kerouac says

funny: someone found this page by googling, "super bladder."

not funny: man. i said something too early. it wasn't some big, "hey, think you're gonna marry me?" bullshit--even i know better than that, and i'm not sure i'd really want to hear the answer right now--but i got very excited about some math i did, math that proved it was possible for me to own property, even in manhattan.

i mean somewhere to live. which, given the circumstances, means somewhere for *us* to live. and even though i know general theory holds that now would not be the time for me to say anything remotely like, "hey, honey, wanna go house-hunting?" . . . that's NOT what i meant.

(i meant, you know, hey. i might be able to do this thing. wouldn't that be great for me? would you be excited about it, too? would you want to come along for the ride?)

it came out anyway because of how great i think the monkey is and how permanent i consider him to be, even though it's not the time for certain kinds of promises, i guess, or mutual investments of large sums of money.

(which isn't what i meant, either--not, "mutual investment." i meant me, mine, my responsibility. if it were a question of co-mingling, i would have been freaked out and not ready, too. i meant me, mine, my project, and would you like to come live in it with me and move out whenever you want which i hope is never?)

oh, groan. and i don't know how much of my sadness now is that i couldn't keep a lid on it even though i know saying something was risky, and i let myself in for disappointment . . . and how much of it is the actual disappointment that the response wasn't:

great. yes. yep. that's fabulous and i'm not scared even though that proposition skirts the outsides of some issues particularly fearsome to recently divorced guys. great, yes, yep, and i'm not scared even though i should be because how much i love you breaks all the rules about when what happens and what's okay to say. we are so good we're not subject to the timeline.

i guess we are subject to it. and that's fine and normal--and probably safer and smarter. all that good stuff. and this is minor, this reminder that there's a speed limit. sigh.

dumb, dumb, dumb.



but i wish we *were above it. rather: i wish you thought we were, too.

funny: someone found this page by googling, "super bladder."

not funny: man. i said something too early. it wasn't some big, "hey, think you're gonna marry me?" bullshit--even i know better than that, and i'm not sure i'd really want to hear the answer right now--but i got very excited about some math i did, math that proved it was possible for me to own property, even in manhattan.

i mean somewhere to live. which, given the circumstances, means somewhere for *us* to live. and even though i know general theory holds that now would not be the time for me to say anything remotely like, "hey, honey, wanna go house-hunting?" . . . that's NOT what i meant.

(i meant, you know, hey. i might be able to do this thing. wouldn't that be great for me? would you be excited about it, too? would you want to come along for the ride?)

it came out anyway because of how great i think the monkey is and how permanent i consider him to be, even though it's not the time for certain kinds of promises, i guess, or mutual investments of large sums of money.

(which isn't what i meant, either--not, "mutual investment." i meant me, mine, my responsibility. if it were a question of co-mingling, i would have been freaked out and not ready, too. i meant me, mine, my project, and would you like to come live in it with me and move out whenever you want which i hope is never?)

oh, groan. and i don't know how much of my sadness now is that i couldn't keep a lid on it even though i know saying something was risky, and i let myself in for disappointment . . . and how much of it is the actual disappointment that the response wasn't:

great. yes. yep. that's fabulous and i'm not scared even though that proposition skirts the outsides of some issues particularly fearsome to recently divorced guys. great, yes, yep, and i'm not scared even though i should be because how much i love you breaks all the rules about when what happens and what's okay to say. we are so good we're not subject to the timeline.

i guess we are subject to it. and that's fine and normal--and probably safer and smarter. all that good stuff. and this is minor, this reminder that there's a speed limit. sigh.

dumb, dumb, dumb.



but i wish we *were above it. rather: i wish you thought we were, too.

when i was home on memorial day, the paper report from the second CT scan came in the mail. it was the same info mom had gotten on the phone, but you know how they send you the form anyway. it was unexpectedly reassuring to see a check next to the box that read, "Probably Not Cancer" in black and white. very much so.

one of my cats is so pretty. she looks like michelle pfeifer. there's an actual resemblance, kind of like how george bush fils looks like a chimp.

i've articulated a couple of times that i feel like i'm done dating. (at mother's day brunch, my mother asked if i was going to move into the monkey's apartment or get my own. i announced we were shacking up. my father was reading his menu. my mother said in a tired voice that she was disappointed, but she supposed it was "to be expected." i supressed the urge to say, disappointed! i find a love worth living with and you're *disappointed*! then she asked, so, what do you think is going to happen? i know what that means. so i said, tersely, not the way i wanted to, that i felt like i was done. actually, i used the M word, which i'm having trouble typing here.)

