Philip K. Dick meets Sue Monk Kidd

The cocktail party started later than I expected. For some reason I thought it would be outside and that we would mingle in clusters on a Manhattan balcony. I thought there would be music and starlight and champagne. Instead there was cigarette smoke and red wine; elbow-to-elbow, the glitterati gathered, each one more talented than the next.

I felt invisible the moment I walked in the door.

White skin glimmered; red lips waxed long and low in sultry tones. Black dresses, low-cut, black suits, open collars. They didn’t have to work at being chic. It came naturally. After years of pretending to fit in, they finally did.

They broke the rules. I was still struggling to learn them.

A cacophony of voices—sweet as a mother’s lullaby, rough as a new lover’s kiss—rolled over me. Seduced me. They were all here, crowded into this one magnificent Art Deco penthouse. All the writers I had ever admired. I closed my eyes and took in one long jealous breath, wished that I could capture the magic of their words in my chest, wished that my fingers would tingle with their enchantment.

Then I moved through the slender, catlike bodies. Noted black and white shadows, long graceful necks, dark glowing eyes. I listened. I walked between them, searching.

Finally I paused, somewhere between Philip K. Dick and Sue Monk Kidd. Somewhere between rippling silk and replicant snakeskin. That was when I heard it.

The voice.

His voice.

Sensuous and lyrical; somewhere a broken-hearted musician was tangled in barbed wire cynicism. And while his voice was distinctly unique, I knew immediately that it was also a little bit like mine.

Then I saw him. Dangerous, with a take-you-to-the-moon-and-back grin.

I recognized the lilt of New Orleans jazz in his voice; saw the dusky color of Creole on his skin. He walked up to me, ice cubes tinkling in the glass he carried. He wasn’t drinking wine like everyone else. He nodded, introduced himself.

Chaz Domingue.

We talked that night, longer than we should have. We met, many times after that. Secretly at first. I didn’t want anyone to know about him. Then I realized his voice was strangely addictive, that it had poured like gasoline into all my empty spaces and then, with an unexpected flash of heat lightning, I was on fire.

I had the voice I had been looking for.

And now it belonged to me, something that I could keep hidden in a treasure box, or I could stand on a street corner and speak it out loud like a Beat poet.

For me, the party was over.

It was finally time to write.

Home Again, Home Again

Like all alien abductions, mine has come to an end. I am finally home again. The days were long, the nights were short and the alien trees scraped the skies. It was a journey to be remembered, although I fear my mind will be wiped clean as soon as I fall asleep.

Thunder clouds on the horizon. Rain pelting metal skin.

I rest my head on the alien dashboard and dream of home...

The Abyss

I stood on the edge of the Abyss; that black night of the soul that never ends. I've heard others speak of it, terrified whispers, half-mad memories. I've heard it called a heavy black cloud that settles on you, rides you like a mantle, like a parasitic beast.

But that is not what it is.

It's like descending into Hell. Like leaving the world of light and air, sacrificing oxygen; it is like drowning in a lake of tar, black; it steals all light and hope; it rolls over you in waves of disaster, flows down your throat, into your lungs. You struggle to escape and then all of a sudden, a dull thudding sudden, you realize that you have adapted to this alien landscape that swallows light. You're breathing tar, it fills your lungs and heart and veins with viscous black night. You're cold and dead. Rock hard stone. Each breath brings pain and yet you can’t stop breathing. You want to.

But you can’t.

This black death is not death.

It is eternity. The dark life that never ends. It is the pit of despair.

And there is only one way to escape.

One drop of red blood. It cuts through the black monster night, it slices like a warrior blade through the unending river of black tar. It cuts all the way through to the heart of your soul.

Hope. Like the pulse of a distant tribal drum.

He calls. Pierced hands reach into the bottomless black.

He pulls. One drop of red. It stains the universe.

It changes everything.

Forever.

On a Street Called Humanity

Somewhere between Pleasure and Treasure and Abundance, there runs a street called Humanity. On a good day, echoes of traffic from the I-610 bounce off nearby buildings, a constant reminder that you are never really alone. If you walk down a few blocks, you run into Music and Arts, although you never have to go too far in this city to hear jazz, that sensuous blend of rhythm and melody, that song of the soul that was born here.

Way back before the world turned upside down and everybody forgot this little street existed, children played in the yards, women hummed while they washed their clothes, air conditioners waged a valiant battle against summer heat. Men worked on their cars in the street and dogs barked when strangers walked past. Teenagers formed a cluster on the corner, an adolescent huddle of shoulders, desperate to keep the outside world out and the inside world in.

