steampunk kitty saves the world

steampunk kitty cat
piloted the dirigible over
fields dotted with dandelions
and dropped catnip seeds through
a chute all along her route.  she wanted to
liberate the feline world and this was her individual uprising.
kitty kitty knew her way around. she never used
a copilot, but did have a tiny parachute
in the event of an emergency
adventure.  and she had really great goggles.

steampunk kitty cat tried.  she
tried to make the world a better
place, after her own fashion.
she tried to shove shoes on the
octopus, she tried to train
the mice to jump through
the holey cheese, she tried to get
the dog to wear lipstick, but her circus
never made it.  the acts were not
good, and the people
just weren't ready.  fleas
were more to their taste, but
she wasn't going near that
shit, no way.  so she wore the
shoes, ate the cheese, and threw
the lipstick away.  the notion
of dog lips made her shudder.

kitty kitty kitty cat had disdain for people.  she
barely tolerated being domesticated and had been
known to scratch and slash any flesh trying to keep her inside.
she dared anyone at all to try to get her to use a box, an act,
to her refined sensibilities, utterly distasteful.  but the backs of closets were good.
she was independent.
though she didn't really know what that meant, in a practical sense.

creating her next caper, and wearing
tulle and one tiara, she sat one late friday afternoon
in a cafe called the ruptured duck.   sipping a white russian, 

she wondered if she should call a pal to hang out with, 

to loll on pillows with and smoke hookah all
night long with and then entertain people with at dawn
by knocking over garbage cans 

and singing james brown songs in the alley. 
she decided she really didn't want anyone else.  meow.  

sidekicks were not her thing.

she ordered cream puffs
and sent a golden dream cocktail
to the handsome tom sitting by
the yarn balls.  after eating and giving herself a slow and
meticulous wash, stretching one leg at a time
as far as she could behind her ear,
she began to leave.  she slinked past tom-cat
and as he tipped his glass her way and tried
to make eye contact, she looked back over her shoulder 

and swished her tail toward his whiskers.  which
felt good.

in the cool air she remembered she'd
never gone that blimp route again to check
to see what had germinated
or if she had wasted all that rip.
without proper follow up:  mission fail.
naughty kitty, she said to
herself. no one else was
around to say it.  she was nothing
if not fair, though she wasn't down
on herself in a clinical, neurotic way.
she knew she was splendid.

 so:   
as for her next move in saving the world from all that is flat 

and unlovely, where was she going to get a
scooter?  she would look
fabulous on a turquoise vespa, she thought. 

while wearing lace up granny boots.  successful or failing
it may turn out to be, 

but: it was a plan.

the cornerman

oh that benevolent buckle-stopping
that came from his eyes, that
brilliance. pulling me from the
conversation with one wink across
the ring
                    then TKO:  out of chasing definition,
                    out of rising palpitation and finally, out of
                    those goddamned christmas eves of dissalvation. 

those eyes beaconing me, sending a tiny gesture
no one else would see and then: we were ha. and
i was again loose.  fine.  shook it off.  he gave me
spar and irreverent and they. 

i had all that.

that pale thistle dress

that finger doorslammed dawning
four months and sixteen years late:
i am still that.  of here now, but visiting.
there too and everywhere at all, just outside and
accustomed to the am that slowly gentled off
to used to be.  opaqued. 



(then:  come here. play me the right song and
i'll careen this car through our rolling
our restless and we will sail over a ditch of
their chaff.  clean.  come here.  bite me just right and
i'll show you my breaking and entering ways.  
with wine and make me sigh just right and come here.
i'll give you bare, sweet secrets to take.  you'll
carry them with you, tomorrows.  come here.)



and inside the crouching building of falling
light here, at any coast it is, this pile at my feet.
this pale thistle dress and sunset cigarette of then
remind me define me back bind me today.
i'm seenless.  i am words and sound and

that, now.

brown eyed handsome man

                                                                    

 nina simone

sings it pretty, says it true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf-FwOGVvHc

...way back in history three thousand years

in fact ever since the world began

there's been a whole lot of good women shedding tears

over a brown eyed handsome man

it's a lot of trouble with a 

brown eyed handsome man....

***

(and yet, if i may say so, worth it.  absolutely.)

spring!

pablo neruda wrote:

i want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.




isn't that just? yes.  it is.

