Songs I Hate #1

"Love the One You're With" -- Stephen Stills

"If you can't be with the one you love, honey / love the one you're with / love the one you're with...."

I was driving home today and this song came on the radio.  I usually just make a face and switch the channel or make fun of it by singing in an irritating voice, but today I decided to blog it when I got home.  Thus commences my list of songs I hate.  Don't expect to see a lot of these or to see them pop up sequentially.....

What bothers me about this song is the whole message of it.  It basically reduces love to a reaction to boredom. To me, it's like the guy is saying, "Hey, I'm horny and I'm bored.  Oh, man!  Bummer!  My sweetie isn't here!  What now?" (Looks around, sees miscellaneous woman, shrugs)  "You'll do...."  And if that isn't just the very SOUL of romance.....

I don't find the lyrics freewheeling and fun.  I find them stupid and demeaning to everything love is supposed to be about.  How about this:  "If you can't be with the one you love....F'ing WAIT."  How about that?  Because call me crazy, but last time I looked up a definition of love in the book, that's what it sort of said, chief.

/rant

San Francisco Again

I simply stopped having time to blog.  That's how good the trip got.

I'll talk about some of my favorite parts.

We went to a restaurant called Farallon.  It's a 3.5 star restaurant built in and over the old municipal swimming pool.  The decor alone was worth the trip.  The arches are all cast iron and the ceiling is a tile mosaic.  Those big lamps are glass sea urchins.  It was gorgeous.  The food was incredible, too, if expensive.  That was to be expected in that sort of establishment.  My one great regret was that I couldn't have a glass of wine to go with my meal since we were in a place that specialized in wine wonderfulness.  I think everybody should eat in a place like this occasionally.  It sort of offsets the airline food and $8 sandwiches one has to eat at the conference center from time to time.

Another major high point of the trip for me was the car tour we took.  Two of the teachers who went with me met a gentleman who offered to show us around in a Town Car.  We took him up on it, and we had a very awesome tour.  He took us all over town and let us stop and get out to take pictures.  He drove us up to Twin Peaks, out to the Sutro district, down Lombard Street, everywhere, really.  He told us all about what we were seeing.  He was originally from Louisiana, and he said he just wanted to make sure we didn't leave without seeing the city.  Without his help, we would have, too.  Our only other option would have been the "hop-on, hop-off" bus.  We didn't see everything I wanted to; I didn't get to the Chinatown gates or City Lights bookstore, but we saw so much that I don't consider myself shortchanged at all.  I am going to work on the pictures this afternoon, get them processed and uploaded if I can.

During that tour, I got to see the Golden Gate Bridge.  I have heard about it all my life from my father.  He spent part of his growing-up life in California and did military training there, too.  To see the bridge finally was to make something I had only a thousand stories for a tangible thing.  The bridge itself is also a lovely thing.  So often when you have longed to see something, it somehow fails to measure up; the image you've carried in your head is somehow larger or more grand than any real thing could ever possibly be.  I don't think this could ever be the case with the Golden Gate.  It was stately, imposing, inspiring, and grand as it stretched up into the sky.  I think I could spend a hundred days with my camera trying to capture its elegance.  They would be pleasant days, indeed.

I also got to go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  I didn't see all five floors, but what I did see was amazing.  I don't respond to all forms of modern art; some of it does not move me at all.  I find it interesting, though, to see what people decide to create.  I did get to see several new artists that I loved and some pieces by some artists that I have never heard of that I really liked.  I love De Chirico, and I got to see one of his that I didn't know about, The Vexations of the Thinker, that may be one of my favorites by him, several lovely pieces by Frida Kahlo, and an entire exhibition of early photography by Muybridge. 

I loved the feel of San Francisco.  It seemed in my short time there to be a city that appreciated beauty and art.  If they built something, they took the time to put it together well and make it lovely.  Their downtown was vibrant, their old buildings full and refurbished.  The civic heart of San Francisco had in one mighty square in buildings of equal might and magnificence a City Hall, a Symphony Hall, a Library, and a Civic Theater.  I always think you can tell a great deal about the soul of a city by how it treats the arts, whether it provides a place for them, ignores them, whether they are seen as a necessity or an extra.  San Francisco very much is in that first class of cities.  Its soul thrives on art.

I could have lived there quite easily.  Even the clothing style suited me.  The weather suited me.  I could have melted into that city like liquid butter.  I realize that part of my feeling was the fascination of tourism and that the day-to-day living there might be quite different, but so much of what I saw there was so much of what I wanted.  California, of course, has the worst educational crisis of all right now, a state government that is completely bankrupt, so this is not the time to pull up stakes and move realistically.

I guess I'll have to say that I have a new dream city now, I guess, a new place to think of running.  I don't think it's an accident that it is so close to Japan, that so many Japanese hands have helped to shape it.  Maybe that's part of why I loved it.  Maybe that's why it felt so secretly familiar to me.  Maybe that's why I wanted to be there and that it was so hard to come home in the end.  All I know is that of all the big cities I've been to in the U.S., it is the one that has called to me the loudest, and when I came home wearing my obligatory tacky tourist "I (heart) SF" tee shirt, I really meant it.

San Francisco, Day 1

Yesterday, mostly I went to conferences and walked.  And walked.  And walked.  I saw very little that was of historic or touristy value.  I endured. 

Today, though.  Today....

Even if I have to beat people with one of my friend's storybook "long handled spoons," I am getting out of that convention center some and going to see this city. 

Because I think I like it here.

