To be turned into links....

A Book
I recently (re)read:
Mirabilis by Susann Cokal

A Movie
I recently watched:
Being Human (with Robin Williams)

For now, I have to run off to a beer tasting at The Curious Grape, in Shirlington Virginia.

link happy

here's another link to a band that I got introduced to when I attended a Mary Prankster show in Virginia last autumn:

The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band

MARY

PRANKSTER

hah!!

yes, sometimes bothering to look up the directions helps.

This girl is retiring...

thats a link, folks.

lets try it again...


and in case it still didn't take, the link is supposed to be www.maryprankster.com

I have hope, I have faith, but will the link thingy really work this time??

Mary Prankster is retiring! And if that link won't work, then what kind of world do we live in???

Tarot

So, currently indulging in a new obsession (or maybe I should say "re-newed") these are the decks I really would like to own:

Celestial Tarot (I loooove the art work and the astrological references)
Tarot of the White Cats ( I have a white cat and I think these look adorable. Plus, its a nice way to learn 6 languages!)
Motherpeace Tarot (I just get a nice feeling about this one)

and maybe also

The Rider-Waite Tarot (this was the first kind of tarot I ever used...an old pack of my mom's from the early 70s)
The Tarot of Art Noveau (sexy and Italian! but several other languages are on this deck too)
Art Noveau Tarot (love the colors)

I also quite like the looks of:
Gendron Tarot,
Chinese Tarot,
Old English Tarot ,
Tapestry Tarot,
and Legend: The Arthurian Tarot.

Its nice to read something with pictures for a change.

(By the way, the book Ahab's Wife has illustrations in it! I always thought that more books for adults should be illustrated.)

tarot and melba 'snacks'

i thought they were called 'toast'

once upon a time...

today I carefully scrutizinized (sorry I'm under the influence of cheap yet drinkable wine) 'the medieval scapini tarot"

by the way it is not medieval. one card depicts rasputin!!'

nevertheless...a fun time.

then I went out and bought "the pocket goddess tarot" by kris waldherr

"I wish they made us learn about tarot in school" I said, after finding websites such as www.tarotforum.net and www.learntarot.com. there are some interesting decks out there. "tarot of the white cats" (I have a white cat.) "the triple goddess tarot" "power of flowers tarot" "inner child cards"

"oh come on you know tarot has to be an out of school thing"

"thats not true! I could see you doing tarot, llike the inner child one, with kids in art class"

blarghy blar blar...

anyways my friend said "I could see you teaching a class about tarot"

"yeah....but then you never know...you could get some girl in your class whose mother is a psychic and knows more about it than you do."

"you're really out there you know that? but its good."

......

"i mean, you are! you're obsessed!"

(this was a convivial and funny exchange)

mineral spa...

is what I said to someone shoving a dirty laundry bag full of "not filthy" laundry behind my back

"how could you be more comfortable now?"

and a pillow at my side

"I remember this from my mother and my grandmother...pillows all the time...theres a female sense....in in in...um...a a a... well...I don't think its wrong to talk about one's family in conjunction with one's mind...I think freud fucked that up...to be honest...but how...I don't know..."

sound of a lighter...cigarette lighting....

patting adjusting

anticipation of typewriter keys clacking

If you really like a book...

then never, never go online and look up the reading group questions.

especially when its a long book and you are only in the beginning stages.

because, for sure, one of the questions will give away vital information about the story

and then, you will mutter grouchily, to your monitor, "thanks for ruining it!"

BLAH.

another interesting not a link

has now been turned into a link!

http://www.williambowles.info/poems/arlette/cornered.html
Cornered
by A. Lurie

compliment

fr the "The Baroness" in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS on the Sept. 17 entry on "Conchology" (http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/) is very interesting. That is not a link. I don't know how to make my links work.

The new book I'm reading is appropriate to the new place. I LOVE Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund. I also very much enjoyed her readings and "workshop" at the Binghamton University Writing by Degrees conference. I had a brief conversation with her, as she signed my books (I also bought Four Spirits) about the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She likes The Long Winter the best. I can't really decide which one I like the best...I think that the first one I read was Little House on the Prairie, and I know I must've read The Long Winter either as the second or third book. (I read them all out of order). I can remember being in third grade and I had just moved to Renton, Washington, from Latham, New York, and I was the only kid in my class who liked those books.

