Materialism and Hip Surgery

In 1994, my sig oth and I were traveling in England. We had happened upon Charles Ware's Morris Minor Centre in Bath, England, where I went into paroxysms of bliss at the sight of dozens of Morris Minors: Travelers, Saloons, Lorries, Convertibles, unexpectedly and beside the main road to Brighton. Unable to produce sounds identifiable as words, I gestured wildly until my sig oth turned our rental car back around so I could walk among the field of cars. Dorothy and the poppies.

A couple of days later in the Lakes District, my shrewd sig oth said if I would go ahead with the hip replacement surgeries I was putting off (fear of losing consciousness and my real bone femurs, etc.) he would buy me a Morris Minor, and not make any negative remarks about the uselessness or danger of the car. He didn't articulate that last, but I have known this man a long time. Called Charles Ware nearly immediately, but the dove gray saloon I felt especially blissed over had already been sold. We returned to the US, I scheduled the first of my two hip replacement surgeries, and began a series of wish list faxes to Bath. March 13, 1995 I had surgery. A week later, my car arrived at the Port of Tacoma, where it was put into seven day quarantine by the Department of Agriculture. I think it was the Department of Agriculture. I was on three weeks of house arrest, but when Morris's week was up, we went to get it. Better than I'd imagined. Shinier, cuter, entirely mine.

Making Ready to Part with the Maroon Saloon

I have put an ad on the Classic Cars part of the Auto Trader website, so have seriously launched the process of selling HAM. I had a seven day free ad on Craig's List which brought one lookilou to my home to grind the gears and nervously steer my little car around a couple of blocks while I nervously sat in the passenger seat wanting to yank the controls away from him. We had a conversation about old British cars and braking before he had to apply brakes, so that went swell. When we got back to my carport he invited me to return HAM to its slot, which was a wise decision, then made noises about getting back to me.

Yesterday, sun out, chores done, I set off with car and camera to document HAM's charms in alluring locales. That house I covet on 39th Avenue! I parked HAM in front of it and shot a couple of cute ones. The Arboretum! Many stops in there, including the parking lot of the visitors center where I would have liked to pull up to the door. Every parking pull out in the Arboretum has a prominently displayed and large forest green garbage can with its white plastic slip hanging out between can and dome lid. I wanted to park directly in front of the handsome old Tudor style building on the upper campus of Bush School, or "Helen Bush School" as we knew it when I was a child, when it was an unapproachable upper echelon facility. My best friend's mother sewed the blue sailcloth jumpers Helen Bush School girls wore for uniforms, which was as close to association as I came then. Yesterday there were orange traffic cones barring access to the driveway. I continued on Lake Washington Blvd. to where it intersects with Hillside Drive and got a shot there with a smidge of pocket park foliage and wink of lake beyond.

But now there is an ad seriously posted and I have received my first bogus offer to purchase, which read:


YOUR MESSAGE: Hi,
Pls i want to confirm if your car is still available for sale,so if it is get back to me with your fime price for my husband view and payment to follow asap.
Mrs Jones.
SENDER'S NAME: Berty Jones
TELEPHONE: Buyer did not Provide

The wonderful world of internet commerce. I wouldn't reply even if I knew what a fime price might be.

Correcting an Error and Feeling Willing to Make More

On this day in 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel. In twenty-one hours and forty-five minutes, he swam from Dover, England, to Calais, France. Nine years later, he drowned in Niagara Falls, trying to swim across and under the churning water.

I realize I do not know how the rate is related to strokes per minute, but will post this finding once I learn as I know closet coxswains are taking notes as they dream of sitting in the stern of a very long narrow boat with eight (or four) tiring rowers eager to hear encouragement, cajoling, counting, anything actually to distract them from the number of minutes left to row as arms, backs, legs talk with greater and greater urgently about the need to cease punishing them and let up, please let up.

I ran us into zero, zilch, zip buoys today. There were boys out in a motor boat, one in the water, sometimes waterskiing, at which time the boat offered us its wake to wobble over, sometimes gawking at us as we passed on either side, two coxed eights intent on our south homebound course. Water was flat, weather warmish, sky clear, Mount Rainier's dome poked out of a cloud bouquet like a cauliflower in its nest of large ruffly leaves. I didn't hear the coach say to head toward the fishing pier, made a wavy motion with my hand to say I didn't hear when I should have put hand to ear so she though I'd heard then talked to me through the megaphone as I headed us dumbly home rather than back north again. All was resolved. Someone in my boat said, "you're her mom, tell her to be quiet!" which made me chuckle but not do any such thing. We learned how to do a river turn - rowers called it a "chop turn" but Julia said if we wanted to sound like we know what's what, we should call it a river turn. In a narrow place, for example a river, you spin the boat by dropping the oar in, lifting it out, tediously and together for a very long time - turning in a port direction you would have ports to back, starboards to row, but rather than backing and moving in a wide circle you pivot tightly and by wee wee increments. I got to conduct with arms out, but we all got bored and exhausted about a third of the way around and returned to ordinary spin so we could head to the dock where there was no wind and I got to steer us toward the north end of the south dock with very little difficulty. Next will be getting into my mind who I want to have tap their oar to move us in the direction I want on short notice so I don't have to say crew-confidence-deflating things like, "I have just gone brain dead. I want to move the bow to port, now what?"

SCRABBLE Scramble in the Newspaper

Attempting this morning to do the scrabble gram in the newspaper - coming out with 69 points I see that a "par" score is 140-150, with a doozirama 100% score of 220. Absolute despondence. I mean it was upsetting to read again that we are fracking the hell out of foreign lands and that a Canadian-born wife beater released from jail intends to reunite with his beloved so bludgeoned she has no memory of him, but word games are meant to buck us the heck up and restate that all is well with the world if we can whisk letters around briskly (time limit of 20 minutes) and succeed ever so individually on this completely and totally nonessential level, allowing us to face the day smugly and securely, our private gold star pinned to the inside of our jacket (it is cool today) for protection.

OERTFFG

forget?
offer?

EULNGGS

lunges?
unglue?

OUSNCRS

scours?

OEPDWRD

worded?
doper?

I added up max scores given what I thought were the rules and came up with 76 possible total points, NOT 223. Reading more closely, I see that if you use all seven letters for any word you get 50 bonus points. Aha. I'm in with the in crowd even though I did not ever use all seven letters. I have also never pummeled anybody nor told the State of Washington my spouse had MS, therefore they should pay me money to take care of her, let alone not allowed them in to my boat, let alone come out of jail and declared I want what she wants and that she wants me.

