innengeliebtes

It's my birthday and we took a brisk walk through Frankfurt's main cemetery, a huge and fascinating place. We had some friends visiting who used to live in Frankfurt, but they had never visited Schopenhauer's grave, so we ambled in that direction. It's a very unrembarkable grave, actually. There are much grander affairs to be found. I never fail to cry at children's graves, especially if there's an inscription, so I tried avoiding them, but unfortunatley failed. Oh well, I always cry over something or other on my birthday.

I got a couple books. Luisa and Miles made me a little "book" of collages and drawings. I got tea and a scarf. And Carlo printed and framed this photograph of me and Luisa (my newest friend on GoodReads).

Oh, and I bought myself a perfume: L'Heure Bleue from Guerlain. A little old-fashioned, perhaps, but full and soft.

That was about it. I hope.
Back to work tomorrow.
Older.

my little nut tree

Coffee. More coffee. Coffee with milk, whole milk, no sugar. Also with cream. Coffee cup. Coffee mug. Coffee muck. Coffee with the dregs in it. Ground to pillow consistency, or still resident in the bean. Coffee to go. Coffee to stay. Coffee running in place. Coffee waiting on the medicine cabinet shelf while I shower. Partly cloudy, clear or 10% chance or rain. Kenya, Brazil, Hawaii. No matter. Coffee. More coffee. Sometimes in a bowl, with rum.

make sure your eyes are doves

For Thanksgiving, I thought I’d post a painting by Irene Hardwicke Olivieri, whose work brings to my mind “bountiful”- richly colored, full of fruit, flora, creatures and sometimes transformation and surreal mystery. She creates her own totems and icons, and paints on whatever seems to be available – cutting boards or other found pieces of wood – in the tradition of folk art.

I met Irene virtually some weeks ago, traveled her site, and put her book on my wish list. I’d put Making You Lovely on my wish list, too, if it were within my means. (Why can't I sell a poem for, say, $450?)

This painting is called Wendy, and I figure Wendy is the somewhat owlish cat and the woman is Irene. One of the things I like about her paintings is how she incorporates words, tatooing people and landscapes. It’s too bad not to be able to see these works in person, where you could “read” the paintings. But even on the internet you can make this one: “Today January tenth two thousand and seven here I am in the center of Death Valley the lowest and hottest place in our country, and one of the most desolate . . . “

*
In other worlds, of course I called my mother to wish her a happy Thanksgiving. I think next year I'll say so in person.

*
And in the spirit of gratefulness, many thanks to Prick of the Spindle for nominating my poem "Faucet Song" for a Pushcart this morning.

millionaire slumber

My poem "Ghazal with Heavenly Bodies" up at linebreak today.
You don't even have to read it.
Just push the speaker icon and it will be read to you!

This ghazal will be in my chapbook, which Tilt will put out probably right after Christmas.

it was the snow that told me

I very much miss real letters.
I've thought of sponsoring their renaissance myself.

From the point of origin that would be fine.

But how would the person receiving the letter feel?
Does putting something down on paper make it seem more recorded?
Will it seem like the writer is trying to make some larger point,
ie have real letters become high-falutin?
Does this matter?

I shouldn't let this stop me.

The only other consideration is that without practice my handwriting has grown hideous.

2 months without reprieve

I’m so tired of the abuse of gloom
economic gloom, investor gloom, consumer gloom, mood of gloom

I found it dozens of times in today’s paper, as if it were being advertised.
Isn’t there another word? Dejection? Glumness? Negativity?
Ok, maybe not.

If you ask me it’s no match for doom, its eternal partner.

Poor gloom, forever being yanked out of the mothballs for some dour purpose
yet so orthographically appealing, proper and symmetrical
able to balance whole worlds on its head

Gloom that foggy-eyed glaucoma
Gloom that wet bread

what is music

this is a tough one
but it will be on my son's music class test tomorrow.
so if you know, hey, pass it on.

garlic powder

I hoped to write a poem about food today. I picked a kind of food and made a big word list. Most of the words I picked were small but soon they were stringing themselves into phrases. Some rhyming started to happen. I hadn’t wanted that but I somehow also couldn’t prevent it. Sadly, it hasn’t gotten much farther than that. I had to go to work after all, then come home and mom around, arranging bathtimes, homework, dog care, tea and supper.