On a street called Humanity, people looked forward to tomorrow.

Until the day tomorrow came.

Storms rage through our world on a daily basis, some we can prevent, but most we have no control over. How we respond to those storms is another story—it’s the dark and scary basement of the human spirit, that journey to the secret place where courage is found. Survival requires courage, but so do kindness and compassion.

I’ve never been to New Orleans, but I want to go. I want to see the Spanish moss dripping from ancient trees, I want to smell the fragrant spice of Creole cooking, I want to hear the syncopated heartbeat of zydeco.

I want to walk down the street called Humanity, a silent prayer on my lips for the people brave enough to stay in the place they call home.

Photo by Troy Snow, courtesy of the book, Not Left Behind.

The Continuing Legend of the Firefish

Here’s what I think happened…
One night, mild-mannered George Bryan Polivka went to bed. He was supposed to dream about aliens. All nice people do. But somehow the wires inside his brain got crossed.

He dreamed about a Firefish instead. Now, I agree, a monstrous seacreature is almost like an alien, but almost is never quite the same thing.

One horrible event led to another, and before you know it, poor George had signed a contract for three books with Harvest House Publishers. Well, there was little hope for him after that.

One dream about a seacreature led to anther. I bet the poor sweet man could barely sleep for months. Then the dream evolved and began to include pirates. After that it got worse and worse. There was danger around every corner, and nary an alien to be seen anywhere.

I think he may have tried to salvage his sanity by writing it all down, hence the entrance of Harvest House—a desperate attempt to save the dear man.

And in the end, all this turmoil and restless waking dreams led to a book of dastardly adventures called The Legend of the Firefish.

I don’t know if it is safe to read this book. It may make you dream of seacreatures (instead of aliens). It may make you want to read the next book in the series. It may make you stay up late at night, reading when you should be dreaming.

I just hope you will all say a quick prayer for poor, sweet George. He may have accidentally written a best-seller when he was supposed to be taking a nap.

The Hunt For The Great And Fearsome Firefish

Stories have been coming in all week about a dreaded seacreature, almost too fearsome to discuss on a PG-rated website. But, to preserve life and to promote good literature, I’m willing to tell you what I can.

Survivors have been few. A little known country by the name of Nearing Vast stands in the center of all the turmoil. Pirates are involved, as well. I know. I didn’t want to bring up the part about pirates. Lately, with all the popular movies out, pirates have taken on a friendly sort of appearance.

Don’t be fooled. Pirates are not our friends. For all we know they could really be aliens.

One man seems to know the true story behind the dreaded Firefish. George Bryan Polivka. And he has written the first in series of exposes on the subject. His picturesque writing takes the fearsome topic and renders it entertaining, nay, fascinating.

The first book in the Trophy Chase Trilogy is now available. Aptly titled, The Legend of the Firefish, it tells a heroic tale of faith, adventure and sacrifice.

But reader beware. The Firefish is not to be laughed at.

More information about this legendary seacreature can be found here.

Green

"Do you know what I did for you? The changes I made, the waiting chamber I built in the center of my heart?"

He didn’t answer, but I could tell that he was listening. His breathing grew shallow when I finished speaking.

He stared into the far distance, to a hill, a stand of trees that masked the horizon. He watched the morning sky as if he hoped someone else would walk out of the forest. Someone different, younger, stronger. Someone with gold dust in her fingers and magic in her voice.

He glanced in my direction, as if noticing me for the first time.

"You shouldn't have waited for me," he said. "When I didn’t come back, you should have known that my plans had changed, that I didn’t have room for you."

"Room for me?"

He nodded and sighed.

"How many have you asked?"

He gazed back toward green shadows. "More than I can count," he answered.

"And they all said yes, they all came to you willingly."

He smiled, a perfect grin, a moment of heaven on earth. "They always come willingly."

"But you don't want me. Not now."

A deep breath. "No."

"Did you want me then, when you asked for me?"

"I don't know," he said. "I didn't want anyone else to have you."

"And now no one wants me."

He smiled.

"This pleases you?"

In the far distance green shadows moved and shifted. A slender figure pushed its way through sienna trees, leaves whispering. Someone was coming, a woman.

"Did you ask her to come?"

He shook his head. "I didn't have to ask. They know I am here. I am always here."

