It's a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look, but wetter.

Continuing on Ryan's nature series: I fucking hate fucking pollen. Seriously, pollen? Stop trying to pollinate my face: your gametes are wasted here!

A story:

Having found the bathroom occupied, I was perched over the kitchen sink pouring warm salty water through my face (like you do), when I heard my roommate Hambone trying to get in through the locked back door. Being a nice fellow, I let him in.

Hambone: Thanks. Were you just neti potting?
Me: Yeah, why?
Hambone: You have neti-pot face.

A Short One About How Awesome It Is Where I Live

I'll keep it brief: springtime is really awesome in Virginia. I'd like to say that allthetime is really awesome in Virginia, but I do get migraines and from time to time it rains a lot and it is a "wet" heat when it's hot (which is to say it's the opposite of a middle Texas style "dry" heat where it's really hot but you can still wear jeans) and all in all the glasses I got at LensCrafters aren't "rose-tinted," as certain people are wont to say. But springtime is great.

I've never been particularly interested in nature writing, so I won't get into how my lawn is being eaten by dark purple violets and how all the neighborhoods smell like tulips and how when I go jogging there are hundred-yard sections of sidewalk completely covered in fallen white/pink dogwood petals. Dandelions, redbuds, red maple. There is so much pollen in the air it covers my car in chunky circles of yellow.

I would post a picture, but I dropped my camera in the indoor pool at the Sheraton we stayed in this weekend in Tyson's Corner. This weekend was like highs of 85, blue skies with little puffs of clouds every now and then. GODDAMN that's what I'm talking about.

My Chamber Door

It all began about three weeks ago. And I knew that Robin's were more comfortable living close to human homes than any other birds - I don't know how I knew this but I did. And so when the Robin started tap-tapping on our window, I was not all that surprised because I knew it would be a Robin because who else would it be? So I moved all the indoor plants from sight, so the bird couldn't see them. Still, though, it tap-tapped. So I placed plastic and ceramic and acrylic versions of animals or monsters - many of which we have in our house - on the windowsills. The Robin didn't care. It tap-tapped.

I assumed the bird was a moron, maybe damaged in some neurological way not all that surprising for city birds living on whatever city-infested foods they eat, but what I learned was that the tap-tapping of windows and all things reflective (also my car sidemirrors) during springtime is not all that uncommon. It's what they do. They see another very similar looking bird prancing around inside the glass and they've got hormones through the roof and they get pissed and they go for it. Protecting their quarter acre, they are.

There are many internet suggestions for this small epidemic of really annoying bird window bashing. Paint my windows with soap? Yeah, I did it, it doesn't fucking work. Dangle light mesh fabrics over the windows? (A) I did it, (B) it looks really stupid, and (C) it doesn't do a Goddamned thing. The bird first tap-taps on our bedroom window to wake us up with the sun, which is not when I particularly want to be waking up. Then she moves to the office, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room. All windows are thoroughly molested by the time I leave for work. I don't want to know what happens when we're gone.

The bird has not yet killed itself, and while I like to tell myself that I don't want this to happen, let's be honest, maybe I do. Right now, readers, it taps behind me. Right now. It taps.

RE:

Stan,
No. Not in Spain. Although it is a possibility and I am looking into it. I did, however, just recently emerge from the woods, from sleeping on the ground, gathering wood, staring at the fire, cooking whole chickens on a spit, turning the spit slowly, so slowly, watching the fat drip not down into the flames but constantly turning in its bead with the chicken, circling the flesh, never releasing its hold, like the same way satellites are always falling but with gravity and the earth moving they are not falling, they are circling.
Haven't seen you in some time, Stanley. I feel bad because when we last played phone tag it was because I needed something translated, not because I wanted to play Apples to Apples or drink wine and sit on your back porch and stare at rusty bikes. Which is really what I'd like to do. Sit on your back porch and drink wine. Stare at your rusty bikes. Your overgrown garden. Your half-collapsed badmitton court.
Nos vemos, guero. Nos vemos.
Ryan

An Open Letter to Ryan

Mi querido Ryan:

Did you move to Spain or something?

Un abrazo,

Stanley