whoa

It's been more than a year since I stopped blogging. Honestly, the only reason I'm here now is because I was setting up my links on Google+. Maybe I should start up again. Why not? That seems to be the pattern. Write, complain about not writing enough, threaten to dismantle blog, stop writing. Repeat. We'll see.

This picture is from our visit to the Chihuly exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. More of my inadequate photos can be seen here. Better photos are available on the MFA site here.

moonlighting

Not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to writing for my company blog. I should have known better than to believe I could write one entry a week in any less than six or eight hours. Why can't I go faster? Gah.

So, now with no time to write my own entry, I'm again cheating with a peep. Tonight, I'll do my best not to think about the fact that one of my favorite jazz singers is going to be a few hundred yards away from my home this Wednesday, and unless Ted has some great secret up his sleeve (i.e. tickets), I won't get to see the performance. Feel like wailing like a big baby. I WANNA' GO! I WANNA' GO!

But that wouldn't be dignified. And would hardly help the situation. I hope you enjoy our fair city, Mr. Elling.

one would think

One would think that without television, progress might be made in other areas. One would be wrong; primarily because television isn't the distraction. It's this crazy thing called the internet.

That said, there are evenings when I'll watch an hour or two of TV. That hasn't been possible since the lights went out on Friday. Despite the extra time, I have not immersed myself in the attempt to write some real, perhaps even mildly interesting, blog entry. And now, in an effort to get more sleep to aid in my recovery, there's no time left at all.

So with that, I leave you with this nice photo of the 2008 Jaguar XKR. Purdy, ain't it?

not even a choir

Not many people see this blog. Precious few, really. So, why have I made such a concerted effort to write here every day? I suppose it has less to do with finding an audience and more to do with getting back in the groove of writing. So, why write here? If I wrote every day in my journals, I wouldn't be faced with the limitations that potential readership brings. Perhaps the pressure to write something that's actually interesting is greater because of the potential readership.

Well, whatever the case, I'm too distracted to explore it more thoroughly today. My "to do" list is lengthy, and the morning is half over. Contemplation will have to continue some other day.

it's slipping away...

The muses are gone. Even the part-time one, who inspires meek anecdotes and easy YouTube embeddings. I'd hoped that this lovely lady sketched by Deeleigh over at Well Rounded might be enough to stir the lazy muses from their slumber. Alas, not. Or not yet -- not that I have it in me to wait around for it.

It's easy to say that available free time has decreased now that I'm well into a real, full-time job again. Especially given the depth to which my subconscious is submerged in my new industry (I have dreams about huge kettles full of cooking fruit, tiny jars packed with delectable condiments, and Excel spreadsheets brimming with pricing formulas. Every day. No, really... every day. Without exception. For coming-up-on half a year.) But I managed to shake the muses loose with reasonable frequency when previously employed in a real, full-time job. What's different this time?

There's no answer to that question, because the muses, well, they've taken leave. Even the second shift one whose sole responsibility is making excuses.

It's not for lack of topics.

* Family... ah, family
* Friends (present, past, former [different from 'past'], and maybe even future)
* A new president
* The wild (and barely tolerable) winter weather
* My rapidly growing dissatisfaction with our living quarters
* The single song I play repeatedly despite having a library of over 20,000 songs
* Poems that make me ache
* Cute cats
* Messy storage units
* A highly successful venture into making meatloaf
* Problems whose aching manifests as bouts of hives
* The sweetness in the world
* The overload of everything in the world
* The year of the landmark high school reunion
* A thick skull that remembers less and seems to only grudgingly adapt
* The imminent demise of one of my favorite size acceptance blogs
* Newly updated lists
* File boxes that look organized from the outside
* Unread books gathering dust
* The burden of truths that can never be shared

This could go on forever. Not actually writing anything interesting or insightful. Just listing the general topics. I've got this one song on repeat on my iPod so as not to wake up Ted. It's 58 degrees in here, and despite my fluffy slippers and layers of long fleece, my toes are cold. And once again, I've escaped the potential for a full night's sleep by rambling about nothing until the calendar turns.

