tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63457615644183546392024-03-14T02:42:56.864-07:00Roll Up The RugsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-6573906237782448002010-05-26T04:37:00.000-07:002010-05-26T05:24:40.329-07:00Small ChangeI've started a new blog called <a href="http://allwriteythen.blogspot.com/">all writey then</a>. It's real plain-jane so far, even more so than this one. I'm not sure what the reason behind the change is.<br /> When I was just out of high school and I started to feel that pressure build up like a storm a coming, that feeling that something needed to change but I felt powerless to make any definitive life movements, I'd put another hole in my ears. I ended up with five in one and four in the other. There was something so satisfying about the chunk-stab of it- like putting a needle through a dried apricot. Or I'd make a dress, or I'd shave my head. Year before last I went through a pie thing where I baked and ate pie every day for about a week and a half. That was great. I love pie.<br /> I guess now I start a new blog.<br /> I haven't been very good so far about replying to my comments. And I haven't put up a blog roll or fleshed it out in any way. It's a new room with a fresh coat of paint and lots of windows and I have a table and a chair there, pen and paper, cup of coffee, and space enough. Would you come to visit? Perhaps I'll even make pie.<br /><br /><br />When Life Isn't Sweet Enough Candy Pie<br /><br />1 deep dish pie crust, slightly thawed<br />60% chocolate bittersweet Ghirardelli chips<br />walnuts, rough chopped<br />dried cherries<br />real maple syrup, B grade<br /><br />Preheat the oven to 375 F. Cover the bottom of the crust with chocolate chips. Cover the chocolate chips with walnuts and cherries. Sprinkle with more chocolate chips. Pour maple syrup over the whole mess, but just enough to wet, not enough to cover. Fold the walls of the pie crust over the top of the filling (the filling should only go about halfway up the sides) so it's all nice and tucked in, and you have a bit of a top crust. Place pie on a cookie sheet. Bake until the crust is golden brown and not raw looking. Remove from oven and chill.<br /><br />Topping:<br />sour cream<br />heavy whipping cream<br />maple syrup<br /><br />Whip all ingredients together until the soft-but-firm stage.<br /><br />Slice pie into small wedges and top with cream. Contemplate life.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-31788335946889725472010-05-06T03:58:00.000-07:002010-05-06T05:06:08.732-07:00Absolute power...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVyH54VAcDNDp_It0hyphenhyphen86dY9IbDtgdf1cu2f8qAjwqHRl58SjbYohJed8j71B2abB5voMMvw0k1pz51hRpYAriE4ejs_VRqJjl5e-y987w2sQSJh6aaMzxNnFMX_dQsDZ85cJC7pQ8xu9W/s1600/CAMPI_Vincenzo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVyH54VAcDNDp_It0hyphenhyphen86dY9IbDtgdf1cu2f8qAjwqHRl58SjbYohJed8j71B2abB5voMMvw0k1pz51hRpYAriE4ejs_VRqJjl5e-y987w2sQSJh6aaMzxNnFMX_dQsDZ85cJC7pQ8xu9W/s400/CAMPI_Vincenzo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468127127284953970" border="0" /></a><br />I've been wanting to write lately but the words won't come. I want to write about spring, and how every morning the birds outside go wild and wake me up with singing and it reminds me of beauty, so I wake up with the idea of beauty every morning but I'm not going out in it, and I feel sad about that. I wanted to write about my sister on her birthday, but no matter how much I pushed the keys it all came out strange and forced. I will want to write about my mama and my other mother come Mother's Day. It's all off, everything is off. I thought this morning that maybe it is because what I need to write about is what's going on in my daily life, which I don't want to write about, because it is about work, but it is what is swimming around in my head. So please, if you don't want to read about work, feel free to click away.<br />A few months ago the owner of my restaurant sold out to another restaurant. It all happened very fast and there was little communication involved with the staff. We were told not to worry, that they wanted to keep us on and that we would all have jobs. There was bad blood over the whole thing with the bar manager at the old place, and the bar staff jumped ship rather spectacularly. Their last night open they destroyed the place. They gave away more than they sold, they smashed glasses, they drank straight from taps and bottles. I do not envy the new owners the clean up.<br />We closed for four days and reopened under the new name and management. Same building, different job. We tread lightly. I likened it to having a foster family- it was nice that they kept us together but we didn't know the rules in this new house, foster mom and foster dad were different and strange, their real kids seemed cocky and didn't know the 'hood. Our regular customers were confused and disgruntled.<br />After a month and change our front of house manager quit, and I don't blame her, but she did so leaving the schedule unfinished and a snarl of problems that we couldn't even begin to know were there. Five servers and two hostesses were leaving for the summer, we had no new hires and she'd let half the staff request off for graduation weekend.<br />They asked me to be the new manager.<br />The new owner explained that she liked the way I am at work, that I'm a good server and I take care of the customers, even if they aren't my tables, that people respect me and that I'm a favorite among the kitchen and front staff. That I have open availability. She wanted me to teach the other servers to be more like me.<br />It can't be done. The things that make me a good server are not the things that make a good manager. I look after the customers because I cannot stand to see anyone unhappy or needful. I spend every moment when it is busy moving moving moving because even if I do not need to refill my glasses or bus my tables I need the momentum to carry me through the night. I talk to the customers because I am interested in their lives, how they are doing, what they do when they are not sitting there waiting for their food to arrive. I do it because that is what I want to do. To those servers for whom this is only a job they do to have some running around money, it can be almost a painful thing to try to care that much. Most of the restaurant staff in Tallahassee are either drunks or students, and both groups do the job, a rather thankless job at that, only because it has the flexibility to allow them to live their real lives. I do it because I like to walk around with plates and eavesdrop on conversations.<br />Being the manager is an in between job. I am not the employee, free to bitch and joke about the management. I am not the boss, able to take people's concerns into account and make changes. I get to make the schedule (which no one likes) and walk around saying things like "Don't doodle at the counter" and "Your pants have a hole in them." People come to me and tell me that their paychecks are light, or that the uniforms are too hot for the summer, or that the coffee we carry sucks. I'm told to make the order for drystock (to go containers, tea and coffee, equipment we might need) and I do, and then the orders are cancelled because the owners have those things at home, and then they never bring it in.<br />The owners have other things going on with their lives, hard things to deal with personally, and that gets in the way and distracts them. I feel for them, but these are not my problems and I do not want these to be my problems. I want to do my job and go home.<br />We have one more big weekend and then things will smooth out. I have to keep reminding myself of that. This summer, if I hire some good people and get them trained up, will be easy peasy and we can do all the tightening up we need to do. I just have to get there. Until then this job is invading my dreams and causing my face to break out. I've developed a hunger for ice cream that cannot be denied. I'm working way too many hours.<br />So there. That is what's going on with me. Now that that's out, maybe I'll be able to write. Maybe. I hope.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-51526157436020200672010-04-10T04:32:00.000-07:002010-04-10T05:39:07.158-07:00Your Big Head Don't Make You KingLast night at the restaurant, a relatively well known local musician played. This is not uncommon, we have live music now four nights out of seven. This particular man is someone I've heard stories about for a while and his name was known to me but I'd never had the, ahem, pleasure of seeing him perform.<br /> Here's the thing about musicians. My Daddy is a musician. Not Daddy Glen, of course, but my biological father. Padre is a guitar player and a damn fine guitar player, probably the best I've ever seen close up and personal. I grew up in houses filled with music, with musicians and late night jam sessions. Dancing in the living room, dancing barefoot in the dirt, dancing with my Mama and dogs and crazy-eyed wild men who drove their women crazy but who could make sweet sounds with those bad boy hands. Men and women who sang, men and women who may not be able to make rent but who always had instruments, even if the amps blew, even if the speakers buzzed. Rock and roll jingle jangle was the lullaby of my childhood and I still feel safe and sleepy at live shows.<br /> When you grow up with musicians you don't revere them. You may adore them, you may love them to pieces, you may need them to complete you, but that sort of otherness reverence is reserved for talent a little less familiar. I need my Mama to make me black eyed peas and collard greens, I need my Daddy to play Do Right Woman. To quote <a href="http://wwwjusteatit.blogspot.com/">Michelle</a>, "Same same."<br /> So when I'm faced with a musician who glad hands gregariously and postures shamelessly and looks at the air above my head and says a bunch of nothing words that mean, "You think I'm great. I think I'm great too." I feel nothing but exasperation. Shut up and play the damn music already. Make me want to dance, that's all I ask.<br /> This man last night was one of those. I understand how it happens, I do. He is loved and he has a certain bellowing charm, and it takes a lot of balls and attitude to get yourself up there and on stage and rock the house. It's protection and projection and without it I don't know if you can survive that particular lifestyle. But really....<br /> Before he went on I introduced myself because I know he knows my family, and has shared bills with our <a href="http://gatorbonestudios.blogspot.com/">Fairy Godparents Lon and Lis</a>. I told him I was Mary Moon's daughter and he knew right off which clan I come from. His eyes lit up and said "So Jessie is your sister!" and then proceeded to tell me that he's going to buy her a drink in a couple of weeks for her 21st birthday, and that men will be lining up to buy my girl a drink. I looked at him squinty eyed but had to agree, my girl is a beautiful angel and that's just the plain truth. Then he asked me if I played music and I said no, but that my Daddy, Jerry Thigpen is a guitar player..... and he cut me off. "Ah, so Jessie is your half sister." He said it with his voice bent down and final, like he knew what time it was.<br /> Let me just say that nothing makes my blood boil more than the words "half sister" in relation to the sisters mine. When I was in grade school I knocked a girl down for saying those words that very same way. It's been a long time since grade school, but babies, I am not afraid to knock a bitch down. Any day can be bitch-knocking day as far as I am concerned. There are no halves in my family, no steps, no halves, no partways or sideways or sometimes or maybes. Who claims this family? I do, now get the fuck out of my way.<br /> He got back on stage and growled and shouted through his set, and I hustled and served and bussed and leaned in close to hear my orders. My feet were fleet, my spine was straight, I picked 'em up and knocked 'em down. The crowd was into it and happy, buying beers and singing along. But no one danced. No one danced and the man on stage did not make eye contact and for me it was all just background noise. It was over for me as soon as he cut his eyes away and cut off my words. I feel sorry for a man who thinks that the blood in your body is more important than the bodies in your blood. #1) Sleazy. #2) Self important. #3) Didn't make me dance. Music? Fail. I do believe I will ask off next time that man is scheduled to play.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-4155433414906521522010-04-03T21:59:00.000-07:002010-04-06T09:24:57.038-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm1gBxkJtKTv9w1DzMDANsU9z4Rh-hrQ23y_KJI_1XFVToc_Wj7KjJA4-zfH76NaaWeuT_SJe-g_b1OtkyX-oGohM88dIMdVujW7KP-5eyDqxn2swKPUZDfRcOkHW51H9va1_AQOgnOe2i/s1600/-4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm1gBxkJtKTv9w1DzMDANsU9z4Rh-hrQ23y_KJI_1XFVToc_Wj7KjJA4-zfH76NaaWeuT_SJe-g_b1OtkyX-oGohM88dIMdVujW7KP-5eyDqxn2swKPUZDfRcOkHW51H9va1_AQOgnOe2i/s400/-4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457061192377064706" border="0" /></a><br /> 3/03/10<br /><br />I did not want to see anyone I knew this morning, and so I took the back roads on my walk to the cigarette store. On my way I saw Sue, who is a dear, but talks so fast and must catch up on family and howareyou and whatareyoudoingthesedays. On my way home I ran into <a href="http://rolluptherugs.blogspot.com/search/label/Dirty">Dirty</a>, and shit fire it was good to see that boy for all that he is clean these days and soon to go overseas.<br /> While I did my laundry I kept my head down and my earphones on and talked a while with my landlord who was walking by.<br /> On my way to work I ran into Miriam, sweet Miriam who is doing so well.<br /> Work was busy because it was a live music night and don't you know I knew the singer, I think she slept with my dad once and we did not speak but she knew who I was.<br /> And Dave walked in and Allyson, who is now a blond bombshell and we say "Oh it has been so long!" and they ask "Where have you been?". And again, after work who but Big E who wants to know where I've been. And I say, "I've been around, I don't get out much anymore."<br /> At work I say, "Tangled Up in Blue" is the only Bob Dylan song I don't like." and Owen says, "Why? Why don't you like it? Is it because of J-?" because he knew me when and I hold up one hand like a stop sign and I say, "We do not speak of J-." and I walk back out of the kitchen and into the dining room to say hello to some regulars who just walked through the door. "What is wrong?" They ask. And then they introduce me to their friend who I already know through Ezzie whom we agree is a magnificent woman.<br /> Can't I just not like a song?<br /><br />Here is the sweetest thing: Two weeks ago I was so far away that I could walk down the street and not know anyone at all.<br /> Here is a funny thing: When I am home, in my hometown, everyone I meet is nice and asks about my life and my family and they smile and they look into my eyes and I feel so desperately self conscious and exposed, so naked and raw, that no matter how nice they are I want to hide. Everywhere I go I see these very nice people, and I do not know why but it makes me feel scrubby and small. And so that is what I think I am.<br /> When I went on my trip to see my friend Ezra (not his real name) it was not what either of us expected. I have known Ezra since before my youngest sister was born, and she was born when I was eleven so perhaps I was nine or ten, I don't remember. Ezra and his family lived in an Airstream trailer pulled by a (help me out here, Mama) '56 (?) Belle Aire (God what a pretty car, it looked like a rocket on the inside). They traveled the country while his daddy played the blues and his Mama taught the kids and once a year they would park in our driveway and Hank and I would get to stay home from school just to play. It was marvelous.<br /> As kids we would put on shows for our parents and play truth or dare and roam the neighborhood and those boys (Ezra is one year older than me, his brother one year younger) were not like the kids at school, they were more like us. They had Imagination, and we could get them caught up in our worlds. Behind every fence there is a forest and that is where the children go. But then we grew up. Sort of.<br /> Ezra and I kept in touch through letters. So many letters sent to Wyoming, to New Orleans, to Washington. Sometimes we were sweethearts, most of the time we just were, we had no name for this friendship that stayed mostly on a page. We talked on the phone, usually late at night. I've fallen asleep talking to him, but he never seemed to mind. It's always been earlier wherever he is. We kept in touch through boyfriends, through girlfriends, through heartbreak and marriage, through divorce and broken bones and babies born. He has two, aged eleven and seven. The last time I saw him was a long long time ago and so, when he offered to spot me a plane ticket, I packed my bags.