A Zombie Johnnie Cochran (a Talking with Bob interlude)

I was hanging out with my friend Bob; Bob was, unsurprisingly, grumbling as he read the newspaper.

At one point Bob sighed heavily. “O.J. Simpson is back in the news again,” he said testily, “why can’t that guy go away and leave us alone?”

“O.J. just needs some crack legal help,” I said. “He needs to hook up with Johnnie Cochran again…that’ll do the trick.”

Bob sighed again, more heavily than before. “Michael, you do know that Johnnie Cochran is dead, don’t you?”

I took no umbrage because I knew that on some level Bob thought I was an idiot and we’d long ago made our peace with that. “Yes, Bob, I know that. But I was thinking that O.J. should go find himself a good voodoo woman and have Johnnie brought back for one more hurrah!”

“So you’re saying that Simpson should get a zombie Johnnie Cochran to come back from the dead to defend him?”

“Exactly!” I replied excitedly. “That would be so cool!”

Bob rolled his eyes and went back to the paper. “I don’t know what the problem is with people in so-called “professional” sports. You got that idiot baseball player who hurt his own stupid self because he let somebody get him riled up beyond control. You got that bicycle guy who lost his title because of ‘performance enhancing’ drugs. And don’t get me started on…Michael…Vick…” Bob’s words trailed off as he looked over and saw me staring off with goofy grin on my face. “And you’re not listening to me at all, are you?”

I shook off the reverie. I knew that the truth wasn’t the answer Bob wanted to hear but I decided to go with it anyway. “Um, no I’m not. Sorry, Bob.”

Bob cocked an eyebrow. “You’re still thinking about a zombie Johnnie Cochran, aren’t you?”

I smiled, almost laughed, and nodded. “Yes! I’m mean, come on, you have to admit that it would be something cool to see!” Can’t you just see zombie Johnnie Cochran in court, skin rotting away under a sharp $3,000 suit?” I shifted into a spooky voice. “If it rains you must feed me more brains...”

I thought I saw Bob stifle a smile. “You need help, Michael,” he said as soberly as he could. “Besides zombies don’t talk that fast.”

“Zombie Johnnie Cochran would be as glib as ever,” I opined confidently. “…until the jury delivers, I needs me more livers…”

“Stop it,” Bob protested, though I could tell he was desperately trying not to laugh.

“…when the feasting starts, I’ll have three human hearts…”

“I’m not listening to you anymore…”

We Are

We are laughing…in the boisterous way that children do…sharing secret comedy…in the earnest way that best friends do…and it is a good moment. And then the moment passes and we go on with our carefree day bolstered by healing mirth and undying kinship.

We are crying…in the way that only true loss can bring on…separated by our shared but unshared grief…and then we closed our eyes to hide our naked tears and held on to each other for a brief eternity…and it is a real moment. And then the moment passes and we comfort each other in self-conscious, self-healing, cathartic and empathic silence.

We are singing…in the unabashed way that only lovers totally comfortable with each other could dare do with each other…making a cheesy love song ours in a way that would linger with us long after our paths had diverged…and it is an amazing moment. And then the moment passes but the smiles and the ardor linger and keep us and our hopeful hearts warm.

We are dancing…soft and languid, passionate and almost ruthless…dancing the carnal dance in the humid sanctuary of our lovers’ bed…we are dancing to a soft symphony of whispered endearments and sweetly profane declarations and reaching for the bright light crescendo as one…and it is a magical moment. And then the moment passes but the tender laughter, shared while catching our breath and setting off sparks on each other’s satiated bodies with the most fleeting of touches, fills the darkness and bonded us as our senses reach for the calm.

We are laughing…we are crying…we are singing…we are dancing…we are sharing the universe and letting the universe share with us…we are dreaming and waking, shouting and whispering, loving and hating…we are accepting and denying, reaching out and holding back, discovering and losing…we are flying and we are falling.

We are being.

We are.

Blogs of Note: Worldman

The world of blogs is, of course, expansive and fairly all-encompassing. There are blogs for just about any interest and we all have our reasons for preferring the ones that we do. My personal favorite blogs tend to be those that are written by inquisitive, open-hearted people who share themselves and their view of the world (both personal and at large) in engaging ways. It is, therefore, not at all a surprise that one of my favorite blogs to visit and savor is Peter Voegtli’s charming, witty, and thought-provoking Worldman.

