Flip-flop day

I was up late a couple of nights ago watching the marathon 15 inning MLB All-Star game.  I rolled into bed close to 1 AM with a gut full of pizza, beer, and a developing case of heartburn.

Naturally, my pre-work routine the next morning was...abbreviated.

I snoozed it in nine-minute intervals from 6:30 to 7:27, when I finally decided to let the alarm win.  I had three minutes to leave the house.

It was a flip-flop day.

The dress code at work is extremely relaxed, so any time I give myself no time to wake up in the morning, on go the flip-flops and I'm out the door before I really have time to think about what's going on.  Most of the time I still remember pants.

As I was slapping my left flop against my heel with my toes waiting for lunch/death yesterday, I thought about the psychological shift that goes along with the flip-flop.  It makes it seem like the day doesn't really count, because you decided from moment one there would be no extra effort wasted on anything.  "Well, I'm not even wearing real shoes today.  There's no way I'm shaving."

And it snowballs.  Breakfast goes out the window.  Teeth go unbrushed.  You plod through the day as a half-zombie, pretending not to notice people as they walk by, and hoping they don't notice you either.  "Hey, don't talk to me!  Don't you know today is a mulligan?  I'm wearing flip-flops!"

To quote Radiohead, I'm not here.  This isn't happening.  All because I didn't put on socks.

Normally I'd try and wrap this all up, but it follows that if I'm not putting effort into anything else, I'm not going to put it in a blog either.  Hell, I may just stop writing right in the midd

Frost

The entire poem was inspired by two songs:

A Sigur Ros song entitled "Glosoli."

and the lyrics from "Beautiful Life" by Artemis:
Nothing really dies,
Nothing's really lost forever--


Winter frost, do you love me?
Place your sheen in my mouth
I will become a fountain
to the ice storm
that lives inside you

I find hushed echoes,
glissading down the mountain
to this cave I am hidden inside
Folded simply into dust-shimmer-
powdered snow lover, come into me
to meet my skin and melt your crystals
on top of me.

Daydream music box ice lover, put your cold lips to mine--
let's warm them up and I'll put my soul in your ear,
my voice will cast a magic healing light to all
your icy shell.

We all need a place to rest-
A place to catch our breath, to find
the secrets within us-to use that key and
lure them all out.

Put the ice to my breast, kiss them,
suck them out, make them yield
So that I can live again.

Vines

The path I have taken is tangled.
Scratches from the cat briar vines sting me
In the forest of my mind.

But we don't have time-

A thicket seemed enchanting,
but it only confused me in the end.

A collision between myself and nature-
a bond I made.

I am a star-lily seeker, a moon-lit strand of life,
DNA particles bathe me,

Another lost woman
In a circus of finder's, a keeper of nothing real

Was I designed to break?
Is that the lesson on how to find my strength?

to break to break to break

We don't have time-

This illusion is a mirror of my mind, my life one vast forest

Through the tangled paths I have chosen, suspended in vines.

So is the answer to believe in anything and to tear myself out?

Before time finds me first and I dissolve back into the lining of universe.

I'm going out on a limb by posting this. Yay for strange idioms!

today today today today today
to know is not to perform to perform is not to know is not
I have a beige derivative record.

Cobwebs hide dark secrets in dark corners. The deepest down agonizingly born.

Decanted away in filmy damp cellars restrained by bitter oak. These vessels, only needfully tapped and sparingly drunk, rest in easy rows. Over time, webs and casks accumulate and age. Froth to foam to smooth clear amber and vanilla-scented oak.

But in this house abides a drunk. Tainted brew painfully purchased will not wait long enough for froth to subside and film to sprout. Desperate hands, feverish palms smash cheap wormwood.

Cracked lips demand immediate drink.

Bitter rawest froth will never quench thirst, but bloat stomachs to the exclusion of finer draughts. Splintering still green wood shatters smashed. Crushed contents pour pale memories onto greyest cement, pooling thin yellow. The miserable planks lie, a perpetual warped wood shipwreck moldering in a puddle of pale yellow bile and froth. The cellar, empty. Despite the wreckage, there is nothing. Nothing. No spiders weave their concealing filament. No soft vanilla oak. No barrel lies untapped for tomorrow.
There is nothing here.

I feel so small.

Local Wildlife

I really thought I lucked out.

My last apartment was under constant attack from all kinds of bugs: ants, mosquitoes, and, my personal nemesis, fruit flies. But since my move to new digs nine months ago, I've lived in a state of critter-free bliss. I thought maybe the exterminators for this apartment complex were better, the place was generally cleaner, or maybe that even the bugs didn't want to live this far north. Whatever the reason, I was grateful.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my trash can a couple of weeks ago and a huge cloud of fruit flies hit me in the face. What? No! This is a no bug zone!

It was then I realized the gap in my logic. When did I move in? October. The middle of fall. The season of dying. The bugs weren't gone. They were just hiding. Biding their time. Waiting for warm weather to come and fly up my nose while I sleep.

