HELLO TO ALL THE BEINGS IN THE UNIVERSE

It’s such an honor to be here. Thank you to Books are Magic for hosting me and Tracy. I’m so excited to share this story with you, it’s taken me a while to get the words right and I want to begin by thanking those who literally made the book, Claudia Ballard, Jenna Johnson, Lauren Roberts, Lianna Culp, Thomas Colligan, and the whole team at FSG.

Beautyland is the lifespan of a woman growing up in Philadelphia who believes she is on the earth to take notes on human beings and send them to her superiors on another planet via fax machine. I’d like to tell you a little about the woman at its helm, about me, and the process of writing Beautyland. I had a lot of stops and starts and a lot of panicked vacuuming while I figured out how to do that. Then, I remembered that in a lot of books, the entire novel is contained in the very first paragraph.

So, here is the first paragraph of Beautyland.

SLIDE 2 (Image of Beautyland’s first paragraph)

In the beginning there is Adina and her Earth mother. Adina (in utero), listening to the advancing yeses of her mother’s heart and her mother in the labor room, vitals plunging. Binary stars. Adina, swaying in zero gravity. Térèse, fastened to the operating table. The monitor above the bed reports on their connected hearts: beating heart, heart, beating heart, beating. Térèse’s blood pressure plummets as Adina advances through the birth canal; she has almost reached Earth. At this moment, Voyager 1 spacecraft launches in Florida, containing a phonograph record of sounds intended to explain human life to intelligent extraterrestrials.

So, here we’re introduced to a little girl named Adina who has just been born at the same time Voyager One is launched into the universe. It seems like it’s just her and her mom. But let’s look at this more deeply. In the beginning, let’s stop right there. I should probably explain what happened in the beginning of time. So, very quickly.

SLIDE 3 (Image of earth with text)

SLIDE 4 (Image of author as a little girl, a pad of paper on her lap, holding a pencil)

Here I am, working on the first draft of Beautyland. I was raised in Northeast Philadelphia. Growing up, I loved to read and write. But I didn’t know any writers or how to go about being one and we couldn’t afford any schools for writing so super long story short I decided to move to where writers live, New York City and found a writers group called The Blackout Writers Group who helped me learn how to write fiction. I also learned how disparate wealth is and this figures prominently into Adina’s notes regarding class and status. I sent my short stories out like it was a part-time job until I had enough published for a collection and went to Brooklyn College where I learned more about how to write a novel from genius teachers like Michael Cunningham and Susan Choi and Josh Henkin.

SLIDE 5 (Image of Beautyland’s first paragraph)

Back to the first paragraph

In the beginning, there is Adina and her Earth mother. That line was originally just “mother” but then I went to a craft talk by the fiction writer Claire Luchette who talked about “the misfit detail” and how sometimes one object that is slightly askew in a line can tell you a lot, so I added the word “Earth” so the reader goes, Wait, what now? This is the first indication that maybe things are not what they seem. Thank you, Claire.

Adina is raised by a single mother named Térèse who goes through a lot of changes throughout the novel. I wanted to write the kind of single mother I rarely see in fiction—one who is flawed but hardworking and who changes in surprising ways. I should probably tell you a little about my Earth mother.

SLIDE 6 (Image of woman dragging a wagon with three dogs in it)

Here she is dragging her dog and mine down the street in a wagon. For most of my life, she thought her name was Helene Térèse but one day she found her birth certificate and on it was the name Helene Theresa.

SLIDE 7 (Same image of woman with name corrected)

Oh, she thought, I guess that’s my name. There are a few stories in my family about someone believing something for their whole lives only to find a document or will or person from their past that reveals the truth. I feel like this is a common experience in an immigrant family. A lot gets lost from there to here, over the big wide ocean. Like Adina’s Mom, my mother had a near death experience when I was born and she also used to drag a lot of antiques out of the trash to refurbish.

Let’s get back to the text

SLIDE 8 (Image of first paragraph)

She has almost reached Earth.

So here is where I should tell you about Adina’s namesakes.

SLIDE 9 (Black and white photo of light-haired girl, laughing)

Adina Talve-Goodman was a dear friend to me and many people on our planet. She was a writer and artist of being alive. We lost her in 2018 at the age of 31. I wanted to honor her by giving my protagonist her name.

What feels like a million years ago, I stood in her kitchen while she made a pie. Adina celebrated every Pi Day by inviting friends over to help her bake then eat a pie. In her kitchen was a framed print of an apple pie and over it was a quote that read, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” From Carl Sagan. I stared at it for quite a while. What does that mean, I wondered?

