the dance

i think it must be the day of the robin. they all seem to have come out to play today. calling, singing, dancing with each other. stopping for a drink from a leaf still on the ground...fresh from the warm spring rain that has just stopped long enough for me to step outside. i have seen a redheaded woodpecker, a spotted woodpecker, a kingfisher or two and at least one band of chickadees. there is also a pair of cardinals out today. the male was out in the early afternoon. his bright red standing out in brilliance against the still budding branches of brown and green. where i come from these birds are everywhere. they are the state bird of ohio and you tend to take them for granted while you’re there. but here, here they only come around a couple at a time, every once in awhile. the female is out now. in the late afternoon of spring. out to find dinner. petite as she is, with her grayish brown tail, and her burnt red face and breast is like the sun when she turns your way, hopping from here to there searching for food. it is that time of year for her, maybe her first, where she will need to store her energy for a purpose far greater than herself. for she will soon be a mother.

i think it must be the day of the robin. the day they choose their mate, their partner for the season. they are so loud today, like monkeys in the jungle. males paired off, puffed up, taking to the sky. beautiful charcoal head and back with brilliant brunt orange and brick red breasts. puffed up. a female is not far. she pretends to search for food on the ground, but she keeps a watchful eye. she will choose before the day is over.

the sky is gray and overcast. and by the sound of the hurried chatter between the birds, i have a feeling it will rain again soon. it is peaceful to sit and listen, to watch the dance.


today's listening: part of your world - from the little mermaid soundtrack

evening sunset

sitting outside facing the sunset. watching it go down brings me to a robert frost poem...one we all know, one many of us have memorized...

nature’s first green is gold,
her hardest hue to hold.
her early leaf’s a flower;
but only so an hour.
then leaf subsides to leaf.
so Eden sank to grief,
so dawn goes down today.
nothing gold can stay.

the sun slowly drifting to sleep behind the mountain facing east hampton in the west. and dylan thomas says,...’do not go gentle into that goodnight. rage, rage against the dying of the light...’ goodnight beautiful. see you in the marrow.

and ethan hawley thought,...’my light is out’...

a moment of sheer vanity?

i sometimes question what the hell women are thinking when they wake up and get dressed in the morning. i’m sitting here at the local community college job fair – any excuse to get out of the office – and i keep finding my eyes wandering back to this middle-aged woman who is making the table rounds. she is also a presenter and manning one of the tables across the way, and i keep thinking, ‘what is she thinking?!’

this woman has the biggest ass i’ve seen in a long time. seriously, it’s a big ass and it’s only accentuated by the too tight white slacks she has on. don’t get me wrong, i try so hard not to have a shallow attitude and it’s not that i think all women shouldn’t wear white pants. but, come on people, think before you leave the house.

the woman’s shirt is too small and tight and keeps riding up and sitting on her hips – so her ass looks bigger than what is probably actually is. and...the pants are so tight that you can see the cellulite and fat dimples in her upper legs and that huge ass. on top of all that, you can see her underwear – way too small and the poor woman has the biggest wedgie i’ve ever seen. please lady, go to the bathroom, pull the underwear out of your ass and pull that damn shirt down to cover something up!

for God’s sake women, just put on your grandma underwear and get over it!


theme music for the day:
metallica – ride the lightning album

driving with the windows down

smells like spring. i was driving home today with the windows down. sunglasses on. Nice. as i passed one of the houses on rt. 66 i saw a woman putting away a hose. and the air became thick for just a minute. i could smell the sun shining down on her lawn, wet from the sprinkler she unscrewing from the hose. i could smell the humidity as the water became the air. i knew it was spring.

so i just came in from having a cigarette. i could smell ribs in the air. not just a barbeque down the street, but the ribs cooking. who the hell eats ribs this late? damn they smelled good though.

i spent the weekend outside finishing the work that began last fall. it’s sick how many leaves are in this yard. i’ve been clearing brush and cutting back anything that pricks. audrey went exploring where i was clearing – underfoot, but at the same time showing me where she would wander so i would know what to clear. i created a little secret hiding place for her behind the big rocks in the back. seriously, it’s like a little castle of her very own and she gets to be Princess of The Mountain at the same time. she went rock climbing for the first time saturday in the back yard. in her purple rubber boots – not the best choice i will admit, but what can i do, she loves those damn boots. she got her first tragic elbow scrap and never even cried. i don’t think she stopped moving long enough to even notice. and yesterday, she picked me a bouquet of daffodils from the yard…heart melting…



today’s listening: dear God i need to do a cd shuffle in my car. too many winter tunes, and i just keep bringing in more and i’m running out of places to put anything…and i’m rambling…

yesterday was a wccc kinda afternoon, followed by a toad the wet sprocket kinda evening. but there was an overall tone of steely dan to the weekend.

today was all about old school – not too old school, more like mid-career school, which i guess for some could be considered old school, indigo girls. did anyone follow that? i digress, shaming the sun album along with 12:00 curfew album, disc one. i think. although it could have been disc two. but i think that one is in my office. oh who the fuck cares? you get the point, right? indigo girls, good stuff.

did you know...

