The Finch at the Feeder

“It’s all a draft until you die.”
–Ellen Bryant Voigt


For breakfast I had fruit crepes with cream cheese and toast. Steak and eggs. Biscuits and brown gravy. A grapefruit divided—sliced in midair and sugared over. It is all a draft until you die? Of course it is. Revision is constant—as endless as sex can seem, when you’re doing it right—and fundamentally self-propelling. The facts are relative things that aren’t half as important as Entertainment Value. I think I heard that on the news.

I read the words “Final Draft” and laugh. I think of 8th grade history class, a weekly paper on any significant event. What could we do but rewrite the past?

The truth is, I feel like I’m drowning. The fact is, I’ve been fighting for the waterline since I first put the pen to the page. Some days I’m in a rental chair, reclining with a mojito I mixed myself. Others, I’m barefoot, running for a Frisbee someone threw me. I always hope it was my father, but he’s revising, too.

Anything can be unmade. Kafka wanted everything burned. Dickinson lived at the bottom of a drawer. The best is never the best. It’s what floats up to the surface after being washed over, over, over.

For over a decade I’ve written the same poem in three hundred and forty-five ways. I’ve taken a red pen to every one. No one will say it, but we need it there. The carrot, rotting on the string, hanging out in front of our faces. If we caught it, wouldn’t we stop moving? Get a real job? Settle down?

The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing---
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us much, and was never written with us in mind.

Here are some quotes by one of the bestselling authors of all time. I'm sure you'll see why.


Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.


I used to get a haircut every Saturday so I would never miss any of the comic books. I had practically no hair when I was a kid!


I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.


Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles.


I feel happy to terrify kids.


I guess I'm way too kind and generous, and a saint - if you can believe that!


Making my class laugh and getting in trouble. I was the class clown. [sic]





Robert Lawrence Stine, you are truly an inspiration.


All quotes provided by the sometimes ironically-named brainyquotes.com

Obama steps up, getting both groups' attention. He says that he will cut the area directly in half and give one part to each. One side says "OK." The other side says "No, please, don't cut it in half. Just give it to them." Obama awards the second group the Holy Land, because they are the real mom.

Then Obama has a ton of wives. The end.