There is some indefinable energy about it I find really appealing.  I was very nervous about coming to California, to tell you the truth.  My experiences in Los Angeles were BAD.  People here, however, don't appear to be made out of silicone and attitude. They are, in fact, friendly, smiling, helpful.  And the mix of languages, cultures, ethnicities, is wonderful.  It's so nice to be in a place where I can hear other languages, many other languages, washing around me like a soft sea, none of it more, of course, than the sound of Japanese which is everywhere. The architecture is jaw-dropping in places, but not so much that it is...rude, if you follow.  The streets enclose and meander.  It is walkable (testament to that borne in the blister on the bottom of my right foot; my Chucks failed me). 

They have such a selection of things here.  There is art everywhere in that casual, everybody-should-have-it way that I think all cities should embrace, and those lovely little specialty shops that sell things that bring joy to my soul.  If they can exist here as they cannot at home, that means there are people here like me, people who also revel in them, too.  I like the thought of that.

There is also the fact that I probably, quite literally, could walk out of the front of this hotel, throw a rock in any direction, and hit a museum.  Not that I've had a moment to go in any of them, but how unusual.  How charming.  It makes me greedy for more time here. 

I am eating breakfast as I blog, Nutella on an English muffin that I bought in a wonderful market in a downstairs food court in a shopping center nearby.  I also started my day with two mikan from a big net bag from that same place.  I'll stroll out on my way to the convention center and pick up a green tea latte from the Starbucks in the lobby (since, as in every major city, they are ubiquitous here).  This is much more the way I'd like to live.  Don't get me wrong; I'm not foolish enough to think this place is some sort of utopia with no drawbacks, problems, or sacrifices.  It's just that sometimes while I'm struggling even to find fountain pen ink cartridges or a showing of a film that's won an Academy award but hasn't been deemed worthy to be shown in the august theater of Podunk, my little heart sort of yearns for living a little more like this.

Life on Other Worlds

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little." ~ George Carlin

A Long Flight

I still don't like flying.  Or rather, I like the sensation of flight, but I don't like the mechanics of getting on the plane, getting through security, fighting with the seats that are too small, and the "thousand natural shocks" that air traffic is heir to.  We now even have to pay for food in-flight, and this tiny indignity bothered me more than it should.

I read most of the trip, my Kindle once again proving worth its weight in gold.  Once we got on the ground and sorted luggage, shuttles, hotels, and so forth, we meandered around to the conference center, registered, found food, and bought a hat. 

Now I'm tired, jet lagged, and trying to figure out what I'm going to do tomorrow.  It seems utterly impossible that I'm going to wake up tomorrow on the other side of the country.  Maybe it will be more real in the light of day.  For now, I think bed is in order.  Maybe I'll be more interesting tomorrow.

All Things Change

I'm walking out.
I'm closing doors.
I'm not going to play
your game tonight.

I  can see you now
clearly.  Open eyes
at last.  All your gold
chipped, flaked, and pyrite.


You're just a faded
photocopy, a
thing tarnished, broken,
a stereotype.


You smirk as you watch,
pretending concern
but, ah, you don't quite
bother hiding that knife.

And you want to say
I've not been patient.
Grumble and sulk that
I haven't been kind.

But if we're honest
You've feasted and grown,
taken advantage
And left me the rinds.

So ready yourself
because changes are
sometimes unsettling
storms that crash right through.

Why don't we phrase it
this way (politely)
Inversion of that
Well-Known Golden Rule

You need not expect
anything from me
that I have not learned,
wasn't taught by you.

On Writing

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." ~ Josh Billings

Free

I feel better than I have in six months.  I know it's tempting fate to say that, but it's true.  After I got sleep last night and got the...um...giraffes to settle down somewhat (I know that last entry has got to be an all-time classic)...I feel wonderful.  It's fantastic. 

Other things are settling down, too.  Certain issues that have been up in the air awhile now are resolving themselves.  Peace is coming.  It's a rare lull and I'm happy.  I love it.

I've just put up a rather fierce-looking owl on my door as a part of a State-Testing incentive we're doing here, and while I don't know that he will encourage anyone to do better on that silly thing, he makes me grin.  A friend of mine brought me a sweet small owl from a trip he went on, so two new white owls came into my life today.  That, too, seems to be a harbinger of good change.

I am about to go get the necessary elements to make "happies" for my students tomorrow as they head into the writing test.  It's still sunny out; I'm leaving the pile of papers, much diminshed by recent bouts of grading I've been able to do since I've been able to FOCUS my mind actually instead of simply sit with it wandering in misery or pain, for tomorrow. 

I feel free and it's a delight.  I hope and I pray that this lasts. 

Tiny Hooves

I have only slept for about two hours in the past twenty-four, so this is going to get weird quick.  As my great role-model says, "Fasten your seatbelts.  It's going to be a bumpy night."  (God, I LOVE Bette Davis...)

The Topamax does NOT like it when I don't sleep.  I need more sleep than usual anyway, and it makes me need an extra dollop.  When it doesn't get it, it gets mad.  In fact, it gets right pissy about it.  Subtle, but really, really pissy.  I was warned about this, but I don't think the doctor managed to convey quite the full array of it, somehow.....

It started last night about three when I finally lay down to try to get what sleep I could before my iPhone alarm started chiming in that silly, faux-cheerful way it has, safe in the knowledge that I would never smack anything I depend on as much as it off its charging cradle no matter what the provocation.  My feet got cold and I could not get warm.  I mean, icy.  I tried everything.  I had enough clothing and blankets.  I even had assorted cattage on the bed.   I was freezing. 

