Wednesday, April 28, 2010

This is what happened

My home situation has not been the greatest, for a while now. The friend with whom I am living, and have been living with for 7 years total now has been having myriad issues - many concerning a certain male acquaintence of hers. As a result, there have been at least 3 restraining orders levied against this male acquaintence. That is the background.
Last Friday at about three in the morning, there was banging at our door. A lot. Based on my prior experience with the situation, I assumed it was him at the door. Locked out by her after she'd invited him over in violation of the most recent of the restraining orders. I ignored the banging. However, after a bit I threw my hands up, got out of bed, threw on running clothes and turned my fan off. At that point, I heard voices. Multiple voices, some female. It was the police. I unlocked and opened my bedroom door to find that he had piled furniture in front of the door. I later learned that he was barricaded in her bedroom and she had fled. I was alone with him.
I started trying to move the furniture from the door. I said "I'm trying to open the door." It became clear that nobody on the other side of the door had heard this when the police broke open the door and large chunks of it collided with me. My eyes and mouth were filled with the powdery, grainy innerds of our front door. There was yelling. The police had their guns drawn, they told me to show them hands, I could only clutch my injured eyes.
I sat out on our front step for a while. One male officer told me I was going to be under arrest, asked me in I was on drugs. Two female officers were more sympathetic. No one asked if I needed medical attention, despite the fact that I was bleeding from my lip and my eyes were full of debris. I felt awful, I felt like I'd done something wrong. I was also relieved that my dog hadn't been there, that I'd dropped her off at my parents' house just that week.
Later at the ER - after they'd refused to treat me at Urgent Care - I found out that I had corneal abrasions. I also had a badly bruised lip, so badly bruised that they checked my teeth to make sure none had been loosened. I had a scratch on my nose, a large bruise on my chest and later, I also developed a black eye. The black eye I'd always secretly wanted.
It seems to be over, at least for the time being. I'm moving May 7. Moving in with my boyfriend, someone I'd known in college. Someone who I trust with my dog, and who my dog adores.
I can't wait for normal. I can't wait to have a kitchen and cook our first meal in it. I can't wait to buy furniture and decorate and have some plants out on the balcony. I've been walking around with a smashed up face for almost a week now, I can't wait to have a new home.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

When he came for the family

"They looked at their daughter standing with her music
in her hand, the page covered with dots and
lines, with its shared language. They knew
families had been taken. What they did not know
was the way he would pick her cello up
by the scroll neck and take its amber
torso-shape and lift it and break it
against the fireplace. The brickwork crushed the
close-grained satiny wood, they stood and
stared at him."
-Sharon Olds

I love this. The picture it traces, and I'm trying to use 'trace' meaningfully here. I love the detail in the description of the cello, but I almost want to take the bones of the rest of the poem and fill them in to a similar degree. It's not to the point of frustration, but to the point of tantalization. ;o)

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

In our room

"On the strip between the lakes
I look for some trace of you
in everything that moves.
At the tip of its wake, a coot's
bone bill points through
the leaves' sponged-ink shade,
slate feathers splitting the air;
the water quivers, bright
as your bath-drenched hair
shaking off silvered bits.
A tern pulls up, tilting
through the spreading light,
then drops beak and body fast.
Two dark swifts dip past
swamp oaks like brown
twilight in our room, blinds
barring your face, while your lips
closed on some dream sound,
some word I didn't catch,
a wood-duck's straight-seamed wedge,
a cowbird shuddering from
the lake on loose bent wings."
-W. S. Di Piero

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Made in spain

http://www.josemadeinspain.com/home.htm

Simply the best! I love this show for its content and its delivery. For its unabashed wackiness and its beauty and poetry. I wish I could adequately convey just how utterly charming and captivating Jose Andres is. Not to mention - hello, Spanish food!
What I wouldn't give to be eating this (http://www.josemadeinspain.com/popUp/Eng105SearedTuna.htm) right now. Or this, http://www.josemadeinspain.com/recipes/clamsInParsley.htm. It's rainy and, at 49, rather alarmingly chilly outside to compared to what it has been lately. This is why I end up addicted to food/travelogues.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Double down

http://www.kfc.com/nutrition/pdf/kfc_nutrition.pdf

I give you, reader, the Double Down. Weighing in at 540 calories and 23 grams of fat (and whether or not that includes all sandwich accoutrments is up for grabs,) it is KFC's answer to all the people who seem to be clinging to their Atkins and South Beach aspirations approximately half a dozen years later. What does this sandwich say about us as a culture, I ask you. It could be placed firmly in the Fear of Carbs camp (as a metaphor for our mob-mentality willingness to fear whatever it become strendy to be fearful of) if it weren't for that damn breading on the chicken. What lurks there? Hidden carbs. One might lean towards labelling this as Simple American Excess. Why adulterate the sheer, fatty pleasure of a fried chicken sandwich with bread when one can replace the bread with EVEN MORE sandwich content?! However despite the impressiveness of that big 540 cal/23 fat g, this is far from the (quote/unquote) worst sandwich available out there. But it IS bad for you. So maybe it's just the sheer ridiculousness of how it goes about its business of being bad for you. I mean, this sandwich doesn't go through any backbends and machinations of hiding that it might potentially be bad for you. It right up there in your face saying, "Look at me. I have no qualms about you knowing that I might be bad for you. I'm going to straight up show you by eliminating any lingering illusions of good health that might be present in a bun. AND you are still going to eat me. BaddaBOW!"
So, I'd conclude that this is an audacious sandwich. And we have to decide if this is a quality we might want in a friend.

A remedy for Insomnia

"Not sheep coming down the hills,
not cracks on the ceiling—
count the ones you loved,
the former tenants of dreams
who would keep you awake,
once meant the world to you,
rocked you in their arms,
those who loved you . . .
You will fall asleep, by dawn, in tears."

- Vera Pavlova

I like the word insomnia, though not the implications. I think there's something about the m-into-n sound that becomes so musical surrounded by all those disparate vowels in such close proximity.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Weight

Today I feel heavy. And actually, yesterday felt much the same. Not heavy as in overweight or fat, this would be something tangible with a set course of action engendered by the very definition of it. The heavy I feel is of the non-literal sort. I feel burdened, encumbered. Every cell of my body burstingly full of lead or plutonium-244. My limbs are slow to wake and respond, animated by underwater reflexes. They impede eachother in their tedious progress.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Spring

"To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death
But what does that signify?
Not only under the ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Oh, please no

In 1825, the French philosopher Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”