ART

PERHAPS THIS THEORY IS WHY I AM SO UNLUCKY! help
i don't believe those people who say "i love you" when i know what they really mean is "i need you to love me". i have never loved someone because i needed it back from them, because i wouldn't love them if they didn't love me the same way. in my mind, love doesn't work that way. love is not something you take from a person. it does not go along with expectation of return. love is not like christmas presents. it is not an even-dollar-value gift exchange. it is more like a birthday present. it is a personal celebration of someone's existence, no strings attached. and the miracle is when it is independently equal and reciprocal

lucky

my new job is amazing.
i guess what i lack in luck in some areas, i make up for in others. and in this case i am very lucky. i wonder what i would choose if i had a choice: lucky in love or lucky in work. i am lucky in parenthood, i am not unlucky in money. i am lucky in cholesteral and lucky in curly hair. i am lucky in social skills and not unlucky in cats. i am unlucky with other pets, however. i am also very, very unlucky in love. i believe i am actually cursed.

nineteen eighty five

i couldn't look at it anymore.

Today

I was introduced to my office. I have a fucking amazing office with a fucking amazing view of the Pearl Street Mall and courthouse. I share an administrative assistant, Sally, with a couple of other people who wear suits and permanent, professional smiles. They are all happy to meet me. We share Sally as if she were a bag of bagels. Sally, like most of the people on the floor has a small cluttered cubicle. In it she has stacks of files and a souvenir mug from her last vacation and family pictures in magnetic frames stuck to cabinets because there is no room on her desk. I will have portraits of my family in stylish frames and tropical plants and I will keep the blinds half-way up. This is how the other few offices like mine are arranged. I have a lot of desk. I have a lot of space. I have a fucking parking pass in downtown Boulder. I have a lot of nerve.

until it's too late.

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullabye

but i'm slow to catch on

It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse
Is this pain in here
I can't stay in here
Ain't it clear that--

I just can't fit
Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit

It doesn't take a genius...

Well since she put me down I've been out doin' in my head
Come in late at night and in the mornin' I just lay in bed

Well, Rhonda you look so fine
And I know it wouldnt take much time
For you to help me Rhonda
Help me get her out of my heart

Dexter and his new friend

making pies

I drove Catherine down to spend the day with her family. I baked a pecan pie for Martin to take to his cousin's. We could have gone to either, but as Hal put it, "Thanksgiving is about being thankful and I would be a lot more thankful if we could just stay home."
So, the kids and I baked an apple pie and we're grilling T-bones for Thanksgiving. The boy is a genius.


You could cry or die
Or just make pies all day
I'm making pies
Making pies

Patty Griffin

Toulouse and his new friends.

Singles

is a 2 disc compilation of just that from the lifetime of New Order. On it, there is the original recording of Temptation from the early eighties. I have the 87 version in a few different places. I hadn't heard this early version in a very long time. It was given to me on a mix tape and like a dream, I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. In Puerto Rico there was a beach club for officers and although I wasn't an officer, I was a girl and military so they would let me in to sunbathe. Right there, I first heard that song on headphones through a Walkman cassette player. Every time I heard that song after that, I would think of looking up through wind tossed palm fronds at a crystal sky: an unreal blue-green-grey like eyes I knew I had seen before. I played that tape 'til it busted and after that I only had the later version.

I just bought Singles this week to listen to while I slept on the couch. I find that now when I hear that song I have a different image. I think of sitting in a near empty bar of dark wood to escape a sweltering afternoon and those same eyes telling me it could be real.

infection

there's a song where she wishes she could run away to some town but for me i always associated that town with where that girl is. i've never been to that town, but i lived there an awful long time.

don williams is a classic country singer/songwriter. there's nothing odd or extraordinary about this man but he wrote a stunning amount of songs and i like him. he wrote tulsa time but i was thinking of another song.

when i was 9 or 10, i loved a different song. it's about being lost and vulnerable and someone helping you without taking advantage of you.

and i don't know anymore how all these connect.

right here

pull it together, girl

well folks, it's been fun, but it looks like life, as i have had the pleasure of knowing it over the past year or so, is coming to an end. on the 27th of this month i start my new job. the seasons have already initiated the end of mid-week motorcycle rides, amateur, small-scale farming and barefoot living. now, i am transitioning back to high heels, business suits, manicures and 30-minutes-or-less meal ideas. crap. i need to find a ride home from school for my son on bad weather days and i already called the people who will clean the house every other week. i've bought new make-up, panty hose and nail polish. i have a stack of clothes for the cleaners and i'm trying to squeeze in appointments for things i won't have time to do later.

