X-mas triptych

Oh no! The new fancy washing machine is broken!

I've pushed every single button but nothing works!

How about we try reading the manual?

Bodies

I've had bodies on the brain lately, probably because last weekend, I traveled to Seattle to see The Bodies exhibition. If you haven't heard about it, its a exhibit featuring the corpses of unknown Chinese people. The skin has been removed from their bodies, and they are displayed to best show a particular system: circulatory, nervous, digestive, etc. Most people I tell usually scrunch up their faces now. "Ew. Dead bodies. I wouldn't want to go see that." That reaction was surprising to me, but then again, I never had much of a problem dissecting rats in high school science classes. But what's the deal? Everyone has a body ... how can one not be interested in what's inside it?

And anyway, the bodies are prepared by removing all cellular water, replacing it with some sort of plastic substance, so they looked more like scientific mannequins anyway--with the exception of their eyelashes and eyebrows, which for some reason were left on. Grossness is accomplished by bad smells, or slippy/drippy tactile sensation, and there was none of that. It was pretty hygienic. I was more grossed out by the Amtrak bathrooms.

Here are a few poetic facts I learned from Bodies.

• Children's bones grow faster in springtime
• Pulse is the artery wall, stretching with each heartbeat
• You are always shorter at the end of the day, and tallest just after rising in the morning
• After conception, everyone spends one half-hour as a single cell

There were two rooms that most intrigued me: the circulatory system and fetal development. Perhaps it's what they had in common: color. Tangles of arteries and veins were dyed bright crimson and electric blue, and were suspended in a glowing liquid. They displayed the vessels of different organs: the lung, the heart, the small intestine. Most interesting was the kidney. It was stuffed with vessels like pot holding a root-bound plant. I guess it's due to all that filtering the kidney does. In the fetal development room (which was introduced with a big sign warning you not to enter if you were the type to get disturbed by unborn babies), a display showed bone development over a period of weeks by dyeing the bones a deep red. I could still see the outline of the fetus, the developing tissue that held the unformed bones in place.

Womb: a conversation

lazydaisydays: did you see the creepy stuffed uterus, on the same knitty.com page as the wrap link?
kablammie: i wonder if that would go over well as a get well gift for someone who had just had a hysterectomy
lazydaisydays: now you'll never be without one
kablammie: just keep it in your purse
kablammie: it won't cause as much trouble there, as it did when it was inside you
lazydaisydays: plus it's machine washable
lazydaisydays: and matches your outfit
lazydaisydays: you could have several ... some pink, some striped, some with rhinestones for evening wear
kablammie: i bet you could make it into a coin purse
lazydaisydays: can you imagine pulling it out in the checkout line?
kablammie: or you could make it into one of those tampon-holding things
kablammie: ha!
lazydaisydays: that's AWESOME
lazydaisydays: i also kind of see it as a hat
kablammie: wombs are multifunctional!
lazydaisydays: who knew?
lazydaisydays: you could adorn it with little sperm fringe
kablammie: ew
kablammie: maybe the sperm is a tampon cozy
lazydaisydays: a tampon cozy?
kablammie: now i'm freaking myself out
kablammie: the shapes go together
lazydaisydays: keep your tampons at the perfect serving temperature
kablammie: i dunno!
lazydaisydays: i see it now...we get home...what did you do today honey? oh, i had a conversation about the fashion accessory potential of the womb
kablammie: a cold tampon is not a good thing
lazydaisydays: with the right marketing strategy, people will buy anything
kablammie: i am cracking up
lazydaisydays: you should write about this in your blog
kablammie: maybe. can i post the conversation? it's funny
lazydaisydays: absolutely
kablammie: i'll also post a pic of the knit womb
lazydaisydays: definitely

Have you ever taken three birth control pills at once?

I remember the instant it all fell apart--like a perfect storm. I had come home Friday night, exhausted from a week's worth of difficult work and sick to boot. My nose was a red, sore bulb; my lips were chapped and cracked. In the car on the way home I realised I had missed two days of birth control pills and pulled over to the side of the road to find the pack. I popped three in my mouth--the two I had missed plus one for that day--and swallowed.

When I got home, I dragged my suitcases inside and left them by the door. Pete was in the living room, sitting on the floor with his back to me. I circled and sat on the couch to face him. He didn't look up or say anything. He continued reading his magazine, picked up his glass to take a sip of beer, and placed it back on the table as if I had never entered the room.

I slumped backward.

"Are you punishing me?" I asked. A moment passed before he answered. He did not look up to meet my eyes.

"I'm reading the Nation." He took another sip of beer. The dog whined and stretched out. It was her sign that she was ready for her evening walk.

"Mo needs a walk. Want to take her with me?"

"No," he said. My eyes filled with tears.

"Why not?"

"I took her yesterday. It's cold." I stared at the ceiling. Waited a minute. Finally he looked away from his magazine, rose and went to his shoes.

"I can see this is a losing battle," he snapped.

"Don't bother!" I yelled. I ran for the leash so that I could get out the door before he could get his coat. He barred the back door. "Get out of my way!" I screamed. I ran to the front and unlocked the deadbolt. Mo was scared, but she had no choice but to follow. I dragged her out the door.

A perfect storm of exhaustion and estrogen. Three days of hormones surged through me and spilled out my eyes. Most of the time, I cry for brief moments. But this time, I could not stop myself. I wept the way Shakespearian heroines weep for their dead lovers. I walked in the dark, talking out loud and gasping and wailing, crossing the street or turning the other way anytime I encountered another person. A raving lunatic on birth control let loose on the streets.

Process

I've been working on Ghost Story recently. It came out of nowhere, but that little piece I wrote in workshop struck something deep, and so I've been trying to do something with it.

I made a little headway. But I was doing something I often find myself doing: I'm great at setting the scene, the atmosphere, but when it comes to writing what happens, I suck. It's almost like I want to write stories with no plot. I just want readers to infer the plot. I kept asking myself, "What's this story about?" "What happens?" And every answer feels wrong and contrived.

Then it hit me. I'm writing around the story. There's something really scary about actually writing the story...the real one...the one that's asking to be written. It's about stuff I don't even like to think about. That I've told no one. And I guess I don't want anyone to be hurt by it when it's written down.

But now that I know what the problem is, I've decided to write the story, and perhaps I'll never show it to anyone. Maybe I will. Who knows. But at least it will be written.

How I love Jane Kenyon

This poem says it all. If I've been delayed with responding to your e-mail or phone call, now you know why...I'm stuck under the rubble.

Indolence in Early Winter

A letter arrives from friends. . . .
Let them all divorce, remarry
and divorce again!
Forgive me if I doze off in my chair.

I should have stoked the stove
an hour ago. The house
will go cold as stone. Wonderful!
I won't have to go on
balancing my checkbook.

Unanswered mail piles up
in drifts, precarious,
and the cat sets everything sliding
when she comes to see me.

I am still here in my chair,
buried under the rubble
of failed marriages, magazine
subscription renewal forms, bills,
lapsed friendships. . . .

This kind of thinking is caused
by the sun. It leaves the sky earlier
every day, and goes off somewhere,
like a troubled husband,
or like a melancholy wife.

--Jane Kenyon

On blogging

It's curious...the things that get commented on, and the things that don't. Most of what I post here is poems, bits of writing from my writing practice, drafts of stories, and I don't get many comments on those. I'm not sure why. Maybe because people don't feel comfortable for some reason. (Or my worst fear is that I'm boring the crap out of you.) I get lots of comments on my rants, which is fun.

I've wondered about those bloggers who get double-digit comments on a single post. What does that mean? Do I have to go out and comment on other people's blogs to get comments on mine--like--is it a communal thing? Do I have to start up blog relationships? Or do I just have to write about more scandalous things, like excrement? (Not to knock it...for a good, fun, raunchy blog-romp, don't miss Gone Feral.)

Maybe I will. A completely new and inappropriate direction for Tchotchka Palace. Stay tuned...

Five things I could write about but I'm too tired to take the time

1. My obsession with making pumpkin muffins.
2. T's obsession with his new cell phone.
3. The dream I had last night where I was trying to fly to Mexico but forgot to renew my passport.
4. The rain.
5. The election.

Everyone laughed at the second sentence

Just four walls at the top of a long stairway. The perfect attic turret for a madwoman to pace before she throws herself down the stairs. Window panes radiate the chill of the night inward. Condensation runs down the glass to hunch on the sill. Brown, heavy curtains can't decide whether to open or shut. They hang uncertain of their future, their purpose.

The light is bright--too bright--it exposes every crack and flaw, every seam and joint. It beats down relentlessly and drowns out the soft sounds of traffic. It sits up in the corners of the ceiling, watching, waiting for something to happen.

A poem for you on the eve of the election

Let My Country Awake
Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

E. said I should document my life

And it was a good reason to blog everyday, I agree. Except when I have days like today. I began the day with the worst conversation I've ever had with my mother in my entire life.

