I’ll Weigh In Later

Duck Billed Platitudes.

My bohemian friend Bethany keeps a blog of quotes and since she is a bohemian I feel that it is my duty to always be on the lookout for good quotes from the grind side (aka: the nine-to-five side).  The best place to harvest inspirational quotes has to be, hands-down, the work conference. When team building is the goal, you can count on some pep talks, power points, and tree metaphors - and always a motivational presentation.

The conference I attended last week was non-profit so the motivational speaker demonstrated a kind of inspiration-economics that a lower budget would demand. She could not risk NOT inspiring us. We did not have a lot of time. 

She came in, lit some candles while reading a poem about hope with the help of some lackluster audience participation and then she proceeded to recite all the hits of every heartwarming email forward about human kindness she had ever received. There was a story about being a carrot or an egg or coffee, and one about being a voice not an echo and another about tugging a dead elephant and another about a growing tree and still more about kindness of strangers and the serendipitiousness of serendipity and the thrill of giving and the wonder of cats. At one point she was throwing out so many inspirational quotes – I thought I heard one Bethany would dig and wanted to write it down, but they were coming at us so fast I couldn’t remember if we should be like the eggs or the coffee. I looked over at the woman next to me and saw that she had made a note to herself that said:

“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. ~ Ghandi”

I became very concerned that the woman might repeat this error somewhere important, like in her email signature or an office newsletter. However, even after all the inspirational bullets being shot at me for the previous hour, I did not have the nerve, the confidence, the ethics, or the kindness to mention anything to her - even when she offered me a piece of gum later.  What is the big deal anyway? Everybody loves Ghandi. He probably said something close when he was going through his individualistic phase.

The moral of the story? It doesn’t really matter what your hear, only what you write.

Books as Decor, Books as Centerpieces, Books as Placeholders, Bookstacks as Art, Books as Snacks

They don’t let you take pictures inside the Eudora Welty House so I bought a postcard of one of the rooms. The house is lovely and you should move in immediately. I couldn’t get over the stacks and stacks of books (the tour guide said 9,000 books were found in her house) and what I really couldn’t get over was how it didn’t look that “Hoarder”-ish. I don’t know if it was the light from the generous windows or the lack of other knicknacks, but in there it made sense to stack books on the sofa, the dining room table, the countertops, and the bed, and wherever. They say this is how she lived. They also said she had a ton of friends and wrote a bizzzllion letters.

 

They give you a driving tour map if you are a good house tour participant – I took the road to see where she was born (and where, supposedly, Richard Ford grew up) there is a huge bronze statue of her in a courtyard near a bookstore and coffee shop. I stopped in to get a peek and felt obliged to order a coffee, the guy in the shop was kind enough to give me a short tour of the area, but when I asked him about her burial site he said he had never been there. I was a bit confused because it was right across the street – you could see Greenwood Cemetery from the quaint bookstore balcony, I know this for a fact because I had just spilled some coffee up there.

“Well I don’t go there. There’s packs of wild dogs and bums.”

“Packs of wild dogs?”

“Yeah – they are always running around.”

Yikes.

By the time I left the coffee shop I was so close to being dissuaded from my gravesite visit because I am deathly afraid of wild dogs and packs of them are just far too wild and people don’t visit cemeteries enough and if I was maimed my body parts would not be found for weeks if ever, and because my boyfriend has already made me feel like a creep for wanting to visit the gravesites of other dead people (I suppose they would have to be dead), but my curiosity got the best of me and the proximity of the cemetery was encouraging me… so I turned in.

  

I didn’t see any wild dogs and the only bum around was me and I suppose you could count some Europeans (who find it quite chic to tour in cemeteries by the way) wearing backpacks who were visiting another big grave.  I didn’t think anything of it until I was wandering into the place – realized I was alone, it was windy, and I was standing on dead people, but I found her just in time. Buried across from a Magnolia and near a cedar. I bowed my head and whispered my short prayer I always offer to dead people I find interesting;“Way to go!” and I left.

Someone should really come and stack some books up on that plot.

