Worth a Thousand Lives

This furry oaf of a man is my governor, Mr. Jon Corzine. You know, the guy famous for not wearing seat belts. And he just went up about a thousand percent in my approval rating.

Do you know what he's doing in the photo at left?

He's abolishing the death penalty in the State of New Jersey with that little pen.

Never let anyone tell you the sword is mightier.

Because I Could Not Say It At All

I will simply direct you to my beloved (unmet in person) friend dooce. One commenter, Amy, said it all.

B-R-A-V-E-R-Y. Those are your capital letters.

If I Could Make This Shit Up, I'd Be on Strike in Hollywood.

I had an interview scheduled at a local, unnamed college this afternoon. Or, at least, I used to. I spent the whole morning getting ready. I flossed. I put on a slip. I put on pantyhose, for crying out loud. (The last time I wore pantyhose was at the funeral of a 95-year-old priest. I went bare-legged to my own wedding.) I gathered my portfolio, plundering scattered files and ideas of half-formed lesson plans in an attempt to wow the interviewer's socks off. (At least we could be bare-legged together.) I ate a healthy lunch. I brushed my teeth again, to remove any trace of cranberry mayo. I packed my briefcase, silenced my cell phone, and left early to drive to campus.

Where I was met by several sheriff's deputies and the plentitude of flashing lights that usually indicates major delays on the Turnpike. But this was not an overturned tractor-trailer or a car fire. This, apparently, was an (unspecified) threat that had closed the campus all day.

Is it me, or is this the second time in eight months that I've been escorted off a small-town community college campus because of a bomb threat? I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should take this personally.

Calling Olson, Calling Memphis

Sadly, I am not in possession of a misspent youth, but I did misspend a good portion of my early twenties to make up for it. Let's see:

College in Greenwich Village dreaming of black Doc Martens and blacker eyeliner. This was before the days when goth was popular with the under-15 set, back when it actually said something. Back in the days when you had to shop at hole-in-the-wall thrift shops down past Bleecker Street because there was no Hot Topic to make it trendy. My army coat was from East Germany, and my pea coat was vintage US Navy, not Old Navy, and had some guy's name stenciled on the neck label.

Flannel over tank tops and t-shirts. Not because of Kurt Cobain, but because of the dust and factory-height windows in the scene shop, which made heating impossible.

Tattoos and random body piercings. Yup, but this wasn't until I was 25. Again, this was when it still pissed people off. Annoyingly enough, my mom thought my first tattoo was cool.

Ditching out after college graduation and fleeing to the Pacific Northwest to become a poet. I picked Spokane partly because it was as far away as I could get from both New York City and my parents without leaving the country or getting wet.

Knowing several different ways to smoke weed without the use of rolling papers. To quote Carolyn Kizer, "After Spokane, what horrors lurk in hell?" I didn't really understand this quote about my beloved adopted city until the eighty-seventh snowstorm one December (with winter not safely ending until April) when the only thing open was the Rosauer's on 14th and Monroe, and the furnace quit.

Crossing the country in a 1965 VW bus with everything I owned, and my cat. It only took about ten travel days, plus four hours for a blown tire outside of Missoula, a tow for a fan-belt replacement that wouldn't stay replaced in Butte, three days waiting for generator parts in Livingston, Montana (which explained the whole fan-belt issue), and two days waiting for a master cylinder rebuild in Bloomington, Indiana, which is where we ended up when the brakes failed and we couldn't stop in Martinsville.

Rolling Rock, cough syrup, antidepressants, thyroid replacement hormone, pot brownies. Never eat the small brownies. They're small for a reason. That reason involves not leaving your body.

Psycho boyfriends. More than my fair share. I still can't convince my parents that this was as much about me as it was about them. Also, it should probably be disturbing that many of them had the same two first names.

Social disorder. No, not the kind in the DSM-IV. The kind that involves nearly getting arrested for all the right reasons while wearing a bag over your head to protest torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Except that was technically in my thirties.

Protests and general rabble-rousing. Well, this has actually increased as I've aged. I think I've finally gotten past my fear of being wrong, or being heard and misunderstood, or (worse yet) heard and understood. More importantly, I think I've finally realised that this angst? This tightening feeling in my ribcage? Is put to much better use when it's not all about me. That my adolescence was only part normal desire to rebel, to break on through, to lash out, to brood--and part serious clinical depression and odd behavioural traits that may or may not contribute to a diagnosis.

Because, frankly, that's what I lost those high school teenage years to. Not general stupidity, or partying or bad choices or melodrama or general operator error. But black, stifling, unabated mental illness. And I wish to God that one of us--even me--had seen it for what it was, and stayed at me until I got treatment sooner. My parents blame themselves, I know. But it wasn't their fault. They were the ones I was trying hardest of all to fool.

The Only Reason This Is Even Remotely Funny

I admit it. I fucked up. Somewhere along the line, I made a colossal math booboo and didn't buy enough yarn for the cardigan I'm (finally) knitting myself after all these years of knitting stuff for other people. No problem, right? Just pop into my beloved Twist in New Hope and ask the lovely Mrs. Debby Brady to please please pretty please stop laughing at me long enough to check with her stockist to see if there's more of this yummy yarn. I really only need about two skeins' worth, because I'm partway up the sleeves, which are the last things you do.

Well, after in fact enduring a whole lot of jokes from Debby and Steve about "Sleeves--make two!" and how I'm going to have to give this sweater to the guy from The Fugitive, she did just that. I got a phone message this afternoon that says the stockist doesn't have any either, and when she does, it will be a different dye lot. This, of course, means that when it arrives, there's a pretty good chance it will be an entirely different colour. Not what you're really looking for in a project you hope to wear in public. So this means that unless by some miracle one of the two other yarn stores in a gajillion-mile radius happens to have some Rowan #536 in dye lot 2616 languishing about the store waiting for me, my best bet is the internet.

Here's where it gets funny, if only just. It was only by visiting Rowan's company site that I discovered just what it is I've been knitting. This lovely, yummy, tweed-flecked rust colour, so innocuously labeled "#536" on the label? Is named "torrid." And I need two balls of it.

Try typing that into a search engine.

Snail

I carry everything I used to be. It forms my skeleton. I carry each lumpen, misshaped pearl of mistake or grief or guilt or insult. Someone will be able to identify my body by them when I die. I carry the memory of our first kiss, just as tightly as I carry the rush of blood through my veins, a hot sound like a whisper. I carry all the songs we have sung, deep in my body; I carry the stars. I carry your memory with me like an old quilt, like a sack of stones to weigh me down, like an old limp from a broken bone that did not heal straight, like silence. I carry your past, too. I carried it that long night when you could not stand it, and I could never bear to put it down. When you are thirsty, I carry water.

I Carry Your Heart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


e e cummings


Michael Hedges, in a live performance: