aaaaliens.

okay, allow me to supergeek out here.    

the second x-files movie will be arriving in theaters july 25, and i am beyondbrimmingbrains ecstatic. i loved this show, still love this show.  it had such a beautiful, strange amalgamation of paradoxical but congruent elements--belief and skepticism, science and parascience, love and fear and loneliness. the series could be scaryish, but it ultimately wrestled with the existential questions of faith and purpose in a world of suffering. the characters harbored complexities rarely seen on teevee--and of course, you've got to appreciate the deliberate swapping of traditional gender roles, with mulder being the emotional and intuitive believer, and scully playing a more stoical, hardscienceandskeptic role (she's also super short, and that's pretty rad).

and as for all of that stuff about aliens and psychokinesis and government conspiracies and shapeshifters, etc.--i am both believer and skeptic, though always the cynic.  i find it very hard to believe without concrete evidence...but i also understand that our scientific knowledge is limited and that people can be bloody nasty with creepy secrets and who the hell knows? maybe sasquatch is stealthystepping through oregon greentrees and hills. and so i want to believe...makes life much more interesting.  

arts n crafts.

i have left my rambling notebook at home by accident.

so i'm just gonna make up an entry of musings and meditations.  

right. 

now. 

for some reason, may has always seemed to me "makeover month." get a new haircolor.  buy summer clothes.  it's a time to tweak the image. to start eating better.  to walk/run/move more. usually it's the heat, i think, that precipitates this need for change.  a [sometimes

literal] shedding of layers and whittling the winter fat. a chance to simplify and explore who i really want to be in the world.

it's also my birthday month, and this year i shall reach a whole quarter of a century.  this seems madness. i've been dreading birthday since i was ten or so; i (perhaps precociously) felt the crushing weight of impending adulthood so acutely then.  i didn't want to be eleven because eleven was so close to twelve and twelve so close to thirteen and thirteen so close to

real teenagedom ('teenager' is a word i loathe to this day).

and so, as i creep by days closer to 25, i still can't help think about how i am too too close to 30. and yet, i am not an adult.  adults wear dress-up clothes to work and buy their own houses and get married and have babies.  adulthood is both space and responsibility, neither of which i can

much claim to possess; possession is another adult essential.  

sorry for such solipsism.  

on monday, case and i went to one of those "paint your own pottery" places.  this one, in the pearl, was fabulous.  if you live in portland, give ready, paint, fire! some business.  even art buffoons feel like maestros.  below is a picture of our masterpieces--shouldn't be too difficult to

figure out which one was painted by a girl, and which one was painted by a boy.  in the second hour that we were there, a family came in with a couple of elementary-aged boys who proceeded to break a few pieces within the first fifteen minutes. there was also a little girl about the age of four or five who seemed to have walked right out of a roald dahl novel.  she

had long, honey-blonde hair and thick round glasses, and her voice was low and raspy--an awkward cheerleader in the making.  she just wanted to paint rainbows.  her mother and grandmother guided her...both unnatural-looking women. her mother was tall, blonde, too-thin/too-tan, and wearing rhinestoned capri jeans and a glittery pink t-shirt. her grandmother had badly dyed dark hair and didn't seem capable of moving any muscle in her face.  wearing a baby-doll tee and dark jeans, she looked entirely out of place, out of her mind.  i silently wished the young girl wouldn't succumb to the same artifice that previous generations obviously had. but perhaps that is me being far too judgmental.  perhaps they are lovely people.

perhaps perhaps perhaps i should makeover my attitude toward other people this may.  like ivan karamazov, i have no problem loving the human race as a collective--from a distance, but individuals with plastic faces and philistine-like cultural interests are much much harder not to disregard, even more so than the shabby man on the street.  perhaps i'll pick up the brothers karamazov this month for the hundredth time and study how to be more like alyosha and not ivan.  perhaps i'll pick up franny and zooey again too, so i can be cut in the guts by the fat lady once more. and i'll try to resist cutting off all my hair...  

in formation.

starting cinco de mayo, 

i am endeavoring to write every single every day

about whatever and ever amen.

all silliness aside, i want to discipline my

frenetic brain/heart/art.  so, i shall try 

to post the best of the day's ramblings

on this here weblog.  i won't be able to

put up a new entry every day because

i lack access to the interweb in my

happy room/tomb/cocoon, but i shall

try my best to post something from every

day in may...maybe june, until i feel comfortable

enough to stop that elementary nonsense and 

just post the best and brightest.  i've never

been an exceptionally prolific writer, and i know 

that practice will only make one better.  hopefully.

i'm also asking you, my onetwothree readers, to 

help me stick to it, and give me feedback.  i expect 

sometimes there will be poems and sometimes

pseudo-philosophical musings and sometimes mere 

cataloguing of hours in days.  

thankyouverymuch.  goodday.

sun day.

however coldly gray and dreary this town can be

(nearly every sorrysorrowed-day, october through 

1st of may), it's remarkable the changes one sees in 

people when the sun comes out to play.  everyone 

beams, smiling at the sky and skipping about on the 

streets. outside sidewalk tables are overcrowded, dogs 

leashed to sun-glassed owners in short-sleeves trot the 

pavement, and choruses of "what a beautiful day!" erupt 

from brokenrecord rubberband lips. 20-somethings talk 

of drinking mimosas on the lawn all bright day long.  it's 

a collective gratitude bordering on worship, beautiful to behold.  

stay here with me. we'll start a jazz band.

nothing new from me.  just a moment from a film 

that feels pure cinematic poetry; the happy/sad/happy 

loveliness of it haunts me.  miss coppola captured 

the bones of me, though she doesn't know it. i think 

she captured the bones of many young, clever, quiet, lonely girls 

still deciding what life is, and yet still in solemn awe of things.

so, enjoy.  it's my favorite.

new language.

i have a problem with words.  

wife is a silversharp knife 

knotted stupid in pretty gingham gag.  

(it tastes of metal and chill.)

husband is a great big bull snorting in his stall, 

with a calloused farmer squinting on.  

(it is sweat and mud and earth.) 

marriage is a charming pink pram--

empty lace and knotted steel. 

(it bubble gum sticks to the palate, fingers, lips, 

and slyknots itself in your hair.)

i would get married 

(someday when i'm old and able-bodied),  

if i didn't have to call it marriage.

and i'd be a wife, if dubbed something new, for

i don't want to be a knife tied to a bull and shit life,

and i really don't wish to swathe my tongue in silly bubble gum.

partner, lover, mate, spouse--these are lousy as well,  

they are teddy bears, chimps and parasites, 

stomachsick with too much chocolate.

i only long for a new language.

so simple and lovely and stirring.

so starry and rich and just right.

but i'm still a girl,

afraid of woman,

yet he seems not a boy

and not really so man.

i am merely she.  

and he is he.

and we are we.

for now.

inhumanity.

cracklecut skin, shredded and stretched by anxious

self-sustaining grace.  there's dirt in your cataract

eyes, crying mud and muck when you allow

yourself to remember that place a long time ago.

remember that place?  i was a painter of trees and you

a prince of thieves in love with creature lions and foxes

you'd only read about and so longed to see. 

horses had feathers and bees were just pretty, stingless things

that carried us hum humming home on sunsilk wings.

inhume regret.  we all grow up.