ESTRELLA

A few years ago I wrote a short story about a girl named Estrella. It wasn't a very good story--no, I'll be honest, it was god-awful. It was a waste of paper that would have been better spent wiping crap off my bottom. I was a nineteen-year-old girly thing trying to write like a big ugly old drunk man, completely under the spell of C. Bukowski.

The story is not worth mentioning but I mention it anyway because today, I met my character Estrella. My meeting of Estrella is not worth mentioning but I mention it anyway because two and half hours of my time was spent with her in close proximity. This is a blog, HA, there IS no waste of paper!

That Estrella could actually exist astounds me.

It shouldn't. No human is capable of making a character that doesn't exist.

She exists very largely.

Yesterday I was excited at the prospect of meeting my new student who had been referred to me by a professor who I previously thought hated me. All of today, I was under the delusion that perhaps this professor did not hate me at all, otherwise he would not have recommended me as a teacher. When Estrella showed up a full hour late, I realized that my first assumption of the professor's feelings towards me was correct.

Estrella is not a bad person, not someone you could actually hate. She is just the most fantastically obnoxious person in the world.

I am a bad person at times, and yes, I am someone you could actually hate. I have many many flaws and cannot help offending people, because I make many judgmental and discriminating assumptions. But I do not bully myself into the lives of other people, and am happy to leave quietly where I'm not wanted. My readers also are free to go when they please. With this paragraph I preface a physical description of Estrella, which is sure to offend people, but which I include because I am being honest to my thoughts.

She was very very very big. When she drove into the driveway, Freddy giggled and said that he could see her stomach through the tinted windows of her SUV. He said even with me being pregnant, four of me could fit inside her. To my credit, I told him he was being really mean. I went outside to greet her, and there was an awkward moment when I held the front door open for her and she had to squeeze around me to get in, but for the most part I didn't pay attention and concentrated on getting to know her.

First she handed me a half-gallon of ice-cream and asked me to put it in the freezer. It's odd; people don't normally bring ice-cream to their lessons but maybe she was just on her way back from doing the groceries. She also asked to use the restroom, and she didn't wash her hands after she flushed, which bothers me a hell of a lot more than obesity. I have dirty hands phobia. When she came out she walked around the house and surveyed the furniture and took a peek at the bedroom.

We finally got down to the business of music, and she was naturally gifted. She had a beautiful tone, and her style of phrasing was easy and eloquent. Her technique though was lacking; she was sloppy and indelicate, and the repertoire she was attempting was way above her ability. I gave her some tips on how to practice, and pointed out some phrasing details she had overlooked. Then I gave her some CDs to listen to and expected her to say thank you and leave. She did not say thank you, and she did not leave.

She talked about being in a choir, and claimed she could sing the part of Madame Butterfly and Queen of the Night. "Wow, really?", I asked politely. She said also that she could play the Liszt B minor Piano Sonata. These works are the most virtuosic and difficult in music literature. I didn't believe her, as she had fallen short on her claims with the violin. Anyone can scrap clumsily through the notes; it's not valid music to my ear.

But she wanted to prove herself. Or she just didn't want to leave. We went to the piano and I offered to accompany her, pulling out my score of La Boheme. Gawdalmighty, I've never heard anything like it. Have you seen the early try-outs on American Idol, and been flabbergasted at the contestants who sound like constricted crows and have no inkling that they sound like constricted crows? She was worse. I was turning blue in the face trying not to laugh, and I only made it through Mimi's aria by concentrating on listening only to my piano part. I have never heard a more sick Mimi. The piercing high notes, sung flat, were as brittle and thin as a smoke detector alarm.

When we finally got through the piece, she said, "You know, the vibrato just comes naturally to me." I didn't break it to her, but I'll break it to you, there was no vibrato in her voice. She must have read my look or seen the reflection of my face against the black stand of the piano, because then she asked, "So tell me, am I a bad singer?"

"No, no. You're just untrained." Maybe I should tell her truth, after all, she's not bad on the violin.

"Well, that was a lot of fun", I said and retrieved her ice cream from the freezer.

She started talking and would not stop. I hinted that Freddy and I needed to start cooking dinner. It didn't register. She talked about trying out for Jeopardy. She talked about joining Mensa. She talked about wanting a boyfriend but not being able to hook one because of her weight. She talked about having ESP and described various situations she was able to forsee because of her ESP, including 9-11.

