Monday, May 30, 2005

Memorable

So here’s the thing: I didn’t have much planned for this weekend.  I’d intended to take off last weekend, but that didn’t happen, so instead I just ignored the whole Memorial Day thing and figured it’d work out on its own.  And, as the Eurosages predicted, damn straight it did. 

Friday night I finally got around to seeing Ray, which I really enjoyed.  One thing I wish they’d done, though, is to have found some less common variations of the music they used - I knew so much of the score note-for-note that I had trouble believing that Foxx, who I must say was very impressive, was actually creating it - the music, much as I loved it, played against the dramatic performance rather than in support of it, I thought.  But anyway.  Good flick. 

Then on Saturday we went to Cornerstone Gardens with Dave and Kim and Daisy and Kaleb, and we all had a blast.  I recommend it wholeheartedly, especially to families with small kids.  Afterwards we had another scrumptious tasting at Cline, a longtime favorite of mine though apparently Dave hadn’t really spent much time there before (the watergardens were particularly gorgeous, with fountains and cascades and acres of lilies and irises; Daisy kept saying it was like Alice in Wonderland, which I rather liked).  Finally, we returned to Dave and Kim’s place for very tasty indian take-out supper, a bottle of Meeker (what?  damn! zin?  carignagne?  it was red.  i know it was red) and a clearly recollected and truly splendid bottle of Silver Oak ‘96 cab; then we had a screening of Sucker Free City, which I thoroughly enjoyed and keep thinking about.  It’s an unoptioned pilot, so it leaves a lot of questions expressly open, but I thought it worked really well - effective as well as entertaining. 

Sunday was a domestic day: I cleaned out the back study, starting with the top of the desk and working down through the file cabinet, then into the closet by cleaning out the random junk, and then the shelves, and finally the floors, even moving out the giant bulky stuff that just disappears when you don’t really look for it.... It took all day and I have a resounding feeling of satisfaction for having done it.  One more piece of the pie lifted off the floor to which it’s fallen, brushed perfunctorily, and replaced whence it belongs.  I’m not excited about the reams of old paperwork I need to shred now, but I’m back down to fighting weight and fitness.  The great thing is, of course, once the whole room is really well cleaned, it never gets dirty again, right? 

Monday started with yoga: we drove over the bridge to Sausalito’s lovely bayfront park where we met Nina, who teaches our Tuesday night class; she’d invited seven or eight of her students for a morning stretch.  We laid out mats and did about 90 minutes of serious work, including some handstands, some back bends, some cool partnered isometrics that pushed the pose into your bones, and sundry other suchlike.  Working outside in warm breezes by the gently lapping bayside, the sun on my face and the moon still showing above the mountains behind my shoulder, my body supported by the forgiving turf and by the goodwill of the strangers who are working alongside me, my face occasionally pressing into the grass where I am overwhelmed by the clean sent of the earth, and then I raise up into a backbend and am lost and dizzy staring into the featureless blueplate sky.... it was a really fulfilling session, in no small measure because Nina does such a fabulous job of inspiring and coaxing and expecting the most from each of us, that we all got a deep and complete workout no matter our level of expertise.  Then afterwards we went out for breakfast with her and with two of the others who’d come, locals who go a long way back with Nina, I think; they were very cool people and we ate a very tasty and satisfying breakfast in Sausalito, which is a fun little town if you get away from funnelcake row.  I was particularly impressed with how many people knew Nina; she was all plugged into the scene everywhere we went.  It didn’t surprise me but it was fun to see it happening. 

We came home and took a vigorous 20 minute nap, then roused ourselves and pulled it together to go to Jon and Lisa’s traditional grillfest for Memorial Day.  It was an intimate but enthusiastic gathering, and the grilled salmon and scallops were excellent; Heidi brought a cake that was a big flat disk about 15” in diameter, with a raised disk in the center about eight inches in diameter, with a raised star in the center of that.  Each layer was about 1.5 inches.  Altogether the damn thing had its own gravity field.  And it was chocolicious to boot.  Because Brian and Sha were not present, I was impressed into duty as the protouncle pummulus: the good friend on whom all the small children unleash their most destructive impulses.  I was slapped and punched and kicked, climbed upon and over, pinched and pulled and had my hat stolen.  I tell ya, those kids.  I love each one of them, and was deeply honored that they allowed me to play that role.  It was an absolute pleasure to get my nards headbutted by a four-year-old.  Of course, all things have their limits and we left in the early evening, the kids still screaming with laughter at each other and Jon glumly hosing out the mud-encrusted wading pool as Kel and I drove home for a night of gentle re-entry into the work world after a three-day weekend that I think we really got the most out of. 

And that doesn’t even get into the good stuff.  But that’s for another place and time. 

TO CONCLUDE: Here are a number of photos I took at Cornerstone.  Look, but don’t touch.  That’s how they get DNA samples, man. 

The front plaza at Cornerstone was decorated with young trees planted in beds of purple glass.  No, really - it looked like this:

This was a garden dedicated to screen doors and Johnny Cash.  It’s not your citified garden, now, nor your countrified garden - it’s a warren of screen doors that impart a curiously peaceful feeling when you pass among them, “Ring of Fire” playing in a sometimes stammering or overlaid loop in the background.  Well anyway we thought it was cool.  Here’s Daisy enjoying it.

Another garden was a carpeted hillscape, domes and valleys and cirques and canyons all smoothly upholstered for naked feet to wander among.  Before you wandered into this vale of moguls, you sat at a bench and took off your shoes.  The bench was set into a narrow verge at the front edge of the garden, and it was lined with coconut shells - JUST LIKE THESE ONES:

This garden was the pits.  Regardless, I rather liked it.  There’s a rectangular pool at the bottom with little fish swimming around in it.  I think it creeped out Dave.

In this garden, we followed curving paths laid out with red bamboo poles on a ground that faded from black at the edges to white in the center, where, on a pedastal, stood a small black pool in which the words of Francis Bacon (not francis bacon) floated.  Yes, I know it sounds weird.

The “Garden Party” garden was just like a typical game of giant rope balls, except this one was freestyle.  Yow!

Then there’s the blue tree.  It speaks for itself.  (cf Truffulas.)

One of the gardens has a cool tunnel.  It’s short and simple, but it’s a lot of fun to be inside of, whether or not you’re with a two-year-old who has just discovered the falsetto range. 

This garden honors migrant workers and it’s phenomenal.  This is just a small piece of it; much more of this garden is worth visiting but can’t be seen or even suspected from here.  I thought that was particularly ingenious. 

This garden is a space that seems lifted out of time, lined with screens of eucalyptus leaves and other chairs and long paths leading to wide calm pools at which these two chairs sit in tended beds of pebbles, so restful that they defy people to sit on them. 

This is a border of nearly 500 pinwheels.  I think I should have gotten up higher for this shot, but what are you going to do.  IT’S A GODDAMN FREE WEBSITE.  Really.  People. 

