persephone must have silent feet, for
as she lit out of her dark room last night,
hall-chamber-hall, cold tile and all she knew
wearing the last flowers of september

to risk this rain so much like spring is bold
small girl, no small thing the underworld

but

come spring, she will divide herself in two
unlikely color, brush away bare arms
the last doubt for sun that day-
in one shiver, it is done

In Praise of Another Earth

Hiding in its orbit among the other "celestial offerings" in 2011 celluloid, and on the surface consisting of the science fiction premise that another earth has appeared suddenly within our solar system, Another Earth has a parallel, other film existing alongside it, that is circumspect to the foibles and randomness of human choice and interactions. Second chances, second loves, a better twin looking curiously into the sky wondering "if..." are the makings of a quiet masterpiece.

A first effort (ironically, also a twin, as the young writer was simultaneously writing The Sound of My Voice when she penned Another Earth) by Brit Marling, the screenplay drips with the delicate prose and utterly personal (if not a little self indulgent, appropos to the writers' age and experience) portrayal of the possibility of youth cut short by a single bad choice.

What if.

Rhoda is all full of herself, her acceptance to MIT, and about a liter of hooch when she takes the wheel of her family's SUV on her way back from a party, feels her face in the wind and is distracted by the night air, the discovery of the hidden planet and the feeling of freedom, of possiblity, when she drives into a car that sits at a red light, holding the family of a celebrated composer, played by the always wonderfully real William Mapother. In that one moment, they both lose everything. The composer loses his family (though he survives after a long coma), his career and his drive to write music (or do anything except take pills and wallow in his loss from his couch). Rhoda loses her future as an MIT astrophysicist, and every ounce of belief in herself.

After serving a four year prison sentence for the multiple manslaughter, Rhoda finds herself in a life she certainly never imagined, and by all appearances has not forgiven herself for causing the tragedy. By this time, a australian accented billionaire has decided to launch a trip to "earth 2" and Rhoda's search for herself - her other self - begins.

The acting isn't so much acting as it is breathing. You can't see the work. Marling is a natural, Mapother (see In the Bedroom again if you missed it the first time)gives his usual raw, painfully accurate and patient best, and the supporting cast does their damn job and stays willfully within the fabric of the story. It is well cast, well edited, well lit, well done. The direction (and co authoring) by Mike Cahill is transparent. This is no Blair Witch foibling around with the steady-cam - ie it's not dated. It's timeless.

"do you think THEY call themselves 'earth 2?' "

The search for self, for reconciliation, for forgiveness, and ultimately, for meaning are explored through the imagination of a talented new writer whose star is rising. Please, for the love of all things simple and pure, I hope she continues to make only small, beautiful, independent films.

It's late, I'm feeling romantic, and my memory fades as I write this, but see this one. If you count my twin, four thumbs up.

Holiday train

They meet in the same train car every morning for a quick debate, and every afternoon for a beer and a cackle. Three men, two women. Today they are exchanging gifts. A toy version of the mustang he always wanted but kids are in college so there's no cash for that; a little tree ornament that is also a shot glass. A t-shirt, a notepad with ironic messages at the top, a hat.

"we're going to breakfast, right? Oh please tell me we're still going to breakfast!" there is an overlap of voices, gravelly with twenty years of commuting and having quit smoking together. Odd memories of the interstitial parts of life. How so-and-so got their name: odd story, let me tell you. "she doesn't NEED a man..she's 82 years old!" She had the best. She had my father! Why does she want more?

Let me tell you.

They will never meet each other's families - may have not shared cell numbers. But they KNOW each others' families. Love and misunderstanding, like group therapy but without the pathetic veil of "safety." someone might get hurt. Opinions sting. But not for more than the time spanning two train rides.

These relationships would have worked just as well 100 years ago. Would that all relationships be as reliable as trains. It's painful not knowing until the next day - "hey what happened to you yesterday?" Daughter in the emergency room. Traffic was Terrible - accident on the beltway. I just had a hard time getting moving this morning. They worry, but in that perfunctory way you worry about acquaintances. Maybe a little more. Enough to buy gifts. Enough to have breakfast and share stories, and do a great deal of speculating on the controversies that don't survive past the train ride. Look over the year, brag about bonuses and kids.

