year of clubs (not diamonds, hearts, or spades)

This time of year, I try to catch up on what I've missed, I read lots of magazines and short stories, and I look at cookbooks, imagining that I'm going to pickle more vegetables and try out neglected grains in the new year.

New Year's Resolution: PICKLE A DAMN VEGETABLE AND COOK THE MILLET IN THE PANTRY. Last year's was READ LESS. I failed terribly, although I have read less than normal in the last few months. Otherwise, I read too much, just like usual. I'm a failure at not reading too much.

My long-term life goal is PROCURE A SOFA, COUCH, OR DAVENPORT. It used to be PUBLISH SOMETHING.

Was 2006 good, or not good? It was good and not good. Duh. But I see crystal-clear-like that I need more socializing in my life. So I'm going to make a DINNER PARTY CLUB, WITH THEMES. Themes like "KAMPAI!! IT'S A JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE DINNER!" My fear is that I just don't have enough people to invite, and my friends will be like, "Um, do I really have to wear a Japanese avant-garde outfit?" and I'll say, "No, it's ok, just be comfortable," and then it will just be a regular dinner with my friends, but with screechy japanese music playing and inedible seaweed items.

Maybe I could advertise my dinner parties on Craig's List. But then I'm afraid that the whole thing will be misread as a belabored euphemism and will produce some kind of awkward sexual situation.

I have been reading top ten lists on Salon and in the NYT and Punk Planet to see what I missed this year, musicmoviebooks-wise. It seems like I saw hardly any movies! What's wrong with me??? I can't make up my own top ten movie list. Deborah and I are going to see either Volver or Babel on Monday. We agreed to see something with a one-word title.

I know! I'll start a Film Viewing, Discussion, and Making Club in 2007 to remedy this whole sitch. Watch Detroit Craigslist for more info on this great new club! And, no, it's not meant to be a euphemism for sex.

Mostly 2006 feels barely there to me. I need to work for a better 2007, with more adventure and fun. Did you know I'm the adventurous, fun type? I like to have stories. STORY CLUB!!!

Instead of being all kinds of fun, I'm ending the year feeling melancholy and restless and hard-hearted and nostalgic. Do I need to start clubs for those traits to help draw other MRH-HN's towards me?

MORE CLUBS IN 2007!!! (How many will my small but super cool gang of friends be willing to join?).

on christmas eve eve eve

Lately the thing to do at gatherings of ladies is to take silly pictures of ourselves. The ladies left just now and I still have the taste of smoked cheese and spanish wine in my mouth. how i love the ladies. so i got to think of how i say merry christmas, how i myself express that sentiment, and i thought i could do it verbally, like "merry christmas" or "joyeux noel" or "meri kurisumasu" or "god jul." or....OR i could let a picture do the talkin'. one of these images could show up in a mailbox near you, in the name of the birth of jesus or whatever:

super groovy

For Christmas, my sister and I bought my dad a thingie that lets you load old slides onto your computer (promise I'll pay you my portion soon, sis. Yep, reeeeeal soon). She's been loading some on ahead of time (promise I'll come help you with that one day reeeeeeeal soon). Most of our family photos are on slides, after all. Just because there aren't a lot of photos around doesn't mean my mom and dad didn't love me. It's just on slides, see? My parents did take pictures of me, even if it seems like they didn't. The loved me and they did take pictures. Tons of them. Just tons. Millions, probably. They weren't "too busy" tending to the needs of my overscheduled older sibling to point a camera at me. No sir. They were crazy about me and wanted to document every moment. And here is proof. Of course, in this captured moment, I'm putting something in my mouth. Most of the pictures are that way.



Mostly I like to look at our living room. My mom was super groovy then. I like the guitar propped in the corner, ready to be brought out on a moment's notice for a rousing chorus of Puff, the Magic Dragon, or Leaving On a Jetplane. I do really like that lamp, too. I'd put that lamp in my home.

lots to do at night

I'm scared to complain to people sometimes that I'm tired, because the conversation may end up going this way:

Tired? Well, what time did you go to bed?

Umm, around midnight, or maybe a little later.

And what time do you get up?

Oh, about 5:50 is when my alarm goes off, then I lie there for a little while thinking about how tired I still am.

I see...what pressing obligations prevent you from going to bed a little earlier? Kids? Work? Chores? Studies? A second job?

Oh, well, like, last night I had to look up pictures of famed designer Tapio Wirkkala, and there are other nights when there are other really important things like that I need to do, like look at the all the different cover art for the Moomin books through the years, or I have to look for an important piece of paper of some kind that I just then remembered about. Plus I can't go to bed without reading for at least twenty minutes.

Maybe you could start reading around 10:00 or 10:30.

(blank look)

***
Look how awesome looking Tapio Wirkkala was! He was a Laplander and the quintessential ruddy finn, by the looks of things.



I thought I had pinkeye, but I don't. So unless something else highly contagious enters my life before tomorrow morning, I guess I'll be going to school, and I guess I'll be trying to teach about government against a background of frenetic christmas anticipation.

Is there any way to GIVE myself pinkeye, do you think?

"Oh, yeah, I was going to start reading my book at 10:30, and be dead asleep by 11:00 with my clothes for tomorrow laid out and everything, but then I had to get up and, you know, do some research online about contaminating my own eye..."

Good night, then.

P.S. I like Cat Power, although somewhat against my better judgement. There is one song on "The Greatest" that centers around the line "I hate myself and I want to die." I like the song, not because I hate myself and I want to die, but because it's spooky and dark. Anyway, I read in an interview with her that she really was suicidal when she was making the record, and now she's feeling fine and adamantly doesn't hate herself or want to die, so now when she sings that song, she sings, "I don't hate myself, and I don't want to die." Why would anyone say, "I don't hate myself, and I don't want to die?" Doesn't just not singing it seem like a better idea?

Things I've Been Doing

Listening to Handsome Family, Kristin Hersh, Brendan Benson, Mazzy Star, and Hoaiho.
Wearing a lovely new blue wrist bauble from Chris.
Wishing for a new woodblock print like this one by Masao Ido.
Bidding on a Finnish mushroom bowl that my grandma g. had.
Hoping against any reasonable hope for a snow day tomorrow (forecast says that tomorrow will be partly cloudy with a balmy high of 45F).
Downloading "Fairy Tale of New York" (Pogues) for my drunken holiday enjoyment.
Looking for various pieces of paper that I misplaced but that must exist somewhere on the planet right now.
Singing, "I could've been someone - Well, so could anyone!"
Avoiding all the usual tasks.
Reading parts of The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006, from the library.
Starting to read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which Pam gave me last weekend.
Admiring the paper the aforementioned book was wrapped in.
Flipping through a bunch of magazines.
Oversleeping.
Forgetting my purse.
Eating salsa verde on potatoes.
Fantasizing about doing tricep dips in inappropriate locales.
Attending third grade musicals.
Standing on the desks of third graders to hang things from the ceilings.
Eating pretty cake with Chicago ladies.
Baking cookies with Chicagoans.
Not remembering my dreams at all.
Winning the bid on the finnish mushroom bowl that my grandma g. had.
finding one of the lost pieces of paper.
not going to bed like a good girl...

I have had my ears pierced since about age 13. You'd think I'd have the whole enterprise fairly well in hand by now.

Oh my god. I was going to write about this earring incident, but I took some illustrating photos and they are just too disturbing to show. Truncated earlobes are frightening. At least, mine are.

Instead, I'll tell you that I stopped at my parents' house to put some of my ornaments on their tree. All my old favorites made it on, including the wheat thin that kelly j. and i decorated with sequins and fake pearls as pre-martha high school crafters/sarcastic wheat thin eaters; the yellow piece of play-dough i made a skeleton print in and hung with a red ribbon; and the single section of egg carton that i splashed with sassy red and green paint when i was, oh, quite little, hung with its white pipe cleaner. as i admired these treasures anew, i felt that i hit my artistic zenith long ago. i don't do any cool projects like those anymore. what? YOU want a decorated wheat thin for christmas? hmmm... i might just be feelin' it...

going to chicago tomorrow. my earlobes are going with me. i just re-read the above and realized it kind of sounded like the earring incident resulted in my earlobes becoming detached. that didn't happen at all. now i really can't tell you the story because it would be so dull in comparison.

but i'm going to chicago, and we are going to have ladies' club friday night and i can't wait. then we're having co-ed cookie decorating on saturday night. and i'm going to just let this whole week of busy, busy school days, third grade musical practices, a Bad Tempeh Experience, unsettled contract/unsettled teachers, rumblings of millionaire bahamas-vacationing families thinking i'm spoiled because i have good health benefits, messy apartment, etc. slide away. i'm going to be just like the slider. mark bolan. t. rex. except that when he's sad, he slides, and i'm not gonna be sad, i'm gonna be the ebullient birthday girl.

it's a botched science project, charlie brown

Rats. That sums it up at the moment. And saying "Rats" makes me feel like Charlie Brown. When I was younger my sister would torment me by saying that my head was perfectly round, like Charlie Brown's. But that's a different story.

Rats, I say, because my science project mock-up doesn't work. See, I had a plan for tonight. The plan was to stay in with some strippers. Wire strippers, that is, plus christmas tree lights, a tin cookie sheet, etc. And for what?

The light up quiz board does not work.

I keep re-checking my work: Metal touching metal here, metal touching metal there... it's a closed circuit if ever i did see one (which i guess i barely ever have).

But it figures. I am simply not handy. There is probably something glaringly wrong that anybody else would notice. Even if I wanted to, I could never be one of those people who could say, "Yeah, it's a fixer-upper, but I am so excited to remodel it myself." Hell, no. I'd rather read and/or admire my Iittala wine glasses (below - pretend not to notice my horribly maintained fingernails). Home Depot freaks me out.

Ideally, in this science project, you touch a metal pointer to the correct quiz answer and the christmas lights illuminate in a possibly toxic blaze of glory (possibly toxic because christmas lights now are labeled as a lead-containing health hazard; it's actually due to the PVC coating, which is basically everywhere anyway. why do i buy all that organic stuff to eat, again?). It was going to be the coolest third grade project ever. By extension, I'd be the coolest third grade teacher ever, and that's what really matters in all this.

I was so excited. I touched the metal pointer to the correct answers.

Nothing.

Rats.

At least there's the Iittala glasses.

Postcard Puzzle

I bought these postcards in Japan a number of years ago. I just stumbled upon them and wondered about them. They are pretty weird. I like them. The guy with the bling-y collar is saying "gochisou sama," which is what you say after a meal. He does look like he's just become stuffed from a good meal. The other guy is Shin-chan, and it says someting about him laughing - "Shin-chan, please don't laugh," I think it says? I am frustrated because I'm not sure about the verb ending and obviously need to practice Japanese more. Actually, whatever it is, I think the milk is saying it. It would make sense for the milk to ask him not to laugh right now, right? Or does it only make sense because I promised myself I'd go to bed at 10:30 and it's already 11:09?
Anyway, the name on the backs of the postcards is "Shinichi Hoshi." I looked up Shinichi Hoshi online and found that he was a Japanese science fiction writer famous for writing short short stories. I didn't find anything about an artist, which kind of surprised me because I feel like I remember seeing a lot of paintings like these while I was there. It made me wonder, did this scifi writer also make wacky paintings? Or is this a separate person? Anyone know? Anyone? Hello??

i just now got home from the place i come from. let's give a shout out to warren, ohio, where both my parents grew up and where i lived on and off as a kid. it was not a happy visit, though. my grandma died earlier this week. i'd already been missing the real her for a long time, but i found out that i could miss her even more. someday i'll write about her cinderella story and her glittery beehive and her sparkly shoes. she had a hard beginning and a hard end, but a damn fine middle. that's the good thing.

i definitely associate her with food. she always had these mints around. actually, warren, oh is all about food to me.












i was the last one of my family to head back to detroit today, so before i left town i picked up six half-cooked pizzas from my dad's favorite pizza place, sunrise pizza, and delivered them around to our various homes in mi. the picture is of their classic "old world" pizza, with hot peppers added. my car smells pretty awesome right now.









i also brought home a hunk of cookie dough that my aunt made from my great-grandma's recipe (on the other side of the family). We cut out, baked, and decorated some cookies last night, which my aunt is using for her holiday stuff, and she sent two more hunks of dough with me and my sister so we can make some, too. Sure. I am pretty positive that i will end up slowly eating the raw dough instead.

this photo should be subtitled "me, after crying for three days, sleeping on a leaky air mattress, and driving for five hours with wet hair that dried badly, in a car that smelled like a pizzeria."

everthing is lousy, except this children of the corn jumper, and it's pretty lousy too.

It's Sunday, right?

What do you do when you're pretty sure it's Sunday, but all signs point to it not being Sunday?

For example, the mail. There isn't supposed to be mail on Sunday, right? So why was a mail truck stopping at each mailbox in my parents' neighborhood when I was there today?

And the busy hair salon I walked past. Are hair salons open on Sunday? I didn't think so.

The newspaper says "Sunday," though, so I'm going to go with it. Plus, I know I had a Saturday, I remember it, and if today was Monday, someone would have called me by now to find out why I'm not at work. I would have had to make something up, like "I had a jumper crisis," because no one would believe me if i said, "I thought it was Sunday."

TV seems like a good way to keep track of days. maybe i need to watch more tv. the office is the only thing i make that much of a point to watch. i used to like lost, but it's lived up to its name and lost my interest almost completely.

It's "spitting snow," as they say, and I'm enjoying it. It seems really sad for some reason. not because i think it should still be warm or something. it's just that kind of day. gray and gloomy and snow settling slightly on people's hair. It seems kind of sad, but fits my mood.

if i could be anywhere now, in the most escapist sense of the phrase, i'd be on the other side of the earth, at my old favorite, yuri jazz cafe, in nagoya, jp. i'd drink the ginger beer (actual beer with ginger flavoring) and write in a notebook and watch the two guys who work there select the next record from the rows and rows against the walls. they'd pick the next record without any fuss, put it on, display the cover, and go back to the tiny "kitchen." i'd sit at my scarred wooden table, one of six, and peek through the shutters now and then to the world outside. i could stay there all day. they didn't care. i could be by myself, writing in my notebook and staring into space, or i could be with someone. it didn't matter. that's where i'd escape to right now. not the beach or san francisco. those don't match my mood. just yuri jazz cafe.

jumper wearers of the world, unite and take over

I really need to go to bed, but I've settled on tomorrow's outfit and thought you'd want to know. How could I have overlooked my puffy white blouse and my Children of the World jumper?

What would a Children of the Corn jumper look like, I wonder?

No more workhorse.

(from biologyreference.com)

I'm trying to think of anything non-work related right now and i'm drawing a mean blank. Yes, a mean one. Work is an amoeba and I'm the thing it's engulfing (shown above). Do you remember drawing pictures of amoebas engulfing things? I do. In high school biology, I guess. Or maybe work is a mass of green jello and I'm the pineapple trapped inside. That's more of a grade school cafeteria memory. See, all my memories relate to various schools! Who am I? All I do is work or sleep so that I can work or make lunches to eat at work or put things in/take things out of bags carrying work materials. Conferences again tonight. "Your daughter lacks intellectual rigor." "Your son smells my shoes."