SLIDE 10 (Black and white photo is joined by another black and white photo of older, distinguished man)

In the book, Adina’s last name is Giorno after the poet Jon Giorno. Though I never got the chance to meet him, he was kind of a queer Italian grandfather figure to me. In Beautyland, after Adina reaches Earth she misses her family intensely. But she’ll find chosen family with childhood friends, workout instructors, little dogs, pianists with synesthesia, Carl Sagan, Yoko Ono. Sometimes the best person to notice a place is a newcomer. She’ll write transmissions about things as varied as popcorn and death. When she moves to New York in her twenties, she sends transmissions about the city as she learns it like a language:

SLIDE 11 (text)

Living in New York, she writes, is like sitting at a nine-million-person blackjack table. We work together against the dealer. If you call on 11 (request a fresh bagel to be toasted), the table scowls at you. You can trust the group. If a group of New Yorkers are walking against the light, you can cross. If a group of New Yorkers avoid a subway car, it is covered in feces. If a group of New Yorkers leave their cars parked on ASP day, alternate side of the street and parking meter rules have been suspended. Like it or not, you’re part of the team. Uptown or down? Express or local? Yell Hold the train, and at least three New Yorkers will wrench their hands between the closing doors. Life in New York is a series of no-look passes.

SLIDE 12 (back to image of first paragraph)

Let’s get back to the text because it’s about to get super galactic. At this moment, Voyager One spacecraft launches…

SLIDE 13 (Image of Golden Record on black background with quote from Carl Sagan)

Voyager One is launched the very second Adina is born and becomes a kind of sibling to her in the novel. Adina’s major milestones are attached to milestones in NASA and America’s understanding of Extraterrestrials. Voyager One is famous for containing the golden record, created by the astronomer Carl Sagan and his team. Carl Sagan becomes a father figure to Adina because she believes he is looking for her. I did a lot of research on him and Voyager.

SLIDE 14 (Golden Record image is joined by an image of people drinking and eating and two audio links)

Here are a few of the images and greetings that are on the Golden Record. One of my favorites is this one from China… This is a message to all children in the universe from Nick Sagan, Carl’s son, when he was 6, and I’m going to play it for you now. PLAY JAWN. Here you see a photo of someone licking an ice cream cone, a man eating a chicken leg, and another man drinking from a pitcher. You can imagine an extraterrestrial seeing something like that and thinking, oh yeah, I totally want to connect to that civilization. Here is a recorded sound of footsteps, heartbeats and laughter. It might be important to note that drugs were a lot stronger back then.

Let’s return to the first paragraph, for the final time.

SLIDE 15 (Image of Beautyland’s first paragraph)

Finally, we come to others, extraterrestrials.

SLIDE 16 (Images of assorted alien articles and photos from television)

Aliens are really having a moment right now. Scientists have found questionmarks in space, we’ve discovered the first interstellar object, our government has just released all sorts of hidden info. Even as I wrote these lines, I was listening to an NPR Science Friday segment on whether there is intelligent life in the universe. If aliens were to come to Earth and hide among us, one of the hosts just said, where would be the best place to hide?

But I and Beautyland wonder what scientists mean by, “intelligent.” Adina believes that on her planet they’ve evolved past the body and its senses. But here on earth, we haven’t even evolved past war or genocide. We haven’t even evolved past alternate side of the street parking? When they say intelligent, wouldn’t it mean Life intelligent enough not to destroy its own habitat?

SLIDE 17 (Image of Cher and Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck, dressed up and watching an opera)

We’ve been talking a lot about stars, but I also want to mention something closer to our solar system. The moon. That is, I want to say something about home.

One of the last times I hung out with my friend Adina we went to the Brooklyn Historical Society to see our favorite movie, Moonstruck. Moonstruck is about family. Beautyland is about how, even if we feel far away from our people, we can still find family, but it might not look how you think it will. Beautyland became a beautiful braiding of my sweet friend, of differentness, of family in surprising places, and not only inventing but embracing the universe.

I worked with a student at The New School Allison Hess who is writing beautiful female centric stories about Appalachia. And she admitted to us during workshop that she had been scared to write about her hometown because she didn’t think it was literary. And I gave some kind of impassioned speech about how every hometown is important and went home and realized I was doing the same thing about NE Philadelphia, a place of Auto Worlds and boulevards and concrete. How could I ever connect Auto World to the stars? I thought.

SLIDE 18 (Image of Beautyland’s first paragraph)

So, this paragraph seems like it’s about only Adina and her mother, but there are a lot of unseen people here, too.

