Saturday, September 30, 2006

My Son is Making My Head Explode

Saturday Morning and Jack just got dropped off at drum lessons. It is his birthday in three weeks and once again, as happens every year, he has found a reason to sulkily announce he doesn't want a party. There are several weird, psychologically twisted reasons for this that can be directly traced to his moron alcoholic father. This year though it is especially hideous because Jack has perfected his father's speech patterns and hand and facial gestures. It is like living with a little passive aggressive replica of my ex-husband. I know I have to be a grown-up and not visit the sins of the father on the child, but Jesus it is hard. Am calling Dr. today for Valium refill and to discuss new anti-depressants as Lexapro no longer seems to be working it's magic. On a happier note, I got a free coffee at McDonald's this morning and yesterday at the gas pump I filled up the car for just twenty bucks! Reasons to be cheerful...one, two three.

Complaints
by Sparks

Nothing in the world is perfect
Grin and bear it silently or yell into my ear
Complaints, it's my department
Complaints, it's my department
Everything you wear's too tight and clashes with the
candlelight
Just give it back, no questions asked

Nothing in the world is perfect
Grin and bear it silently or yell into my ear
Complaints, stereophonic
Complaints, it's ironic
How they chatter, how they bore us like some avant- gardish
chorus
Just give it back, no questions asked

I'll dive off the mezzanine if one more points at crooked
seams
A sign of shoddy workmanship, of Asiatic hands that slipped
Just give it back, no questions asked

Nothing in the world is perfect
Grin and bear it silently or yell into my ear
Complaints, there's to many hours
Complaints, the bosses cower
Two weeks free from all complaining, it was due to our
complaining
Take her to Spain, hear her complain

Now she says she is expecting
That's my fault for not protecting
Her from all the risks of passion
She's complaining, she's old-fashioned
Just give it back, no questions asked

Complaints, it's my department
Complaints, it's my department

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Fleas Have Last Laugh

This morning I get the kids out in the car, spray a thick fog of flea killer all through the house (damn cats), and run outside. Oops, my car keys are not in my bag. Must go back in and find keys. Five minutes of searching before I locate them on the bathroom sink. Five minutes of breathing in toxic bug spray. I probably gave myself cancer or brain damage. It will be hard to tell the brain damage from the perimenopause.

A Flea and a Fly

A flea and a fly flew up in a flue.
Said the flea, "Let us fly!"
Said the fly, "Let us flee!"
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.


Saturday, September 23, 2006

Warhol and Mallomars



I have spent the morning eating mallomars and watching a documentary on Andy Warhol. The man was a camera, taking it in, spitting it out beautifully but always removed from the people in his work. He produced the pictures and movies so that you saw who the people in his work really were without feeling anything for them. Fascinating, beautiful and horrifying stuff all at once. That he could use color to create that awful distance was genius. Look at the painting above. You can see Jackie Kennedy's grief so plainly but the purple color makes sure you don't feel it. I think Warhol was some kind of monster in how he used people up to create his art, but still I'm eager to look at his work. Maybe I'm a voyeur, or just fascinated at the idea of looking at someone and seeing their essence without reaching out to it or into it.

So, I have done very little of any worth today and will now atone by washing the dishes. Happy Saturday!

Andy Warhol
by David Bowie


(this is andy warhole and it’s take one, take one)
It’s, it’s warhol actually
(what did I say)
Whole, it’s whole as in wholes
(andy warhol)
Wah, andy war hol, andy war hol (he)
Like whole hub
He
Ha
Are you ready
(yeah)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Like to take a cement fix
Be a standing cinema
Dress my friends up just for show
See them as they really are
Put a peephole in my brain
Two new pence to have a go
I’d like to be a gallery
Put you all inside my show

Andy warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy warhol, silver screen
Can’t tell them apart at all

Andy walking, andy tired
Andy take a little snooze
Tie him up when he’s fast asleep
Send him on a pleasant cruise (hm hm hm)
When he wakes up on the sea
He sure to think of me and you
He’ll think about paint and he’ll think about glue
What a jolly boring thing to do

Andy warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy warhol, silver screen
Can’t tell them apart at all

Andy warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy warhol, silver screen
Can’t tell them apart at all

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

News Report

5:30 in the morning on a Wednesday. Let the cats out and stood on the steps for a while looking at the night sky. Very clear and starry. It's cool this morning and feels like fall after yesterday's humid heat. It's almost October, my favorite time of the year. Exhilirated to see a deep red leaf in the street yesterday.
Poem below was in a poetry book I had when I was a little girl. My mother used to read the book to me, and this poem was one of my favorites:

AUTUMN
by Emily Dickinson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Nolan


I have met my new nephew Nolan. He is beautiful and immmediately stole my heart. The little ball of warmth against my chest was heaven. He grabbed my pinkie in his fist and I adored him. Simple as that. He looks like Jack and I too. My own children are driving me completely insane. I'm a better auntie than I am a mommy.

Nick and the Candlestick
by Sylvia Plath

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish -
Christ! they are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs -

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Missing

I miss you like a sister,
Like an arm
Cut off in a freak accident.
Like an amethyst bracelet
Left on the F train,
Or the rise of a tower
That used to sit near the river,
Like Joy
Sister, I miss you.


M.J. Tenerelli

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Pills and Paper

I take the pills
Because I don’t want what’s what,
And scream in paragraph form.
I’m passing out
Parting gifts
Pretty like the glitter
Of blood under a street light.
Here’s some pain, take it off
My hands.
It’s free and never you mind
The cost.
It was nothing
I couldn’t afford.

M.J. Tenerelli

Monday, September 04, 2006




It's My Birthday!

Monday's Child is Fair of Face
by Mother Goose

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace;
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go;
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for its living;
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.


I was born on a Sunday, thank you very much.

Click here to see what day you were born!

Saturday, September 02, 2006

School Supplies Saturday

Wickerman, the remake, is out. Contemplating taking kids although the original was ridiculous. I love Nicholas Cage. I have found many people love the original, and hate the new one, so maybe since I laughed through the first one, the new one will actually scare me. Dreamed that I was the Secretary Treasurer of the United States last night and was berating myself for forgetting to put it on my resume. I also dreamt I was 145 years old (although I looked like me). Off to buy school supplies and get haircuts for the kids. And some incense and sage as an early bday present for me...two days until I am 46! Poem below is there just cause I like it; its O'Hara, it has my name in it, and it's almost my party and I'll post if I want to!

Chez Jane
by Frank O’Hara


The white chocolate jar full of petals
swills odds and ends around in a dizzying eye
of four o’clocks now and to come. The tiger,
marvellously striped and irritable, leaps
on the table and without disturbing a hair
of the flowers’ breathless attention, pisses
into the pot, right down its delicate spout.
A whisper of steam goes up from that porcelain
urethra. “Saint-Saëns!” it seems to be whispering,
curling unerringly around the furry nuts
of the terrible puss, who is mentally flexing.
Ah be with me always, spirit of noisy
contemplation in the studio, the Garden
of Zoos, the eternally fixed afternoons!
There, while music scratches its scrofulous
stomach, the brute beast emerges and stands,
clear and careful, knowing always the exact peril
at this moment caressing his fangs with
a tongue given wholly to luxurious usages;
which only a moment before dropped aspirin
in this sunset of roses, and now throws a chair
in the air to aggravate the truly menacing.