The Passage of Time

My mother sent myself and some brothers and sisters a few pictures from home two weeks ago, e-mail-ily. She wrote:

“For those who haven’t seen the house this fall. These are both from the back deck…Today most of the leaves are biting the dust–windy and rainy.”

***

These pictures look like the house is in a goshdurn woodland glen, untouched by the hand of manfolk!

It is on a quiet neighborhood street, however. There are people.

We also have  ourselves a woodpile back there.

***

Here is a story involving the woodpile. A few years ago, a raccoon got into the chimney atop my parents’ home, and skittered down inside, landing on a small ledge within. For the duration of this story–a story which I re-verified with my parents, via telephone–I would like for you to disabuse yourself of the idea that what you see below was the sort of raccoon my Pa would be tangling with over the ensuing 48 hour period:

Rather, keep the following in your mind’s eye:

Ha ha ha! J/K. I think. Dad?

DAD: There are caps you can put on top of your chimney, but we didn’t have one.

Anyway, they discovered the advent of the squirrel the morning after his arrival, because they went into the living room and discovered that the curtains had been ripped apart, “and other things”, quoth my mother. This is because the raccoon, like any raccoon worth its salt, had weighed the odds mathematically, and tried to launch itself  directly through the plate-glass windows in a bid for escape to the lawn below. Raccoons: Perhaps they are more the creative type?

My dad looked up the chimney, but he couldn’t glimpse the raccoon. However, my dad is a gambling man ["The Gambler" we call him, and also "Papa John Sunday", a bizarre nickname whose antecedents I am long since unable to recall] and so he climbed atop the roof–he is sort of up there a lot anyway, to put up our annual Christmas wreath, which measures the width of the Baltic Sea–and looked DOWN the chimney, whereupon he saw this:

Ai!

What to do? The raccoon appeared to be comfortably ensconced inside the chimney for life. Enter my brother Benjamin, who–according to my father–was “either 10 or 8″ at the time of this story.

BENJAMIN, WHO WAS EITHER 10 OR 8: Why don’t we smoke him out?

Now, before you jump to the conclusion that my father immediately built a roaring bonfire in order to procure the makings of a salade du raton laveur  ["raccoon salad"] for his kitchen, understand that my father did not want the raccoon to die;  he wanted to take pains in order to ensure that the raccoon would not, in fact, die, but would dislike the ticklish position of a smoky chimbley, and see himself out of the roof end without further unpleasantness for all parties concerned. Are we clear? I’m so glad!

A fire was accordingly built. My father climbed back out onto the roof–again, to ensure that the raccoon was, in fact, heaving-ho himself, and not dead. The raccoon poked its head out from the chimney-top, but wavered about making a run for it.

The neighbors gathered to watch from the driveway and lawn.

The raccoon wavered. Waverer!

And then!

!

The raccoon clambered out of the chimney, ran across the roof and onto a tree branch, and made good his escape.

Below, everyone cheered.

***

MY DAD: That day, or the next day, I put that cap on the chimney.

***

Something else. The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, of course.

Hoorah, I say. I SAY HOORAH.

  

Learning to Read

She stepped from her deck to the strand
of beach to stand
where she could read
the sky. The lead

pelican dropping like a brick.
The ocean thick
with living things.
A chevron’s wings

rigid on easy thermals in
the heat. The din
of gulls. Their loud
lament a shroud.

Pheve Davidson

A Little Quiet, Followed By Loud

In one of those Halloween shops this weekend, with Bridgid. You know–those Halloween shops, the ones that randomly spring from the earth this time of year, like earthworms from the soil after a driving rain; except for the fact that earthworms are an important part of the cycle of life, the give and take of our ecosystem, the tapestry of the planet, and Halloween shops contribute the following:

And this is TAME. [Also, is that a tie around her head?] You know what I’m saying. This is like…this is like the “Accountant Piratess” costume. This costume is my concession to the fact that I flatly refuse to post terrible things here that one’s mother could see [hi, Mom!]; also my concession to TASTE, also MORALITY. The shop we were in was SODOM AND GOMORRAH. I was Lot’s wife. No, really.

Like–a Little Miss Muffet Adult Costume. No no no.

READ A BOOK.

Ugh, Halloween is weird!

***

The store didn’t stop there, however. We were making our way past bloodied skull masks, two-headed babies with glowing eyes–the stomach, it turns. When I see such things I feel uneasy. It should not be de rigueur, during Halloween season, for free peoples to walk past two-headed babies with glowing eyes in a store without batting an eyelash.

I have drawn my line in the sand. I have drawn it. There it is.

***

Let’s scatter these nothings, these Hallowe’en dregs, to the four winds; instead, let’s look at my nephews in this year’s costumes!

If you need to pardon yourself to sponge the cute off your eyeballs, you may.

***

According to my sister, my niece Maddy has decided that she wants to be a vampire for Halloween. This includes the Halloween costume party at her kindergarten.

MY SISTER: So I was like–great! It’ll be five princesses and MADDY THE VAMPIRE.
ME: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Quoth my sister, however, Maddy “never wavered” in her desire to be a vampire this year.

That’s my girl.

***

I am the oldest of seven children. When I was growing up, one of us was consistently garbed as a hobo on Halloween. Someone was also always dressed as a “housewife” [sporting a cold-creamed face and a bathrobe. Ah, simpler times!] My sister has a memory, which may or may not be true, of being a witch “five years in a row” [direct quote].

Hey. Hey, YOU have seven kids and YOU dream up Halloween costumes for SEVEN KIDS every year, young whippersnapper. 

My roommate told me that when she was a girl, her school had something called “Hobo Day”, where the children all came to school dressed like hobos.

Ai!

*** 

So I just read “The Once and Future King”, by T.H White–

And AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.  And aaaaaaaa.

It cut me right open. Beauty, beauty.

Not beauty: “Nicholas Nickleby.” I have spoken of Dickens many and many a day, here in Wheat Not Oats. And many and many a day have I expressed the pure and shiny and unstinting love in my heart that I have for all his works.  Not this one. No: Not this one.

I waited and waited for him to show me what I knew he could do, and he never did. It was dretful disappointing.

Nicholas Nickleby: Not so much.

Perhaps the movie version is better, starring Anne Hathaway. She is pretty good.

***

Things are quiet, these days. Fall is moving in. Moved in, rather–it’s here. I kicked my way through a lot of leaves on a Sunday morning walk. In college I would collect the most colorful ones and put them on my desk; by the end of the season they were brittle, dust to the touch. They had a week in them away from their tree.

I finally busted out a knit cap today. The store said that it was “one size fits all”, which means “one size fits all except for Emilie, whose head is roughly the circumference of a basketball.”  I jammed it down, though, and made it work. I think. I have boy hair, so I’m always all worried that I’ll look like a longshoreman from a distance.

I bet there would be times when you’d want people to mistake you for a longshoreman, though. Like–

–Dark alleys down by the pier
–Longshoreman bars
–The topmost deck

I think you get the picture.

 

Summons

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look.  Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.

Robert Francis

In Which I Discover That There Is A Great Big World Out There

I spent this past weekend in Milwaukee. I had forgotten–or perhaps I never knew this, and am pretending to myself that I had internalized this knowledge, somewhere along the line, as a scientist does–that autumnal leaf color alters on a sort of “north to south” trajectory. The trees there were a riot of color, comparatively-speaking. There are all sorts of  other reasons for autumnal leaf color changes–the weather, the type of tree ["birch", "oak"], other stuff. [I know what you're saying. "Gee, thanks, professor," you're saying. Then you are falling asleep with your head down on your math homework.]

Back in Chicago, the leaves are still sludge-colored, in the main. Not fair, I say. That is what I say.

***

So you know how Google helpfully suggests search items for you? So helpful, that Mr. Googlepants. Sometimes the search items it suggests are uniquely embarrassing–

ME: No, I did not want to do a search for “The Limited Too“.

I started to type in “autumn”, and there, on the bottom of a list of potential search items, it read:

autumn in my heart

ME: To say that I am “intrigued” seems too mild a term!

I don’t know what I thought I was about to uncover; some sort of God-and-man-forsaken song? “It’s autumn in my heart/My tears are falling/like the leaves from the trees” [SERIOUSLY I MADE THAT UP JUST NOW!] Anyway, that’s sure not what I located! Instead, I located this:

It’s part one of a South Korean tv movie saga called “Endless Love”!

***

Apparently, the other three parts are entitled:

Winter Sonata
Summer Scent
Spring Waltz

I bet there is a love triangle!

***

There’s been a tremendous amount to talk about, in the past several weeks; where does one begin? There is and isn’t a tremendous amount to talk about, because if you’re me, certain things seem pretty clear-cut; clear-cut as a diamond cut with a straight-up diamond drill-bit. Or whatever.

Like:

1. ROMAN POLANSKI

He raped a thirteen year-old girl. Next?

No, seriously, next? ‘Cause this just doesn’t even REQUIRE discussion!

Must read piece on Roman Polanski. Read it.

Must watch video on Roman Polanski. Watch it.

2. OBAMA WINS THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

What? Also, thank you for shackling this to him for the rest of his presidency, as he attempts to navigate the already treacherous waters of our foreign policy agenda!

***

I don’t mean to sound so crabby and fractious. And I should practically never even think about people, directors and actors and the like, signing a petition demanding Roman Polanksi’s release which states, among other things: “It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him”, as if the fact that he was on his way to receive an award at a film festival, or that he is “one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers”, negates what he did :) !  This is just one of the many things my simple mind doesn’t comprehend, Polanski-ward.  I just don’t get things, sometimes. Sometimes people have to explain them to me.

