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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
CommunityThe pizza store guy just drove by smiling in his Honda Civic and waved and for a fleeting moment
I felt a happy rush of community because I'm sitting at this out-
door cafe in a city where you can roam all day and not see a soul you know, yet
I just did see one. Smiling even. Imagine me in this Norman Rockwell painting this fine sunny day under
these big happy oaks. Not that I know Pizza Guy well or even slightly, he works behind the counter at
the place close to where Kelly takes gymnastics - yes the store that always reeks of Pine Sol, they must dump a whole
bottle of it on the floor and leave it. (Good pizza though. Needless to say but I'll say it anyway, we get ours
to go.) Where I was born and raised everybody knows everybody, which is idyllic but often a real pain in the ass
because everybody either knows or wants to know what everybody else is doing all the time. (Some-
times they even know things about you before you do. Think, Waking Ned Divine.) Still, if I had enough money to retire and build a dream house in my parents' potato field over-looking the
bay, I'd do it tomorrow. With Jim, Kelly, the dogs, my many many wonderful relatives and friends
(and high-speed Internet of course,) I'd never be lonely. And with mp3s I could write and send songs
anywhere.
Monday, October 30, 2006
FrivolityIf my Site Statistics show my hits dipping lower and lower will I get depressed or
continue with this quest to find more people to read me and hopefully even buy my songs. Days
when my writing is less-than-brilliant will they forgive me and still come back? I hope there
is one sweet soul in Oregon or Maine or New Zealand or England who stumbled onto me by accident and now reads me daily.
Or the waitress I gave a business card to 4 months ago. Maybe I make her smile sometimes
so she returns. Or maybe it's that one note or line in one of my song snippets that lifts her
up. And if she smiles maybe she will pass that smile on to a person on the street who was also feeling
a little down and that person in turn will share a moment of kindred spiritedness with
the girl behind the counter at the cafe or with the grocery bagger. And those
two will greet the next latte seeker or soup shopper with a happy tone. And those people will
in turn bring a bit of light into someone else's day. Yes, this blogging and tune-smithing seems like frivolity
at times but maybe someone somewhere is counting on me.
School Carnival 10-27-06
Sunday, October 29, 2006
High TideSomeone in Florida is reading this. I wonder who. A girl I think. Maybe twenty-eight
years old. A mathematics genius with long brown hair and flawless skin. Let's call her Jenny.
She's nice but her cat's a psycho, bites ankles in the dark.
Tonight two of her friends will pop by to cheer her up with pizza and white russians and
as Jenny forgets about Bob for a while and her spirits lift they'll all agree how they can't stand the
stickiness of jam on their fingers and getting peppercorns stuck between their teeth. They'll put on
K.C. & the Sunshine Band loud and dance until knocking on the door snaps their revelry and incites psycho
cat to pounce and spill the flutes all over the coffee table books, upturning the pizza onto the white carpet.
(The tomato sauce stains will never fully come out.) As Jenny opens the apartment door for the female cop with
the well-rehearsed scowl, psycho
cat will escape into the night fragrant with woodsmoke and high tide to run wild and feast
on the ankles of lovers in the park.
psycho-kitty, qu'est que c'est ?
Saturday, October 28, 2006
TweezersBlonde that I am, (natural of course,) I've never been anything approaching Frida (or even Holly Hunter in The Piano,) in the eyebrow department. Never really no-
ticed peoples' brows until I finally succumbed to plucking last year and I now can't stop staring
at brows, especially those of t.v. news women. So many style op-
tions: flat-top, extra-thin, extra-narrow, semi-circular, highly-arched, painted-on, Andy Roonies, etc. If you're in the market for tweezers I highly recommend the splinter-grabbers that come in the Johnson-N-Johnson
"170 Items" first aid kit. In fact, when I lost my first pair of grabbers a couple of months ago, I went out
and spent a whopping $10 on a whole new kit just to get the tweezers. Don't tell anybody but I usually
trim my wild hairs in my '95 Camry at 8:45 a.m. when
the light shooting through the oaks is bright but perfectly indirect enough for
optimum grooming in the rear-view mirror. I wonder if the next-door neighbor with the
shaggy hair ever spies as I do this? I do get pretty engrossed in my brow endeavor, anyone could be watching and
I'd be oblivious. I also wonder if said neighbor's house still remembers
our good buddy Rich who lived there for years and whom I miss a lot. Hopefully we'll see Rich
at Christmas in North Carolina.