"You have ESP?", I thought. "Then get this: I-want-you-to-leave. I-want-you-to-leave."

I don't think she had ESP.

Freddy came out of the computer room, to help me I think, and when she found out he was an artist, she talked about drawing. "I've never taken art classes, but I'm pretty good. I draw all the time, and I like geometric designs. I could probably major in art."

We stood with her at the front door, too polite to literally push her out, and listened to her talk about herself for a whole damn freakin' hour. Her tub of ice cream turned to mush in her hand. She wanted to stay the whole night and have dinner with us--Freddy finally told her we didn't have enough chicken but maybe another time. Ugh, do I have to see her again, ever? I told her she could have this lesson for free, but next week, I'm just going to have to put my foot down and say bye bye if she can't afford my fee.

But if she comes again, how am I going to get her to leave?

Someone else in the world has read my precious John Festus Adams!

Another fantastic writer, Mr. Moon, flatters me. Under the Moonlight I am made to look witty and smart. Lunar light also makes people insane. Lunatics, in fact.

WHO IS THIS GUY?

John Festus Adams, author of this precious book:

An Essay on Brewing, Vintage and Distillation, Together With Selected Remedies for Hangover Melancholia: Or, How to Make Booze

It's worth reading even you have no interest in how to make booze. His writing is what writing should be. It flows beautifully, is spare and direct, and it entertains and engrosses the reader. Plus, this particular book is funny as hell, and if more instructional books were written in this warm, imaginative, and personable tone, more people would successfully master learning the subjects that pique their curiosity. If more books of any sort were written with Mr. Festus Adam's mastery of word craft, more people would read period.

I count it a miracle that I came across it. That fateful day, on the one afternoon in my life that I stopped at a garage sale...I was pretending to be browsing through the stack of mouldy books because my girlfriend was embarrassing me by trying to haggle over the price of an ugly ceramic rooster. This book was beneath a hardcover edition of "Flowers in the Attic", and it was crusty with grime. Nevertheless I cracked it open and after reading a paragraph, had to have it regardless of the stiff price tag of a whole nickel.

Here are some other works by the same author:

"Backyard Poultry Raising: The Chicken-growing, Egg-laying, Feather-plucking, Incubating, Caponizing, Finger-licking Handbook"

"Beekeeping: The Gentle Craft"

"Grow Fruits and Vegetables the Way They Used to Taste"

"Two Plus Two Equals Minus Seven: A Novel"

I haven't read any of them, but I recommend them all whole-heartedly. Maybe someone will tell me what his novel is about?

Also, my mother's B-friend has written a poem for Freddy and I, but there's a secret message in it I can't figure out. I'm really annoyed by this seemingly heart-felt gift, and feel that he's testing my intellect. Plus the poem itself is archaic and sappy. Will someone help me figure out the secret message?--I am unable to cipher this madman's obscure meanderings. Supposedly the clue to breaking the code is in the poem itself. I think there's an anagram, but I haven't found it. I will send the poem upon email request--I don't want to risk the author finding this blog on the small chance he might search his own phrases. Christus this is so Victorian! To whomever solves the riddle I will mail a tear soaked handkerchief. Or a dainty white glove.

LE NEZ

I'm tired of posting photos of myself, so I asked Freddy if I could take some pictures of his penis and his nose for a contrast-comparison article. "No way. I don't want to be objectified", he sulked.

So instead I spent an hour in pornland hunting for a cock similar to my own nose, a thin but pronounced crooked cock. I typed "Crooked Cock" on Google. But men with crooked cocks must refuse to let their members be photographed. A few penises looked a bit crooked only because they were partially flaccid. None had the pronounced hump I was seeking.

How is Gogol for a baby name? Noses substitute well in literature for references to cocks and masculinity. Famous people, artists, generals, always seem to have big unusual honkers and these big unusual honkers purportedly carry some indication of their personalities. If only the barber had discovered an erect penis floating around in his porridge (I'll paint over that passage and rewrite it to my liking) instead of a nose in his loaf of bread.

“Good sir,” Kovalev went on with a heightened sense of dignity, “the one who is at a loss to understand the other is I. But at least the immediate point should be plain, unless you are determined to have it otherwise. Merely — you are my own penis.”

The Penis regarded the Major, and contracted its brows a little.

“My dear sir, you speak in error,” was its reply. “I am just myself — myself separately. And in any case there cannot ever have existed a close relation between us, for, judging from the buttons of your undress uniform, your service is being performed in another department than my own.”

