How I Spent My Winter Vacation

Lifts you up, sets you down.

There is something about waves. My firefighter friend said neurologically, ocean waves and fire produce the same chemical reaction in the brain that feels soothing and calming. He’s had experiences where a bunch of firefighters race to the scene of a burning field then stand there for a moment, mesmerized by the waves of fire before they spring back into action, much to the alarm of the poor farmer who is losing his crop. The calming of a camp fire and the calm of water waves are more closely related than one might think. No surprise, considering that even the tiniest atom is full of waves, that sound and light and energy travel in waves, and we’re surrounded by and comprised of waves all around us. It all really is a giant symphony. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by this news, though I haven’t researched it myself.

Mexico was lovely. It is the first time since Australia I’ve relaxed in crystal clear waves. Being neck-high in warm sea water, and having a big curvy wave coming with all the power and beauty of the Ocean, and consciously choosing to relax every muscle and let it lift me off my feet and set me to rest a little closer to shore—this is heaven to me. The trip, in general, brought back many memories of Australia, and cultivating a friendship with the ocean in this way, and my dear friend Dan teaching me how to approach the ocean. On this trip in Mexico, S.A. and I played on the beach and perched on the sand and swam, rested, swam, rested, repeat, repeat, repeat. And I would ask him to float me up—put one hand on my lower back and one under my head, and I’d lie on my back and be lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered, and every time I tensed up I’d take a breath and try to relax again. This is harder than you think—trusting it and making a deliberate effort to literally go with the flow. But it feels really good.

I’ll have to remember this when shit hits the fan at work today. There are rumors, people leaving, things getting shifted around and re-organized. There’s some crap going down—that likely wont effect me very much, but will have everyone else in a tizzy—and secrets and all that stuff that surrounds corporate nonsense. You can tell the shitstorm’s coming because first they start buttering everyone up. Our department head just came over and handed me (and a bunch of other people) a check for $50 for no other reason than doing a good job. Highly suspicious. And next they’ll offer us something good—like pizza or ice cream or something—to lure us into the conference room. Then, when we’re good and trapped in there: the news. And I'm gonna glide right through it.

Top Ten Signs You're At A Lame New Year's Eve Party

10. To give it a Times Square feel, everyone is groped, fondled and pick-pocketed

9. "Party hats" look suspiciously like stolen traffic cones

8. "Ball drop" at midnight consists of a trick your Uncle Earl does when he's loaded

7. "Champagne" really apple juice mixed with Alka Seltzer

6. You notice a "Happy 1999" tag on the package of shrimp you've been eating all night

5. The host kicks everyone out at 11:58 so he can go to bed

4. The only guests are you and Richard Simmons, and guess who wants a New Year's Eve kiss?

3. The Amish can do many things well, but throwing parties ain't one of them

2. It's just you and a dozen Mullahs in a cave

1. It's held in March

Today is my little sister's birthday.

I was only 16 months old when she was born, so I don’t remember it. When she was 3 months old, she contracted meningitis and nearly died. She was in the hospital for a long time, and I’m told I cried and cried while she was gone, and my parents cried and cried and so did our older sister, Emily, who was old enough to know that everyone was crying but didn’t understand why. And about a year ago at a family dinner, her illness came up in conversation, and how hard it was on all of us, and how much we love her and how totally different life would be without her, and all of us, 28 years after the fact, cried there at the dinner table together. I am so thankful she was born, and so thankful that she survived.

She grew into a hilarious, energetic, totally hyper-active little kid who snort-laughed at the dinner table, set our pet bird free, made up nonsense words and shouted them an inappropriate times and giggled, and squirmed through every minute of church. She’s random and unpredictable. She loves Juice Newton and Beethoven. She’s got some weird thing for celebrity-sponsored cheap perfume and new tennis shoes—she absolutely loves them. She’s afraid of the dark. She’s an intuitive, amazing cook (I asked her to write down her recipe for chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and she couldn’t), and she plays the piano by ear. She loves and cares for the elderly for her job. I can't remember the last time she said something hurtful to anyone.

She struggles, though. Sometimes she struggles a lot. I worry about her. I am blessed to have her as a sister. She’s a unique bird, and brings warmth and joy to the world. I tell her that often.

Lists.

Things I like. I just do.:

Cool pens and ink
Spiral notebooks
Fuzzy socks
Rugby
Cosmology and Quantum Physics
Bacon
St. Mary’s Basilica
Making lists
Shells on the beach in Perth

Things I wish I liked but I just don’t:

Oatmeal
Knitting
Gardening in the yard
Sudoku
Surfing
Mornings

Things I intend to do:

Read a science article daily
Keep an audio book in my car all the time
Make more regular trips to the library
Write 2 new poems a day, good or bad
Send something out each month, at a minimum
Keep my exercise dates with Scott
Call my Gram once a week
Take a road trip south, Louisiana, the Smokies, the Florida Everglades, while they still exist
Visit Hanover
Paint more
Save for a new couch
Move into an apartment with a whole kitchen
Hand in my first draft of thesis this fall
Write more letters, including a love letter
Really learn to play the piano

Well, Brett Favre does have a nice booty.

Have I mentioned that I'm enjoying my liberation from homework, and have taken on intellectual endeavors like watching TV in my spare time? I jotted down a couple direct quotes from the announcers of the Packers/Vikings game for you. If you add "in bed" after them, you know, like you do with fortune cookies, they're even funnier.

"...Slipped and threw it right into the offensive lineman..."
"...He came right into the arms of Williamson..."
"...Williamson had six balls. He’s correcting himself now."
"took a hard hit to get the thing out to Chester Taylor--and it goes long and deep..."
"...Asked him about his relationship with Greg and he said, 'We’re cool.'"
"Oh, I like what my quarter back did right there, and he gives it to the 272 pound tight end."
"...The ball's wet and slippery.... We’re going to see a pair at first down."

In bed. In bed. In bed. In bed.
[Insert snort laugh.]

Why didn't someone tell me this is what I'm missing while I'm in grad school. Jeeze.

I am the star.

Of all the years I’ve had so far, this is the year I've learned the most and am happiest to move forward from. I’m thankful for it. Both the dark and light times of the past year make me I’m happier to move toward the future than I’ve ever been. Thanks, Chloe.

You are The Star Hope, expectation, Bright promises. The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future.

Faith, yes. Dreams realised, yes. Powerful change, yes. Healing, yes. Clarity, spiritual insight, unexpected help. Yes, yes, yes.

Who are you?

Bring it.

So, I’ve been working my ass off and the semester’s almost over. The first two years of grad school I worked part-time and I had my mornings to linger over a croissant and coffee and to write when I wanted to and to read a ton. I was also really, really poor and struggling. Now I work all day, come home and do homework until 11 PM. I get down about it sometimes, wishing I had more artist-time, and more free time or at least didn’t work for a corporation. The whole working-all-day-and-all-evening thing, I’m really really tired of it. But there’s a reason I do it: I am well taken care of. My job is pleasant enough and fairly flexible as far as jobs go. I have awesome insurance. I can pay my bills and save some. I have paid time off. I enjoy the people here, and feel good about what my company contributes to the world. So maybe I can’t sleep in and linger over coffee. But I can take advantage of the other stuff.

To those of you who know me, this will come as no surprise: I spent my bonus on an airline ticket. I haven’t been out of the country in over a year and my feet are starting to itch. There is something about being out of my culture and comfort zone that just cracks open the world for me. I lived for a while near the ocean—in Oregon and in the tropics for a little while. I love Minnesota, many things about it, but being landlocked and wearing layers of heavy clothes is really weird for me. I need sand and water. I need to wear a sarong and tank top all day and be barefoot and not covered in something wooly. And for a little while, before I start my thesis, I need my biggest decision in the morning to be “Should I lie in the hammock first? Or should I go for a swim first?”

So I’m going to the Yucatan Peninsula with my sweetheart. We’re likely staying in a small fishing village for a few days, then a hotel in the jungle by Mayan ruins, then we’re going to a small island where you can walk or bike anywhere. We’re staying in a huge condo that one of my graphic designers at work is renting to us for, like, nothing.

I’m going to dig my feet in the sand. I’m going to float on my back in the ocean. I’m going to sleep. I’m going to read whatever I want. I’m going to wander markets for beautiful jewelry. I’m going to see the ruins of an ancient village and old observatories made by one of the most advanced civilizations of the known world. I’m going to get to see what my gorgeous boyfriend is like when he isn’t half crazed by PhD work. I’m going to see what I’m like when I’m not half crazed by MFA work. Oh, it is going to be so very good.

NASA Plans Permanent Moon Base

“[NASA’s] deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said. ‘The door is open for international and commercial interests.’”