I am envious-





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:MARC 419

for goodness' sake

I sat next to a charming man named Richard tonight at dinner, at a symposium on greening historic communities. He’s in his mid seventies or thereabouts, has been married for around forty years, and has four sons, all of whom are successful, in completely diverse careers, and love each other, and their parents, whom as adults, they treat as friends. I asked him somewhat awkwardly what has made his marriage work after all these years. I really had to know. Being in a young marriage, and for the second time, I have concerns. I worry, will it work this time? It’s hard, everyone knows that in theory, but you don’t get much from canned psychology and friends, who won’t admit to anything because you’re too close.

Getting advice on love from strangers always seems best. So I asked him this question after the conversation had revealed that we’re both of a liberal persuasion, have similar world views and both think that Michele Bachmann is a disingenuous, frightening megalomaniac with designs on being Vice President to Mitt Romney. He got my jokes, and patted me on the shoulder. He said a few very useful things, but started with, “you know what happened? when we first met, we lived together. After about five years, my wife said she wanted to get married. I wasn’t ready. She said she wanted the commitment. So when I wouldn’t commit, she left. I was terribly disappointed. Knowing she could just leave at any time made me really pay attention to her, what she was saying, and really listen. It made me an attentive husband.”

The subtlety that is so hard to portray after the fact is that he wasn’t cowed in some way or threatened, he wasn’t attentive out of insecurity, but out of the pleasure of doing it. He realized this woman knew what she wanted and meant business. If he was a part of her life, he’d be able to be a party to her greatness. “She left and went and bought a house.” By herself. In 1972. She is an attorney, and after some years of marriage, went back to graduate school to become a clinical psychologist, and she’s a novelist. He couldn’t let her go. A woman that strong was worth committing to. He was intrigued by her , and maintains that that foundation of individuality is what made it work. He went on; I could see tears forming. I had to steel myself; it was touching how much this man loves his wife.

You don’t hear much about that these days. You hear about jackasses, mostly, politicians and celebrities, (polebrities?) who really don’t deserve to be married. I would have more hope if I knew that Richard was more common. That he’s a type, and that I will over time see that I married that type. I think I will. I think I already do, but he’s also got forty years of retrospective, it’s happened over time, the goodness, the will power. The deliberateness of loving someone for a very, very long time.

Other things that make marriage work in the long term according to Richard’s experience are a common aesthetic and a sense of adventure about it, and communication without fear. “not the brutal brutal truth, but the un-doctored truth, with some gesture toward each other’s feelings.” Tell me the whole truth, but do it in a nice, gentle, respectful way that fosters trust. That’s not easy. That’s what makes marriage hard. It also, I’d like to believe, makes it worthwhile.

Beyond The Pale

I confess, it was the "hot body" contest she entered at a sleazy bar, nary a hip shake after her daughter was murdered in cold blood and dumped in a Florida marsh, that damned her in my mind.

I try to put myself there, an attempt to imagine the woodsman she would have us believe was sent forth to cut out the heart of snow white - how cruel, and at best indifferent, to the mother in her, the mother in me that howls at the idea of anyone laying a finger on my one and only. I cannot deeply go there. It's too much.

Caylee was, by definition, defenseless. The difference of course (if you will leap into the fairy tale analogy for a moment) is that the queen had no daughter, and she had her realm to protect - and snow white had come of age. It was a war between age and beauty. Control and freedom. It's a huge motive for escape, absolution, murder even. War.

Knowing that that battle wages in each of us, however deeply buried or fully resolved is useful knowledge. Self awareness. Something can be done. Thete are outlets. We all learn to cope, and often thanks to the little ones, enjoy reliving youth vicariously with the benefit of experience. We can chuckle at it all. Some even go at it alone, and they are twice the heroines.

And then there are the other mothers.