SLIDE 19 (Image of Beautyland’s first paragraph, with these names with arrows pointing to the text)

Like my friend, my mom, Voyager One, Claire Luchette, Carl Sagan, that Prize is Right contestant. But also…

SLIDE 20 (Image of Beautyland’s first paragraph, with these names with arrows pointing to the text)

Everyone who helped me make the book, like Claudia Ballard and Ted and Tracy and Jenna Johnson and FSG and everyone who helps them and everyone who helps them. This paragraph actually has all of the people of Earth in it. So when we think about the eternal question that launches space ships and books alike:

SLIDE 21 (Image of question mark in space preceded by the question, Are we alone?)

ARE WE ALONE? The answer is…

Yes.

We are, sometimes. Sometimes in life, we feel and are alone. It would be cruel to have you listen to me this whole time and then lie. I know there are those who suffer and feel alone. And if they feel alone, they are alone. Carl Sagan said, sometimes we are On Our Own. It hurts and it’s lonely and it’s hard.

SLIDE 22 (Image of question mark in space changes to include the words, AND YET)

And yet.

There’s this giant feeling of wellbeing that occurs when you feel like you may have found an other, someone who understands you.

SLIDE 23 (Image of question mark in space changes to read: DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN? joined by image of Beautyland’s book cover with arrows that read, you, me, and art.)

Writing has always been the way I’ve called out into the universe and said: DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT I MEAN? And it’s been a gift to have readers reflect back to me, YES, WE ALSO FEEL THIS WAY. Or, NO, WHAT ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Or, MY BOOK ARRIVED DAMAGED–ONE STAR!

In this way, we can meet on the page, in perpetuity, forever and ever.

SLIDE 24 (Now against space, it reads: END OF TRANSMISSION, and underneath, smaller, TAKE IT SLEAZY ((The Good Place reference)).

END OF TRANSMISSION

Thank you, Books are Magic for having me. I’d like to invite my dear friend Tracy O’Neill up to the stage.

Tracy is the author of the novels The Hopeful and Quotients and a forthcoming memoir, Woman of Interest. She has been named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Currently, she teaches at Vassar College.

Full transcript of interview will be provided after event. Thank you so much for joining us!

Hello! I am looking for three writers/actors to table read a short story in progress as part of my revision process. Paid. No experience necessary. Not a public event and discretion with the text would be expected. Character Breakdown below, characters are up for interpretation and intentionally broad. Thank you!

Wednesday, April 19th, 2023, 5 to 7pm, Brooklyn, New York (in person only, location given upon casting)

APPLY HERE, DEADLINE APRIL 5th

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

Rose: age: younger than Lucia

Wedding officiant for gay weddings which because of early Instagram fame she has managed to turn into a job, charming, insecure, will try a new fad, over-functioner, party glue, very smart, so focused on doing a good job she often cannot see the whole picture, undersexed, trapped. Preternaturally adept at parallel parking with a surprisingly messy apartment. Everyone’s memory of the artistic girl from high school.

Closeted

Lucia: age: fiftyish and above

Considers herself a survivor, confident, bad childhood somewhere in the American West she/they won’t talk about, genius-level smart, observer at the party, sees everyone in a room, not a talker unless you get her going on one of her favorite topics (very few people know what they are); how to build a fire, bones of the back, and woodworking, occasionally grouchy but not immune to charm, meticulous in all things including sex, which she loves, allergic to dog saliva yet surprisingly tender with dogs, scared of flying.

Lesbian

Narrator: ageless, deathless, able to conjure any object or experience but cannot take pain away

Has a daughter who doesn’t speak to them

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“Add more broth until it tastes bewitching.”

I wanted to try being someone who sipped broth luxuriously from a mug. When I confided this desire to my friend, the hilarious writer Amelia Kahaney, I was delighted to find that she is something of a broth maven. She sent the below, the most charming recipe I’ve ever read, and is kindly allowing me to share. Perhaps you too will find joy in it? That’s between you and your god.

***

broth with a jammy egg

In honor of your broth journey, Marie, here is how I’ve been making veggie seaweed broth lately. Hope you enjoy! I make chicken soup from scratch at least once a month in the winter but this is every bit as satisfying, especially if you deck it out afterward with miso, vegetables and other fun add-ons. You can bulk it up with noodles, rice or quinoa, of course. Or use crusty bread and butter as your spoon. That’s all between you and your god.

This broth is loosely based on a detox broth from a nutritionist I’m seeing plus a few veggie broth/miso soup internet recipes, but I’ve kind of made it into my own thing at this point. My caveat is that I have a pressure cooker (instant pot) so I don’t know how long anything takes to cook the normal way anymore. Probably between 45 minutes and an hour and a half? (Note to future you: You can keep scraps of veggies in the freezer for a while until you have enough for your broth, stuff like kale stems and herb stems and celery ends, or you can get even crazier and keep sweet potato peels or carrot peels for this purpose. I never put peels in because I like to eat the mushy veggies after they cook, but you can toss them after if that’s not appealing. There are no rules here!)

