Tag Archives: Sandra Caldwell

I Live Vicariously Through These Two!!

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I’m referring to those two in that vintage advertisement above.  I so fucking love that picture. (If you can’t read it, it says, “Coffee’s ready!”)

I would just love to have my coffee announced in that way, and the robe matters a lot, too, gang! I love that robe he’s wearing.

Anyway. I need to discuss that photo I posted late last evening. If you didn’t see it, scroll down to yesterday.

I didn’t do a single thing to the color in that photograph.  I was at the kitchen table, watching an episode of Z: The Beginning of Everything. The rain stopped, and I happened to glance out the kitchen windows at the backyard and I couldn’t believe the light. I never saw it look like that before.  I went and opened the backdoor and just sort of stood there in awe and stared at it. It was like stepping into a movie  from 1939 that was in Technicolor or something. Nothing looked real.

Within a few moments, literally, everything was back to normal and the sun began to set.  Like it had never happened.

Well, gang. More good news happened yesterday. And, no, I still can’t blog about it. This makes 3 really amazing things — related to both plays with Sandra — that I can’t tell you about yet but it’s all just so incredibly good!

Both of these projects have been “in process” for me, in various versions, since 2012. It’s one of those things that, if I’d known when I undertook each of them, that it would take this long for things to finally come to fruition — or that they’d come to fruition at the very same time — I’m not sure I would have been able to stand it.

It’s not as though I didn’t do a ton of other projects since 2012. Still. We all sort of aim for fruition when we undertake anything creative, right?

Anyway. It’s still just a ton of writing that needs to be ton. Much switching of mental gears all the time, but I don’t mind. At all.

One thing about this summer so far that’s kind of sad — it looks like the band that lived next door broke up. They don’t rehearse in the garage anymore, and a few of them moved out. Only the drummer and his wife and their 2 little daughters are there now.

Even though they played that intense Death Metal sort of music, which doesn’t really rank up there among anything I listen to, I loved hearing them rehearse out in their garage (which pretty much took over my whole house so it was a good thing to enjoy it) . And I loved the fact they sat out on their kitchen porch until late into the night, smoking cigarettes and weed and drinking beers and talking and laughing. I couldn’t hear anything they said too clearly, plus I usually stream music at night. But the houses are close enough, and all my windows are always open — it was just that sense of life always drifting in at night that I loved. And they were so young and so full of energy.

They’d go on the road for a few days at a time — I could see all the luggage and the drum kit packed up and sitting on the front porch. Then they’d be gone and the house would be dark. And then they’d be back and all the life returned.

Anyway, all of that stopped. It makes me a little sad. Now the drummer and his wife are sort of living like quiet married people (sort of). I guess it’s better for the 2 little girls, but really boring for me…

Okay, I have a ton of stuff to attend to here because I have an early phone call with Sandra this morning to do some work on the script for The Guide to Being Fabulous. I haven’t even glanced at that script since I was in New York City to work with her back in October. So I gotta scoot.

I hope Thursday is a terrific day for you, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting.  There was no actual breakfast-listening music this morning, because my heart was kinda wobbly and I knew that anything I really wanted to listen to was just going to break it, so I listened to the birds instead.  However, I leave you with one of the songs I wanted to hear –sort of the anthem for my entire life, gang.  Okay. I love you guys! See ya.

“Even The Losers”

Well it was nearly summer, we sat on your roof
Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And I showed you stars you never could see
No, it couldn’t’ve been that easy to forget about me

Baby, time meant nothin’, anything seemed real
Yeah, you could kiss like fire and you made me feel
Like every word you said was meant to be
No, it couldn’t’ve been that easy to forget about me

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
They get lucky sometimes

Two cars parked on the overpass
Rocks hit the water like broken glass
I shoulda known right then it was too good to last
God, it’s such a drag when you’re livin’ in the past

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
They get lucky sometimes

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
Yeah, they get lucky sometimes
Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers get lucky sometimes

Even the losers
Get lucky sometimes…

c – 1979 Tom Petty

Don’t just sit there reading this, dust something!!

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Yes! So far, it’s a terrific Tuesday! I’m teaching the cats how to use a vacuum cleaner!  (It seems fair, since they shed more than I do and I have way too much to do and they’re always just sitting there, staring at stuff.) (At dust, most likely.)

Oh, before I forget, I uploaded another old song. (If you’re on your phone, you have to turn it sideways to see it.) This is a really terrible demo, which is unfortunate because I love this song. But it’s the only version of it that was ever transferred to MP3.  The demo was made back in 1985 on the 4 track in my bedroom, and then we took it to my boyfriend’s bedroom (a drummer), to his 4 track at his place, and he added some drum & synth stuff.

We had a really fun time making it, but it was only ever intended to be a reference demo to take to the studio. And, alas, it shows! But if you listen to it, try to hear the fun & not the horrible quality of sound!

Anyway! Yes, it’s Tuesday!! And I approach this day knowing full well I have too much to do!

In another brief conversation I had with Gus Van Sant Sr. the other day:

HIM: “Well, who’s your agent now? Who’s managing you?”

ME: “Nobody. I suppose I’d better do something about that, but I just, you know – me and agents….”

HIM: (laughter — too much, in fact)

I won’t repeat the rest of the conversation!! It is sufficient to say, I need to bite the bullet and stop doing everything myself because my life is getting a wee bit unwieldy over here.

Yes! I will indeed be contributing a brief segment of my new memoir-in-progress, In the Shadow of Narcissa, to Edge of Humanity Magazine once a week or so. This will be a condensed version of what will appear on my own site.

Yes! This means I have to be sure to write something new (& publishable) at least once a week, and I am now up to my eyeballs with revisions of Tell My Bones because Sandra will be arriving pretty much any moment now to begin rehearsals.

If you don’t follow EdgeofHumanity.com, they feature a lot of really cool photo journalists from all over the world. I really love the photographs on that site. Plus, there’s poetry, people’s music playlists, and occasional nonfiction stuff.  Which is where my pieces from In the Shadow of Narcissa come in: occasional nonfiction stuff.

I’m excited.  I’ve been following them for a while and it’s a whole worldful of other readers.

