Foo on the Other Shoet
Foo on the Other Shoet
This title calls me "Mama"—I think I've used it before. It's overheard over head. (I sit by the cream & sugar counter). Got to cafe early because the Henry computer is fixed & all I had to do was print. It's only 6 o'clock. Clouds over the sky in bands, like wooly scarves & some breeze blowing. Next minute they've gone where the summer clouds go (to the mountains). I keep breaking loose, in my (i)magic—nation & flying with the pelicans, no the hummingbirds, no the russet-vested swallows.
But that's all pretend. So's the picture I made of the dark woman sitting motionless in her car with a Rembrandt glow on her décolletage. Collarbone. What was she listening to? Thinking about? NPR? Her grocery list.
Save it. Not worried except when I panic. Bunches of things lead to panic. Thoughts of possible bad job. Eviction. More begging.
The rigors of escape. Because I want...
Always want something. Want to finish Matryoshka. Want to remove all the mud & the crud, to expose—what you get when you wash away the mud & crud. Ancient coins with emperor's profiles & potshards, intaglios & fibulae.
All the lost when I finally find it. (Who's keeping it? Alan Basbaum!)
I wonder if my sense of crowdedness is based on the fact that the world is crowded—or do I just know that there is too much to know. So many levels of ignorance. (The layer-cake of unknowing.)
BM *Bux 7/10/01
Picked Through Like Stitching
I looked up from my titling activities & saw Kay R. over in the corner holding a newspaper in front of her face. I went & said, "Hem" like an actor in a Shakespeare play. Then she comes over & tells me she's okay & her sister's okay, except for her child abuse. Kay blames everything on that, even her daydreaming. I think, "Rubbish" but say nothing.
Nobody sends me mail, ni yesterday, ni today. I panic & then I forget.
Meanwhile, I keep writing. Only in the morning when I wake to the irrefutable argument that I still live, do I despair. It's hot, or I am. Should I get up at 7 when the truck driver toots his air horn, the woman honks her car horn & yells "how ya doin?" Jeff trundles bins noisily up & down the basement stairs & doors slam. But I don't get up & often get right down to that liquid or gel state that we humans love & sometimes take noxious drugs to attain.
*
I'm finding bus passes & drivers licenses but no more major money. Numbers tantalize me, birds amuse me, people do various things to me, and the clouds & breeze satisfy me—after a very hot summer day. I have bought no raspberries, for money is tight. Grandma gave me some excellent numbers but the Washington lotto was a little off, and I only matched 3.
Deception Pass or the hibachi. I really want the ocean but I think Ocean has left me far behind. Out, out upon it—the evening, that is.
BM *Bux 7/12/01
Can't Count on the Weather
There is so much you can't count on...some things it's better not to imagine. (Many?) And good luck to you.
Flurry of cafe activity at 6:40 & I ought to get up to see if Grandma has picked anyone else's pocket.
News today - none. Job - none. Mail - rejection from Stranger, NBD. Email - none. Work done - some little pages on Matr. &1 p. of corrections on "Woman as Will & Idea."
Now I know the names of all the crew except one girl, the talkative blonde. I expected Lee but he's not here. The musician canceled, I think. Paul/Pablo tells me the guy has so much equipment, it takes him an hour to set up & then he plays for 15 minutes & it takes him another hour to pull down. "What does he play?" I ask.
"Oh, guitar—it sounds like." We both start laughing. "It could be anything."
Tonight noisy little queers yelling to their friends in that exhibitionist way (not a queer thing, a youth thing. Obnoxious. Like we're all the audience. —No, I'd never do that.).
The redhead from the Safeway told me they sell the best scratch tickets at stores in poor neighborhoods. We agree it's all fixed & then she talks me into buying a daily game. Once, I said, if I don't win, never more. She laughed at that.
Okay, I want to read more anthropology & write some escalating effects (stepladder to the heights). Careful, don't fall off.
I think I'm getting a cataract.
BM *Bux 7/13/01
The Smart Thing
The smart thing for me to do about these notebooks is to give them away or burn them. Or hide them, about half anyway. Otherwise, we have too many: the market is glutted. I suppose I could spread them around the countryside, like the squirrels do their treasures.
I am fascinated listening to that woman's long painful story of her debacular love affair. She is Vietnamese & a nurse & he is Chinese & a medical resident. What she has put up with! "You mean you live here, you've never been to Tacoma?" She knocked herself out trying to win his heart, and now she's trying to win her listeners' sympathy.
The sky clouds out & over. I have to leave—the woman has lost my sympathy, and that of her friends, I suspect too. They tell her what she should have said. The woman sounds desperate. Her friend says, "But Chinese people are like that." And the Asian woman straight across from me looks at them sideways. The thwarted lover says she can't pretend any more.
In a love affair, you shouldn't pretend. And you shouldn't let anything offensive go without saying something.
Her talk is — maddening.
