|
 |
| |
I am working to soon bring Wordpress to this site
so you can leave comments.
|
|
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Reel-To-ReelThe analog tape shimmies past like a silver-blue satin gown, sucking up every thought breathed
into the 1974 Neumann U87 mic and I wonder if it's all electrons again? As far as I can tell most everything
is about those little devils orbiting neuclei. Question: what's in the space between electrons
and the neucleous? Is it a vacuum? Is most of the universe really a vacuum, what we
think is solid is actually absolutely nothing? Splitting atoms is what nuclear power is all about, right?
Does splitting one atom give off energy or are many atoms split? I really should brush up on these things, can't
rely on my high school science books which are now probably as out-of-date as books from the 50s seemed when I was a teen.
Many of the elderly (and their parents,) are probably walking around thinking that what they learned in school still is current.
Does splitting atoms equate with genetic engineering in its obtrusiveness on nature? Ahh the more things change the
more God must shake his head. But doesn't He know everything that every one of us is ever going to or has ever said,
thought or done? What could possibly surprise Him, the greatest hands-on high school teacher ever, tossing
us tidbits of science we've only begun to scratch the surface of?
Sunday, August 27, 2006
MushroomWe'd find them in September usually. Some in June perhaps. Always a surprise, appearing overnight on
hills. Beware of the poison ones, we were warned. The smell of wild fresh mushrooms makes babies appear.
Makes the spring bear grumble out of his lair. Meanwhile, a boat is waiting. I am due to go. I
am always due to go. Somewhere all the time. With sore shoulders, cold arms, bruises on my shins - usually
while unconsciously whistling or singing. And eating junk food. I wouldn't mind a chubby burger right now.
Dangerously close to the sleep I've been avoiding. Are we born to poetry? Is it in us or something we make
happen to us? Must be in us. This started out as a mushroom, now a mushroom cloud spreading.
We should have made the ozone thicker, like eye jelly. No, I mean the cornea. Does a scratch on the cornea heal,
unlike a scratch on a glass-top coffee table? Our bodies are miracles. I have done three writings in a row
since I sat down. I think there
is a man in Cincinnati eating dinner while his only son is packing for the war.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
SawdustAs the blade rips into the dressed pine, out his window a pretty girl is like a walking
bowling pin, her feet and legs hidden. Gliding. And he thinks of Just my Imagination, the Stones version.
Running away with him. It must be hot in New York, he thinks. Someone's sitting on a stoop with pretty legs to
attract a man. Someone's beautiful in Africa. He has married and divorced only the fairest ones three times until
finally losing himself in carpentry, small volcanic island of sawdust piling
up around his table-saw legs. Women made him cry but mitered joints and plinth blocks make him whole. The
human bowling pin tosses her eyes at him in passing, pretty and alluring. Brown dominant and silky. Real
made-on-the-stove-top chococlate pudding with the thinnest of skin on. He'd like to reach out and touch her.
What would she say? Maybe she would lke it, fall into his arms on a tide of their melting. They might
listen to Peter, Paul and Mary. Or the tiny bells of Pete Seger's banjo splashing in the rain. The wind is
in from Africa, last night he couldn't sleep.
Friday, August 25, 2006
MedicineBad medicine. Bad Company. No, medicine. Jenny chokes on her pill. Jenny sinks into
the equilibrium of librium and dreams of seaside shanties where silver fork metal flashes just before it hits the
water. The getting-drunk giddy ones in Chester pitching their silverware into the harbour. And the glubbing fish, thinking it's dinnertime are confused to find
nothing bobbing on the surface but contine groping the fading sunlight anyway with mouths only a mother could
love. I see their dorsal fins break the stillness like razors slicing celophane. I would like to swim with
them or dolphins. Let the water skimmer over my skin in glints of youth remembered. (Or youth only imagined.)
I'd like to taste the Bali blue. It must be summer somewhere. It's certainly five o'clock somewhere.
