December 24, 2006

Oh, Joanna

I have recently gotten really into Joanna Newsom. She performs the most literate music I have ever heard:


from Emily

Let us go! Though we know it's a hopeless endeavor
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
There is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
Peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
Hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up at their brow

And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
The butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
The way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
Squint skyward and listen -
Loving him, we move within his borders:
Just asterisms in the stars' set order

We could stand for a century
Starin'
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don't keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don't be
Told; take this
Eat this

Told, the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

Notice the references to The Love Song of J ALfred Prufrock (Let us go then you and I . . . ), The Lotus Eaters (Sailing and poppies) and Leda and the Swan (The father, all things with wings). There are some just brilliant things going on in this song. Navigating a fatalist world being the most obvious and heartwrenching.

Joanna was in Lawrence a few weeks ago. Her concert was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I told My Little Activist yesterday that listening to her music I am struck with how magical it must have been to visit a medieval court and hear epic lyrical music for the first time, or in ancient Greece to hear the Illiad performed. She makes suspends my disbelief in magic. I can't understand how her songs can be without magic, they are that brilliant, enchanted.

If you want to hear one of the most gifted stroy-tellers I have ever encountered check out Joanna Newsom. Her latest album is called Y's. It is unbelievably good.

December 12, 2006

Senior Minus A

I like my burgeoning mustache. That is all I have to say. I think it suits me.

December 11, 2006

Newson Nuisance

I just saw Joanna Newsom live at The Granada in Lawrence, KS. She is the second act I have seen there in the past month, the first being Jolie Holland. Both acts are very well trained musicians and singers performing a range of music. Both times I was frustrated beyond belief when the folks at the bar literally ruined a song or a set by talking through the music. I wish the owners of The Granada would be a bit more sensitive to the type of act they were bringing in and would close the bar inside the concert hall (there is another one 20 feet away outside the actual listening area) when non-rock acts are performing. I also wish people wouldn't go to concerts if they plan on fucking talking through the whole thing.

Anyhow, Joanna Newsom is fucking unreal. I felt like I was transported back to a medieval court. It made me want to believe in magic and witches.

December 8, 2006

Idiotgrams

Recently my girlfriend, The Activist, and I were sitting in one of my favorite eateries, The Blue Koi in Kansas City. Actually, both of us hail it as our favorite restaurant in Kansas City. This, however, was the first time we went there together to eat.

I should tell you that I have a thing for food. I have always enjoyed cooking. KC, my ex, turned me on to a lot of food that I had never had before when we started living together. For that I am eternally grateful.

The reason I love The Blue Koi so much is that the food is amazing. It is overwhelmingly vegetarian. It is mostly healthy. The menu is incredibly adaptable. There is a panoply of affordable appetizers. When I go with friends we will frequently order only appetizers and share everything. They also have unbelievable noodle dishes. These are a little awkward to share but they are wonderful. There are some dinner dishes that are a bit more pricy, but delicious. Then there is the most amazing pho and other broth-based soups I have ever had.

Every dish has something special and delightful about it. Appetizers come with 'Amazing Sauce'. My favorite pho comes with floating tofu tied into bows. Even the bubble tea has some unexpected and wonderful twists such as my favorite, red bean bubble tea.

The Activist and I practically jogged from the parking lot to the front door in excitement. And, as we sat and tittered and cooed and debated about which things to get and how many of them like doubloon-laden wizards on the Hogwarts Express we became awkwardly aware of the conversation at the next table.

Before I continue I should also tell you that in addition to having amazing food The Blue Koi also has an amazing atmosphere. It is friendly, stylish without being posh and it has the air of fun food. The wait staff always have some little punk outfits or funky hairdos. They sometimes skip to the tables and they are genuine when they compliment your food choice and your sweater. The place oozes smartness, queerness and fluidity. In short, it is downright sexy.

I guess that may be why the conversation we overheard was so troubling. Next to us sat two young adults, probably between twenty-five and thirty years of age. They were medical students, I am embarrassed to say, at the major public university I work for. As our excited humming and clucking faded their beguiled banter picked up. The two of them were lamenting the struggle they had as fundamentalist Christian medical students in finding professors and fellow students in medical school who shared their creationist beliefs.

A hush fell over the two of us. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed gal went on about how disappointed she was in medical school on the whole. According to her everyone was unduly preoccupied with evolutionism. I looked at The Activist who, without lifting her eyes from her menu, sensed my gaze and let out a tell-tale ideogram, "oohm."

It is important that I stop and explain the exact sound of this ideogram. I am not a linguist, so please excuse my layman terminology. It was short sound. The noise comes from the deep part of the throat and never rises past the base of the tongue. It chatters the teeth slightly which adds to the feeling of making it and which one, I think, senses when they hear it, but this vibration doesn't produce an audible sound. The noise has a dropping feeling. When it is done in reaction to something you have said it releases a lever in your abdomen that holds your intestines in place thereby plunging you into regret. The ending comes fast, shockingly fast. The muscular stopping action at the end of the sound squeezes the noise, chokes it really. When this sound is made in your company about someone else, it makes you feel as though you are the cohort of the oppressed and then almost by definition you too feel oppressed.

The Activist and I have been discussing ideograms, or more specifically, "mmm's." The Activist has some theories about ideograms. She has thrown around the idea of making a video about various sounds that black Americans make and the meaning of those sounds. Sitting at the table it became clear to me why this particular subset of ideograms exist: there is some really obvious shit that you can't say out loud.

My response to her "oohm," was, "I see what you are saying, now."

I proposed that instead of continuing to eavesdrop, moan and get frustrated until our food arrived that we start our own, proactive, counter-idiocy conversation. So, I asked my cute little activist to describe the harness she was planning on buying. She said, "Oh, I will show it to you later, it takes to long to describe it." I said. "No, I would really like it if you described it to me, in detail."

By this time the fundamentalists had started talking about how often they go to church. The girl went 4 or 5 times a week, but she had a young child to care for. The guy, also blonde with blue eyes went everyday. He was younger than her and by their conversation appeared to be a new med student. She offered him this sage advise:

"I learned this: the church never kicks anyone out. When you need to study, I suggest you go do it at church. They will keep it up as late as you need. And, that way you can pray and avoid your drunken roommates. I had a real drunkard as a roommate when I lived in the dorms. She would drink all the time. She was a real sinner. But, I kept at her. I used to play this one particular song, the lyrics go, "God will always love you." She went away to Europe. Some bad stuff happened over there. When she came back she started to straighten her affairs out. She told me, "I just kept thinking of that song and it made me feel good." We can do great things, but seriously, study at church."


Our food came. We ate. We discussed a friend of ours, a super nice guy. Specifically, I wondered what he would have thought of my counter-idiocy policy. His name is Wick. In light of our accidental eating company I coined the phrase: What would Wick do? I am thinking of getting a bracelet.

I told this to Wick a week or so later. He asked in earnest, "So, am I like the gay Jesus?" I said, "No, unless . . . Do you want to be the gay Jesus?" We made crude jokes like, "nail me to the bed post," and "second cumming."

The Activist asked me if I was, "An atheist with a capital A." I guess I am. I mean, I feel strongly about my atheism. For reasons that are too long and involved to go into right here I also feel that religion is an important cultural phenomenon that is rarely looked at seriously or criticized openly.

Later we decided to play a little game. We each wrote a personal ad. It had to be above all else completely and totally honest. We were supposed to address what we are like, what we want in a partner, what turns us on and what turns us off. We had one hour to do this and then post our ads on Craig's list.

The ads are very different from what I think we normally would have posted. The responces to my ad have been really short. But Sam, he really liked my post. He was moved deeply and said he should like to take the time to write for hours about his feelings. He ended his multi-page note by saying, "your ad has defiantly peaked my interest."

The Activist has gotten similarly grammatically-challenged responses and propositions, mostly via MySpace.com:

"hWat' sup ,i'm Jonhny. I just asw your profil ean dthouhgt yuo seemed coo.k Ify ou wa ntto eb rfiends or chat, I would lik ehatt. b"

"Pretty baby,
How u doin?Am terry by name. I´m a cool and gentle breathtaking young man.I live in spain and i´m a soccer player. was just surfing through the net when i came across something that really captivated and drew back my attention, and dat happens 2 be your pix.U look so charming and captivating, as d going says that BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, you are such a pretty, attractive and charming lady and i must confess that i really want to know u more and better and it will be my graet and pleasant joy if by next time i get back 2 my page and fing your reply lying sweet and charm in my inbox. You can as well add me 2 ur yahoo or hotmail chating list so we can get 2 chat online also... [ censored ] @yahoo.co.uk,,, and [ censored ] @hotmail.com. So till then pretty, take very gud care of urself and av a pleasant day."

Perhaps The Activist summed up the feeling one gets from these type of notes best, "What is it about me, my images, my writing that attracts folks that can't write a sentence?"

I lamented to a friend once, "I feel like I have come so far along this road of figuring out who I am and what is important to me that I just don't find many people who get me anymore. Muchless people I want to date." I used to be a lot more lax in my feelings about grammar. But, in light of recent messages I have come to be a bit more of a grammar snob. It isn't that I don't like the sentiment of Sam's note, or even the notes The Activist recieved, I just have a hard time believing any of them actually understood either of us.

December 6, 2006

The drive home

I am a subconscious driver.

I drive by your car. It has a distictive spot in my mind's parking lot. I feel as though I have had an out of body experience. Who's car am I driving?

I have to tell myself to go down a level when I see it. Don't park in eyesight.

It is usually ridiculously late when I realize that I have taken the wrong highway to get home and that I am headed to our place, I mean your place, instead of my place. And the frozen dinners in the trunk or only for me.

There are a lot of things that used to be ours. It's not so much that I miss them. I just miss sharing them.

I feel guilty when I go to the park and I don't take you. I wake up sometimes and it's 1:20 and I worry that I missed your call, again. I get up to pace the streets looking for you, worrying you will think I don't care for your safety.

