So get this, the place OPENS but because of the power situation, it can’t PAY US on PAY DAY. Nice. Huh?

I’m at a neighbor’s house, sending a smoke signal that I’m alive, having moved with heroic help in that storm, in a Uhaul truck that the truck guys just basically gave to me (since there was no swiping credit cards) . . . Ok, I hate this about this city, the weather, but I love it too, because every time this massive bizarre you can’t believe it storm happens, people come out and just give you whatever they have. The last time, the big bad one that shut the city with 72” of snow, 20 guys, or so it seemed, picked up my little Saturn and moved it so I could get around a turned-over bus. In the Apocalypse it’s no wonder I’m going to come off alright. I have to admit I love the way some of us just throw down and do our best, strangers, with “God Bless!” calling out all over in bemused good humor at it all.

And then I hate the other people. The “I have to get to where I’m going so fuck you.” I wonder if hating people like that is the prerequisite for loving the other kind. (?)

"Stand by Me," Sam Cooke
"If You Want Me to Stay," Sly & the Family Stone

(thanks DmS for the tunes, I can hear them in my head)

a tree. just fell. on my car. [LOL]

first heavy snow. breaks trees up and down the street, falling onto cars. my ass will never thaw. and my couch is gonna get moved in this? what next, a 40 day rain of snakes or what?

and what the hell is this? for Virgo this week: Astute salesmen from the British store Fortnum & Mason took full advantage of the Crimean War back in the 1850s. They sold picnic lunches to officers who were leading the battles at the siege of Sebastapol on the Black Sea coast. In the coming weeks, Virgo, you too can capitalize on a conflict you're not directly involved in. For best results, make sure you don't get caught in the crossfire. Cultivate neutrality, doing absolutely nothing to feed the flames of hostility. Ply your skills and offer your services with impeccable timing, slipping in and out with understated efficiency during lulls in the uproar.

the bangles - walk like an egyptian

so long 2,
10.2006

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. [always loved that one]

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. [whew] --george bernard shaw, both

amon tobin - easy muffin (rib kick)

I miss my dog.

billie the vision and the dancers - ask for more

I want to thank everyone who came to help this weekend, and ahead of time everyone who's coming next Saturday too (though I'll thank you again). [and I'm sorry I cried that one time.] And I loved my tarot reading, because for all my schmoozing around with decks of bullshit, that was my actual first tarot. And it wasn't what I expected at all, but more like a list of questions.

Think, for instance, but translated into Gina-speak, if I handed you something and said "this means that someone or something in your recent past is heavily associated dirt." You look at it. It's whatever, a little picture card. And I ask you, so what do you think about dirt? Especially recently?

planting tomatoes? who knows--think fast. dirty?

Isn't that kick-ass? Because who saw that question coming?! I love that, because I really hate being bored shitless, among other things [cruelty]. T'wound rather freefall into a crazy question for no good reason but clean fun.

(And ya gotta admit, my getting that over-turned cup card, cup runneth f'n kicked the hell over, that was not disputable.)

hush little alien

When I left, I took 2 wine glasses. 4 milk glasses. So much of a dent already, on our insides, it seemed like a good idea to take what was nearest to the door, literally the room NEXT TO THE DOOR, and only what else I’d absolutely need to seem recognizable to the kids. Chosen all in under 2 hours. I suppose too, that it softened the 'for-keeps' factor for me to take less.

But, every single wine glass (guess no showing off the wine w the tofu recipes like "friends" as planned, eh? hahahaha) Every single toy.

Every picture except those of me, the one of him looking down that was next to the one of me at three, curly like B. As I type this, I'm looking at the one I picked to take with me, of him smoking in a doorway in Germany. This is for sure one of those times that bloat wouldn’t help, since no eloquence could describe the nothing that could possibly prepare you.

(. . . . . . . . . . . .) reel but stand, stay standing, try ( . . . . . wait, breathe . . . . ) . . . lock right jaw. shut . . . tight. (remember the fuckthis, shitbreathe . . .)

