Drip drip drip

Caught on the Barbed Wire of Sensation

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Magic



Sometimes only a poem will do. Just some leaves from a tree, or some shavings of bark, but certainly not the branches, the trunk and all the many twigs in their entirety- together all of these things paint too clear a picture.

Here is the procedure: you sit in an empty room.
You wait, with the clicking of the clock, and its little echo.
The inconsequential presses your shoulders down, forward,
your neck bending too,
until your eyes are staring in your lap
and you feel it, the small cool thread, lifting that perilous thing
out from the crown of your head, pulling it out, like a magician's scarf,
upward toward the heavens.

A sudden halt and your head snaps up.
It is sudden waking from a dream, and the prickly voice,
the one that asks you to stand tall,
the one that asks that you use your voice
and ask for admiring eyes
is gone
all gone.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Bird's Eye View of Life



Last night I came home and discovered that one of my dogs had escaped. For the third time in three weeks. She pushed open a window and busted out the screen and then went off gallivanting sometime not too long before I made it home. A sickening pitch of panic set in as soon as I realized she was gone again. I came down from my adrenaline wave when I received a phone call from a woman several blocks down the hill who had my dog.

The night before last as I walked home from the bus I saw a deer get hit by a car. Its hind quarters were struck by a Jeep Cherokee and it lay quivering in shock and pain on the side of the road as I stood there horrified, flummoxed. Finally I got my wits about me and tracked down animal control who came and got the deer, most likely for prompt euthanasia, which sure beats out a slow and painful death on the side of the road.

I am almost afraid to go home this evening for fear of seeing what travesties await me. Will there be a burst pipe under the house as there was a few months back, with water pooling around our boxes stored in the basement? Sewage on the front step from a burst pipe? A rejection notice in the mail that dashes all my hopes for a year and sentences me to another summer of studying to take a standardized test? Would a pleasant surprise be too much to ask? I guess there's always the mild thrill of getting a Netflix in the mail, that is, when they're not throttling me, i.e. purposely slowing down the rate at which they deliver movies to my mailbox, a practice that they now disclaim per the terms of a law suit over the matter.

So silver lining, I seek thee out. Art thou the friendly swarming of my dogs around my legs when I arrive home (if they haven't already escaped)? The comfort of my couch and the relief of removing heeled shoes? A glass of wine and a seat on the deck with a view of the city? I cradle now, these fragile little pieces of enjoyment. I suppose I could imagine myself like a bird, or some other indifferent, aerial animal, surveying the trivial wreckage and treasure of my day-to-day. That's what I need: a bird's eye view on life.

Monday, November 26, 2007

God Love the Holidays



Today is very workaday. It feels like the beginning of a dry period. It is the holidays, a time that always feels like a music video, with days like flashing images, one after the other, like Moulin Rouge- bright colors, frenzy, singing (but less romance and fewer beautiful people). It is the Monday after Thanksgiving and people have a sort of bloated silence to them. I haven't personally spoken to one coworker today. Everyone seems to be cloistered in their offices, numbly tapping out emails as they sit hunched in front of the computer.

Soon, the constant stampede of Christmas parties, and harried holiday preparations will begin. And it all makes me wonder: what the fuck happened to slow Christmas? You know, the Christmas where you ponder the snow, where you lazily bake sugar cookies and sip apple cider in front of a fire. It seems only to exist in the perfectly lit world of holiday movies and commercials, the supreme distillation of a collective holiday fantasy. Or it exists for children, because children get Christmas break (without preparation for finals) and have little responsibility in the way of gift buying, Christmas tree procuring and holiday party and food preparations. And to add to this conundrum is the implied guilt one must feel for not enjoying all the hubbub. Never mind your twelve hour day and the filthy kitchen- YOU BETTER MAKE SOME GODDAMNED COOKIES!

Yeah, I know. Scrooge is tired shtick, a pose aped by many. But I can't help but clinch my fists in anticipation of being put through the Christmas Grinder once again this year. Despite resolutions to forego the anxieties, to shun the trivialities and focus on the higher virtues of the holidays, like family and merriment, peace and graciousness . . . hot buttered rum (I'm not religious, so I only give Jesus a passing thought), I inevitably succumb to last minute panic when I realize I have not, as usual, planned sufficient time for making all the homemade goodies and buying all the wrapping paper/bows/bags/tissue/cards/ribbon/dazzles/frillies/boxes/candies . . . somehow or other, I seem to remember to buy something for a little liquid holiday cheer. I'm not stupid, after all, and one good strong drink seems appropriate in dealing with the hyper-glut fest and poverty-inducing gift exchange that typifies a Christmas gathering for my family.

So now that I've unleashed all that dread into the blogosphere I can continue on in my less-than merry way and go through the motions with a stiff upper lip, after all, there's a Christmas tree to be put up tonight.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Existential Papaya



I am plagued by paper. I don't know why clerical tasks bring out the existentialist in me, but there you go, existential mocking popping into my brain like a jack in a box, except even more obnoxious (if such a thing were possible). I feel as if I'm being punished, which I acknowledge is juvenile at best, hopelessly self-pitying at worst. What a jumping off point! What joy-inspired words!

In order to perform the tasks at hand I surprise myself with the wish to drain myself, like a bottle, of all vestiges of humanity or primordial spark and to become. the machine. that I am. supposed to be. I imagine my speech changing to flawless monotone . . . like the rhythm of a roll call: paper here typing here killing here with a here noose here arsenic here soul mutilation here vivisection here

In some places the heart, the mind is only a disease, something sickly to be gauged out with a surgical tool and placed in a biohazard bin. And if only I didn't have it to begin with, I wouldn't miss it when it's gone. But I do and I did.

Okay, so maybe this is my blue period. The worst kind, so that if you glance at it, instead of the word "blue" you see the word "bored". It is not blue, but beigey grey. The color of milky vomit mixed with mercury. In contrast, I appreciate the verdant: the drippy dewy green of close up photos of grass blades, the rich, crumbly chocolate of garden beds and the provocative pink moistness of strawberry papaya flesh cupping little eggy black beaded seeds. You see? This is proof that I've lost it.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

One brain, two brain, three brain, four.


