Puppy Love

right now i am dreadfully tired from a week's worth of too long days working outside in hot muggy weather. i should be sleeping, but my dog's head has taken up residence in the crook of my left arm, pinning it against my body because it weighs, like, fifteen pounds. i should be the one dreaming heavily at this point, but i can't bear to disturb him, as he's rarely this cuddly at sleep time. plus he's chasing rabbits in his sleep and whimpering, and i couldn't wrest him from such propititous circumstances. so i'll just go on typing, one-handed, until he wakens and jumps off the bed, then plops down on the floor like four twenty-five lb. sacks of potatoes. i couldn't possibly love this dog any more than i already do.

Bumper Sticker

"Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it,"

Three Black-Eyed Bandits Wearing Masks

Tuesday night driving home from work I saw not one, not two, but three raccoons (plus one dark cat), that tried to run out in front of my car within the course of 10 minutes and two miles. Two were on the Shakespeare Bridge, and one was near my house. In nearly five years of living here, though I've seen deer on the hill behind my house, rats my dog has killed, skunks slipping around night's corners, and the usual bands of coyotes prowling and howling, I had never seen a raccoon.

I like to read meaning into such things, especially when they come in threes.

"Nature is a temple where, from living pillars,
Confused words are sometimes allowed to escape;
Here man passes, through forests of symbols,
Which watch him with looks of recognition"
--Charles Baudelaire

So what does this omen portend? My books offered a paucity of the stripe-tailed critters, so I searched on the internet and came up with disguise, dexterity, curiosity, swiftness, cleverness, banditry, magic, and "unmasking the truth helps one accept hidden aspects of the self, the ability to play many roles in life." Coons are also trickster figures. I don't know what it means.

That Makes a Girl Tear Up

(but in a good way)

My brother wrote, about the Dylan post:
"it was nice to see the lyrics to Farewell Angelina. You probably don't remember but I used to sing that to you (along with lots of other songs)."

I didn't recall it (I was very little), but you see, I knew it was all embedded there for a good reason. Sometimes we remember what we don't remember, and in the deepest way.

Now we'll have to get him to tell what else he sang to me, while he played his guitar.

That's the sweetest thing ever.

Sounds Like

This is a quick and short list of words I love to hear spoken, much like the now mythic status of the euphonious phrase, cellar door.

eighth
corner
tar
sorrow
resolution
crush
poem
mesh
criquet
touch
Colorado
moor
torn
heroine
quiet
naked
you
smoke
show
mirror
jaguar
whisper
Joshua
kiss
larder
through
calm

A good idea

...that doesn't happen, is no idea at all.

-Louis Kahn

That Cheers a Girl Up

Farewell Angelina

Sometimes I fail to write because I feel I have nothing to say. The mystery of this is a paradox - it's usually that I've too much on my mind. Too much roiling around for me too put it down clearly, so I remain silent. Often that's when I substitute song lyrics or poems, sometimes they speak for me, sometimes it's just because the song's a favorite.

Yesterday I watched No Direction Home, the Scorsese documentary on Dylan that aired on PBS last fall. If you haven't seen it and care about music even just a little, I can't recommend it enough. Bob Dylan has been a presence in my life since I was old enough to perceive sound. I hadn't quite realized how ingrained in my psyche his music is until I saw it. I don't listen to him much anymore, and that's a real shame. There are worlds to explore... "Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?"


Put him on the list of rare artists whose work causes me to do my own. It's immediate, like a spark in a gas tank. And my God, that face of his. He wins and breaks my heart, all in the space of a minute.

It's strange, for some reason I couldn't stop thinking of Johnny Depp as I watched young Bob Dylan and his antics.









For now, here's one of so many I love; it fits the mood I'm in:

Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpet play slow
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must go.

There's no need for anger
There's no need for blame
There's nothing to prove
Ev'rything's still the same
Just a table standing empty
By the edge of the sea
Farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leave.

The jacks and queens
Have forsaked the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I'll see you in a while.

See the cross-eyed pirates sitting
Perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbors they clap
And they cheer with each blast
Farewell Angelina
The sky's changing color
And I must leave fast.

King Kong, little elves
On the rooftoops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the make-up man's hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone.

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it's quiet.

Bob Dylan
Copyright © 1965

Boulder to Birmingham

I don't want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there's life below
But all that it can show me
Is the prairie and the sky

And I don't want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

Well you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive.
I have come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down
Out on ninety five
And pretend that it's the ocean
coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby do you know what I mean

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

- Emmylou Harris/ Bill Danoff, 1975

This song was written for Gram Parsons after he died.

Exactly Who Is Dancing on Their Graves, Ann?

Apparently 9-11 widows aren't allowed to have a p.o.v., at least according to Ann Coulter. I guess that means no one with a personal experience of something should be addressing the broader body politic - that's the sole province of the erudite and the governing. Sound like democracy to you?

Much as I dislike her, I have always found Ann Coulter to be a very intelligent (if one can be called that when so lacking in feeling), and well-spoken woman, though I have never agreed with much of anything that comes out of her acerbic mouth. She is so mean, even her frame is brittle. I've seen her in debates with some serious contenders, and she always has this amazing unshakeable confidence. She'd call it 'infallibility.' However, as this video shows, she is really starting to lose her composure, to the point of ineloquence. Is it possible she knows she's on shaky ground these days? Really, attacking widows of the 9-11 tragedy? What finishing school did you go to? Even some right-wingers abhor her stance.

My real question is, why is she wearing a short-hemmed cocktail dress to promote her political tome (apparently Kathy Griffin agrees). What happened to the tailored Ann? And please note the crucifix at her throat - isn't this the same, if pared down, costume we saw on Madonna in the "Like A Virgin" video? Or maybe it was Lucky Star? In any case, it's definitely early Madonna, and writhing around on a gondola would do Ann Coulter some good.