This morning, or, as I like to think of it, "moments later when the alarm sounded," I got up, dragged myself into the shower, and I was still cold.  The shower helped, but all day, I've been off on temperature.  Worse yet, there has been this little rill of weirdness to accompany it.  It's like there is a herd of ...something...with hooves...racing under the surface of my skin.  I said earlier on FB that it was horses.  I'm revising that to be giraffes.  I think I can stand it if it's tiny delicate-legged giraffes.  It's not normal, and I'm definitely in need of a LONG, good night's rest if that is the preferable option, but this feeling is just freaking me all the way out.

I'm going to go try to eat something a little more formidable than the two bits of nothing that composed my breakfast (ha -- the Nutella ran out, of course) and my lunch (I had...something...cottage cheese maybe?) and see if the giraffes will quit circling long enough for me to go to pottery and clean up that greenware figure I started before Spring Break.  Maybe they'll....graze or something.  Whatever it is that giraffes do when they're soothed. 

Yeah.  I told you it was going to get weird.  I need a lot of sleep. 

More War

I can't watch the news today.  I just can't bring myself to click or view or even scan a headline.  CNN is sending its little updates to my phone in urgent email dings, and I want to throw my trusty iPhone across the room, hide it in the back of my closet, run away from it. 

Yesterday, when I came stumbling out of the MRI, my mother and another woman were staring at the obligatory waiting room televisions with something like dread on their faces.  It took me some time to clue in to the rhetoric falling from the Commander in Chief's lips, but I put together with the help of the scrolling titles and labels that he was talking about Libya, saying that America would not lead a military action, that it was not our place to do that. 

Today, as I woke and checked my email, the first messages that greet my eyes tell me that we are now engaged in bombing there. 

I cannot say that the people of Libya don't deserve a government that does not oppress them.  I cannot say that their current leadership is a good or just one.  I just have to wonder why, when my own nation's military is dedicated to conflicts in at least two other active zones of conflict, we have stepped into a third.  Is there nobody else in the entire world who can do these things?  (Notice I am not getting into the issue of whether or not it was necessary or why we might really be doing this.  I am not going to turn over that rock and watch all the little philosophical debates run around....)

I think about every single young man and woman who graduates out of my classes and goes into the military, every person I know who serves as a career part of the armed forces in some way, and every time we lift another banner, sally forth in another grand crusade, the chances of those people coming home in a flag-draped box goes up again, and again, and again.  I know they know that when they sign up.  I know they want to serve God, Country, and the Corps (or the Army, or whathaveyou), but I just can't help but feeling that this loyalty, honestly given and rare in this day and age, is being managed badly. 

Just because you CAN do a thing does not mean that you SHOULD do a thing, does not mean that it is WISE to do a thing.  I think that all too often, when history looks back on war, on the devastation that comes from it, the sons and fathers, the mothers and daughters who will never come home again, on the broken countrysides and the scarred landscapes, I think that the reasons why they start frequently begin to look like things that should have been taken care of some other way.

I have said it before, and I will say it again.  Those rabid dogs who want to fight need to be taken and given a very sharp stick and put in a deep pit with slick, high sides.  Let them stab each other to their hearts' content.   Let them get as much blood and death and violence as they can possibly need.  Let them howl and rage and rip and one another until there is a clear victor.  Then put that bastard down.  Let the rest of us get on with living.  We have enough other problems out here among us to deal with without the warmongers adding to it, I think.

Moon

More Fiction

__________________________________________

The world is a subtle palette of blues and greys.  The air is soft, and the breath of Spring is in it, subtle, infectious, delightful.  The moon is rising, perfect and pale, a disc of bone slowly manifesting to dominate the horizon. It is impossible to resist that ancient lunar pull, and I can feel it tingling through my blood like a surge of adrenaline.   It is a night too perfect to stay inside, a night too perfect to spend in front of the endless reruns or sacrificed to other distractions.

If I step out the side door, I almost think I’ll see you crouched there, silvered by the surreal light, made into something not quite of this earth, if ever you can be said to be.  You’d be in new-growing tender grass, idly plucking at the clover with your fingertips, waiting there for me to come out as if it had been a foregone conclusion, an inevitable thing that I would.  And if I came to you there, felt the wetness of night’s dew clinging to my feet and ankles, slipped my hand into yours, I wonder what change would come, what magic would begin.  

Because of course it is a night for magic.  It is a night for transformation.  Here while the stars spin above us, while the moon covers everything in a cloak of wonder, suddenly all things are possible.  I might unfurl great black raven’s wings and fly away from everything that troubles me as I so often long to do, might soar to touch the face of the white sphere above us.  Wisdom might be given to me.  I might interpret the song of the wind in the leaves.  

You’d look into my eyes, smile a little at my whimsy without ever a word having been spoken between us, touch my cheek gently.  And that would be the truest magic of all, that you could know me, understand that a night of such natural wonder fills my soul to the fullest measure, fills my imagination with impossible things, and love me anyway.

What I Want Right Now

A list presented in no particular order....

