Tuesday Poetry

Lotos-Eaters, by Alfred Tennyson

“COURAGE!” he said, and pointed toward the land,
“This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.

A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d; and, dew’d with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

The charmed sunset linger’d low adown
In the red West; thro’ mountain clefts the dale
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more;”
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”

CHORIC SONG
I
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro’ the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II
Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
“There is no joy but calm!”—
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence—ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other’s whisper’d speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap’d over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!

VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The Gods are hard to reconcile;
’Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII
But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet—while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly—
With half-dropped eyelids still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill—
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine—
To watch the emerald-color’d water falling
Thro’ many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine.

VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak,
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer—some, ’tis whisper’d—down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

holidon't

No holiday here. Just horizontal rain and wall rattling wind.

I could tell simply by listening that being outside today will be a thoroughly soaking experience. Once I got out of bed, I confirmed that it even looks like we're having a minor hurricane.

Today I need to go in early to meet with some extra needy students. I've been irritable all weekend because my leg and hip have been sore and all the NSAIDs I'm taking round the clock for that seem to have started catching up to my stomach. I got into a fight with someone at the supermarket last night whose poor manners caused her to repeatedly get in my way - no play by play - it ended with most of the front of the store knowing that all she had to to was say excuse me. I came home, ate dinner (which didn't sit well), patted the cat, and watched SNL's commercial parody collection. Laughter is the best medicine indeed, but like so many meds, it's often more immediately a palliative measure rather than a targeted treatment.

Needless to say, waking up to nausea and a car horn blaring outside (redneck doorbell), my shitty mood has returned. Oh and we don't get today off. No holiday here.

Here's one of those "not a threat but a promise" statements people seem to have a hard time with (as if my knowing that I am going to react in an inappropriately strong manner to something is enough to prevent me from doing it): If my students either don't all show or show up with nothing to contribute, heads are gonna roll today, not just with that set but with the entire lot of them.

cat on a bike

Here's my first attempt at making an animated image. I think it came out good, lots of fun too. I made it for my sister - A, the one I sent you has a background image. This is just Rosie. And bike.

Tuesday Poetry

An Academic Haiku, from Rate Your Students

Junior faculty,
running scared from job to job,
no place to call home.

Lacking

I was looking over my site meter this morning and seeing that a rather large number of people end up here by typing funny shit into a google image search. Up until now, it took them to a post about Archie McPhee and christmas shopping in 2005. Other than cjblue commenting that she almost bought me some of the very items I had been admiring at Archie McPhee's, there wasn't much remarkable about this post. Oh how disappointed these people must be. I'd like to know what the logic is that governs this selection of search terms.

Last night one of my neighbors kept propping open the outside door. This meant the heat was on full blast, roasting at least A____, me, and two of our other neighbors I ran into while I was closing the door a second time. It did occur to me that they could have been lying, but there are good, non-altruism assuming reasons for that being very unlikely. So some dipshit is propping the door. So what? Aside from being worried that our landlord will raise the rent (an issue for me and A____ who are no longer on a year lease), it means we will run out of oil faster. We've run out between 11 PM and about 1 or 2 AM the last few times. This is no fun because it means (a) NO ONE gets heat. If these idiots think their underheated apartment is cold now, imagine how much colder it will be when the whole building is freezing. (b) the oil line to the furnace will clog because it sucks up sediment from the low end of the oil tank. This happened the last time and the filter had been changed within the past year. Clogged means it won't run or won't run well.

I had occasion to wonder what kind of reasoning leads to the behavior of my neighbor last night. I decided that more than being purely self interested, it is childish. That is, self interest would say "I'm cold and I want to be warmer. I don't care if making myself warmer make others uncomfortable. My warmth is the most important thing." So then this person being warm should be a governing principle in the decision of how to act. While propping the door open on a cold night so the cold night air floods the hallway where the thermostat is will make the furnace run hard and might warm the colder apartments, it will also increase the chances of us running out of oil. No oil means NO heat, not simply insufficient heat. And that outcome would seem to be directly in opposition to the governing principle of maintaining warmth.

Ok so this is not supposed to be like some fucking greek philosopher style argument. My point is just that if you're trying to keep warm, wouldn't you think that you'd avoid doing thing which might make you warmer in the short run or for a limited set of times but which has the risk at ANY point of making you much, much colder?

That's the childish part. I don't mean childish like petulant, I mean childish like someone who hasn't mastered object permanence.

All of this is just a long way of me wondering What the Hell is Wrong with People?

(Super) Tuesday Poetry

Down to the Ark by The Mountain Goats

The candidates met up in North Dakota
And they donned their black robes there in the chapel hall
They said a brief invocation to their cloven-hoofed prince
And they signed their names in blood on the vestry wall

In Christ you know there's neither high nor low
And the void will claim all creatures small or bright
Seal up the borders or let everybody in
In the order of the serpent, there'll be neither left nor right

And we pull down our blindfolds
And we reach out for the lever in the dark
Get a sticker for our shirts as we head into the sun
Proudly bearing the mark
Headed down to the ark

The applicants went down to Oklahoma
And they hired an accent coach to teach them the western twang
And several post-born babies learned the hard way:
Vampires only kiss you if they've sharpened up their fangs

And as Minnesota fell, so went Missouri
We met at VFWs in the snow
And we voted down the tax codes, and we voted down the war
So many names to choose from, just one way to go.

WWTF

Much of where I travel in Connecticut is a no man's land for radio signal. The already slim pickings for radio broadcast you could listen to without wanting to ram the car into a tree narrows even further as I wind my way down the quaint, deadly country roads. The road dips and there goes the signal, Punk Rock Jukebox dissolves into a hiss of static punctuated by bands of some top 40 shit - played at a handful of stations by live djs and played at an increasing number by a radio robot (seriously - they don't even have a human to give the play list, just a prerecording referring listeners to a website).

Last night I found myself listening to a muzak version of Mrs. Robinson on a station way down the low end of the dial. It was damned funny. I found myself wishing they would announce the artist because I deeply feel I need to add this to the next CD I make for cjblue.

I mention the muzak so you'll have the proper context for the shit I will listen to simply to listen to the radio. Some people are radio people. When I drive, I am.

So with the exception of a few college radio stations (god love 'em), which can't compete with the massive, sloppy signals on the corporate dial, there's not much to listen to. And even the little stations let me down now and then. Take their tendency to carry NPR programs....please.

Last week, I think it was exactly a week ago, I came up out of a valley and paradoxically lost the station I had been listening to. I scanned and a blurb of talk caught my attention. I forget now what exactly was said that held the promise for something interesting to come. I paused, letting the dialog sink in. It was one of the NPR women, one of the ones who sound exactly the same to me but who lately have taken to adopting a new (apparently hip?), more casual style of speech than what I am accustomed to hearing those clone voices uttering.

The clone was talking to a man who was talking about politics. During the time I listened, the close never disclosed who this man was or why they were speaking. However, what I did hear was the clone and this man stating then agreeing with their statements that issues are not what makes a difference between a Clinton voter and an Obama voter.

The reason for this conclusion they had whipped themselves up into was singular as far as I could tell. The man mentioned that exit polls hadn't shown a discernible difference in issues that people who said they voted for Clinton cared about and issues that people who said they voted for Obama cared about.

Have you ever done an exit poll? They suck! Oh god they suck so much. First, some exit polls are conducted by news agencies, not research foundations. I don't the source of the data cited in this show because Mr. Smary McSmarterson on NPR did not address the point and the clone didn't bother to follow up. She was too busy breathing heavily into a microphone and blithering in a way which I truly have come to dislike.

My god, I think, is this what other people think all liberals are like? No wonder they hate us.

Back to my point. My point is, NPR what the fuck? I listened as the interviewer and interviewee went on to make still more conclusions based on that one conclusion from the poorly presented exit poll data. I had to change the station to keep myself from getting too ramped up.
I guess if I want intelligent radio, I will wait until Democracy NOW comes on (at noon on one of my beloved college stations, one which has little to no NPR and the like). Until then, it's the the transient signals of college stations doing independent and local programming (along with the occasionally and accidentally great moments like Mrs. Robinson) to break up miles of top 40 radio for the robots.

Gender bender

According the The Gender Genie, I'm a boy. In five out of six trials, it says the blog text I submitted was male, as opposed to female. The text I submitted was only my own writing, so there is no news story writing confound here. The Gender Genie was prompted in part by a story about a story on a research project , the findings of which one of the researchers apparently feels supports the claim that "women are more comfortable talking or thinking about people and relationships, while men prefer to contemplate things."

Oh, and my fella's a girl.

Go U. Maryland Grad Union!

Some hopeful news from Maryland.
For more info from the organizers, go here.

(Excerpts from)
Grad Students May Get to Unionize
U-Md., Which Doesn't See Them as Employees, Likely to Oppose Bill
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 3, 2008

A Montgomery County lawmaker will introduce legislation tomorrow to allow graduate students and adjunct professors at Maryland's public universities to form unions, setting up a legislative battle over an issue that has hit a nerve at campuses across the nation.

Graduate students at the University of Maryland's flagship campus in College Park, many of whom hold campus jobs teaching undergraduates or conducting research for faculty, have partnered with national labor unions and hired an Annapolis lobbyist in the campaign to unionize.

The legislation, proposed by Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery), would give graduate students collective bargaining rights to negotiate stipend pay, benefits and workloads with university administrators. Raskin said the students should be able to form a union, just like the university's clerical workers, mechanics, janitors and campus police.

"Graduate students are treated like the migrant laborers of higher education," said Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University.
...
Although Raskin has persuaded several colleagues to sign on to his legislation, the bill is likely to face opposition from the University of Maryland.

Administrators have not studied Raskin's bill, but university spokesman Millree Williams suggested that they might not support it.

"The University of Maryland-College Park is not opposed to unions," Williams said, reading from a prepared statement. "We have several on campus, and we work quite well with them. Our students, however, are students and not employees, and we don't view them as employees."
...
Supporters argue that by forming a union, graduate students could receive better benefits, which would help the university compete against other institutions in recruiting top-caliber students.
....
Laura Moore, president of the College Park campus's graduate student government, said U-Md. is "losing good prospective graduate students because they can't afford to live on what they're being offered."

Moore said most graduate students working as teaching or research assistants receive a stipend of about $14,000 but spend the vast majority of it on rent.

"The situation for graduate students here is very close to untenable," said Moore, a master's candidate in entomology who helped initiate Raskin's bill.

brain scramble

My head's scrambly this evening. I'm blaming the weather. And undergrads.

I opened my email inbox just now and scanned quickly, as I often do. This was the most recent email's subject:
perfectly crafted exclusive
watches rolex
And my brain filled in something about "crotches" and "wax". Exactly what is gone now, obliterated by a real actual reading of the subject line (a sort of literate double take).

I know my unconscious choice of top down to make intelligible the set of scrambled letters could indicate I'm a perv. In my defense, the subject lines in spam (which my inbox is full of courtesy of the university's hideous spam filter) do make those words contextually probable.

Tuesday Poetry

This Is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Say "aarrrrrhhhhggg!"

First class of the semester. It's my last first class. Wow. Do I feel sad? I thought about it and I've gotta say, I do not. I especially do not since within hours of my nearly hour long lecture on why the students need to start with primary source articles from peer reviewed journals for their research projects, I got an email asking me to re-explain why. The email ended with the question "So can't I use magazines or something?"

Can I get a "O. M. G."?

It took me way too long to write back to this person. It would have been less time but I was trying really hard not to sound sarcastic. This was not easy.

With my last first full week of classes and my last first lecture comes the first cold, or at least sore throat. Whether this is a function of the rooms being over-ventilated by a blast of icy cold air coming from somewhere in the ceiling in front of me but always somehow pointing directly at my chest, or whether I picked up a bug from being back on a student filled campus I don't know. Fortunately, I have little to do tomorrow but get blood drawn and make sure I'm registered to vote on "Super (duper) Tuesday". And that's an "ahhhhh" kind of thing.

Paradoxy

The text below is from an email I got today from my department head. The first sentence has been changed minimally, the second not at all. I am so very amused by this.

The organizational meeting for the weekly research group series will be held
at _____ on ____ in rm ____. If you didn't get this message, let me know and we'll get you on the mailing list.

Dear Paul [Saint]...

I love this bit.



I so dislike Paul and his letters. Not exactly sure where it came from. I mean, this is an implicit dislike at this point, an aspect of a long standing opinion I've held about Paul's writings and their place in Christianity since my childhood, when I spent a bit of time in Catholic school. I'm thinking perhaps as a wee 5-6 year old, I was told stories about Paul and his various letters which lead me to form this aversion. Hearing the same tired bit read at so many weddings doesn't help (you know, the part that goes: "...love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Love puts down the toilet seat, never makes you buy your own birthday cake, and always remembers the fabric softener..." or something like that).

Tuesday Poetry - better late than never version

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens
(who lived in Connecticut for many years it seems - I wonder if it was something better back then.)

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

No floating

Today we had a three and a half hour mini-conference in my department. As with so many academic gatherings, we were cramped in a way which recalls that line Tom Hanks delivers so excellently in the Coen brothers' remake of The Ladykillers: "We academics are inordinately fond of wedging ourselves into confined spaces."
Gosh, it seems almost criminal to add to such a perfect summary, but I feel I must contribute a resounding HELL YES.

I admit, I've always been a bit prickly about my personal space. However I've come to regard big name talks, mandatory meetings, and other high turn out events with a nasty mix of trepidation, embarrassment, chagrin, and preemptive irritation since losing the totally taken for granted guarantee of a non-painful hip. It limits me in ways I wouldn't have even imagined. One of them is sitting. Another is accommodating and navigating the wedging in process.

