September

Real Magic

There’s Something about riding the express bus to Tacoma: zipping along 10 feet off the ground with the view streaming past. From up here even the chain-link roadside fences decorated with potato chip bags & plastic sacks look scenic—especially when you’re listening to some great tunes through the headphones.

The world stretches out as if crouching to receive your weight—how about a piggyback ride! Smoke cushions the distance & spirits away the mountain. (Funny, it was there yesterday.)

A road ascends a hill & you would give 10 years of your miserable life to fly up that hill, if only in a dream. But before you can even cry “wait,” it’s gone. Passed into the past.

Another song, another scene. It all delights: even the pre-fabs and the reader boards, & no prospect [pro spect] but the unimaginative, unintelligent, uninspired un-something blight of hometown, Parkland. Pierce County, Pierced to the heart. Being there sucks, but getting there is a trip.

Look: the faded green crown of a maple tree, a black crow like a mild oath or half-hearted curse. A rude retort. Dead tall grass combustible yellow.

Isn’t this where I came in?

15^th Avenue Starbuck’s 9/15/02

How Perfect? Too Perfect

One clear day after another, maybe a little haze but that's part of the package, right? Out in the morning cool at 8 or so to find the kids waiting for the schoolbus. The little dark-haired girl, about 6, with the big pink backpack says, "He's not my friend." to her grandmother, the way-faded, sour-mouthed blonde who gives (me) such bad service at the QFC Deli. It's yellow like butter, the light, & soon will be clarified to trumpet-color.

I like! I walk around all brisk, ignoring the plaintive groans of my ancient feet. Something small-good happens (won $4 on a scratch) & everything is transformed. All is well & all is going to be better. Really, now I'm sure of it, I know. My luck will turn & I'll find a decent place to live & start taking, oh I don't know, dance or yoga classes or I'll start swimming & shed my chubby bell, and get my notebooks (or something) published & be cured of all my ills (including the jowls) & will take off for the wide world.

Don't you think?

Meanwhile, today I have enough $ to go to the store & buy the things I couldn't afford yesterday, and that's a kind of beatitude. (Not to be confused w/ the bee-attitude. Busy, buzzy, dancing, stinging if disturbed & then dying.)

Olive Way/former Boston Market «Bux 9/17/02

Back Again

Goethe wanted more light. Man, he should have come here! Because there is enough light to float him to heaven, & plenty left to dazzle me coming down the hill on big throbby feet. We love this time of year, Goethe & I. Warm & bright during the day & cool enough at night even for feverish hot-flash me. When I wake up, even if I surface vaguely disgruntled, the comforter gives comfort. Some. Nights are long. I dream flat (or shallow) dreams & never remember more than a situation or a character. The extravaganzas of yesteryear have gone south, along with my libido. Odd, this woman business. And no one tells. (Or do people tell & no one wants to hear?)

If I were that girl over there with the top-gathered reddish brown hair & Julia Roberts smile, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't believe. No, even if you can remember the change from girl to woman, you won't believe.

Olive Way«Bux 9/18/02

Out Tonight

The 6 to 7 p.m. lingerlight angled over, and everybody who can is out enjoying it. I like the couple just outside the windows, 2 of the portly (she with serious-rimmed glasses & slick-into-a-bun hair). I like them because they suddenly start laughing & doing weird rhythmic things with their arms.

*

Thinking of JHY whith wom (with whom) I sat practically at this very table (2 tables down actually) & how he told me he couldn't write for nobody (or—implicit—for just himself). So he kept a sort of online journal directed to a friend until the friend told him to quit it. It's twue, JHY, you're too much. Maybe he doesn't understand process? B'which I mean sketching. Turning the world into squiggly lines. To try to describe what it's like to live in the shadow light of equinoctial nights. Dim, that's what. And the bleached blonde punkie in the black motorcycle jacket sitting on the bick, the bike rack. Just a rail. [drawing] Butt (ha!) a place to balance (yer butt) & feet on the rail. Or is that the dog-tying rack? Dog & bike? Multi-purp. Bi-crack!

15th Ave «Bux 9/20/02

Uwajamiya with Carol Canter

Two nights in a row now, I've dreamed, clever me. Maybe from turning off the fan at 3 a.m.? They aren't good dreams, but I'm pleased to know I can still make pictures with my brain.

I dreamed Carol Canter was visiting with her 2 daughters. We went to Uwajamiya which was a big labyrinthine wood building/market in Oakland. Chaotic & crowded. There were details (I think the shops were like the commercial exhibition space at the Puyallup fair, combined with a souk. In other words, a fire trap.) but I don't remember them now. Carol was just as the last time I saw her, only she was somebody else too.

*

I'm not Spinoza, which is okay, but I'm not Rembrandt either. I wish I could draw. Heck, I can't even photograph very well. I wonder when it all drifted away.

Of course it didn't all drift away at one moment. "It" drifted away in bits. Like milkweed fuzz.

15th Ave «Bux 9/21/02

Crazed Eggheads

"Now here's a funny thing," the man who was something like my dad said. He wasn't exactly like my dad because I can't imagine Dad saying anything quite like that. And it wasn't Uncle Lloyd either, though he'd certainly be a candidate for speaker. So, who was it? Somebody's dad. Maybe Sheila's? Maybe it was someone imaginary or read-of, say Julian Huxley, blabbing on, thinking (mistakenly) that he was fascinating Greta Garbo. Greta would wear a bunch of carrots at her waist like a cluster of vege-dildos, at least for picnics.

Maybe that's what Julian thought was a funny thing (he didn't know the half of it). Except Julian being a VSM (very smart man) didn't notice much what was going on around him when he was among humans. He only noticed the girl(s) he most wanted to impress.

Nature's way.

*

Now there's a funny thing. —Maybe I said it.

*

Remember Ariana, the girl with the face bones? Nobody knew what she thought either (so they thought she couldn't think), nobody except me—& I hardly knew the half of it. But unlike a Very Smart Male, I knew I didn’t know.

What does beauty matter, and why? It's pan-cultural among humans, but is it just or even mostly based on signs indicating health? (Fine bones aren't any healthier than coarse ones...) Do the chimps have aesthetic preferences? Do other animals? Dogs? Cats? (All cats believe themselves nonpareil!)

[I'm worried about Lee.]

15th Ave «Bux 9/21/02

Lee Had a Doctor's Appointment

It was today, but I suppose they won't know anything until the test results are in (he hasn't told me what, if anything, hurts, so all I have to go on is how thin & miserable he looks.)

Worry tends to stop all my other (non-worry) thoughts in their tracks. In fact, they leap behind bushes while worry struts.

The days run down the drain now that the sun has left these parts (7:30 last night).

So I worry, instead of writing Weird Essays, using my many house-litter [letter-litter] note pads with phrases such as Stepping Back written 6 to a page. And it all means something. Though I suppose even nonsense means... Well, it means foolishness, Shakespeare's fool, comic relief and— Nonsense; 1 sleeve up, 1 sleeve down: Anne Margaret's sweeping un-uniform.

BM «Bux 9/23/02