Tchotchka Palace

100 haiku challenge, 32

2012-01-24T20:34:00.001-08:00

#32
My dog smells like this:
Salty, warm, like untouched earth.
Soothes the stress away.

I am

2012-01-20T22:05:00.000-08:00

I am a creative leader who lives to share ideas and new approaches.

I'm supposed to say that to myself 100 times a day. It's the exercise this month for my leadership workshop. It's supposed to help me shift my personal paradigm.

I won't get into what exactly that all means, but what I do want to share is this powerful insight I had this morning as I was driving to work. I don't know if my 100-times-a-day saying had anything to do with its arrival, but I think having it in the mix in my head might have helped.

I was cruising along listening to that song by John Lennon's son, Julian, thinking about how much it reminded me of these three guys I went to high school with. They were music fanatics. They all played several instruments, did whatever they could to play, whenever they could, wrote their own music. These were the guys at the party who sat and played the piano and sang harmony while everyone else was playing quarters and getting smashed. They were passionate about music.

And then I thought about myself in contrast. I was in band. I played the oboe, and I liked it, but I was mediocre at best. I rarely practiced. I thought being in band was fun, but I never dedicated myself to being excellent at music.

And then here's what I thought: "But that's because my mom wanted me to play the oboe." And that's when I stopped. Holy crap.

See, for a long time, I've had this story about myself. I'm a renaissance woman. I'm good at many things. But I don't really have the passion and determination that some people do to focus and be great at one thing. It's the excuse I gave myself when I left grad school. It's the reason I give myself about why it's so hard for me to get writing done. I like too many things. I get distracted by gardening, or running.

Some of those things I am truly passionate about. But how many of those things am I doing because I feel like I should do them, rather than because I love to do them? Am I really a renaissance woman, or am I just copping out? If I go to the places where I'm naturally drawn, and give myself permission to leave those other places behind, then what can I accomplish?

100 haiku challenge, 30 and 31

2012-01-16T23:17:00.000-08:00

I composed and recomposed this one several times in my head while I walked Bela tonight. Here are two of them.

#30
We must remember:
at the end of this tunnel,
there are daffodils.

#31
January grey.
I brighten at the thought of
daffodils waking.

My most popular blog post

2012-01-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

I was amused to see that this is my most popular blog post ever, when reviewing my site stats the other day. I suspect most people stumble upon it when they are actually looking for advice about taking multiple birth control pills at the same time.

I have to say, re-reading it, I'm rather intrigued about what happens next.

100 haiku challenge, 29

2012-01-11T21:54:00.000-08:00

I have no idea why this one showed up. But here it is.

#29
Babar goes to space.
His bed: pillows in a pool.
Still my fantasy.

100 haiku challenge, 28

2012-01-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

#28
Freshly cut doug fir.
The scent, surprisingly sweet.
Oregon's perfume.

Rearranging the furniture (part 2)

2012-01-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

I thought everyone rearranged the furniture frequently until I met Tony, the man who is now my husband. His experience growing up could not have been more different.

When his mom and dad moved into their first (and only) house, they picked out their furniture, moved it into place and there it stayed. They chose a heavy Spanish-style living room set, a low couch in olive green chenille, which faced two squat chairs upholstered in blue stripes.

The first time I visited Tony’s childhood home, I noticed they were in mint condition despite the fact they were more than 30 years old. “That’s because no one was allowed to sit on them,” he told me.

“Not even your mom and dad?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Not even when company came over?” I couldn’t believe it.

“We didn’t have company,” he said.

It wasn’t just the living room. The family room still had orange shag carpet, and you could see the deep impressions the ancient plaid sofa had left from years of pressing down the pile. Tony and his younger brother’s bedrooms were both decked in orange and brown—twin beds, a small wooden desk for doing homework, a dresser each. The only difference was that his brother had a few posters tacked to the wall. Charles Barkley. Shaquille O’Neil. “He got away with more than I did,” Tony explained.

I think it’s this difference in how we grew up—the fact that in his house, nothing ever moved, and in mine, everything was always in motion—that explains how we react to change. Tony is immediately suspicious, on alert for risk, while I am thinking of the possibilities. I am a daydreamer, ready to fantasize about a month’s vacation in Italy or Australia, and Tony rarely plans a long weekend away.

Once, I told him, “Tone, I want to quit my job and write a book!” That didn’t go over well.

I have learned that any change, even something as insignificant as rearranging the furniture (you can always put it back, after all) will take serious convincing on my part. Perhaps this is why for more than three years, my living room was configured in a such a way that it annoyed me every time I set foot in there.

I was four months pregnant when we moved in, and I can only guess that I was tired, or distracted, but I must have left the living room set up in Tony’s hands and taken a nap instead. True to his techno-geek, audiophile nature, he chose to place the stereo where any reasonable person would put the couch. Oh, he had his reasons. Acoustics, room resonance modes, blah, blah. But the result was that the couch had to be pushed to one side of the room or the other, totally off balance and not taking advantage of the fire place as the room’s focal point. You cannot, as you know, sit on the stereo and gaze at the fire.

Three years of sitting in that room wondering “Why the hell is stereo in the middle of the room?” feeling like every time we had friends over, they would sit on the couch at one end of the room, and we’d shout at them all the way from the chairs at other end.

So today, I just couldn’t stand it, and announced that we’d be moving the furniture into a configuration that works for me, either with his help and agreement, or if not—I’d just do it myself one day when he was out. And I must have had a little bit of crazy in my eyes because he didn’t even try to resist.

And now, with the couch across from the fireplace, a comfortable, yet close cluster of chairs to encourage conversation, and the stereo in a more appropriate place, I am satisfied, in fact, gleeful with the change. It is like a weight has been lifted from my soul and I wonder if this is how my mom felt after she’d reordered the living room furniture again.

Light.

Free.

Like the change had suddenly opened possibilities that had never been there before. She could see them now and she could go after her dreams, with the couch pointed in the right direction.

Rearranging the furniture

2012-01-02T21:41:00.000-08:00

Growing, up, my mother rearranged the furniture at least every six months.

Not every room. The kitchen, for example, was too small for anything but a small table pushed against the one wall without a counter. Or the dining room with windows on two sides and doors on the others meant the glossy, Ethan Allen table must sit in the center of the room.

But the living room provided my mother with a seemingly endless set of combinations. Sometimes, she pushed the couch against the west wall, sometimes the south, or sometimes she pulled it out to the middle of the room to face the two wing-back chairs, forming a seating area that floated away from the walls.

Her bedroom too. She'd push her bed flush against the wall one month, only to pull it out at an angle from the corner the next.

I hated it. Not that she moved the furniture, but that she often enlisted me. "Just help me swing the couch around," she'd say. Which meant then repositioning the coffee table and end tables, which meant clearing them of lamps and knick-knacks first, then giving them a good polish with some Endust and a rag before putting it all back together. But if I didn't help her, my mom--all five-foot four of her--would just end up pushing things around herself and throwing out her back.

Clearly, rearranging the furniture was something that energized her. She'd stand back to examine the space like a painter inspecting her canvas, then move in with quick, decisive steps. My mom was a master at spatial relationships. She could eyeball any nook, no problem, as tell you if that desk would fit.

