Broccoli and bechamel

New year, new location

2006-01-04T12:29:00.000-06:00

Starting over, or something like, as I've discovered how crappy all this looks in Firefox. Also comments don't work, takes forever to load because of Sitemeter and their ads. Not being patient enough to learn how to fix it right now, and after almost a year without posting anything, thought I'd start with a clean boring template courtesy of Blogger. http://figsandpomegranates.blogspot.com

Chicken soup

2005-02-04T21:29:00.000-06:00

I have to get some pictures of broccoli, and for that matter pictures of--no matter how much they resemble a changing diaper gone bad--pictures of bechamel up. And why? Because I get ten hits a day looking for none other than pictures of broccoli. I feel guilty--no I do--that folks searching for bechamel and for "pictures of broccoli" get my site. It ranks high. Not highly, that would be absurd. I rank high in broccoli pictures and I have not two, not one, but none. For the bechamel...I should appeal to Bakerina, fair Bakerina, I should appeal--a simple link to the best, the most simple, the most elegant bechamel the Bakerina has to offer. I think she would cooperate. I should ask her. She could host this most basic recipe at her site. I could link to it. That's the idea of blogdom.

I don't know why--ok, that's kind of a lie--the spiders of Goodely Oogle send all these folks my way looking for wisdom in a milky, floury--not flowery, and it really better not be floury or one has done something wrong--sauce, but for god's sake, can't there be more pictures of broccoli than my none? Really, in the next two weeks--sooner than that I am too busy with school--but sometime within the week after next I will just put up a shit load of broccoli pictures. For fuck's sake, if that many people want them, it is my civic duty to provide. I may, I will, I think.

Oh, I should holler at the remarkable Bakerina about the bechamel. I had a recipe, buried in a post, over a year ago which included sort of, hmm, erm, somewhat slap-dash instructions? for bechamel. More of a poem about a sauce than a recipe. There was the milk and a bay leaf, a sliver of onion, a puff of nutmeg--that sort of thing. The truth is: bechamel is a handy sauce. Add some shredded cheese--molnay!, I think, anyway. Erm, but anyone, a persistent link. Somehow I need a persistent link obvious to those many few who sadly find my site looking for pictures of broccoli and bechamel. This that pitter flat spalat shat tat, ok, Mary just asked me from where I got the noodles for the soup--which she is now home from work and eating--

"Is it good?" I asked, no really I just asked this seconds ago.
"Yes," she said demonstratively, definitively, declaratively, deluctably, what-ever-the-fucktably? "I love it."

And so, there you have it.

Chicken soup, for the feeling sick your girlfriend, your lover.

There are no audio clips of cats becoming ready to mate here. Or any audio clips for that matter. None.

2005-01-29T22:04:00.000-06:00

I am 6th of 2470 for "audio clips of a female domestic cat ready to mate". Okay. No clips. Not of donkeys discussing cuticle creams or guyabas licking each other on the ear and talking dirty as only guyaba can do. No prickly pears prickling with gossipy heat nor pancakes quietly farting their loving whispery one-notes to butter. No sizzle and hiss. No freaking audio clips. Thanks.

Time and Dog Walks and Dirty Dishes

2005-01-20T22:55:00.000-06:00

Thanks to those who provided helpful advice on my burning topic of fitted sheet folding. Despite all attempts to enwisdom me I am still madly twisting the bottom into a tense puffy bow and stuffing it into the drawer swallow by swallow. Perversely, I now have this nagging desire to iron my sheets. No idea why. Well, that's not quite true. It has been god awful and mean shitty cold here lately and the thought of steaming hot linens has its appeal. Still, hardly practical to iron a sheet, race upstairs, fling it on the bed and hope it stays warm while I finish up the others. Just idiotic, but still it nags.

Not a fan of ironed things, but there's a love of the steam and the wavering scenes beind the white column. Something in the intermittent hiss and glide and the secrets which the fabric gives up in buried smells released by the heat. I'm not fastidious. I'm not bothered by wrinkles in the least. I think there must be an alchemist part of me, enjoying the mutagenicity of t-shirts and pillowcases neatly creased as broken glass, stuffed in the bottom of the clean laundry bag, fuming and changing and relaxing under moist heat. Not much threat of becoming an obsessive ironing compulsive: I don't have the time.

Not sure where it goes, the time. Not sure at all. There's a lot of bits spent at the kitchen sink cleaning the latest peanut butter-covered knife and the latest lip-greased cup for tea. The coffee stains and the coffee syrup coated spoons and for god's sake the dog hairs and the dog staring waiting hoping praying for...for what? Jesus Christ, I wish I knew what was on her mind with the breathing and the sighing and the plaintive shedding. Fine dog though, mind, absolute sweetheart, loyal and kind. Furthermore, she keeps Mary's feet warm at times and that's a service worth as is worth.

Mostly the time lately is in being in between, halfway there and needing to be on the way. Not my favorite way to spend a life. I love endless days and endless days only start with endless mornings, whatever say the fans of late night. No day lasts as long as one started before the sun comes up. Every hour then a gift, a cold secret gift, a mysterious fat and wide eyed tight scalped time. Lately I've been rising with the post, good woman who delivers the mail, hitting our stoop at hours almost noon, not the way I'd choose. Up till three and what would I expect--but these hours after midnight are watery quick, weaving quick leaving quick, depleting things. Hours spent on farting and on wishes of sleep. Not the thing at all and a hard thing to change. Time now to get out and let the dog piss, or bark or howl or whatever she's of a mind.

Black-Eyed Peas, Luck Luck Luck

2005-01-03T20:45:00.000-06:00

To each who has left me comments recently: thank you. I never went anywhere--just wasn't posting. Please do feel free to use the e-mail link. It is kind of people to care enough to check in after months and holler hey. Thank you. Happy new year besides, god, I really hope so. You all deserve it.

It was a new year and so we ate black eyed peas. Old tradition, new tradition. We used to eat roast pork and sauerkraut, fried apples and roast potatoes. On New Years Day Rosalie speculated that might have been Larrys favorite meal. But then she said, she said, he had so many favorites, liking his food. We did not eat roast pork this year. We ate black-eyed peas for luck, for luck, in this 2005, a good year, it will be a good year. Battered, deep fried cod and black eyed peas and cole slaw, collard greens and corn bread, macaroni and cheese. A picnic round the kitchen oak. I think this must be a Southern belief, the belief in black-eyed peas. My brother asked if the Southerners have had such good luck, should we be eating their peas? Not a bad point, but this year we were looking for a little luck, a little calm, a little peace, so my mother with the buying of the peas.

For that matter, I love black-eyed peas, the earth and the grit, the grim stone-faced joy of their taste. My brother consented to eat exactly one, let him have luck, let him. And why not? Whats the harm of hope, of superstition? Two thousand four, a year, a point of planetary position come home again, I wont blame, I wont call bad, but its been a weird, hard year. The worst yet, some might say, but how to value the living, the dying? I wont blame 2004, but I'll be looking forward to 2005, hoping time slows a little. I think it should be tired. Let it rest, let it roll slowly in tall weeds, let it bake in the sun, let it chew on old leather and eat paste.

Deaths at Christmas must be as common as any other time, they must be as common between Dec. 20 and Dec. 27 as between May 1 and May 8, don't you think? Still, they suck. My cousins lost their mother, my father's sister, right before Christmas. Same disease as my dad, almost exactly the same progression. Didn't hold off quite as long. Fuck it, I don't care if it's a plane or an asteroid or frozen goose shit, I just hope something gets me without choices, without too much time for contemplation and deterioration. No need to get into it here, but this aunt of mine, and who doesn't, deserved better. Funny, funny, crazy, brilliant, whacked woman.

Eating the black-eyed peas and smiling at the coming year with one hand over one eye, fingers crossed. A good year. God knows I wish one to each, to all even, knowing that for so many it's going to be an uphill slog through hot pink, curdled poodle vomit. But still, we hope, and why not? For each, for all, I hope good, or interesting, or sweet, or fat, or sassy, or slap happy, or horny, or lightly toasted and buttery, hoppy and bitter sweet or sweaty heady whole hearted blooming black passionate swirled rainbow sherbet, ephemerally loving tear-drawing breath-stealing loin-tingling chest-swelling good times are ahead of you, lurking in your water closet, in your pantry, in your closet under all the jeans you bought last year that don't fit; hiding in the strangely inviting trunk of your car--if only you were small enough to install a right-sized couch and lava lamp and move into that tidily sized, carpeted space--or maybe you wouldn't want to--but still I hope in your music which you will play, in the wonderful food you will cook, in the wonderful things you will write, in the wonderful lost moments with your infant you, thank god, forgot to video tape but will remember forever, in these moments, in these moments, in these moments of congealed bacon fat and pregnant diapers, in these moments of innocence, and it will all seem like innocence someday, fucking god damn it, for god's sake do I wish each his or her happiness. Love it, please, whatever moment it is, love it. Do the stupid, do the wise, do the taxes, but love it, love it. Be a little silly, go tell your lover thank you for the smoothness of the plaster and the horse hair, go tell your dog, thank you for the steaming turds and the plastic bags, go tell your roaches thank you for the entertainment. Telling these planets, these hard cold spheres thank you for the death of my father, thank you for the life, thank you for the mitochondria, thank you for the breath, thank you for the altar and the fat, thank you for the memories, thank you for the sweet brilliance of berry juice and strange fruit hairs. Will and thanks and hope and dread, this affliction, hoping this new year at least has some sweetness, some unnoticed moments to fuel future nostalgic memories.

And, I guess, that's about it.

List Making

2004-12-20T18:58:00.000-06:00

Going to Washington, that's D.C., tomorrow. Right now I have ten thousand things to do but am confident that whatever gets done will be enough. Dishes and dog fur and fish tanks to be cleaning. Bills and cat boxes, overflowing the both of the them, but what else? This is my version of making list. Owen's things to be done in the next three hours. No I haven't forgotten packing; I've pushed it into that never-land of things which, since leaving can't be accomplished without them, will be done no matter how late. It would be lovely one of these lifetimes to be organized, I mean really so. To have all chores done in time to relax and reflect and enjoy it deeply. Does this ever happen? Is there any way to fold a fitted sheet neatly?

No, I mean the last. If anyone knows of a systematic, repeatable way to fold a fitted sheet, please let me know. Years ago I solved the problem by not buying fitted sheets. Hospital, or at least store front clinic, corners and a nice, not-to-worry self-righteous old-fashioned feel. Who needs elastic? Yes, but then there is being in a couple, and the hospital corners, well, sleeping alone and not moving much is one thing, but god forbid, with two bodies and a cat in the bed, and god help us should someone else have to change the sheets...anyway, if anyone knows a good way to fold a fitting sheet, a simple thing, let us know, please.

Let's see. Oh, right, I was going to put that 3M plastic film on a few windows tonight. It actually might happen. If I get started, I will do it. I might not get packed, the bills might not get paid, and I just remembered I should take a shower. The fridge didn't get cleaned by the way. There is this bowl--it's a lovely bowl, a blue banded and white glass Pyrex thing--a bowl full of old hummus. Actually, it's hummus no longer, green and blue-black and white mold. That bowl is lurking on the bottom shelf, well out of sight, not a thing to worry one at all if sight is out of mind. I do sort of miss the bowl.

There is also olive brine runnded over and under the glass trays which allow viewing of the stains and onion skins and blue--really cool periwinkle color--allium mold in the vegetable drawer. The bacon needs to be thrown out. So too the plastic tub of refried black beans. The hard dried--but not moldy--cheese, but properly that's Mary's exclusively so I don't worry. The lettuce: one bag fine--at least till Thursday--and one bag already that watery brown-white liquid waiting to run through my fingers when to pick it up I'll try. God only knows how old that kefir of Mary's is. One wonders why I should worry now if this old hummus has not worried me so much yet? Furthermore, I'm the only one leaving: Mary will be here and could certainly clean the fridge if she were so pressed. But, it's a strange thing. There is something about getting on a plane, or driving far enough away to necessitate sleeping somewhere else--one night won't do it, two barely--this sleeping away is the thing, the thing to remind one of every undone chore, of every cobwebbed corner or every molding crust married to every crusty sock. I'd do it all, if I had the time, pull out and polish every nail in every stud.

But I don't have the time. For god's sake, I've not even packed yet. At some point I'll have to walk the dog. Mary then will be home from work, and so few hours to smell her hair and listen to her talk to put hot water bottles under the sheets and light candles and christmas lights and try to be sweet. If only I were more organized and had this all in a list. If it were a job I'd be on each thing, soon done with all things, I swear.

I should get. Trying to not let six months pass without a post. I suppose I could always post my school work, but goddamnit, boring enough to write the first time, much less to read. I could post unsent letters, the living and the dead. That would be strange.

Wool

2004-12-18T13:24:00.000-06:00

I'm not dead, though if I were I'd like to think I'd have more time for things like maintaining a blog. Different calendar, different clock. Truthfully, after fall semester started and with a new job I haven't even had time for wool gathering. Piles and piles of wool waiting to be gathered, getting matted into felt, full and fuller.

We got a dog too, August, right at the end of August. The Rice country humane society chose her name and we were disinclined to change it. And yes, despite the name, she's a she. Nice, silly and time hungry dog. Sheds a great deal

Suddenly with the semester break and my kitchen floor is actually mopped, there are clean sheets on the bed and even the tub might lose its soap scum patina this afternoon.

I miss good food. Never eaten so shitty for so long in my life. Right now I wish I could eat wood, this tree down in my yard. Three hundred dollars before Christmas to have it taken off the neighbors fence and I passed on the fees for cutting, chipping, hauling. Just down and a lot of wood. How strange a thing that a tree, for many millions of years, a normal entity with integrity--an expected, even desired part of the landscape--suddenly, because of a fence being built under it and cables strung beneath it, a tree becomes a nemesis, a pest, an impediment, an expensive reminder of entropy. It was an ash tree, badly rotted at the heart of its base, but full of wet wet heavy green wood above. Half is still standing, and must come down--one can see light through the curtain of xylem on which it balances. Unfortunately, the my and my neighbor's power lines have to be dropped for those good times and they aren't able to come out till after Christmas. And when, that will be another five hundred, plus tax. I seriously need to find a way to make more money.

Not saying much am I? But not dead, though a lazy, non-posting, bad webizen. May soon think of things to share and find pretty words to hang on them. Of course, anyone is welcome to poke me with a stick (email), to see if I'm just sleeping.

Autumn in August

2004-08-21T08:28:00.000-05:00

Summer forgot about us. It's cold here in Minnesota. It shouldn't be in the forties in the middle of August, but it is. Poor pumkins. Growers say what are normally the size of basketballs by this time rather resemble golf balls. You probably could get away with growing lettuce or broccoli throughout this summer. It does make me smile though to hear people complain about it. Normally this time of year one hears bitter comments on all sides about the sweltering conditions. Strange and a little bit sad though, to feel it's autumn and hardly have noticed the summer.

Mary and I are going with a group of her friends to Wisconsin tomorrow, to the Bois Brule river. A few days of floating and sleeping on the ground. Will be nice, I think. Nice anyway to wake up smelling like wood smoke, damp or not. Showers predicted for each day :) Going to miss a couple of classes though, which feels irresponsible.

Bois Brule, Mary's dad informs me, means burnt wood in French. Apparently it was what French settlers called Native Americans, once upon a time. So far removed from the time and the daily usage, it is impossible to know if it was used with derision, if it was pejorative, or not. Funny thing about words. I'm told the section of river we'll follow has lots of Class I and II rapids, with a couple of Class III. I, of no experience on rivers, will be walking around the last I think. No one ever drowned--or lost one's kit--on a portage. Brule empties into Lake Superior and that is where we finish. Something deeply satisfying about that. Even if you don't leave from the headwaters, following a stream till it gives up to something greater has a beauty to it.

New Aortal Link: Tvindy

2004-08-11T15:14:00.000-05:00

Long time ago I had a nice plan to update my Aortal link weekly. Things got off to a fine start with NoMilkPlease which continues to be an exceptional site, regularly updated, and has grown in its sophistication. Then, really just a week later, I linked Bakerina. I fully intended to continue finding and posting new sites on a weekly basis, but somehow life intervenes. Also, I'm lazy. I think I've failed to change it this long because having that link to Bakerina high up in the side bar is almost like having a book on the shelf. Unconscious spell casting and well-wishful-thinking. Ok, but I've seen the future. Not sure how, it just happens, and the very talented Bakerina will have a book out in the next two years. Believe. So, time to change links.

Of course, my new link, Tvindy, I found via Bakerina, but that's beside the point. I only started reading it recently and have been impressed by how well it lives up to its description, A Blog About Nearly Everything. I still don't understand the name Tvindy, but I haven't tried to find out. Tend to take names at face value. I was led to the blog by the voice articulated in comments he's left on other sites, and have not been at all disappointed since. I found the thoughts of a down to earth, extremely smart young man interested in nearly everything, but without an obsessive need to show off. Haven't communicated with him directly, so how do I really know, but I just get the impression this is a person you would have to really like who has interesting things to say, and says them well.

Also, in quite an astounding contrast to me, he's a high quality and impact linker. If a post mentions little house on the prairie, expect a picture and a link. If it mentions cockroaches, a lovely huge picture of cockroaches and so forth.

Tvindy had a filthy refrigerator at one point, but God knows he must drink a lot of orange juice. And made friends with a scrub jay. I was excited to see this post because I haven't seen a scrub jay since I left Fresno.

Anyway, I'm horseshit at this kind of thing. In the main trying to say this guy has a great blog, the kind of blog to which I'd aspire if I were of a mind to aspire. I'm glad I found it. Tvindy.

My dad as grub

2004-08-04T22:29:00.000-05:00

And this is a picture of my dad...long time ago. Box from Danish Creamery Butter shields him.

Mokey with the mango runs

2004-08-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

Okay, hooking up hardware is simple, easy, plug in, and on so. Right? What a fucking pain in the ass when everything decides to hang and deceive and mislead, and why? Because some horseshit software tack-on wants to be registered and then silently, invisibly, tries for fifteen minutes and is, finally, unable. That's all. What a sack of monkey shit. The kind with the unripe mango runs. The kind of sack with a wide weave. The kind that sweats shit water running down your calves. Burlap or hemp fiber, or some damn jute thing, but full of monkey feces all the same. And these monkeys! Lord, what have they been eating? Week old aoli left in the sun?

Sometimes, no matter their magic, I hate how pathetically wnt-to-be-brilliant-helpful-and-pleasing computers and software are. It always comes down to some idiotic half-wit full-shit trying to get you to accidentally agree to be on the mailing list of every fuck-shit in the industry--and that's the crappy panty that hangs!

Ok, and anyway, several months of wading through half digested Lunchables--they're never fully digested, are they? How could they be? I mean, they sit on the shelf, in plastic boxes, in the warm air of supermarket ailses, the meat and the cheese--but several long moments later, my scanner works again. This is a picture of me as a shaver, doing something quite fun.

Artcyclopedia

2004-08-04T20:07:00.000-05:00

Stumbled on this site via a comment on, christ don't remember, on someone's blog. But, it is great, in any case. It's not so hard to search a particular artist and find examples on the web, but it is fun to browse too, hence the Artcyclopedia. Blue Horses is one of my favorite paintings of all time, and I don't know if it's there. I should go check, but I feel my washing maching swelling, vibrating in the floorboards. Everything being about laundry lately.

Hands

2004-08-04T19:36:00.000-05:00

This is my hand. One can tell it's a hand. Hands trip me out sometimes, all that they see, so to speak. Hands are in everything, unlike the back of one's neck. The nape sees some good times to be sure, but it also spends quite a lot of life being a place for hairs and shirt tags to irritate. I like people's hands anyway. I look at a hand and wonder what the owner is like. Hard working, hard living, kind to animals, secret glutton, nose picker--that sort of thing. Looking at my hand from the outside, I'd say sausage maker. I don't make sausages, not at all. But from this picture, my fingers look the sort that loiter round the nozzle of a grinder catching casing and whirling it into links.

Trying to think about hooking up my scanner. We've lived here a year and I've yet to unpack it. Hrm.

Playing with new blogger

2004-08-03T21:10:00.000-05:00

Goofing around with uploading pictures and things. Changed the pictures link over in the sidebar. Mostly seeing what's up with blogger's changes. This picture is as you walk into our house. Not much of a photo, and distorted now!, but anyway...

2004-07-30T21:18:00.000-05:00

Old Maytags

Oooh, hearing the nighthawks calling. My favorite sound of summer, my favorite sound. Remind me to go on sometime about nighthawks and why I love them so much.

I keep forgetting my password. This happens to me with ATMs as well. Trying to remember that the last two digits are seven years removed from your ex-girlfriend's sister--and she was such a nice girl, the sister, I mean--'s birthyear--well for fuck's sake, what does one expect. Rotten passwords. I have ten or fifteen that I circulate in my head, in the web, and trying to find the right combination of password and user-id often is instructive of how useful a site or service actually is. But, I do remember blogger, don't know how it comes to me, once in a blue moon-Hah! and it is too--posting as I do.

