Thanks to Marcus for this link.

Yesterday, today, this week:

1) As of late, I have become obsessed with fresh pineapple. That is, I have become obsessed with eating it. I buy one, cut it up, and then commence to eating it–mostly all by myself. I have always been a lover of fruit. I believe I’ve mentioned before that as a child I would often eat a whole bag of navel oranges myself. Now, it’s strawberries, blueberries, pineapple. Oh, especially the sweet, juicy pineapple. I just finished my last one. Must get more.

2) Yesterday the keyboard on my 9 mos old laptop quit working. I tried everything and then I rebooted (big fucking mistake that because how do you type in your password when your keyboard is fucked? The answer: you don’t). The woman at Dell kept telling me to press F8 and I kept telling her, “I’m pressing it but nothing is happening because my KEYBOARD DOESN’T WORK.” By the time Allen got home, I was still on the phone. He followed her directions and opened up my laptop to take the keyboard out. There were many, many (a shameful amount really) of crumbs within, thus I will no longer be eating WASA while I write.

So then I was freaking out because I have work to do (and an invoice to send in!)–so we went to Staples and got this keyboard I am using now, while I await the replacement Dell is sending me. All in all, it was quite a good tech support experience (for me anyway, I pity the woman on the other end who had to deal with my hysteria).

3) So, I’ve switched from the OTC sleeping pills I take to fight my crushing insomnia to Valerian and I must say: So far, so good. The one issue I have is that it seems to amp up the insanity of my already insane dreams. Still, it’s been three days and working quite well (though the taste of the caplets makes me gag–they are that sweet, gaggy vitaminy dusty taste. uhhh uhhh, my mouth fills with saliva just thinking of it).

I heard about Drown, the brilliant collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, for years but never read it until now. Let me just say: It was worth the wait.

There are several recurrent themes running through this collection (the lost father, the regained father, the lost love, brotherhood, betrayal–often sexual) but the one I found most striking was that of facelessness.

You would think that facelessness is synonymous with invisibility, but here it is not. There is something within that facelessness, which makes the person all the more visible–scorned, pitied, hated, feared, and by some, treated with great kindness. The faced want the faceless to be gone for good because they represent the worst fear: That you, too, might one day suffer this fate where all that defines you to the outside world is stripped away, where you are a stranger in a strange land–where you are unloved and unlovable.

“Ysrael” is the boy with no face, his face having been mostly chewed off by a pig when he was an infant. Because of this he wears a mask and awaits a humanitarian intervention in which doctors in Canada are meant to restore his face. But this day never seems to come and he is scorned and beaten, but he is also an object of intense interest. There is something about him that fascinates the other boys; if only they could just see behind his mask. But even when they do, it infuriates them, repulses them. There is nothing in seeing his face that makes them feel better about themselves. It only makes them feel worse, more powerless.

Then when the reader sees the world from his point of view in “No Face,” we understand that though he is deformed and maligned there is still great hope and beauty in his world, though he might not realize it. There is something strong deep within that will keep him alive despite the obstacles. He is a survivor. He will run:

He watches the sun burn the mists from the fields and despite the heat the beans are thick and green and flexible in the breeze. His mother sees him on the way back from the outhouse. She goes to fetch his mask.

He’s tired and aching but he looks out over the valley, and the way the land curves away to hide itself reminds him of the way Lou hides his dominos when they play. Go, she says. Before your father comes out.

He knows what happens when his father comes out. He pulls on his mask and feels the fleas stirring in the cloth. When she turns her back, he hides, blending into the weeds. He watches his mother hold Pesao’s head gently under the faucet and when the water finally urges out from the pipe Pesao yells as if he’s been given a present or a wish come true.

He runs, down toward the town, never slipping or stumbling. Nobody’s faster.

So Ysrael stands for the best hope of all of the faceless within these stories–and the message is to keep going, keep running, keep moving forward no matter how people will push you down and try to keep you from being seen.

In that, a book, which might otherwise be bleak, I found quite hopeful. And so, in the end, what you have is a collection of stories that are beautiful, necessary, and heartbreaking. Read it.

