I'll give you a topic.

I just came across a site called the Random Poem Idea Generator.  Here are some of the suggestions it gave me:

Boldly advance wrong opinions about eagles saying everything twice but phrased differently

Throw a friendly arm around gophers in a cocktail dress (Are the gophers wearing the cocktail dress or are you?)

Indicate your preference for Michigan entirely in overheard dialogue (This just makes me think of Sufjan Stevens, so I would probably end up inadvertently plagiarizing him.)

Levy taxes on tigers in the form of an invoice (There's a Charlie Sheen joke in there somewhere.)

Plagiarize every line of a poem about the Midwest in the style of Dickinson (Look, I don't condone plagiarism, okay?)

Here is the result.  I sort of combined all the suggestions:

Animals in America

How many gophers to fill out a cocktail dress?
They wear it to sneak up on eagles.
Eagles are cowards.
They should be more like tigers
Attn: Eagles, you owe tiger tax.
What do you think of the Midwest?
Michigan wins America.
And yet he wandered through the heartland alone . . .

(That last line was borrowed from Edward Hirsch's "In the Midwest.")

Who is on the phone?

My dear friend Angela is coming to see me this week all the way from Nashville!  I am so excited and in honor of this, I would like to share a story regarding our similar cases of mistaken phone identities. 

When we were in college, Angela used to get calls in the middle of the night of people asking for Cash, who was apparently also a person or drug dealer or both.  This happened repeatedly until one night she answered and the person on the other line said, "Yo, is this Cash?" and Angela said, no, this is not Cash.  The rest of the conversation was pretty one-sided and went something like this:

"Who is on the phone?  WHO IS ON THE PHONE? (then, to someone else) Man, I don't know who the f*ck I got on the phone."

She has a different number now, but we still laugh about that line.  Then when I moved to LA and changed to a local number, I started getting calls from someone named T-Bone's assistant.  They would always come in during business hours, and at the time I was working a normal office job and could never answer and say it was the wrong number.  But despite the fact that my voicemail stated my full name, this T-Bone person's rather dimwitted assistant always left desperate messages for whoever to call T-Bone back.  Finally one day I got a text from T-Bone himself telling me he was running late for our meeting, and I so wish I had just texted back to ask the address so I could meet this T-Bone in person.  Instead, I texted to tell him he had the wrong number.  That was the end of that.

Fast forward to last night when I was reading US Weekly (hold your judgment), specifically an article about Reese Witherspoon's wedding to CAA agent Jim Toth. (Coincidentally, the office job I was working during the era of T-Bone phone calls was at CAA.)  There I was, mindlessly glancing over details about decor, flowers, and food, when I came across this paragraph:

"Inside, producer T Bone Burnett's pals, rockabilly band the Americans, played during dinner. 'Reese and Jim . . . thanked T Bone for the band.'"

Como what?  I sat up straight.  Somehow, I knew this had to be the same guy.  How many T-Bones or T Bones could there be working in Los Angeles who have frazzled assistants that call about how their boss is late for meetings?  I always assumed T-Bone was some kind of gangsta rapper name, but maybe I wasn't that far off if T Bone apparently is this music producer legend. 

Who is on the phone, indeed.

Excerpt from "California Plush"

The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars

--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep

and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless

without memories, or
need for a past.

-Frank Bidart

Do you agree with number 1?

I like this list that a friend of mine posted of the 100 Greatest Writers of All Time.  Many fantastic poets are included along with some interesting facts and photography.  I like the Saul Bellow photo myself. 

A few excerpts:

Of Ezra Pound:  "Somewhere between the worst person who was a great poet and the greatest poet who was an asshole"

Of Emily Dickinson:  "She is in every poet we read, every word that is written. Even when she is not, she is there, in her lacks."

Of Ovid:  "Invented eroticism."

They call me Slug Savior.

Yesterday morning I woke up and there was a slug on my bathroom floor!  My first reaction was, That is a slug.  My second reaction was, Huh, I guess I'm not that bothered by it.  I mean, slugs are not known for speed.  I had plenty of time to pee and think about the slug situation before I actually had to deal with it.  It was then that I decided I wanted to save it. 

This was new territory for me.  I'll be the first to tell you that I'm a big wuss when it comes to creepy crawlies.  I have genuine arachnophobia.  The very sight of even a fake stuffed Halloween spider sends electric currents down my back.  It's something about the legs that freaks me out.  Ew, just writing about it gives me shivers.  Okay.  Deep breaths.  So whenever the spiders find me--and they always do--my two options are to either drown them in Raid or alert my roommate, who, being the adult person that she is, will calmly handle the situation and take the spider outside to let it live and procreate and GAH GROSS!

Okay, enough with the spiders.  Back to yesterday's slug.  I felt instinctively that since I did not recoil at the sight of it, I was emotionally equipped to handle said slug disposal myself.  I've always had a theory that since leggy insects bothered me, I could handle slithery things like snakes and worms.  This was my chance to prove it. 

My plan of action was to get a piece of paper out of the printer, lay it down on the ground, and wait for the slug to creep its way onto it.  It didn't take as long as you would think.  The slug was actually pretty keen.  Maybe because the piece of paper that I grabbed had a recipe for West African peanut soup on it, I don't know.  Anyway, phase one of slug removal was completed.  Phase two was to transport the slug paper through my bedroom, around my bed, through the hall, through the living room and out the front door.  At first I thought I would wear gloves, but then I realized the thing about slugs is that they will cling to anything for dear life.  Once that became evident, I did not worry about the slug sliding around onto anything, namely me. 

Phase three was to put the slug outside, thereby releasing it into the wild and hopefully saving its life.  This proved slightly more challenging due to the aforementioned slug grip on the paper.  I tried to angle the paper so he would just slither off, but he kind of went into a ball of fear, so I just set the paper down outside the door and figured I'd check back later to see if he was gone.  I then proceeded to accost my roommate in the middle of her getting ready for work with the tale of my heroic slug rescue.  It went something like this:  "Omi, there was a SLUG in my BATHROOM and I saved it!  Me!  I saved it!!!"  Oh, the humility. 

She was suitably impressed and wrinkled her nose at the prospect of the slug in the apartment.  She, Savior of Spiders, is not so much a fan of the leg-lacking creepies.  I told her I put the slug outside.  She opened the door to go to work and saw the paper.  Omi:  "Why is there a recipe outside our door . . . OH.  EW!"

We are a great team, don't you think?

Wild Gratitude

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In everyone of the splintered London streets,

And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.

This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
"And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,

And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey's waggling mouth
That I remembered how he'd called Jeoffry "the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,"
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn't until I saw my own cat

Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, "a creature of great personal valour,"
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.

And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.

-Edward Hirsch

Poetry meet art. Art, poetry.

My dear friend Angela is coming to visit me in a couple weeks!  I'm so excited to see her, it made me open a box of pictures that she had drawn for me one birthday.  More than a few years ago, she illustrated some of my poems as a gift, and I had them framed and hanging on my wall in my old apartment.  Since The Great Move of 2010, I haven't put them back up yet.  I was trying to figure out why and I wonder if it's because I don't want to commit that much to this new place.  I like the apartment okay, but it's just a place to live, not a home like the last one.  Possibly this is because I haven't put up any pictures.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take photos of her artwork and post them here.  At least I'll feel at home on my blog.

This one accompanies a poem written about a trip to Venice I took with my family.  It's called "A Native's Dream":

 

This one is "Through the Keyhole," written at a particularly angsty time in college:

 

I realize it might be hard to read, which makes me thankful for my shoddy photographic skills.

And finally this one you might be familiar with already:

 

 

A Native's Dream

Rain ruined my first impression 

of Saint Mark's Square, flooded

enough to force people to balance, elevated

on wooden boards while we sought refuge

in the cathedral, guarded 

by bronze horses,

with my father, quite taken 

by the mosaic tile floors

slanting toward the altar.

"How long do you suppose," 

he asked, head bowed, 

"it took them to piece this place together?" 

I forgot to answer

in awe of those flashing cameras.

We struck out again into December

toward jade-colored waves that spilled over

concrete docks on the Grand Canal.  

Gondoliers stood in the wet drops like needles

and called to us, offering

special deals "for only today."

One young man in a black cap promised

in exchange for 80,000 lira

to wipe down the vinyl seats on his gondola himself.

My father agreed, making his familiar declaration

that this was "his city" because he came from

a full line of Venetians with trademark blue eyes, dark hair.

Our guide squinted his brown eyes and held out his hand.

We sat rocking in the boat under our huge umbrella,

the young man at the helm like a tired god

informing us that he was also a fireman.  Luca 

told my father how one could only be a gondolier

if he father was, and his father before him.  

As we passed under the Bridge of Sighs, 

the trail of my fingers swirled the canal like marble.

I'm like that guy who wrote a love letter about his typewriter except about food.

Yesterday I gave a pasta-making demonstration to some people I work for.  I was kind of nervous about it because I wanted to show them how to use their hands to mix the dough and not a food processor, which is something I've only done once but I think it tastes better.  Yeah, I probably should have practiced, but I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal.  Instead I went with talking about the process of making pasta and putting off actually making it for as long as possible.  I figured maybe they would forget why I was there?  I don't know.  Anyway, it didn't work, and while they were looking at me expectantly I took the first step and measured out the flour.  It's funny how something so simple can calm you down.  Measuring flour I know.  Cracking eggs?  Old hat.  Next came the tricky part of incorporating one into the other.  You make a "well" and sort of pinch the flour into the eggs.  As I was doing that I realized that I needed to be explaining as I went along.  One of the people got out a video camera.  My very own cooking show!

The thing about pasta as I've said before, is that it's not difficult to make really.  It just takes a lot of time and upper body strength.  Maybe I was more anxious about that last part, but as you knead the dough you think, wow I'm really earning this meal!  And the great thing about teaching is that if you show them how to do it once, you can make the students do the rest of the work. 

One of my "students" made an excellent point about the process of learning from a *cough cough* expert in a craft.  It's a shared experience doesn't happen often enough these days.  People teach themselves how to do things all the time using the internet or TV, but when another person takes the time to show you something, then you will always associate them with that process.  What a nice idea.

All in all, we came out with two great batches of fresh pasta, one of which we ate for lunch.  As the Barefoot Contessa would say,"How bad can that be?"

You Begin

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

-Margaret Atwood

The error of my Wei

I was trying to find a poem I remembered reading a long time ago by the Chinese poet Wang Wei.  The teacher who introduced him to me used to pronounce his name as if it sounded like "wrong way," which she thought was hilarious.  It's been maybe 12 years since I last saw the poem, but the imagery struck me at the time.  I even recall copying it into a notebook.  I don't know where the notebook is now- probably rotting in a box full of angst-ridden verses- but I think this was it:

Stopping at Incense Storing Temple

I did not know the incense storing temple,
I walked a few miles into the clouded peaks.
No man on the path between the ancient trees,
A bell rang somewhere deep among the hills.
A spring sounded choked, running down steep rocks,
The green pines chilled the sunlight's colored rays.
Come dusk, at the bend of a deserted pool,
Through meditation I controlled passion's dragon.

Maybe it was the bell that got me.  You all know I love a good bell ringing.  Looking at this poem now, though, it's just not living up to the impression I had of it.  Luckily, I stumbled onto the writings of the lovely Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu, which cheered me up.  Despite lacking the heterography of Mr. Wang's name, I find her delightful. 

Here's one for the people of Japan right now.  Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

“Although the wind ...”

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

It's probably a good thing I'm no longer a copy editor.

Some days I feel like my brain just doesn't have time for my crap, so it makes up its own shortcuts when I'm writing.  For instance, as I typed that last sentence it decided that combining the words "my" and "brain" would be easier, so I typed "I feel like by just doesn't have time." 

And sometimes my brain decides that the word "of" would look prettier with a "v" like this: ov.  It was funny the first few times in college, brain, but now not so much when I have to correct all my emails. 

What really concerns me are the days when my brain thinks with an accent.  Like when I had to write the word "wives" yesterday and it came out "woives."  That's not a typo.  I'm actually thinking "woives."  What is that, cockney?  I like England, too, brain, but no one understands your dialect.   

I get the idea of thinking phonetically when you're just learning a language, but words like "of" should not be tripping me up at this point in my life.  Is this some kind of latent disorder that's emerging or am I just really tired?


The Local Language

The way she puts her fingers to his chest when she greets him.

