Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

— Ernest Hemingway

Little Red-Cap

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?1
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –

which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

Carol Ann Duffy 1999

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Growing up a girl — wanting a boy, but not needing a boy — and figuring this out, finding her strength, trusting her own wisdom, loving her perfectly happy solo self …

… well this is just the journey all girls take in growing up and this is an epic poem!

++ Little Red-Cap was the original British title for the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood.

I’ve loved this last season of GoT, including Dani going bugshit all over King’s Landing. There’s been a lot of negativity about the windup, but I think it’s just because people don’t want ANY ending. But you know what they say: All good things…

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) May 16, 2019

So. You might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned my birthday since that hot phone sex sale I had mid-August. Some days, I’ve been wondering, myself. I’ve been multi-tasking, working the phones, partying on Monday nights, cocktail-ing with friends, Twittering, and binge-watching Game of Thrones from the very first season.  I’ve been busy.

But that’s not the only reason I haven’t brought my birthday bash up. Look at this:

How is a girl ever worthy of so much generosity? And this isn’t even everything. A second wave came in after I took this picture, which I’m not going to photograph because it’s just not easy to do. One big box is a chair, another is a lamp. I know this because I know who sent those and when they were to be delivered.

Anyway, I AM OPENING PRESENTS even as I type this. Already, there’s a few with no indication of where they came from and one that just has a first name (but I know a few with this first name). Still, I’m trying to keep track so I can personally thank everybody.

Sunday is the day I will try to show pics of the actual presents, out-of-the-box nekkid in all their glory, so to speak. I’d do it tomorrow, but my housekeeper will be here and I’m going to be monitoring and working her fingers to the bone.

You honor me, you please me, you make me so very happy.

xo, Angela

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Okay … I’m way behind on getting pics to you. It’s a don’t ask, don’t tell situation. But I will get them to you soon. Promise.