Artistes, Or: This Blog Feels Kinda Stuck-Up

The amount of people who happen upon this blog because they’re performing an image search for Garfield the Cat is mindblowing. My mind lands across the room every time I see new evidence of this trend. It goes flying.

He’s a lovable rascal, that Garfield. There’s no blame here.

***

I finally visited the Art Institute’s Modern Wing last Thursday with Kimbo.

Because it was free, we stood in a long-but-swiftly-moving line to get inside. And once we were inside, Kimbo was asked to check her backpack. And then she had to drain the contents of her water bottle, because she was not permitted to check her bag with a water bottle inside, containing water, which–as we all know–contains dangerous, flesh-eating properties, which would compromise the safety of the Art Institute’s coat check employees; water which would spontaneously re-arrange its molecular structure to become an enormous Water Monsterperson, breaching the boundaries of Kimbo’s backpack and surging through the museum lobby on a Flesh-Eating Mission aaaaaaaaaaaaaieeeee!

But I digress.

Once we made it to the Wing, it was lovely. I did get lambasted by a security guard for allowing my hand to gently touch the wall in the Contemporary exhibit. I just wanted to see what it felt like.

SECURITY GUARD: Don’t touch the art!

I wish I could get lambasted for some real misdemeanor in an art exhibit. If they’re going to raise their voice to me from across the room, as though I’ve literally just LICKED A PAINTING, why not really give them something to cry about?

SECURITY GUARD: Are those goldfish?

Now we’re talking.

***

Herewith: What I liked, and what I didn’t like, in the Modern Wing. Obviously, visual art is a wildly subjective medium blahblahblahblaaaaaah, and what floats my boat mayn’t float yours. Also, I should just say that modern art–specifically, “contemporary” art–usually feels incredibly insincere to me. I get all worked-uppy and irritated and hackled, looking at it. I wrote a song, while I was wandering the Modern Wing, and these are the words:

I’m self-indulgent, and I have my work in the Modern Wiiiiiiing

Finally, while I concede that Everything In All the World is Technically Art, I will not concede that chairs are art. Exhibits of chairs have stuck in my art-craw for years. It’s a chair.  You sit in it.

Ugh.

Go ahead. Call me a Neanderthal.

YOU: Isn’t it “Philistine”?

***

WHAT I LIKED IN THE MODERN WING

1. Cy Twombly exhibit

It’s up right now, until mid-September. Sehr gut.

2. Anything Max Ernst 

Especially “Spanish Physician”, and wouldn’t you know it? This is the sole example of that painting on the entire Internet:

Seriously, if it were bigger, I bet you’d totally like it.

3. The building is very pretty and spacious, as buildings go.

4. The Architecture and Design rooms, sans the aforementioned chairs

The delight of this exhibit was in the wee drawings; the architect sitting somewhere at some point with a piece of paper, scrawling scribbles and lines that are bound for buildinghood one day. Framed. Love.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE AT THE MODERN WING

1. Cary Leibowitz’s “Photo Booth Fortune” 

We’re talking about the Modern Wing. The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the most prestigious art museums in the world.

We’re talking about a series of photo booth pictures with fortune cookie fortunes affixed to them.

Am I missing something here? I’m missing something, obviously. Because this piece looked like dreck to me; but who am I to say? I’m just an untutored plebe, is what I am. I’ll just pardon myself right out of here and go look at A PICASSO.

2. Almost anything in the contemporary rooms

Or: The part of my brain that appreciates wall-mounted squares of orange glass is inoperable. And it’s not because I think Art Is An Oil Painting, full stop. It’s because those rooms felt aggressively uninteresting, uninspired, and unconnected to the viewer. Many a museum-goer, no doubt, has wandered past “Photo Booth Fortune”, and found themselves transfixed. I just didn’t receive the impression that the artist cared about the moment in which the audience–the viewer, the listener, the reader–closes the circuit that the artist starts when they make their art; the circuit that’s only complete when another human being participates in what the artist creates; when they look, when they listen, when they read; when they trust your intentions, and your intention should be to come to them honestly and with real meaning. Without that moment, you’ve got nothing. Lean your art up against a wall in the garage: No one needs to see it but you. Why do you care if we take a look? You’ve made it clear that you don’t need us; or worse, that you need us to react with confusion or disgust or ennui. We’re not supposed to work so hard to understand what you mean, and that goes for oil painters and poets alike. I’m not picking up what you’re putting down. And you’re putting down bells and whistles.

