Octopus' Garden

NEW BLOG HEADQUARTERS

2009-08-12T12:40:00.002-04:00

I've moved my blog headquarters to a new blog space: Running Brush.

Octopus' Garden and A Woman Who Loves Insects archives going back to 2002 have all been relocated to the Running Brush site as well.

Hope to see you there? :)

BUT, OF COURSE . . .

2009-04-07T09:47:00.000-04:00

My horoscope:

The sirens are enticing and wooing and tempting you again. This time they say have a really fabulous deal, even better than before. They're sorry, by the way, about the somewhat deceptive advertising they used on the last occasion you came their way. They want to assure you that they'll never again pull the bait-and-switch routine. So are you ready to give them another chance? Don't look to me for advice on what you should do. I'm simply here to report the situation. Besides, you need a good stiff test of your powers of discernment. Oh, one other thing: To demonstrate their sincerity, the sirens are offering you their first song and dance absolutely free.

UM, HELLO?

2009-01-10T14:50:00.002-05:00

It's been brought to my attention that my blogging has been particularly slackerly as of late and yes, I'm afraid it's true.

Some of this has been due to the end-of-the-semester maelstrom. Some of this is about being out of town. Some of this is about the holidays -- otherwise known as The Season of Despicable Mental Hygiene. Some of this is about being sucked down the blackblack hole that is Crackbook. Some of this is about being preoccupied with meatspace issues. Some of this is about having written myself into a blogging corner in which I've abandoned the more casual, conversational posts in favor of drafting, poeming, and conversing with my Japanese Mother to the point that I feel kind of weird/self-conscious about writing the casual, conversational post about nothing.

So, um . . . yeah.

Here's a partial compilation of what's been going on with me:

I was totally distracted and forgot to make a New Year's resolution this year. Is it too late? What should I resolve? Perhaps it should really be something about procrastination? [meta tag] But I'm not ready to make a resolution yet, so will think about it for awhile longer. Perhaps by the Lunar New Year? [ / meta tag]

The Gaslight Lounge in Soo Foo is, just for the record, the consummate blend of kitsch and squalor. I <3 it!

I attempted to throw an Absinthe Party following the departmental X-mas potluck, but as it turned out, everyone became distracted by mezcal instead. Power tools were left behind, which engendered a lot of saucy post-party badinage on Crackbook. Drill eventually exchanged for cupcakes in complex hostage negotiation at Carey's bar. Absinthe Party? Still on the horizon.

Crashing a wedding at the Eagle's Lounge with girlfriends will concomitantly lead to such epistemological concerns as whether or not the correct version of the chicken dance involves a do-si-do or no and whether or not Stacy's mom has got it going on.

During the winter months, I adore acorn squash with a love that is irrational, obsessive, and -- quite frankly? -- just a little bit unholy.

I spent ten days in residency at the lovely Lied Lodge over X-mas break with wonderful colleagues and students, teaching for the University of Nebraska low-res M.F.A. When I returned home, I discovered that my friend John had left a hibernating Fairy Queen(?) insect in my refrigerator for me in a plastic baggie -- wings enfolded down into a clever, compact origami. What could be better than that?

I have been trying to stretch and learn and grow in certain key areas. I have been trying not to let my past blindly dictate my future. I have been trying to arise to challenges that I would not have been able to rise to before. It's hard. And scary. And painful. But there's a kind of joyous openness to all of this, too. And I think it might also be, ultimately, very very good for me?

What's new with you, oh blogosphere???

CARTOGRAPHIES OF LIGHT

2008-12-07T14:42:00.005-05:00

Frozen morning's bedside lamp an intrusive klieg light slicing away sleep's velvety privacy. Cold air rushing in through the window frame, shiver of snow outside. Blurred plume of car exhaust toreadors up in a lazy nebula spotlit underneath the alley streetlamp, drifts like tangled strands of hair into the thorny crocheted lace of bare trees.

Late afternoon light's lazy drizzle palely honeycombing in. Sticky glitter braising the cat's fur, sallow yellow striping floorboards, brush of shimmery butter basted on the bookcase.

Tungsten's photons brightening in winter's early fade-out; gas flame's blue fandango; Coltrane's sax a hot gilded bird tracing radiant orbitals.

The cool glow of this screen. These words burnished pennies refracted into an inverted beam and slide-projected onto the lens behind your retina: electric filament glittering along the optic nerve, sizzling upward where the light of your mind will coppersmith them into jingle and shine.

See how the reflected wedges of rapidly-dimming windows kiss the handblown glass into some kind of quiet incandescence?

IN WHICH I AWAKE TO A BIZARRO TAZO TEA-BAGGING INCIDENT PERPETRATED BY THE CATS

2008-12-04T13:29:00.005-05:00

What I Wish I Was Doing this Afternoon:

1. Writing, writing, writing

2. Reading Murakami

3. Confessing all my secrets to the river, and secretly trysting with the sky

4. Sipping absinthe in the bathtub while listening to Thelonious Monk humming in the bright gilded spaces underneath the keys

5. Transgressing

What I Wish I Wasn't Doing this Afternoon:

1. Preparing an important, but frankly-sort-of-completely-fucking-boring document

2. Grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

3. Procrastinating grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

4. Self-flagellating in completely tedious/predictable/not-even-vaguely scintillant way re: procrastination of grading and commenting, and grading and commenting some more

5. Resisting transgressing

* * *

Recent Linky-Lou Who's:

Interview with Superstition Review

Poems in Fall 2008 Issue of diode

Poems in coconut 14

TRIFLING

2008-11-27T15:28:00.004-05:00

In what has become a time-honored, albeit exceedingly silly, tradition here at Octopus' Garden, I present to you aerial and side shots of the T-giving trifle prior to heading over in a little bit to spend my T-giving with lovely friends E. and J. and their funny/smart boys and E.'s parents. Happy T-giving, o blogosphere!!!!!

UNSPUN NOCTURNES

2008-11-25T10:43:00.006-05:00

You dream your feet are tender and cold and bare. It is winter. You wear an ember-colored blouse. Someone is reading poetry. It isn't like you to take off your shoes like this.

(Prism, nacre, calcite, aragonite, abalone, mother-of-pearl, spiral, whorl.)

Coin ricochets down in a metallic clatter, ropes shudder and creak, velvet shimmies up, and you slow dance in your clear glass fishbowl with your eyes closed. Center page for eight minutes, all languorous swirl and trope: sequin scales' illusion, allusive fan of silk sleeves. Idee fixe with nowhere else to go.

At night, you shut the blinds against late afternoon's too-early dark. You want to hold all the light inside. You don't want to become a silver top unspun. You don't want to be unribboned.

(Prism, nacre, calcite, aragonite, abalone, mother-of-pearl, spiral, whorl.)

Wait for morning, wait for the wind to please stop blowing because you are brittle paper palimpsest with words you can't quite make out pressed down by a too-hard pencil on a torn-away top sheet: vastuary? unrinded? bromeliaphilia? n-ache-r? Wait for morning, wait for the wind to please stop blowing, wait for your chest to unclench enough to take another breath, wait for the weak-tea November light to come and lick the stubble fields into a quiet burnishing.

(Prism, nacre, calcite, aragonite, abalone, mother-of-pearl, spiral, whorl.)

GEM CITY: A MIGRAINE DREAM

2008-11-06T09:54:00.005-05:00

Coasting down foothills into Laramie. My father's old gray Jeep: vinyled and squared, filigreed in lace cuffs of rust.

Rockies' chilled crust thrusts up hard, distorting the horizon.

Perspective all askew: Mountains much too large and much too blue, looming up much too close too fast. I am not a child, but I slide back and forth in the middle of the front bench seat, knees jogging the gear shift. The parents in the car are not my parents. Alco's cracked neon on the left closed down years ago. Lost effervescence of wind-bobbled balloons frantically bubbling in the no-longer-there car lot.

Clouds spill down off the mountains, twisting into dangerous, spiraling wraiths.

Are those tornadoes? I ask.

They flame in the too-loud wind like black dry ice, slivered with bright threads of lightning.

Is it war? I ask.

They dervish off the sagebrushed plains toward the road.

You have to stop. You have to pull over, I say. I'm not wearing a safety belt.

The sound of unfurling metal, burning, shattered glass, hot wind. Everything goes blank.

An eyelid blinks open to sunlight, emptiness, the heart-shaped white behinds of curious antelope retreating. Empty car, empty highway, everyone else gone. Mountains' bright prong ringing an empty town.

Radio's static crackle, then chipped advertisements, like faded billboards in the wind:

it's Joe Albertson's supermarket . . .

on a sesame seed bun . . .

you're in good hands with All State . . .

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER: BIRTHDAY 2008 EDITION

2008-11-02T23:51:00.002-05:00

Regarding the Conservation of Twine:

[While unloading car full of shoulder bags, garment bags, canvas bags, duffel bags, plastic bags, plastic bins, and many, many, many, many boxes for my parents' three-night stay.]

JM: Wach!!!! You be careful that one! Don't drop! And no, too close to ground! Don't let drag that one! Get dirty! Oh, you going to drop it! No! Put that one first! Other one on top! No! Other one!

AH: Which other one?

JM: Other other one!

AH: This one?

JM: No, that one. I think I put something fragile inside. I don't want break it.

AH: What on earth do you have in there?

JM: I not sure. I can't remember. Too many boxes.

AH: This one?

JM: No, that one. You put that box on top medicine chest. You put down there! Right there! [Having recently been apprised that overly-sensitive progeny such as myself need self-esteem bolstering, my mother has recently taken to occasionally providing positive verbal enforcement when I manage to do something particularly clever.] Good girl! That's good job! [Aggrieved.] Oh, I so sweat! Your father! He never know how to travel light!

AH: [Suddenly spotting Fruit of the Loom underwear elastic wrapped around some of the boxes] OMG . . . is that . . . ???

JM: What's your matter?

AH: OMFG! Do you have underwear elastic wrapped around those boxes?!?!

JM: So what! Don't have to spend money on expensive twine. Instead, you cut off when underwear get wear out! Just like big rubber band!

AH: [crickets]

JM: Why you make ajapa face? You probably think you some kind of Rockefeller and so careless, buy twine anytime you want, don't you? No wonder you can't afford own house and force your own parents stay in motel! Nobody believe when I tell them you make us stay in motel when come visit you!

AH: Yes. That's exactly it. My indiscriminate twine-buying habits have brought me to financial ruin.

Tofu:

[Following dinner in my parents' room at the Comfort Inn involving fried chicken, frisbees, and tin foil.]

JM: [sighing] Oh! We ate it! Don't you wish you eat fried chicken?

AH: Not really.

JM: Here, you put orange in your handbag. And make sure you hide it when go by front desk. Come from continental breakfast this morning.

AH: Um, okay. Thanks. Oh . . . here's a bunch of condiments I picked up at the deli.

JM: Oh, you good girl! Such smart for once! Goody goody!

AH: Yeah, I thought you might like that.

JM: Hey, where your father go this time?

AH: I think he took something out to the car.

JM: Always! Always have to wait for him! You have no idea what I put up with! I have to pack all sock and underwear and everything and all he worry about is soda pop! And he can't remember anything! He left fried chicken in the icebox in Nebraska! Can you believe it? I tell him exactly! I say, Don't forget fried chicken!!! And then he forget it!

AH: Sounds like grounds for divorce to me.

JM: Hello, divorce! You don't know what you talking about! First somebody have to want to marry you before you know what you talking about divorce! But nobody can stand put up with you! Such drama queen!

AH: Excuse me?

JM: Yes! All big hysteric and big fight all the time! Such kin-kirree kin-kirree screaming all the time! Make me want go deaf. All the time too, famous big slump from your father side family, and then always you never happy unless make big fight!

AH: WTF?

JM: Yeah, nobody can put up with you. Only your parents can stand you. So you better buy house and then we come and live with you. But you live in separate apartment. And get rid of your brat cats first.

AH: OMFG.

JM: Oh! Here come your father! I have to pick out sock and underwear for stay in Nebraska motel tomorrow! I bet he don't know what I talking about. He going to give complete wrong answer. You watch. Try to fight with him is like fighting with tofu!!

IMPRINT

2008-10-22T23:11:00.007-04:00

Only the day before, air bristling with Japanese beetles, all metallic ping and pinch.

Grasshoppers Jiffy Popping under the sky's blue aluminum dome.

On the walking path, one of the last of the dog day cicadas stranded on its back and rattling its dry gourd of a body until I righted it. Small mechanical wind-up toy's stutter and twitch.

All of this rescinded after a single morning's chilled rain. Leafprints scored into asphalt. An immolation of orange and yellow burnings stilled to silhouetted ash and char.

Imprint of your body fading too quickly from my bed.

Is it an erasure, or is it a swallowing?

Or perhaps the turning of a purse inside out to reveal the silky lining?

Leaves glisten. The drizzle-slick dock shines. Sky an uncertain pearling of abalone.

And yes. I have been turned utterly inside out.

And so I ask you, what other choice is there, if not to give oneself up to the rain--to glisten, shine, and pearl into this very absence, this ache, this lambent and indefinite quiet?

CELL-EH PHONE KITTEHS

2008-09-08T23:55:00.012-04:00

HAPPY HOUR: BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION

2008-09-06T17:21:00.008-04:00

1.
Recipe for SoDakian Martini = Miller Lite + tomato juice + olives. (Do not shake and do not stir. Just swill at will.)

2.
"They Don't Make Them Like They Used to Any More":

Gentleman Sitting Catty-Corner: His wife (gesturing to the fellow sitting next to him) had fifteen children! My wife had seven children! I bet neither one of you end up having anything close to that amount of children!

AH: WTF?

Lu: WTF!

