memory is sewn

ashley with the cornflower blue eyes was telling me of madagascar, a maddening lovely place she'd recently called home away from home. she told of melted down change, tight curfews, multiple tongues and succulent never-before-spied fruits. she told of a woman who's spent the last seven years attempting to adopt a baby found in a garbage can fettered with bushy-tailed feral dogs.

the mom's daughter is seven and still the girl flinches when a dog comes near. the memory has imbedded itself, sinking teeth into her psyche and skin. this memory has become her, continues to create her...

it's memorial day. i left the fuse-in festival expecting to find a bbq with friends. walking to my car along jefferson avenue i passed a carcass of a wheelchair and a man not much livelier sprawled unconscious on the lawn of the coleman a. young federal building. sewn into the backside of his wheelchair were the letters POW MIA.

how memory has become his experience... how memory becomes the way and the who of our experience...

depeche mode

had this thing called "policy of truth." and today i discovered "little leaks of truth." they're both ambiguous. there's some strange stuff hidden in the truth. sticky, messy, hard and difficult, convoluted, unappealing things. like hinting at failure. like pressing booboos from our childhood that seem never to have healed. like tying a string around reminders of weakness.

mind you it all makes us human. we just hate being reminded of it.

the thick thighs. the character flaw. the too-loud laugh. the flaming temper. the gayness hiding around the corner. the father who doesn't approve. the mother who was never happy. the little brother we tried stuffing into the dryer - turned on. the lies we told the first girlfriend, boyfriend, lover, mother, best friend.

sometimes the truth hurts. it's just hard to tell who it hurts more. the teller or the told.

"you all busy and shit?"

yes, edge, to answer your question. yes, i am all busy and shit.

i am all busy and shit preparing to put a house up for sale. who in the hell relishes this? i hate the negotiation process for things that i know nothing about. percents here for agents, percents there for brokers, percents up the sphincter's what i say.

rent it! say do-gooder friends who are not willing to assist in the process or find just the right tenants.

sell it yourself! say all the nameless others who have no experience with that process themselves, but boy does it sound good compared with the hunk of change realtors (sometimes mistaken for money-grubbing capitalists who don't care a wink for the human homeowner) snake from the deal.

it's a morass if you ask me.

in my next life, here are the professionals i'd like my parents, siblings, spouses and children to be:

doctor (1 internist, 1 pediatrician, 1 brain surgeon [just in case])
lawyer
indian chief
mechanic
pilot
realtor
accountant
dentist
carpenter
maison
philosopher
chef

have i missed any? oh, hollywood or broadway executive - for those interesting little gatherings when you need time away.

and...drumroll...the decision's been made. i'm leaving michigan. mfa here i come.

the big lie

how much do you lie to yourself?

think a little more...

so...?

do you need more time...?

i do a lot of justifying (i work very very very very hard not to lie, outright or otherwise. very hard.)... but it means i spend a lot of time in mid-decision. basically b/c i can't figure out how to justify one decision over another. teeny tiny example, and i got a million of em:

who do you hire for a job...the youngish educated guy who's having a baby, has more expenses and who has more in common with you -- or the old-timer who doesn't drink beer but who likes gordy howe, wears a shiny red wings jacket and sparkling white dentures, has already spent 30 years in the biz and will charge half the price and do nearly twice the work?

see what i mean? the decision making shows that i have a split personality. i identify with both guys. one reminds me of who i want to be, the other who i am. more or less.

it's a tough racket. and frankly, my need to be liked and respected at the end of the deal keeps me from taking the decision lightly. probably they'd both understand at the end of the day...but you never know. thank fricken goo'ness neither one is family. huh, then again, i wouldn't have to pay anything if the end result was crap.

eesh, thank double goo'ness neither one is family.

p-p-p-perspective

annie lamott once described grief as a lazy susan. i'd say the same about perspective. one day it stops at wounded keening, the next at squinty-eyed observation. it takes strength to face personal fears. and the toughest part to grasp, the craziest part, if you ask me, is that it doesn't have to be hard. it just has to be. you know, real. open. it's the being receptive to it that bypasses the glitch. and, aha, it's the being receptive to it that also is the hitch. it's like...when someone is telling me something ostensibly about me (but deep, unawarely [i'm usin it], about him/herself) (you tailgate!) i just can't grasp the interior message when the finger is wagging in my face. but, say, he lets it slip as i wake up, sleep still clinging on the edges... (baby, i worry about my future without you...stay safe on the road for me)... well, that's something else now idn't it? dudn't change the fact i'm a loser-ass tailgater, but it does put a new, easier-to-swallow spin on that pill, yessirree.