I’m not really sure why I suddenly found this memoir of my childhood springing out of me, or why I felt I needed to lock myself into a weekly publication schedule for it. I’m still doing my Inner Being journaling every morning, and re: the new memoir, it said: “To a point, it serves you to examine these things because it is assisting your journey out of the DARKNESS.” (That word actually came out capitalized.)

(You should keep one of these journals, gang. They are  incredible and surprising and illuminating.)

I don’t consider myself someone who is still in darkness. However, by writing this memoir, and facing things about my adoptive mother — I have always tried to focus on the good side of her and block out the bad, but that was part of her narcissism: training me to do that — more and more I see that it is in fact a miracle that I survived my childhood. I did attempt suicide twice, but my will to live, which was always bubbling underneath the nightmare, was just ridiculously strong. It’s sort of startling to recognize that now; to marvel at the odds that I am even still here. So I guess that’s the purpose the memoir is serving for now.

Obviously, I’m hoping that the memoir will be helpful to someone else out there who will read it. Assuming I manage to drag something uplifting and helpful out of that whole mess.

Yesterday, Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter brought up some really difficult memories for me re: my mother and the death of my boyfriend back in the summer of 1974. (The newsletter was about the death of his own son and the death of someone else’s son.) And I just could not shake the memories for the whole day.

Still, it was good to sort of see it. Not to dwell on it, but to acknowledge it and try to process it somehow.

Yesterday was actually the “anniversary” of me being committed to a mental hospital after my first suicide attempt in 1975. I was put in there right before my 15th birthday. They actually gave me a birthday cake in there. However, I was on “suicide precaution,” which meant that for the first several weeks of my incarceration (I was literally incarcerated – I was there against my will and in a building where we were literally locked in and the windows were covered in this heavy mesh stuff that you couldn’t break out of.  And everything inside the place was locked. Everything.  Every drawer, every cabinet, every door, every window. And any room where you could possibly be alone in it — that was also locked. In that building, we were treated like criminals but it was only because we were all suicidal.)

Anyway! That’s cheery, right? But I digress.

On my 15th birthday, they gave me a piece of birthday cake (the rest of my cake, they gave to everybody else), but I was confined to my room because I was brand new there and on “suicide precaution.” And I was only allowed to use a spoon. For several weeks, I was only allowed to use a spoon because forks & knives were elements of destruction.

Those first few weeks in there were so frightening to me, because I was always confined alone in my room. And of course, everyone outside of my room was “crazy.”  And if I needed to use the bathroom, Security would accompany me. It was a communal bathroom, which in and of itself I hated. Just no privacy at all. Ever. And the Security person (a man) would follow me right in to the bathroom and just stand there while I tried helplessly to just do what I needed to do in there. He was protecting me from myself, I guess. But it was awful because I was only 15, and really shy, and of course my period had come because it always managed to come when it was least wanted.

It was just awful, those first few weeks.

But what eventually sank in was that my mother was not able to get at me in that place — they wouldn’t let her visit me for a long time– and for the first time in my 15 years of life, I had a sense of peace. It didn’t last long, but it did come.

Anyway, I have to scoot. I have been alerted via a text from Sandra that we are having a phone chat in 5 minutes…

Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world, gang! Thanks for visiting. I’m going to leave you with this unlikely song. I actually listened to it last night for the first time in over 40 years. It was the song that was playing on the AM radio when they were telling me to get into the car because I was being taken to a mental hospital, for my own protection or something insane like that. It was a song I associated closely with Greg, my boyfriend who had died. By then he had almost been dead one year. And the song was unbearable for me to hear, even on days when I wasn’t being scurried off to a loony bin .

But I played the song last night, and I lived through it. I’m hoping you will, too. I love you guys. See ya!

“Please Mr. Please”

In the corner of the bar there stands a jukebox
With the best of country music, old and new
You can hear your five selections for a quarter
And somebody else’s songs when yours are throughI got good Kentucky whiskey on the counter
And my friends around to help me ease the pain
‘Til some button-pushing cowboy plays that love song
And here I am just missing you again

Please, Mr., please, don’t play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it’s over
Please, Mr., please, if you know what I mean
I don’t ever wanna hear that song again

If I had a dime for every time I held you
Though you’re far away, you’ve been so close to me
I could swear I’d be the richest girl in Nashville
Maybe even in the state of Tennessee

But I guess I’d better get myself together
‘Cause when you left, you didn’t leave too much behind
Just a note that said “I’m sorry” by your picture
And a song that’s weighing heavy on my mind

Please, Mr., please, don’t play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it’s over
Please, Mr., please, if you know what I mean
I don’t ever wanna hear that song again

c – 1975 WELCH BRUCE, ROSTILL JOHN HENRY

Good Thing Summer Days Last Longer!

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Happy Saturday, gang!

Peitor has familial obligations in – yes!! – Iowa this weekend. So we are not working on any scripts this morning.  (It seems weird, doesn’t it – that he spent his childhood in both Florence, Italy and Iowa??!!) (It’s because both of his parents were tenured University Professors. In Literature. Both of them. Talk about intense. Both of his parents were always extremely friendly and all. But they’re both ridiculously intelligent. You always wanted to be wearing your best vocabulary whenever they came to visit in NYC.)

Anyway. So I have a little bit of a reprieve from “projects” today, which is good because now I have way too many that I’m trying to focus on every day. I know it’s because I started that memoir website thing from out of nowhere, and then setting up the page became stupidly time-consuming. I wasn’t expecting that.

But Sandra is in fact flying in here in a couple weeks to begin the initial rehearsals of the play (staying with the director because she’s allergic to cats!!), so I have to redirect my focus away from In the Shadow of Narcissa for a moment and get back to Tell My Bones.

I’m in a good place about that, though. And I’ve been kind of waiting for that feeling: that the play was getting queued up inside me.

If I’m not feeling aligned energetically with a project, it’s useless to kill time sitting and waiting on it. I go in the emotional direction of whatever calls me on any given day. It works out better for me that way. But sometimes, deadlines sort of force you to focus on something, regardless. So I’m gad that I can feel the play bubbling up inside me again because that’s what needs my attention most right now.

