What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

I'm staying in...and making my lucky rice & bean soup.

 

If you want a lucky 2013, eat rice and beans. I don't know where I got that superstition, but I didn't eat lucky soup last year, and let's just say, it wasn't my year.

So I'm making lucky soup, reading magazines, and writing in my journal listening to jazz (my new favorite music), feels like the perfect way to usher in 2013.

Whatever it is that you're doing, have a happy and safe New Year.

This year's soup is a Hyderabad Vegetable Biryani hybrid. Apropos of nothing, I'm pairing it with tempura shrimp roll and a ginger beer, followed by a red velvet cake bite and a glass of black currant honey wine from the The Hive winery.

 

(for the wee hours, it's croissants with Italian truffle butter).

 

After dinner it's magazine reading time, (first on my resolution list is to stop buying magazines!)

Tomorrow I'll work on my new year's collage and resolutions.

Happy New Year!

Listen here, here, here and here.



 

 

 

 

 

 

New Year's 2013 Watch & Listen Play List: December 31 - 2013

stina nordquist

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

I wasn't prepared for the questions 2012 asked. And my god, the answers.

2013. Lucky 13. It's going to be a good year.

My play lists may appear like an eclectic mix. For me, they are code, personal, cryptic, secret messages.

This play list is a compilation of themes and ideas and issues that are on my mind and in my heart as the new year approaches.

Years ago, I laid my dreams aside, forgot them, and in the process, lost my way. 2013 is the year I forge ahead, remake the world, and do the only thing I was meant to do: Write.

I had a dream years and years ago of standing in a vineyard in Ancient Greece. Two women approached and offered me a maker bead. They told me I was a Maker.

Yes. Yes, I am a Maker. A maker of stories.

When I was a young girl, the practice in my religion that I belonged to was to give patriarchal blessings. The patriarch said it was a man's  blessing, which at the time confused me and terrified my mother. I understand his meaning now - I am to be fearless in my telling. He said I would tell the truth from the mountain tops. Decades later in sweat lodge, the medicine man gave me the same blessing. My truth is story. It is time to tell them.

I am hopeful for the year ahead. I am looking to the original revolution girls, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolfe, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, for courage to do the work I must. And to myth, especially the reinterpretation of myth in Sophocles' brilliant plays. And to all the writers who have reimagined ancient stories and made them their own, and thus thrown bread crumbs along the path for me to find my way home by the moon's light .

I am ready for the hard work, for the needed changes, the new directions, and the joy that this year promises.

Happy New Year & enjoy the music!

I'm Writing a Novel - Father John Misty
Hey Ho - The Lumineers
Tell Me a Tale - Michael Kiwanuka
Things Have Changed - Bob Dylan
The Story - Brandi Carlile
She Lit a Fire - Lord Huron
Revolution Girls - Mariachi El Bronx
The Hours - Phillip Glass
Beloved - Rachel Portman
I've Got Dreams to Remember - Buddy Guy
Myth - Beach House
The Great Salt Lake - Band of Horses
The Maker - Daniel Lanois
The Right Stuff - Bryan Ferry
Grace - Jeff Buckley
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Optimistic - Radiohead
Shake It Out - Florence & the Machine
She Moves On - Paul Simon
Hallelujah - Savannah Outen
La Vie En Rose - Melody Gardot
Fee Fah Futula - The Henry Millers
More Than This - Roxy Music
Hell Yes - Beck
Sail Across the Water - Jane Siberry
Ends of the Earth - Lord Huron
Head Home - Midlake
Home - David Byrne & Brian Eno
The Winds of Change - Fitz & the Tantrums
Lost & Found - Lianne La Havas
Coming True - Guards
I've Got Dreams to Remember - Otis Redding
Don't Stop the Dance - Bryan Ferry
Twisting the Night Away - Sam Cooke
Passages - Ravi Shankar & Phillip Glass

RIP: Ellie

 Ellie 

Ellie & Harley

Ellie's collar

 

It is a three dog life. Ellie had enough spirit, I thought she'd live more than one lifetime. She is/was the dog of my adulthood and the dog of my daughter's youth.

 

She died today. She was eighteen. In dog years she was eighty-eight.

 

Like the majority of our pets, she was a rescue dog.We found her at the local animal control shelter.

 

When my daughter was very young we would go to the pound on weekends to pet the dogs and cats. We had Sheena, a pure bred Persian cat that had been a grand champion in the 80's, but had been given to us because she had contracted feline leukemia, and although in remission, she was a danger to the other cats in the cattery.

I was recently divorced and thought a dog would restore some normalcy to our family. I was interested in a small dog, but small dogs don't generally like small children. I finally decided a medium-sized dog would be best. I wasn't interested in a farm dog, but when Ellie jumped up and wrapped her paws around my daughter's neck, she begged Mommy please! ,we brought her home.

 

Although Ellie was affectionate and even tempered, it was apparent she had been abused. She had a nic in her ear, was skittish around men and trucks, loud noises, and the broom, and the ironing board. It took her a very long time to get used to my husband, and men in general. She never got used to the ironing board.

 

She was a blue healer border collie mix, a hardy breed that is loyal, physically tough, and a sheepdog herder by instinct. When my daughter was a toddler, Ellie herded her around the back yard. Up until recently, she always nosed the back of my legs as she followed me from room to room.

 

She loved to dig. Nothing could break her of digging in the yard, or the flower beds. And she loved to run, at break neck speeds. She wore a groove around the house. Certain sounds, like the washer would send her racing around the house.

 

When we brought Harley home, Ellie indulged his yipping and snapping and accepted him, although she would get jealous, and bark or hold his favorite toy under her paw, if he was getting too annoying or too much attention. 

 

Christmas day she was disoriented, and in the following days of this week, she slowly faltered.

 

She loved us. We loved her. She will be missed

Artist of the Day: Identity Parade - Patrick Andrew Adams

identity parade  patrick andrew adams

 

The new year is four days away and I'm finding myself reflecting on not only the past year, but the past few decades in relation to how I got here, here being who I am, what I do, and what I desire for the future. What I am thinking about in particular is how being human is a story, that we are all narratives, a collection of linked stories. I am looking closely at the stories I have told myself, how some are accurate, others are wild fabrications, and others no longer reflect who I am, or who I want to be. I am also thinking about how the work I do and have done has influenced many of those stories.

 

Instead of the usual resolutions, I am deciding which stories I will take with me, and which I will leave behind. I want this year to be the year I change my story, for the better. I want this year to be the year I make the important and in some cases, life-changing decisions. This is also the year to finally accept that change and impermanence, on every level, is the way of the world.

 

I am beginning to believe the phrase from The God of Small Things, that it is possible to enter the story at any point. It is also possible to change the story, to live a new and different story, to stay right where you are and create a new story, to leave and discover a new life of stories. At any time. At any age.

 

Remembering this quote has given me an idea on how to structure my desires for the upcoming year: It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet, you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.

 

I chose this photograph for its title, Identity Parade. We are all choosing our identities, consciously or unconsciously.

 

Speaking of the artist, I dare you to read Adam's bio and not smile.

---

artist bio: I am Patrick Andrew Adams. I like to press the button that lets the light come in. I love sushi. I love scooters. I love that my backpack has at least 9-15 markers or pens in it at all times. I love selling my art. It makes me feel not so strange. My favorite color this month is ORANGE. I like pudding - especially chocolate. I like when i can put pudding in my backpack too. Not sure why these bio things are important. I will continue so YOU can KNOW ME. Ummmm i have 2 plants in my bedroom - "Donnie" - my ponytail palm (just thought donnie was a good rocking pony tail kind of name), "Taquesha" - she justs like to hang out and tell me what to do - in a good way (we hid the knifes from Quesha - it was bad when she was in the kitchen). I love talking to objects and giving them names if they aren't named already. Most of my days are spent - riding bikes around in circles - working on this box of lights called the computer - watching the clouds - arguing with my plants - touching other peoples scooters - graphing my love for pudding on the kitchen wall - figuring out what happens to all that misappropriated DNA. Oh i like cake too. I like to laugh. I like watching the clouds. I like to repeat myself. I like pretending that i can fly. I like looking at other peoples hearts i mean arts. I went to a school. I read a few books. I learned about photography and other stuff. I got a piece of paper that says YOUR RAD YOU PASS. Sometimes places like to hang my photos on their walls - i like that. I love to roll down hills. I like sleeping bags that are just a little bit too small. Today i have 3 windup robots and 8 aliens and one toy solider in my backpack. I like the toys. I like sharing fruit roll-ups with strangers. I wish i could do more. I like new people. I do the thing called twitter (aptrick) the other thing called facebook (aptrick) [notice a pattern here]. I like to make pictures in series - and have a hard time showing pictures that don't fit (weird huh?). I wish i was a baller. Wow i think i am done now. Okay - yes you read to HERE. I think i like you. If you hate me click the X in the corner - if not go buy some stuff from my store so i can buy more toys - art - pudding - markers - and plant food for Quesha (she likes mushed up pop tarts [strawberry]).

