the gallivanting monkey

paper anniversary

2012-01-20T18:17:00.000-08:00

It’s one year now since I decided to write a book. (It’s also my seventh wedding anniversary tomorrow, but there’s no need to do a State of the Union there. We’re slicing through the years with good momentum.)

How’m I doing? Well...ho. I’m still in it. I’m trudging forward. My momentum isn’t anything like steady, but words are accruing. The snowfall’s erratic, but what’s falling is sticking. That doesn’t mean that all or any or most of these words I’ve written will appear in the final text. (Final text! What a hilariously far-off term. Feels funny to even use it.) It just means that my understanding of this book is slowly taking shape.

Snowfall is maybe the wrong metaphor. Pregnancy is better. Because the accretion I’m talking about isn’t static. The substance doesn’t remain the same as it increases. The life force in the thing is growing along with its size.

Oh, I like this pregnancy metaphor. Yes, ma’am! You know why?

First trimester. Oooosh. That’s where I am, easy, and I’m still pretty early in it. The morning sickness. The occasional disbelief that I’m growing a book. The thrill and revulsion of facing the material. The amoebic nature of the thing itself, how it doesn’t look anything like a book in the ultrasounds. It’s not cute yet. And it’s still vulnerable: vulnerable to doubt, to inertia (the cells need to keep dividing and multiplying at a rate conducive to life), to the toxic chemicals in straight-up fear.

And this thing is a memoir, which is wicked radioactive. It’s a family memoir, too, and a spiritual memoir. So that’s easy. I bet it’s tough enough to write a “My Year in Tuscany Learning to Make Pasta” memoir. This is all teeth and murk and neurosis and slipperiness and heat.

I’ve written 102 pages of material to date, single-spaced. 57,000 words and change. I’m nowhere near structure. (Oh, structure. Someday, it’s you and me. That’s the second trimester. The golden trimester, where material becomes a draft.) (I think.) I’m writing for understanding right now. I’m writing to find out what the hell I’m trying to say. I’m writing to unearth the spine of the story. I don’t even know if I’m doing that yet. I’m just vomiting up material until my stomach’s empty.

Not empty yet. Not even close. And I resist sitting down to write the way you resist emesis, because while it feels great to have it over with, it feels like hell when you admit it’s going to happen. (Once I’m actually writing, I’m fine. It’s the moment before when my stomach lurches.)

I daydream about structure, though. I do. I try on various futures with this book. We’ll frame it like this! Oh, that’s beautiful! I pretend that I understand the story I’m telling already and I woolgather, arranging this piece here and that piece there and it comes together so neatly. And I admire it for a while, and then I remember....oh. That’s fake. I can’t build that. None of those pieces really exist, and they may never exist in anything like those forms. Damn.

Stop trying to pull the fetus out and cuddle it. It’s not helpful.

I’ll tell you what I do have going for me, and that’s midwives. Midhusbands? Bob Ray and Jack Remick, that’s who. These guys host a writing group at a bakery here in Seattle every Tuesday and Friday, and they’ve done it for twenty years. You just show up and write, and if you’re lucky (and I’ve been lucky), Jack and Bob will give you feedback. Head this way. Think about this. Try this. Beware of that. They’ve each published many books, and taught writing for years. A friend of mine pointed me in their direction when she asked how my book was going and I gagged in her lap. (As it turned out, Jack had met my parents through mutual friends -- even had lunch at their house! the house where I grew up! -- and is familiar with some of the people and places that show up in the story. I tuck that kind of synchronicity into my pocket like a talisman.) These guys are wonderful. Funny and wise and experienced and incredibly generous. And they both genuinely seem to care about what I’m doing here.

Now I feel like I’m not going to have to give birth in a taxicab, you know? There are people standing by who know what they’re doing, and want to see that baby come out alive.

And so that’s my report. I know this has been a record absence, friends. Between parenting and wife-ing and starting in on a new line of work and stabbing away at this book, the old Monkey’s had to lay fallow a while. I want to promise that I’ll be back soon, but I’d rather promise to finish a book for you. But I think I can safely say I’ll be back before then, because that’s a long way off.

captain phillips rides again

2011-10-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

When Dave was a kindergartener in Australia, he fell in love with a little blonde girl in his class. Her name was Cathy Phillips, but that's immaterial, because she was that girl. She didn't need a name. Dave never spoke to her, but he told anyone who'd listen that he was going to marry her. Those long, blonde, swaying pigtails....there's nothing else to say.

In a jaunty -- if slightly wack -- romantic tribute, he rechristened her Captain Phillips, after the first governor of New South Wales. (After some googling, it looks like he should have actually called her Admiral Phillip, but let's not nitpick.) I hope she caught wind of it and made it legal. "Captain Phillips" is clearly a thousand times cooler than "Cathy Phillips", and it would have cemented her femme fatale status forever, like a female James Bond.

In any case, she's still alive and she's still five, only she's changed form, switched hemispheres and enrolled at Finn's school. She has a beautiful name, every bit as cool as Captain Phillips, but I'm not going to use it here. I'm going to protect her privacy. We'll just call her the Admiral, since the title's free. It's high time she was promoted, anyway.

The Admiral caught Finn's eye on the first day of school, when she showed up wearing a pretty white cotton dress. Remember, Finn's a sucker for a good sartorial move. And the Admiral is a star sailor to her bones. (A star sailor isn't just someone in a good outfit. A star sailor has to drip with innate style and coolness. And then top it off with a good outfit.) One day after school, Finn and the Admiral hung around the playground together and became fast friends. They're both half-day kindergarteners, two of the only three in the whole school, and so they bonded over being sprung at 12:30.

For a time, they were inseparable. (I should say they were voluntarily inseparable, but I'll get to that.) Finn's always been adamant about remaining half-day, but when the Admiral mentioned to Finn that she might be going full-day in November, suddenly the wind changed direction. He mentioned it idly, played it cool. "Mom, I think I might go full-day in November." No reason, Mom. Just feel like it. Oh, and maybe the Admiral is doing that.

Whenever I asked him who he'd sat with at lunch, it was the Admiral. Whenever I asked him who he liked best at school, it was the Admiral. He used the same fervent tone for her name that he'd used early on when he was talking about R.J. (for whom the flame has faded, although they were playing together today on their first field trip - ! - to a pumpkin patch).

Oh, but the course of true love never did run smooth. I picked Finn up one day and his mood was stormy. He didn't want to talk about it at first, but then he burst out, "Sometimes she says she doesn't want to sit next to me, but I know she really does want to sit next to me, so I sit next to her even if she doesn't want me to!" I hesitated a little and then said that there is this thing called personal space. "What's personal space?" he asked. I didn't have the heart to tell him that his bold moves were backfiring, so I told him to ask his dad. (Passing the buck is one of the best things about being married.)

Some days it's terrific with the Admiral. But the Admiral is capricious. She invited Finn to be a part of her club, but then revoked his membership the next day. He said that she was being mean. I advised him to locate some friendly people and play with them, then. After all, did he still want to play with her anyway if she was mean? He responded wearily, as though I were the biggest moron ever to walk the earth. "YES." And I suppose that was a dumb question, considering everything I've ever learned about being alive.

Finn and the Admiral are still close, though the Admiral still holds most of the cards. I say most of them, because Finn has plenty of mojo with the young ladies. The class played "The Farmer in the Dell" one day, and Finn told me he'd taken the Admiral for his wife. Apparently there were some other girls who'd wanted the job. There's a group who rush to hug Finn goodbye every day, and you can practically see the cartoon hearts take over their pupils. One little lass grabbed his hand once and gave it a kiss as he barreled past her. The thought bubble is clearly visible over his head. What the hell is happening? Meanwhile, rows of girls go down like dominoes. Dave and I have both witnessed it. It's frankly remarkable.

He had a tough one with the Admiral yesterday. There was something he didn't know about how something worked at school, and the Admiral said he was ridiculous. And then another girl said "YOU'RE sitting with your GIRLFRIEND", referring, of course, to the Admiral. But Finn held his own. He said that he didn't like that bit about a girlfriend, and he told the Admiral that he wasn't ridiculous. He hasn't been to school before, is all, and he's just getting started.

yar

2011-10-09T03:36:00.000-07:00

I had the alarming realization lately that I’m going to be spending nine months of every year driving to and from Finn’s (and, someday, Fred’s) elementary school until I'm 51 years old.

Holy fuck.

First of all, that means I’m going to be 51 someday. It’s nine years off, but it’s more true than it ever was that this is going to happen. It's more true because I can visualize half an hour of each of these ensuing days perfectly. I’m tethered to the brick facade and royal blue railings of Sacajawea, and they’re pulling me closer and closer to my death.

I’m having a difficult time remembering that I’m not actually 51 now. GOOD CHRIST, I’M 51! Oh, wait, no.

Note to the 51-and-over crowd who may be reading this: It’s not you, it’s mortality.

That’s the thing. If our lives are a horizontal timeline that reads in classic Western style from left to right, I feel tucked over to the right a little more than before. I remember feeling myself on the left-hand side of that timeline. I had forever to figure out what I was going to do or be. I could blossom in my own sweet time. I didn’t have to nail it down. The right hand side of the timeline felt positively wide-open and breezy. Horizonless, almost. The map just faded off.

But now I can feel a wall over to my right. I’m not about to bump into it or anything, but I’m aware of its presence, kinesthetically. My body knows its there.

And that brings me to my topic. The body. My body. The ol’ vessel. I’m going to sail in this thing to the grave, and I’m realizing that I’m at some sort of turning point. Here’s a Philip Barry mash-up, from that old beauty, The Philadelphia Story:

My, she was yar...It means easy to handle, quick to the helm, fast, right. Everything a boat should be, until she develops dry rot.

I’m dedicated to the whole notion of yar, inside and out. It’s something to shoot for, that fineness and agility in all the domains that matter to you. But for most of my life, I’ve been focusing on my mental or emotional or spiritual yar. The inner yars.

A few years ago, after I had Finn, I made my first serious run at physical yar. I’d joined a nearby gym to drop the last bits of baby weight. When you joined this gym, you got two free sessions with a personal trainer to get you going. I remember looping away on an elliptical, waiting for my trainer to nab me for my first session. And then somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around and there was Niles.

(Niles, wherever you are, I salute you. Move back to Seattle so you can train me some more.)

Niles was -- as it can never hurt a trainer to be -- ridiculously handsome. His chiseled features were the stuff of Roman coins, truly. And as we embarked on what would turn out to be a year of thrice-weekly workouts, it became clear that Niles was also a deeply good, decent, searching person. We talked about all sorts of things as he made me stronger, enjoyed a shared philosophical bent. He was just a good dude.

And also, he was really, really good-looking. I got 2.5 times stronger than I would have with another trainer, because when your trainer is that attractive, you put out at least 2.5 times the effort. I should really say that I got 9 or 10 times stronger than I would have in other circumstances. It's instinctual. It's why birds have bright feathers.

It was frankly hilarious, how much I was fronting during our workouts. You see, when I was growing up, my family was engaged in a constant competition to see who could be the biggest wilting lily. Whoever was the sickest or faintest or most exhausted won the day’s sympathy prize. But we were lavish with sympathy for anybody’s pitiful old complaint. One of us would collapse in the front door after, I don’t know, going out to buy a stapler, and give the traditional extravagant Kunz family announcement/groan, “I’m HOME,” and then proceed to lay out the tiny physical indignities of the last hour and a half that had done us in. We expected -- nay, felt entitled to -- and received! -- three sets of rapt and understanding ears for our litanies.

We were lame.

But you’d never know it from my sessions with Niles. I gave the mythical 110% every step of the way. Niles would have me down in a plank, and he’d have his little timer out, and I’d hold that goddamn plank until my muscles were all screaming “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” (Shh, muscles. Zip it. We’re somebody else right now.) And Niles would exclaim with real joy, “That’s great! That’s thirty seconds longer than you could do it before!” And I’d be giving off the vibe, pshaw, well, hey. That’s just me. I’m all heart. I never say die. I just don’t know how to do it another way.

Dave, of course, if he’s reading this, is snorting into his soup. I can’t escape my childhood completely. Every day, all day, I’m like “Oh, my finger” and “Ouch, my hip” and “I feel dizzy” and “The back of my neck is killing me” and “I have a little sore throat”. And the Rowleys are a different proposition altogether. Dave’s mom, Larraine, is the quintessential Rowley tough nut. She lives out her days in bona-fide screaming back agony from a botched surgery she underwent thirty-plus years ago. But she powers through it and does whatever she sets her mind to, and will never, never let on that she’s in pain unless she really can’t move any more. When you see some slightly pursed lips and she admits out loud that there’s a little pain, you can bet that anybody else alive would be screaming for an ambulance. So it’s safe to say that Dave is not impressed with my frequent bids for physical sympathy. Let’s say that he’s visibly unimpressed.

Me: “My finger!”
Dave: Blank look.
Me: Pregnant stare.
Dave: Eventual grudging nod. Not of acknowledgement. I-have-to-do-this-or-she-won’t-go-away. That nod.
Me (a vibe): That’s it?
Dave (a vibe): Oh, that’s it, all right.

Okay. Okay, but if I die of possible minor floating arthritis in the next few minutes, you’re going to feel like a real heel. Play “Little Wing” at my funeral, by the way.

Anyway. Working with Niles for that year -- up until I got pregnant and then miscarried and then got pregnant again with Fred -- transformed my body, for certain. I was as slender as I’d ever been, but this time I had muscles, and all kinds of physical verve and confidence. And I became one of his favorite clients, one of his real success stories. But, most happily, for the first time in my life I felt that my exterior matched the best of my interior.

When I was growing up and going through my young adult life, I always had this feeling that my forties were going to be a really excellent time for me. 40 was my target age. Things were going to start to get good. The right side of the timeline may have been amorphous and foggy, but I felt something glowing waiting for me right around that age range. I pictured myself like some sort of warrior elf queen, strong and bright and agile. Maybe carrying a spear of some kind. Wearing some kind of killer boots, invariably.

After I had Fred, all my work with Niles was lost. My fraught pregnancy had me tethered to bedrest, and I kissed all of those core muscles -- as you do -- goodbye. And then last year I had surgery, and it’s been a long road to recovery from there. Eight weeks stuck in bed watching Netflix and eating vanilla wafer and Scharffen Berger sandwiches is not a recipe for vitality. It’s a recipe for a super fat ass, is what it’s a recipe for.

But forces are at work now, finally, pulling me back towards yar. One, there’s that wall over to my right that keeps whispering to me, “Now or never.” This is when I’m forging the body that’s going to contain me for the rest of the ride. I can extend the ride, I can make it more fun, I can give myself more energy, I can give myself a prettier vessel. I can make an elf queen suit.

And two, two is mysterious. Let me give a foundation for this. Eight years ago, I met Dave on a yoga retreat on Maui, and within five days we were practically engaged. One night at dinner, there under the stars with Dave and all our fellow students, I couldn’t eat a thing. I couldn’t even speak. I felt like my body was being filled with light, like my being at the deepest level was being refined by some force I felt but couldn’t comprehend. I felt something humming in me, transforming me, right there in front of my untouched plate. Like something wanted a better life for me, and was cooking me right there in order for me to receive it.

In a much quieter and less dramatic way, I feel like the same thing is happening right now. My diet has spontaneously changed. My sweet tooth, a powerful thing, has all but dissolved. My attraction to crappy food of every stripe has vamoosed. The leftover Fred/vanilla wafer weight is coming off. I’ve begun making these smoothies for myself, gulping down mountains of greens. I can’t recommend this enough, my friends. I’m even going to give you the recipe for this insanely good thing. It feels like the most magical elixir. A cup and a half of greens, packed tight. A banana. A kiwi. Some mango. 2 tablespoons of protein powder. (The hemp sort is really good, not chalky at all.) 2 tablespoons of coconut butter. 2 cups of water. Blend away. Drink it on an empty stomach, otherwise it won’t feel good. (Do believe me about that.) On the one hand, it's a smoothie. It's just a smoothie. But on the other hand, it's a message to my body, a message to my life. I don't even want to articulate it and cheapen it. It's precious, whatever it is.

I really do think there’s some kind of quickening going on. I feel it personally, and I’m seeing it everywhere. Something’s turning up the heat under us all, I think, cooking us a little faster. And I’m feeling those two forces so keenly. The increasing nearness of death and some insistent life force in reply. There’s a call, and I can’t resist trying to answer it, and now I’m trying to answer it with everything I have, even this old shell.

the star sailors of sacajawea

2011-09-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

Finn likes to relax with the latest issue of Vogue when I'm tucking him in bed at night. We flip through, working at a quick pace. We know what we don't have to waste time on, and we know just where we like to linger. His taste is sure, and when he sees a spread that pleases it, he shouts "STAR SAILOR!", pointing extravagantly at the page -- sometimes so extravagantly that I accidentally get knocked in the face.

Up with bright color and flowing, feminine, ruffly shapes. Up with glossy red lipstick, up with perfume samples. Up with Drew Barrymore and her lush features, her pearlescent, peacock-toned Cover Girl eye shadow.

Down with/boo to/spit on neutrals and all black-and-white photography. Down with boring, business-y shapes. Down with severe tailoring. Down with plain handbags. Down with minimalism. Execute minimalism, gangland-style. Toss the gun and stroll out into the street, cape fluttering behind you, never looking back.

Finn is the love child of Martha Stewart and Ziggy Stardust, the love child of Lord Byron and Kramer. He's the Black Stallion, he's a hothouse orchid. Brains coming out of his ears, and an almost wasteful amount of physical beauty. And I don't want to talk about the sensitivity, lest I disturb it from all the way over here in the other room. He's a one-off, I'm trying to tell you. I rarely talk about him here because he taxes my descriptive powers too much. You can see how much I'm revving the engine already. I promise you that these are the most accurate, least over-the-top descriptions available to me.

All children are totally special. I know it. I know. I really do. No "but" here.

But* I'm just watching my now-very-heavily-described, indescribable firstborn go out and interact for the first time in a big way with a world that is not exactly tailored for his...do I call it a type?

*because it's down here

Anyway.

Kindergarten!

Today was day seven, and it was the first day that Finn went into class without crying and clinging to us. To Dave, I should say. After the first three days, it became abundantly clear that I shouldn't be anywhere near his classroom entry. I was already taking a quarter of a Xanax in the morning to try not to cry when he cried, and that dose was starting to look too small. (You're probably like, right, because: a quarter of a Xanax. I'm small, see? And, uh...sensitive.)

Finn would be fine first thing in the morning. No problem getting ready for school. We have a mixed CD in the car that's all Finn's favorite songs, and we'd listen to it on the way there. No problem during "Chicken Grabber". Looking good through "Staying Alive", especially while Fred bobs his head to the music. ("Staying Alive" is Fred's signature tune, has been from the first minute he heard it and began rocking out, and holy shit, does it suit him. Fred, my little man, you're a story for another day.) Not bad even through Booker T. Jones, as we're pulling up to the school. Things would start wobbling up on the playground as we waited for the school bell -- though he'd be maintaining -- and then as soon as that SUPER FUCKING LOUD STARTLING AIR RAID SIREN* of a bell rang, he'd shoot into misery.

*none of this aided by the fact that whenever the bell rings, all the children instantly scream.

When the bell blasts, all the kids line up outside their classroom and get ready for their teachers to throw open the doors for another day of totally! fun! learning! -- and for the other kids, that's exactly what it seems like. They're grinning and bobbing around and ignoring their moms and dads because they have all been to preschool. But, as I said in an earlier post, Finn only went to preschool for three days. (Topic for another day, if ever. To sum up: Hey, moms and dads! Send your kids to preschool!)

Bell rings. Finn crumples fast and hard. He's crying, grabbing on to me. I'm patting his head and rubbing his back and talking brightly to him while invisible gangs of thugs kick the shit out of my heart. I gesture for Dave to take over, since Mama is a more primal pull -- I've got that womb, see? -- than Pops. I stand a few feet away with Fred, blowing kisses and making little thumbs-up and tough-fist "You can do it!" gestures as the line moves forward -- forcibly, for Finn. Dave is moving him toward the classroom. Finn is trying everything he can. He's digging his feet into the asphalt and pulling backwards, and when that doesn't work, he's hanging off of Dad's hand with his feet off the ground, getting airlifted to his doom. It would be hilarious if it weren't so heartwrenching.

As soon as Dave has him in the classroom, I squeeze Fred in my arms and the tears come flying. Other moms hover sympathetically nearby, offering encouragement. I laugh-cry-talk with them, and pretty soon they're welling up, too.

I've never, with either of my babies, been drawn to do anything like a parent's group. That always seemed like far too broad a stroke. Parent's group? Mom's group? It felt like it was casting the net way too wide. "Hey, honey, I'm off to people group!" But in the last week and a half, I've changed. If you are the mother or father of a kindergartener, we are bosom buddies, a priori. I don't need to know one more thing. If your child has been in kindergarten for seven days like mine has, we might as well be buried together, you and I. We are that close.

And I have to say that this group of parents seems particularly delightful. I'm starting to get school spirit, frankly. Sacajawea Elementary and all associated with it kick ass as far as I'm concerned. Finn told me excitedly today that the principal, Barry Dorsey, stands on the playground and yells "Laaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez and......" and all the kids scream out "GENTLEMEN!!!!!!" And then...something? Finn didn't feel like telling me anything else, so I don't know what comes next. But just that nugget of information is perfect.

Where are we? Right, Finn's inside. And this little illustration stands for five out of the seven days he's been to school. He's in the Peace Corner. The other kids are patting his back, holding his hand. (I die at the sweetness.) A pretty little girl named Trinity who sits at his desk is telling him, "You don't have to cry EVERY day!" (Dave reported happily that yesterday Trinity began her wifely ministrations with Finn, telling him all about the good things they would get to do that day, even going so far as to reach over and adjust the zipper at the top of his jacket like she was straightening his tie. Finn, all what is this girl doing? -- and ever the smoothie -- kicked her lightly in the foot. Trinity said to Dave, "He kicked me!" but it was clear that she didn't mind and this wouldn't stop her.) (Oh, Trinity. Be safe out there.)

But let me cut to the chase. He's doing better! When I pick him up every day, he does not look remotely like a guy who's been to hell. I ask him about his day in the car on the way home.

I ask:

"What stories did you read this morning?"

and he answers:

"The Napping House. It was something about a Grandma and some animals and a boy."

or he answers:

"A very important story about little kids." "What happens to the kids in the story?" "I don't know."

or he answers:

"STAR WARS. I HATE STAR WARS. I don't like all the fighting." "Who was fighting?" "Nobody. It's Star Wars Alphabet."

or he says:

"Some story about a bear whose name begins with a C."

I think he's making friends? Maybe? I'm not sure. In any case, a lovely thing happened. I was asking him about the kids in class, and it came out that there was a boy he hadn't talked to yet that appealed to him. R.J. is his name. He murmured it fervently to me, hiding his face in my arm. "R.J.!" That's who he wanted to be friends with. I didn't know who R.J. was, but then Dave told me he's a little guy with a limp and a withered hand. And then Finn told me a couple of days ago that he'd become friends with R.J. at lunchtime. R.J. sat with him and point-blank asked him if he wanted to be friends, and Finn said "sure". I yelled the story to Dave as Finn relayed it to me, and when I got to the part where Finn accepts, I fucked up the story (of course) and said that Finn had said yes. Finn set me straight. "No," came the adjustment, "I said SURE."

Now, I have no idea if Finn has spoken to or hung out with R.J. since then. I asked him who he played with at morning recess today, and the answer was "A jump rope." He just ran around the playground by himself, dragging a jump rope. And that's what he was doing when I picked him up later in the day. Just playing by himself, as he always is when I pick him up, dragging a jump rope around. He's not with the other kids, he hasn't fallen into a game with anybody, and I can't see R.J. anywhere, or Ian, who seems to have made some tighter friends. But he doesn't seem distressed about it. He's just playing. It's cool. It's at least cool enough.

He told me this morning -- before his triumphant, not-traumatized entry into the classroom on his own steam (!) -- as we were getting him ready for school, "You know, by morning recess I'm usually fine." And he asked me how long it took me to get used to kindergarten. I have no idea how long it took me to get used to kindergarten, but that's totally beside the point, which was that it was time to begin bullshitting. "Let's see. What day of kindergarten is this for you? Day seven? I think it was...yeah. Right around seven days into it." He was satisfied, and breezily continued getting ready.

Tonight we looked at Vogue briefly before bed, and as I sailed past a page, he asked me to go back. I circled back a few pages, and asked what he was looking for. He said, "I thought I saw somebody who looked like R.J." When we determined that R.J. was not featured in this month's Vogue, we turned off the lights and I sang him to sleep.

live from the peace corner

2011-09-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

It's begun. My oldest, Finn, has entered kindergarten. We dropped him off for day two approximately an hour ago.

"Dropped him off." My, that sounds breezy. Peeled him, struggling, off our legs? Wrenched ourselves from his grip and airlifted ourselves out of the classroom as soon as his teacher, Mr. Norman, swung in to relieve us? Whatever it was, it was fucking difficult.

Let me back up a little. We put in a bid last spring for Finn to go to an alternative school that we fell in love with, but came up goose eggs. On our list of preferences we'd put approximately one zillion schools ahead of the one to which he'd have naturally been assigned, because I happened to go to that particular school in 4th grade when we first moved to Seattle from New York, and it was the worst year of my schooling life. Holy smokes, it was shitty. Abysmal educationally, barely livable socially. And even if it had improved bunches in 30 years (whiiiiich...we'll find out that it hadn't), the sense memory of walking into that place every morning would have made me queasy.

But we didn't get assigned to any of those zillion schools, and Finn was headed to Olympic Hills. Aaa! We were ready to make the best of it. We were going to embrace the "local is good" paradigm, get involved, shine it up as much as we could. But aaa!

And then three weeks before school was set to start, we got a letter from the principal of Olympic Hills saying that since they didn't meet testing standards, they were legally obligated to give us the option to send our child to another school that did. We were given a list of three alternatives, and on that list was our #2 choice.

Sacajawea! Sweet little Sacajawea Elementary. Seattle public schools are going to hell in a handcart, but Sacajawea is one of the few in town that keeps getting better and better. "A gem in the rubble", said the Seattle Times. A gem! In the rubble, sure, but a gem! We'll take it.

I took Finn to check it out a few days before school began. They'd posted class lists on the door, so we'd find out which kindergarten teacher he'd be assigned. Kit Norman, Room 3. I imagined Kit Norman to be a sweet old lady, but then a fifth-grader and his mom rolled up to the door and we fell into conversation. The boy, Ari, said to Finn, "You got Mr. Norman! He's the best."

Finn got a letter in the mail that day from Mr. Norman, welcoming him to school, and telling him about all the cool stuff they were going to do that year. They'd learn to read and write, they'd learn about animals and dinosaurs and insects, they'd play math games, they'd learn about Asia, and collect pennies to help their communities, and go roller-skating and go to the theater, and on and on. I didn't even notice the letter in the pile of mail until late that evening, after everyone had gone to bed. I read it and my heart swelled. The good vibes of Mr. Norman practically flew off the page. There was also a little form for Finn to fill out - "All About Me" - which we worked on together the next day. Now Mr. Norman knows that Finn likes gardening and watering plants and he wants to learn about all sorts of different trees. Big leaf maples and Norway maples, specifically, if we could be so bold. Mr. Norman knows that Finn likes baking buttermilk biscuits and blueberry muffins, and that he likes to play both hide and seek and "running hide and seek". ("It's easy to make up a new game," explains Finn. "You just take one game, like running, and put it together with another game." Polo Monopoly! Synchronized Twister! Pin the Tail on Kevin Bacon! He's right, this is easy.)

Finn wanted to wear two different plaid shirts and a pair of plaid shorts to orientation. He wouldn't budge on the shirts, but I convinced him to go slightly subtler on the pants. A neutral windowpane plaid, at least. And he had me draw two hearts for Mr. Norman - a large one containing a smaller, smiling one. And then he drew an arm and a hand coming off the smaller heart, offering a spiky flower. Then he went into the garden and picked some clover for Mr. Norman, which we wrapped in a small jewelry box.

Finn's never been to school. No, wait, not true. He went to preschool for three days. There are a few reasons behind this, but this post is already fixing to be ten miles long. Things conspired against, let's just say. So kindergarten, which is already momentous for all parents and kids, is a little closer to jumping out of an airplane than it is to jumping off a high dive for Finn.

Orientation went okay, as well as can be expected. It's just an hour, and you're with your mom and dad, so how bad can it be? Finn was a little nervous and weirded-out, but he handled it, and eventually he befriended a little boy out on the playground, a great little guy named Ian. (Before then, he just wasn't quite connecting with any of the kids out there, and so he kept pasting a cheerful smile on his face and coming back to play with steady old Fred, who's Sancho Panza to Finn's Don Quixote. Meanwhile, I was thankful I'd brought enormous sunglasses, because seeing him out there tentatively approaching kids and then thinking better of it - and then standing there awkwardly, and then playing with forced wildness with Fred - made tears shoot to my eyes over and over.)

Mr. Norman wasn't what I expected. I'd pictured a gentle bear, some kind of cuddly nerd all grown up. Unsurprisingly, that wasn't the actuality. Mr. Norman is more the golden-boy type, like a camp counselor or tennis star or student body president. He's blond and grinning and brisk. And he's great. He announced to us all that he adores his job, he could never imagine himself doing anything else, and that he wants to give kids the best possible first impression of school, to make it as fun as possible. It's rare to get a male kindergarten teacher, and even rarer to get one like Mr. Norman, who really does give off terrific light.

When the first day came, we walked Finn into the class and saw that - miracle of miracles - his assigned seat was right next to Ian, his new friend. (I'll tell you right now that I am giving credit for this miracle to my dear departed dad and father-in-law. As soon as I saw their names next to each other at their little desk, I knew that the grandpas had a hand in this. It's just like them. And furthermore, I think there was some heavenly string-pulling for Finn to end up at Sacajawea, since when I went down to public school headquarters to enroll him there, they were puzzled in the extreme. Olympic Hills was not, in fact, on their list of schools that was required to give kids the chance to opt out. But since I'd shown up, they'd see what they could do. Strangeness.) (I love fairy tales and I'll love them until the end. I don't like to embrace a prosaic explanation if I can find one that gives me goose bumps.)

The wall was lined with smiling parents, and the kids all seemed bubbly and ready to go. As the time came for us to leave, Finn got more and more nervous and then began to cry. I signaled for Dave to take over, and then grabbed Fred (who was ready to enter kindergarten that very day, judging by his enthusiasm for the space) and ran. I made it out the door to the playground and out of view of the classroom window before I burst into tears. Holy fuck. I laughed while I cried, because there I was, the living cliche, the brand-new kindergarten mom beside herself. Dave followed in a couple of minutes, and reported that Mr. Norman had swooped in to comfort Finn and to show him to the "Peace Corner", a groovy little spot in the classroom with a tiny couch and books and a big peace sign hanging on the wall above a basket of stuffed animals. Ian had asked, "Is he crying?" and Mr. Norman responded sweetly, "Yeah, sure he is. It's his first time going to school, so it's a big thing for him."

We went upstairs to the welcome brunch for new parents, but I didn't see one single Bloody Mary available anywhere, so that was a wash.

Oh, man. This will have to be a two-parter. You might think, "Hey, Tina. We're fine with just this one part. You're really more his mom than any of us are, let's remember." But you'll have to bear with me. There's more to report. The rest of the first day, the overwhelming kindness of the other parents, and Mama Crying In the Playground, Round Two. I promise I won't go on and on about this forever. It's just that the first time you jump out of an airplane, your diary entry that night is a little longer than normal.

Okay, then. Off to pick him up from day two. Blow on the dice with me for day three, readers.

