Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

     — Mel Brooks

This Five Star Friday roundup is brought to you by firsts, divorce, letting go, the Dukes of Hazzard, ancestry, life lessons, running, teenagers, more running, cancer, a birthday, coffee and donuts, an irritating yoga class, respite, PPD, life unexpected, rape, and the darker side of ADD.

If you would like to share your own good weblog writing in the comments, we'd love to see it.

Happy Friday!

"Firsts" from Mr London Street:

And I remember lying there afterwards, in that single bed, when I was young enough to think that sharing a single bed with a woman was a luxury and not a form of torture, and wondering what I was missing about the whole thing. The suburban Parisian night breathed impatiently outside through the open window, as if it too felt cheated by how little had really transpired within. But never mind; I could always say I’d finally done it and best of all I could say I’d done it abroad, which at the time held some sort of glamorous appeal. It may have been a drab reality just like my house back home, but it was a French drab reality, and that made it all better.

"Just'a Good Old Boy" from Origami Hour With Henry Silva

"Flying Pacifiers" from ShaunaGlenn.com

"Taking Care" from sweet juniper!:

Think about it. You are standing on the shoulders of thousands. Immense have been the preparations for you. Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd you. An immigrant bricklayer. A homesteading widow. A long line of hard-working farmers. Schoolteachers. Shopkeepers. Fearful refugees. Persecuted Huguenots. Soldiers who survived wars and soldiers who did not. A devout carpenter. A thrifty newsboy. An auto-body man. Hordes of Vikings. A famous inventor. A murdered Sheriff. Adoptive uncles. An engineer. A golfing postman. A cinnamon merchant. Bakers. Fishermen. Daughters of the American Revolution. Revolutionaries. Highlanders. Low country peasants. Irish Catholics. Prussian seamstresses. Pennsylvanians. Metalworkers. Midshipmen. Deer hunters. Berry gatherers. Drovers. Ancient chieftains. Common slaves. And yes: at least two lawyers. They all dreamed about you.

All of them survivors. All of them surviving, to this day, in you.

You are the direct result of many millions of tiny miracles, an endless stream of fortune good enough to bring you out into the sun. What incredible people you are, already.

"I Was Told Javier Bardem Would Be Here" from When The Flames Go Up

"Lessons to Teach My Sisters" from The (Not So) Small Things

"The Bridge" from Anna Maria Horner:

I'm not sure what I was expecting. Taking her to school. I should have guessed what would have drummed up inside me ready to spill everywhere, leaving a trail of years and memories between here and Brooklyn. But I didn't see it coming, not all of it. I am very used to living in the present, but was shot out of a canon to the past. So many times over this past summer. Just shot towards her birth and the beginnings of all of us, the beginnings of Jeff and me. But being hurled past it in a rush of memories it is so hard to see it all the way you saw it then. You think it will last forever, and some days even wish away the difficult parts. Humans just don't know the blur it will become. I believe this to be by design. Inherent in our making. We couldn't handle the frailty of ourselves walking around, if we knew how fast.

"Obsession" from Jodifur

"The Significance of Today" from Wicked Girls Think It, Do You?

"I Still Remember Running" from Health, Interrupted:

I've heard that people who lose limbs still have occasional phantom sensations: an itch, a twinge of pain, the sense of hot or cold. Running is my phantom sensation. When I face the window and close my eyes tightly, I can still feel it. I can feel the miracle of my nerves making my muscles contract when I want them to, and feel the impact of the ground beneath my feet. When I open my eyes this memory knocks the breath out of me, and it's all I can do to remind myself, in a totally different context, that I can do this and I will do this. But there are no words: it is so damn hard.

"A Birthday Card of Sorts" from The Joy Circus

"Catching Up" from No Points For Style

"In Which I Address the Participants of my Monday Night Hatha Yoga Class" from Typical Type 1:

So if you’ll all excuse me, I need to be going. I don’t think I’ve ever left a yoga class this much angrier than I was when I arrived, and I really hope it never happens again. To you five or six relatively normal people I see every week, I’m looking forward to setting my mat down next to yours next Monday. To everyone else, I’m begging: keep your shirts on, take more showers, learn to exhale without moaning, and never, ever do anything with your sphincters in public unless it’s solely your choice.

