so many bad news

I think it is better when bad things happen to you, as opposed to people that you care about.

When it is a personal bad thing, you just suck it up and deal, or go off and cry by yourself, or curl up in a ball on your bed, twisted among the sheets.

When it happens to someone else, you just feel impotent and miserable but without being able to do anything productive. It is especially hard when you are one of the myriad bad things that happens to someone else, then it is almost unbearable.

Now my head just hurts from the crying, or the forgetting to eat all day, or the staying out way too late last night because it felt so good to be singing with the Brazilian boys. Then this morning the painful phone call on my way to taking Isabella to school (I was soooo late that their nap mats were already set out) and more confusion.

She at least brightened my day for a moment with her sharp commentary: "All kids are gifted... except boys!" What? I had to laugh though, even though I probably come across as what a painful sorespot in my life liked to call "feminazis", I have a weak spot for the weaker sex, and I do think that there are a few redeeming qualities amid the grunting and groping... especially when they are children, then there is still hope.

Whispered aside: This is the same skinny boy with glasses who forced me to listen to all things not "fem-rock" but then listened to Harry Connick Jr.... funny, I heard that he is making music for films in NYC - curious what people from past lives end up doing...how dare they continue to exist beyond our fantasy constructions of them?!!!

So more on bad things, but perhaps not totally bad... well the death part is bad, but the other stuff, may end up being a blessing for everyone involved, it will just take some time and perspective to ascertain the underlying (or not) value. And then there were also a few good things. All in one day. It was like a Russian mountain... ups and downs and a hell of a fast ride, but too much is _still_ too much and my head has had about half past too much today. I don't know how I am even seeing straight. Oh wait, I am not... I am racing against the migraine, which is strangely settling in over my right eye instead of its usual preference for the left, and if I can just squeeze out a few more words I will go forth, and against my personal ethic, take a painkiller.

See, this I can manage. I can write away my own pain, but writing, it seems, has the opposite effect on other people's pain.

I may just stop writing.

Maybe.

not?

What the bleep did I know???

"We can now 'have it all,' we just need to adjust what that means on a personal basis. Having it all doesn't have to mean a 6 figure salary by age 25, though it can; it doesn't have to mean two kids, a dog, and an SUV by age 32, though that too could be an option. Having it all can be leading a productive and happy life surrounded by people that we love, co-workers that we like and respect, and doing something that we feel to be important, whether for the 'greater good' or not."
---Ilana Dann - 2000 (Just after the birth of my child - still illusorily hopeful)

www.student.brynmawr.edu/orgs/cnews/012800/womanhood.html


What the fuck? I love finding this crap, these random stray bytes of information on myself floating about the web. I say this with the bitterest, most sardonically curling lip. What the fuck did I know about having it all? I feel like I don't have squat. No, that's not fair, but frankly, the twisting of words that I couldn't have meant so rigidly straight-up for the marketing purposes of corporate private university ABC.edu well, it just stinks!

I love being a mother, and I, believe it or not, have been doing ok for the last several years, but spewing about a fulfilling life and all... it all just still hurts... and no, I have no SUV, nor do I want one... ever... and no, no excitingly posh six-figure salary either:( what do I have? Well, I _am_ back in academia, which is fab, just that it also means the devolving of everything else I was, back into a fetid pile of excrement. I am now suddenly selfish for just wanting to be able to think for a few moments, by myself, to be sad, alone, to not have to share every last intimate detail of my psyche on demand.

How would I re-think this immortalized less-than-aphorism??? I _do_ still think that as women our bodies should belong to us - none of this corporal hijacking - and that the choices we make with regard to our bodies should not be used against us, with the grand inquisitors breathing down our necks, their medieval machines of torture clanking to life...
The Scarlet letter A - for academic - eternally devoid of our feminine charm, or paying the price. Burning the candle at both ends, and finally, what? A brighter light that burns out faster? A quickening? A flutter? The butterfly breaking from its chrysalis, a painful re-emergence as a beautiful form alight, painful for all that knew her. And for her former self. And so much closer to her demise.

Homeland

He married her because she felt like home. And a home was what he needed at that time, he thought. He married her because she looked so fragile, stricken, and he imagined himself as her saviour, as the father that he never had, or knew, to protect and defend. He married her because he thought that getting older meant that you were supposed to settle for something, anything, before it was too late, before every last one of your doors snapped shut.

And she _was_ home. He no longer needed to struggle with the awful language that bombarded him daily, he could recoil, into himself, into her. Her firm hands preparing his food, smoothing the wrinkles from his shirts as he readied himself for a trip back into society, good hands, kind hands, knowledgeable hands, that cared for others. Daily. There was music in his house, and companionship that he had so desired, but the stricken, frightened girl began to lose her fear. And the music began to lose its distinct tug at his heart strings. She began to demonstrate daily that there was something that he was failing to give her. She would never tell him what it was, after all, good girls didn’t make demands from where she came, but he saw in her eyes again - the sadness, the disapproval, the silent reproach.

He was not what she had imagined. The love of her life dying long before this man had found her. She imagined that his loving kindness would involve roses and kisses and pretty words and would require less work on her part. She thought that she could be a home to him, a light in his darkening eyes; that she was meant to be that, for someone, and that he needed to feel like he had a purpose. She tried to be his purpose, but his gaze wandered inward, and she began to feel as if she were a mirage, a specter in her own home.

She had followed another man to this place, a man that she had loved passionately, and for whom she would have done _anything_ he asked. But this was another man, a different one, one that needed respectability, she thought, one who she could only please unimaginatively. One whose desires were a mystery to her. She quietly moved about the house, doing her work, humming songs to herself. This was not a satisfactory situation, but she had always been a relatively optimistic person, and her work, the interaction with her students, was enough. It was. However, the house was not a home, just a house, built together, with mutual sweat and toil. She no longer wondered why he would wander off, alone. She knew she did not want to have children with this man, she feared that they, too, would make her feel like an alien in her own home.

He sat, looking into the depths of his glass, the food silently swallowed, the plates silently cleared, diligently cleaned and replaced in their respective nests. He cringed at the silence and solemnity, he would have filled the house with laughing children to make up for the crying of his own spoiled youth. But then, the bitter reality, he had created a home that felt more like a prison than a home after all. He was more like his father than he would like to admit, demanding perfection, obedience, despite the decided lack of yelling. But he also yearned for playfulness. This beautiful, crystalline wife he had chosen, tiny like a doll, but with no external motivating factor to spark her eyes with life. Not in this house, anyway. He had seen her with this spark, he had thought that it was meant for him, but it was really meant for another, far off, behind the curtains of her eyelashes and within the secrets spaces in her heart.

And now what? they both wondered, wordlessly. Neither speaking, even though it should have been so easy, words should have rolled between them like the waves of their respective seas. She was not the landscape of his youth, he was not the adventure of hers, they were just stoically, silently together. Wading through life, one day at a time. The food prepared, the animals fed, the sheets tucked under in a perfect hospital corner. Perfection and purity, with no messy edges. Straight lines, and straight-laced interactions in the bedroom. He respected her excessive propriety, she, his need to control everything down to the most minute of details. They smiled ruefully, heroically. This would not be another failure. It couldn’t be. It mustn’t be. And besides, who would get the dogs if they both just got up from the table and left?

Pomegranate and chocolate amargo

Dessert before dinner to cap off our five day indulgence spree.

Strangely, my dissatisfaction pulls at me, like the tide away from the shore. Alone in a room full of people. When will I stop feeling alone?

As we walked through the farm, we encountered Javier a visionary, a poet, a farmer, who has worked this same land for the last twenty years. He had a marvelous name for the president - el mono diabólico - and a fabulous philosophy of life - to be content, with what you have, or to look for what will make you happy. Expressed in a much more beautiful way and with a kindness of soul, as if he could ascertain the pain, and soothe it, and offer alternatives not previously examined.

I am so astounded by these brilliant women who call themselves friends, as they play games on the computer and create a new and (much) improved web site for me, or explain the mysteries of crop rotation.

I have come to the conclusion (again) that there are many things in this life that I will never know how to do, and that I best accept this, and move forward. I am also feeling guilty (again) that I am focusing on petty existential minutae when I should be doing something to combat the horrendous and atrocious injustices that my country is commiting even as I write. How many babies will lose mothers or fathers or limbs in the time it takes me to write this crap in my very safe, and very comfortable living room? Would a bullet in the brain solve any of this? No? Then I guess I will continue to breathe, and process from the interiority of a completely uselessly ineffectual intellectual. AND... I am writing a new story that will be both completely un-political, and probably awful by all artistic standards... arggggggggh.

I hate Sunday nights. They are crushing.

I am the "ass" in aesthete

Yes, here I am again. Happily imbibed, or peda, as others would call it. Life is good, I realize, and there is *nothing* like a bar that will let you get trashed in the company of your almost five-year-old, while listening to a fabulously sexy singer-songwriter who is the interim act. Oh my god, I could have licked food from her palm, but, instead I licked it from my own. Kirsten, Becca, Adrian and Miguel (not to mention my darling child) indulged my inebriated state, dancing in sexy swirls, with the drink still in my hand, and a cover band, playing everything from CCR to Jimmy Cliff to CSNY and more, and I unabashedly singing at the top of my lungs, buried deep within the woods of the Santa Ynez mountain range. Strangest thing, here we were, after our late start, in the mountains, por fin!, and in a quaint bar with boar's heads and O'Keefe style cattle skulls, and a crackling fire, and a duende house that Isabella loved!

Then I hear someone call my name, "Ilana" and there is our little Brazilian princess, Vicki, older and younger than she really is all at the same time, out to dinner with her aunt. Reminder: you are never as anonymous as you think! Oh, and how my body feels free, as the music rolls over, and the kamikazes pulse through my veins (K totally did me in, vodka and triple sec with lime juice. mmmmm. I think I had five, but I am still not sure). I am reminded of the nights in D.F. with too much wine in my system and the sex spilling from my mouth, my eyes, the heat rolling in waves emanating desire from every inch of visible skin (and then some).