That
Wide-Eyed Look Is Just A Toyota Away
Friday, October 27, 2006
FolderThe Jazz Police are looking through my folders. The Jazz Police are talking to my niece. Lurking with their blitz of flatted 9ths and diminished 7th chords down
at Mugshots where they know I'm meeting Cousin It later today, where she and I've been converging for
drinks each October 27th for the past fifteen years. The annual hi-how-have-you-been-you-look-great-oh-mi-god-what-are-we-going-to-talk-about-now-we-hardly-know-each-other-because-we-never-make-the-effort-but-let's-do-this-again-next-year
rendezvous. Cousin It, always prettier than I. Taller. Better teeth. Smaller nose. Thicker
hair. Smarter. Maybe I just won't show this year. Will it be a burden off her Jazzercised
shoulders? Has she
also been waiting for someone or something to sever our umbilical cordials? Yeah, maybe
I'll just not show. Wander to Gerde's instead, sip whole-fat latte by the potted frangipanis and appear as mysterious as one can in a powder-pink track suit.
Yeah, maybe. Unless she decides to do the same and we end up bumping into each other at Gerde's,
smiling and pretending nothing's amiss.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
DalmationThree hours ago a rabid dalmation ripped part of the heel off my sneaker just before what was left of my right
foot launched him into the bamboo across the ditch. So what if the clouds wagged their fingers
at my dog-hurling tactics. Let the clouds' ankles bleed. Let their lives flash before their eyes.
Let their hands shake as they dial their doctor to see when they last had a tetanus shot.
This dalmation vs woman show was witnessed by a clump of sleepy-headed kids waiting for the bus, the littlest decorated
with a shocking-pink Barbie backpack. Barbie smiling beside a palm tree, which made me think of old men in tank
tops cruising the gift shops, checking out chiquitas down by the bay (yes, the same men who dream abut weight loss and wish
they could be their own boss.) Then I thought about Cheeseburger in Paradise as I hobbled home and wondered if
the dalmation had mistaken my ankle for one of those. Maybe should've given him fries with his bamboo order.
(By the way, none of this happened to me on this or any other morning.) I am going now to nibble on sponge cake
and watch the sun bake all of those tourists covered in oil. I can smell the shrimp beginning to boil.
 Rabidly
Cute Dalmation - Heading To Ballet Class
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
FatherThe child is growing and we have no say in the matter. Feed them and they'll unfurl.
(Can't stop water from running downhill. Can't tame traffic at 8:30 a.m.) Her skin is stretching, bones and
eyes and lungs expanding. Our grand-children and their children's children sleeping inside her.
All in the plan. Under her gums her grown-up teeth waiting, we saw them on X-ray at her cleaning the day she
wore her Tweety Bird shirt and chose the grape toothpaste. Her dad remarks on her height, then steps lightly
on the stairs as he always does so as not to wake her. Early to bed, early to rise has given him a moonlit glow
to his eyes. The moon whose light comes from the sun. The sun who will one day implode. The Big Bang,
can you imagine it? Pangaea of the sky. And nothing stopping the universe at the end, not even the eyelashes of God. This over millions
and millions of years. We are all babies safe in His womb as the light of our existence dives
deep and wild into breaths yet to be drawn. All-seeing Father knowing our hearts.
Monday, October 23, 2006
PicklesSo that's why she cut her hair. Not over a man at all. Not because she just found out
her sister boffed her husband the morning of their wedding. Not even because she's already gained 30 pounds in
her first trimester. But because someone broke into her condo and stole the pickle collection she started in 6th grade.
