can you read?

to palin's credit, this is a classic 'gotcha' journalism move. for shame madame couric. for shame.

fugazi, long division

tickle of depression

sat out in the autumn sun on my lunchbreak today which was a beautiful thing (bonus: mm driveby) except for the fact that i'm reading an incredibly disturbing book about invented illnesses and the egregious medical marketing techniques used to promote cure of said illnesses except that often the word 'cure' is misleading at best, utterly false at worst.

so anyway, that's not enough to ruin someone's day. but that combined with the idea of drinking rocket fuel is. plus that and the idea of the regulatory agency (the FDA of course) set-up to protect us from the dangers of say, BPA, being utterly useless could start to tug at your mood. (particularly since the FDA's lack of regulation in the pharmaceutical industry is featured in the book i'm currently reading).

but then reading about pigs being abused and raped in factory farms. yep, that'll do it. all these things congeal and harden and leave me a little glum. what kind of a freaking place is this?

update: mm just informed me about cannabalistic polar bears. mood not improved.

ghost dog

max has been dead for 3 months now and it still isn't any easier. the grief has the same force and power. it pulls us under. i suppose the only thing you could point to as a means of indicating progress is that the grief is more familiar.

For our anniversary I made mm a book about max but rather than neutralize the sensations it's merely put contemplating him at our fingertips. There he is on the trip to Boston. There he is as a pup. There he is in the field in Western Mass.

also, on saturday we baby-sat for B & C (4 and 2, respectively) at our house. The question "Where is max?" arose immediately. They knew he died already of course but where was he? What happened to him? There he is, we said, in that box on the mantle. They inspected his ashes not fully certain what to make of our allegation that the ashes were indeed max.

That night, I dreamt of Maxwell running up to our back door. There he was bounding across the backyard, tail wagging. I couldn't believe it. (When he was actually inside it became clear that it was actually a different dog). At or about the same time, Margaret awoke to find herself ripping Max's dog tag off the chain on her neck (which she's worn for months now). She swore to wear it for a very long time and there she is involuntarily tearing it off as I'm dreaming of him (re)visiting us.

Is it max? Somehow reaching us from the golden field where he now runs, saying: that's it guys. time to move on.

to be determined...

the (anniversary) wknd in thumbnail sketch

saturday we left seattle after a good night of drinking and a great breakfast (thanks blake and michelle). headed toward snoqualamie. had cherry pie at diner from twin peaks. drove to the falls. long drive to winthrop from there. we drove past and then returned to first Stafford poem ("time for serenity anyone") just outside Pateros on state road 20. decided to alternate reading them aloud. i went first. back in car, twelve minutes later we found the next one ("from the wild people"). marg read as a nearby helicopter dropped water on what looked like a controlled burn.

we drove along the methow river, which looked like this:



found our way to our cabin and went to dinner in nearby town of winthrop. fields aswarm w/ feeding deer.

the next am, the birds were like television. we found poem 3 ("ask me") right there in downtown winthrop. you'd never know it was there but it was, quietly sitting, waiting, a perfect little provocation.

a couple hours later we were on top of horses, riding up a steep ridge. it felt steep to me anyway. my heart thundered and was later quieted by IPA. ended up back in winthrop for dinner where we discussed the merits of provocation, the necessity of idealism, and the disbelief that we somehow engulfed a whole pizza.

next morning on way out we could not find next poem. had momentary urging to drive on but we stuck it out and turned around. parked at a trailhead and walked down a mountain path. found it ("where we are") beside a suspension bridge.



the last one was way up, at washington pass. when we got there the road was closed.
we parked the car and walked around the obstacle and headed toward where the poem must be. it was most difficult to find and most rewarding. "a valley like this".

we got in car and made the long drive home...

some pix are here

be a person here

mm has long been a fan of william stafford. She and i are approaching our 8 yr anniversary and this wknd, in honor of this glorious event, we are going on a pilgrimage to WA, to track down his methow river signs

here is one of them:


Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

- William Stafford

the future

on saturday the ny times wondered about the approaching nba season, in particular to the advent of greg oden and what he means to the trailblazers. nice to see some love in the press for portland, and to see shoutouts to lamarcus aldridge, travis outlaw, and martell webster. brandon roy praise is to be expected. interesting that oden is technically playing his rookie year this yr. also interesting that the playoffs seem to be a given.

opportunity

it's been a busy few wks, what w/ guests in town for every single wknd in august, and me and mm both battling colds and with various projects in various states and stages of being. i'll attempt to speak to them in the coming days but for now just enjoy this pic of the mars rover opportunity finally climbing out of the victoria crater. onward!