What Shall We Sing for Easter Sunday?

givin' in

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:21:08 GMT

This weekend I am coming back to livejournal. I can't stay away. I miss you all too much, however, i am coming back with a different journal. i'll keep you all posted.

Nintendo DS

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 18:26:21 GMT

I'll sell my nintendo ds for $70 bucks (they're regularly at least $100) plus at least 5 games included (without the boxes for the games though). must me well concealed cash or a money order. if you're interested let me know.

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:20:06 GMT

I am down here for good. Feel free to remove me from your friend's list. If you'd like to keep in touch. I'm on myspace here. I only ever update there anymore anyway.

If you would prefer to email me (rather then myspace), my address is sarah_1981@bust.com.

It's been fun.

From Last Week

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:09:54 GMT

Bob's "Ladies"

After we ate dinner at the sale barn last night, Grandpa and I heaved and hawed in the yard moving a pile of bricks. It was nice, sweating in the dusky purple air, side by side under the pines. Today we headed to Cape Giradeau to see the river and eat Cajun food at Broussard's. On the way, we stopped by Grandpa's friend's house to pet the soft little burros. They brayed and perked their velvety ears when we clucked at them. Their muzzles wrinkled up pleasurably when you scratched them just so. The Mississippi was immersed in fog and damp and twisted and turned like a forsaken woman on the run from a lover. This moring after Grandma and I made the beds, I washed my hair in the sink and looked up to see a trio of wild turkeys outside the window. They were strutting around like a group of kings. I was so excited I squealed, and they set off harassed, for the deeper woods. My cousin, Daniel, is set to come stay next week. Grandpa and Grandma may be quite sick of grandchildren on vacations by the time the month is over. Though they do seem to be enjoying themselves quite alright for now.

Foggy & Damp Mississippi

Down by the Levee

The Melody of a Fallen Tree

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:06:12 GMT

My cousin, Daniel

Grandma in the Dining Room

I must say that I quite enjoyed the "retired life" with Grandma & Grandpa Sample after my arrival on Friday evening. Our days were spent piddling. We occupied ourselves with little chores such as reorganizing the tupperware cabinent, napping, reading, napping, watching the birds, napping, eating, and of course napping. Grandpa smoked ciggarettes, and Grandma dusted about the house. I carved up quiet slices of the afternoons for thinking. On Sunday, Grandma, my Aunt Toni, my aunt's friend Mary, and I headed up to Columbia, Missouri for a tea party at my cousin's college. It was in the historic Senior Hall at Stephen's college. Their was a harpist and young fashion models, future designers, and marketers floating through the rooms like pretty summer breezes. Afterwards we went to a fashion show and oohed and ahhed over designs from second row, end of runway. Later Grandma and I picked around a jeweler's shop, but she couldn't find anything that she terribly adored. The ride home was great fun, and we cackled, as the men say, like "a group of hens." My aunt gave me her recipe for the best pumpkin muffins, and I can't wait to try to make a batch for Papa and Mama. They're gorgeously simple!

The Historic James O'Fallon House

Tagged by squidpod

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 18:33:28 GMT

The rules are: Once you have been tagged, you have to write a blog with 10 weird random things, facts, or habits about yourself. At the end, you choose people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" on their profile and tell them to read your latest blog.

1. I really wish I could go back in time and be a boy in the 1970s for sneakers, scuffy pool halls and black eyes, the desperation and fire of Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" and other songs like "Free Ride", "Sweet Emotion", and "War Pigs".

2. I tell time and measure horribly, if at all, because I always cheated in middle school math. I still have to count 5, 10, 15 to tell time, and I regularly still add/subtract on my fingers.

3. When I was little, I nearly choked to death on a gummy bear sitting on the back porch.

4. When you meet me, I will seem meeker, quieter, shyer, then I am…by far. Most people, who really get to know me, cannot believe I am the same person who they met in the beginning. I am actually very fucking lionhearted and brassy.

5. I am constantly compared to Madame Bovary; since I haven't read the book, I have no idea of that is a good thing or a bad thing.

6. My favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees' song is "Cities in Dust".

7. When I'm walking, sometimes I'll think how am I doing this, and I swear to God, I'll almost fall right then.

8. I am obsessive about learning/studying Chernobyl's history. Radiation fallout is all very romantic and tragic to me, I suppose.