As consolation (to me), I have a poem up at Qarrtsiluni about nuclear power!

care & feeding

On the way home from work I bought three kinds of cheese:
Stilton, Delice d'Argental and Küssnachter.
So it is a relief that my poem Bad Toothbrushes is up at Juked today.

rum being a condiment

my daughter is so wrong
yesterday I quizzed her on the continents
and she guessed one as "Equator"
she also said that previous black presidents
had all been either attacked or assassinated
she wasn’t sure, she heard that at school
and then today she tells me Pierce Bronson
is better looking than George Clooney
I mean come on

homebody

Thanks to Laurel for letting me know my poem "Curtains" is up at Verse Daily today!
A nice start to a Monday for me.

if only i'd known

This may well be already dated, but it's still funny.

too sexy for iran

Publisher's Weekly has a list of its best book choices for 2008, which is dominated by fiction, but also includes a few poetry books. Two of them are on my wish list: the new WS Merwin and Kevin Prufer's National Anthem. The list is here.

When the hoopla went down about the Swede who disparaged American literature as being too tangled up in its own mass culture to deserve a Nobel Prize, I immediately thought of WS Merwin, who is timeless, concerned and perfectly pitched. When I read him I feel as though a ghost is passing through me. Later on I also thought of Cormac McCarthy and a couple other folks. But I also think there is a lot of poetry and "literature" out there that's too hip for its own good.

I can't believe November is already ticking. I'm going to start my own best-of list soon.

what came from the warm mud

One of the many delightful things about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is that the writer has named the chapters. When poets don’t title their poems, they are suspected of not caring enough, but how often do contemporary novelists name their chapters? Seems rather a rare thing. But Murakami does this, and he does it with pizazz.

These titles were sweeping around my subconscious, until the whole entitling phenomenon burst into consciousness in the dentist’s waiting room when I arrived at the chapter called “No Good News In This Chapter.” Well, I loved that. And I was glad to be prepared. Indeed, there wasn’t much good news in it, on the surface anyway. I don’t know, the things that happened in this chapter didn’t seem soooo bad, but I’m projecting. If they happened to me, I wouldn't find them so bad, but I get where the protagonist is coming from. Read the book and find out.

Anyway. Other choice chapters include:

Six Fingers and Four Breasts
On Horses Dying in the Stables
Culverts and an Absolute Insufficiency of Electricity
Death in the Bathtub
Just a Real Knife
Is This Shovel a Real Shovel?
Jellyfish from All Around the World

more than anything i hate golf

People like – or dislike – words for the way they sound or the associations they conjure, but some are also influenced by the way a word looks.

For example, many find something humorous about the letter k.

Pickle. Dunk. Monkey. Kalamazoo. Yank.

Funniest is the initial silent k, as in knackwrust or knuckle. What is so funny about that? I don’t know, but there’s an air of stupidity about it, no? To get really stupid, when someone wants to make a joke of his shop, he screws the spelling to include k: Kwik Kleaners or Kute Gifts. Poor k!

I like a doubled vowel, as in leer and deep. Even better than the double e is double o. To some extent, it’s also funny. Think of the word tube. It’s not funny. But the word loop is. Since tube and loop have the same vowel, it’s not sound here, it’s spelling. Other double o’s are also funny, like doodle, toot, boob, poodle and oodles. And why is cartoon not cartune? Because!

You’d think double o words were formed for the sake of a laugh. But there’s another class of double o words that ooze of mystery and have nothing funny about them. Think room. Such a big little word. Also smooth and broom and groom. Cocoon. Soundwise, it helps if the double o is followed by a vocalized consonant. But it isn’t absolutely necessary. I find a weird spaciousness also in root and soot, for example, and soot isn’t even pronounced with the long /u/.

