chalkduster

chalkduster

i found it in a list of fonts
something sounding brushed away
lifted into the air of a room cast in afternoon sun
the time of day that illuminates the imperfect

the chalkduster sits in a corner of the school
waiting for lucky children

the chalkduster hides - sage and cream
and promises to only breath in

-rlbarnes 12/1/2012

days that make up months that make up years

Thursday morning I left our island abode to meet with attorneys on a loan closing to finally refinance my Newnan home--a sugar-coated thorn in my side that I have determined must be part of my penance for something I did in a former life, or must learn about in this one....and for the record, it has taught me a lot. And for the record, I'm better for it. So I do not dislike the little house.

But what I had thought would be a series of small, unpleasant obligatory maneuvers sandwiched between two long 5 hour drives has turned out to be a much better little story. Today I'm still on the west side of the state, and it was warm enough that I had breakfast with my parents on their porch. And having just torn myself away from reading by the pool for what I suspect may have been more than a few hours, judging by the way the sun has moved, I felt compelled to make a contribution here.

As soon as mother caught wind I was going to be a crows flight away, I was informed of and invited to a champagne tasting at The River Club where my parents are frequent flyers, along with several of their closest friends--this is and was something I'm unable to decline. After learning a bit about five of the best French champagnes (and having most of that information bubbled away into effervescent faerie land), we had dinner and headed back to the big house where Mom immediately abandoned us for the comforts of bed. Alone in the living room and left to our own devices, Wayne and I debated on the best way to bring a nice evening to a respectable close, and decided the most fitting avenue was to have a glass of good whiskey. I added, "beside the fire" but Wayne refused to light even the smallest little fire--for a while, that is, because he was eventually convinced (by only a little daughterly whining) to throw a match and lighter fluid on a 'starter log' that I suppose he determined would entertain me for a sufficient amount of time without burdening himself with the "major responsibilities of having a real fire." I, being a very agreeable and realistic person, was perfectly satisfied with that.

Friday morning (early) Mother rode with me to meet the termite inspector at the aforementioned home of mine. While we were talking in the yard with Jared, my beloved (really) neighbor Parks, came over to see what all the activity was about. He also took a card from Jared that he hoped would result in some sort of attention that would compel his wife Judy to stop her fussing about a roach she saw in their bathroom the night before. Eventually the other two neighbors also ventured out of their homes to investigate as only proper southern folk can do--by pretending to have some particular chore that requires their being at least within earshot--Steve who was walking his annoying white lap dog and Mr. Rice who swore he was moving away years ago, had something that needed retreiving from the car--both very kind men who headed the trifecta of retired couples flanking and facing my Sixth Street bungalow and who, for the years I was there, seemed to make my family feel a lot better about their daughter/granddaughter/neice/sister/cousin being in a house by herself with no man to protect her. The one time Rob visited me at that house, Parks (unsolicited) unloaded every piece of lawn equipment he had in his shed so Rob could mold my yard into something more presentable for a young lady such as myself. This delighted my parents (and the other neighbors).

Moving along. Mom and I had breakfast in Panera--and there I had such a compelling feeling that I need to just get it out. I realized then, that there is something about coffee shops that makes it difficult for me to visit them with others without feeling strange, uncomfortable and very out of place. I am fine  alone or standing in line with someone, but no-sit down and not with company. There, that's said.

Last night I cooked dinner for my parents. Carnitas. It was surprisingly a much more daunting task than it normally is when I'm doing them at home--but they were very nice and encouraging about how good the food was. Considering it was finally ready around 9pm I'm sure at least half of those compliments were directly influenced by near-starvation of eating dinner about 3 hours later than usual. Oops. While I was fussing over the fattiest pork shoulder I've ever seen, Wayne turned the television channel to something other than whatever follows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. He stopped on something that sounded loud..just loud...and I heard this, Wayne begins, followed by mother:
"what in the hell is this supposed to be"
"well push that information button and see"
"uhhh....Trans formers....huh. I think that's one of those young people shows"
"yea"
"might be good though"
"mm hmm"
(pause)
"we'll just leave it here and see if it's decent, then we can change it"
"sounds good"

We ate carnitas and watched Transformers until Wayne decided he was going to bed because clearly Bumble Bee had been killed and there was nothing more to see as he was not one bit happy about Bumble Bee being hurt and killed.  I begrudgingly assured him that the autobot Bumble Bee wasn't dead but Wayne was skeptical until I assured him the same character is alive and well in another Transformer movie I'd seen. After the movie did end Wayne retired and mom and I stayed up flipping between watching haunted house stories and V for Vendetta.

I love my parents. 

Then I went to bed and dreamt about being at the beach with my sweet new spousal unit. No surprise I didn't want to get up early today.

And here I am, about to wrap up my final day in southwest Georgia. I nearly finished the novel I brought with me to read--that's probably why I wanted to plug something onto this lonely page. And while reading I remembered a comment Rob made to me the other night about how he expects I should write a book someday. That's the kind of compliment that makes me smile and feel completely unworthy at the same time. I picture us in 10 years, having maybe published two books....and needing to have a room in the house dedicated to all the copies no one ever wanted. Sigh. Damn old fear of rejection is such a buggar.

