I take the train into a bad neighborhood and cut through the city with a bus. 
   Although interesting characters sometimes present themselves in that route, there seems to be a banality to the time spent changing from one vehicle to another.  
   But on the days when I'm late and the sky is dark, or like tonight when I want to be dropped a little closer home by a bus that takes me a wee bit nearer the door because of tornado winds and howling dogs or wailing banshees dropping to the earth, I venture into center city. 
   And below a pavilion near the berth, benches are fixed to the brick pavers to offer relief.  
   Now, I have books in my shelves that were free for the taking from many sources, but this bench has had books on several days just sitting there.  
   And yes, I have rescued a few of the orphaned books to give them a home in my bag, on my shelf and in my mind.  
​   Tonight, in the windy rain, I walked to the bus and stood without concern of the bench, but noticed there was a gentleman with a heavy beard and a cap made of hemp standing over the books.  Within his hands and between his fingertips, he flipped pages of a William Burroughs book.  I wondered if he was the responsible party.  I wondered if he was just bidding adieu to a favorite work before placing it upon the bench. 
   "Are there books here again?"  I asked the question hoping he would hand me the book at which he was looking, tell me his mission and offer him my name. 
   He responded, "Yeah.  I've seen stacks of books here before.  Who leaves them here?" 
   I smiled and realized he was as clueless as I.  He noticed my eyes and said unequivocally, "I'm taking this one."  
   I picked up the blue fabiric clad piece and flipped through it to find it was signed on the title pages although the words did not interest me.  I wanted that Burroughs.  
   "What is this about?  Who leaves the books here?"  He asked as if I had some secret knowledge behind by smile, but truly I only think it's a brilliant way to get folks to keep fingers on paper in an age of digitized transitiory rubbish.  Words are now strung together as almost a remnant of hurried thought with more concern about a thumbs up from the masses than an introspective analysis of one's reason.
   Hemp-topped-Beard smiled again and said, "There is an independent book store around the corner.  Maybe someone there leaves them?" 
   I nodded and shared something that happened recently in my family.  My sixteen year old daughter had a baby shower to attend.  She had no clue what to buy for someone expecting their first child.  The mama-to-be shared with my daughter when she was a baby, her parents were poorer than they wanted to be.  Money was used for necessities, not books.  But, stories were a necessity.  In the time she spent alone with her daughter, this very clever mother used paper and pens to draw pictures and write tales for the little one.  By the time the little one had a little sister, there were volumes of stories this mama shared.  And by her third baby, she had a library of books that were both purchased from the store as well as the homemade ones.  
   So, my daughter received an invitation with a simple request, written in rhyme:  Gifts are always appreciated but instead of spending extra money on wrapping and a card, a small book would be lovely.  She even suggested used book stores or thrift shops and recycling old children's books.  
   My daughter only took books in a little basket for the kid.  Her favorite, her sister's favorite, a few old standards and a book that was jsut released this year when the little one would be born.  Turns out not many at the party adhered to the request and as a result, my daughter was a superstar understanding the importance of a story for this family. 
   There is a story everywhere.  It's a matter of listening to it.  Sometimes we have to tell it.  Sometimes we have to pick it up and bring it home.  Sometimes we leave it behind for another.

   I signed up for a writing challenge to blog every day of October.  I figured it would be a great way prepare for Nanowrimo - which is a month of writing on one project with a goal of 50,000 words.     Day One I walked through my day with some fire in my belly knowing everything had the potential to show up here on this internet vent and although i should have retreated into my head to take notes on certain occurrances, I totally burst out with some things I should not have said and found the lesson of the day was simply, "sometimes i should close my mouth and walk out of the room."  
   When i had time to write about all the ups and downs of my day which were humorous in my opinion with the cathartic process of vomitting it through my fingertips on to the screen, i sighed heavily and my computer decided for me to shut down and walk away.  That is to say, the program stopped working and because i was writing ferociously, i had only saved the title, which was in fact, Day One.  
   It was after midnight, so Oct. 1 was now Oct. 2 and it was really day two then.  Already i felt overwhelmed and like i had failed.  
   I realized it was nothing more than expressing how once again i took on too much.  Even took that nifty photo of my dinner to illustrate i just didn't have time for one more thing, but i would try my best to get everything done.  
   Day two started with the same kind of hopefulness.  i had been struggling with depression for a few weeks and the constant churning in my head of what i needed to do was daunting - intimidating really.  I am overwhelmed at some giant task before me.  And if I'm ready to expose it to the world, I suppose the words will come through my fingers and my computer will let it remain on the screen to publish to the web of folks out there reading on the other sides of their computer screens.
   I've been living with my mom for a few months now.  It was just supposed to be a couple days when i could no longer walk in fear and insecurity within my home.  And now it is time to return, clean up and move forward.  I keep giving myself one more thing so I don't have time to go and do something as simple as bleach the stairwell.  The word that keeps popping into my brain is immobility.  I'm immobile right now.  I wake up and care for some of the things on my to do list and beat myself up for not completing all that i have taken on.  i allot an hour of writing here and there throughout my day as time allows and find some days i can't get to those sixty minutes - never beating myself up for neglecting something that would bring me pleasure.    So day two ended without a blog post, exhaustion and nothing of value except the motivation from my youngest baby to get that row house cleaned up so i can actually move back in and write within my home.  
   Day three, i woke with a sense of humility, believing i was not going to get anything done.  I had taken some time for me the night before and shared food, drink and merriment - i had no business in felicitious companionship when there was so much work to be done.  I figured out an extremely complicated coffee machine and then moved on with my day crossing things off my to-do list.  No time for writing.  No energy to walk back into the home i understand now i want to avoid.  
   i think i'm done this entry for now.  i'm floundering with how to cleverly find the words to allude to events in my life, keeping them broad and suggestive or just exposing myself with words that define the literal for my days.  i don't think i'm ready for either right now.​
   What i am ready for is to write again in my own row house and know the only way i'm going to do that is on this day four, under the title of a number that has followed me throughout my life, to make a huge step to return to the regular even if i can't ever get to the normal.
   

Everything i wrote was lost.

     It's dead bird season again.  
     I wrote those words in Sevy's Cosmica Sidera as one of Sevy's internal dialogues and although Sevy is based on a person completely separate from me, I think he's more like me than I care to admit.  Sevy was called birdman because he poked around at dead birds.  Not because he had an affinity for dead things, but he had this complete lack of understanding why life could not last forever. 
     Last week, I was waiting for the bus to start my commute and I watched baby pigeons playing in a parking lot.  They were definitly babies.  And if I had to put cartoony voices to them they would definitely be squealing in joy that their mates were playing and their collective curiosity surrounded the scene.  There was a vibrance I scarcely notice with birds because of an unreasonable fear that they will turn on me, gather other avians and peck my eyes out.  (Not kill me, just a painful and permanent reminder of their dominance leaving me in darkness so I can't see them coming after me ever more.) 
     I saw the cheerful little ones on a morning after I saw a featherless dead one lying in my path with flies gathering to eat its remaining flesh.  And that was a day after I could not go into my mother's back yard because another featherless one was lying in the grass two steps out from the kitchen. 
     That's how I usually cross the dead birds some time late July, early August each year - the little ones that may have something wrong with them, discarded by their mama, or shoved from the nest when she is out swallowing bugs and seeds to vomit into their little beaks.  "Where's Jimmy?"  she would ask the remaining little bastards who reply, "Who?  By my troth Mama, there were only three of us when you left." 
     But every now and then, there is a bird that appears to have fallen dead, full of its feathers without blood or anything implying foul play just lying in my path.  
     And I have nothing to say about any of this other than to say, it is in fact dead bird season again.  