Worldman is never anything less than a delight to read and Peter is a wonderful blog host who makes sure that everyone who visits his site feels welcome and totally engaged. Another plus from my point of view is that music informs and permeates the entries which adds to the experience of the blog (especially considering that he has wonderful taste in music :-)

I am an unabashed fan of Worldman and I heartily recommend you visit…chances are you’ll become a fan, too (tell Peter that Michael sent you :-)

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FYI: This is, according to Blogger's count, the 400th Bread and Roses post. Yay! :-)

Babies

I’ve been thinking about babies lately. I’m not sure why. I’ve been blessed to play a part (hopefully a positive part) in the lives of a good number of amazing children in my time…stepchildren, foster children, cousins, nephews, nieces, offspring of friends, friends of the other children in my life…and babies have always seemed to like and feel safe with me.

But circumstances never came together in a way that allowed me to co-create a biological child. In our increasingly crowded world, maybe that’s not a bad thing….but sometimes, just sometimes, there is a void that tugs (however foolishly) at my heart.

When I was a teenager I had already decided on names for my first two children…it was a silly thing but it was a gentle madness and I just went with it…but, of course, life happens the way it’s going to without regard for any plans we make for it (the boy’s name ended up being used by my father and his third wife for their son…the girl’s name came to be associated with a friend I would meet in my twenties.)

And I understand and accept that. And I’ve got no complaints about the love and kinship that has filled my cynically optimistic life with bountiful gifts of love, light, and laughter…but sometimes, just sometimes, I still find myself wondering “what if?”

Sometimes I think about tiny hands grasping my fingers or touching my face…I think about small, wondrous heartbeats and warm breath of sleeping children playing like the sweetest, softest songs imaginable against my chest or on my shoulder…and I still find myself wondering…

Sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself thinking about babies…thinking about a child I’ve co-created blooming strong and sure in a nurturing womb, a child coming into the world and into arms that would always be welcoming and protective, a child growing strong and sure under watchful (but hopefully not overprotective) eyes and never-ending love, support, encouragement, and acceptance.

Sometimes…even at my “advanced age”…I think about babies. It’s a silly thing but it’s a gentle madness so I just go with it until it passes.

Share Hugs

There is something sublime and amazing about hugs. Maybe it's because they can be shared in so many emotionally intimate and emotionally satisfying ways.

Hugs are democratic expressions of love, friendship, concern, fidelity, celebration, sadness, empathy, passion, grace, understanding...they get through the barriers we erect around ourselves (if only for a few connecting moments) and bring joy and empathy and delight in ways that words often fail to.

So share hugs whenever you can...share them with your parents and your siblings and your cousins...with your children and your grandchildren...with people who who make you smile and with people who need to know that they're not alone. Share them with people you love and with people who've done you wrong but want to atone. Share them with people you know who are blue and with people you've done wrong and you need to atone.

Share hugs with your lovers and with people you want to be your lovers (even if you know they never will be.) Share them with your significant others (even and especially when you start to take your lover for them for granted.)

Share hugs for selfless reasons (most of us need hugs from time to time) and for selfish reasons (most of want to be hugged sometimes even if we pretend that we don't)

Yeah, it's a ditzy, flower power idea but so what? In our sometimes gray and cynical world, maybe we need a little flower power in our lives every once in a while...

So share hugs...they're good for you...they're good me...they're good for everybody.

Namaste, y'all.

Lover and Friend

Darlin’, in the end, I've got you
as lover and friend
Funny how it goes
We'd be the last to know
We were made for each other
And from friends we became lovers
Keep on being my friend
Our love will never end...

The music is so distant...sweet Minnie's voice caressing the lyrics from very far away. The woman in his arms stirs and he softly strokes her sleeping head; she shifts lazily pressing closer to him. He luxuriates in the intoxicating nearness of her...plush and warm and, even through his slightly inebriated haze, so very arousing...against his chest, his thighs; from somewhere far away, the music...the late, great Minnie Riperton in her prime...echoes soothingly and he just stares up just...feeling.

The music ends and he just lies there silently. He looks down at the woman sleeping against him feeling...love, anxiety, lust, confusion...just feeling.

Her face brings a wandering: smiles shared softly in the night; laughter, feigned and not, shared, like conspiratorial children and lovers, generously in the daytime. Dreams revealed…coy lies told…innuendo playfully exchanged…passion freely indulged. She has always been quite a woman, but...

"Jimmy?" a voice calling.

"Jimmy?" her voice calling.

"Jimmy, are you all right?"

"...uh...yeah, Kathy, I’m good...are you okay?"

There is a soft, pregnant silence. They will make love now...or they will go for coffee. She groans in boozy discomfort and sits up.

They will go for coffee.

She turns to him, her eyes bleary; her smile lustful and apologetic at once. "Damn, what time is it?"

