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Feb. 11, 2010 Welcome to D.J. Phoeb's Man-hating Valentine's Day Extravaganza!
We're going to the Love's a Total Bitch Cafe, "Where the burnt and jaded meet to eat."
Today's breakfast specials include:
Two Married Entrees, well-done. This includes one heaping helping of you-should-have-known-better (breaded and fried,) one spicy sausage, one glass of vitamin-enriched mundanity, one routine side order of a limp surprise vegetable, and one binge-sized piece of chocolate cake which will make you fat just looking at it.
The Unrequited Love Special. This includes a dish of perfectly scrambled feelings, a side order of mushy sentiment, one spicy sausage, a tall glass of nectar of the gods, and for dessert--whatever your favorite fruit is (ripened to juicy perfection.) --The waitress has been instructed to hold it really close to your mouth but TO NOT under any circumstance actually allow you to eat it.
The Betrayal. This includes two eggs overdone or uneasy (your choice,) bitter grits, one innocent-looking glass of secretly-poisoned beverage, bruised fruit with whipped apologies, and one over-the-top spicy sausage. When you are done eating, you are to throw the plate and smash it hard against the wall your choice.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Feb. 13th or so, 2010
Not sure the date. I think tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I have a case of non-acute carbon monoxide poisoning from car exhaust leaking into my car last night on the way to the reading/slam event in Philly. The streets in Philly were big icy paths filled with ruts so I guess a chunk of ice knocked my exhaust system somewhere. I didn't notice it until I started feeling faint. So I drove home with all the windows open and froze my ass off but still felt dizzy now and then, and this morning still. Well, it's yet another adventure in reading poetry. I haven't even been doing this all that long and already have had a couple weird incidents. Well, at least I didn't have to ask ten college students to escort me safely to my car last night. Last night my car WAS the threat. Can anyone tell me why life has to be so hard? Yeah, big pity party for Phoebe! Well, at least a couple people seemed to like my poetry. Actually, this poetry slam champion, Rachel McKibbens, said she loved my poem, "A More Significant Sun."
I'm pretty soft-spoken for a slam so I don't know....Sometimes I feel like the louder volume and quickened pace distracts from the actual comprehension of the poem. Guess it depends on the reader and how well they enunciate.
Oh well, maybe I should eat something. Yay, the dumb blue blazer of death successfully averted yet again....
LATER--Matthew fixed my car. Out in the frigid cold. Glad it was an easy task. It wasn't exhaust that poisoned me, it was a couple different problems but the fumey problem was some sort of fan belt. So it's true, no one in Mt. Airy was burning tires in the middle of the night, it was just my fan belt. You know, I once saw Indians, really angry beautiful Indians, burning tires in the middle of a highway in upstate New York. This young man was yelling things like "we're taking back the highway" and "go get 'em, they're white," (when this other car drove by in the direction of the burning tires.) Matthew and I had been tootling along in our old Toyota Slow Rider when we came across this little scenario. Matthew stopped the car and I jumped out, like a total dope, into the fray. I still remember I was wearing this old lady dress that was huge on me and had a pattern that reminded me of sky and clouds. Well, I ran up to this fancy red pick up truck where the angry young Indian was standing in the bed, holding a baseball bat and yelling. There was a girl with him. I looked at him and said something stupid that I can't even remember. I just remember he had a red bandana on somewhere and was like, the most gorgeous person I'd ever seen. We looked at each other and my thoughts were probaby these, "My God, you're beautiful. You have a baseball bat. I hope you don't hit me with it." I don't think he said anything. I think he was deciding whether to clobber me or not. I asked what I could do. The girl next to him interjected, "--Call this number." So I wrote the number down and later on called it....Apparently they were angry over the desire of some local (white) people to have them charge sales tax on the cigarettes they sold at the reservation. I think that's what it was about anyway. My head is always in the clouds. I try to attune myself to reality but it's not easy. I hate cigarettes. But of course I wanted them to make their money. I wish we lived in a much much better world. Christ, now I'm going to get all Anne Frank on everyone!
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.--Anne Frank
Feb. 15, 2010 Thought of the day: I desperately need Oprah Winfrey.
Feb. 17, 2010
Hello. My worldwide microscopic tour continues! At this point I am about ready to bite the head off a bat. I will wear a black satin cape and spit fire! Whatever--I wanna sell this stupid (wonderful) book, got it? Too bad I'm not half as witty in front of a mike as I am right here! Yeah, I'm scared of microphones. I'm actually afraid that if my lips brush against them I could catch STDs. But my friend who's in a band said that if he hasn't caught any STDs from a mike yet, then I'll probably be okay. Anyway, I had a few lip-brushing incidents but now I'm really careful....
