so says the straw hat

Grandma gave my sister and I special presents this year - heirloom rings from our great-great-grandmother Eloise Austin Whiting. Mine is pure gold with a flat-plated circle where an ornate "W" is etched. The band has swirled gold designs on either side. When we opened it and Grandma explained what they were she started crying and we all started crying. In a good way. She said she figured we should have them now anyway and then made us all laugh by letting us know that they were rings that had to be sawed off great-great-grandma's hands when she died. Oh Grandma. I also inherited all the Serendipity books from when we were kids. Score. And got a great camera - pictures taken with said camera are forthcoming. I got many wonderful lovely gifts this year. Lucky lucky me. Mostly I just love being around my family for the holidays. We've looked at pictures of us as babies, eaten too much candy, watched It's a Wonderful Life, Elf and Home for the Holidays, we've

Something instinctual inside of us knows how to dance. How odd. We make music. Do other species make music? Just to make music? I know there are special mating rituals and calls--some here may argue that our "dance" is a form of mating ritual as well--but I do not know if there are animals that dance without purpose. (note to audience...looking up "dancing animals is so not worth the ten minutes of wasted youtube video watching time). Not the point! The point is that we dance. That the more we dance, the more we want to dance. That we are born with some innate sense of music and rhythm. The other day we were visiting a local craft fair that my friend Misha , talented artist extraordinaire,  was exhibiting at and I was running about outside with her son Kazimir. When he heard some music he stopped in his tracks, head cocked to the side to get a better sound-to-ear angle, and once he got the rhythm it was time to get his groove on. We were born to move our wonderful b

You know how when a relationship ends, there are certain roles played out? For example, sometimes the girl becomes very proactive about getting her life together while the dude goes out and sleeps around and eats too much. OR vice versa. Sometimes the boy suddenly has everything going right for him--he is working out, eating right, girls are falling off his biceps, while the girl sits at home with a pint of ice cream watching too many Rom Coms on repeat slowly growing fat and zitty. Ugh.  All of this to say that I am very close to my sister. Very close. Freakishly close. She is my best friend. And being so many miles from her for so long feels sort of like a slow motion break up. In this scenario--she is the one with the rippling biceps and the shit together. I will call her up and her voice message will be something like "sorry! I am busy training for a marathon while running my dog so that I can go to my professional job and still have time to go out with my f

I have trouble writing about news stories. I don't know what to say. Especially on this blog that was created mostly as a place for me as an exercise in writing (no offense to you, if you are reading). Let us face it. This is not one of those "useful" blogs where you come away from it feeling like you have learned something valuable. This is just where I sometimes go to dump my brain. That is why writing about news or social happenings are hard for me--I want to write something worthwhile, but writing with a message feels inauthentic to me--that is not something I am practiced in. This blog post took me 2 days just to figure out how I was going to talk about very simple news stories I heard. What a lot of hoo-ha. So. Without further ado--here are two news stories and an observation on advertising that I am going to give you--backed with very little commentary because when it comes to what I should say about them, I seem to be at a loss: 1) States Fail in Fight Against

six months later we are looking through pictures for christmas gift ideas: Serious and sweet flower girl. Mersi Mandi and Rell Lovely flowers and threaded mason jars. Mamnunam Ameh Jaleh and Shokufeh Rainbow Soda In full disclosure, this are the "untouched" photos David graciously dumped on us post-wedding so these are sans editing and still beautiful! What a wonderfully warm and silly day. Endless gratitude goes out to all the people who helped us pull it off. Y'all know who you are. Photos courtesy of David Mendolia

The preview line of the email read "Holy shit. I just realized your not A. Davis anymore." What a conflicting thing to read. I felt immediately smug that my new last name is Mojgani which means I married a man that I love and I loved him enough that it made sense that we would share a name. He agreed to take mine as his middle name so we are going quasi-modern on this one. But after the smug pride of being married came defensiveness. I am too a Davis! I have years of christmas trees and scraped knees, bee stings,  camping trips and popsicle summers to prove it. I can tell you about how my brother cracked his head open on the basement-stair overhang or just the way he sounded when scaring me by howling "I'm Old! Warn Away!" Davis means long car rides and getting sick off of cheezits and tall grass adventures at the ocean. When cousin peed her pants in the back yard. Playing office in the graveyard tree. The gray ghost. Crunching cans, burning ears of indian c

A short list of observations/thoughts from tonight's ATX poetry slam: Anis is pretty much awesome at pac-man Why have an event start at a time if it never starts at that time? Is a late starting event a self-perpetuating monster of slowly increasing tardiness? Resulting in ever-later start times? Resulting in further encouraged tardiness? Causing even later start times? So people show up later than ever.... Most slam masters remind me of one particular slam master I used to know quite well. I wonder if it is the nature of memory or the nature of slam masters. Why go to a poetry event if you aren't going to listen to any other person's poems? Why poetry? Is poetry egotistical?  What would  happen if somebody signed up to Slam and did not use "the old standards" up on stage? Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is one funny, talented lady. She made me laugh so hard I lost my breath.  And to go a little more introspective...I wonder if letting go of my faith all th

Christmas music on my pandora station!

