"O, Canada"

This:

http://www.bigwhite.com

is Rian's weekend destination. Tis the annual Firm Retreat, full of down hill skiing, poker, and drinking. A wild combination, yes?

Rian leaves Friday morning, on the 'Other's Bus', for a six hour journey of tequila mixed with green tortilla chips and the Before and After game. The bus lacks a toilet and after six hours it is likely we will all have killed each Other. Or thrown the bus driver out and turned for Nevada.

Note the temperature. And the fact that dinner will be served at a Steak House that is apparently a 'scenic gandola ride away'. Sympathy, please.

Wishful Thinking

One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold miseries or elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady mind.

Bhagavad-Gita verse 56

Emma's Beloved

Rian dreampt about Ash last night, most likely because Emma and Rian had been discussing her earlier.

In this dream, Rian lived again in my childhood home. Ash stopped for a visit on her way to Emma's New York loft. Twas a very short, simple dream:

Ash sat on the carpeted living room floor, in a large puddle of sunlight, a full knapsack at her feet and the light glinting off her hair. Rian sat a few feet away, on the window seat, back to the windows and the Torrey Pines. The glass was cold against my shoulders.

We were talking of Emma, and of writing, and of the colour of the sky.

And then, from the cushions, Rian saw something interesting on Ash's face. I climbed from the window seat, stepped into the very very warm sunlight, knelt on the white carpet and bent forward. I remember the pupils in her eyes and the pores of her skin and then -

"There are freckles on your nose," said Rian, wisely.

And woke up.

Grain

Rian now knows how the Fool darkened.

Twas not Change, as we all supposed, but the result of staining his wood creations.

Rian's finger tips have gone from fish white (and often heart attack blue) to a nice, lovely, ebony rich tone. I do not know if it twill ever come off. And I have still not found the right stain combination for the Possible Wainscotting.

Obviously, I have not the Skill.

Silence

Rian found silence today, for a few hours, and simply lay still to listen to the sound of empty space.

It was not, of course, truly empty. Streched across the chaise I could hear the gentle but stubborn ticking of the clock, and the faint hum of the refridgerator from the kitchen, and farther away the slurp of the washing machine in the basement. The radiators popped and cracked and cars on the street outside groaned past and occasionally the bones of the house itSelf shifted.

This made Rian think of the Abode as a living creature. Tis three times as old as Rian. And it has its own sounds, some of them without obvious origin. Eyes closed, listening to the body of wood and plaster and glass and piping and fabric and wires that surrounded Rian, I tried to imagine the life this house has lived. Why does it breathe in this way, and not that?

How many births and deaths has it witnessed? None? Many? Has it been treated always well, or ar the initials carved in the wainscotting an evidence of carelessness. Will it carry on forever, or fall apart at the seems.

Silence turned into life, in Rian's mind. And what is life without an occasional blessed silence?

Possible Truths

"Is there anything better than longing for something when you know it is within reach?"

- Garbo

Look Again

PlayDough Love Birds.

Low Beauty

"Midway along the journey of our life,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
For I had wandered off from the straight path.
How hard it was to tell what it was like,
This wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn..."

- Dante

Blasted Radiator

Sand cleaned of all paint. To ye it may be curvy pipes, but to Rian tis Perfection.

And...eh...what cat?

Horror

Rian dreampt, this afternoon, that I - and also my loved ones - were being devoured alive by large black and white, hairy, sentient rose dwelling spiders that only Rian could see.

...this is what comes of glotzing tarantulas at Petco with Aidan.

For Mater

http://www.sadhanayogahudson.com/surya.html

So, yes. Ye could say the poses are meant to be pleasing to the gods.

Entertainment Fixed

http://www.johntitor.com

Possible Truths

"It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one."

- Annie Proulx

Zeros and Os

What keeps an honest creature from cheating?

Heart Palpatations

Life has a wicked amusement to it, yes?

Rian attended another brunch at the Davenport this morning - Rian seems to be at the Davenport often, lately. I pulled on middle finery and red boots to brave the endless rain and went off with a light heart. The rain sculpted the entire windshield over and over again as Rian darted off, driving Someone Else's small car with some forgotten joy.

