everyday splendor

moving right along

2011-08-24T15:03:00.005+02:00

This is to let you know that this blog has moved to http://everydaysplendor.wordpress.com. To subscribe to the RSS feed, you can use the same address. There's a lot more room to breathe at the new place, so I hope you'll come and hang out.

lifeless

2011-06-04T12:18:00.009+02:00

What you tend to do is neglect the people you think can take care of themselves, the ones who wobble but don’t fall down (much), the ones who have it good in one way or another and can get along fine without you, and maybe you even resent them. But nobody has it good enough to not need you, really. Then you let yourself be depleted, you pour yourself into the bottomless pit of the ones who neeeeeeeeeed you, who greedily suck the life out of you with their flapping and whining and squeaky wheeling and dealing. Quick! Stop the bleeding!

chasm

2011-05-02T18:56:00.027+02:00

When you're trying to appear casual hoping no one will notice as you poke around in your memory for the last place you saw your boxcutter just in case and when blaring all day in the brain containing said memory is what can only be described as assault rock a song called eulogy to be precise and when the head containing said brain is throbbing and the body attached to said head burdens more than bears you to the point where you picture yourself peeling open your own chest the way Clark Kent does his shirt and stepping out of your body all fresh and new and strong and you're not on drugs then you probably should be. When afternoon of a faun is playing the next day you know you somehow leaped the chasm in your sleep which doesn't mean it won't reappear any moment now like it does. Anyway, no recollection of the boxcutter.

kaleidoscope

2011-02-14T19:16:00.010+01:00

There is almost only pain right now and a rushing rotting feeling like in time lapse and no strength. Pointy shards inside tumble and poke when I move and when I don't. Pain leads to two places only, fury and despair, themselves a fever and a wasting disease respectively, thus compounding the problem. I'll sometimes take the little white pill that turns me into a sugar cube melting on the back of my tongue, that sucks the pain rot fury despair away like the sand under your feet with the last of the wave. But you can't just be a sugar cube all the time or you'd miss too much.

collection

2010-11-20T08:27:00.006+01:00

Now that your collection is complete you can arrange your dolls on your shelf and twist their heads so they're looking at you and yank on their arms so they're reaching for you and take them down and change their clothes and put them back and make them stand up straight and feel so proud and satisfied because they are yours all yours and you are in control. But the problem is they're people. Dolls fall off shelves but people jump and when people break it's worse.

thrillseekers

2010-10-31T18:39:00.012+01:00

They buy and they buy and they buy things and they jump out of airplanes, greedy, insatiable, priapic, hot for the thrill. Poor things. Couldn't delay much less deny gratification, don't know the elusive creature will eat from your hand, tongue tickling your palm if you're still, or it'll sometimes slam into you and bend you over backwards in a tilt the world kiss. And there's nothing like that thrill, the one that is just suddenly there in the middle of mundane. They're so caught up in their pursuit they rush right past the sublime.

just wondering

2010-09-12T18:34:00.006+02:00

I wondered why they made the tubes such a pretty blue just to put them underground and then thought maybe it was like the fake Christmas tree we had when I was a kid where the metal tips of the big branches were one color so you'd know to stick them in the holes at the bottom of the tree and so on. And the red plastic flowers, of course, and how they got there and where they went because they weren't there the next day. Maybe they went home to a little girl. I took all the plastic flowers home from the table at my great-grandfather's wake when I was eight. At least the workers got to swim in that blue for a while. Or maybe they hate it by now.

glass houses

2010-08-31T10:24:00.004+02:00

From his tiny glass studio on my street he asks me how I am every day and I do the same and feel absurd, but he says fine and smiles. He has a sparkly smile and pees himself all day. This morning he asked would I do some shopping for him, he'd pay, just a little bottle of rosé? I said maybe, went on, took the long way back to hide from him and consult my oracle, who answered comfort in extremis. I delivered two ham sandwiches and a vitamin drink and a bottle of rosé and walked home mourning.

