reservations

The Hotel Su Sergenti, a little oasis of relax, is certainly an ideal place for holidays, with the main factors like sun, the crystal clear water and the incredible beaches of fine white sand. The nature particularly generous with this dream island bursts in millions of colors and sensations which will remain in your minds like precious and unique remembrances. Relax in the mess of our inner structure, which is reserved only for you.

thank you for leaving

Two more days and we will escape the mosquitoes and heat of Sardinia. It is really gorgeous here, but one has to wonder about the lack of window screens. I don't really buy "we're used to it." I did pretty well with my Italian this year although the other night after we had a big dinner for Carlo's relatives I thanked them all for going rather than for coming.

My new chapbook should come out late this month and I'm excited to say that the artist who provided the art for the cover of "In the Voice of a Minor Saint," Emmanuel Polanco, is also donating a collage for "Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair." I looked around and considered other options but I kept thinking there's really no artist who appeals to me quite as much as he does, so I got on my knees and begged. With success.

In other good news, Barn Owl Review just accpeted my "Ghazal with Broken Birds" for issue 5. And Phantom Kangaroo accepted "Smashed Ghazal" for their August issue. I'm of course really happy about this. Prick of the Spindle took four poems for their September issue just before I left, so the dry period of rejections has come to an end.

Otherwise, I have indeed done a lot of reading on this vacation. The choice has pretty much been swim or read. They both take a lot of energy. More on my reading adventures next week.

on the patio over the sea

With my heel slung across the opposite knee, the skin and un-muscle of my calf hang like a slack hammock filled loosely with sand. How, with all the stairs there are to climb in life, can it droop so resolutely? Well, I say, you are lucky it is stuffed with sand. Imagine if it were filled with plums or nickels - and you in your brown bathing suit. Then there would be something to moan about.

summer reading

I'm definitely overestimating my prowess, but these are packed. Ciao!

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (fiction)
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (history)
The Enchantress of Florence by Salmun Rushdie (fiction)
Down With the Ship by Ryan Murphy (poetry)
Dark Blonde by Belle Waring (poetry)
RHINO 2010 (poetry journal)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (fiction)
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (fiction)
Brute Neighbors (lit anthology)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (fiction)
Juan Luna’s Revolver by Luisa A. Igloria (poetry)
Undertow by Anne Shaw (poetry)
The Scented Fox by Laynie Browne (poetry)
The Pill vs the Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar/Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan (poetry/fiction)
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

song of the day: bella ciao

Packing

We leave for vacation this coming week. We’ll be spending 2+ weeks in Sardinia, the plus time being the drive & ferry there and back. Packing space is limited because browndog is coming, meaning the back of the station wagon is half-occupied by her. I’m sharing a suitcase with my daughter, meaning 2/3rds of the suitcase is occupied by her. So I’m making my reading selections carefully.

I don’t really differentiate between summer reading and winter, spring or fall reading. I don’t mind reading snowy gulag books on the beach, or desert books in the dim, rainy fall (which reminds me, I could take The Sheltering Sky!). I think people who like light reading on vacation probably prefer light reading in general.

One tradition I do stick to is reading short stories in summer. This year I plan to read Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fightfight in Heaven. Another summer tradition is the ‘forcefeed read,’ a book I think I should read but have so far managed to avoid. Last year it was David Copperfield, which I loved. This year it’s Crime and Punishment. I’m really not optimistic. I never am. I bailed on The Brothers Karamazov, for example. But you never know.

I usually do take non-fiction, too. Right now I’m in the middle of Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, which with luck I'll finish before we leave (freeing up room in the bookbag). On the maybe pile are The Worst Hard Time and Confederates in the Attic. Dunno.

Poetry is hard to pick because if I take two or three books and it turns out I’m not in the mood for them, it’s a disaster. So I like to bring an anthology for the variety. I’m pretty sure I’ll be taking Brute Neighbors, an anthology of urban nature poetry and prose, which Kathleen recommended and has a poem in. It’s small, too, so I won’t have a problem fitting it in my bag. I will be far from the urban, and any wildlife I see will likely be of the sea-creature variety, but I like when a book delivers me elsewhere.

I was going to link to some summer reading lists here, but none of them have books on them I'm particularly interested in. "Bossypants" appears to be dominating this year, which seems to me a good example of high summer fluff.

I come from a state of astonishment

I have two poems in the new Literary Bohemian, the handsome half-Czech zine that goes everywhere. The poems are Crossings and Among the Watermelons.

Crossings is a poem I began long ago on a trip to Denmark when I forgot my passport. Coincidentally, around that time I'd learned that my paternal forebears were more likely Danish than Dutch. After a boring and disappointing visit to Denmark, I abandoned this poem for a long time.

Among the Watermelons is a cento using lines from French poets I adore.

As we say in China, welcome you enjoy.

For me, my roots don't go much further than Scranton, PA, where my parents are from. And weirdly, whenever my mother visits me in Germany she says, "Germany always reminds me of Pennsylvania." And I understand her, at least as far as eastern Pennsylvania goes. The photo is of her on the cover of The Scrantonian in 1954.

Open the hood and expose the good bones

The piano is nothing more than a musical vehicle. It has a brake, accelerator and clutch. The metronome makes a precise speedometer.

Unlike a typical car, however, the piano can be started with any key.

It is good for taking out for a spin on a Sunday morning when the shops are closed. Dusty, rural roads recommend Mussorgsky; the city’s stop-and-go pairs well with Satie; and the long lake drive lined lushly with chestnuts lends itself to a variety of Baptist hymns.

The piano has an ample interior, airy and comfortable, but that needn’t influence one’s driving style – it may be slow and sumptuous, or aggressive and down-to-business. Most models are aerodynamic, epitomized by the Steinway grand, though the piano world also has its jaunty uprights, which are easier to park.