This structure stands in a garden of long green boardwalks, very restful and peaceful, and from it hangs a draping curtain, and inside dangle threads of fishing line, and people write messages on small blue plastic disks and attach them to the threads and they spin and reflect and transmit light onto a sand floor.  It was totally unexpected and very effective.  Everybody walked out smiling. 

There were also a cafe and a few high-end shoppes there.  One of the shoppes is called Artefact, and it had some really cool stuff, like european town-hall clockfaces turned to rust, and aging gazebos in new orleans wrought iron, and old iron urns with wild colors showing through the paint.  Here’s a few items I particularly liked: 

And that’s all I’ve got for Memorial Day, 2005.  See you back here in one short year and let’s see how I measure up!

Friday, May 27, 2005

Binding Agent Two: Projections

The introduction of a new stapler into my life a month or so ago has instigated a series of revellations to me which any regular reader of this site would have anticipated, since I typically overthink everything so much my teeth get tired.  That’s okay, me and my uncontrolled cogitations have learned to live together.  But usually, when I do my little essay-writing exercises and exorcise those notions, they stay exorcised.  It’s rare that the process takes me to a place where the notion I’ve fleshed out demands more flesh as little as a month or so later. 

But that’s what’s happened with the stapler.  Who’da thunk.  Not the new stapler, mind you, at my amusingly untidy office desk - not this time, anyway.  This time it’s the other stapler at the other desk.  And this one’s a whole new ball of old wax. 

It was easy, in retrospect, to get rid of the weak stapler at work.  It was nothing to me but an impediment, and dismissing it was an act of self-reclaimation, a rejection of erroneous beliefs about my own competence or lack thereof. 

But the home stapler is a different animal altogether.  It’s a heavy grey swingline in cold dense steel.  It sits heavy on the desk, heavy in my palm.  It drove the staple with a clean firm action, folding the tines flatly against the back of the sheet with inexorable precision.  It was with deep satisfaction that I grafted its pretense of order and structure onto the diffuse confusion of my personal affairs - those that could be stapled, anyway.  It sounded industrial when it punched out a staple - more akin to a rivet hammer than a paper clip.  I got it 15 or 20 years ago, and it was far from new then; even so, its battleship grey paint is unchipped and undulled by years of service.  The only thing that reveals its age to the inquiring eye, is the sticker. 

The sticker is a typical file tab sticker, three inches by 1/2, with a once-orange stripe across the top. Typed - with a typewriter - on it is the phrase: “PROJECT SAVE”.  When I first found this particular stapler, it was in a box of office equipment to be discarded by whereever I was working at the time - a bank’s corporate offices, I think, or maybe a studio in LA.  It was a place, anyway, that went through a lot of deskly accoutrements, and they were ready to scrap another box of such stuff with this stapler thrown in too.  “Project Save?,” I asked whoever was in charge of the process as I pulled the old workhorse from the bin of refuse.  “Wuzzat?” “Oh I dunno,” was the apathetic response, “I think it was something to do with recycling old equipment from a school or something.” “Can I take it, then?” “Whatevah...”

So the Project Save stapler came home with me, and it served me well for years and years.  Every time I used it, it felt reliable and solid.  It bit hard and held fast, a solid fistful of office efficiency with a gratifyingly trustworthy clamping action - and every time I had occasion to pick it up or punch it down, I read that label again.  PROJECT SAVE.  How long ago had it been acquired, and by whom, originally?  Where had it done its service?  What hands had wrapped around it, what documents had it bound?  How many offices had it occupied in its mysterious career?  Where the hell did I even find it in the first place, anyway? 

The questions melded, over time, into a worn wrapper that contained this understated tool, till I no longer thought of them as individual questions but rather as a bundle of myseries that were, as a group, comfortingly familiar in their inpenetrability. 

The stapler never seemed to age or change - except for that PROJECT SAVE sticker, which grow more soiled and harder to read as the years passed.  It was stuck on securely, but was as the portrait was to Dorian Grey, revealing to the attuned eye the inevitable viscissitudes of time. 

Lately, that label has become pretty much totally obscured by grime.  I kow what it says, but that’s because it’s grown into my psyche, not because I can actually read it.  And then again, something else seems to have changed lately, too.  I pick up my reliable old stapler and try to use it, but no staple emerges.  I check; it’s not empty, so I try again on a dry run - staple.  Re-insert the paper: no staple.  I fiddle with it till I can conclude that it’s only working every second time it’s cleared.  It’s falling apart, evidently, or already fallen.  Project Save has taken it quite a long way from its unknowable origins, but now, reluctantly, it may be time for me to initiate Project Discard.  There’s freedom to be had, and clarity, and progress.  I just know I’m gonna miss the old guy.  Makes me wonder a little exactly what’s been saved, and by whom.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Force Feeled

Sith!  Sith!  Sith!  Last night I saw a 140 minute commerical tie-in for ringtones, burger king, and Vaderville Amusement Enterprises.  I took a twilight stroll with my friend Laila up to the looming mass of Yerba Buena and Metreon, where we met Jeannette and Jason, her long-time best friend, and not much later, we were joined by Natalie and Rick, the fittest damn couple I’ve ever et a big bacon burger in front of.  Supper was tasty, if not particularly distinguished, and then we ambled over the footbridge to the theaters where Kel joined us (fresh from work herself) for the 7:50 screening of “I Married a Teen-Age Vortex of Galactic Negativity.” But I didn’t get the bug.  My negativity is much more specific.

and by the way, if you really don’t want to know anything at all about the movie, don’t read this.  I’ll just ruin everything for you.  I can’t take that kind of responsibility right now. 

There was much about the movie (this was not a film) that I enjoyed, much that was technically brilliant and ocularly overstimulating.  More so than the first movies, this one was so visually complex and beautiful that I never got bored, even when the plot was particularly ploddingly predictable.  This movie was also sufficiently nuanced - on paper, anyway - to make it a much more compelling vehicle than the last two releases in the series, full of moral challenges and psyches pushed to the breaking point. 

So why did Kel and I spend so much of the movie laughing into our cupped hands, trying not to offend those for whom this screening was a pilgrimage akin to the hajj?  And for the record, Jeannette’s friend Jason appears on-screen as a supernumerary, and has a screen credit for his work as a compositor who blended as many as fifty visual layers into a single image.  Jason was cool and his work was mindboggling (though being upstaged by Jar Jar Binks has got to sting a little).  I’ve got nothing from the dark side to say about this epic as a masterwork of craftsmanship.  Where I get whiney is when we think about it as a character drama.  I thought the first three flix were character-driven, in a landscape of incredible machinery.  This movie and the two that preceded it seem to me more like movies about machines, some of which have taken remarkably human-like guise.  Dialogue was unfeelingly phrased and delivered; character development seemed to happen, when it happened at all, as an external overlay and not as a change from within.  Time magazine quotes a blog somewhere that suggests the movie would have been better as a silent than as a talkie; I rather agree.  Having seen The 39 Steps not too long ago, the stilted conventions and simplistic setups that Hitchcock was already working through and around, seem to continue to stymie Lucas.