(thank you fred, dear, for sending me this)

hey cowboy

you scotch smooth, a stretched burning kiss. 
and you midnights of scorchlight and
stars, we feeling small and we feeling large,
we fleeing from or to,

writers.
in writingless occupation:  no lines of pure or dirt
to answer the question it was:  to, or from.  that was
always never uttered never wondered wanted known

until you yessed.  yes you drew a
line. and yes from that taut place you sprung, and yes,
if not graceful, you were positively charged with power

and there you submerged.  jackrabbit sharp
and into that under, that blanket burrow, that head down
and into that secret plain of broken twigs and rag, into the

unsplendid honor that you'd maybe'd for years while
riding buriden's ass on down to Abilene, for want
of other direction, protected from danger
or distraction or your everything, and but:

one hundred percent of zero is nothing.  treasure that,
cowboy.  my boots are on, and they're red.

today i held my breath

today the sun shined.  it looked
like spring outside.  the hyacinth
in a yellow vase perfumed quietly,
and the white walls reflected light.

and i read:  that humans are equipped
to send and receive signals of emotion
solely through touch.  and blindfolded,

we recognize eight of these
expressed:  anger, disgust, fear, sadness.
gratitude. sympathy. love. and happiness.
 
today i wrote and deleted. 
i held my breath.  i tried to re
let go.  today was scrub brush,
burlap, and jag.

those honey lips

gasped parting.
murmurs down my spine
twist trace the way.

breathe

and
damp descending slices
twirl razing blades,

breathe
that mouth against my sole
hands, honeyed lips
a white ballet
and your brown melt me eyes
were jaguar deep and darkened cave
breathe.




  

the significance of scars

i asked a friend if he could love a woman who had no scars.  he told me that when one began discussing scars, it was the sign of last resort--nothing left to discuss.  i disagree, wholly, as i believe mulling over scars is just the beginning.  

my recent and not so easily gotten over lover had two scars--one under his chin, where he had gashed it as a kid somehow on a bed frame, and the second on his thumb, a result of a near-lethal paper cut.  i've always liked to crawl the map of someone and hear their scars.  but lately i've been thinking about this fascination i have, with healed injury, this fact of his not having had many healed injuries, and of course, as usual, just him.

i prefer not to think about that last part.  but the good news is i just remembered i think he had a 3rd scar, around his eyebrow, but i am not at all sure of this... .  anyway.

i prefer to think about this:  is there significance to scarlessness?  we can't see inner scars, you say, and i say true.  but... how important is it that one suffered their body for desire of their guts?  why do i have a sneaking suspicion that though it may not be important that one does, it is at least telling if one does not.

is a scar a stamped letter of strength--that someone has been hurt, and endured?  is a scar a reminder of passion unfurled?  does a scar signal a warrior spirit, in a man proclaiming one who is fearless and strong, and in a woman demonstrating resilience, and as well, strength?  (of course for women probably the scar would need to not detract from her attractiveness overall.  there's gotta be equilibrium:  woman as decoration and as a good candidate for a long line of reproducing,  and woman as utility--her ability to function successfully as a birthing vessel that won't throw in the towel or go mad-dog or collapse after the experience of pregnancy and birth the first time around) 

perhaps this is all about rationalizing my own marred bod and justifying an extreme suspicion of the scarless-types.  and though this is definitely not intended to flaunt my non-caddishness as exemplified by unpristine skin,  i do have to consider my own scars, and what they mark, and what they possibly contribute to the fleshing of my spirit, in order to see if maybe there's something to my notion that scarlessness--or nearly that--is sinister.  or put another way:  that the extent to which one is visibly scarred tells of character, and functions either in a positively or negatively charged signal.  i tend to lean toward more scarring, more experience, better.  but this is my bias. 

So:  i have a deep smile where my 3 c-sections were performed one on top of the other, that surprise when my bikini is removed; i have what appears to be a permanent blotch the size of a half dollar--dark purple, round, on my ankle--from being on my knees with that particular bit of body pressed onto a fire-hot piece of metal which was burning the holy fuck out of me without my even knowing; i have a slit next to my nose where a dog bit me when i ran to him all glee girl and hugged him, which gesture he did not desire at that moment; i have a thin white line  curving around the top of my finger where i tried to make an adjustment to a purse strap with my pocket knife and wound up slicing myself to the bone right before the plane was going to take off, which required the plane to be delayed and an ambulance to come out on the tarmac and etc. etc.   there are small dotted scars running down my spine from carpet burns.  there is a starburst shaped scar on my hip from the removal of a suspicious mole (it was nothing), and a smaller scar that never gets tan, from same, on my thigh.  i have scars on my eyelids, now, from surgery.  i have a scar on my breast where a tumor was removed (again:  aside from the terror of waiting, nothing)  i have stories of stupidity and passion and aging and experience and self-determination written on my skin, and these are lived.  i mean that word:  lived.