<br /> The family talked, afraid I would not come back. We aren't like that, I said. Mmmm hmmm, they said. But how do you explain a relationship spread out so long?<br /> I am different now. I am not the girl who got in her truck at age nineteen and set out across the country. I am not the girl who went to Ghana and planted trees, or the girl who went to Paris and learned how to walk. I am not so free and easy, I am heavy, I just am. And I was afraid of that. It's one thing to talk on the phone and email and laugh and tell a million jokes and another to be face to face with your imaginary friend. I was afraid he would see how old I am now. I was afraid we'd run out of things to say. I was looking at myself through my hometown eyes.<br /> It's a funny thing to see a childhood friend all grown up. He still looks the same in his smile and his eyes. He is famous in his town, and everywhere we went people knew him. He is the proprietor of a store and co-owner of an art gallery.<br /><br /><br />3/06/10<br /><br />I hadn't been on a plane in so long, I didn't know how to do it. I watched the people in front of me take off their shoes and coats and put everything in bins to be x-rayed, and I followed suit, but when I asked if I needed to take my sweater off they laughed at me and told me that they'd let me keep my top on. I blushed at their belief in my stupidity (I was wearing a shirt under my sweater) and stood dumb as a cow in sock feet while they checked my shoes for explosives. "What if I had just walked through a fireworks warehouse?" I asked. "That could be a problem." they said. Note to self: Do not fly around the fourth of July.<br /> I was afraid that I would be afraid of falling, afraid of crowds, afraid of birds flying into the engines or errant turbulence slapping my head into the ceiling and later causing death, but I wasn't. Alone at the top of a very high thing and I am terrified, trapped in a large metal tube hurdling through the air- no problem. I tried to sleep without drooling on myself.<br /> I had some idea that I would freshen up once the plane got close to Seattle, so that when I saw Ezra for the first time I would look as good as I could under the circumstances. That plan was amended to "Eat a Mint" because there is no freshening in an airplane toilet, I would've had to stand in the aisle sideways to brush my hair, and for that I would've had to stand on a baby because there were so many babies on the plane. I will not stand on a baby to brush my hair.<br /> I got off the plane and took the tram and barreled up the stairs and walked out into the sea of airport proper and turned around and there was Ezra. He had tried to hide, but couldn't once he saw me. The waters parted, I dropped my bags, and he snatched me up.<br /> I felt so shy I couldn't look at him full on, I had to look at him in sideways bits and bites. He looked the same, he looked just fine, he looked like my friend, he grinned like a fool and after we picked up my luggage and got in his van we felt like we'd gotten away with something and no one was the wiser.<br /> It took me three days to believe in the reality of him, it took three more to believe in his reality of me, and by that time I was home.<br /> Every day I would wake up early and walk to get coffee and write, and then sneak back in to wake his sleepy self up and we'd go rambling. We went to the shore to look at horrible popping seastars and found a barnacle that looked like a tooth and stuck it in our mouths and said Golleeee and later I broke it. We went to breakfast with his friends and I ate blood oranges and offered to show them my breasts and was flattered by their silence. We went to an opening at his gallery and I got to meet the woman who is his partner and his best friend there and she is beautiful and makes beautiful art, she is a real artist and she has gorgeous eyes and sees gorgeous things with those eyes and puts those things, those luminescent things on giant canvases for everyone to see the gorgeous things in her eyes. We went to little towns and he is famous even there and we met the illusive Anacordes Mustache Bandit. We went to a military forte and discovered the tiny driftwood houses on the other side and we crawled into them like children and had adult conversations inside.<br /> This friend, this friend, this friend took my awkwardness and my anxieties and was kind. He is my go-to man and whatever I wanted to do we did and whatever I needed he gave and whatever I was excited about he let me babble on, no matter how little he cared about that thing he just watched me with his whole face.<br /> It wasn't easy for me. Here at home I try to be invisible and I can't be because everywhere I go I run into people I have known my whole life. There, with Ezra, I was invisible to the crowds and the seals and the waitresses (you should see how they look at him) but observed so closely by him I felt highlighted. I am a watcher too and I watched to memorize the way he picked up a rock or brushed his teeth or put on his hat or turned his head. I watched the way he looked at me, and the way he looked at everyone else.<br /> How do you describe a friend, and why you like them? He is kind to strangers and tells good jokes. He has strong hands. He appreciates a good mustache. He will eat what I cannot finish. He loves his children. He wants everyone to have a good time and makes it so. He is not bothered by small things. He is very very patient, perhaps to a fault.<br /> He took me to Seattle again toward the end of my stay and I found that I love Seattle. I love the colors and the people. We toured the underground and learned that Seattle's history is based on terrible plumbing, prostitution, and crooked merchants. We ate salmon every day and don't you know that made me happy? Every where we went he knew how to get along and so all I had to do was keep my eyes open and follow. At night in Seattle you can walk to the water and the factories look like stars.<br /> In the end I came home, like I said I would. The Pacific Northwest has an energy like a mist blanket that settles around you and calms and quiets. It is a lulling thing and comfortable, but it is not my home.<br /> Honeyluna took care of my house and cat while I was gone. When I got back it was cleaner than I left it and the bad cat was sweet and well behaved. She left me the sweetest notes telling me what she did while I was gone and how much she loves me. Sometimes I am just shocked by how altogether amazing that girl is.<br /> I don't know, my friends. I'm glad to be home but I don't like my job and I feel that strange irritation of having been quiet and still for too long. A trip can mix things up and confuse things, it can make your life look different. It isn't that I want to be there, but here isn't any great shakes either. (And by here I don't mean Tallahassee per se, I mean what I've done with the place.) I tell myself I need to write more, but the words don't come, I think I should go out but I get so sleepy. In trying to be good, I do nothing at all. I read a thousand books. I have a bad attitude at work. I draw pictures of a table set, and do not color in the flowers. I will figure out the next right thing, it just takes me a very long time to do so. I have to put it in the back of my mind and pretend I'm not looking at it directly. And in the meantime this is life.<br /> The thing is, I guess, that we can do anything, but we are bound by the constraints of what we want to do and what we feel comfortable with and what we can live with ourselves with if we do the things and so therefore we really can't do anything. But that which we can do is proabably a lot bigger than we give ourselves credit for. It's a matter of perspective. And it's no good trying to see ourselves through other people's eyes because that is always changing and to really understand we'd have to have their brains as well. So somehow, I've got to clear away the layers of desire to please and the neediness, and what I think I should do based on what I think is expected of me, and find that place inside that has wishes and dreams and let that air out. If I can. I do believe that a heart ignored is what causes bitterness and disatisfaction.<br /> I am thankful for my friend for taking me away from my comfort zone. For making me laugh and showing me things. For waking me and shaking me, and getting me to open my eyes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-48131151396910226232010-03-29T04:04:00.000-07:002010-03-30T08:01:51.153-07:00A Thousand Words<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAvEg-AZMOESxfHhrPflEgw-z4mKtTlctSSw0fMmqEYkDB_phYR4xcU5s80hdtTIrd65YLFA0oEitCJU4lRid3zyi_5YBpFE6jhWy9Ja_xyV-HQmQ_hr0dizWtnW5LwclvSt3EcDH1LKh1/s1600/25322_383416593587_587658587_3664135_2658439_n.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 306px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAvEg-AZMOESxfHhrPflEgw-z4mKtTlctSSw0fMmqEYkDB_phYR4xcU5s80hdtTIrd65YLFA0oEitCJU4lRid3zyi_5YBpFE6jhWy9Ja_xyV-HQmQ_hr0dizWtnW5LwclvSt3EcDH1LKh1/s400/25322_383416593587_587658587_3664135_2658439_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454010293245381074" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;">(Photo stolen with love and without permission from Django Bohren</span>.)<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-89148016100830006692010-03-05T15:09:00.000-08:002010-03-05T16:20:23.916-08:00For My Pretty Friend<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxoaqIUBHZrPeLQt5G07ix631qcHCHtmtgmxZuq4DZgOElJkRclNQAKt_bhbex7T4cVafjFQZzSxef1usplJkKQaG3Rh0bMJT33-z9kN5BHv5ea7Lm_ZSsHX8Vw8BPZB1g866POq1oW965/s1600-h/parkimage.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxoaqIUBHZrPeLQt5G07ix631qcHCHtmtgmxZuq4DZgOElJkRclNQAKt_bhbex7T4cVafjFQZzSxef1usplJkKQaG3Rh0bMJT33-z9kN5BHv5ea7Lm_ZSsHX8Vw8BPZB1g866POq1oW965/s400/parkimage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445306762962274946" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The children of parents who swing<br />roll around town<br />and grow up banging their good brains<br />against the walls of the world we live in<br />While nighttime bed springs sang<br />the children sat in one room<br />with only each other and learning<br />the lessons that will make them very good drunks.<br />What makes mother and father<br />has broken down and<br />picking up fags and touching tongues<br />they stick out hips and laugh too loud<br />Growing up to paint their lips and<br />hide their hearts<br />The need for trust so keen<br />that one body cannot hold it<br />it trembles and stumbles inside them<br />their souls painted by Picasso<br />And in hand-me-down clothes<br />and broken down trailers<br />they protect and protect and protect.<br />I don't judge<br />I'm sure it seemed like a fine idea<br />at the time.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-28352730509029286582010-02-15T08:14:00.000-08:002010-02-15T11:30:31.018-08:00Life Is A Cabaret, My Friends<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3hiOQgWQU5kVlo9rVtQpTSHEQaXDW6pVxHjQCFhyphenhyphenCf9QhsZJelHE6FjGx8H_ul32DgSC2of71A6aGM7PMaIxWwbl4X35XKf9teCsPSFRslIdRBluStgcXdV4Sls8ZtubMbfLLV9iYE7Rf/s1600-h/burlesque.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 264px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3hiOQgWQU5kVlo9rVtQpTSHEQaXDW6pVxHjQCFhyphenhyphenCf9QhsZJelHE6FjGx8H_ul32DgSC2of71A6aGM7PMaIxWwbl4X35XKf9teCsPSFRslIdRBluStgcXdV4Sls8ZtubMbfLLV9iYE7Rf/s400/burlesque.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5438541952575329602" border="0" /></a><br /> Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and aside from taking reservations for parties of two, we did nothing special at the restaurant. Still, the people came. Last year (as I was told repeatedly by disgruntled coworkers) we had a special meal of several courses with wine and dessert. Each couple's bill came to $100 and each table was a $20 tip for the server involved. It was like a $20 tip factory, and even if you only did twenty covers all night you walked with $200. This year my boss was not feeling the love, and we caught as catch could, and slung the food, and pushed the trout, and used a heavy hand to pour the wine. I was there from 10:30 AM till midnight.<br /> Our restaurant has an attached, but separate bar where we pick up our drinks from the bartenders at night and make our drinks ourselves during the day. Day drinks are simple. I do not make anything that involves muddling, or elderflower liquor. I will not make a cosmopolitan or a kamikaze or anything named after a sex act or a baked dessert, but I will make a gin and tonic and I can tear up a bloody Mary. Even though it is extra work I like making the day drinks. The bar is empty and quiet and clean and the house lights are on. Almost everyday I have a quick fantasy about taking a nap back there. There are couches, though the reality of what sorts of bodily fluids that may be in those couches is enough to make my cheek itch, but I think I could possibly lay a tablecloth over the cushions and it would be more than fine.<br /> Last night, in honor of Valentine's Day we had a "cabaresque" troupe perform in the bar and so during the day they wandered in and set up and did sound check and ate snacks and generally got in the way. With the house lights up in the empty bar they were just regular girls and awkward looking boys. The girls a little on the heavy side, the boys leaning toward gangle or muffin top respectively. I liked the ladies, with their thick thighs and dirty hair. One of them was a redhead with chewed fingernails. One of them was so dark she was almost blue and her red lipstick announced her face before you even had a chance to view her fabulous breasts. A boy with a wispy mustache wore a bowler hat. I worried about them a little. The people who frequent our bar are not very forgiving. They all come from money, they all look the same, they are all young and say judgmental things and end up puking in the hallway or weeping or fighting or peeing in inappropriate places. This is how the youth of the uppercrust act when they get fucked up. Classy.<br /> I didn't have much time to worry, and for the most part I put them out of my mind- the fancy girls and the potential bar crowd both because in the early part of the day it is all about brunch. People seem to think that their mothers like to go to brunch. I don't think so. The coffee is never hot enough and the bacon is never crispy enough and they invariably get something sticky on their decorative sweaters. Everyone seems pissed off at brunch, I don't know why. I try to encourage ridiculous consumption at brunch, just to lighten the mood. Why not get chocolate chip pancakes as an appetizer? Why not substitute french toast for the bread on your bacon and egg sandwich? Let the child have red velvet cake for breakfast! Is it really so much worse than bananas foster croissant bread pudding? I will bring your son a trough of whipped cream, I don't care.<br /> Brunch was a fuck-all circus and we had 45 minutes to clean up, change our shirts, light the candles, and set the mood for dinner, which we did. I looked like something that came out of the dryer, but I had never seen my fellow co-worker Raina look more beautiful.<br /> It's a funny thing that happens when the management is disorganized and apathetic. The crew pulls together tighter. Each table was a nation of two and we were in our own little world, alongside them but not of them. Conversations between us cut off and picked up an hour later as if we never parted to refill drinks or carry food. One of us is getting married in a week. One of us broke up with his girlfriend a few days ago. One of us is sad because the boyfriend does not believe in Valentine's Day. One of us is wearing very unfortunate panties.<br /> All of the couples who came in wear their relationships so nakedly on their faces that I could barely look at them. Boredom, anger, disappointment, lust, hope- somewhere in all of that there is love. The ladies put so much effort into their clothes and hair. Some of the men do alright, but I think they were mostly missing the point. Men- it is not about you. Suck it up. Be sweet, for one night. Not because it is Valentine's Day, but because your girl did her eyes for you, because she wore that dress for you, because her feet hurt in those shoes she wore for you, because her wrists and bosom are touched with hopeful scent for you. Because that girl is sweet on you and does silent secret things to make you feel good, to make you happy that you don't even notice but maybe you feel, give her one damn good night.