Stationary Unicycle

I have the reflexes of a ninja when I need them. For a person of my size and lack of coordination, it's amazing how quickly I can move when I'm not thinking about it. I'm able to catch a falling plate before it hits the floor, to right a bottle that's been tipped before the contents have had a chance to spill, why, even just this moment, the alarm on my phone went off and before my Thinking Brain even consciously registered the meaning of the sound, my left hand, my LEFT Hand mind you, (I am perniciously right handed) flew into action, slapped down upon the phone at bionic woman speed, and defused that blasted thing before it had a chance to ring again. It was truly an amazing feat of dexterity, skill, and startling fury. My conscious brain is still reeling, quite frankly. I had an inkling that the sound of the alarm  elicited within me some amount of irritation, but the magnitude of focused rage, to trigger such a display? I had no idea. It went down like this: T...

Last night I was feeling sort of punk, and by punk I don't mean green mohawk safety pin in the ear black leather jackets and doc martens sex pistols god save the queen punk. By punk I don't mean Jets vs Sharks rumble punk,  pushing old ladies in the park snatching purses slicked hair and switchblades punk. And I certainly don't want you to think that by punk I mean pork pie hat, stealing apples from the fruit cart, tacks on teacher's chair dipping Sally Sue's braids in the inkwell punk. The punk I'm speaking of is mopey self pity punk, out of sorts and down and dejected punk, eat a plate of nachos and a couple of granola bars punk, going to bed before you finished everything you intended to do self indulgent mewling pathetic whiny-ass, gee I'm such a failure what am I fucking doing with my life, just throw in the towel ya big blubbery blubbering butt-face loser punk, take yourself to bed because you make yourself ill punk full of self loathing nothing but ...

I was up at 4 a.m. My daughter was frustrated the night before. She'd procrastinated doing her English homework and eventually 11 p.m. happened, and then self reproach, guilt and extreme fatigue and she set her alarm for 4 a.m. so she could get the work done before school. I offered to get up with her in order to lend her moral support, also to make tea and toast and keep her on task, otherwise the heroic effort of waking before dawn would have been a wasted one. So, I was up at 4 a.m. Bleary because I hadn't gone to bed until 1 because I procrastinate even more than my daughter and going to bed was my Sophomore Honors English homework. I fed the cats and the dog, gave the dog his medicine, let the dog out. I unloaded the dishwasher and then loaded the previous night's dishes (again, procrastination, why didn't I do the dinner dishes last night and spare myself the depressing sight; last night's congealed ketchup and milk rings in the glasses). I brewed myse...

possible blog posts for blogtober: 15 things you don't know about my left nut: 1. I don't have a left nut 2.  I do not even have a right nut As I can only get to #2, this idea needs fleshing out before I commit to it. Hahaha...fleshing out.  some things you don't know about my cat 1. I have a cat 2. she's a cat  3. she does cat things 4. she shits in a box   15 things I want to change about myself 1. fuck this shit 2. seriously 3. back off 4. you do not want to go down this path 5. really One billion (maybe this is too ambitious) observations made while sitting on the toilet  1. someone should really mop the floor  2. I need to get some new reading material in here,   3. I think the new Oprah magazine was in yesterday's mail  4. there are only so many times you can read about living your best life while sitting on the shitter  5. reading recipes while using the bathroom is sort of we...

I placed my desk is in front of the window. This seemed like a good place to put a desk during the long summer days when I first set about making this closet my office. I had a view of my neighbor's garden, their apple tree, their lilacs. But as autumn supplants summer, autumn afternoons bleed into early evening pretty fucking early and the world becomes dark all around. The window becomes less a window and more a mirror. The effect is decidedly less pastoral. I'm sitting here facing my reflection which seems idiotically symbolic. My eyes and nose are obstructed by the plastic window casement, so all I can see is the top of my head in the top window pane, the locking mechanism on the window the window casement, my double chin, my grey sweater-ed sloppy sloping shoulders, my grey sweatered sausagey arms, my grey sweatered matronly bosom, and then, thank god, the top of the desk under which the rest of my overstuffed pillow-y form is hidden. I'm planning on moving my office...

I've decided to post every day again for a while. I just don't have the discipline to write stuff if I don't have some deadline looming. It's too easy to procrastinate. I'm good at easy things like procrastination, also, napping.  Napping is easy. I'm good at napping. I've been reading some haiku. Jack Kerouac wrote some fucking awesome haiku. They sort of blow my head open. In a good way. Like a gust of wind blowing a curtain. It's good. Airing out the brain. Blowing the brain curtains around. I imagine my brain curtains are lace. I like lace curtains. I like the way they blow around in the spring or fall when the windows are open on a blue day. Spring blue and Autumn blue are both blue but they're not the same. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I'm thinking of authenticity and voice. Have you thought about authenticity and voice? Your voice, is it really your own? Do you realize that y...

