Level 57
Harriet Why
- Location
- San Diego, California, USA
- Birthday
- December 29
- Bio
- Emerging from my sheltered life in time to grow up, I write music, I play, and I sing. I've packed my rations and--piano on my back--I'm headed out to hunt for the notes that will light the way to living my best life. I'll be in the woods tonight. See you at the campfire.
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Good one. Re-title it
"Bite Me If You Must." All
those ells
and
apostr…”
November 13, 2009 12:43AM - “Ah, Miss Waking Up, your
words always ball up so nicely
at
the end, tight for a
s…”
November 13, 2009 12:38AM - “Oh, I love this story
even though the ending has a
sharp
point. I found my
first…”
November 13, 2009 12:33AM - “Sometimes it takes a lot
of time and effort NOT to be
a
stupid voter, and the
kin…”
November 12, 2009 11:52PM - “Go guitar girl!”
November 12, 2009 11:35PM
Harriet Why's Links
A Kiss on the Lips for 87-Year-Old Bill
One of three caregivers providing 24-hour care for Bill, 87, and Dorothy, 82, I've known Bill ever since he got together with Dorothy about 30 years ago. He's been living with Dorothy in her house for close to 25 years. Now they both have Alzheimer's.
Though part of the family, Bill… Read full post »
Poet Stephen Dunn and The Ziggy Shape of History
I found this poem in an old email and don't remember where it came from or exactly how it got there. Sometimes I input poems from The New Yorker and email them to myself. I didn't know the poet, so I googled him. Mr. Dunn's poem History is too good not… Read full post »
Aladar Dino-Boy On The Move
When he was three years old, my son Evan discovered dinosaurs. By the time he was five, he had watched every BBC dinosaur documentary made to date. He watched each video every day, morning and night, for about four months. Then I would get him the next one. Dinosaur facts and… Read full post »
If You Be My Bodyguard: In Chorus with Paul Simon
Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al is a short-story title treasure trove. A novel could come out of this song. Straight from the lyrics, here's a rough-draft chapter outline.
1. Pink room. 2. Why am I soft in the middle now? 3. Don't wanna end up a cartoon. 4. If you… Read full post »
Pine Sap in Your Seat
A Fall Piece inspired by Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood
Are you okay with pine sap in your seat on the deck? Will you get after the blobs of it with a screwdriver? How do you feel about those who welcome fall with the art of vomiting pumpkins? Would you prefer… Read full post »
Cell Phone Gallery: Leg Show
He was a long-haired, ragged 19-year-old from upstate New York on a track scholarship to Stanford. He could take mescaline, drink beer, and drive, holding on to enough consciousness to keep the wheels of his Packard truck on the road. I was 17, recently set adrift by my first love, and… Read full post »
Horizontal
Some mornings
thoughts of him
penetrate my sleep
before my eyes
are ready to open
I'm awake
sometimes an ache
he looms invisible
behind my eyes
sometimes in a kiss
almost faded
between my thighs
Some days I stay
horizontal
I can't get any air
my ribs cave… Read full post »
"Gnaw" lard to lipstick and tongue-to-eye kiss
No ma'am, it ain't right.
Florine McLean was my second mother and I don't know where she is, or when or where she was born. All I can tell you is that she lived in Raleigh, North Carolina between, roughly, 1952 and 1962. She might have lived there for 40 years before that and maybe until… Read full post »
Bus Station
Once I Had a Daughter
Once I had a daughter.
Then she was gone.
She disappeared.
She wasn't sick.
She didn't die.
She became a he.
Harley Man: First Violinist
Giving Your Heart to a Harley Man: This is a continuation of story segments I began with "I Thought I Was Mature" posted September 20.
After our introductory meeting over coffee, I waited for Mr. Harley (Patrick) to call. Nothing. Two weeks went by and I didn't hear a word. Since he'd… Read full post »
Froggy Girl Sits It Out
Froggy Girl made her way up the side of the bedspread. When she got to the top of the basketball court that was Angelica's quilt, she heard the other toys giggling. They didn't see her, so she crept along the edge, just below the top of the bed, to the… Read full post »
Thank God You're a Man
The story I'm writing here, about Mr. Harley, well, now I don't know how far I can go. I fell in love with him a year ago and I'm writing the beginning as it's ending. Today he wrote me a very short note—a compliment and a question—and I'm not going
… Read full post »Dochartach
Mr. Harley—I will call him Patrick—was born the oldest of three children, the son of a Boston firefighter who regularly beat him. When he said this to me in the first weeks of our nightly phone conversations, my heart took in the words and I shuddered at the painful image of… Read full post »
Ph.D. in Life
Under Ethnicity, his dating profile said Irish Irish Irish, and under Education, Ph.D. in Life. Hailing from the land of the Blarney Stone myself, I looked at him across the table and felt that by some eerie trickery I was gazing at the face of my family. This gave me pause… Read full post »
I thought I was mature.
I'm old enough to have accumulated a dependable amount of common sense and I thought I was mature. But I fell in love with a swaggering, gum-chewing wounded crackpot with naked women on his shirt. Yep, we "met" on an internet dating site and—after calling me every day for months&mda… Read full post »


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