shoes, honestly

buying shoes is an ordeal for me. not because i can't find shoes that i like, or that there is a lack of available sizes. the thing is, i have 'issues' with my left foot: a bunion and hallux limitus. the later is a condition caused by running. it would have helped, i suppose, if i had replaced my running shoes more frequently than i did. and no doubt it would have helped if i hadn't run so much on concrete. but regardless of the causes, i'm stuck with a foot that is ridiculously difficult to fit.

two podiatrists have told me surgery is an option, but that unless my foot actually hurts, there is no reason to rush into it. one of those podiatrists did say, however, that not being able to find shoes that fit is a valid reason for surgery as well. hmmm. apparently the most stationary sole is the best, i.e. one that does not flex. so my search for shoes must keep these factors in mind: enough room for the nobby protrusion that is my bunion, enough room in the toe box so that there is no pressure on the bunion or the area around the joint, rigid sole, and of course--something that i like.

danskos work--in some styles. and recently i discovered MBTs, a technology based on how the masai walk. according to the creator of the MBT line, walking on sand or springy moss is ideal for the human body. it provides an exercise to many areas of the leg, foot, and even stomach. in addition, it strengthens the back and promotes good posture. MBTs recreate this "walking on sand" effect in a shoe.

i received my podiatrist's endorsement on MBTs and three people in my yoga class have a pair (one of them has two), so i decided to spend the $250. Gulp.

not the most attractive of shoes, i chose an athletic style in black. when i left the store, it didn't even occur to me that i may have chosen the wrong size. but after walking in them for an hour or so, i started to suspect that perhaps i had. they felt a bit too roomy. and they were sure to stretch. so, what to do?

i'm at a point in my life where even a small white lie can be cause for gnawing guilt. maybe it's the karma thing; maybe it's just that i'm a better person than the one who derived such delicious pleasure from lifting a dress, shirt, or a variety of other items from stores and then walking out with the new possessions hidden on my person, feeling the inimitable rush of success.

so now that i had worn the shoes and the outer soles showed mud and tiny stones embedded in the tread, what was i to do? easy--clean them as best i could and determine (honestly) if they 'look' new. then take it from there. . .

so with a screwdriver, an old toothbrush, a paperclip, and the outdoor hose, i went to work. diligent work, and for someone as meticulous (and yes-obsessive) in many ways as i can be, a definite degree of fun. the result was pretty darn close to perfect. i even managed a few impressive touch-ups with a q-tip soaked in alcohol.

so i returned to the store, told the salesman ( who i liked and trusted) that i felt i may have purchased the shoes in the wrong size. he pulled out a pair in the next size down and i tried them on. they felt better, but something inside me wouldn't let me exchange them. so i told him the ones i had purchased originally were probably better afterall, and i left the store. but the story was not quite resolved.

that night i became increasingly annoyed by the fact that the shoes i had in my possession were slightly too large. i knew they were the kind of leather that would stretch, which made the situation all the worse. so i could of course make do, by wearing a thicker pair of socks. but my god--$250 bucks. so i decided i would return to the store the following day, try the smaller pair on again, and 'wing it.'

by the time i got to the parking lot of the shopping center, i was in anguish. the idea of facing the salesman and pretending that the shoes had not been worn made me sick to my stomach. i simply couldn't do it. but the other half of my dilemma was the fact that i had spent so much money on a pair of shoes that were in truth too big. which was stronger? my need to tell the truth, or my need to make a good purchase (i.e. to not 'waste' money). i called my best friend, hoping she would somehow convince me that returning them would be "o.k.," even though i knew it wasn't. i called my mother as well, because i believed she may have had the magic word to make me feel o.k. about it all. the call to my friend went to voicemail. the call to my mom produced a busy signal.

in exasperation i took out the shoes from the box. i turned them to examine the soles--yet again. with very careful inspection, someone could indeed notice that they had probably been worn. it was then i knew what to do.

so i entered the store and the same salesman was there. i greeted him with, "so here i am again!" and laughed. "i'm going through hell with these shoes," i told him. "i think i really do need the smaller size. maybe i wouldn't find the need to fine-tune this purchase so carefully if they weren't $250, but they are, and i need to make it right."

so he went to the stock room and pulled out the smaller pair. "but here's the thing," i confessed. "i may may not even have an option here; i wore them outside and you need to know that."

