How do I tell you about the worst thing that could ever happen to me? If it weren’t for the three cats I am blessed with I would want to be with my mother right now. I don’t want to live anymore. I want my mom to pull me into her arms and take me with her, but I can’t. She wants me to keep loving our cats, to live. I don’t want to be alone. How do I ever recover? I feel like I will never ever be happy again. How can I be happy when everything reminds me of my mom? How can anything not remind me of her, even when I was away from home I called her twice a day!
I thought we had longer, Mom. You were only 68! Everytime I’d say “life insurance,” you’d say you had no intention of dying yet, that everything would work out just fine for me when you died. That I’d be ready, but i’m not ready at all! No one will ever love me the way you did or understand me like you did. I’ll never love anyone like I love you, Mom. How am I going to stay in my home? How am I going to live on 674.00 a month?
I vomited this morning while trying to clean the house. I don’t thin;k I’m sick…I have a social worker coming this afternoon, I.Have.To.Stay.Alive. And so many people are being kind to me. People are good. I will have to tell you the whole story, the good, bad, and the ugly. Sometime. It is too fresh.
Image via Wikipedia Art Nouveau Carpet Matching Drapes
This poem was supposed to be for week 1 of the Poetry Picnic, but I didn’t get it done on time, so instead I humbly submit it to Thursday Poet’s Rally (two weeks later). Let me know what you think!
It is a full day on my usually empty dance ticket. I, Lisa, professional mental health seeker, have the joy of seeing both my therapist and my shrink. Rolling out of bed, nicking my legs shaving, and dressing in my new Family Dollar ensemble, I get to my therapy session at 10 am. As I suck on a starlight mint, we go over my myriad of ”issues.”
“I went to see an art house film called The Smurfs in 3-D this past weekend, and went to the library before the film. This was the first film I ever saw in 3-D and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” I say as my therapist inspects the little book she caught me reading while I waited for her. She admits to never having seen a 3-D flick, and I praise the medium, that one can almost catch a bird flying out of the screen. “Though I don’t think The Smurfs would be your cup of tea.” I then bemoan the cruel truth that kids’ movies would be great except that kids actually come too.
“What is your comfort level standing in a line at the movie theater?”
“Well,” I answer,” not bad really. Crowds don’t bother me, individual interaction does. I can even ask for movie tickets, as long as I have the money so the person will have a reason to tolerate me.” I show her my latest acquisitions in my quest to get all the McDonald’s Smurf Happy Meal toys, the Baker and Brainy (I happened to have them stuffed into the labyrinth that is my purse). I then tell her that I’m too childish, too child-like, but the therapist likes who I am because she’s known me since I was 15 and because she gets money to like me -but honestly, I think she likes me anyway.
“It’s normal to be enthused about something you collect. My mom collected a particular pattern of carnival glass and was very excited when she found a piece at a secondhand shop,” my therapist assures me.
“I have to see the psychiatrist today. I’m not looking forward to it.”
At some point in the session, my therapist says, “but you feel comfortable talking to me, right?”
“Yes, but you don’t poke me with a fork.” One therapist thought I was sexually abused and my psychiatrist feels I have the ways of an “abuse victim.” Once my psychiatrist threw out there one time that maybe I had Aspberger’s syndrome since my social anxiety wasn’t getting better and it’s a struggle to look people in the eye (I’m very self-conscious).
“I’d have to research it more,” I remember the psychiatrist saying. “But I have a lot of empathy. I thought they didn’t,” was my defense. I did not show how upset I was to have a new diagnosis until I was outside and started crying and fussing at my mother. (No one thinks I have Aspberger’s, though, and the psychiatrist never mentioned it again, so it must have been a passing fancy for her too. Let’s just face it, Shrink, I’m f****d and you can randomly flip through your DSM IV and diagnose me with whatever is on the page, but there ain’t no fixing me, not really. But with that cheery thought, let’s continue ).
