isitme.13

Hmm…my thirteenth is it me entry just happens to coincide with my getting of the H1N1.  Coinkydink?

So, yep, I’ve been swined (unofficially diagnosed over the Dr’s phone).  I’ve spent the last five days completely alone and trapped in my house.  I’m fortunate to have friends and family who brought me supplies as needed (soup and a thermometer) – although they kept dropping things off on the porch and then running away.  I began to feel like some sort of feral creature they were luring out to an unhappy meeting with a tranq dart and a cage.  I really did have that thought at one point.  And it was just one of SO MANY brilliant fits of brain activity in the last week.  Here’s a sampling of some of the rest of my thinkings:

• I’m hot.
• I’m cold.
• I’m hot.
• I wonder what Will Arnett sounds like with a cold.  Or Bea Arthur, God-rest-her-soul.
• What will it sound like when I start to boil on the inside?
• I’m pretty sure that the nose is a completely unnecessary part of the body.  Does cutting it off to spite my face mean that I hate my face?  Or that I’d be doing it regardless of the fact that I have a face?  Wouldn’t cutting off my nose still be bad even if I didn’t have a face?  Maybe even worse because it would have been the only face-like thing I did have?
• I’m hot.
• I wish Will Arnett were here.  Or even Bea Arthur.  But not in ghost form.  Or decayed corpse form.
• “Flu Thoughts” is a pun I actually like.  Don’t forget your Flu Thoughts people!
• No one has ever been this hot…ack!  I mean cold!
• I could be the ghost of Bea Arthur for Halloween.  If I live that long.

So there you go flu-free friends.  There’s a little taste of what’s in store once the Swine finds you.  Or, to put it in sincerer terms: It was un-fun, but not the sickest I’ve ever been.  So…be careful, but don’t be terrified.

p.s. I know what I’m really gonna be for Halloween: IMMUNE!

isitme.12

I know I can be an over-explainer sometimes.  I don’t have a short version of any story.  I should never write for Reader’s Digest.  (See…three sentences to say the same thing.  Eeef.)

I am aware of this fact, and so I do try to edit.  With grand ironic flare though, I think I often manage to cut out things that SHOULD be  said instead of the things that shouldn’t be.  Here are a few recent thoughts I probably should have expressed out loud:

• “I swear I wash my hands.”  2 weeks ago I helped host a tie-dye party, which involved me rinsing 50 different dye-filled items to finish them up.  This activity led to a nice glove-like greenish black effect on both my hands.  Four days later I had a job interview (for a part-time, supplemental job, not a major career shift).  Still had greenish-black colored fingernails.  The night before the interview I decided to break down and paint my fingernails (a decision akin to Ghandi choosing to join the Ultimate Fighting ranks in order to tone his calves).  Result:  bright pink fingernails with  blatantly obvious blackened edges – as if I were trying to hide some sort of unfortunate torture incident.  Washed off the polish, tried to keep my hands in my lap.  Got the job!
• “neighbor”  When chatting with my new employer I mentioned that I am a homeowner.  ”Oh,” he said, “So you get to do all the fun stuff like yardwork and upkeep.”  ”Well, yeah,” I said, “But I do have a teenage boy who mows the lawn.”  He chuckled a bit and said, “We had a live-in mower like that for a long time too.”  Oops!  Teenage NEIGHBOR boy, not teenage SON boy.
• “I am not the unwed mother of a lawn-mowing teenage boy.”  see above
• “I swear I wash my hands.”  (yes again)  Today I had to go to the police station to get fingerprinted for the new job.  Lots o black ink involved.  And something called “Orange Lava” to wash it off.  It took two ladies to get all my digits, so then they were just sitting there watching me scrub up.  It made me a little nervous, so I tried to hurry.  Left the station and headed over to the library to return an overdue book.  Already feeling like a library criminal, I reached out for my change only to realize I’d missed a whole black stripe on the outside of my left hand.
• “I use them to curl my mustache.” OR “My nasal passages are made of sandpaper.”  OR  ”That’s where I harvest the skin for my clones.”  Today at the police station there was some difficulty getting prints from my pinky fingers.  So the lady said to me, “Why are your pinkies so smooth?”

