burn

laurie anderson once told me (how many other ears heard?) buddhists aren't interested in ontology. they live life as if it is a burning house. when you're in a burning house you don't stand around wondering who built the house, or when the house was built. you move.

life, then, is on fire.

do you feel the burn...

wonder drug

ACTIVE INGREDIENTS:
words.

WARNING:
do not operatate heavy machinery while reading this blog. (afterwards, sure. beforehand, yes. but not during.)

SIDE AFFECTS:
reading this blog may raise your EQ, give you better relationships with your family and enhance your understanding of who you are. this blog may tempt you to say yes to your future. it gives you approval to cry when you want to and the peace of mind to question authority and yourself (you may not do anything about it right away, but that depends on you). it has been know to give better sex, a bit of patience, another reason to smile at someone you've never seen before. it will give you something to do when you could be doing something else.

tell a friend.

not boats

last night when the boxers hit the clothes pile i looked. not boats. cute little hula girls.

memory and perception are clever little bastards aren't they...always peeking back at us waiting to surprise.

500

half a bottle of remspeck (?) pinot noir. ignore me. i had too much. vince is in the bathroom assaulting my bathroom mirror (which he fastened to the wall after my not having a mirror for nearly 3 years) with flinglets from dental flossing. loretta our waitress tonight and vin had a funny squaring off. she didn't kowtow to vince's general sneariness. and vince didn't cave in to her general lack of respect for the customer. she wasn't one of these pattycake niceynicey waitresses. she runs the joint. like that cartoon character maxine, you know--the one one in curlers and a cig dangling outta er mouth? but loretta, that little smirk breaking through her banged up facade...cute. i don't think she told us all of the specials b/c i surely would have gotten what our loud, late-coming really well preserved 50-something next table neighbors got when their much nicer younger same-gravel-glass-voiced waitress mentioned to them... saltimbocca. mmMM. so. vinny and i sat there for a good couple hours laughing at him mostly. but if the haha turns to me...quickly, quickly, i pout and rage and get red-eye reactive.

in this instant--when i stop drinking and the room shrinks, condenses onto the head of a pin--i move beyond pouty or pensive or defensive. it's this instant that accelerates my dream just a smidge--the devotion to doing, the necessary doing something in my life besides ponder. it's the instant i am standing at the mirror or the table with no thought at all. immediacy. me. the whole thing. maybe like burroughs said: a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork. or something like that. but it takes time. sometimes epiphany are slow-moving elephants. they end up where they want to be in the end. we call it a miracle, just the same.

so back to reality and the thinking of the dream, the creating the space to make it happen. it's slow... molasses slow. and the reality is...and, believe me when i say i have never used the words "navel gaze" but...fucksake...i do it. that sucks. i waste time navel gazing. (i know i know, the art needs the time...but...)

shit.

i'm a navel gazer. for me this means i'm afraid to push...beyond...to get what i want. what i need. i'm afraid to demand.

ew.

well, except with vince. i can demand from him because he demands of me. not evil demands, either. perfect challenges, for me to strive for my dreams, to recognize my potential and go for it, to live the life i want, always becoming the person i want to live--and die--as. and he gets my wrath because of it. because he sees the bullshit, because he knows the beauty. because he looks me in the eye and says: "what are you going to do about it." partner? equal? yup. and reflection and balance. my favorite...almost everything. i catch him echoing my conscience sometimes, and that's another pisser. i hear the murmer...recognition for your work? you can only reach for it by working, really working, for it. the straightest distance between two points.... personally i'm not a fan so much of straight lines... i mean, isn't that what he's for? i'll never be him or think like him. but he rubs off a bit. and thankfully, i do the same. it's the growing together beautifully that excites me. he opens me to faith. and i open him to...you got it...more faith.

vince is done in the bathroom. i gotta go b/c i have waaaaaaaaay too few hours with him and tomorrow i will get up and begin to think about a paper i gotta kick out by thursday.

hey vin's here to collect me. kisses on the neck. my fucking favorite. in his blue boxers with stupid boats. probably his favorite.

i gotta go.

but tomorrow i'll think about my project. because. i must. stop. resisting.

i want to be remembered. you know. remembered.

honored.

i'm selfish. and i'm a good one. i'm one of those who should be remembered. i want to leave something good in the world. for as long as i can.

80 years, shit.

i wanna go for at least 500. don't you?

gotta dream.

sneak

so i'm sitting at the bar at honest john?'s tonight waiting. and waiting. and waiting. jim beam making pretty good friends with hot toddy. cozy and drowsy. radio says it's 2 degees out there -- breath all shallowness, purposeful. heat so blissfully high inside i could fall asleep with mah boots on and my head on my quietish meaty neighbor dude. still no sign of my cold chillin' chick classmates WHO INVITED ME to the joint. i watched nearly skyscraper tall pistons playing who? some white team. not so much skin white. uniform white. basketball players look good don't they? like superhero swimmers -- a little elongated with flexier muscles. it's where the shoulder meets the bicept. the "biceps brachii" according to one source. something about its sinew and cut, how it dives and resurfaces. and the froggy muscle that twitches above at the shoulder, hinting, momentum sneaking out like a tease from hiddenness...then disappearing like it never was....only, you know...the tiny surprise....

let's backup a sec.

hilary. phD student, bit of an offbeat bombshell, voice like cotton candy. between class and no-show she says: "i have a very personal question and you don't have to answer."

sex ... drugs ... what? i have no idea ...

"tell me."

"how much do you weigh...? that's my goal...."

i look at her. what is she talking about?

