Just Like Evelyn "Champagne" King and Shirley and Company Sing

If politicians want journalists to stay out of their bedrooms, I guess they'd better learn to stay out of journalists' bedrooms. But nooooo. Instead, they've ordered the cops to camp out in front of vegan eco group houses just in CASE someone inside is THINKING of throwing a soy-whip pie at a state delegate sometime in the year 2525.

So, if preemptive arrests of journalists is OK, I guess journalists should have been allowed to preempt Miss Cristal or Bristol or Britneee or whatever the hell her name is's pregnancy.

My conspiracy theory: The hurricanes and the VP choice and the pregnancy alike are all out there to divert attention from the fact that journalists and activists are being targeted, harassed, arrested, beaten, jailed, silenced, prosecuted, persecuted, all without cause.

Time out for a little ray of light, as Madonna sings: The rock n roll poet is back to taking care of business, every day, in honor of National Poetry Month.

Now for my own shame--and this one's just the tip of the iceberg--last week I went ahead and did a job I know was damned dead wrong. My boss gives us the chance to bow out of doing marketing we disagree with morally, and I didn't take it. It was for a product that's environmentally damaging, without a doubt. They needed a damage control, image rebranding campaign. And here's why I did it--not for the money, not out of indifference, but because I saw the samples and the ideas they'd come up with, and I knew I could do it so very much better. So it was out of pride in my work.

This week I took myself off the account. I'm not patting myself on the back. I'm still whacking myself upside the head for doing it in the first place.

I feel like comparisons, even twice removed, to evils such as the Holocaust and American slavery are by nature invidious and at the very least grandiose; there's simply nothing that compares. But as long as I'm covered in sackcloth and ashes anyway, let's make it worse: There's this scene in Schindler's List where this woman prisoner tries to pull Rafe Fiennes aside and tell him the plans for the bunkhouses they're constructing at the concentration camp are all wrong; she's an architect, she explains, she knows these things. Sir. And he says "hmm," and he shoots her. It's a big ugly metaphor for the teeny tiny small-scale cockeyed compromises I'm stuck with too often. But if you aren't aware that the teeny ones can take you by the hand and lead you right into the bigger ones, well...

So, this time they came for the vegans with video cameras, and next time they'll be coming for Keith Olberman, unless you write a poem or grab a camera or donate.

Image: Cover of Shirley Goodman's comeback hit, "Shame Shame Shame," which contains the awesome lyric referencing the great William DeVaughn: "I've got my sunroof top, I've got my diamond in the back." She also sang backup on Exile. I bet she doesn't have anything to be ashamed of.

Walk of Shame

Exhibit A: "Starting salaries for day-care teachers hover around $25,000; classroom assistants who don't have college degrees make $10,000 less than that, not much more than minimum wage...High turnover is a problem at many day-care centers, experts say, and child-care workers are among the lowest paid of any profession."--Washington Post, 8/26/08

Exhibit B: "This press has a history of unethical dealings with its authors. The only reason why I didn't know this is because last year's winner had to agree to a gag order as part of the settlement with the press. At their insistence, she is not allowed to tell her story, or warn other poets about what happened. So I submitted to a press that I NEVER would have submitted to if I had known..." Here's what happened next.

Exhibit C: "So very often, the face of wrongdoing turns out to be not evil but ignorance. Under a classic surgical cross-examination by James Esseks, Litigation Director at the ACLU’s LGBT Project, Preece basically confirmed Ms. Schroer’s story. Schroer had the best qualifications and performed best in the interview. Schroer was the best person for the job. Schroer had the job; had it, that is, until she told Preece she was transgender."

Note on Exhibit B: It's interesting, but every poetry contest I've entered so far in my short career has had a fee. None of the erotica contests I've entered has had an entry fee. And the erotica editors have been without fail respectful and professional. And I've won two out of three contests entered. So who's more ethical: Poetry presses or erotic publishers?

Can You Feel the Love Tonight? That's Cool, Neither Can I.

Everyone's going to Burning Man, and I'm stuck tending home fires. Which I really don't mind. It's putting out the work fires that's making me ill. Toxic fumes an'all'at shit.

Dear BA alerted me to the impending Led Zep tribute in the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, and I couldn't even watch because I had a wretched headache from a training run on the Billy Goat Trail followed by taking the kids to see Lion King (Julie Taymor sets, costumes and puppets made me cry, late-stage Elton John music made my head pound) and not enough water breaks in between. Hey, I'm sharing part of the Burning Man experience--dehydration!

I also got bit next to the eye by a spider during a run Friday morning and by Saturday I looked like the Phantom of the Opera. It's revenge for running through so many hard-built webs. Verily, I'm like trailing clouds of chiffon some mornings, the webs are so thick and numerous across the trails.

Stupid races I will lose humiliatingly are cause for love and thanks--they are an excuse to be out there, dragonflies hovering just ahead of my pace, sweet annie scenting the air. Just like officious, arrogant clients strengthen my resolve to do whatever it takes to get myself out of the position of being their servant.

The principal at my daughter's school sent home a welcome letter saying their goal was that "children will learn, whatever it takes." "Whatever It Takes" was also the slogan for Casablanca records, and what it took was usually at least an eight-ball.

Daughter's report from the first day back at school: "Today we talked about armpits at lunchtime." Seven years, and I'm still so blindlngly in love with her.

Well, there's always next year for Burning Man. Of course, by THEN it won't be COOL anymore, WILL IT. Ha ha ha ha bah-dum!

Fruit Cocktail

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker. I played oracle with the Complete Works, and after the pages fell open to a few short stories I'd rather not think about, on the third try this appropriate one came up:

Indian Summer
In youth, it was a way I had
To do my best to please,
And change, with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!

And Prince can do the honors:

Dorothy was a waitress on the promenade
She worked the night shift
Dishwater blonde, tall and fine
She got a lot of tips
Well, earlier I'd been talkin' stuff
In a violent room
Fighting with lovers past
I needed someone with a quicker wit than mine
Dorothy was fast
Well, I ordered - "Yeah, let me get a fruit cocktail, I ain't 2 hungry"
Dorothy laughed
She said "Sounds like a real man 2 me"
Kinda cute, U wanna take a bath?
I said "Cool, but I'm leaving my pants on"
"Cuz I'm kind of going with someone"
She said "Sounds like a real man 2 me"
"Mind if I turn on the radio?"
"Oh, my favorite song" she said
And it was Joni singing "Help me I think I'm falling"
The phone rang and she said
"Whoever's calling can't be as cute as U"
Right then I knew I was through
(Dorothy Parker was cool)

So Veddy Veddy Effed.

Found out the race I'm stuck in two weeks from now goes for three of its 13 miles along rocks high above the Potomac. Scenic!

Been out of town and out of inspiration. Not out of work, though. Almost called a client an a-hole today, but didn't fall over that cliff.

Anyone got a more pleasurable cliff to fall over?

Worthy of a Follow-Up Article in the Metro Section

Wrote this last year as part of the disaster poem series. There was indeed a follow-up article on the Brentwood anthrax deaths the other day, in the Metro section--on the front, not in the inside rail. The Postal Service denied the request of the wife of one of the victims, also a postal worker, to transfer to a different facility after the incident.

The Deaths of Two Workers at the Brentwood Postal Facility, Washington, DC

It’s not the first time white powder
Shut things down around here.
Or the first time it killed, either.
From horse to green to rock it went;
The dealers circled this island
For decades. A postal job
Is supposed to be one way out.
You do your best to steer clear,
Just like they tell you, keep your
Head down, hold your head up,
Keep your nose clean, but damned
If they didn’t find a way to bring that poison
Right in the front door.
And they even got us to carry it.

Try telling anyone around here
That it wasn’t made by the government.
Try telling us that a conservative
Treatment policy was wise.
We know some of them got the cure
Before they even got the disease.
Everyone knows there are plenty
Of pills in the White House. All colors.

Anthrax is one of the ancient ones,
Like rabies, tuberculosis, and
Syphilis.
Of course.
You should have known we’d bring that up.
The anthrax spores wait in the ground
Where an animal has died, and wait,
Until someone tries to plant, to build,
And then they jump out at the living.
The spores survive in Egyptian tombs;
An effective weapon of defense
To get our kings through to the afterlife
With their riches intact.

How long before they answer our question:
How long were they planning to wait?
For six days, the particles floated around us as we worked,
Worked their way into the folds of lungs, into
The clean line of a paper cut, into our laughter
And our greetings and our side-mouth comments,
Yes, and they came home with us to greet our children.
The spores survive so much that we can’t.
Spores have the advantages of being a lower life form—
No stress, no coughing, no bills to pay,
No fool for a boss. But all are equal underground.

The Future of News Media

Yeah, I know, but a poem post doesn't really count, does it?

Let's shut down our OBSCURE bureaus (Bogota, Jakarta, Nairobi ... Does anyone really CARE?) and embed a reporter in "The Amazing Race." That way we can write about "real" foreign news as part of a blog about THE SHOW. Give readers what they "need" by giving them what they WANT, like how you sneak medicine to a dog by hiding his pills inside a chunk of hamburger.

Remember the day Lee Abrams parodies became a bona fide genre.

I Think That I Shall Never See.

I wanted to write a poem about Colony Collapse Disorder, but there's just too much there, got to do some research. So whatever.

It's my favorite place to stop in New Jersey. There are also all these signs along some roads up there that warn people that the trees have been sprayed. I'm not sure why. Do they have a problem with people digging up trees and stealing them? Trying to eat them? Pulling over and possessed of a compulsion to climb them?

Maintenance

It's getting so you can tell the trails not so much
By the blazes but by
Whether the trees fallen
Across them have been cut and cleared.

The violence of the storms increases
Each summer, and this season has pounded
A harvest of timber onto the floors of the city's
Stream bed parks. Piles of cut limbs

Show up trailside, and then there are the
New gateways, chainsaw-sliced
Out of the thickest trunks. The neat core
Is rolled aside and set stumplike,

A future stage for a stretch. The other day in the woods,
Running, I smelled something strange, something
That carried a vague air of alarm. I came up to
Two newly fallen and realized: Char.

Lightning did it. Most just loose their roots
From weeks on end of mud, and topple. It used to be
A fallen tree might lie for weeks waiting for clearance,
An obstacle to climb or bound

Over. Now there are so many falling
They have to get them right away, get ready for more,
Or be overwhelmed. One morning run, two years ago,
On my birthday, I leapt a fallen trunk in smug pride,

Only five paces later to slam my toe against an iron root
And go sprawling. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK,"
I screamed, then "I'M OK, I'm OK, I'm OK, it's OK,"
At the yard worker in the orange vest, tossing raked leaves

Into the edge of the woods from the embassy
Far up the hill, who had made a run of crunching, sliding
Strides in my voice's direction--to stop when he saw me wave--
Fearing another unspeakable attack.

Photo: Vishwin60, Creative Commons public domain license.

I Want to Believe...

...that someday I'll have a threesome with Sculder and Mully. There it is I said it.

...that the Fannie Mae bailout will help stabilize the markets. Though that won't happen until they either publicize or privatize those guys. The current fence-straddling is breaking our balls. I felt a little like a Republican the other day when I read a heartwarming story about people getting loan assistance. "This is great," one woman said. "Now I can go to grad school and really save some money." Hey, wait a minute--I want to go to grad school, too! Except when people tried to get me to use my condo as an ATM, I just said no! And got me a fixed-rate with a solvent institution! So where's my assistance?

...that the people helped out won't just cycle right back to the same old shit, because the real problem isn't solved. I guess I must be a compassionate conservative, because when I read the NYT Sunday piece about the woman who racked up the credit card bills on the home shopping network while in bed after a hysterectomy, my heart hurt for her. Especially seeing the photo--she's way overweight and smoking. We're so terribly, sickeningly, tragically addicted to so much; we must be in such terrible pain to go to such lengths, destroying our health, our lives, our relationships, just to feel a little bit better. Even Republicans do it--look at poor Bob Novak with his penis-extender Corvette convertible. Ooops, forgot, that wasn't purchased out of an addictive urge to shore up identity--it's an investment. You can use it to run down old men and decrease the surplus population.

Words of wisdom from my August horoscope, by astrologer Eric Francis:
"...the whole notion of "difference" as it is projected onto social (so-called) reality is a farce, the job of which is to perpetuate alienation (mainly to sell things). You don't need that, and neither do the rest of us."

Priceless.

Photo: The Last Judgment altarpiece from St. Cecilia cathedral, Albi, from Sacred Destinations Travel Guide. The horrifyingly huge cathedral and its horrifying and also huge last judgment were made over the course of about 200 years to smack down the Cathar heresy. Just a couple of highlights: 400 "heretics" burned; the Pope's bagman memorably coined the phrase "Kill Em All, Let God Sort Em Out." ("Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.") The Last Judgment and the cathedral were the medieval version of "this is what will happen to you if you don't buy what we're selling." Nearly every artist involved in its creation is anonymous. Hope they got paid, at least!

"Death, Race, Sex, Death, Race, Sex, Death, Traffic, Sex"

My daughter is standing at the bathroom sink, sculpting in tissue, soap and water. "I am the great inventor of toilet paper art!" she declares. And: "Water is the enemy of toilet paper."

All of which is no comment on the following, except to say I think she's moving toward a world where separate literary anthologies from men and from women may not be needed, but for now...

Launch party at P&P Friday 7/25, 7 p.m., for Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by 51 DC Guys. Dudes discussing the work include R. R. Angell, Juan H. Gaddis, Brian Gilmore, Dave Housley, Charles R. Larson, Alex MacLennan, Richard McCann, and David Nicholson.

Here's a chunk of a review: “Stress City is a core sample of the D.C. male psyche, a tube that comes out striated with the compacted layers of what's on these guys' minds: death, race, sex, death, race, sex, death, traffic, sex.... makes me feel like I never left. Recommended for Washingtonians past and present." – Jordan Ellenberg, author of The Grasshopper King.

Wish I could go; believe I will be beaching.

Photo: Mural by G. Byron Peck, who did the Stress City cover art; photo by AudeVivere, Creative Commons 2.5.

Son of a Window Dresser!

There's Obama graffiti all over France. Outside the Cluny. On the road to Hautacom, in chalk, for the Tour riders to roll over. He's bigger than David Hasselhof in Germany.

And I've heard he's huge in Japan.

Gotta Love Those Little Visitors

OK, had to post this chunk from the website of the place where we're staying:

"Our village of Lézignan provides wonderful strolling walks for those who are looking for the peaceful traditional French village. Lézignan has a beautiful 17th Century church. The church spire is unique to the Barony of Angles.

There is also plenty of wild life, with deer roaming the woods behind Chez Passet, and birds of prey circling above in the blue skies. We also have the little visitors too, with Doves, the Nut-hatch and of course the Robins and Great Tits."

Of course.

