So I lost my wallet,

Again. This seriously happens to me on average 1.5 times a year. It is sad to say that I have gotten used to it. My new puppy gigs and bi weekly tips allows me to carry more cash around, so my semi expensive night out to watch the final game of the world series (go sox!) turned into a very expensive night out. And it wasn't even one of those really drunk, left it in the bar sort of scenarios. Nope, I paid for the cab home and somewhere in that transaction of handing over 15 bucks, opening the cab door, and walking across the street, I lost my little black wallet, with credit cards, a $20 full charlie card, library card, and about $80 in cash. Ho diddily hum.

Bostonians have proved their worthiness in the past with my lost wallets. One man had found my tiny cloth wallet in the sleet and slush of Davis Square where it had fallen out when I ran in to return a movie. He called every possible number he could imagine to try to find me. UNH, the library in NH and eventually found my parent's home number. I received a call at work saying that he had my wallet and would I like it if he dropped it off for me at work! He did, this lovely lovely gentleman who would not take a penny for his efforts.
And again, in Cambridge a few years back, I received my wallet a week after it was lost in the mail, sent to my parent's address in NH. (I really should get a Mass licence this time around I suppose) with a kind note saying it was found on their front stoop.

So, not all Bostonians are bike thieving assholes.( Though a lot of them are! My poor sister just had her bike stolen from her front porch the same night I lost my wallet!GRRR)

Anyway, what have I learned from all this?
Not to be a moron.
Not to take cabs.

Or perhaps the universe is trying to teach me a more valuable lesson? Perhaps I am supposed to learn that stuff and money are not important and by freeing me of these material burdens I will gain a clearer and more precise understanding of humanity?

Or something.
I still miss my bike.

Belfast, N Ireland

She
is
frantic
water.

Daughter,
why do you sigh this way?
Impatiently
leaning left
arms crossed
weighting
your breath
as you reach for
your own hands
behind
your razored
shoulder blades.

Tell me that story
of the snowflakes
melting.
Tell me how,
in tall rubber boots
she danced in the puddles
of what once
was whole
and beautiful.

Tell me
that the ripples
she made
sent waves
to the other side of the world
so tremendous
that only the few
and brave
would dare to ride and then
they crashed on houses
and smothered schools!

Or
maybe,
she just muddied
the entryway
to her home
in small sleet drooling,
independent
steps.

Icelandic chocolate for breakfast again

Julie and I went to the Barack Obama rally in the Boston Common on Tuesday. It had been a while since either of had paid any attention to anything going on in the honest world of politics. After so many years of Bush bullying, it seems important that we turn our chins up and try again. I mean, there are few people that are less patriotic than me, but as Julie said, "I feel a little too old to not know anything about the candidates."
The rally was interesting. I am not necessarily an Obama supporter, but wanted to hear what he was all about. I thought Deval Patrick's introduction speech was better written than Obama's, but that really just says something about their individual speech writers. Barack is indeed the charismatic man of the people that I had heard he was ( and by man of the people, apparently that means it is OK for him to make common grammatical speech mistakes... "We're doing good!"... ugh.) Of course everything was unsurprisingly hopeful and there were promises for a better tomorrow through extremely vague means.
Now I have the daunting task of checking out the rest of those political freaks.

In other news; I've been eating a lot of chocolate and am about to bake ginger snaps. I will hear this week if I got the apartment that I want so badly in Davis Square. The Sox won game one of the world series.

China Map

I was worn out, lost, and sixteen
in China at 6 p.m., everyone
suddenly in a purchasing frenzy,
when he stopped me with a smile
that just turned me upside down:
gold caps on one side, gaps on the other.
I could tell he was more human
than most people, or more kind.
He was old the way everyone is old
when you're sixteen: maybe fifty, or seventy.
I had passed through the village of pork,
the village of shoes, the village of cotton shirts
and linen. Each few blocks the commodity
changed, the sounds and smells trans-laundered
the air you walked in. He held out to me
a section of the oddly shaped fruit
with a rough, nubbly green rind,
smooth amber glistening inside,
a taste divine, beyond my tongue.
He was a busy man with buyers,
we were smack at the core of the village
of fruit. All of his globes were selling.
I was a ready target, fanning out
the colored bills, raising my brows.
He looked at my hotel's card,
looked into both of my eyes, as if to say
it was going to get dark fast,
and sat us down on two crates side by side,
and stopped his hawking then to draw,
in deft, meticulous detail, a map
to get me back: the splashing fountain
with the fish inside the osprey's mouth,
the statue of the sword-bearing giant,
the dog-legging street that led
to a cat's-paw alley just before the really
sharp turn. When he drew an intersection,
the stoplight had all three circles
with diagonal hyphens radiating out—
and that fountain! He spent a lot of time
making it sparkle on the paper bag
under his knife-sharpened, spit-greased pencil.
I remember his ropy hand veins working.
I remember this fruit I carried back
to my hotel and up the stairs, glowing and round
like the truth. Like the globe of the truth
of everything in the whole wide world.
I didn't know how to go about eating it
when I got back to my room:
no knife, no dish, no napkin.
I sat and watched it ripen in the dusk,
breathing its aroma, which seemed
the antidote to every wrong thing.
In the morning I can't believe I just
left it behind. That fruit.
Also, doubtless, the map.