And the singer watches me as I dance, and Isabella holds me, twirling, and Miguel's birthday cake that Kirsten so thoughtfully bought, wet chocolate and cream between my fingers, devouring with my smile, running my tongue over my teeth, I am alive, and the loneliness that wandered by my side, just an hour before has been scared back into its cave or its closet.

My neckline plunges and the sticky wet alcohol that spilled down the valley tastes fabulous, and I would suck on my own breasts if only I could, but there are so many that would be happy to do me the honor, that I just spin and spin and spin.
Isabella convinces me to visit the duende house and we draw pictures, and she tells me that I am the most beautiful mommy that ever was, and for just one moment I believe her. The car pulses, and Kirsten drives, I turn myself over to the power of others, I enjoy the entrega, the letting go of everything that I usually control. I need a car, I will explore the valleys, calling to me, the olive trees, like the Spanish landscape that haunts me, only missing are the virile toros and the solitude. I think I could supply at least one of those things.

The mesa sunset from yesterday, and the Reisling that followed the picnic, dolphins showing us their felicitous fanfares, and the smell of mushroom brie risotto, as Kirsten and Becca prepare the Spanish hour dinner. The sand beneath my shoes, and the muscles aching and pidiendo manos, and stretches that will bring the familiar tearing, tugging and burning.

Oh. oh oh oh. This is my life, it is, for a day. Tomorrow I will be a responsible adult again, but tonight I will be in love. In love. In love. Tonight and forever, as the land stretches before my eyes and the skin stretches before my hands, and my mind can walk the hills and valleys that are not mine, but that would be, if they were not private property. Perhaps I can strike a deal with the owner, as long as I don't take too much soil with me, if I pitch a tent, and tread softly. If I love the land and then let it be. Yes, perhaps that is a possibility.

I had no idea of the beauty just within the mountains, and now, I cannot go back to unknowing, I must visit every inch that lays itself before me. The grey-green hills, the fog, the blue, the deep lakes and the marauding turkey -guardians. I want to feel it all. Lay myself in the earth, feel its pulse, taste its earthy silt on my tongue, in the corner of my smile as I rock, twirling in ecstasy, hands intertwined in the grass, and stretching, scratching my back as if an animal in the spring.

Yes, I *am* the ass in aesthete, and the cold spring springs forth in my hands, and pissing like a race horse is so fulfilling, like the reverse of the unspeakable acts that fill my mind. It is nothing, a trifle, a moment, and yet. And yet...

Left overs

Phone calls from people, relics from a former life, and food from a former incarnation.

Satisfying and sad at the same time.

What happens when we become left overs in the lives of others? Are we savored, the last meaty marrow sucked from our souls? Or are we just discarded, fat and bones, twisted tendons - the foul memory of mold, decay and fermentation sanitized and rewritten into neat chapters, insipid and devoid of heady aromas?

Constructions of National Identity

Ok. So admit it, we all participated because it is fun to feed our friends and lovers for no other reason than the meal itself, with no implied gift-giving and no uncomfortable gift-receiving. Just lots of food.

I do have to say that I find it rather obnoxious that as intelligent people we still tow the line of crap that this is about the Pilgrims landing on Plimoth Rock (that's how it used to be spelled) and the wonderfully docile, eternally helpful native Americans that received them with open arms and corn-growing tips, breaking bread, just like Jesus with the lepers.

Crap, crap, pure crap. It is a WELL DOCUMENTED reality that this holiday is only loosely based on varying pagan traditions - festivals of the fall harvest, and protestant day of thanks (totally different time of year) and was cleverly constructed (its official date shifting several times before settling here) by none other than our treasured (and then assassinated) president Lincoln, grasping at straws to bind in adobe brick the splitting foundation of a nation in the process of a messy (but which would have ultimately been fruitful) divorce. Prior to the secession from the Union, split along the Mason-Dixon line, Lincoln was searching for a symbol of Nationhood, a common denominator, a way to appeal to the American-ness of all, called together in brotherhood, color and white, meeting, discussing, uniting in a peaceful meal, together reaping the harvests of the mutual toil. He was APOLOGIZING for his attempts at the abolition of slavery.

He should have skipped turkey day and just let the damn (read: Texans) keep their backward-ass ideas. (What elegant turn-of-phrase, but maybe this way our "beloved" prez will understand). Maybe if the union had been allowed to dissolve then, it wouldn't have been such a black day for the entire world 22 days ago. Think: The Guardian.

Nonetheless, it *is* a useful excercise to give thanks (but better on a daily basis) and eating with friends and drinking too much (did we really drink over 15 bottles between the 12 of us???)

The turkey was drunk too! Man, Kirsten and I (with Becca's willing hands) whooped that Turkey's ass. Most beautiful turkey I have ever seen (and *not* because it was our, ahem, first). Miguel and Adrian harvested in the garden and fresh broccoli was incorporated as well as broccoli greens and other sylvan seedlings were made into a mind-boggling, pear and pomegranate wielding, gorgonzola adorned salad. mmmm.

Not without appropriate innuendo, K. and I busied ourselves with rubbing butter and spices along the outside, and inner cavities of the doubly penetrable, extra-large (22 lb) bird. Once it began expelling juice, we made clever use of baster and utility-sized syringe, injecting both subcutaneously and intra-muscularly throughout the course of the day, a whole bottle of white wine mixed with a stick of melted butter.

Stock was prepared early with the less-favored entrails, and served as the flavor base for the kick-ass stuffing (If I do say so myself...) Becca ripped open the luscious pomegranates harvested from her mother's garden and the boys were delegated to the task of chopping (and drinking snarky beers), onions, carrots, parsnips, apple... We also partook of the heavenly fall fruit, persimmon, and ate pumpkin bread for breakfast...

Sauteed the onions, garlic, celery, crimini mushrooms in a butter/olive-oil mix, then, added chopped apricot which had been reconstituted in previously made stock, then chopped apple all reduced to a slightly caramel, seasoned with thyme, sage, rosemary and a few other fresh herbs. Cornbread cubes (bought - didn't have time to make and then let dry my own) folded in, with more stock and a little more oil. Finally upon serving, sprinkled generously with fresh pomegranate seeds.

K. did the gravy which needed nothing more than a simple roux,, of butter and flour, and the lovely pan drippings, replete with a bottle of wine, butter and all the marvelous juices. We laughed at our own sauciness in the preparation.

She also managed to snap out an apple-quince, cherry-soaked in red wine and Cointreau pie, with on the spot crust-preparation (she rocks my world!) and then used the juice from the cherries to lightly flavor the cream that was whipped, but this is all out of order...

Meanwhile, I mashed potatoes with a kick, a head of roast garlic and a few skins smashed in for good measure. Garlic = good... good. Always, well maybe not in ice-cream... but I wouldn't be against trying it once (or anything for that matter;)

Roasted sweet-potatoes, tossed with carrots and parsnips in an orange maple glaze. (Mostly Becca)

And our guests even arrived the hour late that we anticipated (saying 3:30 and figuring food for 5:00) with more salad and wine and Tortilla de patata... so we got to shower too!!!

Now, here is the subversive part, or rather the redeeming quality that I will extract, like a bad-tooth, ripped from the gaping cave of an anesthetized mouth. There we were, together, with the excuse of indulging in (some) hedonistic gorging, and excessive laughter for a reason, to deconstruct the National identity which has been shoved down our throats. A total of three and a half (North) "Americans" to the 2 Brazilians, 2 Venezuelans, 2(and a half) Mexicans, 1 Spaniard and 1 Englishman. We could have better been a UN convention on the status of women in Latin America or a free-trade organization spearhead committee. But we weren't. We were just a bunch of goofy friends, subverting the dominant paradigm: not sitting at a big imposing table, but rather, sprawled about, listening to music, smoking and drinking and generally being thankful for the opportunity to have an excuse to get together... AND... We actually stopped to reflect on what we are thankful for.


Only regret. We didn't have time to make the fresh dark-chocolate pomegranate ice-cream, or bake the brie with apricot jam and almonds... There is always tomorrow, and we have another 6 bottles of wine, so it should last until the evening, at least.

7 virtues (and 7 vices too:(

Here are my seven virtues to be considered:
1) I am cute
2) I am funny
3) I have hair that lets me hide behind it
4) I am generous
5) I am just
6) I generally care about others
7) I kick some kitchen booty

BUT... these are mediated by my seven vices (which if judged in mathematical terms of *absolute value* are significantly weightier)

1) I am narcissistic
2) I am cocky
3) I can't stop myself from inflicting self-imposed physical damage
4) I am selfish (not materially but in a deeper more personal sense)
5) I am obstinate (and downright ornery)
6) I have low sense of self worth (and yes, I am extremely contradictory)
7) I am indecisive

=

Treatise on why I suck. I fall in love with love. I don't do what is in my best interest. I don't listen to good advice, but I often listen to bad, self-serving advice. I am hurtful to people that love me. I am impatient. I can't make myself listen to reason when reason doesn't allign itself to my desires. I procrastinate. I am repetitive to the point of nausea. I lend myself to bouts of melancholy when by all accounts the world is still good.

Guess it is good that tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I can be thankful that I still have a chance to fix all of these problems as I am not dead yet!

Ok. quick! I have to write this recipe to not forget!

This was not supposed to unfurl this way, but I lost the urgently scribbled scrap of paper that I wanted to immortalize and now the urge is even more desperate.

The banana-cashew bread is long cool, and dinner is eaten, and the house is clean, almost all due to Miguel's diligence, he is a much more efficient cleaner than I... too distractible and solicited to get the chaos to subside. In my defense, I did do the bathroom and my bedroom and the Kitchen and the cooking of dinner (shrimp in garlic sauce on a bed of baby spinach, pearl tomatoes and cashews with a balsamic vinaigrette)... The pumpkin bread is in the oven, which I am also responsible for, and its hearthy aroma is wafting through the house.

Urgent. can't lose this recipe, it is wonderful, but also irreplaceable, copied from a Stoneyfield Yogurt container last holiday season, and therefore ultimately unattributeable (sorry whoever the author was!)

