Yep - you guessed it! My latest search for a new name ( which is becoming more of a sarcastic joke at this point, since all the supposed genius names I come up with are TAKEN) left me out in the cold again. Even OrganicSpam.com was somebody else's idea before it was mine. So I guess this is what that "collective mind" is all about...the "we are one" I continue to be persuaded to believe in. The Buddhist booby prize...the Way.
When I was growing up, we went to church most Sundays. A congregational sort of hippy collective that read (somewhat metaphysically I think) from the Bible but which also hosted meditation classes and Tibetan bell playing on Tuesdays. I remember going to the bell session with my mom - she was a master at it - and writing an essay on why Jimmy Carter should be re-elected for president. I am pretty sure my main argument in his favor was "because he is nice". I felt this way about George W. Bush also - not that he should be re-elected but that he was probably just a "nice" guy who bit off more than he could chew. Maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but "nice" nonetheless. I just couldn't believe someone who could get their photograph taken reading a book to a children's class, holding the book upside down, could have the kind of calculating malice his adversaries suggesteded he was capable of. Also, I always thought of him more as a big (duh umm?) golden lab who thought hanging out with pitbulls would get him a better seat at the doggy park. Kinda like he was playing a game of pick-up baseball and he was way out of his league but didn't realize it until it was too late to quit without disappointing his dad.
I cannot imagine for a second why I am even suggesting to have an opinion about any of this. Sorry if I offend. Tough job, really, the Presidency...I couldn't do it.
I am not sure what class it was or even what grade, but I remember the teacher saying "Everything is political, even a bowl of fruit". I think it was an art class, maybe art history. The point I think the teacher was making was something along the lines of...if one had the resources to draw a bowl of fruit, or even to have a bowl of fruit to draw, one had means and having means, or not having means, was a matter of political persuasion. Does that make sense? It did when it was spoken - I'm just chopping it up with my wordiness.
I like poetry because it is quiet even when it is yelling. It makes one feel more than it allows for one to understand. At least, that is what it does for me. Like a good song it makes me ache - either for the sheer tragedy of it all or for the joy....and then there is that fine line where the two sensations mirror each other and I feel so damn happy to be sad.
I want to be a better. Just a better.
Mom, friend, wife, student, athlete, sister, daughter, niece, spatula....wind.
I want to wake up seizing the day when my head leaves the pillow and pass out praying to make a difference when I hit it at night. I want to live like I really am aware that this is all I got.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Eating Poo
Puppy or not, you're just not supposed to do that. It is wrong. So is getting a puppy on a minutes notice just a week after finally deciding you are not going to get a pet of any kind. That you simply cannot take care of one more thing. That enough is enough.
Coco is 9 1/2 weeks old, cute and soft and full of sweet puppy eyes. She sits, she shakes, she chases her tail. She pees once in a while in the house, the moment she comes back inside from a long outdoor romp. I yell. I am not as patient as I would like to be. I am not as cool or calm or tolerant or full of unconditional love. Coco reminds me this - stares at me like "huh? WTF? What crawled up your behind?" as I holler "NO!" and grab the furry little love nugget, wanting to hurl her into the great unknown, but placing her somewhat gently outside instead.
In certain ways, my life has been a series of potty training and tolerating something. First it was my own unbridled passion for life, next my addictions, then my kids, then an old dog who never should have had to die, now Coco. The mortgages don't care what is happening, nor does the laundry, or the clients, or the boss. Only the heart cares. Mumbles something incoherent, whimpers a little, cries.
Feeling alone in something, at the same time that the crowd is nearly suffocating you doesn't help - but then, even that doesn't make the experience unique enough to warrant the unrequested aide one so desperately needs in the midst of such despair. So the puppy barks (!), leaps up at nothing in particular with a monomaniacal zeal, falls on her chin, wonders at the finality of a slammed door.
I am trying to choose between now and the future as if I could. Trying to calculate loss. Running years, like numbers on a calculator...counting moments that have passed that I somehow think I missed.
If love were perfect, it would sit when you needed quiet without having been asked. It would shake for no cookie at all. It would nuzzle into the broken crook of your heart and exhale warm glue into the fissures. It would not pee on floor. And if life were perfect you could wake up happy and stay that way, for an entire hour or a day or a week or maybe even a series of years that floated by slowly like a single spiderweb thread through a a windless summer afternoon. If men were perfect they would love all our little disasters and women, they would smile at the toothpaste tube and children, they would never feel the disappointment of a promise you never made and certainly never meant to break. But, there is pee on the floor and a blob of toothpaste on the mirror and a lot of tiny disasters everywhere and it is late and the children are exhausted just from being alive and.....the laundry thinks it is cute all crumbled in piles pretending to be done.