 

This Moment: 3:00 P.M. 27 December 2012

I wake from a nap dreaming of parking my car behind a building that is one part hospital rehabilitation center and one part tapas bar. I'm certain this has significance but choose not to ferret out the meaning. The snow is heavy in the trees. Branches strain under the weight. The old dog is breathing heavily. The small dog is grooming himself. Now he is turning circles on the bed until he settles and curls back into sleep. Car shuttle past, windows frosted with snow. In this light, the world is a paint by numbers in cool white, blackish green and slate gray. The small dog rises, small tail curled, growling and barking at a man walking on the opposite sidewalk. He is clad in dark blue and black winter gear, a heavy navy-colored backpack slung on his shoulder. He appears like a bruise in the snow. The old dog noses deeper into her pillow. I wonder if the bow hunters are huddled in the neighboring field, behind their blind, large geese decoys before them. During the snowstorm, I saw them searching the field for arrows in their hunter's white and gray camouflage. They said they felled three geese. I thought of the phrase "let it have been quick" from poet Leslie Norris' poem Hudson's Geese. Yes, if there must be hunters and hunting, let the deaths of the hunted be quick and painless. The men had been giddy and said they were "having a ball." As we spoke, geese flew overhead. The man called " geese" and the other two immediately sunk to their knees and crouched in the snow while the man blew into the whistle, emitting plaintive honk calls. The geese turned midair and began to descend. I left, not wanting to see death so close. I hear the gentle rumble of a train rolling down the tracks. The small dog is on alert at the edge of the bed, waiting for a violator to enter his territory. I tap my chest and he crawls into my lap and settles into licking salt from the inside of my wrist.

Snow Day: 26 December 2012

 

 

It snowed all day. Other than early morning breakfast at the local greasy spoon, I've stayed right here, watching the snow come down, listening to both dogs snore the day away.

 

The lazy, post-holiday days are finally here.

 

Until Monday.

The Day in Cartoons: The End of the World -

End of the World Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

 

Tomorrow, it will be one week.

 

I was planning on having a smart aleck wink wink pink apocalypse end of the world party, with pink cocktails and red velvet cake bites. It was a silly excuse for a party. Now, it would just be a silly distraction.

 

The world changed last week. But, we've been here before.

 

I really hope that tomorrow is not just end of the world fiscal cliff nonsense, or war droning on and on, or just the solstice, but that the day ushers in the end of the world, as we know it. 

 

These songs express the sentiment:

It's the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)

The House That Heaven Built

The Day in Cartoons: Holiday Lights - David Fitzsimmons

Holiday lights David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

 

This year, I've been more of a lava lamp decorator.

Only five years ago, we used to outline the entire house in icicle lights, wrap the posts in greenery, then lights. We used to scale scaffolds to put lights on the trees that tower over our house.

This year, I put the wreaths on the outside doors, but haven't hung a single strand of lights.

I can't tell you why not.

What about you?

Artist of the Day: Spiky Abstract - Vaida Petreikiene

 spiky abstract vaidapetreikiene

Even though I didn't take this photograph, today, I would claim it as my self portrait.