While the rest of the academic world continues its love affair with wedging behavior, for me it poses a genuine physical threat these days. Today's gathering was, my god it was like we were going for a world record, like some crazy kids from back in the 50s or 60s or whenever it was kids crammed themselves into phone booths or swallowed goldfish. Today's gathering was so crowded that even senior, tenured faculty were seated in the far less desirable chairs lining the walls of the room rather than at the big table (the big table was all full up with the overly punctual bigwigs and presenters). Several junior grad students sat on the floor. A few stragglers ended up sitting in the hall, crowded around the open door like the proverbial hobos around a barrel fire. I saw our newest faculty hire (a youngish, terribly quiet man they lured here from somewhere in Europe) sitting in the hall, furthest from the door at one of those "desk-chair" monstrosities.

Since I know what to expect (hard rigid chairs with negative leg room if I don't see to matters in advance) I arrived a half an hour before the first talk, rolling in front of me one of the cushioned, adjustable chairs from my office. I set my chair up where it looked like I'd have some leg room if I needed to straighten my leg out a bit, which I often need to do when I sit for a long time. Unfortunately, due to the crowd, even before the time the talks started, I'd been hemmed in by chairs pulled in from the hallway.

As talk time approached, a young woman holding a chair approached me, or more properly, approached the space I was occupying. She walked up in front of me from my right and stood there holding her chair aloft, looking expectantly at the small slice of empty space I'd managed to keep in front of my left leg. I didn't move my legs to let her pass, hoping she'd quickly give up and look somewhere else. She saw me see her, saw me not move my legs, but she continued to hold the chair up the way a toddler might hold up a cup she wants refilled by her mommy. "Ok," I thought, "She thinks I'm being rude, which I arguably would be if I didn't have a really good reason to need this space. I'll explain." I addressed her: "I'm sorry, I need to keep this area a little open because..." and as I was saying "I have a hip problem" she huffed, sighed exasperatedly (over my words), then half turned (one of those taken for granted liberties of a pain free hip) and wedged her chair down into the slightly less open area a bit off to my right.

My god that pissed me off.

Not because this alone was such an offense. It's irritating but I wouldn't be blogging about it if it were just that. It got me because this is the second time in a week I've had an encounter like this.

The first was when I was walking across campus. That time, two men were walking two abreast toward me on a wide path. I was keeping to the right. They were keeping to the middle. To my further right was snow and ice packed up just beyond the long muddy, ice crusted puddle which bordered the edge of the path. The men advanced, and I adjusted my angle a bit to the right. The men continued to advance and by now it was clear there would be no passing them on the right without hitting the puddle but if I tried to cut over to the left of them, I would have to pivot on my left leg and move quickly to avoid colliding. So I stopped. At this point, the one to my left saw me and started, improbably to move to his left, bringing him further into my path and also straight into the shoulder of the man who he was walking with. They bounced off one another, then split, then we all came to a stop for a moment, during which time I made eye contact with them and shrugged. They veered off to my left and I resumed walking, now a bit past them when one of them said in a quite abrupt tone "well WE were taking our cues from YOU!" I didn't stop walking but looked over my shoulder. He was stopped and looking, well, pissed. His friend was a few steps ahead of him and looked apologetic. The pissed off guy nearer to me yelled"I GUESS SOMEONE'S HAVING A BAD DAY?!" I stopped and turned back and said "I have..." but got no further since he had by that time spun around (another hip maneuver) thrusting his hand down in a "oh just forget it!" gesture, and walked back to his companion muttering.

Not worth it, it being allowing myself the luxury, god...the JOY of engaging him in a massively hostile confrontation which would suck up half my energy for the day, but damn what a dick. I thought about the encounter for a while that day. Then I forgot about it. After the young woman with the chair, after seeing that she looked so annoyed, I thought about it again. Since it felt so shitty not to say anything further to those guys earlier this week, maybe I would feel better if I said something to chair-lady. I considered trying to explain to her at the break why I had asked her not to put a chair practically on my lap. But what do I accomplish by soldiering on and explaining? I am certainly not contrite, although I am somewhat embarrassed to even need this accommodation. But I don't feel bad for her, not exactly. Do I want to make these people feel bad, feel as bad as I felt? Not really. Do I want them to understand and not think ill of me? Paradoxical as that is given my irritation at this kind of behavior, I do think that is more the likely cause.

Since today's first talk was one I'd heard before, I had some time to consider these situations and my reaction to them in the space immediately after my encounter with the chair wielding woman. And here's what I decided. I don't really give a shit if someone that clueless thinks ill of me. Impatience or gross self importance, clearly it's a sign of a flawed character - someone who I probably would not like, or at least a side of someone I wouldn't like. Many, many years ago, before I had arthralgias and the various "moans and groans" which have changed the landscape of my day to day life, I decided that I needed to stop letting it eat me up if people I didn't like didn't like me. The situation which prompted the decision to at least liberate myself from wanting some kind of approval even from people I didn't care for was just one of those run of the mill workplace irritations. Probably this is something other people learned in 8th grade but I'm a late bloomer so it wasn't until my late twenties that I realized what the hell did it matter if someone I disliked thought ill of me, providing we could keep things professional and civil?

So today, I extended this to the people who can't manage to not avoid putting themselves on a collision course with me while I'm walking slowly and with a limp, to the people who won't take just a second to be decent about being asked to make a very minor accommodation, to the people who are slightly inconvenienced so I can be (just be) without hurting myself. I pissed her off. I can't casually glide out of the way of very important men. I'm stuck forcing them to notice that crowds do not simply part for them - which means that maybe, despite what their mommies and daddies raised them to believe, we don't all live to accommodate them. I can't float like a butterfly so I suppose what's left is to sting like a bee and learn to be ok with that.

Tuesday Poetry

The Health-Food Diner, by Maya Angelou

No sprouted wheat and soya shoots
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).

Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).

Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).

No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me run

to

Loins of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).

Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.

dogs

There are dogs upstairs. Medium sized fluffy dogs with tails that curve all the way over so they are touching the fluffy backs of these dogs. That kind of dogs. They don't bark too much but they make noises. The strange thing about these noises are they are sounds I had forgotten. The sounds were immediately familiar but strangely unplaceable, at least when I first hear them. Like a bit of a song you haven't heard since you were a kid. The soft "ka-thunk" of paws hitting a floor. The "whap-whap-whap" sound of a wagging tail or of a leg belonging to a paw which is busily scratching at the fleas who are permanent tenants of this building. I hear them when it's quiet, often at night, like now. It catches me off guard.

Tuesday Poetry

A little Shel Silverstein (who, I just discovered, had the same birthday as me)

They've Put a Brassiere On a Camel
They've put a brassiere on a camel,
She wasn't dressed proper, you know.
They've put a brassiere on a camel,
So that her humps wouldn't show.
And they're making other respectable plans,
They're even even insisting the pigs should wear pants,
They'll dress up the ducks if we give them the chance
Since they've put a brassiere on a camel.

They've put a brassiere on a camel,
They claim she's more decent that way.
They've put a brassiere on a camel,
The camel had nothing to say.
They squeezed her into it, i'll never know how,
They say that she looks more respectable now,
Lord knows what they've got in mind for the cow,
Since they've put a brassiere on a camel.

Time

This was about a month ago now, but I was thinking about it since one of my aunts called recently. The polite one. I still haven't heard from the other one, my aunt Maria. She's told my sister she'll call me but I think perhaps she is putting this off.