I got teased a little bit by a new friend I made at my school, Campbell Hill Elementary, which was a school that had not one, not two, but THREE recesses. She was called Cheryl, she was skinny with a square jaw with a large mole, and long blond hair, and her family was on welfare and used food stamps. I think that she and I were two white girls who hung out with a larger group of mostly black girls who played on the bars every recess. Not that I think I noticed it back then, so much, but just in my memory as an older person, I notice it now. I learned to
skin the cat, and to do "the pencil" and other things which I don't remember the names of, but I could describe what I did. I don't remember which one "skin the cat" was. "The pencil" was when you made your whole body as straight as a board and flipped over the bar backwards. "Cherry Bombs" were when you hung upside down and, no hands, swung around on your knees and flipped off a high bar and landed on your feet. I only did that one time, on a playground, when my mother's boyfriend was close by and spotting me.

Also, at Campbell Hill, I learned to jump double dutch and play tetherball. I think that the first time I ever saw the older girls jumping double dutch was on St. Patrick's Day, maybe. "I am Irish!" I remember a dark skinned girl saying, with a tone of irony, or self-mocking, the one who was jumping. I secretly decided that I wanted to learn how to "jump Irish."

I almost think I love this book as much as I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books back then. A light house figures predominantly in the first part of the book, Ahab's Wife. Since Michigan is full of lighthouses, being on the Great Lakes, this seems very fitting...

moving

I just picked up a little ten foot truck (which is nonetheless the biggest vehicle I've ever driven) to carry my belongings out to Michigan. And my internet is going to get cut off at any second...

I will mention that when I went to NYC, my friends and I saw this rather interesting show in Central Park. It consisted of roller bladers, either in various costumes, stages of undress, or street clothes, dancing in their own distinct ways to music that...well I can't remember exactly but it tended to have a heavy dance beat but it was not techno (?) I think...to a back drop of about 40 people on a hill waving and swirling around multi-colored tie dyed flags.

And what that all was for, other than for the pure enjoyment/entertainment/amusement of the participants and the spectators, we did not know.

on the pleasures of dining

A new friend has had an interesting affect on my eating habits recently.

I have become a fan of eating a dinner salad very slowly. Not a wimpy salad, mind you, but a Greek salad, which includes feta cheese and olives and maybe just a few anchovies. Accompanied by a vinegar and oil type house dressing on the side.

So we talk, and I eat my salad very s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y. If the waiter keeps coming by and asking if I'm done, I say that I'm still working on it. My friend slowly consumes a bowl of french onion soup and a small tossed salad. Then for dessert, we each have a slow cup of peppermint tea.

This is not the way I was raised to eat.

Good yogurt tastes like dessert

I concluded today, after sampling the following:

1) Liberte "Six Grains Stirred Yogourt" (with raspberries, buckwheat, rice, barley, wheat, rye, oats) 1.5 % milkfat

2)Liberte Mediterranee Yogourt "Wild Blackberry fruit at the bottom" 8% milkfat

3) Stoney Field Farm "Vanilla Truffle" organic yogurt with cocoa at the bottom and pieces of a Hershey Bar thrown in for good measure. Fat content undetermined.

Dandelion Greens

Tonight, for the first time, I tried cooking myself some dandelion greens.

Tonight, I also found a very interesting article on the internet.



does it work?

If all goes well...

tomorrow I will be taking my first day trip to New York City, ever! I think in the morning I'll drive to New Jersey and I'll be meeting some friends from Maryland and Philly. How exciting!
This trip has been too long in coming.

I've been to Long Island before and I went to the Kennedy airport when I was six, but that doesn't really count.

Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen

Du, Du Liegst Mir Im Herzen

Du, du liegst mir im Herzen,
Du, du, Liegst mir in Sinn.
Du, du, machst mir viel Schmertzen,
Weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

Ja, ja, ja, ja,
weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin.

Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel #2 Lyrics

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
xxxxxx xx xxxx xx xx xxxxxx xxx
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don't need you,
I need you, I don't need you
and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And then you got away, didn't you babe...

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can't keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that's all, I don't even think of you that often.

my car...

my car, my car, my car...my kar-ma...seems to be driving exceptionally well...

conversationalist topics

car
rent
money
work
job
divorce
stress
IRS tax law anyone???