Coming home

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

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

When's the last time you rode your bike?

On River Phoenix

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Amy, Liz and Sara,
Goodbye.

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No better place to be on a holiday weekend

What's happening to me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Dixie comes to town

I drew two tarot cards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a new piece I'm working on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continuing to look at old photos

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

Looking at old photos

Looking at old photos, take two

Still looking at old photos

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

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

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

Pay attention?

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

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

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

Getting the bird out*

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

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


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

Still looking at old photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chinese herbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snow day

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

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

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

Oh no! The new fancy washing machine is broken!

I've pushed every single button but nothing works!

How about we try reading the manual?

Bodies

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

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

Here are a few poetic facts I learned from Bodies.

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

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

Womb: a conversation

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