This is it

Tomorrow Ex Turned Friend is driving out of this town. I am going to cry myself to sleep now. I feel like a total freak.

Prime, The Uma, and a pathetic Friday night

How did I end up alone in the garret, watching a reprehensible "sophisticated character comedy," drinking an entire bottle of red wine, and being generally weepy and sentimental on a Friday night? Because, really folks, contrary to some of the evidence on this blog for the past few months, I am generally a naturally happy and spontaneous and funny and fun-loving social creature. I have my depresso moments (as well as the ominous "history of depression"--yes, even with the naturally happy disposition), but I know the depression for what it is and I know how to manage it. So last night had nothing to do with depression and, truth be told, it is not the first time I have chosen to sit at home with some cheap wine and a bad movie on a Friday night. And, yes, it was a choice. But why?

I blame a) my cable company; b) Ex Turned Friend; and c) Uma Thurman.

a) Earlier this week, I threatened to breakup with my evil and expensive cable company, so they came bearing gifts, including HBO, in order to get me not to switch over to less evil, less expensive cable company. Even though I currently have two great movies that students gave to me to watch and two from Netflix I am dying to watch, I am mesmerized by the many lame choices on HBO, including The Lake House (en espanol, no less), Hope Floats, and Prime, the movie I have now watched not only once when I was kind of trapped into watching it on a cross-country flight, but a second time BY CHOICE. More on this in a moment.

b) I had thought I would go to a going-away last-hurrah party thing for Ex Turned Friend last night. I could have gone had I planned better and I probably should have gone. I have been wavering about it for a while now, though, and I didn't do everything I needed to do to make it happen and ended up too exhausted to go anyway. We had our own last-hurrah thing, so it's not like I am an asshole for not going. It was just sad sitting around alone thinking about it going on while I was at home, even though I chose to be home, you know? I know. It doesn't make much sense and perhaps leads one to the conclusion that I just wanted to have a little pity party with myself last night. Moving on.

c) I have a fascination with Uma Thurman. I will watch any movie, buy any magazine, read any news item involving The Uma. I am even fascinated by anyone associated with The Uma, like Dash Snow, who is a pretty interesting dude in his own right but who more importantly for my Uma-fascination purposes is the son of Robert Thurman's daughter by his first marriage (i.e. the son of The Uma's older half-sister). Needless to say, I can not turn myself away from the screen when The Uma is on it, which is why last night I would not stop watching a movie that I knew full well had me seething more and more with each and every air mile as I made my way from coast to coast the first time I watched it. I can't really blame The Uma, though, because I feel like she made a lot of bad choices film-wise after the breakup with Ethan. It was as if she was getting some things out of her system, and we cannot really blame people for the bad art they produce when such is the case. With Prime, I think she was trying to send Ethan a message, something like, "You were not ready for me and our children and our life together you little fourteen years younger than me on an emotional level cheating emotional fuckwit, Ethan Hawke, and I should have not had children with you, and I should have let you go long before it came to that, and--look--I am totally having sex with the much younger, much hotter Bryan Greenberg, ON SCREEN FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE, while you are being pathetic in Paris with Julie Delphy, walking around the streets of Paris, looking about 5000 years older than when you were with her walking around the streets of Vienna and NOT HAVING SEX WITH A HOT YOUNG MAN FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE, but I forgive you in the end." So really The Uma was too distracted to see the message she was sending to the rest of the world with the movie, which is very simply "women in their thirties should not date men in their twenties because women in their thirties are 'on the clock' and want to have babies, and men in their twenties cannot be saddled with the emotional needs of women in their thirties, much less babies, so you over-thirty ladies must set those young men in their prime free. Because you? Totally past your prime." Scream now at this message, for as long as you want, as any self-respecting man or woman such as myself (who, ok, admittedly does regularly date much younger men and who usually does not feel disposed to be apologetic about it) should do. Absolutely do not do what I did, according to the following formula.

