Let them eat pizza

Behold one of my homemade pizzas:

This one is piled with fresh mozzarella, sausage (original Bob Evan's from the tube, browned in advance), Mama Gallucci's pizza sauce and black olives on one half (the Goat detests olives and I love them). I use my trusty Panasonic bread machine to make the dough (2 1/4 cups bread flour, 1 t. salt, 1 1/2 t. olive oil, 3/4 cup water, 1 t. yeast)

Garlic press that looks like a speculum.

Sometimes I push a few cloves of garlic through my garlic press that looks like a speculum and let them soak in a bit of olive oil for a couple of hours. I add that to the Ma G's pizza sauce in order to make an extra-garlic version of my pie. Sometimes I buy extra-thin sliced Boar's Head sandwich pepperoni and cut it into sixths and cover the pie with the darling little triangle-shaped pieces, which will crisp up into some kind of serious heaven if you bake that mother proper in a reeeeeeally hot oven.

Yes, you always have to use a pizza stone, preheated for at least 30 minutes in a 500-degree oven. I use a pizza peel and a parchment paper trick to get the pie on and off that hot stone. There's probably stuff I'm forgetting, but tough luck. After all, it took me years to get this good at making pizza and you have to pay at least some of your own dues.

I am so enamored with my homemade pies that carry-out leaves me flat (except for the sheet pizza [authentic Italian style with a delicate sauce and not too much cheese] that they sell by the slice at the little Italian deli where I buy the Boar's Head pepperoni).

Hence, the usual joy that inflates most Americans when faced with the prospect of carry-out or delivery pizza is for me, well ... eh, no thanks.

So be it. Eat either too impatiently and the bubbling cheese will peel the skin from the roof of your mouth. For in every act, something is lost and something is gained. Droughts give way to floods. Wheat shimmers in the sun somewhere in between. A low animal roots in filth; a heifer lows in a meadow afar.

You chew; the slaughterhouse looms.

*  *  *

Lighten up

I love lighting stores--all those crazy paths with fixtures dotting the ceiling, tables brimming with lamps and walls festooned with sconces.  

I love to turn switches on and off and watch the lights obey my orders. I love to slide and dial the dimmers.

Every light creates it's own scene.  I'm sharing cocktails with a dark mysterious man beneath that single glowing pendant or coffee with a friend under the bright globe designed to hang in a kitchen nook.

Elegance drips from ten thousand crystal beads and prisms.

Anything is possible in a lighting store. 

All those different fields of light in one place; call it heaven.

You might even find an apron of glittering icicles in the middle of a heat wave.
 

*  *  *

A noble aspiration

The luckiest people in the world are toll booth operators. I would make an excellent toll booth operator.

That'll be three seventy-five, ma'am.

I would button my uniform all the way to the top and wear a size that fit properly, but not so properly that the material didn't strain a tiny bit over my ample bosom, tantalizing the randy men that passed through my toll booth lane.

Actually, sir, Brandt's Glenn is the third exit on up, about 65 miles. 

People would feel a certain way after our toll booth interaction. The burden of the toll would somehow be lessened. People would see my Thermos of homemade coffee and wax nostalgic, thinking of fathers, heavy work shoes and brown-bag lunches. They might even note my name patch and say, "Thanks, Erin," as I smiled and dropped a quarter onto their open palm.

Have a safe trip.

Thusly the scale tips, good pilgrims; and somewhere a fist unclenches. Lips close to stifle an unkind word. Eyes squeeze tears of joy. The sun doth rise in the East and set in the West.

The other cheek turns.

*  *  *

The Grim Reaper, part one

An excerpt from an unfinished book of memoir.

*  *  *

The Grim Reaper is dressed in Chinos and an over-sized windbreaker. His name patch says Grim in golden letters. He sits opposite Erin, a dark-haired woman in her late twenties.

"You're not what I was expecting," says Erin.

"I get that a lot," says Grim. "No idea where the black-cloak-and-scythe thing came from."

"So what's with the jacket?" she asks. "You hiding Mini Grim in there?"

The Grim Reaper cocks his head and gives Erin a quizzical look.

"Never mind," says Erin. Her eyes dart around the room. "I have a question."

"Shoot," says Grim, who then starts to chuckle. "Get it?" he says through a laugh. "The Grim Reaper?" He quakes. "Saying 'shoot'?" He hissles and snorts.

"Hysterical," says Erin flatly. "So where is he?"

"Where's who?" says Grim.

"My brother," says Erin. The Grim Reaper blinks at her in confusion. "Hello?" says Erin. "Your latest arrival?"

Recognition blooms. "Oh, yeah," says Grim, "yeah yeah yeah yeah. He was the Leaving Las Vegas guy, right? And you’re the sister."

"Brilliant," says Erin, indicating her tee shirt upon which SISTER is printed in bold letters. "But yeah, that's right," says Erin, "the Leaving Las Vegas guy. And I'm the sister. And his name is John."

"You mean his name was John."

"Fine," says Erin. "Whatever you say. Just tell me where he is."

"Gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Gone," says Grim. "Dead. He croaked. He's gone."

"But what about the guy with the horns and red suit? What about the reincarnation people and all that Déjà vu stuff? What about the light?" asks Erin, her irritation rising. "I'm talking about the hereafter. There must be some sort of hereafter." her voice rises. "He can't just be gone."

"Yes he can, Sis. I know what I'm talking about. Hey, I'm the Grim Reaper. And if you don't believe me, just take a look at my name patch."

Fury colors Erin's cheeks. She stands and squares her fists on the table. "You prick," she says, "you tell me where he is. You tell me now."

The Grim Reaper lets out a big sigh. "Ms. O'Brien," he says, "I wish I had your answer, but I don't. I'm just a working stiff." He stifles a giggle. "What I do is a one shot ... um ... I mean .... one time transaction."

Erin does not respond.

"You drive that baby off the lot and it's a done deal," says Grim. "Get it?"

"Done deal," says Erin. She stares at him blankly for a long beat before deflating back into the chair.

"Mind if I smoke?" says the Grim Reaper.

"Be my guest," says Erin, pushing an ashtray across the table. Erin gazes at nothing while the Grim Reaper smokes. Neither says anything for ten thousand years.

"You do realize," says Erin finally, "that once we're all gone, you'll be obsolete."

The Grim Reaper exhales a plume of smoke with disgust. "Did you really have to remind me?"

*  *  *

Moonglow

Dear Man in the Moon,

If I could jump into cartoon land, I'd be Betty Boop. I'd lasso you and pull you right down here. You would flail and buck as I struggled with the rope, but your frightened look would melt away when I came into view, catching my breath and batting my eyelashes. Your crazy moon face would split into a toothy grin. Then I'd kiss you just so.

I don't think you're made out of cheese.

All those guys can shoot their rockets and drive around in their lunar rovers and take their samples. They can scrutinize and chart, peer through their telescopes and scratch their chins. I don't care. I know better.

I love you.

You go on and take care of moon business up there. I'll take care of Erin business down here. We can meet in the middle when the stars align properly and when they don't, no worries.

I can wait.

*  *  *

Diamonds

To make diamonds, you'll need water and sun, both of which are always available, but diamonds are rare nonetheless. Unless of course they're abundant.

Enter clouds.

Clouds are the keepers of the diamonds. The sun will be up there, being his regular sun-self and filling an ocean with dazzles or turning a snowy mountaintop into a glittering treasure. Then your clouds come along and put the kibosh on the whole party.

You can't buy diamonds.

Fortunately, clouds are fickle and short-minded. They never stay in one place for too long unless there's a whole bunch of them and then they positively take over--mob-mentality on a celestial level if you will. The miserable lot of them hang up there in the sky like some sort of beasty monolith, keeping the sun on one side and the water on the other. No diamonds for anyone.

Don't get too angry with them, though. They're only doing what they do best and frankly, without them we'd never get any snow or water or ice to make diamonds in the first place.

