Vanessa Christine

Talking To Myself

2012-02-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, " Cornflake Girl," #7 on the playlist, OR IF YOU PREFER, "Grace Kelly," #47 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist and click on either of those songs, then come back up and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I like knowing that technology has advanced to a point where people who* (*those of us who) talk to them*(*our) selves no longer look crazy. We can just pretend we're talking into any nearby cord or wire or if we're in our cars, some device that is below the view of any passer-byers.

Ahem.

I don't always talk to myself, I'm more of a self interrupter. In my mind, I am always talking to myself, and sometimes some of those thoughts are so loud that it's like my brain does not want to have to bear it alone, and out pops a sentence that I had been doing such a good job of containing inside. This would not be such a big deal except that the sentence that pops out is not necessarily the one at the beginning of the train of thought; it's often one of the middle freight thoughts on the train, carrying a random link that would make sense if you could have heard the beginning and the caboose thoughts, but by itself, it just sounds out of place and crazy.

But if I say it into a cord/phone/something below the radar, it no longer looks crazy. See how I did that? "Crazy" now looks like that lady I saw walking past who was wearing what looked like two Chou Chou dogs on her feet. She walked past me and I thought "Do you understand what is happening on your feet?" and then I remembered that at that exact moment, I had a sock in my hair. And it was blue. And I was a public place. In fact, I was at work. That place where it matters what I wear, where I tell other people what to wear. I never told anyone to wear a Chou Chou dog; I also never told them to wear blue socks in their hair. In my own defense, when I learned to do the sock bun the day before, it didn't occur to me to wear a sock the color of my hair. (You would think it would have been obvious that I should have chosen a brown sock to wear in brown hair. What can I say, my mind often eschews "obvious" for more complicated random thoughts.) Also in my defense, the sock was not visible. Just a messy but oh so deliberately messy bun was visible. So there is also a difference between wearing your crazy on the outside vs hiding your crazy beneath your hair. At least I surely hope there is.

-XOXO,

Messy

2012-02-14T13:35:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Good Gone Girl," #46 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The sign at the counter of the coffee shop says "Please conserve napkins." They obviously don't know me. I take 5 napkins and hope that everyone is paying too much attention to their own chlorophyll and chia seed induced iced teas to notice.
I'm not insensitive, just messy.
It's not a "Cheers" moment, where everybody knows my name, (does anyone do that anymore?) though I would like to think it will become one the more I frequent this locale; I like it here. It's a cute darling coffee shop in a forward thinking ecologically minded green town. I bet if the barista were to remove his baseball cap you would find wheat grass sprouting out of his head. It's that kind of place.
I'm not sure they like me here, though. I'm not the type of girl to plug my car into the wall at night; I'm all about guzzling up gasoline. I have probably used enough hairspray in my lifetime to double the size of the hole in the ozone layer. The world would all die of skin cancer, and my hair would not be moved. It's not that I'm totally insensitive, I'm all about preserving nature and keeping the species alive, the cute fuzzy ones, anyway. I'm not sure I would mind a world less of sharp fanged things that bite, sometimes in mass. Sometimes in the dark of night when you thought you were finally safe.

I am not only speaking of animals here. Obviously.

They are probably also disapproving of the heavy technology I bought in with me. All of it sucking up energy by plugging into their wall outlet strip. Other people here have laptops on which they are typing and looking important, also, but they seem to have smaller, sleaker, less energy consuming versions. it seems that every time I get close to cool enough, the next wave of cool washes over the land and sweeps all of those happy green people up in it's swell of coolness getting cooler by the moment. And I...just get knocked under. All the smiley people on the shore waving at me, drenched as I drag myself out from under. So you can see why I needed the excess of napkins.

-XOXO,

No Freeway For Young Women

2012-02-08T20:39:00.001-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, " Any Other World," #50 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Remember that one time when you* (*and by "you," I really mean "me," or "I," as the grammatically correct case may be.) were driving and singing in the car, and you sounded so great singing in your car like that, you sounded just like a professional singer, in fact, and especially when you drove over a bumpy part of the road and it gave your voice instant vibrato that only opera singers and Celine Dion are usually capable of making their voices achieve? Move over, Adam Levine, because you are doing his song one better? Remember that? Yeah, and you were so so happy because it was your day off so you thought, heck, I should go back to the beach, I have several hours of no one counting on me to be responsible to them in any way? Just I am accountable for me, and I am totally okay in this moment? This blissed out moment that you earned yourself after a hard, arduous, mentally taxing workout that you did it, you did it anyway, and now you were rejoicing that you did because for the rest of the day you can proclaim to anyone who does or does not want to know, "I DID it?" Yeah, And then what happened? You looked up and saw that a police officer was aiming his radar gun at you. And everything inside of you pulled tightly into itself, a snail receding into it's shell, a turtle phoning home, if you will, only you had to keep your head up, "keep your chin up, son," because you were still driving after all, and driving requires paying attention. Never mind that you suddenly are no longer feeling free, light and easy. Yes, your voice still sounds just like a rock star, or at least it would, if you hadn't been shocked into no longer singing, but you now feel unsure of your driving. You now feel a strange unusual kinship with Bambi's mother right when her ears perked up, before she started running running running no matter because she could not run fast enough to prevent her own slaughter. That's exactly what it feels like when the police officer aims his gun at your face as you drive by, isn't it? Doesn't it make you wonder what the heck are all of these police officers doing, trying to scare a safe driver into unsafe driving practices, instead of leaving well enough alone on the freeway here, the FREE-way, how ironic, it hits you, how ironic, you think, and you realise that there is no freeway, no freeway for you. Same on edge feeling you get when you see a wasp or a hive of wasps or worse yet hor-nets whenever you are frolicking about in a garden or a wilderness or nature or even just outside of the local Safeway; Anywhere a wasp or hor-net can haunt. You don't exactly know the difference between wasps and hornets, You only know that they are not honeybees, they are not sleepy nectar drunken bumble bees, they are vicious harbingers with stingers who do not die if they sting you once, they continue to sting and sting and sting, and hornets are worse because their name is two syllables of torture, not just one. So this is the association running through your mind when you are accosted by that silly radar gun aimed at your once shining face from whence melodious sounds have been emerging. It occurs to you to wonder, don't the police officers have some hardened criminal to dig up out of a basement somewhere? Instead of not leaving well enough alone? Nothing to see here, officer, we are all obeying the law here, we are all above ground here and not avoiding the sunlight. A criminal would be hiding his crime in the dark underground. Go there instead, Mr Policeman. There is nothing to see here, you think, but your spirit is now slightly dampened.

You know, I have never tasted venison stew, but it has always sounded delicious to me. Venison stew is one of those things people eat in novels which take place in some out in the wild location when the main character/s is/are starving and out of hope, but then low and behold, they stumble upon a lone warm cabin in the middle of the wilderness, which contains an old man and woman both with rough hands who happen to have a large cauldron of venison stew brewing over their lit fire, and they offer the stew to the starving main character, who proceeds to eat the stew with some sort of freshly baked bread, the character proceeds to sop it up with this still warm bread. "Venison Stew," doesn't that just sound delicious? I now wonder if it tastes like the sudden awareness of bitter betrayal, in the middle of a naive run for freedom.

-XOXO,

Don't Mind Me

2012-02-06T21:05:00.001-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "We Found Love," #45 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Whenever I see someone talking on his or her cell phone in public, I try to listen in. I am always amazed at the very intimate details a person will share from her end of the cell phone in a very public place. It's as if the phone pressed up against the ear makes a person forget that not only the person on the other end of the phone can hear her, but anyone else actually in sight of her physical mouth and spitting distance can, as well. Is this rude? And if so, who was rude first, she, for talking in my air space, or me, for gleaning all the dirt from it that I can? Aren't we each just doing out own thing?

Go to any coffee shop and observe: People everywhere, it is busy busy busy, but no one makes eye contact or talks to the people in our actual presence. Everyone is hidden behind his own cell phone, laptop, or ipod. I try to break the fro-zone by looking at you. I want to see if you react or look up. Usually you don't, so enrapt are you in this or that hilarious text that is causing you to smile shyly at the cell phone even though the person at the other end can't see it. But I can, and I think you're just trying to make me jealous.

Sometimes I say something as arbitrary as, for instance, "hi," and it startles you. Sometimes I say, for instance, "I like your jacket." and you'd think I just scooped dairy free calorie free whipped cream into your coffee. I watch you melt in a puddle right in front of me, to be spoken to by a living one, and not only spoken to, but complimented. By a stranger. A stranger in the flesh.

(Just so you know, I would never tell you that I like your jacket unless I actually like your jacket.)

-XOXO,

Three Parts

2012-01-27T22:33:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "The Chain," #23 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

It doesn't make much sense that it's only after you've already lost

that you suddenly fear losing.

Only those who have experienced perfection and recognized it

can understand what I am saying.

II.
Friday night, each one of us was feeling

our own thing,

or not feeling it but it was there

weighing us down or lifting us up, depending.

III.

You are not the dead hope I buried 32 years ago, almost 33

but you rub against it sometimes,

that lump where my chest has grown an extra cavity

like a bruise you resemble for some reason I don't know why-

you've only ever been kind.

It's my mind that plays tricks with my heart,
my hands that reach to grasp for a memory that does not know how to put the atoms back together to form the person who once was there,

who thinks she still is,

who forgets you're a much bigger he than she ever was a she.

-XOXO,

Valley of Laughter

2012-01-27T21:20:00.000-08:00

Pre-Script: This post to be read as the song, "Shadowfeet," #12 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

with my hands I have dug up the remains that remained long after us

just beneath the soil of a perfect place-

the decaying flesh I buried so long ago

(I couldn't bear the stench)

had all been eaten away to bone white

and it sat there,

in the middle of a hole in the soil that was once only good

for growing laughter no one else could hear

(I couldn't hear from so much laughter in that place, do you remember that?)

I started digging from a memory in the middle

of the perfect place

where we once lived--

all that remained were the sparkling bones.

-XOXO,

My Own Private Boulder

2012-01-10T20:41:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song "Somewhere only we know," #16 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

OK so here's how it happened: I was walking on the beach again, because that is one of the things I do routinely, and I looked down and saw a white quartz. It looked about the size of my fist, but it was partially covered in sand. I went to pick it up and realized it wasn't budging and was obviously bigger than it looked. I had to use a stick to dislodge it, but when I did, lo and behold: a boulder. It was huge. So I did what any girl on the beach would do. Because that is how I do everything in my entire life. I carried (holy cow, have mercy, it was pure solid heaviness) it down to the water and rinsed it off in the waves. Then I wrapped it in my hoodie and carried it like a baby-like a huge gigantic baby-the entire two miles back up to my car.
When I was almost to my car, I saw two police-state park-looking gentlemen apprehending a civilian who was sitting on his knees with his hands behind his back. The problem was that this was happening RIGHT by my car. I drive to this particular beach often, and how often do I see these police officer/state park type of guys? Never. WHY did they have to show up the one day I was carrying huge beach contraband? They already had one guy on his knees; who knew what extreme measures they were willing to take to preserve their state beach and keep it as pristine and beatific as possible?? I have no idea if it's illegal to remove 20 lb quartz from the beach or not; it's not something I ever thought about before, and I don't think it's anything that anyone attempts very often. I had no choice but to walk by as nonchalantly as possible; like no officer, there is nothing huge and heavy and beach-belonging under this hoodie I am holding. No I am not slightly panting and sweaty from carrying it up all of those stairs after walking two miles with it in my arms. I guess it worked, because they did not say a word to me as I put my newly acquired boulder in my car.

So now I own a boulder, my first ever. I am proud of the effort I put into getting and keeping it, including the part where I was nearly incarcerated.*

And no, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it now.

-XOXO,

*You can accuse me of exaggerating the almost incarceration, but then again, you weren't there, were you.

Morning Moon

2012-01-09T22:30:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem best read as the song, "Closer" by Joshua Radin, #30 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I did not expect to see the moon this morning
as I got in the car and started driving, 7am
the sky was lightening, still in between asleep and awake
but when I looked up it was hanging there,
full and huge like a soap bubble rising
not 3 feet above the McDonald's by the car wash.
-XOXO,

Pleasure

2012-01-09T21:26:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: Chew on this post while listening to the song "Big Yellow Taxi," #33 on the playlist, in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)
When I saw all the people getting their cars washed on the first weekend in January, I hoped it meant rain was coming. While my tank filled, I walked into the mini mart to buy gum. This gas station/car wash is one of two places I can think of that carries my favorite gum. It used to be all over the grocery stores and Target had it in the bulk gum section, but then for some reason I am still scratching my head about, it was discontinued. Now I go out of my way to find the places that sell this particular gum so that I can hand it out to my friends and say "this is the best gum in the world, but you can't find it anywhere anymore, so I want you to have this." A few of my friends say things like "I don't really chew gum." And I think why would you not choose to live a life full of delicious gum chewing if it was in your power to live a life full of gum and gum and gum? Sugar free, of course, and you still have to brush and floss religiously. But I think saying "I don't chew gum" is about the same as saying "I don't sing in the car or in the shower." Why are people so stodgy about enhancing the simple harm free pleasures of their lives? Simple happiness rules. Here's a super fun thing to do the next time you are driving by yourself. Turn on the radio and sing along loudly. Chew gum and pop it, and blow big obnoxious bubbles while you are chewing and singing. I don't think it's possible to not be happy and endorphin rich while doing that.

-XOXO,

Kicks (A sort of love story)

2012-01-02T20:55:00.001-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song "That Year," #39 on the playlist, plays in the background, preferably directly into your ears via earbuds. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I am standing in line at the coffee bar on my lunch break. The guy in front of me is wearing brand new sneakers. I know they are brand new because even from back here I can smell them. Even though my nose is 6 inches higher than usual due to my own (fantastic) shoes. He probably liked the shoes so much, he wanted wear them right out of the store. Or he got them for Christmas, and this is the first time they have been out of the box. They are florescent red Nike's with a dark blue swoosh. I turn my head to the side and try not to breathe too deeply. I normally enjoy new shoe smell, but these don't smell quite right. To determine why would require a bit more detective work than I feel like putting in right now; I only have an hour for lunch, and I'm hungry. All I know is that this guy was most definitely determined to be wearing these particular shoes.
When I was four years old, I had a favorite pair of shoes. They were brown lace ups. They were probably boy shoes. They had been worn before. I don't know by who. I found them in my closet one day, in the side of my closet that my parent's used for storing whatnots that didn't fit anywhere else in the house. As the only girl, I was the only kid with my own room, so one half of my closet was a catchall. You would think I would have found this annoying, but it fascinated me. After being tucked into bed at night, I would pilfer through that side of the closet in all of it's never ending glory, sure that no one would notice I was still awake with the light on as long as I kept the door shut. When I found the brown shoes during one of my pilferations, I can only explain what happened to me as pure stroke of treasure finding genius. Or maybe an angel left them there for me, his favorite young freckle faced charge. All I knew was that instantly, I loved how they looked on my four year old feet. I wanted to wear them every day. I only took them off at night when I had to take a bath or go to bed. But the problem with four year old feet is that they keep growing. Still, I wore those shoes until I could no longer squeeze my feet into them, and it was with much sorrow that I had to give them up.
I recently found a picture of my four year old self wearing the mysterious brown shoes. On the top half, I look like a typical girl child, in pigtails, a dress, and a smile. On the bottom half, I look ridiculous. Big brown feet sticking out all over. As this was a time before grunge had been discovered in Seattle and adapted by the brooding youth of California, My poor parents must have been embarrassed to take me places. I would have been, if I were my kid. But then again, I was a third child, and by that point, maybe they were just glad I had clothes on. Who can say. All I know for sure is that I think I remember the moment of this picture, or a moment identical to it. My little brother (I'm not little!" he would protest, and would eventually grow taller than me, as if to prove his own point.) and I are swinging on a bench swing. We are swinging and pretending that we are flying someplace high up in the air, above the trees, way up in the clouds, and I am completely blissed out in my childhood; I've got a swing, my imagination, and the world's greatest shoes on my very own feet; nothing could be better than this feeling in this moment right now.
Maybe this is why people trust me to style their wardrobes now; because I remember what the wearing feels like. The advice that I give every day: wear what makes you happy. I remember what it's like to feel what you are wearing to the core of your tippy little ever hopeful heart.

-XOXO,

To anyone who's ever...

2011-12-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song "The Chain," #23 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The raw inside, tender and chaffing.
(I'm letting myself feel the missing of you.)
Remember every detail, panic
when one portion of the picture in my mind blurs
and I have to fill it in with what I think was there
(this is a new kind of faith, a different level)
I don't imagine you perfect, and I haven't smoothed out
your lines or made excuses

for your cracks;
I only know that I melted into them
without knowing how it happened.
(some parts of me are hiding
in your pocket when you walk,
behind your eyelids
when you close them in sleep.)

-XOXO,

Secrets

2011-12-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song "The Other Side Of the World," #33 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. Hint: If you have earbuds, it sounds better when the music is being pumped directly into your head. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I'm learning to hold back,

the power of subtlety

instead of unraveling all at once.

I'm going to let my strings out slowly,

I'm going to let myself be caught,

instead of tangling your hair

instead of getting caught up in my own net

instead of tangling all up in your hair.

When I say "I'm learning," I mean I have heard of the concept,

I mean I like the idea,

even though I am not good

yet.

(I like hummingbirds,

and I like angel fish,

and I like knowing my own secrets as treasures

on a sandy shore

in the middle of a glistening ocean

which turns turquoise when the sun

hits at just the right angle.)

