the poet in you

September 28

Shuttlecock

"I'm a workaholic,"

he confided. That was

the downside of sitting

at the bar at seven p.m.

People kept talking

to the unpaid listener

who pronounced Grand

Marnier "grand mariner"

as in Prageeta Sharma's

poem that she read

at KGB last night plus

her "Ode to Badminton"

which was the upside

of being at the bar at eight

From The Evening Sun
"A Journal In Poetry" by David Lehman

Today is Friday, September 28th. I leave for work in 20 minutes. Then I'll have 4 days off. The next time I go to work it will be October. For me that is the end of the year, sliding into home, the beginning of the end. It means Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas and then a New Year. Enjoy your last Friday of the last summer month, friends. Next month you're going to need to wear your coats.

Dogs. Books. Dogs.

It's happening again. I'm posting books on HomeBase so that I can upload the files to various bookselling venues: Abe, Alibris, Biblio and a few are books that I really like, books that I'd like to keep but know I have a mountain of my own already and when, oh when, would I have time to read another?

I've just listed Didion's The Year Of Magical Thinking and I do like that book, the bit that I've read. I enjoyed the interview with her on Charlie Rose. I'd like to sit on the sofa each afternoon for a week and do nothing but read it from cover to cover but I list it knowing that someone else will also enjoy it and when the time is right it will pop up again for me.

Then I take Slouching Toward Bethlehem, also by Didion and give it a good once over. Then I crack it open, then I read a passage about keeping a notebook because I can relate to keeping a notebook. And I enjoy that little essay so I flip on to the next called, "I Can't Get That Monster Out Of My Mind". The title alone is worth keeping the book. Now I'm afraid to post it. The only thing worse than buyer's remorse folks, is seller's remorse. By George, what if someone out there bought my own book out from under me? I can't have that. No, no, no. These are the problems I face, this is what undermines my success. There is so much that I want to keep. But I'll let them go. Just telling you all about it has helped.

Today's plan is to do nothing more than come home with a pound of coffee, a few pomegranates, and a new book. I'll list books online and then read. It's the perfect day really. In fact, were it 20 degrees cooler it would be the perfect fall day.

Not a care in the world, this cat...

Here are just a few reasons why I am not able to get my haircut, go to the dentist, get my car tuned-up, get new shoes for work:

• The Soap Lady by Renee French, 1st Edition. 2 copies.
• micrographica by Renee French, 1st Edition. 1 copy.
• Lone Racer by Nicolas Mahler, 1st Edition. 1 copy.
• aeiou by Jeff Brown, 1st Edition. 1 copy.
• Mouse Guard #6: A Return To Honor by David Peterson, 1st Edition. 1 copy (of which I would have bought 2 but only one copy was available.
• Mouse Guard: Winter 1152, #1 by David Peterson, 1st Edition. 2 copies.

Austin Books and Comics is a danger zone. For starters, I stand near the section with all of the Top Shelf books stifling laughs which only makes it worse and sound more idiotic than if I just let it out. Eventually it does happen, the stifling subsides and then one of two things happpens: a wide berth forms or companions crowd in to see what is so funny. And it just seems that with some graphic novels, what is funny to one person is not necessarily funny to another person. For instance, I love micrographica. I like the simplicity of the drawings, the faces of the characters and the storyline (rodents covet a "crapball", trouble follows!).

The second reason Austin Books is a danger zone is the potential to spend, spend, spend and not time but money. I was standing near the register listening to the clerk belt out the totals of other customers and trying to figure out how I was going to buy my small stack of books without the Husband having a coronary. I casually broke away from my little group, put my books on the counter and told the clerk under my breath, "My husband's standing nearby so no need to bellow out any totals."

"Okay, I'll just point" he reassured me. And I'm thinkin' to myself, "Could you have a bigger LCD screen? The price display is 3 inches tall and glowing red like a neon sign over a Chinese restaurant."  And he is true to his word, discreet with only one question, "I know this sounds weird but, did you mean to buy 2 copies?"

Ah, dear boy, you have just encountered The Greedy One. "Why yes, I did mean to buy 2."

"Just checking."

I'm sliding down the slippery slope of the graphic novel, right past new shoes and haircuts. And hey, the dentist? I floss a lot, that's got to count for something.

"Are you okay, Fay?"

"No, I'm not okay. Your poem brought my period on a week and a half early so just shut up.
Everybody just shut up!"

-From Henry Fool
Parker Posey as Fay Grim.

Baby squirrels are cute enough. And puppies? Well puppies have cute built in, but you put squirrels and puppies together and OH MY GOD!!!!

It's cool for Austin, in the mid 80's. And it's wet. There are crickets everywhere and this evening when I opened the back door to let the dogs out there was a toad sitting right up against the door. I half expected him to fall backwards into the house. When I told Michael about this he said that in the morning, when he changes the dog's water, there are sometimes frogs floating dead in the bowl.

What is going on here? Are they not amphibian? Are they slowly creeping toward higher and drier ground? They're beginning to scare me a little. All I need in my life are baseball sized pests in the house. And the cat has evidentally retired from hunting. Who knew? It's his Fancy Feast addiction, I'm sure of it. Nothing else can hold a candle to the stuff. If he's not eating it, he's staring at the empty bowl. "To hell with the frogs" he says, "let me hear that sweet lid pop open." Yeah, the cat; he's the boss of me these days. I don't want the frogs to get any ideas from him.