What's the point?

And so with that, I suspect that sanguinary blue will likely come to an end. Not following Paul's suit. I've floated the idea before. Now I just need the overly pert motivation muse to kick me in the ass so I'll actually take the site down.

I'm elsewhere in the ether. One way or another, I can be reached if need be. Good night.

word wonk strikes again

It could just be me, but I find this thesaurus entry particularly enjoyable.

Great:

Synonyms
A1, bang-up, banner, boss [slang], capital, classic, crackerjack, dandy, divine, fabulous, fine, first-class, first-rate, grand, great, groovy, heavenly, jim-dandy, keen, marvelous, mean, neat, nifty, noble, par excellence, prime, sensational, splendid, stellar, sterling, superb, superior, superlative, supernal, swell, terrific, tip-top, top, top-notch, unsurpassed, wonderful

Related Words
acceptable, adequate, all right, decent, good, OK, passable, satisfactory, tolerable; better, exceptional, fancy, high-grade, premium, special

Phrases
out of sight

Near Antonyms
bad, inferior, low-grade, substandard, unsatisfactory; mediocre, second-class, second-rate; atrocious, execrable, vile, wretched

Antonyms
poor

what if...

... sanguinary blue went dark?

a first attempt

My first stab at a six-word memoir:

Yes, I can. And I do.

Given that this is a memoir, i.e. written description of what has happened in the past, it should probably be, "Yes, I could. And I did." Hmmm. I'm probably going to try again.

the present and the past

2008

If you know me, you know I love two types of cars -- Toyota and Jaguar. My lottery fantasy of owning two cars (how extravagant) has always included a Toyota SUV (old dream, 1988 4Runner; new dream, 2008 Highlander hybrid) and a Jaguar (old dream, 1975 XJ 3.4; new dream, 2008 S-Type). There is some flexibility in there. I like my current Scion, and Ted's Prius is pretty darned cool. And it's impossible for my head not to turn at the sight of the new Jaguar XK (rrrrrow).

Other automobile makers occasionally earn props on Kelly's Opinion of Cars. When I lived in Connecticut, I regularly saw an Aston Martin DBS that was jaw-droppingly beautiful. I like the new generation Mini Coopers. And someone in the town where I live now drives an orange Lotus Elise in nice weather (i.e. not for the last three months), which is certainly eye-catching (though I would personally never want one, and would certainly never fit into one).

Tonight, I saw a Mercedes Benz CLS 55 AMD in a parking lot, and holy guacamole, it is one pretty car. I've never been a big fan of MB, perhaps because, despite their luxury reputation, most of their designs were just boxyugly when I first started ogling cars in my youth. In any event, it was lovely, and I just thought I'd mention it.

How this car rave segues into reading old journals, I can't tell you. I just started wandering through the first of my entries when I began electronically chronicling life, which occurred just as I moved myself 'cross country. Here's a smattering from June 1991. For me, it's interesting to read because I see some aspects of my personality that are exactly the same nearly 17 years later, and others that are now completely different. It's also cringe-worthy for its mundaneness and complete lack of creativity.

A brief primer in preparation for this.

• I moved from Maine to Seattle, where I had no family, friends, place to live, or job lined up.


• The trip was 5000 miles instead of 3000 because I "detoured" to Los Angeles to visit my brother.


• Current cost for a room at the SeaTac Motel 6 is $44.99 per night, plus tax.


• "Sisters" turned out to be one of my favorites shows.


• Although upon arrival I expressed frustration at the concept of still being in Seattle after six months, it was all I could do to pry myself away from that wonderful city nine years later.


• Anyone who tackles a long drive should read "On the Road."


• I did not get the job at the Seattle Art Institute.


