Le Mot Juste

I'm doing pretty good this week kids. I've posted something every day! I'll try to do better now that school is winding down. Here's an old pantoum based on a Stevie Nicks song that I don't think I've posted here before:

“You used to be…”

“Starshine,
you used to be silver
love light…love affair
you used to make me shiver…”

“You used to be silver”
You used to be gold and blue
“You used to make me shiver”
“If you were wiser you would get out.”

You used to be gold and blue
Make me laugh through my tears
“If you were wiser, you would get out”
You will leave me.

Make me laugh through my tears
“Love light…love affair”
You will leave me
“Starshine…”

Hump Day Fun

Most people have seen this but here it is again just because it's funny-- The Colbert Report on same-sex marriage:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
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Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Here are some clips from a film called Outcasts. It is a film about the experiences of lesbians during the Holocaust:







And here is a reasding of an excerpt from The Men with the Pink Triangle:

Monday Shorts

A revision of my first story for Sena:

Things did not go the way she planned them. But, then again, things never did. My mother has always been a woman for whom life was a perpetual problem. Never enough money, never enough time. Life was a blessing and a curse and my mother was a woman always in search of an escape.

She wanted to paint but never made time. All my mother’s paintings and paints and brushes and empty or half finished canvases were locked away in the spare room that was otherwise never used. She never finished any of them. She started and then saw no use in continuing. They never turned out the way she planned. “Kind of like life,” she always said.

She wanted to sing. She always plays music in the evenings. Songs she'll sing and dance to. Songs of lost love, songs of old women selling flowers in run down bars, songs soaked in gin and regret, her voice as light as a promise.

She wanted to travel. She wanted to fly in an airplane; She wanted to cross the Atlantic and hitchhike across Europe. She wanted to pray in Chartes and bathe in the Ganges. She wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a rock star, a veterinarian. She wanted to live in New York because sometimes she has insomnia and that city never sleeps. She wanted to stand in Time’s Square on New Year’s Eve and wait in the frigid air for the ball to drop and wave to the people at home watching her on their T.V. She wanted to live in a house by the ocean; She wanted to drive through the desert and never run out of gas. She wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and once on the other side, live there forever because it looks pretty on postcards.

“You wanna make God laugh?” she often says, “Tell Him your plans.”

She wanted to marry. She wanted the white dress and the veil and the flowers. She wanted the church bells and the good wishes and her father to give away and approve. She wanted to walk down the aisle and live happily ever after. First, comes love; second comes marriage; then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

But it didn’t go the way she planned it. My father was supposed to take her away like Bluebeard’s brother and give her the life she dreamed of. Instead, he just disappeared. “Long gone and good riddance,” she says now.

It’s hard to imagine my father. There’s a photograph, stained and faded, that I found once—my mother and father sitting on my grandparent’s sofa, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. It is hard to imagine them then—just a boy, seventeen and a girl, sixteen with their whole lives still ahead of them. Now nothing remains of the life they shared. That is if you don’t count me and the wedding ring my mother still wears.

It’s hard to imagine my father. Even when I look in the mirror and see that I have his hair, his eyes, his nose. Even when I look in the mirror and I look just like that seventeen year old boy in that picture. That boy who’s long gone and good riddance.

They had another child; I had a sister who was still-born. That’s when he started to drink, she says. Though he never missed a day of work and the bills got paid if barely, those five years were hell. My father went when she’d walked the floors one too many times, up at night not knowing where he was or when he was coming home. She claimed she could smell another woman a mile away and she probably could. He never dared show his face without a three day wait—enough time to raise the dead—and something short of an exorcism.

They divorced in 1972. Their life together summed up neatly in cold-worded court documents:
“The Court NOW FINDS that allegations of the Plaintiff’s complaint for Absolute Divorce are true and that the Plaintiff is entitled to an Absolute Divorce from the Defendant. AND THE COURT further finds that the parties were duly married on the 17th day of April, 1967 and lived and cohabited until on or about the 28th day of June, 1972. And THE COURT further finds that as a result of this marriage two children were born.”

