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Below are the most recent 24 friends' journal entries.
| Saturday, July 11th, 2009 |
ancientscripts
|
Saturday
July 11th, 2009 at 10:33pm |
A day at the park
It was a lovely day in the Bay Area today. Somewhat cloudy, even with a bit of rain, in July! We had planned to take Alex to Vasona park again, but the nice weather made it better. It's always been his favorite park because of the small gauge train, but lately we've convinced him to wade in the Los Gatos creek that runs through the park. He absolutely loves it! Didn't want to leave at all. And that's why I love California. No leeches, no mosquitos, and no crocodiles (although some other kids wading thought there were...don't you love kids and their imaginations?). There were ducks and geese and he was excited that they were swimming around. It's actually a big improvement because he's always been afraid of birds of all kinds. He's still scared of ravens and crows but he's much better around other kinds of birds. He's definitely getting his anxiety under control. We came back around 4pm and I hardly had time to sit down. I started on dinner for Alex because he ate junk food instead of his lunch, so he was ravenous. Then I made dinner for the adults. I had wanted to try making farro which is an ancient form of wheat (the food of Roman legions) and is much better for diabetics (less refined carbs and more fiber). I made it like a risotto and it was really yummy. It was a bit more work than rice (soak, parboil, and then cook), but I think it's totally worth it and it's going on the rotation of grains. Too bad Alex won't eat it. Now I'm contemplating buying classic Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. Let the addiction begin... |
exceptindreams
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Saturday
July 11th, 2009 at 11:15pm |
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| Friday, July 10th, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Friday
July 10th, 2009 at 10:12pm |
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| Thursday, July 9th, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Thursday
July 9th, 2009 at 10:56pm |
553: How To Eat a Poem
“How To Eat a Poem” Eve Merriam Don't be polite. Bite in. Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin. It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are. You do not need a knife or fork or spoon or plate or napkin or tablecloth. For there is no core or stem or rind or pit or seed or skin to throw away. |
| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 |
wurds
[ theblow ]
|
Wednesday
July 8th, 2009 at 11:06pm |
"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." |
exceptindreams
|
Wednesday
July 8th, 2009 at 1:58pm |
552: I go back to May 1937
"I go back to May 1937" Sharon Olds I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar make of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips back in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don't do it - she's the wrong woman, he's the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, you are going to die. I want to go up to them there in the at May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty blank face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don't do it. I want to live. I take them up like male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
K brought up a movie I created based on Jeffrey McDaniel's The Quiet World. I had not planned on putting it up, but now that people know it is there, I guess it would be unfair to not show it now. If you are interested, here is my humble interpretation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOTujRDlu3U. --M |
wurds
[ malathion ]
|
Wednesday
July 8th, 2009 at 3:31am |
"To hold a pen is to be at war." |
| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Tuesday
July 7th, 2009 at 11:06pm |
551: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
“The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy” Jeffrey McDaniel Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don't know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that's just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other's ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn't make the silence any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you'd press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I'm sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade's precipice and joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn't be said. |
| Monday, July 6th, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Monday
July 6th, 2009 at 11:06pm |
550: Trying to Have Something Left Over
“Trying to Have Something Left Over” Jack Gilbert There was a great tenderness to the sadness when I would go there. She knew how much I loved my wife and that we had no future. We were like casualties helping each other as we waited for the end. Now I wonder if we understood how happy those Danish afternoons were. Most of the time we did not talk. Often I took care of the baby while she did housework. Changing him and making him laugh. I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost. |
ancientscripts
|
Monday
July 6th, 2009 at 4:26pm |
Ancient writing in the news