Aunt Maria called me while I was walking to the parking garage on a December afternoon. As the crowded old buildings along my path opened onto the sweeping vista of the business school diag, I could see the entrance to the garage. It hadn't been a long day, not in hours at work, but I was wiped out. If I remember right, I had been meeting with students. The garage was like a beacon - nearly there! - in what looked like almost enough light to make it home before dark. My night vision sucks, and it sucks more in CT, a state where darkness apparently lends a rustic charm to the already deadly winding and narrow country roads. I calculated that I could make the haul down one such charming road and at least onto and off of the unlit highway, if not all the way home, before it got completely dark. I could make it if I didn't break my stride and if I wasn't tied up in campus area traffic for some esoteric sporting event.

That's when my father's sister Maria called.

Maria is the second youngest in the family and the one closest to us by virtue of youth and a strong relationship she and her not yet dead husband had fostered with my brother when we kids were little. Maria was widowed young, well young-ish. Certainly prematurely. When she calls, I can hear the ice tinkling in her glass. Probably a high ball. Maria is from a generation where is was important to masquerade one's vulgar habits with posh names. Highball, martini, gimlet - drinks just this side of a double boozey, neat. Or in layman's terms, a whole lot of booze with nothing between the drinker and it but a small amount of glass and the moment of inertia of the drinker's forearm.

Maria has impeccable timing, in the inverse sense. She tends to call just as you're going out, as you put the rice into the pot of boiling water, or were thinking of turning in early. It's usually a lengthy call. I had called her the day before when I had a spare hour. I'd recently heard from my brother that another family member was ill. The ailing relative was our aunt Keiko, one of Maria and my dad's sisters in law. Keiko was the wife of Frank, one of my father and Maria's older brothers. Frank and Keiko lived in Nevada my whole life. I visited them once. They have no kids and I was engaged to a doctor at the time. Being with Keiko and Frank for a day was like having my own private pep squad. Everything I did or said was just awesome, great, excellent. My uncle seemed to approve that I had struck out on my own for Michigan. In his generation, which I think I am to assume is something like the average of Hemmingway and Kerouac, the striking out on one's own ungodly young and entering the workforce without a college degree in hand was something to be proud of. A sign of character, assuming of course you aren't lead away from the real work-a-day world and back into the academy for a decade of futile student-hood, and your too young marriage doesn't end in a whimpering divorce.

I remember my aunt less clearly and specifically from that trip than from the visit she and my uncle made back east years later. At that point, I had moved back to New England and was up visiting from CT. My dad's oldest brother Freddy had hosted "a time" (my family's word for any get together involving second cousins) and everyone was there. Everyone but my brother and possibly my mother. My sister and I were there. My dad and Maria. Keiko and Frank. Aunt Clara and her husband, still alive then. Clara was heard to remark numerous times "Oooh my whole family is here! All my family!" throughout the day, picking up in frequency as we gathered in the family room for a big group picture. Clara had hired a photographer. The thing is, the whole family wasn't there. Who wasn't there was my brother, the only boy in the generation in a family of Irish and Italian catholics. My brother who the Italian relations at least used to give money to simply for existing, who was named while my sister and I were universally referred to as "the girls" or more directly, "you girls". The only relative to mention my brother at "the time" was Aunt Maria, who did so surreptitiously over a back door cigarette and a gimlet.

To make matters worse, the hostess, Ilene (the Irish-American Freddy had married) had invited a good number of the Irish side of the family, most her relations and some relatives of Ilene's mother in law, the Irish American mother of the lot of them....Freddy, Frank, my dad and the three "Aunties" Clara, Maria, and Pauline. These people, the extended Irish side of the families, were not close family. These were people who had never been at "times" for this side of the family before and thus they were folks I didn't know. They acted like they owned the place - hogging the pool table and the television. They seemed to interact only with certain other people I knew by sight alone, if at all.

Aunt Keiko was among the people not spoken to. She spent the day cleaning up after everyone, and I spent a good amount of the day trying to talk her out of that. It seemed every time I saw her, she had a stack of paper plates in one hand and a pile of crumbs or bottle caps in another and was slowly making her way to a garbage pail.

When Maria called this December afternoon, she was returning my request for information on Keiko which I’d left on Maria’s answering machine. I'd heard Keiko was seriously ill and I wasn't sure when I'd get a chance to talk to any of the family if not now, so I took the call. I tried to walk fast and talk while the garage got darker.

Maria told me Keiko had multiple myeloma. I told Maria I had had no idea. Maria dug in with more details. I listened and felt sort of like a heel for not knowing. Keiko was now in the hospital for the second or third time in recent months and the verdict was that she was likely going to die soon. Maria filled me in on all this as I sat in the garage and watched my options for a not nerve wracking drive home dwindle. Maria mentioned that my aunt Clara was with her. Clara's husband had died a few months before, in August. Since then, Clara had kept herself quite busy with visits to out of state friends and nights with more local family.

The holidays were coming up. How was Clara going to handle this first Christmas without her husband? I remembered visiting Clara and her husband at christmas time. They lived downstairs from my grandparents, Clara's parents. They had a tree with candy on it. No kids, but candy on the tree. While I do recall the candy, I don't remember how it tasted. I mention this because what taste memory I retain from Aunt Clara's house was in fact the strangely bitter taste of the corner of one of her lacquered, inlay topped coffee tables. I assume this is a very old memory. But it is part of the package. Candy on a fake christmas tree and the taste of expensive, shiny wood.

That flash of considering Clara alone for the holiday made me think of my aunt Maria's recent wedding, which had happened sometime after the funeral of Clara's husband and before the most recent hospitalization of Keiko. I hadn't seen Maria since Clara's husband's funeral, and then not more than a few glimpses across the overwarm church during the Mass. However, I had spoken to Maria on the phone around the funeral. She had told me that she was getting remarried. Ice tinkled. "Can you believe it? Me at my time of life!" she'd said, laughing, giddy. Whether her upcoming wedding or her husband to be was the proper source of this moment of effervescence or if Aunt Maria's emotions were simply being jerked around by one of those relieved-to-be-talking-about-something-nice-and-not-a-funeral was hard to tell. It also was not my place to ask. She had been so in love with her first husband, I couldn't imagine her remarrying. I was happy for her though. I congratulated her then, intending to speak to her at the funeral and to meet the man who would be my new uncle, but by the time the Mass was over and family was gathering for coffee and snacks in the lunch room of the tiny saint something or another's school just behind the church, Maria had been engulfed in a crowd of family, unknown Irish and Italian relations, associates of Clara and her now dead husband, and worst of all, my parents. I made minimal appearances at the post funeral snack time, then left in what I hoped was a discreet if hurried exit.

