Squirrels in Love

Song of a Suburb

2012-01-20T15:28:00.010-05:00

It's so easy to walk at night in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Danger isn't immediately implied by the darkness that creeps onto the yards in the evening. I can say I don't have any pressing reasons to watch my back, even if maybe I really do. Denial is easy to walk with in a quiet suburban neighborhood. But even so, it's eternally true that something unnerving awakens when the sun falls, even among these neat brick houses and their sand paper driveways. The landscape leans, then escapes into the darkness. A rhythm of porch lights stretches out ahead, creating a jagged path with the implied angles of fallen constellations. It looks like Orion threw his belt to the floor in a fit of contempt for the suburban sky. Cassiopeia was finally overtaken by boredom, reclining her chair all the way back to light up leafy trees, casting shadows all along the way: shadows on curtained windows, shadows throwing pristine lawns into confusion, shadows impersonating drunken ghosts on the curb. Fireflies join them in bubbles of intoxication.

There are shadows of people too, awake and moving from car door to house door. But we're silent like rabbits passing each other with suspicious night eyes. Finally, there's no pretense of social grace. Finally. Everything is wilder at night, and our distances in darkness are both nearer and wider. Driveways reveal themselves to be full of our secret miles. But rounding a corner I can suddenly hear piano music pouring through a screen door. And across the street, there are frenetic guitar strums coming from an upstairs window. My neighbors! I wonder who these people are and if they know that they can be heard out on the sidewalk. I wonder if they at least pretend that their neighbors are an audience, not being quite sure. Somehow we communicate even while tucked away in our rooms and while shuffling faceless in the shadows on sidewalks. Everything moves sideways through the air, everything creeps up behind us giving low electric shocks. These sounds and smells and images are like a cup and string to each other in the darkness of night.

Cups and strings pull space together. The guitar and piano music share their space in the air with distant vibrations coming from the expressway. And from even farther away there is the rumble of trains. They hum over out houses like lost and lonely old songs from a long time ago, come out to be caught in this thick nighttime air; to be anchored, then transmitted by the tuner of a hungry suburban neighborhood. A song is a hum released from the tracks into memory. Rebel songs, work songs, dripping silver guitar songs, cowboy songs, saints wandering down namesake street songs, stoned songs, songs once bound by gothic arches, love songs, mermaids singing each to each songs, blue songs, go to sleep songs, baby remember me songs. There are so many songs that travel together on trains. They flood the smallness of our dark space and can no longer be hidden. A strong breeze eventually comes around the corner of the block. I get to feeling I'm walking with it, and with a sideways community of train songs and people making music alone in the night with their windows open. I begin to feel connected to this strange, full landscape that always opens up and empties like a sieve when the daylight comes.

Ghostly Doilies

2012-01-04T17:16:00.007-05:00

Edward is a picture on my wall,
hanging in the early morning projections,
steeping in the perfection
of a life written backwards
from a past reflection.
He's framed in an expectation
that history repeats and skips along
to echoed beats.
I look for living truth in his face,
under veils of shadow-lace,
but his eyes are only
tintype reproductions --
white blind and moth gnawed
recollections of seduction.
The sepia buttons on his shirt
are forever yet to be unhooked
and the books he never read
and the time he never took
slide off the silhouette
of a precisely vacant look.
Edward is neither hot nor cold,
and the roses have rubbed off
the teacup folded in his hands.
He doesn't even have a heart;
it dusted the doilies of another
part of history, already unraveled
and then re-sewn into the binding
of a a dog-eared home,
no more or less understood than
a note slipped over the floor,
under the wrong door, and brushed
of its meaning and hushed
by dust and time
and shadow forevermore.
It makes my heart break when
I'm newly awake to understanding
that Edward is lost to thought,
never to be truly caught by
my moonlight interpretations
or shadow shifting revelations,
but within these perseverations
there are constant consolations,
unstoppable in life's duration.
Every moment passes away
and has already gone to stay
forever open in the empty-eyed stare,
sharing the invisible air of the past
with Edward.

Halloween River

2011-12-26T16:43:00.004-05:00

Walking down to the banks
of Halloween River
I see that the sky above holds
a few white cows.
With damp knees
they kneel in the widest blue pastures,
uncertain of what do to,
like me down here
on the banks of Halloween River.
My eyelashes gather gold shapes
and I blink and stumble,
The sun so hot it prickles
my skin like a holiday sweater.
But a cold wind
opens the curling leaves
of tall grasses and wildflowers.
They rattle and twist at a rust fence,
and they have loud
imperious playground voices,
A whole kindergarten
crunches underfoot,
yellow leaves and yellow light
cry sunflower sounds until
I can taste the pencil paint.
They cry out,

You're my guest
so I make the rules
you have to listen to me!
you can choose from
a hundred colors
right here a hundred ways
to make-believe your way
to what is really
real our stories
are about the future
you only hear
them as fables
far away from you
but we're talking
to be heard right here
listen to every
word of every fable
they're costumes
that are truer than
what you ever
knew was true

Their leaves turn the pages
of their brittle books,
holding up potions, baking
the golden into the moment.
The story I see could
be funny or pretty or
the most frightening
as the sun scorches
and the wind casts ashes
into a brightness as extreme
as the darkness of night.
The sky is so blue
it could be black
with a double death
of scorched decomposition
and everything on earth
is finding out
about a new autumn
or an old spring.
For the first time I have to guess
which one it is,
because the warming costume
clothes aren't coming off
and the warnings
are the true stories
I have to learn
how to hear.

Names and places

2011-12-03T21:37:00.000-05:00

Beautiful and Ugly are two strangers walking side by side on the streets of the city. They're barely acknowledged by each other, barely understood by others as two separate entities in the blurry flow of figures rushing in the same direction. But halfway to their separate destinations they somehow run into each other. There's a moment of confusion and stumbling as crowds push past them. Beautiful apologizes and laughs in embarrassment, as does ugly. They reflect each others' blushing on their faces, catch each others' eyes, and immediately become aware of an uncanny similarity that exists between them. They could be distantly related. Maybe their ancestors come from the same little village in Latvia.

Beautiful accidentally picks up Ugly's hat and puts it on her head. Ugly realizes the mistake, but doesn't say anything. Beautiful is about to miss her train, and is already late for feeding the three cats and one unicorn she shares her tiny attic apartment with. Ugly is on her way to a dinner date with a trapeze/tattoo artist she has recently met. He seems smart and interesting. If nothing else she'd like to be friends with him. But Beautiful and Ugly hesitate before moving onto their evenings; both have the sensation that they could switch places at any moment. Why was it that as soon as they collided, any difference between them suddenly just seemed like a big, lame joke? Why weren't the people on the street stopping to laugh at the revelation of a silly mistake that everyone on the entire planet had somehow been making for eternity? Nobody was really looking at Beautiful or Ugly, though.

If Beautiful and Ugly were a little younger they might have been amazed by the general indifference of passers-by, but by now they were mostly used to it, and even comforted by it. Through the years they had each learned to give up trying to understand the thoughts or feelings that their presence might consciously or unconsciously evoke, or exactly how they were being defined at any given moment. Being understood is such a dependable uncertainty, no matter what you're called. But even if you're as well adjusted as Beautiful and Ugly are, there's no denying that the unquestioned feeling of actual recognition is pretty great. Ugly had spent her whole life trying to create beauty while carefully holding up high, fragile expectations that never allowed her more than a few scattered moments peace. But here, just recognizing beauty in front of her feels like the same thing that she had tried for all along, and exactly what she wants to do every day in her life. Beautiful stares at Ugly and sees that the cloudy halo of sky around her head suddenly looks so much deeper than it ever has before, and the cracks in the sidewalk under her feet begin to reveal hard won years that can never again be hidden by square block symmetry. The universe she knows is expanding by the second. In her mind, her tiny attic apartment's windows shatter and smokestack lightning bolts inside to singe her unicorn's mane. The cats lick their chops.

The two women stand there on the sidewalk for a moment, transfixed. "Oh crap, watch out for that pigeon!" Ugly suddenly says as a giant bird with a weirdly shaped head lands on the half-eaten danish that Beautiful has been absently holding in her hand. "Shii-it! That's a big-ass pigeon," says Beautiful, letting the danish fall to its predator. They watch the bird tear apart the pastry until it retains nothing of its former danish-ness. They must keep walking after all. All of these revelations must follow them home or go where they will. Beautiful and Ugly both know of a few park statues, perches for pigeons called by so many different names around the city. Some are called ugly, some are called beautiful. But these women are not ready to stand so silent and still under their names quite yet.

2011-11-11T23:55:00.001-05:00

11/11/11

Power ballads

2011-01-30T22:55:00.000-05:00

A while back, I wanted to remember my dreams as much as possible. So I tried, and it worked, but I'm really starting to think this kind of decision must influence the things that happen after you fall sleep. I woke up, conveniently, in the middle of a total parody of a meaningful dream moment. There were gigantic outcroppings of rock set against a pink sunset sky and the words, "love is full, love is full, remember that love is full" coming right from the place where the rock met the light. But the disembodied narrator (was it me?) was talking like she knew I would overhear, and she was clearly aware that she had to dumb down her message in order to make any sense to me at all.

I bet if I were the sort of person to dream up music more often, there would have been a soundtrack of sweeping guitarmonies, or at least some weeping sugar icing strings. I swear the credits were just about to start rolling before I opened my eyes. Still, who wouldn't want to wake up to monoliths and sunsets and grand statements about the completeness of love? It's like the best overblown 80's power ballad you've ever heard -- somewhere in the middle of making fun of it you whip out the air guitar and realize you're totally moved in a beautiful way.

