I too am really looking forward to our visit.  Thanks for the update on the address.  That explains why the envelopes stuffed with cash I sent you were all returned.  Unfortunately I was so hurt by your rejection I spent it all on booze .  I am having my nutritionist send you our dietary requirements.  Its not that complicated.  We just cannot have any gluten, bleached flour, sugar, sugar substitutes, salt, salt substitutes, meat, or meat substitutes.  Our fruits and vegetables must be harvested within 24 hours of consumption and must be hand-washed by virgins.   My wine must be strictly Italian or French and preferably bottled before 1990.  I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.  Preferably with a lime (see harvesting and washing instructions above) and served in the bottle or a sippy-cup.  We must eat from the floor or ceiling for our food to be properly blessed by mother earth or father sky.  Tables are strictly for cards, sex, or card games involving sex.  Which reminds me.  We’ll need two decks of cards, and Milton Bradley’s Twister.  Be sure to clean the tables after we leave.  Eeeuuuwwwww.  I apologize for that.

The Hero’s Luck

by Lawrence Raab

When something bad happens
we play it back in our minds,
looking for a place to step in
and change things. We should go outside
right now, you might have said. Or:
Let’s not drive anywhere today.

The sea rises, the mountain collapses.
A car swerves toward the crowd
you’ve just led your family into.
We all look for reasons. Luck
isn’t the word you want to hear.
What happened had to,

or it didn’t. Maybe
the exceptional man can change direction
in midair, thread the needle’s eye,
and come out whole. But even the hero
who stands up to chance has to feel
how far the world will bend

until it breaks him. He can see
that day: the unappeasable ocean,
the cascades of stone. A crowd
gathers around his body. He sees that too.
someone is saying: His luck just ran out.
It happens to us all.

Margery Williams wrote in the classic children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit, “Generally, by the time you are Real,  most of  your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose  in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because  once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

William Butler Yeats said “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

You embarassed me when you said things that made you seem ignorant or shallow.

I embarassed you when I said things that made me seem mean, selfish and uncaring.

Does that make us even? Are we coming apart at the seems?

- The Curmudgeon.

Foreseeing by Sharon Bryan

Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it’s as if you’d reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end -
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline -
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance -
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can’t help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it’s simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have -
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won’t go on
like this forever.

From the song “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” by Cake

With fingernails that shine like justice/And a voice that is dark like tinted glass.

Just viewed “The Painted Veil” … the 2007 version with Ed Norton and Naomi Watts, not the 1934 version with Greta Garbo.  I generally do not gravitate toward ‘period’ movies or classic literature screenplays, so I don’t know what led me to add this to my Netflix queue… unless it was Naomi’s creamy deliciousness.  Suffice it to say, I feel guilty for my possibly low-brow motivations because the movie was truly spectacular.  Spectacularly provocative visually, and spiritually.  Of course, if I wasn’t such a simple Cretan I would have already been familiar with the novel by Somerset Maugham.  I generally find Eddy’s portfolio to be smug but he and the rest of the cast do a swell job as well.  Highly recommended.

Well, not exactly years…. but just a few months shy now of being a year since my last post.   In the decades long effort to get a handle on my migraine headaches, October of last year I had a sleep study done by a legitimately certified clinic and neurologist.  The study revealed classic narcolepsy and mild apnea.  I have never exhibited the symptoms of narcolepsy such as nodding off at my desk, or at a stop light.  Nor have I ever been one to fall asleep while watching TV or a movie.   I was skeptical but agreed to try a CPAP machine and some sleep meds.

I couldn’t tolerate the CPAP machine, but after a little bit of tuning the meds seem to be pretty good.  I take 125mg of Lyrica and 1/2 of the typical Ambien prescription.  The Ambien puts me to sleep and the Lyrica keeps me in good sleep cycles for a good four or five hours.   I have had dramatically fewer headaches and I am feeling over all considerably better than I have felt in many years.  A couple months ago I began a moderate morning exercise routine that I have been able to stick with, expand upon, and really, become addicted to.

Since the weblog was traditionally a late night angst ridden journaling effort, it has suffered in the healthier me times.   But its more than just the fact that I don’t stay up late.  I’ll try to elaborate soon… Or will I?  <diminished chord on shlocky organ>

At dusk, when kitchen-window light
settles on the grass like a picnic cloth …
“On Catalpa Street” “by Jo McDougall from Towns Facing Railroads
>
It was dark and vague outside.  The storm had rolled away to faintness like a wagon crossing a bridge.
“A Piece of News” Short Story by Eudora Welty