9. During a game of wiffleball, when a snake threatened to end the game and was near my ankle, I severed its head with a garden hoe.

10. I secretly love when men call me babe, hon, etc. I flutter my lashes & purr a bit.

I tag: whoever is bored & has interesting weird things to confess.

"My man wants to buy you something."

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 02:58:04 GMT

I'm writing this letter to you while my toilet is soaking with the pine-sol. I opened the windows for the "proper ventilation" nonsense, especially since I never measure it out and usually pour heavy. Someone with a hoarse, ragged voice is screaming outside into the sunlight. When you are happy, and someone else is on the verge, on a pretty day, don't you secretly think them to be the most selfish beasts? What audacity, ruining such a gorgeous day because of some histrionic breakdown. Obviously when it's you, there's a narcissistic difference. Everything seems that much more important and broken.

I watched a documentary on Noah's ark last night, and I fell in love with the actors playing the Sumerian children with their kohled eyebrows and sand toned skin. The show encouraged the presupposition that the story of the ark was based on a less embellished story of a merchant really out for monetary gains, and a flood that lasted only 7 days. I always like watching those educational sorts of things, what with all the Bible historians, but I personally am far more likely to believe in poetic 40 days and 40 nights, and the miracle of beasts marching two by two and olive branches. It doesn't seem at all farfetched or unbelievable in the least to my heart seeped in years of tightrope living and dreaming. The miracles that I see everyday, the fact that we are all merely bone and blood, yet aware and feeling and exploring; the inspired detail of everything in nature, down to the intricacies of a pinecone leave me little doubt. Strangely, it is science that helped me find my faith.

Speaking of the naturalistic, you should've seen Mama's gasp and impending promise of bird flu when I took a bag out of her car and informed her that I was picking up the creature in the above picture to bring home this eve. I didn't have my camera with me, and I love how dead birds are pulled in and secretive like little hearts, but the cleaning people around the office will always run off with them quickly (imagine that). I thought the markings on this one were so beautiful, and so I put it in the bag and took it up to the office to hide in my desk. Then I took it home. Imagine the shock if anyone would have looked in my desk drawer, and came across my poor deceased bird friend. I will do a lot of strange things in the name of mediocre art (though my good camera wasn't even charged so it all proved fruitless as you will see above). You know how my heart is; you know how I am.

Memo to Myself- List of things to take to Grandma & Grandpa's House
(besides the obvious):
-Sir Roundy, the pillow
-books
-polaroid
-film
-digital camera
-moleskin journal
-driver's education book
-floss
-cell phone charger
-vitamins&paxil&melatonin
-gingerbread shampoo
-DS & charger/Animal Crossing
-Ipod (charge up before leaving)

Oh wait, I'll get that stapler for you!

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:41:49 GMT

There is a dead bird in a bag in my desk at work. Someday I will be an old extravagant witchy lady about town, I promise. You know...the sort that are secretly lonely?

Tweet-Twitter

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:51:35 GMT

Antiquated days had people concerned about the winds, and I don’t doubt that trepidation for a second. Science smirks at them now, but I can’t say that I wholly agree. My windows open in the evening, letting the night air vibrate every awareness within and all the relevant nerves in my skull. You can’t deny its effect. Last night, I fell asleep in my t-shirt and underwear, with my bare legs sprawled across the bed, listening to the Drifters.

I got my Valentine’s ring back, and I keep staring at it when the light hits it, and it seems strange that something so elegant belongs to me.

Last weekend I cleaned my fish aquarium, and now the bulbous gluttons are swimming around, swishing and fanning their fins like little aristocrats. Well, Cornelia is anyway, Ant has a more shy but curious personality. They are dirty fish, but I love goldies. I’ve always fallen terribly in love with mine.

I took a paid week’s vacation from work for the week of the 12th. I’m going to stay at my grandparent’s lovely little house in the pines and write (a ton hopefully), relax, read, & take some polaroids. Hopefully, I will have lots of lovely posts to share when I get home.

