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And Words Are All I Have
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Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
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I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person.
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Or he became me. Or we met at some point.
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Falcons, Grid-Girl, and Lexophiles.
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The peregrine falcon reaches speeds of 200 miles per hour on its dizzying downward dive toward prey. I find that unfathomable. (A third eyelid clears their eyes of debris on the way down.) They mate for life yet are quite solitary. The female flies upside down below the male to receive prey he drops to her from his mouth.
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This poem I wrote during a stay in Ireland explores my enchantment with them.
While Visiting a School of Falconry in Ireland.
Large birds of prey are quite malodorous close up like this; Bits of still-warm sinew and flesh wedged deeply inside their fearsome hooked talons, lodged within the recesses of their dense coats.
The lesson is in progress. Responding to the familiar whistle the peregrine falcon appears suddenly from the treetops, looming, wings spread, four feet across, incongruous in its grace as it sweeps downward by rote toward accustomed rewards,
slowing the beat of its wings on approach, the frenetic wap wap, wap, becoming the subdued whoo, whoo, whoo, its outsized, yellow plasticine-like feet coming to rest on the student’s arm, producing always the same look of sudden terror, then simple astonishment, as the raptor’s full weight, its other-worldliness, settles, entirely, on to the receiver’s outstretched, leather-clad arm.
Their large, liquid, alien eyes, their bobbing heads, are never still. They hit our marks because it suits them. Story goes there was one that scooped up a Yorkshire terrier off the high street once.
Peregrinus, meaning to wander. They cannot, they will not, be known.
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I was asked the other day if I had ever considered “going off the grid.”
I am still laughing. Granted, it’s a hysterical laugh because the mere thought of moving off the grid leaves me shaken to my stilletoes. I am a peron who defines camping as anything below the 10th floor of the Four Seasons.
The person asking me this is what the current culture would term a survivor – ie. a warrior in the out of doors, Who needs pesky running water, I can start a fire inside a sleeping bag in a rainstorm kind of a person. And indeed she has been completely off the grid for longer than I have been wearing nail tips.
Propane factors heavily in her life as do multiple layers of clothing in winter and hypothermia. I told her that not only had I never considered going off the grid but that I may even be considered married to the grid in some cultures. I know it’s a close call as to which I value more, my husband’s fidelity or an indoor toilet. Just don’t make me choose.
She said there were two types of people and when she said this I knew it wasn’t going to be flattering to me. Don’t ask how I knew that: I just did. She said the first type could be dropped off naked in the forest and feel comfortable. The other type, well, the other type wouldn’t. Feel comfortable, I mean.
I told her that I didn’t even feel comfortable naked in my own shower at home, but I don’t think she believed me. People never do.
She said we have too many possessions and that we are plastic people. Yes, of course we have too many possessions. Blah, blah. Just hands off my itemized, alphabetized shoe closet.
She said I had to be prepared to do without, that the time is coming when we’ll all be forced to live by our wits and eat berries and wash our hair with lichen.
I asked her what lichen was, if Pantene made a decent one, and what about people like me who are allergic. Then I assured her that if we go apocalyptic, she’d be the first person I’d call.
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A form of addiction describing those who are obsessively enamored of words, especially those set in a new framework, such as "You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish,” or “When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.”
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One who exhibits this syndrome is known as a "lexophile."
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A competition to see who can come up with the best of these is held every year in an undisclosed location. Here are but a few of the noteworthy submissions.
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.. When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.
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.. A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
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.. The batteries were given out free of charge.
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.. A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.
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.. A will is a dead giveaway.
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And my favourite, when a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
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Try one yourself and send them to me. Warning: they appear (deceptively) easy.
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Snowboarding would be fun if it wasn't for the snow. And the board.
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If the Moon Happened Once
If the moon happened once, it wouldn’t matter much, would it? One evening’s ticket punched with a round or a crescent. You could like it or not like it, as you chose. It couldn’t alter every time it rose; it couldn’t do those things with scarves it does.
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If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you:
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I am here to live out loud.
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Recent Post
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For all of the girls and the women who trusted too much... those found and never found, the lost ones, the lonely ones, whose stories go untold, their heartache entombed alongside them. Last Text from Gabby Petito No service here, but at least I’m free from the cage bars of my body; remember what I’d blogged in observation of …
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Book Sales
The Music of Leaving, my collection of poetry, is available to order.
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Order directly online — for both Canada and U.S. orders — from Amazon, Brunswick and Demeter.
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