Foulbrood and queenless

Here's an update on the beehive from our beeman, Tom.

Hey Tony and Pam,

Yes, your observations are correct. One western super was removed and the honey was consolidated in the remaining one for stores for the winter. The hive is healthy but not as vigorous as I had expected. I havested only four frames of honey. The production for all the hives is down to only a third of what last year offered up. Kind of sad, plus I'm very sure that Janis's hive has foulbrood and will soon need to be destroyed. Its really an awful bacterial disease, plus I think her hive is also Queenless in the process, but it makes little difference when death is imminent. I hope all is well with you both. I'm not sure when extraction is going to take place but I wil keep you informed.........Tomas

Writing

I am here on the Oregon coast for a writing retreat. This is the first time I've connected to the world in two days. Writing is hard and lonely. I've been eating alot of junk, pacing around the room, drinking coffee, tea, wine, beer. My back hurts. I have a headache that begins in my right temple and ends behind my eye.

Men and Women in Key West isn't finished yet. I should have taken Harley Davidson's question to heart when I first read his comment...because it cuts to the heart of the problem...what is the resolution to the story? Did the narrator break up with Carlos? Did she marry him? What happened? It's a strong piece. My readers here have had intense reactions. But it's not done. Huh. Who knew?

Small House is just the beginning of what will be a much longer piece. I've been working on that most of the time I've been here, and it's hard. It's going into some deep emotional shit. But little bits of beautiful inspiration have come at important moments. I spent Thursday just free writing...blabbing my memories on the page with no shape. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning with the image of the staircase in my head, and then remembered pulling up the carpet when we moved in. I love it when that happens. I'm going home at the end of October to work more on it. I want to be there, to look at the house, walk around the streets where I used to walk. I think there's a whole book there in that little house.

It rained all day yesterday which kept me inside working. It's dry today and the beach is close by. My room overlooks a well-groomed golf course, and men in baseball caps and khaki shorts keep driving by in white-canopied golf carts. It's going to be hard to stay inside with the sun and ocean calling me out, and the stupid little men swinging their clubs around in my line of vision.

Small house

When we moved into the house, the first thing my mother did was pull up the old shag carpet. It came up easy to reveal smooth, oak hardwoods underneath. We swept up the carpet tacks and the years of dirt that had filtered down through the fibers to form a grainy sediment. The carpet backing had acted as a fine sieve, only letting the finest particles through.

It was a small house, but there was room enough for the three of us. It had a tiny pink kitchen with a pink push-button stove. A narrow staircase led to the second floor where there were three small bedrooms. My mother’s was the largest, and my brother’s and mine were exactly the same size, both with a ceiling on one end that followed the steep slope of roof above. Even though there was only a short stretch of hallway in between them, sometimes it seemed that my mother’s room was miles away.

I was a kid who wanted to exist below the radar. I had good grades and a bookish nature. My teachers liked me and I had friends, so there was little to worry about, especially in comparison to my brother, who kept getting into trouble at school. He took more of my mother’s energy. Sitting each night at the dining room table, struggling to get my brother to do his school assignments, her own college books piled on one end of the table and a mass of bills and receipts before her, she had little time for me.

But it was easier for me without my mother’s attention. So much so, that when I spent time at my friends’ houses I bristled to be around their parents. My friend Nicole, especially. When I was at her house, I felt uncomfortable until we escaped to her bedroom to listen to tapes and read magazines. Her mother stayed home during the day, and every evening her father would walk in the door and they would eat dinner together at exactly 4:30. Her mother would place neat piles of freshly laundered clothes on the foot of her bed. Nicole would ask her mom if she could go out that night. I thought, “Why bother asking?” Sometimes her parents would make her stay in, or ask her to be home by nine. My mother was just leaving the house by then, her friends pulling in the driveway ready to go out dancing. I didn’t ask to leave the house, I just went.

So on New Years’ Eve 1989, I expected my mother to be gone. She had arranged for my brother to sleep at a friend’s house, and had plans to go out with her new boyfriend. But by eight that night, she was taking off her smart red shirt dress and black heels, washing the makeup off her face, taking off the gold, braided hoop earrings, and putting on her pink bathrobe. From my room down the hall, I heard her crying.