<br /> It all passed very quickly. The kitchen staff traded sushi for pizza. My favorite bartender slipped the waitstaff cocktails and told me one day we would run away together. I told my new favorite joke (What's the difference between a blond and a pair of glasses? A pair of glasses sits higher on your face.) and made the sous chef hug me when he went to push me because he thinks I'm pretty. We all got mad at the hostess, but I felt sorry for her because she is all alone and not a part of our fun. We ran out of napkins. The toilet flooded.<br /> By midnight the magic happened and I had nothing to worry about. The bar was dim lit with candles and amber lights and the fancy girls were transformed into something otherworldly. They circulated in their feathers and jewels, corsets and fishnets and made the patrons look down and adjust their trousers. The awkward boys of the troupe snapped their suspenders and pushed out their chests and kept eyes on the hands of the crowd, mindful that the slap-ass didn't get too familiar. I left before the show went on, my show was over and I said thank you, and goodnight.<br /> I came home and listened to Emiliana Torrini sing If You Go Away and it was not sad as it sometimes is. I caramelized onions and garlic for me. I cooked tomatoes with olives and red peppers. I made salad and cooked pasta and watched a movie, and at 2:00 AM I ate a brownie and went to sleep. I dreamed I saw an old friend in a yellow cab. He had a bouquet of flowers with a red plastic heart stuck in amongst the roses. He picked them out, because girls like hearts, and I knew that even though I only saw him through the window as he was driving away. I was happy because he was thinking of girls and flowers. Then I stopped dreaming. Then I slept forever. Then I woke up.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-46968503915895142452010-02-04T17:31:00.000-08:002010-02-04T18:23:49.693-08:00She Works Hard For the Money<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjfkk_TBZ8Ms6WfSMPYAslK6d10D0S5X4M5vTlZtlFPCBFSZpa9JRrCg_exUwjwdHOBlPtuM1d4_I1g09uKoURSS75B5irNC5NuJManXw5gtWj7LezBYTcCK7J5_4APVSHr4FP7Ghy9A5p/s1600-h/Photo+130.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjfkk_TBZ8Ms6WfSMPYAslK6d10D0S5X4M5vTlZtlFPCBFSZpa9JRrCg_exUwjwdHOBlPtuM1d4_I1g09uKoURSS75B5irNC5NuJManXw5gtWj7LezBYTcCK7J5_4APVSHr4FP7Ghy9A5p/s400/Photo+130.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434579384561493026" border="0" /></a><br />I'm not feeling well, chickies. I'm on day three of an eight day stretch at work and already my arches ache and my toes burn, and I feel like I'm coming down with something. Nothing too bad, I can't hear and my face hurts, but as far as colds go- this ain't nothing. The girls (my wee pretty sisters) and I went and cashed in our Christmas mani/pedi gift cards today (Thanks, Mama!) so the feet are slightly more attractive and feel a little better. I love a pedicure. I always feel like an ugly man going to a whore when I go get one, because generally my feet are just those things I bang the ground with, but the ladies there touch them gently with their very own hands and speak softly in Vietnamese.<br /> Soon I will be flying all the way across the country to visit my best friend who is not related to me by blood, and the thought of that is enough to get me to straighten my weary shoulders and put my squash blossom nose to the grindstone. A week off on hourly wage is a quarter of my monthly gone, but a week to see his face again and find my girl side and serve no man- I'll work every minute till then for that and grin like a gator while I do it.<br /> Normally when I get sick I reach for the comfort foods, those foods that have a maximum of salt, fat, and sugar per gram of white flour (and if you know me you know this is not how I eat). Yes the macaroni and cheese, yes the cereal and milk, yes and yes again to the m&ms mixed in a bowl with roasted nuts and mini bagel chips! Cookies! Butter! Buttered cookies I shit you not, somehow it's all good when one is puny and there is a weight on the chest. I have no time for delicious excesses now, I have shifts to work. Eight days on, two days off, a double, a shift, a double on Valentine's Day. Ahem. A VD double. Son. of. a. bitch.<br /> So soup is simmering, like it should. It has pumpkin, carrots, celery, onions, oh so much garlic, roasted tomatoes, red bell peppers (no, I won't be making this soup for you, H.) that I charred my own damn self over the gas burner, and sweet white beans. This soup may very well save my life. I hope I like it, I made enough for seven brides and seven brothers. Wish me luck and big tips, my friends. When all this is done I'll sleep like the dead.<br /><br />p.s.<br />Last week a customer slapped me on the ass and motor boated my tits. I think that deserves more than 20%, don't you?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-57369974695738254692010-01-25T05:17:00.000-08:002010-01-25T07:44:47.773-08:00Francois Bucher, pt 4<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFwYXzRL55aS1-uz8Ysc6Tujl1137RjgKmiGzH5zrw3F6An3d1RmI50uGB-NKgirWlAtVPsvKsTs4bPnJYMzapBXSoMzas6BwebXNFZBGSFVCSWD5oS3LK0dbesFijr_5VXmaxUSHQopj/s1600-h/Archangel_Michael_Reni.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 272px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFwYXzRL55aS1-uz8Ysc6Tujl1137RjgKmiGzH5zrw3F6An3d1RmI50uGB-NKgirWlAtVPsvKsTs4bPnJYMzapBXSoMzas6BwebXNFZBGSFVCSWD5oS3LK0dbesFijr_5VXmaxUSHQopj/s400/Archangel_Michael_Reni.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430703572376650626" border="0" /></a><br />One day the phone rang and I answered it.<br /><br />Hello? Nautilus Foundation.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Hello? This is Nelson Mandela. Is Francois Bucher there?</span><br />Yes, yes. Just a minute.<br /><br /> That was part of the magic of the place. A modern art castle in the North Florida woods. Gauguin's ladies. Ancient books. Skin puppets in an old trunk. A secret passageway. A ghost ship. Michelangelo's cold brained boy. A phone call from Nelson Mandela. A monster from my childhood. Einstein's couch. Avenging angels. Pick-up truck angels. A nun's room. A locked tower. Zillions and zillions of stars. A Minotaur.<br /> I began to pull away and Francois became bitter again. <span style="font-style: italic;">You don't wiggle anymore.</span> He accused, his face turned away but his eyes cut to me. I told him I had to leave. <span style="font-style: italic;">Who will make me my smoozies?</span> Of course he argued.<br /> I told him I needed to get a job, and that Lloyd was just too far out to work and to go to school. He told me that I was throwing away an opportunity. He told me that my studies would suffer, that my health would suffer. He told me that children who went to school and lived in apartments did more partying than studying and did not take school seriously. (I think he had forgotten that I was in auto mechanic school.) He told me I was not like them, that I would be unhappy.<br /> For the most part he was right. I loaded up my truck and moved into town. I got a job at a falafel place and an apartment with a girl named Nikki who ended up trashing some of my things and ringing up $906 worth of phone bills under my name that I had to pay. I dropped out of Lively Vo-Tech and TCC. I did not take school seriously. But I did have fun. I smoked pot out of a hookah with naked girls. I wore an evening dress and drank icy cold vodka while Nikki read aloud the works of Shakespeare and I rolled around on the floor in hilarity. We ate Chinese food till bursting and passed out in greasy stupors. I danced barefoot at drum circles and tried to learn to juggle fire. I did not shave my armpits. It was everything Francois was afraid of and more.<br /> The other day I was describing my time at the Nautilus Foundation to a friend of mine. He said that it seems so surreal, that it must seem like a completely different life. It does and it doesn't. My life immediately after I left seems more like a dream or something that happened to someone else than my time with Francois. When I lived in the apartment with Nikki (who grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and was far more foreign to me than Francois ever was) and worked at The Pitaria (real name, delicious falafel, shitty hommus) I was trying so desperately for the sort of youthful exuberant life that I thought I should have. It was fun, but it was forced, and I never felt like I belonged. Living with Francois was a bizarre and magical fairy tale, and I always expected the bizarre and magical. My brother and I lived in fairy tales when we were kids, and something like a castle in the woods was only a matter of course. In some ways I am more shocked at how mundane my life has become.<br /> It was that same year that I packed up and headed west. Those adventures were more my style, done alone and slowly with many many miles to absorb what I was doing and who I was becoming. I never saw Francois again.<br /> He died a couple of years later. I do not know if he died alone, or if someone else was there to call for an ambulance. If anyone ever wrote his memoirs they are not published. His body was placed in a concrete box on a slab between the pond and the main house. I went back once, to lay flowers at his grave.<br /> It was a bluesky sunshiney day and it must have been in the summer because I also went looking for black berries. I drove down the driveway and it looked much the same except the dormitories were condemned and there was a giant gate, like the entrance to a Shinto temple. The property had been bequeathed to Florida State University and I was stopped by a man on a riding lawnmower as I got out of my car. He told me I was trespassing, and had to leave.<br /> I stood and talked to him for a little while, I told him about living there and the wonders that were inside the building. I told him about Francois, and he was kind and listened. By the end of the talk he let me wander around a little bit. I walked around the building. I touched the rough cinder block of the walls and noted the wear and tear. I went into the woods but I couldn't find any trace of the Chinese junk. I stood for a long time by the box that held Francois.<br /> It is very plain, that box. If you didn't know it was a mausoleum you might think it held a pump or some sort of electrical gadgetry connected to the house. I put my face against it and tried to feel the man inside, but he was not there. I cried a little, laid my yellow flowers down and said <span style="font-style: italic;">I'm sorry.</span> That was the surreal part, the part where I knew he was dead and cold and in a box and I was standing next to it. It was surreal that I could not just walk inside and find him sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and waiting to tell me something he had been thinking. I wondered what happened to the art, what happened to the dogs. I still don't know, and I haven't been back.<br /> FSU has now renovated the place and turned it into a conference center. The art gallery, which contains some of Francois's own work is named after him, but the center itself is not. When I look it up on the internet I find no mention of the things that really spun my brain, the valuable art, the little light green couch. The information says that there are four bedrooms and two bathrooms available for rent or retreat, but it does not say that there is a secret passageway to one of the bedrooms and I wonder, where are all of these bedrooms anyway? Do they really make visiting guests climb over a stage to sleep in the Nun's room? Did they put a bed in the tower? Or have they ripped the shelves out of the library and put bedrooms in there? It would be too strange to see it so changed and so naked. No doubt FSU has sucked the magic out of the place as best they could, they are good at that. Visitors don't want to be surprised by angels and spiders in the corners of the rooms.<br /> I do. I do. I want the angels and the spiders both. Francois lives in me so frail and whole, his naked skin, his purple scar. He is not a part of another life, he is part of this one. I could not give him what he wanted from me, but he did touch me and I touched him and we changed each other, even if it is just a little bit. To be honest, I do not miss him. But I remember him. I think that is a fine thing. When I die I don't want too many people aching for me, but I would like someone to remember the shape of my hands and the way I laugh. He did not wear his seat belt. He liked artichokes in oil. He had large knuckles and ropey veins in the backs of his hands. When Francois laughed, sometimes it was a bitter chuckle and a sideways glance, but sometimes it would burst so loud and unexpected I could hear it even if I was tucked up in my room. Even if I was walking away, as fast as I could.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /> <br /><br /></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-71418905902145678442010-01-21T04:47:00.000-08:002010-01-21T18:34:09.132-08:00Francois Bucher, pt 3<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIhwbkj_h6ry3GrTz0M9b6gijKBdB1LnNMHPAP6B3bDxlFE9IPSp1UAuOj8KIMjnWvQZCKSCi-wSaMGo_yruEtSd5SRo7DFYz8epsprgMqNcNbrRORa8nllO7hWuxWV-avmpL_F2ab2_xW/s1600-h/525.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 305px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIhwbkj_h6ry3GrTz0M9b6gijKBdB1LnNMHPAP6B3bDxlFE9IPSp1UAuOj8KIMjnWvQZCKSCi-wSaMGo_yruEtSd5SRo7DFYz8epsprgMqNcNbrRORa8nllO7hWuxWV-avmpL_F2ab2_xW/s400/525.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429340297373651026" border="0" /></a><br /> The kitchen in the Nautilus Foundation was not state of the art. The oven did not work and the stove top was one of those crappy electric kinds where the eyes never settle right after you try to clean it. The refrigerator was of indeterminate color and probably from Sears, bought new sometime in the late eighties. There was no dishwasher, and when I moved in no coffee maker. Looking back I think that things must've fallen into disrepair when the girlfriend moved out, perhaps she took the coffee maker. I met the ex girlfriend only once, when she came to sort out a shipment of art they had bought together on a trip long before.<br /> Francois called me into the library to meet M. and see the puppets they were pulling out of a trunk. The puppets were made of human skin. M. was tall and lean with short blond hair and strong hands. She looked like a woman who would be more comfortable riding an elephant than cooking supper, and she barely registered me as she pulled the puppets from their wrappings. They looked like tiny angry mummies. I stood for a moment off to the side but left quickly, the air in the library that day was sharp and thick and I did not like the way that Francois was so giddy or she so absorbed in her task. She was only there a few hours.<br /> What made the kitchen wonderful wasn't the appliances. It was obviously a kitchen for a man of the mind and not the stomach. There was a butcher block and wooden table where we would take our coffee and meals. There was a back door that was always open for the dogs to come in and go out, and you could see the pond from that doorway. Against one wall was the giant hutch that hid the secret passageway, and up on the wall that the kitchen shared with the front room was a painting by Paul Gauguin. The painting was one from his Tahitian period with bare breasted ladies reclining in the shade of fat leafed trees. I loved those ladies, they looked so wise and so lazy, and I loved that I could reach out and touch the whirls of paint that made them.<br /> As soon as I moved in I insisted we get a coffee maker. At first Francois protested that instant was just as good, and certainly good enough for him, but I began too brew freshly ground organic french roast with cinnamon in the basket, and he began to hum as he drank it. I would find him there in the morning with his first cigarette and his coffee mug, naked aside from graying briefs, slightly reclined with one leg crossed over the other. I would pour a cup and start taking fruit out of the freezer for our smoothies.<br /> I made a smoothie in the morning for myself because I liked it, and I began to make one for him because he was intrigued and he had trouble with his bowels. Fruit, soy milk, flax seed, spirulina, he called it his "smoozie" and I think this is the first thing that made him love me. Company was fine, hot meals at night were good, but get him to take a morning shit and all was right in the world. He would hug me and call me his "Wiggly Girl".