Breaking A Horse To Stand Fire

I'm sitting here in the dog days of summer, reminded of my old lifeguarding days where I sat in the evil Texas sun without any protection and yelled at kids for running and broke up the Edgemeade kids when they tried to violate the no pda rule. (Edgemeade was the local dumping ground for fucked up adolescents -- some were mentally challenged, others convicted of petty and not so petty crimes.) I twirled my whistle, hitting my knee every now and then, wincing in pain and vowing not to twirl again. But boredom drove me back, of course, and I'd forget the pain. Such is most of life.

And such were roadtrips with one of my old beaus. He'd take me to places like the Greyhound Bus Museum (I can hear Hank laughing on this one -- he'd taken the old gray dog from Texas to Philadelphia and I don't think he found the experience worthy of umm, a musueum) or to see a fake gunfight in the middle of nowhere where a retarded girl screamed for half an hour because nobody could persuade her the shots weren't real. Truth be told, I couldn't quite either. Not a place to take a post-traumatic stress afflicted girlfriend. But I survived and the next day I saw a sculpture at an exhibit which was titled Breaking A Horse To Stand Fire. The text told the story of training horses to be able to withstand loud noises without flinching. Summer is always like that for me. And summer is almost over, thank God.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another." Madonna

Cocktail Hour
Drinking cocktail suggestion: Sorry for the epic mojito delay -- am having my computer looked at by someone smart this week.

Benedictions and Maledictions
Check out Mark Durfee's (known as the Walking Man) new collection of poems, Stink. I'll have a more complete review here in a couple of days.