#Sheker the dog

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with his puppy, Sheker

Sheker (or Şeker) is the Turkish word for sugar

[mrrightandmrbubble]

Rules: answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people who you want to get to know better

Tagged by @emmy-award (thank you muchly!)

tagging @afieldwithoutaname @soulworthkeeping @foxandphoenix @slypopasquat @veryhappyvegan @waspunk @bemyfuse @fallingintomymellowship @kawaiibellamy @benzodiac and you

Nickname: Kiz, Kizzlebub, Ten Lords

Zodiac: Taurus (surprising absolutely no one)

Height: 5′6″

Last movie I saw: I caught half of Moulin Rouge at my folks’ place and it has not aged well at all

Last Thing I googled: The ex-Hard Copy host obsessed with putting the boot into Michael Jackson beyond the grave, who paid off people for false testimony and all sorts of sketchy shit that should’ve put a pin in a good majority of this a long time ago

Song stuck in my head: 'Banana Phone’. Fuckin’ Raffi.

Do i get asks: Less than I used to but many have moved on from Tumblr and the whole mood has changed so it’s nothing personal (I figure)

Blogs following: Currently 904, down from 1,021 this morn (mid-clean dumping any that haven’t been updated in the last two years because they’re never coming back, let’s face facts)

Amount of Sleep: 6-7 on average and I wake up at least twice because animals (senior dog in kidney failure in particular) but occasionally i’ll get a real treat and go up to a full 8.

Lucky number: I assigned 16 at random when I was in pre-school and it stuck even though there’s no real pattern of it? It started when the teacher was asking us how old we were and releasing us for lunch when we answered correctly (wut?) and I said I was 16. I was 3. See, it’s not even lucky.

What I’m wearing: Bed gear - red oversized FF WL-era shirt (gift from fellow fan) and flowery lounge pants

Dream job: I’ll occasionally have this fantasy of lecturing what I call a Music Appreciation course which consists of just me playing different songs, rewinding back to killer bits and shouting, “APPRECIATE”

Dream trip: Gorging my way down the Amalfi Coast

Favorite Food: Right now it’s a prep meal I make - Italian roast chicken, veggies, and rice - so easy it shouldn’t even be called a recipe but it’s so damn yummy. Also, Harvest Snaps salt ‘n’ vinegar baked pea crisps have taken over my life

Play any instruments: I haven’t done it for a couple of years (not since that big weird party at my last house) but I can play djembe, bongos, congas, tamborim, shekere, and a few other percussion instruments. Yet put me behind a drum kit and it sounds like it’s rolling down the stairs

Languages: My grandparents tried to teach me some basic Polish as I was growing up but it just didn’t take, as with Italian and German in school. Slipped like Teflon off my brain. I’d like to learn a second language, just no attempt has ever stuck

Favorite Songs: The best I can offer you is what i’m feeling this week or else we’ll be here all night and that is ‘Dark Allies’ by Light Asylum

Random Fact: A long time ago, I woke up (or thought I did) to feel my sheets being wrapped tight around me like I was being rolled into a huge cigarette and sensed that I was lifting off the mattress. When I opened my eyes, I was inches from the ceiling but couldn’t move. A voice - human, not like mine, not in the room or with a physical form but speaking from my own consciousness - said, “They’re not here to help you and they’re not here to harm you. Just listen to what they have to tell you.” Then I abruptly dropped back onto the bed and I could move again. Now I can recognize it as an episode of sleep paralysis but at the time, FUCK.

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: The smell of a vintage vinyl stack, cupping a mug of coffee between your hands, the dull thud in your chest when the bass is thick, coconut oil, cotton, jacaranda trees

[kimpeterkovac]

THE MUSEUM OF BABEL

Borges was my first poet-crush, though for his prose poems with magical realist underbeds disguised as fiction-cum-history, a rock star even if you didn't grok all the lyrics. The Jorge Luis action figure holds pride of place in my shelf-top gallery of literary tchotchkes which includes Tintin’s dog Milou (AKA Snowy) and an Emily Dickinson baseball card. Though my fanboy fever dream began with The Library of Babel, recent study unearthed fissures in the entire philosophical geology.  Was it because he was a librarian, or a man (or both) that led to creating an infinite world composed only of books and run only by men?  I hate to say it, Mr. Borges, but you're either wrong, misguided, or of another era. Or all three.

all of knowledge - far beyond books and libraries

The beating heart of who we are is also toys, paintings, bridges, gardens, dolls, sculptures, musical instruments (from the extra-keyed Bosendorfer to the one-stringed rebaba), music itself, socks and jocks, baseballs, basketballs, footballs, cotton candy, used air filters, post-its, zip-lock bags, shekeres, totem poles, fuses, films, fishing lures, fingernail clippings, Tibetan prayer wheels, South Asian leather shadow puppets, opera libretti; not only the lists of objects that would fill the Library of Babel but all the objects themselves.  Each by each lives within a gigantic geodesic dome (thanks, Bucky) presided over by multi-kulti, multi-aged, multi-talented women and children, who might even add a couple of men to their band of intrepid historian-curator-explorers.

girls and women travelling without maps on the verge

This piece was penned by a character named ‘Borges’ created by a different ‘Borges’, both inspired by the real Borges, the one who actually lived. 

a bobble-head Borges just delivered by FedEx - punctuation

[published in Contemporary Haibun Online]