So, I'm not in an uplifted mood today. More like a Debbie Downer day. I hope that if anyone is looking for a little dose of negativity to temper their unwarranted happiness, that they will visit my obscure blog. Obscure almost makes it sound cool. Like something rare that someone is looking for . . . but no one is looking for my little inane ramblings. I know that.

So here's the reality: we are not as smart as we think we are. Most of us. Really. I mean, there are some really gifted people out there (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE . . . though why you would be reading this puzzles me), but so many of us can be described by the very loathsome word "average". I'm average. There, I said it. Average person. Average intelligence (sometimes). There are a lot of us folk out there, but despite that, I feel like I keep getting surrounded by the "above average" folks. They kind of make you want to kick trash cans or take a bong rip. So what? You've got more dendrites in your brain? That's what I feel like saying. Like everything, so much of intelligence is luck. And so much of "intelligence" also counts for nothing. You can be smart, but your life can still be a wreck, and well, would you call that smart? You see where I'm going with this? It's fucking tricky.

Now, I know what you balanced, spiritually and emotionally evolved world view people are thinking: what's intelligence? That's actually a good question. I don't know. And I certainly don't think it's an ability to perform well on standardized tests, though, all things being fair, really, really bright people usually don't have a problem with those tests. Unfortunately for me, law schools know this (though the jury's still out on whether or not these bright people will also be good attorneys).

I just want a way out of the paradigm sometimes- the "what is valuable and what is not valuable" paradigm, and the "what is talent/intelligence and what is not" paradigm. To hell with it all! That paradigm has taken up root in my brain, and I'd like to extricate it. I imagine a surgical procedure, and a neurosurgeon delicately pulling something dark and slimey out of my brain tissue . . . and then poof! It would be gone. I would awake from surgery, bald and full of bliss . . .

But for now I'm here. And there's work to be done.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

The problem with being über-important . . .


I don't want to be a bitter, nasty person. Really. I want to see the delusions of grandeur of others and slough it off and not take it personally even when I'm directly confronted with it. I want to laugh. That's what this entry is all about. Laughing it off.

I'm surrounded by the über-important robots. They march, march, march down the hall. They hold their heads very high and don't say hi. They are appropriately somber and boringly dressed. They are a black cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup. They are hard-boiled wannabes in their twenties, thirties . . . only a few in their forties like that. It seems a lot of people get a little older and wiser and stop taking themselves quite as seriously. It's a sign of character. Some, however, will be a caricature till the day they die. They need it. It's part of their composition, their identity.

I think to reject softness, kindness shows true weakness. It takes courage to be vulnerable and it takes confidence to not have the need to prove how important, how powerful you are.

And so, if it weren't so irritating, I would feel sorry for these people. Yes, ironically I feel sorry for these people who probably feel sorry for me, because they probably see me as weak because I don't work hard to appear strong or to hide my idiosyncrasies. I can be quirky, make odd comments and wear inappropriate clothing. It's easy and it comes naturally. Maybe these folks don't have quirks or odd desires. Perhaps they truly are the robots they seem to be . . . the thought petrifies me.

And now, instead of laughing, I feel like running for the hills!

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Conventions and drinking competitions



Okay, so we know that our brains have a kind of visual patterning auto-pilot system that tells us what we see. If you think about this logically, it would seem that our brains don't like anomalies: it doesn't want to recognize something different or take in a lot of new information unless the scale of newness is such that it can't be avoided.

My question: is there a way to loosen that system a little? Because I'm a little bored here. I'd like to notice something I haven't noticed before. Even something small.

So, I start looking, and I'm not turning up much. There is this apathy that I keep trying to shrug off like a heavy wool blanket that's tucked into the mattress, and I struggle against it its confines in spurts before finally collapsing, exhausted, no longer interested in trying.

We are habituated to our daily lives. That much is very simple to understand. The conventions, the constructs of daily life are like the breath our body measures . . . by and large going unnoticed unless a dramatic interruption is effected. To be stripped of all those conventions then is perhaps the way to conquer the apathy, to see the new small details, or the larger ones, like "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

So to find something extraordinary without dropping free fall from our comfort zone we seek out alternatives. Unfortunately altered conscious states have a hefty piper fee. And one can't help but feel a little skeptical of say, an all night session with a bottle of vodka- there may be revelations, but will they be remembered?

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

It's almost Halloween.



Sometimes I look for proof of human existence, because the evidence isn't always compelling. I see people walking down the street, filling elevators, riding the bus and wondering down the halls, but they don't necessarily exist. They could be ghosts, figments of my imagination. For some reason, when I see people interact with other people, I am a little more convinced that they may not be a ghost or an aural blip on the screen of my brain, because something tells me that ghosts don't talk so much to each other; they are not interested in the world they inhabit, but the one they don't inhabit.

I am utterly confused by the days in which I feel like a ghost. Perhaps there are days where we emit no energy, where we pass through most of the radar of human perception undetected. It is, perhaps, a facet of the little known art of not being seen. Some days I must have a knack for it. Other days are sore thumb days.

But back to the other ghosts, the other people. I almost feel like when I see these people I expect no shadow to cross over them. And I write this here because I think if I told people they would think I'm crazy . . . no need to add fuel to that fire.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Relief on a grey morning . . .



There is nothing elucidating about this morning. Though surely it must be my imagination, the Monday morning faces on the bus seem more creased, more severe somehow. Monday for so many of us involves the pain of realization: the necessity of resuming whatever it is we do with most of our waking lives.

So there is a search for little things that offer relief. I always forget that there's something comforting about the whirring quiet of my sterile office when the lights first flutter on. I sometimes dread coming to that office, but like so many things, once you're there, it's not so bad. Emails, papers, the soft clicking of keys and the blanketing brightness of fluorescent lights . . . but I particularly hate fluorescent lights. Ironically, they make me feel like I can't see as well. And they make me a little dizzy, or at least dazed. I would like to ban fluorescent lights from office buildings. That some people choose to have them in their home is incomprehensible to me.