The way an old man quiets himself,

or that another man waits, and waits a long time, before speaking.

It’s in the gaze that steadies, a music

he grows into—something about

Mexico, I imagine, how he first learned about light there.

It’s in the blank face of every child,

a water that stands still amid the swirling current,

water breaking apart as it leaves the cliff and falls forever

through its own, magnificent window.

The way a young woman holds out a cupped hand, and doves come to her.

The way a man storms down the street as if to throw open every door.

And the word she mouths to herself as she looks up from her book—for

that word, as she repeats it,

repeats it.

 

- Ralph Angel

Fat Tuesday

My freshman year of college we were trying to decide what to do for spring break.  My friend pointed out that it just happened to fall on the week of Mardi Gras.  We were at school in Memphis:  what if- and she was just throwing this out there- what if we drove down to New Orleans to see what it's all about?  It's about an eight hour drive.  So we did it, the two of us and another friend.

To this day I have no idea how we got a room at the last minute in the center of town.  We could walk to Bourbon Street and see all the festivities.  This was pre-Katrina.  There were random parades happening all the time.  It's all kind of a blur to me, not because I was wasted the whole time but because there was so much going on.  I wish I could go back now and do it over because for some reason we were eating at places like the Hard Rock Cafe and not really taking advantage of the culture down there.  Everywhere there was music.  The whole city was one big party.

There was this one store we went into that had a song playing that I loved immediately.  It was what could only be described as zydecajun music.  This was around the time of the dawn of Napster.  As soon as we got back to school, I tried to find this song and download it.  Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found.  It has haunted me for years, and sometimes I wonder if the internet had been too young or if I just didn't have enough information to find it.  Guess the only thing to do is to take another trip to New Orleans and retrace my steps, hoping that that same store is there, still playing that same old CD.

Slim Greer in Hell 

by Sterling A. Brown

I
 
Slim Greer went to heaven;
St. Peter said, "Slim,
You been a right good boy."
An' he winked at him.

"You been travelin' rascal
In yo'day.
You kin roam once mo';
Den you come to stay.

"Put dese wings on yo' shoulders,
An' save yo' feet."
Slim grin, and he speak up,
"Thankye, Pete."

Den Peter say, "Go
To Hell an' see,
All dat is doing, and
Report to me.

"Be sure to remember
How everything go."
Slim say, "I be seein' yuh
On de late watch, bo."

Slim got to cavortin'
Swell as you choose,
Like Lindy in de Spirit
Of St. Louis Blues.

He flew an' he flew,
Till at last he hit
A hangar wid de sign readin'
DIS IS IT.

Den he parked his wings,
An' strolled aroun',
Gittin' used to his feet
On de solid ground.

II

Big bloodhound came aroarin'
Like Niagry Falls,
Sicked on by white devils
In overhalls.

Now Slim warn't scared
Cross my heart, it's a fac',
An de dog went on a bayin'
Some po' devil's track.

Den Slim saw a mansion
An' walked right in;
De Devil looked up
Wid a sickly grin.

"Suttingly didn't look
Fo' you, Mr. Greer,
How it happens you comes
To visit here?"

Slim say---"Oh, jes' thought
I'd drop by a spell."
"Feel at home, seh, an' here's
De keys to hell."

Den he took Slim around
An' showed him people
Rasin' hell as high as
De first Church Steeple.

Lots of folks fightin'
At de roulette wheel,
Like old Rampart Street,
Or leastwise Beale.

Showed him bawdy houses
An' cabarets,
Slim thought of New Orleans
An' Memphis days.

Each devil was busy
Wid a devlish broad,
An' Slim cried, "Lawdy,
Lawd, Lawd, Lawd."

Took him in a room
Where Slim see
De preacher wid a brownskin
On each knee.

Showed him giant stills,
Going everywhere,
Wid a passel of devils
Stretched dead drunk there.

Den he took him to de furnace
Dat some devils was firing,
Hot as Hell, an' Slim start
A mean presspirin'.

White devils with pitchforks
Threw black devils on,
Slim thought he'd better
Be gittin' along.

An' he says---"Dis makes
Me think of home---
Vicksburg, Little Rock, Jackson,
Waco and Rome."

Den de devil gave Slim
De big Ha-Ha;
An' turned into a cracker,
Wid a sheriff's star.

Slim ran fo' his wings,
Lit out from de groun'
Hauled it back to St. Peter,
Safety boun'.

III

St. Peter said, "Well,
You got back quick.
How's de devil? An' what's
His latest trick?"

An' Slim Say, "Peter,
I really cain't tell,
The place was Dixie
That I took for hell."

Then Peter say, "you must
Be crazy, I vow,
Where'n hell dja think Hell was,
Anyhow?

"Git on back to de yearth,
Cause I got de fear,
You'se a leetle too dumb,
Fo' to stay up here. . ."

"I'm going to the nut shop where it's fun!"

So there's this grocery store in my neighborhood.  I used to drive past it every morning when I worked in Century City.  It's on a stretch of Pico Blvd. that houses mostly kosher shops and restaurants.  It also happens to be next to an establishment called the Nut House, which is I think what captured my attention in the first place.  Also, the Nut House looks like this:

Nuts, candy, ice cream and wine???  This place must be heaven.  And it always makes me think of You've Got Mail when Steve Zahn's character says, "This place is a tomb.  I'm going to the nut shop where it's fun."  For years I've wondered, what nut shop?  Why is it fun?  What do they do there? I guess this would be the answer.

Anyway, it's really the grocery store next to the Nut House that has intrigued me for a while.  The grocery is called Elat Market.  It was rumored to be this magical land full of the freshest of fresh and the cheapest of cheap produce and meats.  It supposedly housed all sorts of Middle Eastern delights and spices.  I'd read about it on food blogs.  I'd stalked its page on Yelp.  And now that I live about 5 blocks away from it, you might ask why I haven't ventured in yet.  Well, just like every hero must have a weakness, this shop supposedly has crowds of cutthroat old ladies with big carts.  I'd read horror stories of people stealing out of each other's carts, arguments erupting in Farsi, and customers elbowing each other in the face over iceberg lettuce.  Let's just say I've been psyching myself up to visit for a lonnnnng time. 