Oh by the substitution of that one word, the whole history of Russian literature would be changed. And this statue with an extraordinary story might have blown more fertile wads than snot on it's secret journey.

CUPS

Now that I have established that I will no longer be spreading sweet buttery sexcapades in these posts, I will have to learn how else to keep some sexual excitement present both on and off the blog. The original intention was that I would just make up the stories, but soon the line between imagination and my daily life faded away and my sex life became messier than even a sex blog could handle. Freddy and V. both visited here, and I had to stop writing about sex altogether.

It became too obvious that my posts were more often than not referring to actual events. Freddy had always supposed that my affair with the Maestro was concocted in fun--it could very well be that the blog was my way of telling him the truth without suffering the consequences of him thinking the affair was real. I told him, but he didn't know.

I have this uncontrollable urge to do exactly what scares me or seems wrong to me--I had to know what it was like to be with an old man, an old, selfish, powerful, and insecure bastard. It felt slimy, awful. For me to be with a man the age of my grandfather--nature does not intend it. What upsets me still is learning that though repulsed to the degree of having to sterilize my skin after contact with him, that my body could be so turned on.

My own repulsion turned me on. Watching his frail head between my legs, I would imagine the most gory things happening to it. I would imagine Freddy coming in and breaking his fingers one by one, and much worse damages best left unwritten. I could feel this simultaneously: wanting to thrust out my high-heels and gouge his eyes out while I was orgasming violently. What a dark place sexuality can be.

GOOEY STUFF

Today I asked Fred to tell me about his parents' divorce. They divorced when he was 14, and two years later, they remarried. They are still married.

When his parents were teenagers, his father carved his initials into his mother's thigh with a pocket knife. She was only 19 when they married, and she had a son a year later. Their first son died in childhood, and soon afterwards they had a daughter and another son.

I want to know why they divorced, and how it affected Fred and his sister, because I want to avoid at all cost bringing this pain to my own child. But Freddy refuses to talk about it at all; he won't even speculate on what caused their anger. It's none of my business, but having never heard my own parents raise their voices against each other even once, I haven't a clue how to prevent or respond to heated situations when a helpless child stands between.

It's a given that eventually one partner or both will tire of the relationship, and I expect that cheating will occur because I know myself and I know Freddy; I accept that we cannot always fulfill one another's needs or desires. I mean, we've already established that fact. I've cheated on him, and he's cheated on me. I just think that our friendship is strong enough to survive even this sense of betrayal; his view is probably vastly different but the fact that he is willing to forgive is the final proof I needed of his love.

SUPERFICIALS FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE

Ya ya ya. When you're feeling down an' de clouds gather roun', go git your superficials, ya ya.

Today Zulieka's superficials, pulled from beneath her panties, include four faces she wouldn't mind staring at for long hours on her pillow.

Who knows what nefarious doings made him for a short time the richest man in Russia (as Nadia tells me dinner is illegally obtained and eggs are literally poached). But such a pretty face, prettier even behind bars.


I would gladly let this NYPD Blue cast member handcuff me. Baby, put me in the cell next to Mik-ha-il.


So he's old and pudgy now, and probably gay, sigh, but I can listen to his Scriabin and imagine furious long-fingered excursions.


Well I couldn't find any stills from Hard Boiled, and this one is rather cheesy; all the same those big fat lips and furrowed brows could do a woman justice.

I can feel Bb's movements more and more each day. At nineteen weeks, he may be protesting the noise I make. I suppose he should get used to it as early as possible.

When my mother was here last week, Freddy observed the source of my noise-making abilites. Without thinking, with no consideration for the fact that he and I were listening to a pleasant Mozart divertimento while folding homemade raviolis in her honor, she sits at the piano and sings Strauss--Richard, that is. Her huge voice rattles us to our marrow.

Then Freddy changes the CD in the stereo to Joanna Newsom, and my mother stops singing and asks, "What IS that noise? It's awful!" I couldn't agree more, but at least Ms. Newsom is trying to be artistic while my mother is just trying to be noisy.

She soon tires of using her lungs and switches to Schubert Impromptus, and then violently scoots back the piano bench and decides that our plants need watering. Instead of watering the plants, she misses aim and pours a liter of water onto my wool rug. "What happened?", she asks me while I wipe up the mess on my knees.