"man, i have no idea. and what do you mean 'goal...'"

i heard about this one brainiac, almost invincible lady who could do, really, nearly everything humanly possible

(Zora, the self-made superhero | from the time she was five, she had recurring dreams in which she was a 6'5" warrior queen who could fly and shoot lightning from her hands | she made a list of all the skills she would need to master if she wanted to actually become the superhero she dreamed of being | sample items: martial arts, evasive driving and bomb diffusion | she actually checked off most things on the list...and then she had a run-in with the CIA)

--but Zora...she was terrified of interpersonal interaction....

maybe hilary says this to all the girls -- you know, ice breaker. she's more brainy and analytical than touch-feely-emotional. sometimes it's hard, the beginning. people come to expect certain things, i guess. or, she just wants to know how much i weigh.

"i'm all boob," i say.

"HEY! ME TOO!" (sarah.) "what size are you?"

i tell.

"MEEEEE TOOOOO!" sarah lights up.

no way. she's a teeny tiny thing.

"where?" i say.

she stands up straight and presses her sweater flat.

"and so you are!" impressive. i had no idea.

"SO AM I!" hilary chimes.

"i usually try to hide it." sarah again.

i remember those demure days. as they were reaching their conlusion, a buddy told me as we were walking to grab a beer and a bite, "stace, i had no idea." my reply: "that was the intention, dave." it's like unless you knew, you didn't need to know. yaknow?

"sharon...?" she's across the room, leaning against a deskchair waiting for us to wind down and clear out.

"oh, i'm in the Cs." she shakes her head, matter-of-fact.

"ah," i nod.

silence all around.

show over, we packed up and headed out. i tossed out my styrofoam tea cup, the last vestige of our presence in that room.

just the hint...

till next week.

shhh...

it's a secret...

(this, and other nearly unmentionedables, on postsecret.blogspot.com....

a friend forwarded this site to me, probably not knowing about my morning's post. serendipity, i find, like coincidence, is more magical than mundane.)

sick

i am sick of people saying of others: "s/he would never do that." "not my son." "not my neighbor." "not my girlfriend."

sickness.

tell me, why do people flagellate themselves alone, on their knees, over the toilet, in the strip club, even the young mother who grinds the grass of her front yard into a tight hard brown dirt trail she yo-yo's so often from her front door to her next-door neighbor's house for coke while her two kids watch cartoons in the living room, whereEVER... why can we not face our...weaknesses. why must we also damage others?

secrets...

people have issues. they have ideas. they have shame. they close doors for privacy. they do things they don't want you to know about. they lie for protection.

then, they get caught. take the guy in boston. the ex-priest.

they hold our hopes between skinny weakening arms.

then they lie some more.

churches, military, marriage, school, work, family. life. no place is secure. so the victim, goodness, if it sneaks out from under the bed, from the grave, from halfway around the world, out of the closet, is tied to a chair with heavy rope.

and sometimes, yeah, fear can make even the prosecution lie for protection. skin is paper thin.

the defence whips the victim. the prosecution smears shit inside the mouths of the defence.

liar! liar! they call. evil evil! they yell.

until goodness stands up and stares at the scaredycats who beat and yell and stand with fingers pointing.

"be strong," goodness says. "name your weakness and put down that weight. we are the same. let it go, take my hand." goodness might say these things if it could breathe.

but in our lifeworld, weakness is virulent and goodness does not take steroids or pills to puff up. choked and laying on the floor with weakness, its partner, its lover, gathering strength, is must struggle to its knees. goodness and weakness try to help each other up, push each other down.

sick.

allswell endswell

i ask you: what in thee hell?

(trusting internet sources is a tricky business.... although the article below happened between us - my head to yours...the article cited above seems actually to have occured in our lifeworld. did some lamebrain ever actually argue that truth is NOT stranger than fiction?)

ode to jack london

i saw a girl on the street today who was bleeding out of the head. impossibly maybe her eyeballs. i ran in the snow and fell down ripping my pink corduroys trying to do something for her but i couldn't catch her. she kept up at an inhuman pace. i don't know how she did it with the snow and the wind and the bleeding. and even as i was horrified i couldn't help yelling after her: hey! hey! i couldn't say more than that. how can you call out lady! or miss! or girl! to a person whose cheeks are rutted with blood and whose coat collar is sopping.

do over done over

if i had to write yesterday's post today, it might go something like this:

vin's home for 32 hours or so. it's hard, his leaving. every thursday night i feel the excitement rise. it's a quiet thing, only my blood pressure giving anything away. friday morning i rememember again on my way to work: vin's coming home. i check the clock a few times during the day, hurry hurry. driving home, what rush hour? finally finally, the door.

vin

vin

vin

vin

almost talking

laughing

vin

vin

wine

vin

food

mess

vin

vin

and then...

do over

if i had to write yestserday's post today, it would go something like this:

i can hear vince's exhales from the romper room, his stretching regimen on the fuzzy lake of wool rug. someone's taking his snow blower for a slow walk. garbage truck backing up. again. forward. backup. forward. gone. furnace rumbling in decision. the always there buzz of this laptop, hp.

a gray-green wool sock plays dead on the desk next to me. vince just toss/layed it there. it got mixed up with his laundry a few weeks ago. its mate is in my sock drawer. vin will put my clothes in the closet where they belong but he prefers not to go in my drawers--doesn't understand my organization. so the sock will wait here until i pull open the bottom drawer of the dresser i refinished myself.

the same dresser sat in my childhood home's basement, wrapped inside thick brown paint. the one that held darts, books, silverware for parties. the dresser that got moved to the garage when paula moved her bedroom into the basement, privacy for everybody. the dresser that held greasy car parts, heavy metal instruments for lawn and garden torture. the dresser that fell under the ministrations of handsander and chisel for two weeks that hot summer in 1994 or '95 when i discovered without knowing that to change the world i must change my perspective. uncover things. follow through. it's a hard lesson. i usually fall on my face trying to remember it.

and the dresser...one knob doesn't quite fit...a memory of an oversized mismatched screw, the seed of its previous life. westerly light though my bedroom window barely covered in rice paper, dust unhurriedly building a life on dresser top. vin's heavy watch there wasting time next to scattered change, all of it winking in the light.

becomeone

my friend chark reminds me... snow's outside and i'm sitting hunchy on my steel blue stain-resistant hydraulic-powered armless chair on wheels, warm forced air not penetrating my fat down-filled screamin red bootie slippers.