For my mom, a single mother of two, who was going to school full time, working a part time job and keeping a house running--I think rearranging the furniture was her version of a vacation. She couldn't afford a week in Hilton Head, but she could change the scenery just by changing the position of the couch. I suppose it was when she was feeling most low--her most lonely, unhappy moments--that was when she got the urge to rearrange.

When I moved out on my own, I carried my mother's restlessness with me. I moved into an old farmhouse that had been converted into apartments. I had one half of the first floor, three rooms all in a row, shotgun-style, from the front to the back of the house. The kitchen was at the rear. I not only moved the furniture around several times during the two years I lived there, but switched my bedroom and living room between the middle and front rooms and back again at least once or twice. No matter how I arranged things, the setup just didn't feel right! It made sense to have the living room in the middle. That way if I had guests they didn't have to tromp through my bedroom to get to the bathroom or kitchen. But having my bedroom in the front was unsettling, since I was sleeping next to the front door.

I thought everyone rearranged the furniture frequently until I met Tony, the man who is now my husband.

(To be continued...)

100 haiku challenge, 25, 26, 27

2011-12-31T14:39:00.000-08:00

#25
Go, Diego, Go!
Vamos Diego, vamos Diego!
Immortal earworm.

#26
It's dark and quiet.
Early morning, New Year's eve.
Much to put to bed.

#27
Christmas lights come down.
Nights are just dark and cold now.
January dull.

100 haiku challenge, 23 and 24

2011-12-29T04:48:00.000-08:00

#23
We watch the wind blow
puddles into running streams.
A northwest pastime.

#24
Perhaps not, because
of your [dog] friend, she said, but
have you seen my cat?

I like #23 a lot. It came to me one blustery, winter day when D and I headed outside despite the crappy weather and headed to the covered basketball court at the local school. We brought along a basketball and scooter, but found ourselves most entertained by the wind and the water working their way across the blacktop.

What I really enjoy about this challenge, is that it forces me to treat the poems like a photographer treats the photo. Just keep snapping frames, and eventually you'll get a winner. Don't worry about the ones where the composition's not quite right.

100 haiku challenge, 19, 20, 21, 22

2011-12-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

#19
As long as the cat
is happy, he said. I laughed.
He rolled his eyes, sighed.

#20
Cross the I-5 bridge.
Red tail-lights blur in an arc
past a man on bike.

#21
My little one rides
a blue bicycle, followed by
Dad, scooting fast.

#22
Christmas day makes me
want to do something crazy
like move to Pittsburg.

100 haiku challenge, 16 , 17, 18

2011-12-18T12:49:00.000-08:00

#16
My boy pouts and says,
Daddy, can we make fire?
Drags the logs inside.

#17
Drinking hot tea while
talking about coffee is
a fine thing to do.

#18
Dear friend, exactly
what are you waiting for if
this is all you've got?

100 haiku challenge, 13, 14, 15

2011-12-10T14:05:00.000-08:00

#13
String of Christmas lights
Glows bright in the winter night.
Glitter, flash, twinkle.

#14
I dreamed of a horse
covered--buried in deep snow
surfacing, dancing.

#15
Thank you for the tips
is something my husband says
all the goddamn time.

100 haiku challenge, 11 and 12

2011-12-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

I've enjoyed just listening and finding haikus--as I listen to NPR, to two people talking in the grocery store, or in the case of #10, to something D. was repeating one evening.

#10
This is a red light.
This light is a yellow light.
This is a green light.

#11
The dog hair drifts down
falling like an autumn leaf.
I sweep it again.

100 haiku challenge, 10

2011-12-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

Advent calendar.
We are not even Christian.
We eat the chocolate.

100 haiku challenge, 8 and 9

2011-12-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

I composed these while sitting with D in our local pizza place. I had one of those little stubby pencils from IKEA in my purse, and used the back of a deposit slip to write these down. I realize I'm not being very traditional, (or sometimes, very coherent) with these.

#8
The smokestack spews black.
Factory on the river.
Paper, scissors, rock.

#9
Number two pencil
scrawls on the back of a check.
Subtotal, nine haikus.

100 haiku challenge, 4, 5, 6, 7

2011-11-26T14:57:00.000-08:00

#4
Thanksgiving dinner
is now just a precursor
to Black Friday. Thanks.

#5
Sunrise. Coffee cup.
Steaming. Lift the cup. Inhale.
Sip. My eyes open.

#6
Figs cling to branches.
No leaves for hiding green knots.
A bird's autumn feast.

#7
Five, seven, five is
both much too long and too short
to say anything.

100 haiku challenge, #2 and #3

2011-11-22T05:18:00.000-08:00

#2
This moment. Right now.
It's the only thing we have.
Raindrops on rooftops.

#3
Tony's MRI
Showed nothing problematic.
He scratches his head.

100 haiku challenge, #1

2011-11-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

I'm taking the 100 haiku challenge. One hundred haikius in 100 days (more or less). Here's my first.

Insomnia. Fuck.
Four AM and I'm awake.
A cat yeowls outside.

What now?

2011-10-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

So Friday was cathartic. I left the leadership session feeling cleansed of all my impurities. Clear headed and strong hearted. Saturday was good. But on Sunday, the old anxieties crept back. I felt like the day was not my own. It belonged to D, the house, work that needed to get done before Monday. By 9 am I just wanted to get away. I fled to the shower. Afterward, I sat on the bathroom floor and meditated. Just for like 5 minutes. Did it help? I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe it was getting out of the house and going to the park with D that did it. Either way, I was able to chill out and just take the day as it came.

I'm supposed to do this meditating thing for 30 minutes every day. As I sit there, my mind races. I try to calm it by bringing it back to the now. Tonight, I kept asking, "what now?" and something answered, "go write in your blog." So I did.

If all of this isn't too woo-woo for you, here's something else I've been thinking lately. My house has bad feng shui. It's because of the super tall, skinny house next door. It over-shadows our house and blocks the light. And it's so close (literally about 5 feet away) that it feels oppressive. If my house were a person, it would be unable to turn its head, doomed to look forward forever. Do I need to get over myself, or move?

Perhaps another symptom that I'm on the crazy train (or having a mid-life crisis) is that I ordered two books by Eckhard Tolle.

So glad I have this blog!

2011-10-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

I was just scrolling through old entries, laughing at myself, remembering how it felt to be a new mom, and just generally feeling so glad I took the time to write down some of my thoughts and feelings.

Why don't I write here more often? It's so good for me.

Well, so I don't just leave it at that, I'll talk about today. Or maybe I'll start with yesterday, which was like just about every other work day where I run from meeting to meeting, try to keep up with the dozens of emails I get each day in between, run home to spend a little time with D before he crashes, and then work some more. I'm seriously depleted, friends. If you haven't heard from me, this is why.

I know it's not sustainable. For the first time in my life I've found myself questioning whether I am depressed (I kind of think I am) and need drugs. I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love like it is medicine. I crave silence, stillness, peace, solitude. I've been substituting beer, wine, sugar, and coffee.

