quick.

The Fall: holy smokes, this looks amazing.

downer/upper.

things i'm not stoked about:

this is fucking terrible, but not surprising.

things i am stoked about:
-carrots (so good!)
-broccoli (if i had to only eat one vegetable for the rest of my life, it'd be broccoli.)
-trace minerals (shannon is a big believer in these, but i don't really like the way they make the water taste. nonetheless, they're really good for you and they kick canker sores in the pants.)
-the gym (i know, old news, but i have fallen back in love with it.)
-writing (again, yawn, but i am deep in the midst of a passionate love affair with it. hopefully long-term.)
-flip-flops (i used to wear them everyday, and then i backed away from it, but i have been enjoying it being warm enough to wear them again.)
-peter hoeg's new book, 'the quiet girl.' ('smila's sense of snow' is one of my top 5 favorite books, so i was THRILLED when i saw that he had a new one. i'm listening to it on cd and LOVING it. so much so that i am looking forward to reading it the normal way already. there was a sense of restraint and distance in 'smila's' but this one is so much more passionate and funny and warm. i mean, he's danish, so there's still the scandanavian-ness, but not nearly so much.)
-joyce carol oates (am i boring you by talking about her books and her all the time? she's just so amazing. i'm reading 'my heart laid bare' and it's wonderful.)
-frigoverre (in me and shannon's on-going mission to eradicate plastic from our lives, this was a landmark discovery. i fret about plastic food storage and this stuff has a glass base. we've got tons of it and the thrill hasn't worn off yet.)
-making smoothies for breakfast (gina got me started and now i can't stop. i actually did stop for a couple of weeks, but only because we didn't have any food in the fridge. but i went grocery shopping yesterday and came back with organic blueberries and raspberries, some frozen peaches, more rice milk, spinach....i already had some of my favorite rice protein powder and some sprouted raw flax seeds. so, super tastiness this morning.)
-the liam finn album. remember i posted a video of his performance on david letterman and said i'd bought the album? well, it's good.

seriously, though, guys.
please use your hands-free headset with your phone, and even when you're kicking it hands-free, keep your phone somewhere aside from on your person. not to be all preachy, but brain tumors are sons of bitches, and i love you guys and i want you to live.

blahblahblahwriting.

i flew back from LA yesterday for writing class.

i thought it was the last one, but i guess it was the second-to-last one.

i've been feeling a bit unenthused about my class, kinda aimless and drifting, and was toying with the idea of just not going, but not seriously. maybe old me might have done that, flaked out, but i know myself well enough to know that if i'm resisting something that much, then i should probably shut up and do it, so i went.

my travel day was mostly fine. at LAX to early, since traffic on the 405 is a total mystery and could potentially have taken hours, but in actuality took minutes. some drama in my head about missing my shuttle back to 'Luma, but it didn't happen, so overall, fine. uneventful. no gavin newsom to gawk at. i got home with enough time to hang a little, change clothes, eat something and then head into the city for class. again, thought i was going to be late for class, which i have really tried to avoid after being so late to the first class, and time bent enough for me to make it.

my big resistance to the class lately has been reading my new fiction project. as much as i knew i should share it, i was really afraid of negative feedback, do kept feeling like i didn't want to share yet. but what the hell am i wasting my time writing for if i'm too afraid to share anything i write? in theory, the writing itself is the reward for the writing, because you're releasing things out of your brain that would otherwise just build up and smother you. so, it should be a relief to let it all out, whether or not you share it. but really, why bother if you won't share it? how do you know what you need to work on? how do you know if it's any good at all?
so, i brought my laptop to class, with the intention of reading my new stuff.

