Sometimes I'd rather read about cakes

I’ve been sitting here reading about cakes for far too long. I’ve lost count of how long, but surely /any/ length is too long when I could be working or writing on my books or cleaning the house or running outside.

But I’ve been paging through my favorite cookbook for recipes and stories and pictures of baked goods from long ago, filled with fruit cocktail or coconut or topped with lemon or meringue or powdered sugar.

Appalachian weddings would often feature cakes made of many thin cake layers; guests would bring one to add. The higher the cake the more popular the bride. How wonderful that sounds.

It all sounds much better than the vitriol online, then the laws out there trying to take my rights away and leave me bare and unprotected, the fighting among so many I know.

Conversations

I am very good at having interesting conversations that stay with me, reverberating in my head, but forgetting entirely who I had the conversation with or under what circumstances.

These days, I can’t even remember whether such conversations happened in person or via text, facebook messenger, g-chat, all the many ways our words fly across the world now - whether it was one on one, or had to do with numerous voices chiming in their varied thoughts and stories.

My conversation about the new scary laws in some states, or the meaning of some scene in Game of Thrones, or the funny story about my ten-year-old niece - did that happen with my husband in our kitchen, as we crafted a feast for only two? With my theater friends in our ongoing two-year-long group chat, where we vary from serious to mundane topics throughout every day? Over clinking glasses of wine and pretentious pizza at a bar with lawyer friends? Or with coworkers, standing on green grass and nodding, while forks delicately slice through cake?

Does it even matter? There the words stay, the thoughts tangle and untangle as needed to make their points and form my dreams.

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from New York - January 10, 2012

Good morning New Year-
it’s so lovely to meet you
in this crisp morning street
sitting on my luggage outside a crappy coffee shop
waiting for a bus to catch me up into
January.

Nothing worse than that feeling
you get when you realize the cute guy
you’ve been eyeing on the subway has been
surreptitiously spitting every few minutes into a coffee cup
he’s holding.
I don’t even know if I can make a metaphor out of that.

Discovery of the day:
Seeing a guy dressed in a Navy uniforn
all slovenly and undone
Actually Offends Me.
Me- the champion of free speech and expression.
But also the girl who cries at patriotic songs
that I freely acknowledge are propaganda.
I guess I’m not as cynical as I thought I was.

Overheard on a subway:
“Straight guys high five like they’re tired.
We’re trying to be like them!”
I am amused.

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from Now - January 11, 2012

The trash can reveals
how much coffee I’ve been drinking
all day.
Strewn torn pink packets and slight
droplets of half milk on the bag.
(I try to make myself feel better about my
consumeristic caffeine driven waste
by reusing my stirring straw.
Aren’t I just so green?)

I hope the janitor doesn’t judge
me.

—-

I’ve worn makeup shadows on my headphones
from wearing them every day
at work while inwardly smiling, laughing,
crying and saying all the things to myself
that I might never say out loud.
To me,
I am the funniest person I know.

24?
I’m now
24?
When the hell did I get so old?

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from Now - January 18, 2012

I put my brand new lipstick on
it’s free of cruelty, they say and it smells like vanilla
only to leave marks of it on my coffee cup
two fake sugars and a cream – like every day
no lover’s lips to turn fuschia
I have been very unkissed lately but I don’t think I mind, for once
no handkerchief to leave a romantic stain on
I lost my grandmother’s handkerchief back in September
no one to notice or see
I spend all day in a closed-up box – I could work naked for hours and probably no one would notice
but as I wipe the marks from the coffee cup
it was a birthday present, you know – my older black coffee cup never showed stains
this is for myself and no one else
and there’s something lovely about that

And so I wait.
My impetus to do something is already gone
And there is nothing to do now but
to see what comes next to change my life.

But I want it now.
I want it all now.
I want the books
and the knowledge pouring into my head
I want the language to speak the things I long to
understand.

And it’s a decision I long to make
but cannot yet
I have no Cinderella shoe
and so I chew on my fingers absently
the way I always do when I am
nervous
and leave dashes of dark pink across my pale skin
as if I have already been bleeding a long long time.

Throwback Thursday: Snippets from Now - February 10, 2012

I dressed up today in a
new blue dress that swings out around me
and makes me feel lovely
red tights and a little bit of heel
and a gold chain round my waist.

I wear makeup and lipstick almost every day-
but really
por che? por che?
I want to scream.

Who is it all for?

