06.11.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:48 pm by Beau
Foregoing the garden and concentrating on our annual flower beds and the porch, my new favorite plant this year which I’m giving as giftage is the heliotrope (heliotropium arborescens) which means either ‘shunning the sun’ or ‘turning towards the sun’ or maybe both. I like a good Gemini enigma since I’m the posterchild for fence-sitting. Once fantastically popular with the Victorians (not necessarily a selling point for me), the heliotrope is most noted not only for its smallish, vibrant purple flowers but for it’s enormous fragrance which is described as vanilla-ish. Because of the smell, it’s also been called the Cherry Pie plant which is ridiculous but I’m just passing it along. As with all flowers, there are several Greek myths associated with the heliotrope having to do with unrequited love lost on either Apollo and/or Helios. Anytime those crazy Greek bitch’s love went unrecognized, they wasted away from the sorrow until there was nothing left but a pile of poo, I imagine, which the God’s took pity on (except Apollo and Helios whose callous disregard for their feelings in the first place) and turned them into a beautiful, fresh smelling flower. How this is an object lesson for the next whacked out God-stalker is beyond me, but then again, Aphrodite sprang from Uranus’ amputated smelly left nut so who am I to quibble.
The heliotrope since it came from Peru way back when has been known as the “Herb of Love” and “God’s herb” which nowadays would probably be known as “God’s Kind Bud” if someone figured out how to dry it and smoke it. Knowing its legend, smoking it would probably make you fall down and waste away along a lazy river waiting for Apollo to change his mind and come back for some canoodling. In the mean time, you can make a heliotrope amulet from the flowers picked in August, wrapped in a bay leaf with the tooth of a wolf to help keep assholes from saying mean, disparaging things about you, whether deserved or not. Along the lines of smoking it, had you been robbed, this amulet can also give you a visionary look-see into who the dastardly bastard was and where your cheddar got pawned off to. And for those religious folk out there (my favorite minister, Major Wang) wanting to finally have a one-up on their wayward, libidinous flock, bringing the amulet into a house of Worship will prevent any woman who’s had a little slap and tickle with a married man from leaving until it’s removed. Hmmm…a church basement full of trapped, adulterating hussies; sounds like a fun Friday night to me but what do I know, I’m in bed on Friday’s by 10pm.
In the mean time, I took a zillion pics of myself on the porch this afternoon just so I can remember what I looked like when I was 32 and GodDAMN but I look like Harvey Two-Face Dent from the Batman comics. I swear the left side of my face is drawing down into some chip-on-the shoulder, mean, asshole while the other side still seems to have some optimistic light shining through. I’m a Gemini through and through, I guess.
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06.10.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:08 pm by Beau
The sure-fire ways to win at Vegas are rolling in now. Today one of my coworkers offered up this piece of advice when playing roulette: always bet black on your third spin and you’ll win. The lack of rational mathematical and scientific support for such a thing whacked me so hard in the back of the head, I just had to give in and say I’d try it because frankly, it’s the cutest thing I’ve heard so far. It’s not really how roulette should be approached, but neither is putting money on Jeff’s dad’s lucky number 27 and he almost always hits on it, so we’re doing that too.
Of course, not being the big gambler, I’m willing to try just about anything because ultimately, I don’t really expect to win which is why I probably won’t. I’ll probably stick to the blackjack tables even though I can’t count to save my life. I know enough to follow the rules of blackjack and have enough $5′s in my pocket to keep me busy for a few hours but if there isn’t someone nice sitting next to me to count the cards out, I’m a sunk kitty. That being said, it’s all about laying out with poolside bar service. I have Bloody Bull written all over me.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:24 am by Beau
After Mom died, still in the flush of a stunning and new relationship with my brothers, we all decided we needed to vacation together and soon. My younger brother, Mitch, an avid Las Vegas go’er thought it might be a good spot for all of us and we agreed, purchased our tickets to “O“, booked our snazzy rooms at Mandalay Bay and then waited for the weekend to arrive. Well, Thursday’s the day we’re all flying out for a long weekend of punching it out and getting rich quick. Of course, leave it to our sense of timing to schedule our trip at the tail end of that ridiculous Vegas, the Family Destination campaign, missing the new, nastier, dirtier, obviously more FUN Adult, Sex-tabulous Vegas opening up in August.
All I’m saying is, if I’m turning 33 years old in Vegas this weekend which I am, I want a couple grand in my pocket, some hookers, a stripper pole in my hotel room, and a webcam. Barring that, I’ve asked for an iPod. Everyone has to realize that the real reason for Vegas is to help us remember Mom on birthday this weekend, too. No place better for channeling Amber than loud, brash, too-cool for daytime TV Vegas, regardless whether the asphalt is melting in the record temperatures or not. Have SPF 4, will travel.