Namaste, bitches — I’ve got a decent-smelling husband and an Amy’s Margherita Pizza waiting for me at home.

"No Free Donuts" from Issa's Crazy World

"Darkness Falls Across the Land" from The Feminist Breeder

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I Would Do Again in a Second" from Caissie's Thing:

By the time I got to E., he was in a hospital bed with a professional watcher sitting outside his door paging through a fucking gossip magazine like the world was still right side-up. A nurse came in and quietly reprimanded her for not removing his wastebasket. He looked hollow and humiliated and small. People always say someone looks small in a hospital bed, because they’ve been somehow reduced by their sickness. My boy looked small because he was ten years old.

"Araki San" from Cafe Yamashita

Trigger warning: this article discusses rape and addresses rape jokes –
" Actually Breaking It Down: Penny Arcade's Rape Comic" by Denis Farr at The Border House

"The Closest Thing I Have to a St. Christopher Medallion" from Whoopee:

Before I go to bed in a minute, I'm going to go back in there and whisper big hairy bumholes. in his ear, because the Universe cannot possibly take him from me, knowing those were the last words I ever said to him.

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. If you have read a really good piece on someone else's weblog, submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

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Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.

— Michael Caine

This Five Star Friday roundup is brought to you by a dress, divorce, ladybugs, shoes, an explosion, real beauty, post partum depression, being absent, life blogging, making a family, in flight insanity, the internet, censorship, and assumptions about the way technology works.

Please paste urls to your own good weblog writing in the comments and share it with us.

Happy Friday!

"I Have a Funeral Dress" from Fever:

You don't cry in church? I do. You should. Churches are so full of despair and sadness and lost souls and desperation and loneliness and helplessness and terrible heavy-hearted remnants of people who weren't sure where else to go. And they are also full of hope. That's why I cry. Plus no one thinks you are crazy. They think you are wonderfully spiritual and in possession of a direct line with God. They bow an apology while they leave you to be. It's quite refreshing.

"They Were Strangers to You" from Oh, the Joys

"From Forever to the Sea" from Honea Express

"After the Explosion" from B. Hockey J.:

After the explosion it’s quiet for awhile. More quiet than that. Everything holds its breath. The furniture. The books on their shelves. The photographs hanging on the walls. None of them move. Well. I suppose they never move, but now they move less. Everything holds its breath.

"Judged: Sisterhood of the Traveling Louboutins" from Califmom

"A Rose has the Beauty of a Rose because It's Never Watched a Gardening Show" from Serendipity

"Giving PPD a Face, a Name, a Story" from Issa's Crazy World:

I can’t write to the science of Postpartum Depression. I am not a scientist. I can’t write about the chemicals in your brain when you have it. I am not a chemist. I can’t tell you what a shrink would say. I am not a shrink. I can not tell you about anyone else’s PPD or how they should deal with it.

What I can tell you, is about me. My story. How postpartum depression changed my life. That I can tell you.

"And In the Dark... I Tried to Find the Sun" from Dysfunction Junction

"Why I Do What I Do" from Mommy Wants Vodka

"Pregnant" from Is There Any Mommy Out There?:

Mystical thinking doesn't appeal to me. I'm a realist. A science geek. A facts girl. But mystery enhances life. I can accept that there is "science" I can't comprehend. Powers of the mind I can't fathom. Intuition. Foresight. Are these just a mystic's words for the secret language of hormones, whispered to synapses and sheaths and neurons in the brain? It isn't all that removed from the shaman chanting in the night. Merely renamed.

"Long Live the Crazies!!!" from Jenny Simmons

"An Elephant Never Forgets" from Outing My Inner Geek by Wendy Peters

"More Obscenities" from Kate Hansen Art's The Artful Mother:

The dumbing down process involves removing any material deemed "offensive," a rather obscure definition which seems to mean anything that doesn't fit facebook's standards of mainstream, bland culture. Material such as women breastfeeding, women giving birth, and gay sexuality are removed, because they do not follow the heterosexual/male culture which we're accustomed to seeing. Big bosoms in bikinis= fine, woman giving birth = offensive seems to be the formula. What bothers me about this formula is that we have become so accustomed to seeing everything through this hetero-male lens that we are pretty ready to accept these censorships as "just the way things are," really without questioning their motives.