hm.  i mean, only some of these are caused by my own actions.  so then perhaps a consideration of the ways in which scars are obtained is important--although that can hardly be known at first sight--in clarifying character.  is she healthy?  is she clumsy?  is she so engrossed in the moment that she is unaware?  does she routinely cause people to miss their connections? there must be a mechanism inside us somewhere posing the questions, analyzing the answers, and based upon some unknown-to-me threshold, calculating desirability of the people we encounter.  the desirability of their character.

so.  in general, i doubt men with scars look like fools.  the more scars, the more they demonstrate their "animal".  but i am wondering if women with scars just wind up looking like dingbats.  some scars, we are strong and capable.  too many, we are another liability. 

i'm trapped in the damn zone of blur==where the conclusion to be drawn about a person shifts from "one who moves forward despite risk" or "one who has good stories" into "one who is just plain stupid", and "one who is inert" or "one who mistakes comfort for happiness" into  "one who is just plain stupid".  and where do the scarred, and where do the scarless, fall.  i wish i knew math--somehow i want someone to draw me a map of this, and then tell me how it is.

rats.  i don't feel one bit better after having written this.  especially since i know on tuesday i go get more stitches out, and am going to have a big ol bunch of new scars.  pfft.

want

i
wanted
bald blaze
and true and
running through mud in
good shoes because there was
rain and who
can resist petrichor and why
would they and how sweet.

dark comes.

i
want
unspeakable.

i
want
split figs and
nightmares to share and
that sweater stitched of sticky
spider web.  i want that horror on my shoulders

on my back.

and make me a necklace
from your second teeth, and
give me your hair for the locket
capture your sweat in a small glass phial
and give it to me to drink. your tears are
no good.  give me the salt of exertion. 

i
want
slam.

and in turn, i will crush
violet petals under my heel and then
spit into that pretty pretty pulp,
and you will tattoo beg
from that ink into your sacred
skin.

i want to set fire
to your love.

traces/left behind

whiskied nipples against pressed palms
our damage naked, aspen.
you soul patch balm,
i bleed.

do nothing.  ask it:

wonder, how did we arrive here?
it doesn't hurt. your dna covers me 

and that touch: we catch of divine, 

nascent.  alive

swimming against deadines

but stumbling across ahas & clicks & wanting to share:

the following is some hefty; some validation and axing all at once.

Robert Kurzban, in his evolutionary psychology blog (a great place to crawl through interesting), recently posted about the evolutionary purpose of love--which is something i've considered, quite.  i want some answers, damnit.  i post some of his original writing, here, but you can find the entire essay at the link below.  but now, pulled from "LOVE":

"...limerence causes a certain amount of failure to engage with reality, seeing hope for the possibility of a relationship where a more dispassionate appraisal would suggest there is little, or none."

and, assuming the emotion of love has evolved to function as a commitment device: 

"... suppose love does, in fact, cause someone to stay with their current mate even when a better option comes along. If love has this effect on decision making, then the benefits of signaling commitment would have to be relatively large to offset these potential costs.  Still, to the extent feelings of love genuinely foreclose alternative options in the service of signaling commitment, a potentially treacherous tradeoff is being made. The details, of course, ought to matter. How likely is a better alternative to come along? If one does, how much better is the alternative likely to be? Love’s loyalty makes the most sense in a world in which the next best option is only marginally better than the status quo. Does love look so peculiar to us in part because of the modern world’s greater vocabulary of possible lovers? In ancestral environments, if the variance were lower, then commitment might have constituted a potentially less costly tradeoff."

and finally: 

"...what are we to make of the impact of the detritus of love denied, when happily ever after eludes us?  That is, if love is a commitment device, when love passes out of reach, why does it persist and torment – causing both Romeo and Juliet to endure the greatest of all fitness costs –  rather than gracefully simply fading away? The agony of unrequited love, so paralyzingly horrible, seems absurdly counterproductive, in addition to, from the point of view of the unsuccessful suitor, transcendentally painful. As an adaptive matter, it would seem that the right response to doomed courtship is resuming the search; the worst response is lover’s leap, the course favored by so many. Even those who have resisted paying the ultimate price when their favored mate proves out of reach, the aftermath of rejection seems to pose enormous costs in the form of withdrawal from life’s other pursuits. The dejection of the spurned appears as painful as it is unproductive. If there is a crueler burden with which we have been saddled by evolution than the agony of a broken heart, it is hard to imagine what it might be."