That’s enough of the whifty cineschool meta-analysis, eh?  Let’s get down to brass tacks, or whatever they’d call brass tacks on some weird alien reptilian world where nobody ever flashes a nipple, no matter how many of them they have:

* The most lifelike character in the movie is a muppet.  This is a bad sign for living actors nationwide.

* The bad guy is named after dookie.  (Sorry Melbourne, your name is no less unfortunate now that it’s been taken over by intergalactic evil avatar Chris Lee, still working his Hammer magic four decades after he was outed as undead.)

* The bad guys are named Grevious and Sidious.  Oh come on.  Their freaking kindergarten teacher could have told us they would be cosmically evil, based on the names alone.  “Grevious!  Sidious!  Stop pantsing the Weiner twins!  Don’t you want to grow up to dishonor your given names?” I’m sure it was only with deep disappointment that Lucas accepted the fact that “Slytherin” was already trademarked.

* There is no way, no freaking way in hell, that those two enormous babies came out of that Princess Amygdala’s romantically diminutive abdomen.  Kel noted that the only way they could have fit up inside of her tiny self was if she had no internal organs - unless that’s how she met her fate: maybe they ate her from the inside?  Oh come on, don’t pose your hypertechnical objections.  It’s possible, especially in a world where:

* During a dogfight that appears to be in space, a window gets blown out and our fearless warriors are ejected into space, though of course they crawl their way back to the safety of the shattered bridge of their crippled intergalactic winnebago.  They wrestle it into a landing approach, and the hull starts to heat and burn.  “We’re in the atmosphere,” one explains to his cretinous friends, who apparently never even saw Apollo 13 (Tatooine, we have a problem...).  Okay, here’s the technical quibble: if they were above the atmosphere when the window got blown, then they were in space, where exposure to extremes of temperature and low pressure would trash your internals something fierce.  In researching this answer, I learn that 15 seconds or so of exposure to space won’t hurt you much in the long term. To this, I call bullshit.  Why don’t you try it, mr scientist, and tell me what you think of it, with your “extinct” NASA website?  The experience of being exposed to open non-atmospheric space in the movie, rather, seemed only to heighten the skills of our heroes.  This is because they are made up. And rather silly.

* Why does the cybernetic general cough?  And how come he hacks up a cyberlung when he so much as crosses the room, but in a pinch he can drop five stories, land on his feet, turn into a cuisinart, and escape at high speed, without any additional respiratory difficulties?  Did they cut the scene where he sucks his huffer, as over-humanizing his twisted metal persona? 

* Irritating is his syntax.  Listening him to, in my ass a pain is. 

* Jar Jar is only good for comic relief.  Having him show up as a chief mourner is like having Marcel Marceau show up to sing the national anthem.  To blind people. 

* When you finally kill the bad guy after 20 minutes of hand-to-hand combat, and a trusted aid hands you the special weapon you’d dropped long before during a death-defying fall from a cliff, and which is the essence of your character, give us a moment of acting, there, please?  Are you surprised?  Happy?  Relieved?  What we got was the look I see when someone drops litter in the bus and someone else hands it back to him: sort of, “oh yes that’s mine, I suppose, or at least till I can drop it somewhere you’re not looking.” More “strained politeness” than “elation at having my jedi soul back in the palm of my hand.” I know that joy, by the way, and I did not see it on screen.  Maybe in the NC-17 version?

* Sam Jackson’s direction from Lucas probably went something like this: “Whiter, Sam.  Whiter.“ Kel kept trying to remember him with the jeri curls from Pulp Fiction, but it was like they put his face on Quentin Tarantino’s body.  He had no charisma, no power, no passion, and definitely no “Bad MF” wallet.  And I think that sums up my problem with this movie pretty well: There was no one who was wallet-worthy in the whole mix.  And while I’m at it, when Jack lost his grip on Marwan and let him smak down on the pavement, but then blew up the missle over Los Angeles, averting a nuclear disaster, we could have used some tie-fighters and a wookie or two.  I kicked over 24 hours of my tv-watching time, dude; I deserve some bigger explosions! 

Tomorrow: no explosions.  Earth beckons, and never let it be said that I’m not a sucker for a good beckoning.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Familial Rememberances; plus random brainspasms

* You got to name all the pets.

* No I didn’t.  I named Bozo, but you named Gumdrop.

* No, that was you again.  From that song, “if all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops.”

* Oh, that does sound like me.  Okay, I’ll cop to the cat.  And I guess I did name Blackwatch.

* Yeah, I wanted to name him something cute, like Spunky or something.

* Spunky?  No way.  What a humiliating name for a proud beast. You can’t go naming your dog Spunky.  That’s like naming your dog Jizm. 

Yeah, good times.  And since I’ve got the memopad open, here’s a few more items I don’t know what else to do with:

I’m burned out on all the poker on television and on-line, but I do enjoy my daily rounds of solitaire.  I’m trying to combine the popular faddishness of poker now with the purity and serenity of solitaire.  So far I’ve developed an exciting new version of solitaire poker: “Texas Hold-It.”

There’s actually a soup called Cock-a-Leekie.  It always sounded to me like someone was sodomizing an anthropologist, but maybe that’s my own problem.

In yoga class, when I looked forward into the mirror across the front of the room, I was able to see several people working out all around me.  A woman who had been coming to the classes regularly was behind me to one side, so it was easy to notice that her shirt read “I MAIM”.  That seemed strange: she seemed like a nice, non-violent person, and here she was in a supportive, anti-mayhem environment; why did she want to tell the world about her fetish for removing people’s limbs?  Also the shirt was too cheerfully colored, in green and orange, to be authentically threatening.  Green and orange?  Oh yeah, school colors.  I was reading in a mirror.  “MIAMI.” Right.  Maybe I shouldn’t have offered to lend her a hand?

Enough for now.  No soup for you.  That’s a total ixnay on the cockie, and I’m going to restrict your leekie till you finish your homework.  Tonight Kel and I go to Metreon for the 7:50 showing of Sith - the heartwarming tale of a young man discovering his own light saber.  Till then I’m buried in paperwork.  Away put yer weapons.  I’m gonna get my ass kicked anyway.

Blue Baldey

Tonight I played with photoshop for the first time.  Turns out I need a photo of myself that’s about 4.5 inches square.  This photo seems a bit freakish and disturbing, but in a nice way, so I am probably going to stick with it.  I’m thinking of calling it, “Blue Baldey.” That’s not subject to misinterpretation, right?

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

looking in the peephole

* What was it?

* Excuse me?

* You just figured something out; what was it?

* Excuse me?

* You’ve been sitting there going through some kind of thinking process; it’s all over your face, it’s like you’ve been having an argument inside your own head since you sat down, it’s not like you even pretended to mask it; and just now, just a moment ago, you resolved it - all that anxious tension just melted right out of you - something clicked, inside, and it finally made sense, and you almost laughed out loud, it was like someone just turned on a lightbulb over your head; but even with that, I can’t tell what you’re thinking - how this realization fits into the bigger picture, whatever that is; so I guess I’m just asking, what was it?  What’s your sudden insight?  Your answer?  Your fix?  Or are you gonna keep it all to yourself?