Rare gherkins and dainty fingerlings, dills and bread 'n butters. Hamburger slices. The big one with the
intricate carving of Mel Gibson's buttocks. Even her brass-plated Outstanding Achievement In Pickles plaque from
the Peter Piper Packers Local 207. Ransacked. Violated. Her hair looked better long and she knows
it. So she wears a pink tuque which she doesn't realize makes her look like an Alpine choir boy, those tassles bonking back and forth as she skulks through
the slushy streets of Boulder. The hat that smells exactly like ones we knew in grade school, drying
on a hot radiator. We'd hear the snow-melt hiss and ping all afternoon as Teacher droned on and on and on. Once
and a while we'd detect a whiff of something scorched, time to turn the mittens over. Such a well-behaved
child. Who knew she would end up a scalped and pickle-less gestator?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
GrammarI am semi-colon challenged but my writing limps along anyway. How does a
basically crippled writer with a weak and a lazy mind like me manage to scrape through blog after handicapped blog, anyhow? Well... by strewing
commas with ease and tossing in the odd hyphen for variety while being careful not to lump too many of the latter
into an area already rife with hyphenated terms such as "Hey, you chump-pummeling, rump-thumping, monkey-humping whack-job." Sprinkle
in some whens, buts, ifs and ands. Rebelliously begin sentences with "and." Rarely
use exclamation marks; I'd rather paint with verbs. Holey shit, was that
a semi-colon I just used?!!!!!!!!! Did I do it correctly? Aren't I supposed use them only in conjunction
with indirect prepositional clauses followed by dangling participles and insubordinate ramblings,
or something lke that? The winkie-eye. That's probably all the semi-colon will ever be to me.
; )
Kelly, Self-Portraits, Oct. '06
Saturday, October 21, 2006
RacerHis seat was really more of a racing bike than the ladderback cafe chair it probably seemed to most.
Clutching his knife and fork handlebars, his back leaned low and seriously into
his eggs and sausages as if he were flying down a long steep hill. Such motion in the stillness of his streaky
clutter of blond hair. While he raced I cranked up the Dbs on all tracks for my Mystery Tune, playing them over
and over in my DT770s to drown out the barrage of humanity and let the music steer me straight to the skitterish lyric. Foraged
through each of my 2800 words. Came up with many two-syllable rhyming pairs like Friday-highway, broken-ocean,
flashing-crashing, saddle-battle, pocket-locket, autumn-bottom. Rhymes arrived fine but wouldn't settle themselves
into any meaningful place no matter how much I hammered or gnawed at them. I should've screamed softer. Nothing
coming up. What if all the good stuff is gone? No. No, the best is yet to come. Be good at first,
no - be fucking brilliant at first. Then coast and slide. You and I, racer. We better pump these pedals
til our thighs collapse. The strange thing is, you will never know about or read
this and I can't even remember your face.
 Backyard
By Kelly
Friday, October 20, 2006
PedestalWhen the snow fell that first night he threw down a thickness of figleaves to soften my fall. He was always
like that - leaning in doorways and bursting around cor-
ners when I most needed a friend. Scooping up my fears with his generous eyes. And
the night we ice-skated to the moon I noticed his lashes left shadows on the window-dresser's pedestal she'd just sprayed
with gold and strung with ivy and
grape leaves. We spied on her from the pines as she draped gossamer silk in a white so thin
I thought she would melt right through it as she stormed her art with softness. The way she angled the candles
and angels just so. Hid the wires and safety pins. Lit the stars from within. Anyone could've
fallen in love with the scene she lifted from ashes and fog that night. And when it was done and she'd left to sweeten
windows and hearts elsewhere, even the homeless with heads formerly bowed to the cracks in the dirty sidewalk knew her
creation was something to touch only with hushed eyes and wherever they laid their weary heads
that night they dreamt of summer and laughing children with miracles for eyes.
Miracles
For Eyes
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Cafe # 2He seems nice enough but he could have whips and chains at home. She's obviously trying too hard, sitting
up straighter than you would for a normal conversation. Smiling too much. I wish I could make
out more but their words are getting swallowed in the rise and fall of traffic on Barton Springs. Is
he finding her accent as hard to penetrate as I am? It's windy too, lanyards battering the umbrella poles.
The soundwaves of their voices must look like tangled slinkies when the gusts whip them up into the oaks.
How far will they get? Second date? Continue chatting on-line? Is he already bored or does boredom
only settle in after a few good rolls in the hay? And is he as annoyed by her orange striped shirt as I am? What
kind of shirt is that to wear for a first meeting with your Internet date, anyway? Everyone knows orange and blonde
don't mix. Honey, should've gone for blue or taupe. And why so much perfume? He should run now. Or
she should. They're obviously not right for each other, he'd grow to hate her subservience and her cooking. She
burns the toast, over-stirs the pancakes and undercooks the salmon. Probably leaves her glass eyeball on the bathroom
counter in her cracked Queen Mary teacup. And him - belches all the time, never sits still, constantly
ogles other womens' breasts. What the hell were they thinking?!
