The Middling City is demi-sun today, another full day of gigs for Yours Truly.
Just had a gig for the U and had to battle my way through hundreds of Lions, the ballroom foyer awash with yellow vests, wacky hats expressing individuality to fly in the face so to speak of said vests, stalls of info about home care aids like giant-buttoned phones as well as helper dogs, and a general sense of conventioneer camaraderie and fraternity et egalité.
Sipping on coffee that the U had put out for its own attendees I decided to see what the buzz was around a certain booth that had attracted about a dozen or so Lionesses. I was immediately pounced upon by a Lion who noted I'd infiltrated, also noting that I did not fit in in my business suit. Now You can ask me any fun fact about Lions - I have them all.
Photographed E.O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize winning scientist, who has studied ants. His talk was sobering, noting how collectively We are completely ruining bio-diversity - even our own.
On that note I'd heard enough and meandered back through the outer activity, seeking out the live demo dogs.
Yesterday's ultimate gig ended quite miserably, the chef in charge of banquetly matters really sucking and enraging those in charge who could not believe that one hour after the first dinner plates hit tables some were still sans dinners. The tension in and around the kitchen tasted like white vinegar and the woman who'd hired Yours Truly worried about the status of her job after this comestible fiasco. She informed me I was finished, and could leave a bit earlier than planned because the photographic meter was running and there was no end in sight of the plating. He is an artiste, she said, the chef wants each and every plate to look like a work of art. As any artist worth their art supplies will tell You, art may be made in a timely fashion.
As YT will tell You, regarding the pending art show allegedly to happen next month.
Where is the art, I ask You.
Expediently, when the time is free and right, it will turn from idea and sketches into real bona fide, on-the-walls work.
Parting shot is that art is work. Just like real work.
The drummer and priest at the unfortunate church next door are practicing - beats and on mic. Just not what a jangled workaholic wants to hear so up go mine own decibels, white and rollicking noise.

Rollllicking, noisey Love.

Self-humoured Moment du Jour.
The premier of a slew of gigs featured a very animated translator for the hearing impaired, all big flourishes and mouth shapes, hands in concert-worthy gestures, him near half-standing for emphasis. Made some pictures of him as he was a visually-interesting part of the event. At one point, about mid-programme, I noted that the man and woman next to me were also intently watching the translator. I sort of leaned over and said He's really fun to watch, isn't he. They both just looked at me. I repeated. They watched my lips. Then they gave small, quick nods and went back to watching the translating. Oh, I says to Myself, this is not just a state-mandated service, people actually use it, too.
Amongst the varied and various stops of yesterday was one at the Nowhereseville estate of a Middling City billionaire where I saw my pianist pal, Richie. While milling about, waiting for our services to be oso needed, I learned this fun fact, proving once again that You just never ever can guess what secrets, fetishes, and fascinations lurk in the minds of others.
Turns out he's a self-proclaimed gun freak, just bought a very serious and kick-ass gun, and is going to be buying his girlie a Taser.
The high rollers came into the parlour and we snapped to our respective attentions, being fabulous yet blending as best as we could into the nouveau yet faux-haggard woodwork. Reward after: T&Ts on the richest of verandas, The Roycroft, with one of the Life Coaches, Brucey, for some good old-fashioned Rah-rah You can do it talk.
Do what, You ask.
It all.

5/5 Love - halfway to 10/10, the day YT most Perfectly emerged.
+
Happy Birthday to Dragon Boy.

