Oh look out, you rock ‘n’ rollers

I used to be bold with my hair. It was shaved, or weirdly asymmetrical with spikes and rat-tails and blonde streaks and curls. It’s been an inch long but with bangs down to my chin, or past my shoulder blades. Done up in a single plait or bound in tiny braids around my face. Combed into a perfect Vulcan bob, or a bedraggled John Lennonesque hippie mess. Elvis pompadours and Ozzie man-cuts. Old lady perms and sleek, chic cascades. Blonde, strawberry, clown red, purple. Light and dark. Tall and small.

“Don’t worry,” I’ve told a hundred beauticians. “It grows back.”

My hair reflected me. Not any one style, but them all. I was never afraid of looking like an ass–which is good because I often did.

I got my hair cut this afternoon. “Just take a little off,” I said. “I don’t know what else to do.”

She took a little off.

I used to come out of a salon transformed. But today you can hardly tell I got a haircut. Something in me rejects the hell out of that. Something in me says that things are only worth doing if they are transformative.

So, I bought some dye. I wasn’t bold enough to choose anything too radical, but I’m reclaiming something I had lost–mutability.

Turn and face the strange. Yeah, let’s do this thing.

Cleveland has a new manager

Manny Acta. On the plus side, there’s lots of potential there for puns on his name. I always like that, and with Eric Wedge leaving it was a big fear.

On the minus side, who the hell is Manny Acta? Yeah, I know he managed Washington, but I know nothing about him.

Still, 2010 might be a lot of fun. I’ll let you know this time next year!

The fright

Cuthbert made it outside. I held the door open a second too long, and he dashed past me, down the stoop, and under the porch.

Not knowing what else to do and certain he was going to run out into the street and get crushed, I ran upstairs to get his darling laser pointer. This was harder than it should have been because I can’t breathe worth a damn right now. But, wheezing and coughing along, I charged.

IT DID NOTHING.

The cat who will chase the laser pointer for days if only I didn’t eventually have to sleep turned up his pink nose at it and instead weaseled his way through the lattice at the end of the porch and started dashing up the sidewalk.

One advantage of a deaf cat is they aren’t very good at sneaking.

Another advantage of a deaf cat is they improve your own sneaking ability ten-fold. I was coughing up a storm, but he had no idea.

A block away, he paused to look around and I pounced on him.

Because it ended happily aside from taking a few years off my life and causing oxygen deprivation, I can say that I’m sure it was hilarious to watch.

This was my first escapee in about 15 years. My cats are generally too fat and lazy to try anything.

Hooray for Cuthbert

The biopsy results are in and Cuthbert has eosinophilic granuloma. Despite the dreadful sounding name, this is excellent news. It’s an inflammatory condition of the skin which I think (though don’t quote me) is essentially an allergic reaction.

In other words, possibly annoying and itchy, but not dangerous or exploding.

Leavings

I found the leaf that ate the sun
on the back of my hand, golden and varicose
like a waitress’s shins unhidden by
her thick smudge of peach stockings

and the shoes that murmur hush hush,
your food is ready soon, and she makes
enough money today to send her daughter
to school in stiff new jeans. I remember

his hand held up, an agrafe to hold fizzing
words inside the bottle of my mouth. I lay
the leaf there, close my lips around it
and whistle the whistle of grass.

You know what’s insane?

It’s insane to write a sestina when you don’t even like them and probably wouldn’t like reading the result even if you do manage to write one.

So, what am I doing? Trying to write a sestina when I don’t even like them and probably won’t like reading the result even if I do manage to write one.