I walked quietly to her door, and stood on the edge of the rose-colored rug. She was laying on the edge of her bed, with its large dark spindled frame that had to be arranged at an angle just so it would fit in the room. The matching dresser took up most of one wall, and a giant, heavy-framed mirror hung over it. I could see her back, reflected in its surface. She was breathing deeply, her head tucked into her chest and arms wrapped tight around her sides.

“Mom?” She didn’t answer. “Mom, I invited some friends over tonight. They’ll be here soon.”

“Shit,” she said. She got up quickly and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She was running the water in the sink, and opening bathroom cabinets, banging their doors closed again. I heard her sharp footsteps across the tiles. The doorbell rang, and I went down the stairs to answer it. From the window on the landing, I could see Nicole’s parents pulling out of the driveway, dressed up for a new year’s party.

Nicole was there, and so was Gail, and ten minutes later, Seth and Erick arrived. They had a liter of Coke, potato chips, and a bag of M&Ms. We all crowded into the little t.v. room, Gail and Seth on the loveseat, and everyone else sprawled on the blue rug to watch a movie. I left my friends who were making rude noises and loud, stupid jokes to get glasses and ice for the Coke. The ice clinked, the floorboards creaked under my feet in the small kitchen, my friends turned the volume up on the television. I knew every noise was making its way up through the ceiling to where my mother was likely weeping.

She stayed upstairs all night in her room, maybe making a feeble attempt to watch Dick Clark, or maybe just listening to me and my friends. I knew she was trapped there, but I wanted her to stay out of sight. But just before midnight, she came down the stairs and went into the kitchen. She was still in her robe.

“Your mom is home?” asked Gail.

My mom appeared in the doorway. She had a stack of plastic cups and a bottle of champagne in her hands. “It’s almost 1990,” she said, and looked around the room at us. My friends were quiet. No one answered her. So she said, “Let’s have a toast.” She handed us each a cup, and popped open the champagne. She poured a small amount into every glass.

I sat there and just stared at her. Her hair was a mess. She looked tired. I didn’t want to know this lonely woman in her pink bathrobe. I had let others in to witness the look on her face, the same one I saw from the stairs when she thought I had long fallen asleep, and sat tucked in the corner of the couch listening to the same song over and over again. A tiny fragile thing, she was thinking of my father and where it all went wrong. The look that made me want to blow the roof off the place, shatter the windows and tear down the walls. Throw her out into the cold and walk the other way. The look that made me feel it was up to me to keep this place together. I wanted to wrap her up in a little package, bundle her tight and place her in a drawer or cupboard to hide her away where others couldn’t hurt her. Where she would be safe.

“Happy New Year, everyone,” she said, the tone of her voice strained into false gaiety. And then she disappeared upstairs again, leaving us to sip our champagne.

My friends’ parents pulled up shortly after midnight to pick them up. The house was quiet, and I made sure to sweep up the potato chip crumbs and stray M&Ms from the floor. My mother’s room was dark when I went upstairs, but I could heard her shifting positions under her covers as I got into my bed. I settled into place too, and drifted down into sleep.

The driveway

In winter, Gail’s mom would be outside in her red, knit hat, shoveling the driveway, even for only a quarter-inch of snow. She used a curved metal shovel to scrape along the driveway, getting right down to the surface, leaving it clean. Deep black against cold white, it clearly marked where our yard ended and theirs began.

In the summer, the driveway would be meticulously re-blacktopped and sealed. It ran in between our houses, hollyhocks and evergreen shrubs lining it on our side, and wild mint volunteering on their side, next to their side door. From my bedroom window, I looked across the driveway, to the mustard-yellow house. At night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I would watch her mother through their kitchen window, doing the dishes, answering the phone, getting a bowl of ice cream. I’d see the upstairs bathroom light flick on and then off again, and then her dad would lumber down the stairs, past the window at the landing. Her older brother’s window usually remained dark.