The biography on Audubon that I’ve been reading lately is superb!!! I’ve always adored his work, and I am such a bird watcher/admirer as well. I love the short & fat little black capped chickadees when they hop, hop, hop and watch me when I whistle to them. They have the most complex vocalizations in the animal kingdom, if you didn’t already know. They’re amazing. Someday, when I finally give in and purchase my own home, I’ll have several feeders in the back. That is definitely one of the things that I’m looking forward to at my grandparent’s home. They feed a ton of birds, squirrels, and they even feed a huge flock of wild turkeys and some deer. I have always loved their houses out in the woods.

Degradation

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:32:21 GMT

Memphis trips were made last weekend, and we ended up driving around the factories that are such wonders of modern industry that, with their glowing green lights at night and their husky puffing stacks, they’re almost beautiful. Then we ventured through the chancy part of the city where I felt my apocalyptic inherent desire to run front first and impale myself on certain destruction. When I was little, I once asked my father if when he got to the edge of something with a great height, he felt the urge to jump. The difference between the me of now is that I have neither the ego nor the promise of the immortality of youth backing my addiction for disaster and chaos. It’s reassuring in its own way. On the way back, I slept slouched against the window with the lights flickering behind my lids like the beginning of dreams.

The weather is so warm today. Warm enough for open windows and a little more casual thoroughfare in my way of dress. Really I’m just being a bit more rebellious in small ways, pushing my boundaries in the softest pair of old blue jeans rescued from a friend that hold my hips and sensitively curve around my chubby thighs, gold hoops dangling from my ears. I haven’t pulled out my favorite brown chucks, but I stare longingly at them at the back of the closet. L. insists that I wear them and restore them to their proper glory, although you have to have a special appreciation for them that neither my Mama nor my boss seems to have acquired. Soon enough, I will traipse through the fleamarkets wearing them with my old old tshirts that are as true to me as every memory I’ve had in them, smelling of Coco Mademoiselle with a lipsticked mouthed, pursed in serious concentration, a requirement for the scouring for the best finds.

I looked at a house yesterday afternoon. It had old windows with buttery panes of glass and wooden floors. The attic was tremendously huge, and the porch was nice too, but I can’t force my all roaming wild Daisy May into that space. It isn’t fair to her, and besides that it was out of my price range which is so pathetic it shouldn’t even be called a range. I broke off the friendship a few days ago when confronted with brutal sinuous lies. When he wasn’t even apologetic while holding the tendons of it all, I felt betrayed in a way I haven’t felt in years. I’ve actually felt better about confronting the cheapness of it, and I feel fully justified in being upset. It’s just a shame when you’re let down by someone. I haven’t been bad over it at all though, knowing I had been putting my all into it and was deceived. I’ve laughed more and been happier in the last few days anyhow, and I don’t wish him ill for a second, merely that he will find whatever answers it is that he seems to be searching.

For Thank You Cards Later:

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:06:14 GMT

Aren't these adorable? My boss bought us some yesterday from the bake sale. Then I went home to have dinner made, a sugar free apple pie made, a clean apartment, my laundry done and a bag of presents from Mama & Papa. Now I don't know what I've done to deserve all of that alone, but the presents were even more intent on spoiling me bloody rotten. They got me a pink talking hippo stuffed animal, sugar free chocolates, new heart & pink underwears, new jammies, and a diamond ring that I have been eyeing since Christmas (normally, I can't stand jewelry or could give a care, but the design of this ring is spectacular). I couldn't have been more surprised and overwhelmed. Also, the sweetest indirect valentine that read, "Your photographs and words make me endlessly jealous. You have a knack for writing about your life in ways that make it seem as if you're living in a novel, and I love that."

PS. I just had a bouqet of flowers delivered from my grandparents in a teacup with a saucer and soft pink roses & heather.

Overcast

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:42:56 GMT

We stood in the thin dusk and biting air, and fittingly she recited Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. "Do you know that is the only poem that I know by heart," she said. I squinted a bit and laughed, sardonically replied, "I'd hate for you to hear the poems that I know by heart." No, Ginsberg's rosy assholes winking and fuzzy balls bouncing probably wouldn't win me any accolades with her, merely a look of disgust and wonder at why I have chosen those particularly to commit to memory. Never underestimate the winning round of applause you can get with a little dose of perversion and over the top miming at a party, I thought to myself. In the distance, a large dog barked, and how I love the sound of a dog bark. A bark, not those yipping dog yaps. The solid barks that sound like ocean waves and underwater tea party voices warbling and bubbling through blurry blue water.

