NEW BLOG

 I'VE MOVED TO TUMBLR @ PRECIOUS LITTLE LAMB PIT

here and there

christmas in tennessee and georgia

scents for xmas survival

if you want to smell like the sexiest campfire at the party

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if you want to feel like the highest hollyhock on the stem. (wear as perfume when you trip n spill yr martini all over yr sweater)

on the last hot day we piled into tamara’s jeep and drove down south to the carnival. a massive ferris wheel growing larger and larger as we neared the parking lot. i sat in the back seat next to L and S. our elbows knocking.  a bottle of rum sweating between L’s legs. she took a sip, tossed in a few salted peanuts, then passed it to S. the plastic rim smeared with two different shades of lipstick. i smelled my hair, which smelled like their perfume. 

a moonless night. we snuck in, climbing through a hole in the chain link fence. outside the funhouse, tamara said catch me if you can. this was no ordinary maze but a labyrinth of mirrors, darkened corners, secret passageways, and trap doors.  L and S trailed after her while i waited by the front flap watching two kids score big at skeeball. both former lovers of tamara, L and S saw no humor in their getting lost, neither finding her. tamara emerged laughing, head titled back. her tight denim jacket made crunching sounds when she walked. in the fortune tellers tent, i sat on an elaborately embroidered silk cushion. the room lined with velvet tapestries, hazy from half-burnt champaka.  she read the stars, not crystal balls: as an aquarius you must do what you need instead of focusing on others.  i had hoped for more exotic advice, but nodded my head yes.

standing in a grassless patch of dirt, tamara threw a softball over and over, hitting bullseye every time, sending the clown sitting atop plunging into his tank. she laughed too loud. her glee at winning embarrassing everyone but her.  we walked on, past carts of cotton candy and teenagers kissing in between sips of cherry slurpees; past a man on a motorcycle riding round a metal cage shaped like a giant egg. the heady smell of his exhaust hung in the air. i breathed deep. tamara walked next to me, her arms swinging loosely beside her body. relaxed. it was not always so easy to feel so good. L handed me a bag of tortilla chips crusted with cinnamon and sugar. her fingers sticky on my wrist: look. amateur fireworks, shot up from the sand, shuddering above the ferris wheel, reflected back by the water. purple light falling over us all. i wanted to take a picture but instead just looked. 

for once i fell asleep within minutes of shutting my bedroom door.

sky sapped of light by 5pm. no need for overhead fans. we pull fat cotton quilts from closet shelves, shake out the moths. on the fire escape, we sip hot spiked cider while the cat with the tuxedo face noses through the trash. thick slices of ginger bread sweetens our breath. in bed, we rub noses, toes. through the parted curtains, i can see the first snow soft on the mountaintops. a big, fat moon even if the stars are blown out by the streetlights.

tuesday night

blah blah i have a body 

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wine wine wine do yer stuff

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yum

i don’t sleep more than six hours in three days. i read summer of hate all night. i watch documentaries about football players and their blown bodies. mike webster, old iron flesh, so fucked up he had to taze himself in the thigh every night to sleep. at dawn i eat homemade almond cookies, crumbs stuck to my lotioned chest. i must look into the mirror at least once a day or  else i forget that it is me inside this body. in the morning i yell at M for not wanting to talk about books, or the weather, or anything at all. i want to talk through time, its true. of course i want to be good but it is hard not to act like a shameless cunt when a woman in a BMW honks at me for pedaling too slow on my bike. in times of economic crises, you must be very happy that you have a boss, even if they call on yr day off can you cover tonight’s shift for tiffany? i always say yes. if i could stuff my duffle bag and steal away for a few weeks, sob alone in a strange bed, amongst the crush of pine trees, i could remember how to be nice. if i could sleep at night, i could dream. it might all be different.

sunglasses smudged with rain. the reek of wet concrete sends me. glazed roads. girls in galoshes. their frizzy hair pulled into discreet ponytails, unruly in the breeze. on the stoop i do not think about palliatives for ingrown hairs or john kerry’s botox-blown mug staring up at me from every riven sheet of newspaper: we can’t turn a blind eye on evil deeds even if we are fatigued. but i do. lost in my boxy sweater, buttoned to the neck, my pink umbrella spread, high and haughty against the wash of grey.

before it gets too cold

manhattan beach

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KEYSTONE XL: THE ART OF NGO DISCOURSE

what i've been reading...

May 68 and Its Afterlives by Kristin Ross 

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 LIES-A journal of Materialist Feminism 

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Okay, Okay by Diana Hamilton

palos verdes. peninsula in the fog. brian disappears behind a oily black boulder, climbs to the jagged top, sits legs crossed, eyes closed. i must squint to make out his form in the viewfinder; his cream t-shirt almost indistinguishable from the sky so full of weak white light. M overturns pebbles with the edge of his black boot, scours the sand-less beach for driftwood, tangles of thorns, bleached branches we bend into makeshift crowns. we pose and preen in front of the camera. we wade in the water, crowns slipping, falling into the foam. we watch for the quick swish of a baby jellyfish, sea snakes twice as poisonous as river moccasins, or so brian says. when i slip on a rock, M catches me, steers me back to shore, two fingers wrapped around my wrist. we unfold a blue quilt on a hillside of sage scrub. no need for shade. the breeze blows our cloth napkins away. bean sprouts stuck between our teeth. salt and vinegar chips. i wipe potato grease on my dress. nipples poking through the thin, red paisley print fabric. i snap pictures of brian laying legs akimbo, hands folded, hidden behind his head. “don’t,” he says. i click, click, click. the sun sinks low, brushing the horizon, teasing it. this image is all we get: the fog rolls down from the hills, snuffing the highways.

an interesting article about the funding of keystone opposition groups like 350.org, etc

The Keystone XL campaign, stage managed to appear grassroots while completely avoiding grassroots direction and controlled by massive foundation funding (the largest philanthropic foundations in the US now funnel their money through the Tides Foundation– and Tides has managed to garner complete control of the funded anti-tar sands movement on both sides of the border, while Rockefeller is the primary millions of dollars funder for 350.org) is now wielded by power to keep us busy. [....] 

Hydraulic Fracturing, or “fracking,” has become so widespread it even threatens to shadow tar sands– and given that the climate is planetary and knows no nation, fracking is now competing with tar sands around fossil fuel extraction, and the resultant emission damage as well as fossil fuel expansion. There’s a part of this story you likely don’t know, and people like Bill McKibben [of 350.org]– as well as Canadian public figure Tzeporah Berman– (who runs an outfit that legally exists as a project of the Tides Foundation called the North American Tar Sands Coalition, a secret outfit that determines both strategy and funding for literally dozens of environmental NGO’s and community groups across North America) would prefer it stays that way.Many of the largest foundations now have a policy that they simply do not spend money opposing natural gas, even the natural gas that is fracked. [....]It goes deeper than that; First Nations who have campaigned against tar sands pipelines and development in Western Canada can not receive funding if they also publicly state opposition to natural gas/fracking pipelines– even when there is reason to believe that the gas feeds the construction of tar sands.

READ MORE from "The Problem with Bill McKibben and John Kerry," by Macdonald Stainsby in Counterpunch.

end of summer

palos verdes, torrance, long beach