No One Ever Is to Blame

So this is what mourning feels like. There are fists and there are tears and there is a boot on your neck and glass in your stomach. Someone has cut the strings in your arms and legs. Your beloved surrounds you, a sweet scent, a shadow, a sound, a film that wets your palms. But when you squeeze, fingertips touch palm, nails cut skin. You breathe but feel no fuller. You eat but feel no heavier. The sun is indifferent. There is light but no warmth. Every day it goes down on you without warning. Every day you wait for it to rise and say its sorry.

When I think of all those I know, have known, who have struggled with greater loss, I wonder how they ever survived. I feel terrible I never understood before, never could reach down in their throat and feel their poor pulpy heart, a floppy fish on a boat's bottom. I fear for them and I fear for me that we will never find the sea.

I'm sorry. I understand now. I punch the air, throttle it, but there is no satisfaction. It is as empty as my heart. It is not to blame. It is just air. Who is to blame? No one is to blame. Stop crying. Repeat.

New Book!

I couldn't be happier to have just signed a contract with Aqueous Books to publish a collection of my fiction, titled From Here. It'll be out sometime in 2014; check back here for more announcements and news.

Impact

I saw a movie this weekend. It was like a planet hit me, and I haven't been the same since. Actually, in the movie, Lars Von Trie's brilliant Melancholia, a planet, Melancholia, is in a collision course with planet Earth. Of course, like most movies, it is not just about that. It is also about depression, incredible sadness that imparts such a gravity on your life that it becomes its own orbit, compelling the other planets around you (family, friends, lovers) to continually fight its pull or risk their own collision with you.

I hate feeling helpless. But for the past month, I have felt exactly that. Like a great planet has been hurtling at high speed toward me and there is nothing I can do about it. When my beloved Shirley died last month, I felt as if, as her human mother, I had failed her. Somehow, her symptoms of illness had eluded me (and also the vet, although I do not blame her in any way, as she did so much for Shirley, and in some ways, me). Despite what I thought were my best efforts, she slipped away from me, and I was not even prepared.

People slip away all the time, despite our best efforts to save them—family, lovers, friends. Some slip away by the design of their genes; others by a complete disregard for their fragility. The latter hurt the most. You watch someone you love spin away from you, a rogue planet, a runaway train, and your instinct is to always step in front of them, despite the impact it would have on you. But if you don't try and derail them, you spend the rest of your life derailing yourself on what you could have done, should have done.

Life is so full of regret. Every time you turn the corner, it smiles at you, the shiny unfurling candy wrapper in the gutter, the rattling stop sign on a windy day. A headless toy figure, faded by the sun. It seems so hard to go about your life after the collision. You think about the planet when it was still in the far sky, how small it was. You wonder whether you could have run faster, turned the axis of the earth, spun it out of harm's way. Or put it on your shoulders like Atlas and walked, one impossible step after another, away from the shore, before the tide engulfed you. There is no more puzzle, put you hold onto the few pieces you have until your fingers bleed.

I saw another movie this weekend, too. The Muppets. Of course, a happy tale about resilience and giving your dreams a shot, even if you fail. The important part is trying. So you won't have regrets. They seem almost at odds, these two movies, one telling you there's nothing you can do, the other that, above all, just try. You will fail but you can try. Make sure you are smiling your best smile at the moment of impact.

What the Shop Sold

I dreamed of a store inside a rowhouse that sold all the things I've ever wanted but couldn't have. Except they were not for sale, at least not to me. I could look at them but not touch. I made up reasons to go to the store all the time, looking, trying to find a way to convince the proprietor to give me the things, sell them, or trade them to me. I asked the universe what to do. Finally, it said, you already have your answer. The answer has always been the same. This store does not even exist. When I looked at the proprietor, she said, Goodbye, Jen and went into the back. When I followed her, she was gone. When I returned to the front, so were the things, except for their shadows. Then, when I left the store and turned around they too were gone—an empty storefront. I knew when I turned the corner that the store would be gone, too. I climbed into a cylindrical pod and rocketed into space. The earth was the size of a button. I never wanted to go back, but I remembered the things I did have and was thankful. The earth got bigger and bigger again. I braced myself against the pod. Impact in minus five.

