I've been having the best luck, I've been happy, a poem

Autumn
by Richard Watson Gilder

An Autumn Meditation

For Autumn days
To me not melancholy are, but full
Of joy and hope, mysterious and high,
And with strange promise rife. Then it me seems
Not failing is the year, but gathering fire
Even as the cold increases.

Gawd...

Simply have not made any progress on The Kite Runner. Haven't rd past the point i left off fr the Oct 12th post. Damn you Wikipedia?! Made the same mistake as i did with Atonement. Wiki gives the whole doggone plots of the books (turn away eyes! Turn away). With Atonement, Wiki alerted me to the fact that unresolvable things were ahd for characs i was alrdy uninterested in &, for the most part, unsympathetic towards. I figured there was no sense of carthatic feelings ahd for me to be sufficiently motivated to go on. I wasn't about to suffer through the whole thing only to be left more pissed off than ever-- that's what your job is for! I was already annoyed by The Kite Runner's rich brat of a protagonist, Amir, mean-spirited sense of entitlem't, those few chps in, so when Wiki informed me of the pile upon, piled on, betrayals ahead for the good-natured servant boy, Hassan, fr that conscienceless brat...it was a wrap. There is no amount of atonement that would make me like the grown-up Amir. His crimes, too far-reaching; his destructiveness, great.

On the upside, i'm still slowly making my way through Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. I've been rdg it for a couple of months now-- & i even have a copy that's a 1st edition cover! Also re-rdg Jacqueline Johnson's very excellent, small press published, collect'n of poems A Gathering of Mother Tongues.

Ladies

if you catch your man turning to check out young girls asses, my advice to you? Run. Christ on a stick, what does it say about men who look at adolescent girls butts-- girls that are two, three, four times their ages?! Nothing good. And if you stick w/ such a man, i doubt that the future looks too bright. So what if the teenage twit-- who looked to be about 14 or 15yrs old-- is dressed in white shorts w/ sheer stockings on a cold day in Oct (obviously desperate for attn)?! Should man after man, that i saw in front of me as i walked a distance behind the girl & her friends, should they be turning to look at her ass. I'm sure most of us were young & dumb at one point (i cringe sometimes, looking back down that dark tunnel)-- we needed saving fr ourselves long past the adolescent yrs. The drawbacks of the growing process are too numerous to list.

I know that, for a large segment of the populat'n, age certainly doesn't equal wisdom or even reason (sadly, i avoid a whole lot of ignorant older people on a daily basis). But watching these older men-- some who must have young daughters, nieces, etc. of their own-- putting a crick in their necks, they were trying so hard, to look @ this girl's behind, i felt only sadness for any young female unfortunate enough to be saddled into the permanent orbit of these men.

This is not intended for all the good men out there being decent human beings (and I'm perfectly aware that there are monstrous women out there too). But, statistically, it's been proven that women are much more likely to be protective of the beings that had sprung fr their bodies, having been snipped fr the cord that had connected them; the emotional/maternal bond tend to be stronger than the inexplicable paternal one. So Men: Have some decency. And Ladies: Beware.

Whoo weee!!!!

My littlest niece (but growing in leaps & bounds every day) is a published writer! Cheyanne Alexandra Rosier, check out her book on Amazon.com Where did the time go? It seems that only yest she was only nine yrs old... Oh wait, she is only nine yrs old! (Funny, i know ;-)

This book-to-movie rdg jag, that i decided

to go on, isn't going as well as i thought it would. When i saw Atonement, by Ian McEwan, in the lib, i had some vague remembrance of, kinda/sorta, wantg to see the movie vers when it had come out in 2007. I think the reason i didn't go & see it then, is prob the same reason i had to chuck it into the Mid-Manhat lib return bin yest: Snore! Didn't i learn my lesson w/ A. S. Byatt's Possession?!

