Te dua shume

There is a man who comes to my bar who sometimes frightens other customers. He is kind and good but also easily mistaken for crazed and possibly dangerous. He is toothless, a bit disheveled, drinks a bit. He has a big heart but this is obscured by his lack of facility both with the English language and with American mores.

Lillet was introduced to him for the first time the other day and smiled her usual incandescent smile. When she found out that he is an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo she tried out her handful of Albanian phrases on him.

The man was visibly delighted. And who wouldn't be, to have a pretty girl treat you so kindly and make an attempt to speak to you in the quite obscure native language you had to leave far behind?

My wife: not only kind and gracious, but also speaks some Albanian. How hot is that?

Here's A Better Idea

How about, stop feeding cows pulverized remains of dead other cows, fuckwits!

That iPod Meme

Okay, I succumbed.
Here is the deal:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

I did this, and did NOT cheat. And there you have it.
----------------------------------
How am I feeling today?
"La Collection d’Hiver " – Philippe Bresson

Will I get far in life?
"Like The Weather" -10,000 Maniacs (god, so embarrassed)

How do my friends see me?
"Arabique" – Serge Gainsbourg

Where will I get married?
"Rebellion (Lies)" – The Arcade Fire [Cause I’m ALREADY married! You can’t fool me, iPod!]

What is my best friend's theme song?
“Famous Blue Raincoat” – Tori Amos

What is the story of my life?
"I’ve Told Every Little Star" – Linda Scott

What was high school like?
Carbon Monoxide – Regina Spektor [Indeed.]

How can I get ahead in life?
"In Particular" – Blonde Redhead [Wow.]

What is the best thing about me?
"Régrets" – Carla Bruni [Double wow.]

What is today going to be like?
"This Is Always" – Chet Baker [Oh! Nice!]

What is in store for this weekend?
"Who Is It" - Bjork

What song describes my parent(s)?
"I Could Be Dreaming" – Belle and Sebastian

To describe my grandparents?
"Immobile" – Autour de Lucie

How is my life going?
"Saltwater To Quench Your Thirst" – Michael Leviton {God, really?}

What song will they play at my funeral?
Side Two – Sondre Lerche

How does the world see me?
"Funny Little Frog" – Belle and Sebastian [HOORAY!]

Will I have a happy life?
"Jamais je n’ai dit que je t’aimerais" – Phillipe Bresson

What do my friends really think of me?
"The Work Song" – Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Do people secretly lust after me?
"Le Claqueur De Doigts" – Serge Gainsbourg (I guess that’s a oui)

How can I make myself happy?
"Selon L’Humeur" – Autour De Lucie

What should I do with my life?
"Beauty and the Beast" – David Bowie

Will I ever have children?
"Un Problème?" – Benjamin Biolay [The answer better be “pas de problème”]

I'd Like To Show Her Some Fucking 9/11

From Overheard In New York:

Tourist lady: Does this train go to 9/11?
Man: what?
Tourist lady: I want to see 9/11.
Man: You mean World Trade Center?
Tourist lady: No, I mean 9/11.
Other tourist lady: Oh no, you want the E train. I had this problem yesterday. New Yorkers are so unhelpful

Stunned silence all the way to 42nd St.

--Downtown C train, 50th St.

Swoon!

I am obsessed with my new favorite band, Die Romantik! I have, in the last three days, listened to Hantise d'Enfance nearly a hundred times! I can't stop! I am truly besotted.

This is the perfect song. If it were a perfume I would wear too much of it. I would spray it in the air and run through the spray, I would put it in my drink! I want to eat this song! Listen!

Lateness!

