Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Iconoclast Movement

Can someone tell me why Blogger is only allowing image uploads less than half the time?

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!


Flattered as I am (and I really am), I have to say, 'What a cop out!'

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Rows and Floes of Angel Hair

I have just mistaken someone at the very best coffee shop* for someone else, and spoken accordingly.

How embarassing.

Still, she laughed it off nervously and played along.

While and after I ordered a short cap and a silver needle tea, she continued the same laughter. Her strain is maybe something else and not me. That's a relief.

I've left the house to clear my head.

I'm thinking of right turns, southpaws, cold feet, and the gold dust that settles in my lover's hair.
I'm wondering how two people can live together for fourteen years and navigate the boneyard labyrinth between them - a tired ribcage before the heart, and doors that won't open.

One shouldn't have to work so hard, only to arrive at this.

It hasn't been the jolliest of Christmases, nor the worst of times by any means, but I suspect I'm not alone in my Holiday Ambivalence. Even Spreaders of Good Cheer are under duress. I never guessed Disney would repossess Santa (who was recently handed his ass), but I guess they own everything else. Is Bill O'Reilly puffed-up, red-faced and spitting about that?

Maybe it's time to mention a few things for which I have gratitude:

- I have love in my life.
- Some very dear friends.
- Fondness for my regular readership (and I am yours), though I wish you'd post more comments, for good or ill.
- I've just learned that my blog rank on Technorati is 247,131. That's not so bad, but surprising given the low number of hits per day. I also just realized that when I made the switch to BetaBlogger, it wiped out the ads, which is odd, as they were Google sponsored. It's just as well.
- The comforting way my dog snores.
- The severely damaged nail on my index finger is half way grown out now.
- My mother's clear of cancer.
- Mr. Claus saw fit to send a friend a lap(ple)top, which is what I've dreamed of getting her for years, if I were a rich man. She deserved it.
- I'm less afraid than I was two years ago, and less still than half a decade before that.
- Sometimes I dream about Claire.
- I've some resolutions I'm willing to make.
- I've been reminded that time is quite possibly infinite, so I can't really be wasting it.
- The sun just came out for the first time since I've been home.



*There. Now you have a way to find me, and if chance keeps us separated, you can content yourself with the very best coffee in Portland, so far as I know it. They have free wifi, like every other boutique espresso place in this fair city, though at the chains you must pay.

A Terrible Beauty Is Born

Do you ever happen upon a thing and wonder that in your entire lifetime, you've never discovered it before? Having just found W.B. Yeats', Easter, 1916, I am left scratching my head and wondering just that. If you've a few moments for inquiry, as it's a rather longish one, pour yourself a cuppa and have a read, here.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

Thomas Wolfe* and Heraclitus** both had good, if vastly over referenced, points.

To the first I'd agree, except that childhood was not a place I'd ever particularly want to revisit, except in my writing. One might rephrase, "You can't go home again, if home never was one." This trip, I'm getting along with my mother quite well, except for her incessant need to be in my space, which is a problem with mothers generally, I'm sure. It's a minor problem. Mostly, I just want to punch my step-father in the face. Although my mother these days is quite good-natured, he's been a silent sulking and brooding lump on the couch ever since Christmas Eve morning, over what we just don't know. It seems to stem from a conversation we had about eating well, something he doesn't do, but nothing was directed at him, you know. So it's a mystery.

To the second, I'd say that though the geography of the river looks the same, it is true that the matter moving through it is ever a'changing. One is tempted to correct the redundancy or maybe I should say, superfluity, in Heraclitus, as one really can never step into the same river even once. Still, we get his point. If I damaged the proboscis of my mother's husband, it would not really be the same nose the second time fist meets prow.

I hate being negative, especially when everyone's supposed to be putting on their best face, but everyone isn't.

I have a rash over my right eye, and I just can't tell why.


* You Can't Go Home Again
** "You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you."

Christmas Card Correspondence

J sent me this picture of his dog Buzz:



Me: That's LAST year's picture!
But it's still so cute, you want to hug the stuffings out of him.

J: Yes it is. It is an Iconoclastic Image. Timeless and demanding of broadcast.



Me: He's like the Grinch Who Disemboweled Christmas.

J: Positively medieval, yet it retains the innocence of lowly beasts.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Santatlas


What a burden this Santa must carry, while the rest of us eat, drink and be merry!

Someone help Santa!

On second thought, someone save those poor people in the cottages from the crushing airborne toys! Santa's a menace!

Merry XXXmas

Nothing says silver bells, holiday season, and bless the holy baby Jesus like your boyfriend calling you from Seattle and describing the ways he'd like to be violating you right now, while little children frolic in the background.