Sometimes I pace the streets anyway. No place to go home to except a freezer box of cardboard boxes.

After I left you I sat in my sister's apartment and accidentally knocked a glass of water over. I jumped up. I was terror stricken. "I will fix it." I rushed to the kitchen, ran back paper towels streaming behind me. I sopped it up, not caring for my own driness, kneeling in water and glass. When I stood up I realized it was something in me that had broken.

My sister sensed it too. She told me everything would be all right. It was only water.

I am human, a creature of habit. When I locked myself out of my car. I thought you might help. I walked to your house. As I reached the steps I saw that you sat with your new, better friends. Through the new wood blinds I saw the warm glow of the living room. The big plush furniture. The dogs, our dogs, your dogs sleeping by all of you all's feet. I turned on my heel, popped my collar, hunched my shoulders forwards and went to an acquaintance's house and slept on the porch.

When I woke I counted jumbo jets. Tracing the same route by number as the flight just before them. They would follow the fading exhaust of a copy of themselves.

I realized at some point that you had done incalcuable damage to me. I dont think it was intentional, fully. It is like smoking. I can't really blame the cigarette. It didn't mean to kill me. I had a choice. Once.

But as I sat and cried in my new lover's car yesterday I wished I had never met you. There are so many things to be unlearned. So many habits to break. It hurts the people around me as they watch me struggle with this addiction. I hurt the people I love with secret associations. I stash pieces of you deep in my psyche. There is this thing in that compartment. This road that leads to that place. This spot that is only for you.

Damn you for your piss and vinegar love.

Damn me for my puppy dog consciousness.

What You Talking 'Bout, Willus

People say great things. They do it all the time. Now, I don't know if I ellicit this behavior or if I just happen to be more attuned to it on account of the little notebook I carry everywhere, but I seem to get more than my fair share of wonderful quotes.

Just this morning (it is only 11:30) I have encountered the following:

"The university could use more ass appeal."
When discussing an upcoming movie starring Jessica Simpson as a graduate of our fine school a coworker noted that it was likely to have more draw than About Schmidt which also referenced our school. My coworker went on to say we could use more "ass appeal" as a play on the saying 'mass appeal.'

"Celebrate you infuencers."
Another coworker said this while we talked about the problem with always trying to be original or best in class. He told me that his porfessor in college, the Aaron Siskind, told his students that they should celebrate their influencers and not be afraid to get ideas from other people.

"We squander the opportunity to appeal to our audience's higher self."
This same coworked lamented a certain PR attitude that dictates a focus on damage control and plajoritive plattitudes because they ultimately say nothing, especially to the people we most desperately want to make meaningful connections with.

"The ONLY way to spin things is to embrace them."
Along those same lines, I was shocked when these words came out of my mouth. I was making the argument that in the world of GradeMyProfessor.com and YouTube.com the only way to stay above the fray is to embrace the process, learn from it and make institutional adjustments. We cannot keep 'bad' news from getting out. Instead we should focus on fixing problems, promoting good news and honestly confronting bad news.

"Listening to Peach Plum Pear while sucking back cherry laughing gas is one of the strangest experiences I have ever had."
The Activist said that. I asked her to clarify. She responded, "I could feel myself getting high and there was this inspirational poster directly in front of me: Courage doesnt always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says 'I'll try again tomorrow.' It took all of my self control to not bust out laughing. 'I am blue and unwell.' (Lyrics from the song Peach Plum Pear.) I thought of you and dancing with Pip."

Anyhow, if you would like to peruse some even better overheard quotes check out this site: OverheardoOncCampus.com

December 4, 2006

When you smile


Everything gets better.

My Favorite Eats

There are a few culinary experiences that I am incapable of turning down. I will list them for you:

Cheese Pizza at Mario's in Vestal, New York
Appetizers at The Blue Koi in Kansas City, Kansas
Vegetable Tempura Maki at WA in Lawrence, Kansas
Cheddar Ale Soup at Freestate Brewery in Lawrence, Kansas
Vegetable Praram at Thai House in Ithaca, New York
Chocolate Chocolate Cake at Wagner's Bakery in Binghamton, New York
Apple Tarts at Wheatfield's Bakery in Lawrence, Kansas
Challah at Wheatfield's Bakery in Lawrence, Kansas
Sesame Tofu from Foliage Restaraunt in Binghamton, New York
Tofu with Broccoli from Bo Ling's in Kansas City, Missouri
Smidgens from Gertrude Hawk in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania
Fried Green Tomato Bennies from EarlyGirl in Ashville, North Carolina
Coconut Pie from Arnold's in Nashville, Tennessee
Carrot Soup at Roberta and Albert's house in Binghamton, New York
Corn Chowder at my mom's house in Binghamton, New York
Poori at Ruchi's in Lawrence, Kansas
Sopapillas anywhere in the South Western United States
Chili at Perubsky's in Topeka, Kansas

December 1, 2006

Relationship Building


I, undeserving earthling, have somehow managed to find an amazing friend, Courtney.

Courtney and I couldn’t be more different on paper, she loves sundresses and picnics, she sees the best in people (esp. me), she likes boys and she grew up in little old Emporia, Kansas.

We met for the first time at an art gallery called The Olive in downtown Lawrence, Kansas. My buddy, Nico, and I had gone to this art gallery because some friends of his were doing a group show with a local kid.

Truthfully, Nico and I really went to the gallery for same reason we always go to gallery shows (including our own) for the free alcohol.

Courtney was there to see the kid art. (Admittedly, the kid art was much more interesting than the grown-up art.)

The artists from that night now have a fancy agent in NYC where they have regular shows like real artists, but Nico, who is also now a NYC urbanite, says the work is still just as boring.

It was a period in my life when chain-smoking was more important than eating and Nico kept the little plastic glasses of cheap wine coming out to my spot on the front steps next to the two ridiculously well-behaved dogs and overlooking the animated punk-types who felt stifled inside the gallery space and came outside to jump on things.

Punk is the word for the evening. Everything was punk or neo-punk or hipster-punk. The art was punk. The musicians, who harmonized and had a squeezebox were punk, all the kids in the gallery were punk. My teacher is punk. Nico was tré punk. Everything, that is except for me. And Courtney.

I think I may have been lamenting my decided lack of punk as I lit one cig from the spent embers of another. Someone came outside and hailed me as I sat face pushed down into butted butts.

For the life of me I can’t remember who it was that introduced us. But as I stood there talking to this friend she or he introduced me to Courtney. First impressions are telling, hence my building up this moment: Courtney was doing something very sound-of-music-like, swinging around a tree, and she was wearing a sundress. She had long curly hair. She seemed happy. Not happy to be at the gallery or happy to be with her friends. She was happy to be alive.

This was at an emotional low-point in my life and I remember thinking, “Oh Jesus, just let me get through the next ten minutes without ripping this poor kid a new asshole.” I loathed happy people. Happy people didn’t know what it was like to have fucked up your life. Happy people didn’t understand codependent relationships. Happy people didn’t get aggressive sex. I also loathed happy people because of the kind of faces they would make when I talked. All my best jokes, the ones about my toilet of a relationship, my mom who regularly forgot about me, about my scary childhood neighborhood, about my ridiculous catholic school, about my fat ass, my abusive babysitter, my poverty, my gender, my gay sex life were ALL lost on happy people. They would look at me while I talked and be shocked, troubled and awe-struck by the things that came out of my mouth. Incredulous gaping-mouth smiles would come over them and when we parted ways, which usually happened with them leaving together tittering and me lighting another cigarette, I couldn’t help but feel that the real joke was always on me.

As Courtney rounded the tree in her sundress, loose fabric and long wavy locks flowing behind her, she hopped forwards and put out her hand in the universal pleased-to-meet-you fashion. “Well this is going to suck,” I thought to myself and shook it with a smile.

I looked at her closely. I couldn’t figure out how she fit into the scene inside or outside. Maybe she thought the same thing about me. As a group of us huddled around and talked I got the distinct impression that Courtney was treated with kid gloves by her friend. This may be why she was ignoring the conversation, or at least she appeared to be. I figured she was thinking about butterflies and brave prairie boys. But I felt bad for her, suddenly, like she didn’t have access to the real conversation because folks were scared of offending her. I often felt like people treated me the same way, being, believe it or not, the only queer in our fairly large circle of art friends.

. . .

A few weeks later the web communications manager at work hired a new student to help out with the site. When I popped my head in to meet the new student I knew instantly that I recognized her from somewhere. I said as much, but couldn’t remember where.

I started down the stairs to my area in the video editing suite and turned around and went back in the web room.

Me: “I met you before, at the Olive Gallery, you were wearing a blue sundress with yellow flowers on it and your hair was down.”
Courtney: “Yes, you are friends with Nico.”
Web Communications Manager: “You remember what she was wearing?”
Me: “Yes, it was a pretty dress.”
Courtney: “Thank you, I like it a lot, too.”
Me: “Well, it is nice to see you again. Glad you are joining us.”

. . .

If you take one golden nugget of goodness from this entry let it be this: Start every relationship with a compliment. (Read on if golden nuggets aren’t your bag.)

. . .

Eventually I got moved to a desk right next to Courtney’s. We would look over each other’s shoulder, share funny things we found online, proof each other’s work. Soon we started going to Veggie Lunches at the Ecumenical Christian Ministries right next to campus. Yes, Courtney from Emporia got me to step foot inside of a functioning church. My defense then was that it is a radical church with free vegan lunch.

It seemed as though EVERYONE at Veggie Lunch knew Courtney. She had volunteered with this one, gone on a retreat with that one, sat on a committee with a third. These were not all church types, either. They were radical vegan kids who did things like tie themselves to trees and whatnot, or at least they dreamed of doing those types of things. Courtney walked the room with a sort of reverent boredom. She told me she was "so over" the Veggie Lunch scene. She confessed to being tired of volunteering for college projects. She was about to graduate and she didn’t want to get sucked into planning any more weekend trips or other events that only really benefited the bourgeious middle-class college kids who got to feel as though they did something “really important” before becoming completely shit-headed adults.

