|
 |
| |
I am working to soon bring Wordpress to this site
so you can leave comments.
|
|
Monday, July 31, 2006
WeedsHe wills his old feet to climb the rocky patch towards the vineyard. Wills
his back and legs to bend, his hands to reach and pull. And pull. Again and again. The roots
will be yanked like old Jews from their beds in the night by Nazis, the sun will immediately blind their eyes. By
noon the
heat will have moulded itself to his back but he will go home contented
that piles of stinky carcasses lie shrinking, by tomorrow but dust in the wind. His sons do not approve
of his exertion, they tell him to rest, to sit with Mother in the shade in the garden with warm orange juice, bread and oil but
to rest would be to turn his back on God and the convictions of his ancestors. As long as he is
able to weed the pockets of loam rich with the rain of six thousand autumns, he will do
so. Down the hill he sees his eldest son talking with the American tourists, they will be
asking about the wine - how long, how much, how many years, will this be best with fish or lamb? The first Westerners
this week, used to be a steady stream of them every day before the town's trees and produce stands became
stained with the blood of suicide. "Ah, weeds, weeds," he smiles, "you might as well be roses for
all you know of Palestine. For all you know of bombs and bullets." And he starts to hum as the first raindrops flatten
on the backs of his hands.
Friday, July 28, 2006
NickelsJust as everyone knows by their mother's steps on the stairs whether she is more in the
mood to kiss you or whack you with a wooden spoon, everyone knows the distinct tones of different
coins falling on hard surfaces. Quarters are easy to identify, they resound with that rich satisfying clank we
all love - a quarter found is a moment of thrill. Nickels, generally jealous of dimes and secretly
seething at their lot in life, spin themeslves flat on pine floors with a dull clunk. Pennies, so
bored with it all, can barely yawn a cheap 'whink'. And
then there are dimes. Ahh, dimes, the unmistakable finely-tuned Veuve Cliquot clinky-tinkers of the minted world. These heaven-bells go tripping down
alleyways where happy children play. They spash into fountains. They sing of love. Finding
dimes brings good luck and/or signifies the finder is a person of extremely
high merit and worth. Half-dollars are ambitiously sleeping their way to the top - drop one of those to hear
corporations merge. Of course the lesser coins all bow
down to the silver dollar, the reclusive Howard Hughes of coins. Only kings
and paperboys know the pitch of a silver dollar hitting marble. Coffee can of
change on the kitchen counter reminds me that Nick had over eighty dollars worth of pennies in a five-gallon
water bottle. I know because I was the one who had to lug them to bank after he died. He must've
been saving them for five or six years. Poor Nick, another one I didn't get to say goodbye to.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
MiceI'm afraid to unscrew the grille from the sub-woofer cabinet. Baby mice skeletons could
be in there. I already have to live with the guilt of watch-
ing their parents scurry into the underbrush at Commons Ford Ranch last winter, I don't think I could handle
seeing tiny carcasses knowing they had mewed for milk from the mama they never saw again.
I'd heard mice, figured out where the nest was and slid a heavy chair up
against the speaker cabinet to seal off their crack of a front door. But I couldn't stand
them scratching and gnawing for their lives so I took the chair away and let
them run around one last night. Next evening I set sticky traps out. Next morning
there they were, stuck in their demise. One was caught mostly by its rear paws,
the other by its front. They didn't look real happy. "They're so cute, Mama" said Kelly in reverent
tones. Shut-
tled them with a popsicle stick to
a tall plastic juice pitcher. You should have seen those little eyes as they tried again and again to jump up and
out. Help us, help us. We promise we'll find somewhere else to live.
Just please let us get our babies and we'll all pack up and go. Promise. What
should I have done? Let them roam our house forever, pissing and shitting
everywhere. Set them free in the backyard - they'd only come back in again.
Flush them? Help, please help. "Let's set them free in the woods, Kelly. They'll
be happy and find a new home there." So we did after supper.
(I didn't tell her the part about how they'd probably last an hour before snakes or coyotes got them.) Why
did they have to come in here at all? Now their babies' skeletons might be over there just ten feet
from where I write this. No, I can't open the grille. Jim will have to do it.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Vanilla WaferHer Sponge Bob slippers slap across the cold saltillo as she glides to the kitchen with her nightgown
clinging to her voluptuous form like a fireant clings to a donut. Old fridge door creaks open. Crisper
tray chatters. Something rustles like mice playing in cellophane. Fridge door shuts with a whump
and a clinking of bottles. Slippers slapping again. Pantry door creaking. More rustling.
Shuffling. Cabinet door squeaking. Dishes clacking on the marble counter top. Soda can top popping
with a pfffftt-click. Liquid splashing into a glass. Her sigh. More slapping of the slippers
and suddenly there she is - a tall beauty backlit in the doorway.
She smiles crookedly and shuffles across the carpet towards him. Her long auburn hair blown by the ceiling
fan reminding him of a satin
pillowcase rippling on a clothesline. God, she's so beautiful. How can she
call herself fat? He wants to grab her and wrestle her to the rug with kisses, nail her to the
cross of his flesh and desire. Wants to choke off all memory of any moment past or future but this. She is a goddess
to him, he can only stare sideways at her in awe. The sofa groans a bit as she settles into her usual spot. Three
baby carrots roll around on her cran-
berry plate beside a single vanilla wafer. She sets the Diet Coke on the coffee table and turns to smile
at him again. Damn it, he thinks, why do the best women never realize their own beauty or worth?
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
CheeriosWhen I was a college student I was lucky to work summers at the Mines, doing mostly labor stuff like hosing slag, pick-axing
crud and helping Ernie with the Super-Sucker (hyrdo-vac) out in tailings. Good old blue-eyed thigh-grabbing Ernie. Anyway...
I can still smell and taste that
damp metal mixture that clung to everything and everyone in the Concentrator. Used to find grit in
my bra and undies and inside my nostrils till mid-October. Second summer in my
Noranda employ there was a big French guy on our shift. Can't remember his name but maybe it'll come
to me by the end of this writing. Fat guy, some would say. I still see him in his navy coveralls commanding
the table in the break room with two or three Vachon cakes spread out on a blue shop towel beside his coffee thermos. Always joking and making funny
voices, talking with his mouth full. Often he'd have his whole
lunch gone by mid-morning break. Lately I know the feeling of wanting to feed the blues on a blah
mid-summer mid-morning, even though I've had my Cheerios a couple hours ago. Longing for dark chocolate because
the crisp autumn air and turning leaves are still such a long way home. Chips and onion dip would
be nice. Stuff them blues with something yummy until something
good happens. Much too early for wine but don't think the thought doesn't cross my mind some days. Go back
to bed for a nap until supper. Go back to Schlitterbahn. What was that big guy's name?! David? Thomas? Robert?
No, none of those. I'd know it if I heard it.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Scotch TapeNancy keeps her desktop as crisp as an unopened cigarette package. She tries
to pry off some tape but it's split and she wonders what a scotch tape factory would smell like. Something
burning and brown? Chemicals? How clean would the floor be? Would it be
the same building the Post-it notes are conjured up in? Or maybe the cellophane. The video tape. She
wonders who worked through nights to get the glue's tensile strength just right. How many rolls a day are
made? And what of
the inferior brands of sticky tape, the kind you get at the dollar store. Where are those whored together?
Are they made in China too? Are there any American or Canadian factories anymore? Does everything have to be outsourced
these days? Take Dell Computer. Call their sales line and a perky-slick young American male voice answers immediately.
"Yes ma'am, no ma'am, three bags full." Have a problem with your computer and need to consult tech support or customer
service? You
get the old "Your call is important, please stay on the line," spiel. When someone finally answers
it's all you can do to understand them. Try to be polite. The Indians are trained best vocally. The Chinese
almost impossible to understand. Why does Dell do this? Because we let them. And because the Indians and
Chinese have to eat too.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
WaterparkHe eyeballs his marshmallow tummy bobbing on the big floatie ring and wonders how he ever got
this way. Long before he had a desk job and a family, before too many cheeseburger lunches and re-heated
lasagne dinners he was a young brave as tan and as fleet of foot as any. He flew on his bicycle
everywhere. Now those lean bodies splash past him,
youths with their musculature and vigor taken for granted, laughing teens
romping, eddies of shrieking girls. Young couples with little kids in life jackets. And the
occasional middle-age bobber like him. His own wife and children are somewhere up ahead on the labrynthine
course. He closes his eyes and rocks hypnotized on the chlorinated stew, the sun raining down on his whiteness.