Somewhere the buried knowledge of how the word is spelled affects me even when I’m neither reading nor writing it. As much as I dig root, route leaves me lukewarm. And while I like June, pursuit, newt and chute, they’d be different altogether with a double o.

One might say it’s only because the double o looks so cool. But that’s not it entirely. Also leer is more interesting than, say, near. Wheel is more intriguing than weal, and between would beat betwene, even though there’s something sweet about the latter. Dopey and sweet.

friday confession: sticking to my ignorance

When Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for literature, I had never heard of him. A month later, aside from his luscious name, I still know nothing about him. I'm sorry about this, but life is only so long.

The Nobel site describes Le Clezio as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Actually what they said was "uppbrottets, det poetiska äventyrets och den sinnliga extasens författare, utforskare av en mänsklighet utanför och nedanför den härskande civilisationen".

Wow. Too bad I have such a long reading list. I do not think I will ever get to him.

lap of soot

I finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" last week and I thought it was terrific. It's got a ridiculously simple plot that should be monotonous but instead is enthralling. I enjoyed the writing style, too - how he used sentence fragments, dropped apostrophes, and how he gave the dull and desolate landscape texture. I could feel the soot folding and unfolding over the ruin. But mostly I dug into the terrible story. It's an apocalyptic fantasy that everyone has had - McCarthy's version of that fantasy.

Like a lot of readers, I often shy away from the movie versions of good books. But I was interested to find out that "The Road" is being made into a movie. I was just saying yesterday how I refuse to see the adaptation of Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son," but I am definitely going to see this. There's a slideshow here.

the seriously babbling brook

I am still under the sway of America. I know this because in the shower today I was thinking about Triscuits. Is the cracker named Triscuit because it appears to be woven like a basket, and you should arrive at that subliminally due to “A tisket, a tasket?” The Triscuit does carry edibles, as does a basket. Or is it a play on biscuit, biscuit coming from “biscotti,” meaning “twice baked.” Is the Triscuit thrice-baked? Is the Triscuit a sibling of Bisquick? Or is it simply a cute made-up word that almost rhymes with “mess kit,” or, stretchingly, “gimlet?” My mother always has Triscuits at her house and frankly I find the whole damned contraption too salty. And I am conserving water and arrived at no conclusion before having to evacuate the shower.

elongated aquariums

I left my book on the plane last week. “Astonishing Splashes of Color.” Nicole recommended it, and I wouldn’t have pursued the book but it was at the register of a store I was at in NJ for some crazy price like $2.49, so I said what the hell. I got to p. 135 then put it under the seat in front of me before nodding off, only to leave the plane next morning without it. It wasn’t bad. It was getting good, and I hoped it would show up somewhere. It didn’t.

So I went to a bookstore with a decent selection in English. I figured “Astonishing Splashes” would be stocked since it was short-listed for the Booker prize, but it wasn't. Not that I wanted to buy the book again. I considered it. But more likely I would have read it on a chair in the store. Anyway, the point was moot. The author’s last name is Morrell, and there I was, dead-suspended at the M shelf wondering what the hell to do with my life. (I am reading a book of short stories, but I don't count that. Unfair, I know. Escapes, by Joy Williams. Very Good.)

A woman next to me was looking into Ian McEwan, but I’ve read all the McEwan I ever want to read (Cement Garden, Comfort of Strangers, Black Dogs, Amsterdam, Saturday, First Love, Last Rites), and I was just talking to a friend the other day about the dead end of him. There was a long line of Haruki Murakami books, whom I do want to read but feared I might not be prepared for. A few shelves higher was Cormac McCarthy. Since seeing No Country for Old Men I have considered reading that. The store had it but the cover was one of those Hollywood covers with a still from the movie. I hate that. So I looked at The Road. Of the Murakami, I looked at The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. I kept rotating the McCarthy and the two Murakimis in my hands until it occurred to me I’d better decide, then go home to make dinner. But I couldn’t decide. So I got them all. May they be marvelous.

