Zuzu's Petals

Big Girl Panties

2009-09-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

Z is growing like crazy and I’m in complete denial that it’s going to keep happening. My idea of childproofing is putting things up on the arms of the sofa and I overlook the fact that she can not only reach the arm of the sofa, but has no trouble climbing on and off the thing. Partly I hope that by the time I face up to facts, she’ll have outgrown this phase where life itself is a choking hazard. But then I want to pull back hard on the reigns of time. She wore big girl panties to the playground today and is sitting on the toilet (boycotting the potty chair.. makes for a nice tote, but I doubt she’ll ever use it properly.) How is it happening that she’s wearing big girl panties??

The more I do it, the more I feel pretty clueless about this whole parenting thing. I’m glad that she won’t remember much of these first few years of life for the parenting mistakes I’ve already made. And I think there’s a natural schizophrenia associated with parenting a toddler. While on some level I’m glad she’ll forget, I want to savor and remember every second and partly there’s a deep sadness that she won’t remember and cherish every second too - even those terrible bad mommy moments.

She has a voracious appetite and is known to stuff a whole slice of cheese in her mouth. Or, stuff her pie hole full of turkey if the dog is watching (she hopes to make her jealous.) It’s not uncommon, in her enthusiasm, for her to start gagging and turn red with bulging eyes. I’ve become adept at the Heimlich. She has to be watched like a hawk when she eats because it’s not when they’re making noise when you have to worry about a blocked airway. When it’s blocked, one can’t make noise. Sometimes she can eeek out a little gagging sound as she tries to clear the block with the last bit of air accessible to her. Mostly she’s successful in clearing it herself these days. (Practice makes perfect I guess.) I usually wait to see if she can do it before I intervene. It’s unsettling watching her turn colors and her eye get all buggy. Night before last this happens, I hear the noise as I’m doing some prep work at the cutting board and I turn to watch her to see if she clears it. She does and I tell her, “Z that scares the heck out of me.” A few minutes go by and I hear the sound again, I jump and turn abruptly… she starts laughing. She thinks it’s funny, this reaction I have, when I fear for her life. So now she just makes the sound to see me jump. I can see where this all is going…

Proclaimation

2009-09-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

There was a time before when I only used my computer for creative purposes. I never went on the internet. I’m a Luddite and a slow adaptor to new technology in many regards. I was just pondering my many uses for my old Mac Classic and think it’s pathetic that now that I’m tricked out with tons of technical capabilities and capacity, I’m far less creative and prolific. It seems tremendously wrong. I’m increasingly convinced that the internet is hindering (not enhancing) creative processes, overall.

With that said, you might find my words here more often and me here (online) less often.

What The Fuck is Chasing Ursula?

2008-09-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

It’s been so long since my last post. I’m a bad blogger. Little Z is now Big Z, eight months old and speeding toward nine. She can crawl, stand, cruise along the sofa, yell like a pirate, fart like a sailor, use her pincer grip on cheerios and lovingly say, Da da and Jihad. She has two teeth (which have more than put a damper on breast feeding) and a smile that lights the world on fire. I’m jealous of my mom friends who post weekly and have a lovely chronicle of these precious days. I find myself spent and lacking creativity at the day’s end. Sleep deprivation began sometime mid-pregnancy and persists to this day. It’s a wonder I can construct a grammatically correct sentence and an even greater wonder that the bathroom is clean.

I don’t have words to express how much I love her. It’s excruciating. I don’t know what I expected, but this love is enormous, beautifully painful and incontrovertible. At the end of the day, I think, love alone is not enough. I must be a thoughtful and engaged steward of her becoming and I must play with her relentlessly. It’s difficult to play relentlessly amidst the mountain of dirty laundry. The singularly most unexpected aspect of motherhood has been the volume of dirty laundry. She’s so tiny, I still don’t understand how she accomplishes soiling so much.

I’m getting the hang of living with her. It’s been a process and just when I think I’ve got something down, things change – she changes, she grows, her capabilities change and yes, even, sometimes I change. In truth, mostly, I change. She teaches me all kinds of things and I discover I’m a slow learner, but I’m getting the hang of it. Just give me time to learn to crawl.

I love alphabet books and Z’s friend Luke gave her a charming board book called Zoe and Her Zebra. Each page dons a letter and says, for example, A is for Alexander, but who is chasing him? And there’ll be a picture of an alligator chasing a boy. But then there are conundrums like this one:

This problem isn’t unique to Zoe and Her Zebra. It’s foreboding. I wonder if I’m going to be able to keep up with her. Not only is there New Math, but there seems to be new and bemusing things that start with the letter U.

I’m mystified by this changing understanding of myself – this new identity of mother. While on the one hand, I want to maintain some well rounded balance of interests and activities, there’s another part of me that believes being wholly a mom is the most important thing I could be doing right now. This is such a critical time developmentally. What could be more important (or more interesting) than swimming, hiking, painting, playing, whispering, singing, napping, reading, dancing, laughing, talking, eating, or dreaming with her?

She won’t remember this time. Who does? But I believe it’s an important time for establishing expectations of relationships and the world. I want to show her wonder and laughter and help her to recognize the world as a place filled with joy and possibilities, mysteries and adventure. I want to cultivate an expectation of laughter in each day and manifest it, even if it’s stirred in right next to sorrow and frustration – the pot holds it all. I want to give her a good strong canvass on which to paint her life and her story – and I want to honor her brush strokes. I believe in her ability to reach. She always seems to come back with something in her hand.

And who am I in that picture? Will she say (or quietly believe) that her mother lacked ambition? My identity is increasingly mom. It’s like I’m being taken over by it. It’s been a surprisingly easy surrender.

Motherhood

2008-02-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

Becoming a parent changes everything. Okay. Not everything. I didn’t lose my political conscience, for example. I didn’t lose my ability to recognize that Zoe benefits by being part of a civilization that takes care of its elderly and disadvantaged, provides for the health and well-being of its citizenry and provides assistance programs to help those in need. I want my baby girl to understand compassion, tolerance and acceptance on their deepest levels.

We went for our first big sojourn on Monday past – Zoe, Secret Agent Dog and I – on a four mile trek through the Water District, around one of the reservoirs. Hiking with a 5 week old baby is like carrying a bowling ball with tiny feet. The entire mission of that bowling ball is to lose its socks.

I’m pretty committed to finding a way to get back to a life of some normalcy and integrate Zoe into activities and routines. The first several weeks of her life were pretty overwhelming – not just because she has an absurd schedule of need, but because I experienced some pretty debilitating post partum health complications. Now that my own health is gradually improving, I’m feeling more capable of rising to the challenge of motherhood and figuring out how to create a more dynamic life for the lot of us.

My first observation is that this whole notion of hiking with a baby includes a tragic design flaw. As I set out on our journey I was prepared to push myself physically in order to begin that process of rebuilding my body. I gained about 50 pounds during pregnancy and while I’m currently within about 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight, those previously mentioned post partum health problems laid me up for several weeks and resulted in a phenomenal amount of muscle atrophy. Also, regardless of the added complications, it’s pretty inspiring how pregnancy makes mash potatoes of one’s abs.. That has been quite the surprise.

So anyways – the design flaw. The baby needs to eat about every three hours. It’s important to time activities to accommodate this need. This isn’t just for the baby’s comfort, but also for my own, because I engorge on her schedule. (TMI???) This requires that I keep a good pace on the hike, which is my intent nonetheless. But here’s the kicker – the whole time I’m huffing and puffing, pushing my physical limits, that little bird of a bowling ball, trying with all its might to de-sock itself, is sleeping. So at the end of the activity, I’m spent and she arrives refreshed, nicely napped and prepared to caterwaul for her dinner. There’s no setting her down, catching my breath, regrouping in a serene post-hike haze. To the contrary, she’s spent the last several hours in deep repose categorizing her needs and devising new indecipherable ways to communicate them.

In addition to the little glitch in baby-on-board hiking, we add the variable, the veritable wild card of Secret Agent Dog. The most awesome dog on the planet who has suffered and endured beautifully not only neglect associated with the physical compromise of my post partum issues, but really the prolonged neglect extending into the last month of the pregnancy. Despite it, she’s a champ, even though she’s showing overt signs of anxiety not only over the decrease in activity but also over the stress of the sock-hating interloper.

So it’s near the end of the hike and the bowling ball is getting agitated, making the socks ever more loathsome, and I’m tired, though mentally plotting the challenge in front of me – transfer screaming baby to car seat, drive windy road home, pour lemonade, promptly peel off shirt and shove a breast in baby’s mouth, lay on sofa and drink lemonade. This is where the wild card comes into play.

“Where’s my dog?” is equivalent to “come” in Secret Agent Dog coded language – so as I approach the truck and she’s not on my heels I turn around and call out. She fails to respond with the sharpness of her training – which usually means something’s amiss. I peer down the trail and spy her rolling on her back in distracted, euphoric glee. No good can come of this. No good can ever come of this. Enter the wild card: rancid diarrhea-covered dog.

On the turn of a dime, or a phrase, or however that works, ubermom in training rethinks the strategy. As I pull into the drive, as though on queue, the now hungry and angry sock-loathing, hat-hating bowling ball begins to make its full presence known by exercising her operatic lungs. It’s as though an unholiness has been unleashed into the world and she the only siren of warning. This warning, of course, first pierces the air of the truck, which is rank with the smell of rancid diarrhea-covered dog.

I place the car seat, replete with baby, in the crib, which is really just a staging area given we co-sleep with her in our own bed (the BEST invention!) I haul her highness Ms Princess Honey Bee into the yard for a hose down and washing, all the while, Princess Stinky Buns, Ruler of the Baby Do’s, is busy in her car seat making messy and hollering loose hell’s gates.

I towel the dog, wash my own hands and proceed to attend to the unholiness in her panties while she squirms and screams – now red-faced and spent. This is truly the saddest moment, when she begins gasping for air, her vocal chords quivering as does her entire chin and lower lip. This is the most heartbreaking and deeply sincere form of baby sign language – her rendition of Hamlet …. “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds that sees into to the depth of my sorrow.” She is profoundly inconsolable. She has suffered her first tragic abandonment by her mother and the world. There is no coming back from the darkness now touched. For the first time, she has seen the abyss.

I try to alter the tenor of the moment by tossing a joyful air into the tone of my voice. I scoop poop off her naughty bits and freshen her with clean diapers and a nice change of clothes and as I change her I remind her, “Change comes from within, Zoe. Change comes from within.” If she had the coordination and wherewithal, I’m sure she’d roll her tear-filled eyes at me. She screams at my attempts to comfort her.

I grab the lemonade and back track to the original plan where I peel off my shirt and stick a breast in her mouth. This is where I begin to understand why new mothers never find time to eat - I’m starving but I can’t wait to feed her – it wouldn’t be right in the face of her all consuming sadness. As we cozy up on the sofa and being the ritual, I’m struck by the smell of Secret’s offense. The longer I sit, the more nauseated I become as the rancid poop smell curls twice around the house and goes to sleep – or rather, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t go kindly into that good night – begins its own rage of life. The bowling ball has had vengeance on the socks and its greedily eating while I spy Secret Agent Dog with unspeakable disdain. It’s the one and only act that makes me lose love for her – and she knows it in this moment.

Eventually I just can’t take it anymore – I can’t take the smell or the idea that she’s rubbing that smell on the loveseat, reclining chair and anywhere else she goes for comfort. She feels my displeasure and is cowed on the loveseat, tucking herself into pillows and throw blankets, making herself small. I cut the feeding short and draw a bath – begin to begin again with more potent shampoo.

Zoe’s needs left incompletely fulfilled, she starts caterwauling again as Secret sheepishly gets into the bath without protest. At the end of the task it’s like an explosion set off in the bathroom – the tub drain clogged with dog hair and water on every wall and surface. Nothing escapes the madness. All the while, we’re serenaded with the melodious crooning of blood curdling screaming baby.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Okay, rewind again to the original plan. I leave the bathroom a mess, throw the blankets from the loveseat in the laundry and again retrieve the baby from her freshly inconsolable darkness.

This time we retire to the bedroom – baby’s sense tension, tap into your mood, as do dogs. We all need to calm down. I made the bed cozy, crawl in, plant pillows all around and recommence with feeding. Breathe, okay, let’s all just love each other. Secret Agent Dog, seeking emotional reprieve, hops up on the bed and I lazily pet her and I start trying to relax and deconstruct how this beautiful day devolved so miserably. I close my eyes and start making a mental list of things I now need to get done before I start dinner. It was 1 pm when we left for our first magical outing together – it’s nearly 6 pm now. Finish laundry; clean bathroom; feed Secret; change Zoe; clean out poop-covered back of truck, etc. And as I’m finding a place of contemplation and calm, I sense Secret starting to shiver. She cowers in the face of disapproval and is in her own way inconsolable until she finds a way to redeem herself. She relies on the love between us, comes to expect it like air, and really, no one could love her better. I pull the blanket up around her and give her reassuring works and gestures. It’s okay. It’s all okay now. And I think it is, until she throws up all over the bed. Which seems to put a cherry on this disaster. I just exhale and let it go.. something else to add to the list… wash bedding, clean vomit off bedframe and floor.. and I just let it go and keep feeding Zoe… so she does it again.

Can I Have This Dance For The Rest Of Your Life?

2008-01-21T16:09:00.001-08:00

New Years Eve was destined to be disappointingly uneventful. There were festivities at the Pavilion, the artist in residence organized a New Years ball. I was too pregnant and tired to even consider it, but I was weepy for being so immobile and big and insisted that I accompany Ed on the evening walk with Secret Agent Dog in hopes of rising out of my melancholy. I’m not good at sitting still or down for long periods. I sat on a bench at the ball field and watched the lights swirl in the Pavilion while music rose on a breeze in the crisp cool evening air and Secret ran and jumped and whirled in acrobatic feats to catch her Frisbee. It made me smile and breathless.

It seemed like such a short spell and we were walking back home. We’d bring in the New Year watching Angel (the spin off of Buffy The Vampire Slayer) because I love Lorne (the green demon who sings show tunes and looks so wonderful in yellow) and I’d go to sleep early, likely drift off on the sofa and hope the Zantac kept the acid reflux in check. But then, WHOA what was that? In the middle of the second episode on the Netflix disc I was hit with a wave of contraction. I think I just had a contraction, I announced with a bit of surprise and disbelief. That was the beginning – at about 11 pm on New Years Eve.

Because I was so full of amniotic fluid, the technicians at the fetal monitoring lab told me that I might not even feel contractions associated with early labor. That might have been true. I moved from “early” labor (contractions 10 minutes, then 8 minutes, then 5 minutes apart) within a mere half hour and dove right into active (regular contractions, five minutes apart) labor by midnight.

Neither Ed nor I really believed it. He kept urging that we gather our many’s and get a move on. I kept saying that I didn’t want to drive into the City on New Years Eve night only to be turned away because I arrived too early or it was a false alarm. He packed the truck with my hospital bag and labor kit and called LB to let her know we’d likely be dropping the dog off. I lay in bed as the contractions worsened.

I’d really wanted to have an un-medicated delivery, but after about 9 hours of active and transitional back labor, I asked for a fentanyl shot and when that wore off and the contractions came on two fold (literally, two at a time, less than a minute a part) in timing and intensity, I surrendered to the epidural at about hour 10. She was facing the wrong way and despite being fully dilated, she wasn’t budging beneath the pelvic bone. I pushed for hours, with no progress. In the 11th hour (which was actually the 18th hour) the epidural began wearing off and the anesthesiologist was in a c-section. We pushed right through it and the attendant finally offered either suction or a c-section. I opted to try the suction first – so he came in with vacuum/suction at about 6 pm on New Years Day… he turned her head and literally she was born two contraction, four minutes later. Why didn’t we do that several hours earlier!?!

I was spent, but she was healthy as they come - pink and beautiful. The nurses said there was a rush on labor/delivery that night and ten couples arrived, ten babies were born. They said that she was hands down the healthiest looking of them all. (I guess newborns often look yellowed and jaundiced and all pruned…. Not Zoe, she was plump and pink and full faced.)

She weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces and was a sleek and tall 21 inches long. Her hair is coppery red and as the attendant said, “she looks a little grumpy.”

Repeal Day

2007-12-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

Here I sit, big as a house, while the baby rat-a-tat-tats a little soft shoe from the inside, my internal organs are merely her percussion instruments. Right then, it’s gone beyond soft shoe as she’s gotten stronger and bigger and the space available to her shrinks. She’s moved from dancing to boxing.

I keep meaning to write and then lose track, lose focus. So I’m not going to even strive for a great deal of sensible narrative tonight.

Whenever I see a bay nut this time of year I think of Cassie (aka Indigo.) They’re made of her favorite colors and I keep thinking that she doesn’t realize just how much she likes yellow.

They say that babies know who their core family is because they recognize the voices of people from the womb. Since I’ve been pregnant, we’ve watched all seven seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on DVD. So I guess she’ll think Sarah Michelle Gellar is part of her core tribe. That’s just wrong.

Yesterday (happy Repeal Day, by the by) I stopped by Goth@m, what remains of a once renowned San Francisco piercing parlor called The G@untlet (they seem to use the same “G” logo) to have a few personal body ornaments removed in preparation of the girl’s arrival. Years ago, the SF-location closed down and one of the piercers started Goth@m. I’ve walked by it several times, it’s a stones throw from the old place, but I’ve never been in. I was in the neighborhood dealing with my tax guy, so I figured “no time like the present.”

A beautiful black man was working behind the counter of this somewhat sleazy looking hole-in-the wall of a place (no pun intended.) (The G@untlet was the equivalent of a clean well-lighted place to modify your body, this place had a rather dingy, back-room abortion clinic feel about it.) The beautiful black man, heretofore known by his nickname, T@sty C@kes (I don’t lie), had awesome tattoos – some of which included scarification, all of which were raised. He tells me that tattoos on people of color are raised because of their pigment. I had no idea and I don’t remember T. Lee’s tattoos being raised and I’m thinking, am I so insulated that I don’t have many friends of color with body art? He let me run my fingers over the tattoos – I love that raised feel.

So the beautiful black man called T@sty C@kes, with the fantastic raised tattoo and body jewelry has me hop up on an old and rickety exam table in a small grey room with a window that looks out into a dimly lit, dirty light well and he’s holding the needle nose pliers between my legs, shaking his head, saying he hasn’t seen a vagina in over ten years and how his Mom isn’t going to believe this. I try to console him by telling him I haven’t seen it for several months either. And I’m thinking, this is one of the things that make me different from other pregnant woman– who talk about the wonder of the baby moving and wax whimsical at the notion of motherhood. Their stories never seem to involve a T@sty C@kes between their legs with a needle nose pliers.

Kosovo Music

2007-10-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is very old, but I love these boys and had to share:

Looking Ahead

2007-10-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

Fall

2007-10-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how it was I failed to celebrate, but in the big countdown to Zoe I missed passing the 100 day mark. Today is 98 days and counting… literally, days, hours, minutes… I’m so over this part.

Secret and I went for our last big hike on the mountain before Ms Thing’s arrival. Climbing the rise was excruciating (why did I think it would be a fun thing to do again?) I brought the camera in tow (because hiking up wasn’t enough, I needed to load down with extra baggage too) but despite stopping and looking with a watchful eye, I wasn’t moved to frame anything and shoot. It was beautiful and I did try to stop and take it in, knowing it’s the last time I’ll see it until sometime next year. It’s all golden and thirsty this time of year, and the trails are soft with crushed leaves in all different arrays of pastels and dusty. When we see it next it will be wet and green and misty.

The Madrone trees are in berry with the bark in full peel – ribbons of swirling red paper-thin curls of shedding Madrone skin adorn the trunks like they’re all gussied up for a cotillion. Just makes you want to dance with them. There’s one, my favorite, I pause at it and run my fingers along the cool smooth bark after clearing away a patch of ribbons and I wish it well and I ask for the tree to welcome Zoe. I can feel it saying hello. That will not be the last time the trees speak kindly to her.

I’ve just come in from a ~~hot~~ tepid tub and despite it only being 5:30 in the evening, I’m feeling full on lazy and sleepy – nothing that either a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce or the bundle of Asian Peers on the kitchen table seems to shake off (I’ve tried them both for good measure.) They say that the third trimester is marked by a return of the fatigue and bully if just the mere mention of it makes me want to nap.

We went to see The Kingdom last night. Note to self, you are no longer equipped for 7 pm showings. It was very predictable and the special effects were far less special than I’d hoped for – but there’s something about getting beat up from the inside out during an action thriller that makes the whole thing take on the tenor of one of those John Water’s 3D scratch and sniff movies. Watching the portrayal of the Saudi Muslim fundamentalists blowing up the all-American baseball game recalled that documentary Jesus Camp where the camp director touts, with no small amount of pride, that it’s high time the Christians started raising devout, brainwashed, terrorist children to strike back, just like them fundie Muslims. They really are all so indistinguishable. Isn’t it just so incredibly true that pride indeed does go before the fall? I mean, even when people don’t even realize how shameful they’ve become.

With October waking this morning, the season resolutely changed with a cool rain and overcast morning. When it cleared around mid-day and the sun bellowed across the sky, it was interrupted by high cottony clouds which just seemed to scream things like hot apple cider, butternut squash and pumpkin pie. It was warm, but it was certainly Fall.

There Would Have Been A Time For Such A Word

2007-09-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

There are high puffy clouds in the sky – not terrifically unlike the cotton ball clouds you see strewn across a Midwestern sky. A gaggle of swallows flit through the front yard while the Crape Myrtle has begun its spectacular fall flowering. Secret Agent Dog sits stoically in front of the screen door – ever a watchful eye. What I like is that when I look out the living room windows, I see mostly plants, green and sky. The season has begun to change and while partly sunny it’s a mere 65 degrees at the late hour of 11 am. The plants seem happier for the shortening days and reprieve from the relentless onslaught of summer in the North Bay.

In sad news, Marge is gone. She was here day before last, but yesterday when I went to check on her in the morning in preparation for introductions to a visitor arriving later in the day, she was no where to be found. Even her spectacular web was gone – suggesting clearly something sinister had transpired. Feeling hopeful that perhaps it was just a mishap, like the run in with Ms Honey Bee described previously, I went to the agapanthus stalks this morning without satisfaction. When Ed arrived home last night I grilled him mercilessly… Is there something you need to tell me? Something that happened in the agapanthus that you’ve been keeping from me? After ruthless interrogation I suspect he mightn’t have been involved. In lament of Marge – she should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word… I suppose it is possible that she simply moved on.

It’s just a shy bit under four months until Zoe arrives – which seems all at once like forever-away and way-to-soon. I can hardly wait to show her the wildflowers in springtime. She’ll likely miss her first season of slink pods, but I imagine she’ll be quite alert when the later blooming wild irises start to parade. Despite the treachery of the trail, I’m determined to take her to the second waterfall at Elliot, to see the wild tiger lilies in full sail. I hope her little face doesn’t get scratched up while we rummage through the dwarf forest on the way. When the water stops flowing I’ll take her to the top of the falls where the little tree frogs live and the Canyon Larkspur bloom. While invariably she won’t have a perfect life, she’ll at least have no nature deficit disorder. We’ll plant flowers and harvest basil together and I’ll teach her how to bake bread and climb mountains. That is, of course, presuming I learn to bake bread in the next few months. All efforts continue to end in peril. Ever the Pollyanna – I’m certain I’ll succeed one day.

It’s nice to wander a bit into the future to a time when perhaps my belly isn’t stretched so taught, I can touch my feet and there’s not a creature inside kicking my internal organs for amusement.

Back In The Saddle

2007-09-10T21:04:00.001-07:00

As to the issue of Marge the spider who lives in the agapanthus, Secret Agent Dog took a leap through the agapanthus on Thursday last and lept right through the two stalks that held Marge and her web. There was Marge, big as a small farm animal, plastered, along with her web, in the center of Secret’s chest. I was mortified and screamed – which seemed to make Secret quite happy and excited, which seemed to cause Marge to scurry down her leg. For several hours Marge sat still as a stone in the drive, not six inches from the agapanthus. I debated for some time whether or not I should help her back – but decided to let her fend for herself – she’d suffered enough indignities for the day. Every few hours I’d go to check on her, by the early evening she was nowhere to be seen but by daybreak she’d rebuilt her web and was once again poised between the two remaining (albeit brown and dwindling) flower stalks. She’s back in the saddle.

The Itchy Butt

2007-08-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

The heat wave continues unabated. Ed worked from home to avoid the pre-Labor Day traffic (which is supposed to be thrice as bad as ever due to an impending Bay Bridge closure – for the entire weekend. The prediction is that Highway 101 through Marin will be a parking lot for three days.) as did LB. At mid-day LB joined me at the pool, she reading and doing the respite thing in the sun and shade, dabbling her toes in the water from time to time for a cool off while I swam a mile. (Yes, a stellar, fabulous, exhausting mile!) I’m going to have to start putting on sun screen because the freckles on my face are darkening and it reminds me of when I was an awkward kid.

Coming home I made Ed fetch me ice cream while I reposed in the back cottage in the cool breeze of the air conditioner and surfed the internet for nothing whatsoever. And then I went and picked up some leave-in hair conditioner to hopefully combat the effects of chlorine and since I was out, you know, a slice of pizza – which just made me hungry for the left over chicken enchilada in the fridge so of course I popped that in the microwave. Which all was chaser to the ice cream sandwich which started it all off before leaving the pool. And I act all mystified and bewildered when I get heartburn. Ha! (Yeah, hmmm… wherever is all this weight coming from, eh?)

LB’s coming over shortly, we’re taking our evening hike a little later in the evening in hopes of escaping the heat. Ms Honey Bee didn’t get a walk at all yesterday (way too hot) and today we’re leaving far later than normal… she likely presumes I’ve abandoned her needs as she’s looking rather despondent and forgotten at my feet. And little does she know she’s getting a bath when we return this evening… she’s got what we call “the itchy butt.”

I’m quite happy to report that I actually had a fairly decent night’s sleep last night. All is good is Zuzuland.

Barely Legal

2007-08-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage. - Barbara Kingsolver

We’ve begun keeping a list of every time Zoe kicks me and we’re going to ground her for it later. I think we’re getting a good handle on bondage – we’ll have to work on boundaries no doubt.

We’re in week 21 now and although I promised some reflection on The Good Terrorist…. Well… there you have it – I’m not inspired.

It’s hot today, in the 90’s. I spent the morning doing chores before the heat of the day made it all feel too oppressive and then made the unfortunate decision to take the Honey Bee for a mid-day sojourn to the lake. Even though we relegated our activities to the shady side of the lake, it was still miserably and relentlessly hot. Only one room has a window air conditioning unit, so I lifted my skirt and let the cold air pour over my big sweaty belly before readying my things for a trip to the pool.

Getting to the pool later than I have to date gave me a taste of the family aspect of the club. Early in the day it’s open to adults only and not until afternoon does it open up to family swim activities. There were gazillions of kids and babies and moms – not so many dads. But even with the influx of young’ns most of the lanes were reserved for lap swim and people seemed to respect the lap swimmers.

I’ve been working up slowly (it’s only my 4th day in the pool) and currently I’m swimming 1100 yards – which is about 2/3 of a mile. I haven’t been in the water since the summer of ’01 and I’m way out of shape, but the water is so familiar and comforting to me – it’s like coming home. My body is so different and unfamiliar it’s an interesting contrast – feeling so invited and good in the environment and yet feeling so distant and uncomfortable in my body. The movements in the water are reflexive, however. I know how it’s supposed to feel to swim. I make little adjustments and compensate for my changing body shape, my more buoyant belly, my heavier hips and I try to get that feel. On some level, at least for a few weeks, I know that no matter what I do I’ll feel like I’m dragging my body through the water as I build up the right muscles and endurance to swim on top of (rather than under/in) the water. That’s just the normal road to getting there – nothing I can do about that except swim every day, push myself a little harder and have patience. I do wonder, however, as I’m dragging this bowling ball called Zoe with me, if I’m going to feel like I can swim on top of the water as long as she’s in tow.

After I’d finished my first 600 yards I paused and a man approached my lane and touched my shoulder. He asked if I was a competitive swimmer. Not for many, many, many years, I assured him. He said that he’d been coming to the pool for years and he’s seen no one swim as beautifully as me – how it looked so strong and effortless and like it was supposed to look. It felt nice to hear it, even knowing how weak and formless my stroke is given lack of practice. With each stroke in the water I’m correcting, coaching, reminding, adjusting – and yet to someone it looks beautiful and effortless. “No one else here swims like that,” he tells me.

When I was a little girl I remember watching Mark Spitz in the 1972 Olympics on television. The colors of the pool and the grace with which he moved through the water entranced me. I wanted to do that. Even as a young girl, I was never dissuaded by my lack of abilities or natural talent.. heh. I like it that I’ve never been afraid to square off with failure and keep trying to understand, persevere, anyways. I hope I can give that to Zoe – the willingness to ignore failure, one’s own incompetence and insecurities and do it all anyways in the face of it because what really is there to lose at the end of the day?

Pregnant Pause

2007-08-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience: the task of surviving prosperity. - Alan Gregg

I’m so out of the practice of posting I don’t even know how to begin or what to say. Greetings. This is my first “new” post on blogspot, all the others have merely been transplanted from Diaryland – a quaint little spot – let it never be forgotten, it had its moment. It was.

Week 20, the half way mark, of this pregnancy, has commenced. It’s rather daunting. The miracle of life and all that rot. The first three months were miserable and now I just feel big and uncomfortable. What do I have to look forward to? Feeling bigger and even more uncomfortable and then being in a lot, lot, lot, lot of pain and then terrified for the next eighteen years. And this was a choice… a planned and deliberate choice. What were we thinking!?!

Despite my whining, Saturday was an awesome day. I pruned my agapanthus in the morning, with the exception of two aging flowers acting as pillar to the web of my Marge Simpson spider (which resembles this, but I’d say mine is bigger.) I conferred with Ed on how to handle Marge and his advice was to just leave her be. So there she perches, though much more exposed than when nestled among the other towering scepters of purple flower.

Ed edged the lawn around the garden, which looks amazing after an eight hour stint last week where I weeded, pruned, raked and primped. Zoe’s dresser arrived a few days back and Ed hauled it in pieces, to be assembles, which now lay strewn across the newcomer’s floor.

I’ve been kavetching about wanting to find and pool and swim for years – since we moved up here – and we visited a swim and tennis club which looks like it fits the bill perfectly. It’s an outdoor pool, heated to 82 degrees F, and open year round. If you’re a Native Son of the Golden West they offer steep discounts. They don’t kick in until one has been a member for a few years but it’s even reasonable until then. We got to try it out for free for the day and it was the first time I lay face down, stretched out, for months! It felt so great – like something really precious and valuable. I was beaming happy well into the evening.

After our afternoon at the swim and tennis club we took the bikes out for a spin, while the Honey Bee ran along side, up to the park for a frollicky game of fetch. After a nice work out I retired to the ~~hot~~ tepid tub for some respite. It was a great day.

Despite the pleasures of the day, however, I had a restless and uncomfortable night. If I wasn’t waking to go to pee (an every few hour occurrence… thank you miracle of frill’n life) I was waking up just plane uncomfortable. Around 4 am Secret decided she wanted up on the bed, to be with the pack, and until she departed around 7 I don’t remember sleeping well – despite cozily rubbing noses with the Monster Grrrl, I felt cramped and uncomfortable and sore. So today really sucked by comparison – I did a modicum of gardening but other than that I’ve been prone on the sofa or lazing on the bed and I feel like a big lump.

And if you can’t tell by this post, I’ve officially become one of those pregnant ladies who seem to have no life or mind or thoughts beyond the simple fact that she’s pregnant. For those of you who have never been pregnant, it’s rather all consuming. For those who have, my sympathies go out to you.

I’ll try to bring up some non-pregnant topics next time… like the Doris Lessing book I’m reading (The Good Terrorist.)

I Will Not Miss This

2007-04-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an interesting day, full of retrieval. I’ve sifted through old emails and electronic files, forwarding them on to final resting places. I rediscovered (and revisited) hundreds and hundreds of hours of wasted work I’ve done. There are full length discussion papers in mid-edit, lost in the machinery, and manuscripts for journal articles, fully edited and ready for publication, which have never seen the light of day. There are notes from meetings with lists of action items that never came to action. Proposals for strategic planning and expansion opportunities, replete with letters from collaborators and lists of funding opportunities, never followed up on by the greater machinery. It was heart breaking and painful to revisit the wonderful ideas that died on the vine. I spent the better part of the day stewing in revelation over all the thwarted work product. I will not miss this. I will not miss. I will not miss this.

A Pen

2007-04-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

I am in the sixties now, T minus sixty seven. I am in that place where I am resigning posts and appointments and relinquishing responsibilities that are moot to carry if one does not intend to carry them forward with their full weight. I had thought to maintain certain activities as civic duties, but a wise friend has encouraged me to let as much go as possible so that I might see, more clearly, the world of possibilities. Sometimes that is difficult to do not because my ego is invested but because this has been so much a part of my identity, a large part of how I have defined myself, for such a long time.

I like this unraveling, however. It is a tremendously healthy process. Every morning, when I start my day, I switch on the lap top and I make coffee or tea. Firstly, I check my email, personal and then work, I peruse the blogs and sites I frequent and by then it’s about 9-ish, time to start the real work day.

Increasingly I find disdain for the way the computer is centerpiece to so many activities. When I go out with the camera, the computer is the receptacle, developer, editing tool and print server for the finished product. The first line of communication with most of those I stay in contact with is the machine. Even this journal is online. I do my finances on the computer. We watch DVD’s on the computer. We listen to music through the computer. These little boxes have replaced so many human moments. I resent them.

I look forward to having this creepy black box sit idly on a shelf in the back study for several weeks on end. I will write with a fucking pen!

Woot!

2007-04-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

The lavender simple syrup is a grand success!! I’m drinking my own home brewed lavender soda as I write. It’s perfectly wonderful. I’m beside myself. Look, there I am. See. Beside myself. Hey… gimme that soda.

Another Kind of War

2007-04-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

We tooled about in San Rafael yesterday morning, gathering parts for the irrigation system (soooo stupid to pay what I paid to put that damnable thing in and then water the lawn by hand… /sigh), puttering about in hardware stores and then we went bowling for a break in the action. I so suck at bowling and at the same time I enjoy it immensely.

I made very licious black bean island soup – spicey and salty and hammy and garlicly. After the mountain sojourn with the Pumpkin Cookie, we perched on the sofa and watched a four part BBC documentary on the German/Russian War of the Century. It was striking, horrific, refreshing and bone chilling to hear German and Russian officers speak so candidly about unspeakable things. The documentarian would ask, would you consider that a war crime? Sometimes they would answer yes, mostly they would respond with a resolute no - it was war, it was the way it was. The Russian soldier relays how at the taking of Berlin he called the German officers to a house, one by one, and personally slit their throats – described the vulnerability of the human body and the easiest way to fell one.

I believe he was the man who responded, when asked if he considered this a war crime, that it was not, who is to judge him, how those years are, as they say, lost in the oblivion of history. But it’s clear those days stay with him keenly, in his mind’s eye, a file recalled simply, with some voice recognition pattern – perhaps a mere image or smell can recall than. Just like that. He’s gifted with no oblivion.

This morning we watched one of the Dog Fight series, I think about F16s. What was different about the men interviewed in the War of the Century and that Israeli fighter pilot in this Dog Fights episode was that the Israeli fighter pilot never stopped smiling and he lacked any (all?) humility. Line them all up side by side and Melnik, I think, was the worst – if there are degrees of evil.

Now that there has been enough viewing of war and human atrocity, we move on to more gentle pursuits – I’m going to see Marion Nestle speak at the Commonwealth Club tonight. I suppose that’s just another kind of war, eh?

Cherry Darling

2007-04-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

We lay in the grass in the yard while the sweet smell of hyacinth and other blooming things hover in the air. It’s private and quiet there, a little green oasis and respite from the world – though the world here is pretty quiet and private – it doesn’t require much escaping. Ed finished reading Speaker For The Dead aloud while I occasionally pulled a weed or pruned something. Secret played with her Jolly Ball, moving it about the yard like a soccer champ.

To speed things up, we went to see The Grindhouse. Vroooom, vroooooom.

Holiday...

2007-04-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

T minus 81. I’ve taken this week off work again, mostly because Ed lost his job and we haven’t had time off together, in years. When we take vacations, he’ll spend a not insignificant portion of the time working. That’s just not an option this week, so we’re lazing about, taking little day trips and enjoying our time together. It’s actually something of a challenge for us. When it comes right down to it, we prefer one another in relatively small doses.

On Friday night we ventured into The City for Cookie’s first-ever art opening. It was a smallish venue at Magnet, an HIV testing, counseling and case management center in the Castro. It was sweet and appropriate and I know from talking to folks that purchased items that he sold quite a few pieces. He’s produced a collection of mixed media pieces with a relatively high degree of curb appeal. He seemed quite happy with the turn out and the feedback and we had a great time.

Saturday I spent the day in the garden, finally getting the blueberry bushes in their big pots and the Boston Ferns that arrived last week in hanging pots over the hot tub. I still haven’t planted the citrus trees as I stew in indecision. Wiley, who I’d seen at Cookie’s show, came out for a hike. It was a somewhat unplanned and unexpected visit. He’d mentioned that he wanted to come out and without following up or confirming he just showed up. I’ve mixed feelings about that. I really enjoy people just showing up. I like an informal life that is open to people dropping in. I just don’t feel so great about Wiley, in particular, doing that right now (any more?). By the same token, I’m not willing to disinvite him to my life. (Generally, I don’t do that.) So I’ll just have to sit in my contradiction and ponder it for a spell. In the meantime, I had him mow the lawn.

Saturday evening Ed and I had craft night (something I think we want to make into a bit more of a routine..) We colored easter eggs (one of the fifteen exploded, spectacularly, in the pot – the shell hit me in the eye.. fortunately I wear glasses. That was Easter’s way of spitting at me!) His were absolutely fantabulous. He confessed that when he was a kid he imagined he’d be an artist. He’s totally gifted with this untapped talent, though he contends that he reached the pinnacle of his talent in the fourth grade and never progressed beyond that. I think if we develop a discipline together, it could be grand fun.

Sunday morning we gathered our many colored eggs and ventured into The City to the Pacific Rod and Gun club at Lake Merced where there was an Easter egg hunt and breakfast for the little children of gun club patrons. We ate hash browns while the little kids in multicolored pastel outfits scoured the field in a total of eight minutes. There was no shoot’n that day… amidst the bright orange broken clay pigeons and spent shell casings, children scavenged. It was poetic. This is what it’s come to.

It was still on the early side so rather than make the trek to the South Bay to visit Ed’s mother and have dinner, we trundled on over to Larkspur where the windsurfers set out into the Bay. It’s a lovely view of Ring Mountain and San Quentin State Prison where we toss the ball into the murky waters of the bay and let the Honey Bee paddle and play on the rocky beach.

We went home and changed clothes, took care of this and that, then did that South Bay dinner thing with Ed’s mom and ‘em. They ate honey glazed ham and George made me some lovely scampi. We left before it got too late or we got too tired – so it was a perfect little outing and the traffic wasn’t so bad.

This morning we rose early, puttered around the house, did some cleaning and went off to breakfast at the local Koffee Klatch. I stopped by the post office to get the (gulp) property taxes (I hope it makes it to the Civic Center by the deadline) in the mail and then we dropped Ed’s mountain bike off at the Cyclery. The day’s not over and there’s lounging to be done along with some wandering in the hills with the Monster Grrrrrl.

Shelby Knox

2007-04-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. - Wordsworth

T-85 and counting. I’ve had an extremely productive week even in the face of identity theft and fraud attempts on my checking account. Despite having to shut down and re-open bank accounts, update new direct deposit accounts, etc., etc., I’m speeding forward on my end-of-the-job-world deliverables. I’m not sure why I’m rushing it. When I complete everything I’ve set out to accomplish I’ll merely have to divine a new list of things to do that will make me useful until day zero. Even still, this first list includes what I think are important. I can busywork with them into oblivion after that.

I watched the documentary, The Education of Shelby Knox last night – a Netflix arrival a few days back that I’ve been putting on the back burner. It’s the story of a young devout (straight/heterosexual) Christian girl who gets involved with the local Youth Commission in Lubbock, Texas and spearheads efforts to improve sex education in the schools.

As much as I resisted liking Shelby, she won me over. Her parents are conservative and Republican and really quite proud of both of these attributes about themselves and they’re also proud of Shelby. It’s apparent that this precocious teenager is wildly more intelligent than her parents. I truly get the sense that her parents sense and perhaps even acknowledge this. It makes me wonder why her parents, inspired by this young woman, aren’t undergoing their own personal transformations – questioning the church, questioning the status quo, questioning their own values. Maybe they are, I’d have liked to see the results of any of that.

I suppose what I enjoyed most about it is that it authentically captured a young woman going through this period of earnest questioning, sitting down with her pastor time and again, exploring issues with her peers. I might not like what I heard and saw some of the time, but it was real.

In her community, it seems to have been all the rage to do these vows of chastity with the church. I wonder if now, as a young college girl, if she still clings to that vow. I wonder, if through her personal exploration, she’s found different conclusions. It would be great to see a follow up… something like The Continuing Education of Shelby Knox.

Freedom's Just Another Word

2007-04-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

I had the most fantabulous weekend. It kicked off with the first of a double-dose of the enchanting Cassie – who celebrated a birthday last week by the by – and we wandered a little mountain trail with our darling dogs. The wild flowers are in full array and the whole place is bursting with green. (Might I just say that I love her!!!)

In the afternoon, Ed’s best friend descended from Santa Rosa with his expecting wife and their son for a barbeque. After great food and a bit of chatter, they packed up and went home following a trip to the local, home spun, organic ice cream store (aptly named The Scoop.)

On Sunday I had the most perfect morning with my new old friend Ella, who I mentioned a while back that I recently ran into after losing touch for some fifteen or so years. I can’t even begin to tell you I much I adore reconnecting with Ella. There are some people who are just kindred playmates in this life – Ella is this for me. (Cassie is like this too, but in a different way – equally magical.) Ella is totally toys and sparkles (she has a whole ROOM for her inner child to play in her house!) We went to the Alameda flea market where I got a bitch’n new vintage personal-sized fan and she got (among many other fun things) plug-in light-‘em-up plastic deer lawn ornaments (which I named Stephanie and Winona, despite the fact that they have antlers… I haven’t been totally explicit with Ella that they’re pre-op transgender M to F’s… but they’re totally living with the girls now so they’ll be happy, happy, happy!) She gave me a Looking Good for Jesus change purse out of her collection of change purses (He’ll oogle if you’re frugal) and a typewriter key bracelet. I loooovvvveeee toys and presents and I’ve been eyeing a typewriter key bracelet online for months now. It was just so … joyful!

Then came the second dose of Cassie (with her girl-thing in tow this time), when she came to look at a house for sale in my little town. The house isn’t going to work, but it was lovely to see them out and about.

We moved on to the shoot ‘em up part of the weekend and went to see Shooter. Silly boy movie – big explosions, etc.

When Monday morning rolled around, the reality of Ed being out of work and my time clock counting down began to set in – in the best of ways, really. I began going through my files and packing up papers and materials to bring back into the office and recycling things I’ll never need to look at again. It had a real feeling of T-minus-something-and-counting. A feeling like the next part of my life is about to begin.

Pollyanna

2007-03-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

In honor of TYWWBTBFSTT, I am leaving my job. My last day will be June 30th. I’ve been working with the Admin Director to time my leaving with the interests of the organization, least impact – most benefit, and I’m developing some objectives to complete between now and then given we’re firm on the timeframe now. Admittedly I feel both thrilled and nauseous about the impending change.

For those who know me best, this is a change that been some time in the making. The organization has been slowly de-prioritizing my area of expertise/emphasis and simultaneously I’ve seen the writing on the wall and preparing myself for the separation.

(It’s no secret, I’ve encouraged them to consider shutting down. While I contend it is the best thing for them to do – an elegant and brilliant end to part of a movement that has shifted and changed these past twenty-some years – it’s not something anyone is willing to hear or consider. In the past people have said, you should listen to Zuzu, however unpopular her opinions, she’s almost always right. But those same people won’t listen to this. While their ears are closed to it, I believe in my heart it is the right answer – and not a self-serving bone in my body speaks it. I don’t think it’s my job/role to convince them of this or keep them from pursuing other option, no matter how big a mistake I believe it is for them to do what they are doing. It’s best, in that light, that I go.)

Being anywhere sixteen years – being in any type of relationship like that – it’s hard to let go and I have all those mixed emotions that accompany letting go. Of course the people remain and those I care for most as friends will be in my life in those capacities and I’ll likely continue to support the organization in ways that make sense to me. In that way there’s not the grief of letting go and it’s not like a relationship is ending, it’s merely changing – in a good way. Change can still be challenging.. thus the nausea blended in with the excitement.

Because sometimes there’s supposed to be mountains to climb, I just got off the phone with Ed. He’s on his way home in the middle of the day because he was fired. I’ve just completed transferring my health care benefits to his coverage and initiated new relationships with a new team of doctors. (Fortunately, I’d just completed a physical and series of consults and all is good with this body, so it’s not a bad time to be without insurance I suppose… although that invariably sucks, it just sucks a little less than maybe it might otherwise.)

So the nausea I have been feeling over the change in my job is now expanded to embrace his unemployment. I can’t remember where I read it, but recently I read some Zen proverb that goes something like, If there’s nothing you can do about it, don’t worry. If there’s something you can do about it, don’t worry. Despite how messed up this looks, I’ve strangely got a good feeling about things. They’re going to work out – it’s just not clear how – but somehow when all the dust settles things are going to be even better. Call me Pollyanna…

The MOMA in SOMA

2007-03-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

I was absolutely thrilled when I spied a store in San Francisco dedicated solely to the making of cream puffs, only to taste said puff to find it filled with CUSTARD. They should be shot for false advertising. If they want to sell some errant invention called Custard Puffs, let ‘em have it. But they lie and they are wrong, all wrong!

I went to The City today (Saturday) for the MOMA exhibit on Picasso and American Art. It was interesting to see the original Picassos side-by-side with the American artists/art they inspired. It was a small but fun exhibit, thanks to LB (whose place of employment offers their employees free MOMA membership – we all got in free, Gail, LB and I!) There was time to rush through floors two and three as well (before LB had to be back in our cozy town for a dinner engagement.)

The SF MOMA (originally on Van Ness, now in its new location near Yerba Buena Park in the shopping district in Soma) was one of the first museums to recognize photography as a fine art form. It’s thus always had a great photo collection since 1936 - that I invariably draw inspiration from. I spied a great collection of framed real estate photographs that I do believe are going to inspire a fabulous little copy-cat installation of my own. If I get it off the ground, I’ll post the images.

Outside In

2007-03-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

I did rise at the crack of dawn and made it to Saturday morning yoga. I’ve missed my contortionist feat for several weeks running and have been less limber for the oversight. This morning I have the heat of stretching this muscle, greasing that joint, bending this way and asana-ing that. During yoga, I invariably feel nauseous. Afterwards, I feel great.

Today is the opening of Yellow Legged Frog Docenting season at Carson Falls and Peter and I have the afternoon shift. It’s our job to protect the egg masses. (I’m contemplating starting a new game called “chuck the newt” – although the rangers don’t advocate harming one species to protect another, those blasted newts are eating the egg masses – no doubt eating endangered plants as a starter and moving on to threatened egg mass as the main course to their sinister lives.) I have ceased looking forward to our docenting adventure because it’s too darn hot and the hike is hard.

To gear up for the Carson Falls trek, Ms G and I hiked from Alpine dam up the Cataract Trail, which follows along and criss-crosses a mountain waterfall. There are large deep pools along the way that hikers will splash in that some folks have been occasioned to swim in. I’ve since learned that these falls are another location for the threatened yellow-legged frogs and their egg masses. Unlike the other two locations (little and big Carson Falls) the only explanation for the decrease in population density in this area is due to hikers and swimmers disturbing the egg masses – which has driven their population to near extinction there. I do think if they posted some signs in the particular pools of most concern that the educational effort would indeed dissuade people from puddling about in the standing pools. Be that as it may…

My front yard is a blaze of color - waves of orange poppies wafting in the light breezes. Everything is beginning to flower. I’ve planted pansies and violas as border flowers in the side yards and am sitting quietly with the new lemon tree and Moro blood orange tree to see where they’d like to be planted. I’ve been digging up daisy bushes (which I loathe) and am working on ousting a few oleanders and trying to see what comes together with the front yard. I want to try my hand at more substantial vegetable patch (patch as opposed to garden) this year – but I haven’t really the space so I continue to think on it. I’ve got two blueberry bushes that a neighbor gave me that really must go in the ground by tomorrow as well. I love this time of year. My lilacs are bursting into flower as I write – a fragrant delicate bouquet to hang in the air and catch a breeze!