Katrina Denza has an insightful review of Voodoo Heart at MoorishGirl.

Today is my two year blogiversary (for this particular blog). So, yes, for the past two years, I have been boring you with the mundanities of my daily life. Thank you for caring.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane: Here’s my first post.

Here is another letter from the botany notebook. This one traveled approximately 40 miles and was sent to a Mrs. Cyrus Merrill.

Dear Ma-

Goodbye, From,
L—

The long-awaited See You Next Tuesday anthology will be released on June 20th. You won’t want to miss out. Here’s the blurb from the web site:

The recipe for our new anthology is simple: Sex, 50 stories, 1,000 words each, written by 50 authors from all over the globe. A scandalous fusion of literary traditions, See You Next Tuesday is the exclusive and hyper-unusual mishmash of never-seen sex-texts, exploring the inevitable and always poignant cross-sections of human existence and sexuality.

And like our every-day assorted world, See You Next Tuesday is diverse and dappled. In its opening pages, a U.S. marine maneuvers morality. An aching adolescent “finds himself” in a backyard Jacuzzi. And two men discuss the most coveted part of a woman’s body. Not to mention some other issues: inter-office obsessions, obese body thumping, mountain-moving devirginization, incestuous insight, blind ménage à trios, extra-extramarital encounters, much love for man’s best friend and vengeful women with impeccable aim of their…

Yet, friends, do not mistake See You Next Tuesday for a collection of Erotica. The stories herein paint a deeper, three-dimensional landscape. Some of the figures in such landscape just happen to be getting it on.

Today I give you two tasty treats you will not want to miss:

Sue Henderson interviews THE NEW YORKER cover artist, Peter de Seve

&

Canoe, by Roy Kesey

I have an old botany journal that belonged to a young woman–Lucy Merrill–from Oct. 8, 1880. I found it in the basement of an old farmhouse I lived many years ago.

The journal is one of my prized possessions. Within are many pages of notes on botany, including pressed plants, and quite a few flyers for performances and school graduations. Additionally, there are several letters–most of them are from the 19th century and are not as legible as the one I have transcribed below. They are all–however–equally touching in their desire to reach out and touch the person written to and in the desire to hear news back.

This letter only traveled about ten miles. That’s how far apart they were and yet this was the fastest way to communicate. The stamp was two cents. Two cents for ten miles.

It seems we have not changed so much. We yearn to communicate, especially with those we hold dear. The miles that separate us may be vast and yet we come together so easily through our words on the screen, we share our mundanities, we reach out, and ask that you reach back to us, ask that you tell us your news.

Below is a letter written to Merrill Taylor (I have no idea his or the letter writer’s relation to Lucy Merrill):

March 30, 1922

Lots of love from your old “sis”
Catherine

Curves, by my beautiful friend Patricia Parkinson, over at The Canadian Writers Collective:

The final part of a story, the part of a woman that holds the most curves, is her mind. A woman’s mind holds the key to conflict, the capacity to understand and empathize, and most importantly, the mind holds a knowledge of emotion and this insight, if we dare, gives us the ability to express these feelings, the pain, the loss, hopefully the joy without fear. The story might not stop here, as this analogy is based on a woman and we all know it’s a woman’s perogative to change her mind, the plot line might come to another curve instead of to the end.

I’ve not read Thomas Berger’s Neighbors, but after reading this interview with Tom Perrotta about the man and the book, I’m going to look for it–Tom Perrotta Hails Suburban Sendup ‘Neighbors’:

There’s no question that Neighbors is a suburban novel that can stand alongside such classics of the genre as John Updike’s Rabbit Redux and Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Ultimately, though, Neighbors seems to transcend history and geography in a way that these solider, more earthbound novels don’t. Beneath the antic surface of his story, Berger seems to be making a larger philosophical point about the fragility of civilization itself and the stubborn persistence of our primitive impulses.

This is a cool and yet creepy advance in robotics–Robot sensors go touchy-feely:

Robots are one step closer to having a human sense of touch, thanks to a thin, flexible film that mimics the sensitivity of a human finger. The device may become useful in the next generation of robots and in automated tools used for microsurgery.