She refers to him as "that boy" and teases me relentlessly about my recent habit of talking with him in the evenings. Every conversation becomes more revealing, more honest, and I am flattered when he asks me, "What do you think," even though by comparison my ideas are juvenilely idealistic at times. His have more range and gleaning, where I am inclined to feel things out. He reveals his ugly truths, and I find it most unfair that no one took any time with him. I can remember him in youth, and even if we didn't agree, it seems so ugly that he wasn't supported, encouraged. When telling his story, he emphasizes, "No one," and I don't answer because there isn't an excuse. I hear him ask her, "Do you love me," and a silence that breaks my heart and makes me fiercely defensive. I don't say anything, although I'd like to shake her when she chides him for bothering her. Whatever they think, I have never believed in anyone more. Wherever we go; wherever this goes or doesn't, I am so lucky to have found someone to talk with and share with in ways that I've never been able to before. I am deliciously fond of him, and the comfort of our mutual respect is something that I've rarely known.

Under that plastic palm tree in the sky.

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 05:26:16 GMT

We mourn the loss of our dearly beloved friend and a damn good crab, Hilarie. I hope you're eating dried mangoes and brine shrimpees in crabby heaven.

Brief Look @ the Weekend

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:35:51 GMT

I was taking photos at the creek behind my parent’s house this weekend when two messy headed little boys rode up on bikes. They insisted that Daisy May was their old dog. Stubbornly calling, “Dakota! Dakota!,” and she just looked on like skeptically and raised a questioning eyebrow in my direction. We both ignored them for the most part until the older one snorted in that bullyish way that older siblings do (I should know as I’m the eldest sibling too) and asked if I’d take his picture and give it to him. His younger brother chirped up, “Me too; me too!” No stranger to bargaining, I agreed for the price of an additional photo of the both of them. I was very pleased with the subjects as they were precocious and as comfortable in front of the camera as possible, not primping and overacting, merely being them. Then someone told me yesterday that I take “beautiful portraits,” and he is a photographer. I whined a bit, and we commiserated on how I would love to take more portraits, but how I’m a loner and that doesn’t allow for many opportunities. Also, for the second time in my life an author contacted me to ask for an opinion/feelings on their novels. I am always flattered a bit by it, like a spoiled child. The first one to contact me wrote American Skin, and the second wrote The Danish Girl. I consider myself such a little shut in, that I can’t help but be a bit excited. Otherwise I have been preoccupied with reading a ton lately while tucked warmly in bed, wearing a scarf tied revolutionary style around my neck and lipsticked lips.

PS. I’ve decided to go ahead and post all the photos that I took last weekend because really who can ever tell when I’ll scribble something down here. Enjoy.

Solitaire's the only game in town

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:20:57 GMT

The Manchurian candidate was on Friday night and Sunday too, but I was too busy finishing up Watership Down. I loved it as much as the first time I read it, if not more so…sometimes you reread a book and found you've different thoughts and experiences now, and you can appreciate it for different reasons. Such was the case, and it is definitely in my well beloved list of top ten novels. Then Sunday night I stayed up late, painting my fingernails the color of pink found inside a seashell and beginning Nausea by Sartre. I think of my friend, Jonathan, most often when reading it, and if he hasn't already read it, I think he would enjoy it very much. I take it in small doses, studying carefully, mulling it over to appreciate and stew my thoughts. I took decades of photos this weekend, and I'll begin posting them throughout the next few days/weeks. I have an interesting story to go along with some that I took of two little boys that I met, playing in the creek, but I'll save it for when I show you those pictures. I am quite proud of some of them, and the others, aren't so bad either. I'm learning through exploration and for me, it's the best way to learn. I finally saw a ton of movies today with Amelia. I had wanted to see most of them for quite some time, and I found Little Miss Sunshine to live up to everything that has been said about it, and Clerks II was great too, although not nearly as good as the first (a tad too emotional and overacted at times, but Rosario Dawson makes up for it). We also watched Thumbsucker which was pretty good, though slow in parts. Oh, I didn't tell you guys either that I had a truffle pasta the other night that my friend L. brought home for me. It was my first time trying truffles, and it's a taste that I very much enjoyed and can't afford. Well my dears, be on the lookout for photos and more musings coming up quite a bit in the next days.

