CALYPSOS

Now that I live on my own, I am taking full advantage of the potential this solitude provides for theme song development.  Over the past several months, I have acquired an impressive repertoire, including (but not limited to) the following:

ON NAPTIME:  ”Super Sleep” 

“She needs a super sleep, super sleep.  She’s super sleepy.”

ON PLAYING THE SETTLERS OF CATAN BOARD GAME:  ”Buying Sheep”

“Every day I’m buying sheep.  Every day I’m buying sheep.  Every day I’m, Every day I’m, Every I’m buying sheep.”

ON GRILLING WITH DAD:  ”Old Man Grilling”

“Old man grilling.  My old man’s grilling.  He just keeps grilling, he won’t stop grilling, he just keeps grilling charcoal.”

A STRESS TEST

I’ve recently begun thinking that pure, unadulterated panic is quite possible the best form of relaxation.  Perhaps I’m just maladapted, or some bizarre Darwinian exception, but the I find the fight or flight mechanism in me to be distinctly poor.  When I sense danger, my mind becomes emptier than in any meditation-induced trance I have thus far experienced.  Maybe next time I need to relax, I should go practice jaywalking.

Honk! Honk!

AMONG THE REPTILES

I love to go to fancy department stores and watch the ladies who live there.  They’re easy enough to spot, what with their alligator handbags and crocodile smiles.  I see them as they file through the racks like reptiles, ready to engulf any hired hand within reach.  My favorite part of watching them, though, is that they never notice me.

Chomp! Chomp!

DYING ON THE BUS

Everyone on the bus thinks the man adjacent to me is dead.  I saw him twitch.  Should I alert them? And if so, should I take the Monty Python “not-yet-dead” route? Or opt for a simple, “Don’t worry, he’s still alive”?  Both seem indelicate, and I decide to allow all to soldier on in paranoia.

If I die on the bus, I hope someone calls an ambulance.

SUNFLOWERS

Two of my all-time favorite poems are about sunflowers – “Ah! Sun-flower” by William Blake (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172905), and “Sunflower Sutra” by Allen Ginsberg (http://boppin.com/sunflower.html).  To be honest, I find my appreciation of these poems to be peculiar, predominantly because I don’t have any particular predilection for sunflowers.  Objectively, I see their charm, but somewhere between their considerable circumference and jarring hues, I become a bit alienated.  As if the sunflower is accosting me with its audacious exuberance.

But the elements of the sunflower that I dislike in daily life, I adore in these poems.  Blake and Ginsberg write about the weightiness of the sunflower; they transform sunflowers into anchors, talismans, even time-machines! – and in that sense, there’s something winsome about the sunflower’s endurance.  These sunflowers are not presented as delicate buds on the verge of decay, death, or trampling.  In these poems, the sunflower is a strong flower – in my opinion, the only type of flower worth being.

Every time I see the phrase “the discreet charm of,” I groan. I never seem to understand anything it describes.  The bourgeoisie? Second-order simulacra? If I’m Wile E. Coyote, I like charming entities to be the anvils, walloping me on the head.

Ooooof!

A MARSHMALLOW (but not like the holiday song)

One of my favorite parts of the day is the brief interlude between the removal of my glasses and the insertion of my contacts.  At least until I stumble, I find myself wrapped in a cocoon of fuzziness, the jagged interloper in my cream puff world.  On a planet where everything and (almost) everyone is easily accessible at all times, the few seconds in which my world is a blurry gradient seem a pleasant pause, as though I am existing in a vacuum and all my worries are far away.  Why do I ever put them back on again?