this tag is all over buffalo. i first noticed it on a building across from the gold dome, on a wall above the old harold's shoes. that particular tag has what seem to be codes in simple black line letters in front and back of the "atak hert" (with 'hert' in bubble letters below and to the side) and of course, leads one to immediately ask "hm, what does *that* mean?" (not for me to know, i realize) it is also on an abandoned bowling center near amherst and main and in countless doorways. i have only ever noticed it on dead buildings, which may or may not be a statement in itself.

the tag in the picture is on shelled out projects off of fillmore ave. it towers over the 33 and is very impressive and a little scary. atak/hert what, or whom? is it "just" a name? i, as a mere 'noticer', am not going to suppose that i ought to know, theorize as to the whats and whys, or get all paranoid about it,, but i am definitely intrigued. i did a bit of (very mild) investigating....i liked the following quote.

this is gleaned from this website , a thesis by Bradley J. Bartolomeo of Union College:

Like reading poetry once written in another language, graffiti loses something in the translation when it tries to win the affection of the haves. It is not to be taken more lightly than weaponry, because that is what it is. Graffiti is our war. Graffiti is not supposed to be there. that's why it works. (The Vapors 2000:4)

sex! sex sex sex, sex sex ss sex sex

as the number one suggestion to bring on the labor. runners up:

2. sex and wine (half a glass, of course)
3. paul should 'stimulate' (ooh, so technical) my nipples during an entire football game. then we should pretend i'm the center and he's the qb and "hut" the baby out. (this one wins for laughability)
4. watch or listen to particularly moving movies or music
5. walk laps around my house, rigorously clean
6. whack it (still sex? i guess so....)

of all of these, only #4 sounds appealing. i am supremely lethargic, in limbo, tired and worn out with pregnancy. any active action seems insurmountably difficult. i regard sex as an act of pure lunacy at this point, something that might kill me.

having the baby also seems abstract now. about two weeks ago was the 'peak of readiness,' a high point of excitement and preparedness and emotional and mental stability. now doubt has shadowed things a lot. i worry all is not well. i fear the unnaturalness of induction, but prefer it infinitely to the dreaded "C". the baby squirms and kicks with zest, i think it is struggling for the way out, become convinced that somehow my body isn't capable of progressing into labor. i feel let down, cheated, having done all the right things till now then having to get frickin induced??? not fair. nothing i can do. any little thing is a 'sign,' yet i've been teased by twinges so often that i know it's not 'the real thing' every time. and so it seems this baby will never come. that we're 'not really' going to be parents. that december 10th, then 20th, then christmas will come around, and i'll still be this pregnant, still waiting. and of course having those thoughts is a kind of big scare unto itself--no self-fulfilling prophecies, please. no macabre foreshadowing.

i would love it so if there was some root i could chew to make it happen, some rare, not necessarily delicious fruit i could tear apart, and then it would happen. sarsparilla, maybe?

mine and the baby's time in the same vessel is drawing to a close. it has been a miraculous, ordinary, extraordinary time, one in which i am quite honestly at this point excited to end. why?

1. people say things (in a cooing tone) like 'what a cute belly you have' look, bitch, last night i slept about 2 hours, felt like all the cold water in the ocean wouldn't quench my heartburn, and had gas to rival bush's private stores. even that newborn panda does not appear 'cute' to me.

2. "is it a boy or girl?" has been on repeat for about the last six months. i should have made a puff paint t-shirt with 'i don't know' written across the belly. in a neutral color, of course.

3. goddamnit, i don't care if it's trashy, i would really LOVE a freezing. cold. beer.

4. sex again would be grand (though i guess that's what got me here in the FIRST place). sigh........someday........you know, when the STITCHES heal.

5. my walk may again come to resemble my own, not a penguin's. i can put on an article of clothing that might actually make me feel like a human female (as opposed to a saint bernard). boots with heels. any shoe with heels.

6. i am going to be the best damn mama this world has seen, or at least western new york.

7. #3



phew, that felt pretty good, to complain! now perhaps i can do less of it to my family tomorrow. have a wonderful holiday, to anyone who is reading this, and a frosty cold one for me (i count as two, actually. maybe 3).

i have always had a problem with 'making something' of myself. being firstborn to a very young mother, she always tried to encourage that and those were her exact words, go to college, get a job, 'make something of yourself.' as a result, as is typical with fbs and especially given the way my family structure played out (classic middle child=scapegoat, youngest=comedian, mom=enabler, (step)dad=problematic) i was driven to overachieve and i guess to a degree, still am (to the point where i just fixed the misspelling of 'overacheive' i just did-i mean, who really cares...) (to the point where the glasses in the cabinet that match should be all lined up in neat columns of three) (to the point where house, car, purse, backpack, whatever should all be properly outfitted with lots of writing utensils (since in the house i grew up in they were always impossible to find, would get lost after 1 use)) (to the point where i have driven myself so crazy over 'what i'm going to be' that i haven't chosen to be much of anything).