I keep talking about making diamonds. Yeah, right. As if we have any control over diamond production. We don't. Can't make one diamond to save our lives. Welcome to the human condition.

Sheesh.

Here's the thing: Sometimes you can have sunshine like all get out and as much snow (or water or ice) as you ever saw and there won't be one diamond in sight. Hence, you never want to take diamonds for granted.

(shhh ... come and let me whisper in your ear: this is the real magic. these are the things no one is telling you.)

* * *

The Recipe Poem

Or How To Bake A Poem In Eight Easy Steps

1. Select one extra large love with supple skin. Look for a love that is firm, but with flesh that gives slightly beneath your fingertips.

2. Peel love. Pluck out bitter seeds and swallow each whole.

3. Whisk love's soft insides with one epiphany and three shakes of muse. Add modifiers and line breaks sparingly until pulp forms. Season with time and cursor.

4. Make a flower dough by thoroughly needing quince honey into extra fine longing.

5. Roll dough into a circle, approximately sorrow in diameter.

6. Spoon love pulp upon the sorrow. Trifold dough over love, pinching up sides to form a purse the shape of a sow's ear. Leave a hole at the top so the poem can breathe.

7. Bake at 350 teardrops for one falling star.

8. Cool poem.

Serve poem beneath a cloud of Dream Whip.

~~recipe composed expressly for Nin Andrews~~

*  *  *

Sexy

Smoking might have been the dumbest thing I ever did. I looked awful whenever I stuck a butt in my mouth and smelled worse for the entire 10 years. But when you would lean over and flick your Bic at the tip of my Marlboro Light, the sideways smile I sent over in return had nothing to do with that filthy habit and everything to do with a different little flame that ignited between us.

The way you handle your money: sliding bills toward the bartender to cover a round when no one's looking. Slipping an extra five under the sugar bowl despite the bad coffee and hamburgers that taste as though they haven't said "moo" in a long, long time. You don't hold on to your money too tightly, yet you always have enough. It's about the same with a woman.

The fact that you don't take that for granted makes it even better.

Although I laughed until tears squeezed from my eyes when I pulled it out of my Christmas stocking, I was thinking that when a man like you buys a toy like that for a woman like me, baby, that's saying something.

Don't say that. I disagree completely. In fact, I love your work clothes. I love the way the rough chinos hug your hips. I love the striped shirt and the way the embroidered name patch rests just over your heart like a promise.

Come over here. I'll unbutton it for you. Let me look at you: the shape of your lips, your eyes when you smile. Dear sweet Jesus, just let me look at you.

My god, how I love this bed. I'll take thick comforters, lush sheets and soft pillows over a chest full of diamonds, rubies and gold any time. Nestle in here with me and I'll show you a real treasure.

When you take both my hands in your hands like that, pull them up above my head and hold them there until all the tears I've ever cried evaporate.

The perfect velvet blue of dusk will be gone in an instant. It's slipping away already. But I know a secret way to hold onto it: Lace your fingers in mine and put your mouth on my mouth until the edges between us blur.

Don't think too hard, just make a wish. Now close your eyes and I'll make it come true.

* * *

Happenstance is a clear sigh drawn over time

He stood before  the fountain, lost.

"Do you have the time?" he asked.

I did and I did not.

"Sorry, I do not," I said, giving him the safe half of the story. "I was looking for the Chantilly."

"I know this place," he said. "My parent's made their wedding bed there." I was taken with his strange manner of speech and the way he worried a glass bead in his hand. His eyes were brown.

Fourteen miles away, my husband was boarding the Blue Train towards home.

"I will walk you there," he said, "to the Chantilly." He smiled and softness spilled over his face despite his angular cheek bones.

I looked to the west. Red slippers sparkled upon my feet. I kissed him once on the lips and stepped into the east.

*  *  *

Balance

man woman

bloom fade

dark light

contrast

open closed

faith doubt

gay straight

one side withers and
the entity is compromised

leftie rightie

laugh cry

inhale exhale

you thrive inside me
I breath inside of you

control empower

resist acquiesce

good evil

reference

liberal conservative

capture release

begin end

The good witch

I'm taking up witchcraft.