p.s.  I don’t really pick my nose with my pinkies.  Or have a mustache.  (Just didn’t want to regret not saying that.)  I have no comment on the clones.

seen lately.7

A murder of crows.  That’s what they call a group of them, you know?  Which makes me just heart the pants off the English language.  A herd of buffalo *yawn*  A school of fish *ehh…closer*  A MURDER of crows.  *perfect!*

The other day when I pulled in the driveway there were five large crows sitting at the edge of my yard.  They seemed to be arguing about the rights to a fuzzy bit of roadkill in the street.  ”Squawk,” said one.  ”Squawk SQUAWK,” said another.  ”Oh yeah?!” countered a third, “Well YO Mama…”  Suddenly the time for tough talking was through.  Instead of one clear winner, they all pounced on the bit of road-colored scrap.  They pecked and pulled and jumped around until all that remained were little grey fuzzballs floating through the air – as if maybe they’d been dukeing it out over a dandelion.

And so I thought: maybe murder isn’t so perfect.  Maybe it should be a gangland carjacking of crows instead.

Also:  I’ve always thought a free-range group of sixth grade girls should be called a giggle.

isitme.11

A few weeks ago a friend was here for a visit.  We ate some dinner and watched a movie I should have thought was funnier.  It was dark by the time she was leaving, so I flipped on the porch light and walked her out.  On my way back in I noticed one of my pesky porch spiders had set up shop on the banister and across one corner of my bottom stair.

“You’re one fast mover,” I said to him.  He’d covered most of the space underneath the handrail and a good square foot above the stair too.  There was even a dead leaf twisting in the wind off the edge of the newel post.  ”Good grief,” I told him, “it’s not Halloween yet.  I think I’ll have to move you on in the morning.  So, eat up tonight me hearty.”  Spiders bring out the pirate in me.

I had just settled back down in my chair when I heard footsteps on the porch again (forgotten cell phone).  I rushed to the door hoping to steer my visitor clear of web – and had a sudden gruesome flash of her walking into the house trailing dead flies and June bugs like some sort of zombie bride wedding dress train.  She’d managed to dodge the horror, so I once again stood on the stair waving goodbye.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the leaf swaying and as it came forward into the porch light, it glistened just a little.  I turned to go back inside (about to think some pipe-smoking thought about beauty in ashes or some such thing) when my foot froze.  ”Leaves don’t glisten like that.  In fact, the only thing I can think of with that summer time sparkle is the trail of a…oh no.”  My stomach actually lurched.  With all my might I wanted to go back in the house without turning around, but I couldn’t help myself.  So, I turned – calamity face already assumed.

And sure enough, it wasn’t a leaf.  It wasn’t even a slug.  It was two slugs.  The top one hanging in a straight line, attached to the newel with a short bit of the spider’s web.  He was stretched out to his full six inches  and his pal was wrapped and bunched all around his bottom (?) hanging on, it seemed, for dear life.  And there they two swung, the very definition of the exclamation point they formed.

seen lately.6

Back to the busy season of work life, but I’ve still had time to make a few observations/discoveries here and there:

• Ha Ha! Terrible is my name anagrammed.  Sometimes Facebook is still a wonder.
• I think the Disney Channel must have had it really hard in high school – was a little too nerdy, and not in the good way.  Because, damn, there is a lot of mean-girl-paying-the-piper that goes on in their programming.
• The other day my heart rode off on a motorcycle with a slight built man who had FIRE RESCUE across his back.
• I saw a guy reading a paperback book while walking down the busiest street in Springfield.  Is that really possible?
• I saw another pedestrian fellow who waited to cross at a light with his hands folded neatly behind his back.  He rocked forward on his toes occasionally – like a butler waiting for his next instruction.  He was very thin, had a white canvas belt cinched down to the last notch over his pleated jeans.  Very fragile.  I wondered if he thought his courtesy would buy him any compassion from the 40 mph rush hour traffic cranking by.
• Last night I watched State Fair – a musical about pickles, mincemeat, hog farmers and romance at the Iowa State Fair.  In it there were men riding roller coasters in three piece suits – which was just the loveliest thing I’ve seen in ages.

book club.5

“Himself a teller of tales, he had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular, a story which could make his future or else cost him his life.”

