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February 24, 2008

Uz jsme doma

So Squire and I did a whirlwind tour of California/Nevada, did I mention? Started at my parents', drove down the coast, spent a few days in Disneyland, drove over to Las Vegas, spent a couple days there, flew to Sonora and visited friends there, and then left. Saw some great people. Drank some great booze. Ate some great food. Altogether a fine time.

We managed to catch the CSA bus on the way home; this is the bus that you have to stand in line to buy a ticket and then stand in line to get a boarding pass and then hope the bus hasn't taken off while you do these things, so catching it is kind of a miracle. On the bus the driver handed out our "complimentary snack"; I asked what kind of meat it was and he said "It's not meat, it's ham," and I laughed because it is what it is and it's good to be back in my first/second-world home.

Uhm, there are a lot of pictures here.

I wrote this in Disneyland:
In Disneyland I feel sad, the sort of sad that's like I have cancer and I'll never bring my child here again or see my grandchildren ride the teacups, and it's all terribly fragile and transient, and then I am weeping in Fantasyland except I don't have cancer and so in Disneyland I feel not only sad but also utterly ridiculous.

That feeling of heartbreaking nostalgia for the moment I was inhabiting was present for a lot of the trip, though I only had to pull the car over to cry once, I think.

I also wrote a long thing about Red Shirt Day, but I don't know if it interests anyone enough for me to transcribe. I didn't write, but thought a great deal about, the interesting differences and similarities among my friends, the nature of fear, and the inner battle between sparing someone pain and the need to let people learn their own lessons. And I thought about boomerangs.

February 05, 2008

My Mind

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel.
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever spinning wheel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon

(from Windmills of Your Mind, by Alan and Marilyn Bergman)

except, not really relaxing and hypnotic and windmill-y. More like: SCREEEEEEE! It's like the Factory Floor of My Mind or something. Passport, credit card, lipstick, warm socks, see you back here in a couple weeks.

February 01, 2008

Lock

Under your thumb,
wrapped around your finger.
Not because you want it that way but
because you thought it would be safer
because they said so;

Nape grazed by knuckles
it's colder than you expect
under a street lamp and
worse, the darkness between street lamps
footsteps behind you

Where are you going with this?
You just want to go home.

Sweaty leather in your palm -
a trip you took once, a souvenir
of a place you wanted to go so much
you didn't mind when you got somewhere else.
Remember that, remember how that felt.

Teeth cutting into your skin; why?
Maybe there are no footsteps,
maybe everything echoes in your head,
maybe what unlocks your secrets
can't also be what shields them.

No one thing is enough;
nothing is enough.
Do you hold the keys or
are you grasping at straws?
After this we can talk about "clutch".