Ka ching.

Green Tea

by Dale Ritterbusch

There is this tea
I have sometimes,
Pan Long Ying Hao,
so tightly curled
it looks like tiny roots
gnarled, a greenish-gray.
When it steeps, it opens
the way you woke this morning,
stretching, your hands behind
your head, back arched,
toes pointing, a smile steeped
in ceremony, a celebration,
the reaching of your arms.

My room..

I had been to this seminar once,something on stimulating creativity.It was conducted by a Brit with a cast on her left leg.She never really talked about practical solutions.I personally am of the opinion that scribbling crap on a blank sheet with crayons is not the way to overcoming a creative block.Nor is singing an African hymn at the top of your voice.Love the crayons though, and the blank sheets.Anyway it was the self help shit that jobless people retort to...or people who can't get enough of their social lives.

There was this exercise which asked of you to describe your ideal room.

At that point I couldn't think of much.Except that I wanted a French window that would enable me to see the sunset and the sunrise.

Its lately that I have been thinking of my ideal room,in my ideal apartment right after I find an ideal job and move on with my ideal life and for all of that I'd have to get into an ideal B school which doesn't seem so ideal after all considering the fact that I have an exam two hours from now and here I am at the mise en scène of a brand new post that would be on my blog shortly without being rejected.

So then I started thinking about my ideal room.(I should stop watching Lev's life on youtube.)

I think it should be something like this:

The walls would need a Jackson Pollock feel, because every time you just look at them you would realize that art is  the only thing that won't die and that its okay to make mistakes or be messy because at times something beautiful surfaces beneath all the muck.

I would like to have a coffee machine and a popcorn machine too (I got the latter piece of idea from Rosh)

I'd have a few of those modernistic vases in my room,the shapes of which you can never fathom.They would be empty and bear no traces of flowers maybe a few quality ferns that I'd pick out with care.

My bed would be a little bigger than a single bed to accommodate company for a night only and not perpetually.

No photographs,no memories.

Lots of post-its and deadline dates.

French windows,large and wide,so that the room is lit up whenever I draw the curtains.Don't tell my mom that she'd lecture me on how easily someone could smash it and how I'd be found dead the next day.Anyway getting back to the windows..they should be big enough for me to jump off from if life gets smothered under rock bottom.

I am not a chandelier person lets keep those for the high profile snobs,instead I'd like those tiny weeny lights all through out the room,some on the floor even.

A writing desk is an absolute must.Flooded with stationery of all types: papers,pens,pencils and colours and markers and everything else.Ample leg space so that I can sit writing at my desk for hours together.

That's it I guess.A closet and a rug would complete the deal.

That's my room.

My ideal room.

That I wish to have, right after other ideal things.

Doesn't get any worse than this...

You said that I was a woman with ambition.

I say I am worse than that.

I am a woman who wants to prove herself

and people who want to prove themselves do so at the risk of losing everything they have,

and then they realize they didn't have anything to prove really in the first place.

We call it a dangerous and ill fed notion.

Tiger tiger burning bright..

Flawed perfectionism is enticing isn't it? Wouldn't you want to wake up to a morning with the certainity that even the best,smartest,brightest,most skilful folk screw up (as very loosely put)?
Perhaps not very significantly but they do nonetheless.
One mistake and your tumbling down that infamous disastrous street of ruin.We all have a ruinous aspect to our lives which consist of not so favourable qualities.Accepting them is as hard as denying them.
Tiger Woods you are human.So are you Andre Agassi..and you too Martha Stewart.
Whats worse we are too.
Here's a classic Atwood quote:
'While impure thoughts may make you burn in hell for all eternity once you die here in life, what gets you baked and fried is your inablity to act on them.'
So basically are we wasting time on deciding the pros and cons of morally correct behaviour or are we just living it up and drinking it down?
So this is what I try to do sometimes.
I try to be a good customer (I always keep exact change)
I try to be a good friend (I call you up every now and then)
I try to be a good room mate (I slowly tip toe out of the room to do my work when you are sleep)
And when that doesn't work I say, 'To hell with you..'
And I read,I write,I drink,I eat,I work,I shop,I smoke and not give a damn..if I appear pathetic,desperate or uptight.I mean who cares anyway right?

This one..

This one survived a badly drawn year.

This one crawled out of the bushes.

This one lives in denial.

This one packed her bags and waited.

This one thinks his life gyrates around a fortune stick. (What a magical stick!)

This one is beautifully agitated.

This one was impervious to considerate thought and detail.

This one walked all the way home.

The dark eyed angel..

So why is it that all I can think of

(and will think of through the torrential rains to come and the howling night)

is you,

sighing so deeply in the darkness

you and the smell of you and the windswept curve of your cheek?

If this train ever stops

I will ask that dark eyed angel,the one who hasn't spoken yet

He looks like he might know.

_Eleanor Lerman.