dressing an invisible, flat person

LTLYM assignment # 55

I have another polaroid of a more recent significant outfit, but my parents' scanner just e-barfed everywhere. It's a piece of junk. I think it was maybe the first scanner ever invented? The title/description of this outfit is forthcoming. Maybe. 

Also, Christmas. Happy late Christmas. Presents are forthcoming. Maybe. No, presents really are forthcoming. Get excited.

Wolfspeak

WOLFSPEAK

by Dean Young

It's like Blueberry saying she's a lake

and all people can do is dump in her

busted refrigerators.

No, it's like you spend half your life kicking

the supports out from under stuff

to prove everything can float

and even though everything collapses,

So far, you say, so far.

No, it's like you're repeating yourself,

which is actually a bad copy of someone else

saying the world's a dream

of someone who's eaten nothing

but praying mantises for weeks.

No, the world's a dream

of someone eating the world

then throwing half away because

a banquet's not a banquet unless half's thrown away.

Well maybe, but it's also like you're digging

in the garden and you hear screaming

then thank god you missed the baby rabbits!

Well, if you're going to bring god in, 

it's like god wanted to hide you

only you got tired of waiting to be found

so you leapt into the garage light

and said Here I am

which scared the mignon out of everyone

because you are a wolf.

You know the deal.

How everything unlaces.

You have a halo.

Sometimes you trot into town to drink from swimming pools

even though you know it's bad for you.

People misunderstand your smile.

Also lakes

and the inner flotation of all things.

Nothing is ever lost.

You can't forget where you are

when you're never anywhere

like a star. The star's coloring book 

is just like yours, the universe.

Almost none of the black crayon's left.

People misunderstand black crayons

but put a baby rabbit in their mitts,

they'll feel immense panic. 

Maybe not right away

but soon and forever.

She was watching a movie, one that she watched every day. It was her wedding video, or at least a video of what her wedding would have been like, if the world hadn't ended, if her boyfriend had lived long enough to propose to her. 

She lay on her belly on her bed, feet kicking in the air behind her, and said "Forward," so the image in the monitor, as big as her window on the opposite wall, blurred and accelerated, until she slowed it down at the reception. Some days she just listened to the blessing of the minister, a big lesbian looking lady in a purple dress that made her look like Grimace the milkshake monster, and some days she just watched when the camera took a slow track along the buffet table, feeling nostalgic for the salmon fillet and miniature quiches that she had never tasted. And some days, when she was feeling up to it, she watched the dancing, hugging her pillow while her new husband — they were twenty-five when they married and age only made him more handsome — spun her around to a bluegrass tune. She had never imagined that she would have banjos and autoharps at her wedding, and yet from the first time she heard them she knew the angel had got it all just right, just as it had been, and just as it never would be. The exchange of vows never got to her, but somehow the dancing always did her in. While her father called out that her sausage was getting cold, she cried and cried.

squid squid

What's your squid name?

Mine is Ravenous Sarah the Leviathan.

Piedra

I finally got to meet Sweetie Pedie! She was born at 12:09 this morning, and she is so beautiful and tiny. Her full name is Piedra Sage Jones, and she is named after the prettiest canyon in Colorado (I suggested Piedra Obama Jones, but I like Sage, too). She is very vocal and makes squawks and sighs to Gretchen nonstop, and Dennis said she sounds like a squeaky toy. She has those tiny fingers and toes that always remind me of a tree frog for some reason. Dennis also said she makes old man faces, because she scrunches her face up like potato. She looks like her parents. Gretchen was on the phone with her sister in Africa, and Dennis was changing her diaper, and Piedra was not happy so she started bawling, and Dennis said, "Well, she is real," and I said, "Yes, she is very real."

You can't see her very well in the pictures — she's just a tiny head poking out of the blankets — but the photos are great anyway (visit their blog soon for updates and more photos; with a professional photographer as a father, Piedra had better get used to having her picture taken). None of us could decide what to do with our glasses, so they're in various states of disarray. My favorite is the one where G is taking off her glasses; she looks like a librarian studying Pedie: 

Meeting Piedra for the first time made me think about the day Emmy was born. I remember the dish of hard candy in my mom's hospital room. My parents have always told me that since I was a C-section baby, I didn't cry at all when I was born. I just looked around at everyone. But not Emmy. Emmy screamed and screamed and screamed, and her head was lopsided, and her face was red and angry. Sometimes my parents still tease her about this. Even though she's cuter than me now, newborn-wise, I'm the winner. 

I remember even earlier than that day, too; I was lying stretched across the coffee table (kids are weird), and my mom was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, which was made from big blue bricks and looked like some ice furniture from the White Witch's castle. She told me that I was going to have a baby sister. I don't remember what my reply was, but I remember thinking something like, "WHY?"Also, I remember my dad asking me which name I liked best for the baby: Emmalynn or Emmaline. (My mom was reading Anne of Green Gables). I wanted to name her Lacey, but my input was ignored, because she became Emmalynn. Obviously. In retrospect, I'm glad they didn't let their less-than-three-year-old choose a name, because Lacey is a hideous name, like if I named my daughter Doily or Tea Cozy.

