perpetual huddle

goodreads widget

retcon

as you can see, friends & family,
i have stopped updating this blog.
working on it started to feel like
another chore for my to-do list
instead of an exercise
in creative discipline....
think i'm splitting hairs?
so do i. maybe i'll just
take any excuse to quit
doing anything i really care
about, hopefully just before
it can count as an accomplishment
or a failure. too bad nobody's counting.
i'll probably resurrect perpetual huddle
if there's a time when i trust myself
to actually write instead of get all ocd
about linklisting every magazine article i like.
for fun, scroll through the archives to find
all those entries i backdated.

p.s. read dogs & water

sunday afternoon

one summer i lived in bellingham
in a house filled with music.
all the boys who lived there
played at least two instuments
and together they called
themselves "same as castles."
glin (the one on the left)
was one of the real
bandmates/roommates,
while i was staying rent free
in a largish closet, just
recuperating from school.
he'd always take breaks
from practices to follow
me out to the porch
and bum a smoke.
he made me feed
his vicious flying squirrels
when he was out of town.
he took me to my first
strip club ever... in canada.

now he's finished an album of his own
"later days" and i haven't been able
to get the first song "disappearing trick,"
out of my head for at least a week.
i sing it in the shower and hum it on the bus.
of course the whole album makes me nostalgic,
but i think i can assume it should
make anyone feel something like nostalgia
even if they've never cannonballed
into toad lake on a hot sunday afternoon.

go listen to asthmaboy on myspace
or download the whole album here, for free.

aug. 13 new yorker pg. 26

ebony spleenwort...
densely covered the trestle
between 104th and 105th Streets.

The Kingfisher

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn't have its splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn't born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water--hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don't say he's right. Neither
do I say he's wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
I couldn't rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly

--Mary Oliver

no duh

muni no signs
on the bus ride to our school picnic
i asked the kids what
these signs meant.
samantha gave me
an exasperated look
and easily rattled them off:

no smoking
no barbecue
no dancing
no toothpaste
and
no perfume

lesson plan

thursday august 8th

under science:

"miss huddle will wear
her constellation socks."

r.i.p. gracie

what oprah knows for sure

A-

i gave blood today (pause for applause).
last time i donated was outside
officemax in a mobile unit.
basically, i was stuck in a stuffy van,
a needle dangling out of my arm,
with my regional manager yammering
away nervously in the next bed,
and heckling the tiny asian girls
who couldn't give a whole pint.
i had the last appointment,
so they told me not
to climb stairs without a friend,
kicked me out onto the sidewalk
and drove off.

this time i donated at the irwin center
and now i want to hang out there every day.
first of all, the building is super-strange.
the parking lot is paved like a patio,
and landscaped with corkscrew topiaries.
there are also three fountains out front,
the water dyed the color of blue-raspberry.
inside, everything is round and dim,
designed to be soothing.

the sign-in clipboard
has a built-in digital clock.
they give you a t-shirt
before you even fill out
the paperwork.
in the waiting area
there are good magazines,
and even a book-swap nook.

once you're in back the nurses
are all lighthearted and unhurried.
they call you by your first name
and ask you how you're feeling
with genuine concern every couple minutes.
they joke with you about the tropical fish tank
and your friend's iron levels. apparently,
laughing keeps your blood pressure up.
you squeeze a little foam ball
as a cradle gently rocks your bag of blood,
and before you know it, you're finished,
with a hot pink bandage around your elbow.

where else could you
lounge in a recliner,
pretzel crumbs all down
the front of your shirt,
drinking cranberry juice
through a bendy straw,
and feel totally self-righteous
while you're doing it?

after you sit up slowly
they usher you into "the canteen,"
a round bar stocked with packets of oreos,
where you get to wait for at least another 15 minutes
while another nice lady serves you more juice.
the stools are padded,
the counter, cool marble.
there's a big plasma-screen tv
set on close-caption,
more good magazines,
and a bunch of brochures
calling you a hero.

its 56 days until i'm eligible again,
but my best friend is going to pound
some iron supplements and give it another shot,
so with any luck i'll be back next weekend.