What you ought to have for a basic broth is at least some of the following:

Celery, onion and carrot—say 2-3 carrots, 2-3 celery stalks and 1-2 onions. The holy trinity of soup making, always a must. If you add a parsnip or two and/or or a turnip or rutabaga, your broth will be sweeter. If not, no biggie. No need to peel any of this including your onion, assuming your onion is clean. You can use peels here too, see my note above about a peels-in-freezer lifestyle. By the way, if you shop at “normal” NYC grocery stores, you can buy a “soup vegetable mix” where most of this stuff is sold together in one plastic-wrapped package that costs under $5. They never run out of these because most people are fucking pussies and don’t make soup. Sometimes the only place you will even see a turnip or rutabaga is in one of these “soup mix” packages.

Kombu–one 2-3 inch wide strip per broth batch is good. This is sold in a bag wherever you’d buy seaweed, and you can probably get 4-5 broth batches out of one bag. Check for it at a health food store, food coop, maybe even a well-stocked “normal” grocery store. Don’t be skeeved by the fact that it’s covered in white dried sea salt, that’s the good stuff. If you can’t find kombu, maybe you have a parmesan rind in your fridge and you can throw that in for some salty depth. If you go the parm route, you could try skipping the ginger and soy sauce and veer into a more tomato-y direction.

Dried or fresh mushrooms—I use dried shiitake because I have a huge bag of them from Chinatown. You could use fresh, but dried will give you more intense flavor. I’ve thrown in some fresh and some dried, it’s all very cool and very legal. A handful or two is good. Go with your gut on quantity

Fresh herbs—if you have them are nice—parsley, cilantro, dill, whatever you need to use up. Never tried basil but I did try tarragon once and lived to tell the tale. Definitely throw the stems in too; this is a great way to use the parts of things you’d normally toss.

Something dark, leafy green and tough—kale or collards are good but anything not too bitter would be great. A quarter of a bunch or half a bunch or even a big handful is fine. Don’t you dare toss the stems in the garbage the way you normally would. This is the stems’ time to shine. They’re very happy to be appreciated in your food for once. Spinach is too delicate for the broth treatment in my opinion, so if you need to use up spinach, throw it in at the end.

Ginger—peel 2-3 inches of ginger and throw it in.

Garlic—a few cloves left whole or halved, or not! I’ve done it both ways. Every broth is a unique snowflake (and will not be triggered!).

Peppercorns—throw a couple in or not, whatever, the broth will be happy either way. A grind or two of pepper is fine too, or leave it out. Salt is crucial, pepper less so.

Salt—this will depend on how much broth you are making. Maybe start with a heaping teaspoon or so and up it accordingly? You can always add a pinch or a gallon more salt later as your broth develops, or use some other crazy stuff we’ll get to in a minute. Remember, your kombu is also salty.
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Wild card veggie assortment—perhaps a daikon radish if that seems interesting, maybe a quarter of a green cabbage or half a bulb of fennel you want to get rid of, just kind of whatever veggies really, but maybe not broccoli or cauliflower or peppers or green beans (why? I don’t know! You could try them!). I like adding squash because I like the flavor, texture and color it gives me. Kobocha squash is my squash of choice but any kind would work, or a sweet potato, or not. Can’t go wrong here. Just a heap of veggies you like or that you need to use up or scraps you froze specifically for this moment.

the stems’ time to shine

If you use tomato you’ll have a more tomato-y broth, etc.

Soy sauce—you have this in your fridge, obviously. Optional, for later.

Miso paste—white or red. This is also for later and is optional but highly recommended.

So cut up all your veggies but your greens, mushrooms, herbs and aromatics (all these are already in your soup pot, I hope, including that sweet sweet kombu but not including your two “falayta” ingredients, the miso and the soy sauce) into halves or quarters (or into chunks if it’s a big squash) until it all fits in your soup pot, then cover it with water. The water might just cover the veggies or go an inch or two above them at most. Too much water will yield a blander broth. Bring to a boil and then simmer for a good while until the whole apartment smells like broth. I wish I knew how long it would take, but it’s definitely way faster than bone broth. Taste. When all your veggies are soft but not mushy, assuming your broth has a nice rich taste, you are done cooking it. Maybe an hour, an hour and a half, two hours? You’ll know. If you cook veggie broth for too long it can turn bitter, so just keep tasting and perhaps salting as you go.