Plus, the Internet has been super wonky around here the past few days.  It will suddenly go out, for hours, in the whole area. It’s frustrating but it is also a forced “vacation.” I can’t do anything online. I can’t work on the new memoir. I can’t stream any new music. I can’t watch anything on Youtube or Amazon Prime. I can’t work on my Italian lessons, either. Or even tune my guitar!

So I’ve been using it as a signal to just STOP, you know? Because I never just stop until it’s time to collapse in bed at night. And even then, I usually spend an hour or two doing other weird stuff that I won’t go into right now.

Anyway. It does feel good to sort of just stop.  To be peaceful. To just listen to the earth. To take in, sort of from a distance, all the things that are going on right now.

Okay. This will be brief because the Internet has gone in & out about 5 times since I started writing this!! Hopefully, Spectrum will have it all figured out by tomorrow.

Have a wonderful Saturday, gang, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

The internet NEVER used to go out on my typewriter!!

Just Another Crazy Heat-filled Day in Crazeyland!

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What a day, gang!

I am just now getting around to posting to the blog. The internet was out for 3 hours.

I am trying really hard to move my whole life over onto the new laptop. It’s kinda rough. It seems like everything is just slightly in a different language, you know?

I’m doing it. But it’s making everything go so slowly.

And I thought I was going to spend the day blithely working on the first post for the new blog/memoir thingy, In the Shadow of Narcissa. However, WordPress decided to force me to use the new page editor, and the new site builder. Which is not user friendly, by any stretch.

I thought I had the site all ready to go last night, but I was wrong. There were still some wonky things happening, and it only took me HOURS to fix it!

Not only because I couldn’t find my way around the new “user-friendly” streamlined site builder that kept doing nothing that I was trying to get it to do; but because I’m also still trying to get comfortable on the new laptop AND it’s about  95 degrees Fahrenheit in my bedroom today. So what should be minor annoyances feel like they weigh a psychological ton in all this heat.

For instance, what used to be my “delete” button on the keypad, is now where the “page down” button is. So every time I have to delete something, I suddenly jump down half a page instead!! Took me forever to figure out why that kept happening.

For no reason at all, I just want to post this picture here. I don’t know who drew it but I just love it. It is of course based on Tom Petty’s song “Wildflowers,” from 1994.

And White Lunar, the CD of film music composed by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis arrived.  I have not had time to listen to too much of it yet, but I really like it.  So I guess I’m glad that Amazon alerted me that it was apparently missing from my collection… (Amazon is kind of spooky that way, gang.)

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And Sandra finally called me. It only took her about 2 weeks. Seriously. For 2 weeks, I was sending texts out to no man’s land. But at least she did text me on Monday. Anyway. I still can’t go into it on the blog but it is such good news, gang. Just such good news about our theater project in Toronto, Canada.

It’s almost like I can’t even process it yet. (And everything seems doubly hard to process because of all this fucking heat.) But I am super happy.

And then the other thing I got bogged down in earlier was something that was worrying me about my niece – my brother’s daughter. So I texted my sister to see if maybe I was wrong, but I wasn’t. So then my sister & I got into a texting marathon about that. And then I discovered, either by accident or sheer necessity, that I have this weird sort of “parental” thing lurking inside me.

I never knew it was in there.

In fact, when (grown) friends have asked me, out of sheer desperation because they could find no other sitter,  to babysit their very young children in the past, it was always a strange experience.  I’m extremely maternal, you know, but I never had any sort of “authority” bone in my body.  I’m always on the same psychological level as the kid is. And then the parents would come home and say, “My god, Marilyn, what happened here?!”

ME: “She said she was allowed to do it.”

THEM: “Marilyn, she’s four. Of course she’s going to say that. But you’re the grown up here. You’re supposed to set the rules.”

Anyway. I never think of myself as “parental,” mostly because I don’t have any kids. So I was very surprised to see where I was heading with this whole thing with my niece.  I honestly don’t want to live her life for her, or live anyone’s life for them, for that matter. But I suddenly found myself texting her: You’re gonna come here, and you’re gonna listen to me and you’re gonna do what I say.

HER: “Okay.”

ME (stunned, thinking): Wow. That was easy.

I know I can get on my family’s nerves when I get it into my head to tell people how they ought to live. It totally ruined the relationship I had with one of my sisters. She made sure I had nothing to do with her daughter the whole time my other niece was growing up. So I’ve tried hard to sort of mind my own business since then.  But at the same time, I’m not one of those people who can just keep the family skeletons hidden away in the closet.

I think denial and avoiding things hurts younger people, especially, more than it helps them. So I’m guessing I’m going to piss everybody off. But I would rather my niece be able to make choices about her life and who she is, with her eyes open. If she wants to.

So I guess we’ll see. I just hope I don’t say something horrible, like, “I’m so disappointed.” Aaaarrrrgh….

Okay, gang. Even though I made no headway whatsoever in what I was hoping to do today, I’m still closing up shop, walking away from the desk, and going downstairs to watch another episode of “Z: The Beginning of Everything.” F. Scott Fitzgerald has finally sold his novel, This Side of Paradise, and so the Jazz Age is getting ready to officially begin!!

Have a wonderful evening wherever you are in the world. It’s frustrating for me to not be able to tell you where Nick Cave is tonight and what he’s wearing, but he is steadfastly refusing to post his own private life to Instagram so I am helpless here until his Conversations resume.

Meanwhile, I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning. A totally hot little rock & roll love song from Tom Petty’s skinny, angry, cynical, attitude-filled years! ” A Thing About You” from my own personal favorite Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, Hard Promises. (Play it loud or it doesn’t work, gang!!)

Okay, Thanks for visiting! I love you guys! See ya!

“A Thing About You”

I’m not much on mystery
Yeah you gotta be careful what you dream
I thought this might pass with time
Yeah I thought I was satisfied

[Chorus:]
But oh baby let me tell you, I got a thing about you
Baby let me tell you, I got a thing about you
It don’t matter what you say
It don’t matter what you do
I, I, I, got a thing about you

Somewhere deep in the middle of the night
Lovers hold each other tight
Whisper in their anxious ears
Words of love that disappear

[Chorus]

Baby you hold some strange control over me
Yeah it’s so wild it hypnotizes me

[Chorus]

c – 1981 Tom Petty

Sei così vanitosa ragazza carina!

