circles and circles and circles and circles and circles...

look down a long table
seated around it are the beings that make your life
the first mouth that kissed you
your father, the rare hugger, stiff proud provider of shoes
and love (disguised as criticism)
your brother/sister who kicked your ass so much that the callus remains that makes you tough and strong and teflon
the family acquaintance that went too far
the family acquaintance that once told you you'd never be a writer (he's there in the worse seat, the one right by the kitchen, being made to read this blog 15 times before he gets served any dinner)
Your wise, loving auntie with the "bosom of comfort", who's refrain is "C'mere, baby."
Your friends, the fabric of your present

rat's behind

warning, Momm! Foul language!

There are some days, shimmering heat days, sleepy, headachy, pain-filled days, when I leave the house without the proper foundation garments. I usually wear a thicker t-shirt or a dress of such fabric as to not expose my drooping tee-tahs to the world. Some of my acquaintance have deemed my roundness unattractive, even downright ugly, but on such days I give thanks for the kind of body that allows me to hide my nipples under my meaty upper arms, so I will not appear slatternly to all and sundry of the neighborhood.

Don't give a fuck, in other words.

And so today I sallied forth to make such purchases as were required to enjoy some time away from the bathroom and to meet a dear friend in an air-conditioned venue for a healthy repast. After we ate and witticised, I stopped by my favorite neighborhood giftie store to soak up the creative, wacky energy of the proprietress, a delightful, soulful woman with a love of toys, gew gaws, and those awful quilted floral bags everyone seems to like. We chattered in air conditioned comfort as I gadded about sampling her wares until I came upon a jasmine hand cream sample called "Oolong." Such were my transports of ecstasy that my hostess came to my side to show me other ungents and potions with this delightful scent. I am, even now, pressing my nostrils to the frangrant flesh of my forearm to enjoy the freshly exotic scent.

As she bent to the drawer beneath the display to check on stock, I noticed that she shared with me the same sort of "dishabille", in that she was wearing a white dress that, in a certain light, was quite sheer, and so, I was presented with quite a show when she stood up. Let's just say that meaty forearms were no where in appearance, and that I did struggle not to stare.

Guess she didn't give a fuck today, either.

Her gifts, I must say, far surpassed mine, in firmness and aspect.

My Oolong hand creme is on back-order, as is a new push up brassiere.

And we, the women of the world, owe ourselves at least one trip per lifetime, a Hajj, as it were, to some warm and vibrant place near the bluest ocean, preferably a tropical clime, where we can dispense with foundation garments--indeed with any garments at all--and revel in the beauty and perfection with which we were created in infinite variety, and in infinite grace.

adventures in ci home edition

conversation between me and my stomach this afternoon.

s: i hate you.
j: but why?
s: it's nothing personal, I just do.
j: (nauseous moan)...but I've been doing the BRAT diet -(banana, rice, applesauce, toast...)
s: BRAT DIET my asss(cids). No one should eat as much ice cream as you have.
j: But that was years ago...
s: (Greasy fried) chicken's coming home to roost.
j: Uhnnnnn.
s: Trying to suck me in...don't think that Tums will help you now, beotch.
j: Blah.
s: Was it the asperatime of this afternoon's Coke Zero? Or the recent incursion into
yogurt? did you think I wouldn't notice? When I said "no diary" I meant 'NO DAIRY."
J: UGGGGHHHH.
s: Or it could just be out of whack immune system K cells having a little disco time down
here. You'll never know.
j: I will Sierra Mist you. Don't think I won't.
s: And don't think I won't send that shit back to where it came from! And did you really
think you'd get away with those organic cherry tomatoes??
j: But there were so fresh and so cute. And it was the farmer's market.
s: "organic's" just another word for "nothing left to lose" ...or "questionably fertilized."
j: You are so unforgiving lately. Like the last 5 years.
s: Not my fault you ate enough Whoppers to support an entire Burger King franchise.
j: But that was 10 years ago!
s: I remember EVERYTHING.

fin

Home boy

I watched my favorite comforter go round and round, a fuchsia highway. The laundromat was all heat and humidity being stirred lazily by ceiling fans. This particular unmanned establishment fascinated me--no one ever came to service the place when I was there and the machines--laundry, change, vending--always seemed to work. Who would I go to if the change machine ate my $5 bill? Such things plague tiny minds.

I was staring at this particular dryer load because I'd noticed something in the second or third revolution--there was something small and brown in the drum, something small, plump and brown...with a tail. "Oh christ on a crackpipe," I thought, imagining my cat, Poopy, wallowing around in the laundry basket. "She's left me a present."

Geeeeeroooooossss! I squeaked, involuntarily. Suddenly, the other occupant of the laundromat, a slightly greasy man with gray hair, leather vest, and bright white shirt and squeakers was at my side.

"Smatter?"

His breath was ripe and I squinted and blinked.

'Um...it looks like there's a mouse in there." I poked at the thick plastic of the dryer door.

He peered through his bottle bottom glasses. "Yeah?" He sounded excited.

It hit me all at once. It was one of Poopy's play mice. If it'd been real, she would have left it in a place of prominence for me to step on or trip over.

"Heh..heheheh...it's a fake mouse," I said, using the excuse to move away from his slight odor de must.

"Oh...heheheh. Uhm huh." He then peered at me, puzzled. Or at least I think he was puzzled because his florid forehead sprouted several wrinkles.

"I have a cat, see."

"Oh...OHHHHHH. Oh. hehehheh."

Then he said, "I'm Jarhead." At this point you probably want to tell me my business---you probably want to tell me I misheard him--he said "Gerard" or had a French accent or something. The man said "I'm Jarhead.'

I was tempted to say "I'm Pot au Feu," but the situation was bizarre enough already.

"Well, ok." Eloquent to the last, I opened the dryer door and he stepped back. I reached in to pull out the fake mouse who, in the melee, lost his tail. His fur was fluffy and light and his little pink felt ears were shiny. He reeked of Bounce and dryer burn. I slipped him in my pocket.

"Uhhhh." said my companion, and walked over to the washing machine that was shaking itself silly, slamming against the wall in an effort to get his clothing clean.

How to reply? I pulled the comforter out of the dryer, stuffed it in a trash bag, and left the place with a very false sounding "have a nice day!"

Poopy, when presented with her now tail-less but exquisitely clean mouse, trapped it under her paw, smelled it, and promptly dropped it in her food dish.

There are the scary and the musty and slightly puzzled in the world and there is at least one "Jarhead." Though I don't particularly want to encounter him again, I appreciate his consideration.

inches

She wonders why friends don't have time anymore. She's asked them,
but there weren't any real answers. Just a gradual tapering off of time spent together.

She knows she tends to feel abandoned so she mitigates their silence by trying to suck up the hurt into a gift wrapped package with a big read denial bow. Denial bows are always red, you know.

But truth is just too fragrant a scent, a spice, a honeysuckle dream, to resist for long, and mendacity is too putrid to her now, a decayed, malicious thing, a darkness detrimental to life.

So she tries to understand their fear. It's fear, fear of pain, fear of anger, fear of truth that make people turn away from each other. It's terror in the face of the unknown.

She sees it's too plain for most, but not poetic enough to describe the deep, abiding darkness of not knowing. She lives in that ebony unfolding, that constant pain, that forced smile, that sense of always falling.

Some can't face the pain in her face, the edge in her voice, the stumble in her step, the scalp showing through the falling fur, the body bursting with it's own malice, dis ease. The now constant throb behind the eyes. It's hard for them to watch her have to reach deeper into a darkened trough to find the sprigs of delight that make life worth continuing to live.

So they turn away--a gradual lessening. The everyday shrinks to now and again and then to not at all.

She has her bouts of doubts--is it too much to ask, is it too much to bear, is it too much to face, is is too much to not know--but, really, she doesn't have a choice and envies them theirs.

WHEN

you don't think about it much
when you're sitting by the pond
watching a filthy white mutt
joyously swim, chasing ducks

it doesn't cross your mind
but once a day
as you putter away at your desk
in your cube
in the office
at the hall

you don't contemplate it thoroughly
on the human-filled bus
or at the beach
walking in circles over the breakers
or bending to watch a clam burrow in the sand

it doesn't hit you when you're shopping for oregano
or lipstick or queen size panty hose
or shoes that fit
pushing you body up and through material made half a world away

it comes sneakily through the night
like the whisper of a sea mist
like the dew you don't see falling
like the African dusk

lonely
you are alone
you are empty
as though what you are is scooped out
with a melon baller
there's no sound where your heart should be
there's no share
and no give

there is no answering breath
across the bedroom
and no
common bond
across the miles

there is nothing
only nothing
no thing
not

Our Town

"It's like that race in France, ain't it?" he snuffled as Saturday bike riders whizzed around us, cutting through the town center intersection to join the other side of the bike trail. He trundled off the median and into the street crossing through the oncoming traffic, the dry cleaning bag he was carrying billowing out like a sail behind him. I noticed the bag contained khaki short pants identical to the ones he was wearing, and imagined row upon row of identical pair in the bedroom closet of his neatly appointed three room flat in the Blissful Bounty Retirement Residence.

