Love, sex, spirit, and travel...

We left jobs and home to travel the world...and then I wrote about it.

Today is the book's birthday.


You can order it here or at any bookstore.

The title comes from a quote by OSHO:

Don't call it uncertainty--call it wonder.

Don't call it insecurity--call it freedom.

Books may be written alone--but they aren't edited alone, published alone, or lived alone. I'm grateful to every person whose life has touched mine.

It's exciting and unnerving when something so personal and raw--something you've lived with intimately for so long--makes its way out into the world.

So I won't call it uncertainty, I'll call it wonder. I wonder what will come next?
 

Seducing the Demon

I'm currently devouring Erica Jong's Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, which I bought at Winston Smith, Auburn's very cool downtown used bookstore.

Here a few gems I've found so far:

An Icon's Retort

'"Let me kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses,' some abject fan once asked James Joyce. 'You don't know where else it's been,' Joyce countered."

Writing the Book

"Henry Miller used to say that he wrote fifty pages before he could hear the book's 'fetal heartbeat.'"

Sex and the 70's

"The early seventies was all about the clitoris. The clitoris was queen. It was impossible to escape the seventies without climbing over the clitoris. Apparently, for centuries men had been unable to find it. And women were pissed."

Advice from Anne Sexton

"Once, when I wrote to [Anne] about my terror of publishing a second book of poems, she answered: Don't dwell on the book's reception. The point is to get on with it--you have a life's work ahead of you--no point in dallying around waiting for approval. We all want it, I know, but the point is to reach out honestly--that's the whole point. I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any of us--or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem--a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer--it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem. You have the gift--and with it comes responsibility--you musn't neglect or be mean to that gift--you must let it do its work. It has more rights than the ego that wants approval."

Bisexual Lesbian

My story "Art Making" will be published in the forthcoming Best Bi Short Stories, and the editor asked me to write a little blurb about myself and my story. Here 'tis:

When I'm in the mood to use a label, I identify as a "bisexual lesbian." I've been mongamously partnered with my soulmate, Annie, for 14 years and hope to remain that way for years to come. However, before I met Annie, I had been only in relationships with men (including a five-year marriage). I don't want to deny that those relationships are part of who I am, and yet I feel very woman-focused. That's why "bisexual lesbian" works for me.

My story "Art Making" emerged around the time Annie and I decided not to have children. It was a decision we were happy with, although it signaled a life shift because we'd both tried in the past to get pregnant. This decision got me thinking about the drive to have children, as well as the intriguing tensions between suburban and bohemian life--particularly the ways in which these lifestyles affect and are affected by child-rearing and art-making.

In the story, I was also playing around with the instability of desire and identity. Michelle is seen in the world as a lesbian, but she lives out desire bisexually. I think that is true for most people: that our labels do not match the complexities of our identities and desires. As Foucault says, we are freer than we think.