But today, I didn't go into the office. Instead I went to the first session of a year-long leadership program. My company is paying for me to go. Normally, a business-y "leadership" thing would sound bad. But this wasn't bad at all. It felt a little like therapy. We meditated. We talked about our hearts. I went in feeling all knotted up on my shoulders and left feeling fairly normal.

Tonight I was searching this blog for a poem or photo that defines the essence of me. It's homework for our second session tomorrow. Here's what I've landed on. What do you think? Is this what you think of, when you think of me?

Something new

2010-03-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Julie felt the air change as soon as she drove over the fill—the land bridge that separated the mainland from the island. There were the fisherman, casting off its rocky sides. As if she’d gone away all this time and they’d just stayed here fishing.

She made the familiar turns, off the wider unmarked gravel road on to the dirt road where the pines crowded in. There was just enough traffic here to keep the track from growing over. She remembered plenty of times as a child where her father would have to stop the car and drag a fallen tree limb out of the way before they could make their way through. Finally, she turned the car down the long driveway that ended at the cottage. It appeared before she was quite ready—she remembered it taking so much longer.

As she parked the car and turned off the ignition, she found her heart pounding. She was here again, finally. And though she’d tried to prepare herself during long drive for the way things might have changed, she was unnerved to see it largely the same as ever.

The line of trees that used to separate the cottage from the river had been cleared, but other than that, there was the small wooden stoop where she used to leave peanuts for the chipmunks, the outhouse about 20 paces from the back door where the clearing met the woods. Here was the silty earth that absorbed her step underneath her feet.

Julie smoothed her dirty blond hair with her hand.

“Grandma?” she called through the screen door. She knocked softly, which felt a little odd. As a girl, she would have flung it open and run inside to find her grandparents, no matter whether they were in the bedroom or kitchen.

She saw the woman emerge from around the corner. Her gray hair was still cropped close, she still wore the elegant pendant earrings that most women would wear only on a special occasion.

Julie had to lean down to embrace her. The last time she’d seen her grandmother, she barely reached her shoulder. Now she towered over the woman.

“I move a little slower now, you can see,” her grandmother laughed, her warm voice a little rougher than she recalled.

“It’s been a long time,” Julie said. “But you know, this place looks almost the same.”

Her grandmother showed her around the tiny cottage, pointing out what was new. The floor had been replaced with new, shiny linoleum. There was a new sofa in the sitting room and a different table and chairs, but that was it.

“You can sleep here,” her grandmother said when they entered the bedroom.

“Oh, I wouldn’t feel right about that.”

“No, no.” The woman countered. “Half the time, I just fall asleep on the sofa anyway. It’s pretty comfortable, you know.”

Julie remembered her doing the same for her parents. Her grandma and grandpa would sleep on the pull out couch in the sitting room, which meant that she got to sleep on the floor next to them. She’d often fall asleep to the sound of her grandfather snoring, mixed in with the calling of the frogs outside.

Her grandmother left her alone to unpack. Julie could hear her fixing lunch through the thin curtain that served as a door. She sat on the bed and looked out the window toward the river. As a girl, the first thing she would do was head down to the dock with a crust of bread to feed the seagulls and dip her feet in the water. She’d wait until the second day to swim—like getting reacquainted with river required a slow approach.

She loved that river, and now instead of a vision in her head, it was real and right before her eyes. She realized how many times she’s relied on her memory of it over the years she’d been away. This is the place she’d some in her mind, when she needed to feel calm.

She would often say the names of the places and things here, like a sort of noun therapy. Swimming rock. Puddingstone. Bruce Mines. This was her place, her heritage—the cottage was built by her great grandfather, it was the place where her father had spent his summer boyhood, jumping into the lake, climbing the rocks. It was the place where her parents had honeymooned where they were young and penniless.

It has all been taken from her. She’d spent these past years like an exile from her homeland, thinking of the place, going over the landscape in her memory, daydreaming of the sound of the gulls, the slap of the water against the hull of a boat, the feel of the worn dock underneath her bare feet. In the absence of her parents, this place would have provided a connection, a link.

Julie shook her head. She’d never even been invited. A flicker of anger lept up in her.

As a teenager, her grandmother was prompt with birthday cards and Christmas gifts. She sent the occasional letter. But Julie had learned to stop expecting an invitation to visit here.

Finally, all grown up and out on her own, she stopped waiting and resolved to take matters into her own hands. She smiled to herself, wondering how her grandmother must have reacted to her letter. It was bold, she knew that. But she was tired of waiting for the woman’s permission.

She’d just quit her job—a 70 to 80-hour a week sales job that kept her on the road, away from her fiancé, James. She’d just walked in one day, handed her resignation to her boss, and walked back out, high on the adrenaline she’d needed to be so daring.
That night, she and James cooked a big dinner and opened a bottle of wine to celebrate her new-found freedom. Never mind she was going to be eating away they the money she’d saved for their honeymoon.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asked her.

Before she could even stop herself, the words came falling out.

“What I really want to do is go to Pine Island.” And there it was. So Julie had written her grandmother the next day.

This is now

2010-01-18T12:49:00.000-08:00

...Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

-Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

Untitled

2009-04-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

In the dark
the pale cherry blossoms
are a ghost.
I hardly know them,
but for their scent.

Bright lights
have made me blind.
I see through
my other senses--
the smell of spring,
the cool rain on my skin,
the rush of rain through the fir trees.

The mailman delivers
a neighbor's package to my door.
I relish the thought
of ringing their doorbell.
Delivering the box--
a chance to say hello.

Nerds!

2009-03-08T11:18:00.001-07:00

If you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Or my favorite...

2009-02-15T09:57:00.001-08:00

If you want to start from the beginning, go here.

Candy and old women

2009-01-31T16:42:00.000-08:00

If you want to start from the beginning, go here.

That's the thing about candy

2009-01-20T21:15:00.000-08:00

The beginning

2009-01-18T11:45:00.001-08:00

New! New! New!

2009-01-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

Wow. It's been ages since I've posted. I'm afraid I've been cheating on my trusty friend blog, with the very intoxicating Facebook. Facebook, combined with Flickr are chewing up most of my online time these days.

Well, I did make my Praxis deadline, and "Thoughts about Candy" came out with its release in December. I'm still trying to figure out how to post the frames here, in a size that's readable. I have been getting all sorts of feedback from people who've read the print version--much more than my other stories have received. Maybe it's the images plus text that generates a strong reaction, but it's also the subject matter. I've been hearing lots of candy memories from people. And candy confessions.

One of my favorite x-mas gifts was a Bamboo tablet (thanks, T!). I plan to use it to do a revision of "Thoughts about Candy" digitally. Yay! I have had lots of thoughts already about little things I want to add. I am also considering self-publishing an extended version of it. I also have been thinking about making my four girls/River/Stand by Me piece into a graphic novel. So that's something I'll be experimenting with this year. I can imagine the Glowy Man part really coming to life in a graphic format. I'm itching to start.

WTF, indeed

2008-11-23T19:38:00.000-08:00

This morning, we are ordering breakfast at Autentica. My father-in-law points to something on the menu and asks the waitress, "Can I get this with potatoes instead of eggs?"

"We don't have potatoes," she answers.

"Okay, well just give me this without the eggs."