La la la la la la!

So Kimbo and I got some coffee and tea, right? They have a little counter, with beverages and suchlike; it’s not fine dining. It’s a pit stop, with artsy trash cans. There was a guy our age behind with us, with his lady. Kimbo heard him say:

GUY: How long ago did you brew this coffee? Can I taste it?

I bet that guy totally loved the chair exhibit.

Those chair designers are standing right behind me, aren’t they?

 

Blue Mountain Lake

I sense the trees’ light filtering the room–
knowing nothing about the tulip tree
canoe flipped so its stomach slopes up,
scuffed by quartz tumbled in the shallow drag.
I’ve walked here in the wetness holding rain,
endangered lady slippers dipping petal shoes,
dashes of pink in mud–and you’re not here.
In my dream you write IBIS above
BREAD and RUM–block letter, the R tail
ripped quick, down, as if something shoved your pencil.

There’s a sense of inversion–the tumblehome’s
inward curve of canoe above the water
faces the floor now, would be sloshing in wetness,
inversion in the wood blurring white
sky and itself in the lake. I knew you.
On shelves, round grass or twig baskets
fill with nothing. Tiger lilies are dying.
I’ve heard the dark rustle along your house,
my fingers glowing around a flashlight and touching
blackness, leaves, lumps of chewed blueberries.

Tyler Caroline Mills

It Was Glorious And It Was The Fourth

Thoughts and feelings at my home in regards to the bleeding-eyeball-decibel-level fireworks going off all ’round us on the Fourth of July:

Did someone just blow up a dump truck?

Did someone stick a gasoline-soaked dishtowel into a Coca-Cola bottle, light it on fire, and throw a Molotov cocktail into the backyard?

 Was that an elephant? That was an elephant. They shot an elephant into the sky. That was like an elephant fusillade. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

I’m deaf. I’m deaf and I won’t ever hear Beethoven again. My eardrum feels like a bag of Dole Shredded Lettuce.  

Seriously, though, they were SUPAH loud this year.

We had smoke bombs, but they weren’t very loud. Only colorful. Also smoky.

America: Colorful and smoky.

***

Walking back to my apartment late Sunday afternoon, I passed by a sidewalk-drawing of a hopscotch game.

At the head of the game, directly above the “10″, was drawn a large box. Inside the box, these words:

EVERYONE WINS 

***

Doing some research in the Children’s Book section of the Harold Washington Library on Monday: Many wonders. Do you remember the books about Lyle, the Crocodile?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You do!

I picked up a book about Lyle and a birthday party gone emotionally sideways [what are we to do, when even fictional crocodiles are subject to emotional sideways-ness?]. On the inside cover, there was a sticker. It featured what appeared to be a young Wizard Elf, with pointy ears and a prominent forelock beneath his pointy wizard’s hat ,which featured Images From the Solar System [the "moon", et cetera]. He was flying a book in the manner of a flying carpet. Over the Wizard Elf were the words:

KNOWLEDGE CAN BE UPLIFTING!

Below the Wizard Elf:

This book donated by CITIBANK

You can’t win ‘em all.

***

I would highly, highly recommend any children’s book by David Wiesner, bee the wee. Read Flotsam, say. Dear Lord.

Or Sector 7.

I mean, you just want to take a peek into David Wiesner’s brain!

YOU: What is it with you?
DAVID WIESNER’S BRAIN: You got me, sister.

***

I wonder what the Wizard Elf is named? Hmmmm.

“Splandor”?

No.

***

There is something that happens when you see someone unexpected. At least to me. I have no poker face. I saw someone unexpected–not even a Someone, but a lowercase someone–and my heart almost pounded itself out of my chest in a heart-shaped shape. I have decided that deep-breathing exercises are in order. I could also practice my poker face in the bathroom mirror.

ME:  Now see here, Someone.
MY BATHROOM MIRROR: [disgustedly.] That’s your poker face?
ME: Yes.
MY BATHROOM MIRROR: [rolls up sleeves.]

And the fact that my bathroom mirror doesn’t even have sleeves should indicate how bad it is.

Uh.

