My mom has a birthday coming up. She was young when I was born and now I think she’s turning 70, but I’m not sure.

I texted my brother Jon: Is our mother turning 70?

Jon said: I don’t really know.  I think she’s the same age as Mick Jagger, but I’m not sure.

Mom

Mick

I asked if I should call our stepfather, Neil, to find out.

Jon said Neil probably doesn’t know either.

No one in my family has ever been much good at keeping track of Conventional People Things.

My late father sometimes thought I was born on March 19^th, other times March 21^st.  I’m not sure if he ever knew how old I was beyond the first few years. It was kind of funny.  None of us ever read the manual on How To Behave Like Conventional Humans.

My brother Jon teaches elementary school in Colorado because he couldn’t get a permanent job at the inner city school in Philadelphia where he taught for a year and THRIVED.  The school was straight out of Season 4 of The Wire.

Kids coming from REALLY unfavorable home lives and REALLY not knowing how to learn or do anything more than POSSIBLY survive into adulthood.  Jon LOVED working with those kids.  But he had no seniority and the schools funds were cut.

Jon

I taught yoga and writing at a residential drug rehab for adolescents and I LOVED those kids, who were basically the kids my brother Jon taught, but five years and a few arrests down the line.

Most of my kids were barely literate and almost all court-remanded and avoiding prison. 90% of them were amazing human beings and about 50% of them were genuinely gifted. Not in the traditional, test-able sense, but in the sense that if you LISTENED to them for five seconds and gave them ONE word of genuine encouragement, they THRIVED.  And focused.  And had joy in their deadened eyes.

These were kids who’d been raped, beaten, neglected, encouraged into prostitution by their own parents.

They chanted in Sanskrit. They did downward facing dog. They wrote poetry and prose and gave readings. I showed them respect, they learned a tiny bit about human kindness.

The most  jaw-droppingly original writer I’ve ever encountered was a 16-year-old-kid in that rehab.  The kid SHOULD be at Harvard now. He’s not.  He’s on the streets.  I loved that kid.  I loved almost all those kids. And I am not a Kid Person. But I am a Broken Kids person.

So is my friend and mentor Andrew Vachss.

Andrew started writing crime novels (among these, the very popular Burke series) to reach a larger jury than he could find in any courthouse. And, as it happened, the books wound up supporting his law practice, where he exclusively represents children.  Andrew and his team of warriors formed PROTECT.ORG, which, among other things, has closed up the “incest loophole” in New York State, though that hideous loophole still exists in approximately 31 states.

Never heard of it?  Basically, raping someone else’s child will result in a prison sentence of some 20 years, but if that child is related to the rapist (by DNA or by marriage–like a son or step-daughter) then the baby raper can get off on probation and go home with the child as a prize.  A “grow your own victim” incentive.

No, it’s not pretty

Andrew, incidentally, was the first public person I knew to portray pit bull dogs positively.  He used to send out a Valentine’s card of Honey and Pokey, two grinning, goofy pits.

A lot of the kids I taught at that rehab had only seen pit bulls used as intimidation devices on the streets.  Some had seen dogfights.  We talked about this.  I showed them pictures of Mickey being a goofball, told them stories of his life as a companion animal.  The kids’ faces got soft.

Some of these kids had been raped by their parents.

There are a lot of physically healthy babies and children out there who could probably cure cancer and generate world peace if they were given just a few MONTHS of stable home life.  So my personal policy is, if I develop a need to have children, I will foster some.

I don’t really get the Oh MY God I Must Have A Child Now That I’m Nearly Old thing that drives people to insane lengths to have babies when their bodies are past wishing to cooperate.  There is a lot of sobering data about this stuff.  This stat in particular is pretty startling: “those who became fathers when they were 50 or older were about 73 percent more likely to have a grandchild with autism.”

Maybe middle-aged men should go back to buying sports cars instead of making babies.  Or, better yet, foster or adopt a child.

I realize saying this will not make me wildly popular in most circles.  I realize I am not the majority.

But I’m trying to be the vocal minority.

And to find out how old my mom is.

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Thanks to all who voted for Mickey in the dog modeling contest.

He WON!

As I’ve mentioned, this will make HIM happy since he loves posing and meeting people, but, it’s also a victory for shelter dogs, and pit bull types in particular.  Over the last year or so, pits have been featured in the Lands End catalog and also the CB2 catalog.   Now, it’s Mickey’s turn to spread the message that these dogs are, first and foremost, PEOPLE-LOVING DOGS, eager to please.

And, no, it’s not “How they’re raised”.