Guess I’ll be saving up for some trips to IKEA and Toys r’ Us.

mike doughty – looking at the world from the bottom of a well (i.e. "divorce la la la")

I think I might have to sign off for awhile until I can find a song that goes "don't touch me, doo wap doo wap"

paul mcartney- maybe i'm amazed

I can't wait to paint instead of always putz.

for insomniacs, the world is littered

(who'd ya get?)

bishop allen- making friends

the strokes – on the other side

feist- gatekeeper

for Virgo this week: Writing in The New York Times, Joyce Wadler captured the essence of a genre that has lost its once-heady repute. "Poetry, if we may take a moment to explain to the young people," she said, "is an art form somewhat like rap, only it does not sell, and since the death of Lord Byron [in 1824] there has been a paucity of bling-bling." At the risk of nudging you toward a cultural dead end, then, Virgo, I'll ask you to expose yourself to concentrated doses of poetry this week. In my astrological opinion, you need to have your brain scrambled and heart flushed in a lyrically healing way, which good poetry can do. Here are some excellent sources:

x

I was going along until "brain scrambled". And, no, I don't need that.

cut chemist - what's the altitude

I think I did too.

Ruthie Foster- Woke Up This Morning

(is this Morrison's Ruth Foster?)

King Missile - Detachable Penis

The blog genre. It begins to be a chorus, everyone singing in private sound-proof rooms, though all at once. Seems a good metaphor for how we live. And how we live, how I live, and how I write (i.e. explain things to myself) are inseparable. I remember playing the violin, badly. I would go into one of the rooms when I was supposed to and relish it—I could read a book, be left alone. When I would leave, I would glance at others through the glass and they were actually playing music, and I imagined the music was a lot better than anything I could make. But since someone was playing music, it did not have to be me, anyway.

A friend writes about solitude—it’s a variation on the lonely, and if you’ve ever played the violin you’d know that “variation” can mean VERY DIFFERENT. Solitude is the condition of writing; so many people have asserted that. She says. She quotes Thoreau. I’m dubious. I remember him as being quite self-satisfied and often hanging out over at Emerson’s, trading his crappy beans for the home cooked meals (nearly invisible women, their little marks) and calling it conversation that was vital to the whole history of ideas. (!) Imagine that.

But it might be that Emerson needed him. (“A friend is one before whom I may think aloud”.) I like Emerson. On that basis, I grant Thoreau his necessity, his telling everyone who would listen how alone he was and making them think about solitude (self-reliance being a variation). Okay.

Still, the interlocutor is the thing. The only non-bloated words I can think of for interlocutor (which admittedly sounds harsh, like a train) are ‘friend’ and then ‘lover’. Because no matter how much you’d like to (and perhaps anatomy confuses men on this issue somehow), you can’t kiss yourself. You cannot convince yourself that anyone is listening to you if nobody is. And when someone is listening to you, then . . . (cold and hungry) . . . [I’m listening for, keenly]

skye edwards – what’s wrong with me? (nouvelle vague remix) [try not to think]

“All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.” – Emerson

self help reading + music

from Captain Underpants: The Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People:

One day you’re a superstar because you pooped in the toilet like a big boy, and the next day you’re sitting in the principal’s office because you said the word “poopy” in American History class (which, if you ask me, is the perfect place to say that word).

You’re probably wondering, “Why would adults do that? Why would they encourage something one day and discourage it the next?”

The only answer I can think of is that adults are totally BONKERS and should probably be avoided at all times. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and fine a small handful of grown-ups whom you can trust, but I’m sure we can all agree that you really have to keep an eye on most adults, most of the time.

Didn’t I just say that yesterday?! I couldn’t believe it when I came to that passage last night reading to the buggers, and suddenly this whole project of reading the Captain Underpants series for how it conveys skepticism to children occurred to me. I’m rusty on philosophical texts that would apply to that project, but god knows I got the time. And then I could suggest whether it’s an ethical thing to do or not (YES—if a person needs anything in this world it’s SKEPTICISM). How much you want to bet me I can do this, get it published in an ERIC journal someplace, and come back from sabbatical with an actual thing to show for it (which nobody ever does), plus then be actually qualified to teach in the graduate ED program--? HA! The idea is so ME that I turned to myself and thought: Where the hell have you been Bitch?