43 Things

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:23:55 GMT

My personal 43 things list. Make yours and share it with me.

1. see the aurora borealis

2. see the Pixies live

3. own a cat or dog named Petrova

4. go on a cruise

5. finish losing all my weight to achieve my goal of personal health

6. have a baby

7. get married

8. write an article for Bust magazine

9. go on a whale watch

10. get a tattoo on my upper arm

11. take introduction to political science

~~12. find out as much as possible about the triangle shirtwaist fire~~

13. own my own house with buttermilk yellow walls in the kitchen

14. get my driver's license

15. read the Bible

16. finish the restoration of my dollhouse

17. get contacts

18. buy another bottle of Marc Jacobs

19. see Clutch live again

20. go to the ob-gyn

21. wear a ton of dresses & skirts

22. get laid and either of us stay the night

23. learn half-assed french to use to communicate with my plants & pets who only speak french

24. take a boy I adore to New Smryna with me

25. reread Middlesex by Eugenides

26. get new tables for my living room

27. travel more

28. find another muse

29. present someone that fascinates me with a bouqet of gas station roses

30. learn/identify constellations

31. get my palm read

32. write a fan letter to a nonfamous friend that inspires me

33. get a tattoo on the top of my left foot

34. research & delve into writing something related to my memories & the history of the Welsh baby carriage factory in St. Louis, Missouri (has been a baby carriage factory, shoe factory, housed the insane, warehouse for horror novelties, staging for haunted house, and is now being developed into expensive lofts)

35. take more polaroids

36. see a sea turtle hatching and laying their eggs at New Smyrna Beach

37. relearn Ginsberg's poem "Please Master" by heart for my party trick

38. send more postcards

39. finish reading The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff

40. give away 50 things that I don't need

41. continue to write my grandpa an email at least every two days

42. continue to stay informed about the state of the world, politics, and local news

43. open up a checking account

Cross-Posted

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:14:01 GMT

Question: What do you think about most?
Answer: Morality, boys, and death, but not necessarily in that order.

"Wander with me, yo. It's all for free."

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 01:21:30 GMT

My Hamtaro towel

vitamin water...of course

My writing has grown with me since I was in 6th grade. That was when it was born, and I remember the exact minute where before it had been only the bud of an idea, an egg patiently waiting. We have grown parallel at times, and we have waged angry wars with each other at others. Neither perfect, nor do we ascribe to be, but always impartially observant as the eye of a microscope in the face of my moments, stories, histories, memories, and dreams. I wrote a whole page out today, and we had a fantastic row where I confronted the laziness and mediocrity. Are we on the mend now? We don't know; we are still speaking about objects, and even this memory, around each other with affected yes or no answers. Can't you feel it coming off the page, the screen? Can't you feel the brutality of that proud arrogant 'I' that he has taken the place of the side by side love making of the exotic 'W' and the complacent 'E'?! We are angry, and as a result I fight low. I make a list of words that I like: aesthetic, wheel, and prayer, but I don't finish it. I leave it crumpled at the bottom of my purse, teasing out a bitter jealousy.

I met a lady once, and she studied my face, said, "Oh, you're an artist?" I shook my head, but later she found out about my notebooks. "You are an artist! You just work with a different medium. I knew it; you look like an artist," she said with a resolute nod. So yes we are fighting a bit about the laziness that it has taken to in the last 2 years, but it will be rewarding as hell when we get over it.

Relating to art, I was supposed to go to an opening for mama's friend at a local art gallery tonight, but I was a bit fussy and tired so decided instead to go home and curl up under the covers. I'd like to get a moleskin at Barnes & Noble and start keeping a notebook again. I miss the tangibility of my letters, looping and curling, across the page.

Finally I love when walking through the brisk air, my cheeks rosy and in a generally pleasant mood with a smile and hearing my dear boy, C. call out, "Hey, beautiful! When are we going to get married already?" I wisecracked back, "Call the judge, and I'll go to the thrift store for my bouquet!" We are generally jolly at the end of Thursday because the weekend looms so close.

Interiority.