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
CemeteryDad's volunteered to mow the cemetery. At least he was supervising it this summer, I helped him load the mower
onto his truck for the college kid. How weird (or normal,) must it be for Dad to manage the grounds for
that little white church on the hill by the Bay where the bones of his son, daughter, mother, father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grand-parents and probably their
parents and grand-parents lie. I'm not kidding. How's that for a non-transient type of existence? Dad
born in the house he's lived in all his life, the house his father was born in too. Land deeded in 1850.
He's turning 70 in just over a week and I'm a shitheels for not being there because my passport's
expired and I can't get a quick one. But let's not talk about that. How 'bout that cemetery scene
in 11:14, eh? The olde stone-angel-to-the-skull-during-sex-with-a-three-timing-twit scene.
Quite the movie. Usually so peaceful in cemeteries - grass hushed in reverence, sky soft, even the birds know to
sing sweeter. Nothing beats an old cemetery. In 1999 I thought I'd linger in Pere LaChaise
to chat with Jim Morrison and Proust but opted for the inner arrondissements instead
(thanks again, Christine.) Didn't get to Cork either to scour the streets for cousins with our tell-tale jawline. Next time.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
CobwebsSo I just registered with AdBrite to hopefully get exposure on Dooce.com. Scared that she'll reject my ad and scared that she won't. What will it be like having potentially 900,000
readers poke into my cobwebby corners? Not so bad, I guess. Hello world. Hello you surfers and intellectual
wanderers. Hello Amsterdam - I'll be visiting you someday. We all know we're linked but the Net
brings this linkage flying home to us like a soldier to his wife, to the baby daughter
he's yet to meet, his wine and meatloaf waiting silently for him. Was he once sitting in a
railway station with a ticket for his destination? Haven't we all been? I
remember the summer of '86 on my way to Vancouver from N.B. I remember the blonde girl with the torn fishnet stockings staggering
with her cigarette and her boyfriend in the Calgary bus depot. They were wearing black
leather jackets, me wishing I could've had a little of whatever they were on.
Just my luck to have traveled through the Rockies at night. Eating granola bars and dried apricots in Banff
in my yellow shirt with the too-tight sleeves. In need of a shower. (Weird, the images that stay with
you.)
Monday, October 16, 2006
RodeoWell... it's forty below but I don't give a ****, got a heater in my truck and
I'm off to the rodeo. It's Alabama left and Alabama right. Come on you ****-ing
dummy, get your right step right... Get off the stage you god **** goof, you know... You **** me
off you ****-ing jerk, you get on my nerves. Oh, such joy just in thinking of that little ditty. Uplifting melody, the lyrics skip like a happy child off the tip of the tongue. I used
to think it was 'alamanna' left and 'alamanna' right. Like the Hellamanna tree. One of those big sticky
ones like a magnolia but the orange blooms smell a bit like licorice and floor wax. But that's only in the South.
Up North a Hellamanna blossom is as sweet as new cotton in a Gap store. We used to square-dance in 7th grade.
I will say that about Mr. Henderson, he did try to expose us to a variety of wholesome activities. He was our teacher
when Mt. St. Helen's erupted, Louise Brown was the first test-tube baby, Mother Theresa won the chocolate cream pie
eating contest at the Beerfest, Queen Elizabeth got stuck in the john and Fidel Castro married a triple-headed
goat under his rose trellis. Strange how you remember some things. Please note, these memories
may not be 100% accurate - I was only twelve in 1976, maybe I've gotten bits from '78 or '79 mixed in there too.
Here comes Johnny with his ****** in his hand... He's a one-**** man and he's off to the rodeo...
Sunday, October 15, 2006
DarfurAs a child you see pictures of the little ones with bellies swollen from hunger. Staring eyes.
Flies buzzing around bowls of dirt and rice. Your mother tells you to eat what you're given, millions of children have
nothing at all. Then you grow up and assume things got better over there. But they
haven't. In fact, they're worse. What does the old lady sitting in line on a
stump waiting all day for a wheat or a powdered milk ration tell her grand-child about life and love? Will they stop
off for a burger and shake on the way home, in between Karate class and picking up a couple new video games at
Blockbuster? In Darfur, it's not war but "ethnic cleansing." In Malawi no money
for seeds. Half of Zimbabwe is crying. A.I.D.S.