All pianos are suited to melodious cruising. If you crave a large audience, turn up the volume and burn rubber, or pop a wheelie, or go do doughnuts in the parking lot.

As with any vehicle, a piano is meant to provide its driver with a feeling of freedom. It’s versatile – with imagination you can take anywhere. For flair, experienced drivers suggest wearing a veil or a scarf, or simply let your mane grow long. That way you’ll feel the wind try to pull you back as you get going, before deliriously playing along.

A note on the type

We spent the weekend on the Rhine, including the preposterously cute town of Unkel, and the once-grand/now-tawdry town of Remagen. Among other things, we went to an art fair where I spent an imaginary 10,000 euros on jewelry.

On the way home, to ease the fear that I’m wasting my life, I pulled the old trick of reading in the car until I ALMOST felt sick, then resting, and resuming. I’m reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. My daughter asked me what it’s about, and the plot is truly not that interesting: gay 20-year old staying at the house of a rich English parliamentarian. But it is excellent writing, which expunges all shortcomings (if the lack of a plot is a shortcoming.)

I am lucky to have picked up a hardbound copy of this book somewhere (Borders sell-out?), with its beautiful cover and its heavy paper and dust jacket. During one of my non-reading intervals in the car, I just fondled it and was glad it was mine, glad I could underline and write in the margins should I want to. E-books be damned.

What struck me funny was the half-page "note on the type," Bembo, three times longer than the author’s biography. Bembo is 600 years older than Hollinghurst! It was born in Venice! The typography note turns into a homage, and an anthem for those who love tangible print on real paper. Ok, computer-screen print is also in some font or the other, but you could just as well mark it and change it to comic sans. People!

Police tape

Every morning she’s photographed waking up in another position.

Monday: Splayed, and mouth gaping like a union soldier

Tuesday: Crouching as if about to jump from a frosted cake

Wednesday: Collapsing into herself like Jack Ruby being mortally wounded

Thursday: Breaking into bits of birds

This morning she woke like Ophelia with her hair fanned out and floating, hands folded; and last week there’s a picture of her

knees tucked up, fingers curled against her cheek

as if making a desperate phone call to consciousness

Dogs barking down clouds

Sorry to have been absent, but I’ve been busy off forming opinions somewhere.

For example, if you take a picture of your genitals and distribute them on the internet, you have already shown such a lack of responsibility to your wife and family (and self) that no one can expect you to show responsibility to your constituency, i.e. you should step down from political office immediately. You are also a joke, and disgusting. Is this, like, a trend in male-dom?

I’m also trying to write a ghazal. Will it fail?
And these doubts about my spirit?

I finished a bunch of books: The Quickening Maze, The Redcoats and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, all with different levels of success.

I also let Twitter distract me. Alongside Tricia’s hilarious non-stop sexting, there’s a group of DogsDoingThings, which assures me I have wasted my life.

For example: “Dogs rinsing the remains of an indigent off the sidewalk as a van-mounted megaphone urges, ‘Re-elect Mayor Goldie Wilson.’” Or “Dogs bursting into a cloud of marbles and rolling down the drain.”

This goes on all day people!

Serve your Notion

I went to the dentist this morning. I always like going to the dentist because I become representative America. The first thing he asked me when I came in was "so, what do Americans think about the European e-coli outbreak," as if we'd have some special opinion on it. Anyway, I told him we were widely opposed to e-coli, and if it were to occur on our own soil we would have congressional pre-approval to declare military action.

This was a follow-up visit to have a crown installed, which was fitted two weeks ago. At that time, it was all about Strauss Kahn and the American justice system. Was the perp walk actually necessary, my dentist and his assistant wanted to know. Not only is it necessary, I said, it is therapeutic. It is also democratic, and there are people who aspire to it, who practice it at home. "Necessary" seems hardly the adjective, I said, "essential" is more like it.

I am really happy to be able to serve my nation in this function.

With veins aglow

I would have given up but Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence is one of my father’s favorite books, so I stuck it out, hoping for an ironic twist or natural catastrophe or messy and embarrassing suicide.

But lacking intellectual pursuits, weird sexual inclinations and/or worthy and urgent causes, the idle rich are a dull lot, and the calamity of this book is that to the last page Newland Archer’s life goes on as tediously as ever.

About 30 pages in I wondered if the book would be concerned solely with the characters’ taste in clothes, their home decorating preferences and whether or not their chefs were any good. There was a bright spot about 3/4s through were Newland realizes he wishes his boring wife May were dead, and I was like, yeaaahh, poison her! That would have livened things up, but alas, murder is just not done.

So what did I learn from this book? I learned that in the late 1800s rich white people were like walking light bulbs. They did a lot of coloring, using the rush and ebb of blood to make their faces and necks light up to convey their feelings, or turn ashen to express discouragement, disappointment or calm. Barely a page goes by without someone’s face flushing, or going pale, or clouding over, or reddening fit to burst! This is obviously the way polite society used to express their emotions.

The height of this circulatory phenomenon is the exchange between Newland and M. Riviève, the French messenger. It’s practically acrobatic. First, Newland’s words “sent the blood rushing to his temples as if he had been caught by a bent-back branch in a thicket.” Then “he saw his blush more darkly reflected in M. Riviève’s sallow countenance.” At the same time, “M. Rivière paled to his normal hue: paler than that his complexion could hardly turn.” Then “Archer, reddening slightly, dropped to his chair,” and also “M. Rivière reddened, but his eyes did not falter,” just before “the young man’s color again rose.”

Of course these corporeal warmings and chills parallel similar imagery of embers and fireplaces, the sun and the weather, kindled hope and hope extinguished. Still, I did feel at times it was bit overdone.

