Ræmboʊ Come Home

He's 16 pounds and about two years old, he's all boy, and the dog is afraid of him.

He's The Cat Formerly Known as Rambo. And he's the newest addition to my home.

The daughter chose him for his big saucer eyes, which aren't well captured in this photo. Those eyes make him appear permanently startled, a state of mind that is good preparation for my household.

Within an hour of his homecoming, he was already tired of the little basement office where we'd put him and was freely exploring the house. He's absolutely at his ease now.

There was one glitch. Confronted with a pristine pan of highest-quality, odor- and dust-free, processed-wheat kitty litter (the latest thing in kitty products), Rambo tucked in and began eating like there was no tomorrow. When I brought it upstairs, the dog began eating it. This necessitated still another trip to the pet store (where they are starting to have my frequent buyer card number memorized) to buy something that would read as unmistakeably appropriate to poop in and inappropriate for all other uses. Now all is, um, going well.

The only other thing holding me back from total enthusiasm when we brought him home was the cat's name. I mean who ever heard of a cat named Rambo?

Okay, a lot of people who ride cabs in West Palm Beach.

But seriously. Whether he earned the name from his hunky girth or from his crazy eyes, how was this cat going to fit into my neuraesthenic, literary, and altogether unathletic household?

My generous and knowledgeable bliend Grammaticus came up with the solution: change the spelling, save the cat's dignity.

So Rimbaud, welcome home.

five good things

I have Liz at be present, be here to thank for this lovely, simple, life-affirming meme.









Five Good Things About Today

1. Pancakes with lemon curd, Stuart's newest innovation

2. Saw the Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian

3. Julia's Empanadas for dinner

4. Watched Harry Potter 2 on DVD with my daughter

5. My basement cleaning project, which has been going on for three weeks and has resulted in boxes and boxes of give-away, as well as bags and bags of trash, is finally yielding new workspace and maybe even play space for me and Mona.

Okay. Now it's your turn.

Hypermiling

Here's a movement whose moment has arrived--at precisely the speed limit.

It's called hypermiling, and it uses techniques that tend to maintain constant speeds and eliminate braking. Hypermiling maximizes your mileage with potentially dramatic fuel and cost savings. There is some evidence (a little quirky) that it could actually break up traffic logjams, too.

And all you have to do is drive like me.

For years I have driven passengers crazy with my tendency to let my foot drift off the accelerator, my slow-rolling stops, and my overall lack of speed. I haven't done it precisely on purpose; I daydream a bit, you might say.

But today I consciously drove the hypermiling path, and I am here to say that it takes some getting used to, but is a very pleasant way to game the road. Since I drive in stop-and-go city conditions, it's more than a little hard to break the habit of scooting back and forth between the accelerator and brake, but maybe by the end of the week I'll have the hang of it.

And I might be driving more safely, I think. What with all that looking around to see who's speeding, who's stopping, and who is in between.

I've been getting about 18 in the city, and at $50 a fill-up, I'd sure like to gain seven miles or so per gallon. Fingers crossed.

i'm one to talk...

...or hadn't you noticed?

After posting this tasteless screed, I am hardly the first person you'd expect to take anyone else to task for their own lapses, but this is no ordinary person, this is David Byrne.

Brilliant artist, conceptual genius, insomniac demon of the lymphatic shadow of the heart. Oh, and, formerly known as the lead singer of the Talking Heads.

The man who gave us the phrases "stop making sense" (overused) and "making flippy floppy" (underrated).

Someone needs to kick him to the curb and show him where the pooper bags are kept. (Okay, so I have been spending too much time with Cobber, so what?)

For a long time I have been a fan of Byrne's web site, and especially his peripatetic and always surprising journal, even if he doesn't accept comments (a sin and a lost opportunity, even in a celebrity blog. He doesn't have to read them, for cripes's sake).

Byrne travels a lot, and we armchair surfers get to benefit from his observations. Recently he was in London, and got to meet all sorts of people you and I never will. Plus he saw stuff any one of us might, but he really saw it. Which I have to admit you and I never might. Right?