* Excuse me, but, do I, like, even know you?

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Getting the Most Out of Your Down-Time; plus, Why You Guys Are The Best

This has been a good weekend, full of tasty treats of all different sorts. 

Saturday I got up early and took a run in the park, along the broad avenue of JFK out to the headquarters on Stanyan, and then back up the other side.  It was a bright sunny day, the roses were in full bloom as I ran their gauntlet into and out of the park, and it just got better from there - positively euphoric, by the time I was done.  This gave me lots of energy when we went to Clement Street again for some basic household shopping.  (Noteworthy message carved into now-dry sidewalk concrete: “CONSUME (/) BE QUIET (/) DIE”.  It’s a comfort to have these words permanently scraped into my consciousness now.) We had a great stroll, getting Bird’s custard at Haig’s and green papaya at May Wah and a few savory morsels along the way (the dim sum lady suggested the puffy nuggets and they were phenomenal, with morsels of roast meat and veggies inside a sweet crispy dough pocket - piroshki meets donut, or piroshknut, which strikes me as clumsy, but anyway they were tasty). 

Actually, the Bird’s Custard tin from Haig’s deserves a second look: I usually get this product by the boxful of paper envelopes, but this time I got a big round tin.  It has instructions for two alternative ways of cooking it: in the micro, or on the hob.  Yes, it’s hob cooking at its best, nobbing and nailing its way into your heart.  It describes itself as being served in millions of homes “where proper custard is at the heart of a good pud.” This is probably another one of those places where a charming britishism just never quite makes it across the pond.  Heh.  Pud custard.  Heh. 

Anyway, then we hit Kamei for some housewares.  These included an excessively cute little plastic bowl bearing the phrase, written small across the lip, “All the monuo on coppe food.” No, that’s exactly what it says.  There’s a picture of a monkey at the bottom of the bowl, if that helps at all.  Keep in mind, this product was obtained at a shop where they also sell the JUMBO TOOL CROCK.  I almost bought it just for the packaging and promotional material.  “Don’t give me your Jumbo Tool Crock.” “You can ram that up my Jumbo Tool Crock.” It’s got a million uses, even if you only invoke it by name!  (warning: keep your jumbo tool a safe distance from jumbo tool crock.)

Saturday night, then, we watched a few videos.  We wanted something light, so I suggested the first film of the Decalogue, which was beautiful and haunting and depressed the hell out of us, so thoroughly that we thought watching an episode of Six Feet Under on dvd would be more entertaining, which it was, but it was still pretty depressing too, so then we watched some Robot Chicken and Futurama and got our heads cooled down and went to sleep.  It was a really good Robot Chicken, too.  The one with the monster in the next bathroom stall?  Oh man.  They took the genre to a whole new level with that one. 

And this is as good a place as any to inject some random commentary: last week I also got to see The 39 Steps at a friend’s place.  It’s a short movie, but crammed with good stimulating plot.  It’s Hichcock coming at you straight from the dawn of modern filmmaking, bringing visionary enthusiasm to what was still a new medium.  The film is taut and exciting, but clearly dated in its approach to the subject, which I found fascinating on a secondary level.  From the cubist montage at the beginning of the movie, to the frank undercurrent of sexuality throughout the film, to the primitive iterations of classic set-ups like “the chase across the moors” or “fording the raging rapids,” I was constantly confronted by the gulf between moviemaking then and now.  The perfect example of this, is the scene with the escape from the train onto the Forth bridge, an engineering marvel of the 19th century of which very few americans are even aware today - an image that, when it was first filmed, depicted a work of art and a triumph of spirit, but that now evokes little more than a dingy industrial viaduct.  The 39 Steps is not a perfect movie, but it’s damn good filmmaking and it’s a piece of cinema history you owe yourself to get to know. 

Sunday - today - we got up early and went to the gym, starting with a nice run around chrissy field; the workout, once I got back to the gym itself, was vigorous - but brisk, giving us enough time to get cleaned up and pulled together before going out to a brunch at Mitch and Catharine’s place, which was entirely delightful.  It’s been too long since we’ve done a 5 hour brunch, and this one had the critical hallmark of rolling courses - bagels into frittatas into fresh house-made pizzas into grilled brined chicken legs.  Also, Sha and Helena had brought an amazing fruit salad, and someone else brought a platter of pan dolces that I found totally irresistable.  Dude!  Custard-filled pan dolces!  It just doesn’t get any better.  And then again: We brought the amazing pineapple bread pudding.  I was going to post the recipe but I seem to have done so already so I’ll just back the hell off, but the pud was damn good, to coin a phrase - people were psyched.  Anyway we ate really well, saw some old friends and made some new ones, possibly, and now it’s sunday night and things are wrapping up for a new week - one which I am confident will be fraught with challenges and opportunities I have yet even to comprehend, much less undertake.  So that’s a good time for me to just give a bit of a shout out. 

I’ve met some of the coolest people in the world through this website, and I am proud to call many of the very coolest of these my friends.  I wonder sometimes how well a friend I met through this medium could really know me, or how well I am understood by someone I’ve barely met in person at all.  Let it be said then, here and now by me, that the people who have become my friends here have been exactly the friends I’ve needed, and I am truly grateful to them for their wisdom and support and all-around decency, in the best possible way.  But special notice, I think, has been earned by Sawni, who sent me a gorgeous compass that has given me and Kelly both much comfort in the past few weeks; and Mia, who created a tiny “pocket shrine” for Cosmo, filled with special images of him and his adventures that she’d culled from this site.  It was a labor of love, and one that has deeply touched Kelly and me both. 

Guys, you completely rock.  Thanks for helping us through this time of transition.  Friends like you really help things fit back together again.  We really appreciate it. 

To conclude, here’s a photo of our guardian sculpture, Rico Ghanean.  He lives with us and keeps an eye out for us.  The way I’m feeling toward you good people today, I wanted him to be looking out for us all as this week begins.  We may just be in for more than we had bargained, but at least we have each other.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Roadside Junker

Red Monte Carlo – 1976.  Paint: fading.  Tires: mismatched.  Windshield: dirty.  It’s sitting on the shoulder next to five lanes of slow-moving traffic in the smog-filtered afternoon light. 

* Mira cabron this pendejo of a car is dead again and I’m out of baling wire to pull it back together. I’d like to lie down and sleep right here; my back is killing me after picking all those strawberries today.  But if I stay here I won’t make a dollar for my own supper, much less a little more to send to mi familia - especially if la policia decide to lend me a hand and ask for my papers.  I’ve got to get to Watsonville by tomorrow morning or I miss the lettuce harvest.  Ay, maybe it’s better to walk out in the open air than to spend the weekend with la migra on a bus to Michoacan. I’ll give it five more minutes to start on its own – then I’m going to have to start walking… again….

