featherbubbles

this seems pointless but

2011-01-16T22:56:00.001-05:00

Finally made my peace with Google and connected my login to their "account". so, I guess I can post again now.

aphorisms

2007-03-29T12:07:00.000-04:00

A double negative is not unlike a backhanded positive.

Instructions

2007-01-24T20:21:00.000-05:00

Go to sorabji.com.

Click on "Wander around sorabji.com".

Repeat.

Stuff that came across my radar or landed on my head in 2006

2006-12-23T21:16:00.000-05:00

words: ginormous
music: the Gourds
diversions: Uru
concepts: active listening
music: Sufjan Stevens
things to worry about: radiation poisoning
clothing: for women, little flat heeled shoes. Yay!
politics: Democrats
punctuation: interrobang?!
tv: House M.D.

and another one

2006-06-04T15:07:00.000-04:00

among my weird friends in high school was Robert H., who wanted to be a Muslim and went around quoting the Qu'ran to us all the time. He was a military brat and I guess this was his way of rebelling or something. I heard he got over it...

thought i would see more old high school friends last night at a concert, but if they were there i didn't recognize them.

i realize now how much my relationship to the boys i knew was colored by my fear of never finding a boyfriend . each one was assessed for potential. I really wanted the "fall in love" thing too. had no idea how to make it happen, but was sharply on the lookout. at this point the impulse would be to say "poor things, they were just looking to get laid" but i don't think it was so. on each side, we were uneasy about the conventions that were prodding us towards each other. and really we were all looking for soulmates - or mamas or daddies.

half-light thoughts

2006-05-19T06:36:00.000-04:00

when i was thinking of this as my secret diary, i wasn't taking into account that someone searching on names and places could "make" me if they knew me over time... so I don't know if I want to put people's names in here. But then, will I remember who it was I meant, later?

thinking about Billy B. whom I rode the bus with to school, and how he changed (and where is he now) and how I don't really want to meet up with him now because - ? He got pretty low at one point, pretty much living on the street, after he couldn't live off his friends anymore, long scraggly yellow beard, smelling of smoke... how I eventually got really annoyed at the way he used to hug me and pick me up whenever I met him... and yet... he's still my friend in some way. "Bromo... Butter..." Maybe someday it will all come together.

smoking - can't i quit - maybe today - tired of this feeling in the back of my throat - but by now, I've had the first cigarette of the day and it's too late for today.

K--- - reminded me that he used to have waist-length hair yesterday. Gosh, I'd forgotten that. He is still young, and has that fresh smile. Is there an attraction and of what nature is it?

My Father's Dragon - one of my childhood books - running away (is it good for a child to read a book about a runaway? my little attempts to go on an adventure, even turning the corner from my street was grounds for punishment, then... ). On this street. Elmer Elevator was his name.

Too bad I didn't get the clothes together in time for the Kidney Foundation but they will call me again. Not enough time to work in anything. All this stuff... does it make me happy? Do I need it? Could this country turn away from consumerism and find happiness?

No time to do plays. So far I have avoided taking over care of a server, like K___ ... But still, having just one evening committed seems to sap all my strength. Plays are still being done. Somewhat of an anachronism, but still doing them. Old plays. Foreign plays. Imagining K___ in a play, with a false moustache, playing a German burgher...

Awake now. Music still underneath (Set me as a seal upon your heart... many waters cannot quench love... neither can the floods drown it...)

Thoroughly silly website of the day

2006-03-13T20:25:00.000-05:00

Infinite cat project

Not often that I find one lately that gets me right off the bat. Thanks to

sorabji.com for the link

It's driving me crazier

2006-01-07T22:13:00.000-05:00

There was a group called The Ballantines (or Ballentines, or Ballentynes, or Ballantynes, or...?) that had a hit song heard on the radio in the 60's (might have come out earlier). Can't remember which song it was. If someone knows please leave a comment. Google is no good for this hunt... too many hits for a beverage, or a nightclub.

postdated

2005-12-21T21:22:00.000-05:00

oh yeah, i meant to post here the other day. I had this fantasy that I was the State Patrol and I was stopping James Brown for driving erratically. "Mr. Brown, you are the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in Show Business, I'm just going to write a warning, but the highway isn't safe...."