--New York Times, NASA Plans Permanent Moon Base, December 5, 2006

As some of you know, I’m a science nerd. In my free time, I read books about astronomy and physics and quantum mechanics for fun, and I’m in love with planets and stars and the waves of light that come from dust clouds billions of light years away.

I value studying astronomy very much.

NASA’s plan to build a base on the moon is so, so saddening.

The moon does not belong to us. It is separate and gorgeous and mysterious and pure and lovely with all its pits and shadows. We don’t have the right to exploit it. We just don’t. And to claim it and try to live on it and pursue “commercial interests”—the power we assume there, to stake a claim on it—it’s egotistical. It’s gross enough that we left a golf ball there—a golf ball! Guys got to the moon and someone thought, Hey, lets hit a golf ball! Think for a moment about the sport of golf and the target market golf often caters to, and the values thereof. Men went to the moon and we littered a golf ball.

The article said, “Commercial concerns might want to process rocket fuel and other products from water and other materials that might be found in the ground nearby.” The implied intention is to mine the moon’s resources. An article on Hubble’s Web site said, “Hubble observations suggests new patterns in the abundance of titanium and iron oxides, both of which are sources of oxygen, a key ingredient for life, and an essential ingredient for human exploration.”

If you study the images NASA and Hubble has taken of astrological phenomena, and if you read books by astronomers and physicists and cosmologists, the awe and reverence for our vast and amazing home is astounding. It’s breathtaking. It’s a privilege to be a tiny, microscopic part of it, and deserves such reverence and respect.

But this? This is a major violation. NASA has reservations about whether it will even serve to advance astronomical research goals at all. For the 17 billion dollars a year it will cost to make the moon base, we should first think about taking care of the planet we actually live on, or, say, feeding all the people on it. I am disappointed. I think I’m going to write NASA a letter.

Image: "This image shows the Moon's soil and mineral compostion. Mare Tranquillitatis - the 'Sea of Tranquility' - is the dark blue region on the right."

Actually, I'm writing about YOU. Any other questions?

I bet you other writers out there get this too: People who ask “What are you writing about?” I especially get it from family, who I most often see around holidays. I hate this question. I love that they’re interested, and I appreciate the kind intention behind the question, but it’s impossible to answer. And any answer I try to give is followed by a confused look and “But… what is it about?”

What is it about? Well, I’m working on 2 short stories, an essay and about 19 poems right now. One of my poems includes a character based on my self-destructive sister and the narrator’s relationship with her and her ongoing struggle between the care of herself versus the care of her sister, and finding balance between self and giving love, and the guilt for not being able to do more, and suffering and fear. It’s abstract, so the reader needs to read both for the layer of narrative and the multiple layers of suggested emotional turmoil—pain and healing in the universal sense. I’m trying to a villanelle, using the narrative of a woman with a black eye driving down a gravel road in a pickup truck. In the poem, I intertwine metaphors of what is infinitely small (atoms) and infinitely large (the cosmos) to cause the reader to question mortality and what existence really is about—is it about what matters to us? Should we make an effort to put our impulses and serious problems into perspective? What is a big problem anyway? So it’s also about theoretical cosmology. The history of the universe and physics and theories about how and why we exist. Would you like to hear about my other 21 projects?

I can try to give this answer, or a less painfully personal version of it, but they never know how to respond. I don’t think this is what they want. It’s like when people ask “How are you?” and you know they want to hear “Fine” because they’re asking to show light affection, not to get a real answer.

Giving a general answer doesn’t work. Saying one of my current 22 writing projects is about a girl driving a truck is like saying Animal Farm is about a pig. If Animal Farm is about a pig, then here is what I am writing about:

Nursing homes
Sex
Outer Space
Sledding
Eagles (the band)
Somalia
Grass
Breakups
Cats
Domestic Abuse
Rubber Chickens
Birds
Planets
The Spine
Boats
Ribbons

An incomplete list, but you get the idea: Giving a short answer trivializes the work. I have so many multi-dimensional projects going at once, and even I don’t know what some of them are about. “What are you writing about?” would be more accurate if stated as “Tell me about what you’re doing that’s meaningful to you right now. I know writing is important to you—tell me about that.” That is a warm, good request, especially if followed by attentive listening, an effort to understand and subsequent inquiries.

So: What to do…. Here’s a possible answer: “What I’m writing about is really complex and personal. Trying to explain it quickly wouldn’t really do the work justice, but thanks for asking. I’m working on several pieces right now about relationships and philosophy. When I get published, I’ll bring you a copy.” There—I just killed both “What are you writing about?” And “When can I read something?” with one stone. Now, for a response (be sure to look at the cartoons) to “I’m thinking about writing a book when I’m done with my next knitting project. It sounds fun.”

Rothko

I’m in a coffee shop down the street from me that feels oddly empty and quiet. It isn’t empty. Every table here has one occupant each, and I just noticed that I’m the only woman. The walls are large and bare and mostly white except for a scene painted on them in one color with no variation—a sort of tomato orange. The scene is solid and has distinct corners. Part of the mural is of an abandoned warehouse with broken windows, which takes up 1/3rd of one of the walls, and the rest of the walls are painted with a silhouette of telephone poles and connecting wires that cross and sag along the rest of the walls.

I can sort of see it—an urbanite wants to open a coffee shop, so she gets a retail space sort of in the hip neighborhood but on side streets so she can afford it. She brings in an artistic consultant. He comes into the room, puts his hand to his chin and after a moment says, “I’ve got it. I see white. I see a red—no, orange—no, red-orange. I see [dramatic pause] telephone poles. Rows and rows of telephone poles.”

I’m sitting by the wall by the cracked-up orange warehouse and my shirt, oddly, is the same red as the paint. It looks planned. Everyone is quiet here. Most of the men look like they came home from whatever work wherever, ate something and fell asleep in front of the television for 15 hard minutes, then woke up with a start and thought “I have so much shit to do. I have to get out of this apartment.” Two of them are holding up their heads by resting their chin in a hand and an elbow on the table. I kind of wish my cell phone would ring.

All the men have white coffee cups except the guy with the hair straight up and the cowgirl boots. There are large, bulbous lamps on each table that look like trees from The Lorax. I’m drinking a lemon soda called Bubble Up! And sitting in a chair covered in gold-flecked plastic. There’s definitely some sort of 50’s theme going on here.

All of us are here for company and we know it. There are five tables against each wall and behind us and behind the light from the Lorax Trees, orange telephone wires connect us at the shoulder or head, and I think about wires. Telephones with hearty coiled cords and grounded computers and the speaker in my car with a loose and unreliable wire "I'm wired," how obsolete telephone poles already are. I think of how 50’s homemakers cried the day a husband wheeled the first television into the living room because otherwise, there had very little access to the outside world, except in books and radio and imagination.

The tables are full here because our own walls are not covered in orange telephone poles and we need something that isn’t what we’re surrounded by all the time, even though we’ll stare at our screens and books like I have for over eight hours already just today. And we need people—silent is fine, just to be around more people. In the same room with them. Six Dells. Three Macs. Four Razors. Us. We probably won’t talk.

Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.- Vernor Vinge

Hemmingway once wrote a really short story. It goes like this:

"For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never worn."

Wired Magazine asked authors to write a 6-word short story. Here are some of my favs:

Longed for him. Got him. Shit. - Margaret Atwood
Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.- William Shatner
Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?- Eileen Gunn
Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.- Joss Whedon

Then I tried some of my own:

Submerged crocodile licks lips.
“Romantic swim?”

**

Broken vows generate escape velocity.
Freedom.

**

Tequila in Minneapolis?
Breakfast in Tijuana.

**

Here he comes! Run for your—

OKAY, your turn.

Thesis? Piece of cake.

Miz Voix de Michele is handing in the first draft of her thesis today. Do go congratulate her.

Four

Shamelessly ripped off from other bloggers:

Four jobs I have had in my life:

Worm sorter. (Bait.)
Maid.
Wine Club Manager.
Medical Writer.

Four jobs I think would be neat:

Scuba diving instructor.
Travel writer.
Musician.
Nun. The good kind. Especially if I could fly.

Four places I’ve lived:

Rural Indiana
Oxford, England
Portland, Oregon
Perth, Western Australia

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

Cabo
New Orleans
Wyoming
Prague

Four TV shows I love to watch:

Jeopardy
Oprah
Some sitcoms from before 2003
The Universe shows on PBS

Four of my favorite foods:

Thai curry w/ tofu and veggies
Ruffles and French onion dip
Gourmet chocolate and red wine
Enchiladas

Four places I’d rather be right now

Cottesloe Beach
The Walk Café in Subiaco
Road tripping through South America
A cabin in the mountains with lots of windows.

Happy Halloween

BOO.

Anyone? Anyone? Anybody out there?