I had three "serious" posts in mind for today, and the weather is so beautiful and I am in such a good mood that I would rather post something Interactive and Silly: thus:

Reasons I Have Been Late To Work That My Employer Would Most Likely Not Sanction

1) Hungover
2) Having morning sex
3) Masturbating seemed important at the time

4) Could not figure out what to wear
5) Difficulty finding clothes in messy room
5) Vomiting on subway platform (see 1)
6) Had to finish putting on makeup
7) Taxi taken for reasons 1-7 stuck in traffic

8) En route to subway saw a baby rat shivering on top of some shoveled snow, so went to the coffeshop and bought a muffin and coffee with an extra cup, returned to location of scared/ cold baby rat, put muffin piece in bottom of cup, placed cup horizontally next to baby rat who promptly ran inside cup to eat muffin, took rat in cup to safer snowbank area by tree and carefully placed cup horizontally on the ground, placed rest of muffin by front of cup hoping baby rat would be okay, continued on to subway

Please share what's made YOU tardy!

Did I Really Just Say That?

Holy shit!

On the phone with FedEx just now, I told the operator "I'd like to schedule a pregnancy -- I mean, pickup!"

Maybe I shouldn't have had this window open!

Holy Saturday

We celebrated Easter with Trey's family on Saturday, because he works on Sunday nights, so yesterday we trekked out to Whitestone to my mother-in-law's house, with Trey's brother, his wife, and our nearly two-year-old nephew Franco. Trey's grandmother was there as well. It was gorgeous weather and a lovely and loving day.

I love Franco to pieces. We have the same birthday! He is such a sweet, loving, curious boy who can be joy incarnate. Listening to him make up crooning songs in the car and watching him push a button on his musical toy and dance over and over and over is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Baby fever smacked me in waves: waves like a shot of bourbon, opening the hot stove, the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet dissolve into warm velvet, your womb clenches like a fist. I love Franco too because he is so much like Trey. To see them in the same room is to witness a grand continuity of joy.

We looked through my mother-in-law's wedding album. She is a very beautiful woman with delicate features: I loved being able to say to Trey, "If we have a girl she will have the best nose in history." I love being able to look at pictures of my husband's family -- OMG! my family! and see the repeating of phenotypic signatures. Of knowing that one day if I am lucky I will watch my daughter-in law do the same thing.

I love being in the same room with not-yet-two Franco and nearly 90-year old Nana and knowing that none of us is really any different from the other. Franco's soul shines out from his toddler body: he can't articulate what is going on in his head, but shouts out "BA!NA!NA!" with resounding joy. Nana's body is giving out on her: she and my nephew currently occupy two poles of a spectrum of embodiedness.

Oh, how I want a baby -- What grand alchemy! Tertium non data -- the third is not given. I long for my own belly to swell to an excluded middle, a crucible for someone who is at once wholly of our flesh and wholly alien, and who (I had never really thought of this until yesterday!) will outlive my husband and I. Who will have a strange and particular life of his or her very own, much of which may be completely opaque to me forever. It doesn't matter. I am ready to be permeable, I am ready to be mortal, I am ready to be contingent and frail and more.
And so then this morning, funnily enough, I take [thank you Hedwig!] the PersonalDNA quiz. This was my result:

Encouraging Creator

Surprised, yet not. I hope it doesn't get too boring to basically hear me say, "I can't believe it all turned out okay" over and over and over again. But I can't help it. It is the signature of my small life, the one thing I could possibly offer you. The assurance that spring and love and everything are not a nasty bait-and-switch.

That "oh my god, yes, it is possible for it all to be okay."

Good Friday

I had the day off yesterday -- "Good Friday" indeed! -- and so Trey and I decided to go to church.


Our church -- The American Museum Of Natural History!

First we visited the whale in the Hall of Marine Life. [Did I tell you all that we originally dreamed of getting married under that whale? In our most revered cathedral? Until we found out to rent the room alone is, for members, more than I make in a year?] Then we visited the birds, and then saw the IMAX Galapagos movie, which was heartwrenchingly beautiful.

Then we moved on to the Darwin exhibit, which is fantastic and about which I will write more later, but I wholehertedly recommend it. I will say though, that it rankles me more and more how the name of such an empathetic, intelligent, deeply feeling man is misappropriated to mean "nihlistic." For what demonstrates a more genuine reverence for life than the following:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Oh hey! If you want to get a "T is for Tapir" shirt of your very own, you can order one through www.tapirback.com. All proceeds go to the Tapir Preservation Fund!

