"to attack the family is to flirt with the world of unreason"

This is Foucault, somewhere around the 17th century in his History of Madness. I quote from it in Book of Mutter, and look, oh, right, yes, I'm quoting from it in Heroines. I get stuck on quotes that I become fascinated by that I want to just suck on and roll around in my mouth and I paper everywhere. Two nights ago I laid in bed and tried - TRIED - to think of a way to give me the nerve to rewrite this mss for now the 4th time, as it must be done. And the line came into my head, something like (but not actually like): "We are always moving, moving, fleeing like from some scene of a crime." I thought, hey that's pretty good, but it sounds so familiar, another quote that I've rolled around in my mouth. I thought did someone else write that? That eerie, unfamiliar feeling. And then I thought: did I write that? So I went into the Green Girl doc. and entered it into Find and there it was - in the third person.

Right. I am beginning to repeat myself.

I feel like I should warn people that the book isn't going to be like the blog. Maybe the blog's better. There's some energy, some informality, to a blog, you know? This book has ideas I want to order and so it's less a ramble maybe. I don't know. It isn't very good. Yet. It will get better! I hope.

I am thinking of getting rid of this blog and having like an author page. Which I know is a different thing. But I kind of feel it's done. The only reason I don't get rid of it is out of some weird sense of guilt and betrayal. Like I would somehow betray you. Who are you. Most of you. The invisible/visible you. I almost feel sometimes I want to be absolved of quitting the blog. Like I want to be forgiven somehow. I think after this book is done I will need to put this away, and think of it like a notebook for a project, maybe. I don't have the stamina to keep it up anymore.

This fall will be insane. More insane than usual. I'm now teaching PT at The New School in NYC - so I will be renting a room there hopefully if I can find something sane and safe and then will be flying home to John, and John will be flying to me, and I am preparing myself for one massive sort of permanent coronary the entire time we will be separated from each other, but I know too it might be good, for us, to learn to be away. I didn't see him for about a week and a half in June and he's going away next week to Rare Books Camp and the first day it's awful, like I can't breathe, and then it loosens and gets better.

I am teaching a First Year Writing seminar on "Madness and the Modern."

I have been vain, too vain here, because I think the other book's coming out and I'm apprehensive about it. I have been the opposite of vain in my physical life. I won't cut my hair or wax my upper lip or eyebrows or anything until this fucking draft is done. Like a girl version of not shaving a beard. I need to get into form. Instead I watched an ABC family show on Youtube which led me to Raven-Symone's TV pilot which has a similar conceit as Green Girl (at least the opening, a girl at a department store spraying celebrity perfume).