 

The Llano Estacado

How much soil do you plow to soothe a conscience?
If you’re a staked-plains,  dry-land, long view man:
a sky’s worth. Some even sown the dry playa
mid-summer with sorghum, the cotton plowed under
after early hail. Thus, not every farmer keeps
an old broken homestead sacred as a graveyard.
Today, no Sharpspin on a pivot for an omen,
no stoic farmer on a turn-row changing water.

Among a little wind grit, in a grid on a grid, somewhere
like the crossroads of outer space and Earth, Texas,
a handful of ragged elms withstand a long sway
of heat and wind. These old guards of a home haunt
the field but wither even as ghosts must.  Honor them
with a walk among homesick bricks, and prophesy good.

John Poch

Sea Change

Sunday afternoon, Lake Michigan. Sitting on some rocks with Kimbo and Laura.

There is a family a few feet away. Three little ones, two boys, one girl. Their mothers in tow. Suddenly:

LITTLE GIRL: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGAHGAHAGHAGAHHHHHHAAHAGAieieieiei!

Her mother rapidly begins to remove the t-shirt the little girl has over her bathing suit; the little girl’s head becomes briefly entangled.

LITTLE GIRL: GoooooooUDHKJSFKHGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
US: Man, what gives?

The mother looks at the t-shirt.

MOTHER: TeeeeIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGODGODOGOGODGOOOLEUUUUU!

The mother looks at us, because at this point, we are openly staring; we are all but poised to flee to the lady lifeguard who keeps walking past us, doggedly surveying the water for drownings and et cetera, to beg her for sweet mercy.

MOTHER: There is a bug–

[Here she gestures with her hands, making a circle shape with her fingers the size of a buttermilk pancake]

THIS BIG!

US: Aaaaaaaaaaiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
MOTHER: I will GET RID OF THIS BUG.

[She has a slight accent, which makes her sound worldly-wise as she says this, like: I stormed the embassy in '92 and the government had placed an embargo on shoe imports and on my feet I wore the leaves of a banana tree and a length of twine and in my heart I wore My People]

She walks down to the edge of the water and starts hurling the shirt into it, over and over.

MOTHER: Bug–you–water–sdfusdkihsb–

I kid you not: We see whatEVER was in that shirt landing on the sand. Yards away, we see it. A bug? You’d better hope, and I’d better hope, that it was a bug, because if it wasn’t, that means that someone has successfully bio-engineered a creature which is a cross between a stag beetle, a Gatling gun, and a bald eagle, and they put it in Lake Michigan, and it’s only a matter of time before you turn on the tap to fill the kettle with water to make your cup of Darjeeling-Oolong- what-have-you and GACK.

When the mother comes back, the shirt is a wet, ragged version of its former self.

ME: [joking, but not really.] Was it a crustacean?
MOTHER: [excitedly] Yes, perhaps a crustacean!

[She widens her eyes, bares her teeth, and curls her hands into claws to imitate what it was that she saw in the t-shirt.]

US: [reflexively recoil]

Shortly thereafter, they packed up their goods, and–with well-wishes all around–they departed.

I think we all knew that we had experienced something very special.

***

Bought chocolate pudding cups this weekend. Sure did.

***

So here’s something I haven’t really done, so much, in this blog-o’-mine. Katie sent me an e-mail, talking about what she called her

Top Five Desert Island Books

I’ve been having a few exchanges on this subject, lately; not necessarily about books of the Desert Island variety, but your general Hey! It’s Summer And Apparently That Means Book Lists For Beach Reading, For People Who Go To The Beach And Read Books Also Simultaneously Too.

I basically know what my favorite books are. My top five-ish, even.

So then I was like, “Well, why not share them?”

I mean?

I mean, when O Magazine and the New York Times both tell me what I, as a woman, should be reading this summer, what I should be pulling out of my artfully distressed straw tote, and I dutifully read the linked excerpt, NYT, and it reads like a pink-heeled lobotomy*–well, you know, uprise! I’ll make my own listy!

*Please note: Sometimes a pink-heeled lobotomy is exactly what you need

1. Bleak House–Charles Dickens

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, so, sososososososo good and many-colored and peopled with amazing peoples and funny and sad and triumphant and weird. A man spontaneously combusts. Also, smallpox! Also: Love.