I was born on Sunday, June 25, 1967 at precisely 3 AM—two months ahead of schedule. My mother was then sixteen—unschooled and with child. My father was then seventeen and conspicuously missing. My mother gave me his name—the only name she could think of at the time. To this day his name and a photograph are all I have of the man.

My birth was unplanned and my arrival unexpected—two months ahead of schedule. Weighing three pounds, eleven ounces—the world not yet gone metric.

My sister lived and died one week before Christmas, 1968. My father named her Anne, after his mother, fulfilling his father’s wish. She’s buried there next to Grandma Anna. When Grandpa Watson died three years ago, my mother and I and Grandpa’s few living friends were the only ones to attend his burial. My father sent flowers and a note. Grandpa was buried next to Grandma Anna, the stone bearing his name and marking the years of his life—1928-2006—read, “This world is not my home.”

Time passed. Things happened. My mother got a job in a mailroom. It paid the bills. She started paintings she never finished. She sometimes went out dancing with friends, leaving me with Susan Maxx, one of our neighbors. Susan Maxx—who sees all, hears all, knows all and tells all. She claims her house is haunted. That she hears footsteps on the stairs at night. That the piano plays without need of human hands. That the T.V. comes on when she’s in another room.

I don’t believe in ghosts. What’s gone is gone for good. Like my father. Long gone and “Good riddance,” like my mother says.

But what do I know? This house is so old it may be haunted. And Susa Maxx has lived in this house her entire life. And my mother’s entire life too. We live now in my grandfather’s house, across the street from Mrs. Maxx My great-grandfather built the house and he lived and died there just like his son and probably his son’s daughter-in-law will too. My father was meant to take her away. That’s the way she planned it. But wine, women and song mattered more to him.

“He was a good boy,” Mrs. Maxx said, “your father. Always worked hard. Tried to do the right thing.”

“Not according to my mother,” I said.

Mrs. Maxx bowed her head. “After he lost his little girl, things just never were the same. He never was right after that. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad man.”
“Doesn’t it?”

“We all get through this world the best way we can.”

Something wasn’t right. Something was missing. Something there in that old photograph. Something we lost. They were duly married on the 17th day of April, 1967 and lived and cohabited until on or about the 28th day of June, 1972. As a result of this marriage, two children were born. One died. They were granted divorce on the 23rd day of April, 1973.

Plain and simple. What’s gone is gone for good.

“Let me show something,” Mrs. Maxx said, then she got up and walked down the hall. She came back carrying a small plastic bag. In the bag were photos. “I took these on their wedding day.”

There they were. Just a girl, sixteen and a boy seventeen on a bright spring day standing in the yard in front of our house. There they were exchanging their vows, him putting that ring on her finger. There they were feeding each other wedding cake and dancing out by those trees where Mrs. Maxx’s kids and I used to play hide and seek. There they were and they were happy.

I remember their voices down the hall, down the stairs. Shouting, my mother crying. The sound of things breaking—a glass, a plate, an empty bottle, a window. Sometimes, I can almost see his face. Smell the liquor on his breath when he carried me upstairs to bed. It made me dizzy. I remember the day he left. She packed his things and shut the door behind him and locked it.

“Thank God and Greyhound he’s gone,” she said.

Time passed. Things happened. A broken arm one summer from falling off a bike. Learning to drive and buying my first car, my mother singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” from the passenger’s seat.. High school. College. First love one winter and love lost by summertime. The pain, I thought would never end, until if finally did.
“One monkey don’t stop no show,” my mother said.

I moved to Chicago to teach English for a year. I moved to California to write for a magazine. I moved to Seattle for no good reason except that my lover at that time—what was his name?—wanted to live there. I moved back home when Mrs. Maxx called.

“She doesn’t want to say anything yet,” said Mrs. Maxx, “Your mother always was stubborn like that.”

I went home and waited for the time to come. The doctor said six months at best. But it didn’t turn out that way. Winter ended and spring came. We planted flowers. Went for walks when she felt strong enough. She liked to talk to the neighbors. Mrs. Maxx knew everyone’s comings and goings it seemed.