So, dig this.
En route to the poesie extravaganza I saw a spectacular car fire (NB: this image is via Google Images, not moi) not too far from the bridge that bridges the Middling City and The Land of Mackintosh Toffee.
The car fire was in its beginning stages as I was approaching, that stage when it seems perhaps there's just an overly-hot cuppa Starbucks in the cup holder, or something akimbo with some trash alongside the vehicle. Then that sight of the upholstery catching, that fearful thought that something is really going to ExPlOdE. But it does not. Somehow Yours Truly has managed to see a lot of car fires and subsequently I consider myself a bit of an authority on them, having also, You see, discussed them with emergency car fire anti-abettors - i.e. firemen/killjoys.
So I am stopped in traffic but all the world around the roaring car fire had stopped. Then the firemen arrived and the show was like so over. My camera was not on hand. I have soul-searched and I am allright with this.
Memory bank offers up another car fire on an overpass of a biway of the MC and, as I approached the blaze up ahead and above, I reached for my camera and shot away madly through the windshield. Very dramatic - both the shooting and the fire.
That's far down south and down and over in the southwest.
Urban Epiphany, like the fire/far, was a raging success, although running behind. I read and read and read some more. Actually cutting down to about one-third of what I had penned & planned as the hour was laterific. I felt solid reading, really digging the words. And enjoying most of the words of the others. I needed to leave and upon leaving was followed by one of the readers who asked me to be a featured writer/reader at a series that he produces.
Now another memory.
The Writers' Cramp Series that YT ran for years with partner Paul T. Hogan. This series freakin' rocked: two free reading per month, and always featuring one newbie, one established, one superstar of sorts. I moved the WCS from the somewhat obscure Bethune Gallery (sigh) to Central Park Grill. Thursdays. MCd alternatingly with Paul and I gave readers souvenir WCS tshirts I hand silkscreened. Ahh, the 80s.
So somewhere sometime YT will be a featured person.
Arose at the asscrack of dawn to wend my way to a golf course to make poetry in the form of digital images for a book to be published internationally about the History of the U.S. Open. Part of such took place aeons ago on the green greens of Grover Cleveland GC.
Had a sherpa, Paul, who took me out on the cart and who guided me about so all's I had to do was focus, look, think, compose, think, focus, chat, laugh, focus, repeat.
Let Us just put it this succinct way. With my imPerfect sense of direction and maply impatience, I might still be out there looking for freakin' 18.

Hole 19 Love.

Minding my own business, of course, I said Yes to the annual pome marathon. And, lest You not know (or knot now) pomes is the old-farty word for poems.
In a matter of moments I'll be facing a (hopefully unhostile) bunch of amassed listeners, reading, amongst other things, my new and sketchy Element Song.
Element Song is meant as a sketch of sorts for the pending photo images for the show.
Secret: this is what Yours Truly does, makes lit for visual shows. If there's not a good bit of poesie for the work then there is trouble abrew. So there is Element Song and all is swell.
Think I'm most happy with Fire. Then Earth. Then Water. Then Air.
But Air is how I'll be ending this Urban Epiphany reading as it has some hale advice for how to read the air, how to groove on what surrounds us. That, Everyone, is always the matter at my hand regarding visuals. And what I tried to say in that grad school - put a visual on the world teeming with air/fire/water/life/rock & roll/earth/shoes.

Love's Teem.

Got together with Les Girlies last night to celebrate the birth of Janine, who was in her rare form. Got her some crocheted tights and a Middling City mag for her Shiney Apple joint, her being The Crochet Girl and all, crafting hats, or at least she did in the past.
Slated for the other Shiney item, the Shiney Happy Mag, Yours Truly will be inking away furiously, or, rather, laptopping madly, a story about those who live literally in the long shadows of the grain elevators. I plan on knocking on doors, the camera bag disguised for wisdom's sake. Hope to not encounter any secret cockfighting rings, crackheads, and the like.
Script.
YT: Hello, pardon me, but may we rap about how and why you live here. I want to hear stories of high times, union riots, the scent of Cheerios, lay it on me.
OFW resident: Plethora of witticisms with mad quotes peppered in.
Onwards.
Cannot say just yet what the other is about, today switching from something else.
This AM shot two gigs out at Middling City U, the first being a crafting extravaganza for children along for the Take Your (Snivveling) Kid(s) to Work Day.
Crafting. I ask You.
Supposing this is a respite for the children who don't give a hoot about water cooler convos.
Time to wend away for errands and then the usual laptop moments.

Tethered to the laptop, Love.

