Wanderlust: Too Many Stars In The Sky

Poetry Wednesday

This is Not a Gift

I took, for you

a little key.

I suspect you will turn it one way, though you may

of course, turn it the other

way. I

have become troublesome, I know

but

you love the smell of the books they

keep

behind those doors, I know

this too.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd something not-mine that I love:


Beach Walk
by Henri Cole


I found a baby shark on the beach.
Seagulls had eaten his eyes. His throat was bleeding.
Lying on shell and sand, he looked smaller than he was.
The ocean had scraped his insides clean.
When I poked his stomach, darkness rose up in him,
like black water. Later, I saw a boy,
aroused and elated, beckoning from a dune.
Like me, he was alone. Something tumbled between us—
not quite emotion. I could see the pink
interior flesh of his eyes. "I got lost. Where am I?"
he asked, like a debt owed to death.
I was pressing my face to its spear-hafts.
We fall, we fell, we are falling. Nothing mitigates it.
The dark embryo bares its teeth and we move on.

Ode To Moody

Exactly one year ago today, Moody and I smooshed our faces together and decided to date. It’s been the best year of my life, and in honor of my sassy, snazzy, magnificent man, I have prepared……(drumroll)……

A brief and selected list of things I love about him:

1.) That he likes to gauge the (un)acceptability of his outfits by the facial expressions of the UPS man.

2.) His positively girlish long eye-lashes

3.) His shameless love of pro-wrestling

4.) The fact that he lets me steal all of his favorite clothes, and doesn’t complain that I leave the sleeves rolled up when I put them back in his closet.

5.) That he bought me an espresso machine for Valentine’s Day. Boy knows who he’s dating.

6.) That he goes into our serial-killer-hideout-of-a-basement to switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer when I complain that there’s a serial killer down there. Hiding out.

7.) He lets me put up as many Christmas decorations as I want, and doesn’t complain when they start to encroach on his head-space.

8.) How, when he goes outside to take out the trash and I’m wolf-whistling at him from our second-floor apartment, he pretends he can’t hear me, but walks with a little more bounce in his step.

9.) He shaves his soul-patch for me. Because soul-patches are just the beginning of a slippery slope into rat-tail and mullet territory.

10.) When he’s on the night-shift at work, he spends hours and hours making me origami sunflowers.

11.) How, one time, when I was out of canvasses, he let me do a painting on his back.

12.) His very fine tooshie.

Happy anniversary baby. You are the bee’s knees. 

The Little Mer....man.

Wooo, it really is all about mermaids this week. And mermen, of course. I'm loving this sculpture of "the little mermaid's brother", created by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset to honor the 100th anniversary of Copenhagen's homage to Hans Christian Anderson's little sea-maid: Edvard Erkisen's famous bronze statue, melancholy in the city's main harbor.

Elmgreen and Dragset have programmed their own stainless steel figure to blink every half hour. Love it.

Wanderlust: In the Ether's Air

Breathing Underwater

When I was about three or four years old, I slipped off of an inflatable raft and went under the murky waters of Lincoln Pond for...well, about thirty second. Possibly less. Dear old mum pulled me out, and I had the very good grace to yell at her, "I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BE A MERMAID!"

Let me just clarify. At four, the prospect of having to become a mermaid was AWESOME. In fact, it was awesome until I was about 12. There was water show at the Great Escape, our little local amusement park, and, when I wasn't dreaming of being a librarian by day and the tooth fairy by night, I was dreaming of becoming the mermaid in that show. 

So I love the photo essay Annie Collinge recently did of "professional mermaids" at Florida's Weeki Wachee Springs State Park. They're completely eerie, playing off this bizarre little-girl fantasy (Mommy, when I grow up I want....a tail?) and the semi-dilapidated state of the park itself, which was only reopened in 2008 after decades of disuse. 

Here are a few of my favorites:

Is it OK if I still want to be a mermaid? Just a little?

And I Lost My Heart Over.....

This song.