• a banana milkshake from Sonic -- even though all food is currently unappealing or actually "of the devil," this actually sounds good.  I wish I didn't have to drive more today to get one because I also want....
• my head to stop hurting -- yes, indeedy.  I have another damn migraine.  Which leads me to my next request for....
• a migraine medicine that will actually make this stuff stop -- somebody somewhere has got to have something that will make my head stop hurting.  Even if it's a bullet.  And this of course leads me to thoughts of tomorrow and the fact that I also want....
• my MRI to show that there's nothing up there but what should be -- even if that's mostly rusted wires and dryer lint. And currently a poem that won't come out.  So I guess I'd also like....
• this poem to come out right and be something worthy instead of crap -- because everything I've done lately has been flushable.  Maybe I need to fall in love and have some drama to kick start the poetry engine in which case I guess I also need....
• The "You" I've been writing to (not in the bit about the past.  Dear God, let's not confuse that one with the "You" I write to in my fiction pieces.  Two separate second persons...) to show up at my door on this moon-sodden night with open arms, a heart full of passion, and....
• A banana milkshake from Sonic

See how that came full circle?  Symmetry, my friends.  Symmetry.  

The King's Speech

We have but one regular movie theater here in Podunk.  Its usual bill of fare includes anything with "Jackass" or "Saw" in its title and all things put out by Pixar.  Basically, if it's animated, if people get shot or punch each other, or if the plot took less than fifteen minutes to dash off, you can be sure it will be in heavy rotation in our cinema. 

I'm sure those films have a place.  They are frequently big box office hits, after all.  Some of them manage to be charming, entertaining ways to spend a little bit of time, have an evening out with friends (or a date...I seem to remember that being a use for them, too), or blur away a little of the world outside.  None of those things in and of themselves are bad. 

But a film can be more.  It can be more than catharsis or slapstick jokes.  It can be more than an excuse to hold a hand in the dark or have a big screen babysitter for a couple of hours.  Really great film can show us something about ourselves, about the human condition, can inspire in the way that great literature does since they pull from the same core of experience and leave the viewer with the sense that he or she is better for having seen it in some way. 

I think this type of film needs a chance to be seen here in Podunk, too.  Our local theater owner does not show these, though.  One usually has to go to another city more than an hour away to see movies that are "arty."  Ironically, one of these, The King's Speech, just won the Oscar for Best Picture and it never even played here.  Imagine that.  A movie the industry thinks is so important that it was given its very highest prize (more than one, actually) and our little movie theater owners in their divine wisdom said, "Nope.  Not any good.  Not bringing it here."  Fortunately, I got a chance to see it today at the beautiful old movie palace downtown.  The management there agrees with me that people deserve a chance to see something other than the trite, the cliched, and the predictable.

The King's Speech is indeed a movie that leaves its viewers, if they are paying attention in the least, anyway, better.  I don't think it can help but do so.  As the story unfolds, as the characters unfold, we are drawn in; we feel with them.  It is a story about fear and conquering it.  It doesn't show that as something that is a simple process.  It doesn't show it as a one-time thing, a switch-click solution with a shining hero who has nothing left to overcome at the end.  Instead, it shows a beautifully complicated and layered quest that continues, and in that perseverance, nobility above and beyond anything bestowed by birth or title is revealed.

I will order this movie when it comes out next month on DVD.  I think it is going to become a favorite of mine.  It just made me feel good to see it.  I can't imagine why our local theater made the decision not to field it, why they thought that it would not fare well here.  I can't imagine anyone anywhere not responding to the hope that is in that film.  Of course, if all you want in a movie is big explosions or gratuitous nudity, I suppose it might not be your cup of tea.  In that case, they will, of course, be glad to take your money across town....

Out of Print Clothing's Book Madness

I've become addicted to a website.  Yes, another one.  Out of Print Clothing, already one of my favorite online "window shopping" locations and maker of my Nineteen Eighty Four original cover t-shirt, has started a book voting competition called Book Madness.  They have a field of 64 classic books and visitors to their site can vote for their favorites daily, narrowing the field in an elimination bracket.  Sound familiar?  Hmmm....

The voting mimics the NCAA tourney quite well.  Some of the matchups are no-brainers.  Who in their right mind would pick The Call of the Wild over Pride and Prejudice?  You know Austen is going to wipe the floor with anyone she steps onto the court...er...shelf?...with....  And there have been some last-minute, down-to-the-wire heartbreakers, too, just as you would see in any lesser playoff that might be going on elsewhere.  My beloved Their Eyes Were Watching God went out in the first round to On the Road, proof that when two teams...works...whatever....are evenly matched, anything can happen on a given day.  (Boo, though.  Very Boo.) 

Right now, the 3rd round of preliminaries is going on.  If you like books, I'd mosey on over and vote.  Spend some time.  Look at Out of Print's t-shirts and sweatshirts, too.  They have wonderful stuff and this competition is a hoot. I find great amusement in it, as you can probably tell.  Tomorrow's  bracket promises to offer the toughest decisions for me.  I'll have to choose between Slaughterhouse Five and The Scarlet Letter.  Nobody should have to pick between those, right? 

Back

I lost yesterday entirely.  Another absolutely beautiful day slithered through the cracks of a migraine attack.  I woke up late and already achy, tried to ignore it, tried to sleep it off twice, tried to medicate it, and ultimately failed on all fronts.  The pain just kept getting worse and worse.  I remember very little of yesterday except that at one point I laughed a lot at something.  I wish I could remember what it was and whether or not it was really funny. 

I finally took a phenergan and went to bed.  Even the the light from my bedside clock was too much, but fortunately it has a dimmer switch.  I didn't even like the green glow from the charging light on my Kindle. I pulled the covers over my stupid aching head, all the cats piled up on me, and the phenergan did its job and rendered me unconscious.  I woke up about two, and all the little gears and levers in my brain seemed to have reset themselves.  When I got up to start my day today, I seem to be mostly okay, or at least as much as I am lately. 