2. Middlemarch–George Eliot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

George Eliot may have the pseudonym of a man, but she’s all lady. She writes with sonar radar accuracy about the psychological viewpoint of women from any old era–then-era, now-era, you name it. I’m always all, “I HEAR that, Dorothea Brooke” or “Can I get a WITNESS, Maggie Tulliver” or “You keep on LOVING him, Dinah Morris”. My only problem with George Eliot is that she writes The Perfect Woman and then unerringly pairs her with a man comically unworthy of her amazing-ness.  It’s exactly like Charles Dickens, but in reverse. What’s the good word on this tendency? Can we get some equality up in here? [Sorry about saying "up in here" just then.] Anywho, “Middlemarch” wraps itself around your heart valves in a hurry. Class commentary and forbidden love. So fine.

3. The God of Small Things–Arundhati Roy 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This book heart-cracked me. It is covered in magical adjective vines. Please read it. It is too precious to say more.

4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–Mark to the Twain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do I  really need to explain why this is one of my all time favorites? Also, I wanna be a river boat captain, circa This Book.  It is a true and cherished dream. But that would involve a time machine, and time machines are tooooo tempting!

5. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek–Annie Dillard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I quoted this book to everyone I knew for six months. They hated me. “Please stop talking to me about the reproductive system of a bumblebee”, they would say, but I would not, because they needed to know. This book melted me down in a straight-up steel forge. When I start thinking about things like the circulatory systems of maple trees, I understand that, ultimately, I have this book to blame. It is beautiful and nature and God and praying mantises.

You have your honorable mentions, too, when you make your little lists; like Waiting for the Barbarians and Winter’s Tale, which have writing, both, to burst the heart, and millions of others too numerous to mention, like Claire Messud is a really good writer,  and then David Copperfield is soooo lovely and…

The Fountainhead.

Oh, shut up.

***

Hey, did you-all see that Farrah Fawcett and Ayn Rand were buddies, after a certain fashion, and that Ayn Rand wanted Farrah Fawcett to PLAY DAGNY TAGGART in a potential TV movie of “Atlas Shrugged“ ? Do you know how totally super weird that is? I’m getting the weirds just thinking about this.

Dagny Taggart should probably be played by Angelina Jolie, push comes to shove.

You’re never gonna hear me say that again.

Well, maybe.

 

Chagrin

It wasn’t the life I would have wanted,
had I known what sort of life I did want,
as if anyone ever knew; though I

did know. Everyone had her shadow life,
her should-have life, the life she should have had,
all those thoughts sharp-sharking into her soul,

all those doodles on the skin of the day.
The shame, that this had been and this had not,
could-should, kowtowing to the life of should,

the shock, let’s say, of seeing it had passed,
the chagrin, let’s say, the savage chagrin
that this was what it was, et cetera,

who did I think I was, et cetera,
the queen of Sheba in her shantytown,
or Shirley in her temple (such a doll)

or Scheherezade waking to the day–
not Sylvia, not the sylvan huntress.
The whole shebang was a shambles, hello,

shanghaiing my wishes, shout it out, shout,
those stories of what was and never was,
love, voyage, give me succor–sugar–suck–

hushing the heart and shushing the senses.
Hello, day, shake the sheets out, wake the day.
(As I said this, I was choking up.)

The challenge of cheerfulness–hello, charm–
charade and charm, chameleon, cameo.
I saw the dawn and fell into a hush.

Sarah Arvio 

 

Weddingest

My mother and I were in a Kroger’s grocery store last Thurday morning, buying goods against the arrival of many, many family members coming into town for 

My Brother’s Wedding

As we paused in the meat section, I noticed a man in a long, white butcher’s coat, broad of shoulder and tall of leg–he was the Lumberjack of Butchers, one might say–ambling up to the pork chops some yards off. Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart” played overhead on the Kroger Soundsystem.

As Toni reached the portion of the song where she really breaks it down that her heart is broken and it needs unbreaking, I heard a keening, high-pitched noise. I looked at the butcher.

KROGER’S BUTCHER: [singing.] Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…

!

I looked around, wild-eyed, but no one else had seen but me.

The Kroger’s butcher unbroke my heart in that moment, I can tell you what.

***

There was also a large contingent from the Greenwood Fire Department in the Kroger’s, buying–I dunno, meat and potatoes?

My mother told me that there seems to be members of the the Greenwood Fire Department wandering the aisles just about every blamed time she finds herself in Kroger’s. Once, the firemen were tossing food items to and fro, hither and yon, as firemen will do in a Kroger’s at 10 o’clock in the morning, as though they were tossing hoses or small family pets. My mother said to the firemen:

MY MOTHER: [jokingly]. You guys need to find a fire to fight.
FIREMEN: [dead-eyed stare]

Just because you fight fires doesn’t mean you can’t have a sense of humor.

***

My brother’s wedding! It was terrific. My brother’s wife–for she is his wife now, and I must call her so–was such a beautiful bride that we all had to take care that our eyeballs didn’t sear shut just LOOKING at her. “She should be in ‘Bride Magazine’”, some ladies said, and also “Ai, my eyeballs have seared shut!” That’s how beautiful she was. Like half-mermaid, half-Helen of Troy.

I love the headline above which reads: “One Week to Go? Get Gorgeous Fast.”

Like, “You currently resemble chipped eggs on toast, but we’ll try our best to whip that mug of yours into shape, girlfriend.”

***

When I walked down the aisle in my bridesmaid’s garb, I immediately and unhesitatingly went to the wrong place in line.

MY SISTER: Over here!

I am an idiot.

***

At the reception, my father gave a beautiful toast, about praying to St. Raphael, the saint of happy meetings, and my brother and his wife. Theirs was a happy meeting. I love that phrase: “happy meeting”. I love Myranda, too. I defy you to find a better sister-in-law. It’s the half-mermaid in her, I think.

I have NO pictures from this wedding yet, but I will. But here. Here’s a picture from the November wedding I was in. What the hell, right?

Man, that was a good wedding.

There was the ocean.

***

So…no poem this week. There’s just nothing fitting, at the moment. I decided that I would rather say nothing than say something that wasn’t quite right.

Next week, there will be poetry.

Too serious. Let’s see. How about one of those LOLcats abominations?

I know.

Dearest

What? I can’t call you “dearest”? Dearest dearest dearest. 

***

Finally saw “Star Trek” on Saturday. The sequence of events which opens the movie…I mean…

u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-blee-blee-blee-blee

I glanced over at Bridgid, somewhere in there; we were both in tears. I mean…I mean. J.J Abrams played our heartstrings like a fiddle, he did. Like a plaintive outer space fiddle. Carved from an alien tree. Probably from some planet named Angblub XV. A purple tree, I bet. It’s outer space, after all.

I mean, I’m granting that I openly weep at a lot of things. Like this commerical. 

I mean WHY don’t you just PULL my HEART out of my CHEST.

***

Speaking of things which make me cry:

MOUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIIII!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

***

Headlines of selected op-eds relating to the Iranian election:

NEW YORK TIMES: “Neither Real Nor Free”

WASHINGTON POST: “Neither Fair Nor Free”

Then:

USA TODAY: “Iran’s fishy election results”

Iran’s fishy election results.

Sheeeeeer poetry!

Auuuuugh, USA Today! Auugh! 

I was trying to think of another way to say “Way to appeal to your eejit concept of the ’Joe Lunchbucket’ contingency, USA Today!”

I came up with “Jimmy Dinnerpail”.

What?

***

Nobody needs you to dumb this down for them.  Don’t you get me wrong. I think everyone understands that Ahmadinejad has muscacholi pasta where his brains and heart should be? Overcooked muscacholi pasta, that is, and mixed with tarantulas. Don’t eat it, Iran!

Unless you voted for him, in which case…well. My support of the pseudo-democratic process prohibits from me from accusing you of having muscacholi pasta for brains, even if you do, which you do.

***

My brother is getting married on Friday! It’s terribly exciting. I’ll report back, I promise.

***

When I was on the train this weekend, I saw an adolescent boy. He wore white athletic socks pulled all the way up his legs; his physique suggested that he could put away three piglets on a slow day, and gain nary a pound. 

His t-shirt said [this is real; I surreptitiously scribbled the beginning of the formula down on a scrap of paper]:

“What Part Of

Don’t You Understand?”

Sweet boy!
 

