Scooter Girl

The image of the scooter girl has returned to me.

I told someone this is how my life turned out and I can only imagine how it would be were I a woman in stilettos who wears 14kt gold and eats dinner with her gal pals at Morrell's Wine Bar.

As soon as I said that it occurred to me there is another way: as a fiction writer I can inhabit a character's life for the experiences of the novel. I can momentarily be another person with each book I write.

So you see: the image of the scooter girl.

A woman told me: "You could be a scooter girl and ride around the neighborhood."

T.S. Eliot famously is quoted: "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

On the movie screen of my mind I see a different life: like the one in a print advertisement with gorgeous people on a couch in a living room drinking Champagne.

The woman felt we were not freaks to be saved. She cheered on my fantasy.

That is what I tried to do in my memoir: create unforgettable characters who have personalities and lives apart from their diagnoses. Audrey is a living museum. Blair is a Capricorn.

Here too I remember the lines of a short poem I wrote about my younger self:

the long arm of my memory
reaches for you dear girl
to pull you out of the trash heap
of suburban fright
and plant you on firm soil.

The ending of Left of the Dial has a positive energy.

I do hope you buy the book. I estimate it will be published by 2012-in time for the beginning of the new world. You can read Astrology for Enlightenment about your horoscope leanings circa 2012 as a reflection of the Mayan philosophy of enlightenment and female consciousness.

The world is in a female era in this millennium.

I would like a turquoise blue scooter.

Imagine: that new life. Oh: I have tried in these days to imagine what other kind of life I could have. It doesn't matter. The idea still holds that I'm grateful for the struggle.

Any way I slice it or dice it I can only live through this because I'm a realist and I know I'm lucky. I checked out of the library a book The Story of Stuff about our obsession with things: buying things and replacing them with new things once they become obsolete.

So I tell you: this simple life suits me just fine. I don't need a tomb of gold or whole rooms devoted to dresses or collections of knick-knacks littering my apartment.

The 14kt gold woman can keep her place in the print advertisement.

I'll inhabit another world: where kindness is the ticket price and happiness a true commodity.

Finito.