Best damn pumpkin bread on the planet.

Wet:
1 cup good organic yogurt (vanilla or plain)
1 15-16 oz. organic pumpkin puree (no spices/sugar added)
1/3 cup canola oil
2 cups! (I know it is alot, but this *is* a dessert bread) sugar (a little less if using vanilla yogurt)
3 eggs beaten to a foam and then folded in

also spices should be added to pumpkin or to flour mixture but not at the end!
2tsp cinnamon
3 tsp nutmeg
(alternatively - 5 tsp pumpkin pie spice if lacking proper ingredients)

Dry:
3 cups flour (I never sift and it always works, but you can do what makes you most comfortable)
1tsp salt
1/2 TBS baking soda
1TBS baking powder.
Add this in small amounts to the wet mixture, and stir until completely integrated into a smooth, creamy batter.

Put into two greased and floured bread pans and insert (ha ha) into previously heated 400 oven, for 35-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out dry upon piercing the skin of the loaf down to its core...

I remembered!

So, Isabella has been bathed and her beautifully straight hair combed. How I longed my whole life to be able to pull a brush through silky hair, just once, to watch it fall like satin in a perfectly straight line (like the awful Pantene commercials that make you want to buy the product just so you will have hair so perfect, even though you KNOW it is all a lie). Living vicariously seems to be what I do best, so her hair will have to be the hair of my dreams, instead of the horrible rat's nest that I was awarded, a crowning jewel to cap my decadent brain.

While I combed, she sat at the new desk her daddy bought, and turned on her computer (a free one obtained from a man who offered it in the SB independent) and proceeded to astonish us with her savvy. She knew exactly which game to play and how to manipulate the rat (wait, English, mouse) and then how to turn it off, and how to draw pictures. I am impressed, my mother can't even figure that out for herself... ah, yes, children are fabulous. She keeps asking when our guests are going to arrive, and I keep saying soon, soon, and now, she has curled up on the newly purchased bench and has fallen asleep next to me.

The pumpkin bread is now out of the oven, it turns a dark mahogany color, and I forgot to mention that if desired, whole wheat flour is wonderful, if a bit heavy... but I didn't do that today.

Ok, so I am a bit nervous about tomorrow for two reasons. 1) I have no place to seat my guests and hope people don't mind gathering around the coffee table and such... actually I am sure they won't care as a) most are not American and therefore have no preconceived notions of how a "real" Thanksgiving should be and b) they are my friends and therefore absolutely casual and unceremonious people...
2) I have (big secret!) never cooked a turkey before, and if I fuck up, I just spent a week's worth of grocery money on an unedible piece of meat. Yes, a week's worth. $50 for a turkey that must have been fondled to death after its resort-style free-range-life. I wish I were a free-range turkey... no worries, no nasty antibiotics or hormones (grrrrr. I hate having been subjected to synthetic and unnatural hormones... can't wait 'til Kirsten gets this male contraception thing going strong... why should we be the ones poked and prodded, like cattle or non-free range turkeys just because we have the receptacles of life??? especially when it is many times they who don't want the children!)


Now I just have to keep my eyes open until they get here. I bet the traffic from the bay area was (or continues to be) horrid.
The benefits of staying home.

I am amazed that I feel like this is home, and not just because I am surrounded by my things, but I feel more at home here in CA (despite all the pseudo-hippie, new age tweak-outs) than I did for years in the North East... Not to say that I am totally not up-tight (I have my moments) but if I have to choose a death, wildfires or earth that splits open to swallow me, are eternally more appealing than spinning off the highway into a frozen lake, or simply withering in an icy nothingness, white-out (which, let's be honest is more statistically probable than being swallowed by the earth).

I notice that I have become Californian in my temperature sensitivity too. I am COLD, for instance, right now, where this would be considered mild in NH. How we adapt to our environment. So very easy to forget who we are and where we come from, or to construct a mythical homeland, eternally unattainable, or ultimately disappointing if we were to ever try and return. People die over less. They kill eachother for the idea of a place, not even the place itself. Why is that? I wonder.
Why do we even care?

See here I go again waxing philosophical when all this was supposed to be about was a pumpkin bread recipe. Damn me. I am about as deep as a puddle of piss on hot asphalt. Better stop now. Or else...

Decisions, decisions

Like:
do I put clothing on?

do I get up from this very strange and uncomfortable position. no. wait. a very interesting part of my body has "fallen" asleep. this can only be acheived by sitting just so... a sort of a diagonal angle, one I discovered by sitting on the edge of a curb in Cambridge...

Funny how sitting on the edge of a curb can make you appear to be a social outcast when really you are just tired of standing, or walking and there are no good benches around, and the curb looks so inviting.

That isn't a problem in SB. Downtown there are lots of benches, generally peopled, but still, plenty for the sitting... but they face the stores which makes them ultimately less appealing than the curbs because there you get to watch the cars pass and spy in on the people, as they discuss where to park or eat.

I don't do this very often, and even less lately, having no car or time or ganas...

Do I do my research from home or do I drag myself to school? I left my bike there last night. Damn. walking is nice, but not with blistered feet. I tried breaking in newly re-discovered (evil) hiking sneakers... I will never buy Nike shoes again, they don't fit my feet right and they never broke in, they just always, invariably, rub my heels raw within minutes, causing lasting nuisance for days and defeating the entire purpose.

Theorem: Uncomfortable foot-wear = bad news.

I also have one on clothing: Uncomfortable (meaning any, really) clothing = necessary evil of doing business with normal people.

Decision 1 is made. I will get dressed before leaving the house. maybe. I wish I were liberated enough to just go out unclothed, and not care. Of course in this ridiculously puritanical country I would be arrested within minutes, unless I were running faster than the cops and then hiding, which would be a waste of time and energy and also an impossibility lacking comfortable footwear. Also, people would look really silly with no clothing and just shoes. It is a vicious cycle.

Decision 2 is made as my position has changed into another weird contortion. I am multi-tasking, stretching my back as I write. My laptop is resting on top of my feet, legs straight out in front of me, and I am folded in half, typing... If only my legs were longer I could stretch my upper back too...

Yesterday Alison and I spent our pre-class prep time stretching in the sun on the esplanade in front of our drab 70's style building. the courtyard is quite nice though, and the sun that is bleaching my hair daily was lovely, and she showed me some excellent stretches, though if any stodgy professors were observing, I may be losing decorum points...

Outside we can laugh too loud and nobody has a right to squelch our guffaws... Debra, perhaps the funniest woman on earth (nothing like the dry humor of an Irishwoman with the sensibilities of an Italian film professor) made me laugh almost to the point of tears, or of oxygen deprivation, with just a few well pointed comments.

Theorem: Laughing = good for you. really really.

Of course there are other things that made me sad yesterday, I wonder why my mood is so variable. I wonder if I am not just going a little loopy.

I have made other decisions, which may eventually come back to bite me in the butt... but. There is peace in deciding things that are gnawing at your psyche, and sometimes just the making of the decision improves your overall outlook on life. Even if it seems like the wrong decision, it may be the right one. Even if it is the right one, it may seem like the wrong one. Redundancy is my very best trait!

Then you just have to wait patiently for life to unfold. Which is excruciating if you are as horribly impatient as I.

Sigh.

Kirsten and Becca and Adrian are coming tonight!!! Late. But there is a fridge full of cheese and a closet full of wine and I will be baking banana bread this afternoon to combat the unmangiable effects of time on bananas.

I want to listen to Harry Belafonte. Just for a few minutes. I can't of course not having anything in my house. We used to have LP's and the 8-track reels when I was little, and we would dance around the kitchen and have bananas flambé, with triple sec and butter and sugar...

I made that for Isabella once too, and she loved it. Who wouldn't???

New position. elbows making contact with ground, arms layed flat and still fingers typing, arched back, rump in the air. Still no clothing. 'Tis nice to be alone for a few more minutes before returning to the social world.

Maybe I will buy a croissant at the café instead of trying to feed myself here yet another bowl of cheerios. My staple and unexciting breakfast of the energy deficient. Ok, now the soles of my feet are tingling, perhaps due to the pressure put on my knees, cutting off major circulation to lower legs. It also hurts to keep my neck up and look at the screen.

Ok. Last position. Back to flat on my tummy, half furry rug, half yucky rug. I think that I am a freak, but I hate unevenness. For example, if someone is giving me a back rub and they do one side but do not equally stimulate the other, it drives me crazy. Or if someone kisses one ear or one side of the neck and then fails to go do the other. urgh. Of course I never complain, I just feel uneven. It is also this way when I drive home. There are some turns that are not complete enough for me to feel like there is closure, and it bothers me deeply to not follow the same route home. Every time.

As a woman this could be deadly. They say that to not be stalked or to protect ourselves we should vary our routine on a regular basis, not creating patterns so as to avoid predictably unprotected moments in our aloneness. Why is it this way? Why should we always have to think about protecting ourselves from some insidious and ubiquitous evil? A vague threat that hovers simply because of our sexual apparatuses??? I don't vary my routine on purpose, but I guess I am sporadically different enough to be safe, however, I would really just rather not buy into the fear.

Now this is getting too heavy, and I am feeling sprightly and good, so I will stop writing... my fingers always leading me down the path to perdition. I am getting cold too. It really is time to stop, and then go. Ah yes. Wednesday calls again, but as if it were a Friday:)

Who knew?

Only on the west coast (or at a party school) do they actually sell alcohol in the middle of the day for consumption in the University Center.

Now, not that I am a proponent of being carded, as it is a bothersome, and ultimately wasted action, I am surprised that there was no question. At all. I mean, I still look like I'm 17... as evidenced by the fact that for the last four years while teaching at a high school I was always charged a student lunch price despite the fact that I, on occasion, wore the badge that was meant to prevent intruders from penetrating the hallowed halls, or to keep bomb threats from being scribbled on bathroom stalls. (How exactly this was supposed to happen, I am not sure, but as a brilliant women once told me: "don't try to put logic and public education together. They just don't go")

Am I getting older? Do I look like a grown-up? I certainly don't act like one on a regular basis... But after the bottle of wine, and beer, these things don't have to make sense. Perhaps I am making up for all the bad I never accomplished in my undergraduate years... But feeling tipsy on a mid-Monday after giving a test and before going home to do more stupid research feels pretty good.