Photo: Weekend

A Lawn Savant Who'll Lop a Tree--Oh!*

I'm off to France to taste of the healing waters of Lourdes, y'all. Won't be doing none of that there bloggin for two weeks.

Food of the Gods.

Song of the Season.

Oh, can you believe this, it's all over the Internets! CNN correspondent Michael Ware has been sleeping around. It's all over the news, because, of course, it's really big, big news when a man sleeps around like this, OMG!! (There's this woman correspondent who's been fooling around, too, but who cares, I mean, that's not news, when a consenting adult woman has sex with other consenting adults, who would ever care about that or think it's news? Silly me.)

A Hillary Clinton supporter in a "Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History" t-shirt would have tried to have my child taken away if she knew I write erotica and take my clothes off in front of strangers. Even though neither of those things are ever done in a way that my child would ever know about, care about, or be affected by.

Countless Obama supporters speak of their contempt for Hillary Clinton for letting her husband "get away with it" when none of them know anything about that couple's private arrangements. And neither do I.

Perhaps the sacred waters and hikes in the fresh air of the Pyrenees will improve my disposition. I have been feeling a little Sade. If all else fails, Armagnac.

Photo: Two or Three Things I Know About Her.
*: Pynchon.

Rock. Hard Place.

No, it wasn't from listening to old Roxy Music. It was from hearing Surf's Up at the Booeymonger in Friendship Heights while my daughter had a frozen yogurt. Again, composed on the phone keypad.

Siren
Oh, this rock.
Sand in my throat, sand in my hair.
My tedious keening.
What a lot of work it is to wail you into destruction!
I sing the song without thinking,
Sink deep inside myself.
Ah. In dreams I indulge
In pratfalls, digging turnips, silence—
Nothing to do with sailors. Peace.

Another storm kicks up.

"I Think It's Kind of Sexy that John Malkovich Has a Portal"

For the sleepless with access to hundreds of cable channels, I recommend the replay Oracle: When you're stuck, awake, looking for insight and inspiration, switch on the TV for a minute, flip through the guide, don't get stuck on Real Sex, keep going, looking for a movie they run over and over--Pulp Fiction is usually my go-to. Turn it on, see what scene's running, and take that as a sign from the cosmos.

Three times in the past few weeks when I've tried it, it's been Being John Malkovich. And three times it's been the scene where Cameron Diaz pops out of the other end of the portal, exhilarated and inspired by the ride. "I finally knew who I was!" "But you weren't you!"

Last night, unable to sleep after a wedding rehearsal dinner, it was the scene where Malkovich was rehearsing his lines for The Cherry Orchard. And she pops into him. And is about to go on a date with Keener.

I love the way in a later scene Keener's all looking at her watch while she waits for Diaz to show up inside Malkovich.

So all the sudden there's a false debate about whether a woman can be hot and funny. Get out. Diaz has been doing it for years. Any doubts about her acting chops, just rewind this one.

When it's Pulp Fiction, I most often get the "Bonnie's Coming Home From Work" sequence.

Um, Happy Solstice, Sort Of

Well, not exactly the sweet midsummer greetings I was hoping for, but this is what came to me when the sun came up:

Air Conditioner: A Horror Story
Summer always lulls me into believing
I can write a ghost story
The bestseller, or the latest from M. Night--
Horror looks so easy, the kind of thing you could churn out
In your sleep, or with your toes buried
In the sand. Take something you see every day—
A car, a house, a child—and flip it into malevolence.
Of course, get into it, and it’s another story:
Conversations bog down when they should
Spur the action, the plot feels forced, the
Veneer of omniscience flakes, and
You get that sick feeling they can sense
Your uncertain steps. And there are only
So many ways to describe rot,
Aren’t there? Maybe you know more.

Maybe it’s the air conditioner—
The shudder of that one ragged streamer,
The corrosive drip, that hum and huff
As it struggles to keep things fresh.

There WILL BE Cookies

The latest memo by a executive-level newspaper serial killer with QUITE a PENCHANT for UNREGULATED CAPS USE snuck out of the office and gets taken down here. YOU HAVE TO read the comments. It just keeps getting better. The commments section, I mean. The media industry just keeps getting worse.

Wish I could go to the reading tonight by many of the writers in this anthology, BUT I HAVE TO BABYSIT. I NEVER REALIZED that was IRONY. And YES there will be cookies there:
Not What I Expected: The Road from Womanhood to Motherhood, ed. by Donya Currie and Hildie S. Block: An anthology of poetry, fiction, essays and artwork by Jody Bolz, Carole Burns, Grace Cavalieri, Christina Daub, Mary Doroshenk, Patricia Gray, Clarinda Harriss, Anne Hasselbrack, Jacqueline Jules, Mary Ann Larkin, Lyn Lifshin, Hilary Tham, Donna Vitucci, Mary-Sherman Willis, and tons more. Montgomery College, Thursday June 19, 7:30, Humanities Building Room #009.

The 13 Confessions

UPDATE: Completly forgot the whole reason I wanted to write today was about the beautiful and mysterious Anacostia River. Post had a story yesterday, but they'll make you register to read it--go here instead and take a FREE freaking boat ride and you'll see why it is beautiful. OK, there are lots of things you can do for river cleanup, but here's the biggest one: Don't leave your soccer ball in the yard. Serious. They get washed away in the rain and they end up in my fave river.

1. Stuck in midsummer’s amber, lying around like a full lion, licking my paws and waiting.

2. Happy wedding day, Californians! Apparently, licenses now read “Party A” and “Party B” instead of “bride” or “groom.” That sounds fun!

3. Caught a minute of a commentary by Colbert King this morning on stupid WTOP—gist was that after 47 years of marriage, he’d learned to mind his own business when it comes to other people’s arrangements. No offense to the always-great Mr. King, but I knew that one even before going in myself 12 years ago.

4. Picked 15 quarts of strawberries with DD, froze many bags of them and made an absolutely dismal pie. Have I lost my touch? Maybe it’s the weather. The butter just melts.

5. Still convinced pistachio is the nut for strawberry. Like hazelnut for blueberry. And pinot noir. But people keep asking me to update the template for the deliverable. Damn. Where’s the “…and the living is easy” part?

6. This is too effing funny.

7. I did my first public poetry reading in 20 years the other night, and I didn’t throw up.

8. But at one point I was reduced to hanging out the door yelling “There are cookies in here!” to get people to come in and listen.

9. It worked.

10. A “cultural trend research company” I had to deal with at work is predicting a baby boomlet fueled by high gas prices. It says 2008 will be a “summer of love” because no one can afford to travel. Newly married Californians, start your engines, so to speak.

11. I’m traveling a lot this summer. To France and New Jersey and more. But I don’t know, maybe I can fit a little love in there too somewhere.

12. Mostly I’m going to be locked up working on a oh lord don’t say it novel. And trail training. If the trees ever stop falling over.

13. Got to thinking about Sandra Bernhard in her movie singing “I Never Meant to Hurt You” and before I knew what happened I ended up downloading a bunch of Laura Nyro songs.

You've Got to Accentuate the Positive

I was bummed to hear Tristan Taormino won't be editing the Best Lesbian Sex annual anthology anymore, because I would have liked a shot at getting a story in with that editor. Maybe there will be another Taormino-edited project. I'll poke around, so to speak.

In a farewell to editing column noting the trend toward stranger sex in a lot of the stories--as in perfect strangers, not as in more unusual--Taormino quotes a therapist: "Most people look at anonymous sex with morality and judgment and rarely talk about any positive aspects," he notes. But "because there is no emotional investment in a relationship, there is no history and no future. The experience can be all about the here and now. It's not about attachment. It's very Zen."

