The Best of Days, the Worst of Days

Editor/Publisher (sarcastically): I see you like to dress casually.

Jean (after looking down at the old nightshirt she is wearing): It’s 4:00 a.m. and you’re invading my dreams. Go away.

Editor/Publisher: You chose this profession. The time of day is no excuse for sloppy presentation. The writing business is very competitive, you know. Have you finished your story for Sex in the Dark?

Jean: I’m still working out the logistics of the ménage scene. Three people in a bed have so many arms and legs. It’s especially hard when they can’t see each other.

Editor/Publisher: Tsk. When you’re deprived of one sense, you still have all the rest. A real writer could easily handle this challenge. Maybe you need some inspiration (rubs something furry against Jean’s mouth and nose).

Jean: Pfft.

Editor/Publisher: And I’m still waiting for your review of War and Peace, focusing on the homoerotic subtext, with a nod to Foucault and another nod to late twentieth-century feminist lit-crit. The deadline for the theme issue of Queer Theory is already past.

Jean: Bummer. I’ll have it done this week.

Editor/Publisher leaves, but the furry thing on Jean’s face continues to interfere with her breathing. Someone furiously licks her face. She grabs the dog and puts her on the floor beside the bed, then grabs the cat and holds him until he curls up against her ribs and purrs.

At 7:00 a.m., a BLAST of salsa music comes from the clock-radio. Jean’s Spouse slides her legs out of bed, then shuffles to the bathroom. Loud barking emanates from the ground floor, while the cat flicks his tail across Jean’s face. It’s breakfast-time for the household zoo.

By 9:00, all three dogs and three cats are fed, and Spouse has gone to work. Peace and quiet! Jean brings her cup of breakfast tea to the book-strewn bedroom called the Library, and turns on the computer. There are fifty email messages from writers taking part in the Menage Festival on the Sexy Authors loop, and fifty messages about current trends in fiction from the writers of Moonshine Press on the Unconventional Authors loop.

In Jean’s university in-box, there are six messages from students asking when she will be in her office, even though she is not teaching in the summer semester. Six more messages from various administrators remind her about meetings.

Personal email #1: “Your story submission for Skin and Fur was not accepted. The quality of submissions was very high. Please consider sending us something else next year."

Personal email #2: “I am sending you my self-published erotic novel for review. I am a new writter, and my book is completley different from anything that was ever writen before. Three petite, curvy women become criminals under the Laws of Space when their spaceship crashes on a planet run by male warriors who are all 10-12 feet tall. This book is action-packed! I hope you wont notice my spelling and grammer mistakes. Please send me a copy of your review before you send it to lotsof review places.”

Personal email #3: “To all the contributors to Fast Cars, Faster Sex: I’ve organized a reading in the Bookstore/Coffee Shop in Timbuktu for next week. Three of you are already scheduled to read. I hope the rest of you can participate. Please keep me informed of your own plans to promote this book. – The Editor.”

Jean logs out of all her inboxes, and opens her unfinished story for Sex in the Dark. She reads the first sentence: “When Lyndsey accepted the invitation to Laurel’s party, she had no idea what to expect.”

Too lame. Not enticing enough. Jean puts parentheses around the opening sentence (not wanting to delete it yet), then types in: It was the best of parties. It was the worst of parties.

Too derivative. She tries: Call me Lyndsey (even though my parents named me Olivia after my grandmother). But changing the whole story to first-person POV and working the name issue into the plot would require a lot of revision.

She tries: All fun parties are alike, but every social disaster is disastrous in its own way. She decides that the editor would find this too discouraging to the horny reader.

Jean decides to skip ahead to the unfinished ménage scene. She rearranges some body parts on the screen.

Spouse phones to ask Jean to bring her forgotten notebook and a snack to Spouse`s work. She is stuck in the office during her coffee break. Spouse says she has been really busy, and asks Jean what she has done all day.

Before leaving the computer, Jean checks her emails again. There is a message from a fellow-author (Rachel Green) who has generously given permission for Jean to post the above sketch, based on Jean's photo, wherever she wants. Rachel has never seen Jean in person, which would require some serious travel, since they live half-a-continent and one ocean apart.

Jean decides that fame arrives in unexpected ways.

