When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
Here’s the thing I can never get over: being a writer means having the opportunity to create something from nothing. It’s amazing. I try to act like I’m over it, like it’s all so much rust and resin, that every cage has lots its tiger, that computers destroyed writing, that nothing lasts and there’s nowhere to go. I like to walk with a dark cloud over my head, with a subway train hurtling down the wrecked track, where every conversation about Fifty Shades of Grey never ends like a version of hell, like that poor woman face down in the middle of Fifth Avenue her bag sprawled beside her, gawkers taking pictures. The inside of an ambulance. The inside of a mouth. The inside of a thick manuscript bound by beautiful sentences. That is the thing I can never get over.
Who are you?
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Betsy Lerner 
I am always surprised and stunned when I read something that really shocks me back to how I felt about fiction as a kid. You know, when every story was new to you and before you had read enough to recognize the much sought after, “it’s the same, but different!”
Talk about the magic of inventing something out of nothing…how about something out of many, many things. I read The Map of Time last year and felt that way. For me, it was a book so surprising, so inventive, it has defied a decent explanation from me other than an often repeated breathless, “You have to read this.” Palma’s The Map of the Sky came out yesterday and I CAN NOT WAIT to get down to The Tattered Cover and get my copy.
I just reread my comment and realized I totally sound like a paid advertising service, both for Palma and The Tattered Cover. Disclaimer: No money was received by me for the above comment. However, I have shelled out thousand to TC over the years and Palma’s publisher can thank me for the purchase of at least my two hardback copies of his delicious work and quite possibly more because I never shut up about his book.
Rebecca…The Tattered Cover is magical. That’s where I shop, too!
I am whoever I choose to be and whoever I cannot help but be and often cannot the distinction descry.
So I sing and dance to a favorite tune…
I got third row center tickets to the kickoff concert of their last tour. Was left broke and deaf for a day, but it was worth it.
Zen koan: setting aside good and evil, who am I before my parents were born?
I think the answer is I am the walrus. But yeah, being able to write is the gold ring. That’s me in the pages saving my religion.
Koo koo ka chew!
Me? I’m the one who is left standing because I was enjoying the music and observing all the other people circling the chairs rather than gauging my steps to fall into an open seat.
I love this.
Is it something from nothing? Or is it something from a little bit of everything?
Today, I’m me. Not entirely the type of person I’d expected, but I’m getting used to her.
it could be thought of as a muchness made from a meagerness
I like that. Hope I’m not vicing the versa . . .
Well, I’m getting better. I take the dishes out of the sink before I piss in it. Weary, wasted, can’t find my way to the bathroom or back home.
I’m the believer.
Me too, November. Last year I was living in the hated top percents, miserable and sunk. This year, all the worst things we’re programmed to fear happened, yet I’m still here popping with ideas and believing in miracles again. Happy. Go figure.
Who am I?
I am you and you and you. I am a wisher of words and an explainer of hope. Every sentence I spew becomes a step closer to ‘The End’; the end of the piece, the end of life.
That from my mind the ‘sometimes-wisdom’ of my thoughts falls, astounds me. Why didn’t I do what I do now…then? Think where I’d be. Think where I’d be? If it was anywhere other than where I am now, I would be heartbroken.
I am Tetman, rambling with insight, I am Rebecca building something from nothing, Deb after a BSB concert riding in a limo deaf and dozing as my girls and I were carried home, feeling famous. I am Mary and the walrus, never did understand that song, and I am standing beside Karen, lets share a chair. Sarah and I, the same, I am not at what I expected either. I’m August, not often enough, oh August you are so smart. Jess and Jennine, yes I teach but not in a classroom and MAC… my God I have been where you are and you will be where I am, someday, in a quiet house filled with fingerprints and memories. I am Three Kings, struggling and donneave with hugs.
I am Mike D. how sweet your words and Frank, sailing on a universal soothing sea of words and November tracking dreams. I was, am, will again be, Blocked and Tulasi, with a passion just like hers but different. Sherry, CJ, Ruth and Terri and all the others I see here. Every. Single. Day. We are lifelines to each other and pontificators too; just like I am now.
Most of all, I wish I was, sometimes grateful that I’m not, hope to be and am BETSY with a saggy ass. My God girl you are amazing to furnish us this place.
Who am I?
I know exactly.
I don’t have a fucking clue.
I am not Averil, to old and too many hang-ups.
Best of all, Wry, you’re you.
Aw shucks Mike.
Don’t worry about the lack of chairs, Wry – if the music starts up again (and please let it be a cajun waltz), perhaps we can find dance partners.
Yesterday in Mantova a Senegalese book vendor told me the Adriatic beaches were lined with Italian ladies reading ‘Cinquanta Sfumature’ – it’s like an awful worldwide mantra. Hellish.
Yes it can be wondrous, this pulling rabbits from hats, especially when one of your rabbits(short stories) is accepted by a cool European magazine as mine was today!
Congrats, Cat!
And I’ve been dreaming of those Adriatic beaches for weeks–sans that particular book in my hand.
Who am I? I am a birthday cake brought to the wrong house on the wrong day with the wrong number of candles.
i’ll take a slice
Who am I? I’m way too much of a Gemini’s Gemini to pin it down, nothing alights in one place for long. It keeps changing, morphing, growing, expanding, contracting.
Every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all that we have been.
Who am I? Usually I’m the good mood person…the one (yes I admit it) who sticks smiley faces at the end of sentences. Lately, who I am seems to depend on many things … and whether or not I feel good, needed, wanted, bad, broken, stupid, or like a piece of crap on the bottom of someone’s shoe they are now trying to scrape off.
Bad day to ask the question. Today someone made me feel like a piece of crap on their shoe. Ask me tomorrow.
Fuck ’em and their smelly feet.
A work in progress. One word at a time.
That lady on the sidewalk.
In this moment I am storm-beaten and way, way off course.
Compass Frank, use your compass, tack. You will find your way.
Off the reservation.
»Who are you?«
I’m somebody. It’s my life’s work to find out who.