Why did this fantasy pop into my head while sitting on my porch shortly after getting home from work? Did it have something to do with the boot cut (ok, bell bottom) pants I happened to wear that day? ("got ants in my pants and I gotta dance")...

Or something else? The Rolling Stones latest record in my car player, with its song about being out of control on the highway...

Or was it the rather amazingly high hairstyle I saw in a photo from the office party on someone surprising... or the literature from the University of Georgia in the mail (Brown used to entertain at football games... "Dooley's Junkyard Dogs")

I love these strange thoughts bubbling up from the unconscious (you may have guessed that this is a special place for them).

by the way

2005-10-27T19:54:00.000-04:00

you know, i really didn't plan to post anything, i just happened to be reading bloglines stuff and thought I'd check on featherbubbles, deleted a spam comment (the only kind i ever seem to get) and then took a left turn and found myself here. i'm coming down with a cold so my normal restraint is maybe absent. writing has always been something i'm a bit afraid of. after the words get out i look at them and don't recognize my thought, it's a little like death or something. i used to critique/edit unceasingly which made it hard to finish and turn in school papers, and have always had a hard time getting started. i truly believe that thought can't be expressed in words, but have come to terms with the fact that words are there and are sort of a thing in themselves. it's sort of like the glaze on the pottery after it comes out of the kiln - you had an intent, and there is a result, surprise surprise. then, there's that impulse to stop.

The band I didn't want to see

2005-10-19T11:17:00.000-04:00

In my original first post, the band I didn't want to see but paid $360 for tickets to? Well, I used those tickets to see that band and it was worth it, I think. Mick Jagger shaking that thing. We were so far up we couldn't see the creases. Looking forward to the video...

You

2005-10-17T23:41:00.000-04:00

You with your dark/light hair
With your set mouth
With your withers
With your telephone voice
With your tapping
With your occasional creativity in spelling and grammar
With your low center of gravity
With your blue/grey eyes that gleam and retreat
I'm wondering about you

O

2005-09-16T00:28:00.000-04:00

it's a long long rope
the moon shines bright on Mrs. Porter and on her daughter they wash their feet in soda water
round moon how to do you (rounder than round) float (roundly)
when the saints
i just don't know where to begin
me o my, love that country pie
you pretty things, don't you know you're driving your mamas and papas insane
i could tell you why the ocean's near the shore
what do simple folk do?
boy!
Dad, poor Dad
the world owes me a livin'

airplanes

2005-09-07T21:59:00.000-04:00

In the space of 5 minutes I saw 6 airplanes fly over my back yard. I hardly ever see more than one.

Just heard another one go over.

What does it mean?

addendum

2005-08-19T22:01:00.000-04:00

Monday
The first gas station in North Carolina - could feel the air sticking to me, said to myself, "you're coming home," smiled.... not home yet, but the South, you know.

Trip debrief

2005-08-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

Am not lucid enough to give real accounts of the trip (just arrived back at my little abode at 11 a.m. today, after getting up and driving 4 hours from Charlotte) but it included visits to: Lynchburg, VA (highly vertical), Hartford, CT (nice little park and fountain), Kennebunk beach, ME (no Bush hunting, just wanted to see the ocean and eat lobster), Fredericton, N.B. (lovely town by a lake), Taylor, PA. (lovely town near coal fields), and brief visits or motel stays in Gadsden, S.C., New Smithville, PA, Bangor, ME (an Irving station that is the cruising center of the universe) and more...

I don't think I can sit here another minute. More when my butt recovers...

OK, later, raw notes:

Monday
First stop, Commerce Citgo, gravelly voiced lady tells me cigarettes are cheaper in N. Carolina. Pumps don't work - struck by lightening.

Later - where is my bankcard?

Super8 in Gaffney S.C. $59 for a room? Whatever happened to cheap motels...

Tuesday
Morning radio, NPR, interview with author of "Closed Doors." Evil - horror. Then TMBG - They got lost. I'm sick of this American life. Then morning chatters talking about American cannibal website (which I now can't find).

