It’s Friday, but you probably knew that. 

Charles Dickens, between novels, ran a cottage for women.  I’ll bet you didn’t know that.  Not just any women, but the confidence girls – the “tricksters and whores.”  I’ll bet he had fun with it, considering the prevailing dull moral sentiment of the time. 

I’d like to run a cottage for men, the interesting ones.  

There are words today and I’m going to write them down.  I’m going to edit, too, I’m going to deal with the ones that don’t work.  I’m going to step away, for a time, from imminent “life” things because they’re unsolvable.  I’m going to only do things I like.  At least when I figure out what they are. 

I have Dr. Zhivago here, perhaps I’ll watch it.  Here’s the Dickens thing if you want more.  [Times Online UK]

There were deer in the yard yesterday, I think there were five.  Oh, and I had a dream — this I just remembered — of someone scolding me for my commas.  That’s an odd dream.  A mean one, too, I’m fond of commas why would my psyche make me feel bad about them?  Commas are harmless, for the most part, and free — there are worse things I could do.  Believe me, I’ve considered them.

Until I find something interesting to say I’ll leave you with this:  sew buttons on ice cream.  It’s an indecipherable adage from a very old friend.   Send your own nonsense here:  tdifalco at teresadifalco dot com.  

Holy inchworm, I almost forgot about you.  This.  Our little thing.  Because preoccupied is how I’ve been.  Yes, for months now.  C. says I must have Adderall so I’m doing the next best thing until I get it, I’m drinking coffee.  Loads of it.  It worked for Balzac, why not for me.  He wrote three million books, there were obviously very few blocks.  Or preoccupies.  Or whatever it is that’s got me stuck. 

Today I finished a real piece, one with an editor.  So that was work.  It wasn’t great work — and if you find you way to this post ever, Claire, well you should know I’m in a bit of a rut.  I need to write to get out of it, and I will — get out of it — so don’t give up on me! 

Anyway. 

Technically I did real work but then after that I sat down.  Then I got up again.  And then I sat down.  Since I started that little routine almost an hour ago — getting up and then down, and then up again and walking over there — I’ve covered every seating option in the house and paced all the rooms and none of us seems any better for it. 

My mind sits much too still.  The up and down, I think, was to assure myself it still worked, at least for basics.  What I need is Diet Coke, I wish you’d bring it here. 

Since you won’t (I know you won’t, I’m onto you), I’ll tell you this then let you go:

Catholics who are given electric shocks while looking at a picture of the Virgin Mary feel less pain than atheists doing the same thing. 

I’m Catholic.  If you are an atheist and want to test this with me, come over.  Don’t show up, though, without Diet Coke.

I know the Baby Bach people may very well have ruined this piece forever, but listen closely and picture an unloved suburban woman — a mother and wife — shuttered alone like Rapunzel in a lonely house atop a very high hill.  A woman overwhelmed with spiders and minor plumbing problems and a sociopathic neighbor down the street.  Trapped in a sunlit great room with a pile of crushed dreams and the bourbon running dangerously low. 

Can you hear all of that in this piece?  I can.

[Rondo Alla Turca]

P.S. — I’m so sorry I wasn’t clear.  Ellen is the woman above, my protagonist Ellen.  She lives in a house high up on a hill, she plays Mozart over and over.  Me, I live on a flat street and very rarely anymore play.  There’s no neighbor with mental abnormalities, there’s only L. who drops off lattes on the porch.  And sure, my dreams are crushed, but whose aren’t?  I don’t, for the record, have a great room and there’s a generous supply of bourbon.  Carry on. 

Does anyone know when Mad Men’s coming back, or even when M. is coming back for crying out loud?  It’s ridiculous — both M. swooshing around rosy-cheeked in Vail, and Mad Men disappearing like it did, without a kiss, even, on the cheek. 

Maybe it is back on, how would I know?  I wouldn’t.  I’ll google it, though, when we’re done here.  What I do know is I’m watching the first three episodes over and over because I have the DVD and I need the fix and I’m getting tired of the first three episodes. 

Yesterday I was not optimistic, I was pessimistic.  I was thinking bad thoughts not productive forward-moving thoughts and so it’s fitting, don’t you think, that Writer’s Almanac ran a poem today called “Optimism.”  Can Garrison Keillor read my mind?  Can you?  Okay, smarty-pants, what am I thinking right now? …

If you guess, it will be weird, so maybe you shouldn’t try.

I’ve started clenching my teeth, it’s reflexive.  I catch myself doing it, then tell me to stop and I do it, it seems, fairly hard because my teeth hurt when I’m done.  And my jaw.  But I don’t set out to do it, so how do I stop?

My friend L. got a new washer and dropped something sweet off on my porch, in that order.  I haven’t seen it, L.  I just got your note.  But I bet I know what it is, and you are much too good for me. 

I’m going to go get it and maybe or maybe not I’ll come back.

In the meantime, write an essay and hand it in to me by ten:  50 ways you feel optimistic and how you overcome them to reclaim your surly self.  Send it here.

Mickey not only lost, but they dissed his getup.  It ruined the whole night, I’d like the Academy and everyone else to run into Mickey in a dark back alley right away.  Are they crazy?  No one wanted a dull lifeless Sean Penn speech, that’s the last time I watch and I mean it. 

There was a woman who bled from her eyes and had bone death in the Times Magazine yesterday, I haven’t read it.  I’m behind on everything, actually, and did anyone else notice The New York Review of Books is smaller?  Did that just happen or am I not paying attention.  It’s shorter and skinnier, it’s approaching standard periodical size, I don’t like it.

B. thinks Thursday mass may have scared me off German literature, but it didn’t, B.  There was wine to move Friday, and judge Saturday, and drink Sunday.  The schedule’s been, you might say, a tiny bit crammed. 

That’s mostly all.  Trigger Treat needs a pick-me-up — if you were on Facebook, TT, I’d throw a cupcake or pass you mojitos.  But you’re not. 

M.’s in Vail while the long-suffering D. slaves over a stove.  I know this from Facebook.  D., what time’s dinner?

New York, I miss it.  I think, yes — I’ll stop there on my way to Paris in June.  We’ll drink some absinthe, or at least make a face at it.

The rest of you, back to your keyboards pronto and get that economy back in gear.

I want Edward Gorey’s, “The Recently Deflowered Girl.”  I want the signed first edition that Bauman Books has for $450, and I want it now.  Or soon.

I also want to go to Paris for my birthday.  M., by the way — are you outside protesting the cartoon?  I don’t know why I thought of that, it’s Paris.  Paris makes me think of you and D., and then you and D. make me think of the cartoon, you know the one.  Because we all know how avid you are about the Post.

Perhaps you’re with D. and even H. right now, and you’re all drinking one of the new chai lattes from Starbuck’s, holding your protest signs and wondering what Mickey will wear Sunday night. 

It’s a nice thought.  Call and I’ll meet you.

But anyway, Paris, I want Paris for my birthday, I don’t care about recessions or costs.  Last year I didn’t celebrate my birthday, or other big events, and this year I want Paris.  My French is dusty, but not gone, I think June’s the perfect time.  The tourists swarm in June, I’ll fit in. 

The chimp story is rich, isn’t it?  Speaking of cartoons.  Love, betrayal, madness and bloodshed.  But on to minutiae. 

I have four different moisturizers I can choose from to cover my face with today.  That’s my dilemma.  The sun’s out so I need one, I need SPF.  Yes, I know, I need SPF on all days so I’ll look 20 when I’m 60, I read the studies, I watch the commercials.  Relax, I know that, it just seems more particularly important when there’s sun, making my decision require a bit more thought.

I’m sorry I bothered you with that, it’s what you’ve come to expect, though, you can’t say there’s no precedent.

I’m doing non-writing work for part of the day and then I’ll finish up “Ugly Books.”  And then there’s a Perverse Walk Through Portland, that one’s with RSG.  There are other odds and ends, some here some there, and then a book.  I promise there’ll be a book.  The fog is lifting, I feel stability in the wings, I think it’s coming.

Enjoy your lunch.

I really do love Bellow, you’ve no idea.  Though I go through stages, you know.  We’ll meet in the street next month, you’ll bring up Herzog to make small talk and I’ll have no idea at all what you’re saying.  I’ll be onto something else.

I hope we do meet in the street next month, I’d like to have dinner.  My great friend Deborah is right, the culture of dinner is lacking.  There should be one if there’s never been, or if there was one it should be revived.  Dinner, shared dinners.  It’s one of the lovely things of New York, the deprivation of kitchen space.  It fosters dinners both shared and out.  In Verona, of course, is another story.  D. and M. have their charming dinners in and I’m from now on going to all of them.

In Mac, this year, too, I’m bringing back dinner.  Not parties, I’ve given up on those for the moment, just simple small dinners — dinner with one friend.  You and I, before the month’s up, will go to dinner.  And that’s double if your name is Ross.  Ross and I made plans for dinner, they’re not final.  I hope he’ll let me tack on The Wrestler — let’s have, Ross, a real date.  You can pin a corsage to my waist.