Labels: come here often?

block quote: totally forgetting

I bought a black chiffon spaghetti-strap shirt and jacket once. The salesperson told me I couldn't wear it with corduroy. There was a sense of danger in her voice. It didn't sound like merely a "fashion don't," but rather a word of serious caution, as though the combination of the two fabrics might result in an explosion. She repeated the warning as she bagged the garment. She was troubled by an uncanny sense that I owned a lot of corduroy. The military must have bunkers full of carefully separated corduroy and black chiffon secreted away somewhere in Nevada. It's one of those tigers we hold by the tail, like the A-bomb. I never wore the black chiffon shirt and evening jacket. Too risky. I buy impulsively sometimes, totally forgetting what I look like and how I spend my time. Amazingly, the fantasy of going out someplace kind of fancy, on a night when I wasn't wearing corduroy and had shaved, lasted long enough for that shirt and jacket to make the cut through three moves and countless closet cleanings.

--paula poundstone, there's nothing in this book i meant to say

the year of the bellydance

listen to charlie schroeder's
funny little radio story,
originally aired on
weekend america,
about him enrolling
in "dunk dreams,"
a class to make you jump higher.
i like the good-natured tone of the piece.
plus, he interviews his mom... always endearing.

who's prissy now?

out of entertainment weekly's
25 greatest action movies
of all time, goldfinger is #19.
this morning i found the item
posted on my bedroom door.
listed among its merits:
Sean Connery
in a powder blue
terry-cloth onesie.
great minds think alike!
anyone who can find
an actual captured still,
of the bond bathing outfit
wins a kiss on the mouth.
but for now this pre-007
ensemble will have to do.

non-alcoholic... i can feed it to my kids

If you can't quench my thirst
What you in my fridge for?
What you wanna live for?

scroll down the a.v. club's first annual absolute best issue
to "best skeleton in the closet of a famous rapper"
for the full audio clip of notorious b.i.g.'s "pepsi freestyle"

block quote: i could do that much

She bought me a little Wurlitzer electric piano. It must have cost two years of saltwater taffy savings, and it was only a tenth of the instrument that I had sold for a few hundred dollars after my father died. She showed up at my place the day of delivery, hiding her face in excitement and fear. "I thought you might want something to practice on. And to work with. While you're... while you aren't..."

read the next three paragraphs, here.

i typed them straight from the page,

without looking at the keys.

it was fun, a little like it was my own.

i haven't had much time to blog,
but i'm almost to page 500
in the time of our singing
a vast novel by richard powers,
broiling with hyperbolie, epiphany,
music, and race.
my commute is long.
the book gives me a lot to think about
as i struggle to find my place
at a school in the bayview
district of san francisco.
the kids at work, especially the girls
come to think of it, only the girls,
are always asking me what i am.
even though i can count the other white
faculty and students on one hand,
they're not asking what you'd expect.
"what are you? a mother? a sister?
a teacher?" they grin, and maybe
hop on one foot while they ask,
but they demand the answer.
i try to avoid the question,
usually by laughing indulgently
and saying "i'm certainly not a mother!"
or "i guess i do have a sister.
she lives in seattle.
do you know where seattle is?
its in washington state."
today one of them caught me off guard
i stopped, halfway through tying
a new bracelet on her upturned wrist,
accused again of not
being something,
or at least,
of not knowing it.
"miss huddle,
what are you?"
the sparkly beads
slid off the string,
one after another,
hitting the floor.
i snapped "actually,
i'm a writer."
she started crying.
i bent and reached
for the first bead i saw.

today on aol

mindless pap. hanson on gadgets
rivals only sheriff uses pink to deter prisoners
for the america online grand prize in journalism.

buy a dead squirrel on ebay

amys taxidermy

on the same page

after a long drive up the coast
as we re-entered our neighborhood
my best friend said. "i kind of want
to go to that ... comic book shop...?"
i just nodded.
nothing says "three day weekend"
to me quite like standing
in a fluorescent-lit storefront,
"casually" browsing
the trade paperbacks
for new compilations
by my favorite authors
or "just looking" at the selection
of TNG action figures.