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Yes, indeedy! You are very vain, pretty girl!!

And, NO, they have not yet actually taught me how to say the above in Italian. I looked it up on google translator.

I thought my unending vanity sounded better in Italian.

(I considered quoting from Ecclesiastes, because it has much to say about vanity, but it wasn’t catching the overall verve I was going for.)

Anyway. Yes, I’m vain. And I might have to actually confess here that I am a “skin products” fanatic.  And I only buy my (indescribably huge amounts of) skin products from one specific company in France. They’ve been shipping them to me for 20 years now because they are the best products I have ever used, and I have used everything.

And I’m talking everything, because I’ve been a skin products fanatic since I was 13 years old. I used to have this metal lock box that I kept all my skin products in. I didn’t ever lock it, it was just the only thing I could find in the house that was big enough to hold all my many skincare products.

I have no clue why I’ve always been obsessed with skin care products, and the worst part is that, even at age 13, I was obsessed with high end skincare products. And I was not rich or anything like that. I had to do a lot of babysitting to afford all that stuff. And babysitting used to pay 50 cents an hour, so that was a lot of babysitting.

(Apparently, I had not yet realized that writing porn might pay better.)

(And NO, I don’t really think I write porn. It is everyone else in the world who thinks that.)

Anyway. I have always been completely okay with my unending need for skincare products. Because, even back then, I really believed that, when I got old, I wouldn’t look old if I was vigilant about using skincare products.

I didn’t realize that everybody else wasn’t like this until one day, when I was 14, a girlfriend was in the bathroom with me when I took out my metal lock box and she saw everything that was in it and could not get over it. And she was sort of horrified that even my elbows were smooth. And I was sort of horrified that she was horrified. Who wouldn’t want their elbows to be smooth at age 14??!!

She was one of those girls who had all sorts of other things to do with her life, even way back then. (And I recoil to think, if she’s even still alive, what her elbows might look like today!)

We did not stay friends, of course, because it’s hard for me to stay friends with girls who have non-smooth elbows. And she was unable to stay friends with me because I made out with her boyfriend behind her back. (See? She clearly had some weird sort of value system she was operating under in all areas of her life.)

But in my defense, the boy liked hanging out with me. And he gave me, literally gave me, a pristine, original copy of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, complete with its original photos & cutout things inside the album sleeve. He simply gave it to me because he didn’t want it.  And the only thing I had more of than skincare products were record albums. So how could I not make out with him?

Anyway. I’m bringing all this up because, no, I’m not really that vain.  I do still use a ton of skin products, but I also have wrinkles and stuff. I don’t actually mind having them.  However, most people who meet me for the first time think I’m about 10 years younger than I actually am… which then gives me about 10 seconds to feign modest humility when they learn that I’m actually way more incredibly-older than my decades-long-moisturized face leads you to assume.

I also have a ton of cellulite on my thighs – that I have always had. I’m not sure why. My legs are strong & stretchy & flexible! Because I have been working out steadily & continuously since I was — yes!! — 13 years old. Cellulite has never bothered me.  It’s just not on my radar of things I worry about. However, the company in France that I am addicted to, had this 2 for 1 sale on this new (ridiculously expensive) Mangosteen extract cellulite reducing cream.  And I mean it is stupidly expensive.

I have never really believed that cellulite reducing products could actually work, but since I never cared one way or the other about cellulite, I never tried any of them. But I have noticed that whenever this company comes out with a new product that I don’t think I could possibly need, I buy it, and try it, and the results blow my mind.

(They recently were giving away tubes of another new product they have – a detoxing flash mask. I accepted it graciously because it was free, and it normally costs something like $64.  But what the fuck is a detoxing flash mask for, exactly? Who knows? But I tried it anyway. I followed the directions. Put it on my face for 5 minutes.  Tissued it off. Went about my glorious day. And the next morning — holy shit.  My skin looked incredible. And I don’t wear makeup, gang. So I have to get an incredible amount of dazzling mileage out of just my skin. So now, I always have an expensive tube of imported-from-France detoxing flash mask in the medicine cabinet in each bathroom. Because now I never know when I’ll need to detox my face in a flash and won’t even have enough time to get to the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom! And I still don’t know what the fuck a detoxing flash mask is, I only know that it works!)

So I went for the 2 for 1 deal on the new cellulite cream and it arrived yesterday and now I’m very curious to see what the results of stupidly expensive Mangosteen extract cellulite reducing cream (that you must use twice a day in order for it to work) will be.

I’m hoping the results will be negligible because I really don’t need to get addicted to something else that’s really expensive.  In addition to the detoxing flash mask, I have other masks I’m addicted to; one that is used 3 times a week, one only once a week; one just at night, a couple only in the daytime. I have morning face creams, night time face creams, nightly foot creams, even, and daily intensive hand creams, twice-a-day eye creams, and then other intensive creams that keep all those other parts of my really old body looking a little less than “really old.”

So I’m really kinda hoping that stupidly expensive Mangosteen extract cellulite reducing cream does nothing for me.  But I will keep you posted!!

Meanwhile!!

I have a ton of writing to do here today. I am so excited about the stuff with Sandra that I can’t blog about yet. But in order to manage all of this, I really have to focus, gang. Plus I’m thinking of adding a twice-a-week memoir-type, nonfiction column to a blog that is not this one.  So, um. Yes. I gotta get going!

I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. Don’t worry if your elbows are rough, I still love you!! And I won’t make-out with your boyfriend behind your back ( or your wife, even) as long as s/he refrains from giving me vintage and quite valuable old Beatles’ record albums 100% for free! Thanks for visiting!! I love you guys! See ya!

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The Joy of Boys!!

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I saw the coolest guy today.

First, let me say that Ohio is one of those States where helmets are optional on motorcycles. If you want to take your fate into your own hands, and go helmet-less when you ride your motorcycle, you may.

And if you don’t want to ride with your girlfriend seated behind you, you can have your best friend — yes, your dog — strapped in behind you, instead.

No lie.

You’d think that Ohio had been one of the Rebel States, but in fact, it was not. It was so deeply entrenched on the Union side, that a  few famous Civil War Union Generals came from Ohio, including William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant.

