Aw, Peanuts.

I opened a blank page to write at 12:34am. At 12:34am and a few seconds later I decided to make myself a big lazy ice cream sundae - vanilla ice cream three scoops, a wallop of chocolate syrup, and a handful of nuts shipped to our address from - the Virginia Peanut Company - sent in beautiful packaging to Mr. Zack Hickman who to my knowledge does not live with us, a company that would not provide me with the sender's contact information or contact him on my behalf so that I could return it or track Mr. Hickman myself, a company that told me "enjoy the nuts!" back in mid-December while I was still gung-ho on doing the right thing and not keeping a giant 3 pound canister of overpriced gourmet snack food that could've well been Planters in fancier casing. A company that I just said "oh screw it" to when I got back 10 days before February to an apartment with no food sans lots of packaged items like spanish rice and cannellini beans and a pristine box addressed to a man who's probably living in Sandusky, Ohio with a mysterious new woman who brought with her a suitcase, two chickens and a nut allergy.

You know, I'm kind of fed up feeling guilty all the time doing not-on-my-priority list things and skipping the higher-on-my-priority list things like writing, like reading the Bible, like praying, like playing, like writing a letter to Mr. Burkey to let him know that 11th grade AP government lit a small fire under my ass. Instead of the Bible I read three weeks ago a book called Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, an Irish immigrant who came to the U.S. with a speck of dirt and decided he didn't know what to do so why not become a teacher. He taught in six different schools in New York City - high schools, vocational schools, even a fashion institute (for a month). He wrote about students like they mattered, each searing a sort of identity into his skin - some deep, some deeper. Like they were part of his nature and composition even when he wished they weren't. He gave himself over. Stood up there, a victim of thousands of teenagers' surgical scrutiny, sometimes their adoration, always their mystery, six classes a day like clockwork.

Reading it reminded me that I felt guilty for not reading what I shoulda; reminded me that most teachers start idealists; reminded me about never writing that damn letter to Mr. Burkey, you know, the who's the teacher who made a difference in your life? letter that I've air-composed at least once a year since I graduated from high school, you know - writing it with my finger in the air like you do when you talk to someone who isn't there, when you imagine their responses, the small twitch when they see your name in the corner of the envelope, their eyes squinting to remember your face and who you are. It's undramatic, really. It's because I've never written it that I don't write it. It needs to be about six lines long. Hey Mr Burkey, remember me? Blah blah, blah, I really appreciated your passion for teaching, I wanted to let you know. Blah blah Boston blah blah kids blah blah. Best wishes, Stacey. No big deal. But 14 years later I'm writing a blog entry and not a letter. And eating ice cream with peanuts that technically don't belong to me.

McCourt was 66 years old when he wrote his first book, Angela's Ashes. It won a Pulitzer. He spent his Irish childhood suffering then took thirty adult years doing painful magic in a classroom. Learning all that reassured me that I have 3 more decades to wither away my own speck of dirt before I have to - in the words of Patti Digh - just sit the hell down and write. I wither on in glass and fog like time is mine to spare.

A quote from a famous author: "Publishing may be a Pulitzer but having written the book is the prize." Actually, that's just plain BS. I just made that up so I could segway into this: I love and loathe famous quotes. Some are amazing, said or scribed by famous people who are famous for lovely and heroic reasons. But some of the wisest and most beautiful things are unborrowed and said quietly to no one and I hear them when people think I'm not listening. Daughters hear them. Sons hear them. Spouses hear them and wish they could capture the air right then right there, before they melt away. Memory always does - but those are the imperceptible nothings, little splices of passing wisdom that, when added up over years and years become a feeling that can't be described except as maybe, "fondness."  Because even when you can't remember whole years and whole decades you see their faces talking with words spilling out that you can't hear, like a silent movie, and you remember how you felt sitting near to them and you felt good. Their words didn't feel famous; they felt true.

But hey, at least I've written something tonight, gotten something down. Hey soul! Look here! So I'm feeling mediocre and my stomach is full and my gut is saying go to bed and read the good book. I was at a friend's house on Wednesday and she was getting rid of a box of books so I nosed around and lifted out One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez thirdly because the title was luring and secondly because I had actually heard of it and firstly because the cover was pretty, a mosaic painting of greens and blues that made me feel something towards them. The book was thick and the cover was light so I took it to help shield me from my own to do list written in the tortured ink of my SOUL, tortured not because my soul is tortured but tortured because I'm so deliberately deflective of what I'm begging myself to do. Sure, soul, I'll do what you want me to do, but first let me get through my US Weekly. Foreign Policy better? How's about a novel? I once read a book on writing and it said that to be a writer you need to read, so I'm reading to write and not writing so I can read and feeling feeble and guilty when I do either since you can't do both at once, and that sounds about a nick below right and a hair above wrong which is fine by me because there's always middle-ground ambiguity and anyways that's the grey space I'm used to, and I fear, unfortunate for my grand dreams, where I most like to stay.

It's a funny thing, this writing thing. Because now it's 1:29am and I've done what I knew I should. But I think about that letter and how that's what I shoulda done. Shoulda done instead of clamoring inside these flat night margins like a fool, flapping wings over absolutely nothing except procrastination and are you serious? Peanuts? Peanuts!?

Aw, peanuts.