chain letter

Here's how you play:"Once you have been tagged, you have to write a blog w/ 10 weird, random things, facts, habits or goals about yourself. At the end choose 10 people to be tagged, listing their names and why you chose them. Don't forget to leave them a comment ("You're It") and to read your blog. You can't tag the person who tagged you. Since you can't tag me back, let me know when you've posted your blog so I can see your answers!"

10 THINGS YOU NEVER WANTED TO KNOW

1. I like my cereal room temperature, and soggy, sometimes letting it sit for up to an hour before eating it.
2. I have a crush on Anderson Cooper.
3. I own over 200 pairs of underwear.
4. I own over 30 pairs of jeans.
5. I cry every time I watch Forrest Gump.
6. I have seen RENT seven times in five cities across the country.
7. I have seen Madonna five times in four cities across the country.
8. My favorite meal of all time is a tray of Swanson Salisbury Steaks and reconstituted mashed potato flakes with a glass of milk.
9. I brush my teeth three times a day, especially after eating Swanson Salisbury Steaks and reconstituted mashed potato flakes.
10. My worst fears include snakes and heights.... but not at the same time.

Who am I sending this to...
1) Nobody. The chain letter stops here. I will now have bad luck for the next 15 years, but at least I wont incur the wrath of my true friends.
Exeunt.

acquainted with the night

Evenings descend earlier now along the banks of Tannehill Creek gingerly, on cat's paws, so that by the time I arrive home from work I can barely make out the trusses of the new house framed against the twilight. There, on the back deck perched amongst arthritic oaks, I find myself drinking a beer and pondering what life will be like after the shingles are laid, the drywall floated, and the Nelson lamps hung just so.
Nights like this, months hence, will most assuredly bring the glow of tv screens from veiled windows to illuminate the landscape an incandescent blue. I inhale the cedar-tinged air and watch the fireflies alight. I have been one acquainted with the night.

Acquainted With the Night
By Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

a remark was passed

I recently overheard someone off-handedly mentioning my penchant for reading the obituaries every morning, obsessively scanning the pages for a friend, colleague, past dalliance, or perhaps my own self. Then it dawned on me that I am searching for something that defies being uncovered. All of those pages of vacant smiles taunting me from beyond, with knowing looks of journeys ended, or maybe even begun. I found myself recently beginning to feed my habit by reading the profiles on mydeathspace.com to see how it all ends for those of us here exposing our souls 14 kilobytes at a time in comments and messages that will long outlive our bodies.

My mother used to go through shoeboxes full of old photos, and highlight the relatives that I would never meet; people who are holding me as a baby, or drinking a cocktail (or both!), or posing in front of an irreplaceable landmark long since gone. Funny, how one of my first memories of death was when my grandmother would point to a black-and-white photo of my grandfather under her glass-topped dresser and tell me how he died 8 years before I was born and was now "six feet under." In the picture, he is seated at his desk, smiling and holding a pen in what can best be described as a posed candid. For years, I assumed that everyone who died, went off to go work in underground offices without windows, never to return.

Of course, nowadays these shoeboxes of memories reside on hard drives and servers in Burbank, CA. But they do serve the same purpose of a collective memory source nonetheless.These photos (which I am so definitely not fond of participating in) are the testament to a life lived. To holidays with friends, and tortured family vacations. To lovers departed, and documentation of delight and despair.

No matter what else is happening in our lives aside from the one nanosecond that the camera lens captures, we are able to muster a smile, and see into the future for a fleeting moment.

I am obliged to take pause, and stare back.

dusk before fashion

....8:15pm to be precise. Forget Milan, New York, or Tokyo. Last Friday night, the fashion capital of the world was most definitely relocated to MLK Boulevard in the Blanton Museum.Tribeza Magazine hosted a world-class event replete with all the beautiful people in Austin, plus a few tourists that wandered in by mistake.Why is it that a stiff cocktail adds 4 inches to those svelte runway models as they careened down the runway like wayward jets coming in to land at La Guardia?
The music, the crowds, and the pret-a-porter collection came hot off the racks from Estilo, Garden Room, The Girl Next Door, Keepers, and one more -- I forget who. All that fashion gave me temporary amnesia, the swirling dervishes of cotton, silk, and suede clouded my thoughts. Thank god someone had the foresight to remove the tags.

