The Pushcart Prize and Minor Plastic Surgery for the South Tucson Healing Clinic

Wow. Has it really been a month? That is no way to build up the head of steam needed to get a brand new blog rolling down the glass and gravel and tar of the S. Fourth Ave. construction zone all the way to the I 10 on-ramp at Park and out into the world where it belongs. Not at all. Moving forward, posts will be shorter and more frequent. The Healing Clinic will maintain its masthead promise to cook up, as it were, "a literary gumbo of solipsism, culture, and politics in a genre neutral space." But the clinic's custodian--that would be me--finally recognizes the idiocy of publishing full length essays in a forum better suited to shorter pieces and photographic narratives that take full advantage of the textual dimensions of a web page. Or, in less evasive language: I am a greenhorn who didn't realize that posting shit on a blog might not be a good move if I want to publish it somewhere else and now I'm trying to cover my ass. In any case, from here on out, STHC will show more photos and a deeper commitment to an economy of words. A few of the older posts may disappear quietly over the course of the next few weeks.

Before I post this aerodynamic body of prose, before this sleek verbal Corvette backs out of the drive, before this spare falcon of workingman's English divebombs its unlucky prey--sorry--I'd like to make a self-congratulatory announcement. I've won a Pushcart Prize for "The Boneyard," an essay published in the March/April 2008 issue of Orion Magazine. Here is Orion's blurb, and here's a longer press release from Utah State University. Along with the rest of this year's winners, my essay will reappear in the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology. What does it mean? I'm not entirely certain. What I do know is that now I have something in common with Tim O'Brien other than having been damaged by the Vietnam War. And that, I must say, is pretty cool.


To tell the truth, I hadn't even realized I'd been nominated. I suspect my nasty habit of fatalistic thought--an addiction, really--will plague me with imagined apologies from judges until I hold open a copy of the anthology and smell the pages containing my words. Is fatalism an affliction more common among writers than those who spend less time rooting through the sock drawers and disorganized cupboards of the interior? Sometimes, I can't help but wonder. Other times, I can't help but say to myself, "blah, blah, blah, you uptight old curmudgeon. You need a break from the page." And so I do. A short one.

Andrea (aka Alpha), I owe you a list. It's on the way.