Dangermond.org

Poem (The day gets slowly started)

The day gets slowly started.
A rap at the bedroom door,
bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice
the color of sun which
isn’t out this morning. A
cool shower, a shave, soothing
Noxzema for razor burn. A bed
is made. The paper doesn’t come
until twelve or one. A gray shine
out the windows. “No one
leaves the building until
those scissors are returned.”
It’s that kind of a place.
Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse.
The worried gray is melting
into sunlight. I wish I’d
brought my book of enlightening
literary essays. I wish it
were lunch time. I wish I had
an appetite. The day agrees
with me better than it did, or,
better, I agree with it. I’ll
slide down a sunslip yet, this
crass September morning.

JAMES SCHUYLER

Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

What if you are really not who people perceive you to be? Then what?

Maybelline is always touted as the best mascara. Even stacked up against higher priced, more organic, no matter, it comes up the winner in every magazine. Do you know why? Marketing. That’s right because honestly the mascara SUCKS. Once again, I tried it, this time Maybelline Great Lash BIG because I read in Oprah that it is great. It is not.

The mascara smears. It doesn’t smear when you try to clean it off, it smears on its on. You can barely get it off when you want to and yet it is always coming off when you don’t want it to. It is cheap mascara. Plain and simple. It doesn’t work.

I was in the bathroom wiping under my eye when another woman walked up – I told her about this issue and she said she has the same problem. And both of us admitted to continually buying Maybelline, which is touted as the best selling mascara, but always being disappointed.

Maybelline sucks. Don’t believe the ads. It is not the best mascara. By any stretch.

Miami is the only United States city to be planned by a woman, Julia Tuttle.

In this information age, I feel information overload and am thinking of taking the god totems from my dreams up on a three day hiatus away from any information. Someone brought David Houle to my attention yesterday. He’s a futurist and he says we are leaving the information age and entering the Shift Age – get ready for the new world.

I’d love to be a futurist instead of I’m an archivist of what happened long ago or what happened thirty seconds ago all perceived through my narrowish lens. I’m in the midst of trying to figure out the sea changes happening in the industry I cover – media – where McLuren was right, the medium is the message – but that message gets sliced and diced and made anew on a daily basis so I’m always running to keep up with the game changer that got announced at 5AM when I get to my desk at 7AM. But I do love my job – I was reminded of that when I walked in a room with like minded colleagues yesterday.

Yesterday, I also learned that I’m a monkey, as opposed to an elephant, a dolphin or a lion. I’d have picked an elephant or lion on surface value alone. But the monkey clearly describes who I am – energetic, persuasive, fun loving. And what does a monkey hate: Authority or anyone telling them what to do, Details, and Reports.

We’re all trying to figure it out in media res – which is why stress is our middle name. We need to turn that around on its head and say we’re leading, we’re futurist, not trying to figure out what just happened, but sitting back and saying what will happen. Note to self.

Last night, I glanced up at the Miami sky and saw a beautiful fat crescent moon and last night in my inability to sleep I counted shrimp, oil coated shrimp. And wild dreams ensued. I dreamed that we dug a hole for a pool in the back yard but someone came to tell me they found little people there. I came outside to find a ragged mother and child, with very dark skin, on their knees placing all of the little people and totems they found under my house in the wet mud. The woman called me to her because the totems had started to vibrate and she whispered, “You must pay homage, you must pay homage. You blonde women think you are invincible but you are not. You must pay homage.” I turned to the totems and they vibrated and delivered me a message. “You must not do anything for three days in homage.”

I went running up the stairs to get Tatjana and Tin and Tin was sitting on the floor and I was just about to spew the totem story and he said, “Mom, I saw a dolphin today.” And we both looked over and said, “Oh my god, he spoke!” And suddenly I was on my knees asking him all sorts of questions.

Then the maid came and asked me if I wanted tea and I said yes, and she gave me through a slit in the door that I had left half open 100 green tea bags.

The phone rang and it was my wake up call.

Ever since Tin has come into my life, I have a bias towards his brown skin and his face. There is study on CNN that says children have a positive bias towards white skin no matter what their race. In one of the first year books it says that children naturally prefer their own race up until they are six months old.

Here’s what I say there is a lot of study that shows this and that and then there is reality.

Headed to Miami where I was born, little Havana. I was a child of the revolution, or rather a babe, having been born two months after Cuba ceded control to Castro. I was born in Miami where my family fled. Who knew at the time what was going to happen. When I get to Miami, I always think of my cousins – my dad’s cousins, the fun part of our family. And I think of my dad taking me to Wolfie’s and walking on the beach. He always told me it’s your ami, my ami, Miami.

Geese were floating in the water when Loca, Heidi and I passed them this morning, but they came out of the water and hissed at Heidi for no good reason. I told the dogs, “Silly goose, we weren’t bothering them.” Then we were coming down the bayou and a big Hummer was honking its horn at a gaggle of ducks who refused to go one way or the other. I told the dogs, “Funny ducks.”

My neighbor sent an update as to what is going on in the areas he patrols for the wildlife department – so far so good.

We love our feathered friends and hope for the best.

I went out to Ralph’s on the Park with T to have a quick drink and see her alone – given our family situation, these moments are hard to find. We decided to take our moments in an evening walk with the dogs but we have to wait till she can actually walk since her knee is still in recovery. Ralph’s was deserted except for some weird late night rally happening in the park and the tour buses that pulled up for the private party upstairs.

Long and short of it is this – you need to find your time. We’re trying to strategize about the rest of the family visit and where we can carve out our time, and we don’t want it to be about going to have a cocktail but for now it can’t be about going for a walk – so a gin and tonic it was – and believe me, just what the doctor ordered.