ME: No, I still don’t understand.

***

3. I COULD ALSO TALK ABOUT HOW NASA CRASHED TWO SATELLITES INTO THE MOON TO STUDY THE PROPERTIES OF DEBRIS THEY KICKED UP FROM A CRATER 

 

Oh, artist’s renderings!

Apparently, a “plume” did not arise from the depths of the crater, which made everyone–all of the earth-watchers–very, very sad, as a plume would have most thoroughly indicated hundreds of tons of moon blasting away from its surface.

SCIENTIST: Boo hoo hoo!

Nonetheless, the satellite(s) hit that sucker, and soon we may know if there is water on the moon, and if you or I might one day be living in a moon condo on the shores of the Sea of Rains [Mare Imbrium]! Eeeeeeee!

 

You know what I would totes not want to live near? The Sea of Crises. Uh?

Red alert! Ha ha! Sorry, sorry.

 I think I would like to live by the Sea of Nectar, perhaps.

To be honest, I don’t think I’d want to live moonside. In the stories, it never ends well. It’s never like, “And then they fell in love on the shores of the Sea of Nectar!” It’s always like, “And then they went mad from the moon-sickness and heaved crater-debris at their food robot and then there was no more food.”

You know.

 

 

The Chapter of the Rending in Sunder

And then I began my habit
of walking at night
to get rid of the strings,
witherings. The Lord revealed to me
that I am full of birds
turned smoke and hookèd strings.
I say to the Lord, Lord take
a string. I have named it
mesas ringed with beeswax wicks,
footsteps sowing up my stairs,
tambourines in trees.
Then a  tedious, gruesome
miracle unfolds, for the Lord takes
the string and what attends it.
Walking over a grate
there is the sound of the grate.
Margarita Mondays mean exactly
that. I say, how could I eat?
I ate. And how can I sleep? I shake.
The Lord says, look at the branches,
how they braid over graves.
And the Lord says, look at the HandiMart,
a bright, ordered box.
They have their grief, the people there.
Now the tableaus mass color, now the tableaus
fall down. I say wet pavement keep on
holding me up. Wet pavement hold me
up. Now the fetishes crumble,
now the meteors cup. The Lord says,
I meant of it a blessing. And I say,
I made of it a curse.
The Lord says, sound of roots,
sound of shoots, sound of
asphalt, sound of cars.
I say, I am walked into
deeps. Here are the jewelthreads
and throbbings that I need
to leave. The Lord says, chomp
and be chewed, alleluia.  Sever
and stitch, alleluia. Exceedingly, 
the Lord says, bar, barr, barrr.
I say snowfield? Snowfield?
Piñon roasting? Chaparral?
The Lord says, is what you want
the terrible free? And I say
to the Lord, Lord speak.
And the Lord says, sound of earth in orbit,
its muffled, its four-chambered beat.

Mia Nussbaum

Sisters, Sisters

In the grocery store last week, on the phone with my sister. I’m that guy too often; that guy who talks on the telephone in line, and flaps her hands around like an addlepated scarecrow [what?] when the cashier/registerperson addresses her directly. Anywho, the grocery store. On her end, my sister is feeding my baby niece, who apparently dislikes the dinner menu for the evening. 

ME: What is she eating?
MY SISTER: [examining the label.] Mixed Greens with Harvest Grains.

[We pause.]

 ME: Yeah, you can’t slap a coat of paint on that.

***

I mean ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! 

BABIES: You’re telling me!

*** 

Another night, on the train this time, on the phone with my sister. I have an unspoken rule about having “emotionally delicate” conversations with my sister on public transportation. I mean, who wants to hear me talking about ___________ while they’re just trying to schlep themselves home from work? GOD NO ONE.

Anyway, as I boarded the train last night, I was mid-emotionally-delicateness. When I stepped completely into the car, I told her that I’d have to tell her the rest later. Sarah correctly guessed that I was in CTA-land.

MY SISTER: Well, I’ll just give you a play-by-play of what I’m doing right now!

Side note: This is the train advertisement I was staring at as she related the following:

MY SISTER: Now I’m going over to the oven and stirring the chili. We made chili last night. Now I’m getting the rolls. One for Maddy, one for Ava, one for Drew, one for me!
ME: Uh.
MY SISTER: This is my life.

 ***

Let me be clear on one point: My sister has the best life ever.

***

I don’t mean to keep bringing up funny mail from my job, but seriously, funny mail from my job:

It’s a theatrical production of the famous short story, “The Lady or the Tiger”!

“The Lady or the Tiger”: HERE.

I had forgotten this story existed. I don’t remember when I read it first. High school? Was it high school?

