All meringue
I've made a resolution to
keep this space happy and deceptively light,
like freshly whipped cream, like chocolate
souffle or mousse, like flaky layers of puff
pastry. The blog will be fluffy. All
meringue.
OK.
Maybe this resolution is what is keeping me
from being able to think, it's keeping my
brain tied in knots and my fingers from the
keyboard. Maybe what I want to write about
can't possibly be lightened.
My trip to Seattle was fabulous, full of good
food and good company, lots of walking, and
an appropriately scary (and sometimes
sad) ghost
tour, but there was an
undercurrent of tension that was based on
an old and tiresome narrative. And,
frustratingly, it's something that I don't
feel comfortable writing about here, for
various reasons, one of which is I don't
want to indulge
myself,
would rather just give it up because
resolving it by writing about its
manifestation is impossible and
complicated. At one point, this would have
been perfect blog fodder, but I have no
desire to go there any more. How much
public kvetching and self-analysis can one
person do?
The kid's first day of school was also
fabulous. We hung out with him while the
classes lined up, even got to accompany the
kids to the classroom (parental paparazzi,
with our cameras and our shout-outs to the
stars), and then off we went. There was no
trauma. He emerged at the end of the day
unscathed. He was ready for it, to be with
kids his own age, learning and playing.
There he is, a normal little kid doing normal
little kid things. I've been holding memories
of my own early childhood at a distance, the
multiple moves and mid-year school changes
and how they affected me. I am not him. His
father and I are giving him things that my
parents weren't capable of giving me. I've
even been coming around to the idea that I
might be a good mother, not a perfect one,
but a good-enough one, that maybe he really
can grow up like a normal, well-adjusted kid.
So, here the words are, light, but not overly
airy, with a touch of sugar, yeah. The
struggle will be what to work on if I'm not
going to go heavy, dark, and bitter. How do I
frame my writing life again after a month or
more off, after years of indulging my dark
predilections? I have stories in progress. I
can always turn to memoir
as long as I
give it a happy twist. Otherwise, I'm out
of ideas, feel like my imagination is
stuck, stuck on me-me-me. I worry that I
will never transcend the mundane.
I am so tired of me. I want to write about
you, your quirks and funny ways, they mystery
of how you make decisions, the way you exist
in the world.
I guess we should start hanging out more, me
and you, meeting in the coffee shops,
skimming the whipped cream off our café
mochas, burning our tongues on chai. We'll
speak low over glasses of wine, bump into
each other on the BART train, in the library,
at the dry cleaners, while walking down the
street. I'm certainly not going to find you
in the guest room, standing by my desk. It's
time to get off my ass and walk out the door.
I'll meet you at Caffe Trieste tomorrow at
nine.
Image by
Kristin A
of the
Meringue Bake Shop.
Dispatch from a foreign land
As my plane landed, coming down low over the highway, I had a flash of driving to what was then called National Airport with the philosophy student who broke my heart, standing beside his car in the dark, waiting for the rush of the landing planes, with their high-pitched whines and low rumbles, chilled by the fast wind and the thrill of wondering if one would miscalculate, would get too low.
On the light rail from the airport, zipping past a construction site, catching a glimpse of a worker through an open window, I remembered how D smelled at the end of the day, like spice and spent sweat; his steel-toed boots next to the laundry pile, the t-shirts he wore with the sleeves cut off, the bandana he wrapped around his head to catch the drips.
And remembering what it is like to be independent, to get somewhere on my own power.
Sometimes I have a strong desire to escape my life, but what I think I really need is a chance to be on my own occasionally, to show myself that I am a separate human being. The challenge is how to create this feeling in my day-to-day life.
Image: View from my hotel room (taken with cell phone camera).
The anxious in-between
And here I am, at a café, drinking tea, attempting to write. The sound bounces around, the music and the clang and rush of coffee machinery, the clink of cutlery against porcelain. From where I sit, in a corner in the back, it appears that this place is half-populated by women in-between (like me) and bald men. The other fifty percent are hipsters with their beards and pale skin and chunky glasses.
When I left the house this morning, I told our babysitter, "I'm not used to getting out of the house in the morning." He said he aspired to that, to not being used to the morning slog. Once again, I felt like a deadbeat, a producer of short blog posts and not much else, though being the mother of a small child certainly counts for something. How long do I give myself in this writing gig? At least another year or two, especially once the kid is in real school and I have more time to devote.
August has become the month of anxiety: how will I fill the time with the boy? (So far, so good.) Will he and his friend get along the two mornings a week that they are sharing a babysitter? (Remains to be seen.) What will our adjustment to school be like? (To be determined.) When I go away for three nights at the end of this month, will I pine for my family? Will I feel like a bad mother, missing the Kindergarten/First Grade picnic at his new school? (Oh, just be quiet, anxious brain.) And, finally, if I decide to take up meditation in order to quell all this mainly useless anxiety, will that take up too much of my time and not be productive? (Here I'm just being silly. I think.)
Then there is the Big Anxiety: that I suck. Mainly as a writer, but in other ways as well. I wonder if I will ever not-suck, whether it matters if I am never published, whether I need to write for myself or other people. I should write to please myself, of course, but the danger in doing that is that I am stuck with myself, without thinking about an audience, or about what makes good writing. It's not possible to improve in a vacuum. Not that I write in a total vacuum, but almost.
I start so many things, devote weeks to them, and then let them drop. I need to finish a story, two stories, three stories. More. I need to submit them and maybe get rejected and maybe not. I need to get out in the world. Even being in this cafe is a worthwhile thing: can someone be a good writer and avoid other people? For the last three years, I have moved from my guest-room office to my son's preschool to the occasional playground or play date. When I get out in the world and see all these other human beings, with their stories and distinctive ways of dressing (though we're all clad in dark jeans here and we all use MacBooks), with their different conversational patterns, I remember that I am connected to the world, and all the world is writing material.
Image: The crumbs of my croissant.
On not escaping
The road trip: the long car ride down and then back up the coast, along Highway One and Route 101, those final curves of Big Sur where the kid got carsick (and I was grateful that he'd refused food before then), the rental cottage in Pasadena where I realized that I had forgotten my inhaler and so spent a few hours on our first night there sitting up and trying to take deep breaths. Then there was the graduation ceremony, me and the kid running on the beach in Santa Monica beforehand, the long blah blah blah of the ceremony and the happiness afterwards. We spent some time with the father-in-law and the brother-in-law and the aunt. We ate in lots of restaurants and went through boxes of WWII memorabilia and old family papers and keepsakes.
We went to Disneyland, a day trip where we terrorized the kid by taking him on rides that he wasn't quite ready to experience. He was dying to go into the Haunted Mansion, but as soon as we walked in, he wanted out of there. It was too late. In the days since he's been going over the experience again and again mainly to the birdies in the car (that is, to my index fingers and thumbs, which make convenient bird puppets). He explains what happened and then he has them go through a mini version of it ("Birdies: the room is stretching!"). OK, OK, OK -- I get it. He's working it out. But I still feel guilty for exposing him to that too early. And it wasn't only that. We also got on Star Tours and the Pirates of the Caribbean rides. Star Tours merely scared him. The Pirates of the Caribbean had him burying his head in my chest, asking when it would be over. And I'm not so sure that finishing with the bizarrely psychedelic Winnie the Pooh ride was a good idea for any of us.
Then the trip back home, a greasy dinner, an overnight in Morro Bay, the chill of the wind coming offf the ocean, the seals and cormorants, Morro Rock.
What we brought back with us: a sword, a shield, a retractable dagger, a gumball machine, an old globe, rosaries, a prayer book, the carbide miner's headlamp that belonged to my husband's maternal grandfather. More plastic knights. An extra inhaler. A new pair of shoes. New used clothes.
And now I'm back, wondering where my head is, wanting to escape, really escape. Just me and a book, the swing of a hammock, a cool glass of chamomile tea, a long sleep. This is the state of my fantasy life. Safe, soothing, and solo. I haven't spent a night away from the boy since before he was born. I love him. I need a night away. I'm wishing that I was the type to build him a network, to take a thread here and there and connect him to other people so that we weren't the only ones. I wish all that was effortless for me. But it's not, and here I am, still in the intensity of it all, hoping that it will all turn out ok for him, and desperately wanting a little time to be a grownup away from the toys and the tears. Just a night is all that I ask. Maybe two. The second night for my husband.
Image: The kid at Morro Rock.
Disappearing act
Just yesterday, just this morning, even, I was wondering why I bother to be good – what’s the point in it? If I wasn’t good, fair, faithful, wouldn’t my life be more exciting? Would I start to dress in flamboyant reds and yellows, would wrap my body in stretchy, curve-revealing knits and dresses that are almost sheer? What am I afraid of? I imagine a trip to a different city, a clandestine meeting, the dark taste of red wine on our lips, the giving-in. But it’s a fantasy anyway, an impossible one. Not only would giving in cause pain to the people that I love and destroy the good life that I have but it's not who I want to be. I don't want to be untrustworthy, someone who hurts others for the sake of a cheap, temporary thrill.
I’ve thought about it with the Round Robin, too, my writing prompt class, how I faithfully respond to my partner every day, even when there are some that I know won’t do the same, even when what I get back isn’t what I put into it. Still, I treat others how I would wish to be treated and then feel vaguely resentful when they don’t follow through.
I’m good. I pay my bills on time. I remove myself from temptation. I follow the rules unless the rules seem foolish or would hurt someone else. I do my daily work even when it bores me and I understand that my son will only be a child once so I try to appreciate it all (not always possible of course), even when I’ve played the same game too many times to count.
The balance is off, though, and I’m not sure why. I’m hardening into marble, pock-marked and weathered, Mother Mary. Or a nun. This might be solved with a clothes-shopping trip or maybe I just need to take the next opportunity I have to flirt with a man. If I can find one in my travels. The world I live in is scented by estrogen and dirt. It’s skinned knees and snacks at 3:00 and is populated by mothers and babysitters.
I miss men, the tension they provide, the chance to pretend before I return to the safety of my husband's arms. But it could be that what I need is a day off where the only thing to pursue is pleasure and I don't have to keep track of the dirt, the stuff, and the meals, a day when I don't have to be the timekeeper.
From a photo prompt.
The few readers I have left are probably tired of reading this, but I am still distracted: house-buying stuff, stuff-jettisoning stuff (the joys and pains of craigslist), getting-ready-to-go-on-vacation stuff. I know I'll be back and present at some point in the near future. In the meantime, the only writing I've been doing is for the Round Robin class and I'm barely even reading magazines. Perhaps that's why I feel like I'm disappearing.
Houses are a sickness
It has to be this house-buying thing, the paperwork, the memories of the life I once had. The last remaining pet that Mr. X and I shared is getting weak and thin. She'll be checking out soon, too, my final connection to youth and early love. How I could have been so sanguine about buying houses with that guy, how I could undertake such a permanent thing without a thought? And then I remember: those houses weren’t permanent at all, no matter how solid they appeared. We were in and out, removed some wallpaper, slapped up some paint, and then woosh! it was back to DC or bang! back to Ohio for him.
Houses are a sickness.
Here’s what I would like: to live in San Francisco. Or Brooklyn. Or back in the right neighborhood in DC. Or, since we’re going to be here, I’d like to move this wonderful house just a tad bit north, maybe closer to BART, closer to where the hills start to roll. Or maybe I just don’t want to grow up and be beholden to a particular space. I want it to all be permanently temporary.