Suddenly, my intrepid roommate decided that today was the day that she would venture to the Elat Market.  She returned about 45 minutes later, eyes wide and veins pulsing with bloodlust.  No, I'm just kidding.  She loved it.  She took a detour to the Nut House and made friends with Amir who worked there.  Then she skipped into Elat and bought sugarplums.  I'm not even kidding.  In case you needed further proof:  Coward = Me.

A Poem, on the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant-Maid

The tea-kettle bubbled, the tea things were set,
The candles were lighted, the ladies were met;
The how d’ye’s were over, and entering bustle,
The company seated, and silks ceased to rustle:
The great Mrs. Consequence opened her fan,
And thus the discourse in an instant began
(All affected reserve and formality scorning):
“I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning
A volume of Poems advertised—’tis said
They’re produced by the pen of a poor servant-maid.”
“A servant write verses!” says Madam Du Bloom:
“Pray what is the subject—a Mop, or a Broom?”
“He, he, he,” says Miss Flounce: “I suppose we shall see
An ode on a Dishclout—what else can it be?”
Says Miss Coquettilla, “Why, ladies, so tart?
Perhaps Tom the footman has fired her heart;
And she’ll tell us how charming he looks in new clothes,
And how nimble his hand moves in brushing the shoes;
Or how, the last time that he went to May Fair,
He bought her some sweethearts of gingerbread ware.”
“For my part I think,” says old Lady Marr-joy,
“A servant might find herself other employ:
Was she mine I’d employ her as long as ’twas light,
And send her to bed without candle at night.”
“Why so?” says Miss Rhymer, displeased: “I protest
’Tis pity a genius should be so depressed!”
“What ideas can such low-bred creatures conceive?”
Says Mrs. Noworthy, and laughed in her sleeve.
Says old Miss Prudella, “If servants can tell
How to write to their mothers, to say they are well,
And read of a Sunday The Duty of Man,
Which is more I believe than one half of them can;
I think ’tis much properer they should rest there,
Than be reaching at things so much out of their sphere.”
Says old Mrs. Candour, “I’ve now got a maid
That’s the plague of my life—a young gossiping jade;
There’s no end of the people that after her come,
And whenever I’m out, she is never at home;
I’d rather ten times she would sit down and write,
Than gossip all over the town every night.”
“Some whimsical trollop most like,” says Miss Prim,
“Has been scribbling of nonsense, just out of a whim,
And, conscious it neither is witty nor pretty,
Conceals her true name, and ascribes it to Betty.”
“I once had a servant myself,” says Miss Pines,
“That wrote on a wedding some very good lines.”
Says Mrs. Domestic, “And when they were done,
I can’t see for my part what use they were on;
Had she wrote a receipt, to’ve instructed you how
To warm a cold breast of veal, like a ragout,
Or to make cowslip wine, that would pass for Champagne,
It might have been useful, again and again.”
On the sofa was old Lady Pedigree placed;
She owned that for poetry she had no taste,
That the study of heraldry was more in fashion,
And boasted she knew all the crests in the nation.
Says Mrs. Routella, “Tom, take out the urn,
And stir up the fire, you see it don’t burn.”
The tea-things removed, and the tea-table gone,
The card-tables brought, and the cards laid thereon,
The ladies, ambitious for each other’s crown,
Like courtiers contending for honours, sat down.

-Elizabeth Hands

bgbm

So my roommate and I decided that Oscar weekend was the perfect time to venture out and see a film that received only a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  That film was The Roommate.  While we love bad movies, it's not often that we pay to see them in theaters.  Usually we and some other friends relegate them to something called bgbm.  The "bgbm" stands for "bad girls, bad movies" and while I'm still a little unclear about the bad girls part (maybe because we make rude comments?), the bad movies began in 2007 with 50 First Dates and have gone on to include It's Alive, The Room, I Know Who Killed Me, Troll 2, Gymkata, Leprechaun 5: In the Hood, and even one called The Oscar.

Some were not so bad (Death to Smoochy, Spice World).  Others were so terrible they could only be categorized as mind-numbingly dull and not even worth making fun of (*cough Glitter cough*).  And yet others were remarkable because of the discovery of people who are famous now but at one time were attached to schlock like this (google The Apple and Nigel Lythgoe).

While we're on the subject of bad movies, might I also suggest that there is a fourth category which could be labeled "Movies I Am Ashamed to Admit I Love"?  These are movies that I acknowledge are not paragons of cinema, yet every time they are on TV I have to watch or record them.  You could also call it Jurassic Park Syndrome, but that movie is EXCELLENT.

For me, probably the best example of MIAATAIL would be Where the Heart Is.  That movie . . . where do I even begin?  It has everything:  an all-star cast, babies born in Wal-mart, tornadoes, kidnapping, children named after snack foods, bad southern accents, librarian alcoholism, deadbeat dads getting hit by trains . . . and I love it.  It fascinates me.  I will never get tired of watching this movie.  The only reason I would ever change the channel when it's on is if my roommate walks into the room, and even then I usually make her watch about 10 minutes of it, depending on if Natalie Portman had the Wal-mart baby yet.

So there you have it.  If you, too, would like to start your own bgbm (or bbbm), email me and I'll give you a starter list of movies free of charge.

Oh and hey!  Today is Dr. Seuss's birthday!  Enjoy:

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons, and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one, and calls out “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!
This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn.
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate…
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.

A bit of a downer, frankly

I wanted to share this poem by W. H. Auden.  You might recognize him as the author of the poem John Hannah recited in Four Weddings and a Funeral.  This one caught my eye on one of the poetry sites I frequent- sometimes they post an excerpt of a classic to lure people in on the home page.  But as I was reading through it, it really struck me today.  You know the phrase "arresting image"?  It's something that makes you stop what you're doing and pay attention.  That's how I feel about the following passage:

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

Here is the poem in its entirety.  Maybe it will strike you, too.

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

In the category of Seussical impressions regarding grammatics . . .

this email from September 2005 wins first prize.  I was once again doing a random search through my inbox archives (shut up, it's my thing) and was delighted to see how the following poem evolved. 

It came at a time when I had just started working for a publisher in Washington, DC.  As an editorial assistant, I was tasked with bathing copy in red ink before it went to press.  The rest of the time I spent emailing with my dear friend Angela in Chicago.  We were both feeling like lone reeds ("standing tall, waving boldly, in the corrupt sands of commerce") and so would cheer each other up with silly back-and-forths about nothing.