Huge, huge, simply, humongous fan of A.S. Byatt's short stories: Sugar and Other Stories (Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice is exquisitely fantastical, magical?, realism @ it's very best). Matisse Stories? Natch. Through a vague recollect'n of the imagery of fleshy nudity & lush foliage (or i could just have been mixing it up w/ Jane Campion's movie The Piano: Hot!) of the 1995 movie vers of Angels and Insects. I, through the grace of god, had managed to slog through the first novella of that book, Morpho Eugenia, in the spring of this yr. After that fiesta, finishing the second part, Conjugal Angel, was out of the question. Questions of the failed desires & distorted complexity of the human soul? I'm all for it. But the meticulous Victoriana & hypertexuality of Possession was about to drive me to drink (mmmm, prob not a bad idea). Everytime i saw any kind of cursive writg-- an indicat'n of a journal entry--or some kind of long journalistic quotat'n that went on for pgs, i was ready to scratch my eyes out. I just couldn't take the whole thing anymore & eventually just skipped vast sect'ns of text till i got to the, relief, ending.

I swore i would go back and rd The Fairy Melusina (one of the, seemingly, endless passages of poetic text in the book), the obscure epic of the feminist-minded poet Christabel LaMotte. After rdg the ending I was just too happy to be done w/ the book to want to dive back into the minutiae. Sadly, an intellectual i am not. Anyway, it was the A Lamia in the Cevennes story in Elementals... that made me a Byatt admirer. The lamia seemed to be another aspect of the melusine myth. I thought i had a winner w/ Possession. But it seems to be a postmodernist romance more to do with academic & scientific realism; not much my thing.

But i underestimated my complete lack of interest in English, so-called, "drawing rm" fiction. Any of the "classics" that i never rd in my teenage/high school yrs just is not going to get rd. That goes for other post-war British novelists like Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day-- good memories of Anthony Hopkins & Emma Thompson in the movie-- and upper-class old New York chroniclers like Edith Wharton (thank god for books on tape/cd! It was the only way i was going to get through anything by her. Really enjoyed Ethan Frome though-- which i believe was a bit of a departure fr her usu style).

I may have to go back to rdg Atonement at some point because, fr what i've rd, one of McEwan's achievem'ts in the writing of it is his execut'n of the ideas of Metafiction. If you rd Wikipedia's article on metafiction you'll realize that, hey, i'm almost sure to win some kind of lit award w/ this technique! Anyway, i'm now rdg The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. I didn't have any desire to see the movie, & this book, i know, is going to involve, in scope and subject, so many different levels of heartbreak. Right now, only a few pgs into chap four; it's aight.

Oy!

This is suppose to be a, somewhat, lit blog. But, boy did i feel truly illiterate after clicking on
the link to this website-- Oy vay!

Vote Now for the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction






So embarrassing to admit that i haven't rd much of the "lit greats." (what have i been doing...?)

I gave up on Faulkner after giving up on " The Sound and the Fury"-- a few pgs in-- in High School. John Cheever? Never hrd of him. Ralph Ellison I know, of course, but i really doubt that i've rd the "Invisible Man" (can't be sure; due to the fact that i've gone through so many books, like a steamroller, over the yrs & the memory ain't what it used to be). Eudora Welty & Thomas Pynchon? Sadly, no (know who they are, most likely haven't rd anything of their's). Thankfully i can say i've rd &-- in some instances-- rerd Flannery O'Connor's short stories over the yrs (my one redeeming writer).

Now that Sept is practically over

I finally have the Sept quote (see: Quote of the Month).

Saturday was beyond wonderful

Poets House sure knows how to put on an open house. The new digs are a thing of simple & spacious beauty (no more the dark cramped quarters of a lib rm). I got there at about a quarter past noon, it wasn't crowded @ all-- plenty of rm & space (can't belabor that point enough) to sit & marvel @ their lib collect'n. Lookg thru the stacks i came across this self-made book called "Pirate's Laughter," by a New Orleans based poet. I liked how it didn't have that mass-produced look;that freedom of choice & indiv personality went into the multicolored pages, the author on the cover dressed like a female pirate & smoking a pipe. The second half of the book was exactly that: The second part of the book-- the spanish version of the poems. Anyway, it was all really interestg & bcuz i've been thinkg of making my own book of poems-- note making, not publishing-- i could take heart that it could be done well.