“I’m thinking about asking her about Abilify,” I tell my therapist. “She’s talked a couple of times of putting me on an antipsychotic in the hopes it would help with the OCD and everything, but I’ve been afraid of getting tardive dyskinesia. Do you have any patients on it with OCD?”
My therapist is looking far into her memory and comes up with 75% of the folks she saw with OCD who are chomping on the Abilify say it helped them, 25% said no it didn’t, and if she remembers right, 10% got off due to side effects.
I imagine people who’ve been on Haldol for years, the excessive drool foaming from their mouths. I imagine lactating. But have mercy on me, I’m so tired of not being what I yearn for the most: Ideal. Everyday I feel I’m not doing things just right and some days it throws me into a rage. I take three times as long as anyone else to do anything. I’m more depressed than I was and I feel as though I have few redeeming qualities. I begin to hope that my shrink knows that I will dramatically change from my lifetime membership at “Camp Clucky.”
Yes, yes, Lisa. We get you suck, life sucks, everything sucks. Blah, blah, boo-hoo. Get on with the story.
My mother and I are having a spot of lunch and I’m trying to look up Abilify just to make sure I want to try this, but my mobile phone’s battery dies on me. I try to recall the latestAbilify commercial. Cartoon woman literally weighed down by her depression and falling into the “hole” of the depression. Then her kindly looking doctor helps her out of the hole and prescribes her Abilify. Some side effects, what were they? Happy family having a picnic. Happy. “Resulting in coma or death.” What? I don’t remember, must’ve been really rare. Still at happy picnic, even Depression Hole sits nearby. Everyone is at the picnic having such a nice time. I want to be at that picnic, so perfect! ”Depression used to define me, then I added Abilify.” Ah, how nice. I’ll just ask my doctor all about it.
When I’m in Dr. Shrink’s office, I have my $3.00 ready to throw at the receptionist before she can ask, because I always get the sense she thinks I’ll run off without paying. It’s the rule of the house, yes, but I can’t help see it as a slight towards all psychiatric cases (power to the people!). I don’t think the receptionist likes my mother and I much. I can imagine her thinking “Sod it all, here comes that rubbish. If I wanted to deal with folks on the dole, I’d have stayed in Merry Old England, wouldn’t I?” Even before Dr. Shrink took Medicaid, though, and I had to somehow hack up $75.00 for my 15 minutes, I don’t believe the receptionist liked us much. It may be in my head, and I don’t seem much different from the others in the waiting room: they mainly look depressed, maybe a couple now and then look mildly apes**t. I’ve been with a friend to Mental Health before and they look worse and more interesting. I remember some young woman, obviously in a manic state, talking on her cell, “Friday night I tried to kill myself but they gave me some lithium and I feelsoo much better now!” I wonder if everyone is still getting help since our genius state thought it was a good idea to close the county mental health and the mental hospital to “privatize it.”
I tell Dr. Shrink my decision. She tells me to avoid grapefruit juice (which I already do since I am on Luvox) and to watch for slowed down movements, that tardive dyskinesiawon’t happen suddenly if it happens at all. Two milligrams, not a big dose at al,l and come back at the end of the month( to see if I’m still alive). Ok, great I can do this!
This might fix me.
Or not. Twenty minutes after taking my first cockroach shaped and colored Abilify stuff starts to happen. I am me but I don’t feel like I’m really here. So I’m not at the picnic yet I guess. My thoughts are my thoughts but I feel strangely like I’m not thinking. OK weird. I rush to look at the guide that comes with my prescription then augment it with the internet. Sometime during all of this I start feeling angry, really angry. Smack myself angry, yay!
Apparently on Abilify, I could develop diabetes, go into a coma, and croak, but hey, I won’t be depressed anymore! Since I’m already fat and haven’t checked my blood sugar in ages, I’m not a happy fat camper.
Stay out of the sun and don’t get overheated…What the frostbite? Am I going to turn into a gremlin?
Weight gain! Do I need to say why I might not like this?
Abilify and Wellbutrin should be used with caution because it might lower one’s seizure threshold. Well that would be a different experience! Might lower my immunity…that should be a hit with someone deathly afraid of going to the doctor.
I try to sleep. I can’t, just as I fall asleep, I feel like I can’t swallow and jerk back awake. I sleep an hour to fly awake and feel angry. Repeat this 2 or 3 times in the night. It feels great!
The next 48 hours are interesting. I’m angry at everything and when my best friend annoys me by what I perceive as lectures instead of swallowing it, I tell her off over and over. I can’t help myself! Freedom such as the ability to tell off your best friend over stupid stuff is not a freedom a social phobe like me wants.
Today I returned to my psychiatrist. “I’m doing OK, but I had to stop the Abilify. After one dose I knew I couldn’t take it. If I had done thorough research I wouldn’t have tried it anyway because I’m afraid of getting diabetes.”
“Yes well,”Dr. Shrink replies, “if you look on the internet, getting diabetes from Abilifyseems as common as getting the jitters.”
True, but I feel I should be more concerned due to the fact I’m overweight.”
Later I visit with my professor from college, the one who I named my oldest cat after in tribute. The college is only a couple of blocks from my psychiatrist’s office. We talk various things and then I talk about how awful I sometimes was when on meds that opened my mouth so that I’d say whatever I wanted back when I was in his science classes.
“Don’t ever feel sorry about the things you say unless you hurt someone’s feelings, and I don’t remember you ever being mean to anyone.”
“Well no, but I’d say anything and I cringe at the thought now.”
(Flashback: pointing at a faux skeleton in class and saying, “Look he’s got a boner!” Flashback: among the things I inherited from my grandmother, one was her old lady bright red lipstick. My reply to the comments I got when I wore it, “Hey, this was a really popular color in the 1940s.” I was shy then too, but accepted as the oddity that I was and I’ve always liked making people laugh. In many classes I was near silent anyway, but not my science teacher’s class. It’s a pity he isn’t my real father)
You learn to have patience says my professor at some point in our conversation. ” I guess you have had worse than me as long as you’ve been doing this,” I stammer.
“At least you aren’t an ax murderer. That would be worse.”
“Have you actually had murderers in your classes?”
“Two of them. One the cops chased into the mountains and he was killed.”
Well golly.
So the Abiify didn’t help me become the person I want to be, not close, but, the moral of this story is, no matter what I do, hey, at least I’m not an ax murderer!
PS: Abilify has helped many people, it could help you too. Sometimes the risk is worth the gain. As my pharmacist said, “Line 100 people up, and two would have the same reaction as you did.” Besides, my body’s wired different anyway. I was the 1/10000 of Paxil patients who lost her period on Paxil (happened on Effexor too!). Soon as I stopped, flowed like the red sea. With that, I bid you adieu.
This is the story of a cliché. Her name is Mary Smith like thousands of other women. She’s in her thirties and lives in a high-rise apartment in New York City, Boston,Chicago, or perhaps in Los Angeles. What does she look like? So many choices. We’re pretty sure she’s white though, the ultimate cliché color. Is she a ginger? No, too uncommon. We want something common in print. Golden strands of blond silk luminescent in the sun? Possibly. Brunette, her hair nearly as dark as her disposition? Also a possibility. Chestnut or mouse brown hair, tied conservatively behind her in a style reminiscent of a school marm? Depends. Is Mary Smith a savvy professional woman with three or four friends trying to find love and sexual gratification in a city? Or is she the tragic soul who ends up throwing herself from a bridge in utter agony (Oh the demons! The demons of her psyche! Oh lost love!)? Or is she that woman from whatever romantic comedy is in the theater every other week, who by happenstance finds her true love? We think Mary Smith resembles the marm the most. But let’s read on, the obligatory scene before the mirror is being written…
Mary Smith stands before the mirror, a figure of brown. Her hair is mouse brown, her skirt tan cotton and slightly jutting away from her skinny frame. Her eyes –brown also- appraise herself with care, bringing her ponytail from her back to spread down to her small bosom. A heroine.
Mirror spinning out of the way, she begins to sing a ditty:
Today, maybe today. Today!
Not yesterday, maybe today. Today!
Today!
Today could be the day. Maybe today!
Today, please today, something could happen today!
Todayyyy!
I feel it! Can you feel it? I think I feel it!
Maybe today! It didn’t happen yesterday, could be today.
Maybe love today, my destiny today. Today!
My life could change todayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
This song is transcribed here for inspiration and hope. But a story needs a hint of pathos or some critic will criticize this as being too one-dimensional. Since Mary Smith is a cliché, we really shouldn’t care, though, should we? She reaches into her medicine cabinet and becomes the face in the latest anti-depressant commercial. I talked to my doctor about my depression and he gave me…
What should we say he gave her? Something easily recognized as an anti-depressant. Prozac? Paxil? Zoloft? Lets say Zoloft. Zoloft for the so lofty dreams soaring over whatever clichéd demons Mary Smith subscribes to.
It is summertime and NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA, or wherever the hell our cliché lives. It is an oppressively hot day late in July. Mary Smith works in a paperback exchange, but will one day be the editor of a large publishing concern or maybe the romance columnist for a woman’s magazine. Some people are coming in, milling through the narrow aisles, not really interested in the mass market used paperback bonanza around them. Nor is Mary Smith interested in them unless they approach the counter, book in hand.
“Is it hot enough for ya?” is Mary’s attempt at being friendly with a book-clad fat woman in her 40s.
“Yeah. Hot.” A book called Savage Passion is dropped on the counter. Typical cover in the Indian/White Heaving Breasted Lady genre: An American Indian who looks like he lifts weights. He’s wearing a feather, loincloth, and not much else. A lady, poofy blond hair like a 1980s porn star, with lots of green eyeshadow. A bit of tit and leg is showing from her Victorian gown, leaving enough to the imagination to be allowed at a grocery store bookrack. Mary Smith used to read such books, mainly when she was 14, and grew weary of the genre shortly thereafter, for even clichéd characters can only stand so much of the same. Mary Smith prefers the various yarns spun by Danielle Steele. Now that is literature, is what Mary thinks, and that she need never vary in her choice of author, as Steele releases a new 400 page tome to indefeatable true love every three days or so.
And then he comes in. Mary Smith hears the refrain from that awful song she somehow made up on the spot this morning. Todayyyyy…
He’s the one, thinks Mary. He likes to read, he’s handsome, he’s perfect. Will he notice me?
What does Mary Smith’s future lover look like? Hugh Grant ( He’ll look like Hugh Cronin by the time this story is over)? We think he should look like perfection, the sort manufactured not by nature but by a Mattel factory. He is Ken articulated with the breath of life and perhaps looking for his Barbie in the flesh.
Mary Smith is a Barbie doll, Paperback Exchange Barbie, not manufactured by Mattel, but still ‘swell.’ She fantasizes about this man coming up to her, giving her a lengthy kiss rivaling a 1940s movie scene. I love you, Mary…
He’s coming to the counter. He’s coming.
“Hi,” Mary Smith says for the first time in a long time without having to fake enthusiasm.
“Hey,” says Ken, putting one hand in the pocket of his jeans. “You got a public rest room?”
The day progresses. It is around 3pm. The book store has thinned out and now Mary Smith is alone with a newspaper crossword. A mother comes in dragging her son by the hand. He looks to be about 6, years-old, brown hair almost the color of Mary’s. Mary Smith thought as a young girl that she would one day have a child of her own. Maybe her phantom child would look somewhat like this little boy.
She goes back to her crossword puzzle. The boy is bored as his mom looks at suspense novels. The owner of the bookstore likes knickknacks, the kind that have a sticker on the bottom that says, “Made Exclusively for Dollar Tree.” Cherubs, frogs, gnomes, and ceramic Jesus Christs all vie to be noticed on the tops of the bookshelves. One curio, a genuine African Mask (made in China of painted china), has caught the boy’s attention. His mother is oblivious to him though she is roughly 8 feet away. He starts to climb one shelf to get the mask. It would be fun to put over his face and pretend he is a masked superhero , we believe the child thinks.