Should I even go into the details? The short of it, is that she's known for some time that T's dad was at the courthouse with us when we got hitched. Although I asked him to keep quiet about it, dad-in-law apparently blabbed on and on about it to my parents, making my mom felt excluded and unimportant.

Granted, I umderstand why she feels this way. It's because she has a traditional notion of weddings. You get married in front of your family. It's a family affair, and if you don't have family there, well then it must mean that you don't like your family.

I feel even more strongly about it than I did then, that a wedding...our wedding and our marriage...is too personal and intimate to have observers. I don't regret not having her there. All I regret now is that we didn't wait to do it until T's dad went home. I just let it all happen and I should have known better than to rely on the "it was coincidence" excuse.

I'm just pissed that now, my marriage, is about her. About my excluding her. I'm pissed that I'm feeling guilty about it, and fearful that I'm some sort of freak show who has emotional issues, and I'm pissed that here I am again for the umpteenth time in my life asked to put her needs ahead of my own. I'm pissed that I'm constantly asked to live up to someone else's standards, even though they are not my own. Goddam, and I'm pissed at T's dad for not having the sense to keep his mouth shut.

I heard about this guy...this American Arab...not sure if he's a citizen or not but he's been in the US for a long time (yes...this relates, I assure you). And some how he got on the terriorist watch list. Not just extra security checks, but major restrictions on his life. At least for a while. Until he decided to document the daily minutia of his life online. He's made his life publicly transparent. Now, the government leaves him alone.

It's a genius solution on his part, but disturbing at the same time. No privacy. Nothing you can keep to yourself. Is it the American mentality? Or human nature that the masses don't like individual secrets? I feel like Winston Smith from 1984, where I'm struggling to keep that one, small thing to myself. Just a thought, a feeling that I hold alone. Have you ever tried to keep a secret, or ask someone to keep a secret for you? How long did that last before they outed you, or you felt compelled to come clean? Or someone finds out and it becomes a huge insult to them, even though you never intended it to be one. Maybe not even a secret...just something you didn't want discussed. You just want it to be without sharing it? That's how I feel about T. My truest, deepest feelings about him are not to be discussed. They are for me alone.

48 Things You Could Care Less About

Aw man...I already failed this NaBloPoMo thing by missimg a day. Oh well. I didn't have much to say anyway. I'm going to eek through today by lifting a meme from E.

1. FIRST NAME? Kablammie

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I've always wished for a good story to tell, but alas, no.

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Two weeks ago in the middle of my writing group. I was reading a short piece I had written out loud, and all the sudden foumd myself crying out of control. It was as if one person wrote the piece, and another totally different person was reading it. What I mean is that while I was writing it, I didn't feel emotional at all about it.

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? If I have the right pen, yes.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT? Ewww.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I ask myself that all the time. Maybe, but I'd think I was a pain in the ass.

7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Yep.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? I think I would.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? I used to love Golden Grahams as a kid. I have trouble eating cereal now. It makes my tummy unhappy.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Sometimes. But it takes too much time.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? I call T. to open pickle jars.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? Come on! Chocolate.

14. SHOE SIZE? 8.

5. RED OR PINK? Huh?

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My obsessive self-doubt.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? E., D., my bro, S.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? Steal if you must.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS, SHIRT AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? I'm in my pjs right now.

20. LAST THING YOU ATE? Pumpkin pie and champagne.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The last thing I downloaded on iTunes was a Nike running mix. 45 uninteruptted minutes of beats. The other day, I listened to a CD of ghost stories from Art Bell's radio show.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Aquamarine.

23. FAVORITE SMELL? Pine needles on the forest floor.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? T.

25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Rebelliousness, height,.

26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON you stole THIS from? Love her!

27. FAVORITE DRINK? Non-alcoholic: Irish breakfast tea with milk and sugar. Alcoholic: fruity/sour concoctions.

28. FAVORITE SPORT? Triathlons

29. EYE COLOR? Blue/gray

30. HAT SIZE? Big. I have no idea.

31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Glasses.

32. FAVORITE FOOD? Right now, I'm hot on middle eastern foods like hummus and tabouli.

33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? These questions are getting silly.

35. SUMMER OR WINTER? I'm more energetic in winter. It's the scandinavian in me.

36. HUGS OR KISSES? Depends who is giving them. Mostly hugs.

37. FAVORITE DESSERT? Chocolate chip cookies.

38. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Dunno

39. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Don't know...

40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber and The Poetics of Space by some french dude.

41. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE Pad? A black bump for resting your wrist.

42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? Lucky me...I didn't. I wne to a fun party instead. But I'm obsessed with DVDs of All Creatures Great and Small right now.

43. FAVORITE SOUNDS? Rivers and streams, cats purring

44. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? Beatles

45. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? Barcelona

46. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? I've got a green thumb and animals like me

47. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? DuPage, Illinois

48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Stole it from E.

One a day

It's NaBloPoMo...national blog posting month. (When I told T. he asked "Who decides these things?" I dunno. This person did. Some blogger somewhere decided it and it spread like a virus.) It's sort of a take off on NaNoPoMo where people try to write a novel in a month, but instead, you write a post every day.

Not sure whether I'm committed or not to posting everyday. Maybe I'll make like an Oregonian and commit now, but flake out later. (Ha. That's supposed to be a funny.)

Ghost story

I am upstairs, alone in my room, alone in this whole big house. My window looks out over the back yard toward a stand of glittering trees caught in the moonlight. It's light is so bright it x-rays the whole house and makes the walls dissapear. I am a toy-sized doll spotlit on the second floor, my fear transparent.

This house makes me do things I know are crazy. I run up the stairs away from nothing. I sleep with a crucifix under my pillow. I leave the light on all night long.

I talk to her. "I don't want to see you," I say inside my head. I don't need to say it out loud.

I think about her sometimes--my stepbrothers' mother who died in this house. I think she is here. I know it, and I imagine she sits at the edge of her sons' beds and watches them sleep.

But they aren't here now, so she has nothing to do but stand outside in the hallway and watch me. She looks at me and wonders what I'm doing there in that room and makes me think twice about crossing the hall to the bathroom.

That's where she is. In the stairways and the halls. She stands at the threshold and never crosses over.

My whole time, I hardly remember any one else in that house. I know they were there, but what I recall are rooms without people. I knew the contents of every drawer and box because I spent my time searching through them. I cataloged the whole house--the linens, the candles, the old clothes, the heavy box of coins in my stepfather's drawer. I went through them and then back through them looking for what I might have missed, what had not appeared before.

And it makes me think now that she was sending me where she couldn't go. Placing in me the desire to open up closets and dig through to satifsy her own curiosity. How much of her was still there, how much was gone?

I surprised myself

I surprised myself by bursting into tears as I read this to my writers’ group last night.

I love to brush my dog. It’s instant satisfaction. She rolls over and stretches out her white belly and straightens her long hind legs and points her toes. If I could keep brushing her forever, she’d stay that way—give up food and walks just to feel the brush’s bristles over her skin.

If she were a painting, she would have great whorls like a fingerprint in her fur where the brush left a path behind. She’s a map—a topography of shoulder blades and hip bones. Brushing her, I walk a landscape away from messy human details toward what’s really important: simple warmth, touch, softness, pleasure.

I wonder at our world’s hard surfaces. How buildings are made from steel and glass instead of round earth. Gleaming cars drive across rough concrete and I wonder, where is the soft water? The gentle wind? The warm sun? We’d be better off walking through tall grass. Why do we make the world this way when what we really want is to be cradled?

At night, my dog nestles into sleep on a soft pillow near the foot of my bed. She circles once or twice. It’s a comfort to hear her steps on the fabric. To hear her sigh as she settles in. All is right with the world. She is safe, I am safe. We can all rest for the night, dreaming next to one another.

Things I know about love

(An early draft.)

1.
Dear God,
let me be damned a little longer, a little while.
I've read all about nirvana and the books say
you don't get reborn, but I'm not ready.

Turn me into a cow, a fish, a blood-sucking leech,
but let me come back, yet imperfect to this imperfect place.
Let me taste the muddy water, crawl up on shore
into the frigid air, burrow into the river bank
pack myself in mud for the long winter.
Keep my gills moist and my body warm.
It's better than nothing.

I'll take it. It's a bargain if in spring the slanted sun
begins to thaw my side, beats my heart with salty, slow blood,
blinks my eyes open just in time to catch the dew dissapear
from the grass.

2.
Your name has all the markings of a church.
It's a sacred space.
A word I can't say out loud.
I keep it in a little box,
set it up where I can just see it,
use other names instead.
Like God's name, it's only to be
spoken in drastic circumstances.

Glass, fall, river, ring

He lost his ring in the river. His platinum wedding band. It was there somewhere between the bridge and the falls, but that was a long stretch.

Who would have thought his hands would shrink in the cold water. It was there when he started, and suddenly he noticed it was gone. She'd never forgive him. He needed a plan.

He would hire a team of divers to search the river! Every muddy wallow and algae-covered rock. Though he wasn't sure they'd ever find it he had to try. She'd kill him if she didn't think he'd done everything in his power. He'd drain the river if he could.