Before setting out for Spouse's place of work, she decides to get a coffee from a coffee-shop along the way, and finish her review for Queer Theory before finishing her story for Sex in the Dark. At least the unpaid review is likely to get published, probably within two years.

A writer must live on hope as well as caffeine.
----------

Bwana Dick

First - there must be good coffee, yes, no matter what else, even before inspiration you must have good coffee and what Hemingway called “A Clean Well Lighted Place.” I’ve been anticipating this morning so I made some small preparation for it the day before. A couple days ago I found a used milk steamer at the Salvation Army for two bucks and it chuffs out steam like an old locomotive. And then there’s the creaky old Krupps espresso maker I bought in Panama fifteen years ago when I got my first ever paycheck. I set out my yellow pad and a pencil on the table. I love the simplicity of paper and pencil, like a musician tuning up a wooden guitar.

There’s a message on the answering machine. I hit the play button. I want all distractions out of the way before I seduce the Muse.

“Awhl – LO mate. Naw, it’s Mick ‘ere. Naw listen, you lit'el swine. Keith sez you ‘aven’t returned ‘is calls. You tryin’ a' make us beg, luv? Cos we won’t you know. But look ‘ere, we’re ‘avin’ a party nex’ week. It’s on St Moritz, 'idn't it. Kin you come? There’s these Brazilian’ girls, they’re just dy-y-y-y-in’ to meet you. I can't hold 'em off now, can I? No. So don’ le' us down. Now tell yo’ peepul to ca’ muh peepul, an’ just get on wih-it. Ta.”

Beep – a woman’s voice says “End of Message.”

These guys have been bugging me for a week. Mick wants to be my guest blogger, and he just won’t leave me alone. I promised Macca I’d give him a chance first, but since Jacko kicked the bucket McCartney’s gotten tied up in litigation trying to get the Beatles' catalog back. Mick and Keith got to wait their turn until I hear back from Paulie first. I try to get along with everybody but it’s a rough world out there.

Now espresso, the making of espresso coffee is an art and a craft. You must use whole beans. Not ground. Coffee goes stale as soon as its ground, and espresso in particular because of the high acid. You must use the Italian or Latin roasts over the French roasts when you can, and you must choose the beans that show oil present on the bean surface to expect the proper crema in the finished cup. First – we preheat the holder. I start by boiling some water in the microwave, there it is, and now the coffee holder and the one shot filter are immersed in the hot water to heat them while the old Krupp fires up.

I plug in the steamer and wait for the red watch light to go out on the side, there it goes, which tells you it’s ready. Now the beans go in the grinder hopper, a burr grinder mind you, not a low-rent blade grinder which grinds unevenly and can’t give you the genuine espresso grind. I give it a buzz with a number 3 setting. Below that it’s too fine, like Greek coffee, above it too coarse and then there’s no crema.

Brazilian girls?

Good, now I load the espresso into the holder, tamp it down tight with a twist. The twist tamper packs the grains and squeezes the air out. That will force the crema through the filter. Ronnie my huge old orange Tabby comes into the room and bites my leg to get some attention. I take out a little can of something called “Savory Salmon Feast” which looks like it might be interesting on a cracker with some brie. I load his dish and set it down and he settles in and starts lapping at it. Now the coffee. Now the moment. The scene. The Bean. The Buzz. The act of creation.

The doorbell rings.

Damn I’m losing time. Angels in Heaven gasp. The human race is waiting breathlessly for what I will reveal.

I open the door and there's that busty lemon tart who’s been lurking around the mailbox with binoculars for days. She’s wearing tight clingy suit slacks with a distinct butch tone around the cuffs and a low cut Vittorio Macchiato cashmere with a plunging neckline and a small turquoise pendant, calculated to draw attention to the fact that she’s definitely not wearing a bra. Either that or she’s trying to sneak a pair of cantaloupes in under her clothes.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

She looks a little wounded but quickly recovers her look of rich bitch vulnerability. “Don’t you remember, darling? Our interview?”

“Interview. . . interview. . .”

"You are C.Sanchez-Garcia. Don’t try to deny it. You are C. Sanchez-Garcia the greatest American erotica writer of the Twenty First century. The one who doesn’t do interviews but said you’d do an interview with me . . . under the right ‘circumstances’ was it not so expressed? Hmmn? Or were you drunk? How many Nobel prizes for literature have you won? Or do you even pay attention anymore?"