P.S. I thought of a solution for this whole thing. I think all of us Rowleys should become huge stoners starting right now. We'll just all smoke weed right before school. Finn, too. All of us. Fred, everybody. We'll just get wicked stoned first thing in the morning. (A Great Toking Sound.) "Heeeeey, Sacajawea. What's the word?" Roll into school, drop him off, roll out of there, no problem. Learning will be fun! Shh, I think this is a no-fail plan.

midnight sun

2011-08-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

When I was at the farthest end of 21, I went to Finland with my mom. She was born there, and moved to America when she was a teenager. I’d been there once before with my family, when I was three. I only remember two things: sitting in a blow-up canoe in a living room playing with dolls, and wigging out when my aunt and uncle’s ugly old boxer dog, Pondi, pinned me on the kitchen floor. Now my mom and I were making a girls-only pilgrimage. We were there for six disorientingly bright weeks, right around midsummer, when the sun never abandons its post.

Traveling with your mother at 21 feels old-fashioned. It’s awkward and sweet and a little frustrating, like you’re going to a church luncheon for six weeks straight when what you most like to do at the moment is flash your driver’s license to bouncers and act nonchalant in bars, as though you’d been going to them for years.

We’ll fly on Scandinavian Airlines to Copenhagen, and then we’ll take a smaller plane to Helsinki, and then we’ll take a couple of trains to Savonlinna, where my Aunt Aune and Uncle Jorma will meet us.

On the flight from Seattle to Copenhagen, we order the vegetarian meals. When our trays are set down in front of us, it’s clear that vegetarianism has not made it to Scandinavia. In the biggest compartment of the tray, where the main course goes, there’s a bright white oval sponge. In the smaller compartment, where the side dish lives, there’s a tiny bunch of red grapes. People who’ve ordered the standard breakfast are eating croissandwiches stuffed with eggs and cheese. We’re not vegans. We could eat that. We feel jealous and sad. We taste our sponges. They don’t taste like anything. They taste like texture.

When we get to Helsinki, everything smells like apricots and freshly cut wood. We check into the Hotel Helka and fall asleep in our tiny room. When we wake up, it’s 4 o’clock, but here’s the trick about arriving in Finland in the summertime and waking up with jet lag; you have no idea which 4 o’clock it is, because it’s always light. And it’s rainy that day, so we can’t even try to hazard a guess from the sun’s angle. My mom and I bat theories back and forth about whether it’s early morning or late afternoon. We finally shower and get dressed and go down to the restaurant and see if we can pick up any clues. There’s a buffet in the dark little restaurant with platters of cheese, cheese, cheese, and some rye bread and some more cheese. Fuck if I have any new idea what time it is, but my mom announces confidently that this is breakfast.

We take the train to Savonlinna. Aune and Jorma pick us up and take us to their house, and then the six weeks quickly compact themselves into a routine that looks like this:

1) My mom and I wake up six inches from each other. We’re sharing a fold-out couch. It’s weird, but kind of nice. We grin at each other first thing every day, always surprised by our proximity.

2) We have breakfast. Our first breakfast, I should say. My aunt stuffs us with food all day long. Breakfast is always at 7:00. Rice porridge, rye pastries, cheese, bread, fruit. We noodle around the house for a couple of hours, planning the day, taking showers. By 10 am, my aunt figures that we’re probably starving and she makes a fresh batch of rice porridge, and though we’re not even remotely hungry, we eat big bowls of it with butter and cinnamon and sugar just because she went to the trouble.

3. We drive somewhere to see something. Aune always brings a bag of Fazer candy. This is the best hard candy in the world, because it’s not really hard. It’s slightly crispy on the outside, but then it gives way to a soft, oozy chewiness. There are fruit, coffee, chocolate, and some delicious mystery flavors. I gaze out the back seat windows at the birch trees passing by, my candy supply constantly replenished. Birches look to me like people who’ve had a spell cast on them to make them trees. The black markings on their trunks look like eyes and mouths. They seem romantic and sad, exiled into treedom. They’re my favorite tree in all the world, and Finland is blanketed with them. We sightsee or visit relatives, and stop for lunch and then for cake and pastries.

4. We come home and sit in the back yard and read novels, and I smoke cigarettes. My aunt and uncle smoke, so they don’t mind if I do, too, so my mom’s disapproval is overruled. There’s a porcupine that comes and visits the back yard every day. My aunt calls out in her somewhat broken English, “Porky pie!” I’m reading The Three Musketeers, and demolishing Camel after Camel. If it’s raining, I disappear into the RV parked in front of the house and sit at the tiny table painting watercolor after watercolor of birches that look and act like people. I paint a picture of a birch playing itself like a violin, and my aunt has it framed and hangs it on their wall.

5. Dinner is enormous. Then my aunt and uncle and mom watch Matlock in Finnish, while I read some more or listen to Elvis Costello or The Pretenders on my Walkman. When it’s bedtime, we pull thick window shades down to block that crazy, endless sun.

The days run into each other, maximally boring and very cozy. My mom and aunt and I sit at her dining room table, and they gossip in Finnish while I sit there, glazed. My mom is a neglectful translator. They’ll chatter on for a while, and then my mom will remember I’m there and throw me a non-sequitur bone - “Cabbage casserole of some sort.” “The Santa Claus was drunk.” - and I’ll muse on that for a while until the next nonsense phrase floats my way.

Once we go to some sort of picnic in a gazebo in the woods with a lot of other older Finnish people. We eat stew that’s filled with tiny fish that you’re supposed to eat whole. I crunch into one and gag wildly, my eyes watering, my mouth and throat filled with what feels like thousands of tiny, sharp bones. I’m having a full-blown fish bone crisis, and all the old Finns are staring at me while I choke and make inelegant noises for what feels like forever. Another time we go to a wedding, and I find out I have two distant male cousins about my age, and they’re impossibly good-looking and friendly. Antti-Jussi and Olli-Pekka. I have a wicked temporary crush on both of them, but nothing could be more pointless than sexual feelings at an afternoon wedding in Finland with your mom and aunt and uncle. Another time, my mom and I go to a gallery in Helsinki, where a Polish painter named Jan Jagielski is having a show. He’s there that day. His paintings are beautiful, all these wistful grey-green figures. The artist is also beautiful. He’s in his early 40’s, with shaggy dark hair and baggy, elegant clothing. My mom and I simultaneously fall in love with him, and she tells him that I’m an artist, too. He responds very warmly, and the two of us wander around the empty gallery together and he tells me all about his paintings. On the train back to the hotel, my mom and I fantasize about me marrying the artist. She considers the twenty-year age difference between us and dismisses it as an obstacle. “Papa was sixteen years older than Granny. And your dad is eight years older than I am. It doesn’t matter. He seemed smitten with you.” When I come back from Finland, I will buy a textbook and try to teach myself Polish.

On midsummer night we take a boat down through several connecting lakes to a cousin’s house in the woods. We stay up all night and eat cold cucumber soup and cloudberry cake, and I wander in the forest next to the lake. Everything is golden. Three a.m. sunshine is the most golden thing you’ve ever seen, especially bouncing off a lake onto birch trees. The sun goes down for about one minute, and then bounces right back up like it was just playing peekaboo.

We’re going to travel back to Seattle the day before I turn 22. The sun has just started to give way to a couple of hours of a night/evening hybrid, which feels disappointing. The sun is capitulating and I don’t want it to. I stay up the night before we leave, sitting in the window seat of our fancy Helsinki hotel, looking at the dark creeping at the edges of the sky. I’m going to be really glad to get home to see the proper moon and stars, and to pretend to be an adult and drink in bars again, but when I look over at my mom asleep in that big white fluffy bed, I feel a kick in my chest: the preliminary pang of separation.

usa: a messy ode

2011-07-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

I would have been born on the 4th of July, but I exited my mom a touch too fast. She had what she thought was indigestion at 10pm on the 3rd, and at 11:34pm I shot out. Sort of wish I could have held out for twenty-six more minutes. It's not like I was going to get any real work done in that first half an hour. Oh, well. The first time I saw fireworks, I thought, "Are these for me? Are we still celebrating?!"

Happy Birthday, you old horse! 235. You don't look a day over a hundred and eleven.

When I was traveling in Europe back in 1992, Nirvana had recently burst onto the global scene. Lord, it was nice moving around in their glowing wake as a Seattleite. When you travel the world as an American, you frequently get that "Hello, NEWman" vibe from the natives. We've done plenty to bring that on, but it was a relief to be welcomed as a friend. "You're from Seattle? Fantastic! What is it like?!" Oh, it's magic. Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell and all of us young kids, we all live on the same block, and, well, we all go out onto our stoops and make meaningful, discordant noises in our flannel shirts. It's like Swinging London, or riding on Ken Kesey's bus through Haight-Ashbury. It's a constant wonder. Let us hold hands and accept this vision, for both of our sakes.

No, most of the time when you travel as an American, you can see the eyes begin to roll back in people's heads as soon as your origins are revealed. Many times I've seen people assume that I'd have no sense of humor, and when it came out that I do, they were visibly amazed, like I'd unfurled a giant set of wings or grown a couple of extra heads. (I'll address this phenomenon later, but for now let me just say regarding America and comedy: people, please.)

(Oh: speaking of. I haven't been able to contribute lately, but here are some pieces I've written for this fine site right here. I've been meaning to link and forgotten to. They are humor-style pieces, see? That's why I bring it up. That's why I bring it up, ENGLAND*.)

*Oh, England. You were the most suspicious of all. Sigh.

It's never nice to feel embarrassed to inhabit your nationality, and while I completely get America Fatigue, it's the fucking 4th of July, motherfuckers! Yes, we're arrogant. Sure, we're dumb. Totally, we're fat. Yes, we know. But I'm here to talk about some of the things that make me feel proud and glad to be riding around in an American suit in this lifetime.

THE LIST.

1. The Movies/The Movie Stars.

We don't make the only movies, and we do make a million shitty movies, too, but we make the fucking movies. You are welcome for Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and you're welcome for DeNiro and Pacino and Hoffman in the 70's, and you're welcome for Star Wars and Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Motherfucking Ark and...and...Casablanca and....what were the good recent movies? Who cares! There were some. You're welcome for those!

2. Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll.

I think about when these musical forms were new, and what it said about the people who had the temperament to make way and let them through. Tight and loose, earthy and light, rough and humorous. That music was born here for a reason.

3. The American landscapes

The craggy, hollowed-out, furious pastels of the Southwest. The dripping, serene gloom of the Northwest. The lush and swampy bayou. New England foliage on fire in the autumn. Big Sur. The Rockies like giant, jagged Orca whales. Endless, flat, madness-inducing, character-building prairies. American wildlife. Mountain lions and rattlesnakes and bears and squirrels. (I'm just riffing now, and it's sloppy, but sloppy riffing is some of what makes us who we are!)

4. American Humor

Mark Twain and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and Bill Hicks and Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David and Groucho Marx and Maria Bamford and Bob Newhart and Kathy Griffin and Animal House and Spinal Tap and Rushmore and Caddyshack and the opening twenty minutes of Elf and The Onion and McSweeney's Internet Tendency and The Hairpin and I haven't even scratched the surface. People, PLEASE.

No more categories. Walt Whitman. The Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac. New York through all of it. Boomboxes on shoulders. Hair metal. Patsy Cline. The cheeseburger. Converse All-Stars. Basketball. Southern drawl. Bronx cheer. Austin, Texas. Cambridge, Mass. Berkeley, CA. Irreverence and earnestness and naivete and book smarts and street smarts. Nonconformity. Tradition. Friendliness. "Bring it on."

And I haven't even touched on the larger movements, the social and political highlights. We have had a few. I'm running out of time so I'm not going to try and do them justice. But the night of November 4th, 2008 - no matter what you think about Barack Obama and his politics and how his term is going - that night gave me an injection of pride so deep and full that I'll be feeling it for the rest of my life.

I'm in a hurry, but if I don't say it today, I'll never say it, and if I don't say it now, I won't say it today. Quality Control has gone to a barbecue, so this is going to have to do. I didn't do anything justice, I didn't come anywhere close, but I tried. If the high-five missed the hand, oh, well. You saw where my hand was going. You got the point. It's a quick sketch.

This is a celebration, my friends. Everything else will be there waiting for us in the morning.

the tarot eskimos have twelve different words for snow

2011-07-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

I've been gone awhile, haven't I? If you go back in the archives, back in the earliest days of this blog in 2005 (before I was married, before babies, in the halcyon days of total unemployment), you'll see that I used to post at least once a day. Sometimes twice, sometimes thrice! (Don't go back and look, though. Just take my word for it. They weren't all gems, you know what I mean?) Now I'm lucky if I post three times in a season. I don't want it to be like that. And soon, it won't be like that.

I'll explain. I'll tell you where I've been and where I'm going. (Not that I'm leaving here. I'll be posting here as consistently erratically as ever, I promise.) Maybe you'll go with me, and maybe you'll just stick around here, frowning and waiting for posts. Or maybe you're just going to go do your nails or go wash the car or have a bake sale or whatever it is you do when you run off and leave me here all by myself. (Even if I'm not posting, I just sit here quietly at my blog all day and night, watching you come and go. My family begs me to come out into the sunlight with them, but I shoo them away. NO. No, I can't. Someone I don't know know has logged on from Transylvania. I can't just leave him here by himself. He'll get lost, or break something.)

Where I've been:

*Working on Elizabeth's play, which closed last weekend and was an intensely wonderful experience. Strange to move on, after working on this piece with Elizabeth and John on and off for more than a year. It's a post in and of itself, which will have to happen later.

*Working, stop-and-start-ingly, on my book. Those things, whew. They're...mercy. Daunting. And this first draft keeps shifting on me, conceptually, and all kinds of fears muscle up to get faced, and wow. My word. I had this idea that I was going to have half of my first draft finished by August. What I'll have in August is a little more than half of twice what I have now, which is certainly not nothing, but it's not HALF of anything, see? Holy hell. But I'm dragging it along with me into the future, slowly.

*Finally, and most importantly, I've been immersing myself in a course of study. Ladies and gentlemen, after years of casual study and several months of intensive study and then one very successful, jam-packed month of on-my-feet practice with real, living people, I'm getting ready to pop out of my cocoon as a bona-fide, honest-to-goodness, plying-a-trade tarot reader.

Oh, Tarot, you glorious thing. Let me sing your praises here for everybody. I've fallen head-over-heels in love with you, and we're at the beginning of what's sure to be the proverbial beautiful friendship.

Seventy-eight cards of you, rendered a zillion different ways by all kinds of artists over the last several hundred years (at least). I love your aesthetics, I love the humming resonance of your old, old archetypes. There's the Major Arcana, or "Big Secrets", your thematic heavyweights. They're like the oceanic undertow in a reading, or the pull of the stars. Then there's the Minor Arcana, or "Little Secrets", which catalog in detail all of the streams of daily life, the practicalities and heartbreaks and thought patterns and variously shaped rushes of energy. You take concepts like sorrow or triumph or malaise, and you serve each of them up in several different nuanced preparations. Each card has a little symphony of meanings, and in one reading the clarinet rises to the top, and in another reading with the same card, the clarinet will recede to inaudibility and the strings will take over, or the bass drum, or, or, or.

So there you are, and then here I am, and to serve you up properly I have to be in the very best intuitive shape. I have to be meditating regularly, and I have to approach you with humility, and I have to have my heart organized in real service to the people who entrust me with their concerns. And then when the reading begins, I have to be bold enough to play some real jazz with you. I'm on stage, I'm listening, I'm improvising. I can't hesitate. I have to see and hear acutely and offer out loud what I'm getting as it comes in, but I have to guess its ideal form and shape it lightning-quick. Does this note come in soft or strong? Make a choice, give it up. But then I have to know when I need to be quiet for a second to understand what the shot is, when the reading is delivering something particularly subtle. A card pops up that doesn't make immediate sense. I start talking, stop talking and listen, start talking again...and there it goes. It starts taking off its clothes, reveals its purpose for being there. A moment of doubt comes in every reading, a little nervous thrill when the screen goes dark a second, a split-second or few spent sitting smack on the lap of risk, and then I jump into the blackness and freefall. And don't you know that something always catches me just in time? But who knows if it will next time! You can see why I'm in love.

So that's what I've been doing. I'm new at this, but it looks like I might have a knack. (Oh! And I can do these readings over the phone. So YOU, yes, YOU will be able to have one if you like. Details will come soon.) And it feels nice to be sort of going into the family business. (Not that tarot is precisely the family business.) I mentioned in a previous post that there's some clairvoyance that's run down through the female line on my father's side of the family. It travels as far back as our family is recorded, in fact. Grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great, great-great-great, et cetera. They all had it. And now I'm just beginning to see mine light up. Hello, family heirloom. You're getting polished up and going straight into use. I don't want any grumpy ancestors complaining about cobwebs/ungrateful descendents. No, no. No worries, ladies. I'm not a fool. You left me a pretty fine resource. I'm not going to squander this one.

As always, I have so much more I'd actually like to tell you, but there's no time. But a friend of mine is going to be building me a new website, and there will be a new blog attached that focuses entirely on the thing which lights me up more than anything else, which is the conscious cultivation of our inner lives. That's really what I'm emerging from the cocoon to do. I want to be in a lifelong conversation about the thing that matters most to me, and so...there. That. So I will. Please come with me when it's all ready.

And then, as I said, I'll always be over here posting about flotsam and jetsam and Oscar dresses and Finn and Fred and whatever takes hold of me. Same old this and that, on as loose a non-schedule as ever. Blibbity blobbity bloo.

If you've made it this far, come here and let me give you a kiss for being a big patient hero. You're all forbearance. You're like Mother Theresa. You're like Mother Theresa in the body of a movie star. I should tell you that more often.

P.S. Please meet my newest sponsor and member of my Sidebar Pantheon, the Queen of Wands. When I play spiritual dress-up, she's who I traipse around in. May her dress fit me snugly over time. (But not too snugly. You know. Gotta watch the figure.)

a little rapture

2011-05-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

So I've been working on this memoir, and thinking about my relationship to God and the divine. That's the nut of the thing: how my ideas got formed and how they're shifting, and everything I've done to try and find...well, usually I use the word "it", but today I feel like saying "him". Which is new.

Anyway.

Jesus is on a lot of people's minds today, and mine, too, as he has been for a while here with this book. I was remembering my childhood relationship to him, which, since I wasn't brought up as a Christian, was friendly but distant. I always thought, "That guy seems cool. They've got a cool guy over there." And at one point, when I was around ten, I figured that he's probably open to being buddies with anybody. You don't have to go to one of the churches where they've got a big picture of him. If you sidle up to shake hands, he's going to be all the way down with that, maybe spin the handshake into one of those long, complicated, reunited-with-a-great-old-friend, what-it-was numbers. (I feel like I'm supposed to be capitalizing those Hims and Hes but I tell you I just can't do it. Feels funny. I'm positive he doesn't mind.)

So I've been thinking about him of late, and sort of trying him on for size. I haven't done that since childhood. You can see all of the Hindu flags I've got flying on my blog here, so you know I have a tent informally set up east of the sun. But I'm not - and I make it a point not to be - exclusive with any one way to God. I'm curious about them all, and think that any one of them followed with a full heart will get you there, and that none of them are the point. I'm pretty sure anybody can take the elevator in and up right from where they are with no middleman.

And that brings me back to the Rapture.

I was meeting with my mentor the other day. (I have the world's most wonderful mentor. I meet with her twice a month, and I tell you it's like being launched 500 extra yards down my path every other Thursday. Magic.) And I'd been telling her that I'd been thinking about Jesus as a result of my writing, and she said that was funny, because she'd been thinking a lot about him, too, of late. And no kidding, he's certainly floating in the common consciousness with all of this Rapture talk.

But as I drove away from my appointment with her, driving to see my chiropractor *, I had the most fantastic sort of weirdly holy experience. Every person I saw on the way - riding bikes, driving cars, standing around on the sidewalk - was visibly...how do I put this? They were magnificent. Every single person appeared to be the secretly radiant star of some great epic. It was like The Return of the King, only every damn person alive was the king. Everybody was Frodo, Harry Potter, Aragorn, you name it. Everybody was The Chosen One. I knew for sure that the skinny young Asian man on his bike was possessed of amazing wizardly powers that he will get to put to the test eventually. That the old, rumply, unassuming man in a windbreaker ambling down the sidewalk was as Dumbledore as Dumbledore himself. And it was pretty rapturous, let me tell you. I wanted to see as many people as I could. It was like the world was some kind of divine Hollywood, and everybody was the most famous person in it, and I was the the most avid stargazer alive. Joy.

*Oh my god, that car accident was kind of the best thing that ever happened. Now I get to have chiropractic and massage three times a week! A WEEK! A shot of both every time. I can't wait to tell you about the guy who's giving me massage, either. It's too delightful. Next time.

And this morning, I woke up to a feeling of deeper peace than I've felt in years. I had the feeling that all of my problems - even if they're not visibly solved - are solved already in some way that just hasn't had time to manifest in the physical world. I felt whole and happy, that All is Right with the World, that I lack nothing. I feel it through every inch of me this morning. It's just true.

So, here's to you, Harold Camping, you crazy diamond. And here's to you, too, Jesus, my new old distant friend. I don't know about anybody else, but I think this has been a fine Rapture so far.

on bin laden and being human

2011-05-02T02:19:00.000-07:00

Do I feel like dancing about it? No. The feeling is quieter and darker and grander. Profound grim visceral satisfaction, and something like awe. My reaction may not be coming from the finest part of my nature, but I'm not concerned about that at the moment. It's story, writ large. The shock and grief and fallout of the plot point on 9/11, and the felt weight of an answer on 5/1. Not the answer. An answer. Something direct, finally, that spoke right to the wound.

The rightness of a full circle. The narrative isn't left dangling, the story feels - rationally or not - less senseless. The physics is right, too. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Yes. YES. Gratitude for when that looks or feels true.

Whatever this gives to the families who lost loved ones that day, I endorse wholeheartedly. Some kind of dark, deserved exultation.

And there's the feeling of connectedness - all of our enormous combined attention moving to the same place - that happens when something truly historic takes place. The grand feeling might have something to do with all of our consciousnesses linking up for a moment. That we're all forever located in time together in some concentrated way.

And there's the pure, mind-boggling appreciation for the execution of an incredibly difficult task. The ferocity and elegance of the maneuver. Hot damn.

I know that this feeling isn't the best we can do. I know that exulting over a death isn't what some people might call God consciousness. I grant that, I agree with that. But this is human with a capital H. It's dark, light, high, low, sorrow, glee, anger. The most eternally human mix. There's something right in not disavowing this other part of ourselves, the part that creates all the story in the world. There is no resolution without conflict.

So in a reverse "Namaste", the human in me salutes the human in us all, and I'm savoring this feeling while it lasts.

hello, peanuts, the play

2011-04-17T15:24:00.000-07:00

Two things:

1) I just want to say hello and welcome to the people who have come here recently and begun reading regularly. I'm looking at my stats and it's so nice to see that the place is getting bookmarked, and people are making themselves cozy in the archives. That's just so grand. I hope you'll pipe up in the comments and tell me about yourselves a little bit. So glad you're here.

2) So I'd mentioned in my last post that I've been rehearsing a play, and I said I was going to talk about it before it opened, but then I didn't. Life intervened in the form of another trip to the hospital for ol' Fred. Goddamn. This time: peanut allergy. He has a peanut allergy, it turns out. Awful. He's fine, but really? Is this necessary? I remember when I was pregnant with Fred and was stuck on bedrest, I'd log on to babycenter.com and read the message boards to kill time. There was one area called something like "Controversies". This was where all the smackdowns occurred. Breastfeeding vs. Formula Feeding. Attachment Parenting vs. Whatever It's Called When You're Not Doing That. Et cetera. And I remember getting sucked into a swirling....can it really have been a debate?...about peanut allergies, and what measures are appropriate and inappropriate to protect the people who have them. Now, I didn't know I had a peanut dog in this fight yet, but I remember being amazed by the contingent that was all, "Waah waah with your fatal allergies. We love peanuts and we should get to eat them everywhere and you should just never leave the house!" I'm pretty sure I piped up, which is always a dumb thing to do when you're pregnant - to enter the fray and voluntarily get all worked up over a message board. But now I do have a dog in this fight. Oh, yes. I do. And that's all I have to say about that.

I digressed again. Damn it. I was going to tell you about the play again, but I don't have time to do it justice. I'm off to go shower and get ready to perform. So here are some links which will have to do the talking for me. And then, then I'll come back and tell you about the process, which is really, really cool.

Here's a preview from The Stranger: Medicated Into Madness.

I'll come back and post reviews later. They've all been great. I'm really proud to be a part of this. Elizabeth is one of my dearest friends and I was there when all of this went down. She's turned that nightmare into artistic gold, and I think it ought to be required viewing for all humans. If you're a health care professional, or someone who ever goes to vist a health care professional, this is for you.

Okay. Off I go.

(I guess that was really three things.)

hodgepod

2011-04-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

In the old days of this blog, before I knew what I was doing (because now I know what I'm doing at all times), I used to just come on here and talk. Didn't always have a plan or a focus. Just came on the air and started rambling.

Going old-school today.

First of all, CAR ACCIDENT. (Apologies to those who have already heard about this ad nauseum on Facebook. I can think of at least 100 people who will read this and be like OH MY GOD WE KNOW. WE KNOW.) You guys can skip this one.

For the rest of you: car accident! Oh, I'm fine. But I got rear-ended last Friday...can I just pause to say that I don't enjoy the term "rear-ended"? Whenever I say it, I imagine somebody's old drunk uncle is going to come stumbling in from outside, "D'somebody say rear end?! My wife, lemme tell you, she's got a...oh. Car accident. Well, anyway, god bless her. She's got some caboose on her." There are just too many unavoidable jokes. Rear-ended! Slammed into from behind! Shhh. SHHH.

But let's get back to the horrible thing that happened to me. Yes! Very bad! Sitting there waiting to turn onto the freeway and then an unholy BANG! A Bang/Ouch combo, in fact. The driver was cooking along pretty fucking quick, judging by her crumpled car and my jolted neck.

And it was pouring rain, too!

Let me give you a moment to locate your violin.

Tune up a little. There you go.

Pardon me if I observe that you could stand to practice a little more. You've been playing how long? Oh, that's not long. That's not long at all. Why didn't you say something?

Let's enlist a professional.

Thanks for upstaging my very minor whiplash by walking out on stage on crutches, Perlman. You're supposed to be backing me up. Everything always has to be about Itzhak Perlman all the time. Well, I'm sick of it.

Anyway, that's nice. That's a nice song.

So, yes! Bang! And then instead of getting out of my car right there, I drive around the corner to pull over, hoping the driver will follow me. See, I didn't want to block the entrance to the freeway, you know? I was being considerate! Maybe that's not protocol, but hey! Plus I was confused, nay, shocked! But then the lady who hit me thought I was driving away. Thought I was pulling one of those "Get Hit and Run" moves that people who've been hurt in a car accident and aren't at fault so love to do. When I was stopped at the nearby light waiting to turn onto a safe street to pull over, she got out of her car and started yelling at me to stop. I yelled back and pointed to where I was pulling over.

So we pull over and we get out and she's berating me for not staying where we were. And I'm yelling at her "PARDON ME FOR NOT THINKING STRAIGHT AFTER YOU'D JUST SLAMMED INTO MY CAR!" And she keeps at it, "We should have stayed there!" And I'm yelling, "WELL I CAN'T EXACTLY TURN BACK TIME, NOW, CAN I?!" And really, really, really? You're scolding me?

Did I say it was raining? It was raining. The hems of my pants, they were all soaked. Is this the saddest thing you've ever read? This is like Old Yeller.

Police came. It's so nice to be the not-at-fault one. Medics came, but that was gilding the lily. But then I did drive myself to the hospital, due to escalating ouch. I'd packed coffee and breakfast for my rehearsal (to which I'd been headed) and lounged in the E.R. watching t.v. while I waited to get x-rayed. Sent home after a couple of hours with a prescription for Vicodin. Sweet.

And then it was a total free ride from there. Home safe, sore, medicated. Husband watching kids, pampering me. Drama queen goes on Facebook and gets petted by a thousand mommies and daddies. Spacing out on pain meds, watching Downton Abbey on Netflix. Yes, there's a little back pain, and a teeny bit of whiplash, but I don't have to wear one of those collars that makes you look like the cranky landlord on the 70's sitcom who's gotten his hilariously undignified comeuppance.

For a crappy car accident, it's all pretty first-class. I'd say I'm not complaining, but that's because I've already complained at exhaustive length, as Facebook can testify.

Let's see, what else? I want there to be something else. I don't want this to just be about that. I set up the expectation that there would be more.

Well, let's see. I'm writing a book. Good, that's good, I like this buried down here after everything else. Not too much with the fanfare. I thought about not saying anything, but I imagine this might take me a very long time, and maybe sometimes I want to talk about it.

The book's a memoir, with a family/philosophical angle. My dad's side of the family, particularly my grandmother's clan and ancestors, were some awfully unusual cats. There's some clairvoyance that runs through the female line, ostensibly down to me. I'm looking into this, as it were. And my parents/grandparents/great-grandparents were Theosophists, which is a very particular and peculiar thing to be. And so I'm reacting to that, as well. My granny, in particular, was a looming figure. Well-known clairvoyant. Difficult person. Super intimidating. And I'm learning about my great-grandmother, who was also clairvoyant, but went about things in a very different way from her daughter.

Anyway. Yes. It's nice to say this out loud, even if I'm very early on in the process. I think I need to invent some reason that I have to finish it in a timely manner. I think my own steam might not be steamy enough. I think I need an artificial deadline. Somebody give me one.

Is there anything else? Of course there is. My god. I'm alive, after all. That wasn't my whole autobiography. But is there anything else I feel like talking about today? No. This post was to be entitled "hodgepodge". However, two topics do not a hodgepodge make. Ergo, hodgepod. But I'll come back very soon and tell you about the play I'm rehearsing, which opens next Friday. How about I do that before next Friday? Yes. Good.

See you then. DRIVE SAFELY. (tiny violin)

a message from fred rowley, age 21 months, who has pneumonia

2011-03-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

(Fred enters, appearing to kickbox something.)

FUCK YOU. Yes, you. All of you. All of this.

(Fred swings his arms panoramically, culminating in a double bird-flip.)

Mom, Dad. Fuck you. Fuck you and your nebulizer. Yeah, you have me in a headlock today. But someday I'm coming for you fuckers, and it will be when you least expect it, and let me assure you my retribution will be swift and merciless. I will chop your fucking heads off.

Dad, I'm starting with you right now. I'm going to bite your goddamn shoulder early and often until your whole infrastructure falls to pieces.

Mom, YOU. YOU I don't even....et tu, Brute? I'm not even talking to you. You don't even get a "fuck you". I take back the earlier "fuck you" for you. I'll let you know when you're even a candidate. You have to exist to merit one of those.

New bottle full of Pedialyte instead of milk, fuck you. I don't even KNOW you. Okay, screw it. I will drink this bullshit once. Yes, okay. This is all right. No, wait. No, on second thought, fuck you. Fuck you in the ear. I'm going to slap you all the way into Idaho if you keep coming at me like that. Pedialyte. Can I get some fucking Pedialyte up in here? Who do I have to blow to get a bottle of goddamn Pedialyte? Oh, you mean THAT STUFF? Oh, fuck you.

Bananas, yogurt, Jello. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

Children's Hospital, I don't know who you think you're fooling. Mom and Dad are all, oh, we're so glad we came, oh, they're so nice here. Well, fuck you. Fuck you and your cutesy purple dragon mask nebulizer. Do you think I'm a goddamn idiot? My parents are wrestling this bullshit on to me for a SOLID FUCKING HOUR and I'm supposed to submit because it looks like Barney? I don't even watch Barney, you fucking dweebs. And I'll submit when hell freezes over. You can swaddle me all you like. I'll break out of that shit and kill you all.

