If you annoy a Sicilian woman
She will fling herself at you shrieking,
Her hair and eyes wild with rage; she’ll plunge a dagger
Into your heart three times before you fall

And then she’ll spit on your corpse and curse your memory

If you annoy a French woman
She will fling at you a stiletto heel
Or a saucepan (with sauce veloute’, oui!)
Either one will take you down, mon ami

And then she’ll dial a friend for company

If you annoy a Russian woman
She will make a discreet telephone call
And when in spring the ice of the Neva thaws
Your frozen body will at last pop up

And then she’ll write a poem in your memory

If you annoy an English woman
She will smile sweetly, and poison your tea
And as you collapse, gasping desperately for breath
She will smile again, and ask if anything’s wrong

And then she’ll ring for Jeeves to tidy up

Finally:

A Canadian woman  (I’m telling no tales) -
You mess with her, and you’re bait for the whales!

                               -fin- (so to speak)

no number of opinions will alleviate this apathy, promised, paradoxically: a pandora's box of pathology, which is why attempting dialectics is a farce, a cheap magic trick for a talk-show host in being "understanding", to attempt in mediating, and then scoffing it off, like some under baked crumpet / scone, and yes, it makes sense, pivoting on the possession of a conscience... it's not that some people appear to now possess it, but that they are comical in possessing, and comedy is always nuanced, an ambiguity surrounds their conscience... the binary opposite of comedy? the birth of the tragedy, a succumbing to madness, a suicide... every person possesses a conscience, as the universal law of unit, but comedy hides a person with a grieving conscience, making the person so callus as to make them donkeys, laughing stocks, spaghetti entangled liars... it's only a conscience triggered into a tragedy that reeks with redemptive qualities ascribed to a person, cf. the already mentioned carl sergeant and 'arvey 'ard on weinstein... in the spirit of the film split: rejoice! for those who have suffered are redeemed! rejoice! said the beast. the comedy is near impossible to avoid in post-script idiocy beaming the letters FAIL; the tragedy of conscience, at least we know some evil doers in death are redeemed with the only puritanical act to redeem conscience: the bride of honour.*

can an intelligent person make a slapstick
joke?
  or is it that,
   a dumb person cannot make an original
joke?

besides the point,
  a question is a question -
  and as most questions go -
it's not whether there's a correct
or wrong answer,
rather, whether there actually is
an answer to accomplish
that stated question.

i've noticed a resurgence of dialectical
inquiry, but i have decided to
avoid perfecting the art,
   other than in person,
on a park bench, rather than on
a page in pixel white...

  oh sure, i have a life beyond this
outlet,
and i rarely write a platonic dialogue
to reinforce my experiences,
i once enforced a question
upon a child in a supermarket:
do you think animals are unable
to see 3-dimensional objects
     in / on a 2-dimensional canvas?
he didn't answer, because his guardian
thought i was weird in my
presumption...
which was, however you imagine it:
casual, cordial, orientated
within the adequate use of time and space
for the question to be asked.

personally i find myself if a binary
realm of,
   which isn't exactly a left right divide -
as a "schizophrenic" i am marching
down the middle, and asking myself:
   there's only the middle to mind,
and the mind is the only thing worth
juggling, sure, but juggling
a thesis hemisphere and an antithesis
hemisphere becomes lost in
the schizophrenic-quadratic -
      right down the middle.

which is why i find modern attempts
at dialectics so odd...
i prescribed myself dialectical escapism,
simply because there are too
many opinions i'm simply not interested in.

people seem to have stored these opinions
for so long, they are choking at not
having talked about them...
  it's apparent in comedy...
among comics...
                    they simply say:
if we can't bypass the comedy and sit down
with a cold beer, we can't actually
take the opinion seriously,
  if we can't, at first, make a joke of it...
that's hard...
              that's near impossible to stage...
you can realise the complexity of
enabling a seriousness with a comic precursor
antics to "soften" the blow of
approach...
that is why i await the awaited for
dialectical artist, who must be much
older than i, frankly the age of socrates,
i can only fathom dialectical escapism,
    in that i can fathom an opinion,
but i can't fathom being endearing to it,
keeping it, nurturing it,
       maturing it,
                     making the animate
water into inanimate ice...
                       which leaves steam
   a categorical conundrum of categorisation...