<br /> On the back of the stove were the few spices he had when I moved in. It was the first time I'd ever seen a shaker of MSG for private use and it just seemed wrong so I tucked it toward the back of the cabinet. There were salt and pepper and paprika and a small glass jar that held little silver lumps, roughly the size and shape of Hershey's kisses. One day, when I thought of it and we were both in the kitchen I held the glass jar up and said "Francois? What is this?"<br /> "Oh those? Those are teapots!" he sounded positively gleeful. "Sometimes? When I put the teapot on the stove? And I walk away for a little while? I come back and they look like that!"<br /> I was enchanted. There were about five in there and I had no idea how long it would take to melt down an entire teapot to a Hershey's Kiss shaped lump.<br /> "May I have one?" I said.<br /> After smoozie making and coffee drinking and talking talking talking I would beg off and drive to school. Auto mechanics was not going as I had imagined it would go and each day I would get a little more down. I liked the teacher, he was a good old boy local with thin white hair and sparkly blue eyes. Most of the guys in the class had been working on cars their whole lives and the teacher spent most of his time trying to break them of bad habits. "Not everything can be fixed by hitting it with a hammer" I remember him saying.<br /> We balanced and rotated tires, we changed oil, we tinkered with our own cars. I wasn't accepted as part of the group and spent a lot of time away from the garage and in the classroom supposedly reading my ASE textbook, but really writing letters to college friends. Sometimes in the morning I would pick up a dozen donuts from the Krispy Kreme for the guys, but though they ate them, they didn't smile at me. One guy let me help him rebuild the carburetor on his daughter's VW Bug, but that was the extent of my coed interaction, unless the prof made them include me.<br /> One day a car caught fire in the parking lot and we rushed out en masse to watch it burn. Just as we got there the teacher yelled out, "STAY BACK! THERE MIGHT BE A GUN IN THE GLOVE BOX!" and we all hit the dirt, expecting bullets to come whizzing out at any second. That did not happen, and he calmly sprayed the car down with a fire extinguisher. "Let that be a lesson to you." he said. "You never know if there's gonna be a gun in a burning car." I never forgot that. Years later I saw another car on fire and I GOT BACK. I turned to the person next to me and said, "There might be a gun in there. You never know."<br /> I would come home in the evenings and do my homework and make supper. Francois was always eager for my return and often had something to show me. One time it was a Bible in Aramaic, over 400 years old. One time it was a video of a party he'd had where everyone was quite drunk and played the most intellectual game of charades I had ever seen. One time it was a cartoon he'd drawn, portraying him hanging off the side of a cliff and me up at the top, reaching down to take his hand. He told me stories about the things in the house, about Einstein's couch in the hallway to the gallery (which I jumped on one time when he wasn't home and it made a horrible SPROING! noise and I leaped off and one of the dogs looked at me like he was utterly disgusted). He told me about his wild and beautiful daughter. He told me about getting old.<br /> There was so much talking, and I was so quiet. I'd seen so little of the world and I felt I had nothing to contribute. He took my silence as fascination and maybe reverence, and one day he told me that he had been thinking he might let me write his memoirs. I wanted nothing to do with his memoirs. I wanted to be young and free and have adventures of my own. I wasn't a scholar, and the more he talked and the more he wanted me to stay home to listen the more I began to resent his need. I could kick myself now, but that's how it was. It frightened me to have someone need me so much. Anything that took me away from him was degraded. He felt I needed to cut the apron strings of my family, he felt that my friends were a frivolous distraction, he even tried to convince me that my long distance boyfriend was probably up to no good. "I just don't know about this Steve" he would say, which infuriated me because his name wasn't Steve.<br /> Perhaps he saw in me an intelligence, a spark that I've never given myself credit for. I'd like to think that, and not believe that he was just so lonely that he would have adopted practically anyone who showed him kindness. I think at one time he was a lion, and in my quiet listening and careful cooking, in my manners and naivete, he saw himself resurrected in my eyes. I hugged his old bones and made him feel young. I gave him an audience.<br /> I began to walk in the evenings as well, just to have some time to think. He decided he would join me, and so at night we would walk up the driveway to the road, back down to the creek, and back to the house. Sometimes I would go in with him and sometimes I would say good night and head out, walking fast, fast as I could. After the careful constitutional we shared my alone walk felt like flying. I felt I could just take off into the night and never come back.<br /> On one of those nights a storm came. I was about a mile and a half out when the stars disappeared and the sky let loose. The rain came down hard and fast. Thunder and lightning toppled all over each other with no break in between. The wind pressed the trees down sideways and threw branches on the road. I was afraid like I've never been, afraid of the storm and afraid of the cars because there was no sidewalk or shoulder, just road, gushing ditch, and fence. I followed the fence to a break and walked up the driveway to the house at the end. When I knocked on the door and asked to use the phone the woman there was wary and wouldn't let me inside. I was astounded that she would be scared of me, even after I explained who I was and where I was staying. It was as if she didn't believe that I was just out walking, even though I was wearing only a tank top, shorts and running shoes and clearly carrying nothing in my hands. I finally convinced her to pass me the phone, which she did through the crack provided by the chain lock on the door. I called Francois, but he didn't answer. Even though he knew I was out in the storm. I handed the phone back to the lady on the other side of the door and she told me to leave. So I did. I didn't know what else to do.<br /> I made it maybe another fifty feet down the road when a truck slowed and stopped beside me. The man inside was wearing a worn baseball cap and cover-alls and he opened the door and said, "Hey, you need a ride?" I climbed in. He told me he had seen me walking on his way home from work and mentioned me to his wife. When it began to storm his wife looked at him and said, "Bill? You better go get that little girl" and so he did. He carried me in his truck right up to the Nautilus Foundation front door and made me promise to never go out in weather like that again.<br /> When I got inside, soaked and shaking, I found Francois in the kitchen listening to the radio. He told me he didn't like to answer the phone at night. He told me he knew I'd make it home alright. "You're a smart girl" he said. I bid him good night, took a hot shower, and went to bed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-75878717199716974182010-01-20T10:59:00.000-08:002010-01-21T16:32:02.113-08:00Francois Bucher, pt 2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8wzLLCZyzLleC3PMhsllSZ-Qv_9n0Qn_b1tS6O-l_YNSryPrNgbpiDZ50qoMJoZpNbPHkT_vaEyHzg65OpNT5Gay2i4OQuS9vo7kH1gONGOmCQVMQ-zLQjo4r8gsFbegCOi-Hv_OZivXl/s1600-h/chinese+junk+17+century.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8wzLLCZyzLleC3PMhsllSZ-Qv_9n0Qn_b1tS6O-l_YNSryPrNgbpiDZ50qoMJoZpNbPHkT_vaEyHzg65OpNT5Gay2i4OQuS9vo7kH1gONGOmCQVMQ-zLQjo4r8gsFbegCOi-Hv_OZivXl/s400/chinese+junk+17+century.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428933171031471458" border="0" /></a><br /> When my brother and I were kids, there was a brief time when our dad's band practiced in a warehouse on Gaines Street. This warehouse is now a bar, but at that time it was just an empty space rented out by various people for various reasons. Where the beer taps are now was used by a florist to store back-up stock, where the pool tables are now is where I would rollerskate while dad's band worked through their set list. The smaller room toward the back where they host open mike nights was used to store art, probably from FSU art school, but I don't know that for sure. The memories are hazy. What is not hazy is one particular piece of art in that back room that scared the heebie-jeebies out of me. It was a mannequin, laying face-up on a cot. Where it's head would have been someone had put a large black globe with moth-like antennae growing out of it and a hole in the face area. In the hole was a light bulb. I don't know why this thing scared me so much, but it did to the point that just knowing it was back there was enough to make me stop mid roll, look over my shoulder, and shiver.<br /> I probably only saw it in person a couple of times, but it never really left me. It had gotten under my skin. Which is why, after living in the Nautilus Foundation for a few days and I looked under a sheet draped over an object in the theater and saw it lying there, I was both terrified and not really surprised. <span style="font-style: italic;">So you've finally found me.</span> I thought, looking at it's mute, empty head.<br /> I lived in the Nun's Room, behind the stage. Every time I got up in the middle of the night to pee, I had to climb up onto the stage, cross, climb down, walk through the aisles of chairs past the horrible thing beneath the sheet, go out into the room with the sleigh bed and the angel with the sword, and only when I got to the green marble bathroom would I find a light switch. I always carried a flashlight. God forbid I forgot to bring the flashlight with me in the morning and I'd have to walk all that long way back there at night in the dark when I went to bed.<br /> My room was furnished with an antique iron bed that had originally come from a 13th century Chinese hospital, but more recently had been hauled out from a concrete dome in the front yard which held about 20 more of the same. I also had a vanity that I brought from home and a peach crate containing some of my clothes. The rest of my clothes were housed in the Italian armoir in the front room, as I had no closet in the Nun's Room. My sewing machine and table were on the stage and looked like props for some homey little play, but when I used it the sound would clatter around the auditorium, so I did very little sewing during my stay.<br /> Francois Bucher was a retired professor of medieval art and architecture. Born in Switzerland, he had spent most of his life in the US, but he retained his beautiful upturned accent that made everything he said sound either like a question or a good idea. He had taught at Yale and at FSU and had been granted a Guggenheim back in the fifties, or in his fifties, I can't remember which. He spoke many different languages and had led an exciting life, but he never made me feel ignorant or lesser than. I think that by the time I met him a lot of his spark had gone out. He was lonely and depressed.<br /> It was hot in the Nautilus Foundation (there was no air conditioning) and soon after I moved in Francois grew comfortable enough to walk around in only his underpants, as was his habit when he lived alone. After seeing him the first time without his clothes, it really was no big thing to live with an old man in underpants. I kept my clothes on, though he assured me there would be no threat on his part if I chose to walk around in the nude. It was simple modesty that kept me clothed, although I would occasionally go skinny dipping in the pond out back.<br /> There was a pond out back, I've forgotten to mention that. In fact, there was a lot more to the Nautilus Foundation than just the main building. The grounds covered several acres of woods and fields. Along the driveway, back up toward the road was a gigantic round building under construction that was intended to be the dormitory for the scholars that would come. The round shape of the building was so that no one would would have a better room than anyone else, to create equality amongst the guests like King Arthur's round table. The driveway curved past the main building, over the creek, and into the woods. Past the stone carver's house, past the barn that held the construction equipment and materials, past the giant kiln, past a few more out buildings, up a hill and into a clearing was the duplex my ex boyfriend rented. It was no longer available to rent because Francois had built an observatory up there and he didn't want anyone polluting the perfect darkness with kitchen lights and reading lamps.<br /> In the woods there was an art path that had grown over from neglect. The sculptures that lined the path seemed to pop up out of nowhere and were themselves being reclaimed by the North Florida flora and fauna. In one part there was the sad remains of a full sized Chinese junk ship made entirely of multicolored rice paper. It had been vandalized by drunken locals not long after it's construction, it's great sides torn and dripping from it's skeleton, the masts broken and leaning heavily on the trees around it. Spiders and snakes and squirrels lived in it, poison ivy grew up between it's toes. I still wish I had seen it when it was whole. It would've been a rainbow ship, it would've been infused with light when the sun was overhead.<br /> Francois sounded bitter when he told me of the ship's destruction. He sounded like the whole human race was fucked if people would wantonly destroy something so beautiful. He was disappointed in humanity at large.<br /> He was also disappointed in his life. I could tell that no matter how much he had lived, he could not believe he had ended up so old and so weak. It pissed him off that he had to follow dietary guidelines, pissed him off and frightened him. He would ask me over and over as we ate supper if I remembered he could not eat vitamin K, if I had perhaps accidentally put butter in the pasta. He told me to feel free to drink the vodka in the freezer because God knows he can't drink it, Goddammit. He would look longingly at my greens salad (I don't remember why he was not allowed a greens salad) and tell me long endless tales of his youth. The time he ran away as a boy with his best friend and ended up on a raft surrounded by sharks. The days he spent with Albert Einstein discussing recipes and time travel (<span style="font-style: italic;">He was a fairy of a man!</span> He said of Einstein.) The women he slept with. The stupid children who took education for granted he taught. And on and on. I should have paid better attention, but I was one of those stupid children. I was tired by the time we sat down to dinner, and I was young and he was old and I didn't want to sit for hours and be talked to.<br /> My days started early. When I dropped out of college I decided that I either wanted to be a midwife or an auto mechanic, so I enrolled in the auto mechanic program at Lively Vo-Tech and in an anatomy class at Tallahassee Community College. I had to be at Lively at 8:AM, so I was up at 4:00 to walk before I made us breakfast.<br /> I fell in love with walking in Lloyd. At four in the morning the world was dark and quiet and cool. I walked past old houses and farmland, past fields filled with giant rolls of hay that looked like sleeping woolly creatures. I walked past long stretches of barbed wire, past tangles of kudzu, past creeks and goats and trailers. As I walked my muscles would loosen up and I would wake up from my sleeping dreams only to fall into daydreams. I told myself stories about the people who lived in the houses and trailers, and I told myself more darkly made-up stories of the people who lived in the woods, the ones who made homes in wood rot and gopher hole. The ones who could hide in the Spanish moss and who blended in with leaf mold. I walked and dreamed for an hour every morning and found myself back home.