Computer reveals stone tablet 'handwriting' in a flash http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17405-computer-reveals-stone-tablet-handwriting-in-a-flash.html Computer scientists from National Technical University of Athens developed a software system that correctly recognize handwriting on 24 Greek inscriptions between 334 BC and 134 BC and successfully attributed them to six different stone-cutters. Plans are under way to fine tune and deploy this system to build a large database of inscriptions and their attributions. Paikuli inscriptions studied, restored in Iraq http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=99355§ionid=3510212 Sassanid inscriptions on the Paikuli Tower, a structure built by Sassanid king Narseh to commemorate the overthrow of his nephew Bahram III (Warahran III) in modern Iraqi Kurdistan, have been restored and studied. The inscriptions are bilingual in Parthian and Middle Persian, both written using the Pahlavi script. 'Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions are the only record of old Tamil' http://www.frontline.in/stories/20090717261407000.htm Excerpt of an interview with Iravatham Mahadevan, prominent researcher of Old Tamil and Indus Valley script. Mainly talks about vandalism of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, which are the oldest Tamil texts as well as the oldest Jain texts. |
| Sunday, July 5th, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Sunday
July 5th, 2009 at 5:44pm |
549: The Ides of Amer-I-Can
“The Ides of Amer-I-Can” Kevin McFadden O tempora! O mores! —Cicero I write in times of plus and minus, in decades of division. I write in times when what's said aloud is sometimes not allowed said. The brain's in halves, the heart's in half-knots. In times when pronouns take the place of nouns and proverbs take the place of thought. Times of humanity's peak-ruts: assaults on clear new summits (and summits on nuclear assault). When the Air Force aims high and diplomacy dips low. I write in times when ink seems obsolete, pens dead. I write on a computer whose newspaper-named fonts beg outrageous multiplication. I write in Times. Her T-shirt exclaims NF! and this is America all right, that said it, NF is enough, and yeah, it's clever, but lacks a clear referent: of what? She's dressed kinda feminist so maybe that's her beef: NF of this crap, NF of the way you bastards look at me—basta bastardi! for those of you who ogle in Italian— NF sentences and sentiments like "She's dressed kinda feminist," NF ineffables, let's try saying something useful. The N is on her right breast, the F the left. I visibly introduce myself to N. She verbally introduces me to "F— you." My grandpa used to say as we'd drive the backroads, "Never forget, son, American ends in I-can," giving me a license before I needed it. I'd perch on his lap to steer, he'd shift and work the pedals; hey, it really looked like the world was racing for me. Never swerved toward, "But, Grandpa, so does Mex-ican—and where did that get them?" Where would that put me? Agree with grandpa and drive—dissent, boy, gets you nowhere. Took years to see the bugs in the grill, the Sunday roadkill half-dressed in a ditch, before grasping the unspoken right-of-way. Amer-I-can, really. One possum better off dead. We've clocked the sneeze doing 90. In seconds, it can work a room. My wife seizes up and lets hers go in two iambic bursts. (It's cute, it's cute.) Our sneezes, we know, are ours for life, however accomplished: my solid hoot, her teensy twos, the three or more (I'm guessing) you're doomed to repeat— just reflex. By history, then, do we mean we want nothing to sneeze at? Jamestown to James Brown in a few hundred blinks, Plato to NATO in the space to sneeze. Is it me, dear wife, or is the world looking less like a "Man's Man's Man's World?" Itsyou, she doubles up, itsyou. Today even blood can kill, I can tell through a bag marked BIOHAZARD. Doc says my back is bad, recommends more foam in the sole ("With these shoes you hardly feel the earth"). Nothing's touching, I notice around the sterilized office: tray here, pads there, swabs over some. Gloves between me and my healer, paper between me and the seat, latex between lovers, what's it coming to? Expanse's expense is a distance you can learn from any pre-packaged fork in the hospital café, eating in our cultural fashion, with middlemen, no fingers. Clean utensils for hands who knows what's on. |
| Saturday, July 4th, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Saturday
July 4th, 2009 at 4:09am |
548: I loved you...
“I loved you…” Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin I loved you, and I probably still do, And for a while the feeling may remain... But let my love no longer trouble you, I do not wish to cause you any pain. I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew, The jealousy, the shyness - though in vain - Made up a love so tender and so true As may God grant you to be loved again. Translated from the Russian by Genia Gurarie
Sorry this is so late, spent the entire day at the lake with my new in-laws. Happy 4th of July, Americans. -g |
| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 |
ancientscripts
|
Friday
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:34pm |
Days in the sun...
