a human being what else

'pro-life,' 'pro-choice'

2008-09-21T01:53:00.003-04:00

bugaboo.

i'm thinking about these two words tonight: pro-life. pro-choice.

i've decided, again, of course, that everything political rides on one side or the other of a fence, and the fence isn't truth. it's perspective and spin.

so what if there were yet another way to frame the discussion, let's say, in a more truthful way...

'your life, your choice'

so that each person who votes would be cajoled (by straight-forward honest language [gasp!]) into thinking that his or her vote is really about his or her own life and his or her own choice -- NOBODY else's.

it could even 'trickle up' and 'trickle down' and become...the thinking person's choice (gasp!)

how exciting.

sigh.

Vin's birthday was a few days ago (June 24)

2008-06-25T15:09:00.012-04:00

He celebrated by getting a Norweigian parking ticket
(it's in a sealed bag because it never stops raining in Norway).
He pretended he was a Bergen dissident during German occupation during WWII...

And he got to live his Viking dream...

He even found a good book to read:

He really knows how to stop and smell the freaky posies in Svolvaer, our home away from home in the Lofoten Islands)...

yestserday's comments and then some

2008-06-22T19:20:00.009-04:00

very nice. did you see the long-winded one by vince about ammenities and food? (all true.) we're fasting--flat bread and water--these days to make up for it...

vin uploaded a few (of the 20 or so) videos while he was drinking that wine and beer last night. see http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stacy+muszynski&search_type=&aq=f or google "vince cavasin" or "stacy muszynski." (you'll find four videos from iceland. there's PLENTY MORE. we'll upload when we can.)

ps
it's nearly 2am (in svolvaer [sounds like "s"+"vulva"], norway) and the sun is blazing. spain is celebrating its EUFA euro 2008 victory over italy, and we just got back from walking on the rocks along the seashore.

today's highlights: a local fella (imagine tom selleck, shorter) let us share a taxi ride from the airport with him. we climbed in the backseat, said "takk! takk!" ("thanks! thanks!"), and in 15 mintues got dropped off at our hotel. our cabbie wouldn't let us pay! "he's got it." he pointed to the nice fella in the front seat. "this is how norweigans treat everybody," our cabby said. they peeled out before any more thanks yous could be yelled after them. (our friend siw told us that the "northers" are friends, not like norweigians." lovely, we'd say.)

ha det (good bye)

15 minutes

2008-06-18T18:56:00.002-04:00

is what stacy said she'd give me to write this (while she, presumably very thoroughly, brushes her teeth). [um, vince here] we are on our second night in the impossibly beautiful and impossively expensive country of norway. and as i believe my love said, it's no iceland. it's kind of weird. norway is a mish-mash of what most people in most parts of the US who go out doors are familiar with--lake and river and mountain and ocean and wood and some medium-sized snow-topped peaks. plus with some neverending days and nights thrown in. actually quite like southern alaska.

but iceland is something i've never seen anywhere else. seeing boiling cauldrons of mineral waters, bathing in a hot river that contains the runoff from them, seeing where the lava from a volcano eruption stopped flowing...or where the continents are drifting apart 2 cm a year--that's something you just don't stumble across on an average vacation.

but then our days in norway are just beginning.

norway, norway, why must you rain

2008-06-18T14:44:00.004-04:00

oh but it's romantic.

no story for a few hours. must eat first. entertain yourselves with these images...

pre-ceremony
ceremony
post-apocalyptic party/-ies

a week in iceland is not long enough

2008-06-17T18:19:00.018-04:00

before i start blathering on, a quick mention of pics we've been taking of this trip can be found at

http://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=cavasin.

if you like your photos 90-degrees off-kilter and without captions, you'll love these.

of course, vin and i are in a lot of them, but the real star is the landscape--glacier, iceberg, bay, ocean, runaway sheep, hill, mountain, valley, waterfall, a horse named power, the sweetest farm with the coolest couple and their dog named hekla (named for the famed, angry volcano of the island). if you go there (skalafell farmhouse, skalafell@simnet.is), ask about my boots i left there. oops.

who you won't meet in the pics (forgot the camera) is elisabet, from reykjavik, who reminds us that, among other things, it is belief in ourselves and our genuine, loving connection and curiosity, our recognizing *this* moment in the world that helps us see our blessings. and you won't see siw either. she's our new friend and guide from oslo by way of oakland, ca (thanks for hooking us up, laura.) siw who knows where to find good reindeer patties. thanks for the view of the city from atop that crazy-cool opera house. good luck with getting that northface job.

anyway, here's a sampling of what's up in dig-pics so far:

(note: the island only looks empty. there are actually approx 300,000 people living somewhere.):

glacier-walking

glacier-stopping

icebergs in the bay

still amazing

freaky volcanic, mossy soil

rivulet in valley where lava flow stopped

run! run!

stay tuned for pics and movies of other adventures, including...

our saturday "night" on the town. icelanders don't feign a party spirit. those looking for a good time in the capital city, at least, don't sleep on the weekends. they party. and party. and party. "runtur," they call it. ('round tour.) pub crawl. as elisabet (the coolest gal in hilton hospitality) put it as we all sat on sunday night (vin and me nursing hangovers, she relaxing for a sec on the job) watching the sun not setting over the atlantic and over the main drag of reykjavik, "oh, you should see the walks of shame from here."

elisabet, it might be noted, is a renaissance woman. (icelanders seem to be like this, remaking themselves every few years.) i mean, at 31 she's already toured some US cities with her gal punk band, written and published a book, spent a bit of time as a cult of personality on icleandic web and radio. she also proposed to her finance. guess he said yes b/c they're plannning the dealio for 10/10/2010.

stay tuned also for...
our icelandic horseback riding experience. (if vin were awake, he'd tell you his butt cheeks still hurt.)

and also for...
erupting geysirs

and also for...
our hike to where the continents are drifting apart at 2cm per year. (this is the busiest little island, innit it?, with glaciers and earthquakes and volcanoes and continental plates breaking apart and people !)

and also for...
our 3 mile hike to "hot river." that's a river in the outskirts of iceland's capital city whose hills literally pipe steam because of the boiling water barely contained beneath. water roils, in mini cauldons, out of the earth. it's too hot to bathe at the source of the river, so you creep, near-naked back down the river to spots fed by glacier springs... then you sit and watch the steam rise around you. gray mountains, green grass, purple and yellow posies, and you and your honey. it's really stunning.

we're in norway now. thanks to siw, oslo is alive.

and we're blessed.

and, vince thinks i gave him giardia when i made him drink from a cool, clear icelandic glacier spring. (icelanders look askance at tourists who buy bottled water. "they just bottle it from our tap, which comes from the rivers," they say.) yeah, well, vin and i took a drink from one of these clean glacier springs. and just below our lips--a slug! (that's good for us, too. just ask an icelander. ;j)

enough.
stay tuned...

vince, you EVER gonna write something? ;j

on the other side of the moon

2008-06-09T21:06:00.007-04:00

there's iceland. keflavik. it's 1am. here's what the universe looks like outside our window:

listen. the atlantic, it's tongue pushing against those black rocks. its breath rushing at our window. the earth giving us a little a prayer, right here in this tiny speck of the world. can you hear it? for laura's mom, anne, who has other things to do and see and be, as of 21 may 2008.

edinburgh's weird, pretty, fun.

2008-06-08T08:00:00.013-04:00

it all started on the way here from durham.

see, we left robert and laurie and the wee ones, thinking and feeling all this gooey lovey family stuff. then we’re relaxing at the train station, me falling asleep on vin (getting a cold), then…

we’re on the train. vin discovers strands of windy hair (not ours) on our headrest napkins.

then, i’ve got a cold--raw throat, head like a haggis-stuffed chicken. i sprawl, drooling asleep on the seat. the announcer: “edinburgh! next stop!” vin lauches for the bags. attached to his arse is a string, no, gum (not ours). he drags it across the train car before untangling himself, then we have to scrape up $1.20 so i can use the public loo (before i had "a accident" as june star said). we fall into the hotel. vin tests the ol’ ice and a knife trick on that gum. it works!

we hit the streets before anything else can go wrong.

maybe the girls in the u.k. have it right—take OFF the coat and shoes when temps drop from a gorgeous 68 degrees to a frigid late-night 40. they don't cough or sneeze or blow noses. we (vin and i) share an amontillado after dinner at this little tapas place [la tasca, 9 south charlotte street] with music pouring out the door and windows. but first vince inflicts his homemade joke on our spanish-cum-scottish waiter who has, of course, heard of edgar allen poe. “ever read him?” says vince. “oh yea,” says our waiter. “when i was quite young. something about a crow.” vince forgets to tell the joke. here it is:

Q: what did the raven say when he crossed the road?
A: nevermore.

anyway, our waiter suggests we check out cervantes and neruda. then vin and i walk around in the late night, the castle and the war museum lit up on the hill above us like a reminder of christmas.
[we leave you with a quote from billy bob thorton’s character in the movie we fell asleep to last night, Daddy and Them]: “It was the best time I ever had. It was the worst time I ever had. I believe that was witten by Dick somebody.”

5 days married

2008-06-06T18:52:00.010-04:00

we’ve quickly relearned how to sleep in. 1pm never came so quick.

yesterday (thursday, 5 june), it was sunny in london—again! we spent the day and night walking, trying most of that time to pin point that weird little underground thames walk path. we found it:

after traipsing through michael hoppen gallery’s photo exhibit by wonderkind california girl alex prager and what was supposed to be richard avedon but instead turned out to be that fabu photog who shot that one we've all seen, “american girl in italy.” but i digress. the walk path—think ultra-mini-detroit-to-windsor tunnel meets the catacombs in poe’s “the cask of amontillado”—dank, drippy, echoey—with the occasional bike rider whizzing by. about that trek vin summed it up: “well that’s four hours of my life i’ll never get back.” true enough. he’ll be choosing today and tomorrow’s adventures. if our luck holds, i’ll be able to complain bitterly. ; j.

back to the biking…yesterday the whole city seemed to be running or biking along the thames, including a bunch of people on crack. not the drug. the peekaboo-butt-crack that keeps popping up when the back of the pants refuses to. (an eyeful of this and you’ll never again complain about biker shorts that fit.) eesh.

but even london’s crack habit couldn’t kill our appetite. by 10pm we were starving and cranky and bitching at each other just like married people, and we’d just missed dinner hour with “fabulous” kidney pie wth pea gravy at THE GUN, the little pub tucked into a tiny neighborhood that WHERE [LONDON] magazine calls a “must-visit gastropub in canary wharf.” not only did the place look and smell worth its accolades, a local in the know said that from the cozy terrace one can gossip and eavesdrop loudly and happily and catch the greenwich mean time laser that scans the wharf. we plan to head back there when you visit sometime in august and/or september ; j . maybe we’ll also catch david attenborough’s exhibit—THE ART OF NATURAL HISTORY IN THE AGE OF DISCOVERY. (yes, we’re nerds.) the show unites the work of four artists including leonardo—all of whom shared a passion for the unusual aspects of nature at a time when new species and varieties were turning up just about daily. the exhibit runs until 28 september. fyi.

and in case you’re wondering what madonna’s doing on 9/11, she’s in london with her new show, SWEET AND STICKY. tickets prices...ready?? 198 pounds. that’s almost 400 bucks. material girl, indeed.

we ended the day’s escapades by reading aloud THEM by joyce carol oates. well, i read. it’s really good, so vin stayed with me for a few pages. At this rate we should get to WUTHERING HEIGHTS by, oh, our first anniversary.

==
thursday, 5 june

today under muted skies (ah, england!) we’re heading north to durham to visit friends robert and laurie and their wee ones. seems even a pricey train fare doesn’t secure you a seat, though. we spent the beginning of the three-hour ride keeping company with the fire extinguishers between “carriages” (that’s “compartments” for anyone who dudn’t speak the queen’s english). it could be worse. the kids who “forgot” to pay got seats—next to each other even—got charged something like 700 bucks each for the favor. oh to be seventeen, busted, and in love. (but shuh, two outta three ain’t too bad. last night vin and i got caught with our hands in the candy jar--literally--by hotel staffers. toblerone. big bowls of the stuff at the registration counter. who could resist?)

sun’s peeking out. just brilliant.

[vince here: stac just went to bed. here are some pics from our trip to Durham, and this evening at the Cavins':

Man on train next to Stacy demonstrating untoward behavior:

Vince, admonishing stac to use the wrist strap!!!

Bro pats all around!

Robert & kids:

and that, my friends, is family life in northern England. Tomorrow, a quick tour of Durham, then off to Edinburough, hopefully in an assigned seat on the train...

Vince (&Stac, whose sawin' logs)]

walking in the sun in london

2008-06-04T20:22:00.002-04:00

st. pancras (yes, vince stood there holding what he thought was his pancreas) church (and local hospitals) have cool sculptures in their tiny gardens. we skipped the thames so we could rush to a production of TWELFTH NIGHT at the Open Air Theatre at Regent's Park. it was fun. good night.

now that we've lit the candle...