Mr. X left Takoma Park within four months for Columbus and I was out of the house by the next summer. There was nothing permanent about it. So now I struggle with my ideas about the past and houses and though I know buying this house is the right thing to do on so many levels, it scares me.
I look forward to thinking -- and writing -- about something else.
From a prompt, "I paid for it." I'm still very distracted by house-thoughts and haven't been to another blog in weeks (with a few exceptions). Don't worry. I'll be back.
Top image: The back of the house.
Bottom image: Our front porch.
Drunk on possibility
So. We may have an opportunity to buy the house we’re in. It’s a unique house, well-built and large, filled with light and interesting angles. Actually, it’s my favorite house out of all the houses I’ve lived in, and that includes the two I bought with my ex-husband when I was younger and more sanguine about committing to property. (And my family and I have lived here for three years, which is longer than I lived in either of those places). I’m not sure whether it will happen, but it’s more possible than not, and I’m thinking of all the things that need to be done, mainly minor. I’m thinking of how renting can be a relief sometimes, not having to shell out money for repainting or for broken water heaters or for figuring out why the plate glass window in the front leaks when it rains sideways.
But the opportunity to buy also makes me realize how temporary our lives have felt. We haven't been sure where in Berkeley we’d end up, whether we would move back to DC, or if it would be better to be in Southern California, where my husband grew up. We buy a house, we put down roots, we have some equity. We paint the walls, replace the gate, grow a fruit tree or two in the backyard.
We take on huge debt. We are forever grateful to the relative who is offering financial assistance. We sign the contract and the Neighbornator shows up with a pie, a bottle of champagne, a cup of sugar. An invitation to use the hot tub. With my newfound security, sense of place, I write a series of searing short stories. My first novel (literary fiction) is well-reviewed and sells better than anyone expects. Journalists interview me on the back deck (right outside my writing room, where the magic happens!). They listen intently for clues, take notes as I stare off into the middle distance, thinking, thinking. I turn out to be a brilliant interview, witty, urbane, deep.
Or, more likely, we slowly begin to feel at home, to really build a life. The house shows us its flaws and beauty and we share our insecurities with it. It listens to the fights, the discussions, watches as our son grows up and a series of animals come and go. Maybe we stay for five years. Maybe for twenty. But throughout, the house surrounds us, comforting, soothing. Home.
Image from nertzy.
This is why I haven't been writing much lately or visiting any blogs: I am highly distracted. And none of this may come to pass, I keep on reminding myself: don't get too attached, Jennifer.
This is what you want . . .
Getting in: Security pats husband down for weaponry, palpitates my purse for contraband. What are they after? Drugs? A small caliber handgun? All I have is my ID, a credit card, and phone. I remember the Devo show at this venue and worry that the theater will be full of tall drunk obnoxious young men who will fill the space with pot smoke. As it turns out the crowd is actually "a motley collection of old-school punk-rock fans, curious onlookers and balding Brits, most of whom seemed to be the 40-60 age group" (so says Jim Harrington of the Oakland Tribune. He's right.). There is very little pot smoke or drunkeness. Sometimes I can see past my fellow middle-aged music-lovers and catch a glimpse of the stage.
Inside: One man in front of us (fifty-ish, totally bald) has tattoos of eyes and a nose on the back of his head. His multiple neck folds complete the smile: :0)))) Another man (pressed jeans, sensible shoes, short hair and glasses) stares at a guy to our left (long curly hair, manskirt over pants, combat boots) as the skirted one sways, dances, and plays air-bass in between bowl hits.
Ladies' room: There are only three stalls. I am thankful that the 1400-person capacity venue is half-full and that most of the crowd is male. Still, I wait. I stare at the feet in the stalls. Stall number three: leopard print platform sneakers, red tights. Stall number two: black ballet flats. Stall number three: pointy-toed spike heels, sheer stockings. I am wearing black ankle boots and unfashionably wide-cut jeans.
Home again: We go to sleep after midnight. Nick the cat wakes us up on Sunday with his six a.m. cries of existential angst. Dress Me Monkey still fights and loses. The kid asks us what the monkey plans to do with the proceeds from the treasure that he has not yet been able to steal. Our answers run from building a potty made out of gold to buying and harnessing hundreds of tarantulas to pull Dress Me Monkey's chariot. Kid wants more.
And the week begins.
Image: John Lydon from an interview in the Guardian.
This is what you want . . . this is what you get is the title of both a PiL song and album.
Get out of town
In the meantime, take a look around, maybe check out the best of the blog. Or read one of my most popular posts, Procrastination, B-52 bombers and ball turret gunners. Google sends people to it for the images, but I hope they stay for the writing, are pulled in by the words. I hope you are, too.
See you next Monday.
Image: The kid, December 2009.
What my body is telling me
Stop eating so much cheese. Eat more nuts. You’re never too tired to brush your teeth. I’m beginning to sound like a bully, aren’t I, full of advice on what not to do, telling you what you should be doing? So let’s get contradictory: there are no shoulds. And we’re not going into what that means. Not enough time.
What are you doing well? How can you keep up the good work? You do exercise, get that heart rate up and jump around like a maniac at least four times a week. You’re writing. That’s good for our mental health, though I think you could do more of it more consistently. You generally eat well, whole grains, good veggies, yada yada yada. Your fruit consumption is pitiful, but that’s how you’ve been your whole life. Not a fruit eater. And while I believe you could probably make more friends, you seem to be have a healthy relationship with your husband and son. Thought you could never pull off that one, huh? Yeah, well, stop thinking that way. Have some confidence in yourself, woman.
Here’s the thing: I can’t promise you a lifetime of health, even if you take care of me. Things happen. Cells go awry, brains leak memories. Try your best (please: I want to be here as long as I can), but don’t get angry at us if it doesn’t work out the way you expected. How does the song go? Hold on loosely, if you cling too tightly … well, the comparison falls apart from there, but I hope you get the idea. You should. We are one and the same, know each other intimately, cheek by jowl as we are. We’re on the same page, read from the same book, are cut of the same cloth.
Yes. Yes. Clichés all of them. Sometimes we’re lazy. But you already beat yourself up enough about that one.
Image: Me, as recorded by my computer.
From the prompt: what my body is telling me.
Before the day eases into dark
We choose the plants that will live and those that will die based on our ideas of what is beautiful or can be contained. For the last year, my husband and I have let these weeds flourish in the area between the sidewalk and the curb, have let the thick green stems crawl across the stones, carpet what was meant to be bare. To be honest, the idea of weeding a place where I can’t plant anything is annoying. Why should I care? But it looks messy and we might be moving soon. The task is satisfying, a pleasant way to spend an afternoon in the sun with the boy.
I stepped out of the house with a bowlful of vegetable scraps for the green waste and paused to look at the sky, to remember the night. Dusk is my favorite time of day, a tease of relief after the dragging afternoon. The light was melting away and the darkness, with all its potential, stretched and beckoned. It stirred up feelings of anticipation, of portentous beauty, of a time when every night was filled with possibility. For a moment I could pretend that my night wouldn't end in fitful interrupted sleep after five minutes of reading, that I wouldn't wake up at 3:00 a.m. to dreams of pursuit and capture.
I returned to the house, stepped back into the contained air where the dishes and evening routine awaited me. But in my mind, I wore the flowing dress, I let my hair loose, I walked barefoot into the grass. I breathed in the coming darkness and waited for the stars to emerge.
Image: Cornfield and woods behind my grandfather's place and the Little House, some autumn in the mid-1980s. Technically this is a picture of the tail end of sunset, of not-yet-dusk, but it's close enough and all mine. I like how some of the trees look like ghosts. And after almost two years of using this software, I finally figured out how to fit an image into the text.
Sweater dress logic
That's me up there, in our
office/guest room/exercise space, dressed in
full stay-at-home mom regalia. Baggy cropped
pants? Check. Shapeless long-sleeved t-shirt?
Check. Hair in desperate need of a cut or at
the very least a comb? Oh, yeah. And then of
course, there is the room itself, the armoire
mirror obscured by smudges, the
partially-made bed, the pillow propped on my
desk chair so that I don't get a backache
when I write, the old boxes in the corner
that my mother puts in the back windows at
night during her visits to block out the
neighbor's porch light (she likes to sleep in
near darkness). Welcome to my glamorous
world.
I don't tend to get dressed up during the
week (or ever), because what's the point?
Most mornings I sit around writing or letting
my mind go in four or five dark directions,
and afternoons are kid time. I'm not going to
put on my fancy spandex pants to go to the
library. Over the years I’ve worn many short
and form-fitting outfits, but since my son
was born I've apparently given up on looking
good. It isn't worth the bother or the
expense, and who am I trying to impress? My
husband finds even frumpy-mom me attractive
and I have no female coworkers to dazzle. The
game of dress-up, of wrapping myself in
appealing fabrics and styles, is no longer
familiar.
But feeling frumpy is depressing, so I'm
starting to think about what I wear, to
attempt to dress like I'm still in the game,
like I haven't given up completely on feeling
attractive. It takes work, sometimes it isn't
worth it, but I make the effort. I've started
to go shopping for clothes in person again,
not online or at outlet stores, but in resale
shops, places like the Crossroads Trading
Company, where I might find
funky, offbeat duds on the cheap, where
I'm likely to find interesting options in
small sizes.
This is where I found the sweater dress.
The dress was short, slate blue and
formfitting, with a princess waist and a cozy
turtleneck collar. It went well with a pair
of knee-high black leather boots that I
bought at the same store. When will I wear this
thing? I thought, but clothes
shopping often puts me in fantasy mode, a
sunny place where I shower seven days a week
and get my hair cut four times a year, where
I remember to brush my teeth hours before I
pick up the kid from preschool, where I
decide to put on cute dresses every day
instead of baggy pants. The dress was under
twenty bucks, so I went for it. I made an
investment in fantasy. My husband and I were
planning a nice dinner at Oliveto
to mark the
completion of his dissertation, so I had
an occasion.
On the evening of our
dinner, I laid next to the boy as usual,
waiting for him to fall asleep, for his
breathing to become even and light before I
tiptoed out of his room to change. Boy
asleep, dress safely on, I applied the
tiniest bit of makeup and pulled my hair
back. As I creaked down the steps, my husband
was talking in the living room with our
babysitter. She is freshly twenty-one,
effortless with both adults and children, and
as I came closer I realized that I was
wearing a
dress, that I was wearing
the
dress. It was
as though I had just put on a buttless
formfitting leather jumpsuit. I felt exposed,
like I was pretending to be something I
wasn't, a young person, a stylish
person, non-maternal.
I had brought a coat with me downstairs and I
whipped it on before the babysitter could see
me, then ran behind the magazine rack to put
on my boots. Indecency covered, I fluttered
out the door with my husband before she could
notice that I was dressed as an imposter,
that I was attempting to play the part of an
attractive, stylish woman. And in the cold
restaurant, I kept my coat wrapped around my
shoulders, covered my cheap disguise.
Did the blame for my discomfort lie within me
or was it the dress? Was I over-thinking the
whole thing? (Remember how
neurotic I can
be?) The dress had one
more chance to prove herself. We had a
cocktail party to attend.