Not the Wiccan gig or any of your black magic, or your voodoo, or your dark arts. The O'Brien is blazing her own trail.

I'm going to need an outfit, something special but not too over the top. I'm thinking the vintage stewardess look: shorty-short, go-go boots and that shimmery frosted lipstick. Let's face it, the 1970s-era stewardess is the chick every woman wants to be and the chick every man wants to go to bed with. (If you're going to be a witch, that's the sort of detail you've got to carve out right at the starting gate. I'm a professional like that.)

Hell, I already have the hair.

This is totally going to work. I come down with a spell, and baby, that hocus pocus is going to deliver.

To hell with the cauldrons and black cats. As soon as I get suited up, it's energy ball 101. You scoop up a wad of energy and pack it like a snowball. It may not look like much, but that energy ball is full of popping electric magical sparkage. I'll hurl this mother at you and you will see the light.

Amen, brother.

You want a potion? Have a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

No PBR? Try this: Get fifty cents. Go to the corner store. Buy a Heath bar. Open it up and take a bite. Now your rolling that crunchy buttery toffee around your mouth and life is perfect. Even if all you're doing is thinking about eating that Heath bar, life just improved.

Man-o-man, I am one good witch!

Flying pigs? Check.



I could get you hooked up with one of these, but baby, that's the premium service.

(Did I just get you to click on that link? tee-hee!)

Get a load of this: I can make a Goat ride a bicycle.



I cannot keep this all to myself. But if I tell you the secret, you have to promise to spread it around. That's how you puff up your mega-witch power, by zapping as many people you can with it.

Okay, here's the incantation:

You love me. I love you.
You hate me. I love you.

~~abracadabra~~

* * *

Tropical rain shower

I am in the Health & Beauty aisle at the discount grocery puzzling over Suave versus V05. An older man in a dingy overcoat grumbles a few feet to my right. It's not quite 8:30 a.m.

His head snaps to as his eyes lock on mine. "Can I ask you a question?" he blurts, red-faced. He's clutching a crumpled bit of paper--presumably his shopping list.

I blink once, twice. My options are limited. "Of course," I say.

"What the hell does 'tropical rain shower' smell like?" he asks, jabbing the list in my direction.

My options dissolve further. "I cannot answer that question," I say.

"Tropical goddamn rain shower," he mutters, turning back to the rows of bottles. "What the hell is tropical goddamn rain shower?"

"Maybe it smells like wishful thinking in Cleveland in December," I offer, but he does not respond. Instead he scowls and grabs one of the products.

I gingerly pluck an $0.89 bottle of V05 Sun-Kissed Raspberry Balancing Shampoo from the shelf and sneak a sniff to verify that it will be an acceptable to my 13-year-old daughter. I drop it into my cart along with a bottle of the corresponding conditioner. The man continues ranting beneath his cap of wiry gray hair.

"Good luck," I say, never more sincere.

"Tropical goddamn rain shower," he says.

Three miles to the east, a woman gasps in the throes of orgasm. In the south, a gun fires. In the north, the gray water roils. A baby's cries pierce through the west.

I exhale, swallow a diamond, and push into the rest of my life.

* * *

Phone cam round-up

Someone needs to haul ass over to marketing and tell those guys that "Digestive" is a really bad name for a cookie.


Writing Kit: Everything You Need to Get Creative, Start Writing and Get Published

And to think I've been fooling around for years with this shit when all I had to do was buy this simple kit ...


Sashaying through the "New Items" aisle makes me feel daisy fresh.


HELL NO I'm not sure I'm going to heaven. The only place I'm sure I'm going to is Marc's.


Goat and people mural at **mmmmmmMelt**


Stay tuned to find out why this topic has been on my mind for the last couple of weeks.


This is not coffee. This is desert.


Finally, a bumper sticker we can all get behind.


Hi blue and white discarded plush toy; here you may live and love in perpetuity.

