Books

"That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all."

I took the package to the post office at Eleventh Street and Fourth Avenue. There was a long line because of the upcoming holidays. As I was standing in line, I saw a sign explaining what kinds of things you couldn’t send via airmail: obviously really hazardous materials like lighter fluid and firearms but also alcohol, perfume, prescription drugs, and tobacco. Hmm, perfume. But my flask was so tiny, and it was all wrapped up in the iPod cozy, plus the package was sturdy and all taped up. I couldn’t imagine the tiny vial would break open, and if it did, there were just a few drops in there—they’d surely evaporate right away. When I got up to the window, the clerk looked humorless. She weighed my parcel and looked me dead in the eye: “Any perfume in there?” I looked her dead in the eye and said no. She put the necessary postage on the package and tossed it into a bin.

But it occurred to me that maybe if I began (or, to be honest, continued) super-producing both asked-for and unasked-for recordings of my uke covers as gifts, I could possibly help jump-start a creative gift economy that would spill over into the larger world of exchange.

"I was thinking: Girls get scared way too often. Girls get stupidly scared. I was not scared. Telling myself not to be scared kind of worked. "

"Poetry is not evidence,
it is and it is not not not.
Somebody is lying
about the moon disappearing."