The party took place in a typical Berkeley
house, a small two-bed, one bath, and it was
hopping by the time we arrived at 8:30. It
was my kind of crowd, mainly parents that had
escaped their kids for the night, a mix of
thirty- and forty-somethings. The women were
brightly plumed, showing off cleavage and
shoulders, wearing dresses in thin colorful
fabrics. The room was a tangle of bare legs,
and men in dark colors, of manicured toes
peeking out of exotic shoes. I felt
positively demure in my turtleneck sweater
dress with black tights and scuffed black
boots. The princess waist seemed too
youthful, like I should have had an oversized
lollipop in my hand instead of a beer. And it
was hot in there, so steamy that a bloom of
sweat broke out on my wooled-over torso. I
could have removed my boots and taken off my
tights, could have swung the tights
seductively around my head, grazed the faces
of the other partygoers before tossing the
hosiery out of an open window. But instead I
pulled on my turtleneck, looked enviously at
the bared collarbones around me.
Apparently clothes are all about context.
I haven't given up on my sweater dress or on
regaining my fashion mojo. But I might need
to start fresh, to begin with the foundation
garments. Next week I will jettison my
vintage underwear collection for a more
contemporary look.
You won't be reading about it here.
First image: Me, in
the office, this morning. The
frump-quotient has gone up since then. I
got cold and put on a fuzzy sweater and
socks.
Second image: Sweater dress.
I promise that, after two days of sunshine, I will smile
What is it about my son’s
illnesses that plunge my life into despair,
knock me into a pit for the duration? Four
days at home with a sick four-year-old, four
nights of not-enough sleep, his body
sandwiched between my husband and me in the
middle of the night, exuding heat, the
constant bark of his cough punctuating my
waking dreams.
“Just spit it out, cough it up and spit it
out,” we told him Wednesday night as he
hovered over the sink. His coughs have been
from the center of his body, deep and hoarse.
He let loose a fishing line of spit, coughed
again, and threw up into the basin. It was
very matter-of-fact, but he was concerned.
"Will I need to go to the doctor now?" he
asked. "That's not the bad kind of throw-up,
is it?"
“I used to cough until I threw up when I was
a kid, too,” I told him as I rubbed his back.
“It happened to me all the time.” It did. I
had a bum pair of lungs and was prone to
bronchitis and middle-of-the-night asthma
attacks. It didn’t help that my mother and I
lived in a series of mildew pits, that I
slept hemmed in by cats drawn by my little
girl warmth. I was allergic to both mildew
and cats and probably the cigarette smoke
that twisted through my grandparent’s place.
Used tissues would pile around me like snow
drifts. I had a lot of “melodramatic”
coughing fits.
The doctor said the asthma was nervousness or
hysteria or some such nonsense. I remember
turning it over in my mind, that these
terrifying attacks, the desperate quivering
of my lungs for breath as I sat up in the
dark, were emotional. They were my fault, or
maybe my mother's, for being a single Mom,
for being a bit of a hysteric herself.
The unfortunate thing about running on fumes,
about being stuck to the side of a sick boy
for four days – I have no perspective. I wish
I could tell you of the helpful doctor who
helped me manage my asthma, who held out her
hand for mine. There was no helpful doctor,
though I did at least get an inhaler.
The truth is, I've never wanted to be helped,
except maybe in my secret inner heart, and if
you don’t want to be helped people generally
don’t help you. Maybe it’s safer this way,
but it’s also a drag, and when you’re in a
funk it only drags you down further.
But give me two days of sunshine and maybe a
week of health for the boy and the rest of us
and I will leave the funk behind. I promise
you that everything will be different, that I
will smile back at strangers, will embrace
friends and acquaintances. After the long
gray winter, spring will come again and I
will be filled with warmth and perhaps
something resembling happiness. Or
contentment. I'd settle for contentment, the
absence of grayness.
Image: Kid in between
colds, disguised as a mummy.
Prompt: Write about a
time someone helped you
Because I am hungry for art
But worse than feeling the real world slip away is the feeling that I get when I don't write. It's a kind of lovesickness, an ache of not-having. The only way to feel better is to sit down and start typing. Even if it's painful to write, even when I procrastinate, when I avoid turning on Freedom for the Mac and bop around the Internet looking up information on John Quine or Anya Phillips (I've been re-reading Please Kill Me and the 70s punk scene is haunting my brain), eventually I get around to writing. Because I have to. It fills me. Without it, I am empty.
I want to write all night, sipping on red wine and smoking the occasional cigarette. I want to go to sleep at 3:00 a.m., sated with language, and wake up for a light lunch of mineral water and salad, of warmed baguette slices smeared with roasted garlic and chevre. After lunch, I want to linger over a book, sip a cup of muddy espresso in preparation to wrestle with words on and off into the night. I am up at 3:00 a.m. these days, listening to a frustrated cat howl, staring at the billowing curtains as my mind forces me to consider various bleak scenarios, feeling the heat of a feverish, fitful boy as he pushes me off the cliff's edge of the bed. A week of just the two of us -- me and the words -- would cure my angst. One week of writing in a dark room, embraced by a circle of lamplight, feeling the sediment on my tongue as I drain a final glass of wine, letting my mind dance with the headrush of unfamiliar nicotine. Just a week. I would take the time to focus on this useless fantasy in order to discard it before returning to the here and now.
The Round Robin, with its daily prompts and sweet feedback, helps, but sometimes I still feel like I'm bouncing around in my own mind, where (as usual) it's all about me. Other times, though, I create something that I can't explain, but I like.
So here you go, a piece that is a mix of homesickness and the past and an attempt to transcend. And let's hope for a few weeks of health and clear weather, of writing and creating. Of sanity.
Stained
I want
a cylindrical room made of factory glass, the
door a piece of carved mahogany salvaged from
the She-Wolf, Lord's old boat, the one that
is sitting on a trailer in the backyard, the
hitch supported by a stack of cinderblocks.
Against the cool glass, set into block, the
mahogany will seem rustic, warm to the touch.
I will rub my hand against it before I enter
the room, think of the times we went
waterskiing or just bobbed around in the
muddy waters of the Elk, my wet ass spreading
a dark stain on the boat seat.
Even then that boat was a piece of shit. Lord
wasn’t paying attention to it. He let it sit
in the water all winter long. The varnish
wore off, the gleam melted away. Every year
he bought cans of teak oil, stacked them in
the shed, and let them sit. Barnacles coated
the She-Wolf's hull. They were rough against
my hand, cut into my feet as I pushed against
the boat into the heavy water.
So, the room. It is lit from within, white
light/white heat. Even the ceiling is made of
factory glass. The floor, too. It is empty. I
will go inside, lock the door, and remove my
clothes. I will press myself up against the
glass. See if you can tell me what you are
looking at, my blurry image refracted in each
square. I will light a cigarette, will snuff
it out on the rounded wall, again and again.
You will see flesh, the death of ember, the
end of the spark.
Lord is dead now, too, washed away, though
not in the way you would expect. It had
nothing to do with water. It was emotion. The
dike broke, his water wings deflated, a big
hole opened in his roof and the house filled
with rain. You want me to tell you about it,
to be more direct, but I won’t. I have his
boat and my plan. Every weekend I sand down
the mahogany, try to remove the stains, think
about my cylindrical factory glass room. I
picture Lord on the other side, horn-rims
slipping off his nose, one hand marking his
place in the book. I mystify him and he likes
that.
Image by
Vinje.
The slog and drag of the humdrum
Here are the things I don't
write about here:
My son's colds and coughs
Chores, like vacuuming up the fur, dust, and
sand that accumulate pretty quickly in a
house with three cats, a dog, and three
humans
The laborious process of rewriting my novel
(well, I may mention this in passing, but not
in great detail, since that would send all of
you to snoreland, but it is indeed laborious,
like work-on-the
same-three-paragraphs-for-six-or-seven-hours
laborious)
The difficulty of writing something that is
long-term, of continuing through it without
the instant feedback of blogging
Cooking dinner whether I want to or not
How we're figuring out
where the kid will go to school for
kindergarten in the fall
Tips and tricks for keeping
one's sanity after weeks of rain and
afternoons inside with an energetic
four-year-old
Coping mechanisms I use to see us through one
of Mr. T's business trips
My political views
Natural disasters
The pros and cons of having another child
The perhaps impossibility of having another
child
My anxieties about the quality of my writing
and the wisdom of my current career choice
RIght now I'm stuck smack dab in the slog and
drag of the humdrum. The novel is taking
precedence over the blog and I don't feel
like I have enough time to really shine up
any of my short pieces of fiction for this
space. I'm not sure that many people want to
read the fiction anyway. It seems that most
readers are interested in my personal pieces,
either angst from the past or my depressive
musings on current life. Not that my current
stuff is all darkness, exactly, but I think
my views are cloudier than the average
person's, cloudy with a little patch of blue
sky that expands as I examine it, which can
make the whole process hopeful, I suppose, in
a Jennifer Trinkle sort of way.
It feels as if my mind is preoccupied, that
it is working on something. I just need a few
hours with a keyboard to find out what it is.
But who has the time? I'd rather work on the
novel or maybe that just feels like the right
thing to do right now, a necessity, a way to
lose myself in words and justify my
existence.
So I'm not sure what to put in this space at
the moment, but I know my mind will crack
open again and offer itself up for material.
In the meantime, I may be posting more short
writing prompts, or perhaps reposting some of
the oldies but
goodies. We'll
see.
Image: Everyday me, as
recorded by my computer.
The power of positive and sometimes delusional thinking
I skipped ringing in the
new year, chose to switch off the light five
minutes before midnight on December 31st.
Still, I was awake at the moment it turned,
was lying in bed whispering to my husband in
the dark. We heard firecrackers and whoops of
happiness, the joyous drunken sounds of other
people. My heart wasn't in it. I just wasn't
ready to give up on 2009, didn't feel like
shoving into another year with all that
pressure to change my ways, to become a
better person.
I finally celebrated 2010 on January third,
got a little crazy. Yeah. I moved some
furniture, switched an entire room around.
The living room had become a stale and
cluttered space. Even the furniture seemed
bored, stuck in place for over two years. Our
couch had stretched into a permanent yawn,
the lamps sagged with boredom, and the chairs
were slouching in defeat. It's been this way
for so long because the kid has an attachment
to sameness, to stasis, but yesterday I
offered him a very compelling reason to shake
things up: with the couch across the room, we
could build a huge fort between it and the
dining room table. Never underestimate the
power of a fort on the will of a
four-year-old boy: it did the trick. I've
included a picture of the perked-up room at
the top of this post. It's airy and
wood-textured, a comfortable and open space.
It fits.
This post was originally about spaces made
fresh, about a new year beginning and the
value of shaking things up. The living room
felt stuck and so did I, but as I shifted the
furniture things opened up. My possibilities
expanded. My mind, however, wasn't quite
ready to completely commit to this topic, or
perhaps my mind just works in very mysterious
and cloaked ways. Typing "living room" in a
preliminary draft led to thoughts of
the Bye Bye
Birdie song "Got a Lot of Livin'
To Do." Oh, yes, there are versions of it out
there, including several high school
productions muddying up YouTube, but I then
stumbled upon Shirley Bassey
(to see the
movie musical version, in all its campy
glory, click
here). The song runs for the
first three minutes of this clip:
Ms. Bassey is a little
brassy here, not too subtle. She belts it
out. Still I like her attitude. And look at
the date of the recording -- February 22,
1966. This is the actual birthday of a
significant person in my life and as I was
listening I suddenly pictured him as a tiny
thing, a mewling newborn swaddled in white.
Maybe his mother cradled him from her
hospital bed as she watched Ms. Bassey
perform on television. There he was,
untouched and innocent, with the whole of
life ahead of him. He had a lot of livin' to
do (still does, he's just lived almost 44
years of it). I started to cry. It was
everything, the hopeful song, the image of
the baby full of potential, this strange
feeling of inevitable loss, the relentless
passage of time, that brought me to tears.
