Sunday Meandering

Nothing much to say today, just a quiet-ish Sunday morning on which I woke up curled like a boiled shrimp under my fuzzy blanket, hugging my book and half a pillow to my face, with the cat tucked deep into the curve of my legs, so soundly asleep that she didn't even move when I got up at 8:30, just emerged an hour later to yell "HI!" with all her kitty bedhead still tousled around her.

Lazy convo with the Dood about nothing while he made breakfast for his roommate and roommate's family. I advised him to put the grated potatoes into a colander and press out as much moisture as possible, lest he end up with a pan full of flaccid fried potato mush.

Washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom while I ponder what to make for Roni for dinner -- we still haven't had our Christmas, and I haven't seen her since mid-December when she went to Oregon to spend two weeks with her man. She came back engaged! I'm so happy for her because she finally has a man who seems to have his shit together and isn't a criminal or layabout and who isn't sitting around waiting for her to take care of him.

Some mixed feelings as the realization sunk in that my best friend is going to be a continent away in about 6 months. Actually, there was no "sinking in," there was Life, bonking me on the head with its interminable impermanence meme. Goddamit. This, for some reason, triggered some wholly unreasonable feelings of anger at Dood. Poor guy's all "What'd I do? Huccome you're mad at ME?" I dunno, I just WAS. Really uncomfortable weekend last weekend -- so uncomfortable that I called a time-out that lasted all of a day and a half, before I realized I'd rather be pissed about something and talking about it than pissed and hiding. I will say, however, that the day and a half did give me a chance to take one big, deep oxygenating breath and collect myself.

I get to still be Aileen and do Aileen things, and Dood gets to be Dood and do Dood-things, and as long as we are both truthful about where we are (emotionally and physically), we aren't doing harm. If I think I hear something in his tone, I recognize that it's my own projection, and vice-versa. I do kinda wish he'd stop using the label "ugly" to describe my actions or words, but as long as I know that my intention was neutral, I have to let that go. Labelling has the effect of simply shutting me and any reasonable response I might have down. I don't even bother responding anymore -- I just pause and move along, because otherwise we get into a debate about why the words I said were "bad" (therefore, making me "bad" for saying them) and he gets to be the injured party and I end up defensive about doing nothing wrong. Know what I'm saying? So in in the very act of defending something that doesn't require defensiveness, I end up resentful because I've been made to feel "wrong" when I didn't do anything. Better to just let the judgement rest where it landed, just outside his mouth. It's not for me to point out someone else's projections, but only to recognize my own. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

So it's a nice, quiet Sunday morning, and I had the breakfast of a five-year-old, quick and easy Cream of Wheat. I love Cream of Wheat, and completely forgot I had it in my pantry. With a nice pat of butter and some maple syrup, a good and comforting Sunday breakfast.

And my Sunday morning music while I blurt this blog post? Good, mellow Sunday morning music: George Benson's "Breezin'." I remember my brother used to play it on Sunday mornings -- on vinyl, of course, on his Technics turntable, of course, which was hooked into his Yamaha receiver, of course. (I still have that receiver, the one powered by tubes and shit, at my friend Sean's house, where it resides with my Bose 201's.)

But I digress from my digressions. Did you know "Breezin'" was written by Bobby Womack? And "This Masquerade," by Leon Russell? And "Affirmation" by Jose Feliciano? The amazing things you can learm from liner notes.

In this era of digital music downloads, does anyone bother with liner notes anymore? Does anyone squint at the copyright line on a digital track and say, "Wow, I was TWELVE when this record came out," and in that instant have a series of flash-memories of being 12 and what it felt like to wake up on a Sunday when you were 12, and going to 10 o'clock mass with Dad, and coming back to Mom making breakfast and the smells of sausage and coffee and Dad's Pall Mall Reds, and the "Pittsburgh Press" scattered around the table, with George Benson (a son of Pittsburgh, along with another jazz great, Ahmad Jamal) playing in the background? Do families even eat Sunday breakfast together anymore?

One day I'll regale you with a story about a friend of mine who used to work for GRP Records and the time the esteemed Mr. Benson was in his office noodling on a new guitar he was showing off. Another time.

