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

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

In honor of Edgar Allen Poe's birthday (and my friend Amanda's)

I killed a spider in my bathroom five days ago, and I have not yet found the nerve to dispose of it.  The first day it was to make sure it was dead.  The second was to be extra sure.  The third was to be absolutely Washingtonian about it.  The fourth was to let him be a lesson to all his friends.  And the fifth (today) is because I just plain don't want to get near it. 

Instead, I am going to focus on celebrating Mr. Poe's birthday, which my friend Amanda-from-New-York also shares.  Bet you've never heard this one:

"Alone"

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we?

I was watching the Golden Globes tonight,  and as a result I feel compelled to admit something.  I think most people who have jobs in the arts imagine themselves up on the stage of some awards show, accepting the highest honor for their work in front of all their peers.  I, on the other hand, can think of nothing more tortuous aside from being stuck on a bridge in a car full of spiders over a bay on a gusty day.  I mean, before we even get to the horror of public speaking, let's consider the long march from your seat to the stage.  At least at the Globes everyone is too busy toasting drinks at their tables to be paying too much attention to the actual show.  Most other shows everyone is so bored that they just stare at you as you pass by and psychically bombard you with "keep it short" vibes.  

I guess I should put a disclaimer here that I've never been to an awards show, I'm only writing what I know from television, and it's probably a poor representation at that.  That still doesn't change the fact that if I was ever nominated for an award, I would quickly schedule something out of the country and hope that someone famously hilarious accepts on my behalf. 

I know you're thinking, careful, your misanthropy is starting to show.  I wasn't always like this.  In my bolder days of youthful vanity (read: middle school), I would pretend to be sitting across from Oprah talking about my most recent bestseller.  Award shows weren't really my thing, but network television's highly rated daytime shows apparently were.  In my angrier, angsty-er days (read: college), I pictured a scenario in which I would accept an award out of spite for all the haters and nay-sayers.  That speech would go something like, "This is no thanks to YOU, blankety-blank, who refused to write me a recommendation to get into such-and-such program.  Despite you, so-and-so, who rolled your eyes when I said I wanted to be a writer, I'm accepting this award.  Suck it."

So that's over, thank goodness.  Now I'm sorry to tell you, friends and family members, I will not ever be a good bet for an awards show ticket, but in return I invite you to join me on a secluded beach somewhere- many time zones away from the video feeds (and unfortunately, the gift bags).

The Pillar of Fame

-Robert Herrick

             Fame’s pillar here at last we set,

             Out-during marble, brass or jet;

                  Charmed and enchanted so

                  As to withstand the blow

                   O f   o v e r t h r o w ;

                   Nor   shall   the   seas,

                     Or     o u t r a g e s

                   Of   storms,   o’erbear

                     What    we    uprear;

                   Tho’   kingdoms   fall,

                This   pillar   never   shall

                Decline   or waste at   all;

         But   stand   for ever   by   his   own

         Firm   and    well-fixed    foundation.

That was easy.

There was a fly stumbling around in the kitchen this morning.  It was moving awfully slow.  It even landed on the floor a few times.  I figured it was not meant for this world much longer, but I didn't have the heart to kill it.  There's a door leading outside to the backyard on the other side of the room.  That was when I started trying to herd the fly toward the door.  Have you ever tried herding a fly?  Well, try herding cats and then multiply the difficulty by 10.

Dish towel in hand, I waved it around yelling, "I'm trying to save you, fly!  Can't you feel the cold air blowing in?  Go, go!"  Well, a few minutes later he finally went.  I watched him zip out and then I shut the door on Old Man Winter and went about my business.

Cut to lunch time.  I'm in the kitchen again and what do I hear?  That old familiar buzzing.  What the heck?  Now, I know for a fact the first one went out, and the door was locked up tight after it.  This had to be . . . the first fly's sister/cousin/stepmother?  For a minute I entertained the idea that I was at the beginning of a horror movie where flies start to show up one by one until there's a big reveal of a scary guy opening his mouth and thousands of flies swarming out.  Still, I was trying to avoid killing it.  I figured since I got the first one outside, I could do the same for its relative (or minion of Satan).  Well, this one had a little more pep in his step (zing in his wing?), and he just would not go.

By the time my family arrived home later in the evening he was still buzzing around.  I ventured out the back door to cut some rosemary for dinner, and when I came back my dad was folding up a dish towel, looking pretty pleased with himself.  I looked at him, questioningly.  He assured me the fly was taken care of.  He had "whacked" him.  Oh. 

The Fly

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

-William Blake

No animals were harmed in the making of this poem.

There is a car outside my window that needs to be dealt with.  Whenever it gets turned on, it makes a horrible ear-piercing screech.  The sound doesn't end.  It goes on for ten minutes.  What is the driver doing?  Is he checking to see if the sound will go away?  It's not going away, sir!  I keep sitting here at my desk/dining room table waiting for the car to drive off and leave me and everyone in a five-block radius in peace.

It has been three weeks since I first heard the sound.  At first I thought maybe it was someone visiting our across-the-street neighbors, the ever popular alleged drug dealers.  Those lovable thugs, they get so many visitors.  I'm sure every neighborhood has its own variety.  Ours take themselves literally in every sense of the word.  They are content to blast music but not just any music.  If it's Sunday morning, they will blast Easy Like Sunday Morning.  On repeat.

