Wednesday, December 30, 2009

From Shibari to Haiku


Haven't run since the day before the big storm. Thought it was work, and the cold, and holidays, and just plain lazyassedness, and yes, it's all that plus low blood count/anemia AGAIN, discovered by accident when I went in to get a damn Retin-A refill. So a round of inconvenient and pricey tests will be committed, just to find out that I'm anemic because I'm an old lady who doesn't eat much meat.

I'd been feeling this not really unpleasant swoony feeling for a couple weeks, plus the skippy heartbeats, and thinking--This is familiar. Where do I remember this from? And being so spacey I couldn't quite place it. Then I almost blacked out--I was at this club party thing and a guy was doing Japanese ropework, which is really beautiful, so I volunteered to get into the web he was making a couple times. It's not a sex thing for me, it's being part of someone's living, changing work of art, is why I've done this a couple times. But then, as he was putting on some finishing touches, I realized I was about to pass out. And I'd been drinking water, and I'd had dinner, so it was mysterious. It was also embarrassing, but I had to ask this poor dear man to unweave me, which he did with all dispatch and a great deal of solicitude, keeping me talking, or sort of mumbling, until I could lie down. Fact: Every BDSM person I've met has been of the sweetest and most caring disposition--almost too damn nice, if you want to know the truth. Then again, I would never put myself in such a position with anyone who was unkind or impolite (abandon all hope, trolls and frat boys who enter here). I ran three miles the next day, and thought OK, all better, but then it happened again, though of course not nearly under as interesting circumstances, and I feel kind of funny right now, and it takes for fucking ever for a thought longer than a facebook update to percolate to the surface of my blood-starved brain. Brains. Brains. Am I a zombie or a vampire? This is about the level of brains you'll get from me lately. Lifting my hands above elbow level to keyboard feels monumental, yet I just won't shut up, will I? DH puts on an on-demand movie and I fall out, I open a book and I fall out, I try to write and it's all blah blah blah. Energy goes first to my daughter, then to work, then there isn't any more. Poor DH. Usually I have extra to do more. No more. Use fewer words. Haiku. Silly me, forgot/ Bad girls aren't allowed to love/ Husbands or children.

So I'm doing little writing and less running, and my only contact with the interesting parts of the planet, like you, has been virtual. Luckily, BAker is coming in this weekend for a visit. It is nice to have friends with whom one can sit on the couch.

When tests are done I can go on supplements etc. and I'll be rolling again.

Photo: The Thakoon Shibari shift dress--you can get it at Saks for $1,500, or a kindly rope artist might build you one for free.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Melting

My Prayer to the Polar Bear

Give me one more summer,
A true summer, not a mush
Of mosquitoes and viruses,
Please, good beast, trudging
Through the slush we have made
Of your world, please grant me
One more bloody mary morning
In a bar with clean wood, indirect sun,
One more time to feel the dip in my stomach
That to me means love


Saturday, December 26, 2009

Xmas Chex Mix

Two Doves, Dirty Projectors; Everlasting, Wilco; For You, Big Star; White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes; Right On the Tip of My Tongue, Brenda and the Tabulations; Waters of March, Cassandra Wilson; The Wonder, Golden Palominos; Work to Do, Isley Brothers; All My Friends, LCSoundsystem; Alone Again Or, Love; Halfway Home, TV on the Radio; Home, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros; The Perfect Space, The Avett Brothers; Me and Jane Doe, Charlotte Gainsbourg; Epistemology, M. Ward; It's All Good, Bob Dylan.

