surrogate art teacher fathers
july 17th, 2000

i'm being horribly lazy tonight. so i am simply snipping from a letter i 
just sent to the lovely malice, and thus kill two birds with one stone. 
though i would never really kill a bird. that's a pretty brutal statement, 
looking back on it.

**snip**

hey there, lovely lady type person...i'm exhausted. serious sleep 
deprivation here, but not enough to stop me from wishing you a happy, 
happy birthday, however belated, and wanting to do something neat for you, 
but being here and a million miles away, not being able to. but i'm 
putting the finishing packages on a little kit for you, not to say it'll 
be sent anytime within the next couple of days, knowing me and the lovely 
little demon sitting on my shoulder, you know, the one that goes by the 
name of *procrastination*...but it will be sent, because i am stubborn 
like that.

i'm feeling very weirdly tonight. definitely in no state of mind to be 
sending emails, or updating journals, or anything of that nature. i'm 
exhausted and moody and weird and feeling lonely all of the sudden, like i 
sometimes tend to do. and, judging by the calendar, i could probably 
attribute it all to a usual every 28-day shift of hormones, but i have a 
problem belittling my emotions to that, even though it does come in handy 
for explaining away the irriationalizations, you know.

mostly, i wanted to thank you for sending me the weetzie bat books. oh. 
my. god. there are very few times in my life when i've felt such a 
literary orgasm, and where my mind has been bouncing from left to right 
stringing along phrases in its wake, wanting to recreate the entire 
universe in pen and paper. i think it was just the trigger i needed. the 
book i've been working on forever and a day, the one that i sent you part 
of and the one i've been most recently horribly dissatisfied with, it was 
triggered by my consumption of "another roadside attraction" by tom 
robbins, one of my life-books and gigantic inspirations first introduced 
to me by my favourite high school teacher and surrogate father, mr. lamb. 
mr. lamb had gray hair that he sometimes wore a bit too long and it got 
shaggy in the back, and a gray beard that would sometimes hide his little 
smirk, and very nimble hands that seemed to be wasting talent trying to 
teach the closed and empty minds of west greene high school which lines 
were really the good lines. he built the house his family lived in, he had 
been to vietnam. he had taught school in the deep south, in florida, and 
hated it. and he was always filling my head with ideas, by bringing me 
books and magazine articles, by reading my stories and poetry and 
critiquing them with an honesty i've not found anywhere else since then. 
and i would sit on the desks in the classroom in the afternoons after 
school with my combat boots and my ripped up shorts and my strange flashy 
tights and whatever commercial bleak and gothy message of a tshirt i was 
sporting that particular day, and i would tell him of my problems with 
life, and my problems with love, and my sense of misdirection on where i 
wanted to go and who i wanted to be. i can't even imagine now how totally 
ridiculous my high-school problems must have sounded to him, but 
nevertheless, he listened diligently, and offered advice where he could, 
and was very good and pointing out the edges of things i may not have 
noticed before. i sent him surrogate-father's-day cards after i left high 
school. he was pretty amazing. and he never let me get away with being 
anything else than who i was, not for one minute. i don't know if i really 
learned a whole lot about art from his class, but i know i learned a lot 
about life, and lessons that i still carry with me to this day, and things 
i could never thank him enough for in a million years.

but anyway, i digress. the book(s) you sent me have had much a similiar 
effect as the tom robbins book of olde...as soon as i began flipping 
through the pages, i likewise grabbed a pen and started scribbling away 
for joy. another book is being born before my eyes. it, too, has a life of 
it's own, except it seems to have more direction than my older one, it 
seems to really know where it is going. i just really can't thank you 
enough. (even though i had originally mistyped "think you enough" there. 
and i suppose that's equally true.) i've just finished weetzie bat and am 
going on to witch baby. my life is full, and i feel good.

odd little bit of synchronisity...my friend, jill - my soulfriend Dust's 
little sister - has started reading the weetzie bat books at the exact 
same time as i. oddness.

i'm sleepy. i think i'm going to go crawl into bed now, since my little 
starfish baby is finally asleep and i find myself nodding of midstroke in 
my keying.

**snip snip**

sweet dreams, ya'll.