midnight sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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.

objective/obstacle

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

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

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.

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

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)

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

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.