I Would Never

...carry my dog in a purse or ask strangers for condoms or buy a $75 pair of underpants (even if they're red) or ask you what size you wear or poke your eyes out in old photos with a sharp pencil or answer the phone on even-numbered days or call your mother dirty names or paint my living room beige or eat donuts from the dumpster behind the strip mall or throw away a book, even if it's coming apart or tell wicked lies about your cat or sip bourbon from a man's tasseled loafer or fire a gun or join the marines or steal your mail or sneak a look at your paycheck or leave you behind to be eaten by zombies or swallow a bug on purpose or stop believing in ghosts or bury a body where somebody might find it or use water to put out a grease fire or skip breakfast to lose weight or wear a white shirt with armpit stains or argue with a physicist about how to survive a nuclear winter or become one of those people who is always trying to sell you stuff or say something I know is going to make you feel like shit unless you really, really had it coming.

The Hare Moon & Other Ramblings

The moon is full tonight & according to Dorothy Morrison, April is the Hare Moon--a time for the celebration of earthly fecundity, for planting seeds, for initiating projects. Romance is abundant in the ether... As an interesting side note, Hans Bierdermann claims the hare is a "lunar animal...because the dark patches on the moon suggest leaping hares" (164). I have never thought the maria looked much like pawprints, but I like this image. I do! Giant Bunnies on the Moon! Sounds like a children's book, doesn't it?

What dreams does the full moon bring? Last night I dreamt I observed the performance of a head-ectomy (I'm sure there's a better term for it, probably something that uses Latin) in an operating theater. Men draped in white separated a woman's head from her body & the body was wheeled away on a gurney & I found myself wondering which part of her they were trying to save & which part might be disposed of as "medical waste."

Yes, I'm still fixated on dismemberment, although this one was surgical, as opposed to accidental.

Surgeon: "By cutting off something, something needs to be healed" (my head, apparently). "Being saved in times of distress" (I'll take a pass on the head removal, thanks.) & (last but oh! not least) "Authority; often the male hero" (can a get a hell no?)

Also: "According to Freud, the head is symbol of masculinity." Say what, Siggy?

What I do find interesting here is the image of a woman's body as a site being acted upon by male agents. ((Here is where I exercise some profound restraint & avoid writing a dream analysis based on feminist theory because it would probably bore you to death although maybe it wouldn't.))

***

How I Plan to Celebrate the Hare Moon


1.) Roasted Pear & Arugula Salad, Lemon-Herb Risotto

2.) Coloring Mandalas

3.) Pondering the Tattoo I Will Never Get Because Let's Face It, I Don't Like Pain

4.) Zombies & Rabbits OR Zombie Rabbits

5.) Something To Do with Onions

6.) Refusing to Speak to Anyone Who Does Not Curry My Favor with Dark Chocolate & Excessive Bowing & Scraping




p.s. Do not attempt to curry my favor with curry. I don't like it.

The Unreliable Narrator

Six Things That Aren't True

1.) I have a tattoo of a split-tailed mermaid that sprawls across my lower belly & includes the inscription Here There Be Monsters.

2.) I secretly enjoy Cheetos.

3.) I am writing a graphic novel about a sentient female zombie with no mouth who can consume human brain chemicals from a distance of eighty feet via telekinesis. It's called The Neuron Thief.

4.) My natural hair color is green.

5.) I am willowy & stylish & possess unheard-of mathematical prowess. I have the power to stop a human heart with the flick of a delicate wrist & by speaking the word vibrato at precisely seven decibels.

6.) Everything I have written is false.

Twinkle, twinkle little bat...

Yesterday M & I celebrated my UnBirthday (as we failed to celebrate my actual birthday some six weeks earlier) with sushi & sapporo & Alice in Wonderland. I am emotionally twelve years old & it is not a (post-post) birthday celebration unless it involves eating with chopsticks & seeing a movie that involves both monsters & madness. I like the Jabberwocky. This movie needed more Jabberwocky.

So, as a general rule I totally dig me some Tim Burton-ness. I skipped the whole 3D thing, because I think it disrupts the narrative with too many bells & whistles & it makes M nauseous.

The lowdown:

Overall, it's a yes. Go see it if you like that kind of thing. Visually very pretty to look at although the script (at times) was a little thin.

I loved the reinvention of the older Alice, especially when she's wearing chain mail & looks for all the world like Joan of Arc. Sweet.

I would like to befriend a hookah-smoking Caterpillar that sounds just like Alan Rickman.

Anne Hathaway kept using these bizarre hand mannerisms that were both annoying and distracting. I imagine they were supposed to seem feminine & queenly, but I thought it was a stupid affectation.

My favorite character when I was a little girl was the Cheshire Cat. I kept wanting this Cheshire Cat to be pink because Walt Disney has fried my brain.

I would very much like to host a mad tea party, but I am the only genuinely mad person I know. If Johnny Depp came to my mad tea party, he'd have to ditch those freaky contact lenses & the bozo fright wig. Mr. Depp is all kinds of dirty, dirty hotness when he hasn't been Burtonized.