(winter round here is tough. i've taken to wearing a hat and the booties to bed, still working on everything in between. i had to drop packets of "hot hands" inside the booties to fall asleep last night. now i press my toes of each foot into a packet, 10 hours later. they still work.)

i woke up around 11am to a shrill phone in the kitchen. dashed in a towel. celeste. letting me know she wasn't going to make it to the station for the interview. not a chance. not a spec of heat in her car. so i passed along appropriate telephone numbers,

looked outside.

holy--

now i'm here.
on the chair that i can wriggle freely along wood-slatted floor. heat pouring out of the metal grate, towel still pretty secure. heat rising. cold settling. sitting on my shoulders, the backs of my arms. i feel it on the tops of my clackitykaplacking fingers. the middle fingers especially. dkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkd...the cold keeps staying, won't shake off.

my skin, raising like ripples on the lake. arounding shoulder curving bicept elbow crook forearm and stop. wrists don't get it, hands either--they try to resist the cold, its grudge. they try to shrink from its insistence. move, i command them. work away feathery spreading chill.

when i stop looking at the rising bumps i can shiver. i look again: they raise again to meet my eyes. how many hills...

hands to my cheeks, my face burns my fingers. dkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdk fingers to my lips, feeling? sensing? the pulse. lip heat disintegrates under pressingshock finger coolness. they do not melt together. they...experience...they...slow...they...shhhhhhhhhhhhbecomeone.

you ever...?

you ever just wanna yell at yourself:
what the hell do you want from me?!

then you forget and go take a shower?

come with singles. leave exhausted.

i dragged roberto to gilbert's lodge tonight. poor guy. he comes to this country...to live a few months in detroit. alone. without a car. in the winter. that's four strikes. so i take him to a place where mnm (is that how his name is spelled? anybody...? hello?) used to work. it's a replica of an up north hunters' lodge. not bad for a beer and a conversation. hunters' stew ain't terrible, either. but anyway, roberto. he's italian. and he needs more interaction than the blue-ish glow of his computer monitor off the 4 walls day in day out. i mean his copy of twain's "the mysterious stranger" is only so much company, you know? he said tonight, "i was told (by a homeless guy) that american women love the italian accent." i vouched. it's relatively true from my own experience. so roberto's like: "where are they, the ones that like the accent...?" then he, well, chuckled at himself, kindof embarrassed. ladies, he's cute! where you hidin yr fine selves? a young gent is lookin to be found!

speaking of which, maybe you remember my buddy ellen...? i once dubbed her "the party sprite" because she kind of twinkles all along the edges of the evening, popping in to eavesdrop on conversations, ducking the heavy philosophizing in favor of the brownies over there...fresh out of the oven. like that. and she hasn't grabbed a someone special to call her own either.

and there's kristin, a smoker, stormtroooper direct, isaak denison independent, sensuous, single, "sweet petite with meat" --that's how mike, another cool unattached friend refers to a woman he'd like to meet. could they hit it off? who the hell knows. i'm waiting for helen to have a "bring your singles" party to find out. and, oh, the reactions i hear about that one. one complains--it sounds like a "bring your very own social pariah to the party" party. another keeps asking: "well, when is the damn thing...i need some handlin!"

point is...what is the point? it's tough. you put yourself out there and no nibble from your heart's desire. then what? then it's new year's eve 2004-05 and you hear over the din sometime after midnight in all the hubbub: "puuuuuuuut wiiiiilliaaaaaaaaaaaaam shaaaaaaaaaatner ooooooooooooon . . . . . . . . . . . . the yoooooour goooooooooooooonnaaaaaaaaaaaa diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie one . . . . . . " so you do.

"live like you're gonna die / cuz you are" he coos, challenges, mocks and rocks out.

social pariah, party sprite, whatever your handle. come on to the party. e v e r y b o d y 's welcome. and we're all looking out for ya cuz, like bill says, we are, eventually, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, gonna die. but we don't gotta walk around with one leg in the grave and one on a banana peel all the way there. run run run and fall down flat and roll around like a jackass. when it's your turn, go tired--no, go wagon-draggin shooee-i-didn't-think-i-could-go-on-so-little-battery-power exhausted.

letting go

i have the most damning evidence of all time that i am, in fact, che guavara's horrible sunburt-nose american cousin. and ellen is, also in fact, molly ringwald's other sister (you remember that movie with giovanni rabisi and juliette lewis? yeah, that kind of other sister.)

first my damnation. the day deb, cholly and i were in pisco--was it?--trekking around with our homemade taxi driver-tour guide yuri (strange to have a russian name-sounding peruvian taxi driver-tour guide, but)... he was devilish with the comebacks, fast with the zoomzoom, and expert at dragging us to places where we'd have fun dancing, hiking and stretching the limits with the locals and our (ahem...not mine) spanish. so. the damnation. we were on the coast of pisco--i think--considering a tour of galapagos, which we never did take. instead we ended up hanging out with a sea lion who's number was up (he'd beached himself after losing the battle for his harem to a young virile pup). he was waiting to die, his throaty mournful yawps grusome. then yuri said, "that's the way. the way it must be." and it was so...correct. yuri. a man not bigger than a boy by our standards. small round glasses. he would have been a good doctor but his father died and the family needed money. driving a taxi is a good living, and sharing knowledge is like sharing loaves and fish--the supply seems magically to replenish itself, to grow in fact.