The clocks are ticking. Many don't like the sea but I thought I smelled and felt it today as I
rounded a turn and a puff of air conditioning shot out the car's vents. Just for a moment I was lost and wondered
how I'd reached the ocean.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
StewI was a bad girl in junior high school and stole a can of Irish stew from Kent's for lunch. In fact,
I was with two other girls whose anonymity I shall respect here. One - lets' call her Lucy, stole a can of
those little party sausages and I think the other - let's call her Miriam, stole spaghetti. The cans had pull
tops so we could imbibe quickly. Crouched out there in the snow behind the old store with our hams to our
glutes, eating cold stolen food with plastic spoons.
Pretty pathetic. But let's be cheery! Time for an uplifting post, why dwell on
already-forgiven sins when so much glory and wonder abounds! Mom of course, is the best stew maker you can imagine.
Part of her success may be attributed to the old cast-iron pot she makes it in. If I still had my piano keyboard
here by the computer I could easily pick out the pitch of the lid clanging onto that pot, it's that much a part
of me. In my very first post on this site I described the 'bickle-bickle-hiss-pop' sound of the kettle on
the old wood stove. But the stew pot being so heavy, only makes a skreietch across the stove as Mom slides it back from
the heat. This is not a good topic to have wandered into when I've not yet even had breakfast. I should go warm
those meatballs from last night and put some water in the microwave for coffee. Kelly's got a fever, poor angel.
Not throwing up though so that's good. She's asleep, still in the red shorts and tee she wore yesterday.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
ScampI've done it with everyone. The first I can remember is Nancy Drew but
there must have been others before her, I just can't remember who.
Why am I foggier than most on early childhood memories? So much
lost footage. Yes Nancy Drew as soon as I could read well, an affair that raged 'til I was
twelve. (Never any mysteries to solve in our boring boonies.) Not so much the Bobbsey Twins, tho I did dabble.
Polly French a bit. Some Trixie Belden. The Sears Christmas catalog till the pages were so crinkled it
could stand up on end. Another time-lapse until it was The Rolling Stones for five years non-stop.
Bob Dylan next. Then Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Tried Neil Young but he's too prolific.
Now I'm sucking on the marrow of Alden Nowlan who's been dead since 1983 but still
writing poems. Did I really wander the streets of Montreal at seventeen with my battery-powered ghettoblaster?
(Not p.c. but that's what we called them back then.) Sticky Fingers. Goat's Head Soup. Some
Girls. What a scamp I was. It was getting dark and for a while I was almost lost but my sense of general
direction got me back to the depot with ten minutes to spare. This wandering while I had a three
or four hour lay-over for the Toronto train. Little country kid alone in her first big
city. Angie, Aaaangie, ain't it good to be alive.
Monday, August 21, 2006
BlobI don't know why but I just sent Jae the word 'blob'. As my fingers reached for this keyboard to email
her Monday's Word, my mind ordered me to "Start the word with B." Then told me to "go for L."
Thus I had 'Bl' and for less than a third of a second I flashed on Bleeker which
was mentioned in the movie World Trade Center we saw two nights ago ("Inside a Bleeker Street cafe, I found someone to love
today,") but 'blob' just popped out so off it went to Jae. So... blob. A blotch or mass of slime
perhaps. A person glued to the sofa watching t.v., a beer in one hand and a corndog in the other.
A blob of something dark blue or green groping the insides of a lava lamp. A blob of egg yolk ruining an off-white
silk blazer. A blob of scorched baby bottles smoking up the house. (Once when I fell asleep after leaving
baby bottles on the stove to sterilize I woke two hours later to find all the water boiled away and just
a blob of black plastic sizzling. The stench was unbelievable, the smoke no doubt a cancer.) A
blob of butter dumped into the batter. A blob of chickens crossing the road to get to the other side (no.) The Blob,
was that a comic book character? Sounds familiar. The Blob who loved me. The Blob of LaMancha. La
Mancha means sleeve. What is sleeve in French? Darn, another word forgotten. Well, I have to
go fold the laundry now and get Kelly up and ready for school.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
QuiltsThe quilts are eight deep but I'm shivering and my nose is red from the cold. Just woke from a recurring
dream where I'm on a small plane that goes down in the Arctic and I'm never adequately dressed. Typical
me -at the North Pole without a hat. But miraculously I manage to float happily and warm just above the ice glare where
polar bears stalk caribou. Have you ever
noticed polar bears always have to have the last word in any conversation?