I have a tan. Well, at least a farmer's tan ;) Yesterday my company spent the afternoon playing gokarts and minigolf. Turns out I sucked at both. I step on the brakes too much. And I got tired from the sun after about 10 holes in minigolf and started losing my concentration. But it was loads of fun even without alcohol involved. Today we took Alex to Vasona park which has a narrow gauge train loop and a big playground. He's been very weepy and nervous for this whole week so we were worried that he was going to freak out, but actually he really enjoyed it. We took the train twice, and he played for a while in the play structures until it got too hot and too sunny. He got a bit of sun because he started crying again when we got home, but after 2-tbsp of children's motrin he got much better. Now my problem is him stealing popsicles out of the fridge. Hmph. At least they're sugar-free. Now we're holed up here in the bedroom with the AC blasting. It's actually not hot outside, but since we're toasty it feels good to be in a refrigerator. Dinner is going to be grilled soy-marinated pork chops, garlicky snow peas, and some kind of rice (which apparently is going to be an experiment courtesy of Christine, whenever she wakes up from her nap). Oh wait now Alex wants blueberries. Time to go. Everybody have a great 4th of July weekend. |
| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 |
exceptindreams
|
Thursday
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:27pm |
547: Last Testaments
“Last Testaments” Lorna Crozier The cancer began in her tonsils, she'd say that with a smile almost expecting to be teased for such a serious disease rooting in that childish place. She remembered her son at four when he'd had his out, the way he'd looked at her as the nurse slid the cold thermometer up his bum. She carried on as usual, cleaned the house, fried a chicken for her husband every Sunday, cutting the breast in four pieces, the wings in two. The morning of the day she died she took him down the basement, showed him how to separate the clothes, how to measure the soap, set the dials, how to hang his shirts and pants so the creases would fallout * The man with a worn-out heart, sold his tools so his wife wouldn't be left with that part of him to deal with. How he had loved them in his hands, each so perfectly designed to fit the palm, the wheels, bits and teeth made for one specific use. On the empty walls of the garage hung the shapes of all the tools he'd ever owned, sixty years of wrenches, saws and drills. He'd traced around them row on row so he'd know where to hang each one, know what his neighbour had borrowed, and failed to return. From his pocket he removed a black felt pen and in the corner on a board painted white, he drew the perfect outline of a man. * Before she walked into the river and didn't come back, the woman who couldn't remember the day of the week or the faces of her children, made a list of all the men she's ever loved, left it for her husband by the coffee pot, his name on the bottom, underlined twice for emphasis. |
autumnknees
|
Thursday
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:21pm |
bits, pieces and a link to a catchup picturepost
Last week we were walking along the beach and there was this guy flying these kites, all these coloured kites all attached by the same string, stretching up fifty feet into the sky which was actually a vortex of clouds and the last one was so far away it looked like a speck at the edge of a whirlpool. There are these regulars at work, these three guys who are sometimes joined by a couple women and one of them looks like a rugby player, one like an accountant and one like a poet and they all come in several times a week and sit at the same table and order the same pizzas and they talk about rehearsals and classical music and I thought they were in an orchestra or something but when I asked one of the managers he said they're professional opera singers. I like the stories and I like the characters, but the truth is I hate my job. I hate the long hours and tiny rushed breaks and I dread the weekends. I don't like getting yelled at almost every night; it feels like you're constantly on trial there, it's less about keeping the customers happy and more about the managers catching you out. You have to make a conscious effort to walk with you shoulders straight. I like having a couple weekdays off but now that Alan's got a maybe-job our hours are becoming entirely incompatible. I'm looking for another job but the process is disheartening. And I really hate the weekend. If it wasn't for the job I think things would be almost perfect. It's strange and very wonderful to be living with my boyfriend. We compromise on groceries and cook dinner together even though neither of us can cook and I know that I'm exceptionally lucky to have found someone who likes to explore the city and play in playgrounds and go to the library and have picnics on the beach and all the other little ordinary adventures that make up the meantime. I posted up lots of pictures of the meantime and of now on my blogger and even more on my Flickr, just in case you were curious to put faces to the names and places. Current Mood: weekend-dreadful. |
| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 |
wurds
[ malathion ]
|
Wednesday
July 1st, 2009 at 10:56pm |
"The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man." |
exceptindreams
|
Wednesday
July 1st, 2009 at 7:21pm |
546: Ten Years After Your Deliberate Drowning