Today I took 6,395,329 pounds of books to the used book store. The idea was to sell them and walk out with more money and fewer books than I walked in with. Rather, I walked out with the same amount of books I walked in with, minus $64.

I am working on a research paper about poetry written about science. I’m learning that there isn’t much of it out there. I got a book called “Verse and Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics.” Other than that, I’m not finding much poetry about science (for adults—there are some kid’s science education books). Can any of you recommend anything? Specifically about the Universe/Space or about the opposite: Cells, microscopic stuff. They don’t need to be whole books about it—a single poem here and there will do. Anyone?


"It hit the news today: the telescopic evidence,
faint light from cosmic gas, traces of the stuff
that held everything at once--my fingernail, this pen...
my mother's hairnets, the plane that crashed in Dallas yesterday...
the cameo that vanished under my bed when I was ten, mountains
of bleashed conch shells, women washing sheets
in the Ganges... cobbled streets
of Paris, craters on the moon, spaceships not invented yet
and cameras clicking pictures of that cosmic dust
colder than the pain of loss--proving that everything came
from the same infintesimal seed
about the size, they say, of the dot at the end of this sentence."

--Dinah Berland, All Together, Nothing Lost

In which the artist bangs her head on her desk, stops to yawn, and resumes.

When I dragged myself
to my cubicle this morning
It was like I had never left. I can’t escape
To a coffee shop
Or—novel idea—the gym
Because I have to leave on time again
to go to class and I
I’m going nuts
It is 2:30. The day is young.

My rhododendron weeps for me.
The printer whines.
If my cube had iron bars
I’d drag a tin can along them.
If my cube had iron bars
I’d hold them in my fists
Shake and do something obscene,
like a monkey at the zoo who belongs
in a tree, in a forest, in a country, far, far
away from here.

Where will untellable stories be told?

“We would learn to hear the blankness / that forms the essence of our going on”
--McPherson

On the lawn at 1 a.m. they grow
closer together, strangers in robes
and party skirts and flannels they come
from watching television, making routine love
the bar, couches where they dozed, they come
from doorways and alleys
from the gun shot, the sirens, or the
rustling of voices they have come
together now, from the corners, with nothing
at all to say.
A boy is dead. They all know that
The many questions have no answers
no use asking
but there is comfort
in standing near, the drawing in like ducks on a pond,
an unlikely group, silent, as if to say I
am not alone I am not alone right now these
are my companions
in this they shift their weight cross
and uncross their arms then one girl, maybe twenty, says
It is late.
They separate, the miserable thread of the night growing long and tangled
between them.

Firstbasawassa

Coach Conrads Sit-up Camp for Shirtless Boys

I Ransacked My Landlord's Garden

You charged Joanie downstairs for heat and water
for the washer everybody, including you, uses.
You yelled at Ali for not composting eggshells.

And when I asked you to replace the backdoor eyehook
with a deadbolt
you told me that such paranoid vibes
sent forth into the world
will only serve to attract rapists to me, and
by your inaction, you declared you deemed
a lock
unnecessary.

You didn’t tell me that squirrels nest
in the vent ducts in the cold and will
break into my house and might
smash my stained glass art,
pee on my bookshelf
and claw the window sills so they look
torn, like the work
of a crowbar
which sent me screaming down
the stairs to the neighbors
There's A Man In My House
when it was just three stinking rats
with bushy tails.

Yes,
it has been a while, I know, but today,
I ransacked your garden.
All summer you have been bent
yanking and digging and sweating and I
have watched you
from my comfortable chair on the balcony,
sipping wine, grilling burgers and now,
Steve,
A half-dozen red ripe tomatoes
sit in my bowl.

Three hot peppers,
the only yellow squash,
several cucumbers (there are a thousand),
a head of lettuce, five carrots,
a most beautiful violet eggplant with
waxed-shiny skin and
a spongy core fresh
and white,
like a daisy.

I wonder, Steve, if you put some
fear-of-people-steeling-your-vegetables
paranoid vibe
into the Universe
because
I blame your vibe
for making me hack through
enough rhubarb
for twenty-seven pies.

I do have one regret.
I did not not take
the lovely lone melon.
The cord, too strong
for me to break
by myself.

Jackpot.

I picked up my new car last night. The sellers and I went to the DMV together to with our sickle’s (for the red tape), and after nearly keeling over from the amount of taxes I had to pay (there is no sales tax in Oregon, so what a surprise!) and dealing with a guy who didn’t want to accept my out-of-state check (Yes, I’ve lived here 2 years and still have Oregon checks. Sue me.), and filling stuff out and all that jazz, I have my new car. Well, it is new to me.

My old car—well, dears, my old car is very old. If my old car were a person, she’d be named something like Matilda and would be someone’s 80-year-old grandma who wears fuchsia polyester pants, smokes 3-packs of Parlaments a day, complains about her aching liver and spends far too many late nights drinking cheap gin through a straw in front of the slot machines at the casino. She’s not stylish, has a broken tape deck, coffee stickiness on the dash (no cupholders), and no cruise control. She wheezes and coughs and clunks and exudes a puff of smelliness every time I turn left. And like said granny-lady, she’s been there when I needed her—gotten me around in my underemployed days, made it through a snowdrift in rural Wisconsin, blasted through Chicago toll roads without (accidentally) paying, remained relatively rust-free, and recently survived being driven into an (almost) flash flood. Matilda, she’s a trooper when she isn’t groaning about her aching CV joints and asking for insanely heavy buckets of change to be dropped in her engine.

My new car, if she were a person, her name would be Ruby and she’d be dressed in stylish yet comfortable designer shoes she found at a consignment shop. She’d belong to MPR, vote, pluck her eyebrows and occasionally date a motorcycle. She would see Paris while she’s young, eat chocolate ice cream in her pajamas and escape to the boundary waters for the weekend. She’s pretty but not too frilly. Practical, safe, and zippy enough to be fun and free-wheelin’.

I feel like I just went from a college-age futon and milk-crate coffee table to Pottery Barn. Not Ethan Allen, but happy to have it.

Word of the day: Phhhhht.

Things that suck:

Family issues that I won’t bother going into and some other unfortunate crap.
Dreams about hurt friends and burnt love letters in the toaster (Hey, it was a dream).
Schlepping boxes and stuffing 250 marketing launch packets.
Heavy boxes.
Incompetent people who say they’re going to do something (that is ON a DEADLINE) then don’t do what they said they’ll do, and to fix it, you must make 42,000 phone calls like this: “Dial 1 for loans, 2 for contracts, 3 to wait on hold for 5000 more minutes only to be connected to someone COMPLETELY useless who will just fuck up your paperwork even MORE.”
Eating cheap take-out lunch while trying to assemble 250 shipping boxes.
Clowns. Okay, clowns have nothing to do with today, but aren’t they totally creepy?
My boss, who got in at 9 and left at 4.
Cute shoes that really hurt.
Stupid people who demand stupid unreasonable things and change their mind at the last effing second and don’t understand what you do enough to know you can’t just freaking whip out jobs in two seconds by command.
TWO presentations on poets that may or may not be due tomorrow but must be prepared anyway.
PMS.

Things that do not suck about today:

French Meadow’s Almond Croissants and my friend Kate.
Getting home from work.
Flannel pajamas.
Purple. I just like purple.
The 42,000-phone-calls-stupidity working out in the end.
People who help stuff 250 packets and assemble shipping boxes.
Overtime.
Fall. Fireplaces.
72 hours until I leave town for a north woods cabin.
Myself, who has good work ethic. Except for that whole personal-emails thing.
Good. Boxed. Wine.
Cheesy chick TV shows.
Quality frozen pizza.
My new car. Well, new to me. I pick it up on Thursday.
Phones with an off button.

Oh, more good things on the list than bad things. That’s good.

-Deborah Keenan

Your job is to add
To the river.
You might be
a drop of rain.

If you break down, I'll drive out and find you...

I spent my actual b-day in Indiana with my family—my whole immediate family—and that is exactly what I wanted. My older sister and I drove out to the country to our masseuse friend’s house for massages. After my massage I dozed off in a patch of tall grass next to the big red barn while I waited for my sister. There were chickens and a big green cornfield and a little pumpkin and sunflower patch and a big blue sky. It smelled like home.

I also went to see my 96 year-old granny and my aunt and uncle and cousins and parents and cousin’s babies came over, and I played with little Autumn who is 3 and when we parted she gave me a kiss and made the I-love-you sign with her hand—her mom is teaching her sign language now—and it was all very sweet. Then we barbecued in my back yard and had really yummy cake and wine on the screened in porch of our big old house and talked about our lives, and how blessed we are and how fast time goes. On our refrigerator there is a picture of my father at age 5 on his bicycle just outside that screened in porch. My family’s been in that house for almost 3 generations now, and he grew up in it too.