When you have deemed it done, add a few splashes of soy sauce (the crazy stuff we were getting to) to the pot. Is it tasting good? Is it almost as salty as you’d want it? If so, perfect, because you might add miso later and that’s also salty. When you are satisfied with your flavors, drain the veggies by pouring the whole mess over a colander set upon a second pot. or not! The veggie draining police aren’t going to show up. Your call about how rustic you want to be! Some haters say that once you’ve separated the broth from the veggies, you should throw away your veggies. I say maybe some or all of them can be cut up and added back to the soup later, so save them. Maybe they’re delicious with a little sesame oil and soy sauce. Anything’s possible. Definitely save the kombu at the very least. I mean, this is a fucking pandemic. all nutrients are welcome. Except the ginger. Don’t eat the ginger.

At this point, you can sip your broth and think “no animals were harmed and this extremely tasty broth is full of vitamins!”

Or, you can ask yourself, do I want rustic miso soup? If the answer is yes, take out the miso paste you bought when you bought the kombu. Put a teaspoon or more of it into a bowl and add half a ladle of hot broth to it. Coax the paste into dissolving fully in the broth. Once you have dissolved your miso, add more broth until it tastes bewitching.

Find your kombu that you wisely didn’t throw away and see if you enjoy what it has become. Its new size may astonish you. If you like it, cut it up and add it to your bowl. Add scallions, soft tofu, mushrooms, some of your broth veggies, whatever, maybe a dash of sesame oil. If you are a person who keeps nutritional yeast around, throw in a tablespoon of that. You could add rice noodles, a jammy egg. Leftover pork loin, hot sauce, what have you. Alternatively, don’t add anything at all. Either way, your soup is good as hell and your efforts were definitely worth it.

When you get tired of miso veggie soup or sipping your delicate non-miso veggie broth (as if!), you can freeze it or use it as a base for a bean or lentil soup or whatever broth-based food your heart desires.

(You can also simply boil kombu in water and then follow these steps to make miso soup, but where is the fun in that?)

Yours in simmering,

A

Amelia Kahaney‘s novels for teens, The Brokenhearted and The Invisible, were published by HarperTeen in 2013 and 2014. Amelia lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, their son, a cat, two aquatic frogs, and a semi-enchanted fire-bellied newt.

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A few authors affected by Covid-19

Adam Wilson, Sensation Machines, novel

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders, creative non-fiction

Alex Cuff, I Try Out a Sentence to See Whether I Believe, poetry

Alli Warren, Little Hill, poetry

Amber Sparks, And I Do Not Forgive You, stories

Andrew Altschul, The Gringa, novel

Catherine Lacey, Pew, novel

Copper Canyon’s Entire 2020 List of New Books

Courtney Maum, Costalegre, novel, and Before and After The Book Deal, writers guide

Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson, novel

Deb Olin Unferth, Barn 8, novel

Ed Skoog, Travelers Leaving for the City, poetry

Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine, novel

Emily Temple, The Lightness, debut novel

Gabriella Burnham, It is Wood, It is Stone, debut novel

Hilary Leichter, Temporary, debut novel

Jessica Anthony, Enter the Aardvark, novel

Jessica Gross, Hysteria, debut novel

Justin Taylor, Riding With The Ghost, memoir

Kelli Jo Ford, Crooked Hallelujah, debut novel

Kit Schluter, Pierrot’s Fingernails, poetry

Lily King, Writers & Lovers, novel

Lucie Britsch, Sad Janet, debut novel

Lisa Fay Coutley, Tether, poetry

Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by The Ears, stories

Leah Hampton, F**kface: And Other Stories, stories

Maisy Card, These Ghosts are Family, debut novel

Mary South, You Will Never Be Forgotten, stories

Megha Majumdar, A Burning, debut novel

Megan Giddings, Lakewood, novel

Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem, poetry

Paul Lisicky, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, memoir

Paul Yoon, Run Me to Ground, novel

Prageeta Sharma, Grief Sequence, poems

Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, Hex, novel

Sabrina Orah Mark, Wild Milk, stories (?)

Sarah Gerard, True Love, novel

Teddy Wayne, Apartment, novel

Toni Jensen, Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, memoir

Tracy O’Neill, Quotients, novel

For a more complete list, “Cancelled” Covid Authors 

by Marie-Helene Bertino

originally published: Indiana Review (2009) & Safe as Houses (2012)

To listen to the author read the story: PART ONE:

To listen to the author read the story: PART TWO:

I am like everyone else: good at some things, bad at others.  I am good at eating clementines.  I am bad at drawing straight lines.  I am good at drinking coffee.  I would be bad at building a house.  If someone asked me to build them a house, I would have to say no.  Or, I would say yes and worry they would not like the house I built.  Why is the kitchen made of coffee filters, they’d say?  Why are there no floors?  And I’d say: I wish you hadn’t asked me to build you a house.