• The house where I first rented a room contained roommates, Bean, Mike, and Dave.


• Dave drove a bakery truck at the crack of dawn, and his spare time was spent at his "second job" (i.e. the race track, which he called "the plant").


• The money that funded my trek was a cashed-out pension.


• I lived in Seattle for one year before getting a television. During that first year, I became a regular at the Lake City Library, where I not only read lots of books, I used the communal computers one hour per night to journal and work on my resume, and Mavis Beacon taught me how to type correctly.


• Priscilla and Phoenix (my cats) ended up staying with my parents for nearly a year. I brought them back to Seattle with me when I returned from my friend, Pam's wedding in 1992. Phoenix never adjusted. She ran away in 1993. Priscilla remained my precious kitty love until she died in October of 1998. It is her picture below, taken from my dining room table (she was on the skylight above).

1991

June 21, 1991

A trip cross country, almost 5000 miles in 2 weeks, gone by. And I didn't write an ounce of it down. I rationalized that everything would come back easily enough when I look at the maps, motel receipts, and pictures. But I was frustrated that I couldn't write or tape things as I was driving. There were many inspirational sights, sounds, smells and events which conjured up creative literary images.

For some reason today, I decided it was time to write now. Time to write everything. I have encountered so many thoughts and emotions. If I'd written them down (or somehow recorded them), I would have filled a lot of paper space or blank tapes. It may have helped me to organize some of these many, overwhelming, and often confusing ideas.

June 22, 1991

This morning, as I was waking up, I realized where I am (Motel 6 on South 188th in SeaTac), and when that happened, it suddenly made me feel ALONE. None of my friends or family is here, and I'm having a challenging time trying to get started (anything -- job, apartment) because everyone I talk to is a stranger.

I have to go brush my teeth, throw on some clothes, and ask the girl at the desk the location of nearest laundromat when I pay another $32.02 for this room.

June 23, 1991

I was watching a show called "Sisters" last night and thinking about how hard it is to be here with my family and friends in New Hampshire, Maine, etc... . One line in the show was a younger sister saying to an older sister who was leaving town "there's nothing you'll find out there that you don't already have right here."

I've thought about that. I had it good where I was. A comfortable job, a nice apartment full of furniture and other necessary implements, close access to my friends, and regular visits to my family. It was good. Obviously something was missing, or I wouldn't have left it all behind, right? Hmmm.

I'm looking for a job and an apartment. I wanted to be idealistic and find a job I would really enjoy -- preferably in the music industry. It's tough not knowing exactly what I want. And my money's not coming from a never-ending source, so I've just got to find employment.

I interviewed at a place called Mills Music in Bothell on Friday. It's a store which sells and rents musical instruments, sheet music and supplies. A nice man, James Mills, and a beautiful store. Of course, I went in after he talked with Isaac Meyers -- grandson of the man who ran Meyers Music... a legacy in the instrument world in Seattle. James was kind enough to tell me that I was up against some pretty stiff competition. Oh well... even if I don't get hired there, I know that I can rent a piano for $39. a month!

I have an interview tomorrow at Promotions in Motion, an advertising agency. I'm hoping to be hired on the spot. Talk about optimistic. I want to start working THIS WEEK... I NEED THE MONEY! I also think it will help me to find an apartment once I'm employed.

June 24, 1991

I had it great. I had a comfortable, secure job, opportunity to be published bi-weekly, nice apartment... . I've been through this before. I'm just frustrated that I left it all behind to find something better. I know what is said about hindsight. I could have used that time to develop my writing skills and apply to other careers while employed in a stable job. But I could only possibly appreciate that opportunity after giving it up and moving 3000+ miles away.

I'm trying to find an apartment. I am now running low on money, so I want to get into a place soon. AAARRRRGGHHHH! Now I just want a job so I can pay everything off. Now I'm going to watch Nightline, about unemployment and overwhelming debt.

½ hour later...

