A fat crippled moth struggled on the blotter under the light. Only once I'd turned my attention to something else did the desk frog strike, and when I looked I saw only the tips of moth wings poking from the sides of his mouth. Once he'd finished swallowing the creature, the frog wiped his face and eyeballs with both his hands, hopped back into the shadows, and seemed to doze.

A little "aha":

This is class war. Once the rebellion is quelled, the carpet baggers will move in and grab the prime real estate. Then you'll see real levees go up in record time.

A smack on the side of the head. Bush Senior did nothing to beef up the levees back when he was charged to; Bush Junior hasn't even broken a sweat. This is not so much evacuation, then, as eviction, and the opportunity they've been waiting for.

D'ya think? Or am I just succumbing to more leftist paranoia?

And we're back to pleasant dreams (come back! I won't describe any, I promise) and I can add more support to my theory. Perhaps because of this inferior vena cava thing (and at least part and parcel with it) my liver has become oversensitive. It swells and pangs if I eat very much at once, and if I eat anything fatty. But on each of the "nightmare nights" I'd gone off my tiresome regimen and gorged on my homemade potato salad for late suppers. Those dreadful dreams woke me between 4 and 5--the liver's peak activity period. Yesterday then I took greater care with what I was eating, and the amounts thereof. And I breezed through the night, sleeping until 7 (and then 8). And the dreams, although perplexing, were OK.

Books Received: This just in from Tres Chicas Books (via Miriam Bobkoff)--Just Outside the Frame: Poets from the Santa Fe Broadside, edited by dos Miriams--Bobkoff and Sagan. Over the course of more than 40 issues, their Santa Fe Broadside ezine, conceived to promote the work of New Mexico poets, has published translation, artwork, and book excerpts. This collection showcases the Broadside's poets. It's a substantial volume, and the work is of a very high calibre. I've forgotten how much quoted text constitutes "fair use" in discussing a new publication in a public forum. But I particularly admire Bobkoff's "(First) Report on bringing (back) stones":

... Like a miracle here
the grass is still partly green
so this must be where
today's ceremony of farewell to the light
is being held. It is danced on the horizontal
near a river.
...

If you're in the neighborhood Sept. 29, I see that Miriam suggests you stop in for the reading at 6:30pm at Santa Fe's Main Library. You may purchase Just Outside the Frame directly from Tres Chicas Books.
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