3.
"I Had Sort of Planned on a Low-Key Evening -- That Is, Until Shots Were Sent Over from the Neighboring Table":

Lu: OMG! It's only 6:30, and we're already doing shots!

AH: OMG! I know! Well . . . at least it's not a straight shot of bourbon!

Lu: Ha! You know what? I don't believe Thor Spam (name changed to protect the innocent) can't remember anything from Cool Breeze's party last week.

AH: You don't buy it?

Lu: No. I think he's being a man-boy.

AH: Hey! We should coin a new term for unacknowledged dipsomania, then! We'll call it being ThorSpammed!

Lu: Like, OMG! I was so ThorSpammed last night! I can't remember a thing!

AH: Exactly. And then we can mock him on FaceBook by writing updates along the lines of: "OMG! I was so ThorSpammed last night! I can't remember a thing!" Would that be mean? Are we Mean Girls?

Lu: Yeah. Kind of. Hee.

AH: Hee.

4.
Time-lapsed rain clouds keep on cruising by like long dark cars with tinted windows, and it remains miraculously cool and sunny and blue. A turkey vulture parabolas the Vermillion water tower, visible behind the worn brick fence. BBQ pinks on the grill and around the corner, there's the promise of deep-fried dough as the street festival sets up. A law professor dances the polka with his daughter.

5.
Happiness sizzles deep in my pocket like an electric tingle of loose change.

6.
The Public Domain Tunes Band plays a version of The Drunken Hiccups -- learned from Knut Jensen, two-fingered fiddler from Centerville. The hiccups are pizzicati, or maybe it's that the pizzicati are hiccups, pinging out from the midst of all of the rapid-fire intricate fingerwork being executed by The Fabulous Omar . . . and it's a beautiful evening and fall is coming on, and what could be more fabulous than this?

"ARE YOU GONNA KEEP ON PEELING ME?"

2008-08-31T23:24:00.003-04:00

A bouquet of prickles and stings:
you weigh each thistled scale one
by one, drizzle with euphemisms:
creamy, nutty, fleshy, green.

What will happen when I've gifted
all my nettles away? What's left?
Steamed flower to scoop clean out.
Edible, pressure-cooked heart.

You're plucky and buttery,
ruthless in your mathematics
of extractions and subtractions.
A Fibonacci series of unpetaling.

(Can you squeeze a lemon on me?)

Seismic shifts, and things unhinge:

Relax with ice and slit the resistant
muscle, or steam open the shell.
Do not pry, and do not suck.
(The ice, the knife, the glove . . . )

Earthworms rise to the surface,
throb and bake in the fierce light.
Mole rats head-drum their portents.
Catfish thrash in a tumult of silt.

O harmonic tremor, o earthquake!

O, sweet giant!

O beautiful tsunami!

A STORY ABOUT TAMPOPO

2008-08-17T15:53:00.004-04:00

LARAMIE WAS STORMY THIS TIME AROUND

2008-08-16T23:38:00.013-04:00

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER: SHOPPING EDITION

2008-08-09T20:21:00.002-04:00

Garage Saling:

JM: [Bursting into kitchen, where I've just sat down to my morning coffee.] Okay! So you have fifteen minutes!

AH: What?

JM: You have fifteen minutes to get ready!

AH: Get ready for what?

JM: We going to garage sale! You have to hurry up!

AH: Um . . . I'm not going to be ready to go anywhere in fifteen minutes.

JM: You slow poke! Okay! You don't get to go! We leave you here by yourself!

AH: Okay.

JM: How many minutes you need?

AH: Forty-five. I need coffee.

JM: Forty-five? Hello, forty-five!

AH: Forty-five.

JM: You crazy! Okay! I going to set kitchen timer for forty-five minutes! When it go ching? You better pay attention! If you not ready, we going to go without you, and you going to get left behind!

AH: [Under breath.] What? And miss out on the Hoardy McHoardersons' field trip to the local garage sales?

JM: What you mumbling?

AH: Nothing!

JM: Don't talk back to your mother! And hurry up! Timer chooka-chooka-ing!

Wal-Mart:

JM: Don't leave your bag in cart!

AH: What? I'm not going anywhere!

JM: No! Somebody going to snitch you purse! You such stupid not pay attention!

AH: I'm standing right here.

JM: No! Don't be stupid! Somebody snitch! [Grabs shoulder strap to my messenger bag and wraps it around my forearm multiple times like a tourniquet.] There! You ave to keep wrap around arm so no snitch!!

At the Farmer's Market:

JM: What's that beeping sound again? Sound like peep-u!

AH: That's my cell phone.

JM: Who calling you now?

AH: Nobody's calling me. I have a text message.

JM: Whaaa? Sex-u message?

AH: Text message.

JM: Sex-u message? Who keep sending you sex-u message?

AH: Lots of people are sending me sex-u messages. I'm very popular.

JM: They must be nuts! Must be stalker!

AH: Pretty much.

JM: Oh, look! Watermelon!

AH: They're having a watermelon demonstration.

JM: Hey! Let's play trick on your father. Let's get a yellow watermelon and we pretend it's a red watermelon and we don't tell him. He going to be so shock when cut it!!! Hee!

AH: Hee! Okay. Yeah, let's do that.

DO YOU LOVE ARTICHOKES?

2008-07-30T14:49:00.002-04:00

You might need to become a member of the Artichoke Aficionados Club?

Or join a 12-Step Program: Artichokes Anonymous?

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER: HEAT WAVE EDITION

2008-07-28T00:58:00.002-04:00

Weather:

JM: Wachhhh! So hot! Your father and I go downtown and I just about sweat to death!

AH: I'm sorry to hear that!

JM: So humid too! Give me heat stroke!

AH: Humid? Really?

JM: I don't know what going on!! Not like July weather!

AH: Global warming?

JM: Why you talk like such crazy Democrat? Oh wait . . . you are Democrat. You want government steal all your money.

AH: Yes. That's exactly it.

JM: But you don't have any money. Don't even own your own house. No wonder you don't care government steal all your money!

AH: No wonder.

JM: But my hair! Complete stick to my head, so hot! And my glasses all fog up! And sweat go in my eyes! And your father, he take such long time -- he such complete slow poke -- make me waiting, waiting, waiting forever in hot car like some kind of dog! I can't stand it! And then I get a little bit grouchy!!! You ask your father! He tell you!

Sartorial Issues, Redux:

JM: Hey! You wear that nice suit I got you last time you here?

AH: No, not yet.

JM: Yeah, you need do sit up first. Get six-pack ab. Skirt just little bit tight.

AH: Just a little.

JM: So when you going to wear it?

AH: I don't know yet.

JM: Such nice suit! Suck all my money away! Like money vampire! You better promise me you wear it!

AH: Maybe I'll wear it at the winter residency graduation for the Nebraska M.F.A.?

JM: Oh good! Yes! That perfect! You do that! Then everybody going to be so surprise! They all say, Who that girl in nice suit? We don't recognize her? Instead of such hippy looking. They can't believe it! Don't you know?

AH: Um . . . I guess so.

JM: Hello, guess so! You wear such nice suit instead of such ugly hippy looking outfit and everything complete different! You wear that kind suit and pull hair back so have swan neck instead of ugly duckling neck and some millionaire Prince Charming going want to marry you!

AH: OMG, are you on crack?

JM: I don't know what you mumbling about. But okay, you right . . . maybe not in Nebraska. Too many country bumpkin and not enough millionaire. So maybe you have to go on The Bachelorette.

AH: WTF?????

JM: But first you have go on The Biggest Loser!!!!

OMFG!

2008-07-26T20:36:00.003-04:00

I just got slapped
with a wet salmon - really -
I haven't updated
since people stopped clapping
and Tinkerbell died.

You would not believe it!
My hands were chopped off
and I was waiting for bionics.

My bad . . .

I'm swilling chardonnay
with only your readership
as life preserver, distracted
by the shiny, a delightful
mistress to every Lost Boy
who crosses my path.
My day is filled with
fluorescent light --
from 4:55 a.m. until I see
my beloved's 10000
text messages, and I am
beyond drunk
most of the time.

(It will be fun fun fun
till they take my TBird away.)

I swear on the bones
of my ancestors to update
you with my nefarious
activities at the first chance.

No, really!

And I will write more
to certain you's . . . ?
But it might not be you,
in particular,
who I write to. . . .

(A post from The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator, contracted virally from Dr. Medusa.)

IMAGES FROM LIED LODGE AND J. STERLING MORTON MANSION AT ARBOR DAY FARMS IN NEBRASKA CITY, NE

2008-07-21T02:07:00.018-04:00

IN WHICH MY JAPANESE MOTHER SENDS ME A THANK YOU NOTE FOR SOME FACE CREAM THAT I WAS TRYING TO SEND TO HER AS A GIFT . . .

2008-07-10T03:07:00.006-04:00

and I suspect a teeny bit of hinky-ness with respect to Author Function.

Here is the note from JM:

(My favorite part is the bit where a typewriter eraser was clearly put into action.)

Here is a note from my father, taped to the kitchen cupboard next to the stove at my parents' house:

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER: ADDENDUM TO POPULAR CULTURE EDITION

2008-07-04T00:16:00.003-04:00

Coyote Eyes:

JM: I don't like watch that show Bones. That girl, she have funny eyes. She have the crazy coyote eyes. Such ugly. I can't stand it.

AH: Who are you talking about? Michaela Conlin? Tamara Taylor? I'm not sure who you're talking about.

JM: Everybody know! She the one! With eyes like crazy coyote! They follow you around like ghost.

AH: Do you mean Emily Deschanel?

JM: Whichever one. Such pale see-through color. Look like some kind of ghost. Like crazy ghosty coyote eyes.

Father's Day:

JM: Just barely get here, but your father get your card. He thought you sign you name and then put four A's afterward.

AH: Those aren't A's.

JM: I know! I tell him don't be stupid! But he say look like four A's. He say, "What's that? Ah, ah, ah, ah."

AH: Ah?

JM: I have to tell him no! Those you make drawing of your Brat Cat! With ear and whisker! I have to tell him his daughter make drawing of Brat Cat all over his Father Day card.

AH: Yeah. Tell him those are his grand cats.

JM: Don't you dare! Your father seed have nothing to do with those Brat Cat.

AH: WTF?

JM: Those Brat Cat not from his seed!

AH: OMFG. [Hands over ears} La la la la la la la!

Wishy Washy:

JM: I hate that one. I can't stand him!

AH: Who?

JM: They all go complete gaga about him and say he McDreamy. Hello! He not McDreamy. He can't make up his mind about anything. First go one way. Then go another. He complete confuse. I can't believe he brain surgeon.

AH: No?

JM: No! Who going to let such confuse person operate their brain? Why anybody think he so-call good catch? Plus he have rat face. I don't like it.

AH: Really.

JM: Yeah. Hello, McDreamy! I think he a little bit wet. He complete wishy-washy.

AH: Hmm . . . McWishy-Washy?

JM: Yeah. That's it. McWishy-Washy.

ALAS, POOR YORICK: AN EXERCISE IN IDENTITY POLITICS AND SELF-PORTRAITURE

2008-06-29T01:04:00.004-04:00

AN IMPROMPTU STUDY OF INDIGENOUS CLOUDS: THEIR VARIOUS FORMS, DEMEANORS, AND SONGS

2008-06-25T01:13:00.016-04:00

IMAGES FROM THE WYOMING TERRITORIAL PRISON MUSEUM AND OLD WEST PARK IN LARAMIE, WYOMING

2008-06-16T20:27:00.039-04:00

Butch Cassidy's Territorial Prison Mug Shot

WORD CLOUD

2008-06-15T14:37:00.004-04:00

I made a Word Cloud out of one of my newish prose poems over at Wordle.

I sort of love the depaysment of seeing all of the unraveled words floating about in the ether like that.

You can see it here:

Prose Poem Word Cloud

Go make your own!

RECEPTION

2008-06-12T14:01:00.002-04:00

JM: Who need cable? See, we wrap up rabbit ear in tinfoil! Such stupid spend money for cable. How much you spend for cable every month?

AH: [Unwilling to go down this particular road.] Um . . . why do you need to know that?

JM: What you make Ajapa Face for? I have to worry about you finance! You spend money like you think you some kind Rockefeller. Not even own your own house. Everybody else your age own their own house! Your own parent come to visit you and we have to stay in motel! I so embarrass! I tell everyone going to visit my own daughter, but she make us stay in motel!

AH: You can stay in my apartment. I'll give you my bedroom.

JM: How I can stay when such Brat Cat there? E. have house! She you age. She have house and three kid. And she chair your department! E. is Superwoman! I going to have to go stay with E. instead when I come visit! P. have house. M. have house. Everybody have house.

AH: Maybe I don't want a house. It's very expensive. And a lot of work. And anxiety.

JM: Yeah. Maybe you too irresponsible own house. But what you going to do about retirement?

AH: I'm on a retirement plan.

JM: But what happen when you run out of money? You should have at least two year salary in savings account for emergency! Do you even have that?

AH: Um . . . no.

JM: WHAT YOU GOING TO DO YOU RUN OUT OF MONEY WHEN RETIRE? I SO WORRY!

AH: Well, then I guess I"ll just have to kill myself.

JM: Who going to take care of your father and I if you kill yourself?

AH: No offense, but I think you'll both be dead by then.

JM: No. We going to live forever. You have to take care of us. You get rid of you Brat Cat and buy house and we stay with you.

AH: You can stay in the English Department wing of Dakota Gardens.

JM: You stick own parent in Dakota Garden? We go stay with E. then. In her new upstairs. Away from Brat Cat.

AH: E. has two Brat Cats. And you know what? She used to have three!

JM: Such crazy! Why everyone there so crazy? I so worry! How you going to get through rest of summer when don't get pay?

AH: I'm all set for the summer. I have plenty of money.

JM: How you going to pay for gas to drive home?

AH: I have money for that.

JM: Are you sure?

AH: Of course.

JM: I pack you cold chicken in ice cooler so you have something to eat. And apple. And soft drink. So you don't have to spend all money like burning big hole in your pocket at Subway. They so expensive! And not give you any meat! But that way you have something to eat so you not starve to death. Okay?

AH: Okay. Thanks!

JM: [Happily.] Always suck parent dry. Just like vampire.

* * *

During Season Finale of Dancing with the Stars:

JM: Where reception go? Hey! You be useful. Go stand right there! No, more left! No, no! What's matter with you! Other way! Maybe you go play with rabbit ear? No! That's worse! No, there! Better! Stay right there!

AH: Like this?

JM: Maybe. I don't know. Hurry! Kristy Yamaguchi going to dance! I don't want to miss it!

AH: Tell Mikey to put his metal knee up.

JM: Hey, that's good idea! [To my father.] Your daughter say put your knee up. Get better reception.

Following Kristy Yamaguchi's Win on Dancing With the Stars:

JM: [Clapping and yelling and making a general ruckus.] Hooray, hooray, hooray! Yay! We won, we won, we won! Nobody can beat Kristy Yamaguchi! She the BEST ONE!!!

During Season Finale of Gray's Anatomy When Reception Goes Out Entirely During Last Three Minutes:

AH: [Squinting into T.V. static.] Wait a minute. Is Dr. Torres kissing Dr. Hahn?!?!

JM: Can't you tell? I thought you expert. Publish paper about that kind of thing on T.V.

AH: WTF?

JM: See? Maybe you not such expert after all.

ON SNOWY RANGE ROAD

2008-06-04T21:14:00.008-04:00

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING INSECT MUSEUM = A LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN!

2008-06-04T01:48:00.007-04:00

I remember I used to beg my dad to take me through the Agriculture Building when he picked me up from the University Lab School I attended -- it was on the way to the parking lot where he sometimes parked -- because I loved, loved, loved to look at the insect mounts in the hallways. Now there's a nice little museum.

THE LARAMIE RIVER

2008-06-02T02:48:00.007-04:00

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER (DRIVING EDITION)

2008-06-01T23:15:00.007-04:00

JM: That's red light! You have to stop!

AH: Yeah.

JM: You better stop!

AH: I'm stopping!

JM: Oh! (Clutching stomach.) You stop so hard. Is gut shaker! How I'm going to survive it? Wachh! Look at that. Weather get nice and all kid come out. Like ants! You know, you have such Brat Cat, I think if you have kid they going to be completely spoil. You let do whatever they want. No punish. Completely brat.

AH: Excuse me? All hail, Queen of the Non Sequitur?

JM: You make such bigshot blahblahblah talking so pretend you don't know what I talking about.

AH: Huh?

JM: See. Don't make Ajapa Face at me.

AH: What's an Ajapa Face?

JM: That's when you make face like you don't know what someone talking about. But you know exactly. You know that Sandra Oh? In Grey Anatomy? Always she making the Ajapa Face. So no, you listen! Don't be tonkachi head. (As if I'm impaired.) You . . . Brat . . . Cat!

AH: What about them?

JM: They such bad manner! That one who dead? It want to eat my chicken! I could tell! Try to poke me! It want to run away with chicken bone. Hey! That's good idea! (Laughing) Next time I come visit I feed all you Brat Cat chicken bone! Then they all choke to death!

AH: Hey! That's not very nice.

JM: Those Brat Cat don't how to behave when company come. Bad, bad manner.

AH: Yes, but they have great self esteem.

JM: Who care about such stupid thing?

AH: Exactly.

The Decemberists on CD Player: La di da di da.

JM: Too doo roo doo roo.

The Decemberists: La di da di da.

JM: Too doo roo doo roo. Hey! Don't turn there! No! Don't do it! Too many cars drive on that street. It's no good!

AH: I thought we were going to Safeway?

JM: Yeah, but this way better.

AH: Which way?

JM: I show you. No, not there. Here! Here! Turn now! Turn now! (Socks me in the arm. Aggrieved.) Too late! Go round block so we don't have to drive on street with too many cars. Your car's too red. Like big, big target. Everyone going to try to hit you. Make sure you park far, far away from other car in parking lot, too. They want to hit you with their door. And bang you with their shopping cart. And if you don't double check to make sure everything all lock up, they going to break in and rob you. Here! Turn here!

AH: I have to wait for the traffic to clear.

JM: (Impatiently.) Oh! Now! Jump! Jump now! Oh, you slow poke! Why you don't jump when I tell you to jump? Okay! Now you jump! See? Oh good! You jump!

The Decemberists: La di da di da.

JM: Too doo roo doo roo. Hey! That's a stop sign. That mean you suppose to stop.

THESE ARE THE LANDMARKS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, IN YOUR NAY-BOR-HOO-OOD . . .

2008-05-30T12:56:00.055-04:00

LaPrele Park, By My Parents' House, On the Way to Thayer Elementary School

Antelope on East Side of LaPrele Park (Note the characteristic heart-shaped bum!)

Close-Up of Antelope

Spring Creek, Facing Eastward, in LaPrele Park

Spring Creek, Opposite Direction

Huck Finn Pond, LaPrele Park

Oddfellows and Where the Old Drugstore (Center Pharmacy) Used to Be

Old Insurance Building (University of Wyoming Football Stadium in Background)

The Old Bandshell in Washington Park

Stretch of Road and Field Behind My Parents' House Leading Out to the Highway

Electricity Station Behind My Parent's House

More Electricity (Now try saying it all Twin Peaks-y/David Lynch-y - "Eleccctrrriciteeeeeeeeee!")

Laramie Water Tower = Old Timey High School Make-Out Spot

Water Tower, With Antelope

MISSING THE MOUNTAINS

2008-05-29T03:16:00.002-04:00

WITH TWO CATS IN THE YARD / LIFE USED TO BE SO HARD . . .

2008-05-27T23:58:00.033-04:00

The Rotary Dial Phone Has a Bandage (or is it a Diaper?) Made of Masking Tape!

A Mysterious Collection of Plastic Caps Atop the Arthritic Refrigerator which Makes Strange Noises and Which, My Parents Keep Pointing Out with Weird Glee, is Older Than I Am!

Note on the Cupboards by the Stove

Kitchen

Dining Room

Living Room

My Old Bedroom, Which Has Since Been INVADED by Hoarding Geriatric Aliens, and Which I am FORBIDDEN to Enter - FYI: Am Going Straight to Hell for Posting this on the Internets

More of Artichoke Heart as a Wee Thistle

View from the Back Porch (I used to spy on our neighbors with my pirate's telescope - the guy in this house liked to walk around at night in his underwear!)

THE SEMIOLOGY OF LARAMIE SIGNS = SIGN AS BIRDS' NEST

2008-05-26T13:53:00.005-04:00

LARAMIE WEATHER

2008-05-25T21:54:00.036-04:00

First it rained, then it hailed, then the electricity went out for about ten hours, and then there were tornadoes. Finally, it snowed.

From Top of Train Bridge - Downtown to West Laramie, in Approaching Storm

By Popular Request, Images from Prexy's Pasture - University of Wyoming Campus

Spring Creek, La Prele Park - Down the Street from My Parents' House

LIBRARY'S CLOSING IN 15 MINUTES, SO MORE SOON . . .

2008-05-23T19:22:00.007-04:00

Storm Over Railroad Bridge, Laramie, Wyoming

CHECKING IN FROM THE COAL CREEK COFFEE HOUSE . . .

2008-05-21T19:37:00.026-04:00

in Laramie, Wyoming, while I wait out this overly dramatic thunderstorm rolling in over the Snowy Range.

Lincoln Monument - Outside Laramie

Classroom Building - University of Wyoming Campus

Mosaics inside Classroom Building - University of Wyoming Campus

Be True to Your School?

Images from Happy Jack Road Between Laramie and Cheyenne

Nanking Cherry Trees in Bloom in My Parents' Backyard

POSTS FROM THE MOTHERLAND

2008-05-19T18:55:00.022-04:00

Split Rock Pine on I-80, Heading into Laramie

House Where I Grew Up

Street Where I Grew Up

Downtown Laramie, Wyoming

Thayer Elementary School -- My First School

Antelope Outside My House on the Way to Elementary School

Views from Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Laramie, Wyoming

Artichoke Heart as a Wee Thistle

FELINE AND INTERNET (FELINTERNET) WITHDRAWAL COMMENCES

2008-05-15T09:25:00.005-04:00

Today I will drive across Nebraska. All of Nebraska. All of big, square, hallucination-inducingly endless Nebraska with all of its corn. Nebraska has a scary amount of corn. If all goes well I'll be in Laramie by tonight. I'll try and update when I can get to a Wi Fi source, but plan to do some Moblogging in the interim.

MY DEAREST, MOST BELOVED AND ESTEEMED FRIEND, ANGEL, GUPPY, AND ROOT CELLAR:

2008-05-14T14:37:00.008-04:00

I am joyous to tell you that one million, five hundred thousand calamata olives are ready for deposit in a Peruvian cave marked by a crop circle of silently humming signifiers.

Fruit bats anxiously await your transmission of authorization via sonar and will alert the appropriate algorhythyms to initiate the transfer of importunities.

Your most urgent reply, wrinkled in brine, is desired.

For I have looked upon your profile and wondered: Who is this dreaming axolotl? This squash-court Jezebel? How could this Haz-Mat honey come to be?

For I am a most sincere exiled princess of a defunct thumbtack empire, in need of thong laundering and a Visa Gold card. Or no . . . for I am a kidnapped prince held hostage by the narrative feed of a Tasmanian novel cartel. Or no . . . for I am a roller derby queen on the skids. Or no . . . for I am [just tell me who you want me to be].

Do you wish for the increased omniscience created by a full head of cabbage? Do you wish to meet available Winnebagos in your hometown of Mandan, North Dakota? Do you ever wish for a larger turkey baster?

I will most anxiously await your Yield sign. I will not blink until I hear from you. I will hold my breath like an eager cup full of jangling quarters in a smoke-filled room.

Hurry! You have won the nunnery! The pottery! The cutlery!

Hurry! Time is running out.

FUJI LEARNING CURVE CONTINUES

2008-05-13T12:54:00.012-04:00

CAMEREXPERIMENTS

2008-05-12T00:44:00.009-04:00

I picked up a refurbished Fuji Finepix in early 2007, as I wanted to upgrade my digital camera, and also learn more about how to take different kinds of digital pictures. I had some trouble with uploading some of the early rounds of pictures though, and then the semester started, and then I needed new batteries, etc., etc., etc. Eventually, I just went back to using my old camera. So, a year and a half later, I'm finally figuring out how to use my new (now not so new anymore) camera again . . . just in time for my trip to the (Japanese) Motherland, yes?

MORE BANGS FOR MY BUCK

2008-05-09T20:00:00.007-04:00

I figured that I should probably commemorate my new haircut, as I am inextricably convinced that I will never be able to reiterate the mysteriously complicated litany of multiple hair products in tandem with multiple hair appliances enacted upon me by my stylist. Seriously. There was a mousse, and a curling lotion, and a curl lock, and a curl booster, and some sort of dirty pomade, and then a hairspray that was called something fancier than a hairspray. As she was explaining the various properties of the aforementioned elements, there was a moment when she transmogrified into the schoolteacher from the Peanuts cartoon, and all I heard was: Mwah mwah, mwah mwah mwah mwah.

SWALLOWED UP

2008-05-09T09:45:00.003-04:00

Young swallow trapped in the upstairs landing by my back door.

At first, it was only an unidentified disconsolate rustling among the plastic sacks. Then a glimpse of tired wing. Pull back a box and a panicky twittered swooping around the bare light bulb before coming to rest on the wall. Something almost bat-like about the flat cling to vertical and the photographer's cape of dark wing.

It explained why the cats had been repeatedly clustering about the back door on and off throughout the day.

I propped open the door to the outside on the landing below, hoping the fresh air might guide the swallow back out. I tried to usher it down the stairs, but there was just more awful ricochet and bash.

Finally, I just scooped it up in a washcloth and took it outside myself. Scared to hold too tight or not tight enough. Small blunt head swiveling between my thumbs.

Outside, I set it down in the damp lawn. It seemed disoriented for a moment, but then launched itself crookedly into the pending storm.

How strange it was to hold something that wasn't meant to be held.

What a relief it was to be able to finally let it go.

NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE, TOTO

2008-05-07T20:47:00.006-04:00

I spent a very pleasant afternoon yesterday giving a reading and holding a class discussion at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp twenty minutes down the road in Yankton, South Dakota.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but given that the YFPC is a minimum-security institution, I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be no cable T.V. Oz--replete with shankings, drug deals, open gang warfare, lockdowns, and riots. So I had to ratchet down my feverishly hyperbolic over-imaginings a bit, which was good, as the prison is located at the former Yankton College, with beautiful old academic buildings and exquisite grounds. Apparently, inmates can earn an associate's degree in horticulture (as well as other offerings).

I visited Jim Reese's class (Jim's a writer who teaches at nearby Mount Marty, and edits the literary journal Paddlefish), and they were a terrific group -- extremely attentive, receptive, and engaged, with lots of excellent discussion questions following the reading. (Even if, as co-poet and co-discussant Greg Kosmicki pointed out tongue-in-cheekly, they were a captive audience. Har.)

* * *

AH: [During yesterday's reading.] And there are apparently certain beetles! And inside their bodies they have separate chambers, each housing a different kind of chemical which, when kept separate, are no big deal, but when combined, they become toxic and explosive. So when these beetles are threatened, as a defense mechanism, they combine the two chemicals, and then shoot this toxic, explosive chemical out their ass! Hee! [Pauses, and remembers self.] Um . . . but this poem's not about that.

* * *

Much of yesterday's sky indulging in its own hyperbole: all shiny gun-metal blue and moody dark plum, punctuated by sizzling Z's of lightning and sudden rain. At one point, during dinner with M., an overly-crayoned cartoon stereotype of a rainbow lurched out at us from behind the Post Office. It was so big and intrusive that I almost thought it was going to tip over my glass of Cavit Pinot Noir and fall right into my Zuppa de Mona Lisi.

What can you do with a corny, overly-optimistic rainbow like that?

* * *

Next week I depart for the Land of the Rotary Dial Phone (a.k.a. no internet connectivity) while I visit my Parental Units in Laramie, Wyoming.

I'm in the process of locating Wi Fi hotspots so that I can post bog updates. I'm going to take lots of pictures. Seriously, Oh Blogosphere, you have no idea . . .

FIVE EASY PIECES-DE-MAYO

2008-05-05T16:24:00.002-04:00

1.

I saw a young robin the other day attempting to take off with an astonishingly fat rubbery foot-long super-size-me spectacle of an earth worm.

The worm so large it made flight a precarious, tilty, swooping affair.

Good for you! I said to the robin.

2.

I have decided that it's high time to become officially paranoid about artificial sweeteners.

I want the real thing. Or none at all.

No Splenda, no Nutra-Sweet, no crappitty-crap pink stuff. No fakers, plagiarizers, liars or posers allowed.

Honey is okay. On occasion, I'll maybe take a little honey.

3.

AH: YAWWWWWNNNNN! Phwaattttz?!?!

Aiko the Kitten: Hee. I just stuck my entire head! In your mouth! While you were yawning!

AH: Why would you do a thing like that?

Aiko the Kitten: Because I can.

4.

Tampopo the Kitten: [Wildly bouncing up and down on the mini-trampoline like a a caffeine-crazed orangutan.] I'm the red-headed stepchild! I'm Lu's favorite!!!

5.

At night, the sound of the train whistle gets stretched between the bluffs like hand-pulled taffy.

RESET, RESTART, REBOOT

2008-05-03T14:31:00.003-04:00

I've needed to keep things very quiet, peaceful, and simple here at Artichoke Heart Headquarters while I build up some scar tissue around some recent personal and professional disappointments.

I feel as if I've been trapped on a plane falling out of the sky and the person seated next to me has repeatedly insisted on using my drop-down oxygen mask instead of their own.

It's been turning me blue.

I tried changing seats a couple of times, but it didn't seem to help.

And so I've been blue, running on not-enough oxygen, and exhausted.

And I've locked myself in the lavatory for a little while, alone with the emergency drop-down oxygen mask secreted in the panel over the toilet, until I feel less blue.

And I'm keeping it all very simple:

Writing
Reading
Nesting
Cats
Clean, simple healthy food
Lots of exercise
Plenty of sleep

Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.

Waiting for the blue to fade.

Waiting for the ding . . . for the Fasten Seat Belt sign to blink off.

AFTER THE CARAVAN FIRE . . .

2008-05-01T14:06:00.004-04:00

ruins his left hand

Django goes into seclusion--

learns to fret with just

two fingers,

tapping feet smoldering

in his trademark red wool socks.

BE MY VALENTINE

2008-04-28T16:02:00.011-04:00

My Valentine arrives in the mail today:

* * *
Other recent minty vintage eBay goodness (abstract mid-century bird carving, and Royal Crown Paradise pieces, including Tampopo, who likes to make sure her head's in the frame):

* * *

The possum runs on fleet pink-eraser feet.

Faster than you'd think.

Small burr of a baby stuck to her back.

Raising a trailed flare of dog barks

like car alarms.

Dead? Or only playing?

NOODOOROOS

2008-04-26T17:27:00.005-04:00

My Japanese Mother pronounces noodles something along the lines of new-dew-rues -- noodooroos. She says this word with a certain kind of buoyant joyfulness, as if proclaiming kangaroos! There also always seems to be an an implied exclamation point at the end of noodooroos.

Noodooroos!

Because my people? We are all about the noodles.

Lately, though, what with the adult onset diabetes and all, things have undergone a sad change for my mother. My mother will first exclaim, Noodooroos! And then as if remembering her diagnosis, she catches herself, and she sighs loudly and plaintively. It's a pitiful, depressing sound. Kind of like the cartoon beagle sigh that Snoopy makes.

For awhile, my mother would send me packaged noodooroos in a box around X-mas time. And then she'd make sure to tell me not to eat noodooroos because I was going to give myself diabetes.

Yeah. I know.

"You so crazy about noodooroos," my mother tells me.

And it's true, I'm a potential sucker for any sort of Asian-style noodle dish, but the true noodle hound in my family? That would be my Japanese Mother.

Those of you who know me in Meat Space may have noticed that I suffer from a (not entirely unwarranted) carbphobia that borders on the downright pathological. Yes, it's true. I can be a little bit of a Carb Nazi. For the most part, I keep no refined carbs or processed sugar products in my house. No bread, no desserts, no chips, no white rice, no noodooroos. In fact, I think I may have a physiological sensitivity to these types of refined carbs/processed sugars. They tend to make me feel awful, sometimes even violently ill. But if I inadvertently let my guard down and end up reintroducing them into my system, I immediately start jonesing for them big time -- major, monstrous, big-time crack-cocainey jonesing. Seriously. It's a very, very, very fine line for me between staying away from the carbs and feeling good/healthy and mainlining sugar and feeling sick as a dog.

Yesterday, though, a ginormous box of Shirataki noodles -- Japanese "yam" noodles made from the konyakku root and traditionally used for sukiyaki -- arrived from Asian Food Grocer. (Oh, beloved online Asian Food Grocer, where would I be without you?) The thing about Shirataki noodles? Zero carbs. Zero calories! Chock full of healthy soluble fiber.

Last night I served up spicy Thai green curry on a bed of brown shirataki noodles. Yum!

Today I had a ridonkulously delicious lunch of cold Japanese noodle salad: cucumbers and noodles in a dressing of sesame oil, shoyu, and rice wine vinegar, with a sprinkling of furikake on top. Oh . . . the happy slurping of cold noodles in a tangy sauce with crunchy cucumbers!

Noodooroos!

CLEARING THE FOG

2008-04-25T13:17:00.005-04:00

Loose mist of fog tangled like bits of wool in bare tree branches, climbing up my balcony like a lovesick intruder, breathing on my windowpanes. Morning bathroom after a hot shower. The fog now bitten to nothing by the icy quick sting and staticky swarm of buzzing snow.

* * *
Yuki the Cat leaves a marvelous present of chipmunks in my shoes.

ARTICHOKES AND SOTTSASS

2008-04-24T22:36:00.004-04:00

There's been a disturbing trend toward autosarcophagy here at Artichoke Heart Headquarters, what with the advent of artichoke season and all. Sometimes I like to steam up a couple in the vegetable steamer for a light dinner. I dip the leaves in Miracle Whip Lite, into which I mix in gourmet green curry spice. I love how the artichokes keep one busy for awhile with the pleasure of eating . . . it takes time to peel off each leaf, and scrape of the soft nutty rind of flesh with one's teeth. I love how the flavor's complicated and difficult to pin down: Is it nutty? Is it bitter? Is it sweet?

I re-upped my artichoke stash at the grocery store yesterday, and in typical small-town fashion, the contents of my grocery cart were fodder for scrutiny and commentary.

"What are these?" the cashier asks.

"Artichokes," I reply.

"How do you eat them?"

I explain, but avoid getting all Antonia's Line about it.

"That's weird," the cashier says. "That's really, really weird."

Yes, maybe weird . . . but delicious. All you have to do is to steer clear of the thorns, which are readily apparent. Because of their thorniness.

* * *

My father still does all of his writing on an Olivetti Studio manual typewriter. Sometimes I mock him for being a Luddite. Sometimes I have to order him typewriter ribbons from eBay. Amusingly, his typewriter is now considered somewhat of a collectible vintage antique.

I learned how to type (and write) on a manual typewriter. I admit, there is something highly satisfying about writing and having the sound of one's writing bear a vague resemblance to artillery fire. It makes one feel busy, and as if one is producing something terribly noisy and important.

I periodically switch things up in terms of writing tools when I feel that I'm getting potentially complacent or lazy. Sometimes I worry that it's almost too easy to word process. You can go in and change one word here, and one word there, and poke at it from what occasionally feels like maybe too much of a distance. When I draft by hand, it feels more connected/visceral. More deliberate. When I type, the process of revision really means to re-vision. Every single word has to be retyped, and therefore reconsidered and redeliberated. The same with every line break. Goldsmithery. Hammerplating.

With that in mind, please meet the most recent soon-to-be acquisition at Artichoke Heart's House of Wayward Cats & Co. This is the Olivetti Valentine, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1969. (I found it for a song! Well, okay, maybe not quite a song . . . more like a recitative and aria . . . but it usually goes for an entire opera). Not only is it a typewriter that nostalgically evokes my own literary roots -- a back to the source kind of thing -- but it is also a Design Icon!

Featured on page 245 of Landmarks of Twentieth-Century Design: An Illustrated Handbook, by Kathrynn Hiesinger & George Marcus, the description contained therein reads as follows: "Having used color and referential shapes to humanize the office equipment he had designed for Olivetti since 1957, Ettore Sottsass, Jr. further personalized it with the Valentine typewriter he designed with Perry A. King for use at home. Rejecting the cool efficient image of Olivetti's earlier portable models, he conceived a typewriter that would visually suggest an alternate context and be appreciated less for its function than for its novel design--of orange-red molded plastic accented by two yellow buttons on the ribbon spools ("like the two eyes of a robot"). It was made, he said, "for use any place except in an office, so as not to remind anyone of monotonous working hours, but rather to keep amateur poets company on quiet Sundays in the country or to provide a highly colored object on a table in a studio apartment. An anti-machine machine, built around the commonest mass-produced mechanism, the works inside any typewriter, it may also seem to be an unpretentious toy."

What could be better than that?

NAKASHIMA REDUX

2008-04-19T00:13:00.011-04:00

Hey, thanks and a shout out to M.J. at Friday Fishwrap for her DIY Dyke Decorating Tips. I dithered and dithered yesterday about whether the faux Nakashima should go on the rug, or in front of the rug, and in my head, it sort of sounded like: Should I put the table on the rug? But if the table's on the rug, shouldn't it have to be in the middle of the rug? But then the table will be too far from the futon! So maybe that means the futon should overlap the end of the rug, yes? I know I read somewhere that you're supposed to get a big rug, and then put the sofa/futon/what-the-fuck-ever ON the end of the rug. Gah! I need a bigger rug, don't I? But a bigger rug will crowd out the room! And I can't afford a bigger rug right now! And I love this rug! Gah! In fact, I love this rug so much I don't want to put anything on the rug. But what's the point of having the rug if I won't put anything ON the rug? Gah!

And so I basically really needed someone to just say to me: Put the freaking table on the rug!

And voila!

* * *
Hey, now, Hey, now. Aiko, aiko, ah nay. Jockamo feenah ah-na nay, jockamo feenah nay.

* * *
I don't know, I'm just sort of a in a weird place right now.

And I'm in a weird place with my writing. I'm working with material that I'm not really sure I should be working with--for various personal and familial reasons--but I seem to need to go there . And maybe this is good. Feeling uncomfortable with the material is, I think, ultimately good. I guess I feel as if I should just keep writing and then sort out all the other stuff later on.

I also have completely unrealistic expectations for what I'm able to get done on my sabbatical. There's so much I desperately want to do--three projects that I'd like to explore to varying degrees--but there's just not going to be enough time. And it's making me nuts. And making me frantic. But I need to slow down, concentrate, and focus on one thing at a time. Plus, it seems as if there are constant interruptions . . . I start to get a really good rhythm going and then I have to go out of town again, or I have professional responsibilities that need attending to, or the Norovirus hits, or a Very Bad Kitten spills a vat of coffee on the laptop, etc. etc. etc. So I get nuts. And frantic.

* * *
Rule of thumb: When the going gets weird, cat-blog!

NAKASHIMA!

2008-04-17T16:06:00.011-04:00

Exciting quick trip to the Twin Cities last weekend: Gave a reading as part of the Taproot Reading Series, coordinated by recent University of Nebraska M.F.A. alum, Gary Dop. Saw this exhibition at the Walker Art Center, toured The Loft Literary Center and ate delicious food!

BEST OF ALL, there was an exciting Blogger Meetup with the smart, fun, funny, and fabulous Minneapolis-based poets and po-bloggers Teresa Ballard and Emily Lloyd. Yay!

* * *

I am currently obsessed with Isamu Noguchi and George Nakashima. Part of this obsession has entailed the recent acquisition of a Nakashima-esque tree-slab coffee table. I have hemmed and hawed for many, many, many years over whether or not to get a coffee table--preferring, instead, to use T.V. trays, largely because of their convenient height. (I frequently like to camp out on my living room futon with my laptop, and my coffee, and okay, so I frequently like to eat there, too.)

There's something about a coffee table that has oftentimes struck me as somewhat, I don't know, inherently fussy, I guess?

But it's nice to have a coffee table when one takes the Fortress of Solitude off Lockdown Status and invites (not always imaginary) guests over, yes?

I'm not entirely used to it, yet, but I think I like the new coffee table, so far. Because it's a slab! From a tree! And it's inspired by George Nakashima! So it's mid-century modern! But also slightly Asian in sensibility! So what's not to like?

* * *

Bad kittens! Bad, bad kittens!

ANTONYM OF THE FALLING DOWN SICKNESS

2008-04-06T13:53:00.004-04:00

In a somewhat upsetting turn of events, I was recently stricken with what appeared to be either (1) food poisoning, or (2) a virulent strain of the stomach flu. Things at Artichoke's House of Wayward Cats & Co. were bearing a distinct resemblance to cattle call auditions for Linda Blair's role in The Exorcist. Only not so pea soup-ish. More, well . . . never mind.