In fact, the physical tendencies of water was a major problem for her during the visit. The coffee pot in a coffee maker is supposed to be placed under the filter logically to catch the stream of boiling liquid. Even after I had just explained this to her, she removes the coffee pot, fills it with water under the faucet, and then pours it into the top of the coffee maker while there is nothing underneath to catch the heated liquid. The coffee is made onto the kitchen floor.

But she is gone now, and things are much quieter. I don't know how she raised me without killing me on accident, but my nannies might be responsible.

This photo is specifically for the lovely, sweet, and seedy Pomegranate.

ONE WOMAN'S FUN IS TORTURE FOR MOST

Today was a good day. Yesterday was not. That makes yesterday much more interesting.

One of my very favorite activities is annoying Freddy. This I do especially when he is surfing internet porn.



I began with a vocal rendition of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, not suitable for voice. In the process of fitting five keyboard octaves into the vocal range of two octaves, most notes are sacrificed along with aesthetic consideration. The clanging of bells, chirping of chicks, and other sound effects, though much fun to squawk out in the extreme upper and lower ranges of the voice, intrude upon the unwilling audience of Friedrich as painfully as being screwed tight clockwise on a Red Square onion dome in the fleshy threads of one's asshole. I know every single movement by heart. And I like to repeat the Gnome and Baba Yaga.

But still, I could get no reaction out of him, so I crept up behind him and poked him with my fingers and pinched his nose and ears. He seemed to think this was cute, so then

as a last resort, whining. Oooh Freddy, I'm so hungry. I'm starving the Bb. Don't you think you should cook something for Bb? Don't you care about Bb's health? Do you want Bb to come out premature with a missing lung?

And do you know what he said? "Okay then, what would you like to eat?"

"I don't know. We don't have anything good to eat. What can you make?"

"Let's see...how about pasta? I can use that Italian sausage in a sauce."

"Blech."

"Well, there are some frozen pot pies."

"Disgusting!"

"How about a salad? I think we have some romaine left."

"No."

"Grilled cheese sandwich?"

"Yucko!"

"Tomato soup?"

"You call that food?"

Silence. He ignores me and tries to figure out some Perl at the computer. So do you know what I say?

"Fre--deee! Pleeese! The Bb is dying! Why don't you do something?"

And finally. Finally he breaks. He yells, "Goddamn it, I'm thinking! About what to feed you!" And do you know what he does next? He comes over to me and kisses me on the head. And can you imagine what I say?

I say, "I could make you murder me I bet. I could make you strangle me."

"But why?"

"That question is irrelevant. I could make you lose your temper, just snap. And before you know what has happened, you have killed me."

"Yes, but a lot of other people are in line ahead of me. Someone else would get to you first."

Then I push him and kick him in the shins, and he goes into the kitchen and cooks pasta. Oh yes, I am little miss evil.

RECLUSING

I have an occasional sickness of not minding what happens beyond the internal circles in my head. This hideout replaces the world which was mine during long meditative practising in little 4 X 6 rooms with no windows. After repeating an arpeggio a hundred times and not listening or even thinking but still making noise just because the notion of stopping has been forgotten, one finally needs to pee or eat and walks onto earth again, and it could be at sunrise or at 3 in the morning or dinnertime, but it is cold and one is alone. What has happened to that part of me, is it resting or is it lost? It had no reason or motive, no wordly ambition. But it wanted something very badly.

One phrase from beginning to end and you have in that small time infinite variations. A two-measure phrase, could be only 5 seconds long or 5.03 seconds long depending on your mood and the dictates of style. The notes are predetermined and those notes only you must play, and probably they must be played mezzo forte or pianissimo, legato or articulated according to the composer's markings. But the freedom of your expression increases exponentially by the dictates of specific instructions because each instruction raises the awareness of an infinity contained within limits; an instruction such as "pianissimo" is just a gateway into the infinite varations of pianissimo possible--furtive pianissimos, breathless pianissimos, secretly angry pianissimos biding their time. They're so much more fascinating, these unbirthed pianissimos, than our lives, our stupid politicians, our desire to destroy ourselves.

CUCKHOLDS, CUCKHOLDING, AND CUCKHOLDERS

So many worries about my mother and her new life. A recurring dream: my father is still alive but is sick and about to die, and my mother is already making plans with her new partner. My father knows about the affair and is aware that they are spending all his money, but is helpless because of his sickness.

I am supposed to be an adult, and it is hard for me to accept my mother with another man. So for a young child or adolescent, the separation between parents must be traumatic, and I will not cause this pain in my own child. Some people who divorce say that the situation was much worse in their family life before they were divorced, and that the fighting was harder on their children than the separation.

