Incalculable

I like math so much more than I like people. I like exact answers, truths, proofs. Demonstrable patterns to the universe. Having to figure out the logic model of people just makes me aggravated.

While the wind feels like winter still, there is grass growing in the softball infield, and the clouds are promising Spring.

That's all I've got.

Silent Poetry Reading

Electra on Azalea Path

Sylvia Plath

The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering -
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.

Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped stone askew by an iron fence.

In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a bloody dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.

Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.

The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father - your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.

Running on Empathy

I never know when she’ll call, so when her number shows up on my caller ID it’s like a shot through the gut every time. It’s never the right time for these conversations, during which I can feel my very soul being drained through the earpiece and into the chasm that is her life. I wouldn’t change places with her for anything in the world, but I can’t ever seem to hit “ignore” and make the decision to not listen for once.

We are practically strangers, she and I, but bonded by our mutual and bloody loss. This is why I listen, this emptiness in her is the same in me, and while I’m working on my own answers I think maybe she’ll have some kernel of truth to guide me. I answer her call because I have so many unanswered questions yet.

There is only one explanation, and This. Explains. Everything.

A play in three acts

characters:
Me - playing myself
Other People Bothering Me (OPBM)- played by themselves

Act One
Set in my small, windowless office, morning.
OPBM (walking in, interrupting an ipod-induced reverie): Can you get me an inventory of the items we discussed yesterday?
Me: I can't. It's Friday.

Act Two
Set on the patio outside the office building, midmorning.
OPBM (interrupting an intense navel-gazing exercise): Can you buy me a cheeseburger today?
Me: I can't. It's Friday.

Act Three
Set in the lobby. Midafternoon.
Me: (walks by OPBM while yawning)
OPBM: Stop yawning!
Me: I can't. It's Friday.

Scene.

An open letter to J, who is unlikely to respond

The bruises from your dog have risen, and are fading. The ache our fight left in me has lessened to a souring in my stomach and for that, I am relieved. We haven’t talked in days, and it’s possible we won’t. If we could, I would tell you that I make mistakes all the time, this is not new to me. The nicest thing about being In The Wrong is that The Wrong is a crowded place; you’re bound to run into someone you know there. I have the capacity to forgive, in fact have forgiven you, and I wish most right now that you could do the same.

This life, and where I’ve chosen to live it out, has turned me into someone I hardly recognize. Where I used to be open and warm I’ve become skeptical, hard, and cynical. This is not something I prefer, but something I need to survive here. It’s possible your motives were pure, and that you never intended to hurt me in the only place I cannot protect. It is possible. It is possible that you are genuine, but in the room your silence creates, I can’t put much faith in it.

We are soured by the sour forces around us; it would take a stronger person than I to resist that. I am trying. I am growing older, and I am growing. This will be gotten beyond, one way or another. But at the present, my greatest wish is just that this could be said, not catalogued, that you would hear. Short of that, I am speaking alone in a quiet room, to an audience of none.

That sneaky John Mayer

I must confess that I love John Mayer. Not just because his last name and mine are oh-so-close (that's an obvious sign of our dessstiny), and not just because he wrote perfectly likeable pop songs, and then took a hiatus and did a delightful blues project. Also not because he's a terriffic guitar player and also has an enviable tattoo on his arm (in a box - another sign of dessstiny).

No. It is because he is one sharp feller. His blog is witty, and today's entry, introducing a new approach to the Global Warming debacle, is worth quoting here:

"So here I am, introducing a third side. A laid-back, panic free approach to environmentalism. One that believes the message of "An Inconvenient Truth" is sound, but that it's an incredibly un-fun name for a movie. A side free from the cry of hypocrisy, for it doesn't make sweeping promises. A side that drives an SUV on the way to the grocery store but then produces nylon mesh bags at the checkout line. A side that believes in bringing a change of perspective to our government but letting Carl Rove finish his meal first."

If you've gotten this far, and regardless of your feelings about pop songs that overuse the word "body" and the lanky and lank-haired singers of same, you must go read the full entry. I insist.

Mayo Girls are a Force of Nature

Mein Sister came to town last weekend.

We rocked Low Divide with Jess:









We rocked Pizza King, where we stunned Travis and Matt (or at least Matt):



We rocked the Turf:



We rocked the turf so hard Pants’ shirt came off:







In all, I can’t wait until she comes back. It’s been 2 years since she was here last, and that was about 1.8 years too long.