rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, go to sleep my bear cub
february 1st, 2001

The last thing I need to be doing right now is updating my journal. I need to 
be sleeping. I have teeth that need to be brushed. I need to be checking the 
weather so I can dress accordingly tomorrow. But, I'm not. I'm updating my 
journal. Because I'm not a member of the Gluttons-for-Punishment Society of 
America, and this is the sort of thing Gluttons-for-Punishment do. Isn't that 
right, Al?

It's come to my attention that I actually have an audience, and that's just 
weird. But not weird in a bad way. I mean, I know about half the world has my 
web address, and people have been known to glance around and take a peek and 
see what was up, but I didn't know so many people were reading my journal on 
at least a semi-regular basis. I thought I just had this reoccuring audience 
of about five or six steady readers, and maybe a few drifters every now and 
again. That's pretty cool. Though I must confess, I feel like I should do 
something really cool and spectacular now. Perform a stunt. Pull a rabbit out 
of a hat. Do card tricks. (Or, you know. I can just ramble on about my day 
some more. Which is precisely what I'm planning to do.)

The local PBS station has taken Zoboomafoo off the air, which makes me 
slightly dismayed. Ash loved that show. And I think it was a good show for her 
to watch. And now, she can't watch it anymore. Ah, well.

I recieved my first rejection letter yesterday. (Woo-hoo!) I actually feel 
pretty cool about it, since the editors felt that my work was 'not suitable' 
for their magazine. Now I can carry around this image of being the 'bad girl' 
writer, like Anais Nin. Of course, two of the poems I submitted were goofy 
little love poems, and one of them was just surreal. The only one I can think 
they had a problem with was this one:

Eat at Joe’s
by Devon Koren

Trust –
it’s a five-letter word.
A cactus burr, it attacks
like the teeth of a fine-toothed comb –
instead of getting the tangles out,
it rips the hair out at the roots
and sets scalps to bleeding.

Indian giver –
a scarlet stop sign in sheet metal
like a mirror.

Wrists are split open, fist-sized muscles beneath
the ribcage are sliced, carefully, like salami and
placed upon bread –
ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard—
the salt gets in –
poisonous condiments –
chipping teeth,
making the voice taste bitter.

There is a splice –
the nectar of desert flowers –
tears of Arizona –
bottled up and carbonated.

It’s something like a soft rape –
barely noticeable,
with no evidence left to speak of.

Four strings of my spirit broken loose –
out of tune –
auctioned off, inch-by-inch, acre-by-acre.

Half a million pores used as artificial resources.

The wasps burrowed within and left their
locust shells and larvae collection
to clog up the facial plumbing –
the absence of emotion –
dirty.

I collect pimples across my aura,
and my wrists break – a collection of metacarpals
devoured
by vultures
who were only
following the
road signs for
a free lunch
(that you put there.)

---------

I just don't see anything horribly wrong with that, really. I thought it was a 
pretty powerful piece. Ah, well. *Someone* out there will like it. It's just a 
matter of sending it off enough times. Which is exactly what I plan to do.

I do think I'm going to collect all of my rejection letters, though. See how 
many I can get. Somehow, if I begin to strive for rejection letters instead of 
acceptances, I won't be so dismayed whenever people don't want to publish me. 
:)

Alestar randomly showed up on my doorstep this afternoon. I love that. I love 
surprise visits. People rarely take me up on the 'stop by any time' routine 
that I sometimes give people. Which I can understand. I have a hard time 
popping in on other people for surprise visits, myself. That's become even 
more complicated with the starfish. Since, y'know, before you go anywhere, you 
have to call ahead at least two days in advance to give the person enough time 
to properly childproof their house! ;)

Ash has started going to bed at night without any complaint at all. She's 
stopped falling asleep when I sing to her for about a month now, and for a 
while she fuss just a little bit whenever I was finished singing and put her 
down in bed, but now she doesn't even do that. I sing to her, I put in her 
crib, I tell her 'it's beddy-bye time' and she 'needs to go to sleepy-byes', 
and that I love her, and to have sweet dreams and I'll be there when she wakes 
up, and she just curls over in her blankets and lays down without a complaint 
at all. Tonight, I experimented and only sang all of her special songs once, 
instead of the twice I usually do, to see if she'd still go down without a 
complaint. Which, she did. It would be very easy to ween her off of the 
lullabyes at night now, if I wanted to - and I probably need to, because it 
would be really hard to try to rock a four-year old to sleep while singing to 
them - but...I really love singing her to sleep. I figure, I'll go with the 
singing the songs to her just once for a while, and then I'll switch to laying 
her down in her crib first and then singing to her. That would be easier on my 
back anyway.

Oh, and there was a bomb threat at school Tuesday! Or, I suppose it was more 
of a suspicious-looking-package problem. At any rate, we were all herded out 
of the building and left outside for about two hours. It was sort of exciting 
and dramatic...in that, you know, very postmodern and boring sort of way. ;)

At any rate, I'm running out of things to say, and I need to get to sleep. 
But...life is good.