Before we left that first Veggie Lunch we snuck downstairs to look at a mural Courtney had helped find an artist to paint. The church required that the mural “represent all races, genders, sexualities, body types and have a pregnant woman.”

Yeah, wow.

I thought to myself, “What the hell kind of hippy church is this?” I was a bit confounded as we walked back to work. My church would never have commissioned a mural. Murals are for radicals. They certainly wouldn’t have commissioned this mural: A group of hairy, fat people of color embracing each other, naked. That is actually pretty much the opposite of what my church would commission: a dark, richly-dressed Roman soldier stabbing a scrawny, helpless, bleeding crucified white guy wearing a dirty loin clothe.

Courtney and I began talking over our lunch breaks. The hot topic at the time was the project we were working on at the University and how psycho a select group (ie all) of our coworkers were.

Eventually we wore through work chat and began talking more generally about life. One night Courtney invited me to attend a series of lectures about relationships and sex at the Ecumenical Church. I agreed to go not so much for the lecture, but for the company.

I had just broken up with my partner of seven years. I was lost, confused, freer, but the weird freedom that comes without a purpose. There were three lectures in the series: Jealousy, Communication, and How Gay Rights Effect Straight People’s Sex (positively).

I just about shit a brick in the Jealousy lecture. It wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. There were my ex-partner and I’s problems all laid out for me on a piece of paper. I won’t go into these problems out of fairness to my ex, but we both were displaying some classic behaviors of people dealing with insecurities, the resulting jealousy and finally the backlash from jealousy-induced behaviors. Basically, we went into our relationship with an unrealistic idea of what a relationship is. We thought we were soul mates. When the soul mate thing started to fall apart I felt hurt and betrayed. I distanced myself to protect myself. She sensed this distancing and got scared and angry. The anger induced me retreat further. This induced her to get angrier. You get the idea. We ended up having these fights . . . I call them fights, but they were pretty one-sided. She would try to goad me into arguing with her. I would taunt her with a shut down. She would become genuinely upset and yell at me saying increasingly ridiculous things until I lashed out at her or walked away which really fucking pissed her off. We were both at fault for not taking action to confront our real problems and letting ourselves fall into this pattern.

After this lecture Courtney and I went to a coffee house and I talked for over an hour about my relationship with my ex and how I felt it was at a point that was beyond repair.

We had been fighting for too long.

Courtney sat and listened quietly. She asked incredibly pointed questions. I kept talking. All my other friends avoided my ex like the plague. They were scared of her. It was hard for me to talk to them about her because she did her darndest to alienate them. When I was with my friends I sometimes pretended she didn’t exist. None of them had ever been in a long-term relationship, certainly not a 7-year relationship, so I felt it was pointless to try to talk to them. In the world of 3-month trysts, if someone insults your mom or makes you cry - you bail. In the world of 7-year partnerships if you bail you lose your best friend and 7 years of memories and hard work. Or, in our case, not quite hard enough work. They thought I was crazy for staying with her. I didn’t think there was anything else I could do.

It was so nice to have someone new and interested to talk to.

Courtney and I attended the next lecture, Communication in Relationships. Yup, my ex and I were pretty pathetic at that too. I was starting to see a pattern. There really wasn’t too much we had been doing well. After two lectures and a few cups of coffee Courtney knew more about how I felt than I could communicate to my ex.

Courtney and I started a dialogue about relationships in that period. We have been discussing them ever since. She has now seen me in three-ish relationships and a couple of, uhm, well, flings.

We have become good friends. She is on the list of people to save should the van go over the bridge, or to invite into the bunker in the event of a nuclear bomb. But, oddly, I often feel as though I don’t know her very well at all. I sometimes wish that she would talk more. I feel like there are a million little things she keeps to herself. She always shares things she has read somewhere or heard someone say, and she is good at getting me to say things, but she very rarely tells me what she thinks. One day I would like to get the unfiltered version.

Today Courtney typed a letter to me that said, “I am so sick of silly boys singing songs to silly girls. A flower in the rain? Give me a break.”

My initial impressions of her were so off, and at the same time so on. I wonder what has induced her cynicism. I secretly fear it was me, because I know she has helped to build my happiness. It is built soundly, good foundation, good materials, room to grow.

I enter relationships now like they are work projects. It isn't as clinical as it sounds. I realize that I have the power to lay the groundwork for a great partnership or partnerships. I take this job seriously because I have learned that doing right by someone is the only reason to do anything with them.

November 29, 2006

White Chocolate

My new(ish) dog, Pip, learned about one of nature's oldest tricks today. That's right, it was her first snow! Always cavalier, she sauntered into the frozen back yard she had thought memorized just hours before, turned to look at me and then, in a sudden flash, took off bounding, hopping, digging, now digging out toys, licking, eating ice, jumping, jumping on me, inspecting snow noises, inspecting snow smells until, just as suddenly, she held up her half-frozen paws, first one then another, another and the last other and I called her to come into the warm apartment.

We are hosting a hot cocoa todo tonight. Sweet, wonderful hot chocolate.

We can hardly wait.

November 27, 2006

Thanks, Giving

Thank you for staying here tonight
And marking the places where you had been
I just found the hair you left me
In the bathroom garbage can

Thank you for the half-full cup of coffee
With a moth floating in it and
The bruise in the full-sized mirror
I like it there

Thank you for forgiving me for talking
It is an old habit I am looking forwards to kicking
In the ribs and telling to suck me off

Thank you for believing me, for climbing on top of my body
When I told you I wanted to be inside of you

Thank you for sensing that I am not
What biology keeps insisting I should be
And that I am only my body and nothing more

Thank you for tying me up and leaving me
For dead before kissing me and finding
The place between my brain and my sex
Where all the knotted muscles twist

Thank you for shyly pushing through
That osmotic barrier
That pretends to stand between us
When you almost cried I felt overcome
I could have floated away
If it wasn't for the pink in your dark cheeks

And so thank you for osmoting through my front door
Globulin and cholesterol, swim bladder and rats

Thank you, now come back.

In Someone Else's Words

I am content to have nothing to say. I will let others speak better than me in my stead.

Mexican Blue by Jolie Holland

You're like a saint's song to me
I'll try to sing it pure and easily
You're like a Mexican blue
So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon
I saw you riding on your bike
In a corduroy jacket in the night
Past the hydrangeas that were blooming in the alley
With a galloping dog by your side
When I was hungry you fed me
I don't mean to suggest that I'm like Jesus Christ
Your light overwhelmed me
When I lay beside you sleepless in the night
And when you dreamed my guardian spirits appeared
And the moon stretched out across your little bed
They said they'd started to get worried about me
They were happy we had finally met
We had finally met

A mysterious bird flies away
Seemed to be calling your name
And bounced off the top of a towering pine
And vanished in the drizzling rain
There's a mockingbird behind my house
Who is a magician of the highest degree
And I swear I heard him rip the world apart
And sew it back again with his fiery melody, melody

When you were mad at me I didn't care
And I just loved you all the same
And I waited for the wind to push the hurricane
Out to sea, and the sun could shine again
Oh I don't mean to give you advice
Its just like Delia said, "oh, Jesus Christ"
Just don't get so high you leave the ground
Everything is so much better when you're around
Just don't float so high you drift away
Stand tall, with your feet on the ground
I love your songs, I love your sound
Everything is so much better when you're around

When the moon is as clear as an opal
And the amethyst river sings a song
I'll remember all your dreams and the mysteries
You have borne in your crystalline soul
That you sing from your golden throat
That you shine from your sparkling eyes
That you feel from the goddess in your thighs

You're like a saint's song to me
I'll try to sing it pure and easily
You're like a Mexican blue
So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon
In the afternoon

Sawdust and Diamonds by Joanna Newsom

From the top of the flight
Of the wide, white stairs
Through the rest of my life
Do you wait for me there?

There's a bell in my ears
There's a wide white roar
Drop a bell down the stairs
Hear it fall forevermore

Drop a bell off of the dock
Blot it out in the sea
Drowning mute as a rock;
Sounding mutiny

There's a light in the wings
Hits this system of strings
From the side while they swing;
See the wires, the wires, the wires

And the articulation
In our elbows and knees
Makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase
As the audience admires

And the little white dove
Made with love, made with love:
Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers

Swings a low sickle arc
From its perch in the dark
Settle down
Settle down my desire

And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor
Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember

Then the furthermost shake drove a murdering stake in
And cleft me right down through my center
And I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never

Push me back into a tree
Bind my buttons with salt
Fill my long ears with bees
Praying: please, please, please,
Love, you ought not!
No you ought not!

Then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings
(cut from cardboard and old magazines)
Makes me warble and rise like a sparrow
And in the place where I stood, there is a circle of wood
A cord or two, which you chop and you stack in your barrow

It is terribly good to carry water and chop wood
Streaked with soot, heavy booted and wild-eyed;
As I crash through the rafters
And the ropes and pulleys trail after
And the holiest belfry burns sky-high

Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision
While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue you make your first incision
And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision
Doubled over with the hunger of lions
'Hold me close', cooed the dove
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds

I wanted to say: why the long face?
Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face
Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!
Sing: I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay
Just to lift your long face

And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave
Your precious longface
And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate
- why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil
- why the long face?

In the trough of the waves
Which are pawing like dogs
Pitch we, pale-faced and grave,
As I write in my log

Then I hear a noise from the hull
Seven days out to sea
And it is the damnable bell!

And it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me!
It tolls for me!

Though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
Still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water
And they will recognise all the lines of your face
In the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter

Darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
Appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes
But if it's all just the same, then will you say my name:
Say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks?