Back in Minnesota, Voix and Frances threw a killer party for me with all of my favorite stuff and all my favorite people. We drank champagne and had the best cake ever and red curry for dinner (fav) and went to a swanky place where we drank drinks that end with –tini. I got presents: a journal, salt and pepper shaker, litjo subscriptions, a set of golf clubs, a great ACDC t-shirt. It was classy and fun, and Voix’s cooking totally kicks ass.

I love my birthday time because the sun is high and bright and people are jamming the last bits of fun into the rest of summer and then we get to calm down, rest, harvest stuff, turn inward, get the sweaters out of the closet, turn on the fireplace, pick apples, read and write more, and the life cools down. This time of year, school starting and things ripening and everyone resting from a busy fun summer. It is good. Being 30 is good.

I am going home to Indiana today to celebrate my thirtieth birthday,

which is Sunday. Because I'm leaving work early, I needed to work extra to hit my 40 hours. Because work dinners count as hours, I decided to leave work at the regular time yesterday and go to the dinner planned for our sales reps. Usually, I skip these.

Now, I haven't worked at a company that actually has money for a long time. I've certainly never been in a position to go out to a shmancy restaurant, eat and drink well and get paid for it. My last job was at a very poor nonprofit. My other job was nannying two little boys. My job before that was a receptionist. You get the idea.

Can I just tell you that for about 15 people, we ran up a tab that was the same amount of money that I lived on for an entire semester. It's approximately enough cash to feed all the starving children in China, AND fund research to learn to make fuel out of corn cobs. I was astounded. People ordered so many shots of Patrone that eventually, when one young woman nearly slid out of her chair like a wet noodle, the waiter cut us off. I was even more astounded when one of my co-workers, the leader of the whole young, flash, hammer-fied group, tried to kiss me in front of everyone, and when I dodged him, he accidentally licked my face.*

I don't know if this is common protocol or not. Maybe it was a particularly crazy night. If I ever, ever tell you I'm dating either a sales rep or a surgeon, you have my permission--rather, you are required--to come to my house and perform a lobotomy. Not that they're ALL bad, but I'd certainly consider it a high-risk endeavor.

Now, I have to roll out of bed and go into the office, and I really, really don't want to.

*Lucky for him, I know he's a very respectful guy who was having a rare, dipshit moment.

With salt. Extra salt.

Moi. And Voix.

I am playing hookey from work.

It is 12:30 and I am home sick. Am I sick? Well, a little. I have a cold. And lots of paid sick time. So I am home, and I just left a v-mail for the Voix and I'm going to read and take a nap and watch some movies that I swiped from Kate and Tim when I went over to water their plants. They are on their honeymoon.

I am not going to stay on the computer very long. It is not okay to play hookey from work then spend all day on the computer unless you are doing mandatory homework, and I have no homework right now. I must find mischief. I don't know what kind. One can't ditch out on something unless it's to do something Ferris-Buhler's-Day-Off-esque. At least a little bit.

Now, I'm off to eat enchiladas and drink margaritas with the Voix. Suckas.

Yes. A while.

I just called my ex in Australia and he was asleep—it’s 11 p.m. or so—-so we agreed to talk later and I said Love You because we still do that even though it is a different kind of Love You than before. He didn’t say it back. Which means either his mother is present or he’s in bed with a woman, because I know he loves me to pieces and I know him well enough to know when he’s up to mischief. I shrieked at him—OMG, you totally have a girl over. I teased the shit out of him for a minute and he laughed and said he’ll talk to me tomorrow. He wasn’t dating anyone when I talked to him less than a week ago, so she’s either really new or an ex or a one-nighter. Where once I’d have found this utterly heartbreaking, now it’s just funny and whatever and no big whoop.
That is kind of weird, that this isn’t weird. Does that make sense? I used to live with this man and bought us dishes and talked about marriage and had Christmas with his parents and washed his endless pile of rugby socks. There was a time that I couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t include us together. Then, things changed. When we were heartbroken about it, it was impossible to imagine that being apart would ever feel natural or okay. We thought it would feel wrong and foreign forever. And it doesn’t feel that way—it feels like finally, after 5 years of knowing each other, our relationship is finally exactly where it is meant to be for the long haul. He’s there and I’m here and he dates and I date and we call each other to whine about who we’re dating and we send birthday presents and have a whole new meaning for the I Love Yous between us. Sometimes we can promise to love someone forever and move heaven and earth to keep them as safe and happy as possible. Sometimes you are wrong, and can’t and don’t keep that promise, and that is scary to think about, because if you can be wrong once, you can be wrong again.
I guess… that’s where we’re lucky, Dan and me, is that that part hasn’t changed at the core, it just looks different than before. I still would jump in front of a speeding train to save the guy, and he would for me. And whenever I call him crying about something, he cries with me because even though he’s a big, burly, hairy, steak-lovin’ manly man he can’t hear me cry without getting teary. But the love does not look like I expected it to—we don’t have romantic feelings for each other anymore--and there was a time that I couldn’t trust that things would ever be okay. But they are. It took a lot of time and hurt like hell, but they are okay. And I’m really lucky for that. That even though we’ve been through a train wreck and couldn’t ever imagine how it would ever get untangled, it really is all back on track. It feels good to finally be able to say that and mean it. It’s taken a while.

Grodie.

Did you know that Dairy Queen has a flavor of Blizzard called "Cheesequake?" Excuse me, but I do not want my Blizzards to evoke the image of quaking cheese. I like cheese. I like ice cream. I approve of these dairy products. Please do not mix them.

Ich lebe mein Leben in Wachsenden Ringen

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

-Rainier Maria Rilke

Some sad notes from an old notebook I used to write in when I was half asleep:

In bed
I smooth my foot along
my dry white calf.
So soft
after you were gone
from lying here
Evening.
Night.
All morning.

***

The earrings I wore tonight
glisten on the counter top

You will never understand
the depth of my sadness.

When my last lover saw me
In the picture by the waters

He said standing there
You look like you might
dive in
and swim away.

***

The tree has borne a thousand seeds
and none will ever live.
Last night, the storm
ripped a thousand branches
to the ground.

Why didn't you tell me?

She is sick
to think of it.

***

What I remember most about you
is orange skies
in Minnesota winters.
I was amazed
that it never got
truly dark.

Sponge-Tim No-Pants

My friends Tim and Kate got married yesterday at 5:30 in the morning. They rented a giant camping space in the boonies that was private and pretty. A bunch of people camped and the grandparents and aunties and such stayed at a hotel nearby. Camping Friday night. Wedding at 5:30 Saturday morning. Brunch. Free time for swimming, golfing, canoeing, etc. Reception at 3. Camping again Saturday night.

It was approximately 1005968493 degrees yesterday, so the 5:30 a.m. nuptials outdoors turned out to be a good idea, a cool 83 degrees with a nice breeze. The bride dragged me out of my tent at 4 a.m. We woke up the bride’s sister and a friend or two. We went to the bridal tent (tall enough to stand up in) where we strapped Kate into a bra that looked much like a torture device, Lauren clipped on jewelry and I put on a headlamp, the kind you use for spelunking, to do the bride’s makeup. It was still totally dark out.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel (the groom loves his bride’s hardcore outdoorsyness, but wanted AC and, you know, a shower before his own wedding), the groom and his best friend were dressing. Tim put on his shirt, his tie, his jacket. Then he felt a cool breeze and realized something was missing: he had no pants. There were no pants on the hangar, none in the bag, none under the bed. The groom, he had no pants.

Tim made the 40 minute drive back to Minneapolis in SEVENTEEN minutes wearing a dress shirt, tie, and his boxer shorts.

At 5:30 a.m., all the friends were caked in bug spray and sweat and bed-head and had breath that could kill an elephant. There was no running water, you see, and pit toilets. But Kate—not Kate. Kate was born with mutant naturally-gorgeous genes. She rolled out of her tent with flowing hair soft as cornsilk, as fresh as a spring daisy. She was dazzling. When she walked across the field with her father to marry her groom, she was glowing, Tim was glowing, and he had on pants. It was all as it should be. We would’ve cried if we hadn’t been so dehydrated that it was impossible to produce tears. The ceremony was meaningful and the J.O.P. said relevant and touching things. Tim’s father sang a very appropriate and lovely song he wrote for the couple. His sister sang “All you need is love.”

Then we ate brunch. And instead of canoeing and golfing and swimming, per The Plan, everyone went home or to various hotel rooms to shower and shave their teeth and take a 2 or 3 hour nap. Then we went to the reception where we visited and hugged lots of people and ate barbecue food and really good cheesecake. I skipped the second night of camping and drove home and slept in my own bed for 10 whole hours. It was happy, and I am glad they are married and I am glad to be clean and in air conditioning.

