May Babies

There's a string of birthdays this month in my family. Dad's is today, followed by cousin Melissa on the 7th, Granny Gene on the 14th, Aunt Betsy on the 15th, Grandma Swanson on the 16th, and my own the next day. One of them is gone and the others I don't see very often.

I was walking out the back door of my apartment last week and noticed Lily of the Valley had sprouted along the back brick wall. It's May's flower and was my Granny Gene's favorite. It's the one plant besides the hearty Hostas that have survived my parents' yard over the years. Today the little white bells are blooming some more and I am shocked that it's almost the middle of the year. Another year...

I wrote this about my dad in college...happy birthday Dad.

I.
It was as Summer should smell to me;
of warm air and engine grease,
old wood and rusted machinery
and the sound of my father hoisting up the shed door.
Rolling on oiled tracks the old plank
bent and cracked
peeling white paint
sending spiders to scatter
back to the shade of a spare tire.

II.
I never had a playhouse, or a treehouse,
but I always had the trees.
It was on these summer days
when the breeze was warm and deep and soaked with green
that kids could play and never grow
too tired or too bored
to run and sweat until the sky burned out.
Hiding in branches, crouching in the bushes,
we made our way through tangled timberlands
and sat in beds of fallen needles,
making playthings of pinecones and rocks.
When you are young and imaginitive
shelter is easy to come by.

III.
Late one year,
I discovered the pines
stripped from the waist
of their branches,
scarred trunks crudely marked, dripping
a patchwork of ugly black tar.
I would have rather watched the trees in a skirt of brittle orange,
break
and fall in time
with heavy snow...
I was angry.

Now, lilies of the valley find sanctuary
in the clearing beneath those pines,
blessing the soil.
Bowing in the shade more generously
thank memories ever would.
Walking the yard with my father years later,
I had forgotten the tar
washed away by years of weather.
We looked at the big white pine,
he reached to touch the blemished bark
with his palm, and yes, there it was!
Patched and healed with time...
It didn't seem so terrible
after all.

Hey Anakin

I remember sitting on my parents' bed around the age of eight...holding the yellow plastic box from our medicine cabinet; it was filled with ointments and utensils. There was a blade; it was a covered scalpel-type tool and I knew I wasn't supposed to put it to my skin...I knew what it was for and what it would do. Still, I was compelled to feel it, see what would happen if sharpness met my flesh. I removed the cap and sliced my finger. I wasn't trying to hurt myself...I just couldn't stop myself from seeing if what I knew could hurt...would.

I had a recurring dream around the same age. There was a monster around my parents' house...I knew it...I knew it was scary too. I would call for it, tempt it with apple juice, "monster...oh, monster....", I remember calling from the garage door. Inevitably the monster would appear and I was terrified. It didn't stop me from luring it out somehow it in the next dream...just to see if the thing I feared would come when I called it.

Was cutting my finger inevitable without putting the blade to my skin?
Was the monster destined to show up at my door without temptation?
It could have gone either way.

I find myself asking these questions twenty years later because my life and dreams seem to be wrapped up in the same patterns. I wrote in a journal once as a young adult that I feel the need to stretch everthing to its breaking point...so I can understand the breadth and depth of any matter.

Someone very dear to me challenged my concept of reality last night. "If you believe x, then x is what is going to happen." That's a very bold statement. Is belief an action...a choice? I suppose it is...and I don't want to go on forever believing in actions that I know will hurt me. If fate should have it that I reach into a box of medical utensils and cut my finger, so be it. If a monster shows up unnanounced at my door, I will meet it. If not...

I think I need to give it a rest and take a chance on the things in life that I don't know.

Pushing Dirt

Attempting to sweep away the cobwebs, organize my life in file-folders...listening to my latest mix CD...sipping on wine this sunday. I love it...THANKS AGAIN FOR THE MUSIC JENNY!!!

Left the house for a grand half-hour and nodded at the new green shoots just off the sidewalk. I love March...just a little relief...just a enough to get us past the next snow, some more cold...pushing dirt...just enough hope.

Been working on updates to lisaragland.com.

I'm pretty much...completely in love with this guy.

I feel lucky. Happy St. Patty's Day!

NO NO NO NO

I call bullshit



I'm sick with some sort of flu but there is only so much sleep one can force themselves into. Since I am bound to inactivity and trying my best to avoid complete boredom, I have resorted to reclining on my couch-bed with the tv remote.

So I'm flip flip flipping during commercials for the E! True Hollywood Story; Donald Trump...and come across a profile on an art dealer. This woman caters to extremely rich people and advises them on adding to/preserving/showcasing their art collections.
Blah blah blah...she visits back rooms of museums to keep up-to-date on the latest pieces of art for sale...blah blah blah...and then I see one of these spin paintings by contemporary artist Damien Hirst. For sale. For $20,000.

No way. If I thought bullshit then...my thoughts were solidified when I read the description of these "spin paintings" posted on the webpage above. It's not that I disagree that each painting is unique...it's just that WHY IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE INTERESTING? I'd rather have my cousin's 20 year old spin art tee shirt framed and hung on my wall. I found it much more intriguing to watch a clip last year of Bjork making a spin painting while strings attached to her fingers released paint as she played the piano. Maybe just maybe I find that act to illustrate something MORE about action, reaction, experimentation and chance...