Actually, it isn’t until you start getting deeper in the Hinterlands that you truly encounter this rebel attitude. And by rebel, I’m not talking about KKK-type, Confederate flag-type stuff; just the general attitude of “you can’t tell me what to do.” Whereas,  if you go deeper into the cities, you find that mentality where everyone basically tows the line and deeply wishes you to do the same thing and will look disapprovingly at you the minute that you don’t.

However. Out here, as I said, I saw the coolest guy!

He was riding his motorcycle, no helmet.  He had long, straight brown hair that wasn’t pulled back at all. No jacket, just a tee shirt. A pair of shades.  He did not look older than 30.

He was coming from the other side of Wakatamika Creek, out where Black Run Road is.

At first, I just thought he was cute. I was turning onto the highway, as he was going past me in the other direction. But then suddenly, he appeared on the Old Highway 16, which is a twisty-turny, winding and beautiful 2-lane highway and sometimes runs parallel to the new  highway, and man, was he going fast. I was already going 85 mph and he was easily a little ahead of me.

His hair was blowing back in the wind. His tee shirt was even blowing halfway up his back. He was very clearly looking around for the Highway Patrol, but you could just see that he was the freest human being on the entire planet. It was breathtaking to watch him. But then the Old Highway veered up into the hills and he disappeared.

Of course, I’m very maternal, and right away, I was hoping that his mom had no clue what he was out there doing — going at that speed on that winding road with no helmet on, because even without having any clue who she is, I know her heart would have dropped down to her feet to see him like that. But at the same time, maternal instincts aside, it was just incredible to watch him in all his fearless glory. It really was. He was just beautiful.

I hope he stays young (at heart) and fearless forever. Whoever he was.

Okay, gang! Good news arrived from Sandra today re: our other theater project that’s going on in Toronto, Canada. I cannot blog about it yet, but it is sufficient to say that if I thought I had a tad too much on my plate before I got out of bed this morning, I now have great big heaping piles of incredible awesomeness. And I have to somehow tackle it.

I know I will.  I just have to stay focused. But it seemed like I was getting to a place where I was going to have some breathing room, but such is not the case.

But, still, I couldn’t be happier, gang, even though now I am just stupidly busy.

Well, okay. I don’t usually post songs from Mojo, however, it is probably the best Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers album, ever. It was their 2nd to last record before he died, although the final album he did was a Mudcrutch album that had a few of the Heartbreakers on it, as well.

In terms of their musical prowess, their maturity, the songs on Mojo are really just off the charts good.  It is decidedly the “older/calmer” Tom Petty ( he was 60 years old when it came out). Not the scrappy, angry, skinny, attitude-filled and much younger Tom Petty that I usually listen to. This is the much more laid back one, but the album is just killer. If you like more blues-based rock & roll, that is.

I played this song about a zillion times this morning. “Running Man’s Bible.”  I get the feeling that he wrote it sort of as a tribute to himself and the Heartbreakers and their 40 years of being on the road together.  Of course, I could be wrong because I was never very good at guessing what Tom Petty was ever really writing about.

But, anyway, it’s a great song and it was great music to listen to while that cool motorcycle guy went flying past, in all his youth with all his fearlessness and all those unanswered questions still way out ahead of him on that highway somewhere. Okay! Have a great evening, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya!

“Running Man’s Bible”

You’re with me tonight on this dark highway
We’ve run it together
So many times
We’ve run it for money
We’ve run it for music
We’ve run it to pay for our innocent crimes

I took on my father and I’m still walkin’
Took on all comers in some shape or form
And I see with the eyes of somethin’ wounded
Somethin’ still standing after the storm

Here’s one to glory and survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the running man’s bible
I been next in line

I been next to nothin’
Been next to bystanders
Who shoulda said somethin’
It was not in my vision
It was not in my mind
To return from a mission
A man left behind

Here’s one to glory
And survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
I don’t speak of the times I’ve nearly died

I don’t speak of out lastin’ those who are gone
Or the things I’ve done
I care not to remember
Or the desperate measures
That might have been wrong

Honey here’s one to glory
Here’s to bad weather
And all the hard things
We’ve been through together

Here’s to the golden rule and survival
And to stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible
Here’s one to glory and survival
And stayin’ alive
It’s the runnin’ man’s bible

c- 2010 Tom Petty

Easy-Peasy, Gang!

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Yes, I am of course talking about the endless editing that I’m now doing to Blessed By Light.

I finally signed off on the revisions to Chapter One (I’m really happy with them, btw; this is the strangest novel I’ve ever read, gang, and I think that’s a good thing). But then I realized that Chapter Two could be more streamlined, so I’m up to my eyeballs now in that.

But, honestly, it’s not so bad now. I got past all the stymied weirdness of the other day. And I know for sure that the whole book doesn’t need editing; it’s just these opening chapters that I want to tighten.

So.

I’m okay with it.

That’s me, btw, up at the top there. 30 years ago. I was at my best friend’s beach house in North Carolina. He has long since died from AIDS. But back then – wow, he was the only person who could calm me down.

Actually, when we knew for sure he was dying, that he would not survive, that was his main concern: “Marilyn, how are you going to be okay without me?”

And I absolutely did not know.  Although I didn’t want him dying while worrying about me, so I told him that I would figure it out – how to be okay without him.

I guess I did; I’ve managed, anyway, even though I don’t have any other “best friend” and that is super lonely. But I can guarantee you there are no other photos in existence of me looking that relaxed.

Anyway! It’s a beautiful day here. I didn’t blog earlier because I slept in until 7 a.m.!! I don’t remember the last time I did that, but it felt good. I woke up happy.  But now that I’ve switched my meditation time back to first thing in the morning, then I do that Inner Being journaling thing, and then I had to get started on the revisions. Then do yoga…

So, anyway, here we are! Day’s half over!

I’m gonna say first, though, that I am hopelessly lost now re: all these Conversations with Nick Cave in the UK. I don’t think anyone in Scotland posted to Instagram last night. Plus, all these johnny-come-latelies from London and Manchester are still posting to Instagram, confusing me, and other people who have tickets to upcoming shows back in Scandinavia are posting things that haven’t even happened yet, and since Nick Cave apparently insists on wearing the same darn suit all the time, I am losing my ability to figure out where the heck he is.

