the earth laughs in flowers

My grandma used to always have those strawberry candies. The ones wrapped in strawberry patterned cellophane that turns green at the top and twists into a strawberry stem. The hard candies with the filling in the middle.
The sick filling.
I never realized how gross they were until this week.
However, I love them still.
And well, dears, it's been my birthday lately and so I was watching the ants crawl across my grandparents gravestone today and I thought again about how my Grandpa died five years and two days after my Grandma. Today I wondered if, on 13 November 1994, he noticed the day as a five year anniversary (and then was he still thinking this for the next two days?). Do you ever wonder about the dichotomy of life? I was supposed to be studying the Theory of Relativity more in depth this last semester and what is the most amazing is when you get to the part of the theory that reminds you: two differing viewpoints are both correct. Einstein says scientifically. Brian Greene says, "Chaos precedes creativity." Sir William Blake says, "Whoever tries to reconcile seeks to destroy existence."

Then I was riding my bike home and saw the sign "THE EARTH LAUGHS IN FLOWERS" on the church sign of a Nursery. It reminded me of this music video I watched today. I'm not crazy about the song (so far I haven't found Santogold to be my cup of tea), but the video leaves me a little speechless.
In an inspired way.

The Onion Cutter is no longer allowed to cut onions.

The terror threat level is yellow today.

ooooooohhhhh the fuddling, a march of phrases

I've been enjoying seeing the ducks take their naps in the grass.

The truth of the matter is I am much more comfortable sitting on the porch swing by myself, sometimes feeling wistful, than I am when a boy is interested and I answer the phone. I always feel like not answering.
No awkward voices, pauses, speaking over each other.
None of me hanging up on anyone because I think goodbyes are awkward.
But I answer and imagine myself throwing the phone at their face.
I could almost be considered terrible or pitiful.
Now the question is, when I show up at a barbeque of strangers, what happens when I try to avoid the meat?

GET BEHIND FANNY! GET BEHIND FANNY!

Do you love irony? Because I have some for you.
(I also love anarchy and not taking things seriously.)
You see, I thought Wednesday was funny because I ended up at the thrift store (again) with my arms spilling over with second-hand books, one of which was entitled, "Johnny Got His Gun." It's a novel of one of my favorite styles, anti-war and full of disillusionment, as manifested by this line from the back cover, "This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered--not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives..."
But then we went to an Army/Navy surplus store. I found things there that I have been searching for for months. I kept looking around in wonder and thinking, "Woooowwww.....I totally support our armed forces." High-waisted, wide-legged jeans for $16? Yes, PLEASE! Wool socks, vintage hats, leather gloves, wool bombers? Disillusionment? I have total faith in government! Who needs a revival of Pangea when you've got a great national closet? Viva USA!
As I sat down to my dinner I thought the day had been funny enough. I was looking forward to an early evening: kicking back, putting on glasses, smoking my pipe, a glass of scotch and a good book...But somehow I found myself at a local music venue with this girl who has a shaved head and some other film buddies (in my high-waisted, wide-legged, navy issue jeans, bien-sûr).
As I was sitting there wishing my ears weren't being filled with the sounds of some kind of Jack Johnson ukulele twins, I turned to my right and saw this guy in a Led Zeppelin leather jacket.
Now normally, I'm not a big supporter of the leather jacket. Anything that smacks of "chicks dig it" and alpha anything I like to send packing to the hills.
But it was Led Zeppelin.
So I leaned over, "I like your jacket because I love Led Zeppelin. They are osm."
"Oh thanks...I like that you like Led Zeppelin."
The end, right?
No, he's in the next act. He's in a hard rock band and now that his face was lit up I could see a couple of lines around his eyes and no wonder, because he's a marine who's seen active combat in Iraq. And asked for my phone number.
If anything happens there, it would be as perplexing as me being on a dance team in high school. It's not so much like ten thousands spoons when all you need is a knife, but more like the poem mon père used to recite:

I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But keeps them on my knife.


