Queen Barbara

Novel-writing weather is afoot, and just in time for national novel-writing month. (November).  I wonder what it would be like to attempt such? It does tempt.

Looking out on the carpet of yellow leaves this morning, I felt all gothic inside. I thought of great hounds in great castles clinging to the ankles of their masters. In my picture, but one sound: the sound of collars clanging.  Steely too-tight collars jangling ‘gainst the ice what got up in the hounds’ fur. Their wretched underbellie’s rattling with icicles. The icicles dragging along the frozen heather in the night.

The portents of the morning cup o’ joe.  Fear not, as more than mere folly shall befall these digits.

Leafblowing man roams within earshot. Yes, he’s the elderly fellow what does odd jobs time to time here at View Villa. A leafblower!  I wish he wouldn’t, as the collection of leaves is like I said, carpet-like. But he’s been doing his job for nigh onto 50 yrs. I’m not kidding. It’s like they sold the building, and they made it into condos, but the maintenance man was in the contract. Again, I’m not kidding. When I lived in this place as an apartment, this old guy would come in to fix the plumbing and what-not. He couldn’t actually fix things. He could more just take up my time, speaking very slowly. I’m normally a curious sort. As interested in a plumber as a CEO. But this plumber, and now leafblower, he’s really boring, okay? And I’m sure he doesn’t know what a blog is, so I’m safe.

I’m on my 2nd cup. Just warming up. I don’t want to cleanup that paragraph. And if I choose to write ad nauseum in November, you can bet your bottom dollar I”m not going to edit that stuff.

As you can well imagine.

I made up a song for Babs. She’s my cat. Cuz see I get up, but she remains behind. It’s NOT EASY TO GET UP whne the animal will not follow you blindly into the cold kuitchen to push the ON button.  She makes life very difficult. Well, she eases it not.

Under, bunder babz
Under, bunder babz
She’s my under-bunder kitty cuz she loves her bunders so
Under, bunder babz
Under, bunder babz
I go to make the coffee and she rolls her eyes but budges not
Under, bunder babz
Under, bunder babz
And so on.
You can make up all kinds of new verses.

NOW, if perchance the sound of the coughdrop wrapper should be heard from across the house, she will come runnuing. Becuase it sounds like the opening of the TEMPTATIONS package. She loves those little niblets. She gets them every day, for the following:

a) Scratching on the free chair
b) Sitting in my lap
c) Because it’s time for TEMPTATIONS

Oh, and I read on a web site, not to make a big fuss when she scratches on the ridiculously expensive couch or my favorite rug. I’m to chastise her verbally, no more.

I WANT TO KILL HER WHEN SHE DOES THAT.

For halloween, since there’s not a plan to be had, nor a party that I know of, I may accompany Emma to the land of her birth. Myrtle Creek, OR. In my mind this is a land of many trees and creeks, with wild geese a’roamin’.  This on account of a wonderful tale Nathan told about catching a goose for the Holiday Feast. I’ve been pining for my beloved Corrales, so this will hlopefully be a Corrales fix, minus the chile.  I can see her old man’s farm, while he has it. You know how quick the life flies by, and leaves one wondrin’, “Why didn’t I go to the farm when I had the chance?”

The workday commences shortly, after I drop the car off to Hans. Trouble with the driver’s side door handle has me exiting the car from the passenger’s side. The gadget to fix the trouble costs $13.99 and Hans will install it for something ridiculous like $5.99.  They’re crazy over there. Must have other income streams than mechnicalating.

What with the legalities a’terminatin’, I might be financially back in the black by next summer. The spreadsheet does not lie.  New income streams shall come afoot. I pray for the election of Obama as I think he has successfully programmed “HOPE” into the psyche of the PUBIC. They will begin to purchase anew once that feller is there a’reignin’. Or asking around, “Fellas, uh, where’s that Oval thing?” Har har. So funny in the morning! Oh, come on, you know I love you. Would it hurt to turn up the corners of your beautiful lips?

blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah blah

i am really tired

of over-working

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

and i’m not going to complain about that anymore

blah blah blah blah

and i’m not going to work so much

* * *

fall days make me remember fall days out in the road, playing football or softball

those were long afternoons of play

one very memorable afternoon, juli decided to practice vivaldi on her violin, sitting on top of the crumbling adobe wall that surrounded the palladino house

football and vivaldi

today i ran into two neighbors whose names i now know — with their corgis.  one neighbor, pam, has a corgi-cross. sable colored with lots of black, and much bushier than a corgi. i’m not sure of the mix. the other neighbor, diana, has a corgi named vicki.

i made a point to remember the neighbors’ names, not just the dogs’ names.  dog owners appreciate this.

i have a mind to ask if vicki on occasion needs to be looked after.  she’s only a block from me. i could pick her up. see how she gots along with barbara.

a bit of propaganda came in the mail. a DVD with the title “obsessive islam” or somesuch. i watched half an hour of it. maybe it has bits of truth. jihad *is* scary. but half an hour into it i felt so much fear i was on the verge of a panic attack.

that’s it for today, october 12, 2008.