There are amazingly few good pictures online of pineapple trapped in jello. This one will have to do. The jello sites make me queasy. They usually also involve a lot of mayonnaisey and cream-of-something soup recipes. I am grossed out by those things.

So, I do have an identity beyond school! Awesome. It's about food.

By the way, do you think I should wear my Apples-n-Alphabet outfit tomorrow, or my sassy "READ" overalls with accompanying turtleneck? It's so hard to make these decisions each day! Also, all jokes aside, you will, won't you, sit me down if this ever really happens to me?

Ouch, and then some

1. I hate Emily Dickinson. And I hate that I suddenly can't remember if it's spelled Dickenson or Dickinson. I hate all those dashes she uses, and her prim outfits, and how she was all morbid and housebound. And I really hate that we have the same birthday.

2. Today I have numb and tingly legs. Scary things come up when you google "Numb and tingly legs," by the way. But I think it has to do with my lower back, and some pinched nerves, perhaps? I wonder if it's all the fault of those blasted standing sprints in spinning class?

3. Had a feast from LaShish at Deborah's for her birthday yesterday. Me, Deborah, and Tim ate and cracked up about stuff while Isidora dozed in a hugely oversized sweater, which was super cute. I wondered why she seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes open at times. I do that when I want to finish a chapter or a movie or something, or when I'm teaching a boring lesson or sometimes while driving, but what reason does a newborn baby have? Succumb to the sleep while you can, Izzy!

4. Sheesh, LaShish is so damn good. I wouldn't say no to a bed of hummous with pine nuts, with some of that awesome soft bread for pillows. What do you think of this for their new motto: "SHEESH, LaShish is good!" Would it make you want to go there? I want to go there right now. But I'll bet that uptight Emily Dickinson would have never wanted to eat there. Loser!

5. Like I am even capable of ever teaching a boring lesson!

moomins, y'all

I have a bad memory for books in general, but I think of all the Moomin books I had as a kid this was my favorite. I mean, shouldn't it have been? LOOK! Look at them on their stilts! Stilts and comets! That's a winning combination if ever there was one. I was trying to remember how I started reading these books, thinking it was my Finnish grandma, but no - I think I happened upon them in the bookstore in Dublin as a kid. I still remember the bookstore we'd go to during the two years we lived there. I remember how it smelled, and I remember that the book selection was totally different and that was exciting. So I read Moomins, and I read two boarding school series by Enid Blyton, Malory Towers and St. Clare's.



In these books there were lots of sensible English girls and one or two headstrong ones, and usually a spoiled, glam American nuisance with a lazy drawl and maybe a hot-blooded Spanish girl. At least one of the group would be horsey, one would be strong and athletic, one would be dumb as a stick, and one, whipsmart. They'd get into scrapes and arguments. At least once a term they'd have midnight feasts by flashlight, tucking into tins of pineapple, lovely cakes, and orange fizz sent in parcels from mummy and daddy. Sometimes they'd be careless with the crumbs and would get caught the next day and the headmistress would have to give them a frightful scolding. Sometimes they'd sneak out at night and fall off cliffs, or get dragged by a wild stallion, or stubbornly try to prove themselves by swimming in a dreadful current. They never seemed to meet any lads, though. Pity.

Yeah, I thought it all sounded pretty exciting, that English boarding school life. Looking back, though, Moominland would definitely have been the better place for me. I found some Moomin song clips at http://www.moominvoices.com/listen.html . Some are pretty wild, consisting of multiple layers of moomin voices.

I'm glad that when I can't sleep I can get online and look up things like "moomins." There's over a million sites. A whole lot of obsessed souls out there, which works out great for me. But these two? These two give me the creeps! I knew a few people in Japan who had gotten married at Disneyworld, though, so I guess between the two, a Moomin style wedding is way cooler. I would have included stilts, of course, in case of a comet.

Ha ha!

Someone made me feel really crappy about myself earlier today, and hence I'm enjoying a bit more wine than I normally would on a Tuesday. Plus, I am not with my students tomorrow, but at a workshop all day. So: a second post just to say....

HA! I laugh in the face of typos. As I was self-obsessedly re-reading the cleverly titled post "Flinging things around," I noticed a typo, in whose face I laughed. I mistakenly wrote, "All week I want to send time there," instead of "SPEND time there." It got me thinking: How great would it be if I could send time to my apartment? Like, if I was at the dentist, or the gym, or school for a certain number of hours, it would earn me a certain number of minutes or hours which would be sent with free shipping to my apartment to use there? That would be awesome.

Are the polls still open? I'm voting for whoever is going to make THAT happen!