Call me stupid or naive, but why do divorced parents get married in the first place? Isn't it obvious whether you and a partner will last, especially after spending enough time together and communicating fears, dreams, foibles? Don't you know all of her faults, each annoying habit, her tendency to be unfaithful? This is what I ask my mother when she talks about her boyfriend's past wives--doesn't she think that his failed marriages, mistakes in his choice of partner made three times in the past, are an indication of a flaw in his own personality? He repeatedly married women who cuckolded him, and knowing that my mother is not that type makes me worry that she is not what he subconsciously desires.

Love is not blind; it sees everything. True, you can love someone despite her faults, but if you persist in commiting to her knowing full well that the commitment is not shared, you cannot expect a successful or secure future. The hope is that you can change this person--though rarely, people do change their sexual or relationship tendencies. But probably she will be sick of your own insecurity and low self-esteem, and will realize too late that you yourself will not be changed.

******

I have really put Freddy through hell, and I still don't fully realize it. I am probably incapable of realizing it. What it was, and is still, is unhappiness with myself which is easily thrown in his face as the cause of it.

When someone tells me that he loves me, I don't believe it. When someone shows me that he loves me, I don't believe it. I am therefore not responsible for any of the pain in a relationship and its dissolution. And when things end, some cold logic kicks in and blocks me from feeling upset.

One of the reasons I played around so much is I had a need to test him. That being with other men could end our relationship didn't bother me because in my not too small hatred of misogyny, the fear of being owned sexually and appreciated only sexually justified my need for proof that my desirablity was not lessened by my own selfish sexual gratifications. I have such a terror of being controlled that I would rather be called a skank or a whore and be told bye-bye for good, you skanky whore! than be with any person who would dare call me a skank or a whore.

Pretty much all of my relationships have ended with me being unable to summon the courage to break it off verbally and taking the easy out of having sex with another, and sometimes when this didn't do the trick, having sex with another and another until it did.

Paradoxically, I am infuriated if a lover does not want to sleep with me after I have confessed that I cheated on him.

To be honest, I could probably co-habitate with most any sort of man within loose limits. I am affectionate and low-key for the most part, and I like to see my friends or lovers happy. Because I adjust easily to a variety of relationship situations, I have trouble knowing what my own feelings about a man are. I do not experience all-consuming obsessive love; well twice I did, and the first time I was twelve, and the second time my father had just died, so I consider this type of love needy and infantile, and purely one-sided.

The only time I am aware of my feelings for a man is after I have left him. Then I either miss him or don't think about him at all. When I miss him, it surprises me. Then I feel remorseful and nostalgic but usually refrain from going back.

Happy Birthday to me. I was born in the City Hospital of Ernakulum in Kerala, India. My father was asleep, and the family chauffeur drove my mother to the hospital at 4 in the morning. The road was a recently converted railroad track. My mother says the hour drive on that bumpy ground helped stimulate contractions. It was monsoon season and the electricity was out in the hospital, so I was born in the dark.

She is here, my mother, visiting from Boston. She's a strange lady.

IS IT GUACAMOLE

or did he move? I felt a soft thud under my hand, but it could have just been gas making its way out.

Small changes here and there--you probably wouldn't notice: the skin on my face seems thinner, the blood is closer to the surface and a scar on my nose where my brother bit me twenty years ago is a little rivulet of red. My boobs are larger and fine hairs have sprouted up on my belly where before there were none. I can still wear all my jeans, probably because they fit around the hips and not the waist.

I bought some children's books today, more for myself I think. Unless he's some kind of prodigy, god forbid, he won't be ready to understand them until he's 6.


********


I asked my mother about toilet training. Both Freddy and I think hell, the earlier the better. Poo stinks. But I have friends who think you should just let babies shit and pee freely until they learn on their own so there's no trauma. My brother's kids were like that. They were screaming all the time and pooping on themselves until they were three.

Toilet training causes trauma? What trauma? So my mother tells me that I was potty-trained by the time I was 7 months old. If a baby has the awareness to be potty-trained at that age, you're doing both yourself and your child a dis-service by making them waddle around in diapers until they are four. Awareness of the body is the first step in self-awareness.

