#GetReal Top 100 Reading List (ATTRACTIVE BOOKS)

Making #GetReal #Top100 Reading List. I NEED YOUR HELP. PLEASE COMMENT. Not books you SHOULD read, but books that left exit wound. Kept you up #AllNight. Made you feel like #RomanDemigod, eg Aeneas, who watched Venus #LiftTheVeil that blinded humans to reveal gods destroying #TROY. Changed your life. Or #PLEASUREsoDeep, you'd forego handmade Chocolate or Esctatic Sex to read. Books you REMEMBER VIVIDLY years later. #GoodNews that you know would bring #salvation of a sort to another reader. Doesn't have to be books you liked, per se. Some of my "favorite" books I #HATEDreading, but it was #LOVEtoHATE kind of thing. I knew there gold lay, but it'd bitch to pan (say bcz language so heavy, as in Moby Dick).

Buttercup, Fill Me Up

"People empty me. I have to get away often to refill." -- Charles Bukowski

"Is this not the autobiography of every great writer," I respond.

But, in their response, other writers post: surely not so of extroverts. Among them, there must be a writer or two, though admittedly few.

To which I say, from my cloister: I'm an extrovert -- not by much, but, yes, nonetheless. I get energy from people. I need to scale life's mountains in my mind and with my hands. And, YES, people empty me. SOMETHING FIERCE.

We are so different from each other and must use each other to get what we want, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It just is so.

To clarify, I'm a writer-writer, specifically, a highly-reflective person who over-thinks everything except the golden things that I think just right about. And as a writer-writer, I am so different from "normals," especially from "normals" in a country as anti-intellectual as America.

I outlie. You must remove me from preconceived notions, logic, and analysis, or I'll junk your data. I'm a guest everywhere at anytime. You won't find me Home, where ever that might be. And I do keep looking. I'll never stop looking even though I know the truth.

This EXHAUSTS ME.

To me, people can't see "the obvious." Because it's not really. I've been thinking about It for so long. Then, I go for a walk. And set upon a moment when the bathtub of my head overflows onto your bathroom floor and you hurl apples at me.

People don't understand why I must stop and listen to the gray-black bird in the linden tree on my way to work to find out who she is even though I'm far too late. But I'll remember her longer than I might the fleetingly mighty man by my desk.

Folk don't hear the meter and the rhyme in things far and wide so loud at times that their elevator stops. And the chimes stop, but their box don't stop moving. And you're between the thirteen floors. And you twist and turn. But they're moving up. So they look at you. As though. You've got a gun.

Aldina! Aldina! The Meaning of Me

My mother tells this story: When I was baptized in Portugal, the priest asked my name. As Mother prepared to say "Susana," my godfather blurted "Aldina." No one in the hamlet --neigh the parish-- had heard such a name.

It was the custom among some for godparents to bestow their name, their blessing, & their patronage on the child. "It's a fine name," said my padrinho Joaquim Almeida by way of explanation. "I made it myself. What better gift could I give than that?"

In Fellini's semi-autobiographical film, Amarcord, characters shout my name during a peak moment, & I have since learned "Aldina" is Italian & Turkish. I traced a variant of my last name to 14th century registries in places of worship in Apulia on Italy's Adriatic coast & in Thessaloniki on the Aegean Sea.

On an impromptu voyage of discovery a few years back, I traveled to America's oldest synagogue & met a gentleman from Morocco. I hadn't set out to visit Philadelphia -- it was simply the last train out of Penn Station. But there I was, near a Sephardic synagogue. And it was Saturday.

I asked, could I come inside, once I found some proper clothes. It was Memorial weekend & it was hot. I wore a little black dress, the same one I'd worn the day before; I hadn't packed for my trip. I ran to the nearest drug store & found tights & a plastic poncho that looked like a judge's robe.

Earlier that day, I'd walked around North Philly & discovered in a dollar store a hot pink paper hat,

which hid my white roots. The synagogue man, who wore a blood-red fez, asked my name. I replied. He said, "Why, that's my daughter's name." He rolled the syllables as he spoke: "Al-di-nah. Welcome."

And there I began to unearth the strange Sephardic roots of my family that spread to my godfather, who blessed me with my name -- the name of Jacob's spurned tribe, which sprang from Leah's seed, whose words remain unknown.

The World is Not Enough with Me [sonnet]

As a kid, I played
At Mass. I was the Priest.

I gave my sister Communion
In our plastic-draped, pastel living-

Room in our one-bedroom home
In our barrio in ritzy Westchester

In New York. We weren't allowed
In the living-room. But in

For penny -- in for pound.
We broke sugar cookie hosts.

We have no pictures;
We didn't document sins.

If I led down the aisle,
Would you convert?