2.28.2007
My computer is dying. Slowly. Piece by piece. I have to hold the power cord in with one hand and type with the other. Sadness. Time to switch to a Mac.
The Anna Nicole Smith Tour
Now in the Bahamas you can go on the "Anna Nicole Smith Tour." Really.
Says Felix Bethel, political science professor at the College of the Bahamas, "The story is being reconfigured in the Bahamian way. 'We are sorry that she is dead but look at the tourists!"
Wow. You'd have to make something up for it to be any tackier.
More info:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070228/ts_nm/annanicole_bahamas_dc
Having an "Invictus" Day
Invictus OUT of the night that covers me, | |
| Black as the Pit from pole to pole, | |
| I thank whatever gods may be | |
| For my unconquerable soul. | |
| | |
| In the fell clutch of circumstance | 5 |
| I have not winced nor cried aloud. | |
| Under the bludgeonings of chance | |
| My head is bloody, but unbowed. | |
| | |
| Beyond this place of wrath and tears | |
| Looms but the Horror of the shade, | 10 |
| And yet the menace of the years | |
| Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. | |
| | |
It matters not how strait the gate, | |
| How charged with punishments the scroll, | |
| I am the master of my fate: | 15 |
| I am the captain of my soul -William Ernest Henley (Mr Pettit would be so proud.) |
Another suggestion from the fabulous Griffin Brown
(He's so damn cool, by the way.)
| One Art | |
| by Elizabeth Bishop | |
The art of losing isn't hard to master; | |
Katie: Day 1 and so damn fun!
2.25.2007
Katie arrives--4 barf bags later.
The Mesh clan finds the hospital, just in case.
"Hello Sweet Boy."
Morning matrimonial call.
In honor of Griff
| Filling Station Oh, but it is dirty! --this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it's a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy. Some comic books provide the only note of color-- of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO--SO--SO--SO to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all. -Elizabeth Bishop |
Coming to Term
2.22.2007
Coming to Term
I have become pregnant
With love for myself.
My body aches from the stretch of it.
Skin pulled taut
Thin enough to see the veins
To see my life flowing
Nourishing myself
Endlessly
Cyclically
Mother and child
I push against my own womb
and kick.
Reach my hand to my belly and laugh
Smiling, say, “Do you want to feel her moving?”
My breasts are tender
They overflow with
Poetry
Exuberance
With spontaneous dancing.
My stomach is my ballast and it forms my waltz,
It pulls me up and down with the heft, the rhythm of it.
My movement becomes weighty
Gravity my drum beat.
There is grief here
This birth, this life
Has risen from death.
The deaths of hundreds of menstruations
Cleansing
Cleansing assault and sacrilege
Family and rape
The blood has flowed thickly
Clotting
I was scared I would die there
Sitting on the toilet
Feeling life, death drip out of me.
I have become pregnant with
Love for myself.
I needed no man for conception
Immaculate
My love is spawned up from inside me
Egg and sperm
I embrace myself
With fertilization
My eyes are a dazzling blue
The fullness of my womb
Sharpens my colors
My hair shines with the oil of it
Vibrancy seeps from my pores
You do not need to hold me
I hold myself
Wrap my arms around my belly
Gently draw myself near in embrace
Embrace as I am embraced
By the earth.
I have become pregnant with
Love for myself.
To be whole,
I am my own lover.
Reclaiming my body from the hands
The endless hands that have touched
That would not stop touching
That could breed only death in me
Ripping and pain
My skin dusty
Wrinkled
And sucked dry
There is hope here
Though the word moves shyly
From my lips
There is newness and life here
Heavy with the smell of warm milk
Heavy and glowing.
The eternal eyes
Watching me
Whispering
Yes.
Back in time again: My road trip to Portland
This was a really fun trip through Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon
The PVC Christmas Cow
Downtown Durango
The PVC Christmas Cow
Downtown Durango
Getting my car stuck in the snow in the middle of nowhere.
Taking a picture of the mountains while trying to not run off the road.
Moving Back in Time--Crater Lake Trip
These pictures were taken on my Crater Lake trip, which I took with a friend on my second weekend in Portland.
A little Robert Frost tribute
A beautiful waterfall. 
