You Don’t Have to Live Here by Natasha Radojcic is the heartbreaking story of a young woman named, Sasha–part Muslim, part Gypsy Christian–who makes her way from Yugoslavia to Cuba to Greece and finally, to New York City where she finds her place in the world, at least for the time being.

It is a beautiful, quick read that will threaten to tear you in two for the sadness this young girl endures as she endures her mother’s illness and death, as well as the endless search for a lover or drug that will make her feel less pain:

I never tried to be exquisite. I never tried. I was just thirsty. The thirst is always there. Long before I stopped the drinking and the heroin, long before I even started it. The thirst attached itself to me, changed me. I became thirst, and the men knew. Even today, right this minute. I am thirsty.

Partly this thirst is a desire for love, for acceptance, but mostly, I think, it is about survival. If you keep feeling the thirst, you will know you are alive. As soon as something quenches it, you stop seeking and then you are done. I understand that. I get it. It’s not something that goes away.

Through her many weaknesses, then, Sasha is a character of great strength–she knows how to use her brain and whatever else she has available to her to escape, to survive. And in that she is admirable. Heroic, even.

This book is not an easy read, in that it is rather bleak, but I will say you will be glad you read it. I know I am.

For more information on Natasha Radojcic, you may want to read this: The Bottom of Madness

Read The Kenyon Review Summer 2006 pretty much from cover to cover the other day. Starting with David H. Lynn’s notes (astute commentary on the state of CNF):

Truman Capote got it right when he called In Cold Blood a “nonfiction novel.” He was suggesting that the great strength of novels is precisely that they can give us, through the transformative magic of narrative and imagination, deeper insights into those human truths that matter most.

On through André Bernard’s “The Casual Reader,” Don Lee’s poignant “A Preference for Native Tongue,” M. Allen Cunningham’s hilarious and sad “Twelve Monthly Devotions,” and ending with William Walsh’s “When Language Fails: An Interview with Eamon Grennan.”

There was much else that I read within the pages but these were the pieces that stuck with me the longest, particularly Randy Fertel’s heartbreaking and yet hopeful “Katrina Five Ways” (which should be a must read for everyone):

After Katrina, pundits wondered aloud how our forefathers could have been so foolish to think that technology could hold back the sea from a city half below sea level. But, of course we built on the drained backswamps. Our imperial view of nature was our hubris–or stupidity if you will–but it was America’s hubris and stupidity writ small. In this, as in so much else, New Orleans is the soul of America.

FRiGG is one of my favorite ezines. The editors have unflinching an eye for what they like. And they never, ever disappoint.

Want to learn more about what makes FRiGG tick? Here’s an interview with the magnificent Ellen Parker, FRiGG’s EIC.

The only thing I didn’t like about The Good Life, a collection of stories by Erin McGraw, was that it ended. I would have liked for the book and each story within to go on and on.

In its core this is a book about relationships–all types of relationships: marital, extra-marital, friendships, mentorships, and those relationships we have with people we don’t necessarily care for but are thrust into nonetheless. It’s about how when we should be living the good life–when we may have or are close to everything we ever wanted–there is still that tickle inside, that mosquito of self-doubt that creeps in.

On the one hand, the good life, then, is mythical, unattainable. And, on the other, the good life is now. Right now. Whatever you are living is it, because it is all about being alive and breathing in that moment.

I was struck dumb by how easily McGraw put herself into the world of a Catholic seminary (time and again) and created a vision that seems not only real but entirely plausible. Also, into the world of a dancer, a singer, and a tortured writer of self-help books. From reading all of these various points of view, one gets the impression McGraw is an expert observer of the human condition. She understands fear, she gets loneliness, longing.

If pressed to pick out a favorite story (among all these favorites), I would have to say that the final story of the collection, “One for My Baby” is the story that will stick with me the longest (likely because it was the one I read last but mostly because it has an impossibly, tragically funny scene that involves spreading ashes and pigeons and a hawk). It is a love story between a man and a woman and a woman and an ideal love–none of these things coming together at the right time until the very end.

It is about love that does not die even when it gets hit by a bus–it is love between friends which is always more and never enough. Aless has agreed to hike up into the Sierra Nevada with Patrick, the man she loves but who is pining for his dead wife, Eleanora. They are meant to be spreading Eleanora’s ashes in her favorite place but when things go awry, they end up making do and with this comes a breakthrough, a moment of letting go and reawakening:

“Would you teach me to sing?” he says.

For an interesting moment, the world turns white. Aless can’t even see Patrick, although she hears his smooth voice, which has asked so many things. The asking never stops, nor the giving.

“Open your mouth,” she says. “Then make the biggest sound you can.”

He lets out a little croak. “More,” she says.

His second attempt is almost the same; she can see self-consciousness freezing his mouth. She taps his jaw, which she has never touched before. “Bigger! Yell! Raise the roof!” To show him what he should be doing, she opens her own mouth and lets sound pour out. For a moment her roar obliterates everything–wind and bird calls and distant, prowling creatures. Patrick stops and looks at her admiringly, and she gestures at him to join her. He opens his mouth again and does a little better.

