ahhhhhhhh

Today I have sinned. I have given in. I have given way.
I have left my high-fiber low-fat diet and plunged to the depths of depravity.
Yes, I ate a Texas Hot for lunch.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class, so I don't take a lunch.
Since I am notoriously and self-admittedly unable to make lunches for myself and bring them to work, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I often go without.

But not today. Today my boss said she would be lunching at a local ice-cream joint with her husband. She offered to get me something; said the Texas Hots were really good.

What is a Texas Hot, you ask? As I found out today, it is a thoroughly fatty beef frank in a bun, covered with rivers of gorgeous chili, mounds of chopped fresh onion, and mustard.

A mess of a meal, in fact.
But absolute heaven - the hotdog, glorious with grease, drowned in spicy beans and ground beef, and swirled with bright yellow mustard, little chunks of tasty onion hidden underneath, dyed red and yellow from the mingling sauces.... Yep, I don't think I've ever tasted anything so wonderful.

Hmmm???

What is happiness, anyway?

Is it the giddy excitement, the rattling energy in your bones you feel when everything is going just right, and you have so much to look forward to?

Is it the heartbreaking feeling that beauty leaves in your chest when you sit and watch the sun going down, golden, past layer after increasingly-blue layer of rolling hills, and you hear the peeper frogs start to sing, and the air blows warm and soft through your hair?

Is it the quiet contentment when you're home on a rainy afternoon and you have uncommitted hours stretching out in front of you, and you can sit at the kitchen table with a steaming mug of tea, a good book, and a plate of freshly-baked chocolate cookies?

Is it the deep trust that things will come 'round right in your life, that the world will keep turning, that birth and death are all one and the same, and that even when you're by yourself, you're not alone?

Is it all these things, or none? Or perhaps just a fleeting, ineffable moment, impossible to capture, impossible to pin down?

It's always confused me when people have said that they are "happy"- I've never understood how that could be characterized as a constant state. Like sadness, it seems inevitably something that comes and goes.

05/06/08: New information received today - happiness is a Texas Hot. ;-)

"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating." (George W. Bush)

Heart o' Glass

In 1978, my friend Mary had a K-Tel LP called High Energy. The first song was Blondie's Heart of Glass, which is a kick-ass song.

I recently downloaded it from somewhere, and was listening to it in the car the other night, realizing that in the 30-some-odd years I've been listening to that song, I've never really understood the lyrics. Or really needed to understand the lyrics.

I'm going to write them down now as I've always heard and sung them, because after I write them, I'm going to google the lyrics and find out what they really are, and the song will never be the same after that.
So here they are as I hear them: (followed by the actual lyrics, per Osvaldo's request ;-))

Whatcha'a'love it is a gas,
Sir time now, that heart o' glass
Seemed like the real thing wanitablahhm,
Whachamistrust, losta behind.
----
[Once I had a love and it was a gas]
[Soon turned out had a heart of glass]
[Seemed like the real thing, only to find]
[Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind]


Whatcha'a'love, it is divine-
Sir found out what tis my mind
Seemed like the real thing, but I was so blind,
Whachamistrust, losta behind.
----
[Once I had a love and it was divine]
[Soon found out I was losing my mind]
[It seemed like the real thing but I was so blind]
[Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind]

In between, what I find is pleasing
And I'm feeling fine; love is so amusing
There's no peace of mind-
If I fear I'm losing you, it's just no good,
You're cheesing like a dead girl.
----
[In between]
[What I find is pleasing and I'm feeling fine]
[Love is so confusing there's no peace of mind]
[If I fear I'm losing you it's just no good]
[You teasing like you do]


Lost inside a terrible illusion
And I cannot hide; I'm the one you're using
Please don't push me a-
-using, yeah
[the LP had a skip there and wiped out the line]
----
[Lost inside]
[Adorable illusion and I cannot hide]
[I'm the one you're using, please don't push me aside]
[We could've made it cruising, yeah]

Oh aah you're riding high, on ahm into the blue sky-
Ooooo-oooh, whoa-ohhh
Ooooo-oooh, whoa-ohh
----
[Yeah, riding high on love's true bluish light]

"I know something about being a government. And you've got a good one." (George W. Bush)

This is an example of how anal I am. Or, was. No, am. (And an example of how long my family holds onto stuff, because this picture was taken in January.)

In high school I went through and hand-sewed little tags on all our bath towels and labeled them with each of our names, so that everyone in my family would have our own.


Well, because people kept stealing mine, and it was gross and annoying!

But my plan didn't work. I should have learned then that you can't organize people who don't want to be organized.

"I know how hard it is to put food on your family" (George W. Bush)

The news? Well, Penn has gotten kicked off Dancing With The Stars, and Obama is related to Brad Pitt, and the NFL is concerned about hairdos.

Oh yeah, and I think I saw some brief mention that part of some ice shelf in Antarctica broke away yesterday as a result of global warming, leaving its remaining 5,571 square miles "hanging by a thread". But I sure had to hunt to find articles about it.

And why bother? I mean hell, what's an ice shelf when the NFL players' hair is on the line?!

Miss Hickmott

While I was driving the backroads around Oneonta tonight, I passed Miss Hickmott’s house. She was my pre-k teacher, and she died just a couple of weeks ago.

As I was passing her house, I had a vivid memory of the time she took my class there. She lived near the lower reservoir dam on upper East Street, and she took us all out to look at the dam, explaining to us why it was there and how it worked. She didn’t let us get very close to it, which I thought was stupid, because it looked like just the sort of thing that would be fun to walk across. I was mad that she wouldn’t let me. I also recall that she had an apple – a large, red, plastic apple – in the room to the left at the top of the stairs, and if you put a penny in the right spot on the apple, a little motor inside would make a grinding noise (a grinding noise very like the machines at the circulation desk in the SUCO library made; the machines that would stamp the date on the return card in your book) - a nasal kind of mwaa-mwaa sound - and a little plastic worm would come out and grab the penny and pull it inside the apple. Maybe it was a sort of piggy bank; I don’t know. I just remember being fascinated by this apple, and concerned that there didn't seem to be any way to get the money back out once the worm took it.

Miss Hickmott was a wonderful teacher. I’m sure she was, though I don’t specifically remember how she taught. I just remember the atmosphere in the classroom. Very free, very informal; sort of like Malibu Crowd Days. Lots going on all over, and you could do whatever you wanted. Within reason. The only time I remember Miss Hickmott being upset with me was the time I spit in the sandbox to show my friends how the sand would ball up around the spit, like magic. She wasn’t happy with me that day.

She had funny hair; I remember it was a warm honey-brown, sort of flat on top, and then curled around her head in a pageboy style. I guess it wasn’t that odd really; just strangely flattened on top, like the grass underneath where you sat on your picnic blanket. And I remember her always in canvas tennis shoes and a cotton, button-down shirt, with a light cardigan over top. All pastels. I may be wrong about the shoes. In fact, I may be wrong about everything. Maybe she dressed up and wore heels. But I don’t think so.

I guess the other time she was angry with me was the day Jason Brown and I decided to run away. We hid in some bushes not too far from the playground. We didn’t really go very far. It was thrilling to know that nobody could find us; we listened to them calling, and kept very quiet. I’m not sure Miss Hickmott enjoyed the experience as much as Jason and I did.

One day she combined the morning class and the afternoon class, so I got to see my friend Carrie Stevens (who, appropriately, was the one who sent me the notice about her death). Carrie was in the other group, and so I was excited to finally share a class with her! We watched a filmstrip about dinosaurs, and had some sort of celebration; we all brought food and cake. Maybe it was Miss Hickmott's birthday; I don’t know.

Best of all, I loved driving around in the little pedal car they had there. Sometimes she let me take it up and down the hallway outside the room. See? I’ve always loved driving. The only frustrating thing I remember was that the outdoor sandbox (not the one I spit in; that was indoors) didn’t go very far down. You’d get a good depth going with your hoe, and then you’d hit the bottom and that was it. Irritating. And I got blisters from the wooden handle on that hoe. I’m surprised they let 4-year-olds use hoes. Maybe they didn’t. But that’s how I remember it.

I-earn-y

It occurred to me this afternoon that much of my workday is spent assisting people or tracking down people who would not need to be tracked down or assisted had they spent any time reading information already sent to them, or taken care of their obligations in a timely manner.

So I guess if people were less lazy and oblivious, I’d be out of a job.
Which then leads me to wonder how much of our economy is dependent on general human inefficiency.
Which is a disturbing thing to wonder, so I’ll stop wondering about it and go back to tracking down this bunch of students – I’ve been waiting 8 months for their paperwork. The longer they wait, the more letters I get to write; more time is spent, more paper is used, and the USPS gets more business, our departmental budget soaks up the postage, the college charges the students higher rates to cover the need, their parents work longer hours to break even, and so the world turns.

Go Laziness! Work your magic! Get our country back on its feet!

recording

When I was younger, I would tape-record sounds. It was an attempt to counteract loss. Knowing that my parakeet, Cottentail, would not live forever, I recorded the sound of her chirping. Knowing we might someday sell our house, I recorded the creaks of our basement stairs as I went down them, and the growl of our old furnace igniting. The particular slapping sound made by the wooden venetian blinds on our front door; the flub-flub of our swinging kitchen door as it came to rest against its frame. I didn't want to forget.

I was going through some of these old tapes last night, and found one on which I had recorded some stuff from when we lived in Spain in 1985-86.

It was interesting. I had captured the sound of the town's one lone church bell tolling solemnly. I'd gone into a bar and recorded the carnival-like song playing on a slot machine that we'd heard every day while walking past or stopping for a soda. But later I had done something that I didn't often do - I left the tape recorder running on the dining room table in our rented house, and recorded the last 15 minutes that we lived there.