2008-06-04T11:54:00.009-04:00

we're trying to burn down london town.

actually, we've stopped in london just for a few days before iceland to recoup from the funnest wedding we can remember since...we can't remember--we're still pretty tired.

but we're draggin' our wagons out of bed now that it's 5pm and sunny out. we'll let you know what we find under the thames. (that's where we're headed...we heard we can walk a nasty 1/4 mile under the river to get from one side to the other. how symbolic.)

stac&vin "cavazynski"

a lil detroit in texass

2006-06-27T00:51:00.000-04:00

acl is coming up again. well, in a few months, anyway. man, the stories in the music. they gitcha, don't they just?

secret fantasies

2006-01-17T16:24:00.000-05:00

Eyes Wide Shut. ya seen it? in a beautifully decorated little bauble its "aboutness" if you ask me is human sexuality and attraction in the face of commitment. it's about masks and denial. it's about seeming and being--and lying and truthing. it's about--have you seen "6 Feet Under"? in a beautifully depressing little series of one-two punches by the olding-yet-lovely ma character in its first season (haven't gotten beyond it yet) we discover nearly the same thing: of course, we looooove our partners. sure we'd sure miss em when they're deeeeeeeead, but getting kinky with someone else who noooootices us once in a while, who has all the badabing and none of the strings, that's sure does entice. trouble is, it raises trouble. as it does for the couple in kubrick's EWS.

one apparent difference between the two stories, however, is the cheating mind versus the cheating...ahem...other, more tangible parts of the body.

what about 'fidelio' (psst: fidelity)? what about depravity dressed up like decadence? what about the essence of incredible, incredibly empty sex? what about the distance from here to there, when we're 6 feet under with our eyes wide shut?

do you tell? do you tell your fantasies to your beloved? do you consider the consequences and NOT tell your lover? do you do whatever the fuck you want and lie, even while telling your beloved "bu-bu-but baby, i've never lied to you!" and isn't it difficult to admit to being a liar simply because we don't want to acknowledge the difficult, uncomfortable and, well, slimy truth of it.

what do we tell...and who do we love...and what, really, do we want? how many people do YOU know who live with eyes wide open?

conversation with a slut

2005-12-04T14:58:00.000-05:00

last night i was talking to this slut who likes to read. she's a real slut. and she really likes to read. i asked her, "hey, slut, do you think about words and books and characters and stuff while you're out there slutting and stuff?" and she said, "hell no." i said, "why not? don't they all get mixed up in the same stinky bag?" and she said, "you need a life."

this is true.

i took another swallow and said, "did you ever have trouble with getting the worlds mixed up? do they ever, you know, enter each other?" and she said, "lookit. there's only one thing you gotta know about being a slut: never let em see you think."

this sounds true enough.

i gave it one last college try. "hey, um, so, do you care what people say about you?"

she cocked her head, closed her right eye, and zeroed in on me with her teleccoping blue-shadowed left, and said: "sister. sluts are magical people who can take you magical places. it's fear and snear that keeps the rest of em talking. they give me my name and keep it in business. we're all in it together."

really, i can't argue too much with the logic even if it makes me squirmy.

"aren't you tired of acting dumb? i asked. "don't you fear for your life sometimes? don't you hate that by acting dumb you ruin it for those nonsluts who don't? act dumb, i mean." i really couldn't believe i was being so honest. musta been the bourbon.

"sweetheart," she said, "sweetheart. i don't act dumb. i just don't let them see the wheels churn and the smoke pour out. besides, we all do it. some version of it. we just don't know. now hand me my book. you're boring me."

wait wait

2005-12-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

hesitancy. it can make [insert gerund here] slower, more delicious. or it can rock it off its somewhat questionable base, help push it over, force it flat on its face.

hesitantcy. with its sinister and secret surfeit and withholding, its tease and delay.

in a moment you have life and death, "an occurance at owl creek bride," "the secret life of walter mitty." or you have the fallen diet, just one more scoopful of mayonaise-laiden spinach dip, just one more bowlful of creamy-cold crunchy moosetracks.

hesitancy is not an even-sum game. it is loss or it is gain. it is loss and then it is gain. or it is withholding and withholding--that good idea, up like ash in golden fire. waited on an instant too long. bye-bye. up-up nothing and gone. into the air. like a memory.

machines and animal kingdoms

2005-11-22T11:56:00.000-05:00

no, i did not yet see the new joaquin phoenix-cum-johnny cash flick yet. no, i did not yet brush my teeth today. no, i have no advice. BUT, i did have another wacked dream.

this time a growling gigantic epoxy gray and black behemoth truck-van thing was revving its engine like some sort of four-wheeled beast standing on its hind wheels. it was competing with half a dozen motorcyclists whose tinny sounding engines (like the sounds of fat flying flies amplified close to a thousand times) popped wheelies and rode high and higher up the half pipe wall set up for such displays. as the beast wound down, its front end settled into the ground with a resounding crash-bounce-bounce, while the white pleather-suited and shiny blue-helmetted cyclists winnied their way down in a sea horse frenzie, scooting to and fro, up and down, maniacally, as if when their wheelies died so too would their living breath.

as i woke and tried to pull these notions out of my dream and into the world i imagined seeing the freaky orange cat who actually belongs to the previous owners of our house but who never leaves our back door. i imained that he strolled nice as pie down our hallway settling himself comfortably outside the bedroom door.

any questions?

any idea wtf?

ain't i sumpn? just ain't i?

2005-11-21T23:31:00.000-05:00

is this the sort of mentality it takes to be a famous writer? a famous french male writer? famous frech lover? famous? french? what? where do people get their hubris?

August 15, 1846, letter of that gustave flaubert guy to his wife louise colet:

"
I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to
yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.
"

where art thou edward

2005-11-21T22:19:00.000-05:00

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by edward albee has to be one of the 10 or so best things ever written mostly in the english language. but who can count these things. it's tough to number the sublime.

some "facts" about this play about truth and allusion (among other things):

1
when the play was denied the pulitzer in 1962, two members of the committe resigned and no play received the award.

2
the play's original title was to have been The Exoricism.

3
what's-his-all-american-blue-haired-blond-eyed-face robert redford turned down the film role of nick in the highly acclaimed mike nichols' directed 1966 adaptation. psh. he always was shooting to be the effectual one wudn't he? (george segal took the role. he was smashing, no?)

a few years ago in a basement theatre on the campus of wayne state on a friiiiiigid january night i dragged vin to see albee's Seascape (which did garner him the pulitzer). too little too late is what i said. P.U. is what vin said, who has no respect for the absurd - when it's onstage. put it in the middle of our kitchen, living room or back deck in the middle of a bunch of guests and he's all over that shite, though.

i mean, let's look again at the words of george (the main dude, not segal) shall we...

but first a word on george and martha. george. martha. get it? america's first couple. setting up house. disorderly. disgusting. mythic. ready to tumble. and then george says (at nick, not to him) [remember nick? he's the ultra good looking biology phenom who's primed to take over the department. he's youthful, rational, rarin to go. but also a smidge underhanded, which is why redford turned down the role if you ask me]:

"You take the trouble to construct a civilization . . . to . . . to build a society, based on the principles of . . . of principle . . . you endeavor to make communicable sense out of natural order, morality out of the unnatural disorder of man's mind . . . you make government and art, and realize that they are, must be, both the same . . . you bring things to the saddest of all points . . . the the point where there is something to lose . . . then all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours. I suppose there's justice to it, after all the years. . . . Up yours."

lest you think the whole thing is soliloquy...it's not. it's mostly sick and disturbing and funny as hell. wife picking at husband, husband protecting himself. horribly to-the-bone hurtful. and funny as hell. but i repeat myself.

"And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accmmodate itself to the swing of events, must . . . eventually . . . fall."

these are about the only two outright political things albee says. mostly it's allusion and perry and twist and marriage and infidelity and hide-and-seek with truth. all set inside game-playing. kids with wickedly sharp wit and tongues.

always seemed to me sneaky smart people are scarier than weapon-weilding stupid people. not because weapons don't eviserate. smarts just has truer aim.

thanks for the pain, edward a.

i am an innocent bystander, says the dreamer of her dream

2005-11-21T14:15:00.000-05:00

this morning's dream contained the dream version of my dad and one of my brothers. the dad told the brother that he(the brother)'s got to do better. the brother didn't like this news. he gaffawed, which is male-dream-brother code for cried into the crook of his blue flannel-shirted arm. the brother said something that sounded like: rootbeer!? then he walked away shaking his head not understanding why the dad would want him the brother(the son) to accept or welcome a friendship with the stepmom(she does not make appearance in the dream)'s foresaken love. (in the dream it is understood that, pre-dream, the stepmom has given up a lover in order to marry the dad.) none of this makes any practical dream-or-otherwise sense to the brother. he does not want to attend a birthday party. he does not want to extend a welcoming hand to a foresaken lover who is not even real. he does not understand the dream father's thinking at all. not at all.

what goes on in our heads? how do we become such bystanders in our own lives?

performance art and haircuts

2005-11-20T15:12:00.000-05:00

about noon i woke up shaking off the last moments of my last dream. i was back in my home town at a local arts auditorium/gymnasium. don't know why, just >poof< and i was there. the performance contained some well-sculpted student athletes or artist types. difficult to tell how old anybody was - including the me that was implied in the dream.

there was a particular performer i noticed down there on the court. see, all the seats were above, as with all small towering stadiums. the stage was a court, with mattresses or inflatable barriers for the performers to rebound and ricochet offa when they flew into it or were tossed or body slammed into it by other performers. it hit me all of a sudden that these performers, mostly men, were wearing basketball warmups and jerseys. there were even some basketballs floating from hand to hand, under legs and around backs as dancers pivoted, slid, high jumped and flew over each other. think globetrotters meet martha graham.

it was choreographed, but not. it was messy but beautiful. it was violent but elegant. one guy, the one i had been watching got bumped out of center court where he was holding court. he slammed into the bumper padding and grabbed his shoulder, grimaced. his cornrows barely moved but he was shaking off the shock to his system. or was he acting? one of his mates, glistening white, looked back worried for a second. or was he acting? the scene was turning into something from Rollerball (remember that movie with james caan? a guy ends up a vegetable in the end). before all hell broke loose the whistle blew. half-time. nobody seemed too bad off. the dancers slinked off stage and headed to the locker rooms for their pep talk.

i waited in the lobby so i could stretch my legs. a woman, tall and slinky with sexy nappy hair stuck very close to her head struck up a conversation. i agreed that yes, exhilirating athleticism, yes a suprise to see art mimic b-ball, yes they sure can fly. jordan, nureyev, baryshnikov's got nothin on them.

the performer i'd been eyeing came out from behind the locker room door marked M-E-N and stood close to her, his head bowed into hers. she introduced us. his black skin glistened. the bleach white towel slung around his neck stayed dry. will you be here for a while? he asked me. depends, i said, feeling myself blush. i'm getting my hair cut, you may not recognize me later, i said. oh, in that case, he responded, i may not be around later. he smiled, flirtatious.

he disappeared again behind the locker room door. the woman -- she seemed to me now his sister -- called quietly to him in her husky honeysuckled way. the door stayed closed. she raised an apologetic eyebrow. he was born in a barn, she said. then she smiled, flirting. her teeth were big. flourescent light shining out of the ceiling grates glinted off them. then i woke up.

i said, hey vin. you wake? can i tell you my dream? sure, he said. and i did. and he said, see honey. it's a sign. you don't really want short hair again.

see, i was thinking after my hair cut i'd like to see some ballet - or a pistons versus san antonio game.

funny, until today i had always maintained that i disliked basketball. huh. goes to show what i know.

deer and disgust in southwest texas

2005-08-24T12:22:00.000-04:00

deer look weird in one's backyard. weirder say than in a park or on the side of a highway. i like em here, coolin out and somehow unaffected by the mutha-effin heat that is aaaaaaaaaaaall texan. it's almost disgusting the heat. but it don't stop the critters from doing their thang. i got a virtual menagerie here. fox, hummingbird, butterfly. sheeit, in detroit it was all squirrel, squirrel, rabbit and spider.

oh. i have witnessed belly up cockroaches in the new kitchen. on the floor. right there. just layin there. feet up, takin a dead nap. like i asked em in. like i invited em to tea.

they're really absurd. and shocking. actually, seeing a belly up dead-or-not cockroach on our kitchen floor is almost as shocking as seeing a limb separated from its human being. very disconcerting this. and dirty looking. i don't see dirt. i mean, it's not like pigpen came walkin in all visible fume and whatnot. it's just ... ew, i know about you kinda dirty. i have to work the kinks outta my face after i toss them out of the house. smooth the crease in the brow, work the snear outta the nose/mouth region.

disgust is such a strange immediate thing, ain't it.

and today, so far, only 2 cockroaches. here's to a semi-disgusting day in southwest texas. y'all.