Check out the photographs of Kaunas, Lithuania based photographer Vaida and see if you recognize yourself in one of them.
---
artist bio: My name is Vaida, I live in Lithuania, Europe. I am a passionate photographer, but not only this! My life is full of diverse activities: teaching at the university, being a wife and a mother, cooking, reading, felting, feeling, watching, just living. My website: http://www.vart.lt
My Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/v-art/ My blog: http://vaidaart.blogspot.com/

The Day in Cartoons: Home of the Brave - Randall Enos

Home of the Brave  Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons

 

There are no words.

 

Sandy Hook Elementary Victims' Names Released

 

Sandy Hook victims remembered by family, friends

Art & Music Mash Up: Escape - David B. Cuzick + I'll Fly Away - Gillian Welch

 

 

Escape

 

+

 

I'll Fly Away

Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away;
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).

I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).

When the shadows of this life have gone,
I'll fly away;
Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away)

I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).

Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away;
To a land where joy shall never end,

I'll fly away (I'll fly away)

I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).

 

Poem Therapy: Famous - Naomi Shihab Nye

Famous

Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.   The loud voice is famous to silence,   which knew it would inherit the earth   before anybody said so.     The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   watching him from the birdhouse.     The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.     The idea you carry close to your bosom   is famous to your bosom.     The boot is famous to the earth,   more famous than the dress shoe,   which is famous only to floors.   The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.     I want to be famous to shuffling men   who smile while crossing streets,   sticky children in grocery lines,   famous as the one who smiled back.   I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   but because it never forgot what it could do.   ---   In our look at me! celebrity culture where we post and tweet and status update endlessly, I think it is more than enough to be famous for never forgetting what it is that we can do, and to be famous for our small kindnesses. I write. I make art. I am a mother bear mother. I am a loyal friend. It is enough that I am famous to my daughter, my family, my friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Sometimes, I forget what it is that I can do, but then I remember. I am back to my writing. I have published the first chapter from my novel in a literary journal. When I am finished writing the novel, I want it published. And read. I want it to be good. Better than good. I don't need to be famous. It will be enough for my novel to be good. And to be read.

Artist of the Day: Return to Self - Terra Holcomb

 

return to self terra holcomb

It's easy to get lost in a job, relationship, in all the doing and shoulds and have-to that daily life requires.

This photograph of a woman wearing antlers by Seattle based photographer Terra Holcomb, reminds me that there's a wild woman tucked inside me, and I've ignored her for far too long. (I think I shushed her about ten years ago, and she is refusing to stay quiet any longer).

I don't mean wild woman, as in,  the howling id of the me my mine sort. I'm talking about the wild essential self where imagination, and creation, and joy come from.  

How about all of us let our wild woman (or wild man) out to play?
---
artist bio: I was born on the first Earth day–April 22, 1970. My name is Terra because it means “Earth” in Latin. True to my name, I am captivated by landscapes and nature photography. I am a Washington native that takes every opportunity to explore our exceptionally diverse state. A two to three hour drive take me and my camera to the ocean, the rainforest, mountains or the desert.

Music & Poetry Mash Up: Dear Corporation - Adam Fell + All the Money or the Simple Life Honey - The Dandy Warhols

simple life irina

All the Money or the Simple Life Honey

+

Dear Corporation
                     
                       I don't know how to
say how I feel politely, or poetically, or
without the jugular and collapse of the
immediate heart, so tonight, I won't
say anything at all. Just stare out the
window at our stunned little writhe. Hold
back the strongest urge to knock out a
few of the capitol's most critical walls,
replace its fiber optic cables with
lightning bugs, replace the investment
bankers all with bunker busters. I lock
eyes with the capitol's bright and empty
rooms and admit that, sometimes,
deep in my affluent, American cells, I
miss my body carved to projectile. I
miss trebuchet shoulders and knuckles
flaked to arrowheads, miss my hands
massive and molded from molten to
the bolts of ballistas. I miss blackjack
and cudgel and quarterstaff and
flintlock. I miss pummel and pike and
I am not proud of this. I know it's not a
healthy feeling. I try to un-arm, to un-
cock. I try to practice my breathing. I
try The Master Cleanse, The Stationary
Bike, The Bikram Sweat, The Contortion
Stretch, The Vegan Meatloaf, The Nightly,
Scorching Bath, The Leafy Greens and
Venom Television, The Self-Mutilation of a
Winter's Run, but we can only cleanse
our bodies so much before we realize
it's not our bodies that need detoxing.