foto: sabine rothe

visit to a place that doesn't exist

When I went to Dachau, I didn’t feel much of anything. The experience was purely intellectual – and even that required striving. I felt more vividly about Dachau when I was reading about Dachau, when I looked at photographs of it, when I conjured that apocalypse, working myself into the place with imagination and the memory of all I’d learned. The reality was a failure. There is no Dachau anymore; it’s just tidy rows of sterile geometry, all swept up. No need to leave the small museum. I know that there being no Dachau should be a good thing, but there really is no Dachau. None at all. When I went to Dachau, I didn’t feel much of anything. When I went to Dachau, mostly I was waiting to go home.

cosmonauts

forget-me-nots
pick-me-nots
drop-me-nots
trod-me-nots
sob-me-nots
sniff-me-nots
abscond-me-nots
cause-me-nots

sad little round of life

I have a ghazal up today in the new issue of Unsplendid, a sleek ezine of formal poetry.

luckless pilgrim

We were sitting on the screen porch. My step-mother was telling us how much she had enjoyed visiting Colonial Williamsburg, how it took her a week to work through it whereas her friend Sally boasted it could be done in 45 minutes. Women cooked at a stove; men fired up the forge; everyone meandered around in full costume speaking a seemingly affected style of English. My step-mother's eyes lit up - she wanted it to be real, she imagined it was real, and she could join it. That's how I feel when I visit America: everyone is dressed up for it, including me. I"m tuned in. I talk the talk. I play that I'm part of it, but really I'm not. It's a reenactment. As my step-mother says, it's living history.

a room with one cot can be world enough

I found out yesterday that Tilt Press will publish my chapbook In the Voice of a Minor Saint. I couldn't be happier. Thanks to the folks who have already congratulated me.

I chose the poems very carefully but since I'm traveling and without my files, I can't recall what they all are... mind of cheesecloth, folks. I'll update on that.

Moreover, instead of publishing three chapbooks as planned, the editors have decided to publish five. I think that's great since we all know how hard it is to get published, how limited the options often seem. So in addition to mine, here are the other four:

a / long / division by Hanna Andrews
Leaf Weather by Shira Dentz
In the Kingdom of My Familiar by Julie Platt
Handle This Bludgeon and Run Me Through by Andrew Terhune

I'll be making more noise about this later.

dein goldenes Haar Margarete

I was at the funnel cake stand in Dorney Park and their menu of beverages included "white milk."

It was the only milk on the menu.

I asked the guy what other kind of milk there might be. He suggested low-fat, 2%, and skim. They're all white, too, of course, and none of them were on the menu.

In the right light, milk fresh from the cow can appear slightly blue. And Paul Celan had his "black milk of daybreak." Matthew Sweeney also has a poem called "Pink Milk," which, if I remember right, is about milk from goats fed red carnations.

But I've never seen blue or black milk on a menu. If I did, I wouldn't order it. I also wouldn't order spilt milk or mother's milk or grey, or green eggs and ham.

Maybe in the age of obesity white milk is spelled out as an alternative to chocolate milk? Or maybe somebody just mixed "white" up with "whole."

jane's krazy mixed-up salt

A slum can be a ghetto and a ghetto can be a slum but these are not the same thing.

Sometimes a slum is just a slum. And a ghetto isn't necessarily plagued by crime or, even, poverty.

I read a book review recently that called slums ghettos, and I wanted to get that off my chest.

Just so you know.

swat team

My mother took us on the gospel cruise. You weren't supposed to be on this cruise unless you were prepared to party for the Lord. We found this out after leaving port. I asked my son not to betray me. I asked my mother to please confirm this cruise was only two hours.

dear newark

Three hours in now on planet palin. I was just kidding about watching the debate, since 9 pm EST is my 3 o'clock in the morning. But who knows, maybe I'll make it.

Read "The Slaves of Solitude" and Tomas Transtromer on the plane. Both recommended.

