life rx 29 feb 24
there ought to be a law against sunny southern california
the knight of cups, and a line from Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women: “The night quieted down at work. Wendy, the charge nurse, and her best friend Sandy doodled at the desk near me. Really doodled, practicing writing 1982 and their names if they married whoever it is they are going out with now. Grown women, in this day and age. I felt pity for them, these lovely young nurses, who had not yet known romance.”
the aleatory
Good old gold. The glory of magic is that it floats. You can write it nowhere. Not on the walls of the river and not in a storm. There is noise, but you can still hear the real thing when it comes along because it’ll tell you: Hello I Am The Real Thing. Unmistakable, like the red dark particular to the inside of your personal skull. Once you drove into and out of a blue cloud. Into and out of a white cloud. On a bridge in Arkansas over water that came right up to the road. This is America. Put on your eyeshadow, the romance is everywhere.
the assignment
Make cornbread.
the writing prompt
Put a name on your heart in gold braid letters, like the ones on a shriner’s jacket.
a chune
“What of Alicia,” Terry Allen
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
“What of Alicia” by Terry Allen*
*Playing tonight at the Masonic Lodge, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and appearing 3/1 at Stories in Echo Park for the release of Truckload of Art: An Authorized Biography. I saw the show last night and it was the best thing in a minute. Recommended thoroughly.
Dear diary, I’m still mad about the French tuck.