Here are some other examples, from a list that could be five pages long:

Archer looked at her glowingly p. 21
Miss Archer blushed and tried to look audacious. P. 33.
The young man reddened. p.34
Newland reddened p. 35.
Newland Archer reddened and laughed. P. 53
She glowed with sympathy … a dusky blush rose to her cheek. p. 54.
He colored a little p. 62.
The light touched the russet rings of the dark hair ... and made her pale face paler. p. 63.
The Duke beamed on the group … Madame Olenska’s face grew brilliant with pleasure. p. 65.
Her face lit up. p. 68.
Janey paled and her eyes began to project. p. 71
Archer felt the blood in his temples. p. 77
Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed by the rich red of her dress p. 90
The blood rushed to his forehead. p. 94
To his surprise her color rose, reluctantly and duskily. p. 98
Her face clouded over … the blood rose to his temples. p. 110
... he felt the color rise to his cheek. p. 121
She flushed with joy and lifted her face. p. 126.
Archer burst into a laugh, and May echoed it, crimson to the eyes. p. 177
A sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Archer’s face. p. 215
“Augusta,” he said, turning pale and putting down his fork. p. 232
It was Mrs. Welland’s turn to grow pale. p. 233
Mr. Welland’s brow remained clouded. p. 233
... with an insistence so unlike her he felt the blood rising to his face … p. 234
... and her face, in contrast, was wan and almost faded. p. 243
She merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of her obesity. p. 248
The young man heard her with veins aglow. p. 249

And now for something completely different: The Quickening Maze

And here's a list of 250 books by women "all men should read." I put it here mostly for my reference. I don't know why this is aimed at men, except it seems to be in response to a list from a men's magazine that irritated feminists. All fine by me, but I do wonder at the tit-for-tat (no innuendo intended), and think maybe readers independent of gender may appreciate the recommendations. In any case, it would be helpful if the list compilers made an attempt to justify it, rather than just saying who sent the name of the book in. Am I missing something?

lampshade out of me

So. My mom is here with her wine and cigarettes. She read a bad book all the way over the Atlantic and somehow reading it in an airplane when she could have been asleep makes her feel less like she wasted her time ("The Guernsey Literary Potato Book whatever"). My mother never comes without lotsa American stuff. This time the prize went to peanut butter Tastykakes. But she also brought Swifter refills, Old Navy shorts for my son, single-serving bags of Maxwell House Instant Coffee and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. So now I know all I need to know about the state of America today.

Today we’re going to catch an exhibit of Surreal Things (Surreale Dinge) downtown before it closes Sunday. Like a fat woman who boils over in a new house, I’m a huge fan of the surreal, especially the French surrealist poets. Let us hope the exhibit surprises with strange and uncomfortable situations.

Song of the day: I never thought they'd put me in the Goon Squad

People shouting to each other across the street

I love your idiot mittens!
YOU LOVE MY WHAT?!
I love your thesis on the fetid!
YOU LOVE MY WHAT?!
I love your nervous dancing with the dead!
MY WHAT!?
I love your pussy willow wreath!
WHAAAAAT?!

I believe

There is an afterlife - it is called literature and history.


*

I Am Crazier Than Anyone

The Guardian newspaper runs a series online called “Experience,” in which people are invited to share their stories with the world! Today the story is “My hair fell out one weekend.”

In honor of all of us having survived the apocalypse, and a whole bunch of other crazy shit, here’s a list of folks’ experiences, along with some links. Among my favorites is the guy who, at age 85, was unhappy with his physique, and got himself a personal trainer. And then there’s the lady who feels other people’s pain. Oy.

Warning: some intent navel-gazing.
I’ve only eaten crisps for 10 years
I didn’t leave my house for a decade
I used to hit my husband
I am a 91-year old bodybuilder
I saved endangered rhinos from a bush fire
I crushed my GBP1 million violin
I nearly died after eating wild mushrooms
I was impaled by my own scupture
I threw myself on to an exploding grenade
A great white shark ate my leg
I didn’t hit puberty until I was 21
I feel other people’s pain
I eat roadkill
I was deported
I was run over by a freight train
I lived with wolves
I’m allergic to everything
I flew the English Channel using a bunch of balloons

poetry brooch

I don't know if this was a particularly good idea, but I did it: The Habitual Poet questionnaire.

Luster

Classics I’ve re-read and loved twice: Jane Eyre, The Stranger
Classics I’ve re-read and stopped loving: Les Miserables, Madame Bovary
Classics I’ve finally read and didn’t especially like: Wuthering Heights, Tender Buttons
Classics I’ve finally read and loved: David Copperfield

They say Madame Bovary is a masterpiece but personally I think it is a masterpiece “of its time” for its (then) lascivious theme of a wife's adultery. Also the handling of the “disturbed woman” seems to me kind of tedious. It reveals little to the modern reader. And lastly the writing is praised to the heavens and indeed it is good but is it as good, say, as John Banville? No, it is not. I cannot read French, so perhaps I'm being unfair and the original would poke my eye out. But I doubt it.

Don’t get me started on Tender Buttons. But I think we all know that.

Still, I can only recommend re-reading books you consider worthwhile. It’s a good experience because the plot has less of your attention, the story itself is no longer being revealed, but the whole how of the writing, the language, characters and style are there to reevaluate, and sometimes it’s even better than the first go-round, and sometimes the luster dulls.

for years of service

Before all else, the umbrella is a skeleton. And whether it rains or not in the end it will again be nothing but a skeleton. Whether it snows or the sun shines or the moon or the wind rips the thing to shreds. (::removed::)

Neighbors

Looks like another beautiful weekend – sunny and a bit cool, our small garden exploding with wisteria, clematis and all kinds of other stuff and nobody knows what the hell it is. I took the dog out this morning and the birds were tee-oo-ing away, except for one that was making a wretched sound I’d never heard before. Let’s call him the barfing bird. He’s apparently had enough of picturebook springtime. He gave me a good laugh.