The UK is really decidedly weird, though. Meaning that they seem to be incredibly okay with detaching themselves from their phones and so not posting pictures to Instagram. So they are really just screwing me up.

Oh, sort of on an unrelated note. Right this moment there is an amazing photo of Iggy Pop on Instagram that he posted to his own official page. He’s in concert and, as usual, is only wearing clothes from the waist down. But this photo is an extreme close-up of him from the waist up. He’s in his 70s now and still really muscular, but his skin is an absolute roadmap of lines and wrinkles. It is just jaw-dropping and breathtaking. It truly is.

I love Iggy Pop.

Back in the early 80s, when I was taking that songwriting workshop with (the late) Jim Carroll, one of our assignments was to write some specific lyrics and turn them in. And at that particular time, I was reading Iggy Pop’s memoir, I Need More, from his years living in Germany. So I wrote a song about that.

Here’s a photo of page 1 of my graded assignment – Jim Carroll’s comments. (I treasure this, obviously. Usually we didn’t have to turn stuff in, we went over stuff in class. So I don’t have his handwriting on too many things.) (Oh, I adored Jim Carroll, too, in case you’re new to this lofty blog.)

The song I wrote about Iggy Pop as an assignment for Jim Carroll’s songwriting workshop in early 1984.

Jim Carroll actually terrified me. He was SUPER nice. He really was. But he was also really tall – hence, The Basketball Diaries. And I was really shy. Whenever he would stand too close to me, I would sort of silently panic and freak out. Once, I arrived for class just as he was arriving and so we road up alone together in the elevator (he was usually surrounded by a swarm of students, but this time it was just him & me). He had an intense Bronx accent, and he said, “Hey, so, what’s yer name again – Mary Ann?”

ME: (inaudible reply)

HIM (smiles): “Hm. So how ya doin’?”

ME (just a sort of chirp): “oh. you know. fine.”

I was just terrified of him. It was too funny.

One time, at the end of a class, students still all over the place, he was talking to me about something I had written and while he was talking to me, he was picking at some lint or something on the lapel of my jeans jacket. So, in essence, he was touching me. I have no clue what he was talking about because the blood just went barreling through my eardrums and drowned out everything else. I was so excited that he was, you know, sort of touching me….Anyway.

I’m not 100% positive about this, but I think that Jim Carroll died in the same way that F. Scott Fitzgerald did — had a heart attack at his desk while he was in the middle of writing something.

Well, to switch gears entirely.

After I was done meditating this morning, I decided to get yet another hotel room in NYC for after that first Conversation with Nick Cave that’s happening on Saturday night, 9/21.  I got a hotel room close to Lincoln Center.

I had been planning to maybe ask Sandra if I could just stay that one night in her pieds a terre there in the city, because it’s close to Lincoln Center.

She & her husband now live up in Rhinebeck, which is where I’ll be when we aren’t rehearsing in the city, and I’ve been worrying how intensely rude it will feel for me to leave Lincoln Center and grab that last train out of Penn Station and then arrive back at their house up in Rhinebeck really late and maybe even wake them up.

But then I was afraid to ask her if I could borrow her pieds a terre, because it feels sort of presumptuous to do that – you know, she being an actress and I’m just a lowly scribe. But mostly because I still feel really weird about being in NYC for rehearsals of my own play and then inserting these 2 Nick Cave Conversations in the middle of all that and making myself unavailable for 2 nights.

But, anyway, I finally decided on getting another hotel room and so I’ll just do that and now I feel a little more relaxed about that whole thing.

So life is just working out merrily on all fronts!

And work with Peitor on the micro-short video scripts yesterday was kind of incredible. Extremely intense. It is a shot by shot kind of script that we’re working on right now. So I’m sort of transcribing the thoughts that are in his head – the visuals.  Sort of putting a storyboard into text (before we actually storyboard it), since this particular video has almost no dialogue, and it’s loaded with abstract visuals and industrial sorts of sounds.

I was kinda tired by the time we ended the call. And we only had maybe a page and a half of script. Just intense brain-work for me. But it’s all still so exciting.

Okay, I’m gonna close.  Have a good Sunday, whatever’s left of it where you are, gang! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

 

What Is It About Brides?!

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I look good in the dress, you know.

I wear the wedding gown really well. But the moment it goes into storage…

Wow. I just don’t know what it is.

I’m bringing this up because yesterday was the 18th anniversary of Tom Petty’s marriage to Dana York and she posted video footage of their wedding on Instagram and those two looked happier than you can possibly imagine. (Second marriages for both of them.)

I was happier on my first wedding day than I was on my second, but that’s still not saying a whole bunch. (I guess it says that I can be persuaded to do just about anything – twice.)

I awoke at 3:46am today – yes, awash in those wonderful waves of Eros, yet again. But then the first thing I thought of was that video of Tom & Dana’s wedding and of how happy they were. And I began wondering what (if anything) was the matter with me.

I have just never been the kind of gal who thought much about the idea of getting married.  Partly because I was born in that part of the 20th Century where men still owned everything imaginable, and I thought of marriage as ownership. And I have never wanted to be owned. The thought of being an ornament on someone’s arm has always horrified me.

The other part was of course my sexuality. Even as a young teenager (when I started getting raped by guys from the outside world and then men from inside my loving home), I could already tell that my sexuality was more than most people could really deal with.

At least, in Ohio.

When I moved to NYC everything changed. It was so great, so liberating, in the truest sense of the word.  Because  NYC in the 1980s – well, my sexuality fit right in.  Everyone was off the charts. I think Manhattan was not only the casual sex capital of the world at that point, but also the extreme casual sex capital of the world.

Then, of course, most of the people I knew got AIDS and died. I was certainly spared in that regard, but it was just really stupid of me to think that I could squeeze myself down into something that could fit into a marriage.

I always wanted to have kids. Even back as a very little girl, I just assumed I was going to have a lot of children. I really, really wanted children. But I never really wanted to get married.

Instead, I got married twice and had no children.

The only marriage that ever truly appealed to me was the marriage between E.B. White and his wife, Katharine Sergeant Angell White.

