March 31, 2004
After the show
this smudged black handstamp
delivers today's coffee
postmarked from last night
haiku.
Posted by didofoot at 06:02 PM | Comments (3)
March 30, 2004
Not every bricklayer is a hero
Kids who bring guns to school are now officially classified as terrorists. I imagine this linguistic crime is committed by those pale-complected men who spend their time in beige rooms, inscrutable, cigar-smoking, with the English language bent stuttering and scared over a table in front of them while they perform on her the unthinkable.
And each day sees a new lexigraphic travesty on the newsstands as ordinary citizens are classed as heroes or terrorists, sheep or goats, and English is locked up so far from the sun she has forgotten all the shades of meaning in the world; now there is only pale or beige, beige or pale, and she loses vocabulary like fluid oozing out of frightened pores.
Who will take back the night for English? And when that happens, when that (let us say) man comes stumbling out of the beige building, English swooning in his massive arms, trailing lost vocabulary like kidnapped children, will we call him a hero and kill English right there in plain sight of the world?
Posted by didofoot at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2004
Exploiting my correspondence for material
At random I opened Anna Akhmatova's poems today. Sleeping under a slip of paper which bore your old (760) and three-pronged name were these lines:
For one moment of peace here
I would give up the grave's peace.
I have always used books as my oracles in this way. If a yarrow stick or a coin can be an oracle, why not the Word? To prove my point I have opened Rushdie's Satanic Verses to this line: "The past, it seems, returns." Proof positive: here I am, prodigal, holding your only name.
The question now becomes: which is the prophecy? Two lines of poetry on a securely-glued page? Or the loose-leafed name and number which have stuck to me so improbably for two, or is it three years? I will ask Ondaatje's Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Page 46: "All this I would have seen if I was on the roof looking." My interpretation of this answer, I guess, is to stop assigning blame to these inanimate ideas, turn off the laptop, get up on the roof and water my baby tomato plant.
And someday you will find some bit of me wrapped in a fortune cookie, and then you too can send vague, pompous emails out into the ether.
Posted by didofoot at 08:23 AM | Comments (6)
March 27, 2004
Phenomenal Cosmic Landscapes
Update: Pictures of our trip are here.
I decided that after I die, when I am asked by a celestial government worker whether I have a preference in re: my next life, I will request to be a member of the Ahwaneechee tribe in Yosemite about a hundred years before the white people came. Hopefully the Lad will also request this, since I think it would be nice to be together in the next life. No doubt I will then die in childbirth and he will be eaten by a bear, but in the interim years between birth and horrible death we as Ahwaneechees will enjoy some truly phenomenal landscapes together.
On this trip, however, we came to the park as the aforementioned white people. Though we missed out on the more pure, tourist-free experience of the early Ahwaneechees, I was glad to be a card-carrying member of the now when I saw our hotel room, whose private balcony overlooked the grumbly river and whose Jacuzzi tub was big enough for two.
I can't remember the last time I had so much unbroken time with the Lad. We schlepped around to the various waterfalls and hiking trails on offer, making fun of the people carrying ski poles on their hikes or wearing North Face t-shirts. We mocked the people filming the gift shop and laughed at the people trying to take good pictures of stunning views. We become known as "the two-baskets-of-bread couple" at the Ahwanee. We vengefully undertipped. We saw a fox and a baby deer but never a bear as I had hoped. "It would be great if a bear broke into our car," I said. "Like being robbed by a celebrity."
What I want to know now is, why haven't we been visiting Yosemite all these years like Katie Vigil was always encouraging us to do? It's only four hours away. It could conceivably even be a day trip. From now on, I intend to spend at least one Saturday a month there. Four hours in the car, three hours on a hike, two hours napping in a meadow, four hours back. Who's with me?
Posted by didofoot at 03:13 PM | Comments (13)
March 19, 2004
In which I fuck up and wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m. every morning for two months straight wondering what on earth I'm going to do
Due to my professional incompetence, I've been spending the last few months at work trying to magically create $200,000 where no $200,000 existed before. Today, butting my horns against a looming deadline, I finally swallowed my terror and consulted my cowboy boss on how to go about this.