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight
No, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright
So: enough of this terror
We deserve to know light
And grow evermore lighter and lighter
You would have seen me through
But I could not undo that desire

Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire
Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh desire
Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh desire

From the top of the flight
Of the wide, white stairs
Through the rest of my life
Do you wait for me there

November 16, 2006

Play Date

It was one of those indecisive Midwestern evenings in Kansas City. The temperature had been debating dropping all week, but had yet to follow through in doing so. A stiff breeze had blown into town and the sandy, isolated patches of dirty crab grass pushing up through cracked cement in abandoned parking lots were overcome first this way then that by the wind and they let seed fly in the unintentional hope of reclaiming the land.

I was escorting a friend. I stopped the car next to a fence and parked. A fence can be a lot of different things to different people. So, I will tell you what kind of a fence this wasn't. This wasn't a "I can afford to have someone come and restrain wood every summer" fence. This wasn't a "I have a big beautiful dog that I take care to provide with a safe and appropriate environment" fence. This wasn't a "I run a respectable business that I want to protect at night" fence. This was the kind of fence that really doesn't do shit. The bottom is pulled up in places, an entire side has been removed. It dips down a full two or three feet. The gates won't close. It is the color of disintegration. It is the kind of fence that says, "I give up."

Her: We won't stay long. I mean, unless you want to.
Me: We can stay as long as you like.
Her: Let me call and make sure they are here.
Her: Hey. You inside? We just ate. Yeah, we are here. Yeah, we are coming in.

We braced ourselves against the wind, shoulders hunched, cigarette cupped in palm and strode across the street. We stepped up to a door. It was a heavy sort of door. Commercial grade. This wasn't the kind of place that looks like it should be open after dark. The block has a scarcity of buildings characteristic of industrial zones. The neighbors are mainly warehouses and buildings that have changed purposes so many times it is hard to know when or why they were built. Looking at them inspires awkwardness in anticipation of trying to navigate odd mis-appropriated spaces, of offices with ceilings so low you have to crouch, of conspicuously boarded up doorways and of old unopened closets. You can't help feeling bad for folks who live in apartments on this type of block of lonely buildings.

We exchanged glances before opening the door. This is the right place, okay. Yeah. Right place.

She went first.

Let me say this. There is a certain type of social dynamic that permeates underground places. New people are desperately sought after and vehemently distrusted. It is important, as a newbie, to start off on the right foot. We had fucked up with the clothes. We were wearing street clothes. I had on black pants and a worker-man jacket. She had on an old second-hand peacoat and some jeans.

The instant we walked through the door we were called out on it, "Were you invited?" Meaning, "What are the two of you doing in our space?"

"They're with us. They are invited." Called out a friend of my escortee. She was a girl with a great open-jaw, sideways smile. Her smile revealed a large amount of space inside her mouth and it felt like looking in a peep whole and seeing a whole lotta shit going down on the other side. It was as if smiling was her way of letting you in on the inside story.

The girl with the smile also had a date. A sweetheart. She was tired to the point of not being able to talk right or walk around. She had wet sort of eyes and puffing lips. But she wasn't too tired to raise the corners of her mouth into a friendly grin. I was struck with the impression that it was possible that in her dying moments she might choose to spend her last bit of energy pushing those corners up at someone.

The building we entered was an art gallery. The art was covered with bubble wrap and drapes to protect it. It was the people who were to be on display tonight. In the middle of the gallery floor was an odd table made from black leather and rivets. The gallery lights had been turned around to shine on the table.

There was a group of people sitting on two couches, drinking, eating and talking. It was like any other party, except that several of them were dressed head to toe in leather. A gal from the couch came over to our group. She had on a full length leather dress. Her head was shaved. She introduced herself and said, "I am an admissions counselor at XYZ University."

I thought to myself, should I be networking? I decided against it and introduced myself as Billy. Another member of our group, a guy, told her that this was his first leather party and he was unsure about the etiquette. She took him under her wing and lead him over to a spot close to the table where a woman was now taking off her shirt.

Nearby there was a table set up with pizza and soda. It was apparent from the amount of food that the organizers had expected a larger turnout. This gallery was owned by a local artist who had lost his legs. There were uninhabited wheelchairs strewn about. I wasn't sure if it was art or additional seating.

The woman who had been undressing dropped her pants. She scooted over to the table and spread her legs as much as she could with her jeans around her ankles. She bent forwards and put her hands on the table and waited.

A heavy-set butch woman with a leather vest and jeans took up a spot behind her. She unfurled a long leather whip. The gal who was bent over the table began to squirm. And then with hardly any effort at all the butch woman began rhythmically striking the nude woman's back with her whip.

Now, I say nude, but she had underwear on. They were men's briefs. They were grey men's briefs. They were the color and cut of briefs that you would expect to have handed to you at a prison or work camp. There was something unsettling about the big Germanic butch woman in a leather vest whipping this little Jewish woman in prison grey underwear that were, to heighten the effect, too big for her. There was a tranny boy in the crowd. He yelled out, "Oh, give it to her." This caused the butch woman to stop whipping and motion to him with one finger to come hither. The tranny boy sauntered up to the butch woman and fell to his knees. The butch woman pinched his back and picked him up. She twisted the skin on his back and resumed with the rhythmic, oddly non-violent whipping. The man in the wheelchair cut across my view. He loaded up his lap with pizza and wheeled back out of view without so much as a glance at the main event.

I looked to the couch. Miss Leather USA and Miss Leather Universe sat bored out of their minds holding cokes like eigth-graders at a house party. I presume they were enumerating the ways in which the KC leather scene could benefit from their combined expertise. But I was struck with how juvenile the whole thing was. Two grown women in leather chops and vests with chokers, whips and flogs who couldn't hold a conversation. I mean, we are adults right? What is the point of breaking every taboo if you don't have anything interesting to say about it afterwards? The night felt more like a play date than a play party. I decided that they should of just had a big ol' fucking gang bang. Then people would have come. No one likes this in between shit. And why, for chrissakes, why pizza and soda?

Anyhow, the woman at the table couldn't take the whipping for very long because it was "too cold" in the gallery. If she was my sub I would have told her to shut the fuck up, but that is just me. The butch woman never got much more into it than a flick of the wrist anyhow. I think one of the Miss Leathers dozed off. And my escortee's friends with their magical smiles exscused themselves to go home and sleep. Not seeing any way in which we could possibly add anything to the mix ew excused ourselves as well and we walked back out into the decidedly chillier night and drove away from that desolate stretch of land in search of hot coffee and grittier sex.

November 10, 2006

Hello, my name is . . . you

The revolution will be subsidized

This is the revolution. The revolution is now. The revolution is happening everywhere. The revolution has a brand. The brand is you. You are the brand. We are the revolution. Be an agent for change. Demand human rights. Demand equality. Expect dignity. Work. Be a work place revolutionary. Demand pay for your work. Be ethical. Be a carpenter revolutionary. Be a steelworker revolutionary. Practice revolutionary sex. Be a revolutionary parent. Be a child of the revolution. Revolutionize your parents. Talk. Talk and the revolution will be heard. Be and the revolution will be seen. Create and the revolution will be felt. Organize and the revolution will be televised. It will be broadcast to every Wonderbread household and orphan in Calcutta. Demand global human rights. Recognize that the revolution is right now and only right now. There is no dawn of epiphany. There is no rallying cry. There is only watercooler banter and sweet nothingnesses.

The timetable

Yesterday, an amazing day by all accounts, I drove to a major research hospital in the Midwest and had a meeting about how to realize the dream of having a comprehensive cancer center in the local metropolitan area. I left that meeting and went to the afternoon sessions of Creating Change, the Gay and Lesbian National Taskforce’s annual conference. I sat in on a workshop about sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. I looked around at the room it was filled with amazing people. During a break I stood at the edge of the conference main floor and watched a group of highschool students point and laugh and stare. I realized that for many of them it was a life-changing moment and that their awkwardness was created by a dangerous lack of honest communication about all things in their young lives. I left and went to a lecture about feminism and hip hop which sadly adhered to first and second-wave feminist ideals, “please see me as a woman, a strong black woman, not as a sexual being, “ blah. I went to a small concert, two people, then one person, Anni Rossi.


This is about glaciers. This is about glaciers and flattening. Flattening where you are standing and what you know. So if I am running errands and you are an island, I would like to say goodbye in anticipation.

I am you, you are me. We are not the same. Let’s work together to be singly happy.

The bottom line

Let’s end the discussion we have been having and start a new one. Let’s stop pretending this isn’t about money. It is. We live in a world of currency. Access to money is access to the world.

I work at a land-grant institution. We need money to empower our youth with knowledge and skills that will allow them to further empower themselves with jobs and money. The afore mentioned revolution must be subsidized whether it happens at the individual level, the local level or the regional/national/global level. Individuals need money. Groups need money. The world needs money.

Let’s start talking about how we balance an individuals right to self-determination as determined to a large part by money with the need to create institutions for the public good that are capable of effecting changes that we as individuals cannot effect because said institutions are capable of extraordinary wealth.

October 28, 2006

Hear Us

I pulled up behind a car at a stop sign the other day. The music from the car was rather loud. The bom-bom-boom of the bass was transmitting itself into vibrations in my car's metallic skeleton that resonated with a ziz-ziz-zizt noise from my rear view mirror. As I look behind me in the mirror the whole world seemed to rattle with the beat of the song.

It was a 80's model American car. I think it was a Buick. The windows were heavily tinted. The coloring was something forgettable like two-tone brown. And the tires which stook out two to three inches past the exterior of the vehicle seemed out of place both for their size and because they appeared to be more valuable than the entire rest of the car even with it's earth-shakingly powerful stereo.

Through the wide, dark, boxy windows I could see a human frame. It appeared to be male, with dark-ish skin and curly, shiny hair. This human male seemed as though he may have seen anywhere between 40 and 60 passages of his own birthday. I had the impression he was a human who had had birthdays pass that he could not bring himself to celebrate, dark passages of time, and birthdays where he couldn't help but celebrate because it was a miracle that he had made it through another year.

Praise Jesus.

It wasn't really the loudness of the music emanating from the car that piqued my interest. It was the bumper stickers. For those of you who have never seen bumper stickers they are curt, often trite, occasionally pithy and frequently inflammatory statements of personal belief printed on a piece of vinyl and backed with an automotive-grade adhesive. Belief magnets for your car as it were.