At about 1pm, I left to enjoy Battery Park's gorgeous stretch of trees & immaculateness, along the waters of the Hudson, that kept tempting me fr the glass-sided overview of Poets House 2nd flr. After watchg the various maritime activities, & the Statue of Liberty in the distance, I wandered down to the pavilion where the evts were to take place later in the afternoon. Eventually, the fact that a band was warming up behind me started to filter into my consciousness. Yep, it was Natalie Merchant, & her guitarists, doing sound check.

Sigh. There are so little words to discribe the indiscribable feelings of finally hrg Billy Collins rd in person. Natalie Merchant described all the poets, who rd before her perf as "Titans": Several of my pesonal favorites, and possibly a coupla new ones. I take back everything i've ever said about Galway Kinnell. It's been, maybe, six yrs since i've heard him rd in person & it was a bit of a shock to see him so grey-haired, lookg like the elder statesman i suppose he is. He had two truly hilarious poems: One about Robert Frost being a chatterbox & the other about how eatg oatmeal is so boring it's advisable to do so w/ company (even if imaginary), aptly titled "Oatmeal."

So many great rdgs: Cornelius Eady did a 9/11 poem he had written just after those events-- which was appropriate, considerg how beautiful & resilient Battery Park City have risen fr those ashes. I was excited to see Marie Howe again, after already hrg her rd @ one of Bryant Park's poetry series this summer. "What the Living Do" is one of her most wrenching poems & it was so symbolic of the feelings of death & renewal that i always feel around this time of yr. Samhain again my friends.

And Natalie Merchant, how to describe my long ago college yrs? In the 90s when Tigerlily, her debut solo album, was on rotation at every college radio station across the country. How "Wonder" had us all convinced we were going to change the world.

Holy Crap!

Been busy-- w/ rdg, poetry & job related stuff-- & so haven't really picked up the The Village Voice in a while. Wow, there's a sh**loada movies coming out this Fall! Oscar time again, I guess. Anyway, it's bad enough i haven't gotten around to seeing Ponyo-- great reviews are motivatg me-- bcuz i haven't been hangin w/ my usu tween crowd (aka my nieces), but i've been rdg reviews on Michael Moore's, Jane Campion's & also Lars von Trier's newest (controversial of course) films. I figured i wouldn't make up my mind to go see Quentin Tarantino's newest movie, though i'm a huge Kill Bill Vol. I & II fan (I have a lot of self control, & little money, so i'll wait till Inglorious Basterds comes out on DVD).

There are a bunch of books that i wasn't too motivated to rd before, but am startg to feel the motivat'n bug now that they're bieng, or have been, made into movies-- superficial i know. No matter how hard Oprah tried, all i know about Cormac Mccarthy's The Road is that it seems to be somewhat similar to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series of books: I (The Gunslinger), II (The Drawing of the Three), III (The Wastelands), IV (Wizard and Glass), V (Wolves of the Calla), VI (Song of Sussanah), & VII (The Dark Tower). I know that both authors ideas are set in a post-apocalyptic world. And both have a man and boy traveling together (eventually King's Gunslinger, Roland, acquires some more traveling companions besides the boy Jake).

These books possess an overwhelmgly profound wealth of literary feats-- to this day i'm still uncoverg King's literary references. It's not only "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, but Rhea of the Coos fr Dark Tower 4: Wizard and Glass, refers Robert Frost's "The Witch of Coos." King's work tend to echo epical poetic traditions themselves, w/ their titanic themes of journey, revelation and finally, sometimes, redemption. (The Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption short story is one of my favorites of the written word-to-movie genre-- O how i love Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption!).