-XOXO,

Rocks

2011-12-28T11:12:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best recieved as the song," Mysterious Ways," #4 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

This year for Christmas, I was thinking of giving everyone a rock from my rock collection with a note explaining why this particular rock reminds of me this particular friend. Like "This rock is perfectly round and smooth, fits just right in my hand, just like you in my life." or "This rock is bright and sparkles in the sun; it reminds me of you." I would be thrilled if someone gave me a gift like that; most of my friends will not appreciate my rocks.

"You're so weird!"

I've heard that for years; I hear it often.

Hearing it doesn't make me act less weird, though.

So many people are trying to figure out who they are, or are afraid to let other people actually see who they are.

But I've been through crap; I know who I am.

I'm a girl with a rock collection.

I don't just pick up any rock I find; I have to like it, for some reason. A perfect, round rock with enough weight to it feels good in the palm of my hand. I like to hold on while I walk. Heart shaped rocks are always keepers. I like to think that God put them in front of me to send me a message. Sometimes I pass these on to other people when I know they are going through a hard time. I don't worry about what they think of me; I assume no one's ever given them rocks before, and I don't care if they think it's strange or unusual, because I know it is. But it's a reaching out, anyway, and it's the reaching that matters. People don't reach out enough.

I find most of my favorite rocks at the beach or in rivers.

I like to explore.

Today, I went to the beach with a friend. This friend was in a cranky mood, at least towards me.

Quote from nameless friend: "I am feeling irritable. You are not helping."

Me: "Well, I'm glad I know that I'm not responsible for your feelings, because I am in a great mood."

I said that even though I felt stung, and then I walked away, and then I didn't say anything and we split up to do our own solitary things.

Interestingly, this is one friend who can appreciate my rocks and where they came from. This friend will "ooh" and "aah" over interesting rocks with me, marvel at the significance of where a particular rock came from, say things like "I've never seen one like this before; look, it looks like the face of a whale when you hold it this way."

I will look and say "Yes, I can see that."

I was going to find a rock for this friend today while beach walking, but I also know that nameless friend is getting ready to go on a long journey far away, and does not need any extra rocks right now.

And I also know that this friend has told me in the past, "when you leave, you leave a lot behind," and also, "you are not always good at receiving."

to which I had said "Well, I received that."

and

"Thank you."

Or something.

I did not give this friend a rock today.

(but I did give one to my friend's sister, a perfectly white sparkly quartz, and she said "OH, thank you! I used to collect these, I thought they were so neat!" So you see, I'm not the only one.)

-XOXO,

All of this beauty

2011-12-25T17:57:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem will explode in your mind if you read it as the song, "Closer," by Joshua Radin, #30 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The world isn't falling apart,
but some of the people in it are-
we shatter in effortless beauty,
like stained glass
before it has been reassembled and glued
into a window through which light can shine,
through which you can look out and see,
like the first time you saw the automic bomb
and thought, "orange in the blue sky-
unheard of colors exploding right in front of me-"
we watch and tell each other,
"because all of this beauty,
the world is not falling apart."
-XOXO,

Driving there

2011-12-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "The End of the Innocence," #39, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Confession: If I am stuck in traffic with no way out and wearing nail polish, I will start to peel away at my nail polish like I'm peeling off an extra layer of skin, even though I know how demolished my fingernails will look once traffic lets up. I am not so good at handling a lack of margins. Some people can handle a lack, or they hide secret addictions to get through. Create space in a room inside where you are suffocating. I want to drive through life knowing there is a shoulder always there, always there, just in case. But some roads are too narrow. Often life feels like yesterday, when I was trying to merge on to the freeway that was going to take me someplace beautiful, wild, and free, but a large semi truck was blocking my way, (decide now, decide by your actions) and when I looked in the mirror to see if I had room, I caught a glimpse of a small girl with pigtails looking longing out the window and next to her, the boy with the bluest eyes.

-XOXO,

After Yesterday's Flood

2011-12-19T20:21:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Shadowfeet,"#12 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

This morning, I woke up while it was still invisible dark outside. The waking felt like I had traveled from a long, deep place and there had been a dream there, and it had been vivid, but I couldn't hold it in my mind on this side. It slipped out as I stood upright. After yesterday's flood, I thought some caving in might crush me from the inside out. I didn't know if I could touch a solid thing and walk, mostly spirit. I yawned, got dressed in my running shoes. I made a blueberry smoothie and tea, then turned off the kitchen light and was blind, hand feeling my way to a door that was still where I'd locked it last night. I opened to a black silent world. But as soon as I stepped outside, I heard a raindrop, and then another, and then another; a slow building up of sprinkes until the noise on the roof was a full rain shower, which sounded like well timed applause. The sky was cheering for me, and all I had done was walk through a door.

I got into my car quickly, feeling shy.

-XOXO,

If I had a pet bird

2011-12-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Blackbird," #22 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

If I had a pet bird, I would get a second pet bird, so that the first would not be lonely. But I would never get a pet bird. I think taming a creature that was created for free flight is a sorrow to everyone, especially but not limited to the bird itself, since the idea of keeping creatures that were built for soaring in the open air over the entire planet in a few feet by a few feet cage is cruel. So I'd have to let my lovelies go, and by letting them go, I own that they no longer belong to me, and never did. They would be free and flying and would quite possibly not ever come back to roost in my trees. But if they did, it would have been their choice. so I'd rather not have a pet bird to begin with, just to save myself from all of that unnecessary guilt and sadness.
I like to think that I live in an alternate universe and I have pet birds there, they belong to me, because I named them, but they are free to fly anywhere, there are no cages and the sky is the limit. In my imaginary alternate world, I have two birds, and I name the first one Lucy, the second one Diamonds, and they are in the sky with each other.

-XOXO,

Mean

2011-12-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Mean," #42 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

When I was 11, I had a friend who was some days nice to me, like "you're my best friend," nicknaming me "Mickey," which no one had ever called me before, and sometimes was cold, distant, and aloof. Before this, no one had mentioned to me that girls in 6th grade and on sometimes turn into mean villainous monsters. I forgot to turn into one, myself. So one day, I asked her, "Why are you sometimes mean to me?" she looked at me and said very innocently, "it's like, I can't help it. You know?" but I didn't know; I was like, blink blink, "well, I sort of feel like I just want to be nice to each other every day. So no, I don't get it." and then we went through Junior High and High school, and so on until we lost touch. It's taken me this long to realize that she may have not been my nicest friend, but she was probably my most honest friend. Ironically, this particular girl was discovered to be a chronic liar, as the years went on. There was a scandal which is not my story to tell, so I will not divulge it. I only knew that through all of it, I just loved the girl. It took me being out of high school a few years to realize that, so that when I did finally see her again around town years later, after we'd chatted a bit of small talk, I looked her straight in the eye and said "you know, I don't know what was true or what wasn't all those years ago, but what I want you to know is, it doesn't matter; I would have loved you no matter what was true. I just loved you, and I always will." She said "aw," and "thanks," and changed the subject like a master pro. But I hope that my words penetrated deep, to a place usually left untouched, and it sparked something dormant there, something beautiful left dormant too long. But that's not my story to tell, either.
My story to tell goes something like this: I was once again at the beach treasure hunting for sea glass today. I have a friend who lives right above the ocean and will text me when the tide is low to let me know it's a good glass week. This friend didn't ever look for sea glass until I told him about it, and now he finds it when I am not there and gives me what he has collected just because he knows I like it. There is something to be said for a friend who looks out for the things you care about not because it's what he cares about, but because he knows that it means something to you. I honor that logic. The problem is, I don't necessarily follow through from my end. I was on the beach today, with my head down, and when I saw other people up ahead also looking down, I thought "Don't you dare be looking for sea glass, all the glass on the beach today is mine is mine is mine, you can't have it, and there is no such thing as share." I don't believe in sharing, have I mentioned that before? I am not a mom who tells her kids, "you have to share that" because I don't believe in being a hypocrite. I don't let them eat off of my plate, either. It's like, this is my food, eat your own. So I was walking along, thinking these thoughts while the song "Mean," by Taylor Swift blasted into my ear buds via Ipod, when a smiling stranger tossed me a silver dollar sized piece of clear sea glass. It was perfectly smoothed, no rough edges. He said "I don't know if that's a good one or not, but I figured I'd give it to you." I said "It's perfect!" and thought "HOW did he know I was looking for glass??" He walked on, and I looked up and didn't see him again, so I was sure that he was an angel sent to teach me a lesson. Then a smiling girl walked up to me with a handful of sand dollars. She said "Did you find anything good?" smile, smile. I showed her the glass I had found so far. I said to her, "It looks like you are looking for sand dollars." She said "That's just all I've found so far." as we were standing in a plot of sand loaded with gravel, colorful rocks, fossil rocks, sea glass, and seashells. But whatever. She seemed content. She said "Happy hunting!" and kept smile walking. Then my sea glass tossing angel appeared again. This time, he had a green rock in his hand. He said "I don't know if you think this is cool or not, but it's green and flat, and I thought it was kind of cool looking." I said "Cool, it looks like a piece of smashed chewing gum," because that is exactly what it looked like, and he said "yeah, it does!" and I said "but it's not one I want to keep." So we tossed it, but he was very friendly and smiley through the whole exchange, promising to give me any cool pieces of glass he found from that point on. Very kind. I never saw him again. So you know, I guess it was time for him to go back to Heaven, or at least lose his flesh and blood human form for awhile. His message to me, the mortal human, had been imparted to the best of his ability. I wasn't sure how deeply it had stuck, though, as I approached an older couple with their heads facing the ground, in a plot that looked to be promising as far as glass finding went. I smiled at them through theoretically clenched teeth as I asked "what are you looking for?" The man said "heart shaped rocks." at which statement, I unclenched my metaphorical teeth and smiled more genuinely than before. Like, oh, is that all? Cool. And then I exposed my vulnerability. I said "I like to look for sea glass." The woman, who had not been a part of that conversation, then approached, and I, feeling extremely relieved and therefore jovial, said "So, you're looking for heart shaped rocks?" she said "No! I have a ton of those already! Just interesting looking shells now." and she showed me a few. Still feeling relieved, I said "cool, awesome," and the man, looking sheepish, said "heart rocks, interesting shells, and the occasional piece of glass." That was all it took to bring the snarl and hiss back out of me. May my giving angel of sharing and giving not be too terribly disappointed in my character flaws. But the thing is, when I am searching the beach for glass, I feel like a kid, do you know what I mean? I never ever get tired of it, and I sometimes gasp out loud when I find a particularly incredible piece just laying there near the shore. I don't care what your passion is, I hope that everyone in the world has one, something that excites and brings the child likeness inside out, because it's the simple joys in life that make you so happy throughout the days and weeks and years of a lifetime, and THAT is the lesson I want my children to pick up vicariously from me, if it wasn't accidentally already passed down through genetics.

-XOXO,

Cold the Whole World Over

2011-12-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem best read as the song, ""The Chain," #23 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I no longer want to be the girl
who sabotaged her former self
to sell a painting to a man in Times Square
for 32 cents and a bagel.
I no longer want to be the girl
who looked at the pretty things all around her
and drew a line through the middle of them
with her permanent black marker

one week before the antique dealer

was about to make her an offer
she could or couldn't refuse;

it would have been her choice.
I no longer want to be the girl

who ate her way to the North Pole

only to find that it wasn't a land mass,

and nothing grew there,

it was just the frozen form

of ocean no longer waving
no longer roaring

just cold just deep old cold
the whole world over.

-XOXO,

Slide Quietly Out

2011-12-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, " The Scientist," #41 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Slide quietly out of a comfortable chair,
then March

to the window,
and March

out the door,
March

while the sky pours,
March

while the sky scorches,
March

while the sky changes from raining to scorching,
knowing that

whatever is in between won't be felt.
(i thought i could look at your picture;
i thought a lot of things i hadn't yet done.)

-XOXO,

Pheasants

2011-11-27T21:11:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is best served up as the songs, "The Other Side Of The World," #32 on the playlist, then "Arms," #29 on the playlist, play in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on those songs in that order, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Your meal was savored succulence; I
tasted salt, I tasted sweet, I tasted
cohesive blends of waterfowl.
I was satiated, I wanted more.
I was full and happy and nappy and then
the table was cleared, utensils washed, put away
full cupboards wiped down and closed
the table bore not a crumb
the peasant ate pheasant and all
was not satisfied, she wondered,
so many things did she wonder.
(and if you are ever serving again, she will
order off of the menu, straight off of the bone)

-XOXO,

Shells and stones and ancient bones

2011-11-23T17:44:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, " The Scientist," #42 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Shells and stones and ancient bones
are scattered at my feet;
A whispered roar of memory
from deep within the deep;
Once inside a body strong
that navigated waves,
and calculated distant shores,
and thought of me as brave.
The water numbs, then chills the soul,
all murky down below.
The sun, too bright to look upon,
still blinding in it's glow,
reflects off of her surfaces;
bakes sand midafternoon;
that burns the barefoot bottom feet,
and then is gone too soon.
While all around, the stones of bones,
their stories left to chance,
dried out, washed clean, these shells of our
haphazard remembrance.

-XOXO,

Human Nature

2011-11-19T19:03:00.001-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song "Good Intentions," #38 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

It is human nature to be drawn to something because
it looks from a distance like what we are looking for,
and when we pick it up and realize that it is not what we thought,
it is human nature to sometimes hold it and put in in our pocket, anyway,
making an exception because we
are so tired of looking and waiting.
Sometimes this works, and we find that we have gained
a treasure different than we'd thought we wanted,
but none the less satisfying,
and maybe comforting, even,
in it's own way.
and sometimes it starts to feel heavy in our pocket,
the thing that is not the exact thing,
so we have to toss it out, and take the time to feel the emptiness of
an empty pocket for awhile,
but the unexpected lightness of it, too.

-XOXO,

Terry and The Man

2011-11-14T22:14:00.001-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Superman," #2 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I am once again driving home from work while listening to NPR. I listen to NPR because I enjoy talk radio, and also because my singing-along-at-the-top-of-my-lungs-like-I-am-the-superstar-and-the-actual-singer-is-just-my-backup stations are all playing commercials or songs I dislike. Terry Gross's guest on "Fresh Air" is an Astrophysicist. (The last interview I heard of hers was with one of the cast members of Saturday Night Live. ) This man has won a Nobel award of some sort, because apparently, he studies supernovas that have exploded. This is, according to him, a tricky thing to study, because you need very special telescopes, and because the nature of the supernova is that there is no way of predicting when one will explode, so I guess you sort have to watch and find one by chance when you are looking at the sky through your super lens at the exact right time. The thing that the Really Smart Man has told Terry, and that she has regurgitated for us, her listening audience, is that "The universe is gradually getting larger."

Well Duh. (I could have told her that...)
(...only I don't have the degree to back up my claims; just children, by whom the entire universe is measured.)

What is bothering me about this conversation is that Astrophysicist Man can tell Terry Gross anything, anything at all, and Terry, and all of us, the listening public, will just listen and nod like we believe what he was saying, even if we don't understand it, because he is the one with the title and the degree, and because we have not studied it ourselves, nor do we care to do so, anytime soon.

Therefore, we have no way to disprove any of it.
Astrophysicist:"The universe is getting larger."
Listening audience: nod nod
Astrophysicist: "I study exploding supernovas because I can see them through this very specialized equipment I own and know how to properly operate."
Listening Audience: nod nod
Astrophysicist: "I am careful to only operate this highly technicalogical machinery when I am absolutely sober and have had a good night's sleep."

Listening Audience: nod nod
Astrophysicist: "Last night, I saw rainbows exploding into actual Skittles, only they did not land on earth, they landed on Pluto, which you know is no longer a planet, it is now a star or a comet or a figment of the collective imagination of the entire intergalactic wing of NASA. We just like to add a little blue dot on the map of the planets sometimes when we get bored."
Listening Audience: nod nod

-XOXO,

Jeremy

2011-11-04T20:18:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem goes best as the song, "Wherever you will go," #42 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The flash flood hit me sideways,
a reminder to clean out the storm drain,
clear the leaves from the thing that grew last season,
then let go of what had dried up and died.
(When you were small, you were golden,
and I marveled at your colors-
white blond on olive tan-
all the things that I am not, birthed through me,
me at my most creative.)
There was no time to steel myself
against the thing that was knocking me off of my feet.

-XOXO,

Any Other Tuesday

2011-11-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Paradise," #43 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

So there I was in the middle of my nightmare, just at the part where the two headed sea monster lifts his head out of the middle of the open sea, in which I have unwillingly found myself. I have been having this dream for 17 years, I think. Only this time, I blinked, and it wasn't a dream.
Blink
Blink

how did I get here?
There are those who say that the ocean is the culmination of all of the worlds tears, and that's why it is so salty. How ironic that the one thing we all need, we have an abundance of, yet in a form that, if we drink it, will kill us. How often have I indulged in my own emotional suicide, simply by taking little sips here and there at my own ocean; so sure it's enticing appearance is what I need to make it through this day. I'm no longer so sure that such self indulgence is a good thing. I used to believe that it was.
It had started out to be a Tuesday. I was going to meet a friend for lunch. Let me interrupt myself here to issue this advice: when making plans to meet a friend for lunch, be sure to remember whether this is one of your sane friends or not. Not only is Joel off center, he is the most insane person I have ever been semi close to. I say semi close because how can one be fully close to someone who is so busy swinging from one extreme to the next, as if on his own internal pendulum? if you get too close you might lose an eye. Still, even not close, Joel and I have always been close. We haven't seen each other in, like, 10 years, but we have always been close. I would do the math for you, but I only just made it through Geometry and Statistics because I was too busy daydreaming and answering my own internal formulas to pay attention in class. So when Joel showed up at the pub, instead of saying "hi," or "how are you," like other people do, the first thing he said was, "There are whales off the coast in Santa Cruz right now!"