This two-tone car had roughly eight or nine bumper stickers. We didn't sit for long at the stop sign, so I only had time to read two of the gentleman's credos.


Keep honking. I'm RELOADING.

(Hands in the air.)

JESUS is the answer.

(Praise the Lord.)

I wondered as the Buick pulled away and as we played a ten-block game of 'red light green light' never quite catching each other whether he had chosen to put those two bumper stickers next to each other for a reason. I mean, had Jesus given him permission, personally, to shoot at people who use their emergency traffic noise-makers in his presence? I unrolled my windows in the hopes of catching some of the lyrics of his music. No luck.

I began wondering what kind of a gun this individual might have had in his car. Guns are accessories. Based on everything I knew about this particular human he liked his accessories to be over the top. At first, I thought, "shotgun." Shotguns are more bang than most people could ever truly need. The word 'reloading' seemed fitting.

But then I got to thinking. Everything about this car seemed fatalist; the trust in an omnipotent higher power, the suped-up tires, the decked out stereo, the black windows. It was if this guy knew he was never going to own a later model car, it wasn't part of God's plan for him. Maybe he felt it would be his plight, despite being an upright, God-fearing, honking-horn-hating, car-tax-paying citizen to be harassed by the police for driving a Buick that he bought second, third, fourth hand from a friend at church who had tinted the windows years before. So he went all-out on the peripherals.

I pictured a revolver. A revolver with a fabulously-long barrel. A double-barrel, in fact. A two-barrel revolver with an ivory handle and shiny metal rivets connecting the tang to the ivory. I imagined that this revolver had two bullets in it. One in each of the chambers. Two in waiting.

I could see a dark Sunday evening. A man is driving home from volunteering at a soup kitchen or a shelter. He still has on his church clothes. A car begins to follow him. It is dark, he can't make out the make of the car. It is dark, the car cannot read the clearly posted belief system on the back of the Buick. The man becomes nervous. He turns, his pursuers turn. He slows down. They slow down. He speeds up. They speed up, too quickly. He tries to steady his nerves and goes through a yellow light as it turns red. The trail car goes through the light in full red, and . . . blue. He is over run by his pursuers and forced to pull over. Two cops jump out of the car guns drawn peeking out from behind the flung-open doors.

Our man of god calmly places his revolver on his lap.

"PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR."

This is a no win situation.

"I SAID PUT YOUR MOTHERFUCKING NIGGER HANDS IN THE AIR GODDAMN YOU."

The ivory handle looks rich next to the deep dark metal of the barrels. He takes the corner of his purple church suit and polishes a dull spot. The gun is unregistered, an antique. There is pot in the glove compartment. He has an outstanding warrant for speeding. He is going down one way or another tonight. It is just his time. Praise the Lord. He cocks both barrels of the bun with a small but distinct click-click.

"PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE FUCKING AIR."

Bang. Trust Jesus. Jesus is the answer. Put yourself in God's hands. Heaven awaits you in the next life. Jesus died for your sins. He opened the pearly gates. Love the Lord. The Lord is good. Put you hands in the air. Waive them like you just don't care. God is good. Trust in the higher power. You will be free.

After we pulled away from that stop sign, my brand spanking new, bright red, foreign made zippy little hatch back shining in the sunshine I could only read that one word as I got closer and farther away. The big word. It echoed my thoughts.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Deliver us from our sins. Deliver us from evil. Forgive us our trespasses and let us not trespass on others. We ask this, oh lord, in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

October 23, 2006

Drama Clean



I needed shampoo. My preference was to get a shampoo that smelled good and that moisturizer. But as I stood in the shampoo aisle at the local discount warehouse-style grocery store I was overwhelmed with the choice I had to make.

The brand Herbal Essences was on sale. But in order to get that 50 cent mark-down I was going to have to put my finger on a bottle and say, "THIS one."

Herbal Essences has a new product line with cleverly shaped curvy bottles that interlock to save space in the shower. The curves are functional and sensual at the same time. The manner in which the bottles interlock suggests an intimate relationship between the shampoo and the conditioner which mimics the relationship between two lovers. I don't know which came first the interlocking concept or the sex concept, but I was dismayed at what choosing a bottle was forcing me to say about myself.



Here were my choices:

Body Envy
Volumizing Shampoo
nectarine & pink coral flower

Break's Over
Strengthening Shampoo
coco mango & pearls

Color Me Happy
Shampoo for Color Treated Hair
acai berries & satin

Dangerously Straight
Pin Straight Shampoo
honeyed pear & silk

Drama Clean
Refreshing Shampoo
berry tea & orange flower

Hello Hydration
Moisturizing Shampoo
orchid & coconut milk

None of Your Frizzness
Smoothing Shampoo
mandarin balm and pearls

Totally Twisted
Curls and Waves Shampoo
french lavender and jade extracts

I chose Hello Hydration which said on the bottle:


let us soak it to ya. we're all about the moisture, so let us quench your tresses with lush hydration.



Later that night I stopped into a QuickTrip for some gas and milk. Finally, there in the QT milk cooler someone had finally branded something for ME.

October 22, 2006

The Suck

It has been a somewhat hectic week here in Kansas. I am trying to get my head around the ever-increasing scope of the project I have been hired to work on. Originally I was supposed to be the conceptual artist and content creator for a certain major university's national network television commercial. Then, I was supposed to be the creative director for the commercial. Now, I am being asked to develop a media-neutral communications campaign strategy. This might be the worst case of scope-drift I have ever seen.

Additionally, I am beginning to fall victim to a phenomenon I call The Suck. The Suck is kind of like institutional undertow. It is a slow and steady force of institutional nature. It is a way in which an individual is gradually sucked into a myriad of projects, committees, initiatives, etc until they are inextricably tied up and can't actually get the things the need to accomplish done.

Here is an example of how The Suck works.

You are sitting at your unbalanced metal desk in a terribly uncomfortable chair bought from the local correctional facility. The fluorescent flood light above your desk flickers and hums. As you read the minutes from the most recent staff meeting you make a mental note to yourself to get on the committee in charge of fixing up the office. In the minutes you read that one coworker, let's call him Tom is working on a video project about research professors at your institution of higher learning. Another coworker, Page, is working on a series of public radio shorts about research in general at the university. A third coworker, Millie, is working on a viewbook for high-ability high school students. A fourth coworker, Fred, is working on revamping the website.

After reading the minutes you sit at your computer, intending to begin your own work on, let's say, a calendar of events. But you can't get over how little Tom, Page, Millie and Fred talk to each other even though they are working on very similar stuff. You wonder whether a grassroots approach or a top-down approach is the answer. You schedule two meetings, one with your boss the other with your co-workers to feel out both angles. You daydream for about 20 minutes about how either approach might increase productivity and strengthen our major marketing messages across all mediums. You fantasize about the way in which a clear marketing and communications strategy with defined and measurable outcomes could revolutionize the way you work.

The phone rings. Your boss is intrigued by the email request for a meeting and asks you to join an oversight committee. You are flattered and sketch away at some thumbnails for your calendar while she talks. As you hang up the phone you lament the fact that you don't have a Wacom tablet to input all of your sketches directly into your project folder on the server. You wonder how long it will take to locate a student to scan your drawings for you so that you can get on with some real work.

After a couple of hours of now sitting at a desk that is not the right height and a chair that is not built for comfort you take a walk out of your windowless, fluorescent office in search of a little back pain relief and daylight. You watch as the white, middle class college students poor up and down the main drag of campus, flipping their flops, bopping to iTunes and chatting away on hand held devices. None of them are carrying a newspaper. A quarter of them have laptops. You realize 1/2 the work you do in your office is outdated. And, the provost's charge to make the university a more diverse place - in every sense of the word - is a huge challenge that will require years of work.

You go back to your office and sketch a few more thumbnails before going to a meeting about how many cubicle systems to order. All you can think is, "NO, not cubicles, we need a more stimulating environment." But, you concede the need to think towards office growth and inadvertently make it seem as though you are with everyone else and pro cubicle. After the meeting you answer a slough of emails, several of which are from Page, Tom, Millie and Fred who really want to meet about something substantial, but are having a hard time fitting your meeting in between all the other meetings. The five of you settle on a date two weeks in the future.

Then finally you have an hour to design, but of course, now, you have no ideas and the bland slate grey second-hand office furniture you are literally surrounded by offers no inspiration. You muddle through, somehow, putting color, form, line back into your life. Putting meaning back into your life. Then you realize your entire day was awash. Another victim of The Suck.

It is coming for us all. Can you hear it. It sounds like an inverted train. A metaphysical wind tunnel in the back corner of the office building. Will we all be lost to it?

October 16, 2006

Ouchers

I have made it to Kansas. The trip was fine, at least, I thought the trip was fine until I got to Lawrence. I am supposed to be staying with a friend this week, but she was late getting back to town from Chicago last night. I couldn't get a hold of anyone else to stay with. So, I checked into the local EconoLodge. When I got to my room I was totally overwhelmed with the stench of Febreeze. I figured this was just because it is a dog-friendly room and I decided to suck it up for one night. My right back near my shoulder blade has been sore since yesterday and I decided to take my shirt off and rub on the muscle.

Now, this is me we are talking about. I have bad luck. I started rubbing on my shoulder and felt a tick. Okay, I go hiking, camping, backpacking. I have one full-custody dog and two non-custody dogs. I grew up in New York, the number one Lyme state, and eventually moved to Kansas, the number two Lyme state. So, I am not one of those people who freaks out at the sight of a tick burrowed into her skin. But this was painful. My whole muscle is sore. It is tender the way a really bad inside the nose zit is tendered.

I removed the tick with some tweezers and put it in a jar. I went online. Most definitely a Deer Tick. I probably got it in Indiana when Pip and I stopped to go for a long walk in a park. It was most likely only attached to me for 30-33 hours, not long enough to transmit the little bugger bacteria that causes Lyme. Still, this hurts bad. I am going to have to get a doctor's appointment for my first day of work. Haha. Loser.