The Romance of The ‘Ssippi

    

On the left is a movie prop painting of Ashley Judd painted by an artist from Canton, MS and used in the film “A Time To Kill”.

Key phrases and thoughts from this Mississippi trip thus far:  Lima beans in every dish, slinky flounce tops on home shopping network, networking in a conference room next to a giant bowl of mayonnaise, one-on-one historical & film tours with Jana, hotel billing f-ups, and O brother where art thou.

I asked the hotel clerk/concierge if there was a grocery store nearby and he said “oh yes – there is a Kroger right there” and he pointed to the corner of the lobby. I assumed he meant it was out-of-doors across the parking lot.

“Great,” I said, “Do they sell wine? I need to get a bottle for an important business gift [to myself]”

“Oh no, but they sell beer. You can get beer there.”

“I’d like to purchase some wine.”

“There’s no place around here that sells wine. No.”

“No place – ANYWHERE?”

“No, but the restaurants serve liquor.”

“Well great then,  I will have them put liquor in this large plastic McDonalds cup sitting on top of the tall ashtray near the door here and I’ll tell myself it’s wine. What a great hospitable solution you have offered. How does it feel to excel at your job to such a degree that it is confusing me?”

“This actually used to be a dry county.”

“Wha?” Technically, the whole country used to be dry for a good while back in the day – I’ve seen Boardwalk Empire…I don’t see what that has to do with anything, “So there is NO PLACE to go – even if I get in my car, head out on the road and drive back toward Memphis – I won’t see a single place that sells wine?”

“Oh well down the street a few miles…you can buy wine.”

“Is this your first time to Logan’s Road House?”

“Yes.”

“Well you can just throw the peanut shells on the floor.”

I shoulda brought some mayonnaise. Here …can you fill this giant plastic cup up….

Melting to Preemie Spring

Impatience is King

No matter how hard I stared at the radar screen, the snow would not scooch over to our office! Note: The pencil is pointing out where our office is located – the very tiny white area where sad workers in nearly-abandoned office parks were still inside working.

I say “were working” because I eventually got my wish and we all went home around noon in the name of snow safety. We are now all tucked safely in our homes eating milk sandwiches.

I strongly believe if were not for my impatience it would have taken the snow an additional fifteen minutes to get to us.

However, only my impatience has power, everybody else's impatience is just an annoying exhibition of selfishness and intolerance.

Sometimes when I get out of my class, depending on how many things have to get re-checked and locked down and radio-ed in,  the chapel volunteers will walk out with me. Most nights these are just gentle old southern folk wearing sweaters-over-button-ups looking to share their kindness and love of the gospel to convicts, last night there were two new ones and it really seemed as if they considered themselves some kind of privileged clients of the federal spa and retreat with the way they were carrying on and sighing and saying “i wish theyall would hurry up already” and “they need to get to this gate up in here” under their not-so-quiet breaths.

It takes forever (in regular outside-time time) to get out of the compound. There are practical security issues, not to mention a decent fifty-yard walk, and even more important- there is no real incentive to rush you out of there, so sometimes the dudes in the control room will wait until they are done eating their sandwiches or maybe finishing a chapter of Infinite Jest or quilting that last square for the company craft show or who knows what in thesamhell , to open the gate.

Whatever the case was last night, I was extremely uncomfortable to be around some bible volunteers that were verbally impatient. I had never once thought to complain to the dudes controlling the big gates, keys, cuffs, and electric fences and I was quite sure the guards were fixing to retaliate in some kind of secret way that only people who work in dark, locked, unceasingly surveyed rooms know about. So I did my best to distance myself from them by acting like I wasn’t even interested in whether or not the gate ever opened. The full act included acting surprised when it was my turn to walk in. I think it worked, although I didn’t get any nice small talk from the chapel volunteers on the way out to the parking lot like I usually do, but I can’t help it - there are rules ‘round here.

It is best to keep your impatience to yourself and (if not) to use it only for good.

Life is a test.....

...to see if you recognize Warren G.

I didn't but B did. That is why I have him around.

We went to the Grizz Lakers game last night (and sat in some ridixulous front row seats a-hem) and that was a great way to start the week off. I wonder what I'll do next Monday to top it.

I've got class tonight but I will post an update like you won't even believe (or maybe won't even see) later.


SKL

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Spiritual Warfare

Sometimes if you mistype the web address to this blog you get this site.

The past couple days have been rough for me, so I am extremely vulnerable to cult recruitment and religious conversions and binge drinking and posting irrational and insulting anonymous reader comments on human interest stories and Urban Outfitter clothing reviews. It is fitting that I should fall upon that bible studies site today because it has a link near the top that says “Life is a test to see if you believe & obey the gospel.” So simple! I am totally going to cram for that one later.

What helped me is when you click on that link it brings you to another page that says “Spiritual Warfare” which is totally up my alley. “Warfare” sounds urgent and active. Belief is only going to get you out of bed, but warfare will fill your days.

Since you stumbled on my spiritual warfare site, I will do you the favor of giving you the secrets to the meaning of life (based on my experiences):

• Life is a test to see if you can not kill someone.
• Life is a test to see if you can keep everything you ever bought.
• Life is a test to see if you can drive in the snow.
• Life is a test to see if you believe in leprechauns.
• Life is a test to see if the Lions will ever win the Superbowl.
• Life is a test to see how many doctors you will visit to cure your migraines.
• Life is a test to see how many people believe what you say.
• Life is a test to see how many times a day you can say “like”.
• Life is a test to see what you will become addicted to.
• Life is a test to see how many social constructions you will not be constructed by.
• Life is a test to see if you are actually allergic to cats.
• Life is a test to see if you can take a picture of everything you see.
• Life is a test to see if you fell for it.

The best way to absorb this heavy information is to meditate on one a day. Maybe even one a week. Pick one truth from above and hold it in your head as the answer to all things, and I mean ALL things, for the next week and see what kind of opportunities open up for you, see what questions of yours are answered.

I hope this clears things up. I do not require obeisance as proof of belief - even in the case of a leprechaun sighting.

Peaceful Kingdom

  

We went to the Zoo yesterday. I call the top two photos, presented as a pair, “Let Sleeping Kitties (even panthers & pumas) Lie” and the bottom one, “Harmony in Horns & Stripes”.

Happy Monday. Get back to work.

This Is Where I’ve Been

It’s been too cold and gray around here to get anything of merit done. This place is the backdrop of a painting of London, the inside of a burnt popcorn pan, the edges of a street-corner puddle after a rain-out parade. It’s dark and moist in a very un-chocolate-cake way. I don’t like how it takes my mind to dark places.

Like for example, I’ve been obsessing about how I always seem to have mascara running down my face. I do wear mascara so it’s not a complete mystery, but I don’t understand why even though I have applied it on the top lashes only (as advised by several beauty editors), by lunchtime I look like I have been hitting the crack pipe – like I just got off the cheap bus from Dark Circle City. 

Remnants of black mascara are there even there after I try to wash it off. I’ll wash my face at night and in the morning – raccoon eyes. STILL. I’ve tried everything, soaps, abrasives, oils, gels, creams, lighter fluid – you name it – it doesn’t matter I ALWAYS have at least a trace of mascara on my lashes that will eventually shape-shift into to dark saucers round my eyes.

This leads me to believe that I may be applying new mascara on over mascara that could be days or, now that I think about it, even decades old. My mascara situation is a lot like the grease at Dyers Burgers. They never change the grease, they just keep adding new grease into the vat of the old and it has been this way for a hundred years now.  I’m talking about a bucket full of grease that has been around as long as Henry Ford’s assembly line. Some of the mascara on my lashes could possibly pre-date the curved applicator brush.

When I die and they do a forensic analysis of my eyelashes (if there are any left assuming they haven’t fallen off from mascara abuse or death by fire or molten lava or some terrible torture situation where my eyelashes have been individually plucked out) they will uncover rings, like those on a tree, that will tell the story of my life and my despair. My story. A story that starts with a ninety-nine cent tube of Wet n’ Wild bought with lunch money at the Fowlerville Dime Store and ends with….. well who knows what mascara technology they will have by then. Whatever it is, I am not confident I will be able to get it off my face. Maybe formaldehyde will be the thing that finally works.

