For John — with Dove and Ardor

“What is writing” asks Pippin, and Alcuin answers: “The keeper of knowledge”. “What is the word?” – “The betrayer of thought”. “Who begot the word?” – “The tongue”. “What is the tongue?” – “The scourge of the air”. “What is the air?” – “The preserver of life”. “What is life?” – “The delight of the happy, the bane of the sorrowful, the expectation of death”. “What is man?” – “The slave of death, the guest of one place, a traveller passing”. ~ from J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens

www.ipernity.com

What proceeds within the playground of my mind is not always fluent, cogent and purposeful. Sometimes Thought betrays me and makes a mad dash to the finish line we had agreed to cross together. He cruises past the chalky mark almost before it's been drawn.

And there's Regard and Attend. They're sneaky, they cheat and move their stones off the hopscotch  lines. They don't want to lose their turn, even when they clearly, by way of the rules, should. Sometimes they drop the other foot in a square and say nothing. I become irritable with them. I have to leap to catch up. Dismayed by their duplicity, I'm breathless, I fall to the side.

Sometimes, I fall asleep at the swing-n-slide wheel.

(Sometimes, I fall to pieces. But rarely.)

The space between Thought and Papyrus is gooey. Invisible-gooey. There's an inky force incarnate by the jungle gym, he takes my hand, leads me to Aedos, to whom I demurely bow. Impatience is the bane of the writer, she says.

As is goo, I reply. But look what the bright and modest star, Antares, gave me. I dangle the award before her:

Thank you, Antares!

It can't be all bad, right?

Everything is subject to change, she reminds me (as does Antares).

I won't let them trick me, or get ahead of me again, I assert.

It's alright, she smiles, there is a margin of error. Then there's a margin, and what happens there is anyone's guess. Your friend here can help you to the bubbler. Drink. It fills.

I tuck the award under my arm, and the inky force leads me to the fountain. Somehow, I trust him more than my other friends. He stays by my side. He says, Forget about what happened at the playground—well, maybe not entirely. But you know, you need to get back on the swing. 

Swings make me dizzy. 

Get back on it anyway. Grab the chains, pull, kick forward and back. Eventually, you'll find the rhythm, the arc of the swing, and you're off. Trust me.

I'm still thinking about my friends, about Thought and Papyrus, whom I'd always likened to conjoined twins with a shared brain. But what happens between them, in that invisible-gooey area, is mysterious and not always—I'm learning—easily translatable. Despite the common cranium, they each have their own lexicon and tropology, distinct yet familiar. So much for mind reading.

At the bubbler, I take a sip of water and obediently hop on the adjacent swing, tucking the inky force in my pocket. Kick forward and back. Suddenly, I'm rising and falling. Rise and fall. Higher and higher. There, an arc leaves an imprint in the air. Margins float in the periphery. I close my eyes and see Regard. And Attend. I let go the hurt. So they trick me at times and often try to get in the middle of Thought and Papyrus. They're still fun to play with!

From the high arc of the swing the playground is still, and I observe the quiet beauty of its architecture.

"Friday Night Frolic" - Not Your Average Tonka

Photo by Michael Young--Ozark Photos Blog

I'm still working the metaphors, crafting and work shopping at the writing conference, but I've scheduled something special for you: Southern rock imbued with Ozark musical heritage and tradition, like squirrel potpie, duck hunting, fried catfish, and Ozark jig-dancing.

But first—from today's dump truck of poems—a gift:

Casabianca
by Elizabeth Bishop

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite “The boy stood on
the burning deck.” Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. 

And now, a group of friends introduced to me by Anthony Bourdain—via a recent Ozarks episode from No Reservations:  Ha Ha Tonka. (As in Ha Ha Tonka State Park of the band's native Missouri.)

From their latest release, Death of a Decade, songs reflective of small town southern life:



About their new album (from their website):

Thematically, Death of a Decade is less “story-based” than Ha Ha Tonka’s previous work (which pulled heavily from Missouri history and folklore for its lyrics), with the band now focusing on the transition into manhood—something that doesn’t automatically come once you pass a certain age: “I realize that youth is wasted on the young,” Roberts sings on “Westward Bound,” “Oh, I know that now my wasting days are done.”

However, Roberts says, Death of a Decade is not meant to be a requiem for lost youth, but rather an embrace of the notion that the passage of time is better than the alternative. There you have it again: the wisdom of the Ozarks.

Even if the album’s songs aren’t specifically of the Ozarks, the sound is—still present is the traditional instrumentation (just listen to guitarist Brett Anderson’s arpeggio mandolin lines on “Usual Suspects” and “Made Example Of”), with bassist Lucas Long and drummer Lennon Bone rounding out the rhythm section to stampeding affect. Still present are the spine-tingling four-part gospel harmonies, a signature sound that sets Ha Ha Tonka apart from every other indie band-cum-Southern rock group that seems to be shambling out of the suburban woods these days.

Who said they don't make 'em like they used to?