I am bad at telling stories.  For example, this one is about Christmas lights and here is the first time I’m mentioning them.  A person who knew how to tell a story would start with: this is a story about Christmas lights I finally got around to putting up last night and the miracle that happened afterward.  You know at a party when someone tells an absolute gripper that juggles different characters and lands on a memorable line and everyone holds their stomachs and looks at each other in shocked amazement, a line people repeat on car rides home so they can laugh again?  I am not that person.  I am the one asking the host what kind of cheese it is I’m eating.

The name of the planet I’m from does not have an English equivalent.  Roughly, it sounds like a cricket hopping onto a plate of rice.  I am here to take notes on human beings.  I fax them back to my superiors.  We have fax machines on Planet Cricket Rice.  They are quaint, retro things, like vintage ice cube trays.

Human beings, I fax, produce water in their eyes when they are sad, happy, or sometimes just frustrated.  Water!

My father left my mother because the baby thing was not his jam. How could she ever again be expected to see me but not also the leaving, too?

I work as a receptionist for Landry Business Solutions.  I have no idea what we do.  When people ask I say: when businesses have problems, we have solutions.  If they press me I say it involves outsourcing. A monkey could do my job better, and with more hilarious results.  I answer the phone, keep the candy jar filled, and monitor the bathroom key. Ten minutes out of my twenty-minute training was candy jar related.  The other ten consisted of bathroom key shake down tactics.  People are always losing the bathroom key and the receptionist before me must have gotten frustrated, because she hot glued it to a 12-inch ruler. I have no friends at Landry Business Solutions.  I assume they are too busy outsourcing and thinking of solutions.  They don’t bother me and, unless they receive a Fed-Ex package, I don’t bother them.

Human beings, I fax, fetishize no organ more than the heart.  When they like someone they say: there’s a girl after my own heart.  They will stand or sit very close to the person they love with their heart.  When they are sad they say: my heart is broken.  They will tell large groups of people things they don’t believe.  But, the heart is just a muscle with an important job.  Just an area in the body.

I am bad at asking for help.  When you ask a human being for help, there is a chance they will say later: remember when you asked for help, can I have five dollars? That goes for medicine, too.  I don’t like asking help from pills in a bottle. I don’t want to be woken up at night by a tab of aspirin asking to borrow five dollars.

There’s a reason it’s called alien-ated.  Because I am an alien, I am alone.  When you are alone, there is no one to tell: there is a bird whose call sounds like hoo where la hoo!  Or, there’s a spider landing on your head.  So you tell yourself.  There’s a spider landing on my head.  I should move.

Of course there are good days.  Days when the clementine skin pulls off whole, days when every Karen I meet is wonderful.

A week ago, my mother and I were chopping peppers and she said: let them be big enough so each one is its own mouthful. I don’t like when she says words like mouthful, words that cannot be divorced from sex.  Other words like that are suck, fingerhole, and cock.  I asked her not to say mouthful anymore.  She hopped up and down with the knife in her hand singing: Mouthful!  When I got home the Christmas lights snarled at me from their ball on the couch.  I ate a mouthful of ice cream and wondered how appliances can be programmed to turn themselves on.  If a coffee maker can turn itself on, doesn’t that mean it is never truly off?

Human beings, I fax, spend their lives pretending their parents are people with no needs.  They do not want their moms to talk about sex, or die.

On Planet Cricket Rice, we’ve evolved past the body. A trillion years of widdling the parts that were unnecessary revealed everything to be an appendix, the body itself a husk. I know it’s hard for you to understand.

On earth, my body feels lumbering, cumbersome, a boxy suit several sizes too big. I giggle watching humans walk down the street using their legs. Implementing their hands to hold things. Negotiating with themselves to get to where they need to go using such outdated tools. Like trying to remove a bean at the bottom of a vase with a steamroller. I don’t mean to laugh.

Imagine not being constrained by gravity. Movement is a thought or wish. You are barely finished desiring it and you’re already there, above the tree line, pumping into the incalculable banks of what you’d call clouds. Just as quickly back onto the ground.

In certain human churches I’ve heard it called heaven.

On Planet Cricket Rice, we’ve evolved past the idea of individual. We are a pulsing, in-tune, multi-souled, singular thought. There are no what you would call decisions. The closest I’ve seen to it on Earth is the movement of birds that, without consult, bend and fray across vast expanses. People on Planet Cricket Rice know without consult how to align ourselves onto the common wire. Iterations listening only to themselves, flinching at split-second to pound into or feather out of a gust. A family of feeling, able to detect a clear space through fog and soar into it, made from thousands, thousands into one, beating faultlessly into certain, perfect air. Lift of stomach, catch in throat. You’re there before the mind catches up.

The distance that is not. A quantum distance.

When I wake from dreams about my home, I yearn for the feeling of a planet of people in myself. On earth, we stumble about in our crudely made, badly engineered husks. Alone and separated by our skin casing. We look out only for ourselves. We don’t even have the right eyes to see.
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Of course I am a “they.” So are all of you.

