it's fun being a zombie

This was the second time the Newspeak Zombies on Bikes rode down Tejon as part of the annual Colorado Springs PrideFest Parade. The first time, I interviewed the zombies.

Why zombies, you ask?
Because it's better to be undead than unequal.

colorado river trip 2008

Out of the 365 days in the calendar year (this year 366), these are my favorite three. Every July for the past four years now, we have rafted the Colorado River through Ruby and Horsethief Canyons. No cell phones. No computers. No laundry. Nothing to do but float, eat, drink, hike, and play. It's always good to remember that the Milky Way still exists. For those of us who live in a light-polluted city, we often forget that we are just an infinitesimally small planet in the arm of an equally small galaxy.

It's only my third attempt at an imovie creation, so don't judge it too harshly. I just wanted a way to put all the photos in one place.

Re: The Mooning....... on this particular stretch of the Colorado River, there are no roads, but there are train tracks just across the river. Freight trains rumble through at all hours, including about three times a night. Nothing like being awakened from pleasant dreams by what sounds like a tornado. Every once in a while, however, Amtrak comes around the corner. When it does, shouts of "Amtrak! Amtrak!" echo through the canyon, and everyone runs to the water's edge to moon the passengers. Ah.... tradition!

P.S. I don't know why, but when I play it on my blog, I don't get the music. If you don't either, just click in the middle of the movie, and that will take you straight to youtube. If I play it there, then I get the music. If anyone knows why this is happening, please let me know.... thx

i like doing laundry again

It's amazing that a little Shaker-made structure constructed for "women's work" could make me so happy. But the repetitive bending down, standing up, shaking out, hanging up motion while the Colorado sun is beating down on my bare back does just that. My brother's partner had one of these in Ithaca when we went to visit them in June. I was in awe of its simplicity and compactness, so upon returning, I searched online and bought myself one. A friend told me the novelty will wear off, and perhaps it will, but for now, I am enjoying my conversations with the birds and the flowers as I bare my underpants to the neighbors.

There are numerous neighborhoods in Colorado Springs governed by strange rules about what you can and cannot do with your own home . In many of these so-called covenants, you are not allowed to hang your laundry outside. I don't understand the people who live there.

nyc in summer

I often get overwhelmed when there is too much to say. I think that's why I like poems so much, because they are microcosms of moments. I spent five days with my family in New York City- that's enough to overwhelm anybody I suppose! How about a list? A list would be good. Here are some of my observations and experiences, and some pics to go with.

dark-skinned women with light-skinned infants and toddlers all throughout Central Park. I did not, of course, take any photos of them. But I did spend a lot of time wondering about the women who were at work for the day (both dark and light) while we were wandering through Central Park on vacation.


G and B and U trying to be cool and NOT hold onto the handrail on the subway


finding a chrysomelid beetle (if you know my husband, you know this is not really unusual) while walking around the top of the Empire State Building. I didn't get any pictures of it, but I did get one of a pigeon.


a young woman who stopped mid-jog over the Brooklyn Bridge to ask us if we would like her to take a picture of all four of us (it's the only one we have from the whole trip)


the unexpected friendliness of people on the street

the hostel we stayed at where 20-somethings partied until all hours and neither John nor I had the heart to tell them to be quiet because we remembered our own hostel traveling days. Thank god for the air conditioner whose white noise and coolth a. kept us from dying in the heat and b. kept us from committing murder

B always trailing a pace or two behind, but never once complaining

texting Marina in secret in the Natural History Museum, awaiting the moment when Ursen showed up and surprised the boys. We were looking at these cool creatures. I always like the microscopic ones best


Melissa (another one from this group) and her 12-hour workday reality. I hadn't seen her in, like, 15 years!


realizing that immigrants still come to New York, looking for something, hoping that what they find will be better, somehow, than what they left behind. It often is, but is not always apparent. At least not right away.


Remember Marina's kitchen?



And hey, anything's pretty much better than what we've got:

for (anyone) who has considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf

There are many ways to keep young and old alike from killing themselves. Give them options and outlets. Make sure they know they are loved. Medication. But we all know nothing is foolproof. And only the foolhardy believe that every life should to be saved every time - individual choice can and should be respected, especially with the old.

