Latest Outrages Against the Canons of Fashion and Good Sense

Ebayed, purchased and am presently swaddled in an enormous old shearling coat. Emma says, "Janis Joplin. Or, no, who's that English guy who froze at the north pole?" Beard is enormous and blonde with a big streak of white down the middle. Eyes increasingly crinkled, distant, indifferent, registering irritation and humor at wrong moments. Black cowboy boots with crazy Maori-Mex stitching make me about 6'7". The phrase "get-up" might come to mind. "Costume." "Assemblage." Excessive. Outlandish. I'm starting to resemble myself. Keep adding layers.

Touch off palpable alarm and mirth upon entering Trader Joe's. Talk with skinny jeans scraggly beard guy about cloudy olive oil, how it will clear up at room temperature, whether this is a room, what the temperature might be, the increased greenness of the oil when cloudy, the weirdness and beauty of olive oil. To the no-longer-refrigerated hand-whatevered flour tortillas, which are totally fucking excellent, which excel my own attempts at tortillas, now aborted. Draw looks of amusement and horrified quasi-admiration from a woman. Buy six bags of tortillas because sometimes they're out, because they're so dern good when coated with oil and crisped on cast iron skillet on stove and then doused in butter and cinnamon sugar. Dang.

When Penny, the daughter of a colleague, was four the universe said something to me through her. She turned up at school one day in a faux shearling with enormous tortoise shell Wayfarer's which she refused to take off for the duration of my attempted interrogation. She also wore a leopard print mini-skirt, lime leggings and super sparkly ruby red slippers. Totally awesome. Now that she is five and can tell what goes together we have begun to part ways. But no matter. There was a period of time there when she was my polestar: the distant, twinkling object on which I set my gaze and kept walking. Now I will find my own way.

Praise and Blame

"Laus et vituperatio"
Geoffrey Hill, from The Triumph of Love

Boating and alcohol and boots you can't break in,
and other things I'd explain if I knew where to begin.
It's true this family is a train wreck
scattered back to the Fall,
but there's no one to blame.
Those are your own footsteps in the hall.
That's all.

Bring misery match sticks,
I'll bring/ catastrophe kindling--
and meet me in the next dry forest--
we'll beat sparks from the same dead horse.
Now you work in the factory
where they make gods and governments
(but you're still not funny)
and angels that say, "No complaining"
and orphans who say, "No complaining."

Thatcher and Reagan. Pete Rose. Gene Simmons. You.
It's maybe okay I had nothing to say.
Who would I have said it to?
You said anger was just fashion, you said
"cowards" you said "liars".
And we were only fifteen but what we saw in the city
looked like real blood, real fires.

Bring misery match sticks,
I'll bring/ catastrophe kindling--
and meet me in the next dry forest--
we'll beat sparks from the same dead horse.
Now I work in the factory where they make
intestines and breastbones. We tune them like radios
to angels that say, "No complaining"
and orphans who say, "No complaining",
and rich men who say, "No complaining",
and junkies who say, "No complaining",
and widows who say, "No complaining".

All Our Bases Are Belong To Us

My friend tells me I've been working a combination, trying to crack the code. It's true. Ever since Christmas I wake at five am. Chest tense. Mind and heart working the tumblers. "There's got to be a way." Wantu. Sunandfog. Playback theater. A one-man show. The Hidden Life of Human Beings. Surprise Wedding. Triptykos. The Hearth. Slow Club. Love Your Enemy.

Call Beth in San Francisco see if she needs a guy meet with the board and offer them part-time Doug's got an opening on the mountain go to the college and make nice with the brainiac pitch the parenting book find the name of that one guy from the coffee shop last summer who said he did workshops for Monsanto send an email to Trent's hedge fund operator keep building the website find the email of the author who bought the Nicoise salad send the left over writing from the youth book to Martin in London meet with the pastor from West Virginia push for a meeting with the Blackberry guy demand Frank and Andy invite you to Phoenix get Girl and Bear to the historical society.

Don't forget to work the present means: men's retreat in Minneapolis, Church of God in Orlando, Lutheran family workers in Kansas City, Presbyterian teenagers in Dallas, a Valentine's fundraiser....

Then last night Joseph sits at the counter and says, "All our bases are belong to us."

"What? What did you say?"

"All our bases are belong to us."

I looked at him. "What does that mean?"

"There's this Japanese action movie dubbed in English. At one point this one guys says to the other guy, 'All our bases are belong to us.' It's like some messed up translation." Joseph heads back downstairs to his computer programming. I wash the dishes but I can't stop repeating out loud, "All our bases are belong to us." It just makes me so damn happy and centered and releases the knot in my chest: "All our bases are belong to us."

Again, last night I can't sleep. Working the tumblers. Working the tumblers. I repeat the mantra about our bases and who they belong to until I fall asleep.

This morning an artist friend sent me an email with subject: Gentlemen Storyteller. His name was Jay. It was a 17 minute clip from ninety-nine percent dot com. I watched as the elderly gentlemen explained how he'd been hired by NASA to tell their story for their 50th anniversary. He spent a year listening and reading and talking to people. Now he had a story to tell. He began to tell the story. Ten seconds into his story I felt the tumblers fall: Cherry. Cherry. Cherry. "This is it!" I yelled. "What?" My wife called downstairs from the kitchen. "What did you say?"

I called upstairs. "It's clicked. I found the combination!" I ran upstairs my chest exploding like fireworks. "What is it?" Jill asked. "I figured it out." My heart opening, opening, opening into a beautiful unknown. I look at Jill and smile, "All our bases are belong to us. All our bases are belong to us."