 

The Aqueduct

Lie down someone said and I fell asleep
under the only tree around for miles:
a scrawny thing but sprawling–purple
wood, low to the ground, more bramble
than branches. There were houses hidden
in the canyons, I’d dreamed many times
of a white one with green shutters sunk
into a sandy dune along the San Andreas.
Under the tree I dreamed you were living
there in one of the upstairs rooms; you knew
I was waiting but wouldn’t come out, and I
awoke, then, covered in seeds. Had they fallen
from the tree? It looked a long time gone
to be giving up seeds. What would they let
loose on my desert? What kind of unfamiliar,
thorny thing? The word murderous came
straight to mind: for all I knew, and all I had
yet to imagine.

Jennifer L. Knox

Friends, Motorcycles

At the Printer’s Row Book/Lit/WhatEVER Festival on Saturday, Katie and I found a children’s book called:

Motorcycle Chums in the Adirondacks

This is really true.

What?

There is a character in “Motorcycle Chums” named “Freckles”–I saw, when I flipped ‘er open. I think I read something along the lines of:

“‘Gee!’ said Freckles, with a wide grin. “Now you’re talking.’”

Really, like that.

Also, just look you at that poor rabbit! He’s all hell bent for leather, hopping on out of the way. Watch the road, “Freckles”; if that is your Christian name, which I doubt. Freckles–in point of fact–looks like he has a hankering for some ragoût de lapin, which in French means that is one delicious looking rabbit. No?

***

Upon further research, I learned–ah, God!–that there is an entire SERIES of literary Motorcycle Chum-dom. Their two-wheeling adventures don’t begin and end in the Andirondacks. Other titles I located:

Motorcycle Chums in Yellowstone Park

Motorcycle Chums on the Santa Fe Trail [?????????]

Motorcycle Chums in New England [My roommate: "I smell trouble!"]

They all have the same cover; the same motorcycle-riding chums, speeding a rabbbit to kingdom come.

***

Perhaps this is because the Santa Fe Trail and “New England” just don’t lend themselves to the heart-pounding imagery a book about Motorcycle Chums practically requires.

I mean:

 Loooooook out, y’all!

FRECKLES: I’m gonna pop a wheelie over that steeple!
CHUM: Nooooooooooooooo!

***

For the record, the copy of the book that we saw cost $45.

***

Overheard at Printer’s Row:

MAN: Rhodesian.
[pause.]
WOMAN: Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

 

More Rain

Red, hard-shelled berry clusters
smothered shrubs and crazed brush
I saw from a bridge above the creek.
My two weeks in the woods
to get away from you, from us.
I went down the wet bank to cut
a bouquet of berries that I found
were ladybugs, hundreds of them,
each shell case bulbing more.
I wanted to share that sight with you.
I even planned how I’d tell it,
happy you couldn’t see it when I did.

Same day. Same frame. Small trees
stood midstream in mounds scooped
from feeble banks by recent storms
when the water overcame
its narrow channel. Its force
tore screwy tracks deeper and wider
until those skinny trees bobbed loose.
Same thought. How I’d shape words
to fit that becalmed rich feeling
of extremity. Another story
brought back alive to tell you
or not, if I see you again.

W.S Di Piero

June Is Bustin’ Out All Over, Except Not

I work near DePaul University, and sometimes I go to the bizarre-ish Dominick’s grocery store on Fullerton. Because it is near DePaul University, I have started playing a game when I go to this Dominick’s. The game is called:

What Do College-Aged Guys Purchase At The Grocery Store

It is a tremendously entertaining game, and good to pass the time in line. Yesterday’s round was a solid one. Four boxes of Lucky Charms. This is true.

***

I mean, I have four brothers; it’s not like one person buying four boxes of Lucky Charms really blows my hair back. I’m just sayin’. Locusts!

Love you guys!

***

Ah, Google image search: You destroy me. Below, a yield from “Lucky Charms”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE

I sure am sleeping with the light on tonight!

***

Maple seeds–what folk call “helicopters”, I’ve been told–are everywhere. Ever-where.

All last week I kept staring at them and thinking, “Maple keys. Maple keys. Maple keys.” I couldn’t remember where I’d read that they were called maple keys, and then I worried that every time I called them a maple key, I was telling a lie. But then I recalled where I had seen it. I can keep calling them maple keys. That is what they are.

I found a website which ALLOWS YOU TO CREATE YOUR OWN MAPLE KEY OUT OF PAPER.

Let me know how that goes.