These are extraordinarily resilient, intelligent dogs.   I’ve met a lot of them.  In shelters, in foster care, and beyond and, even those who have suffered nearly unthinkable abuses often become loving companions, family dogs, therapy dogs, etc.  See the Michael Vick dogs. Several of whom have become working therapy dogs.Mickey will be photographed for the Dash and Albert Rug Company catalog sometime in October.

Meanwhile, I’m planning to write a quick-ish ebook “From Death Row to the Runway” about Mickey’s trajectory.  I owe this idea in no small part to Jon Katz, a writer I’ve long admired, whose excellent, thoughtful blog, Bedlamfarm.com, I read almost daily.

Jon recently put out an e-book “Listening to Dogs: How To Be Your Own Training Guru” and it is selling like hotcakes.  With good reason.  It’s an excellent, useful book.

In it, Jon put into words many ideas I’ve had for a long time but couldn’t quite express cogently.  So there were many “Aha!” moments for me.  The e-book, by the way, is merely $2.99, less than most cups of coffee, buy it now!

The main idea of the book concerns questioning the reliance we humans have on GURUS.  Jon is speaking specifically about dog training gurus, but I think Guru Reliance goes far deeper than dog training.

I’ve been practicing yoga for a long time.  My first couple of years were spent studying at a well-known lower Manhattan studio.  Though I love  yoga philosophy, enjoy chanting in Sanskrit, and love showing respect for my teachers (and students) I’ve always been turned off by being exhorted to do anything.  And there was a LOT of exhorting at that studio.  Lots of you MUST do things OUR WAY and ONLY our way.  Most of the hundreds of students taking class there were profoundly rude and angry the moment they stepped off their yoga mats.

I moved on and studied with Eddie Stern at Ashtanga Yoga New York. Eddie never preaches.  Ever.  His teaching methods embody his own teacher, the late Sri K Pattabhi Jois’s oft-quoted philosophy: “Just you breathe, all is coming”.   

There were extended teachings, ceremonies and studies on offer at Eddie’s IF one asked.  But these were NEVER shoved down a student’s throat.

Eddie taught me to think for myself. About my body and my mind and how to achieve balance.

And that’s what Jon Katz is talking about in Listening to Dogs.

Listen to your dog, listen to your heart.

Every person has a unique relationship with every dog.  There is no single method of training that will work for every person and every dog.  I know. I’ve tried them all.   Here, Mickey and my best friend Jenny, working on their relationship as Mick tries to comprehend the peculiar get-up:

Perhaps the biggest benefit of enrolling in dog training is that it commits you to devoting time developing a relationship with a being you have invited into your life.

My childhood dog, Dingo, a husky/shepherd mix, was a perfect dog and , as I entered adulthood, I assumed all dogs were like Dingo. He never needed a leash because he stuck RIGHT by the humans’ sides.  If the humans were busy doing horse farm work, Dingo napped.  He never did any gratuitous barking, didn’t chase other animals or fight with other dogs.  He was friendly and affectionate, but not needy.

In retrospect, I realize this was because Dingo got to be a DOG most of the time.  He was allowed to make choices for himself, was not chained up, left indoors all day, or confined to a small yard , watching other dogs and people pass by.  He didn’t have to deal with walking on a leash down crowded city streets, constantly passing other dogs at close range.  He didn’t have to go into a dog park and negotiate dozens of strange dogs with bad manners.  He was, for the most part, a farm dog.  Dingo was well-adjusted and happy and when we DID take him into a crowd of people or a new situation, Dingo could DEAL because he’d learned to THINK rather than REACT.

Most American pet dogs today don’t live in situations like that. Mine don’t.  They have to deal with a lot of stuff that would have given their ancestors anxiety attacks. 

Mickey was a stray in the Bronx.  I have no idea what went on in his early life, but he was not housetrained, did not know how to walk on a leash, and was afraid of other dogs.  I worked with a bunch of different trainers, mostly strictly “positive” trainers, trying to teach him to ignore other dogs, even if said dogs were ill-behaved.

It didn’t really work.  Mickey did not give a shit about food bribes if someone’s off leash lab was BOUNDING toward him head-on  (For some reason, 95% of the time, it is labs and golden retrievers whose humans have them  off leash in parks with clearly posted leash laws and, as Jon Katz  points out twice in his book, statistically, untrained and/or ill-bred labs are more likely to bite people than pit bulls are – I had actually seen this statistic cited several times before, but  I never mentioned it anywhere because all the lab people would freak out on me and say I’m just a pit bull zealot, but Jon Katz does not appear to have special love of pit bulls  and has TREMENDOUS love of labs, so THERE.)

