miscommunication

(FX: little "thock" of facebook chat message popping open)

francesco
ciao
Sarah
ciao francesco
francesco
come va
francesco
cisei
Sarah
i only speak english my dear
francesco
io sicilia
Sarah
tragic
francesco
tu non parli italiano
Sarah
no italiano!
francesco
ai msn
Sarah
msn? i do not have.
francesco
come
Sarah
i don't think our love will work.
francesco
vuoi il mio
Sarah
your what?
francesco está desconectado

excerpts from Jean L. Briggs's 1970 "Never In Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family"

"It was some days before I made the happy discovery that the Eskimos themselves rarely adapted their activities to the presence of a visitor.  They exchanged smiles with a visitor when he appeared, and talked a bit now and again if there was something to talk about.  Eventually, if the visitor stayed long enough, as he usually did, the hostess would probably serve a kettle of tea.  But for the most part the visitor either spontaneously joined the family's activities or sat quietly on the periphery, ignored, to my foreign eye.  If the host had business elsewhere he simply announced the fact and went out, whereupon it was incumbent upon the guest to leave also.

My neighbors were the most benign and considerate of visitors.  ... The eskimos, unlike these others, never begged, never demanded.  They frequently offered to trade bone toys for tobacco or for bits of my carefully hoarded food supplies, but they rarely complained of the amounts I gave them.  They were never noisy or obtrusive; they just sat, quiet and observant, around the edges of my tent.  If, out of concern for my dwindling tea and kerosene supplies, I let them sit unfed for more than two or three hours, one of the adults might remark on the warming qualities of tea or, more indirectly still, ask if my water supply was low and offer to replenish it."  (26)

(On iglus)  "'Snow' falls also from the canvas roof; the steam from the boiling tea collects there and freezes into long frost-feathers which precipitate in fine, cold prickles on one's face as the dwelling cools.

The Eskimos accept these minor annoyances with equanimity.  They agree that it is unpleasant (hujuujag, not quvia) to be cold and wet, but what can one do (ayuqnaq)?  So when a sudden rain makes a sieve of the canvas roof they laugh: 'We are wet like dogs.'" (31)

"For several days we moved camp at least once a day and sometimes oftener, and always when the water had arrived within inches of our doorsteps.  Once as we were setting up the tents for the third or fourth time, I asked the friend who was helping me: 'Does the water come up this high?' (I indicated the spot where we were placing the tents.)  'Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't,' was the reply."  (33)

"One such evening I observed to Inuttiaq that the dogs, who were chained to boulders at the water's edge, were going to get wet during the night.  'Yes, they are,' he said.  And sure enough, in the morning several dogs were standing belly-deep in the flood, their noses pointed stiffly skyward."  (34)

summery

I been meaning to write.

Things got a pleasantness but no cohesion.  

I'm a pedestrian, a pavement pounder.

Tan arms and face.  I'm hot all day but rarely

uncomfortable, more like full of warmth,

gestating new versions of myself,

effusing sticky love for my friends.

Today I made sushi, man that was great.  Now I'm in my underwear.  Man.

opinions in doggerel a vocation, do call

achewood soothes me 

always.

death

My phone no longer turns on, don't call me.  To fix it/see if it can be fixed I'll probably have to go to the store where my hateful ex works.  Ha ha ha!  Awesome.  Hey christopher, when's the next day you don't work?  Let me know via e-mail, as I don't have a phone.  

So that's been my morning, woke up at 7, struggled with phone for an hour, fell asleep (weeping bitterly) for four more hours, with this horrific cough/sinus infection that won't go away, dreamed epically about escapes, etc.  Lots of photography?  There was a part where I for some reason was taking artistic topless shots of myself on campus at night.  I do not know why I was doing this.  But some creepy guy started following me around and just watching me, and in the dream I became really uncomfortable and like "why can't i just have my tits out without perverts all watching me!?"

Later in the more epic part of the dream there was a beautiful, thin blonde woman sleeping nude in a hammock in the sunshine, covered in a knit yellow blanket with fishnet-like holes so that you could see through.  This woman didn't like me, in the dream, but I thought this was the most striking thing I'd ever seen and took photograph after photograph of her sleeping like that from all angles, until she woke up and almost caught me.  Then I was looking at the photos (I had taken them with my phone) and woke up writhing.

To day do, due, do to day, today:

wash and clothe self

figure out if parents are coming for mothers day/not

clean up cat puke from bedroom floor

plant lavender and rosemary plants in pots

wash three dozen eggs from farm

make a lot of deviled eggs or something

Oh yes I have a big garden now, on a farm, it is the most wonderful thing and will make my summer wonderful.  There are donkeys, and chickens, and turkeys, and guineas, and fainting goats, and a big tawny yellow lab named Scotch.  Soon there will be tomatoes, peppers of all kinds, radishes, onions, carrots, peas, beans, herbs, ETC ETC ETC!!!!  I will feed you all.  You will love it.

friday

The first drink of the night still gives me goosebumps; makes me purr.  

Sometimes I expect people

to be able to

give me what I need

if I want them to

hard enough.

This interplay is like

describing dreams

to one another.  

(Inevitably, both parties

are left disappointed

and feeling more 

removed from each

other than before.)

outside

Spent the evening on the fire escape in a white lawn chair, reading and smoking and drinking rum & orange soda.  

I get a kind of voyeuristic rear-window-y thrill from learning of my alley.  A neighbor cleans his car, whistling along to that "Better Shape Up" song from Grease.  A friend walks by, and I almost yell down at him to tell him I still have his corkscrew, but don't for fear of startling the friend and the other neighbors, and drawing attention to myself.  A man walks up the fire escape in the building opposite to the top floor, where he spends a moment before being chased out by a girl saying she's fucking done with him, and he seems pretty done too.  She watches him go all the way back down.   The moon is big and becomes steadily more concentrated.  

Across the alley people are hanging out in front of that building where people are always hanging out.  Things seem steadily amicable until, at dusk, voices suddenly raise like posturing tomcats and the black guy tells the white guy to watch himself and the white guy calls the black guy a fucking nigger and the black guy says that's exactly what i'm talking about and one of them drives off.  Birds land closer to me than you'd expect and preen suspiciously.  I drop my lighter through the cracks in the fire escape.  An unseen neighbor below is whining about roommate drama.     

When the light's nearly gone the bats come, leafy black sacs dripping from crevices in brick and careening erratically with their velvet wings and dainty metallic "skree, skree."

facebook is reading my blog

Except the Muslim one I... I can't explain that.  

work

Sometimes at work when I'm given a rather open-ended project, I find myself staring out the window for long stretches. There's some kind of pretty maple tree that tosses its branches like a pony tosses its head when it's windy. A lot of cars drive by on 9th Street, sometimes police cars. Whenever someone walks by my desk, I pick up a piece of paper and act like I was in the middle of reading a document. Mostly I think about fucking.
I miss being in class this week already, in spite of the hassle. I miss the long quiet stretches of not-at-home time; when it's not possible to deal with your life as you could if you were at home, and you are somewhat trapped in this state of depressurized thought-floating. Home becomes too familiar at times, and requires that you look at the facts of yourself. Home crystallizes one's relationship with oneself. This is not to say Home is a place of frequent ill feeling, not at all.

Sometimes I feel as though I work for an elephant in a suit, all ponderous thought and movement and sometimes indecipherable reasoning, trunk/hands swaying in front of him.
"This is just elephant logic," I'll say to myself, writing down and performing a task I don't understand. It makes things easier, to imagine a valiant attempt at inter-species communication.

stupid stupid stupid

stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid