Have you ever been looking forward to something exciting and the day comes and goes, you enjoy yourself, but then you’re left feeling like “Great.. Half the fun was looking forward to that, and now it’s over..”? Even assuming that your excitement was warranted and the occasion was everything you were hoping or more..even then there seems to be this “anti-afterglow” and eventual panic when you realize that you must find something new and exciting to look forward to.

Yeah, I see that kind of lamentation in myself and others all the time and I’m sure it has something to do with the Buddhist idea of suffering (mourning the impermanence of moments, events, lifetimes, relationships, everything really); however, I’m also pretty convinced we can do something about this less-than-enthusiastic after-the-fact feeling..this anti-afterglow. And we MUST do something about it… Read more

Hope…what a cosmic joke, this name her parents had given her at birth! She’d been through the fire, fought so long, and now, sunk so low. Letting her hair down, she eyed the bathtub full of water, the almost empty glass of wine, and the sleeping pills.

Somewhere along the way, she’d gotten caught in all the snares. We all start so raw, she thought. Believing we can change ourselves, change the world. Then the mistakes start happening, and we think we can undo them.

She had carried her burdens, never asking anyone to share them, but hoping nevertheless that someone would offer to. Damn, there is that cursed word again. She was set up for this fall at birth, and now his last words to her took the last bite…

“I told you so.”

She sat there in the darkened room, invisible to her friends. They were too embarrassed to see her any more. Just one step further, she’ll just slip into the tub, and she’ll have fallen, and then they will know, they will see her.

Unless they are right, and she is wrong, and she doesn’t exist.

But it was lacking something. It was not the story I had wanted to write. The story I wanted to write and did the next day involved botched plastic surgery; a stolen statue of the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bast; the false confession of an overexcited woman named Edith; the tragic loss of young Roderick in the bogs; the acquisition of a heretofore un-known pair of Carlotta’s slippers; a man seen entering the rare books section of the main branch of the New York Public Library wearing a maroon fez; an unprecedented huge ransom paid in Antwerp for the return of a pair of Siamese cats; a banana, peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich; bad legal advice; the fact that Scriabin was born on Christmas and died on Easter; some misappropriated funds; the death of young Brett Saunders III during a hazing at a fraternity house in Hamilton, New York; Grandma Moses and the fact that her handwriting deteriorated as her painting improved; gratuitous name-dropping; a brief history of mazes; some tepid pornography; a defaced statue of Kemal Ataturk; an interview with a 13 year old boy prostitute in Marrakech; the disappearance of a cigar store Indian; evidence found in a letter left behind in an abandoned car parked outside the aquarium in Rhodes; a bag left unclaimed in the luggage room at Victoria Station; a mix-up in Milan; Mrs. Hudson and long division.

Both stories have since been lost, as was the story I wrote subsequently about their loss which involved an unfortunate incident in Inverness; a dish of The Priest Fainted ordered and left half uneaten at Hacibaba’s Restaurant in Istanbul; some false impressions; the Yiddish proverb that says if God lived on earth people would break his windows; a gift certificate for $200; an unbiased account of the Coolidge presidency; the long awaited but finally successful delivery of a six foot crate from the archaeological museum in Heraklion; some harmless petting; the Complete Works of an author of your choice; the arrest last August of a German tourist named Bleckstein after a five day manhunt along the US-Mexican border; how to tell the difference between Time and Newsweek; a view of the Golden Horn at sunset from Room 401 of the Pera Palas Hotel; the identity of the person who leaves the bottle of Martell on Poe’s grave each year in celebration of his birthday; an explanation of why pigeons do that thing with their necks; and a brief, tumultuous affair with William The Conqueror.

“She’s not all that bad,” dad will say.

“Hell, she can sleep in my room,” says little brother.

“That woman cannot stay the night in my home!” says mom.

Sister Jane slips her a note that says meet me out back when the lights go out.

You check the byline of this story, and it’s a man’s name. So how can I be an Asian war bride decades after the war has moved to greener pastures?

Life is full of riddles and questions. Life is riddled with questions. Life is like a heart that keeps beating long after it’s been sliced out of the body. I’m a mild-mannered reporter who every time he steps into a phone booth turns into Superman. It’s not a matter of personality transferal. It’s a severance, without pay or gratitude.

It’s just a job. The voices say Asian war bride, and I jot it down. I like my job. Once I punch in, I’m as free as a bird. It’s punching out that brings the roof down around my ears.

Starting about midway through the second week, however, she began gradually slipping into her old patterns. She studied the tapes, mapping her hours spent at work at her computer and her activities during her breaks.