I think I know what trauma would be to a two-year-old, and it is not potty training. Trauma is being dropped off a diving board without your floaties with no one waiting for you in the water--my mother's idea of teaching me how to swim. (She always compensated for her own inadequacies by forcing me to into learning them. She can't swim herself.) In this instance her training was effective as I love to be in and under water. In other instances, especially with music, her iron fist left some scars.

But at least, though today I probably would have been taken from her and placed in foster care, she had the courage to let me do things on my own and be independent. When we lived in Hong Kong, she would let me ride the elevator up and down by myself, and wouldn't bother me if I wanted to stay in my room for hours painting yellow chickens. She would frequently leave me alone in the apartment while she went on an errand or to pick up a friend, and trusted me not to hurt myself. She was stupid in a way, yes; anyone with common sense knows not to leave a three-year-old by herself. But I credit her with at least giving me the ability to entertain myself, to not be afraid of being alone, and to not be afraid of new adventures. She trusted me. I trust myself.

Parents are so weird with their kids today. They are afraid both for their kids and of their kids. You never see a 7-year-old outside by himself on his bike because now parents think all other humans are evil and will kidnap their child. If a kid is outside, he's wearing a helmet and knee and shoulder pads, has training wheels, and his mother is with him.

The world isn't any more dangerous than it's always been. Sure our society has problems, but things were even worse in the 1960's. The difference is we're now buying into fear. We watch a lot of TV, and all the news is about fear. So now kids have to stay inside and watch TV and get fat and stupid. I'm so old fashioned. I believe in lots of sun and wind, bugs and scraped knees.

Friends, Romans, Country persons,

Most everyone visiting this site uses a Windows XP operating system, or an older version of Windows. If you use a different operating system, you are subject to being called "Communist!" by the honorable citizen Bill Gates. To be called a Communist by a megalomaniac monopolizer is flattering. It means that you are self-respecting and refuse to hand your hard-earned capitalist dollars to the richest man in the world. I am blushing at the thought that I can count myself to be one of the few Communists of cyber-space.

I do not know why Mr. Gates is so worried. Most of the bovine world is entrapped by Windows, and a few of us Communists are not going to make any his heavy pockets any lighter.

Comrades! Sisters, Brothers! If you too would like to be accused of being a Communist by the honorable citizen Bill Gates, spend an evening or two learning about open source systems. What? You don't have the time? It is too difficult? You would rather give thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime to a measley little geek, money that has taken more than a few work hours to earn?

I promise, in one evening, you yourself can switch your computer over to a Linux system--one that has, yes, office programs, games, graphics, audio editing--and can convert files to run, if necessary, on your behind-the-times Windows computer at work. Tomorrow I will write a one-page manual with installation directions: Linux for the Dumbest Dummies, and stick it on my side-bar. When you have your open source system up and running, you will be the envy of all of your friends, and they will think that you are a computer genius. When you need an excellent 3-D animation program, and you find that you can download one for free when Windows wants to charge $1600 for it, you will have thrown a cyber-clod of cherry pie into Mr. Gate's face.

The best part is that you will join a small but passionate community dedicated to making computer technology available to every member of the human race, and with open arms, the Comrades of open source will protect and nurture your computing chops.

If you really dislike that I can see what operating system you are using, your browser, which country you're in, that you don't have Java script enabled and your screen is only 800 X 600 resolution, and you really really DO NOT want me to know that my god, you are using Windows 95!?, go to @nonymouse who will provide you with a disguise. Or if you live in China, @nonymouse will grant you safe passage through the firewalls.

SUCK ME HARD WITH YOUR MASSIVE BLACK HOLE

I've always felt fishy about The Big Bang Theory--it just rubs me wrong. Recently I watched an interview with the Nobel Prize laureate Paul Nurse, and though his research is in medicine, he happened to mention the discovery of an enormous black hole. I finally have my proof (not only through the intimate knowledge that my friend the Black Wizard, a theoretical physicist, is completely blarney) that we are just pulling stuffed bunnies out of black holes and such.

13.7 billion years is a lot of time to be sure, but it's still a finite number invented by the human mind which MUST understand life and the universe in terms of beginnings and endings. A few of my readers are astoundingly smart, and much better at math and physics than I am. So maybe someone will show me how This Black Hole doesn't crash the idea of a Big Bang.

This Black Hole is 12.7 billion light years away from us. Which means that the radiation or light around it has taken 12.7 billion years to reach our telescopes. Which means that whatever shape or substance we are now viewing is 12.7 billion years old. Time and space are the same.

