fan of Ernie and Bert, mkay.

47. MASHED POTATOES OR MACARONI AND CHEESE? Neither. Will not choose.

48. DO YOU HAVE ALL YOUR FINGERS AND TOES? Yes. Mere - you need to do this meme!!

49. DO YOU HAVE A COMPUTER IN YOUR ROOM? What am I a tween or something? Yes. I have a computer "in my room". The ironic thing is that I am an adult and I still only "have a room". But whatevs.

50. PLANS FOR TONIGHT? I have to write a movie review, and I'm also going to watch Nadine.

51. WHAT’S THE FASTEST YOU’VE EVER GONE IN A CAR? 130.

52. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO? Eric Hutchinson "It Hasn't Been Long Enough"

53. LAST THING YOU DRANK? Glass of red wine.

54. REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT? Not registered as either. I'm a 2nd amendment supporter with a deep love and respect for our military and an even deeper love for the tiniest most invisible unobtrusive government possible (it's more of a philosophical belief than a political position - it cannot be shaken or swayed, it's who I am) who is also pro-choice and disgusted by the racist rhetoric surrounding immigration and even more disgusted by any opinion even approaching anti-gay-marriage. Oh, and I'm against capital punishment. You tell me what "party" would want me. Fuck them and fuck anyone who tries to convince me otherwise. Losing battle. I vote the way I want to. I cannot be bought. I'll be at the bar with Chris Hitchens if you need me.

55. DO YOU HAVE A LOW SELF ESTEEM OR A HIGH SELF ESTEEM? High with abyss-level bouts of low. I whiteknuckle the lows.

56. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING? I'm reading Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian - the 6th (I think) in the Master & Commander series.