book group: vessels (not pictured).  i'm reading this book and my skin starts to tingle and i realize the painter he's writing about is the painter who lived in my place and killed himself.

i told mom about it and she said, you shouldn't read books like that! and i said, you always did that, pushed down reality cuz it scared you, and it made me anxious for life.

but you actually helped me, mom. you didn't shield me from reality, but drew my attention to it by hiding it, you made it mysterious, made me want to find out what it was that was hidden, and that has served me well, now that i stopped actively trying to kill myself slowly with alcohol and drugs and cigarettes. it made me go toward anxiety and fear, to pass through it and not succumb, which has helped me enormously on my daily walk.

and it was really mom who started my taste for the inscrutable macabre. i remember the moment she related the news of a little girl, said, isn't that your friend? she died! i would not give satisfaction. i said in theatrical whisper, No, i didn't know her. at all. then i had a terror sleepwalk waking in the cold backyard.

i remember the long couch, the long flat mustard house sitting on a long flat house-shaped artificial hill. the mustard wall to wall shag, the two-way fireplace. the three trees in front that died, named after three children. i remember listening to three dog night, suitable for framing, on endless repeat.

so, to sum it all up in a neat little bundle, it's a pretty good book.