(Oh the poor ship. Really, the poor ship!)

"Friday Night Frolic" - The Liquidation of Lamebrains

The Neurologist by Jose Perez (Oil on Canvas)

A Summons for Cephalalgia

You sneak in during the middle of the night
thinking I might not notice or mind
like you've got carte blanche
to walk in unexpected, uninvited

You bastard

I've got your number
I've been held by the grip of your vice
countless times
hostage to your beastly manner

I ignore you
You bastard

You hum, warble in my ear
as I search for the dagger and venom
sharp elixir and vapor
with which I might slay you

For you are a mere illusion
that hurts
You bastard

I see you laugh under your breath

as you slowly turn the crank, Screw you

Forcing me to retract the insouciance I feint

as I lose control of the ship

Spiraling among white beams 

and bubbly charcoal floaters

In a lugubrious, colorless, merciless sea 

to the throbbing beat of your pulse

Fuck you

You bastard

The last time you slipped away
I'd hoped it was for good
Otherwise, there'd be a call

For something more effective
(than the ENT's feckless aresenal of pills)
Like a restraining order
Or a hit man

Contracts being my specialty
I'd scribe one immediately
if I could keep the light for a spell
to faintly see where you might sign

The agreement, including, but not limited to
conditions precedent
like prodrome and aura
so I might have fair warning

That my mind is in imminent danger
of being hijacked
by your suffocating hand, your persistent drone,
your deeply encoded paroxysms of pain

You bastard
Your time will come.

AND now, a love song...



John Darnielle, a former psychiatric nurse, writes some of my favorite short stories. And then he sets his revealing, expressive narratives to music, and sings them with The Mountain Goats (or solo). His sometimes morose, but always witty and snarly lyrics prompt smiles and reflection, with no shortage of eye winking.

All Eternals Deck (2011) is the band's latest release. 





And from Get Lonely (2006):




You can find more on Darnielle here.  Now, about that phone call...

(In the event you are wondering... No, the Friday Night Frolic will not become a forum for scrubby, lamebrained, habitual poetry—though I do enjoy serious and not so serious poems. The fragmented stanzas of poetry, in  my case, lends itself to fits of cephalalgia, whereas the narrative is an arduous prospect during bouts of lamebrainitis. )

Dance With Me

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique."

~Martha Graham

Lulu with Herci Marsden

A bit about Lulu: She is très, très, bien—really, quite well—and thanks All for your inquiries and good wishes. Well enough, she is, to be trying out for the dance team at a new school she'll be attending (where she'll be joining big bro) come late August.

Above, is a photo from a few summers back, when Lu participated in ballet boot camp with the Herci Marsden of The State Ballet of Rhode Island. In the late 1960s Ms. Marsden introduced dance to the University of Rhode Island (my alma mater—where I also danced for four years, à la Martha Graham, with URI's modern dance troupe), and at seventy-three years old, she can still work those legs at the bar.

Unlike Lu, who seemed to be entirely out of step during the performance that consummated two weeks of training. For every plié, she did a relevé. For every pas de chat, she made passé. If the dancers' feet were in second position, she was in fifth. I couldn't tell if she was running far behind or ahead, or just playing the opposites game.

See what I mean:

That's Lu without a leg up.

But she kept at it, giggling to herself, didn't leave the floor like she did when she was four, telling me (in almost so many words) the movements were too slow and constrained for her. Not surprisingly, as much as I wanted her to stick with ballet, with the exception of Marsden's soft-toed boot camp, she did not. And I understood this. Dance is an emotional and intuitive expression of life, and for Lu, ballet was all ball and chain, technique where she desired tempest.

Lu's been talking dance the past year or so—jazz, tap, hip hop—asking for lessons at a dance studio, which requires a big commitment, lots of dough, and comes with all the pecuniary trappings: myriad performances, caked on make-up, questionable costumes and grand competitions. Like traveling overseas to perform. Seriously. Seems the entire discipline has been commercialized.

And to that, I say Pooey.

But here we are, headed to a school with dance as an elective, and I can't deny her any longer (besides, it's included in the tuition!). Nor do I want to, for I know the girl needs to move, needs to spin, needs to let her heart spring from it's cage, expand, bounce, and exceed its own yearnings. 

Isn't that what we all need?

Well, maybe not the part that makes you dizzy.

We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive... and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. 
 ~D.H. Lawrence

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

Steadying the Sloop

http://www.mysticseaport.org

You'd think, given the tingly excitement I felt when I jumped into this affair, I wouldn't neglect or forget you (although, I suppose I didn't think a date, a number, all that significant). June 4th came and went like the front yard's magnolia, a quiet salvo of pale color that tottered off so quickly I barely noticed its blooms. I slept in. I got caught up with Puccini while poaching eggs. I sipped thick tomato juice to quell the reverberating oscillation of June 3rd's mojitos. There was the sun, who had me potting cilantro and lavender. And the breeze, who forced me to take a long walk. The day—the bruit—instigated me with its business.