It’s all morally trepidatious, is “The Lady or the Tiger”. Many stories I read in high school, once read later in life, take on new meaning. [You'd hope that you'd mentally outpace your sixteen year-old self.]

Like “Jane Eyre”? Yoink! In my younger days I was all, “Jane Eyre, leave Mr. Rochester in the dust bunnies, girl.”

Now I’m all, “Oh.”

***

These are the three people who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Monday:

 

Jack Szostak, Carol Greider, and Elizabeth Blackburn.

They “solved a longstanding puzzle involving the ends of chromosomes, the giant molecules of DNA that embody the genetic information.”

The ends of chromosomes are called telomeres. They get shorter when cells divide.

[Look, this was the least confusing picture I could find, all right? The other ones looked like spaghetti crossed with the Pythagorean Theorem. ]

I wish I could clearly elucidate their discoveries for you. Suffice it to say “cancer” and “this could all be helpful with cancer”.

***

I had two poems for this week–one long come-to-Jesus poem, the other short. I’ve drabbled on s’long that I fear the shorter one shall have to do.

O drabbling! You’re the death of me, that’s what.

DRABBLE: My b.

 

Extravagance

Like a numbing thumb,
the moment dulls until it tastes
complicity. Of worry

then the craving gnaw–to eat and eat is all,
is all. I’ve stored long
loss upon some kitchen shelf.

A jar that rounds along
the night. Worry words: that works
us sure, the way

a nightbird sures–through shadow sures
its call. At least
this once.  This one, at last.

Steve Wilson

Weathered

On the train, headed home from work, last Friday.

Two men stand behind me, talking. They begin talking about the weather, how it looks as though it’s going to rain; one of the men has even heard that it’s supposed to rain on Monday. They talk about how they should try and look out the windows in their office building a little more. They are science types, I gather–I heard the words “clinical trial”, earlier on in their conversation–and they are attempting to unwind after a long week, nattering about the weather. Their conversation is like an El train after-work lullaby.

Then they kick it up a notch!

MAN 1: [trying to make a joke.] Yeah, I mean–I mean, the weather inside the office, it’s like–partly, uh,  partly fluorescent.
MAN 2: [tentatively.] Like a 50% chance of–paper storm.

***

ME: [Dies]

***

This past weekend I almost bookmarked weather.com on my laptop, and then I was like IF I BOOKMARK WEATHER.COM I AM THE MOST BORING HUMAN BEING ALIVE.

***

Not you, though, person reading this blog who has weather.com bookmarked on your laptop! I’m not talking about YOU.

***

My bookmarks are not that interesting, though, to be honest.

Like “YouTube.”

***

On to business. Last week, as you know–YOU KNOW, OR I’LL KNOW THE REASON WHY NOT–the Hubble swung back into space action in a major way. It needed some fixer-uppering, did the Hubble; some spit polish, some shine, a new spectrograph; and then voila! or “It is time to break it down awesome-style“–new and improved images were captured from the new and improved Hubble. But you don’t have to believe me. Just listen to Keith Noll, a team leader at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore:

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the quality of the images from the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the spectra from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectograph (STIS).”

YYYYOOOOOOW!

First up, we’ve got a picture of something called Stephan’s Quintet:

Otherwise known as–this is true–the Hickson Compact Group 92, because if astronomers can ruin ANYTHING, it’s the names of things they find out there in outer space! Nothing says “romance” like Hickson Compact Group 92. It sounds like a bricklayers’ union. NO OFFENSE TO BRICKLAYERS.

Stephan’s Quintet is so-called because of the five (5) galaxies we see in the picture above. “Stephan” is after Édouard Stephan, who discovered the quintet in 1877.

EDOUARD: Five galaxies! What did you do today?
ME: Gee, I ate a Pudding Pop!

Then we have this:

A look inside the “globular cluster” called Omega Centauri. Millions and millions of billions-year-old stars.

Millions and billions of beautiful.

There have to be other other peoples living out there, I think. I think. Do you think?

I mean…that’s a lot of intergalactic real estate going begging for some occupants, I think.

I love outer space.

***

I keep posting poems from the September issue of Poetry; I can’t help it. There’s so much good.

It’s like “My head fell off because this is so good! Where’s my head!”

 

 
Semblance: Screens

A moth lies open and lies
like an old bleached beech leaf,
a lean-to between window frame and sill.
Its death protects a collection of tinier deaths
and other dirts beneath.
Although the white paint is water-stained,
on it death is dirt, and hapless.

The just-severed tiger lily
is drinking its glass of water, I hope.
This hope is sere.
This hope is severe.
What you ruin ruins you, too
and so you hope for favor.
I mean I do.

The underside of a ladybug
wanders the window. I wander
the continent, my undercarriage not as evident,
so go more perilously, it seems to me.
But I am only me; to you it seems clear
I mean to disappear, and am mean
and project on you some ancient fear.