…that gas is heavier than air? just a little trivia for ya. you learn something new everyday. actually, i think i knew that before today and just never stopped to consider the knowledge. haven’t really needed it much. but last night we ran out of gas – don’t ask, it’s a winter thing – anyway, they couldn’t deliver until today. so this afternoon began the relighting of pilot lights and the reading of warning signs on the side of the hot water tank and the inside walls of the furnace.

the relighting became a scene and it made me think of chemistry class, junior year in high school. that would make me 16 at the beginning of the year and 17 at the end. my teacher was mr. engle and he looked like a smushed up frog. his face was round and even when he smiled it looked like he was frowning. he had glasses that took up half his face, covering his cheeks and making his eyes look like two tiny slits. but, it was the early 90’s and glasses were still big and round, at least the man didn’t have a comb-over. don’t get me wrong – his hair was wildly wrong, just not a comb-over. slightly balding in the front, part on the side, long short hair, a little shaggy with gray starting at his temples, slowly working its way upward and around the back of his head.

he was a bastard of a teacher. but i liked him. my brother had mr. mason for chemistry the year before and i had hoped to do the same. mr. engle taught chemistry as if we were freshman in college. i wasn’t the only one in the class who thought he was standing up there speaking a foreign language most of the time. but i liked him. i thought he was fair. do your homework, try in class, do the labs and you just might pass. i flunked both my mid-term and my final. i’m not ashamed to say it – straight up F’s. but somehow i managed to pass that class with a C.

i paid attention. i came to study groups. i tried to do my homework – damn, it was hard. even my brother had a hard time helping me. he tried to defend me to my dad. i’ll never forget that. my dad and i were fighting because i was doing so badly on my tests. when my brother told him that even he couldn’t do some of it my dad back off, a little. that was one of the few times in that i can remember him defending me like that. it was a nice feeling.

my favorite part of class was lab. i loved the experiments, watching things change color. i even liked that strange after-smell of the choleric acid. it gave me this weird metallic smell way up in the back of my nose. anyway, there was this one time…i apparently flaked out. this is really not a good thing to be doing in lab. again, anyway, i wasn’t thinking and i picked up a beaker full of boiling water with my bare hand. didn’t even think about what i was doing, and it even took a few seconds to register as i held this fucking boiling beaker in my bare hand. and i heard mr. engle’s voice from across the room say, ‘drop it’, and i did. i’m guessing this had happened to him before because he was so calm. he was nice about it too, very paternal in running my hand under the cold water and checking how severe the burns were. so, wherever you are mr. engle, thank you for passing me, and for trying to teach me something, and for knowing that tests aren’t always a measure of one’s full potential, and for helping me know that too.

wow, all that from relighting the pilot light?

spring listening

i’ve tried to sit down and write all week. but nothing seems to come out.

it has been a beautiful week. my God how i’ve needed the sun. and how i’ve missed it on the drive home. it has been setting later and later these days. letting me sneak outside for a smoke and watch it fade behind the mountain looking toward east hampton. the trees still bare, but the evening warm enough to sit for more than a minute. warm enough to breath deeply and let some of the day fade away thru the still bare branches.

as spring unfolds i find myself driving to the sounds of mark erelli, the memorial hall recordings. for those of you not from connecticut or not into the folk scene, mark erelli is a local boy and the only artist at the 2003 newport folk fest to get a standing ovation…that lineup included bob dylan…sorry bob, we like the local boys. his music makes me feel like spring and summer. hot sticky days with all the windows in my car down – music blaring.

i’ve also been drawn back, as i am every year at this time, to 10,000 maniacs, our time in eden album. it came out when i was still in high school. and in the summers of my junior and senior years, i would drive my little silver 1984 toyota camry to work and back again…i was a lifeguard…at the ass crack of dawn during the swim season and in the late afternoons toward the end of the summer. this album reminds me of the summer when i was 18, and it keeps me grounded. i can picture the cool summer mornings, windows down, music on. driving down ada road, past johnny appleseed park, to dixie highway where the pool was – that road, i must have driven down that road at least 1,000 times that summer – the 10,000 maniacs was there with me.

the cure has been in my cd player. i made a killer mix – not too depressing. ‘boys don’t cry’, can’t have a cure mix without it…’to wish impossible things and friday i’m in love’ from the wish album…’let’s go to bed, the walk, the caterpillar, and in between days’ from the staring at the sea album (album of singles). old school cure had some soulful moments, but it was in the late 80’s early 90’s that robert smith found his voice, in my opinion. he created some beautiful lyrics mixed with full sounding percussion. it’s brilliant really. he makes me feel 15. young, fresh, sad sometimes, discovering life.

and brand new is slowly becoming my favorite band for the year 2005. their music has so far been transcending two seasons with me. and it fits with both. fun, funky, little skater boys. their sound is rich, full, and changes with your mood. not many bands can do that for me – most are only around for different parts of the year. for me, anytime music is stuff like indigo girls, janis joplin, u2, rem. not even rusted root makes the list. i know i just went to see them. and yes, i shook my sweet little ass a great deal. but not as much as if that same show would have been a month from now. it was still a bit too cold – gotta be able to be comfy in the overalls and tank top without getting chilled, or too hot for that matter. rusted root is like a may/june kinda music. although they did play a killer song,‘blue diamond’, that i’d not heard before. it was magnificent, sexy…you get the point.

anyway, no radio in the car. too much radio at work – my rob likes the radio, he likes to sing. makes me laugh my ass off when he goes for the high notes of gwen stefani, or tries to explain to me why it’s ok for 50 cent to sing about ‘the candy shop’ but not ok for howard stern to talk about masturbating. hhhmmm…makes you wonder doesn’t it?