Me: "let's go see them!"
Joel: "I'll drive."

Let me interrupt myself here to issue this advice: When making plans to fill in the blank of your own life, be sure to remember whether you are sane or not. I am only semi sane, usually. Why are so many relationships based on the consummation of too many calories, anyway?

We drove off in a car headed towards the end of the land,

the beginning of the water,

the end of where I exist as a solid unit and my subconscious mind take over.

Where the sidewalk ends.

Where the Wild Things Are.

Where the world drops off into liquid fear.

I, like so many sanity seeking folks I know, like to stand back from the edge of that place, and watch from a safe distance. But that was before I had a crazy man driving the car, (ask yourself, why did I agree to strap into the passengers seat of a crazy man's car?) illegally making phone calls to rent a kayak as he drove. He was also calling his cousin to meet us at the kayak place because standing on the shore was not enough for Joel, and he knew it would not be enough for his cousin, either. They both wanted to be out there, where whales were a live happening. They wanted to actually jump off of the kayak and swim with the whales. They wanted to sing songs with the whales and watch their IQ's leap 20 points. I just wanted to make it out of the experience alive enough to actually enjoy whatever IQ I was left with on dry land.

Let me interrupt myself here to issue this advice: Always be sure the people who are accompanying you to your greatest fear at least have a holy reverence for your fear, or at least are not going to go barreling head first into it so you have no chance to do the thing half way, even if you wanted to.
Or be like me, and completely disregard your own advice.

Here's why I agreed to get in the kayak with my crazy friend and his even crazier cousin:

Not because I wanted to do the thing that terrified me, but because I wanted to have done it.

I sat in a kayak with two fearless men who did not slow down as the open ocean approached, but sped up to be a part of it; who, when they saw whales, paddled as fast as they could

directly over where the whales had just gone under. I was the only one who considered the possibility of being swatted by the whale's massive body, of being killed, or worse,

Very.

Badly.

Hurt.

(And then to have to continue living.)

After being swallowed whole by wave upon wave of my own fear, I eventually found that since I had no choice but to be fully in this moment, I let go and found myself on the shores of the peace that passes all understanding. I unclenched myself long enough to realize that a kayak, though tiny compared to the whole of the ocean, practically driftwood against the strength of a humpback whale, is actually fairly stable. Plus we had oars; I had much more control of this moment than I had been willing to believe.

Unexpectedly, the whales, right in front of our kayak, both jumped out of the water headfirst, facing each other.

I think we were 20 feet away from them.

I have never seen anything like that, and neither have you.

It wasn't until I was standing on solid land, the kayak having been securely secured to the top of the car, that I looked down and realized that there were salt deposits all over my arms, legs, and face; the places usually only touched by the salt of my own sweat, my own tears, had been purified from some primitive, deep store where the tears of all of the whole of the world were touching me, and I chose to bear witness. I did not wash it off for at least the rest of the day.

-XOXO,

I Save A Fish (The Beginning of the End)

2011-10-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Crashing Down," #29 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song. Then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)(...still waiting...)

I saved the life of a fish today.

It was just flopping there on the shore, near the water, but just outside of it. I'd never seen that before, and I've been to the shore about 27,338 times. Not that I have been counting or anything. I was fascinated by the fish, so full of life and floppiness. Yet I knew it was dying. I knew it by the way he was talking to me, his mouth flopping open and shut, open and shut, like he was speaking to me in his ancient, native fish language about all of the things he feared and hoped...which were likely all of the things that I feared and hoped, too, and I wanted to say to him, "I know," because I did know. I had so much in common with that fish that I would have liked to have sat him down at the nearby coffee shop and done some lip flapping of my own, in the language he would not understand, either, but which would have mirrored everything he had just said to me back at him. I sensed he did not have time for it, though. I knew that the humane thing to do would be to throw the fish as far as I could out into the ocean. But I am not nearly that magnanimous. I could not stand to touch his slimy fish body, though I did admire the beauty of his rainbow scales and how they glowed in the sunlight. I noticed some nearby seaweed, still wet, so I wrapped that around the fish, the idea being to pick him up in the sea weed and throw the whole live fish burrito wrap into the sea. But the reason that the whole concept of the "live fish" burrito has never taken off in fish markets around the world, aside from obvious reasons, is that live fish just fling themselves right out of that burrito wrapper; they do not like to be contained, especially if their wrapper is itself wet and slippery. I will point out here that seaweed is quite healthy to eat, and the concept of seaweed wrapped fish burritos is actually a pretty good idea, so good, in fact, that I am surprised no one else ever thought of it before.

"But Michelle,

My imaginary reader interrupts here-
"Michelle, someone else did already think of that, and called it 'sushi.'"
Oh.
"...and the fish is not alive, but raw, which is as close as you can get."

Oh ya.

So anyway, after the fish flung itself back onto the sand, having decided that my seaweed sandwich idea was not in it's best interest, I had to think of something else. And since I could come up with no other way to get the fish back into his desired ocean with my own two hands, I had no choice but to kick the fish back into the water. Only I also couldn't stand the thought of my feet touching the fish, either. So I sort of dug my toes in the sand right under where the fish was, and kicked the sand up towards the ocean. At the time I did this, the tide rolled in, so it ended up being a group effort, my self from one end, the ocean from the other. When the tide rolled back, the fish was still on the shore, though closer to sea, so I had to repeat this fish kicking process a few more times, and the ocean continued to help me from it's end of the bargain. Eventually, the sea rolled back out, and took the fish with it. I imagine by this time, the fish had regained his sense of hope, and started swimming on it's own again, no longer requiring the assistance of a random beach girl and the entire weight of the ocean. I imagine that he swam out with gusto, and that now there was a message in all of his lip flopping, and he was able to carry it on to his fellow fish friends. I hope to someday be done with my own shore flopping, my own open mouthed yapping to those who don't have a clue what I am saying, or how to save me from my own extinction, but who nevertheless put forth the effort and creativity to try, in hopes that something greater than all of us will catch me on the other end, bless them. I was encouraged by this thought as I watched the receding tide.

But most likely what actually happened is that once the fish got out to the sea I had helped him get back into, he was eaten by a fish much larger than himself, and that it happened so fast, as he was in mid "never give up" hope inducing speech, and he never saw his own doom coming. This is as it should be.

-XOXO,

why i run

2011-10-21T22:44:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Gravity," #20 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

because when I'm not doing it,
I forget how much I hate doing it,
which is the only reason
anyone runs.
Today I went slow, because of a busted leg
that sometimes I can pound anyway,
sometimes not, and today
was a "sometimes not."
Still, I ran what I could because life
is running up hill carrying the broken
aching thing.
We carry this pain up the mountain,

and wince.

I kept my eyes down just at the
next step in front of me,
since knowing I have more to go than that far
is enough to send me reeling,
and sometimes
even knowing that much is still too much to know.
so I close my eyes and pray my way,
by feel more than sight,
in faith that the next step
will be the one in front of my foot.
I heard a voice telling me to look out
over the vista point since I was here anyway.
I was not particularly moved by the buildings down below,
though it was an impressive view.

-XOXO,

Selling Me

2011-10-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Round Here, #36 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

"Don't try to sell me on you"

you said,

but

I have no need

to sell you something that

I already own.

That's why I am free to give you things-
rocks and books and pictures I drew, something
that reminds me of you or your shadow,
something that reminds me of me in the ways I
like to be remembered.
And you would look me funny
with your face slightly turned and your
body language temporarily frozen in mid
gesture of guffaw
when I tell you that,
your eyes would say "you are lying,"
then soften slightly, rise to actually meet mine finally,
and ask, "are you REALLY sure about that?"
by which point I have already moved on in the conversation
to saying the thing that is me being who naturally comes out of my mouth
which is me and not some
version who wants
to be proven by the thing I already know inside, even if
you don't yet know it.

It took me until this afternoon

to realize that what I do doesn't matter

half as much as why I do it,

and that my freedom in knowing

means that you are free to not have to.

-XOXO,

Empty Shells

2011-10-18T21:18:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, " Other Side Of The World," #33 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Last night I had two dreams, both about being stuck in a shopping mall with a lot of levels and a lot of stairs. I remember the pervasive feeling of loneliness, and it was a huge contained space in which to feel so very deeply lonely.
So today, I drove to the most open space I know. All the way there, I sang loudly at the top of my lungs and imagined I was singing on a stage where people were listening and loving it-not loving my voice, necessarily, but loving ME, for being there, for doing it, for my moxie and willingness to stand before them and sing, anyway. It was overcast when I got to the shore, and I was alone, and I let the waves crash over me because that was where the glass was hidden among the pebbles, the treasure just there where the waves were breaking, so I let myself get soaked by them, I let them wash over me as I continued searching beneath.
Later, when I was cold and goose bumped, I drove away wondering where I was going. I was so tired and wanted a place to rest my head. Shivering takes a lot out of a person, especially the soul shiver of not knowing where I might exist in this world, but guessing that it's some place I have not yet seen, or that has not yet been discovered, or is not even a physical place on this planet. How many rocks and broken shells a person can turn over, shells that once contained something, that now when you hold them up to your ear you hear the rush and whisper of the lives they once contained, what they at one time housed. I drove back with a bucket full of beautiful, empty shells and wondered where I would eventually lay my head.

-XOXO,

White Board

2011-10-18T20:06:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "The End of The Innocence," #40 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

We write the truth, our truths-
in red, purple and black,
bruise colors-
they are hard to read even
when you press down,
the ink is old and drying, but
we write because it is still our truth
still our bruises, ours
alone
("if I didn't trust you,
I wouldn't let you write on my whiteboard,"
you said)

-XOXO,

Other such smallish things of delicious proportions

2011-10-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post goes best with a side of 100% pure maple syrup and as the song, "Uncharted," #27 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

So I don't know about you, but I just spent about an hour and a half inventing a new recipe. I was craving pancakes. I almost just said, 'I was craving 'a pancake,' but that would have been misleading; I don't believe in eating only one pancake/cookie/cupcake/ or other such smallish thing of delicious proportions...I think that to eat just one is a form of torture heretofore not developed by warring countries against their prisoners. It is much easier to eat none than just one. I don't believe in portion control. I think that if you are going to indulge in the good stuff, go big, go large, go huger than gigantic. The only other option is abstinence; there is no sane in between place. Trust me.

My friend Vicki and I used to create these elaborate feasts for each other when we were hungry. We would scour the fridge and cupboards and come up with a smorgasbord of whatever looked delicious. Often, it involved Pillsbury Grand biscuits that we would dip in ranch dressing with a side of sugar wafers-the pink, white, and chocolate variety pack-which we would eat while watching some made for TV movie that her mom had recorded the week before. Often, if would involved finishing whatever variety of cookies were in the house. Man your posts, Oreos. Try to hold up a fight against us and our glasses of milk, chips ahoy!. We decided that it was most conciderate of us to eat all of the cookies instead of leaving just one behind for her sister. We discussed heartily and agreed that for her sister, or anyone else, to come home to a house that contained only one cookie would have been cruel, so we did not leave a single cookie behind. It was a mercy killing; it was the least we could do. Sisterly love has no limits.* I would like to point out here that yes, we were sober during these smorgasbord-athons, unless you consider the Ritalin that I was taking in doctor prescribed large quantities that made me ravenous every 3 hours, yet still caused me to lose about 20 lbs. And Vic was just thin because she was the kind of young toned thing that we all love to hate. And also, this was just about the time when Vic and I took up running as a sport, because we had heard that running was "good for us." I'm the only one of us who stuck to it, and I now run enough miles every week for both of us. But she has asthma as an excuse, having been born almost 3 months premature, so it is only natural and right that I would be the one to keep up with the running. But I digress.
Ahem.
So there I was, craving a bushel full of pancakes this afternoon, but not willing to invest in the carbohydrates. The only plausible solution I could come up with was to make up my own recipe, and so I did; in roughly 17 seconds, (but I wasn't actually timing it) I had come up with a no carb recipe involving quinoa and crushed flax seeds which was already causing my salivatory glands to work overtime, and I was already serving them up at a cute-ish, small-ish pancake and smoothie cafe that also plays live music various nights of the week in the quaint comfortable room in the back where the customers sit on mismatched easy chairs and plush couches with colorful throw pillows that sometimes get tossed around if the Friday night music is particularly rousing and the crowd is particularly randy. And then I went home and created my dream concoction.
It was delicious, and at the same time, not so much. In fact, it kind of sucked. I loved it, anyway. In my mind, I am already tweaking what needs to be tweaked to make the next batch better than this one. Like for instance, actually measuring the ingredients might sometimes come in handy. So much of life is about the pursuit of creating the perfect pancake. The thing is, you can never get it perfect all the way. I enjoyed the mother load of pancakes that I ate today because I had taken the time to make them myself, and because of the satisfaction that comes with that. And also because in the end, they weren't half bad; in fact, they were pretty darn tasty. I would toast to that, if my fingers weren't so maple syrup sticky.

-XOXO,

*Except for when it does.

What you didn't know

2011-10-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Somewhere Only We Know" plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)
You gave me a card with a picture
on the front that you unknowingly
pulled out of the dream I've been having
for 17 years,
the one image I had yet not figured out,
the one image I had not yet told you about,
at least not with words,
and then I knew.
Seeing in front of me on paper what I had only been seeing
on the inside of the bones of my skull
told me in an instant
what 17 years of analysis had not,
and I did not need to read what was inside-
there were words you had written
but they were someone else's language,
did not make sense to me, because
they were wall words,
and I was lightening, and what does lightening
understand of concrete,
except to illuminate the truth of it,
except to shatter it in two.
(Why are you so afraid that I
am not afraid of your truth?)

-XOXO

Alone in a room with a child

2011-10-12T20:21:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Blackbird," #22 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

i am alone in a room with a clock,
and the clock has large red numbers.

Scratch that, i am not alone,
a child is in the room with me,
one so small and quiet and still
you could forget she was here for
half a second. I can hardly see her in
the dark pale light, she looks like a
lump of blanket; but then she sighs
in her sleep, a giving up of the last breath
she had been holding too long,
lets it out like finally.
If only waking hours could align in such a peace.
Tonight, a separate stillness,
as i stay awake
in a room where she sleeps

-XOXO,

Dead Seagulls

2011-10-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the songs, "Other Side Of The World," then "If I Die Young," #34 and #38 on the playlist, play in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on those songs in that order, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I guess I never noticed before today how many dead seagulls a girl can find at the beach. I swear I saw at least 5 seagull carcasses, and on a smallish patch of beach, too. This is starting to sound like some kind of ecological message about saving the planet, but the thing is, and this is what disturbed me about the situation today, seagulls aren't even pleasant when they are alive. Dead, they're good at decomposing and stinking up your airspace. Alive, they are good at crapping on your head and chasing around your potato chip clutching toddler. Either way, they are rude. Either way, they are only good at ruining your picnic.
I talked to a woman a few years ago who told me that because she was from Illinois, she had always thought that seagulls were really cool birds. To her landlocked mindset, seagulls seemed like some kind of magical, mystical creature, like something out of Greek mythology or something symbolic of freedom, so close they were to the ocean and the sky and therefore God and such. It wasn't until she moved her family to a California beach town that she understood the mindset of those who actually live among seagulls; that they are, more accurately, rat birds.
Unfortunately, by the time she and her family understood this, her daughter already had seagulls tattooed all across her back.
I don't mean to sound heartless; I am truly not pro-extinction of any species. Save the Seagulls and let's live together in harmony and give peace a chance and all of that. But it was clear to me, today, at least, that feathers and stink are all that that remains of a life spent squawking after the hopes of someone else's cookie crumbs.

-XOXO,

Burning

2011-10-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

I remember being inside of a building that was exploding. The thing is, I had seen it from the outside, shining as the sunlight bounced directly off of it's walls, so straight and tall; I could see the first shiver in the shining off of one of the windows, the shift in the light, and instead of running away, I ran straight towards it; right to the very center of the building, and stood there as the structure exploded around me. This is a strange position to be in, or at least uncommon. Around me, things crashed, electric wires got tripped and there were sparks and color almost like fireworks, but all I could hear was the constant underlying hum and crash against crash. When I looked down, sparks were coming off of my fingertips-I had touched some electric current, and it had left me charged, a live wire, so everything I touched was made electric by my internal flame. Strange to stand in the middle of your own implosion, and feel nothing, and be nothing, except just a part of it, the heart of it, but that cannot be true can it? To know that you have become the girl with electric fingers? Yes, it can, and it is maybe not so strange after all.

-XOXO,

Beautiful when you cry

2011-10-09T09:04:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Closer," #35 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

It took a lot of courage
to place your bullet in my chest.
But what I want to know is how
did it feel
to remove it first from your own heart,
with no anesthetic, not even a hand to squeeze,
a shoulder to bite down on,
just your own raw bloody fingers pulling
at a thing so deeply lodged it was as if
you could pull apart your own center of gravity
and free fall forever.
("you're beautiful when you cry," he said)
I want to remind you that even if your fingernails
scratched your skin (or mine? Forgive me if I forget which

is which sometimes) in the process of raw surgery,
you were as gentle as possible
but a bullet in the chest is still a bullet in the chest,
you know?
There are so many of them in the world, and sometimes
we get caught in the crossfire
left to bleed out-
One should never bleed out alone, one
should have another heart, of matching intensity

to share the weight of all of our deepest bullets,
and you found mine
and did the bravest thing you could, even
if it was the only thing you knew how to do
or, more likely,
that nothing else was anything you possibly could do-
and you said, "you're beautiful when you cry."
you're beautiful when you cry.

-XOXO,

(for my favorite donkey)

Hopes Of Humpbacks

2011-10-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is meant to be read as the song, "Arms," #34 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

On this much sand,

you stood;

the solid thing,

so I held on.
In front of us,

dolphins dove deep

our focus was the

horizon, our hopes of humpbacks.

