rabbit, rabbit, rabbit

modern art, a cover, and words

i. one of these things is not like the other

did you miss it?

this was the best placard i found in the whole museum when i was at the met last weekend. it's for this piece:

i have a lot of thoughts about modern art, but i also checked out during the second semester of art history when i decided that debating what can be counted as art is not going to stop wars or feed people. not that i think learning spanish will do either of those things, but the people in those classes don't ask the teacher idiotic questions like "can you comment on the influence of art on popular children's films such as the use of figures from ancient grecian urns in disney's hercules?"

ii. "i'm sure there's something in a shade of grey"
craig owens: anna begins [counting crows cover]

iii. a glossary of my homes so far

i’ve lived in three different cities—pittsburgh, cincinnati, and philadelphia. get ready, there are a lot of quotation marks coming at you.

+eggs: while i was going the met, i ate breakfast with a girl who ordered bubble eggs, which confused me and the guy who worked there, until i realized she meant dippy eggs, which confused the non-english-speaking waiter even more. after a lot of explaining and hand motions, he told us that we were looking for huevos estrellados, volteados, pero no muy fritos. oh, of course. and thanks to the man at the table next to ours, i now know the normal word for these is “over-easy” eggs.

+jawn: hand down the best word ever. i don’t actually think it exists anywhere outside philadelphia. it mostly means thing, but can also be used to talk about a girl [never a boy]. i.e. are you going to his party jawn tonight?, check out that hot jawn over there, give me that jawn, what’s that jawn called?, let me get two of those jawny jawns. you can’t go wrong with this one.

+mum: i used to be able to call my mum “mama,” but now it just feels weird since that’s what i call everyone else. if i ever manage to find a job, i can see this being a problem since i am the queen of ending up in awkward situations. like, i’ll be working in a restaurant and i’ll have two girls at my table and obviously one will be big and one will be really little and i’ll go to take their order and the little one will say “you go first, mama” and i’ll get her order and then be all “what can i get for your daughter?” and they’ll look at me like an idiot and i’ll realize what i did and my face’ll get all red and i’ll start laughing too much and then scamper away. that’s what’ll happen. [ps did you know that the word for “mother” begins with “m” in almost every language? the “m” sound is one of the first sounds that babies learn to make and so the mum hears her baby and says “look, she’s saying my name!” talk about desperate, mums. [jk, mums are the best!]] [pps what do you call your mum?]

+nebby: pittsburghese for nosey. i think this one is cute.

+please: people in cincinnati say “please” when they don’t understand what you’re saying, causing non-cincinnati people to ask “please what?” this is apparently left over from all the germans who immigrated to the city. i’ve never really gone for the whole “please” thing; i like “what” or “sorry,” which i pronounce so that it rhymes with “gory.” i also do borrow, tomorrow, worry, and horrible with long “o”s. lots people from jersey say “harrible” [huh?] and everybody from philadelphia says “woo-der” for water [huh? x2].

+slippy: when it snows and it’s hard to walk outside, it’s slippy. you might say “no, it’s slippery,” but you would be wrong, stop adding extra ers. i think this is a pittsburgh thing.

+soldiers: soldiers are you have when you cut your toast into stripes so you can dip it into your dippy egg. i’ve never met anyone else who eats their toast like this or knows the word “soldiers” except for my grandma and the rest of my family.

+with: philadelphians are not fond of their prepositions. coming from a place where people like prepositions so much that they tend to just throw them in at the end of sentences for kicks ["where are you going to?" and so on], this is strange. people here are not “done with work,” they are “done work.” they will call you when they are “done class.” wtf philadelphia?

+yinz: second person plural! this is the pittsburgh alternative to y’all.

+yo: yo is one of my favorite words, mostly because i didn’t think real people used it until i moved to illadelphia. i remember laughing in 7th grade when i had to read dialogue that started with “yo” out loud from a book because the word felt so weird in my mouth. now i know that “yo” is a fantastic way to get someone’s attention, answer the phone, or just use to start a sentence.

what words do you have from where you live?

did you really think you could just put it in the safe behind the painting?

i’m stuck in a room full of half-thought thoughts; they stack up like boxes that need sorted and my room just gets smaller.

you know that feeling? being trapped by quiet? it’s not a good silence, it’s an empty kind, but one that feels distinctly solid in some way. you can’t trust it. the density weighs down on you and you can’t understand why. everywhere else you run, you’re bursting against the sky. but now, in this room, they’ve got you shut in.

i’ll list all the reasons. i’m figuring out why and how and when, so can’t you let go? girl, you’ve got to find some grey or you’ll alienate them all. this drama is tiring, and i can’t deal with the exhaustion; i’m ready to rest.

i wonder what went so wrong. we’ve all done so much damage to each other in games of unfeeling and isolation. we’re dancing around tension, doing anything we can to avoid honest conflict; in its absence, the strain festers and warps until the friction becomes too agonizing to handle. so we give in. we’re doing things we’re not supposed to; willing our sweetness to fade.