I’m in a bit of hot water with a local company. And well I should be. I bought a kettle, filled it with water, jumped into the water, and then asked some suits to go ahead and be in charge of that little knob they use for turning up the heat. It was gentle and warming at first, but now it’s cranked past my comfort level, and in a few days I’ll be boiling like a frog.

The CFO has agreed to speak to me at 3 pm.

I was tempted to wedge the word “ethics” into the discussion. Then Patty called and knocked some sense into me. They’re the dealer, I’m a two-bit player just come in from Idaho. Keep it zipped up, smile, and appeal to their love of a hottie. No! That’s not what Patty said. Plus, they have no way of knowing of my hotness. AND, plus, also, too, if they had any access to my hotness, they might not recognize it for the hotness that it is.  Because it is after all only that kind of hotness as can be appreciated by a woman, and then, only by a certain kind of woman, the lesbian variety, and even then, only she who might appreciate a wordy gal with a love of sport.  So, I hereby throw out the hottie defense, which doesn’t even work for real hotties anyhow. Didn’t Winona Rider do time for some petty-ass shop-lifting? Someone who reads and watches TV, please inform.

Anne’s Abq. lawyer also warned me of being contentious or offensive, as it puts others on the offensive. A lesson to be learned in life as well as in business. In fact it got me to thinking about how reactive I am in general. I’m like some volatile chemical. When I was born, some meteor shower sprayed some moody planet, and now that planet is all pissed off, and is blaming me for the meteor shower. So I’m all reactive and shit. You poke me, I poke you back. I don’t breathe deeply and ask, why did you poke me just now? What do you stand to gain by the poking of me?  What flower might I offer you in settlement? Nope, I just react.

All of this would depress me, if not for the news Emma brings, which is that I can change. Emma brought that news, and I’ve come to believe that. Which is an accomplishment for someone pushing 50, prone to believing what they say about aging. Yadda yadda, old dog new tricks, yadda yadda.

Okay, I hate it when people say yadda yadda, so why did I just say it? Cuz I got a heap of nervous energy to burn here.

I was supposed to meet a friend today for lunch, but I was worried I might try to knock her block off, so I called it off.  My friends are so lucky I’ve been learning!

In other news, Lily writes me emails about buying flower bulbs and feeling guilty for it–until she looks at her vet expenses, and then feels justified in her lavishness, her lascivious lavishity.

Which somehow, since my mind is all over the map, brings to mind a song which I loved to sing with my grandma:

“What a friend we have in Jeeeee-sus”.

We would really stretch out the “Jeeeeeeeeeeeee” part. I liked that. The ladies’ soprano voices would stretch ever so high, to the rafters, and beyond, to heaven. Presumably?

Well, that there’s the update from my world. Welcome to it.

Barbara’s bowl of water and food is to my right. I hear her sips. My lap anticipates this, and looks forward to the pouncing and the warming which follow the sipping.She’s got me trained, a la Pavlov.

There’s a small mite cruising on my screen. It’s annoying and I will go now, smite it, and end its life.  Suits, beware!

This is Wilson. I found him one night at Fred Meyer’s. I was feeling sad that night, and when I saw Wilson, I could see he really cares. His is the look of empathy. The top picture is of him sitting with the light duck, Dolly. The bottom picture, I hope, shows you why he’s one in a million. I sleep with him at night, and I also like bringing him into the office when I’m working. I pet his head a lot. It’s been pretty cold, so I also keep him under the covers at night, but worry somewhat about his need for “space”. I’m talking to him more and more. I know, I know…where this might lead. But I’m willing to risk it. I know crazy starts here…but maybe it ends here too, who knows. I just know that Wilson puts me in touch with being human, at times when I shun all emotion and want to just hide in my cage. When I go in there, Wilson says, come on, come on out and play, it’s safe. It’s always safe with Wilson near. Wilson is without fear. Wilson is only love.

It was a dreary February morning, and I was interacting with Hank’s penis when the phone rang. It was Sue, the Northwest regional sales manager, calling in with the monthly sales figures. I made a mental note to quietly phase out these tedious calls, then asked Sue’s permission to put her on speaker phone. I switched the phone over, and Sue didn’t skip a beat, launching right in with the Vancouver and Battleground numbers, in a monotone at once robotic and soothing.

Hank’s poor little hard-on, timid even at the best of times, wilted further as Sue’s narration quickened. She was now hotfooting it through the North Portland and Gresham numbers at full tilt, turning Hank’s noncompliant member into a sheepish, pale extremity at rest ‘twixt his thighs. By the time we got to the East side, the poor little fella had faded into memory.

I had to do something.

But what?

This is where my “stuff” comes up. Oh, I know, this meeting was about Hank, and if I’d read the agenda for the meeting, I might have kept things on track. How much work can it possibly be to service a penis? It’s not an art form for cryin out loud, and documentation abounds on the subject. Okay, sure, I had skimped, and was getting by with version 2.0 of the manual, but it was common knowledge that versions 3.0 and up were really just remakes of the classic 2.0, known in our little circle as the “K&R” of sex.

No, the problem was definitely not the outdated documentation. It was a problem of will, of intention. My head was there, but my heart just couldn’t get down with the idea of servicing Hank’s head. And then there was the matter of my own needs, hunkered down in the corner out of sight, lest Hank should get some fool notion and try to pleasure me again. Oh, it happened a few times, when I first took the position. Hank actually fancied himself a ladies’ man, and told me over a nice meal at Sauro’s that he knew quite a bit about things down under. This accompanied by a nervous wink and then a quick scanning of the room to see if anyone had overheard. Of course they overheard you, Hank, you have a hearing problem, and your volume control is seriously damaged. Two hot lesbians looked over at me from the adjacent table, both with identical we feel your pain…we’ve been there expressions which pushed me so instantaneously down in the dumps that I had to look away.

But I looked back, not once, but many times during the course of the evening. The darker-haired woman, mid-40’s, seemed to be celebrating something that evening. She wore a simple, elegant, understated black dress, and a gold necklace with an amethyst or similar stone in a very elegant setting. Every so often, it seems her emotions could no longer be contained, and at these times she would lean forward to her girlfriend—a gorgeous young woman, with short blond hair cut pixie-style, and impish dimples—she would lean forward, grab her hands, and then take each one into her own, and kiss them, and then laugh, and force me to look away for fear of being caught.

I kid you not, it was as Sue was wrapping up her report, with the traditional action items for the week segment, that I put two and two together, for the very first time. It was those hot lesbians at Sauro’s who had aroused me!

Anyone with a single iota of Sapphic knowledge would have gotten that—at Sauro’s—not here in Hank’s basement at quarter to 10 one year later.

The lesbians had done it! Sue’s speakerphone voice was now taking on the most honey-dewed, lyrical quality, as I had this breakthrough moment. I can still recall the qualit of that misty February light as it bounced off Hank’s gray coverlet, to his laptop computer, and from there to the pile of socks in the corner, a ghoulish play of light in a dreary Bermuda triangle.

I thought Hank had actually aroused me that night at Sauro’s…so I took a chance with him. We dropped by Kinko’s after dinner that night, to pick up the transparencies for my talk the next day, and while standing in line, I playfully grabbed his crotch, giving him the signal that I might just be ready for some down under play.

* * for later * *

(geeze, I love that catch-all word for all that ails womankind).

I knew I didn’t want to bring in the district sales manager, Novela …

… but a memory. By the time we got to the east side, it lay there like a

Today’s Words:
manipulate
feeble
ahead
oatmeal
involve
incidental
grace

Grace is this fundamental concept that was missing from my consciousness as a child. I’ve had to learn it, slowly, haltingly, with great effort. What is grace? It is that which is the nature of the Cosmos and life itself: a gift. Something freely given, but which you cannot contrive to receive. More abundant that you need if you relax and let it flow into your life, and frustratingly unavailable if you do not trust it.

As a child we traditionally learn this from our parents unconditional availability, but I didn’t have that luxury. And yet as an adult, I could learn that the field itself supports me.