It was weird; almost disturbing to listen to. It's the usual last-minute hustle and bustle of a family scrambling to get ready for a long journey - mom asking whose was the bag of nuts on the table, me stressing over how to pack a sweater in an already-overpacked suitcase, our landlady stopping by and my parents arranging with her in broken Spanish to leave the house keys at the neighbor's. At the end of that 15 minutes, we would be on our way to England, taking a bus through France to Calais, the ferry to Dover. Later that day, my mother's purse would be robbed by two guys on a motorbike, as we stood on a streetcorner in Malaga, waiting for the bus. We would lose our passports and have a difficult time entering France.

But that was all to come. As the tape recorder ran on that day, none of that had happened yet. The walls of the house still echoed with our voices and footsteps; the taxi hadn't yet arrived to finally carry us away from that period in our lives.

Try as I may (and believe me, I've tried), I find myself completely unable to comprehend the passing of time, and our inability to re-construct or re-connect to what once was. And I know now that the tape recording doesn't help; in fact, I think that it makes it all harder to understand.

little grey cells

It has occurred to me to wonder how much smarter I'd be if my brain didn't (by default, it seems) decide to fill itself with useless song lyrics and retain them for decades, even when not regularly accessed. It's a waste of space. Holmes and Poirot would be disgusted.

nuts&bolts

Sunday.

I was having a lovely day; it was sunny, warm enough to start the snow melting. I was driving around in my old car, listening to Cat Stevens, and running errands. A perfectly perfect afternoon.

But what made it extra perfect (if such a thing is possible) was the kind of errands I was running.

I had to get a spring to repair my electric shaver (yes, it broke again), and a washer and nut for the faucet in the bathroom sink. So I went to Home Depot.

I don't often go to Home Depot anymore. When I lived in California, I went to Home Depot (or, preferably, Orchard Hardware) at least 2-3 times a week. Well, I had to! There were things that needed doing! There were tools and stuff that needed to be bought to do them!

But that was when I lived in a house, with a garage and a yard. Now I live in an apartment, and keep my tools in the pantry, next to the sugar. Well, I only have one closet, and that's full of my camping equipment. What would you do? It's a sad state of affairs.

So I hadn't been to Home Depot in a long time. And after meandering around for awhile, picking up some drywall anchors and a clamp and some fuses for my car, I fell to admiring the copper pipes in the plumbing section and the little cotter pins in the grey pull-out drawer in aisle 10... yes, with all the imagining of the cool projects that could be accomplished with all the things they were selling, it took me quite awhile to finally get around to looking for what I'd actually gone there to get.

And on the way home it came to me that someday I will have to face the blasphemous fact that I have much more fun in hardware stores than I ever do in bookstores or libraries.

May God have mercy on my soul.

U2

On the way back from taking Joel to the Albany airport the other morning, I was listening to U2's Running to Stand Still.

It's on the Joshua Tree album, which is one of my favoritest albums ever; both because it's great (particularly side 1), and because it reminds me of the summer of 1987.

-Mom and I took the train cross-country to LA that summer. To Malibu, really. I had just gotten my first (and last) Walkman cassette player, and I had one tape. That tape. Joshua Tree. Which our family friends, the Kerns, had copied onto tape for me from the LP I'd just gotten for my birthday. (They copied it because my family didn't have enough newfangled stereo equipment to effect such a transfer.)

That album is perfect for a cross-country train ride, because you can hear that train-y track-y clackity-clackity rhythm through pretty much every song. Yeah, every song. It's a train album. It's a western album. It's a sage brush dry dirt baking sun cactus open sky California album.

I packed minimally for that trip. I had some black Hanes t-shirts and some Fruit of the Loom men's boxer shorts. And one black button-down cotton skirt. My mom and I had purchased that skirt specially the previous winter, so I would have something formal to wear while I was serving rice pilaf to members of my church during some sit-down pledge-drive dinner we set up on folding tables in the sanctuary. By the summer, I had washed it enough times that it was starting to lose its crisp black, and was looking a bit grey around the edges. My plan was to wear the skirt during the day, as we sat and traveled in the train, and then at night (as we continued to sit and travel in the train) I would unbutton it (revealing my perfectly legitimate public-wear boxer shorts) and straighten the skirt out full-length to use as a throw-blanket to cover me as I slept. I thought this was a very clever plan. It meant that I didn't have to lug around an extra blanket, and that I could feel like I was changing into nighttime sleepwear without really having to change into nighttime sleepwear.

I was 16. It was one of the best summers ever.

connections, conclusions

Things I've been thinking about lately:

- the relationship between stress and high blood pressure/high cholesterol/thinning hair/caffeine intake/over-eating.

- the fact that obesity in the US is on the rise; despite an increased emphasis and awareness of the importance of exercise and eating organic, whole grains, local produce, free-range eggs, hormone-free milk....

- what all that might have to do with the sagging economy; and the fact that my roommate's co-worker took a second job just to pay for the gas she uses to commute to her first job.

- and vacation, by god - apparently, (as Charles Gibson reported on ABC news the other night) - "It is estimated Americans give back 438 million vacation days a year. ... America is the only major country in the world that has no government-mandated time off. 75 percent of Americans do get paid vacation, 14 days the average. But then the average worker gives back three of those days. ...And when Americans do take time off, 60 percent of us are checking office e-mails. So you might consider moving to France. There, the government requires 31 vacation days plus holidays."

Add to that the internet, text-messaging, illiteracy, the war in Iraq, drugs, and the popularity of Thomas Kinkade (‘Painter of Light’) and you’ve got… the portrait of a blinking idiot.

accent grave

I was poking around in the blogger help section, trying to see if there's some way to add accents so my foreign words don't look so silly, when I found this post on the 'known issues' page:

"A bug that made it trivially easy to accidentally set your blog's language to Albanian has been fixed. If you notice that your blog's archives and other text appears to be in Albanian (and you don't want it to be), use Settings > Formatting to change your blog's language. — latest update on Monday, July 02, 2007 "

... if, on the other hand, your blog posts have been set to Albanian and you _don't_ notice, umm... yep... hopefully your friend will notice for you, and then make sure you get prompt medical attention.

[I particularly love the addition of the "(and you don't want it to be)"....]

a consomme of consumption

In the midst of making cookies, doing dishes, listening to a CD, cleaning off the kitchen table, repairing my backpack, while I'd left an episode of Buffy paused halfway-through in the living-room, I felt compelled to turn on the computer and check my email. As if I don't get enough multi-tasking at work.

This led me to reflect on the nature of online life... and the fact that, as much as it's a boon, it's also something that, well, can take you over.

Not an original thought, of course - I'm sure books have been written about it.

But, for the same reason that I resist doing too much of anything for any length of time - watching tv, reading, writing, being alone, being with friends - for the same reason that falling in love sorta bugs me out on some level, and [probably] that I've not yet allowed myself to pursue a career in something meaningful to me, or to settle in one place and commit to a community - in the last few weeks, I have definitely felt myself resisting the all-consuming nature of the internet.

There is something both wonderful and terrible about being consumed by something. To lose yourself in something, or someone, is the most amazing feeling... until that moment when you suddenly realize that you've lost yourself, and then it's absolutely terrifying.

Wasn't it Aristotle who was going on and on about moderation in all things?

Although, that said, I'm going to contradict myself and say that perhaps I need to consider doing moderation in moderation.

Because I truly belive that only by allowing oneself to be consumed can one reach...uhh... consummation.

Springsteen

I was just poking around on my home computer, and saw a WordPad document labeled "Springsteen" over in the corner of my desktop.
I didn't have any idea what it was, so I opened it and found this.
I remember writing it, but I don't remember which song or which album I was referring to, nor why I felt compelled to write about it. So it's sorta random, and deserves to take its place in my pile of [other] random comments about random things.
__________

...I have always really liked the song, and I was listening to it again last night in the car. It sticks out among the other songs on that album - it's got a sort of simple, empty, lonely sound. Makes me think of walking around on sultry summer nights, alone; passing dark used-car dealerships and bright-lit street corners; hearing the humming transformers on telephone poles and the occasional car passing in the distance. The kind of hot-weather night that makes sex extra fun because you're already so drenched and drunk with the heat that every part of you is wet, and so you give up any attempt at control and go totally sleepily nuts with it.

Doomsday

It's Monday, February 11th, 5:34pm.
The First Day of Spring Semester.
One of our most relaxing and not-filled-with-120-students-trying-to-see-us-about-restrictions-on-their-accounts days as ever was. (if you catch my drift) (as in, NOT)

Since I'm at work, and I have on my desk 22 little pink message slips from parents who are all waiting for me to call them back before a half hour ago, this seems like a good time to write a blog post.

To give you a Very Important Update - my co-worker has switched from Dove (R) to Nestle (R) (with an accent on the latter e that this interface won't let me put there).

The Nestle people seem to be a bit more down-to-earth than the Dove people. Their chocolate heart wrappers say things like this:
"How many times have Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith been divorced from each other?"

It seems like an odd thing to put on a chocolate heart. Chocolate hearts are supposed to remind us of love and romance, happy endings, things working out.

Maybe.

Or maybe by reminding us of things not working out, they work their addictive magic and make our bodies cry out for happy chocolate chemicals. Maybe Nestle has in fact figured out the best marketing strategy!

Ok; that was a good break. Now I'll go call some parents. Wahoo.

(PS - They're not all called Wahoo. I was just using that as an example, you understand.)

aaaahhhhh

There are a few things in life that I just can't get my brain around.
Concepts that seem stranger and more elusive the harder I think about them....

-The size and scope of the Universe
-Death
-God
-The existence (and online availability) of David Lynch Signature Cup coffee beans http://ecomm.davidlynch.com/catalog/coffee_house.php

labels

Some people use labels to organize their blog posts.

I don't.