<br /> I'd come in sweaty and get the coffee started and by the time I'd showered and dressed for class (in greasy jeans and a clean t-shirt) Francois would be up, sitting at the butcher block in the kitchen, waiting for me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-68172441270158115782010-01-20T06:57:00.000-08:002010-01-20T09:02:14.584-08:00Francois Bucher, pt 1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTJaNgMM0roav6er-C_bOYm392KaJMOWLVP47HdpWJxDP2A0VnszVxnsuzu_pHDG-Tnzds4y-jQU6CJQN3uSrpfE9C4afGmC4H9kUjbYmZ0sjmtZPzZucX4Xje50j_C9afXIqyqiiKuOwA/s1600-h/lloyd_building_3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 175px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTJaNgMM0roav6er-C_bOYm392KaJMOWLVP47HdpWJxDP2A0VnszVxnsuzu_pHDG-Tnzds4y-jQU6CJQN3uSrpfE9C4afGmC4H9kUjbYmZ0sjmtZPzZucX4Xje50j_C9afXIqyqiiKuOwA/s400/lloyd_building_3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428868391175778706" border="0" /></a><br />When I was nineteen I lived with a man named Francois Bucher. This was just after I dropped out of college but before I took off in my truck for sights unseen. When I called Francois I had no intention of actually living with him, I just wanted a place to stay for a little while with cheap rent and I was wildly inexperienced in finding lodging. What I knew of Francois Bucher was that he was a little eccentric and a boyfriend that I'd had when I was fifteen rented a place from him in Lloyd for the very fair price of $111 a month. I had good memories of the place- it was a little cracker shack duplex set inexplicably in the middle of a monks bald spot of a field at the top of a hill somewhere in the Lloyd woods. We would get stoned and wade in the creek just down the hill from the place and at night there were zillions and zillions of stars.<br /> Back then, people were actually listed in phone books and so that is what I did. I looked up his name, I called the number. (Later when I was living in my truck I employed this same method of detective work while in La Conner, WA in an attempt to find Tom Robbins. Don't try it kids, he ain't listed.) Francois answered the phone and told me that the duplex was no longer available, but if I was willing to drive out to Lloyd he might have something else for me.<br /> Francois Bucher lived in The Nautilus Foundation, a place he dreamed up and built of his own design. The intention of the foundation was to create a space for artists and intellectuals to live and work, a communal genius utopia. He lived there alone, with his two dogs.<br /> The main building was an asymmetrical castle in the abstract with a tower over the middle part that had one of those pointy roofs that one would expect on a tower on a castle, with a flag coming out of the pointy bit. This building was set far enough off the main road so that you couldn't see it if you were just driving around Lloyd and it surprised the hell out of me when I first drove up. I parked in a small parking lot and walked up the path to the main doors. Now I don't recall if I knocked, or if the doors were open, but somehow I got inside and was greeted by the man himself. Before we sat down for coffee he gave me the tour.<br /> The first room I entered was large and dark and had very high ceilings. There were no windows, but there were two doors along the wall to the left, one door to the right, and one straight in front. The room contained a large sleigh bed made up for company, a red and green painted armoir, and a statue of an avenging angel on a pedestal. One of the doors to the left took you to a bathroom completely lined with green marble, the other to a hallway. The hallway sloped downhill to the art gallery which was made from an old silo that had been cut down and bolted on with giant metal bolts. The door to the right in the main room entered into the auditorium style theater (where the plays of geniuses would be performed, I suppose) which at this time was being used mostly for storage of strange objects de arte. At the back of the theater, beyond the rows of chairs and up and across the stage was a small door. That door led to a round brick lined room with one tiny window that Francois called the Nun's Room.<br /> Back to the main room and straight across was the kitchen. To the left of the kitchen was the library. The library was something to behold- chock a block full from floor to ceiling with rows of books on shelves made from boards and bricks and so cram packed that there were even stacks of books on the floor and in trunks and boxes yet to be unpacked. There were two small desks, one at the front of the library against the wall that led to the kitchen, and one at the back that held a lamp and a small statue of a young man whose cranium you could remove to expose his carved wooden brains. The statue, Francois told me as an aside, was made by Michelangelo.<br /> Upstairs from the kitchen was Francois's bedroom, personal bathroom, and the way to get to the tower. You could get to his bedroom either by climbing the obvious wooden stairs in the kitchen, or by going through the secret passageway hidden behind the hutch. It was in the kitchen that we sat, had coffee, and talked.<br /> Francois had recently gone through the break up of a long term relationship and a quadruple bypass surgery. He was afraid that if he were to have another heart attack it would be his last, and he would die alone on the floor with his dogs standing over him, unable to reach the phone to call for help. His proposition was that I would move in and cook suppers for him (following the guidelines provided by his doctors) and in exchange receive room and board. I thought about the library, about the marble lined bathroom, about the secret passageway behind the hutch. I looked over my cup of instant coffee at this old man with an angry purple scar stretched tight across his chest and the doorhandles of his knees pushing against the worn fabric of his trousers. He sat like a man defeated, he held his hands with fingers curled. I was nineteen and all of life was a grand adventure. I said yes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-36294197445325440032010-01-11T06:20:00.000-08:002010-01-11T09:03:28.169-08:00Little Miss Lonely Heart<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYNt7mUWbFEpemUWuc_cL5xbZNs2xrQDoMFbqe7nnqf2gOH48eAI4kiy1WpBNISN8udezu9t-WO_67CCuVNQxhvv5q1xkjKxJz4mzPQopyim5UEl5j7_UifyA5Dc3u47Y7DK-BqDb6Tp-v/s1600-h/66.Camellia.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 313px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYNt7mUWbFEpemUWuc_cL5xbZNs2xrQDoMFbqe7nnqf2gOH48eAI4kiy1WpBNISN8udezu9t-WO_67CCuVNQxhvv5q1xkjKxJz4mzPQopyim5UEl5j7_UifyA5Dc3u47Y7DK-BqDb6Tp-v/s400/66.Camellia.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425528926985000370" border="0" /></a><br />I never did eat those <a href="http://rolluptherugs.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html">chocolate covered bananas</a>. Too messy, too sticky, too much really. That was all the way back in October and I was beginning to think that maybe my man fast had gone on too long. It's good to take some time and reevaluate (or in my case, write down every sexual experience I've ever had, acknowledge where I've been selfish, dishonest, or caused harm, and read it all aloud to someone else while they make comments and laugh at my expense, all through the good of AA) but there comes a point, babies, where you have to get back in the game.<br /> [Back in the game? I deplore sports metaphors, I'm more than likely to mix them up. Let's give it the old college try! Time to knock that ball through the field posts and try not to get fouled and end up in the box! You can't get a touchdown if you try to steal third! Let's bogey this sumbitch and take 'er home! Match, set, love, where's the motherfucking ball boy? Why am I the one who always gets drenched with Gatorade?]<br /> ahem.... Back in the saddle. [Better. Now I feel like a cowgirl.]<br /> I realized last night at my meeting that I may be the only female in my homegroup (which is large) that has gotten through two years of sobriety without sleeping with anyone else in AA. Even very old women with white hair who spend their hour knitting and nodding and speak in shaky voices full of wisdom and experience are out there getting more action than I am. I see the way they look at the gentlemen! It's like a goddamn sober sex party and I was invited but decided instead to wash my hair. Now I am seen as this font of self control and piety, when really I'm just clueless and awkward, like I've been my entire life. Not that I want to sleep with recovering alcoholics, those people are cra-zy. Besides, whenever I find myself attracted to anyone from AA I find that he lives at the shelter or he just got out of jail. I don't judge! I'm just sayin'.<br /> Very recently I decided to take a man up on his offer of love and found myself alone and wearing foolish nightclothes. It is a very chilly thing to wake up in an empty bed in silky bits expecting company. He said all the right things, but there was no follow through. It feels like lies when there is no action to back the words up, and makes me feel like a back-up plan for if the night gets lonely. It made me angry. I love words, I have words, I have all the words I need.<br /> <br /> [my love is like a tempest tossed<br /> the sparrows up against the wall...]<br /> <br /> [if tender feet I do not have to place inside my lover's palms<br /> then I will have the poetry, I will have the words and songs]<br /> <br /> I am hesitant to write in all seriousness about love because it is an embarrassing and private thing, unless you are in love and then the world loves with you and smiles on your shining face. And there are those who will say I had my chance, that love was there for the taking and I walked away. But love for me, like anything because I am too sensitive, is hard and tricky. I want it to be right. I can't be easy, I am not easy, and it is not a comfortable thing to be this skittish, this sober, this self conscious all the time. I envy those girls who have three-ways in cars and end up sleeping in fireplaces (that actually happened to a girl I know. slut.). Not the experience itself, a three-way in a car strikes me as decidedly uncomfortable, but the ease and laughter that goes with it, the shrug of shoulders and wicked smile- that I envy.<br /> There's a Jamaican man I knew who used to say "Don't fatten a fish for another man to eat", meaning don't wind your girl up and leave her wanting, she'll satisfy herself somewhere else. Or maybe it doesn't mean that, he also used to say "You know what time it 'tis" and I would smile, desperately hoping that I at least looked like I did indeed know what time it 'twas. Anyway, I feel like a fattened fish that grows cold on a plate. <br /> I yearn for sweetness, for ease, for warmth. I was self contained before but now, woken up I am needful. A need without fulfillment is no fun and not funny. I feel useless and at a loss as how to find what I want, which is strange for me. Alone is not lonely until you don't want it anymore.<br /> A few weeks ago I picked flowers and cleaned my house in anticipation of company. Perhaps he thought that my house is always so shining, that I always keep a jar of camellias and eucalyptus by my bed. Or perhaps he did not care. This week I cleaned my house again and washed the clothes and made the house smell like lemons. Before the freeze I went out and picked camellias, arm loads of creamy perfection so lovely they seemed edible like they were made of fondant, and rosemary, and lavender. Now though it is so cold outside and all the flowers have fallen from the bushes and the sky is so blue and thin it looks like it might crack with the effort, I have a garden inside. For me and me alone and for my eyes to rest on something beautiful and gentle when I wake up. Though I love them, the flower's faces are so pretty, the gesture now seems as empty as the sky.<br /> I was more content when I was all so self contained, but I don't want that contentment back. It's alright to yearn in winter. And be fragile. And crave warmth. Things happen in their own time. I may as well crave spring, and I do, but I think this longing in me has made me more whole. I feel more tender toward myself and toward others. I fell asleep last night thinking of Mwa and Danielle and Jo, thinking of the snow of Europe. I heard on the BBC that people in the Netherlands and in Germany were being advised to stay indoors because it is so dangerously cold. I worried about them, about you my friends. Do you have enough to eat? Do you have warm blankets and wool socks? And so perhaps this softening, this need is not useless after all. When one is hard and self contained there is no room for others to get inside. I want to let this softening happen, and not try to be so tough.<br /> Which I think, perhaps, is finally the point of this post. I am afraid to open myself up and say I am tender, I am soft, I have a happysadness, because that is not cool or smart, and there is no protection there. But what do I have to protect? I am not so cool and smart, I am just a girl. I like flowers, I like poetry, I like the words "kiss" and "touch" and "pink". Perhaps I am coming into who I am again, and this time soft and on cat feet. If one is lonely, one must let others in. So simple and so frightening.<br /> I started out this post meaning to be funny, and I end up so timid and serious. Perhaps this is why I don't write so often. I am in awe of those of you who write so well about your feelings, whose words are their honest hearts. I am going to end this here, where there is no ending, so I can go to the library and go to the grocery store and cook the food and go to work, but I am going to post it anyway, neatly done or not. To post and hope that I will write more, I will be a part of your brave circle. I hope you all are warm today. When I come home tonight I'll read your words and worry about you and smile with you and we will all crave spring, and that will take the edge off my foolish little loneliness.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-55388465053157424402010-01-08T07:29:00.000-08:002010-01-08T09:39:10.713-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMhV6F22wGVrm-7pKiTBFXz1_kCxqqkopALVq_Guh7XNOkbSIhS8zQGCXe9K7RfPshVLBea2qTYyikUgZ__1t1BCsoRXS81DShG0zsqTeN5yzf_EJYsVwEwZcX7HUobM7c6tcYYHwy4qsg/s1600-h/blog9-27-07.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMhV6F22wGVrm-7pKiTBFXz1_kCxqqkopALVq_Guh7XNOkbSIhS8zQGCXe9K7RfPshVLBea2qTYyikUgZ__1t1BCsoRXS81DShG0zsqTeN5yzf_EJYsVwEwZcX7HUobM7c6tcYYHwy4qsg/s400/blog9-27-07.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424424868856567426" border="0" /></a><br /> My crack-daddy neighbor is moving out this week. No, no, not the sex couple (who would not meet my eyes at the Publix the other day, do they read my blog? Do they know my name? Have I been walking around in my altogether too much?) who live across the courtyard. This is the person who lives right across the hall, my closest neighbor who has been there for years. When I moved in the apartment manager warned me about him, saying that he was an alcoholic but a harmless one, and may sometimes park halfway over in my spot. This is all true. Sometimes he does park halfway over in my spot, but I'm just glad he made it home.<br /> Melvin's (not his real name) apartment is a bachelor pad de-lux. There are velvet paintings of black panthers and leopards on the walls and heavy dark blue and maroon rugs stapled to the hardwood floors. Ashtrays shaped like wild psychedelic glass vaginas share space on small rickety tables with lamps filled with shells and scented candles half burned down and blown out. One time he invited me over to see a painting a woman he knew had just given to him. It was in the bedroom, hanging next to his bed, and showed the headless (I imagine this is more from the limitations of the painter rather than a stylistic choice) intertwined bodies of a man and a woman floating in a green and red (bed? sky? Christmas sex cloud?) background. The man, he pointed out, was him. He was quite flattered and pleased. And what man wouldn't be? The painter may have had no talent for hands, head, or feet, but she had a fine and clear memory for cock.<br /> Melvin is somewhat of an ambassador of the apartment complex, he has a wonky-eyed charisma and an easy laugh that has made him an acquaintance, if not a friend of all who live here. I have only met a handful of my neighbors but Melvin knows each and every one. Somehow he is harmless, even when he knocked on my door one day, a pair of my panties pressed tight to his face and making noises of pleasure, I knew that he was simply returning something I dropped in the laundry shack and not being stalkerish or creepy. This is his gift.<br /> For a while he had his sister living with him. They seemed to do fine for a while until he brought a lady home. The lady was bottle blond and had a hard life living in her face, but her eyes were freaky blue and I could see the beauty she had been. She wore clothes better suited to a college girl with loose morals and looked like the entire town of Panama City, FL wrapped up in one tired body. She and the sister did not get along. They all drank, they all fought, sometimes the cops were called. Melvin seemed bewildered and frustrated at his lot in life and I could tell he was not a man who enjoys having two bickering women living under his roof, upsetting the peace and strewing their flea market potpourri around his living room.