a successful trip into the city to see the doctor who anyway I slice it carryingon justlike a schoolgirl notwithstanding is just that kind we used to embarrass ourselves over when we used to do that kind of thing he's got those paulnewman blues and damn who can even listen to what he says though I heard him say loud&clear there are those we need to hurry along and those we need to slow down and he thought canyou imagine that I was being impatient & gave me no quarter to be lifting lessthanorequalto 10pounds for another two weeks for cryingoutloud

I feel plain odd not happy or unhappy not content nor discontent not at peace nor at this particular moment restless but discomforted disconcerted or perhaps more accurately caught in a perfect libra disappointment in the canyon between is and couldshould be in the chasm of not good enough thankfully though I am not out striving but rather in the company of good friends drinking gentleman jack resetting the mark ha let the righteous winds of libra blow up someone elses skirt

and thankfully I was reminded the good ohsohandsomedoctor notwithstanding that I'm old enough to make my own decisions

I don't really even know what he looks like in the same vein that even in the middle of the flood even standing waist deep in water even canoing through the livingroom it was hard to imagine what it was like I don't know what he looks like but--that is to say--instead I know what he feels like what he sounds like but I can't remember what he looks like all ofasudden I understand what she meant when she used to say I always thought you were bigger there are parts of this I just hate sort of

of course it's just those sticky wicket parts that make it work that are the working parts I mean I can carry on as if I have a schoolgirl crush on the todiefor doctor but fact is here I am in the midst of an intimate relationship with My PhysicalTherapist who aside from that of course has a name but that's part of the problem it's one of those intimate relationships that starts fullblown if rather lopsidedly in the middle without ample prelude one of those intimate relationships balanced precariously on the codified substrates of professionalboundaries trust passion need healingart

in relation to a familiar hamish concept my own bread&butter in fact yet it galls me there it is asif I'm too ha well put together or as if susceptibility is a weakness
it's a flirtation a trick factis I don't want him as a friend I need him oy it's the beholden to gig safeguarding the importance dressing up the I need you to look like act like quack like a duck when infact it's an elephant
of course he likes me and cares...but the intimacy is the currency of purposeful familiarity; selflimiting selfserving andblessedly it's wholly circumscribed

walking the beach yesterday fog sockedin wind gatheredin bursts brows furrowed arms close-tucked working lines kicking sand felt good felt fine good as a down the line ride

walking the beach yesterday as coach mentor and not just another groupie wife felt fine felt like I'm retaining kibbitzing rights same as the rest of the old farts

walking the beach yesterday I made the distance from faith (ye of little) to suffering, the way back through a different wilderness altogether

vulnerable a second rate california word for doubt
sad not an understudy by any stretch butrather a cheap window dressing

like everything else it started innocently enough but I nevertheless backed off the cliff with great aplomb asif it were simply along the way and given the freedom of faith I landed asif I was simply coming down a ladder from the roof

the view was great cleared my head could see to the horizon a new heading a new project not so much a plan as an unfolding I think it, this business of no plans but along the way, must be milestoneish and a hallmark of development a la erickson speaking to competence and yes faith, dear god

well the racket is back, the runs hits errors poems loose lines that give me gas and energy to fan the fire to fuel the rampage, the quiet so unlike me the still so unfamiliar he mistook it for distance where are you he'd asked right here ok he said letting it go as if it were in fact that easy and I guess it was

and it all fits together as if there had been some grand plan

discipline characters story to tell and an on my mark get set go
a gestalt a vortext waiting just for me

a story of faith suffering as doubt wind tides gradients as certainties distilling spirits differences as glue similarities as repellent...solvent that was the word

middleage adults
sophie an aging homeowner in bolinas before the gentrification & amos who knows yet who found whom notable failures content but too wise to be happy

maggie & Solomon upstanding proper community stalwarts as in of their community the ideal godhelpthem couple happy but not wise/free/self-ish enough to be content

a woman practitioner of some art, ama medicine or intuitive counselor maybe a minister maybe a poet–maybe not, a foil just the same

a middlechild

notes:
it struck me as odd that I didn't know Maggie that I couldn't see her then I realized I knew the others contextually and through each others eyes and that sophie was an intuitive seer and that amos is a wizard in his own right so that I'd come to know solomon moreso as he rubbed up against sophie who is airy and imminently available

god I didn't know there was imminent eminent and immanent

so it's back to though mags is the centerpiece she is at least to start inert, self absorbed but absent a sense of self

notes:
so yes she has nicknames justas solomon does but in the end they're just one more edifice one more arrow in the quiver of rightbehavior in the quiver of self-actualization she has contacts and people she knows but few friends besides solly her great liaison is with her personalsecretary cum physicaltherapist

we'll meet her in the opening scene as is her wont she does&will set the stage but it's her character that will unfold her character that will represent the nature of change
erratic without plan or rather answering to its own logic its own physics its own meterology

notes:
I'm not necessarily linear I organize in a circle even moreso in a spiral
I'm a great ranter give great speeches in spite of...anyway who says that dialogue doesn't can't generate word count
fact is I'm a great ruminator and Amos is an easy mark for point&click he has an opinion on damn near everything
Sophie can read beads cards and soothesay as well as sooth and soothe
Maggie is a tightass edwardian if not victorian stiff and starchy but wordy in her righteousness in her prognosticating

