Random tchotchka

It is a good thing "tchotchka" is in the title of this blog, otherwise, I would forget how to spell it every time I wanted to post a random smattering of updates.

1. I don't believe in apologizing for not posting to the blog, or making excuses either. It's kind of like when you were 14 and didn't write in your diary for a long time, and then the next time you sat down to write you started out, "Dear Diary, I am so so so so sorry for not writing in you for so long." I mean, who cares?

But I have been thinking again about the blog, and what I'm doing it for. Then, a few weeks ago, my daily horoscope (which you know is a valid source of information on which very important decisions can be based) said this:

December 20, 2007
Aquarius (1/20-2/18)
If you find yourself bored today, it is a sign that you need to make a few changes in your life. These could be simple changes in your routine, but it is probably more effective to make some complex changes in one of your closest relationships. Some strange cross-communication has been going on, and it might be time for you and this person to figure out what exactly you are doing in each other's lives. Do you two really have enough in common to continue? All relationships don't last forever.

And I thought, "Yes, I am bored." But not with the people in my life, with my writing, and with this blog. Our relationship is strained, I have to admit. It was going so swimmingly too. Maybe it's just that we needed a break, or maybe it's that we need to make some real changes. Or maybe I just need to do what I always tell other writers, and just force myself to sit down with a notebook and a pen in my hand and just write. I don't know. But I need to get my writing mojo or juju or whatever it is back.

2. My dog smells. He's 16 years old, and suffering from a panoply of old-age illnesses including senility, arthritis, hair loss, incontinence, general crotchetiness and advanced dental decay. His mouth has always been a cesspool, given that he has a thing for eating excrement, but now it has bloomed into a full-blown sewer. You know in cartoons, how they draw someone with bad breath? There's this slow-moving brownish stream of nasty eggshells, bubbly goo and fish bones floating in the air over the person's head? That's exactly what it's like. I can smell him from across the room. I'll just be sitting there and suddenly get a waft of it, and I'll think "Oh no, he's close." And yep...he's just entered the room. And so, I hate to admit it, but he's been getting the treatment that so many elderly people get: I'm ignoring him as much as possible.

3. I've been asked to write an article for a new e-zine that celebrates urban living. The topic? Organic personal lubricants. The weird thing is that one of the first people T. and I met when we moved here is the owner of a personal lubricant company. I don't think his stuff is organic, but it's made with natural ingredients, so I'm hoping he might be up for an interview. He used to tell all sorts of stories about the weird things people would call in to the customer service line about, like "My [body part] turned green, what should I do?" And he's like, "Umm, that's not the lube dude, sorry." That could be kind of fascinating. And then I'm recruiting a few friends to do "reviews." I keep feeling like I should feel weirder about writing about lube, but I don't. I do, however, feel weird that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated this past week. I guess that just means I'm grown up.

The word for Portland

In Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, she writes that every city has a word that perfectly describes it. For Rome, she says, it's "sex." Here's my thoughts on what Portland's word might be.

The word for Portland is ... something that glows emerald green and is moist, like an amphibian. Cool to the touch. An enveloping mist of clear water and plant breath.

The sound of the tires on the pavement in the rain sound like the exhaling and inhaling of the city. The roar of respiration. An expanding pink lung.

Portland is calm and practical. Not easily ruffled. A place where people sing along to the radio to pass the time in a traffic jam rather than lay on the horns, raise the blood pressure. They catch up on OPB. April Behr purrs the weather forecast. She says, "Blue Mountains," "Cascades," "the Valley."

She calls this "the Valley!" Like the original California one, but so unlike it because this Valley winks and nods half-asleep while its southern cousin takes Vivarin to stay up all night. This Valley layers in blankets of forest and fern, while the other throws off the cover to lay naked under the stars.

Is the word "dreamy"? Or is the word "sleepwalk"? Are we really here? Or are we somewhere else wishing we were here? Are we sitting next to a fat man yammering into his Bluetooth headset, dreaming we are walking in the rain instead? Dreaming we are tossing off our wet clothes before a roaring fire? Dreaming we are sipping hot coffee with cream? We'll never know. Our dreams are constantly invaded, but we persist in dreaming on.

Maybe the word is "soft." Like the petals of the ubiquitous rose bush that erupts from the most wretched earth to twine around telephone poles. Or soft like the sun's summer rays--never overbearing--just a pale yellow glow of buttery heat. Or soft like a dog's coat--for all those canines who wait patiently outside cafes and pubs. They rise, stretch and settle in again, tucking their tender paws under to protect them from the chill.

Of maybe it is "dark," like the rain clouds that hover over the city. Like the strong earthy smell of coffee. Like the magical bitterness of beer. We rise in the dark and return to sleep in the dark--our skins Golem-like, pale mushroom epidermis.

I wouldn't dare say "cool" is the word. For all the temperature-associated meanings feel right, but all the style and social connotations are wrong. This city is not cool. This city understands the irony in proclaiming itself cool, it automatically becomes uncool.

And with the word "irony," maybe we get closer. Or "Unexpected." Or "hidden." A little treasure buried deep, locked with a magical password. Only the gifted and true can see what's inside. Though many think they know, what they see is merely a mirage.

California prayer

The American dream . . .
Freedom, opportunity, vision.
Not what Californians bargained for
as they drove their SUVs
with the yellow ribbon magnets.

Support our troops.
Let Freedom reign.

Their homes scorched to the earth,
piles of smouldering ashes and charred brick.
They have all the freedom in the world.
Nothing holds them back. Their destiny:
to be a phoenix rising from the flames.

The sun touched the earth
and let them go, and like an infant
just emerged from the womb
they long to crawl back to their confinement.

Fire is the forceps of the gods
pulling us out of the darkness into the light.
Burning through our thick skins,
our carefully formed masks,
stripping us to our bones.

We are left simple.
Elemental.

Coal black, tiny ember, a spark deep inside.
Our voices are winds that wail,
Who? Who? I am. I am.

This is my prayer for the people of California,
who today stand there wiping the ash
from their skin, who hold a cloth over their face.
Breath deeply,
fan the fire,
let it consume you.
Let freedom reign.

Octoberfest

It's soggy and raining today, but a few weeks ago, I took out the camera to record some of the last garden treats of the season. I'm in love with the moody blues and greens from the hops cones on the drying rack.

Are you feeling sllleeeepppy? Yawn.

Babypalooza

It's babypalooza around here. Everyone I know is either knocked up or trying to get knocked up. So here begins the knitting of cute little dudes.

I'm thinking his name is Henry, unless you have other suggestions.

One step forward

I had a bad feedback session this week. I've been trying out a new writer's group, in addition to the one I've had going for about the last year. I get great input from the existing group. They are very perceptive, and very constructive. I always walk away with an idea of how to revise, plus they help me see neat things in my writing that I didn't even know were there. Bonus! They keep me going.

But this new group, I just don't know. I love one of the members. His writing is gorgeous, and he's interested in sharing process too. I suppose working with him is what attracted me. But the other person ... you know when get together with a bunch of new people, and there's that one person in the group that bugs the hell out of you? She's that person. Everything about her seems wrong to me. She likes to sigh and complain about how she's too busy to write. I've noticed that she's more interested in explaining her intentions for writing, than discussing the writing itself. But whatever--I thought maybe I could get past that, and maybe she'd have something valuable to add to my work. I should have trusted my gut.

Good member had something pop up, so he couldn't make it to this week's meeting. Bad member arrived 1/2 hour late. I'd sent out my pieces a few days beforehand, to give them time to do a closer reading. She forgot my pieces at home, but she said, "I read them two or three times, and marked them up and edited them."

Flag #1. She edited them????
When I emailed the pieces, I mentioned that they were character studies, and a way of experimenting and getting to know my characters better. I didn't know whether what I'd written would eventually make it into my book, but that really didn't matter. I just wanted to know what their impression was of the characters. Who are these people? What intrigues you about them? What questions are you left with?