The shelves only are about eye level to the average adult, so from the first shelf, the boy can reach…just reach.
Suddenly a crash, the little African Mask now lies on the linoleum floor in several pieces. Mary Smith turns to look at what happened. The boy is still standing on the first shelf, one hand frozen in mid-air, the other clinging to the shelf. Before Mary Smith can reassure the boy’s mother that the mask was of no real consequence, the mother has gone red with rage. “Now what have you done? G—damn IDIOT!”
Don’t look, Mary. Not your problem, Mary. Mary Smith resumes writing an answer on her puzzle. Her hand is shaking just a bit. She isn’t looking, but she hears. We see that the mother is small, blond, and in her early twenties. She doesn’t look capable of hurting her son, nor does she look capable of keeping him under control. Her frustration and rage is peaking. She grabs the boy off the shelf, but holds him kicking at the air 2 feet below him. Walks far enough away with him to clear the remains of the china African mask before dropping the child to the floor. The sound of the child’s body hitting the floor makes Mary Smith’s pen draw a line off of the paper as her shaking hand drops the pen.
Mary Smith can’t open her mouth. Her lips are stuck together, her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. Her voice is paralyzed. A movie of the week scene and she can’t turn the channel or swallow. The woman grabs up her son so that he stands again. He is winded, shocked, and not crying. She grabs his hand and they leave the store as they came.
Mary Smith is alone now. The mask is in the floor in several pieces. One piece containing a hole for an eye and a bit of forehead is on its side. To Mary Smith it looks like the eyeless socket is staring at her.
There was a time when Mary might have said something. How long ago was that? Ten years ago, maybe fifteen? Since before she let life pass her by. Before she began just trying to get on with life. Before her ideals began to shrivel and maturity blotted them out.
Mary Smith begins to pick up the pieces of the china African mask until she feels a sharp pain in her palm. The piece that had pricked her conscience has now cut her hand. This is the high melodrama we hoped Mary Smith, cliché of the great American short story, would give us. Emotional, physical pain, the kind that will translate well on the silver screen. Keep going,Mary!
Mary Smith drops the offending piece into a plastic bag she is using to collect the debris and then opens her palm. Blood, not massive, but considerable enough is leaking from a small cut. She stares at the red fluid that pumps through her body as though entranced. Funny the thoughts one thinks. Look, Mary, you’re alive. You’re still a person. Can you feel it? (Mournful reprise of the “Today” song’s music should be placed here in the movie version).
Perhaps a potential vampire boyfriend should materialize like a shark smelling blood? You know, a nice pale guy, handsome, opens the door for his lady-love before draining her of her lifeblood. So popular now, but we decide we like this story sans Dracula, and…
Mary Smith bandages her hand in the bathroom, places the last piece in the bag, and makes her way to the wastebasket behind the counter. But for some strange reason she can’t toss the tied bag into the basket. Something, some force has prevented her from throwing the mask away. Perhaps the mask is cursed, right? Not likely. Hello, it came from the wild forest pf The Dollar Tree, not an ancient African tribe. Probably something else. It seems to her that to throw the mask’s remains away after what happened would be wrong…almost bordering on disrespectful for her phantom son’s pain.
It’s time to close. Mary Smith is glad. It’s been a long day. I’ll throw it away when I get home, and with that she stuffs the plastic bag in her purse. The ‘closed’ sign is hung on the door, she sets the alarm, and locks the door . She is out on a generic sidewalk in NYC, Boston, Chicago, or LA.
The loneliness of a large city is something Mary Smith is used to, but something has happened. The late afternoon sunlight is almost like it’s not there to her. The oppressive heat seems to not bother her. She almost feels cold. The world is gray like an anti-depressant commercial pre-pill. People are all around her and she feels invisible until she bumps into a man (OK, here must be the meeting of the male romantic lead. FINALLY. Such a tedious read).
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” a man in a business suit admonishes.
“Sorry,” Mary Smith replies in the same tone as the gent.
