|
 |
| |
I am working to soon bring Wordpress to this site
so you can leave comments.
|
|
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Johnny CashFrom one heart and one voice came a song so real even birds on wires still strain to hear it.
I'm talking Folsom Prison Blues. Black shirt and old guitar predestined to touch us all. God gave Johnny
Cash something special. He gave us all talents; some to work with wood, some with children, some to
cook, others to play piano or make people laugh. Others to fashion jewelry from metals, build machines, calculate numbers. Others
to sing. Others still to dance. Farm. Garden. Some to stir the ice cubes into the lemonade.
Each of us ten talents. But too many lie hidden under bushels or fallen like pennies
between cracks. Are you using what God gave you? (I finally am.) But whether we use our
talents or not, the pure of heart will drive the nations to their knees and the sweet of soul will bend the iron
heart. There are really no fears to live for, all good will win. Even the door-man can offer his smile. (I
hope he quits smoking even though I could be making an enemy of him just by saying this.) Tote
them bushels. Roll that barge. Jesus is a-waitin' and His love is large.
Friday, September 29, 2006
BathtubAunt Lily tossed the old cast-iron bathtub out the bedroom window during the remodel of '78?
Must've weighed 300 lbs. (And that was just Aunt Lily - the tub weighed 350.) I also remember on
winter mornings in high school hiding out in hot hot bath water before braving the freezing room where the scent of lavendar
was enough to choke the cat. Then to clean jeans and some kind of cute sweater. Didn't really know how to fix
my hair then. I do now 25 years later, though I still constantly battle its thinness and recalcitrance to curl.
Thin and fine. Pretty and High and only partly a lie. Lies... tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. But please don't leeeeave. Now, just go! Walk out the door.
Turn around now 'cause you're not welcome anymore... (I will survive.)
I can feel it coming in the air tonight. Oh Lord, (Oh Lord,) summer camp drowning,
didn't you know? Front row tickets to the Genesis show. In the air tonight.
Why is it never in the air today? Like radio waves. Passionate gropings under cover of the night while
radio signals sing from New York to Nova Scotia.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
PicnicSometimes I think about that painting by Seurat. Why is it when we're down by the water with our kids, dogs, baskets of food and beer we're under some
illusion we have the world by the ass, even though we know full well these
rare moments of pleasure might as well be captured on canvas, as fleeting as they are. And why are
we all drawn to water? To watch the ships come in?
The promise of some treasure just for us in the hold of some distant ship? Or a long-lost
friend or relative or the lover of our dreams to magically appear on deck? And before there were ships? Ah, but
Grasshopper, as long as man has existed there have always been ships, even if just rafts or logs to float to
some place better on. Other times I think of the people in pictures like this , and this. All those regular Joes like us, long dead now but at the very moment the photos were snapped,
thinking they still had a life-time of summers to go. And I wonder if they were able to cut and haul as many logs as
their bosses wanted and if the bosses paid them as agreed or tried to chisel their pay come spring. Were they able to
make the money they hoped, to one day be down by the water in summer with their loved ones too, posing for eternity?
And I wonder how stinky it must've been in those logging bunk-houses with the winter fires roaring and no deodorant or baths
and men probably having bean-farting contests. How could they even stand each other in those days?
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
BibleThe B.I.B.L.E. Yes, that's the book for me... I stole a bible once long ago.
Is that bad? Trying to get closer to God but stealing in order to do so? I hope He has a
leniency clause for sins like that. I don't even know where it is now, maybe burned in the fire.
I did get another from a door-to-door Jehovah's Witness, a pretty girl except for her crooked teeth.