Another waterfall
A picture of the snow plowed up on the side of the road, taller than me. Learned how to put chains on my tires.
Funny Things Maya Angelou Said:
2.21.2007
I went Tuesday night to "An Evening with Maya Angelou." Although my ticket was a steal, I was pretty far from the stage. Really. You couldn't get any farther. Behind me was a wall and above me was a ceiling. Its quite possible that there were people outside the theater who were closer to the stage than I was.
I expected her to say things like: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” And while there elements of loftiness and inspiration; I was most struck by her humor.
Here are the ones I can remember (loosely, mind you)
“I’m getting pretty famous and I look just like Maya Angelou.”
“I’ve had to stop flying. People, nice, mannerly people, who if they saw me at a dinner party would be gracious and come over and say, ‘Oh, Dr. Angelou I enjoy your work.’ These same people go crazy in an airport. They start poking me and grabbing me. They start handing me their babies. I was in line for security one day and suddenly the entire security team came over and said, ‘Dr. Angelou, Dr. Angelou. Sign my arm.’ Now these were black people too. As we were taking off, the pilot came back to speak to me. I said, ‘Who’s flying the plane! Get back up there.”
To deal with the stress of flying, she rented a van—from Prince. It was lilac.
“Edna Saint Vincent Millay—ok, so she wasn’t black.”
“Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt (proverb of some sort).”
She rapped “The Raven.”
The three atheist black people—“Lord, I don’t know how they do it.”
“The way you hear it in the media, you’d think there’s no love in the black community. The way certain comedians talk about it…” (Bill Cosby must not be too comfortable right now.)
While she did read the poem she wrote for the UN, she also read “The Health Food Diner.” I am pretty sure would never have been published if it hadn’t been written by Maya Angelou, but its funny nonetheless.
| The Health-Food Diner |
No sprouted wheat and soya shoots
And
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).
Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).
Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).
No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me run
to
Loins of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).
Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.
Condolicious
Why? Because the last two posts are so damn serious.
If you haven't seen this hilarious video yet, check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0f2dHJ6A18
If you haven't seen this hilarious video yet, check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0f2dHJ6A18
On the Vagina Monologues
2.20.2007
It’s still not a word I’m comfortable with. Cunt. Awkward. The cuss word so bad that you heard whispers of it before you actually knew what it was. A secret, seedy word for smoky locker rooms. The woman behind me shouts it loudest, “Cunt!” From all around the room people join into the chorus, “Cunt!” I can’t shout it very loudly; I’ll start laughing too hard. Ooooh, they said a bad word. Not to mention coochie snorcher, pussy cat, mushmellow, and down there. Welcome to the Vagina Monologues. An emancipation of the least talked about female body part.
I was surprised that I could laugh so much about something I had previous only spoken of while drunk. I knew it was there, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to sit in a room full of people chanting about it. They were selling chocolate vaginas at the door. I noticed them, smiled so I would look progressive, and then walked away a little too quickly. I mean, I’m not that progressive.
They start with the word. “It’s a totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word. If you use it during sex—trying to be politically correct, ‘Darling, could you stroke my vagina?’—you kill the act right there.” It only gets better from here. A monologue about hair “down there.” You know what I’m talking about. A woman describes how her husband blames his extramarital affairs on the fact that she won’t shave her vagina. Their therapist thinks this shows that she is unwilling to compromise in the relationship. The woman experiments with it but decides she feels to puffy, to prepubescent. She needs the hair as “fluff” or padding. “Besides,” she says, “my husband never stopped screwing around.”
At times, I laughed so hard that I shook. I wanted to get on top of my seat and cheer. Take the cold “duck lips” they use to do women’s yearlies. Who does think these things up? The scratchy hospital gown. The whole sterile, somewhat bizarre examination—sliding your bum into an extremely vulnerable position. Ahem. There were monologues that showed the range of views women have about their body. Questions of: “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?” Or: “If your vagina could talk, what would it say?’ Then there is the woman who is afraid she has lost her clitoris. And the story about the older woman who had closed up “down there” because of an embarrassing incident with a lot of vaginal wetness. “The flood,” she calls it. After she closed up down there, she started having dreams about Burt Reynolds. “He never did much for me in life, but in my dreams…” In her dreams, Burt pulls her close, and just as he is about to kiss her a flood comes from her vagina. She says, “There would be fish inside it, and little boats.” So she has put up an imaginary sign: “Closed due to flooding.” It’s funny and sad. It points to how fragile we are about our vaginas—how small, embarrassing things can have a major impact. This fragility, the pain and tenderness, is what make the Vagina Monologues truly poignant.