Feb. 18, 2010 Concerning the Google digital library issue, I guess I'd be afraid that people wouldn't buy my book if they could read the whole thing online. I do like old-fashioned tangible books that you can just chuck into the car or put in a backpack. You can get sunscreen on them at the beach or drip food on them at home. You can dogear them and--with paperbacks, there are cool art projects for kids that you can make out of old ones that you might not need anymore. So in the end you can even hang them from the ceiling like chinese lanterns. You can't do that with Google.
LATER--This is probably one of my mom's all-time favorite songs. Lord knows I grew up with her yodeling this thing all over the house. And I like it now, too. I must be getting old because now I want to yodel it all over the house, too!
Okay, Ma, if you ever check out the website, these songs are for you! Love, love, love, (and more love,) Phoebe
EVEN LATER--Was in the middle of writing a short story and found this. No need for you to watch this one, Mom. A little over the top. Was one of my favorite songs way back when. No yodeling.
Feb. 19, 2010 Saw some teenage rock bands play at my old high school for a Haiti fundraiser tonight. Then stopped off at r.a.t. and read. Left a few cards there. This one young poet had a wonderful time in Hawaii and wrote some pastoral-spiritual poems about it. Maybe I'll visit there some day. Don't know. Maybe I'll pull myself up to heaven by my stubborn little bootstraps, too. I'm just here getting my YouTube fix now. Laura Dern in that Wild at Heart clip back there with The Gun Club video is right, radio pretty much sucks. She made me laugh jumping out of the car and bossing Nick Cage around about it. I've wanted to smash apart many a radio myself! And the other thing we have in common is that when I dance, say during one song at my old high school at a Haiti fundraiser, well, I want to dance so that the floor boards sizzle and peel up and the walls shake down around me. Even with restraining myself to the point of ridiculous my kids said I was crazy. Oh, y'all jis jealous. And Judith, I REALLY hope we can work it out so that there's dancing at the book launch party. I mean, it's my party, right? So how about you be a good girl and do exactly as I tell you? I want rock. I want amps. I want a red dress and tap shoes and a very sturdy table. I told everyone on fb I was "going to tapdance on the table." I can't break my word! So I want loud, LOUD music, and lots of it! And a little booze wouldn't hurt. Can I get wasted? Enuf of this staid and proper crapola. I mean, I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT GETTING PUBLISHED! I'm going to need to go a little nuts that night. Hell, you can video me acting like an ass for YouTube. It's sure to sell books! Just work some insanity into your master-party-plan and I'll be okay! Here's a little something to help get you started....
Feb. 24, 2010
There's so much to think about these days in the publishing world. Ebooks and reading devices and Google lawsuits. Much of it is incomprehensible to me. I'm new at this and even just understanding the good old-fashioned publication of a regular paper paperback is a challenge. I like the idea of instananeous digital accessability. But I want to make as much money as possible. And copyright law? Call the lawyer. I was lucky to find my checkbook this afternoon. In my purse. The purse that could swallow Kentucky because it's so full of stories and poems and receipts and the ever-growing supply of different colors of Burt's Bees lip balm. And, of course, no money other than the coins swimming at the bottom. Plastic cards but never any real money when I just want a friggin' cup of tea. But who has time for banking with my life? I just don't have time to be organized or knowledgeable or normal. That's right, I just don't have time for normalcy--especially when it doesn't come naturally. Why bother? And just about the only thing I can do right is WRITE. Oh well, some of us are just cursed. I'm special that way. My purse is full of curses. They become audible whenever I'm trying to find a pen down in there.
Feb. 25, 2010 I just want to assure everyone that I am okay, no matter how much I wail and moan in the pages of this blog. Venting is a good thing. So are positive affirmations--and I am definitely lovable and capable, let there be no mistake about it! Judith and I are
Continued in left-hand column....
A few of the magazines that like my stuff include: Gloom Cupboard, Counterexample Poetics, Sixers Review and Bartleby-Snopes
I started my full-tilt push for publication a year ago (Feb '09) and have managed around sixty acceptances since then.
Continued...
I hated my electric typewriter. Its methods of erasure were absolutely maddening. But one day in my early thirties, I inherited a hand-me-down computer from a friend. Right away I took myself handily off to the used bookstore and found what was by-then the archaic operating manual for WordPerfect 3.0. (Everyone else had Windows 95.)
Now, if someone hasn't done it already, I think someone should start a computer laptop charity for poverty-stricken would-be writers. Getting a computer changed my life! It made editing fun and easy!