I'm typing because I'm waiting for the washer to start its dance of hysterical suicide. I pet my washer, I do. I stroke it and cajole it and tell it what an interesting, beautiful item it is, with the white enamel, and the crytalesque knob and green, many holed--yes many!--interior. My washer is older than I am. It came with the house. It has bearing difficulties. Thumpa thumpa whack whack kafucking crush and a fire and all. But, no, it hasn't caught fire yet. I wait for the day it can do no more, the day it kisses off and dies. No matter how much I think a new washer--being the one who does all the wash--would be a good idea, I will grieve for this old Maytag. There is a reason. Though it is white, it is almost exactly the same model up with which I grew. My parents, noting the impending eruption of my brother, way back in 1969, bought a washer--and--a dryer. They were avocado green. Fuck off. I happen to love avocado green. But the point for God's sake, it's not the color, it's the model, and it's the same. The same one which lurked resentfully in the basement when Mary and I bought this house. The same one which thumps and crashes through its cycle six or so times a week. The one I'm scared to have Mary approach for fear that her disgust with bring both me and the washer into jellied states of inadequate self-awareness--No, just like that.

Anyway, I was predisposed to love my washer, even though I hate that motherfucker and would replace it in a minute if I win the Powerball. But still, I would grieve. I would grieve for the house in which we lived, for the air I once breathed, for the clean young lungs and the pure white teeth. Of for sure, I'll grieve for everyone who was alive when that was our washer, that Green mat's machine. I'll grieve, seeming like all I ever do. Pilot light demons and unfortunate smells and pegboard silhouettes and tiny windows like doorways to thin limbs with unintentioned malintentions.

Anyway, sitting here waiting for the washer to lose it, so I can run to its rescue. I should make coffee at least, and perhaps I will. This day was spent taping and mudding cracks in a ceiling, for those who really wonder what the hell is going on. It started with a harangue about body image over at Bakerina, and I'm too tired and lazy to provide a link, trusting you to find it.

And a prayer for the fates, the spinners at the wheel. I saw an egret yesterday, not an uncommon occurrence, but with the sun behind and every primary highlighted, a white chalk rubbing of brittle black lace. That bird! For fuck's sake.

Hope everyone has sweet or horny dreams, whichever suits, but no nightmares, no and none and all that.

2004-07-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

Old new, Cashew! Member of Poison Ivy Family, Anacardiaceae. Sounds scary, wanting to do what to your heart?

Dish dish and wiki wiki. Looking for some thing to say, to participate. Getting guilty feelings for sitting in the corner playing with the dust on the windowsill. In trouble for that still! Anyway, yesterday was my later father's birthday. Went okay, talking with my mother and offering such words as were there, but by bed, looking at pictures and the rough of it. It is rough. Fuck. You lose like this quarter of your compass dial and you think, "East? East, what happened to East? It was an important direction, for God's sake. Everything I thought I was, thought I knew--East had something to do with it. Then, a friend of mine, Susan, lost her father a few days ago. Echoing pain and walking in borrowed shoes and prayer offering and things.
     But still, I promised myself I'd stay somewhat current here. I like this thing, this blog. I like the people I meet, and the cream rising from my head is watery tonight. That's okay. Poisoned cows.
     I'm retyping, or trying to save some things from my last computer I never got around to moving. The old comp is up in a closet, and there were many files I wanted to save, but I was out of town, in D.C. and there's too damn many things with people and asking for things, so...I did print out, at one point, a fair amount of random notes. Not unlike this present, inked in the flesh moment. Typing lines tonight, lines and lines and lines and falling alseep in the cathode glow. But, I'll type something here, and I promise not to edit. Let's be maudlin and visit the past together, eh and eh, oh.

**************

I went down to Mictlan today. I am getting desperate. Bridges singing my name song and the lines seem to follow a trail of bubbles down under, under the rock and the coontail and the duckweed. The rotting pondcabbage, what will it taste like? Last moments, differential plant diagnosis by taste.
     But, I went down to Mictlan. This god, this Aztec god of a death not mine, seems more approachable than mine, sometimes. But Mictlantechutli, typically, wasn't home. In the hard packed earth walk leading to their home I scraped plaintain from the ground with my toes. They call this weed, "White Man's Footsteps," and that is as apt a name as has ever been given. Of course, it is a mouthful and no one calls it that. Everyone calls it Plantain. Some people, under duress, to distinguish it from many other less offensive plants, will call it Plantago major. I called it nothing that day, but scrubbed it instead, from the rusty earth with my white toe. Fibrous roots catching sun like an inadequate toupee. The seeds yield a powerful laxative, I'm told. You almost certainly have consumed it, if laxatives are your thing. Not mine, not mine thank god Dear and yet.
     In my toes, clutching a pineapple weed, came a moment, a moment of breath and dust and time forgetting to chime. Here was a woman walking the path. Not a relative of the Aztec God of Death I was sure. Here was a woman unclad, or never clad, but wearing the most interesting beating light. Here were her young breasts, not large, not egregious, but held up none the less by thousands of fluttering wings. Butterflies. Monarchs and viceroys beating orange dust into black covered pink nipple kisses making impossible to think, and painted ladies doing their best to do just that. Swallowtails trailing sweet breaths to her belly.
     I never noticed what she wore below the navel, as the wings tickled the entired world and me, inside, despite. I thought, "Jesus, this is something. This is something wonderful. How nasty a bra, how profane."
     I thought we had met, perhaps. There was that sense of familiarity. These eyes I had swum before, so I asked.
     "Do they tickle? The butterflies?"
     "Yes," she said simply.
     "Oh," I said.
     "It's after urea they come. The salts. They taste with their feet, you know." She smiled, the wrinkle and the nose and the eyelight. "But they eat with their mouths." Serious.
     "Oh," I said. "Jesus. It's beautiful."
     She smiled, and it was. Beautiful.
     "Jesus would have liked the butterflies," she said. "If he had thought of them."
     I said, "Oh. Oh!"
***
So I went home to talk to the cat. The cat doesn't need a bra and never talks about Jesus.
     "I like to eat butterflies," she offered. "When I can catch them."
     Nodding, I.
     "Like paper candy, tearing in my teeth."
     I fell asleep, depressed, on the couch, cat staring. I dreamed of her, not her, but of the cat, with yellow swallowtail scales in her whiskers, her tongue in vibrant summber hues. Painting her fur with tongue while she groomed. I slept and the cat was transformed. When I woke she sat in the trap of the window.
     "Well, can you taste through your feet now?" I asked her.
     She blinked crumbled jade and uncoiled her tongue. As pink and antiseptic and mammalian as it ever was.
     Hiding tears with my forearm. The cat shifted her weight inelegantly on fur elbows. She stared through the wire screen, stalking her dreams in sympathy.
**************

Don't really remember when, exactly, I wrote that. It was a dream I had of my Mary, before we were together. Different cat. God only knows how she is. Still think of those butterflies, and the skin. Anyway, best to all.

2004-07-22T20:39:00.000-05:00

Titles and titles and piss on it

What is this, what is this, a nose hair? Scratching my head and climbing the walls. How many years go by before you learn the lessons you were learning when you weren't learning anything? Christ.

Trying to write a paper tonight. Not due, exactly. Due to other students, by "8 o'clock Thursday." Bothers me that I didn't have something complete for them. These people are not without absurdly busy-ing other committments, kids and jobs and things, but they all produced wonderful papers well before eight. I offer, meaning no disrespect to their efforts, god help me, a three quarters, if that, finished rough as coarse sand in a bikini draft at eight--and then my e-mail didn't want any loving from Word! Well, fuck them both. Or rather, fuck word and fuck windows. Actually, I don't know who was responsible. Fuck us all. Anyway, it's only a draft, right? Yes, but it's the question of respect that makes me sick. The other folks all have really nice products ready to go. I want to applaud them--none of them know I blog, so I can applaud with immunity--and to applaud the teacher. This is a class I'm taking to fulfill graduation requirements only, as is everyone else in there, but, but but, the teacher is great. A surprise. A consistent, great planning, passionate, honest teacher--in an entry level class no one takes except to fulfill requirements! If anyone deserves respect, such a one does, and I--I with the not so great, and last minute draft. Yeah, fuck it. The final will be much better, it's already at work in my head. And that's my problem. I write shit out in some ethereal hyperspace and am lucky if the ink dries before St. Peter weighs my nuts, you know? We'll see. I feel like such an ass, but it's not the end of the world.

How's this for navel gazing within academics. A paper on the efficacy of lavender, when inhaled, for reducing anxiety:

On March 19, 2004, my dad died, a few months shy of his sixty-eighth birthday. Until a few years ago, he was as healthy as anyone wants, as happy as he wanted to be, of course, he was also a prodigous smoker. Cancer is a mean trick, I do not wish it on anyone. I spent much of the last year traveling or living in Washington, D.C., to be close, to help out. Anyone who has loved someone with cancer knows helplessness. The desire to do something, anything, to heal, to encourage, to comfort, finally to kill pain. Larry gamely underwent absurd numbers of tests and treatments. His original “sentence” was for two weeks. Two years later he had reason to think he could keep going. Unfortunately, there are times when no matter how positive you are, no matter how strong you are, life just makes you its bitch. The last month of my dad’s life was surreal. The details are irrelevant to the subject at hand—which, believe it or not, is about to be revealed—but in the last few months cancer affected my dad’s mental capacity in a negative and progressive way. He was unable to reason, even to recognize common things, or use speech effectively. However, he was clearly aware of these defects, and of their progressive nature. He was aware that his life had come to the one place he wanted to avoid—incontinent, demented, painful weakness—but with incoherence making it impossible to communicate a desire to continue treatment, or to cease it. One animal to another, fear is very plain. We do not need language to know when a cat is scared, when a dog is scared, when a cornered raccoon is afraid and unpredictable. We recognize fear, and when we see it in those we love, who does not wish to alleviate it? Larry was very anxious. In his case, our doctors presented the options, drugs, or nothing. Valium and morphine—both with lots of unpleasant side effects such as constipation, disassociation, nightmares, addiction and withdrawls—or, nothing? Well….
Before he had become too debilitated, Larry had regularly driven himself from our home in the center of D.C. out to a holistic massage center in the suburbs. At a certain point, when he began chemotherapy, they refused treatment, but they did give him a vial of the massage oil, a blend, primarily lavender. For the last two weeks of his life, confused and panicked, one of the only ways Larry could calm down enough to fall asleep was if I suggested he deeply inhale holding the bottle of oil under his nose. He indicated it was both pleasant and relaxing, that it made him feel calm. Yes, it was transitory—in contrast to the Valium which knocked him out for hours—but he was able to be present. When you only have a couple weeks left with your loved ones, being present matters—one hopes it matters at other times as well. My mother and my brother were somewhat skeptical of the aroma treatment—combined with hopefully soothing speech and, at times, a straight lavender massage of incredibly dry legs—but no one as sleep deprived as we wanted to argue with results. Despite the circumstances, and the following weeks and funeral planning and paper shredding and catch as can grieving, I wondered about that oil. I wonder still what was happening inside that poor man’s head, if some chemical signal was affecting the neural pathways governing anxiety and sleep. Did it really help him? Was the aroma of lavender truly effective to calm him, or was it only the attention, the soothing words? That is really the question then, does a treatment help? Does it have side effects? Are you being misled, poisoned, sold on false promises, or scholarly unease in admitting impotence? Those are the sorts of questions one asks regularly while undergoing treatment for cancer. How you hope something works! How you grasp at studies and clinical trials, how you argue with doctors and insurance companies over efficacy of some barely studied regimine. Compared to studying treatments for cancer, the use of lavender to effect anxiety seems a simple subject. One finds the research to be inconsistent, contradictory, confusing, and colored by desire and economics. But what about average healthy people? If I’m feeling anxious, can a whiff of lavender help me get through a test, a job interview? Can it help tire the hamster in the wheel of worries which gets going every night as I go to bed?

No, don't worry. There are about twenty journal articles scattered around me know, actually relevant to the subject. It's just that I care about writing...and I care about research...but writing about research--how, once you find the answer, are you supposed to care enough to argue persuasively your findings? I could just tell everyone in the class that, yes, lavender is probably effective at reducing anxiety, but that the effects will vary depending on your condition and your duration of exposure. That's fucking it! That's it about anything. The rest of it is arguing about the color of dog shit, as my father used to say. Brown...or is it, taupe!?!

Who knows, who knows.

Treading water, as usual. Inch and a half long jalapeno. Excited. Once, with rows of peppers, now with one plant, and it's even more exciting. Good lord, it's still quite the daylight here in St. Paul, and a family of six racoons, mother and children just foamed between my garage and the neighbor's fence, to ghost across her yard and down the bluff. What are they doing out at this hour?

2004-07-16T11:31:00.000-05:00

Nasturtiums and Watermelons

Hmm, it's been almost two months since I last updated. I suppose an explanation should be in order, especially for those kind enough to have been checking in or commenting, but...what story isn't long and the telling of which too exhausting? Fate seems to be stalking people I love. Combine that with summer, with remodeling, with school with balancing on a delicate thread of happiness and forward progress--sometimes even if thoughts are there, where's the energy to get them out? Besides, the problem with a public blog is that it's public. Not being anonymous, there're lots of things I realize I can't share here, something I never considered when I started this. One starts a little blog thinking no one will ever read it. Suddenly, everybody knows your business and you think damn, I should have worn a mask to this party. Anyway....

Looking out this window at nasturtiums. Profligate, cheerful, silly, wild and rank in a harmless way. I love nasturtiums, through the summer. Only come the first touch of frost and a slimy, ropy mess to wrap around rakes and choke compost piles, but at least that is some time off.

My mother's birthday today, not that she'll read this but happy birthday to her. We talked recently about the slightly poisonous mix of love and memory. All of our birthdays are in July and August. My brother's the day before my father's. How do you celebrate without sadness. Modern life, sitcom society and the absence of the sacred. Our people really need myths, need some framework for ancestors and gods to make reality bearable if not comprehensible.

Mary wanting a dog. We think and wonder about mutts and breeds and query the clawless cat, wishing a dog would just knock at the door and present itself as dogs have in the past. How do you approach fate and who will take the blame? I am starting to think that a life intentionally lived is just the hardest damn thing.

There are very bright yellow flowers on Mary's watermelons. Given the lateness of the season, perhaps we won't be eating of these plants, but the flowers are welcome and the vines seems sure they will take over the world. Half assed attempt to throw some vegetables in the ground this year. We have so many things we need to do to this house, that many things are just nudges in the right direction. A pot of geraniums here, a pepper plant there. I think Mary will definitely have peppers and tomatoes, maybe miniature pumpkins--enough for me at any rate. Perfectionism sucks.

I really should take some pictures. Just making a stab here to stay open. Get in the habit of babbling again.

2004-05-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

Cutworms and tomatillos and things

Cutworms. Strange life for these grubs, eating away under the sod, making a space in perpetual darkness. I've been tearing away chunks of lawn still. Mary has a great love of a plant I don't know, variously called persian jewels, nigella, or love-in-a-mist. So yesterday with the sifting out of rhizomes and lopping off tree roots and piling sod in the back of our lot. A half moon of new fluffy earth next to our front walk and we'll see if the tiny black seeds like it enough. And the chinese lanterns. We popped in a bunch of annuals to hold the eye until her seeds sprout.

Chinese lanterns are a fun way to acknowledge family relationships among plants. Consider a tomatillo, papery husk and yellow seed disks. Consider the same genus growing wild round here, called ground cherry, Physallis virginiana, it's like looking at fraternal twins. How can the eye not see the similarities to a pepper seed, an eggplant leaf? How can the skunky funk of these nightshade leaves, these tomato leaves, this potato, how can these olfactory threads not take one up a branching family tree wondering what mutation, what diverted river, what bit of climate change, what long flying vector--what caused the small estrangement which caused speciation? I love the diversity of the earth, even the countless asters with their constant flux on the slippery quick edge of evolution.

I should go find out what hard bodied adult does a cutworm become? Always just thought of them in terms of the curses of groundskeepers. Can't believe I don't know what the adult form is. We haven't killed many. Mary won't touch them; she passes them to me on the tip of her trowel. Just piling them with the leaves and sod at the back of our yard. Maybe they'll make it. Maybe robins will eat them and be glad for the unexpected protein. What would be able to eat these things, living as they do, locked in the soil? Moles, I suppose, maybe large burrowing beetles, though I really have no idea. I wonder if they are native to this place, to North America I mean. The grass under which they are living isn't. Poa pratensis, Kentucky blue grass, is a European cool season grass, and corrupted as my lawn is with dandelions and plantain, it is mostly Poa. Well, I might as well go find out.

2004-05-15T06:40:00.000-05:00

The Fugees and Saturday dawn. Washing sheets at 5:30 a.m. is very peaceful and satisfying to hang them on the line. Snapping pillow cases and fresh mist. Outside this window watching convergence of dew point and sudden opaque fog over the river. There is Virginia waterleaf blooming and Solomon's seal unfurling at a foot and a half. I dug small hills for Mary's pumpkins yesterday. May be too late, may not. Depends on the year and the angles of the sun. We don't know each square foot of this land yet. Tearing up sod this week, setting in prairie perennials. Hopeful plants, perennials, trusting in the future.

This cup of coffee is almost empty. Have to eat and hop a bus, class at nine.

2004-05-02T07:19:00.000-05:00

Sunrise, Birds, Old Writings and things

Something I never expected to see, and can't explain: a mourning dove being hounded and dive-bombed, chased all over these blooming oaks just after dawn. Thinking, no, that can't be a dove, must be a kestrel or some such. What could a dove do to incite the ire of a sparrow, don't know what kind? Surprised by a common chipping sparrow working the edge of my front walk. The bur oaks and white oaks up here are heavy with pollen. When I left D.C., oaks were already done and leafed out. I wonder if I brought back any pollen in my hair, or my clothes. In my lungs? Could I sneeze and bring southeastern genetic material to these northern trees? Unlikely to be an unwitting vector for a wind pollinated species, but who knows.

I just noticed, the sun rise fills the river valley first.

Cleaning up papers at my desk here, or making a show anyway. There was something I wrote years ago in response to a very small glass of wine. Wished I had it when in D.C., as my mother informed me it was my father's favorite things I'd ever written, father's day cards and elementary school essays notwithstanding. I tried to recall something of it when speaking at his service, but just found a paper copy. He never mentioned to me that it meant anything to him, but there you are, or rather, here:

I will never forget the dream I had about Bongo. The world grey and static, a frozen space and my dead dog rising from the ground to protect me. The sky was the color of olive dust, but so painfully silent.

I will never forget my first taste of Moscato d'oro. Straw colored wine. In the wind I drank the sweet humid fungus of the turf. In the glass I stepped on the plum stones of the birds' leavings. In the glass I smelled the dust of my grandfather's body. In the glass my feet sank in the greasy cool mud under the magnolia trees. In the glass I drank the harsh voices of the scrub jays and the ethereal perfume of an April orange blossom. In the glass my limbs were thin and brown and my lungs had no limit. In the glass I was making love to every moment that ever felt good in my whole life. In the glass everyone knew I loved them and nobody was dead. In the glass I chewed raw almonds under the slow moving trees which made them. In the glass I burned piles of eucalyptus leaves and buried my feet in the fine hot ash. I stood a little beyond the kitchen window in the furrow with my grandfather and spit muscat seeds at the sun. They were the best, we agreed, the best possible grape. There is no flavor which compares, no sweetness so primitively sophisticated, so muskily primal. My grandfather's favorite, my father's favorite, and mine.

I worry that when I die my jury will consist of insects. I will face a panel of crippled ants and tomato hornworms and de-winged flies.

Completely inconvenient. Fat with sugar and seeds, the muscat is not a dainty grape. It necessitates spitting. It is so good to eat that politeness will not survive, nor will conversation. It is a food of those who will eat with silent companions or will eat alone, who will stop eating only when the perfume in their heads threatens to steal their very lives. Eat the muscat and you know, without question or embarrassment or pride that you are god and the grape is god and the moment is god. The grape is your mother. The grape is your shaman. The grape is your confessor and in its embrace sin withers from lack of ambition. After so many years of working the soil I think a man turns to wind.

There was only enough wine left in the bottle for one small glass. Would I ever find another bottle? Would I ever feel that good again? It's exciting to think that you just might.

So I guess I did remember some of that well enough for Larry. It's funny, to me anyway, that way back then I was thinking about the death of Larry's father. Thinking about the time when I lived on the farm after he died. I was having strange dreams. The wine was Moscato d'oro by Mondavi. A couple fingers left in the last bottle of a case forgotten in the bottom of a cooler at a restaurant where I worked. I think it was a 1990, or 91, though when I found it, 1996 maybe? I did find and buy that wine again, but no doubt it was never quite the same.

2004-05-01T08:55:00.000-05:00

Back home, drinking coffee, watching Saint Paul green up. There is some warbler working an ash tree in my backyard. Also a black cat with white throat jumping early nettles and harassing a squirrel. Yellow rumpeds, now several of them. Cold morning, but they seem to be doing well gleaning, one is doing a bit of hawking. A great blue heron going by, following the river. Though this house has problems innumerable, being on a bluff, overlooking the river valley, with open sky over the riparian corridor is a great compensation.

