Sunday Sunday



Sunday morning and my throat is killing me. Hot coffee helping. Hope kiddies stay asleep awhile longer. Feel like I'm swallowing tiny swords.

Went Target shopping yesterday with remarkable results! Got a very cool pair of Isaac Mizrahi shoes for seven dollars, perfect for work, and an Isaac Mizrahi soft red turtleneck for eleven dollars. All hail Isaac Mizrahi, king of inexpensive, slammin clothes for women! Also got sneakers for the boy at the lowly price of six dollars and change. Sneakers he LIKED. Felt like I was shopping at the Salvation Army. Fleetingly wondered if these prices were the result of a very bad national economic downturn, before skipping off to the register. Today I have to look for sneakers for the girl child. May the fairy of low priced footwear still be with me.

I am feeling my way toward doing what I do at work from the comfort of my own home. Sent out emails to a bunch of law firms offering freelance services with a few interested responses. Purchased a memory card to take to work so I can bring all my written decisions home, and have to price fax machines. This could be something wonderful...everyone keep their fingers crossed!

Mr. Jiggers, AKA BFI, has gotten a real job, at a real company, with wages that can be garnished! I figure this will last about 8 months before he is canned, so we'll have abour half a year of steady support checks coming our way. Hurray!

Well the boy is now awake and I must away to put biscuits (Poppin Fresh) in the oven. Today is house cleaning day (the high point of my week). Poems below to make this post something other than banal.

Digression On Number 1, 1948

I am ill today but I am not
too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day, warm
for winter, cold for fall.

A fine day for seeing. I see
ceramics, during lunch hour, by
Mir6, and I see the sea by Leger;
light, complicated Metzingers
and a rude awakening by Brauner,
a little table by Picasso, pink.

I am tired today but I am not
too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white, harm
will not fall, his perfect hand

and the many short voyages. They'll
never fence the silver range.
Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see.

Frank O'Hara


A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?

Alan Ginsberg