Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

It's been a while it seems.  February, when I was in the throes of a broken foot and a doubly ruptured plantar fascia.  In all this time, I've thought about writing, longed to, and yet . . . I wrote for other places, I wrote for books, I wrote in my mind. I stopped time, in many ways. 2019 has been brutal to me. It's been an unending barrage of punches to the face and gut. As I type this now, I shiver a little wondering what will happen next. Will the universe serve me another blow? What insult and injury awaits me this week? I hold my breath. In the fires of memory, I spent a large portion of August in Colorado. Per usual, I found myself footing myself up and down mountainsides, and most pointedly, I made it 3/4 of the way down an expert level hike in Black Canyon. I didn't make it all the way as lupus and asthma said hello, more than once, and my sister from another mother and father--Jen--and I agreed that wrecking myself to make it up and down was not an...

Not long ago I made mention that I wasn't sure if I would want to have a beer with "the girl in Birks" who moved here in 2000.  Wild eyed with untamed hair in shades of auburn with blondish highlights, her peasant blouses with tattered jeans, and tanks with long hippie skirts, leather knapsack on her shoulder and gypsy scarf around her neck spoke of her age more than anything else.  In college she had read Jack Kerouac's On The Road no less than twenty-five times; always scenting the air with clove cigarettes and littering the desk floor, and any flat surface with beer bottles.  Sadly, or maybe aptly, they were not uber cool micro-brews.  Back then Miller and Bud Light called to her on Kentucky nights.  One of the roommates--Mere--"borrowed" the cherished book, but that should really read she "lost" the novel in the forlorn flat surface with papers, clothes, and trinkets.  Most just call it a desk.  Shortly before graduation the mysterious flat...