full of moxie and viscosity

some things to consider
my back is starting to hurt again
this fucking distance thing is not working anymore.
let's dwell on that for a minute. distance. i feel more distance from everyone than i've felt in a long, long time. it's not like normal distance, it's this inner distance thing where my column of normalcy is ten miles from my skin, but on the inside and then i don't want to talk to anyone or see anyone or anything but i cravy intimacy like nothing else, so what's with the dichotomy?

god, it's just time for bed already.
goodnight.

Dear Rachel,

Thank you for allowing us to read your manuscript "Somewhere in Los Angeles." We have given it a thorough read and have found the writing to be of an exceptional quality. We particularly enjoyed the narrator's sense of humor and uniqueness, both of which helped to promote an immediate connection between reader and narrative. We had trouble, however, with the limitedness of the narrative voice. We felt that the perspective of the novel, being aligned with the narrator's infatuation, was too narrow in scope. Ideally, we like to take narratives in which a love affair develops among events - here the events seem built around the love affair. We have therefore, unfortunately, decided to pass on your manuscript. We do, however, wish you the best of luck and hope that this letter gives you some insight into our read of your manuscript.

Sincerely,
The best rejection note writers in the world.







I can handle rejection if this is what it looks like. I have three weeks to send the manuscript out again. Start the timers. Tonight I begin the quest again. Rejuvenated, lease on life. (Props to VLF for that term).

Blog Topic #2: My new job is amazing. I am a tutor and I love it. That is all.

who knew that this was going to be so hard? some days i read what i've written and it makes me feel accomplished, happy, secure. some days i think about what i've written and i know i've done something. sometimes, though, like today, i look at what i've written, old poetry, old stories, whatever, and i think that i have not an ounce of talent, not an ounce of reason, not an ounce of anything to say and i asked vicki about it and she told me that fiction doesn't have to be about anything, just write the story and your meaning, your form will come out, and i believe that, i do, but sometimes i write poetry and i'm pretty sure that i'm not very good at it and i should be okay with that but then sometimes i write poetry that feels so good to write and so good to read and it means something to the person or thing it's about so that should mean something, right? just because it belongs somewhere, it has a home, that should mean more than whether or not it's good. i think that's my main problem in life, i am more concerned with having a home than with my state of being and i don't think that's how it goes, i mean, maybe it does for art but for people? maybe there's more to people than homes. if i could, i'd write myself a home, but then we'd both be screwed because the writing would have a purpose and not a home, it'd be a home, and then i'd have a home but no purpose, because i'd have written purposeful somethings. goodness gracious, this is a difficult thing to write about because i don't know what the reason we write is. pardon that sentence. my spirit is easily squashed by 20 year old walt whitman freaks and that's not fair, he's not my fucking mentor, he's not a decision maker. he's not me. he's not even a matt donovan or a brandon bernard, someone who respects me and my art on separate pages. they like me in real life and they like me on paper, too. i just want to say what i want to say and not be worried about people saying i suck because for crying out loud, i'm not doing this for the good of somebody else, i'm doing it for the good of my soul and then on top of that, maybe some girl somewhere will read what i've written and say that she knows what i mean. that's really all. just relatability (is that a word?), relationability? relattionality? i don't know, but whatever, i want to connect. there's a reason for connection in most cases, and maybe i'm naive in my reasons or just plain immature but i don't think that should be reason to stop. screw the critics. it is not my fault, the youth of my writing: just as it is not my fault that i was born a fresnan or that i was born in 1981 or that i have a stupid picking disorder. i mean, i can move away from fresno and i can act older than i am or try to mature and learn and i can cut my fingernails down to the nub. i can do all of these things but let's be honest, time is the only healer of the laceration of art.

pursed lips
murmuring prayer
or seductions
i throw sex to the wind
ask for forgiveness
scatter rosaries
ride the mule
into darkness
again
but i can still hear him
any time i want
roadside idol
barking orders into the buddha
did he think i was listening?
folded hands under his heart
my eyes flutter back
arch my back
arch my back
pay homage to the court system
guilty as sin
we begin again

(good friend vicki tells me online today): I still can't figure out how normally intelligent people can let their emotional lives go to shit


thank you.

song of the mother freaking day:
"someone like you" by paper sun

i can't just list the lyrics because it won't do sally's voice justice and it won't do the music justice. it's beautiful. i can't stop singing it and i put it as my voicemail message.

i have been talking to s.e.t.h. lately online, a lot, and it makes me really happy because he's one of the men who, for whatever reason, is totally enchanted with me (so i end up feeling beautiful, irresistable, fantastic, by the time we're done talking). but you know, those kinds of positive feelings can't come from just someone saying nice things about you, it has to be someone who you can relate to, or someone who you can sort of feel the same way about. we spend a lot of our conversations saying "i know exactly what you mean" and "oh, you read my mind." it's cheesy and totally romance novelly but i love it, and it brings me a little bit of fulfillment where i'm really missing it these days.

in other really exciting and fantastic news, vicki forman sent me a laptop today. seriously. a laptop. a good one. not an old, shitty, can't run more than one program at once and doesn't have a shift key kind of laptop, OH NO, a freaking great, with photoshop and tons of programs and updates and lots of room and speed and happy stuff and virus protection and mp3's.... a real, honest to goodness laptop.