I had felt a little bad about leaving without speaking to Maria so when our phone conversation about Keiko was wrapping up and the light was gone anyhow, I said "Hey, by the way, I didn't get a chance to say congratulations on your wedding." She said thank you haltingly, then explained in a rush that she was sorry she hadn't invited me and my sister but that she had wanted to. "It's ok," I said. I knew that this side of the family sometimes has a crude way of dealing with limited funds or space. Lines will be drawn along something more like political alliances than blood relation and my having been fixed in the minds of most of the family as a child since I had little to do with them as an adult made me expendable. I understood this. I had planned a small wedding myself and knew that sometimes awkward choices were made.

Maria went on. "It's just that your father said if I invited you girls, that if I invited you then your mother wouldn't be able to come. And that if she couldn't, then he wouldn't come." I didn't even try to hide the disgust in my voice when I told her how tacky I thought it was for my father to have put her in that position. She went on for a while, saying something about how my father had said my mother was so upset at Clara's husband's funeral, how my sister and I ("you girls") hadn't spoken to my mother and this had apparently made our mother even more upset. I clarified "Maria, I did speak to my mother. I saw her sitting at the table with (my cousins) and I said hi." Maria told me that my father hadn't mentioned that. This pissed me off because it was a pretty massive concession on my part to even speak to my mother. Had there been no family there, I would certainly not have bothered.

Why did it matter? It wasn't that I felt I'd done "the right thing" in saying hello to my mother. I had said hello to her because I had found myself at the same table as her. Looking up there seeing her a soft booze puffy tear streaked lump had made me feel ill. If I felt sick looking at her, I reasoned, my aunt Ilene and her kids (whose table my mother had improbably stuck herself at) must have felt overwhelmingly uncomfortable. They certainly looked that way. Ilene had glanced up at the end of the table while she and I were speaking and it was in following her gaze that I even noticed my mother in the first place.

Also, I'm pretty acutely aware of the social mores governing things like mother-daughter relations. They are codified in and informed by the hallmark movie of the week kind of reconciliation which people expect is always possible even in the most fractured family scenarios. I knew instinctively was that if I said nothing to my mother, as would have been my better personal judgment to do, it would have lead to poor assessments of not just me but my brother and sister as well by the entire family. I knew it would be communicated, Ilene and her daughter's less than charitable discomfort at hosting my quietly weepy mother at their table would have been channeled into some chastisement of all of us for having left her there for the rest of the family to deal with. Essentially, we would have suffered ill repute for the sobby mess of a show our mother was forcing her inlaws to put up with.

It also, I think, arose out of a guilty need for a kind of restitution, not to my mother but to the extended family - Aunts Ilene and Clara especially since on the day of the "time" many years ago, when Keiko was playing Geisha and the Irish relatives were busily snubbing the rest of us, when everyone pretended my brother didn't exist, I had been a rotten kid. I had gotten mouthy, loudly referred to one of Ilene's daughters as ugly, and had intentionally rammed my pool cue into the guts and groins of distant relatives who couldn't be bothered to move away from my hard won shot. I topped it all off by flipping off the camera in one of the "whole" family portraits. This wouldn't have been a big deal except that it turned out the one photo where I had discretely rearranged my hands (which I had been instructed to fold demurely on my husband's shoulder as I stood behind him) was the only picture where no one was closing their eyes. In the context of my aunt Clara's excitement and subsequent severe disappointment (which was conveyed to me in a late night tinkling phone call from Aunt Maria), and with Clara's current grief as the backdrop to my mess of a mother peering soggily at me from the end of Ilene's table, I felt snubbing my mother would have been a little bit of discord which they deserved not to witness. I'd never stage a reconciliation for the Aunts' benefit, but it seemed I could at least muster up a little polite appearance for their sake.

And still, this. "And then that turned out to be the weekend your brother was in the hospital and your mother didn't end up coming anyhow!" Aunt Maria had concluded with a shorter version of her characteristic whiskey voiced laugh. I apologized for my father's thoughtlessness again, then spoke briefly with my aunt Clara. She was her usual proper self. Sympathetic to her brother as his wife was dying. Recalling her husband's long battle with cancer and time in hospice. The topic turned to the issue of the culture of medicine in general, which touched too close to politics and drove the always polite Clara from the phone with sweetly said "Good bye, dear." I thought of saying "I love you" but it always feels wrong. I said it one time while talking to Clara the week after her husband had died and she seemed very thrown by it. Northern Italians, they are not warm people.

As I was getting off the phone as unawkwardly as possible with Aunt Clara, I imagined Maria waving in the background. I heard some talking and thought for a moment that I could hear the tinkling of ice in her hands as she returned her attention to the nonspecified old man she had married, who was probably watching golf on TV and feeling thankful that he hadn't yet been exposed to this fucked up side of his new bride's family.

It was very dark by the time I left the garage. It's just as well as it kept my mind more or less on the road instead of indulging the thoughts of my father's voice in the familiar clipped meter it takes on when he imagines he's righteously laying down the law. Dirty Harry Dad saying to his older sister things like "The girls...they didn't talk to their mother. She was upset. They're selfish." I wondered if he used the phrase he had often called us at home, "selfish little shits" Trying to pick out the road from the ditches helped me drive off the thought of my father saying smugly "She doesn't need that. Their mother and I have more than paid..." It helped me not dwell on wondering if he'd add "...for what we did" or if he'd leave it hanging, agency unstated.

By the time I got home that night, I had nearly put it out of my conscious mind. I remembered a while later and mentioned it to my sister when we talked. She was horrified. She told our brother, who then railed against our mother for it. I've since learned that our mother wrote some one of her soppy letters to Aunt Maria. That our mother had told my brother she was "shamed in front of my god and my family!" Her family? They never even fucking liked her. Her god? Well, catholic church isn't exactly the fare she was raised on but in her magical world any judeo-christian god will fit the bill for the big male cheerleader in the sky she has fabricated for herself out of popular religion.

My sense is that this is a good thing, or at least a just thing, her shame and all. That she wrote to Aunt Maria is, well, that's questionable. That my aunt mentioned it to my sister, closing the topic with what I imagine was a huskily spoken plea "Can't you just put your anger behind you?" is cause for my great annoyance. This certainly isn't shit any of us need. I plan on sharing that sentiment with my aunt Maria the next time she calls. She's gonna need a lot of ice for that call.

Movies

"Oh no! Space monkeys are attacking!"

mad skills

Hey guess what? I type fast. I was looking at jobs I am qualified to do and happened to undertake a quick search for online typing tests. While many of them annoyingly put little floating underscores on the text you're supposed to be typing and confound you by not counting errors even if you deleted and retyped properly, I managed to consistently get in the 70 wpm with some errors (which I had fixed even in the time frame of the test) and 59 wpm with no errors. Woo-hoo.
So nearly 9 years of grad school and I'm thinking that my typing skills will probably be the thing most likely to get me a paying job.

Yeah. I feel so like it was all worth it.

dopey new year

I'm chock full o'hyoscyamine which means I'll ring in the new year sleepy, oh so sleepy. I've been meaning to post my resolution before now but didn't get around to it. Right now A____'s out visiting a friend, to return in a while with chinese food (which means more drugs for me but mmmm....beef on a stick!) so this seems like as good a time as any for a new year's post, scattered and doped as I may be.