2 days

2005-08-11T22:53:00.000-04:00

and then i leave my home. it is strange and sad and good.

a question

2005-08-04T01:03:00.000-04:00

if i was mornin dew would sunshine be my friend?

if i was mornin dew would sunshine let me be
would it stir up keen desires
and roll against my surfaces
would it kiss dry my arms and legs
and seal something lovely in my memory
while it soaks my moisture and steals my living breath

found

2005-08-03T20:56:00.000-04:00

april 24, 2001

i don't know how to say goodbye

i know this because i am only now seeing the sunrise after my mother's death. 19 years after the nightfall.

because i sometimes catch myself imagining running into the boy i loved when i was 17. then running my hands through his hair.

then running him over with my car. the fuck.

because i have lost friends - sandy, kathy, renee - and daydream of open-mouthed laughs and awkward-at-first crushing

lopsided hugs. i look for them through the sunlight on the street, at parties and on the highway, on vacations, trying on

shoes. i peek around people, stand up and look alert in case any of these old fiends see me in mid conversation

with a new friend. "oh look," she might say, "i think this might be an old friend of mine." and perhaps instead of aligning herself

directly between her new friend and me, like a perfect solar eclipse and think herself small, smaller, smallest, bright, brighter, brightest.

"i look better now than when you knew me, no? i look happier, no? wiser, yes? lovelier even? on a scale of 1 to 10 i am definitely happier and wiser. lovelier, let me think... i feel lovelier. my complexion is good. do i have anything in my teeth? my skin is warm. am i blushing? yes, yes, fuck, i

am definitely blushing. stop blushing. stoppit.

"and how've you been?" as if it was a week ago instead of 6 months, 6

years, closing in on a decade. and i would smile and a thousand clouds would pass behind my

eyes and crease my forehead. i

would smile even more, a more and more crooked smile because i have a tendency sometimes to smile more with right side

so that the cheeks get very apply. like my mother, maybe. but also grabbable, and so i try to stop smiling. then

remember that is part of what stirs up my charm. so charming. so child-like.

so the me i was 20 years ago when my sister's first boyfriend squeezed my cheeks so hard, he left two red yelling mouths where the flat of his thumbs pressed to meet his forefingers. so hard. so

i am remembering. remembering how he beat his sisters. i don't think i ever saw this, only the afterward, the snakes of fear throughout the house, the whispers in the corners and the girls hiding their faces in their luxurious hair. his dazzling smile almost erasing the pain. almost. and later

years later, paula said yes he did. she knew then, but thought time would heal, would change, would...but no. she knew then but did not know, the snake charmer is partial snake, is inscrutible, is unhavable. his allowance as the eldest son in a harem of sisters and her birthright to Equality pulled and push until...she did not ask until she needed to know. and still

i would smile to see you again, ronny. the pressing

thumbs. smile until i remember the red screaming mouths. strange that you gave THIS THIS other you to your sisters who did not play sports, could not. but i, the 12-year-old football fanatic, to me you taught the step-over, the overlap, the rainbow, the one-touch wall pass; and through you i met my first

football legend, your uncle pat, barely older than you, who played for the iranian national team and who was first opened and then dropped by a leering knife in an airport when he tried to break up a fight. in an airport where tempers flair and men lose themselves in transition. shrinking and shrinking

this smile when i remember your sister mary, 10 days, i think, younger than me, her blue-black hair, brown-isis eyes, throaty hoarse laugh. our shared secrets. walking arm and arm with with them i was yellow bright, she reed slender and coffee warm. i would smile until i remembered...always the smile and always what comes after the smile. and still

even then

even then

despite what i know, which hides in the folds

of what i know, i would like to see and to remember.

crash

2005-08-02T23:26:00.000-04:00

my friend marco confuses crush and crash. so, in his honor, i say,

crash the inner critic.

turn on the music, and write from the unconscious...what comes out is surprising...what comes out...comes...

it is your softness that makes us cry
your vastness when you shut your mouth
and open your everything
when you wear a question mark on your face
an exclamation of whole unknowing, peace
where sound and silence swing together
in the double helix we cling to, your longing
opens us, pricks the center
forests explode
wide sun
of know-nothing deep
that freefall shade of hushed stars on fire
above inky penetrating pre-dawn
thicker and lighter than the holy ghost
your vastness when you shut your mouth
and open your everything
begs
nothing
outside the body

desire has no name

to ml, winter 2005, university of detroit

paris at 16

2005-07-26T19:51:00.000-04:00

jennifer the philosopher waitress had marilyn monroe's nose, a special order. she had an affinity for bars, hells angels and at one time black and blue body art. she provided the blue (eyes, mood). her then husband helped with the blackening from time to time. she was young then, she told me while we were packing up her stuff to move from one dingy cool apartment to the next. clothes, furniture, pots and pans in one corner; incense, coasters, kitchen towels in another. burly friends would move the stuff in the former corner; i'd be carrying out a bag full of the stuff from the latter.

"why'd you marry him?"

"i was dumb. and drunk."

"when did you realize it was all wrong?"

"after he put me in a coma in the hospital."

"good thing it wasn't too late."

"you want this fondue pot?"

"nah."

"he was a jerk. and i was-- how about these?"

"what are they?"

coasters with scenes of paris on them."

"lemme see. cool. yeah. you ever go?"

"not yet. someday maybe."

i hoped she would, figured it was 70/30 wouldn't. practicality - and lifelines - have their drawbacks.

she was maybe 30. already she'd lived twice as long and twice as hard as i. she liked to sashay but quick quick, had just quit smoking. i had just gotten back from msu soccer camp, sunburnt, all welter weight excitement. she had been in aa off and on in equal measure for years, could tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. i hoped to play as well as the pros, needed to memorize the periodic table for a test, had experimented with kissing.... nobody but my mother had ever hit me - so long ago i couldn't even remember what it felt like. across the room her marilyn monroe nose smelled candles, the nose that the doctors had given her after it was busted. i imagined her laying quiet under white sheets for days. the bleep bleep of the machines keeping pace with her heart. she was an elixer. and she wanted me to date a prep cook named dan. dan hart. he was really really nice. really nice. and he was in love. i was 16.

dan hart and i had different ideas about the definition of a good thing. dan hart had eyes. i told jokes to quench their heat. i turned my back when they turned to deep ocean. i walked outside in the fresh air, where i could breathe, so i wouldn't say something to embarrass. anyone.

but jenny.

"you need someone like-- who's that guy in sixteen candles?"

"jake?!" oh yes.

"no, not that guy. the one in pretty in pink."

"which one?"

"andrew mccarthy."

"really?!"

"yeah. sensitive. kinda sweet."

huh.

i ended up hanging out with sensitive, kinda sweet john. johnny. where we worked. curly blonding hair, bluing eyes. deaf in one ear. he nearly whispered. quietly lean and muscled like a wood-splitting hermit. dark intimacies barely hinted at by that white-white under tan smirk. he lived with his grandmother and sister. father in prison. he said he did't have any passionate hobbies. well, not many, anyway.

she pursed her lips.

one night at work hinting turned rock solid. in front of the cookstaff with their faces in their sleeves. i turned open palm fluid motion to him.

S M A C K

platter and plates still balanced in the opposite hand. my hand, my face, the space he located, all on fire. stinging hot.

his blue eyes flattened on a road. "what--?"

i heard myself say it out loud. "respect gets you farther." what stung more? i'm not sure but the heat. i still remember.

no hobbies. no mother. because of his father.

after that our eyes cooled. they turned away more often than they stayed.

i saw a woman who resembled his grandmother punching buttons on a cash register. almost 16 years after we met.

"do you have a grandson named john, johnny?"

"yes," body and face a giant smile.

she showed me photos of his step-kids.

"he got married to a divorcee a few years ago. he's happy," she said.

"picked up a few hobbies what with kids, i bet."

"oh he sure has." she laughed through smoker's cough.

jenny got married quite a while ago, too. to a biker named redd.

older, bolder, bald, gray beard, sweet, the waitstaff told me when i asked... they still see her from time to time.

"he treat her good?" i ask.

"oh, he's all heart," they extol.

chaps, do rags and all. that's good. i say. real good.

gotta put my paris coasters in my give-away corner tonight. maybe my niece could use em....

from here to $31.21

2005-07-24T01:38:00.000-04:00

6-14-97

the date on the receipt for the shoes i got for christine and todd's wedding. studio roma brand. back before i broke the mythic $28,000 per annum income. they cost, according to the bill, $31.21, with "accessories" and tax, at 11:21am. they do this criss-cross thing at the instep, and the heel is a not too innocent, not too naughty 2-3/4 inches. sling back, mildly pointed toe. they show off the arch nicely. creme with slight sheen. the dress i borrowed from swa. deceptively simple. an elegant thing that hung and clung to the calf. a peach-or-beige bordering on apricot silk. silk on skin, same color, turning slight sensation of naked into Naked, especially in kissy breezes. the undergarments were a small concern - not too much to choose from and not willing to spend the dough or the time searching. so, digging into my own stash of possible solutions, i decided - less is more.

todd's dad approached me on the steps of the church.

"you are marvelous in that dress. really marvelous."

i doublechecked with my boyfriend. "hey, am i all loose or hussy in this getup?" he raised an eyebrow, "no," a wink of a smile, lips to my shoulder.

then to christine, who was beginning to glow under the summer sun and the scratchy princess taffeta. "oh, honey, you're beautiful. you're givin all the guys a thrill when you stand in the sun. let's get married..."

it was a sexy dress.

the shoes sit on my desk atop their box tonight. 7-24-05. no sign of festival dancing with royal oak's hari krishnas. no sign of railroad crossing and picture taking on the tracks. no sign of blisters. no sign of drunken stumbling. no sign of panty hose run and disrobing. no sign of christine's father's slurred advice:

"never go to bed angry."

"and get plenty of sex," i heard from somewhere behind him. christine's mom strolled over, speaking in authoratative tones to the bar staff. mr. snyder padded her ass. she never blinked, kept talking.

boyfriend's stomach ache saw us to the door early. the shoes on my desk show no sign of the slow walk to the car through fragrant orange. no sign of the slow tender ministrations offered in the dark. no sign of the following years, the perfectly too loud music through their cardboard box walls, the smells of quick dinners and dirty soccer clothes at the bottom of the closet. the giggles passing from doorway to bed. the tense silences from bed to doorway. no sign of the dozen or so weddings they tried out for but did not attend. no sign of the surgery to correct the broken tarsels etcetera. no sign of his leaving, of mine.

they sit, as if nothing in the world has ever happened. as if anything or everything can.

a lot can happen to $31.21.

what does it say

2005-07-12T20:11:00.000-04:00

about a person if s/he dresses skimpiest when s/he's alone...

?

do most people

2005-07-12T20:04:00.000-04:00

have two doctors appointments and two dinner dates on the same day?

why do i? how do we do what we do?

how do we accomplish it - and how does everything come so...uniquely...together (oh yes and apart) for each of us?

how d o e s it all stitch itself?

teller without penn.the action in precision

2005-07-12T20:02:00.000-04:00

so i'm listening to penn, the quieter part of penn and teller.

and i'm typing a note in email. i type exACTly. you know, to emphaize the voice inflection when you REALLY mean what the hell it is you're saying.

ex act ly.

eghz a c t lee.

you know, like that.

and well, the spellcheck decided that i din't mean what i typed and h o w i typed it. so the spellcheck

decided

to
correct me.

yeah.

and well, i gave the machine a mental mutherfucker - you know, all thought and no breath. like that. and i retyped

e

x

A

C

T

l

y

and it stayed. this time.

so what i realize is that there is action in precision. e-x-a-c-t-l-y. it's so decisive. so er-er-er angular and yet so...straight at the same time.

anyway, penn was telling me a story (i'm still befuddled by the irony), helping me to discover the instruction, the audible melody, usually hidden so often and so softly in silence.

so i was discovering also the action in exactly. and listening from the kitchen, i was discovoring a teensy tinesy spider on the parchment paper right next to a dark chocolate covered coffee bean (sidetrack #1: through a series of unfortunate and necessary steps a few days ago i ended up at a / the neighborhood coffee joint. and i'm talkin to peter the proprietor while i got one gigantic thingie of water in one arm and a bag filled with a torpedo-sized thingie in the other (obviously a loaf of bread.) anyway, peter's like, so can i getcha anything? and i'm like...uh...can't say i'm really hungry or thirsty thereaaaah pete. so i bought an ounce of................yes, dark chocolate covered coffee beans.

i thought i'd hate them and could give them all away. a little suprise for the next coupla people i'd meet. and all for a buck. ! >;D

anyway, i didn't hate them.

obviously. i was in the kitchen discovering wild kingdom on my countertop after handdipping a bunch of beans i found in my freezer... 'member?
end of sidetrack#1)

so i'm seeing the little mutha and i'm thinking, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeere oh where did you just step huh?

and i'm thinking

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan...!

cuz i really wanna just throw out all the chocolate for having little buggy feet (paws? claws? ?) all over it.

but then.

i remembered how there's so much poison/cure boon/bane love/hate lovely/ugly seemingly irrational matings of pro and con going on. with the seed, the future and past, fruit/sin desire/dowfall keep your friends close but your enemies closer. you get me? the mirror. the opposite pole. the ying/yang, the ... you get it...

and i realize the funny thing here is not just that i look like i love lucy's lucille ball when she was in the chocolate factory at the assembly line (cuz you gotta know, i was only mad at that little spiderfuck because i wanted to shovel all those little develish choco-pellets lathered in luscious daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark choooooooooooooooooooocolate), is that i realized that in an instant in my head the tricky mysterious creepy possibly poisonous dirty disgusting tinyspidey was changed into a frolicksome bouncy ... pet.

because i wanted the chocolate more than i was willing to be disgusted.

dingdoingplingplonghy spider or no, i was going to live in spectacular denial.