This Saturday morning listening to The Garden of Zephirus: Courtly songs of the early fifteenth century, Gothic Voices with Christopher Page director. This is one of my all time favorite recordings. It's one of those rare things which survives association. My mother gave it to me one Christmas when I was still living with my ex who killed herself. I played it non stop for a certain period and she too was very fond of it. Despite this, these voices singing very simple love songs, ballads and rounds move me into dreamtime and peacetime and open source godness. Chocolate melting on the tongue, strawberry kisses, warm sun soaking into skin. I love this music.

J'atendray tant qu'il vous playra
A vous declarer ma pensee,
Ma tres chiere dame honouree;
Je ne say s'il m'en desplayra.

I will wait as long as you wish
before declaring my thoughts to you,
my most dear and honoured lady;
I do not know if I will suffer for it.

I said they were very simple songs, but interesting that love songs haven't changed much in six hundred years.

Getting used to the idea of being here, rhythyms and smells and Mary, phone calls and mail. This city is so different from Washington, it's like being in a different country.

2004-04-28T07:51:00.000-05:00

Dangerous Caves

Teenagers died of carbon monoxide poisoning in bluff caves down the street from my house.

And I was just thinking about these caves last week. From what I hear, every teenager and his kid sister that grows up in Saint Paul spends a little time peeking in a cave. It would be impossible not to, I'd think. This is a godawful sad story. City mothers and fathers keep talking about sealing off the caves. They've been boarding them up for years and it's never worked. I can't blame the kids for being curious...Why am I babbling?

Here is a city. Here is part of its history, these man made and not so man made hollows and deeps carved in the bluffs, obscured by roads above, by the very grid of streets and lots and survey markers, stop lights and Dairy Queens. The news: the Apprentice, American Idol, Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, and of course, Iraq. We are a species which evolved in a specific context. Depending on where one draws the line, our minds and emotions are a process over a million years old. For all but ten thousand of those years, natural selection operated on us in a context of selecting for traits--both physical and mental--which increased fitness in an environment of grasslands, forest edges, rocks and sun and rivers. No bridges, no dams, no hydroponic produce, no freeways and commutes, school busses, and no T.V.

Why are we surprised when kids want to explore caves? There's a confused avatar in every one of us wondering why all the skills and thoughts, loves and dreams which got us through the last million years are no longer relevant. One could argue that good sense, certainly selected for in any environment, should have told these teenagers to listen to the advice of their elders and stay the fuck out of the caves. The advice come down on a ratty sign--we get a lot of exposure to signs. We haven't exactly learned that it is worthwhile to trust our 'elders'. Sign your draft card, it's good for you--take a DDT shower, it's harmless--there are WMD in Iraq, that's why we have to bomb the shit out of it--See what I mean?

Here a natural inclination toward curiosity and wonder. Here a society which practically ignores the existence of nature, and demonstrates daily through distribution of resources that its priorities are anywhere but in the respect for and appreciation of the natural. I know most of the kids who wander down to the river, or to the caves, or just away, do so to drink and get laid, but once again we're talking about natural impulses. The attempt by all things paternal to pretend that there's a 'good' and a 'bad' and that if we all just said 'No,' and 'Abstain, abstain,'--Well this is all just a crock of shit, isn't it? Wouldn't it make more sense to consider the context in which we evolved? To set aside horseshit moral judgments which split souls and fill people with guilt and shame leading to perverted behavior, set aside the hateful, puritanical desire to control life, and at least acknowledge reality--wouldn't it make sense to educate kids about nature and their place in it?

Yeah, I know this was about caves. It was the city's reaction to this incident which set me off. Board them up and tell kids, "No." It's just like our government refusing to contribute our share to U.N. family planning efforts because those efforts include education about and distribution of birth control. To me, it's the same as refusing to teach sex education in schools, pretending that sex doesn't exist, that if we don't talk about it, nothing bad will happen. That everyone has his or her secrets, but a Slut is the one who gets caught, or pregnant. The city wants to board up the caves and basically pretend they don't exist. Tragic when teenagers die, but people always say, "They shouldn't have been there--didn't they see the caves were posted?" The cave in question was probably man made, as settlers often carved homes and warehouses out of the bluff, but they've become naturalized in many ways, being of living stone and no longer having a function for man. The impetus to explore them surely is natural. Whenever there is a tragedy such as this, I can't help but think the truly sad thing is that the kids knew so little about caves--or river currents, or riptides, or mountain lions, or lightning--that they had no idea how to survive. Then, instead of realizing that we should be curious about such things, that it's in our nature to be, instead of teaching our children what plants are poisonous, or taking them to the river to learn its ways, we sign them up for pre-school and hockey camp. Sunday School may be great for passing on one's mythology, but it is not a fucking substitution for sex ed. Not teaching a child about the beauty and danger of the natural world--without moral judgment--is like living in a house and not knowing where is the gas shut-off, the circuit breakers, the water main. Saying that sex education encourages immoral behavior is as silly as saying that teaching a child not to stick a fork in a socket is morally wrong, then branding the kid that gets zapped a loose little slut and blaming him or her.

So, was all this about caves, or morality? One could say I should organize my thoughts before sharing them, and one would be right, but I have to go pack and figure out those things I have to do before I go. The things I'll regret if I forget. Stand in a room and see my dad in these familiar things, smell him in his drawers, hear him in loose floorboards and querulous pipes.

2004-04-27T14:04:00.000-05:00

Back to Saint Paul

This Thursday coming. And what will I find? Will the cat be the same color, will she have two tails, will all my friends be in the psych ward or in jail? Looking forward and afraid too, it's been nine weeks of tremendous strangeness. Bound to have an effect.

Setting a date and busy all of a sudden. Trying to beat the lightening right now, beat the rain, with lace whipping at my face and silver undersides of new leaves gesturing in metalanguage that every sentence I write is true.

Thursday I'll be going. Nine weeks is a long time. The first month with Larry feels like another country, another language, another body. Long time to be away from Mary, from my cutting board and Mr. Clean and my mop and knives. Be fun to have certain things again, put up some fresh pictures, plant fragrant green things.

Rather than writing, I have a lot to do. Still shredding and crushing and sorting. Trying to empty drawers, prevent for my mother nasty surprises. Trying to save those things that ought to be saved, that come a gently sad day might be looked at and a man or a marriage a young love remembered with just enough gladness not to be killing.

Of course, at the moment there's the commode, the Isosource, the walker, the shower chair. I had suggested the day after he died calling a charity and having them pick up all these things, and chestnut loafers besides. But, there were other plans and other minds and so a day before I leave I'm making sure these things are gone, one way or the other. A truly practical family would save a shower chair, a walker, knowing that a time will come for another of us but...we are not a practical family and some practicality is just too cold, even for me. Though if I had a shed, and a place where they'd never be seen....I did offer to sell them as they're all perfectly good, but when you've watched your husband or your father going completely to hell, falling to pieces, there's just things you can't stand to look at again, or think about.

I believe in ritual. I believe in transformation. If I had an open field, I'd burn all of this, plastic and fumes notwithstanding. Still would make more sense to me to have a charity come get these things and put them to use. Something like that, I'm walking them over to the nursing home and that will be that.

Fuck, I have a lot to think about, going back to Saint Paul. Strange feeling of being nineteen again, having been at home for so long, with the season breathing on me and days without timecards. An opportunity then, I hope to see what change brings.

2004-04-23T09:10:00.000-05:00

Navel Gazing

Time lately and the juggling of greased eyeballs, slipping slipping, the nervous grab and the awful wet pop and squish.

I need to make a list. Can't even imagine the number of times my father said that. His lists kind of sucked though, never seemed to help him get organized at all. Focus for the anxiety and a yellow page with markings to stare at. I need a real list. A list with things like, Cut out and add mudflaps to my heart, graphic of Yosemite Sam optional, Wash my brain, spot treat, no starch. Invent a time machine, use to negotiate with self at age thirteen, again at nineteen, fuck, and countless points since and between. Find quiet cave with fresh water spring, plant honeysuckle vines over entrance, settle down. This mind is an abandoned house, with the hard dust and the timid light. Room after room after room of grey time dreams, looking for something. Keys, a knit cap, a missing ledger. Somewhere in here thinking I must have left a note to myself, a list, a page of instructions. Feed the cat four steamed prawns for breakfast, divide the irises, point up the garden wall, and go to university to be an antiquairan, that's your true calling. Nothing else will matter. Why with the everything else and nothing matters.

I dream of buildings a lot. Fun buildings, houses, churches, libraries and schools. The mad architect who draws my dreams is brilliant but not kind. The kind of spaces which fascinate and draw on one only to strand in panicked frustration. I would love to visit these places, as a child. Endless rooms with trap doors and dismaying angles, exposed great beams and underground rivers. Chicken wire pens, sudden attics, bleached sere spinning wheels and steel cob webs. There have been stainless trailers with air conditioners in every window, lime green panelling and broken plastic taps. There have been towers, single room stacked on single room, eleven stories high, in every room a different tainted joy. Mariner's compasses in onyx and abalone set in dirt floors of root cellars, half built elevators to sun filled lofts, sleeping girl child in tan strawberry sundress--why am I always dreaming of dead strangers?

On occasion, the lucid dream moment, I'll think to take a hard look, to find what I'm storing in all these rooms. This dream lucidity never lasts long. The characters rebel, the illusion breaks on the faces of friends, family members. The wide eyes and knowing I know. The race is on but the spaces sub-vibrate and threaten, floors drop away suddenly and splintered walls of shipwrecked wood closing in. Being food in the belly, awake swallowed whole. Regurgitated to a new building a new dream, or just thrown out onto clammy sheets. I dream a lot about being trapped. I almost never dream of coffee.

A video game after you've finished it. Once you've won, to go back again, all the hollowness and not caring what you make of it, faded pretense. Turn off the game and go outside. Stupid set walls.

Say this for plants, they never fuck with your head. Or maybe they do, when they want something, but at least there's always the gift. Petals and smells and green breath, sun warmed sugar on the tongue. Rocks never fuck with your head. A slide might kill you, but without malice. River might drown you, but it won't confuse the shit out of you first.

People ashes are chunky. Burnt rock in the bones, roasted limestone. Not in the manner of a plant say, the fine white ash, the fine black ash, the carbon burned off. With people, the vegetable flesh, the ephemera is fired off, sublimated and carried away. You're left with a bag of ground stone.

With the soul leaches hanging from her skin. Fat shiny welded scars. Silver skin, wet skin, bright stripes of mouthed liver. Every rasped mouth leaving behind a pink round tatoo.

Why with the diatomaceous earth, with the mayonnaise lids full of beer? That's a horrible way to die. If your lettuce can't defend itself, fuck it. If you really don't want to share with the slugs, plant your lettuce in a raised box flashed with copper.

All I hear lately is the sound of grinding gears, wrecked tranny, carnage on the asphalt. A new transmission, egg yolks floating on almond oil.

My dad died hooked up to what is called TPN, total parietal nutrition, I think. Tap into major chest vein, big white bag of wax, carefully blended nutrients. Going out on a cold plastic embilical cord.

A different light falls on the dying, when they're anchored past their time. Wrong colors, mudflats full of gaping mouths in the silt, never meant to be seen. Floating in the littoral zone, stranded by the tide. I hate to see jelly fish under gravity.

There was a time when I trusted myself completely, comfortable in the Third Law. I push the earth, it pushes me. People are so much stranger than bricks and sod and walnut trees.

First things first, I need to make a fucking list, go through the motions. Do little things today to make room for the little things tomorrow and the day after and the day after and...hope for the rest, I guess.

2004-04-20T18:42:00.000-05:00

Three Question Meme

Found at Snowball, who found it at the Mommy Blog...I shouldn't get myself into this. I didn't know memes, as such, existed until recently and now I'm a fool for them. And, thanks to aethele, I now know how to use trackback. Seems a bit of fun.

Quote from the original post:

I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions, no more no less. Ask me anything you want. Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (myself included) to ask you anything. (Do a trackback ping so that I know you copied it.)

And that's that.

2004-04-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

Sticky Pink Paint and Getting Lost Along Warped Songlines
Feeling ancient. Thank you for this post Aethele. Waiting for paint to dry, the basement, same smells, same old spring. The quiet cool whiteness of air conditioning. Actual vinyl on the turntable, sounding a little warped. The Beat, I Can't Stop This, 1980, haven't listened to this in twenty years. When did I even get enough years to say that, tossing around decades? Warped ska pop isn't so bad. Waiting for paint to dry, too many fumes, could never be a huffer.

There's the moment when you realize there are far more books you want to read than you will ever be able. And they keep writing more. Too many books, too much music, too many beautiful voices. Too many plants, too many state parks, too many museums, too many crimson and mustard and baby green markets I'll never stumble through seeing the thousand different ways teeth bend.

Give me a stick and a rock, a hollow log. A dorm mate years ago insisted you could lock me in a room with a peanut, a paper clip, and a piece of string. Said I'd be happy. Probably true, but I'm not locked in a room, there's all these pesky choices, all these lovely gifts, given and oh so squandered. What the fuck should I care?

I don't like fake breasts, sorry. They're fake. Short of reconstructive surgery, what's the fucking point. It's my blog; it's only an opinion. I don't like a BMW or a Range Rover. Don't care for rosewood backscratchers. So many people visit this site looking for pictures of broccoli. I really need to get some, silly guilt. And bechamel, probably half looking for a bechamel recipe, many from France. I'll have to post one in French, or change the name to Tripe and Chitterlings.

Didn't like being found via search terms, "Pictures+refugees+eyes+lips+mouths+sewed+shut"

No, didn't. That's what I get for quoting Amnesty International.

Should be walking the dog, waiting for a window to dry, one coat two. Putty and primer and sand. Black and mauve, don't worry different sides. This house was built in 1892 and this window survived the Great Depression and butter rationing, the Cold War and the gas shortage that killed Carter. Should be walking the dog in this insanely sweet sun time. If only I could, if only I could, one moment, one long moment. With the music and all the years and all the lives all just once.

Walk walk walk with Bonnie, black dog and brown. Rescued dog, I should remember that story before I forget. How could I? Laying in bed of late, broken air conditioner, afraid to tell mother and brother how nice that is, to have the sweat. I love the hallucinations. Heat rising, third floor and what can I hear outside, what can I smell. Rising and floating. Standing seam metal rooftops at two o'clock in the morning. Dark skylights and gravel and bats. Saw no raccoons, not this time. Smiling at total recall of music not heard in years. Started to get tangled in neon popsickles and yellow raincoats, bookstores downtown rain days and anxious wondering sucking in guts the varied smell of hair sprays I might have known. One thing about living in a humid town, it molds you, to you. Down pillow worn in chair hot vinyl giant ass print. I swear it doesn't forget, a place, back again following your souless songlines, going going.

Right now I should be going. Paint gummy, I need sun, mom's home, but I'll miss the music, ah with the tradeoffs.

2004-04-19T09:56:00.000-05:00

TV TurnOff Week, April 19-22

Yes, a week to turn off the box, take a deep breath, look around and remember we are alive, have interests, are interesting, are not so fat, so uncool, so in need of Zantac or Allegra or Viagra....Yes, well, I could go on, but please visit AdBusters--one of the most wonderful places anywhere, and read more about the power we have when we don't watch. Acknowledging that television is a part of our lives and that most of us are unlikely to live without it, the question becomes what can we do to influence how this incredibly powerful tool is used.

Adbusters online is in the process of changing, so if you haven't been lately, have a visit and check out their BlackSpotSneakerCampaign, (kick the fat ass of Nike and other shoe cos. who want you to pay a fortune to advertise their brands on your body), among other things. For those unfamiliar, a little, (very little), history: Adbusters is a print magazine based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. It represents a worldwide network of activists, students, artists, writers, and culture jammers. They've got an advocacy based ad agency as well. I miss the spoof ads, but am excited to see what comes when their new site is complete.

2004-04-19T08:28:00.000-05:00

AirAmerica Back on Air in Chicago

Minor update: AirAmerica once again available on Chicago station - WNTD 950.

2004-04-19T08:18:00.000-05:00

Bush and Cheney in Togas Getting Deep

I happen to love Mark Fiore's political cartoons. This one is a from back in March, but shows the administration's philosophical side. Quick load even with dial-up. Requires Flash Player, which I'd link, but for fuck's sake. If you need it, Fiore has a link.

2004-04-19T07:53:00.000-05:00

Help President Bush Remember His Mistakes

The good folks at the Center for American Progress have a quick poll to help George Bush remember his mistakes. While it might seem the taking of such a poll would go on all day and into the night, they've given a few choice mistakes relative to the subject matter of his press conference last week, and ask you to pick the dooziest. Ah hell, it's satisfying for about fifteen seconds, then you realize that he is the President and it's not just a bad dream that leaves you with a taint, the scrubbing and the shame.

2004-04-16T13:46:00.000-05:00

Farting about Sewers and Graffiti

I've never seriously considered living as a sewer rat. I don't know that all sewers would be so bad. Urban raccoon highways. Maybe one brick lined or tiled, for storm water, star burst and beehive of light, fresh air from the river, gauze of web daring lacewing silhouettes. Sewers sewer, strange the infrastructure. I doubt if things have changed very much in hundreds of years. Can't help but wonder at what's inside the walls, at what tunnels men make and forget. Log cabins, and stone huts with thatch for a roof, there's an appeal, no?, a comfort in seeing just what is. But there is a mystery too in the spaces between, what isn't seen. Rusted spoons and amethyst, mummified biscuits of bone and skin, playing cards, a corroded penny, pages from fashion magazines.

There've been times, walking along the bluffs of the Mississippi, I've been tempted by arched black shadows. What child inside wouldn't want to see, to see. To wink from 360 degrees to the invisible possible hope and fear of a tunnel. You know what stops me? Nothing about natural caves, no fear of snakes, or wild animals, cave-ins, or lack of air. Graffiti. Really. Graffiti, beer cans, broken glass, tarnished greasy wrappers of potato chips. Names carved into sandstone, mutilated trees, pathetic runes done in dull Krylon colors. Ah, and styrofoam. Maybe a shoe, a used diaper, a wet sock with pink bear embroidery. Almost interesting things, but too lonely, too sad, too never living to inspire. Looking at a crushed white coffee cup, it's not impossible to think back to the Jurassic, to imagine spent life raining on sea floors. Not so hard to feel the millions of years ticking past in dark and light, the subduction and the pressure, the wildcatters and the geysers, the greasy sterile earth and Halliburton. It's not impossible, but it's fucking sad. Here was an ancient forest and timeless sea; here is a styrofoam cup. Same thing, nothing created or destroyed, but something sure as hell is missing. I hate finding children's socks on woodland paths. There are too many possible stories in a sock. Empty, faded can of Hamm's, not much to tell.

Litter stories are received by deduction, suggestion, imagination. Mostly a story of lazy assholes. That's an odd thought, a lazy asshole, like a lazy eye, wandering asshole, every asshole is blind...? But graffiti says it all up front. This great act, the changing of the face of the earth, the carving of living skin, this must then be the expression of the deepest hopes and dreams of the creator, wouldn't you think? There is no absolute value difference between ancient petroglyphs or pictographs and spray painted initials, but consider the respective motivations, consider the semiotic content. It's hard not to judge people who chip their names into rock faces, or birch skins, just to say, 'I can do this thing'. I don't think it's a question of a youth's search for meaning or immortality, trying to make a mark so as to avoid the dizzying awareness of insignificance--I think it's just being a dumbass, carving a tree cause one can. This sentence is graffiti, I suppose, and not as pretty as some.

I was thinking about sewers, about the brick lined storm sewers pockmarking the bluffs back in Saint Paul. Wondering about the walking of them. No then, I didn't, won't, knowing what I'd find. Broken beer bottles and cigarette butts and waxed cardboard KFC boxes, and hollow raging youths. Kind of too fucking bad.

I don't worry about the river, sandstone and the limestone. I do worry about Palm Warblers and trout lillies, but don't worry about the earth. Long life and long memory and what grief I feel, I feel for our loss, for the shame of our actions. Not like there's a judge exactly, an absolute measure of morality. Only the knowing how wasted, how base, and what a shame when we could have done better. How well a rock is a rock, if you know what I mean.

2004-04-15T07:52:00.000-05:00

AirAmerica: Progressive Talk Radio and Satire

While I can't say I'm a fan of talk radio in general, I wish the folks at Air America success. For those unfamiliar with the project, it's the progressive, intelligent alternative to the extreme right wing stranglehold on talk radio, as represented most famously by Rush Limbaugh. Al Franken, formerly of Saturday Night Live, and author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is one of the founders of Air America, and hosts, with Katherine Lanpher, formerly of Minnesota Public Radio's , MidMorning, the O'Franken factor. Anyone who thinks Americans don't understand satire, or who thinks Americans are physically injured by irony, should give a listen. In words from their About page,

Air America Radio is a collaborative effort that brings together a group of experienced radio entrepreneurs with a talented team of creative artists. We are a new voice in talk radio: a smart voice with a sense of humor. It brings to the marketplace an unserved need. We give voice to what millions of Americans are thinking, but can't hear on radio. Until now!

A note: Their programming has been taken off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles due to what seems to be double dealing on the part of the stations' owner, not due to the erroneously reported insolvency of Air America.