I think today is going to be a good day.  I am going to see a movie today, something I've been trying to do for two days now.  I am going to assume I have turned some kind of magical "corner" with yesterday's headache as they always say and that I'm adjusting to this new dose now.  Otherwise, well, this is just ridiculous, isn't it?

Dream Tree

Found this today.  It is, of course, a Van Gogh.  It's called The Mulberry Tree.  I wish I were sitting under this today.  I have a lot to do.  I need to clean my house, but I don't have much energy.  I'm trying to do it in spurts.  I feel better today than the past two days.  So far, at least my eyes are focusing better today.  It would just be a good day to be on a quilt under the leaves of this somewhere.  It looks like the kind of tree that would take care of a person, the kind of tree that burns with holy fire and dreams and is not consumed.  Sort of a burning bush of a tree, perhaps.  Yeah.  I'd like to be under this today staring up at the movement of light through the leaves.  Maybe I could be healed.

Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

Japan is one of the great loves of my life.  I spent two years there, and what is happening there now makes me cry every time I tune in the news or look online at new developments.  Japan has certainly known the bitter taste of tragedy many times in its past, although this stands as one of the greatest it has ever known and is still continuing to happen.  The Japanese people have known for so long that a quake of this type was coming, have lived with the constant daily shadow of it hanging over them.  The lengths they have gone to prepare for it and the levels of innovation they have applied to that preparedness actually have kept it from being as bad as it might have been in many other parts of the world, something I don't think enough people are giving enough credit to them for.  The incredible preparations they made probably kept Tokyo upright when, if it had happened to a comparable city in the US, it would have leveled it to the ground.  Nevertheless, no amount of preparation can stop all the destruction of a natural disaster, and now that it has arrived with all its horror, I pray for that beautiful nation, and I grieve with them as event after event unfolds there.  This pitiful little effort of mine is the fruit of that feeling.  It is a work in progress.  Its name, the name of this post, is a Japanese proverb I have always found inspirational in my own struggles, insignificant as they are when compared to what is going on there now.

________________________________________________

Rise, Great Sun, Rise

though you are tired and bleeding

though every constant

has crumbled into shaking uncertainty.

Morning must come at last

even though the night has been

long, dark, storm-filled.

Your heart is steel

tempered and folded a thousand times

forged according to the secrets of a hundred generations

supple and strong

made to take every blow

made to bend and never break.

Nature has ever been your fickle mate.

You courted her always knowing

that the same beauty that today

adorns herself in golden gingko fans

and tucks sprays of delicate cherry blossoms

into her hair like a shy and elegant bride

would one day claw and spurn

in the raging howling madness

of the demonic jealous lover

shaking the very foundations of the universe,

destroy the thing she prizes most.

Stand, Samurai, Stand.

And if this is the seventh fall,

then the eighth rising

is now at hand.

The brutal past has prepared you

all too well for what it is to pull yourself up

from the nothing that is left after

the passing of the hand of man

and the wrath of sea, sky, and earth.

Go now to the great still deepness inside you

nothing can ever harm or destroy.

Rekindle the heart of fire

burning low now, banked

but that can never be extinguished

as long as there is a grain of Nihon left.

Turn your eyes to what remains

find strength in what you have been

in what you forever are

and begin again.

Topamax Again

All told, I've slept about 15 hours in the last 24.  Food, anything that isn't liquid and very, very cold, seems like a supremely bad idea.  Yeah.  It's Topamax again.  I'm up long enough to eat food my parents brought me and watch a little TV and then it's right back to bed for me.  I hope I adjust to these new doses faster than I did to going on it originally.

Change Required

I got up this morning, put on comfortable clothes, and headed in to the doctor's office.  On the way to town, I heard about the earthquake in Japan.  Instantly, my heart was in my throat.  All anybody would say at first was that there had been a massive quake and tsunami.  They wouldn't say where.  They didn't say anything about Japan except that Tokyo was in disarray.  I couldn't get any news that didn't relate to how the mostly Japan-event was about to impact the United States.  The mighty giant was once again busy gazing at its own navel.  I know the wave was headed this way, but it had already happened there.  There are people here with loved ones there.  Would it have been so much to have shown us Japan, too?

My new neurologist is wonderful, just as calming and personable as my old one was.  It's comforting when you're dealing with things to do with the inner working of your brain to have someone like that. I hope I can stay with this one.  When my last doctor had his stroke and had to leave the practice, it was such a loss.

During the appointment, I had a couple of other unexpected pieces of news awaiting me.  One was a relief.  He believes the thing I saw in the cafeteria that day was a different kind of aura.  Since I see halos around lights anyway before onset, and since I had such a severe headache that afternoon, he thinks it was not anything to be overly concerned about.  He said he has patients who see things like that frequently.  I hope I never do again.  I do not want to see things that are not really present.

The other two things were not good.  My blood pressure was quite high.  Of course, I was stressed out, both because of the problems in Japan and not knowing and because of being in the doctor's office.  Even with all that, it should not have been that high.  I am afraid that it is just running high now all the time.  He told me to buy a blood pressure cuff and keep track of it.  Now I have stress because I'm worried about my blood pressure being high which is going to make my damn blood pressure high.  I am not fond of this acronym, but it fits so perfectly here:  FML.