Sure enough, the war has begun anew. I've seen the sentry ants marching along my countertops, gathering intelligence on where I keep my cereal and rice, the flies doing air reconnaissance, waiting for another unwashed plate to pile into my sink so they can secretly build a base closer to ground zero. And the mosquitoes have begun making pre-emptive strikes on my arms and legs, trying to make sure their offensives go unchecked. "Next time," I imagine them saying, "we come for your eyelids."

But this ain't my first rodeo. The Battle of Riverside Place was a long and bloody one, but I eventually prevailed. These little bastards won't know what hit 'em.

The Best Outbreak of Chlamydia Ever

It sort of brings friends together. Now this diverse group has something in common- a burning sensation while urinating. Their conversation crosses all barriers of gender and rational thought; “Yesterday, it felt like grains of rice, but today I’d say it’s much more of a coarse, sandy texture.” “Oh yeah, I’ve totally got that, and my urine is all cloudy!” Suddenly, bathrooms are always occupied and so friends must spend inordinate amounts of time shouting “Hurry up!” outside the door. Infected people search address books for old phone numbers in search of useless answers. Phones ring with urgent instructions. Occasionally, old friends become new friends once again. Attempting to carefully unravel the tangled chains of ex-relationships, charges are leveled at nebulous memories of transient acquaintances. Strange, friendly blame is also placed; “You’ve ruined my fallopian tubes! Give me a shot!” Drinks are consumed and somewhere an injection is covertly administered. Drunken mouths exchange horror stories; “Did you know it can be spread through damp towels?! I didn’t!” One small damp towel shared between four people can lead to a lifetime of entertaining, embarrassing stories. Until someone gets an eye infection. Eye infections are never fun.

This time, eyeballs can rest easy. Infection has restricted itself to genitals. The conversation lingers on traditionally unacceptable topics, frequently the specific character of bodily fluids and their abnormal colors. One person seems to be overly familiar with the symptoms.

Everyone blames the man-whore.

me and the hubby!

LOL R JKOE!!

A dying sun sends shockwaves. In the vacuum gale, two atoms are shipwrecked, and then two and two and two. This clumping lump grows inescapable. In the dark calm, fusion. Black becomes brick, then plasma. In ten million years, the orb blinks an infrared eye. The gale becomes a whirlpool and then a breeze. Rotating faster and faster, the pupil of the star becomes light and heat.

This plasma is alone; many are not so lucky. Their relationship is never equal. One feeds on the other. Occasionally the other will completely implode, providing swift death to both.

Infant stars do not cry; they gradually become brighter.

For ten billion years, there is calm.
Stillness.

For the last few billion years, the plasma is busy creating a skeleton. The first, flimsy structure is helium, which is much too light and quickly burns away. The pressures of life produce lithium, carbon, and finally a solid iron skeleton. But iron cannot grow and without growth, there will be no burning eye.

In old age, the plasma consumes itself. Sickly swelling, the eye glares cold red. Curiously, gut balloons until only skeleton is left. Without food, without flesh, it wastes away to a shriveled shell of itself. Here it appears healthy, all clear light and abundant heat. This is the last lucid state. It does not last long.

A ripple mars the smooth surface. Then calm.

Momentary hesitation. Then the death throes.

Flare. Light. Heat. Death. The star throws away its mortal plasma. Only the iron core is left. The dying sun sends shockwaves.

Flat! flat like a pancake!

Flat... so very flat. Oklahoma is so very flat that I wonder if this could be natural or if there really were steam rollers centuries ago that my teacher lied to me about. They must have rolled for hundred of miles. Do you realize how many miles you go into Oklahoma from Texas before you see a hill? 56 miles. 56 miles before I saw a hill. It had been so long that the sight shocked me. Have you ever been shocked by a hill?! I certainly hadn't ever. Then, here's the topper. Picture the grapes of wrath, the dust bowl. The moment that I crossed the state line a giant cloud of dust flew across my car! More on my antics tomorrow as I cross the extreme boredom of Kansas and scale mountains in Colorado in a car that is actually taped together at certain points. For now, I have to crawl into my hotel room bed with fingernail sctratch marks ont he headboard and try to pretend I don't know what nastiness I might be sleeping in. Life is grand :)

Hot

Skittering across the asphalt, the piercing heat radiating from the ground beneath me. I try desperately to make it to my car, only to be met by a wave of undulating warmth as I open the door. The AC whines on, a trickle of comfort but not enough to cool the depths of the dark blue Saturn. I soldier on, the only thoughts in my head are of the cold rooms awaiting me at my destination. Speeding down I-35, I curse the others on the road with their high powered engines, easily chilling the passengers within. Finally I arrive, just as my car begins to cool, and jump out. I walk quickly into the building and wipe the sweat off my brow. Is it really only the beginning of summer?