<br /> The sister left in the night, knocking on my door one final time and having a talk with me in the hallway. She was drunk out of her mind and her body had loosened to a point where it appeared she had no bones and her face moved in such a way that it seemed she had mice roiling around under her skin. She talked on and on about how she was worried about Melvin, how he could get in <span style="font-style: italic;">trouble</span>, how this woman would <span style="font-style: italic;">bring him down</span>, and how now that their mom had passed she (the sister) was <span style="font-style: italic;">all he has</span>. She clutched at my arms and begged me to keep an eye on him. She insinuated that something sinister beyond my imagination (because I am a good girl) was going on over there. I didn't like the feel of her hands, it felt like something sinister was going on in her body, and I kept carefully taking them off of me and placing them on her own shoulders, her arms crossed so that she could hold herself in and not go spilling out onto the floor. I told her that it was none of my business, and wished her well.<br /> Melvin kicked out his blue-eyed girl a few weeks later after her mom and daughter moved in. I suppose he realized that was not an improvement. I was not sad to see them go, they were always stealing my mop bucket.<br /> But now Melvin is moving out, the cold has driven him away. Our apartments do not have central heating, they have giant crackling radiators that are our responsibility to light. I had to have my Superman Brother-In-Law come help me with mine as it is tricky and scary and really a two man job. I tried to help Melvin with his, but no matter which of the two tasks I gave him he just couldn't get it and I left him there in the cold. I felt bad about that, but he's lived here longer than I have and I thought for sure one of his friends could come do what I could not, but next thing I know he's signed a lease for a one bedroom in a newer complex, one in which the heat is central and the utilities are included. Melvin is not a man who needs to be playing with fire, and I believe he knows his limitations.<br /> He will be fine. He'll move his portrait and his velvets, he'll tear the rugs from the floors (or not) and cart the ashtrays and the lamps and the coasters and recliners and framed pictures of his mama and President Obama across town and crank that heat. He'll sit back in his leather chair with his radio on in nothing but a tank top and tube socks, light a joint and raise a glass of amber oblivion, and laugh that crazy rooster cackle at his supreme good fortune, at his new bachelor pad deluxe. And I know, because he told me, that he will revel in the fact that it is only a ONE bedroom, and there is not space enough for any sisters, mothers, or daughters to move in. <span style="font-style: italic;">I'm sorry Baby,</span> he'll say, <span style="font-style: italic;">this is our love nest. Your moms has got to go.</span><br /> Here's to you, Melvin. You will be missed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-52409205183412254642009-12-18T05:36:00.000-08:002009-12-21T16:37:05.453-08:00A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and Happy Christmas, Y'all<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFouGoiGUoX4z2gAB_9iLp1xXCaEJ89rUg9oAci6TfM2cOkd_RHVWXPet8aC6WY-evPNMdAlux_Bu56orGeFiQi3CUX6uFCQGijVmPoBW4IhStYhznQTr6XpPkp38YWwV0Jnb64cSJmRWW/s1600-h/-3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFouGoiGUoX4z2gAB_9iLp1xXCaEJ89rUg9oAci6TfM2cOkd_RHVWXPet8aC6WY-evPNMdAlux_Bu56orGeFiQi3CUX6uFCQGijVmPoBW4IhStYhznQTr6XpPkp38YWwV0Jnb64cSJmRWW/s400/-3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416615527583811954" border="0" /></a><br /> Yesterday I took to my bed. It started last Sunday when my apartment, over the course of a matter of hours, turned into a hellswamp. I'd been at my father's house participating in the annual tree trimming song singing extravaganza and I'd left all my windows open.It had been very cold, and then it began to rain, and then it got very warm, and the weathers collided in such a way to make Tallahassee resemble the inside of a mouth. My apartment was one of those terrariums you build in sixth grade science class to explain how a rain forest works and it's all very exciting in sixth grade science to discover that you, like God, can create rain, but it is not very exciting when you discover that God, like you, can move into your apartment and say "HA". "ONLY I CAN CREATE RAIN. NOW MOP YOUR CEILING, BITCH."<br /> I was very adult. I covered my laptop, hid my journal, and mopped the ceiling. Then I mopped the floor. Then I did it again. I ate some soup on my couch that is actually a twin bed, huddled on the damp sheets like an Katrina puppy on a raft, and went to bed.<br /> No, wait, it started Sunday morning, when I decided to make a Christmas tree. I have a history of making my own tree. Who doesn't remember the futon frame I folded and leaned against the wall and decorated all those years ago? (Much to the chagrin of my then boyfriend because it stayed up for about two years.) Last year and the year before I actually had REAL trees and they were WONDERFUL and they stayed up till February (real trees die, so you have to throw them out eventually). This year money is tight, and I no longer have a futon frame, so I cast my mind about my possessions until it settled on a wrought iron plant stand that Mama gave me a while back. It's a lovely little three tiered thing that looks like a spiral staircase you might find inside a cathouse in New Orleans. When I look at it I can easily see tiny hopeful men ascending, with their hats in their sweaty little hands, their mouths slightly open. In other words, ideal for fake Christmas tree making.<br /> So Sunday morning I made coffee, retrieved the plant stand from the front stoop, gave it a cursory swipe with a rag (that unbeknownst to me I would later use as one of the many things I would mop my ceiling with), and looked for my Christmas cd. I have one, and I could not find it. I did however, find a mix of love songs that was made for me back when I was sweet and pretty, and that seemed to do just as well. Al Green, Dinah Washington, Etta James, thank you and yes. It was lovely my friends, the music sultry, the rain falling soft, my hands and mind busy in the task of carefully twining multicolored twinkle lights around each and every intricate twirl of brothel-ornate iron- until I finished (it took me an hour) and plugged the damn things in and discovered that only half the strand lit up. Not even the good half. (There was a good half.) Don't you dare say that I should have checked it first! I did! I did check it first! This is not my first rodeo! Remember the futon frame! That took me hours and many many strands of lights! So, I sighed. I turned off the cd, which was really making me depressed anyway, unplugged the lights, and cut the bitches off with some wire clippers. They now fill my tiny desk waste basket, tangled and bitter like chains cast off the ghost of Christmas past.<br /> Then the tree trimming song singing father's house extravaganza, then the fetid Godsfault terrarium hellswamp debacle.<br /> Monday was a day of respite. I woke up, called my sweet Mama, and followed her advice of closing up the house and turning the ac on. Worked like a charm. I have an old apartment and I do not have central ac, but I do have three window units. THREE! I am richer by far than many of my peers. Two, of course, weren't working. The one that was, fortunately, is the one in the living room (and so the one most centrally located) and it's a giant rattling thing that hums and spits and curses, but damn does it make the air cold. There was a feeling of Christmas as the great humping beast tharumped it's croupy wintry breath into the air and sucked the moisture from the room, all but pouring water onto the ground outside. My coffee steamed, the music swelled, and we went round two on the decorating, and all was as it should be.<br /> I worked Monday night and came home filled with a strange lighted energy to make Christmas presents. Here is my favorite part of Christmas- that time when the inspiration to make pretty shit to give to my family fills me up and overflows out my nimble fingers. It only happens once a year and by God it is a Christmas miracle and though late this year, I'll take what I can get, so in a frenzy of glitter and glue and gratitude (the three "G"s of Christmas) I pulled out my supplies and set to work. It was a gorgeous night and I stayed up until 2:AM in happy construction, like an elf with a 401k and a dental plan.<br /> Tuesday morning I woke to discover that the glue I had used the night before was, of course, the wrong kind of glue. I can't tell you exactly what went wrong, because that would be giving away the secret of what I'm giving people for Christmas (and really, the secret is the best part of it, this year is pretty weak. No pajamas this year, people!) but suffice to say, everything I had done needed to be scrapped. I did not cry. I went to work.<br /> The details of the next few days are unimportant. Here are the highlights: Work. Cold. 100% Chance of rain (I wish the weather man would say something like "I bet you a Million Dollars it is going to rain", it sounds so much more fun that way). Premenstrual. Bone pain to the point of crippling. Serving a table of twelve peevish viragoes. Nausea. Which brings me to yesterday after work when I came home, put my purse on a chair, took off my bra, and got in bed. Done, I say! I am done! I was ready to hang up my apron and live in my car.<br /> But today, after fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep, everything feels much better. I know that all this is just spoiled child's blues, I know that most of you out there have children and it is a luxury I have that I can just lay my pathetic burdens down and go to bed, but oh babies, I needed it. I needed a temporary oblivion, a thick sweet dream state, I needed blankets pulled up to my nose and the world going by without me for a while. Christmas Day is one week away, and I don't want to hate it.<br /> I love Christmas. I love the excuse to make silly things. I love the madness that comes over everyone once a year that infects them to drape their houses with tiny lights and bring trees inside. I love the smell of cinnamon and peppermint and orange peel. I love the absurdity of it, the way we hang giant socks from our fireplaces and bake cookies for imaginary men. I love that we make everything so pretty.<br /> I love beauty, I need beauty. I don't understand why beauty seems unimportant or unnecessary in everyday life. We have these marvelous bodies that are able to touch and taste and see and hear and why not see color and light? Why not smell fir and vanilla? Why not hear Etta James and Otis Redding? When you reach out to touch, touch velvet, touch silk, touch the oily mottled smoothness of an orange, the prickle of a pine, the warmth of a cheek. And mistletoe? The succulent poison of its fat fleshy leaves and waxy berries, hanging in doorways for promises of stolen kisses. Ginger. Clove. The stab of holly so green and glossy and red berries that fall and make a mess and we don't even care we love them so. Golden globes hung from branches heavy with the burden of family history and each cardboard box of ornaments a treasure you open once a year.<br /> When I went to buy the correct glue the other day I had a moment of panic in the craft store. All around me there were the things that make me happy- ribbons, paper, new pens, paints (that smell of alcohol, that smell of rot, that smell of sulphur), crayons, jewels, beads, sequins, bells, needles, and thread. And all around me were people red faced and angry, brandishing advertising circulars like weapons and shouting at other people who I promise you were not getting paid nearly enough to get shouted at. Behind the cacophony of voices ran the tinny sounds of insipid carols that have been done and redone by both celebrities and dogs and everything in between and played only because the words "Christmas" and "Holiday" and "Snow" are mentioned somewhere in them. This is not my Christmas. I wanted to bolt, and bolt I did as soon as I bought the glue.<br /> My mother hates Christmas, but she has never passed hate of anything on to her children. I am so lucky for that. I am so lucky to have the family I have that lets me be me, and pick and choose the Christmas I want to have. Each year they let me make my misshapen handcrafted things and pass them off as presents. They let me ignore the mall and get all starry eyed over the sparkly bits, the twinkle lights and glitter trees and red bows that people, in their madness tie onto just about anything that will let them. When I was growing up we drank cocoa out of mugs shaped like Santa's head and felt special, even as we rubbed his cherry cheeks white year after year, and we put out cookies, and we put out carrots. Mama, who does not like Christmas read us "Twas the Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve every year until one year we lost the book and my brother spoke up in his tiny child's voice and recited the whole thing from memory. As children we clutched our stomachs in despair at having to eat raspberry strudel BEFORE we could even look at the tree to see what Santa brought us! When we are children it is all magic, even if the "tree" is actually only a branch that dad cut off a pine tree behind the house and our stockings are mostly filled with tangerines and walnuts. As children we do not have to fulfill Christmas wishes and bargain shop and fight tooth and nail for the last Xbox on the shelf. We can sit next to the tree and push our faces up so close so that all we can see is a forest filled with lights and magic, with colored glass so delicate you could crush it in your hand and yet survives year after year because we are careful with our magic, and we wrap it in paper to keep it safe.<br /> I try to keep my Christmas a child's Christmas as much as I can. Like fourteen hours of sleep, I know that it is a luxury I have because I don't have children of my own. But I do envy you mothers and fathers. Even if the light is gone from your own tired eyes by the time Christmas Day arrives and you are worn out and you have tape in your hair and cuts on your hands and you feel sick from eating Santa's cookies at midnight to keep the babies believing in make-believe one more year. I envy you, that you will be there to watch the light in your children's eyes. You will watch them grin their gap-toothed grins and wriggle in their nightgowns. You will be able to pass on pretty, you will make beauty for your little beasts, and they will love it, oh they will love it. And when they grow up, maybe they will keep that in their hearts and still get excited each year, because you gave them that.<br /> And now, sweet friends, my house is dry, my stomach is settled, and I am well rested. The proper glue is sitting on the table next to me and the scissors are calling out. It is only one week till Christmas. I must get busy. Christmas waits for no man. God says "HA". I may not finish my gifts in time, but it really doesn't matter. I wish I could kiss all your pretty faces. If it gets too stressful, put on some Lady Day, take time to breathe.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-90640899317289011092009-11-22T16:17:00.000-08:002009-11-22T17:23:58.891-08:00Children and Mad Men Think I'm Pretty<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBxhIoE_rHBx-vy0ILbZijnfTn6kboDoE7aSYoUD2lQM9EV6o3tW9pzYG2jvxVVRvXZQ8TDrTOCq4xbn-LhQoZnv0tdqrXNUh5ARsGD-vIUYw3hsL8y6rlD3bvpw-bdeeiPz3-sTeNTO2w/s1600/old-man.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBxhIoE_rHBx-vy0ILbZijnfTn6kboDoE7aSYoUD2lQM9EV6o3tW9pzYG2jvxVVRvXZQ8TDrTOCq4xbn-LhQoZnv0tdqrXNUh5ARsGD-vIUYw3hsL8y6rlD3bvpw-bdeeiPz3-sTeNTO2w/s400/old-man.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407103638166982146" border="0" /></a><br /><br /> Today at work an older gentleman dressed in various shades of plaid and drab told me that he would come back to eat sometime, but only if I was working. He would have to call, he said. He told me that he was getting over a heart condition, that is, a woman had just broken his heart, and that it didn't hurt to see a pretty girl. I assured him that we have other pretty waitresses and he waved his hand dismissively and said, "They aren't hags or anything, but..." and proceeded to give me a long and dubious metaphor involving double-bagged groceries and how you don't really need two bags but it's good to have them in case the primary one bursts. I believe I was the primary bag. At some point he also wandered to the rear of the restaurant to commend the chef.