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06.08.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:48 pm by Beau
I’d finally talked with Jeff tonight after a long week of what seemed like him pulling away from me. Usually when this happens, it’s something I’m doing that pisses him off and he pulls away leaving me feeling directionless, anxious, unfocused, and worried. So I was getting the familiar signals this week, emphasized in long, drawn out silences, meals eaten without a word spoken to one another and long hours spent in separate rooms doing things by ourselves. I realize this might be normal for others but for us, who are so immersed and entwined in each other’s worlds, it’s nothing if not short of disconcerting. So I’d let it simmer all weekend and finally asked him tonight if I’d done something to piss him off. He sort of looked at me and said he’s just sort of lost his way with how to be with me in terms of where I’m at with Mom being gone and finally decided though vibes I was sending out that I was asking to be left alone and given wide berth to chew on whatever I needed. I’ve never been the most astute of the two of us when it comes to communicating needs and wants back and forth and I’ve been completely clueless what I’ve looked like and acted like over these last months. I actually thought I’d been doing well. No cry jags, no laying around and wasting days looking at pale reflections of regret and sadness; I felt like, if not blazing hot trails of meaningful living, I was at least being present and mindful and not laterally drifting. I felt like I was getting along which is the only thing to do, really.
I actually still feel that way. My days are getting…more, if that’s an adjective you believe in. The distance given by time changes the sorrow and the uncertainty and the sadness in a strange way. It fades and draws it out into something else that fits into each day and night. It’s not so much in front and on top of everything I do and see and think anymore but more behind it all, giving support and solidity. It becomes less emotional and more factual. It is this way and will be this way; go on, now. It’s not a wound to be healed, it’s an experience that has a long time to get tumbled and rolled over, to be thought about and written about and thought about more.
I’ve been waiting to get here for some time though it’s not where or what I thought it would be. I gave up trying to figure out the whole big map of this process and have just been sort of meandering along, taking in the good days and bad days and hoping the days would come when it wasn’t such a sharp stake to the heart. I had actually started to believe that had I been religious, the ecstasy of the Spirit might turn it all around and I’d be full of gladness and earnest bliss in her heavenly reward. Then I started thinking that’s a huge load and was glad I wasn’t wallowing in all that. I’d come to a good place with the afterwards for my Mom well before she died and it wasn’t about self-delusion, it was about knowing enough to not know anything and not to worry over it.
So time fades the edges of it in a very personal way, at least for me. My days go on as they have before but what I told Jeff, as he stood there watching me, was that I needed him closer to me if anything. I need the regular days of our lives to keep on moving in predictable paths so that when I need to sit back and just watch, I know where the ride is going. It’s this regularity that would drive some crazy, but to feel the regular pulse of our lives helps me know the days move on with me in them, present.
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06.03.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:26 pm by Beau
While I was back in Ohio last week, I picked up the local Troy Daily News to soak in the local flavor as I like to do. The Troy paper is this little paper that reports on all the goings-on around the community and sometimes ventures out into the big news world of Dayton which lays only a few miles to its south. On this day, not really paying attention what I read, I kept getting stuck on an article’s first paragraph. I first chalked it up to my poor reading comprehension skills or my aptitude for missing commas, etc. But after I read the same first sentence/paragraph for the tenth time and it still didn’t make sense, I hunkered down and finally realized it was the worst un-accidental first sentence I think I’d ever read in a newspaper. Something for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, I believe.
For your consideration from the Troy Daily News, May 2003:
“Man killed in shooting with officer – DAYTON (AP) – A police officer hit in his bulletproof vest by a shot fired from inside an apartment fired back, killing another man inside, police said. The suspected gunman then jumped out a window and broke his pelvis.”
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06.02.03
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:24 pm by Beau
Max, always with his slender, underfed finger on the pulse of “What’s Hot, What’s Not” in all culture great and small, had a great post today about not what your favorite book of all time is but what was the worst reading experience of your life, ever. I hold great belief that while I’ve read a bevy of truly awful stink-bombs, my Geministic inability to finish most of what I start concerning anything has spared me this great tragedy so far. Currently, I can say without a doubt my most painful experience in finished book reading was Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I’m not talking every book in that God-forsaken, infinite trail of tears, I’m just saying the first three which I forced myself to read when I wanted to be disaffected and withdrawn and gothy.
There did seem to be some significant discussion on his boards that had to do with a lot of Very Fine English Lit books that I’m embarrassed (or after hearing how painful they all were to read, thankful) I’ve not only not read, but actually not heard of. I’m pretty certain I won’t ever be buying a book with ‘lighthouse’ in the title and/or anything by Hemingway which I can honestly say I managed to get through high-school without being made to read. As I come to think about it, even though there was a lot of required reading in high-school, I’m not sure I actually read any of them, except of course 1984 (Hi, Julie!!!) which I liked significantly. Come to think about it more, I’m not even sure what I was doing in high-school other than drifting around the halls being morose and withdrawn. Good times, good times.
If anyone badmouths Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, however, they’ll be banned from posting forever. House rules.
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