“Ten Years After Your Deliberate Drowning” Robin Behn Since then, I work at night. Against the glass the identical moths open themselves up to me. The Lamp illumines the decorative eyes evolution has granted them. So don't think I'm alone. To them I am the light. Days I don't come with flowers, please think of these white petals pressed into this pane. Pale shapely trapezoids-- they too remember your shoulders. If I don't light the light for x nights in a row . . . Tell me what x is. You must be in x by now. Sometimes one travels several inches on its thready legs-- and old idea alighting on a new ledge in the brain. I used to think--what thing was it that I had failed to do? Now I just see your body, filled almost up with water, harden in my arms, then break --so much does it desire to be filled-- against the real river for good. The eyes through which I see this are impervious to light. This I have learned from the moths: open your wings when you must and flash the inner eyes of a creature so big it could eat both you and the thought that would eat you. Most of what follows I see: how there are more and more, how they never fly away. Nor do they rest in pairs Whatever made these wings is remaking yours now somewhere in the workshop where the thing is extracted that leaves behind the dark. Out there their clustered shadows spill darker kissmarks on that dark. |
ancientscripts
|
Wednesday
July 1st, 2009 at 12:37pm |
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| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 |
wurds
[ theblow ]
|
Tuesday
June 30th, 2009 at 10:58pm |
"All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life." |
exceptindreams
|
Tuesday
June 30th, 2009 at 11:07am |
545: Trouble
“Trouble” Matthew Dickman Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter hung in the Tahitian bedroom of her mother’s house, while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes you can look at the clouds or the trees and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground. The performance artist Kathy Change set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves out of the music industry forever. I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped from an apartment window into the world and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead roles, leaped off the “H” in the HOLLYWOOD sign when everything looked black and white and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like the way geese sound above the river. I like the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful. Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter brought her roses when she was still alive, and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite in his own mouth though it took six hours for him to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died in prison, naked, a bag around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet. Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues after drawing a hot bath, in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water. Larry Walters became famous for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet and then he landed. He was a man who flew. He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best. I want to be good to myself.
K couldn't have known when she picked out this poem that it would come at a time when a handful of celebrities had all just died. |
| Monday, June 29th, 2009 |
shanima
|
Monday
June 29th, 2009 at 9:57pm |
Do you ever think about running away?
'cause i was thinking about leaving today Current Mood:  cranky |
ancientscripts
|
Monday
June 29th, 2009 at 12:21pm |
Dog Tired
Alex woke up at 4am last night. Again. He did the same on Saturday morning too. At least this time he went back to sleep, unless Saturday. Still, I'm pretty tired, because I sang and told The Big Red Barn god-knows-how-many-times. None of it worked, until I started talking about the parodies of 300 that I've seen on YouTube with a half-asleep wife. That put Alex back to sleep. I can't tell if he just likes our voices, or he actually likes geeky stuff. Well, who knows? So it was overall a pretty good weekend. Friday my wife and I went to the French Laundry, arguably the best restaurant in the United States, the only one with three Michelin stars in the California. I wrote up a review of it at here. We had a good time driving through Napa Valley and walking around Yountville aka foodie central. Saw some celebrity chefs too (Michael Chiarello and St Thomas Keller himself). Alex didn't take so well to the whole proceeding though. He was weepy and whiney and morose while we were away for a whole six hours. But we gotta try, not just for us, but it's good for him to have to deal with his anxiety issues. The thing is that today summer starts for him and while whiney he actually got into the car and went without much protestation. Who knows? Maybe he's getting better. The weekend was ridiculously hot, so we hid out in the AC until late afternoon and then pop up for frozen yogurt. It's gonna be hot for a few days. I guess it's supposed to be summer but I'm just not that big fan of the 90-plus weather. I'd be content with the 70's forever. Time to grab lunch. From downstairs. Ugh. |
exceptindreams
|
Monday
June 29th, 2009 at 10:09am |
544: Tape of My Dead Father's Voice from an Old Answering Machine
“Tape of My Dead Father's Voice from an Old Answering Machine” Marjorie Maddox He keeps telling me he's not at home, that he'll reply soon. He doesn't know he's lying, that what's hiding between the space of words is space he's gone to. He repeats his name, which is not the name I call him. I call him now, hear only the unanswerable space answer. Home is always where we've left, the space that means "before." I know to keep his voice rewinding until the space of now begins to answer. At the tone, I can't find a home for how all space rewinds. Lying, I repeat that I am fine, take out the home he was, and leave my name. |
| Sunday, June 28th, 2009 |
shanima
|
Sunday
June 28th, 2009 at 6:55pm |
wuthering heights
When and where did they show the 2009 adaption of Wuthering Heights? I thought it was a BBC drama, but I doubt that now. Has it not aired on TV yet? What channel is it on? I want to see it :) Current Mood:  confused |
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