Mrs. Dalloway's Coffee Break

Saturday is my birthday. The day marks the beginning of my last year in the limber thirties, before the irrevocably looming brokeback forties kick in. Every time I close in on another big milestone birthday, I always think that’s it, that’s when the shit is going to hit the fan, when I need to get my head out of my ass, to have my life figured out, to stop being a daydreamer and a willy-nilly, and perhaps, just perhaps, the elusive, capital-lettered rarities; Maturity and Adulthood, will suddenly take hold of me, and I will be a new woman. So far, it has never happened. I tend to celebrate my big birthdays with a preemptive strike, so to speak: by buying a new garment, something festive, something to make me feel less like oh god there goes another novel, and more like this is going down now, let’s do this, I can do this, this is great, even.  When I turned thirty, I bought a hand-crocheted mini sundress to mark the occasion. It was totally see-through, in all colors o...

Today, as words seem to keep evading me, my heartfelt thanks to the wonderful writers and artists mentioned below, for keeping me halfway sane. A special hats off to Stephen King, my greatest muse; today, his words are delivered by the mighty redhead, Seth Green. ”Richie Tozier is my name, and doing Voices is my game.” Now how about those Voices: Stealers Wheel: Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am. Noga Erez: They say love would kill us all – can you shoot while dancing? Can you dance while you shoot? Pity, pity, pity, oh you’re so pretty. Roxy Music: Love is the drug and I need to score. Livingston & Malneck & Kahn with Woody Allen: I’m thru with love and all you motherfuckers. Jenny Wilson: But you go on insult-insulting me. Lana Del Rey: My man is a bad man, but I can’t deny the way he holds my hand. And he grabs me, he has me by my heart – Likes to watch me in the glass room bathroom Chateau Marmont, slipping on my red d...

Woke up this morning feeling kinda eerie. Made some coffee, but there were no sounds of my cheery mother doing chores somewhere in the backyard. No sign of her or anyone else, just me, the family’s diehard fan of the midnight special, so I slept late. Little did I know it would all turn out as Fate and when I went to check, saw something busting through the door of the work shed, it was gross, and I could not take no more of this crap, “Hey, cut the crap!” I called out, thinking they were joking on my expense and laughing out loud somewhere behind the work shed, but look! In the fields there were many others, and all it took for me to have one glimpse of the walking dead before I ran and ran away from the work shed. I ran through the house and out the door I went and crossed the dirt road and some cars, and there was dent because something had come over everybody there was blood and not just on the crash site, that was bawdy. Scared shitless now...

A work mate told me he had bought a new lamp. It was the kind one could place, say, on the side table, in the shape of a monkey, holding a luminous orb on his shoulder. My first reaction, before I realized it was totally pointless to even utter this in his presence, was to exclaim what fun! Now he had a monkey lamp, just like in Lorelai and Rory’s house! He isn’t a GG man, so he is totally oblivious to the numerous contemptuous references Emily makes during the course of the show to “that dreadful monkey lamp”, the one standing on the Gilmore girls’ side table in the living room. Okay, Lorelai’s monkey lamp is a piece of camp thrash, like the dancing rabbi, and probably bought on a whim for a few bucks because it was funny. My work mate’s new lamp, on the other hand, is a designer lamp, bought from a nice store, and cost a bundle. And because it was the last one they had, Norton was feeling special and kismet about his lamp. And it’s a gorgeous lamp, and funny, too, belie...

Do you ever have those days when you just want to tell Henry David Thoreau to shove it? I had one of those days yesterday. I had a long over-do appointment with my doctor, concerning the fact that I went cold turkey on the sleeping pills in April, right after my disastrous horror show with the Fiend from Hell, masquerading as a dentist, checking my teeth and telling me she was afraid the new was not good. (More on this, check The Mellow Instrument .) I had put off the appointment as long as I could, ignoring both my man’s and my friends’, not to mention my parents’, advice about it, letting their “But jesus, shouldn’t you hear what the doctor has to say before just terminating the treatment on your own?” go in one ear out the other, secretly fearing a similar scolding once I finally got inside the nice doctor’s office with the ficus and the stethoscope and the tongue depressors just waiting to get to action. So, yesterday was the big day, over two months after the fact, an...

This is the recurring line from Creepshow 2, and more specifically from a segment called The Hitchhiker, and since we witnessed the beginnings of a similar to-be often-repeated phrase on Twin Peaks: The Return just in the last episode, I wanted to title my story with its predecessor, and, well, you know: if the shoe fits. Like the first one, Creepshow 2 was great fun, more than anything else, and I especially wanted to see it when it came out because of the inclusion of The Raft, a tale that scared the bejesus out of my already Jaws-inflicted mind when I read the short story in Skeleton Crew, Stephen King’s early collection of shorter fiction, a masterpiece, if you ask me. My man, while an appreciator of literature both high and low, had read all of seven of King’s books before we met, and had a very strong opinion about him and his characters and mindset. It wasn’t that he hated his work, no, but all the books he had read, The Shining and so forth, had a recovering  alcoholic...

When her husband had been gone for a week, Alexandra had a nervous breakdown. When he had been gone for two weeks, she stopped looking for him in the house. When he had been gone for a month, Alexandra found herself totally alone in the house. Lilith was gone. So was the nameless demon who had taken him. When it had been a month and one week, she found him. At least she thought she did. Inside a jar of cloudberry jam, in the cupboard. She was making her breakfast by the counter, getting ready to spoon some sunflower seeds over her usual portion of soygurt with fruit, when she spied movement inside the jam jar with her side vision. She freaked out, shouting a loud Fuck! in the kitchen, dropping the whole bag of seeds on the floor. She swore some more, looking at her cotton slacks, covered with sunflower seeds, dangling from the rough fabric, sunflower seeds all over the floor, a giant heap of grey matter on the green rug. “Fuck! Fuck this, and almost a complete bag, too...