All that there is.

Sometimes when headlights are too bright I stare at the white outer line. Sometimes in fog I stare at the white outer line. I think as a child about coloring and about the car a crayon I am keeping inside the line white car crayon white coloring inside the white line is also a disappearing.

*

Once while staring at the white line while in fog the car moving slowly but as fast as it could it was four am and I had to get home and the car was red then and the girl was in high school and the music was loud. Once while staring at the white line in fog I was moving too fast and forgot the road rise to the train tracks and the car lifted up a little and what was in the trunk made a horrible noise and then the light from the train and the white fog became blind white and the white line became electric and the music was drowned out by the train horn and the train was moving startlingly fast. But I was looking at the outside line and the train was coming from the other direction and the fog was so thick that it hid this. Only one of the ways that I could have died but I didn't.

*

A word is a gesture. A sentence a breast stroke. When I talk when I write I am swimming. It may be in circles but it's movement. The water is warm or it's cold or it's salty or chlorinated (it's often chlorinated) but it is water and I know how to swim. In the pool alone or with a crowd of people I know how to swim in circles around myself but I know how to swim. You might not recognize the motion as swimming. It looks a lot like drowning from above.

*

L and I once thought we would form a band called The Floaters. In restaurant speak for those who do everything. But also because we could live in water a long time without moving our limbs.

*

I can still float on my head, bobbing up with the inhale, deeper down with the exhale. But I no longer play any instruments.

*

I respond in kind, so as not to be overwhelming. They say that humans use five percent of their brains, that humans use ten percent of their brains. I have always felt that I might use more. The flying alongside feeling, some strange tether to other parts of the universe. Whether that means universe or alternate consciousness I can't know. Sometimes I read a book and I want to send that book to someone who might better understand me or we or something else because of it. Sometimes I send a book. Mostly I don't send anything because people don't read. They don't have time in their busy lives. It is possible in knowing me that I only say five percent of what I want to say to you. It is possible that I say ten percent. When the give and take rises, the percentage rises, when it goes down it goes down. Sometimes the percentage may rise as high as twenty, which is maybe how much of a brain is used it contacting the cosmos. But it never goes higher. And you will never read that book. So I keep it on my shelf and I think about sending it and I think about what you would understand if I did and if you read it.

*

My philosophy: that the world doesn't exist except through the lens of the page.You only think you're seeing anything if you don't read it first.

*

I am overwhelmed. I think the pace I have set for myself is too much. I think I need to slow. If I think I need to slow and I look around at you people hustling I feel tired and I feel anxious and I want to lie down. And then I lie down for just a minute and I get up again. I hustle. But my hustle will never be what yours is. When I look around at you people just living your lives I think what are you doing? and I think get moving! And then I remember that living is what we're supposed to do not locked up in rooms. I am locked up in rooms. This room. Which is the same as every other room I've ever lived in been in waited in. I am waiting. And the pace at the pace I wear through the hardwood floor within three or four or five days max. The room built up floor relaid once a week. The floor out from under me every time I move. I move. With the floor gone I am in the cold dark dirt under the house. I wear through that a little racetrack in mud. Always without shoes.

*

That, over there. That isn't really there. This is all that there is.

*

Egads, how has it been a month since I've posted anything?

So I have been a little busy finishing a new manuscript, which is probably a fantastic idea since I'm still circulating the other one. But one can't stop writing, right? Once I've had a few people look over the new ms and I have everything where I like it (it's almost there), I will probably stop sending out the conspiracies and switch to the new one. I can't afford even postage for both, let alone any entry fees. A word about those: I don't go out much anymore, so that's where that money comes from. And I know some people are all like, 'you pay to enter a manuscript?' But I look at it as subsidizing a press. That's the only way I can look at it. I have always done my best to send at least 10% of my income to various charities, sometimes cancer stuff, and I love Kiva for example, but usually animal-related stuff (Best Friends, the local shelter, etc). Sending out manuscripts means I shift most of this flow into presses. I consider it my tithe to charity. Of course, I am hoping for a return...

The conspiracies manuscript has now been shortlisted four times. Money for Sunsets was shortlisted twelve times before getting published (on top of sooo many outright rejections (mostly in prior incarnations) I don't want to say)--the 13th time was the charm. All four excellent presses. So I'm almost good enough?

The new ms is solid though, story-wise, which is silly, but I think what people like to read. I'm actually pretty convinced it will do well, and quickly. Maybe I'm just in love with it. But that's okay by me.

I also haven't updated the recent publication list on here, so I'm probably missing a few things. Today I got word that the new Gulf Stream is up, so you might want to check that out. The link is for my poem (one of the conspiracies, from the JFK section of the book), but be sure to check out all the other stuff too, like especially my friend Leigh Phillips's nonfiction, and also Josie Sigler's story. I really loved Josie Sigler's book, living must bury, so I'm pretty thrilled to be in here with her.

Okay, back to work. I promise to make another appearance soon. I mean, soonish. Sometime. Anyway...