They had only been married a few short months. Thinking about their wedding day, it seemed he was just an observer watching the scene from above. He watched himself shower and dress. He watched himself walking down the aisle before it all began, bridesmaids and groomsmen wheeling around him. He was out of control--at their mercy. Stand there. Smile. Say this.

They were married in her church, a modern building of angles and glass. Her priest a small little man who was too fond of red wine. Going to church to these people was like putting on a hat--a Sunday bonnet of wisps and trim, nothing to keep his head warm. It had been years since he had been in a church. But he remembered the dark wood, the smell of the oil they used to polish the pews, the way the darkness in the room forced his eyes toward the ceiling in search of light. Here, in this church, fluorescent lights ensured he could see his neighbor's brand names, their glassy stares.

He's taken this trip on a Sunday too. It was almost impossible to get her to let him go. She didn't much see the value in floating down the river with his buddies and a six pack each when the good lord called. He he argued it was just one Sunday and he would be back in church next week and maybe he'd even think about going to that progressive dinner she'd been talking about.

This was a punishment. A sign. Maybe he should just go tell her that. Forget the divers. He would say he had a moment with God right there on the river and he understood the importance of church now. It would be better than weathering her anger.

Learning about sex

I
My Sunday school teacher is Larry. He is a gray, long man without children of his own. On Sundays, he teaches us about the Bible while all the grown-ups are in church. There's me, my best friend Ann, a girl named Candy who's the daughter of the minister, and some boys.

Larry about talking about Jesus's mom, Mary. He keeps calling her, "the virgin Mary."

"What's a virgin?" I ask.

The room stops. Everyone is looking at Larry who is now a shade of pink.He looks at me for a moment before he answers.

"It's when a woman has never had intercourse."

"Oh." I nod. I don't know what intercourse is either, but somehow I know I should not ask. Larry has moved on to something new and eveyone's eyes are locked down on to their Sunday school books.

II
My cousin Shelly and I play Barbies. We set up a whole Barbie house--making coffee tables from ashtrays and beds from the little boxes my mom gets her checks in. We spend more time setting up the house and dressing Barbie than playing with her.

Shelly is three years older and knows more than I do. Like one time I told her about meeting some boy by the creek and one of them pulled his pants down and showed me his penis, but she told me I must have been egging them on. She listens to Van Halen. She has one of their tapes with an angel smoking a cigarette on the cover. If I had that tape, I would hide it, but Shelly just leaves it out for her mom to see.

She tells me we have to undress Barbie because Ken is coming over. She makes them lie together on the check box. She makes noises for them.

"MMMM. Ah. Smack."

Shelly calls this "making love."

When she leaves I keep setting up the Barbie house, and now it's hardly worth it to dress her because I just have to undress her for Ken. Making love is the only thing she really does besides sit next to her coffee table.

I start asking my mom to buy me records. I want Oliva Newton John's Physical. I ask for a 45 of Survivor's "I've Been Waiting." Then I take my records over to Ann's house and we listen to them on her Mickey Mouse record player.

Harvest time

I found myself waiting to dig through the moistest earth, where I knew the most potatoes would be, like a child waits to eat her most favorite kind of candy last. I've never grown potatoes before. Once I started digging, I found dozens, lying under the earth like treasures.














I love this time of year. The watering is done. There's nothing more to tend to, except the harvest.

Oh yeah...and making jars upon jars of pasta sauce with all the tomatoes.

You're telling me about energy?

It's like I am a dog--my body turned slightly away from him and I do not make direct eye contact. I see he is wearing a plaid shirt, and that the pitbull is in the doorway and another man in dreadlocks stands behind the pitbull, but I do not know the color of the first man's shirt. He is saying things at me, things about positive energy and how animals can sense your energy, and he understands--stereotypes and all--but it's all about staying cool, you know?

The pitbull is in the doorway but it wasn't just moments ago. It was muscling its body toward me silently. I saw it and yelled.

"Hey! Hey! Your dog!"

And the man in the plaid shirt came running yelling "Vicious! Vicious! Get inside!" He was slapping and pulling at her.

I just want to get away. It is a dark night and it is too late but he is lecturing me as his precious Vicious hovers just inside the house.

The most important thing I have to do today: a book meme

Via Elizabeth:

1. One book that changed your life: Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg.

2. One book that you've read more than once: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: His Dark Materials trilogy, by Phillip Pullman (it's technically three books, but oh well)

4. One book that made you laugh: High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby.

5. One book that made you cry: The Color Purple, by Alice Walker .

6. One book that you wish had been written: The book that I will write someday. But if it were already written, I'd just have to write another one.

7. One book you wish had never been written: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

8. One book you're currently reading: Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Other Electricities, by Ander Monson

Two things I thought of today

1. A co-worker of mine recently lost her older brother. Her parents were both long passed away, and this left her with only one surviving family member, also a brother. It occured to me what that must feel like...only one other person in the world who shares that special family bond. Who knows exactly how you grew up and those certain things your parents used to do. How, in the midst of that loss it might make you feel closer to those that are left.

I still have both parents, my brother; the people who have known me for my whole life are still here. I just saw S. and when he was here, I couldn't help thinking about that scar he used to have on the bridge of his nose. It's gone now (my mother--semi-obsessed with erasing physical flaws--had a doctor sand it down). I'm one of the few people that remembers that scar. We share a similar mental topography. The same corridors, kitchens and basements line our memory.

But, what I thought today, is that I wonder if the knowledge that they are still alive makes me free to travel the world, to live far away, to wander in my thoughts away from my family. Will I feel more tied, more relucant to put so much space between us when some of us are gone.

2. I was reading Cary Tennis' column in Salon, Since You Asked, and learned that there is an unspoken "tradition" among men in communal bathrooms. Men leave reading material for the men that visit after them. I asked T. if this was true, and he said "Yeah...I guess so." What's up with that? How is it that men get indoctrinated into this tradition, but it doesn't carry on with women? What does it mean, exactly? It's rather intimate, actually. It's like "Hey, I read this while I pooped. Now you can read it while you poop."

Rambling tchotchka

I was driving home from work this evening listening to one of my favorite books about writing--If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland. E taped it for me, maybe more than a year ago. I listened to it then, and then recently rediscovered it in the pocket on the driver's side door. I love Ueland because she encourages me to be dreamy, and resist stereotypical ideas of what good writing is, and how good writing gets done. She's like an encouraging grandma, who says "just be you...everyone will love you for who you are," and for a moment you believe her.

Anyway, she's talking about being authentic in your writing, and never lying...always writing down your true experience and I'm thinking "Okay...my experience right now. The traffic keeps stopping for no reason. We're traveling at 60 miles an hour and suddenly it stops in front of me. Why? My throat hurts. It feels like someone excavated a hole somewhere near my nasal cavity, and I know that's how I usually feel after work...like someone's scraped out the inside of my head with the edge of a blade. I keep dreaming in excel templates...because that's what I do all day and so it's infecting my dreams. My dreams are orderly and stacked, and I think it's impacting my creative life. Uh. there's a giant brown dumpster outside that house. I wonder what's going on. T will be gone tonight. Should I knit? Write? Swim? Clean?"

Anyway...I'm hoping to spend a little more time in the upcoming weeks being dreamy. I committed myself to too many real things this summer. I should know better. Triathlon training takes up much of my free time, so does gardening and all the while the half-poem about the elephant funeral sits in my journal unworked on.

But speaking of lying...it's not that I've been lying on this blog, but I've been concealing the truth. I started out wanting to be courageous and tell the truth...no matter what the cost. What did I say "go for the venom"? I have not done that. I've been scared. I am scared. So what should I do? Pick one thing a week that I'm scared to death of writing down and just do it?

Iraqi signmaker

He has put his colored ink away.
Black is the color of the day.
No one orders a bright funeral sign.
He traces out the curving letters
naming lost uncles, brothers,
wives and daughters--in memoriam.
Not writing who killed them, how they died,
death squads close in his mind.
Timid customers choose the smallest size,
their tribute will be in flames by sunrise.

Found poem

It's a ripple effect,a tantalizing carrot
sounding like chirping light rail wires
tasting like cigars and leather loafers.
Feeling like cool glass and clean metal.
A big hit for block 8.

The old fire station sits in the middle
of the trickle down development.
A cost.
An asset.
A decision.
A building?
The way they talk--in opportunities and promises--
you wonder if anything is real.

But they've brought bocce to the city,
an old, fat man's game
made new and sleek for dazzling neighborhoods
teeming with young professionals.
In their lime green and silver clothes
they toss the palino over oyster shells and sand,
speak of pinot and port.

Santa Fe wedding

Yes. We have a friend named Kip. Kip married a girl named Fancy, which is apparently a popular name in Texas. Here are some of the highlights of Kip-wed, 2006.

1. Kip's dad is named Chip. I wonder if Kip's grandfather was named Flip. Or Skip. If Kip and Fancy ever have a baby boy, I hope they name him Rip.