Slightly At a Tilt

Into the fours this morning, three of us coxing (one per boat) and it was thrilling really to be each by each by each, rowers pulling like mad, boats riding high atop the early morning chop on Lake Washington, our points set to where the floating bridge meets the shore of Mercer Island, clouds low and protective over our heads, coach whizzing alongside in her launch urging long strong strokes through her megaphone and keeping us advised of rates as none of the boats seemed to have a working whirligig underneath the stroke seat that keeps counts of rates. The one in the boat I persist in remembering as being named the Blue Thunder which I know is wrong, registered rates, but veered crazily from 18 to 49 from catch to catch so that I only payed attention to it for the charge of reporting to the stroke, who is a long time rower with a metronome in her head, that she was doing 37 strokes a minute in an informational tone of voice. A far better day on the water than last Friday, when an experienced coxswain showed up to cox too and I showed my competitive mettle by pouting and messing up. My whole boat was out of it, the stroke not usually a stroke, the rate counter not working, the workout being all about keeping at 16 strokes a minute then 18 strokes a minute alternating for two minutes each for a period of 16 minutes. Both the stroke and I were out of sorts, not to mention that she is short, our bow seat is tall and she kept trying to row as though her arms were half a foot longer. And then it turned out the experienced cox had never been in a bow load four and got claustrophobic being down in the hold out front and had to sit up because she was scared. Meanwhile I ran my ports' oars into a buoy with minimal warning, though I apologized afterwards. Huge lake, but I ran them into anothe buoy this morning trying to keep from running into another of the boats. We'd been told to stay together and we were being obedient. Next time I'll have the rowers ease off so we'll have room and not bang into anything, boat or buoy.

Boating with Plywood

Our friend grew up in Wisconsin where when they get bored with waterskiing they cut a sheet of plywood into a disk shape and get onto it to be pulled behind the motorboat. Additional props are necessary, such as the resin chair shown in the photo above. Each of the three participants in the plywood derby this weekend went into the water with disk and chair and two of the three managed not only to sit on the chair on the disk while being pulled behind the motorboat, but stood up on the chair on the disk and then turned around backwards, while continuing to be pulled along behind the motorboat.

Paul Klee Rock

Lake Chelan,
Fields' Point
Landing,
walking the dog. The renters down the dirt drive encountered a skunk the other night - their dog was sprayed, they chopped its fur into a punk do. I suggested tomato juice. Bears have been eating the bird feeder food at another neighbor's place. I've seen the skat, large plops and much smaller ones so that yesterday morning, 6am, I sang and clapped and walked fast through the section of our walk during which the dog and I heard branches crunching in the woods.

Poetry Inventions, with Apologies to Bernadette Mayer and Johnathan Mahew

1. write apoem composed entirely of New York Times headlines
2. write a poem composed entirely of Weekly World News headlines
3. write poems composed of words that begin with "st"
4. write a haiku every morning for a month then make a book of them
5. handmake a book especially for each poem you have written
6. memorize your poems. if you don't love them, who will?
7. make a poem entirely from lines from junkmail you receive in the mailbox today
8. make a poem entirely from subject lines in your email inbox
9. write in a form that begins with the same letter as this month. You might have to make up a form.
August, Acrostics, Alphabeticals,
September: sestinas, sonnets, succotash poems, sea shanties
October: octets or Operatic Verse
November: Nine Line Poems (from Poetry Everywhere), Nocturnals
December: Definition Poems, Deconstructions, Dada, Dictation
January: Jacobean verse, Justification of Existence Poems, Jewelbox Poems
February: Fraidy Cat Verses, Foreign Language Poems, found verse
March: Misnomer Poems, Memory Poems, Metered Verse
April: Architectural Poems, Accidental Verse, Annotated Verse
May: Mock Heroics, Medicine Bottle Label Poems
June: Juice Box Poems (will fit on sides of), Joy & Jubilation Poems, Journal
July: Jealous Poems, Joke List Poems, Junk Drawer Poems
10. Write a book of invented poetry forms
11. Send out one poem a day to a different journal every day for three months
12. Give an impromptu poetry reading for your pets. Dress up.


13.

Sending the Children out onto the Road

I sent off five poetry bits to A.K. Allin/Matchbook Poems/403 Roy St. #26/Seattle, WA 98109. Today, Tuesday, August 15, 2006 is the deadline day, though the email I got Sunday said send an email if you want to send and can't by the 15th. Since I know there are dozens of you reading this and not commenting because you're shy, I'll put the email address here: mimiallin@gmail.com so you can email right away. I sent some of the ones I wrote about and took portraits of, but made a couple of changes, since, having written about not being able to be thoughtful, I was a little bit more able to apply my brain in making decisions about what to send. I ditched: "Steakhouse truth:/some are hungry." Now I think that was dumb.

On Labor Day, two of my poems will be part of "Simultaneous Systems of Notation and Representation," a poetry, dance, music and visual creation by Linden Ontjes for Eleventh Hour Productions. Go to Bumbershoot's website to learn about when and to the link on that page to read again the phrase "The Poetic Forms Council for Coffee" one more time. Tatiana Michel and Linden Ontjes will read poems by me, Kary Wayson, Linden, Tatiana, and Jennifer Foster.

Why I Have Trouble Submitting My Work

Someone has a cool new poetry idea: put 1-4 lines of poetry on the inside of a matchbook (I'm assuming it's a blank one, custom designed to highlight poetry, not just pasting poetry lines into existing matchbooks. I want to send them some options.

My first misstep was to spend time obsessing about what the editor meant when she wrote :Grab a matchbook. Flip it over. Now imagine your poetry there on the cover."
Does she mean flip it OPEN? I spent far too much time thinking about this.

Next, I began looking at poems to find lines to send and discovered that nearly every line of my poetry has more than 25 characters in it. Each line submitted must have 25 or fewer characters. It must also "explore language, live outside the mundane, evoke color and sound, convey mood."
None of my work does any of this, I respond from a cowering posture, recover, copy out lines, and type them up.

I find five matchbooks in the house and paste the five bits I've chosen inside the covers, so they can be seen when the matchbooks are flipped open. I flip them open and imagine whether or not they "spark poetry in unconventional circles" as the editor hopes seven submissions will.

