That Time Locusts Ate My Bike, and Other Bible Stories

My mom just bought me a bike.

I am going to turn 39 before the year is out.

But she was never able to buy me a bike as a kid, and I mentioned to her I was looking at buying a bike but it seemed like a lot of money, and she said to buy it and she'd send me a check.

"Making up for lost time?" I quipped.

She quoted me the Bible.

Joel 2:25. "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten."

She quotes the Bible to me a lot, and always has, and I'll admit sometimes it's tiresome, but something about this was sweet. That such an obscure-seeming scripture was at the ready, that she had this assurance that it was not too late to do for her very grown-up kid what she couldn't do when I was little, that broken hearts can be mended while they still beat.

That's what I got out of it, anyway. Well, that and a bike.

Poem for Cyclical Time (See What I Did There)

Time gives more chances,
More a circle than a line,
Cycles round again.

I kind of want a tiny license plate for it that says EAT MY DUST, LOCUSTS or something ridiculous.

It's Love on Wheels

On Sunday I went rollerskating for the first time in 15 years, and maybe the second time in 30. I was really nervous. My knees already hurt when I climb stairs; I don't need to fall on them. But I didn't. In the two hours I was at Interskate 91 (warning: web page plays music you don't want anyone to think you're listening to on purpose), I went from wobbly barely-standing to fairly confident gliding around in circles. The memory of how to move was still inside me somewhere.

So that felt good.

I had a moment, too, one of many I've had over the last year or so, of feeling swept up in the romance of my life, of being in friend-love with this group of queers that had talked me into doing something youthful and silly and possibly slightly dangerous. Maybe it was the saccharine pop music blaring over the speakers at the skating rink or the memory of being 7 under disco lights holding my friend's hand as we spun around corners. Sometimes I think I'm missing romantic love in my life when I'm not dating anyone special, so it's nice to be reminded that I have everything I need and want if I just notice it.

Haiku for Rollerskating at 38

Bodies remember,
Then the heart can open up.
Mind comes in last.

Trying to skate backward (looks a lot like standing still).

RIP Jimmy Crochet

Last night I attended a candlelight vigil for a beautiful person who passed away Saturday. Way, way too soon. We weren't super close, but I was crazy about him anyway. Everybody was, it seems.

I gave him a crochet lesson once. At first he was frustrated with the awkward, new feeling of the hook and yarn in his fingers. I invited him to think about other skills he had mastered--drawing and skateboarding--and how long it took his body to memorize those movements, and to have patience with himself.

As he practiced the chain stitch, we made up an elaborate history and etymology of crochet. He also told me about a high school girlfriend who had tried to teach him. It didn't work out (the relationship or the lesson), and he was determined to learn it now to spite her. I think he was mostly kidding.

Before long, he was on his second row of fairly even single-crochet stitches, so pleased with himself he didn't notice the time. He jumped up suddenly when he realized he was late for an open mic a friend of his was playing at.

Today I just want to be home crocheting mustaches in his memory.

Haiku for A.F.

You learned the chain stitch,
Which was invented in France
By Jimmy Crochet.

This looks a lot like the mustache he sometimes wore.

It's too damn warm out.

Last night, after a rock show in a small venue full of stinky young people, a friend brought a bubble machine into the space and pointed it out the window. We scrambled down the stairs and into the alley to chase the frozen bubbles.

The cold made them more durable, not solid but gummy. We could catch them without popping them, and they would cave in but not disintegrate. After a while, they started collecting on the pavement, sticking to each other and rolling down the street in clumps of bubble-tumbleweeds.

We screamed with laughter and staggered around the alley like sugared-up toddlers. And wished it were even colder so we could see what the bubbles would do.

Seems like that's the value of magic, even the silly type of magic that makes soap bubbles into something strange and wondrous: that we are willing and even glad to give up what's comfortable (relative warmth at 20 degrees F) in exchange for possibility.

Haiku for Barely Frozen Bubbles

I stayed out too late
Breathing body odor and
Chasing bumbleweeds

Knitty Gritty

Haiku for My WIPs

We are a rare breed,
But me and the boys prove it:
Guys who knit are hot.

Stiff Little Fingers

Last night I crocheted white on white while watching Buffy on Netflix for about 4 hours straight because I am on a deadline to complete an art piece I promised to a local nonprofit for their auction, and this is a haiku about it.

Haiku for a Thursday Night Craftathon

Fingers cramping up
Eyes watering from the glare
This better be good

(Season 6, episodes 8 through 12, if you must know.)

Queers of the Stone Age, or My Dinner with Homo Erectus

At dinner tonight (a Women's Freedom Center fundraiser at Fireworks), I was complaining (like I do) about having to eat multiple times a day in order to maintain the high metabolism of a warm-blooded mammal. I am missing the evolutionary characteristic of thinking about food between meals. I should have been a snake. Then I could eat once a month for about five hours, get a big kick out of it, and go back to living my life.

I suggested that, in the stone ages when there were no restaurants, I would have died already. Another friend, who wears glasses, worried they would also be dead, having been eaten by something big. Then it dawned on me that prehistoric us might have teamed up and saved each other's lives. My cave-buddy would remind me to eat, as I looked out for danger.

We think it would go a little something like this:

Haiku for Paleolithic Cooperation

There's no glasses yet
Hold my hand and run with me
There's a bear coming

Many hands make light work. And sometimes dinner.

Let me crochet about it and get back to you.

Last night, as I wrestled with an array of communication breakdowns, with that June supermoon blasting through my window, I started on the first few rows of what will be a very large sphere.

Haiku for a Super Moon

Capricorn full moon
Challenging my boundaries,
I'll crochet your ass.

Analog time warp

Last night I was working on a mixtape. Is a sentence that I haven't said in at least 15 years.

Fish sticks and lady fingers

Last night I attended a performance of the Fully Functional Cabaret on the campus of Smith College. Tonight's the last stop on their tour, otherwise I would tell you to go see it. Fingers crossed they will be able to tour the rest of the country with it.

When in doubt wear goggles

Last night I played a set as part of Deep Frost Slow Thaw, one of five bands in the show whose members were randomly assigned. My friends all said we sounded great, and those who are not necessarily my friends said we looked great. (Our uniform was short shorts and swim goggles.) And we sold five copies of our tape, which is really just recordings of our practices on one of those old rectangular cassette recorders with a built-in microphone. It's so lo-fi it's not even fi. It's like sub-fi.

Take these D cups from me

Yesterday I realized I had been wearing a binder every day for a week straight. I also realized it hurts a lot when I turn my head or breathe. Lifting things and driving are difficult. I made an appointment for physical therapy.

Stitch-n-subvert-the-dominant-paradigm

Last night I hosted a rad, queer stitch-n-such, attended by one other person. I unraveled a blanket I had started weaving, and my friend made several inches of progress on a rainbow latch hook rug. We discussed the prevalence of sexually violent language in our everyday vocabularies and sang along to Flood in its entirety.

Fuck destroy the patriarchy! Build a little birdhouse in your soul!

Haiku for March 14, 2013

Asking queer questions
"How do you identify?"
"What does romance mean?"

With apologies to Bashō

Last night right before bed, I decided to write a haiku a day because g-d knows I can't commit to keeping a journal any other way.

Today I made the mistake of telling a friend my intention, and in response she uttered that most unflattering word to be crammed into the English language in the last couple of decades: "Blog."