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

how do you like what you have

One reason I was unwilling to believe that change is possible is that if I DO believe that change is possible, then I have to accept that the reason it doesn't happen is because people don't want to change. In some ways it was easier to believe in a lack of possibility than a lack of desire. And yet my view has changed (because change is possible, because I wanted to change). 

There's a child crying in a room somewhere
her weeping eyes are pressed against her knees
and the tears are filling up her socks

In a dream I am dating a crocodile and I am naturally very afraid of getting eaten but also I like that big smile so much. I hold the crocodile's mouth between my finger and thumb because I heard that was sufficient defense, and one night at my request it lays its full weight on top of me and I cannot tell you how safe that felt, not like being crushed at all but like being finally fully held.

I love 21st century television the same way that I love poetry. Yes some of it is bad, some of it is epic only in terms of how terrible it is, but sometimes there's a phrase, a moment, a line break or a gesture that reaches out and grabs my heart with how perfect it is. 

When you look at someone 
through rose-colored glasses
all the red flags just look like
flags

Standing in Palazzo something or another and telling my son and his girlfriend the story of Psyche. Don't think that didn't have layers. That went all the way through, every one of them, the girl and the god and the goddess, all three of them, me. Pierced me like an arrow, the burn scars on the arm, the disappointment, the irritation, the need for sleep, and not just because I need to maintain my mythic allure.

Sometimes I think that it is awesome that I care so much less about appearances in general and my appearance in particular than I used to. "How hideous am I?" has not left my lexicon but it is exists for me now more as a beautiful quote than an actual deep pain. And other times, patting various creams into my various deepening wrinkles, I think: I am so so so so vain. 

“Dear Professor James, I am so sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today.”

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