a'cause:

Edie Brickell - Little Miss S.
Joan Armatrading - The Weakness in Me
Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
Beth Orton - Stolen Car

two years ago

Inscrutable is from Late Latin inscrutabilis, from Latin in-, "not" + Late Latin scrutabilis, "searchable," from Latin scrutari, "to search through, to examine thoroughly (as if rummaging the trash or a heap of discarded garments)," from scruta, "trash, rags." The noun form is inscrutability. It is related to scrutiny, "careful examination."

I love it.

(One more time: RWU, land of the free)


Forty-eight.

Love

I'm sick of love. Ok, I love love.
I haven't, though, done a very good job
of being in love or of being loved.
No doubt my parents are to blame yet
I love them. Shabby and expectant,
that's how I've been. Heartless and
cruel, self-absorbed, possessive.
A provider of nothing but charm.
Sometimes some Haagen-Dazs.
I'm a complete washout of the
French New Wave, whose movies
promised my eager generation
a lifetime in bed talking with
beautiful, intriguing partners.
I've lost my sense of humor and
what sensitivity those movies told
me was worth suffering for.
It's gone. I can't find it for looking.
All a big lie too's the shame of it.
I regret it all. A youth misspent.
Hung out with the wrong people,
clung to all the wrong obsessions,
adopted a stance to support all
these cranky excuses for belief.
And love, love was supposed to
be the center, the iron girder,
the permeable doily of a shared
and trusting exploration.
Instead, someone I loved called
me a sexist. Me, who thought women
were perfect, unquestionably.
So perfect I wanted to own one.
In the twilit night of this city's
dense enchantments and disenchantments,
perhaps I've learnt to recognize
that assuming is as brainless as
American consumerism. And this is how
I will find love. My number at work is

-- Greg Masters

First,
Wernher von Braun: "Research is what you do when you don't know what
you're doing." Second, A.A. Milne: "One of the advantages of being
disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." Next,
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
Casey Stengel: "You're lost but you're making good time." Harry S.
Truman: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em."

(RB)

(RWU)

Oh Gram, come on.

91

Whose body is it anyway he would say were he
still so fond of retort:
the sort of rotomontade he used to be
a champ at: his hallowed bellow:
for my part, I doggéd insist
on one more sweater, a chill in here, will it kill you;
the lambswoolly shawl although his room is mostly
flushed with sun at this time of day; & I imagine him
perspiring fiercely, somewhere down below: the onset of rot, & so
what is my reason to conserve him, I ask me, turning thus:
a fine old filet mignon going high
I've grown fond of it's true but who is
morphing into albatross, whose very socks require
an hour of putting on & getting off, & as for bathing O dear Jesus.
Let me be is what he frequently
replies, confronted with unwonted citrus juice, inundations
of B-Complex, the lustreless cheeses
one substitutes, hoping for the best: tomorrow for instance we might wake up
as we used to, who knows, the gleam in his eye, a golden bar
in his hand, forty years subsumed & done away with.
Let me die he says

- Susanne Kort


(I haven't forgotten about RWU)

Racist White University?

In which Greg's alma mater does him proud:

RWU students create "whites only" scholarship

Would those of quite Italian heritage qualify? Hmmm.

Some days it is not
enough to change direction
and shirt color -

the river melts
from one side to the other
camera in hand.

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire
faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest
this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking
moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT
SOUNDS LIKE THIS!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.