That morning I was running late to work and had to park at the very top of a parking structure in downtown Ann Arbor. It made me remember that on one of the first sunny helium-balloon-days tied right to the end of winter, a couple of Community High School kids came into the cafe around lunch time. They seemed so excited and happy, and were picking out desserts with intensity of purpose. The more talkative of the girls told me they were buying food for a picnic at the top of a parking structure for their lunch hour. Wow, I thought. They are smart. The farther I am from when I was a teenager, the more I'm amazed at how good kids are at seeing the other sides of things such as parking structures. If you're downtown during lunch, of course that's the most logical place to really celebrate the sun. Just like that, still behind the counter, I woke up with that amazing feeling of possibility. It was a typical unlocking, melting feeling, or whatever it's best-named during the other seasons of the year.

Days continued to be sunny, snow continued to melt, moments of possibility continued drip in and scatter. And then came that strange dream, and the morning after, which was the first morning of "Spring Forward." Running late, of course, and more than a little tired just like nearly everyone. But I was shocked when after work I reached the top of the parking structure to find the most beautiful pink sunset stretching out over the sky and the tops of the tallest Ann Arbor buildings. It was the same pink sky of my dream. It was so expansive, warm and calm, but nearly pulsating with the voice of something even bigger. So then the guitarmonies exploded over the landscape. Which made me see that one of the good things about these songs is that everybody always seems to know the words to the chorus. Love is full.

Lady Sunshine

2009-12-07T00:10:00.000-05:00

I saw a lady sing at a bar attached to the Holiday Inn right off the freeway. She was wearing a bright candy red number that puckered and plunged without apology. She was a large woman who moved her body with ease and enjoyment. Beneath her platinum blonde wig there was an aura of satisfaction so unobscured that it seemed to reach out, take me by the shoulders and make me a little more comfortable even in my own body. I never spoke to this woman, but when she opened her mouth to sing, the stage lights glinted off of her golden front tooth, nearly blinding us all with love and insolence. The songs she sang were composed almost entirely of sexual innuendo, but had as much authority as any gospel song or Shakespearean sonnet. A particularly dirty line or two make me remember that we were dancing to those words, in public, with unbridled enthusiasm, and were therefore somehow complicit in their meaning. But making yourself complicit is one of the things dancing is for, I guess. The crowd was mostly middle-aged and older, and some of them were dirty dancing, which was both bizarre and sweet to see, becuase it seemed that this was the only place I would ever see middle-aged men and women dirty dancing. I had never seen it before, and it certainly never happens in the movies. I stepped on an older woman’s sandaled foot, which was much more horrifying than stepping on the foot of a club goer my own age, and the women seated behind us kept telling us to move out of the way so that they could watch the show. But we knew we were in the free zone of the dance floor, and my friends are forces to be reckoned with. Sari’s movements are rapid, seamless and completely un-self-conscious when she dances. She is able to interpret the joy that music brings to her without pausing to find the right language of expression. It’s all right there, right on the level of melodies and beats. Sami has the sort of cool you probably have to be born with, and she uses her arms in the smoothest way when she dances, without flailing them or holding them like limp tentacles. When dancing she periodically piles her long black hair up on top of her head and then lets it fall past her shoulders like a flock of silky birds. Just because she can.

A woman who was anywhere between thirty five and forty nine would periodically burst onto the dance floor, placing her flip-flops next to the stage, shouting “woooo!”, and weaving through the dancers with unfaltering enthusiasm. She kept coming up to us saying, “oh my god, you are so cute. I can’t believe it. Will you dance with me? We’re going to have so much fun.” She would grab our hands and squeal. “You are like the dancing queens! You are like Abba.” She told us that she had to make tonight count, to party like crazy with no shoes, because she only gets to go out once every three years, when she is able to escape her strict Christian husband and the demands of her children. She was enjoying herself frantically, in a world of her own making, finding company throughout the room and all down the bar. Her thin face was weathered like a true barroom girl’s, and we wondered what the true story was, if this wasn’t exactly it.

And It was hard not to wonder at the volleyball court right outside the glass doors overlooking the parking lot. Some sort of impromptu game was happening at the same time as the show. People were gathered in loud groups at large tables by the windows, and there seemed to be birthdays and business trip debaucheries and engagement parties going on all at once. The people watched each other, the singer, the dancers, or the volleyball players in between their laughter, their conversation, and their lipsticked sips. With all of this going on, we nearly forgot the world beyond the music’s province, but even that changed when the slap of a ball and the tap of a cymbal were echoed by a loud thunderclap. The singer’s gold glinted when she smiled and this thing she was saying between the words all night echoed in the dip of her hip, “it’s no crime to love this life.” We kept on dancing in that strange, strong shelter of song, completely complicit.

