She Just Smiled and Turned Away

I have this awful habit of carrying around these little unrepeatable moments and pulling them out, like old photographs, to mull over. I do this to make myself happy, but they usually make me sad.

The first is that dawn in Rhode Island when I sat in a ballroom on the hard wooden floor and watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and the house was so quiet and the sun so bright that, for the longest time, I couldn’t think of anything at all. I was completely quiet, too, which rarely happens.

The second is my trip to the outer banks with Elias. It was cold and windy, but sunny, and he came over the top of a dune with his curly hair tangled in the wind and it looked like something timeless, like folks might go there right now and, if the circumstances are right, that moment would play out for them, too.

The third is the time that my grandma and my cousin and I went to McDonald’s for a girl’s night out and, scandalously, we were going to order whatever we wanted. And my grandma let us order three large fries and we dumped them in the middle of the tray and shared them and vowed to never tell our parents that we’d only eaten fries.

The forth is laying in my backyard with this Lithuanian guy who always smelled so warm and dark and good, just talking or staring up at the stars. We saw a satellite pass over head twice. He didn’t fall in love with me, though I wished, twice, that he would.

The fifth, of course, is when we girls went skinny-dipping together in the dark in the middle of nowhere.

Reading back over this, I think I often feel out of place. Most of the time, I revel in being the girl like no other girl you know. And sometimes, I envy you your certainty.

A Mad Haiku for the Dar(l)ing Elias

Now you have a blog.
What if you and Steve Pick meet?
Stars dance at the thought.

In Which I Order You Around

Okay, I sometimes want to send fan mail to you (coughcoughbridgettcoughcoughryancoughcough) and y’all don’t have email addresses on your blogs.

That’s really too bad as I had been planning on composing said fan mail in intricate palindromes. But no more.

Your loss.

The Good Thing is that They Probably Can Already Handle a Gun

Salon.com reports today that the military, in an effort to boost recruitment numbers for its ever-popular war on “terror,” is granting an increasing number of waivers to people with criminal records that would otherwise keep them out of the armed services.

I’m sorry, America, but this is so sadly funny on its own that I have nothing further to add.

Yes, Again with the Libertarianism

I had planned on taking Sarcastro to dinner, sitting in the back corner of some mostly empty restaurant, some place where I could ask him probing questions about libertarianism and study his face for flickers of fear or whatever, and throw butter knives at him until he answered.

But I realized last night that such a plan would be ill-advised at best, because the dude can make himself utterly unreadable. You’re sitting there, some topic comes up, you look over at him to see what his take is on it, he sees you looking to see what he thinks and–fwoosh (if fwoosh is a word)–his face goes utterly blank. He doesn’t even give himself away with the corners of his eyes, the ways some folks do. Nothing*.

So, dear readers, I’m turning to you. Here’s what I want to know:

1. What do you think is the fundamental nature of human beings? I know this can be construed as a religious question, so religious answers are welcome, but will not be privileged–unless, of course, you work old Norse gods into your answer, then you are probably right.

2. Do you think the state has a right to coerce its citizens into behaving? If so, why doesn’t the state have a right to coerce its citizens into behaving well?

3. Is the government an extension of the will of the people or something different?

4. What ties you to me? Do you have a vested interest in my well-being? Why?

5. What does it mean to govern? To be governed? Do we make a fundamental philosophical mistake when we lump together “leader” and “politician”? Or are those two things, for all practical purposes, the same thing?

Ha, it just occurred to me that Sarcastro, if he’s made it this far, is probably thanking his lucky stars I didn’t try to force him answer these questions.

Anyway, I’m just curious about what y’all think, especially the libertarians.

And, in case it’s necessary, let’s all keep in mind the wise words of A.C. Kleinheider, the smartest person I know who’s consistently wrong (though, not in this case):

Here at home we can afford to be a bit Utopian because, more or less, we are all friends here. There is margin for error and room to act a bit silly.

*This has also made me vow never to play poker with him. As you can imagine.

Most of It is My Fault

• So, I may have been talking some smack about the Butcher never cleaning and I may have even been remarking about how the kitchen looked like there’d been a small riot and no federal, state, or local funding to aid in the cleanup, and I may have gone in there to start cleaning and realized that he’d actually done a load of dishes and picked up the recycling and put it outside, and the kitchen was still a mess because someone, and I’m not pointing fingers, has been laying around on the couch feeling sorry for herself in her spare time.
• When the Butcher asked “God damn, who keeps leaving these huge sticks in the street?” I said nothing about the girl and her pit bull who may be playing ‘Do you like this stick? No? [girl tosses stick into the street] What about this one? Yes? [dog tosses stick into the street]’ when they go out for their morning walks.
• Someone, again, not naming names, chastised the Butcher for leaving the cordless phone lying around so that the batteries went dead again, even though, now that she thinks about it, she was the one who left it by the couch when she was laying on said couch feeling sorry for herself.

There may be other things, but I can’t recall any more than this. So, I publicly apologize to the Butcher for these three things, and more, if I need to.