If I were a bug, I hope I wouldn’t be
this giant winged thing, spindly like a crane fly,
skinny-legged like me, kissing the cold ceiling,
fumbling for the face of the other, seeking.
It came in with me last night when I turned on the light.

I lay awake, afraid it would touch my face.

It wants out. I want out, too.
I thought you a way through.
Arms wide for wings,
your suffering mine, twinned.
Screen. Your unbelief drives me in,
doubt for dirt, white sheet for sill–
You don’t stay other enough or still
enough to be likened to.

Liz Waldner

Three Nights Two Days

Home in Indianapolis for the weekend, for my niece’s sixth birthday party.

I got in late Friday night. On Saturday morning, my parents made breakfast, and we randomly began watching a Western film that was on the TV. My pa’s a real fan of Westerns. This particular Western was called:

ULZANA’S RAID

Of “Ulzana’s Raid”, I will say this. AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

One minute, we’re enjoying delicious cinnamon rolls and the gruff banter of Burt Lancaster’s “McIntosh”, a world-weary tracker; the next minute, we’re staring at the screen in frozen horror at  a wagon ride through the countryside gone HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY WRONG and OH MY GOD ARE THEY–? and IS THAT A HUMAN HEART? THAT IS A HUMAN HEART.

It was almost enough to deter us from enjoying our breakfast, but not quite.

MY DAD: [giving me a level look.] Two rolls left, three of us.

***

My niece’s birthday party was a cracking good time. My sister’s mother-in-law has a real knack for clever cakes, and she didn’t disappoint this time:

YES, THAT’S RIGHT

IT’S STILL TRUE

She wrapped the legs of the Barbie in Saran Wrap, and I don’t know what-all, and plunged the doll into the skirt-cake.

When it came time for Madge to blow out her candles: Dilemma! What to do with a pair of flammable plastic arms?

But my sister did not bear five children to be thwarted by the likes of a Barbie Doll.

I AM BA-AR, PAGAN QUEEN OF THE SHADOW PEOPLE!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek

***

Later, we squirted silly string onto the children, to fun up the joint. They screamed as though they were in “Ulzana’s Raid”.

***

The next day, breakfast and Mass, and a Colts game in the afternoon!

There is a time delay between the television in the kitchen and the television in the living room.  This creates a certain amount of  highwire tension during the Colts season. A certain amount of “gentleman’s-honor-I-won’t-give-the-game- away-just-because-I’m-fully-several-seconds-ahead-of-you-here-in-The-Future.” My brother and father and I were in the kitchen at one point, snackin’, and my little sister was in the living room. Something good happened; I don’t remember what, now, but it was good and it was the Colts. Perhaps a “first down”? Perhaps “the Jaguars went for two and they went down hard”.

MY FATHER, BROTHER, AND I: WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
MY LITTLE SISTER: SHUT UP!
MY FATHER, BROTHER, AND I: Sorry!
MY LITTLE SISTER: Yeah, baby!

***

Hubble talk in next week’s blog. Let’s examine the universe.

Oh, The Universe! You’re a real card these days, The Universe.

THE UNIVERSE: Tell me something I don’t know!
ME: But you know everything, The Universe!
THE UNIVERSE: How embarrassing for me.

 

Insomnia & So On

Fat bed, lick the black cat in my mouth
each morning. Unfasten all the bones

that make a head, and let me rest: unknown
among the oboe-throated geese gone south

to drop their down and sit beside the out-
bound tides. Now there’s no nighttime I can own

that isn’t anxious as a phone
about to ring. Give me some doubt

on loan; give me a way to get away
from what I know. I pace until the sun

is in my window. I lie down. I’m a coal:
I smolder to a bloodshot glow. Each day

I die down in my bed of snow, undone
by my red mind and what it woke.

Malachi Black

_________________.

GUH. I’m struck dumb by my total inability to post in a timely manner, of late. I wish I could tell you that it’s all due to a groundbreaking sculpture-in-progress, or something–

ME: Just a few more chisel-hits, and I’ll go post this week’s Wheat Dear!
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: No! Do not keep us waiting, here at the Museum of Modern Art!
ME: Well, all right.

Yeah, I’ve got nothing.

***

Last Friday at work was apparently

HILARIOUS MAIL DAY

Like every piece of mail was the funniest mail I’d ever seen.  One envelope was stamped thusly [this is true]:

FOUND LOOSE IN THE MAILS

Whhhhuuuuh?

A large postcard was sitting on top of the stack; I picked it up. It was from Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art –an invitation to view their upcoming exhibit, devoted to the Day of the Dead . The face-up side of the postcard was as blameless a piece of mail as you’re likely to see. Then I flipped it over.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

***

For the rest of the day, I wreaked havoc with the postcard. Woo, boy!