Funniest is watching my 12-year old watch American tv commercials in complete disbelief. The OTT of it all.

"You'll never have droopy houseplants again!"

Surprise Party

How come every European city has a bar called Café Kafka? Do drinkers especially like Kafka? Do they like a disorienting kind of drunkenness, serviced by menacing bureaucrats? Do bartenders like Kafka, or waitresses? Are European drunks so literate? Of course, Frankfurt has a Café Kafka. I’ve been there. There’s nothing kafkaesque about it. Not that I noticed. Are we all talking about the same Kafka? Part down the middle, big ears? Do all these cafés confiscate your passport as security when you enter? Are they all connected to each other by some hidden door in the broom closet?

the faucet is the saddest instrument

I have a couple poems up at Prick of the Spindle – Rioja and Faucet Song. Rioja is an older poem and the latter is part of my never-ending series of household obsession poems.

Both my husband and our aupair leave the faucet running frequently. They turn it on full blast and leave the room. They say they aren’t “leaving it on,” they’re coming back. It makes me want to scream. Sometimes I do scream, or writhe. It’s really not just plain old vanilla neurosis on my part – it’s blatant waaaaaaaste.

In response to recent submissions, I got a rejection a couple days back from Redactions, but also an acceptance for two poems from Main Street Rag – The Conservationist (“… all the ooze and diamonds of the poor …”) and I Have the Feeling You Enjoy Stress (“…slosh some vodka across the stovetop…”).

On Thursday the kids and I leave for the states for the annual U.S. vacation touching points northeast. I’m scheduled up the wazoo, which I don’t usually prefer, but it’s okay – the kids dig it. I think I’m going to have to skip Philadelphia this time and the used bookstore I love. I will try to squeeze in the Strand in NY, though. I hope.

to hell with everything but brazil

dear manufacturer trying to sell my 12-year old a push-up bra

Man opens fire, robs bank, cheats welfare
Man threatens teller, resists arrest, blows up bridge
Man insults officer, shoots three, kills one
Man runs red light, poisons neighbor, solicits prostitute
Man loots booty, lights self on fire, throws wife from car
Man drives into crowd, goes insane, defrauds authorities
Man stalks actress, runs amok, kills self

zombie haiku

I've been tagged by Laurel to disclose six unspectacular things about myself. And here they are!

1. I have a mortgage I very much hope to pay off someday.

2. I have devoted hours of my life watching the Lord of the Rings movies largely because of Legolas. I have even considered reading the books, but understand Legolas is not that prominent a character. What can I say? Orlando Bloom makes a great long-haired blond elf, and that is unfortunately about it.

3. “supposing i dreamed this” is one of my favorite ee cummings poems.

4. Now that suicide has pushed David Foster Wallace to the foreground of my consciousness, I really want to read him. Like millions of other people probably. Except I probably will read him.

5. We just traded our used used Volvo (plus cash) for a new used Volvo. When I said to my husband that I would have prefered to shell out the money for something more exciting, he said “Sometimes I don’t understand you.” I’m sure this is playing out in countless used car lots.

6. I really do have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.

Meme terms & conditions!
1. link the person who tagged you: Laurel
2. mention the rules on your blog: (these are them)
3. list 6 unspectacular things about you: (see above)
4. tag 6 other bloggers by linking them: Laura, Talia, Charmi, Andrew, Dave, Michi, John

the day arrives like a shipwreck

Yes, I remember. It was more than shock, and more than pain. It was horror.

To me a peculiar thing about it was that at no point on that day did I say “I don’t believe this is happening.” It was completely believable.

As much as it seems like yesterday it also seems it could have happened 100 years ago. Like the Civil War.

Okay, that’s closer to 150 years ago.

Why does that memorial take so long? Was it supposed to take this long? Like, let’s have a memorial ten years later when we’re a little less emotional?

Is it some kind of behind-the-scenes struggle about the depiction of death, or what it is to feel the menace of death?

We all felt it. Every time an airplane passed over. Too close. Too powerful.

