NO More Stupid Flowers

So...new thang, yet again. Whaddaya think? I feel it reflects my inner sarcasm and profound wit. Ta-dah.

Haven't posted in a bit. I think the little flowers have put me off. My own damn fault. Stupid blue flowers. Gr.

Poignant thing Which Leaves Me Speechless

Remember The Mountain Bed


Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs
and leaves:
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly
berry bleeds:
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves, face,
breast, hips and thighs,
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color
of your eyes.

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and
pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled
woodvines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could
not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in
me.

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks
part of the sky,
As your fingers played with grassy moss, and limber
did you lie:
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees
were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay
thinking there.

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised
families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and
flung good seeds away:
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the
valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come
and go.

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our
minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved
and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's
reason why
The People laugh and love and dream, they fight, they
hate to die.

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most
of our leaves are blown,
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where
singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim, but plain, there on our
mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid
your head...

I learned the reason why man must work and how to
dream big dreams,
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the
seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at
city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot,
warm, nervous hands.

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face
all hot with tears,
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to
bring my body here:
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my
joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell
your hair again.

All this day long I linger here and on in through the
night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams
inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk
above all pain
Back to the breasts of my woman and child to scatter
my seeds again.

Woody Guthrie 1944

Tigers and the Trident

Yesterday we went to the Trident cafe to look for books and have something warm to chase the chill from our tummies. I would like to officially declare that although Trident has a decent selection of books, their food is horrible and miserably overpriced. I ordered some fries, but the limp, burnt tubers they brought me were completely unpalatable. It made me mad, because I was hungry, and I wanted something other than snotty boston fashionista food. So now I'm ranting about it.

A good thing, though - I rediscovered Pablo Neruda (Tonight I can write the saddest lines...) and spent some time leaning in the poetry aisle soaking up some words. And when i got change from paying the bill for my pathetic food, I got an interesting five dollar bill. "Help track this bill as it travels the world, " it invited, www.wheresgeorge.com " my fiver is apparently not very traveled. oh well. It was interesting at least.

We went to see Lost in Translation later that night. I don't really know what to say about it. When I see or feel something poignant, I sometimes think it's a waste to try to describe what i think about it. Love does that to me alot, or good books, or going to the movies. It's one of those films that follows you around for the next few days, showing up in your thoughts or your memory at odd moments. Like life reminding  us of fiction, setting us deeper into it, instead of the other way around.. Whatever that means. I feel inadequate about it right now, so I'll keep silent.

I finished The Life of Pi this morning, instead of going to City Year. I know I promised to go and paint and do something benevolent today, but when I woke up that sort of thing just wasn't part of my daily calling so I engrossed myself in the story of the Tiger and the boy. Imagine being lost at sea on a tiny lifeboat with a bengal tiger......it sounds ridiculous, but it has to be one of the most compelling, complete, and awesome  stories of spirituality, science, faith, and survival I have ever read. And so fiction reminds us of life, and removes us from it for a while.

Speaking of being shipwrecked, halloween party tonight. I plan on being the opposite of anything benevolent. I am going to dress up like a pirate and get myself crocked on rum. I'll deal with the guilt later.

Nausea

I have been home sick since this morning. I woke up feeling tense and woozy around 6am, but decided to suck it up and go to work anyway, because the kiddies need their crayons. But not before I yarfed my guts out (yes, I know how lovely that sounds).  That's dedication for ya. My boss sent me home when she noticed I looked a bit green, so I schlepped home in the snow-rain and nearly hurled again on the #39 bus. Perhaps it was the stench of all the stinky midday bus riders accompanying me, or just the funk of public transportation in general, but I think the miserable weather made it especially fun. Whoo-eeee.

I have tried to figure out what is making me ill. I ate a funny sandwich last night,with red peppers on it. I think they were sketchy. I always pick them out when they're in my salad, evil things. Or maybe I caught some horrid disease from the brats at school, who are always crawling with some godforsaken germiness. Or maybe it's psychological, and I'm just imagining that I feel like turning my digestive tract inside out because of some repressed memory involving llamas and a half-eaten purple crayon. But I haven't seen any llamas lately, so that must not be it. Dunno.

It occurs to me just now that my dad, with whom I'm really tight, is flying to arizona today. I talked to him about it last night. He hasn't been on a plane in 30 years, and for the past few weeks he's been jokingly nervous about it. And it just so happens that he left to get on the plane around 6 this morning. I wonder if I'm channeling some pre-flight nausea? Stranger things have happened.

