Boogle Sings

Map of a Google journey, which on Halloween night I will call Boogle.

1 - how to sing
2 - Web: What if I told you that it was not only possible, but that it was guaranteed If you will purchase the, "Vocal Release At Home Singing Instruction Kit," today and follow it's detailed incites for just one year?
3 - Boogle Maps: We could not calculate driving directions between how and sing.
4 - Boogle Images: "Remembering How To Sing"
5 - Boogle News: Win tickets to meet Black Sabbath
6 - Boogle Video : TRAVIS "Sing" (Really Great!!)

Duh

So, almost immediately after gushing past my self-censorship hurdle with the last post, I discover with a laugh that my dad is not the sole reason I keep my mouth shut when the shy patrol is out. My dad is just the guy I've placed it on all these years.

It's me. I'M the reason. It's me who's got the good-girl syndrome. All my life I'm the one carefully crafting my good girl image to garner as much popularity as possible. Okay, as much love as possible. Love is deeper than popularity. And the good-girl syndrome came out of a very real need to be loved. (Gotta be good to get it.)

But I'm here now, past the part of life where I wonder where to get it and how. Wonder who will love me if my daddy don't. Wonder the different ways I'd smash my image to bits at Grandma's retirement home if I say anything without a smile. Show up at church with my forehead pierced in a skirt short as sin. I exaggerate. But my point is made. I'm loved. I'm original. And I'm scintillating as a stump as long as I'm hiding out behind fears that are more old habits than bonafide terrors.

Like A Virgin

When I was 13, my friends and I huddled during the break of our Christian Youth Theater class to hear Monica Thayer regale us with tales of seeing MADONNA in concert. "Like a Virgin" was breaking the sound barrier into the pop stratosphere. Always a half-step behind the times (due no doubt to the constant Alice in Wonderland journey in my head), Madonna to me was just a catchy new singer. She was on the radio a lot. She wore underwear outside her clothes. Her songs were cool and easy to remember. Testament my innocence, part of that huddle was my education that "Into the Groove" meant way more than dancing.

Monica laid it out scene by scene, the concert. But to this day, what freezes me in time is what she said Madonna did with her boom box. I'm hanging on every detail, the lacy white dress and corset, the leather jacket and ratted hair, the dancing. And then she says Madonna STRADDLES her huge boom box and starts GRINDING on it while she's singing!! And then, bye-bye, I am lost, suddenly separate from the mass of girl bonding, traveling through my head with the implications..."Does her DAD see her concerts??"

The question has echoed through my head ever since. Mostly in relation to my surfacing as an artist. I say "artist" as someone who creates something for popular consumption, said creation always coming from the heart, the head, the grind of life and observation of the individual in relation to the whole...whether in concert with the whole or isolated from it.

See that? See that intellectual hat dance? It's my default. Because the poet, the artist, the exhibitionist in me (because, sitting naked on a park bench after all is what if it's not exhibitionism?) is scared to be naked in front of my DAD. How does Madonna do it?

All of this to say that Tania and Lisa and I were laughing about my ancient dilemma. I had a funny blog to post and couldn't because I hit my Dad-wall. So we toyed with creating a parental rating system...along the lines of PG and NC-17, but more like NP (No Parents) or for especially shocking posts ND (No Dads). For the protection of their innocence. Maybe it'll grow to include NM (No Men) for especially gorey girl talk, or FG (Female Guidance), for those men who may want to venture in, but need support.

My self-pep-talk on the subject last night, after a vodka gimlet at Laura's bday party: I'm 36. I'm an adult now. I have... I have .... sss- ... (excuse me while I get liquored up to welcome to these next letters in succession) ... oh wait, let's implement the rating system (ND: Warning, the material you are about to read may be unsuitable to some parents. Reader discretion advised.)

I have sex, goddamnit. Well, on a good day anyway, when the stars are aligned and the guy is right.

How is it that life has been a series of ever more situations for coming out? I came out when I was dating women. I begrudgingly came out again when I had my first boyfriend after many years on the home team. I'm effectively coming out right here, though this particular outing is like being female and coming out as female, or being Caucasian and coming out as such, or being very clearly brunette and coming out as…BRUNETTE!! Clearly I am all of those things. Clearly I am 36, I am not wearing a nun’s habit, I’m a contemporary woman in these scintillating times, and yet, just in case you wondered if it is NOT the way it seems, rest easy, my friend. It is all painfully, joyfully, obviously the way it seems.