“I know you. You’re Vicky Vague. Vicky Vague from Vogue.”

“Britney Von Klockhammer to you, Boy Wonder.” She holds up her arms for an embrace and an air kiss. Its all so tedious, these people. When that doesn't get a rise, she leans on the doorway, looking petulant. I hold my ground and wait her out. She runs a forefinger up my T-shirt and glances down to see if it's having the desired effect. “From Vogue.”

“Come in, I guess.”

“Thank you.”

Hey - there's a camera crew behind her. That cramps my style with the ladies. “You don’t need those guys.”

“They’re union.”

“I’ll do your interview,” I say, running a forefinger up her cashmere and glancing at her nipple nubs to see if it makes the desired effect; it does. “But we must be alone together. Circumstances, as you say.”

“Oh, well then. As you wish.” She smiles wolfishly showing her back molars.

I close the door after her. She tackles me like a hawk nailing a bunny and wrestles me down to the carpet. In one tug she has the cashmere down and buries my face in the hot Himalayan valley of her bared chest. "Now! Here! Beast!" she yells in my ear. "You're mine - humptastic literary boner pony!! Ride me! Roman stud! Make me your love slave! Thrill me! Own me! Sit on my face! Make of me the secret love-whore of your next novel!”

Until she sees what her knee is resting in. “Ewww!”

It's an orange pool of undigested Science Diet and blades of grass from the back yard. Ronnie's doing.

“Yeah, that's just my cat Ronnie, that’s how he gets rid of hairballs. But let’s get back to that boner pony thing.”

“Real writers don’t have cats ralphing on their carpet.” She gets slowly to her feet with the dignity of an iceberg. I pass her a paper towel to wipe her pants off. "You won't see cats unloading hairballs on Updike's carpet. Charlatan!”

“Updike’s doin' the dirt sleep, toots. The only thing he’s banging is that big typewriter in the sky. What would you know about dikes anyway?”

She slugs me and tucks her breasts back in. "Real male authors don't own pussies– they stuff them!"

“Well, that’s all right.” I say, “Listen, I need to get this blog thing out. Coffee?”

“ I suggest you clean up after your cat.” She slams the door on the word "cat".

Alone at last me, Ronnie and the blank yellow pad which has begun to lurk.

But back to the espresso, the secret stuff of life. The brew machine is hot. The ready light is out. The interviewer is gone. All that's lacking is the inspiration. The revelation. The brilliance. The Muse. The Boner Pony. The Ultimate Validation of Existence. “The Work” as we true writers, we grimly serious writers refer to it among ourselves. The Work. We brilliant, but deferentially modest writers are reserved with the uninitiated - oh did you like that little piece? Really? Oh no, it’s something I knocked off during lunch. Just a scribble really, nothing at all ah hah hah - but amongst the inner circle of our sensitive kind we all know about - The Work. The Work is waiting. Yes. The Grimly Serious Work. Waiting. Okay. This is it. Here we go. Gonna work now. Gonna work on The Work now. Serious. Like any second now gonna work. So let's do it, okay. Okey-dokey. Working. This is it now for sure. I'm gonna do it now, see. I’ve got the pencil in my hand now. Any second gonna do The Work. Watch this.

But just one more thing.

I put a demitasse under the spout and turn the heavy black knob. At first nothing happens. Then a single black drip. Then a gloopy explosion that sends a jolt of lightning down the wall outlet. There's an explosion in the garage where the breaker panel is and a smell of roasting plastic. The wiring in the wall has caught fire.

“Come on Ronnie, got to go.”

We run outside and just after a half an hour the fire trucks pull up. Ronnie and I take a seat on the bumper of the pumper truck and watch them soak the last smoldering ashes of the walls as they fall in. St Moritz with Mick and Keith and those wild Brazilian Girls Who Are Dying To Meet Me is starting to look pretty good.

Next to me one of the firemen sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Got any more of that?"

“Sure, kid.” He points a thumb at a big Coleman thermos next to a hose rack. I pour a cup and pick up a clipboard next to it. The Work. The Serious Writer can work anytime any where he finds himself. The True and Serious Artiste will not be stifled by circumstance. What’s good enough for James Joyce is good enough for me. I begin to write my blog.