Key words here: "studies" and "experimenting." She edited my experiments? Umm. Okay. Maybe I don't know what she means by "editing," but if we use the same definition, that's not what I needed at this stage. I was looking for some big picture constructive criticism.

Flag #2. "I don't know anything about these characters. You have a lot more work to do."
She says this before I even begin to read. Really? Nothing?

"Okay," I say. "What's missing for you? What did you learn, and what do you wonder about?"

"I don't know what's missing," she says. "I don't really know how writers create characters. I'd have to compare it to some author that's really good at doing that." Great. That kind of feedback is really going to help.

She suggests that I give the piece an omniscient narrator, so we know what each girl is thinking. "But this is a memoir," I say. She acts like it's the first time she's heard me say that.

Flag# 3. "Annie's totally average."
She says this in response to a description of Annie's room, where there's makeup lying around everywhere. "Every girl has lots of makeup." I'm thinking, I was lucky to have a Chapstick when I was growing up, as she's telling me this.

Flag# 4. "'Barfly' is a term only used for women."
Ummm. No. Ever heard of Charles Bukowski?

Flag# 5. "Why did you write these?"
She asks me, toward the end of our meeting. I thought I told you, I thought, then proceeded to explain that as I move forward, it's important for me to understand how Annie's background influences her response in a situation. Same with the other characters. Maybe she could read the frustration on my face. I wondered if she had even read my email. Had she read my pieces at all? She didn't comment on any of the stuff that I didn't read out loud (I only read a selection in the interest of time).

So, what did I walk away with? I already knew I needed to do more. I guess I need to make Annie so outlandishly spoiled, that even spoiled girls will pick up on her spoiled-ness.

As a writer, you learn to take the feedback that helps you, and leave the feedback that doesn't. Sometimes, you have to be open to feedback that is hard to hear. But you need to hear it from someone you trust and respect. And when you're giving feedback, it's important to listen to what the writer asks for, and to point out what's working, as well as where there's more work needed. You're there to help the writer take one step forward. Just one step.

I think I need a therapist

I'm developing an interesting perspective on my narrator, who just happens to the be the 12 year old me. The more I think of her as a character, the more cynical I feel about her. When I started writing, I felt like she was more tragic and a little heroic ... the way lots of teenage girls are. Being a teenager is brutal, you know? But these character studies have turned her into someone I don't quite like.

1. She's obsessed with food.
2. She's passive-aggressive.
3. She uses the misery of others to her advantage.
4. She's a perfectionist.
5. She's secretive.
6. She's afraid of everyone.

Oh, cruel, cruel mirror!

I think I need to write some moments when she comes out looking good! Some happy fun moments. Some instance of truth and beauty. Why would anyone want to read about a character like her? I also have to write some scenes where she doesn't just sit back, observe and react, but where she tries to advance an agenda. She needs to get active.

I've heard songwriters say they have trouble writing happy songs, because they come out sounding cheezy. I totally identify with that. Okay...next post: a happy scene!

Vacation tchotchka

I'm on vacation this week. Yaaaaay! I told my mom I had the week off, and she was like, "Oh. If I had known I would have come out to see you." I KNEW she was going to say that. I think she said the same thing last year when I took a week off in the fall. Also, the topic of blogs came up, and she asked me if I had a blog. I can never lie. I'm really bad at lying, even over the phone, so I said "Yes. But I'm not telling you where it is." I just don't know how she'd feel about reading some of this stuff--especially the autobiographical stuff that involves memories of her. And I don't want to censor myself because I know she might be reading what I write.

I started off my vacation by taking an awesome weekend workshop with the playwright, Will Dunne.

I wasn't sure how writing plays would translate to writing memoir, or even fiction, but Will led us through a number of exercises that I think would be helpful for anyone who's doing creative writing--even if you're writing non-fiction. We read for drama, no matter what the genre. We mostly worked on character--determining motivations, strategies for dealing with events that come at them--and letting the characters tell you what they want to do. I worked through Annie's character in one exercise, and found it very powerful. She has a lot of baggage that makes her act the way she does. I knew that, but somehow the act of writing it all down made it all much more important to the story. Before, it was all just in my head.

So now that the weekend is over, I'm trying to do the same thing for the other girls in the River piece, and I'm using this work to create some background chapters. I don't know if I'll eventually include this in the final piece (or even the first draft), but I may use parts of it. And I'm hoping that this work I'm doing will help me write more authentic, richer characters overall.

The hardest thing has been imagining myself as a character, since this is an autobiographical piece. Putting myself through those character exercises, I had to ask, what were my motivations? My strategies? What were my fears, loves? What was I angry about? We go through life rationalizing the hurtful things that happen to us--we come out of it thinking "it was them, not me." Treating myself as a character, I had to examine the good and the bad. Maybe it will help my narrator (me) be a more well-rounded character too. But ouch.

Anyway, so I'm planning to do lots more writing this week. And shop for a new car too. My old Subaru is in the shop for the second head gasket replacement in two years. I think it's about time to trade the bugger in. Good thing I decided to stay home instead of taking a road trip!

Glowy man

We were out on Annie’s lawn just as the sun was setting. Her house was behind us, its warm lamplight spilling out onto the grass, but our eyes were turned toward the dark. We sat on the crest of a slight hill that rolled down toward the line of trees separating the house from the train tracks below. It was just an inky curtain to our eyes, this place where the lawn met the woods, and we projected what we wanted onto it.

“Did you see that?” I said, and my three friends strained their eyes to see.

“What?” they said in unison.

I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real or not, but there against the shadowy wall of trees was a figure.

“There. Over there,” I pointed. “Right at the edge of the trees.” No moon, no streetlights. We all peered into the darkness where the faint trace of a man glowed as softly as if he’d been dusted in chalk.

“It’s like, a man. A glowy man,” I whispered.

“Shut up!” Sara laughed and thwaped me on the shoulder.

We’d spent the whole day together—the four of us. It was the kind of day I long for now. No obligations, no plans, there was time to be bored. Before I’d even roll out of bed I would dial the pink plastic phone that sat on my nightstand and call all three of them. “Hey, what are we doing today?”

Annie’s mom had driven us to the mall and we’d spent the afternoon walking laps from the food court down to Sears. We blew through the Limited, the Gap, Claire’s, all our favorite stores in the first hours. There were others like Rave or Lerner that we’d never go into. Those stores were for girls from towns like Cheektowaga and West Seneca, where they spayed their bangs into huge walls and wore tight, acid washed jeans. The mall was an exercise in us versus them. A handy tool in making comparisons and judgments.

Oddly enough, the boys from those towns were another matter. We’d look for the group of boys that most closely fit our requirements—no feathered hair, no high top sneakers, no heavy metal t-shirts—and start following them. Innocently at first, maybe just looking and giggling at them as we passed them at the other side of the promenade. Then more overly, looping back around as they passed and falling in behind them, with enough distance between us that they were clearly in view but so we could talk without them hearing us. We’d follow them in to the arcade sometimes, and on this particular day, Annie had worked up the courage to ask on of them—the cute one with the OP t-shirt—whether he liked Sara or not. We stood outside in a huddle as Annie went in, and held our breaths until she returned.

“What’d he say?” Laura wanted to know. We all did.

“He wanted to know which one you were,” Annie answered. “So I said you were the one with the super straight brown hair, and then he said, ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’”

So there we were, sprawled on Annie’s lawn, discussing whether the boy really did like Sara, which of the other boys were cute, what we should do if we ever saw them again, making bold promises about getting phone numbers, as the day slowly extinguished itself before us. No moon, no streetlamps, just a halo of light from the village in the distance.

“I think I see him,” Annie said, pointing to the right. “Over there?” I nod my head.