anyway. i hope that isn't tempting fate. i can just see me traipsing all over town, believing and sometimes intimating that i'm hanging up my shoes and then . . . god, i don't know. i know what this is and what i feel and all, but until it's decided it's not decided and the world is full of people who thought they knew what they were getting into and i hope i'm not a fool for feeling like i do.

also, i forgot to tell that i stopped a guy from hitting a woman yesterday.

we came out of the tea room in the shady neighborhood and there were sounds coming from the park. the man was slight and very old and asian, and didn't speak english, and the woman was heavy and possibly impaired, chemically or mentally, and probably indigent. after i ran over to thepark, he was holding her by the neck as i tried to understand what was going on and then his open hand flew up and clapped her hard on the side of the head. before i could think i boomed "STOP THAT!" in this commanding voice while a friend called the police. and he stopped. he let her go and didn't hit her again.

i gave a statement to the police when they came, and they took him away to try to figure it out. the woman had taken a powder, and they sent out a car to try to find her.

it felt good to do the right thing, although i wonder how strong my voice would have been had the hitting man been younger, beefier, more aggressive or snarly or possibly armed. i wonder what i would have done then. i also wonder why, when i say "possibly armed," the mental image that pops into my head is of a black man. way to be fair and liberal, louella.

for another story about doing the right thing, go to helenjane.com and get your heartwarmed. it's a good idea, promise.

i'm home. home where my mother is. doing laundry and greeting the cats, and being home. it's so precious it makes me wonder why i ever thought i needed to be famous.

how can i love people so much and become a frustrato with them so easily once their return love is in my hand?

scary piece of truth that i would rather not say: being secure in unconditional love brings me way closer to contempt than i'd like. i can watch myself have a scant hairball's worth of patience for someone who maybe simply isn't in the same mood i'm in, and think:

so uncool.

but stopping it is another story.

i'm not so unreasonable. i don't get mean mean. but i think i'd be a whole-step easier to love if i could get over this.


the monkey says he picked up a self-help manual in a bookstore months ago because it had "how to keep your long-distance relationship healthy" emblazoned on the cover. there was an entire chapter on phone sex. the monkey was intrigued. (insert here the sweet self-conscious dance we did about the phone sex, the nervousness on my end not because i didn't want to, but because the ether would hear the usual sweaty cliches coming out my mouth and would cross me off the Pulitzer list forever, or perhaps simply because i don't believe i can carry off the word *cock* with the necessary chic.) the phone sex chapter consisted of one paragraph, saying that there was no such thing as long distance sex.

sir author, we pity you.

today it's better. yesterday my mother called to say that the "nodule" hadn't grown any, and still appears to have the clean edges that suggest it's not malignant.

there's a moment you always try to reproduce in class, on stage, at auditions, when someone starts a sentence with "and the doctors said . . ." and you try to pretend you don't know the end of the sentence. when you actually don't know, and realize right as the words are coming out that the next few could mean the difference between the saddest play and the happiest one . . . part of it felt electric. i wouldn't have been surprised, in that tiny moment, if the ground had opened up and some sort of demon came out.

acting is just acting. no time ever in my life have i ever felt like that, and i could never in a million years summon it into being. i've felt a lot of real things on stage, but it is absolutely true: acting is pretending.

part of me revelled immediately in the relief, and part of me thinks "doesn't appear to be malignant" isn't exactly relief. that part thinks that if i let my guard down, the tumor will know and begin to blossom--as if i'm keeping it down right now by sheer desperate force. as if i had anything to do with it. one of the women in my cast had her own cancer experience, and told me to go home and watch TV and not do a single thing i don't want to. i have to believe that there's plenty of time for worry and heartache and the general experience of the last two days to crop back up if bad news comes. in the meantime, i can't bear it.

after saying his saying something thoughtless the night the good news came, c. and i talked everything out. i can sort of imagine the difference between doing this with him around and doing it alone--or doing it with someone less ideal--and it makes me shudder. how awful.

today, it's better.

yesterday my mom came for lunch, and when she got there she told me that she hadn't been in the city for a meeting, like she said, but to have a second CT scan at the hospital. the last time she was there, they found "a spot" on her lung.