I've seen them in nature documentaries and at parties with politicians whose pretty wives' smiles are strained,
the kind of parties where tuxedoed servers sweep past with silver trays of smoked salmon and fizzling champagne flutes. Why
is it you can have the most flawless complexion,
wear the finest silk pants and the best shoes but the bears will still go for your jugglar? They'll take
your flesh any way they can - raw, cooked, rotten. And always with eyes as sharp as tailors' pins. Some carry
calculators, some carry salt for your wounds. Wouldn't dream of offering you a bandaid.
Grizzlies with hidden cameras are easily spotted across any ballroom or boardroom where the
floorboads are so cold they sear the bare feet as the water in the kitchen bucket ices over. The quilts are
eight deep and I can see my breath in here.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
SmogWe're such assholes. Polluting our planet with all this coal-fired cooling and heating. Gallivanting
around to Starbucks and the Grand Canyon on fossil fuel when we should be harnessing the sun's power. Most cars
on the road are going to end up in the junk pile anyway, why not start replacing them with ethanol-burning
ones now. Brazil's got it figured out; sugar cane fuel.
Come on Chrysler, Ford and Kia - we can do it! Imagine California with no smog? School
kids actually able to breathe in the troposphere and maybe even learn that the sky is blue. Could happen. Good
old carbon monoxide. Can't do much about bovine flatulence but we can about burning all this oil and coal.
Air conditioning opened up The West, what's gonna close it? Bible says fire. And Brimstone.
The Lord could come anytime, be on the watch. When I was stupid and smoked weed (don't fall
for weed - it'll bring you down eventually,) I used to worry a lot about the End Of The World and lived in constant terror
of fire in the night. Now all I worry about is worry itself. Anyway, I won't bore you anymore
about us being so uncool with our fossil fuel. Good news! The ozone layer's repairing
itself so maybe we're not such total assholes afterall.
Friday, August 18, 2006
MirrorOver there on the wall with some spider sacs no doubt clinging to its back is the large oak-framed
oval mirror I occasionally show the dogs them-
selves in. As I cradle their fuzzy heads to my right cheek I can tell they know
they are looking at their own reflection but they seem nonchalant. Sometimes Peach will gaze at herself for a full ten
seconds. What does she see? Cute little fluffy head and pretty brown eyes? Does she like her look or
wish for a makeover or even to be a different dog? Or a human? Does she ever think of Chance, dead two
years now? She must - they were constant companions for almost seven years.
Does she still wonder where he went, even though I explained it to her well? Is he more of a dream figure to her
or as real a memory as your or my grandmothers who have passed on? Sometimes I wonder if dogs think we all
live forever and if so, are they luckier than us to not know of their own inevitable death? Is it better to
just enjoy each day as it comes, knowing you will be hugged, fed, taken for walks and allowed to chase a
cat or two? I don't know. Dogs are smarter and feel deeper than most of us realize - remember Greyfriars Bobby? Last night as I was drifting to sleep I thought I smelled the vet's shop where Chance was put down as I held him in
my arms. That smell could still make me cry. Traveling from The Alone to The Alone are we all.
But please... rest assured God is waiting for us up on Rainbow Bridge with every pet we've ever loved and lost.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
FeastOn my journey to a healthy hundred years old I still have so much work to do. There are
still weeds to pull and flowers to plant. Still seas to sail on. New dresses to choose. Children and
shaggy dogs to hug. I need to eat more chicken and chocolate, need to pay more attention to the
music of lemongrass soap and the miracle of silk. To listen closer to the wonder of wind
in trees, of cars passing night windows in the rain. From this moment on I vow to never take a seagull's
cry for granted again, to never discount the shelter of a major seventh chord. I'll try not to run barefoot
around the driveway and track tar into bed. I'll send more presents and letters. Spend less cash.