Looking for venture capitalists for a new business I'm going to hopefully launch soon, inspired by a daytrip of sorts I took yesterday, leading Harold along the two-lane to Niagara Falls, New York with a stop at what was once, and always will be, the buried (both the canal, and the chems) Love Canal. I dubbed our daytrip Toxic Tours. First stop Love Canal, nestled behind a facade of concrete and expressway, hard to find. Where the school was is now a fenced-off area with the newer addition of vents and guages and metal contraptions you would definitely not want to mess around with. I have had an ongoing fascination with Lois Gibbs, housewife turned activista, as well as what remains. Occasionally I've gone up there and made images of the perennials that persist where there were gardens and now it's harder to find them. Yesterday I shot this tree trunk that was uplifted for some reason, maybe new development like the senior residences nearby. I decided there must be something of note in the mud in the roots and poked about until I came up with a broken green shard and a white porcelain animal face, all that's left of some figurine. Shot more trees that have been cut down but that are coming back ferociously and noted a huge birch tree with a long green stripe of moss down (You guessed it) its north side. Onwards then to closed chemical factories with rather elegant facades that look like movie theatre marquees. There's nothing quite like the expanse of sunny Niagara Falls desolation. Such natural beauty, raging green waters with an unforgettable smell, producing such pathetic attempts at cashing in.
Time to make more art.

Love Canal Love.

This just in, from the What the Hell Desk.
Well, the poetry reading in sooth is not at all happening tomorrow. It's next week.
And this means more time to hover over pages.
You know, Yours Truly has a lot on her plate at this moment with the usuals plus readying for the next solo show and such.
Bought a lith print intro kit for consideration for the above and have not yet poked about into its chem possibilities. From what YT saw lith prints resemble infra-red but in more golden tones.
This also just in, from the Metro Closures Department.
Harold informs me that the other good and small contiguous suburban diner near the best of the MC area's Olmsted Parks (that would be South Park with its delightful ring road that is actually bucolic and beautiful and not sidling alongside the Bad Karma Expressway like one Delaware Park) has closed. Went there once with Kennedy and did not make it back for their odd diner menu featuring real live French fare. He tells me it's now going to be a hotdog stand. And, sadly, this site was The Coffee Pot which had 8x10 glossies covering every square greasy inch of the joint. This all makes me think I should visit soon the other super-secret diner location in what YT lovingly refers to as Little Appalachia - the Grant Street area.
On that geographical note YT signs off and rushes out into Freelance World.

My ongoing, erstwhile, earnest, and dinerific Love.

After a break in the morning's throttled work schedule slipped off the grid for a respite to the SW, at one of the contiguous Middling City suburbs, at one of the favoured secret diners. Then slipped into the Botanicus Gardenus for a little sniffing business and the orchid room was unforgettably sticky. I had to rush out of their when a gaggle of aged loudspeakers straggled in with inane observations. And then went back, looked at petals for flame-like characteristics. Brushed my hands over everything and felt the softest pre-bloomed flower of a Lollipop plant. Not its namus Latinus.
Time for more more more work before a gap in work and then more work and then less work and then tomorrow a full day of working.
Poetry reading on Sunday. Details to follow, like on Monday.

Follower of Love.