Lately, each day's been the same—demands keeping me from sailing on an even keel. In truth, there is no keel. It's been yanked from it's hull, sending me spinning against the wind. The sails can't catch their breath. The boom's gone crazy, nearly knocking me off the sloop. It's a vertigo inducing course that's neither rational nor apparent.

To be honest, looking back at those early days with you is a bit embarrassing. I was intimidated. I had no idea what to do with you, which quiet place to rendezvous, where we might be going (had we a future?), or why I was tacking the waters with you. Yet you were a compulsion—an urgent need to fill and to get over XYZ. (Though I couldn't shut up about XYZ—constant blubbering.) Like XYZ ever cared about me! You were the rebound affair—a rescue fantasy—you threw the orange lifesaver at me and I grabbed hold of it, naively believing it would save me from the usual conflict and emotional crises of love affairs. Still, I was aware of the odds: only one-fourth of relationships that begin as affairs succeed. And I was nervous.

But to reduce our liaison to simply a rescue is to dilute the truth. I'd always wanted you. I would have swum across the ocean for you.

Somewhere along the stretch of our evolving relationship I began to feel less jittery, less uncertain, became comfortable with you, slowed things down to a more thoughtful pace, and began to trust you. Trust me. Hey, this might work out after all. It turns out, the affair proved to be more than a fling. But comfort breeds complacency, and I fear I've missed the buoy this time.

So please forgive me, dear blog, and kindly accept this post—my 128^th —as my belated Happy 1^st Anniversary wish to you. And it comes with a present from sweet Cheryl, of The Art of Being Conflicted, who writes of the many matters that keep us at odds. I think, however, that she is funnier than she is conflicted.

Thank you, Cheryl, for this award—perfect timing, don't you think?—and for helping us celebrate the one year anniversary of Suburban Soliloquy. Phew. You know the year's been fortunate when you can happily carry on the dalliance despite the bug smear across the screen. (Don't worry, I'll clean it later.)

They say the first year is the hardest, right?

(Now, if only the waters calmed and I could find my damn keel.)

"Friday Night Frolic" - Examinations and Interruptions

These past few weeks, I've been inspired by, and reminded of, the remarkable resilience of my daughter. (And children in general.) Within a span of twenty-two days the girl has been through a quadruple tooth extraction, a series of visits with, and examinations by, several medical specialists, ultrasounds and MRIs, surgery, and today, her streak of health related matters capped off, literally, by the gold brackets and silver wiring of her shiny new braces. On her twelfth birthday, no less.

And not one complaint.

She, as well as all the other children we encountered along this course of medicinal forays, has worn the same determined warrior-face for each run along the path.

And me, fretting over a job interview for a position I've never held, in an industry I know little about. Not much to fret there, really. Certainly not by comparison.

But dealing with numerous and lengthy internet interruptions? (Cox Communications—can anyone tell me if FiOS is more reliable?) That's serious. I'll be lucky to find an open window in which to throw out this post.

Today, my girl is twelve. Twelve! I could never have imagined what I was to be confronted with in those dozen years now past. (And what to come?) Even though I had been a mother—an older mother, at that—for two years when Lulu was born, I was entirely unprepared for what would follow.

No one warned me of the degree to which my mental resilience would be tested by motherhood. Hell, by everything. But I won't bore you with tangential elaboration. You understand.

Anyway, I saw Ann Hood quote Allen Ginsberg on Facebook today. (Ann is a fellow Rhode Islander.) “Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness” she wrote on her wall. 

Speaking of such, I now see my window of opportunity in which to fling my inner moonlight and madness...  while a few escalating bars flicker access in the lower right hand corner of my laptop, and before Lu and I go get a manicure and, later, meet up with her father and brother at Cuban Revolution to have dinner, listen to some jazz, and celebrate the astonishing miracle of Lu's birth, and what she brings to the world.

 My muse. How I love her.



I think it's time for a to return to normal, don't you?



If you don't have Buena Vista Social Club in your music library, you may want to start here.

And thanks so much to all of you who've been so kind, patient and supportive through all of this. I've been unable to keep up with many of you, but I'll be by to visit this weekend (if Cox permits, ugh).

Flexicon

A good pun is its own reword.  ~Author Unknown

Source

In 1995 John Pollack won the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships. Seriously, you can see him here (the one wearing the blue polka dot shirt). This past April, his book The Pun Also Rises, was released by Gotham Books. Here, Pollock—a journalist, former presidential speech writer for Bill Clinton, and author of Cork Boat—writes a humorous and intriguing narrative on the etymology of the pun.

Having grown up in a household where wordplay was everyday, nightly spelling bees buzzed around the dinner table, and silly, punny, puns were always welcome, this is just the sort of word nerd book I can't resist.

And apparently, as you can see by my son's illustration below, the love of word bending runs in the family.

By Max

Citrusing, isn't it? Oh, come on. I dare you...  have some pun.