Yeah, I'm not done with you, Children's Hospital. Fuck your kangaroo mural, fuck your little "follow the rocket!" floor tiles, fuck your balloon motif, fuck your x-ray room koalas. Fuck that little glowing red thing you taped to my toe. Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna claw that tape off. Yeah, you better get out the duct tape. You want that glowing red thing on my toe, you're going to have to go maximum security on that shit.

Hey, there, Kids Clinic, with your stupid fucking logo with the backwards "s" on the end of "Kids", don't think I forgot who sent me to Children's Hospital. It was you cocksuckers and I will never forget. Look, I'll admit that I seemed cheerful when we were driving away from you. That's because I thought we were going HOME or somewhere OTHERWISE cool.

Home USED to be cool, at least.

Fuck you.

(Fred karate chops the air.)

Blackout.

expired oscar fashion commentary

2011-03-06T14:47:00.001-08:00

The Oscars were a week ago. The deadline to react to everyone's outfits was last Monday. So this is six days past everyone already not caring very much. And yet here I go, because this is a thing I used to do, and I enjoyed those carefree days spent blowing dandelion seeds into the breeze and critiquing passing eveningwear.

La la la.

Okay, Caesar, let's praise and bury and just wonder about you.

Helen Mirren! Oh, my heart. She's the most racktacular being ever. I'm a heterosexual woman and I just want to run up and shove my hands down the front of her dress. I could do some supreme quibbling and say that I like it when her hair is a teeny touch longer, but that'd be like sitting in a cafe in heaven and sending your milkshake back because you'd ordered Eternal Bliss flavor and were delivered Ceaseless Ecstasy by mistake.

Until last Sunday, I'd never really quite grasped the hype around Halle Berry's beauty. I never thought she was, you know, a mousy spinster, but I didn't think she was Woman Incarnate either. But then I saw her interviewed before the show in that cloud of fucking Ooh La La, and I got it. If there's ever an actual Miss Universe pageant, with "ladies" from other planets/solar systems/galaxies, we'd have to send Halle Berry. Freaky sexy elfin majesty.

Perfect slippery drizzle of silver. Gwyneth Paltrow, you know what? I even kind of like your newsletter. I said it. I like Goop. And I love that brooch on your hip. That's the kind of original, interesting Oscar jewelry I can get behind. Also, my friend Hilary met you at a play one night at the Flea Theater, and she said you were a real peach. And while I was laid up after my surgery, I watched you and Joaquin Phoenix in the film "Two Lovers", and holy cow, you were so good. Stand still while I stick a bunch of gold stars on your forehead.

Cate Blanchett. Lifetime Achievement award. Yes, those things look like warts, and yes, your torso looks like a puppet stage where a fancy little Punch and Judy show could begin at any moment, but you still look ridiculously cool. I love dresses that highlight an elegant back, too. A favorite phenomenon. And that's one of the best combinations of hairstyle and dress I've ever seen. It's kind of startling in its simplicity. Oh, whoops. Cliche. But sometimes simplicity is startling, damn it.

Speaking of startling simplicity, Mandy Moore! Normally, this is the kind of hairstyle I can't stand at the Oscars. So severe. And this dress trumpets out in a sort of stark angle. But she looks like this retro-futuristic, porcelain thing, and it is MAGIC.

Hey, Tina. Why did you include a picture of Julianne Moore at the Oscars that's from several years ago? Well, listen. I know. But this is one of my favorite looks of all time. And it's a segueway. Moore to Moore. And I bring it up because the effect Julianne Moore makes here is the kind I always hope to make when I get dressed up. Effortless, feminine, quietly original. I bring that up because....

...this, conversely, is how I fear I'll look. Oh, man. This look says to me, "It's what time?! We have to leave when?!?! No, no - no, I need another half an hour. This isn't - let me just do something with my hair, I'm....FUCK. Where are my other shoes? All I can find are...all I see are my orange shoes! What? Fuck you, Keith! Yes, this is the dress I'm wearing! Because...because I spilled Pinot Noir on the one I was gonna wear! Just shut up and help me find my silver shoes!"

Let's try this exercise again:

How one hopes to look. Oh, Michelle Williams, in your brilliant marigold Brokeback Oscar dress with that soft, dreamy hairdo. You should have just said, "World, forgive me. I know this is stone cold Grey Gardens crazy, but I'm not changing this outfit or hairstyle EVER. I'm going to walk around like this until I'm dead. Truly, get used to me. This is how I look forever and ever, amen."

But you did this instead. I don't even want to talk about it. And so many people loved this business. Death...well, not even warmed over. To do list: warm over death outfit before leaving house. Shit! And I even wrote it down! Hideous Valley of the Dead Dolls.

Hi, Sandra Bullock. I don't have a lot to say. I don't know why I included you. This is the picture of inoffensiveness. Tips to the pleasant. Thank you for not wearing an old-school, diamondy necklace. Hair's a little severe. But everything else checks out. Yes, this is me padding my Oscar paper for length.

Scarlett. Scarlett. Let me tell you what I like about your dress. I like the oval of lace around your back. I like the deep red color of the lace. Yes. I like that...let's call it a 10" x 22" region.

Otherwise, what the hell?! What is going on? Has the shock of fucking Sean Penn addled your brain? Can you just simply not think straight? "Oh, kids, it's true. Grandma nearly went bankrupt operating a bordello. And when she went to the Oscars that year, why, she just ripped down the drapes and made her own damn dress. Grandma's always been resourceful. You do what you have to do to get by. Watch your nickels, though, kids. They slip through your fingers faster than you think. Let's see, what else? Sean Penn always liked it best when I didn't wash my hair. Did I tell you kids about Sean Penn n' me?"

When I saw Mila Kunis in this dress, this is what I thought, in order:

1. Who the hell is that?
2. Oh, Mila Kunis. Whatever.
3. .........did Mila Kunis tattoo her areolas lavender for the Oscars??

Finn loved her dress, by the way. However, he loved everybody's dresses. Seriously. Everybody's. Zero discrimination. "BEAUTIFUL!" "I ADORE IT!" "I LOVE IT!" So, factor that in, Mila Kunis.

Amy Adams, it pains me to say what I'm going to say. So let me preface this by saying I thought you were ultra-brilliant in the Fighter. You and Mark Wahlberg were one of my favorite screen couples ever. This would have pained me less to say the year that Julie & Julia came out.

Amy.

No. I'm not going to say it. But I will say this: walk your makeup over to natural light before you leave the house. DO your makeup in natural light if you can.

You were so good in The Fighter.

Anne Hathaway, you wore a thousand gowns this year, but I think this one sums you up the best. Dork. Bubble.

Hilary Swank, goddamn it. Every year I beg you not to dress like you're going on a Golden Anniversary cruise with your fourth husband. (I realize that math is sketchy.) And the thing is, it's not the dress. It's that bun. It's that godforsaken bun that reappears year after year. So keep scooting over to the left because I'm tired of you, Hilary Swank. My left. Your right. About four more feet.

Hello, Melissa Leo. Everybody hated this dress, but I liked it. Okay, I didn't like the golden tin foil peeking out. And the shoulders were awfully blocky. But the concept of a plunging mandarin collar openwork lace dress like this, I like it. But maybe knee-length, for brunch. I don't know. When you began talking up there on the podium, for the first couple of minutes I was like, "Aw, that's so great. Sure, it must be overwhelming. Sure." And then after a bit I was like, "Welp. It's about time for the music." And then you yelled "FUCK". Lot going on, Melissa Leo.

zzzzzzzzzzwhat? Oh, it's just Natalie Portman, no need for me tozzzzzzzzzzzz

Doesn't Reese Witherspoon look like she could organize the shit out of your silverware drawer?

I generally have no reaction to the men at awards shows. Nobody goes to a wedding and freaks out about how nice the groom looks. So I only have things to say when things go wrong. I know. Did I expect everything to go right for Russell Brand? I know. But Russell Brand must grow back his beard. Some people are meant to have facial hair, and Russell Brand is one of them. Although I will say that his casting in "Arthur" is spot-on, because without the beard he looks just like Dudley Moore, only more debauched and stretched out on Silly Putty. However....

....yes. That's right. That's how you're supposed to look. Like the devil's big sexy poodle.

So, Oscars. James Franco and Anne Hathaway, huh? Well. Let's look to 2012, think about some fresh hosts. I submit for your consideration:

objective/obstacle

2011-02-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

It's the sixth anniversary of my dad's death tomorrow. Let's get right to it. On February 4th, 2005, the phone rang in the late morning. My mom's voice was contorted, and I don't know exactly what she said, other than "He's dying." We hung up quickly. I lived ten or fifteen minutes south.

There were split-second questions as we stumble-raced to get to the car and get up to my parents'...parent's house. Do I brush my teeth? God, fuck, of course not. Jesus. Shoes? Which are closest but which go on the fastest? Shoes become on. We fall headlong out the door, are in the car.

Which fucking way? Which route? I-5? 99? Just fucking pick one. I-5, obviously, just go!

I don't remember getting to the freeway but I remember driving up this freeway and suddenly being visited by none other than a fucking ACTING lesson. An acting lesson decided to reveal itself right at this moment. Simultaneously ridiculous and profound, irrelevant and breathtakingly relevant.

Objective and obstacle. I suddenly understood it with crystal clarity.

Objective: Get to my parent's house as fast as I can so I can see my father before he dies. This means drive fast, drive so fast, drive incredibly fucking fast. If you don't drive fast, you won't see him before he dies.

Obstacle: Don't get in an accident or pulled over. You must drive safely, respecting the laws of both physics and the road. Can you imagine? Talking to a policeman? Standing next to or sitting in a stopped car? Unthinkable. If you don't drive safely, you won't see him before he dies.

I felt sure and unstoppable, like an arrow shot from the bow of some Aztec god, the aim of me so straight, shooting to this death with the utmost force and velocity. I've never known what I needed to do so clearly, and executed it so surely. A feeling of extreme power. Objective, the Platonic ideal, in shocking technicolor.

And I felt furious and oppressed, like a horse who wants to run until its heart bursts, but is reined, somehow, in all directions, held down, held back. You have only one want in the world, and you can feel the answer coming from all existence, and it is a resounding, hysterically unacceptable NO. Supreme powerlessness. Obstacle: Like something wants to kill you, and appears to have the upper hand.

We turn onto my mom's street. (It's my mom's street now. God, though, let's give it back to him for a second.) We turn onto my dad's street. They live (I think they live. Is it they who live, still? Or just she?) just one block down, on the right. A giant red fire truck is parked outside. I park and burst out of the car, burst into the gate. A medic is walking away from the house, a blond woman. She smiles at me sorrowfully. She's walking slowly. That makes no sense. Why would a medic be walking slowly? Instinctively this is bad. But I'm running. I'm running into the house.

Initial impressions confuse. My mom is on the stairs. That makes no sense, and is a bad sign. If my dad were alive, she would be with him. But then she says over and over again, "It's all right," and so that's wonderful news! My face lights up, I can feel it light up, because this means I've made it! I try to ascertain where I should go - where is he?! But then she clarifies her statement, "It's all right. He's gone."

I'm turning around. There are medics in dark blue, looking at me kindly. No. No. The quality of NO briefly suffuses everything in existence. It's likely that I say the word a few times [A phrase that was certainly repeated: I didn't make it] but I remember the feeling of the word no suffusing my body more than anything. I make an essential, invisible, involuntary, internal gesture. I crumple. Not outwardly. I don't go down, drop to my knees or anything. It's like an implosion, like there's a black hole suddenly in my gut, and it pulls at the fabric of me, which makes a crumple. This is exact. This is exactly what happened. (I almost want you to find a piece of fabric, and lay it over your partially closed fist, over the circle of your thumb and forefinger, and then reach around with your other hand and pull the fabric through from underneath. I just want you see it and feel it, like a crude little diorama. Death at the second grade science fair.)

He's on the floor over there. That's where he is. Lying flat on his back ridiculously in the middle of the floor, in the middle of the living room. Head facing west, feet facing east. He's in a grey-green fleece robe. And he is dead. He looks like he's been dead for a thousand years, that's how inscrutably dead his face looks. I'm kneeling by him. I kiss his forehead, a dead forehead. A corpse's forehead.

He was very likely already dead when my mom made the phone call. It was a heart attack, or maybe a stroke. My brother tried CPR, but he probably went within 30 seconds. That's what they say. If only I'd known that, but then I wouldn't have learned anything on the way.

wild mushrooms

2011-01-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

The lovely Suzanne Morrison invited me to perform last night in a benefit for SPF, which is Seattle's Solo Performance Festival, now in it's fifth year. It was such a pleasure. It was a small crowd, but the performers were great and the audience was with us all the way. One of those tiny, excellent nights at the theater, with such a sweet vibe. I felt so lucky. So the theme we were asked to explore was "Children of the Rain" - these were to be Seattle stories. Here was mine, called....well, I bet you can guess what it was called.

***************************************************

To bastardize Tolstoy, sunny families are all alike; every rainy family is rainy in its own way. In 1978, my family made a sudden, unexpected move from Westchester County, New York, here to Seattle. My dad may or may not have had a nervous breakdown; results are inconclusive, and now that he’s been dead for six years, there’s really no dragging it out of him any more. But we piled into a couple of cars that June and convoyed across America with a wayward alcoholic moving man, ending up in the remote, wet hideaway that was Seattle. My father was born in Seattle - on a fluke, while his parents were traveling, and my mom lived in Seattle for ten years after she moved here from Finland in 1952. I really don’t know why we moved here so fast, though I have some ideas. There was some yelling and there were some hushed conversations, and I think a good way to describe my dad in general, but particularly then, would be emotionally sunburned. So Seattle was going to be a balm for whatever it was. That there’s so much mystery around the nature and circumstance of his maybe-breakdown seems fitting for our conversation tonight about the rain. Rain is nothing if not discreet. It pulls a veil down from the sky, affords some kind of essential privacy, takes the show inside. Seattle was a balm for my dad, he embraced its muddy weirdness, and the place suited us in some fundamental way.

I want to go back to my opening statement about sunny families and rainy families. There are more than two kinds of families, of course, but let’s embrace some easy duality for a minute and say there aren’t. There are two kinds of families. Sunny families and rainy families. Sunny families write annual Christmas letters. Scratch a jock and find a sunny family. All Christian families are certainly not sunny, but all sunny families are, in my world, Christian. I’m not saying that sunny families are happy families, either. And I’m not saying that rainy families are sad. I’m saying that sunny families are yang families and rainy families are yin. Yang is active, positive, masculine, it’s hot, dry, Western, sun. It’s a Mountain Dew commercial. Yin is passive or receptive, negative, feminine, cold, wet, Eastern, moon. A Midol commercial, if you will. Sunny families are high-achieving. Rainy families embrace process, or failure. Sunny families conduct business. Rainy families go into art or academia. Sunny families are tan. Rainy families are wan. Sunny families are normal. Rainy families are weird.

A year after we moved here from New York, I enrolled in a weird little private school, and one thickly overcast day we took a field trip to Ivar’s Salmon House. We sat at a long table underneath a canoe, and ate cornbread in the low, warm, light, and listened to stories about the Native American tribes that lived here before us: the Nooksack, the Makah, the Elwah, the Chinook. It was great. Contrast that with the field trip our school in Port Chester made to a hamburger bun factory, where we watched white dough being poured into machines and turned into hamburger buns and that was that and only right this moment am I like what the hell? A hamburger bun factory? Whose idea was that? There’s a metaphor sitting right there but I don’t feel like I need to go and get it. We were all given a bag of hamburger buns. My family was vegetarian, and my parents never bought white bread, so we had some thrillingly decadent PB and J’s for a few days, and that was the upshot of that field trip. Anyway, sitting at that table at Ivar’s eating cornbread while the rain came down outside and we could see Queen Anne hill tucked in so closely near us, I pictured the hillsides stripped of houses and imagined the Native Americans moving around in their black and red and white wool cloaks, and the whole thing was so cozy and weird and indulgent for a school day. The kind of thing that the rain allows.

My dad was in no way an outdoorsy guy. He was a Harvard guy, a science-fiction books and suspenders guy. He was also a cross-dressing guy but I didn’t know that when I was growing up. There’s the rain again, with its discretion, and what it allows. So yes, he wasn’t outdoorsy, but when we moved here, he became an avid mushroom hunter. Not those kinds of mushrooms, no. He wasn’t a hippie. My family was weird, but we were also straightlaced. No, he joined the Puget Sound Mycological Society and became this crazily enthusiastic mushroom hunter, taking day trips to the Cascades to tromp in the wet woods looking for chanterelles and morels and matsutakes. He came home happy and exhausted, and filled hot frying pans with butter, and the horrible-to-me-then smell of sizzling, buttery mushroom would infiltrate the house and I would go and hide gasping in the back of my closet holding a shirt over my face. My closet was lined with bare wood and had a little light bulb, and I could fit all the way into the corner, which had a low ledge meant for shoes which was great for sitting, privately. The indoors of the indoors. Nooks and crannies, best explored while it rains.

We also had a huge basement in our house, which was decorated hilariously like a brothel when we moved in. It had red flocked satiny wallpaper and red carpeting and a red leather bar with old-timey newspaper underneath the glass. The ceiling was rimmed with bare-bulbed theater-lights, like you see in dressing rooms, but on a dimmer switch. The basement was lined with books, hundreds and hundreds, possibly thousands of books. My favorites were the sexy ones scattered here and there. They varied in tone. You had your sort of Victorian, Lady's Chatterley's Lover kinds of things, and then you had - and I went back and back to this one - your little paperbacks of goofy, naughty cartoons. The one I’m thinking of was called The Infernal Revenue Service, and it was cartoon after cartoon of housewives ripping off their blouses to reveal their bouncy, comic-strippy boobs in the hopes of having their taxes forgiven by nerdy, corrupt IRS agents. That was in the basement, and my dad’s office was in the basement, and his desk was in his office, and in his desk drawer one afternoon I found a half-slip and two little rubbery cup things that looked like peachy fake caps of mushrooms that in retrospect I realize could fit into a bra to create breasts of ones own. But I had no context for these items when I saw them there, at age 9 or 10, and so I just blankly accepted them. Dads and their desk drawers. Grownups and their widgets and wodgets.

There were so many places to hide in our basement, and so many things to hide. I had no little boy friends to play doctor with me so the neighbor girls were recruited to take the part of Hawkeye Pierce or Rhett Butler or Basil Fawlty - yeah, there was an episode of Fawlty Towers that I found so unbearably sexy, where Basil Fawlty is getting a room ready for this beautiful buxom blonde woman in a turquoise shirt, and the power was out, somehow, maybe, and Basil Fawlty went around a corner to, I don’t know, check a fuse or something, and the blonde woman was leaning up against the light switch, and Basil Fawlty reached around to check the switch and ended up accidentally feeling her breast. I feel like he’d also somehow dipped his hand in black paint, so he left his shameful, indelible handprint on the lady’s bosom. Anyway, I thought it was hot. I could have watched that moment a million zillion times. So I recruited the neighbor girls to make out with me and threaten me with IRS penalties and make me stand buxomly and vulnerably in front of the lightswitch. We took turns being the boy, which was a necessary penance for the titillating reward of being the girl. These were rainy games, yin games, private games, games you didn’t play out on the lawn. Nothing we did in our household was fodder for any kind of Christmas letter.

A couple of days ago I took my son, Finn, who’s almost five, to a birthday party with a Pirates and Mermaids theme. Finn was worried about going to the party but didn’t really want to say why at first, until it finally came out that the problem was that he didn’t want to be forced to be a pirate. If he was going to be anything, he wanted to be a mermaid. Finn is an exquisitely beautiful little fella who likes to dress up in saris and pretend to be Shiva, the Hindu God of Destruction, who he insists is a girl. When he told me that he felt good about going to the party if he got to be a mermaid, I felt a storm of pride and fear and fierce protectiveness gather in my gut. Hell yes, you can be a mermaid, angel, and woe betide anyone who looks at you askance through sunny glasses. Shiva’s a baby kitten who rains down fucking Hershey kisses compared to what they’d see coming out of your mama. At the same time, I knew it would be all right, because this is Seattle.

And that’s what I love about my town, though I got here nine - or a hundred - years too late to be a native. The rain says, do what you want. Stay inside today. No one is watching. Or screw it. Come outside. By now it’s been raining here so long that no one cares. There are no competitions. There are no awards. There are no penalties. We’re not living to pad a Christmas letter. Do your thing. Indulge it. Fly your rainbow Shiva freak flag. Grow into the little wild mushroom that you are.

a unicorn is here to see you

2011-01-09T23:55:00.000-08:00

The title of this post comes from an ultra-delightful website that was just pointed out to me called The Monkeys You Ordered, where they assign literal captions to New Yorker cartoons. There aren't a ton, but they're so good. And they've gotten better at it as they went along. A few of the early ones don't have that ultra-plain literal voice which is so perfect, but then they kick IN.

I remember many years ago when lots of my friends were beginning to get serious jobs, and I was not getting a serious job, and we would go out to lunch to catch up and they'd ask me what I'm up to, and I always felt like saying something like, "I'm thinking about going back to school to study to become a unicorn." Because that's what a baby I felt like next to all of these impressive people with their impressive jobs. And then I was telling this to a friend once, and one of us mispronounced "unicorn" as "unihorn", and then we came up with the idea that the real, technical name for a unicorn is "unihorn", and only those really deep in the know about unicorns and unicorn lore know this. So whenever somebody says "unicorn" in conversation, a great thing to do is mutter "unihorn" under your breath, and when they say, "What?" you say, "Nothing. Go on." As if you just know it's not going to be worth it to explain about unihorns if they don't already know enough to care that they're using the wrong word. Like you're not going to cast pearls before swine, but you just can't bear to let that incorrect usage slide by without marking it a little.

P.S. Since so many of you are suddenly here, I redecorated a little, quickly. Added an area for recent posts. Put up a picture of Yoda. Added a Twitter thing. It's like putting fresh guest soaps in the bathroom, really.

pagliacci? i need a hundred pizzas very quickly.

2011-01-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

Well, good gracious. It's the first post of 2011 and something has happened to this blog since the year switched it up. My kind and lovely internet friend, the much-adored and wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidely read Alice Bradley of Finslippy fame has aimed her magical blog wand at this little out-of-the-way joint. She linked me here and here and spoke of me with great warmth (sweet Alice!) (Do you know that "sweet Alice" was slang for milk back in the 30's or 40's or something? It was. Check it.) and you can imagine what happened. I stepped out on to my metaphorical blog driveway to pick up the newspaper, and instead of finding the usual three or four of you, there were hundreds of you.

THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF YOU.

Aaaa.

Hello. Hello! I was just getting the newspaper. So, uh...my hair is a little bit funny. And, uh....these aren't the pants I plan on wearing all day. These are just my starting clothes*.

*a term coined by my friend John Moe. These are the clothes you wear immediately in the morning so as not to be naked or in pajamas. Awake and In Day Clothes: A First Draft

And thank you, Alice. The magic of the internet, people. If you're not on the internet, I'm telling you you're missing out. You can just talk to people on this thing. You can talk to anybody you like! It's wondrous.

And here you all are. Well. Hundreds of you. No, my god, do come in. Really. I'm surprised but I'm delighted and you just come on in.

So a lot of you will have read my entry about plastic surgery (and if you haven't, it's here) and The Empress asked how I'm doing now, so let's start there. Two months later, how am I doing?

Well, let's not pretend like that's a small thing, what I did. I don't know how my recovery time compares to other people's recovery times, but I'm going to say it's been on the long and difficult end of the spectrum. Only just within the last week or so have I been able to drive a car and do errands and spend the day on my feet doing things without being knocked out of commission by pain for the next couple of days. And I've only been sleeping lying down for two full nights now. Two nights! My surgery was November 8th, and I had to sleep fucking* practically sitting up since then. Really. I was mildly reclining as though I were on a goddamn* airplane for the better part of two months. Towards the end the recline may have gotten a little deeper. I may have upgraded to business class. But still, just try and imagine that.

*Note to newcomers: I swear here. A lot of people don't like it, but you know, I'm afraid that I do like it. I do. Sometimes it has to be done. I don't make it a point to swear, but I don't make it a point not to. I don't want to start the New Year off by faking it here for you. There be dragons, okay? You've been warned.

So, yes. As of two nights ago, I'm sleeping lying down on my precious, thrilled, grateful, sore side. I have a little pillow system going that makes this possible. And other than that, I'm on the up and up. I have some pain still, sometimes. My muscles are back at ground zero, so a lot of my discomfort is from plain old weakness. All my core muscles took a long, long vacation. I have a little stretchy white velcro'd binder thingy, like a big belt that I stick under my shirt, and that holds everything in and makes me feel safe while I'm going about my business and building up my strength again. Vulnerable, that's the main feeling. The whole midsection feels a little wobbly and weird and vulnerable. My rack, on the other hand, feels just about fit as a fiddle. Little tender around the scars, but that's it.

edited to add: Oh. And sneezing. Sneezing is still immeasurably fucked-up. Sneezing feels like my innards are being briefly torn to shreds and barbecued. Coughing is slightly better than that. Laughter is a little bit ouch still.

Would I do it again? I mean, what I already did? If I had it to do all over again, would I? Yes....yes. Yes. Now that I've arrived at this point, I say yes. Would I ever do anything else? NO. No, no, hell no. No, dear God, no. No. Nothing, no, no. No. And obviously you're talking to someone who has no judgment about whatever people feel like doing to feel better about themselves. But I'm not down for any other procedures. No, my shit got addressed. My face is taking the trip to the grave that nature intended for it to take. And that's largely because I just love the look of natural age on other women's faces. I'm also an actor, so I want to guard that whole expressiveness thing. I just think, who has the cooler face? Frances McDormand or Nicole Kidman? Frances McDormand. Way cooler and way sexier, in my opinion. And I'm not doing anything else with my body. No, all improvements to my body from here on out are going to be sponsored by my own work. And whatever else changes that I can't control, and whatever else is imperfect, well, okay. Life, time, nature: you have the floor.

I was looking in the mirror the other day, and I was looking at my naso-labial folds. Hush, now. That's not dirty. You know, they're the lines/folds between the corners of your mouth and your nose. If you're in your 20's or early 30's you might be like, my what? Because you don't even think about them. They're not pronounced. You prance through your days completely unaware of their existence. I was like you once. And then one day you're like...what the hell? What's going on? What's that...why is that getting all...why do I SEE that? I've been gradually becoming more aware of these bastards for a couple of years. And I haven't liked it. I didn't like them becoming noticeable like that. But just yesterday as I was getting out of the shower and standing in front of the mirror drying my hair, tipping my head sideways, I saw them there. My cheeks, doing their little sagging thing. My naso-labial folds, getting a touch fold-y. And I swear to god it looked good. I have a bit of a baby face, in general. I've got a little bit of a weird Sally Field/Ralph Macchio/Michael J. Fox thing where I've always looked way younger than I am. And I still don't look 41, really. But there are just a few gray strands, and this thing happening to my face, these smile lines and this cheek thing, and it kind of makes me look like I've been around. Like I know something. Which I do. You know? And I like it.

Well, thank you for coming by. Really. I hope that you come back. I promise to say some things on a regular basis.

the lines

2010-12-11T10:39:00.000-08:00

Fuck it. That's my lead-in. I'm leading in with "fuck it".

So I've been laid up for a month and I've been cagey about why and now finally I'm over myself and now I'm going to tell you why and I'm going to talk about it. Because: fuck it!

It's going to be long. Get a cup of coffee or a drink.

I had plastic surgery. Yes, I did. I had two kinds at once. (Fuck it, she said so blithely up there. Like it was going to be a piece of cake. Readers, I apologize for the perpetual hemming and hawing, but I'm including it because it's part of the deal. I may be acting like I'm unashamed, and I AM unashamed, but I'm also ashamed so let's get used to holding two opposing thoughts at the same time. I know I better get used to it.) (And clearly the unashamed part is winning because here we are, you and I, and the topic is plastic surgery and we both know it.)

Abdominoplasty, or its horrible layman's term consort, "tummy tuck", and mastopexy - no problem - breast lift.

And fuck it, I say again, and please know that I'll probably say it again a few more times before we're through. The worst part's over. I said what it was. Whew. Now I can get to the good part. The defense, if I need one, and the relishing, which I'm going to relish.

Let's talk about the tummy tuck first. So I have two boys. Finn, my firstborn, screwed up the joint a little bit on his way out. Can't be helped, right? Most mothers end up with a little looser skin on their tummies, and while I wasn't excited about it, I grew not to mind it. Then I remember reading some blog post about the blessed French again, and how there's an acknowledged place for the sexily fecund look of a mother's soft tummy. And last night I watched Louis C.K's stand-up special "Chewed Up", which ends with him talking about the difference between girls and women, and how he prefers women, and he says, "...to me you're not a woman until you've had a couple of kids and your life is in the toilet....that's really...when you become a woman is when people come out of your vagina and step on your dreams. If you're still standing after that shit, you are a WOMAN." (If you haven't seen it, do it. Louis C.K. is a goddamn genius. Here you go: Chewed Up. You're welcome.) So, where was I? Right. Finn, and his initial loosening up of my skin. Livable. And then Fred came along, and Fred was like "How can I make my mark? What shall I do? How can I outdo my brother?" So Fred reaaaaallly fucked up the place during his exit. He passed by my left hip, for one, and apparently reached in and grabbed the labrum (ring of soft tissue in the hip joint) and just tore it with his bare hands for no reason, "You're not going to use this right? Cool, I'm just going to RRRAGGRHHHtearrrrRRrip" which has rendered the thing occasionally painful to walk on forever. Sometimes I can't feel it at all and sometimes (rarely, thankfully) I get shot in the hip randomly for no reason and can barely walk. But his real work was in utero as he grew, and it was tandem work with my skin. Because when Fred came out, what was once - optimistically - "sexily fecund" became something completely different.

Completely different. I'm going to just throw a few words and phrases out there. Skin apron. (Yes, I said it.) 85 year-old Ukrainian grandmother. You know, I think that's enough. Yes. What was left went so far past anything I'm willing to live with. For one thing, I'm not through with sex in this lifetime. No, no, I'm not. And that THING tried to say differently. That THING suggested that not only was I done, but I'd been done for years and years. Well, fuck you, thing. Let me introduce you to a man. He has a knife. Goodbye. And the thing was ruining the lines of my clothes. It wasn't a plumpness, something I could whittle away with a little activity and careful diet. No, that's what I had after Finn, and that's what I did. No, this was new territory. And it made getting dressed this exhausting exercise in trompe l'oeil. No skirts, no dresses, baroque requirements for all tops. Highlight the waist but run away from the thing! Oh, stop it. Set me free. I have enough to worry about.

I wrestled with the idea. Is this cool? Is this lame? Is this going to bespeak some insecurity that's worse than the thing itself? Am I selling my God-given body short? Am I trying to erase the passage of my children? Am I somehow going to be less authentic? I thought deeply about all these things. Answers: Yes, no, no, no, no and hell no.

Now, the breast lift. Hm. How much do I want to talk about this? Well, I'm here, we're underway, I guess I might as well. One of the things I liked about this idea was that it automatically means a little bit of reduction. Before I had kids I was already, how you say, stacked. And gravity was against me from the first, from the very beginning as a pre-teen when they first rapidly made their appearance. But post-motherhood, I'd settled into a ridiculous F cup, and the best word for that situation is "unsustainable". An F cup makes all kinds of demands, physical and aesthetic, and...yes. Unsustainable. And you know, for years as a young girl I was self-conscious about the size and shape of my breasts. I figured that all breakups were traceable to this fact, and the length of any given relationship was merely a reflection of the extent of the chivalry alive in the boyfriend in question. (And then I grew up.) So I didn't mind them any more, had plenty of evidence that they were okay, and they nursed both kids heroically, so I know that I only owe them a debt of gratitude. And I am grateful for all they've done for me. But I just, you know, fuck it. Wanted them a little smaller and a little farther north. Just fuck it. And now they're a perfectly ample and much more reasonable D. D for delightful!