"o.k," he said, taking the larger pair and heading to the stock room. i was walking around in the 9.5s when he returned, shoes in hand. "they're fine. a few things i can touch up 'in the back.' they're essentially unworn."

relief. so simple and so complete. i then told him of a memory from long time ago. my father, a retail store manager in baltimore, md., had the policy: "the customer is always right." he proved his adherence to this idea one christmas when a woman came to the store with a coat she had purchased three years before. she wanted her money back because she claimed the coat didn't keep her warm. my dad returned the full amount she had paid.

"i had to tell you the truth," i told the salesman. "maybe it's because i remember how angry i was with that woman who took advantage of my father's store policy so long ago." the salesman smiled. "the shoes are fine. don't worry."

as he was filling out the necessary paperwork for the exchange, i spotted a pair of jazzy socks for my daughter for christmas. so i purchased these and breathed another sigh of relief. shoes, honestly.

poetry

poetry speaks of
what cannot be spoken
and captures
what cannot be caught.
we read it like a picture
with elements missing
that our minds fill in
to make the picture complete.

a feeling, fleeting and taunting
something that cannot sit still.
because as you try to name or
describe it, it moves
to a different place.
like a wave on a design
drawn in the sand.
so it changes, but
the essence of what you did
remains.

poetry is feeling,
or like my daughter, from whom i learn so many things
once wrote: poetry is like a memory.

oil spill

the recent spill in california, and another in russia's black sea. across the world and yet only days apart. From the Hindustan Times: "greed and carelessness" say enivornmental experts about the tragedy in russia". . . "may be the worst environmental calamity since the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986." "Nobody thinks about safety in Russia," says Vladimir Slivyak, director of Ecodefence, a Russian environmental watchdog. "Everyone thinks about money."

and what about the one in california? "human error." that's the word so far.

for me, the saddest thing of all is the animals caught unaware. innocent victims of technology--yet another instance of our assault on the environment. oil, and the need for it, our collective greed in craving it--all things that make no sense in a world so fragile and beautiful. the animals have no understanding of what happened to them. the birds and sea creatures don't question why. they are not angry with anyone. they simply seek to survive. it's in their nature. just like us. but we've attacked them without cause. like the war in iraq. these oil-soaked birds who seek refuge on the shore are like the children of iraq. fledgling creatures who don't recognize the concept of hate or greed, who value life without even knowing why. i cry for them. my heart is broken.

BlackWater

Even the sound of it is evocative and eerily apropos. the image of black slime, oozing across the land-covering the innocent with an ever-moving, tarry black mass. so that one species is indecipherable from another in the steamy swamp. infested. toxic. which it is. and now the administration, in all its wisdom, has given those bodies who pollute the waters immunity from all wrongdoing. what land is this? what people are these? what conscience survives in a place that was once the beacon of hope to the entire world. what took us from the greatest country on earth to a twisted, sardonic effigy of those who once walked our land. what moment in time marked this outcome? the second that saw the step away from the light and into the dark?

maman

there was a time
when the whole world lived in you
when all i wanted was to sit in your lap
and look up at your dark eyes
and touch your chin
with my fingertips

i thought i could never be as beautiful as you
i didn't like who i was and pretended to be others
more beautiful and talented
anyone but me

as i grew up, you stopped seeing who i was
you were busy trying to mold me into something else
like a piece of clay that you soften and work
into a shape that reflects your thought

i pulled away from you. i was angry.
i didn't want to be someone else anymore. i wanted to be me.
i wanted you to see
and to love the person i was becoming
like a flower, with petals that unfold

but you compared me to other flowers
perhaps more fragrant or with colors
more vibrant
i struggled to be and to know who i was

you continued to love me and i to love you
but it was a pained love, full of frustration
and sadness
and then one day--instead of resenting
and pulling and pushing
i softened.

i simply let go to who i was, letting it unfold
like a flower
and you started to like me again
and i to like you

you finally accepted all those things you
wanted to change
and you started to see them in a new light
a bouquet of you and my father
with sprigs of my own
collected from deserts and hillsides
seashores and sidewalks, the wind and the rain.