***

Speaking of Alice in Wonderland & awkward segues, last night I dreamt I had to climb over a particularly wicked looking piece of machinery that had many buzzing, rolling serrated saw blades extending from its mechanized body like tentacles. I slipped & fell & was nearly split in two by one of it vicious limbs, but I survived.

Notable Symbols:

Machine: lack of meaning, automation; alternatively, a representation of your inner self.

Saw: Something drastic is happening, taking something rough & making it precise; willpower

Dismemberment: (which I only narrowly escaped) the feeling of "falling apart"; alienation, estrangement.

I seem to be quite obsessed with my own disintegration these days. I remember there were people who were angry with me for climbing over the machine. Some of them were poets, but in my dream, they were mathematicians. I think I am feeling anxious about Cyborgia, and perhaps fearful of harsh criticism from other writers? Deep down, we are all insecure about our work, even when we love it & feel like it came together beautifully.

Spooky Things

The house is very quiet today. I wrote another poem I really like, something for the final section of the next manuscript-in-progress. I have a bitchin' title but I'm not ready to share. I am researching the ghosts of famous dead women. Seriously. I even googled "famous dead women" but I got a whole bunch of crap about Brittany Murphy & that's not what I was looking for at all. Last night my bedroom door blew shut early in the evening & sort of rolled open (with a slow, deliberate creak--eerie!) in the middle of the night & I wonder if we have a ghost or some bizarre draft coming from god-knows-where because it was hella cold yesterday so it's not like we had the windows open.

I have a voodoo doll that sits in a tiny wooden casket & wears a top hat with a big purple feather in it & his name is Tony. Maybe I need to prop Tony up outside my bedroom door to scare away the ghost because he looks very much like a creepy scarecrow, except for the fancy purple duds. Tony is something of a dandy.

Now, you would think the maybe-ghost would inspire outlandish, haunted dreams, but nope, nope, nope. It was reruns again last night: the dream where I show up at a poetry reading & forget to bring poems & I am frantically trying to remember them but I can only recall the beginnings & the ends & I forget the middles. The irony, of course, is that one could easily discard all the middles of their poems at a reading & nobody would even notice. Poems are not like Oreos.

Speaking of food & scary things, I am thinking about the fact that I do not like beets because they are magenta and kind of freak me out & I understand there is a variety of golden beets & I would like to try them but can't imagine where they might be found here in the glorious, glorious burbs. Sometimes I am standing behind a woman at the grocery store & she is buying soda & canned spaghetti sauce & bottled salad dressing & sweet-sweet sugar cereal & I think about all the HFCS & funked-up chemicals & unnecessary additives and feel bad about the garbage people eat every day. M & Z really like Doritos, which I think are totally gross & the most unnatural shade of orange. I always feel bad when I buy them, but I don't want to be totally insane about the occasional junk food binge. Sometimes, a person's gotta have their fakey-fake foodstuffs & sometimes that person happens to live in my house. Once I saw Michael Pollan on The Colbert Report & he talked about how he got busted buying Fruity Pebbles for his kid at the supermarket & I liked him even more. Into every life, a little high fructose corn syrup must fall.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Michael Pollan
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

***

Yes, that ghost is actually a marshmallow peep with a bite taken out. It seemed especially fitting.

Ordinary Things

I am working on another cyborg post but have too many ideas. Must. Boil. It. Down.

Yesterday was a day of ordinary things although some ordinary things have aspects of the extraordinary. I took Harley to the dog groomer & noticed they have the most amazing pictures on the wall of competitions they've won with dyed-blue poodles dressed as the snow queen & other kinds of doggie awesomeness & this makes me happy & I can't quite explain why except it's an unusual art form & I appreciate that. Harley just had an ordinary bath & haircut. I don't think he'd make a very good snow queen, although he'd be an adorable elf.



I made mostaccioli & homemade garlic bread & a big green salad with radishes & spring onions & a garlicky-mustardy vinaigrette that was so good I want to make it again today. The day before I was quite tired & nobody was particularly hungry so we had a big bowl of popcorn & called it a day. I had the most ordinary dream: one of those recurring ones where the house is full of fading Christmas trees & it's clearly springtime & I feel disgusted with myself, with my own slovenliness.

Reading:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Bobcat Country by Brandi Homan

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach


Watching:

Angel, Season 1

Transamerica

Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.0

Z is leaving tomorrow for his first overnight trip (sans parents) ever & I am very very anxious, but also excited for him. He's competing in a conference for Future Business Leaders of America. I am cleaning the house like mad because external order helps calm my inner chaos.

Z asked me this morning if we were having a party while he was gone which makes me think I must be kind of lousy at keeping house if he thinks it's a special occasion.

I have a doctor's appointment in two weeks & I wonder if I should mention my anxiety but it makes me feel ridiculous & unsophisticated so instead I just put up with the panic attacks & the creeping sense of impending doom & hope nobody notices but then I tell everybody about it on my blog anyway. Hah.

Things You Might Overhear at My House

Me: "If I were a zombie, I would not eat her brains because they would infect me with the bad variety of crazy, like Mad Cow Disease."

Mike: "You are awesome. Do you know that?"