when it was time to read, i almost chickened out, and i got all flustered and nervous, but i did it anyway. so, i read, the first 10 or so pages of the book, and heard a few noises from the rest of the class as i read, some 'hmm' and some laughing. that's a good sign, i thought. after i was done, everyone was wildly enthusiastic. everyone applauded me at the end of class. lee, who is sparing with his praise, said, not just yeah, but fuck yeah. alan, my teacher, referenced dickens and kafka and margaret atwood. i think, after the difficulties and the repetition of my mistakes in the memoir, me reading this was a surprise for everyone, because the novel is more me. the memoir was artificial and forced, but the novel is me writing the way i want to. everyone was really interested to see what happened next, and there was lots of discussion about directions to take it and what should happen to the main character. alan sent me an email today, about some authors he thought i might want to read, that he was reminded of by my writing, and he said that my piece was still with him, he'd been thinking about it. he said it was "really, really amazingly good." yay!

it was very exciting. after being so scared and protective of it, and so afraid of it being ripped to shreds, or just left kinda soggy and damp, to have everyone be so positive, so impressed, was terrifically validating. *this* is how artists keep themselves going. yes, you have a feeling you're good, but you need periodic validation to keep you going when you have forgotten, or when other people have told you you suck. these are the memories that light your way when you need some illumination. so, i am jealously, feverishly clutching this feeling to my heart. i can do this. i can do this. i am good at this. sometimes i'm not sure and maybe i even think i'm crap, but i have it in me.

alan did a bit of a wrap up for the class, with some general words of wisdom and encouragement, that really hit the spot.

i've actually hit a bit of a wall with my story. i imagine it like this: i'm in a car. i set out filled with excitement, a really clear plan in mind of my route. my tank is full, i have snacks, i have good road music and i'm GOING FOR IT. so i'm going! and it's awesome - as awesome as i'd imagined, maybe better! man, the scenery is so good and i've got the windows rolled down and the music is blasting and i'm singing at the top of my lungs and drumming on the steering wheel! then, as time passes, i start getting tired. my trip has taken less time than i thought, and some of the stuff i had planned turned out to not be that cool so i skipped it, but don't have alternate plans. it's getting dark, i've eaten everything i brought with me, i don't have anywhere to stay, and i might have taken a wrong turn. i'm driving slower and slower, down a road that i thought i knew, but am realizing i don't actually know. slower and slower, until suddenly i am stopped completely on a deserted road, in the middle of the night, surrounded by huge trees. i don't really know where i am and i don't know where i am headed and i am feeling overwhelmed and scared by the confusion. it was all so well thought out, you know?

this is me, lost and scared in the middle of my project. i have run out of gas, i have lost the map.
and this isn't the first time this has happened to me.

i realized that this happens every time. i have a bunch of started but unfinished projects, short stories or something, where i started off really elated and clear and slowly rolled to a stop at some point, unclear what to do, so i abandoned the car and walked home.

but i'd like to end this habit.

alan was saying that writing your book can be a chance to work through all your problems? are you a quitter? work it out on your book. lazy? superficial? fearful? pour all of it into the writing of the novel. he said that when he wrote his book, he was at a really low point. but he surrendered to the process. he said, alright, this is me - whatever i am. pathetic, angry, sad, frustrated, everything i am, i'm not going to hold back, i'm going to pour it all in.

so, i'm in.

he talked about being in the middle of his book and being at temple, for yom kippur. the rabbi is lowered to the ground my two other people, prostrate before the torah and god, on the day of atonement, and he says something in hebrew that translates to 'here i am.' and that's what he imagined doing with his novel. here i am, face down, prostrate before you. i am hiding nothing.

i got tears in my eyes when he said it. partly because of how beautiful that image of total surrender is, and partly because i reminded me of one of mom's ubiquitous labelmate messages, one on her bathroom mirror. it said 'here i am lord.'

admitting we have no control and we're flailing around trying to make it happen when really we have no idea what we're doing - it can be terrifying. but it's what's true most of the time. we have no idea what we're doing. we're scared and confused and just doing it, whatever it is, and hoping for the best.

i appreciate the liberation of surrender. once you surrender, it's out of your hands, which is a relief.