"Does she know that you don't really want her, that this is all part of a game, that there is no purpose, only pretense—"

He stood up. "I do want her. It's no game. It's my life." He waved and walked toward the other woman, the woodland female. He took her hand and they paused in the sunlight, gazing into each other's eyes.

I wanted to call out a warning. Maybe this one could be saved, spared the torment that was surely coming.

But I didn't.

Instead I sat back down on the wooden chair. Crossed my legs and shaded my face from the sun.

I would wait, I decided. Until he grew tired of this new woman. It could be minutes, it could be months. But eventually he would cast this one aside. It would be a betrayal, a broken heart, a lost beginning. It would be the end of her universe, the start of her private hell.

And then she would end up here. Back at the beginning. Wondering if all hope was gone, if there would ever be anyone for her. She would walk that same path of shadow and dappled light until she paused here, just like I did, in this clearing of fragrant pine.

She would sit beside me in one of these plain wooden chairs and stare into the woods, wondering, hoping that he would reappear, that he would come back searching for her.

But he wouldn’t come back, at least not for her.

And for the first time in years, I would not be alone.

THE DEEP END

Summers were filled with a bright outside, layers of concrete and sunshine; and dark shadowy insides. My mother would sleep, shades drawn; grey on grey shadows filtered from room to room as a fan thumped stale, humid air out onto city streets. I would leave our apartment in the morning and walk to my best friend's house while it was still cool. Together we made the journey over steaming sidewalks to Tenth Avenue.

There, a midwestern paradise reigned. Damp wet concrete tunnels housed the changing rooms. A horrid lack of privacy, a bank of public showers, then a wide stairway led toward filtered light. The smell of chlorine and the wet smack of bare feet on rough cement.

And then a brilliant glare.

A bright white-hot sun ate the heavens, washed away all color. All that remained were white and aquamarine. Now you could taste the chlorine in the air, mingled with the soft fragrance of Coppertone suntan lotion.

Water splashed. Children yelled. Mothers and teenagers lounged on carefully spread towels.

My best friend and I entered a magical world. A world of liquid imagination. Here we could float away from the reality of the blue-collar working class. The stench of machine oil and factory dust evaporated. Gone was the feeling that I didn't fit in with the rest of the two-parent world. I walked through crystal water and everything changed. Fairy tales came to life as we imagined we were princesses; my black hair transformed to platinum and like a mermaid, I wore crowns encrusted with aquamarines.

Light played on the water, on the surface that was our skin.

And always, as the day progressed, I grew bolder. Crossing rope boundaries into ever-deeper water. My friend would protest, but I would swim, heedless, under the rope—from the shallow end, where we could easily touch the bottom, to the middle, where we could barely stand on our tiptoes. And then finally to the deep end, where the bottom was legendary, a mythical kingdom where the water changed color, where the water grew cold.

And then, when I had had enough with diving below the ropes and reaching new limits, then I would climb up the ladder. I would pad my way to the diving board while my friend watched.

I would get in line behind the other kids, my heart thumping, my arms wrapped around myself as I shivered. I waited. And waited. Moving a foot at a time. Then finally I would stand at the bottom of the ladder. Here it was impossible to tell when the person at the top had jumped. I had to wait. I had to get the message from someone who could see.

Go! Jump! They would say, as soon as the person above me had left the board. Even before I heard the splash, I was scrambling up the ladder, rungs slippery, hands reaching for the sky.

When I reached the top, everything changed. All the shouting and laughing turned silent. Everyone and everything became small. I could only hear my own breathing.

The board stretched before me, narrow and long. It bounced as I walked. There was always a moment when I stood at the very end that I wondered why I was here. Why had I agreed to climb up here?

But a horizon of water called to me from below. Deep. Cold. Challenging.

A bounce and a jump.

Falling. Lightning quick. Holding my breath.

A splash. Then silence. A turquoise world. Falling down. Farther and farther. One toe touched the bottom. Deep blue. Icy. Then I pushed off with one foot and I would shoot to the top. Lungs screaming. Arms pulling.

Another splash and I was on the surface. Gasping. Flailing. Pretending that I knew what to do. I only knew a little bit about swimming and now I had to do my best imitation. If the lifeguards saw me struggling, they would kick me out of the deep end.

And I had to stay.

It was a point when I was out of control; I was literally in over my head, pushing every boundary, pretending to be something that I wasn't. At that point in my ten-year-old life I had just mastered an awkward dog paddle, a stroke that could barely keep my head above water, as long as another kid didn't make a huge wave. I drank chlorine by the mouthful, coughed and choked.

And I always kept my eyes on the ladder. My goal.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the deep end today. When an unexpected challenge looms ahead. It's funny, but I'm not as brave as I was at ten, back when I only had my life to lose. Things like getting lost on uncharted freeways or flying across the country seem much worse than not making it to the swimming pool ladder.

But back then, risking my life was always accompanied by a moment of peace.

Under the water, all sound disappeared, everything slowed down; it became another world, my body changed into something amphibious. Breathing stopped. Thinking stopped. It all become a wondrous gelatinous moment-of-being, separated from everything and yet surrounded by everything at the same time. Light filtered down through rippling blue. Bodies flew past like we were in outer space, like we were all flying in slow motion, like we had all entered another dimension.

Like we were created for another world. And for one fraction of a second, we all acknowledged it was true.

Aliens in the News

Here we have absolute, documented proof that aliens have indeed made first contact, and on top of that, they are dastardly beings. Tormenting a poor kitty. Those aliens need a talking to . . .

Originally posted here, with the title of "Run, don't let the aliens get you."

Posted by AD, the blogging cyber-super-hero who also happens to be 17 years old and entirely fictional.

The Privilege of Color

I fell in love with color at an early age. By the time I reached grade school I coveted it, in fact. That was when I discovered that crayons didn’t just come in boxes of 24. Looking around a room filled with wooden desks and unknown faces, I saw that a privileged few owned the rights to a full range of 64 prismatic shades. Hues with exotic names like Thistle and Orchid belonged to an upper echelon, a cliquish group of Jills and Janes with sassy blonde curls and even sassier attitudes.

It wasn’t until junior high, when I graduated past the limitations of crayons, markers and chalk all the way to paint, that my passion for color met its equal in my desire to become an artist.

The days were never long enough for me back then, as I filled every free moment with painting and poetry. The creative world became my cocoon. During my turbulent teens I subconsciously transformed my bedroom into a womblike retreat, painting everything—floor, ceiling, walls and furniture—with vibrant, glossy red paint. My older sister thought that I should have included an accent color somewhere, a white table or a bedspread, but I vehemently disagreed.

Red was the color I wanted, the color I needed, the color that brought energy and healing and inspiration to my soul. It was water in my adolescent desert.

Throughout the Mid-Western twilight—that season of darkness that descends every October and oppresses all the way through April—I lived in the center of a flower that never dies. I woke up to walls that glowed like the inside of a hearth. I read e.e. cummings, Ray Bradbury and J.R.R. Tolkien while nestled in an enclosure as cozy as any owned by the myriad Jills and Janes who lived up the hill in brick houses; they came home every night to dinner on the table, a matched set of parents and who knows how many cars in the attached garage. I came home to a room the color of love, and it held me sheltered in its tight-knuckled fist; fiery brush strokes on a plaster canvas that somehow helped me ride out the explosive tidal wave known as the ’60s. During that murky and moonless horizon of pubescence, I woke up to the embers of a luminous red sunrise. The sun never set, the fire never went out in my sacred sanctuary.

For me, color will always be a thin veneer that foreshadows the world of the spirit, a supernatural essence that stirs the world of emotion. I have loved color from a very early age—its awesome power and its creative possibility. But I think most of all, I have loved the very privilege of having it in my life.

Death of a blog

One of my favorite blogs is dying. I wish there was some alternative medicine we could try, some new drug on the market, some renowned doctor we could call. But it just doesn’t work that way.

Blog death is final. Don’t bother calling the priest for last rites.

Still, I completely understand this writer’s need to put the Great Blogosphere on hold. At a point when most people would have sheltered behind armor-plated walls, Steve Parolini allowed his writing to be transparent. Like a reigning King of Hearts, he poured his soul into cyberspace, perhaps a heroic attempt to stop the vacuous Internet from sucking our own souls dry. And for a few, brief moments there was honest-to-God deliriously good content on the Web. Stuff that I would have paid money for; stuff that I would have dog-eared and underlined and refused to lend, even to my best friend.

But this stuff was free. So, of course, it was addictive.

Counting on Whales, a site that focused on “loneliness, loss, love and the unfathomable ubiquity of God,” delivered up a fresh perspective on romance. It’s oh-so-easy to write about love at the beginning of a relationship, when butterflies and bluebirds spring out of every corner. But it takes a purple-heart-warrior to write about love when things are falling apart.

We might not want to admit it, but all those who walk and breathe understand loss. It’s part of life. It’s the bridge to the next world. It’s our passport into God’s presence.