Because I figure everything I write falls under one of two categories (or sometimes both together):

a) Chocolate
2) Statements that will inevitably lead people to decide that I'm completely insane.

But perhaps some variation would be good - after all, that guy did point out the thing about foolish consistency.

I'll work on it.

was

I wish the subjunctive were used more often.

Dove (R) shirks the sweet and goes for the gusto

My co-worker (bless her generous soul) keeps a jar on her desk filled with chocolates. Usually Dove dark chocolates - you know - the little Promises (R).

Each little wrapper has a soft, goopy saying written inside:
"Love is always the perfect gift." (Awwww!)
"The best holiday decoration is a smile." (Oh yes, how true!)
"Joy is contagious." (And gosh, I just can't wait to catch it from you!)

But apparently the Dove copywriters have had it with the mush, and are finally taking a stand.
Today's wrapper?

"GET YOUR FEET MASSAGED."

TMI

Ok, it's official-- I finally figured it out!
It's the dairy!

--See, I can pretty much get away with not using deodorant... unless I drink milk. If I drink milk, the next day my armpits smell like... well, like armpits generally smell if you exercise and don't use deodorant.

It's weird. I guess it's also a good thing that I very seldom drink milk!

It makes me wonder if other people are affected the same way, and don't realize it, cause they just assume armpits are supposed to smell.

And if they are [affected the same way], and people were to stop drinking milk, and stop using deodorant, how would it affect the US economy?!

Fascinating to think about. (The economy part, I mean; not the stinky pits part, of course.)

it's raining again...

(saying that always makes me start singing that Supertramp song)

YES, we had a THUNDERSTORM this morning, of all things. ??!!

On an un-related note (or perhaps not...), I've started re-watching Buffy in my spare time, starting from the first episode.

Two observations:
1) It is a hellishly good show. _Damn_ is it a good show!!
b) It's kinda crazy how far technology has come in the last ten years. -And kinda disturbing how fast we forget where we came from, and when we came from it.

I mean, she calls Giles from a _payphone_ for chrissake! And they speak of the Internet as though it's something reserved for brainy tech junkies.

And here's something else - in Twin Peaks, they were still using rotary-dial phones!

I'm not sure why I find all that so surprising. But it is.

things

I felt chilly this morning, so I turned on the little space heater that I keep under my desk.

Usually when I turn it on, I'm in a hurry, or distracted. In the middle of a conversation with a parent, phone in one hand, I'll reach down and flip the switch to 'heat' without thinking much about it.

This morning I stopped for a minute and looked at the little heater. It's really cute; a tiny black cube that manages to blast enough heat to keep my toes toasty in this cold basement office. It has a sensor that turns it off if it falls over, a little hidden handle so you can pick it up easily, an auto/manual setting, temperature control, and a fan option, in case all you want is a little air movement.

But mostly what makes me like it is the associations it has - my friends and roommates Jodi and Angela purchased this little gem for me in 1995 with 'house funds' (which funds these were, or how we came up with them, I now don't recall). I had just moved to a huge group house (there were 6 of us, unrelated professionals, and one bathroom. Wahoo!) in Los Altos, California, and my bedroom was the back porch. Had been the back porch. I had to put up thick drapes so that people in the living room wouldn't be able to see through the huge plate-glass windows, right into my bed. The floor was concrete, covered with a hideously-fluorescent green shag rug. When it rained, everything got a bit damp. When it was cold (which happens quite often in northern California), the room was freezing. Of course, being the back porch, the furnace's heating ducts didn't reach me there. It was COLD, I tell you! (Hence the heater.)
But from my bed, I could see the two enormous live oaks in the backyard, stretching their branches up over our house. I could see the moon every night. I could hear peeper frogs and crickets. It was one of my favorite bedrooms ever.

I love it that things have that power of association. That this morning in the year 2008, I can glance down at the little black plastic square at my feet, in my basement office in Oneonta, and be instantly transported back 13 years, to recall the details of faces and spaces and times that I haven't thought about for many a moon.

yes, it's true...

...I'm a language conservative from hell.
Except for when it's intelligent play, like on Buffy.

zen and the art of roadtrips

I love driving, especially alone.
There's something wonderful that can happen in your brain when your conscious mind is absorbed with negotiating turns, flipping to low-beam for oncoming traffic, watching for deer and stopped cars... while all that is going on, your subconscious is able to hum along by itself and get all sorts of work done.

...sometimes this process is aided by music; oftentimes the repetition of a particular song.

Thank god for CD players; for years I was stuck with re-winding the cassette tape over and over - now I can just put the thing on 'repeat' and enjoy my uninterrupted reverie.

There are drawbacks, however. Without having to re-wind anything, the uninterrupted reverie can sometimes go on uninterrupted for many hours... like, the whole length of the trip.

For example, there was one instance when I was listening to Kermit the Frog sing about how "It's not easy bein' green... having to spend each day the color of the leaves..." - I put it on repeat and didn't realize till I reached Oneonta over four hours later that it was still going.

The song being 2 minutes and 14 seconds long, that means I listened to it at least 108 times, without a break.

I wonder if that's worthy of a World Record?
Or maybe someone will arrive soon to cart me away.

the antidote to your anecdote

Have you noticed everyone saying "anticdote" lately?
"Let me tell you an amusing anticdote about our vacation to Kansas...."

Yeah, sure. I'd love to hear it.

-Although I suppose it is true that many an anecdote does involve antics of one kind or another.

The other thing that's spreading rampantly is 'safety deposit box'. I even heard William Hurt say it twice in the movie Mr. Brooks.
[Actually, four times, since I've seen the movie twice. ;-)]

profound thought of the day

Fruit is like purple. You can have all different shades and flavors, and they all work nicely together.

Chocolate is like black. Different shades of black conflict; the flavors of different chocolates conflict.

You can taste one kind of chocolate and think "oh yes, this is a very deep, rich chocolate. Yum."
And then immediately bite into a different kind of chocolate, and suddenly the first one seems very strangely-flavored, like a distant copy of the original.

The whole thing plays with your mind in a very mean and sneaky sort of way.

And leads me to ask - is there, then, a True Chocolate? Or is it all just layers of illusion?

And might lead you to ask - why is she eating so much chocolate in such rapid succession that she is able to have contrasting chocolate flavors on her tongue?! I thought she told me she was eating healthy and going to the gym!

speakinaspanish

Esposas=
Wives and Handcuffs, man, gotta love it.

'round and 'round and 'round it goes; where it stops...

I was just poking around in the SAL system that we use to maintain all our loan files, cause I was trying to figure out how to delete a pop-up memo in a borrower's account.
I wasn't having much luck, so I clicked on the "HELP" tab.

I seldom click on "HELP" tabs, because they are so seldom helpful.
But this time I did; I clicked on it. And it brought up a number of items that a user of such a system might need help with.

Except... wait. The top two items are-
1) How to Login to SAL (which I would've had to have done in order to see this page)
[yeah, just try translating _that_ into Spanish, I dare ya!] [que yo hubiera... habria...tendria... umm... hubiera tenido que hacer... no... Que yo hubiera tenido que haber hecho para ver esta pagina.... Yeah, that sounds like a mess, but that's as close as I can get it - Osvaldo where the hell are ya?!]
and...
2) How to Get Help [I kid you not!]

So I clicked on that 'How to Get Help' link, just for kix, and it explained to me how to do what I'd just done in order to get to that link, and then it had its own links, which brought me back around to the page where I could click on a link to get more help doing what I'd just done.... Fascinating! I could do this all day!

Hence my reluctance to ever click the "Help" tab.

I am pro-choice word choice

From: NARAL Pro-Choice New York
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 2:01 PM
To: Kate
Subject: What a guy.

Please thank Governor Spitzer for once again supporting New York women's right to make their own personal medical decisons. Let him know what a guy - and governor - he really is.
___________

Dear Governor Spitzer,
Thank you for supporting our right to choose.
You are such a guy.
What? Umm... yeah, they told me to say that.
Sincerely,
Kate

the table goes round and round

I've been reading... (as the second of my non-mystery before-new-years books) (the first having been The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster, which I highly recommend, but only if you're not already suffering from depression.)...umm... right... so, I've been reading Le Morte D'Arthur [by] Sir Thomas Malory. Maleore. Malorye. Malleorre.

It's a good read. And after living in that 1400s language for awhile, your brain starts saying things to itself like "and he was wonderly wrothe."

But anyway.
Thomas Malory reportedly compiled and translated these Arthurian tales out of the French Vulgate romances and some Middle English sources. (as per Elizabeth Bryan's Introduction)

And here's my whole point for bringing this up... in the original Preface, William Caxton wrote:
"I haue...enprysed to enprynte a book of the noble hystoryes of the sayed kynge Arthur and of certeyn of his knyghtes after a copye vnto me delyuerd whyche copye Syr Thomas Malorye dyd take oute of certeyn bookes of frensshe and reduced it in to Englysshe."

I love that - "reduced into English". I love it love it love it. It's so much more accurate than saying "translated", which gives you the misleading idea that the text has merely been moved from one place to another, laterally, without losing anything in the process.

I often get the feeling that people reading a translation think they're getting the whole story. That they're not missing out. But anything translated is only an approximation. Sometimes the translator gets close... taking months or years (I imagine, anyway) to find just the right word combo to preserve both the literal idea, and any cultural humor or added connotation, syntax and rhythm... but it's a futile task. Compelling, but futile.

Because language is so culture-specific. So experience-specific.
Like, hearing the word 'arbol' gives me an entirely different mental image than when I hear the word 'tree'. Sure, they sorta mean the same thing, but not really.

It's kinda like going to see The Golden Compass. (she said, making a leap and not bothering to fill in the gaps.)

guts

I was just reading the last entry on Osvaldo's blog, where he was speaking about a woman he met briefly; and how he realized in the space of a second, from one comment she made, that she would not be a good dating candidate for him. (O - if I'm summing up badly, I apologize.)

