Watch This Spot

There’s a pile of lavender soaking in a pot of vodka on the kitchen counter. I plucked nearly every flower head from the plant in the driveway median. This lavender, a sticky monkey and a plug of native grasses are the only things that have taken root and taken off in what I’ve come to endearingly call the kill zone.

I’m in somewhat of a funk today – though I don’t rightly know why. I think I need to go for a walk and think. I’ll get back to you on the other side of it…

Watch this spot…. I call it the other side of it. I hiked near ten miles, soaked in a hot tub and ate English cheese to get here. I took photographs too. I’ve been lounging and reading the fabu digital photo book that Cassie gave me for my birthday. Thus far it’s saying that to take good photos I need to buy more shit. Secret Agent Dog is belly up on my right, snoring at the sky (okay, the ceiling.) There are random thoughts fleeting around the room. I grasp at them like buzzing flies - trying to catch them, make them stop. Here are just a few:

I always thought that Catholic school girl thing was an act. I’m still mystified near thirty years later that it was devastatingly real. How do you reconcile all those kisses?

On days when my world is small and I don’t leave the house much, I get pretty bitchy. It’s like somewhere inside I must believe I can control the world by yelling at it or being mean to it. Maybe I’m just looking for a reaction.

One of the recent Google “word of the day” was swan song, which clearly isn’t a word and should more rightly be in phrase of the day or couple a words of the day. See above.

Perfect Stranger

The phrase perfect stranger keeps crossing through my mind. In my head it’s said by Holly Golightly. And it got me wondering what exactly a perfect stranger is. As I was taking the laundry off the line, I thought a perfect stranger would pay off my mortgage… that would be terrifically perfect. A perfect stranger would be honest, kind, gracious, pay random compliments, and, of course, my mortgage. In essence, a perfect stranger would be an extremely generous friend – generous in heart, spirit and, well, capital. No wonder Holly Golightly was saying it. I’m in the market for a perfect stranger.

Couldn't Bare To Be Special

Well, I did it. I pruned the hibiscus tree in preparation for winter. I’ve never pruned a hibiscus tree before. Hell, I’ve never owned a hibiscus tree before. I stood on a chair on the deck with a massive hedge clipper, a cigarette hanging from my lips and a big cup of coffee on the table, and I just started hacking away at the damn thing.

The neighbor, Kathleen, gave me morning greetings and reminds me that while she’s slow on the draw she’d like to replace our hedges with a fence. I’m all for the fence. When I see her I seek her advice on gardening. “I’m just hacking away at this thing, does that seem like the right thing to do?” She pauses and looks bewildered. “I suppose,” she replies with a decidedly skeptical tone in her voice.

The dog looks up at me from her safe haven beneath the table with a worried look as hibiscus stems fall from heaven. The sky is falling – or at least the tree.

I swept up the dried pale lavender lacy petals of the potato vine and cut the straw-like stalks of agapanthus from their leafy beds. I cut back the roses in hopes of one more fall bloom – refusing to embrace the end of the season. I attended to some of the mire I’ve been living in – neatening stacks of paper in hopes of discovering what’s inside and rearranging this and that in closets and the what-not. Putting things in order sometimes makes everything feel a bit more optimistic.

After dinner I took Secret to the ballpark to play fetch. Two men parked a pickup truck across the street and wandered onto a bench in the darkness not even twenty yards from me. They sat in the cool night air and got stoned while Secret mauled a purple Frisbee. They invited me to join them, which I declined graciously – opting for the clear night air, a clear head and watching the joy of her running and catching and happily bringing things back. As she chased a ball into the darkness I looked up to see a shooting star streak across the night sky and fizzle into a sparkling display of death. They say it’s good luck to see a shooting star, but I’ve never figured our who they are.

So we had an omen of good luck, but it didn’t help me out much at the bank when I went to see if I won between $10 and $10,000. Everyone wins $10. That’s what I got too. I was part of everyone. I just wanted to be the special one. But it wasn’t me. Not this time. Maybe it will be me tomorrow. I wonder what I’ll do to find out.

Couldn't Bare To Be Special

Well, I did it. I pruned the hibiscus tree in preparation for winter. I’ve never pruned a hibiscus tree before. Hell, I’ve never owned a hibiscus tree before. I stood on a chair on the deck with a massive hedge clipper, a cigarette hanging from my lips and a big cup of coffee on the table, and I just started hacking away at the damn thing.

