August 27, 2015

Working on three poems right now; even after 45 years, my style is still evolving. I've got kind of a constipated thing going on, a very slim tight vertical construction -- picture a small intestine if you stretched it out and filled it with words.

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I saw this clever sign outside a Mexican restaurant across town: "Our Competition Is In Mexico."

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The Dark Knight never gets old. I try to avoid superhero movies, but this is a classic, if "classic" means the one superhero movie that all other superhero movies (all thrillers, for that matter) should be measured by. Brilliant script, on-target social commentary, a score that sounds as good on CD as it does in the movie, and of course Heath Ledger's legendary performance. When I think of any other character he's portrayed and then watch him as the Joker, it's difficult to believe he's the same actor. Also, I enjoy moral quandaries in stories, and the climactic ferry sequence is like catnip for me. I bring this up because I watched it again over the weekend with three friends, two of whom had never seen it. Nothing like living vicariously through the eyes of a movie virgin. "You want to know how I got these scars?"

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Two things I learned Friday at the Western Idaho Fair: (1) There's a good reason to keep honoring Christopher Columbus: He brought the first goats to America in 1493, and I like goats. (2) There's a bad reason to like gelatin: It's made from bone marrow. I liked gelatin until Friday. (There was no gelatin at the fair, but my friend happened to mention it on the Ferris wheel.)

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(500) Days of Summer is another movie I watched again recently. Here's the saddest exchange in a movie filled with memorable dialogue (heck, one of the saddest exchanges in any romantic movie): Boy meets girl and falls in love. Girl becomes girlfriend but has no intention of falling in love. Boy accepts this. Then girl marries someone else. They run into each other again, and boy asks girl how she could do it. She replies:

     "I woke up one morning and I just knew."
     "Knew what?"
     "What I was never sure of with you."

Argghh. Zooey kills me every time.

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So I'm at the Rite Aid checkout counter. The cashier has just put half my stuff in a small bag. I have a larger item that's going to stick out of the second bag, so I ask if she can put it in a larger bag. She says yes, but it would be better to put everything else in the larger bag as well and give her back the small bag. "We have to save the world," she says. She is perfectly serious. OK, so maybe the fate of the world really does hang on how many plastic bags I use, but it's unprofessional of her to make a customer feel crummy about it. (I'm careful about not using too many napkins when I'm in a restaurant, but I once ate at a place that had a sign saying, "Napkin = tree." I took a dozen napkins, crumpled them up, and left them on the table with a note that said, "Mess = forest." Even though I did it to make a point, I still feel guilty sometimes.)

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Forget Trump. Forget Iran. Here's the real breaking news of the day: I've shaved off my beard. I told someone I only kept it out of laziness, and then I realized what I'd said. I have a tan line just above my cheekbones.

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Blue tattoo on the upper back of a high school girl in line at Fanci Freez -- "To thine own self be true." Was it a homework assignment?

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LinkedIn is haunting me. I haven't used it since I stopped working professionally nine years ago, but I still get notifications, endorsements, and requests for endorsements. I try and try, but it seems to think "unsubscribe" means "I love getting these things."

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Eleven days until Labor Day. Almost time for fall, and pumpkins, and cider, and setting the clocks back. Can you tell I love fall? It wasn't always so. When I was in elementary school, I had to write a poem about my favorite season, my very first poem. I still remember the first two lines:

"I love winter for so many reasons.
First of all, it's my favorite season."

Logic wasn't my strong suit at ten (neither was poetry), but I got a nice grade out of it anyway.

August 21, 2015

This is my second post-summer blog post (my post-post). I'm on a roll -- I might even write a third one if my brain can stand it.

Last Saturday I decided it was time to start thinking about housecleaning, so I walked down the street to Fanci Freez to think about it over some ice cream and a cherry Coke. The conclusion I came to is that I don't have to think about it again until next week.