I, too, have had this experience, and it's still an odd one, when it happens, but I'm grateful for it. -You can be going along getting to know someone, and feeling impressed, intrigued, interested. And then - boom - they say or do something; and it can be a minor thing, as minor as slightly misinterpreting something you say - but suddenly you know, as well as you know anything in life, that they're just not on the same page, and that a relationship with them just wouldn't work. At all.

Because that slight misunderstanding could only have happened if about ten other extremely important things were off-kilter between you.

And it's often somewhat of a bummer to get this fateful internal telegram, cause he was so cool... damn.
But there's nothing to be done. It just is. It just isn't. It's over.

And, really, the mechanism itself is pretty darn amazing. Guts are great!

43 Cliff Street

I was awakened at 2:45am last night by irregular, clomping footsteps on the back stairs, and a hammering at the door. Then there was muffled shouting and more pounding, and I opened my eyes and saw my roommate walking through my bedroom, heading for the back door with a grim look on his face. He opened the door and I heard him say loudly, "You've got the wrong house, buddy. You have the wrong house!" I could smell stale alcohol on the air that was coming in through the doorway.

By this point, I was fully awake, and the police had arrived. I stood at my bedroom window and watched the scene below as the two police officers questioned this very drunk college student. He belligerently shouted "43 Cliff Street!" over and over again in response to everything they asked. "What's your name, sir?" "43 Cliff Street!"

The whole thing seemed almost amusingly surreal. I think I've been watching too many episodes of Twin Peaks.

I was going to write something

but I've forgotten what.

Sunday night again

It's been a weird day. Somewhat depressing and unproductive.

On a whim, I completed an email questionnaire my 12-year-old niece sent me.
According to whomever produced this thing, I am:
hot, romantic, cute, determined, preppy, I like to be around people, I'm "pale and original" (?! sounds like a beer ad), happy, and crazy...

...and fated to have a shitty love life because I failed to forward the email to 20 people within one hour.

Oh well.

I guess I'll go make dinner.

languages

Osvaldo's comment on the chipotle post has got me thinking of another thing that has always bugged me. Why oh why do we have different names for cities in foreign countries? Cities that already have their own perfectly perfect names, thank you very much!

I mean, I could understand if we had to spell the names differently, so that an english-speaker could look at the word and approximate the sound of the native pronounciation. But that's not what happens; it's like we create a whole other word, sounding nothing like the original name.

Like, what the hell is up with Munich?! Not the least bit like Munchen.
And Koln and Cologne. -Why even bother to mess with the spelling on that one? All that 'gne' crap just makes it more confusing.
And the Bodensee being the Lake of Constance?! Is 'Bodensee' really that hard to say?!

(Of course, so far I've only cited examples from Germany, but still.)
I'll add more examples once I can get home and look at my atlas.

If someone can explain to me the logic in having double names for the same place, I'd love to hear it!

flying in a plane and calling people on the phone

the two things that don't seem to get easier no matter how many times I do them.

nope, there were four creepy places

The really really last:

El Valle de los Caidos [Valley of the Fallen], near Madrid. It's a monument to Franco (and I think he's buried there... or mausoleumed there, whatever, as well). It was built by republican [anti-Franco] political prisoners between 1940 and 1950-something. Anyone would get chills just looking at the place. If you ever go there, I recommend a hot tub, massage, sweat bath, and therapy session afterwards, just to regain equilibrium.

a conversation with Tyler (who is 5)

T - What's this, what's this thing?
Me - That's my book.
T - Why is it here? Why did you bring it? What kind of book is it? Will you read it? Read it, read it to me!
Me - Well, I'm not sure you'll like it too much.
T - Read it, read it please!
[He hands me the book, settles himself next to me and looks over my shoulder at the pages.]
Me - Ok. Umm... "More often than not, Hector finds himself at the bottom of the social ladder. He is married in only two of his films (Hearth and Home and Mr. Nobody), and except for the private detective he plays in The Snoop and his role as a traveling magician in Cowpokes, he is a working stiff toiling for others in humble, low-salaried jobs."
T - [getting up and walking away] Eeegghhh! No, it's not very good!

Bresee's #3

There are only two other places I can think of that have given me that same sad-sick feeling as the dream about Bresee's.

One is Mrs. Winchester's bedroom, in the Winchester house in San Jose, CA. They've left it just as it was after the earthquake hit on the morning of April 18, 1906; all crumbling plaster, with the wood laths showing through.

The other is El Alcazar in Toledo, Spain, where there's a room whose walls are still full of bullet holes from a dramatic seige during the civil war.

History in decay is just generally disturbing to me, I guess. Or is it the places themselves?

(later:) No, no, wait, I lied - there are three places-
The last was an old barn near Milford, NY that houses an antique shop. I stood the atmosphere long enough to buy an Edison Amberol cylinder recording of Will Oakland and Chorus singing Take This Letter to My Mother, and then I had to leave. It was just too oppressive.
-That was 20 years ago, and I still feel a bit ill when I think about it. I tried to go back once, a few years ago; after all, it is a kick-ass antique shop. But I literally couldn't bring myself to step inside. It was a beautiful sunny summer day, and I walked right up to the open barn doorway. But it felt like there was some huge negative energy vortex swirling just inside the door. I turned around and left.

Again, weird.

siren

Someone told me once that songwriters write lyrics first, and then compose the melody to go with them. That seems totally backwards to me. Whenever I've made up a song, it's always the music that comes first. Not, of course, that I could by any stretch of the imagination be called a 'song-writer'. And maybe that's why - I've been going about it wrong all these years! Well, whaddyaknow.

Bresee's #2

For years I have had a recurring dream/nightmare of walking through Bresee's Department Store after it was closed (which I never did in real life).
The rooms are dimly-lit, and full of dusty displays and ancient merchandise. Somehow I always find myself in the upstairs hallway by the Salon. In the dream, I look up and see brown water-stains on the walls from years of roof-leaks, sagging ceiling tiles, paint chips suspended like paper graffiti in hanging strands of cobweb, strips of water-logged wallpaper all over the floor.

It's always the same, and always very creepy, and I wake up with a sad-sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Weird.

Bresee's

The other Christmas album... albums... I liked were by Mannheim Steamroller.

But for some reason, every time I listen to Mannheim Steamroller, I see myself sitting on the rug in front of the stereo in my host-family's house in Santander, Spain, looking at the LP album cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America.

Go figure.

CHIPOTLE

How do You pronounce it?!

I find it fascinating that people don't seem to know what to do with that word.

Must be a cultural defect. Like asparagus.

I love chocolate

all kinds-
every kind of chocolate concoction there is.
But I don't like Butterfinger candybars. Ick.

Must be a genetic defect. Like cilantro.

Christmas

Some little-known facts about me:

For two holiday seasons I worked in the Christmas Shop at Bresee's Department Store. I decorated all the fake trees, and created the product displays, and I got to hang out with Santa! I took photos of all the kids when they came to see Him, and I dressed up as Mrs. Claus, complete with wire-rimmed glasses and a weird moldy-smelling bonnet.

And I had to listen to Christmas carols for 7 hours a day, which is why I know all the verses by heart.
My favorite album was Christmas Rock:

DECK the (crash)
HALLS!
with (crash)
BOUGHS of HOL-LY!
FA la la la
LA!
la
LA!
la
LA! LA!

quote of the week #7

(David Gray)

Grant me a wish, just one more kiss
And baby, kiss me till the daylight's through
These are days of make-believe
But there ain't nothing any fool can do

the case of the missing sauce

My friend Mark, at first glance, can strike people as a serious personality, soft-spoken and gentle, so that it can sometimes take awhile to realize that he's also outrageously funny. And every so often he does something or says something that is so... just completely, 100% him, that it totally cracks me up and makes me want to run over and give him a huge hug.

This was one of those times -
At the end of the summer, Mark and Janice came to visit me in Oneonta. Janice had brought some home-made spaghetti sauce (she makes really good sauce, thick with meat) for our dinner the next night.

When Janice and I got up in the morning, we found this little note Mark had left us on the kitchen counter, documenting the various stages of his midnight snacking:

K8's not-yet-patented hiccup cure

I feel I should post this, just to prove that I thought of it first.

This is my cure for hiccups; it has never failed.
NEVER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! Not once on the gazillion people I've told about it. Nor ever on myself, since I came up with it 15 years ago.

I developed this cure on my very own, based on the completely unsound reasoning that your body will avoid drowning at all costs.
Yeah, I know it doesn’t make sense. But it produced good results, so stop complaining!

So I have decided to share my wisdom with the world at large, because I do not like to see good people suffer needlessly.

Here are the steps:

1) Develop a bad case of hiccups.
2) Exhale completely.
3) While continuing to hold all the air out of your lungs, put a glass of water to your lips and start drinking. Swallow rapidly and continuously, as if you were guzzling the water, but only take in a small amount of water with each swallow. Do not swallow any air, if you can help it.
4) Do this until you feel like you absolutely HAVE to take a breath.
5) Allow yourself to breathe in slowly.
6) Enjoy your lack of hiccups.

the road to religion

I used to live in Redwood City, CA.
["CLIMATE BEST BY GOVERNMENT TEST" (said the big sign over the main street)]

One place that Rob and I used to eat breakfast was the 'Francis St. Cafe'.
I called it the "Francis Saint Cafe" because... well, cause that's what I thought it was.
Later Rob gently (and somewhat apologetically; I think he was afraid of dampening my enthusiasm for the place) explained to me that the 'St.' was most likely short for "street".
And I felt kinda stupid.

But the thing is, there IS a Saint Francis Street in Redwood City.
So, would that be St. Francis St.?!

Sunday night

Sunday night.
Sunday night.
Means tomorrow is work.
Bummer.

