Power Love

Your definitive resource. That's all, just your definitive resource.

25 May 2010

SOMEBODY’S IN-BETWEEN GIRL

Let’s say one day you’re skipping down a path and you come up to the proverbial fork in the road. Most people don’t know, but “proverbial” is also a term of art that means “heavy with charms,” which let’s say this proverbial fork in the road is. As you were skipping down this path, before you hit the fork, you had in mind some good stuff for your future.

Let’s say you see the ideal future in terms of red velvet cake. You’re not naïve, you don’t expect it to be the perfect red velvet cake, at least not at all times, but for the most part, you know in your heart that a red velvet cake future is right up your alley and you’re willing to take the ups with the downs, because, after all, the name alone is worth constructing goals around.

So at this proverbial fork, there are, hanging from the wise old willow tree, along with the willow’s natural jewelry (long branches draped like heavily jeweled necklaces), charms. You can see them flash as they spin and catch the sun. Each charm tells you something about your red velvet cake future. There is the clear blue pool of pure water, there is the champagne flute filled with diamonds, there is the adorable fuzzy teddy bear.

You look down the path on your left. There are birds chirping down there. It smells like a fresh, healthy forest. Are the vague dancey notes of a horn section coming from far away? (Yes.) Because you are an exhauster of options, a think-through-it kinda human, a Planner with a Capital P, you take a look down the right path. Not much to see here, folks. And yes, that putrid stench and low, painful wail is in fact coming from the same entity. You shuffle back over to the left path.

As you turn, you run into an unscrolled scroll, floating at face height and flapping in the soft breeze like a shirt on a clothesline. You peel it off your face and read:
1. This is just a path. Right now you’re reading way more into it than is actually here.
2. On the other side, you may run into any, all, or none, of the following, in whatever combination is legally permissible by law: soul-shattering heartbreak, chronic indigestion, a variety of OCD-related disorders, citizenship in a land ruled by ego-infested robots on power trips, an unthinkable shortage of high-quality footwear.
3. Later, when you say you never saw it coming, remember this sign.
4. This is just a path.

Because you are A Planner, you sit down on a mushroom that was ripped off from the set of Alice in Wonderland, and you think Really Big Thoughts. You can hear the horn section and the clink of charms like wind chimes behind you. What you don’t notice is: the clear blue pool of pure water is saturated with poisonous chemicals, the champagne flute is cracked and that’s zirconia, and the adorable teddy bear is hanging by a noose.

At this point, you are thinking critically. You’re thinking that there are possibilities that you haven’t considered, but you feel confident that you have enough information to make an informed decision about which path to take. You take nothing for granted. You make no assumptions. You completely ignore numbers 1 and 4 from the unscrolled scroll flapping like a shirt from a clothesline that you had to peel off your face.

Now let’s say at this point I come along. I would bring with me my chaise lounge, also ripped off from the set of Alice in Wonderland, and set up shop next to you on your mushroom. My butler would produce from his shirt sleeve a tea set made of priceless china that he would set upon a silver tray engraved with ancient words of prayer thought to bestow upon its owner powers beyond the imagination. Because I am grounded and humane, I choose not to abuse these powers. Also, sometimes they make my face break out.

Once my tea set is set up and prepared, while my butler then gives me a manicure (buffed, clear polish), I explain to you your Red Velvet Cake Future. I explain it so well that you get it on every level—emotional, mental, physical, spiritual. You get it so thoroughly you feel it viscerally, as if you actually lived through it already and you know, right down to your very raw nerve endings, that I am so not bullshitting you when I say: the Red Velvet Cake Future is not actually Red Velvet Cake.

You know this to be true, of course. First, you are still understanding things on multiple levels, you clever bastard, and fourth, now you’re starting to think you’ve already been taught this lesson before and you pride yourself on your quick ability to learn, it’s a skill set that’s served you well since high school. Besides, you think, this person stretched out languorously on the chaise lounge with the tea and the butler and the manicure—how can you not trust a woman who wears alligator shoes with the teeth still in place?

Still…if the Red Velvet Cake Future actually did work out…

Would you walk down the Red Velvet Cake path? You would, wouldn’t you.

Sucker.

24 May 2010

ONE OF THESE DAYS YOU’RE GONNA FALL

This parking ticket has been staring me in the face for two weeks. Sometimes I go to the bathroom, and it’s already in there, waiting on the edge of the sink. I’m tempted to flick it right on its “Save a stamp, pay online” corner. I suspect that part’s its eye. I’ve already tried to drown it. It’s still here. For paper, it’s oddly resilient.

I flick the parking ticket anyway. It wobbles on the side of my bathroom sink. If it had arms, they’d be outstretched and moving in small circles, the way cartoon characters do right before they fall off a cliff/mountain/rooftop/kitchen table. The parking ticket kerplunks into the sink. For a millisecond I feel bad. You would understand if you saw my bathroom sink—entities that are destined for hell wind up in a place significantly cleaner than my bathroom sink.

