You Can't Fight At Gettysburg High On Pot.

Sometimes I just stand there and stare at our books over in the corner. We took them off the shelves and then the shelves fell apart like rice paper. Those ones you get at Kmart only survive being dragged around so long. Then, they crumble into dust. Anyway we took them down so Violet wouldn't get to pawing at a colorful binding and pull the whole damn disaster down on top of her. So, I end up glaring at a whole corner full of books about knee high.

Ever since I was a kid and McDonald's had this giveaway for super-edited special McNerdy editions of The Wizard of Oz and Tom Sawyer and a couple others, I've never been without some gargantuan stacks of paperbacks that I drag through my life with me. From my bedrooms to my Mom's attic to apartments in cities all over the damn place, it was easy to leave trash bags filled with clothes and sneaks out by the curb. But, the books must ride along. On airplanes across the ocean I live in fear of being stuck on some interminable tarmac, in some time-warp of a delay. So, the backpack I stuff under the seat eleven inches in front of me is usually full of candy, scattered good luck charms I need for survival should we plunge into the Atlantic off the Icelandic coast, and like four or five freakin' books where one would be fine. I just never know what mood I might be in when I'm up there speeding across the night galaxy.

I like books. They've helped me learn sure. And relate to the world and all. Blahblahblah. But they also helped me quit smokin' weed. About a hundred pages into The Killer Angels I realized that I had so much THC gumming up my works that I was just lying there under the covers reading the same fucking three sentences over and over again. General Pickett on a Groundhog Day loop, hopping up on his goddamn horse so many times in a row that in all seriousness...the war might've passed him right by had I smoked maybe one or two more bowls. After that, I just said the hell with it. I like books better than grass. And I like getting to the end of a page inside of two hours.

So. Me and Monica have been doing our self-inflicted book club. Here's how that goes.

We order one copy of a book and both read it at the same time. The book gets left on the coffee table or the back of the toilet or somewhere like that. Somewhere easy to find it. Sometimes after she's had it last, I'll see a new crease or ripple in the cover or I'll stumble on a hot sauce smear deep in the story. It pisses me off too. We each have our own book mark: mine is laminated cardboard with an antelope in tall dry grass on it. Monica's is a three inch thick 3-D puffy actual invitation to a baby shower or some shit. It is oversize and just ridiculous. In the spirit of our family there are two constants in our Book Club:

1) We move the other person's bookmark around when reading and then forget what page it was on so we just stick it anywhere back there.

2). We never bother to discuss the book before we've read it. Or while we're reading it. Or when we're finished it.

It's a good club. There's very little bullshit.

Here's some stuff I've been reading. After you skim over it, give me some ideas as to what you've been looking at. Especially if its a novel. That's where my head is at.

SKELLIG by David Almond. A story aimed at a teenage audience, but still. A kid whose baby sister is very ill finds an angel out in his family's dank garage. I thought it was a mesmerizing premise and guess what: it is. There's been a movie made of this I think.

JULIET,NAKED by Nick Hornby. Sometimes I start certain novels and get sucked in fast and just want to eat the pages. I devoured this probably about as fast as a slow-ass reader like me can go. Its a hilarious and somewhat romantic look at the modern world of music fans and their sense of proprietorship with the songs/artists they love. Plus, there is a fantastic glimpse at the dysfunctional side of love.

HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST by Steve Hely. The world of big-selling novels spun on it's ass. Hysterical, spit-your-coffee-out-your-nose funny. Laughed out loud nearly every page. There's a moral too, ironically enough. This fellow writes for 30 Rock now.

AMERICAN WIFE by Curtis Sittenfeld. I am almost done this one so I feel comfortable saying that it is superb. The story of a Presidential First Lady, her true self, and the woman she needs to be to make things work. Based on the life of Laura Bush...who turns out to be a fairly captivating woman. Who knew?

TV wise....we're watching DEADWOOD, you cocksuckers!

The Department Of Her Heart.

My wife, Monica, has been involved in a really intriguing debate over the past couple of days. It involves God, journalism, the sanctity of independent thought, the Civil Rights Movement, The LDS Church, speeches, Gay Marriage, Twittering, blogging, media embargoes, politics, fevered opinion, and a specific moment in Idaho when someone said something revealing in the afternoon.

Sheesh.

Me, I've just sat back here on the couch eating the whole time. I dip chocolate bars into Diet Coke, walk to the porch for a smoke, return to my perch.

But, I'll say this much. I love my wife a little more this week than last week. Here's why.

