Dolores Egg Toss

Every town has its annual Festivities in which all the chilluns come out to play the wacky games, giggle and drink cheap Root Beer Floats. Me and my traveling companion were lucky enough to fall upon such a town at such an instance and dominate their Annual Egg Toss until all the 9 and under ones were sobbing over their failures. Okay, okay, maybe we didn't make any young ones cry but we did beat the town Firefighters in a close egg toss, catapulting our egg nearly 40 yards and catching it with such grace, it coulda been a baby's head.

August 11 SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Pancake Breakfast 6:30 am
Crafts and Food Booths All Day
Softball Tournament All Day
Mountain Bike Race 9:45 am
Parade 10 am
Galloping Goose Rides 11 to 3 pm -on the hour
Chain Saw contest 11 am
Stomp Rockets 11:30 am
Water Balloon Toss 11:45 am
Arm Wrestling 1:00 pm
Penny Hunt 1:30 pm
Egg Toss 2:00 pm
Watermelon eating contest 2:30 pm
Water Fight 3:00 pm
Duck Race 3:30 pm

Esposito Hitchhiker

Just outside of Telluride, past the Conoco on 46, we saw a young man trekking the lengthy incline south and slowed to let him enter our Elantra world of Blackalicious. Elantra saved his footsteps 42 miles and he was quite pleasant to have in the hatch; he gave us some local knowledge and hope for grandmothers everywhere! (he was hitchhiking down to Mancos to visit his dear G'ma)

Surprisingly, I did not inquire the fellow about his name. Christoph pointed out to me that I am nearly annoyingly interested in names. Every story he told, my first response would be about labeling lineages - everything from pets to parents, I required a full signature. This helps me capture an image of the characters involved in a story. It is an act of engagement to me; I want to store the memory, so I need details.

One of my favorites things about my morning co-worker is his method of recounting individuals from his past with full names. Isaac Coudorea, Maggie Nelson, Chelsea VanMach, Tapanga Lawerence... He even sneezes with a name: Abignali! I think names interest me so much because they are all so different and surprising. Learning new appellations is adding words to my vocabulary. It is even fun to hear a story about a person with the exact same name of someone I already know; the unknown leaned up against something familiar tickles me.

Words, letter combinations, sounds and memory sparks are all very enlivening to me. Language, in any form, brings me to life. "Rösti" are Swiss (*) hashbrowns. "Giggerig" is loosely translated from Swiss German to Love Crazy in English. "Jein" is German slang for "Yes/No"

Maybe I am crazy but I love burnt hashbrowns! Jein me giggerig, mais me gusto Rösti Brûlé!






Pictured above are (left to right) Pygmy and Steggy

Green Chile Cheese Boar

After stabbing my purlicue with swiss army bottle opener, we began our ascent up a rocky switchback toward Telluride's gorgeous waterfalls. When Elantra wouldn't make it up where the big boys could go (jeeps) we parked under some nice rock coverage and trekked the rest. No more words needed here.

Surreptitious Tent Pitching

Upon the entrance of Telluride, Colorado, we were stopped for about 45 minutes. We thought for a moment there might be a quota on the town. An Audi full of rowdy women occupied our front view; they were shaking their blow-up doll man out the sunroof, waving to the construction workers. Lewis Black kept us company over the mp3 player.



Due to our unexpected delay, we arrived at the free campsite after dark to see that it was apparently FULL. Persistent travelers do not give up because of signs. We kept our cat-eyes out for an open parking spot and/or patch of dirt to erect the tent. When we finally found the perfect open space, neighbors of it came up and tried to pop our bubble: "Three people have already tried that and have been booted." Christoph kindly asked them what would be the best maneuvering we could pull so as not to be the fourth. Our new neighbors, Dave and Andy, lent us their lantern to pitch the tent as far back behind as many trees as possible. Within ten minutes, we were all set up and on our way to free illegal camping. Christoph told me to grab all my stuff and put it in the tent, and I told him I had it all. He was baffled that I had packed a Polaroid camera, two squirt guns and even a plastic lizard but failed to pack camping gear. Thankfully, he lent me a sweater and we decided not to worry about it until after we got back from town.

Fly Me to the Moon Saloon was just opening up and allowed us to check out the band before committing with a cover charge. We hopped on the foosball table and I killed him thrice. To pet his ego a little bit, I allowed him to beat me in pool a few times at The Sheridan down the street.





The walk back the tent was feasible; though we'd shared a few pitchers, we had flashlights to navigate the way. Besides, every star in the sky was shining down - every star. Had I not been so tired from the trip, I would have sat in a swing and watched for meteors.

Learn Parallax

n. An apparent change in the direction of an object, caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight.

A quarry ran alongside us to the right. I mentioned Garden State and how I'd always wanted to stand along the cliff of a deep pit. He promptly took the next side road and we sifted through sammiches to find the least soggy of them all: Ostrich.
-would you like buffalo or ostrich?


After a brief hike toward the edge, with locust-looking grasshoppers bounding alongside my stride, I concluded that the hike would be too long and it would be better to just soak it in from afar. So I cracked a Karma and he joined me on a weather-worn rock to look over the horizon of the drop-off. Silence and vast skies.





Back at the car, I mentioned how my last lengthy roadtrip had been with David and how he told me I was a terrible photographer on the banks of Coney Island. Christoph briefly introduced me to the basics of photography. Here are a few of my attempts at implementing my new knowledge:







Notice the perfection of shadow inclusion!

Lost Already

Navigator deficiencies.



Shouldn't you be watching the road?

How to Purchase a Styrofoam Cooler with a Stranger

Though set to depart at eight o'clock a.m., he said he'd wait a few hours for the company and free sandwiches. Though we'd shared a short discussion in a dark front yard, a passport scan on a stoop in front of sushi and a mutual love for adventure, we were still technically strangers. Though we thought a twelve inch styrofoam cooler would suffice for an Ostrich, Buffalo, Boar and Turkey sandwich, we were wrong. Off we were, southwest-ish toward Tucson...

Visits schmisits!

Jackie came to visit for a week and we began by hanging out with the dagster.



She likes to write, too.



She loves Jackie cause she looks like me :)


Jackie lived the Naropian life for one day which consisted of biking to class, eating Steak Quesadillas and drinking Margs at Rincon del Sol during a one hour break, then watching pretentious writers/artists (in this case film-maker) use their lecture time as an excuse to make people watch her films (which were actually pretty kickass) and then going to Dolan's for a whiskey during the next one hour break. The whole Summer Writing Program ended at Catacombs, a dive bar beneath the Hotel Boulderado. We sat at a table and wrote for a few minutes then rode our bikes home. So tired.



The same deer comes every day to visit our backyard and eat our weeds. Jackie, Pete and I whistled sweet songs to her as she munched on our wild, unwanted plants.



Hiked Sanitas...






And unfortunately, I'm not much of a paparazzo, so those are basically the only Colorado photos we gots.

Onto Syracuse! Trenton Waterfalls!



x RESTRICTED AREA x


You take the secret trail scattered with NO TRESPASSING signs...


WEE!


getting closer...


And Along the Way...

this is eddy's flower- he left it behind but I kept it.


Please save this to your desktop.




Mushroom ears!


We made it!!!


dancin on the edge


Jackie and camo rock



Much bigger than they look -


Smiles because this is one of the reasons I come home...



"Oh look at the pretty red leaves!"


They're red for a reason:


See how the mossy elephant has poison ivy eyes? Yeah, so did I, after unknowingly playing with the poison ivy. And poison ivy ears- itchy ears are no fun.




To finish off the wonderful waterfalls adventure, we made a friend with an inch worm in Jen's car. Inchy!