Lately, although I admit the art form dictates that much of any bloggist's blogorrhea be about him/herself (and I am Exhibit A), Byrne's entries have carried a distinctly plummier, smarmier, name-dropping tone, especially when delivered with the occasional moue of apologetic self-deprecation.

Could this be because he crossed the Big Pond for a visit? (Crossed back, to be exact, though if his parents had not crossed the first time, he'd possibly be helping his native state of Scotland work its way toward independence right now).

I mean what else is a longtime-fan-firsttime-stalker to make of...

...this:

"CS and I have dinner by ourselves at a hip restaurant where she is spotted by another former gallerist who later says he was dying to introduce her to Lucien Freud, who was also dining there."

Or this:

"...We are sitting next to a largish couple from Northern Ireland who, to be honest, don’t seem to belong in such a groovy temple. (Here I go applying my own class evaluation.) He’s an IT functionary in town for business meetings and she’s riding on the expense account tab, or so I would guess. They look like northerners on holiday in the big city, but they mention that they’re staying next door at the Ritz, which is more than an ordinary branch manager could afford."

And, finally, this:

"They explain some of the local dishes — Jersey Royals are a miniscule type of potato only available at select times of year. Either from a glass of wine or something medical the woman has turned bright red — all over, face, neck, arms — but they’re so unassuming and easygoing and lacking all pretense that her redness doesn’t register after a minute or two."

How nice of you to notice that you hadn't noticed.

David, we hardly knew ye.

Now I know what you're thinking. David Byrne himself has ever professed a kind of self-advertising humility in album titles like More Songs About Buildings and Food and art installations like Furnishing the Self--Upholstering the Soul. So of course it's only fitting he should lapse into a litany of gee-whiz-I-can't-believe-this-is-my-life brags when he goes out there.

But who the F is CS, and Y does DB have to be so CKR-TF about her?

(If you can read this, congratulations, you either txtmssg 2 mch or loved William Steig as a kid)

Never mind. At the end of the day, Byrne knows we still love him. And if I want to read a blog that isn't self-aggrandizing, I'll be waiting a long time.

But I can't help wondering what my posting style would be like if I emulated David Byrne's:

"Took MS to PHES today. Her big poster installation was due and we'd been putting the finishing touches to it during breakfast. It was a map of the State of Massachusetts for her class's Spring Final (we'll go on to the DC Public Schools Biennale and perhaps onto Bellagio's Internationale if this works out).

Aspects of the work represent a real departure for her: some of the areas of the poster were done in traditional poster paints, some in colored pencil. I added my own touch, adhering a foam sticky-flower to the location on the map where her grandparents live, while MS invoked Boston's undersung Jewish heritage by drawing a Mogen David to indicate the state capital. That this was an inadvertent gesture only adds to its charm, I think.

Had dinner last night with SH and, of course, MS, who goes with me virtually everywhere. We went to that new dog-friendly place on Newton Street off 14th, Chez S. Very nice place, homecooked-style food (mostly locally grown, courtesy of Star Hollow Farm), and served in a recently redone rowhouse dining room with cheerful orange walls and passably good art and photog on the walls. A bit of a mish-mosh, but what can you do when you want to just chill out and eat with your peeps and dawgs?

The conversation revolved around the air conditioning's condensation pump, which has seen its last days. A repairman had been scheduled for that day and hadn't shown. Now there's lots more water in the basement to worry about. SH wanted to know whether I'd chewed out the repair place for their no-show. I told SH it interfered with my creative mojo to chase down servicepeople, and he just laughed in that special way that seems to say, "Well, it interferes with my creative mojo to have to work a regular day, why don't we change places?"

MS kindly refrained from humming at the table. CS and SS lay at our feet, contented not to have to worry about mojo, creative or otherwise.

Today I'm off to get the car re-registered (I hope) and then wait for the condensation pump. Ohg, and SH has drilled drainage holes in my new planters, so I have that project to look forward to. I am also thinking of getting a new address book, or perhaps making a notebook with blank pages for addresses and calling it, "Address Book."

This has probably been attempted, but perhaps I can give it a fresh approach.

[image by Jenny Holzer]

Poetry Thursday: To Stuart

To Stuart

(after Marvin Bell's "To Dorothy")

You don't love me, exactly.
you love me inexactly.
You let my toad lilies grow
by the air conditioning unit and the
recyclables pile by the door.
And sometimes,
in the ever-more-personal quiet
of our daily nights,
you even tell me it's all right.

You said it yourself, and it seemed true:
"I try to improve things."
But it's not true. Without you,
things would be more than unimproved.
The fans wouldn't turn, nor the kitchen be a "wow."
The air wouldn't move and the tree wouldn't grow.
Someone else would have to hang the shelves.
Without you,
I would have to ask the unanswering
morning
to let me sleep.

Cobber

We adopted him two weeks ago from the Washington Animal Rescue League.

He's an Australian Shepherd and his name is Aussie slang for "pal."

He housetrained in a week and is now working his way through our collection of bedroom slippers.

A very traditional guy.

He rocks.

And no, it's not too late to donate to WARL's annual Mutts Strut through my secure, guaranteed low-hassle donation page.

(Do not worry, CC, I am still a cat person at heart).

All Souls' Day

The feast of little goblins
is over again. Your own
was a pirate, her small hat
askew. And you
are everywhere
absent, as ever. and I
live without you
just this side
of that door.

A man
in the suburbs
where we went
trick or treating
threw candy from
his second story
window. "Are you
brave? Are you brave?"
He asked
the children.

Of course they said yes.
Of course they couldn't know.

Wordless, I can't
everywhere
wordless
without you.
I never can. Never can
live. I live.

Without you,
a lot of things
make me angry at once.
I can't seem to stay
where I should be, in this
velvet darkness, at the edge
of a safe lawn
on a safe street, waiting
for our daughter to return
with her treats.

When you say you are brave
you get candy. That is still
what we have to believe.

Counting Gargoyles

Local literati Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole launched the unbelievable 50th issue of Gargoyle magazine a couple of weeks ago, with a gorgeous cover by Colin Winterbottom (who coincidentally did the cover for my novel Borrowed Light).

The important thing to know, for me anyway, was that this issue of the magazine contains what I consider to be the best story ever written by R. Gilad Schamess, my first husband (how I hate that phrase, and all the history that attends to it). The story is called "Lucky," and it is also readable online here:

Lucky
by R. Gilad Schamess
1965-2000

They kept the luck they found in ledgers. Making it their business, their noses into everything.

There was the car that wouldn't start that kept a family safe from black ice on the highway and twenty-eight deaths, so much twisted metal.

There was the drycleaner's number misprinted in an advertisement that brought together two strangers who fell in love and married.

There was the clumsy painter who knocked a hole in the plaster of the baby's new room, revealing a wasps' nest built in the wall.

There were lottery tickets and gambling sprees and answers to important questions guessed out of the blue and old coins found in attics; they were entered in columns and dated and totaled and covered by the turning of a page.

She kept no food in the house except spices, and she brought home every day what they needed and they ate it all as if there were no dog begging or as if they were preparing to be gone for a long time.

He came home with the papers folded under his arm and more stuffed into his briefcase and some days with magazines in a bag.

They finished the meal and he looked for stories of luck, reading aloud when he found them, and she kept the books.

There were coins in the attic and lottery tickets and lightning striking out of a clear sky the exact spot a man had stood just one second before; he had moved when another man called his name. The other man did not know him but a man with the same name who looked like him.

There were the brothers adopted by different families who married and moved from their homes to the same town to the same neighborhood to meet when their children became friends.

There were hunches to stay in and hunches to go out and to not board that plane and to buy or sell that stock and to look under that cabinet and to try a new route home.

They went out on weekends, driving past where they had left off the last time, with clipboards and the forms they had made and favorite pens, and they found luck that way among houses showing nothing from the outside.

They kept track in ledgers.

She was home earlier and had the dinner ready. He brought the papers and, when they were new, the magazines. When they climbed into bed there were only spices left and the fresh page covering the old.

"We are lucky," they whispered at night. Not remembering how they met, they whispered.

"Lucky. Lucky." Huddled in the dark, only spices in the kitchen, the papers outside in the trash with the clean bones.

-fin-

(with gratitude to Stuart for putting up with my gargoyles, as I put up with his).

categories: life love words