I gave the dog a bath tonight (she is called "the dog" when I am faining ignorance of how she ended up here in the first place) because earlier today she ate poo. At least, I am 99.9% sure it was poo. (I am holding on to that last .01% because I believe in miracles and unicorns and even rainbows in the midst of hurricanes of shit). So I gave her a bath and she was so tiny in the big tub; so tiny and scared and confused. And I was thinking, maybe we are all a little like this - cute and fluffy terrorists when we're running around letting our shit hang out - and then tiny and scared when the unknown comes calling. I don't know, I was just thinking that. Just for a minute.
Coco is 9 1/2 weeks old, cute and soft and full of sweet puppy eyes. She sits, she shakes, she chases her tail. She pees once in a while in the house, the moment she comes back inside from a long outdoor romp. I yell. I am not as patient as I would like to be. I am not as cool or calm or tolerant or full of unconditional love. Coco reminds me this - stares at me like "huh? WTF? What crawled up your behind?" as I holler "NO!" and grab the furry little love nugget, wanting to hurl her into the great unknown, but placing her somewhat gently outside instead.
In certain ways, my life has been a series of potty training and tolerating something. First it was my own unbridled passion for life, next my addictions, then my kids, then an old dog who never should have had to die, now Coco. The mortgages don't care what is happening, nor does the laundry, or the clients, or the boss. Only the heart cares. Mumbles something incoherent, whimpers a little, cries.
Feeling alone in something, at the same time that the crowd is nearly suffocating you doesn't help - but then, even that doesn't make the experience unique enough to warrant the unrequested aide one so desperately needs in the midst of such despair. So the puppy barks (!), leaps up at nothing in particular with a monomaniacal zeal, falls on her chin, wonders at the finality of a slammed door.
I am trying to choose between now and the future as if I could. Trying to calculate loss. Running years, like numbers on a calculator...counting moments that have passed that I somehow think I missed.
If love were perfect, it would sit when you needed quiet without having been asked. It would shake for no cookie at all. It would nuzzle into the broken crook of your heart and exhale warm glue into the fissures. It would not pee on floor. And if life were perfect you could wake up happy and stay that way, for an entire hour or a day or a week or maybe even a series of years that floated by slowly like a single spiderweb thread through a a windless summer afternoon. If men were perfect they would love all our little disasters and women, they would smile at the toothpaste tube and children, they would never feel the disappointment of a promise you never made and certainly never meant to break. But, there is pee on the floor and a blob of toothpaste on the mirror and a lot of tiny disasters everywhere and it is late and the children are exhausted just from being alive and.....the laundry thinks it is cute all crumbled in piles pretending to be done.
I gave the dog a bath tonight (she is called "the dog" when I am faining ignorance of how she ended up here in the first place) because earlier today she ate poo. At least, I am 99.9% sure it was poo. (I am holding on to that last .01% because I believe in miracles and unicorns and even rainbows in the midst of hurricanes of shit). So I gave her a bath and she was so tiny in the big tub; so tiny and scared and confused. And I was thinking, maybe we are all a little like this - cute and fluffy terrorists when we're running around letting our shit hang out - and then tiny and scared when the unknown comes calling. I don't know, I was just thinking that. Just for a minute.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Rebel Mom
okay...I admit...it is getting old - even for me - this searching around for a name for my pen other than "FingerPoet". This coming up duds over and over again - an ever futility-inspiring moment of realizing I missed the boat on domain names....likely years ago...when all the organized A types were buying the cool new tech saavy shit while the rest of us ( or maybe just me) were still sifting through the rack of the Salvation Army for a cool (dig it) polyester blend floral mumu we would pretend we had the umph to someday turn into a funkadellic pillow....or a shawl.
I digress.
I gave RebelMom a shot - TAKEN. Not that I actually want to conjure up visuals of a harley davidson vest wearing 40-something with mom jeans and a feather-strung roach clip in my hair. Plus, for this mom, it hits a little too close to home....like calling myself a rebel will somehow betray the last 15 years I've spent trying to undo that stigma. I imagine myself smoking Marlboro reds with chipped fingernail polish while making Pillsbury Plus sugar cookies out of the tube. Of course, after being denied access to the purchase, I perused the site for rebelmom and it (she) was nothing like I imagined myself to be, given the name. She's all manicured and beautiful and has her S%#t together - a pretty mom (likely of girls, which explains some things) and she has the real deal advertisements on her site to prove she is up to some reputable good.