in terms of the human mind,
i can only find comparison with Alcatraz...
i am forever attempting escape,
i know i will be aided by the snitch,
judas, death...
     but i have to be lodged into
a vocab that may aid me,
  or hinder me.

                   the human experience is
an Alcatraz because of the a priori principle -
what came before me: set the rules,
the winding corridors where
i'm not the Minotaur,
but the scared victim,
   or just the dumb-enough brick of
the labyrinth's wall.
or? the a posteriori principle -
           i impose my own graffiti on
the walls, and be the Minotaur of the long
wait of life, with death:
my morphine angel.
                              
         but i see no desire to engage in
dialectical endeavours,
            hence my choice in attempting
a purification of poetry,
against technique of schooling,
  in making poetry less and less
musically orientated, and returned to
its primordial genesis: of narrative.

  hence my dialectical escapism,
i really have not stable opinion,
or opinion i'd like to adhere to, to subsequently
hug a pillar of a Parthenon.
                
- believe me when i say that the english
language has no inclination of
orthography, since it uses no diacritical
distinctions...
  and yes... russian diacritics is ugly as
your waning babushka of "secrets"...
  - the beauty of existentialism?
            avoidance of the thesaurus,
mismatching words, ambiguity -
the phraseology of: for lack of a better word...
     fiddly parts, you know,
            **** it, you can't exactly
interrupt a waterfall, so why bother
   attempting to boil some water in a saucepan?

  the world once believed in the enterprise
of dialectics, but since the emergence
of a third party mediator,
       what sort of "dialogue's" worth of
the dialectical endeavour is there left?
once upon a time, in ancient,
the mediator of a dialogue was a park
bench, after that a stage for actors...
who asked these third party ponces,
  more to the point: who invited these
plebs into our private debate so they can
mere awe and sigh their saturday nights off?!
who the **** let these plebs in?!

       i'm a pleb, i can call them plebs,
do i ******* look like i work at 10 downing st.?!
plebs only understand pleb talk,
  rude, incoherent, mildly orientated
in journalism, and ever wishing for some
marquis de sade hard-ons.

i encourage dialectical escapism, frankly,
because,
          i 've found that i have a bare
minimum, laurel leaf worth of covering my
genitals aspiration to keep opinions...
    opinions have become spare change,
you loose them almost all the time,
they're the pennies from heaven,
some other lucky ****** might find them,
and then the resourcefulness of that poor
****** is imminent: spend it,
what's there to debate?

                    the only truth of opinion is
that one man keeps them,
and by keeping them, idealises them,
thus becoming an idealist,
  or that another man discards them
as easily as a ***** peacock,
and by doing the ***** peacock strut,
discarding them,
          becomes a chameleon,
a "non-conformist" (**** me that's
stretching the idealist antonym);
  
   if there's a truth: it's a bunch of lies -
and if there's a lie: it's the only truth -
because the rule of pluralism (borrowed from
heidegger states):

          one truth = many lies
           one lie = only one truth

(there is no pluralism of a truth,
       but there is a pluralism of a lie -
the genesis of a lie is?
             a continuum beginning
with the original temptation -
truth is "plural" but it is not
a continuum of precipitation,
but even if it is dismembered
it is a whole, already apparent,
           or rather: to be made apparent,
it does not require a preceding step
to provide a pro-ceding step...
   lies are obstructive,
truth never obstructs; truth rapes,
while lies groom)...

   unum verum = falsum multis
   falsum unum = solum verum unum selem.

