Edmund Schweppe

who else loses shit every time they move? one move i lost my pyrex pie plate which wasn't a big deal, it was easy to replace, but i was completely baffled as to what happened to it because i packed myself. this time it's a whole bunch of cd's (including several mixes i burned myself and that other folks burned for me) and a little swarovski bunny. one of the bunny's ears fell off at some point and now that i have superglue to fix it... i can't find it. and i have no fucking clue where my cd's went. i mean, at the risk of repeating myself, i packed them myself. they were easy to get to and the boxes wouldn't be in my roommate's way while she packed up her stuff so i did those first. so where did my cd's go? no idea.

(my former roommate did not take them by accident, i know that for sure.)

so i'm annoyed about that and also baffled. also my sister and i got mom a soup care package (soup, rolls, cookies, a ladle, a cute spoon) as an early mother's day present and because a. she broke her elbow, b. she was sick, and c. the boyfriend was sick. so, you know, they weren't cooking. she got it a week and a half ago and the most they've eaten is a couple of rolls and some cookies. the cookies are still good but the rest of the rolls went moldy (why didn't you put them in the freezer, mom?) and chances are the soup's spoiled too. (again, why didn't she put it in the freezer if they were both too sick to heat it up and eat it?) if circumstances were reversed and she sent a care package to me or my sister and we'd been too sick to heat and eat, or didn't have an appetite, she'd have given us such a hard time. she kept saying it was such a nice gesture and she was so happy but this, that, and the other thing, they never ate it and i feel kind of like we wasted our money. so i'm annoyed and frustrated about that too.

and i'm working on this thing for writing group and have zero idea what the story even is. i have a situation - i like coming up with situations - and i'm kind of building the world - also fun - but what's the story? how do i write it? who knows! it's my turn to submit something and i have a whopping 960 words and that is not enough. so there's that.

and i still don't have my car back and i'm going to nyc for memorial day with my sister and it's my turn to drive and i have zero guarantees that the car will even make it to new york, much less home. i'm 100% prepared for it to die on the highway or in traffic in midtown manhattan.

on the plus side the weather was beautiful today so i took a walk and got some sun and (more importantly) some exercise, and that was nice.

i know this is old news by now but i just learned about it so i have to share - a guy running the boston marathon collapsed *thisclose* to the finish line and two other runners basically picked him up and helped him across, sacrificing their personal best times to get him to the end. and then one of them collapsed on the other side of the finish line. >.< but they all made it across and qualified for next year.

icelandair is running a contest to prove that even the worst photographer can take gorgeous pictures of iceland. the deadline is april 30 so you need to hurry if you think you're a terrible photographer and you want to go to iceland.

I am a descendent of stillness
and sailors still in motion,
a brew of saltpeter and blackbird song.
In just one bloody wound collide
impatience and calm.
If I fall silent and words ripen
it’s the voice of an olive tree in its quiet seed.
I am the hesitation between hideout and sword,
the yellow in all the world’s traffic lights.
In the future I’ll serve you coffee and worship
you—like an icon—in a picture frame.

--"Two-Blooded", Rolando Kattan (translated from the Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Víctor Rodríguez Núñez)

( and the original! )

today i went to a sheepshearing festival with one of the admins m (the one i went to muppet madness with on monday) and didn't exactly see sheep being sheared - the crowd was too thick - altho we could definitely hear the sheep talking. we did however see some dog herding - i think said doggie was still learning but she managed to herd the sheep around, at least once they stopped giving her the side-eye and kind of shifting away from her - they moved in a tight clump of sheep which was really entertaining - and some maypole dancing and a revolutionary war reenactor showing a bunch of little kids how to hold a colonial era rifle and a guy carving a spoon and bunch of extremely chatty lambs and giant whoopie pies ("the big whoop") and a lot of wool. i mean, seriously, so much wool, so much yarn, so many pretty colors. admin m knits. i do not. i petted a lot of skeins tho. (also a pile of fresh shorn wool and an alpaca.)

i love that sheep sound exactly like the sounds people make to imitate them. i mean they really do say "baa".

tonight i met my sister for dinner (i had shrimp) and we saw the drama and i have no idea how i feel about it. zendaya and robert pattinson had just enough chemistry for me to buy them as two people who love each other enough to get married but otherwise, i dunno. i think it's well done but wow is it uncomfortable to watch. also it was shot in boston but if you don't recognize the street names you'd never know that.

I wear my grandmother’s teeth on my wrist. She mostly
used her teeth for smiling. Hi gang! Big and open, her whole
arm scribing overhead in joy as we approached. Seems
almost caricature, but it was real. She was real. I miss her. I don’t

know how she stayed, after all her losses, so cheerful, alone.
Decades alone, widowed young, alone by choice
in her bed. The teeth I wear are not from her mouth, but
from a jaw older maybe even than humans: walrus, fossilized,

bought before I was born that time she and her husband
flew a small plane they could borrow cheap, thanks to
his job at Boeing—details, details, the small gold chain
that double-checks the bracelet’s clasp, how much security

the details give us—to Alaska. My goodness, the romance,
the time, their lucky, white, poor and upwardly mobile, just-
post-depression, educated selves. Those teeth of hers
I wear are not recently of ocean or ice, and absolutely not

of this new ocean, this new thin ice, but dug from earth
and browned by earth, the rest of their original life gone. The
nerves and blood, the soft gums, the sensitive, broad
mystacial pad and its seeking whiskers. My grandmother

wasn’t like a fossil, which is what some people get called
when they get old. In the care home where she lived
for a few years or months (time blurs), they said her smile hid
her decline. I think again about the pass politeness, rote

manners, can give—their grace or shroud. Inside my mouth,
all my teeth sit still in their sockets, minus little bits which, in some
cases, are filled with expensive compounds my grandmother’s
daughter could afford and which I did not tend or value

enough when their care became mine. I know how loose
teeth can be when a life hasn’t held them or when life’s flush
fades, when the flesh sags off. I’ve found so many seal jaws,
dolphin jaws, porpoise jaws on the beach, in dunes, and,

whether I pocket anything or not, I always wiggle them
in their ragged sockets, count the cusps, touch each point, which
tells me not what they said but who, as a species, they were.
Are. Hi, gang! So sweet, so eager to see even our shitty, selfish

teenage selves. Inside my mouth, there’s a whole lot
of impolite, but I know how to close my lips around it.
The teeth on my wrist from my grandmother might
be fragile. I don’t know and can’t unless I try to break

them. She was such a joyous force. She was such a joyous
force. It makes me afraid to pull the bracelet over the knob
of my wrist, to stretch the old elastic, because I have lost
so much joy already, which is entirely my fault. She seemed,

to me, to always be vibrant with care. The teeth are loose
on my wrist. Once, someone put her finger on the small
spur no one notices below the last knuckle of my hand and
that is why I bought a different bracelet that touches me

where she touched me, with the same, delicate precision.
I hardly ever wear the other bracelet, the teeth, which
are really little squares, like lozenges to ease a throat, and
haven’t I been sore-voiced? Hey, gang! Her arms waving

like she was guiding a plane to the gate. The way
she would love whoever saw her. Really. Whoever.

--"The Teeth on My Wrist", Elizabeth Bradfield