He ordered blood tests and a new MRI since I haven't had one since 2007, so they'll roll me up inside the claustrophobia tube, let the monkeys bang their tin drums, and see if there's anything rattling around inside my empty skull this coming Friday.  He gave me some drugs so I won't care that I'm basically in a big cylindrical coffin with a mask on.  I barely remember last time.  I think I slept through the whole thing.  I know Mom had to drive me.  Somebody will have to take me this time, too.  Whatever pill he wrote me a scrip for will probably make me too goofy to drive; everything does, really.  I have no tolerance to anything.

The second piece of news was that he is upping my Topamax, doubling it.  I remember all too well the last time I was getting used to a new dosage.  It made me sleepy, nauseous, sick, disoriented, a real festival of joy.  I don't know if I will have those problems or not since I already have the stuff in my system.  I guess we'll see starting tonight.

He talked to me about stress being a trigger.  I have to do something to decrease the amount of stress in my life or this is going to keep happening to me and my health; all my health is going to get worse.  My GP is worried about this, too.  I just wish I knew how.  So many things seem to be so far out of my ability to change.  I feel dazed.  I want to run away, but I can't.  What do I do now?  I know I have to resolve it all myself, but I could use a little deus ex machina right now in the worst way....

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom

(with apologies to John Lee Hooker)

I am not a Nervous Nellie when it comes to weather.  I like thunderstorms. They are enervating, invigorating, and sometimes, depending on my mood, absolutely welcome.   I have stood on the high wide-open porches of GulfShores (when they still were there, pre-Katrina) and welcomed a Gulf Coast tempest with open arms.  I rode out hail and hurricane without being too frightened.  I like to be at our country cabin when storms roll in.

All that being said, tonight is making me twitchy.  The lightning is not that cloud-to-cloud kind.  It's wide as the sky and striking straight down in white-blue flashes that linger just a little too long.  My windchimes are clashing against each other on every side of the house as wind wraps around the house like the fingers of a hand. 

The school, before I left it, was creaking in the wind, massive solid old brick building that it is.  It was making those soft sounds I always associate with a large beast hunkering down on its foundations, curving its great back against the rain and storm.  Until I heard that shifting, I didn't realize how bad the weather really was.  That's when I decided I needed to come home, when I looked out and saw the huge oaks across the street bending and thrashing.

My small dog is hunkered behind my knees as I'm typing.  When the weather gets bad, he goes everywhere with me, a constant little golden shadow.  When I go to bed, he will wedge himself under it despite the fact that he doesn't quite fit.  I will hear the gentle chiming of his collar tags throughout the night.  The cats, all of whom will also be piled up on the bed trying to pretend they're not looking for comfort, will be annoyed by this.

It's a good night to look for comfort, actually.  I am thinking of crawling into bed early if for no other reason than giving myself the childish refuge  of warm covers that can be pulled over my head.  Oh, sure, I'll tell myself that it's because I didn't sleep well last night and that the satellite is out so there's really nothing else to do.  I'll tell myself it's because I'm going in there to read in comfort.  But really..... really....it's to get away from this window so I don't have to watch the lightning hit this hilltop anymore...... (shudder)

Wishing for Pegasus

While my students were writing a timed essay yesterday, I was shuffling stuff around my desk and my hand fell on a collection of Billy Collins.  I opened it with a smile, thinking about last summer's AP reading, and I looked at a poem or two.  The next thing I knew, I had read almost the whole collection, and I had that strange ache under my breastbone his poetry always gives me.  I moved to a collection by Tretheway that was there, too, and it only increased my wonder and dissatisfaction.  She wrote of my own soil, my own home, and I cannot even bring my pen to paper anymore. 

Everything that is inside me that used to be able to produce poems has withered and died.  I want to write, but there is never a moment that can be ripped way for it.  Every production that I manage to eke out on corners of notebooks or legal pads is trite, juvenile, horrible.  I hate it all, throw it all away, cannot bear to see it.  I don't want to write about love.  That would be a lie.  I don't want to write about what I do.  That would break my heart.  I feel like I'm wandering around with my pen in my hand aimlessly, doodling on the white surface of the world.

I am able to produce something creative with my camera, capture tiny frozen moments through the lens, but it's not nearly the same.  Those are just shards and shadows, not full songs, and while I love the Nikon and I love to go take pictures, I don't feel numb, don't feel that rush of light and, for lack of a more graceful term, hellyeah that I feel when I know I've managed to get what is in my soul out onto paper in the right words at last. I feel like I've lost a sense, like I was once able to see or hear, and now through some calamity, I'm going to have to go through the world without it. 

Maybe this is just another thing stress is taking from me.  Maybe I have done all I was ever going to be able to do with my amateurish attempt, and I should accept this as an end and lay my pen down with grace and walk away.  Something inside me just can't though, and it howls and rages, rattles the bars of its cage and cries in the nights of the full moon, mutters when sun comes up in despair.  I wonder if this wound will ever heal.

Backyard Birds

I took the time to fill birdfeeders today after I got back from Wal-Mart.  I have about seven feeders, not counting suet feeders or the "exotic" ones that hold cobs of corn or fruit on skewers, so it takes a little time to fill and rehang all that.  I could hear the cardinals and the chickadees up in the top of the live oak and the privet tangle chirping excitedly, telling me basically, "Hurry up and get it DONE.  We are hungry, and you are WAY BEHIND with this...." 