(beginning of sidetrack #2) and i realized that the same antics i pull and reason that my friends should forgive me anyway for are the same things thant send me stammering and pouting when they do their own versions.

and that i do all kinds of stuff that i 'forget' are part of my personality. justifications. make em. immaturity. got it. power maneuverings. do em. cold wars. been known to practice em. as a matter of fact, i'm living the vestiges of a 'you!you!you! yelling match right now. of course, i reason, i'm not the only one at fault and there's only so much you can do. but it's hard to listen when someone wants to beat you up and not discuss his/her own failure to communicate. and while i yell across the ravine i feel my insides shake and fold into themselves for protection. and now i wait, uncomfortable, for the discussion to rise out of the rubble.

the epiphany isn't so rare. we just, i think, miss them all the time. (end of sidetrack #2)

i also discovered in the middle of the situation i was having with the mini monster in my ketchen and my gluttonous appetite for the beans he loped and peed and laid all kinds of eggs all over, that i got bumped from meeting a friend tonight.

in the middle of her harrangued kinda stressed explanation of why she was blowing me off, i realized

b i n g

i'm gettin dumped.

and for a second i don't know what she said. i was hearing blah blah blah blah and my mind was set-stuck like the fist face you see when someone really really has her/his mind made up and you are truly really deeply pissing him/her off by continuing to be alive considering yr present state of being so wrong.

and well, i paid attention to the stress in her voice and realized she wasn't trying to get rid of me so much as apologize while getting rid of me.

and hey, things come up.

as a matter of fact, i had absolutely no leg to stand on b/c YESterday i did the SAME damn thing to a friend of mine.

so.

i put my stones down.

and i said, hey, grace, s'okay. find a nice gift and jus gimme a call when you find the time before i split. she could hear my smile and her harrycarry story slowed and she said okay and the words were wearing a dress. a red dress. i could see her again, her big beautiful brown hair growing browner, and her kewpie doll eyes glistening with health and her marilyn monroe/sandra dee smile.

ok stace. great. i'm really really sorry.

and i realized right then that not only is it way cooler to live ratcheted down to first or second gear when i don't undertand or am taking offence to a situation, but it also feels nicer. it smooths itself out around the edges naturally.

slowing down is good in times of indecision.
that's what i learned.

i also learned that i just might still pull an i love lucy mouthful. and i just might OFFER you one too.

synchronicity

2005-07-06T23:55:00.000-04:00

it all fits.

somehow.

FEELIN HOT HOT HOT

2005-06-30T01:10:00.000-04:00

it's been about 100 degrees around here for a week straight.

i almost got mugged at gunpoint tonight.

what's worse?

actually, when the party goers started going (home) after the fireworks, anne's parents were part of the first flight. bam. robbed. i was probably climbing down from the roof at that point. totally oblivious to the detroit that keeps all the rumors alive. detroit where the ... how does the t-shirt read? ... where the weak are killed and eaten.

yeah.

it's like the trash can through the window in DO THE RIGHT THING. what the fricken frack IS the right thing? it's almost too hard for people to think straight enough to do the right thing.

why is that?

why are punkass teenagers snagging guns and holding sway over hardworking people? people's whose daughters moved into a still grungy but hanging on neighborhood three weeks ago? people whose daughters are really happy to be living in the city and giving back to the people and training community members in AIDS and HIV awareness?

what is this shit.

really.

a friend tonight was telling me about his plight in another nearby neighborhood. a neighborhood choked by an incinerator (sp?) that spews the burned wreckage of any kind of trash it gets (human waste included)and whose teenagers taunt stranger cars as they roll slowly by...

y o u're in the h o o d now, whatcha g o n n a do?

wearing race like armor. class warfare in sneakers and six-pack abs. there is no battleline. it's the community members versus ... other community members.

and the friend says, 'so when i was gone the neighborhood kids took my trashcan - the one my ex-wife painted a big green peace sign on - and stuck it in the middle of the street with a half stick of dynamite and blew it to smithereens.'

how do you/they/we DO THE RIGHT THING - ain't no leaders - kids, elders, indian chiefs - showin us how. WILL THE REAL LEADERS PLEASE STAND UP?!

it's too damn hot in detroit.

it's too damn hot everywhere.

did you hear the one...

2005-06-29T18:27:00.000-04:00

so tomorrow's my last day at work and today i had off, so i go over to ellen's house...

me: what'd you have for lunch today?
ellen: pop-tarts.
me: i wish they'd make a flax seed pop-tart.
ellen: then it'd be called a poop-tart.

no joke.

a little light reading:

2005-06-28T23:58:00.000-04:00

why does sharing feel so damn good? and why are the saddest stories bearable only b/c of the jokes swaddled inside? http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/05/08/lamott_mother/print.html

ruffles - the new spanish fly

2005-06-27T23:02:00.000-04:00

i dated this guy for a minute back in the day who used to wag his eyebrows and go, whattya wanna do? i know what we ken do... and he'd waggle his eyebrows some more.

my stomach flopped there was so little charm in it.

i mean, don't get me wrong. he was cuuuuuuute. and smart. but where had his innocence gone? he had no idea yet the gifts he had to offer. because of his style i wanted ice cream sundaes or potato chips in direct proportion to what he wanted - disclothes'd sweaty things. things perfect for l a t e r but not for then, not for us.

the swaggering. the bedroom eyes. the heat of june. i dragged him to nature preserves to walk and talk; he dragged me to dark neighborhood parks. i dragged him to peopled places to investigate, to explore, to wander; he dragged me to dark neighborhood parks.

youth.

now, more than what? 15 years later, when i hear the phrase, whattya wanna do? the smirk eats up my face. i think of rob, his lanky frame, his sexed-up blue eyes and excellent pouty lips. then i say, i know what we ken do...

then, hand in hand we go the the important room. where all the food lives. chips. the perfect aphrodesiac.

it's a super hero kind of thing

2005-06-27T22:01:00.000-04:00

all the marvel comic rip-off movies must be getting to me...

it's been a day and night of nigh-what-ifs... i feel a bit like clark kent watching superman's life unfold...or is that the other way around? (and what was wonder woman's mortal name? i forgot.)

situations at work in medias res, part of me interested, part disinterested. an observer witholding and yet somehow unable to withhold judgement. it's like i'm suspended, moving away while still part, the child leaving the mother; foreign to the situation, an innocent bystander with a wallop of an opinion in reserve. and that friend's ex i mentioned... he called me. he wants more... my action hero intuition pricked, my ears raised. something inside my head, near the back, shifts.

hm.

an interesting development it telegraphs to the rest of my brain.

the question sits unasked. why?

it sits and it sits, gaining bodyweight, like the taking steroids by osmosis.

whatever happens i won't be part of it. not at work, not after hours between my friend and her old flame. they're no longer my experiences to be having. i'll intuit happenings, or they will be told to me, or they will be kept from me, or they won't happen at all. but the workworld will continue. this this extra-curricular life that the ex- and my friend won't be telling the wife... not mine to share. i'm clark, i'm superman, i'm...just enough out of range to view from a distance. arms folded b/c to reach out is just too much.

i guess it makes sense that in the midst of leaving one world and entering a new, unknown one we gain/sense the superhero perspective, but who knew? it makes our human situations that much more extraordinary and banal. they are at once exciting and strange and powerfully human and untouchable. humanity. you can't make this stuff up.

driveby truckers

2005-06-27T09:43:00.000-04:00

this morning i got a honkhonk from a trucker with a clean, smut-free rig. i caught myself thinking 'what's the distance between this honk and what eventually happened to thelma and louise?' turns out about 5 miles and the roof of my car. couldn't see inside the rig b/c my roof blocked my vision... and i got off the highway about 5 miles after my friend's horny hello. as i exited, the fella (i imagine it was a fella anyway) was in my rearview. by the first red light on the service drive i was smiling, forgetful of what coulda been and thankful for what is. sometimes it's our perspective that turns the screwy into the sublime.

a word on leaving

2005-06-24T19:23:00.000-04:00

whoa.

leaving is in a strange way like exploding. one instant you are here. in the next you are moving away - speeding away and apart and coming together in slow motion. you are no longer here. you are... t r a v e l i n g . you are, you feel, different. you = transition. you feel sortof...see-through. skin, face, arms, your eyes even, nearly there, nearly not there. your hands. the fingers clasp, unfold, clasp, unfold. they feel each other and yet...your brain is moving away from center. outside of comfort. taking your heart, lungs, memory, you, away away. and so your skin and fingers move too. move differently. yours, not yours, not really. semi-present. semi-understandable.

so you hold them there. and you look at them. through your fingers you see your pants. hold them up: through your fingers you see tree leaves flickering in the sun and wind. turn them over. hands you've seen what? a hundred million times? which line is your lifeline? you look in the dictionary. lifeline. there is a picture. still you don't understand lifeline. lifeline. it's moving away from comfort. moving becomes important in this way. it becomes life. it becomes. and comes. and ... comes...

exes and tex-mexes

2005-06-24T00:31:00.000-04:00

had a 'date' last night with a friend and her ex-boyfriend from college. they were together for four years and haven't seen each other for the last eight-ish. weird scene. fun, but weird. i just kept running into the guy in the last few months and my friend got curious, so i set up a meeting with the dude to thank him for some advice he gave (some professions are truly outrageous in what they can expect in return for 'counsel')... anyway, reminds me of my own past loves.

one was too short-lived and far too far away ago to have even a rekindling of friendship or retouching of lives or whatever last night was for these two former lovers. for me and t-, we were young lovers. 17 and 17 and 17...

*dang*

sums up 17 pretty well eh...

and there was another. oh we devoured each other fantastically. what else can be said about 28 and 29? wall-crumbling fence-exploding years those.

and...what about...my Other, my other half for so long... my growing up lover. even after, he stayed with me for years in my dreams, my emotional guage. i almost saw him recently...

but no.

most likely close is what we'll have forever. no overdressed but not too overdressed late night martinis between laughs and stories of not-much after an eight year absence. no sloppy i'm sorries from him to me. no need for things like that, it wasn't like that for us. our time was...weightier...

then again, i shouldn't say what other lovers' loves were or weren't like. but ours...it was...e v e r y thing. it was our age our DNA. it was the mingling of blood. no, for us there will be no slow lingering or fingers fingers like those i saw last night - in a parking lot next to the spic-and-span explorer after the reunion. he's married now too. but married in a very different way maybe than my friend's ex. married in the soul. married. deep loving. deep being. but no room for the surprise grieving. for what's past. is it ever really past...? perhaps it all does pass...

shoo. or not. he just isn't interested in dredging up what was by touching our presents...our presence...

we always were different.

i mean, hey, i got my own next chaper even if it ain't in the cards, the late-night wow-wee how you be martini. i already had one or two too many parking lot goodbyes. tex-mex is on my schedule...and like my dad says about me and vin: 'you guys are a fitting pair : a coupla knuckeheads.' yo. word to your mama - or your ex.

open market

2005-06-20T23:19:00.000-04:00

in the relatively open market of swaggering, teetering, sauntering, running bodies in royal oak at dusk today, i saw a girl with her father. unconscious, uninterested in who was seeing them, the two were walking hand-in-hand. she, about 12. he, 40-something. his yellow izod-clad belly hung lazily over his beltline. his hair unruly and lounging on his collar. the father mullet. her stringy brown hair clumped up unapologetically, her toes stretching in horrible nike-style flip-flops. bad blue skirt. totally in love. telling a story. they passed overdressed mid-lifers in mid-panic attack, sexy underdressed flaunters in mid-pout, semi-stylish middle-class mid-west americans. a site for sore eyes. such ease. such protection.

i watched them while my brain ticked back to someone my brother told me about yesterday. mildred. "i think she called me the other day," i said. "but i'm not sure - she never called me before. the connection broke and she never called back."

mildred. a beautiful girl who always, even at four years, six years, and recently at 20-something, looked to me a little more than a little overwhelmed. a girl hanging on. tough and needy. quiet quiet and on the verge. waiting for something big - or at least bigger. so sweet and so...taken. terribly taken. in. up. maybe for granted. by sixteen she became a mother. not too much longer a mother again. a beautiful and nearly unclaimed child-mother. where and with whom did she take her unconscious walks?

my brother said, "i'm tired, can't help her again. too many times crying wolf." seems mildred has been spending time with someone she would be wise not to be spending time with. the first sign came when mildred's windows got broken. the second involved a rather vicious dog. hard to know when she'll learn her lesson. and what lesson is she looking for in the lesson?

as the girl and he father, in-step with each other, passed my bench, it fell on my head: the difference: i'd bet mildred didn't have too many walks hand-in-hand with her father. not very much hand-in-hand at all. not very much ease. no protection. maybe she never demanded it. maybe it was never offered. somehow, though, she weighs in her own terms the worth of it all.

i guess no matter the open market, you'll give up with very little inducement what you have when you've never been shown the value.