Her face is round and cherub like, blond hair, big cheeks. “My vagina was green, water soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw,” she says. She has an air of innocence about her, it is amplified by the innocence of the text, a monologue about beauty and hope. Beside her is a girl in black, long black braids that reach down her back. She is somewhat hunched at points, angry, volatile. “I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since…Not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand.” They go back and forth. The cherub faced girl speaks of hope and desire. The other, “Not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. I became a river of poison and pus, and all the crops died and the fish.” It is the most chilling scene of the entire show—hope and potential smashed by reality. The vagina as an entrance for joy and destruction. A tearing of the soul as the flesh splits open.
A similar account is told of the Korean comfort women who were forcibly recruited by the Japanese government to serve the sexual needs of their soldiers during WWII. The women were made to wear a simple dress, with a button opening for easy access. It was planned rape on a massive scale—someone had to design and manufacture these dresses. The Korean women were raped until they could no longer walk. Raped until they could no longer have children. Raped as they bled. Raped for hours. Some of them tried to kill themselves, some were brutally beaten to death, others gunned down as they fled. These women were viewed as holes—an easy tool for Japanese masturbation. The Japanese government has removed records of these events; they have taken the information out of textbooks. Now these women are rising, are at the Japanese embassy saying, Put us back in your history books. See us. Do not hide what has happened to us. Japanese government, say you are sorry. We are seventy and eighty years old. Do not let the truth die with us. Japanese government, say you are sorry.
I was embarrassed to be crying in so public a place, until I heard the girl next to me gasp and start weeping softly. All around the audience, people held one another—acknowledging the pain of these women and their own pain. A collective consciousness, a collective grief. It was cathartic; it was devastating; it was jubilant. So that when the piece on women and sexual pleasure came up—the actors moaning on stage—we all laughed at the hilarity of it and cheered at the triumph. Watching and performing the Vagina Monologues is essentially a form of bearing witness to the horror and transcendence housed in that little member. It is celebration and grief rolled into a rollicking, profane show. It crosses all boundaries, is bigger and larger than anything I’ve seen and still, at the end, I was wondering, is that all? Won’t they keep going? There is still so much to say. So here, I’ll say my small part of it.
My vagina tastes like lemons, a little bit tart and sweet. If it were given the chance to get dressed up, it wouldn’t; it would walk in the nude, feet dipping into the soft, wet earth, swimming in a cold creek. If my vagina could talk it would say, “See me. Let me be both grief and joy. Ecstasy and sadness.” My vagina is a mouth, opening and closing. It pulsates, moves; it is dry and wet. My vagina houses so much pain. The pain of being a rape survivor. My vagina is life to me. Hope and new beginnings. My vagina is eagerness, unspoilt and indestructible. My vagina is wild charlock. Simple. Beautiful. It has been tampered with, attempted to be killed off and still it lives, As Maya Angelou would say, “Now she is rising.” Rising. My vagina is a rising waterfall, cresting and moving towards the sun. My vagina is silly thoughts and whimsy. Prayer and hope, touch and softness. Sweet lips upon lips upon lips. Moistness. My vagina is the key that connects me to other women. The secret passcode I know. My vagina connects me to lives of the future and lives of the past. My vagina is a place of life and death. My vagina. My vagina wants to be heard. Wants to shout, “How dare you!” My vagina does not want to be condescended to, to be prayed for, or acted like it doesn’t know what it is doing. My vagina wants to lead a parade in its own honor. Saying, Look what we have come through now, see how we are rising. Awkwardly, bumps and bruising, falling and rising, rising. Rising higher than we have ever risen before. My vagina is a sunrise. A hot air balloon, throwing off weights to go higher and higher into the sky. My vagina is earth and groundedness. True beauty. Trees grow there, shrubs, and rabbits play in the shade. My vagina is a wolf—a brilliant untamed thing, a misunderstood animal, wild, its own. My vagina is not always so serious. My vagina is a pretty pink princess who wears tiaras and dances in the snow.