Which gives me an idea for a story.

Photo: Zen rock garden. Photo is being sold as a poster by a company that does not see fit to say who the photographer is. So I'm not saying what the company is. Does that just make it worse?

Chemists and Alchemists

I had to be on stage the other night, and I wasn't nervous enough, and I was a little worried about it. I'm better at things like that if I'm nervous. No nerves, no energy. The guy running the performance, the co-director-star, made some recommendations about large quantities of Red Bull, then said: "It feels like falling in love." Now that I'd like to have in a can.

And then I thought about Kip Hanrahan's "Tenderness."

Photo: Hanrahan's pub photo. Mmmmm.

Why Two Touches Just Doesn't Get the Job Done

For the past two weeks, I've been writing about Member Development. Heh heh.

So, the buyouts were taken at our nation's capital's major national newspaper (and there really is only one. I've also worked at the other one that says it is, and trust me--those MFs all crazy up in there). I'm not going to cry for my favorite writers or columnists, or for me, Argentina (or any of the other bureaus that have been nailed shut over the years. Because who cares what's happening to those people anyway.). Most of them will go on as contract. (Paralleling the "efficiencies" in federal contracting--lose your job, get hired back for more money, and somehow we all save money from it.) Financial took a big hit, but who needs to know about boiler room mortgage companies, anyway?

Other people can mourn the writers. What I come to bury not to praise is the Washington Post's new copy editing structure, called the "two touch" system. Which sounds like what you get when you can't afford the Emperor's Club.

Even when I worked at a little local, we had at least three reads and a page proofing on all copy. No more. Now much of the writing at one of the two remaining major dailies (nah, I don't count LA either, and Chicago bowed out way back) will get a quick hand job and be sent straight to you!

When the good copy editors are gone, the skeptics are gone, the institutional memory is gone, the integrity is gone, the woodwork squeaks and plagiarists and fabulists and liars and starfuckers and self-promoting freaks of all stripes, not to mention simple scared barely interns who are easily fooled, come on in. And then someone's using the money that's supposed to pay for school building repairs to buy his cousin a Mercedes, and your kid is getting her ass shot off halfway around the world because someone started a war, and you couldn't get a straight read on what was going on early enough to at least try to do something about any of it.

Give me back copy editors and stay off my lawn, you kids!

Not everyone agrees with me.

Trying to Get Over

Dow Chemical is talking like the first-graders in the class I'm right now baking brownies for: "I didn't drop it, why do I have to pick it up?" Article also puts the Union Carbide contribution to Bhopal survivors at currently $550 a head. Mighty big of them.

Oh, but happy birthday Curtis Mayfield and Allen Ginsberg. Wish you were here.

Lordy, a two-poem blog entry run, ain't nobody coming back here ever again.

Clouds: A Business Plan

Keep churning it out;
Someone’s eventually going to want it,
Aren’t they? And we’ll have it ready for them.

We can’t pull out, we’re too far in,
So we’ll just pull back a little,
And then a little more; do more with less.

Take out the ones who know the right words,
The ones who know the rules,
The ones who know what to do.

Slide out the equipment, the plans,
Valves, plates, water spray, escape hatches,
A little at a time, pulling every prop

Until the factory, unsupported, hovers like a cloud.
Humming, barely running, emitting
A buzz of discontent and tension.

What a trick! Like coyote off a cliff,
Legs cycling frantically in midair
Before it crashes. And the cloud escapes.

He remembers a day in Catholic
Grammar school: He was castigated
By the sister for drawing clouds

With flat bottoms. Clouds are puffy,
She insisted; he knew better, little scientist,
And stuck to his guns and took the hit.

Then the toxic cloud rolled down the streets
Like a rogue wave, chasing humans,
Bringing them down. Three thousand

Souls escaped in that moment, spirits
Like smoke into the sky. What a haze
They must have made in paradise.

They say at least one more dies from it
Each day. They say they’re not sure
Where they’re sourcing that statistic.

No matter; today, the world is flat,
The clouds are flat. So he runs
It up the flagpole to watch it wave.

He sees cirrus wisps, but the crown chakra
Is not top of mind. Outsource democracy;
No danger of overproduction here.

The executive summary counsels
Keeping a keen eye toward opportunities
Presented by the fog of war.

Image: Rene Magritte's "The Castle in the Pyrenees," used so often by everyone, I'm sorry, sue me.

Handsome Mess

I wrote this today running. It's for now, but it happens to fall into a series of poems about invasive plants that I've been doing on and off.

Honeysuckle

You learn to do it young--
Pinch the end a bit, draw the stem out
With your teeth barely pressing, gently, gingerly
Tongue out the honey, and let the flower fall.

It smells stronger before a storm--
Pervasive, run as fast as you will;
It calls you to stop and taste, but you say no.
Leave its vines to thrash in the high winds.

It could strangle everything in the garden
You've made. You make the right choice.
Afternoon finds you kneeling,
Sweating, pulling at the invading vines,

Wild with frustration. You stumble back,
Stomping, hissing: "I'll never be rid of you!"
Maddened, but the sweetness persists,
Clinging to your skin, stuck in the back of your throat.

You're the type that doesn't even like
To kill a weed, now, aren't you? Yet here you stand,
With this handsome mess at your feet,
Choking. Torn.

PS: composed while running, but actually written with the keyboard of my phone. I'm thinking this forces shorter line lengths and am wondering about exploring this a little more...

Image: Cover of a blank book from Anathema Books.

On the Road and Off the Road

One maybe two trail half-marathons in the fall. Could the training please begin? The trails around DC are nothing but mush. Trees sliding down ravines (and me doing likewise, nearly), trails washed out, stretches of swamp. I actually got lost on the Hazen trail recently, which is never more than about a half mile from a major DC street. I ended up on the wrong side of the creek and was attempting to cross back to the trail via two fallen trees. I got halfway across the ravine walking on the lower tree and holding onto the upper, but then the trees crossed and I couldn't decide whether to duck under the upper tree or try to straddle the lower the rest of the way, and my overpriced sunglasses designed expressly not to slip off my face were slipping off my face, and a nice man strolling by on the right trail was giving me one of those curious I-wonder-if-I-should-help-but-I'll-mind-my-own-business looks.

If you like this poetry, she'll be reading at Artomatic Thursday, May 30, 7:30 p.m.

I just found out I was a finalist in a poetry contest. I missed the email notification back in March because I was sick and probably confused it with a Nigerian banking scam. But it's really real. It's a super-lefty-political-change-the-world-poetry contest, so there, complete with anti-war march (here's what it looks like when poets protest), and when is someone going to give E. Ethelbert Miller a MacArthur or sainthood or something, people. This entry's too long already so maybe I'll post the poem itself later.

My daughter stayed with her cousins a couple nights while I was off standing too close to the fire. We resumed her chapter book tonight on Chapter 9. Her words: "We would have been on chapter 11 by now, but I forgot to take it on the road."

The L Word and the B Word

Finally catching up on my Tivo'ed L Words. As usual: Writing, abominable; plotting, absurd; fashions and set design, fantastic; sex scenes, whoa baby call the doctor; music, how do they do it??? Issac Hayes' amazing Stax version of "Walk on By" at the finale, sounding for all the world like the new Portishead. And "Do the Strand"?!? Beautiful. Ladies, I take it all back.

Been meaning to write about some of my favorite blogs. I tried to get one of them blogrolls, but it's too complicated. I'll eventually add one. Promises, promises. Or was that "Walk on By"?

