230. EROS

The inner voice of Eros is arbitrary, bizarre, impeccably honest, bountiful, and so powerful as to be cruel. It takes courage to hear its demands and follow them.—Patrick Califia

From the Archives. (June 2006)That line is from Susie Bright’s site.

Huh. So Pat Califia of Macho Sluts fame has morphed into Patrick huh?

Frankly, I am not at all surprised.

I like the quote.

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Meanwhile, I spent most of yesterday installing a French drain in my backyard and can hardly bend today, but it is nearly finished and I am heading out there again as soon as I finish my cup of coffee.

The drain runs along a dried-up creekbed that pools during rainstorms and stays too wet for decent grass. I plan to plant a weeping willow where the pipe empties today, after I take a photo of the huge pile of river pebbles that will form a rocky creekbed in my yard by this afternoon.

The mostly wooded backyard needs some attention, and, with luck, the landscape fabric I placed under the drain will keep the whole area clean of weeds and give it a nicer look while draining the standing water away efficiently and attractively.

LISTENING TO: Jenna Mammina’s cool cover of Honeysuckle Rose

READING: a biography of Benjamin Godard and The Poet’s Notebook

BEST-OF SPAM: pseudo saintliness

70. TWO BEEPING JESUSES & A SCENTED ORCHID

From the Archives

(April 2005) I was reading Refusal’s blog yesterday and came across this interesting bit:

I’m not sure if I mentioned the ‘two Jesuses’ theory before. This is rather like the Kennedy-shooting ‘two gunmen’ theory, except it assumes that the Bible combines the story of 2 Jesuses, one nice as pie, the other mean and temperamental. One blessed the meek, the other kicked out the moneychangers and told you to hate your parents. What worries me is the effect on the trinity. If there are 2 Jesuses, is there still 1 holy ghost? Two? Maybe three for a nice triangle? If you’re one of those people who likes to get stoned and discuss 4-dimensional space, maybe you have a theory about multi-dimensional paracletes.

Ponder that.

It’s 7:30 AM and something in my kitchen is beeping every 5 minutes or so and I cannot figure out the source. I unplugged the microwave and still heard a beep, unplugged the coffeepot and still heard a beep, turned my mobile phone off and still heard a beep. That leaves the oven, unless I’m missing something, and I have no clue how to make an oven stop beeping. Jezuschreeeesto! I gotta play my music louder!

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This is a horrible thing to say but I’m going to say it anyway. Mac released OSX a couple of years ago. We’ve now had Jaguar and Panther and now the Tiger upgrade s coming out. They have really limited themselves categorically by using big cats, however, and I fear that they will soon have to resort to associational upgrades—you know, like the Siegfried and Roy upgrade OSX.5.4.2.7.

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I made a flowerbed by my front walk last night and put a flat of marigolds in around the rosemary plant.

They’re not my favorite flower and they’re not even native, but they’re good natural insecticides and my goal is simply to fill in the space until the rosemary bushes out. Then I’ll plant natives around it.

Next I’ll move the hostas and monkey grass that run beside the deck to a spot farther back in the yard where I put a wrought-iron table and chairs. Then I’ll plant butterfly bushes beside the deck so that, in a few years, I can sit on the deck and watch butterflies.

In other news, I have too many things I want to do on Friday night. Adrienne Rich is giving a free reading. There's an art crawl. An LGBTQ group wants queers to show up at a restaurant that was less-than hospitable to two bois, and to announce our group affiliation at every opportunity. And I promised a pal that we'd go orchid shopping.

Some places transform me when I enter the space, almost stop me in my tracks with their beauty. Hurricane Ridge in Washington state does. The Hoh Rainforest does, especially on a foggy morning. Butterfly/hummingbird havens do. Cathedrals do. And the greenhouse of orchids that we'll be visiting does too.

READING: Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening

LISTENING TO: Bitch and Animal’s “ovumture (in Areola minor)”

SINGING IN SHOWER: How’s this for random? So I’m shaving my pits this morning and burst out with “5 golden riiiiinggggs . . .”