2. The day of the wedding, I heard my cellphone ringing, just as I was beginning a one-hour massage. I ignored it. Later that afternoon as I was sitting in Santa Fe at the Atomic Cafe, waiting for my fish tacos, I listened to my voicemail. It was Kip. "Hey! I was wondering if you could do me a favor. Can you pick up some pies? Like, four or five pies? A chocolate creme pie, key lime, coconut... maybe a pumpkin pie?"














3. Kip and Fancy held their ceremony on the Nambe Pueblo, at the Kiva Bear campsite. Kip told us twice that his shirt was designed in Japan, made in Italy. At their ceremony, the women were asked to scatter rose petals in a circle around the bride and groom. The men were asked to scatter corn meal. This represented sweetness and plenty. I cried the whole time.















4. Nimba, Kip's 15 year-old dog, cried too. She's a very emotional canine.














5. The ceremony started after seven p.m. We learned the gates to the Pueblo would close at eight! We drove our car 2.1 miles out from Kiva Bear, just past the gates, so we wouldn't get trapped for the night. But we'd have to walk those 2.1 miles to the car through the very dark, New Mexico desert. I imagined encountering scorpions and coyotes.

6. D'oh! Another wrinkle. The woman bringing the food was delayed. Her transmission died. We were afraid the wedding feast would consist of this (plus some pies and beer):

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We lucked out though because her husband was a state trooper, so the potato salad, pork and beans, and brisquet arrived safely in the back of a squad car, just before the gates closed (Mmmm. Good).

Jane Eyre on dreams

S. and I discovered we have a similar dream about haunted houses. The difference being that in her house, there's always only one ghost/scary thing. And usually she knows what it is and how to avoid it. In mine, it's always several ghosts. I'm in a big house with lots of windey staircases and hidden alcoves. I never see the ghosts, but I know they are there, and I dread having to go into the rooms they haunt.

It's always puzzled me, what these dreams mean. But maybe I just need to pick up my dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre to figure it out. Course, it's known among English majors everywhere that Bronte used the house as a metaphor for the mind. The madwoman that Jane discovers in the attic is just her own wild alter-ego.

Maybe, those haunted rooms are places in my brain I'm afraid of going. Maybe next time I have that dream, I should just march right in, proclaim I'm staying until the ghosts get out.

Suuuuuuh-mer

It's summer. Which means a few things. 1) I commute to work once a week on bike (18+ miles, one way). 2) I start conning myself into believing I'll actually lose a few pounds and be back to my normal weight by the end of the summer from all the biking. 3) I drink copious amounts of sangria, thereby negating all the positive benefits of the biking.

It's worth it though. Because here's my commute.



Usually, I'm driving over this bridge on my way to work each morning. When I bike, I get to zoom under it, then pedal along the Columbia River. Often, I see nervous rabbits and stately herons. Little birds pop up out of the tall grass after eating a breakfast of grass seed. They zoom alongside me and skim across the water's surface.



Also, another signal that it's summer: my garden is just on the brink of going absolutley Little Shop of Horrors. In another month, I'll be thinking to myself, "Oh my god, how could I let it get this way?" But right now, I have my first sunflower of the year. Oh--and the biggest banana slug ever, taking a snooze in the watering can.

Move over, Lois

Last night I was transported back to my youth when I saw the latest Superman film. What is it about Superman? No Christopher Reeve, but I got the same sort of swoony feeling. Oh, I wish Superman would fly around the world with me in his arms. Sigh. Look at his biceps. The new dude is pretty amazing looking, even if it is in an airbrushed sort of way.

I asked T. if, as a man, he wanted to BE Superman. He sort of chuckled and said "Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it?" As a woman, I want to be with Superman. There's some powerful mythology going on there.

Revelation...duh

It's a dream I've been having for ages. I'm running frantically, trying to escape or get somewhere. I'm able to leap vertical, but make no movement horizontally. I'm going nowhere even though I'm taking tremendous strides. Up, down. Up, down.

As I was doing some real-life running this morning it hit me. Maybe it's not just an anxiety dream. It's trying to tell me something. Even though I may be having great successes, achieving great heights, I'm really just running in place.

Three beginnings, one end

Here's the beginnings of three different stories. You tell me which one you want me to finish.

1.
My paws are cold. The grit at the side of the road we've been trotting feels like thorns each step I take. He kept us going all night. Nowhere to rest anyway so I guess it's not so bad to keep going. Except a thunderstorm is building. I sniffed it. Smells like a lake up there it's such a big one.

He's got me worried. Just like the rain ends up in my nose, so does he and I can tell he's not feeling so good. When we do stop, he sleeps long hours. He sleeps so deep that trains don't wake him. I have to stay awake then, or I can drift off to sleep but keep one ear up and ready. I sleep on my tail so it's not so comfortable or I lick my paws to stay awake.

Once, during the best time we were together, we were in the mountains. It was summer. The air was cool though and we slept on pine needles and thick bed of them. My fur would smell like a tree and I'd bite the slivers out of my fur. There were wild strawberries and he'd spend hours collecting them and I'd find mice and small birds and gobble them up. It was quiet at night and I could drift off pushed up against his side under the dark night, a canopy of trees. I'm not scared of big animals like I am people.

We walked all the way here from there. Except sometimes we ride in cars. When we do he opens the window for me and I get to stick my head into the wind and feel it whoosh through my teeth and over my tongue.

When I dream I dream I'm running that fast I'm hunting mice and rabbits and birds and swimming in mountain streams.

I dream of wild wolf howls and I howl back an answer I run away with them. He becomes a wolf too. We are part of the pack we live in the den. We hunt at night and sleep in a huddle during the day. He chews through my collar and it drops to the ground. I lick his wounds.

2.
Bun was a doubtful cat. Always questioning her feline abilities. She'd hesitate before jumping on to a chair or window sill as if she were judging, then rejudging the distance; gauging the height she'd need to jump again and again.

I never doubted her. She always made it. She always heard my keys at the door and sat waiting on the step as I entered the house. She knew me and she was always there.

Even now, buried underneath the bright forsythia she is ever reliable. She is there in my dreams each night, brushing past her scratching post, curling around my ankles and warming my toes as she perches near my feet.

Bun still needed to tell me something it seemed, and so I paged through the yellow pages looking for pet psychics. I needed to know! What was it she was meowing to me in my sleep?

There was only one. Reginald P. Bryce, C.P.P. (Certified Pet Psychic). And so I dialed his number.

"Hello?"
"Yes, I'm calling to make an appointment."
"Oh yes! Your...bird...She's not eating."
"No. My cat."
"Oh, of course! I see it now. Your cat's not eating."
"No! My cat's dead!"
"Well, good god, honey! Why are you calling me then?"
"She keeps coming to me in my dreams! I think she's trying to tell me something."
"That's serious. You better come in right away."

3.
Jack stretched his long legs out and unwound them from around the bar stool. He kicked them out in front of him and looked around.

Smoke filled the rool, making the far side filter out like it was behind a gauzy curtain. He loved this place. Nothing better than a stiff drink in a seedy New Orleans' bar.

Madame Julia sat in one corner at her usual table. A blinking tourist sat across from her enraptured by her dramatic tarot reading. The Madame was a little black cat of a woman who could bristle and purr on and off like an alternating current. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she read the magic cards and wove them into fate.

The old bum from the corner crouched other end of the bar. Seemed he was always there spending the change he'd collected by honking out some made-up garbage on a rusted harmonica. The songs were so bad that Jack swore the man must be deaf. He never talked to anyone--just sat there swilling cheap beer all night long.

Jack got up and walked round the bar and sat down next to the old man. He could see the wrinkles in his face, creased with grime. Jack threw a few coins down on the bar. "How about you play us a little tune?"

Suspended

I am a friend to deep lakes and running rivers.
I swim out to their middles and tread water,
spin 360 to take in the view. The low view,
my body sunk beneath the x-axis of the earth,
only my head above.

I am a friend to soft sand, piling up over my feet,
buried deep beneath it. My brother covers me and runs
away and now I feel my heart beating through my whole body--
pulsing.

Someday I will be a friend to moist earth.
Earthworms and tree roots at my side.
Tucked in for the everlasting night.

I am a friend to the sky.
What color is the sky?
Silly--the sky is the color of the sky!
As a child, hanging upside down on the monkey bars
I would pretend sky was down and earth was up
and feel the universe spin around me.

Vacation tchotchka

Bee dance

Bees
The bee hive lives. I returned home on Thursday from Portland Nursery to a swarm of bees in my back yard. I had just been remarking to T. that morning that we should call Tom, the beekeeper, because the dead hive was attracting the attention of local bees. Well...those local bees were scouts for a hive that had outgrown their current digs. The scouts led the pioneer honeybees to their new home, and marked the occasion with a swarming ceremony. It was terrifying and beautiful. The world around us works to it's own logic and rhythm, even as we humans attempt to ever increasingly control it.

