Cloud of the Month

I woke up thinking about poetry this morning. Then I fell back to sleep for a little bit and had the freakiest dream about having to give a Spanish food presentation in a Geography class and having an office as a grad student that was also a room I shared with another Lisa, but on top of Mary Lyon Hall where I lived with Tammy and Joanne as a sophomore, and this room anyway, had showers in it but was very rustic, with a wood stove and a huge stack of wood and candles on these old schoolhouse desks. And the TV was black and white. And I spilled the food I was making, three times, OK? On three different sets of clothes, so I went to the prof and told him my presentation would be half-assed and he thanked me for the warning, but in the meantime all these friends of mine had been getting together, while I was trying to get the key to my room and take a shower and find something clean to wear, and had made this huge presentation in which each of them would take a small part, and all I had to do was hold a Spanish flag and a plate of nachos and act all like Vanna White. And I can assure you that I never saw a single nacho the whole time I spent in Spain in "real life."

So, whattup with telling that crazy story- and worse, leaving out the walk around this chilly lake on a bunch of rocks and watching all sorts of gigantic cold water fish swim around while these Monty-Python-like clowns in a wooden canoe glided along arguing over whether the one or the other two had ever seen certain species of fish- none of which I'd ever heard of- being from Australia and Sweden, respectively, and therefore coming from two entirely different types of waterscape. Well, that's Geography for you all right- on some alternate Earth.

But the underlying big deal, of course, was the sweetness with which my friends were there to take over and hook me up when I was less than prepared. And they came from all sorts of times in my life: Tammy, Joanne, Jackie, Uncy, Mike Mills, Grant... I imagine I'm leaving someone out, but hey, it was a dream.

So, back to poetry. When I woke up the first time, I had some imaginary poet's name stuck in my head. It's gone now. I looked up fish poems online and didn't like any of them; what's wrong with people disrespecting the fish? And all the fish end up dead in the poems. The fish in my dream would have kicked serious ass, whether it was a person with a pole and a hook or a cat that had for some bizarre reason decided to come out to the shore.

I looked up dog poems, since the FFM and I were walking with Mike's yellow dog in another dream last night, and she showed up again with me at the lake. The top billing in my search: "Poems in Praise of Dogs." Clearly, peeps, there is a discriminatory air to our treatment of various animals. No wonder we treat each other of different colors and creeds with venom. Skip dogs. They get enough praise.

Cats. Exactly as suspected: All the cat poems are cutesy. Have people not met Dinglehoofer the Shelter Cat? Or a mountain lion on a jogging trail? Sharp teeth, claws, cunning... Come on...

So, now that it's almost sunrise and the sky is all salmon-colored, like a FISH, how about clouds? Amazing: there is this thing called the Cloud Appreciation Society! I want to be in that club. And there you have it: the picture for today, "Cloud of the Month," taken over Amsterdam, The Netherlands. What type of clouds are these beauties? Go to the website to check your skills:

http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/.

Aw, crap; I'm in love. Like a good friend, my favorite word will never let me down.