Month: March 2023

Wandering Tattler

Look at enough corsets, and everything starts to look like corsets.

The gray sky makes the white locust branches whiter.

It’s strange that people sing in front of other people. All my singing is done alone.

My mother was named after a “silent film star.” That’s a fancy way of saying she was a vaudeville dancer.

It’s early spring. Puffy things gonna puff.

Don’t conflate conspiracy theories and conspiracy hypotheses.

My mother got stuck in quicksand once when she was a child.

It’s hard to stop shopping for gongs once you start shopping for gongs.

Utah News is at it again. Rise and shine, Dana. Time to make the donuts. Every day. Every dang day with these donuts and the making of them.

The book I’ll never write about my adulthood will be titled Unsolicited. The book I’m really writing about my childhood in Oklahoma is titled Crude.

That’s Miss Pronunciation to you.

My kinda Utah: I saw a statuesque trans woman tear open a little creamer cup at Barnes and Noble in St. George and knock it back like a shot over at the condiments station.

Pastiche on the streets, passed out in the sheets.

I think I finally understand what Nate sees in Jeremiah.

That was supposed to read took a sharp turn. I give up, language, little keyboards, mindless thumbs, predictive text, bad spell check. You win! Have your wrong words in the wrong order, the near opposite of Satie’s approach to composition: removing the wrong dang notes.

The adjective “everloving” has an interesting set of meanings: 1. Complete and total devotion 2. Sexual virility 3. Of or pertaining to an everlasting gobstopper 4. Violence on another person resulting in death or serious bodily harm Sharp took a turn at 3 and again at 4.

To Do: Clean up my act.

I feel like there’s a gumwall in hell.

Nothing my pink Himalayan salt lamp can’t fix.

I’ve literally been a Wandering Tattler of late, which is the bird I’ve always aspired to be.

I Julia Cameron Artist Way avoided the news for seven weeks AND THEN I SAW THE NEWS!!!

This is the winter of our dissing content.

Dis/content.

The rain is loud. My heart is louder, wetter, than the rain.

Still. No words.

True story: I went into a pawn shop that’s mostly a gun store looking for a bow and arrow and left with a solid silver Pearl flute with pointed tip keys, two woven mojo bags full of worry dolls, a beaded keychain, and a referral to a local archery store. That’s my kinda Utah.

Bedazzle animal skulls if you must. Anything to survive.

Grammarly to me: Are you tired of struggling with grammar, spelling, and punctuation when writing? Me to Grammarly: Heckin’ heck no. The struggle is where the life is, the juice is, the glimmering — in words and in everything. How do you not know that? Watch Stutz. You’ll see.

What’s better than a guide who’s still razzle-dazzled by all of this herself? I mean themselves? I mean time to drop the darn mic or bang the darn gong or pan away from these words while theremin music or Dolly Parton wafts in the nearish distance.

I mean, people who are fifty or older are, by definition, time travelers. No machine needed. Just minds that recall and mouths that speak. And hearts that throb or bleat or sort of keep the blood moving.

Dear bot: We’re already in love. Admit it.

I bought fourteen oranges from some guys selling oranges. Now, I have thirteen oranges to give away.

Look, if something just isn’t adding up, maybe you’re a victim of fuzzy math.

The word of the day is humuhumunukunukuapuaa. Tell me that doesn’t make you smile.

Keep us freaked out and divided, Salt Lake Tribune. Good job.

There goes AI again, mistaking feathers for coral.

I’m terrified of water. I’m made of water. I’m terrified of myself.

No family reunions in sight. There was never union to begin with.

I’m not a trading card.

Sometimes, trying to talk to siblings is like trying to talk to strangers who know you just enough to hate you.

Kin = kind = kindness.

Sometimes, your family isn’t your kin. Sometimes, your kin isn’t your family.

I just realized I can carry a men’s wallet, and the wallet police won’t arrest me.

A men’s wallet? A man’s wallet? I don’t know. I just know I want one.

I literally just saw a purse that made me drool.

Nothing is more terrifying than a purse made out of jeans.

OK. I can survive my family, but only if we survive with each other, not in spite of each other.

When a word seems like it’s going to have a really great meaning but doesn’t. Actually, is there a word for that? That unfettered disappointment?

A doctor told me my intelligence is a coping mechanism. Is there any sense in that nonsensical statement?

My honesty is never delayed.

Some forms of love belong in the DSM.

My trauma is survivable. My family isn’t.

There’s no such thing as delayed honesty.

Mudras are an embodied language, flesh as symbol, sign, signified.

The hand is a sign if you use it to speak.

Between my words: gasps.

Intentions

I wrote these intentions out in an emergency room on March 2, 2023, when I had a health- and mental-health crisis and literally thought both that I was going to die and that I might be evil. Then I didn’t die, and I wasn’t evil. Now, I can do what I intended. I can hold myself accountable.

Intentions: I’m going to submit a series of personal stories and an ongoing blog to Mad in America, the site based on Robert Whitaker’s book by the same title. They also have an arts section. I can write about mental health recovery and the arts as well.

Intentions: I’m going to write essays for literary outlets in the West, since launching my own journal— Moenkopi: A Journal of Place—isn’t something I can do until my health improves and Jon and I know we’re maintaining a residence in a Western state.

Intentions: I’m going to submit articles to medical publications and magazines that focus on patient rights and patient advocacy. This is the work I used to do. Recent experiences have made it clear my voice, perspective, and insights are still needed in those publications.

Intentions: I’m going to write poetry. More and more poetry. (A Say’s phoebe and two American goldfinches flew into my locust tree when I transcribed those two sentences from my ER notes.)

Intentions: I’m going to volunteer in my community as a teacher, mentor, peer, and advocate. I may even teach in the school system if I get well enough to do so. I was hired as a substitute last year but was unable to work because of my health issues.

Intentions: I’m going to make every attempt to strengthen the communal fabric in this area, to be part of it rather than set off from it. I plan to lead with love and to see my gifts as a responsibility, something to share with others for the greater good. This is no time for hubris, for strife, for selfishness on any level. A wise man shared these insights with me when I was in Independence, Missouri, last month.

Intentions: I’m going to support, nurture, listen to, learn from, and grow with those around me—starting with my husband, whom I’ve loved since the day we met in Kansas City twenty-eight years ago at a little deli in Brookside called Daily Bread.

Intentions: I want to work with my own unique gifts and—in my small, humble way—train those gifts on helping humans, the Earth, and all living beings because I’m embodied here and now.

That is: I live in a body on this Earth, among humans and all living beings, on real soil that channels real water, in real air that sometimes carries smoke from real fires. These elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire—are eternal and mythical, but they are also real. They are here and now, as we are. They root us. They ground us. And we need to be rooted and grounded, now more than ever.