 *****

sigh. 
anyway, the essay can be found here:  epjournal.net/blog/2013/02/love/

shamelessly stolen from rob wiblin on facebook, but perfect for valentines day.   this ever happen to you? 

Robert Wiblin

about an hour ago ·

‎"Susan, we need to talk. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. About us. I really like you, but ever since we met in that econ class in college I knew there was something missing from how I felt: quantitative reasoning. We can say we love each other all we want, but I just can’t trust it without the data. And after performing an in-depth cost-benefit analysis of our relationship, I just don’t think this is working out.

Please know that this decision was not rash. In fact, it was anything but—it was completely devoid of emotion. I just made a series of quantitative calculations, culled from available OECD data on comparable families and conservative estimates of future likelihoods. I then assigned weights to various “feelings” based on importance, as judged by the relevant scholarly literature. From this, it was easy to determine that given all of the options available, the winning decision on both cost-effectiveness and comparative-effectiveness grounds was to see other people.

It’s not you, it’s me. Well, it’s not me either: it’s just common sense, given the nature of my utility function.

The calculations are fairly simple. At this point in my life, the opportunity cost of hanging out with you is fairly high. Sex with you grants me seventeen utils of pleasure, but I derive negative utils from all of the cuddling afterwards and the excessive number of buttons on your blouse that makes it very difficult to maneuver in the heat of the moment. I also lose utils when you do that weird thing with your hands that you think is affectionate but feels almost like you’re scratching me. Overall, I derive thirteen utils of pleasure on a typical Friday night with you, or fourteen if we watch The Daily Show as part of it (fifteen if they have a good guest on the show).

Meanwhile, I could be doing plenty of other things instead of spending time with you. For example, I could be drinking at the Irishman with a bunch of friends from work. I derive between 20 and 28 utils from hitting on drunk slutty girls at the bar. Since Jeff always buys most of the drinks anyways, the upfront pecuniary costs are low, and I have no potential negatives in terms of emotional investment. However, most of those girls don’t laugh at my jokes, which drives down utils gained. Thus, I could get between 14 and 21 utils from a night out at the bar.

If you’re looking for the kind of guy who’s interested in maximizing the worst-off outcome regardless of potential gains—well, I’m not that guy. All you have to do is look at the probabilities and compare the feasible range of outcomes in terms of number of units of pleasure to see that we’re going to have to call this relationship quits.

This may feel cold, but there’s nothing cold about well-reasoned analysis.

Like all humans, I know I am fallible—and since I have a natural tendency to improperly discount the future, I have made sure to accurately determine present future value of costs and benefits. But even considering the diminishing marginal returns of hitting on the aforementioned drunk slutty girls, the numbers simply do not want us to be together.

I know this breakup might come as a bit of a shock to you, which I have also factored in. The disappointed look on your face costs me 5 utils of pleasure, but the knowledge that this is the right decision in the long-term makes up for that. Additionally, I have included in my calculations the fact that as a courtesy I will have to pay for this dinner in its entirety, which, given the gender parity we have previously expressed in our relationship, would normally cost me only half that.

I want you to know that this decision isn’t just for me—it’s for you, too. I’ve done the calculations. There are plenty of eligible bachelors out there who are probably able to more vigorously, consistently, and knowledgeably have sexual intercourse with you. While the thought of you being with someone else causes me a substantial negative utility that makes me feel as though I am going to vomit, I know that in the aggregate everyone is better off, and therefore it is the right decision for us to make.

There’s no need to try to persuade me otherwise, Susan. We just can’t let our feelings get in the way of the math.

In the meantime, I need to get back home. My utility calculations tell me that the best thing I can do right now is strip down to my boxers, microwave a quesadilla, and watch a bunch of episodes of The Wire. It might seem strange and horribly unproductive, but it’s not me—it’s just my utility function." HT Misha Saul

It’s Not You, It’s Quantitative Cost-Benefit Analysis.

www.mcsweeneys.net

a love story

Gregory Vogel	6:56 PM (18 minutes ago)
to me

O.K.  here it goes...The ONLY thing I would like for my big birthday is a card or wish from Charles Krauthammer.  I think he is the smartest man that is on the news.  So, for me, if you could, could you get Charles to say "Happy birthday to Diane" or to come to your house for cake or to sign a card, you could go and pick it up, or???????  That is what I wish for my birthday.  He is marvelous....that is who, if I were dying, I would want in my hospital room reading or talking, just his voice and his knowledge, ....along with fresh ground coffee beans and classical music....o.k. that's the deal, kiddo.  xoxo mom 