But often, especially with the young, flirting with suicide is just a temporary blinding, an encroaching darkness, a situational circumstance. In those cases, what if there WERE something that really COULD help? Perhaps not in the long run, but at least in the short? Something that would open a window in a brick wall, if only for a brief moment? Something that could lift the fog for a few seconds to allow one to glimpse the sun? Something that could light a temporary torch in a deep dark cave?

It's called Hopeline. And it's in danger. It seems nothing these days is safe from the long lethal tentacles of the federal government. Please read. And watch. Donate if you feel so inspired. Then pass it on. That is, after all, what we do best in the blog world.

A little scrap of hope and a little bit of time are often enough to help someone begin to claw their way out. And more often than not, they are grateful for the chance to live, even if they don't know it until years later.

Thanks to Frank at Post Secret for helping to spread the word.

click to blow

DANDELION

and a poem to go with:

petals on the wind

There are no more petals to be counted
No more he loves mes
No more he loves me nots
All those yellow doubts
Transformed into silvery strands
Tiny parachutes of memory
Waiting for the wind
Or the restless dreamy breath
Of a young girl’s spinning wish for her heart to stop
And free her from the stem, the stamen, and the story
About to unfold

Flowers know how to live.

But we,
mere mortals-

we struggle just to reach the surface of the soil

introducing bb moon

The newest member of the Spengler family.


Here's where he came from.

erissa with dagger and grin

rebecca!

Rebecca and I don't really know how we met, but it must have been via Maria or Kate, other women we love but whom we have never met. To meet someone in person who you are only acquainted with through blogging is just so unbelievable cool. We had 15 dollar drinks in Manhattan:

Before opening the wine list, we decided to place bets on how much the most expensive wine would be. She guessed something like $799, mine was more like $300, knowing no better and knowing I had no chance of even coming close. After we opened it,
Rebecca made a joke about us being the big losers on some sort of Price is Right for the rich and powerful!

A couple of hours later, I took to walking alongside Rebecca to the subway station the way I do when I'm with anyone in a strange town who knows their way around. I just completely tuned out and strolled, ever-trusting, engaged in conversation, not caring if I was going north or south or east or west. It was the first time I had done that in four days, and it felt really really good to just let go after always being so hyper aware all the time. She got me to the right place, and here we are on the C line, me heading back to my family in the raucus but cheap hostel on West 103rd, and she heading home to her family in Queens:

hi guys!

Every June (ok, so this is only the second one, but I'm feeling hopeful about the years to come), Newspeak! publishes their Sex Issue. I wrote a little feature for it. So for all of you who don't live 'round these parts and can't pick up the paper, here 'tis......








When I read the sex stories from last year’s Newspeak! June issue, I remember thinking to myself, “Yeah, yeah, all well and good and I remember some of those similarly insane moments from my life”, but none of them came close to revealing the beautiful complexity that is…… SEX AFTER MARRIAGE AND KIDS. So I figured I’d have to write it myself. I know for a fact there are other Newspeak! readers out there who are married/partnered, have kids, and have sex. This one’s for you.

It isn’t easy, that’s for sure. But it really isn’t that hard, either. It was harder when they were younger, and woke up three or four times in the middle of the night, and I was so tired from feeding, cleaning, changing diapers, and nursing (I won’t even go into the whole “these boobs are mine and the baby’s so don’t you even think about touching them right now” stage), that sex was absolutely the last thing on my mind when collapsing into bed at the end of the day. And then, if you choose to have your babies sleep in bed with you (known as “attachment parenting”), as we did, it becomes even a bit more complicated. I’m pretty sure, even though the memory from the infant/toddler years is rather hazy, that we didn’t have sex IN OUR OWN BED for about two years! There was the living room floor, the bedroom floor, the couch, the shower, the tent.

You know, it just seems to me that people who worry about a loss of sex life if they let their kids sleep in their bed with them simply lack imagination!

I can’t even begin to count the number of times we would just get started, and from the baby monitor would come the little cry of an infant waking up. Or a scared toddler who had just woken up from a nightmare screaming, “Mommmmmy!” Because, truly, once you have kids, the only time you can possibly have sex is when they’re asleep. That, or while they’re watching Saturday morning cartoons. You do all know why Saturday morning cartoons were invented, do you not!? And enforced nap times. Very important. I remember several Sunday afternoons of frantically trying to get the boys to nap at the same time because we wanted to have sex so desperately!

Now that they’re older (seven and nine), and sleep through the night in their own beds, the bedroom has become our own Chamber of Secrets once again. Until a few weeks ago, anyway……

My husband John and I have a master bedroom upstairs, for which there is no locking door. Hell, there’s not even a door, just an opening from the top of the stairs. This lack of a door has never been a problem for us until the other night, when a little visitor came to call.

It was during that post-orgasmic-still-connected-and-slightly-moaning stage, when from the foot of the bed, our 9-year-old son held up his right hand, waved, and said, “Hi guys!” Those were his only two words, but in his impish smile and tone of voice I heard this: “This is so cool-my mommy and daddy are mating just like the animals on all those nature shows I watch and this has got to be IT!”

It was the shock of hearing him before we saw him that made the moment so memorable. I still wonder to this day exactly how long he had been standing there before he uttered those words. Like he had been waiting until it was all over to declare his presence.

There was a brief moment of panic as we immediately tried to issue him downstairs, my husband looking over his shoulder and me trying to sit up, both of us frantically searching for the covers to hide our butt nakedness. Just then the sudden realization of the absurdness of it all sunk in, and the only thing left to do was laugh. Hysterically. John rolled off to my left, we pulled the duvet up over us, and invited our little visitor to come up onto the bed.

He lay down on my right, on top of the covers, and rested his head on my shoulder. I had my husband’s head on my left, my son’s on my right, my arms around both of them, all snuggled together in our King size bed, in which we had all slept together for so many, many years as the boys were growing up.

We lay like that for a few seconds, and then John spoke. “So, I guess you know now how your mommy and daddy made you, huh?” That smile again, so all-knowing and like some great secret had just been revealed. “Uh-huh”. We talked some more about sex, (he already knew the details, so it wasn’t anything new), laughed, snuggled, and then I finally walked him back downstairs to his room.

When I came back upstairs, John and I laughed and laughed and laughed some more before we finally fell asleep. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but I like to believe that by our actions, we gave our son a gift: a memory of the goodness, the naturalness, the laughingness of sex. Only time will tell.

john prine with emmylou harris live at red rocks 2008 "angel from montgomery"

John and I were here last night:



You just can't quite capture the magic of Red Rocks Amphitheater in a video.... the sun setting, Denver city lights in the distance, the birds flitting in and out of their red sandstone cliff homes, the stars and crescent moon emerging as the night goes on.

And then there were the people: mesmerizing sexy hula-hoop girl, children and teenagers with their parents, old men in wheelchairs who knew every word to every song and sang along. The average age was probably 50, but there were plenty of 20 and 30-somethings there to give me hope. It was the most intergenerational crowd I've ever seen at a concert.

And the smells: the sweet aroma of marijuana drifting under your nose (although we never did see where it was coming from), the earthiness as you walk on the path in the dark to get to your car, the patchouli scent wafting on the breeze.

It was a manic-depressive show. I both wept and danced. Thus is the hallmark of a genius songwriter.

spectacles!

This made me laugh:

But these make him happy:

As we were departing for the Sand Dunes last week, I looked back to check on the boys and make sure they had everything before we got too far from home. I saw Grant reading, realized he didn't have his glasses on, and asked:

"Hey Bug, where are your glasses?" (He's near-sighted, so he's NOT supposed to wear them while reading).

Without looking up: "In my backpack."

Worried: "Where in your backpack?"

Unconcerned: "In their case. I have the cleaner too."

This is a kid who can't pick up his dirty laundry to save his life. Who leaves food wrappers on the living room floor. Whose sunglasses are scratched beyond belief. Who has a hard time (just like his mother) remembering to close cupboards and drawers after extracting the contents for which he opened them.

And yet he can remember to not read with his glasses, to never leave them on the floor, to always put them on the bathroom shelf at night, to put them on in the morning, and pack them for camping without being reminded! I just don't get it!

I suppose it has something to do with the miracle of being able to see the individual leaves on the trees and the outlines of the clouds in the sky. Once you see the clarity of the world, I suspect you value it enough not to leave your glasses lying around.

Me? I now need reading glasses, but I have three pair that I keep scattered around the house, and if you know me, I usually have one of them perched on top of my head. It's amazing how quickly they become a part of you.