The tears weren't totally about him or about
the time that we all lose just by living.
They were about babies.
Or about how we start off so small, so
dependent, waiting to be imprinted by
circumstance, by imperfect parents, by our
own built-in limitations. But the song isn't
meant for tears, it's meant for inspiration,
an encouragement to live life to its fullest,
a message that I may need more than most.
This somehow led to thoughts of another
unlikely tearjerker of a song, coincidentally
titled "Shirley", by the all-female
grunge/punk bank L7. It's about
Shirley
Muldowney, the first professional
female drag racer. L7 mixes simple,
in-your-face lyrics with drag racing
announcer commentary and the sound of an
engine gunning. I have never gotten
through it without breaking down,
including the four times I heard it while
writing this post. Maybe it's the naive
idea that it proposes, that we are capable
of anything: "How many times must you be
told, there's nowhere that we don't go?"
(The song is specifically about women
being just as capable of men, but I think
it can be a universal battle cry for the
downtrodden.) I think it's also Shirley's
absolute confidence in herself that gets
me. In one sample from an interview an
announcer asks "What's a beautiful girl
like you doing racing in a place like
this?" which Shirley answers with one
word: "Winning."
Listen to the song if you'd like, though you may need to link to the music site above to hear it in its entirety. Shirley probably won't have the same effect on you as it does on me, though I'd love to know if it does. I've reprinted the lyrics below, but you'll need to hear the chords, the heavy guitars, the whiny machismo of the announcers' patter to feel the full effect. It's almost enough to make you believe in infinite possibility.
These two songs are connected by optimism, by the fantasy that we have time stretched out, a gleaming eternal path of joy, the idea that if we just have enough confidence, enough inner strength, we can let the bad stuff roll right off, can experience the heady completeness of fulfilled potential. "Halting me is a fantasy," as the L7 song goes. The line itself may be a fantasy too, but perhaps one worth believing in, the power of positive and sometimes delusional thinking. If either one of these songs doesn't convince you, try moving some furniture around. It can help to create the illusion of control.
Oh, and Happy New Year! You're alive, so come on and show it -- there's such a lot of living to do!
***************************************************
(This post is written in
the style of Lydia of Writerquake. She often writes
compelling mixes of song, image and word,
pieces that point to the core, the heart,
of the matter. I'm not claiming to do all
that, just thought of her as I was writing
it and wanted to shout
out.)
Shirley by L7
Welcome the first lady to
try and qualify in an NHRA-dragster
competition ~ Shirley Muldowney!
Feels so real
Crushing the steering wheel
How many times
Must we toe this line
Halting me
Is a fantasy
Cha-cha! call her cha-cha!
What's drag racing coming to?
How many times must you be told
There's nowhere that we don't go
she's got good traction!
I suggest you find a seat in the grandstands,
because you don't want to miss this!
She's just here wants
What she wants to do
I wonder if Shirley's got in her to hold that
throttle down
kills your joke
as she's burning smoke
Shirley Muldowney is pulling ahead... and she
takes the red light
And you will find
Crossing the finish line
Shirley Muldowney has just set a new track
record!
Satisfaction!
How much
times must you be told
There's nowhere that we don't go
She's got good traction!
What's a beautiful girl like you doing racing
in a place like this?
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
The lady got through it
Winning.
What's drag racing coming to?
There's nowhere that we don't go
What's a beautiful girl like you doing racing
in a place like this?
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Winning.
Thug life
We have family
in town for the next week, so things may be
quiet around here. In the meantime, Happy
End-of-December and Merry New Year! And be on
the lookout for these guys -- I'm not sure if
they are carrying little Christmas trees or
spiky clubs.
Image: Some of the many
Santas in my father and stepmother's
collection.
A sense of place
We lived in that first Adams Morgan apartment for five-and-half years. It was a stately, if somewhat shabby one-bedroom with a working fireplace in the living room and an ornamental fireplace in the eat-in kitchen. The ceilings were high and the front wall had three windows set in a subtle, pleasing curve. Just off the kitchen was a sliver of backyard space that I planted with impatiens and elephant's ear that first summer, before we figured out that the upstairs air conditioner dripped on our heads, left the small landing permanently damp, and that the dryer vent above would sometimes let loose flurries of lint. There was also no coat closet. Shortly after signing the lease we remedied that by buying the armoire at an antique shop around the corner on 18th Street. So the armoire was first. The dog, the marriage, the kid, they all came later. The apartment saw it all.
The one-bedroom was on the bottom floor of a
four-story townhouse and the family that
owned the house and lived in the floors above
us had two girls and a pug. They weren't
overly noisy, didn't have loud parties or
screaming fights, but since our space was
separated from theirs by a only couple of
thin interior doors, we heard everything.
There were pounding footsteps and scraping
chairs, the sad howls of their dog when they
left her alone over long weekends, fourth of
July firecrackers set off three feet from our
bedroom. Once the baby came along, the baby
that slept like an insomniac, whose sleep we
were desperate to encourage, we left the
apartment for larger digs in Alexandria,
Virginia, though our son was sixteen months
old by the time we finally moved.
Moving to Walnut Street brought us full
circle. The drafty three-bedroom house had a
fenced-in yard, two floors, and a second
bathroom and was on the very same block Mr.
Trinkle and I had lived on when we first
moved in together in late 1999. But it was
temporary from the beginning: as we were
packing up our DC apartment, we got a call
that led to my husband's current California
job. In the end we lived in Alexandria for
only six months. I remember that time through
a haze of rain and snow, of grasping grayness
and cold feet. We were a 25-minute Metro ride
into the city, but felt very far away from
our cozy, familiar neighborhood in the heart
of DC. My husband often didn't get home from
work until after our son was asleep and we no
longer had our occasional babysitter. I tried
to keep sane, joined some mom's groups,
bundled up the boy to get into the city when
I felt up for dragging a stroller on the
Metro or schlepping our 25-pounder on my
back. Just as spring was beginning to dab the
trees green, to coax flowers out of the soggy
ground, we moved again, to Berkeley.
And it was tough. The first year here was
lonely. Our son hated playgrounds and other
children in general and I knew no one. Mr.
Trinkle was grappling with a new job
situation and I was grappling with an
unacknowledged past. It's hard for me to
believe now that up until the summer of 2007,
I wrote nothing.
Nothing.
Well, maybe the
occasional whiny journal entry, at the rate
of one or two a year, but that was it. I
started writing and Mr. Trinkle and I started
repairing and then I found a friend or three
and a writing group and a good place for the
kid to go to preschool. And then Mr. Trinkle
finished his dissertation (I could be calling
him here "Dr. Trinkle," but he nixed that
one), something that had been hanging over
him, over the two of us, for our entire
relationship.
We've been talking about what is next. It
could be a move from here back to there, back
to the center of the policy universe with its
wonks and its humidity and beautiful houses.
If we lived in Washington, DC, my family
would be geographically closer. I have
long-time friends there that I miss, and
there are those cherry-tree lined streets and
majestic buildings. I just don't know if it's
home anymore.
Home. DC used to be home. It
felt
that way from the beginning, from
the day I moved there at nineteen. It was
all about the houses, the formal public
architecture, the restaurants and street
people. I took pride in living in the
center of a very specific universe, the
place where people would gather to march
and protest, where the federal government
would slowly crank out laws, regulations,
and decisions. Even the wonks, in their
rumpled suits, walking with a sense of
purpose or the wide-eyed look of the
permanently distracted, were endearing to
me. (The K Street lobbyist/lawyer types
left me cold.) I still feel truly alive
wandering the neighborhoods there,
sludging through summer heat or pressing
my boots into the slush. However, I've
never lived in DC without a shield, a
barrier between myself and other people.
The town was made for shields, all that
talk about policy and none about emotion.
The emotions go underground, are
sublimated by intellect. It's so ... male
and macho, in an über-rational sort of
way.
Berkeley's architecture does nothing for me.
My general reaction when I walk around our
neighborhood is "meh,
bungalows" though I do enjoy
getting up into the
hills where the air is
rarefied. It's the people and the
philosophies here that I love, the
crunchiness of it all. Berkeley is where I
had the freedom to come clean and to
become a writer. I don't feel (much) of a
need to explain myself here, to talk about
why I don't have an outside job, to
stumble over the "what do you do?"
question. And I've made some real friends
here, too, women that I want to know even
better, that I want to have years with, so
that our children can be lifelong friends,
too.
Home is eucalyptus-scented. It's juicy local
strawberries all year long. It's hills with
bay views and streets with devoted bike
lanes. It's where my son is making friends
and where I am, too, friends who don't know
me as a librarian but as a writer and a
mother, a woman with a past who isn't defined
by that past. This feeling, of home and
openness, is fresh and delicate. I don't know
if it will survive a move.
Ask me next week, though, and I might be
pining for marble and brick, for trail runs
in Rock Creek Park, for fireflies on June
nights and snowstorms in January, for dinner
with friends at Lebanese Taverna or Oyamel.
I'll tell you that I can maintain those new
friendships, can adapt to life back in the
District, that proximity to my family will
make things easier, will give my son the
safety net of an extended family.
I'm split. We'll figure it out soon enough (I
hope) and I'm sure you will be reading all
about it.
Upper image: View out
kitchen door, Washington, DC, Winter 2005?
Lower image: Our sidewalk, Berkeley,
2009.
Chiaroscuro
Look. I’m all out of words. They started drifting away from me this morning, when I woke up with the boy at six a.m. As the day continued – conversation with the visitors, trudging off to music class, trudging back, stopping at the store, fixing lunch for the visitors, making conversation with the visitors, entertaining my son, taking care of our various animals, fixing dinner, putting the exhausted child to bed, making more conversation with the visitors – the words just left.
I say I was making conversation with the visitors, but the truth is that by the end of the day I was mainly nodding and sighing sympathetically. It was all I had left. So here I am, bereft of creativity, my mind swimming with stories of thyroid nodules and nerves like tangled spiders’ webs, of early deaths and shattered psyches. What’s in store for me? Should I be so smug about my flexible back and thin, muscular legs? Should I be grateful that my mother taught me the proper way to eat? Or that I inherited her frame and general good health? Maybe I will fulfill my genetic heritage some day soon: develop an autoimmune disease, succumb to the rot of debilitating depression, start to feel my legs tingle and fret as if they were plugged into the wall.
Part II:
Resonance
OK, OK, OK, Part I was the
result yet another prompt, from a family
visit in September. It was a photo prompt
that had nothing to do with the resulting
piece. I was going through my old stuff,
looking for something, saw this, thought:
Aha! That feeling some of us get after too
much family time on Thanksgiving. Except I
haven't gone home for Thanksgiving in years,
and if I did, it would actually be wonderful
to be with my mother, though
Kevin's
absence would still be
palpable.
Sometimes I'm afraid that
you're getting the wrong impression. Maybe
you think that I sit around immersing myself
in the past, feeling sorry for myself and
penning various memorials to the me who used
to be. Or that I prefer to
dance with darkness rather than frolic in joy
and light.
I write about what resonates and I have a
complex relationship with both happiness and
the past. The past is always present for me;
it informs the present, keeps me grounded.
And it provides me with great material. Don't
even have to think about it. As for
happiness: I am capable of feeling great joy.
I'm generally happy,
except when I'm not.
The hollows,
shadowy, cold as falling snow, call to me.
Light is meaningless without darkness. I need
texture, a rough patch here and there, a
little complexity and strife to make it more
interesting.
But maybe my next post will be about puppies.