I just seem to not be able to be outside enough.

My Beautiful Launderette

2007-03-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to The French laundry in Yountville. I’d like to leave it at just a big amazing WOW but somehow that doesn’t seem quite enough. It was spectacular. I wish I had the menu in front of me and could just wax poetic on each culinary stanza of this gastronomic orchestra.

This was a really lovely way to kick start my vacation week. (I did have to work for a few hours on Saturday – so in the world of me – the full face vacation commenced on Sunday.) I spent Sunday morning in my yard, gardening. The poppies are starting to bloom and there’ll be a point, likely even by the week’s end, where the front yard will be ablaze of bright orange – an explosion of color. Sometimes I catch people standing at my fence, looking at the dancing color catching wind and bouncing under the sunlight, smiling. It’s a great thing – such a little package of poppy seeds.. who knew they’d spread like wildfire. That’s the thing about natives – they flourish in what other’s may deem to be a hostile environment. It’s what they know. It’s the conditions they thrive best in. Who are we to judge?

Ironically, a neighbor has planted two too many blueberry bushes and he’s told me I can have them. I’ll have to condition the soil with acid to coax the things into fruiting – those things that grow wild in the woods outside of Bemidji. The blueberry bushes were never in the plan… but who can say no to a blueberry bush?

So last night we were all transported to a very decadent land of the most amazing food on the planet. I’ve never had food like this before in my life. When it comes to food – it was truly one of those defining moments. Oh, yes. I see! Now, for the first time in my life, I’ve tasted what it can be. And I admit, it was a very decadent thing to do and I’m honestly not wholly clear if I should boast about the experience (which I’d like to do, because I’m caught up in the excitement like a child who has just discovered the state fair for the first time) or if I should be a bit shameful (because likely the price of the meal could feed an entire family in a developing nation for over a year…. Maybe two… families.. and years… and I wonder if any singular event like that can ever be justified.) I think it might be okay to at once be tremendously grateful and apologetic – so that is it – both things.

There are maybe a little over fifty restaurants in the world that receive a Michelin three star rating (on a scale of one to three – where most of the world’s restaurants don’t even rate a one.) Of those, a mere five are in the United States (I think the country boasting the most three star restaurants is France.) Of those five, only one is in California – and that would be The French Laundry. The master chef (Tom Keller) has opened another restaurant in New York, which is one of the other three star restaurants in the United States. It’s really, obviously, all about the chef. Restaurants are mere brick and mortar to their movable feasts. And you know, I’ve just always wanted to taste three star food because I’m certainly no three start cook (or two star cook… and really likely not even a one star cook.) In comparison, I’m cooking cardboard. Because it’s mycardboard, I’m occasionally proud of it – but it’s cardboard nonetheless.

Something To Look Forward To

2007-03-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

It’s another stunning day in the Northland.

I’ve been quiet of late, not terribly inspired to write. I don’t know why. Work stuff is work stuff – no new news to report on that front. I’m trying to breathe deeply and trust that moving on is good and right and remember that almost anyone leaving any work situation after many years is likely riddled with mixed emotions about it – both good and bad. Especially the bad shouldn’t be given too much weight. Looking back I know I’ll remember this career fondly, be proud of what I’ve accomplished and know I stayed just a few years too long despite my better judgment. It will be my lesson to listen and act in a more timely manner to the dictates of my conscience and heart. Yes, I remain a little nervous about it all. But somehow I know that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Tonight we’re all about royal decadence. I have reservations at The French Laundry. In the realm of Things To Do Before I Die, The French Laundry has been one of the things on the list. I’m totally stoked. One possible down side is that my reservations are for five and the original additional three all backed out (that’s another story.) We’re bringing one of Ed’s coworkers and his coworker’s wife and brother.

Little Star

2007-02-22T10:27:00.000-08:00

Burrrr… I’m freezing cold. Okay, it’s not freezing cold… it’s fifty-something.. that must seem like just plain and simple whining to you Mid-Westerners and Northlanders. I suppose the fact that the wild irises are blooming on the mountain, the shooting stars, milkmaids, hound’s ears, slink pods, Indian warriors and assorted other wildflower fare are blooming madly negates any sympathy I might otherwise accrue for my ‘plaints of chilly marrow. Yet here I am crying chilled to the bone!

If you’ve any sense of compassion you’d at least eek out a sympathetic poor sod, even if you’re tongue in cheek about the whole thing. Over these modest wires I won’t even notice the eye rolls and will feel imminently cared for, even if it’s all a grand illusion, a big ruse. Even if it is a ruse, if I’m none the wiser, what would it matter?

I’m not want to write about work here – it takes up a great deal of my life and I resist it infringing on these parts too. Once and awhile, surely, I digress, transgress, sully this sacred space with that messy stuff. It’s been a difficult year there, calendar year really – not awful, but certainly not easy – painful. Painful? You might query, How’s that… painful? At the root of it, you see, there are really good people struggling together, sometimes against one another, sometimes in the same steaming pot of stuff, and the lot of us concoct a pretty toxic brew together – despite ourselves, our best intentions and all efforts to concoct something other. It’s like we can fancy ourselves as fabulous cinnamon sticks – all sweet and spicy and a little hot – but somehow when we come together we begin to ferment and it doesn’t result in something pretty anymore. Maybe it once did – I’m sure at once it did, despite ourselves even then.

I don’t think our intentions have changed one iota. I think our ability to envision or believe in something (someone?) has. I’d like to believe that I’m just speaking for myself. I know the way this goes if I help to find a voice for like minds. I’m accused of leading a charge, manipulating others, putting thoughts and words in their mouths and heads. And the whole damn thing can (and will) likely backfire if anyone agrees that they’re not speaking their own mind, but rather mine. I don’t really lose anything if that happens – but rather, we all do. We all lose the possibility of something different happening (rather than this terminal sameness.) I don’t think it means as much to others that we break these cycles. To me it would be symbolic of our ability to grow (emphasis on symbolic.) But oddly, that would leave me with a sense of rightness and hope. All this is mission.

I know, I’m speaking cryptic gibberish. What else is there? You don’t really want the details unless I’m willing to form them around constructive examples – leaving them evaluable and/or instructive. That would take more of a tome then I’m sure anyone really wants. Maybe the bottom line comes down to two simple words “big sigh” or a gesture shrug. You know what they say about the violets in the mountains? I feel like a little violet.

I'll Never Be Back

2007-02-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

When seeing a new place I often think: I am going to come back here later – when I am rich, or when I have more time, or when I have a purpose, or when I am alone with someone I love – and do this right. But it is self-deception. More often than not, my feet lead me somewhere new rather than somewhere I have already been. And as I sat at that window watching the train bore through the heart of China, I had a different, more probable thought: I’d better remember what this place looks like. I will never be back. – Brad Newsham

If we could hold each day with a little more reverence – both the good and the bad – and realize we’ll never be back, I think we’d all be better off. Even bad days would take on a more precious quality. It’s never going to be bad precisely like this again. Which even makes bad a little special I think.

I went to see Tati with the magic hands this evening. It’s more than her hands that is magic. Something always reveals itself in her presence. Tonight, for example, I realize that I have an incredibly difficult time simply letting go. I hold on. I resist. And yet when I relax enough to let go, the truths of the universe seem to greet me – my answers find my questions. Tati has taken to using hot stones in her practice and they open me up and the muscles relax under their heat and weight – hastening the process. But tonight I resisted and resisted and resisted moving to that place where my body is left behind being whim to her magic and my mind is freed into other spaces far away. (Maybe the stones kept me there?)

I was freed up enough, however, to remember that it’s time to let go.

The Mayans believe that when you are born you forget who you are and it’s the role of the villagers to sing you back into remembrance. They sing you your name. I read a short missive recently that a parent wrote about her son. He speaks of what he learned in his other life. How when he was eleven he fell off a ladder and was killed. When his parents or grandparents go to teach him things, he tells them that the other boys parents taught him that too – and goes on to fill in more details. He forgot to forget before he was remembered back into being. Sometimes I think I feel glimpses – not of another life, but of some time before and those teachers whisper things to me through my dreams.

I like the weight of this flesh. I like the way it feels curled up cuddling the dog near the fire place and the taste of smoky tea and lavender soda. I’d better remember what this place looks like.

Food, Glorious Food!

2007-01-30T12:36:00.000-08:00

Max and I met for lunch in the dining room at the Palace Hotel. We split the arugula Salad and I had this wonderful organic chicken topped with fennel salad, oranges and a light orange sauce (with a few capers thrown in for measure.) We split desert too – something like a cream puff with Bavarian cream, candied cherries on the side. It was all really, really, really nummy. Afterwards I strolled the ferry building shops until it was closer to time to board (picked up some herbs du provence at LuLu and some lapsong souchong tea from the Imperial Tea Court to compare to the Silk Road’s version I recently ordered from Canada (which was on the doorstep when I arrived back from DC last night – around midnight – yahoo!)

Might I say that I’m totally digging on the lapsong souchong tea. Ed and I stayed up until about 2 am sampling the Silk Road’s stuff. It’s absolutely enchanting. (I’m still in search of the perfect glass tea kettle in order to try out the tea flowers that Cassie gave me last weekend.)

Okay… enough about food for awhile (though Crème Violette sounds divine, doesn’t it?)

Everybody Lives But Us.

2007-01-28T12:33:00.000-08:00

I JUST FINISHED READING Son of a Witch. I highlighted a passage from the book that I felt partial to awhile back. To refresh:

A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask. An Elephant in her disguise as a human princess, a Scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch’s hat, a Wizard’s showbiz display, a cleric’s store, a scholar’s gown, a soldier’s dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?

AND SO NOW at the end of the day, is there illumination. Of course. Of course.

I ADORED THE BOOK, more than Wicked. It’s something of a coming of age story that goes beyond coming of age. The backdrop for the first half is our hero, Liir, in a comatose and decrepit state, being played back to life by the lilting and beautiful music of the lovely Candle. The Sisters left him with her to heal and having no healing power and a soft (near invisible) voice, she picked up her instrument and played with her heart (and the feather of a pfenix) the boy back to life and health. This is the context for our stroll back through Liir’s life to the events which brought him there.

(The Sisters worship the Unnamed God- though while they believe the Unnamed God created humans in its likeness, The Superior Maunt believes that people of the great City of Oz has recreated the Unnamed God in their likeness instead. She’s also attributed with this reflection, Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery, she said to herself, not for the first time. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That’s what makes it mystery. And for some reason all that makes me think of Edward Abbey… I digress.)

IN THE BEGINNING, orphaned, lost and alone, his mother (Elphaba, the Wicked Witch) having been killed by the callous and cruel visitor (Dorothy), Liir goes in search of any family or semblance of kin he might have left. He’s uncertain of his parentage – he knows Elphaba raised him and is perhaps the closest thing to a mother that he knows, but given her lack of maternal characteristics, Liir felt more a charge in her care than a son to her. Be that as it may. He sets off to the City of Oz in search of the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow. The Scarecrow (who will later rule Oz for a spell) relays the following:

”The Tin Woodman has left to cultivate the art of caring. He has his work cut out for him, poor sod. The Lion is suffering severe depression; his cowardice was his sole identifying trait, and now he’s pitiably normal. Neither of them can help you much, I’m afraid. You should get yourself out of here while you can. Start over.”

“Start over? I never started the first time. Besides, it’s not getting out that I need to do. It’s getting in.”

SURELY LIIR goes to the darkest places in Oz in search of the allusive family, the allusive belonging. He explores the country, betrays, amends, fails and redeems. He learns to love and be faithful. He slays the dragons even though the blasted demons stole his broom (the only remnants of his connection to his mother) and nearly stole his life (the reason for is desperate and near death state which Candle plays him so vigorously out of.) It is after he is played back to life, however, that he goes battling his real demons. And yes, he slays the dragons so that the skies might once again be safe for the birds to fly and with this, of course, spring can come again – because so many know springtime by the coming of birds!

It is that one quote that I pulled out earlier, however, that is the heart of the matter, the what of the what, the is of the is. The novel is about unmasking the masked so that they may finally live fulfilled and complete – so that they might know themselves and live with themselves and as who they are.

Early on in the book there’s this foreboding line:

”Everyone dies. It’s a question of where and how, that’s all.”

THIS MIGHT SEEM SIMPLE, but Liir has met an Elephant, disguised as a princess, who only wishes to die as an Elephant and a major part of the drama is Liir making his way back to her, with Candle, to shepherd that transition back to herself, unmask her, so she might die as her true self – unmasked and revealed. Exposed. Where and how is quite important in this instance.

(I loved this part, not relevant.. or maybe completely relevant, I’ve yet to stumble on the connection: In four different hands, applied at four different opportunities, to judge by the aging of the text the wall read ELPHABA LIVES! OZMA LIVES! THE WIZARD LIVES! And then EVERYBODY LIVES BUT US.)

SO HERE IT IS in the culmination, the final moment, in the chapter titled No Place Like It (home, of course):

The colossal might of wickedness, he thought. How we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

Remembering Princess Nostoya [the Elephant disguised as a princess] he thought: Sever us from our disguises. Then he flinched, almost in disgust. Was that a prayer?

WHAT A LOVELY ENDING! (That’s not precisely the end, but maybe it should have been.)

I Linger on Her Thigh

2007-01-23T12:22:00.001-08:00

I linger on her thigh a fatal moment. - L. Cohen

I watched the Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man documentary last night and was simply not impressed. But my love for the man wasn’t tarnished. I could be happy being lulled to sleep by his resonant deep voice each night. He doesn’t sing, he preaches. You have the likes of Bono saying things like, he walks up to the edge of the abyss, looks in and laughs. He’s trying to be clever and yet I wonder if he’s ever listened to the man. Cohen doesn’t walk up to the edge of the abyss and laugh. He worships at the edge of the abyss. He goes there and grovels. It’s why he’s so desperately beautiful.

I had such a stellar weekend; it seems like counting pennies to retell it – all these shiny things. Yes they are good. I reconnected with an old friend, Ella, who I haven’t seen in forever and somehow we lost touch and I simply love her. I cannot express how good it was to see her again after all these years. She is the same yet even more beautiful, she is the same yet very different – deeper, calmer, lovely. It was such a prize to see her. She is filled with so much light and it reminds me to be happy just to walk with her. It’s odd. I used to think she was filled with sadness, but now I realize I misunderstood. It was me, I think. Not her. We will see each other again now.

I briefly mentioned a visit up the Coast to a vacation rental community with some friends a few months back. Two of said friends, heretofore shall be named Emma and Nigel, were married in a clandestine ceremony (aka eloped) in November. They were both to come up with Cookie on Saturday night for dinner and a show, an a capella performance I think I referred to previously by a local group called Solstice. (Since I’ve learned this is a very popular name for all women vocal ensembles – include derivations like Soulstice, etc.) Nigel wasn’t able to make it in the end, but without him we had a wonderful time. I made so much food I haven’t had to cook again all week and there’s still more to go – baked ziti with herb roasted chicken, creamy pesto and capillini, rosemary sour dough bread with fresh garlic and rosemary olive oil dipping sauces, a massive salad…. You know, all the heart healthy stuff.

Cookie spent the night. He seems to stay up quite late and thus sleep in quite late. Ed and I were able to run a hoard of errands before he even knew we’d been gone and out to Terra Linda, San Rafael and back. Once he rose we took a promenade around town (he’d never seen it in the daylight before), picked up Honey Vanilla Lavender ice cream at the local parlor and ate while we strolled and then Gaye showed up for an afternoon hike. Ed whisked Cookie back to the City and stopped for a last round at the range (did I mention he loves the shotgun I bought him for the holidays? Come the revolution, those pigeons best watch their tails…)

Those are all the shiny things. It was a stellar weekend. Come Monday I was still content with the right amount of fullness and emptiness – the right balance of together and alone, new and old.

Lately, I’ve just felt like playing. It’s such a great little playground we have here… this planet, this life, this skin, these kisses. Like the man says, I linger on her thigh a fatal moment…

Untitlled

2007-01-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

They joke about the status quo to break the ice. Once the ice is broken I hope they all fall through. (Let’s grow old and die together. Let’s do it now.) - Ani DiFranco

I’m still feeling happy and optimistic – we’re at the first ides, 1/24th of the way into the year and it’s still rock’n the free world. I was walking down Fillmore Street to Union today. It’s a crazy steep hill – they’ve had to turn the side walk into stair steps because the grade is so drastic – you’d probably just slip right down into the bay without the terracing. (It was so stellar, blue, clear way up there on top of the world. You could see Alcatraz clear as a bell and all the way to Canada if you squint.) I was thinking about something and it struck me, there’s a thought to record – a moment that moved me – and I was suddenly wondering about this need to record thought. To prove, maybe, that it happened? To document that I think and feel and sometimes do both at once?

I’m often frustrated because I don’t feel the stories in me, I don’t hear them, they don’t come out in some bounding explosive narrative that can’t be turned away from and erupt like a pipebomb, wiping out everything in such-and-such a radius. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to kill us all in one devastating sweep of profundity. I want to write but I don’t feel my story. I do write, but I don’t mean like that. I mean my fiction, my inner facts. But what’s true is that I do have these stories, but the ones that come all easy – they don’t count, you see. Unless it’s squeezing blood from a stone and all painful and oozy, it just doesn’t count. It’s not real unless it hurts. What bullshit is that? When really, I delight myself often with the stuff that comes light as the breeze.

There he was
Sleeping soundly
After killing giants all day
And there I was
Throwing stones that never hit the mark.

I love that and it doesn’t even hurt.

TYWWBTBFSTT!!

2007-01-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

I think Chris Baty is fabulous (do we think he’s single, age appropriate and in the market?) I totally love his idea of the Adventure Log 2007 aka TYWWBTBFSTT (The Year We Will Be Trying Big Fun Scary Things Together.) I’m so there! That’s my kind of fun. Hold my hand, let’s jump! I don’t like, however, that people announce the big fun scary things before they do them. I think the rule should be that you only get to talk about them while you’re doing them or, in the example of base jumping, after you’ve done them. To me, adventure is the thing of action, not the thing of identifying the potential later action.

If I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, for example, I would sign up to take John Pomp’s valentine’s day glass blowing class for couples. (Doesn’t that sound like fun!?!?!!!) But I don’t.. /sigh. I don’t think it’s scary, but it does sound like big fun.

Yesterday I took my (relatively) new neighbor, Jaye, on a hike to Phoenix Lake. She and her husband have lived here several months and have yet to avail themselves of the mountain. I hope the trek made the mountain more accessible and less a mystery. It was nice to chat with her – cultivate a friendship. There’s not a big deep big click there, but I imagine, overtime, that might be possible.. there’s a little click. That’s good enough for a new circle in the ever widening eccentricity of circles that to me is community.

I’m so madly different than I was even five years ago.

Wild Cat

2007-01-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

Bunny, Rose, Ed, G and I all went to see The Good Shepherd last night. What’s the casting of Angelina Jolie? That was weird. I liked the movie, however. Matt Damon was indeed stellar and I like the kid who played his adult son. We went to a six-something show and were home before ten, leaving an evening of concerted bundling beneath blankets and robes as the temperatures plummeted in these parts. The thermostat, which was turned to nothing before slumber, didn’t stop the heater from cranking out as the interior temperatures were below 40 and the thermostat doesn’t go lower than that. That’s some crazy shit.

Despite myself and the icicles dripping off the still flowering (though sad and frozen) potato vine, I rose at 7:30 and pulled on layers and layers and layers, grabbed the yoga mat and trekked the few blocks to the women’s gym for an early Saturday morning class with Kaye. After bending and twisting and stretching and yanking my body here, there and ways it ain’t suppose to go, I was sufficiently warmed and even took the Honey Bee out for a stroll. Pools of standing water were frozen and icicles dripped from the outdoor fire-sprinklers on the patios of the units at School Park Plaza.

LB called at 11:30 suggesting a hike. I told her she was crazy and high and that perhaps at 1 pm, but anything sooner was just out of the question, even with these layers piled on like they are. So we’ll be heading out within the hour yet, but I’m holing up in the warmth until the last possible moment.

I’m worried about the birds. Have others been following the story of the dying birds in Australia?

Yesterday afternoon, instead of the regular pilgrimage to Bon Tempe that seems to have become routine, we took the dogs to Deer Park on the old stand by that I call the Long Loop. On the Buckeye trail (which joins a fire road with a switch back trail by way of narrow and exposed ridge trail, the same one which my mother tripped on – leading to a fall and the fateful broken wrist a few years back) I spied something unusual on the hillside above us, near a spot that forms a natural stone alter of sorts. Succulents will grow out of the black rock there which in the wetter season is decorated with some kind of orange lichon-looking stuff. It’s a favorite sunning spot for the western fence lizards and lots of wild flowers blossom about the place in early spring. There are two stones on the bank of the downward slope side of the trail – perfect for perching and enjoying the sun as well as a stellar vista of rolling hills and valley. Anyways, above this spot, about twenty yards up the hill, I pointed out something I hadn’t seen before but I couldn’t make out what it was.

As we drew closer to the spot, Peter guessed a bird, a stone, a log. I asserted I suspected it was a cat. First I proposed a common house cat, then perhaps a wild bob cat, but as we moved closer and given its size, maybe even a mountain lion cub? It had to have been near thirty pounds – quite large for a bob cat. I took a few pictures and when I was able to really zoom in on the pictures it seemed quite evident it was a bob cat, though up close and personal, in real life, it was easy to mistake it for a puma. It was ginormous! (Also upon further inspection, it was hissing at us.. heh. Good thing the Honey Bee didn’t hear and take on that challenge.) It made for quite a bit of excitement on the trail. We moved further down the switch back and were able to look up and fortuitously see it leap and pounce on its prey. That was cool. I’d post a few pictures but they really didn’t turn out that well.

Live

2007-01-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Live to the point of tears. - Albert Camus

Where'd You Get Those Boobs?

2007-01-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me. - Woody Allen

Every day we must point out the lucky things that happen that make this the most wonderful and luckiest of all years. The year started out quite grand with Pelosi being sworn in as Speaker of the House and the fortunate events have continued. The sun rose again this morning, despite so many decries that the End is near. The wild lavenders continue to bloom in the kill zone of my driveway median, despite the encroaching cold (it’s supposed to go into single digits later this week! Absurd!)

There is a man who lives down the street who has always struck me as odd. I’ve never liked him. He makes me feel uncomfortable and he’s a bit touched, a bit off. This morning Ed saw him and when he returned with the Honey Bee following their morning sojourn he said, “you know that kind of odd guy that you don’t care for? He had boobs today.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, “do you mean man boobs?”
“Oh no, definitely not man boobs.” He replies, “But also not boobs that make physiologic sense with his body.”
“What do you mean?” I press again.
“Well,” he continues, “they were more like big giggly saggy sixty year old woman boobs that hang rather low.” He explains as he gesticulates with his hands, as though he’s cupping low hanging boobs in his hands and wobbling them about.
“Weird,” I respond. “I don’t like that guy.”
“He was on the other side of the street and further up, other wise I would have asked him where he got the boobs.” He said flatly and then left for work.

I Squander That

2007-01-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

It’s like, at the end, there’s this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid? - Richard Bach

Saturday Ms Cassie came for a stroll and in the evening Cookie arrived (quite late) to spend the night following a celebration for Hannah’s fortieth birthday. It was a great soirée – a potluck, eighties music, dancing, periodic turning up of the lights for words or song or what have you. It was an absolutely lovely event.

I’ve always erroneously believed a homophone was actually a homonym - me and my errant ways. It’s perfectly shameful!

In the afternoon, G drove out for another hike around Bon Tempe and I scurried home for a hot tub before an hour and a half massage with the magical Lomi Tati. I arrived home at 6 and I was like jelly. I skipped dinner (bad girl, no donut) and ate a whole package of Boursin fine herb and garlic cheese on cracked pepper water crackers. It was totally decadent.

Like Bach said, I gave my life to become to person I am. Is it worth what I paid? Or do I need to give my life to become something I value more? I think it was worth it to give my life to become what I became. And now it’s worth it to become something different. I’m merely having a difficult time reconciling some competing sets of values. I guess I know, intellectually, that art and politics, social change – they’re not really competing - indeed they can be incredibly complementary. The time I want to give them in my life and how I feel about them, however, is in competition – or maybe simply at odds.

I’m incredibly blessed and yet sometimes I squander that with my angst.