This was the observation she made to me that day:

"I think all those years of not capitalizing things is trying to make up for lost time. I keep inadvertently capitalizing random words in the middle of sentences. I feel German or something..."

To which I replied:

"I'm so proud of your turning of the proverbial capitalization new leaf.  Wow, if any of my old professors would have read that last sentence, I shudder to think of the amount of red ink that would have been spilled in the writing of 'awkward phrasing'."

 

That last bit put me in Dr. Seuss mode, which then resulted in the following limerick I sent back to her:

 

Upon penning the most jumbled of phrases,

I awoke from the most dazed of hazes.

I shuddered to think of the amount of red ink

to be lost in my grammatical mazes.

 

Coincidentally, this poem also wins first prize in the category of Nerdiest Limerick Ever.

The power of the internets

Well, this is the one hundredth post on this blog.  It seemed kind of momentous to me, so I wanted to wait until I had something spectacular to say before I got around to writing it.  Luckily, something spectacular happened yesterday.

Maybe you'll remember a few months back when I wrote about receiving someone else's subscription to Entertainment Weekly magazine?  That person was named Marcus Mungiole.  I was wondering why we were receiving his magazine every week, suddenly, after living in that apartment for 3 1/2 years.  I gave him the old half-hearted Google search, which turned up nothing, so that was that.  Well, whom should I get an email from this weekend but Mr. Mungiole himself! 

It seems he stumbled upon the post I wrote about him, and it made him laugh.  I couldn't believe it!  Fortunately, he was not upset about the fact that I went on and on questioning his identity for three paragraphs.  He verified that he was a previous tenant in our old apartment about 10 years ago, and would you believe that the SAME harpy neighbor was yelling at him even way back then?  Amazing!  So Marcus and I are now email buddies, and he was kind enough to forgive me for not following through with my promise to turn over back issues of his magazines since they were recycled during The Great Move of 2010.

That, my friends, is the power of the internets!  And in honor of this auspicious occasion, I would like to leave you with one of my favorite poems.  You all know it- just be impressed I was able to refrain from posting it this long.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Dead presidents, frozen cavemen, and frozen coke

I'm excited about this weekend because a friend of mine that I've known since 8th grade (!) is coming to see me.  I don't think I've seen her in about eight or nine years, but I have no doubt we'll pick up right where we left off.  To quote what she wrote about her upcoming visit on her blog,

"we're planning to re-visit 8th grade, which means lots of frozen coke, popcorn, face cream, nail polish, and of course watching our favorite movie from that time, Encino Man. We'll probably use phrases you won't remember like "Owwwww Buddddy" and "Weeze the Jui-uice."

Well said, April!  And then she posted an 8th grade picture.  I won't do that.  I'll just post this senior year pic instead:

In other news, my dad complained that I was including too much "contemporary poetry crap" on here, so here's an oldie but a goodie (just like you, Dad).

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

It might have been okay, but then they released Hanson.

When I was running errands yesterday, I had my iPod plugged in in my car and the windows down.  I don't know why there's something exhilarating about doing that, whether it's blasting your favorite song or exorcising road rage with something bass-heavy and angry.  It reminded me of a time before I got my driver's license. 

I was one of the youngest people in my class so all my friends were already riding around, proclaiming their love for Dave Matthews by turning up Under the Table and Dreaming as they peeled out of the school parking lot.  Of course we had fun driving around town together, but I longed for control of the wheel.  I wanted to blast Jagged Little Pill whether I was with friends or not!  My greatest teenage fear at that time was that there would be no more good songs to play by the time I got my license.  Literally, the music world would run out of material and I would be left to play the same old Gin Blossoms on repeat for the rest of my life.  How tragic to lose the joy of driving before I even had it.

Well, duh, that didn't happen.  I am happy to report that musicians have not given up the passion to create, that there are yet thousands of chord combinations to be discovered.  And I still listen to some of those '90s songs with the volume turned up because nostalgia is an excellent passenger.

Three Teenage Girls: 1956

Three teenage girls in tight red sleeveless blouses and black Capri pants   

And colorful headscarves secured in a knot to their chins   

Are walking down the hill, chatting, laughing,   

Cupping their cigarettes against the light rain,   

The closest to the road with her left thumb stuck out   

Not looking at the cars going past.   

Every Friday night to the dance, and wet or dry   

They get where they’re going, walk two miles or get a ride,   

And now the two-door 1950 Dodge, dark green   

Darkening as evening falls, stops, they nudge   

Each other, peer in, shrug, two scramble into the back seat,   

And the third, the boldest, famous   

For twice running away from home, slides in front with the man   

Who reaches across her body and pulls the door shut.

 

-Steve Orlen

Valentine's Day: brought to you by angst

The Look

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.

-Sara Teasdale
(yet another poet who killed herself)

When I was little, I wanted to live in a tree.

That still sounds like a pretty good option.  Mainly, I'm wondering if this is the only way to avoid aggressively crazy neighbors.  Before it was the harpy woman; now it's the pushy dog lady.  Always it's the long-term renters who've been around for the better part of a decade. 

Dog Lady seemed all right to begin with.  I mean, she had a dog.  I love dogs.  She offered to let us play with it any time we want.  Fun, great.  What I didn't realize was that by saying I like dogs I was agreeing to a verbal contract to somehow be responsible for the dog when she's not around.  She gave us a set of her keys.  Naively, I assumed she was just asking us to be good neighbors and keep an eye on her place, keep a set of keys in case anything ever happened.  Then the phone calls started.  The day I was waiting for the cable guy to show up and install service, Dog Lady called me and asked if I had her dog.  I said no, and she got all huffy saying, "I thought you were going to take him."  Well, I explained that the cable man had just arrived and I didn't think it would be a good idea to have the dog running around while he's trying to install things.  That seemed to calm her.  I later felt guilty (why??) and played with the dog in the afternoon.  After that it turned into a game of surprise, here's my dog! 

Whenever my roommate or I got home and were standing there unlocking our door, her dog would be barking and going nuts.  (It's one of those little white yippy dogs.)  So Dog Lady yells out, "Who's that? Is that Omi?"  And she would open her door, which is across from ours, and send the dog out.  She coaxes it saying, "Go on, Baby, go see the girls."  Then she shuts her door and yells for us to send him back when we're done.  The dog is so badly trained, he bolts into our apartment and jumps on the couch. 