E.B. White is probably my favorite essayist of all time. He also wrote children’s classics like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, but his essays are literary gems that struck chords really deep in me and have stayed with me forever. (“Once More to the Lake” is probably everybody’s heartbreaking favorite, but I also really love his essay “Goodbye to 48th Street,” among many others.)

His wife was a legendary fiction editor for The New Yorker when that magazine was in its literary golden age.  They met, fell in love, she left her husband, they got married, moved to Maine and bought a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. And then  seem to have done nothing but amazing things for each other’s literary lives.

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He was, of course, neurotic, and she was often the rudder keeping him pointed in the right direction.  But the part I always loved most about their marriage was that, in their house, they had offices across the hall from each other.  They’d each go into their offices in the morning, write all day, and then both emerge at 5 o’clock, have one martini and a cigarette, talk about what they’d written (or angst-ed over) and then have dinner together and go to bed. (Sadly, I don’t know what they did in bed, besides sleep, otherwise I would of course regale you with all those details here.)

To me, that has stuck with me as the idea of the most perfect (as well as unattainable) marriage.

Another “relationship” that has always really appealed to me was Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett’s. But it seems to have involved tons more booze & cigarettes and a lot of shouting.  I’m not big on the shouting stuff.  And they did not get married, but stayed together for 30 years and wrote various masterpieces. And that appeals to me enormously.

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I guess you can see that I am all about the writing.

It’s not that I am not all about love, or not into love, or a disbeliever in love. Love is everything to me. But love is woven in there inextricably with my writing. I don’t know why I can’t separate it. And I guess it does make me very self-involved, although I don’t feel like I am. I feel like my love is enormous and spills over into everything, benefiting everyone – and yet, more importantly, love helps me write better. And that means everything to me and so I guess it makes me self-involved.

But it’s still all about love.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog are no doubt painfully aware that I am totally, 100%, thoroughly in love with my muse. He has changed my life – and so quickly, so unexpectedly. Came into my life on all cylinders, blasted open my writing and turned it completely around.

It’s not that he is my reason for being – the kind of thing that maybe people feel when they are wearing those beautiful clothes and having weddings; but he gives me clarity on my reason for being, which has wound up being the most amazing gift I could have ever hoped to receive.

Clarity on my reason for being.

I don’t know that I would have ever realized just how much I needed that if it hadn’t happened of its own accord.

You know, I watched that short video footage of Tom & Dana’s wedding on Instagram yesterday, over & over & over. And I was simply astounded by how happy they were. (Yes, I pondered it!)  And it wasn’t any kind of bullshit – those two were incredibly happy. You could just see it.  And I felt a little bit like a failure because I can only seem to feel that happy when I’m alone, finding the most perfect word.

So I don’t understand myself and my “alone-ness” any better than I ever did, but I still feel happier than I’ve ever been and just so blessed to have the most amazing muse.

It’s probably best to just not think about it too much. Because I think it’s going to end up being something good for the whole world; I really do.

Okay. I’ve got lunch today with the director of Tell My Bones at 12:30. So I’m gonna scoot now and try to get some writing done before that. I think today is going to be just another stunning day out there. I’m so looking forward to it.

I hope your Tuesday is just as splendid, wherever you are in the world.  I leave you with this, the song Tom Petty wrote for Dana, long before they were married, back when he was heading towards some real dark times, but (he has said repeatedly in interviews) he was already in love with her & waiting. Okay! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys, See ya.

 

I dreamed you
I saw your face
Cut my lifeline
Went floating through space
I saw an angel
I saw my fate
I can only thank God it was not too late

Over mountains
I floated away
‘Cross an ocean
I dreamed her name
I followed an angel
Down through the gates
I can only thank God it was not too late

Sing a little song of
Loneliness
Sing one to make me smile
Another round for everyone
I’m here for a little while

Now I’m walking
This street on my own
But she’s with me
Everywhere I go
Yeah, I found an angel
I found my place
I can only thank God it was not too late
I can only thank God it was not too late
I can only thank God it was not too late

c-1995 Tom Petty

Oh, People! This Astounding Voyage Continues!

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Around 2am, the wind kicked up something fierce, so not only had it begun to rain again, but the wind was blowing rain in on my bed. Short of sleeping in some sort of  adventurous, seafaring schooner, having rain blown in on me while I sleep is not my idea of a nice night.

So I got up and closed most of the windows again, and missed the morning bird songs and overslept again.  Awoke at 6:30am to a bright, shiny bedroom.

And to two very intense texts on my phone.

Both texts had apparently been hanging there unanswered by the soundly-sleeping me for hours.

One was from Peitor. We had been texting before I went to sleep last night at around midnight, and I thought we were done texting and so I set down my phone and turned out the light. But it seems I was wrong. Because he texted something intense, unhappy and emotional (he’s in Italy right now, checking in on his elderly mother), and I left him hanging for over 6 hours! I felt terrible.

You know – lurch yourself from sleep, start typing: Oh god, I’m so sorry. I fell asleep!

And the other text was from a girlfriend that I am very close to and we had gotten into an intense conversation late last night, because (like Peitor) she is also going through some intense family stuff. And she looked so tired and so angry and so fed up last night, and  I just wanted to fix that.

I try so hard not to tell people how to live or what to think or what to do.  And I went through all that training in Divinity School on counseling people, and all of that, and I’ve counseled a lot of people. And I can be a remarkably effective counselor if I don’t actually know you and don’t have to get emotionally involved. I’m perfectly at ease with allowing you to find your own way in life and the “f” word does not come flying out of my mouth…

However. When it’s someone I actually know and care about, suddenly I can find myself saying things like: “You need to do such & such!!”, trying to tell her how to live her own life, in an escalating tone… because I am emotionally involved and I want my friends to be happy and I think that “being happy” means thinking the way I do.

Even though we ended it in a good place, I still felt bad about not giving her enough of her own space last night.  And then her text was there from during the night, continuing some of her thoughts from the conversation and I had to force myself (not even out of bed yet) to not let my mind go to that place where I am trying to fix her life for her – even though I know full well she is not asking me to do that.

And even though I didn’t go as far as the “f” word last night, I still felt like I had. Because I truly prefer to allow people to be themselves, and to have their own thoughts and approaches to the world; and yet sometimes I don’t choose to actually do that. I jump in there and try to “re-script” them in a rather emphatic tone.  And then I don’t feel very good about myself. I don’t want to simply paste my own perceptions of the world onto people, it dismisses the importance of how they feel about living their own lives.

And that was all, you know, before I even got out of bed this morning.  I was still just lying there, under the cuddly blanket and my 1700-thread-count Italian cotton sheets, my head surrounded by all my soft expensive pillows – and I was staring at the phone, feeling like a terrible friend.

So I guess maybe it’s going to be an interesting day.

The Conversations with Nick Cave are on hiatus for a couple of weeks. Well, at least the Conversations that have an uppercase “C”. The conversations with a lowercase “c” that he will undoubtedly be having over the next couple of weeks are apparently private and his website is not revealing where he is planning to spend those evenings.  This likely also means that no one will be posting photos of their lowercase “c” conversations with him to Instagram, so I will not be able to tell you what he is wearing. Or if any of those people he converses with in private call him God.

Yes, this means I will have to fixate on other things.

Like, for instance, my own life.

On Tuesday, I’m having lunch with the director of my play (Tell My Bones) so that I can discuss with him what Sandra said on the phone the other night. And move forward. Most likely at a pace I was not anticipating even a few weeks ago. We’ll see.

I still have some writing to do on that play. Revisions, I mean.  But I’m waiting for rehearsals to start before I actually do that. And the pressure on me feels intense because the cart is officially before the horse now – meaning that a bunch of publicity about this play got “out there”  in the world and on the Internet without me knowing it was going out there.

And now people all over the place are using my “award-winning script” as a way to try to drive up the value of Helen’s paintings.

When I first wrote the story about Helen, it was a TV movie script (and it is an award-wining script now and it did well in a lot of the top contests and at the Austin Film Festival). I was working for Gus Van Sant’s production company back then, working for his amazing dad, who was his business manager and who also managed Helen LaFrance’s career and that’s how I got exposed to her truly amazing paintings.

And I wanted to write about her specifically to expose more people to her incredible paintings.  To her life.  In my opinion, her paintings need to be hanging in everyone’s homes.

And so now, to find myself in this position where, you know, the play hasn’t even been mounted yet; you can’t actually go see it anywhere yet.  And total strangers all  over the world are taking it as a given that the play will be great and that it justifies their wanting to make more money off of Helen’s paintings right now…

It’s not a bad position to be in, but I am under a lot of pressure here.

Which is also why I want the novel finished and off my desk, because I need to focus on Tell My Bones, even though I love this novel and I’ve loved every moment I’ve spent writing it. I don’t really want to rush through it. But I also don’t want it being shoved to the back burner again.  I had wanted it completed by Christmas and it is practically summer already.

So that’s that. My brain on a lovely Sunday morning.  Still in my PJs and already way too stressed…

I hope that you’re having a super-duper Sunday, though, wherever you are in the world.

I leave you with this. I was actually listening to this song again yesterday, because I came across something I’d written several years ago – about how it had felt to be 12 and to love this song and to listen to it late in the night on a tinny transistor radio, after sneaking out of my house and just walking the dark suburban streets by myself, listening to the local AM hit radio station, thinking it really was going to be incredible – being a powerful woman in the world, living my dreams, making them happen… (I leave it to you to decide to what degree that has worked out for me.)

Anyway. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“I Am Woman”

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back and pretend
‘Cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever going to keep me down again

Whoa, yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained

If I have to I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

You can bend but never break me
‘Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I’ll come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
‘Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul

Whoa, yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained

If I have to I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

I am woman, watch me grow
See me standing toe-to-toe
As I spread my loving arms across the land
But I’m still an embryo
With a long, long way to go
Until I make my brother understand

Whoa, yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained

If I have to I can face anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

Oh, I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman

c-1972 RAY BURTON, HELEN REDDY

Just One Frustrating Day

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I have always found Bad Day at Black Rock to be a frustrating, annoying movie, even though that didn’t keep me from sitting through it a number of times.

And whenever I have a frustrating, annoying day around here, I simply call it a bad day at Black Rock and try to leave it at that.

First, though: I finally remembered to put up that photo gallery of Villa Monte Malbe in Perugia, Italy, where the writer’s retreat will be held (hopefully every year). It’s down there on the right hand side. Click on any photo and it becomes a gallery.

Even though it sleeps 60, and has 30 guestrooms with 30 private baths, I am only going to accept a maximum of 20 writers, and probably closer to 15.  Since the retreat will also yield a publication of work that’s written during the retreat, I have to actually meet one-on-one with all the writers several times throughout the week, and then edit everyone after they go home.

And I was thinking I’d like to have a life in addition to doing all that… so, 20 is the max.

I’ve been waiting here at my desk for 2 hours for a phone call from Sandra. She texted: I’ll be home soon, can you chat?

That was the above-mentioned 2 hours ago. However, I know it will be a very interesting chat, so I’m waiting…

I’m also waiting to hear from the director of the play, but he’s incommunicado right now over something that is of great interest to me, so I am trying to be patient there, too.

However, I didn’t get much done on the novel today, so of course, I’m frustrated and annoyed with myself. And when I can’t get other people to distract me (i.e., on the phone), it’s even more frustrating!

And then after mentioning in my earlier post today, that I listened to Tom Petty’s song “Dreamville” about 30 times in a row last night, and loving every spellbinding, beautiful moment of it, as well as the night itself; I played the song again once today while fixing my dinner and broke into tears again.

What the heck is up with that?

I don’t know. Sometimes, I just give up trying to figure out anything.

Anyway, peruse the photos. The retreat is going to focus on sensual/sexual/erotic writing; poetry, prose, memoir, fiction, nonfiction, etc. (Is there an “etc.” or did I just cover all the bases?)

If you are familiar with my book Stirring Up A Storm: Tales of the Sensual, the Sexual, and the Erotic, it’s going to be along those lines, except for men & women, both. Not just women writers.

Plus, it’s still a year away.

Okay, people. I am going to try to see if I can salvage the night here somehow. I refuse to go to bed frustrated. Well, that sounded a little weird, but I trust that you know what I meant.

Buonanotte!!

Baci. See ya!