In lieu of Neil the Y - not the D - Velour of yore is on the hi-fi, emanating that fin de siècle songcraft that I was so imbued in so then. So much so that I was invited to their dress rehearsal to give notes on The Impressions. I recall a bandshoot I did with them near the grain elevators, they were all into their hair, not wanting to get dirty. Boys, rock, noise, hai-karate kicks.
And You know what. I will tell You. They still completely rock the loud-decibeled stratosphere.
I sold myself to a blue-eyed devil, she'll never get the best of me.
That, my Perfect epinw readers, is what rock is all about - the operatic moments of life and love, presented in a somewhat vulnerable manner with teeth, so to speak.
So when your sun begins to fall, was it worth your weight in gold.
Here is another primo example of what makes the rock the rock. The above sounds great as a rock lyric, sung. But, in retrospect, upon close(r) inspection, what in blazes does this mean.
This leads me to the real matter at hand, the Neil Young movie.
It's not exactly that I feel that there are 1.5 hours I can never regain, that is too strong a sentiment and such, but really. The shots of Ryman tip me off to what I did not see down there in Nashville when TunaTwin and I traversed this fair land for the first time together, wending our way up and down the main drag, dragging ourselves into and out of famed joints.
Actually, we became the Tuna Twins down there when a very old man spoke to the two of us and, noting our similar faces, and YT ends that snippet here.
So, back to Neil.
The first demi of the movie is, assumedly, the first night of two, is all new material and that material had me nearly in nap mode. I looked at Brucey and said So he had an aneurism, must we all suffer. That bad. Smarm. Smarm. Smarm.
Second half is the second night, the old shit You love.
Here, a trib:
High school nights of spring when the self begins to crocus out into the world and Neil was on the jukebox of one Checker's. He became part of the soundtrack for our wobbly, young lives of borrowed cars, borrowed apartments, raging intellects, hitched-up uniform box-pleated skirts, and hitching-to-school thumbs up. Loomis's rooms with Neil warbling out of what today would be an iPod was then a boombox.
So long ago and so far away.
Neil Y's Unplugged is an item you must have in the NY collection - if for only what is usually on most discs the cherished track, #6. You Are Like a Hurricane. This version is one of three songs that ever stopped me dead in tracks, gave the goosebump. This is all Life molecules, all Art gestures, All Green, in one fell swoop.
Said tonight to a friend Of course you are your age, think of all the things you have done, all the wondrous things you have seen.
YT rests her wondrous case. Once again.
I am the dreamer, You are the dream. Dig.

Sentimental journeyed Love.

The person in the photo is Richie English, a portrait I made of him in situ at tonight's gig.
Remember that name, he is an en route star.

To be filed under M, formerly as in Dragon Boy, but presently for Middling City Classique.
Funny how time changes our personal alphabetical refs.
A certain pal of Yours Truly, who shall not be named (You know, as Sam wrote, God is a witness that cannot be named), has relocated to the Shiney Apple for work as the MC path had gone completely vapid for him. So there he went. So there he was this fine evening along with a few others who thrive and do this & proverbial that wherever need be. He was, I swear to You, eating a platter of chicken wings as heartily as any rubber-necker/do-gooder/erstwhile visitor hunkering down for MC good times might do.
Thoughts run to what else suchtypes might do in the MC.
Those who were but now are former but who have a surprising leaning toward the, YT searches for a suitable and diplomatic word, textbook attraction.
Yes, the textbook.

Not so sure about Textbook Love.

Ensconced in a super suburban hot spot to edit & burn images for gigs.
At noon today I shot a parade of students et al marching in an anti-sexual assaults protest which featured the requisite signs and yelling into megaphones as well as men in high-heeled shoes that were being sold on the collegiate scene by AmVets - all size 10, all hideous. I asked the AmVets workers alongside the shoe spread about the provenance of the shoes (hundreds) and was told these were all unsellable - some clearly from the 80s, near classics, unloved.
*sidebar: one of those much in the news, ultra-overweight families is nearby, everyone from grandmother to elementary sibs hauling loads of heft, devouring a starch and sugar feast.*
Yesterday went to the delightful, annual brunch at Olga and Ted's home and brought with me a few gifts - a red and white, gorgeous columbine plant, and a flourless chocolate cake probably weighing as much as one of those kids over yonder.
Upon seeing the cake Anya remarked Where's the rest of it.
As Alexi soaked my plate with Veuve Cliquot I became a bit distracted from eating and spent more time enjoying VC than victuals.
I was already saddened by the crackhead-induced death of a Middling City diner owner and the VC sped introspective matters along, culminating in me dropping my potted plant from Olga and Ted off at the shooting scene - along with a somewhat rambling note to the bandits.
I stopped by the diner this AM en route to MCU to snatch back the sign and arrived to see a table set up manned by volunteers collecting money for the late owner - George's - funeral, as well as people dropping more flowers. I felt rather odd about taking my sign just then, especially after I watched a woman reading it and then bursting into tears, so I left it but did give my last five dollar bill to the funereal fund.
One of the volunteers said the diner will prevail, reopened by George's family and renamed eponymously, and undoubtedly still serving grits. She told me that one of the bandits was arrested already, that this guy (a crackhead, shocking) was always broke and George would feed him, pro bono.
The crackhead and his buddy sat nearby after the shooting, watching the ambulances, etc. arrive.
The note penned by Yours Truly in a nutshell stated that in lieu of spending billions on a war in Iraq I wish the so-called president spent it funding schools, rehab programs, to keep more gendarmes on the scene.
While meeting with my tax femme Valerie, who also teaches GED classes, we talked a long while about the lessening of literacy in this country.
No education, no hope, no future, no control, no shortage of crack, no shortage of handguns added up to a whole lot of loss of joy along the Middling City's Main Street on Friday, when a small business owner with a good heart was shot in same by two sans any.

