Yesterday marked 10 years of marriage to my gorgeous sweet man. We celebrated with a night on the town with my soulmate girlfriend and her sweet man. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun. (Photo by Aaryn.)
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26Jul
Categories: Family life, Me Comments: 10
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21Jul
Categories: 100 Strangers, Uncategorized Comments: 4
12/100: Maria, who was cool until I tried to return a burnt muffin she sold me.
We talk about her cool specs here: [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/12-maria.mp3]13/100 Alex:
Plays really nice guitar [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/13-alex.mp3]And 14/100: James.
Talks to me about, what is “body work,” anyway? [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/14-james.mp3] -
18Jul
Categories: photography is amazing, writing Comments: 2
Are up now. Spread the word.
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12Jul
Categories: Me, writing Comments: 4
The last class is over, and all that remains is graduation: readings, dinner, the Sweatheart Ball (yes, ’sweat’, not ’sweet’). Tomorrow a long drive and a couple plane rides and I’ll have my sweet chickens back in my arms Monday morning. Not much more to say than that, really.
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02Jul
Categories: 100 Strangers, writing Comments: 5
I settled in for my flight across the pond with my packet of workshop stories and my journal, prepared to work and studiously ignore the person in the seat next to me. People don’t like to be bothered, and neither do I. After an hour or so of my seatmate typing diligently on his Mac, and me jotting in my journal, I went to the loo and left my books in my seat. When I returned, he said, “That’s a nice journal,” or words to that effect, and so I told him where it came from and we started talking. He was nice enough, and so I yammered on about my MFA, and about my program, and my writing, and when I finally stopped talking about myself and asked him what was working on, he mentioned that he was, you know, preparing for his interview on Fresh Air because his second book just came out. I squealed (politely), crawled into his lap, and asked if he would consider taking me to the studio with him and introducing me to Terry Gross. “I’m pretty sure she’d like to meet me,” I told him, “Because I’m planning to be a famous author some day, and she’d probably like to make my acquaintance, now, before my interview.”
Okay, not really. But I did question him about everything from Kentucky stud horses to word processing for the rest of the flight. His name is Kevin Conley, and you can find his work in the pages of The New Yorker, Men’s Vogue, and GQ.
He was so terribly interesting, and honestly, how often is it that you get to corner someone truly interesting and talk to them for oh, say, 7 hours? He showed me a picture of himself on fire on his laptop. That particular picture graces the book jacket of his latest book, The Full Burn, so you should probably go run out to your local independent bookstore right this minute and buy it. Kevin also promised he would visit my blog, and my feeling about this is, when a guy that’s lit himself on fire comes to call, you have to make an effort.
So, in my limited computer time, here’s a couple more strangers, for Kevin:
Robert
Hear him school me in London geography: [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/11-robert.mp3]And also Paul, who looks a bit suspicious of me.
[audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/9-paul.mp3] -
30Jun
Categories: Me, writing Comments: 4
Get ready; here I go, dropping of the face of the earth for a bit. See you on the other side.
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27Jun
Categories: Baybish, Family life, Motherhood, Uncategorized Comments: 6
June 2008
On the swing today, in Baxter’s Field: [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/giggle.mp3]
July 2007
While I was uploading that audio file, which I titled “giggle”, I ran across another one, recorded in June last year, titled “marlee-laughs”. This one has bonus material: me alternating between ordering Boyish to perform like a trained monkey for her (”Roll around on the floor again.”), and talking like a baby myself. Warning: baby giggles are contagious.
[audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/marlee-laughs.mp3]
They sure grow up fast, don’t they?
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22Jun
Categories: Family life, Motherhood Comments: 4
What 5 Looks Like, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
Happy Birthday, Big Boyish. It’s been a good day.
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19Jun
Categories: 100 Strangers Comments: 2
We talk here: [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/6-bukky.mp3 ]
And, just so you don’t think me a slacker, I have three or four more strangers in the queue, but I’ve been shooting film lately, and I don’t have a way to get them online yet. I’m working on it.
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17Jun
Categories: writing Comments: 4
For SanDiegoMomma’s Prompt Tuesday, write something inspired by this poem:
Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
Here goes:
Sailor told her parents straight out that she intended to join the circus. Her mother rolled her eyes; her father said “Like hell you are,” but when that lanky boy with the blue-black hair took the center ring she might as well have been gone already. She was gone to another world, a world that unfolded before her that night as she sat in the dusty bleachers, watching the boy return to the rings in front of her again and again: this time juggling fire, that time riding backwards in a ring of thundering horses, and again twirling the long ends of a pearly cloth threaded high through an iron loop, spinning a leggy acrobat until her beaded costume fractured the light like fireworks. She would be his acrobat, she thought, and when they brought out the tiger she wasn’t surprised to see that he was also the one who entered the cage with a whip. The tiger snarled at the boy; the boy flashed his teeth: at the tiger, at the crowd. She imagined him after the show, rubbing the fur behind the tiger’s ears, placing his palms under its great chin, feeling the vibration of its purr quivering beneath his skin.
That night, in her room, she left her nightgown in a puddle of moonlight on the floor, slipped on her jeans and her red boots, and shimmied down the drainpipe outside her window. She’d seen the trailers glowing like lanterns behind the circus tent, heard the crickets’ song calling her to him. He was expecting her, she knew. Soon enough, she would be there.