Photo Credit

Starlit

I can't say that Lisa is an astronomy buff (though she had us all up at 3am to watch the recent lunar eclipse). I can say that she admires the planets and the place they hang, the effect of their spin on the night sky and their luminous once-in-every-say-10,000-years habits.

Maybe it's something similar that Tania appreciates in theatre: the moment it creates is often spectacular, often beautiful, and is precious because it is never to return the way it is in this moment.

Venus is blazing in the night sky at present. Tania and Lisa have this magnificent tree-house-like bedroom, a bank of windows that hover just over the treetops in the edge of a valley. No blinds, so they are exposed to the wide open sky and its dramatic displays. And for the past three nights, Venus has been bearing down on Lisa like a landing plane. Tania, being a deeper sleeper, has missed the spotlight show.

Until last night. When she awoke at four. She didn't see it, and through a sleepy mumble channeled Edward G. Robinson from The Ten Commandments. In the same Brooklyn-esque, '30's era, cigar-chomping voice that queried: "Where's your God now, Moses?" Tania asked: "Wheya's ya stah now, Lisa?"

Unfortunately, Tania's brilliance, quite matching that of Venus, sounded to Lisa like: "mnah mnah mhnah star, Lisa? mnah mnah mnah?"

Photo credit

Busted

Feeling surly tonight.
Some friends touched on a hot spot:
My lack of self respect in the company of men.
Isn't that weird?
Haughty and self-important as I get?
That I could lose my words completely
and let some flake flake his flakey flake
without so much as a "beat it, bastard" from me?

They're referring to the guy who crossed my path two weeks ago.
We ran into each other out on the bike path at the beach.
The last I had heard from him was months earlier, when after several intriguing and fun nights out, and an invite for another one, he dissolved to flake-town.
But, did I, out there on the bike path, say, oh "hey, it's you, the jerk that disappeared into nowhere land"?
Nope.
I rollerbladed next to him while he ran, participating in nearly three miles of conversation, as if months hadn't passed.
Then we planned and met for dinner to discuss a story project.
Then we kissed.
It had led up to that hadn't it?
All those conversations? This new light. This new angle of our time together.
Please.
My friends are wondering why he shouldn't flake again, since I've set that standard already.
They're wondering why I always complain about attracting flakes when it's me who's allowing it from the get-go. With my wordlessness.
I got it.
But not without this mood. And this sensation of getting busted open.
I got busted.
There are redeeming qualities to getting called out.
But sometimes you just have to be ugly first.

Thou fawning onion-eyed scullion

Feeling uninspired?
http://www.bishopswaltham.net/BitsBobs/handyPhrases.html

Birthday Hat

Princess Gramcracker's 95th. It's a wonder she never had a crown before, she wore it so easily.

Who ordered the tuna on rye?

Chivalry Lives

Allen and I took a spontaneous dip in the ocean one night.
Afterward, we collected our clothes and got half-dressed for the walk to the car.
With the sky that deep blue and cold ocean water rushing against my skin's memory, my lips got in the way of his when he reached to open the car door for me.
We kissed.
And kissed...Allen in boxers, one hand holding his pants, and the other still reaching to open my door.

Fix it with Physics

...A transformation story for all those who were saddened by the love story...

A NEW story of loss to love in the language of physics:

(Titles taken from the main menu page of Lew Paxton Price
--a website dedicated to articles on physics. I rearranged them to tell a common love story.)

THE VORTEX

INERTIA

INTRODUCTION TO ADVANCED ETHER (DARK ENERGY) THEORY

DARK MATTER SOLUTION (Constant Velocity Point)

PHOTONS AND RED SHIFT (THE REALITY)

INTRODUCTION TO MAGNETISM

MAGNETISM

LIGHT AND ELECTRON SPIN

THE PAULI EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE & HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

TIME DILATION AND ETHER RELATIVITY

The EXPANDING UNIVERSE, QUASARS, and the K EFFECT

TIME

Newton & the Human Heart

Love in the language of physics, from first blush to last flush:

(Titles taken from the main menu page of Lew Paxton Price
--a website dedicated to articles on physics. I rearranged them to tell a common love story.)


A Love Story in Physics

INTRODUCTION TO MAGNETISM


MAGNETISM


TIME DILATION AND ETHER RELATIVITY


LIGHT AND ELECTRON SPIN


The EXPANDING UNIVERSE, QUASARS, and the K EFFECT


THE PAULI EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE & HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE


TIME


BEHIND LIGHT'S ILLUSION


PHOTONS AND RED SHIFT (THE REALITY)


WHAT IS GRAVITY?