Speaking of self-expression, I’ve had a few poems in print publications lately that I thought I’d mention. First, my poem “Whisk” is in the new RHINO. This is one of my household totem poems, and one of my favorites from that series.

I’ve also got a ghazal in issue 48 of Hayden’ Ferry Review called “Ghazal of the Jack Pines.” Hayden’s Ferry actually pays writers, which is pretty cool, although I turned down the payment in exchange for a subscription, which I’m expecting to improve my life more than money might.

Neither RHINO nor Hayden’s Ferry have actually arrived yet, though I got notifications that they are at this very moment making the big swim. But my copy of Passages North has come, and it’s gorgeous. The cover graphic is bold and sober and folkloric. I have two poems in the issue – “From the Back of My Mind,” and “Table, Uncleared.” Among the poetry, I like the dawn losinger poem “She Had No Elbows,” which starts, “etiquette came easy.” I also like the Jason Tandon poem “Neighbors,” which starts:

Like a pink-skinned moon
a boy’s head rises
in the window across from mine
and yells that we can be friends if I want.

Which brings me back to my new neighbor, the barfing bird, with whom I struck up an immediate friendship, our twin heads rising above all this flowering green to retch a little bit, just to keep things in perspective.

My dog attempts suicide

Hey what’s this, oh a bucket of charcoal. Yeah hey I wonder what THAT tastes like hmmm chum chum chum hmmmn well no one’s looking and these are not bad nothing to write home about but hmmmn they kind of melt in your mouth if you chew them up good chum chum well I can’t believe somebody left these here unguarded these dogbite-sized briquettes of coal what’d they think I wasn’t stupid enough to eat the whole bucket of this stuff hmmn nmmm heh heh WRONG!

octopussy

I participated in the royal orgy today, watching the wedding on tv at work along with many of my unabashed female colleagues, and a few guys, too. Hey, we said, if the admin can reserve a conference room during work to watch the German match of the World Cup, let's see them try to deny us these few hours of pomp and romance.

Still, after all the waiting for the ceremony, the kiss, the carriage, etc., in the end it was those fantstical hats that stunned. This is apparently de rigueur in British fashion. There wasn't a bare female head - from frisbee-type contrivances, to whirly-twirlies, to psychedelic ostrich plumes, to birthday cakes, tacos and contraptions that look more like hat boxes than hats.

But if you watched I am sure you cannot but agree that Princess Beatrice whooped them all with her Dr. Seuss-like atrocity. I couldn't believe my eyes - this is a girl with a sense of humor. At least I hope that is the explanation, and not insanity or intent to do psychic harm.

Scrambled eggs and ketchup

I never wore jeans to work until this year. That’s because a former bureau chief, a woman I was/am also friends with, once said women have to do more to earn respect at work than men do, and while people overlook men dressed in jeans, women in jeans look sloppy. So I never wore jeans until this year, when I finally threw off the shackles.

These kinds of statements can affect you more than you think. Another well-dressed friend once said to me, “What is the thing with black and brown? Black doesn’t GO with brown.” And ever since then I’ve thought, wow, black doesn’t go with brown? And I experience an inner questioning every time I pair black with brown, which I like to do.

I also had a German boyfriend once who said “grün und blau trägt die Sau,” which means the female pig wears green with blue. He said this on a day when I was wearing green and blue. I’d often wear green and blue; I figured they went well together. But now I was told they were ultimate frump. And the more I thought about it, the more I kind of agreed. (That is an actual German saying, by the way.)

But the worst for me is yellow and red. Yellow and red has always reminded me of scrambled eggs with ketchup, which I hate. As a kid I loved the game Risk, but I couldn’t play if red and yellow were on the same team. This is surely one of the reasons I dislike the German flag. Ugh, who thought that up? In any case, I never wear yellow and red together. Hell, I never wear yellow OR red at all.

what can occur can reoccur

Here’s a phrase that struck me odd the other day: ‘occur to.’ Without the preposition ‘to,’ ‘occur’ usually means to ‘happen’ or ‘transpire,’ as in “the accident occurred at 6 o’clock,” or “this disease occurs in farm animals.” It has something of a suddenness about it, as in “Hamlet was not prepared for what was about to occur!”

The suddenness makes it unlike ‘take place,’ which works well with events planned in advance, like an operation or a meeting that takes days to be over.

But we also use ‘occur to’ to refer to a BRAIN getting an idea or remembering something.

Yo Jeeves, it occurs to me that white goes better with fish.

What I like about ‘occur to’ is it’s as if an IDEA HAD HAPPENED to you, passively. It crept up on you while you were sitting around minding your own damned business. In that it’s a bit similar to “dawn on,” except that “dawn on” is wimpier because of its reference to the sentimental Walt Disney dawn, as well as a dishwashing liquid that comes in varieties like “lime surge” and “citrus kick.”

And then Monday dawned on Petrushki.

In this case, it could actually be Monday itself, the day, arriving in the form of daylight on that sleeping idiot Petrushki, or Petrushki possibly realized something surprising about Monday. It does seem to refer to the throttling awake of a stupid person:

It dawned on Roger that those cigarette butts in the ashtray were not his wife’s.

Maybe it’s because the dawn seems to come up gradually, like a slow person finally getting the hint, his jaw slackening to reveal a dark orb.

