30 May 2007

The Printable Me, In Two Mediums

I've been published again on a poetry site (same one as before) along with a photograph I took in March.

medusaskitchen.blogspot.com - under May 30

27 May 2007

Online Dating Tag Line

While flipping through my journal, and I came upon this bit of nonsense written last June (I think I should be
embarassed, but it's just too funny...). It would make an excellent online dating profile sentence, no?

"I'm fat, ugly, anti-social, and enjoy being repulsed by close relationships."

Ah, the weird days of yore.

I've also decided that the word "dragoon" is one of the English language's hidden gems. Dragoon. Don't you dragoon me into that, you greasy skank. In my previous life, I galloped on horseback across the moors, musket at my side, war in my blood, courage binding me to my fellow infantrymen, my hearty regiment, my faithful dragoons. This here, children, is a dragoon - unlike his cunning, fiery cousin, the dragon, our little dragoon enjoys his evening pub crawl far too much to challenge any knights in battle.

26 May 2007

May 25, 2007

For three minutes today
I lost my cool
uttered nothing but expletives
thought only in screams
Then
I folded my sorrow
swallowed my dreams
and walked into the rain-washed street

25 May 2007

After the Rain

Somebody is blaring "Time after Time" from an open window.

It smells good outside, like damp aspens; I walked around a little. Damp aspens bring back so many memories of Colorado summer mountains. I miss those, all of those - aspens, mountains, memories.

So much for an exciting evening of being overbooked. I shouldn't have gotten so prideful about it. I single-handedly brought about that thunderstorm, punishment from the gods.

I feel like climbing out of my skin and trying on a different one, new and better.

---

Something Else Entirely

If only you knew
how I sit up at night
weaving words into phrases
spinning thoughts into dreams
you might realize
that these lines
and others like them
aren't poems at all
but rather
the only way I know how
to love you

A First Time for Everything

On Wednesday, my friend Flora (M's mother) invited me performance of something German and musical tonight (Friday). Naturally I agreed to go.

It's now Friday at 5:30pm, and since last night, I've been asked by FOUR other people to get together tonight. Four blond men, no less! Four blond men who don't know each other, all asking me to do different things tonight, wishing so desperately for my company.

Ok maybe that's an exaggeration. And maybe two of these guys are spoken for, and maybe one of them might be gay, and maybe the other one is, well, his own version of complicated.

But still. Who knew I'd become so popular!?!

(Post Script at 9:12pm: a sudden, violent thunder storm ruined all my potential evening plans! Rats)

24 May 2007

One for the Ladies













Also, I came across this poem today. You know it's real when it hurts, simple black words on blank white space.

HOW CAN YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT AND ONLY LOOK?
—Noel Kroeplin

I feel
your eyes
searing my skin
every time
we are together
until I am nothing
but a pile of ashes
that you feel the need
to repeatedly
blow away

22 May 2007

Skinny Girls

Setting: Tiergarten, Berlin
Time: 6pm, Sunday

Scene: Sitting on a picnic blanket with Boy M, Girl M, and Boy H after two hours of boys playing frisbee with some other young Germans.

Girl M: Ok guys, we're going to flip through this People Magazine, and you tell me which girls you'd date just by their picture.
Boys M&H: Ok!
Girl M: [points at everyone from Penelope Cruz to Jessica Simpson to Angelina Jolie to Katie Holmes]
Boy M: Yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes....(in other words, a mixture)
Boy H: No, no, no, no, no, no, maybe, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no, no...(hard to please)
Girl M: [opening to swimsuit page] [to me] Look at her [someone famous and gorgeous] - she has fat thighs! Yay! Don't you feel better?
Me: Yes! I need to see these kinds of pictures....
Boy M: Yeah, she doesn't look so hot.
Boy H: Her shape is funny (Girl M: [interrupting] pear shaped?) but I don't like any of these other girls. They're too skinny. They all need a layer of fat. I don't like skinny girls.

I DON'T LIKE SKINNY GIRLS.

Me: [thinking: What? Really? Is this serious? Can it be true?]

This comment, coming from a 27-year-old guy, world-travelling, highly-educated, and very hot, someone I pegged at first sight to be rather arrogant, somewhat elitist, and out of my league....

For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable being me. Being normal. Being a size 6. Not being skinny.

The feeling was fleeting. But then I remember this conversation, and I feel good being real.

16 May 2007

Quoting Nabokov

"In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles--no matter the imminent peril--these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good."

15 May 2007

I Love...

the Brahms Deutsches Requiem!

5th movement, people, and I die....

11 May 2007

Recital 5

Final recital in summary: There were 3 hearing aids going off THE ENTIRE RECITAL (that high-pitched whine) - I couldn't hear anything else, not what I was playing, nothing, just the incessant electrical screech. And then in Schumann, the piano began rolling away. Between every etude. I was adjusting the piano and bench constantly. But the audience was great and seemed to like everything. And in spite of these problems, I played mostly well, minus a couple spots in Schumann where I was so frantic about the piano being too far away to play that I kind of ignored what notes I was actually playing. They want me back next year for another recital.

I still have to blog about 3 and 4. Soon. Oh, and I got a review from Carmel, very short, which I'll post next time.

Tonight: Last Recital of the Trip

I. Am. So. Exhausted.

06 May 2007

Penning

Tonight I'm sad
Hope fades
Or maybe it's the dog
getting old
I miss her already
even though she's downstairs
in the pantry
sleeping.
Unlike watercolors
oil paintings burn and bleed
Life exists until it doesn't
vibrant hues lost to black oblivion.


(as if in response...
I just found this)

HOPE
—Czeslaw Milosz

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.