cream cycle

One day you're
minding your own
beeswax
and voilá,
a wildcat
shows up



you have no choice
but to love him,
savage as he may be.
(pictured on their patio: Cookie and David's bobcat)

It all began
for me
with that picture



painted by Dale
twenty years ago.
Check out the li'l dahlink
peeping over my shoulder.

Two decades
and two understudies
later...
the first two couldn't keep their lines
straight...
the third
arrived demanding
star treatment.



I spend inordinate amounts of time
writing cat menus in my sketchbook.
I make it easy, just check yes oder no:

_____oui _____non

preceding each entreé,
appetizer or beverage on the list.

pages fill quickly with non after non
checks.



I dream of opening
the first kateteria,
"Guesssss Who's Coming to Dinner"
in New York

and of making the cover
of Biznessweek with its
and my brilliance.
Katomat.



Everyone
will pounce on
the chance
for kitty
to dine in such fine
design.

Catering to
hoity-toities of
utmost taste and
comportment,
no gangstas
allowed.
which would keep
mine off the premises;
glad i own the place.

Cuisine
guaranteed to
please
the best cons
on the planet,
meaning mine,
who will
open
a grand total of
two
katomat doors
to obsession,
either:

1.light cream, only one kind
is acceptable...no cheapo
will do. and,


2.solid white albacore,
NOT the skanky store kind,
brand name only
because it costs the most.

It's all very bad business, I know.



What comes 'round again is such mystery, ain't it.

sistahs

"Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them."
-Madeleine L'Engle

Herewith a confidential glimpse of the letter i imagine sending through USPS.
But since i won't, maybe i'll email it to my peeps this week like this:

"hey sis,
just wanted to let you in on what i want to say but am too chicken to send to another sis. thanks for listening.
party on & xox,
mk

'Dear Hillary,
Once upon a time, I waited in line for you to sign a copy of your book.
I still have it here in the studio, but like many things,
what seemed so important to have back then doesn't stand so powerful for me now.

Don't get me wrong- I admire the strides you've made fighting the good fight in the public sector. Your strength, conviction and moxy have served to create a potent persona and figurehead for thousands, maybe millions of sistahs.

But Hill, your hardest fight is finally playing out.
This is the one you bet the farm on.

Putting up with terminal bad-boying and societal embarrassment from your man....makes people still wonder why you didn't stand up and walk straight out that door to the big rock candy mountain of self-re-invention.
It would have been a hard, maybe impossible climb back up, but it woulda been
your climb.

Despite the perhaps inevitable political suicide, you could've been alive in so many other ways.
Many have climbed that Everest before you. It is a terrifying, death-defying trip and some slip off the edge. But many more make it back with miraculous tales to tell and a rebirth in the making.
And with the determination to: enable no more, no way, no one;
to stay raw and no longer rise above intellect
at a cost to instinct.

Too bad we weren't your role-models; we were waiting in the wings.

This fight is about lessons learned and lessons ignored and lessons that come around again if you didn't get it the first or second or hundredth time. and about false gain.
We fight it but we know it
deep in the gut while the mind plays broker.

Just wish you hadn't bet the farm on him.

Yeah, shoulda, coulda, woulda; easy to say.
Well, if you need a sister's shoulder to finally cry it out, Hill,
we're here for ya, day or night.

Yours Truly,
a fan who would bet on you
if you were free and clear ' "

fuente, full of tuna

It takes a village...



Lope de Vega
got the picture back in 1600's Spain: the glory, the darkness, the gory, the triumph. What else is there.
Having written between 1,500 to 2,200 plays during his life,
Fuente Ovejuna, based on a real story, tells a tale of the power of
the people united.

Early exposure to this drama in its language of genesis, bless Spanish teachers again, melded with that of Coconino County, surely influenced the newest version of the play: Fuente Full of Tuna

Demon kat crossed with li'l angel, Lope's back:


Lying in a work titled Portable Confessional, which Li'l Lope would soon destroy in a fit of creative fervor right after this photo was taken, one can only think that he was dissatisfied with its syntax. so was I.
A keyring of the pope, blessed by his holiness no less, hung from its middle.
Exhibited in several shows, perhaps destined to be a masterwork.
Now a cat bed.

Time to march on and give up the cross seems to be Li'l Lope's
familiar message and so it goes.

Back to senior: poet, soldier, scholar, priest, lover, sailor, prisoner, writer, rich man, poor man, Lope did it all. Always found the escape hatch of reinvention just as he was about to be trapped.
Lived nine lives in the course of one.

As fate would have it, Li'l Lope jumped the fence for the first time today.
Hard to keep 'em down on the farm, now they've heard the chickadee.
True to form as his namesake, the more you try to contain him, the crazier he gets. Could it bea those café anthems piped in on streaming mimi chanteurs.org all day long. Wailing about freedom from love, freedom to love, freedom from the Germans, freedom from it all.

Which is all the fuente ovejuna-ers wanted. Free to be.

And they make it so:
pardoned for the crime of self-defense against a tyrant
by those in plein aire control, the village is released, united,
to breathe the intoxicating air of liberation at last.

so the power-brokers can achieve the ultimate goal of mano a mano warfare,
using the villagers against Muslims.
Defeat of the infidel is assured in the face of a village
united.

maybe the next cat will come back as Joe Campbell Junior and help 'splain some things.

morning after

the day before i left town,
what should appear but giant cookie-cutters
on the street,
and people shoveling
gray grit madly into place.

the next morning, it was back on the bus again.
just before we left, i got this shot of birdfeet.
but what it would be
remained an utter mystery.




until now.
thanks to darling fridamorelia for staying in town
to witness and share the finale:


">

fuente/origen

historia de una vida en diez imágenes
a life story in ten pictures

la familia


buen can


buen pan


color vivo


raíces enredados


montón de flores


mucha moda


muerta con corazón

(por ophelia en cafépress)

santos colgados


mujer del diablo


(por jesús lucas lorenzo, pintor)

translation:

source/origin

the family
good dog
good bread
bright color
tangled roots
tons of flowers
lots of fashion
dead girl with heart
hung saints
devil's bride

como México, no hay dos

speech, less

"there is but one México."
literally: like México, there aren't two.

what is it with twoness.
am i being too literal?






seems to be another level, always




the way México is lived



and how it is visited



by twins within



seeking sun in shadow



and water.



one went,


two came back.


or maybe it's
the other way around.



hasta pronto, love,
mk

y entonces, me voy

and so, I go













No los olvidemos, todos vamos para allá.

Let's not forget, we all go there.

Till I return from México, cuídense bien.