Now if I can just sober up before picking up the kids at school:(

Reflections on the resilience of youth

And if you lose your faith babe,
you can have mine...
And if your lost I'm right behind,
'cause we walk the same line...
---Everything but the girl

It would seem that faithlessness is rampant these days. I find it hard to have faith, say, in humanity when our voting public opts for the reality of mass destruction of others, while claiming to love their neighbor. It is a deeply painful paradox that we Americans (there I go linguistically usurping the identity of two entire continents because my language has made it so) have to face. And yet. And yet... In the unraveling of the mystery we must combat FAITH with faith, in ourselves, in our ability to make a difference, to break through the silence, and the misunderstanding, and mistrust.

It is, perhaps, a false dichotomy to equate atheism to lack of spirituality. I believe that humans are deeply spiritual beings, and that we are searching for meaning, and failing, and searching some more. I recently felt as if I were enclosed in an enormous stainless steel cylinder, surgically bereft of nicks and scratches and the possibility of infection, and the possibility of escape, no notches upon which to settle one's fingers, to grasp, to scale, to rise above and see the light. Of course this is not a metaphor for the alienation of modern woman... it is just how I felt, overwhelmed with the tiniest of tasks, and not being able to start. But, the dam has broken, and I have initiated myself, only to find that sometimes you don't need even the tiniest crack in which to dig your fingers, but rather, rubber boots, gum and sweat, to fight against the slippery steel encasings that surround us.

I believe in faith but not necessarily in God. I believe in the comfort of community but not necessarily the binding conformity of Institution. I believe in myself and in others, and that is enough for today. And I believe in the resilience of our children to overcome the failures with which we have saddled them.

This morning, while I was working (yes, finally) and cooking and making a pot of coffee (multi-tasking is not only for the electronic) Isabella and her little friend Mae were playing just outside the door. I took preventative measures and actually clothed my nether regions, against my desires, but for the sake of propriety, in a soft-heather grey skirt. I lay belly down, as I am now on the brown institutional carpet, data entry in the early morning... Mae commented that she could not come over into the house until her mother came back from doing the laundry. Isabella then asked, "is your daddy home?" and to what I can only imagine was a non-verbal response (outside of my visual sphere) she continued, "Oh, do you have a daddy?".
Mae replied, "yes, I have a daddy. But he doesn't live here." And then Isabella knowingly questions, "Oh, did they break up or something?" Mae, without emotion, maybe four, not wanting to go in and dress warmly. "Yes, they were divorced." And then the two girls hold hands and giggle and make a craft to pay homage to the dead rat from Isabella's classroom.

I think that as adults we forget the resilience of youth precisely because we are so resistant to change and renewal ourselves. Children are more capable of understanding the inner workings of the human heart than we. Wherein lies the moment of change? When does the innocence and the acceptance die? I can remember the first word I read, I can recall exactly where I read it, on a restaurant sign, in front of the Acme in Wallingford, next to the bookstore. I remember the pride I felt at sounding out the word, decoding the letters myself. But I can't remember when I lost my innocence. Perhaps it was a slipping, slowly, a leeching away of essence. I remember, too, the first time I felt the spinning sensation of being *in* love. I must have been 6 and we were playing "kick the can" and hiding in the woods and a little blond boy, Marc, my age or thereabouts, caught me as I was running, and we sized each other up, and he showed me, in sign language the sign for "I love you" and the world spun and my knees wobbled in a swoon. But there was no pain then, there was no loss in loving, there was no destruction of one thing to replace another. Just the smell of the goats in their pen, and the earth, and the knotty roots and dirt beneath my feet. I don't think I saw Marc after that year and I never missed him. Again. The resilience of youth, the lack of regret and nostalgia. Is there a way to recapture that, I wonder?

In the meantime, now that my work-break is drawing to a close, I insist that as humans we are responsible to one another, and if one of us loses faith, there should be another of us, to step in and support, like a Jacob's ladder, always alternating, always aspiring to the sky.

And I even finished my New Castle.

I was so proud of myself. My first trip to a SB bar, and it managed to be an off-the-beaten-path one. More like a house than a bar, with gaudy painted walls, live music and comfortable couches, free from obnoxiously gyrating post-teens, or bar droolers. I had a beer and behaved totally appropriately, well, mostly, no really, totally. I got to hang out with a bunch of skinny Jewish guys with glasses, yes, stereotypical, but in this case also true, and some very cool women from the soc. department. The motive of the gathering (and my being included was through a contact made initially via internet) was to present to us a dear friend who had just moved back from México D.F. Strangely enough he lived not far from where I did and we had an amazingly similar first run-in with the cops... steaming up the windows of cars in front of houses where we lived).

The reason that this is uncanny was that prior to going out, I promised myself that I would only write a little story tonight after I returned, so as to arise early and (ok. you caught me, ahem, begin the work that I was supposed to have spent the day doing.) Instead of working today, or in addition to grading the essays that I had, which took way longer than it should have because I was laying in bed and we all know to what that typically leads... I cleaned my kitchen, and machinated evil plans to take over the world. no? Ok, also not true. I thought about _that_ specific story that I wanted to tell. And here, I was, not alone in my vivid imagination. I could just _not_ tell the story after all. And savor it as my own for just a little longer. Then I wouldn't have to share this one more skinny boy with glasses (not Jewish) with the world. I don't know. He would probably get a kick out of appearing in my writing, what's more, I am going to search for him. That is exactly what I will do. He was a very good poet. I wonder if he is still writing his angry scatalogical poetry.

I feel sleepy, and tired, and not so very sad today. There is a world outside. There are ideas bouncing about waiting to be scooped or plucked or wrapped up in our embrace. There are matters of ethics to be considered and scientists that are planning even faster computers. Joy! Rapture! I can continue to make pithy commentary, and we all know, *that* is what I live for. I don't know if I should take this as a compliment (although at the time it was given as one) but I was once told: "I love you --- you always say the nasty things that I am thinking but am too afraid to say out loud" or something to that effect.
I think I can't even try to silence myself. What would the world be without one more snotty dissenter???

Friday Night... fever.

Who knew that staying home on a Friday night would be so pleasureable. Just the girls. watching a movie. Me, I am unwinding before attacking yet another pile of grading. Now there is _no_ comparison between this grading and the extended misery of high school grading. I was reminded today about the time I wrote my "philosphy of education". What did I write? I wonder, as I have misplaced several years of writing from the cross-over of computers, what on earth I could have written... I suppose it might still be useful if I could find it.

My philosophy in short:

As a teacher (or a human) I have a deep commitment to the well-being, intellectual and individual development of my charges.

I will teach in a way that respects the difference of opinions that may exist, while not renouncing my values. That is, I must encourage critical thought, and offer the widest range of options for my students, while guiding them to make moral decisions that respect the rights of others.

I must be willing to admit error, or lack of knowledge, and always be big enough to rectify my mistakes, or research an adequate response.

I will further the spread of non-dominant points of view, and encourage open discourse, respect and care for others in my class.

I will care for my students on a professional and personal level. I will be a real person to them, sharing personal (appropriate) details from my life and encouraging a sense of community.

I will be extremely demanding of my students, almost as much as I am of myself, because a teacher that isn't demanding, doesn't push students to learn, which is, ultimately our main job as educators.

Oh, and I will be fair and just, to the best of my ability.


I know, I really _do_ want to be in this profession, of course I also want to have *lots* of time to do my own research, but, of course, that is why I am back in school. It makes sense right now. I think that I need the kind of balance that an academic life implies: on one hand, the urgency to create and reflect constantly on what is being done currently in my field, and on the other, the energizing interaction of contact with fecund minds, minds that can be coddled and pushed towards critical self-reflection. And finally, long vacations (ie time to do personal research) unhindered by 9-5 grind, and the encouragement for self-expression and personal writing.

I can do this. Who cares if I will never be good enough for me. Maybe I will be good enough for somebody else. At least I can help others on their quest. Right? That will be my contribution.

Un dia de aquellos...

So some days, ok, lately most days, I sound really down on life in general, but today will not be an exception...

I can't get anything right. I am literally on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and I can't get my f-ing printer to install, or get the programs to do what they are supposed to do. I want my mom. I do. She would just sit down and watch me work, like she did all those years when I needed (silent) company in order to be able to get my schoolwork done. I was a dreadful child, by all accounts, ok, not publicly, outwardly I was a sweet, angelic, and always appropriately well-behaved little girl. Save for at Sunday school, where I was perpetually thrown out of class for my lack of faith or my eternal questioning. Of course, I would end up talking about infinitely more interesting things with Rabbi Rick, which may have been the real reason for getting kicked out in the first place. But at home I was a holy terror. I smashed a window pane with my hand (and a napkin holder in the form of a house) on the coldest day of winter. (I was 10) I would dare my parents to punish me, to take every material possession from me, because ultimately nothing made a difference, we were all bound to our infinitesimal existence in an infinite sphere. Including me.

I have actually had a few invites to go to synagogue lately, and while free food and a Friday evening alone are appealing, I would feel hypocritical and so very anti-Israeli policy that I would have to hide my head... On the other hand, maybe the answers are there, and just needing to be found. I feel so very small, and insignificant and without direction that I can *almost* understand this knee-jerk fundamentalism that is sweeping the nation; giving yourself over to a set of rules that determine your thoughts and actions, must be comforting, mind-numbing, soothing, easy.