Sometimes, I feel a terrifying nothingness down there. A numbness that won’t leave, like part of me has fallen asleep, and refuses in some somnambulant fashion to not wake again. To stay dead. I would call you Lazarus. Raise you from the dead. I would call you my darling, stretch my body across yours and pray, beg for your life back to me. Awake, sweet one. I will massage the muscles of your heart until they beat again. I will put my lips to yours and blow until your chest rises and falls. Awake from your druggedness. Awake from your numbness, your brokenness.
My vagina is a trumpet, a declaration, you can hear the sound ringing, barreling, if only you will listen, if only you want to hear. My vagina is my light and my beauty. My vagina is moss. Soft to touch, to lay your face against. Not melodramatic, just me. Not too much.
Ultimately, the show was amateurish, a group of college girls, sometimes stumbling over their lines, sometimes performing brilliantly. You could tell there were a few that felt awkward to be on stage. For me, this heightened the poignancy, brought the production closer, an intimacy, a realness. When girls my own age spoke, not 20 feet from me, about violence, about transcendence, I wanted to jump up on stage and say, “Me, too! I am a Vagina Warrior!”
We are just opening to hope. Opening slowly. Learning to love our vaginas. Learning to hope. To laugh with ourselves about the dreaded v-word. Or c-word. Or even, our coochie snorchers.
The Beatitudes
The Beatitudes
Blessed are the crazy
The hallucinators
Reaching out to touch the invisible
To you.
Do you
question
your eyes for seeing
your ears for hearing
Your consciousness
Unsure of whether you are
alive or dead or dreaming
He pressed his body against mine and I could barely muster a no.
Unheard
Heavy breathing mixed with husky laughter and
Small breasts
Blessed are the imbalanced
Speaking to themselves
Wild laughter
At jokes
You don’t hear
Me
Weeping
I dream a knife to his throat
Keep it in my closet hoping that
next time.
He doesn’t always touch me
He doesn’t have to
Father, cunt
Tight clothes for his baby whore
Blessed are the institutionalized
Adults made children in soft rooms
The animalized
Corralled
into a room of blunt objects
Cold mashed potatoes and canned peaches.
Smelling of dried urine
No dignity
They won’t let me
shut the door
Thick panes of glass
separate
Them
from
Us
Them scared of Us
We approach
They brace themselves for mutiny
Trying not to tremble
Not to spit at Us
Or laugh
He chased me around the table
My cat scattered and chairs screeched as he
Banged up the stairs
I hid he
Kicked down the door
Roared “Get your fucking ass out here.”
Don’t breathe. I told myself.
Please stop breathing.
Blessed are the humiliated.
Comatose.
The Overmedicated.
Beggars
We shuffle in bedroom slippers
Bleary eyed
To the prophylactic glass
To receive tonight’s ration.
There is nothing left.
I have one pair of clothes reeking of hospital
There is nothing left
No dental floss, no shoe laces, no cough syrup, no soap, no pens or pencils, no locks on doors
There is nothing left
No mother, no father, no sister, no brother
No one, no thing
I do not want your blessings,
Streets paved with gold,
I only want you to
see me.
To touch the
throbbing pulse of my sadness.
To stay as I thrash, cursing you
And myself,
Until I
Burn up
Collapse
Disintegrate
And am reborn.
--Adelaide
What I love about Portland
2.18.2007
Everyone's so damn friendly here. I met a woman at a bus stop the other day and we enjoyed talking so much that we exchanged phone numbers. At a job interview, I started talking with another applicant, we hit it off, and now we're getting together to play board games.
This is a picture of me with a gas station attendant who helped me during the snow storm.
Vagina Monologues benefits guys, too
According to an article by Michael Dale on Broadway World.com, the Vagina Monologues has benefits for men, too. From the article:
Hey, straight guys! I got great news for you. Eve Ensler has a new play in town. No, no really... this is great news for straight guys. You want to impress a girl? You take her to an Eve Ensler play. You don't even have to say anything. Just sit with her in the theatre and just being there makes you seem like the most sensitive, wonderful guy she's ever met. It's like ten times more effective than taking her to a Merchant Ivory movie and a lot shorter.