INTRODUCTION TO ADVANCED ETHER (DARK ENERGY) THEORY


THE VORTEX


DARK MATTER SOLUTION (Constant Velocity Point)

INERTIA

Buy An Acre On The Moon??

Dude. Really?

www.lunarregistry.com

"...we are offering a limited number of "shares" in lunar property in order to fund privatized exploration, settlement and development of the Moon. The value of the shares is directly related to their location on the Moon"

Who owns that "real" estate? Moon squatters? Cheese makers? New Wisconsin, the 52nd state.

(Haven't you heard? #51 is the United State of Insanity)

Vegetarian Options

Matt: Did you hear about mining the moon for H3 as the new fuel?

Pema: There's a good idea. Deplete the resources on Earth, then go to the moon and f*ck with those resources till it messes with gravity here and we can fart our way through space.

Matt: I don't think the moon has that much to do with the Earth's gravity.

Pema: Well can we still fart our way through space?

Mapless

"A man's road back to himself is a return from his spiritual exile, for that is what a personal history amounts to--exile."

--from Saul Bellow's The Actual

Friends, I am writing a book...which, as it turns out, it is my return from exile. However, the return from exile is still a hike through the wilderness. I'm hiking these next few days with a vengeance. So please forgive my break from the daily Bench until MONDAY upcoming.

Thanks for reading. :-)

Not Poetry

The word "bisexual" is not poetic. It'd be like trying to fit the word "refrigerator" into a poem.

It's not a poetic way to describe a life. Like any label or title or job position I suppose, the name is not so poetic.

The life it leads to is.


12.30.98 journal entry
if memory serves, i was just months into dating men again after a several year hiatus.

Journal Entry 8/24/01 nyc

8/24/01
i got out of the apartment today and this is what happened. another poem. perhaps i'll keep writing and call them The Arrival Poems. Maybe they'll keep visiting me, these poems, for these three years. I'll call the book Here Now, since i imagine i'll continually feel like i am arriving as my studies and new york both uncover more and more. Here's today's.

Central Park

That squeak that sneakers make
is short-screeching with
"blats" of basketballs
and the incomprehensible
language of men on the court,
voices captured in a canopy of trees.
A breeze blows through them,
rustling leaves, weaving
between slick shoulders.
Feet pound concrete,
voices rise, "You ain't shit!"
Ball stops.
But the beauty of this
place persists.
Sun slants through effortless green
an oasis in a wider perimeter
of more concrete
more pacing feet
and buildings in rows like cornfields.

My Friend the Lawyer Said

"Marry a lawyer. It'll make splitting up that much easier.
Especially if you're both lawyers."

Like Still Life

...waiting to be got.

I think that's me.

I'm still scratching my head over the guy who has a great time, asks to go out again, and then forgets how to devise the actual contact, you know phone, email, telepathy.

I'm not talking about one guy, although I could name one at present. I'm talking about the several over time who have intrigued me enough to make me curious, and then dissipated into vapor, communication skills clattering to the ground where their feet once stood.

It's hard not to take personally, like, "What did I do? How am I contributing? Why are they cheeking their nuts like a chipmunk in Autumn?"

Regina suggested I put those questions to the men in question.
I suggested it could be the perfect prescription for a neurotic complex. Curious as I am to know.

A Poet's Poem

Invocation

First, there is a window, and an ocean beyond it.
Waves come in close.
Surfers sit and bob for want of better ones.
Inside, a small, framed eagle lands,
feet forward, feathers ruffled, reaching.
An orange.
A silver stein holds pens,
red, blue, black ballpoint.
Then me. Living by design.
Invoking passage for any feeling,
come now, *the* feelings that things bring;
that speak through themselves
like still life, waiting to be got.

2007 PT

Hmmm

Okay, so if you're ever curious, with time on your hands, and you're sitting in front of your computer, say, when it's dark out and maybe late, log on to Craigslist. Look where you will. Find roommates, furniture, advice, activities, people you know and don't. Stir up a commotion, dip your toe into internet dating (if you're willing to try your patience). But most of all, find things you never thought to find, and RESPOND to them. I swear your world will turn kaleidoscopic.

"Foot in Panama" here, is in response to a reflexology-trained lover of feet looking to give foot massages and pedicures. My dogs are barkin', but more, my curiosity is humming...who is this guy? We'll see if he responds back.