Sadness
I've done little writing this week. Sadness. Especially since I've been on vacation. I think my body and mind both needed a break though. I drive so hard throughout the week, and then I don't even let up on the weekends. I'm the girl who wakes up at 6 am even on Saturdays. After a week of vacation though, I'm amazed to find that I can sleep in. I woke up at 9:30 today.

I'm afraid to go back to work. Not only because I've been having a hard time and I'm not looking forward to what and who awaits, but the idea of getting back on that moving train. Do I even know how to have fun now? Do I know how to relax? I watch The House of Elliot, and think "I'm just like Beatrice..." who obsesses about her business, whose marriage has failed, who is angry and worried all the time. Egh. We even have the same hair.

Movies
If you haven't seen Cache yet, you should. The best film I've seen in a while. Subtly political. The conflict between France and Algeria, and the current conflict in the Middle East form book ends to the story, and the film manages, through the story of a bobo family that starts getting creepy parcels and anonymous phone calls, to call attention to the way conflict can build up over nothing. Paranoia, distrust, leaping to conclusions without evidence...human failings that have global consequences. It made the war in Iraq feel very personal, in a way that no amount of CNN coverage can. Don't go if you're sleepy though. It moves slowly.

Fog
Early Friday morning, T. followed me out to Gresham in his truck, so I could take my car in for repairs. But he had a meeting at Leach Botanical Garden to start some web work for them, and didn't have time to drop me off at home. So unshowered, uncaffinated, unbreakfasted me took a hike through the garden. I was hoping it was early enough to avoid humans, but I was greeted by the groundskeeper Scotty, who told me just how many species of ferns and birds were living in the garden. I nodded politely, and sought escape in the woods. Every spider in the garden must have spun a web across the trail, because after awhile, I could feel them building up on my skin. Tiny invisible filaments everywhere. I'm sure I had a spider or two in my hair as well.

I also saw a snail crossing the trail and a cat hot-tailing it down the path as it was chased by some very angry birds. Eventually, I picked a bench and thought about what it would look like if I were to take a little nap. Would I get kicked out for vagrancy or something? But a bus of grade school kids on a field trip soon saved me from appearing homeless. And in past years, I would have felt uncomfortable under the critical eyes of children, sitting there alone on a bench--hair wild, and drowsy--but maybe I've truly grown up because I didn't really care. I just sat there and listened to the teacher until T. was finished with his meeting.

Destination: Austin

Hmmm. Let's begin with a technical confession: the software I use to loads photos on to blogger isn't working, which sucks, because I have gazillions to share. I'll have to load them later when I have patience and T. is not annoying me by prowling the kitchen, wondering whether to eat the rest of the tortilla chips, or glug milk straight from the carton.

We spent the last few days visiting our friends, A&E (so appropriate an abbreviation for them) in Texas. We timed the visit specifically so we could go to the Houston art car parade (pictures! lots of them! imagine Wacky star shaped cars and cars with huge, pink poodles on top, and funny rollerskating characters!) It's surprising Portland doesn't have anything like this, but maybe the freaks here have grown too comfortable and don't need to announce their freakiness anymore. In Houston, the land of the air conditioned tanning booth ("Darque...so good you can almost eat it"), the freaks need a once-a-year event to rally around. I felt right at home.


My fave of the art cars


M peach bush...a bold move in W-loving Houston


Who wants a tasty cupcake? Me!

We saw a few of the crazy cars later, all the way in Austin, when we were crossing South Congress. "Hey! We know those cars!"

Besides eating and drinking our way through Texas, we did some super cool stuff, including hanging out at the TGI Friday's on the river. Hey! That's not cool. Except we were there to wait for the moment just at dusk when a colony of 1.5 million bats that lives beneath a nearby bridge made their way out into the night sky. I was anticipating they would come out as a cloud and begin swarming the area around the river. Instead, a slow and orderly stream of them rushed East, beginning at one end of the bridge and made its way toward us. It felt choreographed, as if each bat knew when to take its turn and fly off, away from the fading sun. The whole thing took almost 20 minutes. It was stunning. I've never seen animals so seemingly conciously organized.

They were certainly more organized than the four of us, who by this time had each consumed two ultimate margaritas and at least one fried mozzarella stick. We headed to a local music and soul food joint and shoved our faces full of fried catfish, cheese grits and beer and listened to a great, twangy, swingy band. We clapped and hooted and hollered. We closed the place down. Then more beer at the Spider House. I floated my new story idea by E. "Hey! Do you think it'd be a funny story if there were this big old dude, and he was in the bathroom, sick with food poisoning, and he heard someone breaking into his house?" She laughed, perhaps politely. And after all the beer, we topped it all off some the sugariest donuts in all the land at Ken's donuts. Wow. Can you say "shitfaced"? How else can you explain that I ate two of those sugar bombs in less than five minutes?


Donut zombies

As if I didn't eat enough, now I can think of nothing but tamales and tequila. I can't complain about the cuisine here at home. I get all the strong beer and coffee I want, the salmon is fresh, and the berries are divine. But sometimes...I crave heat. And now that I've had some, it's gonna be hard goin' back.

A clear sign of gentrification

It's raining, and my neighbor is running her brand-new sprinkler system. Last week, several brawny hispanic men dug trenches in her lawn to lay the pipe. Now, it runs every morning and evening, whether the grass is parched or not.




Oh yeah...and the newly built rowhouses that are starting at $495k. Half a mil for a freakin rowhouse???? Ohmygod i need to run away to the mountains and never come back it is all too much.

I never thought I'd say this but thank goodness for the other neighbor who has a washing machine on his lawn and I've never been so glad to see a stray dog taking a crap in our front yard.

Fingers on silk scarf

The skin on my fingers catches against the silk--rough skin, hangnails, dry fingerpads--hands worn with work.

The little red hen ground the grain, made the dough, baked the bread. The fruits of her labor fed her chicks. The goose, the cat and the rat stood by as they ate and felt their bellies rumble.

My hands are more and more like my mother's with each passing day. A surprise to me--to recognize her there. The pattern of her veins, her red knuckles, the skin with hatchmarks like they've been drawn in rough pen and ink. These are mine now. Passed down without ceremony. Received with prayer that they will know better when to hold tight and when to let go.

I still recall a warm summer day when I was only thirteen. I stood at the washtub in the cool, moist basement, sorting laundry. I asked my mother I should use bleach on the whites. She said yes, but never get it on your hands. She regretted the damage it had done to hers. It made her look old, she said.

But she was old. At least that's what I thought then. But she was not much older than I am now. She was young and looking at her own hands, thinking of her own mother. Looking at the wide, smooth scar from her wrist all the way up to her thumb on her right hand, and once again hearing the sound of flying metal and warm, wet trickle of blood running down her fingers. Seeing the scissors he mother had thrown now lying at her feet. Feeling the rage of her mother. A bull, not a hen, but a bull.

Monkey business

Watch this.

Tooth

Dear Erika,

We've known each other such a long time. Long enough that I know you've lost your big toenail more than once. In fact, you lost it the very first week I met you, after you dropped a table on it. But I don't know much about your teeth. Did you ever have braces? How old were you when you lost your first tooth? Did you ever get a tooth knocked out? I suppose you use whitening toothpaste. And I've seen Crest Whitestrips in your bathroom.

Take good care of your toofies.

Pamela

Dear Elizabeth,

I know you're a keen observer--it's the Virgo in you--fetching out the tiniest details and cataloging them in your brain. What do you notice about teeth? Have you ever thought about them? The stained ones, the uneven ones, the ones that are too big or too small? What kind of teeth does the walking man in Chicago have? Do you think the people at the clown house brush their teeth? With what? Balloon toothbrushes?

Pamela

Dear Doug,

Tooth. It's a funny sounding word. A double "o" brings humor to an otherwise mundane meaning. Say it. "Tooth." Extend the middle and croon a little. At the end, your tongue meets the back of your teeth and gets a little lispy. Some words are like instruments. They carry a melody all their own. Funny, I just realized the act of saying "tooth" involves the use of them. Maybe that's on purpose. Who, exactly, planned it that way?

Pamela

Burgerville on a sunny day

A warm, spring day in the PNW and Burgerville is hoppin'. The parking lot is jammed with contractors--their dry wall-caked boots and carhardts line up to feed. The cashiers call your name when your order is ready. Three men before me are all named Steve.

Bee carnage

inside the hive


bee carnage

Last weekend, I took the blue wooden top off the hive. Dead, mouldy bees were scattered about. Looking down into the hive, I could see honey dripping from the frames. It smelled sweet but tainted. It felt like walking into the scene of a mass murder. Bodies everywhere. I could imagine the bees in their final moments, crawling feebly to where they finally lay.

Gotta love Portland

New story, yet untitled, still unfinished

It was once a convent. In its heyday, it must have been imposing. Nuns in their black habits looking up to the wrought iron crucifix mounted to the roof as they came and went. Now it was just a three-story, rectangular red brick building with empty lots on both sides. The grass grew high in the summer and collected the trash that blew in from other parts of the neighborhood. That’s the thing about MollyOlga. It was the anchor of the neighborhood. The only building on a street of boarded up houses that had any life and it pulled everything toward it.