I think that's about all I had to say. There was a lot swarming around my head the last few days so I feel better now having at least done something, even if most of the swarmers have tunneled off into the far cobwebs of my mind, at least until a time when I won't be able to write them down.

The sun has gone behind the trees and I notice it's time for me to start dinner. I have to redeem myself this evening on that, so off I go.

to Rob....smirk smirk ;)

Seriously, who wouldn't want to be a zombie?

and life is like a song. at last.

electric sheep...err....seals

http://www.parorobots.com/

Hello, Fall...

Happy first day of fall--my favorite season (spring being second)

There is something refreshing about the seasons that take us out of the extremes of summers heat or winters cold (though they too have endearing qualities).

Yesterday evening Rob and I drove out to the beach around 7. The sun is setting earlier now and has been sending the horizon into swirls of brilliant pink, crimson, orange and deep, bruised purple. I've been noticing it all month and I know that once in the winter deeps I will grumble about how the lack of sun makes it harder to feel happy. For now it's worth the slightly cooler temperatures that seem to have only been momentarily allowed through -- out of some holy respect like a parting of the seas. Seas that will close again and leave us with more heat for a while, "it's gotta warm up for Thanksgiving!" is something I've only ever heard living in south Georgia.

The stars were finally visible around 8:30 and we took a few minutes to sit there while the last of the people, which were then just dark silhouettes, trickled away. The two little girls looking for their black dog had finally found him. The guy who had been entertaining everyone by flying up and down the beach with his wind cart finally pulled the parachute back to earth, and after while, we too packed up our beach towel and little igloo and headed toward the path to the car. While Rob was folding up the towel I yelled out toward the water "we live here" -- something I like to do to make sure the universe knows we know this is a special place, even though we long for the mountains like kids at Christmas. And we trudged through the sand discussing the new baby dunes that seem to have emerged over-night.

last but not least, since I've mentioned the mountains, and since this is a fall welcoming post, our honeymoon has officially been booked--spending a week enjoying the views and trails and village towns of the Adirondack Mountains. I believe it will be a most wonderful way to relax after a years worth of this crazy hell called planning a wedding---we also are determined to make and have much more fun on that day than the crazy hell it's taken to get there....and that will be happening in, oh 28 days!!!! weeeeeeeeeee (insert crazed expression here)

tootles

Merlin

ode to onychoschizia

i've left you alone for a while now

surprised at how much you could take

but today things were different

and i knew

i could tell

something was bound to break



-

a case of neato bandito

It never fails that things I want to write about always come to me when I am the most unable to write about them. The drive home from my parents house yesterday afternoon was no different. But I still plan to write what I started thinking about writing.

But this is one of those things that needs more time than the occasional draft of a poem or whatnot, so today I've been delving into the wonderful world of Wikipedia for a little more understanding of what it is my brain is trying to think up....sometimes I FEEL information that seem very real and retrievable, but my brain can't interpret them as anything other than random ideas of the unconscious....that's my hypothesis for now, at least. BUT, in my digging about on wiki today I came across something that made my day!....DOCUMENTED SCIENTIFIC TERMINOLOGY for something I dreamt about a while back. Something that I thought was just fantasy creation in my dream world--and it was a dream I blogged about. That is so dang COOL [to me] I can't even begin to describe my glee.

Anyway, here is the blog (the part in reference is the ocean I swam in)

Sci-Fi Dream

And HERE is what I accidentally came upon on Wikipedia. I've included an excerpt below:

In astronomy and cosmology, dark fluid is an alternative theory to both dark matter and dark energy and attempts to explain both phenomena in a single framework...

In the traditional approach to modeling effects of gravity, general relativity is assumed to be valid at cosmological scales as well as in the solar system where its predictions have been more accurately tested. Not changing the rules of gravity, however, implies the presence of dark matter and dark energy in parts of the universe where the curvature of the space-time manifold is far less than that of in the solar system. It is phenomenologically possible to alter the equations of gravity in regions of low space-time curvature such that the dynamics of the space-time causes what we assign to the presence of dark matter and dark energy.^[2] Dark fluid even goes one step beyond the standpoint of the generally covariant modified theories of gravity. It hypothesizes that the fabric of space acts much like a fluid. So dark fluid currently provides a general and powerful model for altering the dynamics of the space-time manifold. In this theory, space would flow, coagulate, compress, or expand just like any other fluid..."


If my father were alive I probably would have known about this stuff before because he was completely obsessed (in a good way) with Astronomy...and was, in fact, described as a scientist. So maybe it's folded away in my mind because this kind of stuff can be passed down in genes of the psyche. Perhaps they are gifts from beyond. Regardless. This made my day. I am glad for however it arrived in my world.

