1000 words might be 999 too many

Saw this on CNN.com. It took me a looooong time to resolve the little black profile of a lady looking up at a pink sky (as one does). Mostly I saw what seemed to be an ovarian cyst with a bite out of it. All I felt was "ewwww." Probably that's just me.

Hippy Hair

At long last, Kid had his hair cut last night. Three days earlier, he was pushing his breeze-tossed locks (like that? thanks!) off his forehead on an Oregon beach, there was sand on his knees, animal tattoos on every conceivable surface, small sea stones in his pockets. This morning, he went to school looking like a tiny commodities trader: corporate hair, squeaky clean face, no tats, no breeze, sensible shoes.

Something has been lost.

And he knew it. His distress in front of the mirror had less to do with being able to see from under his bangs than what he could see from under his bangs. A long life of not living on the beach, not being sprung from school, not having rootbeer and fries for lunch three days running. A long, sensible life of eating his vegetables, doing homework, ringing the achievement test bells, and speaking politely to his parents.

I don't think I have the heart to ever take him to the barber again.

Things learned the hard way

Leaving three small boys alone in a room with 75 Animal planet "temporary" tattoos means at least one trip to the drug store for baby oil and alcohol wipes. Also many tears. Also the discovery of tattoos in places that tattoos should not be discovered. Sometimes, that discovery comes several days later and is apt to shock the women folk.

Zimzum: A Confession

Zimtzum or Tzimzum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm "contraction"): I feel that to set my karma 100% correct, I need to do something about this empty space in which creation was able to begin.

About a million years ago, I wrote about this zimzum in my doctoral dissertation and had no idea what it was, really. It's just that when you see it portrayed in medieval manuscripts it tends to have a wiggly conch-shell shape that fit in so beautifully with my mad dash through medieval culture and the intellectual and artistic history of the seven-celled uterus. I needed to move to Paris in six weeks and so I sat up one night and wrote crazy things. Possible up to 75% of them were also true things, but there was enough fancy and poesy in there that I have felt guilty ever since. Perhaps this is the origin of those dreams in which I never really got out of high school, and am doomed, DOOMED, to try and find a pink eraser in one of an endless maze of nasty lockers, some of them in rooms where witches live.

Kay, bye.

Yahoos

Next door. Oh, next door. There used to be a nice little family there, but, as it turns out, mommy and daddy hated each other so now her relatives live there instead. And they are a motley crew, as it turns out. Tonight for example, they're out in their backyard listening to Aerosmith (who DOES that anymore??) while the women squeal OH MY GOD! and the men go YAHOO and WA HOO HOO HOO GO FOR IT and WAAAAAOOOOOOOHHHHHHYAAAAA! (I think I transcribed that correctly.) And their dogs are barking--not little dogs, as you can imagine. I've spent the last hour looking for acreages west of the city, someplace where I do not have to live in proximity to other people who are loud. It will cost us at least $900K to have only trees for neighbours, but I think I'm willing to do whatever it takes at this point.

The good news: in 48 minutes I get to call the cops and THEN we'll see who's running a grow-op and who isn't.