Parolini struck a universal chord with his words. He became a guide through a painfully familiar horizon.

Below is a short quote from "The Almost." If you listen, you can almost hear the regret, the sense of loss at the same moment as discovery. Like someone took a blue crayon and colored over a black and white photo.

“She speaks and he wants to press pause for every word. He wants to rewind, press play, rewind again. He wants to study her inflection. Her tone. The dance of her tongue. The way her head tilts and her dark chocolate hair drifts in front of her eyes, only to be brushed back by absent-minded fingers; an autonomic function for her, an alluring and magnificent ballet to him.”

Parolini’s writing is so intimate and personal that it almost makes you feel like an intruder, like you’ve accidentally wandered into his house and started reading his journals. But like I mentioned earlier, it’s addictive stuff. So you crawl back in that open Web site window and start foraging through his pages again, hoping you can at least finish a couple before he walks in the door . . .

Counting on Whales is dying. Perhaps it’s a natural death, an honorable death. Perhaps we should toss rose petals in the river and mourn its demise.

But I suggest that you stop by and read a poem or two, before the dark silence descends. It may be a long, long time before the Internet offers writing this good again.

THE LETTER, page one . . .

“Give me the little one, back there in the corner, mate. C’mon now, haven’t got all day now, have I?”

Lonnie shivered in the open-air market, glanced up at the heavy clouds. Gray sky, gray buildings, gray dirt. He was sick of this miserable off-world colony and couldn’t wait to get back home. Couldn’t wait to get this last letter off to his royal highness, that bloodsucking parasite of the universe who just happened to be his brother-in-law.

He took another sip of brandy, felt warmth shooting down to his gut, felt a brief return of his ever-failing courage. What was taking that steward so long?

“Bleedin’ ship’s leavin’ in less than two hours,” he yelled through the bars, “and that’ll barely give me time to get the message put on all correct and proper.”

She was little, probably no more than five years old, but she’d be cheap and there was something to be said for saving money when you had a job like this. He’d have to buy her a tunic to cover the words, so no one could read them before his royal pain-in-the-behind; but before that he’d have to watch while the scribe wrote the message on her skin, metal needle scratching blue lines in baby soft flesh, had to make sure that the idiot didn’t misspell anything.

Couldn’t have another mistake. Not like last time.

He leaned forward. Poked his head through the bars, his breath turning to frost.

“Crimeny, what’s takin’ ya so long in there? I just need to get a letter in the next post. What is so difficult in all of that?”

Kaleidoscope Kiss

I didn’t expect to see him at the party. He was older than us, this tall handsome man with the dazzling smile. Like a dancer, he moved through our underground culture, teaching everyone the new steps, peddling the new music, the new clothes, the new ideas.

We should have run, I suppose. But we couldn’t. We were his flock of baby lambs, following him, longing to drink from his well of western culture.

That night the Illinois summer rolled out in all her glory: a magic carpet of starlit skies, sultry clouds of fireflies, a thick sticky humidity that drove us all outside.

Smoke wafted, strong and pungent, from one cluster of teenagers to the next.

My skin chilled as my best friend and I walked over dewy grass, crickets competing with the dark, pulsing drone of In A Gadda Da Vida. Midnight blue shadows disguised faces. Lawn chairs sprawled over a gentle hill.

It was there that this mesmerizing creature of the night swooped my friend into his arms, caught her in his trap for the evening. She curled on his lap, drank kisses mixed with red wine. His pretty lips curved in a grin and when he spoke everyone listened. He was more experienced than we were.

He was married.

He told a story that burned in my 16-year-old brain.

He was lying beside his wife, he said, caressing her swollen, pregnant belly one evening. And then, without warning, he placed a tiny tab of LSD on her lips. They both poised, waiting, this kaleidoscope kiss pressed against her lips, this deadly temptation.

Like a baby bird, she opened her mouth. Expectant. Eager.

He held the tab, just beyond the reach of her tongue.

Was there a quiet cry in that moment? A silent scream from her womb? Did the heavens rip, from top to bottom; did swords flash as dark sinister shadows fought shimmering white beings?

He held the tab above his wife’s mouth, ignored all the warnings of the maimed, the armless, the malformed. He teased her until she begged him to give it to her, and then he took the temptation away. He took the acid himself.

He ended the story with a laugh and none of us could tell whether he was the hero or the villain. He leaned down in that instant, enveloped my friend in another wine-drenched kiss.