Another station of the cross

Telephone Pole

There was a telephone pole
that wanted to be a tree,
to do the birds a service,
birds who now only paused
on wires strung up and shared
with neighboring poles,
evenly spaced
like monotonous clones.

Tapping the land line, the pole
demanded fancy branches
and deciduousness
but the phone company
refused, so the pole
interrupted all outgoing calls,
demanding to be a lamb,
and be brought back as Christ.

The Great Whites, or thoughts while dressing for work

What do the great white shark and the great white shirt have in common?

For one, they both have terrific teeth and bite! Flashing in the dark, one could almost be mistaken for the other.

Second, when the great white shirt is all ironed up and starched, it makes a ripping sort of sound when I pull it over my head and stick my arms through the sleeves, a sound not unlike that of a shark shredding something to bits. Scary!

Last, a note on personality. The great white shark and the great white shirt are both no-nonsense types. They mean business, people. Approach with caution . . .

philadelphia, a city

“A moving and important work.”

“The crudest vulgarities lit up by the most pristine instinct.”

“Some unforgettable scenes – full of regret, bathos and mystery.”

“At once darkly hilarious, gripping, and fit to burst.”

“Never have I been served such a portion of horseshit.”

“So well executed, one could almost dispense with the plot and characters.”

“Nothing less than a letter to God.”

“Only now and then does something like this come along that makes you realize life is extraordinary.”

freak incident

Look at this intersection! Look at this Irish bar! Look at this guy hosing down the area in front of his deli. Look at this corner lit by every light bulb and LED screen on the planet. Look at this corner that hasn’t seen the light of day in two centuries! And these guys are protesting against bedbugs? And this is a Scientology video broadcasting to anyone who’ll listen? Look at these buildings boxing in the sidewalk with windows and banners and bricks and a doorman. Look at this lot with absolutely nothing on it. Astounding to see this fence around it!

four strong winds

I had a long trip to America. First I flew to Duesseldorf, which involved much waiting and about 25 minutes on a plane. I was to be seated in row 22, but there was no row 22, which was perfect. Then the 8.5 hour flight to Newark. But everything turned out fine. We didn’t crash. A woman asked if I’d trade my aisle seat for her friend’s middle seat so they could sit together and the answer was no. Sorry, I made about three phone calls to get that seat. I watched “Sekretariat,” which had to be the schmalziest storehouse of bullshit ever. But I survived even that.

I finished Oracle Night before boarding in DUE, but luckily I had a back-up book: Moscow To The End of the Line. It is about a very hard drinker. It is pathetic but also funny. And the first thing we did at my mom’s was go over to the local Borders, which is going out of business (9 days left!) to scavenge the racks. I thought I’d have no luck, but I found about 15 books I was VERY interested in, which I sorrowfully whittled down to eight. I would have taken them all if I didn’t have to lug them back to Germany, some of them being very nice hardbacks! $175 worth of books for $45: The Infinities, Foe, the new translation of Madame Bovary from Lydia Davis, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart, Mapping the World (a geography book that I may cut up/collage), City of Glass, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, and a poetry anthology called A Book of Luminous Things. I've heard of this book many times, but wasn't sure I'd want it. But at $4.25, why not?

The thing about this anthology is each poem is sketched out by the editor at the top of the page. That way the slow among us have a chance to get it. For example: In this Tu Fu poem of spring the days get longer and the mountains grow beautiful. The south wind blows over flowering meadows. Swallows who just arrived dart over marshes while ducks nap in couples on the sand.

South Wind

The days grow long, the mountains
Beautiful. The south wind blows
Over blossoming meadows.
Newly arrived swallows dart
Over the streaming marshes.
Ducks in pairs drowse on the warm sand.

Ok, I hope that was helpful? I know this poem is a toughie. They left out the more subtle one about the north wind for fear of rampant reader failure. Ah well, there are some good poems in this, but the commentary sometimes teeters on the brink of hilarious.

poppins

I read an article recently claiming a spoonful of sugar cures hiccups about 93% of the time. This is the first I hear of this. If it's true, why doesn't anyone seem to know about it? All I ever heard about was holding your breath, or breathing into a paper bag, or scaring the daylights out of the hiccupping party. The cures I'm familiar with always seemed to require a dash of drama. (My colleague, for example, suggests panting. I can't wait to try that out.)

I can only attribute the ignorance of the sugarcure to a misanthropic theory that people subconsciously don't want to be cured of the hiccups because they get pleasure from annoying their loved ones and crave attention. So maybe we've all been told of this cure before but we "forgot." I think of my sister who hiccupped through her youth only to terrorize me, not because she really had the hiccups. Or the people who talk to themselves constantly, who seem totally unperturbed by it, even when everyone else is pulling their hair out.

Both of my kids recently had the hiccups and I tried telling them that it was all in their heads. Which actually did the trick. I'm sure it was a fluke, but still, may work as a last resort.

what might do

I’d like now to read a book that is sad and haunted. Not haunted as in ghosts but infused maybe with the past or hope or illness or regret or something that didn’t happen but might have. Children could play a role, not a bunch of them, and not as the focus, but they could be there for perspective even just as a memory because vulnerability is important. As for grownups, I don’t mind characters who are despicable because how else would I see myself. I don’t go in much for love stories but love might roost in the margins or be disappointing or cause a tragedy before going up in smoke. I appreciate a well-built sentence and I’ve nothing against fragments used in an unaffected way. A good vocabulary is my weak spot. I’m also into fireplaces and watching fires. I love a light snowfall and the smell of manure and all the tricks the wind can do. If animals walk in let them be lobsters or lunatic chimps but not dogs or cats and birds are boring. There’s no time like the present though long ago would work – I avoid the 70s although that wouldn’t rule reading out for me if the book had other things going for it. I like a U.S. setting whether city, suburb or mountaintop, but Europe is also fine into its new eastern reaches and I’m persuadable on Asia. The story might also take place in a small airplane. I like suspense and men with beards. Of all nuts, peanuts. I don’t need a happy ending but let someone come to an understanding or acceptance and go on living, or die with insight, or solve a puzzle, thwart an enemy, or better yet let someone realize what an asshole he or she has been.

good things

One of the best things is I got my son a book he is enjoying: The Maze Runner. It just came out in German, and after months of sulking about his reluctance to read, I gave it another shot, and bingo. He loves it. Thanks to NE for telling me not to be discouraged.