I won't shy from eating peas with a knife.

untitled number 153

There are times when everything is good, you know, and there are no personal qualifications for demising ideas. However you see large patches of grey before you. The grey of ones close to you that attaches down through maybe some sinews or something and comes out your ears. We're taught to live black and white. But I'm still struggling that out. The straight and narrow can seem a jagged tetris line, because sometimes perhaps there are many pathways to Heaven, you just have to choose the ones that go up. Up at a steady pace and not so steep you'll fall backwards into a mound of letters and numbers. Oh, dodecahedron, what are you cracking at?

a letter to you, who is illiterate

Have you ever felt like someone was being so stupid you wanted to yell at them? Have you ever seen someone intra-cating (as apposed to the preferable extricating) themselves in a mess and undervaluing themselves and feeling attached to their sinkingness?
Have you ever been so perplexed by the situations they keep letting themselves get into as if you are looking at an odd painting and you must cock your head to the side for five minutes?
I could shake you by your shoulders and ban certain people from your house and write you laws and learn you your lessons.
But I've never set much merit in giving people my own advice.
With my advice you could follow me in the circles that I lead myself through.

I am so often lost so you should probably learn your own way.
But I'll follow you parallel-ly.
Can we be satisfied with that?

yes Moscow and Costco are very close

To start off with, I went to a costume party last night dressed as Annie Hall. So I had bought these large clear plastic glasses to be A. Hall. And I enjoy wearing them. So as I dressed to go out on a nice evening stroll this evening as I spoke to my friend on the phone I slipped them on.
We were deep in conversation when a boy on a bike stopped me.

Where did you get your glasses? he wanted to know.
And then he asked me a few questions about myself and invited me to a cake party.
Yes! his friend said. We baked ten cakes!
Yes! said the first boy, We have gallons of ice cream!
They repeated addresses and a phone number over and over until I could recite them.

I may be kind of awkward, I may not be the life of the party, and I may watch people more than I actually speak, but I kind of like going to parties like I like facing my fear of ladders. I make friends slowly and so I meet people at parties say a few words and then when I see them somewhere else we may have something to speak about, eh? (I make this sound like a science, but sometimes for the slow ducks life is science...?)

Well I gave us ALL something to speak about tonight.

This house has...well SHOULD have a grate for a furnace just inside and to the left of their front door.
But there's no grate.
Only a big gaping hole.
That I fell in.
So I laughed loudly at myself, got up and continued on my path to talk to Bike Boy 1. And we all joked about how I knew nobody and I had just fallen in a hole.
I was a cool clumsy cucumber tonight.

J'AI VERTIGE!!

I'm a bit afraid of heights.
The Dreamer helped me face this fear a bit Tuesday and Wednesday as he's not allowed to climb ladders and I am.
Thank goodness he loves to patiently sit there day dreaming.
I've been climbing up a ladder to shift around 25 pound, greasy ceiling tiles until they would dislodge into my hands so that I could hand them down to The Dreamer to clean. I made him promise to catch me if I started to fall because I could feel the panic rising the first few times I climbed up. It was a little dramatic of me but Tuesday I woke up feeling like my soul was being ripped in two by the morning air.
Uhhh...I like facing my fears, though.
It's just rare to find people who will be patient with me.
I told the French girl I work with "J'ai peur des hauts endroits" Which I could maybe translate into saying "I have fear of high locations."
It didn't come off so well.
Thursday I completely had the whole heights thing mastered. In fact, I frequently found myself up to my waist in ceiling (down to my waist?).