     It has been too long since I have written for me.  It has been too long since I have written for this site.  It has been too long since I have put care or effort into anything more than the mechanics of waking and sleeping.  My brain is atrophied and my spirit is weak. 
     That being said, I have not been idle in my steps.  I have been cautious to have purpose in the small steps I take, so that when I reflect upon my days, they may have value, if not to me, then certainly to another [purpose]. 
     I do forty percent of my intention; so it does not surprise me when I make plans and don't actually show up.  It does not surprise me that when I'm inspired to write, I do not.  
     I went to see my father in his grave and the internal work leading up to the visit was difficult.  My brain poked at me and asked, "How long has it been since you've seen your father?" and then started calculating the time to lay a path of guilt.  My brain chastised, "You don't even know the cemetery name!  You only know the approximate location!  Bad, bad kid!" 
     I thought on the memories of my father and reflected on none.  They came like sharp needles in my thoughts with sharp words that I would no longer hear audibly.  
     In my daily life, I came to know two ladies with graves of loved ones in the same cemetery.  They checked on the other's plot from time to time and spoke of the landscaping and upkeep.  It seemed to be an extension of housekeeping for them to have their appointments to visit and keeping fresh flowers rotating with the ones wilted from the previous season.  
     I remember going with my father to my grandparents graves and we would sit or kneel and pray and talk.  It was important to go visit.  We didn't always have flowers.  I think I was the only kid in our family who ventured into Holy Sepulchre with  my dad?  I don't know - I was indifferent to a lot as a child.  
     So, in the past ten years I have realized that I have always wanted to be an accountant because the only man of whom my father spoke with respect as I grew up was his accountant.  He spoke of this man's intelligence to add a row of numbers and create a balance sheet when my father owned a dairy farm.  So, for me, school wasn't important because I was a girl he said; but to the contrary, he valued the intelligence of this stranger.  And I hear it in my own experience.  When I say, "I'm an accountant," many furrow their brow and say something banal like, "You must be really smart."  And the thought rages in my head, "I AM SMART!"  but not because I can organize numbers.  It is my opinion that the ability to reason is equated with intelligence.  And I search for knowledge and keep my brain busy so that I will be smart.  Not because it's important to my father - although realizing this, he didn't even know how to say that it was.  
     So, in this epiphany, knowing my father thought his accountant was the bees knees, I wondered if I focused on math skills and took accounting theory and then later majored in the field, ultimately getting the jobs I've had to please my father?  And the resounding answer in my head, of course is -- yes.  
     And to quell any curiosity about his pride in knowing I was an accountant, he never understood that was in fact my profession.  He dropped me off, toting clean laundry, at the dorm not understanding my major.  He wanted me to get a better job throughout my life - something with a pension (and a time machine?), he would say.  Before he passed away, he asked me if I was still a secretary and how long I had to work until retirement.  And when I said, "I'm an accountant Dad."  He responded, "That's a good job.  I hope you make it."  As if I hadn't been accounting for inventories and finances for decades already.
     My writing and drawing was always squashed by the same man.  Sure he told me how great it would be if I could become a cartoonist; 'but you have to be really good to make any money at it,' he warned; 'and this is not good enough.'  And yes, of course a child doesn't realize that a man who struggled his whole life to pay bills and ultimately retired from the police force after a terrible accident is not qualified in the least to critique her creativity -- but still, squash! 
     I digress to the cemetery.  I wandered around looking for his grave and felt more guilt.  In my younger days I knew exactly where headstones were for folks with interesting names or extreme ages within the cemeteries in the city through which I would tramp.  And yet, now I could not find my dad.  
     What a dummy I was not to ask, not to prepare, not to organize this trek to the grounds.  