It's been a long day. It's been one of those days where everything you have planned takes about 20 times as long as you think it will. Because in the course of doing what you have planned, everything else goes wrong. Like:

-In trying to prune back one of my plants, a branch swung back and knocked over the table that was supporting my stereo (3 components, 2 speakers). That CD player rolled more times than Bond's Aston Martin in the new Casino Royale. (It still seems to work, thankfully.)
-I severely bruised my arms and legs trying to carry an armchair that is so big and heavy that even a burly 6-foot-tall guy would have had a hard time carrying it alone. If someone had a video of me trying to maneuver the damn thing up the front staircase, it would have made #1 on America's Funniest Home Videos.
-Trying to get said chair into my bedroom, I knocked over my recently-watered spider plant, spraying dirt and water all over my wool jacket, a number of clean duvet covers, some clothes, a suitcase, and the rug.
-Trying not to step in the dirt, I tripped and broke the the foot off a wooden sculpture.
-I then went to my dad's house to get the keys to his truck so I could take some stuff to the Salvation Army. There were some people there, and I got stuck talking to them. I finally got away and went out to the truck, only to find that its bed was full to the top with leaves; completely unusable.

And that doesn't even count what happened last night! I had dropped my friend Kristin off at her house and was pulling away from the curb when I suddenly heard an ominous dragging-metal sound. Pulling over, I saw that the center exhaust pipe on my car had fallen, rusted through apparently, and that it had dropped, not at the back (which at least would have allowed me to drive home, albeit slowly), but from the front, so it was going up against every bump in the road. So, alone there on the dark street, I took a canoe paddle out of my car (luckily I am someone who keeps a canoe paddle in her car; just in case, you know) and I crouched down in the gutter, and like some homicidal maniac with a vendetta, I snarlingly smashed away at the other end of the pipe with the paddle, over and over, until it was crushed enough that I could twist it with my hands and pull it off. I mean, jeepers!

Come to think of it, work might actually be a welcome break.

the ineffectual elite

I was at Barnes & Noble the other day, and I had plenty of time to mill around the Starbucks coffee bar, since my friend Janice (who was in shock from having just slammed the door of my car on her finger) was alternately sipping her grande carmel frappuccino and putting her head between her knees so she wouldn't faint.

Being a good friend, I left her at the table and was going through the line buying coffee for myself and hungrily eyeing the huge oatmeal-raisin cookies, when something caused me to swing my gaze the opposite direction. And my eyes fastened on a big cardboard display of classics - Hemingway, Dickens, Poe - that had large lettering on the top that said "WHOM DO YOU WANT TO HAVE COFFEE WITH?"

I guess the idea was you buy the book and drink your coffee and feel somehow like you're having a conversation with these great authors.

But I thought, like, what the heck? If they can get the 'whom' part right, can't they at least put the 'with' in front? And if they're putting the 'with' vernacularly at the end, they should've just stuck with 'who'; it would have made the whole thing a lot easier to look at.

Sez I.

advice

...all of which leads me to say something else-

If you really want to annoy me, here's what you do: Catch me singing or humming to myself sometime, and then click your tongue and smile wisely and say loudly and knowingly to the world-at-large, "Well, I can tell Kate's in a good mood this morning!"

Quite awhile ago, I said that often my brain, all on its own, will go out and select a song with lyrics appropriate to whatever I'm going through at the moment, to give me perspective or deeper understanding, or just to help me focus on my feelings and reactions to things. Oftentimes it's just a piece of a song that plays over and over.

And since Laura's death, it's been a little bit of a David Gray song. The rest of the song doesn't fit at all; I think it's actually a frustrated love song. But taken out of context, the lines my brain keeps playing for me fit exactly:

And as I watch you leave I stand
Inside my house of straw
And everywhere I go I find
Things recollecting to my mind
....
Each word it flies
Straight to the heart and I know
Watching you go
There ain't no easy way to cry

well....

A lot has happened between the last post and this. Or, rather, a lot happened awhile ago, while we were all unsuspecting, and now we've heard about it, and the world is upside-down.
But I'd planned on writing 3 posts tonight (4-hour car rides are great for thinking) and this one was going to be about things I want to get done before the end of the year.
And it still is about that. And it feels important to write it all down; even more important than it felt before, when I was in the car.

Before January 1, 2008 I would like to:
-write a song and record myself singing it
-send thank-you cards to everyone I'm thankful to for things I haven't yet formally thanked them for.
-lose 10 pounds (I'd be happy with 5)
-do yoga and reiki almost every day
-finish the quilt I started last year
-finish at least one of the 5 scarves that I started last year
-finish at least SOMETHING goddamnit!
-read a book I haven't read before, about something besides mystery and crime
-give more people more hugs
-figure out the part of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata that I started learning about 8 years ago and still can't play on the piano - I want to grind away at it until I know it flat so I can play the whole thing through without stopping (goddamnit!) (I felt another bout of swearing was appropriate there, for emphasis.)
-So I can leave that and learn another piece.
-Before January 1, I would like to have my apartment look the way I want it, and be cleared out enough that it doesn't give me a headache every time I look around at all the stuff in it.
-I want to finish lining the jacket that I started lining about 6 months ago.
-I want to get more photographs up on my FLICKR account. Laura would like that.
-I want to spend more time focusing on what's in front of me.
(whatever that means)
-and tons of other things. I'll add them as they occur to me...
(additions:)
-hang new photos in my office at work

The word 'occur' always looks so naked to me with only one r. But I can't do much about that.

watch out for Santa Claus!

Driving home up I-81 tonight, I noticed that someone had gone up to each of the 'deer crossing' warning signs, and placed a round red reflector on the nose of each buck's silhouette. It gave the whole highway a very festive holiday air.

el dia de los muertos

November 2 having just passed (a holiday I feel is sorely lacking in our traditional US culture - we have need of remembrance; the need to acknowledge those who gave birth to us - and I mean that literally and figuratively. Our society is so individualistic, I think sometimes people start to believe that they are self-made! What a grand delusion!)
... Anyway, so I was thinking on the way home tonight about how grateful I am for all the people in my life, and it reminded me of something I wrote in high school about my mother's mother, Popi. I have the urge to put it in here, so I think I will:

Popi. Immediately I see her; the wrinkled, brown, smiling face. Her hair is short and curly, peppered grey-white. Her eyes are watery blue, yet unfaltering, and lined in wrinkles. When she smiles, I can see her long, crooked chipmunk teeth. But more often she is laughing; a warm, cackling sound, and she throws her head back as if to catch the joy between her lips. Her feet are planted firmly in Dr. Scholl's clogs, and thin, brown-speckled legs appear from under the brightly patterned Indian skirts of wrinkled cotton. These are fastened haphazardly with a safety-pin around her ample waist. Her cotton blouses of orange, yellow, pink, brown, are chosen for comfort, and hang out over her skirt, perhaps tamed by a woven belt or spare piece of brightly colored cloth. As she talks, gesturing, her rings and bracelets dance and sing, following the rise and fall of her voice.
Popi is my grandmother, but she doesn't seem like a "grandmother." She is my friend. She is ready to try anything - she likes the music I listen to, which my parents condemn as non-classical. I love to create, and she is always there to spur me on, suggesting new ways, different ideas, which I can either embroider or cut, making them uniquely mine. She is childlike, wondering as much as I do, dreaming, exploring. Perhaps it is through this that I find a link which does not exist with other adults. With Popi, adventures are always waiting to touch us with gentle green fingers.
Her car is a dark blue Volkswagon Bug. The inside is dirty cream-colored plastic which smells wonderfully familiar in the broiling sun. The glove compartment is always filled with hot, leathery dried prunes or apricots, which stick to the maps and other papers. In the morning, when Popi takes the car to the end of the driveway (which in reality is not all that long) for her morning paper, she calls to me, and lets me ride standing on the running board all the way, feeling the blue morning air on my cheeks. Sometimes she takes me to the Market Basket for groceries. As we drive along the Pacific Coast Highway, breathing the warm, salty sea-air, her skirt is impatiently pulled up to her thighs as we talk about our plans for the day. She always drives like this, unaware and uncaring that the state of her stretched and faded underwear is evident to passing drivers. If I ask, she will buy me gum, or an ice-cream cone at Swensen's, and we go to the park so I can practice on the monkey bars. We stay until my hands are red and blistered, and the sun has begun to drop behind the purple hills.
At night, stretched out in the big bed, I feel the gritty sand on my legs from yesterday at the beach, but I am warm and comfortable, surrounded by my friends, the cats. At first I am impatient, for Popi can never remember where she has put her glasses, or which pair is the one she wants. Finally, though, she reads to me; perhaps Harriet the Spy, or a favorite mystery. But soon her voice slows, the words stop, and I realize she is asleep, her glasses slipping to the end of her nose. I wake her, saying, "Popi, you're falling asleep!" "I'm doing no such thing", she replies gruffly, as if the very suggestion is offensive. Yet after a few more words, she snores. And soon we are both asleep in a land of cats, sand and crickets.

flexibilityness and maggots

So, having just told Jamie about how important I feel it is to stay flexible [and I mean that both physically and spiritually], I will go about clumsily defending my statement. But since it's almost midnight, this will be stream-of-consciousness style, and not terribly well thought-out.

The first thing I'll say is that in my mind, inflexibility goes hand-in-hand with the worst stuffy aspects of adulthood, and with getting old.
And I'll contradict myself later, but for now, I'm going to talk about the negative aspects of being stuck in your ways.
I can't tell you the number of times in my life that I've said to a friend, "Come watch this foreign film... come walking with me in the rain... let's go swimming tonight... try this weird looking pie, it's really good... trust me, I know a much prettier road... how 'bout some camping this weekend!... I LOVE this CD; let me play it for you.... there's an easier way to do that...." And they say, "No, I don't like having to read subtitles... oh, it's too cold... I have to get up early tomorrow... thanks, but I think I'll stick with the peach cobbler... I'd rather go the familiar way, so we don't get lost... I hate sleeping on the ground... no, I'd rather have something else - your music is weird!... well, but I've always done it this way...."