we climbed inside the "cathedral," an underground/in-sea grotto and stood. and just felt. old as earth itself.

we wandered into one of the most fabulous refuges for flamingos and more wild things than exists near-anywhere else on the planet. nevermind the galapagos, the whole region is crazyraging full of living beasts.

interruption: do you feel the creeping sensation that we're in a race to figure out some ways to appreciate the variety and the plenty that this planet keeps trying to show us before a very small and powerfully determined faction succeeds in destroying or maltreating or dishonoring or wasting it right out of existence? end of interruption.

i'd never seen so much pink in one place. neither on the nude beach of nice nor in the underwear shops of florence. not in parisian art houses or amsterdam's smut houses. not even, i daresay, at a muszynski family picnic (and that, my friend, is a lot of pink skin). hundred and hundreds of birds, perched somehow solidly on one...leg. leg? leg.

and then. the photo.

i don't know where deb or cholly were. deb may have been getting notes from locals about her very new home in the old old culture. and cholly...cholly was probably pumping yuri for info about his region's slang so he could bring it home to his detroit spanish-learning students.

so there i was. alone. standing on a gravelly beige beach between spring chill and summer sweat, with gusts of wind that lift hair off your head and stand it on end, i snapped the last of the roll. of myself planted firmly on crusty beach with broiling salt water at my back. strange thing is when i snapped the pic i remember looking across piles of miles of brown-to-red desert expanse. i didn't get it then. and when i look at the pic now, i still don't. it's as hard to recognize the me on the photo paper as it was to assimilate the dessert-meets-beach scene. one thing's certain, though: my hair gave the whole damn display a standing o, in awe i suppose. marvellously bizarre.

and ellen's debautched identity? marvellously bizarre as well. no idea where this snap was taken. a skiing village somewhere. my guess: colorado. she's stalking toward the camera, skiis in right hand, poles in left, silky rope-heavy hair swinging a bit (pushy wind) barely off her face left left. and her face is squinched, hearing her head's awful whispers. things like: only kurdled milk for dinner, skunk died in your car, gangreen in the leg, insomnia for the r e s t o f y o u r l i f e . . .

she made me promise i'd give her my che photo after i blogged about them both. "even trade," she said, bulls-eye eyes. so i've blogged it.

time to let go.

snowplow madness

okay i gotta make this fast i have no idea how single moms must do it without any time for any of it and stretching the muscle on the bone and no time even to remove the whatchamacallit that grows in the cracks between the tile or in the follicles of skin. soap scum. hair. eesh. how does the old guy do it that i read about today in my podunk newspaper he had an argument with the snowplow guy who was trying to snowplow the middle school across from the old man's house but the old man had parked his car across his own driveway b/c the snowplow man i guess usually dumped extra snow across the old man's property and so they argued and the old man turned around to walk back to his property and the snowplow dude got into his snowplow truck and sped up and nearly ramrodded the old dude into next week or the next life but the old dude kept his wits i guess, called the cops. phone's ringing. i'm back. said "that snowplow guy stopped eight inches from my legs--EIGHT INCHES!" now i ask you: is it necessary? is it really really necessary? do we have to take road rage off road, into the parking lots of middle schools? do we really? i gotta go read. tomorrow comes quick. if we're lucky and we're not grumpy old men or gunning snowplow dudes. careful out there. careful.

in between time

i got 85 euro dollars sitting upright on my desk, in a phat paperclip. a reminder that my buddy marco shipped me a ton of books from his place and i have yet to pay him back. (why he gives me more shit when he knows i don't have one nanometer of space left in my bag is beyond me.) he wrote it off b/c it costs nearly a billion dollars for me to do an overseas money transfer. it ain't worth it, he said. well, he actually probably said something like: "my dear, don't think of it. enjoy the books; it's payment enough." or maybe he said, "you can take me out to an extravagent dinner when you come next time to visit me."

i figured i'd roll up the dough nice and tight, tight enough to shove it...in an envelope or a box with other stuff--like personally double-hand-dipped chocolate pretzels or something equally silly and amazing. he seems to think the italian authorities can't be trusted and the package would never make it to his house. i wonder if it'd make it to his apt. in cambridge.... psht, maybe the red coats are equally thieving. i guess i'll just keep the money for a while, the constant reminder that i have a friend far enough away that it's near impossible to repay my debt.

my house is popping and creaking. it's cold. i'm tired. and it'll be colder at 1am when i'm really tired. the idea of work in the morning makes me remember the nights before 3rd grade book reports. sounds like a good idea till it's Time. then...then...just don't wanna. it's not more rational than that.

it's always like this after a holiday weekend. the spending time with vin, friends in the romper room, myself, late late nights. a tiny vacation. it's tough rejoining the ranks. always always the moving back to "useful workaday" mode is as much a change in attitude as a change in sleep patterns. but soon, you settle into your work and as the hour hand grinds by 9am you hear steve exclaim: "HEY, STACE!" or some derivative, all boucing caps and italics, as he speeds by your hovel the same eager-to-get-to-work way every morning, overcoat already off and slung over the crook of his elbow he's so jovial, so Ready to Start The Day. you drag your head around to catch his back shoe leaving the vicinity. he yells something strange and sarcastic from his office and you're all snarky laughter. then helen sneaks by. you work for another five minutes before you bother her about something related to an idea, a drink after work, an errand before lunch. then tim.... before you even get out "how was your weekend?" he tells you: "ooooooooooh, just something." you forget to find out about his latest recipe. then the black-clad mt, with the great skin and even better 3-minute neck massage, comes by. just in time. does his wife know about his wandering massages? and >>phfoof<< you've already forgotten you didn't want to give the book report. you're up there in front of the class and despite the cracking voice and flaming cheeks, the moment is all you. and, as soon as it's over, you already have forgotten your aversion to the whole thing. you wonder what's the bid deal. maybe you think: man, i must be some kinda lucky. but you can't put your finger on why or how. it just feels good to slink back into comfort for a little while.