Maybe she did a double-take, but I didn't notice. Twenty minutes or so later, she is back with our food. She places a plate with a thin slice of ham covered in red sauce in front of my father-in-law and says, "huevos rancheros," amazingly, with a straight face.

"You ordered huevos rancheros without the eggs?" I said. "But huevos means egg."

It was kind of funny, until I realized I was going to pay 12 dollars for his plate of sauce.

It's not his fault. I don't think he knew what he was going to get. But the waitress--she couldn't have asked "Are you sure you want that?" Had I known what he was pointing at, I would have stopped him. I consider it supremely bad service to fill ridiculous orders without at least asking, "You're sure about that?"

I felt really bad that he only had a slice of ham for breakfast, so I made sure we swung into the doughnut shop on the way home.

Morning walk

2008-11-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

The day started early because of the time change. So we went for an early morning walk. D is big enough to sit in the Ergo now, which makes walking much more fun for the both of us. D can see more than just tree tops and sky, and we both get some snuggle time.

We got all the way to the park and back, and it was only 9:15. Sigh. It's going to be a long day. We will probably take another stroll before the day is done, as long as it's not pouring rain.

Another thing that makes it a long day--the election is only two days away. (You didn't need me to tell you that.) I can't wait for it to be over. I'm exhausted by waiting. At least there are moments like this that give me that hope:

Of course, this is Oregon, and there are many parts of the country where Republicans are going to vote the party line.

Oh, Oregon. How I love you. I wish the rest of the country were as great as you.

Work in progress

2008-10-19T08:40:00.001-07:00

So there's a sneak-preview of my work in progress. The draft is on the left, and you can see what should be the final (or at least final for now) on the right. The goal is to have everything done before Thanksgiving, which is the deadline for this year's Praxis. I should just make it.

No tolerance for death

2008-10-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

I've always really liked Halloween. That's partly because it's candy-centric (I like Valentine's day for the same reason. No boy in the picture? Who cares! There's always chocolate!). I also really like dressing up in costumes.

This year, I feel a little differently. Last night, as I was walking past a house all decked-out with ghosts and a fake graveyard, I thought "Egh. How morbid." My reaction took me by surprise. I usually love this stuff! The skeleton bones just seemed so sad. It was just for fun, but it reminded me too much of real bones resting in the cemetery.

I get the same sinking feeling whenever I see a really violent movie these days. I have no tolerance for gore and death. In Bruge was an excellent film, and thank goodness all the blood and guts came at the end, otherwise I would have never seen it.

I guess that now that I've brought life into the world, I just see no point in focusing on death. Not to get lecture-y or anything, but there's so much to appreciate about life, so much to live for, why do we have to have all this stuff where killing people is the focus?

Anyway, I hope that's not the end for Halloween for me. There are still the costumes, the pumpkins, the apple cider and the candy.

Guarding time

2008-10-12T17:09:00.000-07:00

Now that I have much less of it, I've been extremely selective about how I spend my free time. Some of it's necessarily spent on things like shopping and cleaning (though my standards have gone waaaay down these days...the toilet doesn't get scrubbed until it gets that gross ring at the water line, and that would NEVER have happened in my pre-baby days). Beyond that, I get to choose, and sure as hell, I am not going to waste my time on mediocre movies or outings that aren't fun for me. A few weeks ago, I sat down to watch This is Spinal Tap, which I had never seen, and a third of the way through, I turned it off and headed to bed. Sorry...maybe it would haven been funny if I were 25, or a man, but it just wasn't doing it for me. Sleep was much more interesting.

Yesterday, I did haul 10 dead six-foot arborvitae out of the ground, which seems like it might be a waste of time, but I felt very satisfied afterward. My hard work means I get to plant something there next week. I have been itching to get my fingers into the soil, and all that shoveling did the trick.

That's the thing about motherhood...it makes you much more focused. I really do think about who I want to spend time with, and what I want to be doing. I want to take a walk in the autumn sunlight, I want to watch D. sleeping, I want to do a bit of writing, I want to pour myself a nice glass of wine then drink it while I cook Sunday dinner. All these things are worth it.

Plugs

2008-10-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

My creative writing life has been subsumed by the creation of the second draft of my graphic story, which I can't show you just yet. But my professional writing life, I can share. Here are the highlights:

From time to time, I contribute to my company's blog, Shiny Green Button, which focuses on issues of brands, communications and sustainability. My recent contribution is titled Magritte's paper cup, which I think is a very clever title if I do say so myself.

I also have a new article in IN|UR. It's their "Happiness" issue, and this time I've written about my HypnoBirthing experience. I'm so glad they went with my original title, even though it's a little plain-jane. They had suggested "HypnoBirthing the Night Away," which I thought was corny. But whatever...it's their magazine.

Buh.

2008-09-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

There's this scene in Overboard--that's right--Overboard with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, where Goldie's at home with the four out-of-control boys, doing wifely things like cleaning and cooking and ... using a chain saw to cut down a tree??? And then at the end of the scene she's shown sitting in a chair, sort of shell shocked, muttering "buh buh buh buh buh." I always laugh at that scene. And today I feel a little bit buh buh buh myself.

The weekend started out with a bout of food poisoning. I barfed midway through the presidental debate (highly apt) and spent the night tossing and turning with nausea. Then last night, D. awoke, just as I was about to go to bed, and he was burning like a hot potato. His temp was somewhere around 102, and he was inconsolable. I spent the night nursing him off and on, and then boing! 6 am he is better and ready to go and I am feeling fried. Then T. came down with some sort of bug, which meant that I was pretty much on my own taking care of D. today. Gah. And it was one of those days where I'm constantly changing my shirt because I get spit up on, except once it wasn't spit-up but poop.

I should be in bed, since D. is finally down for the night (let's hope his temp doesn't spike again) but I am insane enough to be staying up to watch Mad Men. But you know, I've been sleep deprived for the last three months, so what's a little more lost sleep?

Have you seen this?

2008-09-15T14:53:00.001-07:00

Brilliant!

A room with a view

2008-09-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

The view from my office.

I was wrong. I thought the first day leaving D. at daycare would be the hardest, and every day after that would get easier. But yesterday, I skipped out after leaving him in the arms of a caregiver, turned up the radio in my car and blissed out to a Pixies tune at full blast on the way to the office.

The first day was nothing. But every subsequent day, it's getting harder. I closed my eyes tight this morning to keep the tears from spilling out.

The view from my office is stunning. On sunny days, the light pocks the surface of the Columbia River with white. I watch trains pass over the bridge on their way to Seattle or Spokane. But it turns out the limited, never-changing view from D's room, is more interesting to me.

Danny Elfman lives here?

2008-09-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

It looks like your average house. But every time I walk past this place--it doesn't matter what time of day it is--a very creepy music emanates from within. It's like someone has raided the silverware drawer and is using the spoons to tap glasses of water. Clink clink clink, in a random succession of notes. I've looked for some sort of metal mobile that's clinking in the wind, but in vain. So I've been imagining someone inside making a weird, Edward Scissorhands-tune all day and all night long.

Today is my last day before heading back to work. The last day to take long walks with D. past all sorts of creepy houses, and creepy mannequins, and pirate flags and countless lovely gardens. I guess we'll have weekends, but it won't be quite the same.