I'm still feeling pasty and diminished, although much less in dire need of an exorcism at this juncture, so there's that.

In other news, I recently purchased a nice chair I was very excited about, which has already now officially become a very nice chair for my cats to sit in.

SORT OF LIKE A KLIMT PAINTING . . . EXCEPT WITH CATS

2008-04-03T22:13:00.004-04:00

SNOW AND MOROCCO

2008-03-31T13:00:00.005-04:00

Woke up to several inches of snow this morning. Wet, soft spring snow. Very pretty, very artfully shaken on, like confectioner's sugar on a jelly roll. It doesn't look quite real. Movie set snow. I'm not going to take it too seriously.

I noticed today that my Morocco - Warm Amber and Incense candles from Target carry a blurb/description inside the lid that reads as follows: "Embark on a safari that explores the wonders of nature as mountains cascade into the sea, animals run wild through uncultivated lands and the sun glows with an amber hue. The exotic nature of this home fragrance fills the air with the untamed sensuality of Africa." Hmm . . . the illusion of cultural globalization packaged in the rhetoric of colonial nostalgia? Evidence of capitalism as the new colonialism? Have I been spending too much time by myself at home? Why, yes.

Speaking of orientalism, here are pictures of the geisha kitsch shower curtain. Love! It!

Also? Aiko wants you all to know that she's going to be phoning it in today.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

2008-03-29T13:28:00.005-04:00

In important local news, I now officially own the Geisha Kitsch shower curtain. Won it for $16.50! Plus shipping! On eBay! I confess to being in a total froth of anticipation awaiting its arrival. Pictures of geisha kitschy bathroom may more than likely be posted. If this is too much froth for your taste, please feel free to look away.

* * *

The local China Trough burned down just over a week ago in a terrible inferno that collapsed the roof and walls and brought out all the local townsfolk to watch. It took the Volunteer(!) Fire Department almost two hours to put out the blaze, and now there is nothing salvageable left of our beloved local trough-ery.

* * *

My spring cleaning/decorating twitch/spasm/parosyxm/grand-mal-epileptic seizure continues unabated, blazing through my collapsing bank account not unlike the fire at the local China Trough. For me, this type of hard-core, obsessive nesting usually seems to adumbrate a period of intense creative and productive energy. Here's hoping.

* * *

I have been experimenting with learning to recreate some of my favorite Thai dishes, because I find myself so frequently jonesing for food from my beloved Sioux City Thai eatery, Diamond Thai (located next door to the Lovely Hair Salon, whose front window is decorated with styrofoam heads topped off with an unnerving display of oddly dated and dilapidated wigs--and where one can also, apparently: get a passport, have immigration papers translated, and secure a small loan).

Last night I was able to produce a very nice spicy green curry, with zucchini, fresh string beans, yellow pepper, onion, and fresh basil. The curry sauce had green curry paste, coconut milk, a touch of brown sugar, fish sauce, and vegetable broth. I spooned this over brown rice, and it was dee-lish-us! This weekend I might try to fiddle around with a spicy glass noodle salad, and eventually I want to move on to fresh spring rolls.

YOU HAD ME AT TWEEDLE-DEE

2008-03-26T16:28:00.001-04:00

O Roomba, I love you with a love that is fetishistic and zombie-esque and o so unholy.

FICKLE ABOUT APPLES

2008-03-24T02:03:00.009-04:00

Lately, I've been fickle about apples--every week declaring another variety my current favorite. A few weeks back it was the Cameo. Before that the Pink Lady. Last week it was Braeburns. And Galas, to me, taste like flower petals. Now, though, I'm in love with the Pacific Rose. They are honeyed and crisp and big and pinky-red and round and well . . . just so darn pretty.

And then there's the fishnet bag full of Clementines. So bright and juicy, small and sweet. Their thin, sunripe skins making my hands fragrant.

* * *

Last week I read fiction at NSU in Abber Dabber, SD and visited with my dear friend P. at her charming new house. It was fun to read and talk about the music school stories, and gossip about my characters behind their backs. All in all, a great trip.

* * *

In the wake of the recent Shower Curtain Mauling by Crazed and Ferocious Beastlets, I was forced to go shower curtain shopping. I found the curtain depicted below (which is fabric, and hopefully therefore less gnawable) on clearance at Target, but it's just not, well . . . doing it for me.

I confess, that I tend to have unreasonably high expectations from a shower curtain. I want it to coordinate with my towelage and my bath mattage. I need it to complement the claw foot bathtub, but I'd like for it to be modern at the same time. I want it to brighten up the room. I want it to be a little bit of a surprise. I want it to be aesthetically pleasing, but not take itself too seriously. (What's worse than a pretentious shower curtain, yes?) I want a touch of whimsy, but I don't want the shower curtain to be goofy, because the shower curtain's visible from most of the rooms in the apartment. So it also needs to function organically within the apartment-at-large. And, as if this order weren't already tall enough, the shower curtain apparently now needs to be gnaw-resistant.

So here are the current candidates under consideration. I'm leaning toward Option #1 (Geisha kitsch! On the shower curtain!) vs. Option #2 (Entomologically correct butterflies! On the shower curtain!), but perhaps you, oh blogosphere, would like to cast your vote in the Who Wants to be Artichoke Heart's House of Wayward Cats' Next Shower Curtain Primaries?

Option #1:

Option #2:

* * *

Look closely. Here is the vet-assistant-with-no-pants toy that Yuki likes to prop up against the futon pillows in the middle of the night for me to find in the morning. Because she's funny that way.

Yuki has named the vet-assistant-with-no-pants toy shortmark. Because she's just funny that way, too.

* * *

Also? I'm considering moving my headquarters over to WordPress.

That is all.

EVIDENTIARY BLOGGING

2008-03-10T18:52:00.012-05:00

Here is the hole the cats gnawed in my shower curtain.

* * *

Here is the appropriately prophylacticized new MacBook. (I wish I could have afforded a MacBook Air! Perhaps the next time there is a CatMacBook Debacle? Although please let there not be a next time?)

* * *

Here are pictures of the offending beastlets.

Tampopo Stuff-On-My-Catting Nobu

Grrrls

Dangle

Behold! My splotchy paws are cute!

Our Machiavellian Machinations to import a large and compelling laptop box filled with crackly paper to lounge about in by killing off the old laptop through Death by Coffee has been successful! Mwa ha ha ha!

FUBAR BLUES (A VARIATION ON THE FOUR-BAR BLUES)

2008-02-27T01:37:00.002-05:00

I get up to discover that crazed beastlets have gnawed a large hole in the shower curtain. Because I really wanted a ragged hole to peer through on those occasions when shower time seemed dull and not-so-fun. Or to keep a bead on the advent of any possible Psycho reenactments.

Then, while writing this morning with my large mug (okay, it's more of a soup bowl . . . okay, it's more of a smallish vat) of coffee, cats thundering up and down the length of the apartment like rhinocerouses on crack, Tampopo suddenly charges the little tray on which I've set up my laptop and my smallish-vat--setting in motion a tidal wave of coffee cascading in mini-Katrina fashion, all over the laptop keyboard.

Historically, I am kind of meticulous about keeping a keyboard protector on the laptop. Somehow, I got all casual and laissez-faire about things this summer, and the laptop? It's been going commando for awhile now.

My adored MacBook? FUBAR.

FUBAR! FUBAR! FUBAR! FUBAR!

Work completely disrupted/interrupted.

Later on in the day, Aiko charges my dinner salad when I'm trying to pour dressing on it. She wants to get at the grilled chicken. And the almonds. She apparently loves the slivered almonds, too. Somehow, during evasive maneuvers, she ends up lunging at the bowl, knocking it clean out of my hand, and it all goes splattering all over the newly-cleaned kitchen floor.

While I shriek profanities in the kitchen, the kittens gleefully scarf down the windfall of chicken and almond pieces off the kitchen floor.

I have decamped to my office at school, where I am posting this, and reading more-and-more-grim MacBook anecdotes regarding Death by Coffee.

I am frankly afraid to go home, because I will probably return to discover that the kittens have somehow managed to set the place on fire. Or are building a homemade bomb out of common household materials.

NO-GOOD BLUES

2008-02-25T22:11:00.003-05:00

Warning hiss of sinusitis--right eye socket an emergency road flare of pain flickering in the morning dark.

Awake all night, all the thoughts you didn't want to think about anymore that still insisted on being thought about cylindered around and around and around inside your skull like chilly blue marbles spinning down a slanted hardwood floor.

Icy rain on snow made last night's streets an accident waiting to happen. Snow coming down all this morning like something ruptured. Everything disintegrates and flakes away. Fresh layers of disappointment erasing icy footprints leading nowhere.

At the end of a stupid and dull afternoon, night was crudely Magic Markered in with squeaky slashes and scrawls. Now wind marionettes the wind chimes like spastic puppets. Your chest clenches.

After what can only be another sleepless night, who will come to scrape you off the ceiling in the morning like chewed-up gum with a putty knife?

SABBAT

2008-02-22T23:09:00.006-05:00

Did I mention that I'm on sabbatical?

Have I mentioned the delicious, greedy book-reading frenzy? An orgy of literary gluttony and debauchery?

Like gobbling a fresh mango right at the kitchen sink--all slippery sweet flesh and sticky juice everywhere--because I can't be bothered with a plate?

Like an enormous box of gourmet chocolates all to myself. Take a bite out of one and put it back in it's gold-foil, crinkly-accordion wrapper. Take a bite out of another. And another. And another yet. And circle back to the first one for another taste.

Like an endless parade of pretty, pretty sushi?

Like one espresso after another -- without the tachycardia and freakyrapidmanicspeechissues?

Like all-you-can-really-drink festive libations without the embarrassing confessional blurting, poor decision making, soul-sucking-to-the-point-that-you-must-jab-a-pointy-stick-in-your-eye-for-distraction hangover, and concomitant panic attack?

Like __________ without __________???

* * *

In other news, the kittens are wild, marauding, thieving, frenzied beastlets. Just wanted to get that out there.

JIGGETY

2008-02-19T18:45:00.008-05:00

It was like winning the lottery. Stranded at Chicago O'Hare, my name was called for the last remaining standby seat on the 5:10 plane to Sioux Falls. Amazing luck, yes? My suitcase finally caught up with me today, and I've been nesting with books and cats and coffee. It was a wonderful trip, but I'm glad to be home again.

On my last day in upstate New York, I was taken to the Everson Art Gallery in Syracuse, where, among other exhibits, I got to see the Pollock Matters exhibit (scroll down to bottom of linked page) which was absolutely fascinating. The story of the Pollocks and their authenticity was, of course, interesting, but perhaps even more intriguing to me were the photographs and possible influence of Herbert Matter on Pollock's aesthetic, as well as the story of Herbert and Mercedes Matter's friendship with Pollock and Lee Krasner. I also learned that Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, which I never knew before.

Later on that day, following a dinner of delicious Mediterranean food, I got to see the Martha Graham Dance Company perform with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. The performance included the well-known Appalachian Spring, but also three other stunning pieces--all replete with the original costumes and original sets (most of which were by Isamu Noguchi). The expressiveness and modern lyricism of Graham's choreography was just gorgeous--as well as its interconnectedness with modern music and art. There was a moment in the second piece, titled Diversion of Angels, which Graham said was inspired by the paintings of Kandinsky, in which a dancer in a red costume races and leaps across the front of the stage like a streak of red paint in a Kandinsky painting. That moment was unmistakable. And it made me happy.

I've been fascinated with this time period--mid-century modern--for some time now. I'm obsessed with it . . . can't get enough. Both the Pollock exhibit and the dance/symphony performance seemed like necessary things for me to see right now . . . I can't explain why, exactly, but it was precisely what I needed.

* * *

IN WHICH I MAKE A SOLEMN PACT WITH MYSELF NOT TO WHINGE ABOUT TRAVEL MISHAPS LEST I AM BESET BY WORSER, MALICIOUSER TRAVEL DAEMONS MOST FOUL

2008-02-17T16:05:00.007-05:00

(And in which I also realize the faux-antiquated "In which I am . . . " titles are of limited amusement, if they even were amusing in the first place.)

Dear Blogosphere:

I am stranded at Chicago O'Hare airport. Again!

My flight to Sioux Falls has been canceled. Furthermore, Northwest Airlines and United Airlines played ping-pong with me for about an hour this morning, as neither one really wanted to claim/deal with me. (United initially said that since I was originally a Northwest customer switched over to United on the outbound flight, they had limited agency to reroute me to other airlines, and Northwest said that now that I was switched over to United, they had limited agency to reroute me as well.) There was a sad period of time in which I was a customer floating about in the airport without an airline. I contemplated a future of simply living in Chicago O'Hare. (Because I figured that upon departing the secured area I would undoubtedly cease to exist altogether, thereby prompting either (a) my arrest, or (b) an existential crisis from which there would be no hope of recovery).

I am now on standby for a 5:10 flight to Sioux Falls. In the event that doesn't pan out, I will be on standby for an 8:30 flight to Sioux Falls. In the meantime, everyone is also hoping that the weather, which is questionable, doesn't become markedly worse, resulting in cancellation of flights on which one is hoping against all hope, to fly out on standby today.

There may or may not be available flights out to Sioux Falls tomorrow.

But the good news is that I can probably get out on Tuesday.

The Standby Situation here, I might add, is totally Lord of the Flies. One family was Sophie's Choiced on a flight to Appleton, Wisconsin.

Dear Blogosphere, please send me Emergency K-Rations (or dispatch Catherine Zeta Jones) should I end up stranded in Chicago O'Hare ad infinitum . . like in that Tom Hanks movie.

UPDATE FROM UPSTATE NEW YORK

2008-02-16T12:11:00.007-05:00

Today is my last day in Oswego. This afternoon I'll head up to Syracuse for sight-seeing, dinner, and symphony, then will spend the night there and fly out early tomorrow morning. The last few days have been an amazing blur of readings and workshops. On Thursday, I met with a history class at SUNY Oswego, read some historical monologues and talked about the intersection of history and creative work. The students there all had really great questions. Then I gave a Valentine's Day reading at the library cafe -- all buggy insect and mollusk love. After that, I conferenced individually with some exceptionally talented (and nice!) SUNY Oswego creative students, which made for a great rest of the afternoon! (One of the students kindly pointed out to me that Lake Ontario would act as a natural geographical buffer and thereby prevent me from accidentally driving into Canada in a Tourette's-like spasm of directional dyslexia, and so I've been feeling really good about that ever since!)

Oh! And also on Thursday? I gorged on unspeakably delicious Thai carry-out from Oswego's House of Thai! I had a Spicy Crystal Salad that I think I'm going to be reminiscing yearningly about for months to come.

On Friday, I traveled to the Village(!) of Hannibal and read at Hannibal High School and conducted a day-long workshop with the high school students. Later that night I gave my final reading for the trip at the Safe Haven Museum located in Fort Ontario.

* * *

This is my (finally) Special Dog Friend Julius from the charming Serendipity B&B in Oswego. Julius is suspicious. When I was here earlier this summer, he wouldn't even deign to be in the same room with me. When I arrived this trip, he came right up to me and licked my hand. However, he wouldn't let me pet him. Which was tragic, because he is so cute and soft and fawn-colored, and reminds me of one of my All-Time Favorite Top Blog Dogs, the awesome Chalupa. Julius withheld and withheld and withheld, but finally last night, let me pet him. Lest I get too big for my boots, however, it appears that I am only allowed to pet him on Fridays, but not on Saturdays. Suspicious Julius, much like my very own Yuki the Cat, apparently has complicated Julius Hoops that one must jump through.

* * *

Here I am, playing around with my MacBook Photobooth, before my Safe Haven reading last night, and this morning in my favorite Santa Claws lobster pajamas. (I should probably not confess to having a favorite pair of Santa Claws lobster pajamas, but I guess I just did, so there you go.)

HAPPY V-DAY FROM SNOWY OSWEGO

2008-02-14T05:55:00.000-05:00

IN WHICH I AM BESET BY MALYCIOUSLLYE WHIMSYCALLE TRAVEL GREMLINS

2008-02-13T21:43:00.004-05:00

First, the flight out of Sioux City is canceled due to mechanical failures.

So I am rerouted to a different airline out of Sioux Falls. And so I drive to Sioux Falls. The flight out of Sioux Falls is delayed due to mechanical issues because it is just So. Freaking. Cold.

The flight from Sioux Falls finally leaves, and circles Chicago O'Hare for a lengthy time, and after landing, waits in line for an impossibly long time before deplaning. I just barely make the connecting flight.

However, the connecting flight is similarly delayed. First by one hour. Then by two hours.

Also? Can I mention that I have Midol-immune cramps of operatic proportions? And a headache? And that I am hungryangrylonelytired?

Apparently, while I am in the bathroom, a gate change is announced. It is not, however, reflected on the LED monitor behind the gate counter. So I think that all is well. I read my book and wait. And wait and wait. The time for departure arrives and I wonder why boarding hasn't commenced. All of a sudden, the flight on which I am supposed to be disappears from the LED monitor, and a different flight pops up. I panic. I flitter at the counter: WhathappendtomyflightIdontseemyflightwhat'shappening? They tell me there's been a gate change. I'm supposed to be boarding my flight right at that very moment at a gate located on the opposite end of O'Hare.

I commence to do the dreaded adrenaline-fueled full-on-panic Run and Flail with roller bag bouncing in tow through O'Hare Airport. Because what could be better than that? Did I mention that my travel day was in it's twelfth hour at this point in time? I arrive at the gate sweaty and freaked out and with a large blister on the ball of my foot. The plane has to be cracked back open for me.

My flight arrives in Syracuse at about 12:40 a.m. I am supposed to pick up a rent-a-car from Enterprise, but it turns out that the Enterprise counter closes at 11:30 p.m. So I get my bag from baggage claim, and procure a taxi to take me to the Best Western, where I am to spend the night prior to giving a morning reading in Syracuse.

At the Best Western, the computers are down, and the keycard-making device defunct, and so I can't be checked into my room. There is only one person working, and so she has to call her boss. I am finally let into my room at about 2:00 a.m. I am able to get sorted out and into bed at about 3:00 a.m.

However, despite the quirky travel day, I ended up where I needed to be, and that's all that counts, when all is said and done, and I've had a fabulous three days so far here in upstate New York! I read at Onondaga Community College on Monday, and then gave a reading and several workshops at Wolcott Middle School on Tuesday. Today I read at SUNY Oswego, and visited with Ira Sukrungruang's (delightful!) creative writing class. Plus? I am driving a rental car! And I have not accidentally ended up in Canada yet! Hooray!

A FEW MISCONCEPTIONS THAT REQUIRED CLEARING UP ALONG THE WAY

2008-02-06T03:27:00.000-05:00

My parents explained the facts of life to me early on, but for the longest time, I thought that when two people wanted to have a baby, they made an appointment at the doctor's office. And then they had sex while the doctor supervised to make sure they performed the procedure correctly.

I thought it was okay to volunteer my accurate, albeit clinical, knowledge about where babies came from when I was invited to Sunday school by the girl across the street, whose mother was undoubtedly concerned about my heathenish ways. It was springtime. Easter. We were being invited to talk about baby lambs and chicks and ducklings. It seemed like a natural segueway. I wasn't invited back.

I thought astronauts really did eat Pilsbury Space Food sticks while they were on the moon. I thought Pilsbury Space Food sticks were the Best. Food. Ever.

I thought nachos were really called machos (what my mother called them) because you had to be macho to eat all those jalapeno peppers.

I thought a party line was called a party line because you had a party after school with rice crackers and hot tea and listened to the neighbors talking on the phone with your hand clamped over the receiver so they couldn't hear you and your mother laughing at them.

I thought everyone else was also required to call their parents "ma'am" and "sir" at home.

I thought it was perfectly normal for families never to answer the telephone or the doorbell unless a Top Secret Code was involved.

I thought that: American people don't know how to tie nice bow on back of dress, and that if I rubbed my nose: Polico going to think you making the Drug Abuser Salute and you get arrest and have to go to jail.

I thought that if I hitchhiked, kidnappers would kidnap me and chop off both my hands with an axe.

I thought that if I left a door unlocked, burglars would break into the house and shoot everyone in the head.

I thought there was such a thing as perfect. I thought that if something wasn't perfect, it was a dee-aster, and shame would rain down upon the entire family.

I thought that if I rubbed the gnarled South Seas carving with bony ribs and pendulous breasts that my mother named Aunt Aku Aku and rubbed for good juju, I could avoid mistakes (memory slip at the piano competition, wrong letter at the spelling bee, an A without the plus) and forestall dee-aster.

I thought I was supposed to be allergic to cats.

ART GLASS KITTEN

2008-01-30T06:44:00.000-05:00

(QuickTime Required.)

Art Glass Bowl and Kitten Centerpiece

A MINOR FOOTNOTE ON THE WIND

2008-01-29T03:22:00.000-05:00

Enormous tumbleweeds of wind cycloning in off the plains tonight--jangling the windowpanes like a glass tambourine while the windchimes dance a spastic, frostbitten tarantella. The bathroom fan clatters open and shut like a mechanical high hat. Wind so strong that, from a distance, it sounds like the dramatic rumbling of timpani mallets rolling thunder and storm forward from the back of the orchestra.

I love the unease, the unsettledness of the wind. I love how it gives anxiety an exteriority. How its excessive spectacle, its hubristic grandiosity--the Romantic grosse fugue of it--can't help but shift one's focus away from the obsessions of the interior--which, lately, feel too much like endlessly fretting over tiny puzzle pieces in a mismatched puzzle that will never go together anyway.

Cold drizzle on snow today. Slipperiness and treacherousness and mess. What else is there to do but put on sensible shoes and tread carefully?

And yet . . . the horizon this evening marbled with creamy streaks of orange and raspberry sherbet. The band of darkness that wraps each day like a tourniquet loosening its grip. There is a slight easing of things.

In the dark, the resolute stars with their obsolescent light from some other lifetime seem almost like an offering--a candle tribute mourning whom? Or what?

You'd think the wind would blow them all out and extinguish the sky. But it doesn't.

A STORY ABOUT A BOX

2008-01-28T04:59:00.000-05:00

(QuickTime Required)

A Story About a Box, Part I

A Story About a Box, Part 2

A Story About a Box, Part 3

A Story About a Box, Part 4

EVERY DAY. EVERY DAY. EVERY DAY I BITE THE BOOK (AND OTHER ASSORTED KITTEN VIDEO SILLINESSES)

2008-01-27T01:06:00.000-05:00

(QuickTime Required.)

Biting the Book

Bathing Beauty

WWF Presents . . .

In other news, I dreamed last night that I had to crash land a small airplane. I was pretty sure that I was about to die. Somehow, though, I managed to maneuver it through trees and rocks and fields and past the roofs of houses, and then through the opened bedroom window of my apartment, over the bed and through my bedroom and over the entire length of my dining room, and then land it right smack dab in the middle of the throw rug in my living room. Really, it was absolutely astonishing. I had no idea how I was able to manage this. I still have no clue.

(Oh! And then there was this thing involving a giant sponge Rubik's cube . . . ? Or wait . . . that was just something I read about myself on a poster somewhere.)

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER: BIRTHDAY EDITION

2008-01-24T00:59:00.000-05:00

Birthday Phone Call:

JM: We don't get schedule yet. Why don't you send schedule? Now too late and we have no idea where supposed to go for conference. We been waiting, waiting, waiting, but no schedule.

AH: I put a schedule in the mail for you on Monday. You really should have received it by now.

JM: But we don't get. So don't count.

AH: That's strange. You should have.

JM: You say you sent. But we don't get. Who the liar? Now too late. Why you do such lousy job organize conference? You don't even make schedule yet?

AH: Of course the conference is scheduled. It's just that everyone else has e-mail access, so I distributed electronically, and I've been really busy, so I forgot to send you a hard copy until Monday.

JM: Always such big lie excuse you have to make for yourself. So you send schedule to everyone else except your own parents. Why you treat complete stranger better than your own parents?

AH: All you had to do was ask, and I would have gladly told you anything you wanted to know about the schedule and sent you one.

JM: We shouldn't have to ask. We paying customer. Customer always right.

AH: Do you wanted to be treated like customers, or like family?

JM: You treat so poorly. Stranger get better treatment.

AH: I'm sorry you feel that way.

JM: I not accept that kind of insincere, side-of-face apology. You should think about what you did! We old!

AH: You're not even going to wish me a happy birthday, are you?

JM: Shame on you! (Hangs up phone.)

At the Super 8:

JM: I so worry about motel because usually we stay at other one, but you wait such last minute to make reservation for us so we have to stay this one instead. This one cheaper. I hate pay so much money stay motel. This one have ice box, too! (She gestures to the dorm fridge in the motel room like a game show hostess, and opens it up to show me.)

AH: I'm glad you like it.

JM: Next time we stay here.

AH: Good.

JM: Hey. You want piece of cold chicken? I can keep all nice cold chicken in ice box.

AH: No thanks.

JM: Your father, I bet, want cold chicken when he come back inside. Who know what he doing outside such long time with car! (She puts a piece of cold chicken on what appears to be a plastic plate ensconced in about a gazillion layers of tinfoil.) You sure you don't want?

AH: I'm sure. I had soup and salad at the coffee shop during the poetry slam.

JM: Wah! You have to spend money? (Conspiratorially). Hey! I show you something. When done eating cold chicken you just wrap up in top layer of tinfoil and throw away and then you can use same plate again next time eat cold chicken. Isn't smart?

AH: Very smart.

JM: And guess what plate is! Can you guess?

AH: No.

JM: You can't guess, can you?

AH: No. What is it?

JM: I show you! (She lifts up the gazillion layers of tinfoil to reveal a plastic frisbee. My parents, it seems, have apparently been eating cold chicken from tinfoil-covered frisbees.) Guess what?

AH: What?

JM: I got it for free! They giving away frisbee for free at Washington Park this summer! I don't play frisbee. But I take it anyway and now make such nice plate.

AH: Wow. I don't even know what to say. That's great!

MESS-O-CATS

2008-01-22T02:58:00.000-05:00

Gray/Blue and Apricot kitten is named Aiko (Beloved) and Orange/Black/Gray/Cream Tabby kitten is named Tampopo (Dandelion).

TUNDRA

2008-01-21T21:43:00.000-05:00

Cold so cold you feel like a crime scene -- flashbulbed open into a tremulous lesion policed by bright yellow tape.

You stay out too long and too late and come back pink as a rare flank steak. You Google hypothermia. Just in case.

You decide you're like vodka. You can stay in the freezer as long as you like without getting burned.

So you go to a party with a six-pack in your purse and even though you've been sad, or maybe even because you've been sad, you laugh and talk and laugh all night long and it feels really, really good.

Cold so cold you turn on every single light and keep all the candles burning.

You simmer a soup on the stove until the kitchen window steams over with mist and fog.

You cheer yourself up with different kinds of apples: Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Delicious.

The kittens sequester themselves in your armpits at night. You sequester yourself like a snail in its shell.

You wait for the pending depression to cash itself in like a bounced check ricocheting into an overdrawn account.

You think if you stay inside and don't leave the house, you can avoid the angry villagers with their sticks and flame.