a honk and a hi, that's what

what now? what's she doing now? eating half a piece of those half-baked brownies instead of reading, that's what. putting off till later what should be done RIGHT NOW, that's what. checking out that last piece of vince's russian poppy seed roll that he says still can't touch his mom's. it's not great, but it's not bad, either, and it is sitting on the counter. and she does hate to waste. mm, then there's the office that still needs cleaning and the file cabinet that still needs usin' and the stairs that still need runnin. how long's it been since she put on her running shoes, anyway--shhhhhh! did you hear that? the soft sneak of distraction. no. no running today. there's reading to be done. and thinking to be done. and there's a movie at the main around 1pm...flying daggers or some such thing. chinese. they're infiltrating. first japanimation now this. railroad workin slaves weren't enough. now what? now they want to live like the rest of us? what? what! what do you mean they want to be here and be seen? what do you mean it's a global world. global if i can shout around it and it comes back to me to slap me on the back, good job ol' buddy. that's usin your noodle. but what do you mean by global? by multi-cul-tur-a-lism? just what are you tryin to pull? what do you mean you talked to some 'nam vet at costco yesterday for 40 minutes afteryou got your tires filled and rotated? those rad bad 16 inchers, the ones on your piece of shit gm that you outta sell yesterday it's so on its last legs? what do you mean he's tall and proud and funny and sweet. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE DUDE! HE'S SNOWING YOU! what do you do all day that you yap with strangers in the costo tire store for god's sake? don't you have anything better to do? ooooooooooooh, whatta laugh...he wants you to dedicate your first book to him: "to one-legged jay, my friend from costco." what a joke. what a loon. what a retard. what do you mean he learned about the american government's agenda only after learning about the vietnamese history and culture when he sat down with them, when he learned their language. what's the point? what.is.your.point. what are you tryin to pull by tellin me he travelled around the world 2-and-a-half times as a professional soldier and got shot up in his own side's friendly fire and that's what put a bullet in his head--pinkish scar on black black skin (and he showed you!?)--his arm, ripped off one leg... what's this got to do with me? leave me out of it. this is YOUR trip, not mine. just what what what...oh he knows brian? the same brian you grew up one street away from? the one you hung out with all during those 10 years when you were making a life with jeff? the one who owns the pro shop at eastpointe bowl? that one-legged jay says brian lost about 80 pounds and looks good? huh. so what, this guy just goes around telling stories, is that it? how the hell did you figure out you know the same people? that's so bizarre. but what were the people in line at costco whispering to each other, the two a you blocking the space in front of the cash register, just uh-huhing and laughing and shootin the shit? what did they say when one-legged jay touched your shoulder and said, "shoo gal, i thought about going back to vietnam to live, where the women are held in respect. esteem. not like here where the men do and say whatever they want, treat em however they want, they got no golden rules in their head or their hearts." what else did this ol man--what, he's 58?--say...he used to be a skiier on the handicap circuit? he eats and exercises right to have a good, long life? he works for the v.a. couseling soldiers coming back from war so they can get back what they give? that he wishes you luck in school--his one regret is that he didn't get his advanced degrees. yet. what about it? what do you get out of it?

what now? she gets a "see ya later, professor...i'll tell brian you said hi...i'll see him again next week tuesday" and a honk of his truck as he pulls out of the parking lot. she gets a small twinge in the back of the brain somewhere that kicks up the volume a notch--it says, a whisper over all the white noise, "everyone you meet changes you forever." she heard it in some anomymous place by some anonymous person who lingers. that's what.

and you. what about you...what do you get?

yesness

my friend jay paints. and much more. we met the other night to talk about yesness, this little cafe show we're putting together. i'm all freaked out and excited. now i just gotta write something for it. anything. something. anything. but really i'm not ready. i'm nervous and ill-prepared. i'll be found out. because you know i'm a fraud. yeah sure i write--but doesn't everybody. i write hidden things on a near-hidden black page, on little ripped out sheets of paper and napkins that i probably will lose immediately oops. i just jot crib notes to prepare for my walk through the tunnel toward mom the light and the rest and the next... yeah sure i write if you mean that kind of writing. oh, you wanna see something i wrote? well...see...i... i actually do public relations, i'm just a student, a girl standing next to you, i'm just taking up space, you know? you really wanna see something i wrote? huh. wow. well, lemme see if i have something small or good or...w a i t j u s t a s e c o n d m i s t e r / s i s t e r .

why?

why do you want to see something i wrote? do you want to make fun of it? or me? next time. next time i'll show you something. i'll be stronger next time. i'll be better by then. i'll have something to say. i'm sure of it....

this is where jay comes in. jay's the one in the gaggle of parents at the regional match who's yelling, "YEAH THAT'S YOU, C'MON MEN, THAT'S YOURS, THAT'S YOU, GREAT SHOT, GET UP, GET IT, NICE TAKE, GO TO GOAL, THAT'S YOU YEAH YEAH YEAH!" you know, that guy. the one you'd like to medicate or be he's so infuriatingly encouraging. his crazy spirit just goes out out out. most days he sits around at the intersection of subdued and zany. lean ramrod straight, goofy flinging ends of hair, crinkling eyes, cackling laugh. and so. yesness. where what if slides into uh-huh. come to detroit in the spring to catch it. i'm doing it because jay asked me. i'm doing it because i should because it's what i want and because we all need that damn jay hanging out on the wrong side of the field yelling like an idiot to "C'MON C'MON YOU'RE NOT TIRED GET UP GET TO IT THAT'S YOU THAT'S YOU THAT'S YOU." it won't be a big deal, says jay almost like a coax. "we're just having fun." like sharing a smile. just for us. just...for...you.

