Not That There's An Answer

Alone on Christmas Eve in Japan

Not wanting to lose it all for poetry.
Wanting to live the living. All this year
looking on the graveyard below my apartment.
Holding myself tenderly in this marred body.
Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness
wise people speak of, or the modulation
that is the acquiescence to death beginning.

Jack Gilbert

Coffee Break

You walk down your street, past the party where the Portuguese kids are running around on the sidewalk, in and out between the recycling bins, working off their sugar high, and past the fancy lingerie shop, the outside of which has been painted this daring and actually quite charming pink, and past the Japanese restaurant where the chefs seem always outside and smoking and unhappy, and past the Indian place where the tiny, pretty waitress once shyly asked why you never use the straw she brings along with your Diet Coke, to the coffeehouse that just put in new chairs and the pretentiousness level of the students working/appearing there has to have a set Sunday-night record, where you get an extra shot in the cappuccino because it's going to be a late night, and you head back, noticing that your new shoes are finally breaking in, and nicely, and these old jeans of yours make you a sexy beast, at least in your own mind, and better there, yeah, than anywhere else, and the fleece pullover is softer than Lorie Stone's kiss in 8th grade when you took a break from skating and it was "Y.M.C.A" playing, and the night is inky blue and the blown-around clouds are a gray that reminds you of campfire smoke and as you fumble for your door key, somehow, campfire smoke makes you remember a girl from high school gym who changed her name midyear to Sunshine and how long her legs were and the impossibly white Nikes, and you wonder, opening the door and returning to the desk, when she finally was embarrassed by that ludicrous, lovely choice, and it became something to blush from, to joke about, to forget, and you boot up and find the file you're working in, hoping the coffee helps you finish what's due by 10 next morning, and yet you still see her, falling down in the dust of the track around the football field, turning onto her back, rolling from side to side, laughing a breathless girlish laugh in snorts and gasps, long tangled hair the color of weak coffee fallen across her face, the one you don't remember no matter how long you sit there, screensaver casting falling stars down the reflection in your glasses.

Tehillim

Crusher is fascinated by the differences between the biblical Jewish worldview, expressed in the Hebrew, and that of later translators (Jewish and Christian). This short article by Robert Alter concerning his new translation of the Psalms touches on a lot of the important ones.

And Here Is Exhibit No. 38

CONCORD, N.H. -- A Concord man is giving up the fight to reclaim a mummified baby that he said has been passed down in his family for generations.

The mummy, known to Charles Peavey's family as "Baby John," was seized by the state nearly a year ago to find out exactly how it died. There was no sign of foul play, but officials said that it could only be released to a relative.

Peavey said he was saving money to pay for a DNA test, but he has given up the fight because the test would cost nearly $1,000.

"I feel like I've been robbed, honestly and truly," Peavey said.

Police were prompted to take action when they saw a photo of the mummified infant next to a live baby, Peavey's great nephew. Peavey said that the mummy had been in the family for decades and was displayed on a bureau in his home. [Crusher: Was it also used as a Thanksgiving centerpiece?]

Family tradition holds that the infant was the illegitimate child of Peavey's great-great-uncle and a woman with whom he had an affair. But after a long fight, Peavey said he doesn't have the money to prove that the infant is related to the family.

"I called my niece and said, 'We've got to raise $900 for this,'" Peavey said. "Enough is enough. Let the attorney general's office do what they will with him."

Peavey did not show up for a hearing this week to try to get the mummy back, a decision that Assistant Attorney General Richard Head said surprised him.

"It's my understanding he no longer wants to pursue this matter, so the remains will be released to a proper funeral director," Head said.

The mummified infant will likely be buried at the Blossom Hill Cemetery in Concord, which has offered to bury it for free.

In the meantime, the mummy's memory will be kept alive with a MySpace page Peavey's niece designed. The page opens with the theme from "The Addams Family" and makes joking references to Baby John.

"It at least raised some question as to what Mr. Peavey's intention was related to the remains," Head said.

But Peavey said his intentions were to put Baby John in a cement coffin he bought with the hope that he'd some day reclaim the family heirloom.

"John was the last thing we had left connected to our past," Peavey said.

Because Peavey didn't show up for Wednesday's hearing, the judge gave him 30 more days to prove that he's related, but Peavey said he doesn't plan to appeal the decision.

Crusher took this from John Dufresne and will display the story on a bureau in his home. Crusher family legend has it that Dufresne is the illegitimate offspring of Baby John (See? He was named for his father, obviously.) and an unknown woman.

Crusher, While Misanthropic, Finds the Objects of His Ire Endlessly Fascinating

When not calling down the fires of heaven on people, Crusher finds them endlessly fascinating. Exhibit No. 37: Crusher has a second-career student in one of his classes. She's a quiet, middle-aged woman given to wearing the same kind of pantsuits--seemingly always a lime sherbet color--a librarian in Grand Prairie, Texas, might find "professional," who sits in the front row, chunky feet primly crossed under her desk, assiduously taking notes on a steno pad.

Except today. She was today a quiet, middle-aged woman sitting in the front row, chunky feet crossed primly under her desk, assiduously taking notes on a steno pad, while wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and a fitted bandana with Harley Davidson emblazoned across the front.

Flann O'Brien: Not As Good As A Squirrel, But Still Pretty Damn Good

'Is it life?' he answered. 'I would rather be without it,' he said, 'for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.'

The Third Policeman

Why Crusher Loves Squirrels

When Crusher lived in Denver, he was most happy one morning to read that the mayor's car had been destroyed by a kamikzae squirrel. See, this self-sacrificing fantastic bastard (the squirrel, not then-mayor Wellington Webb, who is merely a bastard) had gotten inside the car while it was deep in the bowels of a parking garage. And then gnawed through a key wire in the car's electrical system, causing some kind of mega-explosion that blew out everything. And Crusher saw that it was very good. Sure, the squirrel also blew itself up, but an entire expensive car went along with it.

Turns out that this squirrel is only one soldier in a very large, very powerful squirrel army. And Crusher sees that it is very good.

Squirrels: Nature's Anarchists.

And occasionally also drunken little fuckers: