domingo, octubre 31, 2004

The end may be near but...

Isn't the end always near for us humans? or for fruit flies? or for elephant walruses for that matter? Just because we can perceive and analyze our situation to a greater degree, it doesn't really serve us, when we come back to the primal fear of ceasing to exist, and not complying with our genetic mission... our need to endure.

So, instead of waxing philosophical, I thought that I would make light of the situation...

It is true, that often things seem black, and often times we are the ones responsible for painting the door itself black, hiding it from our own searching eyes in the muddled night of fear and solitude. But tonight I would like to remind myself (and anyone else who may be eavesdropping:) that there is still beauty and there is still purity and there is still good in the world, even if that will all eventually come to an end.

Isabella, dressed as tinkerbell, the duende/hada, with sparkling wings. Forgiving ourselves the cheesy american disnified "culture", and recalling that children are sweet and giving and love to please others, and masquerade, cloaked in their imaginations. These are the future, regardless of the fact that they may be born into wealth or poverty, love or indifference, they are still beautiful and shining and hopeful. Yes, hopeful. Maybe the worst thing that we could do is to lose our hope that there could be a way out. We can still walk to the polls on Tuesday, we can still cast a ballot in favor of life, of re-construction, even if we know that ultimately the goal is unattainable, shouldn't we join together in a chorus of what if.. of tomorrow, of please let us try some more?

The possibility of a kiss, from this beautiful fairy of mine, remind ourselves not to give up or give in.

sábado, octubre 30, 2004

All the bad, none of the good.

On my way home, feeling miserable and tired beyond belief, and having a face (it seems) that always conveys dissatisfaction or discontent (this really is the only face I have... I wish I could peel it back... but more on this in a bit). I was already imagining the release of sitting down and writing it all, metallic keys under my fingers, uninhibited due to lack of finger-nails.

Why I am an awful mother (being one right now, as I write and ignore Isabella's doleful petition for cold water with icy...)

I know in my conscious mind that she is exhausted and only behaving this way because I have dragged her from party to party, waking her from her in-car doze for the first party (at professor's house) only to stifle her creativity and desire for exploration so as to not bother all the catedráticos that were happily (and several decades away from me) schmoozing.

I even invented a horrible lie, that the "duendes" would bite her if we went up the path that lead to who-knows-where winding up the side of the mont, she, of course, didn't believe me, and the turth is, I only lied because I didn't want to leave the conversation I was having...

I am exploding, I can't deal with my personal space being invaded today... perhaps it is the lack of sleep... I can't respond sweetly, but instead with brusque and pushing rejection (I am evil, evil:( )of her prodding and pulling hands, her frigid feet, seeking warmth nestled between my legs.

She is so tired and well behaved, and yet, I want more. I want self-sufficiency (just five minutes, please!) from a four-year-old. I realize that I am being psychotic. After several hours of good behaviour and good-eating we left party one and arrived at party two. she had fallen asleep in the car (around 11) and stayed sleeping, wrapped in my shawl, unconscious of the light in the bedroom that people kept switching on, the flow of people into the bathroom, the amplified music...

---"You said you wouldn't be grumpy" accusatory interjection, as I can't stop from growling at her, as she continues to "just try to get comfortable" (I continue to be evil, I should be shot)---

Somewhere around 1 am, after we had been playing for a few hours, she wakens and wanders sleepily into the middle of the dancing mass, she lifts her arms and I continue to dance, (hips are wonderfully useful tools) and sing as she buries her face in the crook of my shoulder. Michelle comes and rescues me, and Isabella reaches for her "friend that is a girl" (she has several) who steals her away to another bedroom. She doesn't sleep yet, and watches a bit of "Lord of the Rings".
Meanwhile, I grow tired too, and feel guilty, though I was digging the groove of the young Brazilian saxophonist, and the raw rub of our voices. I realize that my voice hurts from the smoke, and the sustained volume, and so, I take just one shot of tequila to feel the warmth run down and cradle my strained vocal chords.

I lay down next to her, but the light is bothersome (at least to me, preferring absolute pitch black for sleep to come) and she cannot get comfortable. I allow her to slip her hand between my breasts, if only so that she will suck herself into sweet oblivion, but am again annoyed and unfairly, too harshly remove her hand again. It is 3:30 on the clock when we get home. I can't sleep yet and I am freezing, so I turn on the heater and huddle, shivering on the bathroom floor, with my (subversive) reading material.

It is 8:30, and I am up again, bathing us both, getting us ready and out the door... forcing her to wear a dress (really there are no other options because I have neglected the laundry for two weekends now.) She doesn't want to and I tell her I don't care what she wants. A battle of wills, mine wins because I am eternally crueler, telling her that I will just leave her behind if she doesn't hurry... (my obsession with punctuality will be the ruin of me or of her). This, of course, is not true being that I have no one to babysit even if I wanted to leave her behind, which I don't... I remind her that this is a grown-up conference (no, not a halloween conference) and that she needs to be absolutely silent. She agrees.

And she maintains an attentive silence for the first 35 minutes, only whispering observations and questions "¿qué es la huella materna? I think she may be paying better attention than me, or any of the other conference-goers, for that matter. I hold her close to me and then silently, she begins to play, not a peep, but moving in and out from underneath my billowing silk skirt, tickling, inadvertently, my inner thighs, utterly inappropriate thoughts for this setting are sparked, but strangely everything seems to be speaking to me, to the same end. We really only hear the things that we want to, or maybe we just extract from all communication the essence that will best serve our immediate purposes. The stories of the deconstruction of love, the voyeuristic isolation of the "modern" couple, the surprise encounters and dis-encounters... We slip out the door, to finish setting up the PA and "stage", the guitar wire that I forgot in my dazed stupor the night before having been replaced. Glares and silence. I return alone, only to have her be lead back to me 20 minutes later, by a stranger - the site manager, it would seem- tears drying on her face, still maintaining her promised code of silence, not interrupting the solemn occasion, but parodying my facial gestures distorted by... rage? (god, is that the angry shushing face I make?) she puffs up her cheeks, apeing me, feigning anger as she puts a finger up to her lips... whispers, "do I have to tell you one more time?", cocks her head and angles an open palm as if to threaten a spank... A crystal-clear reflection of the unpleasant mother, the mother that I never want to be, but that I am finding myself more and more. Then she cracks a smile, and begins wiggling on my lap, as I desperately try to listen to what is being expounded upon, she initiates a game of footsy with the woman sitting on the creaky wooden floor, in the aisle to the left of me. She giggles silently, another section of the conference ends and we slip out once more, now to wait, to help organize the food, to be useful. She sits down with a new friend to discuss how boring it is inside. The queen is again holding court.

We begin to play, as a sort of closing to the event, as people mingle and eat. Takes the pressure off, not having an actively attentive audience. We make no embarrasing mistakes (in fact we sound very good), but Isabella is volleyed away with unyielding hands, I bounce her backwards, too forcefully. "No you may not sing today" Repressive fascist authoritarian figure am I. (Evil, I insist.)

It is over, food and instruments are packed away, and we are driving around, we pass a playground and I don't insist on stopping the car despite her exclamations. We decide that it doesn't make sense for us to go home just so he can turn around and come back down-town for work... anti-ecological, too. Suddenly, we hear the pulsing bass of Reggae and stop the car. Hempfest (pathetically mundane) at the courthouse. I want to dance and dance, to lose myself, but Isabella is tired and feeling ignored and stepping on my skirt. I keep making the unpleasant faces at her as she is playing too near the speaker stands. She begins a race towards me, pushing back, swatting at me, the agression turned back upon me, her frustration. She is not enjoying this, but as I whisk her into my arms and twirl her, she laughs, and wants to repeat it over and over, running at me. Stop!!! I finally am at the end of my rope, "You are hurting mommy's back Isabella. Don't run at me!" Glare, bullish pawing of the ground. I decide not to catch her and she slams into my knee-cap, in her upper thigh. It had to hurt. She cries but lets me comfort her. "I don't like you mommy! (I don't like myself today, either) I just love you a little bit. Not very much - just up to the moon, but not back... If you were nice I would love you a lot." (Would that the same offer be available in other areas of life)

Two more hours of waiting at the shelter. She and I make ourselves scarce, slouched together in an arm-chair, trying to find a suitable program on TV. Praise be! I don't have one of these useless cable boxes in my house. There is nothing mutually satisfying and so I let her watch a "kids" show, banal and mindless, we switch to home decorating. Home envy. I will probably never own a home, not in CA anyway... oh well. I switch off. I am feeling caged now, so is she. We come out of the private cave... duty is almost over, we wait, not demurely, she fidgets with everything. I bark like a drill-sergeant. "Stop touching everything!" We go to the car to wait, crying. "I want to snuggle, if you would snuggle with me I wouldn't cry!" "No, I don't want to." "Then I want to leave you" "Ok" "No! mommy, " more buzzing whine, more me being mean. I feel like my brain is being rattled. "Please just _shut up_" Horrid words, you don't say that to a child and yet, I just _did_, and it felt like my only option. I can't take this...

Next stop. Ok, come snuggle, she climbs from her car-seat and cradles herself against me in the front passenger seat, reclining, feeling anxious and ambivalent and tired. Ok. We can do this, if I can just make it home and write... I can stop this feeling...

Well, I got home (here I am) and re-read myself, et.al, and felt pleased again (briefly), safe, my heart racing and then relaxing, breathing as I write, to purge this negativity. I guess all mothers have some bad days... But I hate being the worst.


Post Script... If I wasn't bad enough...

This morning she wakes up, looks at me and says. I love you mommymom, and I say, I love you babybabe and she says you are so sweet, sweet, sweet. and I give her a quizzical look? Am I? She responds, "well, I will always tell you I love you no matter what, even if you are being grumpy." Unconditional love. Yes, there is a reason that we breed after all, and I don't care what anyone says, pets just don't cut it.

viernes, octubre 29, 2004

WMD

Las verdaderas armas de destrucción masiva - la aniquilación pandémica del individual
(or what really destroys us)

Words, mots, discurso

Women, men, desamor

Wont, mediación, depuración

Wanting more dessert

Warped meanings, desconcierto

Why me? Defined.