So it's done. It's all done. November 8th I went in for somewhere between 6 and 7 hours of surgery. It went well, but the recovery has been insanely slow and uncomfortable and sort of awful. Lots of medications doing lots of creepy things to me. Vicodin giving me night after night of lurid, horrifying dreams. Tramadol, its replacement for one day, nearly killing me (truth. bad reaction. terrifying.). Just lots and lots of pain and stuckness. Trapped feeling. On the plus side, though, I've had lots of time for reflection. Lots of time to watch movies. (Here are some more Netflix recommendations: Ballerina, a documentary about five Russian ballerinas from the Kirov Ballet. My favorite is Diana Vishneva, who's technically imperfect and almost goofily beautiful but incredibly expressive, arguably the greatest artist among them. And I've never even particularly cared for ballet! They're incredible, these dancers, and the film is so good. And also Bright Star, Jane Campion's film about John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Totally exquisite. Visually stunning. The actors are almost frighteningly alive and intelligent, to a one, even the children. I cried myself berserk.) (I like to think I've given you a nice range to pick from now, when we drag Louis C.K. back into it.)

Now we come to the part that I'm the most excited to talk about, the note I'm going to end on: the results, which I'm happy about. Everything looks good, natural. Cute and human. Not too far, nothing artificial-looking. Very well done, Dr. Downey. And even better, there are my scars! I was so worried about them, but now I love them. They're kind of violent. There's a searing-looking scar from hip to hip, and some gentler ones up top. But they tell a story that I like even better than the story that my body told left to its own devices. Motherhood is violent in its extremes of pain and beauty. I like having a scar that speaks to that, and speaks to where I draw the line for myself.

this must be the place (naive melody)

2010-11-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

I just woke up from the most excellent dream. It's hanging in the air, still. As gently as possible, and while I can, I’m going to extract its essence and bottle it. A gift hanging in the air, yes, waiting for me to unwrap it. A lucky feeling. I'm staying nearly motionless, like there’s some butterfly next to me who’s going to whisper this whole thing to me if I play my cards right.

I’m with you, butterfly. You lead.

The dream (and it’s not about the specifics of the dream, that’s not the gift):

Walking up the main drag of my childhood (and current) neighborhood, with a couple of dear male friends from college. One an ex, one my old best friend. We’re walking home from a reunion. Or maybe the walking home is the reunion.

It’s odd, at first. Upsetting. My old best friend and I are chatting away, lots of jokes, it’s wonderful. My ex, on the other hand, is rudely, aggressively monosyllabic at best. It’s an active shunning, impossible to avoid noting. Eventually, I get mad and start swinging right into it. Calling him out. Mocking him for his rudeness, insulting him. It feels horribly good. What the hell, right? Might as well! Let him have it. He deserves it. It’s miles better than just taking it.

We arrive at the heart of the neighborhood, a few blocks away from my house, and it’s time for us all to part company. I’ll be walking alone back up to my house, the rest of the group (yes, a group converged, there was a group eventually) will be heading the other way.

Suddenly my ex blossoms into a completely different presence. “Hold on,” he says. “I’ll walk you home.” Warm, soft, tender, smiling.

“Oh. Okay.”

Poof. It’s the most natural thing in the world, and there’s no trace of anger in the air. The metamorphosis is instantly, cellularly thorough. You can’t even call it forgiveness, there’s no time. It’s transformation.

The atmosphere in the dream shifts, and it’s in here, in the atmosphere, that the gift of the dream resides. I’ve lived this atmosphere in real life, just so briefly, but it’s a real thing, it can cross into our waking plane. I’ll come back to that.

So we begin to walk up the hill, arm in arm or somehow touching, and what the conversation does is this: it takes the time in between college and now, and sweeps it clean of any trace of bitterness or anxiety. It says, You are well-thought-of. You're remembered with sweetness. That really happened. Something still remains, never left. You cleared the plates long ago, from shame, but you didn’t need to. The nourishment from that meal is still there for the taking, even if you’re sitting at the table by yourself. There's no need for shame.

I don't know if I'm well-thought-of in his mind, or remembered sweetly by him, but what's true now is that I'm remembered sweetly in my own mind. I'm thinking well of myself. An independent gift.

There’s something complex here, and this is where I have to stay very still to take the butterfly’s meaning. It’s to do with time, and the falseness inherent in time, and it has to do with that wonderful atmosphere, and so I’ll tell you about when I lived it in my real life.

When my husband proposed to me, we were on Balmoral Beach in Sydney. I’ve touched on that day here, so read that, that’s important, but I’ll tell you this here. Something ceased operating while we were there sitting in that glittering sand, and I think, I think it was time. You disagree, maybe. Maybe you think time can’t stop. But, okay, maybe you’re right. Time didn’t stop. I just stopped knowing about it. The concept fell away, and since that’s all it is, a concept, it stopped. Time does not exist in nature. Change exists in nature. Time doesn’t. No, it doesn’t. There’s no such thing as an hour in nature, or a minute. The earth moves, our cells change. Anyway, there we were, and I’d said yes, and I couldn’t feel the presence of anything bad anywhere in the world, or within me, or in my memory, or even as a possibility. What was in front of me, that was the whole world, and it was all benevolence. I didn’t have to worry about it slipping away. I didn’t have to catch it. There was nothing frantic. No memory, no planning, no hustling, no brooding. Bright stillness. I felt like I couldn’t possibly be on earth. This felt nothing like earth. It was a heaven world, with our houses and ferries and water and sand, our stage set.

Somewhere in here is the gift. There’s something we do to ourselves, something I do to myself, an application of unnecessary pain, and I think I can see that I can stop that now. The removal of pain is all we need for happiness, right? We don’t need anything added. I’m not talking about survival, I’m talking about happiness. There is nothing to add. There is nothing to get. All that’s necessary is the removal of pain, and most of that pain I give freely to my own self.

I don’t know how much farther back into the dream I need to go. It went on. Circumstances changed a little bit here and there as we made our way along, but the essential character of the dream remained the same. Warmth, love, kindness, respect. And there was a nice, hilariously neat metaphor or two: at one point, we realized we were carrying lots of bags, and we rearranged them, moved them out of the way, so we could be closer as we walked. It was raining, pouring, dumping, but it was never cold or uncomfortable, and even through the thickest, most active overlay of clouds, we could see the shape of the sun, and we noted it, how cool that was, what a neat trick.

And mind you, this closeness wasn’t FOR anything. It wasn’t building to anything. It felt possible that there would have been a kiss at the end of the journey, but all the satisfaction was right there in the present moment. The pleasure in the walking together was simple, and more than sufficient. Great fullness. No lack.

There was such a nice time, back in real life, in college, before this person and I began dating, where we were just friends. I remember so fondly the pleasure we took in each other’s company. One day we walked to a grocery store, and we each bought a few things, and we were silly in the aisles. I pretended like I was a crazy impulse shopper, and lunged at ridiculous items, while he steered or play-dragged me away. We were a little bit in love with each other already, but it would be a while before anything happened, we’d both date other people first, but right then, that day, those days, those days were perfect.

Eventually we did date, and then he broke my heart a little, and then months later we dated again, and it was more serious, and really wonderful. It was raining all the time, it felt like, a spring rain, a warm rain. We’d be up in his apartment, sitting on his bed, reading plays, and I can hear the Talking Heads singing “This Must Be The Place” overlaying this whole series of memories. We did listen to this song, and it was the right song, and everything felt just like that. I will say that was our anthem, because I’m writing this story, and I can.

And then some more time passed, or rather, things changed, and he broke my heart again, and though this was twenty years ago, I think it didn’t properly heal until I woke up this morning. Can you imagine? But it did heal, it just now has, and I didn’t even know I was still hurt. But I was, and I was carrying myself funny about it. Can you imagine? For twenty years, I’ve been holding myself funny to protect this wound, and now, as of this morning, November 18th, 2010*, I can stop.

*I can’t say it would have exactly been comforting if someone had whispered to me back in 1990 when I was so upset, “Don’t worry, Tina. It’ll all be better in November of 2010. We promise. But before then, don’t worry. You’ll get used to holding yourself in a funny protective position, you’ll get so you don’t even notice that you’re doing it, so you won’t know this was even a problem until it’s resolved.”

This is the funny position I was in, this is what I was doing, this is the pain I was adding to my own life unnecessarily. I’ll tell you. After things changed, and he appeared not to or didn’t love me any more, I took all of those nice memories and made them something shameful to enjoy. I took them away from myself. I figured it was like this: if he was going to take our future away from us, then I’d give us symmetry and remove our past. So, as beautiful as I found our time together, as sweet and important as it was to me, I decided that he didn’t matter, wasn’t that important. My mind would flash on the nice times, and I’d remember feeling humiliated later, and so I’d take what happened later and graft it onto the sweet part and ruin it, sour it, so I wouldn’t even want to look at it. I made him ridiculous, and myself ridiculous, and scattered something ugly, some kind of thought repellent/anaesthesia, over the whole span of time in between now and then and over both of us in relation to each other.

Maybe that wasn’t wrong to do, it made sense to do it at the time, like I was insulating myself from the painful idea that I was easy to discard, but now it makes me feel tenderly towards myself. I think I was operating under the assumption that there were security guards placed around those nice memories. And that was true, but I guess to make it effective, I decided that I didn’t hire them. That HE had hired them. “Keep that girl away from those memories! I don’t want to be seen with her! It’s embarrassing! Don’t you know that I dumped her? Ugh. Don’t let her into that apartment.” And I thought, my GOD. What a DICK. Who would DO that? He’s so callous!

But right, that was me. I did that. I sent that message to my very own self, all by myself. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t. (Well, maybe a tiny bit. When we broke up, he could have been generous enough to tell me that this had happened. But he didn’t or couldn’t and ultimately it doesn’t matter in the slightest. ) All he did, really, was change, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. What could be wrong with that? I didn’t suddenly grow fangs or warts or a hump. Something and someone else became, for him, more beautiful. I didn’t become less beautiful. Things changed in relation to each other. The sequence of events didn’t ruin anything. Things just changed position.

November 18th, 2010. In today’s news, it has been announced that when things fall away, they take only themselves with them. Anything else that is stripped, we strip, and we may stop.

And now, two versions, both important. The one we really listened to, and the live version:

sartorialism, bespoke

2010-11-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

If you haven’t been to the wonderland that is The Sartorialist, go there first, quickly, before you read this. Spend a few minutes. You might not have any reaction, but maybe you will. If you already know and love The Sartorialist, stay with me, because chances are you might never come back and read this essay if you don’t. You’ll fall down a rabbit hole masquerading as an alleyway in Milan, tumbling after some impossibly cool old man in oxfords and anklets, with the hem of his trousers rolled just so. (These old Italians all dare to eat a peach.) Or you’ll fall into a pretty dungeon of despair/envy/desire when you see some mile-long gazelle of a girl in modern, sky high heels, leaning against what was an ugly, nothing wall until she was juxtaposed against it. Slightly wrinkled trench coat, topknot, sleek legs, only the barest hint of elegant tension beneath her languid posture…oof. It creates this longing that makes me think of theater; what she has going on in that moment is almost completely ephemeral. Some elements may remain for a remount: shoes purchasable here, trench there, hair, well, you have some or you don’t. But the rest you can never have, and you’re just lucky or unlucky to have seen it, depending on how you carry that 10 ounce glass of water with the five ounces of water in it.

Aspirational, that’s the word for that site. I frankly love the tension The Sartorialist sets off in me, my glass blinking from half-full to half-empty by the moment. Possibility! Impossibility. Possibility! Not every last photograph is of some paragon of physical beauty – you’ve got young people, old people, thin people, fat…old men - but every single one shows us someone who has absorbed/created/lucked into a sense of style, and that is mostly, largely, maybe? almost? democratic. You can cultivate one. It’s available to you. You might be tone-deaf, but everyone who cares to do it can probably struggle out a real sense of style.

Or not. And those who can’t are left with fashion. But I don’t want to talk about fashion. Fashion, apart from style, is something tinny and temporary and quickly embarrassing. It requires no thought on the part of the wearer, only a kind of pitiful trust that he or she is being handed the right information. Fashion without innate style is that good-looking (or not) kid who heads to Hollywood and is dying to be a famous actor but doesn’t have any talent, whose only hope is a gargantuan dedication to craft. Dubious. That actor who’s not exactly bad, who’s hitting the marks and all, but you just don’t give a shit. Styleless fashion. Nothing gives a sadder, more desperate feeling, sartorially, than that. Especially with the wrong information. You know what I’m talking about.

(And you’ve got the segment of the population who don’t care about style AND don’t care about fashion. Carry on, wizards. Stay warm and dry in the winter and cool and comfortable in the summer.)

Let me digress a little. I have a mild, vague obsession with French culture. (Can you have a mild, vague obsession? I think I figured out how to do it; see me for tips if you’re interested.) Parisian culture, maybe, in particular. I spent one day and one night in Paris almost a decade ago. I’d looked forward to going there all my life, nearly maniacally. I’d have dreams about it, and since I’m always fooled by my dreams, I’d invariably think, “My god! Mon dieu! The day has come! Finally, it’s not a dream! I’m really in Paris this time! All those other times – dreams! But not this time! Hurray!” and then a giant deck of cards would walk into the room and I’d think, “Paris is not quite what I expected, but it’s great to be here. Great…to be here.” And then I’d disappear up into a skylight and continue the dream in Ohio or what have you. My point is that I’d always looked forward to the challenge of Paris. I was intrigued by the idea that it didn’t come easily for visitors, that there was an intricate code to learn, some intuitive and some counterintuitive tricks for comporting yourself in such a way as to make the city fall open for you. (I hadn’t considered the option that it might also be okay if Parisians didn’t like you.) (Me.) And one of the most obvious things you had to do when you got to Paris was dress well, but that wasn’t enough, either. You had to dress with style, because the Parisians THROW DOWN.

So how did it go?

Yes, well. Since I’d been overly excited, I hadn’t slept for one minute the night before, and arrived with a huge headache. So, a good chunk of time was lost sleeping and then taking a bath with my sunglasses on. And then we went out to dinner and then I got to spend a few hours back in the hotel room throwing up some bad tuna. (“Paris! Pinch me! Am I dreaming?!”) Then the people at the front desk denied to my boyfriend’s face the very existence of mint tea in the whole world. (“Ma’am, I’m afraid that you’re wide awake.”) Montmartre was delightful, the next day. I spoke French successfully in a bookshop, to a taxi driver and in a perfume shop. OH! And on the train from London to Paris, I was in the bathroom when they were collecting tickets or checking passports or something. They knocked on the door and I said, “Un moment” and the ticket taker/passport checker said, “Elle est Français.” !!! I practically started singing the Marseillaise. Anyway, they couldn’t see me or they wouldn’t have made that much-treasured mistake. I did my best but I was not, I could tell, able to dress myself to Parisian standards. I really only took two outfits on the town:

1) 1. Dinner (and then vomiting)

A navy v-neck t-shirt, gathered in the front with a little patch of red paillettes, atop a navy pinstripe a-line skirt, with modern-looking black flats.

2) 2. Montmartre, next day (aka “The nice part”)

A risk-free ensemble of white button-up shirt, black trousers, the aforementioned black flats and the sunglasses from the bathtub.

Neither here nor there, ultimately, and no heels = not good enough. It just wasn’t good enough. I could feel it. It didn’t risk enough or express enough or…who cares, right? Who cares what I wore in this one part of the world over the course of slightly more than 24 hours almost ten years ago? I DO.

I do, I care, because it’s to do with nuance, and I love nuance, and consequently hate missing nuance. It’s so aggravating. I wanted to nail it and I didn’t nail it. So Paris is still hanging there, unconquered, and therefore it remains this vague obsession, and so we’re back to The Sartorialist. The pictures I examine most keenly from his site are the ones, obviously, from Paris, but it doesn’t matter, really. The whole question of style and nuance dangles there in every photograph, which begs the question of my own style, and just what in the hell that is, and what it’s for, and why it matters, because it does matter. It’s not enough that the clothing flatter my figure and my coloring. We all want to be found beautiful, that’s basic. And it’s nice to be accepted, to be thought cool. But the ultimate – for me, at least - is to be known, and if you really want to be known, then you leave as many breadcrumbs as possible for the people taking you in, pointing as much as you can to something ineffable. It’s art, and even if you miss the mark you’ve set out for, you will at least have hit something.

*********************

Cross-posted from Writing, Writer, Writest.

the pink house, part omega

2010-10-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

(-Hey, Tina. That house isn't pink.) (-Don't I know it?)

Go back here, if you haven’t caught part nothing and part two.

the pink house

the pink house, part two

It’s sold. A guy bought it a couple of months ago for a ridiculously small sum. We would have held out until the market turned around some day, in fifty years or whenever that might have been, but we owed my mom the money and she needed it now, while she’s still alive. So that’s it. Done. Gone. Closed. Sayonara. And the bottom dropped out of the market mere moments after the deal was done, so we feel like we got…lucky? We got something, anyway. A little cash that looked nice in our bank account for a minute until we funneled it over to Aino*.

*My mom. I never know who’s new here. Right, and why would I? I think it’s optimistic of me to imagine that somebody’s new and needs to know my mom’s name, like they’re ready to invest all the way in this operation. “Now who’s Aino? And what’d I miss?”

The Pink House is no longer pink, so that helps me let go a little. It was such a ridiculous color, and I didn’t choose it – just inherited it – but I loved it, the way you love some goofball quirk in one of your nearest and dearest. Like the way my mom uses the Finnish pronunciation of the letter “y” whenever she says the word “mystery”, so it comes out sounding like something not too far from “moosetery”. “That’s mooseterious!” It’s a respectable sage green now, with cream trim. All of the inside walls are white (except for the kitchen - the kitchen is pale blue), and the wood floors have been stained dark to cover all of the imperfections. (Hat tip to Lucy, the Rottweiler who lived there briefly before I moved in, who smelled my fear and decided she was against me, fucking up my home away from home. I spent the two months that comprised her reign of terror at my boyfriend’s place, wishing she would go away. And then Kristen moved to NY and Lucy found a new home and I moved in.) (In your face, Lucy.) Goodbye pea green living room, orange & white & blue kitchen, red bedroom, blue bedroom, emerald green bathroom. Goodbye, silly floors, with your tiny nails that kept popping up to stab us in the foot. It looks pretty, but I almost don’t know it any more.

And then there was the renter, and the terrible thing.

He stopped paying his rent a month before he left town without warning. I called and talked to him before he left, and tried to work out a deal. I mean, we were clearly going to get stiffed, but I thought he might make a little more good-faith effort if I was cool and understanding. (Yeah.) And after he left, a friend of his moved in and squatted there. So we evicted him. Them.

We got a call from a friend of the family, Mark*, who was going to do some work on the place before we put it on the market. They’d vandalized it. They went to town.

*If you read the story “Convoy”, Mark is Irving. Irving changed his name to Mark long ago to woo a lady. It worked. They’re still married.

Mark painted over the worst stuff before we could see it, with whatever he had at hand, but it was still shocking to see what had happened. In the kitchen, in the bedrooms, in the hallway, bathroom, basement, everywhere. Black….spray paint, I guess. I don’t know. The thin paint bandage applied on top looked as horrifying as whatever was beneath it – a bright, nauseating surgical green. So you couldn’t see what they’d painted. You could just see black masses of paint lurking beneath the green bandages, with black “blood” dripping down the wall beneath the main injuries.

It almost doesn’t matter how it looked, although it looked gruesome. It’s how it felt, that’s the unforgettable thing. Gut-twisting. Something violent hung in the air, still, a kind of psychic odor, like the intention of the vandals kept refreshing itself, was still active. And right – it WAS still happening. This, in fact, was opening night. The intent of the vandalism wouldn’t have been complete until we saw it, the people it was meant for. Well, congratulations, fellas. It did just what you wanted it to do. I wandered around from room to room, agape, tears falling. My precious house. I used to kiss the walls when I lived there, I loved it so much. I would pat the walls sometimes, idly, affectionately, like the house was some giant beloved beast, a family member of sorts. And here it was, taunted, beaten, wounded.

The house was a living thing, it did have its own consciousness. I won’t listen to anyone who tells me differently. I felt so protected in that house, and more, what’s more, I was healed by that house. My life was so chaotic before I moved in, and then something quieted in me, something stopped fighting. Before I lived in the Pink House, I didn’t think I deserved a good and happy life, so I did whatever I could to prevent that from happening. I sabotaged myself whenever I could. Practically kept a gun in my desk and pulled it out and shot myself in the foot every Tuesday, preventatively. Landed myself in jail, even. But the Pink House took me in and whispered things to me beneath my hearing, and something in me relaxed and began to nod along, concurring. (I know it wasn’t just the house. It was the people near me, loving me so well, and it was time, and it was some kind of readiness within me. But it was also the house.)

I don’t have that kind of relationship with the house I live in now. It’s pretty, my house, now. It’s too big. It’s indifferent. It’s too young – it doesn’t have presence yet. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. And we haven’t filled it and adorned it and taken care of it properly. Like I said, it’s too big, and we’ve been too busy. It’s not responsive, because it just isn’t alive yet. It isn’t anything. I feel almost nothing for this place. It’s palatial and it’s empty. There’s something false about it. The floors aren’t hardwood, they’re laminate. The fireplace, it’s gas. You can turn it on and there’s heat, but there aren’t any burning logs. That fire isn’t real. I don’t want to live here forever. I want to love a house the way I loved the Pink House. Can that happen twice in a lifetime? If it can, then I bless this whole world and kiss it the way I kissed the Pink House, because that would be more magic than my brain can currently wrap around.

So, that's it. It's not mine any more. I hope you're happy there, person, but you won't be as happy as I was. If you are, I almost don't want to know about it.

mantra virumque cano

2010-10-06T23:53:00.000-07:00

I just found out that one Thomas Ashley-Farrand just passed away. Well, sir, here's an extended toast to what you came to teach us, and in the meantime, I've circled around a mala in your honor.

Thomas Ashley-Farrand was a well-known and widely beloved teacher of mantra. I've read a couple of his books, and I just so happen to be very deep into a practice I pulled out of one of them. And so I just want to talk about it. I want to talk about mantras, I want to sing their praises, I want to talk about this practice I'm doing.

When I was young, mantras seemed...well, this was not an attractive practice to me. I imagined the people who did mantras to be spaced-out, fern-bar-frequenting, white-tunic-wearing California hippies. And yes, I grew up around these people, near them, but my own family prided itself on being the intellectual wing of spiritual kooktown, if you will. The drone of a mantra seemed to me like it drained your intelligence and free will right out through your mouth. Like I said, I was young, and vulnerable to cliche.

I'm an unabashed fan of the mantra these days. I'm not going to work too hard to sell them to you. This is not in defense of the mantra. This is in praise of the mantra, free-style.

Magic old words, bona-fide abracadabras that chimed out of primordial not-nothingness straight into the finely-tuned ears of the ancient rishis. Psst. Hey. Psst. Would you like a magic key? Would you like another one? How about another one? How about another one? We can go all day like this. We can and we will. Why not? It's the least we can do for you. There you are, stuck. It's comical pitiful tragical. Can't stand to watch it anymore. We're throwing you a bone. We're throwing you a thousand bones. Better than bones. They're keys, like we said. But you have to turn them and turn them and turn them, and slowly something will unlock and unlock and unlock more and then more.

Perhaps you saw that lovely creature I have in a position of honor there up on the sidebar. Lakshmi. I'm following her trail right now, around and around my mala. Let me tell you a little bit about her. So, Lakshmi represents bounty in all its forms. Beauty and grace and wealth and...uh...you know what it is? You know the real reason I'm working with this particular mantra of hers? Oh, blush, damn it, I'm really maybe going to tell you. It's going to make me look silly. (Transparency! yells Mr. Ashley-Farrand from beyond the grave.) (Yes, sir.) (Ach.) So, he said that this one particular mantra is to...[blush]...[die]..."Invoke and Eventually Become the Abundance of the Universe Itself." Ahem. He said that the appearance of Lakshmi wiped all cares from the minds of those who first beheld her, and that this mantra...oh, hang on. I'm just going to quote it, skipping a little up top.

Vishnu [Lakshmi's sweetheart -T.R.] spoke these words in the story: "God's love, through whatever door it comes, is the end of all desire and yearning." The highest abundance is Love. If you feel that your true inner nature is one with the loving, abundant nature of Lakshmi, that you want to bring an abundantly satisfied state of mind to every person and thing you encounter, these two mantras [same mantra with a slight variation depending on whether you're above or below the age of 29 - T.R.] can begin the process of your transformation into such a bountiful and beneficent state.

Well, who wouldn't want that? And, damn it, I do feel that way. I've always been exceedingly lucky, and for whatever reason, I've always been able to make people feel better. I don't know why. It's just true. And I'm going through some kind of profound life change and I thought, well, this is something incredibly positive upon which I can hang my hat awhile.

So I'm going for something called Mantra Siddhi. After years of observation back in old India, it began to appear that 125,000 repetitions of a mantra is enough turnings of the key to make something special happen wherein the power of the particular mantra really sinks into you and becomes your own. You absorb it deeply, it becomes permanently lodged in you. And if you keep going, the effect of the mantra is magnified and spills out onto others as well. I can share the wealth, as it were. So that's just what I'm doing. I have a plan, I have a timeline, I'm underway. I'll be there within a year, maybe a little quicker. And then I'm going to absorb another one, and another one, and I think that I'll just be insatiable for these magic keys. It's the nicest path that I'm falling along. And I owe all of it to Thomas Ashley-Farrand, who sang the praises of mantra in the key that I could really hear, the key that spoke to me.

I can't imagine why everyone alive doesn't find their own key like this.

Safe and happy travels to you, Mr. Ashley-Farrand. Thank you.

I dare you to note that he's wearing a white tunic, here.

convoy

2010-09-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

Everything’s going along pretty smoothly. We live in Port Chester, NY. Third grade is drawing to a close. My pixie cut is growing out, I’m looking more and more like a girl by the minute. I made Gerald Braun laugh on the Third Grade Circle Line Cruise around the Statue of Liberty. I’m considered a damn fine speller, if I do say so myself, despite the mishap with “playground” that one time.

Then my dad goes on some kind of sudden trip to Seattle.

My mom is on the phone with him, crying and yelling, “I hate my life! I hate my life!” My brother and I are looking at her and looking at each other. What the hell is going on? She hangs up and tells us we have to go stay at our friend Elaine’s house. She has to go get on a plane to Seattle immediately, tonight. What?? We scramble some things together and my mom calls a limousine service to take her to the airport and drop us at Elaine’s on the way.

Bad vibes.

-Mom, why do you have to fly to Seattle?
-I have to go look at a house.

Holy shit.

Two weeks later, we’re ready to launch this thing. We’re moving to Seattle. Like, right now. We’ve had the garage sale. Danny Covino came with his mom, which was weird. I wondered if it meant he was in love with me. That seemed like the only reasonable explanation. What a time to find this out, right before we’re separated by a country. Ah, well. And now it’s midnight and the giant moving truck is here from King Van Lines, and we were supposed to be on the road several hours ago but something keeps holding us up and it’s making my mom angrier and angrier. It’s about the driver of our moving truck, something about him coming with no people to load the furniture, and something about a gallon of rosé that he’s carrying around and drinking out of all day. His name is Jim, and he wears a t-shirt that says “The Canadian Hippie” on the front. His daughter is about my age, and we get along great. We play in my room while it gets darker and darker and later and later, and it’s difficult to see what my parents are getting all worked up about, but there you go.

1:00 a.m. and we’re finally on the road. Can’t make it too far because, well, it’s 1:00 a.m. We sleep in the car at a rest stop in New Jersey. I’m going to begin to agree that this is weird. We’re sleeping in the car. Yes, I’m with Team Mom and Dad on this one. Sleeping in a car is lame. This is The Canadian Hippie’s fault, we all agree. And suddenly our family is united, and thus begins my two week summer adventure wherein Tina Kunz of the New York Kunzes will become Tina Kunz of the Seattle Kunzes.

Back up. Why are we moving all of a sudden? What’s that all about? Well, at the time I don’t know. But later I’ll hear something about a nervous breakdown, maybe? My dad had a nervous breakdown? Results have never been conclusive. Let’s agree that he had a nervous breakdown. There has always been a lot of mystery around this. I have no new information.

Once we’re on the road, though, he seems fine. He seems great! So, here’s the setup. We have our two cars. My dad drives one of them, and a young friend of the family, Irving, drives the other one. We’ve got CB radios, and we all have handles. (It’s 1978, right in the middle of the CB craze. Everybody’s feeling very Smokey and the Bandit.) My dad is Slowpoke, because he drives really fast. My mom is Mother Hen. My brother is Numbers Man. Irving is Cookie Monster because he eats bags and bags of Chips Ahoys. (He has an alternate handle, Life Saver, because my mom keeps telling him he’s saving our lives.) And I’m Light n’ Lively, which is a brand of milk in New York but not in Seattle.

I always ride with Mom and Dad. Numbers Man sometimes rides with the Cookie Monster, sometimes rides with us. I’ve got my firecracker flag pillow by my side, which was a gift from my third grade class. Everybody signed it. It’s shaped like a firecracker, patterned like a flag. Andy Haas informs me that the Mariners suck. Everybody else writes something sweet, even surprising people. The pillow makes me feel sad and good, and it smells fantastic, sort of warm and powdery. I smell it all the time and I’m always afraid I’m going to suck the smell out of it with my nose by smelling it too much, but that great smell really hangs on. In other flag news, I have a flag puzzle that has all the flags of all the countries in the world, with the name of the country beneath the hole where the flag piece goes, and the name of the capital city printed right on the piece. On their own, released from their countries, the capital city names sound like people’s names, and I assign genders and personalities to them all, and have them mingle with each other. Any capital city that ends with an “a” is a girl, with a few obviously feminine exceptions like Paris. All the others are boys. Ankara and Brasilia are my favorite girls. Athens and Amman are their dates. I have all the cities and their countries memorized in short order.

My superb memory proves to be a coup for us all in Pennsylvania. We stop at a Dutch restaurant for lunch, and they have a challenge going. If anyone at the table can memorize this very long poem about a bird before the check comes, lunch is on the house for your whole party. Our eyes light up. I grab that pansy-ass poem. I’m like a machine. “The Golden Finch is a lovely bird. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.” I have that shit filed away before we order dessert. The moment comes. The waitress and the manager watch as I reel it off. Lunch is free! As a reward, my mom and dad let me go into the gift shop and pick out an enormous, swirly, multi-colored lollipop to take with me in the car. This trip kicks ass. I don’t know what any of us were worried about.

Indiana is GREAT. Don’t know what my parents find so boring about it. There appears to be candy and ice cream available for sale no matter where we stop. Motels everywhere across the country are fantastic. Ice machines.

Every now and then, we'll listen to chatter over the CB, have a little back and forth with Cookie Monster and Numbers Man. I much prefer just talking with our own party. I don't like it when my dad gets into conversations with real truckers. I know they're going to be on to him. They'll know we're driving a Mercedes. They won't care that it's old. They'll know we have no business trying to mingle with real men of the road, that we're fronting like we're CB people. My dad's voice sounds too jovial, too folksy, when he's talking with truckers. My throat closes up until the conversation's over. My dad's average speed is 90 miles an hour, so once in a while we'll pick up a message about a Smokey or a Bear, and my mom'll look anxiously behind us while my dad pretends to be a guy who drives at the speed limit. Then the CB seems worthwhile.

When we're approaching Chicago, my dad gets into a conversation with a trucker. The day is extremely hot and sticky, an irritable kind of day. I don't know what's going on, but I guess this conversation isn't good. My mom looks more and more worried as it goes on, and then it ends. The atmosphere in the car is tense as we get closer to the city, but maybe this is still residue from that conversation. I don't understand. Then we're on a bridge in downtown Chicago, and an eighteen-wheeler has pulled up next to us and is apparently trying to run us off the bridge. My mom is practically screaming. She tells me and my brother to hold a pillow over our faces. We do. A few minutes pass? A few seconds? Nothing happens. We don't fall over the bridge, we're not crushed by metal, but fear and sweat and silence fill the car for many miles.