i've been feeling like a failure because i don't know what i'm doing with my writing and i'm worried i'm going to quit and be entirely without a goal again and that i'll waste this new sense if clarity, which was so hard earned through mom's death, and that i'll just sit here forever, waiting for something to happen to me, because i don't know what to do. i want to really Be this new me, in the world. i feel so different and so much more capable, or, i did, but it feels like it's going away without opportunities to use it. like, being me, in my house, at the gym, isn't enough. like i can only shine and know myself in a state of crisis. i don't want to lose this sense of purpose, of ME, this version of ME that i really admire, but i just can't seem to figure out how to translate ME into a post-crisis life. i am all filled with fears again, hesitating because i can.

so, i'm pouring it all into the book. so help me god, i will finish this book. it will be hard, probably, because most things worth doing are, and i am going to dig deep and mine everything i have and i am going to just pour it all in to this project. every ounce of my insecurity, my needing my mom, my doubts about my future and what i am capable of, my fears of repeating my mom's mistakes, my fears of failure, my hunger for success and to make myself proud, my need for approval, my shame, my anger, my quitting, my regret - ALL OF IT. fucking all of it. if i have anything to offer the world, if i have anything good or bad in me, i hope to show it in this damn book. i'm sorry it wasn't the book about mom, but i'm just not ready yet.

i get mail addressed to The Estate of Jenna Fisher.

it's so weird, because getting mail to her just feels like a mistake, but that mail, to The Estate, is like a little electric shock of realization - mom has an estate because she died. she died. my mom died. she's dead. she's no less dead now than before. it can be so painful still sometimes, even though most of the times it's not. sometimes something will hit the scar in the right way and it just stabs me again, the realization.

i heard that sharper image is filing for bankruptcy. it's probably because mom is dead. i think she might have been single-handedly keeping them afloat.

today was my last training session with jimmy. i tried to figure out how to buy more sessions, but i just can't afford it without screwing myself financially. i'm feeling really sad about it. he's leaving at the end of april to move to ventura to be a cop (the good kind, not the criminal sodomizing kind), but i had hoped to stay with it at least until he leaves. maybe something will turn up. i'm have a really hard time letting it/him go. it's embarrassing to admit, but he was one of the biggest things that helped me get through my grieving. it feels painfully appropriate that he's going now, as i am realizing that i am out of the woods with the grieving, so to speak, and that it's time to figure out how to live again. like my crutch is getting yanked out from under me, and i need to wobble around unaided. i mostly kept it together, saying goodbye, but i had to go down into the locker room and cry a little bit.

okay, i haven't worked on my book today, so i'm going to log some hours.

p.s. we have a reading scheduled, as the culmination of our class, and i'd love it if you'd come, if you'd like. it's on april 13th, a sunday, from 2 to 4pm, here:

Bird and Beckett Bookstore
San Francisco's
southernmost literary & jazz joint
in the heart of the city's
Glen Park neighborhood

653 Chenery Street,
between Diamond & Castro
in Glen Park
1-1/2 blocks from Glen Park BART station
& MUNI lines 23, 26, 44, 52 & J-Church

don't worry, i'll remind you.

peep.

peeps diorama competition.
it happens every year!
so happy-making.

i'm in la, visiting shannon for a few days.
it's more wonderful to see him than i could have possibly predicted.
i think i ignore/avoid thinking too hard about how much i miss him, because if i did, i might never stop crying.
i told him the other day that, while i am capable of keeping myself alive while he is gone, i am incapable of thriving without him.
going through the loss of mom makes feeling so dependent, so needful of someone very scary. you know, one of us will die, eventually, and the other one will be really, really sad.
but until then, he makes me so happy i just can't even believe it.
i am staying an extra two days because i just couldn't bear to leave him.

on a personal note, i am having a little bit of a crisis, trying to determine what i am doing with my life. now that i'm not in school, and not ready to get back into it, thinking about babies soon, but not quite yet, know i want to write but not sure what that looks like...what the hell am i doing with myself? i'm having trouble writing, which sucks. i'm feeling scared and confused and lethargic and aimless.

it'll all come together eventually, but the not-together-yet phase is particularly painful.

david suchet and shasta marie.