Now it's gotten to the point where both my roommate and I park on the street as often as possible so it doesn't look like we're home.  We have done speed tests to see how quickly we can unlock the front door.  We keep the drapes drawn and pretty much hide out when we're here.  I make sure to be out when she pops home for lunch every day.  I'm not proud of this.  I know I should confront this woman, but we've only been here about a month and a half and I didn't want to cause trouble right off the bat like we did with the harpy neighbor.  But I know I need to give her her keys back and tell her I can't worry about her dog. 

. . . Or do I?  Yesterday something interesting happened.  I was working at the dining room table and Dog Lady arrived back early for lunch.  Damn, I thought.  I was in the middle of doing laundry and now she was going to know I was home.  But then something amazing happened.  I heard the building manager outside (let's call her Rose) and Dog Lady said to her, "Rose, I think your son wants me out of the building."  Dog Lady was spitting nails she was so mad.  Rose's son is our landlord.  Rose said something I couldn't make out.  Then Dog Lady (whose nasal voice carries like a smoke alarm) said that the landlord had sent her an email saying he was going to take action with an attorney.  Something about her not paying rent on time!  Then Rose said something about the "young people" being able to do it, and Dog Lady replied, "Well, I told him I can only do what I can do."  Then I heard a door slam and the dog was barking his head off and the gardeners were working so that was the end of that. 

So maybe she won't be our neighbor much longer?  I know that's a pretty terrible thing to hope for.  I don't wish her ill or anything but having the issue resolve itself would be fantastic.  (Yes, I am a coward.)

In the Waiting Room

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
--"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice--
not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher--
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities--
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts--
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How--I didn't know any
word for it--how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.

-Elizabeth Bishop

Too bad I look stupid in hats.

This is the third comb I've broken trying to get it through my wet hair in the shower.  Yes, I have a lot of hair, but this is ridiculous.  I honestly think the hair is fighting back.  Do I really need to buy a special metal tool to tame this beast?  To give you a visual, if left to its own devices my hair would balloon and drape itself around my head, emulating Cousin It.  How I long for the type of bone structure that would be flattered by a pixie cut.

I once was assigned to write a self-portrait poem in college, and the only thing I can remember is the first line:  "All I am is hair."  Not much has changed, but I wonder where that poem is now. 

Anyway, I'm off to buy a comb.

Haircut

I get off the IRT in front of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after riding an early Amtrak from Philly to get a hair cut at what used to be the Harlem "Y" barbershop. It gets me in at ten to ten. Waiting, I eat fish cakes at the Pam Pam and listen to the ladies call out orders: bacon-biscuit twice, scrambled scrambled fried, over easy, grits, country sausage on the side. Hugh is late. He shampoos me, says "I can't remember, Girlfriend, are you tender-headed?" From the chair I notice the mural behind me in the mirror. I know those overlapped sepia shadows, a Renaissance rainforest, Aaron Douglas! Hugh tells me he didn't use primer and the chlorine eats the colors every day. He clips and combs and I tell him how my favorite Douglas is called "Building More Stately Mansions," and he tells me how fly I'd look in a Salt 'n' Pepa 'do, how he trained in Japan.

Clip clip, clip clip. I imagine a whoosh each time my hair lands on the floor and the noises of small brown mammals. I remember, my father! He used to get his hair cut here, learned to swim in the caustic water, played pool and basketball. He cuts his own hair now. My grandfather worked seventy-five years in Harlem building more stately mansions. I was born two blocks away and then we moved.

None of that seems to relate to today. This is not my turf, despite the other grandfather and great-aunt who sewed hearts back into black chests after Saturday night stabbings on this exact corner, the great-uncle who made a mosaic down the street, both grandmothers. What am I always listening for in Harlem? A voice that says, "This is your place, too," as faintly as the shadows in the mural? The accents are unfamiliar; all my New York kin are dead. I never knew Fats Waller but what do I do with knowing he used to play with a ham and a bottle of gin atop his piano; never went to Olivia's House of Beauty but I know Olivia, who lives in St. Thomas, now, and who exactly am I, anyway, finding myself in these ghostly, Douglas shadows while real ghosts walk around me, talk about my stuff in the subway, yell at me not to butt the line, beg me, beg me, for my money?

What is black culture? I read the writing on the wall on the side of the "Y" as I always have: "Harlem Plays the Best Ball in the World." I look in the mirror and see my face in the mural with a new haircut. I am a New York girl; I am a New York woman; I am a flygirl with a new hair cut in New York City in a mural that is dying every day.

-Elizabeth Alexander

I'm a little worried that I mentioned babies so much, but then again I also mentioned cheese.

What a jam-packed weekend that was!  I'm still in the process of recovering, as is my roommate's car after I accidentally hit it Friday night.  No damage done, although for a second I thought I hit it hard enough to make the trunk pop open (I didn't).  Sorry, Omi.  That's what happens after a wild and crazy game of Wits 'n Wagers.  Have you ever heard of this game?  It's Trivial Pursuit meets gambling.  Everyone writes down their answers to a question and then we put the answers on a board with the odds laid out on them (3-1, 2-1, etc.) and then you place chips on the answer you think is correct, even if it's not your own.  I'm pretty terrible at it.  The questions are all something like, "What's the average amount of pizza slices American children eat in a year?" One of my friends actually wrote down the exact number, but failed to bet on her answer.  It's 46, in case you were wondering.

Saturday I went to help out at my church's ladies' Valentine's tea.  I'll admit I was kind of more excited about all the food we were preparing than the tea itself, but the actual event turned out to be so fun.  There were all these older ladies recounting the travels of their youth.  Many of them had been flight attendants for TWA and had some great stories.  The woman who was hosting the party is 90 years old!  She was sharp as a tack.  She told us about the history of her beautiful home, which she has lived in since 1958.  She and her husband made plans to build the house, but he was called up to fight in Korea (after already serving in WWII!).  So she built the house while he was gone and also gave birth to his son in the meantime.  Her husband returned 13 months later to a new house and a new baby.  What an awesome lady. 