My mom never had to think about housecleaning because she was already doing it. She never stopped. Every Saturday morning she chased my sister and me from our beds so she could wash the sheets. Then she tossed us outside (not literally but almost) so she could clean the place from top to bottom. We'd hear her call for us sometime after 3:00, when we'd remove our shoes before entering. If our shoes were muddy, they didn't come in with us. If we were muddy, we didn't come in with us, either. Here's how clean she was. She had hundreds of books shelved in bookcases with sliding glass doors. At least once a month, she'd sit down on the freshly vacuumed carpet, slide open each door, and dust every book. Did I say the books were behind glass? I'm talking clean here.

Is it awful for me to say that the Soda Fire, which has consumed thousands and thousands of acres so far here in Idaho, is making for some spectacular sunsets?

Lily Taylor plays Corey, a songwriting high school student, in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything (1989). Corey and Joe have broken up. In an early scene that takes place at a rowdy kegger, she sits on a sofa with her guitar and announces to the room, "I wrote sixty-three songs this year. They're all about Joe, and I'm going to play every single one of them tonight." I thought about that scene this week because I've been listening to Adele 21. Great CD, great voice. Great songs. But after the first five or six, I started to feel like the Best Pal who sits with you on the edge of the bed handing you tissue after tissue and telling you it's not the end of the world. Still, though, great CD.

After 18 months and four ophthalmologists (or was it five?), I finally have new prescription lenses. No more eyestrain or headaches. I should sue all of them for my co-pays. The night before, I dreamed I was telling a friend that I was finally getting back my "sight for sore eyes." I wish I were that witty in real life.

On film violence: As much as I revere The Godfather, I never found that street fight between Sonny and Carlo to be entirely convincing. On the other hand, what Woodrow Call did to that soldier for whipping Newt in Lonesome Dove really shocked me at the time -- I couldn't help but wonder whether CBS had had any qualms about airing the scene uncut.

The other night I had my first dream about Madonna, but it wasn't a nightmare.

I once got on an elevator in the office building where I worked while holding a copy of Hemingway's short stories. An executive standing beside me saw the book and said, "Taking a class?" Another time, I was working on a story on the porch of the apartment building where I lived. A girl who was probably no older than 14 stepped outside and saw me. "What are you doing?" she said. "Writing a story." This was her reply: "Do you have to?" Both times I wondered whether I should apologize for being literate or just do my reading and writing inside my little blanket fort at night.

It's Opening Day for the Western Idaho Fair, so I went this morning with my friend Tami and her two impeccably behaved boys. (If there's a Hall of Fame for Perfect Children, they're shoo-ins.) Tami and I enjoyed looking at the photo and quilt exhibits, but nothing really stood out for me. I was much more enamored of the Special Award ribbons themselves, which are a burst of primary colors. If there were an exhibit for ribbons, the Special Award ribbon would win itself. Because of the outlying fire, Boise's air quality level today was code red, or level red -- anyway, something red, red being bad. It didn't seem to affect us, though. The boys rode all the rides about 200 times and were still spinning upside down in the back seat when we left the parking lot to go home.

P.S. I tried my first-ever corn dog this afternoon. Let's just say I don't plan on waiting another six decades before having another one.

What I Did On My Summer No-cation

I hope everyone reading this has had a good summer so far. Labor Day and football season are almost here, so I decided since I'm just sitting here doing my usual monotasking at the computer, why not write a blog post and get the old creative juices dripping again?

You'll notice that today's blog is more personal than it has been. Is this, you ask, because I value your readership so much that I want to share with you the inner workings of my mind? No. It's because I ran out of ideas in May and my brain is still bankrupt. So since I have no inner workings to speak of, I'll just report on what's been going on in and around my life so that you can feel so much better about your own.

Let's see. . . .

My only sibling, Terry, flew out from Maine to spend eleven days with me. We hadn't seen each other in 3 1/2 years, our longest time apart, Turns out she likes Boise and all my friends so much that she's returning next year. (I'm assuming wanting to see me fits somewhere into her decision.)