Watching monstruous deeds.

Waffling, miedo, desasosiego

Wandering minds (mouths?) + dedos

Wallowing, marked (by) destierro

Well meaning diálogo

Water: metered, deviated

Wide-spread machinistic difusión

Waiting... melosa desintegración

Wheedling mundane domesticity

Wasted memoria (de) desaparición

Washington's machista demagogos

Willing myself (to) die

White men deciding (the most destructive force of all!)






weakly............ melting ...................... down.........................

jueves, octubre 28, 2004

Walking the divine path (to class)

Stopping mid-conversation to watch,
as I pass,
eye-brows arched as he imagines my back arching in ecstasy,
undressing me as I flash a smile,
throwing off the rest of my vestments to the winds.
A flash in the pan,
a moment of divine union,
before my heels click,
with renewed bounce,
purged, illuminated and unified in the ephemeral gaze of another.
The letting go, the melting. I have come.

miércoles, octubre 27, 2004

Madame Bovary... only 4c to send to a boy in the armed forces

"She had been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little more love."


"For very weariness, Charles left off going...Heloise had made him swear, his hand on the prayerbook, that he would go there no more, after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that this interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her."

---Gustave Flaubert (I _am_ sorry, but this particular (ancient) copy in translation was one of the only _random_ books that made it here on the first round, oh and my French is horrific too. n'est pas?)

more squash soup. yum. and some more ranting or panting

Emboldened housewife. ha ha. takes on the challenge of conquering a fridge devoid of all but olives that were harvested with the best of intentions and then forgotten, like most things, half a squash and a splash of milk that _someone_ left out. Using my secret mommy powers (because it is always me who is somehow responsible for the feeding of the child _even_ if I get home at 8...) I guiltlessly plagiarized a recipe from the internet, and what I lacked in spices (I guess the cardamom and coriander got left behind) I made up for with panache and pumpkin pie spice. I was even able to dig up the ends of shredded mozzarella to throw in for good measure. Kudos to whoever the author was;)...and thanks, because once again I got to eat a real meal (albeit liquid) instead of just beer. We have a closet full of Guinness (left over from last weekend - after being accused of not planning for enough drinks) - oh wait - I hate drinking beer, unless I am pounding it shamelessly to lose myself in a drunken stupor - which hasn't happened, truly, since the night that J.J., M.A, and N. and I finished a whole bottle of "Cabritos" reposado in a half-hour. It ended badly, N. and I. on the bathroom floor, sharing girly "secrets", then all four of us in the bed that was mine and JJ.s and then split in half, and mine and MA.s I couldn't purge the noxious alcohol and was still moaning drunk, wimpering on the Zebra couch of my furnished apartment, and JJ ignoring me, and MA playing the eternally sensitive and understanding pretendiente (but who was then jealous of the boyfriend that was mine first (and heartlessly discarded) and the girl who had stolen away with me... and all I wanted was to be young and free:(

I should have just gotten out when I had the chance. That was the house with the balcony, that is where I waited to be rescued. That is also where I probably got pregnant, and then never got roaring drunk again, even after the behemoth party that I threw as a departing "gift" to the evil upstairs inhabitants. If you have never thrown a party so big that there are people who you have never met (and none of your close friends have either) still sleeping in strange and uncomfortable positions when you awake in the morning, I don't recommend it, especially not when feeling conflicted about a "surprise" pregnancy and looking madly for an ex-pat doctor. No good, no good at all. So do the math and consider that my dining prospects were indeed looking slim.

Now I am happily fed and Isabella is being baby-sat via video chat with her Bobie, across the country. Amazing what some nourishment can do for the body and the soul. That and being left alone, with no guilt trips about not paying enough attention to others and spending all my time in front of the screen... I am making up for five lost years, dammit! I was meditating on the perfection of the burrito for lunch. Truly it has everything one could need...but I seemed to have lost my train of thought. I could take the Isabeline approach and anounce I love you to everyone or no one, and then start over. Yes, I think that is exactly what I will do.

So, to continue my incited rant, why is it that invariably _all_ (I believe that I have incontrovertible evidence, supported by longitudinal studies across cultures) men expect us to work around their schedule, their needs, their desires? Sisters, we should really move on... But as a very sexy sister reminds me on a daily basis (and we never get any work done in our office, but we do drink a lot of mate) there is this je ne sais quois... about men. I think it must be the eternal mother in us that genuflects to the eternal infantile, nipple-sucking child. We've been duped. I swear. But plastic tools are just not the same... not even strapped on:( (or should I try?)

Shall I stop now? I fixed a big problem today at work and generated "eternal" gratitude (from a man - nothing is eternal), and at the same time, was warned that I needed to be less aggressive in pursuing my goals in Academia, or at least we should practice interviewing so that I wouldn't piss off or frighten the stodgy old farts that will be judging me eventually. Ha. maybe they'll all just die by the time I get there, and then the women will be in charge. Of course, then we will start by tearing eachother down one by one. No such thing as female solidarity, not in any unifying sense. When will we learn that the old boys are just covering up for eachother's inadequacies while we are eternally doubting and trying to ameliorate ours? Fixing our hair or our lipstick, wondering if we are too fat or too thin to be loved or respected. We should just start covering one another's asses, or breasts or whatever it is that we have left hanging out and flapping about and causing shame.

I refuse, yes, refuse to be broken. Fuck the system, if I waste the next six years of my life and no one ever hires me... who fucking cares anyway? I will still be alive and capable and I will still have my scathing tongue and razor sharp analytic (hee hee) scythe... Head of Holofernes anyone? I am feeling a bit like Judith tonight. Or perhaps I will be Delilah, and cut off his hair while he sleeps... Remember Lorena Bobbitt? I bet I know how she felt...

Ok, ok. words are much stronger than they should be. But lacking any physical outlet for all this frustration, all I have left to adorn my naked body are argent, dripping, beaded and beautiful words of anger to chase away the shame.

more bad poetry

Orfeo,
¿Dónde estás ? Hoy mi sol no se asoma,
la noche languidece… eternizándose en los momentos
que… pasan… lentamente, como gotas de agua,
como las lágrimas que no saben caer,
como la sangre que no corre más.
¿Dónde está tu lira? ¿Los cantos que me cantabas?
¿Estarás engendrando otros hijos con tu Venus preferida?
Orfeo, tienes el brillo del sol dorado encarcelado entre tus manos.
¡Oh!, y mi canto ya no te puede llamar, y mi cuerpo de arpa
sin cuerdas por tocar.
¿Orfeo, me has dejado de amar?

Euridice





A huipil hanging from a cross.
The sacrifice in its supplication.
A hole to the center of the universe.
And all things missing and destroyed by the
splintering and splitting of the earth,
consumed by their eternally inward journey.

A cross, dressed in woman, in the birthing, bleeding
breathing, feeding of life. Feeding on death.
Freedom from the terrestrial, ripped from the breast.
Liminal spaces where our footsteps fall on fecund earth.
Slipping, though, the cenote breaks open,
the currents below the surface, circling, spiraling.

Into nothingness, and everything all at once.



martes, octubre 26, 2004

Jobs anyone?

I just received word from Javier that he wants to set up a youth exchange program with an Irish associate, to send over-privileged Spanish children to the U.S. While the prospect of a large chunk of change finding its way into the negative space that I have created for all things monetary, I will have to decline. One summer of hell was enough for me...

It made me think, about all the jobs that I have done... Now my curriculum vitae is decidedly short (and rather embarassing) so I thought I would post it... logically, right? My dear friend Jenny has a fabulously, totally true, secret c.v. of inappropriate jobs. I wish I could be as creative as she, but alas, I am bound by my (frighteningly rigid) personal parameters...

In a rough sketch of my life, I am trying to include all professional things (meaning: jobs for pay... sort of)

1) First entrepreneurial enterprise. Age 6. Blocking doorway of main hallway in Temple Law school, charging toll for students to pass (I hate to say it, but I think that this was my idea and _not_ Ari's. Once. We actually made quite a sum until my mother, an administrator in the international arm of the school came out of class and duly admonished us. We got to keep the money, though.

2) First "real" job. Age 12... Baby-sitter. Lasted for many, many years. I got to deal with all kinds of things, like how to casually ignore my charge's masturbation while my boyfriend and I were hanging out.

3) First (and last) job in an office. Age 16, and getting a whopping $6 an hour (a lot, actually for the going rate). File coordination of busy personal injury law firm. Amusing and really bizarre, ran across cases with not one, but two, boyfriend's families, the current one, whose mother, a doctor, was being undone by that exact malpractice suit. (I felt really bad about it and _never_ told said boyfriend where I worked!)

4) Summer au pair (sp?). Age 18. Nice job, free use of family jeep during week, gas included, partied all night, dragged myself out of bed to go to their house, slept until boys got up. Took boys out with discretionary cash... Made lots of money...

4a) This doesn't really count, but a really funny episode where Robbie, Meghan and I got paid to sing at a trade show selling... Oh yes, Apple Pies, from Gordon, the apple pie fascist. I guess our choice of revolutionary protest songs was not the best of repertoires, but we had fun anyhow.

5) Cafe worker and over-all lackey. Age 18. Bryn Mawr's owl cafe, where, it would happen, a certain Colombian man liked to hang out. This job only lasted one semester. I hated smelling my hair permeated with fry grease and old-dish-rag essence. And my co-worker smoked way too much during the week, all around bad influence.

6) Nude model. Age 18-19. This was much more fun, and the power dynamic was so strange. Better pay than food service, but not that good. Still, a little weird because on my way to Biology class I would always run into one of the professors who took the night class for which I modelled. Had to stop.