i love you now like i did so long ago
when i fell asleep in your lap
in the backseat of the car
all cozy like a cat curled up in the warm
when everything was perfect, everything was calm
and you, after all these years, look at me and smile
you see who i am
and you love me more with all my imperfections
than the image all those years ago
you wanted me to be

pride in work

i sent my bracelet to m. frances, who lives in the santo domingo pueblo, about 60 miles west of Albuquerque, new mexico. i met her at the taos pueblo during the San Geronimo feast, an ancient ceremonial event celebrated near the end of the harvest season. This crisp day in October, over a hundred local Native american artisans brought their crafts to display on folding tables set up throughout the pueblo. amidst the sea of exquisitely crafted silver jewelry, pottery, and other wares, a necklace with a turqoise and fiery orange stone pendant caught my eye. i stopped to admire it and began a conversation with the woman who stood behind the table where it was displayed. i mentioned a bangle bracelet my mother had given me years ago. several turquoise stones were missing and i wondered if she could repair it. she suggested that i mail it to her. i agreed. so she took one of her fiance's cards and printed her name carefully in ink above the p.o. address: m. frances.

after i mailed the bracelet, several days went by without a word from her. i tried calling a few times, but no one answered the phone. eventually an automated message informed me that voice mail for this number hadn't been set up yet. i was slightly annoyed. more than a week had gone by since i put the bracelet in the mail. i knew that i had taken a chance, sending a bracelet to someone i barely knew, but in spite of no communication from her or her fiance, i was certain i would see the bracelet again.

finally, nearly two weeks after mailing the bracelet, frances answered her cell phone. she apologized for the delay, telling me that apparantly her fiance had picked up the package from the p.o. box days before, but had neglected to tell her. she works as a nurse, she explained, and often has extended shifts. By the time she gets home, her fiance is either asleep or at his job. As a result, she had barely seen him during the past several weeks. But she had finally spotted my package under a stack of other items on a bureau in her dining room.

as for the bracelet--frances informed me that the stones were imitation, but that if i liked, she could replace them with real turquoise. it would cost me eighty dollars for the stones and for her work. i thought about this for awhile--calculating whether or not i wanted to spend the money, realizing that the price was fair, but wondering if the money could be better spent. i thought about the lapidariest i had taken it to a few months ago, a man who told me he would charge me sixty dollars for the stones alone--and that they would be plastic, not real turquoise. i was processing all of this when suddenly she spoke in a different tone, as if she had somehow heard my conversation with the lapidariest in California. Her voice was soft and clear. She was telling me something straight from her heart.

"i don't use imitation stone or metal, because that is cheating. my grandfather told me a long time ago that you must be proud of your work, that that is important. you must always be proud of what you do and not cheat anyone. and then the person who wears your work wears it with pride as well."

i was struck by what she said, because she could have easily replaced the missing stones with more fake ones. and i would have paid her far more than what they were worth. but instead she chose to tell me the truth, knowing that I would probably choose not to have the bracelet repaired, especially because she had also told me that the band was some kind of metal, not silver.

so i chose not to have the bracelet repaired, but it doesn't matter. this woman gave me something far more beautiful than the bracelet and she gave it to me for free. she transmitted to me the spirit of her grandfather, who spoke of doing your work with pride. so that when you give or sell something that you have made--it is something of value, something from you.

i carried that into my workplace the next day. i thought of things i had written--too quickly perhaps, because they weren't that important and didn't deserve the focus of my time. but that day i decided to change that. so that whatever i do--i will do it with pride. pride in the work and pride in the giving, because of it.

Being Alan Conway Being Stanley Kubrick

Here's the short version: total, unmitigated, brilliant fun from start to finish. John Malkovich as Alan Conway in Color Me Kubrick, the guy who pretended to be Kubrick in London for a number of years in the '90s (and got away with it!), is outrageously good. He plays his queenly character to the hilt. Every expression, every combination of purposely bad New York, British, and other accents that apparently Conway tried to do in earnest--all of these hit the mark. His walk, side-long gazes, flutter of those remarkable eyelashes caked with mascara--all the little touches that indeed pronounce him a Queen. In fact, Malkovich is so at home with this persona, you wonder. . . And wait until you see him in his fuzzy coat and gypsy scarf, a striking image reminiscent of Edie Beale in Grey Gardens, and only one of a rich assemblage of fashion statements he parades around in during the course of the film.