I'm pretty sparked by:

The formidable now
shrivels jokes.

from "Perils"
***
Her pencil sharpened
her wits

from "Self Portrait #2" is okay.

***

Steakhouse truth:
some are hungry.

from "Feeding Tube Blues" is best when it has from "Feeding Tube Blues" below it. I don't know if it has a high enough smoldering point standing alone.

***

your ski rhythm tightened
through your ankle --

from "A Tentative Mathematics of Atonement" is sensorally interesting whether or not sensorally is an actual adverb anyone else will recognize.

***

my fingers fast in gloves
brazen among dog turd
and blackberry

from "Fighting Entropy, September" may just be gross. Maybe I should go with the last two lines, leave the gloves out of this?

And here is where it goes to hell and I second guess myself to the point where I say "what the hell?" and shove the undeserving into an envelope and out into the world because my brain shuts down, refusing to choose, to judge, to look critically but without meanness at my writing and make intellingent decisions. This is an area of difficulty for me, probably my next largest area of difficulty after procrastination. My critical ear, choice-making brain, poet's sensibility, they all say, we're out of town, we've left no forwarding address, don't call us, we can't be reached and so my disbelieving self-sabotaging idiot self is left to submit the work. She has absolutely no sense, being one of the monkeys not allowed to sit on one of the hundred stools in front of the hundred keyboards whose job it is to type randomly proving that written beauty can be produced ala typing time. My monkey picks her nose and dips her tail in the toilet. And she's the one I call on to send my work out.

If we're only molecules huddled to foil entropy, so what?

Oars, people, boats, all minor things, but when they all pull one way, thats the way the water flows. (with apologies to Bill Stafford)
oar carrier, rigger & derigger,
wrench wielder, bungee afixer,
trail enforcer, freebie hoarder,
soggy sock carter, encourager,
race watcher, photo taker,
cox box carrier, sunglass wearer,
boat walker, occasional talker

Fourth and final day of US Rowing Masters Nationals at Green Lake.

I missed the morning, our only, race. Now I don't have to go back until 2 to take down the tents, etc. so I have a little time to myself, which is a bit frightening after three days entirely focused on the needs of boats and rowers and in particular the assistant coach, not that she needs my help. I am is it constitutionally? other-focused. Happiest when in the midst of someone else's all-encompassing enterprise. I will weed another's garden, feed another's fish, collate another's chapbook, fetch, worry, carry on for you you you you. My work progresses best when I am able to concentrate one tenth of that much energy and focus on it, which is intensely difficult. My first impulse when alone is to go off the grid, into limbo.

The trick is to stop cooperating with entropy, isn't it? Entropy Co-dependent, the twelve step program.
1. Do not ever accept helplessness and/or hopelessness as your birthright
2. Act from choice
3. YOUR OWN choice
4. choose daily, hourly, minutely
5. tune your mind by using it
6. live in your body and move it
7. love other people
8. love yourself
9. don't worry about what this all means
10. create beauty
11. appreciate beauty others have created
12. do not accept the world as it is

Send $1 million and SASE to me for print brochure

Rowing Nationals on Green Lake Day I

Big job today keeping groups from congregating on the Greenlake Walking/Biking Path through the regatta area - volunteer gig with blue tee shirt for thanks. Way way out of my comfort zone to tell groups of people I don't know to do something differently than what they are doing. Not to mention the whole issue of right to assembly. I took it on like something that would be good for me. Nobody refused to comply. I asked one group if I had sounded scary enough.

Cool today with some rain in the morning, wind gusting in the afternoon. Glad we were on Green Lake and not Lake Washington.

Nobody needed me to cox today. I took pictures. Did the hour volunteer gig, walking from one end of the regatta area to the other and back again for a little over an hour. Hung around in the Conibear tent, carried oars, watched boats launch, watched boats race, listened to the innane and near constant babble of the announcer, listened to the bad musical choices during his too-brief breaks, bought a hat to cox in that has a cox embroidered on it, felt part of the team, ate breakfast at a restaurant within a mile of the course with my coach-daughter. Long day.

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Sadly, I cannot begin with an image, which is the way I like to post. Image, then text. So different than writing poetry, where the text produces images, on a good day. This morning I am sluggish and reluctant. Is this not a fairly common phenom with me? Ah yes it is. I want to have all the goodies in my little bassinett, hold the effort. Thank you. Binkie please!

Yesterday, rather than working on my transliteration poems, which would mean either rough drafting my way through one, two, or three, I decided to make a dummy chapbook of the ones that are fairly on their way to becoming my poems, which is to say, twenty one poems if I cheat a weensy bit. I titled them and put them two to an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, then printed back to back so that they are in chapbook format. I think this is what is known as end-gaining, but it is also ego boosting and progress marking. Yea me, I have some poems here, go me! That last bit tongue in cheek- ish if you are declaiming this blog aloud.

I read myself everytime I post. Addictively. Particularly when I begin with posting an image.

Adam & Eve at MoNA

During the 2006 Skagit River Poetry Festival in LaConner, the Museum of Northwest Art put up a show of word-based art. Off to the left side of where a panel of three of us poets held forth on women poets (they rock - title of panel and our consensus,) was a grouping of tiles, one set of tiles grouped around the word Adam and one grouped around the word Eve. Each tile had one word printed on it. I don't remember what other embellishments were present, just the words, which I copied down and will reproduce here as two columns without commentary. Let us begin:

ADAM EVE
dominant nurture
treacherous fecund
rational protective
ideal intuitive
moral destructive
classical mystery
absolute vegetal
pragmatic seductive


Dominant in my response is, vegetal? I can't get over vegetal, but then I cannot help equating Eve with woman, Adam with man. I think the writer of the Bible's chapter of Genesis meant for the reader to identify in this way, so I am going to proceed as though I have made a pragmatic rather than a seductive decision to let this be the ground we walk on for the moment. Vegetal?