i left data behind,
but i walked out with fell,
a promising warren ellis
and ben templesmith collaboration
about a homicide investigator
exiled from downtown,
sent across the bridge to a haunted
wasteland called snowtown.
sadly, it turned out to be an awkward read.
the panels are almost all close-ups,
drifting with luminous aquatint clouds.
templesmith uses computer-aided
blurring in lieu of action lines.
the images are gorgeous,
but they're an uneasy fit with ellis's
in-your-face gross-out prose.
detective fell with his suit, tie,
and little shock of neon blond hair
just can't pull off the muscular straight-talk
that makes you love spider jerusalem.
forget the feverish gunmetal menace
of snowtown, ellis needs the gritty
sprawl of transmet, its bustle,
its blunt lines and bright colors.

i love smoking

our new roommate brought
with her tons of i love lucy on dvd.
it is bizarre to watch as a woman,
but it is also shocking
to see a celebrity
openly shilling cigarettes.
there she is, lucille ball,
lighting up, taking a long drag,
and repeating the name philip morris,
without a hint of irony.

skip the speech-bubbles

another random find from the sfpl
graphic novels cart, bluesman book 2
bills itself as "the second stanza
of a 12-bar graphic narrative
in the key of life and death."
the artwork lives up
to this ambitious jacket copy;
it pours out of the page,
with some of the same weary
and uneven power as the music
it seeks to imitate. the bright scratches
feel like an old-time recording.
the writing, on the other hand,
is more than uneven.
the dialogue swings so disconcertingly
between the tough-talking wisecracks
of a gumshoe in a hard-boiled mystery
(I don't think you rightly appreciate
the ever-deepening pile of shit
that you are standing in, Mister Johnson
so pardon me as I waive a handful
of it under your nose...)
and the sweeping platitudes
of an unspecified narrator
reflecting on a parable
of u.s. race relations
(There is a dignity,
I think, in celebrating
our fortune together
this way. Rather than
as you would have it--
forever divided.
Until there is not enough
left for even one man
to bother calling his own.)
that halfway through
i just stopped reading
and listened to the pictures.

they do?

They say a moonlit deck
is a woman's business office.
--the lady eve

hankie parachute

at the maker faire
the folks from techshop
gave me the chance to machine
my own brass weight
on a metal-lathe.
i wore safety goggles.
i tightened chucks
and turned cranks.
the gold coils shivered
away from the spinning rod,
as the bits pushed inward,
cutting the base, the shoulders,
the cap, and finally, shearing
the whole thing off to drop
onto the shavings below.
the finished product looks
like the antique brass
weights in granddad's bindery,
only it is brand new.

it has a magnet inset
in the base, but i can't bear
to part with it just yet,
so the fridge will have to wait.
i like to feel it
heavy in my palm.
i like to run my thumb along
the sharp edges.
technically, it is insignificant,
an elementary exercise,
a trinket from a hipster conference,
but holding it, i call my dad.
"i miss granddad" i say.

i get lost trying to explain
how it reassures me of something
i can't seem to put words to,
so i try to explain the whole faire instead.
the botanicalls booth was clever--
your plant telephones you
and asks for water in a funny voice!
the homeschooler in me rejoiced
at madame ovary's shameless eccentricity,
and her sticky wands made of trash.
charles benton's kite aerial photography
is both neato and transcendent.
he uses rubberbands and balsa wood
to form images of the world
that couldn't wouldn't exist otherwise.

at this, dad interrupts me to
tell me that granddad
used to trick out his kites too.
in fact, granddad rigged up a device
to send parachutes
made of old handkerchiefs
sailing up the kite string,
and when it hit the top,
they released.

the brass of the weight
holds the heat of my hand.

amazon.com

I remember Dole pineapple rings
on a bed of lettuce with cottage cheese on top
and sometimes a cherry on top of that.
--joe brainard, i remember

i tried green apple and i tried the strand,
but guess who came through for me in the end...