And yesterday of course was the Superbowl.  I was a lone Steelers fan in a room full of Cheeseheads, which made things pretty exciting.  I mean, we're talking people who actually import cheddar from Wisconsin for events such as this.  I'm not really a diehard Steelers fan at all, but since my grandma the avid sports watcher had me following their run-up to the Superbowl, I figured I should go with them.  Ah well, it was a great game. What wasn't great?  Those stupid talking babies commercials.  When will they end that campaign?  I am seriously creeped out by them, but I guess I'm in the minority.  It's just me and Lindsay Lohan hating on the E-Trade babies.

Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things to Worry About

My pants could maybe fall down when I dive off the diving board.
My nose could maybe keep growing and never quit.
Miss Brearly could ask me to spell words like stomach and special.
(Stumick and speshul?)
I could play tag all day and always be "it."
Jay Spievack, who's fourteen feet tall, could want to fight me.
My mom and my dad--like Ted's--could want a divorce.
Miss Brearly could ask me a question about Afghanistan.
(Who's Afghanistan?)
Somebody maybe could make me ride a horse.
My mother could maybe decide that I needed more liver.
My dad could decide that I needed less TV.
Miss Brearly could say that I have to write script and stop printing.
(I'm better at printing.)
Chris could decide to stop being friends with me.

The world could maybe come to an end on next Tuesday.
The ceiling could maybe come crashing on my head.
I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about.
And then I'd have to do my homework instead.

-Judith Viorst

Today's poem brought to you by wine

You thought I was going to be drunk when I wrote this, right?  Well, I'm not (yet).  Thanks to @pxie, I was alerted to a contest in which a Napa winery called Poem Cellars has issued a call for poetry submissions.  Apparently, they include a haiku or a limerick on every cork of their bottled wine that goes out.  Until February 5th they will be taking submissions for their 2009 Napa Valley Red Wine.  The two poets chosen will receive a case of wine!  Go here for more details and to submit.

Of course I couldn't back down from the challenge due to the free wine and all.  Here are a few entries I submitted.  I dare say a glass of wine might have made an improvement.

Let us open a bottle of wine
and toast to the birth and decline
of relationships past,
present, future, and last
'til we no longer walk a straight line.

Here's to the vineyard
and the grapes she produced;
here's to the winery
for improving the juice.

And this one I just plain ripped off of Neil Diamond:

Sweet glass of wine,
good times never seemed
this good.

Hmm . . .  maybe I am drunk.

What's the opposite of a tapeworm?

Because that's what I had for the last week or so. I had some sort of stomach bug that wasn't letting me keep food down, so while the down side was not being able to eat, the plus side was an automatic diet. Just when I was getting used to having applesauce as a meal, my boss made me a plate of roast chicken and vegetables and very sweetly told me to eat it for lunch today. Lo and behold, I discovered that I am back in business, baby.  Hallelujah.

Now, does anyone know where I can buy a tapeworm?

Trust

Trust that there is a tiger, muscular

Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been

seen and never will be seen by any human

eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-

fish will never near a ship, that far

from cameras or cars elephant herds live

long elephant lives. Believe that bees

by the billions find unidentified flowers

on unmapped marshes and mountains. Safe

in caves of contentment, bears sleep.

Through vast canyons, horses run while slowly

snakes stretch beyond their skins in the sun.

I must trust all this to be true, though

the few birds at my feeder watch the window

with small flutters of fear, so like my own.

-Susan Kinsolving

Have a think.

I once read a blog where the writer posted about her husband lying down to have a think.  That image really struck me.  Who takes time out of their day to do that?  But then I thought it would be kind of nice to just lie on the bed or the couch and think about things.  It makes you slow down, maybe appreciate the good stuff in life.  Maybe it gives you a chance to work out a problem.  Well, lately I've caught myself actually putting the "have a think" into practice. 

I tend to read in bed before I go to sleep.  It usually calms my brain or, when presented with more boring material, actually makes me sleepy.  I noticed that sometimes my mind will start to wander to other things, especially if I'm particularly worried about something- to the point where 20 minutes later I find that the book has actually slipped and rests on my chest and I'm just staring at the wall straight ahead.  Now that's just silly.  Why not eliminate the middle-man and just go straight for the think?  So I did.  I got ready for bed and then caught myself reaching for the book on the nightstand.  I stopped.  Not that I wasn't into the book, but I've had a couple bouts with insomnia the last few nights because I've had a lot on my mind.  I figured, instead of just lying there in the dark cursing the sandman for skipping my house, why not get the thinking out of the way?  So I got comfortable, and I let my mind go and I thought and thought until an hour or so went by.  I still wasn't sleepy, but somehow it was helping.  It actually was kind of nice.  Maybe some people call that meditation or praying.  To me, that's something else.  I just call it having a think.

Psychoanalysis:  An Elegy

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.

I am thinking of wet hills in the rain

Pouring water. Shedding it

Down empty acres of oak and manzanita

Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,

Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.

Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana

Driving the hills crazy,

A fast wind with a bit of dust in it

Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.

Or down in the city where the peach trees

Are awkward as young horses,

And there are kites caught on the wires

Up above the street lamps,

And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer

As slow getting started

As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza

After a lot of unusual rain

California seems long in the summer.

I would like to write a poem as long as California

And as slow as a summer.

Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow

As the very tip of summer.

As slow as the summer seems

On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside

Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road

Between Bakersfield and Hell

Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now?

I’m thinking that she is very much like California.

When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways

Traveling up and down her skin

Long empty highways

With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them

On hot summer nights.

I am thinking that her body could be California

And I a rich Eastern tourist

Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas

Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California

That I have never seen.

Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,

Send them.

One of each breast photographed looking

Like curious national monuments,

One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway

Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging

In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?

I am thinking of how many times this poem

Will be repeated. How many summers

Will torture California

Until the damned maps burn

Until the mad cartographer

Falls to the ground and possesses

The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

 

-Jack Spicer

The human condition

I have to dedicate a post to my roommate, who, upon hearing I was feeling under the weather, took it upon herself to learn how to make fresh ginger tea.  It is seriously the best thing in the world.  It tastes a little like ginger ale but with more bite.  Plus it's hot.  And there's lemon in it.  So, thanks, Omaira Galarza.  Now I'm not so scared to go see The Roommate with you.