“Oh my god!” Laura whispers”

We all see him. He has the dim phosphorescence of a dying lightning bug. My heart was in my throat.

“Is he real?”

What do you think he’s doing here?”

“Annie, should we call your mom?”

We all speculate round and round but no one moves toward the house.

“It’s the glowy man!” Laura shrieks, and we’re terrified and charged all at once.

“I think I saw it move!”

“Holy shit.”

I couldn't tell, because it was true that the glow had shifted to a new place, but looking at the old place, it was possible that there was still a glow there too, but it was less present, and the new spot was getting brighter.

When I look back on this moment, I know it was our imaginations. Our eyes pulled in the light from around us and cast it onto the dark space, filling with of all things, a man. In my mind, he was 30 years old, wearing a brown suit. He had short, dark hair. How this man got to be there at the edge of the woods, I didn’t know, but it seemed he wanted to watch us.

“It’s getting closer!” We were on our feet—laughing and screaming.

F-ing River

So, at this point I have a notebook full of free writes, about 20 pages of stuff that will eventually become a first draft, and here's the thing. A year or so ago, 20 pages would have felt loooong to me. But now, I look at those 20 pages and think "That's just the beginning! Just drips and drabs. Oh shit. WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?"

One of my writing mentors, after hearing a short section of the River piece this week, said, "Huh. It seems like maybe you have a book." And as soon as she said that, I made this noise:"Awwwwwwwwh." Whump. Yep, maybe. Or maybe just a long story. But it could be a book too.

I'm half freaked out, half loving every minute of writing this piece. Freaked out because I never wanted to write about this, and yet there it is. A story about being 13. A story that everyone's lived, and probably doesn't really want to revisit, so why would they ever want to read it, anyway? But loving it, because every time I sit down to write, it's like walking through the woods, and then I see a landmark...a giant cairn to mark the path and it just feels right. Like happy coincidences, or puzzle pieces that just snap together all of a sudden.

Re-reading Stephen King's The Body was like that. I hadn't read it since that time. I used to own the book, Different Seasons, that it's a part of. But somewhere along the line I gave it away. So I went and bought a new copy at Powell's for $5.50. Brilliant story. Beautifully written. I didn't appreciate it the first time around, and reading it as an adult, it made me hold my breath in places. But as I read, I realized how much that story influenced me. Maybe it's what's made me what I am today...which is the whole friggin point of writing the River story, of course. But what I'm saying is that as I was reading, I was newly aware of how that book has shaped my life. How it's woven itself into the stories I tell myself about my past. How it influenced decisions I made. And it reading it made me feel like, yes, 13 year-old drivel and all, this is the right project to be working on.

Hashing out River drafts

*From Stephen King's novella The Body.

The most important things are the hardest things to say …*

I closed the book and brought its unbound edge to my nose, inhaling its sweet, brown-papery scent. Those words said everything. I ran my thumb up into the center of the book, and opened it again, reading the page for a second time. I traced the rough paperback page with my finger, feeling the words on my mind instead of my skin.

… And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.*

Mom and my little brother, Stephen were downstairs, a whole universe away. I could hear Stephen laughing along to a sitcom soundtrack—just a squelching blare to my ears. Mom was making dinner. Silverware and dishes clattered, the refrigerator door slammed shut. She’d be calling me to set the table any minute.

I slid off my bed and walked the short distance to the little window at the end of my room and looked out at the street. Empty. It was quiet and dark out there. The streetlight at the corner cast a cone of light down on to the USPS mail box, making it feel like it was the center of the world—a bright blue star, pulling everything into its gravitational field.

I turned from the window and sat down at my small, white desk, pulling open the drawer for a pen and a notebook. I opened to a blank page and quietly tore it from the wire spine, one perforation at a time, then wrote slowly, pressing the pen into the paper to make thick, black letters.

Dear Annie, Laura and Sara,

Goodbye.

* * *

Annie sat on top of mail box and held her arms over her head, fists clenched tight. “Shout! Shout! Let it all out!” she sang loudly.

I sat indian-style in the grass in my front yard, half watching her, half looking around at my neighbor’s houses to see if anyone was looking at us. Blades of grass poked and itched the backs of my legs. I shifted and bent my knees, and then tucked my feet in tight, wrapping my arms around my legs.

“Come on! I’m talking to you! Come on!” she continued.

I knew who she was singing to, and it made me nervous.

This was our corner—it belonged to Annie, Laura, Sara and me. It was the perfect place to spend the long summer days for two reasons. 1. My mom was away at work all day, and 2. Andy Smith lived across the street. We spent hours each day out on my front lawn endlessly chattering, just like the Cicadas that buzzed over our heads. We’d discovered the mailbox to be an unusually comfortable seat, and would take turns vaulting ourselves to sit on top of it, only jumping off when a neighbor came to post a letter, or the mailman arrived. They shook their heads as if to say “shameless,” but we didn’t care. We would head into the house to get iced tea, but carried our glasses outside, clinking full of ice. We didn’t want to miss anything. Because if we waited long enough, we’d hear the rush and clunk of skateboard wheels, an announcement that Andy and his friends were about to pass by.

It was just me and Annie that day.

“Why do you think Laura likes him, anyway?” Annie asked, climbing off the mailbox and throwing herself down into the grass beside me. She swung her long, wavy hair over her face and began examining her fingernails for the best one to chew on.

“Who? Andy?” I said.

“Duh! Of course, Andy.” I could smell the lemony-clean scent of her shampoo as she flipped her hair to the side, something she often did. “He’s like, mean to her,” she continued.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He’s kinda mean to all of us.” Especially to you Annie, I added in my head.

Annie always got picked on by boys. She had to wear a real woman’s bra with underwire and thick straps even though we were only 13. And though she had pretty chestnut hair, she wore thick glasses that dominated her face and gave her owl eyes. Secretly, I thought of her as the ugliest out of the four of us. But Annie was the one who laughed loudest, and always had the ideas for things to do when we were bored.

“Well, he’s mean in front of his friends,” she said, “But I think he just pretends.”

“Like how?”

“Well, sometimes I see him all alone and he’s really nice to me,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. One time I saw him in the office at school and he said ‘Hi Annie,’ and smiled at me. It was like he liked me or something.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I didn’t say anything. I looked up at the telephone pole and followed the wires down the street with my eyes, avoiding her gaze. Andy liked her? No way. She was making that up.

“Huh. Weird.” I said, not wanting to reveal my suspicions. But maybe she sensed I didn’t believe her, because she changed the subject fast.

“Let’s go to Convenient. I wanna get a Jolt,” she said, and jumped to her feet.

That was another good thing about my house. It was a fifteen-minute walk to Convenient, and on the way there we’d have to pass right by one of Andy’s hang outs. His best friend Joe had built a skate ramp out of two-by-fours and plywood, and there was always a good chance they would have it pulled out into the middle of Crescent Avenue and be doing ollies and other tricks for each other.

They weren’t there that day, but it really didn’t matter. The point really wasn’t about seeing them, it was more the idea of seeing them, the build up that was important. Seeing them meant they might yell out the nickname they’d invented for us, “the Tuna Club.” “Hey, it’s the Tuna Club,” one of them would yell, and we’d walk by. We were ready with a come-back. “Shut up, dickweed!” we’d yell. They were more like our enemies than friends, but they noticed us. Rounding the corner of King and Crescent, our chatter would cease. There was always a pause until we knew whether they were there, or it was just an empty street.