Four movies were worth my getting out of the house for: Inside Out is possibly the best animated film I've ever seen, certainly one of the top ten. If you haven't seen it, you simply must. I laughed a lot watching Spy, featuring Melissa McCarthy's funniest performance since Bridesmaids. I didn't mind the R-rated language during the first half; in fact, it added a nice oomph to some of the best lines. However, the poopy machine must have gone haywire after that -- even Andrew Dice Clay would have been embarrassed watching it. Amy, about the late Amy Winehouse, is the best documentary I've seen this year. It was so intimate that when I saw the stretcher with the sheet over her near the end of the film, it felt like a punch in the gut, as if someone close to me had really died. Finally, I was going to skip seeing Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation because I doubted it could even be half as entertaining as the last installment, Ghost Protocol. Some friends talked me into going, so I went. Shows how much I know. At one nerve-racking point, I found myself laughing out loud with glee because it was just so perfectly done.

I had a mystery story and one or two poems published. It's nice when that happens. I've been playing Hemingway in Paris lately, too -- taking a notebook or a book of poems downtown to one of my two favorite cafes and sitting outside to read, write, and watch people going by. The two poets whose works I've been enjoying most are Gregory Corso and Charles Reznikoff. Corso is the only Beat poet whom I've found almost consistently interesting. I've only just discovered Reznikoff, whose collection Holocaust isn't exactly beach reading, though it's thoroughly rewarding.

In national news, Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner and won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. I understand I'm required by law not to joke about this.

I untied my Cable One bundle and released my cable TV connection. Living without television has been remarkably easy for me. (You have to understand that in grade school I could tell you what shows were on at what time and on which channels. The TV Guide Fall Preview issue was my Holy Grail.) However, when someone asked me how I planned to survive the 2015 football season, I realized I couldn't. So I bought an HDTV indoor antenna from Radio Shack (I know -- I didn't think they were still in business, either), and I'm all set. Instead of the four or five channels I expected to receive, I found out I actually get 33 of them, which makes me wonder why I ever bothered with cable in the first place. (True story: Within a week after dropping the service, I dreamed that I regretted it because Michael Landon had come back from the dead and was hosting Saturday Night Live.)

Without TV, I've been listening to much more music than usual. My summer passions have included Kasey Chambers, Adele, Hole, Emmylou Harris, Frank Sinatra, and Diana Krall. How's that for eclectic? Say what you will about Courtney Love (or I'll happily say it for you), but she can rock, and she's written some good songs. If you're not familiar with Chambers, an Australian country-folk performer, go to YouTube and check out her voice on the song "Barricades and Brick Walls." You'll know by the end of the first line whether you're destined to be a diehard fan.

Boise set a record for hot weather on June 28, and I understand that today (August 13th) we've done it again with a temperature of at least 105. It's surprising to me how easily I've adapted to temps edging past 100. Maybe it's because I spent so many years on the East Coast, where stepping outside Miami International Airport used to feel like someone pressing a hot washcloth over my face. Stepping outside today felt like I needed a few more sweaters.

In local news, a bicyclist accidentally set a 73-acre fire in the foothills when he burned some toilet paper he had just finished using. This is how Boise makes the national news. (My friend Guy told me the same thing happened here several years ago, only many more acres burned and the inadvertent culprit was an environmentalist.)

Maybe I should have put my YMCA membership on ice for the summer. I haven't been going much at all. The weather has been too gorgeous (even at 100 degrees), so I've been taking long walks instead. My goal has been to lose weight or maintain what I already have, but, unlike the treadmill at the Y, a long walk can take you past some awfully tasty restaurants. (I personally recommend the grilled foot-long dog at the Westside Drive-In, which has plenty of outdoor tables for relaxing.)

So that's been my summer, more or less. I'll report back with periodic updates on what it's like being me..