Sitting at a table elevated above the dance floor, I watched drunken middle-aged women shake their asses hoping to attract the tender young men trolling. Transvestites crowded in a corner fawning over the newest set of nails. Several kids played with glow sticks the bar was giving away with the purchase of a test tube shot. I kept my eye on the DJ wondering if he recognized me from high school dances where we’d been the only ones aspiring to rave.

“Can I get you a drink?” Drew shouted.

“I don’t drink and dance. Dehydration,” I said.

He went in search of liquids to boost his boogie abilities. Quinn stood behind two turntables manipulating record to fade into one another, alternating between techno favorites and flavors of the early eighties. He bounced to the rhythm, headphones gyrating in time. His waifish frame dancing in a skin tight tee, oversized jeans held up by a studded belt, face painted with stars and glitter.

A familiar song and a nod from Quinn and I found Drew, pulling him onto the dance floor by his tie. I’d been at clubs around the world dancing by myself, content to let men watch from the sidelines. Tonight, however, called for a partner.

We didn’t stop jumping until the lights came on for last call. Drew didn’t need liquor to loosen inhibitions. I’d rarely met a man – or anyone for that matter – that could keep up.

Filming went really well. All nightmares averted.

Had a weird dream last night about someone in my life I've never given much thought to. I'm kinda weirded about that.

I'm tired. Filming always takes it toll.

Another day I have to read 20 papers for workshops. Okay, I exaggerate. It was only seven. It felt like more.

I spend so much of my time reading other people's stuff I have little time to write my own. I know that I learn to write better by reading but I'm not learning much by reading some of this shit. (Ben)

Gabe - this doesn't apply to you. I don't think I've ever been mean about your writing. I think with guidance and more experience your writing will blossom.

I need to take a week off from everything and concentrate on Feel no Rain, but that's not going to happen. I've committed to too many things and I'm unwilling to back out of any of them especially the film projects. I keep thinking about auditioning for True West but I think Tory and Justin will kill me. I guess it is time to re-evaluate what's important. I don't have the energy or the time for everything I want to do. Nor the health.

Do I really need to do a zombie film?

Do I really need to do another play?

What is going to look best on a Grad school application?

Why do I keep pursuing something I know I can't have? He doesn't want you. Why can't you let go, you stupid bitch?

What are you going to do about Liam? What does he want? Why is he so demanding?

Chicago? New York? Denver? Iowa? Where will you be in a year?

Too many questions, too many doubts, too many pain killers, not enough caffeine. All I want to do is go to sleep.

Had a brainstorming session with Torrance tonight about the zombie film.

Goals:
1. Told from zombie's perspective
2. Little to no gore
3. Beauty and the Beast love story

I had an idea about using Maggie from Fractured and Faded as the main character in the zombie film. Using her understanding of Quantum Physics to explain how she can see the zombies. Furthermore, the zombies are souls that are so disturbed that they cannot leave their bodies.

What do you think?

I think I can explain it with a few visuals, but Tory disagrees. He says that I take 20 pages to explain Quantum Physics, it would be too hard to do it in a page.

I almost want to write it just to prove I can do it.

Watched Batman Begins today. It was a good movie but I'm still in love with Frank Miller's Batman. I don't see Hollywood changing that fact. The Dark Knight series was Sean's favourite, it's what inspired him to go into graphic art.

Got a lot done today as far as the upcoming films go. I really need to sit down with another writer/filmmaker to talk about the Zombie flick - just to bounce ideas off. I want to get started on it now. Frankly, I'd like to have preproduction done before next semester.

I'm getting everything done but I feel like shit. Like my insides are trying to cut their way out. I'm sure I look horrible too. All day I've just wanted to curl up in my bed and cry. But I can't allow that to happen. Sean would kick my ass - I learned better.

Life is waiting for me to eat it and I'm fucking hungry!

I got my dress today for my costume this weekend. Wahoo! I hope it looks good. I'm not sure what's going on yet though. I got invited to a vampire party but I don't have a ride. Wait... maybe that's my movie. Girl on way to a theme party but can't get there. Trying to hitch a ride. She encounters a zombie, but she just thinks it is someone dressed in costume. Oh wait, now I do want to puke because that is so contrived. YARK!