I wonder about that. What was the wound, and what was the healing? Does any unmet need, if it is unmet long enough or deep enough to be very very painful, create a wound – around which scar tissue builds? If so, then healing would be necessary in order to let new love in – ie to let that need be met in present time. Because the scar tissue, the defenses, keep the pain in and the love out. What an odd reaction. What an odd way of protecting ourselves. I’d like to have a discussion with God about the schematics here.

It makes me wonder about something. Our body has a lot of self-healing mechanisms. But our mind’s self-healing mechanisms seem to need social interaction in a way that our bodies self-healing mechanisms don’t. I mean, it’s a scale of course, as our body and mind aren’t really separate. The mental part of healing also seems to require interaction. Which makes sense of course. But it’s amazing how our cultural myths about ourselves make it seem like we ought to be able to heal in a vacuum when that is actually not true at all. What a strange myth to evolve. It’s almost like the myth is one of those scar-built things, protecting some wound in the social fabric itself. Hmm.

Anyhoo.

Grace is like mercy; undeserved, unasked for, but there nonetheless.

This is what I miss in the “Law of Attraction” stuff. Abundance is not something you wrestle from the Universe through effort. Grace is what you experience when all else falls away. When you release the striving, the ego, the white-knight, the entrepreneur, and the advocate, grace is what remains. The rose does not visualize more light from the sun. The rose accepts what is given, and turns toward the light.

And yes, the rose eventually dies. And there are more roses that bloom. But knowing that it will eventually whither does not sour the rose for the light.

Yet we are not roses. We have capacities for manipulation. That is not wrong either, for aren’t we just another plant in the garden? Yet still, we are the only plants that seem to cut ourselves off from our own sources of nourishment, because we become attached to them. With knowledge of good and evil comes attachment to good and aversion to evil. The Tree contained not simple knowledge, but the ability to remember, to plan, to string events together and label them “good” and “evil”. The ability to abstract.

Or perhaps it’s just survival skills run amok. The evolutionary advantage of learning is clear. Perhaps all the myths we create to explain our existence are just a byproduct of the evolutionary gift of memory and imagination. Perhaps we’re just another species.

Who knows. I know that I enjoy ice cream and building websites and cuddling. My mind is growing feebler at justifying more than simple effort for simple things. Part of me wants to involve myself with grand schemes, and part of me wants to divest my thoughts of whatever lies ahead and curl up in the moment.

Today’s Words:
draconian
slither
pillage
yet
fraught
accolades
coalesce

Ah, fraught. My favorite word.

Giving accolades is fraught. How to celebrate without elevating, how to honor without those betters and worses slithering in? In NVC you bring it all back to the specific, to the here and now I feel happy and gratitude. Not “you are so great”, not generalizing into an abstraction of better-ness that can be hard to climb out of, to break, to dissolve.

All to the good, but is it something in us that tends to generalize or is just our faulty education that we’ve not yet rescinded from our mind. Who knows, I guess the rescinding’s the thing. If we try, and we fail, then we can ask in what ways it might be in us to generalize and abstractify and why, seeking more clarity as to root causes. But only if we need to. Otherwise the whys and wherefores lead astray into more theories and less happiness. I posit.

Today’s Words:
laconic
paper
amorous
lacking
ineffective
get on with
bone

Get on with it! You’ve been lurking in the amorous section of the paper for weeks, cutting out ads, piecing together phrases. If you’re worried about an ineffective presentation you might as well experiment, you’re not lacking in imagination. For fucks sake, Mom!

Young man, go toss out the trash, the ham bone is rotten and stinking up the kitchen. If I wanted advice about the snapshot of prose I am concocting to entertain my theoretical suitors, I’d ask.

Well sooooorry, forgive my forward confession of frustration, I was attempting to catalyze some fornication for my dear mum who seems to extol its virtues daily with nary an indulgence in months.

Well dear, I appreciate your bottomless generosity in that respect.

Well, thank you for that acknowlegement. I apologize for losing my temper with flagrant disregard for your delicate ears. I’ll get on that trash removal request posthaste.

Sigh, what a dandy son I have. What folly have I for flirting with witless men, when I have such an lovely specimen in my own domicile.

Oh but mother, it hardly compares. You can’t fuck me you know.

Oh my heavens of course not. Forgive the comparison. I only meant in terms of attention spent, my cost/benefit analysis returns a high ROI ratio on time spent with you.

I’m flattered and glad. Come my dear mum, let’s have a picnic.

Splendid, let’s.

Today’s Words:
mullet
debutante
apply
ruddy
guest
bargain
muck

My dad’s response to advertising was “I’ll sell you some cowpies at a bargain price.” I guess he was saying that just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean it’s not shit.