Novice Coxswain Juggles Microphone, Steering on Race Course

In my ordinary life as writer, time is not a critical factor. Let's say I need a synonym for the word "forgetful" - at my leisure I can search my own cranial vaults, the various thesauri on my shelves, the hilariously off-base thesaurus in Word, and muse of whichever ones of these seem suitable. Time! Hah! It does not exist for me. I am out of time, beyond time, mini immortal in my lack of dependence on its constraints.
And lo, I have put me in a boat and I have said to the rowers, row, and I have asked them for race cadence and power 10's, have admonished them to give me high 20's and to take their rates up two in two. I have told them weigh nuff, and hold down, have said "spin the boat" and "ports to back, starboards to row," and they have performed these magical requests, on my signal for lo these many days.
Today was my first day on the race course. "Just follow the course buouys as you warm up," said the coach, and I steered wide and warmed them up. We spun the boat. We practiced starts and power tens, up two beats for 10, up two more for ten. We have fussed and manipulated our large boat with its extending oars within the bounds of lane 4. I have stepped from the boat on the water into the launch on the water and then into another boat on the water without incident. I have been handed a microphone with no strap to hold it to my head and I have failed to follow what pilots call the hierarchy of flying which is the hierarchy of coxing which is "aviate, navigate, communicate" and I have fiddled with the microphone that would not hang from my ear of its own accord nor hold itself under my small cap and have swung wildly into lane 3 and into lane 5 and my rowers have soldiered on, heads out of the boat as I have oversteered to compensate. Yikes.

When You've Got Flow, Go With It

Poem 24: Eeva Kiilpi

Say, how ‘bout dancing
at vagrant homeland motels?
Jazz meds and skat candy, martinis in caftans, faster and harder,
Handel with whiskey and soda, Calypso, stiff crackers,
Beethoven, lingon schnapps,
Med naps not like cadences Shaka Khan
Dewars, Mick and masquerade, hi hat glamour,
thanks to Jagger, one step recovered.
Hear James Taylor’s tidy garish mouth.
Ocher Coburn, a scandal swearer, handstands Hammond,
Natural lignins jaw up Band Aid, Jewel, Neal Sedaka,
Allmans, Hall & Oates, altos, Haydn, Hendrix, life
force at gloaming.
Cheers!
7/31/06

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT WITH INTERESTING QUOTATION MARK USAGE

IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT AREA CODE
"We actually received a call last week from the 809 area code. The woman said "Hey, this is Karen. Sorry I missed you--get back to us quickly. I Have something important to tell you." Then she repeated a phone number beginning with 809 "We didn't respond".Then this week, we received the following e-mail:Subject: DON'T EVER DIAL AREA CODE 809 , 284 AND 876 THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION PROVIDED TO US BY AT&T. DON'T EVER DIAL AREA CODE 809 This one is being distributed all over the US . This is pretty scary, especially given the way they try to get you to call. Be sure you read this and pass it on. They get you to call by telling you that it is information about a family member who has been ill or to tell you someone has-been arrested, died, or to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls. If you call from the US , you will apparently be charged $2425 per-minute. Or, you'll get a long recorded message. The point is, they will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Unfortunately, when you get your phone bill, you'll often be charged more than $24,100.00.WHY IT WORKS: The 809 area code is located in the British Virgin Islands (The Bahamas).The charges afterwards can become a real nightmare. That's because you did actually make the call. If you complain, both your local phone company and your long distance carrier will not want to get involved and will most likely tell you that they are simply providing the billing for the foreign company. You'll end up dealing with a foreign company that argues they have done nothing wrong. Please forward this entire message to your friends, family and colleagues to help them become aware of this scam"Sandi Van HandelAT&T Field Service Manager(920)687-904

Sunday Drive With the Doves

A conversation with Larry Eigner

Larry: Any amount, degree, of perfection is a surprise.
Me: Any amount, degree, of attempts at perfection leave me panting on the fainting couch
Larry: too much of or too frequent a good is distraction
Me: which is why I play freecell rather than writing poetry
Larry: and words can't bring people in India or West Virginia above the poverty line
Me: which I find enormously upsetting. I had an idea as a child that words were exactly what we could use to exactly alleviate poverty, war, racism, idiocy.
Larry: As they come, what can things mean?
Me: When they are overwhelming: Iraq war, Israel making war on Lebanon, Seattle man murdering Jews. More important here to me than meaning is how do we curb violence? greed?
Larry: I feel my way in fiddling a little, or then sometimes more, on the roof of the burning or rusting world.
Me: You are braver than I am some days when I just want to lie in the fetal position in the pantry on the cool cool floor in the dark.
Larry: "to care and not to care...to sit still" Careful of earth air and water mainly perhaps, and other lives, but some (how many?) other things too.
Me: To be alive is to care and then not to care and then care again, to create, then scrub the lawn furniture, then sit at the table with a rose in a vase and write, making a statement that what one person does with the materials of her life and brain and and heart and intuition matters.
Larry: What first (off)? What next?
Me: What to do, what to do? as the babushki say in Russia, but then to let that go, that fatalism, that defeatism, that belief that the horrific news we hear daily, hourly is all the news of the world. Which it emphatically is not.

Larry Eigner's portion of this conversation taken from "Approaching things Some Calculus How figure it Of Everyday Life Experience" from The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book.

Attempt writing in a state of mind that seems least congenial. Bernadette Mayer

Water bugs on the Charles River.

Never listen to poets or other writers. Never explain your work.
-Bernadette Mayer

The author may plant in his text his enigmas. - Alan Davies

Using a trowel and an eyedropper, I set forth to plant my enigmas.
me
The enigma may be no more enigmatic to a reader than is the rest of the text,
Alan D.
but, really, what is an enigma, and why is it spelled with a silent g?
me
The enigma is chosen as a special burden,
Alan D.
Swell. I'll have to pass.
me
The enigma, cued only to itself, faces nothing.
Alan D.
Which, once again, has me in mind of my mother.
me
The enigma is impoverished in context.
Alan D.
Ah! Now we're getting somewhere. The little matchgirl, snow, etc.
me
The enigma does not exist in the tangled limits of nature.
Alan D.
Oh, sorry. No snow then.
me
An enigma cannot be plural;
Alan D.
This just makes me sad.
me
The enigma must not be made to speak itself in any direction.
Alan D.
No fun at parties, then.
me
The enigma is consigned, ordered.
Alan D.
No hot pants, no scotch and sodas at noon.
me
It (the enigma) does not need to be there.
Alan D.

On the Road

Traveling through the dark under an overpass on my way to Tacoma a few years ago, I heard a gun go off or an enormous backfire, or 270 firecrackers going off simultaneously.

My sig oth keeps asking when I am going to get my windshield repaired.

Even East of Eden comes to an end, eventually, at which time you have to find something to do to amuse yourself if you aren't the driver.