Jack Johnson – You’re Missing Me

court me with carbohydrates

Bloat is one of the major crimes against understanding. For instance, a person may make a promise but do so in words, which could be twisted to mean anything and even twisted to be the opposite of what the promise implied. A simple example. A man sees a dog, it is skittish and skinny and hurt and at an unreachable distance, but present and in need and quick and compelling. The man says to the dog, I won’t hurt you. He holds out his hand. The dog inches closer, and the man says it again, I promise I won’t hurt you. The dog inches closer, and the man captures it gently, “I won’t hurt you” as the leash goes around its neck and it growls but doesn’t bite. The next the thing the dog knows, it’s at the vet being put down for infirmity, the long-term results of unwantedness. This is a more humane end than the dog was doomed to before the man caught it—so did the man keep or break his promise? You tell me.

The language problem gets worse with abstract concepts. In particular, I have been trying to understand the meaning of “lonely”. When I say, “I am lonely” I know what I mean. But repeated back to me, I can get confused, because the translation that friends and therapists and books offer back are things that don’t mean “I am lonely.” They mean things like “I have low self esteem”, I am “not my own best friend”, I “fear my own death”, bla bla etc. These ideas have nothing to do with loneliness. Loneliness has two physical components: it is cold and it is hungry. Period. So it is me who is making the language mistake, because I should say in the first place: “I am cold and I am hungry.” My ass cheeks are like hot water bottles someone filled months ago and are now a soft kind of frozen. And I can’t eat because what I have a taste for is a recipe the next man who warms me up knows—it’s something man-food, cheese melted on waffles or some such thing.

I am waning with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and my arms crossed.

I was going to make a joke now by applying these thoughts to the repeated suggestion by one of my friends that I register on eharmony because “it was designed by a psychologist.” I find this very funny, and the pictures of whitey-white people would be great with captions like ‘Where Barcaloungers Go to Find Each Other.’

But: The men I kissed on the mouth I only did so after I spent months inching closer to it, skittish itty bitty advances, retreating and inching again, and even after all that it was a bit like hurdles in gym class where it’s make it over or break your neck. When I wake up for my nightly bout of insomnia, in a few minutes I give myself before I put my thoughts away and become my own best kick in the ass, I let desire float from me into the night, and I fill my nose and stomach with that man who smells like himself and soap and who hasn’t tried to put me down (yet). I ache once, and then amuse myself, maybe by writing my imaginary eharmony profile: will pin and mount you like a butterfly for months of seemingly distracted flirtatious frigidity, followed (suddenly) by an instinct to touch you every time you pass by closely enough, like you do with children and your dog and all things good and warm, while I tell jokes at every opportunity. Until you disappear right before my eyes. (And then I’ll save you from the Apocalypse, so not to worry.)

Ane Brun – To Let Myself Go

cake - carbon monoxide

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for Virgo this week: Jeff Greenwald (www.ethicaltraveler.com) has traveled extensively all over the planet for the last quarter of a century. "Do the citizens of the world revile us Americans more each year?" I asked him. He said that while millions upon millions have come to despise the U.S. government, most don't actually hate us, the American people. That's because they know firsthand the corruption and tyranny of their own countries' politicians, and so they don't hold our awful government against us. Let this distinction serve as a guide for you, Virgo. The time is right for you to fight inept institutions and rotten traditions and bad ideas, but without hating anyone.

(When is the time not right to fight against bullshit while trying not to hate anyone, I wonder? Maybe next week I get to wallow in ineptitude and hate everybody's guts.)

red hot chili peppers - higher ground (stevie wonder cover)

As today is Oct. 1 and thus the beginning of the official housing switcharoo, where packing and booking movers etc. should start getting done, I'm of course doing pretty much zip. I found the "Moving Doctors" business card from the last time, and I can't wait really to get ol' Mike on the phone to explain that the stuff he moved from floor to floor in one house last year, and then moved across town half a year later, is now going back to the original house and the original floor it was on to start with. Maybe I'll ask him for a bulk-nutty discount.

On a brighter yet completely pointless note, as I was scrounging around downloading the above tune, I learned that Anthony Kiedis is about to turn 44 years old (and a Scorpio no less, be still my heart).



there's playful in his face, I like