Over time, I learned to LISTEN to Mickey.  He has limitations.  He will NEVER enjoy dogs rushing up to him head-on (dogs reacting unfavorably to strange dogs coming at them head-on is NORMAL.)

Mickey will never excel at meeting strange dogs while on leash in a crowded environment.  And that’s okay.  He’s a dog, not a presidential candidate.  What he IS good at is meeting PEOPLE, letting children climb all over him, posing for photographs, taking car trips, and being a devoted, companion who chills out and naps while I write,  and, when I’m done working, exhorts me to take him to trails and parks to wander though nature, to quiet my mind by looking at the world through his eyes for an hour.

And that’s a lot.

I actually have more to say on this topic, and on Jon Katz’s wonderful book, but this post it getting too long and, as it happens, it’s time to go walk the dogs.

To be continued.

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I’ve had a horrible pain in my neck for years and now I’ve had it injected full of steroids.  I still have the pain in my neck but, presumably, the steroids will kick in over the next week or so and then I will finally be able to join the circus.

I have ruptured discs up and down my spine, metal plates in my leg and hip,  a torn rotator cuff, and am not particularly physically brave.  But I love and want to join the circus. Specifically, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus.

Stephanie of Bindlestiff Family Cirkus whips a rose out of volunteer’s mouth.

I have an in there. It’s conceivable they’d be willing to train me in the circus ways, but what the hell would I do?

Eat fire on days when I can throw back my head enough to let the flames lash my tongue?

Like Indio, the fire eater at Coney Island circa 15 or so years ago.

Indio gave me one fire eating lesson.  It didn’t go that well.   I shrieked.  Because I am a pansy.

Indio, Fire eater at Coney Island Sideshow.

My dad was a rodeo rider.  He got on bucking bulls and stayed on as long as possible.  This was right after his stint in Korea as a paratrooper. He also hopped freights, fixed machinery, drank enthusiastically, and, without trying, befriended animals everywhere he went.  He didn’t particularly care for cats but they cared for him.  The man could TRAIN cats.  He could get horses, dogs and cats to do circus-type tricks just by LOOKING at them and, additionally, was incredibly tidy and well-groomed.  Not to mention wildly physically fit. He died young, but he’d live fully.

Dad, Gene Estep, aboard Leonard, Madison Square Garden 1982

My mother, who will very likely outlive me,  also has super powers. Horses, dogs and cats do her bidding — not out of fear or coercion, but just because they want to.  She’s got the mojo. She is also, at 69-years-old, a Size Two without an ounce of fat on her body.  She’s a bit hobbly from having been kicked, thrown, bitten, and stomped on by horses through the years, but she is seemingly made of steel.

Mom, Nancy Murray, galloping one of the horses she trained at Delaware Park.

My brothers, Jon and Chris, live in Colorado and are extreme skiers. You know, those guys who trek up to the top of really high mountains and then ski down, sometimes narrowly avoiding the avalanches.  They also scale cliffs with bare hands, ride mountain bikes up vertical, rocky paths, and do other super-powered things.

Which is to say, I’m the pansy of the gene pool.

I briefly raced bicycles, but quit after my second crash.   I’ll get on a horse who is over the age of 15 and, ideally, has had a previous career as a police horse and is not prone to having horse-like reactions to ANYTHING and will keep me safely on his back even if an asteroid lands at his feet.

Yes, I can do a few circus-trick like things with my body thanks to yoga, but even that was getting difficult with the constant PAIN IN MY NECK.

So, with TREMENDOUS trepidation and at the urging of my doctor, I decided to get steroids shot into my spine.

The idea terrified me. Not just the needle, but the steroids.   I’m REALLY sensitive to stimulants of any kind.  Maybe I overdid the methamphetamine in High School when my friend Bliss and I would inhale it in order to understand MATH.  I don’t know. But if I take even a fraction of a regular-person dose of prednisone, I turn into Felix Unger, cleaning everything in sight, chewing on the inside of my cheeks, and generally acting like a crackhead.

The idea of having giant pools of steroids injected into my spine was not my favorite idea. But the alternative was to go on regular pain pills or have my NECK SURGICALLY FUSED.

So I went to a pain management doctor, a small Polish man who pulled on my limbs and dug his fingers into my spine and cracked weird jokes that seemed to annoy his assistant. But I had Googled him extensively and he’d gone to fancy medical schools and did not appear to have killed anyone.

