waste of space broken record

absolute waste of space at work today, (hi HR, if you can read this) but have been very successful in the pursuit of poetry and music. loving broken records:



listen to more by them here

Translation of My Life

I remember the past.
Before there were poems.
I was eight. The world
simple as a primer.
I lived in a small town
far from the ocean.
Home, then school,
then home again,
back and forth
on my blue bicycle.
In the summer, a blue pool,
white clouds sailing over,
and a song playing
on the jukebox.
Always the same song.
Then fall, with its burning
leaves. Thanksgiving.
Christmas. Over and over.
There are photographs,
yellow and crumbling,
to prove what I say.

Imagine: a town
in the same universe as this one,
with the same physical laws,
but no poets, no poetry.
No scribbling hands up late
at night writing words
they believed would save them.
No noisy fluttering pages
to disturb the peace
of the dreaming populace.
Understand, I was only a girl
living the days as they came.
I did not know then I would leave.
Though I had a secret
I did not tell and will not ever,
I did not know I would leave.


-by Elizabeth Spires

read more Elizabeth Spires here
got particularly spooked by "the snowy day"

came on my ipod today as i ran and then set it on repeat and listened 11 times in a row

I don't want another lover
So don't keep holding out your hands
There's no room beside me
I'm not looking for romance
Say I'll be here, I'll be here
But there's no way you'd understand

All I want
All I want
All I want
When I don't even know myself

I don't want another partner
So don't try and break the spell
I can't even understand me
So don't think that you can help
When I say things and see things
That's no way on earth to tell

What I want
What I want
What I want
'Cos I don't even know myself

No-one wants to be lonely
But what am I to do?
I'm just trying to be honest
I don't want to hurt you too
When I'll be there, I'll be there
I know I sound confused

But all I want
All I want
All I want
All I want
All I want
See, all I want
All I want
Is to one day come to know myself

heyyyy guess where i am? at home. online.

yep. thats right. after 8 hours in the wellington public library battling the floridian equivalent of the biblical plaques (crotchety deaf grannies, shushing and bustling librarians, suspicious right wingers, hefty candy chucking children, sulky cell phone talking teenagers, an infestation of massive grasshoppers, no food and worse, no COFFEE) i just found what i had been looking for frantically yesterday morning: wireless.
*shakes fist*
but it did make for good bonding on the phone with coworkers who heard when a tootsie pop whizzed by narrowly missing my head and then heard me turn around and lay mental waste to a particularly tubby and obnoxious bully. ill have to log on and do some work next week to make up for lost time but its fine, im in southern florida afterall, i cant believe im saying this but i might even enjoy escaping into some work. wow. new low.
for now im running, riding, cooking and working on responding to important emails that have been burning a hole in my inbox. and doing more research on The Next Step, hoping my contact contacts me.

here's what ill be making tonight or tomorrow with good floridian tomatoes for a little party moms having for her friend thats leaving town permanently for mexico (smart woman). its good for potlucks and the like:

roasted tomato and goats’ cheese tart with thyme

1 lb ripe plum tomatoes
soft goat cheese
chopped fresh thyme, plus a few small sprigs
1 x 375 g pack fresh, ready-rolled puff pastry
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
extra virgin olive oil
salt and black pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 375

put the pastry on a baking tray and score a line on it about ½ in in from the edge, all the way around, but dont cut it all the way through. put goat cheese crushed garlic, chopped thyme salt and pepper in a bowl, mix, spread the cheese mixture on the pastry up to the line. thin slice the tomatoes and arrange on top in overlapping lines, season the tomatos, drizzle olive oil on top, put thyme over the whole thing and bake in the middle of the over for 55 mins or until pastry is browning and the tomatoes are roasted well.

bite me grandma. oh im sorry can you not quite read this from where youre sitting? HOW ABOUT NOW? BITE ME GRANDMA NOW GET ON BACK TO FOX NEWS.