Waves washed our feet til
i forgot or remembered or both
that the crashing in need not feel so tragic,
the shattering so sharp and jagged-
we'd followed the shell line to here this far;
my colored glass hid in your pocket.

-XOXO

Cathedrals in my heart

2011-10-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post, once again, should be read as the song, "Every teardrop is a waterfall" plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I was looking at a picture of a cathedral somewhere in France. It was intimidating to look at, tall and looming like a nightmare or a question I have yet to answer. It was built with careful attention to detail, which took a lot of time, skilled craftsmen, industrial equipment. Some people build these kinds of things naturally, or almost naturally, and they go to classes to learn the part that does not come naturally to them. They spend years perfecting the engineering science behind the craft.

But I am not the kind of girl who has any large stones or stained glass lying around, or power tools, or even any particular skills. I don't even own a hammer. I am the kind of girl who gets distracted by the glue drying on my hands from where I was building a Popsicle stick house, of the "design-as-I-go" variety. At some point, my fingers get too glue sticky to finish the project, so I am distracted peeling long layers of glue off of my hands; it now has my hand prints imprinted in it; if you didn't know it was glue, you might think I was peeling off my own leprosy. This is like an interesting form of such soothing therapy that I don't even notice that my Popsicle sticks have fallen over, into a sticky shapeless mess that you would never know I had spent any time focusing on arranging.

Things crumble around me.

I do not take it personally,

though maybe I should

pay a little more attention.

Instead, I peel skin glue,

but what I really want is the cathedral,

the answer to my own question,

and a choir inside, singing in perfect pitch so that anyone traveling past will stop and marvel at the echoes enlarging it's magnificence.
This year, maybe I'll ask for a hammer for Christmas. Maybe I'll ask for some plaster of Paris.
-XOXO,

Heart Surgery For Dummies

2011-09-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

(Pre-script: This post best read as the song, "Every teardrop is a waterfall," #37 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading...I'll wait...)(still waiting...)

Just because

you think you have a dead heart

doesn't mean it's not beating just

underneath

what you feel,

or in this case,

don't feel.

You may have an issue with your nerve endings,

in which case I would suggest

sawing open your chest cavity,

and be sure to use a sharp blade.

See there?

It looks raw where you ripped at the muscle

and handed out pieces

(some with a vein or artery still attached)

to anyone walking past,
And oh, that, right there,

that thing that hurts you?
you don't have to keep holding it so close to your heart.

-XOXO,

One Thing

2011-09-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall,"#38 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

One thing I've learned
is that people don't fit inside neat little packages with bows,
of which you can hold onto the strings
as you finish the rest of your shopping,
then stop, sit, and untie the ribbon when you want
to look inside and make sure
that what it contains is still there,
pat it on the head or toss in a few crumbs
from left over whatever you had for dinner last night.
I've learned that strings don't fit around hearts,
that a hand is not big enough to hold the sum total of another being,
and was never meant to.
Instead, I have to walk beside you,
let you be as life sized as you are,
not the neatly cropped 3 by 5 picture I
carry around in my mind
of what I hope you look like
when you make laugh lines.
Instead I have to watch where you'll go
and how,
let you keep pace with me if you choose,
this hammer in my heart pounding away
at a chamber that was never meant to
be your suffocation.

-XOXO,

The Thought Hidden

2011-09-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Closer," #5 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

...this fragile part again.

Brush off the dust, scrub away the grime and the ring around the drain, and what you'll find is a shiny thing that reflects your face, and the exact look in your eyes at the exact moment you think it, that thing you were thinking without even realizing you were thinking it, before the next moment when your mind moved on to the next thought.

You'd never notice the moment of a thought, the second that wasn't even a second, it was just a poof of a thing, how often such a thought goes unnoticed, like the Tupperware at the back of the refrigerator hidden from view by the milk and the ketchup

but all of life is milk and ketchup milk and ketchup and sometimes mustard, though not too often because mustard stains your fingers when it touches you, and does not come out easily. (Tabasco sauce? okay, but just this once.

Inside, I'm fried bologna ready to explode.)

All this I see in my eyes now that I can see them again, now that I have scrubbed the bathtub and the mirror sparkling til my fingers bled; (not literally) I had to clean them again.

-XOXO,

A Thousand Doors

2011-09-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem best read as the songs, "The Chain," #26, then "Crashing Down," #34 on the playlist, play in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on those songs, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I am standing in front of a door
to drop off a pair of tiny unoccupied shoes
and
the door is closed.
On the inside of the door is something
precious, something cold,

something calculating,

something ticking,

something innocent,
and I
am on the outside.
A thousand doors are closed tonight,
this one has closed on me a thousand times
and will be closed to me a thousand times again.
If there is a slight breeze on my back,
I do not feel it.
If a sudden hailstorm smacks me
sideways,
I do not feel it;
I just turn around and let it pound me head on
as I walk away.
-XOXO,

Tendencies

2011-09-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem best read as the song, "Secrets," #26 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I tend to come crashing in;
There is nothing graceful about it.
Just wham, here I am and oops,
what did I break on the way down.
I usually stand up to find it was my heart
that broke the fall, and some blood
got splattered around the parameters
of this place;
but I wipe it up,
wash it out,
cry a little bit,
(just a little bit up front)
and then I settle in real comfortable and nice;
and then the next thing you know,
I have fallen asleep in your back pocket.

-XOXO,

The weight of a thing

2011-09-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Somewhere only we know," #20 on the playlist, plays in the background...or, if you prefer, "Fidelity," #8 on the playlist, works well with it, too. Go down to the playlist, click on that song or that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(still waiting...)

Yesterday at the beach,

I picked up a rock I found on the shoreline.
It was not what I expected to find,
but when I held it,
I realized that
it fit inside my palm like it was a counterpoint,

fit like nothing ever had.
It was smooth and round from tumbling through salt water,
and when I wrapped my fingers
around it,
and put my hand back down by my side,
the heaviness of the rock

felt strong enough to keep me grounded,
or, at least, strong enough to keep me
from blowing away.
It's the weight of a thing that comforts you,
and the knowledge of where it has been.

-XOXO,

Packaging

2011-08-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Good Intentions," #22 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The other day, I bought the wrong sardines.

"But Michelle, how did you know you had bought the wrong sardines?"

Gentle reader, if I am saying I bought the wrong sardines, safely assume it means that it doesn't take a B.S. in Molecular Biology to figure out that you have bought the wrong sardines.

Ahem.

It happened because I was in Lucky's, not Trader Joe's, where I usually buy them. But although the package said "Sardines in olive oil," just like the kind I usually buy, I should have been concerned when I didn't see the word "skinless" on the wrapper. Instead, I figured that since with the skin on, the sardines would look like puke in a can, that no one would have the lack of sense to try to sell them to live humans that way. How often will I have to pay for my assumptions that humanity will, in the end, do the right thing? Or at least, do the very thing that I would do? I don't know, but suddenly, it was that afternoon, and I was finally taking my lunch break at work. I took my break late, so by the time I sat down to eat, I was hungry enough to devour, in more of a lion like than lady like manner, both of the cans of sardines I had had the foresight to keep in my purse.

But then I opened the first can. And what I saw when I opened that can looked like something Jesus and his disciples had just flung out of the Sea of Galilee onto the shore with their heavy overburdened net, then sat by the fire whistling and counting as they threw sardines any old which way. From the look of it, not much else was done to the massacred fish by way of cleaning and care. I didn't even open the second can or blink when I threw it away with the first.
Always read labels and between the lines.

But if certain key lines aren't there to be read between...be afraid.

Be very afraid.

-XOXO,

crumbling

2011-08-24T19:46:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Everybody's Changing," #12 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Today is Jeremy's 10th birthday. Blink, and your baby is in the double digits, even though you have photographic evidence that he was just born yesterday...too bad the photos are all in your mind, and technology has not advanced so far as to develop that kind of pictures. I think they haven't yet found the right paper.
It's been hot lately. It's been uncomfortable, sometimes. Jeremy's cake, though baked with pure love and good intentions, crumbled into a whole lot of crumbly bits. You want to throw your hands in the air and say, "I'm sorry, Kid, we tried. In the end, I cannot control the weather or how a thing reacts to it; in the end, I may have left out a pinch of this, a touch of that; in the end, it may have been in the oven too long or too short by a millisecond." Instead, I covered the cake up with extra frosting, taking special care with the shattered parts. Frosting covers a multitude of sins; I have found this to be true over the course of my lifetime. It doesn't take away the lumpy spots, and you can tell that there is foundational damage at the base of the cake but with the frosting, it is now a thing once again glued together, once again a thing to be candle lit, sung and celebrated over, cut into and please,-everyone-have-a-piece-'d over. Because Jeremy turned 10, whether he was born yesterday or 10 years ago today. Whether or not the weather and the baking conditions coincided peacefully; he is 10, and next year he will be 11, and we will do this again, and who knows what that cake will look like or who will be around the table but
we will do this again and again because it is life, and we celebrate life, we cherish it no matter what it looks like, we savor and enjoy, and lick the last crumb and morsel of the frosting from the plate until the plate is clean.
(Happy Birthday, baby, you are still and no longer a baby, look, I have the pictures right here...)
-XOXO,

inside

2011-08-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Keep Breathing," #16 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I'm waiting in the same place I always wait: inside.
outside is clean, calm, contained, outside, I am in
one piece and smiling in case anyone is recording this
or even noticing whether I was smiling or not right now.
inside,
a storm
and it's me,
i am the storm
and i grow bigger as I swirl around and around
within myself, picking up small things in my
centrifugal momentum, things i had forgotten,
things I thought I no longer cared about,
things I thought had already died of neglect,
but look here, see they were quietly waiting to
be storm tossed up into the atmosphere,
where I choke on them, I choke them
back down my throat
until the swirling recedes
in the place i always wait,
inside.

-XOXO,

From my pet rock

2011-08-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Between the Lines," #24 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

You know the type-the people who write their family Christmas letter from the perspective of the lowest denominator in their family; typically the family dog or the new baby: "What a year it's been! First, I was born, and Mom says she's so glad THAT's over, but I have no idea what she means; I mostly just cried and slept through it, and then they were all saying that I was the cutest baby that they had ever seen, and what a miracle I am, and everyone makes googly faces at me."
Blink

Blink
It's August, so of course I have been thinking about the Holidays, and Christmas in particular. I have been wondering about the annual Christmas letters. Not that I ever write them myself. But I wonder about the people who do write them, if this is how early they get started writing, and I wonder how long it takes to erase anything negative or less than perfect about their livelihoods and children, to plan out what they are going to say. How wonderful Timmy is, how involved and excellent he is in everything he does, so golden is his touch. I don't ever write those letters; I just can't think of a whole page worth of stuff to say about how perfect we all are.

This year, I think I'll send a Christmas letter, and it will be from my pet rock.

It will be a very short letter.
-XOXO,

Short Poem

2011-07-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to care

about the light bulb I keep

forgetting to replace. The world

is dark naturally, especially at night.

I dream in color anyway.

-XOXO,

Some Of Us

2011-07-25T22:09:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Gravity," #28 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Some of us can't relax
unless we have a bottle in one hand
a bottle in the other-
what is in the bottle doesn't matter
different things for different ones of us
at different times and I
am all of those "ones of us"
at some time or other.
the way I do is
I will drain this bottle down then
refill it with all of the tears it was blocking,
then I can finally release my fierce grip on it's
neck, so
I let go wildly, reckless in the letting go like
whoosh and like who cares-
then comes the impact
as crash and glass shattering
cuts my toes and makes me bleed
at least a little.
The rest of the shards get washed out to sea
with the force of the tears they contained-
to be tossed to be tossed to be tossed, jostled
by all the salt of every ocean and once smooth,
deposited on some shore
upon which I have yet to awaken.

-XOXO,

Nesting

2011-07-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post is at it's best when read as the song, "Blackbird,"#30 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Outside my window is an Italian Cypress tree; when I say "outside," I mean that the tree is not two feet away from the window. For some reason, this year, the mother bird decided to build her nest neatly inside the tree at a level where if you stand on a chair, you can look straight into the nest and watch her baby birds for her. There is window glass separating you, but as I said before, you are not even two feet from them. That is close enough to see the distinction between their tiny baby bird eyeballs and the brown outlining them. If you realize how tiny that is, you have a sense of just how close you are to these baby birds, and how often are you ever that close to baby birds in the nest, to watching life science happen right in front of you, and not on a screen? Except that the window separating you is like a TV screen, if you want to think of it that way.
The first thing I did this morning was check on the progress of that fluff mass; that's what they look like when they are all asleep and huddled together. Even so close, you wouldn't think it was anything but left over dirty cotton balls that somehow landed in the tree, except for the collective sighs of rhythmic breathing that moves the mass up and down. But then, keep watching and a beak pops out, and then the magic of four separate beaks and four separate bird bodies silently individual but all calling out. When nothing happens, they fall right back into one sleeping indistinguishable mass. Where is their mother, and why does she leave them there for long stretches of time, alone? I know that babies need to sleep sleep sleep, but I also know that sleep is often a sign of depression, and if your mother were gone most of the day, and you were just a baby not old enough to make anything of yourself in this world, not even old enough to leave the proverbial or actual nest, don't you think you might be a little bit depressed? Think about it.

I see the mother about once a day. She feeds them, and then she flies away again. When they open their tiny bird beaks and raise their tiny bird heads to be fed, they look like that whack-a-do arcade game where you are supposed to whack the thing with a mallet when it pops up. I've always been sort of good at that game. It's the kind I play over and over so that I can get a gillion tickets with which to claim some prize I don't care about, which will likely break the moment I open it's wrapper. It's more about earning the thing than the thing itself.

Once mother bird is out of food for the babies, (or maybe when she is just fed up, she has had enough, somewhere among all of the childrearing and housekeeping she has lost her identity and needs to go and find herself in a wilderness or game of tennis or badmitton or backgammon) she flies away, the so-tiny-as-to-almost-be-imaginary bird beaks settle themselves into their sleeping dirty cotton ball mass again and resume their sleep. I see her point. Why stick around when her babies are so boring so often. I think she was deliberate in placing her nest where it would face the window just so, knowing that while she worked, the human kind would watch her babies for her. It's so hard to find good help these days, but I got my official babysitting certification badge at the age of 14. Someday, when their fluff becomes winglike and they insist on flying off to live their own lives, she will look back and regret every moment she is not here for them now. I'm just saying. Until then, I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, fascinated by every day miracles hidden in plain sight.

-XOXO,

What it washed over

2011-07-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post is best paired with the song, "Between the lines," #27 on the playlist. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Do you remember that place on the river
the children waded while we watched and rested
I think there was river glass,
I think there were cheese itz
(I didn't know what I was doing, but neither did you)

I know the sun was just warm enough,
and it glinted off the water in splotches
that looked like glory,
and I thought to myself that we
were touching heaven-
did I ever tell you that, or did I just think it?
And then there were the storms,
so unexpected in late spring-
I don't remember them well;
just, they blended, just, they were cold-
I remember a lot of cold-
and beneath the cold, some parts
that I wish to forget, I WISH
to only remember the reflection of the water, not
what it covered over, not
what it washed away, before the washing away-
Oh.
Remember going back to the place, the exact same place
but the storm had blown it over,
we had to dig a difficult path through
fallen down trees that had stood for ages
it wasn't the same
(but what ever is)
the tide was high,
the beach was mostly gone,
but I remember I

did find a rock that day-
perfectly hand sized, smooth from years of being brushed under water,
and I did find a thick piece of river glass, with 2 letters
pressed into it,
which is a rare find, maybe
once in a lifetime.

-XOXO,

The Things We Lose

2011-07-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post meant to be read as the song, "Uncharted," #39 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Today, I ran outside, not on the treadmill, and I remembered some things. Mainly that when you run outside, you feel the rotation of the planet, so it's like the earth is one huge treadmill. Hop on wherever, whenever. I remembered that I run because I love to run. I run for the simple joy of feeling like I am alive and flying. Everything else is just fringe benefits. Children know this, and run hard and fast and don't care if they get grass stained or dirt smeared. At least when I was a kid, I didn't care about those things- 'cause I knew my mother has stain remover spray.

And then there was the time when I was playing tackle football after dinner with my brothers. I was crouched and determined, and when I heard "hut hut hike!" I blasted out of there like a rocket...directly full speed ahead into my oldest brother's forehead. Apparently he had also been crouched, ready, and determined. Our parents and other brothers watched as the bumps Mike's and my forehead rose and grew right before their eyes. Mike was upset at his injury; he couldn't believe I would just run straight into his head like that. But those things did not really bother me at all. What really bothered me was that my forehead bump was not as big as Mike's...

...'cause if you're gonna get an injury...

The things we tend to lose as we grow up are some of the most important things: Keys, wallets, bone density, and the tendency to take off running at top speed for no apparent reason. I'm determined never to lose that; only I know what I'm running from, and I'd like to keep it that way.

-XOXO,

I require my people to smell good-A Manifesto, of sorts

2011-07-07T12:30:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Blackbird," #30 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

One of the things I appreciate about being a personal stylist is that where I work, the men dress up. They wear suits and ties and nicely polished shoes.

Think about that for a minute.

I'll wait.

Here's a tip, and I'm not even going to charge you for it: There's no such thing as "too dressed up." If anything, you can probably stand to dress up more. Look down at your outfit.

See what I mean?