I saw this lady sing a couple of months later, in an entirely different venue. It was a family friendly show to an audience of young, old, and middle-aged people (who dutifully withheld their inclinations for dirty dancing.) She wore a gray sequined, high buttoned jacket and long flowing gray slacks. She sang straight laced and well known blues and R and B songs with that same authority I had seen before, this time right under the rumbling sky. There was dancing, but there was also a slight chill in the evening air and we buttoned up our sweaters, our hearts secured a maybe little more firmly in our chests. In between songs she talked about the churchgoing life, and how she needed to save her voice for the Sunday service the next morning. She said she’s a dirty old woman, but not when there are children in the audience.

2009-11-09T21:36:00.000-05:00

I am so in love with this song I stumbled upon. It's like a person I know really well, or think I know really well, and love for all that I may know, and all that I may not know. It's so nice, it's almost irritating, because this is just a song and not a very long one. It isn't long enough to walk me home from work. I can't make out half the lyrics. It'll probably lose some of its power once I have it in my head nonstop for a month, but right now it's like we're on a honeymoon. I wish I knew what goes on in our brains when we love music in this way. Boundaries wobble and slip down and we infer so much visually, lyrically, emotionally. It's like being released, boiled up and concentrated! The only disagreeable byproduct manufactured in this process is a horrible jealousy of talented songwriters...

The Startled Squirrels

2009-11-07T17:24:00.000-05:00

I walked home from the 31 Flavors one warm spring night. I’m not sure why I decided to walk, because it’s a long ways through a lonely part of town. People pass by in their cars or make dim appearances in the parking lots, but don’t do much else with the landscape. It’s easy to feel anonymous on those streets and in their establishments, which isn’t such a bad thing if you decide to eat two scoops of ice cream at night in a hard plastic chair. Leaves could be churning ominously in the treetops, memories could be derailing lives. Forbidden love and the forever unknown could be seething in the air. But all this is miles away from the 31 Flavors. Here, there is nothing around but a sweet, slightly spoiled and plasticized smell, and an aura of pink. However, every now and then ice cream shops and anonymity might be a frightening combination. All the sprinkles and fat cast in pastels could lend a false sense of security, oozing comfort when there’s no one around to look out for you in a forgotten chain on the forgotten side of town.

This thought entered my mind when I opened the door to leave and heard the shuffle of feet close behind me. These feet, clad in battered brown slippers, belonged to a small old man who called out, “Hello young lady!” His voice was strange and loud and I wasn’t about to get into a conversation with him. Not while trying to digest two scoops of ice cream. Not while slipping through this anonymous world. I picked up a little speed down the uneven sidewalk, but all of a sudden a wet leaf slapped me across the face and directed my eyes to the sky. I had to admit it looked ominous, as though a storm was brewing, but my brain was still a little foggy from the sugar and the heavy motor buzzing of the ice cream freezers.

The rain came a second later, with a rumble of thunder close behind it. I heard the branches above me groaning and creaking in their struggle with the wind. There was a loud crack above my head and I decided to turn back, running into the strange little old man who must have been right on my heels.

“How could a storm have moved in so quickly?” I asked, more to the air than to him.

“I can explain that!” He cried through the loud wind. He sounded exactly like Mickey Mouse might have sounded if he had aged through the years and become an old, old mouse. I was speechless, but it didn’t matter because another peal of thunder shattered the sky above us. Everything became so blurry in the rain. The pink “31” was completely lost, and it was hard not to feel downcast in the understanding that a suburban ice cream shop is in fact no lighthouse. The strange old man took my elbow with a surprisingly firm grip and led me through an auto supplies parking lot. We squeezed through tall arbor vitae and landed in a two car garage empty of cars, but lined with shelves of mason jars.

“You can get out of the rain here.” He chirped. I was so surprised, all I could think to do was try to be polite.
“Oh, well, thank you, but I really should be on my way.” I turned to face the pouring rain.
“You won’t get very far!” He called, as cheerfully as a cartoon mouse might, and I couldn’t put my finger on what I saw in his face in that moment. It was a sort of cunning that must have been placed within him by sheer accident.

I decided to take a closer look at one of the mason jars on a shelf and saw that it was completely filled with acorns. The one next to it was the very same. Every jar on every shelf was brimming with acorns.

“Why are you storing these? Do you make something out of them?”
He looked at me with wide eyes. They were so incredibly wide for being surrounded with the sagging skin of a septuagenarian.

“I'd rather tell you about thunderstorms."

"Well-"

"A thunderstorm like this is not something you can just ignore. The tallest trees on the block started to raise this one a few weeks ago. I was there when they did it, so I know. I saw them.”

I couldn't tell for sure, but he appeared to be serious.

“Their leaves grew and with every breeze that stirred them around, they decided to stir right back. All this stirring makes things change in the air, you see. Spring gets much more interesting when you stir it. The first human chef was apprenticed to a tree. They don't teach you that in public schools, do they? The clouds thicken and pretty soon rain comes and lands on the trees and the trees drink and drink and drink. They drink like fish, those trees. Did you know that trees get DRUNK?”

