j-are you training any horses right now?
r-am i?
j-i heard you were a horse whisperer. don't you train horses?
r-do i?
j-m_____ told me you were a horse whisperer. don't you train horses?
r-oh, he did, did he?
s-r_____ is an enigma.
r is smiling like he's sitting on the catbird seat.
i never found out whether he was or he wasn't. he neither dissuaded the belief nor encouraged it. thus, i think he is a trainer of horses.
doing galleys, going to birthday parties, and only have a moment to spare for a kitty.
he does this alot. he likes my shoes more than he likes me.
this café i hit up regular-like for caffeine and wifi does not have a password to access their wifi at the moment. thus, it is interesting to walk up from the back of the parking lot and see who is shamelessly stealing the wifi whilst eating in the car. taxi cabs are common offenders. so are professionally-dressed people that look like they got two bucks to spare for a supremely large cup of tea.
the other day, I saw a woman eating a muffin from starbucks and sitting in her car to steal the wifi.
the staff joke about it. sometimes, after they close at night, and all the taxi cabs and automobiles are shamelessly lined up, they flip the switch.
all at once, a dozen men and women shake their laptops and bang them like something’s wrong.
free wifi isn’t actually free.
go inside and pay for your damn cup of coffee. a small coffee – last i checked – was something like a buck sixty. Also, don’t forget to make eye contact with people. Don’t just glare into your computer screen and never talk to anyone.
i see people in chat rooms – i’m in a forum or two – and we’re all typing away, communicating with people that aren’t in the room.
there’s a social cost to the free wifi, too. we’re in this café and we’re jammed in like sardines, huddled over computer screens and we might as well be in cubicles because we’re alone with the glow of our monitors in a crowded room. We make our own little cubicle walls with empty cups, books, and the way we put our elbows around our laptop so no one can read over our shoulder when we’re telling someone how much we miss seeing them, looking in their eyes.
seven-feet-tall, in flat shoes, and built like an ex-football player that has passed gracefully into middle age, he/she had an adam’s apple as large as a nose.
this man in a bright pink designer skirt-suit (from now on to be referred to as a “dress”, though the chanel suit marge simpson wore in the country club episode is a better approximation), strolled through the art museum in make-up and clean-shaven of leg and face and dressed to the nines.
though he/she didn’t actually quite pass on account of his/her size and prominent adam’s apple and mannish figure…
he/she looked like they had really done all they could to be the classy lady he/she ought to have been. certainly, the elegant attire and jewelry was quite a change from a museum where flip-flops and paint-spattered t-shirts with crude messages are more common than collars and ties.
he/she was dressed to the nines, like a true queen, and made the other women around him/her look poorly dressed in their tank-tops and discount jeans.
i think it takes even more courage to be the guy in the dress when one is seven feet tall and built like an ex-football player. kudos to you! kudos, guy in a dress!
guy in a dress, you are a profile in courage, and would probably be an awesome person to hang out with because you are the largest, burliest transvestite i have ever seen in my life, and you really went all out for it, and pulled out all the stops to be beautiful.
guy in a dress, you are my hero(ine?).
may you inspire other guys in dresses across the southern states of america. the bible belt needs way more transvestites.
also, may you inspire the other women and cross-dressers of the world to dress as stylishly as you did. one of the other reasons you didn’t pass completely was how you were so much better dressed than everyone else that you really drew attention to yourself.
a whole generation of men and women live and die that read more while going number two than they do at any other point in their life. whilst in the restroom, they read newspapers and magazines.
the words are left on the floor. the bookshelves – if they have bookshelves – are full of movies and decorative bric-a-brac and dust.
i am glad that they read anything, but i also cannot imagine the knowledge that the authors must
two days ago a gentleman asked, in all seriousness, where the kimbell art museum kept the mona lisa. he was well-dressed. his wife was much younger than him, and beautiful enough. he had four children each as blonde as his wife carrying pieces of his face into the future.
he asked where the mona lisa was. then, he asked what the famous painting in the gallery was. (an absurd question for anyone familiar with this famous little museum). i directed him to “skeletons warming themselves” by james ensor and caravaggio’s renowned depiction of cardsharps.
a kid jumped up to touch the frame of the ensor painting while i got between the child enough to prevent his hands from reaching the canvas. the father did not chide the boy. the mother did not chide the boy.
then, at the caravaggio, they started taking flash photos of the painting as if they had never been in a museum before in their life.
a well-dressed man, who spoke as if he had gone to college and pursued advanced degrees, with a younger wife and clean, well-dressed children.
he reads the newspaper every morning – he seems like the type – and has diverse opinions about the war and healthcare and taxes. he reads it in the bathroom, where he keeps magazines for the afternoons. his bookshelves have more photograph albums than books of poetry, philosophy, and mythology all combined.
i am glad he is not my audience. are you a journalist? you write for these cretins?
after 200 posts here at blogger (more over at tripod), i felt this was the right moment to do a brief look back in time.
six posts, picked by regular readers, from the past.
feel free to post links to your favorites (or just mention them and i'll go dig them up for you if you're lazy) in the comments section, if you are so inclined.
wanderer:
http://jmmcdermott.blogspot.com/2007/03/things-left-on-ground-of-hostel-dorm.html#links
http://jmmcdermott.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/1521581/going-for-a-walk-on-a-racetrack/
ponderer:
http://jmmcdermott.blogspot.com/2007/04/end-of-world.html#links
http://jmmcdermott.tripod.com/blog/index.blog/1537947/the-future-of-pants/
useless cad:
http://jmmcdermott.blogspot.com/2007/04/yesterday-and-i-have-all-we-need.html#links
http://jmmcdermott.blogspot.com/2007/06/inclement-weather-so.html#links
at the kimbell art museum, a gentleman who had paid for entry into the touring exhibition asked me if the paintings in the museum were the originals.
sometimes, when i'm smiling at people, i'm actually gritting my teeth.
tomorrow will be my 200th post at blogger. it will be an excellent opportunity for newcomers to see backward to favorite posts of a few regular readers.
he asked me to pose for him,
because we were lovers
by our secret stream
my iconography was always made
from a hunter’s
tearful wails
i turned into a deer
i flicked my tail at him
i ran for the treeline
so he shot me
he posed me at his leisure
http://www.kimbellart.org/database/index.cfm?detail=yes&ID=AP%201968.02
i was in a suburban mall buying new jeans and walking somewhere air conditioned for a while.
in this retail silo, birds flew overhead. they slipped into the cracks of the open doors, open windows, open garages. they got lost in the rafters. they swoop down to the floor to sift through the food court trash and the flies and mosquitoes that had made the same mistake as the birds.
in the springtime, they will make nests. they will lay eggs. also, they will evolve.
two feet off the equestrian trail at dinosaur valley state park, i saw this spider.
look close.
pictures have been fun. but, the digital camera has been reclaimed by the rightful owners. perhaps such a device will return to me later.
i think it's growing out of the ground. the construction workers are merely a front for the way the pipes and steel has become its own life, growing walls from the ground through the pipes and the wires.
buildings growing like trees. naked wooden walls.
all these flowers rising from the ruins would not exist if the tractors hadn't come to strip the earth naked. sunflower seeds sleep in the dust, hiding between the roots for the scrapes to come and cause the bloom. they are not the only kind of flower like that.
then, the tractors come again and lay concrete and build walls, and the flowers are stripped away.
flowers that wait for ruin only to die when the ruin ends. the only flowers left are the pipes rising up from the earth like industrial roots.
luxury condos coming soon to this place along the river. i walked around the moonscape, swatting mosquitos and taking pictures.
check in tomorrow, and see more of moonscape.
to build the homes of tomorrow, we must destroy the forests of today.
on my left, the suburbs roll over the hillsides. On my right, the river rolls a path through the hillsides. In between this single block of concrete says “tescorow” like a tiny grave.
i did what conjuring i could and didn’t find much, but i suspect the humble soul that came to me was a dog. on this borderline between the city and the wild, an animal sleeps away the centuries.
not far away, a grapevine grows wild. the grapes taste so sweet after all this rain.
this beautiful place not far from here
at the western edge of civilization, a river rolls below the highway. trees instead of skyscrapers, and birdsong and the mosquito hum of wet marsh and the stink of slow-moving water replicates the way the world used to be.
on the other side of this lonely road, the highway has already brought the hilltakers.
also, i think i see where the trolls res their heads, but none came looking for me.
ain't it funny how the bottom is prettier than the top?
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