We were almost friends for a while until I ran her off. Ran her off then ran into the arms
of the Lutheran Church where I haven't been for two weeks because I'm a lazy sinner who constantly fights being selfish on Sunday
mornings. So much running around from Monday to Saturday. Go here, go there, rush, rush, rush. Sunday
I just want to flop, flimsy excuse for not being at worship. Jehovah's
Witnesses take it very literally that only 144,000 of us are getting into hea-
ven. That must scare them a bit because there are many more than 144,000 of them, must make for
a lot of competing within their own ranks, always trying to out-good and out-God each other. Yes, they are the
Chosen Ones, the rest of us doomed to hell. Luckily, whenever two or more are gathered in His name, there is love
so I pray with Kelly. She says the best prayers, one night at grace thanked God for 'the wedding' so she could
be born. Oh, in case we haven't noticed, God is the all-in-all. And really loves us soooo much!
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
CockroachSo she asks me why God made cockroaches and mosquitoes. "Well, it was actually God's bad brother that made them." "Oh, where did God's bad brother come from?" "Well he started out good at first then turned
bad, kind of like Tammy Wynette in that song." "But, where did he come from, Mom? Who made God?" Questions, questions.
But really - why did God make roaches? Mosquitoes I can understand because frogs and bats have to
eat. Please don't tell me roaches make it into heaven. But let's change the subject. How about
beef stew, no did that one. Champagne. Did that one too. Pick your left foot up, put your left
foot down, twist and grind it into the ground. Repeat with your right and you're doing... The Cockroach Stomp. My boy lollipop, you make my roach go squishy-up. Be sure to chew each bite of stew 36 times. And
brush your hair 100 strokes. Four more minutes. Excellent microwave stew. Coffee soon. How
'bout that spinach ecoli problem, poor farmers. And their wives. FEMA will step in I suppose. No one ever thanks farmers enough. What if a tsunami hits us, clear to the Rockies.
Sounds pretty Stephen King-ish to me. Two more minutes. Done my stew. Heading for the coffee soon.
Cookies too then to my laptop to the tracks. Blood on the tracks, too sad I can no longer listen. Corkscrews everywhere.
Monday, September 25, 2006
ForkThe fork of my dreams would be of sterling silver of course with golden spark-
les and magical powers. With such a fork speaking to me in shades of tussle-grubbing I would
never be bored or lonely again. Never heard of tussle-grubbing? Not
surprising, I just now made it up. I'm sitting in a cafe. I hear sirens and
fire-truck horns. Someone's in trouble. And this blaring zydeco indifferent to an old man's chest pains
or the boy bumped from his bicycle. The baby locked in a car. Sticks and accordion hammering and clanging.
Inanity. Think of all the songs playing Right Now on this planet. Every
manner of music in rooms, halls, malls, and cars. Castles, huts and prisons. On beaches, tour buses
at Universal Studios and roofs where men are shingling in the blistering heat. People of all races in every imaginable
kind of dress, un-dress and mood. Listening. If we could tune in to every song playing
on Earth all at once (at a low level of course,) the sound would be brown. The brown Play Doh becomes when all the colors in a rainbow pack are kneaded into one big blob by small hands under
a buzzing florescent light.
Brown like clumps of wet leaves in November. Brown like manure for roses.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
ChampagneOww, my aching head this morning. Can I even concentrate for 10 mins? Feel the pain and write
anyway. Had a blast, of course. Dinner party with a bunch of song buddies. Gave Robert and Margaret the
wrong directions, sent them right at the Y instead of left. How many years have I lived here? Sixteen.
Sixteen years and I tell them to go right instead of left?! Poor darlings quickly became ensnared
in the tangle of Toll Brothers villas and worried they'd under-dressed. But a cell
phone call re-directed them back to our side of the tracks. A Toll Brothers mansion - who would I be in a house like that with a heart like this? Would I talk differently? No.
Wear different clothes? No. Eat different food? No. Write different songs?
No. Send Kelly to a different school, acting class, ballet, gymnastics? No.
Think of all the taxes, dues and upkeep we've been saving all these years. Oh boy, just remembered
my Wonka Bar in the freezer! That could help cure this fuzzy buzzled head. Sore eyes too. Probably have to step up the
Advil dosage. Now I remember going to sleep. Jim was watching Flip This House. Was about 11:45 when he finally shut off the tube. I remember! Advil...
