Almost Called This...

 If I Have To Wonder  This, So Do You but I settled for:

On  cerebral palsy

It’s weird that my brain

Doesn’t know what’s wrong with it,

And keeps sending out messages that are rarely returned,

And my muscles send tightness

Instead of “while you were out,”

They’ve been here the whole time…

How hard is it to pick up the goddamn phone?

They’ve been waiting for forty-nine years last Sunday.

My brain learned lots of things,

Buffy quotes, politics, the second-hand dangers of the carceral state,

Imagined play-at-home millions on Jeopardy,

But it doesn’t know that it’s broken.

Is it gross that I wonder what the damage looks like?
I mean, it is the biggest thing…

Keeping me from a different kind of

Uncertain future.

Does my brain look like a peach we

Should have brought home from the store and eaten right away?

(that’s why you might get a good deal…the big bruise on the side.)

Or is it like lockdown,

Where the quiet is the creepy part,

But on the outside, everything looks the same.

Which would make a better story?

Finally Attempted "Love In The Time Of Cholera"...

 There are parts that I found fascinating, but overall "se me perdio'"(I got lost...don't you love how Spanish writes about these things as though the directions fall out of your head?) I almost agree with this student reviewer, though I liked it better than she did...I don't think she is wrong, though.Everyone had really long names, too.  Could have used a chart to keep the maids, mothers, and lovers straight.

Still looked for the love of my life's number on the flyleaf, as befits a fan of the John Cusack romantic dramedy 2001's Serendipity but it was blank.  Still looking for a middle ground in my half-assed search for love between the "Always be pitching," energy on the dating websites and trusting a universe that hasn't been exactly fair with me. Not sure what I'm going to do about that.  Not getting any younger, but in some ways, even if I've missed the biggest tragedies of the pandemic, I  don't feel ready to try to pretend that my being in a wheelchair wouldn't be a big deal for my date/ partner.

Maybe It's About The Expectations....

 Me, at age 19 or 20: Fully expected adventures and maybe a writing award by this age.

Me at almost 49: The closest I get to a goal right now is the wish to feel safe enough in public to get a buzz on and do either "Come As Your Are" or "Rehab" so that I can make bar patrons  think "huh...you can take that two ways."

Future's so bright, I've gotta wear shades.

What The Hell?

 (Some slightly less personal writing from my "corona" WIP

vegetation, they remembered from other climates could be part of the reason the Grand Canyon State lost its place as part of an allergy honeymoon. Which might have led her to use her overdone lips to say “ Been there,” but maybe it was full-on heartache she understood. For a moment, Carolyn felt a warm thread of closeness between her and the pretty young stylist. She had never felt that as a sober person before that day, only occasionally in the crowd at concerts or music festivals—those people had felt more like her people, so it was easier to lean back into it than in the hair salon, but she still wished she could hold onto it with people all the time, even as she knew that was a greedy thought.

Carolyn was reminded of that haircut(and not only because she learned she liked her hair short after all, though she highlighted it to add a little “invincible summer” to her look later by having highlights put in. It seemed hard to believe she’d once gotten the same effect by running around outside enjoying herself, but she had.) on that endless morning after the shock of seeing the Resident elected. As she walked in, turning an unmasked face toward the salon, as a song from her early working days played on the radio in the crowded salon that seemed to be full of depleted-looking women with sleepless shadows under burning eyes. Now, when she thought of that memory, crushing as it still was, in retrospect feels freer than it should, since we hadn’t heard about social distancing yet. That  could make something that she used to do all the time simultaneously more beautiful and more disgusting, a moment like seeing a rainbow in a muddy puddle.

I Loved This Book...

 If I were Oprah I'd buy it for all of my friends...even though it's a time-travel book and hard to explain.This Time Tomorrow review
I will let  bookstore staff pick most of my books from now on.