Of course, as there is moratorium on any mention of the inner workings of our relationship here, I'm not saying it was my boyfriend.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

The Golden Years



My mother, who is sixty-four, looks ten years younger. My boyfriend called her "an attractive old bird" yesterday, but was genuinely shocked to discover her actual age. Her manner and drive are possibly even younger. Although she is liable to fall asleep at the picture show, as she did tonight, she is up at five-thirty, and has more energy than just about anybody I've ever met. Not the manic id of the bi-polar, rather the unabating push of a sturdy animal, built for long hard work. She moves mountains.

Still, there is mounting evidence that she has turned a corner, or maybe I should say, passed a milestone (not like those one flushes out of the kidneys, mind you). First, I noticed the amassing of granny-floral prints on the dining room walls. Mother has always been a lush decorator, but never particularly cluttery. I asked if the five pictures on the north wall alone were an aesthetic choice, or simply a matter of storage, as the living room is currently overrun with the kitchen cabinetry they've yet to install. It was the former, as I had feared. It looks undeniably Victorian, or older still, like the painted depiction of the Louvre (Galerie de Vues de la Rome Moderne by Pannini, 1759), the walls simply teeming with the art they'd pinched.

What else? Under-seasoned food, lavender soaps and clock radio in the bathroom, squawking at such a low decibel range, that nobody who lives here heard it.

More significantly, there are several two-liter size bottles of tonic water, Sprite, and club soda, open and half consumed, tucked between the refrigerator and butcher block. You may scratch your head at this one all you like, but in my experience of old people's houses (and this includes my own relatives), there are always flat stale bottles of soft drinks, they simply refuse to part with. Pity the guest who accepts the offer of a cola. Usually, there's never but two or three ice cubes tin-tinning the glass, and even if you're lucky enough to score a Coke, it's so old it tastes like RC anyway.

Do you get what I'm saying now?



How about the grannies with the four-decade-old ice boxes, with cartons of neapolitan ice cream, freezer burnt, gummy and tasting of leaking freon? Ever tried that? It's uncanny the frequency with which such odd things can become demographic trends, and though some might question my assertions, I'll stand by them.

I'd be off to play Scrabble with the old people now, but they've gone to bed.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The Coast Highway

Heading up North for Christmas in Portland. In Santa Cruz right now, looking for surf. It's cold but quite beautiful here. Beautiful houses, pretty coastline.

Won't be posting for a couple days.

Cheers.

Friday, December 15, 2006

While Visiting Griffith Observatory

He: ...but then they aren't really sure Pluto is a planet anymore.

Me: Well, they are sure, they all got together and decided it isn't a planet. Now it's a 'dwarf planet.'

He: Wait a minute, that seems a bit rude. So are they now saying dwarves aren't really people?

Thursday, December 14, 2006

A Movie I'd Like to See, v. ii






A film noir where all the characters are trying to quit smoking.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Hark How the Bells!

Yesterday is spent. Seven hours straight on the Santa (how apt) Monica shoPromenade, braving crowds, underage retail assistants, sore feet, the hyperstimulating glut of merchandise, and finally, The Christmas Music. I was Mannheim Steamrollered. Yet, I spent it with someone I love, and despite the indisputable fact that I am, not unlike Camille, currently dying of Consumption, I was happy.

I actually love traditional Christmas carols, many of the versions fashioned into shape of Jazz standards, and even a few really modern versions, just so long as the bounce or the rock doesn't beat the melody to messy pulp. As a child in Oregon, we actually went each cold December door to door caroling, an experience rather far afield from the Yuletide in L.A. Do people still do that? At home, I think I played every last song known to God and man on the piano, and there was an annual performance/party at my instructor's home. Carols are forever tucked into my musical memory, snug and contented as a sugar-fed kid in footed pajamas, blanketed by an afghan on the sofa and the rosy light of the tree.



If white folks don't gather in song at Christmas time, then there really is a hole in our layer of the cultural cloth. Why unlike, say, the Irish, do we not sing spontaneously and in groups, at parties, in bars, or as we walk down the street together? I say white, of course, because I don't believe this holds true for many other groups, clearly more enlightened in this department. Of course, if you're a regular churchgoer, you have your hymnal, though as a child I really thought them quite dry and wooden. Then there is the Anthem at sporting events, and that's allright, potentially moving even, but it is quite difficult to sing, and is a completely expected and controlled event.

To sing or chant or pray in groups is an experience that fundamentally transforms the energy moving through your body. I dare you to contest the notion. You don't have to dip into the realm of scientific explanation to prove or disprove this, simply remember viscerally the last time you joined in; it just is. Unless you feel terribly inhibited about it, the feeling is joyful, freeing, and conjoining, bonding you to others as much as it allows you to expand into your own individual, spiritual space.

I think part of the impediment to public displays of song, sadly, is the value given to restraint in this fundamentally Protestant culture. I am the last person comfortable with any sort of behavior that disrupts another's sense of well-being, to the point that I can become quite vocal in my displeasure. If some jackass friend is telling a lewd story at the table when there is a family or elderly group dining nearby, I suffer with them. But nothing is lovelier to me than walking through a park or a city square, and seeing people singing, dancing, or playing, in whatever form, just for the sheer joy of expressing it. That is the quintessence of a holiday traditionally celebrated as a festival of Light, and in carnival style. No different from any really Godly Holiday, where the human spirit takes a deep breath, opens itself up, and shines all over the world.

Monday, December 11, 2006

A Movie I'd Like to See



This is a joke title I came up with some time ago. My memory was jogged by exposure to Gizoogle, which translates your text or webpage to jive.

In any case, in my little fantasy world, Snoop Dogg meets Jim Henson and Co. for, The Dark Cryzal.







And of course, Steven Tyler in the reprised role of Jen the Gelfling.

Poached Eggs

I surely love them, especially with Hollandaise, but should they be legal?

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Breakfast Is Not, 'The Most Important Meal of the Day'

'The Most Important Meal of the Day,' is having any meal at all, you bourgeois mother-fuckers.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Scat and Dogs

You know it's bad when your dog farts so loudly that he leaves the room.

Soft Drink

A blog of note.

Full Moon

How unusual not to be able to sleep at this time. Lest I embarrass myself with some astrological explanation, perhaps some of our more empirically scientific minds can explain to me why it is that I always have a shortened sleep cycle, more energy, and wildly elaborate dreams at this time of the month? Hmm?

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Things I'm Not Particularly Proud Of, v. 1

Not much good has come out of Levittown, NY, unless you count Billy Joel, which in my weaker moments, I do. It's something I'm not particularly proud of either, but that's not the purpose of this post. Otherwise, there has been a cartoonist, another pop star, an American Idol contestant, and Bill O'Reilly. That's pretty bleak, when you think about it. The only really good thing is a rather entertaining documentary about the city, Wonderland, by a guy from my graduating class in college. You should watch it, if you can get your hands on a copy.

When I was about seventeen, I was perusing LPs, because that's the generation I'm from, at a small record store in downtown Portland. I was alone in the store with the clerk, until two rather long-haired gentlemen with ragged east coast accents entered the place. I wish I could recall what music I was looking at - it could have been Talking Heads, REM, Run DMC, or even Whitney Houston. Go ahead, yuck it up, but I was only a gangly teenager who had just recently sprung anything remotely resembling hips, and one who did wonder, "How will I know if he REALLY loves me?" Furthermore, I was in deep denial over my genuine love of old Van Halen, the way the popular athlete can't admit he has a crush on the bookish and shy girl. Except I was the bookish and shy girl.

I could have been buying Bon Jovi for all I know, though my defensive ego would like me to point out that I was the first kid at my school to listen to the Beastie Boys. But what does it really matter, I was not cool. A socially awkward girl, seriously underschooled in the ways of boys and dating, and at the same time, it seems I was always curiously attractive to older males. It was confusing and strange, to say the least.

Anyway, the considerably older duo were obviously leering. One of them wore sunglasses on his head and gave me cursory glances, while his wingman thumbed through albums, which he occasionally pulled out as a prop to say, "Hey, Eddie, remember when you recorded this one?" Then they would both look at me, as if I was supposed to overcome my dumbfounded starstruckness and run over for an autograph, a cocktail at his hotel, and some fellatio. After listening overlong to the lame antics, I sighed and walked out the door to the bus mall, where I caught the #33 home, and tried to avoid resting my weary head against the oily curl relaxer glued to the windowpane. It was a peril of the late eighties, much like the talent that escaped Levittown, NY.

And that's the first of maybe three times an embarrasing famous man has hit on me. Five if you count Laverne, but I don't like to talk about that.



(I feel three apologies are in order here: First, I'm sorry to my dear friend whose grandfather designed that infernal city. It's neither of our faults the project was such a failure, so can't we just laugh about it? Secondly, Grant Miller, I realize I have bastardized, nay, plagiarized a format of your posts. I hope you'll take it as a sincere, if inferior, mode of flattery. Finally, for all you strict grammarians in the house, I don't like ending sentences, much less titles, with prepositions, but sometimes it seems impossible not to.)

I Believe

...in love at first oversight.