He doesn't speak.

"Jimmy...?"

Other hangovers and other women's voices play back as he watches her rise and make her way gingerly to the bathroom. She is Mary who never had hangovers...and Maggie who did and loved to wallow in them.

She is Connie lying deathly still and emitting a constant, rumbling snore against his neck as she slept off the previous night's revelry.

She is, quite suddenly and quite delightfully, herself, arms thrown across his shoulders, kissing him.

"Wake up, big guy," she says with a strangely provocative yawn, "it's time to go to bed." No coffee after all.

He smiles impishly. "Isn't that a bit at cross purposes...?"

"Not necessarily," she smiles back, poking him gently in the stomach. She jumps up and makes her way to the bedroom door singing, "...darlin’, in the end, I’ve got you as lover and friend..."

He smiles humidly, that's not Minnie but it sure sounds fine; he chuckles affectionately and lifts himself slowly up and, unsteadily, he follows in her wake humming,"...darlin’, in the end…"

- for J & K -

“Lover and Friend”
words and music by
Riperton, Rudolph, St. Lewis, and Dozier

Remember

Remember? Yes of course I remember. I remember where I was. I can’t imagine that I will ever forget.

I was in Virginia and I had overslept because I had slight head cold. The first tower had already been hit by the time I finally got out of bed. My head was stuffy and my night had been restless and it didn’t make any sense.

I sat in front of the TV in my pajamas…my granddaughter, all of 8 months old, sleeping on my shoulder…and watched as the other plane hit…as the first tower fell…as the second tower fell…as the world came to a dead stop in a horrible symphony of blood and tears and death, of destruction and terror and awful amazement and stubborn defiance. I sat in front of the TV and wondered when I was going to wake up from the surreal nightmare I seemed to be having.

The world didn’t stop spinning…though at times it seemed like should have…and time kept moving forward…though seemingly not at as a rapid and regular a pace as it should have been flowing. We held our collective breath and tried to make sense of our collective fear and grief and rage and confusion…and the world kept spinning.

Six year later, I still remember…we still remember…we are not allowed to forget…we are, for the most part, not willing to forget. The memories of the fallen…on that day and on the bloodied streets and battlefields that followed that day…defy us to even try to forget.

The world keeps spinning…the blood keeps flowing…and I remember…yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I remember…

Dream

(His point of view...)

He was a man who walked through life with a song in his heart…it was the only way that made sense to him, the world could be a disheartening place sometimes that was true but that was no reason to let that change the way he felt inside. Like all men, he had his melancholies and his blues…sometimes he looked back and realized that the life he was living was not quite the one he imagined when he was 17… in the full hubris of youth…and he had laid out a roadmap for the rest of his time on Earth. But he didn’t dwell on that too much…his life was what it was and when he looked back on the path that he had taken it all made perfect sense.

He wasn’t much for dancing or singing out loud…if he was self-conscious about anything, it was his two left feet and his inability to sing on key…but he kept that song in the forefront of his heart just the same.

He knew that he had more than a lot of other guys and he was grateful for that. He was…in the way that men sometimes embraced…content. He had a job that challenged him and kept him from getting bored when it took up 40-48 hours of his weeks. He loved…and got to celebrate with passion…football and baseball and comic books and classic rock & roll. He loved that his circle of friends was small but fiercely loyal and supportive.

And most of all…most of all…he loved her.

He loved the way her eyes twinkled when she laughed…or when she held her baby niece…or when she looked up at him and told him that she loved him. He was a strong man and yet he was moved sweetly that such a tiny woman could make his heart sing with just a smile…or a touch…of just by walking into the room.

He loved the way she snuggled next to his chest and put her arms around his brutish neck when he impulsive swept her up and kissed her just because. He loved the way she sang idly and danced naturally as he went about her workaday life. He loved the way she patiently indulged his love of football and comic books and classic rock & roll.

He loved the way she effortlessly gave as good as she got…with carefree, laughing, thrilling, greedy and generous abandon…when they made love. He’d foolishly thought that she would not be up to the task of accommodating him given the difference in their sizes but she quickly disabused him of that silly notion by proving as ardent and fearless a lover as he could possibly imagine.

He loved so much about her…he hoped to never lose the amazement over the fact that such a wondrous woman could love someone as unabashedly ordinary as him.

He loved the way they talked…about anything and nothing at all…in the darkness before sleep took them to the dreaming realms. And he loved to watch…in the cool of the night and in the golden moonlight…as she slipped off to sleep. He loved to hold her to his chest and watch as she let herself slip off into deep sleep…he loved to watch her face turn so peaceful that it was sweetly, unimaginably wounding…he loved, almost more than anything in the world, to watch her dream.