This really happened the other day. Reading Basho in the park, a glass winged aphid lands upon the page and walks on yellow wire legs pausing in the void of the letter 'o'.

"my mind is a big hunk of irrevocable nothing..." to quote my favorite grammar dissing poet ee cummings and (i) haven't been able to write anything more scintillating than a grocery list. So, in a last gasp fit of despair I decided to give a random blog topic generator a try. Because I was desperate. Pathetic, apathetic. Blah.  Into the random blog topic generator I put these sort of random words, kind of randomly: anger, time, stupid Because, of course, those are the three words that came first to my mind. I have a limited amount of time to work, I'm dealing with a lot of unresolved anger, and why do I feel angry? Because, dear reader, there is just so much stupidity. Violence, idiocy, rudeness, racism, sexism, ignorance, all that shit that's in the news every minute of every fucking day, it all falls under the heading, Stupid. And it makes me ANGRY. So, you've got my three keywords for the generator: anger, time, stupid.   and this is the brill...

The other day the kids are I were walking. We passed by a small group sitting in a small yard in front of a small house. They appeared to be enjoying the effects of  more than a few beers. They were sitting in a semi-circle, two skinny scruffy dudes with regrettably unbuttoned shirts and un-regrettably buttoned pants and a large woman in a tight tank top and shorts, a shiny tan, a perm and a cigarette. They were sitting in those cheap white plastic chairs you can buy at the Walgreen's. The chairs with the thin legs that feel as though they will bend or break if you so much as shift your weight or fart. The chairs you see on their backs by the side of the road  road on garbage day with three legs in the right places and a jagged stump where the fourth had been until Jimmy wiggled in his seat trying to dislodge a wedgie.  One of the scruffy men was carefully speaking in a slow motion slur that sounded raw and sore like a rug burn. This is what he said; "They rolllll...

The other day I was walking downtown, I was in a hurry. While crossing the little bridge over the stream, I saw a family of ducks swimming around. A young mom and her two little kids were walking by, they looked to be in a hurry, they didn't look particularly happy but I took a chance and said, hey! did you see the ducks swimming in the stream? And they said, huh? And I pointed at the swimmy ducks and the mom and kids said, "Awww....how CUTE!!" and the little kids laughed and the mom thanked me and it was sweet and I'm glad I took a chance; I could have been mistaken for a weirdo but wasn't and ducks! Yeah. Today I was in a hurry again, I seem to be in a hurry always, and yet I took a moment to stand on the bridge and look at the ducks. The babies are getting bigger and soon they'll move out, go to college, get jobs, and tattoos and beak grommets or whatever, and so I'm glad I took a moment out of my crazy day to look and see the ducks while they...

I haven't written in a long time. Facebook updates, no matter how quirky, cute, droll or witty do not count as writing. My facebook posts have not been particularly quirky, cute, droll or witty, but pathetic attempts to reach out to humanity, passive aggressive entreaties for comfort, compassion and money. Kidding about that money part. I've been a little blue. I've said it before and I'll likely say it again and again, depression is a fuck...a bad fuck. Some of the sad is due to sad things happening in the world, in the bigger world  (right wing nut bags, right wing nut bags with guns) and in my own small world; my mom is ill and I've been trying to take care of her and my kids, my marriage, my house, my dog, my lawn, my garden, my hopes dreams aspirations and sanity. I haven't talked about it publicly, but my dad is ill. Very ill. It appears my parents might both be gearing up to depart this earthly plane soon. It's just a matter of time and stubbornness...

April I walk through the rundown neighborhood to the rundown neighborhood market to buy a bottle of soy sauce. Soy sauce for the dinner I was preparing to make. Because I forgot to buy it earlier when I was at the grocery store. Earlier, when the sun was warm and bright and the dirty snow shone with drops of water held suspended for a shimmer of a moment only to fall and be replaced by another quivering globe of bright shimmering melting. But now, it's later. I walk past dirty snowbanks, refrozen. Dirty puddles filmed with ice. Old bags and discarded papers catch in the wind like tails or wings. The gray pink early spring sky that earlier had offered warmth like a kindness cools as the sun slides smoothly away like the well manicured regretful wave of a newly wed princess leaving the balcony and the adoring crowds below. Inside the dirty little store, smells sweet, oily, smells of boiled coffee. Stale cigarette vapors off the jacket of...