The Fun's Just Started

2007-01-05T12:06:00.000-08:00

The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun’s just started. - John Updike

I’ve recently discovered Eddie Izzard and I love him. Maybe this is like my discovery of the reality TV show, Survivor. Everyone rolls their eyes, and I can actually hear them thinking “that’s so last millennium.” I suppose the result of not having a television is that I’ll never be a hip trend setter in the glamorous world of pop culture. If you don’t know what’s happening until it comes out on DVD, it’s hard to even feign being bleeding edge about such things.

I do in fact feel a great deal of optimism about the aught seven. It’s going to be a good year.

It’s been a terrific day. I woke to morning coffee – soft and lazy, blog reading, internet perusing like some people read the newspaper (but without the crinkly pages or newsprint on my fingertips.) LB called and asked if I wanted to hike today, so I took a shower, did a few loads of laundry, emptied and filled the dishwasher and dressed for a sojourn with the Honey Bee. It was a brilliant crisp blue perfect day. I took my camera but I wasn’t inspired to take pictures. After all was hiked and done I walked to the post office (tubes on the way, Alison!) and then to the bank and then home. Secret loves these little tool about town things. She walks about like she owns the place, little captain of her band of grrrrrrl gang.

I heated up some perfect chicken vegetable soup. Have I mentioned what a soup kick I’ve been on since the weather turned? Each week I roast a chicken and after a fabulous feast of that I start deconstructing the bird for all its pieces, the good meat in this pile for the soup, the stuff we don’t like for the Monster Girl, the carcass in a pot with an onion, three chile d’arbole, celery scraps, garlic, parsley, a whole mess of seasoning for a three hour boil and simmer into stock. The house smells brilliant and alive. There’s something about using the whole thing that feels so graceful. When the time comes the next day to add the potatoes, celery, carrots, corn and onion (when I’m feeling frisky a daub of chipotle paste for a kick) it feels wholesome and good. Anyways, that was lunch, a small bowl – a late lunch, around four.

After this I hopped on my mountain bike (which is in bad need of biannual maintenance) and road for a good hour up the back side of the mountain to five corners, from Phoenix Lake, down through Deer Park and then back home. I’ve been rather lazy and I haven’t done this trek in a while (I could tell.) My back (ouch) felt it more than legs or lungs (yes, I’m even optimistic I’ll lose that weight I gained when I stopped smoking frill’n three years now…) So after the last mile or so, which is a lovely coast down hill the whole way, I pulled up to the house, tossed the bike aside, tossed the clothes aside and plopped in the hot tub with a shot of top shelf Captain Morgan’s spiced rum and wallowed in the warmth under a quickly setting sun. Stars illuminated in a deep indigo blue night sky behind the silhouette of the towering redwood trees.

Once the heat had found its way deep to my marrow, revitalizing a kernel of me that felt spent and done, I dressed and LB and I went to my favorite fondue restaurant for a seven oclock reservation from which we just returned, just a shy bit before ten (talk about slow food!) It was awesome (as always.) I just finished folding the laundry of which I spoke earlier and I’m cozied up to the fireplace with a good book, a tall cool glass of blood orange Italian soda and that electric throw (which mom contends will give me cancer, but three cheers for the deadly electric throw! Every home should have several!) You know, if sort of feels like the fun just started….

What I Have To Say Is This..

2007-01-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

I wonder ~~sometimes~~ often if I have anything to say. I mean anything imaginative and creative. I love to read. I enjoy writing, though I lack patience on longer works. When I was a kid I loved to make my sister tell me stories and to this day I press Ed to tell me stories (though I get frustrated that they lack real suspense and exhilarating drama… I’m a rather spoiled listener and think I might just find bliss with my head in the lap of some spinster with a gazillion yarns. NPR picks up where Ed fails me.. heh.)

Poetry. Poetry is bite sized and I can chew on it and feel like I’ve finished something – like a painting or laundry. But it’s not so fulfilling, just like laundry. It gets done, but where’s the transcendence in that? It’s actually a little painful.

I had a dream. I always have dreams – deeply rich, colorful and imaginative. If those stories were more at the surface. Back to the dream. It was great. I was a white man trapped in a black man’s body. The black man was tall, trim, beautiful. He wore yellow rayon Capri-length pants, a silk red and white pin striped shirt and leather sandles. He was a bad man. He wanted to kill the skinny pale white boy with long blond hair and bad skin. But the skinny white boy was inside his head/mind and he didn’t know ~~the white boy~~ I was there. The colorful clothing looked beautiful on the black man, but when I looked in the mirror they looked terrible and clownish on me, the white boy.

So the black man planned to kill me, but being inside him, I was privy to his plans, one step ahead. I didn’t hide from him, I met him at the places of his mission and stayed ahead of the game, foiling his efforts time and again. It was exhausting but somehow exhilarating all the same.

You see, we were the heads of different houses or gangs. Each house was represented by a different colored bell. There were five altogether. A new, very powerful head of house had come to town, with strength and armature to kill us all. We’d only make it if we all, including the new one, united. If I could get the bells in a row, it would bring about a kind of harmony and peace.

And as I was seeing the metaphorical bells line up, I’d let down my guard with the black man and he’d gained the upper hand. Suddenly he was on me, had me by the throat with a knife to my jugular. He was all the more determined for all the constant yet thwarted efforts.

And the dream had a very Coen brothers ending where I (the skinny white boy) am screaming and pleading with the black man, No, stop. I have the gift of sight! I have the gift of sight!

So very few of us have even spoke of our resolves for the coming year.

Oh God...

2006-12-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting here near mid-day avoiding the to do list of life. The great and wonderous Emma Goldman wrote that women need to live simpler, yet richer and deeper lives. We can each take that to mean whatever we need it to mean, I suppose. At one time in my life this meant abandoning to do lists altogether and changing my ideas of accomplishment and success to be who I am and what I strive toward becoming with regard to my internal life. Lately it’s about moving out a kind of paralysis – a paralysis that was crucial toward accomplishing the task of stopping smoking – of sitting and doing nothing and not smoking, of weathering boredom and not smoking, etc. Now that I’ve proven I can do that after three years, I’m sort of bored. So I wonder, what am I avoiding, exactly, except my own fulfillment? (How did brushing my teeth become a metaphor for fulfillment? Heh.. I’m kidding.)

I was nearly through Son of a Witch (the sequel to Wicked, the story of the Elphaba, Oz’s wicked witch of the West) when I hit a stand still. I’d been so enjoying it and in to the story and I got distracted by something… I’m not sure what. There’s a few lines that have struck me. Here’s one:

People say “my God!” all the time, but usually they mean, “oh shit.”

And here’s another:

A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask. An Elephant in her disguise as a human princess, a Scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch’s hat, a Wizard’s showbiz display, a cleric’s stole, a scholar’s gown, a soldier’s dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?”

How will I, indeed! And I think to some degree we all live behind masks that we work at slowly peeling off so that we may reveal ourselves and feel both known and loved. Even when we don’t even know we’re wearing them.. then suddenly we realize, oh look, I’ve had this silly thing on all my life… it’s not so muggy and I can sure see more clearly now that I’ve thought to take that wretched disguise off…. Here I am. Wow. Who’d a thunk. And sometimes, strangely, we suddenly slip into something we never had on before, like waking up in tennis shoes (that’s weird) glued to our feet. How ever did that happen?

And I think Oh God! (and yes, I really mean oh shit) and find myself in search of the right strength of solvent.. something to loosen off the shoes but not so powerful as to wrench the skin from my bones. There’s the rub, eh? It’s all about the right solvent. If it scars, it’s too strong.

And what is this kind of pyschological (dare I say, spiritual?) solvent, this thing with the strength to strip us down to precisely who we are but not so strong as to destroy us? Is there really some precise science to the whole thing? Is the pursuit of this tangential question a mere reveling in the hollowness? (I think, yes!… and I so love to think yes!) And I think Oh God!, and I’d like to believe I meant something better…. But I probably don’t really…

It’s not really all so heady. It’s time to act, not sit in melancholy ponderings. It’s time to be, not think. Throw caution to the wind… it’s a new year…. Jump!

SAD

2006-12-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

For those of you wondering how I’ve been, wonder is a neat place to be. I think I’ve had a touch of the season affective disorder. Who is the hell hasn’t? Who in the hell doesn’t? There’s no sunlight, how could we not be despondent, forlorn and withdrawn for fuck sake? (We being the royal we….)

Placeholder

2006-12-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

I’m off to Palm Springs for a few days. While I haven’t been journaling much these days, I have been reading ferociously. I’ll miss the missives of your daily lives while I’m away. I’ve so much to tell and yet so little. I’ve been on the road a great deal, mostly to the Eastern seaboard and the seats of power. I’ve met some interesting people. I’m dedicated to not bringing my computer – being tech-free these next four days. Ed will keep down the fort with the Honey Bee while I’m traipsing about the desert and hanging with mom and ‘em.

On Beauty

2006-11-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

In every book I read there is a line, sometimes two or three, that can’t be turned away from. I have to underline them, defile the book, because they are that revealing – they command something in me, in my heart, beyond me. If a book doesn’t have at least one sentence like this, I wonder if it was worth reading at all.

I think I found one or two in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

Yawn

2006-11-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Baltimore. Indeed the real fun begins tomorrow. Yesterday the conference was interesting. I slept through the morning sessions for the jet lag and the delayed flight due to inclement weather. The afternoon was stellar, however.

Today I holed away in the hotel room and struggled over my presentation for tomorrow. Why it’s taking me so long to pull my thoughts together is beyond me. By the early evening, however, I’d tugged and pulled and braced my weight into it and I think I put the finishing touches on it. I’ll leave it until the morning, find some coffee and review it one more time before printing it out (somehow) and turning it in.

I’ve been looking over the schedule for when I might sneak away to the aquarium or evening wander the waterfront for an hour or two. I feel so stagnant and stifled when I travel. Tomorrow is a big day – presenting a special lecture and later saying words at the awards banquet for one of the two awardees. After that I can sit back and just soak it in and perhaps learn something.

Okay… I’m not very exciting.

Derailment

2006-11-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

Firstly the NaNoWriMoing isn’t Wri-ing right along. I’ve hit a stand still. I won’t say that I’ve given up (yet?), but progress has ground to a screeching halt – metal against metal, sparks flying. That’s okay. It is what it is. There’s been such a fanfare of activities, holiday this-ing, dinner-thating, lunch in the City, guests, and oh yes, the biggest time-suck of them all, the latest season of the Sopranos is out on DVD.

Secondly, I didn’t mention this business about this old friend of mine hitting the bottom of the cage a few weeks back now. I say old friend as in former friend – he wasn’t old and he was no longer a friend. I’ve tried to write about it, but everything that comes out sounds petty and stupid and crazy. I didn’t attend the memorial (which was yesterday) mainly out of respect for his wishes. Though some contend that his wishes might have changed over time, I made the mistake of acting on those contentions while the dude was still fluttering up on the perch and getting bitch slapped for my good graces. I vowed to never let that happen again – an easy and painless vow to keep.

Without going into a great deal of detail, it’s him that needed to make his peace with the world – it wasn’t me who needed to make peace with him. I’m good with who I am mostly. Or rather, how I’m not good with how I’m walking on this planet, I feel quite fine about how I’m going about figuring that out and setting my feet right on the world. That was his fucked up journey, not mine. They just collided and it was an unfortunate collision from the start.

It’s the tense times, the unpleasantries, that I have a tendency to sit with and try to suck the marrow out of. There are lessons and learning in life that are not painful, even joyful dare I say, but when the lesson is so easy it’s hard to take pause and acknowledge that change and growth happened. When it’s accompanied by pain, that is when you really know you’re alive. It doesn’t make the joyful stuff less meaningful, important or real – it just makes it a little more invisible. When it leave a scar or mars us, there’s some proof it happened. Or so we think in these fallible, silly lives.

I have to say, ultimately it’s like those first oil-streaked pages of the Messiah handbook in Bach’s book, Illusions. If God asked you to sacrifice - your life even – would you do it? And the multitude says, “Glory to be sacrificed, crucified.. honor to be nailed to a cross, tortured and killed!” And then the Messiah says, “And if God asked you to go forth in this world and be happy?” And the crowd goes silent. And he simply says, “I quit” and walks away.

People will endure excruciating pain and discomfort in the name of their God, beliefs and religions – but far fewer will endure their own happiness – far fewer will boldly live in bliss and joy as a way to honor their Gods. I don’t know what that says about people. I don’t know what it says about their Gods. I’m not suggesting that unhappiness, conflict, tension, discontent are all failure. They’re just parts of the road – like being born and dying – they’re merely facts of the journey, places in the sidewalk that we must step. But come on, not every dot on the twister board is red – switch it up people – you have fucking choices and it’s up to you to use them. Poking the same spot in life marked “painful” doesn’t lead to transcendence – it merely dulls the sensation and eventually normalizes it. What good is that?

Anyways. I digress. So another old friend (this time I would say that old infers a longevity to our friendship) was in town from Houston, to attend the memorial, and I fetched her from the City on Friday. We roamed a crest trail with the dog and sat and talked into the evening – about nothing in particular. It was sweet to catch up – to hear – to listen (that one is a talker..heh!) She’s a social worker with chronically homeless folks in Houston and in her late forties has gone back to school into a master’s program for social work and political science. I’m proud of her – she’s beautifully full of conviction and determination and making a better world outside herself and this in turn makes a better world inside herself. She doesn’t make a lot of money (and probably never will) but she is happy. This is so important. She is happy.

We laughed and I quizzed, “is it that Lesbian’s identified that Social Work is a chronically under-paid profession and thus flock to it?” If you want to meet cool chicks, don’t look in the G.A. line, look in professions that pay well below living wages – they are eeking out meager, starving existences in questionable neighborhoods with rampant poverty, high crime rates and slum lords. (Of course that’s not true… well.. it’s sort of not true. You can meet them at softball games too. Okay. I’ll stop. I’m kidding. You know I’m kidding.)

If you’ve ever read Studs Turkel’s Coming of Age it’s not the people who made millions in high-powered business professions who at their end of days look back on a life well lived, content with their contributions and creations. But living in poverty doesn’t guarantee happiness either.

The old friend of which I initially wrote – he didn’t live in poverty, but he also served others, sometimes even selflessly – but he still was such a bitter, miserable, cruel, thankless and unhappy coot. Goes to show you. No guarantees. But then again, maybe he had his proverbial coming to Jesus (I don’t mean that literally.) Maybe he found peace there at the end. I hope so. I genuinely do.

For my own self, in tribute to his life, in tribute to his leaving, to memorialize his time on this earth, I would set to work on peeling a few layer of bitterness from my own life and commit to be kinder and more joyful. That seems like a nice karmic end to the story of our walk on this planet.

I should say, all of this happening now is not an accident. I did not contrive it, but certainly the fates are having a hand in these days.

Wiley is fetching another old friend from Oakland today, who is in town from Philadelphia/New York for a harm reduction conference – in this case old refers to longevity of acquaintance and friend is used loosely. I have a fondness for the woman, I’ve never approached her as a confidante or felt great affection between us however. I like her, I admire the work she has done in the community, she is kind and enthusiastic and has wonderful determination with endless optimism.

She is a natural leader, yet she’s unassuming and non-threatening. It’s fucked up, but strong women who are charismatic and convey strong opinions are eaten alive – every aspect of their personal and professional lives are scrutinized. While men are revered, women are often torn to shreds and fed to the dogs. Somehow she’s escaped this fate by maintaining a down-with-the-people, down-trodden and humble leadership style. Don’t be too outspoken, always play nice with a smile on your face. She’s not ineffective and she really hasn’t sold anything out – she’s adept at flying under the radar screen. I think she’s got something going – if you’re a woman and you’re a leader, it’s best to do that by not letting anyone else realize that you’re leading and not receiving any recognition or credit for what you’re accomplishing. There is something SO fucked up about that. I am so over that. And I’m looking forward to her visit this afternoon.

I leave for Baltimore (the City that Reads – you know, because it tops the nation’s chart in terms of illiteracy rates.. so the town adopts a grammatically ill-conceived ironic motto. Dude, cities don’t read, people do) later this week and by tomorrow have to book ticket for DC the end of the month. I’ll mostly be out of town from now until then, thus my dwindling hopes about the future of my NaNo-ing this month. But maybe the time in hotels will actually be good? Like I say, I won’t write it off (heh) until failure in truly inevitable and staring me down in the 11th hour.

Okay… it’s time to hot tub (verb) until my conference call starts (in 15 minutes, yes on a Sunday) and lasts (excuse me!?!?) for three and a half hours (are you serious!?!) until guests arrive.

I feel like I haven’t wrapped up these trains of thought.. let’s just let ‘em go though the junctions – lights flashing, bells ringing, full speed ahead, and see what happens…. I’m not afraid of a little train wreck on a Sunday afternoon…. Let’s raise a glass to derailment.

Cotton Rock

2006-11-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

Okay… I’ve been quite busy lately and now we’re off and running into NaNoWriMo. Isn’t it the way it goes (predictably) that when the NoWri-ing begins the journaling seems urgent, attractive and painfully neglected – certainly in need of prompt tendering? It’s not just the journaling that screams out and demands attention when the NoWri-ing begins. It’s also the kitchen floor, the laundry, the dishes, the dog. Don’t you think I really need to go shopping for some winter wardrobe stuff? Perhaps those closets and cupboards need rearranging. Why do I run from it all so adamantly?

The rains began today and I went to pull the rain gear out of storage so I could take the Sweetness, the Honey Bee on morning ablutions (Ed’s at Zend Con so I have morning duty too) and I discovered I’d packed away all the winter things neatly in the armoire in the back cottage. Lovely sweaters and warm bulky things. Somewhere from there to here, unfortunately, I’ve developed some allergy or sensitivity to fleece. I’m wearing a fleece pullover now and my skin is crawling and hot and itchy. So much for that incredible softness – it’s all for naught when the reaction begins. I don’t have that reaction to the blankets – I wonder why just the clothes. (And of course that’s another thing urgently in need of pondering in the face of NaNoWri-ing.) And I have the same (worse?) reaction to wool – and there’s this craze around natural fabrics of late. I’m all about cotton. Cotton rocks.

Where Sleep Lives

2006-10-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

It’s about 5:30 in the morning and I’ve just hung up from that weekly Friday conference call. Following a fitful night’s sleep… Well, I can’t even call it a night’s sleep. The last time I remember looking at the clock it was 2:30 and the alarm began sparking at 4:30. It was the quality of sleep you get on an airplane, in coach, on an international flight – pasty, dry-eyed, grumpy. Thank God Ed’s staying at LB’s. At least only one of us remained awake with my tossing and turning and swollen thoughts that hemorrhage into the space where sleep lives.

At The Wonder

2006-10-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

There were internet cable access problems in these parts today, making work after about 3:30 pm virtually impossible. I left Peter word and we took off into the water district to discover some new terrain. He’d sent me a pdf of a regional map and I’d spied something called Hidden Lake that looked intriguing. Some seven plus miles later we’d completed the journey. I’d say the first five miles were fun, the last two were a bit brutal. My toes hurt like crazy which put a damper on an otherwise spectacular trek.

Hidden Lake was a bit more of a Hidden Pond, but this time of year it was wonderful to see and feel the green algae-covered wetness, native grasses, cat tails surrounded by towering redwoods. It’s clear it’s not an oft traversed path and I like those mysterious little out of the way places best. Peter contends this was the best find, but despite how wonderful it was, I still think the second waterfall at Elliot is the best. (Probably because it’s just so brutal getting there and when I descend out of the dwarf forest, battling brush on what amounts to a rejected deer trail, onto the moonscape vista of the creek and the two swimming holes – particularly in May/June when brilliant splays of wild tiger lilies glow orange against jet black rocks – I always gasp at the wonder.)

But, like I say, my feet hurt. I got home after dark and was able to connect to the internet and send a gaggle of email that sat waiting for the portal to open so they could sail across the wires. Under the stars and moon I sank into the hot tub and bubbled and boiled until I was wiggly and relaxed.

Ed arrived home around 8-ish, and was mostly an asshole. I tell myself, “some days are like that. Some days I’m an asshole.” He’s been on a winning streak lately. On the bright side, he’ll be staying at LB’s house watching her dog for a few days while she’s in Vegas. That will be good – we’ve been too much together lately. Some nights I want to wish him into the corn field – make him go away and have life unfold without him. Other nights, well, I don’t obviously. It makes happily awaiting his return from work rather anticlimactic. I was looking forward to this? Despite his efforts, he really couldn’t ruin the day.

Well, it’s midnight and tomorrow is a crazy mad day, so I’m off with me – to dream about wet hidden places in earth blanketed with soft nettles, a hundred different words for green and Secret Agent Dog running fast as the wind, lugging logs through the forest, drowning sticks and chasing crows. I love her. She’s so cool.

Ante Up

2006-10-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

Okay… here’s today. Well, last night first. Went to see Departed at the Fairfax theatre. That was fun. And then the afternoon before the night - went bowling at the Country Club Alley in San Rafael on Vivian. I so totally suck at any sport that involves a ball – but I’m amused all the same. And I must say I kick ass on this Area 51-like shoot’em-up game in the arcade area. And all the while I’m limping around because I hauled my sorry self out of bed at 7:30 on Saturday morning to get back in the grind of yoga and between that contortionist bruha and the bowling I’m limping around today with what I’ve heretofore described as bowling-butt but it’s got a richer, deeper and more meaningful ache as it feels like I’ve torn my muscle away from my butt bone doing yoga (ouch. Could that really be possible??) Why this manifests in some sort of extra added foot cramp, I dunno… but it’s a little icing on the cake of these bones. “Hello,” she says, this body, “I’m here. I’m alive.”

I arose for another early morning conference call – this time I got to sleep in until 7, but again, it turned out not to happen so the Baltimorian (Baltimorani? Baltimorer?) colleague and I used a regular direct land line (it’s so old school) and did most of the work between the two of us. It sucks being one of the responsible ones.

Since I was up early, I took my morning coffee in the hot tub. Anything to soothe the bowling butt – to no avail. The sky is relentlessly blue today. The redwoods in the yard next door tower precariously (deliciously.) Talk about a murder of crows – this change of season has brought on a multiple homicide of crows (a mass murder of crows?). They bomb the house with walnuts from the neighbors brilliant tree (I like it more than almost any tree I the hood – and I have several favorites.) Secret Agent Dog climbs the teetering redwood steps up to the hot tub and looks over the edge – she always leans forward to kiss me – I think it’s her way of saying, relax mom, I got the house. It’s all good. What a great way to start a day. The sky, the water, the trees, the dog, the coffee.

So a change of pace.. okay, girls (and boys), who’s doin’ NaNoWriMo this year? I haven’t yet registered but the inimitable, fantabulous, sparkling Alison has raised the flag. Ante up.

It's Wahed

2006-10-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Five in the morning and I’m sitting on hold for the weekly conference call - mute button on, San Pelligrino limonata (with a straw) at the ready, fourteen minutes left on the download for the latest Survivor episode from iTunes. I have every intention of going back to sleep once this call is over, so there’s no coffee brewing, no anticipated familiar or comforting wah of the coffee maker signaling all is well with the world. (That’s often my first question to Ed in the morning, has it wahed yet?)

Ten after five and I’m sitting silently on the call, the lone participant it would seem. Twenty after my Parisian colleague joins and we commiserate for a few moments – me on the early hour, her on her frustrations with the project at hand – and then, like a cool San Francisco fog, I curl twice around the house and went back to sleep.

I wake again near noon, patter about the house mindlessly, take my coffee in the hot tub, walk the dog at Bon Tempe lake in the silver misty afternoon. I’m a little bummed reflecting on how my intention was/is that with this reduced schedule I’d spend Fridays writing, reading, painting, exploring non-work interests, but instead I slept, lounged, didn’t even read a magazine. Next week, maybe next week I’ll do what I intended as opposed to not much. Wah.

Watch This Spot

2006-10-02T16:08:00.000-07:00

There’s a pile of lavender soaking in a pot of vodka on the kitchen counter. I plucked nearly every flower head from the plant in the driveway median. This lavender, a sticky monkey and a plug of native grasses are the only things that have taken root and taken off in what I’ve come to endearingly call the kill zone.