McGraw seems to have an innate sense of how people think and speak and feel and move and that comes through beautifully in her stories. I was struck time and again by the naturalness of the dialogue–particularly that easy flow between friends who love (or don’t love) each other too much. It’s a wonderful collection. I hope you will read it.

For more information about her, here’s an interview with Erin McGrawon the Emerging Writers Network.

I love Katie Weekley‘s writing–she is so funny and honest. And once again she does not disappoint with Internal Power Wash:

When I stepped into the honey, the Third Assistant Director stared at me like he was Mulder in a super important cliffhanger episode of the X-Files. Sure enough, I was green as an alien when I looked in the mirror. Then I immediately discovered the worst way to serve mushroom cannelloni. If you are going to visit Opposite Land or Bizarro World, call me because I now have the recipe that serves one hefty portion, in reverse.

I turned on comment moderation last night–for no other reason than I am going to be gone off and on over the summer, sometimes with limited internet access and so I didn’t want there to be any hanky-panky going on while I wasn’t here to monitor.

Also, if anyone posted anything in comments and then had second thoughts, I didn’t want them to be left hanging while I was away.

So, that’s my explanation. Please don’t feel censored and please keep posting comments because I love them.

Got this info from Utahna Faith and so am passing it on–sounds like a great contest:

Wild Strawberries: a journal of flash fiction and prose poetry is running a contest. We are looking for the best flash fiction story or prose poem about an animal or animals left behind and living in New Orleans after the flood. We are a small press print publication, and we publish literary flash fiction and prose poetry.

Entries for this contest should be between 250 and 700 words. One entry per writer, please. Deadline July 7. No entry fee. Please send your entry in plain text in the body of an email to: wildstrawberries@earthlink.net

Winner will be announced July 14 on the Wild Strawberries website: wildstrawberries.org

The winning entry will be published in _Wild Strawberries_ issue four, and the winner will receive the usual author payment (choice of: two copies of the issue in which the piece appears plus a $10US honorarium, two copies plus a one-year subscription, or four copies). We ask for first serial rights (print and electronic) and six months exclusive publication.

Looking forward to reading your work!

Best,
Utahna Faith
Editor, Wild Strawberries: a journal of flash fiction and prose poetry

If you like history, and strong, intelligent women, you will likely find Empress by Shan Sa a fascinating book.

Empress is the story of Heavenlight, or as she later becomes known, Empress Wu, China’s first and only female emporer, who ruled during some of the most golden years of the Tang Dynasty.

A commoner, Heavenlight is raised humbly but it does not take long for her quick mind to be noticed and before long she is made a concubine in the Forbidden City. From there she becomes a nun and then the wife of an emporer. Finally she rises in the ranks until she is the supreme ruler. We follow her every step of the way–all of the horror and the beauty. We watch as she disposes of her enemies (or perceived enemies) and as she cold-heartedly makes her way through lovers (men, women, and children–even her own sister does not escape her desire), and finds rare glimpses of love.

Weighed down by the constant attention she must pay and be paid as leader and by the ever present pressure to name a successor, there is no place she feels more free than when she is upon a horse (just as when she was a child), where she can once again contemplate mortality and realize that one day she will die:

On some days at the end of the afternoon, I would go for a long riade through the Imperial Park on one of my horses. The thought of this period of escape brightened by mood from the moment I woke. The vermillion glow of the setting sun tinted the tops of the trees and turned the River Luo into a ribbon embroidered with golden waves. A retinue of animals followed me: dogs, leopards, giraffes, and elephants. There were many men to dispute the honor of leading my steed by the bridle: my nephews the kinds; Lai Jun Chen, the magistrate; and the Great Ministers. It was when I was inspired by the melancholy calm of these rides that I improvised my most beautiful poems.

Deep in the forest, eunuchs would free thousands of birds: blackbirds, orioles, skylarks, and thrushes launching themselves into the skies. Their song, an exuberant hymn to life full of virtuoso trills, moved me to tears. The more I was surrounded, the more I was alone. Dusk was falling. It would soon be everlasting night.

It is a beautiful, continually interesting book. I wasn’t sure at first about the narration, but soon I realized that I was climbing inside the head of a complex woman for whom I had complex feelings–I loved the way she saw beauty, but I despised the way she treated other human beings with such callous disregard. Still, that Shan Sa was able to give me these sides of her subject is astonishing–I could easily have found Empress Wu entirely distasteful, but instead I found that at times I was able to find compassion for her and her situation. Like most humans–even those in charge of huge empires who may seem to lack any sense of humanity–she was multi-faceted, and in the dark of night when she was with her thoughts of death, she was alone and might have been scared.

Ultimately, this book recounting a time 1300 years old, feels relevant today–especially as I live in a country which has yet to elect a female president. Does a woman need to rule like a man in order to become elected? Must she lose some of her natural proclivity toward compassion? And, most importantly, might she not do a better job than many of the men around her? Might she not, in fact, shine and bring in a new, golden age?