Ste. Chapelle Winery, Caldwell, Idaho

This Just In: Rod Stewart now working as limo driver in Boise, Idaho area. We saw him at the downtown farmer's market on Saturday, then at the winery on Sunday. One of the women on the picnic blanket next to us ran after him to have him sign her breast. My daughter's sig oth overheard him in conversation on a cellphone: "I'm going to work this job forever." See, he is Rod Stewart.

As a baby boomer, I find it difficult to grok that I have a daughter old enough to have a sig oth and old enough to own a house. Both of these are true independent of my ability to process their existence.

Very hot in the Boise area. My daughter's back deck is equipped with misters, devices that spray mist into the sitting area. Just about necessary if you expect to spend any time at all out of doors. Note the trees and shade in above photo.

Driving to Boise Today

Villanelle in Celebration of Some Living and Dead Seattle Coffeehouses

Virginia’s wayward appassionato
Grand illusion, motore vita –
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

Essential hungry mind, argento
Still life in Fremont, bella
Virginia’s wayward appassionato.

Four angels speakeasy, b & o,
Fuel the local victrola –
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

The blue dog Bauhaus allegro,
Perkatory insomniax Panama,
Virginia’s wayward appassionato,

Scooters racer on the ave, Zingaro
Vivace zeitgeist arosa,
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

Dharwin fiore neo el Diablo,
Starlife revolutions bacco Messiah,
Virginia’s wayward appassionato,
Splendido last exit, Van Gogh.

Don't Wanna Do What's Good For Me

Line them up, them good words, them healthy words, them big ol high protein high vitamin words and swallow em. They got some poets can down em dozens at a time, can feed them back to you too, tap tap tap on the keyboard, swoosh on paper, they don't mind. They know what's good and they don't fight it. They don't lie down on they little fat backs and scream they heads off. They don't kick they little feet and screw up they little faces. They pull them little skinny books down out of they bookshelves and they lay them out one after the other and they read and they read and they read and then they write. They take they little black ink pens in they hands and they scribble. My how they do. They don't whine that they don't got no good ink or they pens got lost. They don't fret about they too thin paper or they no idea brains. They shame me, they do.

Do You Have The Number For Zippy Disposal?

Erging for Coxes

Row in four beats, three for recovery then one for the drive
Sit ready, row
arms, body, legs, LEGS body arms
arms, body, legs, LEGS body arms
smooth it out

Power ten in two
don't rush the slide
up two in two
don't shake your head
fix it on the next stroke
if you shake it, take a power ten
power ten in two
count four beats, three for recovery, one for the drive
keep it smooth
don't shake your head
power ten in two

If you look at me sideways you'll see Sasquatch

Dithering rather than heading out to get estimates to repair my Morris Minor which was attacked by a falling rock between Alpenhorn and Lake Chelan Yacht Club after my sig oth and I had seen a "Watch For Falling Rock" sign somewhere else two days before and declared that neither of us had ever seen a falling rock. Rock gods must have heard this as a request for experience. Thanks, guys.

The year before, my sig oth's bossy older Porsche was hit by a meteor through the carport roof. Oh yes, a meteor. ite. Someone in his office building had an extra Porsche hood and gave it to him. This is actually an object lesson in "putting it out there in the universe" as the newage (rhymes with sewage) folks say. Ask for a Porsche hood or a falling rock and either shall be granted to you. Amen.

Maroon Saloon Climbs Stevens Pass After Passing Out in Leavenworth

Fell in love, 19, with Morris Minors. Denied a green one by my childish waiting for my father's okay, languished in longing until 1994 when, departing the town of Bath, England, in a Ford Eurosmall vehicle, we came upon dozens of Morris Minors in front of The Morris Minor Centre. Days later, my ability to converse about anything not Morris Minors nil, my sig oth mentioned that if I would undergo much needed total hip replacement surgeries he would throw in the extra bonus prize of one Morris Minor, accompanied by no shit talk about minor issues like why the hell would any sane person desire such a death car, etc. March 13, 2005: left hip replaced, osteotomy. Two weeks later my Maroon Saloon was released from quarantine at the Port of Tacoma, one week shy of my release date from house arrest. We drove to Tacoma and took delivery. January 2, 1996: left total hip with osteotomy. Drove Maroon Saloon over Stevens Pass for the first time that April. Today was the last up and over that 4100 feet of elevation gain. See photographic proof here on this blog. To drive over pass, you need: one pair ear plugs, one gallon water, one quart oil, one full tank unleaded gas, one lead foot on accelerator, one battery and then another battery out of the boat brought to you by sig oth after phone call from Leavenworth where marvelous vehicle equipped with Prince of Darkness (Lucas) electrical system had drunk all battery juice and vigor. The gift of the undependable car is unexpected down time out of ordinary life. I spent my hour plus walking trails in the river park of Leavenworth with my camera.

I'd Give You All My Matchboxes, Joseph Cornell

My country 'tis of, anyway, let's look at this today. What's in those sky blue boxes, Joseph? Clouds? Dreams? Lightning? If the bird nest is below the fish, then twenty boxes should be enough to hold at least one hundred finch wishbones. Robins' eggs in the top four boxes, worms and grubs to feed them in the two sets of six boxes either side of the nest. If these were birds of substance, birds of certain sorts of older families, marital records and property deeds, family photographs and daguerrotypes, feathers of the saints, a sacred claw.

To Win, Little Relied on 5000 Sheep

Medium-sized had been in the lead to that point, Large and Gigantic lagging as was expected.

Morning, Lake Chelan: what we've got in our neighborhood is a large cougar. Last time we had a coug in the hood I walked my dog carrying a portable boat horn with high blast capability and the hope that if I ran into the cat it would not be deaf.

Walking up the hill, I was thinking about assenting to the ascent and how if it were to get hotter there might be dissent, dog, man, woman, and we'd wind up on the decent. Decent.

Mythologizing the Garden

For all we have taken into our keeping
and polished with our hands belongs to a truth
greater than ours...
-William Stafford


So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is.
-William Stafford,
from "Bifocal"











Seeing and Perceiving

You learn to like the scene that everything
in passing loans to you--a crooked tree
syncopated upward branch by pre-
established branch, its pattern suddening
as you study it; or a piece of string
forwarding itself, that straight knot so free
you puzzle slowly at its form (you see
intricate but fail at simple); or a wing,
the lost birds trailing home.
These random pieces begin to dance at night
or when you look away. You cling to them
for form, the only way that it will come
to the fallible: little bits of light
reflected by the sympathy of sight.