walkman time capsule

um it is now um 12:05am on october 24th, 2005. it is now technically the last day of long weekend. i have gotten almost exactly no work done. i'm 22 years old. my father was married at this age. and to motivate myself i am making this record of what i'm doing. uh-- it's supposed to be a record of the fact that i'm working. ... so, i'll, uh, just keep you updated. my room is a pile of shit. i have upturned umbrellas. i have typewriters separated from their typewriter containers. i have, um, fork and knife sets that you might use when you're camping. ... anyway ... i'm just gonna keep cleaning until i've got organized piles for each of my classes, and even if i don't get any work done tonight, if i just get prepared to do work, if everything is just clean and prepared to do work, then i'll just fall asleep on my sheetless bed and everything will be o.k. ... cause i feel like i'm capable of doing work, but. alright! better get started!

mother's day

my best friend loves
the movie shirley valentine
and said the main character.
reminded her of me.
i saw it and it reminded
me of my mom, so
i sent it to her
for mother's day.
in retrospect,
maybe not the best gift
for a holiday celebrating
sacrifice in the name of family.
i should have clarified on the gift tag:
mom-- please don't abandon everything
and move to a foreign country without warning!
just don't be afraid to enjoy the view
from a table for one every once in awhile.

homesick

the internet can never
bring me the smell
of fresh baked bread
wafting out of le panier
as i pass, but now,
thanks to streetnote,
at least i can listen
to this guy rap about pot
in pike place market.

loyal porter

last night, as i packed for
my weekend trip to monterey,
the tag on my discount jeans
caught my eye for the first time,
"the loyal." a name that sounds
a little boring, but trustworthy,
like a girl who spends her weekends
birdwatching with her mother.
then, today, on the drive south,
mom and i stopped at REI
to get me another pair of pants.
the ones i found are perfect.
they're asphalt gray ripstop fabric
and the pockets zip shut.
i love them.
but, i have to admit, for a moment,
the name of the style stopped me short.
right in the midst of all that adventure gear
i chose "the porter pant." the porter,
a person hired to carry burdens
up and down the same trail day after day.
its not that i'm especially brand-conscious,
but the marketing types at these big corporations
spend a lot of time and energy
matching visual aesthetics,
intuitive word-assumptions,
and a consumer's desire
for an certain identity.
why couldn't i have chosen
a pair of the "ventures"?
why not lead an expedition,
plant a flag? why not "the riptide,"
for that matter, irresistible,
and just off the shore?
my hesitation was ended
by two thoughts.
1) i know, at least,
that i'd just look silly
in the "overboard short"
and 2) if you read further down
the tag, you'll notice the porter pant
does have "a gusseted crotch for mobility,"
which sounds both
almost unendurably practical
and perversely comic,
which sounds about right to me.

bad poetry and good

i was recently asked to ghostwrite
another blog. according to the author,
this is a perfectly reasonable request
because "all [i] do is steal [my] [material]
from [her] all the time anyway!!"
i refused, but promised to at least
give credit where credit is due,
for this great quote she found
in sound and sense. perrine
via carles, tells it like it is
for your general edification:

And here, perhaps, we should discuss the kinds of poems that most frequently "fool" inexperienced readers (and occasionally a few experienced ones) and sometimes achieve tremendous popularity without winning the respect of most good readers. These poems are frequently published on greeting cards or in anthologies entitled Poems of Inspiration, Poems of Courage, or Heart-Throbs. The people who write such poems and the people who like them are often the best of people, but they are not poets or lovers of poetry in any genuine sense. They are lovers of conventional ideas or sentiments or feelings, which they like to see expressed with the adornment of rime and meter, and which, when so expressed, they respond to in predictable ways.

april

she's no lucy, but
beagle or something's
keen reminder of fall
on a warm spring morning
caught me off guard,
i was suddenly grateful,
nostalgic, and wary.

my first baby box

one of my co-workers brought back
a kit for new parents as a resource
for each toddler-room teacher
from a meeting she attended downtown.
basically, the kit is a mint-green cardboard box
covered in photos of multi-ethnic kids,
a little thinner than a shoebox,
with a plastic handle on the top.
inside it has a bilingual board-book,
Frisky puppies play.
Frisky puppies chew.
Los perritos retozones juegan.
Los perritos retozones mordisquean.
and a magnet for california's
less catchy equivalent of mr. yuk,
the "poison action line,"
along with a bunch of brochures,
pamphlets and booklets
about early childhood development,
full of clinical, but cheery, bulleted lists.
When you discipline your child:

