making good on my $37

Things I Ate at the Christmas Buffet Today:

• 3 lbs of prosciutto
• brie
• breadsticks
• salmon
• 3-4 glasses of sparkling white wine
• green beans and tomatoes
• a hearty cup of mulled wine
• 4 lbs of mashed potatoes
• a river of gravy
• turkey
• walnuts
• a single chicken skewer
• blueberry tart
• 5 scoops of ice cream (2 chocolate, one mint, one rum raisin, one unknown)
• one christmas cookie
• one sip of coffee
• no water

how dreams (and books?) are made

Gaetano:
why don't we try doing this thing where you write a poem and i create an image at the same time

but we don't tell each other what the we're creating

and then morph them together into a collection of random pairs
kinda like the exquisite corpse but the only thing joining them is the juxtaposition on the same page

me:
that would be really cool actually

and it'll keep me on it (writing)

Gaetano:
given the physical distance i'm sure we could make up some bullshit in the forward to make it artsy

me:
hahaha

or we could just transcribe this convo

Gaetano:
that would give away the secret sauce though

Gaetano:
if we do it like once or twice a week we'll have a book in no time

Things I Will Do Before The Office Holiday Party Tomorrow

(aka the last free food and alcohol binge of the year)...

• catch up on the backlog of student papers that need marking
  
• start work on my proposal for a 5% Christmas bonus
• clean my desk*
  
• gird my loins (x3)

*or shoving all my loose papers in binders & drawers

the haunting

last night i flipped out because i found a huge ass roach in the bathroom. i immediately went under the kitchen sink and grabbed my little can of Raid and proceeded to spray like there was no tomorrow. It’s worth mentioning that I couldn’t bear to actually be in the same bathroom while I sprayed the lil wretch, but stood a good 9 feet away raining down all my Raid wrath upon his little twitching body.

I left the roach there, belly up, behind the bathroom door. Mostly because the cloud of Raid was impenetrable at this point, but also partly because I didn’t have the spine to wrap a paper towel around it’s body and feel the awkward crunch of it’s exoskeleton under the pressure of my thumb. so he just lay there, haunting the hinges of the door.

that night, i dreamt of roaches.

"and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die."

Sylvia Plath, circa 1950

A Wonder

Here is an intriguing profile of Toni Morrison, the only living American Nobel Laureate and the writer who probably has had the most impact and influence over me, especially in my understanding of character and language.

"But it's not just our common vulnerability to mob psychology that ties the rest of us to last week's tragedy. It is also our common love of stuff. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a starker illustration of our true priorities. Oh, we pay lip service to other things. We say children are a priority, but when did people ever press against the door for Parents' Night at school? We say education is a priority, but when did people ever bang against the windows of the library? We say faith is a priority, but when did people ever surge into a temple of worship as eagerly as they do a temple of commerce?"

Leonard Pitts, responding to the recent death
of a Walmart worker on Black Friday

On Gratitude