Rant and Ramble

i peel another page from my gary larsen caldender, smile at his image in my mind.

four days.

we are off to yet another "final" family vacation, this time to a cutesy town in the foothills, and for the weekend. there are old posts, there are really old posts, and there are really, really old posts if you'd care to peruse. otherwise, have a loverly weekend.

things i've learned this summer:

ducks like to have their feet wet. i can no longer bike up large hills. i can wake up at eight and drive away at eight oh five. waterfowl are messy, but not as messy as seagulls, which are not as messy as raccoons. nothing is messier than opossums. related: seagulls smell bad, but not as bad as raccoons. nothing smells worse than opossums. i can stand on my head (but barely). baby chicks tend to die with their eyes open. traffic school is inane. a mother duck will bite to protect her babies, but will leave them willingly if tempted with a plate of kale. noodles do not do well in the crockpot. cardboard does not do well in the broiler. the fire extinguisher is under the sink. fawns like bananas. opossoms like ratguts. mealworms like sweetpotatoes and oatmeal. i can match pitch perfectly, but only when i'm Om-ing. i still can't sing. soup is good. yoga is harder than kickboxing. baby opossums bite harder than mother ducks. my boss's sister-in-law is my grandmother's hairdresser. my sister's boyfriend's brother was my camp counselor when i was ten. my mother's best friend used to work at the restaraunt owned by my coworker's next-door neighbor. nika worked at a restaraunt owned by the family of a thirdgrade classmate. my dentist's nurse went to highschool with me. my gynocologist's nurse went to highschool with my mother. this town is far, far, far too small. i will miss it dearly when i leave. i want to leave. i could live without him, but i don't want to. i could be a graphic designer, but i don't want to. i might never figure it all out.
and that's okay.

i am immensely susceptible to beauty today.
the tiny white flowers, dewbedecked and starshaped. the sound of my own breathing. the curl of a wave and long, heavy skeins of kelp beside the weightlessness of a little orange crab, floating dead in the tidepool. the skyline of this city, comprised entirely of topheavy pine trees, their edges blurred by fog. deep violet morning glories pouring over a neighbor's fence. chai with steam rising against my skin. the pull of muscles. drums.

i want to spend today with a book, a handful of dried apricots and my yellow mug, curled on the couch and letting words sift through me as my toes scrunch the blanket. i want to walk through the woods with my poor blind dog and let her sniff her way along oncefamilliar trails. i want to clean my room and decide which of my fewhundred books are coming with me to philadelphia. i want to bake bread and make thick vegetable soup, full of barley and zucchini and kidney beans. i want to write a fourpage letter to everyone i know.

i am supposed to be at work in an hour.
tomorrow is my last day.
i don't do anything there anyway.
and they aren't paying me.

i should go, fulfill my obligation and sit in the stuffy office and eat too many starbursts while the day pads away on little furred feet.

but oh, how i want to stay home.

the wind spills in
angry from the west.
it bends the trees.
the ocean reminds me
of poems.
sylvia plath,
neruda,
eliot. those names
which i would like
to toss about me
casual as pennies
shining brightly in the sun.
i want to be smiled
upon, but the light
shifts away
running in the face
of heavyarmed clouds
gathering into tight fists
over rough water.
i am no fisherman's daughter,
but yet the ocean
heaves at me,
a pulse pounding
at my own, overwhelming.

i spent an hour at the coffeeshop before work, reading a new book and sipping at toohot chai. the browneyed man who hit on me at the creamer counter was so clich� i almost laughed out loud - but contained myself enough to tell him that yes, i do, and wouldn't he have a nice day? out in the sunlight, i was interrupted three chapters in by a man whose goatee couldn't quite hide his overearnest face, and who read me a terribly beautiful poem for fifty cents.

meanwhile, the cold metal bench seeped through my skirt to counteract the overflowing sun on my aching legs, the chai was sweet and soothing, and i discovered that while ee cummings writes a remarkably coherent and engaging novel, it would be nice if i knew french.

we have a dog.
this has been mentioned before.
we have, in fact, three dogs.
currently, i'm just talking about one of them. this isn't the one i refer to as "my" dog. this is the poodle.
this is the one we refer to as "the rat dog." or, alternately "the drop-kick dog."

this dog is currently dividing her time between a pinecone and a stuffed penguin. emphatically humping the penguin, then emphatically chewing at the pinecone. then back to the penguin. when the force of her humping knocks her over, she returns to the pinecone.

yes, she. a fixed she, no less.

humping. my. penguin.

there was a bird on the ground.
i bent close, to make sure it was dead, to make sure my newgained knowledge would be useless and tremble quietly in the face of greater power.

wings were spread wide in perfect symmetry, beak pointing a perpendicular accusation, straight to god. its eyes were gone, and in the middle of its greyplumed chest was a circular wound and a gaping emptiness. i stood there, breathing, for a long, dry moment. there was no blood, no gore, no other injury save a missing heart and a round, evenedged hole. and the blind, beautiful head staring endlessly at the aching sky.

this. is. beautiful.