***While I was lying around whining and going to doctor's appointments all last month, she was writing poems. Good ones. Check it out. She also writes about rock and roll.

***Jill Matrix, I remember dancing with you to Curtis Mayfield at that party where you kissed a boy. Don't try to deny. Find out something about life, media, construction and cats here in her blog. I'd say something about the real L word, but that would just be too clumsy.

***Like that photo you're looking at? It's by my mad burner buddy who once got on a bicycle in New Jersey, rode it all the way to Burning Man, stopped to do his thing, then got back on and rode it to San Francisco, the promised land. Want to buy one like it? Want one in that style but starring you? Go here. Oh, and the blog traces a case of Obamamania that turns to rational second thoughts, tho supportive. Obamambivalence? We'll miss you and the bad songs of the '70s this weekend, dearie.

***Copper Stewart, whom I encountered through Reclaiming witchcraft, has a mind of depth and breadth that is positively scary and eternally amazing. Walt Whitman to ancient Egyptian sacred geometry to forest ecology to politics. His livejournal has lots of fun branches, creeks and ripples; Paganmonist has longer, more structured articles, poems, more.

Photo: Copyright Mark Still, and if you reproduce it without permission, Isaac Hayes AND Shaft will kick your ass. Is that clear enough?

Three Days

I'm off soon for my three days in the weirderness. This is a mashup of believe it or not, Jane's Addiction and Carly Simon. Both have songs called "Three Days."

Three days was the morning.
My focus three days old.
My head, it landed
To the sounds of cricket bows.
And lord, I feel lonesome
For the you I might have known.

We saw shadows of the morning light
The shadows of the evening sun
Till the shadows and the light were one.
And if the gods will please be kind
I'll be with you soon, soon again.

Bits of puzzle
Fitting each other
Never wonder.
Night is shelter
For nudity's shiver;
The way you turned
My head around,
The way you turned
My head around.

All of us with wings
All of us with wings
All of us with wings

Lit

I've been babysitting for three days straight. They are really cute and fun, but it will be so nice tomorrow to be around people who don't collapse when their juice pop isn't the color they want and don't have to be told not to pick their noses.

Today we stopped by the local elementary school rummage sale and while they played on the playground, I got the following literature, for $1 totes:

Dealing, or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues, by Michael Douglas (a pseudonym for Michael Crichton and Douglas Crichton; Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen; The Happy Hooker, by Xaviera Hollander; and Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi. What are these parents reading nowadays!

Been up late baking cookies. Don't worry, I washed my hands. A lot.

I missed the Preakness but check this out (thanks BA!). Go to photo #5 to see the Running of the Urinals.

Who's Your Coyote, Baby?

Nathaniel Mayweather took me to see the Patti Smith movie recently. Smith herself performed live afterward, accompanied by her son, Jackson, on guitar, singing a song she'd written for her daughter. OK, so a large part of the movie was her visiting cemeteries and remembering the dead, most notably photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, her bestest friend. Thank the goddess for Patti Smith. Her kids seem, blessedly, fine. Sweet. Talented. Doin good. Yet they were exposed to an influence, in the person of her best friend, so pernicious that the good people of Washington DC could not even allow his photographs to be displayed in a museum behind closed doors.

When your kids know they are loved and secure, they are richer for having artists around them. I'm going to keep on saying that until I don't feel guilty about being a human as well as a mother anymore. Check you in the year 2525.

Now my favorite scene in the movie was Smith getting a "guitar lesson" from Sam Shepard. Good god, boyfriend's 64 and he's still smokin hot. She pulled up her pants leg and then turned his wrist to the camera to display the matching tattoos they'd gotten so many years ago. She was still a little giggly. He still looked at her like she was a little piece of dark chocolate. They're so alive.

Speaking of chocolate, I am gulping my way through the book my husband got me, Girls Like Us, about Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King. Ummmmmm, good reading. My goodness, was that James Taylor a nasty piece of work, from the sound of it. I try to ignore the base urge to pore over the gossip, like: "This song's about this guy, this one's about this situation," but there's one that's too rich to resist:

Mitchell's "Coyote," you know, "He drags me out on the dance floor and we're dancing close and slow...he's got a woman at home, he's got another woman down the hall; he seems to want me anyway...He picks up my scent on his fingers while he's watching the waitress's legs"?

Who was it about? SAM SHEPARD!!!!

"No regrets, Coyote!" Now that's what I'm talking about.

I am an Animal, Trapped in Your Hot Car

I told myself no more big arena shows. I swore I'd never go to Nissan. So what was I doing circling the bowl with a thousand others trying to get into the Radiohead concert at Nissan Sunday night? Radiohead Nissan clusterfuck. Radiohead Nissan clusterfuck. Put that into google and it comes up 547 times. 548, now.

It was so against my better judgment, but my husband got tickets, and last time we saw them, in 2003, it was such a great show...so we sat in the rain for five hours and never got in. The cops were turning people away at the gates because the show was almost over.

So. It's homegrown for me, from now on! Artomatic, parties full of homegrown music and chicks with flaming hula hoops, bottle of wine with a friend, a night in bed. I love professional musicians and dancers but you guys, your friends with the suits are just shits, buddies, I can't stand them, and they're always hanging around. I know you tried to get rid of them by giving your CDs away, but they're still there, hustling me, conning me, buzzkilling everyone. I'm all about the Home Entertainment Network now.

It's not the band's fault it rained so much! No, but it's their fault they played at the environmentally hostile Nissan Pavilion--especially after declaring that they intended to reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible in this tour. They haven't got a leg to stand on, and that footprint, after holding down thousands of cars idling for hours and contributing to acres of soil erosion, is shot to shit, boys. What have you got to say for yourselves?

Hey, the tickets said rain or shine! But Nissan and the county and state's civil engineering skills obviously aren't functioning rain or shine (in the area's venial rush to cash in on the development boom. As we sat in traffic, we wondered how many of the huge homes around us might be foreclosures now).

Well at least you weren't in Oklahoma or Myanmar! Gotta admit you got me on that one.

And, um, I don't want my money back. I just don't want Nissan to have it. Give it to the tornado survivors, y'all.

PS: The car I was in (with three others) was actually very comfortable. Poetic license.

PPS: And I might have to give up small club shows, too. Drive-by Truckers at 930 gave a great show Friday night, but someone grabbed my ass. Which was both annoying and confusing. I mean, there's just nothing much there to grab. What's the point?

Rat Talladega

Rat Sebring. Rat Daytona. Not a moment of my own. Got to go to Ratsbucks just to keep myself awake.

And Radiohead for the NBA playoffs!?! Ha ha ha ha ha.

Julie Christie, You Make Me Go Misty

She laughs, she cries, she feels angry, she feels lonely, she feels guilty, she makes breakfast, she makes love, she makes do, she is strong, she is weak, she is brave, she is scared, she is... an unmarried woman.

Word. But she's a married woman, too. And probably a drag queen or two.

During my recent adventures with legitimately prescribed pharmaceuticals, I was taking a course of steroids, which kept me up all night. That's how I ended up rerunning the 70s greatest hits on cable. One memorable night, I caught both The Eyes of Laura Mars and An Unmarried Woman. The lines above are the marketing tagline from the latter.

Lot to love about both, from the sculpted cheekbones in the former to the unairbrushed sexiness in the latter. Damn, what happened to Jill Clayburgh? I used to dismiss Paul Mazursky, claiming all he did was rip off European films--Willie and Phil, Jules and Jim; Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Boudu Saved From Drowning; and An Unmarried Woman reproduced chunks of Volker Schlondorff's much less sanguine A Free Woman. But now I'm not so callow. Love the scene where Alan Bates (looking like the Hairy Guy from the original Joy of Sex, also a hit around that time) gives the soliloquy on dog poop.

Coincidentally, my husband is distantly related to Mazursky. Apparently they share a Tante, of blessed memory, who was famous for the size of her bust and the exquisite silky thinness of her pastry dough. My husband's grandmother, GiGi, of blessed memory, used to do a priceless imitation of Tante rolling out the rugelah, chest heaving.

I cut my teeth on those women's movies of the 70s, sneaking into the multiplex at Landover Mall. But the greatest of all was Shampoo. Jeez, Shirley MacLaine, Lee Grant, and ahhhhh Julie Christie. And little Carrie Fisher. My best friend and I used to practice her notorious line, eating carrot sticks and hoping Warren Beatty might wander into our backyards. But not in our neighborhood.

UPDATE: Sigh. Drugs haven't worn off. Remove Shirley MacLaine, add Goldie Hawn. Forgive typos and spelling. Namaste.
UP SOMETHING: Forgot Mazursky also co-created The Monkees, Goddess bless him.

Waiting for the Sky to Open Up

Thunderstorms wake me in the morning. Hello, there, Thor. Found an old CD case full of buried treasure, including David Sylvian’s Secrets of the Beehive. Might be getting better, but don’t want to jinx it.

Standing firm on the stony ground
The wind blows hot, blows these clothes around
I harbor all the same worries as most,
Temptations to leave or to give up the ghost.
I wrestle with an outlook on life
That shifts between darkness and shadowy light.
I struggle with words, for fear that they’ll hear,
While Orpheus sleeps on his back, still dead to the world.

Sunlight falls, my wings open wide,
There’s a beauty here I cannot deny,
And bottles that tumble and crash on the stairs
Are just so many people I know never cared.
Down below on the wreck of a ship
Is a stronghold of pleasures I couldn’t regret.
But the baggage is swallowed up by the tide,
As Orpheus sticks by his promise and stays by my side.
Tell me
I’ve still a lot to learn
To understand
These fires never stop
Please believe me,
When this joke is tired of laughing, I will sing
The promise that Orpheus brings.

Sleepers, sleepers, we row the boat,
Just you, the weather and I gave up hope,
And all of the hurdles that fell in our laps
Were just fuel for the fire and straw for our backs.
Still the talk and the stories to tell
About all our visions of heaven or hell--
When we feel secure again, such mighty dreams,
And Orpheus sings of the promise tomorrow may bring.

UPDATE: Someone said he liked "my poem." uh-oh. It's David Sylvian's song, Orpheus. You can hear and see it here.

The Advent of the Unreliable Narrator

In her consideration of the occasional flicker from the traffic without that came to enliven the dark square of the study window, reflecting on the papers strewn over the sill, she felt each episode of brightness as an almost physical remanifestation of the obscure hurt that had darkened such a portion of her life early on, leaving a meagre exercise of force and will dampened as by the stirring of the spring breeze. But even as yet there could be no resurrection of certain winter-damaged limbs, could there not be a new birth nonetheless, she thought, as her eyes fell upon a date in the open book before her and she murmured: "Happy birthday, Henry James."

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia.

My daughter got a Chia Pet for solstice and we finally got around to breaking the sucker out during her spring break (and my extended sick leave). I've never known anyone to get one to grow, but I'm here to shout, my girl's Chia Pet KICKS ASS. It will KICK YOUR CHIA PET'S ASS ANYTIME. Mean, green, and making the scene.

In other news, astrologer Eileen Nauman's notes on the transneptunian Hades sum it up pretty well. "Symbol: Half Moon in the waning form, with the "cross of matter" contained within it. The Moon in another form reminding us that our emotions can ultimately dis-ease us and kill us if we don't work constructively with them. "Breakdown to make a breakthrough".... It is also the Persephone/Hades myth being lived out by the individual--one must go into the depths of their own, unique "Hell", be destroyed by it, resurrected and rebirth and finally, emerge from Hell into the outer world of fruitfulness, fertility and higher spiritual evolution...Toxic shame...Diseases with a root cause of humiliation, shame, loss of self-esteem, loss of a parent/job/family/country of origin--"shocks" to the vital force that are held deep within the person and manifest later as dis-ease. Eating one's self up alive."

No foolin'.

Mrat

I have been really ill and don't have the energy to write. Hoping that will change.

Going to Jupiter with an Aching in My Heart

I'm vanishing for a while. Spring break, baby. Headfirst into a margarita and a plate of plantains. Three odd grabs:

The "Rules of Surfing," posted on the beach at Santa Cruz, by Sam Reid:
First surfer on waves has right-of-way
Paddle around wave, not through it
Hang on to your board
Help other surfers

I wish I'd done these ads. Driving a Prius also gives you a free pass to sing earworm songs in crowds, cut people off for parking spaces, and text while others are around. I am above reproach!

Put a sample of writing in this thing, and it will tell you whether it was written by a boy or a girl. It says I'm both a woman and a weak male, possibly European. How did it know?

The View from the Belvedere

In honor of The Wire season finale, a poem to Baltimore.

All-American Fresh-Air Cure

“I couldn’t see for lookin
For lookin I couldn’t see.”
--Epigram written on a baseball painting by Paul Darmafall, The Glassman

I want to believe in the power
Of the fresh-air cure,
So I am standing on the sidewalk,
Smoking, with The Glassman.
He can’t take walls or doors,
The stuffy shadowbox and
Wine reek of the art show.
He’s an outsider artist, after all.

He shifts in his lawn chair and
Its legs scrape the sidewalk,
Uncovering another sliver of material.
He believes in America, in science,
In a strong constitution as protection.
He believes air conditioning will kill you.
He doesn’t call them paintings, but signs.
Covers each one with bulletins from beyond.

Out of colored fragments he picked up in the street,
The Glassman sorted red, milk-white, and blue,
And traced three baseball players in glass and glue
On a splintered plywood scrap—
One running, one sliding, one home.
That’s the one I chose, out of all
The glass-encrusted slabs, so many
Stacked to the gallery ceiling, salon-style.

I don’t know if The Glassman knows
That each red dot inside means “sold”—
A couple hundred dollars more for him.
He hangs his paintings on chain-link fences.
He hangs his paintings on the sides of trains,
And lets the rails bear them away.
I give him cigarettes, but we don't
Look each other in the eyes.

I don’t say, but I get messages, too.
I don’t need a crystal ball,
All you have to do is read the signs.
It always leaves me feeling shaky,
Like catching yourself stumbling
On a crack in the concrete,
Your foot sending a shard of broken glass
Skidding down the sidewalk in front of you.

I came to this opening
With a new man, a fresh man,
A transparent man, an all-American man,
A man who loves baseball,
Who doesn’t bother with messages and signs.
At night now I sit in my car and listen to the radio,
Waiting for the last play to play out
Before heading into the bar.

Later, on the rooftop, my man’s
Breath on my neck, I watch
The fireworks flare over the stadium,
Sparks shimmering down around
The Domino Sugars sign
And falling into the harbor,
The water flat and deep brown as
The bottom of a bottle.

Photo: "National Anthem" by Paul Darmafall, from an Austin, TX, gallery site.

The Flower and the Flame

I often saw the etymology of "pornography" translated as "the writings of prostitutes"; later I found out that it's actually "the writings ABOUT prostitutes." I'll stick with the first option. It pleases me to think of assorted "loose women" scribbling away, like Sei Shonagon in her Pillow Book, over the centuries and countries. Why shouldn't they have quite a bit to say, and say it well?