installation

2010-08-02T17:47:00.015+02:00

In the filthy central courtyard the slumlord installs a horizontal fence to suspend detritus above some shop's skylight, but today it is a gallery exhibiting a single piece: a kinetic sculpture, nicely framed by the stairwell window. Several artists are collaborating on this work. Gravity placed the objects side by side and later wind stacked them. I will run and see what rain did just now. It is untitled. I call it "beauty in spite."

escalator

2010-03-27T19:28:00.009+01:00

Worn down, scratched up, shredded, fading. We get there gradually, as we ride along. Most of us hold the handrail. Work or money or a god or a cause. Love if you're lucky. I am. Whatever it is that protects you from the cutting edges, from the interstices that can suck you in and destroy bits of you if you're not careful. And we mend and polish, so that for moments or years we appear less ravaged. Sometimes we walk the other way, thinking we can defy the rules.

cloying

2010-01-15T18:22:00.015+01:00

Imagine a diet of nothing but wedding cake. Knuckle-deep buttercream on cake two times too sweet. A wedding is an event like a trip to Paris, rather rare, and sometimes you skip the cake, admit it. Not an option when you live here. Your eyes are force-fed all that confectionery, you feel like those French geese. Even my ceilings have frosting. Just the occasional bran muffin is all I'm saying. Flat surfaces the color of sand every once in a while, to rest my eyes.

yellowing

2009-12-24T11:01:00.012+01:00

I had an Indian summer, deceptive lengthy lushness, I was lucky. But I feel my edges getting crunchy now, yellowing, my middle getting tissue thin. Late autumn came with a sudden cold snap, a breaking sound. In a snap, like a change of set more than season, youth feels gone today.

earth turtle

2009-10-18T09:09:00.009+02:00

I dreamed the earth was a sea turtle. I did. Its back was crawling with tiny humans frantically hacking at its shell with ice picks, and the earth turtle just floated there, placid, docile. It knew but felt no pain. It was looking into my eyes. I have been there, you know, inches from a green sea turtle, suspended in time and place as it held my gaze, trying to know what I was. The earth turtle of my dream stared at me just like that, eyes full of ancient wisdom and profound sadness. They know not what they do, they seemed to say.

love

2009-08-29T20:32:00.011+02:00

Someone, a Facebook friend, a total stranger, wrote on her wall Where there is love, there is life (Gandhi, she said), and that might be true. In Paris there is love, that is true, just like you always heard. I told some Africans once Don't go to LA, you can smell the hate. They went and saw concrete and concrete and famous names in sidewalk stars, but no hate, or maybe they didn't recognize it. No stars on Paris sidewalks, but there is love spilling onto them, at least in my neighborhood.

zen

2009-07-23T11:10:00.006+02:00

This living in the moment thing is a nice idea but it's just survival. Two bars of pick a song and maybe a hit of weed and suddenly a beach and flowers and the smell of coconut for example. Don't dare poke around for the loss pleasure joy pain that lie ahead or behind that you would see if you could see, would let yourself see, over the high, high walls of this moment. But those walls are there for a reason. Anyway, there is more than enough inside them, usually, if you're doing it right.

three dog night

2008-11-19T17:19:00.011+01:00

For a split second it's adorable but by the time the picture's taken you're mad. They have no right, they can't even feed or shelter themselves. But then, who could deny anyone, especially them, that doggy affection, protection. The warmth with winter coming. Dogs mean more coins in the bucket. Exploitation. But they're all happier for it, and you wonder who rescued whom.

elephant

2008-08-26T20:00:00.011+02:00

I knew that cloud. Not the flying elephant; the one above it. It had come for me before, though not often and not in a while. It always dissipates, eventually, or I shake it somehow, usually on my own power. But I had to hop on the flying elephant to outrun it this time.

devil inside

2008-08-13T17:47:00.008+02:00

You construct yourself and you're solid. You know the stuff of you. You could find your way through you with your eyes closed and your hands tied behind your back. Until the day. And then you wonder where in you that stranger, that danger, have been hiding all this time. Or if they just got in. And how?

age with grace

2008-07-18T10:16:00.008+02:00

I will call her Grace. She is my mother, her mother, and her mother. I am aging, not yet aged, but soon enough. Her hat is not red, she has no society. She has forgotten she was ever beautiful but maybe if she chose that pink and that green she has not forgotten beauty. Next time I will talk to her. I will call her Grace. I will see her and raise her. There but for grace go I.