***

On Saturday afternoon, I had An Experience Through Which I Am Still Sifting For Its Metaphorical Properties. Namely: I consumed truffles for the first time. They were in a Cheese. 

Truffles were something I’d read of and heard tell of for years and years; a substance apparently so delicious that I would levitate three feet off the ground simply by consuming it. I imagined that, when I finally ate truffles, I would promptly be in hock up to the eyeballs, selling all of my worldly goods to keep the truffle shelf in my pantry well-stocked.

So when I was given this cheese, this truffle-cheese, I was a-twinkle with anticipation. 

ME: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I hated it.

Perhaps it’s simply a reminder that I need to stick to spaghetti and meatballs; no deeper meaning.

I love spaghetti and meatballs.

Mmmmmmm.
 
Disenchantment Bay

Touch and go. Our Cessna bumped the sand.
           thumped its tundra tires,
            lifted as if on wires,
banked over ice and rocked its wings to land.

We pitched our camp hard by the Hubbard’s face,
          some sixty fathoms tall,
          a seven-mile-long wall
seven leagues from Yakutat, our base.

Crack! A blue serac tottered and gave.
          Stunned at the water’s edge
          We fled our vantage ledge
like oyster catchers skittering from a wave.

Separation has become my fear.
          What was does not console,
           what is, is past control–
the disembodiment that looms so near.

Detachment? So an ice cliff by the sea
          calves with a seismic crash
          of bergy bits and brash,
choking a waterway with its debris.

We clear the neap tide beach of glacial wrack,
         pace and mark the ground,
         then wave the Cessna round.
Pilot, we bank on you to bear us back.

Timothy Murphy

It’s What It Is

I learned a new thing.

***

There is a type of supernova called a Type Ia supernova. A supernova occurs when a star explodes.  A Type Ia supernova is related to a white dwarf, supernova-wise, and that’s really, really all the further I’m going with that particular line of thought, because then we’re forced into all this na-na-na about “luminosity” and “the Chandrasekhar limit”, and I’m not saying all that stuff doesn’t ring my bell, I’m just saying we’ve all got lives to lead. 

To wit: As you know–right? You know this, right?–a white dwarf is generally What A Star Becomes after becoming a red giant. Very dense, cold, probably crabby.

WHITE DWARF: I’m only emitting a few thousand Kelvins! Brrrrr!
RED GIANT: Suckah!

Anyway, Type Ia supernovas are apparently also referred to as standard candles.

Standard candles! I kind of love that.

That’s like seriously all I wanted to tell you. 

***

I mean:

Standard candles

 

 ***

Yup! Six of one, half a dozen of the other!

***

Slightly terrifying artist’s rendering of a Type Ia supernova I located, followed by two other slightly terrifying artist’s renderings of–quote– “Accretion and Outflows in a Classic T Tauri Star” and “Black Hole Accretion Disc with Winds and Jets”:

  

                                                                                                                                                                          

Weeeeee-iiiird!

***

That T Tauri Star is WEIRD.  It looks like it has an eyeball. That’s all I’m saying.

***

It’s done, it’s done: “Our Mutual Friend” is done! I sure did smile and laugh my way through the remaining Dickensian pages.  I even inured myself to the heroine, Bella Wilfer, All Time Worst.  Unless we’re talking about Dora Spenlow, from “David Copperfield”, and there again! It’s like a Worst-Off, is what it is. Worst Girl Ever-off. Two girls go in, one girl comes out the…worst.

Uh, I’m done.

***

Two Saturdays ago, I was perambulating down Clark Street with Laura in the warm sunny-shine. We passed a flower-box of pansies on our way. I remarked upon how odd pansies are; how they look as though they have faces. You have seen pansies. You know.

A block later, we passed another flower-box of pansies. Laura bent forward at the waist.

LAURA: [to the pansies.] Hello.

 

In Your Absence

Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.

It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.

Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.

It is only April.
I can’t stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.

Judith Harris

Oo-ooo!

I’m alllllmost done with my latest Dickens, “Our Mutual Friend”. It’s his last novel, and it’s purt’ good. Again, though, as ever: WHY, Dickens, must you pair your protagonists with lady-loves who are such TOTAL GOOBERS? Goobs, I tell you! Goobs!