No one, nothing, no reason.
except the momentary pleasure I get by
looking in the mirror
until I realize how inexorably alone
I am.

 

——–

I often think of good songs to die to.
I’ll hear something really melancholy on the radio
and think
“Now this would fit.”

Or some terribly happy song from
a commercial for laundry detergent
and realize that it would be something ironic
to play in the background of a suicide.

I could make an entire mix tape
although really, who uses tapes any more?
of songs I have considered leaving the world to.

But it’s nothing, nothing much-
just a thought –
I’m okay-
I just like putting a soundtrack to my life sometimes

And it’s not like anything else momentous
will be happening any time soon.

They don’t know it-
and they wouldn’t understand it if I told them
But my toddling little nieces are the names I put down in boxes
of where things would go if ever something bad
happened to me – where money would flow from my
coffin into their coffers.
I have no one else to leave it to after all –
it’s not like my pet rats would ever use it.

I wonder if those names will ever change or if that
will always be the only beneficiary relationship I have.

Throwback Thursday: Just There

Written March 28, 2010.

I took a shower and
buried myself under water so hot it made my
arm hairs stand on end and then they
looked like bits of pale light covered with
dew drops

And I thought of Dali
how I wandered through his theater in Spain last
May and laughed and chuckled with his paintings
like they were old friends of mine
and shook my head and said to myself
oh Dali, you are such a fucking weirdo.

I was just there- Man, I was just there.

And my new rats are sleeping in one corner of my room
plopped on top of each other's fuzz- nose in tail and
face in belly-
while my older rat Monty on the other side of the room
naps alone- his own head curled under himself as
if to take in the warmth of his own body so he does
not feel so apart and separate

As I too have curled under the bed sheets at night
until my knees hug to my breasts and I can
hear myself breathing and pulsing and I
am not so trapped anymore.

But I still remember waking up above London streets
with the smell of sausage from the sandwich store downstairs
in my nose and the fluffy cloud like
duvet wrapped tight to my arms and then I would
turn and see if she was still sleeping on the other side of the room
and maybe I would fall back to think a bit before I
tried to tackle the day.

And we were just there, dammit, we were just there.

And I am drip drying now in my chair painted green-
hair longer than it's been in a while cold on my back
and my pink and purple fingernails tapping over the keyboard
like what I says makes a difference

They say that Dali was asked to come to a costume party once
dressed as his dreams and when they opened the door he
was standing there in the garb of death.

God, what an amazing weirdo.

And I was just there, girl, I was just there.

Throwback Thursday: 5:29 a.m.

Written in October 2017.

I just found this while going back through some of my old notes. I like it. I need it sometimes. 


5:29 a.m.

I am lost in the moment between asleep and awake
where I find myself dreaming of time to sleep, time to eat
A place to lay my head and a day to do nothing in
without feeling guilty or depressed or like I’m getting behind.

It’s getting to the point where I 
can’t see who I can trust anymore
All these people trying to maneuver
Me- trying to get inside my head

I, a confirmed idealist,
cannot even comprehend the
malice I see around me sometimes-
How can it even exist?

I still, despite everything, 
firmly believe that 
in every person 
there is a spark of good

It’s just that in the digging for the good 
I too often seem to be overcome by the dark
and swamped over and tramped down 
until I am breathless, on the ground.

And I am so frightened by these Masks-
These Masks around me worn by people
weaseling around me and trying to get me
to betray my ideas, my ideals,
while they are smiling and talking and laughing-
before they turn to malice, a slithering green.

And I do not like it,
one bit.

Yet I am grown and I am strong and
I can see through the charade, most times.

I know I trust too easily but I
try not to trust you too easily
And I wish I could trust that easily
without being so afraid of being misled.

And I am tired and I am lost
And I am longing just to go home
to get away from these lies, this hate
these broken bits of my heart on the ground.

Yet, I refuse to become stone-
I’d rather stay loving and trusting and believing in the world
and be hurt thousands of times over
than be one of those who is so hard to everything
that they can’t truly see anything
and thus, die blind to life’s true joy.

So deceive me, mislead me,
try to break me, if you can-
Know that I see you, your mask
for what you are

Your presence, that knowledge-
will never beat me down
Or change who I am

I will go on loving and living
and being blissfully a part of this dancing sphere

And in the part of morning
where sleep hangs in my eyes and
Dreams slip in and out of reality- 
I will dream of a time to rest, to sleep,
and a lovely lovely world.