Gail’s own room was on the other side of the house, but I would wait to catch a glimpse of her through the window on the landing of the stairs, padding up to bed. Sometimes, she would hear me calling her name, and she would come to the window. We would whisper across the divide. "What are you doing? Nothing. Do you want to do something tomorrow? " We imagined we could string two cans together on a length of wire, or rig a little bell so that we would know when the other was calling.

One August night, we slept out on the driveway, watching for shooting stars. There were too many street lights drowning out the stars in the sky, so we watched cars pass by instead. Tucked inside our sleeping bags we played word games and told stories, naming the mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads. Somehow we managed to sleep all night on the hard surface and woke early when the sun made its way down between the two houses, and the chill of the morning dew made it impossible to doze. When we woke, we were different people. We were no longer friends, because we knew too much about each other.

I would still wait at my window each night, but she would never come. I would think about our plan to string a wire across the divide, a line straight from my heart to hers, now disconnected. I was casting without catching anything, slack and searching.

Later that summer, I woke one morning in my own bed to the sound of voices coming from the driveway below. It was Gail and two others I recognized, Ryan and Sarah. They were just waking up too, or perhaps they had been up all night. I stayed there under the covers and listened to them talk, their voices raspy with the moist air. I knew I had to get up, go to the bathroom, make my breakfast, ride my bike uptown and pretend it didn’t matter she had left me out. I had to pretend that I hardly noticed I didn’t exist anymore. I had to pretend that I was just another neighbor, living in the house next-door.

Men and women in Key West

A warm, ripe tomato dressed in vinegar and salt is always a surprise. The sharpness of the vinegar balances the seductive feel of the fruit on your tongue.

I remember the first time I ate one that way. A small dish of tomato slices rested on the table between Carlos and me, his Mamí and Papí and Mamí's boyfriend, Ernesto. I took a slice and passed the dish to Carlos.

Carlos had warned me about his grandparents' unconventional relationship the day before, as we made the drive from Miami to Key West where they lived. Ernesto and his wife had been their neighbors for many years. When his wife passed away, he moved into the house soon after. Since Papí was too old to be interested in sex, it didn't take long for Ernesto to move into Mamí's bedroom too. Papí didn't mind too much, because he liked the company. The old men would sit in the front room together, watching television all day. It was clear from Mamí's fiery red hair stacked high on her head and her deep belly laughs that she wore the pants in the family.

The two old men piled their plates high and silently worked their way through them, as Mamí peppered Carlos with questions in Spanish. She didn't speak very much English, and I had only a semester's worth of Spanish class, so I gave up trying to follow their conversation, though I could tell they were talking about me. I took small bites of salty chicken, rice and fried plantains and tried to act like I didn't know it, letting my eyes drift around the bright blue kitchen and out the window to where neighborhood kids were playing in the street.

My plate was clean except for the tomato. They weren't my favorite, but since I didn't want to be rude, I divided it into quarters with the edge of my fork and took a bite. "Mmmm. This is the best tomato I've ever eaten," I said to Carlos, who quickly translated my words to his grandmother. "Ella dice, es major tomate que en la vida ha tenido." She smiled and pushed the dish of tomatoes toward me.

From where I sit now, hundreds of miles and more than ten years later, I can look back across that table and see what I was blind to then: an old woman full of pride for her grandson. She was expecting that he would soon have a bride.

For me, it was a cheap vacation to Florida. I had been waiting for it all winter, weighing the cost of continuing to date Carlos against spending a week on the beach. Trudging through the Rochester snow and wind, a few extra weeks seemed an easy price to pay. When we got back, my plan was to wait a few more weeks for the Viennese Ball, and then break up with him.

He was good at making a show of being a good boyfriend, bringing me roses and buying me little presents all the time. But he lashed out when I returned his phone calls too slowly, or spent an evening out with friends. Our arguments were tiresome battles, and when I would try to leave, feeling exhausted and mentally bruised, he would refuse to let me go. He'd keep me hostage in his room until I broke down and lost my anger.

