Newpages has a cool new feature called Literary News, which features new print lit mags received, new online lit mags posted, and news & announcements from Lit Blogs and the the Web.
One of the news items listed was not new to me, but is still exciting nonetheless: CMU FACULTY MEMBER RECEIVES DISTINGUISHED LITERARY AWARD (Way to go, Kim Chinquee!)
Here’s me. Who are you?
Which John Cusack Are You?
1) This week’s fruit selection is watermelon. I bought a hunk of it at the store (I just cannot handle a whole watermelon. It takes up too much fridge space and is just to fucking unweildy) and just now used my melon baller (you must get yourself one of these) to carve it up into balls. Tasty! I gave Allen a small dish of it because it’s likely the last taste he will get before I eat it all.
2) Let’s switch gears to another sort of melon: my breasts. That’s right the saga of the lingering-handed mammogramist did not end on Monday. Oh no, not at all. In fact, she called me late on Tuesday afternoon to let me know that I would need to come back in for more screens. The radiologist, it seems, saw something in the screens of my left breast which he was labelling “superimposed flesh.” What does this mean? You have got me and the mammogramist did not have a good answer either.
So, me and my super-imposed flesh made our way back to the radiologist on Wednesday where (thank god) we had a different tech–she was all business, no lingering hands or inappropriate questions out of that gal. Nope.
And when I told her that I was nervous because, well, I am just a year shy of the age my mother was when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her left breast, she assured that she would call me as soon as the radiologist had a look.
Yep.
So I left there, scared but comforted that I would soon know. As I drove home, I thought about my mum–how it must have felt for her at age 39, four children–the eldest 16 and the youngest 5, to find out that she would lose her breast, that she might die. What she told me growing up was that what kept her alive, what gave her determination that she would live, was her thoughts of her girls.
And she beat it.
And what would keep me alive? So much. There is so much. Too much.
So I got home and I waited and by the end of the day when I still had not heard, I got angry. I am merely flesh to these people–superimposed flesh. That’s what we all are. Not human, not emotional, and certainly not scared. We are flesh and tumors and scars. That’s it. That’s all.
The next morning, nothing. I call and am told I’ll hear back within the hour. The hour passes. Nothing. Another half hour. Nothing. I call back and am told the results are in transcription and I will hear once the typists are done.
Transcription? What the fuck kind of ridiculous answer is that? I should have said that to her but was so shit scared that could not formulate words.
And so I waited and finally, late in the afternoon, I get the call. “Benign,” is what she said. “Benign.”
So here is all you really need to know: You are not in control here. Do not labor under the illusion that you are, because you’re not. You are flesh. You are superimposed flesh.
But for now I am out of jail again until the next time I return. I am free.
3) It is raining again and will be for however long it must rain. Yesterday we had several torrential downpours and today more rain and rain. Everything feels damp, sticky. Welcome to summer!
Hiya. Someone posted on one of my old posts looking for more information on my experiences at Squaw Valley.
Here’s my wrap up from the past two years:
And just in general let me say that, YES the altitude can really fuck you up if you are not used to it. Bring a hat, sunscreen, a water bottle. Drink water all day, every day. Beware of drinking too much alcohol especially on the night before you have a very early flight home the next day, as the Reno Airport is not somewhere you want to be hungover. Trust me.
Basically, it’s a workshop I loved and got a lot out of–including some great friends.
We are lucky ones today. Here is creative nonfiction from two talented women I am lucky enough to call friend:
What Would You Have Me Do? by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
&
Empathy, by Patricia Parkinson
Happy Summer Solstice. It is the best day of the year. Right now I’m listening to the wood thrush outside my window. Soon it will be gone up north, only to return again, briefly, in autumn. But for now, here’s some lamb’s ear from my garden.
Just got word from Art Stein (whom I’ve connected with through my beloved father-in-law) that the web site for the group, Slate Roof Poets, is now live. Who are Slate Roof Poets, you ask? Here’s a blurb from the site:
Slate Roof is a group of poets who work collectively to publish Franklin County poets. Now in our third year, our membership includes Jim Bell, Trish Crapo, Susan Middleton, Susie Patlove, Ed Rayher and Art Stein. We look forward to welcoming new members into Slate Roof in the spring
of 2006.Slate Roof chapbooks are designed by the poets, with letterpress covers printed by collective member and master printer Ed Rayher of Swamp Press, Northfield, MA. Attention is paid to typography, paper choice and binding. One of our goals is to feature the artwork of local artists. All profits return to the press. Poets retain copyright.
Now, let me just tell you that the chapbooks this group produces are gorgeous inside and out. So why not do yourself a favor and order one today.
Listen, you know and I know that you watched Saved by the Bell at least once, but possibly several times. Indeed, you had no choice, for there was this bleak period of television history in which it seemed to be the only show that was ever on.
As such, it is now your civic duty to save Screech’s house from going into foreclosure, because really, what are we put on this earth for other than to send money to aging childhood stars with fucked up lives?
Kathy Fish’s flash The Photograph is near and dear to my heart as not only do I love the woman and her work, but I was also the editor who accepted this brilliant micro for publicaiton. And now Joe Young has done a beautiful job of writing about this flash and flash fiction in general–Poetics of Flash: An Analysis of Kathy Fish’s ” The Photograph”:
The writer of flash fiction is thus in a unique position to make of her story something more, to set her narrative to purposes other than, or rather we should say in addition to, the unfolding of events. Kathy Fish has provided an excellent example of how this can be done. Her at once engaging drama is also a transparency through which we see the mysteries of time and space, a poem of subtle idea and complex emotion, a whirring train crashing through a snowy night.
1) I got my yearly mammogram today. I’ve had one (or sometimes two) every year since turning 30 for no other reason than I think they are a lot of fun. I don’t know about you but having a stranger manuever your naked breast between two slats of plastic which he/she then turns the crank on so that they push together until your flesh and fat deposits are flattened is my idea of a good time.
Anyway, I do this, because I have to do it to be safe. And I’m glad that we have this test and yet I wish there was something less painful/intrusive.
Inventors of the world: please put your thinking caps on and create a test which is connical and which can be done by yourself so that no one other than you is touching your breast and while you’re at it, please create a self-pap smear exam. Thank you.
I’m not usually bothered by the stranger touching the breast thing for this exam but today the woman was, shall we say, CREEPY. She was sort of spacey and asked weird personal questions (“Do you work?” “Your skin is pink. Do your breasts hurt?”) and then went on random tangents about her dog, all the while letting her hand linger longer than it needed to on my breast.
Needless to say, this was unpleasant and I left there feeling sort of violated (not unlike if I ran into this fellow in the photo). But c’est la vie! Such are the joys of womanhood!
2) In other news, we have some sort of bad polluted air advisory in effect in my county today. We are not used to such things here! What is this thing you call smog?
Well, whatever it is, it’s clogging up our air.
3) Today I also went to the optometrist. My least favorite part of this visit is when he puts the yellow drops in my eyes and shines the blue light in them. Then I have to walk around with the whites of my eyes dyed yellow for the rest of the day. Today, I told him I had an appointment afterwards and so he washed them out with water for me.
Okay, so that pretty much sums it up. Sorry I have been so quiet. Have had company and am crushingly busy, but please do know that I still love you. Truly, I will always love you, so long as your creepy, fat, sweaty hand does not linger on my exposed and waiting to be checked for cancer breast.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue #13, guest edited by none other than the wonderful Katrina Denza (not to mention that it features some of my all-time favorite writers!), is now live and ready for you to enjoy.
myfanwy collins 