born into this mess
something about balloon men and far and wee
japanese magnolias in which flocks of purple tulips nest
forsythia, primary color yellow and hot pink
dogwoods
crocuses and daffodils
soon enough we'll have small soft leaves, crabapple petal flurries from the medians, tiny fluffy parachutes blown off the cottonwoods across the river.
allergies kick in, gravity starts getting stronger in the region of my head, i develop a mean sudafed habit and starting eating wasabi in my oatmeal in the mornings to wake up.
spring is the best time to have someone who holds my hand in public and pays for my movie tickets and occasionally (and I am suspecting deliberately) knocks things over to show solidarity with my terminal clumsiness.
spring break starts this weekend:
saturday- drive to bloomington
monday afternoon- drive to columbus & pick up paddy
tuesaday morning- drive to philadelphia
wednesday morning- drive to brooklyn
thursday- coney island, subway tunnels, alphabet city, maybe go on a quest for bruce springsteen's house in jersey?
friday- easton, PA to see very pregnant BFF from gradschool
saturday- BABY SHOWER!!!!!!
sunday- drive to columbus & drop off paddy, then to bloomington
monday- back down south
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I love watching cable
Bush is on TV live in Slovakia sounding like a total ass, talking about the free press here in the states. um, Patriot Act much?
I've skived off school today due to exhorbitant fatigue and joint aches, despite the waterbed in the house where I am dogsitting. my right arm is stiff as hell and my bicep is curiously sore, probably from being worked so hard making sushi last night for my neighbor's feng shui party.
yesterday the labs woke me up at 630ish demanding out and breakfast and although I managed to snooze another hour or two and stumble around trying to make coffee in a strange kitchen I was soon up and rocketing out to the Fresh Market and the Korean grocery.
There's such a lack of decent fish in Memphis. I got in a fight with the fishboy at the Fresh Market about tuna. he insisted I buy the cheap frozen tuna for sushi as opposed to the freshly caught & cut yellowtail, but whatever, I wasn't making it for myself, but for a houseful of ravenous yuppies. I suppose I need to chum up to some of my old restaurant buddies if I want to ever get good fish. they've got live tilapia and eel and a few things I didnt recognize, as well as some decent crustaceans, at the Viet Hoa. and the mexican fish boys don't argue with me. they've quite nice, and love to be spoken to by little peterpanpunkrock girls in damn good Mexican spanish.
anyway, then I zoomed back to Midtown to the vietnamese market and then back to Jen's fabulously endowed kitchen with its huge gleaming expanses of granite counterspace. Then I mise-d like some kind of manic human robocoup, julienning carrots and cucumbers, cooking and peeling lemongrass shrimp for spring rolls, soaking chlorella noodles, steaming black rice, rolling spring rolls. I had to duck out to clean the Pilates studio and then got back and busy making sushi.
nori rolls-
cucumber daikon (which I wasn't too proud of as the daikon was too chemical-y)
avocado mango & smoked salmon
cucumber carrot avocado
avocado tuna
I didn't have a mat, but I made a decent attempt at one of the rolls with the rice on the outside, which came out quite pretty since I'd added minced carrot to the white rice for color, and then sprinkled black sesame on the finished roll. I saw one of the canadians use saran wrap on Iron Chef last night, which hadn't occured to me.
I guess waxed paper could work as well.
I made some badass nigiri with black and white rice which came out looking like yin-yangs.
wasabi mousse. cream, eggwhite, gelatin, wasabi. gorgeous. I think mascarpone would be better, but I was on a $50 budget.
seared tuna strips tied with nori ribbons drizzled with pomegranate teriyaki.
they scarfed it down and crowded into the kitchen to beg for more. when they asked me how I learned to do it, I told them the culinary fairy blessed me at my christening, which must be true, since this is the 3rd time in my life I've made sushi.
I'd just kill to be able to buy things I had access to at Stella. creme fraiche. huge tubs of mascarpone (not these bitty $8 tubs), microgreens. FISH. 10 Lb blocks of dark chocolate.
utensils. pots and pans. workspace.
a person to wash the dishes.
watching Iron Chef America last night, egging on the canadians, yelling at the tv and getting the labs all riled up, I miss cooking. I wish I could combine all the things I'm good at and passionate about into one concrete what-i-want-to-do-when-i-grow-up.
so what combines reading fiction incessantly, writing compulsively, speaking Spanish, and cooking bizarrely and beautifully? and isn't psychosis-inducing?
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Poem for Monday, February 21, 2005
On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME." HST
Portal
By Marvin Bell
He was given to see through time.
He made sense of near-autism and near-schizophrenia.
A door handle turned on its own, back and forth.
On the other side a blinding light.
Grainy apparitions rode the third rail beneath the sidewalk.
City is city.
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Winner of Best of Memphis in Memphis Flyer
for 7 Straight Years
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somewhere around 7 the storm woke me up and i squinted out the window at the rain daggers all golden from the motion light. my yard is flooded down at the deepend where the mosquitos breed.
"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody." ny timeskeep those pages coming, dr gonzo.
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you can still see the high water mark
if anyone could tell us
what comes after the light
it would be
you.
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e.e. cummings - you shall above all things... (1922)
you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love
whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time
that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
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mash me up
so my boss called me last night to tell me she was changing my schedule and then made me get on acquisition and d/l a bunch of mash-ups.
the best one by far is marvin gaye singing "sexual healing" over radiohead's "high and dry." they do it all with sonic foundry and other fancy programs, but it's basically just beat-matching and track-cutting. there's a my bloody/beasties song that's decent, and a hilarious "milkshake/holiday," but most of them are a little too house-y for my taste.
holla.
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someday we'll find it
I don't know what's wrong with me today.
Sherbert, the 2 Chicks and a Broom yoga teacher's baby, woke up mid-way through her nap while I was cleaning and refused to be consoled, even by daddy rocking her, until I came in and got her. I slung her on my hip and carried on dusting. When I finished in the bedroom, I laid her down on the bed and sang her "thunder road" complete with interpretive hand motions. I mean, the fact that she knew I was out there and wanted to hang out with me should have make this a glimmering cupcake of a day.
Maybe it was listening to too much Cat Power. Maybe it was the stupid damn stupid crappy damn stupid multiple choice psychology tests I had to cram for. Maybe it's the freakish weather.
Maybe I should just accept the fact that medication, therapy, 8 full hours of sleep and all still can't keep me from occasional glumness. There's always chocolate Silk with a shot of half & half. there's always Kermit singing "rainbow connection."
there's always two cats on my bed and Hemingway on my pillow.
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stupid crappy psych exams. O, the indignity of having to study for multiple-choice tests! why, it's been since Fall of 1998 since I've had a multiple choice test. Maybe Spring of 99, in my French class. grrr.
I find studying nearly impossible, even at the library. here in my bitty apartment there are way too many stimuli, but at least I have a sofa.
It's sunny and in the 60s here. Ridiculous. Hooray for global warming. This summer will be unbearable.
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I have seen the red rose burning
and this means more. -Bukowski
red flowers and waiting as the sun sets,
there is nothing left but the burning.
bootheels on cement,
the key turns in the lock.
can you hear the tigers?
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it's over
my love brought me 2 carnations
My love brought me red
my love brought me her
my love told me not to worry
my love told me not to die
my love is two carnations on a table
while listening to Schoenburg
on an evening darkening into night. Ah, Bukowski.
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bayou blues
today was absolutely lovely.
therefore it seems perfectly logical that the abandoned orishas of the asphalt covered bluff city bayous should take their revenge in the form of the mosquito plague.
first bite of the year: 7:37 pm, 14th February.
it escapes me why anyone would choose to live in this gods-cursed city. a hundred years ago downtown would flood- the north end and the south end accessed one another by boat. then yellow fever, civil rights violations, the assasination of our culture's greatest hope. the ubiquitous threat of earthquake. the rain. the complete lack of competent governing officials. the corruption in the jails. persistant racism and segregation. the light gas and water monopoly. the hopelessness of the public educators. the travesty of the pyramid and trolley. the dead birds in the summer. it's like a damn Garcia Marquez novel, I tell you what.
we got us some real pretty flowers in the springtime, though.
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monday monday
I spent hours last night NOT studying, framing things and hanging them on the walls. right about 1130 I got the bright idea of stringing speaker wire across the wall and hanging photos and postcards from it with clothespins. I rule.
Good Lord, the sun's come out.
I made a Larry Brown valentine, but it's too fabulous to give away. I do believe this may be the first National Single People Feel Unfulfilled Day that I'm not hung up on some dumb boy. woot.
still no word from the Psych dept. I may have to write a letter to the editor. I hate the South sometimes.
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Poem for Monday, February 14, 2005
For Valentine's Day
from "Incantation"
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
I want nothing on your mind all day.
Let the day turn everything upside down,
besmudge with smoke and flood and wine,
distract you till I fade from view.
