Grey Hair

Oddly enough it's not my grey hair that I'm obsessed with but my
boyfriend's. Mine I pluck with a tweezers when I'm somewhere with
sufficient lighting like my brother's or at some of the places I work. I
usually lose 2 or 3 hairs to every 1 grey that I manage to grab with the
instrument of purification. Woman have so much hair to manage, shape,
eliminate, change. We age, the hair comes, we change.

Moses and Georgia are both pretty grey and I want to take both of them into
the bathroom with a box of Clairol and say "this is for me, not for
you". We are best friends - maybe because they are married they just
don't care about the grey, but I do.

Jon doesn't care, either. Thankfully he is tolerant of my obsession. I
see them - they are seen, when we ride the subway. I'm not looking for
them like a hunter and the hunted. I just can't help it. Its the OCD
in all of us and mine is spotting and removing his dangling greys. One
moment we are talking, and then, now he has memorized the look in my
eyes and the gaze from his face, and he stops mid-sentence and says, "go
ahead". Then with a twinkle in my eyes like I'd been offered a cookie,
I swoop in and pluck his grey. If you know Jon you will know it is super
easy because he has long hair.

That's also by my design. His black, curly locks is one of his best
features and I could never live with him without it. And even that is
changing. Within the last few months I see it thinning and receding.

There are so many things about my body I cannot alter. I have bunions ripening. I figure I gotta get at least one foot done next summer. The scoliosis is twisting and pushing me a few degrees every year, like plate tectonics. I hate my dark circles and bags. I despise the rosecea. I would love for it to be nothing more than a few laps in the pool and youth! Regained! So all I can easily do is pluck Jon's greys and enjoy gazing upon his youth, five years behind mine.

one of my rants has been posted at Gloom Cupboard

See my rant about lemons, yoga ashrams and the human condition in #57 of an online publication variety called Gloom Cupboard.

#57 gloomcupboard

the elephant in the room is dead

You can talk about a lot things that have passed.
Past jobs, past apartments, past roommates and partners.
But you can't talk about dead people.

Can't even make a subtle, grammatical verb shift from likes to liked.
Everyone knows quickly you mean liked as in no longer likes as in no longer living.

I feel like I'm in a skit with canned laughter, and my job is to sneak the elephant across the room. Which is impossible. Because the elephant is dead. And by the way, no one laughs.

Not that you want anyone to. You are just sick of being denied the right to reference your own mother which is like, a large part of your life that is now taboo from all of those who have things in the past but not actual lives lost. Then again don't we, all of us? Is there a big difference between past and passed and gone from well, dead gone?

The answer is yes and no. And here we are.

To all of you who are uncomfortable, you make me more uncomfortable.

To all of you, it will be your turn soon. Sorry.

Miami has nothing to do with writing

I have this obsession about being in the pool. Like any worthwhile obsession there are specific conditions. If I cannot have all of them at the same time then I don't get in and sadly wait in the sidelines of summertime fun.

Some people check the door three times to be sure its locked before leaving the house. I just want to enjoy the pool but it must be hot and sunny outside, by which I mean direct sunlight. Any cloud that crosses the sun even momentarily is like a referee calling a time out for me. The best time is between 11am and 2pm but these hours change with the months, the tilt and distance from the sun changing the hottest times. At the end of July I find the hottest time to be the morning, after noon it's not worth it. And then of course August is often cloudy and spotty. The water also has to be warm.

If its an outdoor pool, then it's no fun to go in alone. Outdoor pools are for playing and lounging and talking about subjects that are bouyant and wet. If a friend goes to the pool but doesn't want to get in, that's also no good. At indoor pools I just do laps and none of the above rules apply. Laps are laps.

But nothing beats an outdoor pool in the hot sun with a friend in the summer.

I'm in Miami with Jon and after waiting for Hurricane Gustav to stop ruining my pool vacation from three hundred miles away, finally, our last day, we got sun. Now I'm showered and mango-scented and laying in a luxury bed on a 2-foot thick matress with the fanciest pillow under my head. I'm hoping for a nap.

Miami has nothing to do with writing, but checking my email does. I'm pleased to see that volume 3 looks like a go, with stories coming from Alexis Clements, Jennifer Viale (a fan ready for first time in print), a triumphant return of Russ Josephs, and hopefully Dave Cole will concede after being asked one thousand times. I'm also sending my 5 last copies to a distributor, Dead Trees and Dye, in England. So I believe I will do a second printing of volume 2. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to find an online printer and see if that's cheaper than the local shop.

Yay for the pool. I vow to do this more often.