Tonight I rowed on the Mississippi

...in a double with a young woman named Erika. It was a skinny double--not much wider than my hips--and very sensitive to every movement. Sleek and white on the outside, and all wood on the inside. An old boat.

Erika bowed, so she sat behind me and called out instructions every once in a while to steer, but mostly we just rowed. It was cloudy, so it wasn’t too hot, and the water was totally calm. Because she was bowing, I didn’t have to look back or think about what direction we were headed or if we’d hit anything. All I had to do was my job, a rhythmic motion, and look straight out ahead at the rippling V we sliced through the water, at the three ducks by the shore, at the one white cloud atop gray ones the shape of a crumpled quilt, at the airplane just taking off at the horizon, at the arc and pedicles of the Lake Street Bridge and the lone biker crossing from one city to the next. Arms away, slow up the slide, click, plunk, exhale and power through the drive, handle heights even around the corner at the finish and click to feather the oars for the recovery.

The first thing I bought with my first paycheck...

...was a pair of Levi 501 button fly jeans. They were boys’, so they sat lower on the hips and were relaxed. It was the early 90’s. Baggy enough to be grunge, fitting enough to still look like a girl. I loved them. I wore them to school. To make out with my boyfriend in his parent’s basement. I took them to college. They traveled across the country with me when I graduated. I hiked up volcanoes in them. I hiked in caves. I sat in them on the floor of my first one-room studio apartment, which had no furniture, cross legged, the hems at the feet all frayed, and cried to my sister twelve states away about not being able to find a job. Eventually, I wore them to my job.

First they got a hole at the knee, then the butt started to wear thin on account of my bony ass. Eventually, they were ratty as hell. I had to do something. Drastic? Yes: I cut them into jean shorts. The button holes on the fly were so worn they’d come undone of their own accord, so I sewed them smaller. I ironed patches beneath the back pockets where you could see the sun shine through. I wore them more. Then: it was time.

I retired the first pair of jeans I bought with my first paycheck when I moved to Australia. It was sad, but they were dead. Gone. Practically just a series of patches and thread. It was time.

After I got home from Australia, I flew to New York and Becky and I shopped at a discount store in New Jersey. I spotted them across the room. This is the part where we would have locked eyes (you know, if jeans had eyes) and cheesy love music would have played over the loud speaker. I made my way to the clearance rack. I snatched them up, tried them on in the dressing room, and Becky exclaimed, “Yeah, I like ‘em. They’re cool.” We’ve been together ever since. They came with me to Japan, another move to Portland. Road trips. Dates. They were aptly named “the nice-ass jeans” by my ex-boyfriend. The hems around the feet are just the right length in my favorite pair of shoes.

I regret to inform you that the Lucky nice-ass jeans are dying. They’ve got a hole on the top of the left thigh, which I can live with. But around Christmas, they started getting the same worn-thin transparency around the sit-bones that the Levis had. Damn my bony ass. I asked my mother to perform some serious surgery, patches and stitching here and there. It worked for a while. Now, it’s no use. It’s time to retire them. Before I’m entirely forced to turn them into strictly around-the-house jeans, I’m trying one more set of ass-patches. But they won’t feel the same. It won’t be long now. The patches will feel stiff and weird. I won’t wear them as often. Today, at the mall, I shopped for a new favorite pair of jeans.

I also regret to inform you that, much to my dismay, the jeans with zippers on the side at the ankle, the kind that burn your leg when you put them on straight out of the dryer, the kind we wore in the SEVENTH GRADE, are back. I tried on maybe 10 pair (not the ones with the zippers—I’m SO not going back to seventh grade). I tried on the “boyfriend cut” jeans, which do not fit like boyfriend’s jeans at all. I tried on the ones that are pre-bleached to look like they’re worn and wrinkled, which The Voix said made me look like I’d gotten fat, washed them a bunch, then lost weight. Bleachy stretch-marks. No thank you. I found a pair that I liked—they’re cute and make my legs look long—so I bought them. But they’re trendy. They’re good for a fling, but not the real thing. Now that I’m on the market for some new Most Favorite Jeans, it looks like what’s out there since last time has changed. Maybe I’ll never fall in love with a pair of jeans again, but I’ll keep trying them on, and who knows. It could happened when I least expect it.

Fun with online dating

My latest love letter from a total stranger. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried:



Hello [Cavu],
I hope you are doing ok.
Have you ever danced untill you felt that you were like an eagle flying graciously across the blue sky?
You look and sound so genuin and sweet. When I first saw your pic I had this feelings in my heart that I have been unable to shake since then. I have not felt like this in a very long time.
Me--I will start off by letting you know that I am a very honest man and expect the same from others. I am not a Denzel Washington but I have this feeling that we could be great friends. I am a down to earth and caring person and I do not play games. I felt an urge to write to you bacause I was overcome with feelings looking at your pic.
Tell me-Do you believe in "Love at first sight?"
Even though we've never met, something about your looks and profile got my equilibrium disturbed.My mind raced as waves of passion flushed over my dark skin, causing me to gaze upon visions of impossible romantic possibilities.I felt like a pathetic man who anticipates the true rhythm of love, with a woman he might never hold. My imagined discourse of thoughts left me suffering, as my lips quivered with the words I might never speak
"I have loved you more than anybody in this world."

I am looking foward to hearing from you. A pic will follow your responce.
Take care for now.
Regards,
-Rico

I am leaving for the Twins game in a few minutes

It's a work thing. We have about 30 marketing peeps in town from all over the globe. I have eaten 3 meals a day with work people for the last 3 business days. We are going to feed our guests hotdogs and they will love us.

Crap that is piled upon my coffee table

One candle. Cream. Unscented.

Currents from the Dancing River: Contemporary Latino Fiction, for lesson planning creative writing classes for immigrants.

Photo negatives, mostly from New Year’s Eve in New York.

A photograph of me, taken by me, in my bathroom because there is better light, for a trial on-line dating profile. The trial is going swimmingly well, assuming I want to date John Lovitz.

A box of 4 gourmet chocolates, the latest copy of GQ Magazine, a Sudoku book, a crumpled map of Indiana Amish country saved from the last time I saw him: All items for a care package for Josh who is a pilot in the navy, and just left for three months at sea.

A piece of particle board with a stretched piece of watercolor paper glued to it.

A surgical technique manual for a titanium intervertebral disc cage, designed for both anterior and posterior implementation.

An exam: “1. From the superior to the inferior, list the five major regions of the spine; indicate the type of curvature it has. Write the tame of each component of a typical vertebra on the spaces provided.”

Two ink pens.

A small rock.

A receipt from Nina’s Coffee Shop.

A postcard from Greece.

How many women I crammed into my attic apartment last night: 13

How long Kate and Tim have been in love: 20 months
Days till their wedding: 55
Time Kate will rise on her wedding day in order to put on her gown and hike a leg up on a tree (we’ll be camping) to strap on a garter belt in the middle of the wilderness in time for her dawn ceremony: 4:30 AM.
How many penis shaped cakes I baked yesterday: 2
How many Ben dropped on his foul kitchen floor: 2
How many penis-shaped cakes Ben baked yesterday: 2

How many women I crammed into my attic apartment last night: 13
How many jell-o shots someone brought to my house: 8 million
How many I consumed: 2
How many the bride consumed: approximately 9
How many times she yacked: 0. That I know of. [Update: Make that 2.]
How many times she drunk-dialed the groom: 2

How long my parents have been married: 35 years
How long they were engaged: 3 months
How long it’s been since my younger sister disappeared for a month and came home married to a man 25 years older than her: 5 years
How many family members have been married in the same small town church with the most gorgeous stained glass windows ever: 8
How many babies those couples had: 20

How many dance clubs we attended last night: 3
How many we rides we took in a black stretch limo: 1
How much we paid for said limo: $6
How many times I had my ass pinched: 3
How many bathrooms I peed in and, using the well-honed skills I learned at college frat parties, managed not to touch a single thing except TP: 3
How many guys bought me a drink: 1
Number of times we heard the song “Baby Got Back”: 4
Number of women in the “Baby Got Back” video who actually have a large ass: 0
Number of times I thought to myself, “Dear God, I am too old for this”: 1,000,000
How many trips to the spa my friends are getting me to thank me for hosting this madness: 1. Yay.