After the nurse had given me a pre-procedure sedative and I was feeling slightly woozy, I looked at the doctor and realized he not only sounded but LOOKED like Roman Polanski.  And, since I was woozy, I said: You look like Roman Polanski.He cackled and, in his thick Polish accent said: You’re not supposed to tell me that when I’m holding a NEEDLE.

Then he jabbed the needle into my spine.

Some of the possible side effects of this procedure are: death, paralysis, infection, blinding headache. To my amazement, I don’t seem to have any of them. I feel a little racy and spent an inordinate amount of time pulling up weeds in the garden, but I am neither dead nor paralyzed.

Still, I’m not quite ready to join the circus.

For now, I’ll get back to the business of novel-writing. I’m stuck on a scene where an addled rich woman, an elderly Scrabble maven, and a lugubrious Irish horse whisperer are holed up in a trailer in rural Maryland, playing Scrabble. I’d better get them out of there before someone gets hurt and needs their spine injected with steroids.

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The other night, after a freakishly strong thunderstorm, I got home and found that the neighbor’s tree had crashed into our yard, taking down part of the fence and some flowers but mercifully not harming dogs, people, house, or GNOMES.   The next day, as my boyfriend, two tree guys, Stevie the Dog, and the  neighbor whose tree tried to kill us, all stood around staring at the tree, I packed up Mickey and drove down to Brooklyn to stay at my friend John’s house for a few nights.  Not because a tree had tried to kill me, but because I wanted to spend time with my City People and also was reading for the Howl Festival.

The Howl Festival was really really really hot.  Not Laura the Hot Farmer Hot.  90 something degrees and set up mostly in the sun and, accordingly, kind of sparsely attended (though I got to see people I adore, Mike Doughty, Edwin Torres, Bob Holman, and, perhaps best of all, heard Todd Colby read TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS).

Because it was a weird distracting set-up for a reading, I read, among other things, FUCK ME, which I haven’t read in a long time.

When I toured with Lollapalooza, I was known as The Fuck Me Girl because anytime the audience was bored or restless I would read Fuck Me and people would become a bit more attentive.

I had planned on maybe bringing Mickey onstage with me at the Howl Festival and having him eat a noodle (his infamous noodle video here for those who haven’t seen it) but it was so hot and uncomfortable, he stayed in the audience with my friends.

The whole time I was onstage, Mickey stared, his ears at full mast.  He’d never heard me read Fuck Me.

He was VERY attentive.

This might be a good time to mention Mickey’s nascent modeling career.

While some dogs like to herd sheep, and other dogs like to sleep on couches all day eating potato chips, ALL dogs want to understand their place in our crazy lives and all dogs, in one way or another, need jobs.

Mickey would totally suck at herding sheep and though he enjoys a good couch and a snack, what he loves best is to meet new people, go new places and, especially, get photographed. He is VERY aware of cameras and considers it his job to present his best angle. 

He seems to have had this knack even before I adopted him six years ago.   His photos from NYC Animal Care and Control show a severely emaciated dog looking RIGHT at the camera. Not in that fearful, defeated way many of the poor dogs at ACC look at the camera, but giving a distinct Come Hither Glance.  Even though he was 60% underweight and slated to be euthanized because he had kennel cough, Mickey was POSING.  On death row.

So, when a company in Massachusetts, Dash and Albert Rugs, announced they were having an open casting call for a dog model, I scheduled Mickey to audition.

I personally HATE auditioning.  It’s dreadful and demoralizing.  I did it about ten times at the height of my Fuck Me Girl fame, and I just found it HORRIBLE and embarrassing and promptly decided to stick to writing books rather than pursuing bit parts on Law and Order.

But I had a hunch Mickey might actually LIKE it.

Just as border collies have it in their DNA to know what to do with unruly sheep, Mickey apparently has it in his DNA to know how to do an audition.  There were other dogs all around, some barking at him, but he completely ignored them and sat down, widened his eyes, and gave come-hither glances to the people checking the dogs in.

When we were ushered into the room where the cameras were set up, Mickey looked at me as if to say: Finally, my job.

With extreme poise, he sat, stood, put his ears straight up, widened his eyes.  He seemed bitterly disappointed when the photographer only took about a dozen shots.  He would have very happily stayed there for HOURS.

Now, Mickey has gotten a callback.  For better or worse, the finalists have all been posted on Facebook and the rug model dog will be chosen by vote.  Voting started a couple of days ago and goes till June 9^th and you can (and should, for the sake of my dog’s mental well-being) vote once a day and get everyone you know to do it too. Voting link here.