These were dreaded words in the rural community where I grew up. You never, ever wanted to hear that everyone on your bus was called to the nurse’s office, because this meant one of two things–either someone had lice or someone had scabies (or ringworm–forgot about that one).

Luckily, my bus was never, ever called to the nurse’s office. I left school free from mites and parasites.

This morning, however, I woke up feeling that my bus had been called. Why? Well, about two weeks ago I got a weird rash on my hands, right in between my pinky and the finger next to it–on both hands. I had a rash on my hands similar to this five years ago, but in a different location. At that time the dermatologist I saw prescribed a topical ointment and it went away. It was, according to him, an allergic reaction to something in my garden.

I figured that’s what this was but then this morning when the rash still had not gone away, I convinced myself–even though none of the photos were remotely similar to my rash–that I had scabies.

Learning from my research that ANYone can get scabies, I headed into a downward spirl nonetheless.

Where had I gotten them? How would I get rid of them? I’d need to have this pesticide applied to my whole body and then basically scald everything else in the house. One web site suggested putting shoes in plastic bags and putting them in the freezer (!?!?!).

Allen would have to tell his work and anyone who had been in contact with him would need treatment.

I would have to contact all of our relatives that we’d seen a few weeks ago and let them know.

Then our niece would have to call her school and tell them that a scabies infected woman had attended her graducation.

I would throw out all of our bedding and clothes.

We would move.

Perhaps to a different country where no one knew us.

We would become nudists, live off the land, embrace our scabiness.

Luckily, I live right across the road from my doctor and was able to get in there immediately. Within about two seconds the doctor told me that it is not scabies; it’s eczema. It’s stress/allergy related and it’s really common (and I’m prone to eczema anyway and so should know this!). He told me that if I had scabies, it would have already spread and I would have seen the burrow marks of the mites underneath my skin quite obviously and I would have marks on my wrists, etc. etc.

I nearly fainted from relief when he told me and I even recalled for him the whole bus being called down to the nurse’s office story. At which point, I think I was starting to freak him out so he left to get my prescription.

And so while yesterday I survived the T-Zone, today I survived the scabies scare of 2006.

That’s right–Another Bite of the Apple–the highly-anticipated sequel to Robin‘s excellent Three Days in New York City is now available for purchase. To give you a taste, here’s an excerpt.

In order to reach new heights with my inanety, I would like to take this opportunity to debunk a few myths that I, in the naivete of my youth, took as fact.

1) If you pop a zit in the T-zone, you will die an immediate, painful death: I remember seeing a movie in health class about acne or puberty or some mixture of the two. This movie put much focus on the dastardly “T-Zone”–the top of the T being your forehead and the bottom of the T being your nose (and area beside your nose) and chin. I remember that this zone was characterized as a zone of death–the pus from any popped therein would go immediately to your brain and somehow kill you. This was unfortunate news as most of my zits (I hate the word “zit” but I hate even more the words “pimple” and “blemish” so am at a loss–but if you have a suggestion for a better word, please do let me know) at that time were on my forehead. Regardless, I did, on occasion, throw caution to the wind and pop zits in the T-Zone and I have lived to tell.

2) If you pop a zit, you will get a scar: This is what my mother (of the perfect skin–she actually told us she used VASELINE as moisturizer when she was young. Vaseline! Can you even imagine? My head would become one giant whitehead) told us growing up. Do not pop them! Don’t do it! AND if you must do it, then hold a washcloth under steaming hot water and then press it on the thing until it pops itself (Have you ever tried this? Painful does not even begin to describe what a piping hot washcloth on a whitehead feels like). Still, scars be damned, I popped them! I have no scars from such poppage, but still I think my mother had my best interests at heart.

3) Once you turn 20 you will never, ever have another zit: Not quite sure where this one came from–some sort of urban legend I clung to and believed. Needless to say, my 20s were my most zit filled years, mainly because I took absolutely shitty care of myself and my skin paid the price. Thanks to my best friend teaching me some stuff about what cleansers and moisturizers to use (she worked at The Body Shop at the time), I was able to clear up my skin. Now, at age 38, I only get the occasional zit, but I do still get them.

And so, the reason I’m writing this is because I had an enormous, painful zit beside my nose this morning–in the “T-Zone” and I worried over it for a few minutes, actually considered whether I was willing to risk life and limb to pop it. Ultimately, I decided it was too fucking unsightly and had to go. But I made my mother happy by first doing the washcloth thing and when that didn’t work I did what was necessary.

Sweet relief–but also a moment of abject terror as the eye above it started to go a bit blurry. Would I go blind?

Nope. An hour has passed and I am neither blind nor dead. I have once again survived the T-Zone.

Just finished reading the interesting nerve.com interview with John Updike, which offered such gems as this:

What Freud had proclaimed was that happiness relates to sex. If your sex is good, you are good. If it’s not, you’re not. That kind of sexual fulfillment was very hard to attain. And even once you attain it, it tends to leak away, so there’s a constant fever of human unhappiness that characterizes our condition.