I don't ever waste energy feeling anxious or embarrassed about being the most "fancy" person in a room. If anything, I'm not really thinking about it. Because when you are put together first thing in the morning, you are done, and you can just go about your day confidently, not worried about how you look. Because you already know that you took the time to be "done" before you left the house. Right??? Not in this society. I am by no means anti Ugg boot and other such knock offs. But I feel that Ugg boots symbolize a lot of what our society has lost, which is that we no longer strive. We laid down our weapons a long time ago, on the battlefield of comfort. We surrendered the white flag, then pulled that white flag down and wrapped it around ourselves and fell asleep. And then we woke up and drove to Safeway or Starbucks without ever changing out of the same ratty sweatpants we had fallen asleep in the night before.

I would like to interrupt myself here and plead with you, gentle reader: whatever you fell asleep wearing the night before should never, ever be worn out in a public setting. Never. Ever. Because I don't care how clean you were when you fell asleep, what you wore to bed the night before smells like dead skin cells the next morning. It's one of those mysterious scientifically unproven facts of life.

I have this saying...I say that I require my people to smell good. By "My people," I mean anyone who is in my near vicinity. In other words, wear antipersperant deodorant, wear body cream or body spray or fancy cologne or perfume. Brush your teeth regularly and vigorously. In other words, make the effort and be diligent about it. It's good for the gingivitus protection, it's good for the gums, it's good for the bloodstream, and it's a common courtesy to your fellow human.

Years ago, and still in many places around the world, people used to have to work for what they had, so they worked hard, and then they had babies who were born to the people who had worked hard for what they had, but since the babies never had to work for what they had, they developed a sense of "we deserve to have everything we never worked for handed to us on a platter. Wah wah wah. Change my diaper."

But the point isn't to look around and say "Ok, I have enough, I can stop striving now; my parents already did that. I'm already smart, and I know that because I was put in self confidence class when I was 2 years old." (gag me)

I don't care if you started out life in a grass hut with no shoes, or if you were born to a fortune, if you have a photographic memory or have to read the same line over and over and still can't remember what you just read. Your job is to build up from what you have been given. To whom much has been given, much is expected. In other words, the MORE you have, the MORE you should be working hard to build upon it. NOT just take your wealth for granted. I am not talking only about financial wealth, I am also talking about natural talents, abilities, and intelligence. Don't just sit smugly on the fact that you can do such and such a thing with little or no effort. Do the thing to the effort that it hurts you, and keep doing it at that level in order to build endurance, balance, and muscle tone. And I do not only mean physical muscles, although believe that those are one of the things a person needs to develop, as well.

*Important note: When working hard, you will know you are working hard because you will be sweating hard. This will cause you to temporarily not smell good. But it's necessary, and the point is to not lounge around all day long in your sweaty work out clothes. I'm assuming you are intelligent enough to catch my drift here...and today, my drift smells like cocoa butter and Philosophy's "Amazing Grace" perfume.

You see, what happens when someone works hard for something is that it builds in the person a sense of self, a confidence and renewed vigor; it causes the person to keep awake and living, as opposed to just sleep walking through life. Sleep walking is easier, and that is why so many people wear Ugg boots to go about their entire day. I am not Ugg boot opposed, but I think they should be worn as slippers around the house and before going to bed. Not to the grocery store. Not to the *(fill in the blank anyplace you can think of that is most definitely a public place)* And when you don't develop that sense of industry in yourself, you lack the confidence to put forth the effort to take care of yourself and make yourself look presentable, because you don't realize that you are worth the effort. But if your children are worth the $40.00 hair bow and light up sparkly shoes, then why the heck is their mother slumping around town in sweat pants? If that is the image you present to your children, then that is what you are grooming them to ultimately become. Think about it, people. Now go change your pants.

-XOXO,

P.S. Just today, I told my 6 year old son, "Ethan, You have a great capacity for learning, so never stop learning; you can never learn too much." He said "Okay," and skipped off. A few minutes later, my 9 year old son walked into the room and I said "Jeremy, I love you with all my heart. You have a great capacity for learning, so never stop learning; you can never learn too much." He said "How are those thoughts related to each other?"

Untitled

2011-07-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem has no song to accompany it. Go down to the playlist and turn it off. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I killed the song you were about to sing;

you were just about to start singing, weren't you-

but I did not stop to hear the tune,

the key in which you would build your crescendo

the sharps and flats and rests-

the underlying bass clef keeping rhythm,

the overlapping joy of the treble-

but I did not stop,

some angry marching soldier of me, with the mind of

a soldier on mission-

I did not add my harmony, my counterpoints

my lullaby, even-

I said there is no room no room no room

for the music anymore, chop up

this piano

with an ax, and bleed

on the keys, now black and white

and red all over-

and you were just about to start singing, weren't you.

-XOXO,

What I didn't tell you

2011-07-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is meant to be paired with the song, "Bend and Break," #38 on the playlist. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

What I didn't tell you
is as much a part of me as

breathing,

and maybe more so-

what I didn't tell you is that everything

was meaningful, everything,

and what I didn't tell you

is that I knew.

(I saw an angel that day-
I saw it and no one else in the room saw it
but
I saw it-

it wasn't the first angel I'd ever seen, but
maybe the most significant)
What I didn't tell you
(and how could I)
was that when the rip
from skin to soul
to bone cracking bone occured,
there was a shaking,
a kind of little earthquake
that shook the core of the earth
yet no one else percieved it-
it was a disturbance that I am sure
the universe grieved.
and what I never told you,
(and now it's too late)
is that I saw an angel-
it was white and large and

I saw it-

it
was not looking at me but looking
at God;
in the midst of this

swirling chaos,
was looking up, detemined.

-XOXO,

History-onics worked for me! (AKA blame it on the infomercial. AKA Your baby does not need to know how to read.)

2011-07-01T08:04:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will expand your horizons when read as the song, "Everybody's Changing," #13 on the playlist, plays in the background. So go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...don't worry about what I'm doing here, I'm just inventing the wheel.)

Remember the time when that guy discovered the continent that the people living on it already knew existed? Good times.

And he didn't even know where he was. But they did.

I bet they felt how I feel any time I read an article about bargain shopping in a fashion magazine. The article usually has a items at price points that are above what most people consider "in the budget," let alone "bargains." And then they follow up with something written in the tone of, "OMG! WHAT a STEAL, can you BELIEVE IT??" And I'm like, "OMG, you might as well just smack me in the face and insult my grandma!" I don't need to be told how to find a bargain. The people doing the thing already know how to do the thing...Not only do I already know how to do it, but I know how to find better quality items at better prices than the magazine "bargain" is showing me. I look to the fashion magazine for inspiration, not exact-tation. The magazines would be better off continuing their beauty and fashion quest, and leave the bargain finding to me. I consider myself a treasure hunter, and as such, I don't want my field of expertise brought to me on a shiny platter and labeled for me. Leave the hunt to me; the hunt is part of the fun.

*And, as I said before, I'm better at it. Amen.

I wonder what would have happened if Columbus would have landed his Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and said, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle; I don't know where I am, but since there are people walking around, I have clearly not discovered this place, and they probably already have names, so maybe it's not my job to come up with a name for them, either. DOH!"

And then he could have sat down and cried, because crying, I have found, is the solution to a lot of things, and then I bet one of those people already living there would have walked up to him, curiously, and said "Oh dear wacky guy who is strangely overdressed, don't cry. We knew the planet wasn't flat, too, but we didn't want to waste our boats contracting your acne and tendency to bake with white flour...but here, have some fish and corn, you look too thin."

Christopher Columbus would not have understood this particular conversation due to the language barrier, but he would have seen the food, he would have understood food, and maybe he would have eaten gratefully and thought "Wow, I really am no better than these here under dressed land dwellers," and "not only is the world round, but it's a small world, after all!" And then he could have gone on to create Disneyland, only he wouldn't have called it "Disneyland," he would have called it "Columbusland," "Chrisland," or somesuch thing, and since the theme park would now be over 600 years old, the lines would be much shorter, so it would have been a win win for everyone.
Just Walt Disney would have to come up with a new life calling, but I don't doubt he could; he was very creative.

-XOXO,

Progessions

2011-06-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post is paired with the song, "Uncharted," #39 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Recently, I went to a friend's house and she had pulled out oil pastels and large pieces of paper for drawing. I sat down and started drawing with bright, vivid colors. I drew hearts and stars and said "I am angry. I didn't realize before I started drawing that I am angry!" So I drew some more hearts in vivid red. And then I wasn't angry anymore, I was at peace. And then I felt the need to draw a fish.

Blink

Lately, I have been drawing fish.

It goes like this:

I call the children to the kitchen table. I turn on some music. I say "Time for art class, kids!" and we pull out the crayons and paper and we color pictures. We do this because after I drew that first fish, I said "I like this fish; I feel like I am a fish, inside." My friend said "I like your fish, your fish is free." Then the children and I went home and I was not done drawing fish, so I gathered them to the table, and told them to draw whatever animal they felt represented themselves, and I called it "Art Class."

(This is one of the benefits to having children is that you can call "Art Class" at any time, and they will not say, for example, "why are we doing art class when it is the middle of out summer break and we should be doing anything BUT anything called "class," we should be languishing in our boredom like everyone else."

At least for now, my children do not say that yet.

But I digress.

Ahem )

My fish are my own; they look exactly how my inner fish would look, if my inner fish could pop out of my self and show itself. The fish I draw have neat round bodies and large red lips. They have big green eyes and purple eyelashes. They have large round blue tears dripping down from their eyes.

I told my friend, "My fish are bright, deep, dark, passionate, vibrant colors, because that is what I am, inside; I am deep and passionate; I am not pastel." And this felt like the truest, most satisfying thing to realize.

But after two weeks of this, I had just finished drawing a gorgeous large vibrant fish when I felt the need to draw a small pink fish up in the corner of the page. This fish had a lavender colored eye, and still the large bright red lips. I told my friend about the pink fish. I told her "I think I had to draw all of those bright fish before I could find the pink fish-" But I was careful to add that "It wasn't soft pink, it was salmon colored pink." She laughed at my distinction, but the distinction was important in my mind.

The distinctions makes all the difference in life.

Art class has progressed.

I now play music, call the kids to the table, and they start to color while I read a passage of the bible. My only instruction is to tell them to draw whatever comes to mind, and not to compare their art work to that of anyone else. This is all I will say, for how can I tell them what lies on the inside of their own hearts and minds? They have to show me in their own way and time.

Ethan's drawings are often puppy dog dragons or bunny rabbits with large eyes. Natalie's often involve cutting and gluing other pieces of paper onto the picture she has already colored, so hers have an element of surprise. Kristina likes to say that what I read to her makes no difference whatsoever in her drawing, but then her pictures betray that. And Jeremy? He often just sits and chats with us while we draw. Actually, he usually asks a very deep, insightful question about the passage I have just read, it has clearly disturbed him,

and then he says,

"Mom, can I watch TV?"

And I say,

"No, we're listening to music. It's Art Class time."

And he says,

"Well, what about if I watch it in the other room?"

And I say, "no, it's ART time."

and he says,

"You're just saying that because..."

And then I hear a new reason why I am just saying that because, and then he settles down and creates some type of castle with working doors and drawbridge or somesuch thing which reminds me that my children have more bones in their bodies than I do.

Blink

Yesterday during Art Class, a strange thing happened. I sat down to draw a fish, but found, instead, the need to draw a bird. Not just one bird, but a page full of bird after bird after bird. Not just one page, but page after page. I am still drawing birds. Somewhere on each page, I have the need to write "little yellow canary." I have no idea why. My birds are neat and stylized. They are rounded, with their wings at their sides, not flying, but resting, and I will never apologize for my drawing style. My birds are me.

I told the kids,

"For some reason, I now have a need to draw birds."

Jeremy said,

"You are saying that like it's a big deal, but it's not, it's just you drawing birds."

He is right; I am just drawing birds; I did not tell him that some of the biggest deals in the world are the ones we don't understand yet.

Just then, Natalie leaned over and outlined what I had just drawn, as if to emphasize my point.

-XOXO,

Pendulum

2011-06-17T20:55:00.001-07:00

(Prescript: The prescribed background music for this poem is "The Chain," #31 on the playlist, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Picture in your mind a time when the pendulum swung
all the way one way,
all the way the other way,
and rested finally in the middle.

A breeze might push it,
a breeze from the other side might push back.
Whichever breeze is stronger will determine to which side the pendulum will swing,
or if it will swing at all.

But sometimes if it swings to the right,
or to the left,
a child or passing stranger might get knocked over,
even if he was paying attention,
that's how unsuspecting a motionless object suddenly moving can be.

Do not put your trust in the strength of a pendulum, even one
that looks particularly strong, for though
it will take something fiercer than a breeze to blow it this way or that way,
when it does swing,
it will hit heavy,
hit you hard, knock you down, maybe
(especially if you had been of the mind that you could take shelter
in it's shadow.)

-XOXO,

The distance not too far

2011-06-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Closer," #6 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The distance not too far
looked something like
a hummingbird that hovered
so close you thought you could touch
it if only it would not cause the
perfection of the moment to
crack and shatter-
and then swift, she was gone,
that jittery perfection,
and it made you wonder
if you'd ever seen beautiful like that,
if you'd ever seen green.
and it made you wonder
about shivering and nesting,
about unseen wings that never stop,
but hover like it's effortless-
made you wonder
if you'd ever see it again-

-XOXO,

Beach Combers

2011-06-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Mysterious Ways," #5 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I didn't make it to the beach all of last year; it's sort of like wherever you live, you take it for granted that you can go to the places near you which attract tourists any day of the year, so you never end up going to them.

But what never changes is the Ocean, and when you are standing on it's shore, it has a roar that sounds like peace and consistency, and will lull you to sleep if you stop to lay down and close your eyes. Meanwhile, it deposits secret clues of all that lies hidden within it on the shore. So today, Natalie and I got as close to the water as we could without actually going in, to look for treasures or any secret clues that might have been left there.

Over the years, I have gotten choosey of what I will pick up and put in my treasure bucket. My children are much less judicious; they'll pick up whatever rock or broken sea shell they find, and they are quick to marvel at the beauty of each one. I want to call out "don't just pick up any old rock, your bucket will get heavy." But I am quiet; there is no such thing as "just any old rock" to them. When Natalie's bucket got too full, she did something that hadn't occurred to me; she simply dumped it out, and put back in anything that she wanted to keep. This, I think, is not a bad way to live one's life.

I could have continued combing the beach for hours; I hate the thought of just barely missing something that may be right in front of me; but Natalie is 4 years old. When she got tired, she said "Mommy, I'm tired," and "will you carry me?" So I put down the rock I had been examining and picked her up instead. She laid her head on my shoulder and I walked away from the shore. In my arms lay a mystery of oceanic proportions with her own secret clues yet to be uncovered. But this treasure did not emerge from any ocean; she emerged from the sea of me, deposited upon my shore with her own secret humming, and I need not understand her roaring or her lullaby; I just need to keep listening.

-XOXO,

On Multitasking (AKA, I was a...Oh, never mind.)

2011-06-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Cornflake Girl," #8 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

So in a parallel universe, I was a stay at home Mom of four children, a long distance Runner, a Weight Lifter, a Writer, a Personal Stylist, a Makeup Artist, a Sociological Genius* (*in my own mind, and I believe I have a good mind about such things), and an original healthy recipe creating Ninja Chef and Baker with a knack for treasure hunting* (*of various types of treasures) . Oh, and I grew my own flowers and vegetables, too.

Oh wait, that is still who I am in this present universe. I forgot for a second, because hello, I have a lot on my plate. I didn't even mention that I home school my own children? That's because I don't.

Also, the flowers and vegetables are metaphoric at this point; I have so far never grown anything but human beings, but since I rather like the number "four, " I feel it's time to move on to growing lesser things. Not to insult the vegetables and flowers, but what they lack in quality, I hope they can make up for in quantity. AKA, I value the children higher, but I will have no qualms about growing many more than 4 vegetables and flowers. You see my point. But now this brings to mind the old saying, "you are what you eat," which would, philosophically, put the children and the vegetables back on the same level playing field, value wise. This is assuming that said children actually eat said (still metaphoric, completely imaginary, as I have yet to so much as aerate the soil with my high, high heels) vegetables.

Ahem.

In the parallel universe I apparently inhabit, I also had a propensity for yes, wearing high, high heels and painting my fingernails bright red. Lest you think these attributes clash with the life of the gardener I am becoming, (in my mind) I would argue that first, go back and re-read the last sentence of the previous paragraph, and that second, red is the perfect nail polish color of a gardener, for it will surely hide the blood when my green thumb starts to bleed from toiling so long with the soil.

"...but Michelle,"

my imaginary reader interjects-

"...Michelle, your hands won't bleed from gardening; they probably wont bleed unless you plan to grow and pick cotton, but you live many, many miles from a plantation in the South, circa 1842, so this is highly unlikely."

Hm. You know, imaginary reader, I have to hand it to you, sometimes you are exactly the voice of reason.

"Thank you."

But now, Gentle Reader, what do I do with my red nail polish? Can I still wear it? How will it affect my gardening career?

"Well, Michelle, I can't say, no one knows yet, it hasn't been done."

Well reader, I have always been a pioneering trailblazer (OH! Forgot to add "Pioneering Trailblazer" to my list at the top...DOH!).
Give me bright nail polish, or give me death.*

*By "me," I just mean the part of "me" that dreams of becoming a gardener.

Ahem.

Amen, let's eat.

(Important note: At this point, it's still just imaginary, parallel universe food.)

-XOXO,

Pancake Batter

2011-06-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post to be read as the song, "Lollipop," #20 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

So there I was, mixing raspberry chocolate chip pancake batter for all the children of the world. For all the children of the world who at one time or other resided inside my womb. And that feels like I'm making them for all the children of the entire world...