Truth blooms from small things
I am the light and the bringer of hope
Amen

* * *

A mysterious bit of untitled flash fiction

My mother never wore sensible shoes.

Her shoes were magnificent things with high heels: sharp stilettos, storied platforms or stacked leather towers.

She defied the northeast Ohio winters with boots that were designed solely for the purpose of showcasing the calf and foot and had no regard for ice and sleet.

"You have beautiful feet," the men told my mother, although she never wore open-toed shoes or sandals.

"My feet are an illusion," she whispered to me once. "My feet are my secret weapon."

In the evening when we were alone, she would take off her impossible shoes and exhale with relief. Then she would prop her gnarled feet, with their bunions and corns and ingrown toenails, on a satin pillow that was atop the hassock in front of the television.

She had nothing but disdain for house slippers. "They are for matrons and schoolmarms," she would say.

Her toenails were always painted Dreamland Pink.

* * *

A post of questionable parameters

My kid came into the kitchen today and said that she thought that the Egyptians were the best looking ancient people.

I embarked on a long irritating speech about how there are no actual photos of the ancient Egyptian people and the only images we have of them are drawings and that people creating drawings and images sometimes make the subjects look different than they actually look for a variety of reasons.

"Cool," said my kid.

Cool.

Pool, tool, rule, mule, duel, fuel, jewel.

Newel.

The world can be separated into two classes: the class that (A) knows what a newel is and the class that (B) does not know what a newel is. It's not very difficult to move from class B to class A. Is that an upward move? Perhaps, although you may or may not contact a newel on your way up as well as on your way down.

Down.

Down, frown, crown. Noun.

Noun is round and affable. But verb? Just look at it for chrissakes! To me the word verb would be the word olives would say if they could talk.

"Verb verb verb verb."

This post is done. Happy Friday.

Visions of cubic magnetics dancing in my head

When you disassemble a Rubik's cube, you quickly learn that the brilliance of the puzzle has little to do with the colorful square stickers on its exterior. The brilliance of a Rubik's cube is in it's composition.

Whenever a person with mechanical vision takes apart a Rubik's cube for the first time, they say, holy shit! or something to that effect because it defies description. It's sort of like a sectional rotating sphere, but without any conventional mechanical means. There's no ball bearings. It is a non-mechanical mechanical device. Having grown up the daughter of a machinist, I understand this as something so so rare and simple and inarguable that it is divine.

Now just bear with me: magnets.

In the attraction mode, they move things together (see: your nephew's baby pic on the fridge). Flip their polarity and they move things apart. All of us are intimately familiar with the results of magnetism. We've seen magnets snap together in an instantaneous kiss. We've watched them refuse to touch each other like quarreling spouses. The magnet defines the terms "attract" and "repel" in the most organic sense.

I had to take all sorts of science courses in order to earn my EE degree, including thermodynamics. The one thing that stayed with me from that class was this line from the professor: "When you put energy into something, it either moves or it gets hot." (damn, that's a good line)

This is true of your car, your furnace and your body. But magnetism bypasses that venerable decree. It moves stuff without energy. Very few of us assign the proper amount of significance to that fact: magnetism moves things without fuel--and it works all over the world.

This brings me to the point of my essay, a concept that drives me nearly insane: why in the hell aren't we powering our cars with magnets instead of GAS?

Why why why why? WHY!!??

Because we need someone to have a stroke of divine brilliance like Rubik did with his quirky toy. We need someone to wake up one day with an applicable vision of a device composed of magnets that constantly reverse polarity and uses the worldwide phenomenon of magnetism to push and pull and push and pull and push pull pushpull pushpullpushpullpushpullpushpullpushpull and somehow rotate the axles of our cars (or a reasonable facsimile.)

Then, oh, people, people, people, THEN we could stop sending all of our money to the glittering city of Dubai. When a stroke of brilliance comparable to the Rubik's cube meets the lowly magnet, the world will truly change.