While I was stressing about the tick I went outside to have a cigarette. I hate smoking inside. I got a smoke-free room because I hate the smell of smoking rooms. (Yes, I realize this is probably what the inside of my lungs smell like.) So, I leave Pip in the room. I walk 15 feet away. Smoke. I come back in the room and notice paint all over the floor. The little bitch had scraped the holy hell out of the hotel room door. So, at midnight I drove over to a friend's house and borrowed a vacuum cleaner to get thepaint chips from the door up off the carpet. My thinking is that if the house keeping person throws open the door and starts working she might not ever notice the back of the door. Fingers crossed.

I am kind of worried about what the rest of the day will have in store for me. I am off to get car tags. Then I have to go to work and fill out my paper work. I might use the rest of the afternoon to look for an apartment. I feel a bit discombobulated. It is weird to once again be home, but not having a home.

October 13, 2006

Please Stay Tuned

Today I am moving to Kansas. The God's in their mysterious godly ways have decided to throw a few hurdles in my way. Tests, I believe they're called in Greek Mythology or trials and trib-you-lations in the American Christian church-going vernacular.

So, today I was to visit a girl that I dated for about 5 months earlier this year. I was going to stay with her tonight in Buffalo then take a nice leisurely twelve-hour stroll out to Saint Louis to stay with other friends tomorrow night.

Well, The National Weather Service sent out this little warning this morning:


444 AM EDT FRI OCT 13 2006
Lake effect snow warning now in effect until 10 am EDT

This warning effects the counties of Niagara, Orleans, Northern Erie, Genesee including the cities of Niagara Falls, Medina, Buffalo, Batavia

The lake effect snow warning is now in effect until 10 am EDT this morning.

A band of heavy wet snow over northern Erie and Genesee counties will continue to lift to the north this morning. Additional accumulations of 2 to 5 inches are possible bringing general storm totals to 1 to 2 feet from metro Buffalo to western Genesee county. Total accumulations of 6 to 12 inches are expected across Niagara and Orleans counties.

The combination of heavy snow and widespread downed trees will make travel extremely difficult across metro buffalo this morning.

Remember, in lake effect snow the weather can vary from locally heavy snow in narrow bands to clear skies just a few miles away. If you will be traveling across the region this morning...be prepared for very difficult and slow driving conditions. Stay tuned to NOAA weather radio and other radio and TV stations for further details or updates.

My Buffalonian gal pal summed it up like this: "Holy shit. (Loud excited roommate screeching in background.) There is a state-of-emergency. Trees are down everywhere. The thruway is CLOSED all the way back to ROCHESTER. You probably won't be able to get in today. Come tomorrow. Holy shit. Look at that."

To which I said, "Oh man. I can't. I have to work on Monday."

To which she said, "Oh well," as if she had just found out the grocery store was out of her regular brand of bottled water which mattered little because she had just seen a new megahydrating-ultracool-electrolyte-replenishing super-water for half the price.

So, I am now plotting a different course to Saint Louis and eventually Kansas City instead of driving up to Buffalo in anticipation of warm mugs of hot cocoa and snow ball fights to be followed at some point by I-will-miss-you-s which I now realize would not have been entirely heart-felt. A small part of me, the simulated happiness part, is telling myself, "Ah well, better to not have wasted your time with something that you know isn't going to last or be truly deeply meaningful." But, another part of me, the part the craves real actual chemically tangible happiness, is saying, "Who cares about forever?! Go up there and battle the elements, take side roads, strap on some skis and get your snowday on." In an ironic bit of self-awareness it is this side of my brain, the real tangible side, that is urgently, persistently reminding me "Meaning and happiness are what you make of them."

October 12, 2006

Ripe

My mom is a bargain junky. Correction, my mom is a self-identified bargain junky. It is the kind of thing that happens to a single parent struggling to make ends meet. She has always worked an insane number of hours. Even now she has two jobs one in town and one three hours away.

I vividly remember her coming home in the evenings laden with an odd assortment of groceries. My sister and I would help her put away the week’s food goods. Three bags of Twizlers, 3 dozen eggs, 2 bottles of pineapple salsa, 4 frozen pie crusts, 24 cans of diet seltzer water, 4 lbs of ground round and a bag of ice later we would wonder, in earnest, what the hell we were going to eat for dinner.

We were the kind of family that would have an excess of tube socks to wear but not a single socially acceptable pair of running shoes amongst us. We had toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods and huge white bloomers coming out the wazoo, but a decided lack of functioning motor vehicles. Though I am sure that if carburetors and fan belts went on sale or were available in bulk we would have an entire shelf of them in the garage.

When I moved home recently I found no fewer than 18 identical Eddie Bauer edition Nalgene bottles in the overstuffed kitchen cabinets. I asked my mom, the midwife, why she had so many water bottles. She said, “They were on sale.” And that was the full extent of her rationale.

My sister, the advertising executive, told me recently that she personally witnessed the storing of three, yes three, turkey ovens. These are not turkey trays that one puts in their normal oven, but rather self-contained miniature electric ovens that are designed for the express purpose of cooking a turkey, not a chicken, not vegetables, a turkey, or in our case three turkeys, without tying up the oven.

My mom once told me while we unloaded a trunk-full of sale hostas, “I have to spend a little money to save a lot.” Over the years my sister and I have tried to point out to her that if she were to say SAVE that little money upfront she might be able to invest it in quality, long-life products or (dare I dream) in stocks or bonds, but she has no interest.

The truth is she shops as a hobby. I have seen her on multiple occasions go to a friend’s house and look through mail-order catalogues for hours while everyone else drinks coffee or discusses the recent happenings in their lives. Sometimes, if she is on her way to visit a friend that doesn’t have the social sense to keep catalogues out for guests to peruse she will bring a stack of her own.

In an average week we will receive 10-20 catalogues and 3-10 magazine and professional journals. The journals go unopened, still in the plastic, into a box for ‘reference.’ The magazines go to the bathroom next to the toilet for ‘thumbing through.’ The catalogues go straight to the living room table where they are read until the ink is worn from the cover and the pages go limp and ragged.

Our mailman has the daily charge of getting all of her catalogues to fit in the box with the door closed. Occasionally he pulls his truck over and delivers the mail directly to the front door. I am sure this is a time saving activity. Several of our neighbors have opted out of getting our mail for her when she is out of town because “It takes up too much space.”

Recently my mom found a ‘lovely’ pop up greenhouse on sale in a gardening catalogue she subscribes to. I am thinking that this is what led her into her stint as a community gardener. New vegetable gardeners always fall into a certain trap. This is a kind of trap that my mom is prone to. The thinking goes like this. For the same price as a tomato I can buy a plant that will grow a bunch of tomatoes. For the price of a tomato plant I can buy a pack of seeds that will grow a row of tomato plants. All I have to do is a little prep work, some watering and viola, I will have a assload of tomatoes for the price of one.

Yeah, we pay farmers to do this for us for a reason. It is efficient.

So, this past spring before the frost lifted, I helped my mom put a million little seeds into seed starting packs. We put the seeds into the popup greenhouse. It was my job to make sure they were watered regularly while my mom was away working. She rented two community garden plots. One was here in town, the other was close to her work in Poughkepsie.

For a few months this spring my girlfriend and I would spend what should have been lazy, post cloital Saturday mornings riding up to the town dump with my mom. A couple of years ago she discovered there was free compost at the dump while saving money by hauling her own trash.

For most people trash day is a day during the week in which you have to remember to cart your waste to the curb before getting on with the rest of your life. In our house trash day is literally an entire day spent going to the dump.

My mom, unlike my girlfriend and me, loves trash day. Here is how it works. We load her old rotting Pathfinder, or as she drawls it, ‘the truuck,’ up with nasty, leaking, maggot infested, week-old bags of trash, some shovels and boxes of out-dated catalogues. We then drive 20 miles out into the country to the county landfill. At the entrance to the dump we pull over at the recycling bins and dispose of the catalogues. Then we get in line with all the dump “truucks” and wait our turn to weigh-in. After weighing-in we drive 300 yards to the ‘household waste’ containers. There are also containers for scrap metal, tires, batteries and refrigerators. We unload the trash. Then we would circle around again to the entrance and get back into line to be weighed. We pay on average two dollars to the lady in the window at the scale. My mom has become acquaintances with this gal in the way many people come to know their butcher or hairdresser. The lady gives us our receipt and a treat for our dog through the little metal drawer of propriety under the window. Then we would circle around yet again to the compost area and load the back of the truck with an insane amount of steaming bio matter while the dog scarves down her treat.

After loading up we treat ourselves to lunch at a local country farm. The thinking here is that we have saved so much money hauling our own garbage that we deserve a treat. The reality is we were always freaking hungry after all the shoveling. We take turns going into the farm store restroom to clean the trash ooze and compost dirt from under our nails. We eat out on the front porch and the dog usually gets another treat.

After lunch we go out to the farm orchards and pick a couple of bushels of whatever fruit or berry is in season. This is much more cost effective, according to my mom, than buying 1/2 ripe fruit at the super market. The copious amount of fruit is taken home and flash frozen for use in smoothies and pies hopefully to be accompanied by three turkeys. (There is currently so much frozen, freshly-picked fruit in our freezer that we can’t fit anything else in.) By the time we drive the 20 miles back to town it was usually well into the afternoon. My girlfriend would take her leave of us. And my mom would head out to her local garden plot where she would spend the rest of the day light hours fastidiously preparing immaculate rows of well-composted soil for her seedlings.