At war with aging, with the shackles of responsibility, with "lost years," with themselves-
Perhaps wanting once again to be queen of the realm with no little trouble maker in tow, no consequences, and no cover at the door, free drinks for the ladies-

When I think of dancing with abandon, I don't think of spring break debauchery. I think of three year old girls. They love to take off their clothes and run around, tease everyone and giggle at the dog staring at them with a mildly worried expression from across the room. They love life, trying on dresses, making mischief and dancing with abandon.

What exactly was this woman missing?

Having just read The Psychopath Test I do wonder. Fairy tales are full of psychopaths. Reminders to not lie, to enjoy youth and springtime and beware the stranger offering sweets. But there are no useful parables here. Just a woman that refuses herself to grow up, and the little girl that now never will.

No more bedtime stories for Caylee.







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Somewhere other than The sunshine state

I don't want to live on the moon

I have to believe that things will get better for everyone.

I was up at 7 this morning mopping the kitchen floor, listening to my daughter giggle at sesame street - the few minutes of the day that, with sticky banana hands, she will tolerate being strapped in a chair. The episode changed mercilessly to Aaron Neville and Ernie singing "I don't want to live on the moon" and without any warning of this haunting, I was transported to some early spring day in the late 70s, when I might have heard it for the first time, sung by someone else. It was ok to wear red pants and a green shirt. Crayons were probably toxic. And I didn't understand why my mom would cry when she heard certain songs, standing in the middle of the kitchen. Mopping. I think my parents' generation had lost something then, maybe everyone loses it, from time to time. Maybe it's having children that make this time travel possible. The tremendous feeling of loss and simultaneous fullness you can get living in times like these can be overwhelming. I don't want to live on the moon. I don't want to fill a mansion with things. I want to live on earth, at home - I think that's what the song means. I'd like to visit some neat places, but I want to live at home. For everyone I know, life is harder right now. In one case, Eviction-notice hard. But if you are lucky to still own your own dirt, you can still grow things from nothing but seeds on a window sill. Though it may seem impossible now, like this shitty time will not pass, it will, and I know it. I can feel it - it's only a moment away. So I'm taking care of things at home, keeping it straight. Crying along to the Cat Stevens station I just set up on Pandora. Tending to seedlings. Laughing at my daughter laughing. Getting ready for the day things turn around. They will.











- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:My kitchen floor

May I suggest

Rediscovering Twin Cinema by the New Pornographers

Rocking my commute, and my world. I don't even feel silly for wearing this enormous raincoat on what will be a rainless day. I think.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:On the Amtrak headed for Union

Old Traditional

She ripped her way out of the dress, borrowed from Mrs. Monroe. Everything was borrowed from Mrs. Monroe until she herself was Mrs. Monroe. The restaurant would call for Artie to fetch the fur. She shouldn't have left it, she could have sold it. "Stupid," she thought to herself, deciding to make a late trip back to retrieve it. It was worth four hundred dollars, a third of her father's yearly salary as a college professor. She finds a one of his mother's traveling suits and steps out the back door, brown from head to toe and marching.

Long, hurried walk to the Avenue. Drunken streetcar sooty mess the son-of-a-no-good- what in heaven's name am I going to do if he sees me coming back in...Too much time to think on the trip back to the restaurant, she piles a shoulder into Theo before he can turn to open the door for her, out of habit. He steps back instead and lights a cigarillo.

"Really," she says to herself, bowing her head through the bar to the coat check, "The trick is to not have desires, or be numb to them. If I have my hair just so, and wear this dress, he will want to hold my hand. If I use irony effectively, he will want to kiss me. Be smart, and it will get me some small gold thing to wear. There was a cold progression to it. She thinks she's too emotional to pull this off.

c(ath)arly simon

You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf, it was apricot
You had one eye on the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner

You're so vain
You probably think this blog is about you
You're so vain, you're so vain
I'll bet you think this blog is about you
Don't you?

Oh, you had me several years ago
When I was still quite naive
Well, you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave
But you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee

You're so vain
You probably think this blog is about you
You're so vain, you're so vain
I'll bet you think this blog is about you
Don't you?

