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My seldom is like no one else’s seldom.

Friday, July 6th, 2007
I think I’d like to go back and visit my 14-year-old self and pat her on the shoulder and say, “Girl, everything will turn out fine.” 

Sometimes I wish my 34-year-old self would go back and tell present-day me the same thing.

 

**

These days I have really been missing Pepper, our cat who passed away this past March. We have some pictures of her posted on the refrigerator, and every time I see them I kind of crumple up inside, remembering how precious she was. She doesn’t exist anymore, and that is something that I haven’t quite accepted yet. I really loved her. Grief is a slow walk.

 

**
I’ve started listening to more public radio and less music. I think I might give up painting and focus on writing. It’s not as if I’ve painted in the past five months anyway, and even then I was never terribly good. I would like to finish reading more books, and improve my vocabulary, or more importantly, my ability to access that vocabulary while speaking. I would like to learn something again. 

The purpose of any of these changes is not to pose as an intellectual–that’s what my glasses are for–but to return to that neglected side of my brain which requires THOUGHT and not INSTINCT. I almost always favor instinct, and perhaps it is time for a change.

Sometimes I don’t remember what a brain is, anyway.

Today at lunch I had a hamburger and read two chapters from Ramona and her Mother. When I draw I will use my left hand.

 

** 

 

In case anyone was missing the ’90s, I’m pleased to announce that pop-up ads have returned in full force.
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Blog Anxiety

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

You might think I’ve forgotten about my blog, or at least my promise to blog with greater frequency. This is not the case! In fact, I often think about my blog and how neglected it has become, and there have been many occasions when I actually log in to my account and begin typing. But then I get halfway through and lose confidence, and then I stop. I don’t delete my unfinished posts but I save them as drafts, thinking that maybe one day I will come back and fix them up so that they are worthy of being read, but I doubt I will ever do that. They will never be good enough.

I am suffering from Blog Anxiety.

And in a move which renders me incredibly vulnerable I will now bear all, as they say, and give a taste of my failures:

“If you were a bear and I was a berry, would you eat my heart out?”
–post never written–

” The significance of living in A.D.”
Earlier this winter I was thinking a lot about these two very major–and universally recognized–periods of history. There is B.C. (or B.C.E. to be PC) and there is A.D. (C.E.) Before Christ, and Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. Mostly these dates are just helpful for us when we need a reference point to begin sorting out events (Jesus Christ was born six years Before Christ??) but they are also handy when you want to do some heavy thinking about how you stack up to the Old-Testament Heroes (perhaps NBC would be interested in the pilot.) Blah blah blah… (Post truncated)

 

“At one point today my lungs and my lips and my larynx teamed up and issued forth the following monologue: “I can’t speak Spanish. I can’t speak French. I can’t sing. I can’t play any instruments. I can’t cook. I can’t sew. I can’t fix cars. I can’t paint. I don’t have any kind of job skills. I can’t do anything well.” I actually BLAH BLAH BLAH (Post truncated) 

 

“A very Christian man and a very atheistic man both stepped onto the subway at the same stop, and proceeded to sit on two benches which faced each other. The Christian man’s name was, appropriately, Christian. The atheist’s name was Harold. Christian was 46 years old and Harold was 38, and although neither one knew it, both Christian
and Harold’s parents had been married on the exact same date, October 4th, 1955. BLAH BLAH BLAH (Post, thankfully, truncated.) 

 

“I do not believe in time travel. Part One.”
(Post never written) 

 

“If I don’t do it, I won’t do it” 

On Friday night the gang gathered around the piano and we spent a few minutes making fun of John Lennon for writing a song as ridiculous as Imagine (oh, you secular humanists!) Today, though, as I was driving along the freeway I couldn’t help but do some utopic imagining of my own. Here: Imagine there was no advertising.

It’s easy if you try, though of course it’s far fetched and the resulting
implications run deep and wide. Mostly I was thinking, “What if there weren’t a thousand billboards on the side of the road? What if I could enjoy the scenery as I drove, instead of consciously focusing on the pavement? What if there were no banner ads on the internet? What if there were no commercials on the TV and the Radio? What if BLAH BLAH BLAH… (Post truncated)

So you see, I’ve been trying! But I’ve lost it. I have lost it. Tragedy upon great tragedies, perhaps we can all gather up our quivering droplets of soul and move on together–brave to leave those things we love, to seek that which is unfamiliar and regain strength with each step. Iowa, Sangria, Melancholia. Lotus latitudinus. BLAH WHATEVER!