More likely about finishing NaNoWriMo. Or my
husband wrapping up his dissertation. Or
maybe it really will be about puppies, cute
little fluffballs, good enough to
eat.
Lordy, lordy
Guess how old I am today?
Just add one to this
number.
I'm fine with it. Really.
Image: Me in 1970 at Hollywood
Beach.
Nefarious times I live in
Forgive me, fellow bloggers, for I have
sinned. I did not intend to leave this blog
for almost a month while I frittered away
five weeks with my son. My mother visited for
ten days and I did not blog. I had eight
hours of babysitting one week and I did not
blog. This past week -- my son's first back
at school in over a month -- coincided with
the visit of an old friend and I did not
blog.
But during those eight hours of babysitting,
I started to think about writing again, about
tackling the never-ending story in some
different way, fitting in time for
as-yet-nonexistent freelance work, attempting
to keep this blog somewhat current (all while
finishing household projects). Good writing
grows best in the dark (thanks, rcb!). What
sees the light here in fragmentary form tends
to stay that way. Or sometimes it embarrasses
me later in its undeveloped melodrama and
weak attempts at capturing reality.
It's tempting, really
tempting, to
put up little bits and pieces on the blog.
There's nothing like instant feedback to keep
one going, except that I don't keep going.
The past -- meh. I've dug into it, and
created stories out of it, have exposed
enough. Now I'm looking to take the facts of
my life, the weird experiences and characters
as twisted and lively as wisteria in bloom,
and make them fictional. I want to harness
the crisscrossing metaphors of my
subconscious.
Blah, blah, blah. I'm continually on the edge
of something, a change, a new way of being,
perpetually on the hopeful precipice. But
I've come so far from the first days of this
blog, typing in the dark and yearning for
more.
Image: My mother and me walking
in Muir Woods, August 2009. Photo by Mr.
Trinkle.
A crumb
But first, a preface to the crumb.
I haven't been here lately. My son is out of
school until after Labor Day and we've had a
series of pet-related good things and bad
things. Cat dying: bad. Adopting a kitten and
a new adult cat: good. Nora the dog passing a
pea-sized bladder stone at the Emergency Vet:
bad, though it could have been much worse.
Attempting to dissolve remaining stones
through antibiotics and diet: good, though if
it doesn't work she will still need surgery.
Me giving Nora cranberry extract pills with
xylitol in them: potentially very bad,
since xylitol can be
fatal in small doses to
dogs. Nora surviving xylitol
exposure unscathed: amazingly, wonderfully
good.
In between pet-things and kid-things, I'm
still taking the Round Robin, a writing
prompt-based class. So here is a crumb for
those of you who are still reading this blog,
from the prompt I
remember.
I
remember that her fingers were thickened by
arthritis, were scattered with freckles.
Helen’s nails were coffee-stain yellow,
bitten down to the quick, and she kept
fumbling at the wedding ring on the fine
silver chain around her neck.
I looked at her hands because it was easier
than looking into her eyes, or letting my
gaze drift to her useless foot in its bright
blue stocking. Sometimes after a visit I’d
look at my own hands and realize that time is
written on our hands the fastest of all.
Already my knuckles are puckering in
idiosyncratic ways and the backs are
beginning to resemble the uneven surface of a
barren planet, ropy with rocky veins and
hairline fracture wrinkles.
Helen wasn’t a worker. The hardest work her
hands had seen was the kneading of whole
grain bread dough, maybe a bit of digging in
the garden. She’d cracked open books, propped
them up, her thumb and pinky keeping them
open. Me, though, I’d scrapped carcasses in
the field, held up splintery boards with the
meat of one palm while I grasped a hammer in
the other. Some jobs we worked all winter
long, if we were lucky inside, but we weren’t
always lucky.
I read a book once about men working on a
tower, applying mortar and making repairs in
the ice and slush of January. They were
suspended from ropes attached to scaffolding,
wore gloves with the fingers cut out as a
symbolic act. Their hands were gouged and
scuffed, palms smoothed by rough passes over
granite, life and work written on the
body.
Image: The kid, pretending
to be a cat, because we don't have any good
pictures of our actual cats being actual
cats. Yes, he is holding an egg mold, which
is this fictional cat's weapon of choice. It
makes him fly or it's a bomb or he shoots it
or something.
Diversionary tactics
Don't be disturbed by the
photograph. It is only a diversion. In fact,
I actually posted it a couple of weeks ago
and then removed the post. I had nothing to
say and the photograph wasn't adding to the
conversation. Today it appears as filler, a
little piece of San Francisco scenery. Or
maybe it works as metaphor, too, though as a
metaphor for what you'll have to be the
judge.
Last night I was walking home from my food
writing class, feeling energized and full of
something (beans? ideas? hope for the
future?) when I realized that I have a
commitment problem. I've been circling
working life for almost five years now,
keeping decisions on hold, tossing words into
the air. I fumbled into my first career,
became a librarian almost by default, then
stumbled when making what felt like a
deliberate move into the world of cooking.
And I've been floating with the current ever
since.
I have to commit or I'll keep on writing 450
- 800 word posts here forever and ever. It's
not a bad gig, though the pay is lousy. I
love interacting with my blogging friends.
But I need something more substantial. A
career.
Do you know what I mean?
For your trouble, your time, maybe as a
reward for leaving a comment, here's a
recipe. Consider it another diversionary
tactic or maybe just some picnic food for
your next visit to Fort
Funston, the hang gliding
mecca.
Herbed
feta and tapenade sandwiches
Briny tapenade and thyme-spiked feta punch up
the flavor of this Mediterranean sandwich. A
couple of simple tricks -- adding a
sprinkling of herbs and olive oil to a
supermarket cheese, roughly chopping a
handful of olives with a touch of garlic –
give it an effortless homemade touch. Bring
extra bread along to sop up red pepper juices
and the occasional escapee feta tidbit.
Makes 2 sandwiches
1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted and roughly
chopped
1 small clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, minced (can
substitute 1 teaspoon dried)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
pinch freshly ground black pepper
4 slices country bread
1 small cucumber, peeled and thickly sliced
1 large red pepper, roasted, seeded, and
quartered
Stir together kalamata olives, garlic, and
mayonnaise in a small bowl. Lightly toss
feta, thyme, olive oil, and black pepper in
another small bowl. Slather each slice of
bread with a generous amount of tapenade and
layer the feta, cucumber, and red pepper on
two of the slices. Top each sandwich with the
remaining bread, slice in half, and serve.
Image: Hang
gliders at Fort Funston, Memorial Day 2009.
Photo by "Mr. Trinkle."
Alarmed by the seduction
The daffodils were just starting to droop, to turn brown along the edges, when J, my second serious boyfriend, the one who still shows up in cruel attempts at seduction in my dreams, for whom no pseudonym works, asked me out. That first April date kicked off a sweet season of mixed drinks with cute but somewhat foreboding names – Dirty Irishmen, Black Russians, Dark and Stormies – as well as watery draft beer. Sex took on a religious quality, became a sacrament. The chemistry kept us limping along as summer eroded into fall and the relationship thinned at the edges.
Impatiens on the front steps.
Then there was Mr. X, my
future ex-husband, another April romance.
After his estranged wife finally agreed to a
divorce, we leapt into commitment. Mr. X
brought me a bouquet of stolen lilacs,
fragrant and in full bloom, along with a
homemade tape of the band Squeeze. We ate
thick chunks of asparagus over al dente
pasta, moved on in summer to goat cheese,
basil, and sundried tomatoes on seeded bread
from Strawberry Fields. Those first six
months were a bacchanalia of Berghoff bock
and bacon, of homemade hollandaise, of
chorizo burritos as big as our
heads. Because he was not yet
divorced, we tried to hide our
relationship, played footsie under the
table at the weekly library school happy
hour. It only added to the excitement, to
the feeling of being so lucky and in love.
Chosen.
Mr. X is to blame for my love of gardening.
After we moved to Ohio, he introduced me to
seedlings and compost, to the pleasures of
growing our own food. Our second spring
together we planted a garden in the shared
backyard of our downtown Columbus duplex. I
couldn’t get enough of it, kept on putting
flowers in here and there, wanted to grow
eight different kinds of tomatoes.
Unfortunately, our shaky relationship didn't
survive past the fourth spring. After we
moved to DC and his new job turned out to be
untenable, he returned to Ohio State. He left
six months after we moved, coincidentally on
the weekend of our second anniversary, though
it was not intended to be a separation.
Distance brought perspective. One cold March
day, I decided on divorce.
With that April came ... love. I'd been
friends with D (now Mr. Writing to Survive),
a coworker, for months, but suddenly our
relationship shifted. It was a mixed-up,
uncertain time. I was suspended between two
lives. Mr. X and I had to come to an
agreement over the house, divvy up our
possessions, and fight over the dog and cats.
D's mother, thousands of miles away in
Southern California, was dying of cancer. My
own mother, having left Kevin temporarily,
was living with me.
But D and I were deep in the process of
discovery, our minds tousled with passion.
There were memorable evenings, late night
dinners at Lebanese Taverna, sitting by the
Lincoln Memorial in the pale pink of sunset
watching the cherry trees turn into blurs of
white, nights spent just hanging out talking,
developing our shared sense of surreal humor.
My mother liked him, too, and would smile
when he told her "Goodbye, Mrs. Casey!" upon
leaving the house. He was like the polite
high school boyfriend I never had. One
wind-whipped day, the weather damp and cold,
D and I drove to Ocean City. We couldn't stop
laughing, in part at ourselves for taking a
beach trip on a day that was a holdover from
winter.
It was the spring we started building the
foundation for our lives. It was also a
spring without a garden, when I let the lawn
dry out and the dirt harden. Without water,
the young azalea bushes that bordered the
house died. I could barely cook a potato, let
alone take care of plants.
Basil plants.
Spring returns, and with it the renewal of
lust, the desire to stroke new greenery, run
my fingers through the dirt. It is the
beginning of love all over again, to join
with my husband and make things
anew.
It takes over everything, this garden lust,
takes over my brain and my time, pushing
everything else out. My writing has gone to
seed and I haven't been visiting my blogging
friends, choosing instead to sink my hands
into the soil, to fill up pots with new
seedlings, to transplant root-bound herbs. At
my last count, we had over thirty pots filled
with vegetables, herbs, and flowers. One
plant remains, a sugar pumpkin that will go
by the back fence, will eventually wrap its
tendrils around a trellis, and that's that.
It is about time that I resisted temptation,
maintained fidelity to the plants already in
my life. I must avert my eyes from seductive
seedlings.
Subterranean homesick blues
Detail from "Untitled (Big Man)," 2000, a
sculpture by artist Ron Mueck, in the
Hirschhorn
Museum's permanent collection. Photo
by Jennifer Trinkle.
I'm still here, still
in DC, the blog and my blogging friends
neglected. I'll be catching up over the next
week, but in the meantime ...
When we flew into Dulles twelve days ago, I
thought I was over it. We’ve been gone from
DC for exactly two years and I’ve adjusted to
life in Northern California. I prefer the
open, laid-back vibe of Berkeley and San
Francisco and the first thing I recoiled from
when I walked the familiar avenues of DC was
the attitude. Lots of self-important people
with important tasks. This town is crammed
with policy wonks, the young ones fresh from
graduate school, green with enthusiasm, the
old ones graying in their suits, cynical but
perhaps even more full of it, the seriousness
of their jobs, the weight of the decisions
they make, a heavy surety of purpose.