No sooner had my birdseed bucket and I disappeared into the house when they were already swooping down onto the fresh buffet.  As I always do, I stood at the porch door and watched them for a long while, enjoying their feathered delicacy and beauty.  Then I thought about my camera again.  I went and got it, put on my extra long zoom, tried to take a couple of pictures through the glass of the door.  The glass needs to be cleaned, though, and the angle wasn't right.  I decided to try my luck outside.

I eased the door open and all the birds flew away in alarm.  I sat down quietly on the porch steps and raised my camera, bracing my elbows on my knees.  And I sat.  And I sat.

It took fifteen minutes of being studied very carefully from a discrete distance before greed for the fresh birdseed overcame their natural timidity.  As they always are, the titmice and chickadees were first, fluttering in, stealing a seed, and flying away.  The cardinals were somewhat less trusting.  Eventually, they, too, came gliding down, and I was able to take some shots. 

It was a nice way to spend some time this afternoon, very peaceful.  I got one or two that I really like, including the one I posted here.  Maybe if I sit out there long enough, they'll just start ignoring me totally.  It would be one instance that I wouldn't mind being invisible at all.

Aerosmith Quotation Handmade Necklace

 

It will be mine.  Oh yes.  It will be mine.  Love the Pegasus, the poet's steed.  Love the Aerosmith.  Love the quote and the sterling silver.  It is in every way good.  Love, love, love....  If you also want one, you can get it from SentimentRedesigned on Etsy.  They also make pendants from a variety of other fonts of wisdom from Yeats to Franklin, from Thoreau to Joseph Campbell, and from Emily Dickinson to Pink Floyd if Aerosmith doesn't quite do it for you, personally.

Thinking About Bygone Days

I wrote this tonight because I was thinking about something from the past.  Not with a longing for it to return, you understand, but just sort of taking it out and tumbling it around in my hand like an old photograph, a curiosity from years over and done with.  This is the product of that musing.  

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I knew from the first time I saw you that there was something, even before I knew who you were, what you were…. I came laughing into the makeshift dojo for the first time, wobbling on polished hardwood as I tried to slip off my shoes with wet feet, and you looked up.  I felt it like a physical blow, even as I saw you hesitate in midstrike before bringing the shinai across your opponent’s do. 

And I did the only thing I knew how to do, the thing I always do.  I ran like hell.  I put up a wall.  I ignored you as hard as I could.  I was distant and polite.  Nothing as beautiful as you could ever belong to me.  

Imagine my surprise when you ran also.  Not away in the opposite direction as I’d expected but in pursuit. 

And what a subtle creature you were with that chase.  You moved slow, stealthy, a big cat stalking something timid and easily startled.  And the next thing I knew, we were there in the moonlight and you were leaning in the window of that old Jeep telling me that you thought I was beautiful, too.

It all ended in ashes, in pain, in lies.  Maybe it had to.  Maybe nothing that starts out with something that strikes like a clean sharp blade can ever do anything but leave a bleeding body in its wake.  In those ashes, however, there will always be one or two moments that shine like diamonds, something left unconsumed.  There will always be you and me in the moonlight, both of us beautiful, if only for that one brief moment before the clouds appeared and everything was darkness again.

Solitary Wanderings

I went shopping today.  I needed to get out of the house.  I started with a thoroughly unsatisfactory trip to get some new clothing (as I find all trips to buy clothing to be, really) thanks to the shoddy attitudes of the people who "waited on me," a term I use with the greatest of ironies.  Only when they realized that despite my refugee appearance that I was actually going to be a fairly large sale did they act like I had suddenly become visible.  By that time, I was pulling the charge card out of my wallet and slapping it down on the counter, thinking, "Oh MAN, I wish you worked on commission...."  You see, believe it or not, I've done the whole retail-clothing salesperson song and dance before, lads and lasses.  That isn't how you do it.  Grrr.....  Excuse me for not dressing like the cover of Vogue on a Saturday to go to shops here in Podunk when it's raining.  Excuse me for interrupting your own personal shopping and/or conversations taking place across the store.  Yes.  My Bad.  Next time, I will be sure to take my business elsewhere so as not to disturb you.

Anyway.

After I took care of that little chore, I went to my favorite junktique.  By this time, it was raining fit to flood something, but it was pleasant on the metal roof of the giant building.  There were lots of people in the flea market, but it's so large that it still wasn't crowded.  I stayed for several hours just taking the time to be solitary and unhurried, looking at whatever caught my fancy.  It was nice.  I wasn't in a very sociable mood, so the background roar of the rain and the empty stalls filled with oddments and antiques were the perfect location for me today.

I managed to find several things I like, as I always do when I go there, including two new pieces of furniture, a stool for my classroom to replace the rickety one that has been cobbled together twice now and is on, quite literally, its last legs, and a small library table that I can store books under here at home.  I love them, but they're very hard to find.  This one has lovely decoration on it, so I was glad to find it.  I brought home the obligatory owl as well, and a box to keep some stationery in that's been refurbished in a brilliant purple paint.

I saw a couple of other things I would have liked to have had, but really, if I can't use it actively, I am trying not to bring it home now.  With the exception of the owls and the PEZ I collect, I don't really do that with other things.  That's how you wind up with a house full of junk and nowhere to put it.  Until I can get the back of the house cleaned out, which is already filled up with junk that is not even my own, I don't want to add to the problem myself.  Maybe this summer will be the summer I get back there and massively purge.  That's my plan, anyway. I want to go back there and reclaim those two rooms, lay hands on things, say, "Nobody uses this anymore," and ruthlessly kick that crap out of my house.  Now as to whether or not that actually happens....