7) Summer program coordinator. Age 19. Got to spend a lot of time with "at risk" (hate that term) bilingual children. Amazing how generous we are as children. I wonder what happens as we grow, these kids would eat only half their lunches, so they could take the rest home for the little brothers or sisters not in the program. Really got to know the state of NH and visit many State Parks, museums etc. Totally worth it (but only for a summer) the following year I volunteered, and the releasing of the pressure made it much better, plus it helped that I was in "love" (read: offering much more of myself than he could have possibly been worth) with the man who was running it.

8) Brief stint as a clerk for whole-foods grocery store. Age 19. Evil. Snooty, stuck-up people on the Main Line should not be allowed to eat good food. Period. I lasted about 3 weeks until the woman demanding that I magically materialize the wheatgrass or whatever she wanted that was not in stock pushed me over the edge. Awful pay, no benefits.

8b) I forgot! Age 19. Lanscaping and gardening assistant. An attempt to work outdoors with the world's most god-awful dolt of a man from, no it wasn't Prince Edward Island... oh, Nova Scotia. Yes well, there is something to be said for endogenous (is that the right word?) populations... A bit like a late Hapsburg the poor fellow...

9) Tutor. Age 21. nothing exciting, bad pay through the university, but once I started on my own, I made a ballsy move and now charge $60 an hour or up... (though I hear the pay for sex workers is even better, and perhaps less skill intensive?)

10) Translator/ Interpreter. Age 22 sporadic awful work. Lawyers are truly evil, even if my mother was one. Medical translation was more fun, I got to tap into my latent love of science.

11) Teacher of High School Spanish. Age 22 (please strap a bomb to me if I ever contemplate this again. I won't, I know). There are fabulous people in the profession, but I, alas, am not one of them, my tendency towards fatalism and political strife don't go well with bureaucracy, especially not in the Libertarian, conservative New England towns from whence I come (ok, there I go appropriating again... I _actually_ come from the repressive Republican hot bed of Nether Providence, in a lovely suburb of Philadelphia... but yanked myself out in the mid-stages of my formation, causing all kinds of gender confusion - wait that doesn't really have anything to do with this...more later)

12) Exchange program coordinator. Age 23. Lots of money, even more stress. Awful, awful, awful. Asking (begging really) people to host students for free and finding activities for cheap, while company owners skimmed as much creamy profit off the top of the over-priced tuition as possible.

13) Next (and one of few) paying jobs as a singer. Age 23. Who ever said participating in a creative project with a spouse was a way to bring you closer together was insane, especially when you need to come up with over two hours of music! Add two philosophically opposed people to a group of three and watch the third run screaming... But we still play together once in a while, having a few programs at museums and universities and such. Not so much these days, though we will be playing this weekend in downtown, if we practice, that is...

14) College language instructor. Most recent endeavor. Very enjoyable, not at all time-consuming. That's why I have to create dilemmas in my life, like... should I do my work, or should I write incessantly to no one... Well, I guess it is clear what choice I have made.

So that's it. Pretty pathetic. My life reduced to a very short and very boring list of jobs. Although, I will be looking for more work this summer, so maybe I can get creative. Never done telemarketing... hear it is awful. Maybe the masochist in me (the one who HATES bothering people on the phone) will look for a self-anhilating job... Just so I can feel sorry for myself. But, then summer is so far away, I may be dead by then, having been pitched ferociously from my squeaky bike. (I really must take it to be greased or something... especially after Chet's accident today - don't want to be at the mercy of strangers or passing professors)

Happy thoughts for this rainy Tuesday.

speaking in tongues

Wet! Wet! Wet!

Cold and wet... Hot and wet... which one am I today? ;)

Amazing what one little change in qualifier can do to a concept, changing our linguistic schema... evoking such very unrelated images.

Pathos... destruction and solitude

or

Lude indiscretion...

Take your pick. Lenguas, langues, langorous longing, isn't language delicious? Maybe I'll eat words for lunch.

lunes, octubre 25, 2004

Aaaagh, still can't sleep

I really am tired, but I can't sleep. More linguistic bullying - it is _never_ a good idea to pair two people who always think that they are right. I feel so frustrated, this shouldn't be so hard, I am a relatively intelligent person, why can't I make things work the way they are supposed to? Perhaps too much stock has been put into social constructs, or contracts between two people. What are our responsibilities to one another? Do we owe people something just because we love them? Do we owe one person more than another because of their temporal placement in our lives? How do we assign value to love and competing interests? Why do we choose to protect the people that we do?

I am fantasizing (must stop) about publishing my first book. How will my name appear? Will I use my maiden name or my married name or both? What if I am not married anymore (anger speaking)? Do I get to keep the name? Am I coopting or appropriating unfairly, identifying with something I am not (for self-serving purposes)? Have I earned the right to wear a name like a badge? What I would _really_ like is for someone to call me by my secret middle name. That would never make it onto the book cover, but I wish to be called this by someone at some point in my life. I would also like to call Isabella by her other name, I picked it especially for her, Sofía, one with the English (or Italian) spelling and the other with the Spanish, a compromise, but both equally pronounceable in both languages, our attempt at smoothing over the continental divide.

There is something predictable and soothing about writing to fill an empty screen, previously an empty page. I can't believe I didn't start doing this sooner, but I guess life has a way of offering us little treasures when we _most_ need them, when we are ready to accept them. Oh the bitter irony. Those who live by the sword die by the sword, those who live by the pen, must therefore also die by the pen? I wish that I had a magic eraser (like the Shel Silverstein poem that has suddenly fascinated Sofía) so as to white out, do over, undo the mistakes in my life, the places that cause me pain and sadness. If I could do things better than I have done, I would, but it seems so unfair that I should be judged so harshly by my detractors.
I don't like to think of myself as a bad person, but lately, it seems to be the theme, and if it weren't for a small person, I would truly believe that I am un-lovable in every way. I don't know what upsets me more, cruel words or passive aggressive silence. They both reek, and wreak havoc on my self-esteem. What? self-esteem, but you insist that I am the most selfish of all people, well maybe it seems that way, but it's just preemptive self-defense. As girls we learn a lot about self-defense, ruffling our feathers like a peacock, not to attract but to warn, a baring of fangs, a hiss... my back is up when you touch me because it is the reaction that I have learned.

This is not meant for anyone's eyes but my own, so if you are reading this and feel alluded to, fuck off, tonight it is not about you. I am anxiously awaiting the diaries whose secrets were robbed. This public forum allows me to repent and reveal without fear of reprisal or repercussion specifically because there is _nothing_ hidden, no expectation of privacy and therefore no trust to be broken. Low expectations ergo no crushing, bewildering dissappointment. At least that is the idea. Reality has a habit of twisting even our most carefully laid plans, and well, if you are a mouse, the cat might just be coming, but then that is what a mouse might expect from life, right? If we nullify our existence, we undress, deconstructing our own funeral pyre, do we undo the greatness of our ultimate departure?

As always my words are like snow falling in the forest, untouched by human life, a sparrow may alight, and mingle with the chilling, thrilling, falling flakes, but nothing else, to disturb the peacefulness of silence and solitude, a prisoner within herself, the warden dangling the keys...

Outline for my "novel" memoirs

So, this is mostly just so that I am forced to see it in print and perhaps be motivated to actually begin writing. Gargantuan task... what I really want to do, but will have to put off until there is some free time. Or will I just steal the time from my sleeping body? I may have to wait until my week in Palm Springs (yuck... but I will have lots of alone time being with parents who really just want to see grandchild...freedom, swimming pools for the (no longer) baby, hiking excursions, a trip across the border. I can't believe I am actually looking forward to this, but I will be able to realize my goal of hanging out at a hotel bar alone:) On another note, I think my web page is finally up, due mostly to the work of the more technologically inclined member of my household...

Now for the real part - Dun dun... the chapters (in working title format - still need to find the right songs to attach to them, but some progress has been made)

1)It’s the end of the world as we know it… a steel bird takes flight, prisoner without a name and the synagogue bombings.

2) Leo Feito and Le Petit Café

3) Día de primavera, dinosaur bones, frustration and the intricacies of truco

4)Rocío, a wool sweater and the defense of class (big brother begins his descent) and privileges rescinded

5) Julieta’s house – a den of sin and vice (safety from prying eyes) ice-cream and 27 perros de la calle

6) Breaking apart, Christmas and eating meat, Nachito, Lagarto, Alejandro, El Negro and the end of Leo in the boliche

7) A death of me – sickness comes, sickness goes, a father figure abuses his power

8) The vivero and a rape skillfully avoided, Hugo’s treason, understanding the subjunctive

9) An amnesiac society, and the beginning of my legacy of getting in the middle of happy couples (the rest will be in forthcoming memoirs, maybe)

10) Gabriel and a chance meeting on the 9 de Julio

11) Ivan in the cemetery, an asado and a new beginning

12) More misunderstandings, near death experience, and another close call

13) Pablo and the midnight visits at Julieta’s hotel, Mar del Plata, virginity prevails

14) Rocío, her moto and finding my voice

15) Sofía, pan de miel and Leo reappears

16) Cecilia, wallowing in delicious misery, the panaderos and the thrown coffee pot

17) A trip to Brazil and Buenos Aires, Gabriel and another chance meeting on another 9 de Julio.

18) Gabriela’s secret beatings, and the politics of race and class, my sorrow and outrage

19) French class, Beth’s loss and tragedy abounds

20) Gabriel and Alma Fuerte, too many expectations, treatise on how to love too many people (or not love anybody at all)

21) A new journey to a new land, from winter to summer in 24 hours, the end…

Walk the vote?