Someone mentions that Christmas eve is 6 months from tonight and what rushes through my mind is how I'm going to buy presents and why the hell I would still be in Seattle.

June 25, 1991

Jack Kerouac never anticipated the 90s.

June 26, 1991

OK. I have a place to live. It's a little room (not that little, but not huge) with a corner window (a cool thing) in a house with three other people. I've only met one of them. It's kind of strange, but as long as nothing unusual happens between now and tomorrow when I get my keys, I'll be OK.

Now I just have to find a job. I want that job at the Seattle Art Institute. I want that job at the Seattle Art Institute.

I WILL GET THE JOB AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE
I WILL GET THE JOB AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE
I WILL GET THE JOB AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE
I WILL GET THE JOB AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE
I WILL GET THE JOB AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE
I WILL GET THE JOB AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE

June 29, 1991

Saturday. What did I do on Saturdays in Maine. I think I went to New Hampshire enough that when I actually stayed in Maine, I allowed myself to vegetate. Watch movies, listen to records, clean the apartment, drive somewhere. Today, I slept til 10:00 (not really, I kept waking up 5:30, 7:00, 7:30, 8:00, etc...). Then I had an English muffin for breakfast. I talked to Dave for a little while. His 1974 Barracuda passed the state emissions test. Then he went to the track.

Bean wandered up and down for a little bit, altering (her client) Barbara's polyester skirts. Then, she went to a conference.

I ended up reading "The Carousel" by Rosamunde Pilcher, the author of the runaway best seller "The Shell Seekers." It only took 3½ hours to read. It was a good-but-predictable story. It did make me realize that if I want to write professionally, I need to be reading more often. If I read more and diversified things, I'll have a better grasp on the styles I do and don't want to emulate. I've been reading the newspaper every day for a couple weeks now. I quite enjoy it. I never bought the paper in Maine, because I never needed or wanted to.

Right now, I want to be employed more that just about anything. I'm thinking about the influx of bills I'll be getting in the mail on Monday (Mom's forwarding them to me). The only thing which allays my fears of unpaid bills is that I paid (and in some cases overpaid) all my bills before I left a month ago. So, at the most, I'm a couple weeks behind. And everything from Maine is paid --electric, phone, cable, oil, etc... . My auto insurance will be due in a month.

Anyway, I do need to start working this week. The sooner I start, the better! It's hard to imagine that on June 6th, I had $1600. cash, and as of June 29th, I have less than two dollars in loose change. I'll have to go through my receipts to figure out where it all went. I know that 17 or 18 nights in a hotel adds up quickly (17 x $30 = $510. approx.), plus $400 to move into the house. Plus gas, food, film, tolls, crates, hangers, etc... . That's where all that money went. It's not like I was being extravagant and buying souvenirs everywhere I stopped. In fact, the only things I bought for myself are postcards. I bought a gift for Gerry, and paid for gas for Denise when she drove me to Idyllwyld and back. Regardless, I knew that I would spend that money: that's what I planned to do.

I just expected to be immediately employed, and if I had been, I'd probably have my first check by now.

What a boring life I lead. I was just talking to Dave about various things, mostly rock 'n roll. It started because "Alone" by Heart was on the radio. He said "Heart: Seattle's Biggest Embarrassment." It struck me as really funny, and I howled! He said he'd met Ann Wilson about 10 years ago at a party, and she was doing major coke. The conversation led to artists, musicians, actors who invariably get involved with drugs and alcohol. It's almost a prerequisite that if you're remotely famous, you have to have a slightly scandalous lifestyle. Which leads me to the conclusion that I will never become famous due to my past, present, and presumably future straight-as-an-arrow lifestyle.

Anyway, nothing makes me feel like I’m me here. I no longer have my job, home, alma mater, family, or friends to support my sense of myself. It has been largely based on those things for a long time, so when I took them all away, I struggled with my identity. When I first got here, all I was was an unemployed nomad in a city full of strangers. It is my task to affirm myself (as a person -- not as a job or a home) within these circumstances.