Anyway, before this post turns into a love fest to Stephen King, another book w/ a movie version coming out that i've been hesitating to rd is Push by Sapphire-- poet extraodinaire. I've been to see her rd in person (a tiny dynamo!). I may bail on rdg it though (prob the movie too). These books w/ their glut of painful human suffergs, especially the injustices committed against childhood-- because i was a child myself, once-- are just too much to rd sometimes. The written word is alive to me. It took me a while to recover fr such books as Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, When Things Get Worse by Barry Callaghan. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm off to the Poets House grand opening tomorrow, Yay! I'm going to miss the old Soho locat'n-- fond memories of workshop & rdgs. But I love the Hudson River locat'n (even better memories of summers down by the water-- especially those great evts i managed to make it to along that long stretch of the Hudson River Park:

September 25, 11am–5pm Invocation of the Muse: Poets & Musicians Toast the New Poets House

Finished rdg "Eclipse"

over the wkend-- the third book in Stephenie Meyers teen vampire romance series that started with Twilight. To say these books are addictive is an understatement! I'm long past the teenage stage, but i've been gobbling them down like the most addictive of sweets, since rdg the first book about three wks ago. Since i can't get enough of them & i'm too poor to actually buy my own copies i've been findg them at the public libraries pretty consistently since last wk.

I ended up watchg the Twilight movie, months ago, completely by accident. My sister's boyfriend always get a bunch of random DVDs fr someone he regularly goes to. Since he always has just the most unlikely choices, we ended up w/ it in the bunch he had brought over. A fan of paranormal romances, i fell for the movie and haven't been the same since. I found the book in the lib a few wks ago & rd it in, like, twenty-four hrs! I got my hands on New Moon last Mon. & was done by Tues. It was such a relief to finish it before the movie came out. Things kind of took an uncomfortable turn for me in Eclipse though. I haven't felt so compelled about a book since Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Unbelievable, but after talking to one

of my former co-workers fr my Coney Is job, I started to miss those mornings, hurrying along the boardwalk with only a few minutes to spare before i would be late. Trying not to let the miracle of working so close to the beach pass me by-- the wind flowing across the water in early morning coolness, feeling like an epic, as i look across the so-far empty stretch of sand.
Sand still drains from hidden crevices in the comfortable running shoes that i wore for my marathon days of standing at that job. A Charles Simic poem my friends:

Couple at Coney Island

It was early one Sunday morning,
So we put on our best rags
And went for a stroll along the boardwalk
Till we came to a kind of palace
With turrets and pennants flying.
It made me think of a wedding cake
In the window of a fancy bakery shop.

I was warm, so I took my jacket off
And put my arm round your waist
And drew you closer to me
While you leaned your head on my shoulder.
Everyone could see we'd made love
The night before and were still giddy on our feet.
We looked naked in our clothes

Staring at the red and white pennants
Whipped by the sea wind.
The rides and the shooting galleries
With their ducks marching in line
Still boarded up and padlocked.
No one around yet to take our first dime.

These are my thoughts

after lvg the Charles Simic rdg @ Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House last night:
-this is what i'm going to miss about NYC when i finally fly outta here like a bat outta hell next year-- walking thru the streets w/ a little plastic glass of white wine
-i've found a new (haha!) poet to love (Charles Simic writes the kind of poems that appeal to me: proletarian, profound beyond what is actually being said w/ vast stretches of silences in the center)
-this is what i like most about Lilli Vernon Hse-- the wine reception! (I felt better drinkg in the subway than i felt thru my entire day of errand hopping betw Bklyn and Manhattan)
-that girl who asked a question (can't remember what the ques was) sounded so much like Maria-- the Russian girl @ my summer job who told me about Charles Simic-- that i went lookg for her after the talk ended

Let me explain why i've been M.I.A these last few mos my oh-so-indifferent public. I've been workg @ my seasonal summer job out in Coney Is-- a vast wasteland of flaunted labor laws & criminal mismanagem't! But, alas, this soul destruct'n finally ended Mon & i seem to have some free time while my attempts to find somethg that pays above min wage cont to be ignored by this buyers market of a recession economy-- oh joy.

Anyway, Maria who is a Russian-born recent college grad who wrote for & was a staff @ her school lit journal told me about Simic, & right after rdg The L Magazine events sect'n i saw that he was kickg off the rdg season @ one of my favorite haunts.



Turned out he recently joined the NYU Faculty. Alice Quinn was her usu observantly literary self. A snippet fr the eve:

Alice quoted fr an essay where Simic said somethg to the effect that poetry was the orphaned offsprg of silence. Simic then laughingly disabused everyone of the notion of him as a solitary broodg poet walking the moors or-- more accurately it would seem-- the empty darkened wooded areas of New Hampshire. He-- more or less-- said to be careful of taking what a poet says as absolute truth. That he very much loves drinks & conversat'n w/ friends (& fr the hacking coughs throughout the rdg: Smokg?). What a man of words-- to the God of poetry & wine: Oh thank you!

Oops-- nearly fell of the train sta platform as i was transferring trains on the elevated outdoor stop. I stumbled as i was leaning out to look for an oncoming train. I started laughing & this lady who saw the whole debacle said "That wasn't funny." I just laughed some more. All that on a tiny glass of white wine!

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

by Billy Collins

"I write poems for a stranger who will be born in
some distant country hundreds of years from now."
Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the childeren, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads towards me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
Whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how stange and colorless the clothes you wear,
I bet everybody in your pub,
even the childen, pushes her away.

What happened to the dog?

This is the ques a friend of mine asked me via email. For those of you who, like my friend, couldn't get thru on the site to lv a comment -- i've been wondering why i haven't been getting any comments @ ALL!-- i wanted to let you know what happened. I've been so busy w/ job search & trying to set up interviews &, let's face it, a million & one things that crop up during the course of a life, that when i called the ASPCA on tues to find out how the dog was doing, i was just overwhelmed w/ just this-- i don't think guilt-- regret the whole day. The long & short of it is the person i spoke w/ said they did get a call fr the area but never came to pick the dog up.

I went back to the check cashing place yest to find out what happened to the dog since these people never even showed up to get it! The young lady i spoke w/ said that the dog disappeared & that her co-worker then saw the dog in the garbage can in front out on the sidewalk.

To say i'm so overwhelming disappointed in the ASPCA is a complete understatement. I spoke w/ the same person this morning-- a very nice person who expressed his sympathies when i told him the ultimate fate of that puppy-- & @ this point i was trying not to break down crying. He explained that they can't always pick up all the animals that they get a call for in the course of a day. That they're a small org trying to service a wide area. That more often than not they do go & get the animal, & he recounted the # of animals that they did pick up that day.

It's cold comfort tho that this puppy wasn't one of them & so ended up dead. It says something so bad about the brutality of, i know not all but, some people. When i called on tues & was told the dog wasn't picked up, i asked "what happens when you guys don't go get them." He said well the police could have gone & gotten it. Well, i won't go into my views on the awful NYPD-- just about the last people anyone would want to call in an Emergency (which would make them happy, since they really could care less about what happens to the innocent).

But i blame myself too for not staying w/ that dog. I just never thought it would all end like this.

I saw just about the saddest thing today

On my way to one of the train stas in my Bklyn neighborhood, i saw this half-grown, seemed to be, boxer mix still in puppyhood-- she/he (in all the commotion i didn't even think of checking gender) had the fine squared head & bright glossy eyes i've somehow come to assoc w/ boxers-- trying to get inside a check cashing store. This little dog was so covered w/ cuts, bruises & smelled so bad, yet when i bent down to touch her/him was so energetic & friendly. I didn't know what to think as i went into the check cashing place & asked whose dog it was.
All the people waiting for service said it was, obviously, a stray & i said the poor thing needed to go to the animal shelter. My distraction seemed to be what the resourceful little dog was waiting for as he/she slipped in. One of the employees shouted that the ASPCA was on their way, as me & this young guy chased the dog all over the store. It must have taken us about 10 mins to get this dog back outside. It's a little over 20 degrees today, after our big snowfall yesterday, & i didn't blame her/him for wanting to stay inside where it was warm.
I wanted to wait for the ASPCA to come, but i had an appointment in Manhattan that i was going to be, at least, a half an hour late for as it was. I tried to tie her/him up w/ a plastic bag-- so that people coming in & out wouldn't be pushing at the dog's constant attempt to get back in out of the shivering cold-- but, walking away, i looked back & saw that already the poor thing had slipped out of that makeshift leash.
Being more of a cat person, i don't know too much about dogs. But more than ever i wished i wasn't so completely down & out. Already such a sweet dog-- didn't even put up much of a fight when me & the kid caught & carried her/him back out-- w/ care & comfort that dog would make such a wonderful loyal pet.
I'm going to try to find out what happened w/ that dog tomorrow. I come across so many strays on the streets & it makes me so sad. Things are so difficult right now. The no-kill animal shelter i worked for last yr in Queens has closed down-- along w/ another of the org's facilities. But so many orgs had had to restrict their resources or have gone out of business & w/ jobs so scarce i'm sure a lot of families, along w/ their pets, aren't too sure where the next meal is coming fr.