The neighbor, Kathleen, gave me morning greetings and reminds me that while she’s slow on the draw she’d like to replace our hedges with a fence. I’m all for the fence. When I see her I seek her advice on gardening. “I’m just hacking away at this thing, does that seem like the right thing to do?” She pauses and looks bewildered. “I suppose,” she replies with a decidedly skeptical tone in her voice.

The dog looks up at me from her safe haven beneath the table with a worried look as hibiscus stems fall from heaven. The sky is falling – or at least the tree.

I swept up the dried pale lavender lacy petals of the potato vine and cut the straw-like stalks of agapanthus from their leafy beds. I cut back the roses in hopes of one more fall bloom – refusing to embrace the end of the season. I attended to some of the mire I’ve been living in – neatening stacks of paper in hopes of discovering what’s inside and rearranging this and that in closets and the what-not. Putting things in order sometimes makes everything feel a bit more optimistic.

After dinner I took Secret to the ballpark to play fetch. Two men parked a pickup truck across the street and wandered onto a bench in the darkness not even twenty yards from me. They sat in the cool night air and got stoned while Secret mauled a purple Frisbee. They invited me to join them, which I declined graciously – opting for the clear night air, a clear head and watching the joy of her running and catching and happily bringing things back. As she chased a ball into the darkness I looked up to see a shooting star streak across the night sky and fizzle into a sparkling display of death. They say it’s good luck to see a shooting star, but I’ve never figured our who they are.

So we had an omen of good luck, but it didn’t help me out much at the bank when I went to see if I won between $10 and $10,000. Everyone wins $10. That’s what I got too. I was part of everyone. I just wanted to be the special one. But it wasn’t me. Not this time. Maybe it will be me tomorrow. I wonder what I’ll do to find out.

Intelligent Trash

“What do you mean by intelligence?”... “The possession of the means of coercing things or men”... “Each time he asked this question the other person, no matter who he was, would answer by producing the image of his desires.”

I whisper to you, woo you, sing you sweet poetic melodies and yet you leave me dry and alone. Sleep, I have never been so shunned in my affections and left horridly unrequited. Cold winds blow strong through this narcissistic city of power. From my hotel room window, here at the Park Terrace on Embassy Row in the heart of DC, I watch newspapers dance furiously beneath streetlights. Words, words, words announcing tragedy, fortunes made and broken, the debutante’s coming out and yet under this light and at this hour, it just looks like trash.

On the airplane I conspired about the life I will lead. Amusing myself with the notion of early morning coffee, a heater in my study, time in the middle of the day to paint water color pictures and the idea of buying a plant – a real live plant. The answer to every problem? No, not exactly. But it’s a start – a first step in a new journey down a road that makes sense. Perhaps it leads to paradise.

Perhaps it leads to paradise but the airplane still touched down in DC. It stayed its course where men and women wear long black wool coats and scarves and carry brief cases. There’s nothing mysterious about the airport, the taxi and hotel lobby. Nothing wondrous or delectable about the room service menu or the faux satin chairs by the little round table in the corner or the two full-sized beds with floral print spreads. But there is something slightly delightful about the daily news dancing furiously under the soft glow of the streetlights. I must admit, even though it’s just trash.

What is intelligence? It is the ability to find beauty and meaning in gestures and silences. It overlooks what’s unpalatable to find redemption in the way the boy in the corner of the bar fidgets with his hair or the way the girl at the counter is crossing her ankles. It’s in all those little, real, unconscious gestures that give people away, reveal themselves, despite themselves. It’s seeing the more in the less and setting aside personal judgment in order to see it. It’s surrendering to that beauty and finding a way to sit with it, be with it, soak it all in. Intelligence is feeling the wonder of what far too few people even pay attention to – the nuances of the environment. It isn’t in all of the things you have to say, the facts you can spew off your tongue or from your photographic memory. It’s in the place that you hesitate, touch your head, breathe irregularly or fumble ever so slightly. It’s the way you place your hands on your legs to steady them and keep yourself from floating away. That was smart. That trash was the most intelligent thing I saw all day.