Carnies and Ice Cube Trays

Yesterday I went to the hardware store to look for ice cube trays. For reasons irrelevant to this story, I decided I ought to have some for the art room, and that was the place to get 'em.. Anyway, I got off the bus in front of the JP Ace hardware store, which is notorious for the oddballs and carnival cooties who work there. No really, they're all very nice, but they look and behave like they ought to be in a sideshow and live in boxcars or tents. It was about five or so in the afternoon, and being like most hardware stores with brief business hours, they were getting ready to close up shop for the day. I wandered in, and as soon as I was past the counter I was accosted by a midget, who appeared from nowhere. A very surly midget, with an ace hardware badge on. He glared at me.

"What do YOU want?" he said very rudely.

"Ummm, errrr, ice cube trays? Do you have those?" I stammered, peering down in utter disbelief at the crotchety little man.

"FINE," and he stomped off down one of the aisles, with me trailing ten steps behind.

I was unsure of whether to laugh my ass off or complain to the manager. What would I say?? "Your midget is a cranky little jerk"? That's what I wanted to say, anyway. Screw being politically correct. Mean people, even ones of a smaller persuasion, can kiss my arse. Grr.

Suffice to say, I didn't get any ice cube trays yesterday at the hardware store.

From Nick,

who needs to Get Some, or at least leave his desk once in a while:

"...My Chinese Warrior Guy is sitting by my desk with his plastic knife. He's winking at me and making suggestive poses with his plastic knife. I think one could officially call that "coming out of the closet."
The Buddha just sits there and laughs at him, though the Buddha's always laughing, so that's not much of a change of pace.
Why did I have to buy the gay Chinese Warrior Guy? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think it's Eleanor's fault. I'm going to return him and buy the Chinese Warrior Chick. With my luck, she'd prolly be gay too.
I need to back off on sucking flux remover."

Wow.

Thermostat

My house was really really cold this morning. because it is a gronk-ass putrid grey day, and I couldn't figure out how to make the heat work.

So picture this. I was sitting here in front of the computer with my toes curled on the warm CPU, with a cup of scalding hot chocolate, shivering in my two pairs of socks with my hoodie up over my pigtails, and an equally miserable quivering guinea pig on my lap. I made a feeble attempt to wiggle the thermostat around, and then decided to turn on the oven and camp out in front of it for a few minutes. Since we have gas heat, I knew I hadn't been cut off since I pay my bills, and anyway the oven was working adequately. It crossed my mind that something might be broken, or perhaps clogged. Do those things get clogged?? I pictured the fat mouse who lives under my refrigerator wandering around in the pipes. Maybe that's what that god-awful clanking and grinding and screeching was down below at 4am the other night (rabid armadillos and the rusty mexican box truck)?? Was my landlord neglecting my utilities and trying to freeze me out of house and home? It occurred to me that maybe the boiler wasn't working in the dreaded dark basement, and maybe I had to flip some valve down there to get the juice flowing. So I bundled myself up and ventured into the back yard with a flashlight.

The thing is, you can only get into my basement- a dirt cellar, really- by going around back and yanking open this big metal storm door. I could only haul one side of the door open, and then it wouldn't stay that way. I was having horrible visions of going down there and then KA-SLAM! being plunged into darkness with only the rumbling of the boiler and the faint, increasing hiss and snarls of some demonic thing creeping. Nobodly would hear my howls or banging or weeping for hours......

Maybe I should have brought my phone, too?

So I stood there at the gaping black maw, peering into the void, certain that there was some shadowy mutant-entity lying in wait just beyond the ring of foreign light, thinking evil predatory thoughts. Not to mention spiders.

Oh, and the stairs are really rickety, and not exactly securely attached to the mouldery dungeon-esque walls.

And spiders. Did I say that already? Big furry black ones, with evil, twinkling beady eyes, gnashing their venomous mandibles.

So I went back inside. I am a big fat chicken, yes. I put on another sweater, and made some hot cocoa, and attempted to steal some more warmth from the afore-mentioned cranky rodent.  In desperation I burrowed under some blankets, and contemplated seeking sanctuary up the street  in CVS for a few hours. I could read bad greeting cards for a while, maybe, and buy some cotton swabs or hair gel, or just walk around in circles. Then when that got dull, I could call someone. Someone warm. Yeah.

I got up and took one last look at the thermostat. I wiggled the knob some more. I climbed on a chair and tried to pull the cover off. Then I noticed this little teensy brass lever underneath. Hmm.

It had a little, witty-bitty arrow on it, and little, weenie itty bitty letters inscribed on it which said,

"OFF". 

Apparently so. Quite amazing, actually.

Now I am warm. Ahh.

Wha???!?