He sinks into the comfortable confusion of water sounds melting into muted motors and voices everywhere, the jangle
reminding him of a room full of sewing machines. Tomorrow he will have to face the traffic
and the papers and the boss but today his worries belong to someone else. Today he is a photo in a vacation
brochure. His feet bounce off other tubers and the walls of the man-made lazy river, in
a human pin ball game. He yields to the swoosh and surge of the rapids rushing
him around a bend. He spins. He drifts.
Friday, July 21, 2006
HeelsKick up your heels. Trip the light fantastic. Skip the light fandango. If feeling
kinda seasick, turn cartwheels 'cross the floor - the crowd' ll call out for more. Or will they ever? Had
a great pair of heels when I was 18 but let's stop talking about the Olde Days, there's more to life than this farm-girl's childhood
memories and musings on dead relatives. How 'bout the future for a change? Yeah! Like the
future in heaven getting to know dead relatives again. And watching all the t.v. you want. Eating anything
and everything and never getting fat, in fact, getting taller and slimmer if you want. (Or shorter and fatter if that's
your thing.) Having perfect teeth without ever needing to brush and floss. Never having to do dishes.
Partying late and not being tired the next day. Or will heaven be about continuing to have all
the same earthly burdens but somehow enjoying doing them through an opiate filter? Do you need to sleep in
heaven? Are babies born there? Is linen permanent press? I do like the
idea of living forever although I used to worry I'd get bored in heaven just hanging out on a cloud all day.
Then some one asked me, "Would you get bored of living here forever?" "Well...
um, no, not as long as I had at least a 4500 square foot house on an acre or three by the ocean, a pool, and a Whole Foods, a 50-plex cinema and a Jazzercise location within a ten-minute drive. Hey, heaven-on-earth might actually be just around the corner if we all
keep on bombing each other enough. Yeah, get rid of all the bad apples and the rest of us can get on with
having a good time. Praise be to Haagen-Dazs, Starbucks and VH1!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
TreeWe all laughed at that scraggly Charlie Brown thing Dad dragged home
from the woods. "A dogwood," he pronounced and planted it close to
the house. For the next two years that runt of a tree was nothing but an
annoyance to lawn-mowing for me and the thought of "accidentally" chopping it flat crossed my mind more
than once. By the third spring it finally produced some blossoms which I had to admit were lopsidedly
cute. By summer's end it had spurted to three feet tall and we invented
the who-can-chug-a-beer-and-run-across-the-lawn-and-jump-the-dogwood-without-touching-it game. Next
summer only Harry could clear its four foot height. Summer after that it was taller than me but nobody was in the mood
for drinking beer and jumping, that was the year our little brother Pat died. I don't recall when Dogwood
reached past the top of the picture windows or gained on the gables, I was long gone on the bus to college with my big
sad eyes by then. Can't say when the jays built their first nest or when Mom started stringing Christmas lights
on it. Been gone so long. I've heard that dogs can "read" the chemical code of scent within human families
and take immediately to kin they've only just met - it's true because my sister's Bobbie-Dog stopped barking
at me as soon as I got close to her. I wonder if trees, like dogs, know familial scents. Will
Dogwood remember me? I bet if you find a child who has loved a tree and grown up, you'll
find a tree that's been lonely.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
SmokeAs quickly as it came into my life the book of poetry went. I know I had it. It was called
"Smoked Glass," by Alden Nowlan, 1933-1983. With each passing year its contents get foggier and foggier
like a face in a photograph hung on a sunny wall. But some of its images have stuck. One of the poems had
a passing line about how cheddar was synonymous with cheese in a small Nova Scotia town because it was
the only kind the inhabitants had ever known. One line about a baby long since dead in a crib, (like Trainspotting sans drugs.) One about a father's reflection of his grown son now only a visitor to his life. One about
the smile on the face of his wife getting tighter and tighter as the cardiac nurse massaged his chest deeper and deeper.