raging. Teachers dying. Fighting from birth. So you send a few dollars each month
and feel guilty for being born here.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
NightmareWoke a while ago from a terrible dream, which has already mostly faded be-
cause I've since been on the Net. Doing some late-night Googling on names
of people I've not seen in years. A fellow teacher whom I lost contact with. I remember her up and
dumping me. Incommunicado. I don't know why. Maybe because I laughed when my dog chased her cat? Maybe
because she just got tired of me. I am a whole person now. I wouldn't think she was jealous but
you never know, if she were jealous she wouldn't say, would she? All I found out on her is she must've married that
nice guy, she's hyphenated her last name. So anyway, about the dream... something about a bunch of us song-writers being
chased by traitors within our ranks. A lot of tightness in the chest and running, running, running up and down stairs
and hiding behind doors and under tents beside the woods. The kind of dream your heart can handle no more of so
you're yanked awake. Wide-eyed. To Google people from your past. Where are they now? People
you knew from college. Your ex-husband. Your husband's old girlfriend - motherlode on that nutcase. Some
websites filled with acronyms like VOBS, ANCS, SSRSB, the DEH, crazy shit that doesn't mean a thing to you but must be close
to the core of some peoples' existence. It would be nice to get back to sleep now, tomorrow is very full. It's
high time I designed a Saturday with no running at all.
Friday, October 13, 2006
IcebergOh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue and they thought they had a ship that the water couldn't
go through. But the good Lord raised his hand, said that ship would never land. It was sad when the great
ship went down. It was sad (so sad) sad (so sad.) Etc. I used to sing this in rounds with cousin Tilda.
A 99-Bottles-Of-Beer-On-The-Wall, or I-Used-To-Work-In-Chicago-In-An-Old-Department-Store kind of tune. Those were the
days when 42 seemed ancient. Now here I am at 42 and thinking things are just getting started. So relative.
I seem to be getting a lot of writing done fast today, only two minutes into this. Is the QWERTY
keyboard mighter than the pen? Certainly can topple the sword. Ah yes, the vitriolic plume upon the beaches of Normandy and the New Jersey shore. Perhaps even into Manhattan, up the Hudson.
No not Rock Hudson. He was The One tho, wasn't he? And Doris Day. Only 50 years but several centuries ago since they ruled this planet.
I bet they would've loved email. What's the Next Great Invention I wonder and I've also been wondering
why clouds are flat on the bottom. And why if you can't see gasoline vapors, why can you
see their shadows on the pavement when you're pumping gas? And a new wonderment lately... If you die drunk, when
you get to heaven are you still drunk? Do you do sober up or are you doomed to inebriation for all eternity,
not that that would be all bad if you were happily tipsy. I've actually still got four minutes left to write
but I'm going to go work on an Ocean song or at least try to find an ocean tho I'm two deserts and
seventeen thousand mountains away from the nearest one.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
WienieI love our little wiener dog, Sweety. Never had a dacshund until him, having always been partial to little
white fluff-'n-stuff poochies, like This Little Guy.  Sweety sure lives up to his name, now that he's stopped peeing in the house. When we first got him I researched
A to Z dog names on the Net but nothing seemed right, so Sweety stuck. He burrows under the
bed covers every night, even for naps. Finds the blanket edge and digs right under. How can he still
breathe, I'd be claustrophobic within a minute. At night he has to be snuggled right up against me.
He smells like strawberries from his Strawberry Shortcake bubble-bath in the kitchen sink the other night. I hope he lives forever. Another wienie I love is a Shelton's all-natural one on a multi-grain bun with ketchup. Um, um, good!
Sweety, Pink Collar Kelly's Idea
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
VestibuleI notice Diana's red hair is getting thinner like her excuses for why she was out late again last night.
I heard the tires screech under my window at 4:00 a.m. Broke down again? Got lost on the east side?
Kidnapped at gunpoint? Diana, Diana, what a tired web you weave, one with dew drops still not drying come the afternoon
sun. Before you turned to selling your dreams, who were you? Yellow blossom on a bush? Virgin with your
roses in the church vestibule? Oh, Diana you don't have to live like this. You don't have to put on your
red light. All those hungry boys from the navy ship, the youngest one who lied about his age to get in, his mother still
crying every night. Was he the one who wanted to save you from yourself? He cries at night too for something,
he doesn't even know what. His lapels bear the grease of a hundred battles, his shoes the scuffs of iron gates
slamming shut. Listen to him. He'll take you sailing. He'll be a father to your children. He'll smother
you in newsprint with only the happiest stories, he'll cut away the sad headlines for your coffee mornings. Diana,
he's the one.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
SatisfactionIn the really olde days you had to wait by the radio for your favorite song to come on, just waiting and waiting. Today you get any music
you want by downloading it NOW Baby! Instant gratification. But the best things in life are still worth
waiting for, like home-made apple and lemon meringue pies. Christmas morning. A first kiss. Satisfaction.
