first they shocked the horse with an electric current.

hey spider.


when I killed you tonight when I got home and saw you were still in my bathroom, well I'm sorry. I meant it when I said "but that's just not where you're supposed to live, dammit." And I knew I was committing an abominable sin. You're a spider but there's life and there's death and we have no idea what we're doing. I'm not being facetious this time, I wish I were.


I've got hope these things work out, I really believe they do–  but you know, it's still such a fallen thing.

Can't you all just see how divine you and everything and everybody else is/are?


from m, who apologizes for being such a dramatic, somber child but sometimes it takes you a while to get back in balance after watching a film of the slaughter of various kinds of animals (the baby cows are the worst), especially if you're the type of person who can't help but think about all the other horrible things that happen in the world. there's beauty and there's glory and there's hope and I love humanity but. This is why I need Christ. You've all got your own ideas but I need mine.

Sometimes I imagine I'm a little girl again, back in my Grandma's basement watching the first film by Norman McClaren I had ever seen. 

God, do you close your eyes sometimes?


read this.

voodoo in my basement*

I've let nature run its course. In my house, at least, but probably on my face as well. Though I'm not entirely sure what that would mean.

Instead of battling every spider that starts puttering in my bathroom I've just started watching them. It seems highly ineffective to start stomping on all of them because more will just keep coming, like zombies or Greekly invented monsters. Instead now I just watch them, resigned to the idea of sharing a space with them.

This new attitude of lazy pragmatism is probably engendered by all the time spent on my back porch, the hybrid of the in and out of doors. I've become used to finding everything I own covered in pollen and to sometimes being distracted by a stray bumble bee that can't find its way out for all the screened windows. And then there are the spiders. I try to pay little heed to the white webs catching all the leaves in the corners of the porch. A couple of times the little monsters have crawled too close and then I've gone for the shoe smacking and yelling discourse against creepers.

But mostly, I do nothing.

Weird.

*such a good song.

hunted by arachnids

The day in which happily find myself in the middle of nowhere and I work pleasantly until I discover a large black spider settling into my bag yet I manage to remain calm, gently dump everything out over the rocks, put them back in one by one (excluding spider) and avoid being killed or killing anything else.
Until twenty minutes later and I find that same spider has sought out my foot, then I smash it, all without swearing.

Danged human hunters.

But I was so impressed by my bravery I decided I was finally ready to face la biblioteca. On my way home from my new favorite nowhere I checked out: The Book of the Spider: from arachnophobia to the love of spiders by Paul Hillyard.
Right next to arachnids and insects were the birds. I told myself not to look too deeply because I'm trying to learn this new skill of focusing and not being scattered shallowly over many topics...but if you saw something entitled The Bedside book of Birds what would you do? Duh.






the above picture is from Montana's Gallatin Canyon. It's a favorite drive of mine.

bursting, addended

I'm facing escalating pressure from G.O., who is actually the O.G. of G.O.G., and from my Mom to write to you.

Plus it's sometimes very nice to be Marge Bjork. Like right now.

There is the constant threat of spider attack in my basement now. I found one on the wall by my head when I was laying in bed last night. I immediately screamed and jumped into my roommate's bed and made her kill it for me as I hyperventilated. I'm not sure which I am more afraid of: the encroaching spiders or the brain damage that could result if I continue to use roach spray to kill them. Brain damage would be a pretty horrible loss, I'm pretty pretentious about my brain. The other night I was remembering how, being the baby of the family I like to have my family's attention TOUT LE TEMPS, so on this particular family trip I was trying to charm my sister until she finally couldn't take it anymore and said, "Can you please be self contained!" So I started singing about being in a tupperware. But it just hit me, some five-six years later, of course in my family we wouldn't say something normal like "Quit it!" "Leave me alone" "Look what you did ya little jerk!" No. We say things like "please be self-contained." The more syllables the better, I say.

I can't help but be serious lately. So can you forgive me when I get gushy and say you're all pretty damn amazing. Don't doubt it, don't forget it. No one is cooler than you. My roommate, her sister, and I burned Twilight the other night*. The book. It's a great laugh for pretentious literary kids, you know, to burn it, but there was actually a real need deep down in my soul. E, my roommate, and I had been reading Twilight out loud to each other for a cheap laugh. But we got to the part where character B thinks that she's not good enough for character Vampire and I couldn't take it anymore. I've seen that too much. If you think you're not good enough for a Vampire, call me up and I'll set aside my battle against the dead horses and we'll kick it. Because me and God in Heaven have a hard time knowing that Vampire has got a hold on you. Then we'll kick the Vampire. No. Then you'll kick the Vampire.

Anyway, whenever I've been party to book burning, I've always been amazed at how beautiful the process is. It's a good thing I like reading books so much and I believe in rabble and rebellion and conformity and have a high ambiguity tolerance because otherwise I could join in with Chuchompfsky in Azbiristan and burn books for a living.

You start off by ripping the paperback covers off. Newer books have glossy resistant paper covers and need to be prodded and pleaded into burning. Then you rip the book into smaller stacks of paper. Start a few pages kindling at the edges. As the tops burn down and off and the flame dies down to embers you start digging through to find the untouched stacks of paper. Once you start to fan them out, blow on them and the flames will jump to life. The page will start turning darker and bubble up and shrivel into itself. I'd like to film the process sometime.

well...

fin. That's the french word for end.

love you,

Marge

* I respectfully do not like the Twilight series and do not presume nor wish to make fun of people who do. Please feel free to love every page of it. Amen to you.

****"Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For Thus saith the Lord: Ye have sold yourselves for naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money."
3 Nephi 20:37,38

Iraq, a rack, aracna, faux be uh

I live in a basement. It's "finished" because it has carpet in my bedroom which is perfectly acceptable to me because I am hopelessly romantically in love with cheep little nanook 'n crannied hovels. I can fill in all the cracks with books and scarves and drape the oatmeal floor in my lovely rugs and paint the walls with my crafty fabrics and old time photos. That, madame, is how I make a home, hurrah.
But when I was arranging the furniture (cinder blocks and 100 year old box springs) to my delight, I remember what basement stands for: SPIDERS. Oh no. Oh no. No, no no. I called my parents (yes, I'm twenty one, emphasis on ONE) who spent un demi heur on the phone convincing me the spiders wouldn't kill me and none of them had actually tried to run at me. I might have told you this story five times before.
OK. I will be sensible, I breathe deeply and remind myself. I now just yell at spiders as I search for things with which to pound them down.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON MY TOILET PAPER?!?!! UNACCEPTABLE!!! GET OUT OF MY BATHROOM!!!
YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO MY CLOTHES!! I FEEL DESECRATED!!!
This is good, I have decided, it gets all my yellings out since there are too few people to yell at here.

But...ce soir, I stay up late late late to death's door to finish my sacrificial worksheets for France. I sit with knees a-folded up a jimbo-like with books piled in me lap and I résumé and synonym my eyes out until it looks like lint is crawling across my knee....THAT'S NOT LINT!!!! SPIDERS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO CRAWL ON MEEEEEEEEE!!!

UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!