Love Love Love.

Although it is reported to be the thirteenth he was never quite sure but did relish that the anniversary of his emergence was this very auspicious day on the calendar of Christians.
Happy Birthday Number 100 to You, dear Sam.

Neglected to state one thing that I did witness at the teahouse the other day, the near-death experience of a famed Middling City draft dodger who now leads a very nautical life.
As I laptopped away there first came some voices down the twisty stairwell, and Jen and I observed the MCdd falling forward whilst holding a tray of tea-related items.
He plunged forward, hitting his large head on his tall body *crash* into the bar about five feet from where I sat. He was still. I thought he had expired.
A small bit of blood was on his chin. I called 911. He awoke, insisting he was fine.
I suggested that he not move. He did. I guess that comes from being a draft dodger, that resistance to law, strong suggestion.
Last night watched Beth Elkins's dance performance on Allen Street featuring three, count 'em, three, video projectors, some stiff folding chairs, good dancers, a narrator, snippets of music, snippets of Geisel's Butter Battle Book. Afterwards I told Beth that she should be proud of what she made, a combo platter of girlie experience and wizening as well as anti-war sentiment that at one point verged on hysteria. There were curious breaks for vino and hummus.
Afterwards traipsed about with Cheryl and Liz, ultimately meeting two Michaels at one of the MC's better bars de gaiment. Both work at the ad agency I did a gig for about a month ago. They knew the work and basically it was decided we would like to cross our farflungish paths again.
Listening to Damon and Naomi but the vrai song du semaine has been Bjork's Real Life Sensuality. That missing blogpost a few days back due to my generous and perfect heart wanting to share with You an mp3 file of said song and suddenly Blogger went all to hell.
Oh, speaking of hell. I am going there.
Today I exclaimed Jesus H. Christ on the very day he sipped vinegar on a sponge, croaked his final words, and then the sky got very dark when he died.
That is why, my Perfect theory, that black jelly beans/eggs are ingested. They represent death. As do Peeps with their odd, somewhat crumbly exterior and liver-coagulating materials (not to mention lethal faux colourings), that do same.
Tomorrow I meet with my maternal and lovely tax lady, Valerie.
I am bringing her some beautiful dianthus as she, Valerie, reps all things lovely about (no, not taxes) femme charms and super powers.

Power of Taxing Love.

I finally took the plunge I had been so yearning for and bought a chainsaw.
Not really the Husqvarna of my dreams but a good starter Remington, despite the admonitions and such of Everyone.
I tell you, in this Perfect World when Yours Truly wants something she does get it.
And also in this Perfect World YT will not, repeat, will not lop off any limbs - except those that are evergreen in nature.
Brucey asked how long the something-or-other was.
The what.
The casing, the chain.
Oh, YT, answered, glancing over at the box, Ten inches.
It's a small one.
A starter one, YT rebutted.
As luck might have it the father of YT noted that a critical piece of the machine was missing, the trigger, so my dreamy moment was (temporarily) dashed on the rocks like a ruined and rusty chainsaw blade.
I feel power.
I have tools.
I have a goal.
I have things to slice and dice.