Maundy Thursday

From good old Wikipedia:

In the Christian calendar, Maundy Thursday, also known as Holy Thursday, is the Thursday before Easter, the day on which the Last Supper is said to have occurred.

The Middle English word Maundy, used only in this context, derives from Old French mandé from Latin mandatum novum do vobis, "a new commandment I give unto you, love one another as I have loved you" (John xiii:34), words spoken by Jesus to the Apostles after washing their feet in preparation for The Last Supper.

From Today's Chat With Ashbloem:

me: I think this nice bird looks like trey
http://www.klein.com/dvk/photos/birds/boat_billed_heron.jpg
Ashbloem: That's a nice bird.
I saw two huge and pretty cardinals on the Cape dancing around with each other. It was cute.

me: OH!!
I love birds.
We are going to the Darwin exhibit tomorrow!
Ashbloem: Ooo! Awesome!
me: sooo excited!

Ashbloem: GrrrRRrrRRrrRRRRr

me: WHY MY SWEET????
Ashbloem: Ready to go!
me: HOORAY
Ashbloem: I'm very excited we'll be in NY.
me: I went and had wine at lunch
Ashbloem: Mmmmmmmm
me: and read "The Witch of Blackbird Pond"
While I was at the wine bar
a mother and daughter came in
The mother was like in her 70s
skinny, striking, grey bob, crazy veins on arms,
big gold wedding ring
I thought
"one day that will be me. I will be an old lady who travels and goes to the wine bar."
They were english, and the daughter looked like a cross between Jennifer Coolidge and Fay Weldon.
Ashbloem: Fantastic
me: After a while, the older woman asks me:
"What are you reading?"
and I told her "A book from my childhood
"that I remembered and had a craving to read again"
It turns out she lives near liverpool
the daughter lives in Orlando
They are going to the Jacques Brel show this evening
because growing up
they lived in Catalan spain for five years
and in Holland for seventeen
because her husband
"was"
Dutch.
And I wanted to cry
and felt my heart fill with joy
because I knew there was a reason why
I immediately felt a kinship with this older woman
and looked at her arms and knew that mine would be just like hers
Ashbloem: Awww that's so lovely
me: and also knew that I should make a point of fucking my husband before band practice
while I was 33 and could
while I was 33.
and juicy.
And they sail back to England in 2 days
on the Queen Mary.
Ashbloem: Exactly! Yes, I should get home soon and do that.
The fucking, not the Queen Mary bit.
But I'll take the Queen Mary as well.
me: Well, you will be thinking of something
OTHER THAN ENGLAND!!! ;)

What We Can Look Forward To: Misogyny, Part I

Please read "Pro Life Nation" from the Sunday New York Times Magazine, detailing the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador. In El Salvador, some women are serving prison sentences for as long as 30 years for having an abortion.

I invite you to reflect on the ramifications of the following quote.

In the event that the woman's illegal abortion went badly and the doctors have to perform a hysterectomy, then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government's doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her.

Don't even give yourself the liberty for ONE SECOND to think, It could never happen here. It could never happen to me.

It is urgent for us all finally understand:

Every Woman IS You. Each. And. Every One.

Hooray! Look What I Just Found!

Blum-Langtry 2008?

This morning I came across this great interview with William Blum. His account of what he imagines the first 4 days of a William Blum Presidency is exactly like how I would imagine my first four days (as I sometimes do, as embarrassing an admission as it is):

The first day, I'll apologize-publicly and sincerely-to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, to all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would announce to the world that America's global military interventions have come to an end The second day, I would tell Israel that it is no longer the 51st state, but, oddly enough, a foreign country ... On the third day I would reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be more than enough money. One year's US military budget is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus was born.

On the fourth day, I'll be assassinated."

Enantiodromia II

Really, words fail me.

Sprung