In my 4th grade diary, how old I said I expected to be when I got married: 30
How many times I’ve informally been proposed to: 3
Age I was when my grandmother told me she’d never live to see the day I found a husband and gave me my wedding gift early: 23
Her age on her wedding day: 29
My age now: 29
How often I use the non-wedding gift she gave me: Almost daily

How many times I’ve been asked out this year: 3
How many dates I said yes to: 3
How many of these men are gay: 1
How many of whom had a degree: The gay one.
Days since I heard “I love you” from a man: 1 day
Miles apart I am from that man: 10,629
How many internet dates I’ve been on, total: 4
How many I had a second date with: 1
How many were totally freaks: 0
How long its been since I went on an internet date: 10 months
How many men I’ve met not on the internet (since I moved here) who turned out to be freaks: 5

How many feather boas were in my bed when I woke up this morning: 2
How much random shit I found strewn about my house when I got up:
1 stray sock
1 make-up bag
1 purple bra
7 lemons
1 vibrating cock ring
1 card that said “I dare you to kiss a stranger”
2 jars of frosting
1 t-shirt
1 bag of shredded coconut
6,958 nearly empty cups of God-knows-what drinks
1 dry-erase marker.
How many gallons of warm, sugary, rummy, nauseating Mojito mix I dumped down the toilet this morning: 1
Leftovers I am most excited to chow down on: Mexican layer dip, mixed nuts, wedge of brie.
What’s left of the penis-shaped cakes: 2 cherry-chip testicles
How many bags of trash I hauled to the dumpster: 6
How many drinks I mopped off the floor: 1
What I am going to do with 7 lemons: I have no idea.

The number of years that will pass before I do another jell-o shot, make a penis cake or dance to “It’s Getting Hot in Here/So Take off All Your Clothes”: 3,593,559,293

How many friends I’ve held up the giant hoop of her wedding dress for so she could go pee at her own reception: 3
How much more important it is to have a great partner than any of the wedding stuff: 100x
How nice it is to have both, if that’s what you want: Quite nice, I'm sure.
How much better it is to be single right now than in something that isn’t right: 16 tons
How it feels right now knowing that I’m not vulnerable to or responsible for a relationship: Light as a Feather
How jazzed I’ll be if I find an excellent partner: Super, super jazzed
How urgent is it to find a partner: Not at all.

How it feels to see two wonderful friends fall deeply in love and make each other very, very happy: Amazing.
How it feels to have your friend tell you 10 times in one night that she loves you, and that this is just the kind of girl’s night she wanted: Worth every dropped and re-baked penis cake.
How sure I am that these two punks are a fantastic match: 100%
How weepy and happy will I be at their wedding: Very.

The Delights of Anger

"Something happens to people in the sunbelt. I believe the constant overdose of vitamin D has softened my skull and turned me nice, so that I've started to act like a nice person--though maybe with a little more of it I will overdose and just come into my own nastiness. For it is innate, at my core. The true flowering of my being is bored and acidic and annoyed with the incredible idiots who surround me." --Stacey Richter, "Christ Their Lord." Tin House, v21


The AC in my car is dead. My car is sitting, unrepairable, in the parking lot of the shop, to which I have no ride. I have 20 people coming to my house for a barbecue in, oh, a half hour, and my GRILL is in my TRUNK. Of said car. In said parking lot. On the other side of the TCs. [Update: I left a half-dozen friends at my house to go pick up the car, which had my grill in the trunk, but it was locked in the mechanic's lot. Ever heard of a Wok-a-que? Me neither.]

CAAAARAAAAAP.

My parents were here last weekend. When they arrived, my mother sent my father back out to the car to get the flower they’d picked for me from our back yard and hauled all the way up here in a wet paper towel from Indiana. When Dad was out the door and out of earshot—and you have to understand that my father is the calmest, sweetest, mellowest, most serene fellow alive—my mom leans over to me and says, “Honey, your father had road rage on the way here.” Road rage? I picture someone screaming explicatives while pointing a shotgun out a pick-up window at an old granny going too slowly in her Oldsmobile. “Dad?” I said.

“We were somewhere outside Madison,” so they’d been in the car for, oh, 6 out of 12 hours, “And someone merged and cut your dad off, and he said Fuck You, Goddamnfrickinffrackingblahbluhdeblah.”

That’s the thing about being pissed: he’d been on the road for hours, there was no end in sight. He’d been stuck with my mother, which can be enough to set off a string of F-bombs in itself, and was tired, hungry and had just braved the Dan Ryan on a holiday weekend during construction. We all have the capacity for so much annoying shit before one small, last thing will set it off. When the cup-o-anger is full, the smallest thing can cause it to runneth over.

That is me. Right now. My boss touching my computer screen with her grimy Cheetoes fingers one more GD time would send me through the roof. Furthermore, the fellow I’ve got a giant crush on just asked my friend out, and she told me aaaalllll about it. I feel like I’m in the sixth grade again, when My True Love, Shane, asked me to ask my friend Toni if he would dance with her, and I misunderstood him and thought he asked ME to dance, so I said yes, I’ll dance with you, and he said, No, I said Do you think TONI would dance with me. Not you. That’s how good I feel about today’s episode. However, unlike the sixth grade, I am now old enough to know he is not the love of my life, or even close to it, and I am old enough to come home and drink the white wine that is cooling in my refrigerator, instead of walking the three blocks home in tears. I mean really.

It isn't just those little things, y'all. I've had a winter that, let me tell you (without the details), has filled my cup-'o-tolorance to the brim. Anger. Growl. I find myself wrapping myself on the knuckles for the venomous, bitter dialogue of nastiness running through my mind on days like today. A chipper suburban moron in khaki pants gives me a Minnesota-fake “Howdy!” in the hall at work when I’m on my way out the door to Chili’s (I loathe Chili’s) for a business lunch, and I want to tell her (but don’t tell her) to get a GD personality and a decent pair of pants. It’s not pretty, and it is all quite illogical. However, it feels good sometimes, and frankly, nastiness holds significant value. First of all, because nastiness, on occasion, just feels damn good, especially when one does not apologize for it. There is far too little irreverence in life, and faaaarr to little in Minnesota. Once, I went to the CC Club hoping for an infusion of irreverence, but the almost-intimidating, overly-pierced greaseball who carded me gave me advice on how to keep my engine block from freezing. Minnesota. Jeesh. Portland—now there’s a town for a good whopping dose of satisfying irreverence. I love both cities for very different reasons, but I digress.

Forcing oneself to see the bright side, to make lemonade, to appreciate every single thing one has every frickin’ minute of the day, that’s crap, my friends. Reigning in the ‘tude may be good for general day-to-day attitude maintenance, but sometimes, it is best to freak the hell out for a while. Break a few plates, perhaps, or scream FuckYouYouFuckinFuck to the guy who merges wrong in Madison. For the love of God, don’t smear fake Cheeto goop all over my cubicle, and If you’d rather date a woman whose favorite song is ‘My Humps,’ then bloody well go for it. When the glittering fabric of life shines about as much as the roller towel in a Tijuana men’s bathroom, then, hey, tell off your mechanic or smash something expensive or bitch out the wench that stole your cab at 5 a.m. when you’re late for the airport (Hi, Relish!). Freaking out dusts life off, and before you know it, it’ll start to shine a little bit, and you’ll be better equipped to deal with the dirt.

So, back to my dad: He came back inside with a most gorgeous iris for me, his middle daughter, and he hugged me, and smiled really big, and he rested. I made him some tea, and we talked. Minutes after I went to bed, my dad came into my room and was scuffling around near the open door to my balcony. “What are you doing?” I said.

“I found a little lady bug,” he said, “so I’m trying to shoo her out the door.” He gently picked her up and placed her on the leaf of my petunia on the balcony, and went to bed, and slept very, very well.

dang, dang, da-da-da-da-daaaang

Atomic Dustbin

My junior year prom date was named Zach. I really didn’t know him. He used to sit behind me in CCD (that’s bible school for Catholics, peeps) and bag groceries at the grocery store. I sort of knew who he was.

He called my house and told my mother that he’d like to ask me on a date. My mother gave me the message, so I called back and he asked me to prom. For that very same night. Why not?

I was out somewhere during the day, and it must have been a pool or something because when I came home I was super sunburned. Zach was there already, sitting on the porch swing with my mother in a gray suit he’d bought at the Bargain Hut for $11 after I’d said yes to prom. While I got dressed, he and my mother made a most gorgeous corsage for me out of lilacs from the back yard, and he pinned it to my dress. We took pictures, and we’re both smiling uncontrollably and I’m red as a lobster.

We went to prom. We danced and stuff. Then we went to Fort Wayne, the nearest metropolis about an hour away, and still in our prom threads, and went to an underground punk bar named Monkey Lust. It was fabulous amounts of badass fun. He lifted me up on his shoulders so I could see the band, and I gave him a fake tattoo in the parking lot. Then we drove down Hoosier country roads, the narrow ones with the dips where the tall grass flattens as you zoom through. They had an enormous trampoline in the back yard. We jumped on the trampoline in the middle of the night in our prom clothes, then we laid down on the trampoline and ate ice cream out of the container. The sky was black and full of stars and more stars the longer you looked at it, just millions of them.

