Mysteries

Do you remember being confused by the lack of connection between a rotary phone, the Rotary club, and Roto-Rooter? I do.

Some poems

Curiosity (line breaks may not be perfect)

Curiosity may have killed the cat; more likely the cat was just unlucky,
or else curious to see what death was like, having no cause to go on licking paws, or fathering litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious is dangerous enough. To distrust what is always said,
what seems, to ask questions, interfere in dreams, leave home, smell rats, have hunches do not endear cats to those doggy circles where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches are the order of things, and where prevails much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity will not cause us to die- only lack of it will. Never to want to see the other side of the hill or that improbable country where living is an idyll (although a probable hell) would kill us all.
Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible, are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables with tales of their nine lives.
Well they are lucky. Let them be nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again, each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one is all that can be counted on to tell the truth.
And what cats have to tell on each return from hell is this: that dying is what the living do, that dying is what the loving do and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

-Alastair Reed

Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes

It's raining in love

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

-Richard Brautigan

The Toaster

I was driving to school one morning on a non-school day in January. It was about 10am, sunny, about 45 degrees, and as usual I had to stop at a light to turn left onto Ladue Rd. In the middle of the median next to my car, I noticed a strange box. It was so close to my car, so I hopped out and took a look. It was a nice toaster box, and it was heavy.

So, I threw it in my back seat.

The light was turning as I lept back in the front seat, and took off to the left. I was imagining myself bravely rescuing this brand new toaster from that deathly median, and setting it sweetly beside my old happy toaster. (They are pack appliances, right?) Also, having seen too many movies, I was afraid that it would perhaps explode sometime in the next 3 minutes before I reached the school. Or maybe it was just filled with something horrible and heavy....but I didn't dwell on that too much.

As soon as I parked, I jumped out and plopped the toaster box outside on the ground. I looked up, but no one was around. That made me scared for some reason. (Movies again, I guess.) It was still sunny, though. I pulled the properly closed lid and peeped in.

There was a still dirty toaster with crumbs all around on the top, but as I lifted it out of the box, I realized that the chord had been severed 3 inches above the plug and both pieces were still left in the box! It was horrible. Some one put an amputated toaster back in the box and left it in middle the road just for some one to find. I shoved the maimed thing back in the box and ran over to the trash can--a quick glance revealed still no one around. I shoved it in the square top, where it barely fit, and ran away.

Reflections on Tetanus Shots

(Written March 2007 when I just saved the things I wrote.)

Last week (Friday) I got a tetanus shot. March 9 2007. I don’t have to get another one till 2017. That’s a long time from now. There aren’t a whole lot things that you have to renew that you only have to do every 10 years. (Passports would be the other.) Most things are either done permanently, continually, or every year or so. You are born and die once. You can get married once. (preferable). You eat, breath, go to the bathroom continuously. It’s never done. And then there’s the rent every month, bills, shopping, oil changes, gas fill-ups, taxes, car registrations, voting, doctor’s appointments, etc.

But 10 years is a long time. Long enough to forget that you need it, or what things were like the last time you got a shot. I remember liking my last tetanus shot, bizarre as that seems, because it made the muscle in my arm tighten up in a funny way. Anyway, last got my shot June of 1996, which was the summer after 8th grade. I hadn’t even been to high school yet!

So, what’s going on now? Well, that Friday I had parent teacher conferences, and the afternoon off, so I took it upon myself to get vaccinated. (9 months too late, but had also cut myself on a fence the week before at Frostbite.) That day, I got liquid ant bait as a present from a parent. Do you want to know how to graciously accept a gift of liquid ant bait? 1) Don’t really look at the box too much in order to pretend that you get that sort of thing ALL the time. 2) Smile sweetly, sincerely and calmly express your thanks. Try not to make any comments about how you’ve always wanted this, because of course that’s not true and then the whole genuine thing will be exposed as a fake.

But the larger event was that my parents got a DOG. Actually, my mom got a dog, something she had swore off for YEARS. And there it was. Very cute. We did not finalize the dog’s name that day, but in the end, she received “Taxi” a name that I came up with for a joke. It stands for “no taxation without representation” of course.

I also went on a a walk with Elly, who I still see from time to time, but we are in very different situations in life. She’s expecting her second boy in May.

I called three people about the dog. Then, that night I told the girls at our 2nd Friday of the month dinner: Holley, Catherine, and Sara Keeton. We went to Zoe, which is a pan-asian restaurant in the Central West End. That night, and that week I was in a big fluster about things going on in my life.