Recently in a bridal shop, I took a pastel mint out of the complimentary container sitting innocently by the cash register. But be not fooled, dear reader, nothing is really free in a bridal shop -- I spent time with a dear friend who had been told that altering her wedding dress would be around thirty dollars -- five hundred dollars later, she was released from her pins and we were on our way to food and drink, a surefire way of easing pain. It is my theory that nobody has actually produced these mints since the fifties; they just recirculate them, much like fruitcake. And you can never tell what they will contain by looking at them. At any rate, the mint had a hidden nut in it, the kind of hard miserable molar-loosing kind and another friend had also popped one into her mouth and with a smile that implied, damn, this is some bad shit, she said, "I think we're committed to finishing it now."
I thought about writing a haiku about the experience called "Hidden Nut" that would be deep and profound, about the pain of expecting the good and getting the bad and having to suck it up. You bite/ pain/ life is bitter/ wrapped in a beautiful shell./ Cruel nut/ Web of lies. You get the idea. But I don't know much about form and can't remember if the whole 5/7/5 thing is passe or actually retro cool. I'm guessing that my dreams for "Hidden Nut" wouldn't be realized, that nobody would turn it into a movie or even do a youtube on it. I recently found the only poem I've ever written for a wedding which I mostly cribbed from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", making a few changes that made it less, well, damned. And as far as I know, that couple lasted even though the signs were bleak which pretty much tells me I'm not going to be able to make money by dressing up in some get-up and pretending to read the future. As much as I like poetry, maybe fiction writing is more my calling after all.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." Sun Tzu
Cocktail Hour
Drinking documentary suggestion: The Life And Times Of Harvey Milk
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!
9 comments:
guess that's why i lost every battle?
I know my enemies pretty well. Still untethered in the D. Let's make a deal.--Kwame
Hey Michelle,
Let me think about that whole "Hidden Nut" youtube challenge; I'd have to work within my budget; Also, I'm hoping I qualify for a tax break from our wonderful State of Michigan.
5-7-5 passe? Posh!
(yes I stole your title without abridgment or shame)
Hidden Nut
from minty freedom
a nugget of sweet pain comes
novocain needle
hey michelle, its alice. nice blog today. i miss the tinker mountain workshop. i hope you are doing well. give my summer blog a look... alicescaffeine.blogspot.com. i worked on a farm all summer and wrote everyday about the intense experience. i just free wrote with no proof reading, so there are probably tons of mistakes.
p.s. i also love your writing prompts that you sent me via snail mail. i've been using them in class everyday. do you have anymore?
I'm history.--Kwame
Ah, Kwame. We hardly knew ye....
So, I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, but did you ever hear about that restaurant germ study? Apparently the mints beside the register had more germs than the interior bathroom door handle! (That may explain the whole nut thing. ;)
xo
The people of Detroit voted him in for a second term- they have no one to blame but themselves.
I must never have gotten the hip hop mayor thing because I live in the city and never voted for KMK. I don't blame them who did or even those who still support him for the piss poor conditions within the city. Conditions in this town started down hill well before Kwame was born. One could say, a perfect storm of socio-economic conditions hit the entire manufacturing state of Michigan.
I blame Kwame and no one but Kwame, despite who voted for him or against him, because he chose the road he followed and the path he led the city down after he was elected.
Can Michigan be salvaged after the 12 years of Engler's bushonomics and 8 years of Granholm's inability and inaction of any major consequence? I don't know but if it can be I will by dint of my age alone will be excluded from any meaningful part in it. So I will leave off the argument of Detroit and the rest of the state with this simple proclamation:
I've done what I could when I could to stand against the things that came upon this place to take it from a healthy place to where it is today and now I simply do not care. If I as a voting citizen of a municipality am to be painted with a brush regardless of my vote the same statement accords...I do not care.
I am a citizen of the planet and in my home there is room enough for everyone and worse problems then the place some call home which is Detroit.
Now about your trip to the bridal shop Michelle...try anything on?
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