As I mentioned last year, I am keeping my resolutions very simple these days. Cut and dry. No grand "going to change my luck" or emotionally grow shit. No, because things go bad - they invariably do (that's not cynicism, things invariably go right too but we notice the bad so much more) - and then I get all superstitious about having brought the bad on myself. Then I feel stupid for feeling superstitious like that. Then I feel neurotic. Then I go and blog about it and it's like neurotic at 11.

So my resolution this year is to drink more water. Or, well, fluid which doesn't dehydrate me.

The resolution is in fact related to how I will spend this new year's eve since while most of the meds I take on any given day have a dehydrating effect, the hyoscyamine is right up there as the worst culprit of the bunch. I can't just blame the drugs though. Even since my much younger adulthood, I've always been one of those people who doesn't drink enough water. I have historically drank far too much coffee - a friend and I could go through two pots of dark roast, then have double espresso drinks in the evening and end the night over bottomless cups at the Fleetwood Diner. Although I have stopped that, these days I drink what is probably a somewhat rather unhealthy volume of coffee tempered with the occasional ginger ale - a concession to realizing I don't feel well anymore when I'm on a continuous caffeine drip regimen. Talking over cigarettes and drinking coffee might seem to be the perfect setting for the counter culture existence, but it loses its romance when you find that some post 30 body shut down means coffee past 3 PM makes you super cranky, tweaked, and not even remotely conversational.

Trying to find out how much fluid one should get a day, however, has not turned out to be as simple as I thought it should be. It seems there's more than one approach to determining an ideal fluid intake. Moreover, the entire issue of fluid intake recommendations apparently is a contested issue. What's a medication dehydrated, intestinally malabsorbing, coffee swilling woman to do? Ask my doctor I suppose. No appointments in the near future, but when I see her next I'll certainly ask. In the meantime, I think I'll go with the conservative "replacement approach" to my resolution.

As for getting something other than just a high hydration level at the cost of rock bottom sodium levels (yes, I know my sodium level...chalk it up under "neurotic" if you just can't imagine haltingly walking a few yards in my orthopedic gimp-girl shoes) I suppose there's always gatorade ("It's got electrolytes!"). I started typing it as "gagorade", which sums up my sentiments on the beverage nicely. Nah. I just can't do it. More water is about the best I'm going to get until there is a tastier option. I'll leave the electrolytes to bananas oh and the tons of salt I now feel free to dump on my food.

Ok well that's it for tonight. I'm pooped. Gonna go lie on the couch and read.

Happy New Year!

7 AM Monday

I'm awake and honestly, no one's more surprised than me. Ok, maybe my intestine is slightly more surprised but I'm not sure parts count.

Sitting here while the car thaws out, drinking coffee and water, checking the weather to see if the promised overnight snow was a washout or if it's merely delayed.

What do people normally do when they're up this early? Aside from drink coffee. Eat I suppose. Er, maybe not. When I'm up this early, my gut tends to feel like I tried to swallow a cast iron pan whole around 4 PM yesterday. This morning it feels like cast iron pan washed down with a bit of dirty oven mitt.

The reason for today's way too early rising is that Max has an 8:30 appointment to have his sutures removed. Although I don't believe I've made any suspicious moves such as prepping the cat carrier, I think he's come to associate my getting up before 9 with him going to the vet since at the moment, he's hiding under and behind the christmas tree. Trying to blend in? Or just making it very hard to extract him? I think the latter.

galaxy

From Wikipedia:
A very remarkable planetary/galactic configuration occurs on December 23rd and 24th 2007. The configuration on December 23 — Mars, Earth, Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Galactic Centre — is shown in the graphic simulation linked below (here); it becomes even more remarkable in that it will be accompanied by the Full Moon (conjunct Mars) at about 2 a.m. on December 24 when a simultaneous Venus square Neptune occurs. It is even more remarkable in that the Pluto/Sun conjunction appears exactly on the Winter Solstice, just past conjunction with the Galactic Centre.

Where the boys are

We have boys. They moved in quickly, as boys often do on account of their usually having little in the way of furniture, dishes, or pots and pans. Why spend money on glasses when you can buy packages of keg cups every month on your mom and dad's Sam's Club card? Why own a baking dish when you can't cook ramen in it? Why own more than the one orange plastic plate you stole from the dining hall last year when a hot pocket's flavor is in some magical way enhanced by its being eaten off a swath of paper towel, a smoothed out grocery bag, or the surface of your hardened mac and cheese specked orange plastic plate?

Thus, because they pretty much aggregated here rather than moved in per se, it's hard to know when the boys officially arrived. I can tell you by when they were here. I believe it was last week, before the storms, that I first heard cars screeching in and out of the parking lot and later (after the storms) tires fiercely spinning on the snow and ice. These are the telltale noises of someone who doesn't understand that not all acceleration need be full to be fully effective. I know they were here last week when the sounds of heavy feet - made heavier by attitude than gravity - shook my apartment, when male hoots and grunts and hollars punctuated loud late night conversations in the hall and on the porch, and when I could hear the giggles and 1:00 AM playful stairwell protests of one or two young women behaving in a way which apparently counts as "coy" and therefore desirable in our post-Larry Flint-iconized culture. This "coy" sounds a lot like what we in my time called "skanky" but I'm more sympathetic to the girls.

Not with boys. I have a BOYS intolerance. I believe there should be a place were I can buy product to get rid of them. A boy spray or powder. Perhaps a boy-bomb (à la flea bomb folks, I'm not talking Ted Kaczynski shit here).

A____ told me this morning "I just worry about you." I said I don't know what that means. It's not specific. He said he worries that sometimes my reactions to things, e.g. the boys on the stairs at 2:00 last night, will make those things worse.

That's not worried about me. That's worried about the ramifications, implications, and overall fall out from my typical reaction to things like BOYS in my personal space, which reaction is admittedly intense at any time of the day and it highly amplified if it starts after I've turned off the lights and settled down to try to go to sleep.

Boo-boo kitty

Max is recovering well. His biopsy results are back and it's all good. (Huge sighs of relief!)
He's stuck with his lovely blue poncho for a while, at least until the sutures come out next week.














Although I know he dislikes being shaved, his wrist shave makes it look like he's wearing a mitten, or maybe one Ug boot. And that's kinda cute.

What's cooking?

Fire Controlled at White House Compound
By Associated Press
December 19, 2007

WASHINGTON - Thick black smoke billowed from a fire Wednesday on the White House compound in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The blaze appeared to be located in Vice President Dick Cheney's suite of ceremonial offices on the second floor of the building. Cheney and President Bush were across the street in the West Wing of the White House when the blaze broke out. It appeared to be under control within an hour.
...

I'm instantly imagining the many foul things Icky Dick Cheney might have been up to in there.

Tuesday Poetry - better late than never...

art and cats

My cat's only dalliance with art (of any human sort) was the time he decorated himself with my green watercolor paint. When I paint, I like at least some of the paints to be quite viscous. This results in my often having somewhat heavy, sticky glops of paint on whatever is passing for a palette. Max found a slightly old palette and stepped into one such blob which had nearly dried through but retained a soft sticky center. He had tracked green paint around my office for a while, leaving little dark green partial toe prints here and there, before I realized what had happened.