A house like that
Saturday, September 23, 2006
SandalsAn all-inclusive resort, for most a once-in-a-lifetime dream vacation but for others a big yawn compared
to their habitual $28,460-a-week Ibiza get-aways. Remember how I used to sun myself like a gizzard on a sock?
Uh oh, there I go again, weirding-out. In 1999 I was as fit and tan as I've ever been, 200 Jazzercise classes
that year. Hopefully I'll get there again. I used to worry only about being ugly, now about being both
old and ugly. So super-
ficial. Okay now for the sensory input. Sometimes when it's really really hot out my sandals start
smelling like peach yogourt. Brown sandals, the leather shiny in spots from all this trotting around. They
squeak when wet. Bury me in them and don't forget to put me in red satin for my wake but please make
sure it's a true summer red, no orange undertones for Jannie even in death. Or cremate me and float some of my ashes on Jae's pool with
the crepe myrtle blossoms. Sprinkle some on Mahone Bay and the rest over WalMart. No. No cremation - donate my organs (except my skin and spleen,) to charity
or whatever, Cher could use my pancreas. Be sure to have my hair high-lighted and curled if I'm to be laid out. Perm my bangs!
Eat donuts at the funeral reception.
Friday, September 22, 2006
AccordionKick the cat from under the table. Give the boys a bottle of beer.... Hmn, what comes next - something
about playing hookey and fishing I think. Hey, there's a great tune my brother Joe turned me onto this summer, "Lily
The Pink," (The Scaffold version,) going to learn it for the Funsters. "And it's drink a drink, a drink to Lily the Pink the Pink the Pink, savior of the human ray-hay-hace.
For she invented Medicinal Compound, most efficacious in every case." Joe owns and double-handedly operates Joe's Cooler Cantina in Moncton, NB. Remember how Michael Dell started by selling computers from the trunk of his car in the 80s?
Well, that's how Joe got started, except with sandwiches and sody pop in '95. Now he's got a van
and does salads, wraps, "buzz-on-yas"
(lasagne,) and desserts, etc. too. Provincially licensed and all, of course.
Up at 5:00 each day. Plans to open his own deli and eat-in emporium. Joe was the mouse in our White-Gift-Sunday
Christmas play when he was 10, yep 1972. Sported grey striped pyjamas, mouse tail and ears. You rocked
in that play, Bro-Joe! Joe's eyes are exactly like mine. Hey, I'll put up a picture of him in
front of Mom and Dad's house, (one of only 6 still pictures I managed to take on our trip before the camera crapped out.)
44 and learning the push-button accordion, busks on Main Street on Saturday nights, sometimes plays with a guitar girl who makes up songs about Anything on the spot. Good on
ya, Joe. Meant to buy you a salad spinner at WalMart. Next summer, eh?
Brother Joe and Dancing Kelly, August '06
Thursday, September 21, 2006
PoliticsAh, the tasty, tactile, aromatic, melodious and visual feast of politics. Here in the land of the
Free-As-We-Can-Be-Considering-The-Human-Condition-And-All, I do lean much more to one political side than the other
but I'll let you guess as to which side - wouldn't want half my faithful ten readers suddenly
screaming for morphine at the thought Their Jannie is not who they'd come to make her out to be. I will say this, yesterday
at Kelly's ballet class as I stood my ground on this whole wire-tapping thing, I could smell the air molecules
between me and my new aquaintance suddenly imploding, her energy sucking the cheer out of our previously-friendly
atmosphere. How dare I have an opinion that wasn't hers? How can we have two darlings in pink tu-tus in the same class
together and one of us mothers be a war-mongering money-
grubbing terrorist a la Sean Hannity while the other a social programs-loving A.C.L.U.- hugging twit
a la Rosie O Donnell? How can this be?!?! A word to the wise... if you discover you are politically polar to
someone you formerly liked and that discovery makes you never want to talk to or look at that person again, that
attitude my friend, is the basis of our nation's divisiveness. And if I have to explain
this further, you're even more of a problem than you don't realize. I can disagree with my
buddy but still go for a coffee or a margarita with her later and chat (without labored breathing
or a forced smile,) about Jazzercise, Jobim and jelly beans. Can you?
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
AlmostAlmost heaven, West Virginia. Blue Ridge Mountains. John Denver in the pine trees. Good old
John Denver, saw him in October, 1987. He remarked on the beauty of our turning leaves, which are pretty
spectacular in Fredericton. (But I can't think of there or I'll cry at not being where my sister waits for her baby to come in just 45 days.) He played to only 3000 or so of us - singing Rocky
Mountain High to just me, of course. Nice of him to drop in on such a small town as ours when he could've not even bothered as
so many of the Big Names, who think Canada drops off east of Montreal, do. He was nice like that tho.
A lot of the best ones went down in planes tho, didn't they? Jim Croce. And cars - Harry Chapin on Long Island. There was a loss, his best songs still probably to come, hard to believe because he'd already
penned
W.O.L.D., Taxi and Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas. As they say, if there's a rock 'n roll heaven
you know they've got one hell of a band. And Jannie these days? Gonna put new lyrics to my best melody and arrangement
yet. Authenticity is the major key. Yessir. Gotta come from the heart and gut. Such a beautiful day
today. Sunlight kissing the Venetian blinds. I wonder if the Florecian blinds are jealous? Get
out and mingle with the world and see what images and words come up for My Best Song Yet.
Malfunction JunctionMy six most recent Beautiful Creative-Writing Posts have been DELETED (forever,) BY MY
SERVER (my own server!) in the process of them trying to fix a failure of THEIR blog publishing hardware.
Thanks, guys!
Okay, so we all make mistakes... Deep breaths, Jannie.... deep breaths,
remember all those starving dung-huttians who will never even see a computer, let alone have challenges with
their band-width providers, while you'll be having shrimp cocktail and Pinot within minutes. But...
Dear Server,... if this malfuction happens again I will sic my lawyer, Joe The German of raging international
success and notoriety on you. And my $10.00 a month will be so outta here. So there!
(Note to self... Jannie, you might want to think about printing these out in hard copy for back-up.)
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Kelly-Blog # 1[This story was dictated to me by Kelly for one of her creation books a couple days ago. Yes,
these are Kelly's own words.]
Please let me live by myself because I will freeze like a statue whenever somebody comes. And I'll take
wipe boxes with me so I can have a sponge bath. And I'll say "Boo!" to people at night when I scare them. And
I will have a magic mirror with me to destroy bad people. And when it gets too dark I'll dress up as a ghost at night
so I can scare people. And I would like to be ordered a ghost costume for Hallowe'en. And I would take two gallons
of water for me to drink every day. And when I drink water I get healthy. Please may the Grand Fairy be
magical-er than everything. Then... I would have three gallons of soda pop a day. And guess what? I would
stay in a tent and I would put up decorations everywhere. And I would create my sister everywhere. I love to play
on the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round.
[Chip off the olde Jim-and-Jannie blocks, eh?]
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
SpeakerOn this desk is a pair of Alesis MK2 active monitors I bought at Guitar Center
three years ago for a hefty $200 each. I joke, as pro monitors like George's probably cost thousands each. And he has four. But I'm pretty dang lucky to have any speakers at all while there
are millions of hungry Africans living in dung huts who have to walk twelve miles a day just for water and have
to wear bright red in the daytime to keep wild animals at bay. Literally. (I saw this on the Discovery Channel
a couple months ago.) The first speaker I ever had the chance to hear music from was on the Greek island of Hydra
in '69, the Christmas morning I fell off the balcony into Leonard Cohen's daisies. I'll never forget the
song playing - it was Three Dog's Night's "One," which I still hear whenever I bonk my head on something
or it snows in April. Prior to
December '69 I'd been sequestered in a shed with only my mentally chal-
lenged cousin and a small Emerson radio of nebulous origin for company. As
I weave this silliness I'm drinking coffee, back to my old school-teaching habit of '89. Just one cup a day tho
and only the good stuff, none of that inferior
supermarket crap for me. Sound snotty? I suppose. I wish I were in London.
Or Hawaii, but preferably the former. I wish it were raining. I need a haircut.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
PonyMy brother Pat had a black pony named Kim. In fact, he had him twice, resold and bought back
again from the crazy hunchback Russian with the glass eye-
ball who lived over the hills in a shack with no running water or electricity. (Okay, so I just made up
the whole Russian thing but it sounds better than admitting I don't remember, or maybe never even
knew where Kim came from nor went to.) Didn't pay as much attention to farm goings-on as I could have,
with my head always in some book. Stubborn little pony never liked me. I'm not sure he even liked Pat.
Or anyone. Cute as they come but not about to let you ride him. Or would let you saddle
up to fly with the wind in his mane and your summer hair but only as far as the back field where
he'd throw you like a dirty shirt into a washing machine then trot home with a big smirk on those velvety lips.
There is a picture somewhere at Mom and Dad's of Pat at fifteen in a red shirt, the summer before
he was killed in a car crash. Sitting on Kim's bare back, with his legs hanging so low they were barely
a foot off the ground. I think the photo was taken next to the burger shack on the horse-hauling field.
Must've been July, his hair was golden. After he died, I being the mail fetcher, had to suffer the monthly
corkscrews to the heart of his pony magazines,
which I hid in the trash so Dad would have one less reminder that his right-hand man was never coming
back.
Monday, September 11, 2006
ScissorsRunning with scissors between parked cars with both shoelaces untied
while talking to strangers with candy... that's Yours Truly! Truly verily I say unto to you "Get Thy
Shit Together." Too bad I gave that poster away in Vancouver summer of 1986, don't even remember to whom.
Probably
some new Best-Friend-For-Life I'd already forgotten by Christmas. The
smallish poster of nice fake parchment had a biblical font you had to look twice
at to actually read. Wonder if it's continued to be passed down from friend to friend? How many walls has
it hung on? Has it gone from that U.B.C dorm in Vancouver to a Montreal pool hall to an attic garrett where a mouse chewed one corner (but hardly noticeably,)
to a basement bedroom dank with mildew and rot to a Chriscraft's galley to the lavendar-fragrant
entrance hall of an exotic dancer in Hoboken? Or maybe at This Very Moment it's displayed in a gilt frame
above a crackling fire in Maine where the aroma of baking cherry pie and coffee is seeping under
the crack of a nursery door of a cherubial boy napping and drooling on his teddy bear. Get thy shit together
but don't go chasing waterfalls - stick to the rivers and the streams that you know for brothers and
sisters the flood is a-coming. Diddle-diddle-bop-bop. Koo-koo-ka-choo.
Five Years Old Today !!!
Birthday Princess Kelly Above, Raising Her Wand.
Birthday Barbie Bike
Friday, September 8, 2006
ClockTickety-tickety-tock. Will time ever stop? An Ariel (The Little Mermaid,) alarm clock looks cute
with a girl's bedroom decor. Clocks tick in rooms
where the blood of murder lies congealing. Time waits for no man. I can change time but time can't
change me, (or something like that - always getting lyrics mixed-up.) Oh, Talented And Weird One, David Bowie you
got your teeth fixed up so beautifully. Tell me, what did you have for breakfast? Rock stars. Aging rock
stars in mansions on cliffs. Just outside Cannes or Malibu I suppose. Some in the high Sierras.
Sedona. Bali. One or two tucked away in the Scottish Highlands. Do they still make music or just sit around
on their asses and royalties all day watching CNN or Oprah with their beer bellies hanging out and their once-young-and-extremely-beautiful
women prattling on about how they never do anything or go anywhere together. Do they even use their swimming pools anymore?
Sad little rock star up on the hill. Paying property taxes and footing the bill.