Next up? Braces, of course.

wave hello

Is there a hyphen in goodbye (good-bye)?
I’m never sure

I want there to be-
It’s the greedy kind of wanting for a bridge, a “you
Can kiss me”, a rope
From the bow to the dock, a clasp
To hold back a wandering earring

You can fold me a paper boat - even though
I’m too tired to row
You can weave me a hollow
basket - that will hold water I will not swallow

You can pick me seven golden daffodils all
Shining in the sun - my arms
Will be two leaden limbs at my side

Birdhouses make me happy-
For a fledgling season anyway

You can machete me a watermelon and
Feed me the melancholy flesh-
After a few pink nibbles, I will
Spit out the black futurists,

Crawl into my waterproof basket, and float away
Under the bridge without a rope
After we kiss and I can’t find my earring

No - he says-
there’s no hyphen in goodbye

But couldn’t I insert one if it were a compound adjective before a noun?
Isn’t that the rule? If so, then-

Will you really agree to be my good-bye lover?
There would always be a bridge, a bowline, a birdhouse, and a fistful of daffodils-
Waiting.

If so, then–
Hello.
It’s so good of you to come by.

erissa the younger

Which one am I?








In three days, I will sit down at a table with four friends and play my first ever Dungeons and Dragons game. Something tells me this is just a teeny, tiny bit stupid. But another part of me says, "Why the hell not? It could be really fun!" I've done many things in the past year that I have never done before, like play the flute (more on that later). I've done many things I used to do, but haven't done in a long time, like read poetry in front of an audience (more on that later as well). It's been a marvelous year of newness and resurrection. My friend Noel coined the perfect term for me: "Mid-Life Isis".

On with our story. Erissa the Younger is a cleric of Eris, goddess of chaos. Here's part of her story:

I am a nomad, a love child born of a young, impetuous love affair. My parents never lived together. Because my mother was so young and the world was in such chaos, my father and his people, the elves, took me in to raise me. But they never understood my tempestuous, impulsive nature, and I couldn’t stand their serenity. So I went to live with my mother for a while. There, too, among humans, I was not welcome, but ridiculed. I couldn’t play their games or sing their songs. I hated them all. My mother could not protect me; indeed, she had no desire to.

And so I left. I wandered. I fought in battles, on all sides, with anyone who would accept me.…. not because I believed in any cause, but because it was something to do. And kinda fun. I saw people die. I died myself, but came back to join the living. I watched the stupidity of humans time and time again as they fought to destroy or defend things that were not worth destroying or defending. I perceived the futility in all actions. I knew that death was no end.

How I became a cleric of Eris shall remain a secret. Clerics of Eris have no monasteries, no organization, no dogma. I ordained myself. I answer only to my goddess and to myself.

I live to cause chaos, in the name of Eris, not necessarily to cause pain or suffering (although that can, of course, be the outcome of a prank), but to reveal some deeper truth or absurdity, and especially to bring enlightenment to the one being pranked. Mostly, though, I do it for my own entertainment!

My only motive is to make sure that others don’t take themselves too seriously. I work to reverse the Curse of Greyface.

If I had a car, it would have a bumper sticker that says, “Bumper Sticker”.

I despise most other beings, but I love the adventurous, the foolhardy, the insane, and the outcast.

I will kiss a man simply to make another man jealous. I will tell you to go left when I really think you should go right. I will contradict myself. I will never tell you where I have been. I will fight when I should run. I will lie if it will make you miserable. Or happy.

The only thing I have to watch out for is the reaction of Eris when I (as sometimes happens) take myself too seriously.

I am a culture jamming merry prankster who adheres to most of the tenets of Discordianism.

Uh, yeah, so there………

If you want to know more about gaming as social discourse, or to see the incredibly cool homemade map of where we'll be wandering, or to read about my traveling companions, go here.

upon waking

I awoke from one of those naps today, you know the kind, where you don't know where you are, who you are, or what time of day it is. The light is slanty and it could be morning or evening or afternoon. You come of out of a dream about people you love, only to realize, slowly, that they're not there with you. Disoriented, drugged, and heavy, you finally come to after a few minutes, and jump up because you suddenly remember who you are and that you have to pick the kids up from school at 2:30. You look at the clock. It's 2:20. You marvel at the fact that you have just slept for nearly two hours, and stumble out the door to your car.

turns out there are many, many...........

Things Younger Than John McCain

(I submitted "The Atom Bomb".......)

Aaron Retka is younger than John McCain.

flea lice

Myanmar. China. Two good reasons to play this game. As if there weren't enough already.

I usually make it to about level 40-42, but I never play longer than about 600 grains of rice or so at a time. I like the fact that if you miss one, it will eventually come back to it so you get the chance to get it right. Tonight I learned that a proem is a preface. I like that it's the word "poem" but with an "r" in it. I'd like to write a proem for a poem.

Re: The title of this post-
Everytime I think about "Free Rice", I hear it with a Chinese accent, so it always comes into my head (no pun intended) as

"Flea Lice"

So play. Let me know what level you made it to. Tell us how many grains of rice you donated. And try not to think too much about whether or not it will all get to where it needs to go.

One last thing: it really is much more fun if you play it WITH someone!

mother's day irony

From our bathroom window on the second floor, we see a maple tree. In the trunk of that tree, we see a hole. In that hole, for the past five years, a mating pair of flickers has returned to set up shop. We eagerly await their arrival every spring.

This spring, however, a family of squirrels has invaded the hole in the tree from which we have watched baby flickers fledge every year. We watched the brief bitter struggle for a home base, and the squirrels, out of sheer bullying, won. (They threw three baby birdies out of the nest!) Now a mother squirrel and HER five babies inhabit the space.

I suppose that's the way of the natural world.

It's just that, well, we like the flickers better. We miss the mother and father taking turns gathering for their babies, which in some subconscious way always leads one of us to a remark about the importance of having two parents, and how hard it would be to feed and clothe and keep our babies safe if there were only one of us. (NOT a plug for "traditional family values" here, just an observation about the fact that yes, child-rearing IS easier with two incomes and two influences. Simple as that.)

Most of all, though, we miss their song.

The squirrels dig up my sunflower seeds, chew the tender sprouts off of the ones that happen to make it, nibble apricot blossoms and baby 'cots from our 100+ year old tree, and destroy our lilacs. Sorry, for all their "cuteness" of bushy tails and chasing each other around tree trunks, they are destructive, obnoxious tree rats. Not to mention they carry lovely diseases like bubonic plague. And they're bullies! And possibly even spies!

And so it comes to this - there's one less squirrel on the Westside. John shot the mother today.

today in other people from my past

Mark DH. He once whisked me out of Seattle in the middle of a panic attack. I once walked the Alaskan tundra with him. We once almost got married.

He makes these incredible pastel artworks filled with luscious dreaminess and visceral aliveness. He has been animating them lately. This one's my favorite. Proboscis Planet:



You can see more of his animated artworks on the baconwafer channel. I will see Mark in September, and we will need only to sit together and say a few words to be happy.

Kirsten LD. She once kissed me. I once visited her in England when she had three kids and I a one-year-old. We once hitchhiked to get to the Glastonbury Festival.

She just produced a BBC radio programme about Child Preachers in America. I saw her last March when she was passing through en route to Spokane while working on the show. We sat on the floor at DIA, curled up head-to-head and had one of those "we've-only-got-an-hour-so-let's-not-speak-of-things-that-don't-matter-and-I-love-you-soooo-much" talks.

I met Mark and Kirsten at the same time, second semester junior year. 1988. Pacific Lutheran University. A course titled Feminist Theology brought a ragtag group of us together that year, and it became a magical awakening time. The kind you can only have when you are young and open and shy and ready and full of longing and lust for life. Sometimes it's hard to believe that 20 years have passed since then. Twenty fucking years!

If it happened once, and you can imagine it, then it can happen again. (That's what Azar Nafisi told the crowd at Shove Chapel when I asked her what UPSILAMBA meant to her.)

I think Alzheimer's is about the scariest thing imaginable. I mean, really, who would we be without our memories? Without our sacred moments? Our daydreams?

There are catalysts in our lives. Sometimes a person and a place and a time come together in such a way that we are forever changed. And we are catapulted into other orbits or higher planes.

What does upsilamba mean to you?

for kirsten

May Day
by Phillis Levin

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.