Ships Sail But I Fly

That childhood deception rewrote synapses.

shipssail — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:43:24 +0000

The time that

I erased your name

and rewrote it more neatly

but spelled it wrong

inverting

second syllable.

Your mom was surprised

that you’d make

that kind of mistake.

City Lights

shipssail — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:25:03 +0000

Tonight I am spent. Emerging from underground I struggle to shake free from my day. And try to speak real words after hours of perfunctory call and response.

I walk blocks to buy high heels. Passing lit up storefronts and holiday-styled windows. I ascend an escalator and am floating above a Starbucks interior.

I make phone calls for moral support and then try on the first pair I see. They fit well, but I spend minutes examining my ankles in the mirror. Trying to look at them from front, side, back, front again. They seem to be growing in front of me.

I take the shoes off and try on another, immediately more painful pair. I attempt to stand on one for a split second, it’s like I’ve been burned- teetering on a red hot toothpick. Back to the first pair, I return to the shoe mirror.

A woman sitting nearby laughs out loud. She’s alone; is she laughing at me? I look over my shoulder. “I never buy high heels,” I say somewhat defensively. But she’s speaking and struggling with a boot. “It went on so easily,” she mumbles, and grapples with it, removing it.

I hurry to an opposite corner of the shoe department. Moments pass. The boot woman is gone and I take her seat. I need to try the shoes on one more time. I need to see the ankles. Possessed by this quest for wedding appropriate footwear, I turn in circles in front of the mirror. Convinced – I hand over cash, make an exit, and walk three blocks in the wrong direction.

I go home.

Makes My Heart Stop

shipssail — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:29:59 +0000

Something about this image does. There’s movement in it. My breath gets held. I can’t imagine making drawings like this- it’s so beautiful. Inspiring.

By Charlie Harper via Carson Ellis

Maurice Sendak- Curmudgeon

shipssail — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:04:12 +0000

I love the nytimes. I like how they can call Maurice Sendak a gnome in the course of an average sentence. I always find the most interesting things in their archives. Maurice Sendak the man was certainly a mystery to me until very recently. I didn’t even know that he was alive anymore until I started reading annoyed sounding sound bytes of his as they appeared in newspaper headlines, and web clips. The light gets brighter:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/arts/design/10sendak.html

Good to know.

Jonathan Safran Foer on Not Eating Animals

shipssail — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:33:40 +0000

After reading about this in the NYtimes Magazine the Globe and Mail and the New Yorker, and having my stomach flipped over ten times each time I read about it I ask “HOW CAN I EAT MEAT?” Answering “I REALLY DON’T KNOW.” JSF is really smart about it, repeats a lot of points I’ve thought of myself. Whether to eat meat or not is a personal decision and for me it seems to just deeply go against my better instincts, logic, reason, feelings.

Going to try harder. Be more discerning. Lessen meaty intake.