Modest Mouse @ Red Rocks

My good friend Jon rented a Converted Van/Limo for his friend Kelsey's 21st birthday to go down to Red Rocks Amphitheatre and I was lucky enough to be invited along. Spent the night hanging out with Detroit kids, drinking Crown Royale and dance halling every night.

Speachless about the beauty. MoMo rocked me, too :)

Ryan Adams, Devotchka and Lucinda Williams are playing tomorrow night and I am so tempted to sell something in order to go...

"Anyone can play the ripcord guitar.”

I can’t stop whispering you
You, my lung lozenge slab to suck on
Thumb for comfort, you were.

You’re bones are just a nice dream,
A karma airbag for my crash.

Scrolls of siestas on Wednesdays flicker in your history:
People trip over the power cord, land into your vegetable lap.

Beyond the gabled rooftops that guard my youth,
I tumble like a cloud for you.

I might be wrong, but you’ve crushed my tin box once before
& I cannot con your spinning plates

Instead, I’ll schedule (without appropriate permissions)
a bending occurence in this
permanent daylight.

Chances are taken like free drink tickets these days
– happenstance surrenders.

To keep my mind to one album would be A Destruction of Trust.

Wish I could, but, in flux,
I come, love, and I leave.
Can hear, but never reach.

Royalties for Parenthesis

dedicated to sacagrapas.





Forgive my interludes
Personal page breaks in sentences
Instead of thinking linearly,
I think in thick stratums
separate echelons of assessment.
I dress myself one sock at a time,
yet very slowly with each garment.

(Parenthetically escorting a phrase is,
in a sense, procrastinating the next section of a sentence.
As a literary device, parenthesis allow a sentence to linger –
in life, parenthesis are the ‘Boondoggles of Dawdling’)

Easily sidetracked,
I use Pac-man as a sad distraction
to (figuratively) defer my tasks to subsequent
positions in syntax.

I promise,
I’ll mow the lawn,
right after several commas, a dash
and quite possibly
an inadvertent semi-colon.

& after that, I’ll pay my debt
to the person who invented the parenthesis –
the devisor of these deviant lines

I owe him much more than any other ‘Punctuation Progenitor’

I attribute my side-speak and
lack of grammatical concentration to this inventor.

I paraphrase myself with these elliptical hugs:
what unfurls to me through renditions,
to others, is covered in coagulated words.
I puncture my life
to find undulations in time –
to breath between the lines.

Though they don’t serve their intended purpose:
(clarification for strangers)
It is the parenthesis I favor.

me jeanie fay and pete

Gold Hill Inn, Colorado

July 4th, 2007

Mushroom Tater

our potato is growing limbs so we put a hat on it and it's fallen off the kitchen table twice already.

it's alive!

And Yet, At the Same Time

Think of the longterm damage-
You might be S.B.D.ing eternally!

No one wants to emit an audible fart in a silent assembly.

If I were the wind
I'd blow you away.

Cup of Philosophic Coffee

Carol Shields says "Just Be!"
Inspirational axioms for dithered individuals:

"Live to the Brim"
"Stop to smell the Lilacs!"
"Say everything with enthusiasm as if an exclamation point accents it!
and it is written in cursive script!"

Buy your Cucumber Juiceboxes in bulk to stock up for Aestivation Season

When forced toward spontaneity I say "yea yea sure - here you go"
then
I retract all statements and
shrivel at obligatory footprints in front

I Flail & Sprawl
a constant stagger of maybe

And don’t think you are any different – you are indefinite as well
Do not deceive yourself to think that you are statuesque and fixed
We’re all just plasticity of ourselves over and over (at least I know am
and it makes me feel better to admit it)

so
though I'm promising you 3:15 every AM in August,
once you jump and break her heart for it,
I'll most likely
back away slowly
and sprint in the opposite direction.

but then again...
maybe I won’t. Who can really know? That’s the tragic humor of it is that
we can never know
until we know
and then and only then
will we know
whether we wanted to know
or not.

if only our lives consisted of rolling around on the carpet & fake fighting with a towel, pouncing ghosts and waking up to a holiday at every sun's ascendancy.

instead
our lives are threads of webs spun so intricate, it drove Picasso to abstraction,
silk worms to masquerade
and snails to double aestivation.