Anyway, it wasn't them.  I know this because last week I ran to the window after a particularly long session of acoustic bombardment.  I was intent on discovering which car it was and . . . after that I'm not sure what my next step would have been.  My downstairs neighbor once confronted a woman a few houses down who was laying on her horn for a good 15 minutes.  This was because she was too lazy to get out of the car and ring the doorbell for her friend/boyfriend/kid/whatever.  They got into a pretty good fight that nearly came to blows but luckily didn't since my friend is a dude.  The moral of the story is, think twice before you pick a fight in da hood.  So I ran to the window just in time to see the offending vehicle pull away from the curb.  Aha! I thought.  I've got your number.

The next time that car started up, I was ready.  I feel it's necessary to give you some sense of what it sounded like:

Imagine a bird, perhaps a canary.
Singing its sweet little song,
it gets to the trilling of a particularly
complex arpeggio when
an evil child plucks the bird
right out of the cage, mid-note.
The child holds the bird
in such a way that it can only tweet
the same note
in terror
over and over and over again until
the sadistic youth
swaps the birdcage for an electric fan.
The bird is dropped in its new prison,
the fan turned on so that now
the bird is shrieking
two variations of the same note
back and forth, back and forth
while the fan blades batter
its poor little organ.
The evil child then extracts
a cricket
from the depths of his pocket.
The poor thing clearly
has been through the ringer,
but it's not over yet
because now
the devil child
feverishly rubs together the cricket's wings,
chirping faster, faster
as if making fire.*
The bird and the cricket,
trilling and chirping,
shrieking and burning.
That is what this car sounds like.

My roommate happened to be around when the car screamed to life.  "Why doesn't he get that flippin' car fixed?"  "I know," I said.  "Let's see if he drives away."  Five minutes . . . six minutes . . . seven minutes . . . "ARGGGGGGHHHHHH I WILL CALL TRIPLE A MYSELF IF IT WILL TOW YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"

We ran to the window.  There it was, rattling, heaving.  The hood was up.  The driver stood before it, trying to solve the puzzle.  He tinkered.  He got back into the car.  He shut it off.

"Huh," I said to my roommate.  "I guess he's aware of the problem."


*I do not condone the torture of animals.  Do NOT try this at home.

The Waste Land

I mentioned the other day that my neighborhood sometimes resembles the Gaza Strip.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

 

But then if I stand on my roof and turn slightly to the left, I see this:

 

And if I turn even further and tilt my head up I see this 

I was thinking about perspectives.  When I'm up on the roof, you can usually tell how I'm feeling about things/life at that moment by which direction I'm facing.

The urban palm tree view makes me feel inconsequential when I look out there and think about how many people are in this city.  Then I realize that I can't see any of them from where I stand so I imagine it's a post-apocalyptic neighborhood.  No matter how bad a problem I might be facing at the moment, there could always be zombies or flesh eating viruses that wipe us out.  Things are looking up! 

If I have writer's block, I like to sit on the top of the steps that lead to the roof and face the Hollywood sign.  I try to get past the horrible conventionalism of it and focus on the idea behind the sign.  Then I immediately flash to Pretty Woman where the guy in the street is yelling, "Everybody who comes to Hollywood's got a dream.  What's your dream?" Then I wish that I could write Pretty Woman.

If it's just a really gorgeous day out like most days in LA, I might take a beach chair up and face the sun.  I will open the latest issue of Bon Appetit magazine and I will plot ways to cook an enormous green tomato. 

Today, well, you're getting a limerick so guess which direction I'm facing.

Ode to the Spider I Killed Last Night

You're the second one I've seen so far.
As big as the freakin' Death Star.
Though your game was well-played,
you were foiled with Raid.
Yet I still wonder where all your friends are.

Roid-mato

Look at the size of this tomato!

I got it yesterday at the CSA (there's your assonance).  Whatever farm that supplies them is supposedly organic, but this is a juicehead gorilla tomato if I've ever seen one. To give you some perspective of scale, here it is beside your normal Trader Joe's variety:

I actually think it's closer in size to this watermelon:

This called for a line-up reminiscent of the scale of planets in our solar system:

And then I got carried away:

I included Pluto as a planet even though I know it's been downgraded because the strawberry was so cute next to the tomato.  And isn't the plum Earth pretty?  Hey, look at all that consonance.  Consonance and assonance in one post?  That's a lot for a Friday.  Therefore, no rhyming for you.  Much like the planets revolve around the sun, many things in my life revolve around food and bugs, and with this ham-fisted segue, I leave you with this old poem I wrote:

A Morning Miracle

I happened to see Jesus one day in a line of ants.
Around my bathroom sink
they walked the curved
and narrow, careful
to avoid the temptation
of going for a swim for a bit
of sticky toothpaste.
It wouldn't fit God's will to get
out of order for pure greed,
and gluttony is a deadly sin.
So they plodded across
the great white virginal countertop,
I suspect on their way to turn a cracker crumb
into loaves of bread for thousands.