I'm feeling better now. Had dinner with my little sister and Drew. We watched Batman Begins - yes, I watched it again. I realized why I don't like it. The story telling techniques are bad. The backstory beats you over the head repeatedly as if the audience doesn't have some sort of reference or we are completely stupid. I liked the visuals but the dialogue was terrible. I also think the structure could have been a little more interesting.

I just want to go to bed and sleep until this pain goes away. I know my friends are worried, but don't be. I'm fine and I'm fabulous. It is only pain, not cancer. It is only physical, not emotional.

Goodnight sweet world, I will sleep well knowing you'll embrace me tomorrow.

I love hospitals especailly when I'm hung over.

Yesterday I had a biopsy to remove part of my cervix. Everything went great. I wasn't in any pain and didn't need to take any pain killers.

Today it was a different story. I'd been tolerating the pain until 3 when I thought I was going to die. I walked to GVH.

Turns out I now have so much scar tissue I'm not functioning properly.

I can't even describe the pain. I'll probably have to have surgery.

I don't want to fall asleep, I feel too alive. I want to lay out under the stars or compose a thousand poems.

I think today's realization and Amadeus awoke something - like I've been asleep for the past ten years. I've lived in such fear and most people would never realize how frightened I've been.

I'm no longer scared of being attached to someone. I still have a capacity to love. Not just love my friends but to open up to a man - allow him to touch me emotionally and physically. To be hurt by him and know that I can heal.

My heart is whole again; therefore, I don't need to run from attachment. I don't need to run from me. The scars are merely blemishes. I can look into my eyes in the mirror and not see ghosts.

I know what I want. I've pursued it in all the ways I know. It is time for a new plan. I'm still compelled.

I want to hold on to this feeling.

Goodnight dear sweet beautiful world. I can't help weeping at the sight of you.

Goodnight desire. I'll see you in the morning.

I got the call between Graphic Design and Pathfinder. I am cancer free! I have another biopsy on Friday morning, but I am done with chemo! Wahoo!

I was so happy, I had to have a cigarette. Kidding!

Today was a very good day! No tragic corset accidents. No evil lesbians (I did see one at Subway). A little fun recollection of playing a french maid in high school. Rewrote Corwin's script. Finished a large section of my Capstone thesis. I couldn't find a very mean file on my computer. I got to show Edit to a new friend. Two people said I looked like I was losing weight (not true). My little sister bought me lunch. I get to see Amadeus tomorrow. Gabe and I seem to be doing well at the friends thing. Jeff K. hasn't bitched at me for over 24 hours. All this excitement, I hope I can sleep!

Goodnight, chemotherapy. I hope I never met you again.

Goodnight, Gabe. Here's to finally making it as friends.

Goodnight, Little Sister. I heart you, you complete me. I hope you weren't eatten by a corset this evening.

Goodnight, sweet world. I shall see you in the morning.

The classroom was cold. The calculus class was quiet.

Suddenly, my chest tightened like I was locked in one of my grandpa’s crushing bear hugs. Yet, this embrace was not warm. I could barely breathe. I stood to go to the nurse’s office.

“Excuse me, is Patricia Bowman in your classroom?” a mechanical voice asked over the intercom.

Mr. McCoy glanced at me and answered, “Yes.”

“Please send her to the office.”

I continued out of the classroom and headed for the main office. I stopped in the restroom to catch my breath but the pressure on my chest was unrelenting. I rummaged deep into my knapsack for my inhaler without avail. I splashed my face with cold water and proceeded to a soda machine knowing caffeine opens the lungs.

When I got to the office window I waited behind a crying freshman trying to talk her way out of detention. She finally left, face buried in her hands.

“I think you have a message for me,” I said.

“Here you go.” Marilyn smiled as she handed me a folded slip of pink paper.

I turned toward the senior hallway and read the paper. Printed on the while-you-were-out slip was: “October 17, 1995. 10:54 am. Sean died this morning. Loretta Bowman.”