I’m in somewhat of a funk today – though I don’t rightly know why. I think I need to go for a walk and think. I’ll get back to you on the other side of it…

Watch this spot…. I call it the other side of it. I hiked near ten miles, soaked in a hot tub and ate English cheese to get here. I took photographs too. I’ve been lounging and reading the fabu digital photo book that Cassie gave me for my birthday. Thus far it’s saying that to take good photos I need to buy more shit. Secret Agent Dog is belly up on my right, snoring at the sky (okay, the ceiling.) There are random thoughts fleeting around the room. I grasp at them like buzzing flies - trying to catch them, make them stop. Here are just a few:

I always thought that Catholic school girl thing was an act. I’m still mystified near thirty years later that it was devastatingly real. How do you reconcile all those kisses?

On days when my world is small and I don’t leave the house much, I get pretty bitchy. It’s like somewhere inside I must believe I can control the world by yelling at it or being mean to it. Maybe I’m just looking for a reaction.

One of the recent Google “word of the day” was swan song, which clearly isn’t a word and should more rightly be in phrase of the day or couple a words of the day. See above.

A Farmhouse In Flanders

2006-10-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

Rather than be confronted with an overwhelming proof of the limitations of our understanding, we accuse the dreams of not making sense. - Erich Fromm

Just because someone boyishly etches, mixes creamy pastel watercolors and dabbles in daubs of oil paints doesn’t mean that they have a heart – doesn’t mean that they are anything less than evil. My mind keeps drifting back to this the past few days. Is it really possible to discover the heart of a monster in a farmhouse in Flanders? And even if it is, who sees the value in that lump of coal? Does someone really believe that the pressure of history will turn that blackened, shriveled thing into some diamond? Clearly, yes. Obviously yes, people will pay richly and imbue it with value. Is it the saffron of historical voyeurs?

I want to make lavender extract. Ideas on how to do that? I’ve read to soak 48 flowers in 16 oz of vodka. Does this make sense to you?

Diet

2006-09-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than out antimaterialistic, otherworldly, New Age spiritual types. But if the material world is merely an illusion, an honest guru would be as content with a Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime - Edward Abbey

I’m not sure I would wholly agree with Edward Abbey – I suppose it all depends to what extent a person believes that we really do invent our own reality. I personally live in a somewhat shared reality – the one where if I run you over with the Isuzu Rodeo, not only do you get hurt, you likely sue and I have to pay court ordered restitutions, etc. That same reality (or illusion - the fabric of which I think we share), involves a shared understanding various micronutrient and nutritional requirements. I’m not saying bratwurst bad, seaweed slime good - but what I am saying is that the constituents of what we eat is worthy of note, but likely not as important as some diet junkies would contend. It’s a balanced and sane blend of things – not a ridged fascism around what we eat that matters.

Gosh, how ever will I lose this weight, I think to myself innocently. Diets just don’t work for me and generally I eat right and well, I tell you as I recount my daily twelve mile bike rides and five mile hikes with the Honey Bee. And I’ve even added on 100 sit ups, I lament, as I reach for another slab of Scharfen Berger chocolate and load up a plate of left over baked ziti for lunch.

Rural Life

2006-09-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, the meaning of life, the universe and everything came and went and I still haven’t divined the perfect party. But in the meantime I met a small cadre of friends for Mediterranean food (the restaurant was admittedly too loud, and I wouldn’t go back again for a soiree of that nature) and a terrifically valiant attempt at bowling (we were only able to bowl a single game before being casually kicked out of our lane in favor of a league of some sort.) It was fun while it lasted, even though it went by too quickly. My favorite people. Much laughter and happiness. I love my friends. They’re so fabulous each in their own right. Each mightn’t always appreciate the better qualities of the others – that’s not so much a prerequisite in my universe – but I, I see what’s marvelous in each of them and lucky for me, when gathered under a single roof, they remarkably get along just ducky for an evening now and again. Me. I’m blessed.

Beforehand, Ed and I took Secret Agent Dog to the beach for the day. He took the day off on Friday after a much heated argument on Thursday where he contended this wouldn’t be possible after all (after planning and agreeing to it several weeks earlier.) Oh, I think not. So we had a great time at the beach – Ms. Honey Bee ran to the point of exhaustion and slept like a rock. It’s great to see her genuinely tired, not just bored-tired. (With my feet in the state they’ve been this year there just hasn’t been even half the exhausted days that either of us require in order to be truly happy.)

I’d hoped to spend a day lazing in my garden, poking and pruning and the whatnot, but yesterday I felt a bit under the weather and largely just lounged like I rarely do. Sedentary isn’t my favorite position, but yesterday it suited me fine. I think I’m better for it today, but the garden isn’t.

One of the workmen, after a long hiatus, arrived today to continue efforts on the closet for the hot water heater. He’s off gathering supplies. One of Ed’s former co-workers from Petaluma (we went to a party at his house last weekend – much fun was had by all. Mountains of children and Secret Agent Dog with a ball. Singapore Slings. Need I say more?) arrived at the house this morning with his two year old daughter. The lot of them, with Secret, headed to the park so I’m alone in the house with the whir of the appliances – washing machine, dishwasher – hummmmm, buzzzzzzz.

The mother of my favorite twins on the planet rang this morning to announce the arrival of the latest addition to their fabulous family, Buster the brown-haired poodle puppy. She was seeking input on veterinarians and we did a bit of dog-mom chat – including the obligatory complaining about the farmer’s market ruining the lawns in the local town park.

We’re heading to the Peninsula in not too long, to have an early dinner at Ed’s mom’s house – hopefully George will have driven to the coast this morning and picked up shrimp and we’ll be having this amazing barbeque shrimp/scampi thing he does. I start to salivate just thinking about it. I hope, I hope, I hope.

Alright, so this entry ain’t so titillating. I’ll conjure some juicier bits later.

Go Ahead, Make A Plan

2006-09-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

I missed the first annual town picnic on Sunday for an afternoon flight arriving in DC at about midnight. The hotel didn’t have a kitchen/room service so I set out for food. Everything was closed. I settled for a bag of popcorn from a nearby CVS and a few bottles of water. I woke up at about 10 am, packed up my shit and headed out to the nearest coffee shop for a latte. Spent way too much time battling security to get onto the campus and missed the opportunity to get to the cafeteria before the meeting began at 1 pm, ended at 5 pm and the taxi met me at the entrance to the building at 5:15, which was perfect – it dropped me at the airport a few minutes after 6 and I was through security and to the gate before 6:30, which was awesome because all I’d had to eat for two days was a bag of popcorn and the airport is filled with such fine culinary fare. Next thing I know I’m calling Ed from my cell phone, on the airport shuttle, as we’re crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, begging him to meet me in Larkspur with a chicken sandwich and a sweater. Eureka!

I arrive home to snuzzle with the dog on the sofa a shy bit after midnight on Monday and ready myself for a 7 am on Tuesday – some five or six hours away from it I drift off and wake up drooling on one of the sofa pillows but/and there’s no coffee in the house. I rouse Ed outta bed to fetch me coffee as I dial in. I not only have to be on the call, which is difficult enough, but I also have to chair the call. Coffee come my way, please come my way.

On the one hand it’s busy, there’s a gazillion deadlines I’ve fallen behind on, at any given moment there are at least three urgent things I should have attended to by COB yesterday and part of that is due to the fact that I reduced my schedule but there’s never been an adequate acknowledgment of how that needed to correspond with a decrease in certain kinds of responsibilities. So things fall through the cracks because there are cracks (gaping canyons even.) But part of it really is due to the fact that I have days that are not perfectly efficient.

Yesterday was a great example. I was just exhausted and I slept through another 7 a.m. call and while I had outlined a day to accomplish some of these gazillion tasks, I maybe only got to three or four of them. It wasn’t for lack of trying, per se, but yeah, maybe it was for lack of trying… Maybe that is the difference between now and what I was willing to do then.

The good news is that I got a call from a consultant who sometimes has my back and she’s been garnering support for a severance package for me. At least yesterday it looked promising – that maybe as early as the first of the year I could roll on that transition. Well, it’s not really a transition, is it? That’s just as it says, a severance, cutting it off, get a tourniquet and stop the bleed, etc. I remind myself not to jump on this roller coaster ride of getting my hopes up. Other pieces have to fall into place, there are other factors to account for.

What will I do with myself if or when I wake up and there’s nothing to do but battle through the thoughts of the day, be alone with myself and my ambition, fears, strengths and thoughts? Partly it’s easy to keep the madness up as a way to hold other kinds of madness at bay. Without the excuses of work, how ever will I busy myself in order to flee my destinies? Ah.. something new to figure out (or maybe something old.)

But all that distraction is a ways off yet. Today I have today – a murder of crows savaging the walnut tree in the adjacent yard – dive bombing my roof with their potential fodder, trying to crack something open (the walnut, you know, or my sanity.) When there’s not an onslaught of thumping walnuts above (the sky is falling?) they are screeching into the crisp pale blue cloudless sky of a later summer morning. Secret is curled up in a sunbeam on her blanket - a festive pink ball perches beside her, pregnant with potential. She’s grown immune to the ruckus too.

I have a feeling that things will not go either how I expect, hope or plan (God laughs?)

Dolphinese

2006-09-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words used in correct context – no human being has reported to have learned dolpinese. - Carl Sagan

When I tell the above to Ed, he contends I’m entirely wrong about that (or rather, that Carl Sagan is.) He proceeds to cackle out a strange staccato sound and proclaims that it means I want a ball in Dolphinese. Promptly, upon hearing the odd cackle, Secret Agent Dog’s ear perk and she jumps to the quick, runs out the front door, and returns moments later with a Hi-Bounce Pinky ball in her mouth. This proves, we think, that Secret understands Dolphinese and that Ed’s Dolphinese diction is spot on.

The Imperfect Host

2006-08-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

There are no pictures from yesterday – I’m falling down at the start! The camera was going to accompany me on a journey in late afternoon that never materialized due to a mishap from point A to point B.

A friend arrived yesterday, visiting from New York. He’d spent the first few days of his spin to the left coast with his parents and yesterday afternoon and last night with us here. I’d spent the lion’s share of the weekend readying the back cottage for his stay – nothing like a house guest to motivate some massive cleaning. (Frankly, there’s more to do back here, but what a phenomenal leap forward we made!)

On a whim I suggested we go for a bike ride. What a great way to maximally see this area, cover the most ground with the least effort, and given he’s been under some stress with a relationship break up, a potential job change, an impending move, etc., I thought it would be great to kick start his vacation with some endorphins. My strategy on this whole relationship going south, ugly, uncomfortable end of the affair stuff is that one should pour his/her energies into working out – so at least when the depression clears you look fabulous. If you’re going to be depressed, you may as well look great doing it. He was game so we dusted off Ed’s bike, hopped on the ride and were off like a prom dress.

It was a great ride until the very end there. That part where his tire blew when we were on the downslope off the mountain, that part wasn’t so great. Nor that little extra added part where he flipped over the handlebars after losing control of the bike and stopped the whole tangled mess with his elbow, his wrist and his back. Compared to that part of the ride the emergency room was actually fun. Yup, you guessed it… I broke another house guest.

I know, I know, I should have brought the camera – caught at least the ER part in one’s and zero’s for some digital memory of the whole thing. I’m a failure and a terrible host.

To Sleep Perchance To Dream

2006-08-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

After my mid-day 20 miles bike ride - with the steepest grade you can think of going on for over a mile - I took a monster 5 mile hike to the second waterfall at Elliot last evening. I love the long shadows and golden light of late afternoonish.

I keep forgetting to mention a dream I had. I was about to die - and in the dream, when one died, they had to meet the executioner (or maybe it was a reeper - whatever the case... I remember him as an executioner of sorts.) It was love at first site. I swooned and lamented the thought that at this juncture I would meet the person of my dreams and that that person would by the executioner. On some level, however, it didn't matter - because I was immediately smitten, immediately in love and something about that, in the face of everything, was perfect and hopeful and completing.

The twist of the story is/was that the executioner fell in love with me too. And I became the only person, ever, to be spared the fate of the executioner as a result. And it is/was because of this it became known that while incredibly rare some people escaped the executioner's fate - and in a place there was little to no hope there was placed a glimmer. And the most humble and wisest would realize that hope was realized through love.

I know, it sounds corny - but that was the dream.

It was almost as good as last night's dream - in which Ed not only quit smoking, he cleaned up after himself. Wow.. what startlingly divergent expectations for fulfillment. heh.

Eat Your Greens

2006-08-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve been so restless of late. Cassie says to focus on my questions before I sleep and seek answers in my dreams. I dreamt I needed to eat more vegetables. I’m game – so be it. Vegetables it is. I hope it’s all that easy.

I want to do something different. I’m tired of the same. I’m dissatisfied with the same. I’m not inspired by the same. I don’t think I’ve ever been so discontent. But perhaps all the world’s ennui can be solved with a simple carrot.

Waiting For A Miracle

2006-08-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

I went on an ambitious bike ride today – it was a mere fifteen miles, but a brutal fifteen miles. A good mile and a half of that was less than a bike ride and more of a bike push. My back tire started spinning on the loose gravel, the road was so steep, and I couldn’t get my bike shoes out of the clips. I was stuck on my bike when it tumbled. I was virtually standing still when it happened, however, so I didn’t end up with even a scrape – just a bruised ego and my feet stuck on the peddles. I was planning to round Lake Lagunitas, but I was so exhausted when I peaked Fish Gulch – the murderous incline – that I skipped that intention and just took it all back on home. I wish I’d have had the camera with me (I wonder how it would have faired the fall…) I ride through this area with my friend P when we walk our dogs together at Bon Tempe, but it was qualitatively different on the bike – in slow motion, being closer to it. I saw some beautiful things that I guess we pass by too quickly. That’s saying something because I keep my camera out, always, when we drive this road and he stops whenever I ask so I can take pictures – but I just didn’t see the light or the low hanging trees the same way before. And well, I didn’t have the camera so what’s the point in waxing on about it, right?

I took a shower when I got home and rinsed the dirt of the mountain off me. I still don’t bathe very often – I feel like I’m doing good if it’s once a week. Such a far cry from City living where I couldn’t leave the house until I’d had a shower. I’m dirtier here, but it’s good dirt. The dirt we live in.

I tried to stop by the art/glass – stained glass lady’s store. I need to design the bathroom windows before fall gets too much further upon us and the rains threaten to commence. It’s already August. I’ve got to move on that. There was a note on the door that the lady was ill and how she’d be in tomorrow. I guess I’ll try to stop back.

I called P and asked him if he was willing to try a walk with me, the gimp, to the waterfall at Elliot. I haven’t been walking or hiking lately and it’s driving both myself and the dog insane. I wore open-toed sandals and just hobbled slowly. I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do or not. The feet hurt like the dickens – but my spirits are lifted. How does one weigh the relative value of these things? Or perhaps more importantly, the relative harms? It was beautiful and Secret Agent Dog was sooooo happy to be trekking as opposed to stimming on the same blasted ball all the time. She needs the diversity of activities – she gets kind of tweaky when it’s just fetch day in and day out.

I have to push myself to be a bit more creative than I have been of late. I find myself waiting for something – this sense of waiting. I sit back and I wonder what I’m waiting for. I’m often filled with this pensive sense of anticipation. It’s driving me a little nuts. I have this inner desire to just let go in a big bad way. Part of me says, just do it! and another part asks, sure, but what the hell does that mean??? Let go of what, exactly? Just do what, exactly? No more waiting…

Accidents Will Happen

2006-08-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

My neighbor gets a double mastectomy on the 23rd. She’s got such a great attitude about all this, it’s rock’n. I want to try to do something kind for her before then – or maybe after. I have to think about it. In other fronts, we’ve been having a great time getting to know the couple who bought the house across the street. We took them for dinner week before last and last night they returned the gesture. For some reason, when I’m near them, I start talking like a chatter box when normally I’m rather reserved. It’s strange. As far as I can tell they’re not turned off, so all is good. We’re thoroughly enjoying their company. She works at the college of art and he’s a web designer.

I’m drinking Private Stock Captain Morgan spiced rum right out of the bottle. It’s sooooo nummy with this scharfenberger chocolate I picked up the other day when I was in The City. Fortunately there wasn’t a lot left in the bottle otherwise I fear I’d be hammered by now. Instead, after the hot tub I just took, it just makes me feel a little toasty and jovial on this balmy Thursday evening. The sky is pink.

I accidentally hired a gardener today. Worse accidents have happened. I intended to have a guy come over and fix the irrigation. I’ve been watering with a cheap ass plastic sprinkler that gets stuck in a tilted position and stops doing its vacillation thing – making discrete areas of the lawn perfecting saturated and soggy and leaving the majority of the grass parched and browning. I paid top dollar for an irrigation system to be installed year before last and for whatever reason when I turn the damn things on the pressure shoots the sprinkler thingies high into the air, breaking them into bits on the way. It’s lethal. It’s beyond putting an eye out, those things could rip off a limb when they shoot. This makes watering the lawn perilous at best. So I intended to hire a guy to come flush the system and take a look at the irrigation and see if he could fix it. What I got instead, or rather, in addition to that, is the irrigation fixed and this other guy who stuck around for eight hours weeding, mowing, raking, sweeping. After eight hours and two hundred dollars later the place looked stunning. He had me write the check payable to the local liquor store.

Trash

2006-08-06T20:09:00.000-07:00

We’d had lofty social plans this weekend. A visit from a wayward friend and a birthday party at an East Bay park for Wiley. Instead we cleaned the car port and I continued (and completed) my Survivor obsession (actually there’s one season available on DVD that I haven’t watched yet, so not completely completed.) Today, rather than Wiley’s party, I think I’ll weed the garden and maybe take a bike ride. My toes are black and blue – a new evolution in the continuing foot saga (wtf??!?!)

So why aren’t we going to Wiley’s birthday festivities? The real/main reason we’re not going: Ed’s been driving on a suspended license with expired tags on the Rodeo. I’m just not willing to get stuck an hour and a half away from home while Ed gets his ass hauled off to jail and the truck is impounded. It just ain’t gonna happen. I don’t think Wiley will understand. The fact that he won’t or might not understand wearies me a bit.

I can’t express, it probably wouldn’t make a damn bit of sense to you, how thrilled I am that the car port is cleaned and tidied. It’s been over a year that it’s looked a fright and people have commented. It’s been my badge of shame. When we set out minds to it, it only took a few hours to clear it out. Damn, I wish we would have done that some time back. Having it linger in that state for so long made me feel rather trashy.

I haven’t mentioned the rats for awhile and for good reason (YAY.) Even the smell of the dead ones in the walls has ceased to linger. We had a brutal heat wave a while back and no doubt that helped to accelerate the decomposition.

There’s a cat living behind the hot tub. Much to my surprise, when Secret went to chase her out, three kittens came spilling forward! So we have a cat family living behind the hot tub. I hope these vagrant guests will assist in rat abatement efforts. They must earn their keep.

The bathroom is almost finished. I hate things in a state of almost. My life and home have been in a state of almost for months and months. I’m all about hammering some finishing nails in about now.

Saint Eerie

2006-08-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

It’s summer time, and the living is easy…. It’s also rushing by – yes, summer time too. Wooosh, like those August winds I felt, hot and dry, making their way up from Africa, while I slept under a full moon on the Island of Majorca de Palma in the sleepy village of Sollier. I was in my late twenties and the world lay out before me like a feast. It still does, but I don’t rush it so madly. It seems like the more I slow down to soak it in, the faster it moves. In this regard, I hate what technology has done to us.

We had a minor earthquake the other night. After returning from a slow rolling hike up at Bon Tempe, I was changing my shoes and readying to meet LB for dinner and the house began to twitch. Secret Agent Dog ran from something chasing her about, or so she thought. When things like this happen there is a instant, though only momentary, confusion. What’s this unfamiliar thing? Reflexively I search my memory banks for a touchstone of experience. It’s funny that the first thing my mind landed on was a commuter train.

Many years ago, not long after I first moved to California, I lived in a house away from a commuter train track in San Mateo. It was also an intersection so not only did the house thunder and shake as the train went by, but the bells and flashing lights of the crossing gates were harbingers of the roar. While our earthquake didn’t have bells and lights, for a moment I found myself looking out the window, wondering where the commuter train was. It just disappeared into the early evening summer air.

And yes, at about the time I was looking out the window for the train and Secret was looking behind her, equally at nothing, it settled in my head that indeed that wasn’t a train, that was just little quake – that was just the earth giggling a little. The phone rang, it was LB, did you feel that!? Yes, I felt that.

I was a teenager playing house with the first boy I thought I loved, whose name was Ed. This isn’t my Ed, but a different Ed. At the time, my Ed was only eleven or twelve years old and to my surprise was living just around the corner. Further strangeness is that he was my paperboy. We likely passed one another on the street a hundred times. I find that all very weird and eerie.

Home Again

2006-07-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

I returned from London last Thursday. I was there during the record breaking heat wave - a tepid ninety-something. Those wimps. Yesterday, the high here was 112.9 - at nearly 6 pm. Friends (who we love, very much, maybe forever despite any wrong doings or offenses they may commit) bought us two air conditioners. We paid, they drove and got them - they drove to Concord and Cupertino - a gazillion miles, in miserable heat - to get these air conditioners. When they pulled into the parking lot of the store in Concord they called to report that the temperature there was 129 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm becoming weather-obsessed. I've been sucked into the vortex of people who watch the weather channel. Okay. I'm not there yet. I still don't have a television - but I have a secret weather blog. There I write things like: It's hot. It's cold. It's raining. I write there more often then I write here. Maybe because the weather changes, noticeably, more often than I do.

One air conditioner is an 8,000 BTU - it cools, supposedly, up to 400 square feet (I think not!) We've put it in the window of my study to cool the 350 square foot back cottage. It barely cools down the one room there, so I keep the door shut. This room was our bedroom for over three years. It felt cozy and familiar to be living our lives out of the back cottage for the weekend. We'd brave the heat and go look at the front cottage from time to time - but mostly we shut the shades and read books, magazines, played suduko, watched DVDs on the computer. We had the three essential heat wave beverages, San Pelligrino Limonata, sparkling Calistoga, Corona. And I'd venture out to water the garden every few hours. Despite heroic efforts I couldn't stop the hydrangeas from drooping.

I had a lovely time in London. It's changed favorably since I went to school there in the '80s. It's more cosmopolitan and despite the global fascination for increased development of open space into concrete structures, I'd still say it's an improvement. I wouldn't live there. It's not my thing. But it was fun to visit - the night bus tour was loads of fun - and the food, hands down, has been the most dramatic and notable improvement over the past few decades. The London aquarium, however, proves to be among the worst of the world's tributes to aquatic life. I'd liken it to little more than a spot of spit in a mud puddle with a few fish tossed in. It's a pathetic little place and they'd do better to simply close it down than to tout, as a town, that they house an aquarium. What an embarrassment! It's a tragic little fish prison.

Traveling made me want to travel more, as opposed to the more traditional outcome where I'm left feeling like all I want to be is home among the Cookie Pie, familiar things, my mountains, summer. That's such a push-pull phenomenon with the Honey Bee. I hate to leave her behind, but it's really not practical for her to come along.

The Wonder

2006-07-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

There are now nearly two clean rooms. I spent the day cleaning the study. Yes, the day. The entire day. I mean until 9 p.m. even. And it's not wholly done. There's one wall to wash down, two windows to Windex and a bookcase to shuffle through and dust - but then it will be done enough to call it a perfectly clean room. I hadn't wiped down those walls since I quit smoking and to be honest I feel like the amount of nicotine exposure I had washing the walls might just constitute a relapse in some circles. It was pretty ooogy. A little more tidying up in there tomorrow and I'll call that one a wrap.

I should have done this months ago! I ran over my big toe with the vacuum cleaner, however. That is a lesson in why you should wear shoes when you vacuum. It hurt like a mother-fucker. (Do mother-fuckers hurt? If so, why?)

The guys working on my bathroom are in the home stretch. I can hardly wait until they're done. I love them, don't get me wrong, but we're hitting that stage in our relationship where I think it would be a good idea if we all had some alone-time.

I leave for London on Saturday evening. I already miss Secret Agent Dog, even though she's all cozied up here on the sofa with me. I think I'm becoming something of a curmudgeon. At one time in my life a week in London would have been the cat's meow. Now I simply dread the long flight, the terminal train ride from Heathrow, clamoring for a taxi at the station and all the whoopla of getting to the hotel, being jet lagged, blah, blah, blah. Now I just want to get home before I even start packing. I think I'm losing my sense of adventure and wonder. (Note to self, rediscover the wonder.) If there is someone in London who wants to help me rediscover the wonder, drop a line.