Three, almost four months passed when the end finally came. I sat beside her and slept at night in the chair by her bed. There were rare moments when she was lucid and knew where and who she was. Most of the time she was someplace else. She crossed the Atlantic and hitchhiked across Europe. She prayed in Chartes and bathed in the Ganges. She went to New York and stood in Time’s Square on New Year’s Eve and waited in the frigid air for the ball to drop. She waved to the people at home watching her on their T.V. She lived in a house by the ocean. She drove through the desert and never ran out of gas. She walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and once on the other side, lived there because it looked pretty on postcards.

And then the end finally came. She was buried next to Anne. There with Grandpa and Grandma Watson. I pick the flowers we planted and placed them there for her. She made a good end. But I cannot choose but weep to think that she lay in the cold ground.

I live in the house where we lived. I teach at a school nearby. And now another year has come and gone. One night, while out drinking with friends, I saw a man sitting at the bar. His hair turned gray, his eyes bloodshot from drinking, his voice throaty from smoking. He was telling the bartender about his children and his mother and father. He was telling the bartender about a woman he once loved years ago. He hoped to find her. To tell her he was sorry.

“I know where you’ll find her,” I said standing behind him, his back to me.

He turned to listen at last.

“She’s across town of Washington Street. She’s there with your daughter. And your mother and father.”

He just looked at me.

“They don’t need you anymore,” I continued, “And I don’t need you either. So you can go back where you came from.”

I looked into his bloodshot eyes at last, into that face that used to look like mine.

“You’re just a stranger.”

Monday Shorts

Haven't posted one of these in a while but here's my last story for Sena's class. I tried to do with the short story what I do with the pantoums. I think I I got a bit closer to that with this:


“…Outcasts Always Mourn”


Pere Lachaise sits outside of Paris. City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love. A maze of the dead. Take the day and wander all you will, you still may never find him.

Echo and dream.

Here lies the poet. The priest. The madman. Le femme de lettres. The Lizard King. No one gets out alive.

“What is the answer?”
“What’s the question?”

Wander through the maze of the dead, the circle unbroken, their words and images still before you, echo and dream.

You still may never find him.

Here they lay in eternal exile. He for the love of Lord Alfred. She for the love of Alice. You for the love of him
.
City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love.

Tell me, do you remember? That day in St. Etiene? Lonely, you were and went wandering. Down the street, steps from your apartment, to Le Liberacion and there he was in a maze of men. You didn’t play. You watched and laughed. Strangers who were not strangers immersed in hot water, steam rising, almost blinding, obscuring from sight the casual faces. Casual. Easy come—easy go. Three men embraced, kissed, touched, groped, enveloped in steam, submerged in hot water as onlookers and passers-by beamed brotherly approval.

Fuck the pain away.

He walked with you to the door and out to the street. You ended up in a café where you were asked to leave when he kissed you.

‘Pas ici. Pas ici.’

Back at the bar in his hotel, he spent 70 Euro on a bottle of Bollinger. A small price to pay to count the stars on your back and fuck the pain away. To sleep beside you, oblivious to the sound of your heart beating. He wouldn’t ask for more. The damage is done. Sex is suicide. The next morning he gave you his card and asked you to come to Paris. You wrote your number on a post-it note and stuck it in the palm of his hand.

You wrote to me to tell me all about it. And that was the end of me.

Tell me. Do you remember the night we met? I was walking in the bar, you were walking out. You turned around and followed me in. I stood at the bar and ordered a white Russian then walked upstairs to the dance floor. Watched the crowd and told myself I wasn’t looking for you.

But there you were.

“Are we the only ones here who want to dance?” you asked, smiling.
“I guess so,” I said and you took my hand.

I sang along to the song they played out of bad habit.
“Look at you,” you said, “Singing me love songs.”

We sang. We danced. We drank too much and had to call a cab. The driver drove us across town to your apartment. Lakeshore Trail. There was no lake. There was no shore. There was no trail. There was a gazebo and a fountain in the middle of a cramped apartment community in the center of a suburban shopping distract. The apartment was dark and you stumbled in the hall as I followed you to the bedroom. You lit candles as I stood watching you. The candles burned dim, the cat sat on the dresser, green eyes glaring, angry to have her spot in the bed taken, jealous of the man who dared to lay in her space.