Maybe I prefer the pain. I do know that I would prefer to choose the kind of pain to feel, but I guess that is the nature of pain, it hurts because we don't get to choose. I have become less and less proficient or efficient in the kitchen these days. Dinner was dill havarti, half a left-over burrito, an apple with almond butter and banana licuado. Then it happened. I dropped the almost-full glass jar of almond butter from three feet, right on top of my foot. Hence, the "I can't get anything right". I keep injuring myself, the left toe is mostly better, the right hand is maybe almost fully functional again (we'll see;) and then I go and experiment with gravity, testing the force of impact as I lift my right foot to catch the glass before it shatters (it didn't) as if the bottle were a soccer ball. Some habits die hard. I think I have said that before, about a completely unrelated habit. The addage still holds true.

I wish I could fast forward five years, ten years, and then reverse it, I wish I could flip to the end of the novel, to read snatches from the last page. To see who the heroine ends up with. Or if she ends up alone. Or if she discovers the cure to some uncurable disease. Or find out if she lives "happily ever after", but then return to enjoy the telling and unfolding of the story. I don't know. Maybe I just waste my time here writing because it is in English and it feels like some dirty pleasure. Like I am cheating the devil and he will be coming for me soon.

What will it be? I think it will be a cat-nap and then arousal (from sleep... you all have dirty minds) to go do more work. Work, wyrk, werk, wirk. What a strange language this is... what strange animal sounds we make. How nice it feels to let the mother toungue roll around the inside of my mouth, my mind, like marbles that I used to suck on, when not playing with my brother and our building blocks. Why am I not a builder? Why am a I a "destroyer" a self-destroyer, a deconstructor? I wish I were an erector... but them maybe I am after all.

Nah. I wish. I don't have that kind of staying power, everything I touch seems to wither in my hands, leeching liquid sickness, the disease that is within all of us. Once upon a time, I believed in a man, and his vision of AIDS was that we were all infected, every single one of us, that we just had different manifestations of the same sickness, it was either within or without, but still present, nevertheless. I don't know if he expressed it this eloquently, but they were whispered late night words, and I clung to my phone to hear them, and the faith that was professed seemed so very beautiful, and so very far away. Several years later, his brother, it would turn out, had an infection that wouldn't go away, ganglions that swelled beyond imagine, that continued after draining. He had the same birthday as me, June 16, only twenty years before. We were the best of friends, when he must have known what was happening, but refused to let himself know, he would tell me the raciest stories about the dark encounters, the fellatio in Manchester bars. My morbid obsession with the terrible blood disease began much before, for years, every time I would read a book, if the word were on the page my eyes would instantly jump to it, and fixate and my heart would hurt for the loss and the dying. I have lost my fear. Somewhere. I am safe here, I thought, but I am not safe from myself, and the disease it turns out has infected us all.

Self-doubt. Is it nothing more than a spiritual auto-immune disease? Is AIDS a metaphor for our ultimately spritually bald existence. Maybe I should go back and reconsider religion. Maybe I can turn it off. Does the pain subside with death or are we eternally tormented in limbo or hell? I don't know. In the dying is there a return to our spiritual home, are we just the same wandering souls bound to one another for eternity, to get it right, or to languish trying? I don't know anymore, no, I don't know any less either, I am just so much more aware of how little that really is.

dogs in the morning

Wet benches dried by my warmth. Mint tea and Cervantes. "El viejo celoso"...
What do we look for in entertainment, in art, in literature? The experience of all that we cannot have in our real life? And what then is it that the artist needs? To purge, to write, to plaster her thought into a real, physical object to escape reality, to create reality, to invoke it or allay it?

If I had dogs, maybe I would just roll around on the floor and let them lick me. And forget all this useless conjecturing. I finally got up, motivated, and ready to release the weight (literal) and there were two beautiful eternally present canines, labs, a yellow and a chocolate, boy and girl. The perfect pairing if there ever was one. And their owner? Enigmatic.

Anos Kata...

My knowledge of dead languages fails... but y' all know who you are and the shout that comes at the end, like at the Ani concert at Penn, you rock baby!

A snotty girl bike-fixing workshop was *exactly* what I had in mind. See. I knew the answer would mystically arrive. Points to be considered...
I have no menu.
I have no hiking boots.
First we need a menu, then we need to go shopping for food and hiking boots.

Then we need to go climb on the top of Thomas Great with a bottle of Asti Spumante for each hand, (or perhaps the top of Phelps? I haven't scaled any buildings here yet) and howl at the moon, and chuck the empty bottles with a dull thud to the grass three hundred feet below. And then guiltfully collect them the next sober moment.

Yay, no tofurkey or faux turkey or whatever they call that shit. (although it you made it, it would definitely _not_ be shit). But I will feel less guilty with you being a non-vegetarian.

What ya doin'? Yeah, I would be peeking into your bedroom just about now, to avoid the work I am so diligently avoiding. Not technically true, I have granted myself 10 minute dispensation. Let's pretend, just for today, that I am there, peeking into your bedroom, in my less than-dressed, perpetual state of being, red silk, and I do just inspire lust, don't I? Somebody better close that door, how will I possibly get my projects finished if I can't watch all 32 episodes of TP in two nights... This is so much fun, and we could even burn some potato latkes to spy on all the unassuming couples as they shuffle from the building...

So many ideas. You must take me to the farm, but no peeing. Not even just a little, it would be unethical. Oh Sabrina and I took the kids to the farmstand the other day and there was a totally evil woman, studiously ignoring us, until she decided to scold our inoffensive children. grrrr.

MMMM. no more strawberries, but I wonder if we could get fresh figs and make higos en almibar, Miramar style... with cream.

What else... I am thinking about how you make all the pain dissappear and how I wish that I had been there for you, better than I was, I mean, before... oh fuck it. can't go back and change shit...

"here comes little naked me padding up to the bath room door. To see little naked you slumped on the bath room floor..." only our slumps are purely metaphorical ones aren't they...

My mood just did a 180 - you kick my ass, darlin' (in the best way possible)

Help!

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors... (Goes without saying... but for the sake of copyright laws... The Beatles)

It was bound to happen, eventually, being that two wheels are suddenly my only form of transportation. My chain popped off, and my hands, after several washings, still retain the tenacious remnants of chain grease. I was, of course, incapable of fixing the problem myself, enter cute, swarthy bike-fixing boy at the IV bike shop. But, alas, he knew of no bike self-fixing workshops in the area. Someone will know. I crave independence and I can't even fix my own f-ing bike. Some sorry excuse for a feminist I have turned out to be.

Fortune cookies...

Nothing as "comforting" as mediocre Chinese food. At least you can always count on the same quality of dining experience. The tea was good, and the rest pleasantly passable. And it is fun to watch Sofía struggle with the chopsticks and comment on how much she enjoys the shrimp in the hot and sour soup.

Here are the fortunes that we received, and officially they are all mine because I opened all three cookies, or, they are all hers because she ate all three. But really each of us gets an assigned cookie and the fortunes are as intransferable as they are aleatory.

Mine is the absolutely wrong one for me. I wonder if we can all guess which one.

You will soon discover how truly fortunate you really are. (vague... not really a fortune, or perhaps a bad omen?)

This is a good times [sic] to consider formally helping others. (ha. time to consider, but not necessarily act)

Don't wait for others to open the right doors for you. (Advice, but still not really a fortune.)

And according to the Chinese Zodiac, I am: Popular and attractive to the opposite sex. Often ostentatious and impatient. Need people. Yup! that *is* me... but wait it is also everyone else born the same year as me... that doesn't seem statistically possible. A whole year's worth of sex-pots... highly dubious.

Of course, according to the good old western Zodiac, being a Gemini, I am a dual personality (yes) and I am highly libidinous, and I can't shut up. (Also true, even when it is in my best interest to do so). But I can't possibly believe that everyone born in the same month as me is equally schizofrenic or manic, or whatever we want to name my personality disorder... Sigh. No finding meaning in dessert after all:(

Life's simple pleasures

The sun sets earlier each day. The chartreuse that paints the sky captures my eyes, before I set my bike to the side and enter into the children's center. Isabella and Pepe are listening so attentively that they don't even notice me. Their earthy teacher acts out the words of the storyteller. The other little girls, who race in a line to hug her as she leaves, turn and point, as I stand silently, not wanting to interrupt their private story circle.

Our Monday evening ritual, Isabella and Pepe get up and collect their things, his wide-set eyes follow me, he wants to hold his *own* bag of books, but I end up putting it in the basket. I set the pace, tired, but at the same time anxious to be home, always a bit nervous when walking both kids and the bike across the four lanes of traffic. We cross, after my gentle urging, they hold hands, two perfectly rhythmic swinging hands. I shelter them with my bike and my body, as if my body would really serve as protection if one of the right-hand-turners were to become distracted, but I do it anyway, the way that my mother's hand, for years would fly to the right when she braked too hard, always the protection of the precious life that we want to see grow.

They are adorable together, they are dragging behind me, Pepe tells Isabella to be a Koala and I have to extricate the leaves from her mouth. Then she comes running, whining, Pepe calling after her "I said I was sorry, I said I was sorry" and she, "Pepe punched me!" as she rubs her tummy. "Pepe, sweetie, let's try not to hit" Isabella interjects, "He didn't hit, he punched!" "But I said I was sorry" "I know, but sometimes sorry doesn't make the pain go away, it's better to try and not hurt in the first place."

"Vámonos niños!" They race along the semi-circular bench. "Niño y niña" she corrects me, unwilling to be included in the collective female annhilation of the Spanish language (or maybe just dealing with English interference?)

And we amble down the path, the darkening sky, trailing deep pinks and purples behind us. Pepe tells Isabella that he likes her pink shoes, that they are pretty. She disagrees! They whisper, and giggle, "I know, you are going to wear your brown shoes tomorrow." Isabella's eyes glow with joy. She asks if he can come over to watch "Peter Pan" but he says he doesn't like the fighting, to which she replies "you don't have to watch that part!" I eavesdrop, walking down the "secret" path that takes us down into the "forest" for a moment, before realligning with the bike path that leads past our house and all the way back out to the Marketplace. "Do you want to watch Power Puff Girls?" Pepe exclaims, "I love the Power Puff Girls". Isabella, "me too! I don't have the movie, I just have the CD." He asks in all his innocence, "can we watch the CD?" and she responds (equivocally, but so sure of herself!) "Yes, I'll just ask my daddy to put it on his computer."