And I tolerantly accomodate their wishes. But deep down, I have to admit that it sorta pisses me off. Because when _they_ say, "I LOVE this CD; let me play it for you!" I say "SURE!" Even if I'm not quite sure. But then I talk myself into it; I think - awesome! First of all, I'll benefit by getting to experience something new, and maybe I'll like it! And secondly, listening to something this person has specifically chosen will give me more insight into what sorts of things they identify with, or are emotionally affected by, which gives me more insight into them. AND insight into the thing itself, and why it's appealing to people. Which is great!

And so it bugs me that, when they say no to _my_ suggestions, not only do I not get to hear the CD I want to listen to, but they're closing themselves off to a new experience. Without a second thought. They're choosing to limit their horizons.

And I don't mean to say that one CD will change a person's life, but when I think back over my own life, it's the times I've had other lifestyles and other viewpoints and unfamiliar ways of doing things thrust under my nose that I've felt my own life expanding; felt my understanding of human nature, and therefore of myself and the people I love, broadening. Whereas the times I've stuck to the known, my world stays small. More comfortable, maybe, but small.

And pretty soon, if you keep only sticking to the familiar, your little box will get tinier and tinier, and then even the common eggroll could start looking suspicious and menacing. What a tragedy!

(Of course, I admit that I make certain exceptions to my try-anything-new rule. Exceptions being: taking drugs, breaking the law, making torches out of cans of hairspray, violence, watching Saw III, animal cruelty, and eating anything that involves maggots or tripe.) (Of course, having already eaten both maggots and tripe, I can hardly say that I'm denying myself a new experience by avoiding them. So I'm safe. At least on that count. Although the maggots I ate were deep-fried. But I don't care what you say - there is NO WAY IN HELL I'm ever going to eat live maggots. At least, on purpose.) (Hmm... maggots always remind me of that scene in The Lost Boys....) Yeah, ok. Ok! I'm done with the maggots!

The flipside to this, of course, is that I've found that the people I'm most drawn to in life are the least flexible ones. The ones who state, stubbornly and unerringly, that they are who they are and that's who they are and ain't nobody gonna change them noway nohow.
And I find that the people who willingly go along with whatever I want to do make me nervous; I suspect them of humoring me. I suspect them of suffering on my behalf. It's disquieting. I'm not used to it. (Which probably means I should spend more time with those people, so I DO get used to it.)

But, yeah, so there's that.

And then there's also the thing where I begin to suspect that too much flexibility leads to a kind of lack of identity. Like, if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing. Kinda thing. If you know what I mean.
I always think of that Philip Pullman series - the one that they're now making an [inevitably inadequate] movie from - where everyone has a 'daemon'; a sort of animal-familiar that's connected to them, soul-wise. And the kids' daemons can change shape, change animal, but as they get older the daemons stop changing all the time, and stick to being one particular animal.
Or like in the Madeline L'Engle book where the farandolae have to stop dancing madly around, and let themselves Deepen.
You know, like that.
Maybe if you stay too flexible, you don't allow yourself to Deepen. To grow up. To become Someone.
Or maybe that's not true. Maybe staying flexible keeps you alive. Brittle things break.

I don't know for sure. That's the thing about this - the more you do it, the more you see truth in everything, even conflicting opinions, so absolute truths become elusive; judgment seems passé.

So for now, flexibility seems like the way to go. Doing things I don't necessarily feel like doing, and finding the positive in them, seems like the way to go. And I'm trying my damndest to keep it up. It's hard sometimes, a lot of times, but it's worth it. So far.

some words about something, and a few more about anything

Well, I don't know what to write about, but I've got to write about something.
Firstly, because it's been too frickin' long since I've written anything.
Secondly, because my cousin Jamie just reminded me (by writing on his blog) that it's been too frickin' long since I've written anything.

Which, now that I look again, really amounts to the same thing.

The beautiful thing about being on vacation is not necessarily about what you do on said vacation, or who you're with, or where you go, or how long you're away. The beautiful thing is you're spending time in a place where all your 'to do' lists are completely irrelevant. A place where you're forced to be inefficient and meandering; forced to experience the present instead of getting lost in plans for the future. And especially, most importantly, a good vacation will take you out of yourself, stretch you out, dust you off, turn you over, give you a good, pounding, deep-tissue massage, and then allow you space and time to snap back to your natural shape.
Which feels so good and right that you don't even notice it. Until you try to fit back into the shape you were before you left.
And therein lies the lesson!

quote of the week #6

(Wordsworth)

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude

song lyrics

D'ya ever have the thing where you go years misunderstanding or misinterpreting lyrics to a song, and then the real meaning finally hits you? It's a weird experience, and I just had it with the Beatles' song 'She Said She Said'.

The song is on Revolver, and I've always (since I started listening to it when I was 9) thought it was a quirky, dark little song. Particularly because it (according to the lyrics as I understood them) apparently dealt with the dissolution of a relationship between a guy, and a woman who at some point had had a sex change operation, which she was now regretting, since things had been better when she was a boy. And that as a result of this regret, she was now in the midst of a suicidal depression, and the guy, instead of being comforting and supportive, was ditching her because he was too immature and superficial to be able to deal with the depth of her emotions.
(That's some heavy s**t for a 9-year-old!)

And most of my erroneous conclusions were based on punctuation. Or, the lack thereof.

The actual line goes like this:
She said, "You don't understand what I said." I said "No, no, no, you're wrong." When I was a boy everything was right. Everything was right.

But the way I had always heard it was this:
She said, "You don't understand what I said; I said, 'No, no, no, you're wrong. When I was a boy, everything was right. Everything was right.'"

Phew!

quote of the week #5

(Indigo Girls)

...maybe that's all that we need
is to be in the middle of impossibility
standing at opposite poles
equal partners in a mystery

quote of the week #4

(Zorba The Greek)

You think too much, that is your trouble.
Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.

people

People are awkward things to be around.
Often uncomfortably so.
They're vulnerable, but they do a good job of masking it.
They have scripts, and walls, and maneuvers, and it's all very convincing.
But I find it discomforting. It keeps me out. It denies me a space.
It makes things unequal.

And it makes them seem intimidating; more than they are. Better than they are.
Better than me, for example.

It's hard not to believe the performance.
And for the most part, I do.
That's my mistake.
Despite all their efforts to put on a great show,
people want you to see through it.
They're waiting to be noticed.
Admired.
Loved.
Not for who they try to be,
but for who they are.

overload

I was away last weekend, and I will not be spending another weekend at home until November 10th.

On that note, I have to point out that stale peanuts taste really gross.

And it's particularly depressing if the stale peanuts are inside a piece of Dove Promise (R) chocolate, which has a wrapper that optimistically urges you to "Find Your Passion."

Although I guess maybe they're helpfully pointing out that your 'passion' must without-a-doubt be elsewhere, since it's unlikely that anyone's passion will involve stale peanuts.

But I could be wrong.

generational information(al)

Working with college students is fascinating; their culture is so different from mine. They say things to me like "Don't you agree that it's absolutely impossible to be successful in college if you don't own a computer?"

There's one thing I've noticed consistently, and I think it's an odd gap in knowledge: Many (too many) of these current college students don't know the numbers of the months. As they're looking at the blank 'next check date' space on a payroll deduction form, I say helpfully, "You'll get your next payroll check on October 5th." And they look at me, confused. There’s a long pause, and I can see the gears turning in their brains. Then they say, "So... is that, like, 8... 5... 07?" It's intriguing. It's intriguing to find it so prevalent. And kinda disturbing.

boodleism boodleize boodler boodlers

(the above is my latest favorite spam-email subject line.)

I'm going to tell a very long story that will have a very tiny point at the very end:

In 1997, I was up on King's Mountain at my friend Julie's house looking through quilt material and discussing cactus-growing, and at one point she said, "Oh, and I have this old record player if you want to take it; I have a newer one."

So I took it. It was cool; all cream & teal, with 4 speeds (16, 33, 45, 78) and an automatic arm, AND an amp, with balance controls, and an auxiliary input, and the choice between mono and stereo sound, and rca speaker outputs.... But it had a specialized electric plug on the back and was missing the cord. So I didn't ever get around to hooking it up to my stereo.

And then I moved to the east coast, and I brought the record player with me. I put clear packing tape across the top to hold the plastic boxy cover on it. It traveled well, but went into storage immediately because I was staying at my dad's temporarily and didn't have my stereo set up.

A few weeks ago, cleaning out my storage unit, I found it again and brought it into the apartment. I took the packing tape off, feeling like I was in a time-warp, like it was just yesterday that I'd taped it up.

It sat in the kitchen for awhile.

Then last week, I purchased some wire and a plug. I put them on top of the record player, and let everything sit in the kitchen for awhile longer.

Then last night, I took the bottom off the record player and jerry-rigged a new cord connection. Plugged it in. After 10 years of lugging this thing around with me, I finally fixed the cord problem, and plugged the thing in!

And the motor that runs the turntable is dead. Dead as a doornail. The amp functions and the little light comes on, but the thing doesn't turn.

But I really really wanted to hear some records, so I hooked it into my stereo system anyway, and sat on the floor of the living room for a long time, listening to records. I listened to about 5 full-length LPs, sitting on the floor, twirling the turntable around with my finger. It was a fun challenge to see how 'automated' I could make my arm, to keep the thing moving at a constant speed.

And this morning I noticed that I have a small blister on the end of my middle finger.