The story is quite fantastic. Apparently Conway managed to dupe people into thinking he was Stanley Kubrick, the famous and reclusive film director. He managed to get people to pay his hotel bills, lured young boys into sexual escapades, would pretend he lived in upscale neighborhoods by having a new acquaintance meet him in front of a posh address, to name only a few of his lavish and skillfully executed ruses. He even managed to fool people who knew the actual Kubrick. One of these people was Frank Rich, then theatre critic for the New York Times. It seems that one night he and a Hollywood producer who had actually met Kubrick - fell for Conway's act. As Kubrick, Conway gained entrance to exclusive nightspots, was invited to countless parties and restaurants. And he was forever adept at not signing a check or paying a bill. And perhaps the most amazing thing is, he displayed very little knowledge of Kubrick the man, or his films.

Conway manages to entice people by portraying himself as the recognized celebrity recluse "confiding" in just them. So the recipient of his "confidential ramblings" feels special, privileged in fact, and is only too happy to pick up the bill, because 'Kubrick' seems to have forgotten to bring any cash and has also managed to leave all his credit cards on his bureau. He drops names right and left, manufactures ideas for movies he will direct, confuses actors from the past and present. All this delivered in exagerrated language, accents, and the every-so-queenly flair.

Being Stanley Kubrick, John Malkovich has achieved what I truly believe to be his best role. What could have been a slapstick misery is a remarkable achievement. You don't dislike the man, you don't pity him. You're highly entertained by him. In fact, you're enthralled by him.

This story about a man who set out to be someone he was not, who played it with all the truth of what he wanted, and who managed to pull it off--in spite of incredible odds, is a delightful sojourn into someone else's dream. And as Malkovich brings it all so delightfully to life, we play along with him, willingly.

Directed by Brian Cook, who worked with the actual Stanley Kubrick as his assistant director in many films, Color Me Kubrick, released in 2005, is a fabulous ride.

Look for more of my movie reviews on Slick's Flicks

follow britain's lead

just read that by spring of '08 britain will cut its force in iraq by one-half. nice idea. let's do one better. take all our forces out--right now. listened to seymour hirsh a few days ago, interviewed on NPR. as for what to do in iraq, his response was quick, to the point, and easy to understand. option one: get all the troops out by midnight tonight. option two: get all the troops out by midnight tomorrow. our presence there does nothing towards solving a situation that continues to exist in large part because we are there. six years is far too long for a war that has no basis. let's get out. now.

vietnam

It’s about time
And wanderings
And grass that grows
Beneath your feet

when you smiled
And said i love you and
shared a summer peach

Forty years ago
i saw your father on the street.

his eyes were grey and

emptied of all his dreams.

you had died, he said simply

'over there' in a foreign field

i still see you

young and so believing

smiling in the wind that summer day

Searching for the answer to something
You didn't have the chance to ask

my camera

I’ve been working on getting to the place where taking pictures is a natural part of what i do. No internal dialogue. Just shoot. So on a recent trip to New Mexico, I carried my digital camera with me nearly everywhere I went. The strap slung over my shoulder, or camera in hand, I was ready to go.

One evening for a reason somewhat unknown to me, I decided to leave my camera in the motel. I suppose on some level it was a matter of “one less thing” to lug around and keep track of as we zigzagged through the streets of santa fe. Maybe it was partly the idea of just living the experience, rather than tracking it. but in spite of that, it was a big mistake.

As we drove towards santa fe, the afternoon showers segueyed into rain. The sun kept its stronghold in the sky and the result was astonishing. Deep azure blue, ever moving and changing pale grey to charcoal clouds, areas of misty white floating across the sky, and amidst all this--like an ancient wisdom that broke through the chaos, the calm and gradual emergence of a double rainbow the likes of which I’ve never seen or imagined. Image upon image confounded my vision. The colors—not just of the rainbows themselves, but the sky canvas upon which they were painted were of an intensity that seemed almost impossible. This was especially true when the bands were superimposed on the highway or buildings--like a sheet of brightly colored cellophane. i had never seen anything like this--real or imagined and without sounding too pessimistic believe i never will again--at least not in this lifetime.