It's been such a good summer.

Good thing there's pumpkin picking, apple cider and Halloween to look forward to, otherwise I just couldn't bear it.

Polar pleasure

2008-09-02T21:59:00.001-07:00

I watched a polar bear swimming yesterday during a trip to the Oregon Zoo. Absolutely massive--he pushed off one end of the pool and paddled to the other side, then pushed off like a Olympic backstroker, belly up, back to where he started. Back and forth he swam. From the other side of a wall of glass, I could see his powerful body move underwater. His white fur moved like waves of grain in the water. Giant air bubbles danced in his wake. He pushed off the glass with his enormous black paws and turned his snout to the sky, making it easy to see his long, yellowing incisors. God, he was beautiful.

Generations

2008-08-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

There's a certain face that D. makes, where I can see my dad in him. It's usually when I'm pushing him in the stroller, and he gets really intense. His lips purse and his eyes go wide. I was surprised the first time I noticed it. I shouldn't have been though. I think D. looks a lot like my brother, and my brother looks a lot like my dad, so sure...it makes sense. I guess it wasn't something I wanted to see though.

I haven't spoken to my dad in more than ten years. In that time, I've only written him twice. The first time was to tell him I got married. He sent me a $150 check as a wedding present, and I shredded it. I didn't want his money in lieu of a relationship, and I didn't want him to think I was just writing him to get money either. More recently, I wrote to let him know he had a grandson.

This estrangement began after many years of my reaching out, having some sort of unfulfilling interaction with him where I came away feeling rejected and hurt. Now, as an adult, I can see he probably didn't mean any of it. He is a poor communicator, he's emotionally unavailable, but not a bad person. He had extraordinarily bad judgment when he got married without telling me, when he moved to Chicago without letting me know. The former probably happened because he didn't know how to tell me that he had a new wife. He felt he was sparing my feelings by not telling me. The latter? I have no idea. Maybe he justified it by telling himself he was busy, he'd get around to writing me, or perhaps he thought I didn't really care anyway. But as a newly independent 20-something, after many years of this tense dance, I told myself I couldn't take the rejection anymore, and I cut all ties.

Of course, I've wondered every now and then if I did the right thing. It's helped me heal a bit, but I always imagine my dad getting old and dying, this rift still between us. I don't want that. But I also don't want to start the old cycle of reaching out, feeling hurt, reaching out again. What I want is for him to reach out to me this time. But I don't know if that will ever happen.

And now I have this new little person in my life. He's a physical reminder of my dad. And a I can't help but think, in some superstitious way, that the resemblance is for a reason. Is the universe telling me I can't just turn away?

What I am is what I am

2008-08-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

D. is blissfully asleep for the first time today--well, sort of if you don't count his passing out in the stroller during our morning walk. He's snuggled into the inside of my Boppy pillow on the couch next to me. It's not standard napping procedure, but I'll take it. And I feel like I don't have much to write, but still, I want to claim this time as my own and put some words on the page...any words will do!

I was telling T. last night that being a mom is one big mindfuck. You spend a lot of time craving the company of adults, wishing you could just have an hour of your old, unencumbered life back, and then when you do get a break all you want to do is go spend time with your kid. "Huh," he said, "I don't feel that way at all." I don't know whether he's lucky or I am.

I'm recovering from a weekend with a house guest. A old friend came all the way from New York to visit, and by the time she left I was totally drained for trying to balance everyone's needs, including my own need to be a good mom/host/friend/etc. Maybe that's it. I just have to give up the idea of being a good anything, and just be what I am.

Outside world

2008-08-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

D. is getting interested in the outside world. Favorite things so far: windows, mirrors, faces and voices. AND the four paintings I created for him, which now hang above his changing table. He is most enamored of Cosmic Dog and Cat, and Space Bee.

Are you in there, god?

2008-07-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

Just a few thoughts to post in a moment in between ...

Watching D's face is fascinating. I never get tired of it, even when he's cranky and showing all his gums in a wide-mouthed cry. It's like his face has all the pre-sets for emotions, even though he doesn't really know what those emotions are yet. His expressions cycle through happy, perplexed, disgusted, one after the other. I can't wait until he genuinely is smiling back at me.

And though I've never been a religious person (except when I was 12 and scared of Satan and ghosts, and so slept with a crucifix under my pillow), there are moments with D. that convince me god is really is some old guy sitting up on a cloud watching all us silly people. Like when I was rushing to get out of the house to run some errands the other day. D was full of breastmilk, and each time I tried to buckle him into his carseat, the pressure on his tummy made him projectile vomit all over himself. After two clothing changes, I decided I just needed to wait a few minutes. If god really is an old dude on a cloud, he really thinks projectile vomit stunts are hilarious.

Sleep or write?

2008-07-11T17:02:00.001-07:00

I'm having a little trouble managing my time these days. Out of every three hours, approximately one of them is devoted to nursing, supplemental feeding and using the breast pump to prepare for the next feeding. I spend a large part of my day with my boobs hanging out. (If there were ever a time to get comfortable with my body, this is it!) But that means I have to decide what to do with the rest. Lots of times it's eat, shower, change D's diapers, soothe him, talk to him, etc. But at least once a day, gloriously, he slips off into a two hour nap, and I am faced with the dilemma: sleep or write?

The logical person in me screams, "Sleep! You idiot!" But I've got stuff buzzing through my head, and it wants to come out. I also crave gardening--what there is of it this year. I just want to get outside with my watering can and tend to my pathetic little basil shoots.

It's the same thing in the evenings. D gets really sleepy around 10 pm (for now, at least) and it provides T. and I a chance to watch a movie and have some 1:1 time, but I know that the darkest hours are just around the corner, and I'm going to be awake for some of them.

Someone stole my legs

2008-07-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

The exhaustion set in yesterday. Funny, because just the day before, T. and I had managed to get out for a walk and lunch at a local cafe, and we sat there gloating about how we didn't think this was all that bad. Tiring, sure. But we could deal. But yesterday, I woke up feeling like a truck had hit me. Sore from my shoulders to my toes.

And someone stole my legs. They took my nice legs and slender feet (one part of my body I've never had an issue with) and have given me the legs of Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies.

Good thing this baby is just so damn beautiful. I can't keep my eyes off him. He does what I call "bird faces," where he will look up at me with his beautiful blue eyes and make little hooting lip gestures. Before he was born, I imagined all sorts of things about the way things would be. I could imagine the tiredness, the sore boobs, all that. And I knew I would love him, but I knew it in this intellectual sort of way. I just couldn't imagine how it would feel. He's a mere a week old, and I feel like I want time to stop for a bit so I can make sure I get my fill of bird faces and soft baby skin. I am absolutely weepy with love and the need to make every moment count.

He was born on July 2, more than two weeks late. I'll save his dramatic birth story for another post. But that means he's having his first week birthday today!

I've been reading Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, mostly while pumping breastmilk. I do this every three hours or so, so that's a lot of reading time. Thank god for her book, because pumping sucks, and her book is so funny and she writes about everything I am dealing with right now, that I can actually make it a whole 15 minutes without tearing my hair out. I personally credit Ms. Lamott for my ability to pump enough so that I don't have to resort to formula.