Four wide stone steps led to the front locked door. It was always a few degrees cooler at the top of the stairs. The doorbell made a shrill sound that hurt my ears, and usually summoned Duncan. He would let me in and then return silently to whatever it was he was doing.

You would think I’d most remember the paintings. It was an art school after all. But even more, I remember the smells. I learned to smell alizarin red, cobalt and ochre. The smell of ivory soap and the rusty tap water at the sink where you cleaned your brushes. The pungent fix solution from the darkroom. The smell of Bridget Robinson’s seldom-washed hair.

Bridget was a fixture on the second floor. She’d have already been there for an hour or two by the time I would arrive. She sat almost the whole day at a small table in between two floor-to-ceiling windows, only getting up to go the bathroom, I imagine, although I can’t really remember ever seeing her move.

Bridget would carefully choose one pastel and then another, working them into the thick cotton paper, stroke upon stroke, making tapestries of bright chalky color. She once drew seagulls resting on the shore. For anyone else a sedate subject, but her birds were giants, and she had them presiding over a raucous mosaic sea of red, violet and green. At noon, she’d pull out a crumpled paper lunch bag and without washing her hands, eat a bologna sandwich, dressed in the pigment residue from her fingers. It took me a long time to realize she was twice my age.

She was always the first person Molly would check on.

“Alright, Bridget?” Molly would stand and look over her shoulder.

“Yeaahh.”

“Nice. Very pretty.”

Molly loved Bridget. You could tell. They both saw the world the same way, I think. Even though Molly would never let me see her paintings, I could tell she saw things the world as big and magical.

The seed of the school sprouted sometime in the 60s when a group of neighborhood children knocked on Molly Bethel’s back door and asked her to teach them to paint. They kept coming. She used her own money to buy supplies and never asked for payment. Twenty-one years later, she and her friend Olga Lownie bought the former St. Boniface nunnery for $2,500 and called their new art school “MollyOlga.”

I loved the drive there. I’d leave my quiet white-bread town safely tucked 30 minutes away from Buffalo and head in on the 400, hitting the Thruway, then through the 190 toll booth requiring fifty cents to pass, and finally down to Locust Street where MollyOlga was located. I’d come off the ramp into the part of town called the “fruit belt” and you’d expect with a name like that the streets would be lined with the trees they were named for: locust, mulberry, peach, grape. Now I think of William Carlos Williams’ poem, “A Locust Tree in Flower”
Among
of
green

stiff
old
bright

broken
branch
come

white
sweet
May

again

But then I thought of Biblical plagues and it seemed appropriate because the street was stripped bare. But I didn’t care too much because it stripped me bare too and I was glad for it. I was a young white girl in her mother’s cast-off Nissan Sentra but I felt like maybe I could be anyone.

Molly tried to shape me. She tried to stop me from holding my paintbrush like a pencil and instead hold it with my forefinger and thumb so I could use my whole arm, and not just my wrist to paint.

Thunder and lightning

It has thundered and lightning-ed two out of the three nights I've been in Chicago. After being away for years, the old nightmares started again last night: a tornado is coming. I am looking for shelter. Last night, I ran into a Safeway and headed to the back of the store away from the windows. But then I realized I forgot my brother. He was in the highrise across the street on the 40th floor. I needed to tell him to get out of the building.

Maybe the dream is telling me I'm worried I've left my family behind. Maybe I have. When I talk to my mother, she never asks me about myself. She doesn't know who I am. I might tell her about a movie I've seen recently, but that's it. She doesn't know me otherwise. We spend our time talking about her life. S. is easier. We have more in common. But still I feel so far away sometimes. If I just chose to live closer...in the same city even...where we could shop together, or eat in the same restaurants, or drive on the same roads, would we be closer? Why should I expect my mother to be any different than an old friend who I awkwardly begin a conversation with after 10 years apart?

I do like art. And so does S. We went to see Kelan Phil Cohran play at an almost non-descript Ethiopian restaurant. The chartreuse walls made it stand out. Phil was playing the thumb piano when we walked in, and from where we were standing, it didn't look like he was doing anything. Just rocking back and forth. But then he moved on to the trumpet and later the harp. He played for an hour, collected his tips like any street musician, and walked out the door without attracting the attention of anyone there. And maybe you don't know who he is, but jazz fans will, and you'd think they would applaud, or call out. Gather for autographs. But nope. Practically anonymous.

And then a day of walking from gallery to gallery in the early spring sun, before dropping me off at Northwestern for a business workshop. I get out of the car, and say goodbye, and I'm thinking as I stand in line to check in and see him drive away, "who am I?" and "who are we?" and "why do we know so little about one another?"

Bzzzzz...zzzzz..z....z.....

Tom was out to check on the hive yesterday. He proved my theory right. They are dead. We have a hive full of bee carcasses. It's been a very wet winter and they were infested by evil, honeybee-murdering mites.

I've been waiting to see some signs of life. Spring has arrived late here in Oregon. The apple trees are just starting to flower. But we've had a few warm days. I expected to see the scouts venture out into the sun. But it's been quiet. I even lobbed a stone against the side of the hive a few weeks back, to see if I could arouse the guard bees. But nope.

Poor little bees.

Poetry

Origami in my brain,
worries keep folding up.
Stupid human worries.
Red, digital numbers burn
into the back of my retina:
It is 2:35 in the morning.
I will get up at six
and drive through the blue rain
in a sea of more red taillights.
Asphalt highways flow into
other asphalt highways and
the steel girders, concrete barriers
keep us all moving in the same direction.

Once I saw a grey ghost cross the highway.
A floating plastic bag
caught in the wind—
No—a great bird
sailed over four lanes of traffic
into a meager stand of trees
and I couldn't stop myself from crying.
I felt its bones in the cold,
the way it tucks its head underneath
its wing for warmth, the hum
of traffic ten feet away from
its nest. My stupid human problems.
Nothing in comparison to survival.

I am thankful for poetry,
that insomnia and birds
can lie in bed together
while I stay awake.
No storytelling road to follow.
No chain of logic because
this does not make sense
and not much does.

Tell stories to the whales
trapped underwater with the din
of motors and beating drills.
They swim up rivers and onto beaches
to find some peace.

Oh yeah, I forgot

Yesterday afternoon I got my mind back. I feel so much better.

I snuggled into the corner of the couch with a strong cup of irish breakfast tea and picked up a book of short stories I was given for my birthday. I flipped randomly to a story by Rick Bass called, "The Hermit's Story." It starts out simply enough: four people are sharing Thanksgiving together. They are eating pie and drinking wine. Then one of them tells a story that gets more and more fantastic as it goes on. Birds and dogs and stars and ice, and sleeping under a the icy skin of a lake where all the water has drained away. It was beautiful. There's no time in the story. The narrator tells us it was 12 years ago and then later tells us it was 20 years ago. And it made no sense. And I loved it.

After I read it I thought, "Oh yeah. I can write stories that don't make complete sense. I can write anything I want." I can write anything I want.

I've been stuck trying to tell this stupid story about this boring woman. I was trying to write it, because the boring character made the whole thing make sense. Some sales woman who has tried her whole life to get ahead but then one day realizes her whole life is meaningless. But it was boring, and I wasn't having any fun writing it, and I would keep freezing up and then trying just to push through, but then get frustrated and bored. I would think, "No one wants to read a story about a woman like this. And I don't really want to write it either." But I had two really strong images on either side of the story, and I needed the woman to connect them--to make the story logical.

Maybe I let this happen because a few weeks back, I gave a copy of Lost to an acquaintence. I didn't expect anything except for her to read it but she gave it back to me with written comments and everything. She didn't like the part toward the end where the girl dives down under the water and sees a whole town down at the bottom of the river. She wrote, " I could belive in the bat boy, but not the town at the bottom of the river." And when I read it, I thought, "Oh well...that's just her opinion" but I think it influenced me more than I realized. Because lately I've been trying to write stuff that's more "believable."

I don't want the girl to just swim back across the river. I want it to feel like she's getting dragged down by the river, the town is like the Sirens in the Odessey, tempting and dangerous, and she has to drag herself out of it.I'm not so interested in the logic as the feeling.

I hate logic in writing. I want to write the stuff that makes my heart hurt. The stuff that makes a wolf's howl form at the base of my throat. That's delightful. That's why I write. Oh yeah, I forgot. Thanks, Rick Bass, for reminding me.

Meditiation on an old photo

She has worn this dress, especially for today. It's the most expensive dress she's ever had--white, gauzy layers with delicate edging. She moves more gracefully in this dress, it seems. It makes her want to dance, and she'll have the chance soon. She'll enter through the doors of the magnificent hall and be surrounded by the most gallant gentlemen in all the county. Oh! She is taking a moment to get her breath before she goes, here in the garden next to a sculputure of a great white bird. It is beautiful and reminds her of everything she wants to be tonight, and everything she wants to feel. Like a wild bird she wants to be free to fly. She wants to be the creature that's most admired.