A + B + C= Copious tears over the "touching" last scene which brings home the "beautifully real message" of the film by showing The Uma and Young Man in His Prime staring lovingly at each other through a restaurant window, forever separated but knowing they have made the right decision for their oh-so-different futures. And, to make it worse, I had somehow come to think of (the eight years younger) ETF and myself as having necessarily suffered a similar fate AND that this fate was a beautiful thing AND oh who the fuck knows, as I was by then to the end of the bottle of Le Mazet. The point is that these were sanctimonious tears over a bad little movie made by a despairing Uma and over a romance with ETF that ended not over being on different paths or someone wanting babies or having different ideas about John Coltrane but actually over nothing more than the fact that in the end we are much better as friends.

Apparently I have a lot to get out of my system as well and I have a feeling I am going to let it all (well, pretty much all) fly here. I apologize in advance. And, Uma, if you are reading, I forgive you for making a movie that made me cry in spite of my better instincts. You are fantastic. Now I am going to stop being a maudlin freak and go out into the sunshine with my pup.

Poetry Friday, Wills

Because who couldn't use a sonnet on a gloomy Spring Friday? Someone once recited this to me (for reals) as I stood looking down at him from the roof of a cedar-lined stone hut. Yeah, he was a little wacky and it all ended in blood and tears--not the recitation (like I didn't fall from the roof onto him and split my head open and make him cry or anything) but the relationship. Still, I miss him.

Sonnet 17

Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, "This poet lies,
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces."
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage,
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.

It's that time again. . .Chihuahua Wednesday

The Chalupa, in various states of awakeness. . .



She wonders if you know that she hardly ever sleeps uncovered and will burrow under anything handy and soft. This is her favorite wool sweater, which makes her a little itchy but is otherwise quite nice.



Here she is squinting in the sun, but this looks exactly like the "squint of frustration," an expression she often makes when you have not been paying attention to what is required of you (e.g. "OUTSIDE!" "VISIT MILO!" "BREAKFAST!"). The squint of frustration is often accompanied by sighs or snorts, and once or twice I swear I saw a slight resigned shake of the head.



Finally, she encourages all of you to take the soonest possible opportunity for a nap in whatever slice of sun is available to you.

Fevah (in which I objectify fire fighters)

What is sweeter (and I do mean "sweet" as in "sweet bike, dude . . .ever take it off any sweet jumps?") than seeing two firemen in their little fire-fighting pants with their suspenders and their tight t-shirts shopping for dinner ingredients in the produce section of the grocery store? Nothing. I actually had to psychically slap myself a few times to snap myself out of the pineapple in one hand, mouth open, staring, blinking pose I assumed for oh, I don't know, a good 45 seconds. One of them caught me though and did the half-smile nod. I believe they were from the firehouse I run by every day on my summer running route. Ahhh. . . .the boys of Engine 7.

Spring has sprung, my friends, and I do believe I have the fever. This totally makes up for hairy half-naked yoga guy.

Small hairy man doing yoga on back porch

Not my back porch but the back porch of the house behind and to the right of the garret, directly in my line of sight, as I sit at the open window having breakfast and futzing around on the computer.

It's the first sunny and warm and awesomely beautiful Saturday morning of the year. Hairy dude has every right to do yoga on his back porch. He's probably doing a very beautiful thing for his body--his very hairy, very nearly naked, short-shorted body.

Still, I have to say it. Hippies ruin everything.

Up against the wall, chihuahua mother**

I am buried in end-of-the-semester work, including 1001 meaningless busy-work tasks manufactured by TDC, and I am also facing deadlines on several major projects. Until I extricate myself, I leave you with Chalupa photos.

She wants to tell you that she greatly enjoyed sharing particulars of her life with you all and plans to do more of this in the future. For now, she would like you to know these "details of privy:" 1) she loves to bark at air traffic; 2) she is very much looking forward to meeting her new friends in her Chihuahua Meet-up Group (oh no folks, I do not lie, it's for real) starting in May; and 3) she loves her viva-Chalupa bloggy friends.








**That's right, Jerry Jeff Walker. Uh huh, revealing my roots.

My sympathies

My sympathies to all involved with the Virginia Tech shootings. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

I am up to something

But even I do not know what it is.