In some ways, I wanted the images to stop being so beautiful. So that I could justify my decision to leave the camera behind. And could even dismiss the beauty of what I had seen so far as being somehow part of my imagination. But I realized how ridiculous that was and gave in to the moment and lived it. I did manage to take pictures, countless ones in fact. I have no tangible record, of course. So you may not even believe me. But I can play them back anytime at all. The thing is--they're only for me.

getting there

touching the sky

a pueblo at the top of the mesa, without electricity or running water. the spirits that lived here long ago--perhaps when the world began, live here still. imbued with power and mystery, it's a sacred place. where the skies are ever changing. where the people pray for rain and when it comes, the land is happy and the people rejoice. the acoma pueblo is a place where the beauty of the earth is astonishing. unencumbered by the taint of modern civilization, its structures and its people can reach up and touch the sky.

an acoma man drove us up to the pueblo. his thick black hair was straight and touched his shoulders. his dark eyes large and smiling, he told us that each year he leaves his home on the flatter part of the reservation to live on the mesa for a awhile. his is one of the 15 families from the reservation that maintain a home in the ancient pueblo. at night, he climbs the ladder to the flat roof of his home and looks up at the stars. in the silence and the stillness, when everything in the world is in harmony. you can hear your self think. "there's nothing like it," he smiles. i imagine. perhaps he converses with his ancestors. but that's not something he told me. nor is it something i asked.

miles and time

can souls speak to each other
in silence
can we believe the
voices we hear
are really each other's thoughts?

like after a dream
when you wake up and believe
the person you were dreaming about
had the same dream as you
or that it really wasn't a dream.
that the two of you were there
together

miles and time mean nothing
when souls can speak
because the truth
is in our minds anyway

we were soldiers

watching ken burns' the war, i hook into a collective remembrance, a moment in history when america was strong and beautiful. i think of my father and the america he believed in. simply because that's how it was. my father was a jewish boy from a small town in pennsylvania. his parents had fled persecution in russia. and now he was fighting the war in france. an easygoing Gary Cooper type who loved kids and always had gum and candy in his pockets.

he saw the faces of the young boys leaving home for the first time. eyes wide open, hope in their pockets, and duffle bags in hand as they left for the train stations, the bus terminals, the darkened streets at the crack of dawn. he saw the soldiers who risked their lives for people they had never met. he saw bodies herded away in body bags by the thousands--ready to be transported back home to mothers and wives, children who didn't quite understand what it meant that daddy wouldn't be coming home again. he saw all that. and he came back.

there is a beauty in the boys who went over. no, i'm not painting pictures of invincible heroes, but they were heroes. scared as hell some of them, and they were heroes. every last one of them. they gave something of themselves to be over there. those who never came back gave all they had.

and there was a spirit of america. a beautiful spirit. as a country we all pulled together. we had a mutual goal. we knew what we were doing. we were fighting a war that needed to be fought, a war that meant something. we knew we had to win.

people pitched in for the war effort. businessmen, farmers, salesgirls, and secretaries. we worked in factories, managed with less of everything. so we could send more over there. because it was something to believe in. we watched the newsreels and read the reports from war correspondents and letters home. gut-wrenching images of the world at war. when for a time, the devil walked the battlegrounds. because the axis was winning.

but that changed. once our boys were able to let go of what they'd been taught in small towns across america--that killing was wrong. that's what it took. because at large, we were innocents. children with shining eyes and smiling faces, some of us shaking in our boots, but still smiling--headed across the sea. to fight wrong with right. it was a war we could win. and we did.

things are very different now.

klimt--going in circles

i was looking forward to this film. the trailer held the promise of a fascinating, visually rich voyage into the mind and life of the painter gustav klimt, an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau. the scenes previewed in the trailer give us brief, but tantalizing glimpses into the substance of his art--an image as reflected in the shards of a broken mirror, a beautiful woman who slams the door and leaves kimpt in a room swirling with little bits of gold leaf. but the promise was far better than the realization.

in a very early scene of the film the camera moves in a continuous circle as it pans a group of men and women at an elegant turn-of-the century gathering where klimt is being honored. we see bearded and mustached gents pontificating in stuffy sentences about what is art: what is beautiful, what is not, what is necessary, and what is not. klimt roams through the lot as if in some kind of parallel universe. and we, the audience, are subjected to the annoying circling of the camera. as if we are standing on the outer edge of a carousel watching the world from that perspective as it spins.

we're under siege. finally, long after it should have happened, the camera stops its roundabout movement and stays on klimt as he takes a piece of cake and presses it against the face of one of the pontificators. at last.

