We’re in it now, we’re trampling through, we’re trudging as fast we can. This next week is the darkest of the year; each day darker than the day that preceded it. And then we reach the Winter Solstice, December 21, when the earth’s axis is tilted as far from the sun as can be, and that day is the very darkest of all.

[My apologies to my readers in the Southern Hemisphere!]

According to the Farmer’s Almanac:

SUNRISE IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, DECEMBER 21, 2009:  7:14 a.m.
SUNSET IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, DECEMBER 21, 2009: 4:32 p.m.

To put things in perspective:

SUNRISE IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, JULY 14, 2009: 5:28 a.m.
SUNSET IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, JULY 14, 2009: 8:25 p.m.

To put things in still more perspective:

SUNRISE IN FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, DECEMBER 21, 2009: 10:57 a.m.
SUNSET IN FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, DECEMBER 21, 2009: 2:42 p.m.

You know what I’d do if I were in Fairbanks, Alaska, on December 21, 2009? I’d put a  steel bucket on my head, and walk around all day hitting it with a birch tree stick! It’d be all the same to me.

***

Earlier today, in Little Rock, Arkansas, a federal judge ruled that the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers was allowed to place a display celebrating the winter solstice and “‘freethinkers’ such as Albert Einstein and Bill Gates” next to a nativity scene at the state capitol.

Do what you gotta do!

***

Did you know that the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers is on Facebook?

***

I’d like to take a moment to make a few public service announcements, if I may. My friend Abraham’s blog, 52 Teeth [see BLOGROLL, Item One, To Your Right, Way Down Below The Poem Categories Which Desperately Require Some Sort of Order for God's Sakes] is now BACK IN ACTION, to-day, after a hiatus of some months. Please go and check it out for fresh tunes and the freshest writin’ this side of the St. Louis Arch! You don’t even know! Woot!

***

Public announcement the second is shamefully overdue; so shamefully overdue, in fact, that I ought to just hit myself over the head with a large, flat rock and call it a day, because I deserve the concussion I’d get, is the thing.

My friend Fischer has been doing lots of wonderful things this past year, and the world needs to know. Please go to her website, which is this:

HTTP://HAPTICLAB.COM

And there you will find something(s) called Soft Maps. Soft Maps, if I may quote Fischer herself, are:

“Quilted maps of cities and neighborhoods that represent someone’s unique place in the world.”

They are beautiful, special, made with fingers and hands, and they could be YOUR’N!

Go play around on her site; it’s rad. It’s been added to my Blogroll, too.

Ugh, why do they call it a Blogroll? Why? It sounds like a cross between a jelly doughnut and a sea snail with no eyeballs.

Uh.

***

Betcha those sea snails don’t need eyes, though. Why would they? They live on the lightless ocean floor. I’ve seen “Planet Earth.” You can’t pull the wool over my eyes.*

*Let’s be frank–most of the time I operate in an “all wool, all the time” zone

***

This concludes my announcements.

Now back to the snowman pictures!

You think I don’t have more where this came from? I have more.

Such is the Raging

Or how, when last sun,
6 PM, burns off
to a few dust flakes
fluttering above the sink,

a further light will
trick its way inside
the linoleum until
each tile–such is

the raging within
unfinished things–
flickers and swims
in its own negative.

Nate Klug
 

Short blog this week. Short-ishy, I think.

***

On Monday, the Large Hadron Collider became “the world’s highest energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV”, which beat the former record of .98 TeV, held by the U.S.A-based Fermi Lab’s collider. 

A TeV is a teraelectron volt. “Teraelectron” is a million million electron volts, or “lots”, or “ever so many”.

So they took their proton beams, and whatall, and they sent them ’round their underground tunnel:

And it made a thing like this [this is pulled directly from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN's, website]:

 ????????   

***

Whatever it is, it’s good!

They will smash the proton beams into each other, and re-create the Big Bang. Then they’ll tell us all about it.

