we are your friends

i am feeling, bless-ed young

dante's sestina

I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.

And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is unmoved, or moved like a stone,
by the sweet season that warms all the hills,
and makes them alter from pure white to green,
so as to clothe them with the flowers and grass.

When her head wears a crown of grass
she draws the mind from any other woman,
because she blends her gold hair with the green
so well that Amor lingers in their shadow,
he who fastens me in these low hills,
more certainly than lime fastens stone.

Her beauty has more virtue than rare stone.
The wound she gives cannot be healed with grass,
since I have travelled, through the plains and hills,
to find my release from such a woman,
yet from her light had never a shadow
thrown on me, by hill, wall, or leaves’ green.

I have seen her walk all dressed in green,
so formed she would have sparked love in a stone,
that love I bear for her very shadow,
so that I wished her, in those fields of grass,
as much in love as ever yet was woman,
closed around by all the highest hills.

The rivers will flow upwards to the hills
before this wood, that is so soft and green,
takes fire, as might ever lovely woman,
for me, who would choose to sleep on stone,
all my life, and go eating grass,
only to gaze at where her clothes cast shadow.

Whenever the hills cast blackest shadow,
with her sweet green, the lovely woman
hides it, as a man hides stone in grass.

fast times

unemployed again. i feel like, is it time for dinner yet?

your old dog

look at your old dog

who never asked for

carpeted floors

i'm melting melting

chalfonte family

i could exercise anywhere, but only at the chalfonte can i collapse off of the elliptical after fifteen minutes and lie on the floor panting and sweating and have our building maintenance man luis stick his head into the gym and exclaim in his tenor voice, "Valeriee! Good job! Good job!"

impromptu visit

our old neighbor french, who moved out last may, came knocking on my window last night. we were afraid he was wandering the los angeles streets homeless, but he's been laying his head on the other side of la cienega with a celebrity friend. the creative genius serenaded us with his wild guitar playing and we gave him back his vacuum cleaner.

keurig morning

i am having my coffee. the world is becoming progressively lighter and brighter.

cupcake baby

i've been taking care of my cat-niece. she's newly adopted and skittish, but i've been turning her into a model citizen. i like when she jumps onto the bed with me and tentatively treads through the safari of blanket and body. she makes me think of my sweet Jo, and how she used to bat me awake with her paw in the mornings.

bath day

baba's bath day

ragdoll

walking around with a cat in my arms makes me feel like a 15-year-old in a judy blume book

mannequin work

today i spent six hours on a set that was supposed to be the shanghai airport. the chinese policemen costumes were very convincing and it was quite funny to see the production wardrobe people come over to adjust their hats and tell them to pull up their pants.

i also liked the lead wardrobe woman who threw an adorable double-foot-stomp tantrum because the hair people "are ruining my outfit!!!" she and her co-wardrobe lady fussed over how to tie the scarf, following different styles demonstrated in a book in origami-step-by-step. they mused that they should practice tying these one night over white wine.

all day i had to stand in the most uncomfortable shoes of all time, red pointy-toed horrors. by the end of the day i was limping across every scene and looked like a very weary irritable airport traveler indeed

cannery row

i've been trying to figure out what i'm going to do alone in san diego for a weekend while i'm watching my cat-niece. i considered tidepooling, but as i've just finished reading cannery row all i can envision is finding dead girls in the water.

breakfast

waking up on those mornings in the drunk tank,

busted lower lip, loose teeth, brains swimming in

a cacophony not yours, with

all those strange others swathed in rags, noisy

now in their mad sleep, with nothing for

company but a stopped-up toilet,

a cold hard floor

and somebody else's law

and there was always one early voice, a loud voice:

"BREAKFAST!"

you usually didn't want it

but if you did

before you could gather your thoughts

and scramble to your feet

the cell door was slammed

shut.

now each morning it's like a slow contented

dream, I find my slippers, put them on,

do the bathroom bit, then walk down the

stairway in a swirl of furry bodies, I am

the feeder, the god, I clean the cat bowls, open

the cans and talk to them and they get excited and

make their anxious sounds.

I put the bowls down as each cat moves to

its own bowl, then I refill the water dish

and watch all five of them eating

peacefully.

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