On my kitchen shelf
happy little saucepan birds
nest inside each other

Hot and absent
With blurs rushing inwards and out
Flying up stairs that curl and bend
And a constant shout of noise
My head spins, my eye sends a glance
Purposefully at many signs
I can't chance too many wrong turns
My brain turns to wine, the smell makes it ache
I follow toothpaste coloured overalls
In a number of steps to counters and beds
Heavy and tense, both fall on me.
I clutch a card that I've read over again
Over again
Again I am lost
Every wing looks the same
I know that time costs the same as fresh air
Window panes here only open enough
To let in a fly
And a breeze not a cough
Rattles my heart when I near you.
You appear small and soft
Not much of you there
In that armchair propped up by pillows
Where we kneel by your side, holding your hand
And that equivalent draft billows in green
Life from out there prods and it lifts
With us talking to you,
Quiet and spent and wistful
The alphabet brings nothing new
We walk out pondering, my arm through yours
It is just us two

It creeps up on me.
The sneaking suspicion
that I'm stuck
in it.
My hair is falling
in my face.
Only a year ago...

I built everything —
it was so clear.

Even though —
it was chaos.

People were worried.
But it was simple.

It was as simple
as simmering sausage
in a saucepan,
sweating in a brick kitchen,
listening to Sade,
and thinking of rooftops.

Things are more grounded now.
People are less worried.
The kitchen is smaller,
and shared.
I turn down Sade
when someone enters.
I'm still sweating,
but it's because something
is wrong with the heating system.

I long to take
an anonymous walk
between buildings.
There are only
neighborhoods
and shopping centers here.
And I keep running
into people who know me.

It's either too cold or too hot —
It's never summer every day.

Everything that was hanging on
my walls
is on the floor.
Precious paintings and prints
dusting with potential.

I reveal myself
less to strangers.
I don't take public transportation.
It's disconcerting how
comfortable having a vehicle is.
I feel urged to uproot,
swinging in someone
else's hands,
but feel like..
I'm interrupting.
Can't I just arrive for awhile?

My safety net is too big
and my home is too small.
But if I abandon it,
I'll wonder if I'm bound
to be restless.

S H E


She softly came into my life without her crown

To whisper, to shed light and to turn me upside down

As soft music, she spoke through her pictures

And once I saw them, I adored her features

Something is daily pulling me to her marvellous cave

To appreciate her fountain of beauty  to which I crave

She gave me something I won't lose

Even if I drank too much *****

She gave me something to keep in heart

So that we won't ever part

Something I look at and see her in mind

Then slowly move to heart to bind

Now that I am totally stunned and sedated

It is too hard for me to be eliminated.



Sam Burton ©



Today is Sunday, Oct. 5, the 278th day of 2014 with 87 to follow.

The moon is new. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Uranus. Evening stars are Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Venus.



In 1876, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, now Texas A&M;, opened. It was the first public higher education institution in Texas.

In 1883, the Orient Express train made its first run.

In 1895, the U.S. Open men's golf tournament was first contested. It was won by Horace Rawlins.



A thought for the day:



You can become a winner only if you are willing to walk over the edge. -- Damon Runyon





QUOTES for the day:



It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear...

------------------------

He serves his party best who serves his country best.



Rutherford B. Hayes



You're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.





Barbara Hall, Northern Exposure, Gran Prix, 1994



“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”

Peter Drucker



"A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning."



Billie Jean King



POETRY





AEDH Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven



W.B. Yeats


Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

About this poem


"Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" was originally published in Yeats' collection "The Wind Among the Reeds" (John Lane, 1899).

About W.B. Yeats


A poet and playwright, Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923. Yeats died in France in January of 1939.

*
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.


This poem is in the public domain.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate







Vocabulary

"Bona fide" is used to mean good faith, sincerity. It is the evidence of one's good faith or genuineness -- often plural in construction; evidence of one's qualifications or achievements.

Health and Beauty



Pumpkin Seeds



Have you ever toasted pumpkin seeds at Halloween? Don't wait until the holiday to eat them. Pumpkin seeds are a great source of iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium, and area also high in omega-3. One handful a day makes a big difference.





CHINESE FOOD

In Canada, Thanksgiving is just over one week away. As an alternative to turkey, how about serving Cantonese Roast duck for Thanksgiving dinner?



Cantonese Roast Duck



By Rhonda Parkinson



Author Deh-Ta Hsiung writes: This is the duck with a shining reddish-brown skin seen hanging in the windows of a good Cantonese restaurant.

Serves 10 - 12 as a starter, or 4 to 6 as a main course. (Note: total preparation time does not include the time needed to dry the duck before cooking).