spots with regular edges, apparently, are less likely to be malignant (at this point, one surmises that "spot" is a nice, rather dick-and-jane way of saying, "tumor"). what happens is more spiral CT scans and then . . . i don't know, but if it *grows* or changes, biopsies and further "action."

i think the thing that makes me cry the most is that whenever we talk now, she closes the conversation with a small sweet voice saying, "not to worry."


i am worried. i feel like a door to the void just opened up. i feel like i can do nothing normal, because it's always the The Thing I'm Doing While My Mom Has Cancer.

she doesn't, not necessarily. but she could. and even if it's not now, she might later. and whenever it happens, she'll be gone.

i told a friend once, about a year ago, that one of the reasons i had for not moving to the big city to be a real actor was that if i could somehow know that my mom and dad had, say, ten years of real mobility and youth left in them, moving away and cutting my presence with them short would be unthinkable. i'm not not going to new york, and the lung spot is not a death sentence, but i have no idea what it would be like to move away knowing that there was . . . finite time. i don't know what i'd do.

i had just been thinking in the last couple weeks about how loving someone for all your life is more like choosing a parent than i had expected. this person, who you sign on with for infinity . . . the only other relationship like that, at least in my world, is the one you have with the people who raised you. except the partner, you choose. now it seems like that even more. i think about the difference that having c. around makes, and . . . if there's a good thing in this, it's that. there's someone to help. i need some help.

i don't know what happens. i don't even know how to talk about it.

today, helen jane writes about a great weekend: www.helenjane.com.

and poof! my innards inflate with the memory of weekends . . . oh, weekends, the mornings of not going anywhere, the crosswords, the irresponsible sex, the lazy buttery light that comes throught the curtains around three o'clock and there aren't any more bagels left so i guess we have to go out, wait, kissing first . . . the stomach zerbits and lack of makeup and the absolute, entire smile. the whole body smile.

and i had doubts about moving in. pah.

i went to my new writers' group and wrote a few pages about my mother's life before i was born. the leader quoted annie dillard at me: "don't save the good stuff."

i wonder at how alone i am, right now, and how okay it feels. there were times when my not seeing so many people would have been a sign of, howyousay, regression into a slimy grey disease, but . . . i think maybe i'm just done here. there are bits i know i'll miss, it's just . . . i guess i'm done.

i heard the monkey talk to me on the phone today, and i played a small game. i imagined he was talking to someone else and how my heart would curl up to hear another person have such a devoted fan, a puppy lover, a full-time lover, and actor in suede pirate pants who leaps up on bars and brings paper sacks to the airport full of salt bagels and orange juice. jesus god. all i could think, suddenly, was . . . my crankiness, my testiness, my inappropriate rules, my vagaries, my hardness, how he only ten percent of the time gets the top ten percent of me, my non-desert of this stainless steel love.

it's an amazing thing.

my apartment is not as clean as you'd expect the apartment of any unemployed person to be, maybe. whatever.

today i was in the kitchen, actually thinking about how it was not so clean, and i reached up to stretch and hit my hand on the glass globe light fixture in there. which then caused me to look at the light fixture, and subsequently recoil. there is a very chubby spider inside the slightly warped sphere of my kitchen ceiling lamp.

my first thought was what it said about me as a housekeeper that small animals are living in my lamps. second, though, was how does a spider get *in*there? i mean, those glass globe things screw on to a base, right? so . . . how?

and it's not like this spider is doomed to death, apparently. s/he has spun quite a few compressed, concentrated webs in there. and there are *bug bodies* in those webs. insects come and go from screw-in light fixtures, i guess. except the mummified ones.

so, i was thinking about how it happened, and i think it happened like this: spider was having a day, was ceiling walking in my kitchen, schlepped over my light fixture, and wooop! fell inside. now, she can't get out. but enough gnats and whatevers buzz inside to keep her fed. she's not running out of air. she's still doing all the stuff she'd do on the outside--spinning, weaving, eating. but it's in a concentrated, more finite environment. she lives in a shoebox condo in the upper east side. she probably telecommutes to her position as mid-level marketing associate at a sizeable gray company. she rents her *sex in the city* dvds from the corner store. her life just ended up being smaller and easier to visualize than anyone ever expected.

i've had to go to the far edges of the city twice recently--so far north that it isn't really where i live anymore. some of the ways you can tell this are: the abundance of pro-life billboards with babies on them, an actual K-Mart, and there is an "o boy, oberto!" factory outlet.

now, i'm not a big eater of shredded and jerked cow meat at any price. but if i were, i hope i'd still be a little put off by twin signs advertising "open to the general public!" and "oberto BLOWOUT!"