this is beyond ridiculous. im sitting in the wellington public library because my mothers internet wasnt working and i couldnt manage to hack into any of the surrounding wireless signals (know that i tried, at 7:30 this morning, holding my computer up like simba from the lion king as i wandered around the condo, which is a great way to get arrested in this state) and then spent half an hour trying to find my mothers car keys which she wuoldnt help me find because she wont get out of bed which is another issue altogether and now ive finally found the libs where they have disabled or somehow blocked all chat functions so i cant get on AIM to work and worse i cant get on gchat to bitch about this clusterfuck of a day to my peanut gallery and my hair is reacting most unpleasantly to the humidity causing me to look like shirley temple after hitting the crack pipe one too many times and im litterally between two blue haired 90 year old ortho-shoe wearing two finger typing grandmas who are eying me like bin laden himself because ive been forced to work off my personal computer which features a holy trinity of stickers-that-will-get-you-shot-in-florida: Obama 08, Free IRAN and Keep Abortion Legal.
not that i could ever imagine retiring period but mark my word i will retire to apalachia before i retire to this godforsaken state of backwards thinking and plastic santas.

follow up convo with pcox

daisy (12:47:37 PM): the commie library is letting me on AIM for all of two seconds can you send me julies AIM?
pcox (12:47:44 PM): OMG
pcox (12:47:57 PM): and WOW you're ALIIIIIVE
daisy (12:48:47 PM): BARELY
pcox (12:49:00 PM): so i got in at 9
pcox (12:49:06 PM): IM SO REBELLIOUS!!!
daisy (12:49:30 PM): my mothers about to kill me i made her read off from a page of notes i had left at home, of course, because im incapable of doing anythign right, and it was like listenign to a dog try to speak russian.
daisy (12:49:32 PM): YOU REBEL YOU
pcox (12:49:41 PM): HAHAHAHA
pcox (12:49:58 PM): frau freund
daisy(12:50:09 PM): yeah that sweet nicknames been used in the past for her
pcox (12:50:42 PM): i KNEW it
pcox (12:51:54 PM): but really
pcox (12:51:57 PM): why am i here
pcox (12:51:58 PM): today
pcox (12:52:01 PM): and in life
daisy (12:52:34 PM): perrin
daisy (12:52:36 PM): really
daisy(12:52:49 PM): do i LOOK like the person to be directing your existential crisis towards?
daisy (12:52:52 PM): if you could see me you would scan my humidified curly fried no make up wearing grandma scaring personage and you would sadly shake your head
pcox (12:53:42 PM): deep sigh
pcox (12:53:55 PM): can you come to california and entertain me?
pcox (12:53:55 PM): thanks
daisy (12:54:14 PM): i am THISCLOSE
daisy (12:54:51 PM): and now that much closer. why? because a woman just walked by me wearing head to toe pastel blue with white nurse shoes holding a book called JESUS WAS NOT A JEW
daisy (12:54:55 PM): i kid you not
pcox (12:55:20 PM): AHHHHHHHH i just choked on my donut. damn you.

just read about a fontina mushroom and sage grilled cheese

"nutty, smooth-melting fontina cheese and adds a layer of sage-accented sautéed mushrooms." COME TO MAMA.

round loaf country bread of some kind
fontina, grated
mushrooms, cut thin
fresh-ground black pepper
chopped fresh sage or dried sage
salt
lots of butter


its happening tomorrow.
me. roommate. the cat. a ton of packing i have yet to tackle. book making for mom and grandmother. its on.

what even is the public domain?

