beardlessness/continued drunken bloggage

i was supposed to be shoveling storm-dragged sand from the driveway today. i said it was a good day for working outdoors, but then i cleaned the house and shaved my head and beard and am getting more and more drunkerer. it feels freeing to remove a winter beard, like i am new to myself. my hands are not the hands of a writer. they are the hands of a blacksmith, a farrier, a cooper, a potter, a carpenter, a butcher, a mason, a steeplejack, a thatcher, an arborist, a gardener, a builder of railroads, a coal miner, a mighty simpleton, a fanatic preacher, a sailor. the callouses come and go, but my palms remain gigantic. one of my russian acting teachers made us look at our hands for a few minutes at the outset of each day's exercises. we sat the arc of us in institutional chairs and stared at our palms, fingers, knuckles, divining the stories encoded therein. wicked.


on the frozen lake in february


shorn in april

yee-HAW! fuck. it's about allowing the poetry into each day of our lives, about asking every moment what it means, what it's good for. i don't mean asking in a reductionist, utilitarianist sense, but in a fish-eating, beauty-seeking, ugly-seeky, instants-of-actuality-vore sense. am i slamming too many suf- and prefixes together into these frankenwords? fuck you, i don't care. i like my frankenwords. i like smoked salmon and slippery cunt. not necessarily on the same plate mind you, but i like them both.