<br /> A few weeks ago I met a man named Jimbo who lives on the streets in my fair town. I met him on the street, actually, walking from the health food store to my apartment. He was carrot haired and beet faced and swayed a bit as he walked. Approaching him I could not help but admire the way he owned the sidewalk. We said hello in passing and he called me Sunshine and asked me for some change to help a brother out. I told him I'd just spent all my cash money at the grocery store, and after he assured me that was alright I moved on and he paused to let me get ahead before he continued his walk. Later that same day I ran into Jimbo again, on a different street some miles from our earlier encounter. "Sunshine!" he hailed me, a grand bellow full of gravel and oboe, "Marry me! You are beautiful!" "Not today!" I returned, feeling every bit a Sunshine.<br /> The day after Halloween I had the pleasure of serving a fairy princess, a Harry Potter, and their beautiful mama, who was herself dressed as herself. They ordered chocolate chip pancakes, sourdough french toast, eggs over-easy, fruit, and grits. The fairy princess ate only bacon and did so with tiny bites from baby teeth and pinkies out, like a lady. As I asked if they needed anthing else, the fairy princess hid her face in her mama's tummy and her mama said, "It's alright, you can tell her." The little girl looked up at me, her eyes like sugared gumdrops in her berry face and whispered, "I think you're pretty!" and then quick! back to the safe dark hide-away of mama's blouse. I blushed and cut my eyes at Harry Potter, who gave me a wicked chocolate grin.<br /> People's eyes are as variable and unreliable as shop-store windows. In some we are tall and thin and young forever, and some cast every awful angle in sharp and haggard relief. I was once told by a manager that if I could not be cute, I would have to be good to cut it in the serving world, and I took that to heart. It's true, I'm not cute. I wear black framed glasses and have severe hair, which I call my Frida Kahlo hair. My bosom is small and my bras perpetually ill-fitting with straps that tend to slide off my shoulders and peek out my short sleeved black t-shirts. When I am thinking of a lot of things at once (which I am always doing while serving) I scrunch my lips and furrow my brow. However. Children and madmen think I am beautiful, and if anyone in this world can speak the truth as it springs flashing from the mind to the mouth it is the insane and the very very young. And if the man is not only mad but also drunk? Oh my, then it must be true.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-38828049995829190512009-10-21T06:57:00.000-07:002009-10-21T11:39:07.531-07:00The Fabulous Sex I Am Not Having<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2UcMUK0FUSVUVbxUjYTux0oBOjF9Ah9bU10UYNkN5oVO2n3C3SJp7ATZXTJVXFuztDQJiggXvZ32kuepUqHMf7mCU3q8EXbaf3LQBTsv5XMpOaL16o-jNWfFBYKejLgO4Eoaa3zIV3OCw/s1600-h/bananas.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2UcMUK0FUSVUVbxUjYTux0oBOjF9Ah9bU10UYNkN5oVO2n3C3SJp7ATZXTJVXFuztDQJiggXvZ32kuepUqHMf7mCU3q8EXbaf3LQBTsv5XMpOaL16o-jNWfFBYKejLgO4Eoaa3zIV3OCw/s400/bananas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395124588196358770" border="0" /></a><br />The girl in the apartment across (or as we in my family say, <span style="font-style: italic;">acrost</span>) the courtyard from me is having spectacular sex. She and her boyfriend moved in about a year ago and all I heard from them was the boy's boorish voice in heavy and pontificating discourse, warped by walls and distance to where I could only make out the occasional word. Words like "halo" and "xbox". He moved out one day in August, one van and a buddy, his clothes and face wrinkled and worn, his hair distraught. He hailed me as I went to enter my foyer and told me he was leaving, the first words he ever spoke to me. "Off to better and brighter things!" I said. "Maybe" he said. The sex started soon after.<br /> At first I thought she was weeping, and I put my earphones in. The walls here are very thin, and to give privacy one must do more sometimes than close a window. The weeping went on and on and I took my earphones off, concerned. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahhhh,</span> I thought,<span style="font-style: italic;"> that's not weeping....</span> and back to book on tape.<br /> Perhaps she is not having spectacular sex. Perhaps she is doing many very frightening, very exciting somersaults. Perhaps she is faking. If she is faking she is dedicated to the fraud, committing herself to the act sometimes several times a day. Somehow, I don't think this is the case. I almost feel sorry for the boy who left. Sorry you Shlub, you treestump of a man, sorry you big toe in trousers, you brown haired tousle, you shrimphook, you fat thighed monocle! You didn't do it for her! And now someone else is! All the time! Many times! I hope you're doing well! Don't worry, your girl is fine!!<br /> I don't mind hearing the sex. They aren't right next door or above me, there is some muffling involved. From other apartments sometimes I do hear weeping, sometimes I hear fights or screaming or drunken girls in piercing hilarity. From my apartment I imagine other people hear the occasional burp, or me yelling at my cat, or both- making it sound like I am yelling at the cat for burping. Or sometimes I will sing my cat's theme song while she is furiously biting my arm <span style="font-style: italic;">Craaaazy on you! Craa-aaazy on you! Let me go crazy crazy on you!</span> which is what I imagine she is singing in her own head but because she doesn't have words I have to vocalize for her.<br /> I ran into a friend yesterday and I told him about the fabulous sex I am not having. He brushed aside my story like cheezit crumbs off a beautiful woman's bosom. <span style="font-style: italic;">You could be having sex....</span> "That's not the point! I'm not jealous, I'm just relating a story!" he didn't let me finish. <span style="font-style: italic;">You could be having sex. Lots of guys would have sex with you, but you're all "I'm May, I'm crazy!" </span>He said this while flailing his arms in the air and running around. I would've given him five to the two if he wasn't so spot on. I arched my brow admiringly. "Oh, you're good, my friend. You're good."<br /> I had a dream the other night that I was in a store that sold only chocolate covered banana products. Chocolate covered banana cereal, chocolate covered banana chips, chocolate covered banana bananas... They claimed to have more chocolate covered banana products than anywhere in the whole world. I related this to Mama and she said, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hmmm, I wonder what Freud would have to say about that?</span> I hadn't even thought about it like that. I'm glad that I didn't mention that in the dream I was in the store because I was looking for someone. He wasn't there. I thought <span style="font-style: italic;">I don't even LIKE chocolate covered bananas! Now if this place sold mustard...</span><br /> Petit Fleur writes about the marvelous brain and it's electric pathways, it's firesnap magic and I have to concur. While I am wandering around my days, wheeling through shifts at work and laundry and money and mold in the bathroom, my brain is doing the jizzy math of my basest instincts. My age plus my solitude multiplied by the moaning thumps across (<span style="font-style: italic;">acrost) </span>the courtyard and divided by the heft and holler of my nephew in my arms = Chocolate Covered Bananas! <span style="font-style: italic;">You don't even like chocolate covered bananas?!</span> says my brain <span style="font-style: italic;">How do you know if you haven't had one in a while? Look at the variety! So many kinds to choose from!</span><br /> My brain may have to wait. In my head there are many kinds of brain (<span style="font-style: italic;">I'm May! I'm crazy!</span>) and the primal sex monkey part is not the one with the keys to the kingdom. I am sober, you know. So very very very sober. It's not like I can go out with friends, get a couple of drinks in me and loosen up enough to sit back in my chair, much less let the hair down and peek over the glasses with that look that means come hither, that means maybe, I take the glasses off. No, I avoid all such situations. The compliments on my appearance I get are from old ladies at the grocery store. They like my buns, and they are not referring to my ass.<br /> Today is the fifteenth anniversary of my car accident and I have to mention that here because it is on my mind. I do not recommend getting hit by a car, but I will say that for the first few years after the accident it imbued me with a great courage and confidence. After seeing my bones come through my skin, after watching my wounds weep red stained yellow tears, after waking up each morning crying before I even opened my eyes, falling on my hop-step way to the bathroom and waiting for someone to come along to pick me up, after all that normal life seemed so sweetly tame. The girls who intimidated me no longer had tigers in their eyes, the boys who would not give me the time of day were whitewashed selfish and preening. If I wanted to do something, like get in my truck and drive west alone with no map and no phone, I did it. If I wanted a job I just went to the place where I wanted to work and asked for a job. If I needed a cheap place to live I called a man I'd never met who I heard charged only $111 a month for one side of a duplex and instead ended up living with him, for free. Why not? But now it's been fifteen years and life has stepped in. At some point a few years ago I realized I was afraid again, and that scared the hell out of me. When I got sober, I made my life very very safe.<br /> Part of getting sober in AA is doing a sexual inventory. You write down every sex thing you have ever done and you read it to someone. The point of this is to figure out where you have harmed others, where you've been selfish or destructive, so you can break your patterns and make amends when necessary. I thought it was great. I would go to meetings and say "So, I'm doing my sex inventory and I was thinking about the time when I was in bed with two of my coworkers..." not knowing that most people do not talk about their sex inventory at meetings. Cancer, yes. Bad haircut, yes. Sex inventory? Not so much. They'll listen, oh yes, they will listen, but talking about it seems to make everyone shy. I wasn't ashamed of my sexual behavior as much as I was ashamed of my regular drunken convivaling and besides, it wasn't nearly so interesting as I've heard through the rumor mill that it was. Three-way with the coworkers? Never happened. I enjoyed the moment but hopped out of bed before the deed was done, shouting thank yous for a lovely evening and stealing three Newcastles out of the fridge before sneaking off into the night. I'm a story whore, a make-out slut, but I get as twisted and tight as my professional hair when faced with actual promiscuity. Sigh.<br /> So now what's a girl to do? I'm getting wrinkles around my eyes and sag around the back. If my 31 year old breasts are perky but there is no one around to see them, do they still perk? How does one go from talking about kazoos and the weather to slipping off the skivvies? I don't think it will happen at the coffeeshop, or good lord, at the Publix.<br /> And I'm not crazy, I'm waiting to fall in love. I'm waiting for that moment of head rush, for my neck to prickle and my stomach to heave. Sex for sex sake is a young woman's game. One who believes that a tumble bump means she's beautiful, or that a warm body keeps the cold out of her own. I have showers. I have a lovely cat. Besides, I have a lot to do. I need to clean out the refrigerator and learn to cartwheel on the left side. Busy busy.<br /> Amanda Ziller once said "Birth, copulation and death. One day I was born, someday I shall die, today I will copulate." Today, I will probably not copulate. Today I will walk to the intersection that knocked my bones out and cross the road, and then cross back. I will go to the grocery store. I will get chocolate and I will get bananas. I will stick one of those things in the freezer and one on the stove, and tonight when the cold comes in the windows and the moaning ululations reach with sticky fingers to my ears, I'll sidestep my wicked tender brain's dreamplan by distracting it with cool and sweet. <span style="font-style: italic;">You want chocolate covered bananas, you psuedo-Freudian charlatan? Here you go. You can have chocolate covered bananas. All. night. long.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com45tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-59025826298988951732009-09-29T05:23:00.000-07:002009-09-29T12:04:52.948-07:00From The Diary of Miss May E. Thigpen Upon Meeting Her Nephew<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQYalr8zk4wvfb1Hv0avkLFZhZlkO57M9gXg6Jjl31E5NpXwlrNvaFbwgJP60TNxL1EyOUMNW9Ja8_vq3Fnq6BPQXk-G1WXXOi_IE2eWdXl3q64JC5jq9BtbRM72jvgFEoN1hFKVCeWGSd/s1600-h/-2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQYalr8zk4wvfb1Hv0avkLFZhZlkO57M9gXg6Jjl31E5NpXwlrNvaFbwgJP60TNxL1EyOUMNW9Ja8_vq3Fnq6BPQXk-G1WXXOi_IE2eWdXl3q64JC5jq9BtbRM72jvgFEoN1hFKVCeWGSd/s400/-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386967385712294210" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I saw my baby nephew for the first time yesterday.<br /> He is beautiful. We all say he is beautiful! He is perfect. He looks like a changeling, with his very serious face, those hooded eyes and very important eyebrows. His nose is like a cupcake turned upside down and his little mouth is full on top and tucked lower lip that gets dragged into the tiny knob of his chin by his heavy, dewy cheeks. He is pink, and has long, long fingers. His legs are long as well like a jumping frog with the same narrow hips and his feet have prominent heels and monkey toes. His ears make me think of shells cut crossways, or maybe just one perfect nautilus in half because they match of course and are on either sides of his noggin in just the right places. They are soft and have good lobes. Mama says he bleats like a goat when he is squalling, but I think he sounds like a boy. I have not looked overmuch at his tummy but I suspect it too, is perfect.<br /> It was the strangest feeling to hold him. He is not my boy, but he is my blood, and it was more like looking into my sister's face than just any other baby. Jason said when he first saw him, his heart just dropped. I was not so much aware of my heart but more like I'd been missing something and here he was. Sometimes we talk about Jessie, and how she was an accident, but we can't imagine our lives without her- that yawning space she would leave without us ever knowing how empty we were. Here it is again. Hello. Here you are. We've been waiting for you, little man.<br /> To speak of him in the clumsy words we have and to give the full weight of how I feel about him I would have to say I am in love with this boy. Then if you were to say <span style="font-style: italic;">Well, if you love him so much why don't you marry him? </span>I'd say, <span style="font-style: italic;">Shut up, You Stupid Fool. I already have.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-69721678288730300652009-09-26T17:10:00.000-07:002009-09-26T17:14:56.116-07:00WelcomeHe is here! I'll let Mama get home and get some rest and tell you all about it, but from what I know, Owen Curtis Hartmann fell to Earth around 4:40 this afternoon. Both Mother and child are safe and healthy. He is beautiful.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-89278083367025016172009-09-26T10:05:00.000-07:002009-09-26T11:53:21.018-07:00Hopefully next update will include a baby.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Still laboring, everyone is exhausted. They gave her an epidural so she can rest, and when she wakes she'll start on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">pitocin</span>. Mama wanted me to log on here and tell everyone that Lily is the bravest* woman she's ever seen give birth, and that's saying a lot. Also, the resident on the floor right now doesn't know his head from his ass, if there is a difference. (Okay, she didn't want me to say that, but I thought it was funny.) I'm still Typhoid Mary, so I'm <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">quarantined</span> at the house. I think my boss thinks I'm faking because I've been saying I have a fever since Sunday night. HELLO! IT'S THE FUCKING FLU! As if I'd fake sick while my SISTER IS IN LABOR!