Increasingly, she was also able to map her thinking, watching with some amusement, fascination, and then embarrassment as her patterns and distractions unfolded before her eyes.Read more…

She unbuttons and unzips the bellhop and the bellhop says god yes and pornographic images assault the bellhop with the cataclysmic force of a linebacker’s crushing hit. She abandons herself to him, blithely, beautifully squashed against the side panel of the elevator, elderly couples watching with big stunned eyes from marble benches flanking the fountain down in the lobby, and she can see their transfixed faces and the pennies gleaming, coppery, on the translucent floor of the fountain.

The bellhop, riding her, excited, nervous, the thrill at this point both from Marguerite’s comely body compressed against him and from the risk of impending job termination, groans, and suddenly Marguerite chants a feral yes and bashes a hole in the glass with her ecstatically clenched fists, shooting sharp shards at the horrified lobby-dwellers down below, and leaps, face first, through the glass and out of the elevator.

The bellhop says oh god, imagines the moment of his now inevitable firing, and the unpleasant but somehow hot crash of Marguerite’s bare body into the fountain, splatting into all the pennies, and stares shocked, but before she hits the floor she unfurls white wings like a gargantuan eagle, and she swoops up gracefully through the lobby, circling the crystal chandelier and gliding out the front door. The naked bellhop frantically presses the L button and descends, pulls up his pants, reaches the ground, staggers out of the elevator, zips up the pants, and joins the mob of patrons who run outside to see Marguerite flying circles around the hotel, breathing fire.

Still shirtless, he sprints away from the hotel, chased by the irate manager, followed closely by the panicked mob, as Marguerite, swimming through the air like a mermaid of the sky, torches the hotel, yawns, rubs the bellhop’s thin tie up and down the length of her body and falls asleep on a pillow of burning clouds.

Remember the details he’ll soon forget he mentioned. So when you say something he’s forgotten he told you, he’ll tap his forehead with a pen, and say, “Here you are again, Carly, inside my head.”

Be subtle, just a bit inappropriate. This requires balance. The world’s full of blatant need and honesty. All those handshakes that run a beat too long, footsie under the table. Avoid skin. Think of whispers, and how, when you want to hear one, you only adjust your head.

Elevator rides are great opportunities for intimacy. You step in front of the boss, lean back a little, and hope someone else gets on.

Stay late to help him put together his power point presentation.

Always know how you look. Lips slightly parted, hands alive as you talk. Know what your legs are doing, if they’re crossed or you’re bouncing your heel.

These things also work: Tuberose perfume. Nipples through black shirts. Hair in your eyes he’ll watch you brush away, wanting to do this.

Offer him one of the long neck beers you’ve stashed in the fridge in a grocery bag.

Walk slowly in and out of his office with corrections. Don’t be deferential anymore. Call him Albert often. Albert. Albert. Albert. Put the papers in front of Albert, who will take your wrist and pull you close to him. Kiss him back.

The desk is high and too hard.

Move to the rug. You don’t want this to be just one time, so set up a reason for the next time. Tell Albert how very close you are, just a minute away, when you know he can’t last seven more seconds. Tell Albert you’ve never had an orgasm fucking. “Watch me,” you say. He promises he’ll be the one who pushes you through the next time, who gets on your map.

After sex, tell him something pretty. How you were the kid who always stayed after school to erase the blackboard because it was so lovely to run through the day’s work. Forget that you don’t mean any of it, and that you stayed late not to help your teacher, but because you didn’t want to go home to your drunk parents, and that all you felt after you’d clapped the chalk out was dread.

The next day at work, stand beside his chair so he runs his fingers up your bare calf.

Bring him chocolate covered almonds. Spike his coffee with Amaretto.

After the security guard shows Albert’s boss the tape of the two of you fucking in the middle of the floor and you both get called up to the executive office to watch it, hesitate. Take a closer look. Say: “How do you know it’s me?” The guard will say you were signed in until 11 p.m. Have the guard rewind and replay, rewind and replay. It may look like you, or it may be the woman from the third floor you saw Albert talking to in the parking lot after he left you with a few more corrections to make, both of them in the open V of the door on the passenger side of her car, because he was considering the drink she’d offered. Say it isn’t you. You don’t have shoes with 4″ heels because your knee was screwed up in a car wreck. Point to a scar under your skirt and threaten to show your boss’s boss. He’ll shake his head and say that’s not necessary.

Leave the room.

Clean out your desk. Pitch all of your Albert’s notes and corrections and the power point zip disk into the trash. Pour what’s left of your Coke in there, too. Try not to look down at your sensible shoes.

Go into your Albert’s office. He’ll beg you to keep your voice down. Raise your voice. Fill every cubicle of the office with your voice.

