I'm moving out soon. The days grind by slowly of course, but I've never been one to count down. It feels like eons since I've lived on my own, and I'm anxious to resume my habits of napping through meals I'm too lazy to make, and smoking away Sunday afternoons while watching TV, and beating a hand drum at midnight for no reason whatsoever; all in the name of independence and merry irresponsibility.
But what I'm really looking forward to is picking up where I left off. It's like I pushed "pause"; I've lived for almost two years in a Temporary State and it would seem purgatory really is worse than Hell. To continue the Biblical allusions: I'm like those people awaiting the Rapture, living in a world of pragmatic and blindingly-optimistic paucity. I think so much about the future, I only process the here and now. It's strange how a long transition can strip your life of purpose. But perhaps no more strange than how a change of address can bring you back to life.
Soon I will no longer be a clock-watcher tethered to train schedules, nor forced to retreat nightly to my twin bed in the suburbs. I'm happy to quit enduring, and start... well, something.It's about time. Perhaps I should start counting.
Thursday, May 17
Wednesday, May 16
April is the coolest month
The cold winter withers
My spirit and energy.
The summer hot is like
Being baked in a soufflé.
And old sister autumn,
Our treatise on lethargy,
She tears us from the trees;
Having died a bit too late.
But spring simply suffers
From papery prosody.
The poets on the scene
Have just far-too-much to say.
And cold busy April,
So awkwardly paralysed
Between the grisly words,
Neatly leads their rhymes astray.
These warm April showers
Pour lyrics and parables;
The crayons of the zealots,
Scribble all the live long day.
And I simply cannot
Wait -- patiently, constantly --
When summer heat will melt,
Creativity away!
My spirit and energy.
The summer hot is like
Being baked in a soufflé.
And old sister autumn,
Our treatise on lethargy,
She tears us from the trees;
Having died a bit too late.
But spring simply suffers
From papery prosody.
The poets on the scene
Have just far-too-much to say.
And cold busy April,
So awkwardly paralysed
Between the grisly words,
Neatly leads their rhymes astray.
These warm April showers
Pour lyrics and parables;
The crayons of the zealots,
Scribble all the live long day.
And I simply cannot
Wait -- patiently, constantly --
When summer heat will melt,
Creativity away!
Monday, May 14
PSA: euphemisms for vomiting
In the spirit of keeping things juvenile, I offer this list:
- Blowing chunks
- Tossing cookies
- Driving the porcelain bus
- Jettisoning cargo
- Painting the town red
- Lettin' it all out
- De-food-ifying
- Changing one's fluids
- Exorcising demons
- Making room
- Self-cleaning
- Keepin' it real
- Bowdlerizing
- Doing the esophagus tango
- Tastin' it twice
- Exploding on to the scene
- Rockin the casbah
- Un-eating (or de-snacking)
- Ruining one's makeup
- Geysering
- Dropping napalm
- Streaming oleo
- Makin' sauce
- Being a harsh food critic
- Testing one's gag reflex
- Feeding baby birds
- Ruminating
- Breaking up with one's lunch
- Giving the dog a bone
- Coughing up a hairball
- Shotgunning... backwards
- Pressing eject
- Flushing contaminants
- Releasing the hounds
- Keeping up with the Romans's
- Technicolour yawn
- Calling Ralph
- Aborting the mission
Wednesday, May 9
Words I hate
I hate the term "hubby". ("Wifey" on the other hand, I can live with.)
Thought you might want to know.
Thought you might want to know.
Wednesday, May 2
Viva Lost Wages
The services provided by a hotel extend far beyond mere lodging. What one is really paying for is the illusion of perpetual virginity and the semblance of brand new, sealed-for-your-protection, freshness and sterility -- in a place that's typically anything but.
I thought about this as I checked out this morning; we left the floor strewn with beer bottle caps, and the unidentifiable crushed, and a footprint in red paint eerily resembling blood. Yet even in dives like the Imperial Palace, day-after-day one's room is recharged to its banal, mock-chaste condition with efficiency. For this feat, we tip our chambermaid.
(The feminist-in-me would say that this represents an almost mechanistic process of re-virgination, but he's not allowed to say much when the patriarch-in-me is around. And drinking.)
But what this all really made me think about is my unspoken (and well-hidden) fondness for the decidedly non-sterile and imperfect. After a long weekend in Glitter Gulch -- simultaneously the cleanest and filthiest place I've ever been to -- I'm somewhat relieved to be home.
I feel an odd affinity for the the peeling veneer on my desk, and my exploding closet, and even the impenetrable stains in the bathroom sink. The allure of the pure it seems, evades me. (Not that it was ever a reliable promise.)
But I'd like to think this is more than just an affection for grime.
These stains and cracks and flaws, of ephemeral and chaotic Reality, right now seem like daubs of paint on a familiar portrait; but usually, something compels us to repair or restore them, or scrape them off. What a shame.
I'll probably change my mind tomorrow morning, while seated in long-dried urine on a streetcar seat. But tonight: I'm good. Like being fond of a scar on a loved one's skin, and tracing it with grateful fingers.
I thought about this as I checked out this morning; we left the floor strewn with beer bottle caps, and the unidentifiable crushed, and a footprint in red paint eerily resembling blood. Yet even in dives like the Imperial Palace, day-after-day one's room is recharged to its banal, mock-chaste condition with efficiency. For this feat, we tip our chambermaid.
(The feminist-in-me would say that this represents an almost mechanistic process of re-virgination, but he's not allowed to say much when the patriarch-in-me is around. And drinking.)
But what this all really made me think about is my unspoken (and well-hidden) fondness for the decidedly non-sterile and imperfect. After a long weekend in Glitter Gulch -- simultaneously the cleanest and filthiest place I've ever been to -- I'm somewhat relieved to be home.
I feel an odd affinity for the the peeling veneer on my desk, and my exploding closet, and even the impenetrable stains in the bathroom sink. The allure of the pure it seems, evades me. (Not that it was ever a reliable promise.)
But I'd like to think this is more than just an affection for grime.
These stains and cracks and flaws, of ephemeral and chaotic Reality, right now seem like daubs of paint on a familiar portrait; but usually, something compels us to repair or restore them, or scrape them off. What a shame.
I'll probably change my mind tomorrow morning, while seated in long-dried urine on a streetcar seat. But tonight: I'm good. Like being fond of a scar on a loved one's skin, and tracing it with grateful fingers.
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