I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
doughnuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm you worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

- Kim Addonizio


in dumb reply:

i am looking for a cotton summer dress
that i can ball up small and tight
at the bottom of a backpack
and wear every day in europe.
this is a dress for movement: riding trains,
strutting through city streets, hips high and back strong.
the dress brushes against the legs of strangers.
passes vendors stalls and their smell of cooking meat.
i want to rinse it out in small sinks
many floors off the ground, wring it out real tight,
and when it's still damp,
hang it over my shoulders again and walk until it dries,
and then keep walking. i want it to stink
in a way that only i could ignore.
i want this dress
to be in too many of the pictures we take,
to be inappropriate for anywhere
but europe in the summer,
to gather coffee drips and wine stains
and tear small threads
in the act of rising from splintered benches;
at least one bench in every city we visit.
i want my tan to be as a direct result of this dress
so that when i'm only wearing my skin
i'm still wearing the dress.

just played the gershwin concerto in chico and redding. a narcissistic self-googling for reviews afterward yielded this:

"In Emily's case, she had this energy, this style," Picket said, noting a need for "style" when performing pieces by Gershwin. "She just came on stage and knocked it out."

which isn't a review of this weekend, but it made me real smug.

things i have learned in the last 72 hours:

1. shmoozing with the rich old patrons who wear giant silver dolphin earrings, hang personally commissioned oil paintings of their cats over the mantelpiece, mount 30 golf balls in a glass case, own original picassos, and heap huge sums of moolah for the symphony is part of the deal, and half the game, and a wicked sly job of silk scarves, strawberries and white wine -- tact, false enthusiasm over disingenuous musico-intellectual giblets, etc. (on the other hand, i found a blog in which one of these same old women commended my dress, so maybe i'm being too harsh.)

2. the audience is full of idiots. i played terribly, terribly, on saturday night, and nobody seemed to notice. (though i did quite well this afternoon, if i do say so myself.)

3. big rooms are almost always unlocked

4. pianos are most frequently to be found in big rooms

5. there are ups, there are downs, there are the shittiest dragging downs and there are the greatest rising ups




three days ago i gave a half-senior recital with carrot-head. i'll provide a full analysis of that later, when i can provide a video clip of the last piece.

but now, sweet jesus, a long week of unhurried breath.

presenting!

the golden dildo.


it isn't surpring that this exists; there have been more ridiculous things. 18 karat gold. one thousand dollars (for something that doesnt even come with batteries). but think about this: there are people out there who would pay one thousand dollars for a golden dildo. even with china jacking up the price on ramen noodles these days, that's still about a thousand packages of ramen.

moreover, this particular website is throwing in a free pair of matching cufflinks with the earl. but not the olga?

chauvinists.



good night, and good luck.

so you're not going to follow through with the piano stuff?
naw.

in that peculiar fall from grace that comes creeping at the end of every semester, i'm on my back on the russet-colored floor of the concert hall between shows, taking a moment to let my spine open itself up again. i gulped that coffee so quick the mug is still warm. me and my mug. ringing like empty mixing bowls on a monday night. we are half off the edge already.

whatever note is printed on the cellist's score is not the one he's playing.

buzz through the floor of that, that note, the rumbleclatteringrack of music stands through the hallway, a locker unlocked and locked again, and a heartbeat, oddly biotic, sweetly mechanical through the mumblescreams of metal and wood and horsehair. heat billows out of me, the mug grows cold.

i could publish a series of method books: loeffler piano method for alternate and deteriorating lifestyles. for the older beginner with advancing alzheimer's -- the font gets bigger the farther you go back, lesson one starts to repeat. the "cuff" method, for little beethovens -- comes with a pair of handcuffs and a railing one can easily retrofit to their piano. packets of lead sold separately.

i could move to the city and start up a professional streaking business. do you have a wedding? funeral? baptism? any event that needs a hearty dose of jazz, you give me a call. the big city part is important; it becomes truly anonymous. the person who commissions the streaker can feign innocence more thoroughly, and the streaker doesnt have to worry if anybody recognizes them. okay. time to start working on my sprints.

a rainjacket crinkles metallically, a mechanical pencil is clicked several times in nervous succession, a sandwich with the entire history of a meatbrick wedged between the pieces of bread with the same ratio as book:shelf in a library is eaten and the scent of the meat (and the history of the meatbrick) slithers about the stickysweet reminder of pink lillies from the memorial last friday. the dead and the dead. being eaten or scattered in hawaii. and the living are tired and hungry. spread like cards on the floor. let's not have a conversation.

this is my mantra that goes:
i am, of myself, enough. i am, of myself, enough. i am, of myself, enough.

the self is where the breath turns around at the bottom of the breath. PLAY OUT OF THERE.

get upset, start walking.
walk until you're not upset anymore. keep walking.
walk until you're upset again. keep walking.
walk until you're not upset anymore, again. keep walking.
walk until you get mad you're walking. keep walking.
walk until you hurt. keep walking.
walk until you feel like you can walk forever. plan a route home.
make it just a little bit longer.

portrait of a friend from this afternoon.

i want more subjects as soon as school is out. let me know if you want pictures.

substance

every time i make pasta i think of my father.

or, to be more specific:
every time i strain out the water after cooking pasta and the steam rises to fill in my glasses, i think of my father. (now that i'm dependent on my glasses i am beginning to understand what a pain it is.)

it is the essential recurring memory of my childhood. pasta. dad. glasses like white cartoon eyes suspended in front of his face. i am watching him from the living room and he's the strongest man in the world, carrying that massive bowl of pasta, pouring out the terrifyingly hot water. plaid button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and beard still mostly black. i set the knives blades-facing-in:

my father is brave and blind; i am a child. he sent me this picture of home:



these days, his beard is mostly white, when he wears it. i'm not carrying any foxtails, in my hair or my socks or my boots. i was talking to carrot-boy last week and he didnt know what foxtails were.

in the meantime:
pasta. wine. supervillian regenerate! back to work!

summer is at the edge of my brain and i cant wait to fall of into it.

Our unrelenting

Summer, 1933.
Your hat on a post,
and my --

a most exquisite exchange overheard this afternoon
amidst the soft falling
of almond blossoms
(the palesoft brush of spring,
that Tease):

"ey, dude."
"ey-dude."
"dude, we were gonna meet up last night --"
"ugkh, dude!"
"you get in trouble or something?"
"ugkh, dude."