I sat on the big, flat rock outside Convenient waiting for Annie. I didn’t have any money so it did me no good to go in just to inhale the stale sugary scent of wonder bread and oogle the Now-and-Laters. I thought about it, and I didn’t like Andy. Anyway, Laura liked him already. I guess if I liked anyone, Joe was kind of cute and wasn’t as mean as Andy or their other friends. Annie said she didn’t like any of them, she said she hated Andy, even. But she talked about him all the time. When we slept over at her house she wanted to prank call them late at night. I told her to stop it after the first time, because his mom answered, and she knew my mom—I didn’t want to get in trouble. She kept calling anyway, sometimes just hanging up and sometimes yelling silly things into the phone first. I thought maybe she liked all of them. More than anything, she wanted all of them to like her.

Annie swung open the glass door.

“I got Lick-a-Stix instead,” she said. “Want one?”

More on River Phoenix, believe it or not

Some of you know I'm working on a longer piece that's about being 13, and a little about Stand by Me too. This is a part of that. I'll post more of the first draft as it comes into being.

Annie lived on the edge of town at the end of a dead end street. Her house backed up against the woods. It wasn’t a long walk, but there was a giant hill on the way. The kind of hill you look at and think, “That would be great for sledding,” and resent that it was marred by a road.

I was on my way up it on a hot summer morning. I hoped Annie would want to go in her pool. Sometimes she was bored of swimming, so she didn’t want to go. It was a steep, long hill but I kind of liked walking up it. It made me feel strong to get to the top without getting winded.

I didn’t ring the doorbell when I got there. No one would answer it anyway. I knew to open the door and walk down the long hall to Annie’s room. Sara and Liz were already there.

I loved Annie’s room. She had to share it with her sister, but at least her sister was hardly ever there. They had their own bathroom with its own medicine cabinet and inside were tubes of lipstick, perfume bottles, little pots of makeup and pink, red, and purple nail polish. Cotton balls and q-tips were strewn around, along with the dust of blue, pink and purple powder—the eye shadow and blush that floated out of their makeup brushes. The room was its own world. Closed curtains kept the outside away. It was okay to shut the door, okay to play records loud or leave clothes on the floor, or have stacks of Seventeen Magazine on every bedside table. Not like at my house, where I had to pick up my clothes as hang them in the closet at the end of the day. Where I didn’t have my own makeup, but would sometimes pull out the tray of my mother’s makeup and stare at it. Here, there was jewelry—glittery bracelets, necklaces, and rings—scattered everywhere around the bedroom. Getting dusty. Lost. It made me want to clean things up.

Sara was on the bed with a bottle of orange nailpolish in her hands, delicately brushing color on each of her toes. It stood out against her summer tan. She got brown without even trying—something I always envied about her. No matter how long I sat in the sun I’d only burn and peel. The skate femmes called me “Casper,” and I hated it. She smiled at me as I entered the room.

Annie and Liz were in the bathroom. Halves of lemon littered the sink and floor. Annie was bent over and Liz was squeezing lemon juice into her hair.

“Hey!” Liz said when she noticed my reflection in the mirror.

“Hi. What are you guys doing?”

“We’re streaking my hair blond,” Annie said, a little muffled from behind all her hair.

“With lemons?” I asked.

“Yeah! I read about it in Seventeen,” Sara called across the room. It’s supposed to work as good as Sun-In.”

“Can I do it?” I thought it sounded cool.

“There’s only enough lemons for me,” Annie said. “Okay, I think that’s enough. Sara, do I rinse it, or leave it in?”

“I think you’re supposed to leave it in,” Sara answered. Annie grabbed a towel to wrap around her head. She plopped down on the bed next to Sara.

“You’ve got seeds in your hair!” Sara giggled.

“Well, get them out, will you?” Annie said.

“Hey, what do you want to do with all these lemons, Annie?” Liz said.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just leave them there, I guess. Our housekeeper comes today.”

“Do you guys feel like swimming?” I asked, hoping that Sara and Liz would say yes, and then Annie would have to agree.

“I can’t.” Annie didn’t even let them answer.

“We can wait until your hair dries,” I tried.

“No … it’s not about my hair.”

“Oh … Aunt Flo’s visiting?” Liz snickered. She was still waiting to get her period and so she thought it was funny whenever any of us got ours.

“It’s not that either,” Annie snapped. She took the towel off her head and threw it across the room. “I’ll show you. Here.”

Annie rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. The letters B-r-e-t-t were carved into the skin on her forearm. They were red and puffy and caked with dried blood.

“Holy shit!” whispered Sara. “When did you do that?”

“Last night.” I could tell Annie was trying not to smile too much. She kept her lips pressed together.

“”Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Yeah. I though you didn’t even like Brett,” Liz said.

“Well, I changed my mind,” Annie said. She opened the drawer to her bedside table and pulled out a sewing needle and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

“I dare you to write Andy’s name, Liz,” Annie said.

“No way! My mom would kill me if she saw it.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing it either,” Sara said, examining her toenails.

“What about you?” Annie looked at me.

“I don’t know…I don’t even have a boyfriend. Who would I write?”

“You kind of like Joe, don’t you?” Sara offered. Annie arched her eyebrows and zeroed in.

“Well, does it hurt?” I wanted to know.

“Not really,” Annie said. “It kinda felt good after awhile.

I took the needle and started with the “J.” Scratching through the top layer of skin wasn’t painful, but digging down, drawing blood was required for the letters to show. Annie was right, it felt a little like walking up that steep hill. It hurt, but it felt exhilarating at the same time. I carved the “o” and the “e.”

“I’m glad he has a short name,” I said.

Soon we were all doing it. Liz carved “Andy” into her ankle so she could cover it with a sock. Sara carved “Jason” into her arm.

It took weekly maintenance to keep the name from fading. I kept my own needle and rubbing alcohol, and a stash of cotton balls next to my bed for touch ups.

I would have been embarrassed if Joe or any other boy had ever seen his name carved into my arm, and I took elaborate steps to never let my mom or little brother see it. I wore long sleeves all summer, or covered the letters with band aids. It was a secret I shared only with my three friends. It made me feel close to them—literally wearing our hearts on our sleeves for each other.

Moody room

The room desires to deconstruct itself.
Collapse the furniture, crumble the walls,
slip off its roof. Let air fall into this space.
Let moonlight cast shadows,
and not just through the window.

But the rest of the house reaches out.
Every time the room sheds its paint,
the house pulls it back.

It feels good to be wanted, so essential a room.
A space that makes the house what it is.
It would be missed so, should it decide to leave.

Dawn to dusk!

The objective: walk a random route through Portland, stopping each hour to record location with a photo.

E. and I hatched this plan a few weeks ago, on another long walk around the Sellwood neighborhood. Both of us, as kids, used to just take off for the day on bikes or our own two feet, pedaling four hours down a bike path, or rambling down a country road. I used to like to head through town, out past the Knox Estate and its polo fields, past the seminary, all the way down Willardshire road to a small creek. It would take a few hours to get there. I'd eat a smooshed sandwich, wade a bit in the water, then start the trek back. No one ever asked where I was all day. I did this whenever I got bored with the long summer days.

We wanted to actually walk from dawn to dusk, but as it's summer and sunrise is about 5:00 AM, and sunset is about 9:30 PM, we thought that a bit ambitious. So we decided 9:30 AM was a good start time, and we'd just walk until we were too tired to continue.

9:20 AM. Leave from home base, about 42nd and Prescott.

10:20 AM. At the Ann Sacks distrubution center on NE 33rd. We're approaching the Columbia River at this point. Lots of industrial sites and distribution sites along this path. Also lots of cyclists in bright lycra heading up to Marine Drive. We spot rabbits dodging into the brush along the road, redwinged blackbirds diving into the tall grasses, and a red-tailed hawk hovering on the wind gusts, hunting for its next meal.














The Oregon Food Bank not only collects donated food for the hungry. They grow it too.














11:25 AM. Along the Columbia River. Sirrus clouds produce a Sundog over the Portland Airport. The clouds are pink, green, yellow.