Suzanne Stratmann sstratmann@gmail.com	7:12 PM (2 minutes ago)
to Gregory

god you are getting more and more difficult. 

i have to just tell you this, because at first, it was all:  "when i am dying in my hospital room all i want is an opened bag of coffee beans."  now the beans have to be ground.  i'm sure a pretty bowl will be appeciated, and so i've got money running on how long it takes you to mention that part of the All-Your-Dying-Mother-Wants-Is scenario.  and then you added sibelius.  then you added coop.  now, no more coop, now it's krauthammer, and i have to get him to talk to you or read to you, let alone sit with you in your starbucks-smelling hospital room/deathbed. what am i supposed to do with coop now?  how do i break it to him that his presence is no longer desired?  does this have to do with his coming out?  god mom.  if that is why you've thrown coop out, that is really shocking and maybe your personality is changing and something really is wrong with your brain.  anyway,  i really hope sibelius is dead, otherwise a cd wouldn't be enough, even on a bose, i'd need to be buying up plane tickets for him as well. 

is rubbing your most-likely cramping feet going to be part of what i should let kraut know about the activities to occur during his presence? cause this seems like it could be a deal breaker. 

mom.  don't get me wrong.  i do take this seriously and am trying to please you.  we've talked about this:  i see deaths as marriages, but in reverse and more honest, and as for your consciousness, it really does only happen once as far as we know, (unlike weddings), and so i do want it to be your Dream Death and will do all i can to make it so.  i just fear you are spending too much time creating this whispy event that in actuality, will be in many many years, and will never live up to your fantasies.  half the fun of any event is afterward, reliving it moment-by-moment with someone else who was there, right?  you see the rub, here?

**as an aside, i think we have just created a cottage industry.  we could become death planners. 

Click here to Reply or Forward Gregory Vogel 7:18 PM (46 minutes ago) to me Wno is coop?   It used to be Shep......but now it's Krauthammer all the way...  and beans....and Sibelius.......I think Charles lives in your area.....in my opinion, this is doable......xoxox mom Suzanne Stratmann sstratmann@gmail.com 7:24 PM (39 minutes ago) to Gregory it was never shep.  it was coop.  anderson cooper.  you think i forget these things? you think i CONFUSE coop and shep??  !!!  Gregory Vogel 7:48 PM (16 minutes ago) to me I am so thankful you are my daughter.....so very thankful.... a gift from God.....xoxo mom Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:24:32 -0500 Gregory Vogel 7:47 PM (16 minutes ago) to me No, no never Coop,,,,,,Shep,...but now neither....Charles......He is the best of the best.....in my personal opinion..... xoxo mom Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 19:24:32 -0500 Suzanne Stratmann sstratmann@gmail.com 8:03 PM (0 minutes ago) to Gregory it WAS coop, thank god i missed the shep phase, and now yes...krauthammer.  i'll get right on it. you are a fickle fickle woman.  which makes it mean all the more to me that you are still, after woe these 29 long years, glad that i am your daughter.   i am still very glad you are my mother.  and friend.  i love you too!

and articulate shows itself like this:

understand hell.  sartre style.

this link is to "No Exit" , an hour and 23 minutes of really amazing writing.  


no exit works, but so too would perhaps this:
...Hell is Other People...





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mshvqdva0vYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mshvqdva0vY

What do we become

Hello Readers in the Distant Future, again...

I'm back.  I was thinking about you today, and wondering about your intelligence--is it "artificial", or "natural"?  Mostly again, I'm wondering how it is we have evolved, and what, as you read this, we are like:  Do we focus only on efficiency, and production outcomes, or do we spend some of our time wondering interesting things?  Do we have imagination, and creativity? Do we toy with questions when there may not be one answer, but shades of speculation and opinion?

I wish I could have the answers to these questions--because in some sense, the answers would provide clues about how to live today. 

In our future, is it all about the moment that is, or do we seek some sort of greater overarching truth, or purpose to existing?  We have a mix of approaches around here, now.  But regardless of which attitude a person takes in life, it is this questioning, this seeking, that distinguishes the human race from "lesser" species.  People are understood to have the ability to reason in their decision making, through the use of logic to map their thinking.  Economists may say that people do not act rationally, but that is a different discussion.  Reason and rationality are not interchangeable. 