but unfortunately that was not a turning point in what had been such a tedious and annoying display of characters, most of whom behave in a way that is stagy, unreal, almost mad. eventually we understand the device. we are supposedly viewing the world from inside klimt's head, as he lies immobile in the asylum, uttering and repeating short phrases now and then, as if in a dream. consumed by syphilis, klimt awaits his death. and the visions we see are his.

what could have been a remarkable film about an artist whose work is sumptuous, with all the gilded elegance of the turn of the century in austria at the time (he even used small pieces of gold leaf in some of his paintings), is not. we see his models, the beautiful lithe creatures perched nude and unabashed on swings, willing participants in klimt's erotic fantasties. but such is not the case. it's a self-indulgent piece. a very good idea gone bad. if we could have seen some semblance of real events and situations, interspersed with klimt's ravings, the effect would have worked. as it was, we are annoyed, impatient, wanting the actors who seem to be acting that they are acting finally seqguey into some kind of truth. it never happens.

directed by raoul ruiz and starring john malkovich, klimt, the movie, is an utter disappointment, made more so by the astonishing beauty of the work of the artist and the romantic image most of us have of the time and place in which he lived.

check out more reviews on my movie review blog, Slick's Flicks

pnf

it stands for proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF), which involves both the stretching and contraction of the muscle group being targeted. my yoga teacher discussed it with us in class this morning as an alternative to the "pushing it" mentality that has been in vogue for quite some time--particularly in high-adrenalin sports like bicycle racing, running, etc. but interestingly enough--that desire to push beyond your limits has also been the cause of many injuries in what is presumed to be a far more benign mind/body activity--yoga. apparently many injuries that involve the separation of muscle from bone, tendon tears, sprains, etc. occur in yoga classes. provoked by an all too enthusiastic teacher making "an adjustment" (i.e. pushing the person's body more into position) or by the yoga student herself pushing her own body beyond what is her current limit. so the lesson here is clear: listen to your body.

back to pnf. the idea here is that all the muscles in the body, including the heart, are happier with warm up stretches, followed by a pause (relaxation), followed by activity, then pause, and the pattern continues. it's only logical when you think about it. if the heart is beating madly to keep up with your demands, it only stands to reason that it could "pop." and as a matter of fact, reports of heart attacks while jogging are not uncommon -even among people who have been running 20 or more miles a week for years. the idea of 'less is more' seems to apply. recent medical findings are telling us that the heart as well as the rest of the body appreciate the pattern described above.

my teacher (lynn) reported hearing about private sessions in NYC for pnf going for an impressive $250/hour. and what it's really about is "don't push it. relax." for now i'll give myself my own private sessions and continue my group yoga classes with lynn.

freedom of speech

i just read that president bush condemned MoveOn yesterday, calling the organization "disgusting." And why exactly? Because it's a consolidated voice of america screaming for the return of our soldiers? Screaming in frustration, sadness, and anger because the war our soldiers are fighting and their very presence on those foreign fields are based on a false melange of fact and fiction engineered for a supposed truth.

Who is disgusting, Mr. President?

sadie chronicles

she's a dog, a gargoyle, a goat, a newborn calf, a dragon, and undoubtedly one of the most adorable creatures on the planet. when i first spotted her at the marin humane society, she weighed a trembling 9 pounds. it was clear she wanted to go home with me right then and there, but i wanted to make sure i wasn't making TOO much of a hasty, impulsive decision (i'm no stranger to that). so i went home and spoke with the voice of reason--my daughter. her eyes lit up and she smiled in that certain way that made me know precisely where this would take us. but we went through the motions of sane, logical thinking and went to the humane society together this time.

sadie (she was scruffy then) took to the ball immediately. it's as if the two were made for each other. after my daughter saw her frolicking in the autumn leaves--retrieving her beloved tennis ball, she answered my question with, "mom, how can we not?"so there's the story in a nutshell.

she's gained nearly 10 pounds since then. still puppy size and is usually mistaken for one. she's a determined little thing who believes that other dogs are trespassing in her world. they are of course. and it's magnanimous of her to allow them there. she curls herself up on my bed in a little ball--easily mistaken for a black and white pillow. or she'll wedge herself lengthwise along the narrow space between the upholstered seats of my sofa.

the name sadie came to us in a flash the day we brought her home. she was such a slim little thing, and we thought of eminem's 'slim shady' and that turned into 'slim sadie' and then of course later the 'slim' was dropped. but it wasn't long before my daughter gave her the name that really fits--satan.