nasty natsy pole dancing

i cannot WAIT to hear this...RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN to your radio...coming up this weekend on a program called "living on earth" on national public radio:

"
Emerging Science Note/Cheap Dates – Researchers find that female dance flies will copulate with males even if they receive worthless courtship gifts that only resemble real gifts.
"

i misread it the first time. then again, how different are female dancers from their tiny counterparts, really? how different am i, really?

how different are you?

and anyway, what the hell's a real gift? and what's NOT?

oh it's all just too too too too weird.

the real fake

this blog is a virtual party. it's like that scene in breakfast at tiffany's--you seen it? you must. but the party. holly golightly (the fantastic achingly excruciatingly fantastic audrey hepburn) meanders, the original party sprite, through all the hanging smoke and teetering drinks. there's the hot young sneaky-eyed writer/gigolo guy (that azure-eyed dude who ended up in the "a team"--george peppard. YES! george peppard). and there's the gabbilionnare sexy foreigner who doesn't have to say a damn thing he's all delicate pomp and lickable. and the woman weeping - just weeeeeeeping - into the mirror with her cruella deville cigarette holder and her mascara leaking down her face. there are the drunk playboys and the drunker straps-falling-off-the-shoulder amazon model girls, beautiful and kinda dumb - at least that's what you think to make you feel better. oh, there's more. but i gotta go to the bathroom right quick before the line snakes....

watch it wiggle (or is that squirm?)

listened to bill cosby in detroit tonight (catch it on pbs, february 13, on a tv near you). he was talking about how parents (specifically african-american parents, but it's all the same) need to be raising their kids. not just giving birth, but RAISING them. he ripped on the "christians" and the pimps and the prostitutes and the lazies and the head-in-the-sands and the whiners and the ones that go: it's the other guy's fault. and he did it all with grace. you know, that fvckin guy is funny. really funny. and he doesn't swear (like some idiots we know...) and he doesn't yell. well, he does yell, but in a nice way. and he talks. he talks real well. and he makes fun of you in a way that invites you to change. he dares you to pick up the challenge. you know, "the cosby show" was the number one show in the united states for a loooooooooong time. black is black. sure yeah. white is white. uh-huh. but it's all gray. and it's all of us. and when you listen to him, even standing in your own kitchen burning hash browns while you keep running into the living room to hear the stereo better, you catch the warmth of his voice. you see the finger he's pointing at us, the 3 curved back on himself, and the laughs he pulls out of the crowd...cuz he's that kinda guy...the one who wants to keep us from crying.

back a hundred million years ago or so...

if you listen to the news you may have heard that the fossils of a 135 million-year-old dog-like animal digesting a dinosaur were found in china. you may also have heard that so many fossils have been found in this chinese region that local farmers are going into the bone business. ain't that sumpin?

you know, 135 million years used to seem like a long time to me. then marco petaccia, a cute serious-faced geology student from pescara, italy, gave me a couple small hunks of rock he chinked out of a mountain (used to be underwater once upon a time) near where i was living this past summer. shell fossils. "seventy-two million years old," he said handing them over. "oh, c'MON," i said. (i mean, i'm from a place where 300 years gets oohed and aahed over.) "no, really," he said. i squinched up my face. "look." he pulled out a couple stodgy-lookin textbooks, opened them, pointed. there was my fossil. wedged between the 60-70-million-year period and the 70-90-million-year period. huh. ain't that sumpin? "then why are you giving it to me?" i had to know. "you see...?" he had a boxfull. "i have a box full of them. i have enough for my studies." huh. i couldn't imagine, however, the authorities at the airport would be too happy about my booty. but wouldn't you know it, when it came time to get the bag dumped out at the airport (they do it to me every time. i buy nail clippers and tweezers after every plane flight), the fossils whumped onto the table. the lady gave them a few turns, screwed up her face, shrigged her shoulders, then crammed them back in the bag.

sometimes coming from a place with a teeny tiny history, and a reputation for being anything from naive to downright duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhstupid is a blessing.

135 million years. psssh. bring on something old.

this is how i procrastinate

enough said.

bring back the vomitorium

wasn't it jane's addiction who belted out "idiots rule"? mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmyes.

now then. they said it like this:

i got a lie
a fat fuckin' lie
about a law
idiots obey
they made it easy
now cheaters have their way
you hi-di-ho's
you're living on your knees

forget the rule!
oh - idiots rule!
forget the rule!
oh - idiots rule!

now there's a time...
but i say non like now
there's a time
where idiots are bound
if there's a pole
planted in your back
then you're a fixture
not a man

forget the rule!
oh - idiots rule!
forget the rule!
oh - idiots rule!
idiots!
idiots rule!
idiots!
idiots rule!
idiots!
idiots rule!

you know that man
you hate?
you look more like him
every day everyday
hi-di-hos!
2 good shoes
won't save your soul
idiots rule!
idiots rule!
("hi-di-hos!" sounds good but looks silly in print, don't you think?)

anyway, i think i heard that plato said it first, someting like this:

wise men do not need the rule, while the foolish find a way around it.

you think the ethically disgusted used the vomitoriums, too?

they come in 3s

edge asked chark, chark asked me...
language truly is a virus.

3 names you go by:
1. mu - oh soccer days
2. stace - usual suspects
3. numnuts - ain't love grand

3 screen names you have:
1. what?
2. ?
3. !