There are today’s ten minutes. That was terrifying!

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Cloudy with a chance of in three parts.

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

One morning you might wake up and realize that last night’s sunset, which seemed so breathtaking at the time, was really just the product of copious amounts of air pollution, refusing to let white light pass unbent.

Breathtaking indeed. You could choke on beauty like that.

***

Everything that this man on TV predicted about the weather is coming true. They say he has a contract with God, that every night God leans down and whispers in his ear precisely what to expect of the skies that week, and God is never wrong. In exchange for this gift, this hand-out of impeccible accuracy and resulting success as a public meteorological figure, the weatherman must spend no less than 40 percent of his free time devoted to local charities and other good causes, which God allows him to choose freely. Forty percent does not seem like much of a request, considering the fame his divine connection has brought him. Though four times a usual tithe, 40 percent is really quite manageable. He can accomplish a lot of good in his charitable hours, if he so desires.

This morning the man on TV predicted flooding on the north part of the city. Many years earlier God promised he would never again flood the world, but the north part of the city, I suppose, is expendable. I’d like to think he’s got it wrong this time, considering I live in the north, but he gets his information straight from God.

I’m worried for my cat. My dog is a strong swimmer, she will do fine. But what about my cat?

Sometimes the weatherman does his 40 percent service at the local animal shelter. I think that people who work with animals must be very kind. I’m happy that he has acheived great success in life. Some people aren’t as deserving.

I think it’s beginning to rain.

***

You have ribbons for eyes, you cannot see.

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To close with an inadvertant rhyme. (I tend to do that all the time.)

Friday, May 25th, 2007

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she needs to just take a vacation to Berkeley, California. So that is what I’m doing, starting tomorrow. I know you will miss my daily-posts, densely infused with wit and insight simultaneously… what’s that? Oh, I have barely been writing a single post every other week? My, but the gig, how it is up. This next part I’m about to say is totally serious though: when I return I would like to make more of an effort to get back to good blogging habits. Perhaps a goal such as, “Ten minutes a day, it doesn’t matter what you write,” and maybe down the road it would become, “Ten minutes a day and it better be worthy of the New Yorker!” or whatever stuffy publication is supposedly good. And then you know what? One day? It will be thousands of New Yorker journalists who will be tugging at their hair in frustration and muttering to themselves, “Ten minutes a day, and it better be worthy of Wear Four Thwart!!”

So for now it’s a so long of the fondest register (and for some readers it is actually a “see you soon!”) and I’ll be back in June!

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The one that got away.

Saturday, April 21st, 2007

Elizabeth, this post is for you.

***

Eric Laundromat slouches in his brown easy chair. Over the years the pleather upholstery has been worn paper thin, and patches of stuffing poke through in places where the cats have opted to sharpen their claws. Six feet in front of Eric sits a small TV set which is glowing, intermittently flashing brightly, droning on at an unnecessary volume. It provides the only light in the room, and Eric’s eyes are glued to it, though his brain is disconnected. He isn’t watching–his thoughts are elsewhere. He thinks of her.

Overcome by regret, Eric lifts the can of Orange Crush to his lips and swallows it down in a single breath. It is all he has. It is a bittersweet poison. With a soul curdling cry Eric crushes the empty can between his palms and hurls it against the television screen, where a man with a black moustache is reading the news. A native Midwestern women has just been awarded a Nieman Fellowship. It’s her. He’s seen her face in the newspapers all over town, and now her face is on the screen, smiling at the world, a smile that one time could have belonged to him.

Eric Laundromat reaches for another can of soda. “I have a crush on you too,” he says mournfully, and some of his drink spills on his shirt when he opens it. And this, all of his own volition.

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Handkerchief prophesy.