"What's that?" says the fireman, looking over my shoulder, probably on the alert for lawsuits.

"In certain circles I'm a highly noted writer." I say. "I'm blogging for my legions of nubile female fans."

"Anybody I heard of?"

"C. Sanchez-Garcia, my good man."

"Kinda stupid name is that?"

"Guess you don't read much."

“Now, if you was Nora Roberts. There's a writer."

"Roberts. She's so twentieth century."

"Holy shit!” yells the fireman.

“Now,” I say, “I’m often compared to early Bukowski –“

"Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!”

“Yeah, well. We live pretty near the airport.”

“It’s a flying saucer! It’s a whole shit load of flying saucers!”

I look up where he's pointing. The common proletariat is always so freaked out by the small stuff. The sky is filling with alien spaceships. One lands on top of the smoking embers of my home. Sitting next to me, Ronnie watches for a moment and loses interest. He licks his chest. He's been around. He's seen worse.

The flying saucer opens and a thin green man in a silver suit emerges, stalking towards me on matchstick legs. “We saw your fiery beacon from space earth man!”

“Well, it wasn’t really meant to be a beacon.”

“You are C. Sanchez-Garcia, the world’s most sought after erotica writer, sexual fantasy object to women of all ages.” It was not a question.

“Guess you got me there, buddy.” I say, sipping my coffee. “What’s the deal? Book contract?”

“You must come with us.”

“You want to be a guest blogger? Take a number, bub.”

“Our planet is dying. We are abducting a few select males of superior virility and intelligence with high functioning verbal skills and a vast sampling of large breasted young women of prime breeding age to be part of our emergency program to re-populate our dying world.”

“No shit?”

“You were requested by our leader, specifically.” He hands me a pair of photographs. I whistle, I can't help it.

“Wow! Her?? Are you kidding with that shit?"

“She is the leader of our breeding program. She refers to you by her pet name for your unusual reproductive endowment - 'Bwana Dick'.”

“Jesus, I can't believe it's her. But I can see it, you know, it makes sense. She has that Spock thing going on when she wears a pant suit. What would Rush Limbaugh say?” I hand back the pictures. "When do I start?”

“The Swedish Bikini Team awaits you even now.”

“It’s tempting.” I look at the flying saucer perched in the smoldering ashes across the street. I look at my coffee. I look at my cat. “What do you think, Ronnie? You got anything better to do?”

He sniffs my hand. He meows.

Why not.


(Originally posted Novmember 11, 2009)

Masturbation Hand

I basically picked this topic cos I'm a nosy bastard, and love finding out about other people's writing business. What pens they use, where they sit, how much time they spend writing a day or a week, whether or not they have set times or just go with the flow, etc etc. But unfortunately for me, I didn't properly think this through. Because although I now get to hear about all of you and the things you do, I realised something as I opened up this post thing in blogger:

My writing day in the life is rubbish. And you know - it's not even just rubbish. It's also weird. And yeah, I realise you probably all get that I'm a mad head, by now, but still. I'm sat here petrified, imagining all of your amazeballs days:

1. Get up to the sounds of birds singing. A little blue one alights on my shoulder!

2. Watch the sunrise while drinking something writerly and awesome, like coffee.

3. Adjourn to my office, where I work steadily on something equally writerly and awesome, like an Apple Mac. I also do things like look at the many important reference books that surround me, to ensure a clean and factual manuscript.

4. A serious author's lunch of tofu, balsamic vinegar and water cress.

5. Another five hours of diligent working, before retiring for the day at 5pm on the dot. More birds sit on my shoulders. I drink something else awesome, like Port. And then I have ahi tuna for tea.

God. God. My writing day is nothing like that. And yeah I know that everyone here probably doesn't have a day like that at all, but I bet you can't help the fear either. The fear that secretly, everyone else is out there being hip and cool and drinking ground beans from the slopes of Kilimanjaro or summat, and like, maybe they've got a writing beret, too.

Yeah, other people totally have writing berets. They sit in mahogny offices with Apple Macs wearing berets and drinking Mount Kilimanjaro while smoking cigarillos and typing 100 words a minute with all of their fingers.

Instead of just three of them, the way I do it.