The Fear

2005-06-07T11:06:00.000-04:00

"i started to notice it when i bought the house."
"what, The Fear?"
"yeah, The Fear."

this is a true excerpt from a recent conversation i overheard during dinner a few nights ago. friends were talking about the settling in of The Fear, that strange and stiffening thing that cages your dreams and puts cement boots on your desire.

talk moved to "what ifs"... what if i could get that job i want, what if my boss treated me the way s/he used to... what if i just coast for another year or two -- or three... what if i magically become happy again without any effort...

what if

what if

what if

what if i told you it takes the same amount of emotional energy and physical toil to remain as it does to change. why, then, do we think that the hardest thing to do is move. move your thoughts, move youself out of comfort. like a battered wife, sometimes it seems easier to take the pain of staying, of knowing the ritual, of counting 1-2-3 until the next expected thing comes...next.

but how dangerous. how exciting. how motIvating to stretch.

to hurt and feel good in entirely different ways.

to meet ouselves outside of our element.

to challenge our capacities. our limits. our needs.

to expaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.

what if you slink smooch stagger-step your way toward something. crawl around in the dirty gray areas. breathe other air.

scary? yep. worth it. yep. but that's just me. it's hard work being a real human being.

memory is sewn

2005-05-30T16:50:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-29T00:22:00.000-04:00

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?"

2005-05-28T13:19:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-19T22:36:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-17T01:46:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-16T01:30:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-13T23:53:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-13T00:15:00.000-04:00

for today

fhew

just another ordinary top 10

2005-05-12T00:33:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-11T00:45:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-10T00:53:00.000-04:00

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"

2005-05-04T00:34:00.000-04:00

who in the hell turned this phrase into something baaaaaad?

mother's day

2005-04-28T22:55:00.000-04:00

today's my ma's birthday. she was born 72 years ago. she passed through 24-and-a-smidge years ago. seems in some ways like yesterday. hard to believe that anyone will be as important to me again. then i consider my yet-unborn children. we'll see...

i got this friend see

2005-04-28T00:22:00.000-04:00

who's leavin town see. leavin the country see. leavin me see.

leavin is a wacky business. it's as unreal as it is real. leaving is an action, a state, a mindset, a thing that is as well as a thing that is not. leaving puts you in two places at the same time and also nowhere, in flux. it is the eternal present. it is a mix-up, an always, possibly maybe as bjork whinesings. it is a smile that tastes tears. it is waiting, it almost never was, it may never be. it is irrationality. total lack of linearity. no ricochet. no absolute. it is faith. it is in transit. it is has been wrapped around will be, the cling for dear life in a rather directed free fall into tabala rasa white space.

it is he. leaving me. the we that was will be something else entirely. would it be so if we had constructed space into something other than utterly foreign land -- each of its miles squashed next to each other, piled on top of each other like impossible mountain, sprawling ocean, crawling desert?

hard to say at the moment. i just know i'll miss him.

today

2005-04-27T10:13:00.000-04:00

ooooooo if i hadda dartboard i'd start with the pictures of war mongers and work my way down to my next door neighbor who calls his son shit-eatin awful names.

modern man

2005-04-25T23:35:00.000-04:00

if i were a man, what kind of man would i be.

i might be medium-tall with eyes. hard to tell what color. (all my brothers: brown or green. all my sisters: blue or hazel.) i would be a reader. and selectively athletic, quick and full of stamina. but this is the how not the what.

i would be the kind of man who looks people in the eye. i would try to refrain from slamming other lesser kids into lockers and later, i'd pay attention not to puff up to protect my ego. a real stud knows plain ol self-confidence is the best pheromone. laughing at self is a bonus; it adds inches to anything worth adding inches to >>wink<<. and i should hope i'd pay attention to my grooming. nails are important: skanky dirt in crevices...bad bad news. i would not be obsessed with balding; if or when it happens i'll handle it. but not at first. baby steps with that shit.

i'd get a little paunch at 40, 45. not a tire. a self-respecting paunch. 5 pounds. 10 max. i'll justify it by figurin i got the equivalent to my own personal set of d cups within reach at all times (that's about what my girlfriend's weigh anyway) - just a little lower on me and with some haywire distribution.

till then, i'd be very careful not to look too sloppy. i might not have the split calves and six pack of my youth but i do alright. feeling good in general helps.

i don't subscribe to any religion. grew out of it. besides, i'm too linear and rational for it, looking to prove my own way. but spirituality and self-awareness don't have to end in amen. i believe in the power of language and life example to affect change. i believe in the ultimate power of love. i've been called a good man, but i want to die a great man. it's difficult because it means remaining vigilant to my own bad habits, all the vices we let slide because we can. i wouldn't admit it often, i've broken a lot of rules, those i'd still break are made by men. those i'd rethink are made by women. probably mothers looking out to protect the rest of us good-fer-nuthins. and crazy as it sounds, i think i actually did learn almost everything i need to know by the time i was five. there are three golden rules besides the one golden rule: nude is better. friends forever. if you have to pay to get it, it may not be worth gettin. that last one has made me into a generous guy; it always comes back to me. don't get me wrong, though: mess with what's mine, you'll regret it. i didn't learn how to street fight for nuthin. i won't start it but if i have to, i'll finish it.

i have a hard time letting you have the last word, even if it means i sleep on the couch. a man's gotta swallow his pride from time to time but not at the expense of his ideals. somehow, though, i never sleep on the couch anymore. in the end, i'd rather be loved than right. it's been a hard lesson. and it's tough to say, anyway, how long right lasts. it changes on a dime or in a look.

manhood is hard to come by. but when you do it right, it awwwright. i thank my ma mostly. my dad, he provided the lines, i guess. i just had to color outside of em to find myself.

and yeah, i dabble with guitar. not because of the chics anymore. i just like it. it soothes and challenges me. it's like building a fire. i guess that's when i really feel like a man. sounds funny, but it's true. knowing i made that stupid roaring campfire. nothing like it. except maybe falling asleep with my baby. she loves me. plus, if my ma were alive, she'd dig her. necessary bonus.

turning japanese

2005-04-24T14:33:00.000-04:00

how to make the sun rise*:

imagine a ladder-like thing small enough to fit in a 1-inch by 1-inch square of parchment (or paper--we're a modern society). black ink preferable. touch black tip to paper. stroke down. left side of ladder complete. stray about one half inch to your right. imagine the parallel line. same pen, stroke down. other ladder leg complete. to command a ladder, you must show its rungs. three rungs are enough: one bottomish: stroke. one middling: stroke. double check: both parallel parallel? the uppermost rung, reaching skyward on the left, slowly constant, rising rising. there. the sun.

now for rise: to the right of the sun, begin with a cross, how you imagine it, golgothic singular. talling and thin. pen to paper, make. now: a smidge up from the base, east to west, parallel with cross arms, your stroke. now, from the center of the cross where the trunk and arms are bound: down left, 45 degrees: swoop aaaaaaand barely up. not snapping up, but hesitating, a skirt hem stirring in a slow turn. a slight breeze. a slighter breeze. pen to center again. from the criss-cross, this time down right: 45 degrees, down down, past the east to west stroke at the foot, further, aaaaaaand a touch upward. not Up exactly. not a Line exactly, but a spin on a heel, a heavier breeze, one that lifts long heavy hair off the face, and up. rise.

sun rise. sunrise. the land of the rising sun.

*from the japanese

love

2005-04-24T00:05:00.000-04:00

love is not what we think it is. and yet it is. it does not look as we expect it to look. and then it does. it does not do cartwheels for us so we kick it to the curb. shut up love, you suck we say. it crawls back to us but we don't see it crawl. we only see it standing in our way, dirty from the gutter and we wonder why it is so smelly and why is its shirt ripped. love, you are sort of dumb we say. get out of the way. and it refuses to cry in front of us. it stands there love. it stands there and looks at us until we turn right left. what are you looking at? stop looking at me that way. i won't stand for it. and love looks and love looks and love says nothing. or maybe it says stop being stupid. and so we smack love. we call it names and we say love, you are not love. you are dumb and by the way you are ugly too and i hate myself-- i mean i hate you. and love opens its arms but we don't see it until we're ready. love waits for us to look up. sometimes we don't look up. and love loses patience. (it's love not fantasy.) love has bills to pay and sleep to get and it gets so tired waiting for us to catch up and understand. and then we look up w a i t l o v e w a i t. and it slows its pace and picks up its left arm, stretches it back a little with its head bowed and waits for us to catch up and swing in beside its warm gate, left right left in unison.

till next time anyway.

thirsting and daydreaming

2005-04-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

that's how i spend most of my days.
every once in a while i focus. hard. like laser.

and you?

something jen said

2005-04-21T01:12:00.000-04:00

before i go to bed, something nice. i've heard too much of war today. 2-year-old women, 75-year-old girls, raped at unprecedented numbers in the congo. i can't take it. i can't take it. i can't take it.

but something jen said.

it reminds me of a poem a sculpture laid on us in a circle in a small room years ago. five years ago? maybe five years ago. in ypsilanti, michigan. in koho's old raggedy apartment. i brought town club pop. he brought bright eyes. new eyes. very very old eyes. soren was his name. soren the scupture. soren who won the lottery to come to the u.s. soren who wanted to paint and sculpt and forget that he had to live in this place to save his family. we didn't have shoes on. i told him, give a poem, soren. tell a story. c'mon. we're all doing it. now you. yeah yeah everybody said with smiles and laughs. sooooren they whined and laughed into their soda pop or wine glasses.

he was shy. he slouched against the wall like my elder sister's first boyfriend ronny. long arabic curls, brooding ronny. soren didn't brood. he...he...soren says my english is awful.

we'll help you i insist. so he begins by looking at my foot. i tuck it under me, make it invisible.

tell me he says.
if i were to catch you and kiss the
what is the word for soul? he asks.
soul we say.
no he says, the part of the foot the sole. sole we say.
no no he says my english is so terrible. i mean the center.
heart i tell him. do you mean heart?
yes he says. his eyes flash at mine. they bump against each other. i tuck mine in, make them littler, invisible. he looks down. he is shy.
i go again he says.

tell me he says
if i were to capture you and kiss the heart
of your foot
tell me
would you limp to save
my kiss

all night diner

2005-04-21T00:18:00.000-04:00

tonight i took a friend to our first-ever detroit music awards.

enough about that.

by the end of the night a second and third friend had joined and i'd had two glasses of wine and no dinner.

enough about that.

when i was putting my coat on, in the middle of saying something very important (ha) over the din and the table to one friend, i got the sneaking suspicion the table behind me was laughing at something i had done. oh yes.

i had whapped a nice, seated, older gent right over the head with my spongy-squeezy-stretchy maroon scarf. imagine old man scrotum. that's what ellen calls it. (the scarf, not the gent.) anyway, if i were another woman in another situation, i could have been flirting or it could have been a feathery boa. but no. it was me. i was in mad story-telling conversation and i had created a tiny disaster, per usual, to embarrass myself and an old dude at the same time -- and end up having 8 to 10 people laughing where they used to be talking. "an adorable disaster" according to marco. yeah well. a mess anyway.

ended up i put my forehead on his arm and cracking up in apology. when i recovered, caught all the comments, took all the necessary ribs, i...yes...went back to the story while i tried to get my arm into the coat and...yuhuh...did it again.

this gave me pause. who doesthis kind of thing on a regular basis? anyway, there's nothing i can do. it follows me or, i find it. the answer was: get home before something else could happen.... get home and g e t me some d i n n e r.

threw some clothes in the wash and thought what i heard through the heating grates from the basement madly sloshing around were the jeans and t-shirts...turned out actually to be the eggs i put on the stove, right down the hallway, 14 minutes before. caught just in time. there was still some water leaping to save its own life, up and over the pot rim.

at any rate, got a helluva good-lookin cracked egg just waiting for me to devour. mm dinner. sometimes eating is a whole night's experience. knowwhatimean?

gettin some

2005-04-20T02:19:00.000-04:00

gettin some sleep would be good. but first a note about the coolest bumper sticker i've seen in a long time. spotted on a saab 93 this afternoon in...well, it doesn't really matter where. the point is the sticker:

if you're not appalled
you haven't been paying attention

how on is that?!
yeah. white hot bright on.

no, you know what, it does matter where. it makes the sticker that much better.

texas.

truth is stranger than fiction. sometimes. usually when it's really bad. this time, however, we got lucky. it's when it's really good.

carsick but so what

2005-04-19T01:08:00.000-04:00

got a headache from car sickness. don't know when i started getting it regularly, but i think it's one of those "old age" things that creep up and kick you square in the dingding. i used to be able to read hanging upsidedown from the car roof at 90 miles an hour around hairpin turns. now, however, ask me a question from the back seat and have me turn my head too fast from passenger window toward driver side and you're risking an issue of vomitous koleidescopes. what the hell happens to youth?

austin is weird. and the bumper stickers admit to as much. they DESIRE as much. "keep austin weird" they proclaim. cool eh? they like their dizziness. their befuddledness. their weirdness in the head is not pain. it's pleasure. too bad ann richards ain't in the picture no more. i have a feeling austin liked her.