Mickey is currently only in SIXTH place (you can’t vote from a mobile device, a glitch probably rigged by one of the, um, PUREBRED non-death-row-surviving FANCY DOGS).  So it’s sort of a pain in the ass.  But think of how happy you will make the Dog from Death Row and the Fuck Me Girl.  We’re worth it.  I swear, we are.

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So the Art Boobs post link got taken down by Facebook.  This was pretty exciting.  I’m not going to launch into a jeremiad about the hypocrisy of it, because I don’t want to get all VEXED, but, seriously.  Vexing.

And now, a little follow-up to ART BOOBS.

The main purpose of the recently-installed “donate” button is to support this blog. This encourages me to keep blogging and novel-writing rather than spending five hours in handstand or lounging around weeping and eating bonbons in my underwear (though those are obviously also worthy endeavors).

Donating, sharing the blog, buying a book, any and all of it cheers me and also builds a wider audience so that maybe,  when my next book finally comes out,  I get to tour a little more extensively,  meet/re-meet more of you compatriots out there, and get to know YOUR work and talents and enthusiasms (like Laura Rhoman, baker extraordinaire, who made me THE most delicious truffles and marzipan concoctions when I read at Powell’s in Portland a while back.)

Some of you have already bought and read all my books AND made contributions to keep the blog going and I really really appreciate that.   I will be over presently to give you bon bons.

Others, namely Laura the Hot Farmer, Isa the Hot Blogger,  and Jody Sigler the Hot Poet, have asked:

  “Where are the rest of the naked pictures?”

Truth is, there aren’t any more naked pictures. I am not an enthusiastic naked person as documented in an old piece, Bad Dad at the Beauty Salon (link that someone, not me, posted)  I am a person who, when naked in front of strangers, thinks: Holy shit, I am naked in front of strangers.

The boob photo was taken by the artist Christopher Wool.  When I realized he was taking boob pictures of me as I lounged by the pool, I shrieked and tried to shove him and the camera in the pool.   So he only got that one picture, as far as I know, though he did go on to paint my brain:

As may be evident from the nature of the painting, ours was a somewhat tempestuous relationship. Though Wool remains one of my favorite people in the world and is an incredible artist.

Maggie’s Brain the Painting went on to become pretty famous.  It’s now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago.  Here’s a slightly better picture of it. Of course, Wool should have given ME the painting, but all I got was a scribbled-on Polaroid.

Lastly,  “I’d Buy That For A Dollar” is a quote from Robocop, a movie I LOVE.

A one-dollar donation is welcome – and wonderful – but you don’t HAVE to be literal. I was making a Robocop reference, mostly because I was excited to see who might riff on it.

Anyone?   Robocop?  Truffles?  Brains?  Boobs?

Thanks for your contributions, shares and enthusiasms.  They mean a lot.

ME

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A while back, the prolific and excellent writer Joe Lansdale posted something funny on his Facebook feed.  I can’t find the post and neither can Joe, but it was really good.

The post said something about how, oftentimes, when you tell someone you meet you’re a writer, they ask: “Would I have heard of you?”

“How the fuck should I know? “

Okay, actually, I don’t think that was Joe’s post, but his was about going to the dentist and the dentist saying:  “You’re a writer?  I’ll expect a signed copy of your next book when it comes out. “

And Joe says:  “Good, and I’ll expect a free root canal.”

Totally paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

I laughed and laughed.

A surprising number of people don’t understand that writers and musicians and painters are not waifish dilettantes flitting about , subsisting on flowers and good lighting.  This is how we make our living.

Buy our shit or we die.

Most people grasp that Adele and Stephen King have products in stores that can be bought, but seem to assume that, if they haven’t heard of those of us who are less well known, then our work cannot be bought, or is perhaps shitty and shouldn’t be bought.

Sometimes people tell me:  Oh, after meeting you I went to the library and took out a copy of  one of your books. I really enjoyed it.  And then I loaned it to my entire family.

It’s a compliment, I suppose, but, really, can’t you just buy ONE of my books? They’re not all great, (I have them sort of categorized on my Facebook page) but they don’t cost more than a cappuccino and a muffin and they’ll make you feel things.  I promise you that.

More and more, a lot of us do give our work away for free — or for whatever a person wishes to pay for it.  We blog.  We put up pay-what-you-wish downloads of our records.  Etc.

See the indefatigable Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk, The Art of Asking.  It’s part of why I finally decided, Fuck it, I’ll ASK!

All the industries behind the arts are in upheaval.  I’m not going to snivel about it. The world changes, sometimes quite rapidly. That is one of the beautiful mysteries of being alive.

