We were 18 years old and at school and everything was new, like wet paint. We loved everything. We had a fascination with opening lines that found us shouting, that would be a great opening line!

What started us: none of us noticed the body at first. It's the first line to Robert Coover's Gerald's Party.

I still love it.

What makes a great novel, story, or any written thing at all is the first phrase. No dust cover synopsis can tout a writer's words better than the writer's words.

Does this work for poetry and music? I think so.

From Neil Young comes a provoking, forlorn line: I think I'll pack it in and buy a pick up.

I sang along. I daydreamed the way 18-year-olds do. I bought a pick up.

A 1971 Dodge Power Wagon. Two-wheel drive, three on the tree. My Toyota croaked roadside and the guy who yanked the Tercel home with a landscaper's chain stopped off at a garage to show me a truck. It was a pasty flesh color. Salmon? Pale pink? and someone spray painted its rims red and slapped an Arkansas Razorback sticker on the window.

If you start it, you can have it, he told me.

Well, he started it, and I drove it for more than a year until it was either, buy another car or buy the farm.

Another Neil Young favorite: Oh, hello Mr. Soul I dropped by to pick up a reason.

We're all looking for a reason, right? For a long time Lily was my reason, when previously each day had been a bland, limp thing. There was no satisfaction anywhere.

From Charles Bukowski: the flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there and sometimes a soul.

Reading the comments to follow this poem someone states: Bukowski is a sad, bitter old man.

Na.

What is the point of today's blog entry? Who cares!

About tattoos. I am thinking about constellations and zodiac signs winding all around my hips, ribs, shoulders, trickling down my arms and creeping across fingers. Something like that. Folklore and myth are cool, but the stories our imaginations have ascribed to the sky linger.

Once we thought the Earth was flat. Sailors plummeted beyond the horizon -- salt shakers rolling off the table. Our minds believed our eyes. The Earth was flat.

Where are the stars? We have not yet sailed beyond that horizon to discover that we can quietly circle back to sneak up on those we left behind staring into the distance with their hands shielding their eyes.

Stars.