your horses ate my cat.

an introductory letter to a.p. smith, upon my finishing his book "welcome to the land of cannibalistic horses." it was the first (and last, to this point) time i've ever written to a total stranger who inspired me...


(*pouring shots of tequila: one for me, one for you, and one for an unsolicited email from a near-complete stranger who is suddenly tongue-tied and fey after finding out there is another single person not from down-looziana who actually knows and uses the word 'lagniappe.' suck the fucker back, biatch. ...now, go make an ass of yerself.)

Hokay. So. I met Mike Force (illustrator of "Horses") through A~, my sweet-muffin coworker. Bought a copy of your book from Mike the day before he went back to New York. I read it and, uh, would *love* to buy you a fuckin drink/bowl when you're in Seattle. Seriously. At the risk of sounding cloyingly trite, my songbird of a scribe seems to have been hiding between the covers of your goddamned book. I haven't been able to write fucking ANYthing for the past few months. Like I had cottonmouth in my brains and fingers, was too damned dry and scratchy to supply the banana-peel lubriciousness that all those delicious words and ideas need to wiggle and shake their way outta my skull. The mental aridity thing, coupled with a creeping sense of apathetic nihilism...well, just watching us fuck ourselves and each other violently, needlessly, day after day after day... it kinda left this girl, regardless how big my heart and mouth, with a niggling, whispering, "what's the fuckin point?" feeling some days. Or months. You know. The Unholy Lonely of being unable to imagine anything you do ever making any appreciable difference. (gawd, summer's depressing)

Yeah. Anyway, I blew through "Horses," laughing by myself in bed at night, holding my bile over so much of the now-standard American Brand of Willful Retardation, identifying, sparkling, seeing myself and all of us in those bound up words and images. I felt sooooo good when I finished it, so overjoyed that there was someone else out there still belligerently determined to fuck with our federally mandated status quo, to get me pissing myself laughing at the same time...made a difference in my mental outlook.

I'm sorry, did I say it "made a difference?" Yeah. What I meant to say was, It kicked me in the fucking head when I suddenly realized that this collection of essays and journal entries and goofy pictures and, really, a conglomeration of the mental and emotional detritus of one person's experience of the world fucking Gave Me Hope Again. Ha. That's the saccharine shit right there. Kinda gets a little sticky on the tongue, but it'll have to do.

So, yeah, it's like I've suddenly rediscovered my brain's uvula and have been poking that fucker with a stick for at least a week. My eyes burn, my fingers are ink-stained and calloused, and I am constantly exhausted trying to juggle those "up 'til 3" writing purges with my "up at 4" baker's schedule. ...And Lo, I Am Ecstatic.

Thanks, man. Take me up on the drink offer, will ya? I'll wear my cowgirl hat and egregious good humor.

High fives all around, then.

-rd-