But my point is this: It's a lot easier to get a 78 rpm record to sound right than a 33 1/3 when you're playing it by hand.

more on college students

When I was young, my friends and I were taught that if you're walking along a sidewalk together and you approach someone coming the opposite direction, you should walk single-file, to allow the oncoming person to stay on the pavement as they pass you, and not be forced off into the dirt.

Seemed like common sense to me. But apparently this custom has gone the way of the rotary-dial telephone.

So for years I've been forced to move my solo self off the sidewalk to make room for the hoards of approaching students. And I've gotten pretty darn sick of it. So I decided to stop making room for them. Instead, I just barrel right into the hoard; straight into them like they're not there. It's really fun! And it makes me feel better.

I'll just start a list:

polka-dotted marzipan
crispy earring
greedily tomato

posts a bit thin on the ground...

"...thin in the air... just generally pretty trim." (to quote Eddie Izzard)

I haven't been posting much lately, and that's for one reason and one reason only: posting takes time. And I haven't got any.

That said, I will write a short post about an unimportant topic:

I just received my first Chinese fortune cookie fortune that is neither uplifting, nor promising, nor is it funny if you recite it and then say "in bed." It reads:

THE PEACEMAKER USUALLY TURNS OUT TO BE THE VICTIM.

I'll have to polish it, though, because it's so terribly green.

Janice got this one. The best yet, imho!

inexorably graduated cylinder

a beautiful mix of the poetic and scientific

redletterday

My hair is long enough now that for the first time ever I can wind it into a bun and ram a chopstick into it, and it'll stay up!

I've been longing to wear chopsticks on my head for years.
And now I can!

Ah, the little things that make us happy....

(On the downside, my initial experiment was completed with a pair of chopsticks I have here at work, and now that I look more closely, I think there are still little bits of rice and leftover sushi stuck to them. But it's all dried up. It's ok.)

:-)

netflix could save the world!

I really like this quote from Mr. Popescu in The Third Man - Carol Reed's movie from 1949 set in post-war Vienna:

"...but you have to break the rules sometimes. Humanity is a duty."

Having also just watched Pan's Labyrinth (which takes place just after the Spanish civil war), I've been thinking about war in general, and the amount of cruelty and torture that are allowed free rein when people silence the voice of their own morality and blindly follow orders, or succumb to their fear of an abusive authority. When human beings choose to deny their humanity, only tragedy and evil can result.

And apathy can be just as destructive.

As we approach this crossroads in human and planetary history, it's good to be reminded of that.

They just, frustratingly, don't.

Gosh these are so much fun! I should write stories based on them.

religiously molasses

Another one.

self-loathing dust bunnies

Sometimes the subject lines on spam emails are endearingly inspired. When I get a good one (like the one above), I will post it.

lotsa babies

Speaking of fashion, one thing I really don't understand is this recent obsession with empire waists. Every woman who wears one of those shirts looks like she's expecting. Soon. Even the flat-bellied 15-year-olds look pregnant! How did this style become so popular?! Creepy.

And there's something a bit Harry Potterish about all this

Ok - here's today's riddle: How is Gatorade like Puff's Plus?

Nah, there's nothing cool and clever about the answer, sorry. It's just that I've found that these are two things that are really really annoyingly gross unless you really really need them.

Gatorade tastes totally disgusting, unless you're completely dehydrated; then it's delicious!
Puff's Plus leaves oily crap all over your hands and face and gives you zits on your nose, unless you have a really bad cold; then you'd swear it was the greatest invention ever!

That's all. Have a nice day.

is it just me, er....?!

I saw this huge internally-lit poster at the Las Vegas airport. It's a photo of an indigenous woman, with these words written underneath.

It's masquerading as an I-am-woman-hear-me-roar sort of thing, but I found it offensive. It gives the impression that women are just hanging out, you know, lying around in the woods or something, a mass of potential energy, undiscovered, unused. (And by whom?!) -As if every woman I know doesn't already do more than her share of the work of Life.

It also equates us with, well, those inanimate things traditionally expoited by humans. I suppose you could say that being compared to wind and trees and rivers isn't all that bad, but what is it that humans generally do with our natural resources? We use them up and abuse them. What? The Amazon's all gone? No more petroleum? Well, hell, we've got a bunch of women here, let's see what they can do for us.

Grrr.

heavenly

For all my life, I've been increasingly amazed at the way the world and the universe are designed. I haven't bothered too much with the ultimately irresolvable questions about whether there's a Purpose or a Creator or any of that; just the fact of things' existence has seemed enough of an answer.

But today I discovered one very serious design flaw. What the hell is up with eyelashes?! After having had one irritatingly stuck in my right eye for the last 24 hours, having searched and searched and flushed with water and searched again to no avail, this morning I finally determined I was going to find the damn thing once and for all. I fished around with my finger as best I could, making my eye tear and bringing out all the unsightly red capillaries… it took me about 15 minutes but I FINALLY got it out!

At which point I thought - who the hell decided it was a good idea to position impermanent, sharp-ended tiny hairs right above our eyes?! Some crazy bastard. A genius with a peculiar vendetta. I dunno. Maybe it happened that time Satan volunteered to take over for half an hour so God could get a quick bite to eat… I'll bet he grabbed the chance to make a couple of, ummm, you know, changes to the blueprint. That would explain a lot.

something to think about (or not)

In my building at work, there is a Women's Lounge with three toilet stalls.
The first two are miniscule; it's hard to turn around; your elbows hit the walls. The air in them is somewhat stagnant, and the lighting is bad.
The last one is bright and spacious, right near the window, and it has a little shelf to put your purse on.

I always use the last stall.
Everyone else (as far as I can tell, after 3 years of close monitoring) chooses to use the first two stalls.

WHY?!

I've thought about this for a long time, and can think of only two possible answers to my query: One, I work with really bizarre people who prefer stinky claustrophobic bathroom experiences OR two, they know something I don't know about that last stall.

I'm not sure which possibility is worse.

old-school irony

I recently purchased a 1969 'Lady Remington' electric razor on ebay. My best friend had had one when we were growing up, and I liked its feminine design - light blue on white with little '60's-style stars... and those long-legged models in the owner manual... perfect!

I took it out of its elegant white-with-satin-interior box, unraveled the cord, and plugged it in.

Nothing. Dead.

I was so disappointed! I unplugged the cord, and sat staring resignedly at the razor.

But wait... was there a way to get inside it? There was!
And it was just a loose connection; easily soldered back in place.

Later, happily shaving my legs, I reflected that the manufacturers of that Lady Remington probably didn't imagine that their lady consumers would ever be pulling their product apart and playing around with wires and soldering irons to get it working again. ;-)

brilliant!

(I found this sign at the baylands - at the end of Embarcadero)

chocolate sheet cake with blue frosting

Most of the time, it tastes really disgusting.
But occasionally it really hits the spot.

I guess it's sorta like the weather in February.

the plastic proliferation of piety

Last year, my friend Janice and I discovered, in a grocery store gumball machine, the Homies Trailer Park figurines. Instantly enchanted by them (who could resist names like "Doo-Doo Dan" and "Kegger Ken" and "Catfish Clem"?!), we went on an insane quarter-spending frenzy, trying to get as many of the collection as we could. We spent all the quarters we had, then went through the checkout to change more bills and found that the cashier, too, had been infected with the Trailer Parker virus; we discussed with her which characters we'd gotten, which ones we wanted. We giggled and put more quarters into the machine. We were having a total blast!

We went back the next day with entire rolls of quarters to buy more! I kept getting 'Doo-Doo Dan'; we both did. We agreed to have a trading session the next day to even out our collections. Over lunch at the restaurant, we did the big trade. We spread our figurines all over the table, and haggled good-naturedly over which ones we were willing to give up. Her husband Mark looked on tolerantly, and tried to find enough elbow room to eat his sandwich.

It was SUCH a good time!!

Then last week, I got a letter in the mail from Janice. It contained a color printout of the Homies newest series: the Santos! I stared in rapture at the photo of the Santos; it was too good to be true! El Santo Nino de Atocha! La Virgen de Guadalupe! San Francisco! Maria Inmaculada!

When I got to New Jersey this weekend, we hightailed it to the market where she had found the Santos.

I put 50 cents in the machine, turned the knob, and pulled out the plastic globe containing my saint. Breathlessly, I opened it, and Janice craned her head over my shoulder to see which one I'd gotten.
San Juan Diego!

Then Janice put in 50 cents... San Antonio!
I put in 50 cents... San Juan Diego.
Janice got San Francisco!
I got... San Juan Diego.
Janice plopped in two more quarters. Papa Juan Pablo!
I got San Juan Diego.
Janice got San Antonio again.
The next time I turned the handle... nothing! Wah!
Janice, being the good friend that she is, generously gave me her duplicate San Antonio. I was very happy!
Then Janice got El Santo Nino!
And I got San Juan Diego.

By this time, I was beginning to feel that God was playing a mighty trick on me. We went into the store to shop.

Coming out, we did another round at the saint machine. This time Janice started. She got... someone, I forget who.

Then I got El Santo Nino!
She got the Virgen of Guadalupe.
I got El Santo Nino.
She got the angel.
I got... San Juan Diego.
She got another pope.
I got nothing! Again!
I tried again... El Santo Nino.
She got Jesus.
My turn... San Juan Diego.

7 Diegos and 3 Ninos! I was starting to feel like I was attending a football game at a local high school: Diegos ahead in the third quarter! Would the Ninos have a chance to pull ahead?

No, they wouldn't. We left.

But boy it was so much fun!!! And if anyone wants a San Juan Diego, let me know. I have plenty.

are you kidding me?!

