That’s Updike.  The first line from “Of The Farm”.  “Macadam” is some sort of road, not that I care.

I’m stumped today, mired in block.  I used to brag that I never got it, “writer’s block.” I used to claim it didn’t exist, that it was for wimps and has-beens and people who confiscate jam.  But I’m stumped now, I’m struggling.  I have to rewrite the beginning and don’t want to.

I’ve got Joyce’s “Portrait …” here and Updike’s “… Farm” and for some reason both Kierkegaard and Sartre in 90 Minutes, though now I can’t find them, the last two.  I brought them in here, I know I did, but now I can’t find them.  For the record, I can pronounce “Sartre” but not “Kierkegaard”. 

The problem of Howard’s car is still unsolved.  A. suggested a Buick.  A Buick means nothing to me.  I want a car, that if you tell me you drive it, I will be able instantly to picture your house.  The house I want to picture is a four-bedroom, 2-bath, 2-story thing with a bonus or great room; either / or.  And a two-car garage with little bikes in the driveway.  Nondescript (the second definition). 

If you tell me what model car — not a van or truck or SUV, but car — pulls into that driveway at 6:00 each night, I’ll send you a hanger.  A nice one, not wire. 

Anyway.  The beginning, sigh.  Maybe if you brought coffee (double, tall, non-fat latte) and set it on the porch then rang the doorbell and giggled and ran away, maybe then I’d be so moved and full of love for birds and mankind and life that inspiration would rise up within me like a song and I’d have the temerity and passion and pluck to tackle the begining.  I need, for one, a smart first line.  I’ve promised M. pages.  No room, here, for C+ work. 

Oh, the agony. 

The planes that pull the gliders are buzzing around outside, I hear them.  They make me want to swim.  Last summer many of our nicer moments were spent spinning in the pool, face-up to the sky, watching the gliders towed and released. 

CHAPTER ONE

They were spinning in the pool, watching gliders.

(Not quite it.)

There’s the bit part of a realtor, too, I’ve just discovered — she was also a “Jane.”  Not anymore, I’ve renamed her “Jillian.”  I’ll offer a class next week on character names, I think you should come. 

[Background, in case you just started reading, on "Jane".]

I’m slipping, don’t think I don’t know it.  My prose has been shoddy, “The Human Comedy“ has languished, my posts are full of typos and misspells and sometimes entire misposts. 

I forgot to put books on the tables this morning at library, hid out back before Holly or Jennifer could ask for the broom, got in a fight with Chiquita, and am now here alone with my words.  Words, words, words and all of them bad.  So many to choose from and yet I chose, just now, these:

“I slept well the night I gave June the key, as often happens with mistakes.”

Hmm.  Well, technically, I didn’t choose those, Nell Freudenberger did and she put them in The Dissident.  It kind of makes me mad, though, because I had been just about to choose them, I swear, right before she did and now I’m left to choose others.  Such as these:

“Elizabeth David Night fell flat and Ellen tottered eerily before the unopened door resembling Carrie at the prom just after they’d doused her in blood.”

Menza menz.  Also these:

“Howard found her swaying like this, bent toward the scattering leaves, and plucked her at the stem like a poppy.”

What do they mean?  I don’t know, they’re just words.  Here’s more:

“Ellen eventually discovered, not to her liking, that Howard looked at everyone in that same gauzy way, in the same way he looked at her.  Bankers, babies, the girl at the information desk at Barnes and Noble; even the guys at the Jiffy Lube.   where he dropped his car every 3,000 miles.”

I’m not crazy about that passage.  I don’t think “gauzy” conveys what I want, nor does it mesh well with the miles – there’s a certain charm about Howard that your “3,000 miles” Joe lacks, but I needed a detail.  The detail I actually need is his car, the kind of car Howard drives, but I don’t know it.  I should know what he drives, but I don’t.  Let’s move on:

“It’s not us, Ellen said out loud one day, three months into their seventh year.  It’s the great room that got small.”

Oh, dear, I’m afraid I have to go.  I just had an episode with the broom that’s left me rattled.  Holly hunted me down and demanded to know where it was.  I stalled, I stymied hemmed and hawed, and eventually I led her to the exact spot of the broom.  (Brilliant luck!)  And with a slight degree of authority, I might add.  I think she thought it was there because it’s where I’d last used it.  That’s the attitude I took, anyway.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for all of that so I have to lie down now and rest.

If you’ve got words of your own to send me, please do. 

[Anne Snow turned 40 two days ago.  E. will, very shortly, write a poem.]

The cartoon yearbook. 