i got a really nice complement (sp?) today from the prof i just finished my first intensive graduate seminar with. (has america decided yet if we can end sentnces with prepositions?) what a great class. and what great classmates. "You have a great deal to offer the profession of English studies," she says, "as well as the world of readers to whom you choose to write." isn't that great? her style had a lot to do with the quality of work coming out of us, i think. something about being progressive in a situation where you can be so much less. it's inspiring. it's like greta erlich wrote: "the world constantly invites us to be what we are." thinking about this, and taking my prof at her word, i discover regularly that this place (read: this care-starved planet) could really really use my assistance and my commitment.

i tell you, the longer i live the more i like wisening up. not losing my youth exactly...just gaining strength. appreciation. it's as deep and beautiful as a tiny ocean. and it's weird too. weird and wild enough to steep inside of once you find it. sortof like austin. and it's soothing enough, i think, even to get rid of this carsick headache.

supposed to

2005-04-17T21:40:00.000-04:00

supposed to sit here in a chicago airport. waiting. supposed to pretend i can’t hear the crappy tv. god-awful night-time “news” programming. supposed to imagine i’m not freezing under forced air. (why can’t we open windows in this country?) supposed to ignore the cinnabons floating from over there to over here, where my nose is. normally i don’t even like those things, but somehow feeling a prisoner in a place makes you a prisoner to all of its assailants as well.

like in-flight to this place.

detroit to chicago is usually whisper quick. not tonight. i got stuck in the seat smashed between two characters. window side: a psychiatrist named mo. (“like moses, not like jesus,” he noted.) huh? on aisle side was no-name. i had a hard time with him because he showed up at all and booted me out of my preferred seat into the one next to mo (“like moses, not like jesus”).

supposed to be, seems to me, when someone has a pen in one hand and a packet of reading material in the other, her eyes downcast and concentration creasing the corners of her eyes, seems to me you’re supposed to assume she’s busy. and seems to me you’re suppose to, therefore, leave her... well...alone.

but no. take mo. mo, who kinda looked like a paperclip with a suit on – all hunkering and twisting skinny angles, and kinda acted like a dude with a very serious compulsion to dig through his bag. over and over and over again. and who had another compulsion to talk. quietly, barely audibly as a matter of fact, incessantly. unfortunately. to me.

interruption:
there is a smooth-faced, good-looking man sitting down the aisle from me in the airport. at the chicago-to-tulsa gate. he’s looking this way and it’s strange. as i type i’m facing him. people behave. do we notice how?

back to mo and no-name in the airplane on the way to this place:
chicago was sloooooooow in coming’s all i’ll say. then neighbor number two, who shared only a “hello” with me when he stole my preferred seat, told me “good luck with [insert topic one mo drilled me about] and [insert topic two mo drilled me about]. and have a good time in [insert eventual destination mo drilled me about].”

eavesdropper!

now kirsty alley is on tv... (“fat alley” says the tabloid tv show making fun of what the other tabloids call her. mind you, the topic of this tabloid news program is that exactly that same topic.) someone kill me.

if you sit long enough in an airport, you begin a study of people. do you know that when you look at someone, s/he knows it. they'll look back at you. they may not know who's looking at them, but they sense it. then again, you know that, don’t you.

isn't that why women, (usually from the (middle) east and other places americans tend to not talk or know so much about, have downcast eyes. looking means too much.

so my body temperature has fallen dramatically. (still under forced air.) and, based on my airport fashion poll, black shoes are de riguer in spring in chi-town. those -- or black leather jackets with flip flops. someone kill me again.

we’ve now reached the point where kirsty is a coke head. ope, moving on to scientology....

the cute guy is looking at me, which causes me to look up. i didn’t even realize he was looking at me. behavior. weird.

eew. who made white high heels fashionable. i hate them. maybe that means i should try on a buncha pairs. like therapy. go to the center of the pain. you know, like how i got over the affect of the word “cunt.” behavior. weird.

eesh, my flight is nearly ready for me. gotta scoot.

check ya soon, after kirsty gets through 1991 and on through to today. c’mon, kristy -- yoooou caaaan doooo iiiit!! ope. kirsty and parker: 9,000 square foot home, full time chef, fao schwartz...wealth is supposed to be heaven, right. poo. they divorce.... you know...supposed to don’t always cut it. but it sure seems good for prime time tv...

my friend just put on his coat. he’s on a mission. he’s at the airport, you know. goodbye, mr. bow-legs. people swarm around his seat but do not take it. the seat holds the memory of him, stays empty, until all the people who remember his sitting there move like cattle onto their planes bound for who-knows-where. then, it's tabala rasa. up for grabs. as if it were put on the earth this morning. and just for that new person. just for a little while.

behavior.

weird.

in less than a week i'll return

2005-04-10T21:01:00.000-04:00

meanwhile:

www.100words.net.

actually

2005-03-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

i leave tomorrah for a lil visit to the blue-haired state of florida. r&r before more readin and writin. last time i was in florida was spring break when i was what? 18 i think. and before that my dad dragged me to disney world...(world, right? the one in kississimmee). i've always hated mickey mouse.

maybe this time'll be diffrnt.

anyway, it's a near-4-day break from the usual grind.

can't wait to catch me some-o-dat....

ahm leavin...on a jet plane...

2005-03-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

don't know when i'll be back again...
oh babe, i hate to gooooooooOOOOOOOOOOO...

welp. looks like i'm leavin detroit.

crazy.

true

2005-03-12T12:09:00.000-05:00

She leans forward and she kisses me. Though it is the same as before, it isnt't the same at all. It is more, stronger, weaker, deeper, quieter, louder. It is more, vulnerable, impenetrable, fragile, secure, unprotected, completely protected. It is more, open, deeper, full, simpler, true. It is more. True.
She pulls away her lips pull away.

--james frey, a million little pieces, p. 190

softnesses

2005-03-11T23:52:00.000-05:00

aging is a wild thing. in my aging process, my father's become smarter and lovelier, my lover has become stronger, my sense of myself has deepened. i think the wild-eyed depression between 29 and 30 has, for the most part folded inside itself.

i'm softening a bit. like my friend christine says of me when i drink, it "takes the edges off." i like it, this aging me.

don't get me wrong, i'm still not friends with the softening muscles, but i think that has more to do with my attention going to books and ideas than to a daily running regimen. all things in good time.

like now. i gotta change the sheets. it's time to hop into them with my vin.

gettin hot

2005-03-09T07:10:00.000-05:00

nothing more than just peeking in while the shower water gets hot....

sleeping pill

2005-03-07T23:07:00.000-05:00

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall abooooooooooooooooooooooOoOOOOOOOOOARD!

last stop before bed--actually, before another reading assignment.

can i cry yet?

i'm soooooooooo tired and cranky and sick of the cold. all the snow melted -- only to be replaced by icicle wind. and that presentation--that presentation--i do thursday night oh holy holiness help me keep it together till then...

i'm tired of moveon.org in my mailbox
by anna nicole smith wherever she appears slurring
and cereal that gets soggy too fast in milk

i'm sick of scrapey-naked trees
of chapped lips
and doing laundry

i'm frustrated with
all the question marks in the air,
between my ears,
on the faces all day long

i want a backrub
and a weekend of NO worries
and a storyteller to show up at my house --
in costume.

maybe then i'd sleep well...

pttttttthhhht. nah, probably some kookoo dream would wake me up, laughing.

what, i don't live in a vacuum?

2005-03-06T11:20:00.000-05:00

ch-ch-changees.

what is it about cleaning up the messiest part of ourselves that invites newness, discovery, reflection, deep breathing?

i cleaned up my office/work room because i had been defiling it (ha, git it?) for waaaaaaaaaay too long. when i started tripping over shit on my way to the computer, i knew it was time. then, when i had to pick up crap that i inadvertently dumped on the floor b/c the piles of paper were teetering so percauriously, i knew it was time. oh, then when ellen would drag people into the room during parties, past the 'private' sign and through the tightly latched door -- people i'd have to go in with a headlamp and jaws of life to retract from the room if there was an accident inside -- i knew it was time.

but truly, i only cleaned it up when it became a matter of pride. when it became of matter of potentially losing an opportunity if i didn't clean, and potentially gaining an opportunity if i did clean. simple. what pushed me to clean was the fact that, in this case, i was standing at the cliffside of personal gain. maybe gain: clean. maybe not gain: don't clean.

i cleaned. a bit.

i never thought about it in these terms. vince always batters me with that one-- that i dojudge, that i value, that i do do things that make a personal difference in my actual life.

i am not a martyr, he tries to show me.

but i am stubborn. i am different. i am different, i insist.

and yeah, in some real significant ways i am different. but in this one, in the one that means i live according to the rules of 'what's best for me' hold. i even cleaned my office/work room b/c of it.

but, hey, i wanted to clean the room anyway. i was gonna clean the room anyway. it was only a matter of time, you see... .

angels and geezers in america

2005-03-05T19:57:00.000-05:00

i finally saw angles in america. last night. tonight it's a friend's dad's 70th surprise party. between the two, 11 blissful hours of sleep. i can't wait to do it again tonight. i'm gonna try for 11-1/2! actually, sadly, that is a dream. but i will be able to sneak in the healthy man's 8.

sometimes it's the little things.

heck, i guess usually it's the little things...

feelin spacy

2005-03-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

i am not in a writer's space. i am in a weird inner-outer space. it's the lack of sleep. it the kind of space-y-ness that makes you want to cry not because you forgot christine's birthday, not because her passive/agressive sadness has put a crack in your armour, not because you're starting to look and feel sloppy from lack of painfully good exercise, not because you can't remember where you lost your gloves, your camera, your slippers or your tickets for tonight's play. but because when your body forces you to slow down, pushes your self into yourself, you can actually F E E L gravity. you feel the weight of weight. "the unbearable lightness of being," as a famous guy once famously said. it's feathery. it's fragile and a little shaky. it's sure of its unsureness. it's delicate heaviness.

it's heavy.

it's that kind of space.

james frey

2005-03-02T02:38:00.000-05:00

that is all.

crashin hard

2005-03-01T02:14:00.000-05:00

livin ain't for the weak...

bad play+good food=touching god

2005-02-27T02:25:00.000-05:00

oof. tonight i rediscovered that community theatre can be epic-ly bad. located in a strip mall between a florist and a podiatrist, eastpointe theatre (broadway onstage, they call themselves) ain't exactly even off-off-off-broadway. but they got heart. and they been doin it for 20 years. eesh.

i'll go back again, tho. the blue-gray hairdos in the audience are enough to keep you wanting more.

i also discovered this eavening ;) that one of the oldest restaurants in detroit was the spot where barbara streisand used to sing every weekend somewhere in vicinity of 1961-62. no joke. hank (enrico actually--but coming up from mexico the lazy-tongued gringos start to call him hank. enrico~henry-->hank), our waiter, told us she used to come in wearing rags pretty much. "dressed by a furniture fabric maker," said hank. no dough. "the then-owner tried every week to get her to sign a contract. ha. he never succeeded even though the joint catered to judges and lawyers even back then. after about 9 months she split for stardom." who knew. the place in case you find yourself in d-town: the caucus club. on congress. after getting your fill there (and checking out the barbara billboard a raging fan put up on her 60th birthday, which coincided with the restaurant's 50th anniversary), head up the street a coupla blocks to the post bar. pretty much guaranteed you'll either spill your stuff or get it grabbed when you try to make it through the guantlet.... you're likely too to run into some detroit red wings. they slum it there pretty often.

other than that, kept a low profile this weekend. celebrated in cute and quite style the last 2 years wit da supah cute and not so quiet vin.

it really is something to look in the face of love. it's like touching god ya know? let's say a- meditate a- focus on a- prayerthought for everyone to get em sommadat mmmmmmmmMM good love...

my recommendation: hugginkiss someone you can't live without as soon as possible. speaking a which, i'm gonna call my dad tomorrow...

the sentinel

2005-02-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

my local rub-a-dub paper says something very important today. mixed in amongst the high school hockey scores (st. clair shores unified battled warren de la salle feb. 16 at civic ice arena, losing a tough one, 4-1), robbery notes (man claims to be cable employee; snow blower stolen from rectory garage), review of detroit native lou beatty jr. as iconoclastic paul robeson this weekend (by the highly talented and historically black ploughshares theatre company in detroit) and various other necessities (2005 restaurant guide, financial future guide, arts&entertainment guide), there's this gem:

The Joke's On You: comedy 101 is no longer laughing matter

accompanying the piece is a photo of a dude looking conspicuously like bill murray circa 1980s, thinning hair and "wha--" expression. donald livingston. he's enrolled in the area's community college first comedy class.

the very important thing the 48-year-old studying comic says:

"be yourself. everybody else is taken."

leave it to the stupid local paper to unearth an actual useful fact. ...

remnants

2005-02-25T00:39:00.000-05:00

i don't sew. i don't. so. so? so! so... sow -- oh wait, that's sow. that's differnt.

i'm feeling at loose ends. a human needs sleep. and other humans. and some food and water, to get cleaned up from time to time, and shelter. oh, and love. preferably lots and lots of it.