* This is a total buzzkill.  Total.  Buzzkill.  I can’t believe this happened here.  This place is so totally bogus.  It’s like there’s nothing here but cars and pavement.  And garbage.  Oh hey check out the grooves in the concrete, it’s like you ran a comb through it.  That’s pretty cool.  Oh!  There’s half a bag of funyuns in the back.  Awesome.  I wish I had a soda.  Oh, yeah, I got one here.  Still cold.  Whoa.  That’s a lot of traffic.  It kind of freaks me out – all the zombies in their zombieboxes.  Heh.  Zombieboxes.  I like that.  Oh!  Man!  What freeway is this, anyway? 

* Keep sleeping, keep sleeping, don’t wake up; I don’t have anything to feed you and you’re so peaceful when you sleep… I should have known his piece-of-shit car wouldn’t be able to handle a little traffic, it’s the same with everything about him; you ask for anything and it all goes to hell.... I just need to get to a bus station, I’m sure I could take it from there, but now here on this concrete ribbon I can’t do anything about anything.... What the hell happened to me, how did I let this happen, and now a baby to protect too, but maybe she’s why I’m here now instead of sitting in that stale room waiting for him to get back to hurting me.  I can’t let that happen anymore.  Maybe I can flag someone down.  Maybe they’ll have something I can feed her.  She’s so tiny.  She doesn’t need much. 

* Oh yes.  I’ve been here before.  Was that, what, fifteen years ago? Oh hell, no.  That must have been 1957.  That’s nearly half a century.  Fifteen, fifty, hard to tell sometimes.... But the car was noisy then, all those boys laughing and fighting over who got in front with me, and I sat so tall and pretty and I let’em fight and the sun crept along just like it’s doing now.... I can even almost hear them if I listen – except it’s really just the sound of cars rolling past so slow.  Cars.  All those people.  I can see their faces, but they can’t see mine.  I’m invisible now.  Almost gone altogether.  This old car is on its last gasp. And when it goes, well, how far behind can I be?  I might as well just stay here, then, till it’s all over.  Who’d even notice.  Who’d even notice. 

* Oh god.  god god god.  What the hell is that?  I can smell it.  Blood?  Blood!  The engine bleeds.  Dammit!  This was perfect.  Now it’s ruined.  I know who, too! Look!  They didn’t expect me to notice it, but they don’t think fast enough.  Fast cars – slow thinkers; dead car, fast – death, car, thought, heartpulse racing, the light is too much, those cars are a tidal wave, crashing down and lapping at my feet till my bones melt and my flesh burns and like hell I’m sitting here in this steel coffin till they come back up searching for me – I may be tender and juicy but I’m not an idiot – I can protect myself – better start now – if I’m sweating this hard it must be a war, and I never lose a war, time to take it to those wolves and those sheep and guhhhhh… mmm… devils.... Take the devil and leave the car – if I can stand in the lane they’ll stop for me, but my legs!  are stolen....

The Monte Carlo disappears in your rearview mirror.  No one got out of it.  You barely even noticed it was there.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Needlepoint

Of all the people who ride my bus, she may be the quietest: that may be what ultimately brought her to my attention in the first place. 

She is always discreetly dressed, wearing cosmetics that enhance her natural beauty, rather than imposing a false face over her true one.  Her hair is beautifully glossy black and rail-straight, parted neatly and falling in thick twin cascades past her shoulders.  She dresses conservatively, mostly in black, with dark stockings and low shoes of good quality; a capacious purse rests in her lap.  Her eyes are large and dark and her skin is sepia-olive, a color that just about demands to be tasted - though samples are distinctly not on offer.

When I see her, if I see her, she’s on an inward-facing seat when I board the bus on my way to work. Her self-containment and self-fulfillment beam out at me on those bleary mornings, as I stumble past her, not even causing a ripple in her concentration.  She inspires in me an aspiration of attainable serenity. 

Is she young?  I think so; I think she’s not yet 35.  Is she married?  Yes, a thick, simple ring adorns the appropriate digit, from which a heavy stone glints spectra in the gloom of our dawn transit.  Is she pretty?  Though her gaze is in her lap or on her work, and she never advertises her charms, it’s impossible to overlook her loveliness.  Is she Asian, or Pacific Islander?  Chicana?  South American?  She is exotic in appearance – that’s all I can tell from how she looks, tawny and ochre and deep kohl black.

Her gaze is in her lap or on her work.  Her work is always, and never, changing: a small stiff white mesh rectangle with a simple abstract pattern of boxes and lines in the middle.  It could be a simplified Chinese ideogram, or a Native American icon of some sort, or something else from a culture I haven’t even considered.  It looks to me like it should mean something, but I have no idea what.  I think that it changes, too, from time to time, as she completes her task: calmly, carefully, steadily pulling a length of yarn through the rigid card, up through one hole, down through the next, stitching a sea of purly white that washes right up against an ambiguous angular geometry woven in bright contrasting red, and then filling in the lakes with white again, leaving only a thick carmine outline. 

She stitches from when I board, all the way downtown.  When she needs more yarn, she pulls it from her bag and gets it working with graceful efficiency.  She works fast, too, filling the space, plugging the holes, turning gaps into links and transforming emptiness into a fabric.  At the pace she maintains, she must finish a couple of these pocket-sized patches every week.  I’d love to know what she does with them, but for the time being, I’m just taking some vague comfort in knowing that her handiwork – whatever it is – continues.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Tracy Powers: The Invisible Austinian

It’s been too damn long since I got back from Austin, not to have said a word about the trip.  I was abroad in the Republic of Texas for a conference of legal aid workers and public defenders, and I must admit it was a pretty good conference.  I also enjoyed what I saw of Austin, though both Tracy and Powers were notably absent.  However, Gopi was right on spot to take me around for a whirlwind tour of an animatronic johnson, vertiginous capitol vistas, and tasty enchiladas; it’s always a curious thing to meet a blogger in person with whom you’ve corresponded for 18 months or so, but I’ve got to say, apart from the ninja fetish and the cornpone phobia, Gopi is one hell of a guy and I’m very glad to have had some time with him.  Thanks, dude.  And I’ll send you a citation for that jaywalking incident if it’ll make you feel better. 

However: that was just at the very end of my three-day stay.  The rest of my time can be summarized by the following transcription of notes:

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

repertory

I thought the brothers were going to be the leading characters.  They stood like ‘dum and ‘dee at my left and right knees, respectively, thick shaveshadow stark against the pallid skin of their fully-packed jowls.  One wore dark blue jeans and a black shirt; the other, black denim pants and a shirt of blue.  Their coarse hair was similar in color, length, and style; their eyes peered with similar suspicion out the window over my head from under similar low broad brows.  Both stood midway between five and six feet, and both carried, I’d say, around 200 pounds of solid sullen weight.  Occasionally one would mutter a desultory word or two to the other in Russian, to which the other would reply with a weary shrug; their two weathered backpacks rested at my feet like obese, moribund dogs.  The broad reaches of their double-barreled bellies blocked my view of most of the bus, and they stood, insensate and immovable, as others struggled past them to find roomier places to ride.  I was all set to set upon them with my most unflinching observational skills… and then the hasid got on.