CO-WORKER: Can I borrow a pen?
ME: Sure! [I flash them the postcard.]
CO-WORKER: [Seizure]

***

Now we must turn to more serious matters.

***

On Saturday afternoon, I was waiting for the bus at the Belmont Blue Line station, which is a well-traveled thoroughfare; aside from the El stop, three different busses stop there. This is just to say that multiple people were standing around when What Happened Happened.

Behind me, I heard someone screaming. Then I heard someone screaming, “Help me!” I turned around.

A man had his arms wrapped all the way around a woman, who was screaming, for help. He was restraining her from walking away from him. Several able-bodied men stood within touching distance of this occurence.

They did nothing.

I pulled out my phone and called 911, and said what I had to say, and told them what was happening, and what they were wearing, and where we were. I ended the call with: “The sooner the better.” [Like an idiot, I ended the phone call in this manner. As if the dispatcher would say: "Nah. After lunch?"]

As this was happening, the woman had broken away from the man and was trying to move away from him, as he screamed in her face. I could not hear what he was saying, but he was doubtless explaining to her how totally worthless she was.

They began to get further away from the train station. One of the Do-Nothings ambled up to me and commented on the situation. “Look there,” he said, pointing. “They’re holding hands now!” This he said with surprise, because he has never left his house or observed or spoken to another human being in his entire life.

 My bus arrived, and the police were not there. The couple had walked down the street, away from where the police would head once they arrived.

ME: Aaarrrgh.

It was at that moment that I realized that I had left my CTA card sitting on the kitchen counter, at home.

GOD:

So I made my way back to my apartment, and as I did so, I heard the sirens of the police car roaring down the street in the opposite direction. And I turned around and ran back to the train station as fast as e’er I could, and flagged the squad car down, and told the policewoman inside where they had walked, and repeated what they were wearing, and she said thanks, and peeled on outta there lickety-split-like.

***

I do not know if the policewoman found them, or what happened if she did. I have no doubt that the woman reassured her that she was fine, that nothing was wrong. She walked away holding his hand; either she’s a good actress, or she thinks she deserves it. Maybe both.

I share this story to point out that THIS STUFF HAPPENS IN THE BROAD LIGHT OF DAY. The broad. Light. Of. Day. In the broad light of day, a man held a woman back with physical force while she screamed for someone to help her. I don’t care that this is Chicago, in the big cit-tay. This isn’t supposed to happen. This was an easy call, men who stood there and watched this happen without lifting a finger. Afraid to take this guy on alone? Band together. You don’t have to beat him up; you just have to get her away from him. Please, somebody, explain this to me. I don’t understand. And I’m sorry I didn’t get in his face myself, but I can barely lift a bowling ball.

Let’s end on a high note.

Mmmmmm. Madeline Stamer.

What, you wanted LOLcats?

 You did, didn’t you?

Why do you stay up so late?

I’ll tell you, if you really want to know:
remember that day you lost two years ago
at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler
with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore?
Most of them went dark and nothing more,
but sometimes one would blink the secret color
it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.
This is how you knew the ones to keep.

So I collect the dull things of the day
in which I see some possibility
but which are dead and which have the surprise
I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell–
so I look at them and look at them until
one thing makes a mirror in my eyes
then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.
This is why I sit up through the night.

Don Paterson

Saying Yes To The Universe

Took a voicemail from a woman named “Olga” the other day.

One more item crossed off the Life To Do List!

***

 Life’s To Do List has been moderately lengthy of late, which leads to the no-updating of the blog. If I had my druthers, Life’s To Do List would be handled by a crack team of cheerful Boy Scouts named “Skippy” and “Royal”–there would be whole merit badges to be gained via the organization of my desk, regarding which the phrase “nuclear winter” comes to mind–but as matters stand, it’s just me. Nose to the grindstone, that’s what.

That saying has always discomfited me. “Nose to the grindstone!”

ME: Ow!

***

See?

***

A random list of  available Boy Scout merit badges:

Bugling
Backpacking
Composite Materials
Drafting
Fingerprinting
Home Repairs
Radio
Whitewater

A random list of available Girl Scout merit badges:

A Healthier You
Art In the Home
Being My Best
Celebrating People
Camp Together
Doing Hobbies
Healthy Relationships
Ms. Fix-It

***
Do I need to go on? I needn’t, need I?

***

“Ms. Fix-It”! Bwahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa gender roles.

***

Also “Doing Hobbies”.

***

Kimbo and I took a last-minute trip to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, last weekend.

 We brought snacks. Kimbo cut up a pepper.

Also, there was a ferris wheel.

 

Kimbo bought a small wooden bird from a wood-carving man at a craft fair. He was grizzled and kindly.