But back to relief. Well . . . the biggest relief to Monday is its ending, really, because on Monday it feels like there is no moving forward- only a halting timidity, a stagnation. One is afraid to hope for relief, even.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Animals on drugs, standardized tests, doing what you don't want to do, liver abuse . . .



My dog ate some chocolate crackers while we were gone. She usually never gets into food or trash when home alone, but I guess she decided to make an exception for the hearty tub of cat-shaped chocolate crackers sitting on the kitchen table. Maybe it was the cat shape that drove her over the edge- cats and chocolate!! PAAARRRTY!! Supposedly, chocolate is like speed for dogs. I don't think there's a whole lot of credible research that goes into that theory, but admonitions abound as to the woes of chocolate munching canines. But my girl is fine. Besides, what she ate was nothing compared to the half of the catcher-mit sized solid chocolate bunny that my childhood dog snatched and licked away. He kind of acted nuts for a while, but he recovered and lived to be twenty years old. Maybe chocolate, like heroin for people (if you don't overdose) has an age-defying effect . . . it's probably only a matter of time before there are chocolate face creams.

In a similar vein of careless joie de vivre, I've decided that I am done with standardized tests entirely. I'll take licensing exams, I'll take regular tests that assess real knowledge and achievement, but I don't think my soul will survive another standardized test. Ever. Just wanted to put that out there . . .

And so that is one area where I am refusing to effect compromise (it's not the only one). It's scary how we learn to do what we don't want to do. We do things to make people happy. We do things expecting some kind of reward far off in the future, like what I tell myself when I want a sticky bun with my coffee . . . that I want to continue fitting in my clothes. But ultimately, I think that doing too much of what we don't want to do leads to some kind of excess in another area of life. Hence my current state of liver abuse which will have to be toned down now that I'm outta the woods of standardized testing hell.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Self Portrait



I'm giving myself carte blanche today. I love saying that. I get to write in the zeros. I could do something crazy or something mildly subversive, like take that weird, piss fumed tunnel in the transbay terminal rather than walking through the homeless gallery. The sad thing is, as I sit here thinking about what things I could do to steer myself out of the neat little work-eat-sleep groove I've carved for myself, I'm drawing blanks. It's like I'm trapped in a Skinner box. I have specific responses to specific stimuli. Sitting at my desk in the morning means that I will seek out a cup of coffee. Predictably. What if I reversed things? That would mean a cocktail in the morning and coffee at night. And this simple theoretical reversal would be part of the explanation I give just before I'm fired, which would effectively carve a new little branch (unemployment) off the afore mentioned groove. It's amazing how one little subversive act can lead to another . . .

You see, our brains want us to stay the course. It's a neat little safety lock system that our brain has so that it doesn't have to do a lot of work. For the brain, it's evolutionary genius. It's like the difference between going to a different job everyday and having to juggle learning new tasks with performing your job and just going to the same job everyday and confining your activities to a finite range of tasks. Something like that. What would you rather do? I'm boring, so I would prefer to have more auto-pilot time. Besides, it's frustrating never to have the chance to be good at something. To stretch the analogy to the breaking point, imagine, for example, that one day you're a police officer and you don't even know how to shoot a gun (which you probably wouldn't use that day anyway, but you know Murphy's law . . .) and the next day you're a cook and you don't know what "de-glaze" means. That would be frustrating, but at the same time, think of all the cool skills you would acquire. I just wish my brain wanted to acquire some new skills, but instead I have to revert to force and conscious effort and all that boring crap.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Rain Drops and Rose Petals



I remember I wrote a poem about rain when I was 12 years old. It was brief. It rhymed, and I was immensely proud of it. My seventh grade teach adored the poem. All I remember were the lines "rain, rain go away, come again another day . . ." and then something melodramatic like, "is this life or is this pain?" Pain, rain . . . what original rhyming! I felt like such a genius. I felt the path of my poetdom stretching endlessly before me. Keep in mind that this is also around the same time I discovered Chopin- the Raindrop prelude (which I later played in a recital) was featured on a best-of tape of "classical" piano music (Chopin is from the Romantic era, technically, but I digress). At the time my hormones were beginning to surge I discovered the beauty of melancholia, tapped out in rain drop after rain drop. From the age of seven I had been a fairly prolific diarist, but my personal accounts swelled to fill many journals. Later my grandfather gave me a typewriter, a tool I used well into my teens, despite the availability of computers- the clacking of the old typewrite held endless romantic appeal for me. Chopin, and his piercing emotional qualities, taught me the meaning of unrequited love. Listening to the waltz dedicated to the woman he was not allowed to marry due to his ill health, I felt a kindred spirit. I too suffered, I felt, from unfulfilled desires, but then again, I think most 12 or 13 year olds feel this way. But there is a beauty in such emotionality, despite its triteness, that I think holds value well into boring old crusty adulthood. As grown people we tend to grow out of our longing. We settle and we eak out our existence with fewer feelings or expectations. Feelings are the stuff of great art, when combined with skill and discipline. Call me an emotionist, but I live for the heady flush of excitement, whether it be cerebral or sensual. I attribute this to my addict self. My addict, or emotionist self gets misty eyed when listening to music, cries over the resolution of a romantic plot, and feels the loneliness, the despair of the tragic fates represented tirelessly in books, film, music . . .

So today it is raining. If anyone were to find this note, I would instruct them to try an inappropriate emotion on for size and write a bad poem about it and put it away in a drawer to be found and savored at some later date, preferably amid dried rose petals.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Cuppa



Why does coffee look so beautiful on screen? Because people aren't actually drinking it. There are no brown dribbles escaping under the lid and creating earthen watercolor streaks down the sides of the cup. There are no crusty lipstick-mixed-with-coffee lip prints on the cup, either. The lid remains white, like a meadow blanketed in freshly fallen snow.

You also can't smell the coffee breath through the screen. All the aroma, the pungence, the very humanity of consumption is wiped clean and cauterized. No smells, no smudges, no fumes.

And I love how coffee is never hot on screen, unless for a specific dramatic purpose, e.g. to burn someone. Other than that there are always scenes where a character is handed a fresh cup of coffee which they commence to slurp down as if it were juice from a bottle (sans dribbles, of course). Obviously they have asbestos tongues. Duh.