sleep lurks inside of me like a demon, crouched at the base of my throat where my skin dips between collarbones. it unfurls slowly, wrapping tendrilfingers down my spine and curling its tongue into the soft edges of my mind. as night falls, it begins to pulse, each moment and each movement of mine lending it strength, and when the gentle flesh of pillow cradles me, it stretches, languid, lambent, licking the inside of my skull and the marrow of my bones. we dance a heavyfooted dance, sleep and i, neither ever wholly triumphant nor fully vanquished.

i think perhaps sleep is only the emissary of my dreams, a flunkie sent out to incapacitate me so that the variegated mosaic itself can take me, steep me in violet and scarlet and give me broken wings.

pluot for breakfast.
sourdough and seitan sandwich for lunch.
bike to work.
bike home.
three pieces of pizza, a waffle, a handful of greenbeans, another pluot, halfbag of chocolate covered soybeans, and leftover fritata for dinner.

sigh.

a mere twenty dollars at the bustling farmer's market today bought all the makings for a dinner with fresh pasta, fresh bread, fresh pesto, an elaborate salad, baklava for dessert, and a vibrant vase of flowers, as well as fruit to fuel my runnings about for the next week.

immediately previous, a mere thirty minutes at my studio provided me ample time to stab myself in the leg with an x-acto knife.

it all balances out, in the end.

i just spent an hour with a duckling, who flopped up my sleeve, nibbled at my nosering, and groomed itself in my lap before falling asleep in my hands.

my faith in the world has been restored.

hi dad.

one of the baby swallows was smaller than the rest, with a splayed leg and tattered feathers. he'd gotten wrapped up in the toilet paper we use to line the nest, and wasn't being fed with the others. i shooed away an older one who was gaping incessantly at my pink fingers, and picked up the straggler. his dry feet clasped at my hand, tiny wings fluttered, bleary eyes met mine. with a q-tip and warm water i cleaned off his feathers, his grimy beak. i fed him carefully, making sure he swallowed. the other birds were chirping indignantly; i'd spent five minutes with this one, and that put the other six cages behind on their feeding schedule. i set him carefully back in the nest, where he toppled over and lay heaving on his side. when i'd made the circuit and came back to his cage, another bird was perched on top of him, and he hadn't moved. i fed the others and then pulled him out again, holding his tiny body close to my own, my heart beating a slow timpani against his wildly chiming snare. i fed him again, a quarter of a cc, and when i put him back in the nest, he stood tottering and stared at me until another bird knocked him over.

the walk to yoga is a leisurely fortyfive minutes through a eucalyptus scented morning trimmed in oak trees dreadlocked by moss. the class is in a barewood room, thin purple mats and careful breathing until i am every muscle shaking and sweat finds its way out of all my skin to slip the soles of my feet as i balance. a month ago i couldn't touch my toes, and now i am standing on my palms.

the walk back, still shrouded in cool fog, i make eyecontact with eleven people in a row as they drive by. after a shower and a peanutbutterbanana bagel, my bike to work is a brisk halfhour, dodging tourists who wander all over the trail gaping at deer and elephant seals. between the coffeeshop and the office, i balance my chai on the handlebars and laugh as it splatters wildly at every bump.

my calves are aching now, my eyes fluttering closed. all the fruit i bought on tuesday is gone, burnt by my everincreasing metabolism that insists that i eat eat eat. i'm worried that if i get into better shape, i won't be able to afford to feed myself. when i was swimming and weight lifting and kickboxing and swing dancing, i was also eating two boxes of macaroni and cheese, three peanutbutter and jelly sandwitches, an apple, a handful of baby carrots, a quart of milk and some salad to hold me over after practice till my mom got home to make dinner.

my strongest memory of her is an early morning ride home, her arm hanging out the window as she sang raucously but well and laughed at me out of the corner of her eye. i remember being deeply impressed by her wild hair and equally wary of her sarcasm. i remember my parents' admiration and respect for her, and my own. i remember that she was beautiful, and smart, and proud, and that life never seemed content to leave her alone. it may not be much, but i remember. i remember her.

happy birthday, dee. i hope you know how well your children do you justice.

the only way to make good banana bread is with your hands. smash the bananas with your fingers, smush them into the flour and wheat germ and sugar and crisco which you think is disgusting but had to add anyway, crunch walnuts between your palms, mix it all together, goo seeping between flourcoated knuckles, scoop it into the pan with the edge of your hand, fingers curled, and lick all the way to your nails even though there were two eggs in the batter and you know you shouldn't.

at breakfast this morning, my father gazed over his coffee cup at the grey sky and said, "if you only knew how fucked up this world is..." i watched him for a moment, and he turned to me, saying, "our social fabric... we are hanging on the edge." i nodded, vaguely stunned, and mumbled something about a self-destructive society. he shook his head. "no, not self-destructive, just unsustainable. self-destructive sounds like it was a planned obsolescence, as though it was intentional. though i suppose when you're at the end of the rope, it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not, you're still at the end of the rope." i nodded again.