My Two Cents

2006-07-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

About once a week I go to the post office. I have several packs of thirty seven cent stamps. I suppose I could walk in there with a whopping fourteen pennies or however many I need and get all those stamps to make the rest of lot legal, but I enjoy going to the post office. It's only a few blocks from my house, it's a nice to see the post ladies, tether the Honey Bee and watch her nervously through the window, maybe run into the random neighbor out doing their errands. But more than all that, there's something very satisfying about giving my two cents, quite literally, and getting that stamp. It's one of those rare times where my two cents are genuinely wanted - they're considered so valuable that I even get something in return!

There is precisely one perfectly clean room in the house - actually, between both cottages - just one. It's the mudroom. I cleaned it today. It was tremendously satisfying. Occasionally I go stand in it and pretend the rest of the house is equally shiny, dusted, windexed and smelling antiseptic - ammonia and laundry soap. Instead, I know in my heart of hearts that beneath the dishwasher lurks more rat poop. Rat poop I haven't been able to get at yet and sop up (SHIVER.) This preys on my neurosis like you can't imagine.

Today was a magnificent day because today LB and I went to Bon Tempe after she finished work and walked the Shady Side Trail with Secret Agent Dog and her best bud. It's been over two weeks and I'm not sure who enjoyed it more - me or her. I'll say me. She'll say her - or rather, she would say her if she could say her but she can't so she won't. Instead she says something like arf (but it comes out sounding squeaky.)

None of the workmen showed up today. What's up with that? They have been fastidious and fabulous and prompt and reliable. Today - not a word. Maybe they had premonitions about the rat poop and stayed away. I love them. I miss them.

I don't think I've taken the opportunity to say WAY TO GO, ITALY!!! That was a stellar World Cup match and no one, clearly, is more deserving. Shame on that brutish thug, Zindane.

Constant Stranger

2006-07-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

From the garden gate the other day...

I used to always carry a notebook and pen that felt food for writing with me. With the advent of computers and other time-saving tools, I just never find myself relaxing with my notebooks the ways I did before all this technology became available to make our lives easier. I'm not so sure I want my life to be easier.

Sometimes when she's not around, I steal pencils from my neighbor's house. Sometimes I feel bad about this and when she's not there, I put them back.

I'm reading the Jeremy Taylor interview and the interviewer asked about archetypes. Taylor explains the universal meaning of say up (goodness, light, enlightenment) and down (evil, darkness, ignorance, etc.) You see, that archetype doesn't hold so true for me. I'm for of an in and out kind of girl. And perhaps in a true ying/yang thang, I'm really not sure if there is more enlightenment, goodness, evil or ignorance in or out.

He provided another example of archetype being the image of blood - which is related to family, he says, and obligations of relationship. I remember a recurring dream. There were holes in my wrists and instead of blood, my veins and arms were filled with sand and shells. My feet were on fire with pain. There were roses growing into them, out of them - in, out - like I said, it's really ultimately difficult to understand the difference between these things. The stem grew out of my foot, the bud and flower blossomed inside. So in place of blood, I have crushed stones, fossils and rose petals. So what does that say about my relationship to my relatives - living and ancestors?

What Dreams May Come

2006-07-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

Even our misfortunes are part of our belongings. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

I am feeling rather scattered and muddle headed. This has persisted for several weeks, maybe even months. I can't concentrate, for the life of me, to set myself to tasks and follow through. The house is a mess, an absolute crazy mess. When I speak of task aversion, I mean on the simplest of levels. I think aversion is the wrong word. I'm not averse to these things.

I can start, but I can't follow through and complete anything. The laundry is partially done. What has been both washed and dried, isn't folded or put away. The dishes in the dishwasher have been washed twice, but something is wrong and they're not coming clean. So half are clean and not put away and the other half need to be hand washed to see if I can figured out what's going on (maybe building polymers in the sink from the workmen are stuck on dishes? Would they really use the kitchen sink when there is a utility sink not but five feet away?)

There is this accumulation of busywork to be done and while I feel I'm constantly doing things, nothing seems to get done. And it feels like there's never time to just sit back and enjoy, read, relax, putter, lay on the grass and stare at the sky. But what's the problem? Why aren't things getting done? I don't mean just house keeping, either.. I mean bill paying, work, everything. I can't get my head around things and I'm increasingly frustrated.

Cassie had a thought, that rather than wait to sit down and read, I start the day reading and relaxing - pushing the chores to later in the day. I went to the park this morning with Secret, tossed the ball and intended to read. Even reading I can't accomplish. I was in the park from about 8 am until after 11. I barely finished the letters to the editor and only got two pages into the interview with Jeremy Taylor. What happened? What happened to the time?

Okay.. back to the damned stupid chores while the rats rummage through the kitchen (I can hear them now.. YES in the middle of the day.) It seems symbolic of something. A symbolism that's no longer relegated to my dream world but all just playing itself out right here, right now, not wasting time waiting for sleep or choosing to show itself at such-and-such a time. There's no difference anymore.

Love Is Like War

2006-06-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop. - H.L. Mencken

Firstly, *ding, ding, ding* ten points for Cassie! You know, she won the Why I Want Boris/Russian art contest too and has her own book of proletariat art from the Moscow Press (go Boris!) Cassie, you’re a WINNER!

I was so moved by responses to my last entry. They were all so sweet and real. Once, I risked my sense of self, my dignity, my self respect, for what I thought was love. I’m not so sure, in retrospect, that it was love at all that I was risking for. It was perhaps obsession and addiction, but certainly it doesn’t look like love in hindsight. I passed through many years where I risked little – but maybe that’s not entirely true at the core of it. I was thinking last night after pondering responses here that I feel like perhaps I’ve risked nothing, and thus everything.

I don’t think giving things up is the same as risking per se. I have to think about that. I certainly have not felt like I’ve given anything up for love – I haven’t given up my dreams, ambitions, goals, job, potentials – nothing. I feel, maybe, like I wish I would have given up something. I’m not sure why. Not because to me it’s some emblem, some proof – but because in retrospect there were paths I didn’t explore that I think I might have liked too – that required a kind of risk I couldn’t even understand. Once I read a poem called “Turning Thirty” and the author wrote, “Turning thirty is about giving up infinite possibilities.” I didn’t feel that way when I turned thirty. Maybe I’m feeling that way after having turned forty. And that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with love at all.

Zosia wrote that she risked her own independent career for love – being the one to nurture the family. I didn’t. I didn’t risk an independent career. I rose to the top of mine, made my mark, and at the end of the day the accomplishments, however noble, and they have been noble, feel somewhat empty. You know, after all, at the end of the day, what really matters? As I’ve matured (and it’s taken a long time for me to mature,) it seems for me to all come down to the quality of my relationships and not what I can accomplish. All I want to accomplish at my day’s end is a great deal of love – is the cultivation of meaningful relationships and joy and not a list of accomplishments. I don’t know.. this makes me ponder and it makes me wonder.

Anyways… a few updates. It’s likely the bathroom will be nearly done by the week’s end and yes, the week ends tomorrow. The rat infestation continues with a vengeance. I have an exterminator coming out today. I’ve appealed to the folks at the restaurant next store (again) to move their trash from the border of my property – for whatever reason, they don’t seem to want to do this (though they’ve agreed to put out electronic rat traps around the trash.) I’ve come to the realization that the reason they won’t move the trash away from residential borders is because they know it’s a problem and they don’t want to bring the problem any closer to the space that they work and play in. I’ve called vector control and we’ve had a nice long talk. They’re calling the health department and checking into what else might be done. I hate this.

Secret gets her stitches out (hopefully) tomorrow. Hmmm. Back to work with me.

I Met A Boy Called....

2006-06-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it….It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. - Erica Jong

Have I mentioned that I love Warren Buffet? I think I might have mentioned that before. And if I haven’t, let me go on record and profess my adoration - I love Warren Buffet! Among my many hopes and dreams is to one day have lunch with Warren Buffet. In that cosmic six degrees of separation thing, if someone can help me out here, I’d be duly indebted.

Despite the fact that I have these little hairclips that I got at some five and ten in a variety of pastel colors – that I’ve not seen worn by another adult other than, recently, in a bad tabloid pic, Anna Nicole Smith, my adoration for Warren Buffet is not like that. It is true platonic love. I love that he doesn’t have a computer on his desk. I love that he reads. I love that he trusts people, importantly the people who work for him. I love his professed relationship to money (that is, he’s not emotionally tied to it.) And most recently I love that on the eve of retirement he gave away thirty-eight BILLION dollars to charitable causes. Sure there must be some tax incentive, but who the hell cares. That’s thirty eight billion. It makes me contemplate a move to Seattle to try for some sweet job giving away Gate’s money. But I like where I live and I’m not really willing to compromise on that. And while I’ve never been all too fond of Bill Gates, I do have a great deal of respect for his decision to step down from Microsoft and dedicate his time to the family foundation.

Have I mentioned I love Warren Buffet? Okay, I love my Argentinean plumber/electrician too. And my American rocker foreman. And his girlfriend’s father. And his friend the carpenter. And I adored the Portugal v. Netherlands match the other day (wasn’t that just like a school yard brawl!?!) And frankly, anyone who didn’t just fall smitten with the soul, spirit, sportsmanship of Ghana this morning in the Brazil v. Ghana match just wasn’t paying attention.

And I love the twins who are turning four next week. They pull me into their magic and forget who I am. I really love them. And of course, Secret Agent Dog. And there’s Ed too (does it mean something that he falls this low on the list, below Warren Buffet and the Ghana National team? Let’s just say this list isn’t in order of priority…for now… so we don’t have to explain things.. heh. Kidding.)

I love Cassie and LB and Mom.. and Hell’s Angels. (Okay.. I don’t actually love Hell’s Angels at all, but ten points to anyone who can name the reference.. here’s another hint: He’s got golden chains on his leather jacket and on the back are written the names…)

I have a question for my gentle readers… what, if anything, have you risked for love?

Romance Is Dead

2006-06-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

Live to the point of tears. - Albert Camus

I’ve kept an 8x11, brown, hand addressed envelope to my old neighbor, in San Francisco, from a certain Lee Baker since the year 2000. My neighbor was lovers with a Lee Baker and they’d ended their relationship badly earlier on. This neighbor had long since moved away. I’d vaguely remembered the affair. The brown envelope was mistakenly delivered to me. In hopes of tracking down the neighbor, I’ve held onto the letter going on six years now – unopened – until today.

Somehow I thought it might be strangely romantic – that perhaps one day I’d figure out a way to deliver the letter and something old and painful might be resolved and forgiven – until today. A few times each year I look through the phone book, contact one or another mutual friend, try old email addresses and wait hopeful for a reply – until today.

Today I needed an 8 by 11 envelope to mail a few magazines to Ed’s brother – magazines I’d said I’d send on several months back but for lack of an envelope they’ve sat on the floor in my study. I spied the letter from Lee Baker and set forth on another journey to find this long lost friend of mine. The journey ended today. I didn’t find him, but I needed the envelope. I carefully, ever so carefully lifted the corners and the old glue relented with a suspicious ease. It’s like letting go and opening up is easier once time passes. I slowly slid the letter out of the envelope – a typed cover letter accompanied the twelve stapled pages.

Whether or not this Lee Baker was the Lee Baker is somewhat dubious. This Lee Baker explains that he retrieved my friends street address by doing an internet search for Jewish-sounding (??) names. It was a ramblings of a total lunatic – some bipolar Jesus freak of sorts – a magnificent essay which culminates in a reprint of a newspaper clipping of a successful in-vitro fertilization, showing that man has finally emulated the virgin birth first pioneered by God. How it only took a mere 2000 years to catch up. We’ll all be happy to note with the advent of fertility clinics and advances in science to help couples having trouble conceiving, we’ve obfuscated the need for God and religion. We’ve finally replaced God with science. (It’s about time, eh?)

Never again will I sit wondering at the 8 by 11 brown, hand-addressed envelope. I liked it better how it was in my mind. Pandora’s box and all that rot. I’ve loosed evil on the world by opening that one and let slip all the romantic mystery of the unknown. It’s very sad now that the deed is done.

((My toes are metallic copper.))

The Savaging of the Butterfly Bush

2006-06-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

I could describe the day yesterday, the beach, the blood, the puke, the paw. I could tell tales of the tragedy, the vet, the sutures. But why mince words on the mundane when I could remember the errant rat (did I say RAT?!?) gnawing it's way through the screen window to get out at 5 a.m., or the Fellini-esque dog that the rat happened on in the yard outside the bedroom window. And how the rat and the dog caused a stoned pup to rouse and pee herself, on the bed and a day that started with more laundry in the wee hours of the morning.. the key term being wee. Or perhaps, just then as we're ringing out the pee and decide to remove the bandages on the good leg when we reveal a forgotten catheter sticking out of the vein. The Zuzu-McGiver trick of cutting up tampons to put on the bleed. The unwillingness to eat or drink. Then the willingness. Then the urgency to unswallow like a bolumic on a mission.

No... why waste a spectacular morning on tales such as this, when you could simply enjoy the savaging and ravaging of the butterfly bush.

More Later

2006-06-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve been busy. No. That’s not it. Too many plans, people, things. I need my time alone – but not too much. I’m looking for that good in-between. I’m feeling crowded. I get pretty agro when I feel crowded. I like the time I spend weeding the garden, pruning, working the soil. Get down in the dirt with me. There’s plenty of room down here in the dirt.

So today I’ve extracted a quiet day (so far) off the loom of them. Somehow the alarm failed to go off at 7 am, so I rolled off the bed at 7:11, not as pleasantly as I’d have preferred. Pulled on my sweat pants and FBI glow-in-the-dark T-shirt (at the aiport Kiosk store in Washington Dulles, United terminal, near gate C17), brushed my teeth, rolled up my yoga sticky matt and out the door to meet Kaye, the neighbor lady. We do yoga together on Saturday mornings. Actually, it’s her routine, I just encroached myself into it. She’s been welcoming. We ladies stretch together.

After an hour or so of contorting, pushing, pulling my body every which way till Tuesday, I stopped at the coffee roaster enroute home for a nice cup of organic Mexican Jose (aka Joe.) After I’m all slippery and loosed up, the caffeine goes down smoother, surer. While I waited for Ed to more fully awake, I continued fertilizing the lawn – there still more to go, but enough for the morning.

And then we hopped on the mountain bikes and road the ten miles to Larkspur. Ed went out drinking (bad man – I hate it when he drinks, he promised he’d stop, dog house and all that rot) and took a taxi home from The City – leaving the truck at the ferry building. However annoying that is, it’s better than irresponsibly driving drunk I suppose. And admittedly, it was a beautiful morning for a ride – a light breeze, still early enough to escape the heat of the day. We had to stop at the Pet Food Cottage to pick up the Honey Bee’s chow before turning back home.

Swooping into the cottage, we off loaded the dog food and bike, did a quick change of clothes, scooped up Ms. Secret Agent Cookie and road the bikes up to LB’s house to watch the US v. Italy World Cup match. And what a stellar showing by the US. (LB says, “we must believe.” I say, “believe what, that Italy is going to kick their ass?” She says, “no, that they’ll win.” “Hmmmm… The World Cup, or just this match?” I ask. “Let’s just start with the match,” she says.) But really, coming up with a draw when the US is two men down is about the same as Italy losing, really. They should feel shame.

We’d intended to go to the beach today, but we’re bagging on the idea. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, there’s more gardening to do and yet I feel like I’ve done enough today.

As much as I do, I don’t want sustainability and environmental issues to be the it girl of this era. I’ve been thinking about this quite abit. I’m in a hot spot, again, of a movement. But this time I’m dabbling around on the fringe and not wanting to jump in. Or I do, but not holding hands with a crowd. If I wrote about that, that would be an entry.

Of course, I think Hedgehoggy would want to hear about what’s on my feet to make it real. Right now, there is Rhythm and Blues polish on my toes – just an exciting electric blue making them glow like crazy. And then there are the rather mundane white cotton socks. My shorts are army green and my tank top is mottled black with bleach streaks from when it went in the wrong load. The royal we (that’s me and Ed) are reading the Horse and his Boy or the Boy and his Horse (whatever-the-hell-it’s-called) – the third in the Narnia series (the first being my favorite thus far.) There’s a box of stewed tomatoes in the middle of the living room floor – for the life of me I don’t know why.

Oh yeah, we went to a monster yard sale in between things this morning. I found nothing to buy, yet like a seedy back-alley character the neighbor man showed me his ~~etchings~~ lamps and gave us three, for free. They’re sweet and lovely. I think many of the neighbor’s raise their brow in pity and wonder at our lack of furniture. I took the lamps but they’re table lamps and we have no tables.

The other day it rained, a few scattered sprinkles, during a walk on the mountain. This is nearly unheard of in this part of the world, in June. It made me happy. I loved, loved, loved it. I loved it as much as Fondue and riding my bike along the canal on a breezy Saturday morning. Things that make me happy: In addition to those things… wood ducks, wild native grasses, the twins.

More later.

Poopy

2006-05-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, say something damnit. Hi – another busy weekend. Too busy. Ed and I sat in the hot tub last night – under a canopy of stars and towering redwood trees – and decompressed our weekend. Too busy. So much so that I feel really resentful toward all the going’s on. Not toward any one person or thing – just the whole package – it was too much. And too many foiled ventures. Perhaps if some of them had yielded better fruits.

Despite this, I happened to get some great pictures of a tree frog, above the waterfall at Elliot. The rangers were out in full force, meaning the Honey Bee was leashed the entire time. Used to be one was allowed up to three dogs, off leash, under voice control, in this open space area. Someone has deemed it a sensitive wild life habitat, however. So now the dogs must be leashed. From my understanding the only sensitive wild life area is a roped off area near one of the fire roads. I’m sure dogs run through that area from time to time. But just as often, because the sign explaining what the sensitive wild life habitat is all about is posted in the middle of the sensitive, roped off area, humans have to crawl over the rope, through the sensitive area, to read that it’s a sensitive area and be informed they need to stay off/out of it. Sheer genius. And the dogs are the problem. Jeeeeesh.

I know, I should oblige and follow the rules – but I can’t. I try to make up for it in other ways… rouge broom pulling excursions, frog docenting (though not always gleefully), caring for the planet in my own ways. Hopefully is the cosmic pinball game I’m equalizing my karma points. I’m sure one day I’ll get a ticket, and I’ll just deserve it. She’s a good girl – well behaved, sunny disposition, avoids people, loves kids – it’s really me. I’m the problem.

So I’m about to drop over $1300 on what I’ve learned is called bathroom trim. That’s the faucets for the sink and the shower stuff – handles, spout for the tub, etc. etc. That’s in addition to the 200-and-something I spent online for the showerhead from Mac The Antique Plumber. I figure, however, since I decided not to buy a new bathtub and since no wood rot was discovered in the walls/floors/ceiling, etc, I could splurge a little and get the trim I wanted and liked. Even still, it feels rather overwhelming and extravagant and crazy. Be that as it may – I’m gonna have the nicest trim in town.

It smells poopy around here.

Pronoia

2006-05-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I’ve been terrible about updating here. Things have been going along swimmingly, yet quite busily as well. (Is busily a word?)

I love that when touched by Ithuriel’s spear, the true form of evil is revealed. So occasionally I pick the flower and hold it, waiting for something to change – wondering if the evil that lurks in me will suddenly become revealed in some striking form. As long as I look pretty much the same, at least we can assume I’m not cloaked – you get what you see – fangs and all (wink.)

For those who remember the Hell’s Kitchen saga of last year, what you mightn’t know is that the saga never ended. There remained a built-in dishwasher that never had a cabinet to build itself into. Without said cabinet, the dishwasher, when opened to be loaded or unloaded, would become front-heavy and tip. Hundreds of dollars of broken dishes later leaves me restless. The floor has never been quite finished, trim was never trum. And what’s gone unmentioned is that we haven’t had a bathroom – for the past year it’s been all sub flooring and a teetering toilet. To shower we go use the back cottage and the sink has been shut off for a year given a leakage problem. The little room can hardly be called a bathroom, and more suitably called a rather undignified toilet.

And there’s the problem of contractors/skilled labor in this part of the world being invariably (though not universally, as I’ve recently discovered) unreliable. Well, suddenly and without expectation a guy called me who’d gotten my name from a neighbor and through a rather whirlwind chain of events demolition began on the bathroom last Friday and has been proceeding at break neck speed ever since.

Sure, there was a trip to LA before that that failed to get mentioned here I believe, and last weekend a trip to DC. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. What’s important is that this bathroom is finally coming together and every discovery has been great news! The walls and floor were ripped up to unveil NO dry rot! This is absolutely amazing (and what one gets for having a house built of precious woods!) An area that has been cause to suspect a roof leakage problem reveals itself to be a sink that drains under the house… as opposed to in a drain (!?!??!) It was easily connected to a drain and suddenly this likely means that there is/was no roof damage!

And all this news leads me to a notion called pronoia. It was first coined by a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. It means nearly the opposite of paranoia. It is a notion that there is a conspiracy by the universe to shower you with blessings. That by 10 am, an hundred things in the universe have conspired to go right, just for you. It really seems to be happening that way, if we pay attention.

There’ll be more later… but for now, if we touch ithuriel’s spear to Hell’s Kitchen it’s looking much better.. and the bathroom, the bathroom, the bathroom… ah.. what more can I say about that bathroom? It commences… love, love, love!

93

2006-05-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing United 93. I’m stunned. I’m reeling at how gripping it was, how difficult it was to watch and how affected I was by it. This from me – jaded, compartmentalized, heady and detached? Wow. It’s saying something, isn’t it? I’m vibrating. I certainly never believed that seeing the planes hit the towers would ever have an effect on me again, having been so visually and emotionally numbed by terminal repeat of major news outlets. But on a big screen in a context, it left me breathless.

It didn’t have that Spielberg-I-can-manufacture-precisely-one-emotion thing going. It conjured many. I would have been angry had the messages been overly political or patriotic. Sure, it’s a political event, it’s difficult for it not to be political. But this film was amazingly raw. We all know the outcome. I wasn’t left with feelings of nationalism. Strangely, I think that would have cheapened it. That might sound odd – it’s how I feel.

That Girl

2006-04-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

I had an amazing experience yesterday. I went to see the lovely and amazing Tati for a two fucking hour massage. Yes two.. I said two. Seeing her is always magical and amazing. Two hours of seeing her was no different – just more. More on that later.

So Cassie came by weekend before last, or maybe even weekend before that. We talked out possible strategies and supplements that might help my poor, aching feet and chatted, etc. Some things resonate, other things don’t. I like her approach. She puts forward a menu of ideas and encourages me to move toward those that resonate for me. I mull things over for longer than the average bird. My ways are so odd. I don’t discuss my processes often because they work even if they don’t make sense to the average onlooker.

For months (years?) she brings up the whole yoga thing. My neighbor has asked me to go with her for months (years?) So I approach said neighbor last weekend and she’s taking me along with her this Saturday morning. She was so excited – it was sweet. I’m really looking forward to it. Now I have to buy a yoga matt.

Anyways, back to Tati. I realize that one of the things I really get from Tati, besides a kick ass massage and wonderful intentional healing – is time. Time to think, reflect, not think, meditate, let myself go, stop myself. It’s really valuable time that I don’t give myself enough.

I had a reminiscence of traveling through the Italian Alps with a man on a train. It was cold. We were holding hands. It was dark. We were whispering. But I kept thinking that I’d never been to Europe with a man, never traveled there with someone I was so cozy and intimate with. Or have I? I kept finding these memories. I was with someone, getting off a train in Rome when a swarm of children surrounded us, begging, trying to pilfer our pockets for whatever they could. I grabbed the hand of a young boy from my pocket – I looked at his eyes, defiant and rebellious. I’ll never forget those eyes. He was missing teeth. His fingernails were painted blue. I was with this same man. Where was this coming from. And suddenly I remembered.

He flew from San Francisco and joined me in London. I think we were in Paris on Christmas and it was snowing. It was all beautiful and I remember feeling very, very tired. There was a time this boy thought I was something. He was a sculptor and a playwright. Conversation was indeed scintillating. I’m not sure what happened. After several years – four maybe – we said goodbye as easily as saying, pass the salt. And that was that. How was it that I had forgotten all this? Misplaced these nocturnal train rides, Paris, even? But I remember New York with this boy, almost like it was yesterday.

This comes back ‘round. One thing he mentioned is that he held in a certain awe that I would do what I say. I would make a plan and I would do it. It would feel big, a pipedream, out of reach – but I would mention it and then I would make it happen. This mystified him. The thing is, I wouldn’t bother mentioning the really out of reach, the real pipedreams, the things I feel are too big. If I’m taking about it, surely it’s eventually going to happen – when I’m ready. He’d see me drawing out an idea on a sketch pad in a train and talking to him about an idea. I’d stuff the scrap of paper in a bag. A few days later I’d have it etched out on canvass and be filling it in with acrylics – asking him how he thought I could get an affect I was striving for. He didn’t know how to make his ideas happen. I don’t know how to not let mine have life.

So as Tati is working her magic, I come to see these moments. They surface – scribbling in a sketch pad and then the canvass laying on the floor of the apartment in the Western Addition. And it seems strangely attached to telling my walking companion that we should rise early and go to such and such a place to try to take photographs of birds. And it seems related to telling Cassie, over coffee one day, that I’m exploring the possibility of buying a house. And it seems related to bad art nights and water color painting. And suddenly this is related to decreasing my hours to four days. And I know I need to work four days a week and I realize I’m afraid like I’ve never been afraid before. I’m afraid and I’ve been letting the fear stop me instead of trusting – just trusting – and doing – just making it happen.

So I went to The City today with this feeling left lingering and I sat down with the new Administrative Director and explained how I was going to work four days a week. He asks me when. June first, I say. We’ll work out the details, but let’s start there. And then I unravel a tail that needs telling – one best saved for telling here at another time. But this is another beginning. And I’m left with the feeling that there’s a scrap of paper in a satchel somewhere that needs transposing on a fresh canvass with all different shades of green.

I wonder what became of that boy. But not so much, I suppose, as I wonder what became of that girl.

Discontent

2006-04-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Down here in the flats, we do our own gardening. And gardening I have done. Yesterday was spent pulling weeds, turning soil, composting, pruning, primping and planting. Icelandic poppies, marigolds, columbine and things I don’t even remember what to call. Delicate things that probably take too much water but I find irresistible nonetheless. It’s not a draught year, obviously, and I’ll take what I can while there’s plenty I suppose. One day, no doubt, they’ll be back to water rationing and my lawn will turn crisp and brown. Carpe diem!

I only tended to the side yard and the day was done. This morning I rise, make coffee, toss in a load of laundry and all the while my body rebels from bending and lifting and pulling in ways I’m unaccustomed to bend and lift and pull. There was a day that I’d say I hurt in a good way. But mostly I just hurt. Once the gardening gloves are through the washer and dryer this morning, however, we commence once more. Perhaps that is redundant.. and the we is perhaps the royal we. Secret and I maybe, or me and my aching back. I love the hot tub. Good investment. Everyone should invest in a hot tub. Once we’re suffering the worst effects of peak oil, it may make a nice planter or something. But in the meantime.. sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.

Ed technically starts the new job on Monday – but he’s busied himself by working on his computer most of the weekend. How convenient while I slave away at chores. This is the side of him I can do without. This is the part I’d just as soon kick to the curb.

I think I mentioned I haven’t been terribly inspired of late. It shows, doesn’t it, in these mundane entries about nothing? I want to decrease the number of hours I work, to four days a week. It seems at any given time there’s a desire for something that’s not happening – like contentment for what we have even.

My Normal

2006-04-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well, the good thing about Ed being home/around is that he can pick up extra dog-walking duties. Don’t get me wrong – my favorite thing to do each day is to walk the dog. I totally love that – not only do I like the hike for me, I also get to see her in her most joyful moments. It totally rocks. But I had to go into the City yesterday to be fitted for and pick up my orthotics (yahoooo!!!!)

That endeavor involved a ten mile bike ride to the ferry – a half hour on the ferry each way, forty-five minutes in bus rides in the City (both ways) and then the ten+ mile bike ride back home. I left the house at eleven and returned home at five, but/and that involved having to wait an hour in the City for a ferry back (poor me, so I just had to stop by the Scharffen Berger chocolatier at the ferry building.)

I actually arrived back at the Larkspur landing at 3:30-ish – but took my sweet time coming home. Honestly it’s usually just a thirty minute bike ride – ten miles doesn’t take so long and it’s mostly on a bike path, aside the creeks and canals that run to the Bay. It was so lovely outside, however, that I decided to come up the back side of the mountain on the way home. Wow. I haven’t done that in awhile. Wiggly. I can’t believe I made it, with a backpack of shoes, a change of clothes and er… all that chocolate even!

The best part of huffing and puffing up the mountain is that from the peak all the way to my house it’s downhill. I descended into the soccer field where all the trail heads converge, and there in the middle were all the ladies with their dogs. I stopped and chatted while the dogs ran crazy around the field and everyone asked after the Honey Bee.

Ed was still gone with the Secret Agent Monster as I rolled up to the house, tossed the bike in the back, stripped and plunged into the hot tub, still covered with mud even. I tried to hose some of it off, but it stuck. Indeed, there was still mud stuck to my legs when we were out at the fondue restaurant, celebrating the several job offers Ed’s received and discussing the pick of the litter. Have I mentioned how much I love that fondue restaurant? It’s the bomb. It’s also a franchise, so it’s possible you could check it out (The Melting Pot), albeit a bit pricey. All hail fondue!

What a far cry from where we’ve been. When Ed and I first started seeing one another, he was an under-educated and under-employed boy of twenty-something - constantly broke and unemployed. He worked odd construction and labor jobs –boat building, maintenance repairs, work in the shipyards, as a painter, etc. etc. There’s been many years between now and then, we’ve gone from those days of $15/hour service and construction jobs to debating over fondue which six figure salaried position has the best benefits and equity packages. I’ll take these days over the past any time.

We’re happier too now – even through my complaining. Even though some days I do feel so totally done with us. I wonder if that’s normal. If there’s just some days everyone, no matter how committed, just feels done – doesn’t want another day of the same face, body, problems, etc.? I don’t know what’s normal. This is normal for me. What is, from day-to-day, that’s my normal. And right now, it’s okay. Right now, it’s good.

Malcontent

2006-04-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve been rather busy.. and uninspired. Did I mention Ed got fired? Yes. Ed got fired. Bummer. He’s not unhappy or freaked out about it, however.. so I’m not going to be either. It makes me realize on some level what a whiner I am. I go from You’re never home. You work too much. to Oh shit, you’re way too up in my space in seconds flat. Something to work on I guess. Why do I have to be such a malcontent?

Follow Me

2006-04-13T12:28:00.000-07:00

I’m all muddle-headed for the cold Ed generously shared with me. He’s so giving when he wants to be. I called off work early today – not so much because I must sleep, but moreso because I’m having a hell of a time concentrating. At a certain point I just concede that it’s not even right that someone should pay me to gaze out the window while my head’s in a day-dreamy fog. I’m not sleepy for the DayQuil and coffee, but I’d call what I am decidedly distractible. I’d describe it as a day of oh look, something shiny! It’s going around. It’s not terrible – but it starts off with a scratchy feeling at the back of one’s throat (at 4:30 am night/day before last I woke up with that burning swollen dry throat feeling – assuaged by a popsicle in the wee hours of the morning.) And then it burns on with a mild fever, loss of appetite and stuffy nose, etc. This too shall pass.

Day before I stopped work early too – but later in the day. Not for the muddle-headed stuff, but due to inclement weather and flood warnings. The town activated The Emergency Notification System (TENS) and I received a phone call around 2 pm, notifying me of imminent flooding and encouraging me to evacuate. I watched the neighbors evacuate. I thought they were being a bit premature. Instead, I made sure the electric equipment (cameras, lap tops and other valuables) was up off the floor and before even rolling up the carpets I went to see the water level in the creek/river. It looked okay. It was actually receding some as I arrived which was my cue to let the carpet’s lay. The rains were relentless, however – coming down steady and heavy for hours. All together, in a 24 hour period, we easily saw 5 inches. It continued yesterday at a much slower pace. The weather services changed the flood warnings (which mean flooding is imminent and/or occurring) to flood watches and/or advisories. The striking danger now, they say, is probably not so much the risk of flooding (which has abated some now that the rains have slowed and become more intermittent) but the risk of earth movement/landslides.

We saw evidence of this yesterday evening and we climbed the rise up Bolinas-Fairfax road to the Water District preserve around Lakes Alpine, Bon Tempe and Lagunitas. Slides were occurring all along the rises banking that road – even the short distance to the preserve area.

A few towns away there’s a Mill Valley man reported trapped (dead?) by a 14 foot wall of mud that came tumbling down. The earth is so saturated it’s now the people who thought themselves safe in the hills that have to worry. Those of us in the lower flat lands – in the flood plane –rest a little easier while our neighbors in their lofty perches begin to sweat. Whoever is worrying, it’s never good – though perhaps all part of the order of things.

I think of when I lived in the City, we never worried about such things. Cities are immune, for the most part, to most of the effects of inclement weather and natural disaster. Oh at least the inhabitants believe they are. It’s that little insular bubble of energy/heat/pollution that for the most part pushes the weather to the suburban areas – protects them from tornados and the like. Public works are set up to respond promptly and accommodate things like increases in volume of sewage processing and/or a terrifically windy day.

When things go wrong in a City, however, the level of devastation can increase just for how people pack themselves in to live so unnaturally on top of one another. But even still, it’s always amazing to me how relatively few lives are lost in natural disasters that strike first-world Cities. I know, folks might be thinking Katrina – but I’ve yet to see a good breakdown of urban versus rural life lost and the numbers were relatively small at the end of the day. There were predictions of tens of thousands – and I believe it was just shy over one thousand, wasn’t it? Compare that to losing upwards of 130,000 to 230,000 people in a single day, from that massive Indonesian tsunami, however – and it really puts things in perspective. Or does it? Are we capable of really understanding perspective at that level?

The thing is, when we hear numbers like this, 230,000, they don’t mean anything to us. I’d read a good/fun(?) book called Cambodia: A Book For People Who Find Television Too Slow. I think it was written by a guy named something-Fawcett. I read it a long time ago. Anyways, he talked about numbers and statistics and how we can’t really fathom or hold the impact of numbers that are really large. What does that mean? Does that mean one in five of my friends and family members, one in two? Does that mean, if they were lucky, entire families? On some level it’s got to be worse, don’t you think, if you’re the only survivor? I don’t know.. maybe, maybe not. I doubt one would ever think of it that way. We’re used to saying that the survivors are the lucky ones. I believe that. I think life is fun, even when we lose parts of the game.

So I try to embrace these numbers. Over the past twenty years, roughly 18,000 people have died of AIDS in San Francisco (about 2.25% of the population of the City.) Generally the current population of the City is believed to be about 800,000. All together, throughout the southeast, the death toll from Katrina was said to be something like 2,000 people – not from a single city, but throughout the entire region. Even still, however, consider the context of population density of New Orleans, estimated at roughly 470,000. Looking at less natural disasters, the death toll associated with 911 in New York City was roughly 2800 people – in a City of 8 million people. 2800 people represents just a little over .03 % of the population. That’s nothing when you think about it. Over the past twenty years roughly 85,000 New Yorkers have died of AIDS (a little over 1% the city’s population.) Even when you average that out, that’s over 4,000 people per year. I don’t even know how to compare these figures to populations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia affected by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami – given just the raw numbers, however, it’s clear these are relatively small.

While statistics are a bit old, I found one source suggesting that 41,000 women die of breast cancer each year in the United States, total. Similarly, the total annual AIDS deaths in 1995 was about 50,000, but that number seems to be decreasing with the advent of more potent therapies to treat the disease. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how we would estimate the number of deaths in the United States due to poverty and violence, but I’m sure it would outstrip these numbers.

So what’s the point here? Sure, many people die for many reasons, every day. What’s the point of comparing these statistics and then talk about 7,000,000+ Jews, Gypsies, queers, etc. who perished in extermination camps under Hitler’s Nazi Germany? Or the 2+ million deaths in the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia (which was believed to represent 15 to 25% of the countries entire population)? Or the slaughter of upwards of 850,000 ethnic Tutsi’s in Rwanda? Or the stoning to death of a single woman in Afganistan by religious zealots?

The point is that there is something horrific and frightening and political about these numbers. And they don’t include the suffering of the living, who long afterwards, perhaps generations, are scarred by the events. Nor do they include the stories of people who are strangely healed by them either – the people whose hearts are uplifted by helping those more keenly affected by death and dying nor those inspired by the telling and hearing of heroic tales. What affects us more, broad sweeping figures of annihilation and destruction or the suffering of one – our mother, our father, our sister, our lover, our dog?

When it’s close, the personal becomes the political.. the political becomes the personal. It’s that one, I think, that we take into ourselves. The one whose suffering becomes our own suffering – or perhaps the end of their suffering is the beginning of our own – a slow overlap where we take possession. At first diagnosis, at first threat, they hold all the fear, uncertainty and pain. Later the loved ones take possession of all the fear and sorrow. And oh how we can caress it. And we have two choices – to become it or to let it go.

Those who become for a spell or forever are the ones who walk the earth hollow-eyed, always reaching out to touch something. They are aware of the thin layer of energy, space that surrounds them that keeps them from truly ever touching anything or anyone.

There is a chemical you put in pools that breaks the hydrogen bond at the surface of water – the thin sheath that the bugs walk across or that allows a leaf to float, rather than sink, immediately. Disease, fungus and worrisome stuff can grow in that space and become difficult to get rid of. At first blush, dissolving that layer makes all things sink and die. But it also allows you to touch the problems and deal with them. What a scary place to be.

Those who let it go – they’re like the ocean horizon. At first the line looks so clear where the one thing, the water, stops and the air begins. But it’s really not so clear is it? The water evaporates and mingles with the air and the place where these two things meet are quite entwined like the legs of lovers. Not only do they touch everything around them, they become part of it and it becomes part of them.

It was Rilke who wrote that if we fling the emptiness from our arms perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

I lived in San Francisco during the time of the big earthquake of 1989. This was a 7.1 on the richter. My understanding is that the richter scale is logarithmic, not linear. Thus, the 9.3 magnitude earthquake that shook in the middle of the Indian Ocean in late 2004 was over 100 times the magnitude of the famed Loma Prieta quake. It was also the longest in duration ever recorded and I’ve read reports that suggest that the quake that inspired the tsunami caused the entire planet to vibrate over half an inch. Now… are you absolutely sure that you have a solid foundation, that your feet are securely planted on the ground, that the earth beneath you is solid and that everything you hold in your beliefs is right and sound and true?

I’m telling you, I think we’re all only scratching the surface – picking at it really, like an itchy scab. What’s down there deep is powerful, destructive and very, very fragile.

And now you're thinking.. enough already, we liked the pretty pictures. bring back the pretty pictures!

Smoke and Mirrors

2006-03-26T15:54:00.000-08:00

I notice that folks are generally more intimate in their blogs than I am. The sturm and drum of their lives have a dramatic flare that in comparison leaves my life feeling rather plane-jane at the end of hours. I think it’s mostly an illusion, however. Smoke and mirrors. I’m not sure on whose part there is more smoke and whose there are more mirrors. If when you look at my words you see yourself, it’s a sure fire sign that I’m the mirrors. It’s more likely, however, that I’m the smoke. Obfuscating. Subterfuge. Like a little bird hiding in the thicket. Peep. Peep. Peep.

Anyways. Here I am. I think I’m an expert at making mole hills out of mountains. Or maybe I’m correct in my presupposition that they’re really all mole hills – everything is – it just depends on your vantage point. The Himalayas probably look like little mosquito bites from the moon.

I went to dinner with my boss last night. He was hot on the topic of problems with immigration and seemed particularly focused on the troubles the Southern border poses. Personally I think he’s been listening to too much right wing radio. At one point he said, “do you think it’s our responsibility to solve the problems of their government?!” I said, sliding my chair back, when I take the long view, when I think of a bigger picture of humanity that transcends borders – I think just because someone was born on a particular side of a line doesn’t seem justification for them to live in squalor and poverty. Do I think it’s our responsibility to solve the problems of their government? No. But I do think we have more opportunities and access to more wealth – in general. And I think with that access comes responsibility that far too few people acknowledge or embrace. There is a responsibility to do something but I’m not sure what, exactly – honestly.

I digress.

Podiatry

2006-03-20T15:52:00.000-08:00

The podiatrist gave me little over-the-counter pads with stick’ums on one side. I’m supposed to paste these fuckers to the bottom of my feet while he sees if my insurance will cover some professionally made inserts and we’re supposedly going to talk next week via the phone. I forget what he said he conjured was causing all this. Something rolling in a particular direction, obviously a particularly wrong direction. Pronating? Bones suspected of curving. You could tell, he said, by the wear pattern on my shoes – which were shoes I don’t wear often. These are comfortable shoes, He says, so people like them. They are the least comfortable shoes I have, I tell him. My feet hurt worst while I wear these particular shoes. Wouldn’t it be awesome if just once you went to the doctors and left feeling better than when you went – that they were able to tell you why were you having particular symptoms and outline a course of action that would actually make a meaningful difference?

Off like a prom dress to the optometrist. My prescription hasn’t changed significantly (all the change, I guess, is just in my head.) And I really couldn’t find a pair of cool new glasses. I went to visit Dan because I was too early for the eye doctor and he says, but those are really cute glasses. (Referring to the ones I’ve had for the past however many years.) I have to agree. They are really cute glasses. So I just up-graded an old pair of glasses with my newer old prescription and picked out a cute pair of prescription sunglasses. Five hundred and ninety dollars later and my flexible spending account is clean, zippo, wiped out. The sad part of this purchase is that I totally have a premonition of these expensive new sunglasses laying in the dust, trampled, at the side of a trail after some mountain biking fiasco. I know they’re not long for this world and I don’t even have them yet.

He says he misses me. I miss him too. I wish he lived closer the same way he wishes I lived closer and we won’t. That’s just the way it is right now and maybe for forever.

Cassie’s back from her astral travel adventure (heretofore known as ATA.) She came to visit on Saturday – but now I suspect she was just a mirage, an ATA illusion. She’s not only merely a lump of flesh channeling Cassie, but she’s not even real flesh. (I pinched her and she didn’t even notice – she didn’t even flinch.) We went on a short hike and I made us stop in a peaceful little meadow near the stables. It was too short – both the hike and the visit. Short because Ed and I planned to go the beach – something fun for a change. But that didn’t happen. Time got away with us so instead we began the arduous task of getting the kitchen cupboards up. They’ve been painted (or so I thought) for months and months – laying on the floor of the extra room. I bought hinges a few weeks back and it was time to do something with them.

As we began to affix hinges I realized the bastard who I paid an arm and leg to paint them didn’t even frill’n finish the job. One word - Asshole. But up they go nonetheless and I’ll do touch up later. The kitchen looks so different. Less cluttered. Brighter. Different. It’s a little shocking to have cupboard doors on – it’s been nearly a year since they’ve been off. Now I need to make a decision about knobs and pulls. But really, who needs knobs and pulls when you have no arms or legs?

Did I mention I bought a new lap top? Well, actually, one place I work for agreed to pay $1,000 toward the purchase, the one agreed to pay half the remainder. So I bought a quarter of a lap top but I get to keep the whole thing. It’s an HP 8000 series (8140.) Very sweet. It’s being shipped. I decided to demonstrate patience and choose the free five to seven business day delivery option as opposed to paying extra for next business day or second business day delivery. This proves I’m a saint (read patience of a saint) for anyone who doubted.

Okay.. this ranks up there as one of my most mundane entries. It only gets better from here. Promise.

KavOuch, Kavetch, KavItch

2006-03-14T15:49:00.000-08:00

My feet hurt like hell. Ouch, ouch, ouch. At first it was the just the right foot. The toes began tingling last October and then a dull ache and throb. Later the entire big toe and the ball of the foot went numb and it continues with the thudding pain that now extends down through the arch. And the left foot, it’s starting in now too. I dropped the transformer or whatever the heck that big ass thing is on the cord to the laptop. I dropped that on the right foot – it sent me gaga. And then I picked it up and it slipped out of my hands and it dropped on my left foot. I wanted to cry. So I go get the phone to call Ed and whine a bit, and I drop the phone on my right foot. On the bright side, I’ve got an appointment with the podiatrist on Friday. I think I want to marry a podiatrist. Sorry Ed.

And I’ve been having these headaches, I think because my prescription is changing on my glasses. So I’ve got an appointment with the optometrist on Friday too. I inquire with the HR guy at work if I have cashola in my flexible spending account. He replies that I do - $500. That’s gonna be a sweet pair-o-glasses. (He says get something with some bling bling cause it’s a bitch getting old and falling apart.) That’ll be me, limping around on Friday looking for bling.

Also.. I know I’m getting bit by fleas. For cryinoutloud. I bombed this whole frill’n place not three weeks ago. Where in the HELL are they coming from? I never had this problem in the back cottage. Help?

The Little Brown Shoes

2006-03-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

I watched Rent the other evening on DVD. It served to make me angry. I found myself yelling at the screen from time to time – things like grow up, shut the fuck up and you arrogant, misguided, cowards. I’d seen it on the stage in San Francisco in the 90’s. I didn’t have this reaction then. I’m still rather surprised at how angry I am and how the anger lingers.

So what’s it all about? It probably doesn’t make sense to the average onlooker. I can’t remember. Do you ever, randomly, realize that you’ve been holding your breath? This happens to me often – maybe for the last two decades or so.

I have an unmitigated anger toward New Yorkers. Not against any particular New Yorker, but New Yorkers in general. As a group they are arrogant, self obsessed, myopic creatures. They are cowards masquerading as cool. Put on any clothes you want – it doesn’t change who you are fundamentally. Frauds. And if you’re a New Yorker or you have some adolescent obsession with New York and you’re feeling offended, just go have a cocktail and buy yourself a new pair of shoes. I’m sure you’ll forget all about it - it will pass.

Cassie was in my dreams last night. We had breakfast at 9 am and then she was coming back to pick me up for a conference I was to speak at at 1:30. In the meantime, my old friend T*dd came to visit. I haven’t seen him in a decade. I adore him. He doesn’t know it. He thinks I gave him my guitar and the comfortor I made when I was a girl, the one made out of old sun dresses and the whatnot, because I didn’t want these things anymore – not as any sentimental gesture. He was wrong. I gave him these things because I wanted him to have them. Because he wanted to learn how to play guitar. Because I didn’t want him to be cold. Because I’d given him money and I couldn’t give him anymore money. Because he lay shivering from a fever from the HIV, from the Hep, who knows, on my living room floor, still tweaked out on speed – but still found it in him to make heart-attack spaghetti. (He got his test results on an April first – I thought he was kidding. We ate Thai food. They told me I was positive and handed me a brown paper bag. What’s this, my do-yourself will and a list of hospices? I threw it back at them.) Because we got stoned and lay on his bed on Hayes and listened to Morrissey crooning the Queen is Dead. Because he is probably the smartest person I’ve ever known and he feels. Because we just had so much fun together – we always did. And then for a whole bunch of reasons, most all of them having something to do with speed, it just wasn’t so good that we hung out anymore and I’m not sure even if I found him today that we could retrace steps to all the laughter. I’m sure he lost or sold the things I gave him. He gave me a red cut glass candy dish. The red color, he told me, has to do with gold being mixed in with the glass. I still have it. I miss him. I miss who I was. I miss who we were then too.

So anyways, what does this digression have to do with Rent? In the dream, T*dd began singing one of the songs from the musical…. we’re living in America, at the end of the millennium.. He sang it over and over. He wore a black leather jacket with black keds – this very young, very blond, very earnest boy – bounced ahead of me down the street – mockingly singing this song. He laughed and everything became playful. I was serious – stoic – and he kept singing until I started laughing. It’s what we were – playmates. And there he was and there I was and we were laughing together – just like that.

He described it best from a short story he’d read. A drop of blood falling on a clean white cotton sheet – absorbing and spreading out in the fibers. That’s what A1D$ is like, not a fucking musical. Not fashion.

I loved his anger. More than mine. I wonder where he is. I saw him on the street in the Tenderloin many years ago. Seemed things were better – maybe – it’s hard to tell. But there was so much stuff… I hate that fucking musical and I hate New York.

Step Back

2006-03-06T15:44:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the desert – sunny Palm Springs. I flew down on Thursday for a conference that ended today. Yesterday there was only a morning session so mom and B, my brother, drove to Thousand Palms preserve for a walk and to see the desert pup fish. The wind was howling – it hurt my ears and we were pelted with sand. You’d think it would serve as some kind of natural exfoliation. Really, I just got sand in my hair.

B was out for a conference in San Diego and rented a car – he’ll be staying until the 8th. I’m flying back Monday early evening. Every time I turn around, mom is putting food in front of me. Lemon-caper chicken with asparagus baked in garlic and olive oil, baked ziti, exotic quiche-like pastries heavy with cheeses, creams, and pancetta. Everything is fabulous and seemingly effortless. It’s not effortless. Emphasis on seemingly. She’s just amazing.