And somehow I find this alluring. Eating and drinking can be so poetic on screen. Bites, though fake, are artful. Sara Jessica Parker's character on Sex in the City can wolf down KFC when she's stoned and have neither greasy lips, nor red glassy eyes. Whole bottles of red wine are consumed in perfectly lit restaurants and the drinkers haven't the slightest tinge of "wine teeth". Bread crumbs politely stay out of laps. Chewing never hinders conversation, unless it is a ploy of the screenwriter to create an awkward moment.

I find the lack of reality, the contrivances, comforting. If I want reality all I have to do is lift my eyes and peer around the cafeteria or the restaurant I might be eating in. There one can feast the eyes on creamy droplets of salad dressing clinging to an oblivious chin, "see" food, or stubborn spinach lodged between teeth. It's animalia. And it's everywhere. I don't need to see it on screen, painfully close up . . . but I should disclose that I'm funny about mouths, up close, even if they're not eating.

Sometimes I wish for a movie moment when I buy coffee. There are no scalding drips bathing my hand. The coffee, even black like I like it, is at a perfectly drinkable temperature. And for some reason, my lipstick just won't stick to the lid. Not only that, but people, admirers and friends, will bring me such cups of coffee exactly when I need them, out of sheer camaraderie or adoration.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Up, up, up . . .



Acceptance is better done without grief.
Forget the heady premonitions
and the secret notebooks.
Put down the glass
and
close the windows
and
go to bed.

In sleep
there is fog behind the eyes,
strange allusions to the very things
best disremembered.

Open the hand
and watch wings explode:
up, up, up they go before
melting and falling like Icarus.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Better Ghosts



I should know better by now.

I shouldn’t care. I can, if I concentrate, pretend it’s just a breeze.

These are just the ghosts.
The ghosts that spring up out of broken streets.
The ghosts that have faces like mirrors.
The ghosts that don’t know complete worlds,
let alone complete sentences.

She is a ghost too.
I’ve seen her wondering:
a white twig amid the grey buildings
with strands of gold that spring from her canopy.

I watched as she wondered from a safe net of forest
into the beautiful, broader territory;
a sprinkling of star on the nighttime snow.

If angels are queens,
she is the divine error that keeps order.
All I can do is watch.

She has foot steps that travel straight.
Her judgment is just-
a brusque dusting of a kiss in benevolent passing.

To know is to be better for it.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Preservation



Faces fade while other details stay intact,
like an ancient ship perfectly preserved
deep within the sea,
there is the shape of a hand,
the scent of a neck
the gauge of the light catching on the edges
of eyelashes.

All romantics are born into the same misery,
the same unquellable tide bearing
unwanted pieces
of conversations
lips and mouths
and a heady erotica superimposed on the pedestrian.

Searching out the merciful oblivion
of wide open gazes forgotten
and visions and revisions never started
is like praying
to a desolated alter
and calling it king.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Poetry is Inappropriate



Inappropriate.

Poetry is inappropriate. It prescribes meaning without owning up to it. It spreads words, like tentacles, out among unacknowledged 'reality' (without going into a discussion of Kant, Baudrillard, etc. . . insert your own version of 'reality' here).

Poetry is an embarrassment, unless it is lofty or removed.

Poetry is . . . well parallel structure is embarrassing, and a cheap tool in the poetry writing arsenal.

I don't like the word. I don't like the connotations. Damned semantics always getting me down.

I place words next to each other, plain words, orbiting around the sphere of the unspoken.

I'd like to think there is more to us than what we say. I'd like to think that what others say is also what we say to ourselves. I'd like to think that semantics isn't as thorny as it is. I'd like to think I could quit using parallel structure here.

Resurrection



In the earth
there is a slithering pressure
where mud fills the empty spaces
and warmth is close, filling each pore,
blocking each breath.

It is a place of roots and
doesn't take easily
to giving in.

Between my toes
and in my nail beds gone gray
with time,
behind my ears and my glassy eyes,
beyond collapsed lungs
and still bones . . .

A pressure
to resurrect.
To take back.
To splinter up, pushing,
fingers tubers in spring soil
and a mouth emerging
gawping silently,
unable to speak a sound,
but with eyes that see
a blaring sun.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Heart of Darkness



Longing can be manufactured into a gift,
one that sits eternally,
unopened,
with ribbon that doesn't fade:

Her face against yours,
a similar respite,
a slow, unmistakable sparkle around the edges,
a pulsing intensity like a lower jungle canopy,
green to green,
leaf to leaf,
and a whisper in the distance.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

The QUEEN



Erasure. The queen is coming.

Her eyes chip corners from your chin,
a smarting wound
and a slap dash gash.

Bend low now. The queen is coming.

She crushes stone fruits beneath her
steely feet,
cropping the edges from the moon.

Palms on the earth. The queen is coming.

She smells like gold
and looks as distant as a star.
Words pour out of her
with the weight of a pulsing river
that cuts continents in two.

Voyeur ou voyeuse?



My more macabre self was lurking today as I clicked on the "recent deaths" section of wikinews. It's wikideath. Cool.

I didn't recognize any of the names. These are people of international notoriety no doubt. To some. But to me they are people with strange names and noble births and/or worldly achievements.

What's especially cool about wikideath is that they list the cause of death alongside many of the deceased. So convenient. Don't you hate it when you hear or read that someone famous has died and they don't even tell you how? Something as mundane as "cause of death" (well, for most of us at least) lends a needed human element to a celebrity death.

The fact that I take pleasure in such dirty details exposes something about me. I just don't know what that is. I guess I'm one of those people that stares as she drives by an accident scene, involuntarily drawn to the possibility of seeing blood.

Of course it's true that curiosity can kill the cat and I often find that my interest becomes blanketed in disgust when I actually do get my grubby little paws on the sordid details. It must be voyeur's remorse, but only in a sense because a voyeur derives sexual pleasure from the object of her observation, and well, that would be disturbing, wouldn’t it? A cross between necrophilia and Schadenfreude. Yikes.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

A careful flux of fluids.