I lay beside you, head on your pillow, your hair black as the sky outside coming on midnight. Your body a map unfolding, sprawled across the bed. Eyes like autumn leaves, eyes, penny copper brown, piercing as a rusty nail, bloodshot from drinking. Lips, wet, the taste of lime, salt and tequila.

Lonely, black-hearted—all that I am or all that I was—was gone with a kiss. You whispered to me and then the ghosts disappeared—echo and dream.

Echo and dream, you lay beside me, blameless as Adam.

Blameless as Adam, unexpected as death, your fingers played me like a virtuoso, your skill undisputed—practiced as you were, so jaded so very young.

Lies like a cheap rug, you whispered to me, flattering words unneeded
with eyes such as yours.

My body was your terrain, myself a map unfolding, a place not traveled, a bright revelation. Fuck the pain away and caution and care be damned.

This was your shining moment.

Tell me. Do you remember the day you left? We tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. We tried to pretend that things were the same. We did the things we always did. I made dinner, you made margaritas. After dinner you went to pack and I stood alone in the kitchen, listening to music on the MP3 you gave me. Songs of love lost. Songs soaked in gin and regret. And there you were. Your arms around me, tears in your eyes.

“Someday,” I said, “you won’t even remember my name.”
“Don’t say that,” you pleaded.

Later that night, I lay beside you and counted the stars on your back, wrote my name along the curve of your spine with my fingertip and prayed you would not forget me.
That was ten years ago. Another lifetime has come and gone. I’ve danced with strangers who aren’t strangers. They’ve taken me home. They’ve touched me with your hands. We drank the margaritas you made. I’ve called them by your name.

They didn’t seem to mind.

Paris. City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love. Like love, Paris is and is not what I imagined it would be. Hemingway’s Paris is gone and yet remains. Truffault’s Paris is gone and yet remains. Echo and dream.

I stayed in the OOOPS hostel off the Latin Quarter. The room could barely contain the bed and was painted the mostly unsightly shade of green I had ever seen, but I could jump on line 6 or 7 to any tourist attraction. Shakespeare and Company was a walk away. There were films in the cinema plein air , and a market and a pizzeria down the street. At night I could go to the Marais as the guide book suggested. Dance at Raid and feel almost at home.

I did none of these things.

The trip was unplanned, my arrival unnoticed and consequently Paris all but escaped me.

One afternoon, however, I sat in the McDonald’s across the street from the Louvre. There was another American-- wealthy, well-dressed and clearly self-indulgent-- sitting with his daughter. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said, “Junk food. You should be eating vegetables instead of quarter pounders and french fries.”

“Oh, Daddy,” she chided.

“Don’t you like vegetables? Epinards? Chou-fleur? Haricots?”

“I like chou-fleur. Daddy, why don’t I live with you?”

“Because you must stay here and learn more French.”

The girl looked down, clutching her doll, twirling the ribbon that hung from the doll’s hair. She spoke perfect French, as a passerby observed, “Qu’elle est mignonne la petite! Elle parle exactetement comme une Francaise.”

I tried not to listen. I ate my Big Mac like the consummate American tourist given in to my own predispositions and surrendered not to the City of Light.

Pere Lachaise. Maze of the immortal. The great and the not-s-so-great. On the street outside the gate a beggar begged for change. Across the street, a boy shouted after a girl in tight blue jeans hung low enough to let the red lace of her panties be seen. He whistled, he jeered, as any boy would do. She told him to “Fuck off,” in French and kept walking. He and his buddies laughed.

It’s all a game, isn’t it?

Tell me. Do you remember that night at the Seelbach Hotel? We sat in the bar where Fitzgerald drank. And “The Poet” wandered the halls looking for the Men’s Room, yelling, “Zelda! Zelda!” You read the tarot for me. The Knight of Cups in the Past; nine of Wands in the present; the Moon in the future.

“Accept the wilder, darker side,” you said.
But I could not.

Pere Lachaise. The maze of the dead. Maze of the immortal. Take the day and wander all you will. You may never find him.

Here lies the poet. The priest. The madman. . Le femme de lettres. The Lizard King. No one gets out alive.

“What is the answer?”
“What’s the question?”

Here they lay in eternal exile. He for the love of Lord Alfred. She for the love of Alice. You for the love of him.