When I'm watching my t.v. and some man comes on and tells me how white my shirts can be. (But he can't be a man
because he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me.) Yes, they're on tour again, God bless them. They just keep on rolling, don't they? Heard a whole new side of Keith Richards
(thanks to Doris who lives in this beautiful country,) from a bootleg recording of him jamming with some friends in his living room. Playing I Get A Kick Out Of You
and flubbing the high notes on Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. No glitter-gloss on those recordings, just real
in-the-moment music, the way it's supposed to be. I love when people are real, don't have time for fakey-fakey
bullshit. Real just like in that Barenaked Ladies song... "I'm so cool, too bad I'm a loser..." Real!
Monday, October 9, 2006
SnowflakesSo maybe you were the one obscured by the tree in the class photo. There were over 300 of you, someone
was bound to be obscured by something. Or were you sick that day, out of the picture completely. Home sick with
the flu? Forgotten. Did you drop out? If you could you go back to high school now, would you still melt
into the foreground as much or walk prouder past the hall hecklers, roll your eyes in their faces and tell them
to go get stuffed? Now it's many years later and you have the car, the house and the know-how (or at least an apartment
and a job.) The chutzpah. But not the youth. You can't go back. Funny how we're always
trying to catch up with ourselves, some of the memories even accurate. Sins and shames and inadequacies. No, you
can't go back to high school and suddenly appear front and center in the panoramic group photo but you can go forward with
grace to love as many people as you can, to use your talents and bask in the glory of raindrops on
roses. Who cares if you're no longer seventeen. What's so great about seventeen anyway? That was quite
a few snowflakes ago.
Sunday, October 8, 2006
BookendsI really need a set of bookends for the shelf above this computer. Saw nice ones at Barnes and Noble. Globes and swirls of marble and granite, polished smooth and sleek. Aristotle and
Homer ones too. If you want it, B&N got it and they're proud of their pricetags stuck with snail slime
onto everything. Or barcodes inprinted. I remember as a kid in the 70s thinking the
news of barcodes being The Thing Of The Future could only be someone's huge mistake. They're
joking - going to have those on everything!? Now what doesn't have a UPC
on it? Yes, I tried those self-serve grocery lines (so-called 'fast lanes,') but gave them up after a few attempts,
always some screw-up, "Unexpected item in bagging area," "Please check your item and scan again," "Bla bla
bla bla bla, bla." Invariably some clerk would have to come help, taking overall longer than if I'd gone
through a regular check-out line. I like to scrutinize the covers of check-out magazines,
see how the stars are holding up. Botox, designer brows, collagen for the laugh lines, $500+
haircuts, another $500+ for the highlights. Body buffing, glowing tans, the newest shade of every make-up.
Jennifer Lopez teeth. Jennifer Aniston hair. Jessica Simpson eyes. Beautiful faces and
clothes, glorious bodies. All that beauty, money too... and they still can't hold onto a man for longer than a
year?
Friday, October 6, 2006
BongosSpeaking of roll bars from my post yesterday, is it true double-wide mobile homes come with them? Handy for
tornado season. Poor Nick, when he roomed with Jim on 290 West (a couple years before I burst onto the scene,)
one day came
screaming into the video store office, yelling to run a.s.a.p. for shelter of the trailer (at
the rear of the property,) because Austin was under a tornado watch. "No. No!" warned Jim. "Haven't
you heard about mobile home park tornado desvastation? Don't you know tornados are attracted to trailers, Nick?!" Poor Nick, believing
him. Anyhoo, there was a trailer park girl I once knew from high school who wore sparkly
red shoes all the time. One day she was practicing bongo rhythms for her solo part on "Fly Me To The Moon" when
a tornado hit and threw her to Kansas with her little dog Dodo. There she met up with a butcher,
a baker and a candle stick maker, each of whom was respectively in search of a spleen, a right cortex and a shot
of whiskey. Then the wicked town councillor of the West (a.k.a. Nefarious Malingerer,) who smelled faintly of fried
chicken and fresh sawdust, tried to usurp their parkland. But... luckily the good town councillor of
the South melted the bad one into a pile of gloop. And they all lived crappily ever after.