It's already my way to use learnfrom everything ha fucking wastenot wantnot

a perfect example of dailylife intruding
imagine not knowing how to fightfair the bread&butter of lasting intimate relationships the hallmark of trust difficult in the bestof times necessary during the worst impossible absent trust andyet one of the catch 22's of trust building is ofcourse it's just this history of fair fighting that defines trust and in the beginning there canbeare no rules of engagement since they're dependent on eachourown cardinalrules broken

fact is he doesn't know you divorced me for just not phoning kinds of reasons and you don't get instead of murder he doesn't take(or make) calls

reallife in the meantime goes on apace I'm in a california dmv wrong socialsecurity# all ofasudden blackhole and need to show them for chrissake my socialsecurity card andblowthemandown I actually have one of which took several hours and voicemail blind alleys and two real people to figure out while on the other end the bank sends me a credit refund out of the cleardamnblue for $750 as if I wouldn'tcouldn't think of 1000 good uses for but it ain't mine which took fortyeleven times longer and used up thirtyeleven more people to sort out--it's being researched–good I ain'tno stinkingparanoidnoncitizen

so again I'm back to being a writer calling oneself a writer seeing oneself as a writer is more than just writing and justwriting does not a writer make the deadline has passed and the dids &didn'ts are understandable which is not to minimize how different is writing from the rest of its attendant retinue which is to say show&tell reading and submitting are most arduous and vigorous in their own right write rite and damn if none of it is convenient but it is a part of breath

and one couldn't say I am not an elitist or nothin'

notes
a mistress of understatement this one this Mags cool&dry but not without passion as it will come to pass not without opinion but without theatre or excess not a false first impression but inexact incomplete and a well placed counter on her part reading you as you read her full blooded but with a sense of decorum a hair up kind of a gal except for in the bedchamber with her lawful wedded husband and the lordking of the realm
ah she'd surprise you this one you'd not suspect her duplicity evenas she led you down the garden path

10/17/89
His t-cell count went down to 1. He went to Fred's for supper, while we were talking on the telephone the earth shook irrevocably. And we came eachofus thatmuchcloser to our mortality&frailty to the inherent isolation of each moment. And we rediscover the power inherent in community&friendship and tenacity. Eachofus is a survivor telling his story over&over again. The refrain of where were you and what were you doing can be heard everywhere. Instant bonding with the man on the street. A city spooked. No one sleeps too well. And ofcourse the ground continued to rock&roll. Talk about hypervigilant.

Notes:
thing is it would be easy to think she was a prude and so she uses that to her advantage that mistake that wrong reading and the assumptions that follow and especially will for gain use the gaping glaring blind spots against unwitting souls who mistake her exquisite and abiding sense of privacy for prudishness or pollyana naivete or worse some sort of nellie passivity
she was just the sort who was not so surprised at nixon's nefarious watergate doings as she was put out by the offense of his being inept and stupid enough to have been caught

so I'm in the shower eyes closed washing my hair shampoo slipping down my forehead and I realize I'm doing three things I'm mastering three things most people take for granted three things hardwon and hard comeby three things I've had to relearn in the last three years 1st and the most difficult&amazing knowing where I am in space with my eyes closed 2nd closing my right eye tight enough to keep soap out of it 3rd having enough reach in my right arm to lather the shampoo on my head

I don't know about you but I'm just lathered

notes:
thinking that sophie is a socialworker doing adoption reunification thinking how in my work I'm familiar with the separation with the removal with the severing of the mother infant bond realizing how little I know of the rest of the story
thinking how being adopted at birth must be one of those single most defining moments in life and how that sets up a real always and never and sets up by default another the other possibility the neverending never out of sight what if
and then I think I was adopted what the hell am I talking about

notes:
the question one of the questions is what moves the story along which ofcourse is a neat recapitulation of what the story is about since it is about what moves things along about the peculiarities the whimsy the disrespect & inconvenience the howrude change can be and being naive and unschooled in all of this I wonder how much of this I'm intended to control from here, from this far out since part of it the magic of it is the vicarious of course exploration of the unfolding

how artfilm grainy how smoky how paisley how Sophie instead of Magda

tomorrow is hisself's birthday would've been 55 and I'm wondering been wondering how it was to be celebrated and today I ran into had intercourse ifyouwill with one of his people cross connected with one of his not yet met but that don't make no damn difference it was still one of his waiting rescue or blessed incorporation...so call it a visitation call it a cool breeze call it a kick in the ass call it some sort of whispering--I'm on notice hell we're all on notice been duly notified that a fullscale operation is being called for