Talk your child in a serious, but loving, voice.

the whole thing was a little troublesome
for a woman whose chosen career
is often seen as a kind of
extended mommy-training...
that said, it was immensely
satisfying to carry a briefcase
for a day, cardboard or not.

dad's night

i'm like the dad.
i have one night
a week to cook.
last week i made
the easy meatloaf
from allrecipes.com
this week i made
the chicken marsala
from epicurious.com
i think the leap from
watery beef and ketchup
to shallots and fresh sage
is pretty impressive,
but i don't think i can maintain it,
and i don't know where
on the internet to look next.
maybe i'll call mom
and ask her for one of
her famous soup recipes...
or maybe i'll call and ask dad
if i absolutely have to have waffles
for a legitimate "breakfast for dinner,"
or if he thinks i can squeak by with pancakes.

punch, roll, & crimp

as a former officemax copy center
employee i got excited about
the durable and attactive
spiral bound menus
at tawans, but i had trouble
describing the coil inserter
to my dining companion.
this australian chick
does a much better job.

taste / gustation

tonight the velo rouge cafe screened
two documentaries by local directors
one about native american salt songs
and the dying culture that needs them
one about a man-made salt sea
and the dying birds that need it.
i ate a lemon pasta dish
topped with fresh ground pepper.

happy anniversary

i can't believe its been
six months already!
i'm still trying to catch up
on polishing up my drafts,
but they've multiplied
from 9 or so to about 75,
a good sign... i think...
but a little overwhelming.
one day at a time, right?

psychic dojo

my best friend ordered psychonauts from gamefly,
for old time's sake, because we both loved
it in college. she wrote a final paper
on it and i featured it prominently
in a presentation i gave to the local rotary club.
its still the coolest video game ever created!
in it you're a little psychic kid at a special
summer camp for honing your mental powers.
you collect figments of imagination,
sort mental baggage,
and fight the internal censors.
most of the action takes place
in other people's minds,
and all the levels open off
the collective unconscious.
seeing it again,
i'm not only reminded
how great the game is,
but how lucky i am
that i still get to hang out
every day with a person who
can truly appreciate gems like this:
He isn't dead, his astral projection
just got kicked out of my mind.
And I'll kick your *ass*tral projection
out of my mind too if you don't get moving!

inbox: upcoming

if you live in new york city
and don't see as much serious
avant-garde dance as you should,
go to prism on monday april 23rd at 8pm.
an old acquaintance of mine, biba bell,
emailed me with news of her upcoming show,
and i thought i would pass along the invitation.
the performance will occur in judson church,
a great venue with a remarkable history.
i saw urisov (her choreography collective).
perform once, in a garage, a couple years ago.
i watched from the slanted driveway
with a drippy cup of spiked lemonade.
the girls wore only nylons and turtlenecks,
the boys wore turtlenecks too, and false eyelashes,
the rainbow kind, and nobody cracked a smile.
despite the cold, the cement, the cheap booze,
and my personal bias against dance without music,
the sheer intensity, in particular, of biba's
creative spirit and the power of her
presence as an artist held me still,
kept me absorbed. each breath
was deliberate, and audible.
rarely do i get to experience art
so very cerebral and so very physical
at the same time. this new level in her evolution
sounds exponentially more absurd (jogger-dudes?),
and abstract (repetition, refraction & lack).
i just wish it was happening
in my neck of the woods. so, again,
point is, you go, and tell me all about it, ok?

terrible twos

ingredients for a mouse mess:

ritz crackers
oreos
corn flakes
milk
cheese
apple
orange
banana
jam
peanut butter
sugar
manzanilla olives
pickles
catsup

1. mix together
2. watch 15 toddlers
drop their jaws in awe.