The link above offers audio clips, local station, and program information. There is also a nice blog attached to the site.

2004-04-14T13:59:00.000-05:00

SpyWare Can Kiss My White Male Thirty-one Non-Professional, Some College, Home Owning, Slightly Unfit, Xp and Cable Modem Using, Not Married but Living With Partner, no Kids,...

Spybots. Stupid name for a stupid idea. Had no idea Sitemeter had exit pop-ups attached to its site. Yes, I know I should have read all the fine print, but pop unders and .exe files slipped into your registry are just tacky. So, I'm a rube. I'm not sure I understand why this isn't illegal. Picked up some irritating bit of code somewhere which insists on resetting IE's default homepage. For fuck's sake. What dipshit has ever actually solicited services from a company whose ad pops up, or under, or appears in your rectum as you sit on the toilet shrilly whining, "We won't let you pass on anything untill you click 'Yes'"? I have to assume that the advertisements are merely a way to fuck with your head and that any actual revenue comes from tracking your usage and visits and selling that information to someone.

This is the internet. No one invited me. I'm not sure there should be any expectation of privacy. Furthermore, I live a pretty open life. I don't give a flying fuck, for the most part, who knows where I go or what I do when I get there. My life and habits are of so little interest that no one would care, or bother to install so called 'spyware' on a computer I was using without one of three motivations: 1) sheer perversity, in which case I just don't care. Be perverse. Just don't show up at my door. 2) the desire to restrict my civil liberties which I guess is an issue between the individual and the government, and 3) make money by selling data to groups who can use that data for purposes varying from harmless--deciding where to build a new Petsmart--to insidious, discriminatory and dangerous to quality of life--such as your health insurance provider looking over your credit card receipts to see how often you charge fatty fatty meals at Ruth Chris or how much beer you charge a month at Big Top.

So, anyone working for any company which happens to collect data, especially without being completely upfront about how and why--Go fuck yourselves with a rusty eggbeater. I'm glad you're wasting your time, bandwidth, and storage space on me.

A nice product, it seems anyway, is Spybot: Search and Destroy. Identifies and cleans up bits of unwelcome code, though one should certainly read the tutorials before using. Read about and/or download the program at PCWorld. Or read an interviewer with the developer Patrick Kolla, also in PCWorld. Very easy to use, nice program, offered for free, though I am sure he welcomes donations.

Also worth checking is Lavasoft Adaware, which complements Sybot SD.

2004-04-13T14:45:00.000-05:00

Not Glazing Sash. Sitting here.

And the empty space. What would I write if I were writing to you? Would I tell of the window reglazing, the young man at the hardware store who cut two identical pieces of glass to different lengths, of the primer high and the plastic wood? Would I rather tell of the 150 year old walnut cabinets, the broken door glass, broken for twenty years and just fixed yesterday? I would say that for a cabinet that old, twenty years is not so long to wait for a new pane of glass. Thick and heavy, waves and round swells it had. Now it, with a hundred odd ruined picture glasses, another hardware store mistake, one window sacrificed by my own hand--sitting, lurking, a lot of broken glass anticipating an odd tornado, a stumbler in the dark.

The utility of glass is a fragile thing, but the stuff itself persists. The 'tears' of green and amber and clear rolling on Lake Superior's shores. Shards in every turned garden I've ever had. Bottles whole in abandoned root cellars, sheds, garages.

Sometimes I think about glass and I get worried. Lot of glass has been made, and it's going nowhere. Little glitter slivers worming under my skin. I wait for the never found bits I'd thought I'd removed from my feet. Waiting for them to shimmy out of my forehead one day. Worry, worry.

If I were writing to Mary, and maybe I am if she reads this, there would be sweet paragraphs that smelled like lilac, shimmering paragraphs of orange oil rainbows in the sun, love words like fallen hairs speckling the page. Eggs and children and hope and rabbits.

And if I wrote to you, instead of you, instead of me, maybe I'd make up things. Maybe Evan and I installed a garbage disposal today which wears caribou testicles on a necklace and is fluent in Greek. Maybe we didn't. I've never been good at making up things.

I write to my cat, I miss you. Thank you for your consideration in these matters. We agree you have claimed the Pendleton blanket as your own, but in exchange you will not wake up Mary while she sleeps between 2 and 5 in the afternoon. No tangential obligations are to be inferred from this minor contract and no further duties are implied.

Speaking of naps.

2004-04-09T23:33:00.000-05:00

One Crazed Moth Short of a Good Night's Sleep

Pissed off at things, tired with pollen caked under my eyelids. I smell my brother’s bagel and wonder why it’s midnight. Midnight should mean charged air and skies of ink. Midnight should be the hurry over chilled ground and long stems of Sorghastrum nutans clutching at you, caressing you, making you wonder. The great whale heart that drums on your skin. The blue water in black air, and blood is always black at night. The other breath. The push, and the tug. The thrill of arm hair breeze and the heat from her skin teasing the gap between you. And what’s more exciting than white eyes and lips full of blood pout, the open mouth smile, the flashing flashing blue glow of moonlight on teeth. Over the humped earth, over the tussocks, over the grasses spent, the scabrous green and the silken green. Coarse mullein fur, over with your wide eyes and the sound of her breathing.

I love the magnification of senses. I hate the brooding pull of day’s end. No sense of time, no sense of nest, or gratitude for being in, rather than out. Flood lights, this keyboard and the sound of a television, denying the night. The night of immense, low frequency power. Night is the bass note, the blue note, the electric thrill. Night belongs to the earth, the rising of the chill. Night isn’t black, not death, not Goth, not meant for the city at all. Night is deep power, but so easily lost. No mustelid eyes, no owls, no panic flutter of dusty wings. Sudden gold powder stain, crushed moth body against your neck. Oh then, that’s the sickening, when you’re a visitor after all.

There’s times when I wish I could go to the ground, to burrow into the loam and move stones to my purpose. Flow out along fungal limbs, the widest skin. M. called me stone, but warm stone. Marmot on a granite at three o’clock. I hope. There’s time I want to let go the earth, not to fly as a bird will, but to dissolve and spread. Standing on a ridge top I forget my name. Almost, the skin forgets to hold together. Confusing time, to be alive. Trying to remember or forget? Hard to keep in mind one being one man, hard to understand why with the two feet and the aching knees. Hard not to taste the plaque on an ermine’s teeth. Disassociative events with the papers and the talking man, trying to remember he’s the president, trying to remember why that’s important. Strange dreams of orogeny, wondering when time will contract again and I’ll feel comfort in familiar things.

There’s nothing but lawns and asphalt and Mr. Coffees and garbage cans without number between me and Mary, but if I look outside the window I know. I know there is black and lifeless ocean beating on this townhouse. I hate the missing note, the cold indifferent music between mythlessness and being. I wish right now more than anything I could cup Mary’s face in my hands and watch the night while she sleeps. The pollen is growing heavier though, and the screen with its debilitating rays. I can go to sleep then, I think. The washing of hands and face. The calm weight of quiet.

2004-04-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

Subservient Chicken

Yes, Subservient Chicken, though it looks a rooster to me. Strange. Picked up at Belles-lettres. It gives me the creeps but I just want to keep playing with the chicken.

2004-04-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

Aortal Link

Friday, fast week, and having decided to make the Aortal Link a weekly thing, here we go:

Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina

New to me, found this week via hop from Chasing Daisy to Sqoogy to Snowball-in-Hell to Bakerina. All very fine stops along the way, and one past, with great fortune finding Aethele where intelligence and wit boil furiously, but today...

Bakerina combines Food, glorious Food, knowledge of, skill with, adventurous enthusiasm for--with easy, beautiful prose. Self effacing without self bashing, funny just because she is.

Typepad site with the easy commenting; warm, rather than flinty, yellow background and black type, easy to read. Pictures, links, and so forth.

But read the following taken from her April 3, post, Take a Packet of Seeds, Take Yourself Out to Play:

"....I am ready for spring food. I am so ready for spring food that under the influence of a shot of wheatgrass juice (I swear, honey, it wasn't me, it was the chlorophyll!), I went to the market this morning and bought 1/2 pound of pea shoots and a dozen Araucana eggs. I used to buy these eggs on an almost weekly basis. Then the New York Times and Martha Stewart discovered these beautiful eggs with the celadon shells, deep orange yolks and intensely buttery taste, and suddenly the eggs were sold out by 7:45 a.m. I used to pay $3.00/dozen for them. This morning I found them for $5.00/half-dozen. Of course I forked over for them, of course I did. These are not eggs for baking, even though they would bring wonderful color and flavor to brioche...but no, no, no, no. These are eggs for omelettes, for frittata, or for those gorgeous custardy scrambled eggs made over simmering water in a double-boiler, the kind that you make only for someone you really love, because 'tain't no way you're going to stand at the stove for 45 minutes, stirring eggs for someone you don't love...."

That's a description of going to the store, mind. Food is life, and for me, to read of it in such hallucinatory prose is heaven. Why else the Eucharist, why else, 'take, eat, this is my body. Do this in remembrance of me'? Life into life. So that's my weekly plug then. Back to shredding papers and throwing away dry cleaner receipts from 1974.

2004-04-08T22:18:00.000-05:00

Good News

Taken from my in-box courtesy of AI.

***
Amina Lawal Expresses Her Gratitude to Amnesty International Activists

Last month, an Amnesty International delegation in Nigeria met with Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman whose death sentence by stoning was overturned after an intensive campaign by Amnesty International and others. Thanks to members like you, the AIUSA Online Action Center generated more than 1.2 million actions on Amina Lawal’s behalf. These actions were in addition to more than 6 million emails, letters and faxes sent by Amnesty International members worldwide.

Amina Lawal specifically requested to see the Amnesty International delegates. She thanked them for all the support Amnesty International has given her during and after her trial.

Amina's daughter, Wasila, is now 2 and a half years old and a healthy little girl. Amina is very happy and has received many offers of marriage since her acquittal. She will be getting married later this month.
***
Get more involved in campaigns like the one which aided Amina.

2004-04-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

And who the hell are the Stoics?

Another product of procrastination. Find your philosophical school at Select Smart found at Aethele, who found it at Angelweave.

My questionable results:

1. Stoics (100%)
2. Jean-Paul Sartre (93%)
3. David Hume (72%)
4. Aquinas (70%)
5. Thomas Hobbes (69%)
6. Kant (67%)
7. Spinoza (67%)
8. Aristotle (64%)
9. John Stuart Mill (61%)
10. Nietzsche (61%)
11. Ayn Rand (58%)
12. Epicureans (56%)
13. Jeremy Bentham (56%)
14. Cynics (50%)
15. Nel Noddings (43%)
16. Plato (41%)
17. Prescriptivism (27%)
18. St. Augustine (27%)
19. Ockham (22%)

2004-04-07T08:16:00.000-05:00

Violence Against Women: Factsheets

From my mailbox, courtesy of Amnesty International. They have put up an incredible set of fact sheets accesible via a link from this page on the Campaign to end violence against women. One fact sheet I include here complete. Shocking and disturbing yes, but also daily fucking life for many women, so there you are. If this is old news to you, I apologize. If it sounds familiar in your own life, you are not alone and there is help available. Pick up the phone, open the door; change is possible. In any case, please take a moment to reflect the next time you cast a ballot on why violence against women isn't the hottest campaign issue. The talking heads on our idiot boxes come Sunday morning can't blather enough about tax cuts and military service records and meanwhile, as those seconds tick by, women are dying. So...
***
Violence Against Women: A Fact Sheet

In the US, a woman is raped every 6 minutes; a woman is battered every 15 seconds. In North Africa, 6,000 women are genitally mutilated each day. This year, more than 15,000 women will be sold into sexual slavery in China. 200 women in Bangladesh will be horribly disfigured when their spurned husbands or suitors burn them with acid. More than 7,000 women in India will be murdered by their families and in-laws in disputes over dowries. Violence against women is rooted in a global culture of discrimination which denies women equal rights with men and which legitimizes the appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends. Every year, violence in the home and the community devastates the lives of millions of women. (Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: Torture and Ill Treatment of Women, Amnesty International, 2001)

Background
Violence against women feeds off discrimination and serves to reinforce it. When women are abused in custody, when they are raped by armed forces as "spoils of war", or when they are terrorized by violence in the home, unequal power relations between men and women are both manifested and enforced.

Violence against women is compounded by discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, sexual identity, social status, class, and age. Such multiple forms of discrimination further restrict women's choices, increase their vulnerability to violence and make it even harder for women to obtain justice.

There is an unbroken spectrum of violence that women face at the hands of people who exert control over them. States have the obligation to prevent, protect against, and punish violence against women whether perpetrated by private or public actors. States have a responsibility to uphold standards of due diligence and take steps to fulfill their responsibility to protect individuals from human rights abuses.

International Women's Human Rights Foundations

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." (Article 2)

The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women states that "violence against women means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life." (Article 1) It further asserts that states have an obligation to " exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons." (Article 4-c)

The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), defines discrimination against women as any "distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on the basis of equality between men and women, of human rights or fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field." (Article 1)

Violence Against Women : A Human Rights Violation

Violence against women is rampant in all corners of the world. Such violence is a human rights violation that manifests itself in a number of ways, including:

Violence against women in custody

The imbalance of power between inmates and guards is a result of prisoners' total dependency on correctional officers and guards' ability to withhold privileges and is manifest in direct physical force and indirect abuses. Because incarcerated women are largely invisible to the public eye, little is done when the punishment of imprisonment is compounded with that of rape, sexual assault, groping during body searches, and shackling during childbirth. Women are often coerced into providing sex for "favors" such as extra food or personal hygiene products, or to avoid punishment. There is little medical or psychological care available to inmates. Though crimes in prison such as rape are prevalent, few perpetrators of violence against female inmates are ever held accountable. In 1997, for example, only ten prison employees in the entire federal system were disciplined for sexual misconduct.

Acid Burning and Dowry Deaths

Women's subjugation to men is pervasive in the political, civil, social, cultural, and economic spheres of many countries. In such societies, a woman who turns down a suitor or does not get along with her in-laws far too frequently becomes a victim of a violent form of revenge: acid burning. Acid is thrown in her face or on her body and can blind her in addition to often fatal third-degree burns. Governments do little to prevent the sale of acid to the public or to punish those who use it to kill and maim. Similarly, the ongoing reality of dowry-related violence is an example of what can happen when women are treated as property. Brides unable to pay the high "price" to marry are punished by violence and often death at the hands of their in-laws or their own husbands.

"Honor" Killings

In some societies, women are often looked upon as representatives of the honor of the family. When women are suspected of extra-marital sexual relations, even if in the case of rape, they can be subjected to the cruelest forms of indignity and violence, often by their own fathers or brothers. Women who are raped and are unable to provide explicit evidence, are sometimes accused of zina, or the crime of unlawful sexual relations, the punishment for which is often death by public stoning. Such laws serve as a great obstacle inhibiting women from pursuing cases against those who raped them. Assuming an accused woman's guilt, male family members believe that they have no other means of undoing a perceived infringement of "honor" other than to kill the woman.

Domestic violence

Violence against women is a global pandemic. Without exception, a woman's greatest risk of violence is from someone she knows. Domestic violence is a violation of a woman's right to physical integrity, to liberty, and all too often, to her right to life itself. When states fail to take the basic steps needed to protect women from domestic violence or allow these crimes to be committed with impunity, states are failing in their obligation to protect women from torture.

Female Genital Mutilation

Female genital mutilation is the removal of part or all of the external female genitalia. In its most severe form, a woman or girl has all of her genitalia removed and then stitched together, leaving a small opening for intercourse and menstruation. It is practiced in 28 African countries on the pretext of cultural tradition or hygiene. An estimated 135 million girls have undergone FGM with dire consequences ranging from infection (including HIV) to sterility, in addition to the devastating psychological effects. Though all the governments of the countries in which FGM is practiced have legislation making it illegal, the complete lack of enforcement and prosecution of the perpetrators means FGM continues to thrive.

Human Rights Violations Based on Actual or Perceived Sexual Identity

Sexuality is regulated in a gender specific way and maintained through strict constraints imposed by cultural norms and sometimes through particular legal measures supporting those norms. The community, which can include religious institutions, the media, family and cultural networks, regulates women's sexuality and punishes women who do not comply. Such women include lesbians, women who appear "too masculine," women who try to freely exercise their rights, and women who challenge male dominance. Lesbian women, or women who are perceived to be lesbian, experience abuses by state authorities in prisons, by the police, as well as private actors such as their family and community. Numerous cases document young lesbians being beaten, raped, forcibly impregnated or married, and otherwise attacked by family members to punish them or "correct" their sexual identity. Lesbians in the United States face well-founded fears of persecution by police because of their sexual identity and violence against lesbians occurs with impunity on a regular basis.

Gender Based Asylum

The UN High Commission on Refugees advocates that "women fearing persecution or severe discrimination on the basis of their gender should be considered a member of a social group for the purposes of determining refugee status." (Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women) Such persecution may include harms unique to their gender such as, but not limited to, female genital mutilation, forcible abortion, domestic violence that the state refuses to act on and honor killings. However, women seeking asylum in the United States rarely gain refugee status based on claims of gender-related violence, as U.S. asylum adjudicators apply a restrictive interpretation of the international definition of a refugee entitled to persecution. In particular, lesbian women seeking asylum from sexuality-based persecution in their countries of origin often, and legitimately, fear disclosing their sexuality to authorities.

The Problem of Impunity

Perpetrators of violence against women are rarely held accountable for their acts. Women who are victims of gender-related violence often have little recourse because many state agencies are themselves guilty of gender bias and discriminatory practices. Many women opt not to report cases of violence to authorities because they fear being ostracized and shamed by communities that are too often quick to blame victims of violence for the abuses they have suffered. When women do challenge their abusers, it can often only be accomplished by long and humiliating court battles with little sympathy from authorities or the media. Violence against women is so deeply embedded in society that it often fails to garner public censure and outrage.

Violence against women is a violation of human rights that cannot be justified by any political, religious, or cultural claim. A global culture of discrimination against women allows violence to occur daily and with impunity. Amnesty International calls on you to help us eradicate violence against women and help women to achieve lives of equality and human dignity.

For more information on women's human rights, visit http://www.amnestyusa.org/women or contact us at AIUSA, 322 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10001 or at (212) 633-4292

2004-04-06T10:38:00.000-05:00

On Correspondence and Coral Dancing in Old Socks

Still in Washington, D.C. Cold, colder than it should be and strange to watch the numbers for Saint Paul be so much higher. I'll get back to early summer and wonder where all the leaves came from.

It may not seem it, but right now I am actually typing letters for my mom to send to countless agencies. Prove to them she really meant it when she called and said he was dead. There's no consistency. American Express, for instance, took her at her word and were very kind. Another company not to be named insists on a letter, death certificate, insists that we fly to their private atoll and dance for them, the dance of the pissing mad spittle bug. We'll wear socks with holes and no shoes and shake my father's teeth in a tobacco tin. When the coral has cut our feet and we've painted his name in bloody toeprints on their tennis courts, they will believe. Silly bastards.

Perhaps I'm not the best choice for the typing of letters. Tend toward spontaneous truth telling. Love true things, no matter how absurdly described. Would like to tell certain company's poor letter opener just how fucked up and hopeless their efforts at fighting entropy are.

Still writing thank you notes. Bit wordy I am; quick notes on pretty cards, reproduced Manet and Van Gogh and plain beige linen, suddenly with appendices. The least social, poorest communicator in our family and I'm writing thank you notes for the condolences, for coming to the service. I'm grateful, and the cards are pretty, and there are people to whom I should say hi, people I've never met, people to thank on my mother's behalf, people people people, and I'll probably never send another letter again. If I start writing to you today, I'll be done in 2036.

I should write these letters. Making more paper with short half-lives. So much shredding the last few days. When I get back to Saint Paul, I'm cleaning house. Every scrap of paper will be sorted, any excess with be fed to the ground. When I die, my possessions will gently crawl out during the night, following the moon, feeling the ground for lines of love and familiar thoughts. A desk will make its way where it wants to be. Before my last breath, there will be no paper to bind the living. Paintings will appear on others' walls and my books will scatter to bus terminals and bathroom floors, night stands in nursing homes. An eight year old kid will wonder who put a browned, crippled copy of the Wasteland on his shelf, but sometime he'll read it, hopefully aloud, and read it aloud again.

Yes, I know, the fucking letters. But my fingers are cold.

2004-04-02T11:47:00.000-06:00

I am a Wife?
The result from this quiz, found at Bakerina, written by Courtney, was too funny not to share. I'm sure when M. checks in later she'll nod to the cat and the fish and say, "That's right; he's my bitch."
***
My result:

You Are Wife!

What Useless Tool of the Man Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

2004-04-02T08:14:00.000-06:00

First Aortal Link

Decided to participate in the Aortal project. Don't feel qualified, having been at this just since February, but was the beneficiary of a few kind links when opening and appreciate the sense of community it fosters. For anyone not familiar with the name, click on it, but I'll say...it's simply a way of sharing the diverse talents and voices which don't have the exposure of huge pay-to-list sites. I have been amazed at my own luck in discovering countless perspectives and resources by madly hopping others' blogrolls. So many things and people to learn, photographs to see, stories one would never hear via a major portal's news feed, and god help us not on T.V.