AHEM:

(Random Digression [or R.D.]: Pancakes are one of those things I used to eat, but no longer eat, because I do not have an off switch once I start eating them. It's better if I abstain all together. End Of Random Digression [or E.O.R.D.])

..and it occurred to me that I could make this a perfect food. I could add spinach I had just whipped up in my blender complete with a couple of fish oil pills which I had squirted the insides out of into the batter. I could add a little protein powder. I could then go into the backyard and tap my own maple syrup straight from the maple tree that grows there. But then I remember that I'm not nearly that organic. I'm not nearly that close to living in an upper New England town near a lake or pond which is a natural habitat of Canadian Geese, for example. I don't have a backyard which contains even one Maple tree. In fact, I don't even have a backyard. And besides, Trader Joe's already bottled the Maple syrup for me. Which is a lot less mess than me and a bucket, standing there in my frustration, trying to figure out how to get the golden nectar from the inside of the tree, where I KNEW it was freely oozing, to the outside of that tree. It is also a lot less time consuming.

Blink

(Random Digression [or R.D.]: Remember when I was a kid, and kids used to eat cookies and candy without worrying about their rising cholesterol levels? 'cause then we went outside and ran around shooting each other with our fingers because play shooting wasn't a criminal act, just a bunch of kids acting out good guy vs bad guy scenarios like in the westerns out parents would watch on tv in front of us without worrying that they were traumatizing us because the particular movie was "unrated?" And we also didn't eat chemicals and splenda and activia. But I am getting ahead of myself. End Of Random Digression [or E.O.R.D.])

Blink

In the end, I didn't put any of that healthy stuff into the pancake batter. But I did create delicious chocolate chip raspberry pancakes, which turned the normal children I'd birthed into the happy, delightfully energetic normal children I'd birthed.

So there goes the neighborhood, and so on and so forth.

-XOXO,

National Football League

2011-06-01T12:40:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, " Undone," #40 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I have a lot in common with the NFL. Most specifically, we share a middle name, which is "Football."

Blink

This is not literally true. My middle name is literally Louise, but I looked up the meaning of Louise, and it means Female Warrior. And since I am a middle child, sandwiched between older and younger brothers, it was my destiny to live up to my middle name, which in my case meant nightly games of tackle football on the front lawn after dinner. So being roughly and loosely interpreted, my name which I lived up to actually means Michelle, the football female warrior.
I appreciate this now.

I did not appreciate it when I actually was a football wielding, grass stained multiple body bruised girl child running catch me if you can fast across the (football field) front lawn. In those days, I wanted a middle name that sounded like a middle name I liked the sound of. The acceptable middle names were Elizabeth, Marie, or even Lynne. But my mother had some crazy notion to bestow upon my bony identity the middle name she herself had been given, and which she herself had always hated. I will never understand the logic of this. All I can come up with is that she knew me better than I knew myself, then.
But now that I am a grown up, I know myself fairly well, most days. I like my middle name. And while it's true that I have never met anyone else who actually likes the name "Louise," I know now that I really am Louise, with all of it's character and, yes, even charm. Louise is quirky and different. Elizabeth (Consecrated to God)? Marie(Bitter Sea)? Lynne(Beautiful Waterfall)?

BO-ring!

And also, let me redirect your attention to the fact that Louise means Female Warrior. I don't care how you turn it, that's just straight up brass knuckles.

-XOXO,

...And then I'll make a vase...

2011-05-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

Wash over the shards of this day
like salt water rolls sharply broken glass
around in it's waves
to deposit on a shore

somewhere I've never been,
somewhere I'd like to go.
Blow across the scar of this day-
the whisper
of a breeze not without a secret promise
that all of this tossing will land us,
finally.

Someday I will be walking along a shore,
the sea will be calm
and at my feet all around,

thick chucks of smoothed glass
that sparkle in the sun
and do not cut my fingers

when I pick them up,
that look like the long forgotten colorful gems

of all of my crystallized tears,
and I will remember,

(Oh how I will remember!)

yes I will remember
where I came from.
( I came from here.)
-XOXO,

Ocean Moon

2011-03-21T13:55:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Bend and Break," #32 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

On the back of my heart

is a tattoo of the dark side of the moon

and the face there

is your face, rippling

like the surface of the sea,

so that's how I know

that there is water on the moon.

But dark, hidden,

a secret no one seems to recognize,

and you're changing; the wind,

blowing, changes the shape of you

but I know you.

I feel the pull

from deep inside my chest.

There's an ocean who's current

has never been surfed or sailed,

treasures hidden on shores

unexplored.

-XOXO,

Liquidation

2011-03-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem will melt you if you read it as the song, "Between the Lines," #28 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

What if I slipped through the cracks

in the floor
(the floor was made of tile and I had turned to liquid)
so there was no trace of where
I had once stood,
of if I had stood there at all,
a solid being on a solid surface?

What if I became liquid

from the inside out,
the blood poured out of my heart,
and congealed first inside my chest cavity,
became

what looked like a purple black bruise

from the outside,
and eventually saturated through bone,

vital organs,
any connecting tissues,
what muscle tone I had once earned and maintained,
and finally skin,
all bloodied now,
all only blood now,
from inside, from the inside
of this solid shape of me.

-XOXO,

Birthday

2011-02-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem smells fresh when read as the song, "Everybody's Changing," #14 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I have stopped carrying you.

Actually, I never carried you,

but you have never stopped

wanting me to, expecting it,

which is something like expecting

a banana to jump out of the fruit bowl and dance

on the crumb strewn kitchen counter.

With my hand,

I will wipe the counter clean,

so clean that

no one could know just by looking

that anyone

had ever made toast.

I'll use my cucumber scented kitchen spray

so that no one

could know just by smelling.

-XOXO,

Deposits

2011-02-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post will carry you out to sea when read as the song, "Uncharted," #44 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

When I was 4, the ocean knocked me over. Not in a gentle or graceful way, just flat out, cold salt water smacking into my back and pushing me face down into the sand while it rolled over me, then back out. This is the risk that any small person takes when stepping into the ocean, never mind if she is wearing her prettiest pink swimsuit or not. Never mind if parents or grandparents are standing nearby with a large towel and a red box of Cheez-It's.

I have never been knocked over since.

When I got a little bit older, I used to go out as deep as I felt brave, and body surf. It was always cold, so I would wait until one level of my body got numb before daring to go any deeper, and finally I would be up to my shoulders, and finally, dipping my head under. Eventually, the chill of the ocean would take over the numbness I had taken for granted. When I realized I was cold, I would get out of the water in pursuit of warm sand and my towel.

It's surprising how much sand a body can hide and then later that evening deposit in a bath drain. You thought you'd left the water, but so much of it had stayed with you, in crevices you thought you'd already rinsed clean.

-XOXO,

Desperate Wanderlust

2011-01-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem should be read as the song, "Going the Distance," #17 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I have a horse called Desperate Wanderlust.
I ride him bareback.
He's not exactly the kind of horse you can saddle,

though sometimes he lets me guide him;
mostly he just runs and runs.
I am convinced we are trying to find the outmost reaches
of grace's wastelands
but we never get there,
I just become extremely tired

sick, even,
so we go back home, where I wrap myself
in the thickest comforter I can find
and sleep until I feel better.
The horse doesn't get tired;
I don't even think he rests.
He just huffs and paces impatiently in his pen.
He can be distracted by small domestic things,
-for long-ish periods of time, even-
A sugar cube, A quilt on his back,
new hay, the melody of wind chimes on a porch
in the late afternoon-
but these are just distractions.
It occurs to me that grace has no wastelands-
that all I do is exhaust myself with the effort I put into finding them,
that I am safe here,
and that warmth is a pleasant feeling.
But then Desperate Wanderlust starts to whinny,
and I start to itch...

-XOXO,

Leprosy

2011-01-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is meant to be read as the song, "Keep Breathing," #24 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Let's face it

(or don't face it, if that's easier)

no one wants the cure

we all just want the leprosy.

No one wants to wake up,

we all just want to dream through it

and believe that we're happy,

smiling as our fingers bleed and our flesh

is eaten away

one nasty gash at a time.

-XOXO,

Centered

2011-01-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem best felt when read as the song, "Bend and Break," #47 on the playlist, plays in the background. After that, click on "Maybe," #19. Go down to the playlist, click on those songs, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

I didn't even know you existed

until you showed up on the screen,

bright and blinking like a homing beacon

in the middle of some dark nothing,

and it centered me.

To think that there was light

and goodness

and something perfectly thriving

in the center of me,

and I'm not even that great of a person,

not half as healthy in my habits as I'd like to

say I am.

But that's the mystery of the thriving thing,

of a hope haphazardly placed

in the center of

where you thought only nothingness

and destruction were low maintenance enough

to survive.

I don't know everything;

I know that now.

-XOXO,

Post Apocolypse: AKA, a funny thing happened the morning after I watched "The Book Of Eli."

2010-12-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

(The following is a true story with some added rambling thoughts sprinkled throughout.)

(Pre-Script: This post will leave you feeling like you are all alone in this world when read as the song, "Soldier," #48 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the Starbucks drive through at 8:30 am and there was no line. I thought they must be closed for the first time in recorded history. But no. They were open. The customers had all been raptured, and I'd been left behind. The employees of this particular Starbucks were also left behind. So I got to thinking, and when I get to thinking, woah. And when I got to thinking, I thought, maybe I'll have to form a band of scavengers with these Batista's, like the ones in the movie, "The Book of Eli." (which, coincidentally, I had just seen the night before.) We'll just wander around all dusty and ragged and grunting for water, and if we're lucky, we'll find a hairless cat to shoot for dinner. Maybe I will be the one wielding the chain saw. In a Post Apocalyptic World, When you're down on your luck like that, you can't be too picky about the people with whom you band, the small critters on which you dine. You can't even be too picky about who gets to carry which power tool. These people made a decent coffee drink, I really was delightfully caffienated by it, so I figure I can trust them Post Apocalypse and all that. At least in the mornings, I'll be able to trust them. I just don't know if I can get used to smearing cat oil on my lips when all the chapstick in the world runs out. Maybe I wont have to. Maybe my lips will stay moist from drinking coffee. Maybe we'll have enough coffee stockpiled to last for our entire lifetime. Coffee, coffee, coffee; I can just live on coffee all day long. Coffee for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lots of incredibly rich celebrities survive on just coffee and Redbull; why can't I? Minus the Redbull? Think about it, people. One can do worse than being left alone in this world with a group of espresso experts. I'm not exactly complaining.

-XOXO,

When I fell

2010-12-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is meant to be read as the song, "Bend and Break," #39 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. When you read it a second time, choose "Better," #39 on the playlist, as your background song. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

The blanket was up to my neck, more like just
under my nose. Did I say blanket?
It was actually 3 blankets and a comforter.
I felt warm and safeguarded, was not conscious of falling asleep.
At some point I started to dream. It was the
coldness in my dream
that woke me-
The covers were now down below my arms,
my arms goose bumped and probably blue
(in the midnight dark, everything looked blue)

oh the inconvenience of how that happens, my ability
to fling my own warmth off
just when
I am beginning to
sink into
something comfortable,
something safe
and I'm not aware that I'm doing it,
don't even realize I've done it
until it's too late.

After that, you know, my right shoulder was sore all morning?

-XOXO,

On The Radar

2010-11-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, "Going the Distance," #18 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Yesterday, I was driving to work, and I don't even think I was speeding. I even remember consciously having that thought, "I am driving to work, but I a not speeding." So it really jarred me when all of a sudden, I saw a police officer standing on the sidewalk and pointing his radar gun at me. He was wearing sunglasses and the smile of a seasoned hunter. He was aiming to shoot. It made me question my own good judgement on the matter of "not speeding," which made me fumble my steering wheel a little and hit the brakes a little. It made me exactly the opposite of what the police officer wanted to make me, which was a less safe driver than I had been the split second before.

This, Dear Children, is what we like to call "ironic."
Y'all, I'm not going to lie; when I saw that radar gun and that smug, satisfied smirk, I felt just like a goose flying with my pack over a frozen lake above New England somewhere; I felt like a Republican out with my fellow constituates on a jovial wildlife preserve for an innocent hunting jaunt; I felt like a large, wild game animal on Sarah Palin's ranch in Alaska.

It disturbed me.
If I was disturbed, I was not going to be on my A game at work, and, as a salesperson, I was not going to sell very well. This disturbed me even more. Because If I don't sell well, not only will I not survive, but the economy won't survive, and I won't be able to pay my taxes...the very same taxes that provide this policeman (who harbors an unrealized lifelong dream of big adventures on the African Savannah with Ernest Hemingway et al circa 1922) with his job of terrifying the masses of civilized tax payers so that he can shock them with a photo ticket 3-5 business days later.

Blink.

And to think, he could have been using that time and money to hunt down and capture a real criminal.

This, Dear Children, is what is commonly known as "Wishful Thinking."

-XOXO,

The Sum Of My Parts

2010-11-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post will introduce you to worlds you never knew existed when read as the song, "Everybody's changing," #21 on the playlist plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

I get all flustered when I have to fill out any kind of Health Care questionnaire or job application that asks me about my race. Pacific Islander? Maybe. My skin is pale, but so is Gwyneth Paltrow's, and she was in an ad campaign that said "I am African," the theory being that we all started out in Africa.

Lately, I have been wearing a flower in my hair every day. You could call it flamboyant overaccessorizing, but I like to think it's my Hawaiian gene pool finally showing itself.

"Michelle, you have Hawaiian in your bloodline?"

Sure, why not?

I have no way of accounting for every action of my every ancestor since the beginning of time, and even if they all kept extensive, detailed diaries, I'm sure at least one or two of them was lying.

Blink.

Even if the lie was simply by way of omission.

Blink.

I am just as likely to contain Hawaiian blood as any other. So I feel pressure, Healthy Care providers and Job Granters of the world; do you hear me? I feel pressure to check every box in the nationality department.Yes, I could have a 15% higher chance of getting this or that disease, instead of that or that disease. You'll just have to test for all of them.

...But instead I check the box marked "Caucasian." This causes my brain to itch in a place I can't quit reach to scratch, because, aside from the fact that I'm not as flexible as I once was when I used to stretch extensively before trying out for cheerleading, (call that my "delusions of grandeur" gene, of which nationality I have yet to pinpoint) checking "Caucasian" is sort of like getting stuck eating the corn flakes when everyone around you gets to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Waffles and Bacon.

Blink.

I have never heard of a land mass, (country or continent, I wouldn't be picky) called "Caucasia." Have you?

How can I be whole if I am not the sum of my parts??

Think about it.

-XOXO,

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T12:51:00.000-08:00

(Pre-Script: This post pairs best with the song, "Better, " #43 on the playlist, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait..)(...still waiting...)

I was always hungry, then.
I wanted something sweeter
than what was on the table
I wanted the sweetness
to never never end
so I went outside and started digging
I started digging
with filthy bleeding hands
didn't mind the sting of the ache
didn't mind because sometimes
something inside of me would start to growl.
I was always hungry, then;
I wanted something sweeter than what was on the table
the problem was
I didn't know how to differentiate
sweetness from poison-
and maybe I still don't.
(Didn't anyone ever tell you that poison tastes like love?)

-XOXO,

The Broccoli Myth

2010-09-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post goes down easy if you read it as the song, "Sweet Pea," #5 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Believing in something because it's what you think you should believe in not the same thing as believing in something because it's what you actually believe.

Blink

My entire life, people have told me that broccoli is good for me, it is SOOOO good for me, and "OMG, how can you NOT like broccoli, it is SO GOOD for you!" I've heard it so many times, in fact, no one has ever told me the opposite. I have even said it myself, "broccoli is good for me!" but that must have been before I had an original thought of my own. Well, actually, judging my the number of imaginary friends I had as a child, complete with first, middle, last names, and siblings, I WAS already having original thoughts of my own. I just had yet to have an original thought about the vegetation I was forced to ingest.

I would sit at the dinner table and be told I had to eat my broccoli before I could leave the table. So I believed for many years that broccoli was indeed GOOD. FOR. ME.

World without end, Amen.

But then one day, as I was attempting to swallow this vilest of miniature edible trees, As if my body were a tree shredder, shredding this small tree to use for my own bodily purposes as I carried on with my day, It occurred to me that I was involuntarily gagging. And I had to ask myself, "How the heck can something be good for me if my own body is doing everything in it's power to reject it?"

I decided then and there that broccoli is good not for me. It might be good for you, your nutritionist, a food chemist in Iowa, and your mother who makes the BEST broccoli cheese casserole this side of the Mississippi, but it is not good for me.

World without end, Amen.

Never again will I try to force myself to focus focus focus just to swallow anything that tastes like the love child of all of my disgust and regret, lightly seasoned with exhaust fumes.

-XOXO,

Violet

2010-09-25T11:04:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: For a more sensationalized experience, read this poem as the song, "Secrets," #43 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (Still waiting...)

I am the raw split open version.

There are body parts,

internal organs strewn here and there

along my highway.

Rubber neckers watch and say to each other,

"All this time, I thought it would be

deep purple,

but I would call that more of a violet,

a bright vivid violet,

definitely."

-Yeah, I get that all the time.

-XOXO,

What I Held

2010-09-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: For a more full bodied experience of this poem, read it as the song, "Gravity," #42 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

When I am old my hands won't rust
or dissolve into dust
if you blow on them, or treat them
less than gingerly.
They will remain as solid and bony as ever,
(do you see how thick my knuckles are?)
these hands that held the babies when they were born
that opened and closed opened and closed
let go of things and pulled things in and pulled things in only
to let go of them so that
I can hold them
when I am old
and my hands
contain the same nerve endings, the blood
still pumping through them from the same heart
that always pumped
(I cannot speak to the condition of this heart,
but my hands,
at least,
will be softer.)