But as I'm reading, I'm thinking that even though I have some higher aspirations for this blog (I dunno why) I should do what she's done, and use it to document this time. So I'm gonna. Sorry to those who want to read about something other than baby. But that's what's goin' on around here. As T. says, "All we hear is radio ga-ga."

So here's a funny picture for you. This was maybe our first night home from the hospital, and I'd asked T. to pick up one bottle of IPA on his trip to the store. I was so pleased with the idea of an hour or two in my own bed, with a bottle of long-dreamed about beer, that I completly forgot I was already completely high on pain killers. A sip or two later and the realization kicked in. T. finished the beer. Sigh.

All is not quiet on the Tchotchka front

2008-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

It’s been quiet here at Tchotchka Palace, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. There’s been behind the scenes action. Here’s just a little update on what’s been filling my time.

Drawing. That’s right. I’ve always enjoyed doing little cartoons and doodles, mostly for handmade birthday cards. A few years ago, when I was working for a big four accounting firm, I attempted a series of Dilbert-eqsue comics called “Adventures of a Pinhead.” (No one saw them except T., but I thought they were damn funny.) Now I’m revisiting the art form, turning my “Thoughts on Candy” into a graphic story. Hell, it’s a lot of work! Every frame takes several sketches before I can get it right. I’m through the first three or four paragraphs so far, and that’s just a first draft of what I imagine the final story will look like. I anticipate re-drawing them all over again. But it’s pretty satisfying, because I can do all these little asides, and draw funny things that would be overkill in typical written form. Maybe I’ll post a few frames up here for your reading pleasure.

Commercial writing. I’ve started writing for a new online magazine called INUR (pronounced “in-yer”) aimed at urban-dwelling folks who are interested in living the good life in a sustainable way. The subject of my first article? Organic personal lubricants. Yep. That’s right. My good friend C. is the editor of the INUR Pants (sex and relationships) section, and I just couldn’t turn her down when she asked me to write an article on that subject. That’s the good thing about being a writer…I can get interested in writing about almost anything. Accounting, for example. Anyway…look for my article in the first issue, due to launch sometime in June.

Gestating. No big surprise for most readers of this blog. Remember this entry? It was like foreshadowing from my subconscious. I found out I was pregnant shortly after I wrote it. So far, I’ve continued to make art, which makes me feel good. Mommy brain hasn’t completely taken over! (Though those early morning weekend writing sessions have gone by the wayside lately. Too tired!) One resolution I’ve made to myself, is that my kid is going to grow up seeing me writing.

Chicken

2008-03-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Popeye's Chicken sits at the corner of MLK and Ainsworth, and I always hit a red light there. For a full minute and ten seconds, I am bathed in the odor of chicken fat and breading. It hunches down in my nostrils and pushes its way down my throat. I try to see in through the glare on the windows, but I can't tell if anyone is actually eating in there.

I really want to like the smell of fried chicken. The crunchy outside, the juicy meat inside. The memories it dredges up. It was the only thing I'd order in restaurants until the age of seven, and especially good at the Tin Cup, a restaurant made to look like an old West saloon complete with wide, creaky floorboards and a circular staircase with a chain link railing. They called it the Tin Cup because you could order sarsaparilla in a take-home, souvenir tin cup, which I only got to do once, but I got to order the chicken and mashed potatoes lots of times.

I liked fried chicken so much that I even ate the Hungry Man T.V. dinner version, with their dried out corn niblets, pasty potatoes, burned brownie and stringy chicken. Because really, it hardly matters that there's chicken under that crunchy breading. That's what I was really after: salty bread crumbs infused with chicken fat. I haven't eaten meat in more than ten years, but every KFC commercial has me leaning forward, wondering whether I'd ever break my meat celibacy to experience that crunch again.

In fact, I've often thought that if I were on death row, and it was my last night on earth, I'd ask for fried chicken as my last meal. And then I think, "Well, if that's true, then why aren't I eating it now? Is this living then?" After all, I'm not on death row and I can have anything I want. I could even buy organic, vegetarian-fed, free-range chickens so I can feel good about eating them.

But what is this fantasy about eating chicken, especially since the smell of Popeye's chicken makes me queasy, makes me want to run the red light and make a left turn into oncoming traffic, just to get away from its oily haze? Maybe it's just a fantasy about breaking boundaries. Exploring the taboo. Maybe I wouldn't even like the taste, and then where would I be? I'd have to choose another death-row last meal. Organic beets and goat cheese? Caprese sandwiches on fresh baguette? I just don't know how that'd fly in prison.

Ocean poems

2008-03-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

I.
I'm terrified by the sound of the waves.
They won't stop.
Inhuman roar, overwhelming boom.
No fear, no desire--nothing.
They just keep coming without a reason.

That's the way I feel about you.
You simply are, for the moment.
Rolling over inside me,
making my blood surge.
An unknowable force.
And I'm going under.

II.
My shoe is a sieve--
a fine mesh that filers sand through
to collect in the space under my toes.
"I should pan for gold in these,"
I joke to myself, imagining treasure
at the bottom of my sneaker.

The ocean's not a graveyard, but a storehouse.
It catalogs and re-displays
glass floats from Japan,
seaweed exquisite enough to be worn as jewelry.
Beachcombers unearthed--unoceaned
two civil war canons, crusted
with a hundred years of underwater history.

In the crash of the waves we find answers too.
Some--the ones who aren't ready--keep their
eyes on land, distracted by the pebbles and shells.
But some look out to the place where water meets air,
and there's nothing there to distract from the truth.

Thoughts about candy

2008-03-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

My grandma always had a dish of them—spherical gems wrapped in sparkly cellophane. I wanted them all, but I didn’t want to appear greedy, so I’d choose just one, red or white, never green or yellow, twist off the squeaky wrapper and pop it into my mouth. They were smooth on my tongue and rattled around against my teeth. That’s the thing about candy—it’s not just a taste, it’s an activity. I would hold those candies on my tongue, flip them around as if each turn might somehow yield more sugar. Candy brightens moments of children’s boredom and soothes the tension of the smoker who just quit cold turkey.

Always performing the “good child,” that dish of candy was a challenge for me. We never had candy at home. And so during the weeks I’d spend with Grandma, I’d constantly have that dish in the corner of my eye. I’d be thinking about when I could next sneak one without anyone noticing.

It’s like candy and old women go together. When I was four maybe, I was always climbing up the narrow concrete steps to Florence’s back door. She always had strips of candy buttons on hand, which is probably the cheapest candy ever invented. Pastel blobs of sugar dropped onto cheap paper that always remains just a little bit when you rip the candy off of it. In my four year old bravado, I had no shame knocking on her door and without preamble, asking, “Can I have some candy?”

When I was older, I’d ride my bike to Convenient after every dime I’d pocketed, where I would get Alexander the Grapes, Lemonheads, Boston Baked Beans, or, my favorite—Now & Laters. Ten individually wrapped squares of chewy tart waxy candy. Chocolate was too expensive. Even a plain Hershey bar was out of my price range.