City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love.

I came to Paris-- to your city--because your lover called me. On a Saturday in September. He called me.

I came to Paris but I came too late.

City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love.

Pere Lachaiase. Maze of the dead. Maze of the immortal. Take the day and wander all you will, you still may never find him.

I finally found you. I laid flowers on your grave. White roses, not red. You would want it that way.

I went to the Marais, to Raid. I stood at the bar and ordered a white Russian then walked upstairs to the dance floor. Watched the crowd and told myself I wasn’t looking for you.

There was a boy--hair black as the sky outside coming on midnight. Eyes like autumn leaves, eyes, penny copper brown, piercing as a rusty nail, bloodshot from drinking.

“Are we the only ones here who want to dance?” he asked me.

We sang. We danced. We drank too much and had to call a cab. The driver drove us across town to his apartment. He touched me with your hands. He kissed me with your lips--wet, the taste of lime, salt and tequila. We drank the margaritas you made. I called him by your name.

He didn’t seem to mind.

AT LAST!-- Garbo and Sleeping Angel Live

Ok. I'm being self-indulgant. But it's my blog. Deal with it....lol.Ever since I was a boy when I first heard these songs I've wanted to see and hear Stevie do them live onstage. And here they are!

Garbo:


And Sleeping Angel (Medley with Rose Garden):

One More for Our Team: Vermont Legalizes Same-sex Marriage

Today, Vermont became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage.

The House voted 100-49 to override Gov. Jim Douglas's veto. The Senate voted 23-5.

Douglas observed that legalizing gay marriage was a moot point because it did not provide the same right under Federal law or in other states. He even rebuked gay marriage supporters for distracting lawmakers from more pressing economic concerns:

"What really disappoints me is that we have spent some time on an issue during which another thousand Vermonters have lost their jobs. We need to turn out attention to balancing a budget without raising taxes, growing the economy, putting more people to work."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted, at least, that the legislative process in Vermont was "healthier," while criticizing the Iowa Supreme Court:

"It's the height of judicial arrogance. You have seven lawyers who have decided, on their own, to fundamentally change Iowa."

There are currently four states that have legalized gay marriage: Vermont, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Connecticut

Monday MP3

"Silver Spring" -- Fleetwood Mac

"I'll cast a spell on you
You won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
but you would not let me
I'll follow you down
'til the sound of my voice
will haunt you
You can never get away from the sound
of a woman who loves you...."

Guns 'N' Roses
Sweet Child of Mine
Paradise City

"Who Will you Run To?"-- Heart

"There's Hope"-- India Arie

Janis Joplin:
"I Need a Man to Love"
"Me and Bobby McGee"

Jewel:
"Foolish Games"
"Angel Standing By"
"The Morning Song"

"My, you remind me of a man I used to sleep with
that's a face I'll never forget...."

"Gay Marriage Mecca:" Iowa Legalizes Same-Sex Unions

Today, Iowa became the third state to legalize same-sex marriage! Wrote the state's Supreme Court in a unanimous decision:

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective."

The only recourse for opponents is a Constitutional amendment which could not conceivably happen until 2012.

Further, there are no residency requirements for marriage licenses, "which virtually assures a rush of applications from out-of-state visitors. The ruling opens the marital door to an estimated 5,800 gay couples in Iowa," according to the DesMoines Register.

Opponents to same-sex marriage described their mood as one of "mourning," and said they seek to impose residency requirements in order to keep the great state of Iowa from becoming, "the gay marriage mecca."

Oh the horror!

Gays and lesbians can seek marriages licenses in Iowa beginning April 24th according to the state's Attorney General.

Le Mot Juste

An old prose poem. A response to mWilliam Stafford's The Darkness Around is Deep:

Suicide
Is one option. When the golden thread you follow runs out. And the ghosts are still awake at two in the morning. And the cat watches them walk across the room. This is what I know of magic-realism. The sound of trickling water. The pendulum swinging. The whistle of the train. The book is not written yet and so suicide is not an option.

Damn it.

Hump Day Fun

Haven't done one of these for a while. Here's Jon Stewart from The Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Inappropriate News Teasers
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