Front row seats allowed us a close up view of the very hems which were graced by these beautiful gazelles, as well as the scuffed shoes of the male models -- something that was not lost on those of us at sole level.In the end, despite one technical hiccup that resulted in one retailer being confused for another -- similar to Nordstrom's being mistaken for Wal-Mart -- the evening ended on a high C.
Drinks, laughter, and gaiety ensued at the Belmont, and then the rest is documented in some binder down at central booking.

hash and eggs

I cannot tell a lie. I must tell several, in quick succession. And why not? What else am I supposed to do when faced with this... "assignment," for lack of a better term. ("Dilemma" was already being used.) I was given the task to go into my literary closet and resurrect the dead. Poems and prose alike, just hanging there lifeless on wire hangers no less. Outfits once destined for the Salvation Army had to be stitched into a passable frock for daytime wear -- and cocktails at 11am. Hemline above the knee, if you please.
How was I to bring new meaning to these works that had found themselves couched comfortably in the confines of a dark 3x5 cell awaiting word from my executors for the date and time of my estate sale? These are the items that would be placed in -- what do they call them? LOTS, oh yes. A fancy catch-all term for "everything in this box $1."
Anyways, this whole ordeal got me to thinking about my own mortality. And the fact that I'm half past due for a Manhattan. They say that when you have a photograph taken, that it takes away a part of your soul. Personally, I think they are getting "soul" and "salary" mixed up, but that's beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that we writers pour so much of ourselves onto the printed page, certainly we must sacrifice a little bit of our life energy to the written word. Believe you me, there's a small charge to be paid the Reaper for every split infinitive and dangling participle. A short story is all good and well. But, a novel will just about fuck you up in the worst way. Hell, cigarettes only chop 7 minutes off your life, but a serialized book will top that by a good half hour.
The way I see it, there really is no use in going back to revisit the past and find it inadequate to the memory of the present. You can't unscramble an egg. The stories are still there, in the shoebox of my mind... but the shoes are missing. There, I've gone and done it. I've ruined the assignment. Allow me a moment to collect my thoughts and punish myself with a thirst-quenching cocktail.

snapshots of a lesser Hilton

I flew 2,228 miles to Portland last week, and took exactly three pictures with my digital camera.Not to say that the lush greenery and mountainous terrain didn't lend itself to being photographed, it's just that I was never so inclined to view the world through a lens finder.I have always lamented being placed in front of famous landmarks and such just to provide photographic evidence that I was there. Somehow, the thought of posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, or Mayo Clinic is just about as appealing as a round of chemotherapy.

Looking back, this disdain most likely stems from growing up with a mother who always carried a Kodak Insta-Matic in her purse to document even the drollest events. Forever, a blinding flash will be connected to that split second before blowing out the candles, or waiting to ride the next roller coaster, or hurrying to catch the Grey Line tour bus. Lifus interruptus, as it were; that momentary pause necessary to position subjects just so to create the perfect shot -- with another one taken just for good measure.
Most of these trifles have been replaced by the advent of digital cameras which allow you to compose a perfect photograph after the fact. The Alamo or Sphinx can always be added to the background later on in the comfort of your home office.But back to my original point, and I do have one. On my way to downtown Portland on the Red Line, I passed Mt. Hood. I passed daring and bold architectural statements. I crossed the Willamette River, and exited at the beautiful courthouse in Pioneer Square camera firmly packed in my messenger bag next to the Rolaids, gum and bottled water. I visited the world famous Chinese Garden, and took a tram 500ft. up the side of a mountain overlooking the city, and not one photograph.

So what did I take pictures of you may ask?

Why the fabulous sliding barn door to the bathroom in my hotel room, of course.

cocktails on 95

The room seemed auspicious enough, smelling of gumbo; a jumble of cities and continents imported on the skin and clothing of tourists happy to be illuminated in the glowing half-light of the Chicago skyline at sunset.I inwardly imagined that if one is forced to drink a cocktail before dinner, then it should most definitely be done on the top floor of the Hancock Tower. Here we were entombed in a steel monolith overlooking Lake Michigan and the teeming streets below whose dust still covered the soles of our shoes.My fear of heights -- thankfully dulled by the Sidecar which sat in front of me -- was discarded somewhere between the 75th and 82nd floors as we had been quickly propelled to this very spot by one of the fastest elevators in North America, according to the building's website. Not to take credit from the wonderful company that alternately enveloped and preoccupied me in conversation while volunteering to catch me if I faltered and needed physical support.

Politics, love life, and Lindsay Lohan were all topics du jour, as Julia, Doug and I deftly danced through the minefields of popular culture, failing to detonate anything more explosive than an equal condemnation of the Bush regime. My mind wandered to the spiders who made their webs outside the windows up here on the 95th floor, logically questioning their survival up here among the clouds. Of course, then I started thinking about the window washers, and was transported in my own mind outside the confines of our glass enclosed space, billowing against the high winds only to be blown to my death below.

My vertigo suddenly returned as quickly as it had disappeared, and the brave face that I had put forth crumbled like the pyramids of Giza.

The fastest elevator in the world indeed.