type a slacker

I gave up on the daily poem

clearly. but I still really like this one:

Jam

By Karen Chase

Our love is not the short
courtly kind but
upstream, down,
long inside - enjambed,
enjoined, conjoined, and
jammed, it's you, enkindler,
enlarger, jampacked man of many
stanzas, my enheartener - love
runs on from line to
you, from line to me and me
to you, from river to sea and sea to
land, hits a careless coast, meanders
way across the globe - land
ahoy! water ahoy! - love
with no end, my waters go
wherever you are, my stream
of consciousness.

Wild Geese

By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.  Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Science Fiction

I can travel
faster than light
so can you
the speed of thought
the only trouble
is at destinations
our thought balloons
are coated invisible
no one there sees us
and we can't get out
to be real or present
phone and videophone
are almost worse
we don't see a journey
but stay in our space
just talking and joking
with those we reach
but can never touch
the nothing that can hurt us
how lovely and terrible
and lonely is this.

                          -- Les Murray

Planes Trains and Automobiles **

Last week, I made a BIG move.  Well, it was a symbolic move; I didn't actually GO anywhere or anything but JUST STOP NITPICKING, ok?  Anyway, I decided to become an OFFICIAL ILLINOIS RESIDENT and go ahead and get my drivers license.  Well, this was pretty big news because I am very proud of being from Georgia, thank you very much, and in order to get an Illinois dl I had to give up the one I (only just recently) got in Georgia.  So I'm thinking, oh, you know, a wait at the dmv and I'll shell out a few bucks and prove my residency with my gas bill and i'll be dunzo.   Easy as pie (key lime, or pumpkin, because really apple pie isn't so easy at all).

Well-- turns out-- it's not so easy.  because you know what I had to do?

I HAD TO TAKE THE TEST!  Granted, it was the written test, not the driving test, but at this point, I have a lot more confidence in my parallel parking ability that my ability to name the various traffic signs based only on their shape.

So I printed out the book from the website (and if I ever have to do this again and plan to actually read the book, i'm not going to print it four pages per page because that font is TINY, man!) and I really WAS going to study but then Katie came over and we started watching Greek and we decided I didn't really NEED to study so I just... didn't. 

And then I went to the DMV, and I thought, I'll just study while I'm waiting! But NO ONE ELSE was studying while they were waiting, and even though i'm pretty sure no one is going to argue against my being the coolest one at the DMV last wednesday (where do those people come from?), i just didn't want to be the nerdy girl who was reading her 7-point-typeface drivers booklet printout at 24 years old.  So I manned up and took the test after NO PREPARATION and I was SO NERVOUS because my whole office knew what I was doing and WHAT IF I FAILED???  And all these other people (mostly esol, but still...) were barely passing.... but.... i know the tension's killing you...

I GOT A 100%!!!!  (and my railroad lawyer father will be happy to know, not that he reads this or anything, that there were no less than 4 train-crossing related questions.)

And ever since I've been showing off my license left and right and even more exciting is that Illinois got new licenses in November which means that NO ONE ELSE I KNOW has a license that looks like mine.  Wanna see it? I'll let you.  Need to take the test yourself?  I'll totally let you borrow my book, and even throw in a magnifying glass.

Two more minor transportation related notes:
* On sunday, I went downtown to see the Andy Warhol Clouds with Katie.  On the train, a man who was clearly from .... somewhere else spent the entire trainride trying to take a picture of the Hancock building.  You can barely even see it from the brown line, I felt kinda sad for him.  So I took a picture of him, taking a picture of the blurry tippy top of the hancock.  I'm just waiting for karma to get me back on that one.

* The new diversy stop opened, and is only about ... 8% complete, and about 90% made of plywood-- so to safeguard our poor hands, they COVERED THE BANISTERS WITH DUCT TAPE.  I was going to take a picture, but I felt like a fool.  Not at all how I felt blatantly taking a picture of a stranger while clearly in his line of vision or anything.

Stepping out of Poetry*
Gerald Stern

What would you give for one of the old yellow streetcars
rocking toward you again through the thick snow?

