Lucky

OK: Tonight I'm steamed like a little neck clam. Publishing the memoir requires strong tactics and I will employ them quickly.

I finished reading Lit by Mary Karr who is a prose stylist nonpareil. I read her memoirs The Liar's Club and Cherry years ago and bought them for my collection. She outdoes herself with Lit. I cried so hard at the end that I could taste the salt of my tears.

Oh: I would like to write one sentence as good as hers.

These days I have begun to spend refining and defining my life. The soundtrack to this soul-searching is "Just Breathe" by Pearl Jam that comes on the radio every day. Eddie Vedder croons about how he's a lucky man to count on both hands the ones he loves. In the coming years I hope to be so fortunate.

Yes: I will bend in the direction life dictates. I will love and lose people as we all do and I will walk on. It nears midnight as I write this swaddled in three layers because the apartment is so cold. The heat of the computer warms me whereas sitting at the dining table I was much colder eating dinner.

I have a theory that you can count on one hand the number of good friends you have.

I will do what I have to do to publish the memoir. I have a friend with an MBA who can help me write the marketing plan and I enlist his services in the spring.

My gosh: I wrote 30 blog entries in 30 days at the start of the 3 personal year so I've gotten off to a good start creatively. My mantra this year is: "Have fun!"

You will see universal themes touched on in JM. I choose not to blabber about insecurities and personal details though I could possibly do that as other bloggers have done so without qualms. Yet I won't. You can quote me on this.

Blogging your life it's like you're a fly in amber sealed in time and space that others peer at on the Internet. I have told you before I'm conflicted about the big reveal. Above all I want to entertain and educate you and do only this: word-by-word in living color.

My computer clock beckons 12:10 AM and so I will write for only a bit more and then go to bed. I urge you to listen to "Just Breathe" and even to download it on iTunes to your computer. I saw Pearl Jam live in concert at the Limelight in April 1992 just three months before I had to be hospitalized the second time. It was their first American concert and the former church was packed with an eclectic crowd. That event became a scene in the memoir.

Be grateful for what you have. Be grateful to count the ones you love. Read Lit and be transformed by the ending of Mary Karr's latest memoir.

This morning as I write the opposing forces of sadness and joy have loomed themselves into cloth like a jubilant sari.

Tell the people you love often that you love them.

That is why we are here: to love and be loved.

I see in my mind now pink and saffron and mint colors bursting into song.

These are the lyrics of my life: a pop song.

Bubblegum.