Vacation

Laguna Beach
Originally uploaded by Martina.

No time to post. I need a vacation or a new job or a nap or something. To borrow a phrase from Neil Gaiman, I am far from gruntled. I have a long list of things I about which I have been wanting to post:

- 3 Leg Torso
- Mix lists for March, April, May
- Who would win in a hot off between Johnny Depp & James Marsters? (ok, maybe it's not a topic for a post, but it's a competition I could enjoy...I do have my theories, though...)
- Paulo Coelho
- The Mystery of the Multiplying Draculas and the Contest
- Theme Music
- Tarot
- Reading groups

Perhaps I'll use this as a place holder and revisit them again later or perhaps I'll never think about them again. It's hard to say.

For now, though, I will restrict myself to posting a Phillip Lopate poem, found in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. It hits perhaps a little close to my neurotic home, but it still makes me smile:

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

Something else that makes me smile. The opening to Mark Helprin's short story "The Schreuderspitze":

"In Munich are many men who look like weasels. Whether by genetic accident, meticulous crossbreeding, an early an puzzling migration, coincidence, or a reason that we do not know, they exist in great numbers. Remarkably, they accentuate this unfortunate tendency by wearing mustaches, Alpine hats, and tweed. A man who resembles a rodent should never wear tweed."

Good advice indeed. There's no more to say, so I won't.