But it’s beautiful here. I’ve always loved
the brick rowhouses with their curving lines,
the public buildings full of grace. Late
April is too early for wilting humidity, too
late for wintry mix. Rock Creek park is
punctuated by the delicate whites and pinks
of dogwoods, with twisted redbuds adding
their outlines against the pale green of new
leaves. Everything growing is green or white
or pink, though we’re missing the explosion
of azaleas that happens in late spring.
I was cocky. I told people that the pull I
felt for my adopted hometown (which
intensified greatly with Obama’s election)
was gone. Then, tonight, our last night here,
I felt the pangs.
I have no choice in the matter. We’ll fly
back tomorrow evening and I’ll go back to my
strange little life, return to my third
incarnation, now playing the part of a
stay-at-home mother with a writing complex.
I’ll spend hours without stepping into
crowds, wander the empty sidewalks of my
moribund neighborhood, thinking back to the
bustling streets of DC, to my quick jogs
across busy intersections with only seconds
to spare before the light change. Once a
month I’ll meet with my writing group and
feel awkward, without context, but still
grateful to be there. And I’ll dig in my
heels, try to grow a life without the context
of work and a love of place.
Trivial pursuits
Butterfly in our backyard sour
grass.
The February rains came.
They cannonballed out of the clouds, burst
against packed soil, strong-armed flowers and
soft green leaves out of lifeless bushes. Our
sour grass exploded. The backyard is now
electric with it, lemon-drop yellow and neon
green as it spreads over bare spots where the
sprinkler didn't reach last summer. A few
days into my blogging break the rains knocked
out our internet service, though we're not
completely sure how they did it. Water is
wily.
Thanks to the wireless connections of two
neighbors, we weren't totally internet free
(I do not recommend sneaking onto someone
else's wifi network, but desperate times call
for such measures. It's a bit of an
addiction, this internet thing.), but mainly
we enjoyed the sudden stretch of time to
fill. When the man from AT&T finally
fixed the problem, he had to skitter into the
crawl space, between the house and the mud,
to put in a dedicated jack for the DSL. It
was fixed just in time for my break to be
over.
Here's what I did over my winter blogcation.
READ: I read Living with the
Truth, by Jim Murdoch (I'm not
going to write a review here, much as I would
enjoy a chance for Aggie and Shuggie to
discuss it on Jim's
blog, but I suggest
you order
it); A Thousand Splendid
Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
(good, but brutal), and started
Nothing
to be Frightened Of, a kind
of memoir by Julian Barnes (how
have I missed his fiction?).
The shorter 'do.
TRIMMED: Is ten months too
long to go between haircuts? I got my hair
cut for the first time since last April,
thinking of Karen,
my blogging hair stylist friend, as I finally
picked up the phone to set it up. The answer
is, yes, ten months between haircuts is way
too long. This time, I made an appointment
before leaving the salon.
THOUGHTS ON WRITING: It's all about the
questions and the quest. In the March/April
edition of Poets &
Writers, poet Lucia Perillo says
she writes
assuming there is no
reader. Is this really possible?
Is she being disingenuous or am I
misunderstanding her point? If we assume no
audience, I think it would be impossible to
write. This might be worth a post, if I can
liven it up a bit.
ACTUAL WRITING: I finished my stillbirth
story and submitted it. While of course I am
thinking positive, sugar-sweet, happy
thoughts about getting it published on the
second try, I'll probably have to keep on
submitting. Maybe I'll need to give it
another once- or twice-over, but I'll wait
until I hear from this particular
publication, just in case. Think good
thoughts for me, please!
THE END OF THE BLOG?: Not yet. I won't be
updating as much or getting as
Entrecard-obsessed this time around. But I do
want to get serious about my writing. That's
why I've killed a chunk of the afternoon to
write this post. Did I mention the internet
is addictive?
Catch up and a writing prompt
So I barely dropped an Entrecard, didn't even go downstairs for two days, just sat in bed, didn't eat, and spend a lot of cuddling time with my son while my wonderful (and healthy!) husband took care of us and everything else.
But that's not why I'm posting. My writing class has started up again. Back to the daily prompts, thank goodness, which provides a break from harrowing memoir, gives me something else to post. Today's selection is White. The prompt is first draft, untouched, warts and all. It seemed like an especially appropriate choice for this blog, which operates in shades of grey and distrusts attempts to whitewash the past. And for another blogger's approach on colors as prompts, check out the most recent stuff at Yoga For Cynics. He's always worth a visit, no matter the topic.
White
Can you think of anything
more bland? White bread, white rice, white
collar. Something devoid of detail; the
absence of pigment, of nutrients, of
personality. Or perhaps you think of purity
when you see the colorless expanse, a bride
in her virginal wedding dress, the priest’s
collar, the petals of daisy. What’s that all
about? Then there’s a blank page or screen,
waiting to be filled, the background to the
rest of our lives, the tabula rasa. Let’s
smudge it or spill the ink, write dirty words
or talk about sex, reveal all our secrets.
Let’s sully the white.
Dirty snow. Image from
TreeHugger.
White is too much pressure.
Don’t you cringe when you see the white pair
of pants? The white shoes that must come out
after Memorial Day and go back into the
closet at the conclusion of the summer?
Suddenly I’m picturing a pair of white shoes
I had in high school. They were Mias, 80s
fashionable, flats with pointy toes that beat
my feet into submission. How long were they
white? By the time I tossed them aside they
were scuffed, grey. They smelled like sweat.
Inside, dirty imprints of my heel and toes.
“Do we really need these details?” you ask.
“Do we really want the dirt, the skinny, on
your white shoes? OK, we can move to other
formerly white things, can see how writing
about something muddies the page, dirties a
secret life. Underwear stained with menstrual
blood; t-shirts with their half-moons of
brown under the armpits; ring around the
collar.
I’m actually thinking about lies, though,
secrets, the kinds of lives we say we have
and the hidden world underneath. Everyone’s
hiding something, is afraid to reveal certain
details, has some shame. I say show it to the
world, let go of your lily white fantasies.
They are totally unrealistic.
What are words for?
So here are some pictures, a little holiday filler. I'll see if I can dredge up some writing before the end of the year.
Christmas morning pteranodon, courtesy of
Uncle B.
Preparing the cioppino.
The final product.
Homemade
Mexican chocolate ice cream.
This year's inadvertent (but popular) theme:
dinosaurs.
I'll be catching up on
comments here, there, and everywhere in the
next couple of days.
Until next time ...
He sees you when you're sleeping
Family will be descending
upon our household tomorrow. I'm looking
forward to the visits (really!), but may not
be posting, commenting, or dropping many
cards until the new year.
Have a peaceful and relaxing holiday! If you
can, with that
guy staring at
you.
Channeling Sam Kinison
Illustration
from YTMND.
MOMMY! I WANT MOMMY!
(here I am!)
NO! NOOOOOOO! I WANT DADDDYYYYY!
(ok, he’s standing right there;
parents
switch positions)
NOT DADDY, MOMMY!
(well, Daddy is the one who is here right
now. Would you like robot pajamas tonight?)
NOT THE ROBOT PAJAMAS – THE SHARK PAJAMAS! I
WANT THE SHARK PAJAMAS!
(the shark pajamas, buddy?)
THAT’S WHAT I S A I
D:
THE SHARK PAJAMAS!
(parent begins dressing
child in shark
pajamas)
NO! I WANT THE ROBOT
PAJAMAS ON!
(parent and child together):
AHHHHHHHHRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!
Another day ends in tears at the writing to
survive household. Maybe our three-year-old
son is developing neural networks at
incredible rates and his thoughts are pulling
him in different directions. Perhaps he is
experimenting with control – how much does he
have? How will we, the beleagured parents,
react to his cries of frustration? It’s
normal (right??), but exhausting, and
patience-trying, and sometimes it’s hard to
see the humor in it all.
Bath time last night was a screamfest. I
wasn’t there – baths are generally my
husband’s responsibility – but I could hear
every outburst. I finally realized what it
reminded me of: my son was channeling the
long-dead 80s comedian Sam
Kinison.
Here is a little taste of my current home
life, minus the lunges and hair pulls, with a
very young-looking, relatively thin Kinison
on the David Letterman show. The comedian was
known, as Wikipedia puts it, “for his
extremely vitriolic humor” and can be
offensive, so viewer beware.
writing to survive – where one day you can
read about Gertrude Stein and Edgar Allen
Poe, and the next you can watch Sam Kinison.
Now you know about my tasteless
side.
People stop and stare
Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster
I had a nickname name for him, a code word really, so that I could write it in my notebooks without fear of discovery. Bertie Wooster. It’s embarrassing, but 100% true: I was a 12-year-old P.G. Wodehouse fan, with a huge crush on my ash-blond, hazel-eyed classmate. Even in high school, after the thrill was gone, after Bertie had metamorphosized into a six-foot tall pothead, after I fell hard for a senior basketball player (another unrequited love), I would blush when we passed in the hall.
Crushes, I’ve had a few. They have ranged from the silly (the hot dog stand guy, summer of 1984) to intense (first husband, early days). These infatuations have been distracting, fun even. Nothing, however, has persisted like my 14-year obsession with Mr. H.
We met at work, my first week at my first real job. Mr. H. was cute and asked a coworker if I was attached. And so the internal churning began. I was attached – soon to be married, actually – but I couldn’t shake the butterflies, the deep blushes, whenever Mr. H would show up in the library. There he’d stand, feet away, hovering over the fax machine (the only one in the office); or he’d actually stop by to (gasp) ask me a question. My heart would race: it races now, as I remember those chance moments. Knowing he spent time in our neighborhood, I would survey the sidewalks evenings and weekends, on the lookout. The soundtrack for that year was a strange mix of Morphine and Holly Cole. Her version of On the Street Where You Live, with its stalkeresque undertones stirred up the ironic obsessive in me.
Today I am a happily married woman. Over the years, the crush has been mainly dormant, with a few volcanic moments. At this point, it’s academic – what meaning does this person hold for me? why do I continue to have those frustrating dreams? – but I am tired of it. And so, today, needing a new writing project to fixate on, I thought: why don’t I write a letter to Mr. H? You know, lay out my feelings in a literary sort of way, show them the harsh light of reality; get them out of my system. Maybe I send it, maybe I don’t. If I don’t, maybe I get it published. Everyone’s into reading about other peoples’ sick love obsessions! I can take this useless, ridiculous feeling and parlay it into art.
Yeah. I’ve been working on it for much of the morning, and I find that the writing process doesn’t purge the feelings: it makes them more intense.
My crush has morphed into a middle-aged thing, a yearning for escape from quotidian existence. I am ensconced in my (relatively) safe life, a housewife wannabe writer, parent to one tiring preschooler. Not much excitement here, though things are quite comfortable and loving at home. Maybe I need to take up bungee jumping or fencing, something to liven up the system.
So: Jennifer, let sleeping crushes lie. Oh, and Mr. H, if you are reading this (do you read this blog? I doubt it.), write me back, OK?
Only joking.
The rampaging dog chair
Nick Cave in The Birthday Party days.
Ten years ago I read an article about ballet dancers. All I remember about it now is this sobering fact: most of them end their stage careers by the age of 30 (a 2007 New York Times article puts the average at more like 35). After a handful of years of twisting this way and that, leaping, bending and living under tight calorie restrictions, the dancer’s body is just worn out. “Another possible career bites the dust,” I thought to myself, but that was the extent of my worries about my thirties.
Today I turn 39 and I find that I am worried about the years ahead. And I feel totally ridiculous about it.
So, reassure me, people! Please?