I don’t know who enjoyed trash days more my mom or my treat-laden puppy. While my mom was busy saving money and working on her little projects my puppy got to go to all the stinkiest parts of town. One day I turned around to check on my pup in the back of our compost-filled truck just as she squatted down and took a leak on the crest of her own private, motorized bathroom. None of us bothered to try and correct this behavior. After all, she was peeing in the dirt and the ‘truck’ already reeked from months and months of hauling rubbage. (My mom has asked me to point out that she put a plastic tarp under the compost.) The puppy loved it when we would unload the compost and she would frequently jump in and help with the digging. My mom usually left half of the compost in the truck to take with her later in the week when she drove to work and the pup would laze atop her kingdom of stench.

All-in-all my mom probably would have broken even on her community garden plots if it hadn’t been for The Flood and the ensuing state of emergency. The thing is commercial farms aren’t usually built in places like flood plains. Years of stealing land and ideas from the Indians has taught us where and where not to attempt to build farms. So low-lying areas that flood often become things like parks and they sport prime soil for community gardens. The amazing thing is that the garden here in town didn’t actually flood, her plot was above the flood line. The road leading to the garden did flood, however. We would drive by the park on the highway and watch day after day as the carefully constructed rows got more and more overgrown until after a few weeks the plants began to die off. By the time we could get back in the crops were pretty much a wash. Her out-of-town garden did flood. She was hoping to replant, but when she went to inspect her plot it was littered with dead, bloated rats. That pretty much marked the end of the growing season.

I asked her if she was planning on planting a community garden again next year. She said, “Actually, I have been thinking about a raised bed for that back corner of the yard that gets all the evening sun.” I can already see the whole process repeating itself. This time with the added excitement of hauling lumber and irrigation tubes.

My mom recently leased a new car. I know what you are thinking: LEASED? But because she is a midwife she can deduct “every penny” come tax time. In her mind deducting expenses, giving the government an interest-free wartime loan, is a better deal than saving money up front. She refused to trade in the truck. It is almost completely rusted out. It needs new brakes. It needs new everything, but I know she was thinking.

“Yes, I might get five hundred for trading this vehicle in, but just imagine how much I am going to save on tomatoes next year.“

In her defense there is nothing quite as wonderful as a perfectly ripe piece of fruit. Especially when you are related to it.

October 11, 2006

Shit.

My car is parked in a tow away lot. There is a police officer watching it. The tags are expired. I am wanted in the State of Nevada. I just had to bother someone for a ride home. I will have to wake my mom up in four hours to drive me over there to move it. I feel like a heel.

October 10, 2006

The Latest Craze

I have decided that the reason that people make life long friends in college has very little to do with the college experience. It is just so damned hard to make friends after college. First of all everyone has a job. I don’t know why people get these jobs, but they do. Jobs are serious impediments to friendship-building activities like staying up all night talking about life, breaking laws for fun, getting in fist fights, doing drugs and drinking copious amounts of alcohol for weeks on end. Second of all everyone gets married. Marriage kills friendship. Married people nest. Nesting involves forsaking other social activities to paint the living room a nicer shade of off-white or spending the weekend looking at saltshakers and bed skirts. Marriage also leads to kids and as much as I adore kids most of them stand out like a sore thumb at a gay bar or punk concert.

I have recently contemplated letting go of a few of my college pals. You know the ones. They never return your letters unless it is with some type of family newsletter. They make an effort to spare “an hour or two” when you come to town to visit them. They want to spend half of your trip looking at wedding photos. They suck.

The thing that keeps me from cutting them off entirely is the fact that I can’t replace them. Don’t get misty-eyed. This is not just sentimental. I literally can’t find available warm bodies to stand in for them.

I am starting work on my grad school applications. I have a twisted ulterior motive in going back to school. I want new friends. Smarter friends. Friends who are politically opposed to marriage, who are studying things that are unlikely to prepare them for a job and who are infertile. I want a cult of highly intelligent, jobless, childless, polyamorous pals to spend my thirties with.

It is with this sensibility that I am preparing for the next decade of my life. I am learning things that are likely to make me more interesting to aloof, sexually-liberated intellectuals with copious amounts of free time. For example, I have decided to take some Latin dance lessons. Latin dance requires practice. Practice takes free time. I am hoping to recruit my fellow grad students into the Latin-dancing craze. Another example, filmmaking. I am sorry, but you can only be into film if you have hours to spend watching it and considerably more hours to spend critiquing it. Filmmaking raises the stakes. Now one must also spend hours and hours writing, schmoozing, err, networking, directing, editing, promoting, etc. Hopefully, by this time next year my cadre of soulless dancing filmmakers will be well on its way to being established and I can turn thirty secure in the knowledge that I will never again spend a Saturday afternoon fielding text messages politely declining my invitations for grown-up fun.

October 9, 2006

Atlas



Last night I came out of my slump. I went to watch Little Miss Sunshine with Rose (yes, like the fucking flower). We were two of eight people in the theatre. I laughed loudly and uncontrollably.

We went to Karaoke. A friend, Michael, was there. His mother was ill. A gal began singing The Rose by Bette Midler. Michael got teary and told me that this was he and his mother's song. He had his heart broken at the ripe old age of 14 and his mother in a moment of infinite motherly wisdom told him, "Michael, honey, I think you are going to understand this song."

Years later, when he was in his thirties his mother said to him again, "The Rose, that is your song." He told me last night that his mother was ill having just suffered a brain aneurism. I stood with him for a moment not knowing what to say and realizing that it was perfectly fine to be quiet and just let him talk. He said that The Rose is their song. Afterwards I told him I felt very similarly when I hear my mom and I's song, Time After Time by Cyndie Lauper.

Well, didn't the little tart request Time After Time for us to sing. We did what I believe to be the most absolutely fabulous gender-fucked, heavy punk version of Time After Time . . . ever, which is a feat considering it is already a Cyndie Lauper ditty.

Last night, somehow, I just knew that I was done doubting myself. It is funny how one day you are just done with a thing. It was okay that I spent this time, a year of my life, not knowing who I was or what I wanted to do. It was another year. But man it felt so good to put the world down and be myself again.

October 8, 2006

Siblings

There were two men, brothers, that ordered before me. They drove an Astrovan. They ate on a budget of white bread and french fries. They critiqued restaurants on a sliding scale of dollars, cents and calories. Taste is skew.

These two watched me carefully, an alien in hiking boots with hairy legs and an odd elvis-presley-esque hair cut. I have yet to perfect looking human. My voice betrayed my sex or lack of sex and my accent betrayed my time on other planets. Interstellar diseases are difficult to anticipate and one should always be on his or her or its guard, these homeworld-tethered humans understood this innately.

They moved across the restaurant vestibule and talked, not loudly, but of a certain decibel that let others know: We are entitled to this conversation.

A heterosexual human female had called one of the brothers at a moment 5:00 am as it occurred at or near the longitudinal coordinates 42.1393, -75.8798, that is to say Binghamton, New York, United States, Planet Earth, Our Solar System, The Known Universe on his cellular phone to tell him something.

When he picked up the phone she realized from the sound of his voice that he had been sleeping as heterosexual human males tend to do at this time at these coordinates, being prone to a phenomenon known as circadian rhythms and thusly being strongly programmed to rest during the hours this side of the planet they inhabit has turned its back on the local star.

The heterosexual female apologized for waking him to which he said, “I am awake now." Well put, human.

He followed up with, "Tell me what you wanted to say.”

I couldn’t hear what it is she had to tell him. He finished the story too bored or lazy to inject any emotional value into the timber of his voice by saying, “Can you believe that broad calling me at 5:00 in the morning? I was tempted to get in the van and drive over to her house and give it to her right then at 5:00 in the morning.”

I deducted from body language that the 'it' he spoke of was his male sex organ.

I, resident alien, longed suddenly, urgently to be a human heterosexual man. I felt the desire drive an Astrovan and to be satiated simply because I felt like being satiated while the rest of my side of the earth was still sleeping. I longed for the hormone-bewildered female to get into an ancient animalistic pose and clean my erect genitals with her mouth before permitting me to copulate with her.

There was a time when I could have forgotten I was an alien. When I could have stayed on this planet and my family could have raised me as a human. My faux human sister and I could have dwelt away our entire existences in this small-sized, economically faltering, human military-industrial post.

It is like sadness to have seen other worlds. Elated sadness. To know one thing is to forget another. To know a lot of things is to not know any one thing well. I have forgotten how to be human, something I was once unquestionably. My sister is much better at passing in the human world than I am. The two of us could have been habitating here, driving around a motorized vehicle, copulating with humans, reproducing human-esque babies, dwelling out our life expectancies. It would not have been any different from intergalactic knowledge seeking.

To be a human's arm length from my sister may have been worth all the unhappiness in this tilting planet.

Trail

We spent the morning at the lake. The cool clear water lapped at flat rocks. My dog ran to water’s edge, to head above water’s edge and then ran further feet not finding rock. I walked along a felled tree trunk as if it were a dock a good 20 yards out into the lake and then my dog came running our tree trunk as well her too wet paw prints unrecognizable as a dog’s. We walked along water’s edge. Then we walked along creek’s edge over footbridge to bog. We looked at bog from a safe distance. We followed bog’s edge to road. We crossed road and found trail. We followed trail to fork. We fashioned an arrow to fork pointing way back. We followed fork to cabin. We went on cabin porch and sat in chair. We walked to front of cabin and followed road to bog, bog to lake, lake to car.

October 6, 2006

Just some words

After work last night I went to have coffee with a nice gal. I drove her home. We sat and chatted in the driveway. We kissed goodnight.

Before she got out of the car I asked her what her last name was and she said, "Rose, like the fucking flower."

I wonder if I will ever be able to look at a rose again and not think to myself, "fucking flower."

(More to follow . . . )

October 4, 2006

A Few Times Around the Track


Well, today (Monday) was one for the books.

The leaves have shown their first flashes of untrained brilliance, color popping forth in unexpected ways like nervous laughter, teasing us with flashes of metered poetry that will soon explode all about. Today the sun shown warm through the puffs of white cloud that clung to the hills moving like caterpillars. The woods smelled of near-autumn and the waterfall ran coldly, invigorated by the week's brisk rain and excited by the sound of itself splashing on cool rocks.