aunt flo's nut cake

journal; the short life and mysterious
death of amy zoe mason
is just as insipid as you can imagine
a mystery novel in scrapbook form
written by sisters who halfheartedly
claim they "found" it, would be.
its full of victorian etchings,
yellow lace, pressed flowers,
and vintage postage stamps,
with a "secret" plot so obvious
the clues are literally highlighted
for the reader. as i was eating
my best friend's perfect
half-vegetarian lasagna
i made her look at the book.
she quickly pointed out
that it is chock full of recipes,
and that we should make one for dessert.
we didn't. but adam gopnik's article,
cooked books, about that very trend
(elaborate food prep descriptions
and recipes in current fiction.)
popped up in the new yorker
during my after-dinner visit
to the loo. he makes a bunch
of scopious and fussy points
about cognition and cooking,
but reading between the lines
he seems to be saying recipes
are lazy writing. in the case
of aunt flo's nut cake
i couldn't agree more.

you are the chosen one

for a non-fangirl it was awfully fun
to watch joss whedon's
not-so-blond future slayer
go from ambivalent
kick-ass chick
(hair down)
to all-grown-up
kick-ass chick
(hair up.)
conquer your fears!
take your own
hero's journey!
slip all 8 issues of fray
one-by-one out
of their plastic sleeves,
and read them in full view
of the public on the bus to work.

hindsight

i was surprised to see in an
onion interview with mindy kaling,
who i only knew as kelly from the office,
that she'd co-written and starred in matt & ben.
as soon as i read that fact her image lit up
and i recognized her in retrospect,
always such a weird sensation.
i saw matt & ben many years ago
at a tiny theater in new york,
in what seems like another life,
with a big group of friends from rpt.
i'd love to say i was a trendsetter,
but i'm sure we went because the tickets
were dirt-cheap. in fact, we took turns standing
while we watched... i miss those guys.

boring zine wins me over

my latest random find from the main library's

"graphic novel" cart, the snakepit book,
is a collection of daily 3-panel strips
by a guy in the austin punk rock scene,

who's life is painfully tedious and shallow.
its page after page of the same...

...go to work, get wasted, see a show,
go to work hungover, get wasted,
go to band practice, watch a movie,
get wasted, go to kinkos hungover...

... for 100s of pages. i constantly wondered

why i was still reading. but, i did keep reading

and by the time i was done, i liked it.
maybe its because the main character
is essentially a smiley face,
and all those pages of smiley faces
activate a primal happy-reflex,
or maybe its because it reminds
me of my bike-messenger artist
ex-boyfriend, or maybe
even though my life
is tedious and shallow
in a totally different way
from his, the book captures
the hum-drum pleasures
and pains of an ordinary life
so perfectly, that something
in me can't help but applaud.
plus, you can see his drawing skills
slowly improve over the years, which is fun.

classic rock

speaking of the postmodern novel,
how 'bout some collaborative hyper-fiction?
http://www.myspace.com/176387641
is a work in progress, not for the squeamish
or the internet-illiterate, about a pervy janitor
and a few other residents of fairlawn, plot tbd.

block quote: we cannot skip

"Kaatu," Gladys said in a mysterious howl, and here we could skip ahead if you know what I mean. It is always tempting to skip past words we do not understand, the parts of a relationship which confuse us, and arrive at a nice clear sentence-- "They clearly weren't in love anymore," or "The yellow-billed magpie can be found exclusively in the coastal valleys south of San Francisco Bay, and there are three common words beginning with the letter A that describe it," or "She was wearing some sort of cape," all of which appeared in the report filed by the surviving and more talkative detective. But we cannot skip to that or it wouldn't be a love story. We cannot skip the way we look in photographs, or our own affectations, or the way we like our coffee, or the way the people we love like their coffee, even though they like it some bad, bad way. We must suffer through all of it, without skipping any tiny thing, and anyway it was a shawl she was wearing.

