Sometimes

Lately every time I have to listen to or watch an annoying advertisement I tell them to "shut the fuck up". It doesn't make people stop trying to sell me stuff, but it makes me feel just a bit better. As of now I mostly say it in my head but some day I might snap and then I will say it out loud, in public. Probably I will be on an airplane at the time and I will get kicked off, The last flight I was on I had to hang my hang my coat over the seat in front of me so that I didn't have to watch the pre-take off advertising. Which like the safety announcements can not be turned off. SHUT THE F UP. please. I guess that is why we all travel with headphones and earplugs. I refuse to be a captive audience.

I have got my defense mechanisms but they are are going to get me anyway someday, because I can't figure out how to stop the deluge of junk mail from coming to my front door. You will find me dead someday suffocated under a pile of credit card offers and cataloges targeted at the middle aged woman. Show up at my mail box and there will be a mound of oblong envelopes with nothing to say and all you will see of me will be an upraised finger. STFU. I don't want your stuff. thanks.

un Cicada morte

Un Cicada morte
lying on the pavement
among the leaves and petals.

The silver corpse, not grotesque,
only sad,
melancholy in the newly fall air.

etc.

Crickets in the evening after storm, after work, are calming. Reminds me that there is something more to this day.

Goddess practice: Poemlets IV

Cold moon
White and Blue it stares
through empty sky,
Shines at wet grass
in too-cool-for-August air.
Deigns to ignore that
thuderstorms and tumult reigned
only hours before.

Americana

There are other Americas. Existing next to mine. They are there, sometimes blatant, sometimes occult. They weave in and out and touch the edges of my America. But I can't get to them.

Someone told me once that Seattle is a small city. And it is true. I always run into people I know, people who know other people I know. People who went to school with friends I know. We all know the same restaurants and bars, frequent the same neighborhoods. I said as much to a friend of mine and he said it was because all people of a certain age group were interested in the same things, restaurants, bars, sports. I don't think so though. I think there are a thousand Seattle's circling in and out of each other. And I can't reach the other ones anymore than they reach mine.

Even less can I reach the other Americas. The realities wrought by geography, society, money, politics, religion, hobbies. I am trapped in my tea shops and cafes, in safe apartments, in secure jobs and nice upper middle class friends, pseudo-intellectuals, people bound to succeed. And so we can't and we don't reach those other Americas. Even I wanted to, how would I ride the rails, attend the most elite of parties? How would I know how to go to other Americas, who would let me in?

and the banal

Dryer sheets. So what, really, is the fucking point? Purportedly they keep your clothes from wrinkling or collecting static. Mainly they serve to lend a chemical stink your clothing. Personally I think they are another brilliant marketing scheme. I mean, everyone goes out and spends money on these little sheets of paper and sticks them in the dryer and......well then you get chemically smelling soft clothes.

Needless to say, I don't use them, but I share s dryer with everyone else in the laundromat and the dryer sheets always end up in my laundry. Inevitably Annabel finds them and shreds them and I have a stinky shredded paper mess to clean up.

Careers

Probably, I should have been a moon goddess. I wonder if it is too late to change careers.

(Smug moon, Proud moon, Lumiary lune) Poemlets III

One gold-orange cresent of a moon
crowns my violet skies,
Tempts the silloutte of trees
to hum in inky green.

Travel Poemlets II: Myrtle Beach, SC in May

Late at night
when the sunbathers and children have gone home,
When, at last, the spring break and wedding revels have ceased.

The beach now dark,
quiet and deserted
but for the ocean, still there,
sending the surf to shore in solemn waves.

Travel Poemlets I: NC, Late June

Night,
Cooler now in a deep
violet hue.
Flicked with
stars and fireflies,
Blinks silver
Blinks golden-green
And dark.

Snapshot

My new neighbor is the Queen of onsies, the queen of adult onsies at least. Since she has moved in I think I have seen her once in a two piece outfit. When I first met her she was gardening in a romper and today she was wearing overalls again, yesterday a coverall. I have never seen so many one piece outfits in my life.

She rides a little red Honda motorcycle and spends her time off gardening, paining on old windows and chasing her large English bull dog around. She speaks in a low voice, and she already seems to know everyone in the neighborhood and everything about everything going on from the farmers market to the bar owners.