I managed to get him into my cubicle and explained the problem. He stared gloomily into his teacup and idly quoted some country lyrics under his breath. "Am I going to be fired?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. I nodded. I deserve to be fired. I am a dreadful, indolent, mistake-making employee.
I explained my plan and he paid close attention when his phone was not ringing and his friend was not telling a long story about union troubles (which, weirdly and coincidentally, were also partly my fault) and the Korean girl he has a crush on was not flirting with him. "Well," he sighed when I finished. "That seems like the only way to go about it." He advised me not to tell my professor-boss anything about the matter. He dictated a long email for me to send to my professor-boss explaining the situation. He advised me not to send the email.
"Am I going to be fired?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. I nodded.
"Am I going to be fired?" I said.
"Yes," he said. I nodded.
"Am I going to be fired?" I said.
"No," he said. "What would I do without our Coleridge conversations every Monday, Wednesday and Friday?"
"Yeah, that's what I thought," I said. "After all, what's a $200,000 mistake when you look at the state deficit?" I so enjoy our little chats.
Posted by didofoot at 10:46 AM | Comments (6)
March 15, 2004
The Principle Is Sound
At the front of the room, the D.J. is having a loving relationship with his moog, an instrument which as far as I can tell was invented for my generation, like sex and Crystal Pepsi. He turns the dials of the moog and it beeps and burbles happily over the arrhythmic thumping blasting from the speakers. The Lad is unhappy with the volume because he has not yet been forced to insert his earplugs. He prefers music which has the potential to damage.
The first to arrive after us are a group I think of as the Clones, because they are all built roughly the same as the Lad, and they all dress in the same indestructible brown and green fabrics which are the only label free clothes to be found these days. The Clones are Serious Fans. They enter alone and slink over to the walls where they stand watching the D.J., who is watching his moog. The Clones do not speak to each other. The Lad and I, it turns out when I try to talk to him, are Serious Fans also once things get going. We slink over to a couch and don't speak to each other. We watch the man who watches the moog. I am very happy, though, because I am nursing a cold, and nestling into the Lad on a couch with a pulsing womb-beat surrounding me is very soothing. I try not to sneeze on his arm.
We are all careful to leave a large space in front of the D.J. This is standard for a club -- normally, once people start drinking, they will start dancing in the space -- but this space will remain open and un-danced for pretty much the entire evening, because we are listening to IDM: Intelligent Dance Music. (Better known in my own head as Impossible to Dance to this Music.) Because no one is dancing, the space resembles the trench that zoos dig between the animals and the audience to keep one from eating the other. I am relieved to know that the D.J. will be unable to attack me across this space.
About an hour after the Clones arrive, the girls start showing up. They shimmy in wearing calf length skirts made of natural fabric. There are not very many of them, and they are not very big. They also arrive singly. The girls slide across the open space like water snakes. One of them is so thin that her bones cannot be larger than ice picks; without the interference of her careless skin, these bones could easily lodge in the flesh of one of the Clones like splinters. I want to feed this girl clam chowder and watch it settle on her hips. She is friends with one of the Clones, who clearly experiences a spiritual crisis when forced to choose between talking to her or listening to the music.
One boy -- not a clone -- is dancing in the space. He's in his stocking feet and he dances in what seem to be very complex jumping jacks, with several crossings of the feet and curly arm embellishments. I worry that this dance might cause him to swallow his own tongue and I am grateful when he stops.
In between sets, the Lad and I try to come up with his D.J. name for his upcoming radio show. I suggest Ursa Minor, but then remember that also means the Little Dipper and I reconsider. I am struck by a brilliant neutrino and suggest Finger-Proof. What does it mean, the Lad would like to know. Nothing, I say; that is the brilliance of it. It sounds like it should mean something, but does not. The Lad rejects this without giving it proper consideration. I am devastated and decide to find a new boyfriend while he is in Europe. That will put a spoke in his wheel.
