Swooning

I have chosen to spend the second half of my birthday purging and reorganizing my office (I believe Badger has already used the Augean Stables analogy; it is appropriate here as well).

Laugh if you will, but an orderly workspace makes me happy and productive. I resonate with my surroundings, so trying to work in chaos means I end up suspended in a chaotic miasma. A harsher analysis would be that I am one of the obsessively reorganizing purse-people from Amelie, but I think that is unfair. Reconstituting the innards of my bag or office after an extended stretch of neglect is a voyage of exploration and discovery!

Evidence: After a years-long search, at the back/bottom of a just-uncovered box, I found our copy of the poem that Spot's wife Roon read at our wedding. Here is the part that would have made my nuptial eyeliner run if it hadn't been shellacked on, big suck that I am:

The moment I heard my first love story, I began seeking you,
not realizing the search was useless.
Loves don't meet somewhere along the way.
They're in one another's souls from the beginning.
-Jalal al-Din Rumi, adapted from the translation by A. J. Arberry

(Noise of honking handkerchiefed nose-blowing in background. Yes, I have one of those sickeningly sweet gooey centers.)

Here is one of Iz's favorite poems, courtesy of S. S i l v e r s t e i n.

THE B L O A T H
In the undergrowth
There dwells a B l o a t h
Who feeds on poets and tea.
Luckily, I know this about him
While he knows almost nothing of me!

She thinks that a b l o a t h must have gotten Jack Kerouac. I don't have the heart to tell her that his guts ruptured after a lifetime of one-too-many drinks. She is also worried about her dad and LH (poets both), but I've told her that the poet-and-tea-sucking beasts only live on the East Coast.

On the way to breakfast, while listening to LH's hella good CD which because it was my birthday didn't skip, Iz was wondering at some of Kerouac's word forms. I told her that poets are sorcerers, that they have the power to melt and mold words, and make them magic.

"How do they melt the words? What kind of oven do they use?"
"No ovens. They use their minds, hands, eyes, and mouths. Minds to conjure up the words, hands to write them, eyes to read them, and mouths to speak them. Magic. Respect them, they are powerful beings."

She seemed satisfied.

Back to the office-gutting before the double shot wears off.