Sigh. Sometimes the badly typing fingers really know what they are doing!

my closet and other crazy shit

I think I may have a bona fide crazy lady as a neighbor. She is always dressed to the nines in flashy, fluffy, fur-trimmed, brocade clothing, no matter what the hour, and constantly recieves packages in the mail from clothing stores. Her car seems to be filled to the roof with bags and boxes - of clothing, it seems, and some children's toys in their regular packaging. Plus, I always think she is talking to me when we meet in the parking lot, and she is, at first, but then she's mumbling into her trunk full of bags and boxes, and seems to have forgotten I'm there. Unless I'm on my cell phone, when she tries to have full and complex conversations with me. Did I mention that the door to her place is almost obscured by boxes? It is. I worry.

She locked herself out on Sunday and knocked on my door to use my phone. Her hands were full of bags and clothes and, for some reason, a rug.

Why does the crazy lady scare me? There was a crazy lady who shopped at the food co-op in ann arbor. she would buy tiny litle dollops of things from the salad bar and make funny noises in her throat like she was choking, but she was well dressed, too. she scared me worse. i guess i thought, why are the crazy lady and i always here at the same time? am i following the same itinerary as the crazy lady? shouldn't our paths cross only very rarely? ok, and let's face it - am i someone else's crazy lady?

This one also makes me think about my closet. I do have a lot of clothes. The funny thing is, despite my generally chaotic approach to life and organization, my closet is a rainbow of color-coded harmony (well, a rainbow with more black and gray in it than most rainbows). I delight in it, I must admit. It's like a piece of art. I want to leave the closet door open when guests come. My cd's are also arranged by spine color. Here's what's organized in my life: My clothes, my music, and my books. My fridge is semi-organized. My paperwork and financial stuff is NOT ORGANIZED. So if you wondered what I care about in life, I guess that pretty much says it all. Here's what it looks like, at least a small slice of the side with shirts, a bit crooked because of course I took it with my computer (and I just drank some wine). Not shown: The other side, with dresses, skirts, and pants.

flinging things around

My pirated (aaargh, Pam) wireless is weakish today, so I just drove silly far to drink coffee and write and do work at a coffeehouse far from my home. I like it here, and there's nowhere comparable near my home. So I drove. Now I'm here, bathed in sunshine, as you can see.

I have a strange relationship with my new apartment. All week long I feel like I'm there just long enough to fling things around and I wish I could send more time there. Then the weekend comes and I know I should get stuff done at home, but I just want to be out among people. Real adult people. With skin and everything else that real people have.

It's like I only want to be there when I'm supposed to be at work. When I'm not supposed to be at work, I want a total change of scenery, maybe another identity altogether.

I had a headache near that one lumpy spot on my cranium this morning. It was a caffeine withdrawal headache! Yea. My favorite kind!

I hesitate to mention it, but there is a student who sits near my feet every day when we're at the carpet and sniffs my shoes. An actual quote from this boy: "Ms. G_____, your shoes today smell just like the boots you were wearing yesterday."

Well, I guess what can I expect when I wear these boots to school?

Halloween

I lived through another Halloween.

I used to like Halloween, but things have changed. It used to be that Halloween was an excuse to dress sluttier than I normally would. Now it seems to have become an excuse to wear pajamas to work. It was my colleagues' idea. I was all set to be a leopard, which would have consisted of clothes I already have plus a leopard thing on my head. But they wanted us to have a theme, and that theme is too embarrassing to plainly write; however here's a hint: it involved a pacifier. Ugh. So terrible. I am not a person who has a stockpile of adorable pajamas at the ready, and even if I did, I don't want to wear them in public under any circumstance. Somehow my coworkers all own one-piece zip-up fleece pajamas! I ended up wearing "sweats," which is another word I can't stand.

Some would say I don't know how to have fun. I do know how to have fun, but it's not your everyday kind of fun. It's very specialized. I can send you a brochure.

*
Added a few minutes later:

I think that because of how public school teachers are viewed in our country, and how I constantly strive to present myself as an educated, intellectual professional, and how we are currently working without a contract, dressing like a b*&$ just seemed like the wrong message.

A leopard would have totally gotten the right point across.

I want to stay up all night

You know how there are holidays and days off, devoted to different things, like the founding of our nation and the remembrance of veterans?

I wish tomorrow was one of them.

I have so much to read and I can't keep up. I have piles - today's New York Times, barely touched; magazines, some from last month; library books... It's unlike me to be so neglectful in this way.

But I did crack open this Ikkyu book today. Ikkyu was a 15th century Zen master and writer of then-scandalous poems. Example: "don't hesitate get laid that's wisdom / sit around and meditate, what crap"

This one's less scandalous but I like it: "I love bamboo how it looks / and because men carve it into flutes"

I once wrote a bamboo poem. I was going to add it here but can't remember it exactly. So I got up to try to find it and realize I need another holiday/day off to devote to organizing my dozens of notebooks. Which one contains the bamboo thing? Aargh.

*

There was a man who used to come into the record store where I worked in Ann Arbor and one day he said to me, "I'll know winter is over by the change in your clothing."

www.itcamefromdetroit.com

What? You think I'm GLAD the Tigers lost because it made parking downtown easier for me tonight? What kind of person do you think I am? Jeez...

This weekend has made me feel like myself.