I guess the Vietnam Memorial was a long time coming, too. And it’s flabbergasting – low-key and devastating. Go there if you haven’t. Cuts right through the bullshit.

Anything but a light show, a PR event.

Over the years, I've read many vignettes and stories about people who lost loved ones, and of course it’s sad. I'll never erase the pictures of people with their "Looking For:" notices. But what I feel more is anger. It’s terrible, I suppose, but even more I feel hate.

Which is unfortunate, because that was probably part of the point – getting everyone all hot-headed and vengeful.

Which worked.

I keep it in check. I'm able to be reasonable. I don't run for public office.

Sure I’m mad at our administration for not preventing it, but not that much. I’m also not mad at a relative of mine for getting raped. In broad daylight. In the company of friends.

Of course I am mad at the administration now. I would like to say "disappointed," but that would suggest having had expectations.

I hate to be cynical. But folks, the chance is coming.

I don't know what to say in the face of it all. That horror.

May it never come again.

thx to erin tyner for the photo.

bananas

"Go, balloons. I don't see anything happening. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. Stand by, confetti. Keep coming, balloons. More balloons. Bring them. Balloons, balloons, balloons! More balloons. Tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet. No confetti. All right. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. We're getting more balloons. All balloons. All balloons should be going. Come on, guys! Let's move it. Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go. Go, confetti. Go, confetti. Go, confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down. Go, balloons. Balloons. What's happening balloons? There's not enough coming down. All balloons! Why the hell is nothing falling? What the f--- are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down. More balloons. - — Don Mischer, 2004 Democratic Convention Producer

tired of this particular hypothesis

If this were France we’d all walk around half-naked and take drugs
If this were France we’d have better taste and spend all our money on art
If this were France we’d laugh through adultery and fraud
If this were France we’d be on strike
If this were France we’d shower occasionally and smoke all day long
If this were France we’d drink our coke without ice cubes
If this were France we’d speak French and not have the faintest what we were talking about

conversation with a backdoor draught

weird revelation
a few days after I arrived to teach in china way back when I saw a group of retarded people cleaning one of the little city squares. It had never occurred to me there were retarded chinese people. All the chinese people I’d ever seen or heard about or read about were not retarded.

making an assessment
first, are there books in the house. Two, which books. Three, what is hanging on the walls. Next, the layout on the floor. Maybe this is in the wrong order?

no, surely not.

der Mensch ist kein Tier
I read an article the other day in which the writer talked about meeting a certain dog in person.
Recently a number of mosquitos have met me in person, but not the other way around.

the screaming man
camped outside my office building is a guy we call the screaming man. He has a beard. His rage won’t let up but as time goes on he gets less scary. Now you know as much about him as I do.

encore

it was the third of september, new and improved

Sherman also came upon the rebel pickets

My au pair is a lunking sweetheart and you'll be glad to know that, while there is no McDonalds in his Siberian city, his mother was fond of Hawaii pizza. He says he's keeping a record of my recipes. I must roll my eyes. I hate to cook, and rather than a cookbook I use whatever I’m reading at the moment in the kitchen, which at this moment is Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs.

When I’m wondering if I’ve put enough salt in the sauce, General Grant notes, “While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or ten thousand, with great composure; but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturallly disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend.” And then I add more salt.

When I’m wondering, though not with total attention, if the pasta's done, General Grant says, “There was about two feet of water in this swamp at the time. To get through it, even with vessels of the lightest draft, it was necessary to clear off a belt of heavy timber wide enough to make a passage way. As the trees would have to be cut close to the bottom – under water – it was an undertaking of great magnitude.” Then I figure the pasta is al dente.

Mr. Grant, I ask, is it better to use sage in this dish, or thyme? And General Grant, later President Grant, says “The Mexicans were very kind to us, and threw no obstacles in the way of our landing except an occasional shot from their nearest fort. During the debarkation one shot took off the head of Major Albertis. No other, I believe, reached anywhere near the same distance.” So I use sage.

tell me something good

I had two poems accepted today, which was startling since it seems a coon's age since I submitted anything. So I worked up the mental wherewithal to send a batch of poems out, too. I figured it was the end of August - I hadn't done anything all month and longer, and I do have a couple poems I like just slouching around the watercooler.

