canteenuh

Was it oil paint or wool felt that set the trees to life tonight? They were not frescoed nor co-ed, but fully three dimensional and diverging all their plains. planes. playns.

I wish to make something beautiful. I wish to be a modern artist, I wish to be a little poet, I wish to be a happy musician, I wish to paint your clothes to appear in Super 8 [mm] formatly rich colors.

La, la, la, let's quit wishing. Let's become construction workers and drink out of thermoses. I'm not that strong now, but I imagine after a few months I could keep up a little better with all of the other construction workers. It might not be the most ideal job in some ways, I sunburn very easily, but it would be free of three to four minute French persuasive presentations. I wouldn't feel a stroke of pretention unless people kept asking me how to spell things. I kind of like manual labor. O to work all day long with a hammer at my hip then to trudge home to some tea as I fight the pleasant sensation of impending sleep long enough to brush my teeth and to read a half a page of a clever book and then surrender to heavy sleep which is not beknotted by twisted subconscious dreamings.

How perfecto that'd be.

¡viva!

que sera, sera, but I love you

photography of mon père

I'm sure you've figured by now, I love my home. My home of origin. Which, although it is one of the continental stars, is a little bit of something all its own. I kind of wish I was on a flight home to go sandbag with my parents and friends and people who went through my checkstand at the grocery store I worked at in high school. It wouldn't matter that I would spend the rest of my life cold and wet or that there are only coffee pots and no hot cocoa pots.

osculation and a 2nd Barack Obama

not the same lighting [sad face]

Remember, Mother, when I spent many evenings with you at the kitchen table browsing over newspapers (or maybe silly romance novels?) as we both sipped our warm milk with creamer (because I was so sick of chamomile tea) and had a melatonin. Alack, the lack of sleepfulness.

I'm feeling giddy ce soir*, so I've repeated those motions. But with Charles Dickens' characters and not newspaper typings. However, the lighting isn't as good as the orangey glow from that odd chandalier in our kitchen, and there's no hum from the space heater stoically combatting the leaky back door, and there are no curtains made out of Grandma's flowered print, and their are no loon figurines and I might miss the company of someone like you.

But, really, I'm a contented fool.

Love,
Marge


*tonight. pronounced: suh swahr, but gently

"i liked that"

I would recommend watching Jules Feiffer's Munro (1961). It's a little nine minute cartoon that's just grand. You can all find your own means of watching it. But do it ASAP.

there was a detective show once

photo taken by moi

I waded through clouds this morning. Poof, poofy clouds that expanded at the knees, gently knocking against each other and me with a little click and scratching at the iron bars they hung from.

Wedding dress shopping.

For Y is engaged and I'm treating myself to a day of waffles. Well, Ego Waffles, which might not be quite as swell as those ones I used to make in the large-mouthed belgian waffler back when I lived on the flooded plain, however, little Ego's leave room for my fruits and veggies. Hurrah...

FAITE ATTENTION:
You should learn the mot-du-jour for I want to use it, I find it splendid.
Vellieity (veh-LEE-uh-tee): noun, (1) The lowest degree of desire; imprefect or incomplete volition. (2) A slight wish or inclination.

Example: The feeling that Marge Bjork felt at the contemplation of eating carrots last night was not that of delight but of vellieity.

to be in love with the world

This afternoon I bumbled up to campus, enjoying the silent padding of my little black canvas slip-ons and the warm measure of sun that was gazing down on us all. I ended up in the library for a moment intent on finishing THIS FRENCH PAPER when I remembered I was dying for some postage stamps. I turned, and there was un homme staring at me. I figured it to be odd happenstancing awkward eye-contacting or someone I might've met somehow but couldn't remember now. I've done that last one lots. Either way, I tried to step around him but he stopped me and said...

"I really like what you're wearing today."
"Oh...Thank you."
He's still standing there. So I asked, "Do I know you?"
"I don't know. I just really wanted to tell you I liked what you were wearing."
"Well, thanks very much."
"What's your name?"
"Marge, yours?"

And it went on from there. We were going the same direction so we chatted and then when I wanted to keep going my way for stamps and he was to go his way for home I said, "Well...I'll see you later, I guess."
"Yeah, that would be cool."
And he left.
That was it.

Highly unexpected all around.
But still really wonderful because I kept silently padding around in my little black slip-ons.

then gustav came

It's been windy and I love it.

Normally I have this little melancholy lodged in my soul, mourning the prairie and wide open spaces that I grew up and stretched my arms in. I could hardly call it emptiness anymore, the gracious space that charmingly sandwiches you between golden field and soft blue sky. The mountains are lovely, but I sometimes feel as though I'm up against a wall. Albeit a majestic wall.

However, today, as the mountains drifted up and disappeared into the heavy white mash of foggy clouds I was amazed at how tall they'd grown. They'd probably been so ten miles high all this time, but you never notice the grandeur until it's embraced by sky. And so the mountains grew on me a little bit more today.

I would like it to be warm and I would like to go swimming.

quince

I have an Abuela who doesn't speak any English. Yet every Sunday dinner she spills out her compliments and questions and I look around for a relative to translate as I say, "Que ? Que ? ¡Si !"