And, P.S., along with the pickles I’ll add an almost-full Vitamin Water if you can fix the dumb little sliver of white along the side … see it?  Over there, to the right.

If anyone can figure out why some of my posts, out of the blue, refuse to follow format (see “Anne Snow” below), I’ll give you three stale cookies plus H. and T.’s forgotten sandwiches. 

I might throw in some pickles, too.

Oh, also, my high school tennis coach won the Travel Photo contest at the big O.  Nice pic, Cahill! 

If you’re like M. and I., you rediscover people a lot.  And usually after they get a long profile in the Times.  So I can’t remember, M., if you read The Atlantic regularly, but when I read this Flann O’Brien review there, I thought we ought to rediscover him. 

My sincere apologies for all of you who suffered the “Best Of” post.  It was a draft, and sloppy, and I’d filed it long ago with a future post date (April 12) and then forgotten about it.  It should never have crossed your discerning little eyes, you deserve better.  Lisa Austin on the other hand, worry you not, will still get her day as Teresa DiFalco (dot) com is devoting it’s entire Summer Preview issue exclusively to her.  Stay tuned. 

(Julie Nipp will need to really suck up — flowers and bottles of scotch are not inappropriate — if she wants a piece of the action.)

H. and T. left today.  Well not today, actually — pre-5am still counts as yesterday, they left yesterday.  For that matter, I’m up and writing yesterday at this very moment!  Bollocks (“nonsense” not “testicles”) on all of it. 

They forgot their turkey sandwiches. 

We’re finally flooring the TV room, chaps.  One more piece of vile carpet gone.  Floor and paint, then we’ll rest, and I’m sorry, M-squared, that we exposed you to it without proper protective eyewear for such a long period of time. 

Are we done here?  Yes, I think so, all done.  Top o’ the day. 

Just saying.  Seems like just Friday we were playing the all-star game in Enterprise — me at first base, Anne behind the plate.

Happy B-day, Dynamo.

 

This isn’t technically Stevie, but I believe it’s what Stevie might look like if he were alive.

Stevie passed yesterday. 

He survived the pool, he was always good at holding his breath, but then I put him by the space heater, which apparently you’re not supposed to do.

In the 24 hours we knew Stevie … he made a big difference in all our lives. 

Here’s to you, Stevie.  Wherever you are.  (Hint:  Under the rhododendren bush, the one on the end.)

That is the first line of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, which is a brilliant little book I’d forgotten about until A. bought me a study, then made a wall of it all shelves, then unpacked my books and ordered them in interesting ways. 

It’s Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by M.D. Herter Norton.

I notice A. has The Tin Drum on the food writing shelf.  I thought this strange, but maybe not.  Oskar – and Gunter Grass at large — does have that curious obsession with onions.  It’s genius, A., I’ll not look elsewhere for Gunter Grass again. 

In other news, I have something new to hang!  (A. likes to hang things).  Helen and Tony are here in three days, and it was raining but isn’t now. 

“I asked for my childhood and it has come back, and I feel that it is just as difficult as it was before, and that it has been useless to grow older.”

– Notebooks of MLB

E., as we speak, has a mouth-watering collection of agents reading his proposal.  It’s going to be sad when I have to hate him; L., too.  L. sent the nastiest message yesterday.  I’ll post it here in not quite its entirety: 

“I have everything at the editor’s except the epilogue.  But please don’t hate me just because I’m so close to being finished.

They’ll be snifting brandies and chomping cigars at The National Arts Club listening to Tom Wolfe tell dull stories for the 13th time, while I’m frantically replacing my Janes!  I resent them for it, I do.   

M-squared is coming to chez moi Friday night.  Expect embarrassing photos next week.  (Of M-squared, not me!)

By the way, in addition to my Keira Knightly / Alec Baldwin dream (the one I told H. about), I also dreamt Scud missiles rained down on Mac.  It was night and they looked pretty, like fireworks, we were drawn to them.  We tried to follow where it seemed they would drop but at the last second A. told us to run the other way.  (Me and some people who went to my high school, who were also at the parade where I saw Alec and Keira). 

A. took charge and drove us back to the commune-style hotel room we all lived in and ordered us to pack.  We did, then it was daytime, then we were fleeing New York like a bad sci-fi, no other cars on the road.  We were in one, though.  We were in E.’s parents red station wagon, but E. wasn’t there and A. was driving.  Still with me?  Then we barreled out of the city and away from Scud missiles and started new lives.

That, my dears, is your adventure story for the day.  I’m only good for one.

Last, but not first, it’s Scruffy’s birthday.  He would like you to know that he’s 1.