He told us that the color of each bird was the exact color of the wood from which they were carved.  They are unpainted, but lacquered–”umpteen coats” worth, as I overheard him telling a prospective customer.

He does not have a website. Kimbo got a business card.

We walked by this painting. It’s the one on the bottom that caught our hearteyes.

 I had to eat a bratwurst immediately to regain control of myself.

***

Whatever the universe asked of us that day, we said “Yes!” or “Yes, we will!”

UNIVERSE: Stop by this vaguely unnerving farmhouse yard sale and examine old pots!
KIMBO AND ME: Aye aye!

They were selling–what, like Mason jars?–for some serious dollars. Those farmhouse yard salers! Give them an inch, and they’ll thresh a mile on their combine! Ha ha! Whew.

***

The “m” key isn’t working very well on my laptop right now. I’ll be clacking away, and then suddenly realize that the sentence I’ve just typed reads “The rain in Spain falls ainly on the plain” or “I don’t like ja on y bread” or “Holy ackerel!”  It’s like typing with a head cold. One of these days, some kind of chaos is going to erupt over this “m” issue. Mark my words.

SOMEONE VERY IMPORTANT WHO HAS RECEIVED AN E-MAIL FROM ME: My name isn’t “Ary”.
ME: I’ sorry.

 

The House
Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes
For a last look at that white house she knew
In sleep alone, and held no title to,
And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.
What did she tell me of that house of hers?
White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;
A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;
Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.
Is she now there, wherever there may be?
Only a foolish man would hope to find
That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.
Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

Richard Wilbur

I Am Energy

I don’t really have a good explanation for showing this to you, opening the whole blog with it, even; it was posted on a Livejournal board I was reading this weekend. If’n I’d been drinking something, water or such, I would’ve spat it to the Mississippi.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

***

I MEAN COME ON

***

Livejournal is such a funny beast [and the Twitter, and the Facebook, natch].

Every time I think I should delete my Facebook account, someone I went to high school with posts about their baby daughter taking her first steps in the Grand Canyon during the harvest moon, or something. And then I’m like…well.

That’s very nice, knowing that, I suppose.

***

Speaking of babies:

My niece’s FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN.

I remember when she was THE SIZE OF A YAM.

I called her the night before, to wish her the best of luck.

MY NIECE: Hi, Aunt Emilie!
ME: It’s your first day of school tomorrow! Aren’t you so excited?
MY NIECE: Aunt Emilie, guess what?
ME: What?
MY NIECE: Tomorrow is my first day of school. 

***

I think it’s time for some News From the Wastes of  Outer Space, don’t you?

From NASA [actual headline]:

Tropics of Saturn’s Moon No Tropical Paradise On Some Days

[I almost died right there]

Apparently:

“Astronomers have identified a storm cell on Titan the size of the country of  India.”

Scientists apparently located a “significant mass of methane clouds in a cold desert area where no clouds were expected”.

Methane clouds. Methane clouds! Also “cold desert area”.  And this is the stuff of tropics! God in His wisdom, I tell ya.

Did you know that Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system?

It doesn’t look like much to write home about, I’ll grant you, but it has methane storms the size of India!

Elsewhere on the NASA site: something called the Planck space telescope has “begun to collect light left over from the Big Bang explosion that created our universe”.

Later:

“The answer [to questions about the origins of the universe] is hidden in ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, which has travelled more than 13 billion years to reach us.”

Um…cosmic microwave background?

THE PHRASE “ANCIENT LIGHT” > THE PHRASE ”COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND” 

Sometimes I think these guys use copies of the Oxford English Dictionary for target practice. 

SCIENTIST ONE: Pretty words! Who needs ‘em?
SCIENTIST TWO: They’re only good for wooing the women!
SCIENTIST ONE: [Sigh.]

***

I saw the below, this weekend. And this ridiculous picture made one tiny crack in my LOLcats armor. I laughed. I continue to maintain that cats are not funny. But.

Let us never speak of this again.

 

The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart

The wind blows
through the doors of my heart.
It scatters my sheet music
that climbs like waves from the piano, free of the keys.
Now the notes stripped, black butterflies,
flattened against the screens.
The wind through my heart
blows all my candles out.
In my heart and its rooms is dark and empty.
From the mantle smashes birds’ nests, teacups
full of stars as the wind winds round,
a mist of sorts that rises and bends and blows
or is blown through the rooms of my heart
that shatters the windows,
rakes the bedsheets as though someone
had just made love. And my dresses
they are lifted like brides come to rest
on the bedstead, crucifixes,
dresses tangled in trees in the rooms
of my heart. To save them
I’ve thrown flowers to fields,
so that someone would pick them up
and know where they came from.
Come the bees now clinging to flowered curtains.
Off with the clothesline pinning anything, my mother’s trousseau.
It is not for me to say what is this wind
or how it came to blow through the rooms of my heart.
Wing after wing, through the rooms of the dead
the wind does not blow. Nor the basement, no wheezing,
no wind choking the cobwebs in our hair.
It is cool here, quiet, a quilt spread on soil.
But we will never lie down again.