Yeah, that's right. I only use three of my fingers when typing. And I don't even use both pointers, either! I use the middle finger on my right hand, and the pointer and middle finger on my left. And the right one I make into a kind of crab shape, the way I've seen girls in porn do when they're about to touch themselves - but I swear to God, I'm not about to touch myself.

Well, mostly I'm not about to touch myself. God, I bet the real writers out there never have a wank to the sight of Alex O'Loughlin's bulge in the middle of writing a scene about him doing stuff to someone.

But anyway, I'm off the point. Which is largely about me panicking, and then finally getting around to my actual writing schedule. And it goes something like this:

1. Start at some ridiculous time, like midnight. The birds aren't even awake to climb onto my shoulders.

2. Sit on my bed with my laptop on this board thingie, on my knees. The board thingie now has weird worn groove shapes all over it, from where I've bashed my laptop into it. Also there are crumbs and bits of old food in the little flap thingies that keep the laptop on. Oh, and my laptop no longer has a letter A stencil. Plus, the shape of my left hand is now permanently shined into the material of my laptop, even though it didn't seem to be made of a material that could take the print of someone's hand. Likely as not, I have melted my laptop with my acid hands.

3. Put a movie on. This movie will usually have someone in it who I'm basing my hero on. But I won't watch the movie - no no no. That would be crazy. No, it's far saner that I then put headphones in and listen to some shitty playlist I made that suits the story, while occasionally glancing at the hero's abs.

4. Type until I realise I haven't had a drink in five hours. Of anything. I'm not even cool enough for thirst quenching in general, never mind being cool enough for coffee. I also realise at about this point that I haven't wee-ed in about ten hours.

5. Have a really long wee, and make myself a glass of juice. It's not even Robinsons, either, so don't start thinking that gives me a cool out. It's ASDA's own brand summer fruits sugarless dilute juice, and it is quite possibly the least cool thing in all the world.

6. Watch an episode of something - Frasier, Simpsons, The Blue Planet - while maybe having something to eat, then type some more stuff. Maybe the same thing, maybe not. Maybe I'm tired now and want to fall asleep with the TV on and the laptop on the bed, then wake in the middle of the night to realise I've just killed Bertha.*

7. Go to bed around 9am, exhausted. But usually happy.

Which is the thing, really, isn't it? That even if you don't fit into all the cliches of what a writer should be, even if everyone else is out there, using all of their fingers...well. So what?

We're cool because we're doing it. That's all that matters. Right?



*Bertha is the name of my laptop. Please don't take away my writing beret.

Note to Self

By Kathleen Bradean

Ignore the hideous wallpaper. It was on the hovel walls when we moved in, and fifteen years later, I have yet to replace it.

My days are all very much like the ones that came before, so it all seems deadly dull stuff. I work a ten hour day plus spend another two hours commuting, so between 5AM and 5PM, my day looks like any other working schlub's. (Except that while I'm driving, I'm thinking about plot, character, and other pleasant diversions instead of the stuff normal people think about, like... I'm drawing a blank here. What do normal people think about?) Then one of us cooks dinner, we sit down together to eat, and after about 7:30 my time is mine to waste as I see fit. I watch maybe two hours of TV a week so I'll have time to write. Or, to be truthful, to read emails, mess around on FaceBook, look up some really esoteric minutia that passes as research, and then maybe do some writing before bed. Or I read and write reviews. Or do blog entries. It's not exactly the life of Castle, is it?

So while I sat at my desk and tried to think of a way to make it seem as if I lead a terribly interesting writer's life, my gaze flitted past my current Note To Self. Aha! Writerly stuff! So I took a picture with my phone (thus the crappy quality, but I hope that helps hide the handwritten "typo" in my note) and posted it here.

This is my third attempt at a novel titled The Devil's Concubine. It's been a real struggle. The first pass was my NaNoWriMo novel. I'd never done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, in which you try to pound out 50,000 words of a novel between November 1st and 30th) so I thought I'd give it a go. It proved that I can produce 50,000 words in a month, but also proved that I produced 50,000 words of utter crap. That isn't the fault of the pressure. The problem was that one of my characters lacked definition before I started, and I was never able to pin down his squirrelly butt. Plus, my plot sucked.

In January, I took another stab at it. 80,000 words, but again, nothing I'd show to someone. I still didn't have a clear vision of the story, and it showed.

