leaving

for NY tomorrow, to see my sister who lives on the St Lawrence, practically in Canada. Our youngest brother committed suicide yesterday. How do you tell people this? Everyone gets the horror eyes. How do you live through such a thing? It's the 9th most popular reason people die in the US. I didn't know this. I wish I didn't know this. Don't Google suicide poems. They're awful, in a different awful way.

what to do

when it is cold out and you are wearing the bathrobe with the threads hanging out and stains on the sleeves.

Hot chocolate recipe:

Some milk in a pan
many scoops of organic unsweetened chocolate
some sugar

Whisk all together and heat up. Don't boil or burn so keep stirring. Add some vanilla at the end. Put in your big French cup, put your feet on the coffee table and savor.

thanks

For everything, the wide blue sky, the cold, my old dog who is better with medication, for Buddhists and artists and writers and Milo for turning 5, for mothers and the babies within them, for the turkeys who lived through another year, for the whole mess, may everyone have enough to eat today and a warm place to sleep.

Manifesto:

A written definition of intent or principles

Absurdism

1. A philosophy, often translated into art forms, holding that humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe and that any search for order by them will bring them into direct conflict with this universe: "True absurdism is not less but more real than reality" John Simon.

2. An act or instance of the ridiculous: "This strained conceit never quite locates screen equivalents for the stage absurdisms" Village Voice.

The absurdist manifesto:

The intent is ridiculous. Put a paper bag over your head. If you can’t fight your way out of it, or you prefer the dark, smell of the pulp mill, crinkling and groaning of arboreal forest, continue your bag costume. Anonymity is comforting. Hold fast to your concepts. Sleeping dogs yip and mutter. Twitch. Cover your indelicate toes. Bite these pages.

My big vacation

I went to Oakland for the weekend. Try running in Oakland, near the Grand Cinema. I dare you. I left my friend's house and ran up the hill, which is a at a 90 % angle from her driveway. I am not exaggerating. OK, I wasn't running. I was kind of hopping a little and swearing. I got to the summit and the street plunged straight down to meet another enormous uphill. Crap. This is why there ARE NO PEOPLE ON THE SIDEWALKS. Why the hell would they want to go anywhere? They could just lie down and roll. Lake Merritt is flat, thank god, so I went there the next day. I saw a pelican by the overflow drainpipe. Weird.

We did go to the Grand Cinema twice, worth it to see old movie projectors and Tiffany glass in the lobby.

I can go back to the Wallingford Irregulars next week. I'm so happy my toes curl.