Everything is wrong somehow. People are so unkind and she is tired of it all. Mary Smith is relieved to lock herself safely into her apartment away from everyone. Suddenly she remembers skimming through the paper that day, the stories. Along with the daily dose of murder, mayham, and outed gay conservatives, there was the story of a man who lived in an apartment building not far from where Mary Smith lives. He hung himself in his closet and wasn’t found for a week, not until someone smelled him. What if one day that happens to me? What if I died one day by natural causes or by dispatching myself and they only found me because I stunk? Would anyone wonder what happened to me? Would anyone care? Oh, knock it off, Mary. Someone would call, your employer, your landlady sure would be on the case if the rent was late. Maybe a friend sometime.
My life doesn’t matter.
Eat something, Mary. You’re just tired and hungry.
Would anyone remember me for anything? No one would. I’m nothing in this world.
Rinse off your face. Get a grip. Ugh, no wonder no one loves me.The mirror doesn’t lie!
The mask is still in her purse, which she has hung on the coat rack. She takes the bag out of the purse, empties the pieces on a tray, hunts down her super glue, and pieces The Dollar Tree African mask together.
Watch something on the TV.
Canned laughter, fake, beautiful people sitting on couches talking their humorous adventures in love and life. Oh kill me now. I’m goingto bed.
“Maybe today? Fuck it. Tomorrow,” she sings as she slips into bed. Mary Smith covers her head with her pillow and drowns the out the world.
The next day she picks up the dried mask from where she glued it together. The mask falls to pieces again. Mary Smith sweeps the pieces into the plastic bag and throws it away on the way to work.
Ni-hao everyone! I am delighted that my dear friend, Joe Romano, AKA Jaco, agreed to let me interview him. I want to showcase his blog, Just Write of Left to my thousands of readers. As you might have guessed, I am his number 1 fan.
“I love Just Write of Left. A lot. I think you should too.”
Jaco’s writing launches his readers into a beautiful, lyrical, and exotic world of romance. The story he wrote installments of this month, All Memories are Traces of Tears, is a tale of a an American in China wounded by his past and the chance encounter that sparks a new love. While the story is fictitious, the scenes are drawn so that you know the author has an intimate knowledge of the China in which he writes. Jaco’s writing gets better with each post, as evidenced in his latest post, drawing the sadness of parting in a poetic vein. Jaco took a month-long, 30 words a day flash fiction challenge from Blogdramedy’s blog and expanded into an engaging, unusual tale. I’m honored to actually have Jaco here on my blog answering my questions as I try to get an in-depth picture of this man as an author and a person.I’ve decided to conduct this interview in a 20 questions format to give it that down home Spanish Inquisition feel. Jaco need only use this abbreviation to decline answering one of my painstakingly thought out queries: STFU, which for those of you not versed in internet etiquette, means “Stop! Thanks for understanding.” Without further ado , here’s Jacoooooooooo!
1.) Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
The truth? Of course.
2.) Perhaps my 10k eager blog readers would like to know why you are called “Jaco. Just Jaco.” To me it’s far more catchy than “Bond. James Bond” and gives you that aura of mystery a blogger worth his salt craves.
Let me begin by saying it’s pronounced Ja koh. Not Jaco as in wacko. Well, I earned the name Jaco later in my musical career. I was a big fan of Jaco Pastoriusthe greatest bass who ever lived. He performed with Weather Report, and later with his Word of Mouth Orchestra. Jaco was to the bass what Hendrix was to the guitar. His technical prowess was unsurpassed. He was better than Charles Mingus in that his compositional skills approached that of Mingus, and his technique took the bass to another level unheard of in the 80?s. I started playing bass late in my career. Toward the end I was playing bass exclusively, and emulated his playing style. My friends started calling me Jaco and it stuck. So I chose that as a pen name. Jaco. Just Jaco. Jaco and nothing more.
3.) Your blog is called Just Write of Left. How did you come up with that name? Me, I just listened to my inner child skipping through my inner field of transcendental daisies, but I understand if you were inspired by more conventional means.
I was searching for a new name for a blog. I brain stormed a bit and came up with Just Write of Left. Probably not the best name for SEO purposes. But I liked the play on words, and decided to go with it. I shut down Blogging Perspectives Daily, and moved to this new domain. While I was participating in the BlogShorts Challenge I decided I wanted to write short fiction. I thought the name reflected what I was doing.
4.) Please describe for those of my 10k readers who haven’t discovered you yet, whatJust Write of Left is about.
Just Write of Left is a place for me to paint pictures with words. I like to create images with writing. That’s the goal. My blog is my personal art gallery in a sense.
5.) What inspired you to start this blog?
I don’t know. I just felt it would be a creative outlet, and I felt it was therapeutic. I needed that. I was recovering from a mean cocaine addiction, and at some point I felt like I wanted to create again. I felt I was well enough to get back to work.
6.) Could you tell us a bit more about your genre and niche?
I wanted to try flash fiction, and write noir. After I complete my ongoing All Memories are Traces of Tears series which was born out of the BlogShorts I contributed, I want to write cyberpunk. I’m a big William Gibson fan.
7.) What inspired the major themes and storylines in your blog?
I’m inspired by the films of Wong Kar Wai. He is a brilliant film maker from Hong Kong. His films are poetry. I love the imagery in his films and wanted to create that kind of imagery in my writing. The story lines are based on my experiences of living in mainland China. Mainly fiction revolving around three central characters. All Memories are Traces of Tears is about promise, yearning, the past, and in some ways about impossible love. Some loves are impossible, but they’re loves just the same. Of course the settings for my stories are mainland China, Kowloon, and Hong Kong.
8.) Do you find inspiration in your day-to-day life?
In my day-to-day life? In a sense I guess you could say that. Depends on where I’m spending those days. I find inspiration in human tragedy, the pain of the human condition. I’m inspired by things that really affect me in one way or the other.
9.) Do you wear your heart on your post when you write?
Of course. Every post is very personal. I’ve always been one who not only wears their heart on their sleeve, but wears it like a red jacket.
10.) The Joe in your stories is gentle and benevolent. Is real life Joe like fictionalized Joe? Are there any ways real Joe is different from fictitious Joe?
Not really different. The real life Joe is gentle and caring, but no one is perfect. I have my moments.
11.) Where do you see your blog going in the future? Will there be new stories culled from your fascinating life? Personally, I expect a book deal for myself, get on the New York Times Bestseller list, win a Pulitzer, and sell the movie rights to Lifetime Television for Women. “She Wrote Yes: The OCDbloggergirl Story” starring Meredeth Baxter.
I’m not sure where my blog is heading. I just want to keep writing. There will be new stories. I have some ideas for future stories in mind.
12.) Growing up, did you want to be a writer? Did you fall in love with the written word?
Well, growing up as an only child I had quite an imagination. I was writing song lyrics and poetry from an early age. I just felt writing was an extension of my musical studies. I’ve always been a ferocious reader so the written word was sustenance.
13.) What made you want to start blogging in the first place? I’m blogging for World Peace.
As I said earlier it was a creative outlet. It got me involved, kept my mind occupied. It has helped with my recovery. I haven’t really written about my cocaine addiction, but I think it will surface in my writing at some point.
14.) Who influenced your writing the most and why? For example, I read a lot of cereal boxes during my formative years and it definitely shaped who I am as a writer. Tony the Tiger n’ Tolstoy, know what I mean?
I mentioned Wong Kar Wai. I’ve also been influenced by the short fiction of Liu Yichang. The great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke is another influence, and the work of Charles Bukowski. There are so many. As for the why? It’s because of the images they were able to create.
15.)What are your main influences in life? The people, the events, your spirituality, just anything that you feel comfortable sharing.
Influences in my life? My parents of course. My girlfriend Xiao Hui. My son Zaid. Music and art have always been a major part of my life. Spirituality? The Qur’an and Islam.
16.) What are your other interests besides blogging? Do these interests come into your writing?
Astronomy and Cosmology. I’m quite the amateur astronomer. Other interests? Chinese culture. Languages. I studied Arabic for a couple of years. I learned some Mandarin Chinese, and continue to learn Mandarin as I will be returning to China in the very near future. No, I haven't used my other interests, but at some point I'll write them in.
17.) What do you do with blogging ‘trolls’ and their ilk?
Blogging trolls. That can be a serious problem. There are more than 70 million blogs in existence. So these people with serious pathological problems just get out there and do what they do. Fortunately. I haven’t had a problem with trolls, not lately anyway. I just try to ignore them.
18.) When, where, and how do you write the best?
I’m always writing. 24 hours a day. But for the sake of actually putting it into a word-processor, early in the morning. I’m usually up at 5 am. I need that quiet time before the distractions of the day just become overbearing. I sit at this huge dining room table in front of my MacBook Pro with a cup of coffee, and a cigarette. I have an idea and I start to formulate it, explore it. With All Memories are Traces of Tears I’m always exploring the characters, developing them. Other times I don’t have a direction until I start writing. It changes. I just keep writing until it feels right.
19.) What is the meaning of life?
I’m still trying to figure it out, but I can tell you what gives meaning to my life. And that is helping people. Giving something back. That’s what I learned. You have to always give back. So if I can help someone in whatever capacity then I feel like I’m doing something that matters.
20.) Do you like Girl Scout cookies? I favor mint chocolate.
Well, it’s funny you asked. Yes, I do. However, I was dismayed to learn they’re not actually made out of Girl Scouts.
There you have it, dear readers. Jaco. Just Jaco has just shown us his art and gave us answers to life’s great quandaries. I had always wondered why girl scout cookies were bereft of girl scouts too, but I never knew how to voice my concerns.Be sure to check out Jaco’s excellent fiction blog http://justwriteofleft.com,and if you’re on Twitter I’m sure he’d love to have you on his ship:@jaco223
I met Dr. Sana Johnson-Quijada the first time she left a comment on my blog a few months ago, and she has been a dear blogging friend ever since. Dr. Sana is the author ofA Friend to Yourself, a blog she started to help people become friends to themselves, a concept someone I know (::cough cough:: myself :: cough:: heave:: ) could definitely use.
Unlike Lucy, Dr. Sana Quijada's advice is free on her blog. Image via wikia.com
Every day for a year Dr. Sana, a psychiatrist and mother of three, is writing on ways to be a ‘friend to yourself.’ Her posts, as she says on her About Me page, are from her life experiences and her training, but she often uses fictionalized characters to illustrate her point. She even writes about perfectionism (not that I have a problem with being a perfectionist or anything).
Dr. Sana’s posts are always relevant to the human experience common in us all. Yesterday’s post was about how revenge often ends up hurting you more than the person on whom you avenge yourself. I can’t help thinking with such awful things going on now and those seemingly getting away with it that this is an important message. There is also the self-care tip of not hurting yourself or others, reminding us emotional abuse can be as bad as physical abuse.
I strongly suggest you start reading Dr. Sana’s blog for common sense tips on caring for yourself and those around you. I’m sure you will find her writing as useful and full of insight as I do.
Depending on who you ask, bruxism (that’s grinding your teeth) can be caused by stress, OCD, your jaws doing weird things, etc., so forth. This brings me to my first real post on my new blog, submitted to you by the muse of losing my nightguard -later found. I decided to post this to Poetry Potluck too!
The Nightguard
Dammit, damn, and damnation!
Losing one’s nightguard is such an abomination!
Night Guard?
You mean that invisible rent-a-cop the complex hired?
Thanks Lorna, Marie, and Mikey for checking out my dear pal’s site. He really appreciated your feedback, and now he’s in the process of converting his Blogshorts into short chapters and expanding on them. Would everyone be kind enough to visit http://justwriteofleft.com and see? I really want people to see his work and for his blog to succeed. Jaco is a beautiful wordsmith.
Beyond Help 
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