One about the high color on the cheeks of those departing the theatre's early show while initiates
in queue for the later one looked pale and lost. One of the fury seen only on the faces
of toddlers in tantrums and university professors. This book I bought for a dollar at a yardsale
in 1987 because I liked the cover, shades of cloudy greys and blues obscuring Mr. Nowlan's distant misty
mountain of a face. I read it a couple times. Then it vanished as so many things do, like
my stuffed panda when I was six and the red dress I sewed when I was fifteen. Why do
some images stay with us forever while others get filtered away into
the murk of years and things we've seen and been?
(I have gone on-line and found the lyrics to the title poem! Here it is...)
A CERTAIN KIND OF HOLY MEN
Not every wino is a Holy Man.
Oh, but some of them are.
I love those who've learned
to sit comfortably
for long periods with their hams
pressed against their calves,
outdoors,
with a wall for a back-rest,
contented saying nothing.
These move about only when
necessary,
on foot, and almost always
in pairs.
Christ's blood is in their veins
or they thirst for it.
They have looked into the eyes
of God,
unprotected by smoked glass.
(See what I mean... he's even better than I remembered! Guess who's ordering "Smoked Glass" from alibris today? Jannie!)
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
WheelchairThe street guy with no legs has fabulous hair. And one hell of a suntan.
I never would've met him late yesterday afternoon near the corner of 6th and Congress if I hadn't crossed
for shade as I was strolling to kill time before meeting up with some song-writing buddies. I wonder what the dollar
bill I tossed him will be used for? Probably his golf dues or gas for his new Mercedes GL450. Maybe he'll slip it to the pretty stewardess for champagne on his first class flight to Bermuda. Yep,
tomorrow while his honor student kids are leaving to gad about Europe, he and his beautiful wife (she of the botoxed
brow,) will be kissy-kiss greeting old college friends for their yearly
two weeks at the Elbow Beach Hotel. His name is Dave Pompadour the III and he likes rose gardening, '29 to '36 Fords and collecting Civil War coins.
(I noticed a few of the latter in his styrofoam cup on the sidewalk.) He's got a spaniel named Van Gogh (Van for short,) a
couple of siamese cats and he's thinking of upgrading his tropical fish tank from 60 to 180 gallons. He's fifty
but doesn't look a day over seventy-nine, I guess spending sixty hours a week in boardrooms with big wigs
will do that sometimes. His favorite color is Cayman blue, his favorite meal prime rib. He plans to retire
in five years and move the family to their place on Gulf Shore Blvd in Naples, FL because even the stop signs there
have crown molding. Yep, Dave is living The Life in the land of the free. And
people say a dollar doesn't go far anymore!
Monday, July 17, 2006
BookFrom books we reach stars and pedestals. Feel the comfort of worn leather boots. Hear
the rustle of papers at Oxford. Smell the linseed oil on the floorboards of the old seaside coffee
shop. Taste fresh-cut summer. I want to read Right Now but there's laundry piled
up again and the usual junk to be organized. Why do the dishes when you can just sell the
house? Dishes are handy little rigs, would've been a big hit with cavemen. Archaeologists now know Neanderthal
Ned fashioned jewelry long before previously believed. And why? To attract other hot-looking
Neanderthals. Cavemen would've loved Huck Finn. They say any
book you choose should make you look good should you die reading it. Oprah's
book club, fairly decent reads, often depressing though. Hardships galore. Oprah, little gal from the projects
done better than about any other woman in her time. Madonna done pretty good too, I like a lot of her music. Too
bad she's never learned to act. But I shouldn't be so mean. What's that they say; great people
talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about others. Don't talk
about others, you never know who's talking about you. I have housework to do, lots of it, more than the average American
gal (even though I'm not actually American but do have a green card,) but I'm going to disappear into a
book now. I didn't sleep so well last night, with the monster under the bed and all.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
DarknessThe monster under the bed is dressed in grey flannel and doesn't stop looking at his watch. He's laying
in wait for my feet but I'm not getting up yet. No way. I'm hip to his game. Still too dark in
the room. I know how monsters are with their clipboards and barrage of questions about how
one was remiss in filing one's tax report from 2003 and why do one's numbers not
match up. They lurk. Why just Friday I saw two suits at Starbucks throwing hot cappuccino on late
filers. The monsters in the closet smell like old bacon grease, the ones in the attic like onions. Should
they meet up on the landing one of these nights (one of these crazy, crazy old nights,) I'll be doomed
to the shadows forever. I've seen the full-color footage they have of me practicing guitar while
I should've been keeping the books. I've read their Second Request. So I've sidled up to the demons
and passed the buck to the C.P.A. What's the worst that could happen? We'll lose our house and be
banished to Canada? I won't get my tuba till next year? Darkness is so stupid sometimes. Insomniac
blackness magnifies every little fear. I know darn well there is no clawed hand that will be grabbing my ankle
any minute, no yellow eyes to devour my weakness. Still, I'll be glad when it's daylight.
