.discount tires.

routine oil change, $24.95...final cost of the day...quite nearly $700.00...turns out you're supposed to 'rotate your tires' (whatever that means)...imagine this....only female, on the phone, in tears (tears from the tires and the novel i'm reading about sudan, which is not the book to be reading while paying for tires, for a car you don't want, in america, when your heart is to be car-less in africa). I'm pretty sure the mechanics, covered in their dirt and grime, didn't know what to do with me. i recovered and even found out how to fix the little light bulb in my head-lights.

but i have tested, and proved, the fact that tears just might get you out of a ticket, and now i think i'll add, get you "3 star tires for the price of the 2 star ones"

this one's for you, mechanics of the world.

.read out loud.

"if you ever asked me
how my drawing classes are going,

I would tell you that I enjoy
adhering to the outline of a thing,

to follow the slope of an individual pear
or the curve of a glossy piano.

And I love traling my hand
over the smooth membrane of bond,

the intelligent little trinity
of my fingers gripping the neck of the pencil

while the other two dangle below
like the fleshy legs of a tiny swimmer.

I would add that I can get lost
crosshatching the shadow of a chair

or tracing and retracing
the slight undercarriage of a breast.

even the preparations call out to me-
taping the paper to a wooden board,

brushing its surface clean,
and sharpening a few pencils to a fine point.

The thin hexagonal pencil
is mightier than the pen,

for it can modulate from firm to faint
and shift from thin to broad

whenever it leans more acutely over the page-
the bright yellow pencil,

which is also mightier than the sword
for there is no erasing what the sword can do.

We all started with the box and the ball
then moved on to the cup and the lamp

the serrated leaf, the acorn with its cap.
But I want to graduate to the glass decanter

and learn how to immobilize in lead
translucent curtains lifted in the air.

I want to draw
four straight lines that will connect me

to the four points of the compass,
to the bright spires of cities,

the overlaping trellises,
the turning spokes of the world.

one day I want to draw freehand
a continuous figure

that will begin with me
when the black tip touches the paper

and end with you when it is lifted
and set down beside a luminous morning window"

drawing class. billy collins

(oh for the days when we'd read outloud what was silently printed on paper...love.)

.aubrielle raye ferguson arrives.

here are some pictures of aubrey for everybody who couldn't be here for such a happy....

http://okbu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014124&l=8bf8e&id=7980032


http://okbu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014124&l=8bf8e&id=79800322