I have had the strong urge for the past few days to spruce up the attic--to clean, to throw out, to store, to hang pictures, to rearrange, and to do all manner of decorating things I haven't really done since I moved in oh so many moons ago. So, yesterday, rather than grading the stack of dreaded papers on my desk, I almost completely reinvented the 897 square feet surrounding the desk. I could chalk this up to the need to procrastinate. I could explain it as Spring-cleaning energy. These are probably contributing factors, but it feels like something more.

It started after hanging out with Ex Turned Friend earlier this week. I gave him a longtime cherished object of mine as a going-away gift. It is something I have had for twenty-five years and have carried with me from town to town for all of my adult life. But it has been gathering dust in the garret, and ETF always really really loved this thing . I realized soon after I found out that he was leaving that it was going to go with him. I wanted him to have it and I did not want it anymore. Giving it to him was a symbolic gesture not only about my connection and friendship with him but about me clearing out, letting go, changing my life.

I feel sentimental and silly writing about it. (I have been feeling terribly self-conscious lately about seeming maudlin or sentimental or expressing anything close to a feeling at all to anyone around me.) But whatever this is I am going through--all of this sadness and all of this building energy--seems important. And it doesn't feel sentimental or silly or depressive or melancholy. I know when I am wallowing. This is not wallowing.

Dr. Crazy thinks I am nesting, and whatever had hold of me yesterday certainly had the charge of an instinct. What I am preparing the nest for is at this point anyone's guess.

The Law of Conservation of Medusa's Ex-Boyfriends

I just heard from the guy I randomly mentioned in the beginning of this post of almost exactly one year ago today, the love of my life at 19-years-old, whom I have not seen since long before the turn of the century and who called out-of-the-blue to tell me of his recent divorce.

?!?!?!??!?!??!?!

?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!

What is with the disappearing and reappearing exes?

It is I! The Chalupa!

I have come with greetings of the Friday evening. The Mama Medusa, she is of the maudlin, with the pining and the grieving all over again of the lover lost and lost again with the moving to lands of vast farness from these. I know not of these sorts of matters, but I respect the feeling with which she feels this the sadness. This closeness she has with this one, it is of the deep and to-be-missed closeness of specialness. It, how the ever, makes for the not so good fare of the blog.

Do not fear! I am here to retrieve the cheerfulness of the day! It has come to the attention of I, Chunk-o-Pup Chalupa Puttalily Fandango, this thing of the mee. . . meeemer. . . .meeee-MAR. . .meeeemeeee. . meme. The Cat of Man of the Doctor of Crazy, he has informed me of the ritual of the tag. The great Sidonia has requested that the Cat of Man of the Doctor of Crazy and I reveal the Five Things about the Selves of Us to which you may have not heretofore been of the privy. Without the ado of further:

1. I was born on the Eve of Christmas. What chihuahua is this? 'Tis I.
2. According to the Rays of X of the veterinary caregivers, I have no knees in the hind legs, or rather the knees caps they have floated jauntily hither and thither from their places of ought-to-be. They rebel from the oppressive structure of the normative skeletal order! Yet I leap, I frolic, I run! I am the dog of miracles. Revolución!
3. The crazy hair of the Medusa? It is most fun to bite, especially when she is of the sleeping. She awakes! Do I turn to stone when I encounter the angry gaze of the awakened crazy-head Medusa? Tsk tsk! No no! It is the most fun of games.
4. My name in the real life it is that of the same of the most venerable of divas, I feel. She is of the talent and of the beauty, as am I. Viva la diosa!
5. The Mama Medusa, she waited quite the while after the passing of her grand chat domestique, the companion of seventeen years, the great Shiva, to bring another creature into the household. I was born précisément three days before the passing of the Shiva. Even though it took four of the years for her to find me, we, the Mama Medusa and I, were brought together for the reason, no?

With that, I will end! And I beseech you to enjoy this the Spring weekend, this the weekend, this the Spring, this the joy!

Peace the out,
I . . . . The Chalupa!

Poetry Friday, only Neruda will do

Love Poem X

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountaintops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin between my hands.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that is always turned to at twilight
and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues.

--Pablo Neruda

I want the Big Love* again. There, I put it out there, like a blogging the lost request to the gods. We shall see what happens.