Journalism! “McCain, Palin speak to crowd of 23,000 in Northern Virginia”

(Published on the UWire Youth Vote ’08 blog on Sept. 10, 2008.  A picture taken for this article was chosen for inclusion on the Wikipedia profiles of John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the presidential campaign of 2008 and can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:McCainPalin1.jpg. Pictures taken for this article were also published in Japanese newsmagazine “English Zone” and were used in the cover design of “Don’t Tell Me Words Don’t Matter: How Rhetoric Won the 2008 Presidential Campaign” by Joel Pollak.)

FAIRFAX, Va. - It was a cool day in September for Virginia- a slight chill in the air. In the early morning light, a small park in Fairfax was still - slides empty of children, swings idling in the breeze.

Outside however, thousands upon thousands of people were waiting to enter, lined up for an event that would not occur for four more hours- sporting red and carrying signs of every kind. They were waiting, not for a rock star or a celebrity, but for the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees- Sen. John McCain and Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin.

Congressman Tom Davis, one of the speakers at the event, called the crowd "the largest turnout for Sen. McCain on the campaign trail yet," drawing raucous cheers. The campaign reported that 23,000 people were drawn to hear the candidates speak, proving the predictions of political analysts that Virginia, despite a growing liberal population, is still a battleground state to be won.

And it was a feisty crowd at that- once they got into the park, an audience volunteer instructed specifically, "If you see a protester, don't touch them- the police or the secret service will deal with them. If they start yelling something obscene- try to drown them out by yelling USA, USA!"

While waiting, supporters cheered, waved signs, and occasionally burst out into patriotic songs such as "God Bless America." One particularly enthusiastic woman wearing a sparkly red baseball cap led a group in an anti-Obama song, complete with several verses and chorus. Other members of the crowd wore moose hats in reference to Palin's famed hunting skills and even held up toy elephants decorated with Palin-esque wig and glasses.

Though the crowd was comprised mostly of older adults and families, a number of young McCain fans skipped school to cheer on their nominee.

"We thought it would be a really good chance to make a difference in history and kinda encourage other people from our school to come and support McCain and Palin," 17-year-old Kate Beitel said. "Being here will definitely help us know the different views he has in-depth- being here in person. We can go home and talk to our friends and families."

A few of the students wore T-shirts emphasizing their different views from many of their peers, including two brothers sporting "Young and Right."

Many of the students cited moral issues as their main reason for supporting the Republican candidates.

"I think because we go to a Catholic school, pro-life is our most important issue," said 17-year old Meghann Beamer, a fellow student of Beitel. "We did a really big project on abortion and morality our sophomore year- it really impacted us."

Gabriel Fite, a student at Fairfax Baptist Temple Academy said, "He's pro-life, he's pro-marriage and I heartily agree with that. There are so many people in this world who just think that they can do whatever they want, but no, there needs to be rules."

Speakers from a number of different viewpoints appeared at the rally- including former supporters of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Psychologist Lynette Long, introduced as a feminist, mother, and ardent Clinton supporter, spoke of why she chose to vote for McCain after Obama was picked as the Democratic presidential nominee.

"You can't have a government devoid of women that knows what's right for women," Long said. "You can't legislate for women without women."

As the sun rose higher into the sky, the now sweaty crowd grew excited when the campaign's fleet of cars drove down the hill towards the stage. As "Eye of the Tiger" was blasted out over the loudspeaker, McCain and Palin got out of a car and walked onto stage with their spouses.

"It's so great to be here in the most beautiful area in Northern Virginia," Palin said. "...I'll tell you we are so excited about to be here. We recognize that it is going to be real hard fight here in Virginia. But John and I are ready and with your help we will win."

Once McCain stepped up to the podium, he emphasized his and Palin's reputation for maverick behavior, stating at one point, "How many of you are tired of the same old business, the same old-boy cronyism that exists in Washington D.C.? You're sick of it and I'm sick of it. We're going to bring about change. Senator Obama has never taken on his party on a single issue, while we've taken on the old boys. My running mate ran against an incumbent Republican governor, and by the way, beat him like a drum."

McCain also addressed his energy plan, emphasizing the use of all options, including off-shore drilling and nuclear power.

"I can tell you now, and there are some navy veterans out here in the crowd that can tell you, we've sailed navy ships around the world and nuclear power plants are safe," McCain said. "It's inexpensive and doable."

He also added that the development of alternative energies would create thousands of new jobs.

"Change is coming and it's coming to our nation's capital and we're going to clean it up," McCain said, to raucous cheers.