Hirst merely pours his paint on to a spinning circular canvas...I am currently looking up more info on the artist...whos name I've heard thrown around since I was in art school;

" Hirst actively seeks to achieve a sense of randomness in his spin paintings (formless splashes of color created by pouring paint onto spinning, circular canvases). The artist explains the source of inspiration for his series of spot paintings: "The aim is to set up a kind of visual humming...they represent the ultimate variety of life...and are random attempts to communicate within a rigid system."

I am so uninspired by the art world right now.

(The sound of wind beating against parentheses)

The wind is blowing very hard tonight.

and btw, i'll be blogging from my work travel blog for the next nine days. see you later.
www.pencilpaperkeyboarderaser.blogspot.com

Laura

I tried writing a letter to my roommate when we moved out last October. I found a draft on my computer tonight...and I can't finish it. This letter...I don't think...needs an ending or a conclusion. I think now; that must be the whole point.



February, 2006, before we actually moved in together, I attended a birthday dinner for your sister. As we sat next to eachother, sharing Indian cuisine ,I was blown away…drained, in fact, by your energy. By the end of the night I barely had anything to say; you seemed to suck the air I could expend for words like a vacuum…and churn it into a conversation of your own. You had the most beautiful blue eyeshadow on.

69 was our address and it couldn’t fit us more perfectly. A Taurus and a Scorpio, the builder, the destroyer, a girl who tries to crunch a beauty routine into twenty minutes a day and a girl who spends hours in front of a mirror before any given event…I kept my door closed, and you were not afraid to open it. I tried to keep my possessions to myself…you did not hestitate to grab my dishes and silverware, mixing it in with your own. We are very different people, yet somehow our paths in life seemed to mirror one another. As I write this, I want you to know that I wouldn’t change one thing that we experienced in the past year and a half.

We cried like babies, laughed like little girls and shared uncomfortable moments that made me realize that you have to get messy in order for anything in this world to have meaning...that you have to deal with dirt in order to learn what it means to be a woman. We're both still learning.

The night we moved out of the apartment you said something as we stood in the doorway…looking down an empty hallway…into an empty kitchen where you used to share your home-cooked meals with me,

“When we moved in here, it was like we both wanted so badly to be something.”

I'M OBSESSED!

I can't stop watching this video!!! The music, the "artistic" placement of the food bowls, those greedy little kittens....and again...THE MUSIC!

Dear Juke,

I have no regrets, I still think you are beautiful...I still look fondly upon the day my man signed for your package...and i squealed as I took you out of the box and held you in my hands. You are so tiny and neat. I like the...idea of you...but alas I have realized you are not the phone for me...and back to the store you must go.

Sigh,
L.

This is the second to last thing I entered in my sketchbook:



And this is the last:



That had to have been a month ago...COME ON! Time to move on...hopefully posting these will force me to doodle some more.

My parents are in town for the holidays and suddenly I don't know what to do to entertain them. This morning my dad and I were sitting on the couch...I was on my laptop...and he said to me, "What would you do without a computer?".

I don't know.



Once again, I have let tending to standard holiday etiquette slip by. I am constantly amazed at those who make the time to make others feel important...how do you do it? And thank you.

button your coat
and pull up the collar,
tense up and shiver
with chattering teeth.
red nose and blue lips
night kidnaps the hours,
scrape all the windows
and turn up the heat.


i don't have anything to blog about, really.

Simply.

'Tis the season...

warm and dry are constantly compromised.

Jenny got a new place...


MikeO's neighbors are at it again...

On to the next blog...

So there's this poem by Lewis Carroll that I've never read.

I have, however...like so many other things, read about it on Wikipedia...and somehow it seems to fall in line with the end of 2007.

According to this article, Carroll is quoted as saying, "I was walking on a hillside, alone, one bright summer day, when suddenly there came into my head one line of verse — one solitary line — 'For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.' I knew not what it meant, then: I know not what it means, now; but I wrote it down: and, sometime afterwards, the rest of the stanza occurred to me, that being its last line: and so by degrees, at odd moments during the next year or two, the rest of the poem pieced itself together, that being its last stanza."

The Snark is a fictional character which is described as being "unimaginable".
Carroll further explains, "Periodically I have received courteous letters from strangers begging to know whether The Hunting of the Snark is an allegory, or contains some hidden moral, or is a political satire: and for all such questions I have but one answer, I don't know!"

2008 awaits;

This morning I slept past my alarm and woke to a text message from a friend..."Snow!" I am thinking of last Winter, when everything cold seemed new again...when pushing cars from icy roadsides made me laugh...I couldn't have imagined that having no job and no money was possible. I couldn't have planned any of it. This morning seemed warm-ish despite the white...until I wiped my windsheild with a bare hand-OUCH!


So here are my resolutions for the new year (and yes, I dare make some);

•Search for the unimaginable
•
•Learn the rules of rhyme and meter

The second bullet point is my reminder to be patient with the process of knowing...and to be okay with the things I may never know.