I smile to myself. Life is still beautiful. It is. Sometimes I forget.

Clouds

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow it's cloud's illusions I recall, I really don't know clouds... at all." Joni Mitchell

The sky is darkening, casting a lovely gloom, but strangely, not reflecting or affecting my mood. I feel very sleepy, and a little in pain (bike and basket with full bag o'books fell over on my hand -trying to catch it and dropping everything else, as usual - this morning, making the manipulation of chalk more of a challenge than usual), but mostly ok. I guess it is ok to not feel everything a flor de piel, not always, passions can be trimmed, tied back, let back down when the coast is clear, like the hair I am thinking of cutting off, or changing its color...red? Probably wouldn't suit me, but something has got to be done. I found three more white hairs! and the Alps are melting!!! Why do these two things find themselves with equal crisis mode in my brain?

Oh right, because I am a narcissistic fuck up. No? Really because they are two equally frustrating, and unchangeable facts of life as we know it. I can't do anything about global warming even though it scares the pants off me. And the outward signs of aging? Yeah, I know, I am too young to co-opt the crisis of aging, it is just that I feel so very old so much of the time, and I am rattling my cage to forget, in the frenetic movement, that I have done nothing grandiose or noteworthy in my time on the planet.

Like so many others before me. But not, I fear, so many after me.

Today I will ignore those things over which I have no control. I will try to just be. And think about the myriad possibilities that have rolled up and parked themselves on my doorstep.

Sunday, Monday happy days...

It is too early to be happy today. This is evidenced by the tantrum on pink shoes that Isabella had before leaving. She actually wanted brown clogs instead of pink sneakers, that her daddy so kindly bought her. (I never would have bought the pink if she hadn't been there nagging, that's for sure!)

I am left alone, again, in my living room, to observe my own undoing, or to start doing. Which will it be? The remnants of Sundays grading-fest are winking at me, with sly invitation. Yes, to the pile, almost finished with my own work. Why is it that we always feel the need to do work for others before we can dedicate ourselves to our own labor? (Maybe that is just me).

I hate to dissappoint anyone. Ever. This is perhaps my most detrimental of all defects. I always dissappoint myself, and that doesn't seem to matter. I am not proud of it. That's just the black and white of it.

Wouldn't it be nice to return to when wearing poodle skirts was trendy? (No) And when happiness was just having a good old car, and someone to ride around in it?... TV in all its nostalgic glory truly destroyed a generation of us, I think. But maybe, again, I am alone in this. Why does the "want" exceed the limits of reason, and of possibility? Why is instantaneous gratification so much a part of our decadent culture? Why can I not separate my thinking brain from my feeling brain? Why can't I just be HAPPY damn it?!

If misery were truly a comparable trait, I would have nothing, NOTHING, to complain about, my life is all but resolved. But therein lies the misery, who wants resolved? and what if the chords are resolved in a minor tone, or an atonal clash? Still, resolved, but not the way that you would want the song to end, with the warm release, the relaxing of all the muscles, all the tension, in a glorious chord of peace.

Ok, it is 8:02. Deal one I am going to stick with today. For my sanity, and my productivity. Me voy.

The 80's radio show or a public apologia

No, not really. Darling M. what can I say? I am sorry. I love you. (I really do) and, I am always wrong. (but not about loving you, man, that didn't come out right!)

Suddenly all the disjointed lyrics of my marauding youth are sliding out from beneath their rocks. (mostly, I think the Neville brothers) you see, I was a radio whore, listened to everything and anything, rather indiscriminately, which may account for how I turned out:(

"How am I supposed to live without you?... now that I've been loving you so long..."

and

"If you don't know me by now... you will never, ever....know me"

or

"Baby sometimes love just ain't enough"

And yes, I know that these less-than-eloquent lyrics are from *my* youth and not yours, my awful country and not yours, and therefore probably silly and incomprehensible (meaning, they mean more than the words, which of course you can read, but they don't sum up the hours spent alone in my little-girl bedroom wallowing in vicarious agony).

I am so profoundly sad, and I am so sorry that I have excised you from my life. (God, I have haven't I?) I didn't mean it to happen. I don't know if I could fix what I have broken, or if you would still be around to hear me. I will try, but I fear that trying one's patience is the only thing that I am very good at.

You were my best friend and now we can't even talk. You blame me for being who I was when you met me, as if we are all just doomed to follow the same patterns of escape. (see "Hombres Necios" de Sor Juana) Wait a minute, are we? One's previous actions are indicators of future behaviour? We are eternally trapped into living out the same situations over and over? I guess that is probably true, but on the other hand, my hands are not the only ones that are dirty. I believed in you. I did, forever. I did and I do, but I just don't know if I believe in forever anymore. I think that the world may be ending soon.

"I guess I'll never really be able to tell you, how sorry I am" (jump to the late 90's non-radio shaved-headed folk-punk diva)

What do I do today? Or tomorrow? How do we un-live our mistakes or erase our feelings? Why do I need to hold you even as I know I am all wrong for you? Why is all of this so predictably banal? You think that I am caught up in my ego, and perhaps there is some validity to that. But you also think that everything you have done has been just for me, and that, I am afraid is not true.

Are we in a better place than we were 5 years ago? I think the answer is yes.
Have we progressed as individuals? Absolutely.
Do we have an amazing child that loves us BOTH? Yes... you should not blame her for my transgressions, it is just not fair.

I am afraid of breaking apart, and I am afraid of staying still, stuck in the mud. I am afraid of hurting you, or of limiting you, or keeping you by my side when maybe you would be happier by the side of another, and I am afraid of the reproachful silence that reigns. And, let's be honest, I am deathly afraid of limiting myself.

Here you are, out and in the public light. You are so important to me (but I doubt that this will make you feel any better). I am suddenly overwhelmed with everything I don't and will never know, and the answers that used to seem obvious, are shrouded in uncertainty. I have no more answers, and I am beginning to hate the questions.

This seems rather inappropriate, and you will probably be more angry for me publicizing our private pain, than you will be happy that I have included you in my story. That is just the way it goes.

"Mira el arbol que ha crecido, con el corazón y el sudor... no hay que sacrificarlo" The most beautiful song you ever wrote for me, or for yourself, or for us both. I just don't know what is wrong with me.

More loose thoughts...

That had nowhere to go in the last postings...
Disclaimer: it may seem like I have nothing better to do than to write incessantly, which is in fact a falacy. I have way too much to do, but writing seems to sooth the nerves and this was something that needed to be said.

Walter Monkey you are a funny man. (if I knew how to link to your LJ, I would, but I don't:( ) And I am not even mad that you didn't call me back today. I had forgotten how much fun we used to have, and the time I shaved your head in the basement, (un-Tarantinoing you) while surrounded by the smell of cat pee. Ah, the memories... or the time Alison and I visited you in your dorm... or the time that we went bowling at 4 in the am and I ripped the borrowed pants from Slavitza (sp?), back when you wouldn't even have a drink... I will always think of you when I use the word genuflect, and how angrily sitting on the edge of my bed you insisted that I genuflect to your ego. Which, of course I refused. You had me laughing to the point of tears.

In tragedy, there is nothing like the antidote of a good laugh. So thank you for inadvertantly lifting my mood.

Kirsten, darling, you know that I love you sooooooooooo much. Anytime you want to make sure I am alive and kicking, you just visit me here... still fantasizing about you moving down here and all the adventures we'll have! (hopefully proposing in the indicative, so as to shift your mind in my favor, cleverly, without you knowing;) Can't wait to get my arms around you in a big old bear hug! And I have already begun the research on culinary schools...

Yay... my life is not over yet! Not yet... not yet... and I have friends, including Carey, who called back after a month! I knew if I held out she would call. Too bad Noah wasn't around to talk with Isabella. Things are going well, at least in the world of ESL - inter-personal relationships, well nothing new if they don't work the way they are supposed to.

Don't be fooled, the real me is still hiding, but I thought I might try on a few different cosmo-visions for good measure, to see which one fits best.

Alas, it is the fatalist that always wins! - which reminds me of a line from Sarah Harmer, Isabella's favorite song of the album

"maybe I'm a fatalist, to let it all go at this, like some balloon I'll probably miss, lost in a tree-top. But there's a coffee stain around your eyes, and lines that I don't recognize. Everything changed from being ok, the night that you came home so late. I could tell by the time on the stove, that you were no longer mine alone, I guess we're all just out on our own, and everybody is only their own... Oh I loved you, and I guess I still do, everything was going so good I thought something bad might happen... And then it did, if you know the difference between bad and good, thought that I'd know, but I cross my toes, and that's how it goes...."

Hmmm. Something smells good! cries Isabella bee as she comes down the stairs. Her dinner was macaroni and a nutella sandwhich. But I just finished making a pot of chicken soup. She tells me that the movie she just watched was sad, because Pancho Villa died and there was blood coming from everywhere, but the actors are just putting paint on him... it is not real, it is a pretend story... She races back up the stairs to snuggle more, being ever more forgiving than I. What is my four year old doing up and chattering past midnight? Don't ask, I am still the irreverently irresponsible (too immature to do a good job) mother.

And so, I am mentally prepared, once more for what lies ahead. Now, if only I can actually believe it when I say it!

Epiphany number 1

I have had one! Just one. Maybe not really one. But it felt like one five minutes ago.

Ok, so my scalp and forehead are hurting :( , and I thus haven't accomplished the work that I was supposed to, but the night is still young...

So here is the epiphany: I am not a sociologist. (no that isn't it) but I am always attracted to research that has *nothing* to do with my field of expertise (which, btw, right now is non-existent), so I had to meditate on some sort of project that would involve socio-linguistics, so that I can specialize, thereby making myself ultimately more marketable (not the real reason, of course), for the teaching methodolgy course that I am suffering through. I say suffering, but it is more like, laughing my ass off b/c the prof is hysterically funny, so even if all the reading is nauseatingly boring (b/c I have sat through far too many staff-development seminars and education classes, and b/c it is not really interesting ) I still generally leave class feeling purged of negative energy.

