One eighty.

Bit of a turnaround. Really it's just inspired by the last trip up to the attic. The grooves in the upstairs windows are filled with the tiny sunbleached corpses of a thousand ladybugs and their housefly nannies. Regina's lost brood. I'd long suspected her to be something of an absentee dam, but being sole witness to the slide of a generation into its own golden dust demands documentation.

I'm. In. Heaven.

There was a magical moment last night at Wegman's when every woman (and one stoned guy) was singing along with Mariah Carey's "Fantasy". The frozen foods section burst into dance.

No exaggeration.

Te llamo? Mallo?

Last of the bunch.

Terseness at its cryptic worst. Thank goodness for the eloquent image.

Dew Drop (Dude Drop)

Pondhopper. Puddlejumper.

Bla(s/z)e

Opted out of wings and tights for the series. Really wasn't my decision. If left to myself, I suspect I'd have had them all dancing with bees or curled up in flowers. Fireflowers.

Hothead.

Sketching out some bookmarks for a fave's fourth grade theater students. Could do this forever.

The devil's in the details in these kids' drawings, though. Been agonizing over the barest hints. Those three lines at the back of the head, for example? Are they the suggestion of speed? Heat? Impressionist dreads? Check out those arms--both clearly behind the back. Is that part of the process of fire-sculpting? Will they notice that I quite literally put his wrong foot forward?

When all's done, I'm putting faith in the ability of dragons and firefoxes to distract your above-average ten year old male.

I even seen a barn dance.

Miss Mary Mack.

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack

All dressed in black, black, black

With silver buttons, buttons, buttons

All down her back, back, back.

She asked her mother, mother, mother

For 50 cents, cents, cents

To see the elephants, elephants, elephants

Jump over the fence, fence, fence.

They jumped so high, high, high

They reached the sky, sky, sky

And they didn't come back, back, back

'Til the 4th of July, ly, ly!

I'm going to pretend I knew all along that was a naval reference. Or that I knew of the poem's existence at all, for that matter. Though I'd always felt a prickling annoyance at the absence of ironclad lore. Yeah.

J&H: Part Deux

Dear Caller,

Only interested in things that have existed, might exist, will exist, never existed. Nothing that actually does exist.

Signed,

Out of Touch

Stirred, never shaken.

Not quite sure, but I may have printed Stoli on one of those beakers. Nestle Strawberry Quik on another. Either one is quite a high. Just watch for those mid-leap transformations--it's a long way down between buildings.

The play's the thing.

"As full of spirit as the month of May

and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;

wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls."

William Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth, part I

Spoonfuls.

The chair has finally arrived. A little marmalade dollop on my vanilla cream room.

West of the moon.

Psyche in the air. Boreas never really minds when he winds.

Prove it.

Semele. Really the Doubting Thomas of pre-Christianity. Just another someone for whom the divine "cuz I said so" didn't quite cut it. And why would it? What percentage of Bronze Age maids came wandering out of those sacred groves actually filled with Olympian seed--and what percentage found an easy excuse embedded in their nurses' stories? For that matter, how many farmlads, old perverts, wily centaurs, rootless veterans donned the mask of a lusty Hermes or Apollo to satisfy their own needs? Clay and paste have about as much legitimacy in a darkened grott as gold leaf.

So she asked. For certainty's sake. For pride's too. To silence her whispering sisters. "Show me your true face." If he was a fraud, she'd endure the burden of shame, but also the satisfaction of watching a local lech ripped apart by horses. Or whatever. If he was the god, she'd be vindicated, and perhaps emblazoned with some unearthly signature.

So Zeus emerged unwillingly. The touch was given. The mark made. Unfortunately, it happened to be a sootspot on the palace flagstones in the vague shape of a girl. Bright reward for a skeptic's narrowed eye.

See how they run.

So our wandering story comes to a sharp end. And is consigned to a fate of spinning tall tales and refusing medication in the amputee ward.

Nada.

Rounding that corner.

There's gonna be a beatdown.

Air on the C string.

"Pack up the gouda, Mother. We're moving on up."

Dancing attendance.

Fleets in the sheets.

Great Phoebus.

Unfinished symphony.