***

I added the Fermi Lab to my blogroll. It was time. It’s always all “CERN” this and “Large Hadron Collider” that and “glamorous international team of physicists” blah blah blah! I don’t know about you, but I’m an American.*

Go to their website, and give some love to a particle accelerator facility in your own backyard!**

*There are Americans on the CERN team
**If your backyard is Batavia, Illinois

***

I know what you’re thinking. “When is she going to stop writing about the Large Hadron Collider?” you’re thinking. “My eyes haven’t been this glazed over since I pitched face-first into that platter of doughnut holes.” [I'M SORRY]

I promise–it’ll taper off. But the LHC has been off for a year, peeps, and so–for the time being–look for breathless particle acceleration reports from yours truly!

Gee, I feel like a cub reporter.

***

On Monday morning, I sat next to an older woman on the train. She had long, iron-grey hair and a large black coat.  She was reading something I couldn’t see.

At some point, I looked over, and I realized that she was reading letters. They were written on pink legal paper.

Then I realized that they were love letters.

At the top of each page, which I couldn’t help but see, was written one word, in salutation: “Dearest.”  

She would take a letter out of her bag. She would read it, front and back, though perhaps she only skimmed, touched down on the important parts; the odds are good that she’d read them a hundred times.

When she finished each one, she folded it, and then she ripped it into pieces. The pieces went into her bag.

 Then she would pull out the next letter, read it, and rip it apart. Again and again and again.

I only caught three things from looking over at the letters:

1. The word “love”.
2. The sentence “I can’t translate.”
3. The sentence “I took a walk.”

The letters could have been from anyone, of course. But I decided that they must be love letters, because she ripped them apart. She was ensuring that she would never read them again. This is a thing that people do.

***

I really REALLY DIDN’T MEAN TO SOUND SO DEPRESSING

4 REALSIES

***

It was just sort of amazing, is all.

***

Wednesday is my 30th birthday! So there’s that.

I think being 30 will be nice. I hear it is, leastaways.

ME: Hello, 30!
30: Hello!

Well, time to make hot chocolate!

Wood

The last thing I ever wanted was to
write again about grief did you think I
would your grief this time not mine oh good

grief enough is enough in my life that is
enough was enough I had all those
grievances all those griefs all engraved

into the wood of my soul but would you
believe it the wood healed I grew up and
grew out and would you believe it I found

your old woody heart sprouting I thought
good new growth good new luxuriant green
leaves leaves on their woody stalks and I said

I’ll stake my life on this old stick I’ll stick
and we talked into the morning and night
and laughed green leaves and sometimes a flower

oh bower of good new love I would have it
I would bow to the new and the green
and wouldn’t you know it you were a stick

yes I know a good stick so often and then
a stick in my ribs in my heart your old
dark wood your old dark gnarled stalk

sprouting havoc and now I have grief again
and now I’ve stood for what I never should
green leaves of morning dark leaves of night

Sarah Arvio

According to WordPress, the tag that people most often click on to reach Wheat, Not Oats, Dear–the tag that calls out to the most people, the tag with the most compelling siren song, the tag that sings, it would seem–is:

I hate Lolcats

When something like this exists in the world, who among us can be surprised?

***

On Friday, November 20, the Large Hadron Collider re-started operations after a 14-month delay. 

A little over a year ago, when they–The Scientists–OFFICIALLY started operations, and OFFICIALLY started beaming protons around the 17-mile long underground tunnel they built, the “electrical connection between a pair of the collider’s giant superconducting electromagnets vaporized”, which is a nice way of saying “NO DOY, IT WILL GET HOT IN THERE, IF YOU ARE BEAMING PROTONS AT SEVEN TRILLION ELECTRICAL VOLTS!!!!!!!!!!”

I am a fan of scientists. I am also a big fan of pictures of scientists caught in unguarded moments of scientific joy. The CERN [European Organization for Nuclear Research--see also In My Blogroll] website has an entire page of pictures up, at the moment, of this LHC reboot. It’s a bunch of scientists, in a room–I believe the room is called the CERN Control Centre, no lie–trying to make things work. They’re such wonderful pictures, you all. They’ve made me laugh with such joyful laughter, is what.