Earlier that day, after we checked into the hotel where we were staying, Carlos opend a bottle of wine. He sat on the edge of the bed holding a delicately wrapped box in his hands. It was a present for me. I untied the ribbon, letting it fall to the floor and slipped off the paper. A black lace teddy lay folded inside a cushion of red tissue paper. He wanted me to put it on.

I tried it on in the bathroom with the door locked. It was cheap and itchy, something I would have never bought for myself. The material gapped between my breasts and was loose where it should have been snug. I stood on the edge of the tub so I could see myself in the small mirror above the sink. I saw the reflection of another woman--the woman Carlos wished to see. A woman who adored him and would never leave him. A woman who made him respectable to his family. A woman who would walk out the door to make love to him. I lingered for a moment on the cold tile floor inhaling the smell of rusty water and Dial soap until Carlos knocked on the door.

Mamí and Carlos chatted in Spanish as she cleared the table. As her guests, we were not allowed to help. I watched her make after dinner coffee by placing grounds and water in a small, stove-top coffee pot and set it on the burner. A pan of milk warmed next to it. She took down bright yellow cups and saucers from the cupboard, poured in the milk, then the strong black coffee and set it before me. "Café con leche," she said.

It was rich, like drinking dessert. It was more milk than coffee, which seemed odd to me, my only experience being greasy cups of coffee and single serving creamers at Denny's. Normally, I wouldn't think to sip a hot drink on a warm night, but it seemed the perfect thing.

This world, with its good tomatoes and dark coffee was like a slightly brighter version of my own. It was a place of intimate families and neighbors, spicy language and strong women. Where men and women fought and loved with a greater intensity.

Mamí smiled at me and said something in Spanish I didn't fully understand. "She says you're pretty," said Carlos. I looked at him and he looked back expectantly. "Gracias," I whispered, and stared at the floor, embarrassed.

Friends and coffee

Let no man grumble when his friends fall off,
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze;
When your affairs come round, one way or t'other,
Go to the coffee-house, & take another.
- Byron, Don Juan

Things that happen here

Firecrackers break the silence
Loose dogs roam without collars
Bees fly over the laurel hedge
Strangers walk down the back alley and kick up dust
The neighbor waters her lawn
The bus roars down Duke and passes me by
The medical marijuana card holder smokes his weed
The dandelions sprout from the dry grass
The for sale signs go up
The old woman washes her driveway with water from the hose
The earthworm is killed by the bus tire
The chicken sits atop the fence
The orange cat sleeps in the flower bed
The woodpecker shrieks at the dawn
The old woman goes to bed at nine
Four teenage boys with a pipe wrench chase after a man
The homeless search the recycling for pop cans
The ice cream truck haunts the streets
The roofs grow moss.

berry-licious

Meriweather complete

You'll be pleased to know that I finished "For Meriweather" this morning. Check it out and tell me what you think. It was hard to decide on how to end it. I didn't want to be too obvious or too trite. Other possible endings could include:

1. She discovers he doesn't have a real package, but a pair of neuticals instead.
2. He's a she-male.
3. It's a set-up! He's a undercover cop trained to ferret out genital-grabbing freaks like her!

On and on and on and on...

I went to a former co-worker's bridal shower yesterday. She wore a pink dress and a tiara. We ate bad food (everything had meat in it! the salad had salami, the pasta had ground beef...so I ate a few celery stalks and a piece of bread...no one ever thinks of the gd vegetarians), we played stupid games (bridal bingo), and watched her open her HUUUGE stack of gifts (registry: Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, aka. nice, expensive stuff).

Ah, it sucked. It made me depressed and self-loathing, because I had to be there for three hours with all these people I didn't know, pretending to have fun and be interested. I hate it when I can't act like myself.

It also made me sad that my mom didn't offer to throw me a shower.

I have to admit, the one really sweet thing was watching her with all her aunties and her family friends. Many of the older women there had obviously watched her grow up. Of course the shower was stupid to me; I've only known her for a short time. But to all the other women there, the crappy salad and the silly games had meaning. Behind the gooing and gahing over dishware is a powerful ritual of a girl growing up and becoming an adult, becoming one of the clan.

