May Second

Rambling, not really comic-related and a bit depressingMy calendar was still on April, so one of the first things I did when I woke up was flip the page. I stared at today's date. Yesterday was May Day, or Beltane for the Celtic Reconstructionists. It was listed as the submission deadline for the next Carnival of Feminists. Cinco De Mayo is on Friday. I go back to work on Thursday. There's a party on the Thirteenth that I'm not sure I'll go to attend. The thirteenth is a Buddhist Holiday called Wesak, which I know absolutely nothing about. Mother's Day is on the Fourteenth -- Don't want to forget again this year. The Twenty-fifth is listed as Ascension (Christian) which I imagine means forty days since Easter. There's two US Federal Holidays (Armed Forces Day and Memorial Day) and Victoria Day on the twenty-second for Canada.

It's too hot in my apartment, a high in the 80s in Oklahoma City. I'd left the Argonaut off, because the cat's sick. He's wheezing and sneezing while I'm coughing and blowing my nose like a foghorn. The climate change always gets me when I travel. It's 70 degrees in Eden today when they bury my grandfather.

I couldn't get a flight. There's information at the bottom of the calendar about the symbolism of doves. It makes me glance at May's picture. A circle, an inscription in seven different languages on the boarder, containing three circles that each contain three spirals with three doves with beaks in the center. The knotwork points towards the center, three images converge.

My apartment's too messy. No one in my family lives in this kind of a mess. Grandpa's children live across the country. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, California -- they're all in New York today for the funeral. I think I'm missing something important. My brother tried to get ahold of me, I was driving back from Mississippi. The landscape is dark and moody, with twisted trees and dark forests. There's still hurricane damage It rained on the way home, gray skies over Oklahoma. It was the third time I'd been to school in Mississippi (My USAF training was there) and the third time a relative died while I was there. I don't think I'll be going back to the Gulf Coast. Patterns.

The flights out of Oklahoma City were booked up, but I took a few days off. I need to clean, even my keyboard's dusty. I still have presents from December I haven't mailed, and souvenirs from Las Vegas and now Peach Syrup from the drive to Georgia for Mom. I can't find my the Harry Chapin CD with Corey's Coming on it. Junk Mail is piling up. I haven't sorted my new comics in half a year now. So, naturally, I found myself on the computer the last few days. A little escapism.

Things keep converging. My Aunt from New York commented on the Italian rant. She's from the Irish side of the family, and a few comments above they talk about the O'Dares being stereotyped. I never had a problem with them, does that mean I connect more with my father's side of the family than my mother's? Or is it just that there's more Irish-American in the South and less Italian-American? The stereotype seems less harmful because it's more normal to be Irish. It didn't make me think "They're making fun of me." Didn't make me think "They really believe it." I used to argue, when I was stationed in Texas, with Aunt Marilee about vermicelli pasta.

"It's in the Ethnic Foods section."

"It's not an Ethnic food. Everybody eats it."

"It's Italian, Italian's Ethnic."

"It's not! Italian's normal."

Did I really think like that?

This isn't making any sense. Grandpa died, I'm thinking about me. I never make the funeral. I was too young when Grandma died. When my grandmother on the Italian side died, I was on the plane when they buried her. I sometimes don't get told until after the funeral.

The whole thing looks like the picture. Incongruous when it's supposed to be a continuous, repeating pattern that you can see spiraling in, but it's disconnected because these little spirals are separated by bright, off-setting blue paint that keep them from blending into the picture properly, the knotwork is trying to make it to the rest of the picture, it points in towards the center but is isolated to little icicles hugging the border where is completely disconnected from everything trapping the awkward, misshapen doves who try to touch beaks in a wreath. There's nothing in the center. There should be something in the center, not empty blue.

I think I'm missing something important.

The cat's sick, he's trying to sit behind me and clean himself in the computer chair and I should give him his medicine. I'm going back to work soon. I need to take my dry cleaning but I don't feel like it. I think I'll order in. Mazzio's delivers.

I'll post something funny later.