phrase of the day

Gelatinous mass is my favorite phrase of the day. A woman on the discovery channel used it to describe squid genitals.

Yuck, but awesome phrase. Gelatinous mass. Say it 5 times fast. gelatinous mass gelatinous mass gelatinous mass gelatinous massgelatinous mass... squid eggs is fun, too.

Okay, enough. Enjoy the image I just put in your head.

Who knew Salt Lake City would smell salty?

Grand Salt Lake Park is located just west of SLC in Magna, Utah. Drive down Saltair Street to get to the marina, and as soon as you step out of your vehicle, get ready for some sea-smell. It smells like a clam bit your face.

I went to SLC today to find a belt and found a magnificent selection, horribly arranged and difficult to sift through, at Decades, a Vintage clothing shop downtown. This is only funny because I've been actively seeking an article to keep my pants up for weeks now. I couldn't seem to find the right fit or price for my belt-budget. Decades provided me the simplicity and comfort of having my pants stay on my waste.

Here are some pictures of the huuuuuuuge lake. And the sand looking stuff is not sand, it's salt. Salt and cattails.

hello life, i'm back...

Boulder from above


Being that my body only enters my wonderful Boulder life a handful of times a month, I must make the most of it with the people i love there.

Hike with Heidi Malia and Milo and a night of shenanigans with Kyle and Chels.


It was windy whirlwinderson and then stopped suddenly when we saw a frantic tumbleweed, so i told Heidi to blow it for a fun video. It moved with her mighty blow, but i don't yet know my camera well enough to get these things accurately...


Bill and his band Backwoods Galaxy practicing in the front lawn on a late november afternoon... 63 degrees out !


he likes the responsibility of off-leash


so does this guy... leap!


but goat and hoss must remain leashed. they are simple.


everyone takes a stop for a sip


...errr sniff at the dirt in milo's case


Wonderland Lake


kyle and chels kiss after her new lip-implants


we got used to her by the end of the night... very scarlett johanssonesque


...it's contagious


I miss you guys... can't wait to be back again in December - - - >

i didn't die in rock springs

i was apprehensive to make mapquest's requested route from boulder to park city. instead of heading due west through beautiful colorado rockies, MQ said to head north then shoot west through all of wyoming on I-80.

i hate I-80. i thought i hated wyoming (excepting jackson). turns out it is beautiful. jar-dropping sunset, good drivers on i-80, so dark and vast, i could see every star in the sky and pretty lakes and mountain juts.

i forgive you wyoming for what you had done to me in the past. maybe i only forgive your bottom half...









sky striations...

resuscitation

at this pace, i'll be in love with you by September
from the cadence of the seasons change,
it'll smooth on into November
and the yesterdays will spill into
tomorrow's beating heart
and life will receive an unasked for
recharged start

Phosphenes

Every year the branches bloom
a veiny version of paper
Each leaf, a sprout shaped unique:
an origami pleated by the maker.

And in the trees are answers for
the one who chooses to look.
It may not read as easily
as the progression of a book...

but life is like a tree of leaves
and leaves have surface area for a reason
They splay and grow in the light
and come & go from season to season

The veins of leaves are distinct lines
as the leaves resemble sentences.
The hidden answer does not lie between
the senses of one's retinas.

Liverpool, NY

I went home a few weeks ago to visit my father after his back surgery, hang out and play nurse. The conclusion of the long weekend home is that my father is a super hero and no body knows it. He is the quickest surgery healer in the universe. I checked the Guiness Book of World Records and he beat it. Yes, I will not be specific about which world record he beat... I forgot the name... but just believe me. Dad = rock star.

While I was home, I was able to spend some time with old friends. This was a breeze of tranquility for me; a breath of cool mint in my face. Jen and I watched top 25 places in the USA to visit on the Travel Channel and the Grand Tetons of Wyoming won first place! I agree, to an extent.

