What does the phrase 'soup to nuts' mean? I never heard it until a coworker used it a few years ago. now it's appearing everywhere and I've decided that it's clamoring for my attention. It wants me to know what it means, it's begging for me to go look it up.
A cursory Web search has turned up a bunch of occurrences of the phrase but no explanation for what it means. How frustrating!
Words and phrases are sometimes like that for me. I'll often get curious about what a word means and look it up, and then the word will appear all over the place once I know what it means. I've heard of the phenomenon happening to other people, but I refuse to think that, in my case, it might be just me noticing this unfamiliar word for the first time.
The problem with the theory is that I am a reader. I read everything. I have a huge vocabulary. I look up what unfamiliar words I come across reasonably promptly, but I'm also good at figuring out what words mean from context. If I don't remember ever coming across a particular word before, that's probably because, well, I haven't. So sometimes I think words have a mind of their own, words wait to ambush me, jump out from behind light poles and off of buses to smack me in the eye and tell me, "READ ME know me understand me love me use me until I wear out."
and, well, I do.
I am a heartless, cruel bitch who uses words, chews them up and spits them out, ties them down and watches them wiggle.
and I like it.
Speaking of food, here's my rant for the day:
I miss citrus.
I grew up in California, land of citrus fruits. Citrus fruits were abundant, cheap, and tasted wonderful. There was a tangerine and a tangelo tree in the backyard, for crying out loud--i used to grab fruit on chilly winter mornings and eat it on the way to school.
The tangerines were sweet and plump and juicy, falling apart as I peeled them. I'd spit the seeds into the creek and toss the peel into the neighbors' garbage cans.
The tangerine I've just gotten doesn't stand up to those winter morning memories. It's...bland. Tastes kind of old. How disappointing. I want the tangerines of my childhood, damnit. I think I'll be irrational about this for a bit.
For a while in college, I lived in a house known as Bonsai Oaks.In Iowa City, there were a number of geek houses—large, rickety houses where people who were in certain social groups would come to rest for a while. Generally, between four and six people lived in these houses, the rent was cheap, and you could pretty do whatever you wanted as long as it was okay by your roommates.
Each of them had a different population and a different feel. The House of Chaos (aka HoC) was a boy realm. Perched on the edge of a ravine and slowly sliding down into it, HoC was one of those very rare "open" houses, where the doors were always left unlocked and there were generally people awake at all hours of the day. Even if nobody who lived there was home, you were welcome to wander in, settle on a couch, and watch TV until whoever you were waiting for showed up. There was almost always a game of Magic: the Gathering going on. They threw mightily kickass parties that lasted all night long and generally involved reasonably rowdy behavior, the cops showing up, and mass drunkenness.
Bonsai Oaks, on the other hand, was a closed house. We were about six blocks from HoC, down the street from the cemetery, and the house was in arguably better shape than HoC. It had a big front porch and a tiny backyard that nobody ever used, and creaky hardwood floors. We threw large and mostly-decorous parties; I don't think we ever even got the cops to show up during my tenure as a frequent visitor and then a resident. The roof leaked into the upstairs bathroom, the wiring looked like it had been done by crazed squirrels, and the kitchen was huge and wonderful. It was "the big white house on the left side of N Governor", it had parking enough for three cars, and a gravel alley that was our shortcut towards downtown and the university.
Bonsai figured largely in my life from my second year of college on. I'd become incidental friends with a couple of residents during my first year, and then during the summer after my second year, my boyfriend moved into the place. I spent a lot of late nights and early mornings there, and moved in myself at the beginning of my junior year of college.
Bonsai was a family—a large, dysfunctional family; we never quite managed to get everyone doing their chosen chores at the same time, we squabbled and fought, we spent far too much time in each other's company.
We had a board where people would post their whereabouts: the choices were "here" "work" "school" "sleeping" and "out". This became necessary when people would call for one of the six residents and whoever answered the phone had no idea where anyone is. "She might be here, but I think she has a class now. Let me check." In the distance, the sound of feet ka-thumping up stairs, a muffled name yelled. More feet, coming down. "I think she's gone. Want to leave a message?" We knew far too much about each other's love lives; there were late-night bitch sessions done over TV and homework.
And when I broke up with my boyfriend and he started screaming, M wandered into my room and asked me if I was all right. M and I weren't the type to spill our guts to one another, but he listened to me as I told the whole story, how endangered I was feeling, how scared I was for the future. And then A came in and hugged me and put her head on my shoulder and told me everything was going to be all right.
I was still scared. And I still moved out two months later. When my ex had moved out, they tried to convince me to come back, but at that point I was far too attached to living by myself to move back in. But I spent many days over there anyway, with the people who I'd come to regard as family, who shared too much of my recent history to need to ask about the backstory.
The temperature has dropped, winter is here, and I am feeling a case of January coming on.Cagey. Restless. Waiting for the light to return.
But something else:
Feeling a little trapped. A little impatient.
A little grumpy.
Maybe a little bitter.
I find myself overreacting to things. I find myself reacting with irritation to things that I would have tolerated with patience two months ago. And I hate feeling this way. It's not fair to people to be patient with them and then reverse myself so abruptly.
Then again, I'd like to know where I signed up for sainthood.
I think I just want to hibernate and not see anyone at all for more than an evening for the next few weeks.
This will pass and I will be in a better mood soon. I hope.
she can't stop shaking and I can't stop touching herIt doesn't come quiet, like flowers
or loud, like rivers.
Over my hands it pours, clear like water
or straw yellow, suspended in test tubes
or other medical enclosureswith biohazard symbols.
I should have one of those spiky signs
with spindles curved like blades
etched onto the bottom of my soul.
in red, a warning.poison. danger.
prone to change without warning
prone to infect, prone to presume
it doesn't come loud like flames
or soft like rotit's something else entirely.
I dreamt I was walking along a fence. It was in Iowa, late summer, the air was warm and wet and heavy and it smelled like manure and fermenting corn stalks. I was walking along a fence and I came upon them unexpectedly, walking in a line to the left side of the fence. The faces. The hands, holding each other. They were going to the top of the hill.Beautiful they were, growing more beautiful as I drew nearer. Two children in angel costumes. A mourner, casting crystal tears from her hands. The winged woman. The stark singer. All of them, walking to the top of the hill.
They stopped to talk with each other. I perched on the fence and watched them.
The day melted into night, the stars spun above, and finally—
—stretched upwards with open arms—
— you are the things you swallow.
no, they say, shaking
their heads.not at all.
it comes chilled like winter
and as clear as daylight—
it remakes my world, shivers,
and moves on.dangerous hand, stay.
—12/17/99
how goes the war?
dissension in the ranks, I'm afraid.