Since he seemed fine with my attempts to wipe the paint off his paw, I got ambitious and dunked his paw in water to dilute the blob. That was decidedly not ok.

During the struggle that followed, Max ended up with green paint streaks all across his snowy white chest and neck. Then he took off out of the house and stayed out so late I went looking for him. As I scanned under cars and peeked into back yards around the neighborhood, I couldn't help imagining the "lost cat" flier I'd have to post if Max didn't come home that night: "Lost - Enormous Orange and White and Green Cat"

Thanks to A____ for the link below.

dipshittery

Now I'm going to have to drive by this cheery holiday display and see what all the fuss is about.

Atheist Protests Location Of Tree
By David Owens
Courant Staff Writer
December 14, 2007
VERNON — The leader of the atheist organization that placed a display in Central Park in Rockville has asked town officials to move a Christmas tree placed in the park by town employees that partially obscures the atheist display.

Dennis P. Himes of Vernon, who is state director of American Atheists Inc., wrote a letter to Town Administrator Christopher Clark and sent copies to Mayor Jason L. McCoy and the press.

In the letter, Himes said he expected McCoy to order the tree be moved away from the atheists' display. He also asked that the workers who installed the tree be admonished.
...
The Connecticut Valley Atheists placed a three-sided display in Central Park on Dec. 1, after first applying to the town for a permit. Permits also were issued for placement of a creche and a menorah. Until this week, the atheists' display was the only one in the park. It is a three-sided structure that on two sides features an image of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and is framed by the words "Imagine No Religion."

The sign was a topic at Tuesday's town council meeting, where some speakers expressed anger that it was in the park.

Justin Schwarz of Brooklyn Street said the sign is offensive and told the council he plans to speak with a lawyer about trying to get it removed. Schwarz on Thursday said he views the sign as "hate speech."

"I find the 'Imagine No Religion' offensive, as a Christian and as a human being," Schwarz said Thursday. Schwarz said a friend who is an atheist apologized to him for the sign.

"This group, they're out to force their will upon other people at the wrong time of the year," he said.

The Rev. Raymond Grezel, pastor of the Rockville Church of the Nazarene, asked the town council Tuesday whether the atheists' display is "appropriate." He urged the council to examine the town's policy and consider the ramifications of allowing any group to display its views.

He raised the issue of a white supremacist organization placing a display in the park on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. McCoy said Thursday such a display would likely not pass muster.
...

Loathing examined

I was re-reading this post and thinking it's this kind of negative attitude that makes it hard to fit in at the various support lists and communities.

I remember I was once on a Lyme Disease list. Some good info on there, some bad, and people at all stages of dealing with the acute illness or its sometimes long lasting effects. There were many of the latter, I think because they would be most likely to be looking for explanations and answers and advocacy tools - thus they'd be likely to find such lists and groups.

I did not fit in. I did not sign my emails with e-hugs and angel kisses. I didn't offer prayers or express my belief in a higher power. I did connect with some people though, usually over the difficulty of dealing with the healthy people around you who don't understand what this disease can do and how long it can do it for. In one such an exchange, my sarcastic humor so angered one of the angel-fluffybunny-ehuggers that she flamed the shit out of me both off and on list. Definitely an authority issue at heart, but played out in the arena of my "negativity".

I was just trying to make some other poor guy smile and nothing I had suggested was that off color. Just, er, some light comic aggressive steam blowing.

Then there's the issue of my family history. I was thinking that probably this blog is not readily identified as a survivor's blog, I mean not if you aren't into reading and such. (oh hell, more fucking negativity). But I don't have buttons and banners and sexual and physical abuse survivor blogrolls, links to Tory Amos pictures, inspirational finger paintings by abused children, sometimes cryptic water color images of hearts, teddy bears, angels, and hands. This is the type of thing I've seen which immediately mark a blog as being in the hinterlands of survivorhood*.

But I do freely disclose this aspect of my history. Sometimes it's important for someone I'm close to or becoming close to to know about. Sometimes it's political. Sometimes I've just had it with someone's ignorant idiot rambling on the subjects and I need to weigh in with some expertise behind the words to give it that extra punch I want. Ah, more negativity. Sometimes I truly think "Aha, a chance to inform and educate" although that one has fallen a bit into disuse after I realized it can be traumatic for me to open my experiences up to someone who is uninformed. They don't usually mean anything bad, but they do sometimes not understand that when, where, and how I talk about things (as well as which things) is entirely and necessarily at my discretion. E.g., my friend who continued a conversation about a topic involving my mom into a stairwell at school. It had started quietly in a room, just him, me, and another close friend. Then we went to get lunch. I recall trying to put it off when we were in the hall. Once we had gotten into the stair well though, he yelled some very detailed comment, not lacking a bit of judgment, which bounced and echoed off the bare concrete.

So what is my problem? What's with all the loathing? I guess I'd wonder more specifically what's with all the stigma against it? And what is with it coming from the survivors themselves even? My sister had some experience with that in a group.

On the general topic of stigma about survivor anger, I think it's fair to say what happened in my family is FUCKED up. And I think that a normal reaction to something that fucked up is to have negative feelings about it. I'm not a perpetrator, my attitudes and outbursts are not of that nature at all. When I do pick fights with people, it's usually someone I think is picking on someone else (or me) or has violated some kind of very important trust. Often a person in a position of some authority and who is using it either maliciously or so selfishly and for such limited ego gratification goals that they are exploiting others or putting them at risk of emotional harm or even more overt, socially acceptable damage.

Ibid on the health stuff. I do wonder if that will fade somewhat in time. I think some of it has already, although it's difficult in the context of academia, where pain and fatigue are practices to be engaged in for social and sometimes professional reward, always done and interpreted with the implicit understanding that the level of energy is more or less renewable. It isn't for me. It can mean I will not be able to get up the next day. It can mean a fever for weeks, a leg that hurts so much I can't sleep (adding to the exhaustion).

I'm watching another student who was diagnosed with a growth on his pituitary gland a few years back go through this shit too. He was sick. He's still not well, but he's better than he was. His dad had endocrine problems too which resulted in a line of troubling related health issues which this kid grew up watching. Being diagnosed with something like what Dad had was scary. And now this kid is being told he's progressing too slowly. The worst part about it is that the telling is usually not direct, and so he attributes his feelings of guilt, low self efficacy, and low self worth to himself. "It's not like anyone is saying it" he told me a week ago. I told him that in my experience, that sinking feeling that you're going to be judged as insufficient due to medical problems is not all "in your head" and is based on some signals you are picking up from the people around you.

Again, more of my negativity. Spreading the loathing, it would seem. If you're a fluffybunny-ehugger at least.



* There's a request not to copy or link to a site I found recently for incest survivors, so I can't give you a full description of the steps that particular site gave for the survivor recovery process. I found them bothersome in a way which touches on some of what I've mentioned above. If you're curious and you look up incest + survivors you'll probably find some of what I'm talking about. You'll also find some which isn't pro-anger denial, I did. But I've learned my lesson to stay away from any support communities or group since I know my "negativity" can always be waved about as a reason to invalidate what I feel, think, or say. And I could do without that.