Friday, July 14, 2006
TrinketWhile stews simmered and cookies baked I'd creep upstairs to Gram's diamonds and rubies and
pearls, my steps on the landing stirring up
a panic of mice feet. Pried up the creaking old lid on the dresser. Baubles and beads overflowing.
Treasures untold. Earrings had obviously just been plotting something
with the pendants - emeralds with a highly conspiratorial glow. Sapphires like fairy eyes in the night.
Cufflinks so lonely there on purple velvet, no man had touched them in years. Pried up old
evenings of taffeta and the perfume of debutante hair. "What, this old thang," I'd
bat over my shoulder as I glided to the verandah where the sun caught my diamonds just right.
"Only a trifle I picked up in Paris last year. And yes, Dahling, a little more mint in my tea." Ah,
but much later in life I learned to be wary of all glittery gold. Wary of new leather purses. And brown
paper packages tied up with string. Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she'll have a Visa bill
wherever she goes. Life's but a trinket that will soon fade away but Heaven's about the gold
you have given away.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
MusicWhat do you do when music you've buried claws its way out of the coffin to corkscrew your heart? Run?
Dive into your daily blur? Mope around your vestibule in shades of saddest summer? Buckets
of rain and buckets of tears can blindside you almost anywhere, in elevators and produce aisles,
in cars on snowy backroads, at the movies when you're wearing your favorite old shirt and really weren't in
the mood to be reminded of the rooms where your footsteps probably still echo from you walking away from
the warm body you had no right to be close to. Some songs are best forgotten.
Nobody knows what they meant to you like nobody knows how much you loved the dog you hugged
for the last time as the vet's needle put him to sleep, how you still miss his face in the doorway,
how you played all those hours alone. Nobody knows. I myself have sometimes been so tangled in
blue on my own stairway to heaven I listened too little for trains in the distance.
I've danced on the dark side of the moon. Tried in my way to be free.
Songs are like tattoos, we've all been to sea before. Can
you stop the flood of music? Stop the bones from rising? Friend, you might as well bridle the moon.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
SnailsThe buliding that now houses the steakhouse at Enfield and Lamar used to be a restaurant
called The Courtyard Grille where once a week Jim and I would savor escargot as we held hands at
our candle lit window table and watched the giant neon cockroach slowly revolving on the Terminix roof across the street. (Terminix now a Cafe Java.) Luckily the big bug more amused
than repulsed us, never stopped us from enjoying our escargot. Served on a wild rice panake (a wild rice pancake!)
in a garlic butter Bechamel, topped with diced tomatoes and melted parmesan. Those were in the Happy Hour days long
before Kelly and long before my hair mysteriously turned back to my childhood blonde. We used to frequent the "Pinatas"
Happy Hour too. $1.25 sangria margaritas. Jim would pop back three of those and I two. And $4.75 shrimp
nachos on blue corn chips. This was on an outdoor deck off Bee Caves Road under a shield of tall live oaks.
I miss those days sometimes. After Pinatas suddenly (and sadly) closed, the buliding lay fallow for a few years
until the award-winning Lucy's Cakes opened there. I know I'm a latecomer to Austin, having been here only 16 years to some people's Forever
but those were my Good Old Austin days and I miss them like I miss my face before crow's feet and these slightly sagging
eyelids. Ah, but not to worry - the best is yet to come.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
SidewalkI've never seen a sidewalk more littered with gum, this surface is actually more gum than concrete, thousands upon
thousands of flattened chew coins welded to the portland cement. Who is chewing all this gum anyway?