ME: These pictures must be shared, and I shall tell it like a little story!

I’ve picked the best of the lot.

***

This is one of approximately 30 pictures of scientists grasping their chins, like in the movies.

[You just know that this fellow is a rockstar among physicists. The hawk nose, the leather vest, the raffishly unbuttoned shirt. "Dr. Rock", they call him, except probably the French word for "rock", because this is clearly not an American physicist, and if he is then I don't know what to believe in, anymore. ]

This might be my favorite shot of the lot. Based upon where it’s placed chronologically in the “photo album”, the “main event” has not yet occured. But something special is happening here, nonetheless. It’s like whatever they’re watching, on the screen they’re watching it on, MATERIALIZED INTO THE SHAPE OF SANTA CLAUS.

They wait. Quietly, the scientists wait; they watch.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Also, what's going on with the woman in the bottom of the frame? Can we talk about this?]

ROOOOOAAAAAAAAR! That is the sound of that man’s happy lion laughter.

Let me assure you: If we could see what these people are looking at, we would be none the wiser.

***

The final pictures show the crew settling back into the business of proton collisions; they’re not going to accelerate all by themselves, you know!

On the CERN website, there is a video showing some of the above. On top of the page, in bold, black letters, it states:

LHC is back! Clockwise circulating beam established at ten o’ clock this evening.

***

The below fell somewhere in the middle of the photographs.

BAM.

I thought we should end on a high note.

This weekend, I learned that the oldest individual tree in the world is a 4,841 year-old Great Basin Bristlecone Pine in California called “Methusaleh”, after the very old personage in The Bible of the same name. Its precise location is a secret.

***

GREAT BASIN BRISTLECONE PINE

***

THE WORST METHUSELAH JOKE I HAVE EVER SEEN

YOU TRYING DOING A GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH FOR METHUSELAH

***

What is known of the location of this tree: It is in the White Mountains of California, in a place called the “Forest of Ancients”.

And I wept.

***

Last week, I walked past two different front doors to two different buildings. Two different repairmen were fixing the doors–which were broken–quietly, expertly, no fussin’.

This made me happy for two reasons:

1. People are still expending the effort to fix things that are broken.
2. There are still people who know how to fix things to begin with.

***

I wish I knew how to fix things like broken doors. That would be terribly satisfying.

PERSON WITH BROKEN DOOR: Whew! Thank goodness you’re here, Ol’ Fixy [note: I would renounce my name and go by "Ol' Fixy"]

***

So…they found water on the moon!

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la!

We’ve spoken of the mission to find the moon water, previously, here, and now it’s come to fruition.  The L-cross satellite “kicked up” 26 GALLONS of water!

[I only did three water gallons and I'm already bored]

Anyways, imagine 26 of those!

“The water findings came through an analysis of the slight shifts in color after the impact, showing telltale signs of water molecules that had absorbed specific wavelengths of light.”

R-A-D-D-D-D-D-D

From the NASA website, a visual which explains the above:

“Each line shows a individual ratio of scans starting with earlier times (pre-impact) at the bottom, and later times, moving up. The general increase over time is the result of sunlight reflecting off dust grains in the ejecta cloud. The sharp vertical features which appear shortly after impact, indicated in the shaded blue area, are the emission lines associated with OH. The eight, or strength, of these lines are related to the amount of OH, and hence water, present in sunlight.”

I love–I’m using the word love–love, love, love–that this is basically the scientific way of saying:

“We saw the sun shining on the water.”

Among Elks

Woke in the brume,
lilacs like turf stars.

The late fawn
standing in his syrups;

bucks down the swale
chewing sedge.

We move south
to slopes of sleeping poppy,

past the white alder,
bending heads to scent

of calx–in natural dark
a man tries his hand

at belonging. He
with greave of hide, a born

hood, lay with three
spikes in the green, lay

peak in the breeze.
He whose breathing

wrongs the still.
You stir now to mend,

to redress?
To be one of us, after all this?

Joseph Spece

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

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

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

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

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

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