The Memoirista
You will come in ships full of coffee and cloth bearing false white flags of surrender only to land and melt into the sharp...
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So while I am trying to hold my shit together enough to make a public appearance today, I distract myself with the question of noses. ...
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Yesterday we got the crushing news that our closest friends here in Oregon are moving back home to Santa Rosa. They moved up here at...
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I've written 12,000 possibly useful words for Cricket and Grey, the book. I was thinking the other 2,000 were tossers but the more I...
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There is an incredible freedom in letting go of the structures of dreams and the colors they used to be packaged in.I almost made...
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Everyone wants to spin some film of unknowable-ness into the atmosphere; a small illusion of unreadable personal text. Hide behind your warped glass windows where...
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I dreamed about my old house again. For the 400,000th time since hearing my bedroom door click shut loudly in the summer of 1985,...
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Previous discussions about Twilight on this blog were about the movie and were before reading the book. The following was written just after finishing...
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Slow organic rot. Entropy in the rain, the gutterless buildings, the tin rooves, the perpetual rivulets wearing wood down to corrugated hollow boards like thick...
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I am beginning today's notation on whatever I will later call this period in my life with a picture of Anna, one of our Ameraucana...
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Emotional stability is not my strong suit. I am going to say this in advance, because I believe that people frequently forget that this...
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We got our six chicks yesterday! Max immediately named one Anna, and another one Bob. Then Philip came in and named on Mohawk. I...
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I suddenly remembered and missed my accordion this week. I haven't played in years. I've barely played since we've moved up here. I felt a...
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I wore my sunglasses into the store like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard to buy my beer. Even in the parking lot the tears...
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In the bright daylight it's a patchwork of staccato impressions: hitting the nose with sulfurous accuracy; accosting the eyes with pinpoints of sight; breaking still...
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Which is the opposite of what I said I was going to do yesterday. Your head is going to spin after reading this post. I...
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I'm 40 years old today. The popular thing to do on a fortieth birthday is to prove you are having your midlife crisis (such...
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79 dresses into hell and I might combust in the satin shroud holding everything I've ever touched together with feeble thread, always on the verge...
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I wrote this last week some time, or the week before, and forgot to post it. Ooops. My imagination is fueled by Celia Cruz singing...
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I have now listened to "Take On Me" by Aha approximately 40 times tonight. That's on the heals of having listened to it about...
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If this was a ship it would never reach the sand, waiting like a crescent of glitter against your dark prophesies. I have been...
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Knowing who you are is so much more than knowing what you'll eat when you wake up in the morning, what clothes you wear...
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I used to say every thanksgiving that I am thankful for the usual things: family, friends, life, food, a job, and health. Maybe it's...
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This post is brought to you courtesy of Celia Cruz's "Rie Y Llora" and my gorgeous sister Tara who let me make her wear...
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Each time I go further inward I toss up these self portraits and I can't tell if it's for courage (because everyone can be...
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It felt like a cigarette, lines clean and straight at first- but then curling relentlessly into the dark beyond the porch lamp. Huddled against...
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Cliffnotes version of this post: I set my kitchen on fire. It stank.What's left of my very favorite old spatula.I have been too busy worrying...
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When I moved to McMinnville, a "city" with a population of only 30,000 people, I was so excited to be moving away from all...
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Before the primordial ooze, there was you. Where the light slid seamlessly from wood to lake to fish to the thing that emerged with...
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As most of my regular readers already know, I am not religious but I love religious art and music when it's pretty and inspiring. ...
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I interrupted your flight to say that you are the kiss, the final seal on this nefarious subterfuge in which shadows have caught shadows...
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There are more punches in this silence than there are kisses. For forgetting. For walking away when all the thunder cried for reaching closer,...
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I'm hitting a bit of rough patch with the book. Probably thinking too much about it. I can't seem to shake the worry that...
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Synopsis of "Jane Doe"Jane Bauer is a bright unambitious shipper in an underwear factory, completely happy with the life she's built for herself in...