12:20 PM. Approaching the Glenn Jackson Bridge. My feet are already feeling tired.














1:20. Lunchtime! At Jim Dandy on Sandy Blvd. Cruisin' on in!















They have a gazillion kinds of milkshakes, but I settle on chocolate, and a gardenburger to boot. It goes down fast. Tastes great. In retrospect, consuming all that dairy was not smart. Back on the path, the milkshake and my Fierce Melon Gatorade churned together in my gut with each step.

















2:28 at the entrance of Maywood Park, a city within the City of Portland. Maywood Park even has its own mayor.

3:20. As we passed this house, the opening notes from Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" came blaring out from one amped-up guitar. Then it stopped. E. and I burst into giggles.















3:45. We are so taking the Max.

4:05. IPA, chips and salsa at the Laurelwood Brewing Co. in the Hollywood district. We were still full from the milkshakes though.

Look closely.

5:30 PM. Almost back to home base. A full 15 miles, very sunburned legs, blisters on all ten toes, but worth it. Then I found these happy dudes in a box of free stuff!

Coming home

It's a common feeling for Portlanders...as the airplane makes its final descent, we watch out the window for Mt. Hood, the Columbia, the downtown skyline. If it's raining, we sigh contentedly. We're home.

Asheville, North Carolina is a nice city. But I'll take Portland any day. Eastern mountain hippies can't compare to Portland Zoobombers and clowns. Day 1 back in town and I was treated to the Multnomah County Bike Fair: bike jousting, chariot whiplash, general bike silliness, utilikilts, and fishnet stockings.

When's the last time you rode your bike?

On River Phoenix

I was thirteen and Stand By Me was my favorite move. Four young boys out on an adventure. It was everything I wanted my life to be. Out with friends, away from parents, telling stories, watching out for each other.

My stories emulated Stand By Me. I wrote my own version over and over again, inserting my own friends. Four girls walked the train tracks, spent nights in barns. Amy, Liz, Sara and me. A pack of girls out on our own, often meeting up with a pack of boys. Andy, Ben, Brent and Toby. But thinking about it, I was never truly satisfied with the stories I told. Liz would still get the cutest guy. She was prettier than the three of us. Amy would go off with anyone, and Sara and I would still be left to figure out what to do with the leftover boys. I couldn’t imagine it any way than it already was.

I should have written me in place of Wil Wheaton’s character, Gordy. That would have made me happy. Scratch that. I’d replace Corey Feldman’s Teddy so that it would be just be me out there with Chris Chambers, Gordy and Vern. I could have all three cute boys to myself.

Stand By Me meant more to me than Star Wars and Pretty in Pink combined. More than I wanted to be Princess Leia with Hans Solo, or Molly Ringwald with Andrew McCarthy, I wanted to be Chris Chambers, be his best friend, and be his girlfriend too. Sensitive, misunderstood kid, smart, a peacemaker. That was me! We’d have great conversations and really important stuff, and Chris would always understand what I was talking about.

I was thirteen, and a story about thirteen year old boys was too much for me to resist. The age when I wanted freedom, the chance to make my own decisions, not to have parents tell me what to do. To stay out all night. It seemed dangerous, enticing, romantic.

Funny—it makes me think my obsession with Stand By Me may have led to my eventual separation those my three best friends I so often wrote about. One day, I wrote a short note:

Dear Amy, Liz and Sara,
Goodbye.

I couldn’t put up with friends who weren’t like Chris and Gordy. Either they were the kind of friends they should be, or I wasn’t going to have them at all. And they weren’t. They were becoming more interested in sneaking cigarettes and beer, and getting in the back of skater vans with bad boys than they were in late night, important conversations that revealed truths and secrets. I felt like an outsider amongst my closest pals.

I remember a few months later writing another letter; this time, just to Liz. Her mom and my mom were friends, and word had gotten back to me that Liz was confused by my disassociation. I took out my copy of “The Body,” the short story that Stand By Me was based on, and copied a paragraph that seemed to say it all for me.

“The most important things are the hardest things to say,” it began. I sent this excerpt to Liz. But my mom told me a week or so later that she was still confused.

***

When I can’t sleep at night I turn my thoughts to River Phoenix. My vision of him is tall and lanky, a little like a scared animal. He wears a black t-shirt and jeans and converse all-star sneakers. A pony tail holds his blonde hair back from his face. His eyes look like they do in the movies, where he tried to make them hard, his posture tough, but the scared part of him always came through. Maybe that’s why people loved him? Why any actor gets labeled great? Who they are shows through the characters they play.

I watched the DVD extras for The Thing Called Love. Dressed in an oversized suit coat, he would not look at the camera. It frustrated me, made me want more from him. It made me dream about being the one to open him up.

I’d like to be his Mrs. Fickett. That rich woman from A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. She was so smartly dressed. She was the kind of woman with a boudoir. A penoir.

There’s the scene in the movie where she’s just seduced Jimmy, but he thinks he’s seduced her. Mrs. Fickett is in a white satin nightgown, fresh from a shower. She’s the most unafraid woman she’s ever met. As he exits the room, she collapses into giggles on the bed, utterly satisfied. Alive. Surprised at herself and how she’d never thought of this before. He was the kind of boy she’d never been able to get in high school. Now it was so easy. And it didn’t have to mean anything either.

That’s the thing about River. No matter where he is, he makes you imagine standing next to him. He illuminates your desires, gives you the chance to imagine how things could be.

I do remember when he died. It had been a couple of years since I’d really thought about River. My Own Private Idaho hadn’t spoken to me the way his other movies did, so I didn’t think much of it when I heard the news. Drug overdose. Heroin. Something. A fashionable night club, movie star shooting up in the bathroom, stumbling out and collapsing on the sidewalk, while other movie stars stood around and watched, secretly thinking, “Now I’ve got a lot less competition.”

It’s only now that I feel a loss, more than ten years later. Perhaps because nostalgia for my own youth makes me long for him again. I would have been nice to grow up together. But then again, maybe he’d be married and divorced a few times already, and he’d be dating supermodels and modern dancers.

Oh—but my fondness for that dreamy-eyed River, I want to imagine something better for him. An Olympian, perhaps. Graceful, strong and outdoorsy. A long braid down her back. The smell of hard work on her skin. Or maybe I’d pair the actor with the soul of a poet with a real poet. They’d move to a sun dappled glade in the woods to escape the prying public eye.

Maybe that’s me, that poet. Somewhere in heaven, River’s waiting for me. He stands at the gate with two chestnut horses. When I get there, we’ll ride together to the banks of a clear-running creek.

How interesting. At 13, I’d let my friends have the boys I wanted. Now, a lot like Mrs. Fickett, I’m not afraid to take the best one for myself.

No better place to be on a holiday weekend

What's happening to me?

I know, I know. The posts have been scanty lately.

Something strange is happening. Instead of writing little snippets--beginnings--I'm scrawling out page after page. And after I'm done with that, I think, "Hmmm. I need to write about this part next."

I'm not satisfied with the snippets anymore. I want to wait it out till it feels done. Get it down, then a little more, then go back, figure out what it all means, throw some of it out, rewrite some, then start all over again.

It's been good. I'm writing more than I ever have. It's a different kind of writing. It's less about the end product than a process of collecting. Letting it all drift in, piece by piece. Not so good for blog posts though.

I've been taking a memoir class with Ariel Gore. Some hip mamas will know her. Or if you live in PDX, you might have seen her name. She's a nice person, probably a good writer--she's published several books after all--but she's a crappy teacher. I almost dropped out of the class after the first session. The only redeeming quality of the class is that it forces me to write with a purpose every single week. I chose the "Looking at Old Photos" snippet, and I've worked on a section of it each week. Blowing out each story into four or five pages (always feeling like I could write more), until now I have four, semi-fleshed out chunks. And in the process, I've figured out what the overarching purpose is for the piece. Whew!