Let me explain. It's all about the in and out. That's fluids in, and fluids out.

Night: beers taking the expressway, and then water to replace what was robbed by the beer monsters.

Morning: water in continual replacement of what the alco-beer monsters stole, then coffee to taketh away.

Afternoon: MORE coffee to keep the eyes open in front of a nasty computer screen. And then MORE water.

Rinse and repeat.

But aside from fluids what is going on in life. Nothing. Blurring horrendous time entry into days. Sickness and catastrophe. Love and war (all is fair). Discipline and loneliness.

Thank you, thank you (curtains closing now).

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Come Hither



Everyone wants information and there ain't none of that here.

I've got opaque, totally personal poems on offer that probably make no sense or lend any pleasure or interest to the reader. For me, that's what makes them useful, if not great- it's like a diary written in code (oops, now I've given away my secret). I go and look at other people's blogs all the time. And there are so many good ones, but mine just isn't one of those. I accept that, like I accepted being called dictionary when I was in middle school.

My friends don't check this blog (with one exception I had the honor of one friend with a lovely mind read my blog) to assess the temperature of my existential ranting or get my recipe for a blackberry mojitos (which are good, btw). In fact, one friend of mine was purportedly going to contribute to this blog, but she backed out, probably too embarrassed by the mission statement and her high school ties to me (notice that bimbos is plural- I should probably change that) and too turned off by the utter obscurity of it. It's like asking someone to hang their paintings in your own little private, dark cave that no one ever enters because they don't know it exists and even if they did they probably wouldn't go in anyway.

I like to think of this collection of aimless ramblings like a sinewy leg sheathed in a fishnet stocking beckoning from beyond the edge of a door opened onto an alleyway filled with moon light. You may or may not be tempted to see what the leg is attached to, and it may be that it's attached to nothing. It could be a sexy leg ruse, with a mechanical lever that a creepy old man manipulates behind said door. Or it could Marlena Dietrich's leg or that of a man with beautifully effeminate gams. The possibilities are rich. Why not check it out?

Monday, August 27, 2007

Ride a Red Pony



Like one living form growing into another,
I try in vain to goad an upwelling
from the red river
that runs from the center of the earth
to the soft underbelly of life,
a strange twisting fruit
that evokes pain
and gives birth.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Drinking Coffee with Aristotle



Back to black coffee.
My cream days are over,
the rough sugar tarting up my mouth,
the cream a pleasure slick
on my tongue.

No more filled out angles.
No more belly full slumber
but a groaning, gnawing
that asks at least for water,
or a lump of fiber,
a natural drop of juice,
a breath of fresh air.

Aristotle could stand on his feet
with a thought, one thought or a chain,
until sunrise,
only standing, and thinking,
but today he would be under
a numbed drug haze, in a lazy boy,
empty beer cans clinking softly
next to him.

Who doesn't want an ethereal mind
and a hunger that can evanesce?

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Dear Snack Drawer . . .



Dear Office Snack Drawer:

I would like to introduce a new member to your team. Please welcome Flask o' Whiskey. Ms. Flask comes to us with impressive credentials. She has had the opportunity to work with many powerful and interesting people, including various Presidents of the United States, specifically, the ones that know how to read. She has also had the pleasure of working along side well-known snack drawer star players Line o' Coke and Big Fat Jay. Together these three have provided a necessary "party" element to the otherwise boring snack drawer landscape composed of Stale Peanuts, Half-Eaten Bag o' Chips and Candy Nobody Wants.

Let's give a Hip-Hip-HOORAY for Flask o' WhiskAY

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Why are we in a music video?



Everywhere I go, except the one place I could really use it (work), I am in a music video. The music is so loud that I can lip synch along, the tunes are so top 40 that it makes perfect sense that promotion would include an actual music video.

Cut to me, sitting with books in front of me at a local coffee shop. Alanis Morisette is crooning about a jagged little pill, that drugged out yoga freak with the hippy hair. I stand, singing along, not because I want to, but because the music is loud and I certainly can't think about, or concentrate on anything else, so I decide to make the most out of it, and play along with the music video game.

Cut to me eating a Panini, crouched in the corner like a wounded animal, looking resentfully at the large speaker over my head. Suddenly I stand, imagining myself on stage doing choreographed dance moves with Justin Timberlake.

Cut to me gazing at a top three times too small for me in a clothing store. Suddenly, I pull my hair brush outta my purse as a handy stand-in microphone and I start cat walking in circles around the clothing wracks belting passionately "you don't know my name . . . baby, baby, BAAAABBBYYY"

Why does god want me to be in a music video all the time? (Btw, God, this is a direct question. I'm not just cc'ing you on this). I'm just trying to be a freaking normal person while eating and studying and reading and brooding over my inconsequential and privileged problems- like, why can't I go home right NOW, and download the new Kaskade from itunes? Instead I'm hear in pukey workville with files coming outta my ass. Whah. And my coffee's cold. And here at work, I could really use that music video.

EVERYBODY'S WORKIN FOR THE WEEKEND.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Lap Dance for Lunch



I could have a lap dance for lunch, I thought, as I headed out for a sandwich. The Gold Club is right there. There's a mountain of a white dude standing out front. I could even go a few doors down to the XYZ and have a drink first, but then I would have to downshift.

Truth time: I've never had a lap dance. I could say I've maybe kind of given one before, but I didn't get any money for it, so I guess that doesn't really count. I've noticed that LDs are kind of a right of passage for the modern woman. It's an interesting social phenomenon because it's kind of part of that whole genre of feminist thinking that says, "Men do this. I can do it too, even though I don't really want to . . . but it does make me feel kind of macho and I like that."

Ah, but what a wonderful thing it is to be a woman and to be able to conceal arousal in public. There are no unruly erections to deal with, and women are better at avoiding something men seem programmed for: the obvious stare.

So I'm wondering now how long the lap dance lasts, how to tip, etc. I know about the no touching rule. Would the big white dude throw me out if I pointed out to my dancer that her spaghetti strap is twisted, or if I tuck in a tag for her? I guess, for now, I won't try that.