But there were those kids who had enough money to buy Nerds. They would show them off and hide them at the same time, like a status symbol, the same way a fifty five year old man might wax his Porsche all day in the driveway, only to pull it into the garage without driving it anywhere. But for sure the Nerds would come out when they needed leverage: “I’ll give you some of my Nerds of you let me be on your team, but only the pink kind, okay?” I never had Nerds. Must be why I’m not so great at negotiation. I bet all the kids with Nerds are now wheeling heads of cattle, or they’re hedge fund managers or con-artists. Or real estate agents. Candy makes other people pay attention to us. Before we have beauty, strength, wealth, we have candy.

The first story I ever wrote was about candy. It began at a carnival, and as I entered the fun house, I fell through a trap door an spilled into a world entirely made from candy. The houses, roads. The chocolate river. This world was controlled by an evil witch who kidnapped little children and kept them there, haunted by all the sweets, but not allowed to eat them.

It was a Hansel and Gretel, meets Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, meets Alice in Wonderland daydream, and so revealing that I’d let myself be dazzled by the candy but not eat it. In the end, I escaped this candy land, but what I should have written—what I really wanted was to live in that world without the witch, not escape from it to a less sweet world with equally restrictive parent. Maybe that’s what candy is … the anti-parent.

Candy is a lesson is self versus others. It’s public and private. It’s who you are when you’re alone and who you are in a crowd. Do you eat the whole bag of M&Ms or save half for later? Do you wish your friend would get her own, because you feel obligated to share otherwise? Candy forces us to reveal our inner workings to the world.

I’m a hoarder, I’ll admit it. Here’s one of my earliest memories to prove it. My friend Amy has two rolls of Sweet Tarts, and there are three of us: me, her and Melissa, her neighbor that always seems to have green boogers running out of her nose. Amy takes a whole roll for herself, and tells Melissa and me we have to share. I’m outraged. I declare that I’d rather go home than share, and I do. In fact, I stop being friends with Amy altogether over the Sweet Tart incident.

I still get worked up over candy and sweets. I hate it when Tony scarfs all the ice cream before I get any. Once, he proposed taking my newly purchased Girl Scout Cookies to share with friends. I looked him straight in the eye and growled, “These boxes aren’t even open yet! There’s no way in hell you’re taking my cookies!”

At six months pregnant, I can only imagine what it’s going to be like when my child discovers sweets. A battle of wills. An 18 year long game of subterfuge. My friend Gwen told me a story about her mother—how she would hide Almond Roca in her sewing kit and jewelry box, but Gwen and her brothers would always sniff it out and steal it. The disappointment her mother must have felt at opening her drawer and then finding her treasure gone. I imagine myself the same way, hiding M&Ms in the glove box, opening it up in a sacred moment of solitude. I’m anticipating eating the whole package, savoring each round chocolate one by one. But they’re gone.

Gwen’s mom might have smiled to herself, felt resigned to the fact that as a mother, nothing is truly her own. She’d see it as a illustration of the self-sacrifice of parenthood and feel good about that. But me? Is that what I’ll do? Or will I slam the car door and storm into the house stark raving mad demanding to know who ate my candy?

At a Las Vegas gun store

2008-02-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

What would it be like to work at the gun store, where tourists, in their khaki shorts, fanny packs and big white sneakers arrive to try out the weapons? The wives stand silently aside, while their husbands ask questions about ammo, load time, never safety.

Anna, who is an army brat, and grew up hunting every fall with her father, works there. She sees the men come through the door and look surprised to see her behind the counter. If one of the male associates is there--even Nate, the gun store owner's pimply son, who doesn't know squat about how to handle a weapon--they will head straight to him.

The coupon idea was hers. She made a deal with the owner: she'd finance the ad, and anyone coming in with that coupon was her customer. The first few weeks they trickled in, one or two over the course of a few days. But then it was one or two a day. They came in for all sorts of reasons--some just because they'd never squeezed off a round on a full automatic before and were looking to add it to their list of Las Vegas thrills, some serious gun buyers, some who didn't even care about the guns, but just couldn't resist a coupon for anything.

She started to find her niche. She was good with the couples. Anna would engage the timid wives, get them to put on the goggles and fire off a few rounds in the back. She'd see the fire come into their eyes, the adrenaline surge, watch their husbands get turned on--sometimes embarrassingly so. She knew if that happened, she's have a sure-fire sale.

Just by watching out for the couples, she increased the gun store's sales by eight percent over the last three months and her own commission had gone through the roof. All the sales men--even the guys who'd mocked Anna for her gimmick--were now trying to get the owner to let them do their own coupon too, thinking it was a magic trick. But only she got it. It was looking out for that special American combination of sex and violence that was bringing in the cash.

In memoriam

2008-02-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

It's 8:34 AM on Monday, February 4. As I type this, Domi lays about five feet behind me. He's finally settled down, which takes him some time because his back end is so sore, and he's licking his right paw, probably as a self-soothing gesture.

In about three hours, our vet will arrive at the house, and she'll administer a drug to Domi that will put him to sleep forever.

We finally made the decision to put Domi down last week, but I was traveling, so we waited until I got home to do it. I wanted to be here for him and for T, who has been a nervous wreck all weekend. Well, we both have. I've waxed and waned between feeding Domi treats and bursting into tears. I don't know what good I'll be when the vet arrives. A big blubbery mess. But it's the right thing to do. Domi's been a big part of my life too.

Lately, I've taken to complaining about his stench and incontinence. I've been thinking about that this weekend. We haven't had the real Domi in our lives for a few years--the bubble loving, radish stealing Domi. We've had some other dog, and we've grown resentful of him. And it's a shame to feel that resentment at the end of his life. It was a shame to not be able to take him for a walk yesterday or do any of the things he used to love. On the last full day of his life, most of what we could do was wait for today. When my other animals get to this point, when my parents get to this point, when I get to this point--I don't want to turn to complaint and resentment. I want the joy remain more than just a hazy memory.

So Mr. Doms, who used to do 180 degree jumps in anticipation of a walk, who once stole a bagel with cream cheese right off my lap, who would chase soap bubbles around the yard endlessly, who forced me to be creative with my garden fencing techniques if I ever wanted a carrot, radish or green bean for myself, who bravely weathered the attacks of an insane german shepherd named Laika, who ferociously ate Domi-sized pancakes, who hoovered up clumps of freshly mown grass in the springtime, who made lots of Doms-sized friends at the dog park ... we love you.

Feeling better

2008-01-24T19:49:00.001-08:00

Bela steals the bone from her doggie Get Well Soon bouquet.

Stupid people, cars and dogs

2008-01-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

Last night, a stupid person came to my house, opened the back door and let Bela out onto the driveway to do the meet-and-greet with his dog. Bela was more interested in running out into the middle of the street apparently, and was struck by a car. I heard it--the whack, the cry, and ran out screaming to see her lying in the middle of the street. The car did not stop.

T. and I rushed her to the animal hospital. I sat in the back of the car trying to keep her calm and quiet, though I was probably doing a pretty bad job of it. Thick drops of blood were falling from her head onto my hands, clothes and the floor of the car, and her eye looked bloody and swollen. It was dark and hard to tell where the blood was coming from.

After several hours at the hospital, we learned Bela had a puncture wound under her jaw, and swelling that had caused her third eyelid to pop up over her eye. Preliminary X-rays showed no broken bones or fractures, but they wanted to keep her overnight. We left, hopeful that we could bring her home in the morning.