*blowout* is just not the evocative noun i want paired with the sale of processed beef food.

i'm partially over myself.

yesterday, i had what some call "epiphany." some college students call it, "freak out." it's not really that interesting to anyone else, but i now honestly suspect that: my reasons for why everything never gets done, specifically the writing, are kind of wrong. i've righteously blamed the dayjob for lack of time, lack of willpower, need to eat cookies, blah blah yadda, when really, i'm very deeply scared that i am just not very good at it, and doing it will only be proof.

that probably seems pretty navelgazey, but i have two things to say: one, as i wrote it just now, a hailstorm sprouted out of nowhere outside (not making that up) as if it were time for a rain of frogs, and two, i actually feel a little bit better after having uncovered the emperor. somehow, having stupid lack of discipline to combat seems a lower imperative than having to fight fear. i happened to be having drinks with a writer acquaintance that night who set me up with a summer workshop, and i've decided that a little endorphin-producing exercise and at least an hour of words a day is necessary. all moving tasks wait until june, all life tasks fit in around those two elements. seems easy, and i've promised it before, but . . . well, we'll see.

i might suck. but i think the beginnings of a turn may be happening, and possibly i would rather suck than be afraid of it.

i also wanted to tell a story.

when i was in highschool, i came from a different, out of district elementary/middle school than most of the kids did. in a fresh environment, it was not so apparent that i'd never had a boyfriend, and a very nice funny edgy fellow freshman asked me out. i liked him. and we Went Out. for like four days--my inexperience and parallysis made complete hamburger of the situation, but i continued to like him as a pal after the whole thing blew over. he was a smart kid. and my junior year, when i wanted so badly to be a part of his circle of friends, i remember him hanging out in the parking lot with me after school and talking to me about drugs. i had a lot of curiosity, and i was pretty sure it was my job as a writer to take some, but i had enough goodgirl juice in me that i was hung up on the subject. he told me that drugs had saved him from suicide a number of times and he thought they were the greatest things ever. and that when i wanted, i could call him and gently introduce me, and i could sit in his house with my notebook and write it all down.

i thought that was very sweet. still do. that he told me i could bring my notebook.

he freaked out after graduation and dropped out of college and started dealing, i heard. his mother, who was my mother's psychiatrist, had to stop sending him "bus fare money" when he would call from various american cities. our favorite teacher said he saw him looking about sixty pounds underweight and kind of dirty around town once, and said he was working at . . . i think, a turnip farm.

about a year ago, i saw him in a group candid photo on the campaign postcard of a kid running for city council--some populist platform, he didn't get elected. but he was there on the paper, looking like a pretty normal hippy guy instead of a turnip farm druggie.

and then a few weeks ago, he was in the paper. he spoke at rachel corrie's funeral (google her name if you didn't hear any of the news stories). he was her friend. our advanced placement history teacher spoke there, too, and i smiled because they were running into each other again. maybe he's not all fixed now--or maybe he never needed to be and he's fine on the turnip farm and circling the country looking for coke--but . . . he seemed lost, or off the radar at least, and he popped up in an important place. it was good.

oh, it was all about my stupid unemployment orientation and wanting to get my crap caked up and the monkey's stellar review and my self-conscious reference to michiko kakutani. it's not worth retyping, sadly.

instead, why don't you go read sarah brown?

www.queserasera.blogspot.com

i'm envious because she used Healthy Choice entrees as a . . . whatever that college word is, that device. anyhow. go on.

um, it just happened. again. for the love of pete.

oh, dear my god above.

i just spent ten minutes writing a screed about trying to update this motherfucking page from an amalgamation of coffee houses, bagel shops and public libraries with free but unreliable wireless networks, and then i LOST it.

this was not meant to be. just: please. the whole endeavor has gotten a little dickensian. i'm just trying to tell a story, here, folks. for the three of you who read this page. i'm just trying to put a little time in. no need for the . . . i dunno, internet fairies to pigpile on me.

fucking fucker. more later.

blood sugar is low. danger. danger.