So...my very first Aortal Link is to No Milk Please. Already listed on my Blogroll and one of the first few sites I read on a daily basis, I hope it's not against the rules ;) to list it, but if so, holler at me. When a man has spinach in his teeth, tell him he has spinach in his teeth.

No Milk is one of the best written blogs I've encountered. Funny, well constructed, approachable essays on all aspects of daily life. The usual links, pictures, and extras, fun things to do...but the main thing is his writing. I love his voice and his respect for readers is obvious in careful construction and editing. His archives are well organized by subject and the backlist makes great reading. I should take a page from his book. Also, the author is a hell of a nice guy.

If you want to know why it's called No Milk Please, go there. He tells you.

Let me see...I suppose I should say, 'Read at your own Risk', or some other such disclaimer, but if you're reading this, and aren't offended by my foul mouth and progressive slant, you shouldn't be phazed by anything at his blog. Seriously, the man is consistent, very funny, and worth getting to know. Suddenly I feel like LeVar Burton on the kid's program Reading Rainbow and should say, "...but you don't have to take my word on it."

2004-04-01T09:13:00.000-06:00

Great Resource for Readers

I haven't had much chance to explore this site, 'The Great Books', but am excited about it. Much information regarding authors' lives and work in one place. Found the link at Spinning.

2004-03-28T21:44:00.000-06:00

Memorial Service

Long week. Gratitude is owed to each person who expressed condolences to me, or offers prayers for my father. Strange thing, a public blog. Amazingly kind people you'll never meet. Have to admit to being blown away by the internet, by the power of a few words and the comfort they give. We barely managed a memorial service for my father, in a simple, beautiful church. Kind priest. Old faces, no children. There was a shade of blue, low angle afternoon light, brilliant and I couldn't stop smiling through the crying. I should go to Venice; I love the light and the glass.

My sweet Mary came to be and I feel I've barely seen her, though believe that I've appreciated her warmth and presence. Since I'm tapped, but wanted to offer some closure, I'll post the words I offered during the service. I had to write fast, put this together late Friday. There was so much else to do. Certain things seem to get stuck in my head, words, images. The groove and the rut, but I hope my father would have liked it. Some things were meant for specific people, so I apologize for things cryptic. Let's see, the memorial service was Saturday, March 27, 2004. A lot of good people offered wonderful things for which I am very grateful. I just read aloud the following; except for explaining what 'scat' is, I was too nervous to speak, so I just read.

How do you know your father? There was a gregarious man I saw at parties, in parish halls, the Market, with strangers on the street. Animated, with stories, gestures, with food and coffee, the grin and laughter. Friendly--and hard to shut up, actually.

Larry, with me, was much more contemplative. Different at home; a paradoxical simple man. Hence there are things I’d like to share with you, the way I’ll know him, what he gave to me.

He once told me I was his ‘reliable witness’. Taking a bath, age of six, the bubbles and clear water, Larry came in and asked, “Owen, have you ever seen me drunk?” I said, “Sure Larry, lots of times.” His face showed only surprise.

It was an easy question and I guess I was reliable. These many years later a different question: how will I know my father in the time that will come?

Let me say first though, I’m not worried about Larry. I grieve for myself, for the missing, the empty chair, for the smile and the voice. The hollow in our comfort, the aching space and time when he was. But, there’s a peace passing even in the darkest moment.

Consider this spring. Walking home smelling hyacinths on C Street. Opening the windows this week to perfume air, fat and soft. The sky this week, the crescent moon, the plum blossom eruption at the corner – If this is the comfort God gives, I am satisfied. I’ve been drunk with love this week, for living things. What great comfort God gives, swimming in my nose, and in every breath my father lives.

But I wonder--I think of my children to come, how will they know my father?

I knew Larry’s father. In the ‘70s, pastoral counseling, part of recovery, Larry said to a priest, “I don’t know how to be a father.” Hank said, “Larry, you already are.”

Honestly, knowing even a little of his childhood, I don’t know how he did it. How he survived to break a cycle. God knows he did the best he could.

If I am ever a good father, I’ll know why. This is how my children will know him. This is what he gave:

His hands, his beautiful hands. In white gloves, the only white man carrying the body of my godfather. These beautiful men, making bridges of palms and fingers. Never preaching race relations, only trying to relate. Another’s proud ideology was for Larry common sense. I never realized he was the only “white man” until I was 27. Football player farmer frat boy, self effacing, living a dream that a children walk hand in hand and never even mentioning it.

He gave National Geographic and Scientific American,
Salmon eggs and white mouths of trout
Gravel river bottoms sucking at bare feet
Unhewn stones and streams of snow melt

We prised mussels from wet cliffs, fishing the surf and the pier,
Black cypress trees, green foam--and tiny scuttling things
No quizzes, no reports, just the watching and the being

In his space there will be fig trees and pomegranates. Grey dusted olive leaves. Roses upon roses upon roses. Orange blossoms, oleander; dust toe prints in fine soil and eucalyptus ash. And the sun warmed muscat, fat with sugar and seeds. The taste so muskily primal, the lust and the sweet. Standing in the furrow with Larry and the foxtail, spitting seeds.

Wysteria on limestone walls of the National Gallery. Week after week I knew his knees, walking to the mall. Bermuda shorts and his camera, sweet spring sweat, walking from Sixth street. Air and Space and Natural History, sliding on well worn bronze statues, daring the Reflecting Pool with tiny legs. Week after week the merry-go-round, the Castle, Industrial Arts, popcorn wagons, dinosaur bones and the great blue whale.

I’ll remember the pandas and the corn dogs. Magnolias, beetles eating pollen staggering, high on holy olfactory notes, plinking on hard ground. Raw almonds, nectar peaches, green plums, tractor rides, his lap for my seat. Standing on his foot to engage the clutch, mad wild, walking speed rides, agape excitement, with a child’s eyes.

I don’t worry about Larry. These are things he gave to me. This is the knowing of him.

He would call me in Saint Paul and read the Thursday Times science page. Stories about bats, or prairies, fuel cell technology. He tried to relate, to find common ground, to put people at ease.

I mentioned a hike once, bringing home scat, fur, bones and seeds. Excited, I told the life histories of animals I knew only by their waste. Every year since, in every card he has sent, the tagline, “Found any good scat lately?”

With Larry, it was always safe to show wonder at the natural world.

Calling from work one afternoon, summer or spring break, I was home. He kept snack food in his desk, crackers nuts raisins. Fifteen minutes of Larry’s excitement at finding a tiny white inchworm in his Sunmaid box. Wonder, to the desire to share, to amusement, finally to analysis and reflection. Fewer pesticides, “This is wonderful, it means the worms aren’t dying!” “What if I’d eaten him,” Not with revulsion, but cringing at the thought of killing this quarter inch larval life. On the other end I heard him saying, “You’re a long way from California.”

How will you remember him and not miss him? How will my children know him?

Every time I hold a child in my arms with tenderness
Every time I watch a child sleeping,
listen to his breathing, the whistling fearless breath,
the sitting up all night just to feel the trust and the peace,
Larry will be present.

Every time an angry newcomer perched on a hard folding chair says,
“I’ll pass”, and hears the again told and again story of an old timer, every time someone says, “Keep coming back.”
Larry will be present.

In scalded coffee and styrofoam cups,
in fellowship and humble service,
in church basements and in warm palms,
Saying the Lord’s Prayer,
you’ll remember him.

Every sunrise spent on rooftops watching the day begin.
Every time I know how to be a man, when
these arms give love or solace to any living thing,
my father will be in me.

And if I live with and love with
one woman for the next forty years,
my father will walk with me all those days and nights
of joy and pain.

When my children undreamed break my heart again and again and again,
Larry will be present, probably saying,
“I told you so.”

Larry was a giver of small things. A watcher and a bringer, often with few or no words. He loved to give, not with pride but with pleasure. Pendelton shirts and toasted crackers, Rolling Stone magazine and guitar lessons, cold cuts and strong cheese. Little things to give comfort, peanut M and M’s, Hershey bars, IBC root beer. He gave rides and he gave time. And lord did he love to give his photographs. Rosalie described his selling on the street as a gallery opening every week. The joy he brought with his images meant so much to him.

You can count on Larry. He was always there for you; he will always be present.

For me that will be the knowing of him. An endless list of kindnesses and nature shared.

For Larry, I’d ask one thing. I’d ask you to enjoy the spring, the rebirth. Death is a word, short hand for life into life into life into life. Don’t miss the riotous blooming, the cherry trees and the dog woods, the plums and the tulips. Listen for the grace coming, listen for the music between the notes. When a redwood finally lies rotting, the fern and the fungus grow. When life comes for you, do not turn away. Embrace the living and the dying, the cycle of one long day.

When the way opens, let grace come in.

So that was it. I managed to sit down and, thank God, I'd put music after me in the order of service. Knowing I'd be out of it. The blue glass and the floating notes, oak vein rail and velvet draped brass crosses. Strange to say, but there was rejoicing in me in those mute mintues. Hard to explain, so I won't try.

For context: Larry was a nature photographer. Many of the people attending the service have his images hanging in their homes. For that matter, he has work in homes in several continents and all over the US. He was in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous for twenty-five years. Without that, I would not have had a father at all. Thank you to all in that group for being there. He had ties to the earth through farming and loving the natural world on both coasts. I hope the above lets anyone who prayed for him know him a little. Thank you.

2004-03-19T23:12:00.000-06:00

White noise organ

My head is so full of music it hurts. Heavy, sinking, settling in, peanut shells flowing warm peach puree. The skin is tingling blood moving slowly with low voltage running and I can't even hear these words for the organ. Twenty-four hour fugue peppered with the cat crying and Rosalie tripping in the kitchen and countless voices managing to say, "Oh I'm so sorry...." And they are and so are we. My father died last night, or yesterday morning, now realizing it's already today. March 19, 2004 at about 1:00 a.m. But I'll always think of it as time of kind fog, the cherry blossoms almost open. Time when I smelled midnight blue hyacinth in a yard on C Street.

Should we walk the dog my mother asked, at three o'clock in the morning. I said, You know my god lives outside so I'm not saying no. A soft night, a night of fog-black maple trunks and vibrant bricks walking in to say goodbye for the ten thousandth time, two or five minutes too late just this night. Breath leaving the room as we walked in, a shattered RT not meeting my eyes. Hard job, too hard, I'd never do it. Warmth and peace and a parting kiss on finally smooth forehead and a couple hours later standing in the park under a tree with my mother and yes, carrying a bag of dog shit. Swollen buds ready to un-zip, the tree last spring where they sat letting night come. Living as long in the blooming as the day would let. Aw shit am I tired.

How do you say, "Your friend is dead?" Your nephew, your brother, your uncle, my father? One point telling Rosalie, "Jesus I need a script for this. What am I saying to these poor people?" A bell, a chant, a log and stick, signal fire and howling if only there weren't the distance. We've been through all this before, almost everyone has. I admit this is different, my mother's mate, my father, three sharp corners instead of a square. There have been many seconds passed since the doctor called and said, "Now come!" Many seconds and many voices and looking at tweed coats hanging, folded white t-shirts. I could unspool this day, pull the cord from her fingers and pin it to the screen. But for why? I think I should go to bed and let the pipes take me. Green foam and the shining black rock, the purple flesh, the coffee smell, Mary's lips, and muscat seeds, rasping sheets, Larry's feet playing gravel into water of the San Juaquin. I could spend this entire night full of seconds detailing the cacaphony. In about fifteen minutes it will be when the phone had rung and I think I'd rather be sleeping, dreaming of Mary.

Sometime soon I should write a proper elegy, just for me and Larry. I should post a picture of my dad. I should tell his story in words that would have meant something to him. I will. Right now it's the ink stain and the white noise howling dog and milling elephants, you know? Rent clothes and wailing, that sort of thing. Jesus Christ, I think it just rounded the first day of spring.

2004-03-17T09:32:00.000-06:00

Dog having a nightmare on a nice sofa in a cold room

Strange sounds coming from downstairs as the dog has a nightmare on the couch. Unfair that a dog should have bad dreams.

In this time I've learned again how much I love the sound of Mary's voice. Throat and timbre and seductive tone with the break and murmur and sweetness of a child. What kind of child will we make? Knowing now there will always be the thought, "I wish my father could have seen my daughter." Or will it be a son? Will she ponder maps of Denmark and wonder if herring swim in her veins? Not having met my mother's father, I study on things Welsh and feel closer to myself. Genetics are easy to understand, not much truly new since Mendel, but what of idioms and food and open mouthed breathing at the site of green hills? I hear Mary's voice on the phone and wonder at the ten thousand ways our children will break my heart. I wonder at the thought of fat cheeks and alien eyes and a body made from my flesh pulling away and persisting outside of my time. My father's hands are beautiful and you'd think him a surgeon or an artist and not a farmer's son.

I am not a coherent thought at the moment; only trying to say hi. To make a noise and empty my head.

There will soon be phone calls to make. I think the one who will hurt the least should make them and that would be I. Not knowing my father's friends, the thing would be done with less damage to them, to me, than to my mother. This is my opinion of course; she may feel differently. Strange to make plans for a man's memorial before he's dead, but there you are. One drawn elegiac note in my head saying nothing that hasn't been said before.

Emotional triage, sorting feelings into safe rooms. White noise and lust noise, binding my thoughts to children and a woman, one woman's warm skin. I laugh easily at the thought of myself.

Not an ethic or a religion or a philosophical belief, but this earth is my body. Has been, will be, long after me. What am I supposed to do? God help me, but life predates myth by billions of years. Lake Superior was locked in glaciers so few moments ago, and two hours by a hospital bed could be my whole life from birth to death. What am I supposed to do? I can't help it if I was born outside of time, obsessed with time, unable to accept any explanation of death more than the melting of ice. Water melts, maybe it sublimates, but it doesn't go away. I grieve, I ponder the dead. I'm maudlin and sentimental. There are body parts floating in my coffee and ghosts follow me to the post office. Hunted and haunted and frozen in time, stuck in a moment. But in this moment, five billions years of my history, and the time that will come. I can't see it any other way. Death is a trauma in the story of the living, but is it a passage? Maybe a transformation. Here, there, where will I set my keys? I'm caught between the global and the personal and having a hard time believing in tragedy. This babbling is starting to make me sick.

So, I'll vacuum, empty the dishwasher, bow to the endless stacks of papers and bills and waiting bandages. Move dust from one place to another. Chase dog hairs. Listen to music--thank god, I've thought of something to do. Anchors and mile posts and warm quiet places to breathe. I'll patch the holes between thoughts and feeling with music and drown out the sound of my voice.

2004-03-15T21:42:00.000-06:00

Saw this on Chunnering and couldn't help myself.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

2004-03-14T11:34:00.000-06:00

There are pretty tulips in a vase on the counter

Now without the gravity in the house three of us wondering how to spend time. A glut and sitting first here, then try there, for a while. A little pacing and half hearted dusting. I cleaned all hell out of one floor the first morning Larry was over at the hospital. Not wanting to offend, just wanting the calm of shining wood and to look at the floor without seeing gauze ends and countless used tissues. I found pills that would have killed the dog and reminders of standing meals from days past. Today, watching the clock and I admit to dread at the coming of two. Visiting hours and what will we find.

It's easy to walk over. If I stand on our front stoop and peer round the neighbor's holly, I can see his window. In that room is sky blue paint, no sky I've ever seen. Peeling where the sink yaws away from the wall. In that room where he lies time bends. Delaying decisions and choosing where to sit. Close enough to the door to bolt, or in his line of sight should he wake up and for a moment know you were there. Being less than a minute from the front door of the facility has an odd effect. We walk over and he's sleeping, breathing ragged and the sound raping your ears, so easy to walk out again, coming back again. We don't even bother to remove the visitor's passes.

There's a sense in the back of my mind that time should be moving, that I should be doing. That I should have something else to say, here for instance. Daffodils are blooming, praise to St. David. Houses are for sale and a bright green moving van waits for shy mattresses to hurry through the grey light. This long moment will end and there will be bills to pay and relationships to pick up and trivial worries will return having matured in their hermitage. Or will the lightness come, a true spring a healing and a ritual made unending? I don't fucking know.

I admit that I am afraid for my father to rise to the surface, to rally once again. How selfish, one might think, not to want know his self aware voice one last time. Ah, well, selfish I am, but consider what he'll wake up to. What will his voice be saying? I hurt I hurt I hurt I hurt I hurt and why the fuck am I wearing diapers? The tumors are all still there, blind in one eye, unable to eat, a gangrened stoma in his stomach, gross muscular atrophy, open sores on his ass, thrush in his mouth and esophagus, fungus creeping cracking skin and what treatment might exist for the cancer? I guess there are possibilities, but how to face the desperate trying?

You don't like to see a man desperate, not your father whom you love or your least liked stranger. The nightmare I had this morning, with his mind awake, aware for the first clarity in weeks, and his body destroyed soiling the sheets in room 2020 just down the street. Demanding, demanding, furious at us for failing, insisting we cure his cancer and get him out of that bed. Thank god for my bladder which pulled me from sleep, quiet moments negotiating with the cold and the floor and my feet. Until I realized I was counting the hours till I could visit him again. His breathing is terrifying, riveting us with rocket gasps in response to morphine dreams.

Delay, delay, the decision making. Are we hoping for a miracle or simply hoping not to decide? Come fate to take the burden from us, in the natural way.

There are maples outside the window, silver and sugar, aggressive and proud branches indifferent and all loving. There's that, and the vending machines and the thought that maybe he knows you're there and will go in peace.

I may never do a crossword puzzle again.

2004-03-12T00:21:00.000-06:00

Death should be Fragrant
For the first time since I got here to D.C. I could go to bed and now I'm not. Sitting here listening to my mother's shower in the pipes. So hungry for sleep, for the quiet of a firm mattress and no fear of waking suddenly to a scared alto wrapped around my name. But I'm sitting here. Larry is in the hospital. Variety of weird reasons. Our procession. A profoundly dehydrated man with a volcanic stomach wound, but wearing a black felt fedora and fine leather coat. Wheel chair and plastic bags, optimistic bags of clean clothes. Our foursome taking a walk in our own neighborhood, less than a block to the hospital where Rosalie works. The bricks and the blue black sky, bit of cloud and cool air. Light enough to see the pungent orange red of silver maple blossoms. We walked Larry to the hospital; we gave him that. Same route as walking the dog, just a little shorter and a strange bed with sheets known to countless bleeding asses.

Relief, believe it or not. There was something horribly wrong with his g-tube. Don't think we were neglecting him. We had a doctor and a nurse at the house to look at it. Two visits to the gastro man who installed it. Another nurse and my brother and I looking at each other thinking, "These people are insane." Everything in coming out again. With the soaked shirts and the sour, almost menstrual smell of dried blood and Isosource invalid food. Twenty dressing changes a day and the hole growing larger. How can that be right? The poor man was being starved and baked to death. You could fold his skin into a swan, so dry. Admit this man please. But he hates the hospital, doesn't want to die in a hospital. Well fuck, I'm all for choosing your death, but trust me, this wasn't the way. He doesn't want to die just now. He wants to eat, or at least to not be hungry. Begging for water. Fuck. I'm relieved because I'm, at least for tonight, not in the position of being responsible for someone but with inadequate tools and knowledge to give him anything like what he needed. The G-tube would have worked fine if it had worked. We did everything we were told, even when it was completely contradictory. Fuck it. At least he can die with some heat to his skin.

I'm beginning to understand why the Buddha sat under a bodhi tree for forty days, or however many. Trying and trying and trying. No help and no answers. No comfort. The assumptions must be wrong, right? There is no way to explain the suffering. No way to make peace with it. No way to give it to a god or pass it to a friend. No relevant prayer and no instructive myth. A whole new space in which to place your mind, a new context one needs.

Death should be fragrant. Why should a white flecked, baked dry mouth coated with slime smell like twice eaten pig shit? For fuck's sake. Couldn't a nature which conspired to make gardenias and magnolia blossoms, couldn't this green mother give Larry this much? Let his mouth open and pour forth violets, fresh grass, cinnamon or phlox? Larry choking on his own secretions hunched over a bowl saying, "Jesus the stink is awful." That's a memory I'd rather not have. This is one thing I would change. The more pain you are in, the better you will smell. When I am dying, drench me with orange blossom water and lay my body down in timothy hay. This is my living will: throw me on the prairie where it doesn't often burn, where the Rosa arkansana blooms madly atop thirty foot roots. I would like to drown in the scent of wild roses and the spice of Menarda punctata, breathing in the dusty red skin of Juniperus virginiana. You could keep me alive on a stale vent for ten years if I forget to do an advanced directive, but man's law won't let me wither and die in the grasses like any grass might.

I have one prayer tonight, as the buttons and knobs and red capped canisters fuck with my sight. Let Larry dream of the Sierras, of the granite and two foot wide trout streams. Let him breathe pine duff and get dizzy on thin air. Let his dreamer be dreaming and walking in time, time of clear light and strong lungs and a quiet sound mind.

2004-03-09T17:38:00.000-06:00

Time

Time. Stealing it, bartering it, slogging through it. Floating on a bubble of bright tension and wanting to take the time to say...

