Take me home
Maybe I’m just more inclined to notice than most people, but it seems like West Virginia’s running a pretty aggressive marketing campaign in D.C. right now.
I would swear that almost every metrobus I see (except for the ones sporting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s face) is plastered with a lovely sunset or a blue rubber raft full of [...]
Scientists
Midway through the late-night newsroom third-quarter crazies, grad school pal Diane and I took to calling each other (and everyone else) “scientists” as a faux-insult. As in:
“Stop being such a scientist, Diane.”
I’m not sure exactly what made it funny, but what made it funnier was the realization– well into the name-calling– that at the end [...]
Silver Bells and Cockle Shells
If you’re wondering how my garden grows…
“Stand beside it, we can’t hide the way it makes us glow
It’s no good unless it grows, feel this burning, love of mine…”
-”Take Care” by Beach House
Lousy Bicycles
“The future’s all yours, you lousy bicycles.”
-Butch in “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid”
I got a solid two hours of sleep on Saturday between the departure of the final house guests (4 a.m.) and the ringing of my alarm clock (6 a.m.).
Over the next hour, between pounds of the snooze button, I entertained dreams of [...]
Only sleeping
“Ah! I cannot understand people who buy new beds, beds to which no memories or cares are attached. Mine, ours, which is so shabby, and so spacious, must have held many existences in it, from birth to the grave.
Think of that, my friend; think of it all; review all those lives, a great part of [...]
Building a better mousetrap
So, about my new roommate… No, not The Tree Surgeon. (Can you believe he’s been here for almost two months?)
I mean my other new roommate. The one that has–I kid you not– moved into my baseboard, just like in the cartoons.
The Housemouse.
In some respects he’s a better than my actual roommates. Quiet, scarce, doesn’t leave [...]
Speedy Delivery!
I licked lots of stamps and envelopes back in the dark, dark days before self-adhesive and blogging.
As a kid, I sent the boring, contemplative dispatches to a collection of pen-pals in exotic places like Russia, Japan and rural Illinois instead of to WordPress.
I usually kept up long after the friends on the other end of [...]
Midday in the garden of good
Le Jardin
Des milliers et des milliers d’années
Ne sauraient suffire
Pour dire
La petite seconde d’éternité
Où tu m’as embrassé
Où je t’ai embrassée
Un matin dans la lumière de l’hiver
Au parc Montsouris à Paris
A Paris
Sur la terre
La terre qui est un astre.
-Jacques Prévert
The Garden
Thousands and thousands of years
Would never be enough
To talk of
The little second of eternity
When you kissed [...]
Mornings
“Warmth in the early mornin’ chill, my girl
Warmth in the early April.”
I’m not crazy about the morning-times, especially when they show up on Monday after a bit too much carousing on Sunday night.
But sunny days are better than most and the best days of all are when you decide to chalk up your hairstyle as [...]
Wayfinding
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
-Dirk Gently in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve been asked out by three different gas station attendants in the D.C. metro area since [...]
Underground
The Charleston Gazette, Nov. 21, 1968:
By James A. Haught
“MANNINGTON–Rescue prospects dimmed late Wednesday for the 78 men now known to be trapped deep in a smoke-filled coal mine rocked by explosions earlier in the day.
The miners are believed to have died about dawn Wednesday when an underground explosion shook the earth for 20 miles and [...]
Misery and me
“He sang again, and although he alone sang, two voices could be heard. He stopped and said: ‘Is it you, Misery, who are singing with me?’ Misery answered: ‘Aye, master, I am singing with you.’ ‘Well, Misery, let us walk together.’ ‘We shall, master. I will never desert you now.’”
-Misery from the Aleksandr Afanas’ev collection [...]
Skipping toward the Gulag
Screeching sirens startled me awake yesterday morning and the first thing that leaped to my mind was, “Oh god, the Tea Partiers have blown up something important…”
A bit histrionic, I know.
But since the intellectuals who brought us death panels have moved on to spitting, spewing hateful racist epithets, accusing their coworkers of infanticide, heralding the [...]
Leprechaun Court
“Once you’re here, there’s no goin’ back.” -King Brian of the Little People
My favorite St. Patrick’s Day movie is a charmingly twee 1959 Disney film called Darby O’Gill and the Little People, about a battle of wits between an old Irish man named Darby and King Brian Connors of the Leprechauns.
In his pursuit of a [...]
Beast of the East
“The Mountaineer basketball team is littered with players and coaches who have sped down the path of success only to run full throttle into hurdles and obstacles. There have been arrests and suspensions, injuries and illness, even seemingly career-killing firings.
Yet the fans have never abandoned their players or coaches.
Maybe it’s because the citizens of West [...]
You make me want to be a better driver
Here’s my newest, bluest life partner and the albatross ’round my neck.
So far, I’m pleased with the Honda and how it has sailed me smoothly to work and back home again.
But a new car is also a burdensome reminder of money spent before it’s earned and of how things haven’t quite shaped up the way [...]
The Ferrari is dead, long live the Ferrari
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
-Atticus Finch [...]
Des glaçon aux astres
Barbarian
Long after the days and the seasons, and people and countries,
The banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers; (they do not exist).
Recovered from the old fanfares of heroism – which still attack the heart and head – far from the old assassins.
Oh! the banner of raw meat against the silk [...]
Blur
Working two jobs is simultaneously more and less complicated than I anticipated. I say this, cresting my second full week of high-speed sprinting from bed to metro to car to Virginia and back to bed again. Throw in some fuming over snow detours and chugging of caffeinated beverages and you have a good picture.
I can’t [...]
Love Haikus for Inanimate Objects
I try to give the people in my life plenty of affection and appreciation, but I don’t usually give much credit to the inanimate objects that exist only to bring me joy.
In the spirit of rampant Valentine’s Day commercialism, here are my expressions of love and devotion–in haiku– for the top ten best non-sentient beings [...]
All you need
“All you need is love. John Lennon, smart man, shot in the back. Very sad.” – Independence Day
Love-mail for all of my far-flung Valentines.
I’m fond of Valentine’s Day in the same way that I’m fond of sailboats.
I like that they exist– whimsical pleasure crafts that merit their own type of footwear–though I’ve rarely been [...]
When Elvis asked me to be his girl
The friend who discovered she was playing mentioned that she was about 70 and that she used to date Elvis and that they call her “The Queen of Rock N’ Roll.” I was totally sold.
Don’t you worry about the atmosphere
We go now to Hank, with the news from Washington. Government offices are shut down for a third straight day, Iran is possibly cooking up some nuclear weapons and… I’m almost out of crunchy peanut butter. We’re contending with some real end-of-the world type stuff here, people.
Heavy snows, 60 mph winds, whiteout conditions, suffering and [...]