Sometimes I get so discouraged about submitting. Is anyone really going to read these poems, I think. I look at online journals and ask, do people really visit this site and read the poems, except for the poets who are in the issue? Or I go to a journal where I've been published and find they've got some real clunkers in their new issue, and I ask, why are they doing this? To meeeee? No, to themselves!

But there are journals I read frequently, a whole bunch of them ones I'd never submit to. Some of the online zines I bookmark are 2River, 42Opus, Blood Orange, Boxcar, Wicked Alice, Caffeine Destiny, Dirty Napkin, Fou, Green Hills, Juked, At Large, Linebreak, Opium, Swink, diode, Unsplendid, DMQ, Word for Word ... et cetera et cetera. I've linked randomly because I'm lazy.

Please do me a favor and add something good to my list.

three faces of eve ascending

sickorich
stinking/filthy rich
rich as Croesus
loaded
money to burn
well heeled
well to do
affluent
well off
>middle class<
working class
making ends meet
down at the heels
broke
down and out
church mice/not a bean to rub together
po
wolf at the door
dirt poor

peaks and valleys

and Valleys and Valleys and Valleys

the dewiest decimals

I finished The Glass Castle the other day and since then my evenings have lacked luster. I come home and feel I'm mourning for a lost world. My mother said I’d like the book, which meant I needed to think it over carefully, but she was right. It was hugely entertaining. Even at the end when we weren’t toughing out some horrendous circumstances anymore it remained interesting, mostly because of the whacky parents. All those years of bad hygiene, squalor, pluck and borderline criminality had my imagination swirling. I like that.

Yesterday I finished The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. After the ubiquitous hoopla, I found it a bit of a let-down. Yes, it is amazing that this book got written, but what was written in the book didn’t seem that amazing. I have the feeling this is one of those cases where the movie, the dramatization, is better than the book.

So, at the moment I’m reading Mothers of Invention. I am also still reading Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant, which I expect to finish sometime in 2011. And not that I don’t have enough unread books around to besiege, but I ordered more from Amazon today, mostly used:

The Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine
The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Somebody
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry
A Passion for Books by Harold Rabinowitz (?)
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson

The shipping costs add up, and I was going to cancel A Passion for Books, but a used hardcover cost $2.50, and I’ve seen many enthusiastic reviews. Ok, I’ve seen even more enthusiastic reviews of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. So who knows? If it’s a miss, my inner materialist says at least I’ll have a nice hardcover.

landscape of cake

I’ve always disliked cake. It’s the sameness – every bite just like the last. Icing never alleviated this. Icing seemed only to be added for its moist otherness; it never actually tasted good. Sweet, yes, but not good. And when you start varying cake's textures by adding things (think fruitcake), the situation further deteriorates. Even the word “cake” is kind of gross – like “ache” with choking attached. Not to mention that a piece of cake is as filling as a meal, and twice as caloric. I guess I’m lucky I never liked cake. I feel that way now, especially after finding this blog.

the joneses

Our new aupair is here. He came in on a bus from siberia. It took 5 days. I always worry we won't find the aupair at the station when s/he arrives. And if i get in the bus and yell "Dmitriy!," half the males answer. Anyway, he's really tall. So riding my bike is out. Also the bed in his room may have to be chopped for firewood. I don't even know how tall he is. But it's no problem because my husband is a gigantic talker. The good thing is he can help us spy on the neighbors' gardens. We've needed some help with that.

it is so easy not to write a libretto

it is easy not to be interested in German shepherds
it is so easy not to believe in palm reading
not to think about asphalt
not to see secret messages in the coke fizz
if you don't buy a house on Kaiserstrasse, that's not so hard
it is also easy not to buy a sketchbook
when you have a sketchbook