The Activist had a brilliant idea this morning. She suggested that I start adding words from my personal lexicon to Wikipedia and attributing the sayings to myself. So this morning I officially coined my first term. Check it out.
Just before Christmas The Activist and I paused outside of a bookstore located on The Plaza in Kansas City. As we stood taking in the swelling crowds rushing to purchase over-priced presents in the ridiculously faux-ritzy Plaza at stores like Armani Exchange and FAO Schwartz where men stand pinching fabric between their fingers and frowning and women delight over ridiculously useless cutting-edge gadgets I took notice of one man in particular. He was wearing an all black outfit topped with glints of metal and leather. He was pacing the area in front of the bookstore talking on a fancy cellular phone.
I guessed that the sum total of things he was wearing or carrying on his person was somewhere in the range of $2000-$3000 and my disdain for this young, pompus rich man deepened the more I watched him. I say he was pompus because he had the air of owning the sidewalk. The way he paced unaware of the flow of traffic, expecting others to adjust, and the way he talked, loudly, not caring who overheard.
"You are staring." Chimed The Activist from the side of her mouth.
"I know." I say, "It is a new thing. I stare now."
As he paced he shifted his supple leather bag to his other shoulder and threw his full-length wool coat over the bag. He placed his sleek little phone back to his ear and said, "I mean I have never even MET my neice. She is three. They haven't come to Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years in the past two years. So, I sit there and talk to no one and no one talks to me."
Boohoo, poor little rich boy.
"So I got them all little things. Even the maid. But I am not going to visit this year."
Imagine the sad tear running down my face.
"I mean they told me not to bring my boyfriend. I haven't even told them he is Asian. Can you imagine my family eating with two gays, one of them Asian?"
He set his bag down.
"Could you be a little less obvious?" asked The Activist.
Fifteen feet away on the same curb a man played a horn. He was spouting out Christmas joy. I had the distinct impression he was there more for the playing than the tips. He was dressed up in a nice outfit, though it paled next to the poor little gay rich boy's.
The rich boy caught a private cab. We went in the book store. When we came back out the musician placed his horn in a richly lined box. The street, reclaimed by the bored, wealthy, heteronormative capitalists kept on being as faux-snooty as ever.
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
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.
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."
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
JESUS is the answer.
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.
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?
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.