Feed the homeless and adopt orphans. I'll put clothes away in closets and drawers as soon as they come out of the dryer.
Go to bed each night with the dishes all washed and put away. I wont cuss as much, won't fuss as much, won't
put off anything worth doing until tomorrow. On my way to a healthy hundred I'll be no sadder or happier than
I am now with everything and nothing laid like the finest feast here at my North American feet. Won't disappear
so often into words like these when I could be dancing.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
SisterSuppose you had a pretty-in-pink sister with a chevron of freckles splashed from one cheekbone to the other and her eyes were the blue the sky gets only
when God's had a really good day. Suppose when she was three and you sixteen you'd fix her bread and butter
with no crusts and have her sit and eat cross-legged on the 'princess pillow' on your bedroom floor, which she thought was
the Greatest Honor in the World but for you was just a ploy to finish your homework in peace. I have such a sister.
I always picture her bursting through the front door with an explosion of tulips
or wrapped Christmas presents in her arms. When I imagine her smile it's the one that day on Tom's
sailboat with the wind doing its best to launch her long hair out to sea. Sometimes I hear
her laugh on rainy roofs. Except for those four college summers and never enough visits, I've been basically gone
since she was five. Always some parting or other, (what's so sweet about the sorrow, Shakespeare ?)
This time she threw me for a loop by going first, back to Fredericton because Ryan's work called. If I were more
of a millionaire, I'd build a Dream House with an open floorplan and lots of big windows in Mom and Dad's potato
field facing the Bay. I'd plant a hundred trees around, especially on the northwest corner, have a thousand spring
bulbs too. And the
Internet of course. But no tv, just listen to CBC radio. I'd build her
a separate wing because even in love we all start getting on each others' nerves after a while. Living close by
and visiting often - that's what God had in mind for families before He invented wheels, ships and airplanes.
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
VacationHey, guys! We arrived in Canada on the 5th. Been too long since I've spent time here
with my family. Be back in Austin next week. See you soon! Jannie-Bannanie
Friday, August 4, 2006
CarburetorGus was our mechanic from Guatemala, a wiry guy in his forties with lots
of springy hair and good teeth. He took home $366.80 a week, much of it probably sent
to his mother back in Jalapa. He was good with easy jobs like axles, brakes and clutches.
But not so good with carburetors, in fact Jim lovingly informed him one day after yet another botched
job if he ever caught him so much as touching a carburetor again he would
shove the screwdriver up Gus's ass. (Luckily, we
all never had to witness that.) "You drive. You check, Patrona Jannie," Gus
would proudly order me upon completion of a task. Yeah me, Office Slacker / Official Job Checker Jannie.
He was so proud of his work, even prouder of the shop. And believe me, pre-remodel and paint days the building
was nothing to write home about. But apparently Gus did write Mama about it and sent pictures too because the
day he got his uniform with his name embroidered above the shirt pocket he came back from lunch with one of those throw-away
cameras to have me take a couple of pictures of him with the other two mechanics in front of the building. And
more shots of him smiling while working under the hood of a car. He did smile a lot, (when he wasn't
arguing over his pay on Friday afternoons.) I remember the day I made him laugh so hard reading the Spanish
instructions as he helped me assemble my new office swivel chair. Between steps
I'd look hard at the directions and feign it read "Drink cerveza!" He howled every time and
thereafter it was a standing joke between us. I don't recall exactly why Gus left The Auto Depot. Jim could tell you. But whether he's back in Guatemala with the poor and the
poorer or still here in the States, you can bet he is walking tall and proudly somewhere with nary a Phillips Head in any bodily
orifice.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
Zombie"Three waitresses all wearing black diamond earrings, talking about Zom-
bies and Singapore Slings." And... Night of the Living Dead of course. Those mummified freaks
lumbering side to side with arms straight out in front. Eyes like patches of puke. I used to stay up late
on Fridays in high school to watch Shock Theatre by myself, eating toast and laughing my ass off.