Sigh.
Next, either off the seat of my pants, or through the ingenious methodolgy that only a mind itself can know, I searched "FatPeace". AVAILABLE! But c'mon, you know 37% of the people will think I meant "FatPiece" which makes me immediatly think of "piece of ass" and well, the truth is, I don't want anyone to think of a fat piece of ass when they think of me, or my writing. So, the drawing baord smacks me up side the head again and I have to hope that someone out there reading this will either convice me to choose what I got, or at least point me in a sound direction. (Then I have to deal with whether I am indeed a person even willing to follow sound direction). Uh,,,,Duff?
What kind of rebel am I anyway, really? I mean, when you get down to it? I wake up every morning, make the oatmeal or breakfast burrito or yogurt parfait (yes, there is a bowl or 3 of cereal in there somewhere). I pack the flipping lunches - REFUSING to cut the crust off - I attend the games. Do hoework, day dream about botox and manicures and more time. Certainly I'm not slamming martinis before getting in the car line or popping valiums on my way to the dry cleaners - and that wouldn't necessarily make me any more of a rebel than an ass, so...?
One of my partying friends was saying about New Years Eve to another friend who had said she was spending the night home with her kids "Oh, come on! What are you gonna do, stay home with a tomato enema and a Mormon video?" As if that were like the worst thing one could do on a night so worthy of hurrah as New Years Eve. All I could think was "a tomato enema and a religious video (?) - that's right up my alley!"
Sadly, I am only sort of joking.
I added adsense to my blog thinking it would be fun to make $000.13 a month off my writing but the only ad they approved me for was some nonesense abouta phone service for "entreprenuers". I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.
I digress.
I gave RebelMom a shot - TAKEN. Not that I actually want to conjure up visuals of a harley davidson vest wearing 40-something with mom jeans and a feather-strung roach clip in my hair. Plus, for this mom, it hits a little too close to home....like calling myself a rebel will somehow betray the last 15 years I've spent trying to undo that stigma. I imagine myself smoking Marlboro reds with chipped fingernail polish while making Pillsbury Plus sugar cookies out of the tube. Of course, after being denied access to the purchase, I perused the site for rebelmom and it (she) was nothing like I imagined myself to be, given the name. She's all manicured and beautiful and has her S%#t together - a pretty mom (likely of girls, which explains some things) and she has the real deal advertisements on her site to prove she is up to some reputable good.
Sigh.
Next, either off the seat of my pants, or through the ingenious methodolgy that only a mind itself can know, I searched "FatPeace". AVAILABLE! But c'mon, you know 37% of the people will think I meant "FatPiece" which makes me immediatly think of "piece of ass" and well, the truth is, I don't want anyone to think of a fat piece of ass when they think of me, or my writing. So, the drawing baord smacks me up side the head again and I have to hope that someone out there reading this will either convice me to choose what I got, or at least point me in a sound direction. (Then I have to deal with whether I am indeed a person even willing to follow sound direction). Uh,,,,Duff?
What kind of rebel am I anyway, really? I mean, when you get down to it? I wake up every morning, make the oatmeal or breakfast burrito or yogurt parfait (yes, there is a bowl or 3 of cereal in there somewhere). I pack the flipping lunches - REFUSING to cut the crust off - I attend the games. Do hoework, day dream about botox and manicures and more time. Certainly I'm not slamming martinis before getting in the car line or popping valiums on my way to the dry cleaners - and that wouldn't necessarily make me any more of a rebel than an ass, so...?
One of my partying friends was saying about New Years Eve to another friend who had said she was spending the night home with her kids "Oh, come on! What are you gonna do, stay home with a tomato enema and a Mormon video?" As if that were like the worst thing one could do on a night so worthy of hurrah as New Years Eve. All I could think was "a tomato enema and a religious video (?) - that's right up my alley!"
Sadly, I am only sort of joking.
I added adsense to my blog thinking it would be fun to make $000.13 a month off my writing but the only ad they approved me for was some nonesense abouta phone service for "entreprenuers". I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Chasing Happy
I was so bummed to find out that chasinghappy.com is taken and that when I put it in my web browser I come up with a very smart and articulate and funny blog now called "good enough to read". Definitely worth the stumble, but still the having showed up a day late and a dollar short, smarts like a missed interview for a dream job. I can never spell "definitely" correctly the first or second time.
