More significant records of my youth

1. Bad Girls, Donna Summer
I think I got this for Easter in 1979, along with Mickey Mouse Disco. I loved Donna Summer. She was edgy and emotive.

2. Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles
I listened to the Beatles a lot when I was a kid. And whenever I saw those creepy vans with dark windows, I would think the Magical Mystery Tour was indeed coming to take me away.

3. "Call Me," Blondie
I had a bunch of cool 45s. "Roll me in designer sheets, I'll never get enough."

4. Business As Usual, Men at Work
A kid named Scott Ferguson made a tape of this album for me in middle school. He drew cool cartoons and had to have all these surgeries on his back. I think he was from Canada. I think Cargo was on the other side.

5. Rio, Duran Duran
Seventh grade was all about Rio.

6. Zenyatta Mondata, The Police
The older sister of my best friend in 8th grade loved the Police, so I started loving them, too. I was way too into the song "Don't Stand So Close to Me." Good thing none of my teachers were at all Sting-like.

7. Golden Age of Wireless, Thomas Dolby
Strangely strong connection with the song "Europa and the Pirate Twins."

8. Sweet Baby James, James Taylor
JT understands.

9. 12 Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline
Patsy understands. She understands more than we understand.

10. The Best of Leonard Cohen
Oh, Leonard.

11. Deja Vu, CSNY
Strong, slightly eerie double-layered nostalgia for both high school and childhood associated with this album.

12. Purple Rain, Prince
What??

13. Are You Experienced, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
What?????

14. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Dead Kennedys
I don't think I totally understood this album when I bought it in high school, but it allowed me to have conversations like this:
Friend of my mom's from work: What if I named a band after your dead heroes?
Me: [Shrug]

15. Led Zeppelin IV
When we were teenagers, a friend from childhood once tried to hypnotize me into making out with him by playing this and telling me about how Led Zeppelin had sold their souls to the devil. I went along with it.

16. The Velvet Underground and Nico
Record store re-discovery of music I vaguely remember from childhood turns an important corner. Felt like I was cooler than everyone for about a year, until I went to college and met someone else who also liked the Velvet Underground and early David Bowie.

Year

Clif and I met a year ago tomorrow.

Droopy

Text message from Mom, 12:29 PM: Remember to eat protein in the morning and stay hydrated against droopiness.


[image from http://dfenestrate.blogspot.com/]

Flight Lists

Flight to Orlando

1. Is that woman carrying a marijuana plant?
2. Two fauxhawks within three rows.
3. Little boy in front of me opens the window shade before we've pulled away from the gate and says, "I can see our town."
4. The first ingredient in my orange juice is apple juice.

Flight back to New York

1. Guy with a comical hat featuring an illustration of a HUGE marijuana leaf is one of the last people to get on the plane. (Problems at security?)
2. Autistic grown twins in the row behind me with their father. They seem to function quite well, until they get into an argument about how elastic is made of rubber as we're getting off the plane.
3. Young woman in my row whose carry-on has a BOGOTA tag seems to be on drugs or delirious. She puts her head on the empty middle seat between us, basically under the arm rest that my arm is resting on, then looks up at me quizzically when I keep touching the armrest to change the JetBlue tv channels. (Cash Cab-Law and Order-Cash Cab-Law and Order).
4. There's a very very old woman across the aisle from me who had to be carried onto the plane and put into her seat by two strong men. She has on a sassy green jacket and a lime green John Deere-style hat that says TABERNACLE-something-or-other. Her daughter beside her has the same hat.

New Smyrna Beach

Things Mom has said so far:

1. We’re only watching this to see if she’s a midget.
2. The warmest fur is the underhair of a musk-ox.
3. I’m not going to kill you with a blood pressure cuff!

Back at Mom's

where it's Christmas in August.

Move it

We're in a new apartment with new rooms and a view of trees. And there's this hole in the kitchen wall.

The night we moved, we ate a beige meal-- hummus and cracked wheat crackers and Chimay. It was perfect. We also watched a movie, but not one of these movies. (We watched Silkwood, which I haven't seen in years. It isn't what you'd call a celebratory movie, but watching something so well acted is comforting, at least.)

The next day we were really tired. We went to brunch and then sat on a bench and looked at these geese.

We still have a lot of unpacking to do.

Summer Project

[poem was here]

My chapbook

at the Poets House Showcase.

Today

I journeyed to Brooklyn for the apartment search in the hot hot heat wave. I had an iced coffee; looked at an apartment; walked around Prospect Heights in the hot heat; had a peanut butter-banana smoothie for dinner; came back home.

Weekend in Hudson

(1) Train; (2) wildflowers for my b-day; (3) looking ghostly-blurry at the b&b; (4) the ritual breaking of the Hello Kitty piñata at the wedding; (5) sculpture at Art Omi.

My friend John drew these feet.

Don't be jealous.


(Drawing by John Fleischer)

Last night when I couldn't sleep

I read an excerpt from this book by Aimee Bender.

Then I read an excerpt from this book by John Waters.

Then I looked up some pictures of Johnny Mathis:


Then I looked up Johnnie Ray:

Then I watched some John Waters interviews:


Then I somehow got to this video called "If David Lynch directed Dirty Dancing."

Then I ate some cereal and started watching this documentary on Netflix about Bergman's cinematographer, Sven Nykvist:


Shortly after the part in the documentary where they show the clip of Max von Sydow wrestling with a tree, I went back to bed.

Visiting W.

The apartment of one of my oldest friends, who lives in Boston.

Upcoming reading

Hey, New England friends: I will be reading in Keene, NH on Saturday June 12th. Information on the reading is here.

What Muriel Rukeyser said

They flung me into the sea
The sunlight ran all over my face,
The water was blue the water was dark brown
And my severed head swam around that ship
Three times around and it wouldn't go down.


Too much life, my darling, embraces and strong veins,
Every sense speaking in my real voice,
Too many flowers, a too-knowing sun,
Too much life to kill.

[photo from the Academy of American Poets]

Our Biography

I had not re-read Whitman this summer yet when I began thinking
"cultivate and circulate" and making fake ballet arms in the kitchen.
The lady on PBS was telling me to circulate my lady molecules
for the good of all living things and men. For once I didn't feel
resentful. I was thinking "lymph and chi" when I woke up and birds
were calling loud-- between a squawk and chirp. I was reading
about Rukeyser's river and how fear of women and fear of poetry
are the same thing. "Too much life, my darling . . . .
too much life to kill" is what Rukeyser said.
Imagine saying that.

Bauhaus

When I was a teenager, I knew a thing or two. I stayed in my room being skinny and having bangs, listening to Bauhaus and lifting 3 lb. weights. I drew pretty good portraits of my own face. I learned to drive stick, and I would drive farther out into the suburbs to go to the mall and walk around drinking Dr. Pepper and chewing candy and being mildly disgusted with the all the . . . people, who seemed to be sinking of their own accord. All the way there, I’d look for the Eagles on the radio, in order to demonstrate that the Eagles are always on the radio and to further demonstrate that—for good or bad—my vocal range exactly matched that of one Don Henley. On the way back, I would listen to Heart or Fleetwood Mac, which reminded me of my childhood in the ‘70s, a time of honest belting and bad vibes. Boys at school would talk to me in class, and I guess I would just look at them or say something weird about The Sorrows of Young Werther or something, because after a while they’d get nervous and blurt out, “I guess that’s how people dress in Europe.” Then we’d both turn around, and class would start.

Shoe Portrait