Monica doesn't care about skin color. She is one of the few people I have ever met who just doesn't see black or white or tan or whatever. And she doesn't care if men fall in love with other men, or women with women. It doesn't scare her. It doesn't repulse her. It simply doesn't register a complaint with The Department Of Her Heart. Illegal immigrants don't bother her. She is not worried about her right to have a .357 on her nightstand. And she isn't worried about spending an eternity in Hell whenever she makes up her own mind about things based on her experiences here on Earth, in this life that she is living as we speak.

Hate, and fear, and not paying a penny towards someone else's welfare, and archaic and questionable books/men/slave owners/documents/beliefs don't grab her mind each morning and drag it far away fast from her beating heart. In fact, its just the opposite.

And this thrills me beyond most of the words I can really come up with.

Should our daughter, our beautiful and wonderful gift from God/nature/outer space, ever decide that she loves a man of another shade, or a woman...I am comforted beyond the realm of any Earthly dictation...that it will be so very ok for me and her Momma to keep on loving her and her life and her choices and her magical experience.

It makes me sad/it makes me motherfucking livid sad to know that there are so many parents out there who would put themselves first, before the love they have for their own kids. It sounds insane and it is.

But Constitutions and Churches and Bibles and Grandpa's Prejudices and Thomas Fucking Jefferson don't mean shit at the end of the day, people. Not when it gets in the way of love in the here-and-now. Monica's God doesn't dress in old robes and hurl bolts of mental madness at those who don't fit into Old Testament Mad Libs. No, no, no. Monica's God...and mine too...she puts down her Virginia Slim to flick over to the baseball from The Pill Poppin' Wives of Beverly Hills (her little secret!) and scribbles down names in her Book Of Goin' To Hell...names often pinned to people who were so very sure they had Heaven all locked up. After all, they did everything they were told. They believed exactly what they were told to believe.

Sucks for them.

Luckily for me: I get to learn from a master. My wife.

Plus she's hotter than hell.

Plus, I get to eat like Bridget Jones on a Cherry Garcia Bender while she teaches with her heart.

Love.

Lately I have been going to bed at night and staring at the ceiling fan as if it were a StarShip hovering down to zip me away. Where will they take me, I get to wondering. To a planet, maybe. Or maybe they just wanna ass-rape me and fill me with caramel filling and serve me at the buffet in one of the ship's six eateries. Either way, I lay there thinking about stuff: about how exciting it is to be moments away from heading out to space, to be seconds away from conversations with clay-colored Lobster Boys with laser eyeballs. Its enthralling. It's fucking ace, is what it is.

Then it punches me on my heart.

Violet. My butter bean.

I can't go to space tonight. I have Violet here in the other room crashed out on her elbows and knees, her tiny butt propped up in the air, aimed at the stars beyond the rafters and shingles above her dreaming head. I can't get on this ship or even the next one. She is over there working up ways to be needing me even in her wildest dreams. And I aim to please.

I give the finger to the fan. I tell it to go get someone else who doesn't have all these Earthly responsibilities like I do. The fan erupts in lights and roars, smoke that smells of fried honeysuckle fills the bedroom; Christ: this is gonna wake her up, I scream into the deafening hot wind.

Then.

Boosh.

It's gone. The StarShip. It simply vanishes in a puff of dust that settles down around me on my left side of the Serta PerfectPosturePimp, like a misty bird pee.

I get choked up. This part is super true. I lay there thinking about what almost just happened/how close I was to walking into the unknown, alone. And it makes me almost cry as I realize that I can't live anymore without my kid. She holds chains she don't know a damn thing about. Chains looped and knotted up and around my liver, my kidneys. Chains gathered all over my left lung. And my right one. New hard chains spun all through my ribs, like bikes locked safe outside a library. Chains to my eyelids. Chains to my teeth. Chains to my still kicking heart.

The feeling has been lingering all around rooms and streets with me lately. All gussied up in afternoon sunbeams smashing into golden leaves, this weird massive entity has been swirling in and out of my consciousness for the last couple of weeks. I get so blue sometimes. I deal with it, run with it. Try to rub it in my eyes and see the world as some sort of sad beautiful ball of dirt/bones/lust/fish. But these past days have found me just overcome with all kinds of newer pangs.

I fall into some dark ass well and a nine month old pulls me out. She heaves me up over the colonial bricks and sneezes in my face. She holds out a pinky like an offer.
Stay here with me, she says. We'll be ok.

It's all too much sometimes. It's me staring hard at her and her shitting like a buffalo while she watches Charlie Brown in a pumpkin patch.

Its a shotgun shell loaded with dimes.

I aim it at the fan/UFO/blues.

I squeeze the trigger with loving tears on my eyeballs. Then I sleep the sleep of the dead.