(another thing that made my day is discovering I can create a "book"  from Wikipedia articles I'm reading, then save it as a PDF and print it all in one go. that is really just fantastic.)

ignorance is bliss I wish I were a bumblebee

Aerodynamically the bumblebee should not be able to fly-
but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway-

-Mary Kay Ash


(there is no blue to swallow this)

yogi quotes, good fortunes and other better things

Last week I stepped into the bathroom at work to fill up a flower vase and wondered to myself did I remember to ask the concierge to put in a work order for that leaky toilet? certainly don't need any deficiencies on us for careless slip hazards...

then immediately I noticed the nice new flooring that was installed a week prior--after the leaky toilet was replaced--and I had to stop and allow it to sink in.....hmmm. dang. I think I dreamt that.

So work has been getting into my dreams and my dreams have been getting into my day time thought processes. Then I worked too much last week. Pretty much 10-12 hour days all the way through until Friday when I was too exhausted to hang in there past 3:30. So when the sneezy runny nose I'd ignored turned into the am I getting a cold feeling last night, it's no surprise that woke up with a cold this morning.  I despise the summer cold. I really do. Fall and winter colds are crappy, but there's just something wrong about having a runny-nosed, stuffy-headed cold in the summer time. But, my brother used to say: "you wore out your immune system, man"...so I reckon I did it to myself. 

Another thing that occurred last week (could have been the week before, not sure) was a conversation I had with a co-worker about just how dang bitter we've gotten. And I feel like I've tried to be more positive, but this has been a tough year. And I've said that in years past and meant it then too. This year has just been a lot of work. It hasn't been terribly painful. I haven't had any devastating losses, but it's been a year of challenges. And I shut the blog down for a while because I'd had too much of the online world and it's an easy thing to turn your back on when there's more negativity leaching out of it than good. So I looked on here the other day and realized that my blog has turned into the posting ground of a terrible cynic. Don't get me wrong, in many ways I haven't changed much, but I'm not that grumpy all the time. It just comes out on here because for a while I've had a very negative association with all things blog-based. 

I decided to change the scenery a little bit, because my life isn't bad. It's actually damn good. Seriously, I cry just about every week thinking about how much good I have in my life--my blog should reflect it a little more often. 

(That's not to say that I take back any of my other posts. I maintain this attitude. All except that I've decided that I will vote this year. And I've decided who for. So that's different. But not much else)

Since I've been feeling a tad bit under the weather the last few days the last thing I want to do is cook. So we ordered chinese last night and pizza tonight. One of my favorite things about Chinese food is the spicy mustard sauce....but mostly I love the fortunes. I like consumables that come with little surprise anecdotes, which is also why I mainly only buy Yogi tea. And I have stashes of the best ones in random meaningful places. Picture frames, journals, favorite books...stuff like that. And while I'm not great at keeping up rituals, but here I'll start the latest idea of mine, by posting pictures of the good ones when they happen.

Here we go: 

Last night's fortunes (they gave us THREE, which is one of my favorite numbers...which reminds me of another story I should blog about later)

those are pretty good fortunes to crack out of a sugar cookie if I do say so myself!

And tonight's Yogi quote. Possibly my most favorite of all Yogi quotes to date: 

So there are a few positive things. Another positive thing is Rob told me this morning that I was talking in my sleep last night. And I really rarely ever talk in my sleep. When I do, he says "you were talking in your fairy talk"... because he says it sounds like something he should be able to understand, but can't. My cousin Logan talks in fairy talk. Rob does sometimes but usually I can understand everything (and frequently can get him to keep talking if I talk back). My brother also speaks clearly in his sleep. I'm not sure what determines the language you use when sleep-talking, but I sort-of like the idea of fairy talk. Those who know me, know why. 

Happy Monday

This Cinco de Mayo...

SaveTheDate

Label Of Love Save The Date

Design photo save the dates with Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

...sign posted in Revolution Books Store - New York, NY:

 "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal."

late night rambler

Leave the past behind, just walk away
When it's over, and the heart break
And the cracks begin to show

                         Freestylers - Cracks

For the last week or so I am pretty sure I have not gone to bed before 1 or 2am. This is because since last Friday we have been moving house to condo around working hours.

So I suppose that's why tonight I am still up, finding whatever I can to read or fiddle with or peruse -- even though I am at my parents house and everyone else is in bed and snoring, as I should be

Web perusing nearly always goes to my most frequently ventured blogs and websites. And as I've stated before, I really thoroughly enjoy  Letters of Note -- and rightly so as it never fails to offer me the kind of thrill that I can only think to compare with opening a special gift on your birthday--or something like that. So drifting there tonight and first seeing a portrait photo then scrolling down to read yet another lovely post of K.V., it was one of those moments.  Anyway I flicked to another letter on the site -- written to George Orwell from Aldous Huxley -- and the last bit of his letter made me want to steal it for my blog as well--since the demise of humanity lingers in my mind almost daily. I could tweak his words just a bit to suit my own perspective but my own feelings are essentially the same--particularly the line I set in bold

"....But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Huxley"

________________________________

And a few suitably amusing illustrations I'd like to add