I resist ceremony. I know I do. It's my own fault. And then I long for it at the most inappropriate time. It would have been nice to have my mom and some of her friends that have known me all my life, all together. It's continuity, it's relatedness, and that's a good thing. When I break with the past by choosing to do things in non-traditional ways, I shoot myself in the foot, in a way. Because,

Non-tradtional=individual=an invitation for isolation.

Traditional=groupthink=accepting the will of the pack.

I can't say that'd I'd do it all differently were I to do it all again, because I've never been so keen on herd mentality. I think I'd rather chew my own leg off than be chained to the group. But observing the way other women choose to live their lives does make me question my decisions, wonder about their impact down the road.

Oh yeah...and speaking of impact...I hope that I never gave my former co-worker the link to this blog.

Spider bite

Itchy.

Supernanny meets psycho beast child

Many readers of this blog will have heard me rant about my recent theory regarding the rash of horror films that feature kids gone bad. Really bad. Like channeling-the-devil bad. For example:

The Ring

Hide and Seek

Both of these films feature a supernatural kid bent on murder. There are others where children just plain scary:

Dark Water

The Others

The Sixth Sense

My theory is that there's a surge of these films because the modern cult of childhood has caused adults to fear their children. Kids have too much power. The idea that "we should do it for the children," or that we must "protect the children," and all of that kind of rhetoric that gets tossed around has led to a climate where we are afraid to do anything even close to the kind of discipline that was common even 20 years ago. Parents have become permissive to the extreme, for fear that they might otherwise damage their little one's confidence. And without any sense of boundaries, the kids are going insane. That fear is coming out in the films of recent: "Oh my god! My kid isn't just a brat, he's Satan incarnate!"

As E. pointed out, these film are different than films like "The Exorcist" or "Poltergeist" which also featured creepy kids. In those films, it wasn't the kids themselves that were bad, but some evil, outside force that had taken advantage of the child's innocence. In "The Exorcist," they don't kill Regan, they just punish the devil that's inhabiting her body. But in "The Ring," it's definately that little stringy-haired chick who needs some ass-whoopin'.

It's no accident that television shows like "Super Nanny" have emerged at the same time. I've caught an episode where a tiny British woman rolls up in a VW beetle to a house swarming with screaming, reckless kids. The parents are besides themselves. They can't figure out why their two year old won't take a bath! The five year old won't stop hitting the dog! Their teenage daughter has dyed her hair pink and stays out all night. Super Nanny spends a few days coaching mom and dad to get a backbone and all is put right.

I suppose it wouldn't be as exciting if when, in "The Ring," Naiomi Watts makes a copy of the evil video to save her son, instead, Super Nanny arrives and gives the creepy girl a time-out. But I sure would have enjoyed it. And I suppose it would have prevented the making of "The Ring 2."

F-U-double-nizzy

Okay...here's something for the pure entertainment value of it (thanks to A&E). Here's my previous post, "The bee-hive having," translated into gangsta-speak, courtesy of Gizoogle. It's some funny shiznit.


The bee-hive doggy stylin'
I love this letta fizzy our Pusha.

Pam n Tony,

On thursday, I tizzy tha whole hive apart again. I couldn't find tha queen but there was lots of brood n I'm sure she is in there lost in tha piles of bees that is present. I did makes killa split, so I unloaded a few more of those bees n brought them over ta mah place ta requeen like old skool shit.

My gangsta attempt ta requeen tha fiznirst split failed. The queen was releazed but killed yaba daba dizzle. Don't ask me why but I placed her in tha hizzy too soon n tha bees were still stressed while in transport n relocizzles. At $14.00 a queen, I'd say its sum-m sum-m I need ta git shot calla at . Drop it like its hot.

Yo hizzle shows no signs of want'n ta swarm. It is an extremely strong hive tizzle is ready fo` tha honey flow ta start. My next move will be ta add a honey snoopa in `bout 10 days. I have bootylicious expectations as everyth'n is primed n any swizzay tendancy has ended n shit.