It's amazing, the thought process that occurs in the absence of television. Dave has a TV in his room. He put it out in the living room for half a day, and I watched in mindlessly. But it's his TV, it's always been in his room, and unless I buy a TV, I'll be watching none of it. That will be a very good thing. I won't have to pay for cable. Although that would probably be nominal ($6.00 or so), it will be that much less to budget. I will be forced into other alternatives, such as reading, writing, and getting out and about.

Look at everything that I've written just because there's no television.

June 30, 1991

I'm not getting my cats. I just talked to my parents. The conversation was going along normally, then my mother asked if I minded if they had the cats declawed. So many things rushed through my mind that I forgot to say anything. It was obviously a longer pause than I thought, so she asked again -- or said something relative to shake me back into reality.

The things that went through my head:

• I found a place to live that would allow me to have cats so that my parents didn't have to house them for any longer than necessary.


• If they're declawed, they're going to be angry, and I won't be there to help them through recovery.


• They won't be able to travel for a couple months, probably.


• These cats are my children, and I feel like an uncaring parent who has abandoned her babies by moving cross country and leaving them with someone else to care for them.


• They are one of the few stable things in my life, and I've been shifting them around ever since I got them. Moreso, in recent months.


• My parents think I'm a freeloading, spoiled brat, and they need to be totally responsible for them.

cleaning out

I'm still struggling with the mess that is almost eight years of accumulation that needs to be sorted and, uh, managed one way or another. Time is running short, so I must hop to it. In today's New York Times, my favorite writer tackles a similar problem in his "Rural Life" column. I can relate... kind of.

My favorite lines are, "This means allowing myself to feel a sudden hatred for objects I’ve been moving around for years. I spend the day muttering."

Barn Cleaning
by Verlyn Klinkenborg

I begin with the premise that the barn will never be clean. It has a dirt floor, and hay is always sifting down from the loft. Swallows have nested over the light fixtures, the chipmunks are everywhere and someone has dug a very proud hole under the wall near the horse tank. I can’t make it clean, but I can recover some territory. I’m not a real farmer, but I have a real farmer’s hoarding instinct — the belief that the thing I’m about to throw out will be just the thing I need down the road. Right now I’m trying to keep myself from throwing out a rubber feed pan that one of the horses has pawed a hole in. I have no idea what I would ever use it for, but that isn’t really the point. It isn’t a matter of knowing, looking forward. It’s a matter of not regretting, looking back.

But what I regret right now is all this junk, and so I’m cleaning the barn. This means allowing myself to feel a sudden hatred for objects I’ve been moving around for years. I spend the day muttering. I tear apart an old tool bench I have loathed all this time. I throw out the previous owner’s electric waterers and the 8-foot yard hydrant with the bend in the middle and the plastic tarps that are full of holes. I see with some clarity the limits of my character and, in a sense, the limits of my life. I love the gratification of fixing what is broken, but it takes a certain kind of breaking for me to be able to do any good. I am never going to be able to weld in a hay barn.

I stop sometimes to watch the swallows fly through the barn or to admire the fact that all the sockets are now in one place. I pretend that I will know in a week where I put everything today. I spend a moment or two admiring the dried up litter of immature mice I found in a drawer. And I finally admit to myself that a half-decomposed box of books that has lived in the barn for a decade has lost its place in civilization. So I load the books one by one — Derrida’s “Of Grammatology,” Frye’s “The Great Code,” even my old copy of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” — into the tractor bucket with a great wad of used baling twine. The burn pile or the Dumpster? That is an easy question. The books flutter down from the bucket on high onto an old hayrack on the floor of the Dumpster. I try to decide if I will have to answer for this someday.