I feel like my dishwashers make my days worthwhile. This morning I was so tired I thought I was getting as bad as the Dreamer, frequently standing around doing nothing, thinking nothing for minutes. Until I walked around the corner and found him sitting on a step ladder sleeping.
I had found my cure, I stayed awake all morning by teasing him about staying awake...and about cutting off his leg.

the lit up rhinoceros

I am feeling this whole warmer weather thing.
I'm down with it, I say!
Tonight I went a couple of blocks south for a "parachute party." Remember in elementary school when you would all hold a corner of the parachute and wave it up and down and run underneath it and sit down quickly so it all billowed around you?
Well, we twenty-somethings revisited youth tonight.
I support this warmer weather laziness.
I support playing catch and laying about in large laid-back groups. Or small laid-back groups. Or solo laid-back groups.
Let intelligence recuperation begin.

Oh, tonight singleness made me intelligent again. My mother the reference librarian gave me an old library book last summer "Drawings by American Artists." So I was eating dinner at my coffee table (it helps that there's no TV anymore) and I picked up the large little coffee table book. There were a few profound statements in the "pre" pages.
"The differences...are less important artistically than the one thing which they have in common. That quality is communication. The degree of its success depends in large measure upon the perception of the artist. If this drawing gives us only a physical description of his subject it may be likened to a story which gives facts only, but if, in addition to this, his drawing communicates his personal reaction and through the agency of line and tone he is able to interpret his subject--then we may conclude his drawing has justified the time and effort expended in its making."

P.S. Singleness is cooler, obviously, but being engaged probably makes you smarter because being faced with other people's opinions is what really makes intelligent human beings. At least that's what I currently pretentiously think.


Viva la summer.

Aunt Morgan and the kazoos

I have so far refrained from making any statements about this and I know you're all dying to hear, but I do like old Architecture in Helsinki better than their newer stuff. Sure, I've jammed out to the Places Like This album and I went to their concert last fall, but nothing tops that old dreamy stuff. Today on my break I was reading Emily Dickinson poems from the "Death and Resurrection" section of my book and listening to the Fingers Crossed album and things were getting pretty transcendental. That's all I'm going to say about that, as I've already said too much, and I'm getting tired of reading music reviews as I feel we're all being a little silly.

WARNING: one from a collection of terrible poems follows.
It's dedicated to how much france hates me.

Some sit facing tepid ideas
stirring around pots of luke warm water.
I could luke you to maggotron heaven
despite your nukes.

Sigh-those same faces
all the names and the places and wet
not still in this
oh, not still in this

siphon a penny a day
but what do you have?
flair?





"The lady hasn't spoken, and if she had spoken she would have said something."
(The Dreamer said that yesterday)

why are the lawyers farming. commencement of "don't ask me any questions for a week"

I feel like I'm some sort of loose-weave cotton fabric that is covered in a tacky print. You might want to use me to sew a pillowcase or a vintage inspired shirt or something, except, I'm just such a terrible weave that I would be good for naught.

Today the Onion Cutter told me I was weird. I asked him why and he said something unintelligible which he finally had to spell out. He says I am weird because I'm cool. I told him I could work with that.

Also, The Dreamer and I spent the morning singing Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it" together. I first heard that song when I danced to it for this dance team I was on in high school.

i'm. making. beef. gravy.

I've been working a lot the past couple of days. I like work. How can I not like work when I get to see the Onion Cutter professing his love to the new girl from Denmark? (He had me check to see if she was married and then he proposed to her.) Every day he asks me if she is going to come in to work and he writes her love notes on pieces of paper towel. He shows them to me, "CALL EM" they say, or, "I LOVE YOU," all in permanent marker.
I promise to never go three days without contacting my family, though. I had been in a nice bubble until my sister called the grill this morning to make sure I was alive.

I carried a tree home last night.

I don't feel like describing the events that led up to me still being at the grill at 10:30pm but I was worried I was starting to become a little delusional when someone opened the back door to throw some trash to the dumpster and I saw a tree. How can there be a tree by the dumpster of the grill, I thought. But sure enough, in a pot there was a shimmery branchy tree.


So at 11pm I carried it home.

Well half way. A woman in a truck drove the tree and I the rest of the way home.

It now sits in my living room.