Today was the first day I did the old place up the way it should be done up. The way you can only do with an old friend or close sibling after years of having lived elsewhere.

My sister was in town for a long weekend.

We started off our adventure with a trip to a cider mill where we bought apples and a small pumpkin for Beaver, a great childhood friend. We ate breakfast at 3:00 pm sharp at a diner and lost all control at the diner happenings; a man dropped a forkful of raw onions on a table and ate them by hand, a couple sat eating spaghetti and meatballs not talking or making eye contact, a waitress indulged in an unusually big piece of pumpkin pie with an unusually big helping of whipped cream.

After breakfast we decided to hit a few balls at the batting cages. It has always been a dream of mine. It is the kind of thing all the real boys did. It was also the kind of thing real girls didn't do. When my sister suggested it I nearly jumped into the car. The whole ride out I fantasized about the feeling of connecting with something, of twisting, of ripping a ball to the back end of the nets.

When we arrived at the spot where the sports complex and attached batting cages had always been we looked around stumped. "Perhaps it was on the other side of the driving range?" And, "No it was right here. There is the minigolf course, or what is left of it."

The batting cages were wiped out in the flood. Deflated we circled the parking lot and got back on the road.

Since we had nothing better to do we decided to drive by our old place on Clearview Avenue (so called because it has a clear view of the Susquehanna River) that was just a mile or two from the sports complex.

We noticed right away that something was off about the our old street. It was quieter than ususal. The yards were overgrown. The mailboxes were missing. The houses looked crooked or slanted and shorter. When we pulled in front of our old pad there was a big neon orange "X" sprayed on the front. We broke out in uproarious laughter when we realized that our house, like most of the buildings in the neighborhood, was condemned.

We pulled into the driveway and parked. When we finally checked our jocular laughter. My sister, the advertising executive, said, "Man that is a great tree." She was referring to an old oak at the front corner of the driveway. The tree was rooted atop a 4 or 5 foot embankment that led down into the side yard of the house which is the size of an entire lot. We called the attached lot 'the soccer field.' This tree shaded a good tenth of the soccer field and would drop leaves across 1/2 the yard that we would rake into various patterns in the fall. My mom had taught us a game as youngsters in which we would we would play house or office using leaves for walls.

When we got out of the car we inspected a pile of flood-damaged junk at the back of the driveway. We haven't lived in this house for close to 15 years, but there in the pile were things of ours - baskets, tables, bikes, toys - mixed in with things from other families and caked in river mud. Our things. Their things. Mud.

I guess it isn’t surprising, in theory, that our old house was sacked in the flash flooding that rocked the town. The soccer field usually flooded a couple of times a year. Not only did the street have a clear view of the river it had a clear role as a flood plain. In the winter there would be times when the flood water in the soccer field froze and we would lace up ice skates and go trolling across our 50 foot wide by 2 foot deep pond, tripping over frozen sticks and roots from the tree.

We went to the back door of the house and looked in the three little square windows. The top window, my sister pointed out, was still the original glass, which was at eye level and had a Celtic-looking painted design. The second window was also glass, but with no painted design and it was at navel-level. The third window down was at knee-level and Plexiglas. Unlike the more recent tenants of this house and unlike the owners, we knew exactly what had happened to those windows and why there was only one original left.

The bottom pane had been knocked out several times by roughhousing in the rather large kitchen the back door leads into. My mom, in frustration, eventually put the Plexiglas in because she was tired of going to the hardware store and spending her evenings replacing the pane. The middle pane had been knocked out twice, that I can remember, once by myself in the dead of winter when I forgot my keys and once by a couple of neighbor girls, who broke into the house while we were on vacation.

The window next to the door was open and the screen had fallen out. My sister and I discussed the pros and cons of going in the window. Finally I told her with a shrug, "I can't fit." And that was it. I can' fit through that little window any more. We decided to forget about breaking in and walked around the side of the house. There was the beautiful old Rhododendron. There were dozens of hen-and-chicks that had grown from the two or three my mom had started. There was the ledge that the old frog used to sit on and pick off bees from the swarm that infested the underside of the front porch. The front porch that was now slanted from the flood and was papered with signs that read "enter at your own risk" in several languages.

So we did.

After all that time we had spent contemplating going in the window it turns out the front door was wide open. We gingerly walked into the front room of the house, half expecting the floor to collapse.

Except for a lot of mud and mold it was just how we remembered it. It felt smaller, of course, the two of us having grown at least a foot each, but it was just the same in every other way. I turned to my sister and said, "We were really happy in this house. MOM was really happy." And it is true. I could not remember one time living in that house when any of us were sad for a prolonged time, except at the very end when my grandfather was ill. Every place I looked I remembered happy things, and the things that were a little sad just seemed funny now that the place was so much smaller and covered in silt and rat terds.

There was a random tricycle in the front room and as far as we could tell it was the only thing left in the entire house other than a nightlight. The same exact nightlight that had been there when we left. We walked through the kitchen where we had played many a game of kick the can and my particular favorite: armoral the floor and sock-slide to the door. Then there was the bathroom, just as we had left it. The linen closet. My sister's room. There was the TV room, the living room and the two upstairs bedrooms. Tiptoing around we started to feel like kids again. Teasing each other. Goofy awkward laughing, running our fingers along the walls.

When we got back outside, my shiny car awaited us in the driveway with the Kansas tags still on it. It is the first new car any of the three of us have ever owned. It seemed so out of place, so impossible.

The first day I moved to this house I paced this drive way enumerating all the reasons I would never love living here as much as I had loved living in our little apartment on Chenango Street. First of all we had switched rivers. Second there was no playground, there was no school parking lot for stickball and wintertime games of king of the mountain atop snow bluffs. There was no school to scale the walls of and jump off the roof of. I had no little gang of hoodlums to run around with. There was no Day and Night gas station to steal candy from. There was only happiness and space to play and run and shout with joy. I had thought I would hate it there.

I was overcome in the driveway with the need to snap a photo and no way of doing so. It was an amazing moment. The two of us back in our old house, looking at a part of our lives we never thought we would see again. But we had no camera so this will have to stand as our record of the time we got to go home again for an hour.

We left our house and my sister asked me if I would have any interest in go-carting. "Would I ever." I had been begging people to go go-carting with me for sixth months, but there was never a taker. We sat out front of the go-cart entrance for a good ten minutes working up the courage to walk in and say, "Uh, yeah. We are two grown women and we would like to risk life and limb to race the shit out of each other in little tiny cars."

All the dudes hanging around out front smoking cigarettes looked like seasoned veterans. They stuck to the place like folks who had been going there so long, every Monday for so many years, that they ceased needing senses to navigate. They knew by muscle memory, where to stand, when to light a cig, when it would be done, how far to throw it, how many paces to the front door, what line to follow on the track to win, how high to hold their dicks while pissing in the latrine . . .

We walked up to the girl at the counter. I later described her as the goddess of the speedway, and it was me who said, "We have never done this before. How do we get started?"

The goddess told us we would need to get our racing license which is a laminated piece of paper that costs three bucks. She explained our package options with unusual confidence for a person with such an array of different size, shape and color teeth. I say this not to be mean but because it was fascinating. She was a goddess to the speedway boys and my sister and I later wondered how many guys had gotten their pirates* snagged on a particularly pointy incisor she sported on the upper right hand side of her mouth. The thought occurred to me that the tooth might leave quite the mark and that the mark might be a sign of passage in this odd insular community. This is all fantasy and none of it is founded in any kind of truth accept that deep sort of intuitive feeling you get sometimes about a place and the folks in it.

It cost us $50 for two licenses and 12 minutes each of track time. It takes several minutes for the photo IDs to print and the snaggle-toothed goddess suggested we come back and pick them up after we raced. She must of flagged us as novices because we got put on a deserted track together with two old jalopy go-carts. Afterwards my sister told me she never took her foot off of the gas pedal and I believe it. It wasn't so much racing as wasting time. After the fourth lap we were both trying to invent ways to make it more fun. We would pass each other and make wild hand gestures or cut each other off and try to make patterns as we rode. After a while we just kept going around in circles because we felt obligated to use up all of the time we had bought.

My sister did get excited in about the tenth lap when she passed me from behind. Her mildly pointed nose jutting forwards against the smiling, backwards flung corners of her mouth. Her long blonde hair was streaming behind her hunched shoulders and pinched elbows, She told me she felt like Cruella Deville. It was almost like old times, except I had no desire to catch up with her. It was too fun to watch her win.

After our time was up we went inside and watched the "pros." They were men between the ages of 15 and 45 that were going around a flat track at much higher speeds than us. It seemed to matter to them and to the crowd which color car was in the lead. My sister professed a disgust for NASCAR that was born in her a few minutes earlier while we anxiously looked forward to being told our time was up.

There were two guys behind us in line when we had come in. They bought two hours worth of races each. The only thing more unfathomable than riding around a little track for two hours was paying $100 bucks to do it. These were not rich guys and we wondered how they justified throwing down that kind of dough on go-carting to their wives or mothers.

The goddess gave us our licenses. They were brilliant. I look handsome, Julie looks beautiful. Okay, we both only look mildly human, but they seemed wonderful to us.

We went to Friendly's and my sister got herself an ice cream. Then we went to our new house. Which isn't really either of our's now and we took a nap.

There is nothing left for me to do in this town now. I have gone to the batting cages, though they were gone, I have gone on the go carts, I have had sex in a public place, I was poster child of the month at the gay bar. I just can't think of another thing I would like to accomplish here and it is time to move. This coming week I will be leaving for a long long time, now that I have had one more go at the old place and discovered I am too old and too big to call it home again. And I don't know when the eternal footman will wave me back into port. Me a ship that has sailed to places unmentionable by name and unfathomable to my former self who was shorter in stature and foresight.

*I met a school teacher a few weeks ago who told me that a boy on the playground ran up to her cupping his genitals and said, "Oh, man. I just got kicked in the pirates." So now I prefer to say pirates over privates.