proteanme

Just because it takes a lot to surprise me and I don’t believe in astrology doesn’t mean that’s that I’m a cynical. For a while now I’ve been letting people call me cynical and I’ve really got to stop doing that because what they really mean is I’m skeptical.  And doubt, which I have a fair amount of,  isn’t the same thing as scorn, and me being doubtful doesn’t make me contemptuous or bitter.

If I wanted to add to my credo I’d say that the planets don’t figure into my experience of how the world works. I try to figure the world out by looking at what people do and people do wonderful and horrible things in equal measure.

Also, I’ve had it with snarkiness. I think when people say snarky things they think they’re being witty and clever. But really they’re just being mean.

When art and politics are mixed just right it’s a pretty incredible experience. I’ve not read this poet before, but she sure got my attention with the following verse.

False Documents

They ran the numbers twice for you
giving you the benefit of the doubt
but you knew the computer at the other
end of the officer’s PDA would not find
your brown number in its little black index.
You drove exactly one mile per hour below the speed
limit. You buckled your baby into his car seat according
to instructions. You signaled for exactly three seconds
before you turned left. You wanted to hide the Subway wrappers,
the empty box of Orbitz gum. Evidence of Big Macs.
You wanted to drink the Mountain Dew before it turned toxic
in the hot Phoenix sun as you asked, doesn’t this green
sludge make me American enough? But you didn’t
move because you knew the officer would have taken
that for gun-finding or drug-hiding or some other supposed
Mexican sport. You with your hands at ten and two
wondered how long the bus ride the officer would take you
on would last and whether they would provide any water.
You wondered, as the officer put hand to holster,
how dangerous it would be to down that Mountain
Dew then and there, in the wide-open American air.

Nicole Walker

Uncut pie

Originally uploaded by proteanme

I haven’t made a pie for a couple years. But it’s RU’s birthday and that meant it was time. The crust was the bomb, but the peaches got a little under cooked. Still good though. We’ve been celebrating in one or the other since Friday night tacos. We saw this really wonderful French film this morning while we were waiting for the skies to clear – The Father of My Children. I can’t recommend it enough. So sweet and sad. And all the nuance and beauty that American films don’t trust their viewers to get

I wrote this several years ago and I keep thinking I can user some of it for a poem. It’s about summer when I was a kid.

We spent the rest of the summer in my backyard or Tim’s and when we weren’t there, we were riding our bikes up and down the street with one of the George’s (pet snake) wrapped around our handle bars. We passed rainy days jumping up and down on my bed, singing to Jesus Christ Superstar and the Jackson Five. We found the Playboy magazines our parents had hidden under their mattresses and we swung on the trapeze my father hung in the garage. We wrote a play about saving a tree and staged it on my front porch and charged every kid in the neighborhood a nickel to come see it. We ate Oreo cookies and Space Sticks and cut the crusts off the ham sandwiches we made. We drank Koolaid sitting on the wall of my porch, legs dangling over the side, dropping half melted ice cubes down into the patches of dirt beneath our feet. On muggy evenings my mother took us to Lindners Ice Cream shop. She stayed in the car while we waited in line, waiting our turn to order milkshakes and sundaes with lids on them so we could take back home. On days it was so hot that the pavement burnt our feet, we’d ride over to Butler college a couple blocks away from where we lived. We’d throw our bikes in the grass and chase each other under the rows of sprinklers that rained down on the big lawn in front of the library. The water arced in the sun and cast off halos wherever we looked.

I wanted to add something to my credo post, which is I believe you should try not to do things that cause you to feel pain and humiliation and if you do you should try and forgive yourself as best your can and then try hard not to those things again. Just practicing this could probably take up a lifetime, although if you want to do other things, like go to school  or climb a mountain or read the classics, it shouldn’t be thought of as mutually exclusive endeavor.

Cast a spell

on me
wrap me in

whatever
warp of words

come to
your mouth

until I gulp
them whole

of thought
whatever spin

we enter when
we so imbibe

what neither
had in mind

-Ciaran Carson

I wore a pair of shoes today that I’ve warn exactly twice in the last two years. Once was at my dad’s funeral and once was at Ned and Kristi’s wedding. I don’t know why I thought about that when I looked down at my feet today, but that’s what happened. I was walking down the sidewalk and looking at my feet and remembering how I’d worn these shoes to the funeral and it made me feel sad to think of these shoes as funeral shoes. But then I remembered wearing them to the wedding and it felt like a relief not to have a pair of funeral shoes.

A real summer adventure. Left the house at 9am and didn’t come back until 9pm. Spent a couple hours at the Oregon Country Fair. It’s one of the queerest non-queer events I’ve been to. I suspect I’d say the same thing if I went  to Burning Man. But I digress. RU and I took the longest way home, riding all these back roads, passing farmlands and vineyards and clumps of trees and cows and sheep eating up the grass in their pastures. We took a ferry across the Willamette, stopped at a roadside fruit stand and got organic blueberries, and had dinner at a taco truck in Woodburn where they make their tortillas by hand. I’m happy to be sun burnt and tired.

More blue skies and hot temperatures and I refuse to complain about it. Or listen to complaints about it. Not that they’re not valid, I just don’t have receptive ears. I want to have an all on love affair with summer without having to fend off the naysayers.

Thanks to my friend, Shoshanna, I put in some serious-for-me biking miles last night, which included riding out to St. Johns, crossing over the deck of the bridge and riding back on Hwy 30. And Shoshanna was wearing a dress and flats with a strap! All in all, including my work commutes,  I think I might have ridden about 30 miles or so yesterday, making the pizza at end of the ride well worth it. It’s a pretty stunning view from the deck of the bridge, especially on a night like last night, when it was so clear and there wasn’t much traffic. The best part, though, may have been coming down the hill off the bridge and stopping for hydration in this pull out tucked into the edge of Forest Park. We were immersed into forest’s aroma. It was like diving into the deep end of summer.

I went to bed feeling tired in a good way and slept with the fan facing me.

I count myself lucky on all fronts.

Real summer has finally showed up and we’re slated to get some pretty hot days here. Already, people are complaining about it, which I just don’t get. C’mon man, you can’t have summer without sweating, flip flops, bare skin, sticking to to your chair, sitting in front of a window fan and sleeping under only a single sheet, if that. I say bring it on, heat wave and all. For me these days are like a cute girl who comes late to a party, saddles up beside me and flirts shamelessly even though the host is about ready to kick us all out. I’m a fan of those kind of girls. They just make the world a whole lot more pleasant. So flirt with me all you want summer. Hell, tease me, even. I’m your guy. I fall for you every time.