The next calamity involved the computer hard drive crash of '97 and the fatal error of never having properly formatted my floppy discs. I am poetic, not technical. And the only reason I am alive today is because an old friend of my mother's, a man who works part of the year in Tibet as some sort of very important chief computer go-to man, happened to have mercy on me. In his cluttered little house, piled high with Tibetan art, computer monitors, cords, and various unnamable cyber gizmos, he spent a full day teasing the ghost of my novel from the dying machine. In so doing, he saved my novel and my life simultaneously. I was overjoyed and promptly repaid him with a large mushroom pizza.So, my novel is a survivor. As I write this, it is very near completion. Soon, I'll open the back door and toss it out to the literary wolves. I'm curious to see whether they will nuzzle it affectionately or rip it to bloody ropes. The fact is, I love my book, and if I found such a thing on the shelf of my local book store or in my local library, I would grab it and run screaming out the door, "where have you been all my life, you beautiful, beautiful thing!" No one could have written that book but me. Yes, it was in the closet for a long, long time, but I really did write it in order to share it. One last thing--a bit of advice to young writers--please get a computer earlier than I did. Then, once you're confident that your writing has evolved to the point where it's publishable, don't "submit" to magazines, "bombard" them. Don't give up too early. And then, once you are classified as "emerging" or as having a "craft," try not to be either slimy or alien. All Best,Phoebe Wilcox 
Drop ceilings are so lovely, aren't they?
prototype sunhat
The red skirt I'm wearing here was one of my mom's minis from back in the 60s (I still have it, the fabric is indestructible.)
Old pictures of me....Here I am loving a rose.
Not-so-fresh Blog, continued
currently gearing up for the long haul of book-editing. We are also perfecting our plans for total world domination. You will worship us and you will buy many many books--as many, in fact, as you can carry all at once. You will. You'll want to buy one for everyone you know. Especially if you love and care about them. It'll be love at first-read. It will inspire and incite and excite. There will quite possibly be a revolution. There. Is is working? May I now pronounce you officially brainwashed? If so, enjoy it. It's not a feeling that comes along every day! And I have to be honest. Personally, I adore this book. I truly wish I hadn't written it, just so that I could have the luxury of enjoying its delights and surprises the way everyone else is going to get to do. I am envious of you, virgin readers.
Feb. 26, 2010 There is white powdery stuff everywhere and I have no idea how much money I have in the bank. As long as my husband comes home from the gym and health food store with a box of black licorice we can continue on in our dysfunctional, snow-bound, sugar-dependent way without anyone getting killed. --Now here's my pal, Jewel. I wonder if she's ever gets cabin fever or wishes that she'd done things differently with her life? She probably knows how much money she has in the bank, anyway. And she's probably in Malibu right now, far away from all the white stuff.
LATER--I'm reading Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust and this is the BEST book I have read in a long, long time. Better than Jane Eyre, better than The Great Gatsby. In my opinion. The main character Todd describes Faye, this woman he's been interminably lusting after, as being like a cork on the ocean, so resilient....This is how he describes it: But for all their moon-driven power, they could do no more than net the bright cork for a moment in a spume of intricate lace. My dear dead Mr. West, you do so totally rock.
Feb. 28, 2010 Went to the TranquiliTea House in Easton last night and impersonated a really vivacious, outgoing sort of person. Left my last book promo card on their card rack. Their one-year anniversary party was great. There were librarians and book lovers there! The next time they have a party, I'm not going to eat hot dogs for dinner before I go. Next time I'm going to spend the fifteen bucks for the buffet and eat there because it looked delish.
Someone who says he's my biggest fan sent me this video today. It's a song about a writer named Cindy. I like it a lot. But I actually think Judith Lawrence at Lilly Press is my biggest fan. She says I'm her favorite writer. Which works out nicely because she's one of my favorite writers as well. You know anyone with a poetry chapbook entitled, Husbands and other Strangers, has to be good.
Mar. 1, 2010 Is is time for my book launch party yet? No? It's just time to be an office worker and a domestic slave? Well, you're no fun at all are you?!
Thought of the day: What IS a thought? I mean, actually, what the heck IS a thought? People say, "thoughts are things." Well, okay, yeah. But "thing" is too vague. Is it an electrical impulse with soul juice behind it? Is it a little envelope carrying electrons? --Wait, I think I know. They're waves! You can measure them, right? They're like biorhythms with narration behind them. Eureka! Now I am really smart! --Yes, sometimes I still vaguely wish I had become that neuropsychologist I once considered becoming. How how enmeshed in mystery I would be if I had done that! Right now I'm not enmeshed, I'm just tangled up in cluelessness. Oh well. Thoughts are things. They must be, I guess....
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