“I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink…
I’m so tired, my mind is on the brink…”

The Beatles' White Album is wandering through my mind, thinking of Michelle and the little piggies and my parents basement where my brother and I spent hours on end: my watching him play the old text-based video games, for hours, really (I loved reading about the damage points incurred and accrued from encounters with Zombies). I also yearn for the musty smell so unique to a basement, or a cava, not quite like the must of a library, but close, when you analyze the overtones... The feeling is overwhelmingly familiar, the watery smell, descending as if to the river Styx, and yet eternally evanescing into the recesses of my memory. I remember being enraptured with the hippie-era, longing to have been a part of some greater movement. Only now do I realize that there wasn’t really any one movement towards any goal, but mostly a bunch of posers and band-wagon hoppers, hoping to cash in on the free love and free drugs being offered. Thinking about ’68, ten years before I was born, and the grass roots student movements and the offering and crushing of human life that seemed so romantic and purposeful to a child of the late 70’s

Maybe this new quagmire will be a chance for the younger generation to feel purposeful too. After the excessive loveless sex of the 80’s (I read about, clearly not being a participant) and the AIDS crisis, what is there left for us anymore? We were terrorized by the “just say no” campaign, being warned to avoid receiving gifts from fifth-graders bearing stickers as they were bound to have been immersed in LSD, instantaneously addicting us, permanently altering our brain chemistry and causing us to run into the street or throw ourselves out second story windows while hallucinating massive white dogs chasing us, like what happened to little Billy. Really, didn’t they realize that they were just de-sensitizing us to it all, and actually giving some of us ready access to bad ideas? Then we were assaulted in our teenage years with the abstinence campaign of the religious right. I would like to think that my abstinence was not in conformity, but rather in rejection of everything, but more likely than not, it was my hypochondria coupled with my basic unattractiveness to boys of my own age/race/class/social group (in other words the one’s to whom I would have access).

I opened the mail-box today, full of glossy photos of candidates, the Governor and his meaty masculine bullish smile, definitely not a man I would like to run into alone in a dark alley or even a dark thoroughfare for that matter. He looks to me like all that is wrong with the male half of the species and his “pumped-up” look just makes me want to hide. The mailings spin which way to vote (I think the people that lived here before us were Republicans (the house could indeed use a good karmic cleansing, and if I were actually Californian, I might even buy into that new-age crap – but I am not… a recent transplant from the East, eternally more up tight, and pragmatic). This is one that caught my attention… mind you, this is Governor Scwarzenegger’s analysis, and we all know the rigorous study of economic policy and social behaviour to which he was privy in the Hollywood grease bowl… (between films promoting ultra-violence, oh wait I mean supporting the NRA).

“Proposition 66 waters down ‘three-strikes’ law” – Now of course, we don’t want any of those violent people of color to get out of jail free, I mean, isn’t incarceration a rite of passage for you if you were born in East LA? And besides, isn’t our tax money better spent on building more prisons and paying more lawyers to “defend” such a dangerous element – really who needs decent wages, good schools and medical care when they can have a hand-out from behind bars?

Oh and heaven forbid those damn “Indians” can turn an economic trick (prop 68, 70), draining the wallets of good upstanding citizens, and the government can’t even control it? Well that just doesn’t seem right, after all what were _they_ doing on _our_ land anyway, we should just stick a needle into their collective arm, a lethal injection to eradicate the last remnants of the culture we destroyed. We’ll all feel much better, and then we can re-write the history books with no one to protest… Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside…

Fuck this. What am I doing here? Nothing. I should be out moving voters to the polls in swing states, but wait! I am one of those disenfranchised voters, I need child-care and transportation to the polls. What is this world coming to? I wish, wish, wish, wish that I could offer myself up as a human sacrifice, arming a mass suicide protest, (it suddenly makes quite a bit of sense). I imagine that this is how people who cut themselves feel, better with the blood-letting, the gush, the warmth, the control over one, tiny aspect of their lives.

I am feeling tragic again, but not to worry, I like living more than the thought of not-living, and frankly, if I am going to choose in which useless state to remain, it might as well be this one (geographical and metaphorical).

domingo, octubre 24, 2004

Tar baby

The wind is in from Africa,
Last night I couldn’t sleep.
Oh you know it sure is hard to leave you,
But it’s really not my home…
My finger-nails are filthy,
I’ve got beach tar on my feet,
And you know I miss those clean white linens
And that fancy French cologne…
---Carey (Joni Mitchell)


I discovered the remnants of this afternoon’s walk (not hike:( lacking correct footwear, obviously) on my right foot, from the beach at Coal Oil Point. The sun still warms, it seems, though just inland, under the shade trees of the family village, the air has a damp chill. Isabella wanted to swim and finally convinced me to let her, it should be noted that I made her take off her shirt so as to have something warm for later. She would have taken off the shorts too, but she had dressed herself and had no underwear, so I let her get them wet, opting initially for “propriety” but then, after co-parental clearance, allowed her to parade naked. After all, there was hardly a soul around, and no one from whom to fear lascivious intrusions. The light was marvelous, bathing Isabella’s body in a golden glow as she splashed about, jumping over the lapping waves. We set out alone, as our mission was nothing more than accompanying the docent on his two hour Sunday stint, telescope behind, she and I lazily walked along the water’s edge. Today it didn’t feel tragic, but rather full of breath-taking life. In addition to the spectacularly gallant seagull perched on a mussel-covered rock, there were sea-anemone, barnacles and a strange long-beaked bird whose identity was a mystery to me. The water was warm enough to allow myself the pleasure of a barefoot, up to the ankle cleansing, and every five meters Isabella stopped to make sand-pies or to exfoliate her belly. And as I drifted back and forth, my mind wandering to secret pleasures, and the inner smile outwardly manifesting itself, I looked up, past Isabella and was floored. There, just ten meters out were a colony of dolphins, arching playfully, the glistening skin, reflecting the light. Isabella, Isabella, Isabella look! I am unable to express my excitement, she comes bounding towards me, never once looking where I want her to. What mommy? No, look! Dolphins!!!

Where, where? As her eyes comb the sand behind me and not the sea behind her. I turn her little muscularly naked body back to the ocean and she can’t see them because they have submerged themselves. I lift her to see above her limited horizon, and they re-emerge, the curvature of their fins one of nature’s most perfect shapes, and then one lifts its tail and splashes as if in salutation. I feel complete. Mommy, remember when we did “dolphin dives” (our special game during swimming time when I was teaching her two years ago). We wander a bit more, and I get a phone call asking if I can speak to the nice family about their dog not being on a leash. I feel the light fabric of my skirt blow up, baring my thighs, as I approach them. I am very sorry to bother you, I say. If you could keep your dog on a leash while you are in the reserve area, that would be wonderful… I truly detest bothering other people or telling them what to do, especially when the beautiful Golden looked so pleased… and too worn-out and panting to chase birds, but probably still enough of a nuisance to disturb their breeding patterns. Dogs are good at disturbing breeding habits of all kinds... still I felt bad, having enjoyed my own freedom so much that chasing away others made me feel, well, a bit police-like, which is the opposite of free.

I shrugged off the negativity - after all the family was very pleasant; a younger mother, two small children a grand-mother and a man who could have been either the father of the small children or of their mother, but who emanated a kindly possession over the smaller ones, which made me think that he was indeed their father and not grandfather. I watched them pack up, leash the lovely dog, pack one child into a large stroller and the smaller one into a backpack that the mother carried… hmm. Maybe it was the grandfather after all, because all he did was push the stroller. Well, I’ll never know, but sometimes these are the moments from which I would like to steal the characters for my stories.

Isabella and I drifted back towards our commencing point, she wanted to see her daddy, she said, but then stopped to make a sand banquet. We returned, and rolled around in the warm sand, the sky a strangely electric blue, and the sun a piercing white ball through my sunglasses. Then she decided that it would be fun to climb the “mountain” and raced across the sand to scale the hill. Her daddy kept calling her back, not wanting her to get tar all over her bum, but I was the one who ended up with the unknowing and tenacious souvenir.

Then it was all over as quickly as it had begun, or maybe not quite. The earlier visit to the museum to see Casasolas’ work left me wishing that I had more hours in the day and more lifetimes to live in reverse. So many eras places that I wish I had existed and that I am amazed to find that the range of human feeling was in essence the same. There was a photograph of a group of "homosexuals" being paraded into the police station, their heads lifted in defiance and finding the spark of attraction in the lense of the camera, an electric impulse transported through time and place. I wonder if we are all just seeking immortality. The life that springs forth from our bodies, the work we produce, the images we trap and isolate and record, are they just a way to shroud ourselves in immortality, to defy the solitude that circles?

But the sun shining on her glossy chestnut head and her teeth, white, smiling, mouth saying mommy I love you, reminds me that in solitude there is always company, and in company there is always solitude, we just spend our lives trying to strike the appropriate balance.

Relatively skimpy list of books to read while wallowing in melancholy

So, it seems that people dear to my heart are feeling nostalgic and blue... I never have any good advice, but what _I_ always do is just wallow and let the emotion sweep over me. Books are my one (one? who am I kidding) selfish pleasure to extend the melancholy and lift it to quite another level, so I thought a list of books would be an appropriate offering. Then I remembered that my library is en route and my memory is horrific, so the list will be very short, and inaccurate, too. (my version of an annotated bibliography:)

"La tregua " (Benedetti) amazing and crushing and metaphorical for all that is wrong with this world and aging alone... also short and probably available in English translation for those who don't read Spanish.

"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" (fuck me if I can remember the author's name...) but the ache for what has been lost and the miracle of what has been gained,needless to say, it's well worth it.

"Ten Thousand Lovers" (I promised myself that I would remember the name of the author - she is an Israeli living in Canada, damn, and it was a library book...) This book actually moved me to tears on several occasions, and it shed a very interesting light on the Israel/Palestine situation, while never failing to leave me wanting to be in bed with the main characters.

"The Wings of the Angel" (maybe this is the title - something to that effect - by Nancy Huston) I read the English translation from the original French, but it was the author's own translation (and she is a native English speaker) for whatever that is worth. Unbelievably beautiful and eloquent, and fraught with angst relating to the Algerian "situation" in Paris of the 60's.

"Birds of America" (ok, not a novel, perhaps better, book of short stories by Lorrie Moore) Too many different things to outline, just read it...or don't.

"The Good Terrorist" ( Dorris Lessing) Well it has been forever and a day since I read this, but if my memory serves me this is the right one (or was it "Memoirs of a Survivor"?) it reminds me of why I continue to get up every day, and actually hope to make some bit of unmeasureable difference in the world. (and why I am not truly an activist)

"The Sparrow" (shit. can't remember either HA! I remembered, Mary Doria Russell) Science fiction, mixed with religion and the discovery of sentient life on another planet. I connected with the chaste and longing-to-be-not-so priest, a linguist and a humanist who ultimately... well why tell y'all the ending?

"Singer from the Sea" (Sherri S. Teppen) Also science fiction and decidedly not my genre of choice, but meriting recognition for its posture on eco-feminism and the renewing earth force (ok - this one should be for whenever anyone is ready to wade back out of the melancholy, when ready to feel angry again)

"...(something) blue...(something)" (I am awful - it's by the woman who wrote "The girl with the Pearl Earring" (This one too! - Tracy Chevalier)but actually much better in my opinion) I liked the unravelling of the protagonist and the setting in the French countryside (maybe only because I have never been and the construction of it was the attraction - but the small-town gossip reminded me of my time in Miramar, always fearing the old ladies reports back on me and at the same time thumbing my nose at them)

"Good Harbor" -( Ann Diamant) After reading "The Red Tent" and wanting to be Dinah in her moment of incineration, I borrowed this - nothing alike at all - but somehow this is more suited to melancholy and the questioning of quotidienne existence, the search for pleasure or change or both. (It is also set in one of my very favorite beach towns on Cape Ann)


and for good measure...

"Under the Skin" (Michel Faber) This was rescued from the free pile in Isla Vista upon arrival in SB, and perhaps for no other reason than that it makes the short-list. But, the loneliness and isolation of Isserley matched my own...


- Here's to the escapists in all of us... (now drink)

I give up!

So the attempt at web-design has found itself onto the server but looks nothing like it is supposed to or how it did on my screen. Aaaaagh! I suppose I should have expected as much using a Microsoft Word Template, being enticed by the "ease" and not really remembering (for a brief, fleeting moment) the DISease, that is the evil empire... So, the question before me is this- do I try to find a way to fix and reload? or do I just say fuck it, all the pertinent info is there and so what if my lovely revolutionary pictures didn't make it, its not like anyone is really ever going to look at the page anyway... except the professor for whose class it is being created, and he doesn't give a rat's ass about what it looks like... blah.

Just another demonstration of my functional illiteracy in all things technical (I would be in good company with powerful men, I think). I think I will move on for now, I mean really, if I haven't learned my lesson by now, that a half-assed job is probably even more politically advantageous than a job well done, then I must also be a cultural illiterate, which I am not, thank you very much...

It seems that I have a fixation on the anal today. Actually, I have long been amused that American culture uses "ass" for just about everything to add weight or impact, whereas Hispanic culture (ok I am generalizing, but I feel that I can do that in this one limited sphere due to observed linguistic phenomena) the obsession is with fucking, penetration, power and such... Now, one might ask what my impulse is towards a culture that is not my "own", though I would argue that I have never ever really had a culture that was my own... being the product of a strange cultural and religious mix, adding in conversion, and parents who used other languages as privacy codes... But, I think that it must be clear that my linguistic preference goes beyond the mere "otherness"... How interesting can someone's ass really be? Ok, so I am not a gay man (though strangely, I have always felt deep down that perhaps I _was_ one, in the mind of a lesbian, in the body of an unfortunatley heterosexual woman - given my predilection for gay boy films... and English (blech!) but I loved Beautiful Thing and was even sexually aroused by it ... maybe a therapist could help me figure this one out). I digress...

Which reminds me of a very funny thing that Alison and I were discussing. She says that she could probably never be with a man that doesn't have an accent and I agreed: nothing sexier than your own language spoken in ways that you never would have thought possible. But I posit that when it comes to pillow talk (during, not post) I would really rather not even understand what is being said to me - far too distracting. It is like the basic approach to song-listening, for all the guitarists in my life, the most important thing is always the underlying musical structure, the beat, the bass-line, the melodic and harmonic interplay, but for me, it has always been about the words. I cannot listen without trying to decipher the underlying _meaning_ of the text that is being offered first. Only when I do not understand the lyrics at all, can I make the code-switching leap of faith and cross-over into the musical intricacies... Of course interpretative attempts ensue, but as an ancillary, not as the primary (primal?) objective...

Ah... now it is time to stretch my aching back, forget all this and move back into reality, corporality and shit. (that's right, shit) grading of others' performance, but nothing exciting or I'd already be doing it.

sábado, octubre 23, 2004

Saturday afternoon hues of blue...

I saw a beautiful photo of where I would love to have been this afternoon, hiking up a mountainside, instead of fiddling madly with a ridiculous computer, trying to fashion myself a web-page, requirement of the department, attempting to make something not completely useless and boring and at the same time not outing myself yet as the free-thinking radical that I really am... ha ha. some radical I turned out to be.

Isabella has curled herself up in a thumb-sucking ball (some traits did actually get passed down - the thumb sucking and the breast fetish, the most salient). We were supposed to go to a concert this evening, but I suddenly felt very tired and sad and uninspired, and over-loaded with work, so I begged off. Also, what is the point in spending time together just because you said you would when both people are just, predictably, pissing one another off. So, here I am, about to begin some thrilling reading on teaching methodology - the most amusing part being that no one ever proposes real, practical, applicable solutions, they just wax poetic about sundry ideals and "best-practices", as useful, I propose, as the drivel that I have been writing. I am wanting to begin writing, for real, but I know that it is ill-advised as my actual work is already suffering.

I think I must have ADD - all these starting and stoping actions have me wasting a tremendous amount of time, but hey... nothing else remotely piquant has rolled across my front door these days. I wonder if the blues are just due to lack of good sleep, or my brain chemicals sloshing back into their previous and marvelous imbalance. I am not complaining, in fact I like to feel blue, and never again will I let myself be tricked into taking medication to solve a problem that is not fixable by medication, it kills your libido, too.

So today's thought is about the concept of an "outlaw". There is something exciting and reckless in being an outlaw, but, in terms of karma, I think that there is something basically wrong with breaking a "law" that directly and forcefully impacts negatively on another person or sentient being. Ok, so you would argue that who can _really_ say how we can determine the degree of impact... I have no answers, just questions and areas for further research, which means I am perfectly suited for academia after all. But here is what I am really thinking about: I would concede that taking somebody else's property, or physically impinging on another person's body-sphere are not OK, but... when the being is larger than even a corporation (can it be? is there an entity larger than Microsoft or Disney? probably not- just bear with me) say the corporation that we call the US government, is the one whose "property" or physical space is being illegally tampered with, does it really have a significant impact? Should we be defending an unprincipled principle?

Now, any good Republican would take this line of argument and brutally rape me with it by claiming that small incursions into the eco-systems of third world countries don't really hurt _anyone_, or at least not us, and in fact the positive economic growth (for us) outweighs the negative impact (on them) anyway. So, there is no need to point out the obvious, my argument is rather weak... but I reiterate, isn't it different when the "person" suffering is the Patrón? as opposed to the eternally disenfranchised.

I just found out that "Z" got his deportation notice from the Canadian government (apparently not _everyone_ can play the persecuted gay card and have it work in their favor) and is planning a trip across the border. My first response was "what the fuck does he want to do here?" but the next was "that's fabulous, I will have to hook him up with places to stay on his journey". I am appalled at the thought that such a "crime" is punishable by our government to a greater degree even than crimes where huge corporate bigwigs rob millions from the workers that they exploited to make the millions in the first place. I would like to see a suit shackled and paraded down through the dank halls of Sing Sing, cat calls, and bars rattled and forced submission from his eternally sculpted, manicured, paid-for (by others) body.

Would I like to be an outlaw? Hell yes! But then, maybe I am already for writing these things in a public place and not using a pseudonym. That's kind of a sexy thought, hmmm, maybe I will mail an attachment to my senator (or my gubernator...).

Ok, enough of this wicked fantasizing, I really must go do the reading I set out to do, and then maybe tomorrow I _will_ actually be able to justify the hike that I am itching to take...

The party is over...

Let it not be said that we “Americans” are always the agua fiestas, the rain on the parade… I hold up to you this evening as a prime example of its counterpoint. I slipped away for just a moment (ok, I had to brush my teeth, I couldn’t resist… and then I had to floss) and upon returning, people were shuffling out the door, wrapping themselves in outer wear, giving kisses, one for the South Americans and two for the Europeans (but which never end on the lips by accident☹ and Alison and I, the only gringas (that and a half-pint, halfsy), taking kisses where we could. Now she was going home, but to something much more exciting, I am sure, and my only desire was to lie belly down on my bed with the screen casting a blue light on my fingers and write it all down. This is becoming an addiction, but a rather practical one, I imagine.

Here’s my secret desire, number 2. I really want to forget about everything and just be a diva. I have been secretly writing songs since I was eight, though the early attempts were lost several moves back. Even then I had nothing transcendent to offer, just longing - what does an eight-year-old know about longing? Probably as much as my four-year-old does about playing the guitar, but man did she look adorable, holding the instrument, larger than herself, with appropriate posture.

I love the way the music slides in over me, embracing me in warmth, my voice detaches from my body, the notes weave themselves in and out and around the principal melody, several versions of every theme running all at once, the primary melody is lost, but what emerges is even more beautiful, and haunting and graceful. Singing is the only state of grace for me, when I disappear and re-emerge as the me I want to be, with no doubts or desires, just pure sensation.

How I love feeding the people I love. Nothing is more wonderful than a dinner party where everyone keeps eating, and drinking in orgiastic pleasure for hours on end, and I know that I was the one responsible for the pleasure. But like all good things, this too came to an end, too soon for me, the gringa… the one who would be happy to have a house full of friends and love every day. We are forever parodied and laughed-at, when at parties in other countries… damn Americans don’t know how to have a “real” party, everything always shuts down so early… I was not ready to shut down quite yet, so again I find myself writing to the eternally non-responsive listener, my own screen. I insist, it was the non-Americans that called it quits, preferring the warmth of their beds (filled with others, for sure) to the joys of the rumbling guitars, rolling in waves, voices uniting, across generational boundaries and continents and genres, a collective memory in an instant, a brief glimpse at the possibility of our joint humanity.