Already I'm thinking, "That second chunk isn't the right story to tell." It's a good story, but doesn't do anything to support the other three. So I have to rewrite that, then figure out how to better weave them together. It's weird...a year or so ago, I would have been antsy at this point to move on. Now, I just want to go back, write it again and again. I'm getting obsessive.

Hmm. What else? I've been reading a lot. Memoirs. Right now, I'm reading "World of Light" by Floyd Skloot. Reading his stuff teaches me more than sitting in a room with Ariel Gore for two hours each week. (And it's cheaper!) I've been thinking about starting to do book reviews, as a way to more "formally" teach myself about the craft of writing. Maybe I'll post them here.

In other news...some of you know that I got hit by a car while riding my bike. It's the reason I'm home this morning: I'm waiting for the insurance dude to drop off a check and pick up the crooked bicycle. I'M FINE, by the way. The accident happened about a month ago, and there's little sign of it on my body. Skin heals fast! But speaking of being antsy, the weather's been great here and I'm annoyed I don't have a bike to ride.

Miss Dixie comes to town

I drew two tarot cards.

“The first will tell me what this weekend will be like with Johnny, the second will tell me what to do about it,” I said to T.

Johnny is T’s old friend. They go way back. I was dreading his visit.

The first card was the ten of wands. Ten bars cross one another at harsh angles against an orange background. Fire. Malice. Ill will. Weathering a difficult situation.

I drew the next card and turned it over. It was the fool.

“That means you should roll with it,” T. laughed

“I was hoping to get one that said ‘run away,'” I grumbled.

I met Johnny for the first time almost ten years ago. T. and I were just starting to date. We drove down to Memphis to spend the weekend at Johnny’s place. I spent the weekend listening to the two of them talk computers, gaming. Johnny chain smoked cigarettes; his fingers were stained yellow from the tar. A visit to the bathroom made me wish I’d brought my flipflops and my own towel—dirt, soap scum, use tissues and q-tips, bristles of hair—this bathroom had never been cleaned. The toilet hadn’t even been flushed.

It was the weekend before Martin Luther King Jr. day, and the Klu Klux Klan was planning to march past hotel where the civil rights leader had been murdered. African-American leaders were planning a counter-march. The police were being called in to keep the peace. Johnny wanted to go. We parked several blocks away from the march route, and got out of the car with helicopters whirring over our heads. Every one was walking in the opposite direction we were. I heard some one say bullets were being fired.

“I’m not going any further,” I said, so Johnny and T. left me standing on the corner. That’s the thing about adventure-loving, Sagittarian T.—he loves the novelty that Johnny provides—there’s just no talking him out of going along with the wacky plan of the moment. In the end, not much happened. T. and Johnny didn’t see any rioting crowds, and my corer stayed quiet. But I couldn’t stop myself from crying the entire rest of the day, even after we’d left Memphis far behind.

About a year later, my relationship with T. in a more solid place, Johnny showed up in our little town in Illinois. He was helping two teenage runaways across the border—a Romeo and Juliet situation. T. took them to a hotel that night, but not before they’d checked their e-mail from his computer. The next morning, we were eating pancakes when there was a knock at the door. The police had traced them through the IP address to T’s house. I was asked to provide identification to prove I was not Juliet. The cops searched the house, asked T. some questions and left. I hoped Johnny would get caught and put in jail.

He didn’t. Instead he moved into our small town. And when we moved to Cleveland together, he followed us there. T. and I had too many arguments about the amount of time Johnny spent on our couch. It seemed that just about every weekend I’d wake up to find him in our living room. When we moved to Portland a year later, I was terrified he’d follow us yet again. Instead, he went to Vancouver, B.C., then back to Cleveland, and finally on to New Orleans, everywhere stirring up chaos. Marriages, divorces, fathering children, giving them up for adoption, getting hired, then getting fired. At one point, he called to say he was working at an S&M brothel. T. would relay new details after each time they’d talked, and I’d think, “What a train wreck. Thank god he’s not here.”

I tell you all this to give you some background about who Johnny is. Was. I don’t know how to ease into the next part. Maybe I shouldn’t try to ease, because when Johnny became Miss Dixie it was a pretty abrupt transition for me too.

Maybe the S&M brothel should have tipped me off. Or I should have put some of the other pieces together—Johnny’s leather and latex fetish? The kind of kinky stuff he’d allude to doing with his girlfriends? I don’t know. I can try to search for clues, but I think we’re trained to be oblivious to a boy signaling he really wants to be a girl. When T. told me Johnny was taking hormones and going by the name “Dixie,” I wasn’t exactly surprised, but I didn’t really expect it either.

I mean, I’m a former English grad student. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in gender theory, queer theory, feminist theory, psychoanalytic blah blah blah. Two points for you, Judy Butler. Gender is a performance, you say? I bought into Johnny’s performance, and performed right back, picking up on his masculine signifiers, perhaps passing over his feminine ones, and behaving the way a woman is supposed to behave toward a man.

And so now, Johnny…or Miss Dixie was on her way to our house, and I realized I didn’t know what to expect. How would he show up? As a she? Would he want me to call him “Dixie”? How should I act? What should I say? And oh yeah, I kind of didn’t like the original person too much, so I wasn’t so excited about this new person either. I braced myself.

I didn’t see Dixie until Sunday morning. She was supposed to arrive Friday night, but she missed her flight and had to fly stand-by. So she got into town late on Saturday, long after I’d gone to bed. I must have slept with my jaw tensed all night, because I woke up with a headache. I was making coffee when she appeared, scrambling to find her purse and answer her cell phone.

I expected her to look more like a woman. An awkward woman. I mean, Johnny was, after all, over six feet tall. He had big feet, and long arms and legs. He played goalie on his high school’s soccer team—his long reach was perfect for blocking shots. But Dixie was just a long-haired version of Johnny. Maybe she was wearing a wig? Her hair was red and purple, and looked stiff. Her makeup smeary from sleep. Cakey eyeliner, eye shadow and clumpy mascara. She wore women’s jeans, and a striped v-neck sweater that wasn’t exactly feminine, but nothing a man would wear. Her purse a bad Gucci knock-off—a patchwork of logos, black leather and a silver studded shoulder strap. She was a bad imitation too.

She was nervous. A scared, awkward deer. I offered her coffee.

“Thanks. And it’s even French press,” she whispered in a weird, conciliatory way, then skittered into the back room where her cell phone was ringing again.

T. got up and we made breakfast. He’d already spent some time with Dixie, since he picked her up at the airport. I was so impressed—he wasn’t phased at all. Dixie’s just an old friend as far as he let on, and we sat around the table listening to stories about New Orleans, hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. She loved the city, but left it to go back to Vancouver, B.C. There’s too much poverty, too much crime in New Orleans. It’s not a safe place for Dixie to be. She told us “lagniappe,” isn’t something good, like I thought. It’s not a little something extra for free, at least any more. It’s more like those guys in New York who wash your windshield while you’re sitting at the traffic light, and want you to pay even though you didn’t even want them to do the job. Everyone in New Orleans expects a tip, a handout, she said. Nothing is for free. Nothing is done just to be nice.

Before she left Louisiana, the FBI shook Dixie down. They discovered one of her “business cards” in the pocket of a dead man. He’d been shot twice in the back. I didn’t ask what line of business Dixie was in. I already knew she’d joined the oldest profession in the world. I’d never considered that profession would require business cards.

I didn’t know how to address her, feeling too bold to come out and say her name. I just said things like, “Would you like more coffee?” “How was your flight?” playing the ambiguous pronoun game to save me from offending. I’m sure it didn’t give me cover—she knew what I was doing for sure. She even seemed nervous about it. She said the last time she was home, she didn’t go see an old friend because she didn’t think he could deal.

