Monthly Archive for November, 2010

Let the sunshine in

Published on November 27, 2010 in baking, Burlesque, Mary Hamilton and ugh up with people. Closed

Dear friend Michael is in town. And so, a baking spree: cranberry bread, strawberry-rhubarb pie, pecan pie, sage-apple-pecan stuffing for yesterday. Butternut squash in the oven currently. We went to Bikram yoga and I sweated out a second Amelia onto my mat. I want more Bikram but it’s expensive. My thoughts are simple and food-related. A few weeks ago, dear friend Mary was in town. I made a lasagna. We wore wigs and went downtown. I miss her. Up with people.

[Pause to watch six minutes of Up With People's 1982 Super Bowl Halftime Show, while shaking asleep foot and wondering if maybe my mother watched this while 2 months pregnant with me and that's why I feel strange watching it, like I'm watching some central part of my nervous system perform a ten-minute medley to the 1960s and Motown. Probably Mom said "Ugh, Up With People is on," and changed the channel to watch something else, anything else, a car commercial, a cowboy smoking a cigarette, the static fuzz]

I’m making the time watch a lot more Burlesque. Do you think it would be an effective piece of art to watch Burlesque continuously for one week, slowly removing your clothing, then your hair, and then small slices of skin? The theater would be empty, so you could practice dance routines in private. You’d be filming it. By the end of the week, colors and lights from the movie screen would glisten on your sweat-soaked bleeding nude body. This is an idea I had while watching Burlesque.

Baking & driving

Published on November 9, 2010 in driving and Interviews. 1 Comment

Last night I made white cake properly for the first time, which was kind of a crazy miracle because I was measuring out the flour and sugar and milk into this huge 4-cup Pyrex deal and, now that I think about it, put the Pyrex on the floor for the milk measure, because I didn’t want to get too far from the fridge. I cook slow but bake fast because I’ve got in my head that I’m not a good baker and the slower I go the more failed it seems. But the white cake came out really well, and that’s a hard cake to make. Thanks Martha Stewart for your freaked out complex recipe and thanks to Pyrex for making a magic 4-cup measure that allows for accuracy. Now I’ve got ten cupcakes making a Maginot line between me and the microwave.

I made you and I will destroy you

In plugging in the camera to upload the picture I took, for some reason, of cupcakes, I see there are still pictures from the ABQ to AUS drive.

oh, there it is

I wish I had a better shot of the Owl Bar & Cafe mural but the sun was working against me. My phone’s crummy camera is full of Texas murals and New Mexico has some cool ones too.

New Mexico rest stop

celebrated suffrage on this sign

I’ve been feeling lately like there’s an unlimited number of things that must be done in a too-limited amount of time. The problem with this feeling is that any scope of time (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 life) isn’t enough time for the xyz that must be done. I can’t stay in bed because there’s work, but then I get up and can’t do any work. It’s causing some general elevated heart rate. Violent dreams too, which seem to happen whether or not I have three cupcakes before bed. I’m living in a Cathy strip this week.

I don’t know if all this means I need to get on the road again. I might go see my girl Sarah in Dallas later this week. She will give me a hug and pour me a glass of wine and we will sit in her father’s house and she will tell me that I’m not having a low-level heart attack that has lasted for a week, and she knows this is true because her mom is a nurse.

Hey speaking of talks, I’m doing Writers in a Room Wednesday night with Doug Dorst and James Hynes. Come by and ask me for the secret to a good white cake. I will tell you but first I will act like I am the only one who knows.

Please find a short Q&A on The Story Prize blog, wherein spare statistics get spat. Thanks to Larry Dark for the Qs.

I’d have twigs in my mane

Published on November 2, 2010 in privet and Reviews. 6 Comments

Austin often tops the allergy lists. When I first moved to the area, I couldn’t go running without developing what felt like a blood-cough but in hindsight was likely something about athsma, I don’t know, my health insurance sucked at the time. I’m at an allergy center today, six years later, getting my first allergy shots. My insurance sucks in a way that benefits me today, so we’re packing six months of buildup shots into two days of 18 shots each day in order to avoid massive copays. I am on all manner of drugs so I don’t die swollen. My eyes feel suspended in a fluid. It’s possible I’ve forgotten how to read and I’m typing this from muscle memory. I’m allergic to cockroaches, dust mites, cedar, ragweeds, grasses, mold, marsh elder, pigweed, red berry juniper, house dust, cats, dogs, feathers, oak. If I was a horse, there is not a rancher in this land who would think twice before putting me down.

long story short I'm just happy to be here

Links: 1) Nik Korpon’s kind review of Museum of the Weird at Outsider Writers Collective supposes that I will find him to be a javelina if we meet. Nonsense, Nik! You are far more like a porcupine. 2) Jesús Ángel García offers his take on the book next to Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s at Vol. 1 Brooklyn. I sat next to Hunter on a curb in Brooklyn last week. 3) Meanwhile, at Impose Magazine I’m all talking about Meredith Martinez, Guatamala, the Jonestown tape transcript, Infinite Jest and the Amityville horror.

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