“I –“

“They do, young lady, they get very drunk! I’ve seen it. And their leaves start really swirling around way at the very top. They go in all directions. They’re crazy, but not sloppy, if you know what I mean. They get all their best ideas then, when people are all inside and can only see by the lightning for half-seconds. They know they’ve got a little privacy. They can finally plan summertimes, autumntimes, and wintertimes. They’re laughing about it all too, make no mistake. There’s nothing you can do about thunderstorms or the drunken plans they bring about. I know this. So I store my acorns by the hundreds over the years, and I just FEEL for changes in the air. But I wanted to tell you a secret."

He lowered his voice to less than a shout and tottered closer to me.

"That ice cream shop almost made me forget to watch the sky. Rainbow sherbet with chocolate sauce and whipped cream on top. It’ll do it every time.”

I didn’t know whether to make a break for it into the pouring rain, or to commiserate with him.

“Two scoops of rocky road” I replied, and a look of understanding passed between us, as if by accident both of our eyes shifted in the right direction at the right time.

It was then I knew I had never seen such a person before. And I got worried. What was I doing out in a strange part of town late at night, just waiting for things to go right, for the night to just slip by without notice on a pool of melted ice cream? And how had that strange squirrely man ended up on that same foggy path under those anonymous flourescent lights? Shouldn't he, at least, have found other things to do with those wide, startled eyes and responsible stash of acorns, and his kinship with the tree mythology on his block? My feet prickled. I wanted to walk a new path home, for both our sakes.

"I guess I never thought of things that way" I said all in a rush and shook his paw. And then the storm somehow ended as quickly as it began. I walked out under the clear dark sky, examining the movement at the very tops of the trees above me. I had never noticed before how taunting their little waves can seem, as if there is some big inside joke going on up there, something I should really be starting to understand by now.

I never went back to that 31 Flavors ever again.

There was an old lady

2009-10-11T14:33:00.000-04:00

There was an old lady who turned into a fly. I don’t know why she turned into a fly. Perhaps she became bored with the limits of her human eyeballs. Her spectacles had gotten so heavy and thick they were really all she could see in front of her. But as a little insect, seeing was more like feeling and listening. It really opened up a whole new world for her in the autumn of her long life, and her wings blew all her thoughts through the floorboards of her old house, telling the dusty photos of her grandchildren on the mantle, “share your heart and your head and your hands when you can.” Saying to the mailman standing confused at the door, “You smell the past when the season changes, and it smells like a victory, don’t you think?” And a few nights ago, when the harvest moon was so large and low in the sky, she buzzed through the night with mystery in that place she used to call the human heart. She buzzed down a brick chimney and flew right up to an old lady who was sitting in a rocker, crocheting a plastic bag dispenser. The fly said to her, “If you become an old fly like me, and spend all your time surrounded by moths and spiders and abandoned webs, always running into windows and dining on spoiled apples, take heart, take heart. Some autumn night you may have a run in with the wrong side of this very rocker and end up flat on the floor to see the moon through this window. And you may be mostly forgotten by the world by then, but you will have known that moon all seventy seven years of your life and it will have followed you all the way to that final struggle with your ancient rocking chair. You will know that the moonlight is beautiful, and everyone you have known knows exactly what you know. And you will change into something new even then. I’m not saying you’ll necessarily turn to religion when you are face to face with such changes. You don’t need to believe in a God to feel this holy, if you just believe in seventy seven years of moonlight.” With a thoughtful look that was illuminated by the silver light, the old lady set down her yarn, opened her mouth and swallowed the fly. I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she had grown fed up with the pain in her legs and the limited movements of her rocking chair, and had decided it was high time to shed her tired human form and turn into frog with a long, sticky tongue and a taste for insects. “Especially insects spouting sentimental platitudes”, she explained with a satisfied croak.

Dunderstorm

2009-06-28T22:35:00.001-04:00

Dark clouds are rolling across the blue sky. They’re heavy and full, rolling right over the sharp point of a church spire. All of this looks so ominous; the tumbling behemoths could just burst in a moment. But before the downpour, there might be an imperceptible battle. "The Sharps" would be awkward political bedfellows, and their ranks would include churches of Gothic architectural influence, the tips of pine trees, the Wicked Witch of the West’s trademark hat, radio antennae… This army of impaling instruments would begin to quaver beneath the heavy force of the sky and wind, only to realize that they cannot withdraw their weapons for a truce. The churches would wonder at being allied with the Wicked Witch, and suddenly think to question their strangely aggressive posturing toward the heavens... The pine trees would feel like double agents, their thirsty roots longing for a downpour and their fragile needles hoping to be spared full force gales. The Wicked Witch would not take her hat off even if she weren’t so resolved in her sharp, antagonistic inclinations. She would hope that she had been designed that way for a reason, and maybe let out a dry cackle. You couldn't tell, because the thunder would have started by then. If her very tip must puncture the clouds, maybe her wide brim would save her green skin.