As of just a few minutes ago, she's eating and walking. But the hospital is keeping her a bit longer. She might come home this afternoon.

I've never wanted to hurt someone so badly as I wanted to hurt stupid person last night. I can picture myself hitting him, screaming at him. To make matters worse for himelf, we asked him to stay until we returned home, but when we got here, he was gone and our doors were unlocked.

But more importantly . . . I almost lost my best buddy last night. I'm thankful that she's still here and that perhaps after a few quiet days of healing, she'll be back to her old, silly self.

Me? I don't know if I'll ever go back to my old self.

An everyday moment of joy

2008-01-06T11:01:00.001-08:00

Know what this is? It's the best kitchen appliance ever. So much better than a microwave or perhaps even a dishwasher. It's an egg and muffin maker. See the steam? It's steaming an egg and a veggie sausage at the same time it is toasting an english muffin

And it makes these in about 5 minutes time:

It's the little things that make life good.

Convenient New Year's resolutions

2008-01-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

Why make resolutions that you can't keep? This year, I'm making ones that are easy to achieve.

1. Write more letters and keep in better touch with friends. I'm terrible about this. I let e-mails sit in my inbox, unanswered, for months. I guess with the amount of e-mail I have to deal with at work, I'm on e-mail overload most of the time. I do like writing letters though. Real letters on nice paper that you place into an envelope. And S. and J. have so thoughtfully set me up to be successful with a membership to and stationary from the Letter Writers Alliance.

(Note: I've said nothing about answering my cell phone.)

2. I'm going to keep better track of snail-mail addresses. Each holiday season I frustrate myself because half my addresses are in my yahoo address book, the other are on envelopes and scraps of paper in various drawers. Most of them are out of date. This year, I sent three bottles of wine to my brother's old address. I spent days harassing the UPS and Wine.com people, then calling my bro to ask if he'd received the wine yet. Never again. I've already purchased a new address book. My brother's correct address is already in there!

3. Another convenient resolution: I'm going to the art museum more often. T. and I got memberships as a gift this year. I love gifts like that! There's a great Chuck Close exhibit there that's about to close. I've already seen it, but T. hasn't. It's worth seeing again.

4. Less convenient, but still not too hard: I'm going to the damn Portland International Film Festival this year! Every year, I hear about it after it's started, and half the films I want to see have already run. I vow to get the flyer that lists all the films, sit down with a big mug of tea, and make a plan for the ones I want to see.

So what are your resolutions?

Random tchotchka

2007-12-20T14:40:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

*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

2007-08-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-07-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

What's happening to me?

2007-05-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-03-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

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*

2007-02-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

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

2007-02-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-02-07T16:59:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

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.

Snow day

2007-01-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

It's snowing here today and the city has shut down. I've been at my desk at home all morning, mostly watching the snow build up outside my window, and e-mailing clients some of the time. I left the wheelbarrow in a corner of the yard last fall, and there it still sits, filling up with inch after inch of snow.

Yesterday was a different kind of snow day. T. and I took Bela up to Mt. Hood for an afternoon of skiing. Here we are, taking a rest in front of frozen-over Trillium Lake, the mountain rising up in the background.

Looking at old photos, take two

2007-01-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

I'm getting a little obessive about those photos...

I have a photo of my mother. She is laughing, her eyes closed tight. Someone has just pushed her onto the bed--my father. They are playing and she pushes her backward and snaps the photo just as she lands. She makes a soft divot on the mattress. We all know what must have come next.

This is our own little apartment, she thinks. It's just the way I want it. The bed's from a garage sale, and the rest from the Salvation Army, but it's ours. It's neat. The bed stays made all day, the bedspread a smooth surface I can peel back before I slide under the cool sheets.

This was before I existed--perhaps just a heartbeat before my conception and I'd like to believe so. I manufacture my own mythology. I was conceived in joy and as I divided cells one after another, my parents contentedly lay next to each other.

What is it about these photos that attracts me? I can't get over how much my mother looks like me, how handsome my father once was. I recognize myself in them--my own life--I see their desires through my own eyes.

In one photo, my father sits in his study. A set of Encyclopedia Brittianica shelved neatly behind him. He's bought a globe and it sits atop the shelve that houses the great books. There are three books on the desk before him, and is studying. I am a knowledgeable man, a man of the world. I've gone beyond all expectations, risen above my promise though no one's asked me to.

I remember being a young child, paging through the that same set of encyclopedias. Anteater. I wanted to see a picture of their long snouts. I sat on the floor of his room waiting for him to come home. Anteater. Antelope the next entry, and not as interesting an animal.

I'm struck by how playful they are. How they honestly smile--they are not smiling for the camera--they are smiling for each other. In pictures taken now, I see fear, distance, self protection.

Looking at old photos

2007-01-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

I have a photo of my mother and father together. It's the only one I've ever seen. Usually, dad took pictures of mom, or mom of dad. But in this one they are sitting together on someone's lawn. A number of other people sit around in lawn chairs in a circle in the background, and the grass is green, so it seems they're at a summer party.

Mom sits in a lawn chair, her shoes kicked off and several months pregnant. That's me in there, just a few months old. She wears red pants and a red-and-white checkered smock-style top to cover her growing belly. Her hair is so 60's--a smooth short bob tucked behind her ears. That was when her hair was still a shiny strawberry blonde. So pretty. She's got a red-and-white can of generic cola in her hand like she chose it just to match her outfit.

She's not looking at dad. Maybe he just asked her a question and she's looking off into the sky, thinking of the answer, or maybe she's mad at him and is avoiding eye contact, or maybe it's just a strange moment in between. It's hard to tell. But he's looking right at her, waiting for something from her. Dad's sitting on the concrete stoop of the patio, Budweiser in hand, thick sideburns frame his face, looking kind of cool in some white Adidas sneakers. He is looking at her as if they are having a conversation. As if they know each other. As if he really sees her. As if he loves her.

I'm not as angry with my father as I used to be. Ten years of silence between us has turned my anger into something that's both easier and harder to live with: a recognition of loss. Easier because I don't have to be strong about it any more. Harder because I let myself feel it.

There are other photos. Dad opening presents at Christmas. He's got a big foil bow stuck to his forehead. Mom doing dishes, a newfangled electric can opener on the counter next to the sink. One where she's laughing--it looks like he's pushed her down on the bed, and the photo doesn't show what happened next.

Those photos are different of the ones that came later. They were playful. Honest. They were seeing each other. How can I say this? It's like sometimes photos don't show you what's for real. They show you what people want to remember. But mom and dad were alone in their apartment, alone in their own little world and you can tell they weren't posing or trying to hide from one another.

How surprising it is to see them that way. My memories of their relationship begin post-divorce: hurt, betrayal, bitterness, estrangement. It's almost comforting to have proof they really did love each other. There was something there, for a little while.

X-mas triptych

2006-12-31T09:42:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-12-20T16:32:00.000-08:00

Bodies

2006-12-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-13T16:48:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-12-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-29T20:43:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-27T11:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-09T17:41:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-07T22:52:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-05T20:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

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.