Were it up to me, I’d wear them every day of my life.

Steph and me at the end of a pretty awesome day.

Not that there’s an apprpropriate or adult way to use the phrase “totally awesome” but I seem to do it in the most inappropriate places – like, in a crypt. Not sure if I’m chanelling Bill and Ted or Cartman-ala-Reginald. But I just overheard myself saying the very thing on a video clip of Poets Corner.

My primary school speech therapist would be appalled.

So would my grandfather.

“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

Roald Dahl

I’ve always loved Dahl. His being a Welshman and my being a West Virginian seemed to draw me to him. That makes no sense unless you’re familiar with both cultures…if you are, it somehow makes a lot.

I wear a cowlick. There’s nothing for it but to grin and bear it. And try not to be too conscious of the huge gaping forehead it inevitably doesn’t shadow. Pa has one. But he’s a man and wears Lucky Tiger and can get away with things like cowlicks. And pompadours. Me…I’m thinking about taking up hats. Again. Maybe even headscarves. Zadie Smith pulls them off. Why can’t I? (Please don’t answer that.)

Ten years ago I never smiled for photos. I never even sat for them. As a consequence I have zero images of myself at that age. Not even in my college yearbook. And I regret it. My twenties were about being self-conscious. My thirties will be about not being anything like that. At all.

No makeup. No fancy hair part to offset the tongue-print. No trying to hide my wonky teeth. (FYI: I’ve never had a cavity in my life. But my canines are small. And pointy. I look like a vampire when I broad-smile. And I don’t like that.)

The Euro took this photo of me at my brother’s house in West Virginia. I don’t hate it. And I’m not ashamed to say that. When I was twenty, I would have been.

I think I’m going to start doing this every year.

Buffy Holt. Age: I’d rather not say.

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.

— Sylvia Plath

Type your answer to the questions into flickr search
-Using only the first page, pick an image
-Copy and paste each of the urls in the Mosaic Maker

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3.What high school did you go to?
4.What is your favorite color?
5.Who is your celebrity crush?
6.What is your favorite drink?
7.What is your dream vacation?
8.What is your favorite dessert?
9.What do you want to do when you grow up?
10.Who/ what do you love most in life?
11.Choose one word that describes you?
12.What is your Flickr name?

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

~Anton Chekhov

Am ridiculously proud of myself for being able to compact a week’s worth of luggage (sans shoes) into one not-large suitcase. Have a sneaking suspicion my carry-on is going to outweigh checked.

Joseph had a way of knowing and speaking that set him apart from most people. The old lady in the photo saw it and felt it and said as much to his mother on the same day Joseph was born – before he had a chance to really know or say anything. Then both women died and nobody else much mentioned it. Until Joseph turned 30. Then everybody started to talk, because the town was small and Joseph was not and what else was a small town to do?

Some people said he was special and not quite right in the head and maybe that was where all his goodness came from – he didn’t know any better.

Others said he was marked by a higher power that tended toward Jehovah but from time to time became an eastern deity or a weird kind of mystic energy.

Everyone agreed he was different. What they couldn’t agree on – what no one really wanted to agree on – was why.

Me: So. You really think its gonna bring about the end of the world?
Him: Possibly.
Me: That we’ll all be sucked into some Swiss-manufactured black hole?
Him: There’s always a chance.
Me: You’re serious?
Him: No.

The Euro is a bit of an amateur physicist/cosmologist (No. Not Cosmetologist, auntie). He’s the one who, some time back in ’98, put me on to a certain Professor Gates, whose work I find endlessly fascinating even though I have to read most everything he writes about a dozen times over just to get a small sense of what he’s saying. So it’s no huge surprise that we’ve been talking about the Large Hadron Collider for several years now. The atom smasher will be turned on next week in Geneva. And Andrew Marr will present it live on Radio 4.

The Times (UK) has a great article on it today. And there’s always Professor Brian Cox’s quote in The Telegraph last May…

The good news, according to a German biochemist who has filed a suit to prevent the LHC from being turned on…if black holes do eat the world from the inside out, it will take four years.

So we’ll have a little time to sort ourselves out.

(I’m joking. I don’t think the LHC will be sucking the universe into oblivion. Really. Mosquitoes people. Mosquitoes.)