Well, I hear you went up to Saratoga
And your horse, naturally, won
Then you flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well, you're where you should be all the time
And when you're not, you're with some underworld spy
Or the wife of a close friend

You're so vain
You probably think this blog is about you
You're so vain, you're so vain
I'll bet you think this blog is about you
Don't you?

to tell you the truth

Hurting someone else's feelings is not a professional ethics violation.

in communicado

I'm Tweetarded. Sure, I get the concept, it's 140 characters, your absolute minimum thoughts on just about anything you happen to be doing or want to share with your "followers." Let's put aside the realization of every person's superego that they are worthy of having followers; that's a different and more disturbing topic. What I don't get (aside from the hash signs) and what is probably one hundredfold over-done in the ancient tomes of the "blogosphere", is sharing minimum anything. Ironically, what I work on relates to what are known as "the worst buildings allowed by law" as they are, in fact, "code minimum," but in the core of that work lies something so much greater - buildings not falling down on people. Buildings not sucking 75% of the electricity we consume in this country. Buildings, at the very least, not failing. If there could be anything 'greater' about tweeting, it is certainly the fact that it is ultimately about mass communication. We tweet as part of my organization's "presence" (and occasionally, we have staff wetweets on tweeting) and I suppose I must, like most in the knowledge-worker force, bend to that reality and get all hash-signed up in there. But if I must, I'll do so with as little regard to meaning as the medium implies. Please, if you tweet about love, stop.

Patriosymbinostalgafrass

The 4th of July parade that wasn't. Is it a parade if the high school band director and program have been cut? Like so many small towns that rely on levies and the conservative not-in-my back yard set who deny them to maintain certain "optional" programs like art and music, in Sunbury the music has stopped. No band in the bandstand, a less than half-full glass of American lemonade sweats in the July sun. And yet the crowd still stops moving, hands on failing hearts, to witness the anthem, the one piece of music that will endure this sad reminder that small towns have been all but executed by the jingoistic "let capitolism work" lowest of the lowest common denominator. Small towns are all but mythology. Maybe the 260 million dollar lotto winner from this corner of Midwest will save the music. At least that's what would happen if this were a movie. But it's not.





-- Post From My iPhone

Location:Sunbury Ohio

Our Victorian preoccupation

I haven't seen many wristwatches lately, though I think Republicans wear them. In DC at least, Cell phones have become pocket watches, and their plastic and silicon are checked and stroked with as much finesse and care as an engraved gilded heirloom.

I see their ancestors on Antiques Roadshow and I consider gentlemen talking into them with proper diction and great purpose on Lafayette Square. Squirrels were introduced recently to delight and entertain them, but there is urgent business to attend to all alone talking into a gold fronticepiece! It would be ridiculous if it weren't true. They're all mad, mad I say!

Unfortunately though the gesture of time checking on an elegant gadget has returned, the manners that went with the age have disappeared. I've left home, left my baby and on this train have just blown my nose into one of her socks- perhaps there are some people who would still offer handkerchiefs to ladies, if there were still ladies to receive them. I glance around and of course everyone is so absorbed in their pocket watches, no one is appalled at me for soiling a baby sock. Maybe they wouldn't notice a breast pump. Now there's a preoccupation.


-- Post From My iPhone

Loginesia

I googled it. It doesn't exist. And now it's mine. Here's my stab at an Oxford's definition, if I can get this thing to catch on.

Loginesia /ˈlɔgˌɪniʒə/
1. Complete or partial loss of memory of website login username and password information. 2. Having a large number of unrelated usernames and passwords such that an individual becomes incapable of remembering them. 3. An independent virtual state consisting primarily of internet-related detritus, files or data recorded or written in versions of software no longer in common use, and multiple digital photographs that are not intended for print. (see 'Photoblivion')

That's mine too.

Beware of Fraud on Facebook

This is NOT a conversation between me and my friend Matthew. It is a conversation between me and someone claiming to be my friend Matthew. Luckily I'm of the generation that still calls mothers at the crack of dawn to verify the location of their sons.

But in all seriousness, please be aware of this fraud tactic. I'll be contacting the FTC and InterPol today.

