Saturday, August 05, 2006

The Good Girl


There was a time a few years ago when women started wearing tiny horse shoes around their neck (I believe Carrie on Sex and the City started the trend). I'd see these horse shoes everywhere, some plain, some sparkling with diamonds, some facing up and some down. I worried about the women wearing the ones facing down, all their good luck leaching out toward their breasts and onto the floor. I'm going to say something that will cause people to gasp -- I hate animals, even and maybe especially, horses. I don't even know the plot of Black Beauty and the only time I have ever used the term is referring to speed. But I have a fondness for all things symbolic and the luck of the horse shoe strikes me as true.

I found a real horse shoe right after I had sex with someone for the first time. Like most women, I wanted something to commemorate the experience and so I kept my eyes on the ground during the hike back to the house. After picking it up and examining it for a while, I decided to keep it. I also saw a cow skull that had been picked clean by vultures, but I didn't have the strength to carry it for the remaining two miles. In a life of losing many things I said I never would, of ruining things that I swore to take care of, the horse shoe has stayed with me all this time. It's sturdy and hasn't broken during all my moves. I keep it on a bookcase, pointed upward, of course, lest my luck run out.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"After living in the dark for so long a glimpse of light can make you giddy. Strange thoughts come into your head and you better think them. Is there a secret message right in front of you and you're not reading it? Is this your last chance? Are you gonna take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins?"
- The Good Girl

Drinking movie suggestion: The Good Girl
This is a movie written by Mike White (of Chuck and Buck fame), and it's brilliant and funny.

Benedictions and Maledictions

We Turn From the Joy of Living to Remembrances of the Dead

Even a drowned
wasp can sting,
provided you chance
upon it in the exact
right position. Like
most things, this is
only a matter of time.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Today's triple-header "Quote of the Day":#1: "You get what you deserve," comments transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart. This is an unpopular perspective, but the fact remains that if we find ourselves with a teacher who is abusive or a charlatan, or who "brainwashes" us, it is we who put ourselves there. We can blame the teacher all we want for his or her shortcomings, and all that we say may be true, but still it is we who brought the bait.--Mariana Caplan;#2: On that September day in 1915, in a dug-out canoe on the Ogowe river near the village of Igendja, the thought struck me that reverence for life is the only principle on which a viable ethics can be founded.--A. Schweitzer;#3: Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!--Pink Floydd.

Anonymous said...

For some reason, Michelle(and I know you have clothes on),the photo reminds me of a Jeff Reese nude study, circa 1992. Maybe it's just me.

Anonymous said...

my Cajun Queen
tried messge earlier wouldn't take for some reason i'll try to remember what i wrote. I do know you're looking fine on that open road, indians scattered on dawens highway bleeding ghosts crowd the childs fragile eggshell mind
Rock on Foxy Lady R2! C2!

JR's Thumbprints said...

Going down that road "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" because in the end everyone's luck will run out. But I don't blame you for hanging on to that horseshoe. As far as that wasp, kind of reminds me of the nonconfrontation scene in "The Difference Between Pluto and Goofy." It was a live wasp that the main character observed, wasn't it? I guess we're all misfits in our own way. Nice post. --Jim

John Ricci said...

Dear Michelle,
Lovely post, as always. The Good Girl is a marvelous movie, I agree. By the way, lucky Horse shoes go quite swimmingly with top shelf champagne. Bravo!