Raking Leaves, Dancing Britney Spears

and the women come and go, talking of michaelango. the quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog. I thought I might have something as I wait for my hair to dry before I retire, so as not to have my longish hair go completely unmanageable somewhere after three in the morning. Which is to say I have nothing, save all I don't say.

Now that my hair is getting longish, a state it hasn't seen since my very early twenties, I like twisting it round and pinning it rakishishly about my head. Note rakish, not romantic. That's a long conversation I really ought to have with someone sometime soon, but not tonight. Also I just realized that my favorite threadbare sleep t-shirt circa 1991 is on backwards. Hold up a sec while I adjust and turn down the heat.

It's warm and wet in Portland. And I should be asleep, I have an early meeting, but mostly I slept the last five days and now I am wide awake and feel like dancing.

That is when I wasn't raking, scooping, bagging the leaves that just keep fucking falling onto my lawn. (gottdamned leaves mutters the Very Old Woman under her breath) I kvetch, but secretly I love it. I like the singular repetition of it, the camaraderie of it, as neighbors stop to commiserate, I love my iPod, I like a mouldering sweat and leaves in my hair, I don't even much mind the odd squicky larvae thing I unearth. The thing that irritates me is it kicks in my semi-dormant OCD and I feel I must rid my yard of EVERY SINGLE LEAF OR I WILL LOSE MY CRACKERS. Uh, wine helps.

And then there is poor Britney Spears, who on the day before the economists point out the obvious about the recession, pours out her soul to MTV, she is sad, bless her heart. But she is not likely to go hungry or lose the roof over her head. Savvy to have such a non-divulgent and at the same time extremely revealing not-mea-culpa-come-to-jesus to the very same media that built you up and so gleefully took you down. Everyone loves a train wreck. The question is what is her part in the complicity of the machine, at some point you must willfully surrender to the shuddering mirage of fame, of power, of the glory of money. And why is it always the young women who pay so fucking dearly.

I often think of Britney Spears in the context of another musician's song. Rufus Wainright has a line from a song that goes "I used to dance Britney Spears, I think I'm gettin' on in years" I can identify with that. I am too old for Britney Spears, I can't dance like she did in that school girl's uniform, never had any desire to emulate her, always scorned her obvious manufacturing. Still I can symapathize, ten years, two kids, and a million unflattering paparazzi pix later, to be rolled out for that kind of public comsumption would make me crazy. And to think there was a time where I was sort of vaguely ambitious enough to want that.

Thank heavens, I guess, for a solid case of oscillating intertia which has left me poor and unlaid in Portland, but rich in hope and friendship and expectation. Minor miracles, whatever.