Favorite scents

• Jasmine in bloom
• Hash browns cooking
• Snow at night, when the temperature is below freezing

(more to come)

Americana (abridged)

So when you fly from Appleton to Denver, the first things you see are small farms with one farm house and one barn each - perfect, quarter acre squares cut out of the landscape with roads between that run exactly north and south, and exactly east and west. This continues for hours, although you might go in and out of cloud cover, but when you emerge there it is again, that midwestern grid, all the way across the middle. Then, eventually, as you head west, you start to see the circles. They are bigger than the squares were, a whole acre each, perfect green circles and you can see along a radius the straight black irrigation pipes that define them, and brown bits at the corner before the next circle in the quilt. Then as you go further west there's more brown, and fewer circles, and some gentle undulations of the land but it's more barren and scrubby. And then just when you're sick of that, the captain announces your descent into Denver and asks you to fasten your seat belt and put your seat backs and tray tables into the locked position, and then if you're by the window you look out and see what seems like a line of low clouds defining the western horizon but as you get closer it's clear that it's snow at the top of the mountains, and when the plane swings around either to the right or to the left to approach the runways you see sun glint off the tall buildings downtown. You look out over it, that distinctive Colorado vegetation and the city and the peaks beyond, and wince with all those memories of being young and new and learning to drink and dance and all the rest of it, but as the plane taxis you look out over it, that brown scrubby landscape, and you’re reclaiming it and it’s yours.

Written after a flight in September as part of an email (thanks DJ for permission to reprint), abridged as above and read out to a poetry group tonight.

Possible Answers

No, never.
I'm flattered, but no, I don't think so.
Not right now.
Not right now but maybe later.
Maybe.
Let's see how things go.
Let's try it and see how things go.
Yes.
Yes, immediately.
Yes, I always have and always will forever.

Without condition

Knowing that there's someone out there who loves you, at all times, just as you are, is one of the chief comforts people get from religion.

Work not yellow enough

I attended a team-building session at work today that included a profile of my work style. In addition to descriptions of my strengths and weaknesses and preferred communication styles, there was a page that listed the features of Ellen's ideal work environment. Here's what it said that should include:

• Bright, motivational, inspirational posters and prints abound.
• She sees the impact and results of her efforts.
• The culture promotes a democratic management style.
• Information is openly and freely available and exchanged.
• There is ample opportunity to express ideas.
• The emphasis is on informality and tapping in to inner creativity.
• Her inspirational vision is nurtured.
• She has freedom from authority and bureaucracy.
• She can question the ruiles and the traditional ways of doing things.
• A flexible approach is taken to the specification of hours and days worked.

I'd say these are all true of me.

Not one - not ONE - applies to my current work situation.

(C) Copyright 1992-2009 Andrew Lothian, Insights, Dundee, Scotland. All rights reserved. www.gatehousealliance.com

anti-viral

I hate this feeling, where you're not sure if you're getting a cold or if you're just finally staring clearly down the black gaping maw of pointlessness that is human existence.

I hope it's just a cold.

working my way around the karmic wheel

If it's true that in my past life I was Marilyn Monroe, then the thing I'm getting in this life that I would have wished for in that one is to be appreciated for my mind rather than my body.

The thing I haven't worked out which may mean I might need to go back and repeat the sequence a few more million times is that now I want to be appreciated for my body as well.

I'm still her inside, people! But now with a Ph.D.!