3 things you like about yourself:
1. absolutely nothing not to like
2. except the foot
3. that sometimes steps in it

3 things you hate/dislike about yourself:
1. procrastination
2. when it gets me
3. in trouble

3 parts of your heritage:
1. polish
2. french
3. italian-american by injection

3 things that scare you:
1. fear
2. hatred
3. jealousy

3 of your everyday essentials:
1. chocolate
2. love
3. fiber

3 things you're wearing right now:
1. cool ass leather boots
2. warm ass wool sweater
3. sweet ass christmas gift scarf

3 of your favorite bands/artists (subject to change at any time):
1. ryan adams vies with lucinda williams
2. jeff buckley vies with nina simone
3. jimi hendrix

3 of your favorite songs at present:
1. damien rice, "the blower's daughter"
2. chet baker/hoagie carmichael, "i get along without you very well
3. jeff buckley, anything off grace album

3 new things you want to try in the next 12 months:
1. moving to another state (emotional ones are secondary)
2. pilates
3. hot massage, hot bath. in that order.

3 things you want in a relationship (love is a given):
1. crying, lots of crying. (kidding)
2. laughing
3. living

2 truths and a lie:(no particular order to keep ya guessing)
1. favorite color: brown
2. i love white castle
3. favorite movie: valley girl (i know i know)

3 physical things about a love interest that appeal:
1. eyes
2. hands
3. heart

3 things you just can't do:
1. be on time
2. be bored
3. make someone feel small

3 of your favorite hobbies:
1. witing
2. eating
3. conversing

3 things you want to do really badly right now:
1. poop
2. leave town and go far, far away - just to see what's up
3. fly

3 careers you're considering (let's say I would consider):
1. writer
2. teaching prof
3. knucklehead. it is too a vocation.

3 places you want to go on vacation:
1. back to italy
2. africa
3. far far far east

3 kids names (either boy or girl):
1. abendigo. joking, sort of.
2. ella or some derivation
3. i can't say i really really can't. gotta see the kid first.

3 things you want to do before you die:
1. live, dammit
2. publish something worthwhile
3. i already said "live" eh

3 people who have to take this quiz now:
1. you
2. your best friend
3. maybe i'll do it again

(chark said it's take 5 seconds. it took like 15 minutes. chaaaaaaaaaaark.)

circus freaks and all-niters

when i was 9 years old i couldn't fall asleep easily. 10, 12, 14, 18--the same story. i went from reading whatever i could get my hands on to discovering cary grant (a left-handed circus freak who looked better in a tux than 007) and all the rest of the all-nite black-and-white television crew. maybe the best late-night discovery of em all, however, was prince through headphones. imagine hearing "lady cab driver" for the first time in the silence of a dark house.... then it evolved. book reports at 2am, papers at 3am, always due the next day. finish a project a week in advance? how?! when i was 21 and graduating from university with my first degree i knew i was doomed. some people get a job and never look back. and others.... yeah, well. they just continue to pull deadline-induced wee-hour workathons. now, even w/o projects due, i usually see the other side of 1am--on a school night.

you think i'd outgrow it. it's 3:43am. i'm thinking some things really don't change w/o radical surgery.

perspective is like ass hole

everybody's got one.

crazy talk from a park bench

a full day
after 2 hours of sleep
makes me feel
like a park bench

heavy and worn
tight across the eyes
and the shoulders
and back
where i bear most
of the weight

tonight
the stomach
bowed and stretched
too many hands
faces discussions
asses just hanging about
lazy legs stretched across me
or no one at all
a lot of nothing
bothering me

the sun sank
it's too cold
too late
and i cannot
remember who said
"sometimes touching another person
is more than i can bear"
i/t, just bench heavy
just bench cold
sometimes even a bench
would like to curl up
under a pink blanket
in a warm bed

cum on...tell the truth

strange things are happening. i received an e-response in answer to a e-question i sent. let me tell you the answer before i tell you the question:

"
The taste of his cum ...
the hot lust on my skin ...
... and that sticky wet sexy slutty nasty feeling!!!
"

ok then.

the question was:

"
what about this do you like?
"

the thing that spurred the question was a sex scene that ended with the female character asking the male character to do his business on her face and rub it all over her cheeks with his tool.

huh.

anyway, the blog writer says his/her site has won or at least been nominated for some sexblog award.

what do i know.

another strange thing: a friend has actually decided to take me up on creating something of a artistic duo: his paintings, my poetry.

huh.

he's won some awards too--photography. not sure about his painting--he's relatively new to the sport.

in either case, whatever strange thing is inside finds its expression outside. somehow. it forces itself to the surface like a swimmer dying for air. flash! crystaline sparklers! and the creature is through the surface sucking in airy sun-splattered life--just to pull it back underwater....

what is this strangeness...its hiddennesses...its exposures...?

is truth stranger than fiction b/c it's truth or b/c it's fiction?

goodfuckingday

guilty urge to brush teeth hasn't won.
the cancer has not set up house in dad's bones.
cousin of gramma-, gander-, chicken-, dog-, rolling hill farm-filled childhood contacted me via email.
networked (almost...c'mon...) a documentary into being.
gonna eat sugar for dinner, and homemade soup and rick's last post for dessert.
got three movies to curl up with and return tomorrow.

today--it's a goodfuckingday.

box this

i ranted recently about tight ass. well, tonight it's lame ass. i shoveled twice today. i'm off work. well, i'm still working, just at home and on some personal projects. i miss freelancing. however, all this is not the point. the point is... tonight i saw a movie that coulda gone either way...million dollar baby. clint eastwood, morgan freeman, hilary swank. part hero movie, part wow. clint eastwood directed and (yawn) produced and...ready?...wrote the score. now there's a little snap in your ginger. and swank...she makes everything look easy. and FREEMAN. does he have a star on the boulevard yet or what. that frickin coliseum movie with that aussie raked in a billion oscars and mr. freeman's kickin it as a supporting actor. this world is corrupt.