Ingredients

    One 4 1/2 lb (2 kg) oven-ready duckling
    2 teaspoons salt
    4 tablespoons maltose or honey
    1 tablespoon rice vinegar
    1/2 teaspoon red food coloring (optional0
    about 1/2 pint (280 ml) warm water
    For the Stuffing:
    1 tablespoon oil
    1 tablespoon finely chopped spring onion
    1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
    1 tablespoon caster sugar
    2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine (or dry sherry)
    1 tablespoon yellow bean sauce
    1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
    2 teaspoons five-spice powder

    Prep Time: 30 minutes
    Cook Time: 60 minutes

    Total Time: 90 minutes

Preparation

Clean the duck well. Remove the wing tips and the lumps of fat from inside the vent. Blanch in a *** of boiling water for a few minutes, remove and dry well, then rub the duck with salt and tie the neck tightly with string.

Make the stuffing by heating the oil in a saucepan, add all the ingredients, bring to the boil and blend well. Pour the mixture into the cavity of the duck and sew it up securely.

Dissolve the maltose or honey with vinegar and red food coloring (if using) in warm water, brush it all over the duck - give it several coatings, then hang the duck up (head down) with an S-shaped hook to dry in an airy and cool place for at least 4 - 5 hours.

To cook: preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. (200 degrees C./Gas 6). Hang the duck head down on the top rack, and place a tray of boiling water at the bottom of the oven. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees F. (180 degrees C., Gas 4) after 25 minutes or so, and cook for a further 30 minutes, basting with the remaining coating mixture once or twice.

To serve: let the duck cool down a little, then remove the string and pour out the liquid stuffing to be used as gravy. Chop the duck into bite-sized pieces, then serve hot or cold with the gravy poured over it.

Courtesy of Deh-Ta Hsiung.

JOKES



Skeleton in the closet



A very large, old, building was being torn down in Chicago to make room for a new skyscraper. Due to its proximity to other buildings it could not be imploded and had to be dismantled floor by floor.

While working on the 49th floor, two construction workers found a skeleton in a small closet behind the elevator shaft. They decided that they should call the police.

When the police arrived they directed them to the closet and showed them the skeleton fully clothed and standing upright. They said, "This could be Jimmy Hoffa or somebody really important."

Two days went by and the construction workers couldn't stand it any more; they had to know who they had found. They called the police and said, "We are the two guys who found the skeleton in the closet and we want to know if it was Jimmy Hoffa or somebody important."

The police said, "It's not Jimmy Hoffa, but it was somebody kind of important."

"Well, who was it?"

"The 1956 Blonde National Hide-and-Seek Champion."



Quick Quotes



"It was different when we were kids. In second grade, a teacher came in and gave us all a lecture about not smoking, and then they sent us over to arts and crafts to make ash- trays for Mother's Day." --Paul Clay

---

"We should have a way of telling people they have bad breath. 'Well, I'm bored...let's go brush our teeth.' Or, 'I've got to make a phone call, hold this gum in your mouth.'" --Brad Stine

---

"Doesn't it bother you when people litter? The most creative rationale for throwing an apple core out the window is 'It will plant seeds for other threes to grow.' And, of course, our highways are lined with apple trees--right next to all the cigarette bushes." --Nick Arnette



Republican or Democrat?



A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a (political party)." "I am,"replied the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a (political party)." "I am,"replied the balloonist. "How did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, now it's my fault."



Birthday Gift

A husband went to buy a birthday gift for his wife. Some friends had been invited over that night to celebrate her fortieth, and he wanted to get something special. At the store he spotted some cute little music boxes. One blue one was playing "Happy Birthday."

Thinking they were all the same, he chose a red one and had it gift-wrapped. Later, at dinner, he gave it to his wife and asked her to open it...

When she lifted the lid, out came the tune to "The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be!"



Blonde Convention



80,000 blondes meet in the Kansas City Chiefs Stadium for a "Blondes Are Not Stupid" Convention. The leader says, "We are all here today to prove to the world that blondes are not stupid. Can I have a volunteer?" A blonde gingerly works her way through the crowd and steps up to the stage. The leader asks her, "What is 15 plus 15?" After 15 or 20 seconds she says, "Eighteen!"