my mother and i had a conversation a while back about the rest of my life, unquote. she told me about her days in college when she was and environmental studies major, full of piss and vinegar and self-righteous enthusiasm. she wanted to start a public information campaign about the benefits of organic foods, knowing (as an economics minor) that organic produce needs a market to sell to, and the market needs to be educated so that they won't want to fill their bodies with toxic chemicals.

i've mentioned little to either of them about stray thoughts of potato farming or photovoltaic earthbermed housing or peacecorps or any of the thousand ideas which pummel each other within my mind, but it's comforting to know they'd have some idea of what i was talking about if i did.

i've been a benign meloncholy lately, hovering in some in between. i am no longer sure that i reside entirely within my own body; rather, i think i might be wafting slightly away, off to the right and drifting in the breeze. i turn my head to catch a wavering scent which maybe isn't there, i wake up and drive to work only to wake up again. nothing is entirely real - nothing has been for a while. when i sleep, i don't rest, and even when i'm doubled over laughing, some part of me is gazing off into the distance, measuring the horizon. i've not been lonely, yet i can't escape the feeling of being alone.

it was a stunningly beautiful day today, perfectly warm and clear with just a hint of seascented breeze.

don't be alarmed, though. the weatherman assures us it'll be "back to normal" for the weekend.

there are flowers vasing on my windowsill, collecting bubbles around their stems. i don't know what any of them are by any name that a botanist would approve of, but they are these:

fifteenpetaled in burnt sienna and dusty pink, with exuberant buttery yellow stamen huddling around a deep violet center.
thin fuschia petals like an anenome underwater, but with a daisyellow center and little spindly leaves.
something pale purple and thistlelike, a spikysoft explosion plummeting out of pale green lace, and smelling incredibly like chocolate.

the overalled woman at the farmer's market refused to accept my bouquet, insisting that i add more flowers even as i passed and almost doubled the dozen-for-a-dollar mark. i had also a number of rowdy orange chrysanthemums, and as i handed her my dollar, she added a dozen softpink lillies with a smile.

this moonlight
is no spun silver (as once i
supposed, and as myth
so prettily painted) but rather,
a hardy stainless steel,
plated and
bound close
to my window,
a blinding blankness.
i would be crying (perhaps,
my tears could shine),
but
the moonlight refuses.

i dare you to find a single male who, upon waking up covered in blood and with a throbbing pain in both gut and lower back, would simply sigh and mutter "already?"

"When you defeat a thousand opponents, you still have a thousand opponents. When you change a thousand minds, you have a thousand allies."

"it should be simple to be free, you know, but it's not." -peter

they argue, "yes, but if we didn't divide along racial lines, we would fine something else to place between us. eye color, hair color, height, weight, type of sneeze." they say, "yes, but we humans will always look for our differences and hold them up as boundaries."

well i'm saying, "as well we should."
you could empoy a clich� here: variety is the spice of life. except that without it, life is not only dull, it is delicate, vulnerable and unstable. every facet of natural history proves that diversity wins out over monotony. call it a manifestation of the law of entropy; call it common sense. a thousand niches will be better filled by a thousand species than any single one, and in exactly the same way, a thousand cultures will better survive than any single one.

we are not humanity.
we have created a culture, born of the twin snakes of salvationist religion and ruthless agriculture, that flaunts natural law at every point. we are seeing the effects of our blind enthusiasm: nuclear war, famine, global warming, massive erosion, species extinction, a gradual shattering of the ecological system which is accelerating at an exponential rate - one which mirrors our perverse population explosion. but we are not humanity.

we are only a single culture. not america, not even "the west." for all our opulence, we have no corner on this market. the vast rice paddies of china are no less destructive than our forest-razed grazing lands and endless fields of genetically engeneered potatoes. and the guilt and grotesque glory of christianity is joined by islam, judaism, buddhism, taoism, hinduism, all the branches and subsets thereof - every religion which teaches that it is only god's favorite creatures that are flawed, that the gulf between our lifestyle and one in keeping with reality can be filled by a redemption, whether internal or divine. we look at each other - peering across the ocean to jordan and taiwan and france, gazing down our nose at mexico or chile - and we declare that we are different. and we are, and we should be. but the most basic, fundemental mindset of our culture is identical, and therefore we are, at end, the same.

when details of cuisine and method of salvation and climate are stripped away, our culture boils down to this belief: the world is ours to populate and devastate - we are the highest expression of god's creation or natural selection, and, as such, not subject to the laws which regulate all other life on earth.

but look: we are not humanity. there are a thousand ways to live. there are a thousand ways to tend the earth - we've just found the one which breeds famine and instability and death. there are a thousand ways to commune with the gods - we have found one which separates us from each other while requiring that we are all the same.

i am not flawed; nor am i god's favorite. i am not exempt from the laws of nature any more than i am from the law of gravity - or entropy. my earth is sacred, and i am exactly as sacred and the spider i killed this morning and the redwoods i walked through holding his hand.

sigh.
again - read something by daniel quinn.

well, the really long and involved post i'd written just got eaten by blogger. so, in the meantime: read something by daniel quinn.