DOES ANYONE ELSE UNDERSTAND HOW FANTASTIC THIS IS? VICKI FORMAN, YOU HAVE SAVED MY LIFE. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. YOU HAVE MADE MY LIGHT GREY LIFE INTO BLUE AND PINK. THANK YOU SO, SO MUCH.

for all of the awkward situations i've had to endure, and all the stupid barbed wire i've had to pick out of my calves, i always end up without any shit on the tip of my nose. i'm a lucky, lucky girl.

http://sorryeverybody.com


is a very touching site that i'm going to submit a picture to soon.

today is such a fucking awful day, seriously. i got in a fight with my manager at work and i still don't have the days off that i want, i had an awkward convo with a friend which makes me just squingy, and to top it all off, i'm just damn tired and damn broke and lonely and sad and stupid and mournful and whiny, mostly, mostly i'm just a whiny, whiny girl. i'm sorry everyone, i really am. i'm sorry for being broke and insensitive and hard to be around and silly and overemotional.

mostly, it's time for me to get to bed because clearly i am in no position to be awake any longer. i'm far too whiny.

but i love you all.

Josh and I are going to make a cd of songs about red-headed girls, because all of the ones we know about are really, really sad and awesome. Okay, we only know two, but they're both really good:

sweet lorraine by patti griffin
red molly by richard thompson

listen to them if you're in a folksy, cry-y mood.

gratitude is such a dynamic emotion, hard to hold and hard to define and definitely hard to deal with. but beautiful.
what was that line from that one poem?
gratitude is the most inarticulate of the emotions, but i will try to thank you... i can't remember the rest. upon looking at my poetry, it is obvious to me that half is beautiful and half is pedantic and half is overwritten and half is really sad. oh, and half is lies.
ah well, there will be new art soon, anyway.

"POLITICS IS THE NEW ART! I AM THE NEW AVANT GARDE!"

name the movie and i'll give you a blue ribbon.

how's this?






i know a tattoo artist now, and a damn fine one. what do we think? in addition, might i add that richard (said tattoo artist) is one of the more genuine, hysterical, unique souls i've met in a long time? it's true. thank you, richard, for being such a good time. i'm a lucky girl.

we all remember nathan gadd. he sat me on a rooftop and explained to me how if the bible is true, then when you read it, something will happen. i read the bible and lots of things happened, and we sat together in the chapel of silence and watched a carved tree patiently, waiting for someone to say something. we snuck into the box of prayers and read other people's wishes and didn't feel voyeuristic, just felt like sharing. he told me about bluebirds and happiness and he talked me out of getting a mountain dew slurpee and he said things like "that is incredible" and "she floors me" with so much fucking gravel in his voice that i tripped fourteen times. told me things about vexation of spirit and velvet underground. we smoked cigarettes off my balcony and i feel nice when i think of the time we shared a blanket. he was smarter than me and more dangerous for himself than i was to myself, which was near impossible at that time (remember? there was a justin). i stopped picking for him and started reading again. he let things freak him out. he blinked with more eyelid when he knew i was watching. he made me think about jesus christ, for heaven's sake, he made me think about jesus christ. and most of all he told me that love is more than boys and i think about that every day, almost. (something else i think about very frequently is how mark small once said to me, sometimes things just don't work out, rachel, sometimes things just don't work out: and it was so genius).

Broken, tonight! Some 20-year old made me feel like my art is fake today. He just said it, casually, almost: "you're a fake artist. your art is fake, and you're a fake." He wasn't joking. He was right. What do I do to remedy the ingenuinity of my art? There is very little to do now. Suicide? Too messy. Become jaded, bitter? SOOO trendy! Continue on my path of fakeness? Ignorant. Any ideas?

Maybe I should learn to stop sticking my huge foot into my huge mouth.

Zero 7 and I drove home tonight, watching the circles of fog around the streetlights move with our eyes. I don't mean to be offended by a wandering toe, or a kind set of eyes, but as I am now, there is no room inside my life for budding romance. As much as I would like to afford myself time for it, or space for it, I don't see it happening. I have time for tears and time for art and time to think up life plans, but really, there is no time here for happy lovers.

Serah in my class today had lovely eyes and I watched her perfect skin from my wooden chair. The National Geographic woman's face was similar and more moving. Watching other people survive in their beauty is astounding. Tonight I sleep on pinned hair and false pretenses. In the morning I will find a new way to lie to myself, probably.

Today I felt like I was looking for a husband while I was looking for parking. Go figure. Maybe I'm too picky?

Meet me in Canada.