so the point still is...now i gotta read the book: rope burns: stories from the corner by a person who goes by the name of f. x. toole. don't ask me.

anyway, check it: publishers weekly says the author dude is 70 or thereabouts. yes. 70. first collection of stories. 70. he wrote between gigs tending boxers in their corners as a "cut man." anyway, his piece (novella?), "million $$$ baby," that the flick is based on goes like this: "lacerating account of a courageous, deeply endearing hillbilly woman fighter and her sad fate [...] arguably the best story in the book."

no sex, except one guy fully-clothed, with the floor. lots of violence--emotional, physical, other.

so the movie: if i were a siskel type, i'd give it, even with its deficits, two gloves up.

--speaking of gloves, do not move to michigan if you hate winter. like i said, i shoveled today. a lot.

pussy galore

anotherfuckingmurder. i do not buy all the hype about detroit. i do not buy it. but somehow there it is. some dude somehow related to mnm (is that how you spell it) and differently somehow related to a friend got murdered over the weekend. just what the hell is going on.

sunday night at cvs i'm picking up a prescription to make sure we didn't have an oops and i stop to buy some papertowels (why are the dumbest things always needed). i'm paying for the things and i tell the guy behind the register--we'll call him paul. he looked like a paul. he looked like he just outgrew his pocketprotector. he looked lonely and a little scared. and so i collected my change and wished paul a happy new year.

he stopped.

he looked at me and said real straight and honest-like: i appreciate that.

i said no sweat.

he was still kinda flustered and said as he ripped my receipt from the register: really. thank you. it's going to be a long one.

i gave him a question face.

the year, he said.

ah, i said.

i'm going through a divorce.

oh.

so thank you, he said again.

and like that. bam. another death. and another.

ellen's friend is breaking up with her live-in. they're sweet and cute. at least in public. she's had enough. and so. a death? a rebirth?

who the hell knows. if cats have 9 lives, how many do people have?

single use

sore throat. won't go away.
back at work. won't go away.
medication--"single use." causes new agony.

another workmate's father died.
another workmate got engaged.

death, rebirth....
it's a single-use life with all kinds of alterations, intit?...

robbin' the senior citizens' center

hospital story:

ellen's walking down the hallway at the hospital where she works. she can't keep up with this little old man so she starts making small talk to get him to slow down.
she: do you walk?
he: oh, yeah, i get exercise.
she: what kind?
he: i like to dance at the senior citizens' center.
she: what kind of dance?
he: oh, rock.

she's like, if only he were 50 years younger. here's me: wha--?! how the hell old is he? she's all: 94.

we laughed a good one at that.

we are all definitely in this together. different velocities but aaaall together.

the great invention

january one. aaah, doesn't that just sound groovy baby?

ok ok. my audience of three neeeeeds to know. about the ass. ahem. last night my ass was soooooooooo tight...
; j

more on that later.

i'm a little bit freaked out about this subculture called "cutters." i have heard of it, i have friends whose kids know kids who do it, i have friends whose kids do it, i have a lot of fear for those kids and those parents, but especially especially i have fear for those of us who walk around saying things are worse now than they ever were.

i ask you: in what way?

maybe i'm a pessimist. maybe i'm a dreamer. maybe i think that things are always worse now than before because we ourselves--the big I--are in the middle of it now, and the "t-h-I-n-g-s" seem so much more real b/c "I" am in the middle of them.

i used to say that the u.s. was founded by a bunch of businessmen. i have in the last week decided that the u.s. was founded by a bunch of marketers. the land of the pioneer marketers. we were born to sell. stuff. dreams. ideas. willy lowman is a microcosm of the whole shibang. bear with me here:

1492: well, looky looky... how do we get our hands on this dope prop-er-tee? the grandfather of spin
1776: bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... breaking the muthafuckin mold, feggettaboutit it's so good spin
1865: 40 acres and a mule! heavy-handed spin
1866: land granted through 40 acres and a mule rule rescinded! double wheeling-triple dealing sinister spin

and on it goes. aaaaaaaaall marketing. we market the world. wizard of oz: america. author: american. frank baum. born in...where else...new york. actual first name: lyman. but who the hell'd read anything about anything (except chemistry or physics) authored by someone named lyman. oh no. he marketed himself with his middle name: frank. much cooler frank. frank baum. dropped lyman like it never existed. and really, here we are, 2005. there's no such person as lyman baum s far as the public is concerned, uh-uh. nossirree.

need i say more?

1952: the first tv dinner

according to researchers who care about such things,
"
The TV dinner got its start because of a product surplus. C.A. Swanson & Sons of Omaha, Neb., had too many turkeys and leased 10 refrigerated boxcars to hold all the meat. The refrigeration units only worked when the cars were in motion so trains had to keep hauling them between Omaha and the East. Determined to put an end to the problem, the Swanson brothers told their sales staff to find a new market for turkey. Up until that time, most turkey meat was sold around Thanksgiving.
"

don't even get me started on the assembly line and mass production, fruit-flavored vodka and in-car television sets.

we, my friends, are the progeny and the begetters of the greatest marketers on the planet. step right up and see what it'll getcha...

cutters, writers, automatic garbage disposals. the next big thing. oh, maybe even people who can communicate these ideas to each other. maybe even people who can say to their kids: "baby, this funnylookin walking corpse of a man mick jagger once sang beautifully, 'you can't always get whatchoo want but choomightfind you get whatchoo need.'"

aaaaaaaaaaw yeaaaaaah. now that. that's an invention worth marketing.