Kirmizi_ada

Recently, spam has become immune to my mail-filter, which means a flood of nonsensical nonesense in my inbox.
I take this hard, and personally. But ever since I saw Sigourney Weaver play Scrabble in "Snow Cake" two days ago, spam subject-lines have taken on a kind of mystical directivity. I've started collecting them. They make nice little titles for poems.
Here's one called:


Embalm boom box


We lean a minute on our grouty machines,
We read this note again,
each holding a corner of the post-it paper still

We watch the fibers
air-lifting the syllables
out and elsewhere

(because you couldn’t count
on the humans—
they say a lot with those mouths they have,
but not this:)

The three b’s stewing under and
up like cherries without their skins
How every thing gets modified
How sticky transitive and blind

I think about the regional manager
Folding back down into that silvery rental car
Out campaigning for her losers again
Or calling-in to call-in centers

Did she picture us standing over this,
taped down queer on the mixer table
Under the flour-lacked timeclock

Maybe my colleague has thought of better questions:
will the solution hold
doesn’t it rot the speakers
won’t the switches and inputs fall lame

when do you know to stop
do we just work our time up here in silence
which delivery van does it go in when we’re done?

Looks as if written on the steering wheel
Or on something else void and shaky
(You can feel that dust
stuck on the back.)

This week, a trans-Atlantic shout-out to my friend Liz in Bernal, who rocks my Erdball gently and steadily. And one for Russell in Oaxaca. I can’t wait to see you wiggle your feet in my bed and smile at me with your eyes closed. And Dor on 120th St. for holding space for me in your wild and precious life. And for Mom, Bob, Alica, Aunt Judy—all of my friends who have birthdays between November 10th and 20th; isn’t it cool that you all have birthdays right about nine months after Valentine’s Day? For my dad: I see you in my own body every morning. And for DD who refreshes the mystery every time I see her. For Chris, who has the most generous laugh in Berlin. For Graziano, who showed me that empty ballroom, that tea house, that tiramisu. And Chantelle, who has been a more prolific source of humanity for me than the humanities over the past six years. For SLR in Seattle, I think, who I hope will someday be my roommate again. For SAC, with love spraypainted red. For Corey, fine gentleman and early-Marxian visionary. For Koray, who lets me beat him at tavla. For Thomas, who didn’t have to let down his hair. And for Donnie, who is getting older but you could never tell. For Vassil, with all the ways he welcomes. For Travis, oh Travis—du verschlägst mir den Atem! For my Berlin high-school students, whose essays comparing Fahrenheit 911 and Loose Change would get any US public high-school teacher put on some FBI watch-list somewhere. For Wiebke and Ursel, my virtual bodyguards here in rough-and-ready Norddeutschland. For Hüzüriye, who makes me talk faster, lest I become listless. And Noah, whom I imagine singing me to sleep. For Julie who is holding down Texas until the rest of us get our asses down there. For my Gramma who lights up the twenty-first century. And for my other fearless and sleek MCs-of-the-future like Susan in Seattle, Justine in Oakland, ARM in Boston, Jen in New Bedford, Erik inside or outside the Beltway, Don way up there in Twin Peaks with his fahncy Chrome bag, Priscilla in Oakland (die haushoch gewonnen hat!), Yael (who is everywhere simultaneously), Lindsay teaching almost everything in Springfield, Electric Jones on his high branch in Chinatown, J-A singing in the Netherlands, Eyra, Luis, Raquel—I love you and wish you happy thanksgiving, in good spirits and warm company.

Come to this land of sunshine
To this land where life is young.
Where the wide, wide world is waiting,
The songs that will now be sung.
Where the golden sun is flaming
Into warm, white shining day,
And the sons of men are blazing
Their priceless right of way.

Last night, Arisona became the first state ever, in which the voters themselves rejected a ban on gay marraige. Masseltov, Arizonans! Since I don't know the melody to the state song, I will just set the words to "Strange Fire" and sing it on the subway this morning for spare change.

Unfortunately, despite having canned two anti-immigration House candidates, these voters also approved English-only legislation with a devastating 74% majority. I guess you can be a married gay immigrant Arizonan, as long as you do it all...in English. Hmmm, ¿qué hacer?

The Hamburg weekly Die Zeit dramatically painted the new US political landscape this morning as follows: "Bemerkenswert ist auch die Geographie dieser Wahl. Sie hat für die Republikaner einen Todesstreifen produziert, der sich von Neu-England über Pennsylvannia entlang der grossen Seen bis in den Mittleren Westen zieht. Hier sind die Abgeordneten der Rechten haufenweise gefallen." ["The geography of this election is noteworthy as well. It produced a no-go zone for Republicans, reaching from New England over Pennsylvania along the Great Lakes to the Midwest. Right-leaning Congressmembers there have fallen by the boatload."]

The magnetic gates at the Karstadt shopping center down the street are now draped in "Frohe Weinachten" cosies. Grocery stores are stocking organic Glühwein in their vitrines for 2.95 EUR. And to think that Halloween was all of 13 hours ago! A bargain-table placard at the Dussmann bookstore on Friedrichstraße reads “Es weinachtet ein bisschen” [“It is Christmas-ing a little.”] To which I secretly begged: Bring it On!

While snacking at said Karstadt today—trying to reason away an uninvited meatball in my lentil soup—I set out to ascertain why I adore Christmas so enduringly. This was one of those ventures that could only end in spiritual ruin, I suspected, but nevertheless:

I brushed aside the tinsel-decked, chestnut-roasted bait—the Temptations doing “Rudolph”, Jessica Simpson and/or David Bowie doing “The Little Drummer Boy”, Mariah Carey in a glittery Santa Hat, flammable decorations, my great aunts Ruth and Margaret knitting mittens, and eggnog with rum. These were surely all topical expressions of a more deeply anchored devotion.

I knew I loved my family, airports, and snow; seeing any of these always makes me happy. I knew that I had once loved Windham Hill’s holiday piano music, and still grin in its direction, as one might grin in the presence of an inscrutably beloved ex-spouse. Petit-bourgeois and sentimental to the very hilt, I had to acknowledge that LL Bean, Trader Joes, and Restoration Hardware could adequately outfit my own personal afterlife. But I also thought about how I am a big-old atheist, and that—though I may long to smell the myrrh and moist straw in the manger—Jesus’ birth itself gets only about a 5 on my divine seismograph. So tell: why do I promptly rise up in joyous song when everything turns red and green each November? And why do I feel no desire to break with this wassail-slinging madness?

Which is when I turned with a plaintive whimper to "Born to Kvetch", a fantastic little biography of the Yiddish language by Michael Wex. On page 21, he talks about how nitl nakht (Yiddish for Christmas) is a day when some observant Jews used to take a break from studying Torah—a prayer practice that, among other things, blesses the souls of the deceased. Torah-study on Christmas, it turned out, might be an inadvertent leg-up for the goyim.

Do I maybe jones for a little nitl nakht myself, a break from my more or less earnest study of the world in order to watch Washington’s fundamentalist cabal fumble through its yearly behemoth of tax write-offs, family melt-downs, and bankrupt well-wishes for the troops? Or am I, too, just hooked on the ecclesiastical calendar—the eternal circle of folly and reconciliation, months of potatoes for an hour of mutton, boundless domination in West Asia for one snow-angel on the front lawn?

I don’t know, but boy am I excited for X-Mas 06. Staving off North Sea winds with mulled cider in early December, pre-Christmas watching Lifetime with my mom, New Years on a Greyhound to Vermont. Maybe Nancy Pilosi will even be Speaker of the House by then.

It’s a twisted mystery, but the blessings never fail.