All right, think of anything by day,
but in the night˜only of me alone.
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Winner of Best of Memphis in Memphis Flyer
for 7 Straight Years
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it just may be a lunatic you're looking for
Dear Dr Graesser,
Approximately a week ago I contacted Frank Leeming in response to an offensive remark that Dr James Shaw made about the mentally ill and about the Memphis Mental Health Institute. He replied to tell me that he had forwarded my email to you, since as the head of the department you are the appropriate person to deal with my complaint. I am still hoping you will address my grievance. If you are unable to do so, I will be happy to contact Dr Porter, the Dean of Students.
In case it is necessary, I will summarize the situation:
Last Tuesday, the 1st, in his Psychology of Personalities class, a student asked Dr Shaw what his reaction would be in his private practice if a patient were to become violently agitated. After a few sentences about dimming lights and looking at flowers and such, he proceeded to relate an anecdote about his son's working at MMHI, a place he described as being where the police take serial killers and other violent psychotics. He continued that his son wished that they had taught him running skills in medical school.
Because of personal family experience with MMHI, I contradicted him and stated that MMHI is a place for the uninsured and indigent who usually have other place to go. I also stated that although there are forensic cases and other people who may become violent, staff keeps them closely supervised (often on one to one checks) and in the event of dangerous behavior supplies sedation, specifically Haldol. He responded by saying, and I will quote fairly accurately, "yes, well, not every one can tolerate Haldol, and anyway the orderlies aren't always on hand with a syringe. So yeah, I would say, sit near the door and be ready to run."
Dr Graesser, I cannot see how this type of condescending and misrepresenting comment about the mentally ill is in any way appropriate in an undergraduate psychology class, or in ANY situation. I feel that as a member of the mental health industry, especially one with a private practice, Dr Shaw should know better. Frankly, I am shocked and disappointed. As long as the mentally ill are viewed as humorous, crazy or inferior by their caregivers, they will never achieve true wellness.
I will admit that as a family member of someone who is a mental health consumer I do have a certain sensitivity to this issue. But it is this sensitivity that has led me to study psychology after doing my BA in Spanish at Rhodes; I hope to one day earn a PhD in psychology and treat patients of my own.
I am earnestly awaiting your response.
Sincerely,
Sue Cook
the part about the family member in MMHI, of course, is a stretching of the truth, as I was warned against revealing my status as a Mental Health Consumer to the department.
rrrr.
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Poem for Monday, February 7, 2005
Poem for Monday, February 7, 2005
The Vase
by David Ignatow
See how tall and straight I stand
with blossoms above me. Could anything
be more beautiful than I who am nothing
but an enclosure upon emptiness?
Burke's Book Store
1719 Poplar Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com
Winner of Best of Memphis in Memphis Flyer
for 7 Straight Years
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the finger is not the moon
you can download Dixie Dirt's first album, 'springtime is for the hopeless and other ideas,
here.
there's a weird pins and needles feeling at the tip of my left pointer finger.
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live transmission
I woke up this morning and opened up my laptop to discover that the output wire from my computer to my stereo is picking up a talk radio station. everything I listen to has bland over-accentuated voices bleeding through it.
it's like listening to Godspeed, All the Time.
one of my best friends leaves for Bloomington today, along with her two cats I've been keeping for the last 4 months.
Dixie Dirt is amazing.
and that's all I have to say.
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revolting
I've turned into a Cat Lady.
Still nothing from the doctors.
My psych professor made a patronizing joke about the mentally ill at MMHI in class and I walked out. it's insulting enough to have to pay to hear him go through the book and tell us what to learn for the exam, but teaching a roomful of undergrads that mental illness is funny is unethical.
do medical school professors make jokes about epileptics? do they roll their eyes around and foam at the mouth to make their students like them?
The mental health industry is sick. The information packets at MMHI refer to the patients as mental health consumers. makes me picture rows and rows of blank eyed shoelace-less men and women lined up at picnic tables eating spaghetti. the sin that eats away at the industry is that the providers think they are superior to the consumers.
we've fetished mental health to such a point that we refer to it as a commodity. can one buy mental health? should one
have to? does it really come in multicolored gelatin capsules? is there a surplus of mental health rotting away in a warehouse somewhere? does EliLilly offer producers money to burn their excess mental health to keep the price steady or do we flood the market of our neighboring countries with genetically modified mental health, causing their collectively farmed mental health to be worth less, forcing them to immigrate to the border to work in our mental health sweatshops?
rrr.
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