Poem Therapy 11 December 2012 9:17 P. M. : Syria Regna & Morning News - Marilyn Hacker

Syria Regna
Marilyn Hacker

Morning News

Marilyn Hacker

 

Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread
and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,
repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.
A cinder-block wall shared by two houses
is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen
sink and a cupboard, on the other was
a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.

Glass is shattered across the photographs;
two half-circles of hardened pocket bread
sit on the cupboard. There provisionally was
shelter, a plastic truck under the branches
of a fig tree. A knife flashed in the kitchen,
merely dicing garlic. Engines of war
move inexorably toward certain houses

while citizens sit safe in other houses
reading the newspaper, whose photographs
make sanitized excuses for the war.
There are innumerable kinds of bread
brought up from bakeries, baked in the kitchen:
the date, the latitude, tell which one was
dropped by a child beneath the bloodied branches.

The uncontrolled and multifurcate branches
of possibility infiltrate houses'
walls, windowframes, ceilings. Where there was
a tower, a town: ash and burnt wires, a graph
on a distant computer screen. Elsewhere, a kitchen
table's setting gapes, where children bred
to branch into new lives were culled for war.

Who wore this starched smocked cotton dress? Who wore
this jersey blazoned for the local branch
of the district soccer team? Who left this black bread
and this flat gold bread in their abandoned houses?
Whose father begged for mercy in the kitchen?
Whose memory will frame the photograph
and use the memory for what it was

never meant for by this girl, that old man, who was
caught on a ball field, near a window: war,
exhorted through the grief a photograph
revives. (Or was the team a covert branch
of a banned group; were maps drawn in the kitchen,
a bomb thrust in a hollowed loaf of bread?)
What did the old men pray for in their houses

of prayer, the teachers teach in schoolhouses
between blackouts and blasts, when each word was
flensed by new censure, books exchanged for bread,
both hostage to the happenstance of war?
Sometimes the only schoolroom is a kitchen.
Outside the window, black strokes on a graph
of broken glass, birds line up on bare branches.

"This letter curves, this one spreads its branches
like friends holding hands outside their houses."
Was the lesson stopped by gunfire? Was
there panic, silence? Does a torn photograph
still gather children in the teacher's kitchen?
Are they there meticulously learning war-
time lessons with the signs for house, book, bread? 

---             

Over forty-thousand and more. Gone.

Artitst of the Day: Home Way - Harry Stooshinoff

  home way harry stooshinoff paintbox

 

All roads lead home. You can never go home again. Home is where the heart is.

 

The holiday season, at its core, is really about home and tradition, personal and cultural.

 

One holiday tradition I do every year is a breakfast casserole Christmas morning, which is really a kind of bread pudding. I had never really thought of it as a tradition until my stepson said, It's not Christmas unless its Christmas casserole. Very sweet.

 

Check out Harry Stooshinoff's painting and prints on his site. I love his use of color and brushwork, and how he indicates a landscape so beautifully. This painting is a new favorite.

---

artist bio: When I was a boy growing up in Saskatchewan, I used to look far into the distance and wish I had more trees around me....to protect me and make the place feel less empty.  Now I have lots of trees around me, but I still like to look very far into the distance.  It's a big, NOISY world.. So I make small, quiet paintings... It makes a certain kind of sense.

Artist of the Day: Llama, Adorned - Marian Short

llama, adorned marian short

 

Wouldn't it be excellent if every single one of us were as self-possessed as this llama?

 

Check out the woodblock prints of the witty and whimsical animals of Cakeasaurus' menagerie.

---

artist bio: One day in second grade I announced I would become a children’s picture book author when I grew up. While I am fully into adulthood now and don’t "seem" to be a picture book author, I have never lost sight of that. Maybe it’s like Sandra Cisneros posits in her House on Mango Street – that age is like the layers of an onion: you never lose the younger years, they’re just different layers. So: kind of like that, the picture book-me is still in there. And my woodblock prints reflect this: I love to create designs that are playful, whimsical and perhaps slightly off-kilter – and for me, striking a balance between text and image sets the stage for tantalizing partial narratives. Yes, the penguin is leaving with his suitcase and he seems fed-up. What on earth happened and where is he going?