Iowa's not much to talk about. Corn, corn, corn.

The Badlands are compelling, those strangely formed green hills and cliffs. I peer at the land intently, trying to feel the badness. Something bad must have gone down around here, I think to myself. And then we get to Montana, and Montana fucking outdoes itself. We stay at a giant Holiday Inn in Helena. It has a motherfucking Polynesian-themed pool! Any hotel with a themed pool makes me want to run up and high five all the staff. AND! When we’re going into this hotel, I hold open the door for a man in a ten-gallon hat, and the motherfucking awesome old wealthy cowboy tips me a dollar! This is the first money I’ve ever earned. I stare at my dollar all night.

We’re getting closer to Seattle. Who knows what’s going on with The Canadian Hippie? We’re in worryingly less and less frequent contact with him as we drive across country. The atmosphere is increasingly chilly when we do see him. When we get to North Bend, which is about an hour outside of Seattle, some kind of confrontation happens between my dad and The Canadian Hippie. I don’t get it. I hang out with his daughter again, and we can’t figure out what all the hate is about, but it’s making things awkward for us. It’s less fun to play with her this time. We’re clearly on different teams, like it or not.

We arrive in Seattle on my birthday. July 3rd. It’s overcast. We don’t know anybody. We don’t have any furniture. (The Canadian Hippie abandoned us and our moving van after the mystery confrontation. We found it unlocked in a nearby mall parking lot a week after we got to town. ) My mom buys a Pepperidge Farm cake and puts a cutting board on a small box and throws a pillowcase over it for a tablecloth. She has silver candlesticks that were in a box in the car, and we have candles. We sit on the floor and they sing the birthday song to me. The trip is done. It’s cloudy and strange and quiet here, and I’m nine, and I live in Seattle.

********
(Cross-posted, as is the trend these days, from Writing, Writer, Writest. I've expanded it for The Gallivanting Monkey. I was respecting word limits over there. I don't have to respect a goddamned thing over here. Also, our moving truck looked just like the one in the picture. Atlas Van Lines ate King Van Lines. Based on performance, that can't have been too tough. I like to think that Jim is passed out just below view. Okay, then. All the good numbers* to you.)

*best wishes

i will never marry you

2010-09-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

When my husband and I got married, a friend of ours read a poem aloud called The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess. In the poem, the Buddha’s kicking it of an afternoon, wandering around like the Buddha does, walking. Just walking. And then this naked red goddess with long blue hair pops up in front of him and blocks his path, all HWAA! Here I am! And the Buddha’s all, hey! Why you gotta pop up and get in my way? I was just going about my business, cool, Buddha-style. (Also, the Buddha clocked that she was a very foxy naked goddess, because he’s not dead, after all.) And she said, and I quote, “You can go around me, or you can come after me, but you can’t pretend I’m not here. This is my forest, too.” Then the Buddha and the Goddess get into this sort of sexy, challenging face-off. He assumes this rock-solid meditative posture, and starts telling her about how after arduous practice he’s penetrated reality, and she’s like NOT SO FAST, I AM REALITY. And then they really get into it, but never mind. We can leave them there. I’ve arrived at my point.

For years I’ve been toggling back and forth between Buddhism and Hinduism, and it’s driven me nuts that I couldn’t land on one of them. They’re each so attractive in their different ways. Buddhism is cool, impeccable, unflashy. You can’t argue with the logical empiricism of Buddhism, or you can, but Buddhism doesn’t mind. It can wait all day. Argue yourself in circles. Eventually you’ll tire, and Buddhism won’t have been even mildly scratched by your efforts. I can’t think of another religion that gives near as much attention to epistemology as Buddhism does, and then it has the grace to set it down and get to pure practice. It’s so incredibly secure. It’s the most secure, unflappable religion in the world. When did the Buddhists ever flip out and wage a holy war? Never is when. They’ve conducted themselves with great class through the centuries. Buddhism has its head down and its eyes on its own work, and it gently suggests you do the same. Am I gushing? I might be. I confess a crush. I had a crush on a fella one time purely because he was so calm and sensible -- so calm and sensible, in fact, that it struck me as terribly manly. Buddhism’s like that for me. So elegant and brave and adult. Swoon.

At the same time, though, if we’re going to run with this choosing-a-religion-as-taking-a-lover notion (and we are), hmm. Buddhism, gosh. You’re so cool, such a catch, quietly sexy in your way. But I’d sort of like to have the sense that you could flip out now and again, get mad, get ecstatic. That’s what I’m missing. That’s why I can’t commit. It’s not that you don’t have danger. You do. There are some essential safety nets you don’t provide, and that’s daring, that’s provocative. But you never seem to do anything wrong. You never mix it up.

Cue the sitar and a supersexy four-armed blue god strides on to the scene. WHAT…is that? And then the sky fills with somersaulting gods and goddesses in all flavors: ridiculous, wonderful, elephant-headed Ganesha, Hanuman the Monkey God, the triumvirate of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, with their respective girlfriends (!) Sarasvati (special power: music, knowledge and the arts – she plays the veena) (Me neither. Like a guitar?), Lakshmi (wealth, grace and beauty: who can turn the world on with her smile?) and Kali (who will fuck your shit up and add you to her necklace of skulls). There’s Durga, riding down the sky on her tiger or lion, whatever she’s in the mood for that day, swinging her ax and taking out demons. There’s Krishna, The Cosmic Player, with his long lashes and his blue skin, and his patient main squeeze, Radha, and they’re hot with love for each other. These gods and goddesses are like a divine Superfriends - and they sound like cartoons - but when you dive in to each of their lore, you see they stand for particular principles of reality, laws of physics, natural phenomena, and there’s plenty of sophistication in the layout. Hinduism is full of epic stories, battles and sex and revenge and undying love. It’s unreasonable and fiery and vast, and it sizzles with nuclear magic. The cosmos is like a giant silver screen, and the Hindu pantheon strides across it like so many movie stars. It’s the oldest religion in the world, with thousands of years of heft to it. Plus: gurus*! If you can wade through the sea of false ones and get lucky enough to find your very own real one with your name on him or her, zing! You have booked a ticket to enlightenment. May take a while, but it’s booked. Your guru is contractually obligated to make that happen.

*Buddhism quietly adds, “We have teachers. It’s in the same neighborhood. It’s worth noting.” You do, Buddhism, and I like your spin, there. Your way feels less confining, and you seem to invite more personal responsibility. No, I dig. I dig it.

Quit armwrestling, fellas**. You’re BOTH gorgeous.

**by which I mean quit trying to arm wrestle Buddhism, Hinduism. Buddhism is ignoring you, anyway.

Okay. The sex appeal of both religions has been established. Time to examine compatibility. I would so like to pair up with just one of you and make a go of it.

Buddhism, I like who I am when I’m with you. You make me get serious, you encourage me to let go of my illusions. You calm me, ultimately, even if you make me terribly tense for a while on the way there. I feel mature, womanly, ready to face facts. You cool my proverbial fevered brow. You drag me out of my head and into the stream of time and place in front of me. It’s now. It’s here. There’s nothing else. The world may be twisted and dark and relentless with suffering, but we’re not hiding, and the blessings we find along the way are as real as rocks.

Hinduism, I like the world best when I’m with you. The world seems like a miraculous, benevolent circus with glowing peel-away layers through which more light shines, more dazzle manifests. I feel like a child, incredibly well-loved, with my hands held by enormous cosmic Mommies and Daddies who leap me over the puddles and whisk me out of harm’s way. I work my way around my beaded mala, chanting the mantras you gave me, and I feel something sparkling through my body, wafting around my head. You let me be so human, you meet me where I am, you never make me feel ashamed.

I can’t do it. I can never choose. I will never choose. I want both, and I’ll have you both, but never fully. And it’s all right, almost. Well, it’s wonderful. I’m very happy. I have, of course, just one relationship with one Divine, who switches shirts according to my mood. I can swing from one vine to the other and get across the abyss just fine the way I’m doing it. When I meditate, I can touch you both. And if I’m honest, I’ll confess this: Hinduism, you’re probably my true love. I’m fairly sure that you are. But as long as Buddhism walks the earth, I won’t marry you.

(Cross-posted from Writing, Writer, Writest. But I'm gonna give you some extras, because I can do that over here.)

SPECIAL FEATURES:

1) One of Finn's favorite Hindu YouTube treats. (He could watch these all day.) This is a slightly pared-down version of the go-to Gayatri mantra, which my brother taught me when I was small.

2) Sita Sings the Blues. By rights, you should have seen this in an art-house movie theater somewhere. Second choice is watching the DVD. It's my pleasure to bring you the lamest option of all, knowing that it's still so much better than nothing. Don't even think about not watching this in some form. You'll rue the day.

nothing

2010-09-13T11:53:00.001-07:00

It’s the hot water you were born into. You were in it before that, even, steeped in your mama’s body. But you come out and go right into the family pot, and the flavor is simmered right into you, for good or for ill. It smells like your family, it tastes like your family. You can’t get away from it, no matter how far you go, but you won’t really know which part is you and which part isn’t. Is some part of your bones your own? How far down into my body do I have to go to find some purity*? Is all I am apart from my family some faint dot of light, a web of thoughts? Whose brain is this?

*I almost exclusively see this purity in my own children, though. They may have steeped in me but I feel more like a door they walked through, completely independent except for the shape of an eye, the angle of an eyebrow. They had to get here somehow. It had very little to do with us. To me, they came as the adults they’re going to be, wrapped in the temporary, frustrating chrysalis of their own baby suits. But that’s them.

On the one hand, I don’t want to be a part of a family, a member of an inescapable group where fifteen of us are walking around with the same mouth. A family is like a cult, and the curl at the side of your lip that you share with Cousin Sue is the telltale marker. We’ve both been there. We know.

Bound by a secret, bound by something that only your family understands, bound by a sadness, your family’s sadness. Your own family’s shame: no one else’s is like it. Good to have a place to go where people also know the secret, the secret thing that renders you a family. Not everyone likes this soup. It’s a family recipe. It tastes familiar, we all love it. We’re used to it.

Two blood lines. One side of the family dominates. The other I can’t see. It’s like the portrait you can stare at that’s a woman from one angle, a vase from the other – only here all I can see is the vase, no matter how plainly visible the woman is. One side bullies the other side out of existence. Van Gelders* trump Valtanens. My father’s side wins.

*My father’s mother’s maiden name was Van Gelder. My maiden name is Kunz, so wherever you see the word Van Gelder, you can substitute Kunz. However, it was the Van Gelder wing that was the loudest and the closest, so it’s Van Gelder from here on out.

In the Van Gelder family trunk: 1) Clairvoyance, passed like a beam from generation to generation, a light right between the eyebrows. No, a window, and through that window the light passes. 2) Volume, vehemence, fight. 3) Something bent, something twisted. Secrets. Pockets of ill mental health. 4) Treasures from the Far East. Chinese and Indonesian blood, years logged in India and on Java. Philosophy. Spices. A framed, gilded leaf from the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha sat when he reached enlightenment, the leaf an offshoot from the original plant, like all of us descendants that have come down the line. 5) Vintage stories with famous faces passing through. Henry Miller, Gloria Swanson, Salvador Dali, George Bernard Shaw, E.E. Cummings. The effect altogether is shabby, tweedy, glamorous.

And then, shoved into a corner, is my mother’s side: so vivid for her, so inaccessible for the rest of us. She grew up on a farm in Northern Finland. The farm was called Siertola, and for her it was like Tara. Her memories are of cows, and skating on frozen lakes, and yellow leaves, and the texture of her wool coat. They’re beautiful to her, they’re moving, and they can barely be heard over the Van Gelder din. The Valtanen music is too quiet, it’s too spare. Long, slow, single cello notes against a wintry background. So much is marked by absence. I met my grandmother before she died – she was just like a stick figure. Skinny, with straight hair that stuck out, and no English. I couldn’t tell what she was like. And then she was gone. My grandfather left her when my mother was one, so he wasn’t there. He was a streak of dark hair, a cloud of alcohol, one meeting with my mom when she was 15. “I hear you’re my daughter.” “That’s what they tell me.” And then he was gone, too. Valtanen faces are broad, their limbs are sturdy. I only know what we look like. I don’t know who we are.

Finland was too far, and we only had the one representative, so we defaulted to Van Gelder. We were swarmed by cousins on Sunday nights, talking about Theosophy and arguing over curry at the dinner table. Voices rising, arms waving. Privately, I loved it. It was warm and wild and loud and familiar and it felt almost like mine. Publicly, Van Gelder blood was freak blood and I wasn’t happy about it. We were vegetarians before anyone knew what the hell that was. We were Theosophists. “What the fuck is that?” asked everybody. (Can’t do it for you. Not now. God bless Google.) My grandmother was a famous clairvoyant who as a young girl transmitted messages from soldiers who died in Gallipoli to their families, healed people with her hands. It felt like we were the goddamn Munsters. I felt like Marilyn, looked like Eddie, worked on being the Munster who could blend in, pass for Grade B if not Grade A American. I dumbed it down, blanded it up, played to the crowd. “What religion are you?” (Oh, shit.) “We’re…Christians.” I learned to tell jokes, be cool, shake off the familial stuffiness. I loved being free of it. I loved making my own persona.

Oh, man.

Here comes the regret. There’s something too poignant here that I don’t want to look at. Distancing myself from my family, rejecting them. Subtly. There’s betrayal in here somewhere, and I don’t know who did it first. I don’t want to look. And there’s a love that I don’t want to talk about either.

KING LEAR
What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
CORDELIA
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.

There’s something at the core that I didn’t show you, that I can’t show you, that you’d never be able to see anyway, because you’re not my family.

This is hard. Family. Jesus. I’m losing my way, here, maybe on purpose.

I buck at being part of a family. I would sort of rather be alone. It can’t be helped, though. Also, that’s not true, and I love them. Oh, who knows? The topic makes me want to stick my head out of the window. It makes me need air. And we don’t have time to properly address this. The hot water we’re born into, the haunted houses we grew up in. The drama soaked into the walls. Aeschylus, Tolstoy, Ibsen, O’Neill. Everybody knows the family is a killer. The safest place on earth, right? Your home. Wonderful. The back of your hand. Yes! True! And you spend your whole life dismantling the little bombs they accidentally planted inside you. (That’s too dramatic and also not dramatic enough.) Whatever note I leave this on, it’s the wrong note. What did you do to me? Thank you for everything, sincerely. The other one. Both.

This did nothing any justice. Sorry, family.

P.S. This is cross-posted from my dear friend Josh Grimmer's new concern,Writing, Writer, Writest, which he's set up in order that not-writing-enough writers could begin to write more. So I'll be writing there each week on their given theme, and occasionally cross-posting over here. Do go and look. There are some real gems.

violence redux

2010-07-27T00:42:00.000-07:00

Oh, Christ, people. I've put this post up without a disclaimer, and then removed it. I've put it up now with an enormous disclaimer, and then removed it. I guess I only need one disclaimer, and it's this:

I don't hit my children.

Don't anybody let me change my mind again on this post. Jesus.

P.S. What Ingrid wrote was beautiful, and I'll put most of it in the comments section.

********************

I don't want to write this post. I mean, I guess I want to. I'm here, the engine's running. But I think I had to hijack/kidnap myself to get myself here to do this. I'm pulling myself out of the trunk at gunpoint. Write it, bitch.

Ok, ok.

(pause)

Can I do a little more preamble?

No, fuck you. Get to it.

FUCK! I DON'T WANT TO. IT'S UGLY.

I don't even know how to let myself start talking about this. I've had that ball in my stomach that's made me want to come here and write, but every time I've felt it, I thought, "No. I can't talk about that. I'm not even taking that to my journal. Find something else to do with yourself, ball. Go assimilate yourself into my organs. Cancer's treatable."

SPIT. IT. OUT.

It's about parenting. It's about violence. It's about avoiding child abuse. Narrowly.

Finn.

(This is so halting! And I can't make it be any other way. Sorry for my halting prose.) (Like I'm going to come here and be fluid about this. That would be terrifying.)

Finn. He, himself, is not my bête noire, but he fucking summons it. He's the dangerous little angel that leads my bête noire in on a leash, dancing around me and laughing. Wait, who's doing the dancing and laughing? Both of them. Both of them fucking are! and it's too much to take! Many times a day it's too much to take.

Obviously, our children test us. But the older Finn gets, the deeper the testing is getting and it's accessing something ferocious in me, something uncontrolled. Something that matches Finn's uncontrolled energy. Or maybe it's not his energy at all. Maybe it's mine. Maybe Finn goes wild and tears the day apart because I can't or won't or don't know how to do it. Maybe this energy is leaking out of me like some kind of toxic factory runoff and polluting my child, and he's just trying to get it off of him. That could be what he's doing. He's not fighting us. He's fighting IT.

When he's in the throes of this energy, whatever it is, he's not angry. It's not anger. It's just muchness. It's like he's plugged into some frighteningly outsized power source, and he doesn't know how to let it run through his body. Trust me, this is not simple childhood, uh, vivaciousness. When this energy starts running, I start to tremble a little. I have to plant myself a little more firmly wherever I'm standing, dig in, grab hold of something internal. I know it's coming. The energy starts running and vibrating off of him and he gets so wild, and he becomes this creature that you can't reach or reason with. The energy won't back off until it peaks.

Is this true? No. Fuck, no, no, it isn't true. That's how I LET it happen.

(This might make no sense to any of you, yet. Please forgive me. I'm working this out in public, in real time, here. If I take this public, then I can't pretend it isn't happening. Accountability. Possibly safety in numbers. Take it to the fire where all the other cavemen are gathered. Look, look, others. This.)

So there's a moment that comes when the energy is running. The moment is subtle, small and decisive, and if I gloss over it, I will lose. Either the bête noire is going to take over or I'm going to use my core strength to calm down and stop and breathe and allow love to permeate the situation. It's not like I can't do it. I just can't or don't or won't do it nearly as much as I should...which I guess should be EVERY FUCKING TIME. Because this is my child I'm dealing with. This is a small, fragile, tender being who's counting on me, my beloved little creature, my son.

Oh, breakdown. Breakdown.

(Finn, I'll come back to you. I will come back to you, baby. Wait here.)

BEAST! It's you I'm coming for now. You THING, you CLOUD. What are you?! Where did you come from and why are you inside of me and who put you there and what do you want? You're this dark genie, this black smoke. Anger, flailing. Coldness, too, an utter lack of concern for whomever and whatever is around you. You will do your own thing. You're supreme. Once you get going, you like it. You flex your muscles. You knock things over. It's satisfying to you, this display. You like to frighten people, it makes you glow. It makes you feel large. Makes you feel godlike. It's nothing to you. A flick of the hand and something dies and let that be a lesson to everyone.

For a split-second it's like that. A blazing dot of satisfaction and joy, like an atomic pinprick.

For me, I mean. It's like that for me when I let the beast win - and fuck love! who ever heard of love? who has time for it? - and I use my relative size and force to try and intimidate Finn (who, by the way and to his credit, gets less and less easy to intimidate) (although this results in a spiraling situation wherein I'm faced with the dilemma of pulling out bigger and bigger weapons). HA! FUCK YOU! LOOK WHAT I CAN DO! I'M ENORMOUS!

A negative re-creation of the big bang, an orgasmically destructive conflagration. I think this is why people imagine hell to be hot.

I yell, of course. Right. No shock. Kudos to the flower-like Thich-Nhat-Hanh of a parent who doesn't do this. He or she may be out there. But my yelling, for the moment, is what keeps my child physically safe.

Because the moment fucking comes. The impulse and decision. Fuck you. My body against yours. Mine will win. You'll go out the window or against the wall.

There it is. There's the horror and shame. The discovery of an anger and violence in me so profound that it could turn against my own child. I pray that this is universally true and I pray that it is unequivocally not universally true, but I suspect that it is.

When it kicks in, I feel unrecognizable to myself. I don't know what this thing is that's running me. I'm being run by something. I've allowed something that isn't me to come in. Is it me? It's not any me I know. Is it truly a part of me? Because something is in you, does it make it of you? I'm not trying to escape responsibility. I'm not. I'm ultimately - I hope - in charge of whether this energy moves my body and uses my voice and to what degree. I'm just trying to look at it. I'm not trying to run.

I will say that this degree of violent impulse only happens when Finn is doing something aggressive to me physically and won't stop no matter how often or loudly I tell him to. That's when I feel like a caged animal and the situation becomes potentially unsafe. Because that is violent, even if it's violence delivered by a four-year-old. There's a shock in being disregarded like that, a hot sense of violation. If he's hitting or kicking or pushing or squeezing or hanging on me or touching me in some relentless way, licking or poking or flicking or tapping like Chinese water torture, and he won't stop despite my hectoring or pleas, then I'm transported to the primal middle of whatever cumulative anger I've buried in this life. Dropped right inside it. And I will make it stop by nearly any means necessary.

Nearly. Nearly. Nearly.

Once, I had Fred in my arms, who was crying and needed tending to. Finn threw himself at my legs, and then threw his arms around my waist and began pulling. I told him to stop, and then yelled for him to stop, it wasn't safe, I have Fred, we could fall, I have to take care of Fred, let go, let go of me, and he wouldn't and I pushed him over. I threw him off of me and he fell on to the floor. In my defense, there was an element of the dramatic soccer player going on for Finn. He milked the fall, spun it a little, helped it along. Seemed almost glad it happened, as well as frightened and sad. Like he had his own strange pinprick of joy. But there he was on the floor, and I had put him there.

This isn't the worst thing that ever happened. Neither, though, is it small. It still lives on in Finn, who brought it up tonight when I was putting him to bed. My bête noire was activated after a jagged evening, and my patience was gone. My voice was loud and flat and I was ordering him this way and that. We had gotten into his bed to read stories, and I was doing battle with myself. I was trying to do the good thing. I was trying to breathe and be still. I summoned a softish voice, if one with a flat affect, and asked him to please pretend to be a rock for a minute (long enough for me to allow love to get a foothold, which I didn't say). I could feel the energy wanting to run in Finn still, and I could feel my own tears fighting their way up. (They won.) Finn draped a leg over me and began kicking me sideways with it. My voice got louder, a warning, and I told him that I would eventually do whatever it took to make that stop.

He said, "Would you hit me?!"

I said, "No, I would never hit you. I would never hit you. No."

He said, "Would you push me over?"

I knew he remembered. I considered pretending that I didn't know what he was talking about.

I said, "Would I push you off of me? Would I push you over?" and paused.

I answered, "Yes. Yes, I would. If you're doing something to me like this, if you're kicking me or pulling me or doing something to my body that I don't want you to do, then yes. I would. I would do it. I would push you over."

We sat there in the strange peace of this knowledge.

please hold

2010-07-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

RSS Feeds. I always forget about the RSS feeds.

Yes, there was a post here earlier. Yes, it's gone. Yes, it will be back.

The subject matter of this post, for those who didn't have it spooned into an RSS feed before I could whisk it away, is very sensitive. I posted something and I felt ashamed about it and wanted to hide it.

My dear friend, Ingrid, she's one of the people who saw the post in her RSS feed. She called me this morning, and we hung out and talked. She's going to have my back and write a preamble for me so I can put it back up. I can't go it alone on this one. I'm afraid I'll get speared.

I forgot that long ago, when I was pregnant with Fred and spending lots of time on Babycenter.com, I set things up so my blog would post over there. When I was scrambling to take down the post, checking Statcounter to see whether anyone had read it, I saw that it had posted to Babycenter, and someone had indeed read it. I went and looked.

One comment: a crying emoticon.

You can interpret a crying emoticon a lot of different ways when you have no other information to go on. I decided that this emoticon was crying in horror.

Ingrid is going to help me and I'll have it back up at some point soon.

So, you weren't imagining things. And if you read it and got worried, please don't. What I wrote was true but it's not anywhere close to the only truth, or the most pervasive truth. I stand by it. But it needs more around it. It's not enough by itself.

Okay. Please stand by.

a man, no plan, a canal.

2010-06-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

A year ago tonight I went into labor with my youngest and final child, Mr. Fred Rowley.

If you follow this blog, you'll, uh, notice that my posting frequency has plummeted during this last year. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think there's a correlation between the two.

No, YOU'RE crazy.

This post wants to go in more than one direction and I'm going to let it.

First, I have this guilt that I haven't been out here chronicling the beauty of my children in the way I did after Finn was born. So, I'm going to paint some pictures for you. I'm going to let you see them a little.

Second, this past year has been the most difficult of my life. I took a Persephone-like trip to the underworld and I'm only just climbing out into open air again. I don't fully understand what happened. I know this: I turned 40 last July. I'd been looking forward to this all my life. 40 always had this corona of light around it, a gravity and thrill to it. I felt in my bones that I was going to come into my own in some critical way. Like I would be born this year, somehow.

Maybe I was in the birth canal.

Wait, I think that's right.

Oh, argh. This is two posts and I'm trying to squash them together. Well, screw it. The birth analogy for this post is a Siamese twin. A Siamese triplet. I'm one of them, and Finn and Fred are the other two. We're definitely fused together. If I birth this post at ALL it'll be a miracle, so I'm not going to require that the process be pretty.

1. Fred! Let's begin with Fred. He's the little trumpet call, the sunrise, here. Fred had a hell of a time getting here. His ride through my body into the world was fraught. So many times we thought we were going to lose him. The problem was never with Fred. Fred is the farthest thing from frail. Fred arrived in style, all in one piece, better than solid.

How do I describe Fred to you?

This is why I don't post! I'm humbled by my subjects. I'm just going to dumbly hand you images and try to begin to describe Fred that way.

Here:

* deep in the earth-->ready to be excavated --> but not excavated yet --> still all Nature, all potential --> a massive cache of ore --> gold, what else? How does it glow without being up in the sunlight yet? Trust me, it just does --> the future of this gold can only be something large and magical. A grail, a sword. Something bright and noble.

*Daffodils (yellow) (gold again) -->simultaneous flower and trumpet

*Golden retriever (right) --> your best friend, so lucky and happy and good

*THE SUN.

That's the light of Fred, the glow of him. We know he's on the side of good. We know he's on the side of joy. We know he's tough, and we know he's not mean. He's all benevolence, but don't bother fucking with him. He'll barrel right past you.

It's the summer solstice. In Finland, the midsummer holiday is called Juhannus. I was there once for Juhannus, with my mom. We went to a cabin on a lake with some cousins, ate cold cucumber soup, watched the sunlight streaming through the birch forest. The sun went down for five minutes around 3 in the morning and then popped right back up.

Fred timed his entrance here just right. Here, everyone. My signature. Sunlight.

I'm not going to try and describe the day-to-day of Fred to you. He'll just sound, you know, like a baby. I'm no fool. I'm not going to try and get across the light in his eyes. Maybe you'll get to see it for yourself someday.

2. Finn.

If I'm daunted talking about Fred, I'm doubly daunted talking about Finn. My complicated moonbeam. That metaphor isn't just me trying to be neat and easy, cheap and symmetrical. I may have made him, but I didn't MAKE him. I'm just reporting, and that bit of reportage is accurate. I'm going to let myself be primitive, again, and just hand you what I can hand you about him.

*Long, pale, willowy. Wild, sensitive. Where Fred is of the earth and sun, Finn is netherworld, elf (not quite right, elf, but it gets there), moon. He's a creature. There's danger to him. He's carrying something wild, and he doesn't know how to work with it, yet. There's a split. On the one hand, this intelligence and refinement. His vocabulary boggles. He doesn't want the music too loud. The sheets are too scratchy. And then these bursts of energy come through him, and he hides his face. Can't use words. Neighs like a horse. Plunges toward you. Plunges away from you. Careens. There's no such thing as a wild thoroughbred, is there? There is now.

He's wild as Pan, soft and bruisable as the bluest blueblood.

We watch Blue Planet together. Orcas converge on a mother and baby gray whale, separate them, take the calf down, kill it. He likes this part, defiantly. It matches something in him. He mimes shooting a thousand arrows at the Orcas. He's with them and against them, both.

Why would I be able to describe this?

Look, I said it wouldn't be pretty. I said it would be a miracle for me to get anything out at all. I can't describe my children. It's useless.

And now I'm too spent to try and talk about myself, and that's really all the metaphor you need for me for now. I'm spent. Forty, you took it another direction. Nice work. You mixed it up. You zagged where I thought you would zig. I don't think 41 is going to be a piece of cake, necessarily, but at least I think it's going to take place above ground.

I'll come back to me later. And the Pink House, don't worry. I'll come back to that, too.

the pink house, part two

2010-05-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

"This is the tribute I get? The same picture over and over?" Oh, Pink House, you know how it is. I'd have to go through old pictures and then, I don't know, SCAN them or something, and who has the time? Pretend it's a different day. Different snow*. Different things happening inside. You choose. (*Maybe it's foam!)

So where was I? The good news. The love story. Elizabeth. Comedy in the hallway. (How am I going to cram it all in? I'm not, I'm not going to. Make peace right now, Tina.) Okay, I know. The old failsafe. Snapshots. ("Irony," declares the Pink House above.)

Pulled at random:

1. Christmas Party, 200...2. I think. It's not that kind of Christmas party. It's the other kind. "Dress outrageously" is the edict, and everyone complies. I've chosen some kind of Hindu tenement angel look, with fluffy white wings, a kimono and a bindi. Brian is sporting an enormous David Byrne-ish suit and tie. It's 3 in the morning. The music is loud. The people are dancing. The floor is bending beneath us a little. The thought crosses my mind, "I wonder...if the living room...is going to fall into the basement." And then it crosses back the other way, and forgets something and crosses back, and keeps doing that. Nice work, floor, keeping us alive. (Lots of spontaneous dancing when people come to the Pink House, due to a music collection heavily weighted to guilty pleasures but anchored - entirely not due to me - with enough credible stuff so that the self esteem of our guests doesn't totally plummet.)

2. September 11th, 2001, before 7 am. The phone rings. Who calls this early? Something is serious. A message from our friend, Jenn, "I'm all right." What? Why wouldn't you be? I turn on the TV. I wake Brian. We stare at it. We go wake Elizabeth and Erik. There we are, in the living room, for most of the day.

3a. April 19th, 2006, around 8pm. I'm in an enormous birth tub in our living room. Elizabeth is squeezing my back during contractions, and Morgan is, and our midwife is, too...is Dave? He may be. He may also be freaking out a little in the kitchen. Larraine, my mother-in-law, she's in the room, too. I say out loud, just to get it out of my system, "We can always put him up for adoption, right?" I'm joking, sort of, but I'm also not. I think I need to have this deal on the table in order to keep dilating. I'm not ready to be a parent but within 15 or so hours I will be anyway. I imagine Finn also needed that deal on the table to keep doing whatever he was doing. Um...she's not ready! I can hear her thinking it!

3b. April 22nd, 2006. Home again, home again, jiggety jig. Baby in a teal velour suit and hat, this is your house. You live here. (He lives here? Really? With us? I need to lie down.)

4. December 31st, 1999. Elizabeth and I are getting ready to go out to our different New Year's Eves. We have purchased and are wearing the same high-heeled pony skin boots, in different colors. Mine are red, hers are olive green. We have that song on. It's still light out. We're dancing. We can't believe it's here.

5. Summer, 1999, a random night. Our friend Forest is living in our basement. He has a bad dream and yells out. I think he's being attacked and launch my knee jerk "we have an intruder" move, which is to yell out in what I think sounds like a man's voice, "WHAT?!" Like, I'm a big football player and why are you bothering me with all these questions? That's what it sounds like. That's my move. Forest comes upstairs and he and Elizabeth join me and Brian in our room. Elizabeth pretends to be on the phone placing an order, "Hello? Yeah, we need some mommies."

6. Christmas morning, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, done to excess. I have stayed up until 5am wrapping all the stocking stuffers. The presents snake out across the floor. The stockings overflow into large grocery bags. Elizabeth is there. Brian is there. Jenn is there. Stephen may be there. Morgan will come later.

7. Summer 2003. It's just me. Brian and I have split up. I watch the movie "Laurel Canyon" and decide to take up pot smoking more seriously. I buy a pretty little pipe. It's odd to be drinking wine and smoking pot by myself in my little house. Anesthetized, lost and hopeful.

8. Various times. What's on television? We watch "The Practice." Ba-nuh-nuh-nuh! Always dance to the theme song. We watch "The West Wing" and "The Daily Show" to help us cope with the Bush years. "Survivor"? This kind of thing can't last.

9. Election night, 2000. I've thrown out a rib and am pasted to Uncle Bill, who is a deluxe old leather recliner that Brian has imported into the house. Am likely wrapped up in Mr. Softee, who is a taupe blanket given to me by my friend, Cara, for my birthday one year. It hurts to breathe. The election is finally called for George Bush. At that precise moment, the TV smokes, sparks and goes black. It has flatlined.

7. October/November 2003. I'm on the phone. Long distance. Australia. A short conversation, just to touch base = an hour and a half. A regular conversation = 3-5 hours. The longest conversation = 10.5 hours. I can see the moon out of the living room window. He can see that same moon. My ear cartilage is nearly destroyed, but this doesn't matter.

Well, this is clearly going to be a three-parter.

Next time, the bad news. No, we haven't sold it - that will be good news. No, we had some renters. And it went bad. And they assaulted the house. Nothing too serious, all cosmetic wounds are healed. But just picture your most sacred, beloved place, and picture it desecrated. Feel that.

Those fuckers.

the pink house

2010-05-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

Some of you will know this place. Some of you won't.

This used to be my house. Well, it still is, sort of, for a few more cosmic minutes. It's on the market. We have to sell it, need the cash to pay my mom back for the funding of our current house, the one we built. Our time is up. The market might not be, but our time is.

The Pink House.

How the hell do I begin to tell you about the Pink House and what it's meant to me? And, shit, which do you want first? The good news or the bad news? Instinct tells me to go good news first. Then the bad news will mean something.

The good news isn't news, either. The good news is the old news, the story of how I met the Pink House and how we fell in love and how good it was to me, how good it was to a lot of us. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this place was the stuff of legend. It was. (Not, like, giant legend. But for a good dozen or so people...no...more. More. Let's say a score. For a score or more of people it was, what do I want to say...a locus. A real locus. A hub, a gathering place, home base, where it was happening. Depending on who you were and when it was, the Pink House was: quiet oasis, bumping party palace, Daydream Central where all the beautiful girls sunbathed and drank wine and dreamed and plotted away the summer of '98, cozy love nest twice or thrice over, and launch pad into incarnation itself for one Finn Rowley. First house, best house for more than one of us. )

My beloved friend, Kristen, bought it in the spring of '98. She and my key girl, Elizabeth, fixed it up from a falling-down wreck and made it so good. Oh, shit, it was good. My girls knew what they were doing. They worked like hell, plaster in their hair, and made it...oh. I want to convey the perfect aesthetic of the place when they were done with it, and I'm doomed to fail. Pea green living room, cream fireplace, perfectly weathered and untouched windowsills. Kristen's bedroom, that muted blueberry, and Elizabeth's, that terra cotta red, both with the beds in counterintuitive placements that made you want to smack your hand against your head, they were so right. So fresh.

I still lived in my crappy Fremont apartment when they moved in. Post-marriage, mid-perpetual-crisis, chain-smoking, fervent, freaked-out times. (Good times included.) I went over to that Pink House as often as I could, to soak up the brilliant company and the perfect surroundings. Home away from home. Uplift guaranteed.

We'd all climb into Elizabeth's bed in the a.m. with our cups of coffee. Elizabeth always spilled. Little tan blobs on that creamy white duvet. Wrecked the perfection just right.

I'm not going to even try to convey that first summer. Let's just say it set the tone, implanted the magic. I know, it's hyperbole city over here, but you don't know! how! much! the place! deserved it! Anyway. Much drinking, much smoking, and a very witty and good-looking rotating cast of characters. Many regulars, some day players. I was deeply pleased to be a part of that scene.

Kristen moved to New York that December, and I moved in. Take the arrow of my life's trajectory from that moment forward and aim it up. No, higher. Steep, that incline. Whatthe- where the hell am I going? Whoo!

I was infatuated before I moved in. After I moved in, I fell in love. And then it deepened and deepened.

And Elizabeth and I, oh, we had such a good thing going on. 11pm every night, like clockwork, boyfriends present or no, we'd find ourselves in our bedroom doorways, chatting...and it was like someone came and sprinkled comedy dust in the hallway. We couldn't miss. Bang! Boom! Bop. Pa-chow. It's a miracle we slept at all.

It was so, so copacetic.

...

This is going to have to be a two-parter.

lovesexy revisited

2010-05-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since I've listened to this. I bet it's been too long for you, too.

I tell you, it's the perfect time to go back in. It sounds so good. Always a great moment, when music that didn't sound quite right for a while suddenly gets its luster back.

Spring of 1988, I'll come back and talk about you later, too. You blew my mind. And this was your soundtrack.

high holy day

2010-04-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

A dozen years ago, I spent Easter night by myself at the now-disappeared Cafe Septieme. (Oh, Septieme, two of your three old incarnations are missed. It was Version Two that I loved the most. You died before you died when you painted your iconic red walls yellow. There was no point in returning after that.) Septieme was a wonderful place to be alone among people. I would bring a book, a notebook, a pen and a pack of cigarettes and unselfconsciously spread out in a booth. Daylight would fade to dark, coffee would turn into wine. Watching, scribbling, dreaming, smoking, longing. Septieme worked magic with longing, alchemized it, made it something temporarily harmonious, something pleasant to wear for a while. This is one of the reasons people would stay for hours on end, I think. Everyone you knew gravitated there, too, so you'd be alone for a while, doing the thing you came to do, and then a friend would roll up and join you, and then a friend of theirs would join in, et cetera, until some never-before-seen grouping would have accrued. Then one would leave, and another, and then your friend, and then you'd be alone again, doing your thing there in the airy space between the tall red walls, in your red booth, with its table all covered in white paper.

Easter night, 1998, dark, getting late. Septieme, as usual, has done something nice with my loneliness so I'm reluctant to leave, but I leave uplifted. In my car, the radio is tuned to the classical music station. I don't know what's playing, but it's clearly something holy, and it takes the baton from Septieme and keeps my mood afloat. The world goes into slow motion, a little. I leave Capitol Hill, driving down Denny. At the bottom of the hill, two goth girls are walking hand in hand. From the minute I see them, I'm suspended in some kind of transcendent state. They look to me like angels. I feel overwhelmed with tenderness for them. They're moving in slow motion, swinging their hands. They're friends, or they're in love. Goodness radiates from them, putting the lie to their angry, dark clothes. I'm charmed, spellbound, and from a distance within myself I'm aware that I'm in an unusual state, and I wonder how long it will last. I don't ever want it to end. Stopped at a red light at the foot of Denny, I see the line of cars facing me from the opposite direction, with their pairs of bright headlights. I can feel the presence of each driver, and each one is as good, as angelic as these girls holding hands. An angel at every wheel. I note this, and noting it I get the feeling that this unusual state is going to hold for a while. The quiet joy surges in a little triumphant wave. I'm not going to drive home. I'm going to drive around the city for as long as this lasts. I want to see every person I can. Each person I see is exquisite and makes me so happy.

It's not just people. It's everything. Buildings. Banks! I'm struck with tenderness for the very concept of a bank! The concept of money! People throughout history, putting their heads together, coming up with ideas for how we can do this down here. -Shall we try money? -Where will we put it? -Should we keep it at home? -Wait, I have an idea. -Good idea! -We'll need a building. -Let's get some builders! -I'm a builder. -Me, too. -Excellent. You do the building. It's not just buildings, either. Little planted strips strike me as so joyfully, unnecessarily beautiful, a tribute to the innate goodness of humanity. -What will we do with this in-between space? -Let's plant something in it! -We'll need a gardener. -I'm a gardener. -Great! Have at it. I can feel the presence of so many benevolent hands in nearly everything my eye alights on. An enormous, well-intentioned collaboration. I think, "Oh, look, an apartment building! Who's sleeping in there? Tired angels after their long days. Sleep well, angels! I'm sorry our contact is this short, just me driving by." I'm only sorry it's late on a Sunday night, which means fewer people out and about for me to adore. Otherwise, I drive through Fremont, rejoicing, drive up 99, all glad purpose, curl around to Wallingford, full of hope, and head down 45th. A donut shop. Winchell's. One person behind the counter, one in front bending down to look at the donuts. Pure joy, to the point where I blow some kind of internal fuse and the transcendence begins to wear off. I drive around for another half hour or so, soaking in the residue, beginning to miss this experience already, starting to long for it.

Happy Easter, angels.

and the bleak horse i rode in on

2010-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

It takes almost nothing to summon it. The light hits wrong, for example. You're inside while it's sunny, the sunlight is streaming into the room, but track lights are are shining down the walls and a lamp is lit, senselessly, in the corner. The natural and man-made lights clash; the lamps and track lighting--which look so good at night, so inviting--look artificial, superfluous, weak. Irritating. And the sunlight, in turn, looks oppressive and callous. Go away, we don't need you, each light says to the other.

The First Noble Truth of Buddhism. Dukkha, or dissatisfactoriness. The premier fact of life. I like how Lama Surya Das expresses it, that things feel fraught, cracked, hard-to-bear, off-the-mark. Unreliable and dissatisfying (surprise).

I've been meditating every morning for the longest stretch of my life. Not very long in the scheme of things, just a few months, but it's permanent between us, now. I've crossed that line. Never abandoning it. I require it for my well-being. It's something I'd always hoped for but never thought I'd be able to pull off, having a regular meditation practice. I thought I'd weasel out. But no, no, hell, no. Thank you, 40. (I always looked forward to turning 40. I had the idea that this was going to be a special age, a turning point, and there's no question that the arrival--among other things--of a full-fledged meditation practice into my life is going to propel me places I couldn't have gone without it.)

I read this morning that when you start meditating regularly, it's common to experience dukkha more acutely. What's really happening is that you're experiencing the same amount you always did, only you're seeing it more clearly.

I can report that this is true. Mutherfukkhin dukkha wherever I turn. When the timer beeps and my morning meditation is finished, I fish around briefly in my copy of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's book I Am That to develop a game plan for facing the day's barrage. The solidity and calm lingering from my meditation begin their slow wane, and dread gathers outside the door.

Wow, Tina. Meditation sounds really good. I'm going to try it. It's working so well for you.

But it is, and here's why it is. I felt it today at the end of my meditation, after I did my I Am That fishing, once I had my game plan. I have to jump to the Third Noble Truth for this one. Here it is, in its three aspects: There is the cessation of suffering, of dukkha. The cessation of dukkha should be realized. The cessation of dukkha has been realized.

I'm reminded of my friend, Peggy, whose voice I can hear saying, "Get on your gear, boys, we're going in!"

That's what I felt today: the mirror image of FUCK THIS SHIT, its positive shadow. I will fuck this shit, thank you, this shit being dukkha and the fucking of it being my commitment to follow the path* of the wise ones who have realized the cessation of suffering. It was like a little lion's roar in my gut, this feeling. Spear in the air. Me and what army. Watch your castle, Way Things Are.

*That there is such a path is the Fourth Noble Truth**.

**You know what's funny? I'm not even a Buddhist, she said, wearing a maroon robe and prostrating herself in front of a statue of the Buddha.

I'm tired of it, see. I'm tired of it on all our behalves. Waist-high, neck-high in dukkha all the damn time. So much suffering, and so much of that self-created.

Backing up to the Second Noble Truth, the cause of dissatisfaction, which is tanha, which translates to...oh, hell. I'm just going to quote a chunk from Surya Das:
***********
These four facts of life are meant to be known, understood, and realized, seen as they are. Knowing the bare fact that things are dissatisfying won’t free us from dissatisfaction. The crucial part is knowing the Second Noble Truth, which is the cause of that dissatisfaction — not the things themselves, since the things themselves don’t suffer; it is we who suffer. The cause of that suffering is clinging, attachment, greed, desire, resistance, fixation — whatever you want to call it. It is often called craving. The word literally is tanha in Pali (samudaya in Sanskrit), which suggests thirst. Because we crave, continually desire and thirst for various experiences and things, and because created things are never ultimately satisfying, we suffer. That’s where the chain of suffering can be addressed: whether or not we cling to things and crave for experience. It’s not that we have to get rid of the things themselves. Things are not the problem. It is the attachment, the identification with things that causes suffering. Tilopa wrote, “It is not outer objects which entangle us. It is inner clinging which entangles us.”

This clinging takes many different forms, as we all know. We might well examine in our own lives what forms this attachment takes, but traditionally it is laid out as taking three different aspects: One is craving for pleasurable experiences, what we want. Second is craving to get rid of what we don’t want. This is also a desire, of course (although in the form of aversion). This is interesting, because here we see how attachment (or desire) and aversion (or anger, aggression) are actually the very same movement, a craving for something other than what is.

The third aspect is also very interesting as we go a little deeper into it: Craving or desire to become something or someone, that is, egotism itself. It fuels the whole process of rebirth, of wanting something and becoming that. So there is a lot of dissatisfaction in that, since whatever we can become, however we can seem, whatever we get or achieve, doesn’t last forever; yet we exhaust ourselves and absorb ourselves in getting it; we are invested in it and identify with it. That’s why clinging or attachment can also be called identification. If we identify with things — if we identify with our body, if we identify with our mind, if we identify with our self-concept — since they are not ultimately permanent or satisfying, it is very trying. We never quite get what we need out of this incessant clinging and demanding. It’s like drinking salt water, which cannot alleviate our thirst, but just makes us even more thirsty.
************

Dissatisfaction and thirst, all day long. Something gives you a little temporary burst of pleasure. The light hits right - look at that cloud! It's so bright against the cloud behind it! Oh, this is the light I like! Birthday light! Overcast with a glow! (See, this, this is all I ask, world. Things like this knit together tightly end-to-end from waking to dark. Good news and good lighting all day long.) Oh, why do I have to drive around the corner? I won't be able to see that cloud anymore. Oh, this street. This street is no good. These houses are like nothing. Tan bricks. Please stop making that noise, you're giving me a headache. I wish, I wish. Ouch. This hurts. All of it. No good. It's no good.

I'm tired of the sudden stomach-drop, dukkha gut-punch, ensuing tanha scrambling. It's downright undignified, the scrambling. Christ, I find myself on my knees looking for scraps all day long. Scraps. On the internet. In a book. On television. From you, and from you, and from you. Save me, give me a little hit of pleasure.

Yes, Facebook, save me from the suffering of being alive.

(This is not, I hope I don't need to say but I suspect I might, a dismissal of my myriad blessings, which are myriad. I know. I know! But you know and I know that good fortune never immunized anyone from despair. And I think this will probably need to be said as well: I'm happy, too, as happy as anyone alive. Truly. Worriers in the house can rest. Regular existential despair doesn't cancel out regular everyday happiness. I just don't want you to imagine that I'm some asshole who doesn't care for the beauty that surrounds her. Believe me, I am aware, I count all the blessings, and I am grateful. It all, unfortunately, doesn't cancel out Truth No. 1. That's all I'm saying.)

Fuck this endless search for scraps. If I'm going to go on an endless search, which apparently I am, I want to search for something fine. Holy Grail. The cessation of suffering, that ought to about do.

I sat down to write exclusively about dukkha, which means I sat down to bitch. But I'm not leaving us there.

I had a sleeping Fred in my arms tonight, so warm against me, and I suddenly understood that though Fred is a baby, he's not a baby. He's a man that's not a man yet. He's a person. He is complete. He is conscious. He is intelligent. He is himself. So I had this mysterious man-not-a-man up against me, sending his warmth right into my torso, into my face burrowing into him. Nothing between us. No issues. Pure contact, pure togetherness. Not a scrap. Something deep, something real, something uncorrupt.

Thank you.

i want my balloon back

2010-01-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

The voice is getting louder. I want my old lover back. Acting, I'm talking to you.

A while ago, I wrote this post (which explains, eventually, the title of this one) about how I felt I was ready to let acting go and embrace writing in its place. Dumb me, I always think I can kill and then bury these deep desires. You can starve the little unnecessary ones, no problem. They wither and float away and you never remember they were ever there. But I always do this; I take my pride and pain and fear and cut them up and mix them around and refashion them into some practical-looking garment that I can parade around in and look wise. What? Oh, no. That? No. No, I don't need that. No, I outgrew that. Yes, check me out, I'm traveling light.

Allow me to quote myself:

You know what it is? What acting gave me I think I might not need so much any more. As I get older, I find I don’t so much need an outlet for the parts of myself I repress in my daily life, because I think…I THINK…that I’m not repressing myself so much. I don’t sacrifice truthfulness on the altar of my persona in the way I may have done back in the day.

Ha!! You think? Oh, I'm on to me. Hilarious. I cracked that one, did I? I'm all me, all the time, letting it fly? The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Congratulations. You're a total anomaly. And you figured it out so young. Nice try, hoser.

So I thought I had snuffed it out, my desire to act. And then last fall, an ember was found lying in wait. And then this morning I had an epiphany, courtesy of my meditation practice. I follow this path called The Way of Seeing (so linky today, Link Wray), which, among other things, entails 25 minutes of counting meditation in the morning immediately followed by ten minutes of laying back quietly and just being present with yourself without getting caught up in your thoughts. I've been having a tricky time with the laying back. Thoughtsthoughtsthoughts. And then this morning, it occurred to me that I could try a little trick and approach these ten minutes as though I were bade to go onstage and sit on a chair, quietly, and just be present/open. Oh, that! That's what this is! Now I get it, I can do that. I can go onstage and do nothing. I love going onstage and doing nothing, in fact. This is that, minus the audience. Excellent. And I could feel then how clearly it's a part of me, how deep it is, what an orientation it is, being an actor.

Let's be clear. This isn't, of course, meant to be the reverse post to the first one. I thought I was a writer but I'm really an actor! Der, duh. No. But I miss the visceral sizzle, the carnality of it. You can't just be a head floating over a heart wrapped in a soul as an actor. Your whole instrument has got to be involved, on fire. I think I feel a little dead without it. My body wants to be recruited. And you also can't be an actor without being aware of your own desires, your real ones, your deepest ones. You need them. You need their fuel. Same with your fears, you have to identify them and be willing to hole up with them. No fudging. How ass-kickingly marvelous. Who would want to do less? Jesus, then you're really living. Then you're not just biding time.

The good thing is that I'm clear now that this isn't something I'd be trying to wrangle into a career. So all my "audition this" and "unfair that" excuses can suck it. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here to live, damn it, that's all. Life force, I want to feel it. Nerves tingling. Dangling off a ledge.

Yes, that's what else I love about it. It's like a dare. I dare you to go out there in front of all those people and ________________. Oh, yeah? Watch me.

I've been away from it long enough, though, that I'm coming back humble. Oh, yes, I am. I have been re-blessed with beginner's mind. Holy shit, how do you do it? Screw it. Let's find out. Let's find out all over again.

I hear that Marya Kaminski is chewing the living heart out of Electra with Seattle Shakespeare Company. I'm going to go and watch her and be inspired.

attention, please

2010-01-11T06:59:00.001-08:00

Quickly, I'm swinging on ropes across a great ravine, and your attention is the next rope.

Ah, thank you. Life-giving sunlight, your attention, strikes right in the solar plexus, spreads pleasure, propels me another slow, sure, enjoyable twenty feet.

Look, look at me! Hurry up. Thank you.

[I perform a small dance in the air, gyrations. Payment for your trouble.]

Your attention has disappeared. That's fine. I have its ghost. Your foot has come off the gas pedal but the fuel hasn't entirely stopped flowing. I'm still moving forward.

Slowing.

[(There's a trick involved, here, bystanders. You have to pick the right moment to launch your bid for attention. Do it too soon and you're wasting perfectly good fuel. This is assuming some ecological model in which fuel is exhaustible and can be wasted, but you should assume that. If you don't, and you're wrong, you may not make it all the way across to your death. You may run out of fuel and die before your death.

The cartoon character has just raced off a cliff into mid-air, come to a stop and realized its dilemma. We are in the micro-vicinity of the moment to strike. You have between now and your blinking take to the watching audience (the other watching audience, the one that doesn't matter) to launch your bid. If you wait until "reality"/"gravity" kicks in and your limbs just barely begin to flail, your performance will have a whiff of desperation about it. This isn't immediately fatal, it's just foolish. You have a long way to travel across to your death. If you are to hold the desired audience's attention, your performances must inspire trust. Your performances should be assured, seemingly careless, professional without showing it. Your technique must be firmly in place. Then you can allow real life to come into your performances! And you should, you must. You have a long way to travel across to your death. These performances should be worthwhile, should nourish your audience with something real. Your audience is also in mid-air, is quietly struggling, has a long way to travel across to their death. If you are always yelping for attention and then holding up an empty box, your audience will begin to ignore your pleas, however tuneful your yelp, however shapely your box. The trick is to inspire loyalty, lifelong loyalty, create a valuable symbiosis. You and your audience should have a real exchange at each of these desperate crossroads.)]

[(However, you both have a long way to travel across to your deaths so you should occasionally also just have fun. For every four times your bid for life-giving attention involves the removal of your skin and bones and the revealing of your pulsating internal organs, there should be at least one bid that's just flashing some skin or telling a joke or popping and locking for a second. Feel free to adjust that ratio, if you're confident. Play it by ear, if you have a good ear. Don't fuck with it, otherwise - lives are on the line. When in doubt, 4:1.)]

And....

NOW.

if the world is a stain, let me love what spilled

2009-12-31T01:14:00.000-08:00

I want you to start right this second and come slowly into focus. Be relentless. Be slow, infinitesimally slow, and infinitely persistent. Be slippery. If I’m afraid, slip around it, slip under it. Start with a warmth. Slowly let it spread. Make it like that day at Balmoral Beach when the sand was white and glittering and the air was warm and cool and the bay was still underneath its small busyness. Everything bad had drained away and I was on Earth but I wouldn’t have believed it. The inside was unrecognizable. The green and yellow ferryboats were gliding silently by and my ring was shining. We were on our knees in the sand. You propose to me like that. Then start lifting the veil, and like I said, do it slowly. Make everything get clearer and brighter. Let it all be visible. Where it's beautiful, I should know the extent. Where it's awful, I should know the extent of the damage. It should be slow, but don’t let it stop. Don’t make me wonder if you’ve left. If I have to see something that I’m afraid to see, let me know you’re with me. Do it by a warmth. Do it by a hand on my shoulder. Never make me wonder if you’ve left. I will begin as a newborn kitten, I'll blackmail you like that for gentle treatment. These training wheels should soon become funny. When you can tell by my heart rate that I’m properly strong, then you can splash it out. Throw out something dazzling, like a vast cape of fireworks-flowers-something I can't imagine. Something with teeth, something that burns. Cause awe. Sustain it until it crumples everything weak in me, until only a worthy companion is left. When I’m really strong, make your move. Surprise me. Kill me if you have to. Bounce me up and out of it and then you can decide if you’ll keep me or throw me back. If you keep me, I shouldn’t mind. If you throw me back, keep my illusions. Let me know what it’s like to move down here without sticking to it. Give me the thing that unlocks the suffering, the light that shines behind it and reveals a different shadow play. This is a prop, and that is a prop, and these were the actors. Credits.

emergency techniques

2009-12-21T12:51:00.001-08:00

1. Emerge.
2. Check for bleeding. Are you bleeding? You're not. Good. The accident was a metaphor.
3. If you are bleeding, please stop reading this list.
4. Imagine that the accident only just happened a second ago. Assume you're in shock. Assume the accident was grave. Your responsibilities diminish immediately. Let others determine fault. All you need to do is accept the blanket and the cup of coffee and let yourself be squired to a nice hotel.
5. Watch movies on hotel cable.
6. Pretend you have amnesia and that this ignominious business is nothing to do with you. Nothing whatsoever. You're a Habsburg, for the love of all that is holy. You're descended from Confucius. This is all too ridiculous and will all be straightened out presently.
7. Just get here. "What happened? I just got here!" "There's too much to explain. Just wash this." "Okay." Do this constantly.
8. Many of the techniques have to do with denial. Note: these are emergency techniques.
9. I'm just a nice little hedgehog who lives in a tree with her seven children! Has there been some hullabaloo? Hm. Well. It all sounds awfully difficult. Off to bed, everyone! But not until you finish eating all your jam. My, my.
10. A classic technique is to be French. "It is complicated."
11. Hatch a plan, very impossible, with a rapidly approaching deadline. I have to be elected President by when? Jesus. I better get to work.
12. While campaigning, don't be alarmed if others are alarmed by the sight of all the imaginary blood on your shirt. Fold this into your campaign in a positive way. There's no time to change shirts! Only to roll up sleeves and solve problems!
13. When you're elected, this will be an accident of a different color, and completely consuming. You will have advisors to help you develop new techniques for your new problems. And finally, you will be able to launch an investigation into everything that happened previously. Don't do it, though.

letter to a good friend

2009-10-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

What if you were one, and what if I wrote you a letter? Not an important letter. Just the letter of the kind that good friends used to write each other when they lived far away. And long ago, too, before emails. I just want to write you a rambling letter.

This is what I'm thinking about.

(I'd ask you first about all of your things, but there are too many of you and I don't know all of you. I trust that Aunt Karen is on the mend, and that your quilt is coming along, and that the charges were ultimately dropped. Tell me if I'm wrong.)

I'm thinking about October, ten years ago.

Wait, first let me tell you that I've been thinking about acting, and how I've missed it. I read an article in Vanity Fair about Penelope Cruz, and how immediately after she stopped filming her last scene in "Nine" (a musical number sliding down a rope, which blistered her hands), immediately upon reaching the bottom of the rope, she slipped behind something to cry because she was done with this role. I'd been doing fine without acting - really well, thank you - until I read that.

Ten years ago this October, one of my favorite acting teachers was in town from Vladivostok. (Hang on - oh, my goodness. Giant cascade of yellow leaves shooting by outside my window. All right. It's stopped. I can go on.) Leonid Anissimov. He was teaching a class at a loft in Belltown; we were working on The Cherry Orchard. We never rehearsed with artificial lights, only ever with lots of candlelight. Class felt like church, in the best way. I remember sitting there next to the little makeshift stage, with its hanging windowpanes, and being filled with eagerness. Everything about me was on the edge of my seat, ready to lift off. It's an exquisite feeling being in a room with someone who knows all sorts of things that you want to know, someone that you believe in, someone who's like this giant, oh, let's call it a samovar full of tea, and you're a cup, totally empty and all you want is to be filled over and over with this tea.

I remember a moment when we were talking the script, and suddenly I was filled with this understanding about Ranevskaya. No, it wasn't understanding. It was a feeling, like I was Ranevskaya, and I was overwhelmed with her shame. Tears, everything. My hand shot up and I could barely talk fast enough to explain what I knew. Laura, Leonid's translator (I loved Laura. She was so warm and calm and beautiful, and she called me "Tinochka" which made me feel scooped up, part of a family) murmured what I was saying to Leonid. He looked serious, and nodded, and then was suddenly full of energy and looked right at me. "Da! Da! Yes." He said something in Russian and Laura translated, "Now we are rehearsing."

When I used to perform, what I would do in the few minutes while I was hovering backstage waiting to make my entrance was this: I would touch everything, all the objects around, to take their temperatures. I was especially glad whenever I found anything cold, because it would wake me up. I was really looking for cold things to touch, that was the real mission. Another thing I liked to do, while I was warming up, was to go out into the house and touch every seat. I thought it would open something up between myself and the person who would eventually occupy it. I remember reading that Michael Chekhov wouldn't perform, wouldn't go on stage until he loved everyone in the audience. My word. I wouldn't have even one performance under my belt. I'd still be waiting to go on in The King and Queen Can't Speak, back at Ridge Street School, back in 1975.

Leonid used to take a nice long time talking about different things before the real work of class began, in order to get us ready. The idea was that you shouldn't get up and work until you're in the water. That's how he described it. When you were ready to work, some transformation would have occurred. You can't swim until you're in the water. I thought I understood the concept pretty well. And then once, during a performance of The Seagull many months later, I found myself in the water! I was on stage, but I was in the water. I didn't have to do a thing; I was in the water. Buoyance was palpable, and ease, effortlessness. No decisions to make, just letting the water bob me where I had to be. I arrived everywhere perfectly, lightly, fully. This is not a tribute to my great skill. This was more like receiving a blessing. I was weightless. I couldn't miss.

I thought that maybe I would never need to do it again, but I miss it. With Finn and Fred so young, it's difficult to imagine rehearsing and performing an actual play. It's too much time away, now. Maybe I will take a class, just so I can feel those muscles working.

Here come those leaves again.

What else, what else, is that it? Is that all I have to say to you?

One more thing. I discovered something. I'm always discovering ways to outwit my worries. This is what I discovered today. It's just another way to say the same thing that everyone always says, so don't get too excited. But so, here: I'm hiding from my brain, right here in my life! It will never find me here. I'm hiding in the curtains, in the sink, in the counter, in Fred, in soap. It can't get me when I'm out here. And what's out there can't get me when I'm in here. I feel like I've been whisked to the Canadian Rockies, to a safe retreat, right in front of me. And then I don't have to work so hard to fight my worries, and I don't have to browbeat myself about them. I'm on vacation, on retreat, hiding away and I brought everything with me, and nothing that I don't need.

That might not make sense, but if you're my friend you'll just let it go.

Write me.

what you are unaware of is this

2009-10-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

The sky is a low ceiling with your death directly on the other side of it. Anyone not present is a fairy tale until you see them with your own eyes. When someone leaves the room, they may as well be stepping off the edge of a skyscraper. The play you are watching is the only play ever to have been performed. These are the first actors in the world. You are a wine glass made of air and you could shatter at any minute. Everything apparently solid is a fakeout, a dream, a mass of congealed sound waves. Every word floats between invisible quotation marks, pointing to a terrible underlying purity of experience. Could anything be more frightening? If your solar plexus doesn't recoil at the thought of such purity, you are thinking of something else. Where you are going, language isn't following. Language clings to everything with the desperation of that knowledge. You will be hit by a bus, just as everyone said could happen. Everyone will be hit by a bus. You're going. You're going. While your blood is leaving you all your possibilities will rush away from you, the one more kiss, embrace, look, not one, your rightful thousand, your rightful million. Your favorite books are leaving you. The kind of light you like that comes in from the side: the light in the morning, the light in the late afternoon, the light from a lamp. Goodbye to gentle sideways light. Blood red, cobalt and canary line up to administer their last kiss but you have no time to receive these kisses and your lingering hunger for color could drive you into an unfortunate rebirth. Emerald stands waving forlornly at the gate but you have already gone and will never know how it loved you. You are going towards an overhead light that comes up from the middle and travels everywhere and has no gradation, the quality of which is unfamiliar. It is a terrible light and you are required to love it. It is reputed to be wonderful but it is peeling away everything you know, even your old stuffed horse, even your mother, especially your lover and so you hate it. You will be thrown towards this light again and again until you receive its message. There has been talk of love but you are conscious only of brutality. The part that is conscious of brutality is being killed by the light. Something will remain and you will receive more instructions at that point. Some of this is true. Some of this is not true. Something, ultimately, is the truth. You must practice disappearing to know which part is true and to receive vital further instructions. If you rely on instinct, your instinct will fail you. Everyone here is wearing fifty layers of clothing over a fat suit, making it so that no one can perceive anything correctly. No one wants to. This is why everyone says, "You never know." But the clothing is coming off and the suit is coming off and your bones are coming off and you do know.

when ganesha met sally

2009-09-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

I love Hinduism. It's in my top two world religions. Among other reasons, it’s the only religion that’s ever marched right up into my face and said hello. (Your move, Buddhism.)