You keep telling yourself you're like vodka. You can stay in the freezer as long as you like without getting burned.

Outside, late at night in the Hy-Vee parking lot, wind Spirographs the snow under the metal halide parking lot lamps and everything is a frozen discotheque of glitter, glitter, glitter . . . and you think you could stay out there in that beautiful deadly tundra forever.

THE TOILET PAPER STAGE

2008-01-19T04:17:00.000-05:00

In which the kittens begin to distinguish between Self and Other and enter into an imaginary misrecognition of symbolic knowledge upon which the Ego is formed. To inaugurate entry into the imaginary order, and counteract threat/anxiety of fragmentation, kittens must unspool and fragment toilet paper to resolve aggressive tension between subject and image, as well as demonstrate jubilant mastery over the imaginary . . . but hide when the Omnipotent Mother, who has opposable thumbs, discovers evidence of this precarious mastery.

FRANKLY, MY DEAR, I DON'T GIVE A DAMN

2008-01-18T01:38:00.000-05:00

When I was in the fourth grade I became obsessed, for awhile, with Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. I must have read it at least ten times that year, although I'm not exactly sure why. In part, I simply liked the physicality of the book itself--it's brick-like heft that made it an everlasting gobstopper of a read. Maybe it was that I was always desperately searching for any avenue of imaginative escape that I could find from Laramie, Wyoming, circa 1970's. And, of course, the patina of old-school Hollywood glamour associated with the movie starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable was inescapably compelling to the hopelessly freakish geekozoid that I was, so there was that, too. I liked the epic-ness of it all, I suppose. And yes, the trashiness, too.

I remember that my mother used to love the skit on The Carol Burnett Show where Carol Burnett played Scarlett O'Hara preparing to meet Rhett Butler after the war--forced to make a dress out of those dusty green velvet drapes at Tara. Carol Burnett came sashaying down the stairs of the set with an enormous drapery rod yoked to her back and my mother just laughed and laughed and laughed. At the end of the show, when Carol sang, "Now it's time to say so long" and tugged her earlobe--a special "hello" to her grandmother--I noticed my mother always looked up from her knitting and tugged her earlobe too.

I particularly liked the skit that was a spoof on soaps on The Carol Burnett Show--"As the Stomach Turns," I think it was called. Or was it "The Heartbreak of Psoriasis"? No, wait. That was a commercial. My parents actually did watch the soap As the World Turns together on a regular basis after lunch before my father went back to the office. I remember that they liked to idly gossip about someone named Rachael--Rachael this and Rachael that . . . Rachael, Rachael, Rachael--and it took me the longest time to realize that they were talking about a character on a T.V. soap.

I have fuzzy memories of T.V. shows that I liked when I was really small. I used to love The Glenn Campbell Show, for example. When I was four, I announced that I was going to marry Glenn Campbell when I grew up. I also apparently announced that I was going to marry Gomer Pyle as well. So, okay, maybe I was a little bit fickle. And apparently weird, too. There were shows that I was too young to get, but with theme songs that I loved. I adored the Hawaii Five-Oh theme song, for example. And the Mission Impossibe theme song, too. ("This message will self-destruct in 60 seconds!") And for some reason, I really liked that silly show Love, American Style. (It was because I saw the episodes with Karen Valentine, and she was just So! Dang! Cute!) I remember dying Easter eggs one year while Love, American Style was playing late in the afternoon. And a very, very faint early memory about playing on the living room floor as a toddler and watching Dialing for Dollars during afternoons while my father was working at the office?

But in the fourth grade, it was all Gone With the Wind all the time.

In the fifth grade, I started taking my first college classes. During the lunch hour, I'd walk to my father's office in the English Department from the University Pilot School that I went to, and I'd eat my lunch--which he'd keep for me in his desk drawer. I read all sorts of books I wasn't supposed to. I particularly liked reading all of his students' short stories.

BOTT'S DOTS

2008-01-16T20:49:00.000-05:00

In warmer climates, the center line is defined by reflective Bott's Dots stuck onto freeways with epoxy, but here, in snow country, snow plows scrape them right off, so highways are striped old-school style--with trucks and hoses and spray nozzles. Sometimes the paint is garnished with a shrapnel glitter of reflective glass beads for better visibility.

(When I was a kid, the dashed passing-lane stripes always reminded me of the dashed middle lines in those amazingly racist red Big Chief Tablets that we had to buy for school every year, along with our Elmer's Glue, Crayola Crayons, and Ticonderoga #2 pencils.)

Here, the center line can sometimes be tricky and elusive. Have you ever been unexpectedly caught in a bad snowstorm? The tense drive home--head hanging out the side window when the flurries get too bad, trying to find the center line? Bracing for the invisible collision?

(I was skipped forward, so never really became adept at penmanship. I sign my books with the leaning, too-careful cursive of a first-grader. Without any lines I go off the road completely, which is okay, because lines are overrated anyway and I have 4-wheel drive, but still . . . off road is off road and on the highway there's too much traffic to write over the center line.)

Here, it's three degrees below zero already tonight. More storms and flurries on their way.

Frostbite.

I'm hanging my head out the window looking for that shimmer of yellow, some tiny glint of spark not snow, to guide my way back to who and where I was before.

WORD BETRAYALS PART IV: NOW WE ARE SIX - PSYCHOPATHICAL LIAR

2008-01-14T22:34:00.000-05:00

When I am six, I find a lump.

I am six, and I don't know a lot, but what I do know is that a lump means cancer and I'm going to die some kind of horrible death that can't be spoken about out loud in front of children, but only mentioned in whispers and murmurs among adults.

I don't tell anyone I have cancer. Because in the first place, it's not someplace not embarrassing--like an arm, or a knee--and I'm very, very bashful on account of my mother won't let me leave the house during the summer unless I'm wearing a sun bonnet. She says that only low-class people get suntans and ladies have to protect their skin because otherwise they'll end up looking like truckers.

I am six, and I don't know much, but I'm sure I'll be punished if my parents find out I have cancer because I probably got it by doing something I wasn't supposed to.

I am six and what my Japanese mother calls a psychopathical liar. She says this is a problem because if someone accuses me of murdering somebody else and I try to tell her that I didn't murder anybody, she won't know whether or not to believe me and won't be able to come to my defense, and then I might have to go to jail for murder. I am worried that maybe I've given myself cancer by being a psychopathical liar.

I am six, and waiting to die. I'm not sure how long it's supposed to take or what will happen, exactly. Maybe it will be all coughing-up-blood-in-a-hanky, like in the opera, La Traviata, that my parents watched on T.V. Or maybe it will be more like the movie Love Story--where love means never having to say you're sorry.

I am six, and waiting to die. I lie awake at night, listening to the sound of my father's typewriter in the next room like artillery fire, all the stuffed animals piled on the bed with me at once so I won't die alone, my heart pounding, waiting and waiting.

Eventually, the lump goes away. It just disappears from the surface--reabsorbed somewhere deeper into my body, I think.

And that was that. Or it really should have been. But that bad seed, the secret darkness, it spread and spread and spread, and still . . . I wait.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2007-12-31T23:54:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year to everyone from Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, Nebraska! May your 2008 be filled with wonder and delight!

SADNESS

2007-09-21T01:43:00.000-04:00

Goodbye to The Bean, who was loved by everyone who met him. And by me most of all . . .

OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR . . .

2007-08-18T02:20:00.000-04:00

I’m tired of being like the bee who’s duped into mating
with ophrys orchids mimicking winsome
female bees, only to discover a bee’s not a bee,

and I’m nothing more than a glorified pollinator.
Isn’t it better to be an insect
who pretends to be a flower, like the delicate-petaled

Malaysian orchid mantis, who entices crickets, flies,
locusts, and moths into her pink embrace?
(Ambuscade of bewildering mandibles, necks severed

in a single, guillotine-like strike. Such fierce clarity.)
Or how about the complex stratagems
of the Maculinea butterfly, who lays her eggs

inside wild buds of thyme? Her caterpillars hatch, eating
their way out of thyme until they become
steeped in it, sweating a spicy milk crazy-delicious

to red ants who, in a gluttonous haze, carry the soft
fragrant sultans back to the nest to be
bathed and groomed by worker ants. Then, like con-men in a heist

movie locked in the bank vault at night, the caterpillars
eat the stored hoard of ant larvae and eggs
before fleeing the scene of the crime in a sly disguise.

Or consider female Photuris fireflies, who copy
the intricate mating signal flashes
of other firefly species⎯the same way child prodigies

can play back, note for perfect note, an entire sonata
after no more than a single hearing⎯
in a performance so authentically compelling that

male fireflies respond to the coded flashing come-ons
as if they were one of their own, only
to be killed and consumed. Nothing really is as it seems,

and no one’s really who or what they say they are. Hawk moth
caterpillars pass themselves off as snakes,
while deliciously-edible Viceroy butterflies robe

themselves to look like toxic Monarchs, whose stained-glass orange
wings are spiked and windowpaned with poison
Milkweed leaves. Everything’s masquerade, subterfuge, and soap

opera, revealing only that it’s arrogance to think
we could ever really know exactly
what it is we’re getting into. Imagine tropical

male ants who chemically disguise themselves in the sultry
perfume of virgin queens⎯slipping past more
aggressive males to insinuate themselves into the quick

pulsing heart of the nest where, cross-dressed in female scent,
they, with their gentler art, are allowed to mate
with the queen. Please, just think of that should you ever find my

owlish decoy eye-spots unconvincing enough to wish
to tear into my wings. Take a moment
to think of that before you shame me for my illusions.

(One of two poems just out in the Summer 2007 issue of The Southern Review.)

UNHIATUSED

2007-08-12T02:02:00.000-04:00

This clotted knotwork divides and subdivides;

fetus with a tight red fist;

tangled skein of yarn, unraveling arteries;

pulling and pulling;

rasp and scratched tug of red wool;

(Red Heart yarn -- three-ply -- worsted)

lost thread, dropped stitch, snipped;

insistent tick of knitting needles

with their too-bright

clicking and fretting and clicking.

WHAT I WAS UP TO A FEW WEEKS BACK (IN LIEU OF ACTUAL BLOG POSTING)

2007-06-18T20:22:00.001-04:00

SUCCULENT EMOTION

2007-05-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

Libra Horoscope for Week of May 17, 2007:

"There can be no transformation of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion," wrote psychologist Carl Jung. That should be your motto in the coming week, Libra. Clear thinking and impeccable logic will not be sufficient to guide you to your next great adventure. You need the driving force of succulent emotion rising up in your solar plexus, the lush power of raw sensitivity piercing your heart. Feel as deep as you dare.

IN WHICH I BECOME AFFLICTED WITH A TERRIBLE PESTILENCE . . .

2007-05-04T13:31:00.000-04:00

1. Gory Details Re: Pestilence

After two weekend days of hallucinatory fevers and complete incapacitation, I went in to see my doctor on Monday, where it was revealed that I had a severe throat infection of unexpected magnitude. Med students were called in to take a look and marvel at the disgustingness of my pestilence. "Yikes!" they exclaimed. "Ouch!" they said. "Oh my God!" My doctor prescribed, in addition to a stiff round of antibiotics, Percoset(!), to alleviate the Nearly Unbearable Pain of Swallowing. All in all, there were five straight days of fever and utter incoherence. Wednesday was the first day I was able to drink fluids without feeling as if I were pouring battery acid down my gullet. Yesterday was the first day in an entire week that I was able to eat anything that wasn't an Edy's fruit popsicle. Last night I had my first real night of non-fevered sleep. Today I really feel like a real human being. I can't even begin to articulate how amazing it is to feel like something resembling a real person again.

Needless to say, in terms of the end-of-the-semester dismount? I am Deeply. Hugely. Profoundly. Unequivocally. Screwed.

* * *

2. Conversations With My Japanese Mother: Terrible Pestilence Edition

JM: Hey! You don't call us when get back from your trip. We been waiting, waiting, waiting by phone all day long since you suppose to get back time. No nothing. What's matter with you?

AH: Sorry. I'm sick. I want to die.

JM: Always you make such big lie excuse. What you sick for?

AH: I don't know? Because I'm in hell?

JM: [laughing] Yeah, you go straight to hell. That's what happen when you don't call when you suppose to.

AH: [mumbling] Yeah, definitely in hell.

JM: So why you so stupid get sick now? You can't afford be sick! It's end of the semester time! You can't afford miss class! What you think you going to do?!?!

AH: Okay, can we not talk about this right now? I don't know what I'm going to do. And I'm already very stressed out.

JM: You should be stress out. Such stupid!

AH: What?

JM: I told you need to be careful. Too much traveling. Always you get sick. And you never listen to me. Do you gargle with salt water every time you come home after leave house? You have to do every single time! Your father and I gargle with salt water every time we leave house. I bet you don't. I know you. You lazy! Do you wash hands and sing happy birthday? I bet you don't. You have to sing. [Commences singing lyrics to Happy Birthday because clearly, I -- uninformed Philistine that I am -- cannot be counted on to know the lyrics.]

AH: Oh. My. Fucking. God.

JM: Always so stupid get sick. I told you so!

AH: [to no one in particular] I wish I were dead.

JM: Yeah, we call you back sometime when not so stress out and such bad mood, okay?

* * *

3. Adventures in Ichtheology: A Nostalgic Interlude Looking Back to Happier, Pre-Pestilence Times

Apparently there is a local fish known as the Stickleback, which I happen to think is the Best. Name. Ever. (It has stickles! On its back!) In fact, I think that perhaps "stickleback" should be introduced into the vernacular, because what could possibly be more useful than to pepper one's conversations with homages to the Stickleback? For example: "X has been a mite stickleback-ish since he caught his girlfriend cheating on him with the Swann's delivery driver." Or, "Don't hate on Y's favorite band, [insert name here], or he'll get all stickleback-y on you for at least a full month." Or, "I told you. Z's a total stickleback!"