I’d seen this particular hasid many times before; he cut a distinctive figure.  He seemed barely old enough to shave, and his sidelocks had just begun to curl into spirals that brushed his high, delicate cheeks.  He was tall, six foot two or three or four, with creamy skin and ruddy hair that thatched his head like ryegrass in a windstorm.  He wore the traditional black leather shoes below the traditional black gabardine trousers that matched his traditional double-breasted black gabardine greatcoat (worn right over left); a traditional big black fedora perched extravagantly on his head and, when I looked more carefully, I could see his skullcap under it, held in place with a metal clip. He worked his lanky way through the bottleneck of standing riders, earning squints of aspersion from the brothers chunkyrussian as he wormed past them.  He took up a spot just a few feet farther down from them, arranged himself and his shoulderbag, pulled out a book bound in soft, well-worn leather, and began to read it and daven - to pray and sway, expressing the words with his mouth, mind and body all at once.  But as he prayed and swayed, he glanced, too - glanced around to the other riders, appraisingly, as if he were watching for something, or someone. 

It wasn’t long before he found someone, too - brother chunkyrussian #1, who sidled over with a question mumbled quietly so I couldn’t hear.  Words were exchanged, first with somber seriousness, but soon the short fat man warmed up to the tall young zealot and a smile melted its way through his face.  They began to look at the sidur - the prayerbook - together.  Tallboy asked the fireplug something; the fireplug grinned shyly and nodded his cheese of a head.  Tallboy swiftly closed and kissed the sidur, put it in his bag, and pulled out his phylacteries.  He selected shel yad, removed the protective cover from its small black wooden box, kissed it and laid the cover aside; he told his new friend to roll up his left sleeve above the elbow as the hasid placed the box just inside the joint and wrapped the slim black strap up his arm, thrice around the bicep, down over the base of the box to hold it in place and then around the forearm and wrist and hand and middle finger, and then back… the headpiece, shel rosh, came out next, the cover removed and kissed, the loop already nearly placed on the neophyte’s head before the hasid realized they’d forgotten the kipa, which he swiftly plucked from under his own hat and perched on the older man’s balding head before resuming with the t’fillin, placing the looped leather strap over his forehead and arranging the black wooden box of holy words on his brow, literally a frontlet between his eyes.  The book came out again, was kissed perfunctorily, and then was cracked open to a prayer in which the hasid led and the thick russian man followed, a distant look of serenity on his face. 

The prayer was brief.  We were coming up on my stop, and the hasid was getting off too.  He unwrapped his straps from the other man’s arm, undraped them from his head and shoulders, replaced the protective covers and kissed them, and then finally put them back into a carrying case and scurried off the bus behind me. 

I stepped to the corner curb to cross to the south; the hasid stood waiting beside me.  We exchanged a quiet smile, a smile of simulated fraternity.  The light changed again and I went to cross the intersection eastward; I checked over my shoulder to see if I was being followed by a too-tall jew.  I wasn’t.  Instead, I saw him turn to board another bus that was just pulling up, another 38, going back east, the way we’d just come.  As he hoisted himself up the steps and into the bus, he looked over across the parkway to me, ambiguously.  Then he turned back and disappeared into the doorway of the new bus.  I noticed, as he ascended, a yellow plastic toy flag stuck into his deep coat pocket, decorated with a woodcut-type image of a fabulous crown, with Hebrew lettering underneath.  First he disappeared into the bus and then his flag followed him, briefly unfurled against the setting sun.  The doors closed on him and he was gone.  The chunky russians, needless to say, were out of the picture.  This didn’t turn out to be about them after all. 

Monday, May 16, 2005

Fulfilling the Appetites - Big Time

It’s been a good weekend of relaxation and gratification.  Friday was a rollercoaster of frustrations, aggravations, enticements, and delights, and by the time it was over I had nothing left for the weekend.  So, when I awoke on saturday, I cooked myself an enormous brunch ("slutty duchess” french toast sandwiches, mmm good, with melon balls and pitted cherries, which are each just as euphemistic as they sound but twice as tasty), with rum and cold seltzer to wash them down.  I ate and drank myself insensate and then dawdled and tidied and read, finally falling into a comatose nap in the late afternoon for three motionless hours under the goosedown comforter.  Kel was home once I awoke (after 36 straight hours on the job) and we had indian food for supper while watching television (Cook’s Tour and Apprentice).  Then I returned to Bed Mountain - the kingsized pillow-top bed that was already plenty comfortable before we loaded it up with a three-inch memory-foam mattress-topper that cradles my pleasure-lovin’ self like a welcoming bosom and that’s paying a big compliment to bosoms.  I got about 15 hours of sleep, altogether. 

Then on sunday - today - I awoke gently and did a bit of writing before stepping out to clement street to meet laila and jeannette for a shopping trip at the new may wah, an enormous emporium of asian delicacies.  laila was looking for certain pandan products (no relation), of which I’ve never heard of any of them; she found not only fresh pandan leaves, but also pandan extract and pandan paste.  I tells ya, it was pandanonium.  I got a load of produce, some ginger tea, mochi, and a bunch of other crap, and then we all strolled down to vege house on 6th for a few plates of deliciously greasy food and some of those weird sweet soupy dessert drinks I so enjoy (plus fried chinese dough at three-fer-a-buck, which you just can’t beat).  We talked for a long time over lunch and I then bid my friends farewell, wandered back home, and attended to a bit of paperwork and blog updating; then Kel and I went to the gym for a solid workout.  Once home again I showered with the nice soap evi gave us so long ago but that I was initially saving for guests till I realized that I’d get more out of it if I used the damn stuff myself; I cooked up a very tasty supper of tortilla soup with broccoli, carrot and sausage, drank lots of rum with mint and coconut juice (yay new may wah), and then watched the end of survivor.  I’m going to bed now with a nice buzz on, feeling positive about facing a new week.  we’ll see how long that lasts, but so far, so good. 

and in honor of a weekend in which I indulged myself without restraint, eating and drinking and sleeping and enjoying what life had to offer, here’s a poem I wrote not long ago about appetites, and the fulfillment thereof.  It’s based on a phrase I saw printed on the side of an enormous bottle of household cleaner, but it could really apply to so many things, don’t you think?  I call it:

INDUSTRIAL SIZE
is the size for me
why settle for rivers
when there is the sea
when a bucket is barely
enough for a taste
and the leftover extra
goes never to waste
i need more than enough
and some extra on top
and i’m just getting started
when other men stop
my capacity beggars
the bottomless well
i consume till i drain
yet my thirst doth impel
i desire and crave it
and all it implies
there is one size for me
it’s INDUSTRIAL SIZE

have a good monday.  go on, I dare ya.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

twig bindles

apropos of the last entry i thought i’d slap down this photo i recently took out near where that guy did all that stuff with the sticks.  there’s still a messy pile of twigs in the ivy, and the shattered remnants of the boughs off to the other side are starting to become landscaping.

as the man says, click to embiggen.