Imagine how many people will want to silence the voice that successfully defines the design that replaces the internal combustion engine with the magneto. Imagine how powerful the country that first conquers that technology will be. Imagine how immediately the Middle East will transform into just a place.

* * *

The administration would like to apologize to the reader for the incomprehensible ramblings of the Authoress. The Authoress, as the reader may have surmised, is difficult to control and is often prone to tangents that have little to do with her daily tasks. However, the administration has discovered that sometimes it is best to indulge the Authoress as the Authoress sees the light in the east and has known the metallic taste of blood. The Authoress hears the sound of falling water.

Return of the wet kid

So you tell the bevy of tweens to amuse themselves by playing in the sprinkler (you are old-school that way). They run screaming for towels and swimsuits. Satisfied that you've solved the "We're bored" problem for the time being, you go and pick your nose in front of the computer for about a half-hour while squeals of delight rise up from the backyard.

You go to dole out Nutty Buddy bars only to find the tweenies soaking wet and covered in mud from head to toe next to a new mud crater in the middle of your lawn that was not there 45 minutes ago.

After you deliver the mandatory the-party's-over-you-will-
have-to-plant-new-grass-blah-blah-blah tirade and send everyone home and tell your kid to weed the front bed by the tree, you study the mud crater and marvel at how they got from the innocuous kids-with-sprinkler square to the excavating-mud-devil square in less time than it takes for a banana twin-pop to melt. You stick your toe in the cool wet earth.

A woman in her bedroom on the second floor of a house on the street next to yours gasps in the throes of climax. Seven miles due north, a man lying upon a hospital bed exhales his last breath. Somewhere between where you are and the end of space--call it a zillion miles up--a star explodes.

Page 123

The first five sentences on page 123 of the 31st Edition (1996) of the The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual are:

Macau Stands alone in datelines.

(This spelling is a change in AP Style.)

Mace A trademark, shortened from Chemical Mace, for a brand of tear gas that is packaged in an aerosol canister and temporarily stuns its victims.

machine gun (n.) But: machine-gun (v. and adj.), machine-gunner.

See weapons.

* * *

I will now translate this for my Dear Readers.

Macau cannot get a date. Hence, his style manager changed his make-up, apparantly to no avail. The Macau would like very much to see an individual known as "weapons," but has been deterred by a group of armed guards, which are admittedly not very onerous as their machine guns are in their buts.

"weapons" has another suitor, a man named Mace, who has been cut off at the knees and uses a great deal of hairspray, the smell of which disgusts everyone except Mace, who will not go anywhere without using an entire can. He believes the resulting coif is stunning.

Macau will have to pass through Mace as well as the armed guards and the victims of Mace's hairspray (including his very own style manager) in order to get to "weapons." Alas, due to the style changes, this seems unlikely. (The style manager is a 34-year-old virgin. She is also in love with "weapons.")

Accostomed to idolatry, "weapons" has remained unaffected by it all. Conversely, Mace has been crying over the whole situation since anyone can remember. Macau is still waiting.

From the place where assholes are confounded.

Plenum

The dream was loathe to release her, with it's colors and air and the wonder of flying. When her eyes finally fluttered open, it was only her room surrounding her. The small yellow stain on the ceiling stared down at her with its usual condescension.

Open Letter to Mr. DiCosimo

Dear Mr. DiCosimo,

The Administration is concerned about the Ape. He was last seen defecating in the east. It has come to the attention of the Administration that you have also been commiserating with the Nun who prays in the west. The Administration is aware of your dealings with the nun who prays in the south. These dealings, however, are unimportant to the Administration.

You should know, Mr. DiCosimo, that the Administration is in possession of the note concerning your mother that you gave to the Nun who prays in the west. Said note was gravely received by the Administration, Mr. DiCosimo.

The ruby you hold in your palm is a lie.

The Administration does not, however, advise you to swallow it. Instead, Mr. Dicosimo, the Administration suggests you give the ruby to the Ape who defecates in the east. His subsequent antics will amuse you. Do not give the ruby to the Nun who prays in the west.

With solemnity,

The Administration