--daniel handler, adverbs

this grown-up book
by "lemony snickett."
claims to be about love,
but it's more an exercise

in language for its own sake.
it interlocks carefully,
without being neat.

it layers and loops back

on itself; the vocabulary

becomes personal. i don't

recognize his version of love,

but the way he describes it

reminds me of the difficulty

of trying to describe

what any certain important

word means, like when i try

to explain what i mean by "loneliness."

this particular effort is so keenly

in evidence that i can't decide whether

or not to forgive the book

for the elements that make me

want to dismiss it as just more

annoying postmodern fiction.

the action is beside the point,

always on the verge of flippant.

the prose is stylized, too pop

and too pretentious

at the same time.
i'm on the fence.
i should reread it.
i skipped too much.
have you read it?
can you weigh in?

yum yum

lunch at pizza orgasmica.
dinner at foreign cinema.
thank god for rich relatives
and the food they treat us to.

mixed media brain freeze

my step-grandma (i call her nana)
is in town. nana's an artist.
she's the one who taught me
how to walk through galleries,
how to look at and talk about art
as you see it. the new de young
was at the top of her to-do list.
i felt like a ten year old girl again,
all dressed up in her sunday best,
nervously trying to mimic the pacing
and gestures of the truly sophisticated.
that said, the charles sheeler exhibit
was so fun, i couldn't help but shed
a little of my self-consciousness.
as you move through the space,
as you turn from piece to piece,
the images repeat in different forms,
film, photograph, painting, drawing.
its like a three-dimensional grown-up
version of those spot-the-difference
puzzles. along with this oddly
satisfying kind of visual deja vu
you get a real sense of his process.
the images grow more and more rigorous
without quite crossing over into abstraction.
when we had finished with the museum,
nana and went to see a movie.
after sheerer's clean planes
the painted veil was too lush,
all tense closeups of eyelashes
in dappled sunlight or misty vistas
at twilight. my brain ached
like a tooth might if i'd followed
piping-hot black coffee
with a scoop of raspberry gelato.

block quote: judge a book

I splashed water on my face, put on my robe, and headed downstairs. Already my headache was receding. After I started the coffee, I went to the living room window to look out at the day. The temperature had risen again--what could have been snow became a downpour during the night, and now the sky was a redemptive blue, the pale pastel that often follows a rain. Birds sat in a convivial row on the nearby utility wire. Elongated drops of water hung beneath them, shimmying in the breeze. I watched the birds for a while, waiting for the invisible signal that would have them all lift off together, but it did not come. They sat content, enjoying their version of a coffee klatch.

--elizabeth berg, the year of pleasures

covivial row? coffee klatch? must we?
you can just hear her reminding
herself to be "precise" and "vivid,"
congratulating herself on her
alliterative personification,
her use of rhythm, almost prose-poetic.
to be fair, though, as you can see,
i knew what i was getting into.
i'm much more of a man-writer fan
(steinbeck & graham greene,
warren ellis & wallace stevens,)
but every once in awhile i pick up
a book like this. of course,
i'm so merciless with them
only because i am terrified
that this over-articulate, cliched,
and womanish "creative-writing"
would be all that came out,
if i ever really tried.
what scares me even more,
is that i know it's what's coming out now,
and i only wish i could accomplish
what these talented and hardworking
authors have, whole novels,
when i can barely manage
a contemptuous and precious
little blog, much less a short story.

check out this "comment," a very funny post
from a parallel universe: sunday, april 08, 2007 2:05 pm

everything wobbled

4.2 earthquake
as soon as i thought it was safe to crawl
out of my closet i got back online,
because they aren't real
unless the internet says so.

waking up

the snowy day

i owe my childhood studies
professor a personal apology.
in our picture books class
i ranted that the snowy day
was the perfect example
of dull and politically correct
children's literature, with a token
african-american character.
i had a point to make, loudly,
and at length. i accused anyone
who defended ezra jack keats
of being a tedious liberal.
now that i work at a minority preschool
and scour the library for good
books to read in class, i see
i couldn't have been more wrong.
"the snowy day" is a rich
and delightful little book,
the kids love it and i return to it
over and over again at story time.