Last night, Alice and I went to the DFT to see It Came from Detroit. It was so good - basically I relived my twenties through this documentary chronicling the Detroit garage scene. It made me miss that whole scene, even if I was never part of it from the inside. All the footage of the Gold Dollar was very nostalgic, as were the clips of bands that I've seen time and again, going all the way back to house parties in Ann Arbor. It made me quite happy to see friends, acquaintances, and not a few crushes on the big screen. All my old rock crushes are officially re-activated!

Then, after dropping the early-to-rise Alice home, I met Mollie for dill pickle martinis/beer (you guess who had what). It was excellent to sit at the bar with her and talk and laugh and semi-notice the game on the TV in front of us. I didn't get home until a fairly wee hour, which I like.

Tonight I went downtown again, with Jen and Alice, and though around the corner from Comerica Park, home of the Tigers, we had no problem parking (not that I'm glad about that or anything). We went to Small Plates for dinner, where we drank an awesome bottle of Spanish red wine, ate good food, batted around various topics and ideas, and then...

we went next door to 1515 Broadway where we saw Blair's one-man show, Burying the Evidence. Oh my god! We were all completely in awe of him. His show was unbelievable - so funny and sad and passionate. It's clear that he is doing what he is supposed to be doing, which almost no one can say. His poetry, his songs, his movements were all perfectly done and gave me chills. I heard the guy behind me say, "God, I need to start writing again." That's exactly how A, J, and I felt. Blair's show seemed so professional - like we had paid a ton of money to see a famous performer, not paid a little to see an old friend. I wish everyone could see it.

So the weekend's almost over, and it's almost time to turn the clock back, and I'm ending Daylight Savings time feeling, as I said, exactly like myself.

nasu dengaku meets the d

I had a student start a piece of writing with, "Fortunately, I had a mullet."

So, I think youtube is a bad thing for me, now that I realize I can see other people having fun in Japan there. It makes me want to be in Japan. I am super restless and wish I could travel. I realize I'm not unique in this way. But although I'm excited about my two events in Detroit this weekend, and I'm a big fan of Detroit, compare Detroit and Tokyo for a moment:




I trust I don't have to point out which is which.

OK, I'm joking, of course. That is Detroit, and a beautiful photo at that, and it's from Detroit Bike Blog. But this is a more true picture of Detroit:



It's not bad. But can you get nasu dengaku like this??? No. For that you need Tokyo, which is where I photographed this and many other meals.

I do it because I have to

Two thumbs WAY up for cool kids who bring to mind long-forgotten talents and gifts. Today I was tapped and turned around to find the tapping fingers positioned like this. I used to position my fingers the same way, to make time move faster as I sold movie theater tickets.

I just thought of all my movie theater coworkers. That was high school. They are probably all harried moms and dads now, maybe feeling a little old. Meanwhile, I'm posting pictures online of my fingers twisted up funny.

Only a little bonnie

I got this new Bonnie Prince Billy, and I think I like it, but I'm not sure it's all it's cracked up to be. I like that I'm still listening to Will Oldham after so many years, although I took a break for quite awhile. I think the woman's voice on this BPB gets on my nerves. Some of it seems too precious in a way. Plus, none of the songs to me measures up to the two "Florida Songs," which are my favorite two Will Oldham (Palace) songs. One is called West Palm Beach and the other is Gulf Shores. Both take place in FL, and both are beautiful and sad. "She won't get up, she's shot-gun seamed, she's sewn to the sea - it's a dirty old trick that I've yet to lick and she's yet to beat." I feel like it's all about her being depressed in Florida and him not knowing what to do. I could be wrong, but I will continue to think of the songs that way even if I am.

So even though I'm not blown away yet by this new one, I still am looking forward to seeing the accompanying movie, Old Joy, at the DFT in early December.

Another old favorite of mine is Yo La Tengo and they never do anything less than great, I feel, including their newest, I Am Not Afraid of You and I will Beat your Ass. I love them so.

Imaginary Reader and the Author's Tale

I love the sunshine today.

Now for a parable...

Imaginary Reader came to me last night and said, "Why do you update so much? Are you that narcissistic? Do you think we are checking three times a day, unable to sleep, to eat, without a word from you?"

"Gentle Imaginary Reader," I said, "Come, have a seat. I will make you a dill pickle martini and tell you a story." So Imaginary Reader sat, I stoked the fire, garnished a murky martini with a garlicky spear, and began to spin my tale.

***
I spend most of my days with small people, children, actually, who are creative and entertaining and yet who cannot endure the weight of all of my thoughts and knowledge. Many times throughout the day stories come to my mind, stories sometimes involving swear words and morally questionable actions on my part. Or an esoteric interest reveals itself, and while my mouth is speaking of why we must revise our personal narrative stories, my brain is reeling with questions about the Stone Forest, about the aesthetics of rain, and trying to remember that guy's name who built the amazing houses for the poor in the south (his name is Samuel Mockbee, and he's pictured above. Oh, did you think that was Imaginary Reader? I guess he could be). Sometimes, Imaginary Reader, these mental diversions threaten to spill over, and I find myself trying to compensate in some bizarre way. For example, when confronted with the mysterious menu item "Traveling Taco," I drew on the board a very detailed taco with suitcase, traveling hat, legs and shoes, and an excited grin. I was enthusiastic about this project, until one of my students broke through my creative process and said, "Why are you spending so much time on that taco?" My defenses flared. Because I want to! Because I need to! Because I am a creative and interesting person who needs an outlet at times! I yearn to travel, like this taco; to draw, like you kids are doing now with your persuasive travel posters; to write my own scandalous personal narrative. But no. I'm with you children, here, where I must contain these impulses and guide you toward your creative zenith while I choke on my own!