Bloodhound
Image courtesy
of In Praise of
Sardines
Last year this night bled
into Sunday afternoon. Following a trail of
crushed blackberries, I traced the stains
with my fingers and watched as we went from
mud to cracked glass to bruise. Late night
notes, an errant bike ride, “drama at
Inspiration Point.”
In a year, total turnaround, but, as always,
I focus on dates.
Tonight’s bad mood explained.
Thanks, HaloScan and ... ominous piano practice?
Unfortunately, my elation at the retrieval of the missing comments has been tempered by the sound of one of the Neighbornator's offspring practicing the piano. Yes, it's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," though it's much improved from last year's attempts.
I am afraid that the annual jazz party preparations have begun. We have our bags packed in case we have to leave on short notice.
Jailbreak
It was the end of an incredible, challenging half-year. I’d spent June through October in New York, studying culinary arts at the Natural Gourmet Institute, living in a studio sublet in Chelsea. By day I’d take notes on “health supportive” food and create vegetarian gourmet fare with my fellow classmates. Evenings were for wandering Manhattan. The Hudson River was a few blocks away from my apartment, and the West Village was an easy, entertaining stroll. Sometimes I’d go the distance to Midtown where the streets were hopping with humanity and the buildings were a mix of architecture spanning three centuries, old brick storefronts intermingling with structures of concrete and glass.
The streets of Manhattan were overwhelming to me: too much stimulation, every block packed with shops and restaurants, with signs and graffiti (“Mama Loves Neckface”?), every address crying out for attention. Night subdued the signs, softened the calls. So I walked and watched, sometimes talked on the phone with my husband, who was back in DC. We’d go over the days humiliations and occasional triumphs. A few late nights in Brooklyn with my friend Jules – drinking, talking, attempting karaoke (never, never again) -- sealed the New York experience.
I went back to DC for six weeks before my internship at Greens Restaurant and spent the time preparing to start a personal chef business. During this break I appeared on a local television news program cooking contest, which led to a later on-air meeting with Anthony Bourdain. My world was opening up into something completely new. It was shiny and scary, anxiety-producing and freeing, a chance to create a business and change my life.
So. November 29, 2004. I was in my favorite city, San Francisco, about to work at Greens, my favorite restaurant. But something was distracting me from restaurant job panic. The day I started my internship, I also had to track down a drugstore. No matter how many tests I tried, the results were always the same. I was pregnant.
One new world slipped away as another one appeared. This was an alien planet created with an equal mix of worry, sacrifice and love. What would it be like to have a little creature totally dependent upon me? Was I up for the task? Was the pain I carried around hereditary, something involuntarily slipped in through the genes, a burden to be shared? I was terrified.
The 80-hour internship went by in a blur. I was a solitary, preoccupied figure, standing in place at the salad and dessert station as other employees, efficient in their clogs and hats, sharpened knives prepared for work, zipped around me. I would look at my slow, inexperienced hands as they grasped the serving spoon and tipped that night’s curry onto a plate. I methodically patted out tart dough as dinners were plated around me, carefully removed the skin and pith from scores of oranges in a haze of prep staff conversation, inexpertly mixed the ingredients for the filo pastry of the day in the cold of the isolated back kitchen.
It wasn’t enough time to even get my feet wet. My inexperience would never get the opportunity to disappear. I was going to be permanently interrupted.
But was I?
Since my son was born, I’ve been living as though all that was ever going to happen to me already had. I’ve let the experience of being a mother stop me from participating in the larger world. The stories I write here are about the past, about the life I had when I had a life outside of my house.
On the other hand, by writing these stories I am reentering the world, slowly emerging from my own head. And I find that my dreams have changed. That shiny new world of four years ago is no longer relevant.
I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
From the inside
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
So. What would I write if ...
This has been a hard week of slog and attempts to think my way through a muddled, sad brain.
There could be at least one reason I am struggling -- the end of July marks an anniversary of sorts (some might call it an antiversary). This, coupled with an overnight work retreat for my husband next week, a true triggering event, is bringing me down. These dates will lose their meaning over time, but the first go-round stinks.
So. Maybe that's it.
(Ever since my mother sent me this quote from Seamus Heaney on the use of 'So.' as prelude, a call for attention, I've been using it as a sentence all on its own. The quote is below, Famous Seamus on translating Beowulf and using the term 'So.'
There you have it -- a little esoterica to balance out the angst, to confuse the crowd. Oh, for courage and greatness.)
"And when I came to ask myself how I wanted Beowulf to sound in my version, I realized I wanted it to be speakable by one of [my big-voiced Scullion] relatives, [who had a kind of Native American solemnity of utterance, as if they were announcing verdicts rather than making small talk. ] I therefore tried to frame the famous opening lines in cadences that would have suited their voices, but that still echoed with the sound and sense of the Anglo-Saxon:
Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
peod-cyninga prym gefrunon,
Conventional renderings of "hwaet," the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with "lo" and "hark" and "behold" and "attend" and—more colloquially—"listen" being some of the solutions offered previously. But in Hiberno-English Scullionspeak, the particle "so" came naturally to the rescue because in that idiom "so" operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention. So, "so" it was:
So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness."
On the way to L.A.
Greetings from
scenic Cambria!
We're on a road trip down to the L.A. area,
to visit my father-in-law. This morning we
drove out past San Simeon out to see if we
could find elephant
seals.
We did!
More later. I have friends' blogs to catch up
with, too.
In the beginning ...
When I started this blog in late December of last year, I wasn't in a good place. All the things I've been writing about since then were burbling just below the surface, barely suppressed, waiting to be given form and shaped into a story. I used a pseudonym -- Anonmomous -- and wrote pretty freely about my angst at the time, my desperation, the stifled creativity that I blamed on my daily mundane existence mixed in with a childhood hangover.
I had no creative outlet, but a strong desire to write and figured that starting a blog would force me to do it on a regular basis. Maybe I would find others out there like me, or attract an audience (even an audience of one would have been wonderful). But nobody reads a blog if they don't know about it. I started using my real first name, joined blogcatalog, and things started to look up.
Most of my early posts are gone, but I recently found an interesting one from right before I "came out." I've reproduced it below.
Thanks to Geoffrey for asking some questions that got me thinking about the early days and how the process of self-expression has actually changed the story I've created for myself.
I also have to thank The Fearless Blog for her kind profile of writing to survive, and her words of encouragement. As usual, she got me thinking about how a positive attitude can change the equation entirely.
Manufacturing interest
18 February 2008
As I was thinking about whether I would post tonight, not sure if I had anything to say, I decided I would manufacture something of interest to write about: the manufacturing of interest in what I am writing here.
I have no idea how you arrived at this blog, whether you find it entertaining, or relevant, or worth five minutes of your time. I could probably come out of the closet, quit being anonymous, and invite people I know to read it, or at the very least passively put up the address in my facebook profile and e-mail signature. Perhaps then the blog would spread like a benevolent virus across cyberspace, e-mailed here and there: you simply HAVE to read this.
Would more people read? Maybe. Would it affect what I write here? Most definitely. In a good way? I am not sure. Currently, I can write corny or stupid or revealing stuff here without worrying about hurting anyone's feelings or worrying about looking corny or stupid. I would probably remove anything non-writing related, which may be the cleaner and kinder way to go. I still have much mulling to do on the topic.
H and I took advantage of our holiday Monday babysitter to go into the city. We wandered around North Beach, did some vintage shopping, had lunch. We ended up at City Lights and I was suddenly overwhelmed by all that fiction, non-fiction, poetry, ecology, etc etc, titles and authors I have never heard of and will probably never read.
What a crazy idea it is to write when there are so many talented people out there who can barely sell a book.
But I can't worry about that now, can I?
Reality
True, I am happy not to be in the working world. I can't imagine anyone else taking care of the boy on a full-time basis. I am a worrier and a control freak and I would miss him. There is no job waiting interesting enough to pull me away and I'm a poor juggler. The rush to work, the rush home, the mad dinner dash -- I didn't like it when I was childless. Mix in a needy little one and I would be a raving lunatic, in a less fun way than I am now. A full-time care situation would also be less than optimal for my total homebody, somewhat mommy-obsessed son.
(Note: There are many reasons to be a working parent. My mother was a working parent. Most of my friends are working parents. I love them all and admire their ability to have a working life and a home life. Their kids are generally happy and well-adjusted. I have nothing against mothers who work.)
Then there is reality: money. Farting around with my fascinating life story isn't going to bring in the cold, cold cash. My husband bears the burden of supporting us in a very expensive part of the U.S. I haven't contributed to Social Security in almost four years (yes, I still cling to the quaint idea that Social Security will exist when my time comes to cash in). And I miss having an outside focus.
To make money writing salable stuff takes concentrated effort. A plan. It takes time to implement a plan. And seven hours a week of childcare isn't a lot of time.
My solution: stop sleeping.
Though I don't sleep much as it is.
All that jazz, Part II
I’m sure it was an oversight when Dieter neglected to give us an invitation to his jazz party. We had been out of town the previous week. Perhaps a strong wind had blown the slip of paper off our porch. Maybe Dieter, Jr. had inadvertently skipped our mailbox.
I watched from our upstairs bedroom as a small tent went up. Thinking back to Angelica’s mention of the party, I imagined flinging open the gate between the two yards. The hordes would spill in, clutching Coronas and Aquafinas, swaying to saxophone solos and smashing our sepia grass into the dirt.
Our landlord and Dieter were tight, friends
from when she lived in our house. The fence
contains two remnants of their relationship:
a double-doored gate connecting the yards and
a 2x2-foot window. The thick, beveled glass
offers a view of birch and bamboo, visual
access to the back corner of Dieter’s world.
It's a sideways glance, no eye contact
necessary, thank goodness. The gate came with
a shiny new padlock. We’ve never bothered to
remove the key, so there it dangles, a symbol
of hope gone sour, of potentials never
realized.
I was thinking about our poor neighborly
relations -- where did we go wrong? -- when
the dog nosed me in the thigh. Oh yeah. Time
for a walk. I put my son in the back carrier,
leashed Nora, and walked out into frenetic
Birdland preparations. The Neighbornator
family was bringing in more foodstuffs. I put
on my friendly face.
“You’re coming tomorrow?” Dieter asked, his
tone light. As we passed his dog, Nora
growled and lunged, putting on her vicious
cur act. She’s insecure and totally harmless,
though you’d never know from her bark. I
pulled on the leash. "Nora! No!" My son
buried his face in my back. Dieter observed
our little drama with a poker face.
With Nora subdued, I got back to the
conversation. “Coming?” I asked blankly.
He seemed surprised. “I gave you an
invitation! Are you sure? Didn’t we talk
about this? It must have been your husband.
Ja, that’s it! I talked to your husband about
it a few weeks ago.”
I shook my head. Nein.
“I am sure I talked to him about it. Ja, I
remember ... Oh," he interrupted himself,
realizing the futility of this line of
thought. "Ja. There will be music of all
kinds! It starts at 1:00 and goes on all day.
Invite all your friends!” Dieter was a little
flustered.
I tried to be nice about it, to muster up a
smile or some polite enthusiasm. We had just
gotten back from a trip to the East Coast.
Everyone was jet-lagged and sleep-deprived.
My husband and I were in the middle of a
marital mess. Given I could hear this man’s
dinner conversation, what would an all-day
jazz party sound like? An all-day jazz party
that started at my son's nap time?
Saturday, September 29th 2007 was a beautiful day.