for the first time after almost two years of blogging what must be now about 200 poems, a poet contacted me to tell me to take down a piece. (hi david. oh and david it will take a few days for it to disappear from the web. i know this well as i once wrote a coworkers full name up here by accident and then spent three days sweating as it continued to show up in google searches. although chase would probably love that i post his sharpest zingers, loveable attention whore that he is)at any rate i was perfectly happy to take the poem down. and i wish david good luck in what must be a full time job monitoring the internet for people like me who appreciate his work and share it to inspire people to do further investigation into the poet, the form, the ideas that the work brings up. the web is bluring lines and i understand it must be frustrating for a writer to keep control of their work. but this is not a poem i copied from a book. its online now anyway(at NPR) where it will stay for however long NPR leaves poems up until they're archived. years? then again i assume they paid for the rights... but now its available for free for the masses... so then its just a matter of supporting npr via hits on their website? i'm honestly not sure how i feel about this. its terribly complicated. anyway i'll keep posting poems on my little blog that ten people read on a good day since in 199 cases it hasnt seemed to bug anyone enough to mention it but if poets dont want their work up they can let me know.

for those of you interested, heres the unauthorized poem

image by burt clifton.

inked

i turn the soft side
of a forearm to face my father
cursive ink sunk into skin as white
as when we first met

well its small enough to hide
he says picking up his fork again
as i unroll the sleeve in silence
peer through the distortion
of my glass for dissapointment.

if only it were all as easy
a layer turned back to reveal
legible indelibe that which rises
to the surface from within.

father if i could spell it all out for you i would.

spinning until i pass out

went west to dads this weekend which was brilliantly calming on one hand, my fathers support is tantamount to my peace of mind. and i have it.

on the other hand i feel somewhat empty from committing out loud over and over to all his guests at dinner that i will be quitting my job this spring to head to geneva. the idea is so young but i can feel myself leaning on it unfairly. it will only happen if my connection connects to me and she's proving slippery. I dont want to let this choice get taken out of my hands when that is where it began and that is why it felt so right.

my life is my own. yes it belongs in parts to the people i love who love me but my life is my own. i have x number of minutes left on this earth, i want them to be full of people i can give to and learn from in equal parts, characterized by giving and taking, or at least challenging and rewarding... in every way.

at any rate. one of the guests at this dinner dad and sandra threw with an intimidatingly accomplished and worldly set, was the sister of the violinist sophie solomon. her schedule changed but up until this week sophie was going to join us so earlier in the month dad sent me a link to her music and i. love it. it makes me want to slap on the eyeliner, snap on some gold hoops and twirl my skirts until i pass out. (see above vid)

and then this, a quieter song, lazarus, featuring kt tunstall on the album. who we all know i also adore:

ugh this is beautiful and she is adorable. i find myself adoring her.

"youre the reason why ill move to the city youre the reason why ill leave."

Sweet and Spicy Toasted Pecans

even if it has to happen at midnight, which im guessing it will based on my nutty schedule this week, im going to make these sweet n spicy little buggers and im going to put them in the pretty orange tin i have been waiting to use for dad and sandra who im visiting this weekend out in the way west of mass. even if it lays me LOW so help me i will make these and i will gift them.

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste (use less if butter is salted)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste
4 cups pecan halves

Makes 4 cups

preheat the oven to 300°F.

Melt butter with brown sugar and maple syrup in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in salt and spices. Pour over pecans, toss them well, and lay out on a cookie sheet that has been covered with parchment paper. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes depending on how crispy you like them. Stir once during baking. Remove from oven and allow pecans to cool on the cookie sheet. Store pecans in an airtight container.

shearwater snow leopard

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

-Billy Collins

i cant get beyond the questions

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

-Mary Oliver

just pasting a convo up here that i dont want to forget. this goes back to the hope issue.