I’m sure there are some life lessons to be drawn from this but just now I’m pulling a blank. People buy manure you know. On sale or not.

My dad also said you should never sell hay from your own fields. You should till it back into the soil, otherwise you’re selling the soil itself. See, the dirt makes grass, the cows eat the grass, they re-deposit the grass as shit on the field, which nourishes the dirt. It’s one big circle of life and nitrogen. You start selling off your hay, you gotta start buying fertilizer, which is really other people’s cowshit. It’s an endless cycle.

So we didn’t sell hay. But we bought hay, from the neighbors down the road. (about 6 miles down – in the country, “neighbors” is a looser term). I always wondered if we didn’t sell our hay because of the “cycle of life” or because we always ran out before winter was done and so we had no extra to sell anyway. Sure sounds better the first way though.

My dad read me Just-So stories when I was a kid. They’re all about explaining things by making up stories when you don’t know what’s really true. But you call it folklore, then it’s OK.

I’m not bitter (much). I just like the truth. I like the way it rings inside me, like the bells of an angry cathedral. It comforts me at night. I want to know that I stand on the ground, even if the ground is muck. At least it’s solid. Stories change, but there is always a ground to stand on. Things fall away.

Sometimes the truth is just the present moment, and the ruddy feelings of sadness that overtake you right before the light turns green. You know you feel it. There’s truth in there, somewhere. You can’t name it, you can’t explain it, but you can’t deny it either. It’s there, a pushy guest that won’t just shut up and let things be. Always has something to say.

So you listen, and wait, and things become clear, eventually.

It’s the clearness I crave. I want to wrap myself in it, the calm nothing of the night. Angry visitors come and go, but the night stays. The silence holds everything, even the aching to be held.

You always get what you need after you don’t need it anymore. It’s our human fate, to learn to let go and be content with what we have. It’s the only lesson that endures: that just this moment is enough. Whenever you forget, there is life to remind you. It comes along and steals away the promise of the night, until you remember that you don’t need promises.

You only need the night, and the ground, and the clearness of the air. It is there, in your lungs, holding you from the inside, filling your blood and caressing your cells. Time and space, truth and air, all turn into the breathe and the moment by moment dance of your heart with the world.

“This blatant effrontery will not stand!”

Margo rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room. Whatever, Mom. As if I need your permission to fly. The very ability made her free in a way her mom could not comprehend. When her nubby winglets had finally unfurled, after weeks of agonizing yearning, her parents had been duly flummoxed. She was lucky it was summer and they were eating out on the patio – the dramatic opening of her shiny iridescent wings and subsequent flight would have been far less impactful if she’d had to get up from the dining room table and walk outside first, making sure they all followed. Instead she simply waited for the right moment, somewhere between asserting her independence and giving a withering diatribe on the impossibility of tbeir even attemting to curtail her freedom and then WHUMP she was wingful and then WHOOSH she was gone.

Now, of course, she had to deal with the fallout. Sigh.

Just her mom of course. Her dad was busy investigating the last uptick in the market, and her brothers had long since gotten over ther initial surprise. After all, wings were quite common alterations nowadays. It didn’t make her so special. Just because it wasn’t Orthodox didn’t mean it wasn’t done.

Just tell that to her mother.

“You know you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetary if you have genetic modifications!” her mom yelled after her.

As if she cared. Why would she care to be bound by a bunch of stilted old rules when she could soar through the sky? If God didn’t want her to have wings, He wouldn’t have invented Cosmetic Genetics.

Her wings were something between a bat and a dragonfly, and her bone structure and composition had been modified as well in order to make her lighter. She’d had to keep her wingnubs concealed for some time as they grew in. Man did they itch. But it had been worth it.

As long as her mom didn’t do something psycho and lock her in the cellar.

She wished she could pick her mom up and carry her with her as she flew, to show her the amazing feeling of being airborne. But she wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry a full human, even a skinny one like her mother. The supplements the cogen company gave her were filling out her shoulder muscles but it would still take time to grow that much muscle.

But someday, she would do it. She would show her mom what it feels like to fly.

She wasn’t naive enough to think that it would change anything. Her mom would still be anti-cogen and would harp on her everytime she came home and give her pamphlets about the Natural Humanity movement. But maybe, just maybe, the little girl that still lived in her mom would feel glee, soaring above the city, being carried by the wind–and that would make it worth it.