On Addiction:

Once I blog once in an uneventful, unstressful night, I blog twice. Then thrice. Who knows how many more will follow.

Here's a quotation on addiction said by my legendary professor: Bobbie Louise Hawkins:

"I think reading is an addiction. Writing is like a secondary addiction. You realize if you're going to be an addict, you might as well be your own supplier."


...and since we're already here and quoting my most quotable professor, I will slap a few more into the cyber-world.

"Women who are attracted to Narcissistic men do it to have space."

"What kind of hooker has a bum hip?"

"Republicans love celebrities - why? - well, because they want them to read the lines right."

"I'd like to suggest that solutions aren't necessarily the best thing that can happen. Putting a nail through something isn't going to fix your future."

"And flopping around is often where it's at - you flop around until you find yourself at a place you didn't expect. As DH Lawerence once said: 'My characters slog along and slog along and then they blossom like little cabbages!'"

"Go with it that you don't have a chance in hell but to change constantly."

"The ideal is like a grey cloud hovering over what actually is. And it makes 'what is' look inadequate and even though the ideal extends itself as unattainable, you continue to vote for it to show that you have standards."

"Rhetoric will not let a new thing happen."

"Pieces like this run the risk of becoming confetti."


Everyone should meet BLHawkins.

The things we come across...

While researching far and wide across the vast internet for a job or grant or fellowship or future for myself, I wonderfully stumbled upon this FREE ad on craigslist:



Free: comfortable, sturdy, but ugly couch/sofabed

Reply to: sale-490507887@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-26, 7:28PM MST


Yours simply for the labor of hauling it away, one very comfortable and sturdy sofa, expands to a double bed for those too-many-friends-suddenly-comatose occasions. When not extended into bed form, highly suitable for many an afternoon whiled away with books and/or audiovisual entertainment, not to mention a favored location for lazy-Sunday naps. Due almost entirely to the aforementioned comfort factor, this was one of the few furniture pieces that we decided was worth hauling across the country when we moved here from Massachusetts in 2004, despite its aesthetic shortcomings (see below) and possible alternate usage as battleship ballast.

Only hitch: according to a local expert (full disclosure: said expert is related to me by marriage) the upholstery on this couch, while admittedly robust and in generally good shape without stains or much wear, is certifiably "BUTT-ugly!" (emphasis hers) to such a degree that the camera may have suffered an electronic aneurism when a photograph was attempted with the pattern completely exposed. (I have not yet looked up the resultant error code on Canon's site, but I am assured by the aforementioned expert that "CF card full" is an arcane digital-imagery message that really means "That is such a butt-ugly couch that I refuse to sully my CCD sensors or display panel with its image.") Luckily we'd managed several other pictures by that point with the butt-ugliness only partially exposed; see attached.

In consideration of the opprobrium you will likely face when you present it to YOUR discerning housemate(s), spouse, or significant other, perhaps even while uttering something like the following perfectly understandable but in retrospect somewhat ill-chosen words:

"Look what a great couch I found for practically nothing!"

...in consideration and mitigation of that awkward moment, I say, for the paltry sum of $20 I am also willing to part with the patented Butt-Ugliness Concealment Device (BUCD, a.k.a. "slipcover") with which the couch is currently equipped, depicted in the attached images. This particular BUCD is constructed of heavy-duty chenille in a sage-green color. (The prospective purchaser with delusions of aesthetic sufficiency may be interested to know for purposes of comparison that the print visible above the couch in the attached images is of Stephen Linhart's "Gaze", http://www.stephen.com/portfolio/9.html)

Not included: the mysterious BUCD accessories visible in some pictures. These sinister objects are sometimes referred to as "throw pillows;" this confusing nomenclature persists despite the cries of horrified consternation that inevitably result if one is so incautious as to contemplate actual throwing. Their true purpose remains steadfastly unknown to this researcher.


Couch dimensions:
width: 70" at widest point (arm to arm)
depth: 36" (90" in bed-mode)
height: 30" at middle of backrest (highest point.)
weight: unmeasured but significant. Bring a friend or three.

Provenance and, ah, pet peeves: couch was previously owned by a family with dogs. We steam-cleaned it repeatedly after acquiring it, and no trace of doggy odor or hair remains apparent to our senses, but persons with allergies may wish to take this history into account. In much the same vein, full disclosure demands mention of the fact that we are possessed by two cats who regularly avail themselves of the sofa's previously-noted afternoon-nap advantages; while they are not inclined to shed more than your average indoor feline -- and while we often vacuum and occasionally launder the BUCD -- persons with especial sensitivity may not be interested in taking the chance.

Note: Butt-Ugliness Concealment Device ("slipcover") does not function with 100% efficacy when item is configured in bed-mode; some Butt-Ugliness may be apparent to the perspicacious observer and/or your snooty parent-in-law who does not consider thrift to be a virtue and was looking for a reason to sniff disapprovingly anyway. On no account will the poster be held liable for incidental damages arising from failure of the BUC Device to prevent thinly-veiled speculations as to the purchaser's design sense, color sense, sanity, intelligence, or lack of any/all of the preceding.