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 20:25:30 GMT

Flores & Cindy, my ivys that overtake everything! They have to have haircuts (pruning) regularly

Today has been quite domestic, if I do say so. I’ve watched bubbling pots of lentils until they get muddy, adding little smokies. Finally, a splash of apple cider vinegar to my bowl like my German stepgrandmother always has made for us. When I woke up this morning, I was pleasantly sore from exercising yesterday, but I went about it again, and I feel really good, if not a bit ashamed of my thinning arms. More healthy, yes, but how will they hold so tenderly those I love dear, if they become any longer…I still have my hands, which mother says are the softest she has ever felt, and begs everyone to feel them. I act a bit embarrassed, but I’m such a pigeon, and I only wish they could be put to some good use, like soothing little heads of hair and wiping tired brows in the evening. I have taken to laying on the love seat instead of the couch for reading (Bonjour Tristesse, if you’re curious). The shortness of it, allows me to dangle my legs over the ends, sometimes fold them up like a letter in an envelope, and my arms, pompous hanging over the top of my head, nesting around my hair. I already need a haircut again. I love my hair cut short like a little boy, but wearing mocha pink sweet lipstick and mascara dashed eyes. Easy and feminine enough to make eyes, but not enough to hide all flaws behind pounds of caked foundation. I don’t understand women who wear any of that sort of thing, as it feels like a mask on your face and leaves its imprint on everything their face touches. I took some photos of my home, but my batteries died after a few minutes, and the damn lighting is so horrible and not really true at all. I will show you anyway, but the lights are never that glaring and institutional, I promise. I can’t paint, per the landlord, or I promise I would. Things are good. Things are better then good. I’m listening to the Smiths’ “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”, and it is always perfect. God love Morrissey… “and if a double decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die, and if a ten ton truck crashes into us, to die by your side, well the pleasure-the privilege is mine.” Yesterday I had horrible pms, and so today is well-deserved. My neighbor was driving me crazy. I like him alright as a human being, but he is such a hoosier. He screams for his son from our front porch area all the time, and yesterday I was at my wit’s end. Then my brother woke me up quite obnoxiously from a nap, and I was a bear. Today is so much better. I understand the irrationalness of hormones, but it doesn’t change the way I can feel like a raging bitch and then dissolve into tears over being unable to find the match to my sock. Men don’t even know. Oh, I have to go, “Cactus” by the Pixies is playing now!

wall above my kitchen table

wall on the other side above my kitchen table. I keep little delicate things and toys and such in this old printer's drawer.

an antique dresser with my great-grandmother's 50th anniversary drink set & two vintage bears from my grandmother. usually I have a reddish cloth covering the top.

closer, oh and that's a chalkboard thing above the dresser, but hopefully it will go sometime as it doesn't really go with my westerny on booze theme.

the full picture of the kitchen dining nook. i have a lamp in there, that is not a light orb explosion, okay?

shelves in my living room with an eagle cologne bottle from my step grandfather who passed away last year, a vintage secretarial magazine from Amelia, a little plastic Indian from mama, 2nd shelf has an egg timer from Amelia that floats in water, a wee painting, and a wine bottle shaped like a cat with flowers

of course tons of books on shelves throughout my apartment, and my favorite bookends that are horses, but they look like they have ice cream melting on their heads, says Amelia.

coral & a statue of a lady that my little sister gave me on top of my dvd shelf thingy.

a landing on my stairs. books and baby dolls of my aunt who passed away with leukemia when she was only five.

Finally, don't mind the glare, but this is one of my favorite finds that resides in my living room. It's called Portrait of Christmas Eve, and what is better then half naked women and polar bears?!

"Tell me, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone?"

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 00:39:30 GMT

a photo I was drawn too in an antique store. I carry it in my purse know, and I have a weird sort of attraction to it.

Father Jose told us when we were younger about women from his homeland of Papua New Guinea who suckle pigs. After the pregnant sow conceives, she is slaughtered, and the women nurse the piglets. I asked him, "Is it true?" "Yes," he told me, "it is true."

When the moon is round and thin as a communion wafer, I talk to N, but only under the cover of dark. It's true then. I don't trust him in the light because I know he is in love with all women, and he has a deceptive laugh and he dances about questions like a fox. He is cunning with his bated breath, and his, "You saved me," and a pregnant pause, "...from cleaning." He says he needs a motherly woman, and he doesn't believe me when I say I won't sacrifice myself again. The father, son, and holy spirit all left me wrent once. I offered my breast and naked in bed with their heavy heads they laid in my lap and asked me to stroke their hair, begging milk for their parched lips, a switch cut from the tree when I was displeased. They held me at night hard and with china doll faces, they slept, relieved and quiet. I walked home alone in the mornings, carrying my shoes, watching for bits of glass on the wet pavement. They grumbled in their sleep when I straddled their waists, leaned into their ear, "I'm going home," so quietly. The greedy reply of them rolling their bodies into the sheets on the other side of the bed where I had left warm seconds. It's true at night though, with N. saying my name like the rosary. I am afraid when I take my socks off at night to see how he sleeps.

PS. If you haven't downloaded "I'm on Fire" yet covered by Electrelane, you're fucking seriously missing out.

The Fire I Breathe

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 18:41:53 GMT

My long fingers have been tucked in the pockets of my jeans all morning, and I appear to be perpetually relaxed, but I’m really just shyly hiding my chipped nail polish. My boss says I am slimming down before her eyes, and she is, “amazed by how much weight I have lost over the holidays.” My dear friend D. comes in, and he pauses, says, “You look different. Did you cut your hair?” Before I can nod, he has assessed me again and pronounced softly, like a true gentleman, “Nice.” I’m off again, breaking into my clumsy big smile. My mother says I have a goofy smile, and she’s right. It lifts my chubby cheeks, and my clumsy horse teeth gnash about with pleasure. Isn’t happiness itself dumb and giddy though? I’m not self conscious about it at all. On the contrary, I find the pink flashes of gums slivered between my big teeth a bit sensuous like a child who when told she is pretty, unabashedly responds, “I know.” There is a grey kitten who has taken up around the apartment. I have officially named him, Nickel, my little communist. I have to tell you how hard it is not to take him in and spoon all day in bed, reading aloud to him. He isn’t that tabby grey that I don’t like either, but grey as the sea and storm clouds and dirty nickels. If I didn’t fear he would scratch my leather sofas all to hell, I would’ve long since brought him in, but it’s okay as we converse outside like old comrades. When he comes running, I affectionately pick him up, and he purrs into my neck. He’s still young though and still adores his play time with an old plastic Skoal can he finds in the grass and tosses with his paws and then pounces. I also fear that he would miss his buttery white sister or brother who runs with him but is too feral to come as close to me. Today the weather man for the Memphis station (which I watch because something has gone haywire on my t.v., and I can’t get the local news anymore) had on a white shirt with huge red and orange and yellow polka dots. I actually froze when I saw it and said aloud, “You have got to be kidding. What the hell are you thinking?” He didn’t answer, but continued to talk about the highs and lows, and I couldn’t see anything but the storm of obnoxious color across his chest. He wasn’t even respectable enough to cover it up with a suit jacket. I don’t normally give a hair about what other people choose to wear, but this shirt.

Papa.

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 18:20:09 GMT

This is my favorite photo of my dad. His favorite person then (and probably now) was Elvis. Wasn't he handsome?! Also, this is my stepdad so don't go looking for a family resemblance, although one time my grandmother told me I had his shoulders...my dad and I just both looked at each other and rolled our eyes and chuckled.

Put it on the hi-fi!

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 17:04:40 GMT

-Red Transferware. My grandmother's is so beautiful, and I'd love to someday have some red transferware. It's so expensive though. Mmmm, I could die over good dishes and wee vintage china. Not modern china. Hang modern china, but oh, the sweet little scenes on toileish red or blue transferware is so lovely. I personally prefer the country barn scenes or just the simple smattering of flowers. I prefer my grandma’s unmatched collection that she has collected over the years from yard sales or fleamarkets or antique shops. See, I promise I will be an old maid! I've got old passions & old tastes & an old soul. Who else still uses phrases like "pussyfooting", etc.? Just imagine your grandmother with a mouth like a sailor & a penchant for dirty Prince songs, and you’ve probably got a good idea of my personality.

-Speaking of dishes, have I mentioned my absolute adoration at my new buttermilk yellow set? They also come with saucers & coffee mugs, but I didn’t take photos of those.

-films by the marx brothers. I got a set for Christmas.

