Yesterday was intense, gang.

I don’t know if that full moon was factoring in to things, or not. But emotionally, I was all over the place yesterday.

The happy stuff was that my lunch with Kevin, the director of Tell My Bones, was so much fun. He had some initial casting questions, regarding actors, but other than that, we just talked about all kinds of stuff and laughed a lot and had a really nice break from the intensity of our lives.

And then, almost the moment I got back home, my ex-husband in NYC called to chat. He actually bought the print edition of The Guitar Hero Goes Home and was reading it!!

He said he would give me his feedback when he’d finished reading it, but he asked, “How can people think there isn’t a lot of sex in this book?”

Well, by the standards of “erotica” there’s not a lot of sex in it. By anyone else’s standards, I guess there’s a ton of sex in it… (I do have it listed as “appropriate for over 18 only”)

I give up, though — trying to figure how to market anything I write. There’s always either too much sex or not enough.

But it was so nice that he actually bought the book.

And then my other friend Kevin called! The one who lives in Montana most of the year (and the one who my ex-husband visited while on his vacation out West this summer!). It was so nice to chat with him. He’s planning to come back to Ohio soon, but only for one month and then he’s planning to go off to Chile and Argentina for a while, if COVID doesn’t get in the way of that. So I’m not sure if that vintage 1965 VW camper van of his will remain in my barn indefinitely or not.

So that was really just great — to have all those people to talk to you yesterday, including actually seeing another human being!

But in between all that, I would sink rapidly back into a depression.  For a few reasons, many of which involve people who are not getting back to me about things that are very important to me (some other things I wrote, and also stuff related to another play). I’m beginning to feel like I don’t exist.

But part of me is trying to convince myself that “not hearing from people” is actually a good sign…

And I’m still trying to get them to come pick up the 8 yard waste bags filled with dead hydrangea blossoms that are sitting at the curb (since Tuesday). 6 phone calls. Each phone call guaranteeing me that the truck is coming, and it never comes… Yesterday afternoon, the customer support person said the truck came by and couldn’t find any yard waste.

How can you not see 8 enormous brown yard waste bags filled with enormous hydrangea blossoms at the curb? Finally, the last phone call I made to them yesterday to see if they’d get here before the weekend started — the lady told me I’d be better off just putting them in my trash bin and having them picked up as trash on Wednesday.

It broke my heart, you know. Literally. Because I’m neurotic and I can’t treat all these beautiful blossoms like “trash.” But now I have to. So I stuffed them into my trash bin and now there’s no room left for my regular trash between now and Wednesday.

I actually cried doing that — not only because that’s how fucking sensitive I am, but because, you know, why didn’t the guy who picked up the trash on Wednesday — yes, the very same guy who moved all 8 yard waste bags one foot away from my trash bin — just put them in the garbage truck, since he was actually holding them??

I hate when things make no sense and then I’m the one who ends up feeling crazy.

Well, one nice thing — I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner and trying to stop streaming that Brian Jones documentary because it keeps making me so fucking sad: I saw a woman walk by on the sidewalk and then she stopped and pulled one of the yard waste bags from out of my bin and took a whole bunch of those hydrangea blossoms home with her. I don’t know if she’s going to dry them or what. But I felt so happy that someone was going to use them, probably as decorations in some way.

I can’t bring anything like that indoors because all 7 of my crazy cats destroy that kind of thing over night.

Another nice thing is that the little house across Basin Street is finally going to get some inhabitants!

When I first moved in here, the woman who owned that little house was in a nursing home, and she has since passed away. Her son comes by periodically to take care of the grass, etc., but it’s been a totally empty house. But the son has been getting it ready for some people to move in — an older couple, it looks like.  It will be so nice to finally have some life over there.

Here is the little house, this morning, as the full moon was just barely visible through the fog. It looks like  a really weird house from this side of it, but it’s actually really cute.  And has 2 porches and a deck.

At one point, I was hoping my birth mom could either rent that house, or we could buy it for her. But my sister didn’t want her living that far away, and I don’t think my birth mom wanted to live that close to me, 24/7 — because I’m sort of crazy, in case this blog has not alerted you to that.

Whereas, both of my sisters are intensely not crazy. They’re super grown up and serious about everything. (And I’m actually the eldest.)

Well, okay.

Last night, I was listening to some lovely Morgana King music in the dark, in my bed. Trying to seek out reasons to be really happy about all these people who are treating me like I’m invisible. (This song in particular, is so lovely):

And then I started poking around in my music, and I discovered that Bruce Springsteen has actually dropped another new song for his upcoming album, Letter To You. It’s called “Ghosts,” and it blew me away for 2 reasons: one, being that it was that anniversary of Tom Petty’s death yesterday and it made me think a little bit of Tom Petty.

But it also made me think of The Guitar Hero Goes Home — my new novel. It really did. It just kicked my heart so hard.

Because, you know, it’s always just me and the thoughts that are in my head. It’s been like that for as long as I can even remember. I’ve always been very isolated by my thoughts, even as a really little girl. And then at some point, my thoughts make it on to paper and go out in the world, and they either sell or don’t sell, but then I’m always right back to being alone with the thoughts that are in my head.

But even though The Guitar Hero Goes Home is fiction — I made it up, it just came to me out of the blue two summers ago, when I was so in love; but even though he’s fiction, that guy in that novel is so real to me. Just so real. For me, he lives. And I love him like he’s “real.” And so that new Springsteen song “Ghosts” just hit me so hard.

And not in a bad way, but a very intense way, and it reminded me of how isolated I really am. And I don’t guess that, as this point, it’s going to ever really change. I guess that this particular lifetime is just all about managing alone.

Okay, well. I’m going to get started here. Yoga and then put some more of those thoughts down on paper and call it a short story.

I hope you have a great Saturday underway, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting!! I love you guys. See ya.

“Ghosts”

I hear the sound of your guitar
Comin’ from the mystic far
Stone and the gravel in your voice
Come in my dreams and I rejoice

It’s your ghost moving through the night
Your spirit filled with light
I need, need you by my side
Your love and I’m alive

I can feel the blood shiver in my bones
I’m alive and I’m out here on my own
I’m alive and I’m comin’ home

Old buckskin jacket you always wore
Hangs on the back of my bedroom door
Boots and the spurs you used to ride
Click down the hall but never arrive

It’s just your ghost moving through the night
Your spirit filled with light
I need, need you by my side
Your love and I’m alive

I can feel the blood shiver in my bones
I’m alive and I’m out here on my own
I’m alive and I’m comin’ home

Your old Fender Twin from Johnny’s Music downtown
Still set on 10 to burn this house down
Count the band in, then kick into overdrive
By the end of the set we leave no one alive

Ghosts runnin’ through the night
Our spirits filled with light
I need, need you by my side
Your love and I’m alive

I shoulder your Les Paul and finger the fretboard
I make my vows to those who’ve come before
I turn up the volume, let the spirits be my guide
Meet you, brother and sister, on the other side

I’m alive, I can feel the blood shiver in my bones
I’m alive and I’m out here on my own
I’m alive and I’m comin’ home
Yeah, I’m comin’ home

© 2020 Bruce Springsteen