By the time I get to the kitchen—it’s quite a way, there’s the winding staircase, the long corridors with oil paintings of old men in white wigs and lots of women with corsets (this wasn’t my idea, I hired a “house stylist” in the ‘70s,when that was the thing to do, and, stupidly, I was completely unnerved by his ability to turn my name into homonyms, and I fell madly in love and let him have his way with the east wing. I know, I know, when will I learn? (You should see the stables—not my proudest moment.) And then there’s the courtyard with the cobblestones and I don’t mind saying, that’s a real pain to run across with diamond shoes and of course, there’s that long stretch of moving sidewalk through the west wing and the next time I say I am in a “techy phase,” shoot me).

Finally, I was in the kitchen. And who’s already there? The parking ticket. This jerk won’t die, man. One thing’s confirmed at this point, though—the “Save a stamp, pay online” square is, indeed, his eye. I walk casually to the “stove.” I’m not quite sure how to use this contraption. I was told in order for this room to qualify as a “kitchen,” it had to have a “stove.” Zoning regs, I guess. I just come here because this is where the wine is. Usually red, in crystal goblets.

I pull a crystal goblet to my lips and as I do, I glare across the room at the parking ticket. And suddenly, we have this connection. It’s like out of that movie about the two football dudes who grow up together and go pro and one of them gets Lou Gehrig’s disease and dies and the other one goes back to college where he meets this amazingly brash, independent woman and ohmygod! the greatest love EVER, but then he goes to the army and she becomes a hippy and they get into political fights and break up and then one day they see each other from across the street at a pro-war/anti-war rally and they have this connective stare that binds them together forever because they will always be The One That Got Away to each other and then I think Earth is attacked by aliens and the film ran over budget so they ended it there.

Anyway, that’s the kind of stare I had across my enormous kitchen with the parking ticket. I move away from the “stove.”

I teleport to my movie theater in the basement, next to the wine cellar. You are correct. The parking ticket beats me there. “This is getting creepy,” I tell it.
“You’re telling me. Usually people pay after they meet me in their bathroom,” he says.
He has this way of twitching his right corner that is somewhat endearing.
“Wussies,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a bully game, really.”
“There’s something I can’t quite reconcile about the cops issuing tickets on machines owned by a private company,” I admit.
Parking ticket says, “Home of the mandatory wrought-iron fence. Home of the overnight-disappeared airport.”
“Righto,” I say. And then, “I still call it Comiskey.”
“I still call it Marshall Field’s.”
“I have dial-up internet connection.”
“Pay me on Tuesday.”

20 May 2010

MAYBE IT'S YOU

The problem with a single, ferociously intelligent, sparkle-witted woman is: She makes you realize how pathetic you are for defining yourself through your partner.

And she doesn't apologize for it.

12 May 2010

THINK YOU GOT ME CONFUSED FOR A BETTER MAN

Sometimes you feel so raw you wonder if you’ll ever heal.

I don’t know why they do it, but the weather peeps on the 10:00 news seem to take much time to tell what the weather was before they get around to what the weather will be. This confuses me. Every night I wonder about it, I don’t mind saying. What’s confusing is, if you made it through the day, and you’re watching the news, you already know this information; and if you didn’t make it through the day, you’re probably not watching the weather report on the 10:00 news. “Must send letter,” I thought to myself as I drifted to sleep on the couch. I write very effective letters. Corporate entities really enjoy hearing from me.

Rules of Planet Kim:
* Inanimate objects reply;
* Citizens are defined by their partnership with their preferred writing utensil;
* Exclamation marks are banned by executive order and no you most certainly do not get an opportunity to speak on the exclamation marks’ behalf in front of a jury of its peers, this isn’t a democracy, fancy pants.

Planet Kim looks suspiciously similar to: Key West, the Caribbean, New York, Paris, depending upon the time portal by which you enter.

I issue the laws with the help of my Council—a purple Sharpie, a Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball Extra Fine Point in blue, and a green medium point felt tip “pen,” that’s leaning very close to marker-dom, but we’re not judging here. My Grama used to use a pen/marker like this. She used to write in cards: “I love you, Kimme.” That’s how she spelled my name. I still have those cards.

Laws of Planet Kim:
* Law #1—Every Sunday is community dinner night. Except dinner night starts during the day because Sunday afternoons are melancholy incarnate and besides, I’m severely self-conscious about my cooking. Sometimes it’s hard to get the writing utensils to cook (lack of opposable thumbs seems to make them sketchy decision makers when faced with intense heat and sharp knives), but they eventually figure out a way. The writing utensils on Planet Kim are not functionally fixated.

* Law #2—Everyone has to check in with at least three (3) people each week. Not the same three (3) people every week, different ones. And by “people,” I’m including you, lead pencils. Lead pencils have a tendency to be standoffish, but really that’s because they’re shy, don’t let the leather and the loud music scare you.
Checking in is defined as: making human contact with another human or writing utensil. The point is to let another entity know you’re thinking about them so that they go through their days knowing there are people in the world who are thinking of them.

* Law #3—I pushed for a weekly talent show, but as the Council pointed out, we’re dealing with people who floss with quantum physics, so I’m sure you can imagine the complexity of the acts. Algorithms need space to bloom, and by “space,” I mean “time,” because the two (2) are the same on Planet Kim, which is why the talent show is a monthly occurrence. Sometimes, though, the monthly talent show is really an Allman Brothers concert.