biomadness
judigoldberg, born&suckled in the Canadian east is a westcoast writer living in America

she started writing one bored Sundayafternoon in highschool when her brother whom she'd been mercilessly pestering said a little shrilly, do something sit down write a poem do anything but leave me alone

she's been published online & onpaper and is cofounder of PenHouseInk, a small press&writer's guild

her other interests include trajectories default settings wind one-word book titles waves middle of the night storms spotless shirts & exacting hairdos change hightheatre fall's dress-up less punctuation reading aloud

she's married lives ontheriver & works as a nurse in SanFrancisco

so here I am pissed off put out again by My Physical Therapist who all of a sudden without consulting me without discussing it with me ha making the damn decision on his own without even a for your information eye to eye so I found out from the office help for godssake has decresed my weekly visits from three to two as if it isn't about I'm getting better and in his inestimable judgement twice weekly is more than adequate and actually ample yet I'm left feeling argumentative disappointed and not so much putout (maybe) as leftout goddamn it

Notes: conversations

Sophie & Amos: first meeting on the beach
Sophie & Amos: children or not
Maggie & Caitlin: looking for Sol or not
Sol & Amos: so what are you going to do now man?
Sol & Amos: what if good old Mags ain't who she used to be
Sol & Amos: how Amos and Sophie met
Maggie & Caitlin: their history how they met
Maggie & Caitlin: so what are you going to do now (after the conference encounter)

and all of a sudden I wonder about monologues and limited 3rd person point of view I guess I better nail that one--the pointofview thing--down

Notes:
August 5th 1971 lottery born in 1952 Dec. 16 number 128
signed up dec 20 1971, graduated 1970 June started college sept 1970, enlisted after his 19th bday
Amos McDuff: 51, single but involved, weekend supervisor for major metropolitan hospital, lives in Baja and Bolinas with Sophie (has partownership?) when he works
was an aerospace rescue and recovery service ARRS military airlift command MAC special-ops pararescue medic went into theservice after his bestfriend (high lottery number) screwed his wife spurred by iffy lottery number stout, still rises to a dare Sol same age high number Maggie & Caitlin 54 Sophie 52

met an interesting woman on the beach today a cross between Janis Joplin and Apt Trat both in their better days she too was beached but with a better lighter spirit than mine...I was looking longingly she was glad enough to be looking it maybe sucky but it's a good suck she said after all you could be in oklahoma by which she meant not here not at the ocean beholding the incredible day incredible view incredible air and simply beholding the incredible good to be alive sentiment that was there for the taking and she was right, namaste!

notes:
I think more&more I don't need to know it all ahead of time but rather I need to stay true to some things
it's an exploration of what if not a race to happily ever after or knowing what happens it's about the traveltime it's about the disruption not getting somewhere but surviving learning enjoying ahyes trusting the wave, yes getting up instead of paddling some more faster it's about paddling through the breaking wave knowing it's a bitch
and to know it all would take the starch out of it or more aptly the fluidity out of it

so, if I gotto I will...it's been a week since I saw ThePhysicalTherapist (nevermind MyPhysicalTherapist) because the UtilizationReview division the folks who administer Workmen'sComp around here needed more paperwork&bowing&alms&jumping&bending&scraping (notto mention they waited until the last minute&needed extra prodding) before they'd give dispensation for the requested 2X a week for 4weeks...okok so he knew what he was doing and didn't need my 2¢ which wouldn't have covered shit--but when he asked, as he has a wont to do, how are we doing I could only say wellll, as these things go my shoulder missed you, so there

Notes: plotting
...it starts on Thursday asin after phonecall Sol doesn't come home , Maggie stews sortof but is in a state of knowing, sends letter Fridaypm
... the prologue or 1st scene with Amos will be checking SurfReports which'll be inlcuded from timetotime and ofcourse used metaphorically inthemeantime I've asked ©Surfpulsedotcom for permission
...the title will be Doran: 2~4 and Fair also metaphorical or inside joke ha!
...that Maggie being as internal as she is ofcourse has&will keep a journal, I'll use entries as a way of flushing her out aswellas conversations with Caitlin who at thislatedate I know very little about

change is afoot (howsovery veil thin) even as I write about it and who knows where it will lead as is its wont but I believe the wisdom is steady as she goes which isn't the sameas go with the flow nor entropy (a measure of the amount of energy in a system that is available for doing work; entropy increases as matter&energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity [ant: ectropy]) meanwhile ectropically I got permission from surfpulse.com AND they are going to use Solo Tango(YES!!!!!!!ha)
& allofasudden style rears it's head–thomaswolfe,carolmaso,michaelondaatje,margueriteduras,senajeternaslund,judigoldberg

onmymarkgetset go!