-William Stafford

See, it's so lightly and rightly a sonnet.

Petey, our next door neighbor, caught on the verge of possible escape attempt thwarted when I entered the house and closed the window. Intense stare directed at my dog.

Who can say what any of us is on the verge of?


Do note the six toes on each of the two front feet. Each of his hind feet has six toes as well. Four toes total above the norm.

Contemplating Alternate Careers

Or what if you had a matchbook?

Never Throw Anything Away

Okay, so let's say you have an Altoids tin.

ZZ Wei has a way with clouds

In my sweetie's fantasy, we will climb aboard the travel van and fly into adventure. We'll equip it with cooking utensils, Krustez pancake mix and canned tuna, a mattress, a collapsible table and chairs, collapsible bicycles, a Coleman lantern, adventure books, maps, changes of underwear and good boots, and sing-along travel music. Off we'll set, our hearts bouyant and lacking for nothing. Yes, he has seen About Schmidt, but he has also seen the movie where the man climbs aboard his riding mower? small tracter? to reconcile with his brother half a continent away. Maybe the bicycles wouldn't collapse but ride outside the vehicle on a rack. Maybe I would not collapse within myself, dismayed by my virtuous antagonism towards gas usage, my less attractive desire to stay in fine hotels and dine in restaurants where there is no ketchup on the tables. I have no wish to make meals ala Lucy in The Travel Trailer movie or to scud around corners like Goofy in the Disney film. I haven't even seen RV or whatever the recent film is called with Robin Williams in it, but I don't feel attracted to doing so. In our travel van, the highway would spool under us like film stock while the scenery painted itself for our passing. We would never misunderstand the nest egg concept, or be really, truly lost in America. We would only play "Born to be Wild" with a sly nod to how silly we look. How silly do we look?

hot under the collar

hot flash

hotbed

hot

h!

The Jack Straw Writers' Program 10th Anniversary Reading in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Seattle Central Library yesterday afternoon starred nine of the ten chosen writers. Trisha Ready wasn't able to come at the last minute, interviewing for grad. school in I think, don't get me wrong, somatic psychology. Dreamy.

Readers and our fair audience had to find their way through the Gay Pride Parade, heading downtown for the first year ever. Virtually nobody was able to get into the library's parking lot. I parked down 4th avenue about four blocks away and got to walk to the beat of "Dancing Queen" on the way back to the library.

My favorite of the readings was Anna Balint's monologue piece - affectingly in the voice of a young woman who repeatedly sabotages herself and probably will never be able to raise her own children as a result. Barbara Earl Thomas's story about a young girl's sexual awakening through communing with mannekins at The Lerner Shop came in a strong second.

The reading went by incredibly quickly. We had all been admonished to keep it under five minutes, and we all get gold stars. Such a gorgeous gardening Sunday, ferryboat ride Sunday, hiking Sunday, and yet we had an audience in the neighborhood of 50 people. I had memorized my four poems, thanked Joan Rabinowitz and Chris Higachi and went into a white marshmallow space for a half second. Luckily I had made myself a crib sheet from one of the Cracker Box cardboard covered books the volunteers make at Beacon Hill Elementary. I had pasted my typed poems onto the pages, one per page. I opened the book, saw what I was starting with, and was fine from there. It was an interesting experience to face an audience the entire time rather than looking down repeatedly to make contact with the mothership of the poem. I liked and was terrified by the sensation of speaking my mind to everyone. People afterwards, including other poets, seemed to respond to this manner of presenting. I think I'll keep it up - move to longer readings with this same memorization focus, and the crib sheet, just in case. Many people were moved by the Bobo piece - so many of us grew up here in Seattle. Someone, maybe it was Joanie Strangeland, maybe it was Ann Hursey or Anna Balint, maybe it was me, said we could put together a Bobo Poetry Anthology.

We went up to the opening celebration for the newly remodeled writers' room on the 9th floor after the reading. Food and good wine were spread out on the table in the small room next to the writers' room. My only gripe was that there were people blocking access to the side of the table with the cheese on it, and I felt too woosy (not woozy) to ask them to shove over, or around, or just get the heck over to the writers' room for a frickin minute. (It is hot today, have I mentioned this?)

The writers' room has a cluster of round tables divided into kiosks, each with its own bookshelf and its own plug-ins (2) for laptops. Over the heads of these tables are white leafy lor petal ooking fabric structures, perhaps to diffuse the light, perhaps to prevent observers above from pelting the writers at work. I'm not sure it is possible for observers to even be above, but it looks like there might be room between the top of the wall around the writers' room area and the skylight above. 30 Lockers line one wall of the room, below a gallery of photos of writers who have read at the library and are slightly more famous than those of us who read Sunday, to wit, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Don Delillo, the sci fi writer from Oregon who wrote the boat analogy writing craft book, also a fantasy trilogy with a strong girl protagonist that I enjoyed immensely -- Ursula LeGuin, and others. Nice b&w photos. A photographer took pictures of us as we schmoozed and drank the good wine. When he photographed me, I was making a weird face, sort of a one-sided chewing activity, with an eye scrunched shut. If you saw the old wise guy who led Eddie Murphy to the temple in Nepal in The Golden Child, you have a sense of my fabulous look.

At least one other 1999 Jack Straw Writer, Rebecca Meredith, was there. She no longer lives in Redmond, and no longer is involved with RASP. She said Victor's Coffee House, where we hung out as a 99 group, has become inhospitable to writers since the new guy bought it. He cut the RASP reading series. Peggy Sturdevant, who was a 2002 Jack Straw Writer, has become an official P.I. blogger in addition to the writing she does for money. She had a blog at blogspot for a few months, but got bored with it. When she switched papers for political reasons to the P.I. she noticed bloggers' stuff was printed sometimes and applied to be a P.I. sponsored blogger. They wanted resume, etc., and now she's the P.I. Ballard Blogger. Huh. She has a couple of regular commenters. Oh for regular commenters. It would be almost like having friends, no obligations, which is one of my issues. An issue that does not keep me from typing away so that I can push that orange "Publish Post" button and see my words on my green backgrounded screen.