I thought about "chasinggay.com" but it seems just a tad bit too controversial for this girl. I'm already known (at least to myself) for shooting from the hip so to speak when I talk...a sort of unedited blah blah blahing that runs out of my mouth before anyone has had time to drop and roll or at least take cover.
My friend Kerry Duff of, CEO of The House (ceoofthehouse.com) is encouraging me to shut up and start writing. She doesn't talk like that, of course. She just makes me dark chocolate covered peanut clusters in cutesie cupcake papers and hands me a metaphorical pen (polka-dotted bow and all). She does this all of course with 4 kids, a real estate career, a talent for taking photos and likely a place on the PTA and every other possible board out there that makes A+ parenting seem like a part time gig. WTF? I'm here picking up poo off my 7 year olds bedroom floor - left a wee bit too liquid from a puppy I mismanaged to import off the streets of Mexico....during the holidays and only 2 weeks after a major move from LA to San Francisco meant to "simplify my life". All of this makes me NEED chocolate covered peanut clusters and friends who make my projects seem small enough to actually complete. Thanks Mrs. Duff!!!
Since it is indeed already January 2nd, I suppose it is time for a new year's resolution or two.
So here goes:
1. to give up dieting
2. to do things I love, often
3. to wake up happy
I'd throw out a couple more but I want to win this year so that's it. Recap: I'm gonna nourish myself, enjoy life, and laugh. All funny people, please drop me a line.
Happy 2012.
I thought about "chasinggay.com" but it seems just a tad bit too controversial for this girl. I'm already known (at least to myself) for shooting from the hip so to speak when I talk...a sort of unedited blah blah blahing that runs out of my mouth before anyone has had time to drop and roll or at least take cover.
My friend Kerry Duff of, CEO of The House (ceoofthehouse.com) is encouraging me to shut up and start writing. She doesn't talk like that, of course. She just makes me dark chocolate covered peanut clusters in cutesie cupcake papers and hands me a metaphorical pen (polka-dotted bow and all). She does this all of course with 4 kids, a real estate career, a talent for taking photos and likely a place on the PTA and every other possible board out there that makes A+ parenting seem like a part time gig. WTF? I'm here picking up poo off my 7 year olds bedroom floor - left a wee bit too liquid from a puppy I mismanaged to import off the streets of Mexico....during the holidays and only 2 weeks after a major move from LA to San Francisco meant to "simplify my life". All of this makes me NEED chocolate covered peanut clusters and friends who make my projects seem small enough to actually complete. Thanks Mrs. Duff!!!
Since it is indeed already January 2nd, I suppose it is time for a new year's resolution or two.
So here goes:
1. to give up dieting
2. to do things I love, often
3. to wake up happy
I'd throw out a couple more but I want to win this year so that's it. Recap: I'm gonna nourish myself, enjoy life, and laugh. All funny people, please drop me a line.
Happy 2012.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Sunday Morning
I want Sunday to start with a little "s", as if that way, I could trick the following day into not noticing it's turn in line. When did I begin to worry about tomorrow? When did I buy into Monday being a poor broker of time, the bastard child of an incomplete two-night stand, some sort of uptight nanny? I digress. Remembering to center around the self, rather than run headlong into the tragedy of self-centeredness, I find myself ever talking a big game and slipping behind smoke and mirrors with an "I know I'm gonna get caught" grin and a craving for a cookie. Or 12.
Sometimes I think it would be better to think before I speak, but mostly I am either exhaling the impetus in my chest or putting it on lockdown, ears burning - metaphorical fuming galore. Once in a while, there is a memory....of not being willing to suffer....a calmness, that reminds me no thing matters but this, now, and breathing.
I'm either pulling a Ghandi or stirring up sh*t. Balanced between the two is the little me that's at last unaware of my size. I betray her though, in writing....desperate to give longing a voice...melancholy a microphone.......desire a dance partner.
Three hours into Sunday - sunday - sun day....here in Santa Monica in a canopy of fog...thinking about church and GOoD, how capitalization ruins everything, space.
If I've told one person about the insatiable whole of being, i've told a thousand. Trans-versing back and forth between Me and me and I and i and obviously, not yet having had a moment free.
Then there is you. YOU. How the silence between us is enough. How your quiet soothes me.
I never wanted to be in love. I wanted to be filled.
Who would've thought it was the emptying that mattered?