Noon, Chinese food in N. Carolina.

Lynchburg - where is the river? Couldn't find it. Teenager in park told me if I walked all the way past the basketball court and looked down I could see it. Too far.

Wednesday
Toll booth guy (Maine?) told me he had decided to pay for the next person who drove up, which happened to be me. I told him he was sweet in my best southern accent. It made my day.

The Irving station in Bangor ME is the hangout capital of the universe at about 10 p.m.

Thursday
Why, when I was so close, did I take the wrong exit to Fredericton? There wasn't even any moonlight as I took my early morning drive by the river.

Sunday
Taylor Pennsylvania - young blond retarded man with sores around his mouth asked me to give him a cigarette, and light it for him "cause I'm not real good at that". First he asked what brand I had.

The Family Affair restaurant. The chic spot for the elderly set. Strange setup where you can see the back kitchen through the order window and it seems to be on a higher level than the restaurant. They brought me shrimp cocktail, soup, pasta salad, dinner salad and a big dish of delightful vodka cream sauce linguini. I wanted to take half of it with me but thought better of it.

pangs

2005-07-31T21:51:00.000-04:00

yesterday... driving home, listening to the Chuck Wagon Gang record my sister had lent me, I had a vision. It was heaven... heaven was full of people, music, bright lights, activity... it was like a carnival. I knew that my parents were in there. But somehow as I approached the gates, the thought occurred to me that I might not get in. I started crying... not in the vision, in the car.

today.... going to the ice cream place, I tripped over the door sill (again) and this time, my arm involuntarily flung itself out, and I got a horrible spasm in it (the bad shoulder) so that I howled out, "Oh, oh, " for several moments. An older woman came over to see if I was all right. She told me to sit down. Then another lady in her party came over. "My grandfather had a bad shoulder..." The spasm wore off quickly and I got my salad and ice cream.

the thread between these is unexpected pain, I suppose. and revelation.

what do you think

2005-07-23T18:05:00.000-04:00

they've already announced that the building is closed but I can't get up from this chair. the light keeps blinking. what an enormity of stuff remains to be done. i had energy this afternoon but it leaked away. plug me in please. i have that tinnitus thing again, it probably never goes away now, am thinking about Not I by Samuel Beckett, "the buzzing... so called... in the ears." is that my future... ? looking forward to tomorrow. well, one can't look backward to it, can one?

bettting on the horses

2005-07-03T18:20:00.000-04:00

I was in a strange nostalgic mood and started looking up people from my past in Google. Totally unrelated to my search, I came across this case. In a way, it reminded me of the person whose name I was searching for. I could imagine them telling me about the case with great chuckles. There's something about this case that seems dated to me, I can't imagine a judge using the word "pecksniffian" in an opinion now but maybe there are some who would. I can enjoy hearing about cases like this from the safe distance of having nothing to do with them but anything legal scares the willies out of me. You are really up in the air dangling and there's no way to be sure what can happen. In a previous life I had to appear at administrative hearings and it was certainly true then. I felt for Michael Jackson, what an ordeal...

Just now

2005-06-22T23:23:00.000-04:00

I have a million things to do, it's late, but here I am writing. Just went out to have a smoke on the back stoop, and there's a lightening bug shower. The last time I remember seeing one, a whole cloud of them appeared in the valley below my apartment at the time, and I stood transfixed for maybe half an hour. There were so many they really lit up the valley at times, when synchronicity happened. This time, they were in the trees above my stoop. Their morse-code-connect-the-dots networking gave me a strange sense of the verticality of the world.

Just woke up

2005-06-19T14:41:00.000-04:00

The weather here is so balmy and beautiful. It's sunny but cool breezes are playing about. The birds are singing. Went to breakfast and had a delicious and satisfying buffet. I have an incredibly tedious but intellectually taxing task to do at the computer this afternoon. It was all too much, I just had to nap. Now I am trying to remember who I am and what I have to do (same thing just about).