What would you give for the feeling of joy as you climbed
up the three iron steps and took your place by the cold window?

Oh, what would you give to pick up your stack of books
and walk down the icy path in front of the library?

What would you give for your dream
to be as clear and simple as it was then
in the dark afternoons, at the old scarred tables?

* i bet you didn't know April was national poetry month! And so, for the rest of the month, expect a poem that I like every day.  just a little spring time gift from me to you!

** also, it's just trains and automobiles. sorry.

Very! Important!

oh, this is very important, as you may have noticed from the title of this post.

For quite some time, I have been planning my future career as a professional figure skater.  I have long known that for my long program, I will wear a blue costume (to match my eyes) designed by Vera Wang (she's very good at that, just ask Nancy Kerrigan, whose costumes Very designed.  Vera was also almost a professional figure skater herself) and do 4.5 minutes of leaps and twirls accompanied by Rhapsody in Blue (by the Gershwins), which is just perfect for ice skating.

But for oh so long i've not known what I would do for the short program!  It's just so difficult, as the short program is often peppier and not quite so serious as the long program.

Don't worry, because, as you might have guessed by now-- today i found the song.  It's Brooklyn's on Fire! by Nicole Atkins, and it's just perfect.  First of all, it's got punctuation in the title, which makes my journalist's heart sing.  Second, it's got this pretty melody in the verses, and then the choruses sound like a shouting crowd, which gives a nice juxtaposition for gliding during the verses and jumping and fancy footwork during the chorus.  Third, and most importantly, it will let me wear a costume inspired by Fireworks (don't worry, Vera will make it classy.)

To continue this absurd post, today while I was walking to the bookstore, it started RAINING M&MS at the corner of Racine and Altgeld.  This, combined with the finding the perfect song a short time later, convinced me that despite the tornados ravaging downtown atlanta and the 6 inches of snow that fell in Chicago JUST YESTERDAY, the world is not, in fact, coming to an end. 

but this post is.  Good bye!

I loved the flowers but not so much the dessert.

so anyone who has met me in the past .... month might have heard about this little dinner for 1700 people that I was planning at work.  And how it was taking over my life and i was working the hours of a consultant (though still making non-profit money) and blah blah.

and then I had this great idea about writing a post about all the funny things that happened, like the time my boss called me and said, don't worry sarah beth! we have 8 empty tables with 10 people each, so that right there is... 800 people!  which a. it's not, but b. is not that funny if you're not me.

So instead i'm just going to say--- to anyone who has had to put up with me for the past month (esp kt and the time I made her get out of the car when I was trying to parallel park because she started laughing) thanks for not giving up on me completely.  Because the diner's over and I LIVED (I was going to say survived but that seemed a little crass when I work for a holocaust museum) and I will return to my regular life and be a regular person. And though my plus one was really more of a plus 2 (excellent girlfriends) and less of the date of my dreams, it really turned out to be one of my favorite nights of recent memory and look at that, now all we have to do is open a museum.

and honestly, after this, it really doesn't even seem that rough.

so not the man.

dear 5 am,
get some better tv.  there's only so many times an insomniac can watch she's the man on hbo before thinking it's not funny anymore.  I haven't reached that point yet, despite having watched it 2 times in the past 24 hours (and many, many, many times before that), but I'm afraid if I have to continue watching it I will no longer love it.  See, when you cannot sleep, the last thing you want to do is mess with the dvd player.  And ever since the strike, there's NOTHING LEFT ON MY TIVO. 

I know you don't understand, because you LOVE being 5 am-- it's what you do best, I know.  But what I do best is, apparently, not sleep, and the complete and total lack of Will and Grace and Golden Girls, or even a nice Dawson's Creek, is NOT HELPING.

Just think about it.  I'm never going to love knowing you, 5 am, but we can at least make our hate-hate relationship a little more pleasant.

love,
Sarah Beth

Today at the grocery...

... a very old lady was in line behind me.  This is the sum total of what she was buying:
1:  $.25 packet of ramen noodles
1:  Handle of Smirnoff Vodka
1:  Giant bottle of extremely blue Hypnotiq liquor.

What was she going to do with these things? Is she secretly a college boy? because the ONLY people I have ever known to make such purchases at one time were boys, and they were in college.  But even they wouldn't buy hypnotiq.

Who buys hypnotiq? What does it taste like? It is like grown-up kool-aid? Does it turn your tongue blue?

I once did PR for a liquor company, and one of their new products was a line of liquers that were made with natural fruit flavors, or something, and we had to taste them all, and I thought I would die.  They were TERRIBLE, and they were supposed to be major competition for hypnotiq, and all I could think to do was mix them with lots of other alcohols and call them cocktails and hope that no one noticed that there was no more than a splash of the fruity drinks in there. Of course, my coworkers didn't seem to mind them so much, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas about a. the old lady, or b. hypnotiq, feel free to let me know.

two happy thoughts!

The other night, Katie and I went to dinner at Leona's.  There was a group of little boys near the window, and they waved enthusiastically at every passer by.  It was one of the cutest things i've ever seen.  Of course, as far as tween boys go, these boys were not actually *cute,* but their enthusiasm sure was.  They also had a delicious-looking cake.  Though they were generous with their waves, they were not nearly so with their cake.  That's ok, leona's is delicious on its own.

If you need a little pick me up, watch this and listen to what Dolly says.  She's about 100 years old and still looks like a Barbie doll, so she probably knows what she's talking about.

Within us lies an invincible summer

I am posting this at 715 am, because I have been UP SINCE FIVE because I for some reason thought that I'd be able to go running before work this morning. There is snow all over the place, as usual, and thus, I could not.  Instead, I thought about summer:

Here are some things I miss about summer:

• Coming home from work when it's still bright daylight and having time for a run.
• Sitting on the steps of the dairy queen with a chocolate sundae and watching people walk their dogs. Btw, it's STILL daylight even though I have now been for a run, come home, and walked all the way up southport to the DQ.
• Espadrilles
• Having no need to drive my car, ever. Of course, I didn't have a car last summer, so who knows the places I may have felt necessary to drive to on those 100 degree days.
• Taking my sisters out for ice cream (wiff spwinkels, beff! With SPWINKELS!)
• Millennium Park, especially on days when there are activities such as free hula-hooping lessons. They did not help me one bit, though I was an enthusiastic participant, and then spent 2 weeks pining for a hula hoop of my own. I am over that, at least for now.
• All the flowers, especially the trumpet vine outside my house. When I moved in, it wasn't at all groomed and I thought it was the VERY WORST PART about the whole house, and about 5 minutes later it started blooming glorious orange blossoms and went from zero to hero just like that.
• There are no days like "sickie Monday" and "most depressing day of the year" in the summer, like there are in January and February. Do researchers think it will be helpful to point out that we're all miserable right now? LOOK AROUND YOU, if you can see through the snow and rain and fog. (actually, at the exact present moment it's not bad out, but give it a little, apparently it's supposed to be back to the uge later tonight.)
• Dining outdoors. I know that some people lament the heat and humidity and bugs (those people being the entire city of Atlanta, where you will find almost no outdoor seating, despite the fact that it's warm enough to eat outside almost year round).
• Reading outdoors. Yes, I know that the wind blows about the pages, and no, I'm not just talking about beach books. I'm talking about reading a classic book with passages about sunlight and sundresses and wind and leaves and floral arrangements and tinkly piano (Virginia woolf? Fitzgerald?) while you read in the sunshine. Really, there's nothing better.
• Not having to go to the gym. Because in the summer, you can just run outside. You can run many, many, many miles outside, without worrying about the darkness or the cold or the ice or the fact that if your nose starts running it might freeze to your face (which is a constant concern of mine). Also, if you put on the soundtrack to Hairspray during these many mile runs, you might find yourself dancing down southport, and then maybe kinda singing, and then actually living out your dad's prediction for your future career, that being "person I know who lives her life closest to the character in a movie-musical."