I received a package late last week in the mail at the home I used to share with my girlfriend in Jersey City. It was a box from Amazon.com. I asked my gf to open it find out what specific book or CD was in the box that was obviously a selection from my Amazon wish list for my 44th birthday.  Inside the package was the anthology, "Underground Voices: A Collection of Short Stories" : http://www.amazon.com/Underground-Voices-collection-short-stories/dp/0595380921/ref=sr_1_2/103-9728670-1771829?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189988083&sr=8-2 

I have written for undergroundvoices.com (see my story, FIVE WEST, here: http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVSchroederStephanie.htm) and appreciate the wide-ranging memoir/confessional genre, which is described on the book jacket of the book as "noir, grit, alcoholism, mental illness, psychiatric sessions, torments, journals, confessions and purging," since I am working on a memoir, Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies and Suicide, about my life with Tourette Syndrome and bipolar disease.

 The book was a gift from my very longstanding--and long lost--friend Mary whom I met at "The Farm" as we refer to Kate Millett's upstate New York art colony for women. Mary and I had been close after our time at The Farm in Poughkeepsie in about 1985 or thereabouts. Mary lived with me and my then-girlfriend Michelle for a while in Reading, PA until she found herself her own place. I visited her in Northampton after she moved there. We kept in touch and Mary came to NYC about 7 years ago and stayed a few days with me and then-girlfriend Tina (yes, I DO go through girlfriends!) in Tribeca and then sublet my friend Joan Nestle's apartment for 6 months to write. We hung out together, but I was going downhill fast, on the way to a psychotic break and Mary was distracted by the high cost of living in the Big Apple. We both went our separate ways after her sublet expired. I stayed in New York, moved to Brooklyn and engaged in various endeavors. I didn't hear from Mary until about two years ago --two or three emails back and forth and then nothing, until this mysterious pacakge.

I have a friend in NYC, Jeanne, who is another old buddy from The Farm. We meet about every other week for dinner and drinks (even though I don't imbibe) and talk about everything, including The Farm. In fact, I just called Kate Millett this weekend after years of no contact to wish her a happy Virgo birthday from me and all the other Farm Virgos, including me and Jeanne.

 These days, at 44-years-old and my friends being in their 50s, 60s and 70s, I am beginning to feel that these fragile unions [tip o the nib to Joan Nestle for the phrase] are all I have in terms of friendships and family of choice and that I must cherish and nourish then as if my life depends on them. Because it does.

Para fazer o download da edição portuguesa do livro, em formato PDF, use o Mídia Independente, o 4shared ou o e-mule.