So my sister just called from JORDAN, where she is staying with her lawyerly friend Laura and and Laura's husband and babies in a palatial house in Amman. I was supposed to go on this trip as well but then admirably and sacrificially asserted that I did NOT quit my job and move to Pennsylvania for a year in order to GALLIVANT AROUND but in order to accomplish some very serious goals, such as the completion of three books. And that perhaps I can gallivant in the FALL once some of these goals have been achieved, but for now I gotta buckle down. Anyway, my sister is going off to Egypt at the end of the week for a couple of days and tomorrow is heading off for a day trip to Jerusalem, and I told her that if she gets blown up she will RUIN MY LIFE and I will never talk to her again, so she promised not to. I am recording this promise here for posterity and future blackmail purposes.

In other extremely exciting news, this week I went to PETCO with Barb so that she could buy $500000000000 worth of food for her cats and whilst there I spied an array of squeaky squirrels and hedgehogs and rabbits and chipmunks... After a long time spent contemplating this impressive array I decided to fork over eight whole smackers for the CHIPMUNK in an effort to lure my annoying canine charge away from his very disturbing and decidedly unmasculine ball, which looks like this



and which he insists on having thrown to him at least 5000000 hours every day, to a much more appropriate object of desire for a mini tousle haired hunter, like this



This being "Chippie," as my mother insists on calling him... despite my efforts to point out how such a name undermines the quest for masculinity at the heart of my generosity. You will notice that "Chippie" looks a little worse for the wear. As my plan worked far better than I ever could have dreamed and in fact completely backfired, as Gus is now so obsessed with "Chippie" that he manhandles him all day long... sleeps with him, nibbles on him, carries with him outside and up and down the stairs, and even, well, occasionally humps him.

I mean, have you ever seen a more shocking and untoward sight?





I know.

In other news, I saw "The Strangers" on Friday and while I thought it was scary but kind of lame, I'm not gonna lie I've imagined masked men lurking in the dark on several occasions over the last few days... and NOT in a hot way.

Oh: and my friend Anthony sent me a bunch of poems the other night and I am now obsessed with this Sylvia Plath one, The Zoo Keeper, that I had never read before and think is completely astonishing.

I can stay awake all night, if need be ---
Cold as an eel, without eyelids.
Like a dead lake the dark envelops me,
Blueblack, a spectacular plum fruit.
No airbubbles start from my heart, I am lungless
And ugly, my belly a silk stocking
Where the heads and tails of my sisters decompose.
Look, they are melting like coins in the powerful juices ---

The spidery jaws, the spine bones bared for a moment
Like the white lines on a blueprint.
Should I stir, I think this pink and purple plastic
Guts bag would clack like a child's rattle,
Old grievances jostling each other, so many loose teeth.
But what do you know about that
My fat pork, my marrowy sweetheart, face-to-the-wall?
Some things of this world are indigestible.

You wooed me with the wolf-headed fruit bats
Hanging from their scorched hooks in the moist
Fug of the Small Mammal House.
The armadillo dozed in his sandbin
Obscene and bald as a pig, the white mice
Multiplied to infinity like angels on a pinhead
Out of sheer boredom. Tangled in sweat-wet sheets
I remember the bloodied chicks and the quartered rabbits.

You checked the diet charts and took me to play
With the boa constrictor in the Fellows' Garden.
I pretended I was the Tree of Knowledge.
I entered your bible, I boarded your ark
With the sacred baboon in his wig and wax ears
And the bear-furred, bird-eating spider
Clambering round its glass box like an eight-fingered hand.
I can't get it out of my mind

How our courtship lit the tindery cages ---
Your two-horned rhinoceros opened a mouth
Dirty as a bootsole and big as a hospital sink
For my cube of sugar: its bog breath
Gloved my arm to the elbow.
The snails blew kisses like black apples.
Nightly now I flog apes owls bears sheep
Over their iron stile. And still don't sleep.