Having read many, I like "the writings of prostitutes," especially "the Graphic Novels of Prostitutes." (Thanks to Nathaniel Mayweather, fancy lad for the gift of that book; you always could pick em.)

So am I impossibly geeky because I visit a porn star site just to read her blog? Belladonna (NSFW) has such an honest, emotionally up-front voice--such a cocky voice, so to speak.

Another star, Penny Flame, (NSFW) doesn't write much--she paints! She has a MySpace page for her paintings, but they're really not very well displayed there. And she smokes and does yoga. Would I were 20 years younger, and that she had freckles.

In that vein of romantic yearning and nostalgia, I found these great colloquial English translations of the Pillow Book, made by Simon Cozens. Makes Shonagon sound like a blogger. And that's not a bad thing, to me.

The Rain That Swells the Water
One time, I had a boyfriend who would always mail me the day after we had slept together. Once he said that he saw no point in our relationship and didn't have anything left to say to me.

The next day came, and there was nothing from him. I was pretty fed up when the dawn came with no next-morning mail. "Well," I thought as the day wore on, "I guess he actually meant it."

The day after that it rained really hard. Dawn came, noon came, and still no word; he'd forgotten all about me. Then I was sitting outside on the veranda in the evening, and a boy came up with an umbrella in one hand and a letter in the other. I tore open the letter, and the message was: "The rain that swells the water."

I thought this was more beautiful than a whole pile of poems.

Art: Sei Shonagon by Kikuchi Yosai; public domain.

My Arms Get Tired

I'll blame my demanding yoga instructor. As I often find myself saying nowadays, I never thought I'd be in this position. Sing it, Todd.

Please don't look at me that way,
I can hardly say what I have to say,
There is nothing that I haven't told to you
That I didn't believe you knew.
I am thinking of another time
I could feel you thinking that you were mine,
Now I hold out my hands 'til my arms get tired
And you wait on the other side.

You and me, we're both the same,
Don't let me take all the blame.

"Brian, Can You Please Try to Distract This Idiot By Playing That Flute Really Loudly?"*

Happy Birthday, Brian Jones.

The heartbreak mix: Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, Painted From Memory; Golden Palominos, This is How it Feels; Chet Baker Sings; Lloyd Cole, Don't Get Weird on Me, Babe; and the second disc from Best of Todd Rundgren.

And then Izzat Love? comes on, and you bang your forehead against the steering wheel.

And here I thought that there could be no greater reason than her performance in Orlando to love Tilda Swinton more.

*This story about Brian Jones on Fairly OddParents has GOT to be apocryphal. You know different, you write me.

Photo: Nico and Brian at Monterey. Don't know where it came from; folks all over are using w/o attribution.

Jungle Fury Fever in Operation Overdrive with My Achy Breaky Heart

Brag about not getting sick, and what happens? You're in bed for three days. Not happily.

But it was there I discovered my latest Power Ranger Boss Crush: David DeLautour, RJ of Jungle Fury. Ooh, la la, do they make them cute in New Zealand!

So my vicarious viewing children's TV crush list now goes: RJ of Jungle Fury; billionaire boss of Overdrive; and Billy Ray Cyrus.

Trampled Under Foot

When I was running today, I nearly tripped on a fragment of a 45-rpm single, on the sidewalk outside the embassy of the Vatican. The bit of label left on it read: Loving Time by James Busch, on Midnight Records. I think I remember it right, but I can't find anything like it on Google.

A couple of days ago I found a playing card on the sidewalk outside the Vice President's residence: the King of Diamonds.

And All I Got Was This Sticker

There’s a family tradition that we don’t say who we voted for, but that doesn’t stop a guy from asking. So I do the usual: Clues, diversions, hidden meanings, extrapolations.

Me: “This is the only clue I’m going to give you: When I turned on the car afterwards, the radio was playing ‘Play That Funky Music, White Boy.’”

DH: So that means, what, you wrote in Edwards?

Me: [Buckled.]

I’m wearing this fugly 3-inch-thick boiled wool suit jacket that’s like Mamie Eisenhower’s body armor. And I’m still freezing. I think it’s because of the 6 a.m. hot yoga. When you start your day in a 97-degree room, you know you’ll never be that warm again. And winter clothes bring a body down.

We Like Men With a Little More

Big discussion on the snarkee ladieezze blog about changing societal pressures on men to lose weight and men who are "too skinny." Majority of commenters say they prefer their men a little on the thicker side. Right on! I always think I have a type, but then it turns out to be the type I'm with that year or decade, over my lifetime as a serial monogamist. Right now, my type is hairy, with extremely muscular legs and maybe a little paunch (mmm, cozy). Eighteen (jesus!) years ago, my type was practically hairless golden brown sleek Pacific islander (I have been guilty of Asian fetish). Twenty years ago it was a long and lanky Northern European blonde. Twenty-five years: My pale Goth twin, my mirror in height and BMI. Thirty: Milk chocolate skin, soft sculpted muscles and a high, soft 'fro.

Starting to sound like Sinatra. From the brim to the dregs, baby! But my point is this: I recently had to listen to a very fine man kvetch because he's two pounds over marathon weight. And I'm thinking this is turning into a cultural thing, and it's ridiculous. Guys, love your bodies as the Goddess made them. Keep your heart and circulation healthy, and your ass will follow.

(Am I objectifying them by speaking only of their appearance? I remember their minds and secrets and jokes and taste in music and books and much more, too. But they are so beautiful, and it pleases me to remember their looks as well.)

It's also been weird because I've had some people ask if I'm "OK" because I dropped a lot of weight over the past two years. It's because I'm eating local/sustainable/simple/homegrown/herbs as much as possible, OK? I've been sick maybe twice in two years--not bad for someone under constant quivering-stress deadlines and personal drama who sleeps five hours on a good night. Plus, it's normal for me to be skinny. Pregnancies and hormones just skewed it for a couple years.

And my point with that: You eat decent food and you exercise because of how it makes you feel. How you look will always be subject to some genetic fortune.

PS: My taste in women is as constant as the northern star: Lanky, freckled strawberry blondes, or Angie Harmon.

They Take Orders From a Guinea Pig Drag Queen

Weekends, we let the child watch TV and eat cereal while we sleep in. Give me a damn break, her every other waking moment is filled with constructive, developmentally appropriate social and educational opportunities. She sits on the couch and keeps up a running report.

DD: My favorite Power Ranger, the Blue Power Ranger, her real name is Sally!

Me: Which one is this?

DD: Power Rangers Ninja Storm! And also I watched Power Rangers Mystic Force.

Me: Do they still have that same boss? You know, the rich one in a big house, with the guy who helps him? (To husband:) He's hot. In that softc-o-r-e kind of way, you know?

DH: (In pillow) Mmph.

DD: No, their boss in this one is a hamster.

Me: A hamster?

DD: A hamster, a hamster!

Me: I'd like to see that.

DD: He's on now! Look!

DH: What does he look like?

Me: A giant guinea pig. In drag. He's a guinea pig drag queen. Gesturing at a flat-screen TV.

DD: He gives them their orders!

Photo: Rod Lousich, the hot boss. No hamster he, nor softc-o-r-e in the least, but a respected theatrically trained actor from New Zealand! From Operation Overdrive, probably used actionably.

PS: Mom is PO'ed, but comfortable. Racking her brains for something positive to make from it all.

I Got the News

My husband, my ex-boyfriend (;)) and others have been pushing The Wire for years; I'm lately addicted. Stopped watching any TV for about a year, but started making an exception a few weeks ago, seeking escape from my own drama.