Would only get scared on my way up the dark stairs to bed, always took those top three steps in
a single leap to the safety of my room. But the bedclothes would sometimes get so heavy I couldn't move
my arms. Pink Floyd thus wrote me a song because someone told them when I was a child I had a fever and my
hands felt just like two balloons. That was me alright, a distant ship's smoke on the horizon. Comfortably
numb. Comfortably scared shitless in the darkness was more like it. Thumbs especially
swollen. Even cowgirls get the blues. I've been told I look like Uma Thurman. Jim doesn't like this
picture, says he's seen me in better ones. Jae likes it, tho. Somedays I can still pass for almost beautiful from an
angle or two. My hair finally behaved for a Funsters show this past Sunday, I could feel the approving eyes
of the Russians upon me. In heaven will beauty be as we desire it? What of us with too-big noses and rhubarb necks
here, will those features be admired one day? Stop it, life's good. Never
have minded my own physically flawed company, wouldn't be writing this if I did.
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
TypewriterSo I've been chowing down on the Alden Nowlan I just bought on the Net and of course my every thought and action is now self scrutinized for lit-
erary worthiness. Everything's a potential poem; from the
way I dipped my cloth napkin into my water glass at the restaurant to wipe the spa-
ghetti sauce off Kelly's face, to how dogs laugh, to the smell of sawdust and apples. Did I mention
I wrote a lot of really bad poetry twenty years ago? But hey, you gotta start somewhere. Feel things
too deeply, write much crap, add twenty years experience and something good might surface. Blood
on the blogs. (Another twenty years and I should be starting to hit my stride.) Take Kelly - an emotional
sprite from the git-go. Cried non-stop for her first six months but was laughing at
her own jokes by seven. Potential great writer there. I suppose now that I'm
conjuring up the occasional worthy piece I should try to get one
or three published somewhere. Would be fun to submit to the Fiddlehead which had no choice but to kindly reject me so long ago. One of the fun things about blogging is you never know
who's stumbled onto your site. Barbara Walters could well be devouring my daily mindspeak. Hey,
how are you Barbara? You're looking great these days! Don't forget to sign my guestbook. I
hear Joe the German is now reading me so that makes at least seven regulars. Need to contact Web.com
and see if I can get comments added to these posts. Now what was I saying? Oh yes, I was wondering if Alden
Nowlan wrote by hand or typewriter. And if by typewriter when,
if ever, did he go electric?
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
BicycleIf I hadn't had the urge for an after-sunset bike ride that night sixteen years ago and if he hadn't been silhouetted
in the sunroom window of his mother's house as I sailed past on my bike and glanced left to see him, and if he hadn't
flown home from Texas just that day and been too tired to go to The Pub that night and had my then (soon-to-be ex,) husband
not driven to Woodstock that weekend with a load of furniture because we'd been hired on to teach
school near the Arctic Circle, I would not be writing this now. I would not be here on this chair
with this bottle of water at this computer in this house with these dogs and this daughter. May
never have grown my hair long and lost those ten lbs that plagued me all my college years. May never have picked
up a guitar. May never have taken a singing lesson. May never have written
the songs you can hear on the "Listen" page of this site. Wouldn't be a Funster. Would cer-
tainly not be wearing this blue shirt. Christine from France and Jo from England
and my parents and sister and cousin would not have trekked to Austin and seen the Lake Travis sunset from The Oasis. Now his mother, who couldn't stand the thought of me until that Christmas, but later grew
to love me and I her as much as two can love, and willed me one third of that house with that sunroom window, has
gone on before us. (The ex-husband found happiness with someone more like himself too.) Had
I not ridden my bike that night good things would still have happened to me but never this good. It's amazing how lives
can change forever depending on the time of day a sad girl goes for a ride on her bicycle.
|
|
Blog archives? Column of dates, upper right of page.
Thumbnails below all enlarge with a mere
click of the mouse.
 
|
|
|