“You know, because I’m a girl now,” she added, almost in an unsure tone. Maybe she was testing us out. Seeing how we’d react. It must have been be weird for her too.

She told us a story about a really attractive girl she once knew. The world seemed to bend around this girl—people acted differently around her. She could have anything she wanted. Dixie’s goal was to be just like the girl. She wanted that kind of attention. She was going tanning, doing yoga, had created a whole maintenance routine.

“You judge your own progress by looking in the mirror,” she explained. Yeah, that is kind of what it’s like to be a woman, I thought.

As I sat there, I felt she was a spinning top, flashing a separate possible identity on each side as she whirred around. She said she’ll infiltrate the lesbian crowd in Vancouver. That’s where she’s found the most acceptance so far. Gay men don’t like her. Lesbian women seem to have a “you go girl” attitude. But honestly, I don’t know where she’ll easily fit in. I was a little sad, because for the first time I realized that all of Johnny’s chaos, his moving from city to city, and now this identity crisis is just an attempt to find a home. Dixie’s a spinning top that’s longing to come to a standstill. After the hormones, the surgeries she’s talking about, will she be able to stop spinning?

I remembered a prediction I made years ago: Johnny’d end up an old man, still wandering around, couch surfing, relying on the others to help him out, give him a few bucks, put up with his shit. And the older he got, the less patient he’d find people to be. People may put up with a teenager crashing on their couch, but feel less generous toward a middle-aged man. (Dixie’s already lying about her age.) But I took little pleasure in being correct. It was not a schadenfreude moment.

She sorted through her luggage—four footlockers worth of crap—deciding what to take, what to leave behind with us. She planned on telling the customs police that she was vacationing in Canada, so she couldn’t take everything with her. Four footlockers would have screamed “illegal alien.”

Her boyfriend came to pick her up. A Shell Oil executive from Houston. I don’t know why he was in Portland, how long he was planning to stay with Dixie. Once again, if this part of the story seems to come out of nowhere for you, just know it did for me too. All of a sudden a purple Chevy pulled up in our driveway. A 55-year old man with a gray beard got out. Refered to her as “Dix.” Said he was happy to see “her” without a hitch. Gave her a silver ring. I think he's the one who is going to pay for those surgeries. At least the breast implants. I wondered how would they describe their relationship? Dixie was a woman with male parts. Is it homosexual? Heterosexual? Maybe there’s another word? Maybe there’s no word.

Those tarot cards were right on. I really was the fool.

Here's a new piece I'm working on

I haven't been posting much lately. Mostly because I've been working on some longer pieces. Actually revising and finishing pieces! (And sending them out to journals so editors can reject them.) But here's a first draft of something I'm calling "A Cliché" for now. Some of you might read the completed piece in Praxis next year.

I noticed the honeybee on the lip of our water barrel. Water had caught in the lid of the barrel, and the bee was resting on its edge, sipping water through its proboscis. This feeding tube was thicker than I’d ever imagined and red too. He balanced and drank for a long time. Two of his relatives had come to drink before him—but had perhaps stayed too long—sipped too much. Their furry little bodies lay at the bottom of the water. This bee didn’t seem to notice his kin had drowned.

That’s one thing you have to do when you start a hive: provide a water source. Bees collect water like they collect nectar and bring it back to the hive. I’d purchased a cement birdbath for the purpose; one with a lovely Celtic design at its pedestal base, but hardly ever saw bees drinking there. It seemed they preferred my water barrel instead, or sometimes I’ve seen them congregating on the damp garden soil after I’ve watered.

We’ve had three hives in the last three years. The first, a European breed, lasted through the winter, which is good, because the second year is when you can begin harvesting honey. They died going into the second winter from a mite infestation. We brought in more bees, a Russian strain this time, and started a new hive in a different part of the yard.

The old hive, a tomb of dead, moldering honeybees, and slowly crystallizing honey sat dormant, but soon attracted attention. I noticed a few rogue bees hovering around the outside of the hive one morning last May. I later learned these were scouts on the lookout for new quarters. Later that day, I returned from a trip to the garden center to a swarm of bees at the back of the house. Thousands of bees swirled in the air. A beard of bees clung to the side of the old hive. I ran into the house and made sure the windows were closed tight, then called our beekeeper friend.

“There’s a swarm of bees at the back of my house!”

“That’s fabulous!” he said. I was confused. I thought this news would cause him to panic too. Instead, he was delighted.

“Don’t worry, when they’re swarming, it’s like they’re drunk. They’re completely docile. They’ll calm down in about a half-hour.”

And they did. These new bees were pioneers. They had set off from a neighboring hive in search of new territory. What better place than an old hive, already set up for all their needs. They swept out the carcasses of the dead bees, and made it a home. It was insect ingeniousness that they could sniff out a new hive, and fly all the way to my house. Nature is so smart.

And so, for a summer, we had two hives. A Russian one, and who know where the squatters came from, each zooming around the neighborhood, keeping the plants pollinated and producing fruit. A bee’s territory has a radius of about three miles. I imagined my bees up on Mt. Tabor, then buzzing by the hive on their way over to Mt. Scott. I felt protective. I wanted them all to return home safely at the end of the day.

Honeybees need their entire first year’s honey as a food store over their first winter. It’s only after that they make more than they need, and you can begin to collect it. So we’ve only harvested honey once so far. I’m not sure if it truly tasted better, or if it was because I understood all of the work that went into it. Our beekeeper friend came over and suited up in a pair of white coveralls, tucked them into his boots, placed rubber bands around his sleeves, and shoved his hands into thick, protective gloves. He lit a few cedar chips on fire for the smoker, and pumped the bellows to produce a few puffs of gray smoke. Once the bees were sedated, he lifted the top off the hive, and inspected the supers—the layers of the hive above the brood chamber—for honey. He pulled out several frames dripping with amber sap, brushed any lingering bees away, and packed the honeycomb away in plastic bins.

He came back a week later with two quart jars of honey. I took a spoonful and placed it on my tongue. Flowers! I could taste flowers…millions of them! I’d always known honey was made from flower nectar, but it wasn’t until I actually observed the process, step by step, that I truly tasted the connection.

Visitors seem squeamish when we tell them we share our yard with 14,000 honey bees. But I’ve grown comfortable with them. I hardly notice they’re around unless it’s a warm day and they spill out into a cone to fan the hive. The bees exit through a small hole and shoot up and over the laurel hedge—up 12 or more feet and out of the yard.

About a year or so after getting the first bees, a man showed up at our front doorstep. He was from the Oregon Department of Wildlife. He wanted to know if we had a beekeeping permit. We didn’t. Luckily, he was an easygoing Portlander, so he told us we could file the paperwork within the next six months.

Part of getting the permit meant getting the approval of all our neighbors with a certain proximity—several homes across the street, houses on either side of us, houses behind us. We geared up to walk door to door, and I imagined encountering fear. Overly protective parents, frightened elderly people, zealous home owners afraid of bees in their rafters.

Most of the neighbors were excited to hear there was a bee hive in the neighborhood. The old lady across the street has once kept bees herself. One made looked forward to their effect on his fruit trees. Several people just wanted to help us “resist the man.” It turned out to be a great way to get to know our neighbors, including the man who greeted us, “Yes, I AM a medical marijuana cardholder, and NO, you can’t have any!” then invited us in.

Bees are dying, you know—pollution, mites, pesticides. They are dying in great masses. This means plants flower but produce little fruit. This means we could all be in very big trouble. And so I guess I feel like I’m doing a good thing for the world, regardless of what my neighbors think. I watch the bees resting motionless on the leaves of a tomatillo plant, drunk on nectar (and let me tell you—tomatillos must have some good nectar because the bees always seem to get stuck there. It’s like a college quad them morning after a huge frat party, littered with inebriated bodies.) and somehow feel connected to the whole world.