That's when I thought it might be a good idea to start writing again, in whatever capacity. I don't expect you, Imaginary Reader, or anyone to read these words, or to care. But I must press on for my own sanity. I hope you understand now. It's not a personality disorder but a creative imperative that leads me to tell my Stories.

***

The fire was down to embers, Imaginary Reader was down to his last bite of pickle spear, and moments later, my room was returned to normal. I was left to wonder: Had it even happened at all?

High electric kicks

1. Lately, it seems like I'm flipping light switches on and off with my foot at least as often as with my hand. Should I keep going with that or try to tame my natural impulse?
2. I feel better now than at the writing of my last post. I can't think of anything I have in common with the guy from Sheltering Sky, thank god.
3. I have really seen very few South Park episodes, but I watched one tonight about the band Timmy and Phil Collins. It was a good one. Anyway, I always thought (back in the day, when it was an actual thing to think about) that Phil Collins was the antichrist, except since I don't believe in an antichrist (or a christ, for that matter), I guess that's not the right comparison. He's something really bad that I believe exists. Basically, he's for people who don't like music. Many years ago, when we lived on S. Division St. in Ann Arbor, Chris made me a Phil Collins puppet, to either torture me or give me a chance to act out my angst toward Phil Collins; I don't remember which. I do remember that I took the puppet around with me one day in my bag, took it out at a coffee shop to show someone, and must have left it behind. Which is so sad, but it's also great to think of someone finding it and maybe even loving it.
4. I also watched the Simpson's episode where the Flanders family moves to the town where those Hummel figurines are made.
5. And I watched the movie Hard Candy and am trying very hard to forget all about it now.
6. Watching TV is a good thing to do when you're sick.

Home from work

I'm home sick today. I hardly ever do that, mostly because it's so much work to get things ready for a sub teacher that it's easier to just go in. But not today. Today is all about fire in my stomach. You know it's bad when you keep reminding yourself of the main character, Port, in The Sheltering Sky (a book that I love; I hear the movie stinks). He is slowly dying of malaria. There's lots of descriptions of the desert woozily shimmering around him all psychedelic-like, and of his stomach feeling like liquid fire, etc. It's all very excruciatingly described, and not a good thing to be able to relate to.

Since I don't have the book to draw a quote from, I was just online looking for one. They all seemed to be about the book's larger existential theme, if you can call it that. Not everyone thinks of intestinal agony when they think of the book, apparently. Then I found a book club guide that included questions like this: "What keeps Kit and Port Moresby together as husband and wife? What role does their friend, Tunner, play in their attachment to one another, and how do their mutual episodes of infidelity affect the course of their marriage?" Ugh. God. Is that what book clubs do? That sounds so terrible to me. My book club would have to be renegade. I could never sit around and answer college literature class essay questions! We'd have to make up interpretive dances or something instead.

This is why I never pursued a Lit. Master's despite loving books so much. Analyzing them too much kills it for me.

So, the other thing I found online was a list of books to read while you're traveling in various countries. This list recommended The Sheltering Sky for people traveling in Morocco and Algeria! Great idea. I definitely would want to read about slow, lonely death in Morocco and Algeria by parasitic intestinal destruction while traveling through those countries. That would be my very first choice.

Ikaruga, baby

Such a rainy day, but we had our woodsy field trip anyway. I loved the drizzle and the forest smell. We saw two deer, a woodpecker, some fungi, worms, nests, and a raccoon's sleeping spot. One kid claimed to have seen the raccoon's butt, but I don't know...

Being out in the rain made me realize that I hardly ever go outside when it's raining. And yet, I *claim* to like rain sounds. In Japan, during the rainy season, you still lived your regular life, just under a series of umbrellas (well, for me it was a series, because I'd accidentally leave them behind whenever it cleared up). You walked to the train station, past the lush gardens, the convenience stores, the tofu shop, the beer vending machines, the rice fields, the Chanel boutiques, the tucked-away temples, all to the accompaniment of rain on your umbrella. It was loveliness itself.

Last summer when I visited, I stayed a couple nights in the small town of Ikaruga, not far from Nara ("Ikaruga" is apparently also the name of a shooting video game, based on my Google search...). It looked like this:



Of course, I didn't see it from quite that angle. Anyway, it rained the whole time I was there. The family I was staying with was, of course, personally responsible for the rain, and they apologized constantly, as they should have. When I first arrived, the mom told me I couldn't see my room because of the rain. I imagined that it must have had a gaping hole in the ceiling. After dinner, when the rain had slowed to a drizzle, she picked up my suitcase and led me down the hall to a sliding door leading to a lovely garden. Complex slipper-changing took place, then she led me through the garden on a path of stones, onto a wooden ledge, into a different pair of slippers, through another sliding door, into a beautiful free-standing traditional tatami room. It was so perfect. That night I lay on the futon, thinking about the randomness of my being there, in that room, in that family's home who I'd never met until that day, and I listened to the rain and inhaled the smell of wet wood, and was happy.