    So, I started over again.  To the corner of the grounds in which I knew he now laid.  I counted up nine and four over.  Nothing.  Start over.  The numbers had to be correct.  Up nine and four over.  A hole. I walked over the other tiles that laid flat upon the earth and found him.  Exactly where he was said to be.  I laughed aloud and a man wearing his very best military garb turned to me and said, "You finally found him, eh?"  Yeah.  Yeah I did.  I found in the ground, sunken into the earth, a marble stone that read my family name with both my mother and father.  
     I climbed over the stone and sat atop the mound of soil that presented itself from the sinking stone and laughed with my father for having a stone that was four times the size of any of his new neighbors and told him he was showing off, like he warned the rest of the world not to do.  
     I talked to him a lot that day.  And I don't know the result, other than I know I have to make the serene conversations with this ghost a part of my routine.  It was the cup of coffee on Sunday morning when everyone else was in church.  It was the drive out to the park  to turn over the car so the engine would not forget its purpose. It was time with my dad that no one else could understand.  
     I watched yet another version of Hamlet this week and I of course had to share with the world that I had found it.  So on facebook I wrote my little introduction to the video and edited it over and over again because I was reflecting on his descent into madness.  It reminded me of a few things and triggered some thought.  
     I decided that a better turn of phrase would be an ascent to madness.  For if a descent is a downward motion and the earth/ground is below us, the term grounding would be a descent.  Conversely, to have one's head in the clouds/to think lofty ideas/to be aloof? would be light and airy - not at all grounded in reality -  where we all wind up in the soil becoming dust.  Very plainly I shall say, it occurred to me that the path to madness is an ascension and to remain grounded is nothing more than a descent into one's grave.
     I thought again about this heavy stone sinking into the ground prematurely.  And my thoughts aren't all sorted out with it yet.  (Unlike numbers, my thoughts don't fit into neat little columns.)  In the eulogy I wrote for my father, I noted his need to work through the mechanics of living.  Make sure there are groceries and locking the door at night.  I didn't mention I couldn't see his passions.  There was nothing lofty to counteract the dirt and grounding of life.  I was angry that I was finally exploring my creativity and didn't want to acknowledge that he had any.  I was bothered by the missed time cowering to working hard to the objective of getting through to the sunset.  I was angry that he set me up to want a grounded reality being rewarded with nothing but a pile of sinking dirt.
      I don't know where all this is going.  I have been thinking all these things for over  a month, with everything being so important I'm making notes in my head and then balling up the scraps in my head when I can't make sense of them .  
     So, it's been too long.  For everything.  I've been walking through my days getting stuff done and even having a good time doing it.  But I feel like there is something so completely missing to make me whole.  And at the same time, I feel like it could just be I'm looking too hard for the heavy rock that's going to hold me in the ground instead of letting me breathe the air and float into the clouds for a bit with some freedom.  And understanding my thoughts have defined the descent into reality and ascent into madness, I wonder how open I am to the ascension of freedom knowing that when I feel most crazy--- I guess I haven't worked it all out yet. 

     When I started my current work in progress over a year ago, I knew I had to murder someone for the story.  And I knew who it would be.  I even knew the weapon and method.  What I did not know was the events that would reasonably make sense leading up to the demise of my main character's husband.  (spoiler?) 
     Honestly, I have not worked diligently on this project and partly is because the main character is so personal and I want to honor every aspect of her personality.  I want to assure that I convey enough of her life that the reader falls in love with her, just as I have. 
     At the beginning of April I was stuck.  Total writers block.  I knew the objective, but my brain would not contrive circumstances that made sense.  And then while in a hot tub one day, I had an epiphany about including a sauna.  I thought this would move the story along and give me more time to create tension and discord with my characters while allowing the calendar to tick away through the pages of the writing.  
     And then a very unexpected revelation came to me while riding the train in the morning.  I could use the sauna as a tool in the murder.  It is going to be perfect I am certain.  But I couldn't stay home and write.  So I made notes and I am obsessed these past few days.  I wanted to post the status on facebook that I had figured out the murder and couldn't be happier!  I snickered in public thinking how I would have to explain myself yet again but beamed knowing that only a writer would think in such terms.