It’s a strange thing to care for a creature that either does not recognize your existence, or views you as a threat. I will not get the love back from a honeybee that I will get from my dog. We cannot share an emotional bond, so instead we will share a practical one and provide each other with something we need. Food. Shelter.

Respect is what I have for them, more than love, I guess. I’ve taken the time to learn about them. I know I must wear light clothing and keep my breathing even and calm when I must get near their hive. Centuries-worth of honey stealing by snuffling, snorting black bears has made honeybees quick to anger at the color black and the presence of exhaled carbon-dioxide. I notice them—notice when they get active in spring, notice to birds who hop close to feast on the dead bees that have been pushed from the hive, notice when the hive seems to be weakening from illness.

Birds and bees. It’s an age-old cliché. They’re the story of life. We humans are so far removed from it that we forget how true the cliché really is. New brood is born, and then they die, and in between they create life all over the earth. This is the only thing that stays the same.

Continuing to look at old photos

If you'd like to see some of the photos I've been writing about, I've posted them.

Looking at old photos

Looking at old photos, take two

Still looking at old photos

Here's Uncle Floyd and Aunt Lois, bathing in the St. Mary's River. That's where we took most of our baths, since there was only one shower for 15 people. We took our floating Ivory bar of soap, and Prell shampoo out to the river, and watched the suds float downstream.

I loved Auntie Lois. She always had a bowl of candy ready for me--smooth, egg-shaped mints, celophane-wrapped sour balls. But Uncle Floyd scared me a little. Maybe it was his laugh, which was half sly chuckle, half whistle. We did have something in common though: we were both swimmers, and each summer I would show him how fast my butterfly had gotten.

This week, I learned that Floyd died in Hurricane Katrina, and it took several weeks to locate his body.

Pay attention?

What does it mean when I hear a woman read a piece about her march on a nuclear test site, where she notices the beauty of the desert, recounts that the land once belonged to the Shoshone, speaks of the power of walking over land that no one ever gets to walk over because it's surrounded by barbed-wire fence...and then the very same day see Ali-G do a skit about marching on a nuclear test site, located on land that once belonged to the Shoshone? Should I pay attention to that odd coincidence? It's Ali-G for goodness sake. Is the universe trying to tell me something via Ali-G?

What does it mean that S. has a dream he's at the zoo, where there's three William DeFoes all wearing hats, who then proceed to turn into our relatives...and then in real, waking life, gets a call from one of those relatives, the very next day?

Now, if we find out that our relatives want us to go protest a nuclear test site, that's really going to be weird.

Getting the bird out*

There is a little bird where my heart should be.
Sweet little thing, but it's killing me.
Tiny bird with fragile wings,
it can't fly out, it's tied by a string,
sitting in my ribcage, trying to sing.

It's quite a dilemma for me.
I'm always dizzy,
pins and needles in my hands and feet.
I've got to get it out, but it's so sweet.
My life or it's life, I can't decide.
I wish my chest would open wide
enough for my heart to beat
and the bird to sing.
But it's the bird or me,
or we both might die.
So little bird--goodbye.


*I saw a Kiki Smith installation at the Whitney a few weeks ago. This poem was inspired by one of her works of the same title.

Still looking at old photos

Aunt Leslie is drunk and sprawled out in the rocking chair--laughing--about to pee her pants it's so funny--her patchwork pants. She's got blue keds on her feet, the left foot is pushed out in front of her like a forgotten part of her body. The beers made her leave it behind.

In another photo, Uncle John sits alone on the couch, drinking a stubbie and smoking a cigarette.

Maybe the two photos were taken just moments apart. I know that the rocking chair is just across the room from the couch. Though they sat there together, the camera could only capture them apart.

I am always moved by how young they look. Uncle John wears black socks, scuffed shoes. He looks like one of my friends. Aunt Leslie has long hair, wears little jewelery. She's a plain girl who likes to have a little fun.

My memory of them is different. So one sided. Gruff Uncle John--we weren't supposed to bother him. Aunt Leslie was tough. She took no bullshit. In the photos they are vulnerable, young, alive. I wonder if they remember those people?

Do they remember that linoleum? Red, black and blue overlapping geometric shapes. Do they still smell the knotty pine the whole cottage was built with? Do they trace the walking paths in their minds? From Aunt Lois' place to Grandma's? From the old dock to the new one? How do they walk back through their lives?

My photo daydream is interrupted by sounds from the kitchen. It's the mouse trap. A mouse is caught in the trap. Squeals for life. Loses life.

Maybe that's what's bothering me about these photos. They all feel like the instant before entering the mousetrap. The next moment the hinge comes down, and everything is fixed in place. But in these photos, they're not taking the bait. Everything is left open.

At least my list is only a set of crossed out lines...

I recently read a study that people who make piles are more creative than people who make files. That some randomness in the disordered order actually has meaning and function. Those far-too-organized, Tupperware-bin-loving, file-folder-hanging, Steven Covey disciples are actually the boring freaks you always knew they were anyway.

This news gave me comfort about how I live my life. My desk at work is littered with scribbled-upon papers. My car always full of clothes to be delivered to Value Village, books to be returned, water bottles, barrettes, chapsticks, receipts and all the other detritus of car travel.

At home, I pile unread mail, bills to be paid, reminders from the vet to take the cat in for her rabies shot, Jiffy Lube coupons and anything else that comes through the mail slot into a big basket. Sometimes, if it gets too full, Bela the paper-obsessed Labrador retriever steals whatever is on top and shreds it into pieces on the living room rug. If I spot her in the act, I make her bring it to me and say, "Thank you!" as if she were doing me a big favor. I don't know if it's discouraging her or not.

I try to make lists: dry cleaning, new tires, look for a low bookshelf, buy b-day present, open savings account. I do half the list--the things I can do on the way to Powell's or Portland Nursery--and I throw the rest away. You know, I never have to make a list of things to do in the garden. Don't need to. Never have to make a list of things I want to write someday, dreams I want to have, music I want to hear. There those things are--they present themselves--line up for me to wander past and notice. Weed this patch, clip that back, sew new seed, water, search for pests, harvest fruit. It's all there like one instinctual mnemonic device. It's so embedded it comes naturally.

Do you remember when you didn't have to remember anything? How seconds stretched out? When you had no idea the difference between a month and a moment because they sounded an awful lot alike anyway?

Piles. Just put it down and I'll take care of it. Don't move it or I'll forget all about it. Don't move it or it will have never existed.

Chinese herbs

Chinese herbs taste like compost tea. The arrive in compact, brown paper packets, and their aroma invades the house immediately. Pungent. A bit sweet underneath. Like worm casings.

I dump the contents of the packet into a pot--twigs, dried fungus, seed pods--a dried and dessicated forest floor. I add water and soak the mix, and boil the contents into a dark, brown liquid, then strain the solid matter out and divide the tea into two strong doses.

The first day, I was depressed with each sip. "I have to drink this crap twice a day?" I was a four year-old faced with a plate full of mushy peas. I held my nose, made gagging noises each time I swallowed. This is ass tea. This is dog coffee. Cigarette butts, mud water, graveyard earth, battery acid.

The fifth day and I could taste more. Licorice, maybe? Still bitter, still earthy fungus, but somehow healing. The tea fills me up and satisfies my hunger. Surprisingly there are no more nighttime cereal raids, no wine binges, no need for second helpings.

There is power in continuing to do something you believe you cannot continue to do. There is power in running one more block, in getting up early each day to write, in drinking bitter, brown liquid every morning and night.

Maybe the tea makes my life better? Every moment I am not drinking it is a gift. I am taking out the trash, but not drinking tea! I am washing my face and flossing my teeth, how glorious! How precious--this moment before I have to take another sip. How enjoyable--this row of knitting before I force myself to drink again.