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It’s appropriate that the Sea of Tranquility is located on the Moon: within site but forever out of reach…like Michaelangelo trying to touch fingers with the Old Man “Dammit! Stretch! Reach!“
Life in general feels like that right now. In exactly 20 days I have 12 papers, 3 presentations and 3 final exams coming home to roost. You know, if it weren’t for all the damn busy work these professors load on me to justify their existence and make it appear like they’re doing something, I might actually learn something.
I’m screwing around tonight. I should be outlining a paper or four, performing analysis or some such crap, but I’m on strike, for the next 12 hours anyway. I ordered pizza, I’m drinking wine (I make it a rule not to drink the last month of term), and I just discovered my next Future-Mr-Inmate-If-I-Wasn’t-Happily-Married-Husband-Man in the form of Nathan Fillion in a crazy little show called Castle. And dammit, where has that been all my life?
Tomorrow it’s back to work. Crazy like a fox. Nose to the proverbial grindstone. The next couple weeks are going to be the most hellish I have seen yet. But it will pass, hopefully my GPA doesn’t take too hard a hit, and then I’ll settle back into my summer time bubble and try to enjoy a little down time.
For the next 12 hours I’m just trying to remember how to float. And breathe.
A Jew, a Muslim and a Christian walk into a bar…
No, seriously, they did. Embassy workers and the cheeky lads were kind enough to invite me to dine with them. I played my part of the shocking and bedeviled American and more wine was probably sprayed from laughing than was properly consumed. Not a bad way to enjoy the afternoon.
Welcome to Den Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag….
Do remember though that you must respect Low Sidewalk and High Sidewalk. High Sidewalk is for walking, Low Sidewalk is for cyclists and you best mind your P’s & Q’s when tress-passing on the Low Sidewalk because the Dutch are armed with bells and they are not afraid to use them.
Next stop: the local grocery store. The Netherlands are damn expensive and eating out will put you back a pretty penny or four so I hit the market and pick up enough food to crowd into the mini-bar when I get back to the hotel. Nothing terribly noteworthy about Dutch grocers except for the staggering variety of dairy products. Takes up nearly a third of the store. A clerk was kind enough to explain the varieties of milk and for what foods they are specifically engineered.
If this entry is disjointed it is because that was my experience. My hair and sleep cycle did not meld with The Hague. It’s all now a bit of a blur due to sleep deprivation and the strange habit I have of viewing a new city through the lens of the last city I visited. Hence, the Netherlands is viewed through Iceland who was viewed through Ireland who was viewed through France who was view through Morocco and so on and etc.
So my summation is this: the Dutch are groovy kind of folk. They like their bikes retro, their cars small, and their dogs breed-neutral. They have a complicated style of dress that only years of study in the areas of architecture and Dadaist art could I then begin the assimilate. They serve a cup of coffee with a cookie which is exactly how life should be.
The Dutch will take the time to tear up an asphalt covered street only to be replaced with brick laid in a herringbone pattern. That’s a lot of brick. That’s a lot of patience.
The architecture is Baroque on top of Baroque on top of more Baroque with snippets of astounding Art Deco and modern structures. But all building have the same M.O: large windows with, often, no curtains drawn. They suck up as much light as they can during the day and and rarely bother to draw the shades at night allowing for seriously people watching in their natural habitat. When asked about this, a local store clerk informed me that Dutch people did not assume the worst of people as Americans clearly do.
Attached to these large windows, however, are retracted candy-colored striped awnings just begging to spring out. The most common color are white and orange which I can imagine make the place reminiscent of Newport, Rhode Island the summers of the early 1900’s where the Astors and the Rockefellers and other Masters of the Universe would keep “summer cottages” (read: massive mansions constructed before the introduction of the income tax). I would actually consider a trip back here just to see these awnings in full glory.
I like these people. Their national color is orange, they’ve adopted mint tea from their citizens of Moroccan descent, they ride their bikes rain or shine, hell, I saw a family of four commute to work on a tandem bike with attached side car. Amazing. This in a city with the best public transport I have ever seen.
The only complaint I can conjure is the weather, well, that and a disturbed hotel-roommate. The weather has either been pissing rain, misting rain, or blowing rain the entire week. The only reprieve was the last day when the sun finally broke through and the temp reached a lovely 50 degrees. Rain however, was not enough to keep me from visiting the beach.
I’ll get into that tomorrow though. Right now, I’m still so jet lagged, I’m ready to call it a night even though it’s only mid-afternoon.
Believe it or not, I learned this poem sophomore year of Catholic high school. To date, this remains one my favorite naughty poems. Do keep in mind this is posted by woman whose husband is away at sea…
(ponder,darling,these busted statues
of yon motheaten forum be aware
notice what hath remained
–the stone cringes
clinging to the stone,how obsoletelips utter their extant smile . . . .
remarka few deleted of texture
or meaning monuments and dollsresist Them Greediest Paws of careful
time all of which is extremely
unimportant)whereas Lifematters if or
when the your-and my-
idle vertical worthless
self unite in a peculiarly
momentarypartnership(to instigate
constructive
Horizontal
business . . . . even so,let us make haste
–consider well this ruined aqueductlady,
which used to lead something into somewhere)ee cummings
Naughty Haiku For Sailor
Hey, there Sailor Man
When you’re done there at the helm
Come home and take mine
Sailor reads more poetry than any person I have ever met. He tackles poets I wouldn’t dream of reading unless I had the backup of a college professor. He can quote any number of poets at the drop of a hat. He is my own personal library card catalogue. All I have to ask is “Hey, what’s that one about the fork?” and he knows it.
Similarly, I’ve probably made more mixed tapes than anyone I know. I do a damned good mixed tape. Ask anyone who has received one from me. I like to craft a collection that is thematic. Like an old fashioned record album. I want to tell a story with the music I gather into one place. Like Sailor, hum a few bars for me or give me a a word or two and I am the grand champion of Name That Tune.
So I’m trying to apply my mixed tape mentality to this week’s poems. This next poem isn’t so much about love, but about letting someone into the inner workings of your noggin. A little exposure if you will. And as far Sailor is concerned, if you’re reading this, I am sure this isn’t anything you don’t already know about me.
I Have Been Her Kind
Anne Sexton
have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
You know, after all this time, I have no idea if Sailor reads this blog? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. I know I wouldn’t want to know the inner workings of my twisted mind anymore than was necessary. This blog is best read by strangers.
But Sailor is away on another high-seas adventure. I’ll see him for a few weeks in March and then, not again until July. Such is life of a college student and her mate.
And Valentines Day is this week, I’m feeling all soft and mushy. So I am dedicating this next week of poetry posts to the man I love.
I am deeply, deeply, sorry for this y’all…
Harlem Night Song
Langston Hughes
Come, Let us roam the night together
Singing.I love you.
Across
The Harlem roof-tops
Moon is shining.
Night sky is blue.
Stars are great drops
Of golden dew.Down the street
A band is playingI love you.
Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.
Erie is the last place on this planet I ever expected to run into Former Colleague, but the world being as small as it is, I suppose I should have expected it sooner or later.
Former Colleague and I worked together under terrifically awful circumstances. We both had a boss from Hell within the same company whose sole purposes seemed only to either make us miserable or humiliate us as much as possible. Our jobs required extensive travel and since misery loves company, we were thrown together a lot. We had nearly identical passports.
FC and I are two people who really shouldn’t travel together for the fact that FC was a devil and I would fearlessly go along with anything. On more than one occasion, we would play “Business Spouses At War”, the end result being that we would gain such niceties as free hotel dry cleaning and room upgrades. Some hotels will do anything to shut a bickering couple up.
Our usual modus operandi revolved gambling. FC and I would bet on anything. The weather, the guy in the airplane seat behind us sneezing, how many times would the guy sneeze, or who make the weirdest faces at the little grandma and get her to laugh first. You get the idea.
Our winnings over such bets wasn’t money but a thing called ”Damn Glad to Be Here” status. Whomever lost the bet would, for the duration of the trip, have t0 introduce themselves as “Hi! I’m So-and-So, I’m American, and damn glad to be here!” to every single person they met on the trip. If our respective bosses got wind of this, they would make a point of introducing us to anyone they could find, including the homeless person on the street begging for change.
Needless to say, this sort of exchange does not go over well in most parts of the world. Except Australia. They effin loved that line in Australia. But as ridiculous as this game was, it got me through a lot rough business trips. If I was pissed off, tired, depressed, burnt-out, or just bleh, FC could always goad me into a bet, that resulted in a rousing adventure of “Damn Glad To Be Here”. I probably would have left that job a full year earlier had it not been for that game.
When we both had reached our limit, we left the company. I eventually lost my taste for the Corporate Theocracy that has become American business and changed paths. I did it the day I was called into the office and my boss offered me a promotion. I quit instead. FC left not long after I did. I lost track of FC who became little more than an amusing anecdote I told from time to time.
I was doing a favor for a friend and dropping off a visiting sister at the downtown Sheraton this past week. We were meeting my friend in the bar when I noticed a familiar face down at the other end.
FC. A little older, a little sadder, possibly even angry. He seemed to have lost all sense of humor. He bought me a drink and told me about his life in the 15 years that I last saw him. He left our company for another. Same company really only with a boss who was worse. He managed to stick it out until that boss retired, climbed the corporate ladder, escaped middle management, and carved a place out for himself.
He’s my age but I swear he looks 20 years older.
FC goes on to tell me all about his work which he is beginning to suspect he might actually hate. There is zero talk of a personal life. He hates his coworkers, he despises his staff, he is beginning to think he may even be worse than the two hellish bosses we had all those years ago.