Matthew
Need's Urgent Assistance!about an hour ago
Clear Chat History
7:03amMatthew
hey there
How are u doing?
7:03amZB
hi matthew. it's early! I'm just fine. how are you?
7:03amMatthew
Am not good
7:03amZB
what's wrong
?
7:04amMatthew
Im in some kind of deep mess right now
7:04amZB
how so?
7:04amMatthew
Im stranded in London
I got mugged at a gun point last night
7:04amZB
holy shit?
where are you?
specifically?
7:04amMatthew
All cash,credit card and phone was stolen
7:04amZB
did you go to the police?
7:05amMatthew
Im in a public Library
7:05amZB
what credit cards do you need to notify?
7:05amMatthew
i have reported to the local cops here.Investigation is going on
7:06amZB
who do you need called?
7:06amMatthew
I really need your urgent assitance
Thank God i still have my Life and passport
7:06amZB
sure - how can I help?
7:07amZB
The US embassy is helping me with my return flight home
My return flight leaves in few hour but having trouble sorting out the hotel bills
7:07amZB
what hotel are you staying at?
7:08amMatthew
Wondering if you could loan me some few $$$ to pay the hotel bills and take a cab to the Airport
I will def refund you when i return home
Would you loan me some cash?
7:08amZB
what's the quickest way to do that, western union? it might be easier if I call the hotel with a credit card
and then western union some cash
7:09amMatthew
you can wired it to me via western union
7:09amZB
can you go to the hotel so I can call you there and help sort that part out?
7:09amMatthew
Do you know any western union outlet around?
7:09amZB
where are you in london?
7:09amMatthew
Kentish town
7:09amZB
what hotel?
7:09amMatthew
You can wired the money to my full name as written on my passport
I checked in with cash...
7:10amZB
what hotel?
7:10amMatthew
Sector Inn...
7:11amZB
can you go back there so we can talk?
7:11amMatthew
Would you call the hotel Manager on my behalf?
I have limited time here
7:11amZB
Yes, I can do that - are you going back there before the airport?
7:12amMatthew
I cant go back to the hotel now..I need to return with cash Jessyca
How much can you spare me with right now?
7:14amMatthew
????
7:14amZB
hold on a sec
7:14amMatthew
ok
7:14amZB
I'm on the phone with your mom
who is certain you're in mississippi
and that you're reporting to teach today.
want to tell me who the hell this is really?

See recent report on CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

the (little) devil in the details

In Praise of
The Second Nine Months by Vicki Glembocki

At about 5 months along in my own pregnancy, I read The Second Nine Months with a bit of trepidation but with great recommendation from a friend of the author’s who insisted that I would enjoy it. I did. The trepidation had come not from worrying that it would be too negative or sarcastic, or whiny and insufferable as “Operating Instructions,” (the voice of which smacks of bitterness from not having a partner with whom to venture into parenthood among other meanderings about drugs and religious hooey) but out of a fear of my own feelings. I get annoyed at the neediness of the dog, how will I ever be a mother? It is the unabashed, unapologetic look at self doubt that makes The Second Nine Months a success – not in delivering us a new trend in baby-and-pregnancy-related books (though it will likely result in a string of copycats).

I have a brutally honest friend who announced early in her first pregnancy that she thought the whole thing was gross – including the idea of having an infant – and while at the time I confused her portrayal of motherhood as a bit cold and unemotional, what I missed in the statement was the very emotion in it, the questions in herself she’s willing to face, and the strength to say, “it’s not complicated, or it is, but the fact that I’m straightforward with myself about it is not.” She’s right, it’s gross. Not admitting it is more gross. Not being able to speak the truth can literally make one sick and further – for what I’d like to think is the urbane woman – makes us slaves to the marketing empire that is salivating for us to drop our precious load on the economy, oddly, making us “consumers” while really we are producers.

Pregnancy makes you do weird things, like steal fruit from business breakfast buffets and google “why men find pregnant women so hot.” It makes you fierce and wilting a the same time. It conjures up all sorts of strange nightmares that progress with the pregnancy, of deformed babies and a deformed self image, coupled with a growing realization that while it may all be worth it in the end, the poopy parts might also have to be as good as it gets. It’s also a vibrant, pulsating time when you feel like there’s a beam of light on you wherever you go, a fecund image of life, family, sex and of loving a parasite. It’s confusing.