Sliced, diced, dreamy Love.

Working/blogging/editing at the teahouse, basking in the glow of Teahouse Jen who has an actually, surprisingly good Muzak station on... nu-lounge.
Yours Truly has gleaned some info over the years being on the scene and documenting it all and this includes this Fun Fact: Those who work in secret ways are, generally speaking, kooks.
Note yesterday, gig #3 in a tight series of 4.
A super-secret laboratory with contraptions that could be looked at by YT but not photographed in any way. I might not even be allowed to be blogging all this to You.
The address was approximated... look for a tree with a little curved branch, walk 10 paces towards the north and when you spot a little yellow, seemingly-random mark on the ground you are within 5 feet of the lab and suss out the rest.
YT asked a handily on-hand cleaning man where in blazes said lab was. He pointed to a door.
The door had blinds and was locked. They were expecting me and the cam but still it took them a while to open the freakin' door. A woman opened it and basically marched me in about 2 feet, imploring me to stay there. After about 1 minute I queried thusly, seeing her fluttering nearby. Am I really supposed to stay right here. She moved me into a very odd area with partitions and no humans where YT read the NYT until all was ready.
What was most enjoyable was the booth designed for training those to interrogate, I was sealed into it for effect. I had enough effect after, oh, about 30 seconds.
I asked about the small, de rigeur, badly-painted landscape on one of the booth's walls, propped against an alcove of sorts. Oh, the lab leader stated, That is for helping those who are being interrogated to feel less confined, that they have a psychological escape if need be.
Have You ever heard such nonsense.
There You are, in a sealed interrogation booth, a man with a clipboard asking questions, five cameras pointed towards you, an infra-red cam noting your twitches and sweat, a super-secret device to your right monitoring your heart. In the midst of this sound-proofed moment you glance to the right and AHHHHH, a moment of serenity wafts across your mind as a representational bit of hillock evokes.

Love the POWER of Art.

SuperBonus:
Go here for some Art Power.

Most of this day, motoring from gig to gig, I've been listening to Bjork's first release as her post-Sugarcube self, Debut - most notably one of the world's to-date heppingest songs, Big Time Sensuality.

BTS:
I can sense it
Something important
Is about to happen
It's coming up
It takes courage to enjoy it
The hard-core and the gentle
Big time sensuality
I don't know my future after this weekend
And I don't want to
It takes courage to enjoy it
The hard-core and the gentle
Big time sensuality

+ cannot wait until the release of Drawing Restraint 9, the movie with Bjork and her big man, Matthew Barney.

Drawing Love.

Whilst singing Youuu are the TYMPANIST Yours Truly clapped her hands most enthusiastically, to the utter surprise of Middling City Orchestra's Jesse Kregal, spotted in Coda, the site of Michele's swinging b-day gathering last night. He was so overcome by the claps and con brio singing that he did not note that it was YT who was cheering his entry.
Coda brought out a flight of ice creams for Michele and it seemed the challenge there was to out-do the former flavour. Kate Elliot explained them - Tarragon/blah-blah, peanut butter/garlic, roasted beet/blah-blah... Despite the wacky iced concoctions all else rocked.
Deb says the owner/chef is superb of visage, did not get a look.
To facilitate getting to Coda in a safe and timely fashion TY pressed the Forester along Kleinhans Music Hall, in a spot labeled For Middling City News Music Reviewer. It was 8:05, if said slacker reviewer was that late, oh well and hoof it.
Yesterday was my faux b-day. The date selected by me to glean some faux docs to hang with my older high school pals who were of legal limits.
I do accept gifts for the faux b-day, much like the other. Same sizes and such apply.
I fauxly thank You.

Non-Faux Love.

