bird by bird

I'm learning a new song on my mandolin! It's so lovely, and you can hear how it's supposed to sound at the very end of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou." Those dolls..

"She says I do not care if you believe me or not, it is the truth, go on and believe what you want to. So it is for sure that she is lying, when it is the truth she will go crazy trying to get you to believe her. So I feel like I know. She lights up and looks off away from me, looking sly with her cigarette in light through a wet window, and I can not feel what to say. I say Mayfly I can not feel what to do or say or believe you any more. But there is things I know. I know I am older and you are not. And I give to you all I got to give you, with my hands and my heart both. Every thing that is inside me I have gave you. I have been keeping it together and working steady every day. I have made you the reason I got for what I always do. I have tried to make a home to give to you, for you to be in, and for it to be nice." --David Foster Wallace

See, I've been having me a real hard time But it feels so nice to know I'm gonna be alright

Last week I took a 1-day memoir writing intensive course through the Gotham Writing Workshop, and it was the best. bday. gift. ever. (thanks, EM!) I walked into the workshop hoping for some help with an essay I've been working on about My Big Heartbreak. I was looking for advice to follow and tools to use to give my piece cohesiveness and a reflective conclusion. I imagined running out of the class at the end of the day, promptly opening my laptop, and filling in all the holes of my story with all the perfect missing pieces. I walked in with the story of My Big Heartbreak and nothing else, but as we talked about writing, and I heard other stories, and we worked on writing prompts, I realized that I didn't want to talk about that story anymore. I realized I wanted to write about the first time I ate an artichoke, when my grandpa let me drive his truck. I wanted to write about my dad and when I first learned that being a writer was a real job. I wanted to write about all of those

“There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course. But I was pretty certain as I sat there that night that if it hadn't been for Eddie, I wouldn't have found myself on the PCT. And though it was true that everything I felt for him sat like a boulder in my throat, this realization made the boulder sit ever so much lighter. He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

This past week I dogsat a dog named Domino. He is a dachshund, a rescue dog, an oldie and a fatty. He barks a lot and does not get along with other dogs we encounter on our walks together. Domino's owners told me, "We're the kind of people who cross the street when we see another dog coming." I get it now. I cross the street with Domino, too. Domino's main dog attributes are not... traditionally valued, shall we say. He's needy, not playful, and his belly is so fat that it drags on the floor like a pot belly piglet. His snout is almost entirely gray, and it's pretty clear that even in non-dog years, he's very, very old. Still, after the first couple of hours with Domino, I was uncharacteristically smitten. I just love this obese, barking little beast, and I can tell Domino loves me, too. At nighttime I let him sleep in bed with me, though he needs some assistance because it's too high up for him to jump. The bed is not that high up at all, but

Last night at a party off the Church stop on the G train, I wore red lipstick a shade or two too bright and a dress with a gold pineapple on it. I met a tall-tall man with a beard who had a hand that felt like a paw when I shook it. We stood and talked in a group on the roof of an old Brooklyn apartment building, discussing the stars, animals in captivity, and looking in at neighbors with open windows. I made some jokes and he laughed at some of them. BYOT. Bring your own telescope. A girl I deemed my only competition for the tall-tall man's attention started talking about her job as a neuroscientist, about how she does experiments on fruit flies--stimulates them and studies their reactions. "You basically just fuck with fruit flies all day," someone in the group said. We all laughed. She did not laugh. She talked science and neurons and carbon reactors, but I couldn't stop thinking about those poor fucked with fruit flies and how much luckier the ones that live in