What I take most from Second Nine Months is that I know that deep, irrational love, the kind I feel for the first time with my future spouse and father of my child, and what I expect to feel for my child, comes with the capability to hate, a dark repose and broiling anger for the whole mess, the whole lot, and anyone that would dare step in my way as I couple with it. The balance between the two makes for a complicated woman, a light and darkness that defines us all, and a worthwhile life.

Thank you, Vicki. I will almost certainly give it a second read. If I have time. Which I have a feeling I will not. But I’ll want to.

PS
The one thing I would change if I could in the story? Wouldda sent that email and then FIRED her ass.
Millenials...

o kentucky

Recently I went to a Louisville Bats game at Slugger Field. The opposing team was somewhat irrelevant – let’s call it Bats v Gnats. I was impressed by the diligence of the seat steward, guarding the “diamond club” seats, all ten of them, with pride though the entire section lay empty. I sat at the periphery, the lone fan in my section, near first base. It was also called the “first base club” which I connect with Louisville’s air of innocence. The kissing and hands-on-top-of-blouse section, as it were. When a young barista offered me a “hot passion,” pronounced “pay-shun” I felt the blush push up past my cheeks and through my scalp. Kentucky people are deliberately slow, not to stave off heat or the shadow of oppression as in your deep southern states, but to make sure you know they’re trying really, really hard to please you. They talk like bourbon here, and it makes you want to confess all your secrets and be done with it.

If I looked deeper, if I moved my clothes and my life here (which includes a significant other that looks and talks like he should be here anyway) and settled into a neighborhood outside the candy fleur de lis shell, I do wonder what I would find. Kentucky is at once rich and destitute, a crossroads where horse people meet piss poor. There is a fantasy of wealth in Louisville and a romance that is shocking for a town in a state that borders Indiana, so far my least favorite state in the union – I lived in Valparaiso and no one had ever heard of Mardi Gras – something tells me they know about Mardi Gras in Louisville. In my experience, what lies across the border is in the boring belt. Kentucky, the rolling, pretty bluegrass south, is so far away from the beer gut that is most of the middle of the country. Taking in Kentucky one does not guzzle. One sips.

There are tremendous problems here, just as in the middle and the sides and the bottom and top of our country. There are pockets of poverty and ugliness, there are uneducated, abusive people, there is racism and intolerance, there is probably a serious issue with evolution and terrible corruption. That just makes it normal. There are piles of coal on the river. I could overlook those. Because it’s gorgeous here and the accents just kill me. The architecture is solid. There’s a serious take on preservation, a growing interest in sustainability, and an established dedication to stay local and buy American. People smile here, and there has been little reason to smile lately. I will admit I am still clueless about the complexities of life in this state. But I leave wanting to know more.

When I was thirteen I had a mysterious encounter under the blazing hot New Braunfels sun. There was a black bottom reservoir, a green eyed bathingbesuited boy a few years older than me (and about a foot taller) and an opportunity. We had this silly and polite adolescent-intellectual conversation under a tree for an hour, and I took his picture doing a swan dive into the deep water. I never saw him again but I will always be able to recall with great accuracy the romantic buzz I had for the rest of that muggy Texas summer. He had this funny southern accent I didn’t recognize and touched my hair and cheek sweetly and kissed me goodbye, first base nowhere in sight.

Kentucky sorta makes me feel that way.

led by strangers

well, I wouldn't want to stand there and wait for a conductor.

He was so patient, seeming to look at a point just off my shoulder as I reached him in line, a steady stream of besuited ants marching by him and out the train door.
- one woman, the one that sat next to me and spoke staccato
words in a language I did not recognize, stepped off, turned around and
said, "does he need help?" and then before I could advise, disappeared.

"I only see one conductor and he's way down at the first car [helping
people who are perfectly capable of getting out of the train all by their
big-boy selves...] - why don't I take you where you need to go" I said hopefully to him, above the din and shuffle.

