The (mis)adventures of a macintosh administrator.

Finding a Box of Family Letters by Dana Gioiat

2012-05-03T10:30:32Z

The dead say little in their letters
they haven't said before.
We find no secrets, and yet
how different every sentence sounds
heard across the years.

My father breaks my heart
simply by being so young and handsome.
He's half my age, with jet-black hair.
Look at him in his navy uniform
grinning beside his dive-bomber.

Come back, Dad! I want to shout.
He says he misses all of us
(though I haven't yet been born).
He writes from places I never knew he saw,
and everyone he mentions now is dead.

There is a large, long photograph
curled like a diploma--a banquet sixty years ago.
My parents sit uncomfortably
among tables of dark-suited strangers.
The mildewed paper reeks of regret.

I wonder what song the band was playing,
just out of frame, as the photographer
arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot?
Get out there on the floor and dance!
You don't have forever.

What does it cost to send a postcard
to the underworld? I'll buy
a penny stamp from World War II
and mail it downtown at the old post office
just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve.

Surely the ghost of some postal worker
still makes his nightly rounds, his routine
too tedious for him to notice when it ended.
He works so slowly he moves back in time
carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses.

It's silly to get sentimental.
The dead have moved on. So should we.
But isn't it equally simpleminded to miss
the special expertise of the departed
in clarifying our long-term plans?

They never let us forget that the line
between them and us is only temporary.
Get out there and dance! the letters shout
adding, Love always. Can't wait to get home!
And soon we will be.
See you there

- Posted from my iPhone

The Demon!

2012-04-11T00:45:20Z

Mermaids

2012-04-03T12:11:46Z

I see the mermaids, my friends, who do not sing to me, instead sing only to each other in the secret tongue of those who belong to something, even if it is only the sea.

M M Locker

- Posted from my iPhone

Grown up me still ♥'s Farrah.

2012-04-02T14:46:52Z

God made man stronger but not necessarily more intelligent.

He gave women intuition and femininity.

And, used properly, that combination easily jumbles the brain

of any man I've ever met.

-Farrah Fawcett

Parables. Part one.

2012-02-08T12:42:53Z

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego."
He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute

and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Location:The bus

Silo Solo by Joyce Sutphen

2012-01-24T08:12:57Z

My father climbs into the silo.
He has come, rung by rung,
up the wooden trail that scales
that tall belly of cement.

It's winter, twenty below zero,
He can hear the wind overhead.
The silage beneath his boots
is so frozen it has no smell.

My father takes up a pick-ax
and chops away a layer of silage.
He works neatly, counter-clockwise
under a yellow light,

then lifts the chunks with a pitchfork
and throws them down the chute.
They break as they fall
and rattle far below.

His breath comes out in clouds,
his fingers begin to ache, but
he skims off another layer
where the frost is forming

and begins to sing, "You are my
sunshine, my only sunshine."

- Posted very late from my iPhone

Me and Chas

2011-12-27T20:15:46Z

NYC, Chelsea, West 18th st.

My next door neighbor Charlie and I messing around with a web cam

connected to my roommate Andy's PC laptop. Circa 1995.

GETTING WHERE WE'RE GOING

2011-12-16T11:53:19Z

By John Brehm

Surfeit of distance and the wracked mind waiting,
nipping at itself, snarling inwardly at strangers.
If I had a car in this town I'd
rig it up with a rear bumper horn,
something to blast back at the jackasses
who honk the second the light turns green.
If you could gather up all the hornhonks
of just one day in New York City,
tie them together in a big brassy knot
high above the city and honk
them all at once it would shiver
the skyscrapers to nothingness, as if
they were made of sand, and usher
in the Second Coming. Christ would descend
from the sky wincing with his fingers
in his ears and judge us all
insane. Who'd want people like us
up there yelling at each other, trashing
the cloudy, angelic streets with our
candywrappers and newspapers and coffeecups?
Besides, we'd still be waiting for
the next thing to happen in Heaven,
the next violin concerto or cotton candy
festival or breathtaking vista to open
beneath our feet, and thinking this place
isn't quite what it's cracked up to be,
and why in hell does everybody
want to get here? We'd still be
waiting for someone else to come
and make us happy, staring
through whatever's in front of us,
cursing the light that never seems to change.

The Ideal

2011-12-15T04:15:03Z

by James Fenton

[For @ameliemx]

This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.

A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.

This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard.

- Posted from my iPhone

A Cat's Life

2011-10-26T11:45:21Z

by David R. Slavitt

Her repertoire is limited but fulfilling,
with two preoccupations, or three, perhaps,
if you include the taking of many naps:
otherwise she is snuggling or killing

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:on the bus to work

♥

2011-10-19T23:31:59Z

♥

Steve.

2011-10-19T12:57:24Z

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become."

- Steve Jobs

I remember those dark days.

2011-10-10T00:52:25Z

From John Lilly's tumblr: 'Fuck Michael Dell'

"It was a tough time at Apple -- we were trading below book value on the market -- our enterprise value was actually less than our cash on hand. And the rumors were everywhere that we were going to be acquired by Sun. Someone in the audience asked him about Michael Dell's suggestion in the press a few days previous that Apple should just shut down and return the cash to shareholders, and as I recall, Steve's response was: "Fuck Michael Dell.""

Awesome.

Someone ought make T-shirts. I know I'd buy one.

The Guardian by Joseph Mills

2011-10-03T11:38:07Z

I don't think my brother realized all
the responsibilities involved in being
her guardian, not just the paperwork
but the trips to the dentist and Wal-Mart,
the making sure she has underwear,
money to buy Pepsis, the crying calls
because she has no shampoo even though
he has bought her several bottles recently.
We talk about how he might bring this up
with the staff, how best to delicately ask
if they're using her shampoo on others
or maybe just allowing her too much.
"You only need a little, Mom," he said,
"Not a handful." "I don't have any!"
she shouted before hanging up. Later
he finds a bottle stashed in her closet
and two more hidden in the bathroom
along with crackers, spoons, and socks.
Afraid someone might steal her things,
she hides them, but then not only forgets
where, but that she ever had them at all.

I tease my brother, "You always wanted
another kid." He doesn't laugh. She hated
her father, and, in this second childhood,
she resents the one who takes care of her.
When I call, she complains about how
my brother treats her and how she hasn't
seen him in years. If I explain everything
he's doing, she admires the way I stick up
for him. Doing nothing means I do nothing
wrong. This is love's blindness and love's
injustice. It's why I expect to hear anger
or bitterness in my brother's voice, and why
each time we talk, no matter how closely
I listen, I'm astonished to hear only love.

- Posted from my iPhone

October 1st entry From The Gardeners bed book by Richardson Wright

2011-10-03T02:28:27Z

THE MONTH OF OCTOBER
Verses for a Night Walk.
Autumn brings me closer impacts with reality than any other season. The balmy airs of Spring and Summer breed in my mind only pretty pantheistic sentiments, but let a tang spill into the air, and my comfortable and easy-going soul is spurred on to great adventure. On nights such as these I disappear over the back wall and head across country. The stars are sharp and brittle. Odors of dying vegetation rise from the ground. I tramp on, searching for what Vaughan said he saw--
"I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright."
And turning toward home, my feet slogging along a little slower, my head in the heavens, I wonder at Vaughan's other verse--
"There is in God, so some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here
Say it is late and dusky because they
See not all clear.
O for that Night! where I in Him
Might live invisible and dim."

- Posted from my iPhone