Once I heard it speak, or someone I can only imagine was connected with it, somehow. I was sitting on my bed one evening reading Autobiography of a Yogi, and I was reading some bit about The Divine Mother, and all of a sudden I heard....well, it wasn’t inside my head, but it also wasn’t outside my head. It sounded as though it were coming down through a tube about fifteen feet over my head, but the tube was, in fact, in my head. Whatever. It was a beautiful female voice, and the voice said, mysteriously and simply, and as clear as a bell, “I live forever.” And this wasn’t my voice, my thinking voice. This was a completely separate voice from my own, sugar-sweet. And that’s all it said. “I live forever.” I’ve never heard a voice before that and I’ve never heard one since.

But that took place a couple of months after the story I’m going to tell you now, which is when Hinduism introduced itself to me.

So Hinduism has a doorman, and his name is Ganesha. Surely you’ve seen him. He’s an elephant-headed god with a bulky man’s body. Hinduism has a long list of marvelous gods and goddesses. But Hindu protocol says you’re not heading to those VIP tables until you have a conversation with and pay your respects to Ganesha.

This is the story of how my big, floppy-eared Godfather-in-the-Sky and I met.

In a time I like to call The Sensitive Summer of 1999, I was a raw nerve. There's no time here to tell you why and there's no need. But maybe I’d taken some Ecstasy a couple of months earlier. And maybe things went a little haywire after that. It’s not important. Just know that I was like an antenna made out of a mimosa plant, hyper-alert and wobbly.

One day towards the beginning of this summer, I went on the spur of the moment to a yoga class. I was not a yoga go-er, but I needed the medicine that day, so I prescribed myself a Level One class. I'd say Level One was approximately one level too difficult for me. I was struggling, gasping, tipping over. Maxed out.

Eventually, it came time for the meditation. The nice part. Relief! We were guided through. We sat with straight spines. We were told to breathe through our noses. And that’s what I did, breathing in and out.

And then things started getting peculiar. On every exhalation, it felt like my nose was lengthening and dropping, like a trunk! Not my nose itself, but...let’s call it my spirit nose. (I know.) Anyway, yes. Every exhalation, longer and longer, this thing, this essence, this wispy elemental protuberance from the middle of my face. Back in 1999, we didn't have these expressions like OMG or WTF, but if we would have....

OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK

All right. Never mind. Continue. I have a trunk now. Whatever. That's cool. Yoga is wa-a-ack but there you go. Mine is not to wonder why. Now we're told to envision ourselves looking in a mirror. Very good. Hello, mirror. There I am. Nothing special going on there. And now we're told to envision ourselves looking in not a regular mirror, but an internal mirror. We are looking inward to ourselves, in an internal mirror. I wonder what I look like in an internal mirror, how that’s different from an internal external mirror. Let’s see.

I look like a charred elephant head. My head is an elephant head, blackened to a crisp.

Let me just shut and rub my internal eyes really hard and try that again. I look like a what?

Charred elephant head.

Okay, Eight Limbs, thank you for the incredibly difficult and super-freaky class! I will be on my way now.

Later that night, at my boyfriend's apartment, I had something close to a panic attack as I was trying to fall asleep. I was agitated, and everything felt ominous and rubbery, but I sweated through the sensation and eventually sleep took over.

And then I’m woken up. Speaking of sensations, I’m woken up. I feel for all the world like I am being pierced all over, like I'm being sewn. Not my body, more like the air around my body, but it's me. I can feel it. We can call it my aura if we want. I don't know. It was my airspace, palpable. Prick, prick, prick. I don't open my eyes because I don't want to see what might be doing this. I am supremely uninterested, if by uninterested I mean scared shitless. This pricking, sewing sensation just goes on and on and doesn't stop.

Then, behind my closed eyes, I see this clear pattern form. It's a pattern of green and white floral geometric arrows. Like a futuristic sort of feminine wallpaper. Arrows, with their stems wrapped in these soft flowering lines. Green background, white lines delineating these arrow and flower shapes.

Aha. Okay. And all the while, the piercing continues.

Now the next stop on the Lunatic Express is this sensation: do you know how normally you feel that your consciousness is in your head? Behind your eyes, say? That's command central, right? Go ahead, take a second and place yourself. You sort of think that you are in your head, yes? Well, my me dropped. My consciousness, my self, my command central dropped a foot or so down the hollow tree trunk of myself, right into the neighborhood of my heart. If I opened my eyes, I would have fully expected to be looking right out of the middle of my torso. I was there. I could even hear my heart beating right next to me, freshly loud. Right on top of me.

And all the while, the piercing.

I was terrified. I thought maybe these were aliens. Truly. Like extra-terrestrials were performing some kind of surgery on me, or some kind of examination. It just didn’t stop and I was petrified.

And then suddenly I remembered yoga class, and the elephant head. It crept into my consciousness that the Hindus...don't they have an elephant-headed God? Right, Ganesha. Right. I'm going to think about Ganesha. Maybe that will help. Maybe he'll help me. And the minute, the minute I do that, the fear disappears and the most delicious feeling in the world comes over me. I feel like I’m suddenly in a warm shower – not of water, just of warmth, flowing down over my head as I lie there, and I feel so sweet and peaceful, even though the piercing has never stopped. And then! Then! Instead of the trunk I had in yoga class, I suddenly feel like I have giant, floppy elephant ears! Waving back and forth next to my head! This is surprising and super-amusing and very comforting, and I find myself getting drowsy again and I drift back to sleep, while all of it - the piercing, the sense of relocation, the floral arrows, the warm shower, the flapping ear feeling - all of it continues.

You can imagine that the next morning I am awfully very goddamn curious about Ganesha. So I go to a little spiritual bookshop and seek out a book. There must be something. Hindu shelf, Ganesha, Ganesha. I'm expecting that I might find a slim little tome. OH. What have we here? Who's THIS fatty? I’ve found an 800-page number called Loving Ganesha: Hinduism’s Endearing Elephant-Faced God, by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. An illustrated resource on Dharma’s Benevolent Deity, Remover of Obstacles, Patron of Art and Science, honored as first among the Celestials. This will do!

I go home and start devouring this giant, weird, delightful book, which is like the most fun bible of Ganesha you can imagine, with all kinds of stories and lore and drawings and poems and imagined letters from Ganesha. I read about the Milk Miracle, which happened on September 21st, 1995, wherein statues of Ganesha all over the world accepted and drank milk for 24 hours. This is a real thing. They reported it in the New York Times. Devotees would hold up spoonfuls of milk to these statues, and the milk would disappear. It happened in India, in Canada, in Nepal, in Kenya. It happened in L.A. It happened in Queens. The crowds went wild. Milk disappeared by the gallon, through straws, out of trays. Sometimes the Ganeshas would refuse the milk from devout believers and gobble the milk offered by nonbelievers. Anyway. Well into the book is a big section that has a list with drawings of all the symbols associated with Ganesha. Heaps of them.

Now, it took me a while to get to this part. It took me a few days. And then I saw this.

Pushpashara, Flower Arrow: Loving Ganesha shoots flower-covered arrows from His sugar cane bow in guidance to devotees, so they will not wander too far from dharma's path of true fulfillment.

What do I make of all of this? I don’t know, and I think it’s foolish to try and make anything. There’s nothing flimsier in this world than a conclusion. But somebody else said it well, and I’ll finish by handing him the mic, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And to that I say “Word, Bard.”

now i can call him fred: the birth story

2009-07-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

Sixteen, going on seventeen days old. Fred Harrison David Rowley. Here he is on Day One:

Stats at birth:

Entrance into world on Monday, 6/22/09, 3:48 p.m.
20 inches long.
8 lbs 4 ounces...wide.
Apgar* scores of 8 and 9

*Score measuring general robustness of baby, administered once and then again in disbelief. Is he really that awesomely robust?? Yes, and then some.

Story time.

I awake Sunday night/Monday morning at around 3:30 from my tiny, two-hour sleep. Braxton Hicks contractions* are afoot, as they have been for a good while towards the end of this pregnancy, but these ones have a spark about them, a feeling of show time. I get up and noodle around on the internet. I get a message from an old friend I hadn't been in contact with for fifteen years, and I'm so delighted by this that the Braxton Hicks contractions change out of their rehearsal clothes and put on their real costumes and also cross off the "Braxton Hicks" from their dressing room doors. I call the doctor around 4:30 and describe what's going on, and she says we ought to head on over to the hospital.

*These are contractions that happen throughout a good portion of a pregnancy, sort of like practice contractions. On the American Idol finale during the year Finn was born, Taylor Hicks and Toni Braxton performed a duet. I couldn't believe it and I'm still mad that they didn't form a band called "The Braxton Hicks Contraction".

Team Fred's Birth consists of myself, Dave, my dear friend Elizabeth and whoever happens to be on call at Swedish that day. (Hey, wait. Last you knew about it, you blog readers, I was going to have a c-section. Well, some things happened and I changed my mind and a nice lady took out my cerclage stitch and the c-section was cancelled.) I was hoping beyond hope that the aforementioned nice lady would be on call that day, and she WAS. Dr. Susan Harvey. Cool Hand Luke! The first good news of so many good newses of the day.

Elizabeth comes to get us, we go to triage, iv/blood draw, blah blah, and then we are shipped off to our room, where we meet our second good news of the day: our nurse, Ms. Tracy Sharp. Oh, Tracy. Oh, sister. She's bossy and pushy and all business but in the best way, a kind way. She ascertains that we're trying for a vaginal birth, now, as opposed to the repeat c-section. Nurse Tracy lets us know that if a baby CAN be born outta there, SHE can MAKE IT be born outta there. If SHE can NOT make it be born outta there, IT can NOT be born outta there. Nurse Tracy apparently makes it a point of pride with herself that this baby will leave through the traditional exit, but she tells me that I will have to be putty in her hands all day long. She gets to flip me around and move me here and there and I have to do whatever she says. As I do not have the conviction that I can make a baby do anything in particular at all in regards to its being born, I gladly throw myself at her mercy. All day long, I am all "HOW HIGH?!" before she can even get the "Jump" out.

One of my annoying personal qualities is a sort of Zelig* phenomenon wherein I inadvertently mirror the energy of any person I am in contact with for more than five minutes. (I eventually had to stop seeing this one particular hairstylist because she was this loud, obnoxious, Texan party girl and I couldn't stand myself whenever I had an appointment with her. I was all, HA HA, OH MY GOD, I KNOW! Old ladies who live in the apartment beneath you and are just trying to sleep while you have loud parties are total bitches who deserve to have cruel practical jokes played on them for months on end! TOTALLY! Also, I think I will not schedule my next haircut just now, thanks. I will slink away with my cute hair and never return.) Also, I can be a bit of an ass-kisser. These are not positive traits but it appears that I was born with them just for this very day! Just like Owen Meany and his crazy voice, my Zeliggy ass-kissing would bloom into great purposefulness on one pivotal day, this day of Fred's birth. I would have Nurse Tracy on my side. I would zigzag back and forth between ass-kissing and mirroring all day long. Doulas? I agree! They're totally stupid! I know! We hired one, but we fired her because we suddenly realized that they're totally stupid and against everything good! You feel that way, too? I feel that way, too! We want to bring our placenta home, though. I mean, no, we don't! Of COURSE you can move my leg that way. Also, you're really pretty. And a saint!

*Great Woody Allen movie. His character, Zelig, morphs *but exactly* into whomever he's with. If he's talking to a psychiatrist, he becomes a psychiatrist. If he's talking to an old Chinese man, he physically turns into an old Chinese man. If you haven't seen this movie, rent it now and then come back and read the rest of this post later.

Dr. Harvey broke my water around 8 in the morning, and then we didn't see her until later in the day. (I have changed tense. I might do it again. It's late.) For a while, Dave and I walked the halls of the childbirth wing with our iv tree and me very large in my hospital gown and little hospital socks, waiting for labor to intensify, feeling like a a couple about to give birth in a Hollywood movie. Oh, honey. A baby! Stroll, stroll. Pause. Ouch. Resume stroll. Oh, honey. A baby! Stroll, stroll. Switch direction.

Nurse Tracy said that I was progressing really well, and that I could have an epidural any time I wanted, but the longer I could hold out, the better the chances to avoid a c-section. I couldn't believe that I had arrived at the point where I could have an epidural already! Glorious! So do-able, so far! We strolled some more, and then the contractions got more powerful, and Tracy steered me to a rocking chair, which...good. Very good. Elizabeth had gone to seek coffee and breakfast, and when she returned I was heading into the most serious contractions I would have to feel all day.

I put myself down a little, earlier in the post, talking about my Zeligness and asskissomania. Here's where I give myself a dose of the opposite. I am incredibly, incredibly good in difficult, hospitally situations. I do say so myself. Elizabeth said I was like a Jedi during contractions...and I WAS. I WAS like a Jedi. The pain would kick in and I would get very quiet and peaceful and root myself to some solid place within. All stillness, all acceptance. Very strong-feeling. Eventually, the pain was enough that I didn't want any more like it, and I gave the word for the epidural. The anesthesiologist arrived in her hat with cupcakes all over it, and administered the epidural. Did I flinch? I did not. Did I stay perfectly still, even during contractions? You know that I did. When a person came into the room to ask me a question, did I hold a calm finger up during her question and say, "Just a moment. I'm going to have a contraction right now, " and assume my silent, meditative contraction pose, and then did I peacefully open my eyes and address her question? Friend, I did. Nurse Tracy talked me up to the nurse who filled in for her during lunch. "She is awesome," said difficult-to-impress Tracy to lunchtime Deirdre, "She NEVER COMPLAINS." She bade Deirdre treat me right, and Deirdre did.

After the epidural, I had to lie in a funny position for a good while in order that Fred might change positions. He was facing the wrong way, sunny-side-up, and Tracy knew the trick to convince him to move. I lay on my side with the uppermost leg curled up toward my chest, shaking and shaking from the epidural, and Fred worked away for a couple of hours to reorient himself. (Small hero. Helpful wonderbubble.) I had a fever. There was a cool washcloth. I knew when contractions were happening, but they didn't bother me. I slept a little. Everything progressed beautifully. Fred turned and descended, I dilated and thinned, all at a steady clip. At 2:00 pm, Fred and I arrived at our places. I was at 10 centimeters, he was down at the entrance to the exit. We were ready to push.

Clever Tracy. Before we began pushing, she turned off my epidural without telling me. She wanted me to be able to feel what was going on in order to be able to push effectively, but she also wanted me to stay relaxed and avoid internal freakouts about pain levels. So she just quietly turned things off. I love you, Tracy.

Dave was stationed at my left knee, Elizabeth at my right. The pushing began.

All right. So. Pushing. A baby. Out. Is not my idea. Of. A good time. First of all, it feels totally futile. No, first of all, what it feels like is doing situps wherein you're also not allowed to breathe and you're also making some kind of heroic physical effort at something you don't quite comprehend. You're directed to push down with this part here but also push the baby up towards the light, and whatever you're doing is great, really great, but you should also do it, like, five times harder, whatever the fuck it is you're doing, which you're not quite sure but it's really fucking hard already. Second of all, it feels futile. It doesn't feel like anyone is getting anywhere! And your loved ones (which now include your nurse) are telling you, "You're doing so great! He's moving!" And you're thinking, "Why are they saying that? Why are they lying to me?" And then they're like, "Ok, push! Push!" And you're thinking, "No shit?! I should push? Like I was going to do something else during this contraction? 'Hey, you guys, with this one I'm just going to do a great visualization! And with the next one, will you hand me that magazine?' Of course I'm going to fucking push, whatever that means, for whatever that's worth, which is NOTHING, not that you're ever going to level with me about that!" And then they're like, "Push harder! Harder, now!" And you're like, "THAT IS EASY FOR YOU TO SAY, MOTHERFUCKER. ALSO, HOW ARE YOU GAUGING HOW HARD I AM PUSHING?? DO I NOT APPEAR TO BE OPERATING AT MAXIMUM??!" And then Tracy says "Go!" which means "Take a deep breath and hold it and begin pushing" so you take a breath and then someone else says "Breathe!" and you breathe again but realize you already did that and you're supposed to be holding your breath and so you do this stutter breath and you have to figure out how to kick off into this round of pushing on this weird stutter breath, and you plan to speak up when your next little rest period comes up between contractions. Between contractions, all you want to do is breathe deeply and go limp. You have to give some notes, though, to your birth team, because you're all figuring out how to do this. You say, "Don't say 'breathe' after Tracey says 'go' because then I do a double breath," and your team is incredibly sweet and understanding and receives this note like a champ. Next rest period, you say, "Don't say 'push' so much." Next rest period, you say, "When you tell me not to arch my back but then tell me to push Fred UP, I get confused," and they say, "Cool, great, we don't do that any more." During the next rest period, they say, "His head is showing, do you want to feel it?" And you do, halfheartedly, and there it is, but whatever, you just want to breathe cool air and lie there like a dead fish. And during another rest period, they say, "Do you want me to get a mirror so you can see?" and the question seems so irrelevant and far-fetched, like, "Hey, there's this really neat documentary about spiders on right now, do you want to watch it?" No, I don't want to watch a documentary right now. I'm trying to have a baby. I don't even want to watch a documentary specifically about me, Tina Rowley, having a baby named Fred. I just want to have that baby. I have no time for these sideshows.

At one excellent, beautiful point, however, Tracy announces, "He's going to fit." He's going to fit. This is not going to be a c-section. This is the moment when we know it. I am going to have this baby the way nature intended. Lift, rush, lightness, amazement, joy. The c-section with Finn was terribly difficult, our meeting was delayed by a few hours and dimmed by medicated sleepiness, the recovery was slow and painful, and as a result my bonding with Finn was adversely affected for a while, and a fierce depression ensued. I felt useless, wanted to fall off the face of the earth. So, that, THAT, was not going to happen this time. Whatever did happen would not be that. It would be better, for sure, maybe good, maybe great. He's going to fit! (We later found out at that his head is in the 25th percentile, circumference-wise. My beloved small-head. My considerate bunny rabbit.)

At the most excellent point of all, Fred rounded the toughest corner of the exit and made his way to the light. His small, thoughtful head worked its way out. They call that bit "the ring of fire". Fire, no. Ring of OW, FUCKERS, yes. Fire is an exaggeration, though. But his head came out. Then Dr. Harvey was there and she pulled his body out. And then he was up where I could see him, in the light. A baby. Mine. Fred. Visible. Lit from within, sure, but definitely lit from without. Jaw drops. Tears of joy. 3:48 p.m. And then he was wiped off and wrapped in a blanket and then he was on my chest, warm and squirming, with his soft face and soft limbs and soft head, warm like a bread roll. (Bun in the oven is the perfect description of the thing. Bun out of oven.) Heat, weight, movement, sound, happiness. Can't convey.

Other things happened, fine things, good things, but nothing else matters. Fred is born. Stop typing now. The story is told. Maybe a few more details later, maybe not. Shh. Fred is here.

untitled

2009-05-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

I have to stop calling him Fred. This is not because we're not going to name him Fred, or something like that. He, if he stays the he that we believe he is, will be named Fred sans fail. No, I have to stop calling him Fred because it's making a problem right now.

It's making me mechanical.

I found this out by not calling him Fred for once. I found this out a few minutes ago lying on my couch, drinking some cold water. Cold things and sweet things (and also hot things and...anything I ingest at all) make this child move around. Evening does it, too, makes him move. The operative word in this paragraph, though, is "child".

There's a human child in there. It's not as obvious as you might think. It's particularly easy to forget, weirdly, if you are the person carrying the child. This whole thing can just seem like a large, semi-permanent medical condition wherein your midsection expands and a little constellation of other symptoms gather around it, and this midsection does some occasional flips and things. And even though you know it's a baby, your baby, it just gets to be background noise. Also, it's just par for the course to fall metaphorically asleep and sleep through your life and organize yourself in such a way that you aren't rousable, aren't disturbable. Par for my course, at least. You may be a wide-awake, blinking, vividly present monk type who eats a wild strawberry and enjoys it with every cell while a tiger chases you over a cliff to your death and you feel that, too. My waking moments are few and far between, I'm afraid, as much as I love them.

But I at least had one this evening, and it happened when I was able to strip away or at least manage in time not to add unnecessary language to the moment when the child I'm carrying moved in response to the cold water. Bang. Awake. Me. I was.

I comprehended that there was a human child in there. Not "my" child, because that puts a whole story on to the situation, a story that I already know and makes me fall asleep. No, a child. A human child. Not mine. Just in me. A child, shifting around, trying for a better position or reacting involuntarily to the cold. I was more moved by "a" child than "my" child, because "a" child is all children, everywhere. Helpless. This was a flash of something primal. Throw a child upon the earth without its parents or someone to care for it and it will die. A child in nature. Small limbs, confusion, need.

This activated something in me so much more maternal than the phrase "my child" or even more instinct-killingly, the name "Fred" does. Naming the child is necessary, but it's also distancing. You start relating to some imaginary idea of who this child is. It's the difference between an empty picture frame and a picture frame with a random photograph of an attractive model that you haven't taken out yet. Calling this baby "Fred" before we know him feels like sticking the frame up with the photograph of the model in it and imagining that this model is our loved one.

I'm getting very large, and it's physically painful in ways that are new to me. A few blood cells have burst inside the skin on my stomach, leaving some tender red dots here and there. These red dots exist, and I struggle when I walk sometimes, because of a child who is curled up in my middle. A person. Another person. The other person I keep forgetting about. A person is dangling off of the front of me, encased in my skin.

I know that you know that. But it's news to me.

I'll tell you something nice that's come of this realization. I've been talking about this pregnancy a lot, naturally. I get self-conscious about that, and also self-conscious about simply being a pregnant woman - particularly a pregnant woman with another child, already. I'm thrown so centrally into my identity as a mother. Or worse, or more tritely, a mom. A mom! Hi, I'm a mom. Just a mom! Oh, you know us moms. Recommended by Dr. Mom. It's easy to feel that being pregnant and discussing it, or being a mother and discussing it, or just being either of those things at all is somehow inherently ridiculous or trite. I keep looking at myself through other people's imaginary eyes and getting bored or irritated with my very existence.

But my small moment of awakeness and accompanying burst of fierce maternal instinct to care for this human child within me cured me, at least for a bit. Mothers are ubiquitous, yes. "Moms." It's not unique. It's not "special". It is, however, extremely real and can cut all of the civilization out of you in a heartbeat. You are dropped right into the middle of the wilderness, an internal wilderness, and just like the child in utero reacting to the cold water, you respond to the child's presence involuntarily. You reach for it.

i totally painted this

2009-05-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

In MS Paint. Dear god, I am a genius.

Two items*:

1. Now that I am far bigger than a house, Dave & Finn & I are moving in with Fred in my womb. We need the space.
2. Have I ever, will I ever, is it possible for me to ever have a shower that is just a shower and not an imaginary point-counterpoint face-off with whatever phantom opponent I'm arguing with in my head at the moment I turn the water on? Maybe when I was nine and taking my first showers and my mind was consumed with bearing up under the water pressure, probably not, it would take an act of will greater than I will ever remember or care to give it.
3. Iceburg wedge salad with Russian dressing; strawberry and watermelon agua fresca, all limey and sugary.
4. Six and a half weeks to Fred's airlift into the world. Ach mein Gott. Shawshank Redemption!
5. This is how I like to imagine Finn and Fred in the future:

*I know. But I think it's funnier to say "two" and have five. But it's only funny if I know that you know that I know it. Otherwise it's just gently tragic.

Buona notte,
Tionardo

good intentions snap like yesterday's breadstick

2009-05-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

This is a poem of Dave's that was published in the journal "Juked" a while ago. I love it. Also, the title expresses my current feelings about participating in NaBloPoMo. Not quitting. Just saying. Intentions, good ones, they, you know, snap. Not that they are snapping. Just that they do. It's still today's breadstick. But it feels like it's getting late. Yes, I realize that we're only on Day 4. Don't they say something about the first four days being the hardest? Whatever.

To Dave's poem.

****************

Good Intentions Snap Like Yesterday's Breadstick

Eight sets of dinner plates form a stupa
rising from the sink. These seven legs
of ham were harvested from a couple of pigs.
Like art hung from fridge magnets: six ribbons of demerit.

Five quads eye each other with suspicion over dinner.

A four course banquet to commemorate the kitchen fire
goes wrong as the chef is reduced to cinders. Three
marbled steaks and a two fingered Heimlich will satiate
Nina's appetite. One pot of boiling water clarifies things
for the lobster.

*********

Here's the link to the poem as published.
Good Intentions Snap like Yesterday's Breadstick

Tomorrow I will say something.

not, in fact, done

2009-05-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

Inconceivable.

a thing that seems cruel and an uplifting thing

2009-05-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

Do you know this book? I read it many, many years ago and I wish I had a copy in my hand right now. Sei Shonagon was a member of the court of Empress Sadako back in the 10th century, and she wrote this beautiful mish-mash book of lists and observations. Here she is describing how it came about:

******************************
One day Lord Korechika, the Minister of the Centre, brought the Empress a bundle of notebooks. "What shall we do with them?" Her Majesty asked me. "The Emperor has already made arrangements for copying the Records of the Historian".

"Let me make them into a pillow," I said.

"Very well," said Her Majesty. "You may have them."

I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material....

I was sure that when people saw my book they would say, "It's even worse that I expected. Now one can tell what she is really like."

****************************

(Oh, ancient proto-blogger, I know how you feel.)

The book is full of the oddest, most charming lists. Pleasing things, ugly things...I found this one on the web.

***************************

Words That Look Commonplace but That Become Impressive When Written in Chinese Characters:

Strawberries
A dew-plant
A prickly water-lily
A walnut
A Doctor of Literature
A Provisional Senior Steward in the Office of the Emperor's Household
Red myrtle
Knotweed is a particularly striking example, since it is written with the characters for "tiger's stick." From the look on a tiger's face one would imagine that he could do without a stick.

***********************

What a long lead up to the tiny substance of my post. It's not going to be a list. Or it will be a list of consisting of one item, which might disqualify it. Here's my own pillow book entry for today.

**********************
A Thing That Seems Cruel:

The knowledge that a fond memory that you have of yourself and another person might be remembered indifferently or worse by the other person in the memory, making it difficult to treasure the memory uninhibitedly.

****************************
Yes, well. Boo. I'm not going to leave that there. I'm going to add a new item. A very potent emotional carbon offset.

****************************
An Uplifting Thing:

When you are positive that your very fondest, most sublime memory of yourself and another person is viewed in the same exact glowing light in the other person's memory, and you can look over and confirm this out loud because you have married the other person in the memory.

****************************
This doesn't address the first problem, but that's like complaining that there are pebbles sticking out in the Garden of Eden* that a person could trip over.

I'm declaring "Pillow Book" as my theme for May.

*A different Garden of Eden, where you can eat the apples.

strawberry fields forever

2009-05-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to May, the last month in which Fred Rowley will not see the light of day, the perfect month to attempt NaBloPoMo* and perform CPR on my writing practice, the month with the theme "sweetness". Well, look. The official NaBloPoMo theme is "sweet" but I didn't feel like saying the theme "sweet" because I didn't like the music of that, and also I would prefer a noun where the theme lives. The theme "rebellion"! And also the theme "nitpicker".

Strawberries are sweet. Strawberries are also dangerously high in caffeine, apparently. Ask Fred, who released this statement earlier, "What the FUCK, MOM? Holy shit, what - what- what's happening, I'm - MOM YOU ATE SOMETHING - Holy Christ, I'm jittery, I just need to move, I need to....OHHH MAN...shake it out! Shake it OFF. LEG it. Leg it AROUND. HAND. Fuckin'...twist it. Jesus. FLIP IT. Hey, fuckin'....eat another one. Eat another of it. I can work this. Unh. Knock knock. My name is Lyrics Born AKA Macka Dang Dang. Live from the 0-1-5 doing my Thang Thang. So much soul so much MACHISMO so much control oh so much CHARISMA and that's my trademark baby CALM AND CONFIDENT...."

The statement goes on from there. Thank you, Fred. Keep on keepin' on.

And then we go backwards to the very first sweet, the first notable sweet on record. 1975. (My record. I may be narcissistic but not to the point that I feel that the shit throughout history was savory until I was there to taste otherwise.) Washington D.C. Age six. Indian restaurant. Meal is eaten. Dessert is served! It looks like a big pretzel made of orange jelly. Odd, but it's dessert, so I just know that it will suffice. Bite. Static. Consternation. Sweet. Sweeeet. Sweetness. STATIC. Gather forces. THINK, Tina. Go to what you know. Sweetness is good. Right? RIGHT? Bite again! Oh, shit. My assumptions. Scrambling. These bites are sweet. I live for bites of sweet things. But these bites are...DON'T EVEN THINK IT. Bite again. Oh, damn. I'm too young for this. I'm too young for this Zen bullshit. I'm too young for this Siddhartha Middle Way jive. Fuck me. I can't fight the truth. My dessert is too sweet. I'll tell you what's not sweet, though. The salty tears of confusion, these ones on my CHEEK, that's right. That'll cut the sweetness. Thanks for bringing me here, Mom and Dad. This has been wonderful.

Fred, the strawberries are only the beginning. Wait until you meet your orange pretzel. Let me give you a head start. The whole place is like that. This whole scene. Yes, we have brought you here. I'm sorry. And you're welcome. And I mean that.

Look, I won't be writing about sweetness all month. Far from. So cloying. No no. I will theme it as a last resort. But I will be here all month. Tip your waitress.

Edited to add: Anonymous commenter, thank you, and also you have saved me! I hated the title of this post with a passion. You have re-titled it. You are going on payroll.

*National Blog Posting Month, which it is every month, but this month so am I.

self portrait and tiny commentary

2009-04-15T12:19:00.001-07:00

I just haven't wanted to write. I haven't been longing to write and unable to find the words. I just didn't want to. Still don't, really. I've heard enough out of me. I want to be nice and mute. All I am is pregnant, and all I've done is talk about it, and everything is fine and there is little left to say. ( Also, I've forgotten how to come on here and noodle around genially. All this THE BABY'S DEAD! NO IT'S NOT! YES IT IS! IT WILL BE! NO IT WON'T! business has temporarily squashed that knack.) So, the will to muteness is strong. Let's not call it muteness, even. Let's call it silence. Then there's no problem.

So I'm drawing and drawing. Since going on bed rest, and since being sprung therefrom, I've just curled up with some nice markers and made stacks of drawings*. That way I can say things without talking and I don't even have to know what I'm saying. I will maybe ask Dave to scan some for me and then you can see that I haven't been just dead for a month.

*This self-portrait is not a hand-drawn marker one. This, and all my self-portraits on the blog, are MS Paint. So's you don't imagine I'm that unhandy with a marker. I'd just go ahead and resort to Comic Sans for this whole enclave if that were the story. Hello, little lady! It's wonderful to try hard things.

Facts: Fred is doing excellently well. He's rearranging the furniture all the time. The furniture = all my organs. I am gaining strength. A date has been set for the repeat c-section I am going to have! June 12th is Fred's presumptive birthday. Banana bread is being baked and eaten a lot. Spring proves it again and again; it's my favorite. Massive heroic little green sprouting everywhere is the feel-good movie of the year. Also, OH MY BACK.

That is all. I promise to claw my way back to regular posting...as soon as I want to.

P.S. This picture makes it look like I have dreadlocks. I do not have dreadlocks. Another thing I don't have is the patience to fix that picture and make my hair look as triumphantly smooth and shiny as it REALLY REALLY IS.