Obviously everyone is a little disappointed. Then 80,000 blondes start cheering, "Give her another chance! Give her another chance!" The leader says, "Well since we've gone to the trouble of getting 80,000 of you in one place and we have the world-wide press and global broadcast media here, gee, uh, I guess we can give her another chance." So he asks, "What is 5 plus 5?"

After nearly 30 seconds she eventually says, "Ninety?"

The leader is quite perplexed, looks down and just lets out a dejected sigh -- everyone is disheartened, the blonde starts crying and the 80,000 girls begin to yell and wave their hands shouting, "GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!"

The leader, unsure whether or not he is doing more harm than damage, eventually says, "Ok! Ok! Just one more chance -- What is 2 plus 2?"

The girl closes her eyes, and after a whole minute eventually says, "Four?"

Throughout the stadium pandemonium breaks out as all 80,000 girls jump to their feet, wave their arms, stomp their feet and scream...

"GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!"





Have a super nice Sunday!

yes, i know he said he was a vegetarian, delicate counter-priesthood prince - a manner of vegetarianism that expressed an abhorrence of the practice of Eucharist, i too think the Eucharist as a metaphor is a bit porridge: i.e. yucky.  but as Wagner said to him: up north, either you eat meat or you lose the plot (loose - ß - again, not scharfes S - but die scharfes'zart - sharp-tender - already prerequisite of what sharpening omega meant for the w); mind you: salt & pepper to taste according to your own palette - if you're not a sugar ****** you won't over-salt the sauce... and you certainly will not overcook the pasta, halfway between dreadlocks and poodle hair: desirably experience bound al dente, and here comes Socrates with his knowledge of al dente: me no muffin! true that... like all these excess sugar breakfast cereals - ******* the outside, soft inside... or like the idea of ants having an exoskeleton... that's pure culinary theory - al dente exoskeleton; did i already mention salt and pepper to taste? yeah, the beef stock cube is salty, but not salty enough, given the already unsalted meat and vegetables: i cook, i take care of a toddler - Nietzsche keeps bragging: cooked by a cyclops.

