Cringe-worthy Goodness

So, my dad just called to bug me about going to the bank and he was all like “The Butcher’s gay friend knows the woman who does mortgages for people who are employed where you’re employed” and I use the word “like” because, clearly, those are not his exact words, but I bring them up because “gay friend” was word for word what he said.

Never in my whole life until this moment have I ever heard my dad use the term “gay” as a neutral descriptor used to narrow down who he was referring to.  Never.

I give credit to the Butcher.

Lunch-eh-time and the Living is Easy

So, I’m on my way to lunch and the weather is put-it-in-your-mouth delicious and I hear what I think is the familiar plinks of the first few notes of Johnson’s “Come in My Kitchen” and I’m looking around and it’s just the noise some loose wires are making as they hit some other wires over my head.

And I’m thinking about an interview I read once with some old blues artist and the interviewer had asked him why some song sounded the way it did and the blues guy was all “That’s just the rhythm you hear when you’re walking behind a mule all day.”

So, I was thinking about that, what it would be like to listen to the world as a collection of noises that could potentially be songs and just then the fire trucks and an ambulance came by and I thought, “You know what would be so awesome I must remember to mention it to folks?  Music for a marching band to do as they marched down the street that was made up of the sounds you hear on the street.”  And so, as I walked, I was trying to decide what instruments would play what music.

And then, at lunch, I got free brownies.

And then, walking back from lunch, I saw a guy’s ball cap blow off and under it, he had the most beautiful yarmulke, blue with embroidery.  And the shock of seeing, on this frat-boy looking kid, this beautiful, delicate, artistic stitch-work just tickled me so much that it made me happy to be alive.

I know that’s kind of corny, but that’s what I thought: “I would have been sorry to have missed that.”

Mmm.  Lunch.

Blogging Against Disablism Day

I am, by far, no disability rights activist.  But today I was thinking of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Ponds.”  I’m not sure it’s exactly fitting for today.  After all, we are not all lilies.  But I read this poem and what I take away from it is that we all have value and we all bring something beautiful and fierce and light to the world, even though none of us is a “perfect” specimen.

We can, of course, keep searching through beautiful, fierce, light-bringing people for those closest to “perfection,” but we can choose to let go of that, too.

The Ponds
by Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them–

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided–
and this one wears an orange blight–
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away–
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled–
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white filre of a great mystery.
I want to believe that imperfections are nothing–
that the light is everything–that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Republican or Democrat, You Decide

If you had to guess the party of the person who said the following, who would you guess?  (No fair playing, folks who also read Shakesville.)

”Unless you ovulate or have ovulated, we have no business as males interfering with your female decision on reproduction,” King said. ”A woman making a decision that she wants to abort, that decision should be honored.”

Weren’t we just the other day talking about how we Tennesseans can at least count on Florida to be stupider than us?  Indeed, has the world gone topsy-turvy?

Don’t Do This

When your brother’s funky deformed cactus falls off the window ledge, just let it fall.  Do not reach for it.

No.

Do not attempt to catch it with your bare hands.

What kind of idiot would do that?

Also, I should point out, that the same advice holds true for all cacti.  Unless you are doing some weird fraternity hazing, there is no reason to ever try to catch a falling cactus.  And for sure, do not put it in your pocket.  Why would you even need a cactus on a rainy day?