I began having suicidal thoughts as a child. The thoughts grew large or diminished, but desiring to not be a living person was always there at the back of my brain, as a big presence or a wisp of an idea, in some form, always. When I was a little kid, I shut down. I was blank. Despite everyone's best efforts to knock the “weird” out of me, I managed to hide a kernel of my self hoping that some day I would find it and tend it. That was brave and hopeful of me. To my family I was simple, dumb, blank, hapless, a loser. The real me was internal and far away for safe keeping. Middle school was a nightmare. I managed to endure and didn't die. High school was a horror story. I wanted to die, but I didn't. College was fraught with crisis and fear, and though I never got a degree, neither did I walk in front of any of the tractor trailer trucks that sped past me on my walks to campus, nor did I throw myself over the bridge railing into the Stillwater River. At one ...

The obnoxious Salon headline read: "Generation X gets really old: How do slackers have a midlife crisis?" Fuck you, Salon . Just fuck you. First: I am not getting REALLY OLD, thanks very much. And heads up, youngster, the next 20 years are going to fucking fly by. You're going to be 40-something and be as shocked as I am now every time you see your 40-something year old face in the mirror, because on the inside, you still feel like the funky little hipster you used to be. My kids are going to be the hip happening cool youthful adults when you're middle-aged. They will mock you for being getting REALLY OLD. When this happens, I will get all Schadenfreude on your middle-aged midlife-crisising ass, and I will laugh and laugh, if I'm not already dead and sleeping the dirt nap of the ancients. Second: You wanna know how a slacker has a midlife crisis you smug little millennial?  Come over here while I lace up the Grunge era combat boots of my youth, and I will m...

Maine winters linger. It's just what they do. But this year it's different. Winter isn't lingering so much as it's stalled in the middle of the road. We'll be looking winter in it's ugly road-dirty grill until we can call a goddamned tow or push it out of the way, muscles straining. I believe that people encase their past traumas in amber. We are living beings and the hard remnants of the past are hurtful to us. We store them and we try to forget about them but they make us ill because we are living beings and we are meant to fill ourselves with the present which is alive, and the future, which is full of potential. The  dead relics poison our blood. We forget we carry them. It's one thing to carry the certainty of death in oneself. It's another to carry death itself. There are crows in the yard. Flapping black wings, One crow drives his head into the soft snow, he shakes his head, flaps his wings, hops forward, does it again. I thought per...

I'm awake. Mostly. It's Monday/Tuesday. It's Tuesday on the calendar, but content is all about Monday. Say all the words. Even if they are ugly words. Even if they are hurtful words. Even if they are very strange and weird words. Even if your father tells you your words do not make you pretty. Especially then.

I took a Buzzfeed quiz to figure out what sort of tattoo I should I have. I trust Buzzfeed and I have faith in the validity of their quizzes. I trust BF quizzes like my mother, a Leo, trusted her daily horoscope, the one printed in the back of the daily paper between the Jumble puzzle and Ask Doctor Donahue. Buzzfeed really knows the REAL ME, for real. The real me who needs a tattoo at the age of getting awfully freaking close to 50. Plus my skin is getting that weird dry skin thing going on so that a tattoo will nicely draw attention to my weird old skin. A tattoo, oh yes. I must have one. Buzzfeed peered into my very soul and determined based on my Starbucks cup preference and Pixar movie preference that I want need should must have a typography tattoo. No pictures for me. Forget the Celtic knots,  retro blue birds and cliche butterflies. Emblazon upon my creepy old lady skin the unambiguous word. I looked up examples of typography tattoos and found many people ha...

My son will be turning 11 in April. He's already a giant fellow at 5' 3". He looks soft and round and he is but he's also very strong. One of his favorite games right now is, Can I Pick it Up? Anyway, I digress. In my family, boys get softer and rounder before they grow into broad shouldered giant manly men. True story. This morning, my big little boy stared pensively into his cereal bow. I asked him what was up and he said he was worried about going through puberty. I asked it there was something specific about puberty that was troubling him. He told me he didn't want to grow a beard and was afraid to shave for fear he'd cut himself with a razor. I looked at his sweet smooth face and imagined him with facial hair. Huh. Wow! OH MY GOD. I didn't say that though, because when your kids come to you with this stuff you have to be placid as a pool of water, you have to remain as cool as goddamn cucumber and as you must appear to be as serene as something r...

The cool dry slick slide of a garter snake through my hands, the small flat rock as big as my two palms together, set in the woolly green moss in the woods behind the house. The smell of mud. Rain rolling like warm wax down the living room window. The ping of  june bugs as they hit the screen door and me in my summer pajamas, fresh from the bath with hair still wet and stuck to my head and neck, sitting at the table playing with clay while my parents sit in the next room watching tv. The little men who clung to the bathroom fan leering at me with wide eyes from the ceiling while I soaked in my bath.The whirligig of red, blue, and green faces that spun in front of my eyes at night before sleep took me. The murmur of voices that echoed in my ears while the faces spun. The faces only I could see that stared at me from under the paint on walls, the phantom cats, slinking around corners and through doors, so quick, sometimes I was only aware of the movement, or perhaps the flick...