     I have not written anything new in a while.  Certainly I have not written anything moving me along as a writer.  Still frequently, I think the words will string themselves together if I just focus for a moment and allow them to speak through me.
     Now, life gets in the way sometimes and for sure my days and nights have been full of things that are just not writing and for that matter nothing lending to creativity.  
     And then it happens.  I walk down the street and looking in the intersection, as I have a tendency to do, I see another toynbee tile.  This one is in fact just about two blocks from the crappy house in the bad neighborhood I live. 
     I started noticing these tiles - oh who knows how long ago it was - that's not true, i know exactly when I noticed them... I had been on JFK Blvd and my eye caught one under my feet.  Within a month, I had tried to map out the tiles, believing they were an art installation with a big picture I just could not figure out.  Then in the year 2000, I stood at 16th and Chestnut Streets looking down at the biggest tile I had seen to date.  It was part of the manifesto reading how the tiles should be laid alone and calling the media folk hellions. 
     At the time, I lived in a neighborhood that didn't seem to have any tiles.  I only saw them when I was in center city.  Then I went to Steve's Bug Off Insectarium - the museum devoted to bugs in a neighborhood farther from center city than my own in Philly.  There was one right there in the intersection I had to pass to get into the oddball museum.  I was convinced it was another marker for an oddity and more than ever I had to figure out how to map out these tiles.  
     Then another in the northeast.  And another.  There may have been as many in the northeast as in center city.  We moved to the wrong side of the river and then back to [South Philly].  First walk to the grocery store, there is a tile on some little street that few would use.  A documentary was released about these tiles and the man suspected to have laid them.  I lived two blocks away from his home.  I made sure when I was walking the dog or heading to the store, I walked past his house to maybe catch a glimpse of him.  From the documentary, I inferred that he suffered from paranoia and it wasn't my intention to frighten him.  I just wanted to know more about these tiles.  The more I looked into this man, the more I felt a connection and kept thinking he was seeing something others could not.  
     As an aside, while watching A Beautiful Mind, it was pointed out that John Nash saw things that others did not.  His brain, although brilliant, was skewed and he suffered from schizophrenia.  I remember saying, "Why can't his wife see the things he does?"  The reaction from my movie buddy was this puzzling look that I could not read.  
     With Sevy Verna, the man suspected to lay the tiles, I was so curious what let him see something that the rest of us couldn't.
     At any rate, I have several projects needing a re-write (including Sevy's Cosmica Sidera featuring Severino) and I feel like I haven't got it in me to begin.  And then I see another tile.  I moved again.  I no longer live a few blocks away from Sevy's house.  I had not expected to see this tile.  And even more strange, I walked a way I never walk to get to the train in the morning.  It was a series of coincidental circumstances reminding me that I need to be mindful of this writing so that I can let it out in a steady stream instead of the vomit of words making little sense to anyone but me.  
     I read recently that writing is the art and publishing is the business.  There are stressors that trigger when thinking about reading the work for publishing and I am not even sure that is the direction I want to go with my work.  
    I always thought art to be a struggle.  Without really hard personal anguish there is no epiphany allowing the sharing of something greater than we are.  The banality of suffering provides a commonality, but that moment that an artist translates their victory over the struggle is the moment art is born. 
     I've heard art is the murder of habit - merely the unexpected.  I think to translate that more concisely would be to say it is the interruption of habit.  We have to return to our habits and routine, but there is definitely an art to having the unexpected creep into our days. 
     I had a friend say to me once, an artist sees things differently than the rest of the world.  He meant there did not necessarily have to be suffering or something extreme and unexpected for art to happen.  And I reflect on these words each time I sit to write.  I wonder what it is I can do to make the reader of my work see things as I see them - because I don't think I have ever seen things quite the way most folks do.