Now, back into the piles in my own little barn. *mutter*

saturday stuff, part v

"Skywriter Trailed by Sky Editor." Courtesy The Onion. Love this.

blogging chicks

I've joined a blogroll! The commonality of its members is that all the authors are women. There is a wide range of blogs on this roll. Some are very tech oriented while others are mommy blogs. A few are random online journals like my own. There are topics of all kinds. To check one or more of them out, go to the list under "Blog Stuff" in the right column.

annoyed!

I finally get around to writing a new post, and Blogger's playing head games with me again. Two of my pictures are a tad too wide for the column, thereby pushing to the very bottom of the page the whole right side of the blog. This looks sloppy and annoys me tremendously, however Blogger will not allow me to go in and re-upload the pictures in a smaller format. For some reason, it also keeps adding paragraphs tags that I didn't put into the HTML. So my apologies for the zigzagginess of the page. I promise to fix it as soon as the Blogger gods allow it.

dad and the 'stang

I love this piece. Even more, I love that the Times resisted the urge to wait until Fathers' Day weekend to run it.

the invitation

The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams,
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic,
or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your life from God's presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes"!

It doesn't interest me to know where you live, how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are, how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

ancillary joy

Darrin M. McMahon and Timothy D. Wilson each have a piece in the op-ed section of today’s New York Times. Although entered into with slightly different intent, both pieces arrive at similar conclusions.

Mr. McMahon’s article entitled “In Pursuit of Unhappiness” examines the directive to 'have a happy new year' and summarizes thusly:

"Those only are happy," [philosopher John Stuart Mill] came to believe, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." For our own culture, steeped as it is in the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and endless cheer, that message is worth heeding.

So in these last days of 2005 I say to you, "Don't have a happy new year!" Have dinner with your family or walk in the park with friends. If you're so inclined, put in some good hours at the office or at your favorite charity, temple or church. Work on your jump shot or your child's model trains. With luck, you'll find happiness by the by. If not, your time won't be wasted. You may even bring a little joy to the world.

Mr. Wilson’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” addresses the tendency to reflect on the year as it comes to a close. He thinks that’s bad advice.

Social psychologist Daniel Batson and colleagues at the University of Kansas found that participants who were given an opportunity to do a favor for another person ended up viewing themselves as kind, considerate people - unless, that is, they were asked to reflect on why they had done the favor. People in that group tended in the end to not view themselves as being especially kind.

The trick is to go out of our way to be kind to others without thinking too much about why we're doing it. As a bonus, our kindnesses will make us happier.

A study by University of California, Riverside, social psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues found that college students instructed to do a few acts of kindness one day a week ended up being happier than a control group of students who received no special instructions.

As the new year begins, then, reach out and help others. If that sounds suspiciously like an old Motown song or like simplistic advice from one of those do-gooder college professors, well, it is. But the fact is that being good to others will ultimately make us kinder, happier people - just so long as we don't think too much about it.

So, in a nutshell, be nice to people and do good things for them. That's advice I can get behind.

dear kelly,

My 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Dion, assigned us the task of writing a letter to our future selves to be opened at some date we had to pick. We even had to address the envelope and put a stamp on it. As I recall, first class postage for a letter was 13 cents at that time. I remember some of the details in it (mostly about a certain boy in my class who I thought was particularly sweet), but not much else.

I think I opened it around my high school graduation. In the intervening time, it prompted me to use the letter-writing technique as a sort of diary. I put the letters into a photo album, which I believe is stored in a foot locker that I haven't opened since 1991.

Now, there are websites that allow you to do the electronic equivalent of Mr. Dion's project. I just read an article about FutureMe and went there to check it out. I had fun looking through some of the public entries. One by a 14-year old boy to his 24-year old self was funny. Maybe I'll write one or two of my own. Will you?

old poetry

With so many things to do today, I shouldn't be pawing through my computer files looking at random files for no reason. But alas, that is precisely what I was doing. I encountered this piece I wrote shortly after contracting EBV. I was on serious medication which made everything -- good or bad -- seem huge. Unfortunately, at that time in my life, most things were bad so I didn't get to enjoy the predicted euphoria my doctor indicated might occur. Mostly, I was just a wreck. To wit:

Heightened

The commute home is hell.