Monday, March 12th, 2007

Davis Dreckle met his fellow
doomsday prophet at a fence in the park–
It was dark–the sun yet an hour away.
“My brother,” Dreckle began to say,
“I see the world will end tomorrow;
might I today your handkerchief borrow?”
“Oh my,” his shadowy counterpart sighed,
“My friend, the world it will not end
Until every last tear has been theretofore shed.
And what do you think this handkerchief’s for?
To catch every tear before it hits floor.”
“No more! No more!” Dreckle said with a roar,
“There have been enough tears, there have been enough wars!
It’s time now for the closing score.
Tomorrow it ends so I’ll ask you again:
Will you to me your handkerchief lend?”

To which the reply came: “No.”

Darling Dreckle with his Neck all veiny from his anger thence
Grabbed his friend and shook him, pushed him backward off the fence.
“Tomorrow the world ends, but for you, today,”
a by passer heard dear Dreckle say
to his brother and friend where he now did lay.
And Dreckle departed feeling quite certain
that after tonight drawn would be the curtain.
“But will it end?” asked softly his friend
who as chance would have it, did not die.
“For there are still more tears to cry.”
And he himself shed only two
Which mingled with the morning dew,

For his handkerchief had missed them.

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If your last name is Wilder does that compensate for your dull subject matter?

Friday, March 2nd, 2007

On my lunch breaks I’ve been reading Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. I’m not quite sure why it’s a classic, except that it is classically boring. This is really supposed to be the definitive American play? Really? People live and marry and die? Really? It’s a bit too sugary for my taste. If I have to read about the Stage Manager smiling warmly at the audience one more time, I think I might toss my invisible cookies (all stage props are imagined, remember. How novel!) I wonder if it really is in a time capsule somewhere as Wilder intended. I pity the souls of the future who dig this one up.

I guess to save face I should mention that I haven’t finished reading the third act yet. Maybe something incredible happens (besides more life, marriage and death, that is.) If so, consider this my advance withdrawal of above statement. Here here.

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Can you find meaning?

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

There is a woman who listens and a woman who speaks.
Seldom do these two women meet.
Seldom they sever; their discourse is never
too clever
if ever they discourse at all.

This source of life has no remorse for strife inflicted by the fall.
We are all, each one of us, a knife plunged deeply in the wherewithal.

Celeste! Celeste! This is your quest, can you find meaning in it all?

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But who spins the wheel?

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Her life was a game of Life, unmistakably. Her rank had been determined by a spin of the plastic wheel and little else. Thinking it would give her an advantage, she took the longer route–the University route. All that did was set her back.  

She married young–she had to. Society had placed a mandatory STOP, determining she was unfit to proceed through Life independently.

She drove a station wagon.

She was still paying off her college loans when the first child arrived, a blue stick of a thing, a boy. They came quickly after that, another boy and a set of twin girls, each one of them plastic, in a manner of speaking, and each one of them a burden. But this was Life and the plastic wheel continued to spin and she loved her husband and she loved very much her children and told them so every morning as she plopped their little stick bodies into the back seat of the station wagon.

At random intervals her life was colored by tragedies and triumphs: She started a party business. She was injured in an automobile accident. She had a short story published in The New Yorker. He uncle died of bone marrow cancer and left her with a dozen cats.

She was not afraid to play the stock market, though often she lost. She wasn’t aware–or perhaps she simply had no use for–the rules of the game of Life: whosoever hath the most by the game’s end wins.

And the game would certainly end, though she nor her plastic contemporaries cared to acknowledge that fact as they sped along, the plastic wheel spinning, always spinning. But it would come and it did: the Day of Reckoning. And all of her wealth was spread out before her and she was awarded a lump sum for each child she had bourne and raised and it was all about money–it had always been about money.

But she would have none of it. Her life was not a game of Life, she knew better. And with great satisfaction she broke the spinning plastic wheel into pieces. It was just that simple.

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Giantude forged.

Monday, February 5th, 2007

We’re standing at the mirror in the bathroom. She tells me that she feels like such a phony when she wears high heels. That anyone who sees her knows she’s not that tall, that it is simply the two inch wedge propping up the base of her foot. It’s an act and we all know it. But it’s a time tested bit of fashion, I remind her, and no one really thinks you look silly for it. We all know your eyelids aren’t naturally that shade of green, that your eyelashes aren’t really that long. I don’t feel silly about the makeup, she tells me, only the high heels. The high heels are such a lie. And I can’t bear to walk around in a lie.

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