Well, now I suppose it is time for me too, to retire, and to search for that peace, in sleep. But just remember, the party was over against my will, another myth debunked, a fallacy unmasked. Not bad for a Friday night.

viernes, octubre 22, 2004

what the hell do I know anyway?

I am feeling eternally frustrated with technology... Paradoxical, or oxy-moronic, that I should be writing about that here... And I would stop, cold-turkey, but I like the self-expression, floating about where I don't even know, a la deriva, on its back, face up to the sky, enveloped in warm water, or shivering through icy, subterranean caves.

This space is so surreal, visited only when I am in my most un-corporal state - so strange that there should be an obsession with the tangible universe. In here I am not a real person, but rather matter converted back into electrical impulse. I don't shit, or bank, or have real, pressing work to do. Of course in reality I _do_ have all those things to do, we all do. I don't always smell of roses or guayaba... but here I do, or at least I can if I want to.

Feeling conflicted about this schizofrenic reality. Just deleted myself from a few places, and enjoyed the power of erasure, of course how would I really know if I actually _did_ delete myself or if that energy is still pulsing through, in its eternally aching attempt to make itself matter.

The Cabalistic properties are indeed overwhelming. With the utterance of the word, the creation of the thing, the loosing of Shelley's creature, or of a wooden boy. A wish, made carnal, and then like all things carnal, deteriorating, decaying, ultimately withering to convert itself back into energy.

The possibilities are infinite, and infinitely inferior to the real world. A thousand typing monkeys might actually make more sense...is it not in the action? in the purging that meaning is created? I have been contemplating the laws of physics, by which, it seems, we were previously bound (before we could voluntarily convert ourselves into wisps of energy). The ball, perched at the top of the hill, en potencia, hypothetical, potential energy, and the very real possibility that the ball will roll, picking up snow and eventually creating an avalanche, or a mudslide (for those of us in warmer places). Where is the power? Where is the poetry? In the potency, or in the destructive mass that bears down upon us?

Ah yes, I know nothing, less than nothing, and I am feeling overwhelmed by the Herculean tasks set before me, easy for a techy, I suppose, but frightening for me. And the question (rhetorical, as I really have no choice): do I really want more of me floating around cyber-space? I think I might just want to resist... but as usual, I won't. So much of my life is built up on what is expected of me, from myself more than anyone else, that my most secret joy is letting go... for a few seconds... just to see the "what if" before I safely run to pick up the scattered pieces, pushing them back into their neatly organized compartments. It is in the letting go, sails full, head thrown back, hair trailing behind, that I am who I want to be... but the rest, as they say, is reality.

jueves, octubre 21, 2004

oh my...

Red wine..., following red beer, following white wine... following strange mix of pop music from my youth. I am thinking about the "grapevine" the weekend dance hall (connected to Swarthmorian church) wholesome fun for suburban teens, thumping house music and a "movie theater" where the most exciting part was watching what kind of sexual activity our classmates were engaging in... of course I only once partook of said environment, and then not even, my one weekend boyfriend Charles Wong, who, unfortunately bragged too much about how far he was going to get with me and ruined his chances... alas... sometimes talking too much can really have a negative impact... wouldn't you agree?

Oktoberfest, at the Santa Barbara Museum of History, a sort of company party for the design crowd, and of course I only wanted to wander off by myself. That's all I ever want to do in "party" situations, for as long as I can remember. I always need to find one person with whom to have a tete a tete, and hide in a corner, discussing the finer points of life. I suppose it is ultimately a narcissistic fantasy of mine, but then I have never claimed to be anything but self-involved.

I am remembering the teenage parties where I was always hanging on the margin, just "cool" enough to be invited and just strange enough to not fit in. The akward silences, the strange interfaces, I was never cruel enough to be a teen queen, I could never have justified crushing the soul of a poor hoping adolescent. There was a time, though, that I bought into the negativity. Oh how I would have loved to be the girl that everyone wanted. It reminds me of "Mr. Jones" and how I thought Noelle had it made, even though she was just as confused as I, and then that she is now divorced from her Harvard husband and how sad that makes me, and how much I would like to see her and talk to her again, as two girls, not as two wives... or ex-wives, or quasi-wives, or whatever it is that we are these days...

How can I possibly be only twenty-six when I feel that I have lived three different lifetimes? And now is the fourth and everything seems so new and shiny and reckless and fabulous and then I am snapped back to reality. I have a daughter. I have a life. I have responsibilities... But I know that my daughter is a militant of happiness and that makes me feel better. She danced and danced and danced... never caring if anyone was watching, feeling the rythyms and moving her body, as if she were a girl much older than herself, but un-self-consciously... Van Morrison calls to me, the brown-eyed girl of my 13th summer, I know, my eyes are green, its just that sometimes they're not, and I think of the longing platonic, or absolutely un-platonic, lust that I shared with the nice Jewish boy Matt Cohen that summer, a summer listening to the Doors, and feeling the rain fall with the riders on the storm, and believing that this _was_ the end... and still hanging out with my parents...
And then the Ramones and then David Bowie and I am launched back in time to the space shuttle that I dreamed would take me away from where I was, a girl, in her bedroom, attached to her phone, longing for a boy, but not just any boy, a boy that I could save, and that could save me, who could bring me to my knees and toy with my brain and all its intellectual gallantry. I think that I have never gotten over this.

I once dumped a perfectly nice surfer boy, who was perfectly into me, by telling him that he just didn't stimulate me enough intlellectually. Who was I? What an absurdly ass-holeish demagogue... It was just that, you know, that I like to hear myself speak. I admit frivolity, or self-agrandizing, what can I say, there was rarely anyone to prove me wrong...

And then there was Beth and Suzie... How we had fun, dressing up in my bedroom, discovering our sensuality, playing games, making plans... The questions about multiple orgasm and self-exploration - Suzie never did...Beth was always so sad because the boys preferred Suzie, I didn't really care as long as there was a good time to be had, Pete and Greg and the first time we smoked in the woods and then bounced on the bed and the world spun like a top... How I wish I could have cried so many years later, with Isabella in my arms, when I ran into Pete on the street in downtown Media, PA. and I asked after Suzie and Beth and he just stared... You don't know? he asked incredulously... Suzie died three years ago of a heroin overdose...

No, I didn't know, I imagined her happy and free, happier than me, and the chill ran down my spine and I asked myself how I did nothing... But my life had moved on, I had been around the world and back, leaving my friends, my family my life... How could I have known, but then I had suspected... somewhere I must still have the photos I took, black and white, I named the series "Amistad" - how I wished for what Beth and Suzie had, but I could never give myself over to just one person, not Heather, not Jen, and later not Carrie or Jeff or Rob, or Laura or Jenny or even Kirsten who I adore, perhaps more than all things...

I think I will keep drinking tonight, so that the words keep flowing, I am an eternally immature, irresponsible, self-involved narcissistic feline, refusing to be a concubine because I want the King for myself and no one else. And yet, so much is still sublime, beyond my reach, unfurling itself in the distance, a temptation, a tease a distant copse of trees swaying, calling to the wood-nymph in me... I will never reach the goal, I will fail miserably, I will fall, crawling through the muck ... and still happily.

The sorriest part of all this is that I re-read myself and want to vomit. Nothing transcendental, nothing beautiful, not even iteresting to anyone but me... but what is this if not an opportunity to spill my guts privately and publicly all at the same time. I remember Paul and me, laying with our backs on the still warm asphalt, staring up at the stars, singing our hearts away to Galileo and my toying and his longing and my un-trustworthy abuse of our friendship and love. I remember the urgent kisses before leaving and the hopes that I didn't share, cruelly (maybe I could have been a teen-queen after all).

And three nights ago, there we were, and a pair of teenage girls from Brazil, giddy in their inexperience and their pre-mature saavy, and me thinking I can't handle beeing a corruptor of minors, and offering to drive them home, little girls that they were singing about "sexual healing" - what could they know about "sexual healing" ? They are at the point that they will learn about sexual breaking and stealing and robbing and cursing wondering why he doesn't call after you did just what he asked.

I am transported once again to London, Watford, actually where I spent a summer playing soccer and trying to fit in with a bunch of rough-around-the-edges north Philly soccer-stars, girls who accused me of being a "nigger-lover" for hanging out with a group of South-London boys. and oh, how I waited for Charlie, how could he know where to find me? But I waited and I hoped and I imagined him calling my name by the window, his hands reaching out for me... And then the trip to Ireland and the bizarre sexual politics, the repression and at the same time, prurito, the itching to know what was forbidden, my first trip to a "real" pub (and probably the only one), trying Guinness and practically spitting it all out on the floor. The game was all that mattered then, and perhaps, still now, I long for the game that will make me feel alive and real, and not quite so disjointed... And Chicago, and Supertramp were the soundtrack to my days - the transatlantic yearning, kippers for breakfast, and tea that could kill a horse. The following summer, post-surgical reconstruction and the same obnoxious English boys, complaining about how Spaniards could not make a cup of tea and marvelling at my astounding English skills - what a good laugh I had that day... a girl in the body of a woman, but still unsure of how to step lightly, repressed and shocked by the European lack of shame, breasts bared and mine even more interesting for their lack of exposure.

The discovery of cleavage... what a powerful leverage over men (and women I would later learn) and if only they knew that I would gladly cleave from my chest the unwanted and uninvited flesh. I would have been Peter Pan forever if I could have been. Not that it really matters, I guess we are all relatively un-satisfied with the bodies we have been given, and who wouldn't be with the amount of incidental propaganda that is forced down our collective throat, practically from birth.

I have failed as a mother because I have folded to Isabella's pressure... I have even taken her (cringe... hide behind large pillar...)" to Disneyland. But only becaue she asked... how can I say no? I can only hope to inspire her to question the validity of the discourse, but hiding from it won't solve any problems, I think, it will just postpone them to a more difficult time. She loves princesses, and who wouldn't? I have lately wished that I had some royal influence, a snap of the fingers and that back massage that I always want, readily and humbly offered... not so.