Don't want to give the wrong idea to anyone who may be facing cancer. My father has outlived his 'due date' so many times, and with a good quality of life, that doctors should be embarassed ever to make predictions. His original diagnosis was for fast growing small cell lung cancer. That is like saying you got shot in the head with a 40mm shell. It's not good news. We killed that cancer and about a year later mets showed up in his brain and cns. The cancer today is constrained there, but is wreaking havoc and at the moment we can only imagine how widespread it may be. There are so many ways for illness and nature to strip from a body its dignity that one's definition of dignity has to change every moment.

Personally I believe that any cancer can be eliminated from the body. I don't care whether it's yoga, chemo, nutrition, a clinic in Mexico, drinking thousand year old bone soup--I won't go so far as to say illness is a choice--I don't believe that, but I insist that a body's own potential for healing greatly surpasses passive acceptance of alleopathic medicine. All that said...

I think my father's race is run. This is a time of unraveling. The diapers and the spit cups. What do you do when someone looses his bowels while standing? If you're my mother you reach out and catch it in your hand to protect the bed and the floor. Now that's strange love, not knowing what to do. I can't imagine how this is for my mother, married over forty years. One partner her whole life, in love since she was fifteen. Christ. Got to run as I've been paged to the kitchen so I'll wish everyone well.

2004-03-08T19:01:00.000-06:00

Falling asleep on the floor during the insertion of a suppository, not in my ass thankfully
No time no time. Three people plus a night nurse and round the clock sleep deprivation. If there's a better way none of use are lucid enough to find it. Disjointed articulation and disarticulated joints. Broken hips and pressure sores. I pray for release, winking at shrubs and crushing lavender. The yards on Capitol Hill have gotten so godawful nice over the years. Rosemary and cacti and lavender and yesterday embryonic hyacinth flowers. I loved spring here. February and March. It's been a long time.

Fucking rollercoaster, trite but true. Feeling a thaw, pending release and watching my family tear at each other, tearing down and wanting to kill out of helplessless, frustration and not a little fatigue. Walking away has occurred to me. Death I can deal with. Watching the living dissolve sucks. If I'm being cryptic blame it on the voles. That's what my father is doing. Begging for me to help him with the voles. Pissed as all hell and when does this helplessness turn to contempt. I honestly hope for resolution before that. I don't mind his seeing voles or thinking they are out to get him; I just hate not being able to do whatever the hell it is he wants.

We do not have mice by the way, and certainly not voles, though under other circumstances I'd welcome them. Used to hate finding cold fur cigars sleek with cat saliva. I encouraged the voles, the mice, the star-nosed moles and tried to leave piles of thatch around in which they could hide. Pissed off my ex-girlfriend, but eventually she killed herself and the woman who bought our house loves volunteer fauna, so it all works out. Feeling a thaw and making amends. Smiling at children with ageless eyes. I have some hope for the future. I just hope everyone I love whom I expect to go on living makes it.

I told my father I loved him this morning and he said, "Thank you." Why does that have to hurt so much.

2004-02-28T20:09:00.000-06:00

Recipe for a GI Feeding Tube

Doing things this week I never thought I would. If you ever feed someone through a tube, hold a stethoscope on the stomach and pump a few cc's of air. You should hear a flutter, let's you know it's still in place. Or you can draw off a little gastric juice, but the air seems to suit me and my brother better. Food that you swallow really does turn into stomach soup. Also, digestive juices don't burn you as much as you'd think. Then you pour in100cc of water followed by a can of Ensure--no the flavor matters not in the least, unless you really are good at pretending--mixed with enough water to flow, followed by another 100cc of water, followed by a shot of air to clear the tube. Takes a while and pray nobody coughs or stomach contents will jet from the tube. Do this six times daily to get 2000 calories. But don't lie down and watch out for meds on an empty stomach or full stomach or whatever the fuck.

Ok, don't get the wrong idea. I'd do this myself for myself if I were all together otherwise but for some reason couldn't eat. Yeah, good times as my Mary would say and you better believe I miss her. I feel so bad for my father that I don't dare stand still for five seconds or the thoughts catch me. Getting away is difficult as one of us has to be with him. See, the trouble is that my dad is almost with it and might have a chance to have better cognitive function returned to him. He has expressed his desire to hang on a little while and see about having a temporal lobe met zapped with a gamma knife on March 9. So...you load your father into a wheelchair van to get a tube put in his stomach. When you get to the hospital--actually that's a long--and potentially funny story. So funny I was three mouse hairs short of a full blown anxiety attack. In part my dad got confused and thought that having his stomach cut open was the worst physical therapy he'd ever had and that the lousy doctors did nothing for the pain in his hip. Hard to explain. Hard to do.

Got to walk the dog today as my mom was off from work. Poor dog's only been let out in the yard and the flagstones are decorated well with feces. I was so painfully grateful for the warm sun--fifty degrees here today--and blue sky and the smell of spring sweat on my lip. So grateful, but I could barely focus for the white noise in my head.

I miss Mary who's far away in Minnesota, and I miss my family. We're all short tempered and drawn tight tight tight. Eating in odd corners and feeling guilty cause Larry will choke and aspirate if he tries to eat. Broken sleep and feeling guilty every time you leave the room and desperate to get a few minutes of absolute rest. Crap on a biscuit. I know at some point we'll not be able to do anything more I just hope we all get through without some total brain fucking. I don't know; that sounds really stupid. I guess I'm just saying that dealing with grief and family relationships is hard enough, but that being on call twenty four hours and not knowing what the hell you're doing and being scared and your patient is your fucking dad and one moment he breaks your heart asking for breakfast and the next he pisses you off by swearing at you for hurting his leg when you're not touching him--well shit, that's a different story. It makes things just a wee bit harder, you know.

Met a very nice doctor yesterday though. Rare, in my opinion. Well, this is too long to be away I guess. Take it easy.

2004-02-22T12:26:00.000-06:00

Traveling
And you're wondering, can Bono make me feel better? Maybe Bach, or Sublime, or drumming pencils on tin? Maybe if this snow was sand and I was an hourglass and we were all frozen flowing upward, well frick frack and break my ass. Not much to be done sometimes. Take out the garbage, clean out the fridge, change the sheets, try to put away the laundry from yesterday. The dishes from the dinner that came before, and you won't be eating dinner here tonight. Why Owen, one would say, spending the morning doing damage control, sounds as if you're going out of town. I am. That damn phone and damn cancer and damn timing.

I have to run off to the airport here in a couple hours; my dad is going downhill fast, and my brother suggests I make it as soon as possible so he might recognize my face. He says, "Don't be surprised if he calls you George." No I'm not trying to be funny, but if I were John Irving or Nick Hornby it would be alright to laugh. Honestly he can call me any damn thing he wants. Yes, I'm dying inside. Yes I hate it, of course. But I have a man inside me, a lifetime of memories, I have voices and cold rivers and hot sun and seersucker suits and smoke of Pall Malls bluing the sky and browning walls. Of course it's coming; it's already gone, but the plane leaves in four hours and it doesn't give a shit about my understanding of time.

My folks have a dial-up, but naturally I'll try to get on and see what's happening in the blogosphere. Paul, good luck, hang in. Sometimes it's just timing. I had to call that place back and remove my name from consideration. They wanted me to call when I get back in town. Unlikely to result in anything, but hell, it was nice. God is irony. Sorry, was just thinking of a BBC story about Americans not understanding irony from a few weeks back. Well, off to pack. Somebody kiss a collie or a goat or a three winged pigeon or a promiscuous Welsh guinea pig for me. I'm fresh out of all you see.

2004-02-20T08:35:00.000-06:00

Atari Flash Bits

Remember Pong? PacMan? Or this vector plot?

This bit of Atari nostalgia comes via Mir at the Dim Sum Diaries. Personally I miss those days. I miss the innocence of early computer games. Of course, in part I suppose I'm only missing my own, but isn't that every generation's self indulgent right. Still, I contend that good game play is far more important than incredible graphics or movie theme tie-ins or what have you. A game like Break-Out, as incredibly dull as it seems at first glance, is as addictive as anything made for PS2 and has a charm of transparency. It's possible to look at that game and almost see the code feverishly drawing lines on your T.V. screen. Well hell, aren't I full of sop this morning, wallowing in nostalgia?

2004-02-18T12:13:00.000-06:00

Interview for the Easter Bunny

Just returned from a job interview. Nothing dramatic. I wasn't asked to strip down, marry a stranger or eat reindeer testicles--so it wasn't as bad as being on the Fox network. Just your typical anxious uncomfortable selling of self. I suffer from interview blackout. It's not just interviews. Any kind of a discussion with a stranger and I might do just fine, charm and wit, (well, maybe not much, but enough), salient points and the 'thank you,' the eye contact and hand shake. I suppose I do all these things. I hope I do. I just don't remember. Parties, interviews, requests for donations, attempts to sell things--I blackout. And no, I did not drink a twelve pack before the interview--that's what I'm doing now. That would be interesting.

"So, do you have a policy on drug and alcohol use?"
"Actually, we do. We have entry testing and then random screening in the future."
"But I'm sipping from a bottle of Mad Dog right now."
"Oh, well yes, but we aren't testing you right now."
"So you don't care that I'm drinking my way through this interview?"
"Are you kidding? I took four Atavan before I shook your hand and packed my rotten tooth with cocaine while you were scratching your ass."
"Oh...so you have a dental plan?"

I don't know. I interviewed with a very nice, calm guy, and think it went well. He told me to expect to come in for a panel interview sometime next week. I don't want to do a panel interview, not really. Not a fan of the panel, of the committee. The right to a trial with a jury of one's peers is very important, but these days I think I'd take my chances with the judge. I've seen the Nielsen ratings. George Bush is president. That man is a product of committee design if I ever saw one. Who's the painter? Hieronymus Bosch?

This is what a job interview feels like. The Temptations of St. Anthony Yes, thank you Alta Vista.

I walked the couple miles home to clear my head, but it's a grey, somewhat ugly day in a string of many here. Thank god though, it is kind of warm. We have ice hanging from our roof valleys which I think would kill someone was it to fall on one's head. Not good for the roof but startlingly pretty.

Hell, I know the job I want. I want to be the spring bringer. The Easter Bunny. Yes, to race round the world in a widening spiral, kissing buds and bringing motion to snow. Setting the water free and muddying the earth. Rupturing and ripening and breathing green into dry branches. I wish, I wish just to walk the fields and mind every living thing, to scatter seeds and splash timid lust filled color in every corner. To lay hot sun on rocks and swell rivers with pure liberated ice. Put the glint in the robin's eye and ease the tight rib skin of goats with new browse. I would love to be an invisible dancer through the morning haze, to feed glacier milk to eager mouths. I swear I wouldn't ask much. Clean sweat and five minutes to feel the air grow cold as the stars come out, to be grateful for Mary's warm arms at the end of the day and to have my nose filled all through the hours with rotting raging tenderly mad new life. That's my job.

So, basically, I'm fucked. I'm a badly cracked hickory nut.

2004-02-17T09:39:00.000-06:00

Writing Resumes

Boy, you know what's fun? Writing resumes. Oh what joy it is to write in sanitized, prioritized, enthusiasized, jargonized-like-a-goddamn-souless-moronicized language. Oh well. Here is what I would like to write:

I haven't killed anyone...yet.
I've been late to work twice in my life. One power outage and one bus accident.
I don't fart loudly while working and don't talk endlessly about fictional sexual conquests.
I don't bring an infectious, angry pet monkey to work with me.
I've never appeared in a reality T.V. show of Fox.
I live by the golden rule and have never set anything on fire, accidentally.

What the hell else does someone need to know? I should just copy my 100 things and see what they make of that.
"Hmm, this fellow likes sheep and pomegranites--I'm not sure we can trust him."
"Yes, but he's a champion belcher--that could come in handy at company picnics."
"I don't know...he's pro-union. Unions make me shit green."
"Yeah...hey, did you know male goats piss on their beards."
"I wonder if that really attracts wo--I mean female goats."
"Nanny."
"What?"
"Female goats, they're called nanny goats."
"Hmm...well anyway I don't think my--well I don't think I could bend that far."

And they'll go on like this. This is how work gets done in America. With paper and misdirection and politics. Actually the place to which I'm sending this resume today kicks ass. I don't want to include them in my sour cloud.

2004-02-15T11:31:00.000-06:00

100 Things

Just added an 'about me' page. Lord, it takes forever to write 100 things. Not usually my inclination to bludgeon people with details about myself but I realized I enjoy reading the lists of others so. If you know anything about html and you want a good laugh, take a look at my code. Of course, it might make you cry. You might want to hurt me. For all I know, it won't display properly on anyone else's PC anyway. I'm struggling to learn enough code to do what I want, and while it's very interesting, Owen gets a little frustrated. So I bend things, and do wrong things with trial and error and probably have much unnecessary code, but it seems to work. Oh well. Time consuming. I'll have to tackle an organized archive next, books, music, plants, a recipe section. Content isn't so hard--it's getting it up in a style that is consistent from page to page. I guess that is what CSS is for but once again--I don't know dick! I've said that. Hope everyone is recovering from their VD.

2004-02-14T20:25:00.000-06:00

Candle Smoke Clean Floors Wool Blankets and, I guess, Drifting On, Whether One Likes to or Not

Blowing out the candles. I'm the one who blows out the candles. Turn down the heat, check the locks. Stand in the all to brief stillness when it's too late for the day's business and tomorrow's is held at bay by the drifting smoke of sandalwood and rose. I would crawl inside this moment and live forever if I could. Planted in the foyer, cold pressing at my back and light fading over a clean floor. I would take this moment and be in it forever, except.

At Christmas, at home, with my parents, my father was off, to the landing and up the stairs and I standing in the dark with the candles, and it seems odd that I should feel my time when it's so far off. I hate to think, I hate to wonder what thoughts lurk in his head. My only blessing for you, or anyone, is not to think too much, not to see or feel or wonder too closely. Live your moments and be happy in them. And no, I don't really mean that, not exactly. Now if I could invent a computer that smelled like a blackened smoking wick when you turned it off. That would be something.

2004-02-13T22:06:00.000-06:00

Lovely feathers, a cat's dirty behind, and men in restaurants

A friend of mine writes of receiving a Valentine's Day card with feathers from not one, but two, finches. I think that's a lovely present, especially given how much the recipient loves birds and natural things.

If you've ever worked in a restaurant, Valentine's day goes on a short, shitty list with bad breath and a lousy disposition. A list of days which won't wash their underpants, their socks or their hair. A list of days when the coffee is boiled, your washer leaks, the car is stolen, the cat pisses on the clean laundry you were too tired from working Valentine's day to put away. Oh, and perhaps you forgot to clean the litter box, eh.

No, I'm not going to try to ruin the day for those who've never carried a tray or stood over a grill, but it's hard not to mention it at least. This is the list of days:
::mother's day
::New Year's Day, and the eve I suppose if you work in a bar
::Valentine's Day
...and to a lesser extent, I suppose, Father's Day. These applying in the United States. I'm not familiar with other countries I regret. Also I'm neglecting Easter, Christmas and so on because what sucks there is already so obvious. At least on those days customers have a little sympathy that you're not with your family.

New Year's day sucks because of the hungover customers, the hungover coworkers, and perhaps your hungover self. I want to write hangedover, but that just doesn't seem right. Also the goddamn line out the door. Why does every sour stomached s.o.b. and his little sister think going out for a greasy brunch with rubbery poached eggs and cold toast is such an effing good idea? Enough said.

About mother's day, and Valentine's day though, oh my. While many lovers who actually are not fighting, do like each other, and know how to behave in public do go out on V-Day--and while the world is filled with sweet, loving, intelligent and generous mothers whose children are not a total disappointment to them are taken out for a lovely time on mother's day, they are joined on these days, on these two special Hallmark days, these days of guilt and consternation, these days of scrambling and anxious hope and resentment, on these two days they are joined by the strange walleyed fellows who go out to eat--I mean where they sit down and use a fork--twice a year. Twice. Mother's day and Valentine's day. Not all are louts, or socially inept. Not all are obnoxious. Not all prattle endlessly about how they ,"Know good service and pay for it." Not all mention your tip with every visit. Not all fight with their mothers and tell her not to be stupid, rolling their eyes--loudly, if you can imagine, even rankly!--Yes, odiferous, audible eye rolling! Directed at you, their server. To engage you in the conspiracy. Of how dumb. Sad. Fat. Controlling. Stingy. Daft. And helpless their mothers are. Not all of them do and you're awfully nice to the ones who don't, or at least you would be if it weren't mother's/V-day and you weren't running off your ass. Oh well. It's only two days out of the year.

The really disturbing thing? You watch men talk to their wives like that on a daily basis. Men who insist on ordering for their wives. A man will tell his wife, in front of God and all creation, not to order sour cream because her ass is too big. A man will tell his wife to shut up. A man will tell you disturbing intimate details about their intimate habits and what he can get her to do. Men call their wives bitches, morons, slobs, idiots, dimwits, nitwits, and 'my woman'. All this at table, if front of their kids, in front of other people's kids. No shame and no idea at all at how horrible they're being.

I never could stand that. You have to walk a fine line lest you lose your job--which is fucked. In a functioning community, where folks might actually know the passerby, you'd think every man woman child and potted plant in the restaurant would simply take this woman away. Let the man go live on an island with considerate monks trained to educate total fuck nuts in how to be human. Wait a minute, sorry. I was saying that's it damn tricky to say what you think in a situation like that. Mostly you stand there, your own heart racing, throat swelling, stars in your eyes and the heat in your cheeks. My God, listening to that shit gives you a sympathetic anxiety attack. I can't fucking stand it.
I never got in trouble, but I was known for telling off people. You just have to know how to do it. The sad thing--see above where I said, "which is fucked"--is that what you say can make things worse, or have no effect at all. The worse the abuse is, the less opening your mouth seems to help. For the average shit sack who thinks it's swank to order for his woman, or just another moron who thinks jokes about a woman's weight are, 'just trying to be funny,' you can ignore him, turn to the woman and say, "My god, is he always this bad?" You can point out that you asked her for her order, and do it again. (This always really pissed the guys off. They'd turn red and just shut the hell up. Eventually most would play it off, just being cool to you. But one thing I noticed: the neater the man's grooming the more controlling he was in public. Just a personal observation. Over-perfect hair, manicure, plucked eye brows--fucking psycho.) The poor slobs who just think dumb ass shit is funny--and I think I'd have to include myself in this category at least on occasion--often as not feel terrible, act like kicked dogs, and beg for forgiveness. Good lord you see a lot of the worst in people waiting on table.

I didn't mean to go wandering off like that. I sat down here thinking about bird feathers. I was thinking about Mary's hair to be honest. She's off sleeping and she has the most beautiful hair. I'd personally like to find every advertiser who ever lived and kick each one right in the teeth for introducing concepts like 'dry, damaged hair' into our minds. It's their ... I was going to swear again but I promised myself I'd try to cut back so ...godawful--and yes I know some people think that's a swear too--It's their products that cause dry damaged hair in the first place! Jesus Christ. Have you ever smelled hair dye. The stuff'd like to kill you. Can't sleep at night thinking the Nice 'n Easy is going to sneak in the bedroom at three a.m. to cover my face with a pillow.

So maybe thinking about how Mary is so beautiful asleep where, god willing, no advertiser can reach got me pissed off about certain aspects of love and commercialism and I took it out on poor guys trying to take out their mommas to dinner. Sorry. Wait, no, no I'm not.

By the way, this is completely unrelated, but for those who have cats. Do yours attend to their toilet immediately after using the toilet, as it were, or do they race around madly only to land on your pillow to advertise in an olfactory way their business? Had cause to wonder this evening and Mary was disappointed. Had thought better of the cat. Pointed out that she herself doesn't race out of the john without certain ablutions just because she's running late. She has a point, but I'm not going to be the one to explain this to the cat. I clean the damn box and that's enough. Night then.

2004-02-12T22:25:00.000-06:00

Witness Blogs?

Having a thought...this idea may already exist, if you know anything about it, please let me know.

I was reading e-mail earlier this evening, one of those automated newsletters from Amnesty and was also wondering how Mizmo was doing with her recovery from breast cancer surgery. This led to the thought of how one person may keep a journal on paper and have it published to the internet by another, both offering a certain validation of the former's experience, and an opportunity for the latter to bring those experiences and their lessons to an hyper-linked community. In other words, what the author of Fembat is doing for the author of Beyond Contestation inspired me to wonder if a 'blog-pal' network might be feasible as a method of witness for those victims of human rights abuses who are without the means to present their cases directly.

Certainly many groups try to get the actual words of individuals out of repressive social and political situations. I'm thinking of groups like Global Exchange and Witness. Actually, what Witness does is extraordinary, sneaking digital video equipment into some very nasty places. People actually involved in a particular struggle are trained in the use of the cameras and left to shoot what they see, to tell their stories. If you've never checked out that site, do, some of the direct documentaries are mind blowing.