Note to self: I'm gonna dress like a man for Halloween. A hump-backed man (because I know how to do this people) and I'll go get an LD and maybe instead of throwing me out, the security guys will take pity on me, and then we'll have beers, and before you know it I've got some new poker buddies. And then they find out I'm a woman masquerading as a humpbacked man and they'll feel let down, but oh well, it'll be fun until that happens.

Palomino



Cremello hair cascades in front of the eyes,
she eases,
but does not tease
with each marked step
a rhythmic hallway cadence.

It is not golden skin, but a veneer,
like rays of sun vanishing on the horizon,
one turn and each sparkle
evaporates
and then an appearance,
like a symbol projected against dark street,
eyes that are both
dark
and light.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Humble Pie



It's more than a dish,
it's an experience.

Why a snear McNear?
You stand, stalk closely.
You wait for the moment of
the point and turn.

You torture on whim
and punish out of loneliness.

Why the lone dune of your reverie
must come to encompass me-
I don't know.

I could give you eyes larger
than huckleberries,
a smile like the sweet yawn of morning.
But.
You'd turn it down on a day like today.
You'd turn me away,
as you have done.

I take lessons
and write them down:
the topagraphy of a snear
I can sketch, and for it,
I will recollect.

Let us say goodbye.
I want to say goodbye.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Blindside



Liquids distill mornings
and love refines intentions.

A few words here or there,
thrown carelessly over a shoulder,
errant grains of thought,
can nestle in the earth to produce leaves.

We are our generalizations, our condemnations:
the forgotten call, the unspoken state
sometimes retaliate.

And if I could tell you
what it really is,
the chance is you’d reject that truth,
an offering left for scattering
on a door step,
a bottle drifting to sea.

Monday, August 06, 2007

For Free



This connection has worn like the gold color
on a battered locket.

Stochastic encounters do not a welded bond make-
if striking out on the slick slopes of this armored pyramid,
I slip to the hot sands below
you will reign above.

But the sun is a balm,
and the sea is free, with waves that don't take to belonging,
or balances;
it takes instead, with a ruthless hand
and crushes the bricks of civilization.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Speedos, Ambidexterity, Rankism (SARs- It's a disease)



SPEEDOS, or BRIEF-STYLE SWIMSUIT (BSS)

Why I like to use the brand name rather than BSS: because it rhymes with cheeto, and cheetos are cheesy, like speedos.

So what's the deal with speedos? They're just plain wrong.

Are you an Olympic athlete? I didn't think so, Mr. I'm-too-sexy-for-my-shorts. It's just too high-def. It's not about me. It's about you and the unflattering way you choose to present yourself, really, like on a platter garnished with *berries* (never mind if that's your intention and it's not in public . . . )

What is it about speedos that reveal more than actual nudity? Nudity = natural. Speedos = abomination. It's because for many men, speedos press and create bulge, and not the good kind. It's like, "Oh look, here's what my butt looks like in a spandex vice! Isn't that nice?" It's also a pubic hair peak-a-boo show with hair sprouting uncomfortably from the groin, like weeds creeping through the cracks of a driveway.

Speedos should be used for utility, i.e. to make one more aerodynamic. There are exceptions here, but they generally don't apply. That being said, one should abstain, abstain, abstain.

AMBIDEXTERITY

What is it with the freaky people (person) writing with both hands at meetings?!? I noticed. Or maybe I'm going crazy, but it's pretty, well, unusual. I thought I was special, and then there's people who can sit on either side of the table facing forward and scribble comfortably on a note pad. How convenient that must be.

RANKISM

That's right. It's what you think it is, and it's dumb. Hierarchy is good for accomplishing tasks. But not acknowledging another human being because you think they're below you in the global/social pecking order is not. It's limited. It's a limited way of life for limited people with limited views. It is the spawn of insecurity and inflated egos, common bedfellows (one of my favorite words, I'm making a note right now to use it as often as I can). Of course I complain because I am daily on the lower end of this arrangement. And I love how people who I do good work for are too good to say hello to me in the elevator. Really, is it that difficult? I actually enjoy saying hello to such people because it makes them uncomfortable to acknowledge me as a human being; it knocks they're cool, little important world out of orbit for just a moment, and one must take pleasure where one can . . .

Monday, July 30, 2007

Girl, you got it goin on.



Girl, you got it goin on.

But please tell me why.
Why the barbs,
why the wire in your dreams
and the sharp shards
and the broken seams.

Girl, you got it goin on,
but no one sees.
They forgot the days of smoking
in the aisle.


They forgot the champagne blue
and the pills for two.
The short skirt a work unto itself,
and the designer cocktails from the top shelf.

I break a bottle for you,
against the shipwreck,
and the wreckage.

I poise a crystal glass in honor of you
and your prima donna tou tou.

Unfashionable Jeans



Give me your biggest card,
your biggest, sweetest eyes,
your soft hey in passing
your . . .

Anything

But this, this has got to go.
Nothing like nothing to make you dig a hole.
Nothing like the nothing to make you
see the things that are not there.

There’s nothing like the abyssal planes
of mundane, of another cup of coffee
of forgetting your own birth right

To Live
To Breathe
To Give in

To nothing that don’t suit your fancy
your fancy please

getting down on one knee
nothing like that last shot
of whiskey

Here’s one for you and your last soul.

Here’s one for the folks prying metal ships apart
and the watery lakes
where one grain is harvested at a time.

Here’s one for the crowd
and the stylized bars in dreams:
there we wear boots and unfashionable jeans.

Hide and Reveal



Hide and Reveal

I.

After two long days you flinch in recognition
like being confronted
with a scene from a dream
washing at your feet amid the banal.

There are thorns here, small grasses
that will cut your toes,
some powdery remnants of glass,
a tax on smiles
and a silent way of edging off the fringes of laughter.

But here it is, beyond all that:
a delicate shiver on your spine,
a twitch of the eye,
a picture on the surface of a pond,
gone in a blink.


II.

To be left, nails scraping in dirt,
an earthworm emerging after rain
attending to small tasks,
is to make a return
from a reckless voyage
where ships circled castles in the sky.

There is no end as near as here.

And there is no return like the final one,
and no solace like the bitter knowledge
that is balm rather than briar
to the prurient soul.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Anhedonia



It could almost be
a regal woman's name,
but is instead a creeping slug
made of dark matter, no, not
the kind that draws all inward,
but a cousin, like the umbra of the moon.

It is a house built on a foundation
of perpetuation
of human condition
of the ugliest, and most private despair.

It could almost be
an illustrious blue period
for the soul,
one tempered with booze,
one numbed with food and with lack of food,
one undone by silence
and one put off by noise.

It is a star leaking its light
in the sky
until only a dark point
remains,
like the period at the end of
a life like a sentence.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Letting go on a grey day.



Empty and surprised
I gave up today like an old sweater
with unraveling sleeves
and a hole in the back,
put it in a paper bag
and sat it by the door.

I let the grey light seep into it
and the wind knock it over.

Finally a cat came and drew
it out with outstretched claws,
toying at first with the loose strings
before creating new ones.

Like saying goodbye
to an unwanted guest,
I said a few words and turned to go
without looking back.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A little metatext here . . .



There's nothing lamer than ruminating about blogging on your blog, but I feel that the weight of my snide, peeved comments supersede this rule. Besides, I am the editor in chief here in my humble little universe.

This is the thing. Why does it bug me so much that blogging supplies a raison d'être for some people? Allow me to clarify. Some people record the minutiae of their daily existence on their blogs. This is what my cat ate for dinner. Oi, how I can't get this stain out of my sweater, etc. That's all fine and dandy, but what I sense is happening often is that sooner or later the anticipation of blogging, or reviewing (more on that at a later date), starts to shape not only the experiences before they are recorded later, but the perception of them while they are occurring as well. It is my belief that this phenomenon later results in doing things merely so that you can blog about them. To me, that's insincere, and disturbing, mainly because it highlights some of the existential ennui I feel when I think about what makes other people tick. It's the "look at me!" syndrome; the need to do things merely to be able to do the telling of the doing. It is disingenuous and jarringly narcissistic. Let's see. How many ways can I say fake? Phony. Artificial . . .

I think, however, that I must accept some of the blame for my ire. Why am I always searching for authenticity in people when they are merely trying to look good or seem intelligent or fashionable or successful or confident when they may in fact be none of these things? Perhaps it is the power of shaping your existence with thought, with tempering a trivial, grain-of-sand experience with a little meaning. That's meaning in the form of someone caring enough to observe and read the vain, trying recordation of someone else's not-so-interesting life.

I suppose we all want someone to care. But I don't want to want that. I spurn that want. Consider that want denied. I deny that desire because I want to have my own, private, authentic experience. But I am a hypocrite because here I am blogging about it. But it's only slightly hypocritical because no one reads this blog, so really it's just a readily accessible receptacle for inane thoughts.

Thank you and goodnight (afternoon, morning, whatever).

Monday, July 23, 2007

Life is a Tambourine!



No it's not, but it got your attention anyway, didn't it? You little mysterious, imaginary little ghosts reading my blog.

What liberation it is not to always take life so seriously. It's just life after all, folks. I don't know what everyone is so up in arms about. But they're awfully serious. They, they, they. They won't eat pastries. They neurotically check their hair in the mirror . . . because hair is an especially serious matter. They worry about their taxes. A lot. And the planning of vacations that must be tackled with great seriousness in order to set about the business of the divide-and-conquer tourism routine. They worry about reproducing, about creating little serious replicas like themselves. They frown at a lunch time beer and shiver at the thought of other similar kinds of weaknesses. They . . . well, they are American, no doubt. They won't buy cream and believe in margarine. They honk their horns in petulant ire whenever someone has the audacity to circumvent the flow of their structured little (and I mean little) universe. I could write a book about what's wrong with the way people drive, and it would be based on the premise that people take life too seriously, which you THINK would be a good thing behind the wheel, but not so, because all of that seriousness is kind of like a poison coalescing in the body that eventually metabolizes into misery, and it is that resultant misery that makes people impossible toddlers masquerading as responsible adults on the road. There, I said it.

But not to be too serious. That's my goal today, because there's nothing like Monday in corporate America to wipe the smiles off the faces of even the most jovial among us. Oh look here comes someone with a face like a jack-o-lantern. Better go . . .

Friday, July 20, 2007

A Room of One's Own


Puffy-eyed, far from center, with a coffee in hand, she sits, slumped and rumpled before a screen. A screen can portend many things, and this one is no different. It tells the story of 7.5 to 8 hours. Of email. Of listless conversation. Of looking down the barrel of another bleak few days. Of denial. Of improper syntax.

This is the story of your average maiden not-so-fair. There is nothing on her breath but the hush, hush, hush of more words unspoken. In the evenings she tries to consume with restraint and not to regard her phone. A phone is a nightmarish thing, a portal to despair, an offending reminder. Better to put her hands over her eyes, her ears, her mouth and pray silently. And move silently, from room to room, from wall to wall. Eyes roving and then resting on dry knuckles, skewed fingernails. There are sheets of something overlaying her face that she notices in her small lit mirror, also a nightmarish thing, a portal to an insuppressible reality of physicality, like wax figures in a museum. Tonight she is one of those frozen figures, caught, anatomized and splayed for the viewing pleasure of . . . well, no one, but the fine particles of air and dust, resting silently in each plastic pore.

From the sinking glut of a white couch she envisions another inhabitable space. This new space is without strictures. Loneliness emerges from its cocoon to become more sophisticated: an hermitage. A clean desk and a bookcase. A cup like an endless well with no bottom. A life within pages, within the folds of brain tissue where unrequited longing sits, yawns, stretches.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Death at the Window



From my window I can see San Francisco,
and a couple walking a dog,
the man joyfully swinging a bag of shit.

Death is a lone, friendless universe,
with no one to talk to ‘bout pending doom,
or the end of life,
or anything of any import.

Jack Kerouac was a drunk who partied in Frisco.
He woke up in hotel rooms with strangers after long wino benders.
He loved jazz. And haiku. And being a Buddhist bum.