My 14-year daughter got her hair cut in a punky cropped-on-one-side style (that looks good) and asked for a feminist book called Living Dolls, which I got. She has been following me around telling me how “furious” she is about, about, what? About sexism. All I can say is swing out sistah. It is great to have two kids battling for airtime to promote the books they’re reading, even reading me short passages to try to make me understand.

I veered off the usual path and read a vampire book, Let the Right One In, which I can only say is wild and wonderful. I loved it. Great story and very well written. Sometimes funny but also touching and of course completely undead.

Back in real life I wanted to go to my mom’s for her birthday in mid-April and she pretty much forbid it, saying she’d rather I come out when she moves, which I understand, but I have doubts she’ll move this year. Anyway, I acquiesced, not wanting to visit if she’s only going to cluck her tongue at me. Then a training opportunity came up at my company’s offices in NY and I put my hand up and was chosen, so, while I’m a little trepidatious about the demands of the training, I will be at my mom’s in NJ for her birthday, and she is thrilled.

Last, I entered Good Reads monthly poetry competition and won! This is great because I actually win something – Billy Collins’ new book, which I’m interested in reading. Here’s the poem I entered:

Riding Backwards on the Train

It’s not unpleasant: perpetual surprise.
But instead of feeling I’ll arrive, the world

appears to pour towards whatever
I’m getting away from. Cows and foliage

blur by and I try to imagine easing
into couch cushions, or the plunge

back onto the bed, quilt whooshing
up from behind. Still, I can’t shake

the faint dyslexia reverse riding
brings, the suspicion I’m rushing

assbackwards into the future, kick-me
sign tacked to my spine, a breech

birth with no eye for what’s ahead
until it crashes into the past, the inkling

I’m a fool doing the backstroke smack
up against the wall of the pool.

i was in nyc

The flag was hanging vertically from the building, just hanging there as if gravity were a mistake.

Noise didn’t matter. Tears didn’t matter, and you’d need more than moonlight. You could be the drunkest man on the planet and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

And why should it? It wasn’t as if the flag were outside Army HQ. It wasn’t even at a public school building, much less a bank. Still.

Later when the wind picked up and the people inside saw it flapping and writhing, they put their hands to their heads as if their hats might fly off.

And as I always do when my wish comes true I began wishing the exact opposite, all the while knowing even if the wind did settle down it had nothing to do with me.

Sometimes it’s better not to read too much into things.
Sometimes even the smallest desire seems an enormous impertinence.

Aunt Bobbie’s Almanac

If your palm itches, choose sixes.
If your wrist itches, it’s not because
you’re missed.

Empty your head for clarity,
then abandon all desire for clarity.

To ward off fever, twist your mustache.
A mustache is bad luck enough.

Whistle in the kitchen
and marry a man who beats you.

Don’t whistle
and you won’t know love at all.

To achieve your dearest wish
cross your fingers,
all your fingers;

keep them crossed
until they fall off.

stray notes from my desk / unable to throw them away I put them here

the key is fooling yourself. My doctor gave me a placebo / never underestimate the power of a placebo, he said, his one eye drooping

Sacrifice is a sign

Explaining my gay marriage with a Chinese character

comeuppance/high dudgeon, and what is this about boots to hide the gazelle-like ankles

Mexican girls smoking small cigars and wearing masculine hats, that’s what makes the world go round

He who has recovered from a distant sickness
An audience of chairs

German food is alive and well

And when the doors bulge & split, we erect a fence and hoard our modest hopes behind the border

The Dead/Araby/Where are you going, where have you been/George Saunders

pockets we care deeply

I would like to get fat and wear military fatigues while sitting in a quiet, carpeted room with the xenophobia shades down smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine like in the old days

A guy walks into a bar and there is no one there to get the joke

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

I finished Wuthering Heights at the very moment Elizabeth Taylor died and now Catherine Earnshaw/Linton will be forever tied up in my mind with the slightly plump young Liz. Richard Burton can play Heathrow, Hindleg and Harelip all rolled up in one overly emotional mass - occasionally drunk, of course. Works for me.

I don’t know, call me uptight but Wuthering Heights was over the top. I’m more the Jane Eyre type. It’s like Rose Red vs. Snow White. I always come down on the Snow White side, even when I wish I could loosen up. It’s why I like pale Legolas more than sultry Aragorn, why as a kid I preferred Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood over Sesame Street, and probably why I work out better in Germany than Italy.

My own failings aside, it is amazing that Heathcliff is considered a romantic hero when really he is a plain sadist. My husband also recently read Wuthering Heights, then watched a movie version, and he said the film brought over more clearly how Heathcliff had been abused and humiliated as a child. You get that less in the book because the volume is cranked up to FREAKOUT pretty much throughout. But the abuse, along with his attachment to Catherine #1, was one of the reasons he decided to be spiteful, tyrannical and cruel for the rest of his life, before finally going insane. Thank you!

I am glad I read it. I’d started and given up on it some years ago. I did understand Heathcliff in the end, and the story and writing certainly are stirring. And we got an excellent Kate Bush song out of it. For the next hour or so I will be enjoying that limbo between books, when every shelf brims with possibilities.