tmh

2008-07-07T09:15:00.004+02:00

They play pedestrian chicken here in Paris, the too-many humans on the sidewalks barreling, careening, shoulder checking. And they invade your eyes as if entitled. In California there was sauntering and no trampling, or the shelter of your car. Sunglasses to keep the other humans out too. But there's not enough sun here to keep the people out of your eyes.

always

2008-05-14T21:49:00.005+02:00

Faith is always, always misplaced.

plain ugly

2008-05-04T12:50:00.011+02:00

It's usually there, somewhere, but you don't always see it at first and too often you miss it entirely. The hidden treasure. For a moment I did not see that these panes held the sky and then some. By now your crowded mind ignores the details, processing only the minimal information you require to comprehend and navigate your world, your life. Unlearn this. See everything again.

substance

2008-03-08T13:20:00.002+01:00

It's so easy and usually fun to be cute and on display but some days you would rather be invisible. Then no gaze can assault you, you don't feel the heat and breath of pressing faces. Words cannot be directed at you. No demands. Other people take up less space when you disappear, rather than the other way around.

the happiest place on earth

2008-02-19T17:07:00.002+01:00

A carefully constructed world where dreams come true, just like in that when you wish upon a star song, one of the songs pumping mandatory joy into your head through speakers hidden on anything fixed while you stand in line for Peter Pan or a toilet. Everywhere, people drenched and drowning in thick, sticky fun. The sparrows at the happiest place on earth are heedless of the princess purses and pirate patches in the gift shops. All they need to be happy is crumbs.

webcam

2007-11-22T20:28:00.001+01:00

It's just Thursday here, in Paris, but I talked to everybody and they talked turkey. It's just Thursday here, though. So I went to a webcam that showed me my beach. It looks like it's just Thursday there, too. The ocean doesn't even know that much.

that red

2007-09-28T20:20:00.002+02:00

There was a single early bloom on the gerbera she had transplanted months ago at the last possible moment from the greenhouse window to the ICU corner of the planter just outside the front door. Real light, real dirt. That red. She felt it in her throat. I love that color. It makes me happy. It's not the color, her friend said. It's the beauty. Then for a long time the beauty was there, caught in her throat.

stigma

2007-08-27T15:16:00.001+02:00

Skritch silence skritch is wake up in Paris music made by men in green sweeping water-filled gutters with plastic brooms. People tend not to wear the color here. My favorite. In winter you need it most. I gobble the greens of the trash men and their brooms with my eyes. There's not enough to go around. But they are there with their music, early in the morning.

foreign soil

2007-07-24T16:37:00.001+02:00

This was home before. Skies full of palms and air that feels more like my own breath. I am here for a time, for a moment, and surprised to find that the dream state persists. So there is nowhere real, now. I'm trapped on the other side of the mirror. That's OK. Most of me has always lived there anyway.

unreal

2007-07-16T15:58:00.002+02:00

There is a quality to the light here and something else I don't know what, but it never seems quite real. For some of us no other place will do, and so we exist in a dream state. In American cities, you find coffee in tiny cups and backwards accents on wrong letters. They are not Paris.

just me

2007-06-30T20:24:00.002+02:00

Solitude. An essential part of a balanced diet. Sometimes you can even find it in Paris, on a Saturday evening, in June.

one day

2007-06-29T08:40:00.001+02:00

One day he was there, finally. Orange hair, hungry. The sweetest day. Others came, that day and others, to others. They keep coming and then one day they are men and they are magnificent, these men we made. But who wouldn't trade this one day for the other—just for one day?

camouflage

2007-06-16T14:22:00.001+02:00

A tiny, cobblestoned side street in Paris. A dark office. Comprising its unsightly façade: a once modern doorknob; dull, discolored paint and metal—no match for the elements; shiny curtains of some synthetic fabric. Impersonal and cold. Neglected. But not devoid of beauty, thanks to the serendipitous harmony of hues. And then, this cat. Blending perfectly with the inadvertent palette and yet, in high contrast. Soft, warm, alive.