"Your hair gone!" she bellowed, waving her hands above her head. I nodded. "You sick again? I make you soup." She pushed through the swing door that separated the restaurant from it's kitchen and screamed into the cacophony of pots and pans. She screamed in Chinese and at her husband the cook, in tones so vitriolic that it could have only been like: "Wonton soup and white rice right now! And no msg, you monkey's behind! It's the sick Negress from next door! Her hair fell out, probably from eating your horrible food, you son of a swine!"

Sweetie and Sugah toil at the drug store. Sugah is from India and speaks in horror of Phoenix where her daughter lives. "It's so hot it makes me feel dead," she intones, her doe-brown eyes gone wide. "No, I'm serious, honey. These are two-for-one, dear." I am non-plussed, until she tells me "Go! Go! Go get the other bottle!..." of spring water, buy one get one free. We discuss our diabetes. "I am hungry all the time," she says, munching Kashi go lean from the box. I tell her of my appetite suppressing nausea and she says "I wish," and we giggle.

Sweetie comes in on the weekends to run the register. She is from an African country, so beautiful and deep that it shows in her face, a smooth ebony with the glow of the sun. "I must learn to drive," she tells me. "My sister is volunteering at the library. FOR NO MONEY. Will you look at my resume, sometime? I want to work with children, not in this place all my life." She caught a drunken man trying to steal a bottle of Purell hand sanitizer. She marched him back to the register, wordlessly paid for the bottle herself, and handed it back to him. "He stank," she explained to me as he furtively exited the store. Later I saw him in the alley, giving himself a dry Purell bath.

I glide into my favorite giftie store, borne upon a wave of softly undulating new age music which covers up the squeak of my movements across the old wood floors. All of the women who work here seem so effervescent, mellow, and friendly---perhaps they smoke pot in the basement. I waft among the treasures there, the one-of-a-kind earrings, the saying stones, the purses modeled after samurai pouches, the vibrant whisper soft scarves, the ArtGirlz pins that say "imagine" and "lust."

The Slovenly Guy sits at one of the outdoor tables in front of Starbucks, nursing a cup of coffee, chain smoking and making off-color remarks to passers-by. He said something insulting to two women who passed by holding hands, and one of them got right in his face and said "fuck you," with accompanying hand gesture. He shrank to half his size and mumbled "I was only tryin' to be friendly," to their retreating backs.

I give the new Yoga center a wide berth during my perambulations. Strange, culty vibes. There's always a minion at the front desk staring out into the street as though to compel the masses to join..."if you'll only cross our threshold, you will experience healing beyond measure, all for 1/2 your life savings. In the tiny rooms behind me, meet your destiny, stretch your body like a pretzel and participate in creepy...ahem!...life-affirming group hugs with people you hardly know."

My neighbor S and his wife, D, are from Nepal. S has high blood pressure and OCD and writes beautiful love songs in Sanskrit that he sings on Saturday mornings, strumming his guitar. Their apartment is so clean you could eat off the floor and the delicious saffron and onion smells from their kitchen make me happy. I pass by their windows on the way to my stairs. "We're having Thai, tonight!" S shouts joyously, a short, broad, brown man with a shock of strong black hair, his bare feet rooted to the earth half a planet away from his homeland.

She drives a red neon and works at the 1/2 price bookstore, a place so sacred to me that I can hardly believe it exists just outside my door. "The new Donna Leon came in," she nasally intones, her head just at my shoulder. The store is air conditioned to a slight frost, and the smell of old pages and dusty prose intoxicates. She putters behind me and speaks of her cats, Neon and Astra, the new Harry Potter midnight promotion, how the insurance company screwed her when she retired. She brings the step stool so I can sit and peruse the lower reaches of the mystery section. "We have magazines, now," she says, her contempt obvious. I gaze over the mag selection and agree. There is no "New Yorker."

Yadda lives at the end of the building and spends summer days roasting herself to a crisp in a beach chair set out on our tar paper roof. "How a-uuuuuu!" she sings as I pass by, her hair a beacon of white, her skin the color of wheat toast. She always knows the forecast and advises me on umbrella usage and suitable outerwear for the work day.

The waiters from the Indian restaurant play soccer in the alley. A truck bound for the highway rumbles by, it's horn sounding like a ship's blare. Poopy the cat screams at the birds who nest in the waving branches outside the bedroom window. The bell player practices at the Catholic Church, sometimes stumbling over what I swear sounds like the Stones "you can't always get what you want."

Ahhhhhh....Home.