P.P.S. El Finn, underwhelmed by purple airplane:

P.P.P.S. Handsome husband in spring snow:

mirage and oasis

2009-03-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

I don't know what I want to tell you first. The sensible, current, chronological thing to do is to tell you that I've been released from bed rest. And I think I'm supposed to be very celebratory about it, and I am, I am, but my fingers don't approve of my starting on this high note. There's just one more low note I have to relate. I know. Repetitive. But then we can get on to the business of freedom and being sprung and gratitude. I promise that we will really get there and it will get very happy. Just bear with me a moment again.

Two weeks ago, we had what I'm hoping is one last crisis with young Fred. It appeared that I was leaking amniotic fluid, and that the fluid wasn't right. I called the nurse and told her what was happening and she said, "How fast can you get to Swedish?" We got there very fast.

For context, in case you're not a pregnancy and childbirth person, if you're leaking fluid and you're still not too far along and the fluid is green, that's bad. That's very bad. That's bad enough that when you're driving to the hospital with your son wiggling around in your womb, you're certain (repetitive!) that he's going to have to come out. And at this point, if he lives, his chance of survival would hover around 10%. But if your son who's already born and has been here for nearly three years is riding in the car with you to the hospital, you have to play it cool. You can't cry and scream and freak out. You have to be like, "Say, if you like cars, you're going to like this freeway. Hey, did you see that blue truck? Big one! Look, look, there's Mount Rainier. Can you see that mountain?" And you have to keep it up otherwise you're going to go where your hands are, which is on your stomach, patting it, stroking it, silently talking to it, transmitting messages to its contents. Your mouth and face have to do something separate, smiling and talking, "Do you know what's good about when Mom goes to the hospital? You get a present when I come out! The hospital's cool because if you have a problem, they're good at fixing it, so it's cool that we're going here today. What kind of present do you think you might want? A lot of animals, huh?" And your heart, of course, is split in two. One half for Finn, pumping out brightness, and one half for Fred, doing something that I don't even know if I dare look at to try and describe it. I don't even know if I could describe it if I looked. I'm looking and I don't even know how to see it to attach language to it. It's beyond my powers. I can give you two words, maybe. Dark and delicate. Well, part of it is very simple, naturally. That part I can give you. You're saying goodbye. The rest is preparation. Okay, I got more out than I thought I would.

So then there are a few hours in triage. And during the first stretch, I'm in what I keep calling the eerie calm. I've already wept and howled at home getting ready to go to the hospital, and I've already packed that away in the car with Finn, and now that we're at the hospital (Dave and I are there - my mom has taken Finn back home with her) I feel weirdly strong and peaceful. It's like being in the eye of a hurricane, maybe. You know what's around you and you know what the level of destruction can be, but you're calm. There are a few times in my life where I've had this strange feeling like I'm a general going into battle. An old hand. Not averse to the challenge. A readiness. Even a little vestigial feeling of pleasant defiance left over from this mystery general's youth. A touch of the "bring it on". So I had that for a while, propped up there on the gurney, waiting for things to happen.

One phenomenon during this period was the sensation of being cartoon eyeball to cartoon eyeball with Mystery. We had our strong suspicions about what would happen, but we didn't know for sure, and we didn't know when, and we didn't know why. A lot of time was spent staring at the white, textured ceiling tiles there in triage, willing some kind of divine face to poke through and explain itself. When? Why? What? Who? A face persists in not appearing. The tile is relentlessly unchanged.

The mechanics of the event, spread out over hours:

Blood draw. (White blood cell count high. Infection somewhere.) Ultrasound on top. Ultrasound inside. Speculum check. Amniocentesis. (Is the infection in the womb? If so, case closed. Baby is delivered immediately. The ultrasound technician asks the doctor to describe the pull from the amniocentesis. The kind doctor murmurs either "turban" or what I later understand to most likely be "turbid". I ask, "What's turban?" She meets my eye and says, "Cloudy." I like this doctor. I tell her she's extremely charming for the Grim Reaper, and I mean it. I like how she just looked me in the eye and gave it to me, gentle and real. Turban is not good.)

Now we have to wait several hours for the full results of the amniocentesis. First will be the glucose reading, then the gram stain, then a culture. The results will unfurl in phases.

The eerie calm is over with a vengeance. No one seems to think we're going to get a good result. The eye has moved on and now it's wind and sound and feeling, full force. One interesting part of the storm that I watch from the side is my new temporary stutter-curse. "Oh, f-f-f-f-f-f-u-u-ck."

Dave is by my side and he's not going anywhere. We're assigned a room, finally. Elizabeth and Jenn come. We all wait together. Fred is squirming around. The nurse tells us that the womb is showing irritability, and I think she means Fred, but she meant the uterus itself. But I didn't get that until later. I thought (you have to forgive me if I jump from tense to tense) that Fred was irritable because my amniotic fluid was cloudy and polluted and horrible, that he was spending his last few hours choking to death in there. I talked to him on the intercom, which is my hand cupped up against my chest. I tried to help him relax in there. And I talked with Dave and Elizabeth and Jenn about how at this point, I would want there to be a little memorial for Fred. Once a guy is moving around like that, and if he's going to come out alive, then he really landed and lived and deserves a sendoff. We talked about that a little, and I talked into my hand into my chest, and rubbed my belly. And we cried, and I stutter-swore.

At around 10pm, four or five hours after the amniocentesis, while Elizabeth and Jenn were at the store getting me magazines and vitamin C and hand lotion, my doctor came in. "Good news! The glucose test and the gram stain have both come in negative. The chance that the third test will come out positive is so small at this point that it's safe to say that the infection is not in the womb." Safe! Safe! I'll be getting antibiotics for my infection, but Fred is going to be fine! I can go home in the morning! We live to fight another day.

There's such a pleasure when you're lying out flat and you feel like you've been run over by a train, and you know you were lying on tracks and you did see a train pass over you, and then you find that you're lying on the tracks still but you're FINE! You didn't DIE! You weren't even hurt, except for the emotional trauma of lying on train tracks when a train is coming and seemingly rolling over you.

It's amazing how much suffering in this life is a mirage. Like so many terrible dreams. But you wake up shaking and tear-stained, something happened to you. But it didn't. This pregnancy is the longest, most bizarre dream. But Fred is real and I really think we're going to make it. I think we're going to go the whole way. I'm starting to feel confident. He farts around in there reassuringly all day.

While I was in triage, in the eerie calm, I kept having images of Fred as Indiana Jones being chased by the big boulder. I told Dave that if Fred lived, we might have to name him not Fred Harrison David Rowley, but Fred Indiana Harrison Rowley. I was serious, Dave. Dave knew this, and shook his head with his hands over his eyes, headache-style. He pointed out that Indiana Jones is played by Harrison Ford. Dodged a bullet there, my dear. Fred Harrison David Rowley it is. George Harrison with a fedora and a bullwhip. I'm satisfied.

And also, I'm free! Yes! This just in. I went for a follow-up appointment to check my cervix/cerclage, and apparently since it's been a month and everything looks perfect, I no longer have to be on bedrest! I still have to take it easy, but I can walk around, and I can drive a car. Such sweetness, ladies and gentlemen. I got up and made my own toast this morning, and stood there with Finn while he stood on a stepstool, which brought us to nearly the same height, and hugged him and went eyeball to eyeball with him and he asked so many questions, like "Why do you have EYES?" and "Why do you have GLASSES?" and "Why are your eyes BROWN?" and he was so happy and I was so happy and the answer, Finn, is I HAVE NO IDEA.

P.S. You are all so wonderful. I can't get over people. We've been the focus of so much love and care over the last while. I feel as rich as Roosevelt.

if you see cerclage on the spa menu don't fall for it

2009-02-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

It's a beautiful word. Cerclage. It sounds like something with hot towels and lavender oil and firm Swedish old lady hands, ridding your body of toxins and cellulite and dead skin cells, leaving you smooth and glowing and ready for your honeymoon in the French Riviera.

No.

It's an unpleasant surprise your OB/GYN springs on you when you've gone in for what you think will be a routine appointment. You get an ultrasound and your doctor says, "Hmm. That's not my favorite thing to see." And then she says something about your cervix and says the word "funneling" and says "hospital" and suddenly you have an hour to go home and pack your bags and go to Swedish Hospital, which is a totally different kind of therapeutic Swede.

One thing you can do during that hour is break out into a fast-burning fight with your mom in which she might say something like, "I DON'T LIKE THE WAY YOU'RE TALKING TO ME" and then you can say things like "I REALLY DON'T GIVE A SHIT" and "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE RIGHT NOW" because this is a good way to relax when you're under pressure. It's even better when your small son watches this exchange and looks at you like you've started projectile vomiting werewolves, because then he'll really be in the mood to give you a hug when you leave and won't hide from you as though you were directly coming after him with a shiv. So that's one option.

Another option is for me to stop writing in the second person because I can't keep this up the whole way. I never meant for it to get this far.

Let's jump to me in the hospital. First, a short list of things I don't like:

IVs
blood draws
surgery

Then, a thing someone might say. Like, an exclamation of sorts:

Too bad!

Let's be balanced, though. A short list of things I like:

adjustable beds
room service
nice ladies

And another short exclamation:

See?

So, that happened. I went in last Thursday, had my blood drawn and hep lock put in for my IV, got amniocentesis to make sure I didn't have an infection, was tended to sweetly by Dave and my friends Elizabeth and George, and on Friday morning had a little surgery to get a cerclage placed. On Friday night I watched "Rain Man" in my hospital bed, which the Percocet rendered quite enjoyable. On Saturday I had another ultrasound, and later had some untoward bleeding followed by the most painful goddamn motherfucking cocksucking exam in history to check the cerclage, made even more undignified by its being conducted on an upside-down bedpan. Why my nice room at the fancy hospital had to turn into some kind of fucked-up makeshift M.A.S.H. unit I will never know. But there was screaming, and also crying, and gripping of hands, but then soon after that I was given the okay to go home.

Cerclage, right. I forgot to tell you what it is. It's when they sew your cervix shut to prevent pre-term labor. There's regular cerclage, which I think is called McDonald cerclage, and then there's Shirodkar cerclage, which is what I got, which involved some crazy shit I was none too happy to be awake for while they were performing it/describing it. (Then there's abdominal cerclage which is even crazier, so thumbs up on not getting that one.) I had a spinal block instead of general anaesthesia - better for Fred, but not a source of tender, soft focus Kodak memories for me. The surgeons were all "knife this", "dissect that" and I was like LA LA LA I DON'T NEED TO KNOW EVERY DAMN THING YOU'RE DOING A-LOUET-TE JE TE ALOUET-TE ALOUET-TE JE TE PLUMERAIS!

While I was in the hospital, Finn asked Dave, "Did Mommy run away?"

I'm getting tired of typing, now. I'm typing with one hand because I'm lying down funny. The cerclage went well, but the upshot is that I now have to be on strict bedrest until Fred is born. His due date isn't for four months. Ai yi yi. I meant to talk about that in this entry, the first stages of facing down that gaping maw of time spent lying down in an uncomfortable position. But that will have to wait until a little later. I'm out of juice.

More details to follow. Once I find a better writing position, I imagine there will be more details accumulating here than the world can bear. Enjoy your reprieve!

the ballad of sir freddie crisp

2009-01-26T23:56:00.000-08:00

I'm debating the preamble. Do I put one in? Do I put a disclaimer up top, saying something like "I know this pregnancy has been full of trouble and I'm sure you're tired of hearing about it...[blah blah something about The Perils of Pauline]" or do I just jump in and begin?

The half-disclaimer did it. Allude to some embarrassment/discomfort with telling you about more pregnancy frights, but know somewhere more important that no disclaimer is truly necessary.

We thought we were going to lose Fred on Friday. Oh, I think that disclaimer was more necessary than I knew. I feel like the boy crying wolf. But every time I have cried wolf, there has been a wolf. The wolf just didn't eat anyone. Kill anyone. The wolf didn't kill anyone. But the wolf has been taking enormous bites out of me. Fred remains unharmed.

It began with a call to the doctor about some questionable sensations, and in the middle there were painful contractions up my back, as strong as when I went into labor with Finn, and there were other markers of labor. It headed towards the end with the doctor telling us to come in immediately, and us packing a bag for the hospital and heading for the doctor, certain that we were on our way for me to deliver our son twenty doomed weeks early. It ended well. No pre-term labor. Other reasons for the symptoms. Fred fine.

It's the middle, the goddamned middle, that's still eating me.

This is less a post to describe the particulars than it is an attempt to make some sense of all this trouble, although there will be some more particulars in it. There's sure to be some flailing, here.

I just want to note that this is the third time in the past year in which I have experienced the death/impending death of my child, even if it was really only once, and then very, very early. And the difference obviously matters to an infinite degree, if there can be such a thing. I know that. But it's not nothing, this facing it down all these times. It's fucking ridiculously something.

In the middle, when I was having the contractions and panicking and waiting for the ob/gyn's phone to be turned back on after lunch, I was lying on a couch and trying to listen to a relaxation CD. Word to the wise if you find yourself in this situation: don't.

This:

"Note any feelings that are taking place in your body, and emotions that you may be having."

Pause.

"Now let them drift away."

is not something you can allow to happen in this situation.

It does not go like this:

Well, I'm shaping up for a second trimester miscarriage. My son will come out and be absolutely unviable for this world, and will die quickly. So...yeah. That can just drift away. Drift away. Because, you know, I just need to relax. OH, my god. That feels so good, to just let that go. Shake it off! Oh, yes. Much better. Keep talking, soothing British man. You're taking me to Bermuda.

It goes like this:

British man drones on pleasantly. You squirm, shift, cry out a few times. You bang your fist on the couch. You want to relax because THIS, what is happening, is not what you want. You want to feel something different, and you remember from somewhere in your life that relaxation is good. But you know that to relax is to agree to shake death's hand and show him to your son's room. (Later, your smart friend points out on the phone that you can't let go of something until you have a hold of it. That is also a good point. But you're not aware of that wrinkle while you're fighting with the relaxation CD.) Finally, you throw off your headphones and proceed to eviscerate anyone who comes within three feet of you who tries to tell you something comforting, or attempts to show you a potential bright side/escape hatch. No one escapes your vicinity without their head being bitten off at least once. You assume the character of the wolf.

It goes like that.

But there were isolated moments with that relaxation CD where I struggled not for relaxation but for some kind of honest-to-God acceptance. And that's why I'm here, that's what I'm writing for, that's the jewel here that I'm trying to unearth. Not acceptance in the specific, as it relates to this incident, but a larger one.

I was lying there, and looking out the window at the midafternoon. Painfully sunny, bright blue sky. Bare branches. And these moments would come where I could see that there was nowhere to run to. Your life is the life that comes right in front of you. It can have absolutely anything in it: beautiful, loathesome, there's no quality control. And I could see in these split-seconds that there's no use, ultimately, in fighting. You fight where you can affect things, but this goes right to the old serenity prayer. The wisdom know the difference. And I thought, well, if this is my life, if the life that has my name on it is one where I lose this child, I can't very well turn away from my life. You have to befriend your life. You have to do it. You don't have anything else.

So I was simultaneously trying not to let death come in and take my son, and trying to let my life in to do what it will. And I only had the one door to work with. Keep death out, let life in. It felt so mind-bogglingly tricky.

My mind keeps flashing back to the George Harrison song, "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp". (I didn't quite catch the lyrics properly the first few times I heard it. Instead of "let it roll" I heard "Betty rolled." As far as I could make out, the song was all about someone named Betty.) I love this song.

Let it roll across the floor
Through the hall and out the door
To the fountain of perpetual mirth
Let it roll for all it's worth

This is what I constantly find myself trying to do now. Let it roll. Although everything is fine, I still have a situation going on with this pregnancy that requires extra monitoring. And I don't know how to hold my body. There's an impulse to some kind of magical thinking, something having to do with that door where Life or Death can pass through, wherein if I hold myself right mentally and physically, I can stave off death coming in. So I hold myself in whatever way I think that is. And while I'm doing that, I know I'm not helping anything, not affecting anything. But I don't dare stop it, or I only dare for about five seconds per minute. And I know that those five seconds are the only ones in which I am actually living. I can get from the couch, say, to the dining room table holding myself in some way which reflects the old Native American saying, "Today is a good day to die." It feels excellent, like I imagine surfing feels. It feels dizzy and expansive. Living, incredibly briefly, without fear.

Why do I do this? Why do I tell you these things, these terribly personal things? I worry that it's a kind of emotional exhibitionism, but I try to aim some kind of quality control radar at it, to see if it contains something legitimate. I keep getting a green light. I might be brokenly defaulting to green, but I keep getting green.

this flavor!

2009-01-20T18:51:00.000-08:00

BEEP! Beeeep beeep beep! Honk Honk! Beeeeeep beep!

I can say nothing else that hasn't been said. It's unbelievable. Hello, new world.

But also, moving along....THIS flavor:

Ladies and gentlemen....the contents of my womb. Well. Not the first one. Well, not any of them. Just their collective first name attached to one sweet-ass little growing baby with a handsome profile and long fingers who if you stretched him out would be nine inches long. THAT guy.

The impending Fred Rowley.

We went in thinking otherwise. Then the lady said something about "Here's the scrotum," and I thought, "Why is she saying the word 'scrotum' in relation to my daughter?" followed closely by, "Oh."

And then, "YEAH!"

Fred! Finn and Fred. The small comedy team of my dreams. We're delighted to keep populating the world with Rowley men. This will be the eleventh Rowley man born in a row. Ain't seen no lady Rowleys since the 1930's. You gotta marry in. That's what I did.

In parting, I know that none of you particularly enjoy thinking about my cervix, but if you ever HAPPEN to be thinking about it, which never tell me if you are, think LONG thoughts. It's too short. Which is either fine or totally shitty. Too early to tell. Anyway, this cervix business put a damper on our boy joy, god damn it. The box of paranoia that I keep putting in the mail keeps getting returned to sender. Stop it, fucker. Get out of here. Anyway, long. Length. Lengthiness.

Fred! Fred Fred Fred Fred Fred.

FRED!

Fred Barack Hussein Michelle Malia Sasha Obama Rowley. I mean, we'll see.

the thing where you aim the car down a hill and try to start it from downhill momentum

2009-01-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! That's what I'm doing here. Writing is the car and I am the driver. I might also be a person behind the car pushing it if we end up somewhere flat and the car hasn't started yet.

If the engine were running, I would have some sort of direction to take us. This is not a trip to make the car go somewhere in particular. I'm just trying to keep the car alive in case I need to drive it. A person cannot talk and think endlessly about being a writer if she doesn't actually write something ever. It begins to get sort of sad, and being a writer sounds more and more like being a professional skydiver or astronaut or ballerina.

Oh my god. I forgot that nobody likes to read about a writer not writing! Especially when that amounts to approximately a fifth of that writer's output! I'm going to try the ignition now.

___________________.

I have just opened another tab. 101 Great Posting Ideas.

Oh, Jesus. The first suggestion involves "matching up my readers wants and needs using the Visitor Grid method of brainstorming." I thought this would be like, "Write about the best muffin you ever ate!" The thing is, I don't know your wants and needs, other than those of the person who perpetually arrives here after having googled "milk boobs", and I don't want to get in a grid with that person so much.

*Then they suggest I write a post exploring the pros and cons of an issue. I could, because they told me to, but I don't want to, so I won't. There, I did.

*There are a lot of suggestions involving "my niche". I could interview key people of my niche, or controversial people of my niche, or post about current events in my niche. My niche is not writing. I am the key of that. I find me controversial in that way. And the most current event is I'm writing right now! Totally controversial and key!

Tina: Tina, what's happening?
Tina: I know!
Tina: Et tu, Bruté?
Tina: You can't call this writing, though.
Tina: True! Welcome back to the niche.

(To get that accent over that 'e', I googled André Breton and then copied and pasted. Is there another way? Do French people google André Breton when they need an accent aigu?)

*I'm told I can also spruce up my post with pictures. That's a good idea. I google-imaged good writing. This is something that came up under that rubric. (I also googled "rubric" to double-check. I think I'm all right.)

Really? The Lake House. Well. I congratulate the writers on this victory. And I'm not in a position to be snarky, as these writers have written something.

***************

There are a lot of things, of course, that I could be writing about that are actually things. In less than three weeks we're going to have the ultrasound that tells us who this baby is, if this baby cooperates. I could write about how I feel about the two possibilities, an Oona or a Fred - how I'm going to be kind of intimidated if it's Oona, because I've built the idea of a daughter up in my mind so extensively, and how sort of relaxing Fred sounds in contrast, and how shocked I'll be if it's not Oona anyway. I could write about how this particular pregnancy and the overwhelming physical and emotional toll it's taken during its first trimester has left me feeling completely disconnected from everything except my body, and how I miss other things: meditation/the associated feeling of inclusion into the big stream of life, writing/art/creativity, and very very much my friends. It's like I was throwing up not just the things I ate, but many of the things I care about most. I could write about my sudden adoration of beef. Beef and milk chocolate. I could write about Dave, and how great he's been, and how exciting it is to be in love with my husband in a way I didn't imagine that a person could be after a while. My great good fortune. And I could always write about Finn, but trying to describe that utterly bananas, gorgeous, wackadoo creature is far too humbling for someone as rusty as I am. Just imagine a naked, milky-skinned elf dancing around the kitchen holding hands with his parents and then spinning off and bumping dizzily into the cabinets. That'll have to do for now.

Well. It's a start. Rabbit rabbit.

notes from the polar express

2008-11-29T01:54:00.001-08:00

Wolves are natural comedians. It's true. They'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.

We let Finn stay up and watch The Polar Express on tv tonight. He has the book, was once wicked into it, is all ready for Christmas and Santa and all that sweet sweet action to begin.

Some notes:

*We thought the appearance of the wolves might scare him. In fact, he finds packs of wolves to be ultra-hilarious. Super totally completely so, to the point where I feel like I might need to reconsider wolves.

*Also popular: the Hot Chocolate Guys! "Hot Chocolate Guys!!"

*Massively compelling: the enormous pack of caribou. I mean, mooses. Caribou. Mooses. What? WHO ARE THOSE GUYS? Ten minutes after the caribou leave the movie, when the Polar Express is about to crash through the ice and all hell is breaking loose, a question.

"Where are the caribou?"

Dave suggests that they've gone home for dinner. Finn determines that they're having pasta. On plates.

*Before the elves appear onscreen, there's a faint jingling of sleighbells. Finn understands this instinctively and breathes out, "ELVES...." with maximum wonder.

*After the movie ends, we spot Finn standing over by a window looking at his reflection, lifting his arms up in the air and going on tippy-toe. He informs us in an excited whisper, "An elf is lifting me!" The elf lifts him on to the couch, escorts him to a diaper change, and basically does our bidding for the rest of the night. An elf can make him do anything. NOTED.

ripple effect

2008-11-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

It's great that the news turned good, but that shook a woman up something fierce, Monday's scare. I feel like it's going to be better for me and young Seabiscuit here (a new fetal nickname has adhered) if I shake off some of what shook me.

To it.

Seabiscuit and I have a complicated relationship, due to the fact that I have attached myself to a theory that this is the same person who came in the spring and then left. I'm thrilled that this person made it through Baby Crisis '08 2.0, but I'm wary of this person at the same time. Who is this person and what is this person's agenda? And will this drama persist throughout this person's lifetime? (Spoiler alert, Mom. Yes. Duh. No life is without drama. You missed this? How was jail, again? Thought so.) All children are here to teach their parents a lesson, but this one seems so gung-ho about it. Jesus, Sensei. Calm down. Grow an arm, first.

Monday, God damn it. Monday was brutal. Unforgettable. Worse than this spring's actual miscarriage, until the reverse news arrived. How often does a person truly scream in her lifetime? I remember doing The Seagull many years ago, playing Masha, and in our production Masha goes offstage and discovers Konstantin's body and...makes the sound that she would make. She when she's me. Which was a gutteral scream. So I've made the sound I made on Monday, but I was Acting. Genius! Thank You. Monday was my first real-life scream like that. Only. Only, I declare. I prefer not to repeat it.

Somebody died on Monday and it didn't matter then that they didn't actually die. They died until reports varied. I'm always going to be in that orange bathroom in that red nightgown yelling for Dave and then the yell turning into something else and then Finn crying downstairs because I was making those sounds and then pulling it together for Finn when he came to see me, "Oh, Mommy's just upset because something happened that she didn't want to happen. I'm okay, see? Mommy cries sometimes, it's all right.* Something just happened that I didn't like, but it's all right."

*"And she yells, too," Finn added. "When I run away from her and she puts me in a time out." Right. Yes. Thank you. Great. That's Mommy. Cries and yells. You don't have any other fond memories tucked away in there yet? Just the crying and yelling. All right. Super. Carry on.

You only have a handful of days like that in your life, that are just burned into you like that. I'm not over it, yet. There's this person growing inside me (who, if you go by the latest ultrasound, is getting adorable. Nice head! And those shadows around your face fall in such a way that you look like a g.d. Kewpie doll already. Fast work, sailor!) and this person feels incredibly complicated, beyond the built-in complications of a developing human. I attribute great strength to this person, cramming a little forceful foot in the scarcely-open door we left for his/her conception, and then hanging on in there through the deluge. And I attribute also great fragility to this person, heading down here once and exiting at 5 weeks, and then coming back and having a tiny funeral practically mapped out before hitting daylight.

This pregnancy also feels sort of unhearty. This is not the sort of pregnancy where the young healthy peasant is out working in the field at full term, and lo and behold the child drops on to the soil while the mama finishes the harvest. This is more like the fainting lady in the mansion who's like oh...my condition. I cannot, due to my condition. (Everybody please whisper. The lady. Her condition.) I'm going to be listening to a lot of positive hypnobirthing cd's over the course of the next few months. (As opposed to the negative ones. This contraction, it is beating you. You're cowering, you're crumpling. The pain is too much this time. Get the nurse. You will require intervention.) The next few months feel long, and I'm not, like, running slo-mo through a field of daisies to embrace the actual birth, who's running towards me with sunlit hair streaming Fabio-like behind him. June 20th, 2009 feels right now more like the day I storm the beach at Normandy.

Thank you for listening.

or not! not again!

2008-11-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

People. You will not believe a word I say ever again. But I have been to the doctor and the baby is FINE. I AM STILL PREGNANT. The baby is moving around in there and the right size and having a total heartbeat and blowing our minds.

I...I...wha?? Wha????

I am sure to be extremely happy as soon as I peel myself off the floor, which may be never.

We gave that little whippersnapper a time out on the spot, right there during the ultrasound. It's a second per week of gestation, right? Right. So we were like, "NINE SECONDS, buddy. You stop moving around for nine seconds right now. This is a time out. You're in this time out because mommy was bleeding as though she'd been shot. Hey. Stop moving. Nine seconds starts over. Hey! Okay, look, the nine seconds is going to start again. All right. Look. You are in time out because we were about to bury you and plant a tree and place a Buddha statue on the spot. Do you understand? You're - hey! Nine more seconds! Oh, fuck it."

I'll go in next week for a fancier ultrasound to explain what caused all the bleeding. In the meanwhile, I'm resting and not lifting things and explaining my damn self to all you good people.

We're exhausted, and just maybe...feeling really good. Definitely feeling run over by a truck. But it's like a fucking ice cream truck. Driven by clowns.

All of you, all of your sweet messages, your sweet offers....I don't even know what to say. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Massive posse of angels out there. You crazy beauties and all your love worked a goddamn miracle.

Or I made a gigantic, embarrassing public mistake. That could also be it.

Right.

Either way, permanent real estate for all of you right here. (Chest thump.)

Onward.

again

2008-11-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

About an hour ago. Miscarriage. This will be abbreviated, because it lacks the, what would you call it, the freshness, the newness of the miscarriage from earlier this year. The wonder is gone.

Doctor's appointment is tomorrow, but there is precious little doubt about what happened. I have what you might call the corpse.

This time I'm totally unapologetic about talking about it.

After the initial animal shock/screaming/crying, a grim black humor has descended. A sarcastic numbness is in place. I'm too angry to feel tender and sentimental.

I can feel something like painless contractions continuing as I type.

I had to listen to goddamn Pachelbel again on the hold music for the doctor's office. It's farcical, really. I used to like that piece of music. I used to love it, actually. Thanks, Seattle Ob/Gyn Group. Maybe when I come for my appointment tomorrow you can fix my favorite meal and have my favorite scents wafting through your waiting room.

The contractions are getting a touch more painful. Well. That seems realistic.

More later. I appreciate all your congratulations, truly, and I'm sorry to give you whiplash again.

Baby, I will feel more for your absence as soon as I am able. I promise.

yes we did and also yes we are

2008-11-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

photo lifted from the delightful site yes we can hold babies

First, AAAAAAAAAA! The joy of that moment, when the tv said Barack Obama Elected President...I've never felt/witnessed/shared in anything like it. Jumping up and down and sobbing and laughing and feeling like the sky broke open revealing some new better impossible beautiful sky. A giant world joy all at once, the whole world popping like champagne, like the Christmasiest Christmas Eve Christmas morning holy holy all over the Earth shared glory. Merry Christmas! You, boy! Run and fetch the fattest goose out of that shop! There's ten thousand dollars for you!

Yes. Afterglow. Fantastic. Marred by Prop 8 archaic bastards. God forbid evolution happen too fast in this country. Somebody has to do the job to hold us back. We loved our protruding foreheads! Standing erect is overrated. We were warmer when we had our own fur.

So. So I'm breaking my weird old long blog silence to tell you also* that I'm pregnant. Just 'bout 8 weeks. Yes! Yes, we did. Yes, we are. And I've had my hcg levels checked, and they're nice and high, and I had an ultrasound and that little baby was just the right size with just the right heartbeat. Poom poom poom, you could see it going there, right on the screen. Bap bap bap. Someone's in there, and someone's got it going on.

*Sarah Palin killed also. She shot it from a helicopter.

I was like, let's wait this time, Tina. Let's wait until 12 weeks to tell. But 12 weeks, schmelve schmeeks, I can't do it. I'm a VAULT that I held out this long. My old policy of glasnost or perestroika, whichever one is openness, that has to be reinstated. If things go well, I tell. If things go ill, I tell. I'm a teller! I'm a bank teller and you guys can have all the money out of the vault and you didn't even try and rob me. I'm that kind of teller. I'm a totally gung-ho pro-active co-operator.

Also: a drooler. And a gagger. A heaver. An up-chucker. A bloodhound who will need you to turn on the fan if you're planning on slicing that apple. A tired-unto-dying-of-Saltines-er. An I-got-a-craving-for-banana-cream-pie-five-minutes-later-who-the-fuck-had-the-stupid-idea-to-buy-a-pie-er. Because it can't have been me.

We are very excited and hopeful and nervous. We had barely barely made the decision to try again when some baby barreled in through a two-inch crack in the door. Ding dong, I wonder who's at the door, is it an encyclopedia salesman, let's see OH MY GOD THEY'RE* IN THE HOUSE AND THEY'RE DRAWING A BATH AND ORDERING A PIZZA HOW THE HELL DID THEY DO THAT SO FAST?! Hey mom. Pass me that rubber duck. Thanks. And shut the door. Also I will need to borrow 20 bucks for the pizza.

*It isn't twins. But he or she is too unwieldy, and I'm not jinxing anything.

So, whoo! Baby born in an Obama/Biden world, phew. Now let's get our asses to the second trimester post haste. This trimester blows. It also blows a trumpet, because we're on our way to a Rowley quorum. (6/20/09, give or take a whatever.) But morning sickness just purely blows.

However, screw that. I end on a positive note. C major, mofos!

no, no, no, no and no you didn't

2008-10-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

The unthinkable has come to pass. A lady at the grocery store looked at me and said, "Wow. I thought I was looking at Sarah Palin for a minute there."

OHMYGODINEEDAHAIRCUT. And contact lenses. Jeebus.

yes, yes, yes, yes and yes we can

2008-10-22T00:30:00.000-07:00