In the Public Eye

Today, 2pm, I am part of an event at the Seattle Central Public Library. Ten writers representing the ten years of the Jack Straw Writers Program will be reading for five minutes each. Each of us represents the writers from each of the years of the program. I am Miss 2002. I was a Jack Straw Writer in 1999 too, but am not wearing the sash for that year. Since I have as a project the memorization of my poems (if I don't love them, who will?), I will be saying my poems rather than reading them. I have made a little commemorative book, cleverly titled "4 Poems in 5 Minutes", which I will be handing out to whoever wants one. Yesterday, I brilliantly affixed stickers advertising my book, nothing to hold onto, so that people might go to Finishing Line Press's website or to amazon.com and buy my book. A couple of days ago, folding little books for this reading, a small overweight angel in mismatched socks whispered that I am doing the best work I can do the best way I know how so I may as well put it out there. I'm not suddenly going to awake to take my waking as Roethke or Shelley (him or her) or anybody else but me. I don't sound like the greats, but then none of them sounded like any other of them, not to mention that in this postmodern, postindustrial, postmenopausal world, there are a fracking lot of us out here throwing words around like we really mean it and who the bleep can decide which of us is going to last or even surface. Perhaps that was a question. To make any kind of art is about making it. To be a deep sea diver, go diving, if you know what I mean. What will I wear to the reading? Nothing too obviously psychedelic yellow green so I don't blend with the escalator and confuse patrons. I used to try to dress like a poet, but never have been able to decide what that means. One middle school student for whom I have built a small but colorful shrine in my back bedroom told me she knew I was the visiting poet because I looked exactly like one.

Some possible rules for pre-reading jitters:
1. know thy poems but print them up in 14 point type in the event your mind flees the premises
2. warm up voice and body.
3. no milk - blechy throat will blur words. no vodka.
4. dress for the event. no tiaras unless event calls for same.
5. bring party favors
6. no stiletto heels unless you can stand in them without falling on your face

And yet, I have come to cringe over the flip, snide and tongue-in-cheek. I take as my text David Sedaris's supposed text of the graduation speech he delivered at Princeton, reprinted or printed for the first time, in the New Yorker. How many pages? I was bored after the first half page. When satire goes wrong.

And now to launder me and iron my linen skirt and spiff up for Rem Koolhaus and the Jack Straw Foundation gang.

Gratuitous Grace Photo

This is not me coxing, nor is it the right crew, nor is this Lake Washington. That hill in the background is not Mount Rainier. We had many more clothes on, in particular me, the cox. Since I have not yet taken the float test, I wore a huge jacket with a life preserver built into it, which kept me toasty in the bit of a breeze. Our boat was taupe, not blue, and there were four rowers. The boat was rigged for sculling not sweeping, two oarlocks and two oars per rower. You will get no information from this photograph to help you visualize this morning. Mount Rainier was starkly present, not a ghost mountain. It wore no lenticular cloud beret. I however wore a WWU Vikings baseball cap with the microphone strap tight around it. My mic cord plugged into my cox box (not a dirty phrase) which plugged into the boat so all four women could hear me fabulously well when I yelled my idiot questions to our coach in the launch or counted under my breath to be sure I would have them shift to another rowing task "in two" at the right time. As my counting became shaky when I was distracted, Mount Rainier, swimmers off the port bow, buoys, wake, breeze, steering lag time, Sally the stroke counted under her breath as she rowed to cue me. Here's the wide awake and brilliant thing: I remembered to unplug the cox box from the boat before stepping out when we returned to the dock. I did not ram or graze the dock. I will never be able to work for the Washington State Ferry System.

On the Lake, 5:30 am

A new era in my life has opened its petals, revealing Mount Rainier, strong and handsome at the south end of Lake Washington, from the stern of a 40 foot long racing shell at did I mention 5:30 am. The tender bud (not button, G.S.) of my cox career got a midicum of sun and no splash. The boat rocked a little once in awhile (wake, yanked steer string) but I came away invigorated and grateful.
One quad,
one novice cox,
one coach in one launch,
one broad shouldered mountain,
two oars per rower,
two motor boats with skiers,
two directions to pull on the steering line,
three sets of paddle 10, half pressure 10, full pressure 10,
three swimmers doing laps in the lee of the floating bridge
four rowers.

Lost Item

Lost in the bathroom, far east end of Terminal B, Logan Airport, my brand new hardback copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma, unread.

Please return to Pippi at this blog, pronto.

Note: this collage pilfered from the website of Deborah F. Lawrence, fabulous satirical collage artist. Go to www.deedeeworks.com.

Don't jerk me around, I have important things to do today. Upstairs, where the flying ants clustered before they were dessimated by the sticky goo the exterminator lay down around every floor to wall juncture, many projects lie about the space I like to call my workroom. I spend time here making poems, lesson plans, collages and handmade books. I also spend more time than I want to tidying, which, as Mrs. Beerman from kindergarten could confirm, is not my preferred activity. "Pippi L. does not seem to like to clean up," was the text of the comment section of my very first school report card. This was before my star status period of brilliant bubble test results put an end to this unkind of observation.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

Did you ever stop to think what makes gelatine dishes stiff? The answer is all tied up with the chemistry of gelatine itself -- but the important thing for YOU is that gelatine is a wonder cooking ingredient that can turn a liquid into a solid "just like magic."

-Good Looking Cooking: A Guide to the Use of Unflavored Gelatine
copyright 1959

Is it just me or does this sound sexual to you?

TO REMAIN HUMAN

...Even your floating thoughts begin to sit on their own bottoms.
-The Sanity We Are Born With, p. 27

Have you met my daughter Shawna and her husbad Todd?