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This is the last time. Seriously. I can't keep giving snippets because that's not how it works. But pasting them here has helped me...
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I have not looked at my book for a week. Tonight I have been rereading much of it. I am trying to encourage myself...
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I am 130 pages into the first draft of my book. My book. Those words feel like a 50 pound weight around my neck. ...
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Pearl is buried. Philip is on a business trip. My mother, not usually much for babysitting kids took Max overnight last night so that...
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You are going to forget everything by morning. Like all the things I know for sure, this moment is ephemeral, fragile like onion paper...
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I feel the heat reaching for the pale raspberries, offering color to what was merely the reflection of nature's desire, turning it into something...
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I have become slightly obsessed with the idea that I need to practice writing fiction as an exercise to increase my skill as a...
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I sit down to write something very specific and it slips away from me. I tell myself it doesn't matter because I don't write...
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Sometimes it seems the universe is not poised to let me out into the ether. Perhaps there is time and then there is a...
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It comes at me like a flush of blood in my head, like a rush of energy pulsing quickly through its paces; something I...
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Origin is the gritty mud from which our light rises for the first time. It is the place we begin to keep track of...
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Have I mentioned lately how much I loathe the smell of my own perspiration? I stink right now because I slept in and the...
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You can not open me up so easily. You cannot come closer than three feet without risking your limbs and your eyes. I have...
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Right now I'm remembering what mornings used to be like when I lived with my dad and my sister after my mom and my brother...
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There was so much blood on the floor when I came home. So much that my heart immediately pumped itself into an almost holographic...
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Longing is like a rose that waits for the moon to open itself but needs the warmth of the sun to unfold its shy...
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Happy New Year!I have spoken of many dark things this week. I've looked at things that need to change in myself. I've come up with...
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Hello long hour. I'm listening to the timber of a smoke at twilight, the way it coils itself into the light like liquid air. I...
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The big question for me in this very minute at which I am seated at my desk in my recently rehabilitated writing room is: can...
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(What I wrote in 1998)I am most afraid of myself when others are afraid of me.I want to say that I am uncomfortable with the...
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In spite of my urge to destroy all of my journals because I believe they possess spirits of their own and are haunting me, I...
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My feelings frequently tangle as they reach towards the light, looking for the nourishment of expression, aching for water to quench the drying instrument of...
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and how wind chimes freak me out*(reprised)Sunday morning. Cold, grey, quiet. I love this morning. I also love how talking about my aversion to games...
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I was never a punk.I've been threatened by punks. Rich punk kids were always the worst. There was one in my high school who decided...
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I do not have a foot fetish and this is definitely not some Shakespearean moment where I doth protest too much. sometimes life conspires to...
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Blackberry season is as fleeting and as capricious as the rush of power a teen first experiences on feeling hormones pulse through their blood like...
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I am full of eulogy this evening. There is a constant narrative in myself that dictates what it sees in the past tense. What has...
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under a canopy of lightHuman relationships are curious fragile volatile vessels of hope, expectation, baggage, need, remembrance; like dark blind rooms where shiftless spirits continually...
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The first thing I would like to do this evening is send PKM the hugest unlecherous hug from me for drawing my name for her...
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You lay there like a salty bride in tulle froth, waiting for your wintry groom to come and take you away. Away from this perch....
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I live two lives, one is my waking life, the other is my sleeping life. I cannot tell you how many times this mailbox has...
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There is no aphorism to describe how I'm feeling these days. There is no need to sum life up in abbreviated bits of wisdom. The...
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(no longer the future, not quite the past)There were a couple of admonishments I heard quite often as a kid. The first (and most annoying...
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(For Angela and Hope)There are themes cropping up everywhere like garish flashing pop-ups that you can't close down even when you pound your computer...
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Free-falling through time takes practice if you want to avoid crashing smack into your own self as you have been and not change the fabric...
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My OthersThe oil of bay carried itself like a queen on the fierce wet wind and I knew I was alone with it, hanging from...
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Max recently asked me if he could get Lucky Charms cereal. I think Lucky Charms cereal belongs to a class of food in which you...