This is too intense a conversation for someone I have not seen in over a decade. I call over my friend’s sister and introduce her to FC. I tell her he’s visiting, he’s from Chicago, and he’s damn glad to be here.
My friend arrives with a few other friends and I begin the old game anew. FC grudgingly and quietly goes along. He’s not into it. He doesn’t look like he’s much into anything anymore , not even this life. I let him slip away after an hour or so of my nonsense. We don’t even exchange email.
Earlier in the evening, FC sighed as he told me how he would put in another 15 years and retire with this company. It has a good retirement package. He seemed resigned to that fact, as if he had no other options left in life.
I wonder if he’ll last that long.
Oooo, I’ve been a bad blogger. Totally slacking off to be sure. It’s not for lack of having anything to write about as much as it is the disinclination to complete whatever thought the mice in my brain have been cooking up. Since last I wrote, I have begun no less than 15 posts, and all of them sit there for me, like old aunties patiently waiting for some attention.
So here’s the highlight reel of what’s been going on in my brain for the last thirty days:
Thanksgiving: Sailor and I visited Detroit and I was working on an entry that would cast the characters of a certainly twisted little film about the subject. I wrote no further than casting Dr. Horrible as friend Kennedy and Edna Mode as my other friend Hansen. Sailor will be portrayed by Gerard Butler in 300…of course.
Iceland: the economy here may be bad, but I’m glad I’m not living in Iceland presently. I think Icelanders should exact revenge on the world credit markets by becoming Vikings…again…
Skinny Pants on Men: VETO! I am China on the UN Security Council of men wearing skinny pants, particularly when said pants ride below your ass line. Rock star or not, it just looks bad. Let’s ponder this for a moment: big pants with no belts resulted in the fashion trend of baggy jeans around ones thighs. This is does not however naturally or organically flow into skinny jeans following the same logic. What is to be assumed, however, is that, dude, your ass is too big for your drawers to cover them so either get to the gym, lay off the fries or invest in bigger sizes!!!
Visiting Detroit: Always entails furthering Sailor’s Motown education while on the road. Hey, we’re locked in a car for 4 hours, when else am I going to get the chance? At the rate we’re going, I’ll be in the grave before he can have an intelligent conversation of enduring legacy of Marvin Gaye or the evolution of Gospel music into modern pop.
Cubicle Mates:engaging in noisy habits like eating apples at work. I sooooo love listening to you slurp and chomp and gurgle your food. Please do me favor and get a knife to either fall upon or to cut up your damn fruit.
Dirty Pirates: an occupational hazard of being married to a sailor is that you watch a lot of pirate movies. Saw Pirates of the Carribean for the umpteenth time and am still amazed at it’s appalling ability to inspire in me the desire to have dirty pirates babies.
Sailor being home for the winter: Long story short, he likes to spy on my secret-single-grooming behavior and my desire for intimacy only goes so far. It’s not like Sailor hasn’t seen me without make-up or my hair bedraggled, it’s just I rather he not see the trans-formative process involved in making me presentable to the public. I’d rather he continue to believe in magic, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.
Dead deer on the highways: holy crap do they make a mess! Like Carrie on prom night, the blood is freaking everywhere…
and lastly:
Lessons Learned from Re-Visiting a Small Southern Town:
1. It’s sometimes hard to remember the reasons we left.
2. When I remember those reasons, I remember they were damn good ones.
3. Southerners have the best names like Bootsy and Trout, and those are just the first names.
4. Nothing funnier than Dubliners operating a proper pub in the South catering to red neck motorcycle gangs.
5. Got-damn there ain’t nothin like Southern Hospitality!
6. My status in said town has finally been downgraded from Damn Yankee to just Yankee.
7. In a town so small, the changes that do occur seem enormous.
8. I forgot how much fun local gossip can be.
9. I also forgot how fast news is spread.
10. Given #9, I really should have stopped drinking sometime around midnight.
11. Given #9 and #10, people were surprisingly accommodating in keeping their voices down in my presence the next day.
…and I think that about gets you up to speed…I can’t believe I would have turned any of these into a full length post. Time to get deleting…
I’m a sucker for a mystery. Not as in novels, I actually don’t care for the genre in literature. And mystery movies don’t exactly do it for me either. It’s more akin to simply enjoying a story that does not have an end. Or is missing it’s midddle. Just enough so you don’t have all the facts and are left wanting for more.
Whether it’s Amelia Earhart, raining frogs, Raoul Wallenberg, the Black Dahlia, The Mary Celeste, or Jack the Ripper, I frantically beg that people don’t find them, don’t solve them, don’t examine them, and in general just leave the story the hell alone! I like my mysteries intact.
So it is with anticipation that I hope no one comes forward to solve this interesting case of a perfectly functioning piano left in the woods off Cape Cod. It’s a little romantic, a little creepy, definitely strange, and a perfect late fall mystery for me to ponder.