Friday, May 13, 2005

glass all empty

Some of the regulars in my ‘hood are casting-room perfect.  We have a few cautionary examples of the “there but for the grace of god” variety, some consumptive walking coughs that have wheezed their red-eyed way to dawn after chilly dawn for more than a decade, and even some tragic remnants of expired glamor or greatness.  The ones that really get to me, though, are the scholars and the monks.

I have no reason to think that any of these guys are particularly intelligent, much less well-educated, but something about their gaze, their hoary beards and bookish aspect, makes me think of them as a sort of humanities faculty of the street.  They just look wise, even when they huddle against a wet wind in a litter-strewn doorway.  As they shake their coffee cups and ‘baccy tins at me in search of spare change, they still retain an air of lofty intellectualism.  Even in shredded dungarees, even with long untended fingernails and rheumy eyes, even lying out on a park bench or slumped over a garbage can, these guys look like they know something the rest of us do not.

My image of them wasn’t much sullied when I saw one, the one I consider most monklike in appearance, stretched on his back in the thick ivy, perusing a tattered, soggy edition of a “gentleman’s” periodical, his grimy hand thrust down into his equally grimy pants.  So he was groping for a fistful of pleasure in this sullied world he inhabits.  So what.  I was just sorry to see him driven to such extremities. 

And then a few weeks ago I saw the frozen moment that really put it all in perspective for me - made the situation, despite my wish to see it through rosy glasses, coldly crystal clear. 

The one I call Shakespeare was on the low grassy slope of the greenbelt, wearing his usual motley and rags.  I call him Shakespeare because of his fine, delicate features, his tragical expression, and his theatrically long white hair and beard, which fall in gentle cascades over, respectively, his shoulders and chest.  He’s a small man - lightboned, slim, and below average in height, delicate in appearance, verging on frail.  The late afternoon light seemed almost to pass right through the parchment of his weathered skin.

Beside him on the lawn lay his bags - shopping, garbage, and duffle, stuffed with whatever he didn’t want to be without that particular day.  He reclined on one elbow, slim legs curled beneath him, raising a small, incongruous drinking glass beween the dying sun and his bleary eye.  Against the filth of his delicate fingers, the tumbler gleamed with preternatural brightness.  Light penetrated its limpid surface, magnified and multiplied; he held it up before his face so the golden sunlight coursed through it and shed its illumination on his weary brow.  The glass was dry, a veritable metaphor realized in the palm of his hand.  He turned it back and forth a few degrees, drinking in the changes in the patterns of light that spangled his retinas.  He looked to be in his own little world, one in which water was served cold in fragile goblets and tables groaned with delicacies. 

In the meantime, though, he was just a soiled, hungry old man, lying on the turf, staring at an empty glass.  I took such things so much for granted, but my wise friend was teaching me well to appreciate anew how precious can be even the transit of light through clean clear glass, and the cool kiss of something, anything, pure and unbroken.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Ball Boy

I really hadn’t done anything remotely like it since I was a small child, but a few years ago Dave and I started throwing a baseball around a bit.  Mainly it was just hardball catch, with some softball too ‘cause Dave is in a league; we’d just have a relaxed afternoon in a meadow hurling the rock back and forth.  Sometimes our wives came along to take the air and keep each other company; sometimes it was just us.  The arc of the ball, the flat slap of the ball into the glove traveling right up my arm and clear to my heart… there’s a reason people do these things: they feel good and they are deeply satisfying.  I enjoyed my occasional games of catch.

And that’s the thing: I really didn’t do things like that.  I had a glove, yes, but it was basically unused, sitting in a closet under the guest linens.  I didn’t play team sports, or follow them much; I didn’t golf or play tennis or any such thing.  I rode my bike, sometimes, was all.  My juvenile t-ball experience had been a disaster.  So this game of catch with Dave was a fine break in my stultified patterns. 

And as I rebuilt - or built for the first from scratch - my sense of an inherent capacity to do these things, to throw where I aimed and catch what I spied, I felt comfortable with Dave.  He’s like a brother to me, after all, and I had the sense that I could try my best with him and, if I failed, threw the ball away or flubbed an easy catch, it would still be okay.  We were just goofing around.

Sunday, May 08, 2005

You’ve Got a Friend

Back at the end of April I hied me hence to the beautiful Carson Valley for a bit of a party with some fellow bloggers - jules, pete, teresa, debbie, and ruth, accompanied by a healthy assortment of spouses and alcohols.  we played a little poker (I came out $4 ahead, which means the universe is doomed), ate some tasty foodstuffs (the Dr Pepper BBQ Sliders were particularly noteworthy), and drained more american whiskey than a crowd that size should have been allowed to have in the room in the first place.  no one got sick, or into a fight, or wound up in a compromised situation with farm animals or equipment.  even so, it was still a fun party.

but you are looking for the inside story, aren’t you?  that’s why you came to me.  well let me take this opportunity right now to disappoint you.  it was a comfortable, very entertaining visit but the stories are not actually of the sort that can be shared without visual aids and, preferably, a corkscrew.  really, you had to be there. 

one point, though, that jules particularly insisted I reference, was the notion of “AntiPretzelman.” someone was throwing pretzels at me and, somehow, missing me.  “I am impervious to your pretzels,” I boasted.  “It’s my superpower.” superheroes that lame don’t even get spandex outfits, you know.  I’m going to be stuck in colored cello-wrap.  and my chest logo is likely to be a post-it.  pretty sorry stuff. 

but other than that, it was a blast from the moment pete picked me up at BART - one shave-headed white guy with a bit of hair at the chin and wearing an orange baseball cap, waiting for another.  I told pete that someone would think we were a couple so he went home and got a different hat, and that was the only hitch in the whole trip.  The drive up was gorgeous, as was the drive back, and the destination itself.  I ate well.  It was fun.  Here’s a link to my shutterfly album on the subject, if you want visual proof.  Olfactory proof is a bit harder to provide, but drop me a line and I’ll see what I can work up for you.

One thing I particularly like doing when I visit new places is to see what the yellow pages has to say about them.  I always pull out the big floppy book and page through for maps, coupons, local information, all that good crap, trying to get a tab on the local culture.  Minden was no exception and I really enjoyed their yellow pages, which seems to be a statewide affair.  One thing that caught my attention was the repetition of advertisements for certain select business entities in different sections.  In particular, I noticed that the “Moonlight Bunnyranch” had big full-page bullet-pointed ads all through the book, in such sections as Escorts, Entertainment, and Massage; sadly, I didn’t take the trouble to look them up under “fellatio” but I bet they’re listed there too.  The thing I found most amusing was the way that these ads differed from each other depending on the section of the book in which the ad appeared.  For example, here is a selection of the services identified in the ad under the “massage” section:

* chinese massage
* friction, bodywork
* excellent service
* facials
* thai water massage
* stress reduction
* therapeutic touch
* the finest massage
* same day service
* helicopter pad (I’ll admit, I’m not sure what this refers to, but it sounds like fun)
* discreet billing

so this is clearly a business that offers a broad range of valuable services.  but by whom are these services provided?  The answer is under the ad in the “escorts” section of the yellow pages, which lists, inter alia, the following descriptions of the staff:

* adorable ladies
* area’s finest ladies
* attractive escorts
* classy outside calls
* confidentail personal escorts
* courteous personal escorts (who, apparently, can’t be counted on to keep their mouth shut when it counts)
* elegant refined ladies
* exciting gorgeous ladies (who, apparently, are a bit lacking in the elegance and refinement categories)
* finest female escorts
* fun classy ladies
* impressive dinner escorts ("my god man, can she keep those things hovering above the table for the entire meal?")
* pretty friendly ladies (the lack of a comma makes me wonder if this means the ladies are friendly and pretty, or if they’re mostly, but not completely, friendly)
* professional ladies

I shared this list with evi and scott, who wondered if it could be utilized anywhere else; I assume it would work anywhere that prostitution was legal but we could only think of one state other than nevada where that was true: Brothelvania, a proud land bearing the popular state motto, “you’ve got a friend in Brothelvania.” I think I’ve got my next road trip destination in mind already.  this time, though, I don’t think I’m going to share the shutterfly album so indiscriminately.  some things deserve to be asked for.  I may be classy and elegant, but I’m also a professional.  I mean, when it really counts.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I think my helicopter has just landed.

Natal Felicitations - from and to the birthday boy

as those of you who are paying entirely too much attention may have realized, I had a birthday recently.  the day itself was not a very pleasant one but the overall birthday process has been much better, tyvm - low-key, comforting, and in a strange way, in spite of the difficulties at the time, an affirmation of what is good about being alive.  thank you sincerely to every one of you who tossed a good thought my way for my birthday - were it a card, a giftie or just a moment of rememberance and a silent smile at your computer desk, they were all appreciated. 

to continue my tradition of writing poems for my birthday, here’s the latest installment.  if you are mapping any trends here, I’d appreciate a heads-up.  I’m sure it’s symptomatic of something but I just don’t know what, or if it’s getting worse.  all I know for sure is it’s getting more complicated in terms of rhyme scheme, but that’s probably just a reaction to the antibiotics.  it’ll go away in a few weeks, if I don’t eat too many radishes. 

30-11 years gone by
and here I stand undaunted
catching fungoes on the fly
I’ve got it so I’ll flaunt it
now play a half-court game with life
that’s carved in two without a knife
divvy up the joy and strife
for 30-11 years all rife
with vinegar and wine.

30-11 years ago
they clipped my twisted cord
I tried to take it nice and slow
and let the hours hoard
but time is naught but relative
it passes through me like a sieve
and marks the part of death I live
these 30-11 years they give
me drying on the vine.

30-11 years to go
or more if I am lucky
mapping out both high and low
from galilee to truckee
with all that’s on my plate today
a wiser man might kneel and pray
I think that I’d prefer to play
if there’s 30-11 left, I’d say
the rest are mine, all mine. 

and many happy returns.  with a few cheerful exchanges, and a gift certificate redemption that can’t stop giggling, too.  and a deep, personal thank you for skipping the spanking machine this year.  I’m still finding bits of leather in my shorts from last year.  but that was probably my fault. 

lesson learned: do not taunt spankmachine. 

okeydoke.  till tomorrow, then.

Return: What Happened to the Good Boy; and How We Celebrated the Redemption

hey good blog people, the chuckler is back and, if not better than ever, reasonably well-rested and ready to assume the onus of your entertainment needs again.  it was hard to come back from my trip and see that the only thing on the site was our goodbye to the dog, but it’s been made so much more manageable to have undergone this loss with the support we have enjoyed from so many of you.  To anyone I have not personally thanked, it’s not because I don’t appreciate it; it’s just been a very intense phase here and I have not been able to do all I’ve wanted to do, to write to everyone I’ve wanted to thank.  you’re all in my hearts, and coz gives each of you a tender, velvety, sweet-scented lick on the cheek. 

and for anyone keeping score, here’s what happened: we were feeding him supper and he came up, wagging his tail.  he wagged himself off his hind feet and never regained use of his legs.  we did what we could, carrying him up and down the steps, using the sling to haul him around every time he needed to be anywhere he wasn’t.... he was brave during the day but scared at night, whimpering and anxious unless we slept next to him on the floor.  after three days and some excellent veterinary advice, we had to conclude that he most likely had a spinal tumor that had cut off the impulses to his legs.  such tumors are inoperable and we ended his incapacitation, knowing it was distressful to him and that his quality of life had plummeted to unacceptable depths.  he was a great, stalwart, loving friend right up to the very end.  we miss him terribly and the house seems so empty now - it’s the first time in my life I’ve not had a pet. 

I’m doing a crappy job with the entertainment, aren’t I?  well that’s what you get from a goddamn free website so cram it with walnuts, my good friend.  Okay here’s something a bit more entertaining: at the very beginning of the hiatus, before any of that cosmo stuff, we had a wonderful passover seder:

This is what it looked like when I drank the truly exceptional wine charles brought for kiddush - the blessing over wine.  there are four glasses of wine consumed at passover and charles demanded that he fill my goblet with the very best.  as always, he outdid himself.  the event as a whole was a total success - several newbies got a good introduction to the runaway steamroller that is passover food, and the discussion of the symbols and history of the event was lively and entertaining.  we had babies, grandmothers, strangers and good friends all working together for a memorable holiday.  How memorable?  here’s my shutterfly album if you really want to find out....

it did occur to me, though, that one thing I hadn’t mentioned during the seder (the official passover meal and celebration I’ve been going on about) that I hadn’t revealed the results of the important research I’d done into the ten plagues.  I have done a lot of reading and thinking about the story of passover, and the big guidebook to the celebration that I wrote years ago (yes really) now needs to be updated with some corrections and amendments.  One of the most important things I discovered was that the famous ten plagues were not actually the only plagues up for consideration at the time.  The heavenly focus group had actually done a brainstorming session first, generating as many creatively oppressive conditions that they could before cutting the list down to a nice decimal-based size.  I don’t think it goes too far to say that the entire course of history could easily have been changed if the final sequence had been very different.  and by “very different”, please consider what the world may have looked like if the immanent shekinah, whose name exceeds our power to speak it, had imposed the following REJECTED PLAGUES ON EGYPT:

* wedgies
* papyrus cuts
* punditry
* weak outside shooting
* camel spit (more than usual)
* recap episodes
* cheap knockoff handbags
* obelisk envy
* pledge breaks
* walking like an egyptian

there you have it people.  those were the rejects.  yet here I remain to make fun of them.  the chucklehut is back.  I will see you here tomorrow.  that is, if you’re not doing anything better.  feel free to drop me a line if you are and I’ll see you there instead.