who would have thought that a personal
revision of mama Italia's classic
could end up being so tasty;
Nietzsche is the foremost diner in my humble
abode: i just like the way he says:
who let woman into the kitchen?!
that's right, i deviated from the standard recipe
of mama Italia's cooking for papa don
Giovanni - honestly? in lonely times at
university when everyone was into ******
ad drunk debaucheries, and ****** fancy dress
parties? Aria Giovanni saved the day...
just look at the classic beauty, plump as a plumb
in between two cream bergs - such
exfoliation... where's that daddy long-legs
on the catwalk... come on! shove a malteser up
her *** like a suppository escutcheon - i'm sure
the salad leaves will keep her starving even more,
or walk her in Gucci with a drip-pole -
intravenous therapy while on the job -
but can you believe what only a quarter of a teaspoon
does to the Bolognese sauce recipe?
wonders... you don't add the carrot, or the celery,
among the vegetables you add button mushrooms,
and the three colours of peppers -
onions and garlic (a lot of it) as standard -
oregano, rosemary and thyme too,
some Italian five-spice - but the fennel seeds!
the fennel seeds! after i learned to cook i see
ready meals are diabetics in disguise,
and restaurant foods as defunct -
what? we're all expressing our capacity to
make choice, apologies if you made the sort of
choices you now hate... hardly a reason to
complain about my exercise in freedom,
i don't blame you, i'd have chosen differently
if i were you too... but there we go...
i'm cooking Bolognese from scratch because i like
to tickle my sense of smell and the buds of
the palette garden, i look at the sauce and
write fiction: the plot thickens...
                                                     and that's the great
3 minute microwave sequence on the other
side of the spectrum... because we're all so *busy -
busy bees and that's merely the generation Y
dads getting hormonal treatment from tending to
babies - choices choices choices -
                                                          oddly­ enough
the mediocre work that goes on in those glass
shards - by comparison, the default argument is
pretty obvious: i too would have not invested
in caring for art, or as i once said:
you can't get good art and raise a family -
you can create good art that will support the family,
you'd end up being a great technician,
an artistic engineer - the standard model of bridges /
already in your head - is refining yourself
via plagiarism - you end up plagiarising yourself -
but come one! a quarter of a teaspoon of fennel seeds?
well, i'm not talking cumin seeds...
or maybe it was the turmeric powder that
coloured the onions yellow while frying?
2 tablespoons of garlic - for sure, enough garlic
and we're already talking Dracula -
~5 strips of bacon too -
                                          no, not necessarily involving
carrots and celery - why be boring?
this is me in my furore days in an organic
chemistry class at university - back to the esters
and perfumes, but this is raw, it's analytical
chemistry, it's nothing synthetic -
birds and the bees and some hippy buckles over
a giant butternut squash - which is why i find
people who ably memorise and recite poetry
are the same people who probably write polemics,
and do the peacock verbal dance for a woman
in a restaurant - rather than give her raw grub
of your own calibre - 1 cube of beef stock
dissolved in water - simmering for about 40 minutes,
tomatoes chopped - obviously tomato puree -
500 grams of mince beef -
                                                ever think that poetry
could reinvent journalism and also the way of
writing recipes? FENNEL SEEDS! that's what goes
in first, you roast them in chilli infused olive oil -
let them sizzle for a bit - and yes,
you pour some oil into salted water where
you'll be boiling the spaghetti - the oil means the
spaghetti won't stick together, plus pouring
oil into a saucepan of boiling water is the other
famous pastime of chemists... the former?
watch paint dry. i'm pretty ****** sure i missed something,
like mama Italia missed something to keep
the recipe a secret - well... there's Parmesan cheese
to garnish and fresh basil -
                                                and if i were raising a family,
i wouldn't be listening to the dead skeleton's album
dead magick... oh sure, the reward would be:
i'd have a little crowd at my funeral, some gibberish
about how many people knew me so well... but really
didn't... the whole street profession...
                i never got the idea of solitude and how it
might be sad from the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby song -
don't know never became an impressionable counter -
oh yeah, Darwinism helped! it helped a lot
in creating a world view, a world view that said:
don't touch this ****... leave them to it:
these people are more influenced by opinion columns
of newspapers than philosophy books -
in England, where, i dare say, the daily telegraph
is actually respectable, as is the guardian -
and the central of the two opposites? tickling
tabloid, i call the times posh tabloid, because it is
a posh tabloid: i like the way fame
desired for sales becomes toilet paper
the next day... or the newspaper on the street
that gets the footprint on the plastic surgery escapades...
love it! mm, yes darling! lovin' it!

Yield infinite possibilities

Ingredients
A pinch of “I don’t give a crap”
A dash of “respect”
A cup of “alone time”
2 sprigs of a “peace of mind”
A heaping tablespoon of “some good lovin’”
2 gallons of “go **** yourself”

Directions:
1. Pour half of “go **** yourself” into a saucepan and mix it with “I don’t give a crap.”
2. Place the sprigs of “a peace of mind” and stir constantly with “some good lovin’” and half of the “alone time.”
3. To finish it off, add “respect” and then place the saucepan over medium heat for 5 to 10 minutes, or until it is very hot but not boiling.
4. Remove it from the heat. Add the remainder of “go **** yourself” and the other half of “alone time” if needed. No need to pour it into mugs. Keep back pocket and use all the time

Nutritional Information:
Amount per serving

Happiness and self worth: infinite
*******: absolutely none
Years gained in life: too many to count
Knowing that you don’t give a **** because you’re happy: PRICELESS

If there's one thing I fear will always be a mystery to me, it is with the ease that some people fall asleep.

Like, seriously just lie down and that's it. That's it?

That's it.


It's 4am and when I lie down my mind is still racing a million miles an hour, even when I'm so tired I can't even walk straight. And I check every limb for a sense of weighted-down, for that sleepy-fuzzy feeling in my knees and calves, tense abdomen, fixed shoulders, arms crossed like a saint, or flung up, whatever feels right, trying to find the holy grail of comfort that may or may not exist depending on what night and how long until I have to get up. 5 hours. 4 hours. 2 hours and 46 minutes.


