Dear Mr. Future,

Thanks for always being there for me.

Best,
Andy

Dear Mr. Past,

Some times it's nice being around you, and others I wish I didn't know you so well.

Take care,
Andy

Ambroise Paré

The Lord be Praised for Ambroise Paré


and more for his helping gentleman hand
weighing, cupping, a footed bowl of rosewater,
the surface spilling over
its lip, sloshing a rag of putrid turpentine,
hearing the sweet sizzle of sour.

Daubing his rag on the lost,
firm fingers became the father to those without,
rolling royal sleeves to the elbow and
painstakingly prying out plans for
the clenching, spring-loaded "Le Petit Lorrain".

Where are you now, enemy of the arabesquing arquebuse?
When will we hear again "Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit"?
"Guérir quelquefois, soulager souvent, consoler toujours", right?

Incised, the arteries bow-tied back,
twitching then imp like a floundering flicker--all white subclavian.
I hardly seem to notice what is already gone:
That strange and grevious fact,
the phantom limb skimming--dancing--off the surface
of that ancient river whose name only
the blind know and only
amputees can pronounce.

The Return

I have managed to hack back into this thing.

"What is life? What is death? If you cut out the heart of a dogfish and drop it into a bucket of warm saline, the heart will continue to beat for up to eight hours. Is that life? Or is it merely "technical life" or "virtual death"? Not long ago, some fossilized lotus seeds known to be thousands of years old were dug from a bog in Manchuria. A botanist chipped away the rocklike outer shell, incubated the seeds in damp cotton wadding. In time, delicate green shoots appeared. He set them out upon a lake. Behold! The lotus bloomed. Time was when one could say with King Lear as he cradled the body of Cordelia: "I know when one is living and when one is not." With the advent of medical technology, that distinction has become blurred."--Dr. Richard Selzer

An old man sat on a front porch wearing a white undershirt and worn grey denim pants. The porch was the kind that was one complete slab of concrete, marred only by the crack which ran from the south corner of the house, edging outwards towards the five uneven steps. The man kicked his toes against the crack, feeling the swell that decades' worth of heat had caused to form. Using an old toe he flicked out the loose chunks and kicked them off into the high grass. To his right, a screen door hung wide open, the black aluminum tapping against the brick of the house. Inside, barefoot feet could be heard slapping against linoleum. Occasionally the man would look over his shoulder into the house, squinting as if able to see through the walls into some distant room. Turning back towards the street, his face would curl up and his belly would bounce in a silent laugh. Resting his hands in between his legs, the man would watch the goingson of the street, moving his head left then right, sometimes fast, sometimes slow as if carefully tracing an arc. He could see the whole street from his position. He knew when new people were on the block--he could pick out those that were lost. Usually he would just sit and look, sometimes nod if someone passed that he knew. When the mailman would come up to the house, the man would stand and walk down to the street to take his mail, smile and say a few words--usually about either weather or the neighbors--and then head back to his seat in the shade.

Put a dollar into the machine...

Dear blog,

I've had a funny feeling in the bottom left corner of my mouth all day. It's not one of those "ha ha" funny feelings though, more of a "I need to shove my tongue up against the side of my mouth and rub it in a soothing counterclockwise rotation" sort of feeling.

Anyways, what's it like being a blog--I've always been a bit curious. I mean, how do the letters that got left out feel? E gets alot of usage elsewhere(used six times in that short phrase alone), but W sometimes gets the short end of the letter usage spectrum-pedulum-decimal scale.

Speaking of scales, I've been curious all day about the Dewey Decimal System. I did a bit of research and here's what I've learned:

Melvil Dewey was born in New York on the tenth of December, 1851. He went to school and eventually became a librarian at Amherst College. In 1876, he published an important book, one that would TOTALLY change the way books were arranged in libraries. Through this book Dewey established the Dewey Decimal System. Dewey did other things to affect the ways libraries operate today. He helped found the American Library Association in 1876 and established the first professional library school in the United States in 1887. Other associations Dewey was involved with include the Children's Library Association, the Association of State Librarians, and the American Library Institute. He also edited Library Journal (with which Middletown Thrall library is a subscriber). Dewey died in 1931, but his revolutionary organization system still stands today as one of the most convenient and comprehensive tools today helping librarians and readers locate and classify information.

And so...I introduce to you...

THE MELVIL DEWEY 155TH BIRTHDAY BASH.101206.R2!!!!

...more details to come so don't touch that dial!

Come Watch Me Dance Sometime

By the way...check me out on Wikipedia! Just type in "Andy Ross" and proceed to learn all about my exciting life and times--and lead vocalizations. Enjoy.

Why I love the Internet

I like finding pictures on the computers that other people use, and then putting them on the internet as if I was interested in them...which I'm not. This is a picture of my new girlfriend! Her name is KiKKiMmOosiI(it's a very complex computer-generated language). Anyways, she's hott.