Have had a shit ton of paying work (one of my coworkers developed serious health problems, which besides being sad and worrying means juggling there) plus child care, so very lazy about any other writing or doing much of anything. Want to write about the Solstice, about Copenhagen, about the tsunami anniversaries, about the astrology, about a story I read, about all the year/decade lists, but too bad for that, we're off to the library and to buy milk now.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

What Tiger Woods Didn't Do

The golfer didn't do any of these things:

--Refuse to sell a breast cancer survivor health insurance.
--Cut off funding for children's health care.
--Take gift cards given as holiday help to the poor and spend them on himself.
--Make peanut butter with factory equipment contaminated with salmonella.
--Tell a homeowner in trouble that he could help them get a new loan to avoid foreclosure, take the last of her savings, and run off.
--Spend people's retirement savings on bottle service in nightclubs.
--Collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses after running a company into the ground.
--Threaten to expose a CIA agent as political retaliation.
--Make up news in order to promote a political agenda.
--Threaten harm to a witness in a drive-by murder case.
--Dump PCBs into a creek.
--Continue to manufacture known carcinogens.
--Refuse to meet safety standards in a mine, causing deaths of workers.
--Lay off hundreds of people to save his stock options.

What he did do, apparently:
--Have sex.

Why are people so upset about that last thing, and not mad at all the people who did all those other things?

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Being Present


Someone I like...what should I call her...Synchronicity Spice? It'll do for now. (It's not a good day for naming. Today I got a whole list of potential business names back from a client with an email saying: "I hate them all." I agree. But I hate everything related to marketing. Unfortunately, I think the clients are on to me. That's going to be a problem.)

Anyway, she asked me about the Not Buying Anything. Truthfully, it's not going so well. I've bought plenty of things this year I don't really need. A couple of t-shirts--the other day I was at a store looking for a coat for my daughter and came out with a t-shirt for myself. Not cool. Some stuff from Patagonia, leggings and sport bras, during the end of summer sale. A book. Probably downloaded about $30 in tunes. Some sweaters to replace two I lost. A cheapo running fleece and pants, just this weekend. And on the New York trip, I caved on a sweater at Muji and two of those fake $5 pashminas they sell on every corner.

She asked about gifts. Books always work, or something made by an artist. Sometimes herbs or teas I grow. I bought several crafted baby gifts this year. For years, I've given all the families my siblings have spun off donations to someplace--wolf rescue, MSF, probably Potomac Appalachian Trail Club again this year. I am so, so lucky that they don't get weird about not getting things.

Anyway, this is dull, but it being near the end of the year--new moon tomorrow, Solstice next week--I thought I might start reckoning up in a number of ways.

I am bad at giving gifts and at receiving them. I do not like getting presents. I cringe this time of year, with all the commercials telling me I am supposed to want, want, want, diamonds and jewelry in particular. I tend to get gifts impulsively and not according to occasion, often choosing things that leave the recipients bewildered, and I forget important occasions--I never like to celebrate holidays, my own birthday, or my own anniversaries of any kind. I didn't like celebrating the wedding or anything else, either. I think I am probably a bad relative and a bad friend by the lights of Hallmark marketers, but I also like to think I have some things about myself that can make up for it.

Anyway, what follows are two lists for Santa, my daughter's and my own. If you guess which is which, you get a present. Neither of us will get all we ask for.

List #1
1. Mini lime green shuffle like Kyle's.
2. Remote control black widow spider.
3. Candy jewelry making kit.
4. Pajamas for dolls.
5. Me being able to do a split.
6. Real live dog! (Please.)
7. Bath set for doll's dog.
8. The ability to know if something is real or not.

List #2
1. Nobody to
feel like this anymore.

2. Kyoto perfume.
3. Universal health care in the United States.
4. Time.
5. Support. Or at least some sense occasionally that I won't be laughed at or sent straight to hell for doing the things I care about.
6. Better poetry collections in the libraries.
7. Me being able to run a trail ultra.
8. The ability to know if something is real or not.
9. Your presence.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

And There Were Those Who Did the Double Bump

The Bump

Back there before we got it
The way we did the dance
Was to slam a skinny hipbone
Aimed to set your partner
Reeling across the room. Battle bumping,
Laughing, never mind bruises.

Bertha Butt had plenty of backup.
I look back, see none. I have run my rump
Down to a plane and a duet of knobby bones.
Feet pounding over mountains flattened out
My own mounds and hummocks. Run away,
Run away; no softness behind me.