I always have music in my dreams, stuff I've made up in my subconscious. The music upon my return to earth was some Crosby, Stills & Nash knockoff, some bittersweet-all-the-wiser-sounding song. I always thought they were a little smug.

(Photo: Paolo Neo)

Bad Ass Glow Pens

I'm excited to again be a judge for the 13th annual Fiction and Poetry Contest run by The Baltimore City Paper. I had so much fun in 2008 reading work, and I hope the entries this year will be just as badass.

You know who you are? You are a badass. And I know you submitted your badass work before November 11th so I will get to read it. If not, send it to jmww; we're still reading for the winter issue!

You know who I am? I am a glow face. And badass Sean Lovelace can run circles around my poke-slow jogging self. A 1:24:10 half-marathon, Sean? Can I smell your shoes?

Forever Good

I keep hearing "Reptile" by the Church a lot, on the radio and my iPod. I don't really believe in any deeper meaning, except to remind me that Starfish is one of my top ten favorite albums of all time (and there are lot of albums vying for those spots, but in case you're wondering, House Tornado by the Throwing Muses, Sister by Sonic Youth, After the Gold Rush by Neil Young, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, Microcastle by Deerhunter, and The Smiths self-titled are all in there somewhere).

What Starfish reminds me of is being fourteen or fifteen, an avid tennis fan (but wondering what Andre Agassi's hair was all about), not having any friends, hiding out in my bedroom writing bad novels patterned after the literary brat pack authors of eighties (Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerey, Tama Janowitz) and listening to Starfish. Also wanting to go to Australia, to see what inspired Steve Kilbey and company to write such beautifully quiet but savage songs, such bete noir. (Ironically, Starfish was recorded in LA with Waddy Wacthell, the quintessential 70s session guitarist.)

There was a really beautiful poem written by Steve Kilbey in the liner notes of Starfish, which I've included here. I've never wanted to write a poem that revisits the soft night memory of youth because Kilbey's says everything I've ever felt about that which has been lost:

Starfish

"Good, now and forever, music reach and awakens,
Swimming in the shallow end, down, down, remember
A need, a gnawing longing for what ?
Shapes and faces come slowly into mind
Glissando Australian insects out there signalling
The sound of Dad's car in the drive
Lying in the grass, watching the sky
The piano washes over thoughts, the smell of crushed mint
The ants which come out as it begins to get dark
Helplessness, planes miles up turn on their lights,
Child, oh child, the tastes in our kitchen,
Not knowing the right words but wishing long and hard
Golden clouded moon, enveloped by the family
Melting further the cracks in the pavement become chasms
Shrubs whisper, walls conceal adult pleasures
A mere hint and we're gone too
Forever, beautiful things, the shop that sold shadows
A walk down the path towards our old home
Mercurial touch of past summers
The sheer wait of nostalgia
Maria, now long dead, glide through this tonight
Shimmer, disappear and return
Emerging random memory in flux
Falling felled the flowering kingdom
Finding buried tin soldier years later
The sounds of a carnival way off in the valley
An abandoned nest, the sprinklers splash on in darkness
Windows glimmer dim waiting for her at the edge of dusk
Distance, our hesitant conversation, someone calling
A bucket full of starfish, warm rain, the long sleep
Deep dream, dream of now, now and forever good"

JMWW Holiday Nonfiction Reading Awesomeness (And Comedy Show!)

Our holiday nonfiction reading for jmww is right around the corner, it seems like. I hope you can make it! (Thanks so much to nonfiction editor Dario DiBattista for organizing):

To promote JMWW's Fall 2011 special nonfiction issue (http://www.jmww.150m.com), we're hosting an event at The Americana in Canton. We're branching out into new areas of Baltimore other than just Hamden and Mount Vernon, and trying to get the word out about the awesome literary scene.

Two local essayists featured in the nonfiction issue, Ned Balbo and Jane Satterfield, will be reading. And, two other amazing local nonfiction writers, Evan Balkan and Paul Barbagallo, will be there, too. In addition to Baltimore's best beers on tap and the great cuisine of The Americana, we'll even have the comedian Rory Holderness doing a brand new routine catered for this event. That's right. This ain't no stuffy highbrow event. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll drink? Alllll gooooood.