I hate waking up to mornings like this. Omnious, gray and brooding set the tone no matter what method I used to scour it from my skin and my soul. Today would be another one of those days – too many classes, too many meetings, too much rain.

After reading several horrible manuscripts tonight, I've decided to become the Boondock Saint of the English Department. Call me Maggie MacManus.

I stalk the hallways awaiting the bad writers who offend my creative sensitivies. My first hit - Steve Utech.

"Steve, did you use adverbs and end sentences with prepositions?"

"Yeah, but..."

Maggie's muzzle flashes. "And when I vest my flashing pen and my hand takes hold in judgement I will take vengence upon mine enemies. And I will repay those who hase me. O Lord, raise me to Thy right hand and count me amoung Thy writers."

"Ben, did you fail to put your play in proper format and repeat the word modification four times in two sentences?"

"Yeah."

9mm bullets drip like sweet rain. "Whosoever shed last blood. By man shall his ink be shed. For immunity of God, make he the man. Destroy all that which is evil and poorly written, so that which is good may flourish. And I shall count thee amoung my favoured sheep. And you shall have the protection of all the angels in heaven."

The faculty will come to my aid. Mark will bring the rope. "Charlie Bronson's always got rope."

I'll bring gifts to Bill King. "I got to buy you a proverb book or something, because this mix 'n' match shit's got to go."

Luke will be there. "There's so much shit that pisses me off! You should recruit, because I'm sick and fucking tired of walking down the street, waiting for one of these crack-piping, ass-wiping, motherless lowlifes to get me!"

And Lilly. "The 90's are killing me. I shouldn't have done that. You're not supposed to tell a guy you're gonna kill him no more. I got to tiptoe through the tulips with these assholes. Taking all the fun out of the job. "

Corwin will chime in with a well placed punch line. "We're sorta like 7-Eleven. We're not always doing business, but we're always open. "

I will stand atop Taylor and proclaim: "Now you will receive us. We do not ask for your poor or your hungry. We do not want your tired and sick. It is your corrupt we claim. It is your misspellings and grammatical errors that will be sought by us. With every breath, we shall hunt them down. Each day we will spill their ink, 'til it rains black from the skies."

And the writer's will say, "And shepherds we shall be, for Thee, my Lord, for Thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand... that our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth unto Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be, In Nomine Patris, Et Fili, Et Spiritus Sancti."

I'm feeling better. I've pushed last night's odd dream to the back of my brain and I've had long discussions about what it means to be a victim (a unwilling or unwitting participant in physical or emotional trama or violence). It was not my fault. I was the prey not the predator. I've never before witnessed such keen manipulation. And that's saying ALOT!

I think my dream last night was just a way to feel normal again - a realignment of goals and desires. It was not a direct manifestation of desire, just a mere suggestion of my need to connect with someone not necessarily with him.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

I feel like a recovering alcoholic whose mantra is one day at a time. But it really is just one day at a time. Today was tough but I'm stronger than I was this morning when I woke up scared.

Goodnight sweet world. Sleep well and I look forward to what you have to offer in the morning.

I keep finding myself in these completely f-ed up situations.

I know that I allow it to happen but at the same time I feel I've been manipulated. Because of my passivity I feel self-destructive - not suicidal just prone to very bad decisions: drinking, violence, sex, drugs.

I haven't committed any sins against myself but I'm scared. I just hope I can find shelter from this storm.

Tuesday they are doing a staged reading of Catharsis. Not only was it the first time I've written about my step-father and Joey, but I will see them both manifested on stage. I wish someone could be there with me to help me hold it together. But I want to be stronger and face it head on. It has been almost 16 years since that night, the ghosts shouldn't be that frightening.

The June 2005 updates to the Oxford English Dictionary include new entries for the terms zombied, zombification, zombified, and zombify. The OED cites examples from such publications as Fangoria: "The aftermath of a meteorite shower zombifies most of the community."

1. Zombies are ravenous and infectious, yet slightly slow and easy to kill. People can therefore unleash their inner mass murderer for the good of humanity.

2. Zombies are one of the few movies monster archetypes that appear (mostly) in hordes. Hordes are ALWAYS cool.

3. Zombies can only feast on live flesh/brains. I salute discriminating taste.

4. The "zombie clinging to last vestige of humanity" gag, i.e. using a fork to eat brains, trying to drive a car, etc. never, ever gets old.