Posted by didofoot at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2004
No Name #226
One of my old favorite boys introduced me to the poetry of Rimbaud when I was twenty. I still idly flip through Rimbaud collections when I find myself in bookstores, hoping that the news of my fidelity will travel back to that boy along the universal psychic pipeline. Then last night in lecture, my professor idly mentioned that at the end of his life Rimbaud renounced poetry in favor of industry and became a slave-trader. This knowledge will color all my subsequent readings and now I wonder: am I sad because I've lost the poet? Or the poetry? Or because I've lost the boy?
Posted by didofoot at 10:24 AM | Comments (2)
March 04, 2004
POI
In the immortal words of the Princess Cinderella, a dream is a wish your heart makes. In this case, though, my dream was a wish my mouth made, repeatedly, mostly to watch the Lad wince and squirm. And then last night, my dream was a wish that the Lad made come true.
Yes, it's true. Last night, the Lad gave me the only surprise better than a marriage proposal or a trip to Malta: a ticket to Disney's Princesses On Ice at the Cow Palace.
Though this may initially sound like the Homer Simpson bowling ball (aka a gift which the giver will enjoy using more than the recipient) I assure you that I have been longing to see Disney's POI even more than the Lad has. At last, my magpie love of glitter and shine has been nearly sated. My only regret is not having known ahead of time where we were going, so that I could have dressed as my favorite Disney princess like so many of the tinier fans did. (For the record, Sleeping Beauty is my favorite, for obvious reasons.)
Black leather clad, clutching motorcycle helmets and conspicuously lacking a child, we waded through the crowd to our seats as a twinkly fleet of vaguely Arabian skaters came swirling out onto the ice clutching sparklers. "It's Vegas for kids," the Lad said with well-concealed horror.
"Now I know what happens to all the figure skaters who weren't good enough for the Olympics," I said.
I was so happy. As Cinderella and the Prince skated to the pre-recorded "So This Is Love" duet, which as a child I believed was the most beautiful song ever, I leaned into the Lad and thought: Glitter, princesses, and the Lad. Surely, this is love.
Posted by didofoot at 01:30 PM | Comments (9)
March 03, 2004
My quiet beach community
I often think of how someday the Lad and I will marry and live in a quiet beach community and have a couple of rowdy kids. One day, I will be cooking spaghetti and singing to August and Everything After when the Lad will walk in with Adam Duritz, whom he has befriended through his glamorous, unspecified-in-this-fantasy job. I will be so embarrassed to be caught singing along to Adam's music like this, but relieved that this is at least a legitimately purchased album, unlike all the other Counting Crows albums I own. He is very gracious about it though. He and the Lad play with the kids. I make sauce and then join them. We make an enormous structure out of tinker toys. We have dinner. We go watch the fireworks and I don't wear shoes and we have to carry the kids home and then after we put the kids to bed we get kind of drunk, to prove we are still cool, but on good wine, to prove we are grownups. Actually, the Lad still drinks beer. But I am a grownup, and so is Adam.
This delightful evening cements our friendship with Adam Duritz, which opens the door to friendships with other famous people. Initially, the solid relationship and just-folks charm that the Lad and I share is a breath of fresh air to the glittering swathe of Hollywood that streams through our front door, but eventually we fall prey to the seductive charms of their morality-free lifestyle. The Lad enters an extensive flirtation with Jane Fonda's great-niece, recently famous from her role in Star Wars Episode VIII: Fire In Space. Adam and I share an ill-advised kiss in the kitchen and are nearly caught by my seven year old daughter.
Our marriage is becoming a shambles. We are in danger of losing our beach community house to a double mortgage. One night in early August, the Lad and I have a pivotal conversation. We are brutally honest. Tears are shed. In the end, however, we agree to start over. We pack up the kids, sell the house, move to Canada and live happily ever after running an exquisitely independent bar and brewery that offers a truly dynamite pale ale.
Posted by didofoot at 03:18 PM | Comments (4)
