tuckova

There's a city in my mind

In this metaphor we walk into a Denny's. It's the only town where we can stop to get food; it's not even a town, just a gas station and a Denny's. And it hasn't even always been a Denny's. There was a Burger King and a McDonald's before this, the two in one building, and a long time before that a kind of mom and pop diner. But it's a Denny's now, and it's time to eat, and we can talk about what used to be here or what we wish were here, but... for now, we're in a Denny's.

The Denny's menu, oh my. What's the Onion joke about a bucket of eggs and pancakes and bacon and a funny name? Yeah, lots of that. Breakfast served all day. The crazy amounts of coffee I drank at Denny's in college because of the free refills, the bottomless cup of toxic sludge. Now I just pray for one or two vegetarian options and some tea.

Hey, and they have those vegetarian burgers! And they have side salads without bacon bits! I'm pretty excited. But you're all sour. You want sushi, you want Indian food, you want something really healthy instead of something pretending to be healthy. And listen, I don't disagree. I'd love that stuff; I'd love a menu where it takes me three hours to choose because it all sounds so good. But this is Denny's. It was made not to be the best possible food for everybody, but the food most likely to appeal to the widest margin of people at the truck stop.

After eight years of greasy pork sandwiches served in a dirty ashtray, the fact that BOCA burgers are owned by big tobacco becomes much less of an issue for me. I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer a morally-uncorrupted vegetarian meal loaded with flavor and vitamins and no GM foods. I'm not saying I wouldn't be happier if there were an independently-owned restaurant here instead of a Denny's. I'm just saying: here we are, it's time to eat, this is a Denny's and this is what's on the menu. You can refuse to order anything; you can get a cup of coffee and eat the saltines and refuse to spend money on less than what you want. That's the beauty of truck stops. Personally, I'm going to get the soy burger and the salad and I'm going to be incredibly happy to have that option and I'm going to celebrate that option in the hopes that maybe someday Denny's will come around to an even better selection for me, or maybe there will even be a whole better restaurant. But in the meantime, I'm eating the best thing on the menu, and I'm saying it's the best thing on the menu; not because it's the actual best thing for me, but because I'm hungry and the idea of eating something that isn't going to make me puke is pretty exciting at this point.

blind men and the elephants in the room

It breathes on you softly
whiskered like a boy you kissed in college
who smelled like lavender whiskey
This breath tickles
looking for hidden treats in your fists
and pockets
close your eyes

It feels tough
like you'd like to be and aren't
your grandfather had a coat like this
smell of pipe tobacco and wheat
This skin is rough and tender both
under your hands
close your eyes

Smooth and hard
and cool like money
It reminds you of things you wanted to possess
leather and ivory
It smells of loss and tastes like bitten nails
don't talk about it
close your eyes

Sits on your car because he thought it was a circus prop
Steps on your foot when startled
Terrifying vindictive rage
I'm sure it needn't mean anything; mustn't;
close your eyes.

R.I.P., D.F.W..

That a young and gifted person should be in too much pain to be asked to stay alive in the world and give it more in no way diminishes the gifts already given, what they meant, what I learned. I know that. But I still spent most of last night and this godawfully early morning picking at a wound that isn't mine in the first place, reading bits over and over, laughing again at an insight and weeping over flashes of merriment that are forever gone.

I should have rented movies this morning and permitted myself a day of escapism. Instead I thought I would work past it, as the salt of sweat is the best salt for such wounds, and wound up punching aimlessly at work that while meaningful will never mean that much, failing and flailing and finding myself at 3 p.m. eating grilled cheese with the salt of tears and a side of punch-my-face for letting the day go the way it did, wasted because I did neither what my head intended nor what my heart wanted.

I am sorry for his family; sorry for us: for the words that won't be said, for the places we might never go because he can't take us.

dammit.

Vse Je Jednim

What it's like is that sometimes I don't think I can say anything directly, that I feel like all conversations have to make a stop at metaphor and line before we can get to where we're going. We get in the car with a dream I had. You start the trip when you say it's your fault, and it's not, but when I say it's not you start crying and you say "I wish you never brought it up" which I never meant to make you cry but if I could take one thing from you this burden would be first: I have to bring it up so I can lift it away from you.

I am not accustomed to handing other people tissues. What I mainly do is take charge and fix stuff and later on I cry alone. I mean that's why I have tissues in the first place: for me. I am not supposed to hand them to you and definitely I did not mean to make you cry and anyway why are you crying when I tell you it's not your fault, because this is not a sad thing but a statement of fact like how the beer garden is going to close soon is a fact. I mean it's just a thing.

It is hard to have nothing to invoke. For the love of poetry, I try. Oh, for Prufrock. Please don't cry. Please let me take this sadness from you and please for both of us let's throw it away far, down the field, far out. Let's throw it past the boy counting dandelions in the outfield, past anybody in the stands; let's make it something that nobody finds because nobody wants it. Let's steal home. It's not your fault. It's full of damage but we can't trace fault lines. Instead let's look towards construction that can weather the whether. Let's get past sports and geology and blame. Let's stop crying. We're running out of tissue.

the night became a brand-new day

Oh, I want to do a whole thing about how the cottage was totally neglected for 8 years, and so if anybody had thought we were going to make it better instantly then that person was crazy, but I'll tell you that even though the neighbors are surely frustrated that we haven't gotten ourselves all up to snuff yet, we've focused on domestic issues and the improvement to the land itself is dramatic, albeit subtle. It was A METAPHOR, because everything is a metaphor. I might write it someday before November, but not today.

Last weekend we went to the cottage (!I know!) and Squire was being impossible, totally disinclined to work. At all. You'd open your mouth to some sentence about the chainsaw and he was too absorbed in re-reading a book to even notice you were talking. It was irritating. Then I realized it could be fun. I dubbed it "Proust Weekend" and I think everybody deserves one once in a while. We propped him up with pillows and sleeping bags that I declared were furs, and we fed him tea and gave him snacks and inquired after his general health and his digestive system every couple hours. Friar said we should get a four-part novel out of it, and perhaps someday we will, but the point was: you make it a game, and then it is one. Proust weekend is not remotely irritating; it is fun and it is funny!

Squire started school again Monday, so I think a Proust Weekend was a well-deserved sort of mental bachelor party. School persists in being stupid. They've changed their idea over the summer that he should take Some Other Language and decided that he should take English classes. So yeah, the native-English-speaking kid will be learning "eeeeet eeees ayyy dog!" yay. I went and met with the English teacher, and suggested that she let him read (English) books during classtime or that perhaps she use him to help the strugglers or something. She mainly seemed interested in if she could give him the same tests she gives the other students. I have lost the battle over how this is stupid, and am now girding up for the battle over whether "How come" is correct English (or whether "Do you have" is the same as "Have you got" or whatever idiomatic and correct English he'll be using and be corrected for using). Le sigh.

I could make a list for you over battles lost and battles won and you would be horrified. Not least because I tend to change allegiance: take the swimming battle for example. Sometimes it's hard to care enough to fight from where the sun now stands.

Also on Monday, for SPICY, my computer died. I don't even want to hear about it. My grandmother had serious trouble keeping pictures in frames and my parents have a recurring problem with the front door of their home and I cannot, CANNOT, manage to keep a system that backs up what I said. I have lost journals to rainstorms and apparently I can knock out a computer by sneezing.

And that's us: an unexplored metaphor, a proust weekend, school is stupid, my computer died. It's September, and I wish you the best, because we all deserve it.