Tea Time in the Green

Due to the lovely weather on Saturday Priscilla and I were able to finish our tree house. It is not much of a tree house, more of a raised platform of old wood with a slanted roof and some slots and shelves. All of the sides but one are open to the air and we have procured some transparent tarp for rain days. To consecrate our new artist space i.e. secret hideout I got an old china tea set from goodwill and we had a tea party with a thermos of hot water and some shortbread cookies. I allowed Anabel who came with us some tuna. Scott insisted on pouring brandy in his tea.

On Tuesday I will make good use of the tea set again because we have a tea planned with Garrett. Garrett is a man who lives in a tent shelter not far from our hideout. He has his lean-to fairly near to the path that has been worn through the bushes. Most days he sits out front of the tent on a log reading old paperbacks so we got to know him on our treks through the brush and he became curious about the scraps of boards that we were carting by. Garrett is about 50 (maybe) and actively chose to go live in the in between space to "get away from it" as he says.

Green Space: liminal in the city limits

Despite the fact that it is 47 degrees and cloudy today, I started a spring building project. An outdoor spring building project. Some of you may be wrinkling your brows in confusion. Yes, I still do live in the upstairs portion of an apartment complex with no yard or garage. I am also singularly inept when it comes to building and tools in general.

This morning, however, saw me wielding a power drill and hammer that I borrowed from Priscilla. (I also borrowed Priscilla to help me with the building project).If you were not the all omniscient aforementioned morning you might have been hard-pressed to actually SEE me.

Lately I have taken to exploring the green spaces within the city of Seattle and it is in one of these spaces that I have decided to build a tree house. It is (or will be) a fairly low to the ground tree house. It will mainly consist of a low platform and some shelves and it is where we plan to write (me) and paint (Priscilla). (It may also include general loafing around punctuated by drinking and smoking on the part of Priscilla's boyfriend).

We found the prefect spot last Saturday by following the trails worn through the city greenspaces. I think the trails are made by homeless and transient people who sometimes set up tents and blankets in the underbrush.

I really like these spaces and the idea of people living here because despite being in the center of the city these spaces, like freeway underpasses and sides of railway tracks, are somehow liminal to the bulk of city life.

We live so much of our lives next to these spaces. Driving over and by. Houses, playgrounds and shops just a few blocks away. And yet for most of us these spaces don't exist. They are in-between spaces existing within but not as part of the cityscape.
The people who inhabit these spaces are also liminal, living in but not as a part of normal city life.

So, Pricilla and I have decided to base our creative space in the in-between space. Also, I have always wanted a secret tree fort since I was a little girl.

If you had thought I was going to disclose the location of our hideaway you were mistaken. It is somewhere Other and close by. It will suffice to say it is well hidden in the branches and far away from the trail and clandestine tent encampments. After all we are the strangers in this neighborhood.

There is a demon in my television and at times I posses it

As many of you know, for the most part I am a mild mannered and one might even say genteel individual. I believe in the importance of being polite and I frown upon excessive swearing or "cussing" without due cause. However, sometimes the television.....

This didn't happen until Fiona moved out. The madness started to creep in afterwards. It is like the television could see that I was alone in the house, alone but for a white fluffy cat, and then it attempted to creep insidiously into the corners of my mind.

The other night I came home from a long office day and turned on the aforementioned television. I was sitting there watching ancient reruns of "Friends", half asleep on the couch with Anabel purring on my lap.

Then it happened. The demon I mean, I could feel it reaching its sinuous tentacles out attempting possession, attempting to brainwash me. I am not sure how long it was there staring at me before I noticed it, but notice it I did. Because in the middle of a shampoo commercial in which a sultry European voice promises strong, soft and shining hair. I found myself sitting bolt upright on the couch yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP, SHUT UP!". The demon thus exorcised, I turned off the TV. I had visions of smashing the entire box Office Space style, but instead I coaxed Annabel out from behind a bookshelf and went up to bed with a novel.