I'm sure he had a point...

Man nearly dies downing vodka at airport
Wed Dec 12
Associate Press
BERLIN - A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing two pints of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new rules about carrying liquids aboard a plane, police said Wednesday.
...
New airport rules prohibit passengers from carrying larger quantities of liquid onto planes, and he was told at a security check he would have to either throw out the bottle of vodka or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked.

Instead, he chugged the vodka — and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function, police said.

Tuesday Poetry

Why We Play Basketball by Sherman Alexie
(from the YouTube note: animated by the Native Lens youth in May 2005)


Cover of Bowie's God Knows I'm Good (lyrics here)

The loathing

It has begun. I have the loathing. It came upon me yesterday evening when I wasn't looking at a clock. It had been dark for hours but this time of year my body's apparent blithering optimism fails me and my internal clock. "Too early" is about all I get out when I consider the light and the hours between 3:30 and 10:00 PM. So I tend not to consider them.

I was on the carpet in the living room and it was dark outside. The cat in his blue soft e-collar, which looks like a cardinal's cape (except blue not red) was alternately snuggling and biting. I thought of the invitation I had gotten to a grad student potluck end of the semester weeeee thing going on this Friday. This Friday my cat is not having surgery because we pushed it to Monday. This Friday our grades are due. And somewhere in there I suppose I ought to buy a tree...but when? Before any frivolous extras like tree decorating, I should probably clean. And what if things don't work out well for Max? Will I really want to come home to a half decorated christmas tree next Monday?

I think it was the last bit, the nod to "things to do" which are at least in principle enjoyable. It was that last bit which heralded in the loathing. Not that the thought of a tree irritates or even upsets me. I like lying under christmas trees and looking up the lights. I like turning off the lamps and letting christmas tree glow, a light which certainly has it's own peculiar - dare I say magical quality, illuminate the room. What got the loathing going was, I think, the somewhat well worn but still unexpected path running from things cat and health related, things school related, and The Rest - which lead me into an accounting of what The Rest is and can be for me. The answer tends to come out as not a whole lot. And then my automatic questioning begins(why? am I ok with that? if not what needs to be different? how can I make it different?), turning me back to what will necessarily be a closer and more pointed examination (or at least consideration) of things health related and things school/profession related and the interactions between the two.

And once that circuit is complete, we have loathing.

Hello collar?

Max is a very unhappy kitty right now. The vet shaved Max' tail and butt and cleaned the wound Max has fussed at so much that it is now about 1.5 times as big as it originally was. Max has surgery scheduled for next week. They're going to remove the growth, as well as another one that's closer to the base of his tail (fortunately it's more dorsal than the open one). And Max got a shot of antibiotic. He's one pissed off cat. I'm sure he's in pain and to make it all worse I won't let him lick and bite at his tail.

We tried the elizabethan collar. Wow did that not work. So now we're on to the "soft collar", or we will be in a few hours after we get it from the vet. Man I'm really hoping that's better. One of Bubblewench's kitty's had a tail injury recently, maybe she can weigh in with some advice on how to keep the cat away from an injured tail.

sick kitty

My cat Max is sick. He's been biting at his tail. Actually, he's been biting at a lump on his tail which the vet saw once a while ago (pre-biting) and said it didn't look too bad. But now, oh boy does it look bad. He's got an appointment for late this week to see the vet, but tonight I discovered his tail was bleeding. No details since I know my constitution for ick is higher than some, but the short story is it's looking ugly and he won't leave it alone.

A___ awesomely came up with a good bandage from a nonstick pad, a bandaid, and a small section of elastic bandage, and of all things duct tape (no tape is actually stuck TO my cat, just around the bandage to hold it together). So far Max hasn't fussed at it too much, but he's clearly cranky (ok, crankier), which means he's in pain.

I feel like a bad pet mom for not getting him in sooner.

I'm also worried about leaving this bandage on - it's snug but I don't think it's too tight and we cleaned the wound before we dressed it. But I know it's not good to leave bandages on long (for sure > 24 hours is a big fat no-no). I'd love to change it tonight...ok well "love" is perhaps the worng word. I'd feel better if I could change it tonight but A____'s out of town for the evening and there's no way I can wrestle nearly 20 pounds of cranky, pained furry fury into acquiescence long enough to do the dressing change alone.

It's going to be a long night I think.

cruel and mean professor

Ahahahahahahaha!!!!!
"cruel and mean and not nice at all?"

power and privilege

There's a fine line between "dictator" and chief executive. Apparently it's a matter of party affiliation when interpreting whether the head of the executive branch of government is engaging in constitutional "evisceration" or merely evoking "executive privilege", "executive power", and "inherent powers" of the executive branch.

GOP health-care suit called Scrooge-like
By David Mendell, Tribune staff reporter
December 7, 2007

Gov. Rod Blagojevich forcefully defended his legal ability to broadly expand state health care coverage Thursday, excoriating those who are suing to halt the expansion as "Scrooge-like" in the holiday season.

A business group led by prominent Republicans has sued the Blagojevich administration to block the governor's health-care expansion. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Ron Gidwitz, a GOP candidate for governor last year whose family built and then sold Helene Curtis, the maker of Finesse and Suave shampoos.

"I find it almost Dickens-like," Blagojevich said of the suit. "It is mind-boggling to me that the heir of a shampoo fortune would actually go out of his way to take away health care through the courts from the very people who made that shampoo for his dad and allowed him to inherit all that money. Yeah, it is Scrooge-like in many ways."

The group sued after Blagojevich unilaterally increased the number of Illinoisans who could receive state-subsidized health care by 147,000. The governor's action came after a legislative rulemaking body turned down the expansion. Lawmakers were worried about a lack of money to pay for the program, among other issues. Gidwitz responded that by expanding the program without the consent of lawmakers, the governor is "not just running roughshod over the constitution, he is eviscerating it." Blagojevich is acting "more like Hugo Chavez" than a democratically elected governor, Gidwitz said, referring to the socialist leader of Venezuela.

"TAing doth murder sleep"

Let me tell ya, when sleep has come the last week, it does feel like "the death of each day's life". I feel this most each next morning when I wake, still hopeful at that moment of rising consciousness that it will not hurt. What am I doing each day which would account for such a descent each night and subsequent exhuming each morning? Why, I'm "wrapping up the semester". Sounds so cheery, doesn't it? Sounds like it should have yellow gingham curtains tied back with little light blue eyelet lace ribbons. Sounds neat and homey, like something I'd find in a jar with a hand drawn label promising the sweet reward for good honest hard work.

Instead, it's a pack a day, caffeine embalmed, tendon twisting grind which leaves me wanting to write things like 'Ok now I KNOW you're just filling up space" in the comment sections of certain student papers. It's the emergency brake left on. It's the smell of what you forgot you were cooking and were reminded of by the smoke alarm telling you and your neighbors that tonight's dinner is way past done.

On that note, I'm off to stumble into bed. Gute nacht, apparently.

Tuesday poetry

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.