Ken’s Towing truck
(a particularly testosteronic specimen
of spit-shined steel,
with an enormous
and garishly-lit flatbed
riding condescendingly high)
bullies the cars forward.

She
-- right in front now --
sticks steadfastly to 59 mph,
determined to teach Ken a lesson,
but,
in all likelihood,
merely frustrating herself.

A Metro passes with
Easter egg color sunset reflection
rollerpainted onto its formed bus boards;
crystalcandymarshmallow pink and robinegg blue
drizzled over the dangerzone yellow
of a Volvo ad.

She
-- right beside it --
touches the fiberglass texture
with her eyes,
and lets the car
drive itself.

A stop at the store, a heavy duty mom’n’pop
with Spaghettio cans in military order
but floors bumpy like elm roots grew under them,
to get
milk.

Guy at the left of the door,
leans casually against an aging, rusted rail
(barely keeping him from falling down
a cracked, concrete stairwell leading to ?).
“Excuse me ma’am,” he grinds to a start,
assessing his next potential donor
but not stirring,
“would you have any spare change this evening.”

She
-- walking past him --
usually replies but, tonight,
is astonished by his insensitivity.
“Doesn’t he know I’ve got problems?”
The silent accusation sears her temples.

The only person in the store
who doesn’t have Kool-Aid tinted hair
(other than herself)
is the cashier.

The man under the Shop Rite sign
(across the parking lot,
by her car)
neither walks, stops, nor waits for Metro.
He stands
observing humanity and
proffering his opinion.
“Now, there!”
His there punctuates the air.
“There is the love of my life.”

A gallon of milk
-- purple cap --
swags unevenly against her leg.
“The city isn’t usually so cruel,”
the thought fills her head in
hundred-times-original-size sponge letters.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© 1997 Kelly A. Cox 2-24/97

verlyn klinkenborg rocks

How many people could title a piece "Driving From Ucross to Sheridan in the Depths of an Owlish Darkness?" One. Verlyn Klinkenborg. I love his writing.

December 9, 2005
Editorial Observer
Driving From Ucross to Sheridan in the Depths of an Owlish Darkness
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

I can never quite get over how different the world looks at 3 a.m. It's the same old world, a few degrees colder though no darker than it was when I went to bed. But a squall blew through while I was asleep, and now the ground is covered with dry new snow. The car starts sluggishly. I sweep it off with a broom from the porch, clumsily, as if I had forgotten overnight which-handed I am. The tires squeal on the snow - it is 3 degrees - and I turn onto Highway 14, which will take me northwest from Ucross into Sheridan, Wyo., and to the interstate. The highway is a smooth white plain. There is one set of car tracks on it, heading the other direction.

Nearly everyone who drives this stretch of road keeps a watchful eye out for deer. The lower few miles are paved with red asphalt, and in daylight the ice patches on the highway look like pools of blood, reminders of how many deer die on this road. And in the miles into town I see dozens of deer tracks in the fresh snow, the traces of their crossings in just the past few hours. The tracks are all nearly perpendicular to the road. No dawdling for these deer, no deciding, like New Yorkers in a snowstorm, to wander down the middle of the road because there's snow on the ground. These deer know their business, whatever business it is that draws them across the highway.

I had driven down from Billings, Mont., three days earlier, just in time to catch the midafternoon dusk of a cloudy day. The cattle stood out against the snow-blown hills like inkblots. I'd never realized how perfectly a flock of sheep is camouflaged against snowy rangeland with the brown grasses still poking through.

Horses of every description, all of them looking strangely old and swaybacked in their winter coats, grazed in the brush. They are experts at finding that one break in the wind - a line of round bales, a billboard - and that one ray of sun. They stood there as if waiting for night to absorb them.