I asked Omi what kind of poem she would like dedicated to her today.  She said something about the beach.  Then I found this poem and we both had a good chuckle over it:

The Beach in August

The day the fat woman

In the bright blue bathing suit

Walked into the water and died,

I thought about the human

Condition. Pieces of old fruit

Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human

Condition was this: old fruit

Comes in and is left, and dries

In the sun. Another fat woman

In a dull green bathing suit

Dives into the water and dies.

The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun

While the seascape arranges old fruit,

Coming in and the tide, glistening

At noon. A woman, moderately stout,

In a nondescript bathing suit,

Swims to a pier. A tall woman

Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human

Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

-Weldon Kees*

*Note the last line in his bio: " It is not known whether he killed himself or went to Mexico."  Omi thinks he went to Mexico to lay out on the beach.

That'll teach me to avoid the whites.

Today I finally found the jeans I've been looking for!  And no, I wasn't shopping.  I had ordered 2 pairs of jeans off of a Groupon deal at the end of November.  I was pretty excited about them since they ended up being only $24 each, and I got in on the deal right before it expired.  The jeans took about a week to ship, but during that week we moved apartments and I went out of town.  My poor roommate was overwhelmed with everything going on, and, though she did tell me the jeans had arrived, she stashed them someplace so secure and secret that neither of us could figure out where they were once we started unpacking from the move.

Cut to: almost two months later.  Pretty much all the boxes have been unpacked.  The only ones left are the ones from the garage that are stacked in a storage closet.  I figured once I tackled those, surely I'd find the missing jeans package.  There was no where else to look!  So I thought.

Today I decided would be a good day to get some laundry done.  I was home when no one else in the building was, which meant no fighting over the one and only washer and dryer.  I was so optimistic about the amount of laundry I could do that I even tackled a load of whites.  I hate doing the whites because they're made up of a lot of little things like washcloths and socks and they're a pain to fold up and put away.  I'll usually do three loads of darks and towels before I'll get around to the dreaded whites.  Anyway, I schlepped my linen bag of white laundry out to the machine.  I unloaded everything into it and then I noticed a plastic bag at the bottom.  At first I thought it was a bag of dirty clothes that I had forgotten to unpack from a trip.  But then eureka!  It was the missing jeans!  So I guess sometimes adults still get rewards for doing chores?

This poem is not really related to any of the above, but it is kind of related to clothes, and I like it.

Old Coat

Dressed in an old coat I lumber
Down a street in the East Village, time itself

Whistling up my ass and looking to punish me
For all the undone business I have walked away from,

And I think I might have stayed
In that last tower by the ocean,

The one I built with my hands and furnished
Using funds which came to me at nightfall, in a windfall....

Just ahead of me, under the telephone wires
On this long lane of troubles, I notice a gathering

Of viciously insane criminals I'll have to pass
Getting to the end of this long block in eternity.

There's nothing between us. Good
I look so dangerous in this coat.

-Liam Rector

The simple things in life

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but there are certain moments in life when I experience pure happiness.  Not apropos of anything, it just is suddenly upon me.  There are not that many instances of it occurring.  Of course, everyone experiences happiness at certain occasions or while spending time with people they love, but usually even then at the back of your mind your to-do list is still there, your worries and anxieties are not that far behind.  When pure happiness hits, you know it because it's all you feel.  It's just plain joy at being alive.

I can remember one time when I was in college bringing back some lunch to my dorm.  I was carrying my drink and a sandwich and I was walking across the grass to the back door of the building.  I went to fish my keys out of my bag and it hit me.  I don't know why.  Nothing around me triggered it.  Just for a minute, everything seemed well and good in the world and I was happy.  It makes me think of that Florence + the Machine lyric:  "Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head/Struck from a great height by someone who should have known better."

Well, it's been many years since that incident, but the same thing happened to me today.  I was in the kitchen this morning.  I was standing there barefoot and in a pair of shorts I sleep in.  The window was cracked open so that a breeze was entering with the sunlight and hitting my bare legs.  It was somewhere around 75 degrees.  I was eating an apple I'd cut into slices.  I spread peanut butter on them.  It was quiet except for the cawing of a lone crow somewhere outside.  The strangest thing was that the linoleum of the kitchen floor felt so good against my feet.  It made no sense, but I was happy.

Eating Poetry

-Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Now I see why Ginsberg was imagining you in the watermelons.

I am enraptured by this poem by Federico Garcia Lorca:

Arbolé, Arbolé . . .

Tree, tree
dry and green.

The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.
The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
When the afternoon had turned
dark brown, with scattered light,
a young man passed by, wearing
roses and myrtle of the moon.
"Come to Granada, muchacha."
And the girl won't listen to him.
The girl with the pretty face
keeps on picking olives
with the grey arm of the wind
wrapped around her waist.
Tree, tree
dry and green.

Don't you just love that "grey arm of the wind"?  And why does picking olives sound so romantic? Where can I find some myrtle of the moon?

Lorca is a very big deal as a poet, but I had not read him until fairly recently.  He was a contemporary of Salvidor Dali in Spain, and his life ended during the Spanish Civil War.  Listen to this craziness:

"In 1936, García Lorca was staying at Callejones de García, his country home, at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was arrested by Franquist soldiers, and on the 17th or 18th of August, after a few days in jail, soldiers took García Lorca to "visit" his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernandez Montesinos, the Socialist ex-mayor of Granada whom the soldiers had murdered and dragged through the streets. When they arrived at the cemetery, the soldiers forced García Lorca from the car. They struck him with the butts of their rifles and riddled his body with bullets. His books were burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen and were soon banned from Franco's Spain. To this day, no one knows where the body of Federico García Lorca rests."

Pale Blue Dot

I was cleaning out my hard drive and came across this picture, which blows my mind every time I look at it:

That is called the Pale Blue Dot.  It was taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.  The "dot" is Earth, depicted against the vastness of space.  It looks so lonely; it's hard to imagine how teeming with life the planet is.  The best part of the picture, for me, is that it looks like Earth is caught in a shaft of light.  Really it's not a beam of light shining on it directly but a refraction of sunlight in the Voyager's camera optics.  But look at how tiny we are!  Earth is taking up less than a pixel of this photograph. 

Carl Sagan wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.  In it, he references the photograph, saying,

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds . . . It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."


Sir, Say no More

Sir, say no more.
Within me ’t is as if
The green and climbing eyesight of a cat
Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

-Trumbull Stickney