Amnesty International of course is a leader in providing a lifeline, shining a light as it were on injustice, trying to keep prisoners of conscience, refugees, abused persons, and slaves for instance, alive with letters, with political pressure, with legal action. As the average slob that I am, I check into action center, pick a few of countless choices, edit form letters, print sign mail, maybe e-mail a few more, but...the next day there are ten or a hundred more cases and suddenly reading their newsletter and I recognize a name. I haven't thought of it since the week I mailed that specific letter, and that pisses me off, at myself naturally. I can't blame Amnesty for my not keeping up with a woman, Rodi Alvarado --really grim example of American injustice-- to whom John Ashcroft doesn't want to grant asylum. Their methods seem to have tremendous effect and I think that they've exploited the internet well for magnification. One thing though that always leaves me curious.

Human rights groups sometimes ask for letters written directly to prisoners or refugees. Both he or she who is detained and the oppressor know that someone out there is watching. That certainly makes sense and the groups sponsoring the letter writing usually say that they get word from the detainees through lawyers or other risky means that these letters are very appreciated. Actually, comments made by former prisoners of conscience are available for reading somewhere on AI's site and testify to this fact.

So, this has been a round-a-bout post hasn't it. Forgive me, it's late and I'm thinking while I type. Very hard for me. The point then is I wondered why I might not try to keep in touch with a specific person, either directly via the post or through reports of intermediaries in human rights ngo's. And then...here was the point after all...maintain a blog on that individual's behalf. It seems that an idea such as this would be better suited for people in chronic long-term struggles, such as refugees seeking asylum or prisoners of conscience, than for people actively being shot at in the streets. Sorry, I was thinking of this student that got disappeared last year and realized he couldn't very well correspond. Ah damn. So perhaps not many of one's blog buddy's--forgive me--actual words would be forthcoming, but the one with the connection and the ability to publish could do so on the general situation. I don't know, a picture, maps, links, a biography, a detailed history of the problem, collection of comments to pass on when feasible.

I'm only thinking. If this seems like a worse idea than breeding chickens to lay square eggs, (true! I'll look for the reference later), please let me know. Any thoughts appreciated.

2004-02-11T18:17:00.000-06:00

Cream of Potato Soup

When you have more in common with Comic Book Guy than with real people, perhaps you're in trouble.

But I can see the whole world, I can hear it's heartbeat when I sleep. The rivers and gorges and tiny fractions of rock. I can see the dung in fabric the indigo dye I can see the wax cast bas relief of cassava loving me, but I think it's trouble just the same. "Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not..." Yeah, well, those lilies can kiss my ass I think.

Oh if I could get inside the root of one tree, if I could smash myself on the scar of earth and just be free. There was a taco. In the taco we placed a tire iron, some rusty seeds, the lip of a friend whom we neglected in his time of need. Carving that lip was nasty, I'll tell you. Sitting up all night past the hour of the bean, watching reruns of the Partridge family. No scalpel, no surgical instruments, just a corpse and a bottle of horse liniment. I took the lip, a trophy of desperate need, and now I try to make soup with mud and broken reeds.

A friend of my mother, with the oboe and the split tongue, never could carve a reed, it's a wonder she was. Names are flowing faster now, I can barely see the faces. Just one after the other signing on to the new creed. My cat doesn't get it at all, not at all. She doesn't know what I need. I can't blame her though, I can't lick my ass to save myself, but that's only me.

I wish I wish I wish I wish there were something really to wish for. I wish for a sickle or an anvil or a millstone. I wish for the simplest of technologies, god please. I don't care much for these changes. Can I help it if I look at a glacier and it feels like yesterday. Can I help it if the smoke wine is blooming in my veins.

It's not good when your woman drinks poison, but she won't tell me how. I don't know if it's from a toilet bowl or a silver chalice. I see the signs, I've seen them before. A dose of moonshine might help. But how to spring the toad.

I like to think of small sacrifices, but there's no one. No one who wants them, the blister and the chum. I'd love to give each fingernail, to appease something or just one. I'd love to give my liver if it wasn't already gone. Take this, eat this in remembrance of me. Lord, how we remember that. The good old church.

This is the recipe for cream of potato soup, if you hadn't noticed. Take your leftover root vegetables, roasted the night before, and saute them briefly with a few mushrooms. Adding chicken stock and a bay leaf, adding pepper and wine. A little vinegar and ginger, honey if it's mine. Let it simmer or soften, I honestly don't give a fuck, whatever it takes to make it soft, to make it good enough. Finally with milk, no real need for cream. Throw it in the blender if too goddamn thick it seems. Oh, but take out the bay leaf first, for gods' sake.

2004-02-11T16:40:00.000-06:00

More on Human Rights applying to all

Passing this along, and along. This is terrible. It's not that I'm too lazy to rephrase, it's just easier to cut and paste sometimes. After posting about Gay Marriage in the U.S., it seems important to post this, which I snipped from Fembat.

"Passing this along...

At the last session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), Brazil proposed a resolution on "human rights and sexual orientation" (E/CN.4/2003/L.92) which claims that sexual diversity is an integral part of Universal Human Rights as reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In March 2004, 53 nations will sit at the United Nations in Geneva to discuss, argue, vote and then publicly declare if they believe sexual orientation and gender identity are human rights or not.

What can you do?

You can become better informed about the resolution itself and you can sign the petition

Found via Bacon, Cheese & Oatcakes who likewise found it at was it the pagan remark?"

By the way, you can read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here and naturally click into whatever part of the U.N. you like.

2004-02-11T16:33:00.000-06:00

Gay marriage in the United States, or regrettably perhaps not. Bill at Prometheus Unleashed says it better than I could at the moment, at least regarding our constitution, so click over and read about how George Bush wants to trample on love and personal freedoms. God, seriously, I don't understand why this is an issue. I get that some people don't like something, I don't agree with it but fine I get that. Why the hell though, do you need to pass laws basically saying that some people aren't people and aren't entitled to the same rights as others? What a sack of monkey puke.

Little George Decides to Go Ahead and Piss on the Constitution

Prometheus Unleashed

2004-02-11T10:25:00.000-06:00

What's in a Word

Thinking of word origins today. Saw this story about the word 'bitch'on AlterNet and found it interesting. I haven't checked the references, but a suggestion is made that calling someone a 'son of a bitch' was a way to slander one's worship of a goddess rather than being a christian. However you feel about the word, the author makes a case which I haven't heard before not to use it. Of course, I've used it twice in this post, but I hope one would forgive the context.

2004-02-10T22:45:00.000-06:00

This post brought to you by the good folks at Quest communications, formerly known as Ma Bell

Dinner was a bust, even if it was good enough. Roast roots but no rosemary. Tostadas with refritos and thank god for sour cream. I tell you I hate the phone. I hate cooking with the phone slipping from my shoulder at 400 degrees. God help me I love the people but why can't I have a lifetime to be a son, a lifetime to be a greenman with moss in my teeth, why can't I find five minutes I haven't wasted just to give them to Mary.

I've got to be honest. This shit is painfull, ridiculous and out of hand. Talking to my folks and trying to get a read on and fucking forget it. Where the hell is my dad, lost somewhere in cancer land and throwing out nonsense verse? He and I have that in common, we always have. We are masters of the incoherent ramble, the king elicitors of the polite smile, the silent pause which turns into mute opus, but tonight the shit sandwich comes on different bread.

I'm with the oven and the slicing of vegetables and looking for the rosemary which we don't have, I don't know how the fuck we wound up with no rosemary, but when your father has lung cancer, you answer the phone. When people have died, and so many have, and will, you dread the ring, but when it's your dad you do answer god help you. We try to keep it light, but I don't know where the hell he is. My mother says he's having trouble getting the words out; well I wish she'd called me, not on the motherfuckinggodloveit speaker phone, but a quick word private as it were. Let me know what was really going on.

When your mother calls you and tells you to be funny and you have to go on-line and look for crude jokes you know you're fucked. We got to the one about the Indian and I say, "Oh shit no, I'm not doing jokes on the Indians. Moving here was enough."

So Larry reads the captions on the news to himself and we try to put enough pieces of a conversation together to be.

Aw hell. This is the paragraph where Mary sleeps through the night. The sheets are cool and smooth and don't bind. Her forehead smells like spring sweat of children lying in the hyacinths. Her feet are warm and the air moist enough and we pile rabbits on the bed. Layers of brown fur nest and a perching cat and she has all the pillows and I'll never say a thing.

This paragraph is the room where Judy shot herself, right between the b and the n. It happened there. The next sentence is when the cop showed up and I can't believe I forgot his name. I liked him though and wish they sent him for all the suicides. This paragraph was brought to you by the nice folks in the Sporting Goods section of Fleet Farm.

On these lines I'm painting my life and the inside of my eyes, retinas splashing on taught slim bumpy canvas, loving the linen. Warm sun and porches, cedar stars and making love on the grass and everyone I love is still living, or I've forgotten each one. Our daughter of flax we call Pork Chop and the son tasting Menarda leaves I name Sexy Mama. But here at least there is coffee and the warm sting of her teeth on me.

This word has already happened and there it went, you missed it, but under it we scattered Donny's ashes. God I wish I could show him the colors There is goldenrod blooming through the snow, it has to be. I've seen it in my dreams.

In this coffee I'm drinking the warm New Orleans eyes of my godfather. At least I can't see the bottom. And what do you do when you're just fucking done? How do you find a way to comfort anyone? When you've run out of words at least there should be a release. I'm so damned tired of missing people, especially before they're dead.

In this paragraph, brought to you by the American Society of Embalmers and Necrocosmotologists, we try to get tired enough not to be anxious, not to drop embers in the bed where rabbits are trying to sleep. God I hate the smell of scorched fur and the wailing of bunnies. Seriously.

2004-02-10T22:17:00.000-06:00

Christian Alarms Flight

This comes courtesy of the green fairy and the BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Christian question alarms flight. I know I really shouldn't find this funny but...it is. I would like to know just what would have happened if the pilot had come on the horn and begun exhorting people to read the Koran and be good Muslims. I admit I'm a bit envious of the folks on that flight. What a lovely story to relieve an otherwise long and boring flight. Of course it is disturbing. The religious right, as it's called--somehow implying that the rest of the right has no claim to religion and that the left can just go fuck off--has an absurd amount of influence in these United States despite representing a very small portion of the population. The reasons for this are obvious and well documented: brainwashed true believers are more motivated than the disenchanted and disenfranchised and are generally less self-conscious when piloting planes and prosteletyzing. I don't know how we'll wrestle from them control of Washington this year--wait a minute, that's not funny. Despite being complete wingnuts these people are helping--it certainly isn't all their fault--to ruin my country. They have a huge influence on elections and social policy here and lazy slackers like me can't stop giggling at them long enough to do anything about it. Crap, damn, and piss on it. Oh well, it's still funny. Quite a luxury to think it's funny when they are in fact a fringe. The worse things get here economically and socially I suppose the more fertile things may be for Christian terrorists. What a shitty thought. So see, I'm not laughing any more, I'm depressed at how perverted religion can get in a true believer's hands.

2004-02-10T13:00:00.000-06:00

Stop the Violence

I don't subscribe to cable or dish t.v., but for those of you who might, consider the following:

EVENT NOTICE
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
February 10, 2003
- - - - - - - - - - -

The following television program will air next week on Lifetime Television:

"UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS"

Tuesday, February 17
10 pm ET/PT

"Until the Violence Stops" is a powerful one-hour documentary on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. It shows the movement's impact in five communities internationally, while exposing the pervasive and cultural forms of violence that women experience all over the world.

The documentary is part of Lifetime's public awareness and advocacy campaign, "Our Lifetime Commitment: Stop Violence Against Women." The documentary will air commercial-free on Lifetime.

2004-02-10T11:08:00.000-06:00

lime jello scrapple pea soup Frosted Flakes

Finally a little break of sunshine. It's even warm if you have an exceptional imagination. Trying very hard to think of what to make for dinner tonight. I never mind cooking at all, it's the what that chaps my ass. I should print a menu for the month, present it to Mary and let her switch things up to her preference, and be effing done with it. Or I could go to the grocery store and solicit people at random. Ask this one or that to pick one thing off the shelf, or out of a bin, something in a box, something fresh, pork in a tin. Anything, or rather, any one thing from each. Blindfolds might come in handy, making meals more random, for me, for them, I don't know. I wouldn't want to influence the participants by gasping with horror when they reach for lime jello scrapple pea soup Frosted Flakes. That would be a casserole to remember. Maybe it would be better not to ask kids. And I have to decide if I want to be bound by the rules, and what rules? I'd rather not have any I guess, but let's just say whatever lands in the cart--ten queried parties and ten items only--has to be the list for my dinner tonight. And his has to be edible. No stupid wise ass little shit putting in Ajax and getting shrill about my sticking to my word. I hate that. I don't know why I would do this to myself and Mary, but it's getting that hard to come up with ideas. At some point here I am going to have to get on with work, get out to the market and find some ingredients, plan or no. So.

2004-02-10T05:52:00.000-06:00

The quiz below is very entertaining. Even if you are an American and love it, which I am and do, for many complex reasons.

2004-02-10T05:46:00.000-06:00

I am an Intellectual

Which America Hating Minority Are You?

Take More Robert & Tim Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim Cartoons

2004-02-09T12:16:00.000-06:00

There are cat hairs in all my canvasses. There's paint on my mouse and grounds in my coffee. Messy, messy.

2004-02-09T09:37:00.000-06:00

House Renovation

So in this house Mary and I bought. We moved in in August and we still haven't transformed it. Maybe it's because we never got a garden in. Hard to know a place if you haven't sifted the midden. Maybe it's our own malaise; times and lives being what they are. The magic of Bach and Murphy's Oil soap and peppermint oil dying in the face of leaking taps and clogged drains. The house wants a ritual and I don't know what it is. How do you go about finding a house's religion? Do I hang a broom on the door, or place the hand of fatima on the windows? Should there hang printed Jesuses over the beds, or a peg rail halfway up the wall?

I'm not sure I trust the ghosts in this house. Wraiths of former residents papering the walls. I think they have not been happy occupants. Over enough time every thought gets painted, horsehair in the plaster, smoke stains in the varnish. This house is mute. I paint it with salt and I paint it with vinegar, I sing to the sloping rooms, light a candle, burn a stick. Listen. Only at night with its helpless small noises. Tracing cracks in plaster, telling fortunes in peeling paint. Go to the bones, the windowframes and the unfaced studs. Tasting the lathe. This house was built in 1906; it weighs more than a Chevy Impala, for instance. This house feels like it might disappear at any moment. There is water underground, seeping toward the Mississippi, it keeps me up at night, sounding like the slapping of eye lids. I saw a terrible program on T.V. once, Maurie Povich, live or feigning, balloons filled with mint paste, but every show seems to be paternity testing. This is fitness at its most abased. I'd rather see a lion eating cubs. But I wondered to take the horse hairs from these walls and send them to the lab. How many individual horses are represented in this plaster? How were they eating, what color were their eyes and what unfortunate circumstance led to these crinkly bristles holding together my walls? And what of the lathe, what were the trees? On what long since eroded slope did sunlight shatter in their needles? I can find out in seconds how many shares of e-bay were traded in the last hour, and I can't find out the names of the trees who live in my house. This is a cave of body parts. Limestone and horses and tree bones. Scalding hope bonded to the walls and names written in permanent marker over the washtub. The rust on the pipes only going home. Awake at night praying for rituals to be revealed. What would appease the blister fog? Sometimes the air is too crowded with faded names, the stained collars and chipped fingernails and broken dishes, strained neck veins and rotting stomachs. I wish it were spring. Mary and I woke up nearly buried in the silt. Bits of lost thoughts and moments of limpid terror settling over our mouths while we slept. I don't want to become part of the mudstone, I'd rather go down the drain and find the river.

2004-02-08T15:25:00.000-06:00

I love this kind of thing. It's the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it's the Foundation, it's well it's the Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia. Check it out, write an article, learn something about LLoyd Alexander, author of The Chronicles of Prydain.

2004-02-08T14:00:00.000-06:00

DeathPenaltyinMinnesotaOhGoddamnit

We are not all as bloodthirsty as some famous big eared, small brained Americans. But, it's getting worse. Our attorney general is trying hard to get federal death penalty cases scheduled in states which don't currently allow them, such as Minnesota, for state crimes. In the US there is a Federal death penalty for crimes prosecuted by the federal government, but each state is free to decide for itself how to punish crimes within its own jurisdiction. This honestly kind of sucks as when you have an idiot for a governor, (Tim Pawlenty), such as we have in Minnesota right now. The small minded bloodthirsty sack of shit can't stop slobbering about how we have to get that good ole religion. An appalling number of us support the death penalty. The reasons are very weak. Arguing about this here is like arguing about abortion rights or religion. I think a lot of people support the death penalty for no better reason than that they are assholes. Too lazy to think about an issue and form an opinion of their own, they listen to what the neighbors are saying, more importantly listening to what is acceptable to think and say within the neighborhood. Seriously, ideas are like viruses. Anyone can catch them. The simpler the idea and the less critical the thinker, the more virulent the spread. Mystifying really, some of the arguments you here. For my part, I am disgusted that our Governor is jumping on this neo-facist bandwagon. It really is not part of the flavor and tradition of this state. Hard to believe that Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone were all part of the same political society which has spawned this vile boy scout looking sneak. Hmm, though the odds of anyone reading this and getting on me for libel are slim, I'll point out that 'sneak' refers to the telecommunications non-scandal that should have been Mr. Conflict of Interest with greasy palms. As to the vile part, well I'm sure that speaks for itself.

Anyway, from the US I can't lobby via Amnesty International about death penalty issues within the US. It's a sensible policy, but I'd encourage anyone stopping by from outside the US to visit Amnesty and weigh in. Thank you. Visit Amnesty International.

2004-02-08T13:06:00.000-06:00

Fun with ads

I love the fact that the ads in the blogspot banner above, by google, are for onions and milkpaint. Keywords are fun.

2004-02-08T12:48:00.000-06:00

blood candy

fingers white blade sunrise
crackle steam pop and dream
fish sticks and dog licks and fur in my teeth
bones beneath tomes beneath dust and fallen stones
rock dust river rust trout eggs and blue feet
blind blue tiles vertebrae stonefly
venting with a knife scaling life has its price
having left what you have you have

screens falling from frames and undrying green oil paint
all the things left undone, the haunting, I hide
cement floors and oil stains and shelter from the rain, but not too much
musk of dog shattering taillights with copper stones
old woman's bones, under parchment skin superman xray is ok.
seeing everything looking for a number ten needles
to find an eye

never buy a camera, never make a pie, the smell will linger
smelling back on honey hair heat of an oven
sweeping crumbs, not the last

diving for pearls dumpster waiting for the storm to settle in
if I were a squirrel I'd hide my nuts in old coffee cans
how can, how can god give people cancer, how flood fire war and disaster? You want to know...answer one question
if I were god there would be a lot fewer people lots more trees.
but i don't want to die, dying trying.

dreaming again, bleeding again
oh, if I were blood candy
painting again, shadows and plastic silk
eyes of a monster scaring her
just don't scare me she said
just that

making pies and painting faces behind veils, it was all I could do
to deal with the dying, no use in trying.
which sense will govern which sense will choose you?
which sense will taint the blood which blood will pick the shoes?
Shoes? Yer shoes telling stories in dust and wear in dreams of dead men and size 42 Big Mac overalls, god help buying those J.C. Penny and what ever happened to sears oh poor sears
A suit for $4.98, oh yeah, could someone please explain inflation to me.

Understanding the color green, what it has to do with time
Understanding the old splinters the brown and the flakes, the stones and the mandrake. What spell river rock and mortared souls stacking cracked photos in a box by Steve Madden. She never wears those sandals anyway. Who will look, who will sort through these old transparencies when I'm gone and I don't want to be gone. I don't want a legacy, I just want to be the one. I want to be the one. I always want to have the taught skin and the fresh face and the half understanding smile hated you will be half hated, how could it be otherwise, a hope fulfilled and failing everyday, you should be hated, but that's me

Maybe your photo album reeks of joy, love, understanding, maybe it scatters them like stars from my grandfather's eyes, drunk on pain, drunk on a thousand millions years' hopless heredity, fucking the love and pissing it away.

What is the sound of urine on tin, strangely it is more something of a smell of moldy dead person's underpants, not music, not like rain on the roof in summer when you're horny hopeful sixteen, oh no, eventually it's all just moldy old fabric that no one should have saved, just pull the plug, god please, on me. Set fire to it all and burn my bones dancing away, not saved, not sanctified, not praised, not stored, not crematoricized, just kill me for god's sake and let me dance away, let my spirit be, but of my father, of course remember she did come by having sex with tight fruit print jeans, fighting the brass tasting the amnesiac effects of ass, gone by and by the rights buried another thing buried, where will we bury my father, fuck, on the farm? In the city where he was loved, whose magic will win and it's only for the living, this magic. Fuck it if you think the dead care.

Father bald with omaya resevoir in your head, and that's where the flow stops and memories of your early lovers will start

2004-02-08T09:07:00.000-06:00

Grey and shitty out, but not without beauty if you get up close to it. This picture is not up close to it, and it's not beautiful, but that's the view from my porch today.

2004-02-07T23:20:00.000-06:00

Saw this link on Abraxas and a couple of the animations are too silly to ignore.