J. Allyn Rosser

Feet

I find men's feet silly and awkward.

Mold as Art

I've never seen such a lovely colorful display of the common coffee cup mold. The picture does not do it justice. There is even silver mold, now growing on the green mold. I wonder if it will turn into diamonds if I leave it alone.

Seasonal

Those hairs
are so fine.
Silk like baby bird feathers
and I can't help but
ruffle them.
Puff them
like a
chill.

Is it enough
to sit cross legged
cool,
socks to my shins,
watching leaves fall lazily
and think
savage thoughts
of long white thighs?

We [women]
look skyward,
see a face
and hope it's Grace.
If the face is a painting,
if the face is pained
or panting;
we are there.

My wings.
Unnoticed in the trees
below the faces,
and above the sweat
of sheets
unwashed
or words
unspoken.

Autumn,
and the need for
a thousand hands
stroking me
in sleep.
I am stockpiling.
Books,
And plants,

Poetry and
Honey
for the tea
I wish I drank.
More of.
She needs.
Warmth on these lips.
These hands.
These hips.

Immortal Love

Like a door
the body opened and
the soul looked out.
Timidly at first, then
less timidly
until it was safe.
Then in hunger it ventured.
Then in brazen hunger,
then at the invitation
of any desire.

Promiscuous one, how will you find
god now? How will you
ascertain the divine?
Even the garden you were told to live in the body, not
outside it, and suffer in it
if that comes to be necessary.
How will god find you
if you are never in one place
long enough, never
in the home he gave you?

Or do you believe
you have no home, since god
never meant to contain you?

-Louise Glück


*There have been tremendous amounts of poetry penetrating my life of late (written and unwritten). I thought I'd share some of my favorites. L.G's short anthology "Vita Nova" found me at a random salvation type store in northern maine on labor day weekend in 2004 and our meeting was one of those fateful events that change your life. The poem " Mutable Earth" has followed me though many continents and relationships, rifts and valleys. Tonight I returned to her and was surprised at the last lines of her last poem in this anthology. It reads:

I thought my life was over and my heart was broken.
Then I moved to Cambridge.

Mutable Earth

I woke up at 5:15 this morning to get ready for a cold bike ride to work for 6 am. Opening my door in half wakefulness, I blinked several times to see that no, my bike was indeed not where I had parked it the evening before, and no, I still was not dreaming.

My beautiful Fuji Absolut 21 speed, a gift from my dad 15 years ago, of a shimmery teal green the color of emerald seas, has violently been snagged from my doorstep in the middle of the night!

And in quiet, moneyed Brookline of all places...
People suck.

A half full cup of cold tea on a cold night, though, is still a shitty cup o' tea.

But speaking of positive...
I have trouble finding anything redeeming about winter, or pre-winter as this may be. I can barely feel my fingers, have my pjs tucked* into my socks. Am actually wearing socks. To bed, no less.

I will be envisioning the hot burning sand of a Fijean beach as I drift off into a cold slumber tonight.

* My dear friend Tara taught me the art, and value of "tucking". Indeed, she left no corner unshoved, no space unsmothered with another layer of cloth. And she survived in a caravan in the winter of Southern New Zealand. I will thank her endlessly for the lessons she gave me about the priceless practive of tucking in.

The cup half full. Again and again. Until you fall down drunk.

So I've been told that I'm an impressively positive person. That I can reassure people that there is a good to every situation and that, if nothing else, there is something to gain in that there is something to learn. And truthfully I do believe that there must always be something to learn from every painful, scary, life altering, death defying, mud-on-your-shoes, shit-on-your-face, confidence-losing, guilt sodden, lost-in-a cemetery, never-walk-again, penniless, friendless, godless sort of situation.

I can be that annoying person who when someone says,
"Karen, my dog died, I lost my job and found I am pregnant and have herpes."
I would probably come up with something like,
"I'm so sorry! At least now you know not to have unprotected sex with high risk partners while ovulating!"

Or something along those lines.
Anyway, I blame my mother, for always trying to look at the bright side of things. She is excessively positive. Readily willing to admit if something sucks, but also sure to remind me that most hardships are not the end of the world. That people have suffered much worse and that I have no other choice but to deal and move on. She, unlike my dad who would bring me teddy bears and gumby dolls if I was home sick from school, would medicate me with encouraging words like, "You're not that sick, Kare. You'll feel better tomorrow."