The writer Jon Katz muses on this sort of thing (and many other sorts of things) on his engaging blog Bedlamfarm.com.

It was seeing Jon Katz’s “Donate” button that was the final straw for me, that made me rip at the resistance I felt about ASKING.  And I’ve installed a “Donate” button on this blog.

Nurture the things you love or they die.

I supported a documentary, 12 O Clock Boys,  about  dirt bike gangs in Baltimore.  Now, thanks to all of us who gave Kickstarter contributions,  the doc has been released and just won an award from HBO and will find its way to a larger audience.

I gave Amanda Palmer twenty bucks when I downloaded her most recent record. She’s given me more than my money’s worth between the music and the online persona.   Her tireless willingness to keep putting herself and her work out there, no matter what, is inspiring.

Amanda Palmer naked

So I think it’s okay to offer people the opportunity to donate to this blog.

I might die tomorrow. You might die tomorrow.

So.

If you found one of my books in the stuff your ex left behind and read half of it then forgot it on a park bench, you could give me a dollar.

If you saw me on MTV when you were 15 and thought I was hot and put me in the spank bank for future masturbatory fodder, you could give me five dollars.

me half-naked. photo: christopher wool

If you’re a high school student performing one of my poems in speech competitions, you could give me a dollar.

If you wonder how I’m going to keep from going to debtors prison before finishing my next novel, you could give me several dollars.

Or not.  That’s fine too. You can just think nice things about me.  In the yoga philosophy, they say this is really powerful. This thinking of nice things.  I have found it to be true.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Bob Holman poems:

You know things

THINK THEM.

And then, if you want, give me a dollar.

Thanks.

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The typical response from my friends when I make a dog video is:  Why do you do that?  You’re insane.

Many writers would have made dog videos, or, worse, CAT VIDEOS if they’d lived in the age of YouTube.  For example: Kerouac, Bukowski,  and definitely Patricia Highsmith.

We writers, even those of us who have at some point been branded quirky, subversive, shocking are essentially just goony, reclusive idiots who talk to animals and do other childish, occasionally charming things when we’re not pounding nails into the floor with our foreheads (Eric Bogosian quote).

There are some social butterfly writers.  Truman Capote.  Neil Gaiman. These guys had/have such huge lives, I don’t know how they ever wrote/write. But these are superhero writers.  The rest of us spend a little too much time alone, in our underwear.    Some of us become secret connoisseurs of cat videos (how else to explain the extraordinary amount of media references to cat videos, other than journalists are sitting home watching fucking cat videos?)

I have made dog videos for four or five years now.  Mostly just because looking at images of  my dog (s) in motion soothes me.  Also, my dog Mickey, LOVES being photographed and filmed.  Seriously.  He was once photographed by a high fashion photographer (for the wonderful Unexpected Pit Bull calendar) and the photographer burst out laughing when, as soon as she took out her gear, Mickey began posing.  She’d never seen a DOG do this.

Recently, I made a two-minute movie about Mickey encountering zombie hookers in a cemetery.  Why would I possibly do that? I have no idea.  It just seemed funny. I have a pretty idiotic sense of humor.  Sometimes, I’m funny, but mostly, I’m a jackass.

David Sedaris is very very funny. It’s unclear to me what his stance is on the subject of cat videos, though I think there is a passing jab at cat videos in his hilarious new book, Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls and, of course, this jab implies a familiarity with CAT VIDEOS.

I did a reading with David Sedaris a bunch of years ago, and it was pretty great.

We hadn’t met or read each other’s work before the reading but, in one of those beautiful coincidences that keep life worth living, it SEEMED like we were buddies who had planned on reading complimentary pieces.  Mine was about eating too many dried apricots on a bucolic country trip with a new love interest, his was in a very similar vein.  We both read about terrible humiliations.  The audience laughed and laughed and laughed.

After the reading, David Sedaris and I hugged and vowed to remain forever friends. We haven’t crossed paths since.   He became DAVID SEDARIS.  I became a quirky, subversive, shocking novelist who sometimes makes dog videos.

Okay.  I even made one cat video because I got pissed off at that wildly successful existential French cat, Henri (no link to that bastard, he gets enough attention already.)

I made a lame attempt at a rebuttal cat video starring my reluctant, ancient, cat Lulu.  I’m a little ashamed of this.  But not that much.  Not as much as I was the time I ate too many dried apricots while on a bucolic vacation with a new love interest.

There is something really pure about making dog videos.