In any case, today's trip was good.  Even getting the clothes was necessary if not all pleasant.  It was nice to be anonymous me (well, mostly.  I didn't see more than two people who knew me.) and have no one make any demands or need anything from me.  Sometimes I need to be totally alone in order to get myself pulled back together, to keep the world from rubbing me raw.  Today was restorative, and I feel much better for having taken the time, even in the outrageous rain, to do it.

Date a Girl Who Reads

 This is not mine.  I found it on Tumblr.  But I endorse every single word.  And yes, darlin', I am one....
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“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

—	Rosemary Urquico

A Justification for Chocolate Intake

"Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250" ~ Harper's Index

Awesome, this.  Think I'll go get some now.  I'd hate for my brain to run short on glucose, you know.....

Run Away

Too tired to post last night.  I stayed at school late working and talking to a teacher friend, went to have dinner with Mom and Dad, something that's all too rare these days, and then I just sort of became unconscious when I got home.  It slipped up on me stealthily, and the next thing I knew, it was midnight, there was one of those horrid "oldies" infomercials on the TV with music on it that I grew up with, and the cats were all piled up on me.  I hate that.  It makes me feel like I'm eighty.

Today is now Friday, and I'm itching to run away.  I don't know where to, but I just want to get out.  Probably, I will wind up going nowhere since the weather is supposed to be ickish.  Maybe my grand adventure will only be into the pages of a book or the back aisles of an antique mall.  I don't know.  I've just itchy feet and cramped wings.  Days like this,  moods like this, make me want to show up at the airport with some crap in a bag and my passport and just tell the people behind the desk, "Send me somewhere good.  You pick it."

Owls

I collect owls. As is the way of such collections, it started with just a few token items when our school went to small learning communities and I became a part of a group that took the owl for its symbol.  Then I'd see one here or there in an antique mall or online on Etsy that was clever, and I'd add it.  My mother added a few old pieces she'd had for years.  I bought one made from an old shovel from a craftsman at Chimneyville. The next thing I knew, the owls had grown to to dominate an entire large bookcase shelf.

Then people started giving me owls.  This year, my wonderful students have given me four.  A past student has brought one one.  A colleague brought me one she'd had around for a long time.  The owls keep flying in to be a part of the parliament gathering behind my desk.  (And I do just love the collective nouns for birds... Owl parliaments are the only parliaments I can support...) 

Of course, many of the things I have with owls are functional in some way.  I have a little planter on my desk that I use to hold post-its and index cards.  I also have a beautiful carved pin of cherry from an artist on Etsy.

Yesterday, that day that shall live in infamy, one of my AP students brought me a yellow and green metal owl wall plaque.  It has that wonderful, startled look to it that I enjoy so much about owls, and that great retro feel to it of things that come from the 60s and 70s.  It made me smile just to see it.  I hung it before 1st period started since I keep a hammer and nails in my filing cabinet along with all my other "Girl Scout" gear, and it looked out in puzzlement at the events of the day with me.  When the student gave it to me, she told me how she'd found it in an antique mall, and that it had a "twin."

Today, before school began, another of the students in that same sweet class showed up as I was standing at my duty post outside my door with a brown paper bag and handed it to me.  She'd gotten me the twin, identical in almost every way except the way it faces and the decoration on its belly.  I put it up, too, and the two of them watched the goings on today, much better all the way around.  Giving it to me was such a kind gesture.  The things my students do constantly humble me.

Whether I found them online, rescued them from a flea market, or got them as gifts given to me by someone else, what started as an afterthought has become something symbolic and encouraging.  Athena's owl, that traditional symbol for learning and wisdom, sits everywhere in my classroom.  Maybe some form of inspiration will shake off those wings somehow and do some good.  They do me good just by letting me know that somebody somewhere thought enough of me to care.  That is a powerful inspiration and magic all of its own.

Which Do I Deserve?

Today has been a study in contrasts.  I slept off the migraine from last night and got a good night's rest.  I took the time to put supper in the crockpot before I left the house so it would be ready when I got home, took the time to walk around to the back yard and cut more daffodils to take to my classroom to replace the faded ones I threw away yesterday. When I got to school, one of my wonderful AP students brought me a lovely green and yellow metal owl.  I put a nail in the window frame and hung it up. It makes me smile every time  I look at it.

Then the day changed.  Old enemies emerged: apathy, immaturity, out-and-out rudeness, my own physical weakness.  I had to take a Maxalt by 5th period. I fought the after-effects and the rest of it the remainder of the day.  Tuesday, the day that always, always finds some way to suck, had stealthily crept up behind me and struck.

When the bell ran and I finished my bus duty, I came back to my room, called my Mom to check in.  She asked me, "So tell me again, why are you still there?"  I told her that I don't want to leave the seniors, that I don't want to leave the AP.  That I'm not so sure that it's not this way everywhere.  That there are still things, students, challenges, plans in the future that I'm looking forward to.

But I can't lie.  The sweet, no matter how sweet it is, is increasingly becoming unable to outweigh the other.  What am I supposed to do?  Which is the right thing to pick?  Why can't I decide?

I packed my things, locked my door, brought myself home.  I got to see my Dad for a minute or two, opened a package from amazon.com that contained my shipment of Ito En green tea.  I ate my supper, had a piece of pie.  I'm sitting on my couch surrounded by purring cats and an affection-greedy pit bull, and I'm going to reclaim those shattered shards of good that this day began with.  By God, if nothing else, I think I at least deserve that.