Deborah Digges

Remember That One Time?

Remember that one time, when I said that I’d post on Wednesday or Thursday of last week, and then–sure as the sun will rise–I never, ever did? I just–I–you know, let’s just look t’other way on this one, and act like it never happened. 

I would have been no good to you, anyways. Imagine, if you will, a ghost made of strawberry Jell-O trying to write a blog. Your fingers don’t even hit the keys. You’re a ghost, for one, and for two, Jell-O isn’t very substantive.

“Electric Jell-O,” is what my friend Lisa called me, to be fair. How can Jell-O be electric? It can. I was there. I saw.

 ***

Saw the movie “Born Yesterday” in Grant Park, last Tuesday; have you ever seen it? My God, my God! The audience laughed and laughed, giddy and appreciative, in the way we modern audiences simply don’t laugh at our modern comedies, what with their high ratios of throw-up and bromance [both good, in their way--believe you me].

I’m going to be imitating Judy Holliday for the rest of my life. Her voice sounds like a cross between a mallard duck and a five year-old girl trying to sell you a Bratz doll out of the back of a truck. 

See?

***

For the record, I am vehemently opposed to Bratz dolls.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY

My daughters are going to play with crude dolls their Pa fashions for them out of corn husks. No lie. If it’s good enough for Laura Ingalls Wilder, it’s good enough for me. Those Ingalls girls! They could get fun out of an empty flour sack.

LAURA INGALLS WILDER: The train’s* pulling into the station! Choo, choo! I sure hope it’s got some millet on board, to get us through this hard prairie winter!

*Flour sack

***

What do you mean by “That looks terrifying”?

***

Many family members in town this weekend, for the seeing of my play. I wonder if I will ever see anything I’ve written performed without working myself into a sixty-seconds-from-heart-failure state. It’s a problem.

*Lights up*

ME: This is my last night on earth.

Somewhere in there, tears of nervousness/joy/laughter  usually start running down my face, although this year I blame that on the fact that, in the piece’s climactic dance-off scene, one of the characters pretended to shoot an AK-47 and throw it off-stage. I nigh on to cracked me a rib, laughin’!

It was all him.

***

I spent the last week of July on a temp assignment which required me to stand on the street and assist passers-by. Each day, a different street intersection, a different Chicagoland area neighborhood; a different temp partner-in-crime with whom to while away the sunny hours. [You learn lots about someone, in six hours. You learn L-O-T-S. How people want to be FBI agents, or start a business making parasols. You talk about God.]

The entire experience was like a sprawling, street-level sociological experiment, honestly: Who wants to be helped? Who doesn’t? And who takes the opportunity to sink an arrow shaft into a friendly-faced temporary employee?

THE BEST PLACE I WORKED AND PEOPLE WERE SO NICE AND MY HEART: Hyde Park.

THE WORST PLACE I WORKED AND PEOPLE WERE SO DISMISSIVE AND RUDE: Old Town

Other workers surveyed said that Lincoln Square topped their list of Largest Amount of Individuals Behaving Like Sanctimonious Na-Nas. Multiple workers, in point of fact. Lincoln Square! Pull it together, Lincoln Square, and stop acting like you’re God’s gift. You’re cute, and all. I get it.

***

Ah, Hyde Park…Hyde Park, where I had never been, to my great shame; Hyde Park, blissful and light-dappled and eclectic; Hyde Park-I-want-to-live-in-you. The further away I got from Hyde Park, the more acutely my heart ached. It knew that I had found my home. I blinked when I got off the Metra at Millenium Station and came up onto Michigan and Randolph, with one berskooillion people walking the streets. “Not Hyde Park,” said my heart. I walked to Daley Plaza to get on the blue line. Critical Mass bikers were waiting there [on a side note, a personal breakthrough in the act of Not Having A Heart Attack When I Suddenly Come Upon Hundreds Of People On Bikes] and my heart said, “Not Hyde Park.” Nothing and nobody was Hyde Park, and I need to get back there, soon.

Poem very hard to pick this week. This is a thing that happens.

One goes on.

 

Crush

Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can’t
really eat them. Or you
wouldn’t want to. If you grab
the soft skin with your fist
it somehow feels funny,
like you’ve been here
before and uncomfortable,
too, like you’d rather
squish it between your teeth
impatiently, before spitting
the soft parts back up
to linger on the tongue like
burnt sugar or guilt.
For starters, it was all
an accident, you cut
the right branch
and a sort of light
woke up underneath,
and the inedible fruit
grew dark and needy.
Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.

Ada Limón