The Big Bang theorists claim that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old. So in looking at this Black Hole, 12.7 billion light years away, we are looking at the beginnings of time and space.

13.7 billion years minus 12.7 billion years is 1 billion years. This Black Hole had only 1 billion years in which to build the huge mass and gravity that we are seeing. Or maybe it was just born that way, poof, everything at once. As we speak, the numbers people are punching out calculations and theories to make this work within the tenets of the Big Bang. They are calling this Big Black Baby "precocious". But even our own Milky Way Galaxy, estimated to be 13 billion years old, used those 13 billion years to gather its brood and swirls, and it is no where as large as this single Black Hole.

Okay, suppose I believed in the Big Bang. Then:

If we are looking at THE beginning of time and space, off by 1 billion years, and everything originated at one single point in time and space, then our own Milky Way Galaxy (supposedly 13 billion years old) must still be exploding outward from this single point at nearly the speed of light. Otherwise, we could not be 12.7 billion light years away from the x-rays of another entity.

With the rules of our current understanding of physics, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. We traveled at nearly the speed of light away from this Black Hole for 12.7 billion years. Therefore, there is only one possible shape for our Universe, and we are on the outer edge. All other galaxies can be no farther than 13.7 billion light years away from the Point of Singularity. With the Point of Singularity in the middle, the boundaries of the Universe is a sphere. The space between the Point of Singularity and a point on the boundary of the Universe may not be occupied; however, there can be nothing beyond that boundary.

We cannot observe anything in our Universe farther away than 13.7 billion light-years. Before this number, 13.7 billion, there was no light. But here is the paradox: all galaxies do not have to be moving in the same direction from the Point of Singularity--if two trains take off in opposite directions travelling at the speed of light from the Big Poof, they will be 13.7 X 2 billion light years away from each other, or 27.4 billion light years apart. But we cannot ever observe this.

But I don't believe any of this, and if a crack-pot musician can dream it up, no wonder the numbers people are confused.

Sometimes I wonder, if we braked to a hard stop, could we see the light of our past? Someone 13 billion light-years away is seeing our Milky Way's beginnings.

Pshaw, I don't believe any of it.

Say it again.

I don't believe any of it.

GENES



I think, secretly, and will never write it down, that my reasons for having Bb are not purely altruistic. Without practising, without concerts, I feel useless. What else can I make that gives me evidence of miracles?

I can share with this person all the things in the world that I love. I will sing lullabies. I will cut apples in the shapes of bunnies. I will show Bb the beautiful and terrifying Egyptian statues in the museum. I will teach Bb how to plant tulip bulbs in the fall.

But I am really afraid that I will give Bb my unhappiness, the same restless and useless pacing back and forth through life passed onto me by my mother. I was educated in music with an urgency motivated by doom; every day closer to the year "it is now too late." By age three, she had me standing with my face to the wall calling out note names and chords as she played them at the piano. What was the point? Now, it IS now too late.

With my heart in my womb, I believe that he will be different; nothing like me, nothing like Freddy. And please God, without our noses.

FROTHY DRINKS

It will never happen again, this hollandaise, this glorious sabayon. The crowning achievement of my morning with a life-span of only three minutes and destined for the sink drain. I wanted to save this fragile wildflower for my lover upon his return, but it would have wilted by then.



He needs fattening up, skinny Freddy. He's finicky about food, and what does make it down his gullet wouldn't fit in a bird's eye. Try spreading the mass of a bird's eye over a six-foot-three frame, and you end up with nothing but bones and an imperceptible film of goo.

Most of his calories and nutrients are absorbed from beer. He drinks 12-16 bottles a day. I didn't complain about it in the past as he's much too reserved to exhibit drunkeness, but with hella responsibility on the way wouldn't you agree he should cut down?

At first I would hide the packs, minus three bottles, in my car, in the washing machine, in the basement. But Freddy would always sniff out the location. So then I took to hiding the individual bottles, which required full-throttle on my creativity and stealth. I did such a good job that I can no longer remember where I've put the bottles of golden ambrosia.

And because he is such a lovely man, Freddy has stopped drinking entirely. Alcoholic beer, that is. Last week he brought home five six-packs of different non-alcoholic varieties: Beck's, Kaliber, St. Pauli Girl, Buckler, even Coors (which actually tastes a lot better than regular Coors). He still drinks at least twelve of these a day, seeming to prove his point that he was never an alcoholic; he just likes the taste. I don't believe him of course.