Human beings, I fax, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters.  A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track.  Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their days off.

As a child on Planet Cricket Rice, I lie in bed trying to figure out a way I could know everyone on Planet Earth.  America was easy, I could drive through it.  Then I would send a letter to one person in every country and they could tell their friends and I could know everyone by association.  But, language was a problem and I didn’t know every country’s name and I used to get panicky and red-eyed about it.

I have other responsibilities at my job.  I seat clients who have problems and are waiting for solutions.  Sometimes the person with solutions is late.  When people are late to meet me, I assume it’s because they lost track of time while planning my surprise birthday party.  I worry: will they remember I like chocolate on chocolate?  But most human beings don’t like when other people are late.  They get frowny-faced and huffy.  So I entertain the clients who wait for solutions.  I make the candy jar talk or I tell them I have a friend who has vintage ice cube trays.  You pull a silver crank to release the cubes.  I say: would they like to own vintage ice cube trays?  Normally they say yes because when they are waiting human beings can be very participatory.  Then I say: not me!  I don’t need getting ice to be a charming experience!  I pretend to be very anti-vintage ice cube tray.  In this way I yank the tablecloth out from under the bottle of wine and candle of the conversation.

If you met me, you’d wonder why I do not look like aliens you’ve seen on TV.  Why aren’t you green? You’d say.  Why isn’t your head overlarge?  To answer that I offer this: Landry Business Solutions had a Halloween costume party and Tammy came dressed for a regular day at work.  She said: I am a serial killer.  We look just like everyone else.

When you’re alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field.  You can sit in a chair and get ready for it.  As it moves through you, you can reach out your hands and feel all the edges.  When it passes and you can drink coffee again you even miss it because it has been loyal to you like a boyfriend.

If you need it to be about a boy, I’ll give you a boy.  In a gas station at the end of the day, the owner or the skinny teenager he pays counts the drawer, fills the cigarette machine and flips the closed sign.  My ex was the closed sign.  On that gas station, or any store that closes.  He used to make fun of me for answering questions with metaphors. He’d say: how was your day?  And, I’d say: if my day were a bug, I would crush it.  He wanted me to say: my day was fine.  He’s dead now and by dead I mean dating a stripper. Strippers are girls who can say: my day was fine.  Also, they’re very good with money.  My exes do well after me.  I’m like a lucky penny.

Cars, I fax, are not attached to anything. They are free to collide with other bodies whenever they want and wreck each other.  This would not happen with my bumper car system.  Cars would be attached to poles linked to an overarching mechanism, as they are in bumper cars.  The worst that can happen in a bumper car is you make a strange face when you smash someone.  A strange face that makes the other person think you are uglier than they thought and that maybe there are other ugly things they don’t know about you.  But they forget in the next second when they are smashed by someone else.  It doesn’t hurt, though, as much as real cars.  It doesn’t hurt as much.

Here’s the thing about human beings: sometimes you smash their cars, sometimes they smash yours.

One time I got my nails done and the girl held my hands so softly I wondered if she knew me.  She commented on the loveliness of my cuticles, and she didn’t have to. She went out of her way, and human beings don’t like to go out of their ways.  I said: I hope nothing bad ever happens to you.

Five days ago, the bathroom key went missing. Landry Business Solutions has a PA and I made an announcement over it.  Why we have a PA is beyond me since only twelve people work here and they sit in one room.  I could have easily walked into that room and made a medium-volumed inquiry but I don’t like to leave my desk.  My announcement over the PA was: WILL WHOEVER HAS THE BATHROOM KEY PLEASE RETURN IT! Three hours later Delilah slammed the key on my desk.  The door had gotten stuck, and she had been trapped in the bathroom for hours.  No one heard her yelling.  She missed a meeting, and still no one thought to look for her.  She heard my announcement in the bathroom where she sat, hating me.  Someone from another office finally heard her and climbed through a heating duct to free her.  Delilah, disoriented, left early.  It’s a bad day when you realize how unimportant you are.

Human beings who are squeaky wheels, I fax, get everything they want.  Quiet humans who don’t complain get nothing.  A squeaky wheel will complain when they have an obstructed view of a movie screen until they get a better seat.  In the better seat, they will find something else to complain about.  The floor is sticky.  The cup holder isn’t big enough for my deluxe soda.  I have to believe quiet humans who don’t complain see half the screen but are happier.  But, maybe they’re not.  Maybe they spend their lives sad they can’t participate in conversations about movies. Harrison Ford was in that movie? They say.  I had no idea.