Pure Garage

2009-02-19T15:22:00.001-05:00

A little garage light,
a little red against the black night
a little road
a little old rusty train
a ride right through the black night
Blackbird chains and candy canes
Cut into the thick atmosphere
Fog can freeze, I hear
the solid silence floats into your ear
And icy clouds can collide
with the tip of a blackbird whip
a sudden snip, the wild of flight
scatters pieces of the black night
structures caught by surprise
in headlight eyes
and a little garage light,
a little red against the black night

Valentine

2009-02-13T18:52:00.000-05:00

You are so beautiful. You are. And I mean this generally. I can be so general about it because it’s generally true. Why is it so hard for us to see sometimes? You might pick apart your features and hold an intervention with them. You may tell them that they just don’t belong on your face or on your body, and they’re really messing things up by being so persistently themselves. But they are plucky little devils and thrive in their existence. Your nose darts out into the moonlight and your eyelashes harvest dust. Your body casts shadows that startle squirrels and your elbows press indentations into upholstered arm rests. Despite all sorts of loathing thrown in their direction, coming from the inside and the outside, they remain thoroughly themselves, and even take the initiative to age in all sorts of unique and unwieldy ways. So I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that your physical presence is lovely, no matter who you happen to be. You can’t help but take up a nice chunk of space, and that hair of yours will want to keep growing even after your scrupulous eyes stop working and all the subjective electrical currents leave the boundaries of your brain.

Cupidity

2009-02-01T15:02:00.001-05:00

I’ve been longing for some sign of spring, although I realize it’s a really long ways off. I’ll be fine, pining. It’s not even joyless, just making it through, because in the meantime, the green pine trees outside have been beautifully groomed as the arrows of January. The air is so clear and the sky is a gigantic blue heart; a perfect, willing target. January pulls at short, taught days and the pines do their work, with snow as feathers at their flanks. The green looks nice against the blue and somehow the day grows beautiful. We mortals may be freezing and alone, lips chapped with impatience, holding hands with only the wool of our own gloves, but somehow we still get it. Almost every day we get it, in some sort of way, pulling back and then letting ourselves go, heading out under the sky. We'll see what happens.

No. 2

2009-02-01T14:57:00.001-05:00

Walk into the forest and feel the kindergarten crunch underfoot.
Yellow leaves and yellow light cry sunflower sounds until you can taste the pencil paint.

Conversation

2009-01-03T15:35:00.001-05:00

A junction at the eyes,
flashing lights
arms rise
Eyebrows, cheekbones,
the bridge of your nose,
come closer
when the arms close.
A mysterious place
to fall into grace --
the crossroads
of the human face!

The Funny Papers of December

2008-12-30T15:48:00.001-05:00

Christmas lights on the furniture polish
pickled watermelon relish
Golden tones on the phones
Electric organs wobble bones
Trees are wearing fat snow suits
Snow knows how to steal your boots
I love the way that you look
You are a complex comic book
Your eyes are so fine
All the blinks are one liners
And It feels so good
To look at the funny pages
As a winter storm rages
And all the mistakes and breaking
I’ve made and am making
and I’ll most likely make
find the time to take a break
and watch the cat chase her tail
and find the funny side of fail

2008-11-11T23:30:00.000-05:00

Nutcase is such an excellent word because you might imagine a squirrel with a briefcase when you hear it. And of course a squirrel with a briefcase is a total nutjob -- you would be a delusional squirrel if you were a going to your job carrying a briefcase. You'd probably even be wearing a miniature bow tie or something, which would seem a little nutty even if you were human. I think probably everyone knows what it's like to feel like a squirrel out in the open wearing a bow tie and carrying a briefcase, but you always feel so incredibly alone when it happens.

Cheesy poem/song about my Irish crush on a Frenchman.

2008-10-31T15:49:00.006-04:00

I had a crush on a French baker when I was in Ireland. Talking to him at the market on Thursdays made me feel so happy, and he made the most delicious little chocolate cakes I have ever tasted. He was married. He would talk about how he and his wife spend weekends preparing elaborate meals, conducting experiments in the kitchen, and harvesting ingredients out of the garden. He said that they made sausages and cased them in pig intestines. According to Jean Dominique, it’s quite a difficult process and perhaps not advised, but it also sounded so incredibly romantic, even despite my vegetarian inclinations. I don’t think he ever suspected my crush, but right before I was about to leave the market on my last day in town, I ran to his stall and told him I wanted to say goodbye. For a second I felt like I was in a movie, approaching the most dramatic scene, and that there were even violins playing in the distance. I know it’s a cliché, but I really honestly felt that way for that moment. Maybe someone WAS playing a violin, I'm not sure. It was one of those situations where you can’t really say “See ya later,” so we had to awkwardly wish each other luck with the rest of our lives. Afterwards, I walked quickly to the bus stop and my heart was pounding because I felt like I had been perilously close to throwing my arms around him by accident, just out of some nervous tick or compulsion to complete the movie scene. I remember it felt so good to escape mortal embarrassment at the time. All the same, I won’t ever forget him, so here is my epically cheesy poem.

Jean Dominique, Jean Dominique
Sell me fondants in a parking lot
I'd like to take all that youve got
it’s misting it's raining
hands in your sleeves
standing under canvas eves
there’s grey every Thursday
in Ballinasloe
So we talk all about the Michigan snow
And all about your homeland too
And all the skies that hold their blue
And all the news that’s falling through
Jean Dominique, Jean Dominique

Browsing the lemons and lambs lettuce
At the fruits and vegetables stand
Bright citrus instruments
buzz under your hands
And your eyes get caught
between green and brown
Like leaves caught in a fence
on their way to the ground
And your cheekbones, eyebrows,
and the bridge of your nose
Make such a lovely crossroads

Jean Dominique, Jean Dominique
We talk of the rain and the emerald green
pigs and potatoes and udder cream
And about that day you drove
from Galway into Ballinasloe
Like St. Nicholas with your gift of snow
holding Mont Blanc on your car roof,
your snowballs sail through time,
sending me proof
that a frozen heart can ever sway
And cold lips can be brought to say
I would love you, my knees would go weak
If you weren’t married, dear Jean Dominique
Jean Dominique, Jean Dominique

Blue

2008-10-26T15:54:00.000-04:00

the bluest translation of blue
that opens up through
the window of your little room.
your empty shirts on the floor
little empty birdhouses
little empty birdhouses on chain fences
looking over I-94
your childhood mattress without any sheets
is sitting at the edge of the street
I slept on it too
it felt both old and new
under the bluest translation of blue

2008-10-17T22:35:00.000-04:00

Do you ever spend an afternoon at work imagining that your keyboard would actually feel sort of comfortable if you just set your head on it and napped for a little while? Then, do you ever try to go to sleep at night and feel amazed at how much your pillow is more like a keyboard than you had ever thought, all lumpy and full of word combinations? It seems like it could be a vicious cycle.

Today I was typing something when I suddenly heard the guy in the office next to me saying, "You're being such a good little girl. What a little trooper dooper. Yes you are! Yes! You're doing SUCH a good job. My little girl is so good, yes she is. Why, Yes! Dooobie dooobie doobie doodles do." It was such a beautiful display of cheesy over-the-top, yet completely spontaneous and heartfelt pet-talk, and it was all the more amazing that it could be summoned in an office space. I imagined a white Persian cat wearing a pink tiara sitting on a fluffy pillow next to his computer. But when I turned the corner and looked inside I saw a Boston Terrier, looking rather demented and making weird Star Wars creature snuffling noises when it saw me.

I really love this office neighbor guy. He's the type of person who you tend to like immensely before you can even put two thoughts together to figure out why. He's just plain cool. He also listens to new-agey Native American flute music pretty much all the time in the office, and he knits sweaters at meetings.

I keep having to be reminded of the ebb and flow of things, how it's always changing, things are always returning and leafing, leaving, coloring, falling. So much of the time it can be interpreted in a scary or sad sort of way, but then sometimes it seems more like rocking, teetering, tottering. Change is consistent, although it doesn't ever really seem exactly syncopated. But there could be a supernatural hand pushing a cradle and whispering some sort of lullaby through the fall leaves. Lullabies ARE scary, but in such a comforting way. Like this season of color and decay. It feels so dramatic and comfortable at the same time.

2008-10-01T17:25:00.000-04:00

At the cafe there were two boys sitting across from each other at the window playing a game of Scrabble. They were brothers -- they must have been. Dark curls and acne crowded each of their foreheads, glasses were slipping down each of their thick noses. There was a lot of silent sibling communication going on, and they seemed completely unwitting in their hunching symmetry. If there were six more brothers, they probably wouldn't even have noticed that they were all creating an arcade, adorning the cafe with the architectural principles of a Gothic cathedral. And they wouldn't notice that they disassembled such an amazing form when they got up to leave, toppling the imaginary triforium and clerestory in their wake. They were just playing a game. There's this quote by Annie Dillard that I recently read but can't remember exactly. It's about how beautiful graceful things are happening all the time in the observable world, and it's sort of a tragedy that we will miss most of it. The best we can do is show up.

Five Mile Road

2008-09-26T12:44:00.001-04:00

Driving west on Five Mile Rd., there is nothing really to distinguish the fact that I’m in Southeast Michigan. There are fields, many of which don’t seem to be cultivated, and then there are some trees, and then there are some houses. Field, trees, house, field, trees, house. Once in a while there’s an old barn next to a field, a few trees, and a house. But what is it about certain stretches of the road that feel magical, as if I’m encountering something so perfectly beautiful and comfortable I could have only dreamed it up, or seen it dreamed up by someone else in a movie or a painting? It’s familiar and mysterious at the same time. Michigan must be the most beautiful place on the planet, it hits the mark so well. I turn onto Dixboro Rd., heading south, and once again I’m in another world entirely. Not much has changed, but vague differences in the landscape are so uncanny when miles and miles have informed expectations for more of the same. Maybe a cloud has shifted in the sky, or maybe the grass is a little bit more golden over here.

