my girlfriend cephalophile

my girlfriend the cephalophile

howdy!

heard from dickson for the first time in a couple years! while we

talked he missed his connecting flight at o'hara airport. we weren't

talking long, so it's not my fault--let's blame it on chaos theory!

what's even worse, he's a travel agent!

but it was good to hear his sunny voice again...

it's true, my girlfriend's turning into a cephalophile. i made up the

word from the cephalopods she's been obsessed with since we returned

from florida. ALL things cephalo (literally, "head foot"): squids,

octopi, arganauts, nautali, etc. she's got all the library's books and

videos on these creatures checked out, and like the proverbial "shrimp

platter", they keep cropping up in our lives. lara, a girl from work

just returned from mexico. "good," she replied to my question about

how the trip went, "i got attacked by an octopus."...like by thy

way...she was walking the beach when she saw an octopus on the shore.

she passed by on the ocean side of it when a wave came up and pulled

it back toward her leg, where he/she/it grabbed on to her leg,

probably thinking, "hey, something to grab on to."

"then it started biting me," she said, also matter-of-factly. she

explained that they were like little ant bites, but i was seeing the

beak from 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. you can't pull an octopus off

if they don't want to be pulled off--another interesting piece of

cephalo trivia. but she was able to get it to attach to her arm

instead, increasing her mobility and allowing her to wave her hand

around in the air like some sort of octopus club.

well, turns out that part of her group expressed disappointment about

leaving without seeing an octopus, when--you guessed it--in walks

lara.

reminds me of the crazy man in jeremiah johnson: "YOU WANTED TO SEE A

GRIZ?

WELL, YOU SKIN THIS ONE, I'LL GO GET ANOTHER..."

well, they were finally able to convincce the octopus to let go by

soaking lara's arm in salt water that was warmed to just the right

temperature, another piece of interesting, and yet practical,

information. (here at "lifestyles of the poor and shameless" magazine,

we aim to INFORM.)

and the new pirates of the caribbean movie (rated ARRRRR!) portrayed

davie jones as as some sort of ceph-human, which was fun to watch, as

was kiera

knightly. but not nearly as much fun as audrey tautou (sp?) who is

truly

outstanding in anything she does--another of my absolutisms.

and yes, distracted again from the meat, the message, the BONES, the

VISCERA! of this which is what, again?

my mom gave me the book "know-it-all" about a guy who reads the

encyclopedia britannica--33,000 pages, 4 feet, two inches tall stacked

together..."a virtual danny de vito of information and facts", he

explains. anyway, he discovers the fine line between being really

informative and being really

annoying. let me know if i ever transgress...

i'm still reminicing about 2006. i know you're thnking it's already

february, but since i haven't mailed my christmas presents yet, i seem

to be right on schedule. i'm refusing to go into politics, but i just

remembered seeing kathy, one of pam's clients. we'd heard so much

about each other that it only seemed right that we meet. a little

background: Kathy had terminal cancer, and that was only one of the

hardships in her life. she lost her husband of 50+ years. she signed

everything over to her son and daughter-in-law and then her son died

on the operating table during routine back surgery, which meant that

her daughter-in-law, whom she doesn't get along with that well, now

owns her house and everything. then her beloved beagle dog dies. her

grandson and wife go to jail for molesting the wife's daughter...all

of this hardship didn't prepare me for what a firecracker she is.

she was so fun, and flirty even, that i would never have guessed that

she was dying. pam was surprised to see her so well, herself. i feel

so lucky to have seen her sparkle, because my next visit, things were

much different.

she was practically bed-ridden drifting in and out of attention,

stopping mid-sentence oftentimes, leaving us the fill in the blanks in

our heads or probe for answers. but there were certain themes she

would come back to--one that i still remember was perry mason, which

makes me re-evaluate my criticisms of television.

she talked wistfully of the things that she can no longer do, or

things that were getting harder to enjoy, like eating. "if you could

have anything in the world to eat right now, what would it be?" i

asked her.

"strawberries," she answered so quickly, like she was expecting the

question.

well, the next time i visited she was completely bedridden, on high

powered pain releivers, and drifting in and out of consciousness. it

was a hard transition to see--and so fast. i think it was only 2 weeks

time. well, i picked out a nice box of strawberries to bring with me

(luckily she didn't say something like "mbane worms"). well, it was

hard to feed her--i had to cut it up and she drifted out a couple of

times before the first one--but when she finally noticed what was

going on she smiled, and you could she was smelling the strawberry's

passage to her lips like a wine conesseur. she ate slowly, savoring it

and smiling.

that was the last time i saw her alive, and that, is one of my

proudest accomplishments of 2006--that strawberry.

this week i turned on the radio and heard the last 2 words of an NPR

interview. they were:

"...toxic schnitzel"