5. Zombies slouch, and that makes me fell slightly more at ease than that broom-up-the-ass Michael Myers.

6. Animal zombies.

7. As an actor, I can honestly say I would like to play a zombie in every role I will ever play. S' ridiculously fun, plus FX makeup is rad/tubular.

8. Even the most out-of-shape person can outrun them, for a while.

9. A reasonably smart, resourceful person can find ways to live among them, due to their slow speed and lack of higher reasoning skills. Which is cool and impresses people, a la-
"So , where do you live?"
"Raccoon City."
"Oh my God! Isn't that dangerous?"
"Nah."
(swoons)

Drawbacks:
Again, zombies are easy to kill- this is why it would suck to be one. Zombies also, if sufficiently numerous, soon present a paucity of ways to kill them. Shooting, stabbing, bludgeoning, exploding, and burning are all fine, but soon you run out of places to go.

Tonight Jeff made a HUGE deal about the fact that I wear my wedding ring on my right hand. He made me take my rings off and then he stood up and put my wedding ring on my left hand. The last person to put a ring on my finger was Sean.

Furthermore, he went on and on about how awesome Sean is because he married me and how I'm still married because I never divorced.

I don't know how to handle all of these conflicting emotions. Yes, I'm still attracted to Jeff but I don't want anything more than a friendship. Putting a ring on my finger was more than I could bare especially considering what Will is dealing with.

I have to remember that I am only human and I can only bare so much of other people's pain. I cannot heal him. Jeff cannot heal me.Damn it, I need to go to bed.

Goodnight sweet world, goodnight fair Liam.

Did you know that high school alumni associations hire companies to look for gradutes?

In the last month, I've had two people contact me from my high school. Today, I got a postcard regarding an alumni directory. I called the number to find out how they find me. It turns out they research public records - electric bills, credit cards, phone bills, etc. I have none of these things.

The lady asked me a bunch of questions - spouse, address, kids, email, phone number. Is it bad that I lied? I don't need somebody making me feel bad because I'm not married and I don't want kids right now.

Edit was accepted for the Colorado Filmmakers Showcase at the Starz FilmCenter in Denver.

Spark has been pushed back to spring semester due to financial difficulty.

I've convinced Tory to do the Zombie film - except our roles are going to be reversed. He is going to produce and be director of cinematography. I'll direct! I'm really stoked. I haven't directed since high school. But I guess it is my script and idea. Furthermore, I am aware of the restrictions of producing such a film.

Someone asked me about this poem recently. I'd read as a featured poet a few years ago. It has seen many, many revisions. It started as a rant when I was an agnostic. Today, I refuse to edit out the parts about fate and God because I believe poems should remain true to the moment they were written. Although I'm no longer an agnostic, it seems a good time to publish again.

Languidly mounted upon human criticism she sits,
Chaos and order dancing, she screams locked in madness.
Masquerades of naked dramas fill her nights,
By day she plays with the stars.
Spitting sputtering spewing she breaks her promises.
She curls up around your loins leaving you screaming: more!
Fate you are a wretched whore.

Destiny has not been a lover nor a friend.
She has beaten me until I have cursed her name:
Sorrowful screams in the dead of the night.
This life is not meant for me.
Inner strife, pent up rage, rage, rage…
I am the casualty in this war.
Fate you are a wretched whore.

There she is mumbling nonsense about beauty.
Can there be truth?
Only when someone is in your thighs;
Fortune is not to be known by any virgin.
It only comes in murmurs that feel like lost dreams.
For you delusions there is no cure.
Fate you are a wretched whore.

Take me for I am only a weak heart and soul.
I have bared myself raw and naked under your heavy lipstick.
You love me, rob me and leave me.
Your cigarette, whiskey ruined voice rattles me.
Warless nights and passionless days lay scattered before me,
In such a disarray I cannot ignore.
Fate you are a wretched whore.

