Flicker on...Flicker off....

Crickets are so effing loud.

Yet they make good industrial-strength white noise accompaniment to Wumpscut. The front door is propped open by a multi-colored russian lamp and the sounds of babylon fill the aural space of the porch.

Orange blossom incense and citronella candle keep the primitive winged vampires away while providing such a wonderful mixture of scents.

I've got a large glass of unsweetened tulsi tea mixed with Firefly vodka. I'm sure all health benefits typically reaped from the organic goodness of the tulsi are washed away in the tide of the sugary alcohol.

Above the treeline, which is partially obscured by the centuries old hickory trees in the front yard, there is an orange sherbet sunset fading up into a pink cotton candy haze.

In a small harbor of urban seclusion I feel alone and invisible. Pretending there is more nature than man, ignoring the occasional car that drives down my street, the thick drooping power lines dividing the sky in haphazard pop-art cutouts. People in workout clothes walking dogs and between song changes faroff wails of firetrucks.

On the porch, hidden from view. Only the lightning bugs exist in a more random state of motion and existence. Flicker on....flicker off.

Dry Thunder

If you consider the heat index it's been well over 105 for nearly 5 days now. Now, yes, this is at the peak of the heat during the middle of the afternoon, but nonetheless, that's hot.

This may sound like I'm complaining. On the contrary. I'm pretty tired of hearing people complain about the heat and it's not even officially summertime yet. This is why A/C was invented and if you can't afford that or yours doesn't work then perhaps living in SC isn't the best place for you, eh?

Right now it's thundering like mad. I remember nearly every summer you could 'look forward' to the endless pounding of a summer thunderstorm. For hours the rain would just pour down and the lightning and thunder would be chaos and fear and great beauty all mixed up. I enjoyed nothing more than reading Nancy Drew books in my den of a bedroom, head right next to the window, listening to the storm rage.

I would feel separate and distant from everyone and everything except the world in my book and the power of Nature outside. I think a lot of us still desire this sort of escape. Obligations and expectations and the money-driven cycle of adulthood seems to keep us from the intensity of wonder that, as adolescents/young adults we experienced nearly every day.

Now it takes sacrifice to indulge. Budgeting out a small parcel of your time to try and vanish, even for just a moment...

Ours No More

full with memory, a breathless time
we spent hours here
this room, this space holds the heat
    of nostalgia warming the floor
a past collective seething from the walls
illuminating the air
just a lingering spectre of decadence
    welling up around the corners
strange how the light fades
a rich liquid glow draining away
we sigh and step back
shattering the hypnosis
the resonance of human prescence
now a dying hum beneathe the dust
spent and failing
alone

--written sometime at beginning of 2009.

They Should Have Sent a Poet...

I spent the morning nervously waiting to head off with my mom and sister so I could try on and possibly buy my wedding dress. Finally the time came and we drove down to Bella Vista on Gervais St. where I had an 11 o'clock appointment.


I was strangely nervous. I don't know why. I guess it was because this was something I had never done before and I completely understood the importance of getting a dress that works.

Apparently I was also quite frantic over what type of underwear to wear, but that proved to be a pointless fret as the bridal consultant who helped me let me dress myself. Hooray for southern manners I suppose.

Now I know a lot of women are probably going to be a little aghast at what I'm about to say, but...

after 2 hours and only 10 dresses, I found the one.

I've heard stories about women shopping for months, trying on dozens and dozens of dresses.

I was not going to do that.

I didn't get my hopes up too high that I would find a dress at Bella Vista, and was completely prepared to try a few other places, but well...now I have a dress and it's just wowzers.

The whole time I tried on dresses, I reaffirmed something I had always known about my sense of style: what I love on paper/magazine/runway very seldom looks good on me. It's the ugly stuff that works.

Now don't get me wrong. This dress isn't ugly. It's just not at all what I had in mind. But it's perfect and I just knew it was the one. Besides it made my mama and sister cry. It was the only one that made them cry. So I guess it was a winner.

Well after all that, where I was rather reserved and not emotional at all, I came home.

I wanted to watch a movie and so I put in Contact.


I forgot how much I cry when I watch that film.

Apparently I had a whole bottle of emotions, fueled by stress and worry and it just pretty much exploded all over the pillow on the couch.

There's something about the hope and imaginative abandon that is required to understand our existence: it tears deeply at me.

I think my emotional state these days has quite a razor's edge and it's probably not a good idea to watch such desperately beautiful and poignant films.

So here's some pictures of space to make me happy.

Enjoy! The Star, Vega


The Lightning Galaxy


NGC 1672
a barred galaxy in the southern constellation Dorado