The Oil is No More

So, there's been one upside to the incredible wave of cold sweeping Wilmington...

The oil froze.

The oil froze!!!

And it is has now been removed from the porch and from the life of my beagle, Gertrude. And also from the lives of the stray cats that have been hanging around it. I kind of feel like we just demolished the neighborhood bar or something. The bar of oil.

It is a good day.

Reason #328 That I Suck

is that I forgot Poem Sunday. Which I've been saving up poems for... well, forever. And so, I now decree that it is Poem Monday. Yes! Poem Monday! Bigger, better, and... on Monday.

Adam and Eve
by Tony Hoagland



I wanted to punch her right in the mouth and that's the truth.


After all, we had gotten from the station of the flickering glances
to the station of the hungry mouths,
from the shoreline of skirts and faded jeans
to the ocean of unencumbered skin,
from the perilous mountaintop of the apartment steps
to the sanctified valley of the bed--


the candle fluttering upon the dresser top, its little yellow blade
sending up its whiff of waxy smoke,
and I could smell her readiness
like a dank cloud above a field,
when at the crucial moment, the all-important moment,
the moment standing at attention,
she held her milk white hand agitatedly
over the entrance to her body and said No,


and my brain burst into flame.


If I couldn't sink myself in her like a dark spur
or dissolve into her like a clod thrown in a river,


can I go all the way in the saying, and say
I wanted to punch her right in the face?
Am I allowed to say that,
that I wanted to punch her right in her soft face?


Or is the saying just another instance of rapaciousness,
just another way of doing what I wanted then,
by saying it?


Is a man just an animal, and is a woman not an animal?
Is the name of the animal power?
Is it true that the man wishes to see the woman
hurt with her own pleasure


and the woman wishes to see the expression on the man's face
of someone falling from great height,
that the woman thrills with the power of her weakness
and the man is astonished by the weakness of his power?


Is the sexual chase a hunt where the animal inside
drags the human down
into a jungle made of vowels,
hormonal undergrowth of sweat and hair,


or is this an obsolte idea
lodged like a fossil
in the brain of the ape
who lives inside the man?


Can the fossile be surgically removed
or dissolved, or redesigned
so the man can be a human being, like a woman?


Does the woman see the man as a house
where she might live in safety,
and does the man see the woman as a door
through which he might escape
the hated prison of himself,
and when the door is locked,
does he hate the door instead?
Does he learn to hate all doors?


I've seen rain turn into snow then back to rain,
and I've seen making love turn into fucking
then back to making love,
and no one covered up their faces out of shame,
no one rose and walked into the lonely maw of night.


But where was there, in fact, to go?
Are some things better left unsaid?
Shall I tell you her name?
Can I say it again,
that I wanted to punch her right in the face?


Until we say the truth, there can be no tenderness.
As long as there is desire, we will not be safe.

Still Learning

So, I'm back to starting all my posts with 'so.'

Lessons learned in the last 24 hours: I am the only person who thinks lion peen is funny. It is ok to mix paper and plastic recycling in New Hanover County. I should have said hi to that girl I saw in Subway who looked like someone I went to high school with, because it really was her and not my self-centered tendency to think everyone is someone I know.

Regarding recycling:

I was still dormant during the great election post extravaganza of 2008, so I did not get to share in the collective joy of the blogosphere, though I wish very much that I had gotten myself together in time to take part. Anything I say now is pretty much a rehash of the tears and tentative stirrings of hope supplied by those bloggers more talented than I, though I shared those feelings, and because of them, I made a promise.

I promised God (or whomever) that if America could elect Obama, I could start recycling. The problem with posting this is that I now have to admit that, heretofore, I did not recycle. Erm. Yes. Meg is very bad. This is now corrected.

But now I am constantly calling my sister and plaguing her with questions that everyone else has known the answer to for ages, like, Do I have to take the caps off my plastic bottles? What if the tin can doesn't have the symbol on it? Can I still recycle it? Should I rinse? Crush? Good God, this is complicated!! Seriously, I have attempted to recycle everything that has crossed my path this week.

But seriously, this is my way of saying that I am committed to a changing future, that I am committed to doing my part in it, and that I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.

It's All Happening At the Zoo

So, Thomas and I went to the zoo on Sunday.

There's this zoo here in Wilmington--it used to be called the Tote-Em-In Zoo (which I never understood. The name always made it sound to me like some good samaritans found a giraffe in the woods and just toted it in!) but is now called Tregembo Animal Reserve or something like that.

I'd never gone there before because I'd always heard that it was sad--that the animals were miserable, etc. But then on Friday night we ran into some friends at the bar, and they said that it was fun and that there was a porcupine there that would dance for peanuts.

Hold the phone, I said. You can feed the animals?

Yeah, we were so there. Frankly, I had hoped to touch things, but that was not to be.

I did see this awesome cockatoo that spoke as if it were possessed by the devil, and I'm pretty sure said, "Fuck," to me:

See the evil glint in his dark, dark eyes???

And then I took pictures of animal porn. Some intentional, some unintentional.

Intentional Porn:
Hahahaha! The bearded dragons are on top of each other!! Because it's like they're having sex!!!

Unintentional Porn:
Umm. Yeah. Not the best angle for this lion.

I had fun throwing peanuts to the monkeys and speaking to everything as if it were my new best friend, because the proximity was such that I felt as if everything WAS my new best friend.

And here is the porcupine of awesomeness, who started the whole thing. I did not feed it any peanuts because the sign did not say that it was ok to feed him peanuts. And I have very strict morals about these things. Which is why I take pictures of lion bits.

Is Unkind to Animals

And a most happy birthday to my 16 year old Gertie today!

So, Hi There

Having just spent approximately 800 years trying to fix this layout, I'm giving up in disgust and just saying Hi.

Hi!

I missed you.

So much has happened, and I totally meant to hop on the NaBloPoMo bandwagon again this year, but I blew it, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

For my triumphant return, I would like to share with you the story of my beagle, the oil baroness.

Every New Years, Thomas and I have a party. It used to always be a Fondue party (or as Thomas calls it, Fun-due), but more recently we've been having Ugly Sweater Parties for New Years instead. Anyway, I think the last time we had a full blown fondue New Years was two years ago. And that's how long the huge jug of peanut oil that we bought and barely used has been sitting on my back porch.

Frankly, I'd grown fond of the jug. It was like my personal thermometer or something. Every morning when I let the dogs out, I'd check the oil. Frozen? Need a sweater. Not frozen? 3/4 sleeves ok. It was just a fixture, like the tree that randomly grew up through the porch. Annoying, but finally just part of the landscape.

Anyway, we went on a mad porch/yard cleaning spree before holding an oyster roast last Saturday, and Thomas tried to throw the jug away. And the plastic that had endured two winters on my porch... well... shattered. So, not all of it shattered, thank God, just the top of it, and we covered it up with plastic bags and vowed that as soon as we got a hard freeze and the oil froze again, we'd get rid of it somehow.

Flash forward to my Beagle, who is suddenly hiding under the house all the time. WTF? Why is she doing this? And she won't come out, even when I offer cheese. I keep having to get a flashlight and go after her. And why is her head so gross and oily?

Because she's been under the porch, rolling around in (and eating, I'm sure) 2 years old peanut oil.

Yum-may.