Anyway, it's a calm and peaceful Sunday. The Steelers won against the Ravens last night in a game that came down to nailbiting in the last five minutes of the game. Today the Jets play the Patriots, and in the event of an unlikely upset, I guess the Steelers will be going to the Super Bowl again (I mean, how many upsets can the Jets pull off phhhht?). Ho-hum, Steelers in the Super Bowl? And the sun came up in the east this morning, too.

Another Lombardi would pretty much complete the image rehabilitation of Ben "The Molester" Roethlisberger, wouldn't it? Rabid sports fans can forgive anything except losing, I guess.

I start traveling again next week -- I leave for LA on the 24th, fly to Houston on the 27th, then back to LA on the 1st, then to Cincinnati on the 3rd and back to Houston on the 4th. Finally back to NYC on the 7th. Poor Miss Kitty is going to be soooo pissed at me.

But I'll get to see Dood for two weekends running, which is a good thing, because like it or not, I need the human contact to keep him real. The words, words, words of all our talk, talk, talk, they just aren't enough for me. I need to taste and smell and touch someone to remind myself that I actually have a real relationship with him. Elizabeth Barrett I am not, and if I were, I probably couldn't come up with, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

I'm more Audre Lorde:

Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not
but as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.
Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.
("Recreation," Audre Lorde, 1978)

One Arm Out From Under the Porch, Waving a Tiny Piece of Paper With Some Words on It

Important enough for me to post and repost.

Cheri kicks my ass, if only I remember to go to her when I am feeling like crap.

Now, if only I could remember it:

Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but....

But -- gawd-dayum I'm so pissed at myself because I haven't written anything worth a damn in a while.

Shit.

And FUCK ME, FUCK ME, FUCK ME, I wish I had written this:

Mr. Hayes probably got forty bucks for publishing this, but who the hell cares? It's freakin' beautiful ("I now know "bolt" is to lock and "bolt" is to run away.") and it's in The New Yorker.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

In other words, good ole Ozymandias was saying, you better read this, commit it to memory, before the copyright police come along and make me take it down.

Right now, I am jonesing for grace.

Next Year On My Birthday

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
about the time I picked up
the Daily News and the headline read
No Bad News Today.

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
how I found a painting signed "Vincent" in the attic
and sold it to a passing junk dealer
for the price of a meal.

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
about the 2am I stood on a street corner
and watched an elephant appear from a hole in the river,
give me the wisdom in one sad eye,
then lift me onto her back.

How I waved at the gaping crowd
as we paraded west,
disappearing into a garden.

Next year on my birthday remind me to tell you
about the time I spent the last dollar in my wallet
and bought the winning lottery ticket,
and on my way to collect the winnings
the wind snatched it from my hands.

I watched it blow away and laughed
with the taste of ashes in my mouth
and didn't chase it.

Nadir

If we must cheat ourselves with any dream,
Then let it be a dream of nobleness:
Since it is necessary to express
Gall from black grapes--to sew an endless seam
With a rusty needle--chase a spurious gleam
Narrowing to the nothing through the less--
Since life's no better than a bitter guess,
And love's a stranger--let us change the theme.

Let us at least pretend--it may be true--
That we can close our lips on poisonous
Dark wine diluted by the Stygean wave;
And let me dream sublimity in you,
And courage, liberal for the two of us:
Let us at least pretend we can be brave.


Elinor Wylie


I don't know why I'm digging out the poetry. Just feelin' it, I guess, and that almost never happens, so I figured I'd better go with it while the feeling's there. Poetic bitterness is just so much tastier than my own right now.

You have to understand that my heart is still saaaad.

I tripped, and fell into some emails. Yes, I still have some of them.  There was that one weekend, early on, while I was still being all together'n'shit and being kind of cautious, and that one weekend, well, I asked him if he was "wooing me" and he admitted he was doing it. And after that, well, I just sort of let myself go with it, and I let him do it to me. He was very, very skilled at it, too.  And looking back on it, well, all I can say is, "How cruel. And oh, how very, very stupid I am."

My dad never prepared me for shit like this, and goddamn if it doesn't catch me off guard every fucking time.

Assholes I can deal with, but something like this, man, it's mean, and it hurts my heart.

I hope no one ever does this to his daughter. Or yours, for that matter.

You think I exaggerate? Come on over to my house some time. I'll let you read every page.