-calling everyone "my sweet baboo" like sally calls linus

-My find of the year (funny, considering I found it at the very end of the year). The photo doesn’t really capture it very well, and it is really really big (which I don’t know if you can tell), but this now resides on the wall behind my couch.

-Ben Lee’s “Ketchum” is my all time number one favorite song to listen to when I’m melancholy.

-a recipe for a daily health drink that is currently all the rage in mi familia. Given to my grandmother by a health food store owner. My grandmother very much believes in the natural curing properties of honey and vinegar. My little sister calls it fire whiskey, like in Harry Potter because after you swallow there is a wee little heat in your throat from the vinegar. It actually tastes quite good too. You combine 4 oz. of apple cider vinegar, 8 oz. of honey, 32 oz. of apple juice, and 24 oz. of grape juice. You drink ¼ cup in the morning & at night.

-Already making plans for New Smyrna Beach vacation. It will be as great as last year because the same bunch is going, and we are flying again, instead of driving (well my dad & grandmother our driving down, but my cousin, sister, stepmum, and I are all flying), and we get to stay with my cousin Shawn and his wife, Jill, at their house in Orlando on the way down and back. Anyway, it’s obviously months before July, but I’m already excited.

Benevolentia Adveho

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:21:02 GMT

Barn.

Around the ranch.

The old swing that grandpa put up, and in the background, the hay barn.

Sunrises that look like cathedral ceilings.

Beaded purses above grandmother's dresser. I adored these as a child. I thought they were the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

Great Grandpa & Grandma

Old barn.

Bouquet from my great aunt's place. My grandmother is as zany about books as I am.

Knick-Knacks

Grandmother's bedroom window.

Billie Holiday is floating through the apartment, and I've started to put the Christmas decorations in the closet, under the stairs. The tree, of course, stays up until Epiphany on January 6th so that Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar can find their way to Christ child. The ranch was wonderful as it always in, and I quite fear the day that grandmother passes away. The 300 acres breathes of her, and a blur here or there of my grandfather long since put in the ground, under the pandering tiny feet of doe that come out at night. There was a sooty black night, and we sat under the old tree, talking politics. A fluttering startles us, but we all softly laughed when it was revealed to be the huge wings of a night owl, diving into the fields for a dinner of poor mousies. Grandmother's redware hosts an early breakfast of English muffins and apple spice conserve. I stomp around outside taking photos of the sunrise, the cold air clawing its way into my bones. I can see their shadows bobbing and fighting in the windows over my shoulder, and the cows moo, irritated with intrusion. I laugh like an old crow when I hear the relatives all discussing my cousin's fiancée. They think of women in terms of their strength, and they speculate over whether she will be able to work the cows during the year, as tiny as she can be. Jared shakes his head, but hurriedly offers, "but she can cook." So proud is he that he is bringing a worthy woman to the strength and brawn of the place. You are forgiven if you can care for children or prepare steaming meals for the rest. They have to be warmed over by the food, after they come in, covered with blood from the dehorning, castrating, and giving shots. Grandmother sets everyone's clothes in a bath with water, and it turns so red with blood that she empties and refills it several times to wash out the day. In spite of the brutality of the ranch, my grandmother has filled it delicately and her linens are vintage and pristine. I tried in vain to capture the feeling of the place with the photos I took, but it's something you can't understand until you've spent time as much time there as we all have. I am thinking of trying to procure a ring with our family motto on it, "the good will come," or in its original Latin form, ""benevolentia adveho."

Yesterday Amelia picked me up in old Hardy town, and we dug through mass amounts of antiques, and I found quite a few lovely finds. One painting that I am in love with, now resides above my couch. It was so funny to see us, struggling to fit the huge thing in her compact car, and old men walked by offering, "you need a truck for that," or, "you'll never get that in there." We are stubborn women though, and of course, we got it in the backseat, although Amelia could probably not see out the back window on the way home. Perhaps I will take some photos of the finds soon, soon! It's nice to be home though. My family is the greatest gift I have ever been given.

Taken sometime during the French Revolution. Révolutionnaire!!

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:32:27 GMT

sometimes i wish i had small apple breasts like those girls with laughs like calm seas. they scent the room with flowers and moonbeam and blankets of pine needles. i have breasts like mangoes. my laugh will fill a room, crashing like hurricane seas into every single nook and cranny. i am no jackie kennedy.