The sky was cloudless and the air dry and
warm. A light breeze ruffled the leaves in
the trees, a pleasant sound, easy on the
ears. At 10:30 a.m., in a yard hemmed in on
all sides by houses, in a yard of perhaps 500
square feet, in a yard next door, it started.
“Testing, testing, 1-2-3.” Someone was
testing a microphone. Attached to an
amplifier. Attached to speakers.
We were doomed.
At 1:00 p.m. sharp the warm-up act started.
Gospel. This was followed by a traditional
jazz quartet. At some point a pianist pounded
out some classical music (was that Dieter's
son? The one who kept on butchering "Ain't No
Mountain High Enough"? If so, he had
improved.) Then an R&B band took the
stage, followed by a nod to Thelonius Monk.
During the intermissions, my husband and I
would look at each other: was this it? But it
kept on keeping on. The pauses were just long
enough for equipment changes. We watched as
vans pulled up and spilled out musicians and
instrument cases, the next group on the
marquee getting in line. We listened for the
appreciative applause at the end of each
solo. We looked up the Berkeley city code on
amplified music. Dieter was well over his
four hour limit.
From our backyard, the music was loud. Very,
very loud. No wonder Dieter didn’t understand
most of what I said: he was probably
half-deaf from years of noise exposure, Pete
Townshend without the guitar. The animals
were agitated. Nora paced back and forth
until she found refuge in the bathroom, while
the cats would scratch at the back door to be
let out, only to rush back into the house
with flattened ears and disgusted
expressions. My son skipped his nap. And the
bands kept on coming.
Our last escape from the wall of sound was at
8:30 p.m.. Hoping to gain back sanity lost,
hoping that our son would finally fall
asleep, we went for a drive up in the hills.
No one said a word as the car wound up steep
inclines, pushed through eucalyptus-scented
air to a quiet, dark place with a view. It
was a surprisingly clear night and we could
see San Francisco. We watched lines of cars
snake across the Bay Bridge, felt wonderfully
insulated from the sounds of engines and car
horns, saxophones and vocalists. Our son was
asleep. Time to go home. Surely the whole
mess was over by now.
But it wasn't.
It seems funny now, funny that we came home
to a Mexican band singing La Bamba, complete
with horn section and what sounded like clog
dancing. It was the most raucous gig of the
day. It was almost 11 p.m. When would the
madness end?
And then it just ended. As the song wound
down, the crowd whistled and stomped,
screamed for an encore. Ten hours of
incredible music, well-performed,
well-appreciated, and very loud, and they
wanted more. It was not to be. Jazz Fest 2007
was over.
The hordes slowly dispersed. We brushed our
teeth and went to bed.
For several months, we barely looked at
Dieter, whom we christened The Neighbornator.
We didn't confront and he didn't apologize.
There were no arguments about the event or
the noise level, just bitten tongues and
imagined amusing scenarios, all with the
self-centered surgeon as an object of
ridicule, his accent exaggerated and his
mannerisms cartoonish. We've gotten some good
laughs out of it.
For Jazz Fest 2008, we'll be out of
town.
All that jazz, Part I
Yes, our wayward next-door neighbor is originally from Germany, though his accent has been softened by thirty years in the U.S. “Dieter” is in his mid-50s, of medium build, tall, with white hair and sky-blue eyes. He’s a neonatalogist with a specialty in prenatal surgery. Maybe it takes his kind of arrogance, of surety, to operate on the not yet born. The hand must be steady and the conscience clear before you make the cut. You don’t toss that self-confidence aside upon leaving the operating room. Dieter prides himself on being a regular guy who does his own home and car repairs. He rides a sleek black motorcycle to the hospital. He blasts classic jazz tunes and world music while doing yard work. But these are not crimes.
Maybe we weren’t receptive to friendship. Perhaps we have nothing in common. There was talk of a barbecue that never materialized. He and his wife made a welcome to the neighborhood visit that ended at the front gate. Dieter didn’t seem to approve of our dog training or of our slow to smile toddler and most of our conversations left me feeling vaguely insulted. The relationship became one of brief smiles and half-hearted waves from car windows.
But we became very familiar with the patterns of Dieter’s life. We had no choice. The houses in our West Berkeley neighborhood are built tightly together. They tell the secrets of the lives held within: whose marriage is in jeopardy, who drinks too much, who cries before leaving the house every morning.
This knowledge of our neighbors' lives is forced, impossible to avoid. Unscreened windows let in fresh air and leak out unsolicited information. We hear the arguments, the sex, the banal exchanges on what is needed at the store. Glasses clink and sobs are suppressed into pillows. People curse during arguments and berate their teenagers for sullen attitudes. (As I type this from the deck, I hear a mother and daughter fighting. The daughter is screaming “I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care! “ over her mother's tirade. Closer, shoes crunch on gravel. Someone clears their throat as they open a back door. There. The door slammed behind them. Silence.)
When Dieter spent all of last August sprucing up the yard and power washing his house, I knew something was up. He was on the cordless phone all the time, speaking enthusiastically, making arrangments, using "Ja, ja" instead of yes. We’d heard about his annual shindig. “I told him that you’d be great friends, hanging out together, opening up the yard for his annual jazz party,” said Angelica, our landlord, naively before she took off for Arizona. Now I watched a small tent go up, saw the stacks of chairs and tables, observed as Mr. And Mrs. Dieter ferried cases of water and beer from the car.
My heart sank when the deliveries started. A medium-sized truck with ‘PIANO MOVERS’ in huge black letters on the sides was the first to pull up. Three burly men gently moved a wrapped baby grand to the backyard as Dieter supervised with pride. Over the course of the day, more trucks lined up, delivering equipment, microphones, lights and other mysterious things. The big event appeared to be imminent.
No one had said a word to us.
Continued ...
Schlump
Am I the only person in the world who needs time, real time to exist and think and be by myself, to write? Extemporaneous writing just doesn't do it for me. Just sit down and write ... but what if I have nothing to say? Sometimes I need to sift through my thoughts, to make sure everything is all clear, before words come out.
Write about what you know. Hmmm. Maybe I need to get out more. I don't particularly feel like writing Mom-lit. I love the little guy and find practically everything he does worthy of mention (did I tell you about his pteronadon song? "you are my friend pteronandon, you make me smile ..."). To write about him, however, would box me into this life. I need an escape hatch or, at the very least, a window to open to let in the breeze.
Just keep writing, 1000 - 2000 words a day, wrote a commenter here recently. I admit, I got defensive. It isn't so easy to just sit down and write so many words for me, partially because of the nature of my life (and I probably wouldn't be writing at all if I had a job outside the house) and partially because I've never written like that. I think too much, maybe, and the thoughts get tangled up in each other. My internal editor tries to sort things out, to make sure all is nice and neat before letting the words loose from my mind.
I have a friend (are you reading, Bob?) who shows up periodically in my in-box, long e-mails about his life, writing, academia, and philosophy. If he were working on the 2000 words a day quota, one e-mail would practically take care of it. Bob has always been this way -- the words flow. They're not always the most well-crafted, but he is a good writer and he gets there eventually. I'm jealous.
When I decided to start writing, Bob -- who has 3 children and teaches and writes for a living -- told me that he didn't know any writers who sit down for blocks of time and just write. Everybody fits it into the odd moment, writing ideas on a scrap of paper here, tapping away at a laptop there.
I'm creatively bereft at the moment. No ideas, no tapping. This is a theme here lately, but just writing about it makes me feel like I am getting back into the swing.
Say, how many words is this???
Watch this space
The hours were long and being exposed to the inner workings of the legislative branch got old. There was micromanagement. Basement darkness. So I quit and went to cooking school. Finished cooking school and had a baby. And when part of me slowly reawakened, I began writing.
One of the things I miss about the working world is creating things for the Web (another thing that might have my old colleagues scratching their heads). Although I'm not sure how many people read or use the web pages I created, I am still proud of them, though I've deleted links to them. This document has been edited now that I'm out of the closet.
I'm in the middle of redesigning this blog and putting together an Internet site using Rapidweaver. It's kind of like the old days, except I have more control and no technical support. I'm limping my way through and it's slow going. Hopefully it will be up in a week or so, but until it is I may not be posting as much or checking in with my friends.
See you soon.
experiment
the kid is asleep on my lap. the husband is asleep by my side. the visiting brother-in-law is coughing downstairs.
and I can't reach my cup of coffee.
Throw it away
Or write up my petty complaints on my blog? Bingo.
Right now I feel like a frustrated housewife who has this little writing pipe dream. I wish I had more energy at night to write with conviction. If only the kid went to sleep before 9:30. If only he went to sleep unassisted. If only I'd started writing a decade ago, when time spread out before me and my brain was just a wee bit larger.
I know I'm lucky to have this life, to have a little time. It's just enough time to waste.
And now he wakes ...
Schticktease
There are rays of light and days of song, where the sky seems ever-blue and the breeze off the bay refreshes, when C sleeps late and naps long, when words come flying out of my fingers onto the keyboard, and dinner is easy to prepare, delicious, and enjoyed by all.
But I have a schtick here, a theme, of apprehending the past and through that apprehension (!), forgiving myself and others.
Some days, a girl just isn't up to it. But the past will be there, waiting ...
Buzzer beater
(Begin boring complaint)
First, C got sick. Then H developed the same cold. When C gets sick, he sleeps like the baby he once was: poorly. Also violently, with lots of tosses and turns and kicks. When H gets sick, he snores more. My cold symptoms started on Tuesday, the same day C developed pink eye, guaranteeing that daycare was a no-go for Wednesday. Babysitter doesn't want pink eye either. Finally, after the first night of good sleep in five nights, yesterday C decided to skip a nap. I have pink eye for the first time since third grade. And I've spent most of his nap time today cleaning up in preparation for the babysitter (at least his pink eye went away).
(End of boring complaint)
Now he is awake. 'Later.
Nubbin brain
I'm 38 years old and I haven't written a creative word since I was an undergraduate. I don't expect it to come easily. The Mom and K project has an emotional heft that makes it difficult, too. And I seem to suffer from a twisted nostalgia, a real desire to inhabit the past, at least so I can write about it about it with some veracity. I'm trying to let go of my obsession with uber-accuracy, which helps when my literal mind gets caught up in the details.
Mark Doty has a good essay about memoir and truth in the latest Poets and Writers -- but now that I have H and C beside me reading a book, the nubbin brain is shrinking even more and I have a hard time bringing it to mind. Check it out if you can, though you'll probably have to get your hands on a physical copy.
Players win and winners play
Another long no napper today. My ole nubbin brain keeps on shrinking, with very little to show for it. I did learn that toddlers (at least my toddler) enjoy raking clean cat litter and can turn almost anything into a digger -- even themselves with the proper equipment (dust pan and litter scoop).
I'd like to transcend the day now, please.
I've been reading Beautiful Children , a first novel by Charles Bock. Some of it is very well done. The portrayal of how a marriage can slowly fall apart captures a sense of sadness and inevitability when people no longer communicate, can't bridge the distance they've built between themselves, but still care about each other. What happens to the couple when their only child goes missing is also poignantly written. Many of the characters are real and believable. It's a long and ambitious book with various interweaving story lines. I can feel the struggles he had writing it -- ten years and at least four rewrites -- and it is on the bombastic side, well maybe some lower form of bombasticity, since his language is simple for the most part. Just over the top. Maybe he should have stayed with the couple and their struggle, but I'm not sure that would have been as interesting for Bock or his readers.
Early sleep, no sleep nights
Then I wake up and can't get back to sleep again. My brain is buzzing. Lots to process in this do-little life.