Thursday, October 5, 2006
Wheelchair # 2If ever I am in a wheelchair I want the high-powered model with drink holders, velvet upholstery, air conditioning,
multiple CD changer, and roll bar. I sure do take my legs for granted. Don't we all? When's the
last time you thanked God for your legs, arms, eyeballs and hip joints? I haven't lately (but I guess I just did. )
I also take our lake park for granted. Reliable sources say there are potential nefarious malingerings afoot to pull the
wool over (and the park out from under) our home-owing eyes. Such intrigue. Piece of land's worth
$2,000,000 which will only appreciate. Capped at 400 families to join. (Pretty lucky to
have it.) Yep, jumped aboard the olde rabble-rousing wagon this morning, talked to about half a dozen folks I know,
with many more still to invite to the up-coming informational meetings. Knowledge is power.
I'll tell two friends and they'll tell two friends and they'll tell two friends and so on and so on and so
on. Next thing you know, we'll all be cavorting through fields of springtime daises with our fragrant tresses
perfuming our every fantasy. Never underestimate the clout of a few concerned citizens or a new shampoo.
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
TelephoneIt's ringing and ringing, and of course I think of "Again and again in the same situation for so many years,
tethered to a ringing telephone in a room full of mirrors... Like a church, like a cop, like a mother..." Ahh,
remember that summer, Rosie? How many times did we play that album? Two sisters camp-
Clunking around in our matching wooden-soled sandals in that big old mostly-empty house with the squeaky
floorboards. That night skinny-dippping you-know-where. Drinking beer in Chester. Sailboats.
Cheap champagne. Silver bracelets. You always rolling those baoding balls in your palms and me with my letters and pens. Both of us singing "whirl, whirl, twist and
twirl, jump around like a flying squirrel..." Hey, remember the Dodge "RTS," Reliant
Transportation System? (Like we could ever forget.) Remember one of us
peed our pants in it near the Tantramar marshes from laughing so hard?! And Chancie (Poochie-Babe-I-Love,) going everywhere with us of
course. Ahh. It was good, sister. I don't remember every detail so much as the laughter.
It must've rained sometimes but I can't recall.
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
FameI probably won't be famous until after I'm dead. Like Van Gogh I suppose. (Providing
the world as we know it hangs around long enough, that is.) Just as well anyway, who needs the fame?
Maybe a taste would be nice on occasion, a few parties in Malibu. Meet Jack Nicholson. Meryl Streep. Joni
Mitchell. Leonard Cohen, of course, the latter I wonder if I'll really ever get to meet. Never seen him except
in still photos and for a few minutes on the Net in a video clip of some interview by a beautiful
blonde who looked like she didn't know what hit her. I'd say it was the late 60s. I'll for sure be
clenching my little fists in impotent rage and beating my tears against wild oak trees if I hear he's up and died
on me. Jerk for smoking all these years, and swimming pools of whiskey. But Mount Baldy and meditating may have counteracted all that. Yeah, maybe (sincerely,) L. Cohen will be
one of those guys at 100 ( I'll only be 70,) with a full head of hair still puffing away but splitting a cord of wood
a day. Let's hope. Fame, it's all pretty silly anyway. Doesn't mean anything. Yeah, I'll take mine
later. With a twist of lemon.
Monday, October 2, 2006
Picture frameGolden but not glittery. Silver but not quite shiny. Dull as a cucumber on a winter's day.
This is the picture frame that cozies up to the image of Great-Grandma's and Great-Aunt Bessie's prize jack-o-lantern
of 1928. In the background flapper girls with roses in their hats. Pin-striped boys at the fair. Cotton
candy and gasps of conversation atop the Ferris wheel. (Great-Aunt Bessie swearing the carnival lights were tying
to shake the stars down from the sky.) Sugarwater, U.S.A. is where they raised that pumpkin from a baby.
Caressing it with borrowed horse-blankets every October night. Carving Boos and Gotchas on its meaty face past
twilight as Great-Grandpa sparked up a utility candle to save their eyes. Pumpkin blood squirting
onto the porch and pumpkins souls screaming like lobsters into a steaming pot. Were they pumpkin murderers
as the flapper girls preened in the hall of mirrors? Two beautiful co-conspirators now only
grainy images behind glass, their bones sleeping soundly beneath grass that smiles at the sun all day.
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