<div> Sorry, I must be feeling better, because I'm more pissed off than I was yesterday. Ah, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">trippy</span> Zen of fever dreams....</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Anyway, keep us in your thoughts (Lily, Owen, and the crew at the hospital). They sound plumb wore out.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>*Um, she may have said "More Grace" as in "Lily is handling her labor with more grace than any laboring woman I've ever seen." Sorry, not sure. I am still running a fever.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-84478150925666980812009-09-25T06:34:00.000-07:002009-09-25T07:42:39.449-07:00Here We Go<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNybqR4f29PhJRcug9eal8ZoXGQAPuEPNdesRo8AOWK5_eSzOK3lbcwNeiv1ezvEoxx8CUpIAQXe6c5QVyAOzdEcOvQhgsqScO5xBo-OHqsViumycxwKCXnvXCrYoNUY1r3E7GmPk8qg7k/s1600-h/bdp1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNybqR4f29PhJRcug9eal8ZoXGQAPuEPNdesRo8AOWK5_eSzOK3lbcwNeiv1ezvEoxx8CUpIAQXe6c5QVyAOzdEcOvQhgsqScO5xBo-OHqsViumycxwKCXnvXCrYoNUY1r3E7GmPk8qg7k/s400/bdp1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385415445566631570" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The day my sister Lily was born, there were a hundred people at the house and my brother and I ran wild. My mother wore amethyst beads around her neck and a tie-died shirt of Daddy's and nothing else, and though her belly was huge her legs were still the envy of every woman in the world.<div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When we have birthdays in my family we start out like that. At some point, in the midst of kebab making or sushi rolling or river wandering, someone will say, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">On the day you were born...</span> and the story will get told. In mine, Hank is entrusted to the care of Aunt Lynn, who wisely braids her long golden hair into two braids the way my mother wore hers, to give him something to hold onto. In Hank's, there is an honest attempt at natural childbirth with only a book and a woman who had given birth before as guides. In the story of Jessie I chime in, carrying the thread of the story to say, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">And as you slipped from the womb, Anne-Helena got so excited that she pushed my face into her very impressive bosom and I missed the whole thing.</span> Lily's birthday is in two days, but today, today she is in labor with her own child.<br /></div><div> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have the flu.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Owen, </span>I will say, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">On the day you were born, I had the flu. Your Mama went into labor at 5:30 in the morning, and your Uncle Hank called me and woke me up at 8:30 to tell me the good news and to say that he and Aunt Jessie and Auntie Taylor were going to breakfast.</span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>So funny this day. It is beautiful and sunny and warming, there is a hush so far and not too much of a busy. I am very aware of the birth story that is unfolding right now and I am doing my best to make only right actions today. My cat is playing Monster Under The Sheet and I am wrestling with my sore hips and rusty bones, but I am clean and I washed with rose soap.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I called Mama and made sure that Lily is wearing her amethyst beads and she is that makes me cry, I don't know why. I want to be there to look into her eyes and to feed her honey and to rub her feet, but instead I am trying to get my fever down and crying over a lavender necklace.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Mama gave that necklace to me some years ago, probably because I borrowed it so many times. It took me a while to get over my selfish and narcissistic desires, I loved that necklace for it's light catching beauty, for the purple shadow it threw against my collarbone. The winter I first got sober, I gave it to Lily. It was always hers, anyway.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>She is wearing it now, and laboring. She has thrown up (which is Wonderful, Mama says) and her contractions are regular, though short. They will be at this all day.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I can not tell you how proud I am of this girl.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>On the day Lily was born, I was not afraid, because my Mama was the strongest woman in the world, and I myself was proof she could do it. Now Owen is getting born, and I am not afraid. Lily is the strongest woman in the world, with the biggest heart and the longest legs and the arms made for holding and a well inside her deep and pure. She may have to dip into that well today, deeper than she ever has before, but it will never be empty. Her strength has no bottom.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Owen, on the day you were born, I had the flu. But my every waking thought was you. My every stretch a lean toward you. My very dreams a moving train to you to you to you. And every moment before and after you are born is love for you.</span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Come on Baby, we are waiting.<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-30852373310403377082009-09-17T11:41:00.001-07:002009-09-17T11:42:08.987-07:00For Michelle.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lcB7VQvWLcu97jxZShugIw9WyfmypW9NSG0zGq-9ua5O4aJ1TL9eg-wlyDWFTV4zeOT8TcUtNk21FHCgdb1Fr054q8nG5xVegI-2D9MJ3xyntU_UdlvFTdP-uSKbV-vc6sdTvh-LnoSk/s1600-h/96420630fdc523d9_landing.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 309px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lcB7VQvWLcu97jxZShugIw9WyfmypW9NSG0zGq-9ua5O4aJ1TL9eg-wlyDWFTV4zeOT8TcUtNk21FHCgdb1Fr054q8nG5xVegI-2D9MJ3xyntU_UdlvFTdP-uSKbV-vc6sdTvh-LnoSk/s400/96420630fdc523d9_landing.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382508498970579666" /></a><br />Happy Baby Meat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-87150275815153090732009-09-16T18:54:00.000-07:002009-09-16T18:55:43.059-07:00For Lily.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixStHg1yADQn58U3FEqYWR808PxQ0uoYfhPULfBG5WfYVhSYSTK3NP20efy2vdfVY0EYVfLRlx6iT9UNnPne6x0zoIPbCx3r9tNx05tHGGs6uHWkRkQp0JK8zPXm2iFBvgq9Zrt7aw7Bzc/s1600-h/6aa539257a0da980_landing.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 329px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixStHg1yADQn58U3FEqYWR808PxQ0uoYfhPULfBG5WfYVhSYSTK3NP20efy2vdfVY0EYVfLRlx6iT9UNnPne6x0zoIPbCx3r9tNx05tHGGs6uHWkRkQp0JK8zPXm2iFBvgq9Zrt7aw7Bzc/s400/6aa539257a0da980_landing.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382249131640802146" /></a><br />Plus, I was getting tired of looking at all that meat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-79420917132937335492009-09-09T05:17:00.000-07:002009-09-09T07:02:11.323-07:00Health Care. You've been Warned.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWHRCkXhEUtwSC7mPWy8I5OPYUzEmGq7sylP_a4RiZ4u_SoEcp_ivAisfj8PxWAcwaV7e9jdDurhoXZAS71_FvThN3-jE4mbL9R1dvJxkLi8mCsu2VUfZhf7BE215xAwfreTYomv-LLeL/s1600-h/slaughterhouse.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 389px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWHRCkXhEUtwSC7mPWy8I5OPYUzEmGq7sylP_a4RiZ4u_SoEcp_ivAisfj8PxWAcwaV7e9jdDurhoXZAS71_FvThN3-jE4mbL9R1dvJxkLi8mCsu2VUfZhf7BE215xAwfreTYomv-LLeL/s400/slaughterhouse.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379467627697962546" /></a><br />No doubt everyone who comes here has already been over to Bless Our Hearts and read my mother's post about the health care debate, and the comments that followed. Some of the people who commented are new to her blog, and felt the need to tell her how wrong and backward she is. I of course, wanted to jump in, eyes blazing, and pick apart each comment one by one. It is the daughter in me, the badger, but I realize that her blog is not mine to defend. She does a fine job of that already. Luckily, I have my own.<div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This is not a democracy. This is not a newspaper. This is Roll Up The Rugs, and these are my thoughts and feelings. If you don't like them, be happy that you are free to write your own damn blog.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I'm not for communism. Okay, sure, in high school I entertained the notion that it seemed like a good idea, but since then I have seen that it is a good ideal and not a very good idea at all. It doesn't work, it never has, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with public health care. I don't know why people keep bringing it up.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I happen to like capitalism. I like the American Dream. I like that I can work for my money and buy whatever the hell I like with it. I like that, if I wanted to, I could take classes and work hard and get a job that allows me to climb a ladder and get to the top and make a bunch of money and eventually own a house in Paris and St. Tropez and go to the Isle of Capri and not worry about breaking my leg and being able to afford to go to the doctor. I like that I have that option, but the fact is that we can't all do that.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I'm not saying that we don't all have the potential to do that, I'm saying that in order for this country to run, we absolutely can't all do that. It wouldn't work. It's fine and well to say that we are all free to make our own money and take care of ourselves, but really, we can't.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Do we like our restaurants? Our grocery stores? Do we like to buy meat, purchase clothes, find new music to listen to? Do we like to have clean toilets wherever we go? Do we like to be able to walk down the street without stepping over dead dogs? Do we like to have someone else get an armpit full of hot oil as they pull the oil filters from our cars every few months so we don't have to? Do we like the service desk at Target? Do we like to stop at well-stocked gas stations when we are on long road trips? Do we like our lives, our clean and comfortable lives in this country? If so, we better be pretty damn thankful that a huge amount of people are willing to work in low paying jobs to make this lifestyle actually happen.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Poor people are not necessarily lazy, they are just poor. People, real, living breathing people pick the vegetables, slaughter the meat, cook the food, clean the restrooms, sweep the parking lots, paint the houses, stock the shelves, iron and steam the clothes (that come from Paris, that come from India, that come from Mexico), change the oil, deliver the goods. Human beings write the music that inspires, that makes our hearts open. They paint the pictures that make us think, or catch our breath, or break our hearts. They take the photographs. They self educate so that they can give us information about the toys we want to buy, they fix our phones and our computers. They write the books. People do everything that must be done in order for having money to mean anything at all.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And most of these people do so without health insurance.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whenever I hear someone say that they don't want to pay for someone else's health care because those other people have the same opportunities as everybody else, and that it is their own fault that they haven't made more of themselves in this free country, I get confused. The ones among us that are privileged enough to have the jobs that provide the money that pay for health insurance should be pissing themselves with joy that there are so many people willing to do all the things that they do not want to do. Personally, I like being a waitress. People like being served. Do you like being served by a sick waitress? Do you want your butcher to come to work with the flu? <br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>That's really what it comes down to for me. I'm not even going to get into the fact that emergency care costs all of us more in the end than preventative, and so we end up paying for it anyway. I'm not even going to bring that up. (ha.) What I am going to say is this: If you like your capitalistic lifestyle, you must accept that you are able to have it because of the hard work of people who have less than you. In order to continue living the way we do, we must take care of those who provide the goods and services that keep us happy and content. This is not communism. This is simply what it takes to let the rich enjoy their riches.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Now go enjoy your filet mignon, tip your waitress, and shut the fuck up. <br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6345761564418354639.post-64201422464586408032009-09-02T04:22:00.000-07:002009-09-02T06:04:23.162-07:00Just a little bit of nothing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCDF1U5tUIg928qRM2WDRHCett0IhJ8fJcH4BM1y2FedwMxjrCqITtd4rHhGyLW9ZYZ5Bgjoc04XS93BPlYuvsnySpQluR5J9pZVUkolE9mkoZfpmlkxltCExdANplAIwbYHnQotoko522/s1600-h/paper+boat.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCDF1U5tUIg928qRM2WDRHCett0IhJ8fJcH4BM1y2FedwMxjrCqITtd4rHhGyLW9ZYZ5Bgjoc04XS93BPlYuvsnySpQluR5J9pZVUkolE9mkoZfpmlkxltCExdANplAIwbYHnQotoko522/s400/paper+boat.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376848466243228098" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It's been too long between posts but the words won't come. The words come, but not the connective tissue. Wanderlust. Fall. Raindrops. Waitress. Heartbeat. Love, love, or lack thereof.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I've written for an hour and deleted every word. I feel like the world is in motion now, or my world, my world is in full spin, where it has been stalled for so long. I feel there is a change a coming, but I always feel that when the fall comes.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I like my new job. I like the restaurant, the people, the food. I like the mood of the place, the lighting is forgiving of my oh so recently sedentary ass. If I ever decide that I'm going to take time off again to figure out my life, will someone please knock me down? Please remind me that a body in motion stays in motion. Still, the time off has made me thankful for the movement. I'm sick to death of laying around, as much as I needed it.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>But back to work and being busy. The working makes my mind work and perhaps that's why I cannot write. I can't sit still. I walk and paint and clean. I feel the desperate need to clear the dust out of my corners, in my body as well as my home.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The rain is really coming down now. There was no sunrise today. A long time ago I was in Guatemala and my friends and I climbed to the top of the Jaguar Temple at Tikal in the dark to see the sun rise over the ruins. We sat for hours and though we saw the purple flowers and we heard the scream of monkeys, there was no sunrise, just a slow and gradual lightening. So we climbed down.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I'd like to go back there. Who will take me? Who would like to go? I don't think they are burning buses anymore. <br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I don't know if it is the motion of getting a job that gives me the wanderlust, or if it is the change of the season that gives me the motion that allows me to get a job, and the coolness of the air through my open nighttime windows that makes me dream of highways, but it is raining and there was no sunrise today. <br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lately I am thinking that I seen so many beautiful things, but those are only a tiny tiny bit of the beautiful things to see. I have seen snow on yucca. I have seen breastfeeding babies. I have seen wildflowers on train tracks. I have seen a toucan in the jungle. I have seen a scorpion as big as a kitten. What is there to see that I don't know is there to see? And so my mind jumps.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I'm going to give up on this tattered post and I do apologize for it. If you live in Tallahassee I invite you to come downtown and float boats down Franklin Avenue with me as I do not work today. We might catch cold, but we might also catch a frog, you never know.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> <br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com15