Tunnels

My birthday is in 5 days



I want to spend it with people who'll dig tunnels
from their windows to mine.

Apologies...

I have been a lazy lazy horrible terribly distracted awful blogger.

I just took a new job, and in my infinite wisdom/over-estimation of abilities, I am also continuing to work for my previous employer until the end of their fiscal year, which happens on June 30.

And I was putting together a benefit for the latter and coordinating a federal grant application (due June 11) for the former - so yes, excuses excuses... lazy lazy horrible terribly distracted awful blogger.

I haven't so much as cut out another heart... but I have been thinking over some concepts to realize.

So about the hearts...

I recently was directed to a blogger at Frantic Writings. Here's an example of what he's all about...

"Tuesday my case goes to the Cleveland Clinic to see if I qualify for a heart transplant. All in all I’d have to say that’s pretty fucked up. I still can’t believe that I need a new heart."

Here is my reaction...

I cried a little... well, I cried alot - it was that kind of hacking simpering coughing donkey-bray of a cry that comes when a totally foreign reality clicks instantaneously with your own unrelated thought processes.

I've been doing alot of that since the end of '02...the littlest triggers set things in motion - mostly stories about loss of control or a complete change of plan or unmet expectations.

Anyway, he writes about this juxtaposition between experiencing a great joy and facing a great challenge and seems to plunge from one level of Maslow's Hierarchy to a much lower one in an instant.

It just hit the right nerve... and tears... and hiccupping... it was all quite sloppy.

I've really grown to hate how much loss of control there is in aging... or in simply being a human for so long that if you had a good run at one time, its really easy for the magnet to flip from positive to negative. And the realization that our bodies and minds are machines that wear down and have parts that should be re-called - it's all quite discouraging.

So after reading his posts, I considered him, someone I don't know and someone I am unlikely to meet, as I cut out hearts for the first round of my series...

And I cut out about 30 of them... big, small...hearts to be hung out to dry... hearts to be mounted like trophies and insect specimens... hearts in nests hatching beautiful things...

And I kept thinking about the theoretical heart and the physical heart and how we talk about broken hearts all the time without the reality of having experienced a literal Broken Heart with its wheezing and arrhythmia and unbalanced-ness.

Anyway... I as I thought about this man with a Broken Heart, I was imagining a store where he could go and there would be stacks and stacks of hearts... real working, replacement hearts like Wonka's factory or a Target... or even just a field... with a good crop of strong, healthy hearts and an abundance so great that you could choose to be picky.

Maybe even stock up with a couple extra - you know... "just in case."

How great would it be to have an inventory of spare hearts in the basement?

You could...
*pass them out to friends
*keep them on hand for emergencies
*give them to panhandlers
*have one for different needs: athletic heart, sacrificial heart, snow-blower heart
*you could mail it around the world and it would come back smarter and stronger
*you could keep one in its original packing and sell it on eBay as "mint condition" - no scars, no baggage, no clots, blockages or stints.

The possibilities are endless. So much is caught up in love and symbolism of hearts... it leaves me speechless.

I'm just very glad I was introduced to his blog, it's good for inspiration - and I like to think that as I work on each piece, he's got a bit of good juju (and hopefully a working heart) coming to him in each one.

Television worth watching...

Creature Comforts

I LOVED the short film and apparently they've turned it into a series...
I'm really glad I turned on the television.



Television may be the devil, but what a great excuse to rollick with Old Scratch

In Grantchester, in Grantchester!

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: According to 2 other versions of the poem, I found this phrase, "ei’ qe genoi mhn" - in place of this phrase, "Uítu gunoímen." The explanation reads as such: Epsilon-Iota/Theta-Epsilon /Gamma-Epsilon-Nu-Omicron-Iota/ Mu-Eta-Nu"

Which still means little to me - (It's all Greek to me...?) - ideas, thoughts translations? Again, please share.

UPDATE: No, I have no idea what "Uítu gunoímen" translates to... if you know, please share.

Excerpts from "Grantchester" by Rupert Brooke, May 1912

"Uítu gunoímen . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! -- -
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .



God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester."

For entire text, click here

photo by l. perkowski

Impatient to read

As an unofficial 10-year boy, I'm fidgeting in my seat, banging my foot against floor, tapping my pencil incessently and all worked up to read this book. Whales and snails and puppy-dog tails - not to mention how to build a go-cart.

Read an excerpt here.

UPDATE: For those who question my unofficial/official boy-ness...



I got the HANDBOOK.

So there...

Oh yeah...

Well I have Christopher Walken's HEAD.

circa August 2001

Thought

You know what I haven't done in a while...?



...ridden a carousel.

That sounds like fun.