I think the purpose of language is to say something. Otherwise why don’t we just grunt and groan and make barking noises?

People say that Stein “reacquaints” us with language.

I can do it too (if I may be so audacious). My version of Gertrude Stein’s poem Orange.

Lemon (a poem that was more satisfying to write than to read)

Why is a smell crab an eyebrow run. Why is a round yellow why is a sad color a round round a broken show and give me back my pieces just give me yellow round tart table round  canter clop in the heat be okay I just want to be okay be okay I just want the yellow sun.

Frieda decides to run away from home. What song would it be?

On the radio this morning an actor described making a film about the rape of Nanking. He worried because the actresses were required to cry so much and he said prolonged emotion is hard on actors but then, as he watched, one of the girls turned to him and winked. Can you do it even when don’t feel it? Larry McMurtry said he hated writing Lonesome Dove, but how could he not enjoy writing something that is such a pleasure to read?

It’s flooding in Oregon. The school where I work is an evacuation center. It’s selfish, but I love big weather. I wouldn’t feel this way if it were my family washed away or my home or anyone I knew or maybe if I had more imagination or heart.

Virginia Woolf said that we should write what interests us, what moves us. I ran away from home when I was fifteen, but now it feels like someone else.

It’s Saturday and I’m reading  Virginia Woolf. About five minutes ago, I received an email from my mother. It is made up of two sentences:  “I lost her address and I want to thank her for the Xmas card. Sun is pretty on the snow and I see 2 cardinals in the tree.”

This tendency of my mother to start in the middle of a conversation used to drive me crazy. It is a little like reading Virginia Woolf, I think: we are thrust into someone’s consciousness and must struggle to orient ourselves. And then, abruptly, some sharp unexpected sensual image.  I love that sudden leap from sender of Christmas card to two red cardinals on a branch in the snow. So vivid. I recently realized that often when my writing is strongest I am writing like my mother talks.

2011 Jody Lee Lipes / Fox Searchlight

Earlier I said I didn’t think MMM was worth the anxiety I experienced watching it, but I found myself thinking of the film all day today and, better still, thinking beyond the film: thinking of what it said. Thinking about the prisons we allow ourselves to live in, about fundamentalism, cults, domestic violence, about the human longing for a charismatic leader or, at least, absolute answers. When the film ended, it seemed incomplete. But in retrospect I think that what I saw as the flaw was really the strength: we share Martha’s confusion about what is happening, what is being remembered, and what is imagined. She doesn’t trust anything and neither do we. She can’t tell what is really happening and we aren’t sure either. The film leaves us with a sense of uncertainty and paranoia. I think that means it worked. I think it’s an important, brave film. Well acted and well told and worth the anxiety experienced by its audience.

I’m reading A Moveable Feast. I want to go to Paris in the 20s but clearly that will not work out. When I went to Paris I met a woman named Beatrice whose apartment was full of books. She had a painting of flowers on the wall that matched the flowers I brought. Beatrice took me to a structure built by the Romans and gave me creme de cassis to drink.

I want to be in my town the way Beatrice is in hers, even though I have less to work with.

Obviously Hemingway should have stayed with his first wife, Hadley, but it’s common to imagine something we don’t have is better than what’s right in front of us.

Last night I went to The Dark Side see Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene with Mya –how’s that for alliteration– and then to Les Caves to drink Belgium beer. I’m willing to experience anxiety during a film, to be afraid, worried, sad, frustrated, and angry, if the film makes it worth it. I’m not sure Martha was worth it, although I admired its portrayal of the way young females can sometimes agree to give up our autonomy, our safety, pleasure, self- respect, our humanity. I did that when I was nineteen, but I don’t want to talk about it today.

Maybe we’ll go to Hawaii or maybe we’ll go to Savannah or Mexico. I want to sit on a beach, drinking cold beers and reading novels. I want the sun beating down on me. Camus said that even the poorest Algerian has it better than a European because in Algiers the sun always shines.

I finally figured out the plot for my book, The 5 ½ Senses of Frieda LaValle. Yes, it has a plot. It apparently has a plot which must first be carefully constructed. I have tried writing it the other way, the way that involves faith and avoids the hard thing: figuring it out ahead of time. Some people say that figuring it out ahead of time is too restrictive, but how can that be? Writing involves so many choices. Every dang thing is a choice. And anyway even if you do plan it, within that plan you make a thousand changes.

Now I have my plot and I just need to write the story. I had hoped to complete it before the end of winter break, but that is the day after tomorrow so it is unlikely.

I’ve begun my young adult novel yet again. How many ways can I write the same story?  It was going to be my simple story, the one I wrote quickly, for fun. Oh, and my agent thought it would sell. Let’s be honest. The first version was disturbingly similar to the movie, The Sixth Sense. Something I didn’t notice until I had completed it. I went back and watched that movie again after someone pointed it out. I had taken the kitchen scene almost verbatim which made me wonder about myself. How much of what I think or imagine is my own? I rewrote the whole novel. I changed everything. I wrote it one way and I wrote it another. It is set in Portland. The protagonist is a sixteen year old girl whose mother died the previous year. My characters always have mother issues, but I don’t. I have a perfectly good mother. My characters have mothers who die or run off, who get arrested, who abandon them.

I am searching for the perfect coffeehouse in Corvallis, Oregon. I do like Market of Choice. MOC has comfortable chairs, is warm, serves Stumptown coffee. Today I am at Interzone, the hip coffeehouse near campus. It also has good coffee. Interzone is not a very good place for me to write because the music is sometimes discordant and it is not warm. Interzone has interesting art on its walls. There are tables outside but it is December and it will be a long time before we can sit out there. When I went to Paris I imagined I’d sit in coffeehouses but it was not so easy to do that. My German friend Maria took me to the coffeehouse where Sarte used to hang out but a cup of coffee cost $15 so I just took a picture of a man with a dog and left. So anyway when I tell myself that in Paris I would find a perfectly good coffee house, it is a lie. Oh, now Interzone is playing jazz and that is much more conducive to early mornings. A trumpet. Piano.

I can’t settle on my protagnonist’s name. Sometimes she is Frieda but other times she is Sophie. She was also Edie, briefly. Some writers say that the inability to decide on a name means the story itself is half baked but my story is not half baked. I just can’t seem to figure out how to tell it.

Yesterday I read Crystal’s Tarot cards and her ultimate outcome was three queens. Is it a violation of confidentiality to say that?

Does anyone else wonder about the Celtic Cross position “hopes and fears?” Waite’s book says “hopes or fears,” which has a different meaning entirely. Less interesting but more simple to interpret.

A woman with a bright pink umbrella walks down the street. It is late December and the students are gone.

I’m reading On the Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebold about Germany after the war, the terrible destruction of it cities and how no one talked about it. Even the Germans themselves did not seem to comment. German writers did not write about it. My mother’s family was from Aachen which was destroyed. They were from Auchen, Alsace Lorraine and County Kildare.

I’m reading Hemingway for class.

Years ago Chuck’s great aunts hired a genealogist but when the genealogist found out they were Jewish, the aunts had the research stopped. I have looked for what that genealogist found but haven’t been able to discover it. Chuck’s family is from Poland, Ireland, Normandy and Visingso. His grandmother was Swedish but she was the opposite of the characters in an Ingmar Bergman film. Her comment on almost everything, “Oh, it don’t matter.”

Palestinian poet, author of “So What; New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005″ pub.2006, Copper Canyon Press

Upon learning the definition of the word “cannibal,” four year old Sasha was quiet for moment. Then he turned to me and, hoping this was not some tradition he was only now becoming aware of, asked, “That’s bad, right, Mom?”