What on earth is going on

w/ the numbering in Mary Oliver's collection of poems Thirst?! I'm not sure if there's some kind of signif to the misnumbering, or if Beacon Press just messed the thing up (prob not). I'll have to do some research on this. (Yeah right. Let's see if i actually get around to doing it...).

Finally

rd a Joyce Carol Oates novel-- something i've been meaning to do for such a long time! However, instead of starting with heavy hitters like Black Water or Blonde. What have started me off on my J.C. Oates journey is a, (not good to assume, but i'll do it anyway) i assume, little known Young Adult-- the classification i found it under @ the NYPL-- novel called Sexy.

As my nieces continue to get older at, practically, the speed of light (though close to, and at tween stage now), i've become more & more interested in finding out exactly what kind of hell my sisters will be in for when the teenage yrs hit. This is a new era we're living in. I figure, though things will always be different for each generation, these are interesting times, c'est vrai?

Though Sexy is damn good literature that Oates is writing for the young crowd-- the exploration of the developing male adolescent sexuality (something i'm not too familiar w/ coming fr a family made up of mostly women). The cover drew me in-- a hunched over vulnerable-looking pic of the rawboned protagonist, under such an explosive title!-- but the blurb on the inside jacket was just so misleading. (Misleading blurbs are a problem i come across every so often, so i try to take them in stride. But it gets a bit annoying). I don't know, maybe other people would feel that the story did fulfill its catastrophic account of broken trust. For me it didn't. The novel is so much subtler than that. And i felt that it wasn't so much the adults in his life that the sixteen-year-old Darren Flynn lost trust in-- it's more internal & psychological (not to mention hormonal!) than that.

Hmmmm...

Sometimes you find yourself remembering these little stories that you rd at random in one of those small press lit. journal-- months, even yrs later-- and it triggs such a flood of wonder at how much it had impacted you w/out you really knowing it had packed the powerful punch it did.

It makes you then wonder...what the heck was the name of that writer?... thinking to look him/her up to find out what else they've been up to; if they've been busy racking up the awards & prizes. And that story-- now you come to think of it, was so stunning in it's attn to craft and insight into the infinite complexity of human nature-- did it win its author some of those awards and prizes? A Pushcart maybe? And even though i know you really shouldn't live your life by awards, they're somewhat of a barometer of how much time and effort you're actually putting into this thing you so optimistically call a career choice (something to remember when the malaise of existential despair makes an appearance at the door and settles in for a long visit).

I've noticed that stories about older women stay w/ me the longest-- maybe it's because in a short while i'll be an older woman too. Or maybe these stories that have so impressed me are written by older writers (typically women) who seem to have had quite a bit of time to perfect their art & know their way around a sentence or two. Then it's hard to remember which little journal i actually rd the thing in, since they're so many to wade thru (not to mention which particular issue of the journal it was in). I know i could try googling whatever details i can remember on the off-chance one of these details will snag on an online archive.

But time and, lets face it, motivation isn't big on a lot of people's agenda, so i let nature takes its course: Eventually i find myself rding over issues of journals i'm familiar w/ and Lo! Jackpot. Or rding a new issue of a journal i'll find a mention that a particular story or poem had gone on to some prize and Lo!(again) it was that little unforgettable darling that had so insidiously worked itself into the subconscious-- storing huge chunks of itself in one of those vast memory compartments that had then sprung open out of the blue one day in a quiet moment of completely unrelated reflection.

More Kimi pics...

Kimi decided to hit the road once and
for all...drat, escape plan foiled again!



Kimi having decided that she'll get her glass of
water herself-- preferably w/ a huge goldfish in it!


Kimi trying to catch up on her rding
but distracted by all the human traffic