Until then – it hurts my feelings when you tell me I look tired.

Sorry to get so personal and talk of self-care and hygiene even though that shouldn’t have grossed you out too much unless you believe mascara is made of bat crap.

Milk Sandwiches

It’s another snow day here in Memphis. Things froze up overnight and everything that wasn’t already shut down from the weather yesterday (and oooh lordy they will shut down a shopping mall round here) was by the time I woke up. Of course it is all nearly melted now but there’s no need to get back to work – snow flurries are expected tonight.

When it snows here, when it snows AT ALL, in fact when there is even a forecast of snow coming within 36 hours, there is a run on the grocery stores like quadruple coupon day – we are talking panic of 2012 end-of-days proportions. All the Schnucks and Krogers and Walgreens and whatevers run out of milk and bread within hours. Like the only thing left is maaaaybe raisin bread and buttermilk.  From what I gather (from word on the streets and reader comments on select articles over at the Commercial Appeal) – in Memphis, during any kind of inclement weather, people hole up in their houses and make milk sandwiches to stay alive. 

We tried this but it is SO soggy. I should have stuck some milk-soaked bread outside overnight to make milk-popsicle-sandwiches. Maybe I could have strung them up on a clothesline so I could have easily pulled them in the window without having to risk going out of doors.

Really you can’t make milk sandwiches, we all know that, silly.  That’s why its just another great southern metaphor for trying to control an uncontrollable force like the weather (only the CIA can control the weather). What do you end up with? Soggy bread.

Civil War Trail

We went out to Shiloh yesterday – National Parks were free all weekend in honor of MLK Jr. We didn’t know that before we got there and would have paid anyway –not just because we each had three dollars but because the price of admission would have been worth it for the 1964 movie filmed with barely enough men to hold a proper football game, let alone stage a reenactment. That is what I like about Civil War tourism though – it’s rooted in our imagination and not just in reproductions and silly details like facial hair and canteen shape.

There were a couple troops of Eagle Scouts or something out with compasses and backpacks walking the battlefield.  The slackers trailing behind would put up their thumbs when we drove by. I do love that joke.

After our auto tour we went to the Catfish Hotel (one of the oldest family restaurants in the whole US!) and ate some catfish. You can order the catfish plate or all-you-can-eat catfish. The all-you-can-eat catfish comes with bones and tails and I was quite sure I couldn’t eat any of that so I picked the plate but there was a big ol’ fella at the table next to us that was chowing through plates and plates of whole catfish – just like in a Looney Toons special – as many as the waitress could bring him –plates stacked high with deep-fried fishes. He’d take the whole fried catfish in his mouth and pull out just the bones with the tail and plop the fishbones in a big pile and his whole family would clap.

I ate my fair share of hushpuppies and we made it home in time to watch some of the Golden Globes, which seemed kind of silly after leaving such monumental entertainment. We all have to wind down somehow.

Magical Britches

From Frankenmuth, MI

System Restart

Nothing I like better than books, albums, or tours named after computer terminology. It started with Paul McCartney’s “Memory Almost Full” – man, every time I would see that CD on display at a Starbucks I would just lose it. Since then I’ve been on the lookout for clever show titles.

I’ve decided to name my one woman show “Close All Tabs” – it is about a woman that won’t let go of the past and get a real computer except the past  will be represented by a twelve-pack of Tab diet soda – and everyone knows that once you open a can you can’t close it so you can’t really “close all tabs” – the show will be a journey of inner self discovery (meaning I don’t say anything but people watch me as I write in a journal) where in the end I stomp on all of the cans and a big lite-brite comes down on stage with the phrase “Crush all Tabs” backlighting me as I change into a shirt that says “Me 2.0”.