What went through the minds of the homesteaders who planted their stakes in places just like this? Aside from all practical considerations, perhaps there were some who set their eyes on a piece of land and immediately knew tehy were home. It is so tempting to think that the people who have preceded us were romantics, as if their reveries and exaggerations got buried with time and lost shape, but somehow made the land more fertile.

Farther down Dixboro Rd. there’s a large field of yellow leaves that look like yellow flowers. They’re climbing a hill, leading up to a red barn. I had a small plastic red barn just like it when I was little, with plastic farmers and cows and pigs that could be stored inside of it. Early mornings in a yellow kitchen with yellow eggs and lots of yellow corn through every window-- this is what I thought of farm life when I was a little kid, inspired by my plastic toys and breakfast cereal commercials. All of these associations rise up with a simplicity that’s deceptively meaningful to me. It makes me feel as though I have lived here before, and makes me wonder how this road would appear to me if I actually had.

I drive a little bit farther, trying to keep my eyes moving. Is it possible to indulge in these reveries and drive responsibly at the same time? Something tells me that this is an important question. But I all of a sudden I notice a little handwritten sign sticking out of a patch of wild grass right next to the road. It says, “Thank you!!!” I wonder what it's for. Is it intended for someone in particular? Is it intended for humanity in general? Is it intended for God or gods or the universe or a long lost lover who would only drive down this road on a miracle? Whatever the reason, I feel so happy that it’s lodged in the ground right there, echoing the thoughts of random drivers in moment they see it, attaching its exclamation points to those millions of vertical stalks, blades, and stems all around.

2008-09-19T12:59:00.002-04:00

Don’t worry if you fall short of
your imagination
it's stretching
like a cat in the sun.
Falling short is alright
The dust catches light
before it settles to the floor.

Beach

2008-07-14T22:31:00.000-04:00

"You know, it's like the slow-band-aid-peel." I stop my slow progression into the lake and watch her step over some sand to take a dip. My dear friend, steady in her eyes, swimming. She’s passing me. She’s passing me a wave that moves the lake past my thigh. Goosebumps feel like flocks landing after a far flight.

Castanets and Sleigh Bells

2008-07-08T16:26:00.000-04:00

I can’t escape from summertime in a loud café. The air is saturated with humidity and sweet coffee drinks. Caffeinated flies are banging into the window from the inside, while warm rain is banging into the window from the outside. There’s soft music too; profound melody beneath the clanging of cups and the frothing of machines. It's like the sounds could all solidify in one moment, be rolled into a box and syncopated into some sort of strange Phil Spector soundscape, all measured moonbeams smothering hysteria. But there is still all sorts of room in the atmosphere for a confusion that I just want to express to someone or something without stalling and subverting with dismissive smiles or coy ego preservation or all those things that get in the way of actual honesty

Nothing is too terrible to be true, but at the same time, no terrible truth will undermine the beauty that will forever stand by itself, leaning on nothing. There is always a reason to feel better, but giving these reasons the meaning that they actually deserve is another thing altogether. Laughter sometimes isn't a reaction that immediately occurs, even when the situation is really just asking you to laugh at yourself. Music surrounds us, but we can't always hear it, and we can't necessarily tell ourselves what to be, even as our intellect is pounding its fists on the table (a little insecure about potentially not being heard), saying, "but we have a pretty good grasp on it all, don't we?!"

The Nets

2008-06-26T13:56:00.002-04:00

I don't know you, but your words are caught in the nets. And they remind me that falling is never graceful, except by accident, because you seem to have fallen in with such accidental grace. You uncoil for sun and for love, hanging over a steep drop. And you will most likely know this cliff from the bottom up. You wrote about all those little things pushed together at the very edge -- the frogs and turtles and skittish sheep that jump and brush against colors made strange with age, and against a spiny self doubt that frays all the seams of your half-remembered schemes and your basement lullaby dreams.

All of this could have been held in an accordion bellows, pushed through for the clang of a quarter in a chipped coffee cup. It could have been a metal jerk in an old juke box machine sending sad songs spinning for the clang of a quarter and a flash of neon light. Or it could have been handed to a half-handed man stuck in an ice cream truck. For a bubblegum Popsicle, it could have been slipped into his tape deck and played slowly up and down the streets, singing in his smile as he worries the children on every warm dusk of their summer vacation.

But you wrote out your love for free, for really anyone to see. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but in this electronic land of cheesy poetry, maybe I could be... some sort of electronic tree,
that’s grown almost imperceptibly
because of a love
that has nothing to do with me.

Conversation

2008-06-11T22:59:00.000-04:00

An easy place
to fall into grace --
the crossroads
of the human face!