I also had the privilege to reconnect to my old Academic Support buddy Dan. We were the dorks sprinting through the hallways every day after History class, racing to our lockers. Competitiveness never ends, it seems. I beat him in Shuffleboard with some tipsy LeMoyne guy, whose name I forgot and is not important anyway.

It made me think about home in a different way. It's comfort. It's relief.

For me, that weekend was finding a ladybug land on my hand. I believe that ladybugs are lucky, but luck doesn't just come. It is triggered. It was 5 days of unraveling events of happy coincidences.

It is now two and a half weeks later and the smile hasn't left my face. The memory feels like a next door neighbor; I can knock on his door any day and he'll be there to have a conversation with.

I miss home, but not as a physical place. I miss it as a memory. As a unit of me that is somewhere that I am not. I continually wish my family and friends and loved ones to move to a solid place, or commune, where we can wake up and eat breakfast together every morning. Where I can once again see the pattern of their habits and they can learn the direction that mine have taken in the years that I have been away. We can re-familiarize ourselves with all the nuances of the hearts and minds that mean the most to us. It is a place of us. I miss us.


That was a ramble of the sub-conscious. Now, a few pictures from the Syracuse Airport:





The words that come to mind are:

segregation
delay
bandaged due to damage
unfit to live
compiled
denied
left
lost?

I captured and trapped, then plundered his words...

I asked him what he thought about...
Expanding Circles

he said,
they don't stick around for long enough...
and padded squares unravel
from the quadrant's angry angles.
We have no choice but to steal
the memories and dreams of others;
they're the quilt that keeps
our souls warm at night.

A noontime nap can help.
It is a dose of dozing
and dreams are fireworks:
Brilliant powerful ubiquitous images
and then they are gone
Quick glimpses remain:
A Phosphenes behind our eyelids -
outlines like a bright flashlight
that momentarily blinds.

We accompany the moon's rays
by following her beams' path
as a guide -
a reflection of reality
trapped in the psyche
of the past.

Our hopes, ambitions, fears,
desires and needs...
These are all things like beams
They are seen and they are there
but to say the word
is like shouting a cloud
into cold air.

These puffs of nothing
and everything
at once
terrify and electrify us
They are the very DNA
of our non-physical existence

If we could deduce a system
to capture...
to wrap it up in a blanket of...
a quilt...
or maybe we're always making quilts
when what we need to be making
is bed sheets.

Layers to lay down on
and wash when dirty.

C.H.L

looking to the rafters and the rafters got an answer
but the rafters don't send postcards
or fake magazine exposure photos

the rafters shed some light, but they shed it all night through
they shine it down on everybody -
me, him, her and you
the light, it looks like answers
and it may look like a smile
but I tell ya one thing true,
a smile can be faked from either side

Cedaredge, CO

It's pretty up here!

See :)

Mashing

Yes Obama's mellifluous speeches woo the budding rhetorician in me to once again feel passionate about politics, but he sure can dance, too.

The story of Meg(h)an(n) and David

The story according to me* is that David is a trucker from Vermont. Rising gas prices have placed him in a virtual stalemate. It’s too expensive to drive anywhere, but if he doesn’t drive he doesn’t earn any money. The burly trucker is holed up in his cabin deep in contemplation, verging on depression, all triggered by the economic recession.

Megan is a phone sex operator with whom David has been chatting for months. Through continued correspondence (costing him $1.99 a minute) she convinces him to get back on the road again, if only to see her. While he goes about his cross-country journey to end up in her arms, he’ll be able to make a haul and bring in some income along the way. In reality, Megan is a suburban soccer mom with three kids and mini van in Arizona. Hmmm…looks like her husband’s going to have some interesting and unexpected company.

(Full disclosure: I drew inspiration for my story from an article about high gas prices hurting brothels.)

Dave’s take:
David was raised well—the standard life of a good school, good parents, athletic trophies (I’m assuming on the last bit). Then in his college years, David becomes a jihadist. He grows a beard, converts to radical branch of Islam and joins a terrorist sect. He goes about all his extremist duties which culminate in his hi-jacking a plane.