...

Like a wild bird, she wants to be free to fly. It's no fun in here with these parakeets. The cramped cage, the smelly, damp newspaper. She seems to be the only bird who minds, though. All the others are happily tinkling the bell or looking in the mirror. Paco is beaking his way up and down the right corner of the cage as usual. He never does anything else. She's the only bird that wants to be free. She dreams of nestling down in a patch of grass every night instead of the newspaper shreds she's got. Then she'd wake up to the sun and catch a wind current and just soar all day, riding one gust after another.

She once asked Polly about escaping. Had she ever tried it? Ever know anybird who did? She wanted to know the details. What's the best way to get past the shopkeeper Steve and his little Vietnamese girlfriend? Once you do that, how do you get past the big door? But Polly just stared at her with her beak wide open, so she hadn't brought it up since. Every night though, she dreams of being free.

...

He really did not owe an explanation to anyone. Certainly not her. She always wanted one though and she would keep asking and asking until she got one. Well this time he was gonna fix it so she couldn't ask. So that she'd never be able to ask again, as a matter of fact.

He started making a list. Shells from a tribe of hermit crabs, the eye of a newt (standard fare), the inner frond of a sword fern. Lots of purified water and the special words. That oughtta do it.

Positive reinforcement

I realized yesterday that the blog entries lately have been a wee bit too negative. So I'm gonna counteract that with a list of things that make me happy. I'll just keep adding them as they come to me.

1. Tortoise's song, "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were women and men." Both the title and the music. I was at the gym yesterday, and it slipped into the shuffle on my iPod. The title of the song is so long the iPod had to keep scrolling it.

2. Lovely, pale pink yarn from the softest, little alpaca lamb that ever lived. Eight dainty hanks arrived on my doorstep yesterday. I just wanted to shrink myself down to mouse-size so that I could use one of them as a bed.

3. I am the same age as Dave Chappelle.

State of the union

I should be getting ready for work right now, but I just spent the last two days coddling my client, and so I'm not so eager to get back for another day of thinking about someone else's needs before mine.

My horoscope for the month says that I'm in the mood to upset the apple cart. That's for sure. As I sat in those meetings, I kept thinking, "Who am I?" I could be a kick-ass marketing guru. I'm good at it. I could funnel all my energy into my business career, make a ton of cash, and just stop struggling. Hell...gimme a BMW and a yearly vacation to Maui and a mind that does not question what it all means. A simple, quiet mind.

Or, I can be a writer.

I am not sure I can do both. So with yesterday marking the end of the thirty-first year of my life the reset button got pushed. This year, I need to spend some time building a life that supports my true self. Every night, I have to go to bed thinking about what I'm going to do the next day to be my true self. This is the end of the line for my marketing career. I'm not pushing for a job at Nike as a marketing exec. No. The world wants me to go that way, but no. I either make it as a writer or nothing.

All this time we've known each other

Ryan returned the phone to the cradle.

"That was Chris. They're running a bit late."

"Oh well. I guess that gives us time to have a glass of wine before they get here. Loosen up a little bit," Renee said. She selected a bottle of red from the rack and took two glasses down from the cupboard.

"I'll just keep the oven on low. Hopefully dinner won't get too dried out."

Ryan sank onto the couch with a grunt. "I'm beat," he said. "I don't know why you invited them over on a Friday night anyway. I'm not sure I want to make conversation with anyone."

Renee sipped her wine. She had seen Laura at the gym a few days before. She was stepping into the shower after yoga class and realized it was Laura in the stall next to her. She never realized how slim Laura was. She always wore shapeless baggy clothes and old-man cardigans. Renee always thought of her as a homely woman. She wondered what Chris saw in her, because he was tall with dangerously rumpled hair and a deep, gravely voice. Renee had to devise a ruse everytime she saw him to keep him from noticing how she blushed. She couldn't help herself. It was practically instinct. He was so amazingly hot and what was he doing with a woman like Laura? She couldn't make sense of them as a couple.

But in the shower she noticed Laura's tiny waist and her two, perfectly shaped breasts. Renee hated her own. They always felt too large and pendulous. But it seemed Laura had the perfect body. Perhaps that explained it.

"Well, Ryan, it just came out. We were standing there in the shower and all of a sudden I was telling her about my new recipe for goat cheese and tomato quiche. They next thing I knew, we had plans for Friday."

"The shower, eh?" Ryan wiggled his eyebrows. "Well I just hope they bring some more wine. I'm going to need it."

Soon the doorbell rang and Ryan rose to answer it.

"Hey, guys! Come on in! Let me take your coats," he said.

"Nice place!" Laura said. "I don't think we've ever been here."

"You know, you're right" Renee said. "All this time we've known each other and I don't think we've ever gotten together, just the four of us."

"It's about time, then." Chris said. "Hey, we brought some wine." He handed the Renee the bottle.

"Thanks! Ryan and I already started. I'll pour you a glass. Make yourselves comfortable." She went into the kitchen to get two more glasses.

"It's a syrah," Laura called after her. "We just love syrahs."

Ryan was back from the bedroom where he has put their coats."Oh yeah?" he said. "We've tried them from time to time, but we tend to like pinots."

"I like beer," joked Chris. "Lots of beer and good, hard liquor." They all laughed.

"Everyone makes such a big deal about pinot noir," Laura said as Renee handed her the glass. "But it's just not exciting. We like wines that are bold."

"Laura's been into finding the cheapest bottle that still drinkable. Who knows? The bottle we brought could be $1.99," Chris said.

Laura shot him a look. "It's not. But there are lots of good, cheap syrahs out there for like, ten dollars."

"Well, I don't care how much it costs," joked Ryan. "I'll drink it!"

"Come on everyone, dinner is served." Renee said. They moved into the dining room and Renee brought the quiche out and set it on the table.

"Ooh! It smells wonderful." Laura said. "I like these plates too. Are they fiestaware?"

"Yes. My grandmother's. It's the original stuff." Renee said. She loved being able to say that. She always enjoyed setting the table, placing her bright cloth napkins and vintage water glasses beside her vintage dishes. She knew how to create atmosphere. She was always surprised when she went to other people's homes. They would turn on the overhead, fluorescent lights and use paper napkins. It was like eating in a cafeteria. But Renee liked to dim the lights, set out candles, and put on a good jazz CD. People always remarked on her good taste.

"Man, you won't believe what happened to me today," Ryan said as he served the quiche.

"Cut me a big piece," Chris said as he passed his plate.

"Would you pass the salad?" Laura asked. Renee handed her the salad in its hand-carved wood bowl with matching utensils.

"So, I call my credit card company to tell them to take this stupid fee off my statement. All the sudden this nine dollar fee appears on my statement for services or something. I don't know what it's for, but it pisses me off, you know?"

"Oh, I hate having to call the credit card company," Laura said.

"Well, I'm on the phone and it take me forever to get to a real person. I have to press one, then zero, then listen to another menu."

"Yadda, yadda," Renee said.

"Well, when a real, live person picks up, it's this woman from India or something! I could hardly understand her!" He said something in gibberish as if he was imitating a foreign language.

"That sound more like Chinese than Indian," Chris said.

Laura laughed and repeated the gibberish, "yingyangwongchong."

"Well, whatever. All that money I send to that company and they don't even have an American on the line. I just hung up. I couldn't stand it."

"Are you going to pay the fee?" Renee asked.

"Hell, no! I'm going to write them a letter," Ryan said.

Renee took a sip of her wine. She looked across the table at Chris. He had a five-o-clock shadow. Usually she liked Ryan to be clean shaven, but on Chris, a little stubble looked good. She wondered what it would feel like against her face. "Ooh. I'm starting to feel the wine. I'm all glowy," she said. She felt warm and like all her muscles were loose and flexible.

"Mmmm. Me too," Laura said.

"I should open another bottle," Ryan said. He got up and went into the kitchen.

"Women," said Chris. "It doesn't take much."

Laura started to giggle and touched his arm. "Remember last weekend? It didn't take much then, either."

"Oh, yeah?" Ryan had returned with a bottle of champagne. "This is all I could find." He popped the cork and filled each of their glasses. "You had a little too much, eh?"

"We had kind of a crazy time," Laura said. She was still giggling. "I can't stop laughing!" She took a sip of her champagne. She looked at Chris, and he shrugged his shoulders at her.

"Well...we were over at our friends' house for dinner. Clark and Mary. You've met them, right?"

Renee nodded. "We met them at your summer barbecue. Remember, Ryan?"

"I think so," He said.

"You might not know this about them, but they're kind of...swingers."

"No!" Renee shrieked.

"We've known for a long time, but we never really talk about it with them."

"So what happened?"

"Oh, Renee. You just love gossip." Ryan rolled his eyes.

"We were over there for dinner and we had a few bottles of wine between us. We were all a little loopy."

"It didn't help that we smoked a joint on the way over there," Chris said.