Still no epiphany... it is coming... I promise...

drumrolls...

My project is going to relate to the discourse lag (and its effect on personal / intimate relationships). Meaning of course... why the fuck people in bi-lingual / bi-cultural relationships can't fucking understand one another... I thought that So Cal might be a relatively split-relationship rich area, and that way, I can limit the scope of my research to say, heterosexual couples, with one American partner and one Spanish-speaking (or do I limit it just to Mexican?) partner. What specific modes of discourse see the most communication break-down? What language dominates... etc. No doubt this has been done before, but once I start investigating, I will be able to aproximate an angle that is slightly unique... (and that's all you ever really have to do anyway, right?, variations on a theme, like little lapping waves that make very little actual progress, but make all the academics feel really good, 'cause nobody dares contradict them...)

This is horribly vague, and probably way beyond my capacity (either intellectually or experientially). But, I bet the results would be fascinating and very telling. Perhaps I could limit it further to this particular set of circumstances in the University community? Would the pool be large enough? So who cares that I am not equipped to do this sort of thing?! This is how it ties in to my literary research: I have been fascinated with the idea of linguistic exile, and of writing in a language other than the mother tongue, for very personal reasons, and I think that the research that would necessarily go into me creating this proposal (let's not even imagine that this would then turn into an actual project - highly unlikely) would be immensely helpful, at worst just for emotional clarity and at best, providing a theoretical framework for the analysis of some works that I have been wanting to approach.

Did you discern the epiphany? No? Oh right, I haven't put it in yet. This is it: personal tragedy and pain can be turned into a useful fuel for purely academic research. A broken heart can indeed have corrolary benefits, a massive crash and burn can inspire...see Diane Vaughn- "Uncoupling" which I will be taking out of the library post-haste.

To do:

Today's to do list... I will accomplish all this and more, I swear! Ok. maybe not. I will try, really, really hard...

1) Grade midterms for Colonial Lit class. (not be too evil)
2) Glance over, grade and factor in extra credit (x 60 or more)
3) Mark attendance based on exams...
:. be caught up on readership = not failing miserably.

4) Grade quizzes for my class. (make notes of what was not captured, in general, to review on monday)

5)Wash piling tower of dishes (where they come from, I don't know, it is not like we actually ate at home...)
6) Borrow cart and haul laundry to laundry room.

7)Not behave badly. (never happening. I _am_ a complete failure.)


Why the harsh judgments? I can't seem to make deals with myself that will stick. I am a glutton for emotional punishment. I am a bad mother, although I did get to hold Isabella (she actually sat still for 5 whole minutes) and look into her beautiful eyes, while she kissed my face repeatedly. I hadn't noticed, or maybe this is a new development, but she has a dark grey circle that encloses the deep, glossy brown of her otherwise seamless eyes. I have no backbone. I have no gumption. I have no resolve. I got up early but then returned to lounge around bed until the late afternoon. I am going to create gender confusion for Isabella by not repressing her need to lounge naked with me. (Now this I am unsure about, am I going to screw her up?) I just can't tell her it is wrong for her to try to extract milk from whence it once came. She thought that the hole had gone away, even though she constantly reminds me that when she has a baby sister and brother they too will be given milk... and she will get the other available breast, as eating too much can be harmful for the imaginary wee ones...
I am also bad because I am having fantasies about more children some day. Even though I am thoroughly incapable of keeping my own shit together, even for a day... People like me should not _ever_ be allowed to have children again... but that doesn't make the desire go away. I will read my own thoughts on boycotting reproduction. I will buy into it. Perhaps I will flee. One might laugh at this due to my ridiculously backwards life situation, but I am sort of a commitment-phobe... the idea of permanence seems so cashed... ARghhhhhhhhhh! I want the eternal present, the today with no thought for tomorrow, or twenty years from now. I can't even do today right, so how can I consider that I can plan for tomorrow. And then the deep-rooted need to make plans pops his ugly head back out...

I dream of a little boy, climbing up the side of a mountain, laughing, head thrown back. How can I have a career and be a mother? I should have thought of that, now shouldn't I? I think that so many young couples (and older ones, too) get divorced because they ultimately need to divide household labor (including child-rearing) in a more equitable split, and physically removing themselves is the only way to acheive this. Where are the answers?!!@!!!!!!

8) I will get a grip. (nothing is ever as wonderfully enticing, nor as heart-rendingly horrible as it appears from a distance)

On blogging.

The whole concept of baring your soul via virtual reality goes against my grain. Which grain is my favorite? Amaranth or Quinoa for their awesome nutritional properties... No, not that kind of grain. I know, it is just me involved in this conversation. So, to the point I go...

I never _ever_ imagined myself writing on-line, or navigating, or sneaking around stealthily, skulking, snatching moments from other peoples lives, but my god! what have I been denying myself all these years? I am so tragically un-hip that I can do very little here anyhow, except write and write and write, but here I am, doing all the things I never thought I would.

The truly fascinating part of this, as I am a virtual *virgin* of virtuality (but certainly not virtuosity), is the bizarre dichotomy of public/private space. This of course is not a new concept, yes, as I said, I am eternally behind the times, but it is new to me... (so bored veterans be gone) Here's to losing my virginity! round two (or three if you count the other kind;)

But this is supposed to be about blogging. Yes, little distractible me... So why is it working so magnificently for me? Well, while there is the implied possibility of an audience (and, it seems, I _actually_ do have one - say J, J,M, M, M and K... among others, even if only my non-virtual friends catching up), there is the underlying inherent individuality of the undertaking. I realize that people do end up reading this (motivating factor? clarity factor?) but as I am writing, I mostly forget the world and everyone but myself, being more honest than I might be otherwise (thanks for the analysis J!) in real life situations with any one given individual. Plus, I am reminded, or notified (kindly) that I am too damn prolific, blogs don't usually get updated this often or with this much narrative (pooh - I always do shit wrong - it is just my way)

All this is true. But I am still terribly dissatisfied. What else is new? I think that constitutionally (no, not the document that is being shredded as we speak) I am more suited for quiet introspection in a natural setting than this über-artificial one. I am reminded of my long walks in the woods (of which I can no longer partake, having less than suitable transportation and a companion whose pace can only be urged on, like when we visited Muir Woods, by searching for duende holes...) in the pine forests. My dreams still bring me there, the soft crunch underfoot, the pungent pine-needles carpeting the ground, the clearings where my life would be perfect - perhaps this has more to do with literary infiltration from a young age - the damp leaves clinging to one another, as they have fallen, mingled in their ochres and reds. I recall the longing that Thoreau inspired in me, and I also remember a really amusing anecdote which transpired in the summer of '96 at none other than Walden Pond (akin to the place where I should be writing, but am not)...


A year before, I had met one (of the many) loves of my life. He was coming off a bad acid trip (and I was the one responsible for its upswing), and I was with my brother and his new lover (the one who I would later visit and travel up the PCH with) and we were new to New England, having returned respectively from Miramar and Bordeaux. Knowing nobody, we decided to visit Cambridge, as it held many a fond memory of earlier explorations, on visits to our younger cousins' on their Bat Mitzvahs. There was a motley crew of spare-changers, drifters and soul-searchers, up against the wall, resting in the alcove entrance to a closed bank, right in front of the sunken circle by the newsstands and the T-entrance. They had a guitar, which was enough for me, we sat down and sung... and made a bit of spare change too. Mikey, with his shaved head, blond and beautiful, with his floppy jeans and looking just like an ex - Gabriel, but for the fact that he immediately set off my gay-dar. He had the richest, most melodious voice and we fell instantaneously in love. It was mutual, and platonic, nothing like the joy of a relationship where sex cannot possibly cloud the issues.

So, Mikey introduced me several months later to Ara, a clever girl, left very young to her own devices, living on cloves and working as a nanny, painting murals on her walls. She and I were quick to befriend, and the excitement of venturing out weekend after weekend from drab, safe, suburbia to spend the weekends alone, unsupervised in their apartment in Somerville was enough to keep me from going nuts in my seventeenth year. What did we _not_ do in that apartment, before the gentrification of Somerville, before the pseudo-ritzy hipster bars and cafés, Somerville was still affordable for the poor, if they pooled their resources.

Now we won't recall here the hilarious episodes of the triple New Year's celebration, nor will we recount the time Ara and I spent the day on the bench in Davis square, ending in a wild orgy on the living room floor, although it might be germane to introduce one of its participants, Lisa, (the other being an inconsequential male figure whose name I can't remember who I do recall had a gorgeous white dog with blue eyes - that being the only reason we brought him home with us). Now Lisa, it would turn out was the first girl I would ever kiss, but by the time we went to Walden, there was no tension whatsoever between us, she was more than slightly agoraphobic, so this trip out was quite a feat for her...

Three girls in the aging, awful, American, Dodge Caravan - mine for the using for a little over a year, before it conked out at exit 4 on 93 in NH, after returning from a James Brown concert in Lowell. It was stiff, and boxy, but it got us from point A to point B. And that night, a steamy summer one, point B was Walden Pond. We arrived, and parked stealthily up the street. Of course the park was closed after dark, but that was, in fact, the tantalizing transgression. We walked down the hill, sliding on the eternally present pine-needles, indiscernible in the darkness. But upon arriving at the sand, having walked by Thoreau's tiny cottage, our faces were illuminated by a monstrous, low-hanging, glowing orange ball of a harvest moon. Good thing, we had no flash-lights. We trekked to the far side of the pond, and judging it safe, we removed our clothing, what little of it there was, light Indian fabrics, no doubt, and raced into the tepid water. Nipples surely retracted in delight. And there we were, three wood-nymphs splashing in the water, we could have been plagiarized from a Roman Frieze. In that moment we were all free, not bound by any desires but the ones we were living out. Basking in the darkness of the forest and the luminescence of the smiling moon, in our girl-hood, all the hurt and aggressions momentarily erased from our collective memory, our bodies cleansed, our souls purified, if only for a fleeting, evanescent moment.