Have they never heard of a trash can? If your gum loses its flavor on the bedpost overnight should you throw it
on the sidewalk in the morning? In some countries gum is illegal, they chop off your arms or something if
you get caught with it. And Parisians, ah Parisians would never dream of defacing their beautiful boulevards,
not inside the glorious Peripherique anyway. Outside in the narrow alleys and places a rabbit wouldn't go, well...
that's a whole different story. Having just been dazzled by the sunlit marble and gold
of the 1er Arondissement, I wasn't prepared for the filth I saw in the banlieux from the window of
the First Class section of my Germany-bound train. After a few miles of endless run-down tenements and garbage
gardens I expected to
see junkies suddenly staggering from squallid doorways with needles
sticking out of their arms. Souls rotting in grafitti, didn't they have mothers
who cared? There is a Culture of Poverty I once studied about. Depressing as hell. Hell, ha ha - depressing.
The old perma-depresssion of Purgatory. Jesus save me, my time is ever approaching. But let us turn our
eyes to sunnier things like oatmeal breakfasts and Spring-Fresh Tide with the potential for greatness in clean
laundry today.
Monday, July 10, 2006
PatternAs I wander into the old fabric shop the smell of floor wax, sewing machine oil and pattern ink
instantly diffuses my summertime blues into an unexpected calm and I inhale deeply, filling myself
with the reverent hush of possiblilty; ballroom gowns, ruffled pillows and the sole reason I came in here - those
breezy palazzo pants on the mannequin in the window. I will feel like myself again in those. I swoop towards the
pattern aisle past a dejected-looking husband seated by the door, twirly racks of notions and a bin of last-chance
fabric ends, my rubber soled shoes waking the ghosts in the creaky old floor. Past the cutting table
and the slow and deliberate snipping of scissors on white tulle. I find the Butterick Sew-And-Go #6956 I'm after
and clutch it to my bosom, giddy with the promise of tissue paper within. I turn
towards the aisles of fabric bolts. A hunched elderly lady smiles at me as she shuffles by, leaning
into her shopping cart full of bright pink and blue yarns. I wonder if she will be knitting mittens
and hats for charity or for her grandchildren. Or maybe tiny afghans for preemies in neo-natal units.
My eyes tear up at the thought this woman is a dying breed, replaced more and more each day by machines in
China. I suddenly grab her and give her a great big bear hug and a kiss on both cheeks and thank her
for being. (No, I don't really but I do in my heart.)
Sunday, July 9, 2006
RooftopWhen this old world starts a-getting me down and people are just too much for me to face, I climb 'way up to
the top of the stairs and fling the cat down. Perks me right up! But seriously, the roof is
The Place To Be but be careful - most accident policies cover falling off roofs but not
hitting the ground. Some roofs are shiny tin, like those on 110 degree days you'll sometimes find a wheezing
cat or two on. Hey, isn't there an ice cream called cat on a hot tin roof? Fiddler On The Roof, I never did see the end of that movie, Mom made me to go to bed just as the middle sister was leaving for Siberia.
At least I think it was the middle sister and I think it was Siberia. Do you know at sixty below they
have to keep fires burning all night under Siberian oil pans to keep from freezing up? That's some
wicked-ass cold. Minus Sixty! Typical nasty weather (tickle yer ass with a feather.) Of course
forty below is equivalent on both the Celcius and Fahrenheit scales. I guess once you get down that cold what's
the dif? It's all brass monkeys then. There must be a special Siberian thermometer that registers
from minus sixty to a nice toasty just-above-freezing. Siberian Girl, you know that you came and you chilled
my world. (No cats really harmed in creating this or any other post.)
Saturday, July 8, 2006
MosquitoesAm I getting deafer with age or have mosquitoes morphed into a strain that is as silent as it is relentlessy
annoying? Used to be able to hear any mosquito approaching but lately I'm suffering their sharp stings
without ever detecting that dive-bomber whine. I try to wait them out under the covers but as soon as I gulp
for air they strike. Don't scratch, don't scratch. That's the worst thing you can do, get past
the first 15 minutes of pain and you're home-free. Scratch and you're forever doomed. Bastards. You loved
me like a hungry mosquito, hugged me in your navy-blue speedo. (Maybe I'll use that line in a song somewhere.
Maybe not.) Woke up with bites on my ankles and forearms this morning after a Bermuda dream again.
Took the usual ten-minute N.Y to Hamilton ferry. Scoured the giftshops for notecards. Jim wouldn't even sit beside me on the trip back, sat with some
businessman who was obviously much more interesting than I. Kelly wouldn't heed, kept leaning over the side of the boat
scooping up minnows and shells. Did I tell you what could've happened to her on The Queen Mary last year? With no child-proofing on the Promenade deck rails, for the longest ten seconds of my life
she was out on a ten inch ledge with nothing but 100 feet of air between her and the water below. Luckily
there were no mosquitoes on the Q. M. and the sausage breakfasts were pretty decent.
Friday, July 7, 2006
AugustI'm so much better at keeping the old Farmall tractor's cantankerous clutch from popping than
last year when I was fourteen. Only sent my brother flying to the back of the hay wagon once so far today.
Only stalled out twice. Easy, easy, easy as my shaking left leg rises and I lay on the gas
with the right. Feeling less like a girl and more like part of the hay-making team, no dispproval in Dad's eyes today. Over
the motor's chug I sometimes catch snippets of his whistling, an on-going medley of hymns and pop-tunes
as he effortlessly tosses the 60 lb bales onto the flat bed trailor. Joe and Pat flinging the bales up
from the opposite side. Harry shunting the shaggy rectangles into place, one row vertically the length of the
home-made wagon flanked by a row horizontally on either side. They are stacking the third tier now, this
our fifth but not final load of the day about halfway built. Making hay while the sun shines.
Not the new-fresh smell of June hay but the darker late August raspberry and string bean aroma of autumn's-on-its-way hay. Years
ago when I was too small to lift a bale I'd run alongside the trailer as the crew of men worked. Sometimes too
forgetful that the hay stubble would be murder on bare feet. Pickle jar of water with a few shrinking ice cubes
passed from man to man. Water bearer me. I should've been an Aquarius. Jar and lid thoroughly washed twenty
times in hot soapy water but somehow had never lost the faint smell of sweet pickle juice.
Thursday, July 6, 2006
OatmealWhen you're down and troubled and you need a helping hand. And nothing,
(whoa nothing) is going right... friend, sleep on it and eat some oatmeal. That should snap
you out of any fit that may have hit the Shan. Yes, the taste will be mildly medieval, the texture positively pagan,
the aroma early 1700s farm-house but that's nothing fortified soymilk and a dash of maple syrup can't
cure. So much more than just a breakfast, oatmeal's a ritualistic reminder that Ooo Child,
thing's are gonna get better (Ooo child, they'll get easier.) Yes, it's lumpy bumpy glumpy but it's going
to keep you from becoming schlumpy dumpy grumpy around 10:30 a.m. Don your hardhat. Don your tutu.
Don your autographed picture of Andy Devine - just get out there and Do It! Battle those traffic jams. Merge those
corporations. Meet your lover in the Tuileries, she'll be wearing red silk charmeuse and the
Chanel Catch-22 you keep coming back to her for. As she tumbles onto the jaquard bedspread you will sense
heaven here at hand, the collision of your breathing proof God exists in your porridge-fueled passions. Don't burn
the coffee when you reheat it. Don't worry who forgot to buy eggs. Don't cast your old perfume bottles into
the Seine for tonight is the night when Love will be mentioned because you started the day off right.
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
CookiesCo-existing with HTML, URLs, registry keys and all that cyberjazz are something called "cookies."
I don't know what they are or do but they are probably an integral part of why this computer is able to digest what my fingers
type on these keys for you. Weren't we all amazed by transistor radios on beaches, then Walkmans on bicycles?
You know they were going to close the patent office c. 1896 because all that could be invented surely had?!
Hard drives. Defragmentation. Why does the disk buzz and whir, even seem to grind sometimes? Does my disk
get pissed? How many laserings can my pits and plateaus handle? Who put the bomp in the ram-a-lam-a-disk-dong?