It would be easier if it were a boy.  Then I could say to Tammy or Grace at work: I feel lonely because of a boy.  And they could say: men are like trains, there’s one every five minutes.  But, if I say: I am an alien taking notes on human beings to fax to my superiors, they would have no arsenal of information from which to draw.  They would not know what to say at all.

Two days ago they passed around a newspaper article at Landry Business Solutions and I realized I do everything wrong.  I tie my shoes wrong and they are the wrong shoes.  I breathe wrong.  I walk wrong. The article was about a place far away whose inhabitants are so poor they have to eat dirt.  There was a picture of a dirt-eating girl standing with a bicycle.  The right thing to say was what everyone was saying: what a shame, where’s my checkbook? But what I said was: how did she get her arms to look like that?  Is it from the constant bike riding?

It’s not a boy or a job or a family or a house. It’s the world.  There are so many people in it.

This is the part with the Christmas lights and the miracle.

Yesterday, I stopped to collect a heads-up penny and was late for the train to work.  I walked fast to catch it.  People who walk fast look weird and every time I’m walking fast I think how weird I must look.  I still missed the train. The doors laughed at me.  But, trains are like men, there’s one every five minutes.  So I got the next one.  I wasn’t that late and no one noticed anyway.  But the candy jar was empty and I couldn’t get to the store until noon and I smiled at Delilah and she did not smile back.  The day was a slippery rock I couldn’t climb.  Walking home I heard a couple arguing and even though he was insisting I knew it was the end.

I remembered that morning I had collected a heads-up penny, and nothing lucky had happened to me.  I felt swindled.  Behind in the count.  It was one of those days.

I got home and there were still the Christmas lights to hang.  And it was time.  It was not time to check how much sugar I had.  It was not time to say the word rose over and over until I forgot what it meant.  It was no time other than the time it was to hang the lights.  So I got a ladder and a staple gun and climbed to the roof of the house I could not be trusted to build.  And I hadn’t asked anyone the proper way to hang lights so I crawled around stapling haphazardly to the shingles, not a line but words.  Two words to let my superiors know I was finished taking notes and to come and get me in their glorious space ships.  When I was done I climbed down and checked my work. In lights I had stapled: HELP ME.

I figured it was best to err on the side of honesty.  I didn’t learn that on Earth dear god, but I learned it.

I ate a forkful of cold noodles and went to bed. At 3am a commotion on my front lawn woke me.  It sounded like an army of washing machines in their final cycles had congregated outside my window.  My bed hummed.  I looked out. Beams of ambitious light jackknifed through the yard.  Aggressive, angel light.  Light that somersaulted and looked like sound.  Red lights and white lights.

They were cars.

More cars than I could count.  The first ones pulled onto my lawn so the others would have room to pull behind them.  They held human beings who disembarked holding baskets with cloth over them.  I recognized my mother, the manicurist, my ex and the stripper he dates, Delilah…  People filled my street and the street next to it and the cars were still coming.  I could see headlights for miles.  They were still coming.

I was down on my knees.  One human being cannot withstand the force of that much kindness.

Do you know what I mean?

Miracle of America Museum, Polson, Montana

Dearest Internet,

Parakeet (June 2020) is now available for pre-order and has a cover that serves so much avian-Hitchcockian-Criterion-Collection realness that the author is so happy she sings, tries on dresses:

This fierce bird makes her even happier than listing “no upcoming public events” on her Events page. Sadly, the autumnal respite will soon be coming to an end. Happily, this means she will be visiting a town near you. Please take her out for bread and chocolate somewhere with a jukebox that contains narrative. A dance? She’d be honored.

If you are on Instagram, so are we! Find us here.

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For those of you who asked if Marcello could be any cuter he’d like you to know that no, he sure couldn’t. There. He just tried, and–nope.

#adoptdontshop,

MHB

Friends, the folks at FSG will be publishing my next two novels, PARAKEET (Spring 2020) and BEAUTYLAND (Winter 2022). I am so excited to share these stories about strong, odd women with you. This amazing early Christmas present was made possible by my wise When the penis lacks in getting enough blood to cause an erection, and after sex is over, the erection goes away. super generic cialis donssite.com is not a paradox. Erectile dysfunction generic levitra is caused due to insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle. Children with an ED usually slice their food into smaller components thereby cheap canadian cialis facilitating the assimilation nutrients by body cells. Apart from them many antidepressants and india tadalafil tablets antipsychotic drugs cause impotence. and true agent Claudia Ballard and the unfailing support of my family, friends, and community who I thank from the bottom of my feathery heart. I’m a very lucky bunny.

On Father’s Day, we adopted a 4 pound papillon flirt. Marcello Fox has black whiskers on one side, white on the other, and is between 3 and 5 years old (film icons never say).

#adoptdontshop
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