because in spite of being adorable (and she's a GREAT dog who understands a slew of commands and will kiss you incessantly and put her little face so close to yours as you snuggle on the couch together that it's almost obscene), there is a strong streak in her that is quite demonic. if a new person comes to our front door, for instance, and reaches out to pet the "cute little dog" (particularly if the person is wearing big clunky shoes), she is not beyond giving the hapless individual a very clear warning in the form of angry, loud, and incessant barking as well as the occassional "nip" on the shoe itself or even the back of the ankle. she doesn't like the sound of motorcyles and tries to outdo them with sustained verbal messages of her own. and even if her tail is wagging while a stranger is petting her, her patience (and trust) can wear thin and she'll snap angrily in defense. she used to chase after bicycles, but that has mostly stopped. she's still not fond of skateboards or little kids on tricylcles, but she can "deal."

there are ways around some of this behavior. one of the obvious ones is to tell strangers not to pet the "cute little puppy" who is wagging her tail and looking at this new potential ball thrower with those adorable saucer eyes (she sometimes looks like a baby gorilla). another one, saved mostly for people who come to the house the first or second time, is to throw a ball or one of her fluffy toys to her immediately upon entrance (being careful to avoid eye contact--apparantly, according to an animal behaviorist--this can "incite" her).'

whatever works' indeed.

the twig

The leafy field
Where I found you
Wrapped in winter’s arms
Eyes as cold as the twig
wedged between your fingers
Is where i remembered my name

the sades

book review--the road

finding the words to describe the experience of reading Cormac McCarthy's the road is challenging, to say the least. because i find myself wanting to get into the same kind of rhythmic/hypnotic movement that captures you on the first page of the book and takes you through the story. you're a willing traveler, because it's more than a story; it's a vision. an astonishing vision of a world that is potentially and dangerously close. when the earth has died, when the few remaining people are scavengers with no taboos. when everything is grey and black. bleakness, smoke, decay for as far as the eye can see. and the characters--the man and the boy--are unnamed. it is only 'the man' and 'the boy.' they walk, trying desperately to walk faster than the oppression of death and surrender that pursues them. the love that is felt between the man and the boy is the purest of loves. they speak simply. so much of what they say is left unsaid, but understood nevertheless. there are no quotation marks throughout the book. and yet the reader always knows who is talking. 'okay.' 'okay.' and you know who said it first.

axis of aspartame

so it seems that mr. rumsfeld has been involved in more than just world politics, although what i am about to say could be considered world politics--but just not the kind that involves the military. aspartame, known by the names NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure has been shown to be linked with as many as 92 negative symptoms exhibited by the human body. i can only imagine what appeared in rats. interesting to note that according to one source, the amount of aspartame deemed as safe is as much as 20 times SMALLER than what the FDA in the US has established as safe levels. a recent european report is now claiming that aspartame does NOT pose a threat, even in levels higher than the daily recommended dose. so what do we believe. here's a little tidbit that may sway you one way or the other: the guy who was at searle (the company that produces aspartame; in fact he was CEO) when aspartame was pushed through the FDA and was proclaimed as "safe" was noneother than our buddy donald rumsfeld. still listening? now what does that tell you? let's say you arch an eyebrow. let's even say you don't.

read these facts:

• you'll find aspartame in any number of items you consume that are labelled, "sugar-free"--cookies, yogurt, chewing gum, soft drinks, candy, to name only a few.
• a sampling of the 92 health risks associated with aspartame include blindness, tinnitus and hearing impairment, migraines, severe depression, insomnia, personality changes, asthma, hypoglycemia, severe PMS, brain damae, suicidal tendencies, and even death.
• according to consumer advocate attorney jim turner, who was instrumental in the 1969 banning of cyclamate in the US for its link to cancer, Rumsfeld was hired by Searle specifically to obtain FDA approval for aspartame. there have been calls for the reversal of that approval ever since.

My feeling is this: I'll have my little piece of poison in the form of one stick of chewing gum here and there, knowing that it contains aspartame. When it comes to sodas, I'll skip it altogether. As for sweetening my cereal--as long as I am not diagnosed with diabetes, Ill choose agave nectar because it's delicious (and you can use less because it is actually sweeter tasting than any other natural sweetener), along with maple syrup, honey, and yes--a little bit of sugar.

A votre sante.