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(plus a pretty picture of liquid sunshine)What my friend Lisa B. says is true. I worry altogether too much that I'm going to alienate people....
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I often wonder what kinds of things people imagine I keep secret? I often wonder if anyone wonders anything at all about me? I'm...
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(when coffee cost 25 cents and came with a roach)Back in 1989 I was a nineteen year old fashion design student living in San Francisco,...
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"What I want to know is why God comes into the picture so much when I haven't got the smokes? It's not like I'm looking...
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Your GriefYour grief is like a broken stopwatchtarnished gold filigreeticking the sameminute to death.The thought that just flitted through my brain two minutes ago is...
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Everyone throws punches from time to time. Everyone. Whether it's metaphorical or literal. Something I realized about myself just a few months ago is that...
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I have come to see myself so differently than I used to that I forget sometimes about the magic of adornment. I forget to wear...
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You know how sometimes the writing is on the wall in huge red dripping spray painted letters but you still try to erode them beyond...
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Instructions for reading this post: Do not, under any circumstances, read this post as a cry for help, a boo-hoo fest, or as an effort...
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Is that a squash in your patch or are you just happy to see me?(That turned out to sound dirtier than I intended.)The last time...
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This is the very first diary I ever kept, given to me by someone on my tenth birthday. It is unfortunate that it is peppered...
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I just looked at my site meter and I can't help but notice that lately my site has been lower on visitors than usual and...
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(This one's for Capello)5-20-04This song feeds a kind of human sorrow that is always cloaked in indescribable joy. To open it up I unleash all...
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I think it's time to offer up a little primer on the nature of this blog and who I am. I like to say about...
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Sometimes I hear a song that hits some integral chord that's been playing over and over in my own head, that lulls me into a...
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This is my mother's faithful garden lion. She has handed him over into our care because she doesn't anticipate having a garden when she moves...
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I developed my bib apron pattern over two years ago through an intense trial and error of sample making and serious cursing. When I finally...
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I am prone to bouts of self loathing. I found out pretty late in the game that it wasn't just a matter of low self...
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(or anything easier than writing)Being a writer may sound like a barrel of monkeys to a lot of people. Nothing but whiskey and laughs. It's...
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I am in that lovely stage of a cold when my chest has constant offerings, my nose is raw from blowing, and I've used up...
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Last night was one of those nights when Philip and I stayed up to an impossible hour drinking beers and getting excited about art, music,...
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I'm fast forwarding a bit to a better time in my life. I was a wee twenty-two years old. (I promise I won't talk about...
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The following are excerpts from my journal, mostly written in the dining car of my train both to and from Seattle. I wonder what kind...
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Lucille pointed out a blog to me yesterday that many of you may already know about called "Inside a black apple". I read a post...
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This has been a transformative year. I have restored myself to my rightful place amongst the poultry keepers of the world. I have returned to...
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Snow BirdThrough the maddest hoursI could hear your brushing wingsthrough the attic burst to flamesharp white through thick smokenorth-winds calling me back homeSnow Bird, take...
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This is Chick after a day romping with her sister Lulu through swamp water (mud) and tick infested bushes. I know they're tick infested because...
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The picture you see here has nothing to do with anything. Just a pretty memento of kitchen counters past. I mentioned to my friend Lisa...
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I have just spent two hours cleaning my house. I scrubbed my shower like I haven't done in months, with a hard brush and a...
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Night WalkThis lamp post is my mapto the shrubby pinessharp resin reachingchoking this brick pathwhich tip-toesinto the darkness ahead.This lamp post is a heartfrom which...
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When I was seventeen my life ambitions were drastically different than they are today, in fact, my ambitions have continually evolved over the years...
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I went to St. Vincent De Paul today looking for the proverbial "treasures" amongst the detritus of lives pared down, of lives ending, of...
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I cannot tell you how I came to be here, but I will tell you that I don't need to explore this hotel to...
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I am an ant,with a job. The job to nest,and nest,and shed featherswhere I sleep,like a bird. And shed feathersto warm my babewho can't...
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