We became great friends. I went to Europe that summer and he sent me giant packages with mixed tapes (Fugazi, Nine Inch Nails, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Nirvana). Four months passed till I saw him again, and I was dating a boy named Ted. Ted and I dated and Zach and I were friends. Once, home from college for Christmas, Ted and I were having troubles. Zach and I went to a party and drank too much and kissed. And we both felt weird. So, whatever, we were drunk and it was stupid and we agreed to pretend it never happened, and I pretended I didn’t hear him say he loved me. Maybe he didn’t say it at all, but I’m pretty sure he did.

I dated Ted more. Then Ted and I broke up. I wanted to date Zach, but he was dating Anna. All summer Zach and I went swimming and ate ice cream and lounged in a hammock. He dated Anna, and Anna was beautiful and wonderful and I liked her. Once, a bunch of us were swimming at his house, and for reason we were in his bedroom (the whole big attic) and I don’t know how it happened, we hugged or something, and we could have kissed. But we didn’t.

Then I went to Europe again, to study, and he sent me letters. The old fashioned kind, remember? Hand written on notebook paper with clippings from the small town newspaper that he thought were funny. “Pig Falls from Three Story Window.”

In the first letter, he said he had broken up with Anna. I sent him jam from Herrods and pictures of books that I thought were beautiful and he sent me collages and pictures of the awards he won at art shows—he was always winning awards at art shows because his art was fabulous.

I was gone again for four months. I went to Prague the weekend before finals with my friend Erin, from Oxford. We were talking about Zach and she convinced me that this crazy him-loving-me-when-I’m-not-available and me-loving-him-when-he’s-not-available stuff had gone on long enough. What? FOUR years? She was right: When I got home, I would tell him enough was enough. I loved him. And he loved me. It’s time. Yes, I would do it.

When Erin and I got back to school, there was a letter from him waiting for me.

He was engaged. To a woman named Erica.

I did it anyway. It was hard. I didn’t tell him we should be together. I took him to a park and I remember that I was wearing something hooded, because I kept stalling and pulling the hood down over my face because I couldn’t look at him. I said something like…. I promised myself I’d tell you this before I knew about Erica, and I’m going to tell you anyway. But I want you to know that I’m not intending to upset anything, or to date you, or to harm your relationship. I’m telling you because I need to tell you. If you want to marry her, I want you to, too. I love you. And I’ve loved you since the ice cream on the trampoline.

And now he’s married and has two kids. We aren’t friends.

I wish him well. And I can’t smell lilacs or eat chunky monkey or listen to Gray Cells Green without thinking about what a really great guy he is.

The end.

Ten things I love about my mother: A very incomplete list

She names her plants.

She tells dirty jokes.

She’s brilliant, both enlightened and creative.

She gets rural Hoosiers to appreciate and create art.

The woman is a domestic magician. She got candle wax out of my favorite skirt. She can pack a huge load of stuff into a single suitcase. She can make an awesome set of curtains out of two rags and a stick pin. Her lasagna? Wow.

She’s thrifty.

She married the best man ever.

When my heart got broken, she asked me what I needed, and when I said, “Get me out of this country,” she did.

At Notre Dame football games, she’s the loudest person in the crowd.

She's the Trivial Pursuit champion of the world. And I'm so jealous.

For a different party, she made a miniskirt out of fruit rollups.

Here's one for the “That Was Suppposed to be a Joke and Now It’s on the Internet?!?!” Files

My best friend sent me an email yesterday with the subject “OH MY GOD.” Last winter she went to a costume party. I don’t know what the theme was, exactly—some sort of construction-worker-meets-Burning-Man-artist kind of thing. She made a fringy miniskirt out of containment straps (used in building) and a sort of a tank top… with much less covered up than a tank top. It was iridescent orange, revealing and, while it sounds scary, it was fun and, well, strappy and not something one would be caught dead in anywhere but a theme party among friends.

Yesterday, she hopped onto the Web site for the organization that threw the party to look up an event date or something, and there she was, in all her glory: a GIANT photo of her in the orange strappy ensemble with one high-heeled-boot hiked up on the wall, give the camera man a (fake, joking) sultry dirty-girl look. On the internet. Yes indeed.

I wish I could post a link, but she’d KILL me. Hey: If you wear a bra made out of construction-worker-strappy things, chances are high that it'll end up online. Oh, it was very, very funny.

Shout out to the St. Paul Photoblog

This semester will be over in two days, 22 hours and 58 minutes.

How I Learned to Knit

I lived in my then apartment with my then husband who, then, comes home from work at 3 a.m. smelling like sweat and smoke and exotic dancer perfume.

My husband drops his clothes by the bed and curls behind me. The neighbors are screaming. They started at about three in the afternoon with vodka, I tell him, and were onto whiskey and with a break to walk to the bottle shop around 8 p.m.

The day we moved in, I locked myself out. I was outside trying to light the pilot for the water heater when the door slammed shut, and there I was in my shorts and bikini top and no shoes, and I needed to borrow a neighbor’s telephone book.

I didn’t know. How would I?

The biggest one, the fattest and hairiest, opened the door in his underwear. He said if I ever needed anything else, anything (wink), I could knock any time.

The locksmith took an hour to get there. I could’ve hugged the locksmith and kissed the top of his head. It took two hours to get the place open. My apartment was the hardest place he’d ever had to break into.

James was his name. The drunk neighbor with his gut hanging over the rim of his underwear.

I cleaned houses during the days, a cleaning lady. I took a calculator to the grocery store because I could spend no more than $45 on food for my husband and me for two weeks. At home alone until 3 a.m., I read books on the porch and hung wet socks over the backs of chairs to dry. I rubbed mold off the bathroom ceiling with a mop and swirled sand down the shower drain. The neighbors were drunk by 5 p.m. every bloody day, and sometimes they weren’t just drunk. But my apartment was the hardest one the locksmith had ever broken into, the locksmith said so.

Even half asleep I knew the sound of my husband’s car coming up the bump into the parking lot. I knew the sound of his door slamming and the sound change made in his pocket when he walked up the stairs. And my favorite sound: his key sliding into the deadbolt, and the turning of the lock.

Now, he curls behind me. It’s a big night for James and the boys. Now they are really screaming. There is body-shaped thud against the wall next to where I sleep. Someone is getting pounded.

My husband gets up. Enough, he says. You’re going to Penny’s, and I am calling the police. No, I say, I’m not leaving you here with them.

I was worried about him. I think about this now, not then.

Get dressed.

No.

Get dressed.

If they know you called the police they’ll kill you.

I agree to get dressed because my husband calls Tiny, the best bouncer they have where he works. He is not so Tiny at all, and he is our friend.

I ask to wait there long enough for the police to come, but my husband knows too much about the police here to allow that, and they’re outside now, the neighbors, I mean, and they’re thudding and punching and snapping the railing to the stairs into pieces. Something like a skull might have just cracked pavement.

Something Happened. The drunks are panicking. Suddenly Penny is honking out front and someone yells Get Rid of It and they thump back inside their place.

From our place, we have to cross their door to get out. Now we can make a run for it, outside past their door with my husband and Tiny—when did Tiny get here?—on either side of me, toward the car. They do this for a living, but I am not a stripper and these aren’t everyday drunks. My sandal slips and I yelp and Tiny yanks me up by the arm so I don’t fall. A hunk of hair runs down the steps in the blood like a mouse in a flood.

Turn around. Through the apartment now, I hoist a leg over the balcony and I am down the fire escape and jump the last 10 feet. Penny’s car goes slow, and I look out the back window at my apartment, where my husband and Tiny are. It is all very quiet.

Penny is my husband's friend, but I have met her once before. My sticky sandals are out on the steps by the screen door. She offers me a beer and I say no. I cross my legs on a pillow on the floor. She makes me tea, and adds a splash of whiskey.

Penny’s house is pink and yellow inside, and she has big pillows and fresh flowers and some music playing that should make me feel better. I sip the drink and Penny declares: I'm going to teach you how to knit.

She sits across from me, and I mirror her because I am left handed. She teaches me to cast on, and I don’t get it, so I try a few times, then how to stitch. Maybe a pot holder, or a scarf, or, you know, it doesn’t have to be anything right now.

So I start, and I’m still sniffling, and the needles click and she goes quite fast. I click and click without thinking and then I stop for the first time and look at it. What have I done? I have made a mess of things—loose loops and holes and tight spots all the way through. She says I have to unravel and start again from the beginning.