When we came back from thanksgiving we found out two things in as many days: 1) the heat in our house does not seem to be working. With overnight temperatures dropping below freezing, I feel fairly confident this can be considered a "problem." 2) we have rats. in our attic. and falling down our walls. I am also certain this can be catagorized under "problem." I am starting to think that being a grown-up is a bad idea. Let us move backwards then. When we considered it a "problem" when somebody wasn't playing fair at Loopin' Louie or the monster under the bed was a problem. Back to when deciding whether we wanted to buy the popsicle on the way to the donut shop or on the way home was a "problem." When doing homework was a "problem." Scraped knees. Lost Monopoly pieces. Incomplete Fire Safety Escape drawings. Not high enough allowances. The neighborhood boys. Give me those problems back. I officially resign from this whole &q

I got an email yesterday from a dear friend in Mexico who said she was personally thankful for me. So simple was the gesture, and yet so meaningful. In a world inundated with immediacy and efficient mass-communication capabilities (ie. the blanket text, the impersonal email, the facebook blast) it is nice to know that there are still people on the planet who slow down long enough to make the moment personal. Out of all the different thanksgiving wishes i received, all appreciated, this one was the most memorable, stood out the most, because of one simple word: my name. She used my name. She sent this specific email just to me. It inspired me. When I got home to my freezing Austin house--yes it gets cold in Austin you non-believing northerners--there was a sweet thanksgiving card in the mail from my mom: the queen of cards. I feel loved. I want to practice sending small messages of love to the people in my life. It is such a simple way to spread good cheer.

Oh vegas. How my feet do ache! How many interesting people are here. So many wonderful lights.

Remember Maine? And all the lobster we enjoyed?

I am sitting next to the crooked tree at the top of the bluff. Austin is a city skyline in the distance, a lazy meandering city between green hills with a great blue river cutting between. I am watching the river flash secret mirror-messages to the sky. The kayaking couple make good time under the bridge. The bridge is the color of rust, an arched contrast to the flickering flat blue river. When other people walk up, I ready myself to leave. I do not feel like being interrupted. She is carrying two white balloons with the words "Health" and "Happiness" scrawled in black permanent marker. He asks me overly excited: "What are YOU doing here?" we are both wearing 49ers paraphernalia. He should be taking her picture. She is untangling balloon strings. So quickly, before we can think, the wind sweeps the balloons up and away. Swift, out of her hands, and there was no picture taken. We all watch them fly away feeling helpless and guilty and helpless some mor

My memory is a piano string suspended pulled rigid tight in silent anticipation for any key. The road simply ended. The lake ahead of us wearing silence thick as a winter shawl though it was not snowing. The whole planet fit in my car. The whole planet was so still I could not even tell if she was breathing and night time and the moon were busy being bright not caring to check the planets pulse only half glancing for the murmurs of creek stones over water. The telephone pole had cracked in half hanging limp arms--black asp on the asphalt. We kissed in the car a while left the engine running where the road ended forgetting to survey the damage the wind had done. The moon shining on the lake looked like a cowboy riding silent-film reels on repeat.

how simple, the two of us standing there one at each sink, passing the dishes between the silence in the house tucked around like snowfall discovered at night so soft I can hear the needle scratch on the record player how simple, to softly kiss the smile of your lips and the pulse of your neck before bed and later, we will cut your hair out back in the blue-yellow afternoon and the birds will come to make nests of these scattered pieces

At the foot of the stairs all the locusts have fallen dead. In swarms they have come crawling haphazard drunkards out of sidewalk cracks and broken bottles they have come birthed by these southern heated nights, hot sex with the streetlamps glow shuddering jagged and circular and pressing. This pressing heat. And at the foot of the stairs all the locusts have fallen dead in a heap. Pile belly-up dry legs stuck out like broken radio antennas searching for music too far away to feel. In the store, the French music is playing too loudly. The needle skips on scratches. There is dust all the way in her long hair. Nothing to buy, just piles faded piles and all these souls not talking. silently shifting. The too-tall man has no hair. Wears short shorts and mouths "watermelon watermelon watermelon" so somebody will think he knows how to sing-a-long French. The music spins. Every so often the bell at the door will ring. Under the streetlight, in passing, it is hard to say whether the

I am very rusty, so be kind... Pasadena, CA There is a rose hanging low from a bush and when I stop to push the petals to my face a man in a truck yells out the window at me while the dog tries to keep on walking I try to take pictures of the way the rain is filling up the backyard swimming pool but the camera cannot capture a million fat drops exploding. Does no justice to the tottering floods edge. You call me every night on your way home from work and I answer. The house is empty so I do not need to worry about the echoing of my voice down the hall.