I just received this personalized letter in a large, fluorescent orange envelope:

--WILL YOU DO US A FAVOR AND TEST TOOLS?--

Dear Kate,
Would you mind very much if I sent you a free circular saw to use? How about a free cordless drill? All I'm going to ask in return is for you to fill out a brief questionnaire on how well the handyman product I sent you performed.
Please don't delay. Return the enclosed RSVP today.
Larry Okrend
Executive Director
Handyman Club of America
______

Dear Larry Okrend,
I am flattered by your confidence in my handyman abilities; as you say, it's true that I am known among my family and friends as an 'outstanding handyman'!
I do have one concern, however. In the event that your circular saw does not perform as intended, and hacks off my right arm, I will be unable to fill out your questionnaire, and you will not receive your desired feedback. In that situation, is there a telephone number at which I can reach you to file my report?
I wish you luck in your endeavors, and look forward to receiving my free tools.
Sincerely,
Kate

some further thoughts on the negative

So, why are we all addicted to discontentment?
Well, I'll tell you.

For one, it's ground into us by our society. In fact, there's a bill before the Senate right now, proposing that our national anthem be changed to the inspirational song, "Never Be Satisfied With Anything", which adheres more closely to our country's current value system.

But I think it's also just because a crappy time makes for a better story.

Who the heck wants to hear about your idyllic Hawaii vacation? Not me.
Now, if your suitcases were lost a couple of times en route, and the shark bite on your leg got infected, I might be interested.

d'ya want yer eggs sunny-side-up, or over-hard?

More and more often, I've been experiencing moments of real contentment. Gosh, it's a great feeling! And somehow, it doesn't seem to take much, just a twist-of-the-brain, a slowing-down, an appreciation of details.

This morning, for example, has been filled with beautiful things:
-lounging in bed
-a luxurious hot shower
-a long walk in the early morning sunlight
-tasty iced coffee
-vases of gloriously-scented peonies filling my office (my co-workers bring them in every spring, from their own gardens)
-a leisurely stroll with co-workers, down to the staff coffee hour
-a poppyseed bagel with butter and cream cheese
-the anticipation of eating the last of my yummy birthday sushi for lunch
-looking forward to having lunch tomorrow with a friend
-the smell of fresh-cut grass
-the fun memory of playing with Trev and Emma last weekend
-a reminder of my upcoming trip to Oregon and California

Here's the morning seen alternatively:
-I had to get up early to take my car to the shop
-I was in a rush and didn't have long enough in the shower
-I didn't have a ride, so I had to walk over a mile back to my house
-I hadn't eaten, so I decided to stop for an iced coffee at McDonald's.
-They didn't have decaf, so I had to go to Dunkin' Donuts instead.
-My boss needed to switch lunches with me, so the lunch I had planned for today, I had to reschedule for tomorrow.
-The peonies in my office are already past their peak. And I only have tons of them myself because the scent of them is giving everyone else a headache, so they keep giving them to me.
-The coffee hour was weird, and only one person talked to me.
-I mistook the butter for cream cheese in the crappy lighting, and had to scrape it off my bagel, leaving a huge gob on the side of my plate.
-I'm in debt from having to buy the plane ticket for my upcoming trip.

-Both versions are equally true and valid, and most often, I think it's easier for me - for most people- to get stuck in the latter version. Why are we so addicted to discontentment? If anything in life is pointless, it's to spend energy on not enjoying it.

penispam & pellets

I'm sorry! ... but I get such a kick out of these! ;-)
Here's the latest:

Subj: Your weenie will thank you
-If you can't persuade ur girl that she deserves only your tiny size, so, never mind, just try out our wonderful pellet and you'll show your girlfriend a REAL SIZE!

thought of the day

Tailgating is dangerous, particularly if you're behind a tanker truck full of liquid nitrogen.

have you ever stroked your diaper genie?

If I were granted 3 wishes, I would use them thusly:
1) world peace
2) 10 million dollars
3) that actors portraying drivers would stop taking their eyes off the road in front of them and staring at their passengers for prolonged periods of time. --It's just too nerve-wracking! In fact, I find it much more suspenseful than scenes of defenseless women being creeped-up-upon by shadowy figures with gleaming knives.

Although, on second thought, I'd use wish #2 to wish for 100 wishes. (This is actually a decision I reached very early in life, after hearing countless stories of people who were granted only 3 wishes and who completely botched them up in really annoying ways, despite plenty of clear&obvious warning signs. I mean, geez!)

motherhood

I've noticed that mothers have a peculiar ability to talk, you know, just sort of on and on, randomly about stuff, and to about six different people about different stuff, at the same time, even while performing a task, like, shopping at the grocery store.

I could never figure out if it was that motherhood had somehow turned them chatty, or if only chatty people become mothers. Either way, I think I'm doomed; I just can't talk like that; it makes the muscles in my face tired. How do they do it?!

"So I was saying to her, wouldn't you prefer to... Hey, watch your fingers, honey, that's sharp... have a larger party, and we could, ...excuse me, does this come in a larger size? ...you know, bring some salads, or something, if they had the... Honey, you have GOT to stop pulling on that... if they provided the hamburgers and hotdogs... oh, thanks, they're in aisle 8? ...Hello? Yes, hon, we're just getting the last thing and we'll be home in... excuse me, the guy at the meat counter told me there were more of these in aisle 8? Thanks... home in just a few minutes, so if you could start the grill... SARAH FOR THE LAST TIME WOULD YOU PUT THAT DOWN... ok, love you hon, bye... but then... no, Sarah, we're NOT buying that today... she forgot to get the meat, and so all we had to eat was salad!"

the joys of friendship with Joel ;-)

Me: "Joel, I have something to tell you, but I can't remember right now; call me at work later!"
------
Joel: "Hey, so what did you want?"
Me: "Sorry, I have absolutely no idea."
Joel: "Still?!?! ...You know, I think it's entirely possible that when you one day do get Alzheimer's, no one will notice."

I'll take two! -more penis frenzy

"With Penis Enlarge Patch even a sleeve from your shirt will be too short to cover your penis."

WOW! Think of the possibilities! Great for outdoorsmen; doubles as a belt, AND, when stiff, makes a handy brace for breaks and sprains!

midnight madness

I saw the funniest thing while I was out walking tonight-

I was rounding a corner, and came across a group of about fifteen macho-looking guys on motorcycles, stuck en masse at an empty intersection. They had obviously been waiting for a green light for some time, and as I approached, I could see it was slowly dawning on them that in blithely sailing past the “Stop Here For Red Light” sign, they had also overshot the trip sensor for the traffic light by about 20 feet.

So now they were, all of them, performing a sort of chaotic dance in the darkness, craning their white-helmeted heads over and looking back and forth at the ground in confusion, trying to see where the lines lay buried in the black pavement. And then one by one, hesitantly, and somewhat clumsily (it had just stopped raining), they pushed their bikes backwards until they were over the grid, attempting to reach the critical mass of motorcycle metal necessary to trip the sensor, looking up hopefully from time to time at the still-red light.

I couldn’t help laughing; they were so darned cute!

such an odd thing to find oneself written down by someone else

(this is, paradoxically, the most personal thing I have posted, to date)

"Once, many years ago, there was a child of nine who loved Walter Milligan. One Saturday morning she was walking in the neighborhood of her school. She walked and thought, 'The plain fact is – as I have heard so many times—that in several years’ time I will not love Walter Milligan. I will very probably marry someone else. I will be untrue; I will forget Walter Milligan.'

Deeply, unforgettably, she thought that if what they said about Walter Milligan was true, then the rest went with it: that she would one day like her sister, and that she would be glad she had taken piano lessons. She was standing at the curb, waiting for the light to change. It was all she could do to remember not to get run over, so she would live to betray herself. For a series of connected notions presented themselves: if all these passions of mine be overturned, then what will become of me? Then what am I now?

She seemed real enough to herself, willful and conscious, but she had to consider the possibility – the likelihood, even – that she was a short-lived phenomenon, a fierce, vanishing thing like a hard shower, or a transitional form like a tadpole or winter bud – not the thing in itself, but a running start on the thing – and that she was being borne helplessly and against all her wishes to suicide; to the certain loss of self and all she held dear. Herself and all that she held dear – this particular combination of love for Walter Milligan, hatred of sister and piano lessons, etc. – would vanish, destroyed against her wishes by her own hand.

When she changed, where will that other person have gone? Could anyone keep her alive, this person here on the street, and her passions? Will the unthinkable adult that she would become remember her? Will she think she is stupid? Will she laugh at her?

She was a willful one, and she made a vow. The light changed; she crossed the street and set off up the sloping sidewalk by the school. I must be loyal, for no one else is. If this is the system, than I will buck it. I will until I die ride my bike and walk along these very streets, where I belong. I will until I die love Walter Milligan and hate my sister and read and walk in the woods. And I will never, not I, sit and drink and smoke and do nothing but talk.

Foremost in her vow was this: that she would remember the vow itself. She woke to her surroundings; it was cold. Even walking so fiercely uphill, she was cold, and illuminated by a powerful energy. To her left was the stone elementary school, deserted on Saturday. Across the street was s dark row of houses, stone and brick, with their pillared porches. The porch floors were painted red or gray or green. This was not her own neighborhood, but it was her turf. She pushed uphill to the next corner. She committed to memory the look of that block, that neighborhood: the familiar cracked sidewalk, how pale it was, how sand collected in its cracks; the sycamores; the muffled sky."

-from Teaching a Stone to Talk - Annie Dillard

grrr

There is nothing better for putting me in a really bad mood [read: dark and stewing and evil and depressive] than the following: a nap, watching tv during the day, or going to a matinee. It's a physical/chemical reaction of forcing my body to remain inert, when it should be running around and getting stuff accomplished.

Earlier today, I allowed myself to be talked into going to a matinee. I knew what the effect would be, but as I explained this to my friend, I began to feel that I was being silly and inflexible. So I went to the matinee.

Please remind me never to do that again.

Here's how it should go: If I say "I'm going to a matinee", you will say "No, you aren't."