A couple of guard bees slipped out of tha split hizzy that I was mobbin' ta load into tha ride n a bee nailed me in mah left pusha eyelid . Slap your mutha fuckin self. When I wizzy up this AM, it felt n looked like I had been in a barroom fizzay . Keep'n it gangsta dogg. My left side of mah fizzle was really swollen now pass the glock Anotha dogg house production.. T-H-to-tha-izzat happened at `bout 4 o'clock, n I hoped thiznat you weren't return'n soon. You M-to-tha-izzust have noticed sum-m sum-m was up . Snoop dogg is in this bitch.

I left tha feeda in tha entrance but they dizzay need ta be fed fo' rizeal. At least, not in any time soon hittin that booty. Talk ta you playa. Give me a cizzay if there is any questizzles

I am from

My friend E. sent me this wonderful poem exercise, which is essentially a form of mad-lib style poem making. I had to stop everything so I could write my version right away. If you want to see the template so you can write your own, go here

Here is my poem:

I am from Fry Daddy, from powder puffs wafting silvery talc powder and Prell shampoo.

I am from the doll’s house, with its pink, push-button stove and counters, laundry chutes, sloped ceilings plastered with Duran Duran posters where I wrote the names of my crushes on the bottom of my desk chair.

I am from the Sycamore, the Linden, and the Elmwood, from Cazenovia creek, that wound its way past the cemetery toward Burger King, stinking like a sewer, from Sinking Ponds and four-leaf clovers.

I am from Amazing Grace in the kitchen, and maple spread, from Ruthie and Lois and Floyd. Audrey and Bud. Always an auntie, never an aunt.

From “practice makes perfect,” as I trudged toward ice skating or swim practice, and “you have to call them, even if they don’t call you,” when my heart was broken and lonely.

I am from speaking tongues in an evangelical church, kicked out of catholic school for wearing sideburns, asking the Sunday school teacher to define a virgin, and being stoned to death while spreading the message of Christ.

I’m from Motown and Staten Island, from Sweden and Deutschland. Pickled pig’s feet and liverwurst with mustard, Foosh soup, and little chicken, little salad.

From the stubborn toddler pouring a beer in her mother’s shoe to get attention, the ambitious girl who sold homemade potholders for change, the young woman who escaped her younger siblings by going to church.

I am from refrigerator door, dry sink, battered shoebox.

Bee bother

More Meriweather

I've updated "Meriweather." (See below.) It's such fun to write. I'm still thinking about how to end it though.

For Meriweather

She just pretends to be clumsy, so she can grab mens' packages as she falls. She's done it twice today already, once at the coffee shop, where she fondled a young, brainy bike messenger type. The second time she was entering the elevator where she worked as a receptionist in a law firm. She spotted on the of senior partners in front of her and sprinted to catch him. The opportunity was too good to pass up. She often used speed as a guise--she was running too fast and slipped over the threshold, or she was flailing to catch the bus and bumped into some obstacle, usually a trash bin or potted plant.

The surprising thing was how differently each man would react. For example, the lawyer pretended not to notice. Or maybe he really didn't notice, his package shrivelled with disuse from too many long nights curled up with a law journal instad of his wife. Married men--she could tell by a quick glance at their left hand--seemed to enjoy it. They would always yell out something like, "Hey! Watch the goods!" with a wink and a snicker.

It was the men her own age who got mad. They'd shrink from her touch and scowl harshly yelling "Watch out!" or "What the hell?"

"The technique" as she had come to call it, was a method of quickly achieving a very intimate knowledge of a man. Whether one side was bigger than the other, or one side had been removed, or there were piercings--she knew something about that man that few others knew. It was a kind of power, because they didn't know she knew it. They would adjust themselves and walk off, never guessing that a complete stranger had peered into the depths of thier lives, like a ten year-old peers into a hampster cage, observing the way the hampster nibbles on pellets or runs on the wheel.

She considered trying the technique on women, but it seemed that groping a breast or pubic area wouldn't return the same kind of information. Maybe she was less objective, being a woman herself. Or maybe women were just less puzzling in general. You could already read so much about a woman from her handbag, her hairstyle, or the way she glanced (or didn't) at her reflection in a shop window. Men hid their secrets better. It was only after giving one a full, body-checking grab that he revealed himself.