Destiny has cast me out of her graces.
She has thrown me out of her bed without a blanket.
The bitch has ripped my dying lover from my arms.
Fate has eluded me down back alleys.
Faith has damned me for my place in her arms.
God is no longer a saviour.
Fate you are a wretched whore.

Writing Advice from Kerouac

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages for your own joy.
2. Submissive to everything, open listening.
3. Try never getting drunk outside yr own house.
4. Be in love with your life.
5. Something that you feel will find its own form.
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow.
8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind.
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual.
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is.
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest.
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you.
13. Remove literary, grammatical, and syntactical inhibition.
14. Like Proust, be old teahead of time.
15. Telling the true story of world in internal monologue.
16. The level center of interest is the eye within the eye.
17. Write in recollection and amazement of yourself.
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.
19. Accept loss forever.
20. Believe in holy contour of life.
21. Struggle to stretch the flow that already exists in tact in the mind.
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better.
23. Keep track of every day and date emblazoned in your mind.
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge.
25. Write for the world to read and see your exact picture of it.
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form.
27. In praise of character in the bleak inhuman loneliness.
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better.
29. You’re a genius all the time.
30. Writer –director of earthly movie sponsored and angeled in heaven.

Grief, that inner weeping child I call Sophie, has become an everyday part of me. Sophie sits in a corner waiting for a quiet moment to tug on my coat sleeve. Won’t you come play with me? Won’t you hold me?

I go many days without talking to Sophie. She gets upset, throws things and sneaks up on me, scares me into crying. Sophie has a way of doing this while I’m at a party, at the grocery store, or watching a movie with friends.

Peri sifted through the 20 page Choose your own Adventure she'd recieved in writing workshop from Steve. Steve was the kind of guy that had done too many drugs and thought it was cool to play his Casio at Open Mic Nights to accompany his horrible poetry stylings.

"I thought this was a senior level writing class!" Peri said to the pages in front of her.

Steve's writing couldn't pick an audience. One of the adventures turned into a PG-13 sex fantasy while the others were the fodder of pre-adolesent boys.

Peri was working different chapters of her novel through workshops. She hoped by working on each of the chapters she could figure out what parts of the story needed to be written and what parts were better off locked in her head.

Outside, the sky was alight with the fire of night’s advance; blue, pink and yellow mingled in ways only seen on truckstop postcards. Inside, Peri perched herself in front of the television, behind a stack of ungraded papers, beside a bottle of chardonnay, and under a log cabin quilt. The high mountain summer night wasn’t cold enough to warrant the quilt but it was a happy remnant of the past.

She hated being to be the professor to assign papers discussing the ramifications of Mikhail Bakhtin on modern writers because she was the professor that had to read and evaluate each paper; however, it paid the bills no matter how contrived the essays were. At least it wasn’t Calvino.

The phone pulled Peri from her loathing. “Hello?”

“We’re coming over,” Bridget said. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

“Who’s we?” Peri asked jumping from the sofa looking down at her boxers and Surf Colorado tee.

“A few of us from the department. Got any wine?”

“Of course.”

“Good. We’ll be there in a few.”

“Damn it!” Peri said hanging up the phone. She ran up the stairs tripping on the top step. She tore through her drawers throwing on a pair of dress pants and a black tee – simple, understated but semi-professional. Her new colleagues were used to seeing her in a business suit among the academic halls full of jeans and oversized sweatshirts.

“Mom, who’s my dad?” I asked.

My mom and I were sitting in the living room. She was curled up in her Lazy Boy cross-stitching. Her white cotton nightshirt flowed around her like royal robes. Ensconced in her throne, I thought she had all the answers.

“I wondered when you’d ask,” she said not looking up from her needle.

“I’m fourteen. Isn’t it time I know?”

“His name’s Steve. He was my high school sweetheart.”

“What happened?”

“I got pregnant and he disappeared.”

“He abandoned us?”

“Not exactly. He was still around. I thought it would be better if we handled this on our own.”

“Why?”

“Steve’s an alcoholic,” she said flipping a cigarette out of the pack. She lit the cigarette with trembling hands. “Your grandma hated him. She wanted me to get an abortion.”

“What?” I asked. The earth had quit moving and turned on its side. Grandma’s Catholic and she wanted to kill me?

I wrapped my arms around myself trying to ward off the chill filling the room. “Did you love him?”

“I don’t know … maybe. I was young and stupid.”

“What’s love feel like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you love Larry?”

“I love him but I don’t think I’ve ever been in love. I’d imagine it would feel like floating. Like being so filled with light you can’t help but float.”

I imagined a dove flying: pale, white and beautiful. I pictured myself floating on a thermal, arms outstretched drifting towards heaven; a gentle hand lifting me higher. Would I ever feel that way? Was it possible? If Mom had given up, what hope was there for me?

To write this novel I have to remember everything.

Remember is a funny word. Re-member. It's like placing body parts - members - back on the body in some new sort of configuration.

I wonder what I've forgotten, what I can not handle to re-member. I've kept a journal since I lost Sean so that I can piece together my life but I was incapable of writing during that time. All I have is fragments of conversations to piece my life back together with. Some days I'm flooded with memories, other days I can barely recall his face - these are the days I weep. These are the days I pour through old journals looking for notes, any brief reminder of his voice.

It is these days his absence is like the sky - spread over everything.

I'm looking for a shadow of the event - some dark spot of memory remaining in the cobwebs of my mind. When I'm feeling brave I forage the dark places for scraps of explanation with which I could forge a whole memory. These shadows haunt my dreams - tossing and turning in my sleep, waking to terrorizing visions.

Things I still need to write:
Seeing Steve at the doctor's office
Christmas discussing ruination of marriages
Learning about my sister
Dave's death
Gravestone rubbings

I think I've given up. As I look around my desk I see a picture of the bridge Sean proposed on, a picture of my quaint farmhouse, a list of schools mostly in New York that I want to attend, stacks of books that need to be read, journals that need to be catalogued, stacks of sad blues music and a cowboy hat that needs to have some fun.

How can I ask any man to contend with all these things? What man in his right mind would want to spend time in this place? It is where past and future goals collide. I do not live in any present moment. I'm always holding something back - either a recollection of the past or a wish for the future.

I was once told that my strongest assest is that I can find the beauty hidden in every moment. Today, I found myself struggling to find any beauty in any moment.

"Maggie, there's a possiblity that you were never in remission," the doctor said. My thoughts had strayed to the fact that she was wearing black tights and shoes with a brown skirt.

"You're telling me that while I've been off chemo for two months, the cancer has been growing."

"You've been sick for a month and not getting better ... the only other explanation is -"

"I'm HIV negative. It's in my chart."

She looks in the chart as I wonder and hope that she got dressed in the dark.

"In the past year, you haven't had any unprotected sex?"

"Honey, I haven't had any sex in the last year. I'm negative! And now you're telling me that I've had cancer for the past two months." I was getting upset when she'd done nothing wrong. It was my body that was wrong - eatting itself.

"Can you come in for an exam tomorrow?"

"Are you going to do a biopsy?"

"I don't know."

"It's a yes or no question."

"Yes, I'd like to do a biopsy."

"Can I have children?" I asked already knowing the horrible answer.

She paused and again flipped through my chart.

I stood and pulled the chart from her weak grasp. "Yes or no?"

"I don't know." She didn't want to tell me. I could see avoidance in her eyes - she couldn't look at me, only at the floor.

"Why don't you just remove it?" If my cervix no longer served a purpose aside from collecting disease, it should be removed.

"I'm not ready to be that aggressive," she said. She still had hope; whereas, I'd lost mine. I've known for awhile that I will probably adopt. God save the African AIDS orphans.

"Gimme the fucking scalpel I'll do it."

Ignoring me she said, "How about 8:30?"

"I'll see you then." I left in tears.

Five hours later, I'm still not sure I see any beauty in this. Maybe it is sign telling me to slow down. I spend so much of my time running from one fire to the next - class to class, meeting to meeting, job to job - that I rarely have time to catch my breath. Maybe I do need to take next year off from school. Live with Mom, work, publish, get better, study for the GRE, save for the move to New York. Maybe tomorrow I'll find the beauty, I have too much homework tonight.

Life sucks, get a helmet.