You guys who took a girl to her last show, The Vagina Monologues know what I mean, right? I hear statistics show that 92% of all straight guys who took a date to see The Vagina Monologues scored that night
http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=1678
I'm going tomorrow night, but I'm not making any promises.
Aunt Adelaide
I didn't have a blog in January so now is the time to publicly declare the incredible beauty of my little nephew, Wynn. Yep. I'm an aunt.
Wild Charlock--Superweed, defender of small children and tea cup poodles alike
According to an article from The Guardian, scientists have discovered a superweed that is impervious to weed killer. Enter wild Charlock. Apparently, scientists were doing experiments with a genetically modified oilseed rape (awkward name--bet he got picked on a lot in elementary school). The GMO plants were in the same field with wild charlock; two plants that scientist believed could not cross-pollinate. But, with a little Barry Manilow and a nice white wine, anything is possible. The resulting charlock proved exceedingly difficult to kill. As The Guardian points out, when doused with "lethal herbicide it showed no ill-effects." Scientists are still investigating the pull the plant out by the roots technique.
This development has had a major impact on the GMO debate. Causing farmers and scientists alike to question the danger of a new species which could quickly overwhelm not only their non-GMO predecessors but also any crops to which it was exposed. This will result in elimination of plant based food as we know them and a global charlock diet.
None of which is relevant to this post. Here is my rather crass reading of the story. There is this little charlock, living in a field, minding its own business. Scientists come along and try to control nature by introducing GMO plants. The charlock cross-pollinates and scientist lose that control--they have created a plant that they can't kill. It points to the illusion of power, and I find a degree of defiance in the charlock's unwillingness to die. To anthropomorphize, its a tiny plant giving the finger to those who would assume dominion over something that cannot be tamed.
To read more check out: http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1535428,00.html
Incidentally, if you do an internet search for this story, make sure you put "superweed" as one word, or you'll just find out about some really rad marijuana.
A letter to my brother
Hey Griff-
Went to sleep and then woke up jonesing for some cornbread. Luckily, I am well prepared. I spent the day hiking in Forest Park. The sun was shining and everybody was out. I had planned to go to a women's pick up rugby game, but no one showed and I headed for the park.
Portlanders, like those in most big cities, seem to have mastered the art of making ever smaller dogs. Some are shrunk in proportion, others look like Cotton from "King of the Hill"--like their legs have been blown off at the knees. The tiniest dogs seem to have an air of being being constantly pissed off. A tea cup doberman pinscher actually told me to fuck off yesterday. Well, it didn't actually say it. It was more of a stare that said, "Hey, what you looking at, buddy? I may be small but I can still kick your ass!" I crossed the street.
While these tiny dogs look odd in downtown, they look bizarre on the trail. Walking in Forrest Park today, a golden retriever ran haphazardly towards me, sniffing the air as he ran by. Behind him, a toy Yorkshire terrier struggled to keep pace, by which I mean struggled to keep pace with its owners who were leisurely walking. They would call the bigger dog back occasionally and he would come galumphing back, circle the smaller dog gaily and charge forward again. The toy dog would try to go faster, while cursing under its breath. It was the only time I thought Paris Hilton could be humane for caring her dog in a purse.
Ray Bradbury writes the story "All Summer in a Day" about a colonized Venus, where the people enjoy the light of the sun just one hour every seven years. I am reminded of this story often here in Portland. On those days when the sun shines, everyone comes crawling out of their houses and apartments as if the sun will not be coming again for seven years. Downtown was packed with people of all ages, mothers saying to their small children, "Look at the light!" Well, maybe not that bad. The light filtered through the mossy trees of Forest Park and the water jumped up to dance in it.
You may have noticed by now that I imagine a lot of things talking that don't actually talk. As far as we know. Its a habit I've picked up--sometimes my lips move when I see it and I imagine people must think that my mind has long since gone on vacation. Or try singing while you're walking down the road. People may give you odd looks or an occasional smile as they pass you, but to people driving in cars I look as if I'm waiting for my purple pony and magic chicken suit. Which is fine, if you're into that sort of thing.
All of this is late night rambling. Enjoying the words that come out before I even know what they'll say. Are you writing much? I hope so. It seems to crisp and clarify life for me.
Love you
Adelaide
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