There was one man, however, that she hadn't been able to get a read on. She'd see him frequently as she would walk to her bus stop after work. He must have worked downtown too, or perhaps lived nearby. He would always be wearing khakis and a non-descript, plaid button-down. It was the male uniform--what men wore when they really didn't care about clothes, but still believed what their mothers had taught them about looking decent in public. These were the same sort of men who happily stripped down to their boxer shorts at home. She see him everyday at just about the same spot. She would be walking past the newsstand, and he would be coming in the opposite direction.

One day, she saw him approaching and purposely lingered to look at the headlines. He was three steps away from her when she turned and caught her foot just-so under the newspaper rack. She made a wild gesture of swinging her arms wide to the side as if she were trying to catch her balance, but her oversized handbag swung out just enough to pull her over, depositing lipsticks and old receipts onto the sidewalk at the same moment she extended her arm and cupped her hand.

And then she had done it, but felt nothing. No spark of intuition, no glimpse of soul. Just spongy flesh that yielded to the side. He was silent, and looked straight ahead in a blind manner. He didn't even seem to notice she was there.

She scrambled up and made her standard apologies while collecting her purse. "Oh...I'm so sorry...two left feet..." and moved down the block. On the bus she closed her eyes and tried to get a sense of him. There was nothing. "Maybe he's an alien...a zombie...a pod-person," she wondered.

And so today, she decided she was going to do something she had never done before. She was going to try the technique for a second time on the same man. She knew she risked revealing herself because the clumsy act would only work once. But she couldn't free herself from thinking about him until she was certain there was something there, or he really was as blank as she first sensed him to be.

All day, she obsessed about how and when she would do it. She needed to position herself in a way that would produce the optimum read. It needed to be something that would give her the maximum amount of contact time and allow for the greatest surface area to be covered. Halfway through the day, she noticed she had been doodling penis shapes on the "While You Were Out" notepads she used to give phone messages to the lawyers. And then it came to her: she was going in from behind.

After work, she waited at the newstand once again nervously fingering El Pais and the New York Times, and looking for him out of the corner of her eye. When finally he passed, she counted to five and then took off after him, carefully keeping far enough behind him that she wouldn't be too obvious. He was wearing a grey t-shirt and shorts today, which seemed out of character for him. He was looking ruffled, a little grungy even. His pace was brisk, and she found herself taking two steps for every one of his.

They walked two blocks and then he started to slow down. His hand entered his pocket and he pulled out a ring of keys. She saw him sifting through for one and knew her moment had arrived. This was where he lived. In just a moment he would unlock the door to this squat, brick apartment building and dissapear. Her chance would be gone. So she sprinted and lept head-first, like a baseball player diving for a fly-ball, both arms outstretched, palms exposed and fingers wide. She grabbed hold of his crotch, closed her eyes tight, and clenched her grip.

And she felt nothing, except the scraping of her own elbow against the pavement and her ribs making a heavy thud as she hit the ground. She realized he was screaming in pain and writhing on the ground in front of her. Her hand was still between his legs. He kicked her in the head and she let go. She felt no pain, just blind confusion. Nothing. Still nothing.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he screamed. She could feel people staring at her as they walked by. She had just outed herself to the world, all for nothing.

She sat up, and looked at him. He was breathing hard and his shirt was stained near his shoulder where he had hit the concrete. He struggled to sit up, and faced her. He loomed in and she braced herself for a slap or punch. She deserved it. But all she felt was a wet touch on the lips.

He had kissed her? She opened her eyes and looked at him. And then she saw it, the thing she had been waiting for, the feeling she had been waiting to feel, a tiny object placed on the horizon, so small it was hardly there, and just a movement away from vanishing altogether. She found she was staring at herself. Like standing between two mirrors, where the reflections were endless, she had felt nothing because he had been thinking of her. He pulled away and looked hopefully at her.

"Ya'll are fuckin' crazy!" she heard someone say. They both turned and saw a grizzled man with a plastic bag full of empty soda cans watching them, one hand still searching the garbage can. She couldn't help but laugh, and was happy to see that though he was still holding himself, he was laughing too.