Glimmering

Quiet calm--
the point of a single star
The breadth of your palm against mine.

Blooming release of new discovery
Adventures coasting down balloons of laughter

The lightness of you and I,
Glowing in a bubble of comfort

I have a place where I hide my golden chariot
and i only tell ones like you--

like you--so pinpoint the star side of
my bright and hopeful heart

stage it so that we meet again in the
cloak of the gentlest night

tucked away from the world--a silence
that speaks in synergy--

waves and ribbons of colors that
only the hand of nature can mix into
the powder tipped wings of butterflies who wander
is the way I smile for you--

and all your sparks
and warmth find out the meridians of my mind

I think I have found the single star who
may possess the compass to find my heart.

We sleep and I dream off and away
And in the morning an "unbearable lightness of being"
steals me away from the day, from the world,

perfectly composed, perfectly centered after,

I am intergalactic glitter--I channel new birth

new is all over me,
new delights,
new electricity surging out of me.

I am blooming.
I am birthing out stars.
I am a golden chariot with wings.
You are the single point to my star seeking heart.

Cause and Effect

Blast Iowa! Its chicken is poor rocket fuel. Burning them only sets forest fires. Upon re-entry, many obituaries are celebrated. Once I saw a chicken eating another chicken. This must have been sweaty itchy work. There is a term for chicken
cannibalism; "Lots of chewing." This is the chicken that I suspect of burning down a large portion of Iowa. Chicken is made with a good deal of hydrogen, which causes the bird to essentially become an explosive blimp when mixed with a great deal of silver tarps and hanging baskets. Hanging baskets are for fiber. Everyone needs fiber. Chickens are force fed into giant plastic fuel tanks, sort of like making pate, but exactly not. Giant plastic fuel tanks will always be painted with racing stripes and strapped onto rockets. The rockets are then exploded on the launch pad. This sets a forest fire in Iowa, which must acquire more chickens.

I should have been less amused.

Last night, I was reading "What You Eat." Father tells son, "If you kill it, you eat it." To the father's immense displeasure, the boy is alternately unfortunate and cruel. He's forced to consume lots of animals; ants, flies, small birds, squirrels and a dog. Of course, I thought to myself that this was a great idea. All children should be cruelly and disgustingly forced to learn this lesson.

Last night, a fish died. The struggling, untailed tiger barb. I know this is mostly my fault. What does one do with a dead fish? As it drifts slowly in neat little circles, I try to decide. Burial? I don't have a shovel, and the only patch of grass around is a rank plot slathered in fecal matter, rotten cardboard and blue spray paint. Trash? But although fish never receive dignified disposals, I couldn't just throw him in a bag with beer bottles and pizza crusts. He might start to stink. Of course, there is always the toilet, but...

Back in the fish tank, interspecies cannibalism is occurring. The algae eater is making a desperate attempt to consume fish corpse. Perhaps this is something to put a stop to. Then again, I may not have to worry about disposal after all. Unfortunately, there is a minor problem: algae eaters do not have teeth, only something that resembles a giant flapping suction cup. I thought they were vegetarians. The scene resembles a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The belly-up fish drifts in the same little circles around the same two plants, over and over, chased by a greedy scavenger desperately attempting to inhale the entire little corpse. Like Tom, the frenzied scavenger is luckless. Even in death, the little fish continually escapes from the flapping suction cup. The corpse drifts away, gets caught in a small current and comes flying back, smacking the algae eater right between the eyes and ricocheting straight upwards. I had no idea dead bodies could be so mobile.

It is time to put a stop to this. Grabbing the net, I beat back the scavenger and scrape up the mutilated body. But now I have to do something with the fish. I don't believe in omens, signs or anything but coincidences, and yet I feel an urge to eat the little thing. In the mesh net, the body appears much less attractive than in life. Suddenly the skin looks slimy, and there is a distinct odor of fish gravel. Can I eat a entire fish, all shredded fin and filmy eye? Would I need to gut this thing first? I imagine gooey pink intestines and a rosy swim bladder. The image is toxic. If I die from eating the fish, would someone eat me? Frying isn't an option. Baking would taste horrible. Maybe the fish would enjoy one last swim -in boiling water.

The fish has been out of water for about fifteen minutes, and the stench is definitely noticeable. I can't eat it, even though this seems a more dignified disposal method. Selfishly, I simply can't stand the taste of fish flesh. The toilet it is! I upend the net into the bowl. A quiet plop and the fish just sinks. There is something vaguely wrong about staring into a toilet for an extended period of time. I have the nagging impression that I should feel somewhat more or less emotional about this; it is just a nameless dead fish.

My cat has never been interested in fish or toilets. Defying all her known patterns of behavior, she runs into the bathroom and leaps straight into the toilet. Every well-fed being in this house is a scavenger tonight. Just maybe, I have made the right choice. Risking interminable feline wrath, I flush the toilet. The fish disappears.