Newspaper folks do love to talk and talk they do about this plotline and its authenticity or writer's motivations. I've been around for bureau closures and buyouts and new owners who thought they could fire copy editors because spellcheck could do that job. My own MSM rise, halting and stilted as it was, was only made possible by the fact that I was young and willing to do more for less money than the ones they laid off and bought out. (That's the real meaning of "do more with less.") I never crossed a picket line (but I got some sweet pressure and lots of shots from a Detroit crew at a conference one weekend, and I did think about it til I sobered up), but a single-mom friend did. I actually managed to increase staff once at one place I worked, but that was because the owners were very very busy playing golf all the time. The Wire's newspaper scenes ring pitch-perfect to me and the ad hominem don't fly.

I'm desperately trying to distract myself until it's the right time to do a ritual for Imbolc, the pagan celebration of new beginnings, creativity, seeds stirring, sap just thinking of starting to rise, calves being birthed. Child's asleep and I can't write anything real. I'd planned a healing ritual, because I have some folks in mind there, but now I am furiously worried primarily about healing for my mother. I just got an email saying that while on her way to get her knee replacement, she fell and injured her shoulder. She is in pain and will need to heal for at least a month before the knee surgery can happen. My father has asked us not to call until tomorrow. So I'll call on the gods.

Photo: "Cosmic News," (Utah's Newspaper Rock), by Jahdakine, Creative Commons

Lazy Protagonist Faces Idealized Antagonist's Failure to Disappear

How about some Lloyd Cole today?

She walks into the bar
And there you are
No longer angry
No longer young
No longer driven to distraction
Not even by Scarlett Johansson
A few moving parts
Need to be replaced
The engine starts
But only on Tuesdays
but look at it this way -
Now that the children are asleep
You want to play
But you’re so lazy
She walks into the bar
And there you are
Idealised vision of a woman through a smokefilled
twentieth century screenplay
Advancing
Towards protagonist with paperback and beer
Manifestly failing to disappear...

The Repentant Madeleine

Drinking juice is a big waste of fruit--empty calories. I don't do it often. But this morning, after a night home with my husband drinking wine and watching Viggo Mortenson get tattooed on demand, I packed a tall glass with ice, OJ, grapefruit juice, and water and got my ass a pure Proustian moment:

At 15 years old, my weekend schedule went like this: Friday after school, shower and over to the country club to haul steak and bourbon around until about 11. Drink and smoke with a pack of other waitresses, bartenders, sous chefs, and a few wayward slumming husbands, either at the closed-down grill room bar or at the odd little tavern across the street, floors and walls about 80 years old, cold in winter, fresh in spring, a jukebox with the Commodores and Elvis Costello side by side. Sometimes sleep over at my boyfriend's condo--a golf pro with a bad shoulder. Up Saturday morning for the tall glass of ice, OJ, grapefruit juice, water, to still the headpounding and get me through the long subway ride to the Corcoran, for all day art class. Snooze through the long ride back, and head back to the country club to do it again.

Screw "The Secret," Get a Lap Dance

Over-and-overing Four Winds from Bright Eyes. Nice wild fiddle.

"Hold us at the center while the spiral aligns
It's knocking over fences, crossing property lines
Four winds cry until it comes..."

I just read the loveliest essay by this stripper witch (witch as in pagan, dear, not an insult). She blogs here. In the essay, after she gives a guy a lap dance, he says she made him "feel really good--I feel things I haven't felt in years." And here's what she tells him: "Good. Pay attention to those feelings and you'll keep having them."

What strikes me about that is not just the compassion but the practical wisdom of that statement. Because whether you're talking lap dance or artistic venture or building a birdhouse, the trick to being ALIVE--not just slogging day to day--is just that: pay attention to what energizes you and makes you sing. Screw the rest.

Free Sample, Like at Trader Joe's

So horribly burned out from work. Afraid to turn anything down--when we look back, we'll realize a recession started about three months ago.
This one is based on the Lifetime Movie "In the Best Interest of the Children," in which Sarah Jessica Parker (wha?!) plays a white trash bipolar mom whose five kids become the subject of a court battle.
Men aren't the only ones with a death-and-resurrection cycle. We invoke and destroy the bad girl, over and over.

The Manic Mommy
Even though she’s broke and bipolar,
Her house is bigger than yours.
Sure, it’s tumbledown, but so is her long blonde hair,
The kind of richness of ringlets you’ll never have.
Five fucking kids and she’s still skinny as a whip. Hah!
And how many cowboys have rolled
Over her mattress on the floor?
Smart, too, and so are those kids.
When the baby cries, the oldest girl
Goes to the kitchen to find something to feed him—
Deftly smashing one roving roach
With the base of the baby bottle,
Baby in one arm and holding the bag
Of nearly all-eaten-up potato chips in the other.
She rocks the baby and sings to him and feeds him
Potato-chip crumbs softened with tap water.

You fat barren bitch handpicked by the state,
Do you think you’re a match for the manic mommy?
With your Barney song and your farmhouse cookies—
Dinosaur, sitting on your big purple bottom,
Crying about the interests of the children—
You haven’t got a prayer against her.
She’ll get out of that hospital.
She’s scooping up those kids and speeding ahead,
She’ll crush you like a potato chip.

Leave My Adulterous Cousin Alone!

I found the Lifetime Movie Title Generator in my poetic research. Its creators acknowledge that while the machine is inventive, it takes a human mind to come up with something as precious as "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?"

My faves so far are the headline and:

God, Don't Leave Me Paranoid
Maria's Story: A Teacher's Brutal Lover
Brought to Justice: The Dark Bethesda Infidelity

You can choose all kinds of professions and situations, and it generates a Lifetime Movie title for you. I put cousin in there just to make things interesting. Oddly enough, my favorite cousin just called and is coming up for a visit.

He's currently unmarried, but attached, so yeah, leave him alone anyhow!

"The Coin Don't Have No Say"

I don’t get out much to first-run movies (childcare). But here are three lines that stuck with me from three I did see this year.

“The coin don’t have no say.” No Country for Old Men. Opting out of the game is the last and somehow, maybe, the most powerful move toward freedom one can make when it appears one is powerless.

“I will sit here with you all night if you want me to.” Into the Wild. A “temporary” road relation is willing to give more than a “real” family member would. So what is the true nature of commitment, blood, time itself?

“You have a niche.” Michael Clayton. People do not want you to change. And most everyone’s afraid to find out if they can really pursue “old,” left-behind dreams. But if you’re lucky, something blows up and you end up having to do it anyway.

Up is Easier

I'm still running. It still hurts. It hurts more going downhill. I need to find an all-uphill course.

My brother got a calf injury recently and says it hurts more going downstairs. He said he's going to the M.C. Escher Rehabilitation Facility, where all the stairs go up.

This just over from our Mad Man friend: 100 Best Indie blah blah of all time... What a lad list. PJ? Minutemen?

"Which ones do you own?" he asks. All my vinyl went to a good home long ago. I can tell you which ones are maybe not the best, but which ones mattered most to me: DKs, Fresh Fruit (got me thru 20-hour shifts working for an alcoholic harasser, playing it in my head, because then you weren't allowed to listen to music at your desk); Half-Jap, Greatest Hits (young love); Eno, Another Green World (listened to Eno in labor); Bloody Valentine, Loveless (best. sex. music. ever.); Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted (brought me back to life in Miami).

What about you? I don't care what's the best. I want to know what it meant to you.

Oh, and, happy Tolkien's birthday.