A meditation on Louis Armstrong

I
Louis would have felt awfully awkward at dinner with my family. Mom would have put spaghetti on the table--the kind with the big chunks of stewed tomatoes in the sauce--and his grin would have gone away. His mouth would no longer be like an ear of corn with big, juicy white kernels, but pursed lips like a pert lemon.

Maybe he would have liked mom's pork chops and apple sauce better. But if spaghetti was what we were having, then he better eat it. And on top of all that he'd have to make small talk with my dad, and try not to smack me across the table for staring at him--his big gold ring, his jaunty checked cap, cushy merino argyle socks so proudly ending in a pair of fine leather shoes.

"How nice, how nice..." he'd politely say in response to my dad's bad jokes, or my mom's attempts to make him eat more greasy garlic bread.

II
You are what you eat. As if teeth are corn kernels, and eyes are lemon leaves. I could eat myself outside in. Begin with my licorice hair and saffron eyelashes. Nibble off my potato chip fingernails and feast on my pudgy little vienna sausage fingers.

It's not an attractive fantasy. I'd rather my doorknobs become chocolate-covered almonds and my stairway transform into slabs of peanut brittle.

I'm such an American. A consumer. The world is more attractive as a place for me to gorge my appetites. Perhaps as an Iraqi suicide bomber, the idea of my lips as a sour lemon feels like a better idea. A bright, shiny fruit for God alone.

III
juicy fruit is gonna move ya
chews so soft it gets right through ya
juicy fruit the taste the taste the taste is gonna move ya

The worst of me

40+ hours a week and I arrive home with only the worst parts of me intact. The food hoarder, beer guzzler, bitch, sloth, whiney parts. The better parts get spent uselessly on clients and co-workers, coffee runs, and e-mails.

I walk in the door and my priorities are drink, shit, eat, sleep, leave me alone. Leave me the fuck alone.

I thought this job would be better. It is. But I'm still exhausted. I'm still unable to cope, addicted to caffine and alcohol, craving space from telephones, friends, and family.

It's not them. It's me. I've sold my brain to someone else for the past 10 hours and I just got it back! I want to keep it to myself before I have to consider their thirst, hunger, exhaustion, sickness, whatever it is they want to me to take care of. And there are animals, and mail, and unanswered phone calls, and oh yeah, better exercise so I don't get fat (I'm getting fatter every day, fat ass).

I spend time with friends and I barely hear what they say because I'm thinking I only have two hours and then need to go back to laundry, groceries, oil change, cat food, drain cleaner, garbage. I eat food and forget I'm chewing. My mouth is full and I taste nothing. The only time I am truely happy is tucked in bed, the lights still on and slightly drowsy, I have seven blissful hours of nothing in front of me with space from my life, my fat body, my dissapointment.

The bee-hive having

I love this letter from our "bee-keeper"...

Pam and Tony,

On thursday, I took the whole hive apart again. I couldn't find the queen but there was lots of brood and I'm sure she is in there lost in the piles of bees that are present. I did make another split, so I unloaded a few more of those bees and brought them over to my place to requeen.

My earlier attempt to requeen the first split failed. The queen was released but killed. Don't ask me why but I placed her in the hive too soon and the bees were still stressed while in transport and relocation. At $14.00 a queen, I'd say its something I need to get better at.

Your hive shows no signs of wanting to swarm. It is an extremely strong hive that is ready for the honey flow to start. My next move will be to add a honey super in about 10 days. I have great expectations as everything is primed and any swarm tendancy has ended.

A couple of guard bees slipped out of the split hive that I was trying to load into the car and a bee nailed me in my left lower eyelid. When I woke up this AM, it felt and looked like I had been in a barroom fight. My left side of my face was really swollen. That happened at about 4 o'clock, and I hoped that you weren't returning soon. You must have noticed something was up.

I left the feeder in the entrance but they don't need to be fed. At least, not in any time soon. Talk to you later. Give me a call if there are any questions......Thomas