A: i believe people are inherently good. and if they are not its b/c the world has been unfair to them along the way. even the people who fuck me over, i end up defending in some regard
me: i believe people are inherintly selfish and if they arent its because they had a fantastic parent. and if there is no such thing as unfair, just the cards were dealt and how were either wired or taught to deal with them.
A: wow. those are two differing perspectives
me: were hardwired to look out for ourselves. thats what i mean by selfish. we do defend ourselves, we are defensive by nature, we are out for our own protection.
A: i believe people care for others and try to do the right thing. right by themselves and right by their brothers. work really hard to not screw people over intentionally and to be honest when it counts
me: nope. dont agree. i think thats religion and peer pressure that keeps us doing right by our brother. have you ever watched people walk by a homeless person lying sprawled on the ground in manhattan? no one stops to see if hes dead. i think people would rather not screw other people over because religion and our parents and society impose whats right and wrong and that honesty is correct but ultimately our instincts are to do what is best for us. and i dont think people will go that much out of hteir way to help someone else out. particularly not a stranger
A: i believe that everyone wants to do right by others but that we live in fear and that social strata and functioning institutions of order have been organized around stratification, fear, and denial of need. after all how else could the market run?
me: fear, yes i can see that being a factor
A: i see what your saying, but i don't know if its instinctual
me: peopel are afraid of the homeless man.
A: they are. they have learned to be. this is what i learn from watching children
me: they help another kid who has fallen down?
A: no, but they don't run away from a kid who has fallen down. these things are learned
me: i dont know. i think people are good to themselves first, and to the people who they know and love intimately, namely their families, second. its a survival tactic, a species couldnt survive if they were universally compassionate.
A: yes. but thats why we form social groups. and kinship ties
god i can't wait until i've been in school longer and i actually know how to talk about this stuff instead of pulling it out from dusty corners of supposition. so i'm sorry if my argument seems weak. in comparison to what you are saying
me: dont be sorry. and i dont think theres a way in the world that you could convince me that people are not inherently selfish and will only go out of their way to do good if it is easy or if they are feeling pressure from society. this is what my experience has been. it doesnt mean i dont love love love people, i love studying them i love seeing what makes people go out of their way, how we balance our self protective instincts with our inherent loneliness, the other major weight on the scale... we are lazy and selfish yes but we are also lonely. and that leaves us vulnerable and it lets us love and that makes us do all kinds of things that are difficult, not lazy, and selfless in a way... i love people. but thats what i believe is operating at their core.

Dunn gone and summed up the entire human experience in a poem. again.

(sorry i couldnt help it)


Desire

I remember how it used to be
at noon, springtime, the city streets
full of office workers like myself
let loose from the cold
glass buildings on Park and Lex,
the dull swaddling of winter cast off,
almost everyone wanting
everyone else. It was amazing
how most of us contained ourselves,
bringing desire back up
to the office where it existed anyway,
quiet, like a good engine.
I'd linger a bit
with the receptionist,
knock on someone else's open door,
ease myself, by increments,
into the seriousness they paid me for.
Desire was everywhere those years,
so enormous it couldn't be reduced
one person at a time.
I don't remember when it was,
though closer to now than then,
I walked the streets desireless,
my eyes fixed on destination alone.
The beautiful person across from me
on the bus or train
looked like effort, work.
I translated her into pain.
For months I had the clarity
the cynical survive with,
their world so safely small.
Today, walking 57th toward 3rd,
it's all come back,
the interesting, the various,
the conjured life suggested by a glance.
I praise how the body heals itself.
I praise how, finally, it never learns.

Stephan Dunn

beginings of a grilled cheese menu for my cafe-in-the-sky

some invented some found on the web, this list will be an ongoing project and i hope to name each one i try and love. feel free to offer names! and other suggestions!! im going to try all of these and let you know. ill take pictures if possible. last night i made number 7, the prosciutto and fig jam deal but we didnt use arugala and it needed it. so when i make it again ill take a pic.

tonight, number 1...

1. apple and aged cheddar on walnut bread
2. pear and smoked gouda and arugala on white
3. grape and taleggio soaked in grappa (read about this on a great site) on whole wheat bread.
4. roasted chevre and beets and sweet balsamic on french bread
5. sundried tomato pesto and mozz
6. sweet hot mustard and jarlsberg on pretzel roll (also on the web, have yet to try but UGH)
7. mozzarella prosciutto fig jam and arugal on ciabatta
8. black forest ham carmalized onions and cambozola
9. blue cheese bacon tomato and egg (like a cobb salad!)

break the wishbone. and a heart while youre at it. fascinating how predictable we humans are.