the silly sticky tricky part of the silly sticky tricky self-awareness for me is remembering that i wag fingers at myself in disgust and write little mental post-it pickmeup notes to myself in praise. just gotta let the guard down to recognize that other people, just cuz they ain't me, can and do in fact (1) behave irratically and (2) love me anyway. really! once i forgive myself for not being perfect, then maybe i can forgive them... and maybe too i'll hear em... i mean, sh!t, they've woven themselves into the fabric of my life...what makes me think one kerunch is gonna pull the seems apart entirely?what -- what's that i hear me saying from behind my wagging phalanges, knitted eyebrows and fragile aggression...?

huh!? -- oh, yeah, i'm having personal epiphany. yeah, like that...easy. open. basic. real. ain't that just somethin?

naked chics

when i was a kid i knew a guy named chic. chic cicchini. (sounds like "chic chic-kini".) of course he was over-the-top hot. a stripper. but i found that out after the crush settled hot in my veins. i was in fifth grade i think. he coached soccer at my school. we were on the field together pretty often. i never made a move to break the crush. the power of the crush lies in distance and anonymity. even then i knew that. fantasy remains fantasy only when it stays cloudy, muddy, luscious, off-limits. even then i knew that.

i haven't seen the guy in a long time. not his half-a-mile-wide too-heavily muscled calves. not his pompadoo hair. not his cartoon chisel face. fading-to-amber eyes. sprickley almost beard. not one whisp of his husk and rasp voice. years ago i heard he was coaching wrestling at one of the local high schools. caught between appalled and piqued, nearly imagining him in the stretch-awful-taut wrastlin suit. best not to imagine. even then i knew that.

guy had a younger brother. poor younger brother. brent. decent enough name. but a shadow just the same. must be tough for a young wanna-be-stud to get out from under. poor younger brother. didn't have ambition to help that i know of. didn't have intellect oozing out of his ears either from what i recall. poor younger brother. hope he got over it the way i did. just one day you realize the name chic...it's well...more a badge, a magnet, a spotlight than a name. and the talisman, naked or not, lost its power.

comin

sometimes it's tough crammin a whole lotta life into what little time we got. other times it draaaaags and draaaaaaaaags.

last night i drove a speedy red car, hung out with a cool-ass prof, thought very little of my future while it speeded toward me. it begins now. and now. and now. my future full of stars and turns and hijinks and hallaballoos. mine. the future.

here it comes.

one word

for today




fhew

just another ordinary top 10

what we've all been waiting for since dave eggars tried it some years ago. here, some perfect answers -- in no particular order...

-it just happened. it has nothing to do with you. i swear.

-well, first you must punch in the code, then twist the pink wire and the bluey-green wire together so they look like a double helix. whatever you do, do not, i repeat DO NOT touch the copper wires together.

-it got cut off in a dare back in high school.

-hell YES, especially when you press on it!

-is that a question or a statement

-because when he told me to wait i had no idea he was going to run in there and pull a heeeeeeere's joooooooohnny... who coulda known that?! you can't expcect me to have predict that!

-did you just ask me that out of love, out of jealousy or out of fear?

-how should i know, i wasn't there.

-after she tried it the first time, i guess there was nothing left to stop her.

-no way! never! at least not yet... would you?

why do some people

go to bed early?

it takes falling over near-dead to get me there.

why do some people "eat to live"?

i don't understand these people.

why do some people hypochondriate (? - you know what i mean) while others deny they're dying of some silent thing deforming them from the inside out?

fear of our original sin, maybe: mortality.

why do some people huff paint?

marijuana's got so much more history; it's a unifier not a desperate inhaling howl of death. come gitme death come gitme death. save me death save me from myself. marijuana doesn't do that. not that i know of, anyway.

why do some people swear at their children?

their children!

why do some people lie about ... anything? or everything?

recently someone i love told me i'm weird (or, that it seems weird) because i don't speak differently to different audiences. i must. i must behave differently somehow. right? it's human to hide, right? of course it is. but really...really...i'm pretty integrated. i can't think of someone i speak differently to...

can anyone help me here with examples...?

(some people help with examples...)

new york

2 days in new york is a magic pill.

i even waved at frankie and johnnies for nameless as it passed by me, a pleasant surpise in the near-make-believe.

"pussy whipped"

who in the hell turned this phrase into something baaaaaad?