Friday, September 07, 2007

I Speak For Myself


In the corner of my childhood home, there's a tombstone for my great grandmother, a beautiful piece of black granite shaped like a heart that says, Dearest Beloved. I grew up with it given that it never got put by her grave; by the time her other relatives had shipped this stone, my parents had purchased another one, strangely enough at the same funeral home that handled their services. While many people found the tombstone creepy (lots of Addams Family jokes, a show I loved because the characters were rich and eccentric instead of poor and pinned down), I found it soothing. My parents rarely got rid of anything -- I go back home and can see to the beginning of time, my time on earth anyway. We love our lore, and I am no different.

Sometimes I think back to my childhood, that lost world. Auden says that if you make it to twenty-five, you've survived the worst life has to offer and everything is better from there. This, of course, was when he wasn't asking if "anyone would mind too terribly giving him a blow-job." This question springs from the man who wrote the beautiful line, "lay your human head on my faithless arm" and "about suffering, the old masters were never wrong." Ah, we are so many things at once! Brilliant, crass, hopeful, and despairing. Usually, we are just trying to get by and hold it together without breaking down in sobs. Okay, I speak for myself on this one. But we are miracles too. There's a spider in the corner of my room as I write, and I am loathe to kill it. Maybe it's Charlotte! Probably it's just an ordinary spider, spinning a web that will fall apart way too soon. But it's my spider and I love it and that's good enough for now.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I was in a cave and I needed to draw some pictures on the wall about what my journey was, and that drive, that need, led me to acting." Harvey Keitel

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: On The Couch Lorraine Bracco

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

9 comments:

Cheri said...

People fear what they don't understand.

Anonymous said...

A spider? How big is it?

Unknown said...

being child is so simple.

the walking man said...

Be all things to all people...if it's crass they need be that, if it's an arm to lean on be that so on and so forth, but I absolutely draw the line at the blow job thing.

The rest is just simply being human and if you can at least claim that much you are further ahead than most.

Peace

mark

Anonymous said...

yes, ropinator- you are lucky.

hahahaha

John Ricci said...

Dearest Michelle
Lovely view and post as always. Today's entry is vigourous humourous mysterious and also in some ways seems sad to me because of the ghosts of the dead and their lingering presence.
I think I recognize that place with the see through view. Curled iron and all. It is an interesting reflection and appealingly shapely.
Champagne wishes and caviar dreams and of course Bravo to you and yours!

eric1313 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

The more things change, the more we notice the capacity for others to stay the same.

Unless that, too, is a trick from the inside of time's billowing sleeve.

What do the anonymous intellectuals think of this? Surely they can weigh in on this topic in the morning, as they wonder about two questions

When was the last time professor pimple pipe changed his underwear and it wasn't during work hours?

When was the last time Bozo the Book Worm laid eyes on sex organs that did not involve diagrams?

Their silohouetes, psychological and physical, are both with ear shot of their doom.

They are their own nemisis, a path chosen long ago.

Charles Gramlich said...

I've always been amazed at the way in which people chose tombstones. they'll smile, and say, "she would like this one." It's kind of weird when you think about it.