excerpt from The New Golden Bough

Thus, for instance, a certain superintendent of the king's cattle was once prosecuted in an Egyptian court of law for having made figures of women and men in wax, thereby causing paralysis of their limbs and other grevious bodily harm.~~the adjectives here please me.

yesterday, Harvard stop

Any seasoned eavesdropper is aware of the inverse relationship between the intrigue of a comment and the volume at which it's spoken. This makes a pack of teenagers, particularly shrill groups of co-ed acquaintances, one of the least interesting populations on the T. To the right, one is shrieking about her inability to be "cute" in a drama--obviously soliciting comments to the contrary--and to the left is a boy who wiggles his pelvis at the girl in front of him--a display of misplaced virility, as he's obviously gay, but still very masculine when he moves with carelessness, that ole totem of testosterone. By this I mean, his backpack swayed within an inch of my face.

There was one boy who just clung to a pole with slate-neutral body language, neither confirming or denying his membership in the group. When he spoke (in response to not-cute girl's question, I admit), he grinned, leaned in, and answered her in low, rapid speech, spilling his own roots (a public school, he admitted) before she could comment.

The best facebook message I will ever receive

Subject: Hi!

How's everything going?? It's cold here, money's always a problem, and the new fulbrighter is really nice, but she's not you (and by that, I only mean she's shorter, curvaceous and not hippie at all).
I'm still working in jail, but I have fewer and fewer students each time (two were transferred, one was released)
Language II is (very) slowly getting more organized, and some of the ppl actually enjoy it! (?)
Nicanor is hiding in my closet...
My little sister's been asking about peanut butter... d'u think u can send me some? She's just survived a nose job, so... she deserves it.
OK, got to go. I've got to play hide-n-seek with my babies (both of them)
Write soon!!

fall-back exercises

There is nothing weaker than a man who will excuse himself.

When I was seventeen and angsty in the way only a suburban Ohioan hopped up on Ayn Rand and scholarship essays can be, I told my mother that I felt defeated, every single day--same material, same classmates, same homework, same self-referential poem, same bed in the same position--that by the time I tucked my understimulated self in every night, I felt the bitter inertia of my existence. And Mom said, "Well, why don't you sleep on the couch?"

That worked.

another excerpt

Trial advocates face times of success (!), failure (#%?), excitement (yea!), weariness (sigh), fun (yes!), anxiety (oh, no), satisfaction (ahhh), frustration (ah, me) and peace (it's over).~ from Trial ed. Haydock and Sonsteng

Listed right after "cheerleaders to hold carwash" (selected July 24)

Written directions lead to cocaine

Let's just say its proximity to the window has been noted~Lawyerman, in answer to my inquiry about specific verbal threats, in answer to his inquiry about printer troubleshooting

sounds best sung

No no no no I know.~Mia Doi Todd, "Autumn"
This is how I walk when I have given up.~Diane Cluck, "Yr Million Sweetnesses"

on being firmly in my mid-twenties (selected July 21)

Although occasionally found in sluggish rivers, the barbel preferes fast, clean, well-oxygenated water. ~ from The Complete Book of Fishing:A guide to freshwater, saltwater, and big game fish

21st century romance

But we weren't, and I didn't want to be, which means that my lack of allegiance to her-and-I's non-existent relationship is completely non-bearing on you-and-I's non-relationship.~not Mr. Negative

It should be rock, scissors, dynamite with cuttable fuse.
~ Demetri Martin, from "Person"

archived sentences--December 1-15, Missoula, Montana

December 1: "Do you fight the system?" a student asked me while I was substituting remedial math.

December 2: "These are not woolly, romantic notions calculated to make science appear friendlier...rather, they speak of the increasing awareness of the beautiful sophistication of molecular behavior, which is generally gregarious and rarely linear." Philip Ball Stories of the Invisible, p. 5.

December 3: "The minutes mold into hours." taken from a high schooler's descriptive essay on the joys of music-making

December 4: "Is it possible to short-circuit reflexes? If so, how many? Is there a limit?" notes to self

December 5:?

December 6: "Can anyone guess where I took this?" historical society guy who recorded sounds along the entire Lewis and Clark trail, while playing cricket sounds

December 7: "C'mon, no one will tell. I'll give you a dollar. Hot chocolate? Free sex?" a sixteen year old boy, trying to convince me to let them not have class for the final 20 minutes

December 8: "You can't miss it." Our landlord, Tom, giving us directions to a specific point in a wooded area about an hour from our home

December 9: "The first fifteen minutes of a cupcake's life are crucial." wisdom from the Vegan Cupcake book

December 10: "Even the knifings in the general store had stopped!" an excerpt from the Argentinean legend of the blacksmith and the devils.

December 11: "Are you pregnant? Could you be pregnant? Have you had unprotected sex lately? Has there been a penis anywhere near your vagina? When was your last period?" the nurse at Planned Parenthood, before she'd give me the third round of the HPV vaccine. (This was after they'd already taken a urine sample).

December 12:"...there is only the occasional solitary ombu, the single tree indigenous to the area...the ombu has a huge trunk and widely spreading branches, but its distinction lies in its roots and in its obstinacy. The roots, knotted and gnarled, rise out of the ground and spread out in strange forms and shapes, profuse and weedlike...no cyclone has ever leveled an ombu, no drought has ever killed one, no fire can burn one. It cannot be cut by customary means and so has no utility as lumber. But I can enter into the national life in a symbolic way, as it attracts men and events as the only plausible stopping point in a world almost undifferentiated." p. 18, Peron and the Enigmas of Argentina (there should be an accent above the "u" in "ombu," and the "o" in "Peron").

December 13: "More fun! More fun!" Emilio Estevez as Coach Bombay, getting the kids pumped during the playoffs

December 14: (from a high school student's vocabulary sheet)
culminated: to bring to the greatest point.
"My sister became so culminated she punched me in the face."
delphic: it means awkward.
"The lady had such a delphic accent."

December 15: "A sandwich is a sandwich, but add some mozerella sticks, and you've got a party on your hands!" on an Arby's chickenfingers box.

superior sentences

From John Leonard's introduction to Joan Didion's collected non-fiction, We tell ourselves stories in order to live:

"I have been trying forever to figure out why her sentences are better than mine of yours...something about cadence. They come at you, if not from ambush, then in gnomic haikus, icepick laser beams, or waves. Even the space on the page around these sentences is more interesting than it ought to be, as if to square a sandbox for a Sphinx."

complaint and answer

Out with it. First post: what's this about, what's the purpose? I used to be whimsical--a lyric poet who composed a poem a day, with no small ceremony, in a collage-covered notebook I'd pieced together in what remains ones of the most fecundly-focused late nights I care to recall.

These days, I am all business. I work for a law firm, edit on a freelance basis, and pitch articles to further my dreamed-of-career as an essayist. The easy inspiration and self-confident discipline of my early days have passed, but I've gotten tired of criticizing myself for failing to produce something, for failure to actually write (the verb comes before the noun, I chide), on a daily basis.

So I will write something on a daily basis--something potentially useful but concisely poetic, and, furthermore, a reasonable, attainable, and measurable expectation. One sentence a day, minimum.

"So let it be written, so let it be done."~ my memory of a recurring line in the TV version of The Ten Commandments