Merged with that questioning is the fact that we raise our children to the extreme--we do not toss them from their nests (birds) or spawn and swim (fish)--our babies are born completely incapable of doing much of anything, and must be cared for by their parents until they are presumed capable of using their innate ability to reason.  (Our babies have been known to rely upon their mothers until they are in their 50's.)   In our prolonged raising of our kids, we have a lot of time to think about what we want them to come away with, and in this context many parents try to think about and distill and make manifest the very essence of some theory of "upbringing".  And I read something recently along these lines, which made me happy and sad--and made me think of you, Future Me. 

The article had been sparked by a conversation the writer had had, in which was discussed what the group anticipated would be the wisdom that they, in their ripe old ages, would wish could actually have been passed down to their children, and been accepted.  The writer outlining some of his response to the question is one I consider to be an absolute power-thinker.  He possesses a stellar intellect and a curiosity the magnitude of which cannot be adjectivized (by the time you are reading this that may actually be a word.  Here and now, I just made it up.)  He is burst open to questions and seeks answers, on a massive scale.  And he is an extremely driven person, and the drive is: question.  go past the common boundaries.

As one of the three things he discussed, he stated, (and I paraphrase), that though the young may believe that life is not valuable without preferred features such as geographic location, life partner, or career, he would like his children to know that they will in fact adapt to situations poorer than they had hoped for, and without most of what the now-young person treasures. 

I respect him so...ah the pain!  This perspective is very upsetting.  I often find him not just right, but profoundly and deeply right--, and in this case, I either disagree, or I want to disagree.  I haven't decided which, yet.  Any response to this question is completely subjective, and there is no one right answer--but still, it was crushing to me: the surprising amount of acceptance of, and resignation to the sometimes less than satisfactory outcomes of important individual decisions--the ones that each of us make in our lifetimes.  And that he would advocate the transmission of an understanding that, even when it is obvious that a decision is no longer the best choice, a person can and will adapt to the situation, and be OK, and one need not seek change, because good enough is good enough... . ugh.  I may be wrong but I read this as his wanting his children to learn to accept the choices that they at one point made, for all of their time, and learn to live with OK and be OK with it.

I hope I misunderstood.  

Because I think this is fine for some people to say, but not him.  He and his questions simply breathe potential, and so why does he admit stuntedness into his perspective, as natural, or acceptable, or fine.  Of course we can adapt.  But should we, really?  Is it a more noble or cleaner course of a life lived?  Is it better somehow, easier or smoother, and then if he thinks yes to any of these, how does that work--perhaps less external turmoil, but what happens to a person inside?  Accepting OK rather than striving for better than that...and why, again? I suppose his answer is that what happens to a person inside is that they adapt.  I do not like this answer. 

(This is almost un-American!, I say, half in jest.  But, it is rather German, in my experience.  We'll save that--another day, another missive from me.)

Because he is writing, in his article, about ideas that he considers both wise and of such import that he wishes it were possible that his children actually learn them, I have to conclude that this belief is a product of his reasoning, and not just a flash of momentary defeat.  In fact, he does not see it as defeat.  He sees it as a fact.  Just:  that.  And again:  oh no!   (Of three points he made, I should say, only one was upsetting--and another one contradicted it, which causes in me a slim glimmer of relaxed muscles: that his argument was rather more sophistry than not).  In thinking about it, Future Beings, Future Me, the post was pretty much a poem.  It was beautiful, painful, and answered fewer questions than it raised--at least in me. 

But... what does it mean for us?  In the end, did we adapt?...and why did we adapt, when there were options, and adaptation was not really a matter of environmental pressure?... In that market, in our long lives, did we stop taking each choice and deciding along the way if it was working or not, and then acting on the considered answer? Did we eventually accept status quo?  How do you all live; what is going on?! Do you even experience dissatisfaction, and if so, is it considered OK?!?

These are questions with no answer right now.  Was he on the right track, as was so often the case?  Oh.  This is what I wish I knew about our future.

But he asked that question later, in a different article altogether.

nonautobiography part 3

At the very moment that I was born, four minutes past Sagittarius,  they discovered I had no penis.  They had always wanted a girl, but didn't think it would happen, and then there I was:  the first girl in the family in 50 years, the youngest of five brothers before me.  The whole of my extended family came by my father, who had eleven brothers.  And no sisters. Though no one knew it then,  I was also to be the last person at all to be born into the clan. To the displeasure of my father,  my mother, exhausted and sweaty and with blood on her socks, (but lucid and able to boast of not using pain medication for my birth), ever planning ahead, snarled from the stirrups that if she got pregnant again it would kill her, and for her doctor to go out there to the waiting room and tell her husband that fact right now.  He frowned while he stitched her up, but finally consented:  and that was the moment she became what she considered to be liberated.  For the rest of her life, when she would have more than two glasses of wine,  she would tell the story of how she would, and still did, thank God for the pill.  She was a very devout woman, who liked to say that she never wanted children in the first place, and could have lived happily without any, but there was nothing to do for it.  She also was very permissive with my brothers, saying, as they were heading out on some adventure, that the loss of one wouldn't matter, there were plenty more at home. My mother was delighted to have a girl, but let's be realistic.  She was one of the 13 adults in a close knit family living near one another in the suburbs, who would in many senses jointly parent my siblings and I, and she was often universally overruled with her opinions.  From the beginning, in their understandingly limited comprehension of female, the family in general held on to one great fear:  that I would become impregnated by age 16.  This fear was struck through with a thick vein of anticipatory schadenfreude, and his brothers began teasing my father.  And so when I was four days old they placed a bet, eleven against one I would get knocked up, to be called on my sixteenth birthday.   I didn't know this until much later.

When it was haircut time, we all marched down to Mr. Sid's barber shop, with his travel posters of Greece and his suspect magazine selection, and we were given identical styling, which happened to be one or the other of the two styles Mr. Sid knew.  We were buzz cut in summer, and given a slightly longer side part in the school year. Mr.Sid would always ask me if I wanted a shave too, noting the darkish hair that downed my upper lip.  "A moment with the blade and you can have it made", and I would scarlet as his belly roiled with convulsive laughter.  My mother sat there and didn't remark the incident, until we left, and she would hiss as we walked down the sidewalk that I had to have thicker skin; I had to stop letting other people hurt me, and that in the end, I should buck up because it was not going to change until I was a teenager and could take care of my own hair.  My mother prized simplicity, and that was the bottom line.  It didn't matter that people mistook me for a boy.  It didn't matter that I hated Mr. Sid.  Hate was just a feeling.  I realize now that I hated Mr. Sid instead of hating my mother.

So, for thirteen years, during the school year, every six weeks I would ride home on the floor of the car, crying, wetting my root beer flavored sucker with drool, tears, and snot.  I derived pleasure in pressing that lollipop into the carpet of the car, then smashing it and grinding it in.  When it hardened again, and my mother found it, she would be furious.  Every six weeks.  I'm not sure why my wailing didn't move her, but I am sure it had absolutely no effect upon her need to streamline, and run a tight ship.  This desire for order shows in the photos of my childhood: six kids in lederhosen shorts, bump bump bump down the line from tallest to shortest, or six little ones in footed pjs holding their favorite present and sitting around the Christmas tree.  I remember my favorite gift was the dump truck I received the year I was eight.  It came unpainted and with a set of paints so I could decorate it as I wanted.  I covered it in pictures of flowers, and girls wearing dresses, and holding hands.


It is a dubious fortune, at best, to be a first and a last. 

nonautobiography (2)

understand hell.


we've all heard about that hot inferno red poker spiked middle earth torture chamber, so let's offer that description as one possible image of hell, but add as variants, for this thought experiment, the following:

a)  hell is the current world, but with no coffee and no music or cinema and definitely no wine,  a place where one is constantly running late, and and wearing too-tight shoes, without end 

b)  hell is the current world, except that every time anyone's mouth moves all that comes out of it is of diaper rash, politics, the cost of gasoline, the random activities of second-cousins, odd weather patterns, previous ski vacations, cable company "issues", and high school pranks, without end

c)  hell is the current world, but a world with only bad writing and one is being constantly bored, or the opposite, ---to be condemned to only reading a stream of beautiful writing that makes one wish to kerosene one's own keyboard and throw away the pen

d)  hell is here and now, and is such that one can confidently state that on average, its normal is "good enough".