now, i never really classified myself as 'anal' or 'type a'. some of the overachieving tendencies right now stem from having too much time on my hands and also from 'growing up' (yikes), at least to the point where if i'm going to drink wine, i at least possess a proper glass, for both myself and a guest, if we so choose not to slug it out of the bottle. and i had, for all intents and purposes, a 'normal childhood,' whatever that means, if on the 'serious child' side who liked school and books a little too much and always had the lamest comebacks and would go home and cry a bit too easily. so it's not as though my mom or my family or my assumed role or my love for school fucked me up, or even if they did i really hate whining about that kind of shit and am not trying to whine.

it's just that i burned out so young. with paul, i just figured that out last night. the same things that haunted my childmind and made me resort to tricks like endlessly flipping the pillow and laying the other way on the bed to get to sleep (he did the same things, did you, firstborns out there?) are pretty much the same things that haunt me now: i'm no sculptor, or quilter, carpenter, architect, or even junkyard proprietess: i find it extremely difficult to take this chunk of me and shape it, or pieces (not peices) of me sewn or joined together to make some whole, or to arrange varied castoffs identified for their uses and functions when and if needed. i.e. 'making something of myself' (shudder). i do know a good amount about myself, but honestly, after a while, what good does that do you? somewhere along the way, i ran out of being able to try so hard, became overwhelmed, got distracted and daydreamy because it was fun, finally, fun. now because of some essential nature bullshit, it's not so fun. now it's just kind of full circle: what am i going to do with my life? what? what? what? what? what?

is it as tyler durden says, that we all grew up thinking we'd be rock stars and astronauts and movie stars (.....but we won't....), is that herowish mentality (after all, by overachieving didn't we all think we could 'save the family,' or at least keep our names or hides out of the next big fight?) the mother of all hangups, the bitch that wants only the best, the most, the shiniest, the strongest for itself, and could just get it if only.....if only........

thank you for indulging in this little self-counseling session, brought to you by "t's hangups, inc., llc."

(and there are no barking sparrows....)

mmm. i love those candies that taste like lavender. not the gum, tho, which tastes musty to me.

the person sitting next to me right now smells like i didn't know i sometimes used to smell, which is of morning damp tobacco smoke and hour old coffee...it is not particularly pleasant but is nostalgic. as completely botarded as it is, i miss the mechanics of smoking. i miss the little realizations and conversations and romanticisms (even if somewhat cliched-like those coffee/cigarette ruminations)that sometimes come about only because of it. that's about it though-i never realized what a little slave it makes you.

i saw this excellent movie called me and you and everyone else we know, parts of which keep popping in my head and turning round in there. all in all it was extremely well done, lots of parts to make you squirm but i like that sometimes.

hm. har. i feel like writing, but topics aren't really coming well, so i will give up and perhaps go make some soup.

they used to.

Dickens wrote an entire world in the line "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." He could have written that anytime and it would be true. I try to keep this in mind when i am feeling especially glum about the state of the world. what do i know, i haven't lived long enough to make an accurate judgement about what exactly is happening to us as a society, perhaps i never will be able to make one and perhaps i ought not to, don't really want to. what would that solve, after all, one person's lifelong observation of the world. write a memoir, for chrissakes. or just write.

the baby has been doing trapeze artist tricks in there, and it creates the god-weirdest ache in my cervix. 'ow, my cervix' is a curious thing to be saying a few times a day. i cannot quite tell which body part is causing the sharp one-two jabs. all of them, i think.

here is a tiny rhyme about it:

my baby floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee
it's my cervix vs. muhammed ali
punch and jab and kick and spar
out of myself is beaten the tar.



also, i'm so sentimental these days. over the weekend i almost started crying because of takeo spikes's achilles tendon thing. i don't even know what the man looks like, that's how much i follow football. but man, that's a tough row to hoe.

it would be my fortune that just as i finally procure a library card, the library closest to me is closing, permanently. the flourescent paper that declares so is quite sad. though i accept that some libraries *have* to close, and that the 'system' is doing its best to keep all areas of the city well served. we have been lucky so far in that (previously) we were in the top five cities for libraries per capita, or something like that. also, most other libraries charge you to request items and to rent movies, buffalo's didn't (but will starting october 1st, blech).