-XOXO,

Silver Fish

2010-08-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post should be read a the song, "The Chain," #54 on the playlist, plays in the background, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

I just washed the silverfish bug-creature that was using my bathtub as a rest stop down the drain. I know that we are all supposed to co-exist peacefully with every creature we can't stand on this earth, even if we don't understand why God created them in the first place. I usually abide by this rule, I promise I do. But invading my bathtub is really crossing the line. I have a strong disregard for the rights of anyone who dares sneak into my bathtub while I am peacefully sleeping...just when I thought it was safe to step into the shower...into my own shower in my own home. I said that already, yes, but it bore repeating.

Raise your hand if you have ever washed a small critter down the drain, then wondered if it was still alive, as alive as ever, only enraged now, and focused on revenge, and determined to use the last shred of energy it can muster to climb it's way back up the drain and navigate it's way through the house until it has a feel for the layout, and can find you where you sleep in your bed at night? In the pitch dark, where no hidden camera will detect it, and no personal eye witnesses will be able to identify it later?

My hand is raised high.

I think about these things.

BUT THEN

What if I had smashed it, and this bothered my conscience? There are few things that bother me more than a bothered conscience.

Raise your hand if you have ever suffered from smasher's remorse.

Raise your hand if you have ever salted a snail, just because you had heard rumors of what would happen if you did, and you wanted to see for yourself if it was true, even though you were usually such a good, good, calm, quiet, rule abiding girl? But no one told you that the snail would actually turn green, did they? No, no, they didn't. No one told you how MUCH WORSE that would hurt you than it ever hurt the snail, so that suddenly you knew JUST what your mother was talking about when she said "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" right before she lit into you, did they? No one told you that you would be forever internally labeled as a murderer of snails, that you would suddenly realize in that moment, (Too late!! Too late!! Yes, my friends, it was an epiphany realised TOO, TOO LATE!!) that life really IS precious, and that EVERY life deserves a chance, you always believed it, but had never let the thought process carry itself out all the way to the snail level of life and living in this world. AND NOW!! The poor dear has NO CHANCE at fulfilling it's intended life cycle, and it is all your very own 10 year old self's fault.

And now you have to live with yourself, with your very vile, disobedient, naughty self, forever more after, world without end, amen.
Gulp.

My hand may or may not be raised high.
I'm sure that was just a random "for instance," and not, I repeat NOT an actual flashback from my own life.* Hee hee. But I digress.
And I am blushing as I do so.
Where was I?
Oh yes, the silver fish.
I should have smashed the little dear.

Blink

...You see how I did that? I just eliminated all smasher's remorse because I called it a "Little Dear."

-XOXO,

*But then again, you never can tell, can you?

Picture of a Girl walking up a hill

2010-08-08T08:17:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: The background music for this post is: "Secrets," #45 on the playlist. Before proceeding any further, please go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

The problem with my life is that I have to live it. No one can live it for me. I realize that this is a common problem.
The other day I took my 3 year old with me to the doctor. While we were waiting for the doctor, she drew a picture, held it up, and said "this is a picture of a girl walking up a hill." The doctor came in and told me that I'm going to be just fine. I was both comforted and not. I still had to walk out of that room with one foot in front of the other. I still had to blink when I opened the door and the sun struck me as too bright to deal with just at that moment.

-XOXO,

White Walls

2010-08-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is best read as the song, "Blackbird," #47 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

When I look back, it seems

that I was always bumping into a white wall,

the white wall always just in front of me

and on every side,

only I could never see it-

it's very whiteness was blinding,

so instead I just felt confused

and bruised

and wondered why I wasn't moving forward

and wondered why I could not feel the sun

warm my skin, or even see

my long shadow behind or in front of me,

tall and impressive on the ground,

a dark and brooding shape always changing

so you could never be too sure from which angle

I might be coming

or going,

or who or what I was turning into.

Instead, in a white walled room, my skin looked

purple and cold,

like the bruise of me.

-XOXO,

Somewhere Over The Time Space Continuum

2010-06-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: The Earth will spin 2.6% faster if you read this post as the song, "Everybody's Changing," #37 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)

(...still waiting...)

So I've been thinking a lot about physics in the physical realm in which we live. I think about it as I observe my firstborn child's rapidly approaching adolescence. How did that happen when she was just born, and was a newborn, and I was holding her? She was sleeping on my chest, and people would say to me how soon she would no longer be a baby anymore, and I would look at them funny because I knew that she would be a baby for a long time, at least an entire year. But that was yesterday, and now she's THIS tall. And on top of that, I wonder how she keeps getting older, while I don't.

Blink

And it's confusing to me, when I ask her to take out the recycling for instance, and she says, "Okay" and takes it out. There should not be a person in this world who never used to exist who now exists and is old enough to do things like take out the recycling. My brain cannot figure this out. Did I mention that she used to have hiccups every day, when she still lived in my belly? And now she is the one who fixes my household technology?

So you see that the time space continuum is all wrong, and someone really should write a letter to Einstein's people about that. He may have been a genius, but there was a lot he didn't know. Obviously. Like there was one hot afternoon last week that lasted an entire 7 days, or so It felt. Then I went out for gelato and coffee that night, and that lasted 3 seconds. I am not making this up, people. Like I could be so creative as to disrupt the time space continuum in my own life. Like I would ever try to mess with my own brain in such a way. But I swear that's how it goes. You blink and BAM! The scenery has all changed. But then sometimes you blink, and BAM! You are frozen some place you'd do anything to escape. Where are Dorothy's Ruby Slippers when you need them?

You know, I always wondered what that girl's problem was. She was finally OVER THE RAINBOW in a magical, colorful land, and she wanted to go back to Kansas. Did she not notice that when she was in Kansas, everything was brown? And not just brown as a nice accent color, but that EVERYTHING in her home and the surrounding landscape was just plain brown, including herself and her relatives and the evil neighbor lady who threatened to have her dog killed? In the rainbow land, Dorothy had already destroyed the Wicked Witch, so Oz was completely safe and happy now, and she had become a national hero. Why would she ever want to leave that place? Most of the people she loved were already there, just in varied forms; all she needed to do was send a memo for Auntie Em and Uncle (who knows what his name was) to catch the nearest flying house and join the rest of the gang in Rainbow Land. Add a line about the ruby slippers. Ruby slippers, people!! I dare you to find a pair of those in Kansas, Dorothy! But alas, pre adolescent and adolescent girls are not always convincable of anything logical that they have not come up with themselves. I am going to have to keep this in mind in the next few years of my firstborn's life, as I blink blink blink, and the next thing I know,

she's, like, 42.

-XOXO,

Swamp Water

2010-06-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem best paired with the song, "The First Cut Is The Deepest," #63 on the playlist, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

The alligators are not sleeping
or maybe they are now-
that's the thing, I cannot always tell
but their teeth are a little too large, too sharp
for me to willingly risk it again,
my neck, my leg a little too precious.
Trust me,
they may look sluggish, bored, and harmless as logs,
but I have been in front of the open yawning
or snapping mouth of more than one of those alligators
to know that I will not stand so close again.

Yet he keeps beckoning me to the water,
"The water is calm," he says,
but it's not the water I fear,
it's what lies beneath-
(Something like, Once bitten, twice shy-)
It is one of the first lessons I would teach a small child-
"Children, stay away from water in which there are alligators
no matter how calm the water surface,
no matter how strong you think you swim,
for they will wake up instantly when you do not know,
they smell what they want to smell, and it smells delicious to them,
deliciously like you, Child."

He says to me, "You are not trying"
But I am trying-I am trying to stay intact.
And well, you know,
now that I think about it,
wisdom says that either you do or you do not do,
that there is no "try-"
so maybe he is right to tell me that I do not try
to step into his murky pond.
Instead, I stay far away.
Instead, I stay alive.

-XOXO,

Mulberry Tree

2010-06-02T21:44:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem is best read as the song, "The First Cut Is The Deepest" #65 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

I used to believe I would be pulled out of

whatever predicament in which I found myself.
I used to believe I could climb the mulberry tree in my backyard
to the highest branch I could reach

and free fly.
I would eat the berries on the way up.
I remember the sweetness.
There really is such a thing as a mulberry,
it's just that most of the mulberry trees around here
are fruitless
so I would say that most people
have stopped believing in such a thing as a mulberry
most people
have stopped believing in free flight.
but in my backyard, we had a mulberry tree
with sweet fruit,

and a lot of it,
and you could climb it as high as you could climb,
eating the berries all the way up,
then look over the fence into the yard of the guy
who kept homing pigeons
and raised rabbits
I think to skin, then eat, then who knows what he did with the skins-
such a peculiarity in the middle of a modern city
in the middle of the '80's.
On the other side of the fence you could look over and see
the backyard of the neighbors who's children tormented me,
or were my playmates,

one or the other,

from one day to the next,
and their yard was full of weeds
but then when they moved out, the new owners
fixed up the backyard and put in a back patio.
The new owners did not have children,
so there were no new tormentors or playmates living next door,
one or the other from one day to the next,
and if you didn't want to look over any more fences,
you could poise yourself just right,
and jump out straight, and feel,
for a split second,
like you were flying
as you free fell
right before you landed in front of where we sometimes grew a vegetable garden
where we sometimes grew the beans and carrots-
I used to believe I could fly or at least
I enjoyed the thrill of a very high fearless jump
because I was 6 and did not know what things I needed to fear in life
and that this fear could keep me alive
and unharmed
could keep me at least
from biting through my tongue and bleeding all over myself,
so bad I scared the neighborhood cat who was just taking a stroll across the backyard fence,

on the side of the yard
that faced no other backyards, just the street
since it was a corner house and lots of cats liked to congregate there-
I remember the face of that cat as I cried from the pain

and the shock
of realizing my teeth were through tongue
a place the teeth were never meant to belong
much like homing pigeons and skinning rabbits
in the middle of suburbia
in the middle of the '80's.

-XOXO,

Don't touch Me

2010-05-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post makes the most sense when read as the song,"The First Cut Is The Deepest," #66 on the playlist, plays in the background, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I am once again painting my nails.

"But Michelle, why would you do that when you can just go get a pedicure? And have someone else do it? That's what WE do."

Well, now here you have raised a good question, Dear Gentle Reader. I have nothing against pedicures per say, if I wasn't such a control freak about how I want my nails precisely painted, which knows no rhyme or reason except that no one on earth who isn't me does it to my satisfaction. And I have nothing against pedicures per se, it's just I don't like the idea of strangers touching my feet as they make fun of me in a language I don't understand. Then tell me that whatever color I choose is such a "pretty color." And I have nothing against pedicures per se, it's just that I run a lot of miles, a lot of days, So if I get a pedicure, and I get a staph infection, and as a result they have to cut off my entire foot at the ankle, this will put a damper on my distance running. Especially if I want to go fast. And then I'll never make it to the 20?? Olympics. Heck, I've never even run the Boston Marathon yet. At some point, a girl has to ask herself, "Is getting a pedicure worth possibly missing out on the Boston Marathon for?"

"Michelle, most of us don't have to think too long or hard to decide that 'yes, yes it very much is.'"

Good point, Gentle, Beloved Reader. And you have just made my next point for me. I Am Not Like "Most Of You." I am very much like Most Of Me, though. I will keep painting my own toenails. Now, after I run the Boston Marathon, ask me again. Maybe then I will be willing to risk the pedicure. At least then if I get the dreaded Staph Infection and they have to amputate my foot at the ankle, I can have the entire foot bronzed. In Platinum. I would add a placard to the mounted, bronzed (in platinum) foot, amputated at the ankle:

"This foot ran the Boston Marathon. IN fact, this foot would kick your booty if you were standing next to it at the starting line of the Boston Marathon. This foot rocked my world while it was attached to me. I still have phantom pains like it is attached. Then I try to stand up on it and I fall over on my face. All for the love of Cherry Jubilee Nail Polish. Beware the Cherry Jubilee."

Blink

Yeah, so I'm just gonna go finish painting my own toenails here, do you mind? I promise to not overcharge myself in the process, too. I promise to not insult myself in a different language as I do it, too.

-XOXO,

Kickin' Up

2010-05-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will come at you like a swift kick in the tires when read as the song, "Half Of My Heart," Number 65 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Try to keep up with my emotional dust and see where it lands you.
On your metaphoric face, eating my...symbolic dust;
the fluff that gets churned into the air from my back bike tire.
Careful kids, 'cause it's all just an analogy,
until someone gets on a literal bicycle and starts to peddle.
You stand on the sidewalk,
watching her legs pump.
You may have never noticed how strong her strong glute, quad, and calf muscles are;
how focused ahead her gaze can remain,
her long determined arms,

steadily focused on forward flight,

never causing the wheels to swerve left or right.
Just kicking up all that dust,
and you stand coughing into your flannel sleeves
blinded by the sunlight which has never seemed
so brilliant before,

yet still so, and never more,

completely

out of reach.

-XOXO,

Very Scandalous Things

2010-05-21T07:16:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will involve you in your own internal scandal when read as the song, "Lollipop," #51 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

There are two Very Scandalous Things I've done in my life so far, more if you're counting. The first I will not mention; the second I will mention; the rest I am still in denial about.

My Imaginary Reader wants to interject right here, and I imagine that said reader has just come in from a long day of surfing:

"Woah, Dude, why are getting all confessiony? Are you like on your death bed or something? Gnarly, dude; Far OUT! Righteous!"

(Not that I know, Gentle reader, not that I know today.)

My other imaginary Reader wants to interject something here, and this is the reader who just got back from her latest Psychotherapy Training Session:

"Wow, Michelle, the fact that you are in denial and won't admit even to yourself thing that you have done, in order to project an image of goodness to the world, shows that you are more flawed than if you had just been honest in the first place. And also that you have a large ego. And also that you are not as in denial as you say, since you did actually make mention of Scandalous Things."

(Actually, Dear Reader, I made mention of Very Scandalous Things...and the rest of what you said just flew over my head.)

Ahem.

So anyway.

Here is my confession:

After birthing yet another human being into this overpopulated world (not that I'm counting)* I was at the gym one day reading an article in a magazine. I don't remember which, Self Or Shape or somesuch magazine who's goal is to cheer you on to physical fitness glory. And while I was reading, and feeling so encouraged and full of hope that all of my personal fitness goals were, actually, yes within my very reach, if I would but be brave enough to grasp for them, I found an article with a workout plan that I could do at home which required no equipment. There were even little pictures and step by step instructions on how to do each exercise. So I ripped out the pages and took them home.

(Insert moment of horrified silence here as you realize what I just said)

(And if you need to take a moment to weep and wail and gnash your teeth right now, just go ahead and do that too.)

Before this, I was a person who didn't even realize I prided myself on being a Person Who Would NEVER Tear Pages Out Of A Gym Magazine And Take Them Home. (or P.W.W.N.T.P.O.O.A.G.M.a.T.T.H.) But then I did that thing which I never thought I would ever do, and suddenly I was a person involved in a Scandal. No one knew about it but me, but a scandal is a scandal.

Do you know that I never even wasted one second of guilty guilty guilty self bashing and loathing on it, either? I actually wasted TWO seconds on guilty guilty guilty self bashing and loathing on it. But then I blinked, and it was gone. Because the truth is, I felt the article could help me out, more than I cared about sticking to some notion I had always thought was what I "should" do...and in my case, it turned out to be a good decision. I used that article for many months; I did that series of exercises at home whenever was convenient for me. I gained from my own scandal. What I gained was mostly muscle tone and a bit of endurance.

I think that more often than not, when faced with a scandal that looks like an answer to what a person thinks he or she needs, a person will do the scandalous thing.

Call it "Human Nature," if you will.

In the five years that have since passed, I have decided that I don't want to be a person who removes pages from magazines that belong to the gym. I have been very, very good.

Except for last week. When I did it again.

(For the record, it was a completely different article, on a completely different life altering topic)

Oops.

And with that, this confessional booth is closed for the day, before the cops start hunting me down and pounding on my door, before they get out that big megaphone and yell "Come out with your hands up. We have you surrounded."
Gosh, can you even begin to imagine just how embarressing that would be for me? No, I don't think you can.

-XOXO,

*If my tongue in cheek sarcasm is not obvious, let me tell you: I was using tongue in cheek sarcasm. OF COURSE I don't see my own children as overpopulating the world. I don't view anyone else or their children that way, either. Duh.

Criminal

2010-05-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will lock you up and throw away the key when read as the song,"Good Intentions," #62 on the playlist, plays in the blackground. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Well, traffic court was interesting.

By "interesting," I mean completely boring.

Raise your hand if you have never been to traffic court.

I could have raised my hand with you anytime in my life before 1:30 pm today. I walked into the building and stood where all of the other losers stood, also awaiting their day in court. At 1:30, they let us into the room and told us to sit. Then when the judge walked in we were told to stand. Then she immediately told us to sit, so we sat, and listened as she told us what's what in traffic court. About a third of the way through her monologue I realized that the bench on which I was sitting was hard, wood, solid. I had forgotten to bring my stadium buddy and my beer hat. I had forgotten to wear my foam finger. Occasionally people would enter the courtroom, late. The judge got all kung fu ninja on them for that, and this was the most entertaining part of traffic court.

Judge, from her perch: "What is your name and why are you late for your court time?"

Defendant: (Insert name and excuse here)

Judge: "You're an idiot, get out"* (*general paraphrase)

So then I sat there and listened to the million cases which were of course called before mine. I thought, "Surely after listening to all of these people, I will know exactly what to say" Friends, I am here to tell you that even though I was almost the last person the judge called up today, there was still a bunch of stupid stuff that came out of my mouth. I am not nearly as eloquent in person, in front of a Real Live Judge, as I am in my own head, circa 1987, and I am 11 years old watching Judge Whopner on the People's Court.