(bright eyes, brown skin on the other hand... ...)

self-inflicted

slowly ripping all the hair
on my legs out at the root
with the medieval torture-device
know as the epilady
drastically raised my
DIY beauty-treatment
pain threshold.
plucking my eyebrows
or waxing my armpits
can never really phase me again.
in the same way, sitting through
all 116 minutes of the excruciating
chinese avant-garde masterpiece
what time is it over there?
this weekend in new york
forever raised my
experimental film
pain threshold.
when my best friend
sat me down for a bit
of kenneth anger's new dvd,
the nonsensical and sluggish shorts
(rabbit's moon, puce moment &
fireworks) seemed almost quaint,
and barely made me wince.

i want a TARDIS machine

TARDIS machine
dr. who
so hip!
so bbc!

nyc trip

this weekend, i flew to new york.
i traveled across six months
and into the melting snow
to meet a boy again.
he and i spent
most of our time together
getting lost and eavesdropping.
in roughly chronological order,
other activities included:

as soon as i arrived, adding my avatar to his wii
alongside jesus, tyra banks, & his roommates.

killing time at the odessa cafe
until tony, of kropps & bobbers,
could cut my hair. the salon peaked
my sophomore year, when i had a shaved
head, still wore hipster political t-shirts
and lived rent-free next door.
nostalgia.

browsing at st. mark's comics.
i picked up a transmet
to read on the plane ride home.

wondering how i become the girl
who drags a boy to the louis comfort tiffany
exhibit at the metropolitan museum of art
then demands to know if he really likes it,
or is "just pretending." high maintenance!

watching a broadway show (thanks
to an infusion of cash from a relative.)
the first half of the musical spring awakening
was raucous and delightfully squirmy.
the second half was pointless and dated.
the music was loud and too poignant,
the staging, distracting. all those blue bulbs.

browsing at the strand.
i was shocked to find
that in their 18 miles of books
there wasn't one copy of
joe brainard's i remember.
the man behind the counter
suggested barnes & noble (!),
then wrote the isbn number
on a post-it in cursive so beautiful
i instantly forgave everything.

lunching at the telephone bar and grill,
one-on-one, trying to talk about feelings.

watching mafioso, a funny, sad
tender and suspenseful old movie
about the mafia, and about life.

smooshing into prune,
with a gang of seven,
trying to act sophisticated.

getting dropped off at the
blue & gold bar by my aunt and uncle,
with enough hugging and reminders to "have fun!"
that we could have been toddlers
on our first day of nursery school.

lounging around in the bachelor pad
of my best guy friend from college
listening to recording's of big bang tv's
first gig, a smashing success.
keep it up, snoogles.

trying not to lose my composure
in the cinema cafe as my rolling
padded armchair kept drifting
backward from the table.

clenching every single muscle
in my body with unbearable tension
as elderly francophiles get into a shoving match
during a screening of the already
nerve-wracking what time is it over there?

perpetual huddle

Sunday, January 25, 2009

goodreads widget

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

retcon

Sunday, August 12, 2007

sunday afternoon

Friday, August 10, 2007

aug. 13 new yorker pg. 26

The Kingfisher

no duh

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

lesson plan

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

r.i.p. gracie

Saturday, June 23, 2007

A-

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

block quote: totally forgetting

Saturday, June 16, 2007

the year of the bellydance

who's prissy now?

Thursday, June 14, 2007

non-alcoholic... i can feed it to my kids

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

block quote: i could do that much

Friday, June 08, 2007

today on aol

Thursday, May 31, 2007

buy a dead squirrel on ebay

Monday, May 28, 2007

on the same page

Sunday, May 27, 2007

i love smoking

Saturday, May 26, 2007

skip the speech-bubbles

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

they do?

Sunday, May 20, 2007

hankie parachute

amazon.com

Sunday, May 13, 2007

walkman time capsule

Friday, May 11, 2007

mother's day

Thursday, May 10, 2007

homesick

Friday, May 04, 2007

loyal porter

Friday, April 27, 2007

bad poetry and good

Thursday, April 26, 2007

april

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

my first baby box

Sunday, April 22, 2007

dad's night

Friday, April 20, 2007

punch, roll, & crimp

Monday, April 16, 2007

taste / gustation

happy anniversary

Saturday, April 14, 2007

psychic dojo

inbox: upcoming

star trek: the next generation

Thursday, April 12, 2007

terrible twos

Monday, April 09, 2007

aunt flo's nut cake

Saturday, April 07, 2007

you are the chosen one

Thursday, April 05, 2007

hindsight

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

boring zine wins me over

Sunday, April 01, 2007

classic rock

block quote: we cannot skip

Saturday, March 17, 2007