The worst part of it all was that, despite the awkward hush that fell over us, his tale didn’t diminish his beauty. It didn’t loosen his hold.

We all sat poised like baby birds with our mouths open.

Waiting. Hoping.

Longing for his kaleidoscope kiss.

The Silent Yes

I grew up in a family where yes was said too often. Sometimes the yes was silent, but it was still yes. Always yes.

Up the hill, the Janes and Jills lived in brick houses, had two parents and multiple cars that waited patiently inside ample garages. In my house, there were two parents and four girls and two boys—in the beginning. By the time I was eight, this had been whittled down to one parent and two girls. To this day, I sometimes think that if I stand still long enough, everyone around me will melt and disappear. They will blow away like dust on the brittle wind and I will wonder if they ever truly existed.

Alcohol ran like a raging river beside my house. Both of my parents grabbed buckets and ran down to its rocky banks, where they freely drank. Sometimes they stumbled home together. Not always.

This was all normal to me. Not good, but normal. It wasn’t until I walked into someone else’s house, one of those brick everything-is-perfect-here varieties, that I felt the dirt beneath my fingernails. Fortunately, all my friends lived in wooden houses. All their parents had secret maps that led them to the river, and they all took turns drenching themselves.

Some people have fragrant memories of family vacations and birthday parties. For me, my childhood comes rushing back in a stomach twisting lurch whenever I walk past the open door of a tavern.

Somewhere along the way, at a very early age, I became an artist. It may have been my path of escape. It may have been a means of expression. I don’t know. For me it was as important as breathing. It was survival. Drawing, painting and writing were the fingerprints I left on the world; they were the way I touched, felt and comprehended everything. Reading was the vehicle that transported me to another world, a safe land where all the bad things happened to someone else. My art was the thing that allowed me to stay human, that gave me the ability to feel when I should have been numb. It was what gave me hope and it was the thread that led to my future.

When my friends dropped out of school and went to work in one of the many soul-eating factories, I clenched my teeth and said, “Not me.”

I wish I would have had more as a teenager—we all long for more, it’s part of our nature—I wish I could have known God intimately. I wish I could have ridden the waves of adolescence with Him.

But that wasn’t what happened. I didn’t meet Him until later. Much later

The Send Button

I think the fear of failure and the fear of success are twin sisters. They play together in the dark; hold hands while they run through the rain. They laugh and giggle and sleep under my bed like childhood monsters; sometimes they whisper things only my dearest friend should know. They tell tales about my inadequacies, and rarely need to embellish for I am fraught with enough details to entertain an entire gymnasium. They are blood relatives to that other set of dastardly twins, depression and anxiety. I think they all phone each other, a hellish conference call that could only take place during a full moon, and brainstorm on ways to stick yet another 9-inch pin into the Voodoo doll that is me.

And yes, I am supposed to be writing.

Isn’t that what I am doing right now?

Paranoia? I think not.

See, they really are out to get me. What they don’t know is that the keys are moving and words are flowing, a river of thought—discordant and jumbled, yes. First drafts are as snarled as mermaid hair, with bits of seaweed and fish scales thrown in for color. First drafts are as maudlin as a middle-aged streetwalker sauntering through a gated community, or as embarrassing as an alcoholic parent coming to visit during the holidays. It’s all about wearing your naked heart on your figurative sleeve. Let the world see it. Or at least pretend to let them see. You’ll always have that second draft, you know.

Unless, somehow, you accidentally hit the “send” button. And you turn in the first version by mistake.

Whatever you do, don’t tell either set of twins what I just said. That would give them yet another stone to cast when I am lying on the floor, my brain empty of ideas and my deadlines looming. Let them think my fears have mysteriously vanished, that I have been healed, that the writing demons no longer gnaw at my heels. Perhaps the twins will go and visit my neighbor instead. I think she needs an hour or two of desolation to break up her cheery day. She smiles entirely too often. Perhaps she has been in cahoots with these evildoers all along.

I’m convinced the twins need to get a life, they’re stuck in a rut, they need to go pick on someone else. I’m entirely too small and unimportant. I mean, somewhere out there someone is actually making an important decision or two. Shouldn’t he/she be the one riddled with doubt? I think this is like getting someone else’s poison pen mail. All this doubt and insecurity has to really belong to someone else, someone with a greater purpose.

All I should be worried about is whether I should have a cheese quesadilla or a bean burrito for lunch. And maybe whether I should polish off that bag of cookies while I’m at it.