The Ballad of Pan & His Lady

This is an example of my bizarre stint with scrapbooking.

Today I really wanted to write about my adoration of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, but I can't stop thinking about my friend Edward and so my preconceived plan and I must part ways. And for the sake of honoring Edward, I also must turn my blog into a musiclog instead of a bookblog because our days together were much more infused with song and verse than prose. In fact, Edward inspired me to write a ballad which I read to him on the top of the ferris wheel at the Virginia State Fair, probably half a dozen years ago, or so. Like so many friends in the 90's, Edward and I showed our love through mix-tapes and dirges, Ani DiFranco concerts and raves, small femme punk concerts and Neil Diamond slow dances.





(PARAGRAPH BREAK: THIS IS FOR YOU CRAIG!)





Edward and I met my sophomore year at SLC. He wasn't a student there and so we spent a lot of time together in his closet-like room in Bronxville. After he left to major in Social Work and minor in Dance at Cornell, I took the bus up to visit him and he'd drive down to play my savior, time and time again. College for me was more like middle school than middle school. I felt freakish, insecure, dumb, ugly etc. It didn't help that I wasn't a millionare or a model. So. When Edward and I became friends it was like Kermit & Miss (Ms.?) Piggy or Laverne & Shirley. We were meant to be.



After college, Edward and I did stuff like drive to Colorado and camp in the Rocky mountains, live off of gas stations cappuccinos, then camp our way out to Olympia and hop a plane to Alaska (tickets courtesy of Edward-- thank you thank you than. k you) and live in a trailer park in Juneau with Edward's boyfriend before I took a job on a cruise ship and sailed off in a repeat loop around Alaska's inside passage for the next 2 1/2 months.


Edward is now a certified scuba instructor (among many, many other things) living in Hawaii with what sounds like a wonderful and a very lucky man. But he'll always be Pan to me.

The Ballad of Pan and His Lady
For EJE
The End of Summer 1999

Deep in the wild heart of the West
Just at the end of June
Pan and his Lady cast a spell
Under a crimson moon

By his hoof and her tender foot
There sprung a columbine
With roots like a true promise kept
Bound together through time

Call them morning or call them night
Be they foolish or wise
Pan loved his lady like a child
And they both had emerald eyes

Sky alive with blackberry wine
All for dance and folly
Sad and sweet they enchant with song
Wild Wind River Valley

As dusk falls soft they breathe the smoke
Of juniper and sage
For life reveals both lies and truth
At such a tender age

By the light of the great North Star
Goodbyes need not be feared
Although it seems their paths shall part
Upon the Last Frontier

So sad the stars ordained it so
She’ll never be his bride
But ever and forever more
Their love blooms side by side

She’ll set sail upon the sea
And he will find another
For so I’ve learned it is with hearts
At the end of summer

My Duomo

At work today I had to step outside of the office and away from my lovely stack of invoices and tearsheets to recieve a phonecall from my past. Gwen is a double-black belt in karate, a psychica pianist, a poet, a painter, fluent in Italian and the beloved victim of stalkers too numerous to count. Weezer's lead man has written several songs about her including Butterfly, which we listened to in our shared dorm senior year at least 18,000 times a day. Although I spent two years with Gwen- one in Italy and one in New York- solid, daily, 24/7 & etc. I have only seen her one time in one day in the 11 years since we graduated. And that was the day of my wedding. Although Gwen and I did many, many different things together-- from wholesome to illegal & everything inbetween, one of the things we loved doing best was reading. Separately and together. Outloud and silent. We went to the English bookstore and bought all kinds of random books we'd never heard of to devour together in our apartment along with tomatoes, mozarella and a couple of bottles of Chianti. In an earlier post I wrote about reading "The Fan Man" outloud to each other at the Telephone Bar, but after a few months of meeting there every night, we found that just wasn't enough. We had to move in and be together absolutely every minute and so we found an apartment above a wine store on Via Guelfa near the train station caddycorner to plenty of prostitutes and drugdealers. It was there that I gave her "Jane Eyre" and she gave me "Wuthering Heights." It was there that we discovered Natalia Ginzberg, Italo Calvino, hashish and Sappho. We named each room in our apartment (furnished with items we found in the alley) after a ring of Dante's Inferno. If you had been able to stand on the roof of our apartment, you could have seen the Duomo.

love in a recession

For Valentine's Day, I am growing my eyebrows out for Stan. He has an eyebrow fetish. This has nothing to do with books but it has everything to do with love (and vanity.) Wish me luck!

first grade confidential

According to legend, this is my first journal. As you can see, "who I Hait!" is followed by a long list of kid's names organized by an elaborate system of stars, check marks and x's. Then there is "who I LOVE:" followed by the names of my parents, myself, my cats, my friends and God in that order. There is also a list called "who I'm in Love with" but it's short: "Josaph" (followed by about 18,000 stars and hearts enclosing the word LOVE!) This alleged first-ever-journal ever also has many pages of frowny faces, giraffes, tic-tac-toe games, a screen play that's about seven sentences long, the first act of which is "Seen I, Amy: sniffle sniffle." There are drawings of hands with long fingernails, times table equations and stamps of dancing vegetables. Looking back, I can't say things have really changed all that much.

A Readers Lament and other Discrepancies

The difference between what I want to tell people I read and what I actually want to read.

Books to read vs. books finished vs. lonely, abandoned books divided in 2 by long forgotten bookmarks.

The passionate way I read Tom Robbins at 15 vs. the confused, somewhat annoyed way I read Tom Robbins at 32.

The amount of time there is to read vs. the amount of time there is to slough through the dishes, cram laundry in the washer, make playdough doggies with 3 year-olds, cook something, shop for something to cook, go to work, have sex, consider attending church, meditate, volunteer, drive the car around, etc.

The number of new books published in 2007 (195,000!!!) and the days I have in the year to get depressed and angry that so many other people are already published (365!!!)

The books I've read vs. the books my friends have read vs. the books my husband has read vs. the conversations we have that we filter through the words of different authors in our heads.

Ain't No Casanova

After 24 hours of nerve-racking uncertainty, God retrieved my brain from the looney bin- hurray! Sometimes, it seems, ms. brain likes to take little fieldtrips to insanity-land without getting the requisite signed permission slip. Which is why I must keep ever handy my winged pegasus, my headless fertility goddess, my double-stuff oreos, one of my many journals and any old highly romantic and engaging novel that happens to be laying around. Today's book du jour (is that the phrase? I'm not French, nor do I work in restaurants ((these days)) so pardon my vulgarity) was "In Lucia's Eyes" by, oh goodness, I don't remember already! Anyway, he was a Dutchman who writes the story of a woman that Cassanova mentioned briefly in his diaries-- Lucia -- his childhood true love who disappeared from the plantation where she was a servant girl only to be found many years later with a grossly disfigured face in Amsterdam. It's a very interesting book for many reasons--- there are graphic scenes of small pox, a beautiful red-head whose passion is drawing airships, whole passages of brilliance from Cassanova himself that in mood and flavor are reminiscent to me of Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray." And the red-light district of Amsterdam contrasted with the pastoral country-side of Italy, both of which I visited at the age of 20 in search of- or maybe on the lam from- my very own beautiful, arrogant Casanova. Anyway, thank you Lucia---you ever so gently helped transition me away from the dark side. **** Call me crazy, but I don't think the guy up there is very lust-provoking. What's up with Casanova???