Then, during a commute, I had an epiphany. It came in part because of something Michael Thomas Ford said in his master class at Saints and Sinners literary conference. I realized that I had never forced myself to define what the story was about. After noodling over it for a couple days, I figured it out. So I wrote it down and taped it to the wall next to my computer so that if I ever lost sight of what I was supposed to be doing, it was there to remind me.

Figuring out what the story was about was closely followed by the definition of the plot. It's a very simplified version of the whole complex spy thriller I have in mind, but at it's core, this is what happens in the story.

What's the main conflict? I have to remind myself. Isn't that sad? But since most of the caper involves a third character, it's been too easy to shift my focus to him. That's went wrong with the other two attempts at this story.

What drives the plot? This is where the third character is important. He's the catalyst that puts the plot into motion.

So there you have it, a sloppy handwritten note taped over world's ugliest wallpaper so that I can keep on track in this story. A day in the life. Whoo-hoo. Riveting stuff.

A Day in the Life *

By Lisabet Sarai

I read the news today, oh boy,

About a lucky gal who made the grade,

Although the news made me quite green,

Well I still had to laugh;

I read her biograph.

She was both lonely and unknown,

Older than I am by a year or two.

Six major pubcos turned her down.

A decade on, she scored;

Nobody expected her to win the Nat'nal Book Award... **

I saw a film today, oh boy,

Based on a novel I have always loved,

A crowd of people forked out cash

I couldn't bear to look

How they raped the book.

I'd love to turn you on.

Woke up, fell out of bed,

Brushed the cat fur from my head,

Grabbed a cup of joe and went to read my mail.

Found my keyboard blocked by a black tail...

Read my last day's work and winced,

Tried to keep myself convinced

I could write at all. I penned a line or two.

Checked when it was due and went into a dream...

I read the news today, oh boy,

The vampire lady made another mil.

The New York Times still didn't call

Two K seems awfully small

Now I know how hard it is to publish anything at all.

I'd love to turn you on ...

(to my books, that is....)

* With apologies to John Lennon and Paul McCartney

** For more on Jaimy Gordon and Lord of Misrule, winner of the most recent National Book Award, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/books/02book.html

Sex, Politics and Other Dirty Words

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

When Wish Becomes Will

One of my favorite words is "free"-- it is part of so many wonderful words and phrases: free spirit, freelance, carefree, free will, free gift with purchase, free to good home, free to be me, freestyle... and, of course, freedom. Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." True enough. When you've hit rock bottom or banged your head against a brick wall or been told "No, you can't do that" for the hundredth time, maybe that is the moment when you're truly free.

I watch my 19-month old toddler experience the world around him. Everything is new and exciting, I watch his eyes widen in wonder at the simplest things, hear him catch his breath at every new discovery. He is untamed, a wild thing. He seems most free after his bath, when he's scampering about on my bed like a monkey, naked and joyous. It's in those moments when I realize how free his spirit truly is-- without self-doubt or worry or concerns about the future to bog him down and box him in.

I forget what that kind of freedom is like, though I call myself a free spirit. I forget that the external voices of judgement and the internal voices of doubt don't control me unless I let them. It's the way of things, I suppose, to forget our limitless potential and the limitless possibilities available to us. I know I forget mine all the time. I say things-- or nod when other people say things-- that deep down I don't even believe. Things that begin, "I'm too old" or "I really can't" or "Maybe" or "I wish." Words can be as limiting as fear. Often, those words are nothing more than expressions of fear. And freedom is squeezed into a smaller and smaller space and labeled a luxury.

Limitless-- it's a daunting word. Exhausting, even. If my life is limitless and I'm not taking advantage of it, what does that say about me? So I put the obstacles in front of me, look for the road blocks most likely to slow me down, put the limits on myself where none need exist. And then I complain about feeling constrained by time and exhaustion and pregnancy and the baby's schedule and the husband's career and life in the suburbs and publishers who aren't acquiring what I write... and... and... and...

Freedom is scary, freedom is about exercising free will. It's about letting go-- not holding on. It's about making choices and not just letting life happen. It's embracing the moment instead of lamenting the moments I've let pass me by. I lose myself in my writing, in my child, in my daydreams. Those are my moments of greatest freedom-- when my world shrinks to the words on the screen, the small hand on my cheek, the mental shift from "I wish" to "I will." That's my freedom. What's yours?