Last night I got to hang out with this man at a bar, and then he came to my apartment and ate one of my cupcakes. YAY.
A Primer
by Bob Hicok
I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.
I will never hold an instrument and have the ability to create something wonderful. I will never be able to compose anything truly moving, anything memorable or special. I will never close my eyes and hear the sounds of an imagined tune that could change the world. I will never strum a guitar and hear all the possible songs of the world in the sound. I will never put my fingers on a piano's keys and feelt them move of their own free will, creating, living, freeing the melodies just beneath the surface. I will never hear the infinite potential of every note and all the million ways it could be arranged to mean something.
tori amos
"fat slut" you said
what luck i said
to be stuck in your happy family
don't you dare, i said
judge me
you go and
stick it in somewhere
i'm sick of hearing it
go stick it in somewhere
i'm sick of hearing it
The Space Heater, by Sharon Olds
On the then-below-zero day, it was on,
near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,
like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire of a fire's heat,
the little coils like hairs in Hell.
And it was making a group of sick noises-
I wanted the doctor to turn it off
but I couldn't seem to ask, so I just
stared, but it did not budge. The doctor
turned his heavy, soft palm
outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I
said, "If you're cold-are you cold? But if it's on
for me..." He held his palm out toward me,
I tried to ask, but I only muttered,
but he said, "Of course," as if I had asked,
and he stood up and approached the heater, and then
stood on one foot, and threw himself
toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand
reached down, behind the couch, to pull
the plug out. I looked away,
I had not known he would have to bend
like that. And I was so moved, that he
would act undignified, to help me,
that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if
the moans made sentences which bore
some human message. If he would cast himself toward the
outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old
shame and horror, then I would rest
on his art-and the heater purred, like a creature
or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,
the father of a child, the spirit of a father,
the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,
the heat of vision, the power of heat,
the pleasure of power.
An LJ writing prompt for lack of better subject matter
Some people spend their whole lives preparing the answer to this question: What albums are on your personal all-time Top 10 list?
I took this to mean albums I can listen to the whole way through and never skip a song, albums that will always make me stop and listen for a bit, albums that make me remember. Not really the sort of things I would put onto mixes, just because I think the album in its entirety is so great. Got it? Okay.
"I have wished that each building around us
Was a cedar, a poplar, a pine;
That the men and the women were statues,
An the rain that was falling was wine;
That the lights were ethereal flowers;
That the cars were the nooks in the wood,--"
Ameen Rihani, Lilatu Laili
HOORAY!
i don't think obama will make revolutionary changes or anything, BUT the fact that he won is really exciting to me. michigan approved medicinal marijuana use, massachusetts decriminalized the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, and colorado and south dakota rejected anti-abortion proposals! this is so encouraging to me. i hope that as older, narrow-minded generations die off and younger, better educated people put their two cents in, the U.S. will become a more just, democratic place to live.
here's to hope.
and obama, you better use your power wisely, bitch!
"The Trans for Obama campaign continues! It's your time to stand up & be counted, trans democrats, independents, and republicans! If you're voting for Obama, why not make your vote count twice?
First, here's a reminder of an event way early in the campaign that has been forgotten by the "they're both against gay marriage" set: Obama made a point of shutting down homophobic sentiments when he could have just let the moment pass. For those who think that them both being against gay marriage means there's no difference between them when it comes to LGBT issues, please remember that McCain chose a running mate who is for "ex gay" therapy.
Then go look at these photos. I love that this photographer just kind of knew - as did Richard Avedon (watch till the end) - that Obama would become President Obama. Look at the one of his shoes. Of him cleaning up the drips from his ice cream. At the faces of the young people listening to and looking at him.
My firm belief is that Obama is an extraordinary president for extraordinary circumstances. [sic] That we are in the latter is in no doubt, considering this week's economic news; there are lay-offs happening in all sectors of the economy. That the former is true - that Obama is the right president for this time - is only something I can be sure of in my head and heart. His decision to run when he did, his unbelievable good planning with making it to the nomination = all of these things, the odds he's beat, tell me that his time is now.
And now it is yours. Go out and vote - early, if you can, to avoid the lines, or on November 4th."
My dad's buying me a Yaris hatchback sometime within the next week or two. It'll be really helpful for me if I get to finally drive myself back and forth between home and university. With my schedule being the ugly mess that it is, is it any wonder I find myself constantly exhausted, constantly waiting or constantly late?
In other news, I feel pretty good about being back in university. My saving graces are four classes in particular that I really enjoy. Four out of six is not bad, so I consider this semester a success so far. One of the four classes I've fallen in love with is a social behavioral science class called "Identity, Difference and Deviation in Society". I absolutely love it, because some of the biggest anthropological studies from about the 1960s and back seem obsessed with blaming social deviancy on repressed homosexual urges. I find it endlessly amusing on the one hand and pretty sick on the other, which means that all in all, I was made for this class, and this class was made for me.
So I guess the short version of this is, I'm tired and overloaded, but I'm relatively happy all things considered, and I'm doing ok. I miss Jay a lot, all the time, constantly, especially in the moments before I fall asleep, when in that haze between dreaming and being awake I reach out to the other side of the bed and am always surprised not to find him there, warm and peaceful and perfect in every way. I'm suffering by being away from him, and it causes a huge massive black hole in my life. In my heart, in my soul, in whatever you want to call it. I'm damaged and incomplete until I can be with him again.
But all things considered, I'm doing ok. How are you?