This is also due in part to the fact that being in court makes me feel like a Horrible Criminal. Like the state of California has something against me, the state of California knows who I am. Even if it is just traffic court. I can just imagining my life in an orange jumpsuit with shackles around my ankles as I shuffle through the cafeteria carrying a tray of unrecognisable gray prison lunch slop. Oh what a life; and I was always such a good, good girl.

In the end I got a reduced fine, a payment plan, and a mid life crisis.
So I wont actually be wearing the orange anytime soon. I'll just maybe wear the t-shirt that says "I went to traffic court, and all I got was this Massive Identity Complex."

and then I'll carry on with my life of crime, 'cause once you're in the clink, it's all you know.

-XOXO,

Salt Water

2010-05-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will feel like you've been pummeled by an unexpected wave when read as the song, "Healing Begins," #67 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Salt water is good for cleansing wounds and the preservation of things. I guess it makes your wounds more flavorful, too, if you are the type to lick them. Dogs do that. I wonder if they have an inexplicable knowledge that there is healing medicine in their saliva or if they just do it because they are dogs, and dogs like to lick things. And most of all they like to lick themselves because they are their own most favorite things.
I think that a vigorous workout has the same effect on a body as a good hard cry. My body is dripping with the tears when my eyes are not. I am refreshed on some level, feeling in my heart the intensity of the ache on another as the water pours out of me, cleansing from within. But it's gross too and I have to wash it off. My face is bright red and beating with a pulse. My entire head is reminding me that it is alive. My legs take me far, and farther each day. From what am I running, to what am I going? The sand is good for joints. I can run and listen to the crash and crash and crash of the waves on the shore, and think, "I know how that feels"
The ocean is completely salt water. What's it preserving, what's it grieving over? How many stones and shells are hidden in it's depths? What sort of beautiful and terrifying things achingly delicate and graceful, and horrifically huge and clumsy, are lurking or floating about therein? There is a stone, and a shell, and I have a stone inside of my own chest, with names written there on, and and I have a shell too, and something used to live inside of it.
I think all of this and keep running and running, my body keeps pumping and pumping the tears my eyes were too small to express.

People like to ask "how far did you run?" The answer is always, "I ran the whole way."

-XOXO,

Wind Smacked

2010-05-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post smacks you in the face when read as the song, "Winter," #60 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I opened the door to walk outside and immediately was slapped in the face by a fierce wind. It shrieked accusations at me that must have come from the bottom of the universe. I felt the tone, but could not make out the words. I don't think it mattered anyway, and I probably agreed with all of it as I tried to push through. But no matter how many steps I took, the wind was with me, right in my ears. I had to go out the door though, as only I knew, I had to get out there, for the very wind that wanted to push me back was the air I needed to breathe, even if it was just my head that made it out, and my feet stayed on that side of the threshhold. Maybe my face needed a good wind slapping as the rain pummeled down, as the sun blinded my straigtforward eyes. If I walk outside tomorrow and my shoulders are burnt, my cheeks rosy tinted, just let me walk, and I'll figure out where I'm going. My feet will show where they are headed.

-XOXO,

Long Linking Chain

2010-05-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem will set sail when read as the song, "Where we Gonna Go From Here," #59 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Like anyone can be
a thick chord of rope
or a long linking chain
that connects an anchor
to a boat
to keep the boat from floating away
and also from sinking
so the boat stays put, rocked a little by waves, sure, but
stays put none-the-less.
And if you were, wouldn't your links start to corrode
over time, wouldn't rust start to eat away at it,
and little fish, too?
and if you were, how would you protect the boat from holes,
from burning down,
from any attack that comes from an outside source
above the water, or from the air?
how would you keep the boards from being eaten by termites
which may have been in the wood, unseen, before the wood was ever
fashioned to form a boat?

-XOXO,

Through the looking glass

2010-05-04T12:43:00.001-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will blow your mind if you read it as the song, " Good Intentions," F#63 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

I remember being a cutting edge 4 year old in 1980. Two of my favorite TV shows were Sesame Street and The Love Boat. My favorite Sesame Street character was Ernie. Who could not love Ernie? Bert always had that pessimistic uni brow and was such a stick in the mud. But together, they worked.
My highly intelligent cutting edge brain also had a few things figured out. I knew, for instance, that Bert and Ernie could see me through the TV. I could see them from my side of the glass; surely they could see me from theirs.
I remember watching an episode of Sesame Street where Bert and Ernie were looking in a closet, then they looked up, right through the TV screen, and acted like they could see the children on the other side of the screen. I was delighted and thrilled, because it just proved to myself what I already knew, which my brothers had harshly mocked me for believing. Now, here was an episode of Sesame Street that completely proved my point. Bert and Ernie really could see me; at least on that one day, they could. Take that, brothers who thought they were smarter and wiser than me; especially to the brother with red hair.
The Love Boat was an entirely different TV show. Sesame Street came on sometime in the morning; The Love Boat was on in the afternoon, when more mature people turned on their TVs. I liked being part of that class. On the Love Boat, they always drank something that sounded like "Shampoo," and I remember thinking it must be so disgusting. Grown ups were weird like that. I enjoyed the theme song; "The Love Boat, soon we'll be making another run; the love boat, exciting adventure for everyone." And there was always a scene where two people would go outside and stand near the railing with drinks in hand, talking. Who knows what they talked about, probably more boring grown up things, but there was always a breeze on them, and it looked cold to me. It also made me nervous to see them standing so close to the rail. How easily either one of them could topple right over, his or her perfectly poised glass of Shampoo totally ruined by the ocean water. These are the types of things I thought about while watching television as a child.

As I got older, (read: 7,8,9 and beyond) I also developed a love for sitcoms. The first thing I noticed and fixated on while watching sitcoms was the way the rooms were decorated. I payed more attention to the background behind the people saying their scripted words than the people themselves, and tried to pick up on even the most minuscule details. I then tried my best to decorate my bedroom to match as closely as possible what I saw in the houses of the sitcoms.

The other thing I noticed in sitcoms was that people would come in the front door, then leave the door wide open. They never took the time to close the front door.

Families in sitcoms kept a lot of bottled juice in their refrigerators. I was jealous; I wanted there to be more bottled juice in my own refrigerator, so that I, too, could casually saunter into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, pull out a bottle of juice, take a sip, close the lid, say something witty, then leave the room with my bottle of juice in hand. Sitcoms made me realise that my own parents required me to drink from a cup far too often; juice from a bottle was oh so glamorous to me. What a luxurious way to live! Just imagine!!

Also in Sitcoms, if a family was sitting around a table to eat a meal, there was always one side of the table that no one would sit on. This was as annoying as an unscratchable itch. I vowed that if I ever created a sitcom of my own, the characters would always close the front doors they walked through. The family would sit on all sides of the table.

In fact, I did make up my own sitcoms, several, and I would act them out in my room. I would provide my own laugh track. I would make up many a theme song, then rehearse the staging of how we/I would present myself to the camera as the song played behind me. Usually I would laugh infectiously at the camera, or at my imaginary sibling who had just said something witty that the TV viewing audience could not hear, but could only wonder about.
So be careful lest you assume you know just what a child is picking up on in the Television he or she is viewing. Sometimes what you think may be damaging will fly right over their heads. Other times, the things you think are innocuous are exactly the thing the child is fixated on, and fascinated by. Watching television as a child gave me something to mentally chew on, process, wonder about, and in general, made me a more well rounded, creative person. Which completely defies most conventional current wisdom. But it's like I always say, sometimes conventional wisdom is not conventional, not current, nor wise. Think about it, people. Enjoy your TV, children of all ages.

-XOXO,

Not Seeing

2010-05-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem takes flight if you read it as the song, "The End Of The Innocence," #25 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Once there was a man who captured a bird

because he felt he loved it so much.
He loved it so much and wanted it with him always.
It was so colorful, so pretty, and oh the songs it sang.
So he clipped those colorful wings,
and put it in a cage.
The bird did not fly to the top of the cage
or sing the songs that had initially called his attention to it.
The bird lay down in the bottom of the cage
silent,
it's dull eyes
straining to stare off into a distance it could no longer see.

"Oh well at least the bird is colorful and pretty"
reasoned the man.
But the bird's colors were hard

to distinguish without the sun
lighting them as they stretched out,

soaring to a limitless horizon

until the bird was so hope filled and joy filled

it had no choice but to open it's mouth

and let out the song

collecting there, too large a thing

to contain inside it's bird body frame,
shaky, small boned, but with promises

of where,

of where
it's determined

wings would take it tomorrow.
"Oh well at least the bird can sing"
reasoned the man, not remembering
that he had not heard the bird sing
ever since he had brought it home
and made it his.
"Oh well,
at least the bird is with me"
reasoned the man not seeing
it was only the bird's eyes

that continued to blink out at what
it could not believe it was not seeing.

-XOXO,

Compulsive Gambling

2010-04-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This poem becomes a compulsive read when read as the song, "Going the Distance," #38 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

the cruestest thing,
to be stuck in a moment
with only my feelings
with just my thoughts
my thoughts are insane, my feelings are a labyrinth
but everyone is insane,
everyone is avoiding his own labyrinth
this is why people turn to legal and illegal drugs,
prescription drugs too,
and compulsive drinking
and compulsive gambling-
We are compulsively gambling our lives;
the pot is gorgeous and there in the middle of the table-
but someone has to have the winning hand,
why can't it be me or me or me
Oh! The thought of this is so deliciously mind dizzying
we forget,
it means that everyone else
becomes the losers.

-XOXO,

A funny Thing Happened on the Road to the Moon

2010-04-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post is out of this world when read as the song, "No Air," by Jordan Sparks plays in the background...but since I don't have that song on my playlist, you'll just have to settle for singing this line to yourself over and over: "Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air." Then go down to the playlist, click on any song you are in the mood for, and come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

On the road to the moon, I slashed my own tires, then looked around to see who had done it. You were sitting on the side of the road, saw me looking at my tires and said "Do you need some help?"

I looked over and saw that your tires had also been slashed, so I asked you about it. You said "My tires have been slashed, and I am looking around to see who did it."

Then you noticed my own slashed tires and skeptically said "Maybe it was you."

I said "That's absurd, I don't even know you yet. I have never seen your tires before just this second."

You just blinked at me, eyes full of oblivion and mounting suspicion, pointed to my tires and said "it appears you have a reputation. It appears you are not new at this. It appears the odds are stacked against you."

I blinked and looked back at my tires and said, "Well, since it appears that we are both here with slashed tires and no way of fixing anything, except by our own devices, maybe we should just enjoy the view. I think it's quite exquisite. Plus I have some really good dark chocolate, enough to last us both a really long time."

You looked down, puzzled and a bit amused now, and said, "I have been so busy wondering about my tires that I never noticed the view, but it's lovely. And look, I have a large batch of peanut butter, enough to sustain at least the two of us for quite some time."

So we ate the chocolate with the peanut butter and found the combination to be better than each had been alone. We were quite content and pleasantly full.

"Besides," I said as cars sped past, "The moon looks like it's probably crowded. look at all the people whizzing by, with tunnel vision for the moon. Not one of them even stops to see this view behind us."

"Yes," you said, "Yes, I agree. It's as if we can gather our thoughts here without all those mindless people. It's as if we can have an uninterrupted conversation."

"Yes" I said, "And I have an idea. Let's relax and enjoy it. Even if you are suspicious of me, who cares how or why our tires are slashed, let them be. In the meantime, at least we can think. In the meantime, at least we can breathe."

"Oh," you said, "Oh, I didn't even think of that. You are quite right, there is no oxygen on the moon."

"No oxygen," I said, "and all those people rushing towards it."

-XOXO,

To Have and To Hold (a story of Red Cake)

2010-04-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will fill you with all sorts of beautiful deliciousness when read as the song, "Fall Apart Today," #61 on the playlist," OR as the song, "The Power of Love," #41 on the playlist, plays in the background, as long as you change lyrics in your head to "The Power of Cake." So Go down to the playlist, click on those songs, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

We hear alot about the Very Selfish Person who wants to Have his cake and Eat it too, as if this is a bad, greedy thing. But everyone wants to have his or her cake and eat it, too. Why wouldn't he or she? Cake is good. Cake is pretty. Red Velvet Cake is especially pretty, though a mess and a hassle goes into it if you ever make one from scratch.
Three years ago, I embarked on a cake baking journey. I wanted to find and bake the best Red Velvet Cake that I could. I didn't know that Red Velvet Cake existed until I saw the movie Steel Magnolias when I was 16 and really into watching movies that I knew would have me balling like mid life crisis at the end.* Some people like to ride roller coasters. A good weep inducing movie was the same amount of a thrill for me, especially since roller coasters have always had a tendency to terrify me (hello, crazy heights, and you are barely strapped in, rolling over a rickety thin track you can barely see, high, high up in the sky. Is this even sane? Think about it.) Also Roller Coasters make my stomach want to part ways with it's cake. (and in this instance, the word "cake" is a metaphor for "any food I have eaten that day.")
So there I was, niave that such luxuries as Red Velvet Cake existed, and now I knew. This was one of the few hazards of growing up in California (aside from the constant threat that the entire state will break off and fall into the ocean, or get carried away by a huge tsunami, or get all cracked up by an earthquake, but most likely all of those things will happen at once) I did not "KNOW" Red Velvet Cake in an experiential way until years later, when I was visiting someone who lived in the southern state of Georgia. I ordered a piece from right off the counter at a coffeeshop. It was like taking a bite out of the fruit off of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I was suddenly very wise to the fact that I had been missing out, and simultaneously feeling like I had been jipped, but would no longer be missing out or jipped for the rest of my life. At the age of 21, I knew I had 21 years of cake eating to make up for, and roughly 80 more years to do it in, probably. Assuming that the Pacific Ocean's comsumption of the state of California does not take place in that time period. Or if it does, then assuming I am on vacation somewhere else at the time. (And, Most Ironically, Assuming that I don't eat too much cake.)
So I went online and tried several promising sounding recipes. Some recipes have more ingredients or more steps than others. All require generous portions of the very naturally occuring ingredient, "Red Food Coloring." I know this is a natural ingredient, 'cause I picked the bottles of it off of the tree in my backyard.** There is either a cream cheese frosting that goes on the Red Velvet Cake, or there is a white, lighter in flavor frosting. I tried and perfected varieties of both.
It would have been good for you to be my friend at that time in history, particularly if you are one of the "have your cake and eat it too" types. My friend Francesca can vouch for this, because guess who showed up at her doorstep with several home made variations of this mysterious Red Velvet Cake? Me, that's who. Unfortunately, she was not a huge fan. She said something horrendous, like, "I think Red Velvet Cake is pretty to look at, not so good to eat." Clearly, this makes her a "have your cake" type of personality, more than an "...and eat it too..." or maybe she just doesn't like my baking and was putting me down gently. Wow, now I feel mildly insulted, and I did not catch that before. This is why it is best not to go back and reflect on things people have told you in your lifetime. You might suddenly realize that you now know what they meant, when at the time the statement was made, it had flown right over your head, like a bird, back up to it's perch in that very giant Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
In the end, I came away with what I decided was the best recipe for Red Velvet Cake. It was the one that involved the most steps, including having to purchase a certain kind of flour, then to sift it onto parchment paper. I mean, really, who does that stuff anymore. Myself, some really prissy people, and the Waldorph Astoria Hotel, that's who. Let that be a clue for you as to my recipe, people. (He who has an eye for the semi obvious clue, let him see.)

Should you decide to embark on a mission of this type for yourself, let me warn you: If you never particularly wanted red splatters on your kitchen walls, don't bake this cake. There are other ways to keep red splatters off of your walls, but I will not mention them here and now, as there may be young, naive children reading. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil does not need to extend it's branches quite that low if I can help it.

-XOXO,

*Let the record show that this particular thrill was a phase that lasted roughly just during my dramatic-only-to-myself teenage years, then promptly ended.

**I am assuming this is not the same Red Food Coloring that causes cancer in lab mice.

Ripe

2010-04-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

(Pre-Script: This post will refresh you from the inside out when read as the song, "Sweet Pea," #20 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Oh how I love it when I cut into an avocado, past the tough skin into the soft edible portion, and find that it is, yes indeed! A perfect avocado! Cut open at the peak of it's lovely perfection!! But Cutting into any fruit is a gamble; you never can know for sure what condition a fruit is going to be in until you cut it open and see for yourself, in the privacy of your own home, usually your own kitchen. You pick your fruit based on an educated guess. There are signs that your fruit will be good or bad, based on firmness to softness ratio, and the color of the outside skin. There are varieties that tend to be better than others, and have a higher rate of perfect fruit goodness. you can't cut a fruit open in the store, before you buy it; then it would be completely unsellable, and shop owners look down on having their sellable items being made unsellable before they have even been sold. Avocados are not cheap. So it is important to pick well. Apples are easier to choose, I think. But even apples can deceive you. I once cut into what looked like a perfectly perfect crisp, firm apple (just say "no" to powdery apples. As far as I know, no naturally occurring apples should ever contain powder.) to find brown rot in the middle. I was bewildered and instantly turned off and threw the apple away. I was 8. This is how I learned the concept of a rotten apple. My mother was the unsuspecting consumer who wasted precious grocery money on that bit of rottenness. She had no clue, and how could she, there were no outward evidences of such rottenness based on what she could see. And her innocent (to such apple atrocities) daughter was the victim who paid the real price. The price of having the memory of her first rotten apple etched in her mind for time immemorial. Or at least for the rest of her life. Why am I now talking about myself in the third person.

Be careful of the things you bring home that look alright on the surface. You never really know what it actually contains until you get inside of it. This usually happens in the kitchen.

-XOXO,