But now I am looking for that bump,
The one that gets me over, sets my
Pendulum back in swing, moves
My hip to barely brush the other's:
To the left, to the left, to the right,
To the right, to the back, to the back.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?


Back from taking my daughter to NYC. She wants to be a Broadway actress and I want to live at Muji. The more complicated one's affairs become, the more simplicity one's wardrobe demands. OK, it's not Oscar-worthy, but my hands hurt.

Thinking about the thoroughly modern Thackeray saga of the White House gate-crashers--first thing I was wondering about, which I haven't seen addressed anywhere, is what's becoming of the horses. These two reportedly haven't picked up a tab in a while, but they must have horses, so who's caring for them, and with what funds? Other thoughts:

--Oasis started out as a contender winery, and the scion reportedly did enology at Davis, so what happened? The wine got bad real fast and the tasting room turned into a shrine to the party-crashers. Naked Mountain took the Chardonnay honors, Horton took the innovation prizes, and Barboursville took the history/tourism. All Oasis had was a pretty good fakey limo tour business. This is an interesting blog entry from someone who worked for that.

--Why was there ever a real housewives of DC anyway? We don't do that kind of thing here. We're prized for our dowdiness. It's what we do best! We are Ugly Betty! We are the brains of the operation.

--It was funny that some local media make a point of saying that the couple have a home not in Fauquier but in Warren.

--If Bravo is doing all this as a modern morality tale, tracing the downfall of a folie a deux, that's fascinating--and horribly cruel. Maybe there's a new pseudo-celebrity delusional intervention reality show in the offing. People do get desperate in this New Depression. Just please, make sure someone's taking care of the horses.

--It's all been done.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

You Will Eat a Banana Soon


1. My daughter has been making these "fortunetellers," where you fold paper into quarters and etc, then switch it in your hands according to colors and numbers and open up a flap that tells your fortune. If you've ever been an 8-year-old girl, you know just what I'm talking about. The four possible futures she has written in: You will eat a banana soon; you will have 22 children when you grow up; you have a big head; you will be the star of a Hollywood movie.

2. More journalists getting laid OFF every day; our jobs hang by a thread and all I can think of is health insurance. Fucking trapped! I'm going to die from the stress of worrying about the prospect of not having fucking health insurance!

3. My job is getting too stupid to be borne anyway. Today someone wanted me to write this: "We live at the interplay of data and analytics." No, no, we don't live there! I refuse to live there! Maria doesn't live here anymore! You live there if you want somebody living there! Foreclose that son of a bitch and tear it down like it was the Amityville horror! I won't live there! You shouldn't live there either! Get out, get out now!

4. Just give me health insurance and I'll work doing dishes, I promise, you can give my job to someone else, just don't let me have to worry about what will happen to us if one of us gets sick!

5. And we never do get sick, really. Knock wood and goddess willing. Really, I'm not even suicidal anymore since I had my daughter. Except for those flashes when I encounter people who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars and don't know how to wipe their butts.

6. Not that how often you get sick really makes any difference, or should, when it comes to health care, because it's a right. Did you hear about these pricks at Lincoln University who won't graduate students with a BMI over 30? BMI is a crock of shit; any athlete knows that. Absolutely dumbass, meaningless measure.

7. The topper is that the school head says he can't afford to provide fresh produce and nutritious food for students on campus because the school is in a "remote location." Where, the fucking arctic ice station? Even there, they get frozen vegetables. Asshat. I sentence him to not being able to afford treatment by a brilliant medical specialist who is fit but fat.

8. And nobody yet has proposed fining me for endangering my health and possibly costing taxpayers by running at night and on rocky trails. At my age. No problem, as long as I've got that cute little BMI number.

9. I downloaded a bunch of Gary Numan the other day. The early stuff. It is beautiful and romantic and gay. Someday I want to hear the break from "Replicas" in a club. If I only got out more.

10. I have to keep reminding myself that we are not in the time of Charles II. Bubonic plague AND a great fire, plus Milton and beheadings and hangings! Taking DD to the library tomorrow; hope I can find that one.