September 2009
40 posts
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Today: The most beautiful day of the year. Hard to believe it is also garbage day. Coffee, coffee, coca maté. I stopped my car for a squirrel that decided to sit in the middle of my traffic lane. An old man on a bike waved at me as if to say, thanks for stopping for that squirrel. Dreams of being in Sweden and eating Lingonberries. Tonight: Vermont Curry from Japan.
Read an Eileen Chang story...
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Today: A whiff of incense at the head shop where I bought a Coca-Cola. The aroma lingered. More hot dogs, more candy bars. They are wretched, but I’m not interested in anything else at the moment. Except maybe some Waffle House: hash browns, pancakes. I love waking up in Georgia and talking to the sweetest black ladies at the Waffle House across the street from the hotel.
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Today: The taste of cigarettes, candy bars. Coffee. The sadness of someone who was once completely comfortable with you, acting uncomfortable with you. Stress: Car broken again. A walk to Walgreens to buy food for dinner or a knock on the neighbor’s door to ask for leftovers?
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4 love poems
Love is a poem in a high school anthology waiting to be found. Love is a love poem written on the heart of a bull frog. Love is a tennis racket full of holes but good to clobber. Love is a canned ham covered in jelly. Don’t you agree?
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Yim Yames—Long Long Long. My Morning...
I accidentally bought this song on amazon....
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Give the reader something fun and something to believe in. If you do, you’ll have readers for generations.
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“I catch up: each night, now, I must capture one taste, one touch, one vision from the ruck of the day’s garbage. How all this life would vanish, evaporate, if I didn’t clutch at it, cling to it, while I still remember some twinge or glory.” -Sylvia Plath
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Bernard wants passion; Lenina wants amusement
“That mania, to start with, for doing things in private. Which meant, in practice, not doing anything at all. For what was there that one could do in private. (Apart, of course, from going to bed: but one couldn’t do that all the time.) Yes, what was there? Precious little. The first afternoon they went out together was particularly fine. Lenina had suggested a swim at Toquay Country...
“I’ve got two sets of headphones / I...
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We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege. -Marilynne Robinson
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Poems I wrote for workshop
But did not turn in: Readers On a swing you read Melville. I read Haskell. Moby Dick and Out of My Skin. After we close the covers, we homp. Antique Shop The woman who asked “When are you due?” was wrong about you.
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Three poems I wrote tonight, all untitled:
Eating that cheese danish on Thursday made me happy. But this third cheese danish on Friday, begrudgened.
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Humpback whale, oh baleen whale, Our captain went on home, The first mate met a watery death, The ensigns all scampered, And I am alone on this tiny teak boat. Baleen whale, oh whalebone whale, You filter food from sea. Oh filter some for me.
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The girl who made me love cabbage is gone. The girl who made me love cabbage is gone. The girl who made me love cabbage is gone, And now all I eat is balut.
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“A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the...”
– MFK Fisher
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“But remember, also, young man: you are not the first person who has ever been...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
Makin’ Whoopee—Harry Nilsson. From A...
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“But in 1946, when he picked up his petri dishes and noticed the spots that...”
– Microcosm, Carl Zimmer.
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Secrets
I shared some of my secrets with a woman last night. She told me some of hers. I might see her again soon, but after the middle of this week, I won’t be able to see her again soon. I suspect this kind of exchange happens often. There are weird things that happen to us that we long for a context for, but they are often things we can’t tell people who know us for various reasons. The...
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Help Me Rhonda. When I was little, the...
WatchWhere I was born.