She looked up instead of down - six strawberries with
stems, bouncing down the front steps. The remains
of the seventh would stain the floorboards for days.

A twenty-six-word story for your 26th birthday. Welcome.

OOOO
lovely Rita, meter maid
all Calliope but no music, seafoam
in our ears
(and the world went away)
may I inquire discreetly
each to each - noise, a deafening
Shush
this is not what you want.

on myth

Siren Song
Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistable:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

At last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

*

Penelope
Dorothy Parker

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;
Brew my tea, and snip y thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed
They will call him brave.

Helen of Troy does Countertop Dancing

Perhaps a list

(count
backwards
from
one
hundred)
(is it even here or so much older)

will help sort this out.

Put Off the Wedding Five Times and Nobody Comes to It

(Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)

I thought of offering you apothegms.
I might have said, “Dogs bark and the wind carries it away.”
I might have said, “He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day.”
So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a high impetuous moment for you to look on before the final farewells were spoken.
You who assumed the farewells in the manner of people buying newspapers and reading the headlines—and all peddlers of gossip who buttonhole each other and wag their heads saying, “Yes, I heard all about it last Wednesday.”

I considered several apothegms.
“There is no love but service,” of course, would only initiate a quarrel over who has served and how and when.
“Love stands against fire and flood and much bitterness,” would only initiate a second misunderstanding, and bickerings with lapses of silence.
What is there in the Bible to cover our case, or Shakespere? What poetry can help? Is there any left but Epictetus?

Since you have already chosen to interpret silence for language and silence for despair and silence for contempt and silence for all things but love,
Since you have already chosen to read ashes where God knows there was something else than ashes,
Since silence and ashes are two identical findings for your eyes and there are no apothegms worth handing out like a hung jury’s verdict for a record in our own hearts as well as the community at large,
I can only remember a Russian peasant who told me his grandfather warned him: If you ride too good a horse you will not take the straight road to town.

It will always come back to me in the blur of that hokku: The heart of a woman of thirty is like the red ball of the sun seen through a mist.
Or I will remember the witchery in the eyes of a girl at a barn dance one winter night in Illinois saying: Put off the wedding five times and nobody comes to it.

-- Carl Sandburg
from Smoke and Steel

For the filedrawer.

Amanda's couldn't-have-said-it-better link (Frederica Mathewes-Green at frederica.com) is a much needed voice, often ignored. Arguments on issue provide no synthesis no fullness no place. This cannot be argued from the strictly personal but it cannot be argued from the quote objective endquote and why is it Argued battleground style, two armies in straight lines marching across field?

Stop.

x

No Solicitors.
No Trespassing.
No Parking.
Officers on duty.
Lavender building hidden behind white steel spike fence, unnoticed behind gas station dumpster pawn shop fast food, parking lot empty but for a few nondescript older models and broken glass. Two tired women smoking, scuffed white nurses' shoes on second shifts. No signs on the lot today.
No purses or handbags.
No backpacks.
Please show proper ID.
Only one partner or support person.
Support person must also present ID.
No children beyond the waiting room.
Bulletproof glass warps the receptionist's smile and makes her eyes disappear behind her reading glasses. Eight forms, two-sided. Mirrors on the sides of the desk. Racks of magazines but we sit with our hands in our laps listening to the news, whispering to the woman across the row of chairs to the right. Shushing children. Touching up lipstick. The woman is here with her friend and her friend's seven year old son; she is tired of being sick but really doesn't know what this will be like, just knows it's the closest to what she wants. We tell her all we know good bad and ugly and she is reassured. I hope for her that reassurance lasts. This room holds more hopefuls than any Miss America anteroom. Friday. A warm summer evening. The lobby is a nunnery, a girl's camp, full of cameraderie and wishes of good luck godbless be well. Full of you have no idea bitch, fuck you and your sympathy, go lean on your (boyfriend?) sitting here like it's his ordeal somehow. It is his ordeal, for some of Them. Quiet resolve sits two seats down from barely contained hopeless misery. By Wednesday we will be weaker, sick to our stomachs, but by next Friday we'll know for certain the direction of our lives from here and now.

It is not a thing to be taken lightly.

x

For reference: Norma McCorvey's affidavit for reconsideration of R. v. W.

To all!!!! Pa' todos!!!!!!!!

I saw Bjork!!!!!!!! Vi a la Bjork!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those that know what I am talking about:
he he he!!!!!!!!!

Pa' aquellos q' saben a lo que me refiero:
ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!

For those that don't know what I am talking about or don't care, still:
he he he!!!!!!!

Pa' aquellos que no saben a que me refiero o que tal vez no les importe, todavia:
ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!

Love, Amor,

Laura Laura

Apparently "he he he" translates to "ha ha ha", English-Spanish. I do miss my L. -- she said as she stretched and closed the bedroom door.

Working on it. Always.

All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman’s face, or worse--
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.

-- Yeats

Loopy chemistry how I love thee.
Onion: Manic-Depressive Friend A Blast While Manic

type.type.type.type.type

(x)

Like Falstaff? "It's that level!"

This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moons and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantlepiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can only take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.

-- Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

x

The former plaintiff known as "Jane Roe" [Norma McCorvey] in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion sought to have the case overturned in a motion filed Tuesday that asks the courts to consider new evidence that abortion hurts women.
...
"We're getting our babies back," a jubilant McCorvey said... McCorvey and her attorneys asked the federal court to consider more than 5,400 pages of evidence, including 1,000 affidavits from women who say they regret their abortions.

If I regret my abortion (or my breast augmentation or my tubal ligation or my piercings for that matter), can I find 1,000 others who regret the same (out of millions who may or may not) and have the procedure severely limited - based on my experience of what merits 'exception' and what does not - or even outlawed? The NYTimes can use the possessive - "their abortions" - because of our language of self and medicine and mutilation and body. I use "my abortion" the way I use "my rape": as something I have done (or that has been done) with my body, something that I have changed or experienced with same. In this vein, it's interesting that in all existing and former US law regarding pregnancy and abortion, a pregnant woman does not factor into the list of responsible parties. The pages of opinion written in the deciding of the Roe case spell out clearly that it is the status and viability of a fetus which is in question. Woman, once pregnant, is written out completely: her doctor is responsible - and if married, her husband can file malpractice damages if an illegal abortion is performed. The text of R.v.W. and attendant opinions don't apply to me. My name is Host. I won't even begin to comment on "getting our babies back."

(Edit per email. Clarification: I have never had a tubal ligation nor breast augmentation. Don't sound so worried.)



x

More Supreme Court watching here. Did I ever tell you about the time my mother was working for the Justice Department and my father came to visit her at work?
Headline:
Long-Haired Hippy Type in Army Surplus Jacket Nearly Clocks William Rehnquist Over the Head with Camera Equipment (Accidentally, of Course); Smartly Dressed Young Paralegal Nearly Dies of Embarassment and Ushers Hippy Type Out the Door. Rehnquist Doesn't Notice.

I. want. strawberries. with. vanilla. cream. right. now.
please&thankyou

x

6/8 Sunday
after a lot of lateness, rachel goes swimming and we put out the fire and gather our belongings and wonder if we are still out there in the beach somewhere
*
after drive and music and stopping and starting and chips and coffee and unpacking and cleaning and cooking and cleaning and lounging and reading and walking and driving and picture-taking and gatheringdarklymisting
there
she was
not waiting
but there.
and I don't know how much of the salt on my hands is seaspray and I don't know how long I stand here breathing but I know I am home.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not-if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me? (oh, Walt.)

[n.b: to be taught with "The Babysitter"]

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing (my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
grasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

-- e.e. cummings, 1926

pluit
what is raining? softly, a more liquid rain not falling but flowing, clouds melting.
groundwater.

the birth of language
(lucille clifton)

and adam rose
fearful in the garden
without words
for the grass
his fingers plucked
without a tongue
to name the taste
shimmering in his mouth
did they draw blood
the blades did it become
his early lunge
toward language
did his astonishment
surround him
did he shudder
did he whisper
eve

.

Saturday 6/7
I'd have been up with the sun if it wasn't raining again and cold, thin-blooded me in 60-degree sweatshirts. Peter and I escape most of the morning chaos and cleaning: to Diana's bakery for rolls (we parked on the street, didn't lock the doors, were short a dollar but Diana sent us off and bid Mom a happy day - PT pats me on the back as I have a stroke of small-town shock) and off erranding. People start showing up two hours early as per usual. It's been ages since I saw anyone! Those I hadn't seen in a while are invariably taller than I am when they used to be shorter, or vice-versa:

Taller
Das Sibs
Zach Colton
Every old St. Joe's schoolmate of L&P's (possible exception: K. Holeman)
Every new Cathedral schoolmate and all CAP personnel

Shorter
Cousin Mary (Fisher)
Great-Aunt Mary (Sorenson)
Gram
Mr. G

Party in full swing makes me feel about 12, or would if it weren't for high school girls asking me if it ever gets any better. (Short answer Yes with an And; Long answer No, with a But...) I wander and schmooze and answer the same question eighteen times and it's wonderful. Escape for a while into the quiet of my borrowed room with a folderful of earnest and sometimes not-bad fiction to pore over, thanks to "Peter's ex-girlfriend" - my favorite young-old person. Adults walk home for the evening, kids drive to mall for DDR and arcade; M&P and Frank and I play backgammon and talk over yet more coffee; I realize where my drug addiction and conversational bent come from. Best part of whole day comes in late evening, cleaning up until the wee hours with brother and Mike, talking about Bjork and anime and history and girls and Neil Gaiman. Three beers later, to bed god-knows-when. I don't think I'll make it to 8am mass somehow.

To hell with letters. (The tides wait restive on paper: coming, promise. Transcription feels wrong for now. Want to pour them out over your head.)

On silence:

"As my prayer became more attentive and inward I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent. I started to listen -- which is even further removed from speaking. I first thought that praying entailed speaking. I then learnt that praying is hearing, not merely being silent. This is how it is, to pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard." (Kierkegaard)

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness,
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

-- T.S. Eliot

[thank you, Bruce]