Half way to brunch Rian's mobile rang. Someone Else's father was being rushed to the ER with a possible heart attack.

Rian went on to brunch. It was a birthday brunch for Someone Else's father's mother, yes? So the chickens of the family were all there.

We sat, eating pancakes and Crab Louis and Buck's Fiz and hot chocolate and tea and asian chicken salad and coffee cake and creme brulee and chocolate lava cake. And in between forking up silver and clinking crystal and passing brightly wrapped presents, we took turns on the various mobile phones, checking with doctor's, waiting to see if Death was hovering about one loved by most of the brunch guests.

What an odd, refined, unemotional creatures can be.

The fat orange gold fish were back in the hotel fountain. Rian watched them for a long time before driving home.

Confessions

Someone Else wants to quit the Firm and start his own.

This makes Rian uneasy.

And THAT makes Rian feel guilty.

Also, Rian sent the radiator away to be sand blasted pure and clean. Poor radiator. Abruptly yanked and thumped across the floor and sent out to be super exfoliated. All in one day.

Reasons Why

Rolling

Rian purchased a hat for Someone Else's grandmother this morning. Tis a birthday gift, so Rian had the Nordstrom's clerk put the hat into a large shiny silver hat box. The hat box itself was very pretty, and the present will be appreciated.

Afterward, hat box in one hand and Aidan's fist in the other, Rian wandered through Pottery Barn, glotzing leather couches and organizational systems and lamps the colour of sunshine.

I purchases a small something for a friend, and as Rian was handing over plastic, the clerk grabbed my hand. His tag said his name was James and he was, despite Rian's reluctance to box, obviously very gay and happy to be so.

"Your ring!" he said, fawning over Rian's rather chunky jewelry. "I've seen one just like it in Vogue! I love it!"

"Oh?" said Rian, amused. "Thank you."

"I've been thinking of getting one myself," James continued, pleased when Rian tugged off the ring for his examination. "But with a lion's head on it. What do you think?"

"Perfect," said Rian, trying very hard not to twinkle. "Just think of the damage you could do in a fist fight."

James laughed obediently, rang up Rian's purchase, and Aidan and Rian were ready to be off.
At that moment, however, as Rian juggled parcels and returned ring and a little person's reluctant hand, the hat box decided to make a break for it.

Sparkling in the display lights, the box fell from the concrete counter, landed perfectly on one edge, and merrily began rolling past leather couches and organizational systerms and lamps the colour of sunshine.

"Oh, dear!" snickered Rian. "Look at it go. Who would have guessed it could pick up such speed."

James, being a kind soul, made a motion to chase after. Rian shook head and sent Aidan in chase instead. The hat box rolled over a perfectly beautifully red oriental rug, around a self of candles and silver frames, and fetched up against a cutstomer's shin.

The customer was not amused.

Rian, James and Aidan were. Retail should always be so exicting.

Signage

Driving home in the dark last night Rian passed a flashing electronic sign attached to a car lot.

"IT HAS BEEN PROVEN
THAT RESEARCH CAUSES CANCER IN RATS"

the sign shouted in brilliant yellow letters.

For a good block after, Rian wondered about the owner of the sign.

Did he think himSelf witty? Was he making a political statement of some sort? Was he trying to annoy? WAS the message amusing, and Rian just did not find it so?

Reasons Why

Tulips Midwinter.

Tearing

Rian has just finished glotzing The Hours and found it terribly depressing to watch.

Are we meant to imagine such pain in another's every day life? Do we experience such, each? Or is it entirely literary hyperbole?

Some stories settle a blackness across Rian's heart.

Concentric

This morning Rian got lost in a rain puddle.

Wide as the concrete side walk and round as an automobile wheel, the gathered water appeared still and deep, but for the heavy rain drops that fell lazily, circles and circles spreading on mirrored glass.

Behind the spreading circles the still black reflection of reaching trees fell away.

I stood over the puddle for long minutes, eyes wide, engrossed in the perfect circles over otherwise still silver.

If I had vertigoed and staggered dizzily, I am nearly sure I might have fallen Through The Looking Glass Puddle to a cold and perfect world beyond.

Reasons Why

Penguin races through Sin City.

A Dangerous Obsession With Words

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glotz