*You know, the Big Love, the love that knocks you over, steals your cosmic credit cards, and leaves at an utterly beautiful loss.

Strange unbloggable things afoot

Strange unbloggable things that have happened to me this week, in haiku form . . .

Office Politics

Listen soberly
As she speaks martini-ese.
Learn everything.

Farewell Dinner

Whiskey-soaked goodbyes
Follow whiskey-soaked hellos
Blurring all the lines.

Castration Anxiety, Student Edition

Your intense dis-ease
With this professing woman
Bores me completely.

Random Bullets of Cranky Easter Morning

• What's up with the cold weather, people? 31 degrees Fahrenheit with an expected high of 40 degrees. This reminds me that every single May I vow to make plans for a mini-vacation to a very warm locale for the next May. I always pretend I will have the money or will somehow find the money to do this. I never do.
• Money. I don't have any. I don't care at the moment if it is incredibly crass to talk about it. It's an enormous struggle every single month. I am tired of it. It also occurs to me that it's RIDICULOUS that I am putting 5% of my paycheck into a retirement account when I have to panic and scramble right now to pay my bills. I have let my father pressure me into doing this. (And, yes, I suspect the reason I am woefully financially unsuccessful at this late age is because I have let my father continue to have a major influence on my financial decisions.) I am actually paying some bills with a credit card that doesn't charge interest until August, because by then I will be able to pay it off with a check from teaching summer school. Pathetic.
• I am teaching summer school. Boo.
• Paloma has invited me to a wonderful Easter dinner. She's cooking for her entire family and a few friends, all of whom I would really like to see. I know this should be a good thing and not a cranky-making thing, but I had no idea what she was talking about when on the phone Friday night she was "reminding" me of Easter this and two hams that and scalloped potatoes here and cobbler there, all at her house. She had thought she had told me weeks ago. Normally this would not be a big deal, but I am so so behind in my work. I was way behind before the weekend began, and the past three days of seeing out-of-town friends and going to papers at the conference that is in town has royally screwed me. I estimate I need about 10 hours each day today and tomorrow to get through the work and that may be a little on the conservative side. I can see squeezing in an hour tops for Easter dinner. That would be extreme eating and running, though. On Easter. Rude. What to do? Go for a bit? Say I am not feeling well?
• I actually am feeling sick. I don't know if it's allergies or what, but I am exhausted, achey, and, as is abundantly evident by now, cranky.
• There is a very large hawk in my neighborhood. I wish I could say something Thoreau-like about its mighty beak or the gold of its tilted feather in sunny flight (I heart Thoreau, in spite of myself, I really do), but as he seems to have taken a loud screeching interest in the Chalupa the past few mornings, what I will say is this: "Get within 100 feet of this yard in any direction, you filthy scavenging coward, and I will rip you apart with my own hands."
  
• I have been having these amazing dreams that I am in a reality that isn't real. I am not talking about lucid dreaming, which is standard dreaming procedure for me. I mean in the dream I am projected (for various reasons, by various forces, some friendly, some not) into a simulated reality, a holodeck-like projection, and have to navigate my way through it. At first, it feels like I am travelling through a muddy-feeling substance that looks like the world but has thick heavy mass and texture. As I learn how to walk, to breathe, to talk in this new environment, it begins to feel natural. I bounce around as I would in my normal environment, but there's no gravity. There is only substance around me, and I can walk through it in any direction--down into the earth, up into the sky, up walls and upside down on ceilings. I can find the substance is moldable and I can create things I need from it. Am I a) stepping precariously closer to the edge of psychosis; b) really getting into a certain something I am teaching right now; c) spending way too much time in virtual environments; or d) fabulously creative and brilliant?
• Have you noticed blog cliques? I have been branching out in my blog reading, and I have seen a few groups of blogs that seem to discourage outsiders and seem to encourage a certain exclusiveness--in posts, in comments--among a limited amount of people. I am not talking about those bloggers who have a combination of new readers, IRL friends, and readers from a certain community. What I see from those bloggers is an at least implicit generosity with all visitors, except of course those commenters who are hostile. What I think I am seeing are some blogs that are the virtual equivalent of the "cool kid" table in the high-school cafeteria. I do not comment frequently even on the blogs I regularly read and I have never commented on these cliquey blogs I mention, but I am fascinated by what it is that gives off this exclusivity vibe on certain blogs.
  