From my window I can see the bay,
stretching landless and lightless to the prickly
San Francisco skyline.
I think of pizza in North Beach,
of noodles in Chinatown at the edges of the Financial District,
and finally of the lonely workaday hallways.

Death is something maudlin, something mundane.
Death is a plump martini
at the edge of a marble bar at a crashed gathering.
Death is knowing what you know and
not knowing what you know.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

We Drink Coffee



We don't go to gyms. Not really. We coalesce, we drink things like coffee, or maybe a night cap. We don't have issues with chairs. We like sitting in them, actually, but prefer a couch.

While young our bodies may be lithe and svelte, but as we grow only a little older, emerging from our teens and our tender twenties, our bodies grow a little thicker, and a little downward. But we can still be beautiful, navigating from our desks, cup in hand.

We can sit and read forever and get up only to use the bathroom and to have snack time. We'll go hiking, but we go slow up the hills with heavy breath, smoker lungs wheezing.

Sometimes we conduct anthropological experiments. We observe passerby from a café seat where sometimes we see the other kind walking jauntily, healthfully. They run marathons and do bake sales on the weekend. We think, actually, how a bake sale would be cool. You could sit and drink coffee and eat tender pieces of banana bread and take money and maybe even smile a little.

(Thank you to Dogmilque for the beautiful coffee photo that I found on Flickr)

Thursday, May 17, 2007

MONEY GRUBBING AND SNUBBING


People who scorn capitalism and the greedy while enjoying the fruits of both are almost as bad as those who devote their every fiber to making a grab at cash without moral qualms. The stance of the former is born out of bitterness and the need to be fashionable, not spiritual or intellectual superiority. And more importantly, it's hypocritical.

Sure, we can all spend all day expounding on the woes of corporate greed and the inequalities in the tax code. But how often is such a diatribe balanced with an examination of the societal benefits of corporate greed? I'm not about to say that the good outweighs the bad, I mean, what can compensate for mass exploitation of the planet and its most vulnerable people? But does that mean that you want to live in a world where market place competition is banned and we're forced to buy overpriced ill-produced goods? Would that improve the environment and our education system? Maybe. Would most of us find that acceptable? Most likely not.

Like most complicated situations in the world, this presents a conundrum, and once again I must pay homage to Voltair in saying that the "the truth is rarely pure, and never simple".

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Penny For Your Righteous Thoughts



Do you ever get that feeling that you're behind? Everyone is better dressed than you, knows more about technology or art or whatever. Everyone has already heard the joke or the news bit before you.

Well, if you feel this way maybe you're just as insecure as I am. Or maybe I'm not insecure. Maybe the reason why I don't have the newest cell phone or the coolest ipod is because I don't feel like I NEED those things with the urgency that others do (or it could be because I just don't have the cash to blow). I often wonder just how much people genuinely want the things they buy or accomplish in and of themselves verses wanting them merely to show having them, to flaunt them. Folks sure get a lot of satisfaction out of flaunting, and that's not entirely bad.

For example, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to look good and have others notice. That is a primordial desire. We exist to reproduce, so why not aim to compete to attract attention, hence a mate, or money and success which is really just about sex anyway? Or power. Power and sex. People want them both. In great supply.

However, looking good is one thing. Donning a purse that proves first your ability to drop five grand on a bit of leather and hardware and second your impeccable taste is not just about sex. It is a little bit about sex, but it is more about status. Again here we come back to power. It really does seem that sex and power are the common denominators of our existence. And to think some folks feel so insulted by evolution because it places them too closely to mere animals.

Indeed I could sit here and cluck my tongue at all the outrageous foolishness in the world around me. However, I'm not so stupid that I don't realize I'm part of it, and it is the way things are. I suppose that's why religion has such a great appeal for some (that is, when it's not being used to wield power or prey on little boys or grab good ol' cash like in the old days). I'm talking about the truly devout here. The genuine saints, monks, nuns, the yogis, or just the truly good, spiritual people out there that have rare, not-so-corrupted ways of thinking. You know who I'm talking about. That is a direction that leads away from obsession with sex and power. It's heartening to think that there are folks out there that want to be led away from those things. It almost makes you want to go to church, or to an ashram (though that's way too trendy, IMO).

Pigeons Must Die


To work. That's where I'm going. Today the air is warm and gentle and I feel my thoughts easily gliding over the rooftops of the downtown buildings, dreaming of far off lands, or at least not being at work.

As I walk toward my building I see a pigeon lying on the ground with slowly blinking eyes. The bird is on the verge of death. People rush by, but I stand looking down on this lonesome, pitiful sight. This is a bird that no one wants, and no one cares in the least if it dies unceremoniously on the sidewalk. The pigeons are known to crap profusely downtown, as they perch on networks of transportation cables above intersections, leaving corners splatter painted with their white-green shit. I always approach those corners cautiously, reminded of a day I obliviously pounded the pavement in an interviewee black suit, and became appalled and disgusted to notice a white watery smear on my lapel. Yet despite that insult, I can't help but feel a small, creeping sadness looking down on this feeble bird. But, like everyone else, I walk on, though I shrug, and the air feels a little less warm.

I'm reminded of a documentary I once saw where a baby monkey who had met its untimely death as it climbed power lines and was electrocuted in the streets of an Indian city was lovingly scooped up by random passerby, who managed to cover the tiny, lifeless body with brightly colored ceremonial powders and a shrowd before commencing a brief funeral march down the street, holding the body aloft on a pyre. Monkeys, among others, are sacred animals in India. Pigeons, in San Francisco, however, are somewhere near the opposite of sacred. I try to imagine a San Francisco where pigeons are cherished and often fed treats for the purpose of good luck, akin to how it is considered good luck in some parts of India to offer a cow a bit of fruit, for example. I think the effects of such a shift in regard would result in not just a few fouled intersections, but a city blanketed in thin white excrement, because pigeons, though relegated to the ranks of other nasty pests like rodents and ants, manage to do quite well despite the lack of largess shown to them by the people of San Francisco.