Snow Day: Blowing Brains

    

Before     12:25 pm                    After  12:53 pm

I took a picture on the way in to Overton Park and on the way out. According to my timestamp, this snowman murder happened sometime between 12:25pm and 12:53 pm. Judging from the height of the missing head and the additional footprints, the assailant was probably not a dog. Could have been a teenager or a hawk (or I guess - possibly a high-jumping frisbee dog). I’m on the lookout for a hawk wearing a scarf, a stolen scarf.

Round here it isn’t just schools and church groups that get a snow day. My office was closed. We (Memphians/Mississippians) are not equipped for snow and I am not about to show people my Michigan snow driving skills – I’d wind up at work or helping old people run errands or something. Although I don’t want my snow tracking skills to go to waste - I am thinking about getting into the snowman justice business. But I would have to move back up to Mich for that – this southern snow is gonna be gone in 48 hours – you mark my words.

                                       Snow Moto in Overton Park, SKL 2011

Buggy

The Lost Cargo Highway

Phonebooks on the entrance ramp to I-240/Airways – Dec 22 2010

Things in the road. My heart aches when I see stray chairs on the side of the highway or papers spilling out on curbsides or brand new phone books with wind-turned pages lying limp on entrance ramps. Who will come back for them? I think.

Then I run them over.

I noticed a clump of clothes at an industrial intersection on Airways Blvd last Tuesday morning on my drive to work. There’s no telling why there’d be a pile of clothes in the middle of the street. Someone could have spilled a laundry basket out the back of a truck or maybe a scorned lover threw a suitcase out the window of a moving car or maybe someone was hosting a new kind of yard sale or game show where you can keep what you can grab while not getting run over. Either way – the owners had to keep moving – since no one had picked up the mess by the time I drove home that afternoon at 4:30. I determined at that time that it was probably women's clothing (or could have belonged to a gentleman with a preference for turquoise and fuchsia).

The strewn clothing was still there on Friday afternoon. It was very much still strewn and looking far dingier than before (surprisingly without any noticeable tire tracks). The owner of the bright clothes could have been at the Gulf by now, shopping for new hot pink t-shirts, finding a suitcase with a better latch.

This part of town is the dirty business part, where we not only do we air dirty laundry, we let it sit in a busy intersection for days and weeks, just daring someone to touch it, but mostly waiting for it to disintegrate, to get ground into the pavement until it becomes a bumpy part of the road like the rest of the past that has traveled before it.

Adjustments for the Decade

The holidays are officially over. I took down the Christmas tree yesterday and went back to work today. It seems everyone is settling into the new year in their own special way, like the guy at the gas station at Brooks and Millbranch – he decided not to wear shirt at all – winterbedamned, the gals at my office were abuzz with talk of The South Beach Diet, they put up a new calendar at the headache clinic, and I even overheard a nurse tell my doctor that they had accidently put a patient in Hospice. 

 

             (Old: Kitty   New: Inspirational Piggly Wiggly)

I get injections in my head and they give me an ice pack to help the swelling and pain. It is made out of two ingredients: ice cubes and a rubber glove. No muss no fuss. I let it melt and then re-freeze it in fun shapes.

 

I like my health care like I like my New Year resolutions: inspirational, dangerous, and simple. 

So Long So Long

Near B’s office yesterday. New Years Day is a good day to tear down buildings because the chance of foot and office traffic is low

and because Nostradamus said so

and because you can work it from all sides, leave the second half of the sign for later

and because the farmers almanac said it was a good idea

and because the contractors and smasher-upper guys get time-and-a-half

and because you only need one van and less snacks

and because you can get a clearer picture

and because it is metaphorical.

Paper Wake

We are on the last page of the year. I was disappointed in my Word Origins Calendar (too many computer terms!) and I won’t be getting another. I’m switching to a Far Side or Golf Tips desk calendar.

The last word of 2010 was “brandy” (the drink – not the girls name popular in the late 70s).  It means burned wine only palatable to old ladies and the English ripped the term off from the Dutch brandewijn. Creative.

I hope you all set your drinks (or towns) on fire on this night of celebration.  Happy New Year!