Some of my work is pretty hard-nosed and people assume I’m a seen it-all-five-times-and-didn’t-like-much-of-it person.  But I’m just a quiet, animal-loving, yoga-enthusiast idiot who sees magic in many places, including dog videos.

Perhaps my friends think I’m insane for making dog videos because even  they can’t reconcile the side of me that produces melancholy, twisted books with the jackass who makes dog videos.

Neil Gaiman has helped me with this.  I always used to feel that, as a writer, I couldn’t show the side of me that believes everything is potentially magical, that all the world is a dog video.

Then, I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and liked it immensely. In particular, I  liked the way he matter-of-factly goes from the familiar to the fantastical almost in one breath – and it works beautifully.

It was very liberating to see someone do that successfully.  And I felt less crazy.  I felt like it’s okay to write brutal things one minute and make videos about my dog meeting zombie hookers the next.

Neil Gaiman does not, as far as I know, make cat videos, though he DOES post Tumblr pictures of his aging cat and also of his dog, a beautiful, rescued white Shepherd named Lola who I briefly met a few weeks back.

Reading Neil Gaiman gave me permission to let loose completely,  incorporating a sense of wonder and magic into hard-nosed writing.  Something I’ve long avoided doing.

Perhaps, once I get used to doing this, I’ll have less need of making dog videos.

But I hope not.

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I’m heading off to teach yoga in a few minutes and am having the standard-issue mix of dread and slight excitement at the prospect of cajoling people into doing unusual things with their limbs and their minds for 90 minutes.

I prefer teaching yoga to teaching writing. I always worried that teaching writing (excepting the occasional workshop) might kill my writing.

I don’t have that fear with yoga.  There is no killing yoga. It would just come back.  Like a zombie.

Zombies have outshined vampires and well-to-do housewives as a national obsession.  And seem in no danger of leaving.

I like magical creatures, mythologies, Sci Fi, and zombies.  I talk to trees and inanimate objects (and people and animals too)  and consider everything imbued with a spirit.  Including zombies.

I have the notion that, if the need ever arose,  I could reason with a zombie the same way you can sometimes reason with or whisper to a difficult dog or horse.

Maybe I’ll be in big trouble when the zombies come.  Or maybe I’ll have a lot of a work as a Zombie Whisperer.

I wrote  a short story, Zombie Hookers of Hudson, because I like zombies, and also because I was asked to contribute  fiction for The Marijuana Chronicles, coming July 2nd from Akashic Books.

Rather than drum up some long-ago shenanigans from my weed-smoking youth, I invented pot-smoking zombie hookers.  My zombie hookers are pretty benevolent.  Because they were invented by someone who thinks she’s a  Zombie Whisperer.

I think zombies are popular because we all think the world is ending.  Pretty much every culture and civilization since the beginning of time has thought their world was ending.  In our time, there may be more of a case to be made for this outlook. The earth is heating and the weather is getting really fucking wonky. Even some Republicans admit this by now.

Most of my life,  I’ve had recurring post-apocalyptic dreams.  As a youngster, I loved Planet of the Apes, Road Warrior, and Bladerunner because these movies looked like the landscapes in my dreams.

When I first moved to NYC at age 17, Bladerunner played every weekend at the St Marks Movie Theater.  And I went EVERY WEEKEND.  My friend Bliss and I would sit there, reciting it pretty much line for line, smoking lots of weed and cigarettes (this was Lower Manhattan in the 1980’s, you could shoot  heroin in your jugular on the subway and no one would look twice, though I never actually tried THAT) and cooing over Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah (those standing backflips of hers were particularly awesome, watch here, though it is heartbreaking.)

Sometimes, leaving the theater, it was hard to distinguish the barren, bombed-out-looking landscape of the Lower East Side from the sets of Bladerunner.

Movies like Bladerunner, Terminator, Planet of the Apes, 28 Days Later etc…are just manifestations of our collective unconscious same as Hieronymus Bosch paintings were in the 15^th century.

Right now, our collective unconscious finds zombies particularly appealing. It’s somehow cozier thinking zombies will wipe us out than a series of weather events or biological warfare.

And yoga is the zombie of mind/body practices.

Yoga started a long, long time ago and, no matter what anyone does to it, no matter how many of us freaky yoga-loving loons interpret and transmit it, it keeps working and finding new converts and, for the most part, spreading well-being and some degree of peace.

Yes.  Yoga is a cult.  But,  pretty much everything is a cult.  Human beings like cults.  We like believing in the same things.  It makes us feel less alone.  We are a weird, conflicted species, celebrating individuality and original thinking, but all, at heart, believing the same thing:  That the zombies are coming and yoga will make it better.

Time to go teach yoga.

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I read about half a John Updike book once then grew enraged at the chronicling of the ennui of the well-to-do and flung the book across the room.

Somewhere in my mind, I lumped John Cheever in with John Updike, though I  had never actually read a single sentence of Cheever’s. I made one of those categorizations I was prone to in my late teens and early twenties.  Because I knew EVERYTHING in those days.

Now, fortunately, I know very little.

A little later in life, I came to be friendly with John Cheever’s daughter, Susan, who I liked, both as a person and as a writer.  I felt a vague stab of guilt for not having read the work of her late father.  But I still didn’t read it.

Through the years,  on hearing of my love of swimming and, in particular, my love of swimming in the pools of hotels where I wasn’t staying or of people I didn’t know,  friends kept asking if I’d ever read Cheever’s The Swimmer or seen the movie. I would just say “No,” and leave it at that.

Six months ago, while on vacation in Mexico with my boyfriend, I went swimming at a particularly spectacular beach.

My boyfriend stayed on the beach, reading and slathering himself in SPF 2000 sunscreen as I went into the water, cavorting, doing handstands and backflips. Glad to be alive.

I have since read Cheever’s The Swimmer.  It is an astonishingly good story.   And what I was feeling in that moment, in that beautiful sea, is very well expressed by this:  “…he was breathing deeply, stertorously as if he could gulp into his lungs the components of that moment, the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his pleasure.”

I was feeling all that.    My head was under water, inside the sea, hearing the woosh of the Caribbean. And then, I heard a dog barking.  I  could probably hear a dog-in-need bark from 200 miles away.  I immediately swam toward the shore and peered at the beach, where I saw a scrappy tan pup barking at my boyfriend.

There were other people on the beach, but this dog had singled him out, the guy with the giant straw hat and the SPF 2000 sunscreen, to ask for help.  Because this dog needed help.  He had a hideous, very infected bite wound on his front leg and his ribs were sticking out. 

As it happened, I had a can of dog food in the basket of the bike I’d ridden to the beach.  I was planning to  feed a very sad-looking stray poodle-type who hung around the bakery in town.

We found a discarded flip flop, put the dog food on it, and fed it to the pup.  He devoured the food and started on the flip flop. Then, he drank the contents of my water bottle, and then my boyfriend’s water bottle too.

I sat, looking at the pup, marveling at how he was not in good shape but was able to be happy in that moment, smiling at me, squinting his surprising bright green eyes.

As I wondered how we would help him (we had no car, no cell phone service,  and were miles from where we were staying) he dug a big hole in the sand, right under my bent legs,  burrowed in, and took a nap.

This was the beginning of a very wild 48 hours.  Through the help of about a dozen local people, including the folks at Alma Libre Books, two animal rescue women, and a bunch of veterinarians who routinely donate their time at a clinic for low cost veterinary care, we got the pup medical attention.  And all our new Mexican friends URGED us to get the pup out of Mexico where it was thought he had fallen off the back of a truck of a man transporting pit bulls and, generally, men transporting pick-up trucks full of pit bulls do not have good intentions.

Later, I wrote a short, highly fictionalized account of this event.  It’s up on Akashic Books’ site, here: The Killing Type.

So we ended up adopting an injured 6-month-old Mexican beach dog and flying him home with us to New York.  We called him Esteban, “Stevie”, after the child of the hot brunette and the Mexican Drug Lord on the show WEEDS.

Mickey, my dog of the exceptional ears, immediately liked Stevie.  And Stevie liked him. 

Stevie has his issues, he doesn’t know how to meet other dogs on leash and he hunts the innocent garter snakes in our yard. But we love him deeply.  When he is not being an insane adolescent dog, he is extremely loving, funny and handsome.

Also, he got me to read John Cheever.

Even though we’d found Stevie on a beach, we didn’t know if he could actually swim.  I have a friend with two  greyhounds and they periodically fall in the swimming pool and immediately sink and have to be rescued.  They can’t swim AT ALL.

As it happens though, Stevie can not only swim, but he’s an avid swimmer.  He has already jumped into one swimming pool, three smelly ponds, several creeks, and the Hudson River.

I made this movie of him swimming in a pond.  I called it The Swimmer, nodding to the John Cheever story.

Then, I decided, it was probably time to read John Cheever.

I discovered I greatly admire the writing of John Cheever.

The moral of this post is,  If you adopt a Mexican beach dog, you will find out you love something you had once categorically dismissed.

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