tuckova

ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things

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Interests: Alfons Mucha, Archibald Leach, big words, Bob Hicok, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Masaryk, cheese, clarity, dark chocolate, David Byrne, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Adams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Fred Rogers, garlic, Gaudi, Gertrude Stein, ginger, Gustav Klimt, Iva Pekarkova, Jane Austen, Jaromir Nohavica, Jeanette Winterson, Josef Skvorecky, Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Just a Minute, Kate Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, laughing until it hurts, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, little kids singing, Lloyd Alexander, mandarin oranges, making lists, Margaret Atwood, Miss Manners, New Yorker, Paul Simon, performance, P.G. Wodehouse, poetry, Rebecca Solnit, Rob Brezsny, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Creeley, salt, Salvador Dali, secrets, silence, Star Trek, Stephen Dunn, Talking Heads, Terry Gilliam, things that stain, This American Life, Tom Waits, T.S. Eliot, vegetable juice, veiled cultural references, vinegar, water, wine, W.H. Auden

sail to that perfect edge

Rubber cement is maybe not the best medium but I like the way it strands, small gossamer spiderwebs to sweep up in the morning. And I like feeling like something is secure when it is fixed in place with these spiderwebs. Last night I woke up at 3 a.m. with the sentence "In the European Union, old money is useless" and I thought about nouveau riche and and oyster forks and it was words but also images. Oh, brain, you are so full of surprises.

Lately my primary word thoughts have come in the form of a quiz, mostly multiple choice with one answer a blank for the thing I didn't think of, and discussion questions for extra credit. I feel like I'm generating no new thoughts, just questions about how other people think about what I think. Or what they think about what I haven't thought of yet.

I have lost my voice as of this morning and it is funny how this is so unimportant. "What could they speak of — anyway?" Though I have suffered no cruelty. It is crazy how much I need to insist on perspective. Like you wanted nothing, and then you got something, and then that something was gone. Is it not stupid to mourn that absence, rather than celebrate its brief presence? Is it not wiser, better for everybody especially you, to say: what a wonderful gift that was. And yet I find myself, the one who has pushed away in "do it myself" independence forever, surrounded by tea, cough drops, a pyramid of mandarin oranges, tissues, all beautifully arranged by myself because I do it best, crying not a little bit because I was once cared for, and now I am not again. Never mind, never never mind.

It's international women's day, apparently. I have never felt so entirely hated by the United States as I have lately. Okay, I have, but I've felt hated on the basis of my beliefs, not on the basis of how I was born. It is strange to feel so … not hated so much as vaguely distasteful, entirely disposable. I feel like I'm one chapter away from having my bank accounts frozen, straight to the colonies with the other unwomen. Well maybe it will be safer there.

My quest to be more like Mister Rogers continues with varying success. Maybe I should get some goldfish to go with my picture picture. Won't you be my neighbor? 

 

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