Rattle the windows. Make coffee jump out of mugs. Ask him this: “You fucked her after me?”

If you have to think of yourself as a trophy, don’t let it be the brassy thing you win at swim meets. Be the five point deer head in the lodge. That’s funnier, don’t you think? The kill he made without his wife? The proof he hangs in his den–next to the smaller deer in heels–that she’ll put in the trash if he dies first.

When you wake at 4 a.m. and your brain’s on fire, pretend you’re swimming in a lake alone and the water’s cool. Slow down. Go easy now. The feeling that love’s a kind of home…well, it won’t go away, but you can put it away. Just dam it and trust the banks will hold once the water stills.

Read the newspaper the minute it hits your door. Notice bad days also happen to other people. Be grateful for that.

Find your next job in the want ads because you want to be seamless. Then you have a highway with no red lights. Just high speeds and miles of road. A place where you can drive all night. Texas. Those people in Texas care so much about their trucks that the roads are black velvet.

Today’s nature show is questioning religion. Well actually it is on anteaters…I am questioning religion. Why would god create an ant and then an anteater? Does he not like ants? Or is it a “Lion king” thing? A “circle of life” thing?

Or did god in his infinite mercy take pity on the creature with the long tubular nose and create something small and generally defenseless for it to eat?

Or is it more likely…..and blasphemous to state that god didn’t want the ants at all! Didn’t want them getting too cocky and thus created a natural foe….The anteater…..Checkmate!

Ants have anteaters, man has maneaters. Certain types of bears, lions and sharks are maneaters. They have been nearing extinction since ilm directors and authors were given guns.

These maneaters can be found on the flags of professional sport teams or hostile countries. Countries and sports teams like to choose maneaters because they are strong and fearless.

Ants are also strong and fearless but are never identified with national flags or contact sports.

An ant can carry something like ten times its weight. It could carry ten other ants.

A lion, though strong could never carry ten other lions. Nor could a bear! And if H.G Wells’s horrible predictions should ever come true and monstrous ants walked the earth, I am sure that they too would become maneaters and …what the hell….they’d probably eat anteaters as well.

When I see banners with lions in sunglasses, or sharks with hockey sticks, I am often curious as to why I do not see an ant representing a sport team.

An ant carrying a creature ten times its size and weight, in bloodied serrated mandibles. One of its six legs would have a rugby ball as the other five scurry forward knocking aside bears, lions and alligators in its path.

It would stare out from the “Alabama ants” banner with cold, calculating eyes and a raised tentacle that seems to transmit “Here’s one for the collective” (the Borg of the insect world).

“Let’s hear it for the drones!!” A team for the new millenium. A new breed of hero.

The Louisiana Locusts, The Brooklyn Bees . . . the Rochford Roaches. And they would make a country proud, or a planet peaceful.

Soon all the flags for countries and sports teams would forget the pride and strength of the maneaters and anteaters, and adhere to the collective symbolism of the insect paying homage to determination, will, and cooperation opposed to strength, pride and individuality.

Yet, it seems that the anteaters have already lost the battle

For I have never seen an anteater, but I’ve seen plenty of ants and I don’t see many maneaters either.

Except on nature documentaries and the occasional Star Trek episode.

Looking down into my bowl, I see a small toy racecar that sets off a riot of childhood memories. Since when did 21st Century cereal come with toys actually inside the bag? I hadn’t even noticed the advertisement on the front of the box when I bought it.

I pick up the car and unwrap it, set it down on the counter. I test out the plastic suspension with a little pressure. Seems sturdy enough. I push it back and forth, the mini-wheels squealing with the delight of their first taste of solid ground. Cereal forgotten, I shift into drive and peel out on the slick Formica.

Cruising past flour and sugar jars, my bright green car hugs a hairpin turn past the knives at 150 mph. The tires screech and twist with a few simple turns, and I’m defying the laws of gravity for a few breathless moments, riding apple and pear wallpaper and leveling off again to retrace my melted rubber tracks.

This isn’t enough! Faster and faster, I’m pressing the pedal to the floor and aiming for the wooden edge of the wide-open road. There’s no purple-faced boss here to tell me to get back to work. Flying on the ground, free of cubicles and paperwork, I am enjoying my life for the first time in years. My teeth grinding against each other, lips pulled back into a dangerous snarl as I fling my near weightless vehicle off the edge and into the sunrise. This is it! This is what I’ve been waiting to feel my entire life!

The small car hits the floor and lands on its back, wheels spinning like the kicking heels of an overturned beetle. I pick it up, set it next to my bowl, and pour milk over my cereal. I dig in with a satisfied smile. Today, I will quit my job. I mean it. This time, I will do it for real.