If you haven’t read her amazingly beautiful book, Red, you should check it out. But if you’re thinking about leaving the Southwest, I would suggest not reading it.

Here is a great excerpt. I wish I wrote this.

“I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. I write in solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent. I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain. I write to migrating birds with the hubris of language. I write as a form of translation. I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know. I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness. I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating—always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around. I write I write because of the humor of our condition as humans. I write because I believe in words. I write because I do not believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox. I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in the sand. I write because it belongs to the force of the moon: high tide, low tide. I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness. I write because as a child I spoke a different language. I write with a knife carving each word through the generosity of trees. I write as ritual. I write because I am not employable. I write out of my inconsistencies. I write because then I do not have to speak. I write with the colors of memory. I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as a witness to what I imagine. I write by grace and grit. I write out of indigestion. I write when I am starving. I write when I am full. I write to the dead. I write out of the body. I write to put food on the table. I write on the other side of procrastination. I write for the children we never had. I write for the love of ideas. I write for the surprise of a beautiful sentence. I write with the belief of alchemists. I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short. I write knowing I can be killed by my own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by both understanding and misunderstanding. I write out of ignorance. I write by accident. I write past the embarrassment of exposure. I keep writing and suddenly, I am overcome by the sheer indulgence, the madness, the meaninglessness, the ridiculousness of this list. I trust nothing, especially myself, and slide headfirst into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it to shreds—and then realize, it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters of cut glass. I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient we are. I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.”

I seem to have lost my bike pump. It’s a little one that I carry around in my man-purse. It is very likely that it went missing at casebeers during Japanther. I hope nobody stole it. That’s a pretty rotten thing to do.

Here, by the way, are some great pics of that show. If you look closely, you’ll see me rockin’ out.

I picked up the new 7 from This Runs on Blood. It’s a great little package: hand-screened artwork, free stickers (of course), white/blood red wax, and it seems to have been put together with a sewing machine. Ser gut! I also grabbed The Pharmacy’s LP on banana yellow wax with free album download!

Maybe rain? Maybe snow? One thing is for sure, there is plenty of ways to get your rock on.

And….simultaneously, Japanther, This Runs on Blood (7″ release!!), and The Pharmacy is playing casebeers. 8pm, bring cash for touring bands.

If you don’t know, now you know! Wish I could be at two places at once.

at 6:00 PM, the Ride of Silence will begin at Flagstaff Medical Center in the West Campus Parking lot and roll across the globe. The Flagstaff ride will ride down Beaver street, through downtown and end back at FMC. All are welcome. Cyclists will take to the roads in a silent procession to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while cycling on public roadways. Although cyclists have a legal right to share the road with motorists, the motoring public often isn’t aware of these rights, and sometimes not aware of the cyclists themselves.

I’ve been house-sitting at Melissa’s and treating it as my “fortress of solitude,” which means lots of reading, writing, and playing outside.

I’ll be back full-force very very soon.