Thanks to Adrienne Kammerer for lending me her image "Bringer of the Black Dawn."

Comments Cut and Pasted from an Article on Sidewalk Rage

I used to have irrational outbursts of rage,
those stopping at bottom or top of stairs or escalators in subway stops.
Later in my life I analyzed the source or rage and focused it appropriately.

I recently got in an argument
about a parking space. I was putting boxes in the trunk and I noticed a pickup waiting.
I closed the trunk and headed for the supermarket.

The driver yelled, “You could have told me you weren’t leaving.”

It is quite natural to feel annoyance. No laws need to be passed.
Idiots can figure it out. The absolute worst is those who do it mid-stair.
The elevator, bus door or subway rushers.
(Please correct me where I may err.)

After I returned I found a dent in the hood of my car.

When I am in the city, walking alone, I have a destination.
Walking from A to B, I will mutter things, walking on a sidewalk.
I don’t care about the appearance of my car.

But don’t you hate when parents use side by side strollers on a sidewalk?
Don’t you hate it when people stand side by side on an escalator?
Don’t you hate it when two slow people are walking side by side?

When I am travelling on foot
and have interacted in subtle ways with men,
I feel I am in a tribal hunting party. I find it hard
to fault people who feel the urge to strike someone:
reptilian idiots, corner blockers, hand talkers, person
with an out of state tag, the stop-and-turners,
slow movers, the home for the blind.

Civility isn’t everywhere. But it must be in a guidebook
because tourists regularly stop and take pictures.

My point is the pickup driver is an angry person;
his anger will lead to health problems, or he’ll encounter
an equally angry person who will hurt him.

I believe he is already mentally ill. A disease is much worse than a dent in my car.
I’m not sure about religion or politics but I am positive
ultra-narrow cars would make the world a better place.

Not that any of this matters.

Most men travelling in the same direction will not change course, coming out of a building at full speed. I spent most of my working days in the belief the only way was by the skin of my teeth.

If I could have changed my behaviour I would have yelled, “I’m not leaving.”
I would have pulled out and let him park there.
**

Song of the day: The Magic - Joan as Police Woman

quite the

So ok let me check that I’m getting the gist of this article -

"Dwayne and Wanda Smallwood worry the gravel pit threatens the town’s RURAL CHARACTER."

"So Brite Tattoos believes the proposal is at odds with the town's RURAL CHARACTER."

"Wee Ones Play–n-Day Care have joined the protest, saying the town's RURAL CHARACTER is at stake."

Ok, think I got it.

weather zelig

I was in an earthquake once. I had recently moved to Germany and rented an apartment near the train station in Mainz. My bedroom window looked out on a labyrinthical courtyard of buildings, including a brothel, a laundry shack, and lots of garbage cans. In the middle of the night I woke up shaking. I half woke up, anyway, and my sleepmind tried to grasp what was happening. I realized it wasn't me but the bed shaking, or actually the room. I said to myself, 'finally it has happened: the devil has come to claim me.' And I went back to bed. I was always scared shitless of the devil, even when I stopped believing. In the morning, I'd forgotten all about it. When I got to work, our secretary asked if I had felt the earthquake, and I was at once surprised and completely relieved.

I also experienced a tornado when I lived in Kansas. I lived in a house across from the fire department. One day I was deeply engrossed in an exercise video when the sirens went off. I noticed them, but they were quickly absorbed by my subconscious. Minutes later the German professor from the college where I worked was banging at my door. He had a crush on me and often showed up at my door asking to massage my feet, but this time he hustled me into his car and down into his tornado cellar. Weather-wise it was an interesting experience - everything went dark and very quiet. Our town was spared but some terrible trailer bashing went on not too far away.

From the human disaster almanac, I was also in China when the Tiananmen massacre went down. I lived in a city on the coast east of Beijing. We'd seen some protests, and some of our students had traveled to Beijing to be part of larger demonstrations. In China at that time, the one way to get real news was from other people. There was no internet, censored or not censored. The tv was state run and so were the newspapers. The only true news -and even that was questionable- came from people who were there. My mother in NJ knew more than I did about what was happening in Beijing, and she wasn't taking it calmly. All we had was Li Peng, the premier at the time, on tv repeating the same speech over and over.

After recounting all this I suddenly feel, at least on an amateur level, like an unimportant, curiously nondescript short Jewish man with glasses who manages to show up in surprising circumstances without any particular motive. I blend in, and am defined only by what has happened to me. I do hope it is a career I've now abandoned, and I will be spared eyewitnessing Middle East uprisings and nuclear disaster.

(The poster is from Witold Sadowski, a Polish graphic artist.)

ides

The ides of March have come, and things are much worse for the world today than they were for Ceasar. Who really cares about Ceasar at this point. Still, given the nuclear crisis in Japan, this old literary reference is certainly getting a new chance at relevance and householdnamedom. Germany shut seven nuclear reactors for review.

I was thinking, what if all of Japan was rendered unliveable? Would there be a place in the world to re-settle the 127 million beleaguered Japanese? They certainly have emerged in all this as very humane and organized. Not one looting as far as I heard.

Anyway, I looked up 'ides' and it means the 'middle of a Roman month,' but the 15th of March is not the middle. There are 14 days before it and 16 after it. Let us hope tomorrow the situation does not deteriorate further.

And now for my daily grumble, from Yahoo! News, again:
"Japan Faces Radiation Catastrophe Threat"
I guess it's not technically wrong, but it sounds awkward. Does Japan face the actual catastrophe or the threat? I think what they want to say is the "threat of catastrophe." Being in news myself, I'd like to believe there just wasn't room for that "of..."

The Ungrateful Son, or Justice Galore

A man and his wife were sitting by the door of their house. They had a roasted chicken and were about to eat it together. Then the man saw that his old father coming, and he quick took the chicken and hid it, for he did not want to give his father any. The old man came, took a drink, and went away. Now the son wanted to put the roasted chicken on the table again, but when he picked it up, he found it had become a great toad, which jumped upon his face and sat there, and would not budge. If anyone tried to take it off, the toad looked ferociously at him as if it would jump in his face, too. So no one dared to touch it. And the ungrateful son was forced to feed the toad every day, or else it would have eaten part of his face; and thus the son wandered the world without rest.

from The Brothers Grimm

magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror and no one can stop them

Some children have a fierce sense of right and wrong. Take the magpies. When you tell some kids what magpies do to the eggs of less flamboyant birds it’s an outrage to them! After that they will not give the magpies any rest. My son was like this. I was also like this. I remember the day my father told me life wasn’t fair and it was like I’d been tasered. (Anyway, as I said to my doctor, I wonder if those children with a deep sense of justice grow up to become criminals. Probably not.) Still, I don’t think it’s good to put too much energy into right vs. wrong. It will exhaust you. You’ll get on a train and someone’s bag will be occupying a seat that should be for a person. You’ll scowl at the bag man and wish bad things on him, even if you have a seat. Or you’ll be a cyclist who gets terribly pissed off about an ambulance parked in the bike lane. This stuff will eat you up.

In my train this morning, a woman was reading a book called Goals ("Ziele"). She was marking passages with a highlighter. Goals can be good, but it is also good not to have too many of them. And why mark up a nice book with an ugly, yellow fluorescent pen? That is wrong and should be severely punished.

Thanks to seasprayblue for letting me use her image.

I suspect my son and I will continue, justly, to give the magpies a very hard time.

at the office entrance

We talked about the wind because it was windy. Across the courtyard a man’s scarf was flapping around fit to strangle him.
- H said, it is like a wind tunnel here in the courtyard.
- L said, at least it is a warm wind. Two days ago it was bracing.
- K said, this wind is like the wind in Kansas! When it pushes my coat open I have the feeling I am in Kansas anymore!

They were all right, really. I have also lived and Kansas and was astounded by the strong wind they could muster there.

Mostly I wanted to say that in all of nature the wind is most like water, but I didn’t think that was something to mention right then.

I also have noticed – and it seems banal, however true – that when I wash my hands in cool water in the restroom after hours of working, it is like my hands are having a drink.

nettles in march/mugwort in may

I admit I have neglected to think about stinging nettles for months. Then, yesterday, they came up in two different things I was reading. One was a Salon article about cooking them, and the other was in the book Lolly Willowes, again about cooking and eating them. I never knew of nettles until I moved to Germany, where they're called Brennessel (burning nettles). Left alone they grow very tall and fuzzy. People panic when they see them because contact irritates the skin, for upward of a couple hours. It's unpleasant, but also interesting. Like childbirth!

I don't get bent out of shape about nettles because I come from America, host to the crippling and fearsome poison ivy, which dwarfs nettles like losing your leg dwarfs stubbing your toe.

On days when I can't think of anything positive about living in Germany, I look in the mirror and write "poison ivy" backwards on my forehead with eyeliner to remind me the country is p.i.-free. At most it is shown in botanical gardens like a bearded lady in a freak show. There innocent Germans can ogle it, and expats taunt it with sticks.

Reading While Walking

When the book opens, the street shuts up.
The story pours from all sides; it drops

its ponderings along shorn lawns. It splits
ways with the true day. Fiction freights

the air; the walker strays. When the book
opens, the street shuts up. The mind dowses,

drinking at the page. Eyes trip and linger
on the doubling curve. The walk meanders

and the walk moves straight. Leafing
fills the air with a whirr of birds. Pages

layer, and pages turn. The mind lolls
down the rungs of words. When

the book opens, the street shuts up.
There is no fiction. There was no world.

been there

Somewhere here in the middle of various crises I have been named a 'Stylish Blogger.' Thanks Sherry and Kathleen. The first thing I have to do to go down in the book of stylish boogers is reveal seven things about myself. So here goes:

1. I love staying in hotels alone. First thing I want to know is is there a sewing kit? And do I have something tiny along that needs sewing?

2. I was one of those lucky women who lost weight after having children instead of getting fat. I think it was nursing. Or it was subsisting on what the kids left on their plates. Or chasing them around. Or maybe it had nothing to do with kids and somewhere along the line I simply fell out of love with food. Really, I can’t be bothered most of the time. Been there, done that. I also wish sleep were optional.

3. Dog is man’s best friend, diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and my best friend is 100% whole milk. Really, every day. Ok, so there is one food...

4. Places I’ve lived: Mainz, Germany; Plainfield, NJ; South Plainfield, NJ; Dalian, China; New Brunswick, NJ; Frankfurt, Germany; Highland Park, NJ; McPherson, KS; Davis, CA; Milan, Italy; Madison, NJ;

5. I am a loungewear pioneer. You can count me in on any outfit that does bed, grocery store and dog-walking. I have strong ambitions in this area.

6. I find snobbery occasionally refreshing, but arrogance I find mostly outrageous.

7. All those no-name rejections on Duotrope are mine. Surprise!

The next thing is to name some other stylish bloggers. I've decided not to do that since many of the blogs I frequent have showed up on Kathleen or Sherry's lists, or the lists generated by those lists. Instead, here are some art sites/blogs that I really like and you should look at:

Brian Dettmer
Anthony Zinonos
Su Blackwell
Hollis Brown Thornton
Juliana Swaney
Emma Kidd