"At least your worries are a cup full of buttons - call me when your cat eats half a stick of deodorant"

Everything relative:

whatever you've hurt
someone's hurt it worse

whatever you've lost
someone else lost it more

whatever pain
someone other severer

worries? no worry is worse than
a poisoned puppy

to regain consciousness of what is lacking

all, every, entire crack-rod/twig/spoon "thrust into a snug place"
holding power in a kind of tunic
exclusive small enclosures
wasted, spent in vain – no longer to be found in a bag-sack or satchel

in gallabuxur*, deprived of life.



• gallabuxur is icelandic for "jeans"


(an etymological translation of one of my past poems... can you guess which one?)

"Take the bins out Sunday night, so we don't forget in the morning"

we're all commingled containers-
sticky substances in the base of our jugs

we're jagged edges of aluminum cans,
soggy tops of cardboard milk cartons

we recycle ourselves-
bump up against other beer bottles and artichoke jars

we're all labeled accordingly
but the glass smashes when we're dropped from too high up
and my label breaks
your's tears
his is soaked in neglected liquid
hers, plastic and in tact

it's after the smash that we learn to live at bottom of the bin together,
broken and mixed

from a crouched position

Sometimes wonder where my elbow is –
If I cannot lick it, is it present?

Teeter two senses on the same precipice
Just as The Grasshopper holds, in accordance,
two visions

two visions concomitantly occurring,
prey and predator, lying down together

:patterned stiletto landscape
perforated crumblings of earth, dirt:


A parallax, clearing a space for fusion,
as well as diplopia
A perspective shift of necessary tension

Horizon as threshold,
– not a line
– certainly not a boundary
A place of configuration and continuation

SNIPpets

From my last post, inspired by such writers as William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein, I've decided to start a small collection of short poems where I Say Nothing In Particular. Through these little poem-pets, I will have a collection of dust and cloud-dew.

Aren't you all excited?

Are you still there?

I'm here, come back! I'm alive, again!

SNIP

every writer should have their own:
“say nothing in particular” poem.

this is mine.

-Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

Words are things; and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

for jeff, from prague

the mac computer sat, overnight,
in a shallow puddle on the kitchen table

in the morning, she refused to type.

no one knew where the water had come from
there was no evidence of a glass
having been knocked over by the cat

"maybe it was an ice cube. ice
leaves no trace."

The evidence disappears.
If I ever commit a crime,
solid water will be involved.

for orange peel:

a fish with asymmetrical
fins will swim
in a circle
forever w/o
end

hearsay

she said she heard someone say:
"there is no such thing as synonyms"

and there aren't

just words that say the same thing differently...
"like does not like like that is obnoxious" mm says

and he who writes error with four
r's is being symmetrical, maybe -
tidying up a mess

a pangolin as an artichoke
a noun as a mistake
things we can reflect on
or is it expression, creation?

we mimic and stir, is all

someanimals inacanoe

newness! (nooness?)

as i quoted in the last post, the concept of "busyness" should hit another level of severity. i guess you could use swamped or immersed or submerged but those sound so negative. i am busy in a good way. creatively, but also workedly. everyone should enjoy their work and i do, so i do lots of it.

this is my update: we're running the show here in boulder. i will not specify what we are running, but i can guaran-fricken-tee you that we own a slice of this joint by december 2007. and who's "we", you might ask? we is confidential and will be disclosed shortly.

so this is a very surreptitious post. please continue to check back for updates on "we" and "what".

It's button time.

-meghann