On Thursday morning we hiked Palm Canyon, the Murray trail to the seven sister’s waterfall. I brought the camera, but I’m not seeing what’s in front of me. And when I do see something, I’m sloppy with the camera settings. It’s interesting that on the mountain, at home, I just can’t get close enough. Here I wish I had a wide angle lens and wish I could get further away. I’m not accustomed to looking at things this way. Not used to wanting to back up. It takes practice, like standing on my head or reading upside down.

You're It!

2006-02-23T15:34:00.000-08:00

Embarrassing moment number four:

4) I have weak wrists. I went bowling. When I swung back I’m not sure what happened. Those weak wrists gave out. I dropped the ball, it hit the ground, rolled backward and landing on the toe of my bowling companion. Despite those armored bowling shoes they rent you, it broke his toe. (This was many, many years ago. I haven’t broken anyone’s toe in the last decade at least.)

The final and last embarrassing moment:

5) That same actor/comedian that I’d mentioned earlier had a father who was in a drunk driving accident during the tenure of our relationship. His father was drunk and took a left turn on red and hence forward was a quadriplegic. Again, I was a late something-teen and far from eloquent, articulate or even emotionally seasoned. We were going to visit him for the first time since the accident – I think it was literally within days. I was thrown emotionally akimbo because I’d heard him yelling as we approached. There had been a mouse on his head and there was nothing he could do about it. I don’t know why… the thought of that just threw me off balance further. So we enter the room and there is an awkward silence. I perhaps should have deliberated on what it was I would say to him – but I’ve never before rehearsed a casual greeting. When I entered the room the levity of the situation struck me, I was dumbstruck and wide eyed. He looked at me and I searched my databanks for something to say – anything – anything at all. “How are you?” seemed totally inappropriate. I knew I couldn’t say that.. .I opened my mouth and all that came out was, “so, how’s work?” The man had permanently lost use of everything from the neck down just days previously. Jeeesh.

Okay, so I did it. Those were five embarrassing moments and it’s time for tag:

1) Alison, 2) SandyZ (Fightn4life) and 3) Madrigal.

Independence Day

2006-02-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

I’m still working on those embarrassing moments. I’m on number three of five I suppose.

3) Before I had a good sense of how the internet and search engines worked, before I started this blog, I had another blog. I vented a rant called Independence Day in which I told the story of a failed first love with an aspiring comedian/actor. I mentioned his close friend, who has grown to be a rather successful comedian/actor. I mentioned these folks by their real names (thus it becomes important that I didn’t realize how search engines worked) and some of my remarks were visceral, blunt, personal and disparaging. In context, the piece was about betrayal and intimacy – deception and disease – and about removing the rosy glow of idealized first love to look at something in all it’s nakedness.

The piece was called Independence Day because it was about shuffling off the innocence and letting go the allusion. If you wrap your head around literary allusion it was about this:

we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp / on the 4th of july / we sat out on the hood with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks / explode in the sky / and there was an exodus of birds from the trees / but they didn’t know, we were only pretending / and the people all looked up and looked pleased / and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending

It was dramatic, yes.. what the fuck, I’m dramatic in my writing. Anyways… the subject was searching his own name and came across the piece. He was living in LA and tracked down my phone number and called to ream me out for putting such personal information on the internet and what if his future mother-in-law saw that!?! I have to say, I was mortified. I was embarrassed.

While there was nothing, technically, untrue, in what I wrote – in neither the actual events or in how I reflected on things –it also wasn’t the whole picture. But/and if you’d heard the Ani DiFranco song lyrics of the same name that inspired the essay you’d maybe get it.

so many sheep i quit counting / sleepless and embarrassed about the way that i feel / trying to make mole hills out of mountains / building base camp at the bottom of a really big deal / and did i tell you how i stopped eating? / when you stopped calling me / and i was cramped up shitting rivers for weeks / and pretending that i was finally free

Of course on the phone that day I couldn’t explain. All I could do was be embarrassed and mortified and apologize over and over. And within days I’d learned about meta tags that won’t allow for search engines to cache pages and I’d written personal pleas to search engines to remove this page. I was just mortified – I was so embarrassed.

Now, whenever I think of that relationship I don’t remember the good or the bad times, the deception or betrayal, the pain of lost love or innocence. All I remember is the entry in my blog and how sorry I was that he’d seen it. I have to admit that it feels better to just feel sorry than it did to carry around baggage filled with lost valuables.

and i don't think war is noble / and i don't like to think that love is like war / but i got a big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot / of your front door

Kaboom. Ouch.

Now the most interesting thing is that while that entry has long since been deleted from the internet, I still have it as a word.doc and to refresh my memory I just went back and read it. While I still regret that I used his real name and am embarrassed that he read it, etc. - man he so totally missed the mark. What an idiot.

Shelter

2006-02-21T15:30:00.000-08:00

I’ve was tagged again.. this time five most embarrassing things. This task has stirred no small amount of distress. I’m low on the spectrum of someone who does foolish things and/or if I do them I’m simple enough not to be embarrassed by them. I’ve had fun inquiring after the most embarrassing moments of friends and acquaintances – but this has not jogged my mind to produce more of my own.

1) I went to the store and forgot to wear my pants. I was at the grocery store and it suddenly dawned on me that I was only wearing a t-shirt and underwear. (I wasn’t drunk and hadn’t been drinking. I have no excuse. No, I was not wearing a thong.)

I’m certain I’ve had many embarrassing moments – I really just can’t think of them. Denial is powerful. I can’t keep the love on that one going because it’s just too difficult.

Wiley showed up for a surprise visit this past weekend. Back space. On my way to DC on Thursday the tail wind was incredible. We broke the sound barrier over Ohio and arrived an hour early. Fighting nature all the way back, we were an hour late arriving home Friday night. I met Cassie for coffee Saturday morning. Surprise. She was wearing a beautiful hat and I took pictures of her with my new camera. The wall behind her was mustard color – I didn’t even notice until after I downloaded the images. Just a perfect color.

Anyways, M bought me a bitch’n cool lens for the camera – just as an out-of-the-blue gift. He said I can’t have such a cool new camera without having an awesome lens. I was never happier to receive it because his heart seems to be working – the angioplasty has relieved symptoms. Damn, it’s so nice to have something make a difference for a change. And for some reason this allows me to really appreciate and indulge in enjoying the gift and feel even more grateful and happy about it. I love it!

So Cassie and I arrive home after a nice lazy morning with coffee that reminded me of when we first met, in The City, when we’d just sit in cloudy cafes and drink coffee for hours and talk about nothing and everything – you know, back when I smoked cigarettes (sigh). So we arrive home and there, surprise, is Wiley – he’s come for a weekend visit. Surprise. With him he returned two books I’d leant him forever ago – Paula (Isabel Allende) and Shelter (Jane Anne Phillips.)

For the observant among you, you’ll note that Jane Anne Phillips is listed among my favorite authors. I loved her collection of short prose Black Tickets. This, her novel, Shelter is quite another story – I’d call it a delectable mountain in its own right. (Betraying, of course, that cummings truly was another of my favorite authors and this betrays my highbrow ways – I’m not a fly by night fan of cummings recounting memorized poems recited in dubious chick flicks, but the harder stuff – ami, the enormous room, the non-lectures, every last piece of him…) I remember when I read it, cozied up in a window seat of the Morgan House at Irish Beach on the Northern California coast. The Morgan House is on stilts on the bluff – in the window seat there is a view of nothing but ocean forever. I cried just because it was so beautiful – not the view, but Shelter. Though the view was something too.

There is a temple in Mendocino, when I sit on the front stoop I feel a vibration, an energy, a tone of bliss. It’s unmistakable. If you’ve ever been to Mendocino and stopped by this temple, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Irish Beach is about twenty miles south of Mendocino on the Coast. I have so many good memories that were born there. Like reading Shelter the day of the night that I saw Gary Oldham play Mozart in Beloved.

2) I was a late something-teen in Mexico and my sister and I went to a night club in Manzanillo with two Mexican boys we’d met at Las Hadas. I wanted to say that the swimming pool at the resort was beautiful. Instead I said that the goat was beautiful. When I went to say I was embarrassed, instead I told them I was pregnant.

Paula is a beautiful… a beautiful… what.. memoir? She wrote it for her daughter, Paula, who was in a coma. If she came out of the coma, she was sure to have no memories. So as she sat at her daughter’s bedside for months, she wrote her memories, so when she surfaced from that sleep she could relearn herself. This is who you are. This is who I am. This is where you’re from. I don’t remember where I was when I read that.

On Sunday Wiley and I walked the crest trail to Phoenix Lake and wandered slow back, the short loop to Woodlane, passed the stables home. But Saturday night Ed’s friends from work showed up and watched zombie movies until the small hours of the morning. I need more time alone and more time together, all at once. And I like having the books back. He even brought back one I’d never leant him.

What Was Left Us

2006-02-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

We have to begin someplace don’t we? Despite the fuzzy marsh-like edges of our lives we pick these numbers, the only ones we think we’re certain of, and use them to remember a life. They are embraced by born and died. You look at these rocks in endless rows and these are the consistent bits of information – little to nothing is said about all the bits in between.

I really don’t think it matters. You cannot kiss a memory.

The pot needs stirring. The heavy things that sunk to the bottom and lay closest to the flames, softening in the simmer - and the lighter things that float to the top, when we aren’t paying attention evaporate and disappear – they all need mixing up.

I began on the edges of a Midwestern City - Minneapolis. In a black-painted house with short brutal summers and difficult growing seasons. Remarkable efforts were made to grow roses, a vining clematis and delicate blossoming things. Anything to add cheer to the blackness. What winter couldn’t kill, despite heroic efforts – that was what was left us.

A Little Sugar

2006-02-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

I love Valentine’s Day. I don’t feel the pressure that accompanies other holidays. I sent a bouquet of sweetheart roses to mom. When we were kids she made it the best holiday – a special dinner in the dining room on good china. Cherry cheese pie for dessert.

I bought Ed a Treo, which for those less tech among us combines several features in a single hand held device. You can send and receive email from it (it has a tiny keyboard), synchronize it with your work or home calendar and keep your schedule and contacts handy. It’s a cell phone. It’s a digital camera. It’s got a little video recorder. It’s an MP3 (music) player. You can get full internet access – so you can browse the internet, instant message, anything you can do while you’re online. You can take a picture or a video, for example, and immediately email that to someone from the device, no matter where you are. It can act as a wireless port and enable internet connectivity for your lap top. You could be on a boat on the Bay, for example, with your lap top and the Treo would enable internet connectivity and you could ruin a perfectly beautiful leisure day by being able to work. (How lovely.) On some level it sounds dangerous. He loves it.

I, on the other hand, received a fabulous new digital camera. This was a combined present for several holidays and probably makes up for errant gift giving behaviors of the past. It’s a Canon EOS 20D. I am so stoked!!

So yes, of course, these material gestures don’t actually signify love. They don’t mean that we love each other, that our relationship is going well, that we hold one another in a state of mutual regard and respect or that we’re happy. I’m not suggesting that things are going poorly, rather, merely, that these gifts don’t necessarily signify anything to the contrary. But maybe, you know, things aren’t always going perfectly and I won’t notice so much because I’ll be distracted with my frill’n awesome new digital camera.

Happy Valentines Day to you and yours! May the gifts you give and receive be glorious distractions from the imperfections of your lives and loves. If you find yourself in a single state this most perfect of holidays, it makes you no less in need of distraction – just go buy one of your own (you know, if you’re not with the one you love then love with one you’re with – even if you’re alone.. maybe, especially if you’re alone.) We’re all imperfect and we all need a little sugar.

A Sign...

2006-02-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

The bewilder is shrinking. I won’t say to right sized because who knows what that is. I mean, maybe we’re supposed to carry dumbstruck around like a permanent satchel – the wonder of the universe and all that. Sometimes (maybe mostly?) we misapply it.

An exercise in something – how we imbue things with meaning that don’t. How swift the line is between something and nothing. How sadly silly this whole world can be sometimes.

There was a time last week, so lost in my moment, in that reaching to achieve, that I lost something. I reached out and touched the computer screen wondering if there was someone, somewhere, seeking contact too. I don’t mean through this virtual world. My grandmother would understand this, no doubt. She sat there long enough waiting too. Somehow I knew, deeply, the meaninglessness of what I was doing despite how impressed people can sometimes be with these kinds of efforts. This is because I know. This is because I’ve seen the face of hopelessness and there was truth in the murder of crows feet and knitted brow – that blank, abandoned stare on her face. Empty eyes. I wanted to take her face in both of my hands and kiss her passionately while she died.

But I didn’t (and neither did she.)

Blink

2006-01-31T15:12:00.000-08:00

I am SOOOO dumbfounded right now. I don’t typically write about the brass tacks day-to-day of things, but today I’m so frill’n beside myself I just need to say it, to write it, to prove to myself and the world that this is all real. Pinch me. Is this a joke?

I was asked to participate in a review group, an ad hoc study section if you will. This is a group, for those who aren’t familiar, that will convene to review grant applications, in this instance for unit/site applications for large networks that conduct studies in humans (called a clinical trial.) I have a lot of history with this particular application process, shaping it from different perspectives over the last few years. Anyways, that’s not the important part.

So I received the usual truck load of material via Fed X in early January. I had to deal with all the ablutions of my friend dying and the pre-review conference call wasn’t until the 13th of January and then I had work obligations and that trip to LA and Palm Spring and the what not. But that’s all okay, I set aside all last week, an ENTIRE week, to accomplish the task at hand. This is more time then I’ve ever given myself to do this work – I didn’t want any pressure for a change.

Not. As I sunk my teeth into the project it spun out of control. It proved to be the most complicated review process I’ve ever been part of. One application alone included over 50 site applications. Just doing the math, if one were merely to spend an hour reading and then writing a review of a site, that application alone would take more than a 40-hour work week to complete – and that was just one component of ONE of the applications. Needless to say I haven’t slept much.

I’ve slept a total of six hours since Saturday, I think, and I flew to DC on Sunday for a Monday meeting, had a delay (the airplane was struck by lightening – don’t ask) getting home last night and didn’t arrive back here until after 2 a.m. this morning. Every second in the airport, in the hotel, on breaks during the meeting and every moment before this trip was spent reading and writing reviews on these applications.

What I’m trying to paint a picture of is how hard this was and how much time I spent on it and how I sacrificed. (I’m a virtual martyr.. that’s the take home message.. this is all about sympathy.) The dog was neglected and suffered short walks and loneliness (in her most sad moments she climbs on the sofa where I’ve been perched for the past week, lays down on a sea of papers and just rests her head on the keyboard of the laptop and sighs – hoping my hands will find her head for a scritch or a cuddle given the only thing in the house I touch anymore are these papers and that black box.) The carpet needs vacuuming. Secret got in the garbage when I was gone – she does this when she’s lonely and craves attention - and Ed pretended to clean the coffee grounds off the kitchen floor – which means they’re just scattered around abit and being tracked through the house.

Long story shorter. The review group is scheduled to convene via conference call today at 7 am my time. Yup.. that’s right, I hunker down for an EIGHT hour conference call. I have my cordless phones at the ready with my headset on mute. One is charging while the other is poised to do its job. The computer has been recharging all night. The stacks of papers are arranged neatly around the living room according to some logic that will allow me to access the appropriate material at the right time, efficiently, during the review process. I have organized in a systematic fashion over 300 pages of written critique I produced over the past week (maybe I could submit THAT to NaNoWriMo!!)

The call begins slightly after 7 am, no doubt the host was trying to contact all of the participants. In my fatigue I forgot to put the pot/decanter under the coffee maker and coffee flowed freely over the counter-top this morning while I rushed about trying to find my toothbrush and brace for the grueling day ahead. At about 7:10 the program staff initiating a welcome and introductions and by about 7:30 the chair of the group was introducing the first application and the primary reviewer was beginning a verbal critique of the first component of the application. At about 7:45 am the program staff interrupted that there had been an administrative glitch and they needed to go into closed conference momentarily with the chair.

At about 7:50 am, the program staff noted that the administrative glitch was that I am not allowed to serve on this type of review group because I sit on another council with advises the Division. They apologize profusely and thank me for my time. Goodbye.

At 7:55 am I sat staring at the wall. What the fuck just happened? That was a week of my life. That was over 300 pages of written critique, over a hundred hours, lost cuddle time with the Honey Bee, sacrifice, sleep deprivation, all the things I didn’t do, my brain hurts. Is this a joke? By 8 am I’d picked up all the grants and tossed them in the recycle and deleted all the review materials from my computer. It’s like it didn’t happen. It’s like it never really mattered anyways.

I don’t even know how to express how bewildered I feel right now.

Bucolic

2006-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

I’m waiting for the flight to LA, in the Palm Springs airport, writing on the laptop. We won’t board for another ten minutes, yet I’m already bored (sic.) Mom clipped an article on Johnny Walker Lindh from the paper this morning. She underlined bucolic Marin, and asked me if I knew what bucolic meant. Before I had a chance to answer she said, I looked it up this morning. It means idyllic. It sounds more like a disease. This is strange. Am I becoming my mother or is my mother becoming me? This sounds like conversations I have with myself in the morning over coffee and a dictionary.

We went to her gym, had another great lunch which negated all our efforts at the gym, took an ambling walk down Palm Canyon Drive (I got a wonderful lemon Italian ice on a warm afternoon – we looked at shoes and went to our favorite store - The Alley. It’s a discount furniture/kitchen/stupid-stuff store. We spend hours there and never buy anything. A crazy Latin man – I’d guess on meth/tina – spoke loudly to himself. I want this. Now this is tasteful. This would look great. I’ll get this. Loudly. We reached the exit at about the same time. Mom pulled my arm back and pretended to search for something in her pocket. He’s crazy, she whispered in my ear. I don’t want to go out at the same time as him. I explained to her that at any given time she was outside in the world with at least one crazy person – there was no particular elevated risk with this crazy person. He stopped in front of us and knelt to speak to some flowers – she accelerated her pace and we passed him by. She seemed to feel more comfortable when he was behind us.

We were in a hurry so I suppose it’s good we passed him. He was talking to the flowers! she exclaimed. Which I thought wasn’t so crazy. Later I made her jog at stop lights, so she can make 10,000 steps on her pedometer and keep up with her grandkids. Now people with think I’m the crazy one, she said, breathless as she jogged on spot. There you have it, I told her, at any given time you’re outside in the world with at least one crazy person, even when you’re alone. She wasn’t amused, but she kept jogging.

We were in a hurry to get to Brokeback Mountain. I told her I’d pick the movies next time. She picked two real downers. Don’t get me wrong. It was beautiful, but it was a short story, not a novel. More should have happened in a full-length major motion picture… in my humble opinion.

Higher Ground

2006-01-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

I went to my first town council meeting tonight. When we moved here it was my intention to get involved in civic life. We’re pushing on five years and this was my first meeting. I sat next to a distinguished and articulate man. He was so kind and helpful and earnest. I was kicking myself for not voting him in for another term.

The meeting, it was entertaining. After two and a half hours, however, it was time to crawl home with my stuffy-nosed, coughing, sleepy-headed self.

I realized that one of my barriers against grief is to recount inconsistencies – those things that make a person less than perfect – you know, human. These are the ways you are human and thus it minimizes the loss to me and the world today. But it’s a heavy veil to lift and rally against grief. It’s left my shoulders sore and my body a bit fatigued. I really can just let the dead be dead – without making them either less or more than who they are in all their perfect imperfections. I forget that I can do this, however – and thus my shoulders are sore.

I’m waiting to hear if the President will declare a State of Emergency and hopefully release FEMA relief for the area. I’ve heard I can get a no or low interest loan and that sometimes the Federal Government forgives these loans. I wish they’d hand out grants outright. I need to dig out the foundation and really, raise the house another foot.

Garnish

2006-01-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

At about 10 pm on the evening of January 3 that certain suffering ceased and a new brand commenced. There was a piece of paper spit out of a machine sometime around 7 that evening. It was his last recorded pulse and vital stats.

Severe Weather Alert

2005-12-30T21:19:00.000-08:00

There’s a big storm coming. The center cannot hold. Those things on the periphery are starting to break loose and fly. The winds. The winds are supposed to maintain at forty miles per hour, rise to sixty from time to time. Tomorrow night. That’s when it’s supposed to begin, technically.

I don’t want to talk about anything and I don’t want advice or support. Sometimes it’s just about letting the winds blow and the rains wash over me. Sometimes it’s just about letting go.

We Were Children

2005-11-21T17:13:00.000-08:00

Eenie meanie miney moe, catch a ~~tiger~~ memory by the toe. If she hollers let her go. And my mother says to pick the very best one and you are IT!

Yesterday I drained and cleaned out the hot tub. The fiberglass shell is much slicker when it’s not full and just a little damp. There’s an inverted V-shape in one of the contoured seating areas, intended for your knees to drape over, positioning your feet at one belting jet that gives an awesome foot massage. For reasons I can’t explain, I was standing with one foot on either side of the sloping upside-down V and for reasons I further can’t explain both feet slipped outward at once and both knees crashed inward, toward the top of the V, simultaneously. It hurt like a mother. The right knee seemed to get the worst of the tork. I kept it elevated all night. I suppose I’m lucky. I don’t think I tore anything, just torked it good – no bruising but it hurts, hurts, hurts.

So while an early evening of chores was fumbled, I was laying on the rug in front of the fireplace, knee propped up on pillows and had plenty of time to think. Thinking is my affliction. The unexamined life is not worth living and all that rot. Examine, I do. Think, I do. I let my mind thumb through a pile of reruns, memories from this era or that. It paused on this one:

I was twenty four and he was twenty five. Under other circumstances I don’t think we’d have even been friends. In these circumstances, I watched his friends disappear one-by-one – unwilling or unable to sit with the changes happening in him. But I don’t think he really had friends – he just didn’t know it. Or maybe I just couldn’t see the friendships – built on such strange and frail foundations. I cared for him, perhaps I even loved him, but I didn’t like him. I spent hours and hours with him. We spent one night together. I arrived at his place around midnight. There was a candle on his bedside casting a warm, almost romantic glow around the room. Sometimes I held his hand. Sometimes I talked to him. Mostly we sat in silence. The folks from the coroner’s office didn’t arrive until five or six that next morning.

One day, a few months before, I held his frail, wasted, naked body as he wailed. The porcelain bathtub in his Tenderloin apartment was too hard and he lacked buoyancy – he was just bones and nerves covered by a bit of flesh. If I held him, he could bathe and not be in pain – nerves crushed between porcelain and bone. He cried. He shook as he sobbed. “I wanted to make $30,000 a year,” he screamed at the wall. “I don’t want the first time my name is in the newspaper to be in my obituary,” he pleaded. As though either money or some notoriety is worth anything – has any value. And some people don’t know how to make anything of their lives. He didn’t even really get one.

No one else knows these things about him. No one but you, now. You and I. That he wanted more. That what he got wasn’t enough. That it was just he and I. I cleaned shit off the walls and floor when he couldn’t make it. Sometimes he thought I was his mother – no, really, he really thought I was his mother. I was twenty four. He was twenty five.

We were children.

It's Me

2005-11-20T17:12:00.000-08:00

There are hippies who live next door who have impromptu drumming circles on the weekends. (I wouldn’t call them hippies, but they call themselves hippies.) They’ve offered an open invitation to their events, and while I don’t mean to be unneighborly, it’s doubtful I’ll ever take them up on the invitation. The invitation is kind and genuine, I believe. They have been gracious neighbors. The dog barks at them while they do Tai Chi in the yard (I surmise that the slow movements resemble aggression to her, she moves slow like that when she hunts. I think she’s trying to tell them, I know you’re there! I’ll kick your ass.) You see, it’s all how you look at things. Most people who practice Tai Chi likely wouldn’t view it as an act of aggression, despite the fact that it’s a marshal art – but the dog knows. It’s how I feel about them – you’re nice, but there’s something not right.

Despite the fact that I know, at least casually, many people in this town, sometimes I feel lonely. I don’t completely understand this. I’m happy here. I love this town. I felt even lonelier when I lived in the City… nothing worse then feeling lonely when you’re surrounded by millions of people (including those you count as friends) – it just proves that it’s not about access to people, it’s about something inside – some inadequacy, inability to make the connection. And it’s not even about not spending time with people. It’s about the quality of the connection. (It’s not you, it’s me.)