Sometimes I think it would be better to think before I speak, but mostly I am either exhaling the impetus in my chest or putting it on lockdown, ears burning - metaphorical fuming galore. Once in a while, there is a memory....of not being willing to suffer....a calmness, that reminds me no thing matters but this, now, and breathing.
I'm either pulling a Ghandi or stirring up sh*t. Balanced between the two is the little me that's at last unaware of my size. I betray her though, in writing....desperate to give longing a voice...melancholy a microphone.......desire a dance partner.
Three hours into Sunday - sunday - sun day....here in Santa Monica in a canopy of fog...thinking about church and GOoD, how capitalization ruins everything, space.
If I've told one person about the insatiable whole of being, i've told a thousand. Trans-versing back and forth between Me and me and I and i and obviously, not yet having had a moment free.
Then there is you. YOU. How the silence between us is enough. How your quiet soothes me.
I never wanted to be in love. I wanted to be filled.
Who would've thought it was the emptying that mattered?
Monday, June 13, 2011
hair cut
tonight i got a hair cut because i can neither smoke nor nonchalantly toss back a shot of wild turkey nor drive off a bridge. i have no desire to harm myself...i simply like change. alteration. riots.
there is something so quiet about being simple. and the silence grates on me. makes all my inner poetry a beggar. makes all my hunger mad.
i try to be quiet. not to stir up the metaphorical pot of wanting that bangs like a thousand fists upon my psyche - demanding i spill my own gunk over into your lane - and YOU - driving so fucking fast - across these freeways called los angeles moments - that you have no time - no space - no listening - for my need.
you see, the want became a need in only 44 words. imagine a life. despair.
so we give up the trying.
trade it in for some real authentic no bars held love. the good stuff. we suffer having enough (finally) like a series of jesus's in drag...i know gayle.... you will understand this. (and mostly because of the girls who broke the rule.) i'm not sure all wisdom is earned. some of it just is. like an allergy. like a curse. like a gift.
the line that is the finest is always the one one is walking. i am at odds, forever, with my mouth. she speaks. she chews. she catches breath.
because my hair is parted, there are lovers leaving each other for the last time. the way the bangs fall means the loneliest man in the world has just been given a promise. crazy glue and broken hearts and gob-stoppers and electric eels and dinosaurs and magic erasers and the wilderness and yellow work. people say thank you. they ask "how are you" and wait for an answer. married couples remember why they fell in love.
had i curls, on the day you came to cut - it could've been different. you may have been a poet and i pencil or maybe there'd be two children laughing or i'd roll you a cigarette instead of going to therapy. and maybe you would have pop tarts in your car and for that reason alone, for you, i would take a bullet or give you my parking space or maybe i would learn how to sing.
but today the hair was straight so i just said "thank you so much" and when you drove away, I said a prayer for the girls who broke the rule.
there is something so quiet about being simple. and the silence grates on me. makes all my inner poetry a beggar. makes all my hunger mad.
i try to be quiet. not to stir up the metaphorical pot of wanting that bangs like a thousand fists upon my psyche - demanding i spill my own gunk over into your lane - and YOU - driving so fucking fast - across these freeways called los angeles moments - that you have no time - no space - no listening - for my need.
you see, the want became a need in only 44 words. imagine a life. despair.
so we give up the trying.
trade it in for some real authentic no bars held love. the good stuff. we suffer having enough (finally) like a series of jesus's in drag...i know gayle.... you will understand this. (and mostly because of the girls who broke the rule.) i'm not sure all wisdom is earned. some of it just is. like an allergy. like a curse. like a gift.
the line that is the finest is always the one one is walking. i am at odds, forever, with my mouth. she speaks. she chews. she catches breath.
because my hair is parted, there are lovers leaving each other for the last time. the way the bangs fall means the loneliest man in the world has just been given a promise. crazy glue and broken hearts and gob-stoppers and electric eels and dinosaurs and magic erasers and the wilderness and yellow work. people say thank you. they ask "how are you" and wait for an answer. married couples remember why they fell in love.
had i curls, on the day you came to cut - it could've been different. you may have been a poet and i pencil or maybe there'd be two children laughing or i'd roll you a cigarette instead of going to therapy. and maybe you would have pop tarts in your car and for that reason alone, for you, i would take a bullet or give you my parking space or maybe i would learn how to sing.
but today the hair was straight so i just said "thank you so much" and when you drove away, I said a prayer for the girls who broke the rule.
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