pantoum's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHICKEN WITH ITS HEAD CUT OFF

(late Saturday night/early Sunday) Full moon rising and gosh is it beautiful. Almost cold too—and I'm a walking furnace who rarely gets cold.

I was okay out on the deck in my shorts and T-shirt but the nip definitely registered on my legs and Coolio eventually went inside to put more clothes on before climbing back under her blanket.

She invited me over to sit on her deck and solve the mysteries of the universe with her and we did explore a few of them. Talked a lot, enjoyed two Maker's Marks with gingerale and lime (a new and delicious drink for me) and two cigarettes each (which, alas, I also liked ... so won't have another one for a good long while).

I'm not kissing anyone tonight though and it was a nice, relaxing way to spend an evening with a friend.

Their deck sits high in the trees above a nature trail and one particular oak beside it looks, in the winter, as if it's decorated for the holidays because so many stars twinkle around its bare branches. The moon almost always sits among its branches when I visit—the seven-to-midnight spot, I reckon—and I try to position myself where I can stare at it.

It was so bright tonight that it illuminated all the clouds around it, which distracted me when I was driving home because all I wanted to do was stare at it.

Reminds me of my poverty days when I threw newspapers from 3 till 6 AM and was good friends with the moon and all its phases.

We rented I ♥ Huckabees, which I need to watch again.

It struck me as a Hollywood attempt at profundity—same as that dumb wine movie that basically announced "profundity, profundity" before he said a couple of dumb lines about drinking—but it is possibly better than that.

Obviously, I need to see it again.

I'm guessing that it's one of those films that people either love or hate. And it had a good cast. And it used some existential terminology. And it included some interesting visual effects. And, frankly, you put Isabella Huppert anywhere in my vicinity in a film and I'll not only like it but will pant. Loudly.

She was brilliant in The Piano Teacher—a disturbing film. Several of my friends walked out of the theater during this film, in fact, which sort of baffled me.

I mean, yeah, it's disturbing. No doubt. But that woman got more mileage out of an eyebrow twitch than I've seen in a long while and the complex story did an incredible job of presenting a complex character in a complex world very realistically, without sugarcoating.

My friend Zulu and I went to see it together twice and noted that our friends who stomped out were all nonSoutherners.

We working-class Southerners saw so much violence on a day-to-day basis, we decided, that it's part of our culture and we're just not horrified by it. Or maybe we're fascinated by it. I know I am—and want to parse its particulars, find some meaning.

In a scene in my novel, I talk about the fact that my mother's best friend's father used to punish her by squeezing hot pepper juice into her eyes.

That's southern to me. And saying that to another person who just nods her head in recognition instead of dropping her jaw to the floor is southern too.

As a character in my novel says, If your farm produces chickens, then sooner or later you're going to see one running around with its head cut off.

Ponder that for just one moment. The man squeezed HOT PEPPER JUICE into his daughter's eyes!

. . . and the Magnetic Fields also sing a song called Chicken With Its Head Cut Off (O my heart's running 'round like a chicken with its head cut off. All around the barnyard falling in and out of love...).

•

O yeah. I forgot to say earlier that these two obnoxious teenage boys in Blockbuster were walking around commenting on the fact that Coolio and I are dykes—two gorgeous ones, in fact, losers. Then, as we were leaving Harris Teeter with our gingerale, they drove by in a minivan and shouted "dykes" out the window.

We both just burst out laughing. Probably not the response they expected, but how fucking pathetic. And then Coolio yelled "minivan" and they squealed off (hopefully with their tails tucked between their legs).

That probably hasn't happened to me in at least five years and I always wonder what exactly the guy thinks he's achieving.

You know, I'm not ashamed of it, buddy, so you are certainly not shaming me. And, frankly, I just look at you and feel sorry for your girlfriend.

•

Reminds me of something the Ginger's uncle once said after he made an outstanding chair and someone asked him if he wanted to market it: "Making one of them is one thing. Making five hundred of them is something else entirely."

LISTENING TO: Sleater Kinney's One Beat

1:49 a.m. - 2005-05-22

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next