We'd love to see you there! Please spread the word! And please check out the nonfiction issue (www.jmww.150m.com). We have an e-book, too!


About the readers:

Ned Balbo received the 2010 Donald Justice Prize, selected by A.E. Stallings, for The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line Press/WCU Poetry Center). His previous books include Lives of the Sleepers (U. of Notre Dame Press, Ernest Sandeen Prize and ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal) and Galileo's Banquet (WWPH, Towson University Prize). He is also the author of a chapbook, Something Must Happen (Finishing Line Press). He has received three Maryland Arts Council grants, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, and the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. "My Father’s Music," an essay on adoptive identity and ethnicity, appears in Creative Nonfiction's anthology of Italian-American prose, Our Roots Are Deep with Passion (Other Press). He teaches at Loyola University Maryland.

Jane Satterfield is the author of Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond (Demeter, 2009) and two poetry collections: Assignation at Vanishing Point (Elixir Press Book Award, 2003) and Shepherdess with an Automatic (Washington Writers' Publishing House, Towson University Prize). Among her awards are an N.E.A. Fellowship in poetry and three Maryland Arts Council grants, as well as residencies in poetry or nonfiction from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Satterfield has received the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society's Gold Medal in the Essay, the Florida Review's Editors' Prize in nonfiction, and the Heekin Foundation's Cuchulain Prize in Rhetoric for the Essay. Her craft essay, “Lucifer Matches,” appears in Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois U. Press). She is literary editor for the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement and teaches at Loyola University Maryland.

Evan Balkan has published five books of nonfiction, most recently The Wrath of God: Lope de Aguirre, Revolutionary of the Americas. His agent is currently hawking his novel, The Short Unhappy Life of Thomas Hammond. He is the Coordinator of the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore County and lives in Towson.

Paul Barbagallo, a candidate in the MA in Creative Writing Program at The Johns Hopkins University, is a veteran reporter of ten years. His work has appeared in The Washingtonian and other places.

Rory Holderness is an up-and-coming young live comedian and also Twitter comic. He has performed at clubs in and around Baltimore such as Fire House Tavern and Sonoma's. His comedy articles have appeared on FunnyorDie.com and slacktory.com, and he is currently a contributor to nationallampoon.com. His various work can be found at cuddlyninja.com or @CuddlyNinja.

The main event:

Saturday, December 10 · 2:00pm - 4:00pm
The Americana
900 Kenwood Avenue
Baltimore, MD

Lifelines

Today, while doing the laundry in the basement, I found a short story in a spiral notebook that I'd forgotten I'd written. It had even been published eight years ago, the literary journal long belly up. I have boxes of old notebooks where my dreams live on in longhand, finished novels not good enough for prime time, beginnings of short stories never ended, endings of short stories never given beginnings. I look through the pages, surprised that so much of my life has lain hidden in a box in the basement for five years, a box I dumped unceremoniously, along with old cassettes tapes that I don't own corresponding CDs to, when I moved here. I read the words and can remember what I was thinking but didn't actually say (fearing someone who shouldn't be reading them would—and did). I wonder if I have actually forgotten more than I remember.

I wonder whether I will forget what happened this year, or last, if, in the grand scheme of things, if any of this means anything important. But it all happened, the proof in the velvety ink. I sound so smart, so sure, so unsure, so depressed. So hopeful. Over and over again, like an EEG, the peaks and valleys of my life repeat like breaths. What I will change, who I will be by the next journal entry. Who I am instead.

If I shredded all these pages, will my cells slow down and fall away, particle confetti into the late afternoon sun? Will I be free to be different, or will the oscillations spike and recede, forming the haunting pattern?

I finished 20,000 words of the new novel. Thankfully, it's all electronic.

The Pitter Patter of Big Paws

My neighbor up the street, whose dog Hoover (Shirley's friend) died suddenly of stomach cancer a few months ago, adopted another dog from a rescue. She's a gentle Rhodesian/Mastiff mix, and my entire hand fits on her head with room to spare. I don't know if this is my sign from Shirley, but I'm happy that my neighbor has a new cold nose in her life. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. All that.