how can i be so busy without a job? i swear to god. i'm actually juggling things.

my vaccuum cleaner broke today. and, actually, flames came out of it.


so, that happened.


here's the thing: there are far fewer stories now that i am not forced to interact with the workaday world. all there is is me thinking about being in love, and then about how i talk about it too much.

while i was in new york? the best one and her best one were in a bar with me and while rummaging in her purse, she made this face--it's an adorable face, it's a face that's only hers, kind of like the longshoreman's grimace she gets when she's very intent on lighting a cigarette--and i wasn't quite sure what i recognized it from, but what came out of my mouth was, "hey, you just made the face you make when you're high," and she turned to me amazed and said, "how did you know i was high?"

that tickled me.

anyway. i guess the moral is, who knew not having a dayjob would make me boringer not any less busy?

this morning started off shitty. the doctor's appointment i had to come back from new york for this morning got screwed by bad appointment keeping, and then i wasn't called for rehearsal--i even accidently payed for a day's extra parking at the airport lot where i left my car. apparently, every force but my own knows i should have stayed in new york an extra day.

but the truth is, how could i care? it is sunny, and i'm in a coffee shop with pigtails on drinking yerba mate, listening to love songs too loudhhh. shhh. don't tell, but i'm young today.

the city was the home it's been lately. the best one and her best one and i sat in a bistro and talked about summer (and i was told about the very phenomenon alex wrote about yesterday, the one where you find an empty subway car in the summer and it's for a reason, and the reason is: stinking bishop. www.brokentype.com. pretty links will have to wait until blogger has better mac support). and i saw the monkey's show.

he is so good. i know i'm supposed to think this, but i am proud and relieved that i can say it with no blush whatsoever. he is really good. it's like dating kevin kline.

we're more like family these days. a good thing, the best inevitiability, although he mentioned missing october. i suppose i miss it a little myself.

and when i say family, i mean the conjugal family. i mean, your emergency contact who you also get dirty with at nighttime.

in the ladies room during the interval of his show, there was a woman at the next sink who belched seven times (i'm pretty sure it was seven, but you only start counting after the person has belched inordinately, so it's a, howyousay, guesstimate). after the show, chris said to me, "so, the belching lady was there tonight," and my jaw dropped. apparently the poor woman had some head trauma and now comes to all the shows at this space and belches and gets crushes on the male actors and asks to touch their chests. they've all learned to smile at her and say, "i'm married."

when i came to the space to see the matinee, i made lovely eye contact with an elderly man as i turned the corner, and just as we broke the smile, he farted. i was so glad for him that we weren't still looking at each other, and then he farted again. apparently, the upper eastside is just gas haven.

also, i was wearing a strapless dress, and this lady came over to where the monkey and i were sitting with his Nicest Friends, and said: "i don't suppose any of you have a pen?" and then she looked at me and said, "well, i suppose *you* don't," and mimed taking something cylindrical out of her (imaginary) cleavage. well, really.

i was an usher at the matinee the next afternoon and the first patron into the theatre gave me a piece of candy "as a present." these people really exist, and they live in new york.

ooo, ooo, ooo. i sing every song.

someone found this blog yesterday by googling,

"girl get fucked at the laundromat"

which makes me a little sad. until i remember that the archived post it links to has to do with my plans getting fucked up during the same week the monkey and i play scrabble at the laundromat. heh.

i'm about to leave new york, again. i have stories about the belching lady and the one who referenced my cleavage, but they'll wait. i've got to go catch the matinee of "the pirates of penzance." its utter lack of resemblance to any theatre i have ever seen before is actually quite remarkable.

i feel like airplane jane.

i said a strangely anti-climactic goodbye last night. someone's love is leaving town, which makes me wonder about the absolute impossibility of seeing inside how two other people care for each other.

in the meantime, i leave tonight for another whirlwind monkey tour. this is really the last one. i'm pretty sure.

i bought new insoles for my favorite shoes and now i have brand new feet.

i started making the monkey a CD this week, in return appreciation for the absolutely beautiful collection of songs he made for me--i know it's just a CD, but it made me cry and smile and everything, and so i wanted to do the same . . . which means, of course, that i turned it into A Test. i don't think i can handle hearing any of those beautiful songs i picked again for months because i coated them in stress. gross.

please think of me while i'm watching multiple pirates of penzance this weekend. yar.