"So they have a hot tub and after dinner we all decide to go in. But of course we didn't bring our bathing suits, so we went in naked," Laura said. Renee noticed Laura was rubbing the inside of her husband's arm as she talked. She moved her hand quickly up to his elbow and back down to his wrist. She kicked Ryan under the table to try to get him to look at her, but he was transfixed.

"So," Ryan said. "What? Did you swap or something?" Laura squeezed Chris' arm.

"We dared Laura and Mary to kiss and they did," Chris said.

"That's it?"

"Ummm. Let's just say one thing did lead to another."

"Wow." Ryan drained his champagne.

"I don't know if I could ever do that. I just don't know," Renee said. She looked down at her lap. She didn't know what to say next. She could hear the fizzing of the chanpagne bubbles in the glass.

"Well, we certainly killed the conversation!" Chris said. He pressed his hands together.

"No, no...I was just thinking I should clear the table. We have tirimisu for dessert," Renee said.

She stood up and collected the dishes. In the kitchen, she put on the kettle for tea. She heard Chris and Ryan laughing from the dining room. "Laura's had enough, I think! Throw her in the drunk tank!"

Renee rinsed the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher. She carried the slices of tiramisu and a pot of tea out to the dining room on a tray. Laura had her head resting on the table.

Renee couldn't help yawning as poured each of them a cup. "I can't believe how tired I am," she said. "Ryan, you had a hard day. You must be tired too."

Portland: January

This doggy, soggy winter. It has rained more than 30 days straight and that means 10 more days and we're going Biblical. Even Noah only had to wait out 44. Spring is coming.

We go about our days medicated with coffee. It is a window that draws in whatever daylight exists out there between the raindrops. Movies and books a drug too--tricking us with the illusion of life and activity. There is something happening, somewhere in the world beyond these pillows and blankets which we burrow down into for whole months. They are a like a bandage on a wounded man. They keep us barely alive. We eat avacados and tomatoes from Southern California--a rude and brash cousin who has too much and appreciates nothing--the bright fruit injects a bit of summer into our winter days.

The dog sleeps in its chair and wakes once a day impatient to be put on a leash and led out into the wet night in search of the doggy news that is printed at the base of every sign post and shrub. My eyelashes catch drops of fog and I think perhaps I see a rainbow. A promise that June will soon be here with its roses and long, clear days. I hesitate to wipe my eyes so that I can live the dream a litte longer.

Fries, please

Being sick is lonely. The whole world continues on outside as I lie here in this bed. People go to work, kids go to school, stock boys stack apples and oranges into pyramids in the grocery store, truck drivers hauls their goods. All this happens as I lie here.

I remember last year when the Pope died. I felt so sorry for him. I knew what he was feeling. After so many years of being among throngs of adoring people he was sequestered away in a bare hospital room. He must have lay in bed listening to the whispers of his cardinals as they talked around him. No laughter, no joy, no life. Just a hushed contraction of time while they waited for him to die.

I am not going to die like the Pope, but I am so sick that I can’t go to school. At 8:15 each morning I can hear the middle schoolers gathering for the bus and then it drops them off everyday at 3:30. I used to wish my window would overlook the street so I could see them too. But wishing is useless.

On one side of the room I turn my head to see a blue chest of drawers with silver pulls. It is there everyday. A constant. I get bored of looking at it; I have looked at it so much. To the left is my window, which overlooks the side yard. So instead of watching kids get on the bus, or old people walking their dogs, I look out to see what is happening in the yard. An awful lot happens there. Birds and squirrels wander through, the leaves grow and change and drop of course. I don’t need to tell you. I notice everything though. Every shade of green grass—from its emerald lushness in the early spring to its weak, limey green at the end of the summer. I notice the weeds as they sprout up and the way the laurel hedges grow at least two feet each year.

I have a tutor that comes once a week now on Saturdays. He’s a timid man who looks nervously around the room at the pill bottles and syringes and the IV drip that stands at attention in the corner just in case. He must worry that he’s going to get what I have, though you can’t catch it. He sits across the room perched on the folding chair mom puts there for him and he talks loudly at me, as if it were my ears that are failing, not my lungs.

At first he tried to do all sorts of work with me—math and science. But now we just read books and when he comes he talks about them. He yells his thoughts across the room for about an hour and then he gives me a new book for my assignment. He scurries out the door to where mom is waiting and I hear her say each week, “How’d it go?” while she writes him a check. I always wait to hear the sound of her ripping it from her checkbook—the perforations tearing with a satisfying zzzzip.

I feel bad for my mom. She feels bad about leaving me everyday but she has to go to work. She gets up before its light out to give me a bath and make me breakfast, give me my pills. She leaves a few hours later with nothing but a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios in her purse for her own breakfast. She leaves me propped up on pillows with the remote control in easy reach and kisses me on the cheek.

My favorite day of the week is when she reads me bits from the town Bee. She reads the articles about people we know or important things like that time when Wal-Mart wanted to open a store near the post office but everyone fought it. It comes every Thursday and she reads it out loud to me.

She gets especially into the articles about the mayor or the school board. Once, there was a proposal to build a skate ramp in the park and she was really upset about that. Half the town was for it, and the other half against. Some said at least it would get those boys out of the bank parking lots and movie theater steps where they were destroying property and scaring off senior citizens. The others said that skateboarding should just be banned altogether. Those kids were just waiting to crack their heads open and the town shouldn’t given them a legal place to go and do it.

I didn’t really care too much, because I was waiting for her to get to the school lunch schedule, which is my favorite part. Sometimes it’s grilled cheese on Monday, spaghetti on Tuesday and all the standard stuff. Sometimes the menu is out of the ordinary like the February when its African American history month they serve things like red beans and rice and okra. I’ve never had those but they sound good.

I wonder what it would be like to go to school. I would have a locker and eat in the cafeteria. I’d see the lunch lady every day in her hair net. She would ask me if I wanted peas of French fires and I would answer, “Fries, please.”

I’ve been at home so long that most of my friends have grown a whole foot or more by now. When I was first out of the hospital they would sometimes visit me, bringing flowers and had to be removed from the room right away, or candy that I couldn’t even open my mouth to eat. I remember my best friend, Michelle, with her long, brown hair and brown skin. Mom called her a “tomboy.” She came only once. She sat nest to my bed and didn’t say anything. Her mom and my mom were outside in the hall talking and she just sat there and stared at the floor. I couldn’t say anything either—I wanted to. I wanted to just say hi and ask her about Valentines Day and stuff. But finally her mom came and got her and she never came back.

I wonder if my friends ever think of me anymore or maybe they just pretend I moved away. I still remember how they looked. Timmy always had a runny nose, and Scott had the nicest freckles. I hated Amy and her bouncy, blonde curls. Cindy was tiny and had a funny laugh that always made me laugh too.

Mostly I think of Nathan. We always sat at the back of the bus together, even though boys and girls didn’t usually sit together. He had sandy brown hair and a scar on his chin from when he fell down the stairs as a little kid. He never did come to visit me, but he sent me a card with a big elephant on it that said, “Get Well Soon!”

I think of him everyday, especially when the Price is Right is over and the soap operas are on. They are never fun to watch. I think of the time he chased me during color tag in gym class. He didn’t chase any other girls except for me.

My friends probably do things like play sports after school and go to dances. If I were in school, I’d try out for the soccer team. That’s what Michelle plays. I know because sometimes the Bee has articles about how the team is doing so good. She is the star forward. I would be on the team too, and we would both be out there on the field and maybe it would be muddy that day so we’d come home from the game covered in mud. But it would be really fun and we would run hard anyway and be exact with our passes and outmaneuver the other team. We’d win, and then come in to the locker room cheering and excited. And on the way I’d see Nathan watching me from the crowd. And maybe he would have his driver’s license and wait for me so he could dive me home from the game.

Last year, mom read me a story about the homecoming floats. Each class would make a float on a theme, and the theme that time was fairy tales. One class made a Little Red Riding Hood float with a giant wolf’s head in a pink bonnet, and another class did Hansel and Gretel with a real gingerbread house and they threw candy to the crowd. I’d want to be one of the people throwing candy and watch the kids rush forward to pick up the peppermints and lollipops that fell to the ground.

There was a picture of Timmy in the paper too. He was homecoming king and there was a photo of him and his queen. They were wearing goofy tinfoil crowns. But I hardly recognized him. His note was bigger and it was like the whole shape of his head had changed. As if someone had pushed his jaw in and made his forehead stick out more. Maybe it was all the football he played. His neck was thick and he had hulking shoulders too. I wondered if he remembers coming to my birthday party once. He was the only boy I invited, and mom didn’t want him to come. But I invited him anyway.

Last night, I felt my lip split open. I sneezed and it tore open. There was nothing I could do until morning when mom checked in on me. By then, the blood was dried and my lip swollen twice its size. Sometimes it happens. It always hurts, but now I’m more used to living with it. I know that in the morning, mom will wipe it clean and apply Vaseline. She always makes me feel better.