Thursday, September 7, 2006
WarthogIn the Raleigh-Durham airport recently I saw a couple hundred servicemen dressed in camo,
bound for Iraq. Had to fight the urge to gather them all up safely in my arms, plaster
their boo-boos with Spiderman band-aids and send them off with ice cream cones to play outside. As I walked
past I thanked them. For putting themselves in harm's way while that night Kelly and I would be back in Austin having
a nice dinner before Jim and I watched King Kong on DVD and she sat in her room practicing her letters and
listening to the Beach Boys. Thanked them for protecting my privilege to walk out of this
house and drive my Toyota (yes, I'm back in a Toyota again,) to Starbucks with only the fear of someone maybe
cutting into my lane or them being out of those little dark chocolate coated graham cookies I like so much. Do
you know that somewhere scouring a desert horizon there's a boy/man in an A-10 who hasn't had a decent cheeseburger in weeks? He's
high and ready to die today. If he ever makes it back from the war who will he be - a hero or a husk
of the man we once thought he was? Many on the watch-towers have fallen but he will be the
one to end all wars. Yes, Carl Sandberg, "the weapons not yet dreamed of in the minds
of men" you wrote of many decades ago are even more beautiful than you could ever have possibly imagined.
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
LollipopI used to fancy that traffic lights were raspberry, lemon and green-apple lollipops and if only I could
get to them I'd have enough sweets to gnaw on until I was 94. Sugar pop. Can't recall the last day I didn't
have something sweet, must've been at least one day in the past year. Writing this reminds me Kelly's got a little tin
of raspberry hard candies from France she intend-
ed to sample last night after dinner but forgot. La Vie de la Vosgienne. The life of the
Vosgienne. Hmmn, what the hell's a Vosgienne? I'm guessing it's a seer, female of course due to the "nne."
Or a wood nymph. Probably a place name though, where the inhabitants give no thought to the origin of the word,
always been Vosgienne so why inquire further? Why ask why the sky's blue or the grass green? I wonder
if Steve Irwin had a sweet tooth? He sure had no crocodile tears, was a genuine good guy with an incredible lust
for life. I bet he loved steak and juicy burgers. Bet he could chow down ceasar salad like it was the
last romaine lettuce on Earth. Always taking a humongous bite out of life, one of those guys so full
of life and health you'd subconsciously convinced yourself he could never die. Sting ray eh?
Bitch of a way to go. "By Crikey,
she's a beautiful little ray. What a little snapper! Just beautiful." Good
on
ya, Mate, for all you did for this planet. Meet you on the other side.
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Rain You should smell how fresh the world is this morning! Been lightly drizzling
for hours. I should take the dogs for a walk, forget about sunscreen for once. Just skreek open that
heavy front door and get out with the trees and the grass and the cypress mulch calling. Amble around the block getting
soaking wet then come back to a hot shower, a perfect hair day and something tasty for lunch. But I'm thinking I'll
take my laptop, headphones and a piece of chocloate cake and do my music work on Kelly's bed, basking in the glow of how clean,
organized and pretty it's been transformed into since yesterday. She's got over 400 hundred books! Oh the places
she'll go. Now that she's in Kindergarten and everything's perfect in my life I could almost screw it all up by
getting pregnant again. Hey, maybe this time we'd have a baby who just sits happily in the middle of the floor and plays
with whatever you give him or her. Not interested in tearing every book off the shelf, pulling everything out of every
drawyer or climbing to the top of anything and everything he or she can find, not craving to explore every corner
of his or her available universe, regardless of danger or how much sleep his or her mother hasn't had the previous
night. Oh, and crying only when hungry or hurt, not just because it seems like a good idea twenty hours a day.
Could happen. Dream Babies have been known to be born.
Monday, September 4, 2006
Tee-peeOn give me a home where the buffalo roam and the beer and the cante-
loupe sway. Heard the one about the lady who tells her psychiatrist she's been dreaming she's a wigwam,
then a tee-pee, then a wigwam then a tee-pee? Shrink lifts his Groucho Marx eyebrows to pronounce, "Doll,
your problem is you're just two tents." Oh boy, I had another of my stuck-in-the-arctic-waiting-for-a-plane
dreams again last night. I really should consult a dream interpretation book on that. If I told you all my sins
you wouldn't believe me. From this moment I shall Sally and Sue forth with raging intentions. I'll eat raspberries
and let the smell linger on my hands for days. I'll vacuum twice a week. Been so long since she baked a cake.
