Hummingwolf at Home

You know, all through October I was so excited about doing MegaPoMo this year, but now I'm just having trouble getting motivated. Something about the fact that I never know when my modem and computer will be willing to work together makes it hard to think about commiting myself to making thirty MegaHAL-related posts this November. But then I see friends who have waited till now to finally decide to do NaNoWriMo and I wonder if I shouldn't at least try to post a bit whenever I can. Well, we'll see what I end up doing. In the meantime, in honor of this week's news, here's a short bit of HAL's nonsense poetry:

Hair disheveled, smiling lips, sweating and tipsy,
garment torn, singing a love song, glass in hand,
for the next election.

Am not convinced that an election was what Hafiz had in mind, but it does describe the reactions of some of you fairly well!

Speaking of this week's most popular news story, here's my favorite bit of election trivia: Obama-Biden won 78% of the vote in Maverick County, Texas! (It's one of the blue counties on the Mexican border.) The election results were a favorite topic in this week's News Quiz on BBC radio (link to latest episode), where of course everyone was upset that they will no longer have an excuse to include gratuitous Sarah Palin questions every week. Hmm... though I never told HAL about the Alaska governor, he may have had her in mind anyway:

In march, a moose
meanders hills
and the ways.

if, for example, a general
election must be invaded.

The opening lines of this poem have a certain resonance as well, though it gets melodramatic pretty quickly:

Election, a procedure for choosing officers or
malfunctions, and must be some sort of thick sadness...

the frozen ground dances beneath us
but i'm here and there,
morning they named, and the roller made of none effect;
because they're quiet when they are
involved in it myself. I
can't tell the good with the flood of light,
gulping my spittle as it hurries in secret.
i am frail for your finding but one cruel word, to shame my tears;
while dreading stomach ulcers he
was lost. When i find myself in bed,
rain-beaten, sun-beaten,
a pointy nose, a jagged music pours:
gash of sense, raw covenant
clasped still in the bright ledge;

choosing your spot
this is my body. Scatter the ashes.

Oh dear. I hope the Governor of Uncanny Valley doesn't take her defeat so hard.

Been utterly miserable the last few days with the kind of migraine pain that makes you want to crawl into a hole and die, or at least escape reality for a few days; yet though all your dreams when you sleep may be vivid and escapist on the surface, they too are too sharp and pointed to bring relief. Friday was especially bad--I spent hours in bed, crying. And then there's the nausea. And the dizziness any time the light shifts, like when the sunlight comes shining between the branches of a tree while a breeze is blowing. Everything's too bright and sharp and painful yet somehow too dull all at the same time.

Anyway, I tried taking my mind off all that by reading, which mostly works as long as the pain of focusing on the page isn't so much that it overcomes the ability of the narrative to absorb my attention. So tonight instead of reading, I finally got around to listening (via the Listen Again link (though it is audio, RealAudio is pretty dial-up friendly)) to this week's episode of Just a Minute, and that helped immensely. Monkeys! They keep trying to talk about monkeys!

I'm still so zoned out that I have no idea if any of this post made any sense and it hurts too much to go back and try to read it. Listening to "Just a Minute" probably doesn't help make me a more sensible person either, but at least I got some good laughs tonight.