(Her point of view: Breathe)

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My other corners of the interweb:
Pop Culture: Neverending Rainbow
Eclectic Sites and Images of Interest: StumbleUpon
Comic Books: Suspending Disbelief

Breathe

(Her point of view...)

She was an early riser and sometimes…just sometimes…she would wake while the morning was still dark and still…she would wake while the nighttime stars had yet to give way to the dawning sun…and she would listen to him breathe.

She would wake with her head nestled against his chest…sturdy and broad, rough-hewn and hirsute and always so very warm and welcoming; with his arm curved… gently and protectively and chivalrously… around her; with those soft sighs and whispers, so random and so endearing, that occasionally crossed over from his dreaming world into the safe haven of their bed punctuating the darkness and making her smile. She would wake and just listen and remember, even on those rare days when they had been at odds over something silly, all of the reasons why she loved him.

She loved the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed…and she loved the way touchdowns and comic books and Jimi Hendrix solos still brought him so much child-like joy. She loved the way his hands, so large and seemingly ungainly, always touched her with courtly and sweetly wounding tenderness.

She loved the way he knew when she needed him to listen and when she needed him to make her laugh; she loved the way that she knew when he needed a shoulder to lean and when he needed to be teased out of his shadows and back into the sunshine.

She loved the way he would sometimes literally sweep her off her feet and into his arms and kiss her…ever so passionately…for no reason other than he felt the urge to. She loved the way she sometimes caught him looking at her…as if she were the most precious thing in all of God’s creation and he was blessed to have her in his life.

And she loved the way their bodies flowed together…with rhythmic grace and un-abandoned ardor in natural turn… when they were making love; the way their carnal symphony…sweet asides and bawdy, humid endearments, tender, whispered encouragements and growled, exuberant lovers’ exclamations…filled their bed…their home…their universe…with music that was theirs and theirs alone.

And on those days that she woke before he did…before the sun did…she loved to listen. She loved to listen to the sighs and whispers…to the steady, soothing beat of his mighty heart beating in his mighty chest…she loved to listen to him breathe.

(His point of view: Dream)

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My other corners of the interweb:
Pop Culture: Neverending Rainbow
Eclectic Sites and Images of Interest: StumbleUpon
Comic Books: Suspending Disbelief

Blogs of Note: Michele

Blogs of Note was at one time a reoccurring feature of Bread and Roses; it spotlighted interesting sites that I had encountered during my excursions through the blog-o-sphere. As time and circumstance shrank my time to surf as much as I would have liked the feature fell by the wayside. But now I have been inspired to resurrect Blogs of Note by the site being spotlighted today.

You can find no more engaging a site than Michele Agnew’s delightful eponymous blog. She is a warm and welcoming hostess who encourages her readers to become part of an ever-burgeoning and interactive community through clever posts that ask thought-provoking questions, make pithy observations, and encourage dialogue and discovery by sending them out to visit each other’s blogs. It’s a lovely site well worth a visit…though I warn you if you visit once you will be visiting often (when you visit, tell her Michael sent you…it’s a Michele thing that you’ll understand when you get there :-)

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Some of the Blogs of Note that were spotlighted in the past have stopped being published or updated for one reason or another but most of them are still going strong and are still highly recommended (as are all of the sites on the blogroll on the left.) I happily direct your attention to:

A Gag Reflex (our very first Blog of Note. Most of the original posts have been removed because, happily, Cori Crooks' harrowing, beautifully-written memoir is going to be published next year but attention must still be paid. The original Blogs of Note post about this site is here.)

Dog Eat Doug (a delightful comic strip by the talented Brian Anderson...now being featured in newspapers around the country...that presents the sweetly humorous adventures of a puppy and a baby...the original B of N post is here.)

The Donegal Express (a thoughtful, well-written, and challenging site which features politics...but not exclusively. Original B of N post is here.)

My Neighbours are Hoors (a wonderfully charming blog featuring the wry and witty observations of a woman whose downstairs neighbors are "ladies of negotiable affection". The original B of N post is here.)

PSotD: Political Site of the Day (a great, incisively written site that, despite its title, is not exclusively political. Original B of N post is here.)

So What Can I Do? (Karima Neal's engaging positive action advocacy site. Original B of N post here.)

Waking Ambrose (the ever-erudite Doug Pascover's witty updating of Ambrose Bierce's classic Devil's Dictionary is always entertaining, thought-provoking, and undeniably clever. Original B of N post is here.)