Sometimes the clouds thinned just enough to throw their blue light onto the dark brow along the hills to the southeast, like stained glass letting the sun through. I thought again what I often think when I come west at this time of year: that winters in the East and West are really two different kinds of beasts.

Winter where I live in New York seems to come out of the woods like a white wolverine, stealthy, barely visible till it is right upon you. But winter in Montana and Wyoming - especially on the Crow Reservation and the open ground east of Sheridan - is another creature altogether. It comes not on foot but on the wing, nothing as domestic as the wild turkeys in the stream bottoms or even the hawks along the telephone poles. It's something more feral still, able to set off a worry in you when you sense how limitless it is.

I had to put aside that worry at 3 a.m., driving into Sheridan. I hit a blinding squall of snow, and it was enough work just to concentrate on keeping to the middle of the road. Every ranch light seemed like hospitality itself. After a while, I could make out the lights of Sheridan, like a false dawn beyond the hills. One car went by me, coming from the other direction. I stopped for coffee in town, where the stoplights were flashing, and then took to the interstate.

The snow had let up, to just a fine drift of flakes out of the sky. And as I headed north, past Acme and Ranchester and Dayton, I kept seeing the same illusion. Every light in the distance - yard lights, headlights, the lights of the engine on a coal train coming my way - seemed to throw a focused reflection, a separate beam of light, straight up into the sky. Every pickup or semi seemed to be shining one headlight upward, and the farther away they were the clearer the illusion seemed. It was just light reflecting off the snowflakes, of course. But on this early winter morning, it seemed much stranger than that, as if I had blundered into a world where it made sense for traffic to trace its route along the underside of the clouds.

You get up at 3 a.m., and it seems as if it's going to be 3 a.m. forever. But the minutes slip away with the miles, if slowly, and soon it was 4 and 5 and 6, and I was getting close to Billings. The darkness barely let up, but by the time I got within sight of the city its lights had mingled with true dawn: just the backlit gray of a snowy winter morning, but enough, at last, to show me the fence lines and the windblown grasses above the snow again. And there, too, were the horses, back from wherever they go when the night absorbs them.

Dr. Klinkenborg, you rock.

priorities

I want to write more. I think about it every day. It's in the transition from thought to action where I encounter the big challenge. Every day, there are topics I want to express. I send myself reminders to write about specific issues. Those email and voice mail messages are the electronic equivalent of sticking Post-it® notes all over my bag. I've bullet-listed groups of such reminders before, but will save doing it again now.

When ideas that I think are original come into my head, I wish for the opportunity to do nothing but work them out, putting aside responsibility and focusing on bringing the idea to life. As I've mentioned before, I'm a deliberate editor and thus believe that significant time must be spent to craft an idea well. That's really the biggest reason I don't blog more frequently: I want to ensure that I'm writing interesting ideas in my quirky and deliberate style, but can't devote the time required to achieve that style. To wit, this simple entry with very little substance has already consumed 36 minutes of my time. And I've said nothing! And I've said it in a very ordinary manner! (But with a rapidly expanding population of exclamation points, as if they alone infuse some sort of excitement!)

I'm done whining about this. Probably won't enter anything else for a while. Tomorrow, an extension of the chores I worked on today, then football and dinner with friends. Maybe I'll return to blog again on Thanksgiving day.

Oh by the way, the logo at the top is me. That is to say, I am Blue Pencil Productions. The only thing that regularly wins this stamp is our holiday newsletter (if I had enough time to take on side projects for BPP, I'd have enough time to blog more!). My friend, Doug, created it for me using the font I love so much Ted & I used it on our wedding invitations. Many moons ago, he'd created a background for my first personal website. It was cool and funky, pink with concentric circles. Heavens, that was ages ago.

44 minutes. It will take me a lifetime to write a book. I took me nearly an hour to write four tiny paragraphs about nothing.