One minute you are musing about art and the next you'have been invited to view the photos of someone you love, and not one of those boring evenings in the light of the slide projector but one of those new fangled invites where you get to see the loved ones dorking around their lovely craftsman home when what they meant for you to look at were proper public views of somebody's college graduation for example your other daughter's.
Both the lovely souls pictured are college graduates. In fact, the bloodied prom date (to whom I am related by real blood) has a master's degree - in science (of journalism) . (See sidebar to the right>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>)

Say, I'm Gleeful about Paul Klee

Long long ago, when elephants gave birth to girls and boats could be crewed by two blockheads, I fell in love with the art of Paul Klee. I knew nothing of its context or the artist or even whether to say clay or clee. I was a fresh-freed college student about to become someone other than my pupa self, and damn it I was ready for a renaissance or a naissance or a seance, nuance, nonce, though not nuptual, no. I wanted to know how to apply color, why calculus, what is western civilization? But what I found out was that marijuana makes you: 1. horny 2. hungry 3. paranoid. I also discovered that there are no Cape Canaverals for jettisoning the self.
But here is Paul Klee off the internet and onto the internet where I want him, all blushing and blue with firm black lines that say to me, "I know what I am doing. I say what I am. Blue goes just here, here, here, two dots right here, this line begins with a curl, grows thick then thin as I command it."
Outside there are weeds pushing up between the bricks of the walk from the street to my doorway. They are green, but not the green in this painting. Someone uses a blowing tool to move dead leaves around down the alley. The noise comes on obnoxiously, flares, and silences. It has nothing interesting to say. A strange man came into our house on Friday, shouldering window glass. He replaced many of our windows but not the frames. While he worked he made impatient, exhausted, disgusted, world-weary huffs that distracted me at my writing table. He has not been wooed by the paintings of Paul Klee. The skylight above me shows a blue sky, which continues blue all the way across the section of the square opening that is visible to me as I sit here. No decisions. My iris violet wall wears a block of lighter violet where the skylight has invited sunlight in. This cheers me, but not like the painting. The lighter violet block is an accident of light and placement, there is nothing unintended in the painting.

Do you need glasses? Try this test:

what do you want when you gotta have something and its gotta be sweet and its gotta be a lot and you gotta have it now

Did you ever think you would grow up to be who you are?
Did you ever think you would grow up to be?
Did you ever think you would grow up?
Did you ever think you would?
Did you ever think?
Did you ever?
Did you?
Me neither.
either.

Video flash: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang just out on Tuesday. Robert Downey, Jr. Also Val Kilmer. The movie opens with a boychild magician whose boychild assistant sets the chainsaw going and begins the saw the girl in half trick. Girl starts screaming, which sends father running, she's acting, film cuts away as father raises arm to strike. Yikes. Robert D. J. in best aware-of-we're-making-a-film-here narration turn ever and ordinarily I am irritated by voice-overs.

Clinging to expectations is a less than ideal way to proceed

Rain and wind and rain and wind and bits of weatherstripping stuck ridiculously to the sills and below them rather than in the grooves the windows fit into here at Duxbury, Mass. so that I have fled the beach house for the free library, where the room is warm, dry and well lit, except for the half a minute when the power was out and all of us here held our collective breaths. On the table beside me I've set Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus and Picturesque Expressions: A Thematic Dictionary, First Edition. Let us begin:

INSIGNIFICANCE:

anise and cumin
Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and
cummin, and have ommitted the
weightier matters of the law,
judgment, mercy and faith; these
ought ye to have done, and not to
leave the other undone.
-from Jesus' reproach to the Scribes and Pharisees

a drop in the bucket
from the King James version of the Bible:
Behold, the nations are as a drop of
a bucket, and are counted as the
small dust of the balance.

fly in amber.
An unimportant person or incident remembered only
through association with a person or matter of significance.

Mickey Mouse
Cheap or inferior, small, insignificant, worthless;
petty, trivial; simple, easy, childish.

no great shakes
a low roll on a shake of the dice,
a negative appraisal of someone's character
on the basis of a weak handshake,
or a negligible yield resulting
from shaking a barren walnut tree.

one-horse town
The phrase maintains common usage in the United States despite
the fact that horses are no longer the principal means of transportation.

peanut gallery
In many theaters, peanuts and popcorn were sold
only to the people in the least expensive seats,
usually in the rear of the balcony.
Since these seats are traditionally
bought by those of meager means
and, by stereotypic implication, those
with a minimal appreciation of the arts,
comments and criticisms
from the people there carried little, if any, weight.

pebble on the beach
"There's more than one..."
and "You aren't the only...,"
most commonly used in situations
involving a jilted sweetheart.

penny-ante
Compared to the man Bilbo,
63-year-old John Rankin is strictly
penny ante and colorless.
(Negro Digest, August, 1946)

Podunk
the Podunk near Hartford, Connecticut,
or that near Worcester, Massachusetts.

small potatoes
evidently derived from the short-lived satiation
of one who has eaten a small potato.

....

But wait, here's "cock a snook" under INSULT:
A British slang expression for the gesture of putting one's thumb
on one's nose and extending the fingers, equivalent to
thumb one's nose. (not to be confused with setting the fingers
beside the nose, see 'Twas the Night before Christmas.)

The Far East Report

Duxbury Free Library, 3pm, view of lawns and Percy Walker (not Walker Percy) Pool, with lines of yellow school buses doing drill team drills at the stop sign behind the oak trees. My hair is damp, I've come from PWP where I swam 36 laps, 1800 yards, thinking of my daughter, who rows 2000 meter races, training multiple 2000 meter pieces daily, or at least that was true until NCAA Nationals.

I'm here at the DFL to research the 2005 Tour de France, think yellow jerseys, think Lance, think our family around the television, Jim deep into radiation treatment and every yellow jersey an omen for him.

Dizzying to be so far from home in this distant yet familiar place. I'm out of sorts this year, disgruntled at the loss of some of my work-avoidance places like the las Olivades store with its Italian dishes, now replaced with a bland interiors store called Octavia's, its wan attempt to woo me with a glass counter of sea glass bracelets failing, all those complacent pastel rectangles.

Following my extra beat heart experience, I am off caffeine and now off French Memories Bakery where I used to buy lattes. They don't make decaf. "Only high test," said the counter girl. Their petit fours and tortes were obscured by condensation on the display glass - what I cannot see I refuse to miss or long for.

What is the function of a blog? Is this a literary blog? I write, I read, I write about what I read and everything else, so yes. I can boast zero comments, a perfect score. Talking at the dinner table with my writer housemates (I cannot say "fellows" as we are all women), we discussed blogs and websites. Two women have websites, I am experimentally blogging. Who reads your blog? Apparently nobody, I said. I am not sure of what use I want to make of it. It is odd to journal so publically, but my blog, arguably, is not public, so there is no invasion of privacy, no questions raised about the expansion of the public sphere into the private. Perhaps I am an exhibitionist, but an exhibitionist flashing inside my own bedroom with the drapes drawn, or maybe just a teeny bit open in case someone might be hanging about in the shrubbery ready to view something really really interesting and distressingly alive and vibrant. Junior high school discovery fantasy, redoux.
Adieu.