Cookies, little munchy crunchy bits of computer for us addicts. Why, just yesterday I felt pretty darn depressed
until I got my chocolate chip ones. Bits and bytes. Little city in the CPU tower going about its daily
life. Roads, skyscrapers and streetlights. CPU, you see me and I see you. Peripherals.
I cannot begin to fathom how everything works let alone fathom how people were able to figure all this out. Where have
I been all my life? The binary code could explode a node. I do know all these ones and zeros keep crying
out for heroes - like you and me. Longing for human contact, however cyberian. And that can't
be all bad. Yummy yummy cookies.
Monday, July 3, 2006
BonfireA chill creeps in from the water as darkness gulps the final scraps of rosy horizon,
the lights of the Gaspe coast beginning to pop up like fireflies. We have scavenged up and down the beach ten minutes
in either direction and returned with only two armloads of sticks and one small log; gone are the golden
days of wayward driftwood - highways and transport trucks having long since displaced river logjams. This
modest pile of fuel will have to do. We have already prepared a tiny teepee of dry twigs stufffed
with shredded paper and cardboard bits. Rosie strikes the wooden match with a ffftt across a flat piece of sandstone and
the paper catches with a whumph. All eyes are drawn to this miracle of flame. Up the beach a
rival bonfire begins to flare and swell. From far out we hear fishermen's voices. "Bring 'er to, Chummy-Boy,
Jaysus me." The Bay's surface is unusually still as a church window. No moon tonight,
lots of stars though. No one speaks. No one mentions the smell of early fall in the air. No one mentions
I'll be flying back to Texas tomorrow. We just watch the fire's hunger and listen to the pop and hiss
of damp wood succumbing. We are no longer aware of the smell of the salt water, it is now part of us, as it
probably always has been. Donny pops the beer caps and I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Blue # 2Bring me the sunset in a cup and I won't be such a recalcitrant paint chip.
This indigo is growing too faded for summer's longing and autumn will have its way with every chloroplast
soon. But let's not talk of fare-thee-wells now, the night is a starry dome and they're playing that Frank Sinatra beneath
the Malibu moon. Yes the Moon who has been too weak lately to take on my apathy. See
the bellhop nod and throw my suitcase
out the window? He is so jealous of my right to travel unimpeded while the roses
in the vase on the lobby table weep to no one but his former sunny self. I must check out of this hotel
before the FD & C Blue #2 can jettison what remains of my youth. Before the
bridges of Paris can no longer recall my footsteps and Vienna gets lost in the laughter
of only the most beautiful girls. Barcelona's wavering. No one's waiting at the gates of any castle. Door
knobs squeaking and all the mothers' sons not yet home from the war. I might as well fix a ham sandwich and turn on
the t.v. I'm not going anywhere tonight, not in these old blue suede shoes.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
PumpernickelNot the biggest fan of this dark and brooding jumble. Fun to say the word though.
Pumpernickel. Jump her sickle. Thump her pickle. Flour because peasants somewhere once ground
some grains that didn't poison them, "Hey, we're still alive, let's eat this again tomorrow!"
Not the biggest fan of rye either but used to drink rye whiskey neat when I was a show-off nineteen-year-old with short hair
and chubby cheeks. I actually like chubby cheeks. I'm up to 125 lbs now, the most I let myself get to.
All that whipped cream on cherry cobbler. Lot of sausages lately. Tequila too. Most people peg
me at 110 but no, I average 120, plus or minus 5 lbs (love the minus, not so crazy about the plus.) Oh,
these weight issues ingrained in our pathetic skinny-loving culture. On diets in college I used to breakfast on
carrots and coffee, in high school often fasted for 24 hours, once a week. Stupid diet books. I'll always
admire Tom Hank's physique in the second half of Castaway, buff little bugger in dreads catching those fish with spears and
cracking coconuts with his skate blade. Why did he bother wearing a loin-cloth, tho? Nobody was around.
So he wouldn't sunburn his winkie? I sunburned my buttocks in 1986 at Vancouver's Wreck Beach (whoops, too much info.)
|
|
Blog archives? Column of dates, upper right of page.
Thumbnails below all enlarge with a mere
click of the mouse.
 
|
|
|