Breakfast, though, is first (I use too many commas).  You’re supposed to eat it all the time, and I think if there were hot oatmeal — brown sugar, a bit of milk — sitting here already made, I would eat it.  It’s the making of breakfast that slows me down.  It’s dull.  I know, it’s me, actually, who is dull, there are myriad things one can invent for breakfast, it’s the time of day maybe.  I dislike kitchens in the morning.  I’ll move breakfast, for a short time, to nights and tell you how I fare.  It will be an experiment, I’ve vowed to experiment more. 

First, though, another chapter.  I’m stuck – you won’t believe this — on the very same section again.  It’s exactly like my cozy Ugg boots.  One has a tear in the zipper so it only zips up halfway and looks silly.  But I love them, they’re the most indulgent thing I wear and so every day I put them on, and yank the zipper up, and yank and yank to get past that damned spot.  And every day I never do, and every day I get mad.  I consider not wearing them.  I decide to wear them, irritably.

And this stupid section in the middle of my book, where the exchange student comes to the door?  Same thing.  I can’t get the zipper past, I should cut it but I don’t, and each time I move past it irritably.

If you have stories about monkeys, send them here, you can’t beat a monkey. 

Nights are hell, aren’t they?  Well, hell’s dramatic, let’s say they suck.  There should be little masks above beds, like on airplanes, and they should drop down at a specified time and squirt something in the nose that makes sleep instant and complete.  No waking up two hours later business. 

But there isn’t the mask and so the night goes on and on and when sleep comes it’s erratic — not on every night, just the sucky ones.  And without sleep there’s nothing left to do but feel sad.  And sad’s a funny feeling.  Funny because it should be in the brain, it’s the thinking that makes you sad, but it creeps into the lungs and the stomach and even the heart, what is sad doing there?  In the heart?  Sad’s not even a thing, it’s something the brain’s completely made up and like an unruly housepet it’s run off to the lungs and heart even as you sternly call it back. 

That’s all really, just some thoughts on sad and sleep. 

Scruffy barked, so there’s a killer I guess downstairs.  At least a distraction.

I like Tony Hoaglund as far as poets go.  

Some of Trump is bankrupt, a giant chimp was shot dead and a Muslim beheaded his wife — not that there’s anything wrong with that, being Muslim, I mean. 

I added Gershwin to Pandora this morning.  They kicked off, of course, with Rhapsody in you-know-what, but followed with the complete concertos of Shostakovich!  Some days are a cheese souffle. 

I can’t tell you much because my monitor’s practically out.  Red dots and dashes spilled all across, it’s very difficult to see what I’m leaving you with.  I could be writing anything for all I know.  I’m typing blind.  I’ve gotten back to work, it’s frenetic almost.  I’d lost some steam for a bit.  It’s hard to focus when life wrestles loose, but I’m focused now.  You’re, I’m sure, all relieved.  Now if only the monitor would behave. 

I made neither gnocchi or ricotta yesterday, I’ll try again.  But I’ve learned there are 900 crickets, at least.  I miss mine, I want more. 

Here’s something you can read until my monitor comes back and I bathe you in warm bubbly prose:  The End of Alone

M., by the way, is on Facebook people.  Nothing — yes, you were thinking it too! — is sacred.

I’m drinking cinnamon in my coffee because it’s Super.  Cinnamon’s a super spice, and the Times said to put it in your coffee.  Who am I to argue?  Seriously. 

B. sent me another cricket – gryllus pennsylvanicus — and while I’m too late in the game to incorporate it, I had a brilliant idea:  Ellen is drawn into an intensely passionate emotional affair with someone who touches her at her most primal level — bugs.  She’s terrified of bugs, and they stand in as a very physical metaphor for her more abstract fears — loneliness, isolation, dashed dreams, that sort of thing.  Anyway … bugs.  Someone captures them in a way she’d never dreamed and completely enchants her. 

A man sends her crickets, the most beautiful singing crickets and her worldview is changed. 

G. has made a list of two-syllable words, I want to frame it.  It’s not a list in the traditional sense, but more Pollack-y, it’s abstract.  Some are written big, some small, some are crooked and some curl around. 

Here’s a sampling:  thunder, sizzle, happy, birthday, sixteen, wheezing, sneezing, pillow, bedspread, hairdo, Chopin, jolly, hour, minutes, seconds, eighty, chewing, Scruffy …

I’d like to give you the whole list, it’s soothing in its entirety.  There’s something very relaxing about two-syllable words.