right now, i’m so far away from anything close to home, but you’ve got two, maybe three.

my whole world is in black and white; you know what i’m saying. that was one of my favorite things, when you turned ugly things into pretty words. like "grave gardens." you have this way with candy-coated heartbreak, but do you feel it? i’m wearing stitches to show what’s missing, but you? you’re jumping around so your feet won’t get burned. look how easy that makes it to escape; how convenient, then, to have a ready-to-wear apology. are you afraid to admit to it or are you just scared of being the one to lose?

loss is so natural, so common, but it scares me more than anything. when i love things, i want all of them. it's like eating ice cream; even though it makes your teeth too cold and your stomach hurt, you keep eating. it's a horrible and fantastic kind of want because you know that it’ll eventually be gone, but you keep eating because it's the only way to even taste it at all.

instead of loving you less, i’m learning to love you differently. it’s not an active love, or a love of you with me, it’s a love for the pieces i took. somedays, i’ll walk past shades of you, like someone screaming or the sidewalk to your old apartment. and i’m still crying to iron and wine, buried in my bed on cold nights. i’m trying to be calm in the wake of your happiness, but it’s hard when you look through me.

i want out of my head and into the world. i need more noise and less space or something to make my eyes start taking in the color again.

rima xxxviii

¡los suspiros son aire y van al aire!

¡las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!

dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida

¿sabes tú adónde va?

+gustavo adolfo bécquer

[breaths are air and go to air

tears are water and go to the sea

tell me, woman, when love is lost

do you know where is goes?]

the trapeze swinger

i like...

drawing people i know as comics.

stomach flu

um, everyone in philadelphia is sick right now. luckily i got a flu shot so i’m just losing my voice, which ideally will end up being sexy for a few days. we’ll see. i think about the weather a lot when i’m in the city since interaction requires me to actually go out into it and right now it’s being a total fucking dick. like last night, it was doing the really pretty quiet snow thing and i walked home all smiley listening to it being silent. then i woke up this morning and the sidewalks were all slippy and melted and it was raining. come on, weather. stop being a tease.

also, i hate alligators and they are on tv right now in my living room. people are provoking them. oh god. i hate alligators almost as much as i hate rabies.

speaking of alligators, have you seen this video? please watch it.

i am going to make t-shirts with this little guy on it.

incidentally, have you noticed that obama is left handed? i am left handed. i think all left-handed people get secretly excited when they realize someone else is a lefty too. i know i do. why do left handed people die younger than right handed people? why do i get my university’s hillel newletter? do the colors on my blog make it too hard to read? why is the discovery channel now the home shopping network? life is full of questions.

HOMYGOD THEY ARE LETTING ALLIGATORS CHASE THEM. he just said “we’re gonna put on some heavy armor and agitate the alligator to try to get him to chase us.” guess what mythbuster? elbow pads are not exactly what i’d call “heavy armor.” actually, not even close; maybe if you’re five and trying to learn to rollerskate. that motherfucker is going to crush your bones into tiny tiny pieces.

i bought lotion the a few weeks ago that smelled like last winter, but now i don’t even notice it.

isn’t it funny how smells fade into familiarity? and you know how smell is supposed to be the sense that’s most tied to memory? try to describe how something smells. it’s hard. but then, when you talk about how something looks—there are so many words! flat, smooth, small, close, easy, curvy, ugly, young, red, blue, alive. scent escapes language and lurks somewhere back in your head, back where memories are spun.

it’s almost february, too. i’ve been waiting for it since november so i can listen to “february air” while i walk to class because i like songs with specific months and days and times in them.

there’s not really a point here. i think the point is: i would like some bike-friendly weather so that i can go outside and start making sense.

Consider the Hands that Write This Letter

after Marina Wilson
Consider the hands
that write this letter.
The left palm pressed flat against the paper,
as it has done before, over my heart,
in peace or reverence
to the sea or some beautiful thing
I saw once, felt once: snow falling
like rice flung from the giants' wedding,
or the strangest birds. & consider, then,
the right hand, & how it is a fist,
within which a sharpened utensil,
similar to the way I've held a spade,
match to the wick, the horse's reins,
loping, the very fists
I've seen from the roads to Limay & Estelí.
For years, I have come to sit this way:
one hand open, one hand closed,
like a farmer who puts down seeds & gathers up
the food that comes from that farming.
Or, yes, it is like the way I've danced
with my left hand opened around a shoulder
& my right hand closed inside
of another hand. & how
I pray, I pray for this
to be my way: sweet
work alluded to in the body's position
to its paper:
left hand, right hand
like an open eye, an eye closed:
one hand flat against the trapdoor,
the other hand knocking, knocking.

[Aracelis Girmay]