Owl Be Seein' You

josieportillo:

Sorry I made the Potter Party a bit confusing, but I’m excited so many people are going, right? And I promise that this time I won’t laugh at any highly inappropriate moments! No crying boyfriend to laugh at this time around.

Ever since I was little and a stadium burned down in the middle of a fireworks show we were watching, I have jumped at the sound of fireworks. I was too young to remember anything beyond getting up out of our chairs and running for our car as fast as we could, and then looking back at the growing flame as we tried to remain calm while waiting to get out of the parking lot.

But it was enough to make me cry all the way through a fourth of July celebration at the Hollywood Bowl a year or so after, until a man behind us finally gave me his glow-in-the-dark wand, hoping it would make me feel better as we filed out at the end of the evening.

I still jump at the sound of fireworks, which is why I’m glad Tyler spends his Independence Days at home with his mom so she doesn’t get frightened by all of the neighbors lighting fireworks illegally in the neighborhood. She may not be frightened with us here, but I can’t help feeling like I’m in the middle of a war zone…and glad I’m not out in the midst of it.

Tyler and I have almost decided for sure after watching Beginners tonight that we want a Jack Russell… when we grow up.

(via deliriousmuch)

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.” —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

(via eagleserum)

“Feral hamsters are not pets. They mean business.” —David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (a.k.a. the summer tome that I can’t put down but still might take me the entire summer to read)

This summer…I went to Paris…in the 1920s…and hung out with Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso. You should go, too!

How can anyone think this guy is a douchebag?

“Frankenstein” by Edward Field

The monster has escaped from the dungeon
where he was kept by the Baron,
who made him with knobs sticking out from each side of his
neck
where the head was attached to the body
and stitching all over
where parts of cadavers were sewed together.

He is pursued by the ignorant villagers,
who think he is evil and dangerous because he is ugly
and makes ugly noises.
They wave firebrands at him and cudgels and rakes,
but he escapes and comes to the thatched cottage
of an old blind man playing on the violin Mendelssohn’s “Spring
Song.”

Hearing him approach, the blind man welcomes him:
“Come in, my friend,” and takes him by the arm.
“You must be weary,” and sits him down inside the house.
For the blind man has long dreamed of having a friend
to share his lonely life.

The monster has never known kindness-the Baron was cruel-
but somehow he is able to accept it now,
and he really has no instincts to harm the old man,
for in spite of his awful looks he has a tender heart:
Who knows what cadaver that part of him came from?

The old man seats him at table, offers him bread,
and says, “Eat, my friend.” The monster
rears back roaring in terror.
“No, my friend, it is good. Eat-gooood”
and the old man shows him how to eat,
and reassured, the monster eats
and says, “Eat-gooood,”
trying out the words and finding them good too.

The old man offers him a glass of wine,
“Drink, my friend. Drink-goood.”
The monster drinks, slurping horribly, and says,
“Drink-goood,” in his deep nutty voice
and smiles maybe for the first time in his life.

Then the blind man puts a cigar in the monster’s mouth
and lights a large wooden match that flares up in his face.
The monster, remembering the torches of the villagers,
recoils, grunting in terror.
“No, my friend, smoke-goood,”
and the old man demonstrates with his own cigar.
The monster takes a tentative puff
and smiles hugely, saying, “Smoke-goood,”
and sits back like a banker, grunting and puffing.

Now the old man plays Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” on the
violin
while tears come into our dear monster’s eyes
as he thinks of the stones of the mob, the pleasures of mealtime,
the magic new words he has learned
and above all of the friend he has found.

It is just as well that he is unaware-
being simple enough to believe only in the present-
that the mob will find him and pursue him
for the rest of his short unnatural life,
until trapped at the whirlpool’s edge
he plunges to his death.

“Siren” by Robert Hass

Here is the poem I meant to write
But didn’t
Because you walked into my study
Without any clothes on.

I had just been thinking of how the Aegean sun
Must have lit up the faces of Troy’s fallen heroes
When you walked into my study
Without any clothes on—

Walked in and stood there,
Holding a glass of sherry
Over your left breast,
Which looked soft and firm as Brie.

Your tone of voice this morning
Should have warned me
That you might walk into my study
Without any clothes on.

I should have lashed myself to my chair
And stoppered my ears with wax.
But I forgot.
And I’m glad I forgot

Because when you walked into my study
Without any clothes on
You sang sweetly, sang sweetly,
And I died nobly, like a man.

“Siren Song” by Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

I finally got to see Tyler robbing trains in an old family home video the other day. This is me as a younger, more schizophrenic cowgirl (note the shoes), but I think we could have made a good team on the plains through the killer combination of his threatening drawl and my pacifist superpower ability to bring cultures together, not to mention those spiffy red overalls.