Want To Break Up? 'Tis The Season, So Better Hurry

November 28, 2009 - NPR

It's not just turkeys that get nervous this time of year. Chances are high that a failing relationship will also meet its end during the holidays. That's because it's not just turkey season — it's turkey drop season.

"The turkey drop is that holiday breakup season where all the college students return home for their first major vacation, and everyone breaks up," Washington University junior Carly MacLeod tells guest host Robert Smith. She writes the romance column for the student newspaper.

It's often freshmen who do the majority of the turkey dropping, MacLeod says. After three months living apart and making new friends, high school sweethearts reunite to find their long-distance relationship is more burden than they want. Upcoming finals add to the emotional stress. "Go home, hook up and break up is pretty much the pattern," MacLeod says.

You're not safe from the turkey drop if you're out of college, either, according to relationship and sex advice guru Dan Savage. "For grown-ups," he says, "it's the anticipation of being stuck for three or four more months.

"You're a cad if you break up around Christmas. And then there's New Year's — and you can't dump somebody right around New Year's. After that, if you don't jump on it, is Valentine's Day," Savage says. "God forbid if their birthday should fall somewhere between November and February — then you're really stuck.

"Thanksgiving is really when you have to pull the trigger if you're not willing to tough it out through February."

Both Savage and MacLeod speak from experience. MacLeod was turkey dropped her first year in college, by a boyfriend who told her the distance was too hard to handle. "He was still a senior in high school," she says. "That one hurt even a little bit more than, I think, a regular breakup."
Savage doesn't have any advice to share from his breakup. "I'm actually bad at the turkey drop," he says. "I had a turkey drop that was coming, and I fled the state."

to do/gift list, maybe if i make it public i'll make it happen?

• set up boarding situation for kitty over holiday
• write to eli to apply for internship
• investigate cooking, farming, teaching riding in geneva/switzerland in general
• get appt to get treadless tires changed
• get windshield wiper fluid, oil, water, everything fluid in the car because shes dry as a bone
• pass car inspection
• figure out why comcast sent me a bill for negative 80 dollars
• create poetry collections for dad, mom, grandmother, sandra, liz, steph, others
• make fortune cookies for sandra and dad
• bauhaus book for mom or book on how to draw for fashion, Fashion Design Drawing Course or Essential Fashion Illustration
• donate to EMA on behalf of friends, family and coworkers for holidays, send acknowledgements

this poem is the opposite of what im writing these days, but exactly what I wish to write

it also discusses a kind of person i am not, but exactly who i wish to be

I Foresee the Breaking of All That Is Breakable

Perhaps, after all, it is merely a desire
to use the word thanatopsical—
but if you can wash or handle
artifacts like this blue
tea mug, carried from Crete as a gift
from a friend, or this nacreous
orange bowl,
a honeymoon souvenir
bought in a now-defunct artists'
shop in Colorado, or
this antique Chinese mudman
carrying his sponges
and fish from a day at the pier,
without a pathological
fixation on the day you will stumble
and drop it, or smack it
against the sink divider or brush
it with a hand reaching
for the letter opener, you are junzi:
a superior person, as Confucius had it.
You probably make love
to your spouse without imagining
betrayal and pay taxes
without complaint
because you think nothing
in truth belongs to you.

They invented the earth for people
like you, and then salted it.

by john estes

wanna smile?

when it rains it pours

today i feel like stars are aligning my poppers!
maybe tomorrow i will feel like stars are falling out of the sky and hitting me on the head burning my face into an unrecognizable pulp of scar tissue
but today, i feel quite positively positive about my prospects!

this poem breaks me a little

the planned child

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken
a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me - I would have
liked to have been conceived in heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the
rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion
cartwheeling across the dark, not
the earth, the sea - none of it
was enough, for her, without me.

by sharon olds