Now into the 3rd person to escape detection and judgement. (Bit of a reef around me.) Did
you remember to plug in your cell phone? Did you charge your laptop - no I paid cash, ha-ha. Today's clean-up-Kelly's-room-day, a
twice yearly venture. No time like the present to dive headlong into the thing you least want
to do. Once you start it's never as bad as it seems. Today's the day!!
Sunday, September 3, 2006
BootsI miss the constant pounding of boot heels in New York. Especially in late September when the
leaves are just starting to turn and erasers still
smell new. Not that I've ever been to New York in autumn but I can imagine the confident pummeling
of leather on concrete up Jones to Bleeker and McDougal to West Third. There's a beautiful young woman there
in a burgundy dress, perpetually striding in tall brown boots, her red hair bound
for cafe destinations. She sits aloof, sometimes writing on trapdoors, sometimes on sleeping pills. She looks
for Allen Ginsberg. Waits for Kerouac each day until 3:00. Tries to find Gerde's. There's a man in a long
black coat with eyes bluer than robin's eggs who follows her sometimes to Washington Square but she always gives
him the slip. Out from the spices and greasy alleys she filters like smoke through a tube then changes into someone blonde
in phone booths. Lugs her shoulder bag over-flowing with images and distorted facts
as shadows grope the sikewalk like an Idiot Wind.
Saturday, September 2, 2006
BeeswaxNone of your beeswax, oh Honeycomb Kid. Yuck, bee larvae are so gross. But maybe bees think
human babies are pretty gross. Have you seen close-ups of the eyes of various fuzzy spiders? Eee-yew.
When I was 8 or 10 (or both) I helped my grandmother sell vegetables at her Farmers' Market booth. There
was a man there selling honey. And Maria, the beautiful Austrian with her streudels, (whom it became apparent
several years later was pretty wacko.) Zip to 8 years later (5 years before I even had a driver's license,)
she insisted I take her car alone to town. She was so far ahead of my life and I loved
her for her confidence in a little country bumpkin like me whose own mother has never learned to drive. Maria... petite
and tanned. Snowy topped, 45 if she was a week. Blue eyes that jumped right off the baker's block.
Anyway... I somehow managed to navigate nervously to McDonalds where my fellow Miss Bathurst contestant
Lynn Faulds served me at the drive-through window. "Wow, when did you get your license, Jannie?" "I didn't." "Oh."
In that silver-blue 1979 K-Car I was the teenage somebody I was meant to be that day. Thank you Maria,
wherever you are.
Friday, September 1, 2006
GypsyGypsies, tramps and thieves... Tinkers and tailors and one-step-ahead-of-the-jailers. Remember the
videotape of the Irish Traveller sneakily pounding the rage of 1200 years onto her four-year-old in a Kohl's
parking lot? The gift of child abuse that just keeps on giving. Sparing the rod and spoiling the
child's chances of ever loving herself, unless she's tough as nails and turns to drinking or poetry later in life.
Seen, not heard. Hugged, then hit repeatedly.
Slapped faces carrying the reminder of every hand that laid them down or cut them till they cried
out in their anger and their shame. (They are leaving, they are leaving. But the fighter still remains.)
Was it really a lack of potatoes or actually hatred against parents that drove so many young Irish from their land?
A bloody-nosed kid swearing at ten he'll be gone by fourteen and is. Chipped teeth from pitchforks in the
haymow. Bruises on the back and on the heart, (Thoughts of Jesus and puppies help a bit when the blows come.)
Talking back and waiting for the blows to rain. Meanwhile grey-haired Sid and Nancy sit in rocking chairs
and wonder why the good-for-nothing sons and daughters never call.
|
|
Blog archives? Column of dates, upper right of page.
Thumbnails below all enlarge with a mere
click of the mouse.
 
|
|
|