i know i'm lucky that, especially being a woman, i live in a society where i can earn a living. there are so many places where i would not be able to read or handle money or make decisions regarding my or my family's welfare. i am lucky, even in this country, with the amount of control i have over my family's destiny. when i told martin my starting salary at this new job, he told me he worked as an engineer for 15 years before he made that much. i guess that was a few years ago, but still, i am very fortunate.

so, i will put my toes in pointy shoes, clean the dirt out from under my nails and head back to downtown, corporate america and i will be grateful.

are you done?

we were talking about love and different situations involving love. my 13 year old son had been listening to the conversation. i think we were wondering what to do about love when he said, "love is like presents. it's best to just say thanks and move on."
i think that is a very fair summation of the experience. and just this morning, i found two more situations where this approach has proved useful: breakfast and friendship. men can be so much more insightful, and concise, than women.

in all fairness, though, i had two different conversations with a woman and a man last week regarding the question of how can a woman tell if a man is in love with her. my conversation with the man never really yielded an answer, but my conversation with the woman was short and succinct. you can think a man is in love with you when he's not, but if you have to ask, then he's definately not.

facts:

it hurts when i breathe
gumbo tastes better the second day
possession (new order) sounds like home
the "singles" are all i have or need
my doctor has not yet called in my new prescription
it hurts when i blink, swallow, turn, try
comfort waves at me from the kitchen, then hides
i should paint the upstairs hallway before i pick up my kids
i am drowning in these sounds of a small island (a key) surrounded by an ocean of a small brown mailer which contains these sounds on a tape

"seems like i've been here before... won't you show me, please show me the way"

i could go on but these small sounds tell the story for me

i got

the job

charlotte juliet antonia spider

this was a very cool thing that Payusa and I got to see yesterday:

about a girl

we first noticed little CJAS about a week ago and she has almost doubled in size. no wonder. she is very beautiful. it's good to be a girl.

blow

after being sick for a month i finally went to the doctor today. what started as a nasty flu import blossomed into a nasty infection. no wonder my head aches to explode. no wonder i have a fever. no wonder the world is a dali painting. on my way home i stopped at the butcher's and bought a big hunk of braunschweiger (liverwurst) and then i stopped and bought fishsticks and tater tots. starve a cold, feed an exploding head. i have antibiotics and some other prescription that is green and white. word is i'm gonna pull through.
the wind is howling and hot.
dorothy, who i love very much, is teaching me to knit. dorothy is retired and knits baby caps for the newborns at the hospital, among other things. i am trying to make a scarf. we spent 3 hours yesterday morning laughing hysterically and i got about 5 inches into it. i am extremely proud of this little piece of work.
i had a second interview yesterday for a job i really want. i think it went well.
that wind is going to make me lose my mind.

so many kinds of blue

beautiful

conversations lately have me pondering the question of what people need and what they want and are there really differences between what he needs and what she needs from the one they look to. i don't think the differences are great. we need approval. we need to be something amazing and wonderful and life giving to the person we give our lives to. he does and she does. and we need to hear it and feel it without asking. and it can't come back handed or with conditions. and sometimes it comes as silent approval and sometimes it comes as an unsolicited verbal acknowledgement. maybe she needs to hear the positive critique more and maybe he needs to not have to listen to the negative critique more. but i think we all need a little less crap.
i spent half my adult life in a relationship where i was not good enough. i wasn't smart enough or pretty enough or capable enough. i worked a couple of jobs while i earned academic scholarships, took care of his grandmother, brought his children into the world and deflected the flirtations of my peers. the most disgusting thing i could think of during those years was letting that man fuck me. he told me i was frigid. i had a problem. and it made it ok for him to sleep with whomever he wanted. which made him more disgusting. truth is, i prefer to make love more often than i shower and i really like showers.
i think we all need to feel like the one we love thinks we are the bomb, that we just do it for that person. of course it takes an investment to find out what makes someone else feel that way. it will most certainly be different than what makes us feel that way. i think we should all have someone who dreams about us, hopes for us, lives to share bodily fluids with us. i think it is a beautiful vicious circle where making someone feel that way makes them want to make you feel that way.
that's what i think.

is the past closer than the future?

four years and ten months ago is not so far. january 1, 2002. we stood on the back porch. it was not too cold to shoot fireworks over the field. the kids and their parents raised a toast and all sipped cherry 7-up from champagne flutes.
four years and ten months from now is not so far. september 1, 2011. kisses goodbye and they'll both be away to universities. tell me where i'll be.