And most often, I did.

Anyway, in a half hearted attempt to make myself feel better about the current friend-pain that is slightly tormenting to me, I've decided to come up with the positives of emotional turmoil.

Here is my list:

1. Appetite (un)control. Rather than the foolishness of 'everything in moderation', lately I prefer 'a few good things in excess'. Mostly, I have been surviving on several cups of coffee, interjected with wine and evening binges on bad-for-me foods like potato chips and chocolate. The great thing is that I cannot possibly feel guilty for having a dinner of french fries and Italian cheese if I haven't eaten all day AND I am feeling "emotionally unstable!"
That and I still think I've lost a few old lbs.

2. Emotional Instability. I've actually found that number 2 can help me to justify pretty much everything in terms of careless spending. So I want to spend $128 on new jeans that I don't need because they make my ass look great? Do it! You're going through a lot right now! So I want to go to the movies by myself in the middle of the day and eat an entire bag of popcorn with "butter-like topping" for breakfast, lunch and dinner?( see number 1) Of course you can! You deserve it after all you've been going through! So you want to drink a bottle of wine (again, see number 1) and write poetry and then eat some more cheese while wearing your new jeans? Why not! Italians do this every night!

3. Perspective, mindfulness and appreciation.OK, so admittedly, this may be the best of the three, but truly I can be thankful for the amount of consideration I've given to myself, my family and friends, and to our environments and our exquisite moments of beauty. Right? I mean, the flip side of one's self being in chaotic, confused disarray is to experience pure and honest clarity. Clarity often comes to me in taking myself out of a situation and placing myself in the midst of couple laying happily in each other's arms in the grass, or a child skipping joyfully down the street or a man who reaches out to hold the hand of his wife absentmindedly on the T. There is so much goodness, and love and beauty in our daily lives that I think, overall, my tough times, or yours, are nothing in comparison.

The fruit basket

So I've had the good luck to be able to sleep a great many nights recently in the company of the sweet dog Mia in a cute apartment to myself a few steps away from the Boston Public Gardens and the Esplanade. Staying here, beyond being a nice reflective time to myself, has also made me view the city that I live in as a tourist. I would guess that more than 90% of the daily amblers through the gardens are foreigners, appreciating the city that we all forget to.
In my time walking Mia I've had the chance to see the many flowers, statues and fountains that actually make Boston a worthy place to visit. We have such beautiful space here! Who knew!
And my most favorite observation is the replenishing fruit basket in the stunning angel statue on the corner of Beacon and Arlington. Maybe once a week a mysterious person or persons (or God himself) fill her empty basket with fresh fruit and veg.
The first time I saw the fruit I thought it odd that I hadn't noticed it before, and odder still that it looked so real in comparison to the bronzed woman of the heavens. The next day though, the fruit was gone. I was confused, and a little disappointed by what I considered a child's harmless prank.
Another week later and the fruit reappeared, and disappeared yet again. This was one fiber starved angel.
This morning Mia stubbornly woke me at the rough hour of 6:30, rougher still after a post-3 am bed time. Anyway, this morning her basket was full of apples and a yellow pepper and perhaps a pear.

It warms my heart to know that we live in a city and world that feeds angels.

I return to this picture every few days. The woman haunts me. I wonder if she exists.

And so I will eat blackberries beyond midnight.

And so I will eat blackberries beyond midnight.

These indulgences that further
my understanding of what it is.
A woman.

For example,
I know now
that we once had wings.

That in us still,
is the fluttering of a memory
of a million tiny transparent flaps
of silk fibers
woven together by the hands of our children
spanning a million tireless ages.

That we birth and rebirth ourselves,
And though further from flight,
we know.
We know.

Like we know with each individual
ingested bulb of blackberry juice
we will be feeding
the hope,
of a lonely and wise,
more-than-a-bird.

Buy Music. Be Happy.

Ok, so I like most love the access to music that we have given that we have the correct expensive tools (a computer, the interweb, an ipod and credit card). Surprisingly, I have spent less money than I would have thought on music in the last year given that access is so easy, with the stored numbers and expiration and itunes constantly asking me to buy buy buy! Still, I am not sure where a few of my purchased items have come from. Like the Gorillez songs, that I am not disappointed to have, and still do not remember purchasing. And of course I miss the hours spent browsing the music aisles, but not the frustration in packaging and actual bad cds.
Anyway, I just bought the soundtrack to "Into the Wild" which is entirely done by Eddie Vedde which I have yet to see but have heard good things about. Anyway, Eddie Vedder could be saying the words "moist panties" over and over again and still I would only cringe slightly and might still want to lick his face.
Goddamn his voice is sexy.
And so I feel good, really really good, about the purchase. :)
And I am realizing that spending money, the invisible thing that goes in and out of my invisible accounts is actually quite amusing. And I suppose that this is not an entirely new realization, but seriously, money is such a joke! I made the mistake of looking at my credit card statements yesterday, which haven't really gone up or down in the last 5 years but stayed at a pretty steady $5000 of debt, and wonder how this has affected my daily life. And the point is that it has not. And I am so aware of how irresponsible it is to think this way, but honestly, what is more real than my day to day? And any extra money I earn goes to nice dinners or more bottles of wine or new underware or a trip. I will never pay off my credit cards and I am happy to admit that I do not care.

