A week, a weekend.

I am up to 23,207 words on my book. I've reached a tough point and feel a little discouraged. But, I'm gonna finish it. I am!

Many things to look forward to this weekend, including the new National Portrait Gallery exhibit: Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. It's about gender and sexuality and spans from Walt Whitman to current day. HERE The Portrait Gallery has long been my favorite museum-- seeing Lincoln's death mask? whoa-- and they are breaking ground with this exhibit.

On Monday I move into my new office. It has a window! No more cubicle for me!

In order to make a TOOTH SWITCH PLATE: one must first discover the need, then draw it, then form a mold, pour it, harden it, market it (in catalogs

sent to dentist's offices), ship it, include two screws-- to be generous-- paint the wall, mount it.

Only then, can I stare at it while I wait, while suction and such happens, x-rays, water pics.

I brush my dog's teeth with turkey flavored paste.

Still life, Pear Mouth

Drum avalanche... on my head!

Last night my husband and I went to a music store in Catonsville. My husband has been saying, "I want to learn how to play an instrument before I die," a statement that sounds dramatic, but one that I can get behind. This music store was selected because I knew they had a large selection of "lefty" guitars. Clint writes with his left hand, but paints with his right, so he didn't know which had he would prefer when it came to guitars.

We met a great guy, very helpful, not pushy, not rude-- like so many music store employees I've run into in the past-- and they started to experiment. As they were having fun, I walked around the store, playing a few chords on this guitar and a few on that one. I saw a resonator-- one of those guitars made out of metal with cones built in as the first amplifier system. The guitars have a great, chunky and rough, sound.

It weighed about twenty pounds, so I decided to sit down to play it. The only available spot was on the platform that held some drum kits. The platform was double high. Well, based on the title of this post, you can guess what happened... the platform tipped over and drums and symbols came crashing down, crashing on me, crashing on the guitars in front of the display. Can you imagine that sound?! So, I was trapped under two drum sets and a crappy platform-- trying to hold it up with my back so the whole thing wouldn't fall over and also trying to put down the twenty pound guitar with one hand without banging it up.

Yes, I am sore today, but okay. The store employees were so kind. After everything was righted (and everything was determined to be okay) I started to shake from adrenaline and embarrassment. I decided to stick next to Clint for the rest of the night.

And the funny thing is, he ended up getting a resonator! Last night I gave him my old glass slide and he immediately started in with some amazing riffs-- a guy that has never played before! I think it is so important to find the right instrument. Something really clicks when you do. In all, a great night. And next time I go to that store, I'm wearing my glasses and a hat... incognito!

Some NaNoWriMo!

How much more awesome would it be to see ourselves in the transition of elements? In the dust clouds of a volcano, the purple red of a maple leaf, the segmented body of worm or the flashing blue of an Atlantic octopus? That was my fear and trembling, the finding of a rounded and smooth moon snail shell on the beach, picking it up, happy to find one without holes, only to have my thumb pinched by a hermit crab that had made it its home; how perfect a home, vacated and then filled, vacated and then filled until the shell could no longer be used; the creature that had created it, had built it around its soft body, long gone.

********

Corbina. A name that surprised me, a roundness I discovered on her mail after I had seen her working a stand at the farmer’s market. A tall stone of a woman, a strong jaw with large teeth that she probably grinded in her sleep. She was selling heirlooms, giant ugly tomatoes that split their own seams. She was concentrating on a book about soil Ph, barely registering anyone around her. She pushed her toes into the ground, digging them in, wriggle by wriggle, impatient to absorb what she needed to know. I took a dark purple tomato and kept walking. I didn’t look back until I was in my truck. She was standing there, eyebrows gathered, lips in a slight frown. I bit into the blackness. Juice ran down my chin.

********

Those are two paragraphs from my two narrators, a young woman and an old man. I'm at 8,000--- way behind where I'm supposed to be if I want to finish at the 50,000 goal. But, 8,000 words is the most I've ever written for a story and I'm proud of that. I'm setting up to write more tonight.

Aimee Bender wrote the most encouraging NaNoWriMo post the other day. I'll have to cut and paste some of it here later.

New York was just what I needed!

I actually forgot that things were going on here in Baltimore this past weekend. What I mean is, I forgot that it was also Halloween in Baltimore, like it was Halloween in NYC. Funny, right? But it felt good to be so disconnected from home base.

I would have preferred to be on the beach for vacation, but for a gorgeous weekend in October, NYC is perfect. My husband and I walked and walked and walked. We visited the Guggenheim. We heard Anne Carson talk about Odysseus's wife, about Bridget Bardot and about selling out. Lou Reed walked into the lecture and sat down right in front of Carson. It was quite an electric room. Then, oysters and beer. More walking. Breakfast outside in the Village. Bleeker Street and Marc Jacob's new book store, called "Book Marc." It was super well edited and a lot of fun. Chelsea, costumes, dogs, dogs, dogs!

I know that getting out of town was just what I needed. I signed up for the NaNoWriMo today! That book is finally going to get out of my head.

Whoa! Best of Web nomination

Hey-ya, I just got an email alerting me to my nomination from LITnIMAGE-- my deranged love poem to Saakashvili has been nominated for the Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology! Super happy time. (Sorry, I think Eunice from SSTLS is rubbing off on me, that book IS so super sad and so super funny, truly frightening and hilarious at once. That's an incredible feat and why I love satire.)