David makes it through the metal detectors, the security personnel and boards the plane. Also on board is Megan. Megan’s a flight attendant. All these principals David has held so near and dear to his heart (caged by his ribs and bomb vest) are erased over the course of the flight as he falls for Megan during her continual trips up and down the aisle and adjustment of his seatback. He can no longer carry-out his suicide mission as he just can’t kill Megan.

Crisis averted!


* An article taken from Willamette Week- (wweek.com) a Portland, Oregon news source.

How the Universe Works

Humanity is needing something other than yourself

a touch, a hug of reaffirmation that the body still exists -
that you haven't disintegrated into yourself, yet.

Getting stuck inside your head
is eventual hell.

& it's easy to let this polluted world
kill bits of our innocence



(things can be taken from a rumble strip conversation)

tamari moderator

We hold on by the pinky finger of cell phone service
to keep our 'to be continued,' continued.

Conversational Jenga
and every time the tower tips,
we build it up again.
Even during a rumble strip
exchange.

That’s companionship.

And friends know when you’ll be home.
Friends think ahead in such instances.
Friends greet you with a tofu curry dinner
and excited story-telling dishwashing energy.

My mind could have used a moderator
on the drive home.

It leaked ideas.

Observations on 9/11/08 on 285

Truck amputee abandoned on the side of the highway.

Comic strip clouds of Colorado
& the dusk smudge of distant mountains.

Lonely cows surrounded by their species -
gathered in such huddles…
what a malodorous example of community tolerance:
everyone's breath and asses
on the same horizontal plane.

It’s filled with imitation cop cars –
siren shaped roof racks
keep me from speeding.

Fog fills the canyon like a split dam.

Shape of a shadow valley is beauty leaking.

Even when valley is vast and empty,
it peels the paper back
on the crayon color of my smile.

Amethyst Necklace

Unsure if we were attempting it,
(sideways high-fives until sunrise)
we fell asleep in the clouds
& woke up to speckled snowflake footprints
of people passing by in the night -
I never wanted our wallpaper windows
to defrost.

Wanted to never need to snooze,
have all the time in the world
to lay side by side and smile.

It wasn't my place to ask what was on your mind -
I listen to the yellow lines,
never pass unless perforated.
So will you perforate your heart for me?

I'm an amateur harmonicist
out of practice with this
so I visually willed you to kiss me
but you didn't quite read me right

I want to write songs about the scent
of your vanilla mint breath
breathing me warm
in my cozy crawl-space bed,
where we worked on our Pilates form.

I'll be your word a day,
your way of learning during mindless counting.

I want to swim with you
in not-awkward silences
& quiet my violently beating heart...

...but instead I spill this
on a Safeway receipt
on the side of 285
going home.

Going Alone

If you wanna ride with me,
you'll have to sit cross-legged
cause leg space is limited

Little did the thief know, he'd cause accumulation.

A held hose
gets SF
and spews all at once.

I haven't had a computer since Oregon, so these next few days will be flooded by the dam that broke in me.
Nothing a beaver could fix.

*splash*

Cougar Bait

Whoever says it's rude
to ask about calluses,
canker sores and ulcers

is embarrassed because

they forgot to ask
about calluses,
canker sores and ulcers.

"But even when the window's clean I still can't see for the fact that when it's clean it's so clear I can't tell what I'm looking through"

I sometimes wonder what the windshield
of our lives would look like
if we hadn't hit defrost

What if we kept it frozen like
a polaroid icicle,
captured in the pose of love?

...maybe moved to the mountains
as you once had mentioned
and kept me guessing
when it would happen

Was I always wishing or
was it ever a holy love
as I had seen it?

My guess is yes because
one must experience something
to feel the phantom limb of it -
the ache of its absence

You're the only memory that makes
me crumble into a pile
of vulnerability

I need to know permanence
on your end
before I can...

finish that sentence.