Television

Strange how you can actually feel your brain rotting with every minute you spend watching boring television shows...
unlike most things, even wine doesn't make it better.

-----
So, it was a good day. It throws me off kilter having just one day off versus two in a row. My "weekend" feels less like a mini vacation and more like a sick day. Still, I managed to accomplish a lot at least in exercise. I walked to some new dogs in the Fenway area that I am going to be hanging out with in a few weeks, then to Coolidge Corner, which unsurprisingly already feels awkward. I then biked back to Boston and walked with Mia to the somewhat disappointing Oktoberfest in Harvard Square. Not so German, and not a sniff of beer, but I did enjoy a delicious dinner with Laura and Andy and Jackthedog at their house. Jack and Mia played amazingly well and Andy's long awaited "Torta Rustica" was worth the wait.
-----

And the emotional week has been peppered with good news too! Tara is coming to visit for Thanksgiving and my mom assured me she would pull out all stops to present the Australian with a true American feast, Esterly style.

Sense and Sensibility

What a good girlie movie.

And I love

The satisfaction of blowing out a candle in one red breath.

Poem

I light a candle
and watch the shadows
of dried flowers
on the wall.

Aren't they supposed to dance,
these shadow plants?
Shouldn't they flicker
in unison
and sympathy
to my bleeding heart?

Lavender.
It figures.
What with the frumpy satin
bridesmaid gowns
and old lady talcum
powders..
I wouldn't expect much
in the way of
compassion.

But the orange balls.
(How else to describe them?)
Of natural fiber and formed
against the
high
and
unjust expectations
of beauty.

I wanted more from you.

Ani, Coltrane, Etta, Miles and randomness...

Our friends, the music we go to when alone we must be, and silent we cannot handle.

It is interesting, the remedies for sore hearts. Mine seem to turn almost immediately to music, and then wine, perhaps peppered with random hugs and bruising. And then more wine.
----------------

And I remind myself that change is good and highly necessary as catalyst to growth. As is challenge.
And so from conflict can come resolution.
Peace most often is recognized after stormy circumstance, etc. etc.

And even though I am afraid to leave my room (man, i've gotta pee) I realize that ultimately, if it comes down to it, I can pee in my closet.

---------

But back to the music, it is not entirely the most appropriate for the situation, but I do think that Etta James' "Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday" is one of the sexiest, most soulful, yearning, and perfect recordings that ever there was.

It might be blasphemous to say, but I think she sings them better than the Lady herself.
Etta sings like real romance and real love are possibilities and that the hurt ain't so bad. In fact, the opposite... what is real love without all the pain and confusion? ( Ok, so I admit that my experiences may help facilitate this conclusion.)

"I don't know why,
but I'm feeling so sad,
I long to try something
I've never had
never had no kissing
oooh, what I've been missing
lover man
oh where can you be?"

And it is not just about lovers. It is not about men, or women... it is about the truth and yearning in her voice.

Its that it doesn't sound like she is singing a song it sounds like she is singing her heart.

-------------
Is it lazy to buy screw top bottles? Or does it just make more sense? Studies show that cork does nothing to add or diminish flavor and is not an sustainable material...

And bad people don't ever know they are bad, say some.

And what is bad? And what is good?

(a feeling, a feeling)
-------------
I had an amazing eggplant dish at Baraka Cafe in Central Square tonight. I've spent some time on epicurious.com and other Tunisian recipe sites with no real luck finding an adequate recipe, though have found some fabulous ideas for veggie dishes.

I'll keep you posted for the themed dinner parties that I hope to someday host...

------------

I'm returning to Mia tomorrow, the bra eating, sneaker chewing bitch that loves me so fearlessly...

I'll watch
closely
the light
slivered
under your door
like a piece of paper
waiting,

I cannot read
again,
my eyes are blurred
in the smokiness of night
when the rods
(or is it cones)
are working double time
unencouraged, and
under appreciated.

Under the pillow
lay my head
curdled in the fluff
of kamikaze non-geese.
Synthetics to muffle
any noise
that I will not make
anyway.

And I am thinking
of ships,
and the non horizontal
which is the inevitable position
for slumber
and wonder,
Does crooked sleep
lead to crooked
life?