Here is a slice of the garden that led to my room:

Swiss chard, lentils, peppers, apples, and almonds

And here it is, everyone...tomorrow's lunch.

Mama played the keyboard

It seems like I'm living inside a giant human heart. In reality, I think it's the music coming from the apartment of the "old Detroit rocker from the Bob Seger era" (as he told my mom in the hallway one day - along with other nuggets such as his sister's IQ and how Mama played the keyboard and Daddy was a better singer than Frank Sinatra, etc.). Anyway, it's very Poe - Edgar Allen, not Teletubbies - in my apartment right now. I'm trying to remember if I stashed a warm body in a closet this weekend between the reading, the paper grading, and the other wholesome weekend activities I enjoyed. I guess I'd remember if I did.

spunk rock

This is the Stone Forest in Yunnan Province, China (photo from www.uh.edu/~jbutler/kunming/stoneforest.html). I didn't know a place like this existed, until today, when I saw Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Zhang Yimou). It was excellent, if a bit overly sentimental. I normally avoid any film with a "grouchy old man and the spunky little boy who makes him appreciate life again" slant, but it didn't bother me too much in this. The scenery was heartbreaking in itself. That Stone Forest! Unbelievable. Then there's the Stone Village where the spunky little boy lived, and the way they stretched tables all down the narrow lane and had a huge village feast. It's good to imagine that other people live in that kind of way.

My muse

That little gnome I have in the corner had his first portrait, in which he was placed in a realistic situation, done a few years ago. Here it is. I may try a second, more formal portrait one of these days.

No gutters? No gutterballs!

It's silly, I know, very silly to sit around my apartment taking pictures with the Photo Booth feature on my computer. It's even sillier to apply effects to the photos, I know. But it's kind of cute, isn't it, how this small bit of my apartment ends up looking like a bowling alley? A bright bowling alley, with a lot of cool stuff instead of pins. My kind of bowling alley.

SPORTS UPDATE!

This morning, lining up to fetch the students, I noticed that all my co-workers were wearing orange. Orange sweatshirts, sweaters, t-shirts, etc. My shirt was black. I don't really believe in orange clothes. Maybe if the orange was almost red, I would consent. Anyway, I had no idea what was going on, and I didn't really want to. I hadn't had any coffee yet, after all, had been running late and had to make do with some weak tea. I wasn't in the mood for any kind of staff coordination efforts unless it would result in strong, black coffee.

The kids came in, and it seemed like the kids in orange were high-fiving the teachers in orange a lot. This kind of thing had happened before, I realized. Last Friday had been the Big Game, as they call it. Teachers had worn Their Teams' colors. I had probably worn black, which was neither team's color. It didn't even dawn on me until later in the morning, well after my students asked me, ""Michigan or State?" "Um....I went to Michigan," I said, not really knowing what they were getting at. This would be greeted with either a cheer or a boo. Then the principal played both teams' fight songs, and I realized it was the Big Game thing. "I really don't care who wins," I told my kids. In other classrooms, full out wagering and tailgating was going on. In mine, they once again got gypped of any school spirit or sport related experience. Just how I like it.

So today, I finally equated the orange with a sporting event. All casual, I asked my coworker, "So, is there a Tigers game tonight?" She looked at me like I was fully alien. "They're close to the World Series," she said.

Oh, right.

Later I heard her class singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," while mine was stringing together food chain mobiles.

At least I'm not bitter

For a long time, i've loved eggplant. I love it in baba ganouj form; i love it japanese-style, broiled with miso, or else as tiny little pickles. I love it Chinese, in a spicy peanut sauce, or Italian as a component of ratatouille. I don't really like it breaded and deep-fried, but otherwise, I've rarely met an eggplant i didn't like.

Then there are these little guys. So cute, I thought when I spotted them at Eastern Market. Such delightful aubergine jewels. For a couple of dollars, I had a bagful. I daydreamed, looked up recipes, made plans for how I'd change my eating habits now that these new friends had entered my world. And then... and then...

I cut them up. I decided to saute them with some spices and tomatoes. I had them cooking over a fairly low heat, waiting for them to get soft and succulent. Now I know that eggplant can be bitter, but this was crazy. The cooking process seemed to actually release bitterness into the air. Soon I was literally gagging, choking on bitterness. I don't know how else to describe it. I turned on the fan, hoping to spare my neighbors, most of whom I've never met. Many of them are old, possibly weak, unlikely to fare well with bitterness vapors filling the lungs. I didn't want to be responsible.

I gagged. I actually gagged.

I turned off the heat and let the eggplant cool.

I dumped it all into the garbage and made a peanut butter sandwich.