There is a wonderful story, the last of Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America" about the horror of accidentally killing someone else's child and the escape to an Italian village as the (non-functional) concubine of an academic, and the obsession with an ex-pat masseuse. That is the kind of obsession that I would like to have. If I could pay someone to take my body un-judgingly in their hands five times a week with no other objective than to release the lactic acid and other toxins from my muscles, well, let's just say I would be a happy woman. But, I have no funds for such luxury, and I have been involved in far too many car accidents to ever live pain free anyway, so I might as well just learn to live with the burn...right?

What would it be like for money to be no object? I think that Lhasa de Sela was right, if there is no pain and agony, there is no reason for love to exist, without the privation, there is no point... the happiness loses its sweetness, dulling like a bad American meal at a bad American restaurant. Flavorless and full of fat, with no electric impulse rolling down your tongue to your chest, no ardor, like the milk that rolls in and burns to the core of your nipples as the child tugs.

Perhaps I should just take up an un-healthy habit, like drinking, or smoking...and forget about what I really want.

martes, octubre 19, 2004

Diatribe for the decadent

I hate...

the way we communicate, no, really the way we fail to communicate.
it is never my goal to make you feel this way.
never.
and yet, here we are another night and we talk at eachother, in your language, of course, and no one listens to anything but their own pain and insecurity, their own treasonous thoughts, their own anger and regret, their own failed expectations.

I hate...
the rain on my glasses as I ride, creating a crystalline prism of blinding light.
and the tears that are dripping, shamefully from my tear ducts.
the cold seeping into my bones.
the tired, sorry song being played again and again.


I hate...
feeling like the failure that I am.
that I let you cast a shadow over my belief in my intrinsic worth as a human being.
that there is never a tissue near by when I need one.

I hate...
the silence that I want to adhere to.
that you have once again proven me incapable of staying away from where I promised myself I wouldn't go.
fearing your censure, and your judgment and your hate.

I hate...
the thought of my life without you.
and my life with you.
and my fear of the unknown.

I hate...
feeling like I am under your thumb.
pinned to my needs, indebted to you, together with you.
alone with you. alone by myself.
a lone wolf, prowling, and tearing at its bait.
a wolf incapable of remembering its mate.

I hate...
being the bad one, the evil one, the witch.
cackling from my tower.
excercising my substantial power over you.
self-destructing in a fiery mushroom cloud.
crying out loud, not being able to quiet my pain.
freezing inside and outside - the rain pours, like blood.

I hate...
my legacy.
that I cannot be someone else, from somewhere else.
irresponibilty, impunity, human filth devoid of caring.
my (in)humanity.

I hate...
that I cannot fix things with the wave of a hand.
a royal pardon, a goodbye.


I hate...
to hate.

The ideal mate

Toying with the idea that there truly could be a person suitable to my madness (or anyone's for that matter). I am sure there is not, being the intrinsically difficult person that I am, but daydreaming when there is more pressing work to be done seems to be my forte:

The ideal mate for the eternally selfish: (note please, no gender attached to said ideal)

1) knows how to cook, and does so whenever I don't feel like it, but stays out of the kitchen when I am working, otherwise.

2) makes me laugh, in my soul, much more than makes me cry.

3) makes me cry, sometimes, just so I don't feel anesthetized and dull around the edges.

4) adores my child and knows when my patience is about to snap, absconding with her in order to allow me space to work.

5) Is willing to do light housework, or support the informal economy by hiring someone else to do said work.

6) Has enough sense to not give a shit about money, and enough money to not give a shit about sense...(in other words, does not need me to micro-manage)

7) wants more children, eventually...but will be willing to parent said children with style and grace and lots of outdoors activities.

8) Has politics that don't interfere with mine and the ability to express opinions without using words like knives.

9) makes me laugh some more, makes me angry at the world and then makes it feel like its not so bad after all.

10) Teaches me something new on a regular basis and lets me expound ad nauseum without complaining

11) Enjoys my arsenal of humor, ranging from the completely inappropriate, scatalogical, to the multi-lingual puns of varying registers that I was raised on.

12) Believes in something, but absolutely not in religious Institutions (with a capital I).

13) Knows me. doesn't have to be from the same place or time, but knows exactly where I am coming from.

14) Understands my obsession with punctuality and forgives my transgressions in the name of said obsession (ie, not finishing other crap in order to leave with half-an-hour leeway)

15) doesn't yell (much) I do, so my yang would have to not be a yeller... it doesn't work, I've tried.

16) Believes in equality in a real and applicable sense, refuses to enter into power struggles with me and lets me make fun of myself after my childish rants.

17) Wants to live in 15 different countries before death.

18) Exists in a love/hate relationship with my country and their own (if not the same country).

19) Appreciates beauty in miniscule moments, like the dew hanging from a blade of grass, or the scent of lemons wafting through the air with the changing breeze.

20) Will prefer allergic misery (like my own) to an existence stripped of animal companionship.

21) And of course, is wildly and madly in love with the ocean.

lunes, octubre 18, 2004

A bouquet for you...

She picked flowers all the way home, offering them up, in spite of the fact that I was grumpy all morning (and later too). "Look, I always pick things that are pretty and smell nice for you." She's right, she does... Flowers are such a socially constructed requirement of any relationship, it seems phenomenal that they should also be a genuine gift... the one that I have always been searching for.

I don't mean to disparage, I am a fabulous gift-giver and a rotten gift-receiver, I always have expectations that are too high, hoping that a divining decipherer will pluck my deepest and most secret want from the air and serve it to me, with no ceremony... but I, inevitably failing to offer the right clues, render it all an excercise in futility.

I once received a wonderfully well-meaning cactus for a birthday present, wonderful and all wrong. I promptly killed it, accidentally, over-zealously watering it before a six week trip to Mexico and California... I meant to save it and cherish it, and be grateful for its novelty and spiny beauty, only to return and watch it crumble into dust in my hands. Life works that way, it seems.

But on the way home I recalled an amusing anectdote that I have long been meaning to manifest in written form, and then forgot... So here it is.

Back when I was a young girl (ahem...) living alone in the Megalopolis that is Mexico, DF. I lived in a very strange home, for a brief time. I had been living with my friend Tania quite some distance from the University that I was attending... It was a half-hour bus-ride (usually standing) to the metro Taxqueña, then a 15 minute, head-lulling rock to Chabacano, where the blue and brown lines intersect, a mad dash through the tumultuous multitudes, and with luck, a spot on the first sardine-packed, rush-hour cattle-car that pulled up, taking care to not be trampled, smushed or felt-up - all the way to the end of the line; and finally another half hour bus ride out of Tacubaya, up, up, up through the pestilent markets and human detritus, to where the other tenth live, gingerly stepping off in front of the massive IBM building, feeling guilty and apologetic, and finally arriving at school.

This, I had thought, couldn't go on forever, and although the commute was just long enough to read an entire play before class, I needed less strain, physical and emotional, so I chose to move (after weeks of fruitless searching for my _own_ place) in with her two un-bachelor (or post bachelor? divorcé) uncles. Alex and Tavo. What a bizarre tryptich we made, they being twice my age and then some, the brothers of my ex, and one of them, Alex, professing his deepest love for me, parading me (unknowingly) around as if I were the newest young thing on his arm, a live-in date, a mistress. I had the only bedroom for myself, and they camped out on the living room couch and floor. It was a fourth-story walk-up, on Patriotismo, with a direct view of the World Trade Center. There were no elevators, no phone, no intercom, no fridge and no water filter (evidenced by the living creatures, black and red swilries, that swam about in a glass of water if not covered by a cloth napkin upon aperture of the faucet). On a side note, that might explain my eternally awful intestinal illness; looking back it seems kind of silly that I wouldn't have demanded they help me carry bottled water up the four flights... but I didn't.

So Alex and Tavo, and other brothers of theirs were among a strangely emergent social group that I had the privilege to observe. They were culture leeches, always finding out what gallery was opening, an event for every evening, free drinks and gourmet food, rubbing elbows with the social elite. All of this, was of course, initially unbeknownst to me. At least for a while. I enjoyed having a free ride and tangential company while exploring some interesting, and other truly wretched, current work that was being produced in the city. I would arrive, perhaps nurse a glass of white wine - slowly, always too dry for my uninitiated palate. I was there to observe, to soak in the visual landscape, to relax after a long day, anything but supposing myself learned or knowledgeable on the themes presented. For me these moments were a temporary disconnect, allowing me to not think, to emote, and then shortly after seeing what was to be seen, I wanted to go home. Alas, there were always other plans and I tried to blend in, to dissappear as the waiters and bartenders, tactfully tried to avoid making eye-contact with my companions. All of this could be amusing, and it was, until the night that I was "invited" to a Cuevas exhibit.

"Get dressed up if you want to come out to a gallery tonight," says Alex. I don't own gala attire, but I am told that it is not _that_ formal, I foolishly capitulate and we arrive, only to discover, to my chagrin, that this is an invitation-only event, and not wanting to humiliate myself more, I allow myself to be slipped in the door. I immediately want to die when I am saluted by an ultra-rich, ultra-bitch classmate, "Ay que gusto verte!" as I want to slip inside myself, into the wallpaper, or dissipate into molecular form on the floor. My doubt about the degree of intended maliciousness of the comment allayed by my justification that it wouldn't be _that_ unreasonable for me to know someone (letting myself be tricked by the hidden race/class politics of the country) that would be there. All the while I am desperately trying to disassociate myself from the leech crowd, trying to focus on the paintings, which were the reason that I had come in the first place, trying to avoid the approach of other moochers in this crowd who had now seen me enough to feel that they too could engage me in discussion. I had finally escaped, up the stairs to the third floor, hiding by a fountain near the gallery offices, breathing, biding my time so that I could then casually stroll back out, taking a taxi back to my home that was not a home. And then, a hand on the back of my neck, unwelcome warm breath and a bouquet of flowers... "Where did these come from??" I asked, dreading the response. "I stole them from the center-piece on one of the tables, no one will miss them." Mortification, rage, rejection of said flowers, and a confused look from Alex -"I thought women loved receiving flowers..."-

Well we do, just not _that_ way...

That was the last time I went to a gallery with my roomates, and soon I was out of the house, living the high life, quite literally, after Alex exposed his love for me and promptly began chastising me, telling me that my choice of recreation was wrong, in spite of the fact that he was a (sometimes) functional alcoholic. Men... why do they always start fathering as soon as they think they have the upper hand?

A bouquet for me, or a flower, or a gem, to pluck and roll over in my hands, a good laugh now. And once more I ask myself- how do I get myself into the situations that I do? I think that I am somehow drawn to danger and the perverse, a curioius cat, craning my neck... Oh well, that is that.

Just 5 minutes, I swear... and a recipe

Hot Chai in hand, accompanied by tacos of last night's interesting creation. I will allow myself 5 minutes to process the day, before actually doing any work. So, Santa Barbara really is a "real" place. The rain drumming on the balcony shocked me out of my slumber, reminding me that OH Shit! I have to walk Isabella to school in the rain. How I wouldn't prefer to lay curled up with her all day, ignoring responsibility, staying dry for a little longer. But, in fact, I like the rain, and she has a pink "princess" umbrella (her choice - I have no veto power when she absolutely must have something pink - even if my former self rolls over in the watery grave I created for it). She looked so peaceful, head lolling over the side of the bed, feet perched conveniently in the middle of my rib-cage. How could I roust her out of bed at 7, just so I wouldn't have to walk her in the rain and then ride my wet bicycle, wetly, to school. This is one of those moments where my lack of planning is paramount. I know that there are busses, in fact, I advocate the use of them, just not for myself... Perhaps this is just justification for me not doing what I should... it seems I have a habit of justifying my bad choices to myself.

Returning to last night's dinner. I made myself cook, a fabulous procrastinating technique, though the accusation of me "not lifting a finger" to do anything in the house was not a welcome commentary... So, I did get my hands on cilantro and made the soup that I wanted, butternut squash, sweet potato, carrot in a clear chicken stock, (reduced by accident), with sauteed onion garlic, ginger and cilantro (wilted - bright green, not dark), and after pureeing at the end, a half cup of cream (or half and half...). That is the first recipe that I orally ? (sensibly? olfactorily?) plagiarized from a dear friend, Chef Susan... I am sure her soup is different, I just had to go by what it tasted like and how I could repeat it...

So in repentance I will publish the other half of dinner, for the world to plagiarize...
The boiled chicken breast that I always use for stock is often turned into a cold salad with walnuts and grapes, but seeing that I had no grapes, and that I was pissed off at walnuts, I opted to salvage the tomatoes on the brink of destruction.
They were at that watery, non-pleasing texture stage, just before they start having rotten moldy spots... I figured they would be ok for a salsa ranchera, and they were, but this turned out to be a sincretic salsa...

Roasted tomatoes (6) and two serrano chiles also roasted on a flat comal (or dry pan)
In the blender, with a dash of salt, blend three garlic cloves and a cup of chicken stock (or water) and roasted stuff
In a large non-stick pan, heat olive oil (always cold-pressed extra virgin) sautee a handful of chopped onion, and pour uncooked salsa into hot pan. Cook until tomato loses its pinkish-red color and turns a deep orange.
Decide something is missing, and having no cilantro yet, grab the only other fresh herb you ever buy - basil, fresh that day.
Roughly chop basil and throw it in to salsa, meanwhile with other hand, pull the boiled chicken (trust me- sounds bad, but its one of those amazing Mexican culinary tricks) apart and stir it about in pan.

Ta da... now you can serve it on whatever, I chose corn tortillas, and going with the sincretic feel, you can garnish with cheese (in this case asiago, fontina and provolone - already shredded and pre-packaged for me)

So, did I get my work done? Of course not, but it is raining and I am enoying the early morning peacefulness of a house bereft of noise but the droplets and my clicking keys, and the babe who gently snores.

domingo, octubre 17, 2004

Shopping for porcupine...

Well, I might as well have been. Is it so wrong to want fresh pesto that has pine nuts instead of walnuts? I am inordinately disenchanted with Trader Joe's today... even though I got 4$ Australian Shiraz, lox, chocolate-covered soy nuts, hummus, capers, brie, armenian string cheese, olives, pickles of varying species, crumbled gorgonzola, pierogies, tri-color tortellini, gnocchi, almond butter, nutella, TLC crackers and more...

Let's just say that shopping for food to pamper yourself, and then not finding the one item that you *really really* wanted, well it sucks. So now I have a closet full of ideas and no desire to do anything with them. (although crepes with capers, cream cheese and lox might happen) I even forgot the cilantro (after remembering the ginger) to make winter squash soup AND the water has boiled way down as I read through pages of writing, not the writing I was supposed to be looking at, mind you...

Why do I even bother to get out of bed some days? I am cranky and bitchy and altogether unpleasant today, so I now choose to take leave of myself (can I do that? please?) and perhaps wash some dishes before doing the work that I won't be finishing today, even though I promised myself that I would:( It must be true, that becoming machines would be an infinitely more *intelligent* thing to do... no pain, no comprehension of what it feels like to be surrounded by the deafening roar of the waves, or dwarfed by the ancient redwoods... or locked inside a brain that won't turn off! But... I think we all know why we do the things we do, because of our unflagging belief in the *humanity* of our universe.

This could be filed as my first ranting (I thought it might be good to add one, given that it is in the sub-title and all:)

Addendum numero 1

So, last night, very late I remember the best Isabelism of all...

Mommy... what does "nocturnal" mean (brief explanation) VERY GOOD! you _do_ know about night creatures... We aren't nocturnal, though. (well, sometimes I am) Why? (very good question - it seems that insomnia is a useful creative tool).

And then again this morning, she blows my mind (it is amazing that some people actually listen and take note of other's utterances!) when we are discussing plovers and their predators, and I ask her if birds are nocturnal, just to test her and see if she has really retained her lesson from school. --Well some are... Owls for instance...

Ok, so she _is_ my child and I get to think she is amazing no matter what, but I am often floored by her insightful commentary. I am also amazed at how basically different she is from me.

Where at 5 I was fretting, panicking really, about the concept of an ever-expanding, never-ending universe, she wakes up happy, a wide smile and says, mommy, will we be together forever? She asks if I am immortal and I reply that no, indeed I will die someday, but not soon (I hope), and that I will always be with her (blah, blah, blah) and she replies: "So your not an elf? - because, you know elves never die..."

No I am not an elf... but on a totally different note, I have been revisiting music archives of my past, and bjørk jumped out at me. I don't know about you, but I think I prefer her singing to her acting, although, I am personally a fan of Lars von Trier's work, I think that the tongue in cheek, musical noir about the descent of darkness into the human soul, mixed with social commentary about the alienation of the industrialized world (for some reason, reminiscent of the images of factory work in "Stone Butch Blues") falls a bit short of its mark...

Of course, it is almost a year (or more?) since I watched that and this was not, in fact, where I was going at all. Today is about rambling on... (Zep?) no. I wanted to talk about the Police...

If there is one person, musically, that has accompanied me in the weirdest of ways and places it is Sting. And I only own two albums, and rarely, if ever, listen to him... But, I recall hours with my brother, sharing space on the couch (before we would grow annoyed and beat the crap out of one another for impinging on one another's delineated space)... watching classic MTV (back when music television _actually_ included music) before remote controls, in the reign of Beta-max (which we did not own, having technofobe or just really smart parents)... Roxanne... you don't have to put on the red llight... before video became mini movies, divorced from the meaning of the song... it was just a bunch of guys, playing music, with a red background. you can't get any cooler than that. His voice cracking, and me wondering (young child of the suburbs- self-admittedly) what on earth a red light could have to do with prostitution... but for some reason, I connected with this Roxanne. Why did he want to save her? or control her? Maybe she was happy walking the streets for money... Don't we all do that in one form or another?

Then... of course in my teeenage years (or still?) I longed to be the girl in the rain, waiting for the teacher, lolita in the car, escaping, controlling... but after having actually read the book (much, much later, Lolita just made me sad, another girl lacking talents or self-esteem, or a father figure that puts her above all else... a pathetic figure, and how does she end? pregnant and miserable... arghh. but it was writtne by a man).

There is a version of Fields of Gold on Eva Cassidy's "Live at Blues Alley" that recently reminded me how much I still like Sting... aging, deafening cry. I recall seeing a documentary in college where he was supporting grass roots efforts to stop the destruction of the rain-forest, fighting against the caucho (gum) companies... I wanted to be an activist. I would have liked to strap myself to milenary trees, but my nihilistic side asks, ultimately, what is the point of our existence? Is it just to feel pain and frustration at all the things we can't ever do or fix or give?

Then I listen to Isabella, singing a soundtrack to her morning, her songs a simple and winding melody that describe the thoughts passing through her mind. And I think, no it is just me...other people do _not_see the world this way. It makes me feel better that I did not pass this terrible disenchantment to my daughter, and I think that maybe she is here to guide me. She always says that she picked me... that god made her just for me... that god is everywhere, in the rays of light that shine down in shafts, highlighting the dust in a small chapel on Bear Island, in lake Winnepesaukee... Do children really have a main line to God? I know that I never, ever talk about the concepts that she has somehow gleaned from the world, and I am frozen in a moment of incredulous doubt? Could she, yes, she must, know more than me about these things. There is no demagoguery in her discourse, there are no expectations, confessions, repressions. God made her the way she is because she is good (god- ok I have worked on not gendering god... or at least putting the concept in gender-flux - that much is my intervention, I admit).

So God and music from my childhood, great topic for a Sunday morning... or perhaps this is my personal sermon for the day. Nah.

Doo doo doo, da da da... is all I have to say right now.
Brain fizzling after one more night of self-medication. I _am_ sorry, and I know you _are_ right, but I think that I am a hedonist at heart, or an escapist, or both. Forgive me father, for I have already forgiven myself...(sort of)