“-tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they’ll scarcely find us (if they do,
we’ll move away still further: into now”
-ee cummings.
Tag Archives: love
{berets and bongos} 66;
my mother, the legend;
my mom is a legend.
she tells the best dirty jokes.
she is constantly stopped by friends in the grocery store.
even when we are 30 miles away from home.
she once thought it was a good idea to put mayonnaise in a soup.
thus giving rise to our new favorite southern exclamation, “HOT BUBBLIN’ MAYONNAISE THAT’S AWESOME.”
she always makes sure stray dogs have a bed/yoga mat/ bit of cool tile to sleep on until we can find them a home.
and best of all, she is a world-class texter:
happy mother’s day, “cletus”.
i am very glad you birthed me.
{berets and bongos} 64;
“one grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
one not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
one fine day.”
-lawrence ferlinghetti, recipe for happiness in khaborovsk or anyplace.
{berets and bongos} 61;
“oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much”
-frank o’hara.
{berets and bongos} 57;
“having a coke with you*
is even more fun than going to san sebastian, irún, hendaye, biarritz, bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the travesera de gracia in barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier st. sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles…
i look
at you and i would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the polish rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of futurism
just as at home i never think of the nude descending a staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of leonardo or michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank…
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why Ii’m telling you about it”
-frank o’hara, the selected poems.
*one of my favorite poems of all time.
{berets and bongos} 56;
“the campus, an academy of trees,
under which some hand, the wind’s i guess,
had scattered the pale light
of thousands of spring beauties,
petals stained with pink veins;
secret, blooming for themselves.
we sat among them.
your long fingers, thin body,
and long bones of improbable genius;
some scattered gene as kafka must have had.
your deep voice, this passing dust of miracles.
that simple that was myself, half conscious,
as though each moment was a page
where words appeared; the bent hammer of the type
struck against the moving ribbon.
the light air, the restless leaves;
the ripple of time warped by our longing.
there, as if we were painted
by some unknown impressionist.”
-ruth stone, in the next galaxy.
don’t worry, i will;
tomorrow i am going to visit my lovely bff in california!
brb, gonna go sob of happiness in a corner somewhere.
this song is essentially my song-motto for the trip. take my time coming home, boston? don’t mind if i do! at least until i can expose my limbs once more. because my attempts to protest winter (which boils down to me wearing shorts +knee socks and hating everything while being outside. and drinking a lot of lemonade/orange juice/ anything citrus-related.) are proving to be meager at best.
so until then, boston. i’ll be back soon.
don’t worry.
i like your cobblestones, and creepy churches, and bros too much to leave you.
a valentine’s day itinerary;
nom to your heart’s content on some maple-apple oatmeal and iced coffee. watch your favorite, most romantic, creepiest episodes of “twilight zone” under your electric blanket boyfriend. yell at your laptop screen, screeching “SANDRA, DON’T EFFING PUT YOURSELF INTO SUSPENDED ANIMATION!” until your heart breaks for commander douglas stanfield in “the long morrow”. feel the love from the lovely street art in your ‘hood. luv u 2, central square. luv u 2.
after bike riding from cambridge to boston in your happiest dress, getting called “best dressed biker” by a spandex-clad old man, and getting clay (?!?!?!don’t ask ??!?) out of the headphone jack from your iphone, make your film acting debut. make sure to take your direction to fall in the middle of boston common as seriously as possible. you are a method actor after all, and if comes down to covering yourself in mud, then mud it shall be. eat and bond with your valentine’s date of choice, a tofu burrito larger than most newborn babies. bike back to cambridge and daydream about making out with some cute, bespectacled nerd in your favorite, most romantic, creepy little alcove on harvard’s campus (do we see a theme here?).
enjoy your valentine’s dinner with your favorite smarty pants, jane, at dudley coop. think about how it reminds you of your hippie dippie year of vegan food and composting at new college of florida. admire their knick-knacks and stumble upon your favorite poem in their potty. watch as a pacifist knife-fight breaks out between courses. remember why valentine’s day is the best day ever. 
break up said knife fight. celebrate first year valentine’s day friend-iversary with your lovely friend (we met last year in sf while swing dancing at uc berkeley!) admire even more knick-knacks and leave the lovely little hippies of dudley some goodbye magnetic poetry. congratulate yourself on having three successful single-ladies valentines days in a row (year one: blue man group with BFF +second family. year two: this happened.) wonder how year four will top this one and hope that it involves burritos, swing dancing, romance, and less mud. you know, the basics.
{berets and bongos} 52;
“i don’t
even know
what we talk about
i just listen
to the sound of his voice
and to his laugh
and to the sound
of him listening
to me. ”
-sonya sones.
let’s get out of here, future manfriend;
dear future manfriend,
i think honesty is the best policy. i really, really do. i believe in a complete laying out of my quirks and idiosyncrasies like a traveling salesman spreading out all of his half-used, rickety products for sale.
keeping that in mind, every few months or so i get this tingling in my fingers, specifically my “travelocity.com URL typing” fingers.
i have an extremely hard time sitting still, you see. i spent two hours on amazon looking at luggage. the image of a packed suitcase is enough to get my heart pumping. once you get the sweet taste of airplane cabin air, your plane neighbor chuckling to himself over “happy feet” playing on the tvs, and notes on altitude flooding your brain it’s hard to shake off the magic spell of traveling.
it’s in my clothes, it’s in my hair, it’s in my skin. i can’t shake that magic out if i tried.
and now i find myself in this place that i love, but that i’d love to run away from for a little while. i’ve been out of practice, you see. i’ve sat in one place for the last six months that just sitting my whimsical self on a commuter rail train to the outskirts of boston is enough to get my gears going.
i’ve tried to describe to myself what not traveling makes me feel like. it makes me feel stagnant. i feel kind of stale at times. and like i just described to a friend in an ever-so-eloquent facebook chat, i feel like “the universe just took a dump on my soul”.
i sometimes worry this plane-ticket temptation of mine might cause you to flee. i sometimes worry sitting still is an art that i’ve never really ever considered mastering. i signed a year lease two months ago on my apartment and i’m still amazed with myself. “travelocity’" seems to be subconsciously typed on my computer every other day. i’m not sure at what point i will be okay with sitting still, but when that day comes i will welcome it like an extended house guest in my apartment whose lease still shocks me.
so i offer you this quirk, if you will. i’m a little bit much to deal with. and just like a product pushed on your like a traveling salesman, you can feel foolish for buying into it whenever you look at it at a distance. but i hope my laundry list of quirks (singing while dishwashing, my foreign-children’s-book buying problem, drinking iced coffee in the winter, silly socks) will make you want to come along with me on these silly, little escapades with me. will make you humor my tendencies to flee.
or better yet, make me sit still for once.
your future nomad-lady friend,
me.