also there was a fairly entertaining dylan doc on pbs last night, which continues tonight. some of the footage was quite astounding, it provided a nice pictorial/video supplement to the 'story,' which was basically dylan's own 'chronicles: vol 1' with some interviews of contemporaries thrown in. that's why i say 'fairly entertaining' since if you read the book, the film (at least this first part) isn't telling you anything you don't already know. plus if you are a big dylan fan you will most likely already know a ton of this stuff. but dylan's own commentary is a great deal less miserable and vague than seen previously and he actually gets a light in his eyes during a few reminisces. it occured to me, both reading the book and seeing the film, that fame like his is not in the least enviable. you have three, maybe four generations putting all this meaning on songs, words, feelings, and attitudes you can never recreate. deifying you. you yourself may have never known the meaning, and after a certain time, your life changes and you probably don't care like you once may have. you tour, you keep performing since that is your line of work, but (most of) the crowd is expecting those old washed out now threadbare anthems you've done thousands of times, in countless versions, endless cities, in front of hundreds of thousands of old timers and kid hippies, for decades. i'd be pretty miserable as well. but, at what price fame. and i'm making him sound all played out and used up, as if he relies on all those old tunes to get him through, when really 'love and theft' kicks ass. judging from a show i saw a few years back in columbus, he has himself an excellent time playing from that. he's writing his memoirs and appearing in films by martin scorsese, about him. i guess life can't be too bad.

last night i dreamed of two massive eagles with especially large claws, flying just a few feet from the surface of some pristine lake who knows where, hopefully somewhere on this earth, a secret place on mama nature's body as yet undefiled by man's repugnant touch...

anyhow, one of the eagles spotted its catch and swooped down, scooping with its claws but missing, so very quickly it plunged itself into the water in a shallow arc and emerged victorious in the air with a monstrous, delectable salmon. it was awesome. i felt that.

yesterday i witnessed a very happy, very large man riding an old fashioned aqua blue bicycle.

a few days before that, i got to see my baby's face in 4D.

the world is fucking amazing, in't it?

sparrow (finally) caught a bird and left it for us for a present. unfortunately, it was not discovered until it set to stinkin in the 'junk' room we don't use that much. so paul swept it up and dumped it in the trash. i feel bad because i had always kept it in mind that when cats do that it is truly giving a gift, and he should be praised and thanked appropriately. well, who knows when he actually dropped it off, and since the reaction was less than stellar, he may not ever do this again. aw. sorry, little hunter. carry on, do.

matthew's zoo pics reminded me that sometimes at night from our room (which opens up to a backyard porch), we can hear some kind of zoo animal warbling? yowling? lowing? bellowing? moaning? singing? crying? yodeling? ....some combo. the first few times i heard it i thought it was a far off dog, perhaps ill, whose howl got distorted over the distance. then for some reason i thought someone had a llama in their backyard (hey, i have pregnancy brain, ok??? and the pseudo-mansions around here have some big (and of course, fenced and bushed) backyards). i did not even think about the fact that we live near the zoo until our landlord, who came over to fix something, asked if we've heard the zoo animals yet. duh! anyway, it's quite impressive, since it is quite a few blocks away, but also very sad. a plaintive, displaced sound. i will not go to zoos because i get too blue about the whole state of affairs. there's a lot of arguments and counterarguments and reasons and pros and cons and the like, but what it all boils down to is it just makes me *sad* that they're in there. as for what i am going to do when the baby is four or five and wants to go, i do not know......

also in the hood some moneyed folks were having quite the backyard karaoke party last saturday night. yikes! four reps of dancin' queen, each sung by equally hideous though surely different generational females is quite enough for me. i will not enjoy that song evermore. it was fabulous free entertainment though. abruptly, it stopped, which led us to believe that some other moneyed folks may have called the police for disturbing the peace of our perpetually quiet area. p and i were saying how a party in our house would be unenjoyable b/c the neighbors and hood are so still, and music/noise would surely be frowned upon at least. a shame. i miss you, north pearl!! do i feel an ode coming on?? i do, i do!!

ode to north pearl

dearest railroad style apt
i miss that funky brick wall in the kitchen
what became of the courtyard sludge bucket, (surprise!! (ha))
and now no jaunty sparrow climbs that rickety escape to the roof.

we have flowers here too
though much less crack cocaine
i used to walk in antique daydreams
streets leaking slowly histories.

you will be restored to some former glory
huge and barely lived in by two busy people
maybe some echo of a good time will resound in the closet they'll preserve,
i sure hope so, the baby was conceived there.






i won the lottery! my uncle gave me a scratcher called "fat cat" and laughed because i'm 'fat', then i went and won a benjamin. ha ha and hell's yeah! *someone* i know says unfortunately it's not yahoo money this week, but i say screw that, mama's buying herself......hm. what? it is funny how when you're not working you don't need and want things the same way. or maybe i am in the detached from material items cycle. before i might have blown it going out, eating, drinking, carousing. i think i am finally learning how to be quieter.

maybe i could go to some pub at say, three in the pm, play a bunch of jukebox songs and have a pepsi (which sometimes causes my eyes to roll back in my head it's so goddam good: allowable but slightly naughty...) there's something so awful about going to a bar when you're pregnant tho. i can't remember the last time i was in one. am i missing anything? nah.....