2004-02-07T15:08:00.000-06:00

Beyond Contestation

Okay, this is an in post edit, modifying the flavor of what I just posted. I actually got a wonderful feeling from B.C. The woman is strong and I know she's going to live. I can say this because I have seen people I love survive some mean ass cancer. It's just that it's so fucking hard sometimes, eh? With my dad, I know he counts on me to be positive, to be normal, to look forward. And I am, do. But I don't like to talk about it. I can't help but think about it; nonstop nights and ceilings and chrome arm rests digging into flesh in black vinyl airports and hotdogs in Chicago, one good layover, scalding bitter coffee bile in D.C. and another set of cheerful fucking scrubs god I wish they would wear plain green, but that's me. There's a lot of thinking about it, but it's gotten hard to talk to my dad for lots of reasons. I don't know the author of B.C., never met her, but you know your ancestors and you know your grandchildren and you know Eve and everyone who's ever lived and died, just looking in a child's eyes, come on, in a few simple words, a LIFE revealed. See that's the idea then, people with cancer are alive; they are not a fucking disease. You get surgery, you have rehab, you take drugs--so does a poor sob in a car wreck, but if he's thirty and his head is in a piece, he's a fucking hero. Now why is he different from a cancer patient? Because of preconceptions and fear and people looking away when they talk to you, afraid to meet your eyes, afraid to laugh, looking to pat your fucking arm. Aw hell, here I go again. Better I'd let be. But that is a wonderful site of the dear above and below. She's a strong one.

Been reading Beyond Contestationa bit. Sweet and beautiful and alive and altogether too much for me to deal with for more than five minutes at a time. She writes of a new nightgown waiting to welcome her home from cancer surgery and I think of how many times we've told Larry he has to get home cause the dog needs to get walked. Making plans for the future makes sense, defy and survive. It's not denial. I wish a few of my father's doctors would read what their patients who live, write. Oncologists have almost no sense of humor. Humor heals. When I call home I don't want to hear results from the latest MRI or stain, my mother tells me whether Larry is still laughing. After 21 months with small cell, fast growing lung cancer the tough son of a bitch should be laughing and his oncos should take the fucking hint.

Thinking of the trips he's planned with the angry bitter cancellation and where does the anger go. Good old poisonous anger. You know, sometimes I think a good head of rage can keep you alive, get you through, but not if you feed it and bleed it into the ones you love.

I'm going to check out now, shovel some snow, pet the cat, dancing on the sharp edge of her words, waiting to wake up and run. At least I folded the damn laundry. Never have I maid I won't, but someday I might just have real linen sheets sent out for laundering, and why not so fuck off. And a bit later, another five minutes at the above site and we'll see how I take it.

2004-02-07T13:18:00.000-06:00

The smell of Comet, of chlorine, is comforting while I clean the bathroom. Mingled with Mr. Clean this smell is rising from my hands right now. When in doubt, clean, restore order, fight entropy. Funny that these very toxic things eating away at my skin should make me think of home. Despite the misogynist ads of Mr. Clean I still buy it because that's what my mother uses. It's not that I am forever convinced our house was the cleanest, just that smells burn into you, infect you. Little olfactory riffs, viruses of love and hedges against anxiety. Nothing but these pieces, mad orchestral tuning, lost notes and green notes and notes that smell like old cotton and cedar. God help you if you live in your nose, everything hurts that much more. Still I'd much rather clean the toilet than fold the laundry which I'm off to do.

2004-02-07T05:24:00.000-06:00

Welsh Cakes

Bore da. That's the only Welsh I know, which is a pitty since my grandfather spoke it. Never met him, but it gives me and my mother something to get misty eyed over on pleasant occasions. The lottery, the big hit, the sudden success, and you can be sure my mother is going to Wales. She actually used to make Welsh Cakes for us many many years ago and if I turn inside my head just right, and twist my nose I can still taste them. Flour on the counter, thick meaty slabs of dough cutting with neat edges. It was occasion, it was special, but did we appreciate what we had, what we were getting? I don't know. I'm going to have to make these things this week. Found one recipie here, but I know my mother never used lard. We'll call her then, later, and talk about Welsh Cakes. A happysad moment in the middle of all the shit.

teisen lap, Pice Ar Y Maen, Welsh Bake Stones, Pice Bach -- a sampling of different things these have been called on Google this morning. My vote is for Pice Ar Y Maen, a man named Trevor Jones calls them such and if that isn't a Welsh name, neither is Owen.

I've found Welsh Cake recipies from Wisconsin, Ohio, California, England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, and just now Germany. All the listings in America were from people like me, with Welsh grandparents, trying to hear a note of our diasporic songlines. I wonder how many Welshmen there are in Sweden. I think this one is my favorite so far because it comes with a picture of someone actually making the cakes, even if it is in Canada. History has to get made sometime, you know. What will I have to feel nostalgic about in five years? Typing in a hard chair by a cold window at 5:44 a.m. :)

2004-02-06T20:51:00.000-06:00

My friend Pete

has just started a husk. I bullied him into I think, but it's perfect for an obsessive such as he. Anyway Pete, good for you. I hate milhouse, but I love that his picture is on your site. Everything's coming up Milhouse!

2004-02-06T19:53:00.000-06:00

We went to the Home and Garden show in Minneapolis today with Mike, Mary's brother. Home and Garden show. Smelled like the state fair, only with no fur, only the vats of steaming fat floating dough. How incongruous plastic cups of thin beer and pink wine. Thirty dollar a square foot glass tile and stainless steel cabinet treatments flagstone walls and hundreds of blooming hyacinths and straw colored beer in cloudy plastic cups.

We walked around and around and around and I took a survey of free candy. Very weak, the candy at the Home and Garden show. Few freebies. These folks have no idea how to get my attention. Give me food. Give me good coffee in a real cup with cream and sugar. Fuck, give me a doughnut and a cup of orange flavored drink, I'll stand and listen to your spiel. But not at the Minnesota Home and Garden show. The number one candy? Fucking Dum Dums. Suckers. Well....

To be fair, there were some beautiful garden displays, and a few reps were giving away Hershey's kisses, one with Resee's peanut butter cups. Hard not to wonder though at the hugely expensive displays for water softening systems, for home delivery--I mean just the displays cost a fortune. I wish they had a stall for village wells from West Africa. Dracunculiasis
cholera and I don't know, how about just shit flavored water that kills you for looking at it. Strange deal, these traveling shows of conspicuous consumption. Anyway.

2004-02-06T19:03:00.000-06:00

This is from Mary, who deviously hacked into Owen's blog,(actually she sat down next to me and said, "Can I write something?" "Claro que si"):

I really need a new job. I currently wait tables and i am an assistent manager at a restuarant. I am up to fucking early 4 a.m. 5 days a week. i am never late i can handle a lot of fucking tables i rock.

Mary

2004-02-05T20:40:00.000-06:00

Figs.

Liberating hairs clogging drains
I'd stand one of these bristles on end and name it
breath to breath, old power words
"You were a Mary-leg-hair-fetus, waiting to be,
Now you are Mule." There are a lot of hairs in the sink;
we'd need lots of names.
A basin, a Christening, and down down.

If I were a hair, take me follicle and all
clinging bit of bright flesh
Don't shave me, burn me, wax me, chew me, Nair me, curl me, iron me, or Epilize me.
Have some fucking respect.
Plant this hair in a windowsill, on moldy Brie, sidewalk cracked vinyl dashboard, sleeping drunk's tongue, in a wedge of buffet honeydew, on a baby's eye, on an alopeciac perineum, forget me stuck on the tweezers, but
don't just slice me with a dull crusty pink plastic fucking razor. Please. Of course, we could always leave it be.

Air marching ions
Ghosts of former pets
Songlines tangled in wormcastings
Lips shoulder nipple hooks
in purse seine nets.

We went to the Fanny Farmer's, tasting assholes,
finding ones we liked.
Frosted, frocked, chocolate dunked and powdered. Laughing, she muscled a mint into every squiddy ring. A courtesy to fellow travelers whisper she assured me. Gentle assholes dying in our jaws too tender and sweet. The guilty feeling kills me. Crawled inside a starnosed mole and never have got out again.

I love the wetness of a fig. Its heat, its breath, limpidity and translucent bloom. The sensuality of a fig is so obvious comparisons are illadvised. That to which it's compared might suffer. I'm talking about fresh figs now. Dried and I are friendly, to the colon and to the heart, to the palate too. But a fresh, ripe fig hanging on this tree of grey muscle looking like cooled earth sex elephant soul extrusion warmed by the San Joaquin sun. Figs are hilarious. They are sexy. They are ridiculous fruits in America, a bit of primeval Eve, Mesopotamia refugees. Figs are must, figs are rut, figs are warm and sweet and slightly hallucinatory. A fig has a hole. A fig has residents, hard narrow beetling things which rush over your hand if you give them time and tink as they fall to the tamped earth and bleached grass. Not that it matters, crunching them and crunching fig seeds and liberating wasp dreams. When I lie dying, I want to hear the falling of glass fig eaters in powder earth toeprint.

I love figs. I miss them. She was wearing a lotion, not labeled as such, but reeking of fig dust last night. Standing in a frozen Minnesota being ten years old under an ancient tree. That was a hell of a tree on that dirt where my father was raised. Lips numb with cold drinking ditch water from concrete standpipes. The dog did it, crystal clear, how stupid, to think water was safe to drink. Anyway, so figs are on my mind.

2004-02-05T15:30:00.000-06:00

Well, that's a bit depressing, if true, down below so why not a recipie? Here letting my inner dork come into full flower, February flower. The only flower I have seen bloom in Minnesota in February--outside I mean--is skunk cabbage. In 1992. Symplocarpus foetidus I don't have any recipies for skunk cabbage, though I recall that it's edible if you go to a lot of trouble to remove the oxalic acid. Doesn't smell like skunk either; skunks have an almost sensual aroma when you're not too close, musky and eye opening and many layered. Skunk cabbage smells like rotten meat. Also throws heat which I think is just so cool. Specualtion exists as to whether the foul scent and perhaps carbon dioxide the plant gives off is meant to dupe insects in search of carrion and have them carry off a pit of pollen. Anyway...no recipie for rotten meat. I was thinking of cuke sauce. If you do have some horribly rotten meat and you just can't stand to throw it away...I don't know, stew the shit out of it with curry and serve it with...cucumber sauce, raita, or whatever the kids are calling it these days, but a very easy recipie:

half a cucumber, whole cucumber, however much you have left
skin on skin off doesn't matter, your taste
yogurt plain, any amount of fat
sour cream, light is fine
granulated or fresh garlic
lots of dill
ginger if you like

combine, more yogurt than sour cream, finely shredded cuke, seed first if you're picky, drain or not, add dill at 1T/c garlic, salt, ginger to taste, stir

eat it on crackers, eat it on toast, eat it on pita, eat it with kabobs, and so on.

2004-02-05T14:56:00.000-06:00

Strange bad times going to Unique thrift with Mary. Flashbacks to dead girlfriends and every curly dark haired head a gouging rudder. Awful smells and smiling children and Spanish flowing easily over left-over toys chipped candles over priced Levi's. And this dead woman has to keep popping up sliding through the features of one woman's face and another. I wonder sometimes if suicide leaves angry spirits walking the earth. I picture block long rigid spider legs, tattered shadows, rasping screeching, all the tools from a child's nighttime terror closet. Stalking Larpenteur Avenue seems unlikely, god awful ugly street. Why would you bother, no peace, no satisfaction. I hope for her sake there is no consciousness after blowing your brains across a motel room. Can you imagine the disappoinment you'd feel? Looking for something dramatic and all you are is dead?

Why even we went to that store, you never know what you'll find. Disgustingly ugly street and lot with the Lamplighter Lounge around the corner. I hate this now with rusty side panels of a Grand Prix rasping my eyes the smell of our yard and mouse piss in the garage. I hate the wiring of memories, this time. I hate the smell of skin and seeing her teeth. I hate the smooth waxed floor under my feet. Fuck, it's like having a phantom limb. Worst, this time, this trip with Mary and how is this fair and god knows what storms are in her head, what's the memory, feeling like shit? Finding 3-M window treatment tape for 30 cents, what a deal. A pair of Calvin Klein jeans for Mary that probably won't fit. Running scared just to escape again. God, sometimes I wish the ghosts would just catch you and have it out.

2004-02-05T08:25:00.000-06:00

What do they call English breakfast tea in England, lemur piss? (This sentence I am writing much later; it occurs to me that might be taken the wrong way about lemur piss. I have absolutely nothing against lemurs. I love them, further they are endangered, many types, especially large species have gone extint since Madagascar was first settled. Anyway, I like English breakfast tea, I just can't picture somebody sitting down in Dorset somewhere saying, "Hey let's have some English Breakfast Tea, for breakfast. It from the U.S." You see what I mean?)

This is so strange. Anti-immigration wing nuts trying to take over the Sierra Club. If you're a member, find out who these folks are before you vote, eh.

Go news, if there is any, about the fight against sweatshops can be found in this article. It's depressing that in the US it isn't impossible to buy sweat shop free clothing, it's only so damn hard almost no one does it. All of the places we traditionally buy clothing are completely mute on the subject and the manufacturers certainly aren't coming clean with labels and such. Aw hell, what a shit sandwich. I'll have to raid my bookmarks and come up with a summary of options.

2004-02-04T21:44:00.000-06:00

I'm still fuddling with another site on my provider to have storage for stories, poems, pictures and things, but did get a page of pictures together. It's been years since I fooled around with html and a lot of things have changed, not the least of which is my patience. I used a quick site function from my provider and it shows. Eh, oh well. Going to bed.

2004-02-04T17:38:00.000-06:00

Ok this game is really stupid, and it isn't very friendly to penguins, but I can't help liking it

2004-02-04T16:10:00.001-06:00

God I wish I spoke French. There are so many things I'd like to read in the original language. Also it would be fun to talk to Mary's dad. I can't seem to convince her we should learn the language together even though it is a part of her heritage. My Spanish is getting rusty now that I don't speak it much. This is silly. I live in a Latino neighborhood and buy my groceries at a store where I am often the only blanco, but in this context I don't feel comfortable presuming their English is worse than my Spanish. I will say this though--every Mexican I've ever spoken to in Spanish, English, dogbarkingmadgesturesfoottwisting whatever language has been friendly to a fault and our conversations are always a success. Communication succeeds, the point of language. With French and French speakers, eh, it's been a little different.

This began with the contemplation of dinner and what to make. There are so many leftovers in our fridge they should have their own demographic and help important beverage manufacturers decide what to name a new carb free protein laden urine flavored beverage. One of these leftovers is a large pan of Potato Dauphinois(Dauphinois, hey I was right or these folks are as stupid as I am)--I think. I have no idea how to spell this word. I could get the cook book, but then that would be cheating. I'm just owning up to ignorance. I'll make a good guess at how to pronounce it, but you can't hear me, trust that it's dead on, not Parisian, more rustic, maybe Provence. Of course, this was a recipe from an English cookbook. God help me. Maybe I should make Welsh cakes and eat them with butter and jam, lacking currants I could use chocolate chips, Aztec cakes, sweetened. The problem with the Potato-es, where is Dan Quayle when I need him--Daphnewas is that Mary didn't like it. The problem with that is this huge pan lurking in my refridgerator needed attention. Aw crap, I'm beginning to hate food.

2004-02-04T12:20:00.000-06:00

2004-02-04T11:58:00.001-06:00

Ha, it finally got up to 0 degrees here. Blood running heating bills stark terror in white envelopes with red trim. It's noon and I finally consented to turn the heat above sixty. The cat won't speak to me and the fish lurks in a corner of his tank tying vainly to start a fire by rubbing two shells together. He's a goldfish, not tropical and I should think the cool room temperature keeps his head clear. I read in National Geographic yesterday that every time one turns on a light or turns up the heat one is dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Yeah, well I knew that, and now I feel just slightly guiltier above turning my heat up to sixty-four than I did yesterday. Thanks National Geographic. Guilt meter. Gilt peter. Stilt reader. Kilted bleeder. Blah.

I started this blog to force myself to write something everyday, to try to touch base with my own thoughts and perhaps too self-consciously share them with friends who might wonder what I'm up to. Unfortunately, I feel myself more constrained by ever, I guess by the sense of this blog world I barely knew existed. Forms and types and rings and heros and standards and things. Well, I have noticed a lot of male bloggers link to porn sites, unabashedly. A lot of women with kids link to sites of other women with kids and everybody links to , Abraxas. Bloggers in Great Britain seem to be slightly wittier on average, and bloggers in the US seem equally divided between technical blogs, political ranting, and journals. I've definitely spent too much time in the last few days reading blogs. I'm getting very sick of the word 'blog'. Not that anyone will read this or pick it up, but in my little universe I'm now calling it 'husking'. I don't think of bored fisheyes hiding illicit porn from their bosses, not when I think 'husking'. I think of corn. Not cornholing goddamnit, corn, Zea mays, teosinte, cornhusk dolls and corn huskers lotion. Autumn and bonfires and broken prairie smells. So husk on. But not blog, hearing I picture grey wet skinned frogs size of dogs googling through the cities snatching children and brainwashing them. No offense meant of course, I love CornHusks and you husky husking folk who've created this community; I just couldn't take the word anymore.

2004-02-03T20:25:00.000-06:00

Going to bed then chaffing in Pendleton robe, never wear but it's well below steeping tea and waiting for laundry to dry, for Mary tomorrow. The soup turned out wonderful, fantastic, with the edition of dried figs and ground glass and whiskers from dead men's shavers. Or not. The soup was great. Add a little garlic, granulated, when cooking the mushrooms, and a bit more to taste later. Also, cut the olive oil and add more butter. The fungus is a sponge, a soaker upper of that wonderful olive musk, just out of place later with the sherry and the thyme. Hmm, I think the dryer stopped.

2004-02-03T16:56:00.000-06:00

Alright then, toilet seats clanging far away and Mary must be awake, typing faster, spelling, soup simmering, a wonderful word Simmer, much like saunter, not like disinter, though for the right folks on the right magical prom night, we shouldn't judge, oh no.

The Joy of Cooking, my favorite cookbook of all time. It's all here, the magic and the dross and the dental floss. Hard boil an egg, whip egg whites in a couple bowl, bouquet garni and monkey pea, well something like the latter.

From The Joy of Cooking, 1997, page 96, Mushroom Soup

About six cups
Slince rather than chop the mushrooms for a meaty texture and a handsome look.
Heat in a soup pot, over high heat, until the butter is melted:
3.5 T extra-virgin olive oil
1 t unsalted butter or additional olive oil

Add:
1.5 lbs mushrooms, (preferably at least 12 ounces wild), wiped clean and tough stems romoved, sliced
.5 c shallots

Cook, stirring often, until the mushrooms are wilted, about 5 minutes. Add:
3 T dry sherry or Madeira
2 T all-purpose flour
1 t dried thyme, or 1 T fresh thyme

Reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan, for 5 minutes. Stir in:
4.5 cups Brown Chicken Stock, page 39, or any vegetable stock, pages 38 to 39
.5 to 1.5 t salt
.75 t ground black pepper

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer until slightly thickened, about 20 minutes. Ladle into warmed bowls. Garnish with:

Chopped parsley or fresh thyme leaves

Prepare Cream of Mushroom Soup by stirring in .5 cup heavy cream and .5 t salt. Simmer briefly, taste to adjust the seasonings, and serve.

I will report on the many many deviations shortly.

2004-02-03T16:11:00.000-06:00

Sauteeing mushrooms and shallots now. Butter, extra virgin olive oil and fungus. God it smells good. We'll see and I'll post a few recipies when the stock is in.

2004-02-03T13:19:00.000-06:00

For cinnamon toast:

Done with it? Eh, well, try making it for someone else, especially when she can't sleep, too hungry forgot to eat lonely cold or generally in need of comfort. The best thing about comfort food is making it for other people, eh.

Ingredients:
bread--wheat, white, rye, sourdough, but nothing more exotic
cinnamon
butter--a little soft, but not like your Swedish grandma's
sugar--or honey, Stevia, so on
a Toaster oven--you have to have this for my very simple method

Toast bread lightly once
While warm smear with butter, sprinkle cinnamon and load with sugar to taste
Put the bread back in the toaster and watch while the sugar melts and flares and flows into butter cream eddies swirling with cinnamon streaks.

Don't walk away and let it burn. Butter is inflammable and scorched toast smells like French Roast shit. Don't forget to give her a napkin, large towel, plate or something to catch the crumbs, especially if serving her in bed.

2004-02-03T09:47:00.000-06:00

Well hell, we'll see. Mushroom soup today. Mary's request. It has been a while and the last time I made it I screwed it royally. Too many onions, always my curse. This time, this time, just give me this one time. Meanwhile we'll see if a thirty-one year old with no artistic training can really completely change his life and sell a painting. Talking that over with Mary last night and looking out the window at the tracks. No one could pass our yard undetected. I see mostly squirrels, but long for the past. A possum track in light, wet snow is something wonderful. The state's maximum security prison, Oak Park Heights utilizes a large barren expanse of snow around their facility for much the same purpose. Nice and low tech.

Go to pick a recipie for Cream of Mushroom soup.