The Upwardly Mobile See-Saw

That’s how life feels right now. Ups and downs and lack of real balance, but it’s like the overall trend is upward and I’m poised for good things.

This is an interesting age to be and it’s an interesting age to … be it in. =)

THIS TOO SHALL PASS [danny schmidt]

Austin boy, whose C’ville show I am sorry to have missed. Song linked below.
I’m temp unable to sit at a computer for very long, but I’ve got a non-quoting post for you in soon enough.
____
Well, things change fast
But this too shall pass
Better carve it on your forehead
Or tattoo it on your ass
Cause who can tell
When the clock strikes twelve
If today’s become tomorrow
Or if it’s all just gone to hell

My friend makes rings
She swirls and sings
She’s a mystic in the sense
That she’s still mystified by things
But scared to ask
How can nothing seem to last
Cause like a cancer in your body
It all just goes too fast

We think too big
We think our self is one whole thing
And we claim that this collection
Has a name and is a being
But deep inside
When every cell divides
It sets upon the rule that states
Self-interest is divine, and

Cancer, too
Lives by this golden rule
That you must do unto the others
As the others unto you
All for the best
Cause that’s all the life accepts
And so we kill it like a buffalo
With awe and with respect

Don’t ask God
Just holler at the the sky, cuz
She’ll tell it to you plainly
In the clouds that whisper by
And praise the shapes
And then praise the way they change
And they’ll teach you not to pray to light
Without you pray to rain

So I pray to hands
And I pray to needs
And I pray to blades of grass
To find forgiveness in the weeds
But as for health
I just never did believe
And so I never prayed myself
Except to those that prayed for me

The story goes
Or the way that I was told
There was a king that always felt too high
And then he fell too low
And so he called
All the wise men to the hall
And he begged them for a gift
To end the rises and the falls

And here’s the thing
They came back with a ring
It was simple and was plainly
Unbefitting of a king
Engraved in black, well
It had no front or back
But there were words around the band that said
Just know: This Too Shall Pass

more e.e. cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

e.e. cummings’ “i carry your heart with me”

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

A thing can be simple and a thing can be beautiful. It doesn’t need to be different things, but it is not always the same thing. This poem proves one or the other of those.

No Accounting for Nerdery

“I promised you 25% of the profit after expenses.”

Obviously after expenses, Star Trek character – that’s how you know you’ve arrived at PROFIT.

Not too lazy to linklove

On myself. Sort of.

Commercial Wisdom

This is a two-pointer.

They say the iPhone has an app for everything. I want an app that lets me search for restaurants by location, by hours open. Seriously, there are not many places open on Sunday nights.

I can’t stop being charmed by the man in the McDonald’s non-pretentious coffee commercial green shirt who says about his glasses, “I do need mine; they’re very real.” Or maybe I’m just charmed by that line, or the delivery.

Let The Right One In.

No way I could have watched this myself, but I'm glad to have seen it.

Nightmares become dreams?

Always let in like souls.

Tap out "kiss" to me.

Gringo’s Delight

I hear tell of a restaurant in Atlanta, a Mexican restaurant with a burger on the menu called Gringo’s Delight.

I want to eat this burger, even if it is just a normal burger. Or, if you’re a 30Rocker*, “I want to go to there.”

*30Rockster? 30Rockstar? A bit too flattering, that last one.

Small Happy Bouquet

A number of small, lovely items from a few weeks ago:

1) Back to the crackling warmth, facing out over the Eastern seaboard with my friend on my right. I see our bonfire shadows on fog. It’s so thick and gray, it’s a staggered, deep, misty canvas. I flap my arms like a bird. Not a graceful bird or a majestic bird. More like a turkey or a flustered, overweight penguin. My friend sees that I’m flapping and smiling. He starts to ask what I’m doing, but before he finished his question, he’s looked up and realized. He begins to do a macro-Vogue, full- and half-arms framing a torso rather than hands around face. We’re warm and we’re flailing and we are simultaneously become shadow puppets and puppeteers.

2) Squelching boots in red mud, I assume. It’s too dark to tell and we have to leave the warm, well-lit farm house, but there’s no reason to think it’s not the same red mud we slogged up through. Friend is holding a big black umbrella against a big black night sky. New moon. I hold a plastic superhero-paneled bowl holding leftovers of probably the best chicken salad-type dish that has been brought to a potluck, but maybe Friend holds it. Somehow, I light our way with two miniature plastic flashlights  supplied by the farm house denizens, considerate. Also, pink and blue on rainbow-colored lanyards, like twinned but independent headlights as we two walk on our four feet back to the car in the dark.

3) I reach up my arms and stretch out my fingers and they touch the ceiling. I am wearing only moderate boots. I am giddy. My arms come down so I can clap in reactionary glee. It is as happy as when I saw the fried chicken for eating.

Cloth Diapers Delivered

There is a van parked outside my house with this slogan on it. I am forcibly reminded of The Luck of Ginger Coffey.

I don’t know whether to hope for better luck than his or to be thankful if I get even his modicum of luck.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be cloth diapering, though. And if I do, I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be with the outsourcing of that task.

(Edit: I think it’s this business. I don’t think the van pictured matches the van I’ve seen aside from the name, but whatever. I can’t recommend them or anything, I just know that people get curious. And their children get poopy.)

Why don’t you know what Luby’s is?

 

I mention in passing to a friend the childhood ritual of being taken to Luby’s as a treat maybe once a week. I always got the same thing and darned if I don’t love my habits.

This friend looks at me blankly. Has no idea what a Luby’s is.

Oh. I know why you don’t. Below is a screenshot of the locations page.

 

I even get a little thrill when I see Luly’s on King of the Hill. (Yes, food is that big a deal to me.)

The last time I had to strike a “too” Texan cultural reference from my repertoire, it was homecoming mums.

PeekaAAAAAAUGH

Oh my God. This is the scariest photo. This is what made me scream out loud, home, alone. The baby farts bit is a valid point. Babies consume a lot of dairy.

It’s like you took your child and turned it into a Teletubbic, cancerous growth to attach to your own body. Why??

Cutest Out-of-Context Sylar Quote

“I’m not your apple.”

I don’t think I have to wait for any more shows to make this decision.

I do feel like I need to ‘break up’ with Heroes because guuuuh what is this nuts script-writing that’s going on? I’m not a particularly discerning consumer of television and film. I don’t notice most plot holes or ever “call” what’s going to happen later on.

But I do have a whacked-out-behavior-(ra)dar. I’m in this for the characters and the story and no one seems to be acting ‘right’. Who are these people? They don’t seem like the people we met previous seasons.

I’m sorry, Heroes. I will probably keep hanging on for a bit, but let’s be honest about things. We’re neither apple nor tree nor pie for each other anymore. Tragic.

Child: Unleashed

When I was growing up, we had a child leash of sorts. It was playskool brand, i think, and was really two white velcro wristcuffs with thin, colorful stripes going in the ‘hotdog’ (not ‘hamburger!’) direction, connected by plastic, spirally, phone-cordy red cord.

I loved that thing or the idea of it. I don’t know how we came to own it. My parents never once suggested we use it or ever put it on me.

I would velcro us together and they would put up with it – sometimes. More often than not, they’d sigh, unvelcro their wrist, and carry on whatever store transaction needed to be taking place. I am relieved now that my parents had enough shame/dignity to not have allowed that velcro leashing en serio.