Five Tools

giacometti: "figurine dans une boite entre deux boites qui sont des maisons"

when i can't deal with my mp3 player, even, as happened this morning -- i have THREE new tools in the distraction/mindLESSness effort.  that's a total, when all is well, of FOUR tools.

if i can read, i now have [ONE] oppen's COMPLETE work, and [TWO] oxford's collection of american poetry. the other big "if," and it's sucky, is that these books are large and heavy, and at the times i need them the most, too large and heavy to be of use.  that's how poetry gets to kick a person in the ass.

if my hands can grip the the little non-skid plastic non-skid plastic corner stick-ons decorating the underside of my workaholic laptop, then if the index and thumb can toss it onto the pillow awaitin' on my lap, then we can try to get to youtube and [THREE] wallow and smile with maru, and now, with and at, maru&hana.

[FOUR] there is almost always an *actual* cat, always there has almost always been a cat, but it's different now.  they take turns checking.  i've begun wearing hoodies to bed, with the hood up. in the beginning, the hoodie went up to aid in sliding up in the hearsepital bed without also dragging hair and whatever sexpot top i sported. then the hoodie stayed up to protect the mp3 wiring, then to keep my head warm, then because it comforted me, and always because it kept my unkempt hair more kempt.  so, anyway, the cats, in turn, snuffle at the perceived entrance to my face, and issue their particular greeting.  buddy, small melodious things. marmy, *::ack::*::ack::* + apologetic purrrrr and approximated headbutt.  dobby, a loud, unmodulated, caricature of a MEOW. dobby always scares me to death, if i have actually achieved sleep, and i squint to perceive a worried pink nose. yes, a nose can worry.  there's more, lots more, to number FOUR, but i'll spare you.

the mp3 player senses change.  it first died and required resuscitation. then twice, then, after a third, almost mechanical, heartless lazarus play, one night found me cursing new curses. "not that song again, no, not again, did we not do that song just, what? twenty songs ago?"

somehow, we were down to 22 songs, and, the odd thing? they were all of an era. go ahead: shiver the creepy-shiver, all at once, as one. here, this will help you pull it off: melanie, candles in the rain. 

ohh, emm, gee, mine people, ohh, emm, gee.

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown.

We were so close, there was no room

We bled inside each other's wounds

We all had caught the same disease

And we all sang the songs of peace.

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown.

So raise the candles high

'Cause if you don't we could stay black against the night

Oh raise them higher again

And if you do we could stay dry against the rain.

so the mp3 now has been reformatted.  and no, i had not been so organized as to save its last incarnation, as each incarnation was a work in progress. which is why we all come back as worms -- don't be fooled.  the universe doesn't save or back up its work, either, not believing it can make a mistake, being the universe 'n all. did i tell you what a god-awful anthropomorphic nitwit i am, and always have been, will be?

so the reloading goes well, and is a pleasure.  

we reloaded less than two-thirds of the former songs, adding a few new ones, and a few that had been removed in fits of pique.  we had a bad day yesterday, breaking beneath the weight of physical, but not mental or emotional, pain.  the perfect day for the betas (in alpha testing, a.b.o.u.t. ready for launch!) ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR.

don't be jealous because i have five tools in my toolbox.  be happy for me.  and get me a perfect mp3 player, with seamless wireless paid for by, i dunno, you, and enough memory to hold the impossible recordings of all oppen's work as read by oppen, live, before a live audience, and the bazillion poets the oxford edition included, all recorded live, audiences optional.  no podcasts, no video, just the voices. maru and maru&hana are a whole, are "as is." the actual cats stay as they are, too, cannot be improved upon, marmy's breath excepted.  

oh, and with time, i'm sorry to break it to you, the various versions of the serenity prayer fail, usually before giacometti, brancusi, duchamp, modigliani, rothko, beckett. you will have your own sacred list.

now, if the hands fail, well, we'll revisit all this.

© 2015 L. Ryan

ugly bedroom

i've been quiet because... things turn on a dime.

anyone want to come and redesign my bedroom?  the centerpiece is now one butt-ugly brown hospital bed. i remain, o my president, author of obamacare, which allowed me to receive a hospital bed with trapeze within 48 hours of the doctor ordering it, o do i remain ever grateful!

but a butt-ugly bedroom will not do.

new rugs will be necessary, because i don't want to fall off the butt-ugly brown bed onto the slick butt-ugly brown floor.

this morning, after dear fred went to a sunday morning shake-and-bake with the militant existential lesbian feminists, taking along a gourmet tuna salad with a fresh and golden loaf of bread, i challenged myself.  "self," i said...

sorry.

anyway, i cleaned the common areas we share with the castafiore and her amours, and with the hangers-on that groups such as ours attract.  mollusks. oops.  typed that out loud, i did!

in my brief period of profound laziness, the feline triumvirate has been intensively training.  dry, sculptural, free-standing hair ball sculptures tucked like hidden treasures behind furniture legs -- sublime!  a stylized swirl of hardened ocean waves, slick and seemingly splashing, reaching for the sky -- carefully presented alongside a gravity-bound fourteenth-century leather and iron virginal hope chest.  the first pieces were clearly the creation of marmy fluffy butt, and her fury was swift and fierce when my efforts to preserve her commentary on world hunger somehow fell prey to the chaotic anti-art suction of my hoover.  the watery, shellacked offering was from the suddenly shy buddy, of maine coon provenance, and he approved its destruction, seeing his arching, asiatic columns as bits of performance art that already were passé.

using the forensic skills that only advanced students of french literature (and its intertwined, inbred complications known as critics) are able to focus upon the disparate remnants of avant garde cat art, i determined that dobby, the edgiest of this feline force, had dabbled with such success in a retrospective homage to trompe-l'oeil that it will be only by chance that we discern his gastric artiface from our hooman accoutrements and clutter.

so i am back in the putrid brown bed.  i confess that it helps my body relax, that joints previously screaming at an annoying level are now making only the occasional habitual moue.

but this room... this room.  a disaster.  i offer proof:

© 2013 L. Ryan

Beck-in-Poo

A big nod to Lorraine Devon Wilke of Addicting Info: The Knowledge You Crave.

Glenn causes me various gastrointestinal ills and I am something of an artist, myself.  Plus, while I actually speak a fluent French, I cannot, for the life of me, imitate a French accent in English (an inexplicable oddity).
For that matter, I cannot "do" a Spanish accent in English, either, despite a passable command of that language, as well. It's a mystery.

Anyway.

So I am thinking of dedicating a week, a month, however long it might take to get it right, to the accumulation of G.I. matter*, enough to fill a life-size mason jar into which I will insert the Living, Nude Glenn Beck.  We will call it Beck-in-Poo, which sounds for all the world like a charming English hamlet. And, given that insight, as if from God, there will be no need for any accent nonsense at all!

Being that I'm a big fan of the "Eureka!" story of Archimedes and the discovery of displacement -- I love baths -- guesses from the gallery as to the amount of poo displaced by Mr. Beck will end with the awarding of a lucrative door prize.

At no time will the gigantic lid be screwed on the jar, at least not without a straw and generous air holes. Beck-in-Poo being performance art, Glenn will be extricated at the end of the gala evening.  We have an exciting closing to this art act:  attendees will don brown vinyl raincoats and urns of Holy Water with which the Actor shall be cleansed.

Clearly, some of this needs rethinking, revisioning.  His nudity, for example.  People will be trying to eat delicate and delicious canapés, and devouring the cubed cheese platter, the spiced nuts, the pretzels.  Washing it all down with ice-cold chablis.  That blue thong Beck created with a sublime minimum of wrist-flicking keeps coming to mind as an option.  Not that it will be blue for long, though.

Great art.  It's hard.

In lieu of a framed Constitution as our visual Appeal to Authority, the gallery-owner, an odd woman, wants framed xeroxed copies of Dolley Madison's letter to her sister as the British enter Washington, intent on burning the wayward city to the ground:

Three o'clock. -- Will you believe it, my sister? we have had a battle, or skirmish, near Bladensburg, and here I am still, within sound of the cannon! Mr. Madison comes not. May God protect us! Two messengers, covered with dust, come to bid me fly; but here I mean to wait for him... At this late hour a wagon has been procured, and I have had it filled with plate and the most valuable portable articles, belonging to the house. Whether it will reach its destination, the "Bank of Maryland," or fall into the hands of British soldiery, events must determine. Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out. It is done! and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping. And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take.

I confess to noting nothing profound by this juxtaposition, but she simply crows with delight at the thought.

*****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****

*Puh-leeze, Dear Readers, I would not put even The Beckster in a life-size mason jar full of mine own poo.
Instead, I would employ my extensive training in the Fine Arts.