so why are we always shootin for soooooo much more? what IS it about gargantuanous? what is it about prosperity? what is it about keeping all your teeth? what is it about a straight back, straight nose, straight looks? and what about the leftover pieces at the end of the day? the kid who doesn't know his grammar? the bum who bums for leftovers and less? the ol' lady critchety-crotchety on her way to the store, bent sooooo far over she's looking at her own shoes all the way there? what about them?

what about scabby babies and dirty mouths and homeless hearts? what about george w. bush. what a mess he must be. what about married people who don't talk to each other? what about unmarried people who don't talk to each other? what about other people's married people who should keep what they got to themselves? what about the freaks who end up in the world's newspapers? and those who don't? what about them?

what about the scraps of food? of life? of reason? where are they all? and those scrungy folk who go diving in after? what about shitty schools and shittier attitudes and not knowing where to begin to discover the self? what about lost keys and lost minds and lost wages and the bureaucracy that designs itself to just keeponna fucking it all up for everybody? what about it? what about it? what about it? at the end of the day you better believe i got something to grab onto. i got...i got...i got lucky. i got what i need. i'll make all my pieces fit somehow, even if they're just remnants.

true

2005-02-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

what next to procrastinate my reading assignment... shall it be a discussion of 81-year-old ousmane sembene's newest politically charged film, moolade -- about female genital mutilation... or perhaps a rough-and-ready retelling of the 3-course-meal (seafood, strangely mashed potato salad and chocolate chip icecream) i just shoveled in without regard for taste or timing in order to sit here and ruminate about the stomach ache about to happen... or maybe something special... something... something... different... something... about you out there...

today when i was waking up (i've not been feeling a hunnert percent lately) chark was flitting in and out of my waking dream. not chark the woman, but chark the sensation. strange, maybe, considering i'm not sure exactly what she looks like. but that's not important. laced among this charkeyness was a long-ago love... we exchanged words i don't remember and he kept busy at something i don't recall... but the feeling was all charkblog, filled with a muted tenderness, a questioning... a little absence-filled presence. beauty and search. it was a dreamscape powerfully full of a loving distance between me and him, not to be overcome but understood. it was near-meloncholy. it was near-smile. and when i woke up we, all three, were close -- and yet more distinct. we each are unique and far apart. i understand this. (somewhere too there was a delicately pink woman, naked, with taut nipples and a palpable joy. i leaned against the door jam next to her, our upper arms touching, wondering. just looking and sensing and wondering.)

what happens when i let the secret out of the bag--that i think (is a dream a thought?) beautiful missing things about a former love, about my new friend chark? are they thinking about me? is that the power of coincidence? is that the power of thought? is that the power of being made of the same human stuff -- dust and whatall blowing all over the god-crazy universe?

i read a quote once of rumi: "lovers don't finally meet each other. they are in each other all along."

some people say there is no truth. i say it's there, in your bones. just break one and you'll feel the ache of it. truth. and your sisters and your brothers over there, down the street, in those crazy clothes, speaking those kookoo unrecognizable languages -- the same ones you've never really reasoned were human exactly like you are human will say at the instant of the break, i understand your pain. i know you. i recognize you. you won't hear them say it, you will see it in their eyes. you will read it in the curve of their bodies. the language that comes before words. the truth before the truth. the deed before the verb.

what next to procrastinate my reading assignment... what next...

stalker talk

2005-02-21T12:04:00.000-05:00

i know two people who have or have had a stalker. and last night i met a gent who has a bodyguard because of the "s" word. i saw also the "s" word approach the gent. unlike my old workmate brett, who has a small meandering obsession with ashleywhatsherface...you know...the twin...full house... the dude from last night has pinwheel eyes and a squirrely tight pencil thin permasmile. weird.

the stalkee's usual casual stance stiffened, drained of its ease and replaced by tension, like concrete setting in the joints.

stalkers are scary scary people.

i am happy to say i'm a regular gal who's had infrequent brushes with fans, years between at best. recently i heard, however, there's a local(?) guy who saw me at my favorite local restaurant and has come back numerous times since...

the waiter with the apply cheeks and hyptonizing tiger eye eyes told me so.

"is he something i should worry about?" i asked thinking stalkerstalkerstalkerstalkerstalkerstalkerstalker...

"nah," he said.

i haven't been back since.

did i mention it's my favorite place?

and late last night, when i left the stalker/stalkee sitch, clop-clopping, keys in hand, less than two blocks away from my car, i watched a dude running across my path.

leather jacket to run in...? where's he going...? nice gait...where's he going...? when's the last time i laced up my running shoes...? how many hours of sleep will i get in before the hoopla begins tomorrow...?

somewhere in all the thought, i lost the dude. less than a block-and-a-half to my car.

"scuze me..." the dude.

raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawaar. i jolted alert. where the fuck did he come from?

"i ain' no bum."

coincidence. i ain't in no mood.

"not tonight, sir," i said. walkin walkin.

"i got my boy..." he reaches into his coat, walkin faster than i can, to pull out a medallion or a locket of his boy on a chain like a picket fence...

"no, sir. not tonight."

"i ain't gonna do nothin' with a cop car right there."

"no, sir." firm, no snear. but no smile either.

less than a block way. car car car car. keys.

"hey! HEY!" keep walkin. two goups of guys coming from the other direction. two by two. tall. big coats. less than half a block to my car. keys. phone. my heel stomps echoing on sidewalk versus their heavy silent sneaks. gap closing, i see the whites of their eyes as they spread out to cover the entire width of the sidewalk in front of me. "bay-bee" i hear something. "coo-coo-cootch" something else. boymen. i walk, close close close close car.

"hey."

it rumbles up my esophogus and turns white in the night air.

i look them square in the face. one...by...one...by...one...brown eyes...red hood...high cheeks...goutee, all tall tall. i'm in the street now. "hooooooooo" i hear it, the fourth one, chicken shit style, after they pass. one fluid motion door open. i swing into the seat camera stuff still slung across my chest. audible exhale. freedom.

it's another reason i don't lock the driver side door between getting out and getting back in.

the runner dude had fled. the boymen were bigger and more than he. they boymen were for me, again, this time.

you don't have to be extraordinary to know the tiniest of something about the stalk.

whispering

2005-02-19T00:08:00.000-05:00

this so i won't be found out...
careful and quick
so they won't hear more tap-tap
in the office mess room...
i have to go to bed
b/c i don't get enough rest...
they worry for me
even though i fight it like a 5-year-old...
i do not WANT to sleep...
i do not WANT to miss
the party...
but i must.
i can't go on
my shoestring nerve
wanging and thwanging...
and tomorrow it begins again...
rest rest rest...
a missing mantra
when does it come...

i just noticed

2005-02-17T22:29:00.000-05:00

again

that i'm slouching.

SITTING UP NOW.
(at least for a ... second)

remember hilary? i told you about her some time ago. about how her gettin goin with people seemed fraught with...i don't know...soft stress...

well, i found out tonight she's autistic.

discovery is lovely.

rick that bastard

2005-02-17T12:11:00.000-05:00

is leaving his blog.
depressing depressing.
a few months and already i'm attached like mold on cheese.
friendship is wild like that.
impressions are created in a snap.

smoosh

and he's imprinted himself on my life.

he probably meant to leave that one badass audio clip too--
a parting gift.
the bastard.

vagina

2005-02-15T22:32:00.000-05:00

monologues.

have you seen them? the monologues, i mean.... really fucking (ha) great. for everyone. take a bunch of women of all ages, throw em up on stage and hear em tell the stories of their vaginas. it's smelly, brutal, painful, healing, heady, bountiful stuff. they even use the word... that word... cunt. cunt. cunt. cunt. cunt. cunt.

cunt.

and it's a good thing. a powerful thing. a thing of importance. it's THE thing.

and what about today? today i went to a work party, a going away party for the big boss. i really wanted to cry. i was so...off.

then a workmate said, "stace, you ok?"
not sure. i don't bother to lie--it's more work than it's worth.
"it's a weird vibe in here," he says. "i feel it too."
yeah, i sigh.

why do we forget the whole world is on the same plane? why do we feel so alone in the world? all it takes is ONE thought about the center of love to remember we're all the damn same. same stuff. same life. all of us one. (i have been promising for months to design a tee-shirt that says "jesus freak." chark, will you wear it? rick? edge? guys...? WHOOOOOOOO wants one? nameless, what will synagogue say ;j?)

then one of the guys started talking about pussy. indirectly at first, of course. the jokes about how the hunky 40-year-old across from me is dating the much younger girl. then the table slid into a tale-spin of good-ol-day stories and sighs and smirks and somehow, it made me feel better instead of worse. i was feeling too real and therefore missed any opportunity to get on my high horse--thank fucking god. i was just...one of the guys. not less. not more. not anything except there. right there. in the moment. not anything except accepting. and all of a sudden, it made sense.

vagina=power. duh.

not power over anything. not power to anything. just filled with power. just powerful. the cradle of civilization.

there i was, just sitting there with the guys--billbomm on my left, bearded and silvering at the temples; jimmylee, hair growing longer while he contemplates a fumanchoo (spelling??); matt, all shiny head and baby ass smooth-skin; malloy, an unlit bottlerocket with coily hair and a new pinky ring.... not harboring anything except, well, love really. just real life. just us. just smiling and breathing in our few moments of civilization before saying goodbye.

shit. and love.

2005-02-14T22:54:00.000-05:00

i've not be here for, what, 2 days? fuck, i missed you. i missed this. i haven't read anybody's thoughts since friday. who knew. you fuckers really grow on a person.

so.

i've been in austin. and since today at 1pm, in an auto wreck. i think my life is catching up with me. too much. maybe i'm feeling superstitious now too. the kind of superstitious that says, "hey, i crawled up the highway embankment at 40? 50? more? miles per hour and i'm alive. too bad vin's jeep is in coma. we're hoping for it to pull through... but it was crazy...lickity split i was looking at the mortar, bam, the sky, smash, the other side of the highway. and not one other car to feel the heat. i like that. my life my own. well, it's lonely that way but when it's dangerous i prefer that no one else be in jeapardy. (be part of the solution not the problem i always say.) i understand the difficulty of that statement--death can occur when you're alone if nobody can aid. then again, it can occur when some IS there to aid. anyway, all i seem to have is soreness and a bill to pay. far far better than the alternative.

this weekend i discovered a bunch of shit:

1. i really really do hate cold weather. i will be happy to move from it so that in a few years i can maybe appreciate it.

2. i kept expecting to see you at one of the many airports i got waylaid (sp?) in friday, yesterday and today. we would have had a great time...

3. mothers do know if their kid is a shithead. i met a mom (a very cool lady) who does understand that her pre-teen son is part of the "cool" clique among his peers. he's kind of an asshole. (i paraphrase.) but the relative good news is: he's ALWAYS been this way, so the clique hasn't changed him as much as found him. very strange. the mom as archeologist. i like that too.

4. i just ate about 4 pounds of confetti, cocoa-covered hazelnuts. italian. if you haven't tried them, spend the best $50 of your life (and i'm cheeeeeeap-ass) and call the new york distributor at 516-783-3314. it'll be like you're visiting sulmona. i SWEAR, you will love it. tell your sweethearts (kids, lovers, whomever you LOVE, it's a late valenine's day gift.) if you like hazelnuts, tell them you want "tartufo con nocciola" (tar-toof-oh con no-cho-la).

if you can't afford it, ask some people who love you to pitch in for it. then, after you eat three pounds of it by yourself, tell me anything in the world measures up....

tomorrow: the vagina monologues.

peace out.
and ps. i love you.

tonight

2005-02-10T23:57:00.000-05:00

you luck out: hadda work tonight instead of go to class. so instead of hearing about theory of blahblahblah you get...tonight babe...why don't yoooou staaaaay...

it was my job tonight to take photos at this party for WDET listeners who spent $500 to attend a really nice little celebration. (public radio is non-profit so listeners pony up when they think the music and news is worth it.)

i'm working on less sleep than i'd like to admit. running on fumes really. and i really didn't think i'd make it. but, as usual a party to be had MUST be had. a sad drunk restaurant mogul (sp?) in the making told me i'm gorgeous. his daughter isn't much younger than me. he's very sweet and he needs some real love in his life, you can see that. otherwise, we mixed and mingled and i shot smiles everywhere. people are really really something. i dig em hard.

if i could figure out how to work the camera system to this thing i'd show you mickey white (ford motor company truck man) and chris brown (did he slip me his number??), willy wilson (sportin a really thorough beard these days), and adam (a now-new friend who went to the regional high arts school. i'd like to have done that. his buddy adam [yes, two adams] instructed me in the ways of recognizing the "gifted student" (how much of that stuff is just bullshit and engagement, i wonder?) they said something about senstitivity and qustions. tons of questions. we laughed a lot--splash of cabernet aid. jackie and vicki of avalon bread (the best bread company in the city - just broke $1M in annual sales). and lots of others, including plenty of workmates who are just too too cool. i'd hang with em even if i did't already know em. but that might not be saying too much... i'll give almost everybody a try.

strangely enough, i did miss going to class. but work - if it MUST be done - oughtta be interesting if not somewhat enjoyale. right? how'd your night go?

cats

2005-02-09T23:14:00.000-05:00

sumptin funny to take the edge off (not you, edge...)... so i was reading this little vignette today about

(stay with me here...i KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOW all this english seminar talk is getting lame--if it didn't start out that way for you--but i'm barely 1/3 through a class that's gonna last till may and so most of my concentration goes to it. see, the thing is i think i'm a little obsessive and unfortunately, a little perfectionistic as well. very bad combination when there's only 24 hours in a day and so much shit to get done. anyway
i tend to get really excited about what i'm doing so i can stay (con myself to be?) enthused about it. it seems to work out. let me know when you get really sick of it all and i'll try to talk about other, more interesting stuff. i promise.)

so there's this woman who's studying kids to figure out how media (ya know, movies, radio, television, video games) finds its way into their language in school (talking and writing). i think they're in first grade. (okay okay, so it's boooooooooooooooring, but stay with me for just a sec. if yr not a parent, maybe you will be one day...) well, this made me laugh out loud...ready...? wait, a teeny tiny backstory on the kids first:

marcel is obsessed with the nfl. so obsessed he turns a group project about making a poster about "freedom" into a dallas cowboy football player (which he tells the teacher is a guy trying to get to the underground railroad with harriet tubman [vince, are you paying attention?]) then there's wenona who always says she's a cheerleader. (she likes dallas as well.) anyway, marcel is a real firecracker, working his teams into projects, figuring out how to read the map so he can locate his teams, etc. wenona on the other hand seems kinda lazy. the researcher never SAYS so, but you can tell. she says during the kids' writing sessions, while others kids discuss and try to sound out words and wenona always resorts to "cats"... then comes the thing that just made me fuckin crack up:

"Wenona and Marcel are sitting together during writing workshop. It is early December. Wenona quickly writes 'I like'; when no one at her table can provide her with Christmas she finishes the sentence with cats...." (dyson)

can't you just picture that little kid. sittin there for like a second and can't figure it out without expending energy...so she throws her hands up and goes with what she already knows. wonder what she does with all that extra first-grade time....

but isn't it just like all us humans? i mean, when we just can't be bothered to work that little extra, to walk that little extra, to think that little extra. it can all be so simple... just... cats.

i'm gonna try that next time edge hits with one of those crazy rhetoricals or when rick drops a metaphorical bomb or when chark lays a pretty patch of black on white or when transience tosses out a phrase that makes me check to see if i pee'd myself or when jason says something confoundingly guy or when nameless makes me pine for my mom (or the red-haired twin i never knew i had) or garrison leaves a beautiful 3-liner in somebody's comment box or when jen ignores my message on her sassy blog... it could aaaaaaaaall be so easy... just "cats"...

but of course the fuckin trouble is i'm usually (though not ALWAYS) more marcel's style, the little punk-ass trouble maker.

what about you? when're YOU wenona? when're you all about..."cats"?

lost time

2005-02-09T00:32:00.000-05:00

a few days ago i caught myself thinking as i struggled to come to...oh how we struggle against our impermanence...and tonight it came crashing down. my uncled died. my dad's little brother. not little actually. 6'7" not little. frank. uncle frank to me. frankie to my dad. apparently dad and barb got the call earlier tonight that he was being rushed to the hospital from the folks home where he was staying. well my dad went tearing off to be with him. more than 30 miles separating them my dad was gonna appear on his doorstep to make everything better or easier or who the hell knows what, crazy love lines that string us up and hold us together.

and this uncle frankie wasn't a real gem or a peach. not really. i don't remember him handing out half-dollars to the kids. i don't remember him patting homeless guys on the shoulder. don't remember him giving good advice or even saying anything all that thoughtful to anyone, frankly. ha. and i'm still sitting her snivvlin and wiping snot off my face.

a few months ago i got a ton of phone calls from him. he was desperate from me to see him. i didn't even remember i gave him all my telephone numbers the last i visited him for his birthday, shit, a few years ago. i brought him a bunch of elmore leonard books b/c he said once before he liked mystery or crime novels...and leonard pretty much writes about uncle frank's neighborhood.

and his voice in my phone lonely and alone. so the next day i went to see him, to sit on the corner of his bed and tease him for a while and make him laugh and talk to him and listen. he didn't look good. i mean, he did look good--he was a naturally attractive man w/o doing a damn thing for it. but he didn't look good. he was sick. and he was losing ability to move around--his great long legs wouldn't hold him up anymore and he either didn't know why or didn't care. he didn't tell me. he just kept saying i'm glad you came. and i'm so surpised to see you. and he smiled so big.

he said, you didn't know your momma did you?
for nine years, yes, i said. i knew her as well as i could. why?

she was harsh on me, he said. i asked if he thought she was too harsh. (i don't know if anybody else in his life had ever loved him enough to be loving and harsh at the same time, which can be a life-saving grace.) he said, maybe. what do you mean maybe? i had asked him. he just pursed up his lips and tried not to cry.

did you ever see a 6'7" guy try not to cry about a 5'2" lady who was "too harsh" to him? it's hard and lovely and impossible to look at.

so why was she so harsh? i asked.
you know she got mad at me at her wedding, he said.
on her wedding day? i asked. to my dad?
yep, he said.

she was yelling at you over all the guests' heads, wasn't she? i asked.
he laughed.

did you deserve it? i asked.
naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw! he shook his head. then he slumped.
and i put my hand on his gigantic paws. his skin was soft.

he fished his wallet out of his little dresser. when he opened the bottom drawer to find it, i saw a pile of adult diapers in the drawer.

i tried to think of a joke so i wouldn't cry.

he opened his wallet and pulled out little picture of a boy where some money should have been.

it's my boy, he said.
the last time i saw him he was four.
the boy looked about four.

he's probably 32 now, he said.
how old are you? he said. are you driving yet?
uncle frank, you're great!
what? you 21?
i'm 32, uncle frank. i'm 32, too.

he fingered the photo.

you're momma's been gone a long time, he said.
yes. she has been.... you miss her, too?
he just shook his big head and his cheeks kindof bobbed up and down.

i almost got married before, he said.
really? why didn't you?
baaaaaaah. it didn't work out.

don't you have any lady friends in here? i asked. can't you go poppin any wheelies and showin em what's under your night shirt?
yeah, i had a lady friend in here. i was going to ask her to marry me, he said.
well?!
she up and died on me.
he was making a habit out of this trying not to cry thing.
you just gotta be quicker next time, uncle frank. catch em off-guard. roll up behind em and bump em on the backs of the knees so they fall into your lap. really sweep em off their feet!

well, after that i missed the holiday celebration this past christmas b/c i forgot my phone at home and i had the wrong day marked in my calendar. i got home to a bunch of messages from my dad and my aunt cynthia and my dad one last time for good measure. all of it too late.

and now, he's gone.

no more harsh words. no more harsh words i wish we all could have had more of. unless, of course they're together somehow and making up for lost time....

gettin it?

2005-02-08T13:08:00.000-05:00

this? what about this?

send all comments to the "comment" section below.

fiction is...

2005-02-07T23:55:00.000-05:00

regarding yesterday's post.... see chris. (ain't he cute.) see minnie bruce. (can't you just hear her drawl?)

as for what i learned today.... a little something from our friend john updike:

"fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet."

pretty good eh?

words words words

2005-02-06T18:44:00.000-05:00

the old italian songstress mina (check her out...no, she only LOOKS like a drag queen). anyway, mina's got this old song called "parole parole parole," or "words words words." and in it some dude is handing her line after line of love and she's all blah blah blah. or, in her language, "words words words." i love that. but the truth is, sometimes words aren't full of crap. like today...

some phrases i heard this afternoon at an annual memorial reading for philip j. traci (former professor and shakespeare scholar at wsu, murdered in an unsolved hate crime in 1984 [sadly, long before my time there]):

"our time has come. we've made that time come. it doesn't come by itself." --minnie bruce pratt, anti-racist human, poet and activist

"what does it mean to connect to each other inside the grinding machine of capitalism? it's affirming to know that ... it's been evolutionarily shown, this good will to help each other out.... what does it really mean to be with each other inside this grinding world of work?" --ibid.

"the only danger is not going far enough." --ibid. (quoting muriel rukeyser)

"i sat there chopping peppers / i was what came before words" --ibid.

and some other beauties that could not escape notice...where's that dictionary? ;j ...

"avian allusion" -- christoper leland, wsu prof and writer, most of fiction

"dithery helplessness" -- ibid.

"fresh as an apple. green as an emberald. sure as a prophet. my harry, my own." --ibid.

purgatory and pretty things

2005-02-05T13:42:00.000-05:00

in the purgatory between sleepfulness and wakefulness this morning, i thought:

oh how we struggle against our impermanence

now that i'm awake i think: yeah...it's our lot as humans.

play it again, chark

2005-02-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

it's like hot potato. wait, potatoe. potato? okay. i think. (shit, didn't EVERYbody make fun of dan quayle when i was a kid b/c he put the "e" on...or took the "e" off...? shite.

anyway, chark got it from jen then gave it to me. nothin serious 'cept a little music makin. kay now... random 10 (for chark cuz she's so dang curious and ... i'm on a procrastination rampage.
like chark's my list veers wildly by the day...)

THE RANDOM 10+2 (in chronological order just so i know when to stop.)

1i get along without you very well/chet baker
2lilac wine/jeff buckley
3jeepster/t rex
4anything off 'amused to death'/roger waters
5star gazer/mother love bone
6the entirety of 'bold as love'/jimi hendrix
i lost it/lucinda williams (the one tom petty wrote)
8leavin /or/ thought it would be easier/shelby lynn
9three days /or/ classic girl/jane's addiction
10how does it make you feel/air
11strange fruit/billie holiday
12the whole of 'translinear light'/alice coltrane

total amount of music files on computer:
never touch the stuff

last CD bought:
new beastie boys for my 10-yr-old nephew

last song listened to before this message:
i say it with music...goodnight mrs. callabash, wherever you are/jimmy durante

five songs you listen to a lot or mean a lot to you:
see any of those above

who are you gonna pass this stick to? (three persons and why...you don't have to if you don't want to...)

i implore you: if you are reading this and yr the leeeeeeast bit inspired, DO IT and send me the list. please.

the other language for lovers

2005-02-04T23:01:00.000-05:00

did you know...that in piglatin, lover translates to overlay
?
isn't that fucking great!?

hilary heat miser and delta change reality

2005-02-04T01:15:00.000-05:00

today's quote is from hilary. hair like heatmizer. even though i never saw heatmizer. wait, lemme find a website to corroborate my claim... yes. but she's way cuter--if you can believe it. (and the spelling's actually heat miser. scuze me.)

and the quote is...

is..

.

"I have no facility with the spoken word so my connection with the written word is spiritual."

==
also: i ragged on my ladies for not finding me at the bar last week thursday.... if you look you can find the post [see archives down V there or >>over there>>

anyway, from my perspective last week, they missed me sitting there at the bar. from my perspective this week, i missed them by just as wide a margin. lookit that. only a week and i changed my story.

poof. reality is different now.

what'll it be next...?

heat (for blair)

2005-02-03T09:47:00.000-05:00

a poet friend (we'll call him blair) has something to say about heat, but i...i don't know what to say about heat.

it's winter. i can say that.

i can say that it's been noted that even in new jersey winters landlords only have to keep apartment temperatures at 62. 62. is there heat in 62?

blair is going to a few funerals this weekend because of the reality of heat--or its absence. in this winter. in that new jersey. how hot is that?

heat rises.

and when the people rise up...there's heat in that.

heat expands.

sometimes heat hides in unlikely and unlocatable places. sometimes heat doesn't hide at all. pow. right in the kisser the people, their heat, on the way up...somewhere. or rrrrrrrrrrrrr. when the bodies force heat from squeaky crumbling oppressive pipes they squeeze out the cold. or aaaaaaaah. the small comfort of cold hands cross woven with warm hands.

body heat saves.

i can say that where there is heat there is also fire.

chi of jake

2005-02-02T17:14:00.000-05:00

does every generation, every community, everyone have jake?

does jake always disappear...like the contents of your 3:24am dream...does jake take up residence in the back of your head, holding the yellow yard stick against the spine of every potential...the imprint...is that jake sitting at the bar, languid and smiling, waiting for you--till you talk...then jake >>ppOpp<< sharply, and utterly, is gone...a busted balloon...who's this you're talking to?...who's this you're with?...illusion...does jake make your bed on weekends, whittle effigies to your name after dinner...after you clear the dishes from the dinner table--that dinner table...its air thin as mckinley kongur annapurna everest...

who's your jake?

where's your jake?

or, like the nerd screamed from under the glass table: JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!

mastermind

2005-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

"jackson pollack could paint a damn good bowl of fruit--if he wanted to." --m.l. liebler (1/31/05, detroit)

"jack kerouac could write a real sentence--if he wanted to." m.l. liebler (1/31/05, detroit)

sometimes it's...>>swiiiiiish<<...in your ear--all net.

first, know the rules. then follow the rules until you're a master. then break the rules (better: make them curve toward you, your magnetism, your precision) like the master's master.