WinterPark Thanksgiving

Winter Park Mountainline


Snowboarding Cocoa stop


Jeanie and Gans-look-alike friend Melissa


Our goodbye note to Nancy and Bill... a thank you even though we didn't get Banana Bread


Cruisin' Town


Empire, CO.





Christoph and Buddy



This was in the men's room at our Burger joint. We lived by this motto all weekend. Board games, beer and eating!

A reflection off the deck doors of our burger joint...


This is Wilbur... he chewed off all his feathers after a nervous breakdown. Though cold, he seemed happy enough.

Ophirs!

Yes, we went 0-17 for the season in frisbee. I think we doomed ourselves when we changed our team name nearly weekly. For the tournament we named ourselves the Ophirs to stand for Oh-and-fifteen on the season. We condemned ourselves!

But it was fun all along anyhow. Love you pumpkins afternoon delight random strangers!

It can be a bit maddening, having an irrational passion for something.

I think in terms of literary devices. Speak to strangers with subtle allusions & abstract references. Listen with rhetorical critique & I love in spontaneous snippets.

I can't ride my bike by a passing wind without mentally scrawling a haiku. I thought about good words to use in sestinas all day. I sometimes convince myself the entire world and everyone in it is living the epic poem; each action, a line in the verse of day.

Lately, it has been elegiac glasses fused to my visage; I'm not sure how to remove them. I can't convince myself that it's best for me to try.

It's a blurry focus to live in - a nebulous cloud of questions, constantly seeking epiphanies and explanations.

Now I know why Nietzsche went mad.

Better to have lived and died than to never have been born at all.

I am glad you were born - despite the rifts we've come across over the past four years.
H.B. frog.

Reminders against worrying

Do not round down.

Rewrite, edit, pare down.

Hug.

Don't grind your teeth over it.

Sing outloud on bike but watch for stop signs.

Hug, again.

Hang out with someone who makes you productive but often distracts and helps procrastinate.

Never be late; be just enough on time.

Kerouac Chorus Response # 17

Keep a coffin nearby,
collect every tear
in it.

Then, I guess, first
you should line your
coffin
w/saran wrap

so as not to spill
or allow seepage

A coffin doesn't kill -
it collects.

Just as a gun doesn't murder -
it's the messenger.

For those of you who know me...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/education/edlife/naropa.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I go to Naropa. I study poetry in a Buddhist setting. I am a florist.

Last semester I took a course in Ikebana: the way of Japanese flower arrangement. I was reading through an old notebook and found a few things that re-inspired me:

"Why don't you live that question? Let it work on you in life and let the answer bloom."

in acknowledgement of shifting, impermanence: "The pain is then part of the happiness."

"The crescent moon is still a full moon." Even if it's just a glimpse, it is still a full moment.

Live your questions - answers are eternally evolving. Everything is transient. Appreciate a moment for what it is.

Gregory Corso:

"You can't tell anyone anything they don't already know - people's heads are just dark and you gotta light em up. In a sense, we were illuminators!"

Night off.

What's a night off?

For me, it generally occurs between 6:30pm and 11:00pm. It is a time when nothing must occur.

Tonight was a night off for me. We (meaning George and I) sat at the kitchen table and wrote and googled and giggled and drank wine, ate brie, probably annoyed people around us, but we just were. Now, this may sound hippie, but we literally were just BEING what we ARE. We just were.

And it felt good - to have a night like this. I felt like I haven't had it in a while. I feel like this is what I am looking forward to for Thanksgiving: a time to just BE. I'm most excited that we'll have video cameras to DOCUMENT it!

Thank you for the Goulash, George. The garbanzo beans went so well with the cologen, paprika and bay leaves.

unknown

How your words winnow in my head
I hate
that I cannot display the
ideas
of why you make me elate
why space
can make me smirk -
the edges between city skyline buildings
straight.

Can't there be more than one beauty
catches eye
I can't synopsize why he, why me
and think only we
'what's the bug with wood of a relationship'
I deposit this thought in the
comment box
that he never checks

what prompts
the line breaks?
What's the sp ace
mean?
Is it different in font or form on a subway car -
Question lapse like the moon eclipse
dawn of a morning star
sometimes cannot be seen because of
taller trees or
hover clouds

Either way, it's there, behind and
it's above you, too
and we are both below

tucked in the cellar bed

don't eat the quiche

"Why did we need to know about that?"

Why? Because history teaches us things. We can listen and be open to others' experiences and learn from them as if we had experienced it for ourselves.

Don't eat the quiche at The Cup. Do not eat the chicken at the Hungry Toad. Do not microwave Chef Boyardee with the cap on. Do not climb armoires.



* * * I wish I had know about Ettore Boiardi earlier; I would have written my Italian-Americans final paper on him. Damn.