* * *

J: The pallid sturgeon is having difficulty reproducing in the wild.

KB: And why is that?

AH: [interrupting rudely] Hee. Because they're self-conscious!

J: Well . . . actually, that's kind of true.

AH: So do you suppose that makes the pallid sturgeon the J. Alfred Prufrock of the ichtheology world?

* * *

4. With a Burning Violin

For seven nights I have flickered until dawn
like a pale and incoherent flame
dancing again this reckless tarantella:
this fever, this fierce searing venom,
an ineluctable lightning in my veins.

MOONFLOWERS IN A TOXIC WASTE DUMP

2007-04-19T00:55:00.000-04:00

Libra Horoscope for Week of April 19, 2007:

You could grow moonflowers in a toxic waste dump, Libra. You could lift the spirits of a child who has been raised in grievous poverty. That's how much regenerative power you possess right now. You might even be able to locate underground water in a desert, or resurrect a dead dream, or alleviate half of your deepest suffering. I'm not absolutely sure you could transform lead into gold, but I do know that now is one of your best chances ever to pull it off.

"MUZZLE OF BEES"

2007-04-16T01:21:00.000-04:00

Not only do I have a doppelganger, but I may have a tripleganger as well.

My friends see me walking across campus, or entering a restaurant. But then they're startled, because it really isn't me.

In a town of 10,000 people, how likely could this be?

What was I doing? I ask them, fascinated. How did I seem?

How many of them are there? Who keeps the Xerox machine? (Will their sleeves come unstitched from climbing your tree?)

Today I saw a Mourning Cloak perching in the grass, ragged wings like handmade paper tipped in gilt, waiting for female butterflies to come by.

Have you seen me lately? What was I doing? How did I seem?

There's an invisible filament that glistens in the morning if I'm still awake, stretching from Point A to Point B, a glitter of nothing, tiny spider's tightrope.

Half of it's you, half is me . . .

Have you seen me lately? What was I doing? How did I seem?

LEFT OF THE DIAL

2007-04-12T01:11:00.000-04:00

1. Icy Hot! (Or, I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt)

Today I was humiliatingly reduced, for the third time this past week, to slapping an Icy Hot patch on my Grading Knot/Lump/Hump. Now I'm feeling slightly anxious because I've used up the last of my Secret Icy Hot Patch Stash, yet my Urgent Pile-O-Grading is asexually intercoursing and becoming increasingly gargantuan and behemothic. In other words, and not to put too fine a point on it, the Icy Hot to Grading ratio is most alarmingly all out of whack.

(Embarrassing Blurtage #144: The Secret Icy Hot Patch Stash was originally purchased after a particularly wild night of dancing, after which I developed a sore neck from flinging my hair about too much in the wanton abandon of my (clearly former) youth. That's (Icy) Hot, right?)

(Embarrassing Blurtage #145: I sort of like the way Icy Hot smells. That's even (Icy) Hotter, right?)

So in order to sidestep what is undoubtedly turning into a Dangerous Icy Hot Dependency, I think I'm going to have to cold turkey myself off any further Icy Hot Goodness.

Seriously. Aren't you a little embarrassed for me at this juncture? I'm a little embarrassed for me.

2. Testy When Tested

I became testy with one of my colleagues, A., at a committee meeting today. He was, perhaps, purposely yanking on my chain a little, but was, nonetheless, maintaining an essentialized notion of maleness and femaleness, and was resisting my dogged insistence that sex and gender had to be clearly uncoupled in a project that was ostensibly all about examining gender roles in Shakespeare's tragedies. I, predictably, was yammering on about Judith Butler and performativity, and, as I became increasingly agitated, putting cranky air quotes around "masculinity" and "femininity" and saying things like "allegedly masculine traits" and "allegedly feminine traits." At one point, A. was saying something along the lines of how such-and-such was "just in a woman's nature and what are you going to do with a woman like that? She had to be punished and made to swallow fire."

It was at that point that I exclaimed, "Jesus Fucking Christ, A.!" and flung my pen across the table.

Because I am a Consummate Professional. Reeking of Icy Hot.

Afterwards, A. thanked me for a "spirited discussion."

3. Fire Eaters

I will not play with fire.
I wll not play with fire.
I will not play with fire.
I will not play with fire.

4. Peel Back the Sky

All the stars fall down in a brilliant icy clatter.
My flushed cheeks sting.
Not stars . . . but snow.

DIATRIBE IN FAVOR OF JOUISSANCE

2007-04-09T01:50:00.000-04:00

Today I walked by the river, where the hoofprints of deer crimped the mud into dainty, tear-shaped ridges. Water cycloned in cold swift eddies. Tight buds were swelling on the tree branches in an insistence of green aching.

Today I did something completely out of character. Today I did something that made myself vulnerable. And you know what? I didn't come unraveled. All my limbs didn't fall off. My head didn't burst into flame.

Today I discovered that one could buy schlocky, yet nonetheless delicious, grocery-store carry-out sushi at the Hy-Vee. I ate spicy tuna roll for supper tonight while watching old episodes of The Gilmore Girls.

Today I took an emotional risk. I have taken all sorts of crazy risks in any number of ways throughout my life, but as the mollusk-without-a-shell girl, I will confess that I have become much too adept at avoiding emotional risk-taking. What might look like emotional risk-taking from the outside is really more about allowing collisions with unviable situations, that I know from the outset are ultimately unviable, to happen. So, I took a tiny risk. Just a little one. But I did it. And you know what? I didn't come unraveled. All my limbs didn't fall off. My head didn't burst into flame.

Today someone interpreted my dreams for me.

Today I tell neurosis to back the fuck off, bitch. I tell anxiety to suck my spectral phallus. Today, and even tomorrow, and most likely even the day after as well, I'm going to be all about the jouissance.

Today I tilted at windmills. And lost.

But that's okay. And you know why? That's right . . . because I am so all about the jouissance, baby!

FAVORITE HAT

2007-04-05T00:27:00.000-04:00

This is a picture of my favorite hat in the Whole. Wide. World.

It is soft and fleecey, and there's a maple leaf, with an embroidered beaver on the other side. (Fuck, yeah!)

(I don't really know why I just exclaimed Fuck, yeah! I guess that's just how I roll.)

I like to wear my favorite hat backwards.

If I thought I could get away with wearing it every single day, I probably would. (So instead I wear it every other day or so, and hope no one notices.) Sometimes it's too cold to wear my favorite hat in the whole wide world, and sometimes it's too hot. This makes me sad.

Occasionally, I fret about what would happen were I to somehow misplace my favorite hat in the whole wide world. (Or should Rabid Marauding Visigoths or Whatnot break into my apartment and steal my favorite hat for use as a Potholder or a Stadium Cushion or a Loincloth or something equally Visigoth-y). And really, I have to say, were I to be permanently separated from my favorite hat in the whole wide world, I don't know . . . things could get ugly.

Certain difficult individuals have, on occasion, teased me about Attempting to Impersonate a Canadian when I wear this hat, but I think that's just (a) rude, insolent, and intrusive, and (b) a reading of the semiotic implications of my favorite hat that, quite frankly, lacks a certain nuance.

(Perhaps tomorrow I will Impersonate an Eggplant by wearing a fleece hat in the shape of an eggplant. See what I mean? That's just crazy talk. Unnuanced crazy talk.)

(And yes, they make fleece hats that look like eggplants. And yes, I want one. Because I happen to really like eggplants. And (recently) cheap beer with copious amounts of olives. And Appletinis. And yum woon sen. And handbags. And hedgehogs. And goldfish. Among other things. Just for the record.)

So, no impersonating of Canadians, although it's true that once I fell in love in Canada and it was very confusing, because I think that what maybe really happened was that I fell in love with Canada. Or something like that.

But that's another story altogether.

* * *

Top Secret Message to The Posse: Poker Alice this Friday at Carey's? 8:00-ish? Come dance with me? (And careful now . . . this Top Secret Message is so Radically Top Secret that, were this Mission Impossible, it would self destruct in 60 seconds.)

* * *

I'm really starting to think that this may be, in fact, my Dumbest. Blog Post. Ever.

"I'LL RUN AWAY WITH YOU . . ."

2007-04-03T05:20:00.000-04:00

5:20 a.m.

Can. Not. Sleep.

Alarm going off in less than an hour.

Why, why, why?

You're just like a dream.

I want to walk around town in the dark with my disheveled hair, moonlight forking its silvered tinny music through my head, daring the sun to come up.

I want to call down the fog to come and dance with me: all swirl, and dip, fandango, arabesque, and mist.

I want to get on a boat and ride it down the river. All the way to the confluence. All the way to the ocean.

I want to ricochet through the dark, all reckless electricity, and pool the lightbulb on your nightstand with the soft hum of golden lumens burning away the night.

You're just like a dream.

And I just want to sleep.

RUNED FOR LIFE

2007-04-01T15:01:00.001-04:00

Dr. Medusa! Has done a rune casting for me!

My forecast is to Kiss! Chase! Tilt!

All to the soundtrack of Morphine's "The Night"!

MO(BETTER)BLOGS

2007-03-29T02:13:00.000-04:00

On the road Author Functioning it up again for the next few days. Have figured out how to moblog from the cell phone, so check in here for (apologies to Elizabeth Bishop) Small Bad Cell Phone Pictures:

Artichoke Heart's Moblog

HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR

2007-03-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

First, the newsreels of Hiroshima, in the movie taking place in Hiroshima, where the actress in the movie plays an actress making a movie about Hiroshima and peace. A movie about (re)membering what has been (dis)membered. A movie about the horror of forgetting.

It is here, in this movie, where I walk tonight. In the black and white streets of borrowed time, inside the movie set of a movie set, brazen neon flickering numinous promises, the fictional lovers first illuminated, then dowsed like a candle pinched between thumb and forefinger. Can you see me? Will you follow?

(You're destroying me. You're good for me.)

The late-night cafe. Cold pale crisp beer. The shadows of moths like tiny black hearts singed by the unexpected flashing burn of rice-paper lanterns. The insatiable koi mouthing the surface of the garden's pond, like insects fluttering against a lit window, like your face illuminated by the quiet electric glow of your computer screen as you read these words. Like my face, as I write to you.

Here, on the other side of your screen, inside the movie taking place within a movie about Hiroshima, about the illusion of love, about the illusion of not forgetting, I will tell you my stories, I will tell you I love you, and promise you that I will never forget you. Here, in this place, at this moment, it will all be true.

(She: . . . on the fifteenth day too. Hiroshima was blanketed with flowers. There were cornflowers and gladiolas everywhere, and morning glories and day lilies that rose again from the ashes with an extraordinary vigor, quite unheard of for flowers till then. I didn't make anything up.

He: You made it all up.)

Here, on the other side of your screen, by the River called Ota, which ran by the city where my mother grew up, where the clouds hang low and dark like bruised sulky pansies, and the glimpses of sky behind are a surreal, too-bright Dali blue (not that you would know this . . . don't forget, this is black and white) I am walking in deeper into the interior of the narrative's narrative.

Will you follow?

BACK IN THE U.S.S.R. (YOU DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU ARE, BOY)

2007-03-25T22:08:00.000-04:00

Things here all flurry and hurry after returning from Wednesday's road trip: visiting writer in town for the O, Canada! reading (exotic Canadian authors in the flesh + hockey fetish = "authentic" Canadian literary goodness), the newly-revived Women's Research Conference this weekend at the University (among many other wonderful offerings, an amazing panel session with four iconically legendary American Indian women activists), best buddy P. in town for the conference (we read together on a panel and got to catch up in person, for once, instead of our usual M.O. of what S. likes to refer to as "teen phone").

I read fiction here in the home stadium for the first time, as opposed to poetry. Mind you, I've read fiction elsewhere a number of times, but this was the first time most of my colleagues/students/friends had actually heard any of my fiction. Honestly? I was surprised at just how nervous I felt about it.

Then, at the conference banquet, I read some poems, after which I ate the most delicious chocolate cake of my life. It was so delicious and shiny that I couldn't stop obsessively talking about it in embarrassingly fulsome sexual terms at the party I went to afterwards.

* * *

SAUCY PARTY BADINAGE:

P: It's amazing how it all fell into place and made perfect sense after meeting people I've heard you talk about.

P: Oh . . . so that's what you were laughing about earlier? Those guys all standing in a circle?
AH: Yes! With the postures! And the pants! And the pockets!
[We all pantomime the postures with the pants and the pockets.]
P: Hee.
L: Hee.
A: Hee.

L: I'm telling you. You don't want no scrubs, Artichoke Heart. (Pointing to her left.) See? Those are scrubs. You don't want no scrubs. (Pausing.) Well . . . maybe I'm kidding. I guess they've got graduate degrees.

SK: (To B.) But you're a lesbian!
B: But sometimes it's just there and it's long and it's hard and you just want to take care of it.
SK: WTF?
L: WTF?
J: WTF?

BJ: I don't know where the hood is.
L: What kind of a lesbian are you?

GF: So are you going to watch The L-Word or Battlestar Galactica tomorrow night?
AH: Well, I've been invited to The L-Word party. You, however, never invite me to your Battlestar Galactica parties.
GF: I'm not sure if I'd call it a party.
AH: How would I know? I'm not invited.
GF: Mostly it's just me watching Battlestar Galactica by myself.
AH: Yeah?
GF: With a bottle of wine.
AH: Yeah?
GF: In my boxers.
AH: So I guess what you're telling me is I'm watching The L-Word, then.

DL: My absolute favorite is tattooed handcuffed Barbie.

Happy Birthday to Lu and Anarcia!! You are both delightful, and wonderful, and amazing!!

From AH, Chocolate Cake Fetishist

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