Somebody with sweet potatoes for brains could see, for instance, that Bella Wilfer and John Rokesmith are the marital equivalent of a peanut butter and tar sandwich. And if you’ve ever tried to eat a peanut butter and tar sandwich, you know where I’m coming from. You are probably also missing your molars.

 Do peanut butter and tar go together? Are these your brains?

 Maybe it’s ’cause Dickens was a philanderer. 

***

Those sweet potatoes look heavenly, though. Let’s not lie about it, or anything.

DICKENS: And there I have you!
ME: Damn you, Dickens!
DICKENS: I win! Me!

***

The space shuttle Atlantis is currently on a mission to repair the Hubble, otherwise known as My Heart. Last Friday, the astronauts worked on replacing the gyroscopes.

This is a gyroscope:

They help keep the telescope pointed a-right.

Anywho, two astronauts–Dr. Massimino and Colonel Good [note: these are their real names] went on a space walk, to fix the gyroscopes, and to replace some batteries, much as you or I might do!

YOU: The cordless phone is dying!
ME: Nuts!
YOU: Well, time for a space walk.

Colonel Good had some trouble replacing one of the batteries, but it finally clink-clanked itself into place.

The article I read goes on to state, quote:

“Congratulating his men, the shuttle’s commander, Scott D. Altman, jokingly quoted King Leonidas of Sparta, who held off the Persians at Thermopylae 2,500 years ago. ‘Remember this day, men,’ said Commander Altman, ‘for it will be yours for all time.’”

That Commander Altman sounds like a real firecracker.

***

Spacewalks are quite interesting, actually. You should go read about them.

 

How I Fell & How It Felt

At the movies, in my suede boots, like a fawn in the dark
startled by the lights, I fall; down the stairs vertiginous steep
I fall all week–and still fall, and still bark
and bloody my shin, and I am still asleep.

Or no, moving from Cheer, to Joy, to All,
I fall like a cumbersomely breaking sack
of groceries in the parking lot. Why call
for help, game hens, why hope for something back?

The “sorrys” go by me, like the jaunty sparrows
pecking the llama’s grain. From a mother’s sleep
I fell into such a state–the slings and eros
of outrageous fortune–I could weep

as Ash (our hero) now begins to weep
vast shining cartoon tears for the beloved
Pokemon who’s died. But tears are cheap
as movie tickets. Everyone is moved

uniformly. I just feel it more
in my right shin. I bet there’ll be a scar.

Jennifer Clarvoe

Better Ye Late Than Never

Okay…so “posting last night” means “I totally didn’t post last night”. My English, it is not so good.

***

I gave myself a Mission last week, and I’m fulfilling it here, today, rightnow:

OLD TIMEY SPARROW

My co-worker Lisa and I spend our days–some of our days; we also work–creating imaginary characters, and writing them songs, and singing the songs, and then laughing a-much. [One such character is named "Edie Pea". Her song begins: "Edie Pea, Edie Pea--she's a pea-sized rodeo rider!" NOTE: NO ONE THINKS THIS IS FUNNY BUT US.] Our newest character is a sparrow. I’m not going into exhaustive detail about the Sparrow, though Lisa and I have built an entire universe of exhaustive detail about the Sparrow. The Sparrow has a voice of his own; a history; a life well-lived.

Somewhere along the line, in the mists of sparrow-time, Lisa decided that the Sparrow was–quote–an old timey sparrow. We imagined him as an old-fashioned capitalist type of bird, with a top hat and a monocle, mistreating his workers.

LISA: Let’s Google “old timey sparrow”!

Nothing.

LISA: Put it in quotes!
GOOGLE: Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Says I: If Google–Google!–cannot produce a single picture of a sparrow in a top hat, one single old timey sparrow, then I need to get cracking.

A sparrow, a top hat, a pair-of-scissors-and-a-glue-stick later:

Mission accomplished.

***

Mother’s Day: A Photo Essay

We did OTHER stuff, too, you know.

***

I found another lilac bush to replace my old dear one, thank God; I pass it on my walk to work. The scent drills you from three houses down, if by “drills you” one means “wafts you to the Heavenly Gates”.

ST. PETER: Mmmmmmmmmmm!

It’s a very unassuming little lilac bush, too. But it smells like true, true love, whatever that smells like, and it probably smells really good.

I have posted this poem before.

Dealio.

To The Harbormaster

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

Frank O’ Hara