(For the full Matt Lauer interview, click on the post title.)

2211 NE 21st St.

I didn't grow up like you grew up. I grew up surrounded by books, the static of a television, and the walls of an old towering house with too much history and not enough warm. I lived through years of eternal solitary silences after being torn from the company of three elder siblings and the hum of my mother's hyperactive sewing machine. I settled into cold quiet corners of over-large rooms and waited for someone to come home. And when they wouldn't, I scraped around in the fridge and ate raw bacon with my dog, thank god for my dog, and thank god for my cat, and peanut butter and too many Oreo cookies. And thank god I never got trichinosis. And later, when they still weren't there, I put myself to bed and wondered at the immense space and endless quiet of that old dark house.

Sometimes I challenged myself to open closet doors or brave the attic, with its old servants' quarters, and that creepy storage room, which bared its rafters like teeth. And the inverted star scratched in the cement wall, the one with sinister adornments in red paint - who put that there? That house whispered a lot of secrets through its drafty rooms. But no one bothered to kept a secret about the woman who killed herself there - certainly not my mother, who told me when I was nine. Just like she couldn't keep quiet about the ghosts she and my step-brother claimed they saw there too. Right there in that house that creaked and groaned because, you know, houses can move. And houses can close in. How funny those stories, those stories they told me. How funny that I was the only one ever left behind to think about them by myself, for myself, those stories I mostly tried not to think about at all.

And that was the worst part, not the stories or being afraid, but the alone. Alone is a bottomless crevasse that makes you forget about the rhythm of time and the patterns of being. Alone is a life made completely abstract, abstract at an age too small for abstractions. Alone is a purgatory, but a punishment for you don't know what. Alone like that - stretched out over the infinite hours - feels like falling and falling with no one to catch you. That's when you taste the first lesson of despair.

So now, although I've conquered the dicomfiture of loneliness enough that I actually crave moments of solitude, I pray not to be left alone for the rest of my life. Being alone seems pointless. One wants union, one seeks reflection, donation, and the warmth of someone's hand. One wishes for the last sweep out of the ghosts, caught in the sticky skeins that cob attic spaces of memory.

You are what you eat

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:

"Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Eve Pull Down the Apple

Which tree are you? Find your birthdate.
Mine's 6/26 - (Jun 25 to Jul 04 & Dec 23 to Dec 31 - Apple Tree)

APPLE TREE (the Love) - of slight build, lots of charm, appeal, and
attraction, pleasant aura, flirtatious, adventurous, sensitive, always
in love, wants to love and be loved, faithful and tender partner,very
generous, scientific talents, lives for today, a carefree philosopher
with imagination.

what if a much of a which of a wind

gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't; blow death to was)
-all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

-- e. e. cummings

Let's Do It Like They Do On The Discovery Channel

A woman in India married a cobra. Brings a whole new meaning to 'ride the snake.'

Can't get away from these reptiles nowadays.

You Say It's Your Birthday

You're 26 today, Jed! Happy New Year, Sir! Have fun in the Apple, but can't believe you're depriving the left coast of the opportunity to fete you. Sorry my blog got you in a spot of trouble - just tell them that simulations aren't the same as the real thing.

Kiss kiss!

When Life Imitates Art

Even before the art is released...

We've got snake on a plane!!

Spellbound

Yesterday afternoon on the way to work I had occasion to question the soundness of my mind. I had parked outside the Yoga studio, and the heat inside the car was sweltering, but NPR held onto me so tight I couldn't make myself get out into the fresh air. Why? Because they were reporting on the national spelling bee, in perticular, the part where a twelve-year-old boy spotted a mistake on the part of the judges, saving one child from wrongful elimination.

Anyway, my issue with all this is, simply, just how big of a dork am I? Pretty big I guess. This kind of shit thrills me. I don't know why, but I find it all very touching, particularly that completely entertaining documentary from a few years back. Maybe it's watching those well-meaning kids trying so hard, or maybe it's watching the tension they go through. Reminds me of the intensity of all those piano recitals and state competitions I had to endure in grade school. But this is better than that, because these kids seem to be having fun. It's the same jazz you get from watching sports, or some lucky bastard who just got told his granny's lamp is worth $35,000 on Antiques Roadshow (one of the only things I'll watch on tv, btw). In some circles I could be lambasted for comparing those two, but I'll take the risk.

It seems some grad students found the spelldown amusing enough to create a drinking game. This somewhat ameliorated my fears of complete nerditude, though I hadn't swilled anything, which probably placed me right back in the category of my fear. But then, they're grad students, so I guess we're in the same boat.

The Doublemint Twins

I was at a daytime party, and finally met the identical brother of someone with whom I was already acquainted. Had an interesting conversation with both, then we three decided to guide ourselves on a tour of our hostess' home. Upon discovering a rather spacious closet, we stepped inside, and the edgier of the boys closed the door, while wearing a cheeky grin.

I grew characteristically nervous and giddy. It was getting a little hot in there. So, to cut the tension, I blurted in a manner not unseen in Diane Keaton, "Now I know how the Fonz felt."

Don't worry, nothing happened.

Bulletin

Thanks to all those of you who voted some time back, but I have returned to the Land of Blonde-dum, and I couldn't be happier. I look about ten years younger, for one. I can return to wearing all those colors in my wardrobe that went obsolete while I was a brunette, for another.

In other news, Levi constantly smells like maple syrup these days. No idea why. Sometimes I walk into my room and can tell he's been in there, simply because I start thinking about downing a shortstack of pancakes.