Never saw a stage door that I did not burst through, never having had appropriate respect for that Third Wall.
Or is that the Fifth Wall. Wailing Wall. Fifth Wheel. You know, the barricade of Imagine.
At the play last night was, amongst others, directress Debra Cole, and Mike of FLYNN'S fame. Zut alors! Yours Truly shouted internatlly upon seeing him in all his Buddha reserve, serenity.
Katharine and I had business to attend to - getting Annie her much-deserved giant bouquet of pink fleurs. So what if it wasn't yet the end and it was only half-time.
We were running up some institutional stairs, arm-in-arm, when I saw the designating sign on the door. And there we found ourselves, cramped behind a curtain with all the players, hunting for Annie's face in the small crowd. We gave her some hugs, kisses, and left the greenish roomish area. Being an aunt I got the children hepped-up on cookies and Skittles, Jake fishing about for them the whole rest of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. What did Jake the teen find most engaging about the drama. The talk of boobies. Me, too.
Just got back from photographing a man who has made his life work about mushrooms small, large, fetid, and oso much more. Mushrooms. He does not hunt them, I was told by his über-wife, He says you should get them from the market.

Puffball Love.

Here is the likeness of the Kenmore copy who pulled Yours Truly over today for - of all things - talking on my cellphone. Oh, oops, nope, that is the image of the missing link between sea and land creatures. My mistake.
So there I am talking work matters when I see the flash and dazzle of a new cop car. Me and another were pulled over for same reason. He came back to the car with my rap/plea sheet and sort of - believe this or not - apologized. He said It's not a moving violation at least, you can appeal. Squalling children, loud music, piping hot beverages, I still argue, are more a threat to public safety and well-being than holding a phone to my head. My cellphone, ironically enough, has a speaker phone feature but it's so hard to hear the person that it's usually in front of my head about 8" away. So how is that legal, and having it moved over 6" or so around to one side of my head not.
I rest my case. Onwards. Phone floating in legal car space.

Defendant Love.

Yours Truly was tipped off by Pam yesterday that a diploma from Parsons/NSU might be heading my way and lo, behold, there was an oversized cardboard envelope in the side door. A very expensive doc to be sure. Immediate relaying of news to the various followed by immediate query if the doc is framed yet. In lieu of custom framejob by Penny the Framing Mistress I think I might opt for the readymades at Target. I like that this piece of $60K paper will be surrounded by foreign-made glass and wood particles for about $20.
And, always relishing the Ironic, my premier invoice to repay the student loans arrived yesterday. And what a sobering piece of mail that was, it might cut into my shoe budget.
Sped from the teahouse and attendant laughs to the suburban MCU campus where there were snowflakes twirling in the air. I made some ports of a femme in the dramatic arts whose business it is to traipse all over the world for educational purposes and YT thought Hell, sign me up for those frequent flier miles.
Bought the stray cat contingent and the wild birds some healthy snacks en route back to downtown, always searching for Favoured Person Status amongst The Feral.

Feral, suet-rich Love.

In case Yours Truly disappears from this shithole suburban wi-fi centre this perhaps is the suspect of my demise - 70-something, striped shirt, slovenly, has a really filthy iBook, glasses, crooked mustache. Walked in to work on the MCUniversity deadline as I have no *bleepin'* wi-fi on campus and spotted this - shall We say - character across the room. He was all crumpled up on a nearby sofa. As I got to work he shuffled over sputtering about moving things out of my way to which I replied It's fine. He laughed and is now sitting right next to me. I am shoved as far to the right as can be. Yikes and more yikes. Not to beat a homesick horse to death but in the Shiney Apple one's chances of bumping up against a veritable Mr. Creepy like the one to the east of me is fairly slim. I have my headphones on and he just tried asking me if I've ever forgotten my password and that he's downloading . . . something. Online porn the thought bubble over my head queried.
Onwards to my deadline of two back-to-back, enthralling portraitees.

Portraits of Love not appropriate for this skeeved-out moment.

*this just in*
It went away. Here's to The Perfected Really You Could Be Writhing on the Ground with Some Sort of Attack and I Just Really Would Not Give a Flying Phlegm vibe.