hey guys. i'm spending my saturday night suppering with my mom and dad, while we gossip about my little sister. we all came clean. and she's getting voted off the island.

sitcom life

I watch a lot of sitcoms. It's one of the manifold distractions I use to get through my days. I work out, chaffing my most private of areas in spin classes, falling out from my headstands in yoga, completely disrupting the chi of the room. I shop (but rarely buy), I Facebook (and really need to cut back), and I work. I love my work, I only wish there was more of it. I feel important, that I do, in some tiny way, make a difference. I completely styled a girl for her first Homecoming. From earrings to dress to shoes to how her hair should look. After all that, I want pictures!

Anyway, I digress. I wish my life were like "How I Met Your Mother" or "The Old Adventures of New Christine" or "Happy Endings" (new obsession). I'm fascinated by the fights of these shows. When Graham and I fight, it's ugly and inarticulate and, quite frankly, it usually involves one of us (usually me) bawling. On sitcoms. it's entertaining and quippy. They fight with smart punches, they fight standing up, looking at each other dead-on in the face. When Graham and I argue, I recall looking away, cravenly, staring out the passenger seat window. Or it's in a dark bedroom, at the end of the night, and we can't see one another's hurt faces. Is he crying...?

Why can't my life be a sitcom? It's so crisp and clean. Of course, I'm aware of the impossibility, that life isn't performed in front of a live studio audience. There's no laugh-track. And, most apparent, life's not scripted. But I still SO want to believe that I can live a sitcom life. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough on the TV show, memorize every detail, the dialogue and situation will eventually sink-in to my own very real, TOO real, life.

hey, guys

Well, being a person who graduated from Ole Miss, I couldn't not leave without having heard, read, researched, loved the works of the late, great Barry Hannah. I've only this week begun his book of short stories "High Lonesome" and its great. I wish I could write with such detailed, yet simplistic honesty. Here are some examples. And I'm mostly composing this blog for myself, so I can remember and use these words and expressions in my day-to-day life.

"He might have been something caught in the forest and detained for study, like a white deer missing its ilk, because he was sad and in love and greatly confused."

"Pal was a gangling youth of superfluous IQ already experiencing vile depressions. His brain made him feel constantly wicked but he relieved himself through botany and manic dilettantism."

"For the others, the wine went down like a ruined orchard, acid to the heart, where a ball of furred heat made them reminiscent of serious acts never acted, women never had."

"She had a clean face and new shoes."

"I wanted to explain to him how important friendship was in this cold universe."

"What I admire is anguish, casual faith, clothes, poise, and minor disaster, or the promise of it. I like the most lifted a little. The pride of exemption, yet terror in solitude. This is a busy concept."

"I am slow. I am windy. I have so little vision, engaged in this discourtesy length and interminable excuse, but seeing bits of light here and there ahead."

"There's never really time to develop one's ambitions. They just throw you out there and you grab on to something handy like an amateur, in terror.

"Whosoever you are, be that person with all your might. Time goes by faster than we thought. It is a thief so quiet. You must let yourself be loved and you must love, part of you that never loved must be opened and love. You must announce yourself in all particulars so you have yourself."