"What's Wrong With 'X Is Dead'" by Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic

"1 Min Reading: Killing Our Dreams" from Paulo Coelho's Blog

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. If you have read a really good piece on someone else's weblog, submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

And because you are a fan of finding good new writing on the internet:

Subscribe — Subscribe to this website to keep up with us every week.

Show your pride — Take one of our badges for your website and spread the word.

A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.

     — excerpt from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

This Five Star Friday roundup is brought to you by the atomic bomb, medical high jinx, a changed relationship, Craigslist, a negative work environment, social anxiety, speech therapy, dreaming, Mumbai, a dog, bike theft, rape, BlogHer, Momsie, feminism, and a childhood remembered.

Paste urls to your own good weblog writing in the comments. Don't be shy!

Happy Friday!

"The Fourth Dog" from Breed 'Em and Weep:

"I saw her, and I thought of you immediately," Nanette wrote. "Let me know if I should pull her." The photo attached was, of course, Fanny (who was initially called "Chippie" by the intake staff). She was terrified and cowering against the painted cinderblock backdrop of the Brooklyn Center for Animal Care and Control. Something vaguely collie-ish, yes, but the soul in those eyes is what got me. I began to cry, looking at the fear and the bewilderment there, in that face.

And she looked like a mix of Ferf and Nina and Eli genes. She was a dirty, grimy, broken mix of something very familiar, and very beautiful.

"That's my girl," I said before I knew I was saying it. "That's my girl."

Yes, I wrote. Yes. I could not have said no.

"Peace Festival" from Theresaurus

"Alone In a Crowd" from Miss Britt

"The Gift of Voice" from In These Small Moments:

Over the past 18 months, Lyndsey has become a part of our family. She is the person who knows Katie best aside from us. She is the one that I turn to who I know will understand the way I feel about this child. She feels it too.

"All Wand, No Magic" from Not Undecided

"Syncretic Shrines – II" from Wayfarers and Pathfinders

"Intira" from Mr London Street:

This isn’t about false sentiment. Intira wasn’t a nice woman and she and I would never have been friends, that would have been unthinkable. If I close my eyes and ignore the television blaring in the corner, I can almost still hear her barking incomprehensibly down the phone at someone, or cross-examining me with suspicion when I asked her whether she wanted something from the coffee machine. But sitting here now, with the benefit of nearly fifteen years of hindsight, I can’t help but find it a little sad that I wasted all that time back then ridiculing probably the only person in that whole office who fitted in even less than me.

"OK" from ShaunaGlenn.com

"My Dream, Our Dream" from My Tornado Alley

Trigger warning – this is a story of rape –
"UnSilenced" from Life On a Tightrope:

I didn’t say a word, just slipped through the window to safety.

Twenty years have passed.

Twenty. Years.

I have been silent for long enough.

"Massage This" from Dirty Hooker

"Justice In Brooklyn" from Whatever-Whenever

"Unsolicited" from Not Really:

I didn’t lean against the wall waiting for the right people to talk to me. I don’t even know who the right people are. The right people were the ones who stood and engaged with me about whatever fucking subject it was for however fucking long the conversation worked. And I’m sorry, truly sorry, if you didn’t find those people. They were there. They were everywhere. Wonderful, interesting, kick-ass women with valuable stories who were looking for you to get outside your own head, to get the fuck over yourself, and talk to them.

"I's the B'y That Catches the Fish" from cribchronicles.com

"Where Did Women Folk Get the Idea That Writing About Their Lives Might Be Interesting?" by Catherine Lacey at HTMLGIANT

"The Last Deposit" from Mom-101:

Funny how sometimes you feel the absence of a person more than you can feel a presence. It's like physics f*cking with you. A universal practical joke.

Please come back and share good writing with us over the coming week to be featured on the next Five Star Friday. If you have read a really good piece on someone else's weblog, submit it by Thursday at midnight CST to have it featured on Five Star Friday.

And because you are a fan of finding good new writing on the internet:

Subscribe — Subscribe to this website to keep up with us every week.

Show your pride — Take one of our badges for your website and spread the word.