I go for a bit without stopping, but can’t go a stitch further once I see I’ve only repeated the same mistakes as before. I unravel and start over and unravel and start over and I don’t feel like I’m getting any better at this. I am slow and concentrating very hard and it is always a mess. I undo my work. I begin again. The telephone rings at dawn.

"The Root Problems of the writer...

...are personality problems. He or she cannot get started, or starts a story well then gets lost or loses heart, or writes very well some of the time and badly the rest of the time, or writes brilliantly but after one supurb story or novel cannot write again, or writes brilliantly while the creative writing course lasts but after it is over can no longer write. The root problems, in other words, are problems of confidence, self-respect, freedom: The writer's demon is imprisoned by the various ghosts in the unconscious."

a quote from John Gardner (in the Forward), Becoming a Writer

[Substitute "writer" for artist or "anyone trying to do what they really, really love."] Discuss:

I handed in 65 pages of work on Thursday.

And I'm glad to have that pile of paper outta my face, I'll tell you that much.

I'd love to write something clever and witty, or funny or... Anything. I want to talk about how I went to the cabin last weekend and the basement flooded and we all scooped water out with snow shovels. Or how my best friend from undergrad just bought her gown for her PhD graduation, or how I spent so long in a lavender-scented bathtub yesterday that I shriveled up to a happy, white, good-smellin' prune. But. I want to eat. Then I want to call my Dad back brush my teeth and crawl into my freshly-changed bed and read my big ole book with the sunflower on the cover and fall asleep.

Sigh.

The Bath

During my visit home for Easter, I dropped into the creative arts center my mother manages. She wasn't in her office, but I saw she hung a print of Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Daughter over her desk. I went to the ballet room where 20 five-year-old girls in tutus played duck duck goose. I saw my mother bend down, unzip a five-year-old’s pink jacket and lifted her up so she could reach the coat hook. She said “Okay, now go put your shoes in the cubby and find a spot on the floor,” with the same tone she used to use with me. I remembered myself at five, reaching up to pick a honeysuckle blossom off the vine in our back yard. "Pinch the bud," she'd said, "gentle, gentle. If you pull the style through the bottom of the petals you can taste a drop of nectar.”

I was raised with my two sisters in a creaky old Midwestern farmhouse, now surrounded by the town that grew up around it. During my sophomore year of high school, Mary Cassatt paintings started showing up around the house. The Bath hung above the bureau full of picture albums. Mom bought a print of The Bath for $5 at a rural library she found while researching her ancestry. Years later, she saw originals at an art gallery, and a photograph of Mary Cassatt. "She looks like your great aunts," she said. "Just like some of our relatives."

In The Bath, a mom holds her daughter on her lap and washes her feet in a wash basin. Cassatt’s an Impressionist, among the ranks of Degas and Renoir, best known for a period where she painted mostly mothers and children in everyday scenes. Like most art, what makes them brilliant is the something else, and here, the something else is the ease of being between these mothers and children. Cassatt communicates a very specific kind of love through the relaxed way a child rests a hand on her mother’s knee, the way a mother holds the child up on her lap with a secure but gentle hold.

I remember my mother taking me out to the garden when I was young to dig my little hands into the dirt while she planted tomatoes. There was no lack of these every day moments, or of love, in our house. When my parents moved me into my first dorm room, she cried and hugged me out the window of the car as they pulled away. “I never even taught you how to make a roast!” she had said. I said, “Its okay, Mom. I haven’t eaten meat in six years.” More recently, when I came home from a year abroad heartbroken and emotionally steamrolled, she sat with me in my old bed, wrapping and unwrapping pieces of my hair around her finger until we both fell asleep.

I suspect that my mother’s love for Cassatt’s work has less to do with her life as a mother than as a child. When my mother was eight, her mother died of a massive brain aneurysm. Grandma was about my age then, 33. Over time, Mom's early memories have blended with stories she's heard or things she may have made up: Her mom trying to curl her hair to look like Shirley Temple’s. Dyeing eggs in a cup of vinegar and food coloring, A fight over an onion.

I returned to Minneapolis after my Easter visit. The ground thawed and tulips popped up as they do. I called my mother to find out how to get candle wax out of my favorite skirt. (Hot iron. Newspaper.) I asked her what the deal is with her Mary Cassatt obsession.

"I dreamt about a painter who was my mother, and the next morning I looked in an art book and saw the painting of the mother bathing the 7 year old girl," she said. "I just cried. Finding that painting did more in healing my childhood than anything has, including being a mother." I had identified with the daughter in the paintings they express a maternal comfort I’d received growing up. My mother loved Cassatt’s work because through the child and mother, she drew out a little bit of the maternal love she had missed.

Today, I miss my sisters.

When we were little, Easter meant it was warm enough to go outside in the early morning in bare feet to search for eggs without getting too terribly cold. It meant that the bush in the back yard would have pink blossoms on it, and we would dress up in our Easter dresses with hats and hose and shiny shoes and have our photograph taken. We would gorge on candy, fidget all through mass and go to our grandmother’s, where she’d give us more candy and our mom would insist we’d had enough and my grandmother would say, “Look at them! They’re too skinny,” and give it to us anyway, which pissed my mother off, also a part of the holiday tradition.

Yesterday, I found an old photograph from about 1982 of my sisters and me. We’re in our old family room (mustard colored shag carpet, plaid couch) watching Mork and Mindy on our big old television with no remote control. We’re all in our footy pajamas and we’re all on the couch upside down, like Mork. We liked Mork. We spent a lot of time upside down—on the couch, at the dinner table, and occasionally we slid down the stairs upside down. It was riotously funny.

With three girls, is often lots of hard laughter. My oldest sister is kind of quiet and introverted very smart and hugely sensitive and occasionally hysterical. The youngest was absolutely hyper active—pretty out of control now that I think about it—and she was always getting sent out of classrooms and away from the dinner table and failing class and making up rediculous words and saying things out loud that everyone secretly knows that you just don’t say out loud and she was creative and nuts and also hysterical. Once, she got sent home with a nasty note from the home ec teacher because she refused to use measuring utensils while baking. She’s an amazing cook—but that didn’t matter. So my mom wrote back to the home ec teacher: “We don’t ever use measuring utensils in our house.” Which made me happy.

My little sis is a worry and a headache and totally lovable and unique and ornery and awesome. She is sensitive and sweet. The week after college graduation, I was in the driver’s seat of my car, which was packed to the gills, ready to high-tail it out of Indiana for Portland, indefinitely. I rolled my window half way down to say goodbye and she cried and blubbered all over the place and left tear streaks all over my window. I didn’t wash the car for a long time because I didn’t want her sweet tear streaks to go away.

So, I miss them, that’s all.

Squirrel Fur Coat, Anyone?

I'm engaged in an ongoing battle with squirrels. I live next to a park, and there are millions of them. They have parties on my roof. They've busted into my place and broken my stained glass window and clawed up my window sills. When I moved in, I had a refrigerator on the balcony (long story) and they used to break into it and put little teeth marks in the butter and steal whole eggs. A few days ago, I put my orchid on the deck to get some sun, and when I went outside to collect it, all the leaves had been munched on.

I want to take them all out with a sling shot. But do I? No, I do not. I am nice.

Last winter, I planted 6 tulip bulbs in pots on my balcony. Everyone's tulips but mine are growing. So today, I decided to dig one up to see what the deal was--Are there roots? Are they all duds? What?

The tulip bulbs are gone. GONE. All six of them. In their place I found a peanut (in the whole shell--two little peanuts) and a stone. The squirrels stole all freakin' six of my tulip bulbs and planted a G.D. peanut and a frickin' rock.

Growl. They have not heard the last from me.

Apocalypse

"WASHINGTON - Call it a coincidental sign of our digital times or a reason to stay up late and stare at the clock. Either way, early Wednesday morning the time and date will be 01-02-03-04-05-06.

At 1:02 a.m. and three seconds on Wednesday, April 5, 2006, it will be the first hour of the day, the second minute of the hour, the third second of that precious minute in the fourth month and the fifth day of ... uh oh. It's not really the sixth year. It's actually 2006 — only in our shorthand is it '06."

Wow. Journalists in Washington have time to write whole articles about this stuff.

LOOK! It's a Mr. Potato Head Darth Vader!

Adjustments

Okay, so I'm working 8 hours a day and taking one class and teaching one class. Two nights a week (in a row) I leave my house at 7 and get home at 9:30. I did almost all my homework for last week, but because I was cramming, I didn't retain anything I read. During class discussion people were talking about stuff in the reading I didn't even have a faint recollection of. The work room? Annie Dillard's deflated frog? What?

It'll only be 6 more weeks--then off of school for summer, then just 1 class in the fall. But Lordy. I'm so tired and so behind and my apartment's a mess. My Creative Process is in severe distress.

Those of you who've done this or are doing the work/school thing now, how the hell do you do it?