• How did I forget what a great movie Moonstruck is? I watched it last night before bed. Best forgotten line, between Olympia Dukakis's character and the NYU professor (played by John Mahoney): OD: I am not old for you. JM: I am too old for me!. HA! Think I actually told The Grand He that he was too old for himself once, not remembering that I had stolen that line. I do this constantly, by the way--steal lines from movies and forget they are from movies and think they are mine. A huge amount of them are from the 80s.
  
• Finally, in way of an apology for all of the crankiness I have just dumped on you: Happy Easter, Happy Spring!

Poetry Friday, Christina Davis

The Primer

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

--Christina Davis

Hmmm. . .I think I am feeling happy and light--tired, but happy and light--on this bright Spring day. Why this poem, then? Maybe because in the midst of all this enormous possibility I am feeling, in spite of this sense of being on the cusp of something--of everything--very very good, there is a small and deep sadness that is about letting go. Ex Turned Friend is leaving. I loved him. I love him. I am going to miss him. Then again, I have been missing him for a long time.

Should be grading should be grading should be grading

I am stuck at school for another two hours (well, look at that, I have lost a full 51 minutes messing around on the Internet) hour and change. I am having an early dinner with one of my BFFs from grad school, who is in town for a conference, so I decided to grade in my office until it's time to meet. HA! I am embarrassed to say how few papers I have graded in the holy god three-and-a-half hours since my office hours ended.

Have I done anything one might call work in this time? Unless you count researching whether or not you can use flexible spending dollars to have your eggs frozen and stored, no, no I have not. In case are wondering whether or not you can use flex spending to freeze and store your eggs, the answer is yes. In case you are wondering if there's a more banally tragic scenario than trying to find out whether or not you can use flex spending to freeze and store your eggs, the answer is no.

I need a break, folks. I am talking a big-ass, long-ass, real-ass break. I know you know the feeling.

Muscovite rune googling

Someone in Moscow found my blog while looking for some "gebo rune action." I don't think I want to know.

I apologize for the slow crawl through the rune queue. I am hoping to do one or two casts this weekend. Those in line, please let me know if your question remains as is or if you'd like to amend it.

Hello . . . it is I, the Chalupa

I come to you on this fine morning of the day with greetings and the assault of cuteness. Do you not admire this photo? When I gaze upon it, I am reminded of the brilliant New Yorker cartoon and of course the great poem of the Blake, with its trochees and its chats de jungle. I am not the tiger, but I less the never burn the bright, do I not?

Am I wrong to think this is kind of brilliant?

I think I might have a new found respect for she whom I have always referred to as "The Screeching Canadian."

Happy Pink Moon

Pink pink pink pink . . .on its way at 1:15 EDT.

Random Bullets of Medusa Went Out and Had Some Drinks*

7:20 a.m. Oh my.

• "The language of love has become a foreign tongue." Sing it, baby. SING. IT.
• *poof*
• Really? I am really meeting the mother of The Boy (of the messy breakup of nearly a year ago) for the first time? Tonight? Why? Whhhhhhhhhy?
• *poof*
• These are for you, Dr. Crazy:
• Heee, me nime iz Jeeermy. Jeermy frim Deeery. Ujkdklsy ksljk ledy ksjlkedyg kdyekla dlyekdl dlkylklslsy KIEOILSUY.
  
• Surreptitiously. Ye like that word, doncha?
• Russell Crowe? Doogie Howser?
• *poof*
• *poof*
  
• Cigarettes smoked since July 17, 2005 prior to this evening: 0. Cigarettes smoked since July 17 2005, after this evening: 0. Zero! Cero! Null! Nullus!
  
• *poof*
• My feelings for Ex Turned Friend? Perhaps they run a teensy bit more deep than anyone, least of all me, suspected.
• Hippies ruin everything.
• Whiskey nice. Mmmm. . . .sleepy. Night night.

*Likely to self-destruct upon the sober light of sunrise