When I was five, we adopted a puppy, and I insisted on naming her Lacey. She slept in a box with blankets, and my dad put a clock in the box so it would sound like her mother's heartbeat. I remember I thought that was so odd, that her mom's heartbeat was folded up with all the cogs and gears of the clock. I pretended Lacey was my baby, and I swaddled her and held her against my chest so she could hear my real, ticking heart, not the strange cogheart.

Whoops, tangent. Anyway, welcome to the world, Baby Jones! Piedra's a lucky girl to be brought into the world by such amazing and loving people. Also, she's lucky to have such brave parents, because I think so much courage and faith brought Dennis and Gretchen together. I'm not just talking about the note Gretchen wrote Dennis, or Dennis moving to Maine, but the fact that they both acknowledged wholeheartedly that they were made for each other. Because that's a terrifying thing to do, to tell someone how you feel, and give them your heart. It's the second scariest thing in the world (after velociraptors). But obviously worth it.  

I love all three of you. And please tell Shelby that Pedie is NOT a squeaky toy.

Muttnik

Muttnik

As she burned, immolated inside Sputnik II, 

Laika barked out warnings to the dogs 

tied up in snowy fields below

whose owners loved furniture more, 

and the dogs raised muzzles to the stars 

with nothing to keep them company 

but the moon overhead and their own long howling.

I'm reading Sputnik Sweetheart, and it reminded me of my ol' friend Laika. I've always thought Roxie looks a bit like Laika. Well, I guess more like the dog who is Laika in that one video. On a side note, I hope the Obamas rescue a shelter dog.

that's right, touch it, it's called girlface!

Thank you, Slog, for introducing me to the wonders of dubbing over soap opera footage. Deven Green, you're right up there with Brad Neely. 

gone

RIP hard drive. All of my writing from May 2007 to present is gone, lost to that ephemeral world where I imagine all digitally-trashed files go. I haven't yet decided if I want to pay $300-900 to recover my files (eeew, are you crazy, Mr. Mac Shack guy!?), as all of my music, pictures, and older stories were safely tucked away on Em's external. (Speaking of older stories, why did I write so many poems about giraffes in 2006? Mystery)! 

So I guess the only things *really* gone are my newer stories and poems and that one weird file labeled simply "various" that contained mostly funny pictures/videos/etc I've gleaned from the webs (so long, photos of cats dressed in Harry Potter scarves and videos of singing muppets). 

I cried on Friday in the Mac store when I found out it was all gone. Lesson learned. My new hard drive will be guarded more stringently than Minas Freaking Tirith.

So, to the point of this longwinded, Biden-esque explanation of the death of my hard drive: please, please, please let's start some sort of exquisite corpse/writing group/something. It can be totally casual, and we can do it IRL but also do some sort of email-y thing to include those of you who are lost to geography. I don't care. I really just want to write some new stuff with my friends. 

Okay. Neato. Let me know.

"... a quiet, meticulous waiter who had the sad airs of a man long accustomed to the spectacular demolition of dreams."

bat chat

1:12 PM Amber: oh yeah

hey

finger bones

what are they called?

1:13 PM  me: phalanges?

Amber: like feet bones are called metatarsals...

me: oh right

Amber: yeah, I wasn't sure

me: carpals

Amber: i haven't fractured my fingers

just everything else

ooooooooooooh

sweet

yeah

cool

me: *metacarpals

1: 14 PM Amber: okay, neato

META

me: omg, you're so meta

1:15 PM you're so pomo

1:16 PM Amber: oh yeah, totally. i know. it's awesome.

"I'll keep my cell phone in my apron so we can text each other"

I took a three hour nap on the couch today in my underwear, during which I had weirdo dreams involving waiting tables and Tetris. I just got a brain freeze from eating applesauce too quickly. Now I'm going to put in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (inspired by Neil Gaiman's anecdote last night about Terry Gilliam just popping by for tea while he was working on Mirrormask) and probably pass out cold on the couch again. 

When I'm not feeling like this, I'm glad my routine of couch-sleeping, work, and the innernettes is occasionally peppered with awesomeness, like hearing Gaiman read last night (although I was slightly embarrassed when someone asked if it were true that he's going to write an episode for Doctor Who and I yelled "OH SHIT!"), and The Silver Jews last Sunday, and Sigur Ros a couple weeks ago, and my planned trip home this weekend to see the fall colors and go to the pumpkin patch with my mom and play with my Tamale Mollie listen to dad and Em play the banjo/mando. 

Also, I'm glad Yam-bear and I can connect via texts while we're at work; of course, her apron is undeniably cuter than mine.