***

choose one hell.  got it? 

now picture deciding to walk away.  picture deciding, and executing. 


how'd that work out for you?

yeah. the utter panic and vision of walking away is easier to imagine with some definitions than with others:  for example, departure from the middle earth would definitely be difficult, even with a shovel or an accommodating and discrete elevator man, i'll give on that.  look at what happened to orpheus and eurydice.  we can't even rely upon our surface earth peeps--our most devoted of still-living lovers willing to gamble their very souls for us, to be secure in us---try finding one reliable stranger guy in hell to help out.  i imagine that the hedonistic, greedy for instant gratification, pleasure seeking sensualists working there are Pretty Crabby, and not big into conversation or deal making with those who have nothing of consequence to offer up.  in hell one is deprived of bargaining chits.

and i think everyone could agree that options a, b, and c are all nightmares that would be difficult to leave because implied in the statement itself is that the entire world is like that, so where would you go?  those were trick options.  and you thought d was the trick option, didn't you?  because of those words, "good enough".  

perhaps because of the five options given, in which only one can, in reality, loom as a threat--(i have no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that lead me to believe any of the first four variables could even be)--my mind dismisses the other four rather efficiently.  but that aside, i do find that the good enough life, the one many don't even consider at all when asked to imagine unpleasantness in extreme, is the slipperiest, stickiest, most trappifying Hell of them all.  remember that there is no way out at all of the first four hells.  but this good enough thing...this trumps them all, for me.

and this is the wine-dark, the mystery dust or poem inside of us, the thing we don't or can't articulate to anyone.  this tiny "ok" hairball is swallowed, accidentally hidden by us, and most dangerously, it is secreted away from ourselves. 

so there is nothing to tell, really.  no words for no thing to say--it's all fine.

but at some point, our consent or no, words and definitions come together to describe.  and it all comes down to which story one wants to tell, really.

pity us. 

dad

it is so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk

on some dry scorching day
fry an egg on a sidewalk and remember


                    sitting at the table being fed the daily feast
                    of flared nostrils and obey and
                    that his, his was the way.


                   but later,  listening to his music, his plunging 
                   the rod through the barrel
                   with clean cotton pieces
                   schwut scweescht schwut tk tk tk  pause.  tk


                  remember
                  the cologne of gun oil and crisp
                  fresh cold broken twigs fresh clean ruin
                  clinging to stubble and red wool.  tender skin and

                  (he really did have the softest, silkiest)
 
                  tender skin and stories.  this was
                  the scent this was the sound of him. 


                 his hands scarred and strong.  foreign.
                 they moved in old ways  and the
                 things he knew.       he spoke exotic.
                 forests    blinds   iron sights.   bullets and buckshot 
                 and why. 

                 decoys  and calls and antlers with points 
                 and once.   and once when he was young
                 there was that hole shot through the floor
                 at his feet.  to the dining room table below.  


                 now he wasn't table he.
                 pulling the luster of early morning 
                 to himself    focused on now and then.  
                 this morning he spent in his
                 now and then.
                 
                 a silver afternoon by the fire 
                 breathing crackle and spark and watching him. 
                 expanded   uncompromised    young and   
                 in those moments     the him of him.  seeing
                 the now and then. 


               
on some dry scorching day
fry an egg on a sidewalk and remember


words and meaning are not the same.

nonautobiography (1)

There are things you never tell anyone.  It's not that they are dark wine secret, but that they are central, and difficult to see.  And more difficult to articulate.  Listen:  put your head on the cool side of the pillow and Hear: the stories in the blues, the ache, the boozy smoke--you hear the same themes over and over again, and these are the themes of this story, too.  These are the themes of Bukowski, Nabokov, Kundera, and grit.  This is a story about the dust-to-mud side of the street.  You know of it even if you haven't walked it, because by now you've certainly heard the music--swelling rainstorms of love, scorn, and lonely nights when you feel as significant as a figment of imagination.  This is that. 

This is a story of growing up. 

Some people imagine growing up to be something that occurs between the ages of 0 and 18, say...though we are keeping our kids 'Kids" longer and longer now.  At any rate, growing up is supposed to be a phenomenon that happens to us and ends sometime shortly after puberty, when we stop growing physically.  And that is growing up; true.  But I didn't grow up, then.  I grew up when I realized that I'd literally sold myself into slavery, and at such a low price, for just the promise of white respectability.  Well, even that didn't cause me to grow up--that happened when I realized I had a choice right now:  stay in hell, or start walking.  I chose walking.  I'm still walking.  It's a long, hot, fucking armpit of a miserable walk out of this joint, let me tell you.  My name is Irrelevant.  I am you--the good choice girl, or the bad choice girl.  The one a mama invited to dinner, or snapped at on the telephone. 

Who decides who is good choice and who is bad?  Ah.  Thars the rub, as they say.  "They" are pirates.  An honest lot, pirates.   With a pirate, you know where you stand.