Today we had an extra long time to sit across the table and chat with each other as the rest of the family worried about the cooking time, consistency, and location of brown saffron rice compared to white (final and only consensus was that brown rice takes a lot of planning ahead). She showed me how her wrists hurt and and how it's hard because you use your wrists as you eat, but what are you going to do? You eat anyway. And today, as she has every Sunday for the last two months, she asked about my novio (boyfriend). My Tia (aunt) explained that we had broken up. But I liked him, Abuela said. I couldn't remember how to say, "Yo tambien," quickly enough so I made Tia teach me how to say "I'm good, he's bad." And also, "Voya querer atantos muchachos commo pueda." Which may not be remembered exactly, but at the time I did tell my Grandma correctly in Español, "I'm going to love as many boys as I can."
She then explained how when she was young she always had boyfriends, if she didn't have real ones, she'd make them up.

Yes, Grandma and I had some great bonding today.

being short shrifted

Voila le printemps !

Congratulations monde [world] for making it to the Spring Equinox! It's in the air and tagging along behind is amour for you and you and you-oo. That's my mandate, comrades, we're all going to sing along with that Beatles song "All you need is love!--all together now--ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE!--hearty, boisterous chorus now-- ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, LOVE--now Nicole Kidman don't interupt with your pessimism*"

Did you celebrate spring, Dears? Did you revel in its embrace, its porch-ness, its light and fluffy taste? I did. I sat on my porch, I've been eating grapefruit, I walked about and took a polaroid of a neighborhood tree that's had "LOVE ME" spray painted on it, I fixed my bike, aaaaaannnnddd IIIIIIIIIIIII {drum roll} CHOPPED!


Take a good look Ladies and Gents! Stare as the pithy (wait, was that a joke?) Marge Bjork does and dance and shakes her bobbed head around! There go your gorgeous locks! HA! HO!**

And I had a spotting of a 1970's muscle car with my ex-marine inside.
And I have mono.

The end.



*That admonition for Nicole Kidman is not actually in the original version of the song, believe it or not, but I added it in case Kidman was around ready to chime in with her line from the Moulin Rouge version, "Love is just a game."

**Those last few exclamations are something I might say if I were to see my real ex-novio (but in a charming I'm-celebrating-life kind of way)

rich people will nickle and dime you to death

We've all got to admit, it would be nice if I made more sense.

One of my favorite things about being a nanny is the little scraps of secret knowledge Monstruo Uno shares with me that start building a picture of the times when I'm not around. The other day as I was putting on Uno's shoes to take him and Dos to the museum he starts whispering, "I can't go near Daddy's car because if I do I get a BIG spank! Something something something I just got a soft spank, but I can't get inside Daddy's car otherwise my bum will fall off, that's what Daddy said." All this whispered as if he was letting me in on the secret of how he and his friends had found a treasure chest.

I'm glad his Dad warned him his bum would fall off, rather his bum than other things that could happen with five year olds and cars.

the story of gently untwining two people

I am completely untwained, untwined, unwound (in other words, single) and wound up again because the only thing I know to do is to move on. I would rather stand in a tray of brownies than eat them.

This doesn't mean I don't lay awake five (or ten) minutes longer at night and listen to the Beatles more, but I can't very well drop my New Years Resolution* now. I might have accidentally made a metaphor about making mistakes when we (who are now un-we: he and she) were taking off the back tire of my bike (which I tried to sufficiently apologize for, I really didn't mean to imply anything of the kind, I loved every minute, even the brutally honest ending), but I learned I love this vulnerable loving thing, especially now that the days are being all springly goldenized.

My goal this week is to be effervescently charming.

example of effervescent charm

...and to remove someone from my speed dial.........








*Be still, hearts of my parents, my NYR is to kiss more (which is largely metaphorical)

johnny tsunami and the baroque curls

There's a man in range of my hometown newspaper who writes in editorials all the time about how rockets are ruining our planet. Apparently if we did not disobey the laws of speed and sound our weather would be calmer.

My Madre says maybe we'll get to heaven someday and be surprised to find out that rockets really were the cause of so much meteorological havoc.

I hope he never quits writing editorials.

That picture makes me feel horribly vulnerable. I can't take my eyes off it.

slippers

I couldn't have read this at a better time in my life.

F & G and you and me

Remember when I was 17 and trying to mobilize a small town in the middle of nowhere (my dear, sweet nowhere) to buy cows for people in South East Asia who had lost a lot from the 2004 tsunami. And how I would call awareness to Darfur and jihads and how murderous photos of children with the starving puff-belly look are? (You can imagine I enjoyed being co-editor-in-chief of the school newspaper to have such a forum every month.)
I think I failed at all of that.

And that's maybe OK.

I was a real harping soap box kid in high school. And no one ever cared much except the elderly ladies who would talk to my mom when they went to the library.

I just got a letter today showing that somebody remembered that I had been a part of their life and it was a good thing and I think that made every minute of [insert descriptive word here] high school worth it.

"All you need is love, doo da doo doo doo, All you need is love, doo da doo doo doo, All you need is luh-ha-ha-huv--"

Love,
Marge

ALERT:
anyone into Bobby McFerrin? Like sayyyy $30 worth?

Dear Nokia:

I've been having some problems with my phone. You see, my vocabulary is apparently bigger than that of my phone. I know. I've checked my spelling in dictionaries, I'm right and your phone is unintelligent. Please, I can't be the only one texting visceral and chauvinistic.

Sincerely,
One who would like to fully utilize the English language.

P.S. Sorry for being pretentious.

all you're getting from me on this day of ex-porches

{voila}

not quite

but who wants to replicate in completia.
I just made that word up.



I love grapefruit. And grapefruit is my one and only.