BM *Bux 7/14/01
Hey, Pectin Head
Here's Lee & there he goes to smoke the cigarette he had behind his ear. He went dining, drinking & dancing on his birthday & to Portland just after.
Nothing much has happened to me. I dreamed cinematically last night after several nights of blank screen. All the dreams involved frustration. There were no numbers.
Then today it rained.
I coat my hair with fruit gel that dries it firmly in place & attracts flies. (One hovers in my face even now.) The cool drizzle satisfies my overheated soul. I am not crazy. I am not committed to life or death, but turn turn turn like a weather vane.
The only time I feel grown up is when I finish writing.
I hate all editors.
I ignore that weirdness in my throat. (Did someone say lump? No one said lump.)
In the misty afternoon, I attempted a walk due west to Lake Washington but discovered a forested ridge in the way. Hey, what's that? I don't remember a forested ridge –or do I? The only time I've been that way was with F. all those years ago—and as many times as we went that way...it was all foreign territory. So, is that Madrona? And down at the bottom of the ridge is another road. Some trodden grass. A bunch of ducks & even more geese.
BM *Bucks 7/15/01
Hey, Fruit Pate, Lemon Skull
This isn't funny. Well, in some ways it is—I suppose it depends (as Reny used to say, screwing up his face) on how you look at it.
When I think about the only men I could ever (have) love(d) (e.g., Gene Musser), they were the ones who made me laugh. But they didn't want to make me laugh, or they didn't care if they made me laugh or not, they were just funny—and went home to their wives. And the only one I ever wrote about was Alan Gevins.
Gee, I wish the Sun would buy that essay, even if it is incoherent.
I'm going to stop praying. I don't believe, I can barely suspend my disbelief long enough to say Amen, and besides, my ancestors all, male & female all the way back, hate me, and want me dead.
Well, dig this ancestors, I want you dead too, and I get my wish because you are dead. ha ha ha ha ha.
This excepts parents who can stick around till they've had enough. I don't want any part of that.
Tomorrow I curse God.
Today, it is cloudy & coll. Coool. Again, I got sprinkled on, but I didn't mind because it was just sprinkles & I'm a girl of nature.
That was as I walked to the Montlake library where I printed my pages & had no email. Then I walked home—no I walked over here—& got hot walking but didn't care & decided that praying is not my métier.
Now I'll go to the Henry library & pick up my books. I have $80 left & tomorrow is the anniverse of Tomas's death. I wonder if those 4 coffee-drinking policemen are paying attention.
BM Starb's 7/16/01
This title calls me "Mama"—I think I've used it before. It's overheard over head. (I sit by the cream & sugar counter). Got to cafe early because the Henry computer is fixed & all I had to do was print. It's only 6 o'clock. Clouds over the sky in bands, like wooly scarves & some breeze blowing. Next minute they've gone where the summer clouds go (to the mountains). I keep breaking loose, in my (i)magic—nation & flying with the pelicans, no the hummingbirds, no the russet-vested swallows.
But that's all pretend. So's the picture I made of the dark woman sitting motionless in her car with a Rembrandt glow on her décolletage. Collarbone. What was she listening to? Thinking about? NPR? Her grocery list.
Save it. Not worried except when I panic. Bunches of things lead to panic. Thoughts of possible bad job. Eviction. More begging.
The rigors of escape. Because I want...
Always want something. Want to finish Matryoshka. Want to remove all the mud & the crud, to expose—what you get when you wash away the mud & crud. Ancient coins with emperor's profiles & potshards, intaglios & fibulae.
All the lost when I finally find it. (Who's keeping it? Alan Basbaum!)
I wonder if my sense of crowdedness is based on the fact that the world is crowded—or do I just know that there is too much to know. So many levels of ignorance. (The layer-cake of unknowing.)
BM *Bux 7/10/01
Picked Through Like Stitching
I looked up from my titling activities & saw Kay R. over in the corner holding a newspaper in front of her face. I went & said, "Hem" like an actor in a Shakespeare play. Then she comes over & tells me she's okay & her sister's okay, except for her child abuse. Kay blames everything on that, even her daydreaming. I think, "Rubbish" but say nothing.
Nobody sends me mail, ni yesterday, ni today. I panic & then I forget.
Meanwhile, I keep writing. Only in the morning when I wake to the irrefutable argument that I still live, do I despair. It's hot, or I am. Should I get up at 7 when the truck driver toots his air horn, the woman honks her car horn & yells "how ya doin?" Jeff trundles bins noisily up & down the basement stairs & doors slam. But I don't get up & often get right down to that liquid or gel state that we humans love & sometimes take noxious drugs to attain.
*
I'm finding bus passes & drivers licenses but no more major money. Numbers tantalize me, birds amuse me, people do various things to me, and the clouds & breeze satisfy me—after a very hot summer day. I have bought no raspberries, for money is tight. Grandma gave me some excellent numbers but the Washington lotto was a little off, and I only matched 3.
Deception Pass or the hibachi. I really want the ocean but I think Ocean has left me far behind. Out, out upon it—the evening, that is.
BM *Bux 7/12/01
Can't Count on the Weather
There is so much you can't count on...some things it's better not to imagine. (Many?) And good luck to you.
Flurry of cafe activity at 6:40 & I ought to get up to see if Grandma has picked anyone else's pocket.
News today - none. Job - none. Mail - rejection from Stranger, NBD. Email - none. Work done - some little pages on Matr. &1 p. of corrections on "Woman as Will & Idea."
Now I know the names of all the crew except one girl, the talkative blonde. I expected Lee but he's not here. The musician canceled, I think. Paul/Pablo tells me the guy has so much equipment, it takes him an hour to set up & then he plays for 15 minutes & it takes him another hour to pull down. "What does he play?" I ask.
"Oh, guitar—it sounds like." We both start laughing. "It could be anything."
Tonight noisy little queers yelling to their friends in that exhibitionist way (not a queer thing, a youth thing. Obnoxious. Like we're all the audience. —No, I'd never do that.).
The redhead from the Safeway told me they sell the best scratch tickets at stores in poor neighborhoods. We agree it's all fixed & then she talks me into buying a daily game. Once, I said, if I don't win, never more. She laughed at that.
Okay, I want to read more anthropology & write some escalating effects (stepladder to the heights). Careful, don't fall off.
I think I'm getting a cataract.
BM *Bux 7/13/01
The Smart Thing
The smart thing for me to do about these notebooks is to give them away or burn them. Or hide them, about half anyway. Otherwise, we have too many: the market is glutted. I suppose I could spread them around the countryside, like the squirrels do their treasures.
I am fascinated listening to that woman's long painful story of her debacular love affair. She is Vietnamese & a nurse & he is Chinese & a medical resident. What she has put up with! "You mean you live here, you've never been to Tacoma?" She knocked herself out trying to win his heart, and now she's trying to win her listeners' sympathy.
The sky clouds out & over. I have to leave—the woman has lost my sympathy, and that of her friends, I suspect too. They tell her what she should have said. The woman sounds desperate. Her friend says, "But Chinese people are like that." And the Asian woman straight across from me looks at them sideways. The thwarted lover says she can't pretend any more.
In a love affair, you shouldn't pretend. And you shouldn't let anything offensive go without saying something.
Her talk is — maddening.
BM *Bux 7/14/01
Hey, Pectin Head
Here's Lee & there he goes to smoke the cigarette he had behind his ear. He went dining, drinking & dancing on his birthday & to Portland just after.
Nothing much has happened to me. I dreamed cinematically last night after several nights of blank screen. All the dreams involved frustration. There were no numbers.
Then today it rained.
I coat my hair with fruit gel that dries it firmly in place & attracts flies. (One hovers in my face even now.) The cool drizzle satisfies my overheated soul. I am not crazy. I am not committed to life or death, but turn turn turn like a weather vane.
The only time I feel grown up is when I finish writing.
I hate all editors.
I ignore that weirdness in my throat. (Did someone say lump? No one said lump.)
In the misty afternoon, I attempted a walk due west to Lake Washington but discovered a forested ridge in the way. Hey, what's that? I don't remember a forested ridge –or do I? The only time I've been that way was with F. all those years ago—and as many times as we went that way...it was all foreign territory. So, is that Madrona? And down at the bottom of the ridge is another road. Some trodden grass. A bunch of ducks & even more geese.
BM *Bucks 7/15/01
Hey, Fruit Pate, Lemon Skull
This isn't funny. Well, in some ways it is—I suppose it depends (as Reny used to say, screwing up his face) on how you look at it.
When I think about the only men I could ever (have) love(d) (e.g., Gene Musser), they were the ones who made me laugh. But they didn't want to make me laugh, or they didn't care if they made me laugh or not, they were just funny—and went home to their wives. And the only one I ever wrote about was Alan Gevins.
Gee, I wish the Sun would buy that essay, even if it is incoherent.
I'm going to stop praying. I don't believe, I can barely suspend my disbelief long enough to say Amen, and besides, my ancestors all, male & female all the way back, hate me, and want me dead.
Well, dig this ancestors, I want you dead too, and I get my wish because you are dead. ha ha ha ha ha.
This excepts parents who can stick around till they've had enough. I don't want any part of that.
Tomorrow I curse God.
Today, it is cloudy & coll. Coool. Again, I got sprinkled on, but I didn't mind because it was just sprinkles & I'm a girl of nature.
That was as I walked to the Montlake library where I printed my pages & had no email. Then I walked home—no I walked over here—& got hot walking but didn't care & decided that praying is not my métier.
Now I'll go to the Henry library & pick up my books. I have $80 left & tomorrow is the anniverse of Tomas's death. I wonder if those 4 coffee-drinking policemen are paying attention.
BM Starb's 7/16/01
posted by K. E. Ellingson at 4:08 PM
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