That is why I will never fully give myself over to this sort of virtual existence. I just need more.

Howling at the moon

There are lots of really good, kind, honest, talented people in this world (believe it or not).

Are we bound to them because of their goodness, even if they are not good for us?

Are we afraid of destroying the karmic balance of the universe? (we can't possibly have that kind of impact as individuals, only in collectivity)

Are we afraid of growing old alone? forgetting the loneliness of the wrong company?

...

a resounding wall of deafening silence, more waves. more matches. the moon is hidden from me, but she is still there... i can wander through the midnight brush, and i still have a canine voice with which to howl plaintively, to her ultimate inclemency.

More unkosher thoughts

I have been toying with the idea of female circumcision. Gutting all apparatuses of pleasure prior to womanhood, or marriage. To a Westerner, hedonist pigs that we are, it is a highly suspect idea. Where is the agency, the choice? Agreed. But. Who are we really kidding, is there any female agency in Western culture either? There is certainly the _guise_ of it, for sure, but is there really, and deeply, any more control for women in the lovely war-loving Occident? Nominally, I suppose.

Wouldn't it maybe be better to know exactly what you were up against from the get-go so as to not be distracted by the things that you can never have. Wouldn't it be better to live in a Harem so as to share the burden of a household, and to share the companionship that is so often missing from a monogamous (ha), individual couple? Close the window with a black curtain, paint the glass ceiling red?! Now, in no way should this be read that I advocate violence against women (well maybe myself, but that is another story)but, can't we at least attempt transparency?

So, no removal of genitals, but what about the hysteria? How many Western women had un-wanted and un-invited hysterectomies, the cancer of the womb, the written word, the denied access to pen and paper, or the over-zealous, jealous reading of those words, destroying of the diaries, the life-lines, written on the body, in invisible ink. We secretly pass this to our daughters without thinking that we, by the same token, are repeating the silent misery. If I were a Kennedy, I could just have a Lobotomy... and then the docile femininity would return...

The chalice, the vessel, the provider of life. What if we all just stopped? International, Inter-planetary boycott of reproduction! Then reproductive rights might get a closer look. Men have the right to procreate whenever, but the real reason that they cut us down is that they are scared shitless that one day (perhaps not in lontananza)...we will foreclose on their future. And no matter how many rapes are perpetuated, if we refuse, they will not be able to muddle through on their own. The current situation in the Middle East should be a prime example: you cannot create peace, you cannot raise a child, you cannot heal the world by destroying it! (imposed Democracy is the antithesis of true democracy) and sadly, it seems that men, not women, are endowed more heavily with the destructive force.

Yes, I am well aware of the conflicting view points on this, and I have never claimed to be either philosopher nor writer (by trade, anyway, necessitiy, now that is different). Shiva reigns eternal, but you cannot sustain a world where creative and destructive forces are in imbalance, and the systematic dismantling of women (by women, as often as not) will not have a fructiferous result in the long run. That is why I propose the boycott. If there is swift and crippling reception,(a metaphoric foot to the groin) maybe the men will stop, and scratch their balls for a moment, and wonder what happened, and reflect on the necessity of killing more people and the inalienability of having bigger and better cars, and more black slag to poison themselves with...

This is my fantasy, of course. Reminding myself that even with a woman ob/gyn, after 10 hours of useless labor and toil, I was forced to receive a pitocin injection, causing more pain and less progress, but maybe fun to watch for a sadist. And then, against my wishes, so they could reverse the fuck-up of overdosing me and sending me into 30 minutes of unrelenting contraction upon contraction, they wanted to give me pain killers...I meekly refused... but 6 hours later, when I could not make my body do what it was supposed to, according to their time-frame, I was again held against my will, told to bend over and not move (they could not be held responsible for possibly paralyzing me by hitting a nerve, if I would just sit still... so uncooperative, as always). The needle, piercing my nervous system, calming the pain, but for whom? Certainly not for me, I would have begged, if not so worn down at 4 am, to let me just stay the course. A three-day labor would have been a thousand times better, and if the end result was death? Wouldn't that be divine justice, an eye for an eye, a child for a mother? Part of me, of course, did die then, it just took a little more perseverance to discover that, but in dying there is always a rebirth, a re-direction of energy.

In the end, I just let them steal the child from me, and give me drugs, so I could forget. I didn't forget and, as it would happen, they didn't read my chart and so, I got to relive the joys of a morphine allergy... This of course made the baby drowsy, and not nurse to their required standards, and once more, against my will, she was given formula while I struggled to extract the colostrum with a machine... (If I ever do it again, I will be a VBAC, I swear, and I will have a midwife not a doctor, and it will not be in the Uninhibited State of Anglo-domination)

This may seem un-related and tangential, but it is actually quite relevant. WE are responsible for our bodies. WE are responsible for our minds and souls. WE must do something to stop this machinistic masculinity that steam-rolls our individual rights. It must stop! So, if castrating ourselves physically is not the answer, castrating ourselves mentally certainly is not; but we need to use our words, our minds like a shield around this planet. They cannot come back in until they learn to wipe their feet and step softly and not carry a big stick!

Lauryn Hill...now there is a sexy mama...

I really mean it too. It is so nice to hear someone with an ego bigger than mine, makes me feel better about myself...Of course my inflated ego is a much more private endeavor, AND it is constantly being assailed. How is it that some of us are just born thinking that we are right even if we're not? While others, often _are_ right and they keep it all to themselves?
I have learned, just a little, that you can't always get what you want... but I find that what you need doesn't take very much effort at all, it just sort of falls out of the sky into your lap or your soup.

What exciting things will I be machinating for this evening? Well, as a reward for my diligent advancing of evil research project, I will indulge in my favorite form of self medication, oh and I'll probably have some MJ too... what? We should all know that my fav form of self-medication is _not_ substantial but rather essential, the losing of myself in the being a song...
I found a book of poems and songs among my things and while I never wrote down the music, I _do_ still remember it all. Most of it is silly Peace and Love stuff. No that's not true, there is a song written to a good woman, incidentally named Luna, (before the name carried the significance that it does for me now) who was brutally attacked and her girlfriend murdered with an ice-pick wielding midnight bike thief in the sleepy town of Rose Valley (no, not Thorn Valley). And it remains (and I think forever will) an a capella song, along the lines, and probably for the same reasons as "Me and a Gun" and "Behind the Wall" .
A lament cannot be instrumentalized. Period. Just the wobbling voice of a woman against the sky. Funny, when I wrote it, I had never really experienced, first-hand, the violence that tormented me. Now that I have, it just feels more urgent. I wonder if I will ever be able to record that, and the Water-goddess song... when we were playing with Maria, Bryan, Sean and Reid we tried to re-arrange it, but the vaguely funk/ electronic soounding crap was just that, it lost the spiritual searching part of it, turning it into just a song. Ho-hum. I guess it is a good thing she decided she needed to be a Diva.

I am remembering the gig M. had for the PMC big rollers (cyclists raising money... can be a good thing, sometimes, I guess, but man, some people just take themselves way too damn seriously) at Moakley Court house over-looking the harbor, and the sad look I must have had on my face to invite the unwanted attention of the aging cyclist, I was just imagining falling over the edge of the balcony and he strutted up with his Martini, seeing what he could get. It is funny, I played the game for a few minutes before telling him that my husband was sitting right behind... did it feel good to have someone pay me some attention? probably. No, I don't think I was even remotely interested in hearing about his bike-commute among the wild "big-dig" traffic patterns, but it was nice to not hear my own voice for once. That was the last time I saw Maria. I think that was why I was sad. I had been prohibited from seeing her after her inconsiderate retreat from the band, and really in terms of being a good friend, she was rather self-ish, I just didn't seem to care, or notice before, loving the sound of our voices together too much to notice the lack of reciprocity in the friendship. Also, we tend to give people we love the benefit of the doubt for far too long.

I think it is just sad when that benefit snaps like a brittle bone, utterly irreplaceable... Then even getting a $500 an hour gig for your "friends" doesn't cut it. The uncomfortable explanations, and the bright eyes, tears withheld. The classical guitar behind me, and the blabbering divorcé... and Luna, who never had justice... and the majestic sterility of the court-house, where those who have can pay for justice, and those who have not, well, they see their last moment of freedom fly out the enormous plate glass windows into the tempestuous harbor.

It is funny, though, that I can go from devilishly scheming to morose melancholy in the space of 4 paragraphs. I think that it is just that the melancholy is constantly hovering, and the diabluras are just ways to chase it...It is like flicking matches at a mammoth wave that is rolling in over your head. Terribly useless and backwards.

I look at the back of my right hand, I can barely discern the cigarrette burn that I asked Leo to put there, dared him really, you probably couldn't see it if you didn't know it was there, playing Truco, drinking espresso, even then I knew the end was lurking just behind the sparkling beginning, that is why I asked him to permanently brand me, so the reminder of the destruction would serve as its own precursor.

I remember as I look at my bitten finger-nails the lapse of a year, when I _stopped_ myself! I stopped myself biting them, for A., he wanted me to be more womanly. (Nothing like an external motivator to acheive what we never would want to do on our own) He wanted me to be someone I was not, and all I wanted was for him to be who he was, I thought, but then who he was didn't turn out to be who I thought. I promised myself then that I would never genuflect to the will of anyone else, for the gift of perceived love, but as is expected I failed myself miserably in that promise too. I put lip-stick on, I painted my nails, and then later I bowed to the fantasies of others never questioning what my own was. What fantasies do I have? They must be dead, I couldn't remember ever thinking I had a right to fantasies... I probably don't...

Daily, I just try to hold it together, wishing that to live didn't hurt so damn much. Why does it hurt so much, like an open wound is constantly being ripped at. Prometeo c'est moi? How dramatically self-centered... It's not the shackles that others impose upon us, but rather the ones we impose on ourselves that hurt the most. And I think that for now, I am done.