this is the actor, david suchet.
i'm having a little bit of a love affair with him right now.
why, you ask?
well.
you may or may not know that i listen to books on cd quite a bit, and by 'quite a bit' i mean instead of the radio or music, in my car. i am always listening to something when i am driving. i'm surprised mykhail didn't start speaking in an english accent, after listening to agatha christie for 3 days.
anyway, i am going through an agatha christie phase, and this is all because of the wonderful
david suchet.
he is most famous for playing hercules poirot in the agatha christie movies on the bbc and he reads the books on cd. not only is he adorable and charmant (as the french and, like monsieur poirot, the belgians, say) as poirot, but he does the voices for everyone else in the books, creating AMAZING voices. i seriously can't stress enough how impressive his vocal range is. he can play poirot, who is a pompous little belgian man with a french accent, a blowsy middle aged american woman, a well-bred young irish man, and a blustery old british general, each distinct, each entirely consistent. and then he has his normal voice for the narration. AMAZING, you guys.
so, i'm on my third book on cd by him.
here's a clip of him talking about the making of a video game version of 'murder on the orient express.' it's not amazing, but he does the poirot voice and you'll see how different it is from his own voice.

tonight, i popped in a movie that i had rented from netflix and HE WAS IN IT!! yeah! i know!
it was 'the falcon and the snowman' which was dated and featured a very young sean penn and his huge nose. seriously, it looked like he had a fake nose on or something. was it always so big? did he get a nosejob?
anyway, david suchet plays a russion diplomat and he is fantastic. so suave and self-assured.
then, from doing research on him, i find he's won tons of awards and was nominated for his performances in 'who's afraid of virginia woolfe?' and 'amadeus.' oh, and he was at the royal shakespeare for, like, 100 yrs and played caliban and iago and tybalt.
also, he's 5'6", which is so poirot.
anyway, it's exciting. he's great, and he actually works quite a bit. good for him. he deserves it.
***********************************************************************************

on a totally different note, i haven't talked much about putting shasta marie to sleep yet. i think i am avoiding it, since it's hard being here at the house without her. she deserves a tribute, but i'm not ready yet.

mall madness,

ladies, payless shoes is doing some good stuff right now. look at those shoes! the blue ones look almost exactly like some calvin klein ones i saw later in the day, only the payless ones were more comfortable, and, duh, a fraction of the price. also, i'm not sure if i was able to capture it, but the slip-on tennies are covered in japanese-y cartoon figures. there are some scattered fug sequins, but those would be easy to take off.

just saying.

maybe check out payless soon.

i didn't *want* to go to the mall in santa rosa, you guys. but my phone died, in an unavoidable, no-way-to-fix-it way, so took it to the apple store in santa rosa (i know! who knew they had one there?) and they gave me a new one, thank god. shannon had made me nervous that they would want to send mine to the factory to have it tinkered with, and i was feeling decidedly twitchy at the prospect of being unphoned for a while. what have we become? remember when we didn't even have pagers, or when phones weren't cordless? and now, i can't stomach going a few days without my cellphone.

anyway, they were nice and gave me a new one, probably because mine had gone from illin' to non-responsive dead while it was there.

so, elated from my new phone swap-out, i felt like i had to check out payless, since i was right across the hall and there had been a pair of sandals that i was considering. and, lo and behold, the selection in SR was amazing.

but i didn't buy anything because i am a smart person.

then i went to macy's and tried shoes on but didn't buy anything and then i went to forevs and bought one shirt and a bag, making it the only time i've ever left forevs having spent less than $100.

i was woozy and light-headed from hunger, so i went to lunch. the restaurant was insanely busy, and i waited and waited without complaint, only to be told that the thing i ordered wasn't available, a piece of information i could have used BEFORE i'd waited for 20 minutes for my food. so, i ordered something else and waited some more. my food came and it was fine, but not as good as what i had ordered before, but i read and drank pellegrino and had an espresso and a piece of coffee cake and everything was pretty much fine.

now i'm home, and new iPhone has been implanted with the intelligence of old iPhone and it's almost like the rift between us never occurred.

i know. this is a pretty fluffy journal entry.

sometimes it's nice to not have to write about angst and sadness and self-doubt. sometimes it's nice to just talk about a nice pair of cheap shoes, you know? also...





they seem to have misspelled my name on my clothing labels. i should talk to someone about that...

hypocrites, music and departures.

"an oily, fetid substance." nice, bio-deisel industry. very nice.

i like how he's known for ethics. whoops!


after seeing this video on goldenfiddle, i bought the album from itunes and it's tasty.


shannon is leaving today for los angeles for a while, to finish the last stage of the new 'indiana jones' movie. i'm missing him already, even though i am at work with him today to have lunch.

this is pretty amazing. wait for it.

Santogold "L.E.S. Artistes"
by bluntedsoul

kanye feels like this is maybe the best ever, and i have to agree, a bit.

also, you guys, i really want this bag. ideally i want the one in the navy blue, below this, but i would also be happy to take the bronzey one to the right. it is currently on sale, at revolveclothing.com, for $2oo-something, marked down from $400-something.



if you're really dying to buy me a present, and can't seem to figure out what to buy, this would be a safe bet. oh, but you could also buy me the sienna bag by deere calhoun, also available on the same website. i'm partial to the three pocket version, in grey.

not sure...

how do i know if the difficulties i'm having with the memoir are healthy challenges, to be transcended for a glorious finale OR the natural obstacles of something that needs to be given some space and rest, i.e. take a break from the memoir for a bit?

i don't want to be a quitter, and give up because it's hard, because writing is hard, and that's part of what makes it satisfying, is grappling with something so slippery and occasionally feeling like you get a handhold on it. and yet....

i am not enjoying writing the memoir. since i started the fiction project, writing the memoir feels like homework. fiction feels so much more natural, but still hard, whereas the memoir writing is just hard, in general. after writing so much about what happened this way, in my blog, letting it all come out as it would, sitting down and writing it all over again, in a more rigid way, with forced dialogue, just isn't working. after discussing it in class so many time, i am SO self conscious, SO concerned about making the dialogue gel, making sure it's not too much in my head and that i'm setting it firmly in a concrete place, that the story is moving along at a steady enough pace, etc. etc. etc.

you know what i've realized, guys? i write crap dialogue. i can't write it for shit. it sounds dumb and stilted and unreal. at least, i can't recreate dialogue from something that actually happened and have it not sound bad.

i felt like my writing on here was good, strong. it felt real and honest. and the things i am writing in my memoir don't feel honest or real. they feel forced. but the feedback i got from my writing class, both the teacher and students, was that having everything be like this, like my blog, was suffocating, there was no perspective and no air. i can understand that, after reading a couple of smothersome books, with narrators that barely ever come up for breath out of their own consciousness. you want to know what the air smells like, what the nurses look like. you want to be able to sink your feet a little in the setting before being carried off in someone's rickety little rollercoaster of a train of thought.

but how do i do that, if this is what feels the best? and i don't mean the writing of it feels the best, though it certainly feels better than what i have been doing, but this writing, to me, is more honest. i can remember and recreate what i was feeling and thinking and how i responded to a certain situation and why, but i can't remember what was said, specifically, and every time i try to bring it back it immediately bleaches all the color out.

i just don't know.
maybe i have already written everything i needed to about this, in here.
maybe i need to focus more on THIS, the writing that's here, and fill in periodically with setting and stuff.
maybe i need to just write about it the way i want to write about it, if i want to write about it at all, and let go of writing it the way my class is encouraging me to write about it.
it just feels like i am trying to walk around in shoes that are too small. yeah, i can probably get used to it, but there have got to be shoes that fit better, right?

last week, after having some stuckness problems and feelings like i wasn't enjoying my project, my writing partner, clara, suggested that i take a break from writing episodes and just write for a while on characters. i was having trouble creating everyone with my writing so she thought, why not JUST write about your characters, to make them real for you?
so, i did.
in the midst of my illness, i did some writing, describing my mom. i wasn't really trying to tell a story or even writing anything that fit in any obvious way into my memoir, just writing about her. anne lamott wrote two of her books for other people, one for her father as he died of a brain tumor (fuck you, brain cancer) and one for her best friend as she died of breast cancer, i think. (fuck you, cancer, in general.) her goal for writing them was as a gift, as they died, a love letter to them. she talks some in her book about writing your stories not for publication, but you have them written so other people can read them and know you better. so, i felt like i was writing about my mom for me, for when i miss her, and for my kids, who won't get to meet my mom, but will hopefully be able to know her through me, and you, too. so, i wrote and wrote and it was fun to just write without the self-consciousness.

i read that stuff in class last night and two people said that they liked it the best out of everything i've read thus far, which was nice to hear but really surprising, because i was totally ignoring all the rules we've been taught and just 'going for it,' as they say. my teacher was one of the people who said it was my best work, and i was just stumped. i didn't really follow any of the rules, there is no dialogue or anything, it's all just skipping from one place to the next, one time to the next, but that's the best? why isn't that suffocating? because being smothered by mom is interesting and evocative but being smothered by me is boring? i don't fully understand. i'll need to email him about it.

an interesting thing happened, later on in my writing about mom.
i switched from talking about her past, before me, and was writing about her with her cancer, trying to describe the change in her from the cancer.
one of the hardest things i have had to chew on, while processing my mom's death, has been how hard a time i had connecting with her, in a way that felt meaningful to me. i felt farther away from her at the time of her death than i ever have, because it came after years of living apart, where allen had taken up so much space in her life.
she was so close-mouthed about her illness, and i just wanted to talk and talk and talk about it.
are you scared?
are you mad?
are you sad?
do you have regrets?
she just wasn't really open about it. all of my tearful monologuing led to not one instance of her really opening up with me about what was going on inside her.
it was so frustrating and scary for me, kira fisher, who can't have an emotion without observing, labeling it and discussing it. i assumed she had all these teaming emotions inside of her that she wasn't dealing with, because she wasn't talking to me, she wasn't talking to allen, she wasn't talking to her friends... there was so deep depression when faced with her mortality, no dizzying highs of elation over the preciousness of life, and i really wanted that, with her, because that was what *i* was having.
but, while writing, i thought about her, and how she processed things.
she didn't seem like someone tormented by inner demons. she was peaceful, all the way up to her death.
yes, she was probably avoiding some of the unpleasantness, but she didn't seem troubled.
and i thought about how she didn't talk to us about hew feelings and how she was doing much, in sickness or in health.
and then i thought about her relationship with god and how supported and confident she felt through that.
she found peace in giving things she couldn't process by herself over to god. she described this place, her mental altar, to me once. there is a dense forest, and in the center of the dense forest is a clearing, of grass and sun. in the center of this clearing is a boulder that's flat on top. and when she is troubled by something, she'd go to this clearing and lay out her problem on this rock, to dry out in the sun. she'd tell god that she had done everything she could with that problem and she was going to give it to him to handle. and she felt like letting it dry out in the sun, flattened out on a rock to bake clean, was usually enough for her. she'd taken it as far as she could and now it was out of her hands.
so, why wouldn't she have done the same things with her fears about death?
all of my questions:
are you scared? duh.
are you mad? duh.
are you sad? duh.
do you have regrets? duh.
but she didn't need to talk to me about those things because what could i do about them? nothing. i couldn't give her peace. i couldn't take those fears away.
but talking to god could.
she could take all those fears and regrets and angers and she could lay them on her altar to dry out in the sun, so nothing was left of them but powder, and so she was left with just the sweetness of it all.
doesn't that make sense?
there will always be regrets, it will always be too soon. but it seems like the goal would be to end your life in the presence of what worked and what was good and what joys you brought and received.
and it seems so much more like her to have been there at her death, rather than tormented by the loss of it all.
the realization brought me a whole new sense of peace about her death. i would have loved to be more a part of her processing but just getting that she processed it successfully in her own way, and that the pain came from me wanting to see her process MY way, rather than recognizing her own ways, was a big relief.
i think mom was probably totally at peace with herself and me and everyone when she died. i think she was ready, in every sense, as best she could be. i think she felt safe and protected, like she was heading home. which sounds corny, but is nonetheless true.