It is true, I may be going mad. And you may pretend not to know me when you see me ripping out pages from the grocery store magazine rack or cursing the Stella Artois advertisements at the Landmark Theatres. But Reader, beware the demon that lurks within the network cables and sprawls on glossy print. She is waiting for you to let down your guard. She will coax you, amuse you, seduce you, annoy you. But if you let her in she will steal your soul and sell it for a premium.


I mean, really, just shut the fuck up.

Roma, still

My hotel room faces inward, looking down on the small courtyard and across to buildings that are not the hotel. From my window I can just see the corner of a room in a house or apartment across the courtyard. It seems to be a library or study since the wall is covered in messy overstuffed bookshelves. In front of the books there is a desk. When evening comes someone in the house turns on the green bankers lamp on the desk and sits working. From my angle I cannot see the person in the desk. I see only a hand that holds a cigarette and the smoke that curls in front of the shadows on the wall. The hand pauses to turn the page in a book and then returns to hold the glowing stick. Who is this who sits late at night as the smoke curls into the air?

Rome, Alone

In Rome it rains every afternoon. The mornings are clear, blue skies and warm, but every afternoon when I am done with work I am hit by a squall that quickly dissipates and returns to sunshine. I have learned by the 3rd day to carry an umbrella. My hotel, near the Vatican, is in a small alley of a street. An unassuming building but comfortable inside. I had stayed here once before with friends but this time I am on my own. Every morning I come down to the dining room and eat the bread, Nutella, and arrangement of chocolaty pastries served. The dining room and lobby are permeated with the smell of strong, rich coffee but, still, I take tea. This is not the first time I have come to Rome by myself it is in parts fabulous and lonely to wander the streets by yourself.

Airport

This is me at a cafe in the Frankfurt airport drinking a cappuccino and eating a sandwich.
What? You ask, am I not supposed to be in Italy, perhaps already arrived in my Roman hotel? Well, yes, but somehow the flight was overbooked and I decided 400 Euro was worth a day of napping and drinking coffee in the airport.

Germany is grey and flat today. I watch the jets lift and land as rain comes in over the low trees. For a moment a rainbow touches the runway and then the rain is here, splattering on window and drumming on roof.

I am writing to you the old fashioned way- on cocktail napkins. My computer has died and the converter inadvertently checked. Perhaps it is in Rome by now without me.

The rain is done now leaving behind high fanciful clouds and the palest of bluish-white sky. My coffee is gone but for a trace of foam and busy travelers rush to gates and awaiting planes. I wait.

on the 2 stuck behind the 36 trolley

On a cold, cold night the bus has come free from the electric cable. The drivers swing the wide poles back to the wire. The connection sparks causing a flash of blue flame into the bitter air. It is a magical moment. Then it is over and the drivers laugh, return to their respective buses, traffic moves, we all go our ways.

Snow Day

A pack of children walks down the sidewalk through the flurrying snow. They are about 30 in number, 4th graders perhaps, flanked by 4 or 5 adults. They walk, dance, skip and sing down the sidewalk, nothing like Madeline style. There are no two straight lines, but instead a bevy of boisterous children swinging their swim bags, seemingly oblivious to the cold and snowflakes. Probably more like my namesake in spirit if not in form.

Last night they dreamed of a day off from school, mounds of white fluff, snow men and sledding. This morning they awoke to disappointment and only a smattering of snow. Now, though, their disappointment is forgotten and they are happy to plot with their classmates, traverse to the local pool through the still falling snow.

Antacid

Jennifer Claire eats antacid tablets when she is sad. Not stressed or angry or upset, but when she is lonely and sad and maybe a little depressed. In the old days she used to eat food when she was sad. Fabulous mashed potatoes and gravy, chocolate mousse piled with whipping cream. McDonald's French fries, or a handful of M&M's that always sat on the receptionist's desk at her office. (Back when she used to be the receptionist, now she strides by without a second glance).

Jennifer Claire used to be fat, not horribly so, but just enough. She used to eat antacids then too, but back then it was for the heartburn and indigestion caused by so much food.

Now that she is thin she eats antacids instead of food. It is not so much the act of chewing on a minty disk that cheers her up. It is the chalky aftertaste that comforts her and gives her hope that everything bad can be neutralized into bland perfection.