Can't help but think that we will pay for it later, this weather. It will be 114 degrees in July, or we will have a freak ice storm or something. This is, I reckon, that human propensity for balancing out pain with guilt. Everything must be paid for. Doesn't work very well but it's what we do.

mmm hmmm mmmm

2005-06-15T00:31:00.000-04:00

it's that part of the night when i used to get a second wind. i need that wind now, but my body is only capable of playing game after game of free cell or going to bed. i'm going to bed soon but had meant to post something to this neglected blog earlier and hadn't gotten to it. didn't finish the spreadsheet but did get it in some kind of shape. bought lots of records from amazon (should have looked elsewhere, I know, but lazy). 3 Jonathan Richman (we went to see him this week in a little club, very intimate), a Natalie Cole that I heard in a restaurant, an on-sale Arvo Pärt. felt better today than for weeks, in spite of the shoulder still giving fitful pains. so, shouldn't push it by staying up much later. bye

unexpected

2005-06-02T23:54:00.000-04:00

tonight as i was leaving the singing someone asked me if I'd been at the Magnetic Fields concert...

Mental Space

2005-05-31T21:03:00.000-04:00

Last week, happened to see the two space movies, Star Wars 3 and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Although I wasn't expecting much from it, Hitchhiker ended up sticking in my mind much more than SW3 for some reason. Never read the books or got into the radio series, so my reactions were purely to the film. There's some imagery in it that I think will get conjured up over and over in situations in my life. That field with the slappers - I foresee that I will go through events in life where i feel like i'm in that field. The huge planetary construction site was somehow more awe inspiring than the futuristic cities and molten planets in Star Wars... and the Vogons are more likely, in spite of their amusing caricaturish qualities, to show up in my nightmares than the Sith and their minions. There's something about the familiar in an unfamiliar context that gives a certain lurch... Later on i'll decide if Hitchhiker deserves this estimation or not.

Things that happened at parties

2005-05-22T21:06:00.000-04:00

Party at doctor's house, big porch, backs up to the woods. Summer evening, a big black cockroach is flying around on the porch, i see it and go inside to the kitchen, but the door is open. Suddenly it flies in. lands on a girl's blouse and crawls inside. I'm transfixed... for a few seconds she doesn't notice it, she's talking to people, then she gives a little cry and says, "you know that bug - I think it's in my shirt" and quick as that, the women form a circle around her as she takes off her shirt, the men kind of look at the floor... it falls out, crawls through the circle of women and one of the men steps on it. This kind of took the oomph out of the party and people started to leave shortly thereafter....

Party years ago at someone's house. I bring the records. Rufus Thomas, Crown Prince of Dance. James Brown, Get up Offa That Thing. There's a guy we haven't seen before, Native American, dark hair and lively, takes a fancy to Peaches... it's probably not the music or the dancing, but people start to get really loose, really wild. Suddenly there's trouble and when I look around, Steve clocks the guy. As information developed later, apparently the Native American had said something to Peaches that she found insulting. I had forgotten that Steve was in the Marines. It's all over, the guy leaves, no police. I leave that James Brown record at home ever after.

Second post

2005-05-15T09:48:00.000-04:00

it didn't seem right to just have one post, so here's another.

the rain has stopped. cockroach season has started. i'm still enjoying the memory of the navrattan korma from last night. why does Sears have merchandise where the price is "zeroed out"? i was told that the item was on sale, then clearance, then it gets zeroed out, and guess what? when that happens, if you want it, they have to key in the price. the full price.

whatever cycle is doing this to me, i am staying away from stores today. guess that means the internet too. bye.

first post

2005-05-15T09:31:00.000-04:00

why in the dickens does a country as earthquake-prone as Iran want to get nuclear reactors?

maybe no place is safe from earthquakes? not here, at any rate. there was a 3. something one here around the turn of the century (1890's). and just a couple of years ago while i was working on a paper in the wee hours, i felt a tremor. thought i was just getting weird... but heard about it next day

so those were the thoughts just before i got the impulse to do this blog thing. have to watch my impulses this weekend... yesterday i paid $360 for tickets to see a band i didn't really want to see... what is happening? check the cycles...