Artist of the Day: The Radiant Child - Jessica Echevarria

the radiant child jessica echevarria abstractcelebrity

 

Finding Northampton, Pennsylvania based artist Jessica Echevarria, aka MOPS, is an exciting discovery. Every piece on her site demands attention.

 

I love this brilliant mixed-media portrait of painter Jean Michel Basquiat. If you love this portrait, you will also love Echevarria's portrait of Jay-Z and Lady Gaga.

 ---

artist bio: Urban Artist with a fire inside. I use mixed mediums, and empowerment to create art. Starting only a few years ago, I have managed to stay prolific, find my voice, and create a style that is my own. I find inspiration in everything, and have no intentions of ever stopping this creative moving train. I genuinely love making others happy, and am grateful to have found my reason for living. Making art is everything! Smile, it feels good!

Music & Poetry Mash Up: Kubota - Garrett Hongo + Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards

+

Kuboka

On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawai'i, my maternal grandfather had barricaded himself with his family--my grandmother, my teenage mother, her two sisters and two brothers--inside of his home in La'ie, a sugar plantation village on O'ahu's North Shore. This was my mother's father, a man most villagers called by his last name--Kubota. It could mean either Wayside Field or else Broken Dreams depending on which ideograms he used. Kubota ran La'ie's general store, and the previous night, after a long day of bad news on the radio, some locals had come by, pounded on the front door, and made threats. One was said to have brandished a machete. They were angry and shocked as the whole nation was in the aftermath of the surprise attack. Kubota was one of the few Japanese Americans in the village and president of the local Japanese-language school. He had become a target for their rage and suspicion. A wise man, he locked all his doors and windows and did not open his store the next day, but stayed closed and waited for news from some official...

 

Artist of the Day: You Blur - Shaina Hedlund

you blur shaina hedlund

 

This photograph articulates exactly how the day feels.

 

Hedlund has another blurred photograph on her site. I'd love to see more. Great concept, don't you think?

---

artist bio: I love pictures because they document memories. I love memories because they reflect my life. You can keep up with my recent work on my tumblr page.
http://shainahedlundphotography.tumblr.com

Poem Therapy 6 December 2012 8:04 P.M.: Footprint on Your Heart - Gary Lenhart

Footprint on Your Heart
Gary Lenhart

Someone will walk into your life,
Leave a footprint on your heart,
Turn it into a mudroom cluttered
With encrusted boots, children's mittens,
Scratchy scarves—
Where you linger to unwrap 
Or ready yourself for rough exits 
Into howling gales or onto 
Frozen car seats, expulsions
Into the great outdoors where touch
Is muffled, noses glisten,
And breaths stab,
So that when you meet someone
Who is leaving your life
You will be able to wave stiff
Icy mitts and look forward
To an evening in spring
When you can fold winter away
Until your next encounter with
A chill so numbing you strew
The heart's antechamber
With layers of rural garble.

---
If you are very lucky, you will have many footprints imprinted on your heart, even if they shred you or strew your antechamber with rural garble.
 

The Day in Cartoons: Karl Rove and Fox News - Dave Granlund

Karl Rove and Fox News Dave Granlund

Karma finally, finally circled round and smacked Karl between the eyes. Time will tell if he stays down, or if, like the Undead, (or a creepy Svengali Vampire), will rise again to feed on living flesh.

The reasons Karma needs to be involved in the first place, are too numerous to list (Valerie Plame, Yellowcake/WMD, Bush's brain, Citizens United/Crossroads GPS - a good start). 

 

I think this news calls for a letter:

Dear Karl,

I really am a bitch.

 

See you soon,

Karma

P.S. Things get worse before they get better, so remember to Smile.

Interesting Reading:

Christian Science Monitor - Is Karl Rove's media career kaput

Los Angeles Times - Fox News reportedly benches Karl Rove after election meltdown

The Daily Beast - Why Fox Benched Karl Rove and Dick Morris

Washington Post - Karl Rove coming off Fox News bench?

Salon.com Grand old grifters rebuked