"aren't you nice. thank you" he offered and we stepped over the threshold, a gap that I normally
ignore completely, but of which today I made a verbal presentation. "we're stepping over now" I said eagerly and when our right feet hit the platform in unison, he took hold of the heel of my hand and launched down the ramp to the station with more conviction than me. His command of the space - limitless to him and bound to me by hundreds of bodies and obstacles, caught me off guard and I momentarily hesitated - he was leading me, for a moment, and then I rebounded to finish the job as I thought I should.

This could be my realizing that I take too much for granted - vision, among other natural 'gifts' but I'll refrain, and it would be untrue. Mostly in those moments I had with him, I thought about whether or not he could do things better than me, like smell and feel. If it's annoying waiting on arms to hitch rides, and if he could tell by my voice that I am a nice person - and an idea for a love story. Certainly he can't tell his gentle grip on the heel of my hand and great purpose with which he took his steps made me think about falling in love without seeing someone. No, you can't tell that from a walk and a chat about the daily commute - so banal and chatty a chat about the acronyms that follow us like stray dogs through our days in DC.

No I'd have to tell him that, I suppose. And many other things that none of us care to see in each other.

there is no car magnet to describe it.

You want family values? Let's let our new president teach by example.
Not the canned love we've become accustomed to in our politicians, but a real blushing passion-
for his wife, daughters, and country. This is the first family of fables, something
we've only seen in the on-screen heroics of hollywood presidents, the good ones.
This is all so spookily familiar, a final sigh exorcising the last curses
of the Kennedys, one nation-wide recollection of our sweeter past that may not have really
existed- the one in our daydreams that is sepia toned and never, ever angry in church.
Never, ever in front of the children.
And what we've got, pulled up on that big screen is the larger than life character, not the celebrity.
A good man. Doing good things. How refreshing.

P.S.
Your flag decal won't get you into heaven any more.

edible sentiment

I don't dislike Paul Newman's take on marital fidelity as much as I want to steal it while carefully avoiding the woman-as-meat metaphor. It is simple in it's purpose, to illustrate the great secret that is, I assume after fifty years with his wife, a great marriage. He said, "why go out for burgers when you have steak at home?" Truly.

It is so much easier to go on about people that don't mean anything to you. I am speaking of stories I have taken down with great amusement as if I were taking a dictation from Georges Sand. Oh the too-clever musings of a will-never-be. The problem is, or rather, the "opportunity" is that when I sit to do this now, my thoughts are remarkably clean. You. And thus everything seems filthy. The words that were born in the mash of erotic potatoes that seem to surround a relationship early on - the bulbous and attention-getting and looking vaguely like the indiscretions of past presidents, and for the most part somewhat uninventive and tasteless – those starchy dear ones are not there any more. The common burgers, the philandering fries. So I must move on from idle reporting, and the silly pursuit of ordinary hot potatoes. I simply cannot bear the lowly roots when I am faced with the possibility of poetry.

I'm looking into a tea of temperance, the lines on your face, and your unique take on godlessness. And cucumber water. I was indulgent, but limited. And now I'm rare wordless filet mignon in some ludicrous herbed sauce. I am a pound of butter and a gallon of fresh juice. I am culinary and clean, but decadent nonetheless - the finish of a fine pinot and your relentless check mate. You've made my love wholesome, and as I gag on that word, I will say as well that it is goodness on a wide spectrum, played out in a come to dinner bell of multi-tonal loveliness across the field of this new life – including the craggy cat's meow and red kettle air raid on a crisp October morning. That smoke tendril I hate and love. Remorselessly wearing aprons and giving myself over to your steady and kind rule over the kitchen. That bread knife fiasco. Being the baker – I'm an early riser anyway. Well just for old time's sake, here's a curse on you for making me happy and ruining my idle nonsense. For making me lose my apetite for fast food. But not for dining on dreams and if necessary to put dinner on the table, with second rate knives. And not for caring enough for me that I may dine on love and occassionally grilled cheese and tomato soup, which you will somehow make into a gourmet meal. I am fearfully but hopefully tasked now with writing a real love story.