The second official book club selection was The Enchantress of Florence. My pick – because I love loved Haroun and the Sea of Stories so very much. Haroun actually stands as my one happy souvenir from the first terrific failure of a book club I was in.

Enchantress covers some similar territory as Haroun…although in much more elaborate fashion. Which sometimes seemed good, and sometimes seemed exhausting. Both books wrestle with the potential power of fiction. Haroun’s central theme has more to do with what it means to tell the truth…and how sometimes story is a more truth-telling medium than bare facts.

Enchantress is more about the power of story as a creative force – about its ability to bring things to life. But then the rub that once a story’s been brought into existence it takes on a life of its own. Some created things pass on their spark of life, and others become destructive in their efforts to sustain themselves. We’re forever telling ourselves stories to get through the day…everything’s going to be all right, my haircut’s fine, here’s the edited version of me I want the world to know… And some of those things are helpful, can even be enriching – but all too often they run amok, turn all insidious and smothery.

So, we talked about this book in our book club. Gathered around a fairly fictional campfire, we all agreed that we weren’t crazy about the book. Too too many threads of stories to keep up with. Point proved perhaps. The very best part though, was that some of our own hiding stories were outed – one in particular courageously told. One (though I know it seems overstated) one that could make a future or cost a life. It seems to me that that’s the sort of gift story is meant to bring…a place (either comfortably familiar or completely foreign) where it’s safe to connect.

the REAL book club

post card.5

Last week I spent a blissed-out afternoon at the Japanese Strolling Garden in Nathaniel Greene Park.  I have decided that “stroll” is the perfect description of the pace of my life – my life when it’s going as desired anyway.

The large pond in the garden is (of course) full of Koi:

I’ve always found these fish a little intimidating – they seem sad, but in an aggressive sort of way. Like Rosie O’Donnell. Also, don’t they kind of seem like goldfish that have been flushed down toilets near nuclear power plants? Like they might suddenly sprout feet, walk up on land and start slapping you around til you give up your wallet? (“They” being just the koi, not the koi AND Rosie.) It’s weird to me that in tattoo language koi are like a big yellow smiley face – the sign of all things peaceful and happy – when I’m always thinking they belong in the WWE.

Anyway, the Strolling Garden Koi have apparently been very well conditioned to people…especially people with snacks. So, any time I approached the edge of the pond, the underwater Koi alert sounded and one-by-one they would come swimming after me. It looked a bit like the turtles had worked out some kind of submarine and were constantly launching bright yellow and orange missiles at me.

I tried my best to stay all Zen. To imagine that their open-mouthed greetings were well wishes from the depths of the earth – and not threats to my person voiced in politically-incorrect Chinese accents. “I thank you for your tidings from the sea…oh, and from you as well…and you…oh, there’s quite a lot of you aren’t there? I’m just going to back away slowly now.” Now that I think of it, that’s probably how that whole coins-in-the-fountain thing got started. It’s not about wishes, it’s about protection.

book club.4

Last week I finished Russell Brand’s “My Booky Wook” (as you can tell from its appearance in my bathtub):

All I knew about Russell Brand before Booky Wook was what I’d seen of his late night appearances with the likes of Leno & Letterman. And, natch, his interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air. On all these occasions he was just the loveliest, funniest most disarming fellow one could ever hope to encounter. Quick-witted and eloquent. Funny without sharp edges. Lover of ladies of all sorts. And so I thought sitting down with his book would be a lot like listening to one of those interviews – just without commercials or stupid pet tricks.

And in some ways that’s what it was like – his voice is pretty unmistakable.

But. There was an awful lot of the unexpected for me too.

Much of his life has been a mess. And not just a scruffy, endearing sort of mess. But a wrist-cutting, perversion-laden, drug-sodden mess. I think it wouldn’t be unfair to say that much of the content was actually repellant to me: depressing and disgusting and completely foreign. But I read it cover to cover for that one attraction: his voice.

For all the distance that the details of his life created, his story-telling drew me in. I just read something from Donald Miller the other day that talked about how hard it is not to crowd writing with too much of yourself. Even if (especially if) you’re writing about yourself…there’s so much temptation to self defend or self promote. I’ve just read Reading Lolita in Tehran this summer too, and I thought it was an utter failure on this front – whereas Booky Wook was absolutely brilliant about it.

How do you tell stories that are so extreme in their nature and neither be too proud nor too ashamed? How do you learn some tremendous lessons in the living of your life, but not get all preachy in the retelling of that life? Well, watch Russell Brand. He’ll say something like, “Here’s what happened (as best as I can recall), and though I might not do that thing now, I sure did do it then.” (Of course his version includes a lot more “blokes” and “birds” and Brit-culture references.)

In one part he recounts an interlude with a prostitute where he smashes her phone because she keeps answering it while he’s trying to get his money’s worth: “And she looks at me again, suddenly mortified, and the scene becomes real and awful, and she just starts crying. And now we’re two human beings in a room on earth. Our previous roles, a prostitute and a customer…that’s all gone now; the shards of that illusion lie shattered amid the pieces of her phone. We’re just people, one of whom has behaved atrociously to the other” (273). He seems to do this over and over again – here’s the story I was telling myself, but here’s what was real, so do with that what you will cheeky reader. So, no matter how foreign the setting you come to that moment of we’re just people he and I. And there’s something lovely and healthy and free about that space.

So here’s my conclusion: if you want content that will elevate you, make you smarter about world affairs and maybe a little bit of literature – get Reading Lolita in Tehran. But, if you want to experience good writing – story-telling that might actually invite you to tackle your own truth – get Russell Brand.

post card.4

With my photography fixation rekindled by MN vacation, I’ve been wandering around some of my favorite Springfield gardens this week. Here’s a bit of what I collected:

inch worm @ Xeriscape Garden

As much as I love flowers, they do have the downside of attracting crowds of undesirables: June bugs on the cone flowers, spiders swinging between stems and the perverts in the Phelps Grove parking lot.

daisies waiting on the storm

I was encouraged by the number of bees I encountered – you know, after that whole disappearing-bees scare of the last couple of years. The air at the Xeriscape was so thick with them that it felt like a big bumbly blizzard.

Master Gardner Daisy @ Nathaniel Greene Park

Over the last couple of days’ shooting I remembered this habit I have that might not be the most conducive to my long term survival. When I have the viewfinder up to my eye, all of my other senses shut down…hearing, touch, common. So, I kept finding myself snapping my shot and then gradually becoming aware of a series of objects bouncing against my head. As it turned out, the objects were the well-fed bumblebees come to head butt me out of their territory (seriously, these were big bees…not just drones, but like Sumo wrestler bees). This from the girl who couldn’t bear to pick up the dead bird in her yard because it had ants on it. Granted these were crow-flesh-eating ants, but still.

post card.3

Here are a few other vacation observations:

• Many men in Minn. are mustachioed.  (Srsly.  It’s like a state full of county sheriffs and used car salesmen.  All Lutheran.)
• There’s something about the stillness of a lake in the early morning that will persuade you that it’s true what they say about the flap of a butterfly’s wings leading to a hurricane.
• The stomach is my least favorite place to get a mosquito bite.  So far anyway.
• My family is completely nuts:

Fauxlder Brother Troy & gal pal Karen. They're from CA (see gang signs & traffic signals).

Pops, Mom, Dick & Helene as KISS. I spent a large portion of vaca time making various celebratory signage and painting faces.