It's the sound of an entire town sleeping, the privilege of hearing the secret noises that houses make when nobody else is lucid, praying your mind will wander, willing yourself to wander into it, setting traps, trying to find solace when you're left out of sleep, when everyone else sleeps, and it's tantamount to the feeling of being picked last for a soccer game in elementary school.


I used to imagine making soup. I would imagine my feet on the ground, planted firmly, gravity on me vertically instead of horizontally. The gritty tile, barefoot. Savor every step to the drawer, rummage for the can opener. On your tip-toes to reach the can of mushroom soup on the second-highest shelf, turn the can around to see the label and make sure it's the right one. Get a pan out. Scratch a flake of dried food off the metal side. Open the can, pull the little slice of paper off the jagged rim, pour in the water and mash the solid with a fork. Turn on the stove. I would be asleep by now. Or I would have wandered into a variant scenario. The saucepan was full of water and dead flies. I had to drive to Giant Tiger for more dish soap. I was a kid again, when I was wearing a swimsuit and anxious they wouldn't let me in. I needed a watergun. It was summer. It was finally a dream. Free of reality.


But it isn't. I feel my head heavy, the grinding feeling on the inside of my forehead. I ease myself with facts that hold little solace. Insomniacs have higher IQs. Insomniacs function better. Insomniacs succeed. You know what? Insomniacs have higher rates of breast cancer. Insomniacs have frighteningly higher rates of depression, anxiety, memory problems, automobile accidents, functional issues, all because they soup trick didn't work one time cause I tried it with tomato, all because I woke up too late this morning, it's 4:30 and I have 2 hours and 30 minutes to sleep and is it even worth it?


When your head falls back into the pillow and you feel the muscle unfurl, the slight pain that loosens into nothing, warm legs, heavy knees, weighed at your ankles, arms crossed like a saint, flung up, fetal with your knees grinding into each other, your hips off-kilter, and your mind still races a million miles a minute, dances around every trap you set, your stomach clenches in panic at nothing, you hear the secret noises that houses make when nobody else is lucid, you see the orange haze of the sky from the streetlights of the city next over, you've seen so much half-light the color is saturated into the skin under your eyes, bleary blue, sharp blue, blue raspberry kool-aid powder, half-everything and you know you've lost the fight, it's over, it's morning.



Can you dream during the day?
Can you stop your head from lolling on the desk?
Can you finish the assignment when you're ankle-deep in IQ?
Can you simply get into bed and go to sleep?


That has to be the worst advice I've every gotten from multiple people.


"Just go to sleep."

I can't describe the dark, moreso how it fades away to blue or hazy orange depending on whether we're rural or urban. I've not slept in a hundred places. I've not slept while a thousand different birds chirped and it blended into some sort of organized chaos and I can still hear the most persistent of them to this day. I've not slept in light-polluted cities where the falling snow was tinted orange and the closest thing to a star was the airplane that I mistaked for Venus. I've not slept in my boyfriend's bed where I woke him up to half-stroke my hair at 2am when he'd been asleep since 12. I've not slept in camp rooms where I  lay there in the darkness, scared to wake them up, surprised when the prettiest girl snored the loudest. I've not slept on couches, after ***, before scaling 30 foot poles in some version of a trust exercise, above and all else in my own bed, and you can just lie there and go to sleep?


You can just lie there and miss all that?

We stayed in a house
A big cottage looking house
It was so lovely

I shared a room with
a girl in my class, we had
a room on ground floor

I loved the country
lanes it felt wonderful to
walk in to nature

At night the stars shined
brightly , o there was many
sparkling sweetly

Then I saw saucepan
A saucepan in shape of stars
Was god cooking din!

I realised today
I notice nature when young
But had forgotten

I can only see a
little memory it seems
very far away

But it's there somewhere
Floating by me like a cloud
on a sky blue day

But it hardly stops
And when it does it plays like
an old time movie

Until it runs out
Leaving just a blank screen where
a snubbed *** **** burns

I cannot stretch this
memory no more , but I'm
glad the saucepan stayed